by C. A. Gray
The blond soldier raised one eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “Do you know where we’re going then? By all means, lead the way.” Without even waiting for the Crone’s reply, he turned away from her like he’d forgotten her existence, setting the pace at a brisk walk. Kate fell into step beside him as if in a trance, looping one arm through his.
I approached her, glancing at the soldier. “You two know each other?”
I saw him glance back at me, the little muscle in his jaw tightening.
“Jackson,” Kate whispered, and in the agonized pause before she told me, I already knew what she was going to say. “This… is my fiancé. Will Anderson.”
End of Book 1
The Eden Conspiracy
Book 2 of The Liberty Box Trilogy
C.A. Gray
www.authorcagray.com
Prologue: Ben Voltolini
The battalion of soldiers presented themselves for inspection, and Ben Voltolini paced before them with measured steps. The Tribunal stood at his back, the soldiers at attention before him. They stared straight ahead, like robots.
“Lieutenant Colonel,” he barked. The commander snapped his legs together. Voltolini went on, “Did the mission succeed? Have the refugees been successfully eliminated?”
“Not all of them, sir!” the Lieutenant Colonel nearly shouted. “Their caves are destroyed, and we estimate almost ninety percent of them are dead. The others… escaped.”
Voltolini paused in his pacing. One-one thousand. Two-one thousand. Three-one thousand. Four.
“Escaped?”
“Yes sir!” shouted the Lieutenant Colonel.
Voltolini lowered his voice, and brought both of his own feet together, leaning toward the soldier. “To where?”
“We do not know yet. Sir!”
Voltolini pursed his lips. “I see. And how did these—ten percent, you say?” He resumed pacing. “How did they escape exactly?”
“We believe there was an—imposter among us. Sir!”
The air in the room grew thick.
“Oh?” Voltolini purred.
The Lieutenant Colonel fidgeted. “Corporal Ramirez was found dead. And stripped of his uniform. Sir.”
Voltolini pursed his lips. “And who was wearing that uniform, if not Corporal Ramirez?”
“We do not know, sir!”
“Take a guess.”
The Lieutenant Colonel hesitated. “Will Anderson has not reported for duty in several days, sir.”
Voltolini inclined his head. “Anderson.” He paused, looking back at the Tribunal. “Anderson…”
Jefferson Collins, the Speaker for the Tribunal, took a tiny step forward and cleared his throat. “A recent EOS, Your Excellency. We presented him to you weeks ago for elimination. But because he is extraordinarily skilled at detecting and exploiting weaknesses in computer systems and networks, you elected to spare his life—”
“Ah, yes, yes, Anderson,” Voltolini waved him off. “Engaged to that reporter who vanished, right?”
“Yes sir,” murmured Collins, “but we told Anderson that we had her captive to ensure his continued cooperation….”
“Right, right, I remember him,” Voltolini cut him off. “I understood he was performing beautifully, though. Thanks to him, we’ve infiltrated New Estonia’s mainframe and have Control Center construction underway on the ground there as we speak, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” said Collins, shuffling his feet. He paused, and his eyes flitted about the room before he spoke again. “But—”
“Why the hell did we send a guy that valuable on a mission to blow up some caves in the first place?”
Collins’s eyes flitted around the room even faster and he shuffled his feet once before taking a tiny step back in line with the rest of the Tribunal. Voltolini whirled to face the Lieutenant Colonel instead.
“Well?” he demanded.
“He—snuck in, sir. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to locate the fiancee, and we suspect that Anderson discovered that she is still at large. Our hold over Anderson was therefore…weakened.”
Voltolini opened his mouth and closed it again, his face expressionless. “He snuck in.”
The air in the room grew thick.
“Hurst,” Voltolini said, looking back at the Tribunal and focusing on a man towering six foot eight, with a jaw like a horse. “Please take the Lieutenant Colonel into custody.”
The Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes grew wide and his breath shallow, but he did not move as Hurst seized him by the elbow with one enormous hand and dragged him from the room.
Hurst was the Tribunal’s Chief Executioner.
When the Lieutenant Colonel and Hurst disappeared, Voltolini turned back to the battalion before him. “Major,” he said to the man who had stood beside the Lieutenant Colonel, “Congratulations on your promotion.”
If the Major felt shaken, he did not show it. “Thank you, sir!”
“Among the bodies found in the caves,” Voltolini went on, “did you find the terrorist Jackson MacNamera?”
The Major hesitated. “No, sir!”
Voltolini nodded. “I see.” One-one thousand. Two-one thousand. He turned back to the Tribunal, this time focusing on the Chief Technology Officer. “Barrett,” he barked at a middle aged woman, “We need to tighten security. The bullet trains from now on will require that the brainwaves of the individual correspond to the ID chip used to board.”
Barrett nodded swiftly. “Done, sir.”
“How long will it take?”
She hesitated only for a second. “The technology exists. Implementation should take—forty-eight hours at the most.” Her eye twitched as she said this. She knew her team would have to work around the clock to deliver on this promise, and even then everything would have to go perfectly according to plan. If she failed, Hurst would haul her off next. But the Potentate would not tolerate reasonable deadlines requiring ordinary working hours when there was a terrorist organization on the loose. This she knew.
