by Lizzy Ford
Mercenary
Mercenary
Midpoint
Mercenary
Episode Two
Theta Beginnings Miniseries
*
By Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
*
Cover design by Eden Crane Design
*
Smashwords Edition
Published by Captured Press
www.CapturedPress.com
*
Silent Queen copyright ©2016 by Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
*
Cover design copyright © 2016 by Eden Crane Design
All rights reserved.
*
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
*
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Mercenary
I watched the world burn with glee. Fresh off a paid mission overseas, I had spent several years building up a reputation and career as a personal bodyguard for drug dealers, heads of criminal organizations, mob bosses and anyone else who paid upfront, asked no questions and didn’t care how many bodies piled up. They were the only kinds of jobs I could find after my two year murder trial ended five years ago. I was acquitted – compliments of the politician who hired me to make the hit landing me on trial – but I was also blacklisted from any sort of legitimate employment anywhere, thanks to a Supreme Magistrate determined to punish my former employer and anyone who worked for him.
So when I saw the words, Supreme Magistrate feared dead, scroll across the screen for the fourth time, I laughed. I continued to grin as the news stations in Washington DC, where I lived, scrambled for coverage of what was happening around the world. Whenever they managed to grab a live feed from another city, it ended up flat lining once the other station was struck by the gods’ fury.
“The gods show their true colors at last,” I said, smiling. Earlier in the evening, the gods had begun to attack humanity, everywhere but within the DC area and Maryland, an area reportedly protected by Zeus. The newscasters weren’t able to identify how far this safe zone extended, but they claimed Zeus’ priests had contacted them directly and assured them that DC would be spared whatever wrath the gods were displaying across the rest of the planet.
My eyes glued to the television screen, I loaded magazines into the weapons I spent the past hour cleaning and piled my favorite knives on one side of the coffee table for a quick inspection before I left my apartment.
The world had descended into absolute madness. I couldn’t conform to a society where my natural violent tendencies were condemned but this … this was chaos. This was me. An environment where only the merciless survived? I was born for this! The fatigue I experienced from nine months overseas disappeared when I began to consider all the possibilities.
My cell rang, and I grabbed it.
“Yeah,” I said gruffly into the phone.
“Good evening, Niko.” The polished voice was quiet.
Wariness crept into my excitement. “What do you want?”
“Are you watching the news?”
“Who isn’t?”
“Then you should know what I want.”
I had been hoping this particular man had been killed by the gods. I squeezed the hilt of a knife hard enough for my knuckles to turn white. Setting it down, I leaned back and allowed the sofa cushions to support my weight. “Humor me,” I said.
Cleon, the wealthy politician I allied with seven years ago, called when he needed my particular skills. We had a deal of sorts, one I wasn’t able to buck, when he alone knew what to hold over my head to make me comply with his demands. The good: he called infrequently, and it had been eighteen months since we last spoke. The bad: the jobs he hired me for were rougher than any of my other gigs. All the scars I had earned since we met were from jobs I did for him.
“I thought you would be pleased to know the Supreme Magistrate won’t be crushing either of us beneath his heel anymore,” Cleon said.
“You never call to discuss the news.”
“Very well, Niko. I try to make our exchanges pleasant as my way of showing you I appreciate what you do.”
I rolled my eyes. It had taken me some time to figure Cleon out. I was constantly surrounded by men whose reputations for violence were a source of pride. I had developed a sixth sense when it came to people and surviving strangers. Like me, Cleon was a different animal. Brilliant, driven, and obsessive, he was also capable of generosity and kindness. He fit the description of a psychopath – except he valued the relationships he shared with a select few too much to be incapable of empathy.
He was complicated, and for some reason, he genuinely liked me, which was how I got away with what I often did when dealing with him.
“I don’t need your shit,” I replied. “Tell me what you want. I’ve got some looting to do.”
“For such a talented man, you have such low ambitions.”
“Bye, Cleon.” I hung up but didn’t put the phone on the coffee table.
In his circles, he was supposed to be diplomatic, indirect and politically correct, to the point no one was supposed to know what his true positions on anything were. I usually had to remind him once or twice not to play those games with me. I already knew what he was. Likewise, he understood the depths of me.
The phone rang again.
“Yeah,” I said, answering it.
“This again.” A flicker of annoyance was in Cleon’s tone.
“We’re past the foreplay stage, Cleon.”
He released a slow sigh. “Half my personal security detail was in Florida in training this weekend. An opportunity presented itself I must take advantage of, and what remains of my personal detail is not likely to last until dawn. The city is a warzone. I’m not even certain who is attacking my convoy.”
It was then I heard the sound of a gun report, followed by several answering shots and the accompanying shouting of men.
“If you are in the city and available, I would appreciate your support,” Cleon said, ignoring the sounds.
