The Liberty Box Trilogy

by C. A. Gray

  She looked at me again at the word evil, searching my face. It made me want to cry.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so powerless.

  “Hello?” Charlie shook her again, forcing her attention back to him. “Remember how Voltolini threw us in prison, two days ago? Remember how he threatened to kill Mom and Dad if you didn’t deliver Jackson to him? That didn’t work, so now he’s trying another approach. That’s all!”

  Kate opened her mouth, and croaked, “Charlie. What’s happening to me?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like they somehow sent you messages customized for you in the middle of the broadcast,” Charlie muttered. “I didn’t think that was possible, but then again, what do I know…”

  Customized messages? I felt a surge of hope. If that was true, if it was possible, at least that would explain it.

  “We have to get back to the signal disruptors, and fast,” I ordered. That seemed to be Kate’s only chance. “Plus, the agents are likely to get here any second.”

  “Agents?” said Grant, looking at Michael.

  Michael nodded. “I’m sure they traced the broadcast signal. They know it’s us.”

  “Um,” said Grant, raising his eyebrows in alarm. “Don’t you think maybe we all need to go with them, then?”

  “We only have one car,” said Charlie. “There’s no room—”

  “I have a car,” said Michael. “So does Grant.” I counted the crew members: there were seven of them. “That’ll fit us all. Come on, everybody!”

  The crew all looked relieved, and bottlenecked around the door in their haste to get out. Charlie forced Kate to her feet, as Michael called back, “But where are we headed?”

  “Friedrichsburg,” I called back immediately. It was the only place I could think of. We didn’t have a headquarters anymore, now that Beckenshire had been leveled—but if there was any chance of meeting up with the hunters, any chance that any of them were still alive, we’d find them in the forest somewhere between Friedrichsburg and Beckenshire. If they were there, and if their trail wasn’t too cold yet, hopefully I could track them.

  I ran back to Charlie and Kate. He tried to pull her toward the door by her shoulders, but she pulled away, her hands up in the air like she might throw a punch. Her pupils constricted as her eyes darted from Charlie to me and back again.

  Reasoning with her wasn’t going to work. She was well past that point.

  Grandfather? I pleaded mentally. What would he do in this situation?

  Then it occurred to me: even if the control center was able to target stronger signals to Kate’s brainwaves, they couldn’t read her mind, could they?

  Because if they couldn’t, then that meant they couldn’t directly taint her memories of me. They wouldn’t know about them.

  I raised my hands in the air too, trying to show Kate that I meant no harm. Then I said, “Remember when I first met you? You were sick. Nick had found you in the forest, and you were still feverish. You were so scared, like you are now. You were just trying to make sense of everything.”

  She stared at me and didn’t respond, but I saw the recognition in her eyes.

  I went on, “I brought you breakfast the next morning. Root vegetables we’d gathered from the gardens, and game meat. You ate it and I sat by you in silence, until you started to cry, about Will, and about everything you’d lost. Then we talked about how important grief was, for healing. I almost held you, but I didn’t, because I could tell you weren’t ready for that. Instead I told you I just wanted to be your friend, and you said you could use one of those. Remember?”

  Tears sprung into her eyes again, and she gave me a tiny nod. I took that as encouragement, and took a step in her direction, my hands still in the air. She didn’t back away.

  “Dude,” Charlie said nervously, “They’re gonna be here any second. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “In a minute,” I said, my eyes never leaving Kate’s face. I went on, “Remember how we went down to the stream by the caves to talk? You kissed me there for the first time.” I searched her face, and I saw it soften—or perhaps crumble was the more appropriate word. “All I wanted to do was kiss you back, but you’d just lost your fiancé, and I didn’t want to take advantage of you. So I pushed you away. I lay awake that night kicking myself, wondering if I’d done the right thing.”

  My voice broke, and I took another step toward her. I saw her muscles shudder, but again, she didn’t back away.

  “Jackson…” said Charlie.

