Wesley grabbed the kid by the throat. He struck him across the face then turned him down to look at me.
“You ever touch this kid again and I’ll kill you,” Wesley said in a hard-edged tone that spoke of death all on its own. “You might think that’s a threat, but it’s a promise. I’d put you down right now too, except the screaming from your one-eyed friend is starting to grate on my nerves. Get him up and get him out of here.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” was all the guy seemed to be able to say at the moment.
Wesley gave him a hard shove toward the entrance to the alley. He nearly fell in his haste to grab his screaming friend. He looked at Freddy, who lay unconscious, hesitated for half a second, then ran from the alley with his one-eyed friend in tow.
The two were gone a second later.
The past version of myself shuddered under Wesley Cage’s stare. Present me understood what I was seeing. I had a guess how this was going to end.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Wesley said. Reaching down, he dusted off my journal and put the torn paper together as best as possible before handing it to me. “Here you go, Daniel. Get up. Let’s get that garbage off you.”
“Th-thanks. How-how do you know my name?” younger me asked, reaching out to accept the journal. I struggled to my feet. Stained napkins and food containers fell off me. “Who are you?”
“Right now, I’m just a friend,” Wesley said, reaching out to me.
I flinched.
He wiped off my left shoulder; a piece of paper with wadded gum fell to the ground.
“I know your name because my organization is interested in providing you employment,” Wesley said, taking a step back from me. “We can give you more than just a job. We can give you a new life. A chance to reinvent yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, clutching the journal to my chest. “Why would you want me? I’m not anybody.”
“That’s not true,” Wesley said, shaking his head emphatically from side to side. “You are someone, whether you know it or not. How many times have you been beatdown in this alley?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“No family, emotional disorders without anything to live for, and you fight on,” Wesley said. “Your kind of spirit is exactly what we’re looking for.”
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “You want me because I’m a-a loser?”
“I want you because you don’t quit,” Wesley said. “Why do you have to go through this alley?”
“I work at the orphanage I used to live in,” I said, swallowing hard. “This is the quickest way through. Anything else would add kilometers to the trip. When I run errands into the city, I have to go this way.”
“Why?” Wesley asked again.
“I have to work,” I said.
“Why?” Wesley asked like a broken record player.
“I need money to live,” I said, starting to get frustrated by the seemingly asinine line of questioning.
“Why?” Wesley asked again. “Why hold the job, why write in your journal, why not just give up?”
“Because I don’t give up,” I said, narrowing my vision. Tears of frustration filled my eyes as I realized what Wesley was getting after. “Because that’s not who I am. Because I’m going to find a way to make something of myself. I’m going to claw my way out of this hell hole, even though everyone tells me it’s impossible.”
“That’s right,” Wesley said, nodding. “Because that’s who you are.”
We stood staring at each other for a long minute. Wesley had brought on tears when even my beatdown had been unable.
“I can give you everything you want and other things you didn’t even know you needed,” Wesley said. “I can give you a family, real purpose, a way off the moon, and that’s just getting started. I can teach you how to handle yourself in a fight and how to get a handle on those emotions of yours. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
“You with some kind of church or cult or something?” I asked.
“No.” Wesley smiled for the first time. “And if I was, I wouldn’t tell you. I don’t need an answer today or even this week. Think about it. Think about what you want for yourself and who you are.”
Wesley gave me a nod and turned to leave.
“Wait!” I said turning to shout at his back. “How will I find you?”
“You won’t,” Wesley said. “I’ll find you. I have a few more offers to deliver and I’ll be back. In the meantime, think about it. You should be safe from any bullying.”
Wesley said this as he stepped over Freddy’s still body. He was about to turn the corner when a rogue thought stopped him. He turned to me again.
“Oh, one last thing, I knew your fa—”
An explosion ripped me from my sleep. I fell out of my seat in the dropship seating area, struggling to find my bearings. It was dark outside the many windows lining the craft.
I could hear Lori and Riner yelling at one another before a voice filled the cabin of the dropship.
“Phoenix dropship, land now or I will blow you out of the sky,” the voice ordered. “You have five seconds to obey.”
Chapter Eleven
I would have been worried, maybe even panicked. I mean, I already hated flying and now there was another craft about to blow us out of the sky.
The only thing that kept me from losing my cheese spray was the fact that I recognized the voice. The accent, the robust almost jovial voice over the radio, was one I knew well.
“Vault, this is Mustang I,” Lori started over the communication channel. “We have an unidentified dropship firing on us, preparing to engage.”
I was no expert on dropships, but I knew the weapons on the ships were minimal at best. These ships were designed to transport people from point A to point B. Any fighting these larger ships were going to do was going to be short lived and clumsy.
“Wait!” I said, stopping between the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats. “Don’t fire on them. Not yet. Let me talk to them.”
Riner looked at me like I had totally taken a turn for crazy town.
Lori ignored me.
“I mean it,” I said again, reaching for Riner’s headset. I removed it from his head. “I know who’s on the other side of the line.”