“Excellent,” said Voltolini. “You also told me last year that it was theoretically possible for us to upgrade the brainwave technology to target the brainwaves of a specific individual and customize their subliminal messaging.”
Barrett balked visibly before she caught herself. “It’s… technically possible, but it will take months to create the technology—”
“I want it in a week,” Voltolini said, and smiled. She sucked in a breath, and smiled back.
Collins wrung his hands and cleared his throat, taking a tiny step forward. “Sir,” he squeaked, “As you know, we’ve already changed our entire security so that the rebels cannot penetrate our databases again. But… that may not stop Will Anderson for very long. He is an extraordinary man.”
“That is why we need targeted signaling as quickly as possible,” Voltolini turned his deadly smile upon Collins, who shuffled back into line.
Voltolini turned again to face the battalion. “The remaining refugees are on foot. They cannot have gotten far. Fan out, comb the area. When you find them… show no mercy.” He turned back to the Tribunal and said conversationally, “Anderson was admirably compliant until now. That’s interesting.” He looked at the Major. “The reporter, Brandeis—was her body found in the caves?”
“No, sir!”
Voltolini nodded. “I can only assume that she’s with the surviving refugees, then. If she’s there, take her alive. She may be useful.” He paced. “As for their presumed leader, Jackson MacNamera—he will come to us, sooner or later. Count on it.”
Chapter 1: Kate
Will sat on the edge of the canyon with his back to me, staring out over the vast ghost town below—a remnant of the old United States. The forest gave way to many uninhabited cities like this one, left empty after the death and disease that ravaged the nation decades ago.
It had only been a day. One day since the caves blew up. One day since we arrived at our new te
mporary home.
One day since I’d found out that my fiancé was alive, after all.
I started to approach Will, but stopped, watching his profile, trying to make sense of what I felt.
When I first saw Will among the troops at the caves, just before the bombs exploded, I thought I’d seen a ghost.
“Kate!” he ran to me, breaking ranks. “Kate, thank God! I knew you had to be here—”
He threw his arms around me when he reached me, pulling me in for a hug and dragging me with him as he attempted to sprint toward the forest. I stumbled with him, still shocked, moving only because he moved. Behind me, I heard gunshots and screams.
We were a good hundred yards into the forest when I managed to gasp, “You’re alive?”
“Kate, listen to me. I’m going to leave you here and go back to rescue as many of the others as I can. Stay here and stay out of sight, no matter what happens—do not let anyone know you are here! Can you do that?”
“You’re alive!” I cried, throwing my arms around him at last, even as the screams sounded in the caves. I looked back and choked on a sob. “And you’re—a soldier now?”
“I’m not a soldier. I’ll explain everything later, but I need you to promise me—”
“Stay hidden,” I repeated to show that I’d heard him. “But Will?”
He half turned, already moving away as he glanced back at me.
“Come back to me this time.”
He gave me a weak smile, blew me a kiss, and vanished.
Will returned with a crowd. He left me in charge of them and went back for more. When he came back the second time, Jackson and the hunters were with him.
We hadn’t been alone together since. We’d been on the move, and then set up a makeshift camp for the night, though no one slept very much. Without the shelter of the caves, the night air was cold—especially since we couldn’t build fires either, to make us more difficult to spot in the wilderness. None of us had eaten.
I’d caught Jackson watching Will and me a few times, and I wished I could talk to him. But what could I say?
This morning, the hunters went out to find food for what was left of the refugees, while Molly and the other women went to forage for berries, root vegetables, and herbs in the forest. I saw Will glance at me before he slipped off by himself, and I knew he wanted me to follow him.
But now that I stood watching him, I didn’t know what to do or what to say.
He turned around and saw me. But instead of a greeting, he said in a flat voice, “You took your ring off, I see.” Before I could answer, he said, “And you and Jackson seem awfully familiar. How long did that take?”
I covered the distance between us. “That’s not fair,” I said, sitting beside him and taking his hand. “I thought you were dead.” I paused. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened?”
He let me hold his hand, but his remained limp. “When I was researching your old roommate, I hit a firewall that must have alerted the agents what I was up to. They showed up at my office, and invited me out for a ‘chat.’ I thought that was it. But instead, they told me the Potentate decided I was too valuable to kill. They wanted me to hack into New Estonia’s mainframe and deliver classified information that would enable them to infiltrate it and build control center technology there, too. They told me they already had you in custody, and they threatened to kill you if I didn’t do what they wanted.”
“It was a lie,” I murmured. “They tried, but they never caught me.”
“I figured that out later,” Will said, still not looking at me. “At first I thought it was true, because I went to your apartment and found a half-packed suitcase, and I didn’t see you on the news broadcasts anymore so something had obviously happened to you. I started to wonder why they didn’t ever let me hear your voice. Once I started investigating, it didn’t take me long to find out that you’d vanished, and they were looking for you.” He paused, and turned to me, his expression bleak. “I still played along for awhile, delivering little bits of information here and there so they’d still think I was on their side. But meanwhile I set up what I hope was a secure, encrypted server, and sent classified information to New Estonia, leaking the Potentate’s plans.”
