Battle Cry (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 4)

by Kyle Andrews

  “What?” the Governor snapped into the phone. “We're busy here. We need air support.”

  There was silence. The elevator doors closed and one of the other men pressed the button that would take them to the roof. The elevator began to move slowly.

  The Governor put a hand to his head and closed his eyes, nodding along with what he was being told. Finally, he said, “How far does it reach? Then it's a loss. But it ends here.”

  A moment or two of silence. The Governor took a deep breath and pulled himself together. Inside the relative safety of the elevator he became a figure of authority—cool and calm.

  The Governor shook his head and said, “Then we don't have any other options, do we? We need to show these people and everyone like them what happens when you act against us. Arm the drones. As soon as we're out of here, use them. Use everything we have. That building, this building, the streets, the people... Turn this city to dust, for all I care.”

  43

  Rose was laughing at the situation that she and Justin now found themselves in, but it wasn't really funny. She was looking at someone that she had known for years, but there was something different about him.

  As she looked at Justin, happy to see her old friend, his eyes went to the ground. He didn't rush toward her and wrap his arms around her. He didn't smile. If anything, he seemed uncomfortable to be in her presence.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  “I'm fine,” he replied, walking toward Sim.

  When he reached Sim, Justin bent down and felt for a pulse. Rose stepped toward the door that Justin had come out of and said, “Don't worry. I knocked him out, but I didn't kill him. That's Libby's boyfriend, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A highly trained HAND officer, no less. A big, imposing servant of the authorities with no injuries to speak of, facing off against little old me, and I took him down with one arm in a cast.”

  Rose was smiling, trying to lighten the mood between them as she went to check on the little girl in the hospital room. As she looked inside, she saw three HAND officers lying dead on the floor.

  Looking back at Justin, Rose shrugged and said, “And you took down three of them. I guess you win this round.”

  “It's not a game,” Justin replied.

  “I know that. I'm just... Is something wrong? You seem different”

  Justin was walking back to the hospital room. His eyes once again turned to the ground as Rose made that comment to him. She stepped in front of him before he could walk into the room, forcing him to stop and talk to her.

  Still not looking at Rose, Justin quietly said, “I am different.”

  “You're still you.”

  Now his eyes met hers. In them, Rose saw a question, as though he weren't quite sure that he was still the same person that she knew. The look in his eye worried her.

  Justin pushed past Rose and walked into the room. She followed him to the bed and watched as he started to look over the little girl. He was looking for injuries, but didn't find any.

  “She's sedated, but I think she'll be fine. You need to get her out of here.”

  “You can come with me.”

  “You know I can't.”

  “The mission is over. This is it. This is what we've been waiting for.”

  “As long as one of them is out there, I can't afford to go home.”

  “You don't look good.”

  “I'm fine,” he said. He pulled the blankets off of Mandi and studied the girl's sleeping face as he said, “You shouldn't use the same stairwell that you came up in. There's too much gunfire. I saw another stairway. Just go back the way you came and turn right when the hallways come together. Walk until you see it. I didn't hear anything back there.”

  Then he looked up at Rose and paused. She could tell that he wanted to ask her something, but he wasn't sure that he should.

  Finally, with a quiet voice that held a hint of the man that she once knew, he asked, “Did he suffer? When the time came, did he suffer?”

  For just a moment, it looked as though a tear might be forming in Justin's eye. It took Rose a few seconds to realize who he was asking about. When she finally figured it out, she was almost relieved. This really was the old Justin. He was still in there, somewhere.

  She shook her head and said, “He got slow. Went for less walks. Finally, one day, he just went to sleep.”

  She left out the part about Ammo sitting by the door, waiting for his master to come home. It would do Justin no good to know that.

  Justin nodded and said, “Good. Thank you. Thank you for taking care of him when I couldn't.”

  “He took care of me.”

  Justin smiled, just barely and said, “Yeah.”

  There was a cough outside the door. Sim was starting to wake up. As soon as he heard this, Justin's expression hardened once again and he told Rose, “I need to find Marti, and I need his help for that. You have to make this look real.”

  He put his gun down on the table next to Mandi's bed and walked to where two of the dead HAND officers were lying. He reached down and grabbed their batons, one in each hand. He extended both batons and stood, watching Rose and waiting for her to come at him.

  “Do it,” he whispered. “Now.”

  Rose walked into a better position, swallowed hard and said, “You come back to us.”

  He didn't reply.

  Rose would have loved to argue with him and demand that he leave with her, but Justin had devoted his life to this mission and he wasn't going to walk away from it until it was good and finished. Arguing with him would have been a waste of time. Her only option was to fight him.

  44

  He had known her for years. They were friends. They were allies. They had eaten meals together and joked with each other. She had saved his life. Yet, when Justin looked at Rose... No, it wasn't her that seemed like a stranger to him. It was himself. When he spoke to her, he didn't know how to be Justin.

  With Marti and even Sim, things were easier. Sim didn't even know what Justin really was, but Justin could smile and joke with him. It wasn't because he was more at ease with Sim. He could never put his guard down with him. Maybe it was just that Justin knew which act to put on when he was around Sim. When it came to Rose, Justin didn't have a character to play.

