Illegal King

by Mason Dakota

  I thought I understood. “So that pill won’t take away the virus.”

  “Correct. It will merely slow down some of its effects and extend your life a small margin of time.”

  “But it won’t change the fact that I’m still contagious to Nobles, I’m guessing?”

  My father shrugged and faked a sad expression as he said, “You’re my carrier. I can’t have you die isolated in a cell when I need you out there spreading the virus.” Then with the hand still holding the vial with the pill, Richard opened his palm more and I saw hidden in his hand a small key.

  “This isn’t a rescue. You’re just trying to save your operation,” I hissed.

  “I’m trying to save my son.”

  “If that was true you would have come with the cure, not a suppressant.”

  “I came with a choice. You can either be tortured and die for your pride, or you can take what I offer you and live another day.”

  “Except I’ll only continue to spread your virus.”

  “Do you really think you are so special? I can create more of you without trouble. Who’s to say I haven’t already. Now don’t be stupid, and take what I’m offering to you. Gabriel isn’t worth torture and death in a cell. Do you really think he would sacrifice his life to save yours?”

  He’s logic made sense. I really didn’t have much of a choice. He knew I wanted to stop him, and the only way to do that was to play along with his game. It would mean spreading his virus more. What else could I do?

  He smiled, knowing I had come to see reason. And yet I still felt like there was more going on—like why my father was working under Adam Rythe and at the same time leading a rebellion against him.

  But I knew what I had to do and the sacrifice it meant.

  I reached forward, took the vial and the key, swallowed the pill within the vial and hid the small key within my own palm.

  “Why are you doing all this?” I asked.

  My father smiled weakly and said, “To create a better world for my son.”

  “And you seriously believe that’s what you’re doing? You’re a monster that’s messed up in the head if you think that”

  Richard chuckled, pointed his finger at me and said, “You might be right.” Then his face sobered up and he said, “But it doesn’t change anything. Hopefully one day we can sit down and speak honestly about everything that led us both here.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Pain flashed across Richard’s face and he sighed deeply as he stood to his feet. I asked, “That’s it then?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. His eyes darted to my palm where the key was hidden. “Good luck. I’ll be seeing you.”

  He left the room and I scrambled to unlock my handcuffs and escape.

  Fifty-Five

  Almost the second my father left the room I was struck with an intense wave of dizzying sickness. It would seem the pill was either slow to act or it did nothing to prevent the virus’s symptoms from springing up.

  It merely delayed my death…not the insufferable pain. My insides did calisthenics and using my nerves as jump ropes.

  I vomited once more and if it weren’t for being cuffed to the table I might have slipped and fallen to the floor. Nobody came in to clean the vomit off the floor or me.

  Nice to know they care.

  But maybe that was good. I doubted anyone watched me. I saw no cameras. Regardless, who would approach a guy handcuffed to a table and vomiting on himself. I slipped the small key out of my palm and jammed it into my handcuffs. With a pop the handcuffs came off and I leapt to my feet a free man. The sudden movement dazed and blinded me. I had to brace myself against the table to stop the dizziness. It wasted precious time to grit my teeth and force the nausea down once more.

  I moved to the door and ever so gradually turned the doorknob and peeked outside. Just one guard. One lonely soldier to guard one lonely Outcast suffering a crippling disease and handcuffed to a table.

  Hopefully this won’t be too difficult.

  He wasn’t even carrying a blaster rifle. He only had a small blaster pistol at his hip. I closed the door, throwing my weight into it to make it pop loudly in place. And then I slipped backwards into the corner. The soldier charged in with his pistol raised. He didn’t see me behind the door and I used that to my advantage by throwing all my weight back into the door.

  The door slammed into his side and threw him against the wall. I pounced upon him and smashed my elbow into his neck in the space between his breastplate and his helmet. His head whiplashed back into the side of the wall and he gratefully collapsed. I had knocked him out.

