“Stay away!” Fiona said. “You hurt me!” Her voice trailed off in sobs. “You hurt me.”
“Okay, I won't touch you!” Leslie said, tears pooling in her eyes.
Fiona curled up like a child, tried to stay covered, rocking from the pain. Revolution wanted to cover her. He unlatched his cape and threw it to her. “Here!” The cape embraced her perfectly, but as it scraped across her skin, the teenager screamed in agony again. The glow from her pupils blasted a brilliant beam of light that launched from her mouth as well as she lifted her head and let loose a blood-freezing scream.
Then she collapsed. Out. Cold.
For a moment the two just stood there, staring at her. They said nothing. Members of the nighttime skeleton crew had gathered at a safe distance to watch. No one spoke. Finally, Revolution sighed. “I had no choice.”
Fiona Fletcher awoke in the vacuum of space. A million stars twinkled at her in the vastness. Once again she was naked. She blushed and then realized...
She was alone. Utterly alone.
Yet somehow she felt that was okay. It was like she had just been born. Everything new. Innocent. Beautiful. The very universe itself stretched out around her. She was one with it. Connected. She tried hard to remember how she had gotten here. Only flashes filled her mind. She had travelled. Fast. Or...she had fallen.
“No...that's not right. Didn't fall.” The memory was fading the way a dream does just after waking. She lifted her head, peering back up at the stars. She took them in for several moments. Then something changed.
Something was wrong.
She gazed at the beautiful orbs and realized what it was. They were moving. All of them. Coming closer. The entire universe was moving toward her.
No. Not just moving.
It was collapsing on top of her.
She spun, lunged to dart away, but the blackness of space seized her. It glommed onto her in sticky, stringy, wet goo. Is this what they call dark matter? She fought it, tried to whip it off of her, but each time she flung it away, more splatted onto her skin. Wet and slimy and strong.
The stars were everywhere now. So close that they began to merge. Fiona succumbed to the suffocating dark matter as it crawled up her body. It wrapped around her slender legs. Pulled them tight together. The blazing light from the stars blasted her. Its energy surrounding her from all directions. She raised her hands for protection, straining against the black goo, which now looked like a terrifying bodysuit of tar. It pulled at her, sucking her down. Her arms mashed tight against her sides. The goo closed around her head. It pulled her hair. Climbed her neck, her cheeks, over her eyes. It covered her nose, and she couldn't help but breathe it in. Suffocating, yet not. The stars merged into a solid mass of radiance. The great wall of light consolidated around her, over her, and consumed her. Fiona's consciousness slowly swirled into a great black nothingness as she screamed...
CHAPTER 32
Revolution, Ward, and Leslie stood at Fiona's bedside. She was attached to a bevy of electrodes and monitors. Leslie held a chart. She and Ward scanned it. “She's entered a coma, and her vitals appear to be weakening,” Ward said.
Leslie patted Revolution's shoulder as she and Ward exited the room. “I'm sorry.”
Revolution sat beside the bed; he slowly placed his hand over Fiona's. He sat there for some time. No one noticed how long. Mostly they wanted to give him privacy. Either that or they were afraid he’d throw them in the chamber and turn it on...
Either way, when Fiona fell into that coma and effectively disappeared from the compound, so did the General. No one would see the Revolution for the rest of the day. Presumably, after he left Fiona’s bedside, he locked himself in his quarters deep underground. No one, not even Leslie, dared to disturb him. News that might have otherwise required his attention was diverted to Leslie. At some point early the next morning, he brought Blinky the cat into Fiona’s room. After a thorough inspection of the new digs, the feline had settled in between Fiona’s legs on the bed. She wormed herself into her standard sleeping spot and curled into a snoozing little ball.
In the afternoon, Leslie approached Ward with an idea. Ward helped her write up a proposal, and Leslie appealed for help from the highest authorities of the insurgency—the Congress of the Revolution, or COR. She promised to tell Ward more about them when the time was right, but the important thing was that COR approved their plan one day later.
Ward and Leslie entered Fiona's room. Revolution was there. They all just stood in silence for several minutes. Ward had tried to conceal his horror at the whole situation. Revolution was clearly not concerned with the Hippocratic oath. So he wasn't a doctor in his past life. This lent more clout to the idea that he was from a military background. No medical person would even think about doing what he'd done—and then Ward remembered the Tuskegee experiments from the twentieth century. For forty years, African-American men with syphilis had been given what they thought was free health care from the US Public Health Agency. Instead, the syphilis was never treated or even disclosed to the patients. It was actually a study on the progression of untreated syphilis.
No, he had to admit this incident didn't rule out a scientist or a medical background. And despite being covered in metal, the Revolution’s body language cried out his regret and his worry for this girl. His eyes were the only part of him that was visible through the armor. They were pools of sadness. It was the only time Ward could recall him showing any emotion at all.
Finally, Leslie broke the silence.
“General—”
“She isn't going to get any better, is she?” Revolution sounded more human, more defeated than Ward had ever heard him. Even Leslie seemed to note the tone in his voice.