I gasped. “Did they get your message?”
Will shrugged. “I have no idea. I’d only just completed it when I discovered that there were refugees hiding in the forest, and the Potentate sent a battalion to blow up their headquarters. I figured if you hadn't already escaped to New Estonia yourself, that’s probably where you were.”
“But with the control centers, how did you sneak in undetected?”
“The control centers can only track the undocumented, or people they’re specifically looking for,” said Will. “I figured it would take them a little while to start looking for me, and by then I’d be off the grid.”
“But the uniform, and everything?”
He paused, and took a long, deep breath.
“How did you get the uniform?” I pressed. “How did they let you in to the battalion?”
“I found someone about my size,” he said. “I tracked him. I waited until I could get him alone. And then I slit his throat.”
I didn’t react for a moment, sure I couldn’t have heard him correctly.
Will turned back to face me. “These are desperate times, Kate.”
I realized I’d been holding my breath, and exhaled.
“So your turn,” he said. “Since your last broadcast, you fled for your life and found the refugees. I got that much. Anything else?”
The wind ruffled my hair and I shivered. “That’s the basics,” I told him at last. “Everything else has just been happening inside my head I guess. So far.”
Will withdrew his hand from mine. “Oh yeah?” His voice was flat.
I wrapped my arms around my knees. “I feel—different,” I told him at last. “I mean, it’s a lot to take in. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I found out in that time that everything I thought I knew and believed was a lie. It felt like before I was just… sleepwalking. But now… I think I know how I can help the resistance, Will!” I looked at him, getting excited. “The people in the Republic are all still brainwashed, but they trust me, like they trust no one else except maybe Jillian and the Potentate himself. So what if I can use that? What if I can find some way to go back on the air and tell everybody the truth?”
“No,” said Will. “Not a chance.”
“Why not?”
He paused, like he was trying to decide whether or not to say what he was thinking. Finally, he turned to face me.
“You’re weak, Kate.”
I blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“I know you. You’re not a fighter. When things get rough, you don’t rise to the challenge. You panic. You’re not a problem solver and you’re certainly not brave. Look, this isn’t supposed to be a criticism,” he interrupted when he saw my expression, “it’s just a fact, all right? The only reason you survived this long is because you stumbled upon the hunters. Otherwise I guarantee you would have died out here long before now.”
“I’m not the girl you remember, Will,” I whispered.
“Not the girl I remember from like two weeks ago, the one I’ve known for years?” he retorted. “Come on, Kate, be real. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior—bar none. The second you catch sight of an agent you’d lose it, and it would be up to me to save you, as usual. No.”
I fell into an angry silence for a long time, and Will didn’t speak again either. It felt like a showdown.
“Besides, there might be another way,” he said at last. “Nick told me you discovered that a bunch of citizens all started to ‘wake up’ around noon or one pm last Thursday, corresponding to time zone changes in different parts of the Republic. He said you all figured that happened because the control centers must have been centrally disrupted all across the Republic at exactly that time.�
� He turned to look at me and gave me a humorless smile. “Guess why?”
I gasped. “You?”
“I didn’t know if it had worked or not until I got here. But as far as I know, the Potentate and the Tribunal aren’t even aware that it happened, which means they’re not expecting it to happen again.”
“How long was the interruption?” I asked.
“Only one minute. I didn’t want to call any attention to the program at first, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now that I know I can, though…” He turned to me, the wind rustling his blond hair. Gooseflesh raised on my arms in the breeze. “What if I can go back in and set the program on a loop? At regular intervals, it’ll disrupt the signals, a little longer each time. Not all at once, not long enough to draw any agent attention. But enough to wake people up gradually, so they won’t have the rude shock you and I had.”
“But you’ll have to go back on the grid to do that, and they know you’re a turncoat now,” I argued. “Even if they didn’t find out about that program, or that you leaked secrets to New Estonia, at least they’ll know by now that you killed and impersonated a military officer. They’ll be looking for you. You’d never make it out alive!”
“I might have a solution for that too,” Will swung his legs out in front of him, letting them dangle over the ravine.
“Of course you do,” I muttered.
He ignored my comment and went on, “The thing about the brainwave program is that they have to be able to detect your brainwaves for them to work, right? So all we need to do is block their ability to read us. Thoughts are electromagnetic energy. So in theory, we should be able to block the control centers’ ability to read our thoughts with any conductive material. If we strip the copper wire from lamps or small appliances and weave it in with yarn from wool sweaters or whatever, we can make faraday cages to insulate our heads. Ski masks would be safest, but even just a cap should be enough to obscure our brainwaves from the control centers enough that we’d fly under the threshold of detectable electromagnetic energy, and it would be a lot easier for us to blend in. We’ll have to wear something non-conductive underneath, though, or else they’ll act like antennas, and amplify the government’s control signals…”