  Thank God!

  I took his blaster pistol and cautiously moved into the narrow hallway outside the room. Thankfully nobody was there. Luck was still on my side. To my left was a dead end with a window and to my right were the stairs I had used earlier. Going downstairs would be unwise. That left the window as my only option out.

  I moved toward the window, stuffed the blaster pistol in my belt loop, and fought to get the window open. The window resisted my efforts and in my frustration I almost smashed through it completely. When I was about to lose patience and shoot the window out, it loosened. I lifted the glass and poked my head outside.

  I was five floors high. Jumping out would shatter my legs. I needed to climb down. Soldiers patrolled around the building and in the streets beyond. I noticed that the window opened up on the entrance of an alleyway below and if I could maneuver my way down I could slip into the alley and escape unseen.

  I slipped out my left foot first, bracing it against the thin ledge outside the window, and slowly leaned my body farther out the window. From there I saw a metal drain pipe on the wall close by leading down to the alley below. The problem was that I needed to pass two open windows to get to it.

  Great. This is going to be fun.

  Holding onto the windowsill, I straightened myself against the wall as I slipped out my right foot. I braced against the wall, five stories up in the air. Down below, soldiers held conversations and if they just so happened to look up I would be dead. I couldn’t wait any longer. Time was of the essence. Keeping my body tight to the wall, I slid along like a spider. I stood upon the tips of my toes upon the small thin ledge. The heat of the air and from my own sickness made my palms sweaty. I tried my best to rub them clean along the wall as I scooted by.

  I made it to the first window and froze. The window hung open and I heard people on the other side. I clung there trying to figure out how to get past when I turned my eyes skyward to see that the floor above me had another thin ledge going along the wall like the one I balanced on. If I could reach that one then I could pass above the two windows unseen by those inside. The only problem lay in it being too high for me to reach.

  I had no other choice but to jump for it.

  I swallowed in fearful preparation. Normally this would be a cake walk and I would already be in the alley and long gone by now. However, this virus and the beating from Raven had greatly weakened me. My body felt four times heavier than usual and my muscles offered half their usual strength. Simply breathing between bruised ribs and scarring lungs took the effort of running a marathon. Every gasping breath made me dizzy and my body tremble violently. I didn’t believe I could do it. I wanted to just stay there, stuck like a fly on a wall waiting to be squished by someone with a swatter.

  By that point my disappearance would be noticed and the alarm would be sent out. Search parties were on their way. I needed to create as much distance as I could as quickly as possible. I took a deep breath, released it, and leapt.

  My skills hadn’t failed me yet and I took hold of the ledge with a wave of victory flushing through my system like water releasing from a dam. I wanted to rest and cheer in this tiny victory, but time prevented me. I pulled my knees up and braced my toes and kneecaps against the wall. I scooted myself along the wall right over the first window. I made it half way to the second one when a wave of pain stabbed me in the
gut.

  Perfect timing.

  I heard commotion in the window below me.

  They knew I escaped.

  Suddenly a man leaned out the window inches below me. I froze the best I could, though I couldn’t keep my arms from shaking. The sweat on my palms moved to my finger tips and if I didn’t move soon I would fall. I couldn’t move without being discovered. I hung just by my fingertips. I was inches above this man.

  My body shuddered and my muscles locked up with spasming cramps. I cringed in pain, using everything in me not to let out a single decibel of sound. My sweaty palms finally betrayed me. My left hand slipped, leaving me swinging by just my right hand. I was too weak to reach up and grab the ledge again. The nausea hit me with a storm and I wanted to throw up. My vision swirled and flipped. It felt like someone twisted a spear into my gut. Then my right hand began slipping!

  One finger slipped.

  Oh come on…

  Another finger slipped.

  Can’t I just catch one break?

  A third finger slipped. I gritted my teeth. The man looked left and right fervently, in my opinion far too slowly, and shouted to someone behind him, “He’s not out here!” Then the man moved back inside.

