“I think they knocked her out. We are a go, now!” Brody raced up the steps, not thinking about them or the spaces in between. He was hooked up and running for the edge, waving to Trelix as soon as his feet touched the surface of the roof. “Loren, have the girls check that we killed their cams.”
Trelix was over, and then Drake and Riley and finally Loren, nodding at him about the cameras. They dropped the belts into their bags and flipped the rope off the edge of the roof. They weren’t going back the same way.
“Slight change of plans. I didn’t think they’d hurt Ams, but they might not know what she is and they didn’t give her a chance to tell them. Drake and Riley, you are going to hang back a bit on the stairs. I don’t want them to see you. I’m pretty sure I outrank most of them in there, so we’ll try that first.” He flew down the steps, not waiting to hear confirmation from anybody, his boys following quietly behind him.
The door was locked. Brody pointed his stunner at the seam and pulled the trigger frying the connector. He was face to face with the big guy with a scowling face. He seemed to be in charge, but he was only a lieutenant. The guy must have realized it at the same time as he jumped off the edge of the desk and straightened himself out.
“Captain?”
“Captain Ellis Maxwell. At ease, Lieutenant,” he said as nicely as he could, in his kindest Brody voice, and then walked right up to the guy and screamed in his face, “you bloody imbecile! You have our R-level target, by the looks of it, injured. Explain.”
The man wasn’t scowling anymore, eyes large, afraid large. He might be their best bet, in charge or not. “Sir, she came here herself. We didn’t know who she was, but she was armed. She had these on her. And it sounded like she was talking to someone on the comm, so we knocked her out. This is an S-5 facility. We can’t have people walking in and out of here like that, sir.”
“Name, Lieutenant!” He was still screaming at him, needing to make sure the guy was a coward.
“Maxton, sir,” the man said sheepishly. He was it then.
“You’re with us. The rest of you are dismissed. I don’t do well with paperwork, so I won’t file this unless I have to. At ease. My backup units, take the elevator down.”
He had Loren pick up Ams, though he would have rather done it himself. He wanted to make sure she was all right but he couldn’t do that now. He had Maxton at gunpoint and Trelix was helping Loren with Ams. They just might have pulled it off. He turned away, and from the corner of his eye, caught his name flashing across one of their screens, only none of them were paying attention; they were all staring at him in real life.
As soon as they hit the elevator, he pulled the trigger on his stunner, more than once, knocking Maxton out for long enough to make it back safely and to try to figure out what he just saw on that screen and how much time they had now because of it.
“Drake, Riley, meet us in the back of the building. We are going to be running when we get there.”
And run they did, all the way back, using the back streets, doing their best to blend into the shadows. Riley grabbed Ams from Loren and Brody had Loren help Drake and Trelix carry their hostage. As soon as they filed into the room, he frantically told them they might be in a bit of trouble. But he wasn’t sure what kind, and that they had to turn all the lights off, and nobody could do any cooking tonight, not anything that needed heat or electricity. He had Loren shield their room from scanners as best he could. They only had a few sheets of Zapex, the material that hides heat sigs, or so they were told in training. Never really had any use for it before.
Everybody was staring at him, everybody but the hostage, who was still out cold on the floor, and Ams, who looked asleep on the couch. Ella was tending to her, running something that pulsed over her head.
“Ella, turn it off, now!” He yelled at her.
“I will, Brody, just as soon as I know the girl is going to be all right. It’s either that, or she could die from internal bleeding in her brain, and I’m not letting that happen,” Ella said calmly.
Riley walked over to him, eyes angry. “Let her do what she needs to do. We owe her that much.” His voice was quiet, full of rage quiet. And then Ella snapped at both of them that she was done and that Ams would be okay, and they needed to just let it go.
Loren had his screen out for some reason but he didn’t want to know yet. He was trying to think of why his name would pop up like that in the bloody lab.
Riley crouched in front of him. “Spit it out, Brody. What the hell happened in there that’s making us hide now? Talk, Brody.”
And he did then. They deserved to know that he may have just put all of them at risk, only he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it was possible, and then Loren was telling him that he hacked into their system when they were inside and downloaded what he could. He handed him a screen with texts on it.
“This was on their system, Brody.”
He was staring at Hassinger’s name on the screen, over and over again, not reading anything, not seeing anything beyond that name, and suddenly, he knew how she made his crew, the boys he trained for years, the boys who’d bloody die for him, turn their guns on him like that with a word typed into the damn screen.
