Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  Jack spread his hands. "Why the hell not?"

  "Look, I had my doubts after all your time as a vegetable, and for the first few months, you really seemed to be coming around. But for the past couple of month's you've been... I don't know, distant."

  "You haven't exactly been busting down my door to visit."

  "It's just that ever since the Defender thing, you've been living in your own little world, pretending nothing's changed—"

  "I haven't—"

  "It's a different world, Jack!" Several of the other patrons craned their necks to look at Grant, but he didn't seem to notice. "It's like you've been regressing, trying to delude yourself that nothing's changed, that the world you used to know is still on track. On its own, that's bad enough; I'd recommend counseling. With everything else though, I'm suspicious."

  Jack carefully moved his glass of wine out of the way then leaned forward. "Suspicious about what, huh? Everything else? Is this your Defender conspiracy again; I'm one of them, released to spy on everyone and just pretending to be normal?"

  "The evidence fits."

  "What evidence?"

  Grant jabbed a finger at Jack. "You're keeping something secret!"

  "I'm keeping something secret? I'm keeping secrets? Who had to tell whom about Suzanne?"

  Grant crinkled his eyebrows. "Suzanne?"

  "Lauren, goddammit, whatever her name was; that's no the point!"

  "Hey!"

  Both men turned to stare at Amanda. "You want to talk about secrets, huh? I'm fucking pregnant, alright? You're getting on to me for acting stupid? Grow the fuck up; I'll be in the lobby if anyone needs me." She pushed away from the table and stomped away towards the elevator.

  They watched as she was swallowed by the building and disappeared from view, then returned their attention to each other.

  "Did you know about this?" Grant asked.

  Jack shook his head.

  Grant leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "Damn it, I'm not ready to be a grandfather..."

  Jack sat in silence for a moment then reached out and patted Grant's shoulder, their argument put aside, but by no means forgotten.

  6

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 15

  The cell deep int the underbelly of the Pentagon was familiar in ways. The low concrete ceiling ribbed with rebar, the pipes and wires locked away behind a protective metal cage; it all seemed like home for Melana.

  The toilet in the corner, more importantly the sink with its promise of fresh water whenever she wanted it, was less familiar. The last time she had been in a cell like this there had been nothing so extravagant as basic human comforts.

  Comforts. A week ago, living in her townhouse, taking the bus to the studio every morning, indoor plumbing would have been a necessity, a prerequisite for being alive. It was always there, never to be questioned. Comforts were things like heated seats, or her new gel insoles.

  Now all of that was stripped away, gone along with the beautiful, well-fed, manicured, pedicured, pampered excuse for a human that she had been there, in the real world. Now all that was left of her was the Melana who had been in the mirror.

  That Melana had come to this cell hours—days?—ago, after what seemed like weeks of interrogation. They had tried to force themselves into her mind, to break her and turn her to their will. Of course, they had failed; the last person who had attempted the same had succeeded too well.

  "Who are you?"

  She had been handcuffed, shackled at the ankle, sitting incongruously on an antique sofa in the White House. Not telling... It took her a moment to realize that her answer had remained locked inside her, not broadcast to the red-faced agent looming over her. The scramblers were still on; if she wanted to communicate, it would have to be the old-fashioned way.

  "We know that you're Melana Angela Ruiz."

  "Then why'd you ask, asshole?"

  "Who sent you?"

  She leaned back and stretched her legs, causing the chains to jingle. "Allen."

  The agent looked at one of his assistants. The assistant nodded and began to prod at his palm-top.

  "What did you think you were going to accomplish?"

  "I was going to kill the president."

  This cycle had repeated ad nauseum: they would ask an obvious question, Melana wouldn't answer, they'd ask something mildly interesting, and Melana would answer honestly. Then they'd take what little she'd give them and try to worry a deeper meaning from it.

  "Who is 'Allen'?"

  "He's the guy who sent me."

  "Damn it, I—I mean, what is his relation to you."

  "That's my business; the real question is, 'what is his relation to you?'"

  "What did you mean, the Q-bomb has detonated?"

  "It means you fucked up, asshole."

  "What's the Q-bomb?"

  "I have to pee."

  Once the agents realized that they would get no real information from her, they smuggled her through a service tunnel to a waiting armored car. In the brief space between the tunnel mouth and the car she saw the sunrise and wondered if it would be the last she would ever see.

  From White House to car, from car to Pentagon, from Pentagon to pit. Once inside the huge structure they had taken her down past unseen floors of offices, of storage rooms, of normal, everyday life. Their final destination was a claustrophobic space twenty feet long, eight high, ten wide, divided in the middle by a wall of glass.