  Without hesitation, I pushed off straight into the air with everything left in me. With desperate grasping hands I reached for the small ledge again. A miracle happened and my hands once again firmly grasped the ledge. I Nearly screamed with excitement! I scuttled as fast as I could to the drain pipe. I slid down it to the ground below, landing with a soft thud in the alley. I ran away from the building.

  Now on the run from the Empire. Nothing ever seems to go my way.

  Fifty-Six

  I headed straight for the only place I could. Evelyn’s motel room. My options were limited. My friends were in danger, but I wasn’t sure how I could tell them about the Emperor. Would they even believe everything I told them? I wasn’t sure even I believed everything that had happened.

  About a hundred yards from the motel, a black van with tinted windows screeched out of the parking lot and sped past me, nearly running me over. I dove to the side and the van disappeared.

  That can’t be good.

  The EMP wiped out every technological device in the city. That included all vehicles present within city limits when the blast went off. The only working vehicles were those brought in, and for the most part they belonged to the rich and powerful. Individuals who fit that category today were few. That meant that van belonged to the Empire or it belonged to someone else…like Alexandra Carline!

  I took off sprinting into the motel and ran straight for Evelyn’s room. Her door was barged open and hung on a single hinge. I charged through with my weapon out and ready. The room was a wreck. Scorch marks covered the walls in places where Evelyn’s stun baton likely struck. The mattress was flipped over, the desk knocked down, the back sink cracked, and the mirror shattered. Drops of blood dotted the floor and bed sheets.

  There was no Lorre.

  There was no Evelyn.

  The room was empty.

  I walked deeper into the room, heading farther in as if I hoped they would be there. They weren’t. Someone had taken Lorre and Evelyn. For some time, I stood there shaking with rage. Someone had harmed them. Someone had taken them. And I wasn’t there to protect them.

  “Who did this?” I hissed.

  “Alexandra.”

  I spun around back to the doorway, blaster pistol raised and read to fire. There, leaning against the door frame, with a look of sorrowful disgust, stood Jeremiah Lorre. He failed to meet my eyes. The blood on his clothes was dried and a day old. His wounds were not fresh. He hadn’t been here. He hadn’t defended Evelyn, and it enraged me.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He swallowed and said, “I walked out, wanting to stretch my legs and get some coffee. Evelyn was packing and getting ready to head out. While I was gone, Alexandra’s men came. Evelyn fought them, however, there were just too many of them.”

  I pounced upon Lorre, my free hand going for his throat. I threw him backwards against the door frame, and the door finally snapped off that last hinge and fell. Lorre didn’t try to resist me as I squeezed his throat. He coughed and gurgled, struggling for air.

  “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HER!” I screamed.

  “I’m…sorry,” said Lorre between coughing breaths.

  I screamed and rammed my fist into his gut. He bent double. I grabbed him by the shirt collar and slung him back into the motel room. He fell upon the tipped over mattress and rolled over to meet my fist with his jaw. My hand exploded with blistering pain upon impact, but I hoped the pain it gave him was worse.

  I pulled back my fist again, shouting in frustration and ready to hit him again. Lorre dodged my next swing and dove forward, pinning my arm with one hand and striking me across the jaw with the other. It certainly hurt more to get punched in the face than it did to actually punch someone.

  Lorre moved and I was suddenly thrown backwards into the wall. The wall rattled and a picture frame fell. He punched me two more times and before I slumped to the ground with a sensation that my lungs were filling with blood.

  “There was nothing I could have done,” said Lorre above me. I gasped for breath and cried.

  I sobbed, “She took her because of me.”

  “Because she knows Evelyn is connected to Shaman. Because you’re Shaman, and she wants you dead,” Lorre said.