She took in a deep breath. “We still don't know. She may.” She spoke it like a scientist.
“She may not,” he said.
Revolution turned to them. “I bet it all on the Fire Fly. They'll realize there is no ultimate weapon sooner or later. They'll trace that rumor right to our door. We’ll have no defense. I won’t be enough.”
So, does he regret what he did, or does he regret what it may do to the movement? Ward thought to himself. The man in the metal was hard to read. Ward spoke up. “We may have a solution.”
“You're probably not going to like it,” Leslie added.
It took them a mere seventy-two hours to set it up. They contacted Blake Lane through the convoluted channels they had established years ago. The editor had made the deal. It was no small feat. Lane had to know it would mean the end of her cherished Common Sense. But she was a woman on a mission, too. And she was far too tenacious to let the failure of her paper stop her from being a great journalist. Or a great citizen. Sometimes to be one, you had to be the other as well. So she played her role without a moment's hesitation.
At six o’clock on a Tuesday night, as millions of families were sitting down for dinner, it happened. The primetime webcasts of Internet television began as always. Most folks surfed the Net through voice commands—one of the great innovations of the last several decades. News, sitcoms, reruns, search engines, videos of cats, dogs, kids, and game shows all blinked to life at the sound of a voice.
And then the Net was hacked. Big time.
All across the country the image of the Revolution seated in front of a camera took up the screens. Later they would find out that sixty-five percent of all systems were affected. Rebroadcasts of the speech would catch the other thirty-five before the Chairman decided no one could run the footage anymore.
The Revolution read from a teleprompter inside his helmet as the words scrolled across his eyesight, though that was impossible to tell from the outside. His only backdrop was Old Glory. His words were slow, calm, resolute. “Tonight, I come to you from the studios of the newspaper Common Sense, who have agreed to broadcast this over their secure server. After this message is sent, they will be no more. The Council will shut them down. It is what they do. I come to you tonight to ask you, the American p
eople, to join me in calling on our leaders, our true leaders—the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court—to make their voices heard once again.
“And to those leaders: Do you now see the error of your ways? Has the State Street Massacre opened your eyes? Corporations are not people, nor should they drown out the voice of the people or their elected leaders. Like the monarchs of the past, wealth has corrupted this government. I ask you to find a new road.”
Revolution paused for a moment, hoping his words would sink in, then continued. “We have heard this call before.” He leaned forward. His voice took on the commanding tone he could call forth when he wanted, as he prepared to quote the Founding Fathers.
“The cause of America is the cause of all humankind. Governments are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people, it is their duty, to alter or to abolish it, and too provide new guards for their future security.”
In the streets of Boston, hundreds of destitute working class, thin and hungry, gathered to watch on digital billboards. The Revolution was reaching a fever pitch now as his speech concluded. Even through the camera he knew his message was connecting. He'd done these enough times, he could feel it.
“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. The Union must be preserved, the Republic restored, the Sun of Liberty must rise again,” he concluded. And with that, an image of Old Glory filled the screen for several seconds before regular programming resumed.
As it turned out, the Chairman decided not to shut down Common Sense. The Revolution had won that battle. By announcing that's what the Chairman would do, he made Sage feel that he couldn't actually shut them down. Even though he wanted to. He'd have to wait to take his revenge out on Blake Lane.
In the streets of all major cities, thousands of people crowded around the giant flickering billboards to watch the broadcast. The Revolution had done things like this before, but never on such a massive scale. They watched in stunned silence. After it was over, the streets of Boston were eerily quiet. Then someone yelled out: “Down with the Council!” By this time, a team of reporters had gathered to cover the crowds live. Media Corp reporters called them a mob. They caught the image and broadcasted it around the country. Before the Chairman could get to them and force them off the air, the crowd had broken into a chant: “Rev-o-lu-tion! Rev-o-lu-tion! Rev-o-lu-tion!”
The Chairman didn't allow that to be rebroadcast either.
The effect of the speech was unpredictable. Leslie had hoped it would throw the Council off balance and give them more time to figure out what to do about Fiona, the rumor, and all the rest of it. Instead, it caused something else...
Paint sprays out on a random brick wall at night: “The Suns of Liberty will rise again.” The video of the incident goes viral on the net, and word of it begins to spread. The phrase is repeated across social media platforms at breakneck speed in the next two hours. In four hours the message is spray-painted on walls all across the country. It becomes a rallying cry. Then it becomes something more...
In the days that passed local militias calling themselves “The Suns of Liberty” sprang up all across the country. Reports of violence and terrorism soon followed. Authorities began appealing for calm.
The reports poured into Media Corp outlets from every corner of the nation. Eighty hours after the broadcast, the main lobby of the Freedom Council’s towering headquarters in New York City, Freedom Rise, was bombed. A local Suns of Liberty militia took credit.
One hundred hours after the broadcast, in Los Angeles, a row of Media Corp satellite dishes were wiped out in a series of explosions. Again, a Suns of Liberty group was held responsible.
