Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  It was glorious.

  The trees around them blocked most of the sky. Oliver wasn’t tracking the position of the sun, though. He simply followed the dirty, treaded snow as it meandered through the forest, up slopes and down through broad drifts. They had to pick their way across a frozen stream, careful not to slip on rocks slick with ice.

  An hour of walking brought them no signs of civilization. At best, Oliver estimated, they had traveled three miles.

  A split in the tracks showed that two vehicles had traveled this direction and joined paths toward the hideout.

  Cedric, shivering bitterly, asked, “So which one do we follow?”

  “Logically, each one will lead us to some structure or other,” Oliver said. A glance at each of the dirty paths showed him that the right-branching one headed downhill.

  More than anything, he wanted to get off this mountain. He took that fork.

  “What if I think we should go the other way?” Cedric asked.

  “Based on what criteria? Obstinacy? You’re free to head off that way if you like. No one’s forced you to come with me.”

  “You did force me. What was I supposed to do? You told them I wanted out!”

  “You should have spoken up if you felt otherwise, dum-dum. But did you really want to stay with them? One of their other hideouts was blown to smithereens by a military drone yesterday.”

  Cedric grunted. “Good.”

  “Not good if you and I were stuck down in the belly of that mine when another drone came along. Like you said, we may well die out here, but I’d much rather freeze in open air than suffocate in darkness, amid collapsing rocks.”

  The younger null shut his mouth. More telling, he picked up his pace, suddenly just as eager as Oliver to get as far away from the Brotherhood encampment as he could.

  Chapter 14

  The Revolutionary

  Sunday, February 24, 2:07 PM MST

  The sun above was a malicious tease. It beamed directly overhead, bright and brilliant, and yet its feeble warmth did nothing to banish the chill that set into Oliver’s bones. Cedric’s teeth chattered. With only a sweater over his flannel pajama top, he rubbed his gloved hands up and down his arms.

  They had been walking for hours down the snowy track. Both boys’ stomachs gurgled. Oliver had at least enjoyed a full dinner the night before. He didn’t know the last time Cedric had received anything to eat.

  There was plenty enough snow for them to keep hydrated, at least.

  He searched the sky as they walked, his eyes alert for aircraft—especially the unmanned type. They were remote enough not to encounter any, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed.

  From afar off, coming from the road behind them, a rumbling sounded through the trees.

  “Go faster,” Oliver said, foreboding bearing down upon him with that noise. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Maybe it’s someone who can help us,” Cedric said.

  “It’s coming from the same direction we did. Do you want help from domestic terrorists?”

  Cedric made a frustrated noise but he quickened his steps. The far-off engine drew closer.

  They made it a hundred or more yards before two of the Brotherhood all-terrain transports appeared behind them. As the vehicles approached, Oliver and Cedric scrambled up the embankment into the tree line. The deep snow sloughed into the tops of their boots.

  The first transport pulled to a stop alongside them, and the passenger-side window of the driver’s compartment rolled down. Abel Ross’s scruffy face grinned at them.

  “Need a ride, boys?”

  “Not from you,” said Oliver.

  “I don’t really think you’re in a position to pick and choose. You’ve come a grand total of eight miles from our base, which leaves you with another thirty or forty to travel on this road before you reach anything like civilization.”

  Oliver and Cedric exchanged a glance. Oliver didn’t think he would last that long, and the younger null certainly wouldn’t.

  Still, “How do we know we can trust you?” he asked.

  “You have a lot of choice?” Abel replied with a smirk. “There are wolves on these mountains, you know. They get mighty hungry in wintertime, and two defenseless boys might prove awfully tempting prey.”

  A desperate noise squeaked in the back of Cedric’s throat. Even Oliver’s resolve started to crumble.

  “Are you headed back to your base? Because it would be pointless for us to go with you.”

  “Naw. We’re headed to a waypoint. Climb aboard, fellow nulls.”

  Oliver expected he would place them in the cargo area in back. Instead, Abel descended from the front compartment and motioned for them to get in. He grinned at the transport behind them, waving.

  Cedric darted forward. Oliver followed more slowly, misgivings forming a heavy lump in his throat. A man like Abel Ross, a man driven by revenge: this was a calculating, desperate soul, not someone they should easily trust. He had already destroyed one school and planned to destroy another as he waged war against the government that had ruined his life. Oliver couldn’t imagine he gave favors lightly.

  Or at all, really. Which pointed more toward an ulterior motive in helping the pair.

  And yet, if thirty or forty miles still lay between them and civilization, their options were bleak. Reluctantly he climbed into the cab.

  The seat stretched from one door to the other, a long, padded bench devoid of seatbelts. Warm air poured from the air conditioning system, stinging Oliver’s frozen cheeks as he settled in place. Cedric already had his gloves off, holding icy fingers against the blast. Oliver did the same. His knuckles ached as the numbness around them broke.

  Abel took the last space by the window, hemming them in as he shut the door. The transport lumbered further down the road, its speed between ten and twenty miles an hour, and sometimes as high as thirty in the longer stretches of flat terrain.