I started to laugh. “You’re in the middle of it, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I am,” the unflappable politician confirmed. “I may be in the need of an expedient extraction. Can you bring your team?”
“They’re stuck overseas. But I’m here.”
“It might take more than you this time.”
“Text me your location. I’ll see you in thirty.” I hung up and tucked my phone in my pocket before strapping on my most lightweight protective vest. It was followed by various sheaths, ammo storage pouches, and weapons carriers. I had mastered the combination of mobility and firepower after several missions overseas in hostile, third world countries. I paid an exorbitant amount of money for the bulletproof vest that weighed a mere two pounds and was an eighth of an inch thick. Everything else was custom made for my body, fitted in a way to ensure I could reload a handgun in seconds and also kick someone in the head as needed.
When I was ready, I checked the location Cleon had provided and then began calculating how to reach him fast. I wouldn’t drive a car in this insanity if my life depended on it, but a motorcycle would be agile enough to maneuver through the chaos and carry me across the western part of the city towa
rds his location, somewhere around Silver Spring, just inside the Beltway, at the border of Maryland and DC.
Leaving my apartment, I trotted down the stairs to the garage under the building and unchained my ride from the post I parked it next to. I walked it up the ramp leading to the street and paused. In the distance, first responder sirens screamed while the monotone blare of the foul weather warning system echoed off the cement buildings in my neighborhood. Otherwise, it was eerily still. No one on my street was out, though the lights in every building were on.
I slung my leg over the seat of my ride and didn’t bother with a helmet. The police had better things to do than enforce the helmet law tonight.
My bike roared to life, and I took off. The side streets were quiet, vacant, and I began to wonder where Cleon’s war zone was. It wasn’t until I cut through downtown DC that I began to see the looters struggling to carry stolen goods down the streets. The police cordoned off the memorials and governmental buildings but hadn’t yet barricaded the shopping and business districts – or the banks, which was where I would have been headed if Cleon hadn’t called.
I skirted police barricades and walked my bike through crowds of people on the verge of killing each other to get to the money in banks and ATMs. DC was a political city where someone was always protesting something. I passed two large rallies, one whose speakers were condemning the gods and another whose leaders urged the world to have faith during the end of days.
On several blocks, the police and people were clashing, and the acrid scent of tear gas was strong enough for my eyes to water a hundred yards away. I tore down side streets when the main routes became too violent or crowded, stair stepping my way north. The closer I got to Silver Spring, the more I began to see the war zone Cleon had described. It began with a woman sobbing over the lifeless body of a man in the middle of the street.
I followed the trail of bodies riddled with bullet wounds until I heard the active sounds of gunfire ahead.
Rather than plough into it, I hid my bike among the bushes of a small park and darted into the nearest apartment building, taking the stairs two at a time as I went to the roof. When I reached the top, I trotted to the nearest corner to scout what obstacles were in my path.
It looked like a tsunami was poised at the northwestern side of the city. Instead of water, the wave about to hit the city was made up of people and vehicles. They jammed the roads, neighborhoods, and every inch of space between them in order to seek refuge inside of Zeus’ protected city. The military had set up barricades and armored vehicles, the police riot gear, and they were both struggling either to slow or stop the surge of refugees pouring into a city already on the brink of collapse.
In addition, flashes of light from the muzzles of weapons and the report of rifles, as well as the occasional boom from a bigger gun - possibly from one of the armored vehicles - originated from a point just north of where Cleon claimed to be. Floodlights blazed along the edges of DC. The Beltway, and every other road leading into the city, was a parking lot.
To the north, in Maryland, the skies were clear as far as I could see, but to the west, over Virginia, from the direction the people came, fire rained down from the heavens to burn everything it touched to the ground. Everything within the Beltway was safe. I judged the firestorms in Virginia to be maybe thirty miles away, outside the Metro DC area.
Adrenaline surged through me, and I stood, mesmerized and grinning, as I watched the world outside of the DC area end. How Cleon could find any opportunity in this disaster, I had no idea. But the man was smart enough to capitalize on any chance he found to better his position, especially now that his primary complication – the Supreme Magistrate – was dead. Something here had caught his attention for him to travel from the relative safety of his home in northern Maryland to the city.
My phone rang, and I answered it. I was about to snap at him and tell him I was almost there when a scared, young voice spoke first.
“Mommy won’t wake up.”
The words, or perhaps the voice, yanked me out of my near-giddy state. Turning away from the chaos, I fought the sudden tension of my body. My chest tightened, and my free hand clenched in a fist. My primal side had already figured out what took me a full ten seconds to register.
“Sh…she said … if I got in trouble to call … this number,” the child on the other end of the call was starting to cry.
“Tommy?” I whispered.
“Y…yes. Can you … help us?”