  I held up one hand to silence him, and went on, “After the soldiers blew up the caves, on our way to Beckenshire, you approached me and asked me to teach you to hunt. Remember? Remember the bear that would’ve killed us both in another twenty feet? You were so hard on yourself that you didn’t manage to kill it, the very first time you’d ever hunted. You told me you thought it meant you were weak. But the next time, with the buck, you did it all by yourself. You even cleaned it mostly without my help, even though you’d never done it before. You’re a strong woman, Kate.” I took another step toward her.

  “Stop!” she begged, thrusting her hands toward me, palms first. “Don’t come any closer!”

  I started to feel desperate. Behind us, Charlie looked out the window and cried, “Jackson! They’re here!”

  “Then go!” I told him over my shoulder. “Catch up with the team. Get your parents out of here.”

  “But what about you guys?”

  “I’ll take care of Kate and me. Go! Get to Friedrichsburg, we’ll meet you there!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlie hesitate for a second, but only for a second. Then he ran for the door.

  I turned back to Kate. I had to make her understand. I had to.

  “Remember what you said to me last night?” I asked her, pleading. She didn’t respond, and I urged again, “Remember?”

  Her breath came in a short gasp, and tears slipped down her cheeks in earnest now.

  “What did you say to me, Kate?” I prompted.

  She opened her mouth, and it just hung there for a second.

  “I said… I…”

  A group of agents burst into the room, weapons drawn.

  “Jackson MacNamera, you are under arrest for treason and terrorism by order of the Potentate!” cried one, shoving the barrel of a semiautomatic into my back.

  Nine agents, I counted at a glance. Too many to take down and try to protect Kate at the same time. Judging by the ruckus I could hear downstairs, I suspected there were more waiting outside the building, too.

  When I turned back to Kate, though, I saw the agent who approached her lower his weapon and hold out a protective arm.

  “Miss Brandeis, are you all right?”

  Kate froze, looking from the agent to me. Then she looked back at the agent again, nodded, and allowed him to put his arm around her shoulder.

  She might as well have stabbed me.

  The agent with his arm around Kate barked at me, “The Potentate has commanded us to inform you that the bullets in our guns are classic and not deep impact, so he suggests you not resist this time.” I could tell that he was just relaying a message. He didn’t understand what it meant. But the Potentate did.

  It didn’t matter anyway. I’d lost the will to fight.

  I hardly noticed when the agent with the semiautomatic pressed against my back pulled my hands behind me and cuffed me. I looked at Kate again, tears in my own eyes this time. She looked tortured.

  The agent who held me shoved me past her on the way to the door. As I passed, I whispered, my voice breaking, “You remember what you said to me last night?”

  She managed another tiny nod.

  “Then fight, Kate. Fight!”

  The Phoenix Project

  Book 3 of The Liberty Box Trilogy

  C.A. Gray

  www.authorcagray.com

  Prologue: Will Anderson

  I dropped
to my knees, a pair of wire cutters in my hands, and went to work. Most of the wires were thick, black, and very well insulated, so it took the combined strength of both of my hands to clamp down. At the first repeater in Crystal City, I’d been careful to find just the critical cable that would disable its ability to amplify the control center signaling to the nearby district of the Republic. I’d even frayed the edges of the wires a little bit and put the corpse of a dead rat beside them, to make it look like it hadn’t been an act of sabotage.

  But then I’d seen the broadcast.

  Beckenshire bombed into oblivion. And along with it, all the rest of the refugees.

  Including Kate.

  The last time I’d seen her, she’d been sleeping under moth-eaten blankets on the concrete not ten yards away from me. I’d only half glanced back at her as we crept off into the forest, not knowing it would be the last time I’d see her alive.

  Now in Pensington, I wasn’t careful anymore. I cut every wire I saw, and didn’t bother making it look like an accident. Snapping through wires acted as a surrogate for snapping through necks, which is what I really wanted to do right now.

