Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  His heart sank as Hancock guided him to the entrance. They passed from gray half-light into darkness so thick that he could practically chew on it.

  “Elevator’s just up ahead. Watch your step,” said his escort into his ear.

  Shale and rubble littered the ground. A dim bulb shone in the distance with light so feeble that it failed to cut through the darkness. It twinkled instead like a far-off star. As they drew closer, the faint outline of an iron cage emerged, the shaft elevator that would take him into the yawning depths of the abandoned mine.

  He didn’t want to go. Why hadn’t he stayed in the basement with Jenifer?

  Half a dozen fighters loaded onto the elevator with him, and down they went into the deep, black pit. As they neared the end of their journey, brightness flooded the elevator shaft. The car stopped in an underground cavern rigged with dozens of floodlights.

  “It’s a natural cavity here,” said Hancock, prodding him from the elevator. “Makes for a good gathering place.”

  And gathering place it was. Upwards of three hundred people crammed into that space, talking, chattering, their voices echoing off the walls. At the advent of this latest group of fighters, a whistle cut through their ranks. The voices hushed.

  “We got the null, just like we said we would,” Hancock called.

  Oliver caught sight of some of his classmates across the space. They peered back at him as though uncertain whether to view him as an ally or an enemy.

  Up on a wooden platform, a dirty, scruffy man beckoned for him to come forward. Hancock’s hand at the small of his back propelled him there. A growing buzz in Oliver’s ears alerted him that something was off, but his attempt to dig in his heels only caused Hancock and another fighter to flank him and keep him moving.

  “Oliver Dunn, our resident psychopath,” the man on the platform joked as Oliver joined him. Chuckles burst out across the crowd. “This kid’s such a strong null projector that the government’s willing to pin your crimes on him to get him back into their clutches.”

  A few more laughs peppered the group. Some of the men elbowed each other, grinning like idiots.

  The scruffy man continued, his hands spread wide. “Well, so, now you have a null strong enough to suppress any projector in your midst. Shall we open up discussion?”

  “What’s going on?” Oliver hissed to Hancock, who continued to guard him.

  The fighter grunted. “Democracy in action.”

  “I thought you said a Brotherhood cell had gone rogue.”

  He shrugged. “Stretch of the truth. Technically all the cells are rogue.”

  Oliver gaped, outrage and dismay warring within him. Why had he not stayed in the basement with Jenifer?

  “What do we have to gain from attacking another Prometheus campus?” someone asked from the crowd.

  “What do we have to lose?” someone else replied. Murmurs erupted both for and against the proposal.

  “They steal our children, indoctrinate them, and turn them against us,” cried the scruffy man. He prowled the platform, working the crowd like a carnival barker. “They destroy lives for their own power. This is tyranny at its very worst!”

  “But what do we accomplish by attacking another campus?” the first man asked again.

  “We don’t have to attack,” said the head rabble-rouser. “We have the means to make them attack themselves, and they have no way to stop us.” He clapped a hand on Oliver’s shoulder and shook him, as though to emphasize his point.

  The buzzing at the edge of Oliver’s senses intensified. There were projectors in this crowd—a handful of them, but projectors nonetheless. And he recognized one of them.

  “Are you going to cower in tunnels, pretending that you’re brave?” the man beside him continued. “Are you going to sit idly by and allow this government to trample your rights and your lives without any fear of recourse? Are you men, or are you children?”

  Oliver spied his quarry at the other end of the room, a fourteen-year-old girl with long, wavy hair. She watched him through narrowed eyes, contempt in the firmness of her mouth.

  Kennedy Ross in the flesh.

  And the man at Oliver’s shoulder, logically, would be her father.

  They hadn’t set off to blow up Prom-B. They were garnering support, and Oliver was a pawn in the decision-making.

  He flung Abel Ross’s grip away. “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “You’ve already murdered how many people? And now you want to murder more? You have the means to get your other daughter back without an ounce of violence!”

  A hush fell over the crowd. Hundreds of stares fixed on the pair up on the platform.