  “You boys have a lot of nerve to set off on your own like that,” Abel remarked.

  “It seemed like the logical thing to do,” Oliver said. “Do you have anything to eat?”

  He barked a laugh, amused at such a blunt request. After rummaging through a rucksack at his feet, he produced a couple of granola bars. “Here you go.”

  Cedric snatched one of them and tore open the wrapper.

  “Thank you,” Oliver murmured as he received the other.

  “Think nothing of it,” said Abel.

  The bar was dry and dense and possibly rancid, but Oliver ate it anyway. His stomach growled in response, unsated by such meager fare. He could have eaten five more like it, but he was already too indebted to Abel for any further requests.

  “You seemed pretty intent on getting away from the base back there, to set off into the snow by yourselves,” Abel said after they had gone several miles.

  Oliver grunted. “No telling when a government drone might follow your slush-tracks through the wilderness and bomb the place. That’s what happened to the first base I was taken to.”

  The man tipped his head in acknowledgment. “It’s always a possibility. This is war, and war has its casualties.”

  “Like the students at your next target school?” Oliver asked, his nerves writhing.

  Abel spared him a wry glance. “You don’t approve of my tactics. I don’t care.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter. I didn’t know—I mean, it’s so rare for a Prometheus student to—” He couldn’t say the word. It choked in his throat, so bald and insensitive. Prometheus had every medical technology at its disposal. Its students didn’t die, but he couldn’t say that to this man, who had experienced otherwise. He finished his halting speech with a simple admission. “I didn’t even think of that possibility.”

  A ghost of a smile played around Abel’s scraggly mouth. “That’s all right. Liberty ain’t dead. She’s alive and well at Prom-B, and I intend to get her back.”

  “You lied?” The words burst from Oliver’s lips b
efore he could restrain them, and he might have kicked himself in the split-second afterward. Abel shook with that barking laughter again. Of course he had lied. He was a liar through and through, a genuine psychopath who would say or do whatever he needed in order to achieve his aim.

  Misgivings writhed anew within Oliver. They should have braved the wolves and the forty miles—if either of those details were even true.

  “We appeal to logic by our very nature,” Abel said when his laughing spell had passed. “Null projectors, I mean. That’s what we do. We allow others to engage their logical reasoning for any given situation. We enhance it, in a way. You enhance it to a degree I’ve not seen, kid, but the best way to work a crowd into a frenzy is to appeal to their emotions. Nothing overrides logic quite like the death of a child. That invokes pathos in its purest form.”

  A quick glance to Oliver’s left showed the driver unfazed by this disclosure. Of course Abel would have men loyal to him, men who agreed with his crazy ideals.

  “So you still plan on razing the school with all its students and administrators?” Oliver asked. Beside him, Cedric sat rigid with shock.

  “They deserve nothing better,” said Abel. “This is war.”

  “It’s not war. It’s your personal crusade.”

  Abel’s mouth twisted in a sardonic sneer. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bands which have connected them with another—”

  “I’ve read the Declaration of Independence,” Oliver interrupted with a sneer of his own. That wasn’t entirely true. He’d found a copy buried in one of the older American History textbooks at Prom-F, but even it had been censored in some spots. It was held as a radical document, despite its fundamental role in the birth of the U.S.

  Abel’s eyes narrowed. “Then you know that the offenses our Founding Fathers faced were a pittance compared to the oppression we live under now. Mad King George couldn’t hold a candle to the tyrants that govern us today.”

  Oliver believed it. Five years ago he would have scoffed, but he was cynical enough now to understand that the Powers That Be cared only for themselves, that they viewed those beneath them as tools to be used and cast aside.

  And yet, he could not agree with the revolutionary tactics of the man sitting next to him.

  He licked his lips. “I don’t recall any stories about the Founding Fathers blowing up schoolhouses with the children and teachers trapped inside.”

  The scruffy man grunted. “They did what was necessary for their day. We’ll do what’s necessary for ours.”

  Silence stretched between them. The two transports continued their gradual descent from the mountains to the foothills below. At a fork in the road, the second transport turned the opposite direction as the first. Something nagged at the back of Oliver’s mind as he watched the passing scenery, something important.

  It wasn’t until they turned up a road that led up to an ice-encrusted farmhouse—a different structure than the ranch house from the night before—that he realized the problem.

  He’d ridden in the back of the other transports because the Brotherhood operators didn’t want their uninitiated passengers to witness the way from one base to another. The Brotherhood guarded its secrets as closely as Altair in that respect. The twisting journey of the snowmobiles two nights ago had disoriented his senses; he would not be able to trace his way back to that first base. The journey in the transport last night had shielded the road to the second base from view.

  Except that now, after riding in the cab, he could theoretically find his way back.

  And someone like Abel Ross had no reason to give away such tactical information unless he didn’t care if it was disclosed.

  Or unless he knew that Oliver and Cedric would never get a chance to disclose it.

  Under the circumstances, the second option seemed much more likely.