Everything.
Just.
Stopped.
The voice belonged to my son, a six year old boy I had never met or spoken to before this night, a child I had willingly given up so he wouldn’t be infected by the sickness that ran in my family full of lunatics.
I stood, frozen, barely able to breathe, as I began to understand the larger picture of what the apocalypse meant for me. Cleon would have known this at once, but I usually only saw what was in front of me. New York, the first city hit by the gods, was where my ex and my son lived. I should have realized their danger the second I heard the city had gone up in flames.
“Where are you?” I asked after a long silence, where I was trying to figure out how the hell I was going to make it up the eastern seaboard to New York without being fried by the gods.
“I don’t know.” Tommy started crying harder.
“Hold one. Don’t hang up,” I told him.
I lowered the phone from my ear and swiped through the screens until I came to a phone locator app. I had no shame; I wasn’t embarrassed to admit I put a hidden tracking application on the phone of my ex, Theodocia, when I sent it to her. My merc jobs did more than fund my weapons and armor purchases; they also provided a financial cushion for my son in the form of a trust my ex had access to. As a High Priestess, she was supposed to give up luxuries and live on a small stipend that wouldn’t buy her a daily coffee in New York. In addition to the trust, I sent her money monthly so she could take care of our son, and once a year, a new phone, because I knew she would never buy one for herself.
“You still there?” I called to Tommy.
“Y… yes.”
I waited for the app to show me where Tommy was. To my surprise, he was less than a mile from Cleon.
“You’re in DC?” I asked, puzzled. I pressed the phone to my ear and strode across the rooftop towards the stairs.
“I don’t know.” Tommy’s next sentence was so garbled from tears, I had no idea what he said.
“Tommy,” I interrupted. “I need you to take a deep breath and calm down. I can’t help you if you can’t talk to me. Do you understand?”
I heard him panting in response as he tried to obey.
“Are you in DC?” I asked again.
“We were going to DC and our helicopter crashed,” he replied.
“Who’s with you?”
“Mommy.” His voice grew tight again. “Phoibe.”
The name meant nothing to me. “Are you hurt?” I asked.
“No.”
I was imagining Tommy the only survivor in some sort of horrific accident. “Are you safe? Are there people around you or anyone with a gun?”
“No. We’re … underground.”
I leapt down the last three steps and slammed the door to the apartment building open before trotting across the street. “I don’t understand. I thought you crashed,” I said.
“We did. We went through the ground.”
I couldn’t imagine what that meant, but I had his location. “Listen carefully. I want you to sit down by your mother and wait for me. Okay?”
“Are you coming?”
“I am. Right now.”
“Okay.”
“If anyone comes and they have a gun or scare you, you hide. Got it?”
“Y…yes.”
“See you in a few, kid.” I hung up, wired, and sent a quick text to Cleon telling him where to meet me.
This time, when I took off, I was filled with a sick sense of urgency, one
that left my stomach churning and robbed me of all my former exhilaration about the chaos ahead of me.
I hadn’t wanted a kid. Theodocia and I broke up when she refused to have an abortion and took a job in New York. She abandoned me, chose a kid over a life with me. I’d never forgiven her for it and never would, more so because she knew why I refused to have children. Mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, propensity toward violence … all of these ran in my family. Ran in me. My kid had no chance, unless a High Priestess and the best person I had ever met in my life could save him like she almost did me. I wanted it to be true that her goodness would be able to drive out the half of Tommy that came from me, but I wasn’t hopeful. The men in my family were drawn to violence and died young.
Reminding myself this could have been anyone’s kid, I wasn’t able to rebuff the sick sinking of my stomach or why this – he – mattered when I had never met him before, and I didn’t want him in the first place.
I rode until I reached a barricaded area swarming with refugees, the military, SISA – religious police – and the regular city police. If anyone were in charge, I couldn’t identify who. I maneuvered away from this mess only to wind up in a second one, this one a full fledged battle between two well-armed factions: one hidden in buildings and the second a combination of SISA and military. The SISA-military alliance was brittle without the chaos around us. I doubted they’d be on the same page for long, and their turf war was likely to turn nasty once it did turn, more so since their commanders in chief were killed in New York.
I went around this battle, or tried to. The fight between the unseen forces and the city’s protectors extended north, towards the Beltway. It ran for a mile. When it became clear I’d have to enter the fray to reach Tommy, I pulled off the quiet road I was on, parked my bike and straightened my weapons. Any restraint I would have considered in not killing government officials vanished at the thought of Tommy being stuck in the crossfire. SISA, military, or other – anyone who crossed my path was going to be dealt with the same quick way.
Cleon had texted to say he was close – and my destination was where he intended to go in the first place. I didn’t care what he was up to or even if he made it to my location.