  "You know," a guard said as Melana's clothes were taken and a thorough search began, "if you don't have some powerful friends on the outside, you're going to be spending a lot of time down here. This room isn't on any map."

  Ignoring the indignities being performed by the other guards, Melana raised her chin and confidently announced, "I have the most powerful friends in the world."

  The first guard snorted.

  When they were finished, they passed Melana through a door in the glass and then she was alone, save for a single armored guard remaining in the antechamber. She took a quick inventory of everything that now lay at her disposal: Bed, bolted to wall; mattress; pillow; sheet, blanket, pillowcase; one t-shirt, white, a jumpsuit, orange, and a pair of socks, also white; toilet; sink with soap dispenser; soap. All in all... not much.

  She used the toilet, dressed, then lay on the bed.

  What else was there for her to do? What would Allen want her to do in this situation, now that his great plan had failed?

  The obvious answer would be escape, but that was impossible thanks to the scramblers that hummed non-stop behind the walls. Just how long had this place existed?

  With escape impossible, what else? What else, what else... Memoirs? "My Life as a Guinea Pig." Denounce the government, name names. That would achieve some of Allen's goals; just because the Q-Bomb failed in America didn't mean the rest of the world wouldn't get in line. Assuming they let anything she said out to the public.

  No, as much as she hated to admit it, her best bet was to ay low and wait for the outside world to come to her rescue. Hopefully Vince and the others would come for her... assuming they didn't believe she was dead... assuming they approved of her actions enough to warrant an escape. They still believed the Allen's plan was on track.

  There was always the possibility that a pro-Defender politician like Terstein would ally with a hotshot civil rights attorney and get her out of here, at least as far as minimum security, and from there she was as good as free.

  She continued to think along these lines until she fell asleep, and when she awoke the next morning... she was still exactly where she had been.

  With nothing to do, her mind wandered. Voices from the past bubbled up, taunted her with their simplicity.

  The world can't stand against us; we're too powerful... Imagine if the United Nations, if any small body had this much power... Disinterested, not moved by partisan politics, out to serve no one but mankind, and able to enforce goodwill... That is who we will be, that is who we are... All we
have to do is show the world that they have nothing to fear so long as they play along...

  Other voices came, mixing in until Melana's head was the seat of a cacophony of noise, desperation, primal fear. The more the voices spoke, the more the cell collapsed in on her, brought her back to where she once was.

  She was on the point of believing that she was still a Defender, still stuck with the others in the concrete hell, that her life as a news reporter had been nothing but a dream—when the food came.

  "Try not to choke on it," her guard said, sliding a covered tray through a slit at the bottom of the glass wall.

  Food, another luxury; she hadn't always had that before.

  After three meals, a second guard, also decked out in E.H.U.D. armor, arrived to relieve the first, and Melana counted this as a day.

  She slept.

  The next day, she had just finished her second meal when her guard knocked on the barrier.

  "Hey, get yourself cleaned up; you have a visitor."

  "What, another interrogation?"

  The guard shrugged, her armor exaggerating the movement. "The fuck should I know? They just told me to get you ready."

  Melana raised her eyebrows, frowned, then turned to the sink. She splashed some water on her face, then sat on the edge of the bed.

  For her part, the guard was standing tensely before the elevator to the surface, weapon ready. Moments later, the elevator buzzed and the doors slid open. General Loblen Mistaren stepped out and into Melana's private corner of hell. Recognizing the general, the guard straightened, saluted, and stepped to the side.

  "Sir!"

  "At ease," he said, waving away her salute. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped up to the glass. "Hello, Ms. Ruiz; so nice to see you again."

  Melana didn't answer. The old fear and revulsion was taking hold.

  "I must say, I'm so glad you finally got around to doing what I asked of you."

  She glanced at the guard. "What, you mean kill the President of the United States?" she asked in an overly loud and annunciated voice.

  Mistaren looked over his shoulder at the guard, who was standing at rest. "Oh, you don't need to worry about her; she can't hear us right now. Everything we say will remain in the strictest confidence."

  Melana suddenly felt the earth beneath her fall away; she had no idea what was going on, and she was sure she wouldn't like whatever it was that Mistaren had come to talk about. She decided to take the offensive in the conversation. "So you came to gloat, right? You force me into one last job, I get caught, and now you're so damn happy."

  "Now really, why would I be happy that you performed so poorly that you actually got caught on a routine hit? I'm actually disappointed; I expect better from one of my proteges."

  "I'm Allen's protege, not yours. You created monsters; Allen redeemed us."

  "I'm sure he'd be glad to know that his martyrdom has turned him into a Christ-like figure."