  “My other daughter,” Abel Ross repeated. The nasty sneer that leapt to his face made Oliver question whether it was prudent to push the man very far. “My other daughter? Liberty died. She died in Prometheus’s clutches, only months after they took her from us. I can’t get my daughter back. I can stop the monsters from taking and killing anyone else’s child, though.

  “Who is with me?” he roared to the crowd.

  They roared in return, galvanized by his passionate plea.

  Oliver gaped. A chant went up from the fighters: “Freedom or death! Freedom or death!”

  Abel Ross thrust Oliver back toward Hancock, who latched onto his arm and pulled him from the wooden platform.

  “Well, you did your job well enough,” that fighter said in Oliver’s ear as they went. “Abel insisted that people join his cause of their own free will, and there they are, signing on by the droves.”

  Oliver felt like shoving the butt of his hand into the man’s throat, but he was in no position to succeed in such an assault. “Great,” he said instead. “Now you can take me back to Altair.”

  Hancock scoffed. “Like we have the resources for that. If they want you, they can come and get you back themselves.”

  His heart stuttered in his chest, like a hand had gripped it and wrung it dry. Of course Altair didn’t want him. No one wanted him, except as a tool to use for their own nefarious ends. And this time, any destruction that resulted really could be laid at his doorstep.

  Chapter 13

  Enemy among Friends

  Sunday, February 24, 9:16 AM MST

  Hancock escorted Oliver down a side shaft lined with wooden supports. He unlocked a sheet-metal door and motioned the null-projector inside. Oliver felt the weight of the mountain above him as he crossed into the low, dimly lit room. It had been hewn from the living rock, its walls shored up with thick wooden posts and its floor littered with more rubble.

  The door shut behind him, and a key turned in the lock.

  For that first breath, the walls pressed in upon Oliver.

  Scrabbling from the corner drew his attention a split second before a body barreled into him. Oliver hit the ground hard, skidding in the dust with his assailant on top of him.

  “Filthy traitor!” cried a younger voice. “You stinking… filthy… traitor!”

  With each of these final words, a narrow fist punched at Oliver’s shoulders.

  It was Cedric. Oliver, torn between relief at seeing the younger null alive and annoyance at being tackled and repeatedly hit, grabbed the boy’s wrists to stop the assault.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Cedric thrashed against his restraint, but Oliver was older and stronger. He flipped the boy away and sat up, rubbing his left shoulder, which had taken the brunt of Cedric’s wrath.

  “You’re a traitor. You helped them.”

  “Get off your high horse,” Oliver sneered. “I didn’t help them do anything.” He hadn’t helped intentionally, at any rate.

  “Where were you that night then, hmm? You weren’t in the room when those traitors came through and pulled all of us from the dorms.”

  “I was knocked out with a tranquilizer dart by the time they got to you,” Oliver said. “Not that it’s any of your business, you Prometheus boot-lick. I don’t have a team in this game, and you wouldn’t either, if you kn
ew what was good for you.”

  Cedric glowered. “Traitor.”

  With a heavy sigh, Oliver flopped down against the wall. “You don’t know the first thing about treachery. You can’t even figure out why you were transferred to Prom-F. It’s because you’re a null, Cedric. They were never going to send you back to Prom-C or anywhere else.”

  “You don’t know anything,” the younger null said. “Principal Carter told me it was only temporary, that there was a mistake in the computer system and they were going to get it wrinkled out.”

  “Yeah. Principal Jones told me the same thing. And then, when I’d done everything I was supposed to do to get back to Prom-A, she and Principal Gates stood there, coldly smug, and didn’t lift a finger to help me. It’s a scam. And as far as I’m concerned, the whole debacle of this past week can be blamed on General Bradford Stone.”

  Cedric snapped his mouth shut and glared. He didn’t know General Stone as anything more than a menacing visitor. He didn’t know about the shadow campus or that Stone collected all of Prometheus’s null-projectors there, eventually.

