The Chase

by Bradley Caffee

  THE CHASE

  The Chase Runner Series

  By

  Bradley Caffee

  The Chase Runner Series

  Book 1: The Chase

  The Chase

  Published by Mountain Brook Ink

  White Salmon, WA U.S.A.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  The website addresses shown in this book are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Mountain Brook Ink, nor do we vouch for their content.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

  ISBN 978-1-953957-00-9

  © 2021 Bradley Caffee

  The Team: Miralee Ferrell, Alyssa Roat, Nikki Wright, Kristen Johnson, Cindy Jackson

  Cover Design: Lynnette Bonner

  Mountain Brook Ink is an inspirational publisher offering fiction you can believe in.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Sneak Peek at Book Two in THE CHASE RUNNER SERIES

  To Tirzah,

  who helps me to be me

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, without whom I would not know the freedom to be the unique creation I was meant to be. Thank you for saving this “Willis” from a life of measuring up to the joy of knowing I am accepted. You have brought me to a place I never would have gone, much less considered attainable. Thank you for not removing my “thorns,” so I could become the man I am today.

  Thanks also to Tirzah, my wife and encourager, for allowing me to follow this crazy dream of writing. You have stood by me and not allowed me to give up, even when the manuscript sat around for months untouched. You’ve put up with countless days of me disappearing into my laptop and celebrated each milestone. Thank you for being the keeper of my dreams.

  My kids, who have patiently waited while dad finished “one more paragraph.” You both amaze me every day as you become the unique people God created you to be. I hope my pursuit of this dream has shown you they are possible.

  My agent, Sarah Freese, who took on a writer who promised he was done “playing at his writing.” You believed me and believed in my work when so many tried to tell me it would never happen.

  My editor, Miralee Ferrell, thank you for giving this unknown author a chance. Willis, Perryn, Jaden, Kane, and the others’ story is deeply personal to me, and I am humbled that you would help me bring them to life on the page.

  To the incredible publishing team at Mountain Brook Ink, thank you for teaching this new author all the things about marketing a debut novel and supporting other authors. You and the fellow authors at MBI have been so welcoming from day one.

  Lauren, my dedicated first-reader, for putting up with my endless emails and for championing the character of Sheila. You saw Willis and Perryn’s story unfold from the beginning.

  Becca, Greg, Kyla, Lauren, and Nikayla, my superhero team of beta-readers, for taking time away from the craziness of life to help me develop this story. So much of where the book is today is because of you five.

  Carrie Givens, the first editor to ever look at my work, for putting up with my overuse of adverbs and giving me amazing counsel to navigate the world of publishing. You were the first to tell me this story was meant for more.

  Janeen Ippolito, who brought her A-game to make this story so much better, even though I won the edit in a raffle. My writing has never been the same.

  Steven, my “cattle prod,” who gave me the final nudge to finally sit and begin writing.

  To all my friends and readers who kept me moving forward with their never-ending pleas to read the manuscript and nagging requests for official release dates. You put up with my promises that the book would one day make it to print for so long. I hope it was worth the wait.

  Chapter One

  Sweat dripped from Willis’s forehead to the metal floor. His breaths seemed to echo off the walls of the empty training room on the Western Alliance space station, returning each pant of recycled air to him as if taunting his efforts. Normally a place of action, the silence of the cavernous sphere unnerved him. He’d skipped out on his team at the morning meal to spend time on the track alone. None of the other racers practiced solo, but that is what it meant to lead the best team in the Western Alliance. This last part of the track could decide which team won the next run, and he was not about to lose. The moving walls had caught him off-guard again and knocked him off his feet. He silently cursed the track before him as he rubbed his sore shoulder. He still bore bruises from the previous track they’d been forced to run, and he had no desire to add to them.

  The Western Alliance was one of three alliances that could afford to place their training centers in space where the administrators had complete control over their training environment. The rest of the alliances been forced to choose terrestrial training grounds. Some were even petitioning the World Coalition to outlaw the orbiting stations saying they gave their alliances unfair advantages, which they did. As the recipient of those advantages, he wasn’t going to argue. If it got him home—if it helped him live up to the legacy of the Thomson family—he would take any advantage he could get.

  The track was inside the training sphere that crawled with a beehive of hexagonal panels. Each metallic panel that made the interior of the ten-story room was interchangeable, allowing the track to be altered each month to present new challenges. As no one could predict the exact nature of the next year’s Chase, the track was designed to simulate any variable, including environmental controls so the administrators could change the conditions to match different Chase environments. The track was unpredictable, and that made them—made him—some of the best trained racers in the entire Coalition.