“Hey!” Riner shouted as I slammed the piece of equipment on my own head.
“Papa, this is Daniel,” I said, answering the voice. “I repeat, this is Daniel Hunt. I’m on the dropship you’re shooting at. Stop firing.”
Riner looked at me with his mouth open. Any wider and it was doomed to strike the floor. Lori gave me a quick glance with her eyebrows so high, they nearly touched her hairline.
“Daniel son?” Papa asked over the open line. “Daniel, you survived your mission! I thought you were dead for sure. I even wrote it in my diary. When you ran off, I didn’t think you had a chance. I just didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to make you feel bad.”
“Nope, still alive and kicking,” I answered. “How you enjoying that new dropship of yours? Immortal Corp make a good product?”
“Oh, you know, still learning how to fly it. We’ve only been practicing a few days. Lucky for us, we had a few Reapers who flew in their past lives,” Papa said as nonchalantly as if he were speaking with an old friend. “Going to break Aleron out of the Hole as soon as we are comfortable maneuvering the dropship through the air.”
Aleron was the Reaper leader. Right now, he was being held in a top security prison on Earth. The city of New Vegas was home to the prison code-named the Hole.
“Right,” I said. My hand traveled to the necklace Papa had given me to provide safe passage from the Reapers and mark me as one of their own. “Well, hey, you do you, but can I get a free pass on you attacking this dropship? I kind of like being alive.”
“Right, right, Daniel son,” Papa said with a laugh. “For you, anything. Reapers don’t attack Reapers. You are one of us.”
I got another sid
e-eyed look from Riner and Lori for that one.
“Thank you,” I said. The next phrase I added in because I found myself liking Papa despite everything. “Your greatness truly knows no bounds.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere with me, Daniel son. Where you going anyway?” Papa asked. “This is Skull Bearer territory, or at least it used to be until the red woman came to town. There’s nothing out here besides the city of Cecile, and you don’t want to be anywhere near there.”
“Actually, that’s where we’re headed,” I said. “I have business in the town. I’m going to chute in.”
Silence on the other end of the radio was followed by hysterical laughter. Not just laughter roaring from Papa, the likes of which I had never heard before. It wasn’t the kind of laughter that you hear when someone is making fun of you, but rather the kind when someone truly finds something joyful to take part in.
“Daniel son, you are one crazy mutie son of a gun,” Papa said, slapping something on the other side of the radio I could bet was his own belly. “I like you, but you are not right in the head. You have some deep-seated issues, my friend. Need medication or a psychiatrist or maybe both.”
“Yeah, well, I guess neither of us is playing with a full deck. If you know what I mean,” I said, remembering the assault the Reapers and I made on the pair of Immortal Corp dropships. “We good here, Papa?”
“Always good with you, Daniel son,” Papa said with another laugh. “May your blade be forever wet with the blood of your enemies and your drinking cup never be empty.”
The line clicked dead.
I handed Riner the headset. His mouth was so wide, his bottom jaw nearly hit the floor.
“So you’re a Reaper too, huh?” Lori asked, recovering from her own shock. “You know, the more I get to know you, the more I realize I know nothing about you. Maybe I don’t want to know more about you either.”
“It’s probably better you don’t,” I said, looking out the front window to the dark sky in front of us. “How long was I asleep?”
“Just a few hours, but we’re nearly there,” Riner said, bringing to life a map on a screen in front of him. “You should probably suit up in your chute, but this is where we’re going to meet you in two days’ time. We’ll come as soon as it’s dark.”
Riner pointed to a map in front of us and on that map to a location where a bleeping red dot showed a natural plateau in the desert terrain. The city of Cecile also showed up on the map at least a few kilometers to the north.
“You going to remember that?” Riner asked, looking at me with a suspicious eye. “You need to write it down or something?”
“Naw, we’ll remember,” I said, hoping X caught on to the use of the word “we” instead of “I.”
“Good,” Lori said, jerking her head back to the rear of the dropship. “Riner will get you in the chute. Godspeed, Reaper.”
“Yeah, thanks for the lift,” I said as Riner pulled off his headset. I followed him to the rear of the ship.
“As soon as you jump, you count to five in your head and you pull the cord,” Riner instructed as we made it to the rear of the ship. “Any more than five seconds and you’ll be tempting fate.”
“Five seconds,” I said, giving Riner the thumbs-up as he helped me shrug on the pack. “Got it.”
The backpack chute was heavy. Straps came over my chest, arms and legs, securing me to the harness. Memories of possibly having done this before not once but many times comforted me.
Come on, you had to have done this dozens of times while you worked for Immortal Corp. Piece of cake, right? I asked myself.
“Goggles will protect your eyes and help you see at night,” Riner said to me over the sounds of the thrusters. “Keep your eyes open down there. No one from Phoenix has been to Cecile since the red-headed woman came to town. Who knows what kind of hell is waiting for you there.”
“Thanks for the words of encouragement,” I shouted back.
“Opening the back hatch in three, two, one,” Lori said over the speakers inside the dropship. “Godspeed, Reaper. We’ll see you in two days.”