  He was just a stupid, willfully blind kid.

  And Oliver was too exhausted to force him to see. He leaned his head against the rough rock and closed his eyes, trying not to think of the mine shaft, of the explosion he’d witnessed the previous day and how easy it would be for a military drone to collapse this cavern in on them all. His nerves danced a jittery rhythm.

  Why had the Brotherhood put him and Cedric in a holding area separate from any of the other Prom-F kids? Surely his former classmates weren’t a danger to the two null-projectors anymore. They were free and away from Prom-F, and most of them had probably joined with the Brotherhood’s cause willingly—nay, enthusiastically.

  So why isolate the two nulls? Did the Brotherhood think Oliver and Cedric would betray them?

  But Oliver would, in an instant. He knew that just as surely as he knew he was breathing. If he had the chance to report these rogue Brotherhood cells, even to the government itself, he would. Grateful as he was for his timely rescue from Prom-F, the methods made him heartsick. That they would wreak such destruction upon another Prometheus campus made it worse.

  Especially because there was every likelihood that he would take the blame.

  “My life ended last Monday,” he muttered under his breath. “It doesn’t matter. My life was already over before any of this started.”

  “What was that?” Cedric had flung himself against the opposite wall, hunched over bent knees and resting his chin atop his arms, but he looked up to glare at Oliver.

  Oliver glared right back. “I said my life was over last Monday. I have nothing to lose. Is there any hope of getting out of this room?”

  The other null scowled. “There’s nothing in here but us and a lot of rocks. We don’t get out until they let us out.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “How should I know? It’s not like they gave me a clock.”

  Oliver left his wall to inspect the door. It was set to swing outward, which denied them any direct access to the hinges. Its metal was tarnished and scratched with graffiti, but still solid against any attack.

  It was anchored against a wooden frame, however, and the wood of abandoned mines tended to rot.

  With single-mindedness coursing through him, Oliver raised his foot and kicked against the door, approximating where the lock would be. A resounding bang sounded, like thunder, and Oliver rebounded back onto his rear end.

  “What’re you doing?” Cedric asked, scorn on his face.

  “I’m sick of living my life in a cage.” He ran at it this time, slamming his shoulder into the sheet of metal. It jarred beneath his impact. He shoulder aching, he backed up again, this time for a running start to another kick.

  Again he rebounded to the floor, skidding along the dust and rubble. Sweat beaded on his brow as he readied for another assault.

  Someone beyond the door was shouting. “Kid! What do you think you’re doing in there?”

  Oliver took one last running kick. A splintering crack answered his efforts, and the door swung out. It smacked a fighter on the other side, sprawling him out flat against the stone. Oliver, half-shocked his attempt at freedom had gone so well, ducked out under the frame, beckoning for Cedric to follow.

  The fighter picked himself up off the ground. “You crazy son of a—”

  “I don’t want to be here anymore,” Oliver interrupted. “I’ve served my purpose. You guys got what you wanted. You can turn me loose now. Cedric too.”

  The fighter brandished his gun. “No one leaves a Brotherhood cell without the commander’s say-so.”

  “Then take us to the commander. You can try to shut me up in another holding area, but I can’t imagine the wooden posts there will be any sturdier than these. And do you really want all your holding area doors to get kicked off their frames?”

  A grudging expression flashed across the fighter’s face. “Come this way. One step out of line, though, and I’ll shoot ya.”

  He followed the man, checking that Cedric came as well. The younger null looked around himself, his skittish gaze darting everywhere as they walked. The dank, narrow passageway was enough to give anyone the creeps. Relief pulsed through Oliver when they emerged into the broader cavern from earlier, encased in earth though it still was. He didn’t feel quite so buried alive here.

  The crowd had dispersed, but fighters ran from one tunnel to another as they prepared to depart for Prom-B. Dread struck the pit of Oliver’s stomach.

  “Commander!” shouted his escort.

  A weathered man looked up from his conversation with a cluster of fighters. A dark frown descended between his brows. He broke away from the group, approaching with long strides. “What’re those kids doing out of their holding area?”

