The Revolution needed to fight the gangs, even if they were on the Council’s payroll. No one wanted the rising crime rates, not even the Council. Everyone wanted them to go down. It was good politics; it was good business. Just made sense. That way, a day would come when the Council would be forced to support the Revolution just to keep public opinion on their side.
Paul Ward had always thought himself a persuasive guy. Good people skills. In a profession not always brimming over with charismatic types, Ward had risen fast in academia due not only to his brilliant work as a surgeon and medical chemist, but also to his gift of gab. People liked Paul Ward.
If only he could meet him, talk to him. Revolution would see the light.
Couldn’t tell it from his appearance, but Paul Ward was a wealthy man. Not that he looked like a hobo; he just didn't flaunt his wealth. Never had. His only real example of conspicuous consumption was his insistence on living in the top five stories of his high-rise apartment building. Ward rented the other twenty floors out to middle-class tenants. He was a man on a mission. He’d quit being a professor. He’d needed to change the direction and purpose of his life. At first he had tried to live off the family trust fund. Not having to worry about money meant he could devote all his time to the causes most important to him.
Then, as he saw his bank accounts shrinking, he went through a phase where he just tried to live off the interest of the trust fund. In those early days, he'd actually believed that was a realistic plan. But then he wasn't that wealthy. And then he had decided to build a suit, to take the road less traveled, shall we say. Then he knew. He had to make a living somehow. So he became a landlord.
Ward returned to his chair and plopped back down. Took a swig of his beer. He stared at the video screen for a moment. Thought about watching the clip again.
He glanced over at a side table next to him. Lying there was large, well-worn manila envelope labeled “The Source.” It was stuffed with smaller white envelopes, business sized. He reached over and grabbed an unopened white envelope. Ward sighed, took a deep breath, and took another quick sip of his beer. He plopped the sweating bottle down and ripped open the envelope, unfolding a single sheet of paper.
Why had he been too nervous to read this note at the drop spot? Why wait until now? He chuckled. What’s up with all this paranoia? Maybe because the whole involvement of The Source in his life was a mystery. How had The Source tracked him down? No one even knew about his “missions.” He’d kept a low profile. Yet The Source had found him early on. It was an unsettling enigma.
The Source was his secret partner. Secret even to Ward. Some time back The Source had found him. Left him an anonymous note at his unofficial hangout on a tall church steeple well where he could watch the city at night for signs of trouble. At first he had been distrustful of The Source. But as he proceeded to cautiously check out the information he was given, he came to realize that whoever The Source was, and whatever the reason he was forwarding this information to Ward, The Source was always right. The Source could be trusted. So, every week, Ward scurried off to the drop spot to find a new letter and a new target.
Every instinct told him not to trust an unseen, unknown partner with a hidden agenda. And he'd been insisting lately that The Source tell him his identity. And so far, The Source had refused to do so. All his attempts to stake out their agreed-upon drop spot, just to catch a glimpse of the mystery man, had failed. Whoever this Source was, he was very good, and yet that begged a further question. Why did The Source seem to need Ward?
Still, The Source had never failed him. Even saved his life, probably more than once. He had a partner, like it or not. And despite some misgivings, it was mostly a thing to like.
When he’d first gone out on these secret missions for The Source, he'd insisted on only serving as reconnaissance for the authorities. Zip out to locations, ascertain that criminal activity was taking place, and then call it in from a heavily encrypted digital line.
The real thrill was the flying, of course.
Ward glanced over at his orange wings and smiled.
By assisting the authorities, instead of supplanting them like the Revolution, a great deal of trust had grown between himself and Boston's finest. The fact he had yet to seek publicity was also working in his favor.
That was good for a while. But now he had set his sights on larger targets. Targets that made his blood boil, his throat tighten, his eyes moisten. As nice a man as Paul Ward was, as committed to nonviolence as he was, there existed one enemy, one target, one man that could very easily force him to violate all those cherished vows he had made. The man who had murdered his son and driven his wife to take her own life. The man who had crushed his world. His pulse quickened just thinking about him.
He'd thought for years of ways to get at this target. But surgeons don't know much about taking down organized crime. He'd talked to his congressman, the local authorities, even met with the governor in his office. All to no avail. Most of those folks were on the take anyway.
And then the Revolution had come along.
He had burst open the door to a new possibility. A handful of imitators had risen up in various cities across the country. But none was as famous, or infamous, as the Revolution. Most were just glorified Neighborhood Watch, truth be told. Which is what Ward had been until a few months ago. Ward wasn't interested in the fame either; he just wanted to make a difference. He just wanted to honor the memory of his late wife, who had cared about cleaning up the streets so deeply—sometimes it made it hard for Ward to breathe when he thought about her.