Two hundred and sixteen hours after the broadcast, in Houston, a field of Imperial Petroleum oil barrels were set ablaze. The Suns of Liberty of Texas claimed responsibility.
The impact of the attacks was predictable. The National Guard was mobilized in every state. The Council Guard were deployed to every major industrial asset owned by Council corporations. The military was put on high alert. Even the CIA and FBI were given domestic spying tasks. Under Council rule, the CIA had a new division, called SHADOW, devoted entirely to domestic surveillance. In short, the authorities were in panic mode about the attacks. As it turned out, they weren't the only ones.
A black SUV arrived to take Ward to the compound. He no longer needed to be blindfolded. He'd gotten used to the extra turns they took whisking him to their headquarters. And finally he'd been allowed to learn the route and the address. But he had told no one, not even Alison. He was on strict orders. Revolution didn't trust anyone, but Ward did it to minimize her own danger. She hadn't liked not knowing where he was being taken, but said she understood. Nothing would be more important to the Council than the location of the Resistance stronghold. There was an emergency procedure that would allow him to tell her. Or more precisely, for her to be told, but Ward did not want to think about that scenario. It wasn’t a pretty one.
These security measures had become old hat for Ward, but on this day there was something extra. Someone extra. In the passenger seat in front of him sat an odd-looking guy. He wore a leather bomber jacket, brown pants, and a dark T-shirt underneath. On his head he had on a helmet that was a cross between that of a fighter pilot and a motorcycle rider. It only covered his face to his nose. His mouth was visible under the dark reflective face shield. That was enough to notice that he was an attractive man. He looked more than a little strange in the close confines of the car. And he was completely wrapped up in whatever he was doing. No one ever spoke to Ward on these drives, but this guy didn't even look up. The driver at least nodded to him.
Mr. Leather Jacket held a small device in his hand that scrolled some kind of digital readout. Ward couldn't make it out. At one point in the drive it beamed a three-dimensional holograph onto the man's side of the windshield, and he seemed to study it intently, though from Ward's vantage point he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe a map of some kind. Its eerie aqua-blue glow filled the SUV’s cabin.
After a while Ward guessed that the man was monitoring the surrounding areas to be doubly sure no one was following them. The Suns of Liberty attacks must have really made them all very paranoid, he thought. It did make sense to Ward that a feasible target for any retaliation by the Council might be Boston.
When they arrived, the driver sprang out and opened his door, as was the custom. But as Ward strode for the compound, Leather Jacket stopped him with a hand to the chest. Without a word, he stepped back from Ward about a foot and ran the small device up and down, scanning his person. Satisfied, Leather Jacket waved him on. Ward watched the man out of the corner of his eye as he entered the building. He was scanning the area with the small device the whole time. He never looked Ward's way again.
CHAPTER 33
The attacks his words had inspired were not welcome news to the Revolution. Ward figured he was in some trouble when he'd gotten the encrypted call to attend an urgent meeting on the matter. When he arrived inside, he found the meeting was only between himself, Revolution, and Leslie. As the meeting began, Revolution, as Ward feared, started scolding them.
“This was not my intention,” Revolution said sharply as he paced across the situation room. Ward and Leslie sat at the big table, watching him. “How long before there's collateral damage? How long before a child is killed? There are a million things that could go wrong. The Council will make sure it comes right back to us.”
Silence hung in the air.
“It's working, though,” Ward said finally. “Alison says these groups have the Council reeling.”
“They have us reeling, too,” Revolution sneered.
Leslie shot Ward a look that seemed to say, Just let him vent. She spoke up quickly, Ward realized, to take the pressure off him. “We wanted to throw the Council off balance and they have been,” Leslie said. “Council knows they
're not in control of these groups.”
“Neither are we,” Revolution said. “We created a diversion by starting a fire. But now that fire rages out of control.”
They were all silent for a long moment. Revolution just stared at the wall, his back to them. Ward and Leslie exchanged quick glances with each other, but neither spoke. Since the Fiona incident, Revolution had started showing more emotion. Ward wondered if that was a good thing.
Finally, Leslie swiveled her chair toward Revolution. She grinned a sly smile. “Maybe we get control.”
Revolution said nothing, but his entire attention fell her way. She cocked her head in thought as she rose and took her turn pacing.
“What if we provoked the Council, made them come here?” She turned toward Ward as if to explain. “We've always spread out our influence. The hero movement just happened, thanks to the General here, but we’ve always used it to our advantage. Recruited the best and the brightest when we could and kept them distributed across the country. Local contacts, if you will.”
She turned back toward the Revolution. “What if we combined them? What if we formed one single strike force made up of our best people? Paul and Lantern are already here. And what if we called this group The Suns of Liberty? We could claim these attacks were all their doing.” She shot them a wide smile. “All our doing.”
“How would that help? The media’s calling them terrorists,” Revolution pointed out.
“So far, what they've done hasn't killed anyone. So far, we like what they've done. It’s what they might do we’re worried about.”
“Wait. Who are these other assets?” Ward interjected, suddenly confused.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution Page 15
