Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  “Well, after all you did to help Central, I think it’d be rude to turn you down.”

  She smiles as she pulls into the barstool next to me. “It’s nice to get out of that armor once in a while, although it’s a little weird to be normal height again.”

  “We’ve never formally met. I’m Tommy, and this is Dodger. The fantastic soldier you see drinking a pint at the end there is Yazzie.”

  “Great to finally talk,” she says as she looks at the row of beer taps against the back wall. “I’m not going to sit here and lie. I knew who you and Dodger were from seeing you around Central, and Jackie talked so much about you.”

  “All good things, I’d hope.”

  “Mostly,” she says with a smile before waving to the end of the bar. “Sorry about you Yasmine, but Jackie never really said anything about you.”

  Yazzie just shrugs as she takes a drink from her mug. “We don’t know each other as well as she knows these two.”

  “Makes sense. So, what’s all the discussion happening around here?”

  Dodger taps her glass. “We were actually about to toast to some friends of ours that we lost in the fight.”

  Kali takes a deep breath and actually doesn’t answer at first. She motions to the bartender and a tap against the back wall, and soon she’s got a mug in front of her. “I lost someone I was really close with during the fight at the inner courtyard, at Fort Silence. We’d known each other for years, back to when we were little kids.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “Yeah, it actually felt like a little bit of me died at the same time,” she says as she looks down into her drink. It takes her a second before she looks back at us. “How about all of you? Who are you toasting to?”

  “There’s one specific person I’m toasting to. Someone I lost a long time ago, when all of this fighting with the Sha’b started. Linda Gomez.”

  Yazzie raises a glass. “To Linda.”

  “To Linda,” we all agree before taking a drink.

  Yazzie speaks up again. “Of course, we also lost Patel during the fighting at the Green Zone.”

  I nod. “As good a person as I ever met. To Patel.”

  “To Patel,” we all call before taking another drink.

  I look over at Kali. “How about you, then? Who’d you lose in the fight?”

  It takes her a second to answer, but when she does, she smiles. “Belinda Torres. You don’t meet a lot of people like her. She saved Jackie’s life at one point, then she died saving me. What a woman.”

  I give her a nod. “To Belinda then.”

  “To Belinda,” everyone says with a third drink.

  That leaves us all sitting at the bar for a long minute before I finally add anything else. “I’m going to roll this into one big toast but, it’s important for us to remember that it was tens of thousands who died out there. Here’s to all of them.”

  “Here, here,” we all say in one final toast as we finish off our drinks. After that, it’s just a little bit of time as we sit around, talking to each other and remembering good times with those we lost. Mikey doesn’t come up during any of it. I don’t know, maybe me and Dodger just want to be selfish about his memory and keep it within the circle of people who knew him best. Still, it’s good to sit there and pass stories around. With no battles to fight and no enemies on the horizon, we’ve earned ourselves at least one good night.

  Erin’s Recording 07

  I sit there with Ned Lancaster at a table, watching the lights outside the tower we’re drinking in. “Amazing,” I tell him. “Bloody amazing. I’ve never seen so much light in all my life.”

  “I know,” he says with a smile as he looks out of the window. The two of us just stare, at a road leading off to the edge of the island and the river of lights that are flowing out in front of us. “I never believed I’d see something quite like this.”

  “The beauty of this place when it had a full head of steam.”

  “Even know, it’s more beautiful than any other city I’ve seen,” he says with a nod. “But I must return south soon.”

  “Right, and I’ll be heading north.”

  “You still need to get everything in order up there at the fort?”

  “That’s the look of it. Some Central bureaucrat will be going up there eventually, then they’ll put in a real government to take care of all the people living around the fort. Then they won’t need Erin Donoghue anymore.”

  “We will always need Erin Donoghue,” he tells me as he turns and motions to the table we’ve set up in the tower. “A toast.”

  “Now that’s what I’ve been waiting for,” I tell him as I pick up the bottle and two glasses that are sitting there and pour us two shots. We each take a glass and hold them high. “To the bear of the south, Ned Lancaster, in gratitude for his help at the Battle of Fort Silence.”

  “To Erin Donoghue, the man who helped unite the clans and helped overthrow the tyrant, Yousef Suliman.”

  “Here, here,” I say as we both put back a drink. It takes a moment, but I soon feel the burning in my ribs and take a step back. “Powerful stuff.”

  “That’s right. Bottle of my own, brought from Zone Delaware. An Islay whiskey. It has a reputation for being fiery.”

  “Well, the reputation’s well deserved.”

  “Have you made plans for what follows after your time at the fort?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet. Seems to me that it might not hurt to have some of the clans settle in the area. Keeps the zone less crowded. And there are good lands up there. I’ve wondered, with the Northwest Creep Colony gone, if it might be easier to make a life in the area. Set up a few greenhouses to protect from the cold and get some real farming going.”

  “Ashanti mentioned something like that. You know, she’s eager to try that in the Arrowheads. With all that land and soil . . .”

  “It’s hard for me to believe I’m having this conversation. When I was a boy, I never dreamed I’d live in a world where we could grow food without being worried the Creep would flood in and wipe out everything we’d done. Now look at us.”