  As they pulled up alongside the big red barn, Oliver’s mind raced. One of the Brotherhood fighters waited for them, pulling the doors open. The transport moved into its confines. The barn was huge, with exits at both ends. A line of snowmobiles stood along the open horse stalls on either side of the main area where the transport parked.

  Where would Abel dispose of them, if it came to that? Inside the farmhouse?

  No, too messy.

  In the barn, with his willing men to watch and perhaps assist?

  Much more likely.

  But they had already stopped. Abel was already getting out of the cab, motioning for Oliver and Cedric to descend.

  Cedric made a move as though to get out, but Oliver caught his arm.

  “I think we’ll sit in here for a bit, if that’s all right,” he said to Abel. “My legs have cramped from all that walking.”

  The man eyed him up and down. “Suit yourself,” he said, though grudgingly.

  The driver exited the other side, taking the keys to the ignition with him. Not that they would have done Oliver much good. It was a manual transmission. He wasn’t even sure he could handle an automatic, but the gear shift and clutch of a manual stood as a mocking obstacle to his plight. He knew in theory how they worked, but theory and practice were two separate issues.

  Under the circumstances, he had no time for the trial-and-error method of overcoming that learning curve.

  The exiting adults left both doors open, so that a cross-wind blew through the cab, quickly robbing it of its warmth.

  “Why are we sitting here?” Cedric hissed.

  “Because that guy has no reason to keep us alive,” Oliver said in much the same tones. The side rearview mirrors reflected a handful of people exiting from the back of the transport, leaving the barn. Kennedy Ross’s wavy hair flashed among them. “C’mon.” Impulsively he darted for the exit.

  Cedric scrambled to follow.

  The lie he had told about leg cramps turned out to be not so far from the truth. His muscles ached as he bolted to catch up with Kennedy in the cluster of fighters. None of the other Prom-F kids had come with this group.

  He heard a hissing noise from Abel, who had been a few paces off speaking with one of his underlings, but he ignored it.

  “Hey,” Oliver said as he fell in line beside the man’s daughter. Surely Abel Ross wasn’t monster enough to execute a couple of kids where his own child could witness the carnage.

  Kennedy recoiled, fury descending upon her. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Your dad picked us up on the side of the road. What’re you doing here?”

  “Get away from me, you filthy null. You ruined everything when you came back.”

  “If I had really wanted to ruin everything, I would’ve told the administrators about you. I knew it was you. They wanted to send you off to Prom-E with me, except that I wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “Sure you knew it was me,” she sneered.

  “You have a distinctive signature,” Oliver said. “Projectors tickle a null’s senses. I knew it was you.”

  Her scowl deepened. “Then why didn’t you report me?”

  “Why should I have? I’m not beholden to Prometheus for anything.”

  The statement mollified her anger, if only by a degree. Oliver took the opportunity to glance around them at the wide expanse of snow-covered farmland and the house to which they were headed. He had not even reached the porch when Abel fell in step beside them.

  “Button, can you go on inside? I need to have a few words with our stowaways.”

  “Keeping secrets from your own daughter?” Oliver asked, his heart racing. “Seems like she should be able to overhear anything you have to say to us.”

  Abel glared, trying to intimidate him into submission, but Oliver steadily met his gaze. His life might well depend upon this gamble.

  Kennedy glanced from her father to her former classmates and back again. “What do you want to talk to them about, Daddy?”

  His mouth pressed into a firm, thin line. “Just some reminders for them not to take any liberties here. They
’re our guests, but that doesn’t give them leave to act like they own the place.”

  “We won’t take any liberties,” Oliver promised, with no intention of keeping that promise should he find himself in danger.

  Abel grunted and let them pass, up the porch and into the farmhouse. Oliver breathed a controlled sigh of relief as warmth enveloped him.

  Chapter 15

  Den of Thieves

  Sunday, February 24, 4:07 PM MST

  The farm had been stripped down to its barest basics as far as furniture was concerned, but a fire blazed in the hearth of the main room and hot air flooded from the central heating system.

  Some of the Brotherhood fighters stashed their gear against the wall. Others carried theirs upstairs to a loft. About half of the dozen men went to use the bathrooms, cracking jokes about the luxury of a porcelain flush toilet.

  Oliver stuck close to Kennedy, and Cedric lingered near them both in that front room with the fire.

  The packs by the wall each consisted of a sleeping bag and other supplies for roughing it. Oliver visually picked out a few lengths of nylon cord among the pile. There were coats and scarves stashed alongside the gear.

  No weapons, unfortunately. The Brotherhood fighters knew better than to put those down.

  What would he even do with a weapon if he had one? The rifles and handguns these fighters carried had been outlawed decades ago, confiscated from the general population along with the ammunition they needed. That the revolutionaries and dissidents among the population would keep their weapons did not surprise Oliver. He was only shocked that so many had gone without discovery and confiscation in the intervening years between when the law was passed and today.

  Regardless, he had no clue how to fire such a weapon. It was more than just pulling the trigger, but the exact mechanics of it were a mystery to him.