  Staring in front of him, he watched the moving parts protrude in and out. “Right, right, down, left, over.” He whispered the sequence to himself, committing it to memory. In all likelihood, he would be the member of his team to reach this point of the race first, and he had to be prepared.

  Thunk. A wall dropped suddenly from above, and he added an extra ‘down’ to his sequence. A blow to the head there would mean the difference between winning and losing.

  Standing, he returned to the start of the long
room. He closed his eyes.

  Willis, you’ve got this.

  Opening his eyes, he sprang forward. Ducking to the right, he extended an arm to push off the far wall. He drooped underneath another wall and kicked to the left to avoid a third. The overhead wall he’d noticed shot downward, and he dropped into a roll.

  The sequence flowed through his mind, and he grinned as he passed the wall that had struck him earlier. Springing from the exit, he slowed to a stop on the open track beyond. Hands on his knees, he panted heavily and turned to look at the way he’d come.

  “Gotcha,” he whispered to the empty room.

  Satisfied he was ready for their training run later, he exited to join his teammates in the common room. The annual Chase had ended, and everyone would be gathering to watch the victory ceremony.

  “Quick! Grab the camera!”

  Sheila hated covering the annual Chase. The endless crowds who’d traveled from around the world to see something that was no longer original. It made her sick. Those who couldn’t afford a privileged seat in the surrounding stands gathered according to their alliances in front of the stage. The black velvet curtains behind the podium and the matching skirt around the foot of the stage made the unbearable sun seem more oppressive. She kicked herself for uncovering her supervisor’s budget mistake five years ago. Now she was in exile covering news that wasn’t truly news.

  The Chase happened every year, at least every year since she could remember. The alliances around the world each put up their best team to compete to win the right to change the Law. One law. That was it. Other than that, the Law never changed. The Law mandated everything. The Law mandated her clothing to identify her as a woman from the Western Alliance, a pants and jacket combination with the yellow and black Alliance insignia on the sleeve. The Law mandated that her father’s business was taxed to the point of extinction. The Law mandated that she eat, sleep, and drink the amounts dictated. She resented the Law, but it ruled her anyway.

  She frowned as she examined the one spot left where they could get a clear shot of the girl. Standing at the edge of the mob near the stage steps, she sighed in frustration. The angle would have been better on the right side of the stage. The shadows are all wrong here.

  The bright sunlight burned her squinting eyes as she looked along the front of the stage. Pritchard, whom she’d shared press rooms with at several inter-alliance events, stood there gazing in a mirror. She rolled her eyes as he practiced several versions of his smile.

  “Hey, Pritchard!” she called. “I don’t suppose you want to trade spots, do you?” Glancing at Sheila over the mirror, he lowered his arm and adopted one of his rehearsed grins. She groaned. “I would have gone with smile number two.” The last comment was too quiet for him to hear over the growing noise, but she privately enjoyed the moment at his expense.

  “Sheila.” Prichard finally responded. He handed the mirror to an assistant and skirted through the growing crowds.

  She sighed. She hadn’t meant for him to come over.

  “Sheila, my impetuous competitor.” He held his arms wide as if he was going to embrace her.

  She raised her eyebrows at the comment. “Me?” She gestured to herself. “Last I checked, you were the one whose news stories were as fake as the material in your suits.”

  He appeared offended but quickly smiled again. “Fake? Oh no, my darling. I may have—” He paused. “I may have embellished a few details, but that’s because I know that it is drama the viewers want.”

  “Drama? Spend any more time in front of that mirror, and your viewers will have more drama than they can handle.”

  He harrumphed. Shaking his head, his lips curled as he spoke. “At least I haven’t been demoted to a junior journalist for my alliance, Ms. Kemp.”

  The comment stung. “And yet here we both are, reporting the same exact event and sweating under the same sun.”

  “I am here because I chose to be. I chose the great privilege of reporting on this world-changing event. I don’t imagine you are here by choice.” She frowned, making him beam again. He had beaten her.

  Her scowl deepened. She regretted ever talking to him. She turned away.

  “Ms. Kemp?”

  “Yes, Prichard?” She sighed.

  “I suggest if you want a proper spot in front of the stage next year that you get here early. As for my spot, you can’t have it.” He glanced around, smirking. “The shadows are going to cause fits for the camera aperture. Your viewers, if you have any left, will think you are sick with how washed out you’re going to appear.”

  “I know. Thank you, Prichard.” She was tiring of him and couldn’t hide the disdain in her voice. He grinned and slipped back toward his cameraman.