  I’d kill Stone for betraying us all, if he wasn’t dead already. If I could bomb the palace and take down the Potentate and the entire Tribunal in one fell swoop in retribution for what they’d done, I would—but even that would be too good for them, I thought savagely. I’d much rather snap Ben Voltolini in half with my bare hands, if I could ever get close enough.

  Since I couldn’t, though, I’d have to settle for starting a revolution. The more people we could wake up at once, the better. The twenty-seven control centers across the Republic were too heavily guarded, but we now had a map of all eighty-one repeaters, thanks to our successful mission in Friedrichsburg.

  The problem was, there were now only three of us left to destroy those eighty-one repeaters.

  Nick, too grief-stricken to see reason after the broadcast, had insisted on going back to Beckenshire to find Molly, even though there was little hope that anybody had survived that blast. Jacob and Roger volunteered to go with him because it was clear he was out of his mind and needed someone to keep him from doing anything rash. And that damn Jackson had disappeared as soon as we arrived in Friedrichsburg—none of us had a clue where he was going or why. We’d never see him again now.

  We really could have used his help, too. What a bastard. Maybe I’d snap his neck too, if I ever got the chance.

  “Think you got ‘em all,” said Alec, bemused. He stood over me with his arms crossed over his chest. I’d almost forgotten his presence until he spoke, only then realizing I’d cut every wire in the building and left nothing for him to do but stand there and watch.

  I looked up at him, wiping the sweat from my brow, and gave him a curt nod. This little shoebox of a building was barely large enough to house the repeater itself—no windows, no ventilation whatsoever.

  “Fine. Let’s hit the next one,” I said.

  Jean waited for us outside, beside the idling car. Alec had hot-wired it like an expert—apparently when he and Kate’s former roommate Maggie had been on the run, he’d acquired a lot of subversive skills that were coming in handy now.

  I climbed in the shotgun seat while Jean took the back and Alec drove. We hadn’t gotten a mile down the road toward the next repeater when we came to an intersection with a blank silver screen in the middle of a town square. It crackled and lit up. My heart stopped.

  It was Kate.

  Jean gasped and Alec swore. I could do nothing but stare at her. She looked cleaner than I’d seen her since before the caves, but for the first few seconds of air time, she froze.

  I couldn’t comprehend it. I was elated she was alive, but—how? My mind raced for possible explanations. Is she a hostage? Where is she? Am I dreaming?

  At last she smiled, as if she’d won some sort of internal battle with herself. “Hi, friends. I know you’ve been told a lot of things about me since I’ve been gone, most recently that I’m a terrorist and that I am your enemy. I imagine that for a lot of you, that’s been very confusing. You know in your hearts that I am devoted to you. I’m your Voice of Truth, the face you’ve come to trust. I want to honor that trust today, by telling you what I know is true.”

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut.

  This was the broadcast. The one she’d been talking about from the beginning. The one I told her not to do because she’d need me there both to put her on the air, and to protect her, and I wouldn’t go because I also needed to be in Friedrichsburg and I couldn’t be in two places at once.

  She went anyway. Suddenly I remembered that when I’d glanced back at her just before we’d left Beckenshire for Friedrichsburg, she’d seemed unnaturally still. When she slept normally, she didn’t snore, but her breathing was rhythmic and loud. I’d had a brief suspicion then that she wasn’t actually sleeping, but thought nothing of it, having no idea why she’d bother to fake it.

  She followed us into Friedrichsburg. She must’ve gone to find Charlie after all.

  Jackson. He knew she’d followed us, and he went after her. Of course he did. She had to have someone to protect her, and since I wouldn’t do it, the damn white knight rode off to her rescue instead. He was probably in the studio with her right now. Oh, I could kill him…

  Kate was saying, “When I began to realize all of this, my fiancé at the time, Will Anderson, started to help me with my investigations.” I started at my name, and despite everything, it stung to hear her say, my fiancé at the time. “He was a computer hacker, and he began to uncover information that confirmed and fleshed out my own memories and realizations.”