  Fighting her felt more natural somehow, and yet it felt wrong. Part of him wanted to fight on her side, and another part of him wanted to arrest her. He had a hard time figuring out which part was real.

  She delivered a punch to the side of his face, and that felt real enough. She winced as she did it, and started to pull back, but Justin straightened up and gestured for her to come at him again.

  Rose hesitated.

  Justin didn't have time for this. He went at her, bringing a baton down at her head, which Rose blocked with her cast. He used the other baton to sweep her legs out from under her, and she crashed to the ground.

  Justin took a step back, allowing her to get up. Once again, he gestured at her to come at him. Again, she hesitated.

  He swung a baton toward her face, never intending to hit her. All he needed was for her to react, and for her to allow her training to kick in. As that baton moved toward her, Rose ducked out of the way. She came back with a kick to his stomach.

  Justin stumbled back, more than he probably would have if this were a real fight. He stumbled through the doorway and fell to the ground in the hallway.

  As he hit the ground, Justin glanced toward Sim. Sim wasn't yet awake, but he was beginning to stir. Rose needed to get the girl out of there before Sim woke up, or else they would have no choice but to kill Sim.

  He asked himself if he should have been trying so hard to save Sim. If he were truly Freedom and Sim were truly HAND, they were enemies. There shouldn't have been any second thought or hesitation, but for some reason, Justin couldn't allow things to reach a point where that decision needed to be made.

  Justin started to pull himself up off of the floor, but dropped
again. Pain was shooting through every limb of his body. Every movement was met by what felt like lightning striking him squarely in the chest, but he kept moving and kept daring his body to do its worst to him.

  Rose stepped over him, carrying Mandi Hollinger in her arms. The sight alone took a weight off of Justin's chest that had been there since the stadium, without his even realizing it. Mandi was now with the one person in the entire world who Justin could be sure would keep her safe. At least one part of his job was now over.

  As Rose started to move away from Justin, Sim's eyes opened and fixed on her. He started to move, but his movements were sloppy and weak.

  Justin pushed himself off of the ground, allowing the batons in his hands to make noise against the floor. Once on his feet, he raised the batons, groaning as pain shot through him. He only allowed it because he needed Rose to hear him.

  Then he charged toward her. Rose turned and saw him. Fortunately, she was smart enough to not ask why he was looking for more pain. She turned, to keep the girl out of harm's way, and drove her elbow into his chest. As he was struck, Justin fell back, on top of Sim.

  Rose took off down the hall, running as quickly as she could while holding onto Mandi.

  “No,” Sim said, still groggy. He slapped Justin on the arm and said, “Get up. We have to stop her.”

  Justin pulled himself off of Sim slowly, allowing Rose enough time to get away without having to worry about Sim shooting her.

  Once he was off of Sim, Justin turned, wincing with pain and said, “I couldn't stop them.”

  “Them?”

  “There were at least six before you got here. They killed the others.”

  “We have to stop them,” Sim said again, getting to his feet. He still seemed unstable once he was standing, but held a hand out for Justin to take.

  With Sim's help, Justin got up and shook his head. He said, “Forget the girl. They're already making their way upstairs.”

  “What's upstairs?”

  “VIPs. The Governor... Marti's up there.”

  Sim looked down the hallway, in the direction that Rose had run. The smoke that was building up in the hallway was keeping him from seeing Rose, but he was looking in that direction as though he were trying to figure out the best way to cut her off and kill her.

  Then, Sim turned toward Justin and asked, “The Governor, you say? That should probably be our priority.”

  It was hard to tell whether Sim was really concerned about the Governor or if he was more interested in helping Marti. Regardless of his motivation, Sim reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his HAND earpiece. He put it in. Putting a finger to his ear, Sim said, “Four-four-eight.”

  Sim waited for a response. When none came, he furrowed his brow and looked at Justin. He shook his head, letting Justin know that there was no reply.

  “Four-four-eight,” Sim said once again, and again there was no response.

  “Communications are down. Collin Powers said that they would be targeting the HAND building too,” Justin said.

  “You think they actually did it?”

  “There's no way for us to know. All we do know is that we can't get orders. That means that we're on our own. We should get to the fifth floor.”

  Sim nodded and started to move down the hallway, in the same direction that Rose had just gone. Justin followed, trying to slow Sim down, just in case Rose hadn't cleared the area.

  Once they had passed through the doorway that Sim and Rose had broken through, Justin saw the door to the hospital worker's office that he had passed on the way in.

  “Hold on a sec,” he said to Sim, heading for that office.

  Justin entered the office slowly, looking to both sides to make sure that there was nobody in the office who planned to attack him. Fortunately, there wasn't. The only person he saw was the same woman in a lab coat that he had seen earlier.

  She looked scared of him. That was good. Sim walked into the room behind Justin, and she looked even more scared of Sim—most likely because of the uniform.

  “We need to get to the fifth floor. The stairs are blocked by terrorists. Which way would be the fastest?” Justin asked her.