  Fun’s over, Sheila. Get this over with, and you’re done for another year.

  “Focus on me, but get ready to transition to the stage once she’s up there.” She stared at her cameraman to make sure he’d heard her.

  “Do you want me to get the chairman in the frame?” Tony smirked.

  She gritted her teeth. He knew how much the chairman bothered her. After losing her banter with Prichard, she chose not to answer him. “Make sure you get the girl. Chuck will kill me if I miss this one.” Everyone was buzzing about the girl who had won the Chase this year. The phenom from the Joint Mediterranean States was supposed to blow everyone away, but another racer had tripped in front of him causing his fall, resulting in a twisted ankle. There would be outcry from his government and certainly an investigation, but no one would care. All they cared about is that this nobody had somehow crossed the finish line first.

  “What’s this girl’s name again?” Tony scrunched his face in confusion.

  “Shreya,” she responded.

  “Shreya? Shhhhreeya. Shhriieeeyyyaa,” Tony went on making odd shapes with his mouth as he overemphasized the syllables of her name. “What ever happened to normal names like Susan or Jenny?”

  “She’s not from the Western Alliance, doofus. Different alliance, different culture and language.” She rolled her eyes. That is why he was behind the camera.

  Music suddenly filled the air with triumphant anthems silencing conversations across the lawn. Reporters instantly straightened their stances and fixed their hair. This was the moment. Sheila pulled at the collar of her grey jacket, picking off a couple of fallen blonde hairs. She should have worn the blue one. The right corner of the collar on this one never lay flat.

  Holding her microphone to her chin, she stared into the lens of the camera and imagined the blank stares of millions of people at home. Person after person would be seated with their glazed eyes staring at the screens in their homes to see the surprise of the year take the stage.

  The music shifted to the over-the-top patriotic sound of the World Coalition anthem followed by violent applause causing her to wince. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the chairman taking the stage.

  A man of average height, Chairman DeGraaf had to pull the front of his robes up to avoid tripping on the stairs. He breathed heavily in the heat of the afternoon, the consequence of an ill-timed heat wave that had hit this year’s race. His wire-rimmed glasses had slid partially down his stubby nose and sweat glistened on his face. His gray, thinning hair was carefully placed along his scalp, but the sweat had plastered it to the skin. He appeared miserable in his black, red-trimmed robe meant to remind the world of the mournful years after the Great Collapse before the Law brought order.

  He was followed by a delegation of twelve deputy chairmen and chairwomen. Each one of them was garbed in traditional clothing designating the allied region they represented. Representation was a loose term in the Coalition. The allied regions did not get a vote, and their deputy chair was nominated from within the Coalition.

  Sheila peered past the entourage to see the winning girl. There she was.

  Sheila exhaled slowly as she followed the movement of the seventeen-year-old. The girl was beautiful. Her black hair was pulled backward and allowed to h
ang naturally behind her. She had been dressed in a purple and gold silk sari which flowed perfectly around her form without causing her to appear beyond her age.

  “A symbol of hope and equality, this year’s champion truly embodies all that is good about the Chase,” Sheila reported to the camera. Tony’s smirk and raised eyebrow reminded her to remove the snarkiness from words like ‘hope’ and ‘good.’ She couldn’t help it. Her father had been loyal to the Western Alliance, supplying the Alliance centers with training helmets. To repay his loyalty, the government had stopped paying for them and levied huge import taxes on his materials. As she described the alliances that the various officials represented, she recalled the day government officials showed up to arrest her father for failure to pay the import prices. She never saw him again as he disappeared among the masses the Alliance referred to as ‘rehabilitation candidates.’ The arrest had been nothing more than a covert way for the Alliance to assume ownership of his helmet designs. The Chase gave everyone the hope of change, but nothing ever changed.

  “Despite the protests from Mediterranean officials,” she continued, “the crowd seems eager to welcome this young beauty into the long line of enshrined champion Law-changers.” Sheila could feel the words passing her lips as she described the scene for the camera, but she couldn’t hear them. It was the girl’s eyes. Her shape and forearms showed the years of training, but it was her eyes that betrayed a lost childhood. The tears rimming her lower eyelids gave away her terror. She smiled to pass them off as a sign of her assumed joy.

  She’s not ready. The realization suddenly filled Sheila’s mind.

  “Greetings and welcome to the loyal citizens of the World Coalition.” DeGraaf, blotted his forehead with a handkerchief and tried to quiet the crowd with his other hand. “The humility of my office grants me the great honor of displaying this year’s shining example of the purity and greatness of the Law. The Law that protects us all.”