  The guard gestured to Oliver. “This one kicked down the door.”

  Before Oliver could utter a pithy remark, the commander grabbed him by his coat lapels. “You think you’re clever, kid? You think you can come in here and destroy stuff as you please?” His foul breath washed over Oliver’s face, peppered with flecks of spittle.

  Oliver gathered his courage. “I thought the government was the one that keeps people confined against their will. How can you hope to defeat the monster if you’re exactly the same?”

  A sneer crossed the man’s face, but he thrust Oliver away.

  “What do we do with them?” the guard asked, a helpless whine to his voice. He wasn’t much older than Oliver, a peon yet unhardened. “If we put them in another holding area, the kid’s just going to kick down the door again. He says he wants us to let him go.”

  “You’re miles away from civilization,” the commander told Oliver. “You’ll freeze before you can get anywhere on foot. And don’t expect us to give you any directions.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Oliver said grimly. The sun would be up by now. He could at least make an attempt to get away.

  The man jerked his head toward the elevator shaft, a signal that Oliver was free to go. As the boy turned to leave, though, he called after him. “You’ll get yourself arrested and killed for your efforts. The whole world thinks you’re a monster.”

  “Thanks to you,” Oliver shot back over his shoulder. “You and our rotten government are two sides of the same coin. Cedric, if you’re coming, you’d better hurry up.”

  Cedric fell in step beside him, casting suspicious looks at him every couple of seconds. Their escort shambled behind them to operate the elevator.

  The mechanical box creaked and groaned as it ascended through darkness. Oliver’s bones quaked.

  Don’t think of falling. Don’t think of the pit beneath. Don’t think of the mechanics failing.

  When the car finally stopped, he discerned a faint rim of daylight at the far end of the cavern.

  “Good luck with your life,” their escort said. He snapped the door shut again and descended.

  A couple of sentries
manned the exit. “The commander said we’re free to go,” Oliver told them. They exchanged an uncertain glance with one another. Both their gazes drifted to Cedric’s feet.

  For the first time, Oliver realized that the younger boy wasn’t wearing any shoes. He was dressed in his pajamas, coated with remnants of shale and rubble, with only a pair of socks on his feet, just as Oliver had been a day ago.

  “You people didn’t even give him a pair of shoes?” Oliver asked, outraged. “What kind of freedom-fighters are you, that you would let a twelve-year-old kid traipse through the snow without shoes on?”

  They exchanged another glance. “Your feet are smaller than mine, Jem,” one said to the other.

  “You want me to give him my shoes?” his fellow asked.

  “It gives you an excuse to grab a new pair from the supplies.”

  The soldier scowled, but he removed the shoes from off his feet. “Wear ’em out, kid,” he said as he handed them over to Cedric.

  “Do you have a blanket or an extra coat?” Oliver pressed. Even with the sun up, the air was bitter cold.

  “What do you think this is, a charity?” the fighter sneered. “Go on. Git.”

  Cedric sat on the ground and pulled the boots onto his feet with a sullen slant upon his lips. He didn’t mutter a word of gratitude. Oliver, bundled up still in the layers of clothing gifted to him by Smith, removed his coat and pulled off a sweater to offer to the younger null.

  Cedric received it with a grunt.

  Oliver buttoned up his coat again. He pulled the gloves from his pockets and gave those to Cedric; he thrust his hands back into his pockets and set out into the snow. A crunch-crunch-crunch behind him told him that the younger null followed.

  It was, perhaps, nine o’clock in the morning. The tracks left by the transport that had brought Oliver here were still visible. He followed them; even if he couldn’t make it back to the ranch house, he would make it somewhere.

  “We’re going to die out here,” Cedric said with a rotten scowl.

  “Better out here than in that pit.” He meant every word. For the first time in his short life, Oliver Dunn was free, unsupervised under a wide sky, with no one telling him where to go or how to get there. His breath puffed evanescent clouds into the cold air as he walked.