  She thinks I’m dead too, I realized. And why wouldn’t she? She knew we’d gone to Friedrichsburg, but for all she knew, we went right back to Beckenshire afterwards. We might’ve been there when the bombs dropped.

  “New Estonia, if you are listening,” Kate said, “we need your help. You are next. As we speak, Ben Voltolini is building control centers on your own soil, disguising them as benign construction projects of which you would take little notice.”

  Jean whooped out loud, and in the rearview mirror I saw her pump her fist in the air. “Go Kate! Yes!”

  But there was something off about Kate. She had a certain wild, frantic look in her eyes, and beads of sweat dotted her forehead. Maybe it was just the adrenaline of a forbidden broadcast, but I didn’t think so. It looked like she was getting sick.

  She went on, “The old United States had a Declaration of Independence that said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Liberty is one of our unalienable rights. You and I have the right to be free—”

  The screen cut out suddenly, replaced by the face of Ben Voltolini. It took me a moment to register what had happened. He wore a sympathetic expression which made him even more eminently despicable than outright malice might have done.

  “Miss Brandeis,” he cooed. “Like the rest of the Republic, I’ve been listening to your broadcast with great interest. While it is obviously well rehearsed and quite articulate, at this point I really must interrupt. You have indeed been brainwashed, my dear, but not by us.”

  My intestines curled into one big knot. I understood Kate’s fevered expression now. She isn’t using the signal disruptors right now; she can’t while sending a broadcast.

  The control center signals are getting to her again.

  The Potentate shook his head. “Look around you, Kate. What do you see? Is it the dystopian world you have described to the people of the Republic just now? Or is it the world of freedom and affluence you’ve grown up in?”

  They’ve re-targeted her. She’s being brainwashed all over again.

  The Potentate began to go on and on about Jackson: how he’d captured her, how he was the enemy, how he wa
s using her against the Republic. He’d killed members of the Tribunal yesterday.

  He had? Somehow we must’ve missed that broadcast.

  “MacNamera has held you captive for so long now, and brainwashed you so thoroughly, that you believe you’ve actually come to care for him,” Voltolini said, apparently directly to Kate now. “It’s a well-documented psychological phenomena, and you're not to be blamed for it. But he’s using your feelings for him against you. I urge you to examine your memories with him. See if what I say isn’t true. We care about you, and you need our help. I personally offer you full pardon for your participation in terrorist activities—in exchange for the life of Jackson MacNamera.”

  The seal of the Republic appeared on the screen, and it went blank.

  We had the right of way, but we just sat in the idling car. All of us stared at the now-blank silver screen and did not speak.

  “Boy,” said Alec at last. “He wants Jackson bad.”

  Alec’s words woke me up a little. “We have to find her,” I said, and pointed at the screen. “We have to find out where that broadcast came from. We have to find her before the agents do!”

  “Dude,” said Alec flatly. “No way we’d get there before the agents. Ten to one they’re already there.”

  “Plus there are only three of us to break the remaining seventy-nine repeaters—” Jean began.

  I cut her off. “I have to find her!”

  Alec shook his head at me in disgust. “Are you an idiot? We already lost Nick to a pointless mission to find a dead woman!”

  I almost punched him in the face. But instead I said something that I knew would hurt almost as much. I pointed at the screen and said, “If that had been Maggie, would you hesitate?”

  Alec half lunged at me from the driver’s seat, and Jean cried out, which seemed to check him. He sat back and huffed, glaring at me with daggers in his eyes.

  After a long pause, Jean said in a tentative voice, “We can find her location in the control center files. I’m sure she’ll be long gone from the broadcasting studio by the time we can get there, but it doesn’t look like the Potentate intends to kill her anyway. Not yet. So we can just find out where they take her. And maybe we can still break a few more repeaters on the way.”