  The woman was shaking. She looked toward the door as though she expected to see bad guys rushing into the room at any moment, opening fire and killing everyone in sight.

  “Ma'am , I need you to focus,” Justin demanded. “We need to get to the VIP level. Now.”

  The woman still didn't answer. She was most likely in shock.

  Sim walked to the woman's desk and said, “Listen to me very carefully...” He pointed his gun at her head and continued, “You need to answer our question. How do we get upstairs quickly?”

  “Th—The elevator,” the woman answered, staring into the barrel of the gun.

  “Power's been cut,” Justin replied.

  “There is an elevator down the hall. Go straight, past the other hallways. It runs on the backup generator, in case of emergencies. You'll need a hospital badge to use it.”

  Justin pulled the woman's badge out of his pocket and walked out of the room. Sim followed closely.

  “You don't have a gun,” Sim said to Justin.

  Justin held up his two batons and replied, “I used to. It was taken. These will be fine.”

  They hurried down the hallway. As they passed the spot where all four hallways met, they could still hear the fight taking place near the main stairwell.

  Justin hadn't seen the battles being fought. He could picture the bodies strewn on the ground and the fires that were burning. He could hear the screams of men and women as they fell wounded. He could smell smoke and chemicals. He couldn't help but wonder how many people that he knew were lying dead on the ground. How much blood was pooling around those bodies. How many limbs had been lost. How much flesh had been burned. If the reality of that night were as gruesome as what he pictured in his head, he probably didn't want to see it.

  He tried to push those images out of his head as he continued to rush down the hallway. When he finally reached the elevator, he swiped the hospital badge and waited as the car slowly began to make its way toward him.

  Both Justin and Sim kept watch over the dark hallways as they waited for the elevator to arrive.

  At last, the elevator doors opened. Both men hurried inside and Justin pushed the button for the fifth floor. The doors closed. The elevator began to move. For just a moment, the sounds of violence faded, but they were soon replaced by the fresh sounds of a new battle.

  The elevator doors opened and the first thing that Justin saw of the fifth floor was the body of a nurse slumped against the wall across from the elevator.

  Smoke hung more heavily in the air on the fifth floor. Justin could see small fires down the hall, along with flashes of gunfire.

  He glanced back at the elevator just in time to see the stainless steel doors closing behind him. There was blood smeared across the doors. Looking back to the nurse on the ground, Justin saw her hands covered in her own blood. He pictured her pounding and clawing at the elevator doors, screaming for help that would never come.

  There was a crash from one of the nearby rooms that caught the attention of both Justin and Sim. Justin started to move toward it, but Sim put a hand on his shoulder and stepped in front of him. He held up his gun, highlighting the fact that the only weapons that Justin had with him were those two batons. Normally, that would be enough. However, Justin allowed Sim to take the lead as they slowly walked toward the room.

  Down the hall, Justin saw a flash of light. It was accompanied by a loud bang that shook the floor. Dust and debris mixed with the smoke and began to drift down the hallway toward Justin.

  Behind that cloud, he could see the shapes of people who stood in front of the emergency lights. Whatever he and Sim were going to do on this floor, he knew that he had to hurry.

  Walking into the room, Justin hoped to find Marti—preferably hunched over the bleeding corpse of the Governor. However, as he and Sim made t
heir way around the empty patient bed, they found a nurse curled up on the floor. She was an older woman, sitting next to a spilled tray of food and medication.

  The nurse was crying and keeping her eyes on the ground, but holding her hands up in the air as a sign of surrender.

  “Please! I'm just a nurse!” she begged.

  Sim relaxed his grip on the gun just a little bit, and took the aim slightly off of the nurse. He remained ready to shoot her, should the need arise, but he didn't seem to consider the nurse a threat.

  “We're HAND officers. I need you to tell me where the Governor is,” Sim told the woman, speaking slowly enough and clearly enough to be heard through her sobs.

  The woman looked up and saw Justin first. He wasn't in uniform, so she flinched as she saw him. Sim quickly stepped in front of Justin and stood before the woman, showing her his uniform and his shiny HAND badge.

  “You need to tell us where he is,” Sim pressed.

  The nurse looked into Sim's eyes, ignoring Justin entirely. She tried to calm herself and said, “He went to the roof. They're getting him out of here on a helicopter.”

  Sim's shoulders slumped. He seemed almost disappointed that they'd missed their chance to find the Governor, but he straightened up again and said, “We're also looking for a nurse that works in your ER. She would have come up here to check on a patient.”

  The nurse huffed and in a bewildered voice said, “She went the Governor and got herself out of here. She left the rest of us to die. She didn't even try to help us.”

  Sim nodded and said, “That sounds like our friend. So, she's on the roof then?”

  45

  The elevator doors opened and the Governor's team hurried out onto the helipad, which was on a platform, raised above the hospital's roof. The helicopter hadn't arrived yet, so once they were out of the elevator, they were forced to wait.

  As she stood there, wind pinning her hair to her face, Marti looked out across the city. There was nothing between her and the outside world now, and she could see it in all of its glory.