Riner stepped farther back onto the dropship, holding on to one of the many steel handles that protruded from the wall.
I found a handhold close to the ramp doors that slowly began to open. A red light strobed on and off as the rear hatch opened at the center. Half of the rear section of the ship lifted upward while the other half descended into a ramp.
Ice cold wind rushed into the ship.
“X, I don’t need these night vision goggles when I have you, right?” I asked low enough Riner wouldn’t be able to hear me. “We can see better with your help?”
“Affirmative,” X said. “You can turn on the night vision by just concentrating on the idea and commanding yourself to do so.”
I followed X’s orders, reminding myself I could see in the dark visualizing it and then blinking hard.
The darkness outside the dropship turned from blackness to brilliant gold. I leaned out, looking at the desert ground below. Large dunes with sheer cliffs and rolling dirt hills extended for as far as my eye could see.
“Any time now!” Riner shouted over the sound of the wind. “We’re going to get to the city soon. Lori’s about to turn the Mustang around and get out of here.”
“All right, all right,” I said, moving toward the edge. Jumping out of a perfectly good dropship seemed strange. Everything in my body was telling me to stay inside. My head was warring against my instinct.
“So we doing this or what?” X asked in my head. “Sometimes I really wish I had a physical presence. Like right now to give you a push.”
“Easy!” I shouted to her over the howling wind. I took a deep breath, screwed up my courage, and made the jump.
The feeling of sheer weightlessness was one difficult to explain. I knew I was falling fast, but how fast was a mystery to me. There was nothing besides the ground to tell me exactly how quickly I was plummeting.
Oh crap I forgot to count, I thought to myself. I rushed the five count and yanked on the orange cord. A billowing sound was followed by a hard tug as the chute opened behind me.
Lori and Riner hadn’t told me how to maneuver this thing. Maybe they forgot or maybe they just figured I’d work it out.
Next to my chest were a pair of pulleys I grabbed on to. Memories or instinct— whatever you want to call it—was kicking in again. I maneuvered the black chute toward the ground using the pulleys to glide in a zigzag pattern and ease the pace of my descent.
It felt good to be able to recall something from my past right when I needed it. Maybe this was a step toward recovering all my memories.
To the north, I could make out lights to a small city. It was still a few kilometers away, but I would be able to make up the time quickly. Angry clouds overhead were coming in from the ocean to the west.
My boots hit the sand softly. The black chute followed a second later. I bundled up the chute, unharnessing myself. I dug a shallow hole and hid the chute there.
“X, any sign of how to get in or out of the city?” I asked, looking around for any clues of highways or paths to follow.
“There’s a path that leads to the city just east of our location,” X answered. “I wouldn’t recommend traveling on it but perhaps just to the left in the darkness.”
“Agreed,” I said, patting the MK II on the right side of my thigh to make sure it was still safe and snug. “Let’s go.”
I started jogging toward the path X outlined in my vision. I could see as clear as day with a golden tint brightening everything. A broken line X overlaid my vision which showed me exactly where to go and how far away it was.
When we reached the road, I stood quietly, examining the path. When anyone talked about Cecile, it sounded like a death trap. I wasn’t expecting to find this.
“Is that…” X’s voice trailed off as she too tried to understand what we were seeing.
“I think so,” I answered. I looked up and
down the road to make sure we were alone before walking over to it and taking a knee. I pressed my hand against the still warm surface of the pristine asphalt.
I had never seen a road this nice, on the moon or on Earth. Mars maybe. Mars was the only place in Echo’s dream I’d seen something at this level of craftsmanship.
“What is going on in Cecile?” X wondered inside my head. “Is it a nightmare in there or not?”
“We’ll find out soon,” I said, rising to my feet. I moved off the road a few meters to the left and started walking.
“You think the woman with the red hair, Sam, did all of this?” X asked. “She came here, killed everyone in charge, then took it as her own to what? Give the city better streets?”
“To be honest, it hurts my head even thinking about it,” I told her.
We arrived at the city sooner than I thought possible. Like the road we found, what was waiting for us in Cecile was unlike anything I expected.
Chapter Twelve
There were no walls or sentries standing guard when I arrived. The well-maintained road led straight into the city. So far, the city consisted of a single main road lined with brick and mortar buildings. These buildings were interspersed with wooden structures like storefronts and homes.
It looked like there were even lamps down the main street. Voices carried from the different businesses still open at this late hour. There was music that came from a building on the left halfway down the road.
“Am I going crazy or does it sound like people in Cecile are actually happy? I asked X under my breath. “They sound like they’re having a party.”
“Get your MK II ready, Daniel,” X said, low and stressed. “I don’t like this.”
“That makes two of us,” I said, moving to the left side of the street.
The buildings were clean, with windows and signs that read things like “Liquor Store” and “Groceries.” It was like we stepped out of the Badlands and into another time altogether.
“And that’s when I told her, Gertrude, if you ever do that to me again, it is over.”
Absolution: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 2) Page 7