  She rolled her eyes and turned her back on him to lean against the cool glass. "What do you want?"

  "I came to offer you a chance at freedom; it pains me to see you locked up like this."

  She turned in a sudden burst of anger, smashing her fists into the wall and pressing her face as near to Mistaren's as possible. "It didn't seem to bother you so much when I was one of your fucking lab rats!"

  Mistaren stared cooly at her through the fog of her breath until she calmed and relaxed her fists. "I think you'll find," he said slowly, "that I'm a different man than I was then."

  She leaned her head against the glass and slowly shook it. Then her whole body shook as she tried to hold in laughter. "How long?"

  "Hmm?"

  "How long since you did it to yourself, became one of us?"

  "Just before Allen died."

  She straightened and took a closer look at Mistaren. He was thinner than she remembered, yet at the same time younger looking. He was either suffering from a terminal disease, or... The guard was still standing motionless, oblivious to their discussion.

  "How are you doing that?"

  "My secret. Let's just say the scrambler's aren't as effective as everyone thinks."

  Melana took a deep breath and tried to push out against the humming. Nothing; she was still trapped.

  "It's not worth trying; you won't get through."

  "What do you want?"

  "I want you to try to kill the president."

  His self-assured manner was unsettling. "I just killed one president, and now you want the next one dead?"

  Mistaren looked hurt. "I said no such thing. I just want you to try to kill him."

  "You expect me to get caught."

  "I expect you to make an effort to kill the president. Anything beyond that is between you and him."

  She turned her back on him again. "I don't work for you anymore."

  "Then I guess you stay here."

  She heard his footsteps as he left, taking her only chance of freedom with him.

  "Wait."

  A squeak of sole on concrete echoed through the room.

  "What do I have to do?"

  Clicking approached and grew louder. "I'll take you to were the president is being held, and then you'll break through any defenses and try to take him out in any means you deem appropriate."

  "What's to stop me from going after you the minute I'm out? Better yet, what's to stop me from giving an exclusive to AmeriNews about your past with the program?"

  The glass behind her flexed slightly as Mistaren leaned against it, and his voice echoed back from the far wall when he spoke. "First, the president will be closer. The drugs in your lunch should kick in soon, and when you wake up you'll be about a mile away from his current location, codenamed Camp Eglon."

  The room suddenly jumped into sharp focus, and she had to fight down a flutter of panic. Her greatest enemy had powers she didn't, and to top it all off it seemed she would soon lose motor control. Cooperation was looking like a far better option now.

  "Second, nothing's stopping you from exposing me, save for a very popular man and freshly minted president coming to my defense. You have some sympathy, to be sure, but you're an unstable individual who performed acts of terrorism. Enemy number one. You kill the new Latterndale, make it look like an accident, and suddenly I'm an ally short."

  His logic made a vague sort of sense, though Melana didn't believe that the president would affect public opinion regarding Mistaren, alive or dead. Or maybe it would and she just wasn't analyzing it right. The room was getting fuzzier—no, imagination, just imagination.

  Still, not long to fight back. She should at least look into cooperation. "What's in it for me?"

  Mistaren snorted. "That's exactly what Edarus asked when I recruited him for my little scheme."

  An interesting twist. With Mistaren's president on the chopping block, Melana would have absolutely no chance of survival should her usefulness pass. If she refused his offer now, her usefulness wouldn't even begin.

  "Just what is your little scheme?" Was she genuinely interested, or buying time? The room was already losing distinction.

  There were several seconds of silence before he answered. "Demolish the old world order." His voice was tired, yet just a little wistful. "Wipe the slate clean, allow for the E.H.U.D.s to rise to a position of power, where they are able to function as the perfect impartial judges of mankind. Purge us of the mistakes of the past, and bring humanity into the wider universe." His words were fantastic, yet his voice was sincere.

  The sincerity was so strong that it extended out from the general through whatever hole he was able to make in the scrambler's field and touch Melana. Cautiously, she turned her face to the glass, and was surprised to see Mistaren reflecting her position. She looked into his eyes, saw sadness mixed with hope mixed with... something else.

  "This is what Allen wanted."

  He's lying, don't believe him, don't—

  Vince was standing in the corner now, a shadow amongst shadows,
urging her to fight past the general's words. She struggled to find an argument to justify refusal in this scheme. "Allen's already failed. There's no way we can act for peace now..." Hard to keep eyes open, to talk.

  Another voice spoke, breaking into the darkness of the cell like sunrise. "You always assumed it'd happen overnight. Peace takes time, Melana. The Q-bomb is only in development; deployment is a long way off yet."