  I nodded. Somehow Lorre acquired the blaster pistol I had stolen. A look of rage was in his eyes, and it was directed straight at me. He knew I was Shaman. He knew I was responsible for the death of his family. He knew that if he hadn’t gone to the hospital to free me those months ago they would have been saved. He knew the Justicars were killed by my father, and if Lorre had known everything I had known then maybe they would still be alive—but now they were dead because I kept my secrets.

  Something softened in his eyes, or maybe more accurately, the rage in his eyes shifted focus from me to something else. Maybe he was remembering how I gave the cure to him, seeing how broken and weak I was now.. Maybe he was remembering how if it hadn’t been for Evelyn we would never have escaped the night before. Maybe it was how Evelyn took care of him, cleaning him up when he lay so wrecked and beaten. Maybe it was the fact that at his core Lorre was a protector and someone had been taken from him under his watch.

  I wasn’t sure what it was, but I found myself respecting Lorre more, seeing a man as shattered as I was with some fight left in him.

  Lorre lowered himself to my eye level, turned the blaster pistol around and offered it back to me. “We are going to get her back.”

  I swallowed, nodded, took the gun, and said, “The Emperor reassigned Alexandra Carline from Mayor to Police Commissioner. Her task at the moment is to bring in Shaman no matter the cost.”

  “So now the Emperor wants Shaman dead as well? Why?”

  “He thinks Shaman is someone else.”

  What he wants is Gabriel.

  “Shaman is more than just you?” asked Lorre.

  “The short version is that someone else used to be Shaman. I only got the role a year ago. The Emperor wants my predecessor. Evelyn was hired to catch him, not me. It now seems he has tasked Alexandra and her whole army of NPFC officers to catch me,” I said. Lorre helped me up. I didn’t thank him for his assistance; he wouldn’t have wanted me to.

  “Then she has taken Evelyn as bait. Likely back to headquarters. She’ll have an army,” said Lorre.

  I nodded and said, “Then I’ll burn the building to the ground.”

  I carefully observed Lorre as I said those words. He was a former cop, and though he had been fired by Alexandra, Lorre was still a cop at heart. He might very well still have friends within the NPFC. He might not like the idea of bringing that building down. I saw the internal wrestling match in his body language and facial expressions. Finally he said, “We are going to need some help…and firepower.”

&
nbsp; “Let me take care of that. Go and do what you need to do to get ready. I will meet you outside the NPFC Headquarters at nightfall,” I said.

  Lorre nodded, and without saying another word he left the wrecked motel room.

  “You’ve gone too far this time Alexandra,” I whispered to the room around me, “There’s no forgiveness for this. You want a fight? I’ll give you a war. This ends tonight.”

  You’re about to see who the real monster of Chicago is Alexandra.

  Fifty-Seven

  I spent a considerable amount of time circling the block of the hideout before ever going inside. I had to make sure I approached unseen.

  Imperial soldiers patrolled the area and arrested anyone suspicious. Multiple gunfights erupted in the Stinks between members of the Sabols and the Emperor’s soldiers. The Sabols never won.

  When I finally deemed it safe and clear, I made my way into the abandoned office building and downstairs into the hideout. Gabriel, Michael, and Thomas were seated around the table and looking over various maps and papers. That much I expected.

  I didn’t expect to see Chamberlain and Alison there.

  “You brought them in on this on their honeymoon?” I directed my words and my angry glare straight at Gabriel.

  “Oh, hey Griffon,” said Michael trying to overcompensate for our previous conversation with cheerfulness.

  “Shut it, Michael,” I said. I kept my eyes on Gabriel.

  Gabriel fully turned toward me and said, “Yeah, I did. They had a right to know what the situation is.”

  “They were on their honeymoon!”

  “Griffon, Alison and I would never have forgiven them if we came back and found you dead,” said Chamberlain.

  He stood leaning on his cane with one arm. His wife stood under his other arm to give support. I know it hadn’t been long since I had last seen Chamberlain, but to me he was an entirely different man, as if he were older and stronger. Marriage changes men.