He had the money and the mind to build his suit. He could take up some of the slack that law enforcement had left behind. That was already happening in a few other cities. The Revolution had spawned a lot of imitators, to be sure. But while some were effective, most of them—hell, the vast majority of them—were not. The Hero Movement did seem to be building, though. And they all, every last one of them, took on the gangs—not the Council. That was the kind of strategy that the Revolution didn't seem to understand. He was the only guy out there challenging the Council. That's why he needed Ward's help.
To see the folly in all that.
Ward peered down at the note. “Okay, partner, give me some good news.”
The note was short and concise, as usual. A puzzle of sorts. He sighed. “Great. Another riddle!”
Can't give you my identity.
Not yet.
Visit First National in the Gardens.
If your algorithm is correct...
Ward rolled his eyes and felt slightly insulted. Of course it's correct. I am a Harvard professor, for Christ's sakes. Or was, anyway.
...we've broken their code.
The code. He knew he’d broken it. He just needed The Source to confirm it. The code was surely a set of coordinates. The code had been a personal obsession of his for the past six months. The code was from his most hated enemy.
What was still unknown, but he figured The Source could find out, was what those coordinates pointed to. They were not simply latitude-longitude, but they were definitely geocentric. Based on the kinds of information The Source had provided in the past, he guessed The Source was someone with military, government, or academic background. There was no other way to get the kind of technical and inside information The Source routinely leaked to him. So he was also guessing The Source could put those coordinates into the right database to find a match. Naturally, he'd been right. The code pointed to a bank. The site of his enemy’s next heist.
The note concluded:
A Fiddler will play a tune there.
Could be a Revolution.
Bring your wings.
—The Source
Ward laughed, stuffed the note back into the white envelope, and slipped it inside the manila folder with the others. Across the room, a dark suit with the orange wings hung prominently on the wall. He admired it. It was his great creation, simply hanging on a hook.
“Wings. That I c
an do.”
CHAPTER 4
The roof of the Ward Apartments building glimmered in late afternoon sunlight. It danced off the nearby rooftops. The tarnished silver-grey of once proud Boston’s dilapidated spires lanced into the amber sky. And there, in the glare, Paul Ward was clad in the tight, blue bodysuit of hard plastic material. So dark it looked black. The same color as his old Toyota Celica he'd fixed up a few years back. They called the color “midnight blue” if he remembered correctly. For some reason the color just seemed right.
On his back, a finished set of the orange wings sat folded flat against him. He slipped a matching helmet over his head, locked it down onto his shoulders. He twisted his head from side to side, testing its flexibility. His eyes were covered by a protective orange lens, mouth exposed. Stupid.
He looked ridiculous. But the truth was, and he'd known this for months already, he was completely addicted to all of it.
The wings mechanically unfurled. They hummed. A quiet drone of raw power. Ward only had to think about it and their tiny but powerful engines ignited. Like most wealthy people, Ward had a neural transmitter in his head that could control virtually any device he chose, hands free—just by thinking about it. If your family had enough money, you could get a transmitter just slipped in under the skin at the base of the skull and off you went. Outpatient surgery. And while the Council could use them to track you through GPS, a simple procedure could disable that function. Ward had had it done years ago. Computers, phones, televisions, nearly anything could be controlled by thought alone—even the wings.
Long vertical lines that ran down their length gave them a slight “accordion” look. They were an ingenious cross between insect wings and a miniature jet.
He took in a deep breath. A single step and—WHOOSH!—he blasted off the roof.
The exhaust from the jets was nearly invisible. It rippled the air around him. The wings were powered by a nonexplosive chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen. As long as the circulating hydrogen supply didn't leak, oxygen in the atmosphere was enough to power the engines. Oxygen was the input and oxygen was the output. In other words, the jets could power him indefinitely. Before the Council, he could have sold the technology and made a fortune. But the Council made that impossible.
One of their first priorities had been to transfer nearly every major existing patent to one of their subsidiary companies. Their patents covered concepts, ideas, and even theories, not just actual inventions. Whole divisions of their companies were focused on patenting every conceivable type of technology, whether it existed or not, meaning that as soon as someone invented something, the Council could swoop in and claim it for their own—including all kinds of air-combustion engines. They owned the very idea of air-combustion engines. If you tried to defy them, they’d sue your ass off and you’d go broke anyway. It was easier just not to try.
Bastards.
So the fortune he was going to make off the wings would just have to wait.
For now, though...
He was a bullet in the wind. He zipped above the distressed urban landscape. Rooftops rolled by beneath. Tar, steel, concrete. The wind in his face, unfettered and free. The world blurred as the jets increased their burst. He was riding a rollercoaster as he arched over the curvature of a domed roof. G-forces pulled at his face, and he lowered his head so that the helmet took the brunt of the blast. He smiled. He could never get enough of this.
Without even thinking, he let out a whoop that echoed across the concrete canyon below. Pedestrians looked up, searching for the sound, but by the time their eyes met the sky he had zoomed over the rooftops—and was gone. The pure exhilaration of flying as fast as the body could withstand was just about as cool as anything he had ever done, or could think of doing. It sure beat the hell out of hang gliding, formerly his favorite hobby.