  Neddy taps the table and smile. “Change comes for us all, in the end. You used to be one of Daniel Pearson’s most fearsome fighters, and it wasn’t long ago you said you weren’t a leader. Now you want to take your people north and make a home for them there.”

  “Ishara always said I had more to me than the gun and the bottle,” I tell him with a sigh.

  “Speaking of which,” he says as he pours out two more drinks, “I may be wrong, but I believe we have at least one more toast to make.”

  “That’s right.”

  “To Ishara and Tara,” he says as he hands me a glass.

  “To Ishara and Tara,” I tell him as we both drink it down. Again, I feel that burning in my ribs, like fire’s pouring down my throat. “It’s hard to imagine what I’d have been like if not for them.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You were always the man, Erin Donoghue. You always had the potential to become what you now are. I was proud to serve by you.”

  It makes me laugh. “Lancasters. They said you were like your father.”

  “Did they?”

  “Men of words. Men who earned loyalties through what they said.”

  “If you only lead by the sword and the gun, you earn a man’s fear, not his loyalty. What we say, how we act toward one another, those things earn a man’s loyalty. I’ve congratulated my people on their birthdays, sent gifts to them at the birth of a child or on their weddings. Loyalty is earned through more than just fighting.”

  It makes me look away a second, out to the streets beneath us. “The Sha’b will still need a leader, you know. Now more than ever, with them uniting. With them settling down.”

  “And you didn’t want to be that?”

  “No. I’m happy being the man in-between, the man who keeps things running. Leading this many people . . .” I shake my head. “You need a certain character for that. I’ve got a go
od eye for this sort of thing. Spotting people of quality. I think you’d be up to it.”

  “It’s not my role to take.”

  “No, but as I just got done saying, I’m the man in-between. I’ll bring it up to the clans and let them decide.”

  “You honor me.”

  I look back at him. “You honor yourself, Ned, same as all the great people I’ve ever been loyal to. Let’s only hope the clans see what I see.”

  Jackie’s Recording 47

  John speaks into my ear. “So, when should I expect you back at Highpoint?”

  I’m sitting in the near dark surrounding St. Patrick’s Cathedral, looking at the front steps leading up to the doors. It’s all locked up, but lampposts heading out in either direction keep the streets lit. “The city’s so much more alive with the power on. Just having streetlights on at all hours changes the whole feel of the place.”

  “Not sure that answers my question, but I’m happy for you kid.”

  “Thanks. But you’re totally right. I need to get back there and start resupplying the weapon stocks. That should be a lot easier now that I have a map of Apeiron’s cache system. I won’t have to be flying all over the place trying to find ammunition.”

  “Is it a stupid question to ask if you even still need the weapons and armor, kid?”

  I smile. “Yeah, I still need them, John. I know how impressive the fighting looked, but it left me feeling like I was dying. I don’t think even Creep cells are meant to put out that much energy for that long. I mean, we’ll find out just what I can do over the next few months, but for now, we still need the weapons. I definitely still need the armor. From everything the Stranger said, I have a feeling I’ll be fighting things that can keep up with me at some point.”

  “Scary thought. So, what’s the step by step from this point out?”

  “Phew. Well, let’s see. Get to the Tower and free everyone, then see what clues I can find about the Eye and the Angels. Then get Doc Watson up to Hightower so he can look through our records and find out what he can. Plus, maybe he can find some way of getting you free from there.”

  “It’d be nice to visit Central again after five hundred years away from it. It’d also be nice if the good doctor could repair my memory circuits.”

  “That’s the hope. Anyway, after that, it’s time to head west. From everything I’ve seen in Yousef and Ishara’s records, there’s a Tower out there that looks suspicious. Might even be active.”

  “Like the one you came from.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Sounds like things won’t be calming down anytime soon.”

  “Well, that’s why it’s going to be good having you stick around, John,” I tell him with a smile. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you to talk to when things got rough.”

  “I appreciate it. Now, shouldn’t you be getting to bed? I thought you had some sort of presentation to make tomorrow.”

  That gets a big flap of my lips in response. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  Personal Recording of the President, Gabriel Branagh 24

  I may not be acting as either president or a representative yet, but Jackie called me in to meet with her and some of the other big players around Central for something important she said she needed to talk about. I got to Central Primary not really sure what to expect, but happy as hell to see the old militia. Most of them thought I’d died during Yousef’s takeover. I didn’t really get into explaining the details of my survival, though I did let them know that rumors of my death had been greatly exaggerated.

  At any rate, when I step into the council chambers, I’m not surprised by who I see there. Tommy, of course, as the new president. Dodger and Michael Tan, both representing the city. And newly minted General Martin, to provide valuable military insights, I’m sure. But there were more, people I recognized from briefings about the Sha’b. Marc Lopez and Ashanti Bonsu. Then there was Ned Lancaster, son of the famed Neddy senior. And finally, months after having first met him, Erin Donoghue. He’s the strangest to see there, but the minute I step inside, he greets me with a handshake and a pat on the back.

  “Glad you’re alive,” he tells me.

  I smile back. “I’m glad things worked out between our two people, after all.”

  “The Tank would say as much.” He gestures to a seat, and I join him at the table. It’s only a second after we’re all exchanging hellos and brief introductions that Jackie steps into the room, her body covered in her dress uniform, black gloves covering the navy-blue coloring of her outfit, and the white Mantle Victoriam covering her back from shoulder to shoulder. She greets us all with a smile as she steps up to the table, giving us all a simple wave before starting.

  “Thanks to everyone for coming in,” she begins, although even from the start, she sounds tense. “For me, it was almost half a year of fighting here in Central, but for the rest of you, the war went on for a year. But here we all are, stronger because we’re finally not pointing guns at each other. Stronger because we’re actually united, for the first time in centuries, from Zone Delaware in the south, across the bay to Central Freedom, and finally north to Fort Silence. That’s more than five thousand square miles of continuously controlled human territory, more than any people have held since the Following Fall. I’d say that’s something to be happy about.”

  Tommy raises his hands and starts to clap, “Here, here.” Along with him, the rest of the room breaks out into mild applause, before finally settling down and letting Jackie continue.

  “When I first tried to make an alliance with Fort Silence, there were two major reasons. The first was because I wasn’t ready to use my powers, not to my full ability, and I thought we could rely on Yousef to be Central’s protector. I think we all that didn’t really work out,” she says to some laughs. “But there was another reason I thought it was urgent that we start uniting people together.”

  She takes a deep breath, and I lean in, watching her. There’s a moment where her normally brown cheeks actually look as close to pale as she can get. “The reason is because I was scared. When I first came here, I learned that Angels had been spotted around Central. Not only there, though. From my talks with both Yousef and the Tank, I learned they’d been spotted all around the Deadlands, across all the land we now control together.”

  Jackie taps at the table controls, and the screen at the back of the room lights up. It’s a map of the city and the surrounding Deadlands, with clusters of red running from south to north. Alongside those clusters of red, there are clusters of orange that are less dense but that dot the map around Central Freedom. “The clusters of orange you’re looking at are confirmed sightings of Creep infected individuals. Not Creepers. I’ve discussed this with Doctor Watson, and we’re just calling them enhanced humans for now. I’m talking about people with the power to manipulate the Creep, people who have similar superhuman strength and speed from their experimenting with Creep cells. When we talk about Yousef and what set him down the road of wanting to kill people like me, it’s it looks like Fort Silence, going back to the old general, encountered people like this. Both the Tank and Yousef seemed really concerned about them. They both said that there was an arms race going on, but not for tech from the Old World. They implied that there were people across the Deadlands trying to manipulate the Creep into a weapon again. The confirmed sightings in orange you’re seeing here are from every person they tracked, and even from some of the hunting, that they did trying to eliminate these people from the Deadlands.

  “But it’s the red lights that really have me worried,” she says as she waves to the map. “Those are markers from across the Deadlands, including here in Central, where people reported seeing Angels. I went back through the records here at Primary to look at security logs and reports, just trying to piece it all together. It turns out the Angels don’t come here frequently, but they come around enough, and they’ve been doing it for a century at least. Meanwhile, at Fort Silence and in Zone De
laware, both Yousef and the Tank kept recording every time one of these Angels was spotted. You can see that they’ve been pretty active.”

  Erin nods. “I remember talking about this with you, Branagh,” he says with a tap on my shoulder. “Must have been months ago now, before everything around here went to hell.”

  “I remember,” I tell him with a nod. “You mentioned that you were worried about Angels. I said they were just a rumor.”

  “Believe me now, then?”

  Tommy nods. “And I remember saying that we ‘d seen Angels in the Tower.” He looks over at Jackie. “We always assumed they were scavenging technology. I mean, they were always seen digging into wiring and hardware.”

  Jackie points a finger at him. “That’s right. What we’ve never bothered to ask is why they would be taking tech out of the Deadlands.” She takes a deep breath as she looks around the room. “What I’m about to talk about is really sensitive, but I know I can trust all of you.”

  Neddy speaks up from the back. “We are a council now. What we say remains in each other’s trust.”

  “Thanks, Ned. Here’s the thing. Ever since I bonded with the Creep, I’ve been . . . I don’t know. I’ve been feeling a mind in the Creep. The Creep carries thousands, if not millions of minds in it. After bonding with the Creep, I could touch those minds, at least a little bit. They’re not whole minds though. They’re not aware of who they are or where they are. They don’t know why they’re trapped in the Creep. They’re like fragments of people. Trapped, in what we call the long nightmare, experiencing hallucinations. Sometimes good ones, but bad ones too.

  “But there’s a mind in the Creep that isn’t a fragment. It’s whole, and it’s strong. It’s strong enough that it can control Creepers to a degree that I’ve never seen. I’ve fought powerful people who could make the Creep swarm and send vicious monsters after me. This though, this mind, it feels like it can do even more. It feels like, given enough time, it could control the whole thing. Every inch of the Creep.”