It was every little boy's fantasy come true.
But tonight was different. Ward had developed a secret weapon that could help him fight crime without using violence. He glanced down at the small cuff-turrets around his wrists. The secret they contained completed his transformation into the hero he desired to be.
The time was right...
But if that was the road he was going to travel, he knew it meant he'd be exposed to the world. He was not sure that was a step he was really ready to take. Up to now, he'd barely been noticed. There'd been very little mention of him in any respectable media, despite now having taken down several of The Source's targets himself. With The Source’s help, he was actually making a dent in the local crime scene.
And he loved every second of it.
But he had to face it. At some point, he was going to have to think of a name, or just announce to the world that he, Paul Ward, once a respectable surgeon, innovative chemist, and Harvard professor, was the idiot flying around like an overgrown pigeon. Pigeon Man: shitting on criminals since...
“Oh shit!” he veered wildly, narrowly missing a small water tower.
He had to focus on what he was doing. These flights were getting to seem nearly routine, but they were still dangerous as hell. Man was not meant to be hurdled through space at one hundred plus miles an hour without a titanium shell around him. Or at least some steel.
Sometimes he imagined himself as a giant paintball hurtling through space... Okay, better get that image out of his head. Besides, he'd spent a long time on his flight suit. It was actually flexible armor. Mostly bulletproof, but certainly not crash proof.
Sometimes he called it his bug suit, because that's what it looked like. Not intentionally, but as he put it together, every time he changed the design to look better or be more functional, or both—it looked more and more like a bug. He kind of thought he looked like some kind of moth. Moth Man was already taken, though. Didn't like it much anyway.
Ward arced upward toward the gold-tinted clouds above. He brought his arms in tight to his sides and rose like a missile into the sky. He did not like to fly too high in case something went wrong—and to avoid small aircraft. But on nights that he had trouble focusing, he found it safer. Less chance of being spotted, too.
He leveled out, bringing his body horizontal once more. He thought again of his enemy. An enemy he swore to himself, in the golden blaze of the setting sun before him, he would take down or die trying. Beneath him lay his beloved Boston. An adopted home, but one he had come to call home just the same. Was he ready to show himself to the world? Ready or not, his adopted home was calling.
Tonight he hoped to make that home a little safer. Everything he had done up to now was preparation. And it was going to be a long night...
CHAPTER 5
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
NIGHT
The engines on the Apache whined from the descent. A steep, diving descent. The black of the starry heavens spread out around the helicopter. Its lateral jet engines fired it across the sky in a burst of power. Its angular design was more aerodynamic, more menacing, than models of Apaches that had come before it. Inside, a single pilot maneuvered the craft into a line of other identical choppers. Their V formation glided to life perfectly.
A dozen choppers dove toward a large unruly mob in the middle of a city square.
This Boston, this world, was run-down. The once proud buildings were cracked and dilapidated. Shadows of their past glory. The Depression had taken its toll. Left behind in its wake were the scars. Some of them were bizarre. Mobile media and Internet were everywhere, yet basic sanitation, heating, or unspoiled food could be scarce. State Street, where the large crowd had gathered, had once been the heart of Boston's bustling financial district and a historical marker. Now it crumbled like the rest of the city.
Like the financial centers of most cities in the US, State Street went through a period of change. Growing inequality fueled this change. It all started in the twentieth century and had not stopped. Inner cities grew, and grew less safe. The financial districts of most cities lived near the inner city. Crime here became intolerable to the wea
lthy who had to travel in and out of them.
So, in Boston, as in the other major cities, they walled off the financial district. State Street had been a major thoroughfare through the city. But about twenty-five years ago, it was made into State Street Square. Like a cul-de-sac neighborhood. “If you don’t have business in State Street, you have no business being there,” went the saying.
And then the insurgency happened. And it happened in Boston. Boston became ground zero for insurgent activity, and State Street became ground zero for protests, just like the one tonight. So, for the past ten years, the financial district had been moving. Most of it was miles away now. But enough of it remained on State Street to make this protest meaningful. Most importantly, the local office of the Freedom Council itself stood just below the mass of protestors gathered on this night to “celebrate” its birthday.
An ocean of flags and protest banners spread across the square. Signs in the crowd displayed statements like: “END SHAM DEMOCRACY!” or “FREE US FROM THE FREEDOM COUNCIL!” Several featured stylized images of the Revolution. In the center of the square a podium had been set up for speakers. The crowd began to quiet in anticipation as a tall man with bright-red hair approached the microphone. His last name was Roosevelt, and he counted two American presidents in his familial lineage. He had a round face, though he was not an overly heavy man. His chin was long, but his cheeks puffed out, making it seem short. His eyes were large, round, and captivating. The appeal of his otherwise unremarkable face was in his eyes. He was someone you wanted to follow. The crowd fell nearly silent as he started to speak.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution Page 3