And that whoever got Trina killed was lying on the floor in this room or six blocks away in the lab.
He closed his eyes and counted to twenty to calm himself enough to where his rage wasn’t written all over his face and got up. “Loren, tie his hands and feet for me, will you? And Ella, I need you to wake him up please, as gently and sweetly as you can. I want yours to be the first face he sees.”
5
The Hostage
Riley, May 31, 2236, Reston
Brody was afraid of heights. It was so strange that he didn’t know this until now, but watching him on that roof, he knew, knew for sure that Brody was like Ams. That’s why he panicked in that elevator. It was the one fear he didn’t understand in anybody. Heights always beckoned him. He loved the feel of it, the air moving so much faster and louder around him than it did down below. He could stand on that roof for hours, just breathing, letting the wind rock him. He felt like he was floating far above everything that made him hurt: this broken city with its too-clean streets, the empty houses, Brax’s words at the clearing, Hassinger’s laughter as she pulled the trigger…. Being up high made it fuzzy, diminished it, and in some small way made it bearable.
He was worried about Ams but somehow could read in her face that she’d make herself do what she needed to do anyway, afraid or not, and she did, with a smile. He could see the fear in her eyes, but he didn’t think anyone else noticed, the way she smiled at them…. he loved this girl. Flying to that roof after her felt incredible. He was weightless, the wind soft against him, caressing his face. He ran his fingers through it, collecting the feel of it in his hands, and then it was over, far too quickly. He made a mental note to ask Stan to let him do this again, with more distance, and more height if he could manage it.
Ams wrapped her arms around him, grinning.
“What, Ams?”
She was smiling so wide, he thought he did something embarrassing.
“Your face, when you were on that thing, Riley… I think it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen you. It’s nice to know you can smile like that.” She kissed him softly and ran down to the stairs.
He wanted her to go last, so he could help her if she got stuck, but she wouldn’t let him. He watched her face turn serious as she climbed, but she didn’t stop and didn’t complain. It’s as if she found a way of tuning out what she was doing.
When they were just outside their tower she finally asked him if he really, truly didn’t mind her doing this, going into the lab like that, and he couldn’t lie to her, so he told her that he minded, minded in every way, but she was right about wanting to do it, and he was pretty sure she’d make it out of there okay. She smiled a small smile at him then.
“No goodbyes or anything, Riley. I’ll be all right, I promise,” she said and raced insi
de.
He was thinking about all of that while playing with her hair, waiting for Brody and Loren to finish doing whatever they were doing with that screen Loren had, and then Brody was up, looking very calm. It didn’t add up for him to go from frantic to calm so quickly. He watched Loren put metal ties around the soldier’s hands and feet, and then Ella crouched in front of the man, holding a small box under his nose. The soldier’s eyes flew open, scanning the room. He tried to get up, only now realizing he was tied up the way he was. Loren helped him sit and moved him against the wall, checked his vitals, and nodded to Brody that he was okay.
Brody slowly walked over to him and crouched in front of him, staring at his face, not saying anything.
“Well, look at that. Alliance Captain fraternizing with Zoriners. Never thought I’d see the day.” The man was scowling at Brody when he said it, voice full of contempt. “What’s it like, Ellis, to surround yourself with a bunch of apes? Yeah, I called you by your first name. You don’t have rank to me anymore,” he said, and then spat at Brody’s face. He didn’t sound at all like he did before at the lab, nothing fearful about him.
Brody didn’t move, just kept staring at the man. He got up finally, and walked over to Loren and Trelix, whispered something to them that wasn’t meant for the rest of them to hear, and they were on the man, picking him up and dragging him out into the hallway, Brody following.
Riley ran after them, not trusting Brody not to kill him now. They dragged the soldier into the comm room. Loren blocked all transmissions from this tiny space earlier, so they should be safe here from any scans. Loren snipped the tie at the soldier’s hands and tied them behind his back, put him in the chair against the wall, and he and Trelix left the room.
“You don’t need to be here for this. I got this.” Brody looked at him, still calm.
“I am staying.”
Brody slowly, deliberately unbuttoned the soldier’s uniform shirt and moved it off his shoulders. The man sat still, looking at Brody’s face. Brody took a roll of silver tape from the small bag Loren left him, cut a strip off of it with his long knife, taped the soldier’s mouth shut, and without any warning, drove the blade into his flesh in between his shoulder and his chest and pulled it out. There was blood spraying everywhere, the man’s head down on his chest.
Brody grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. “That was for what you said about my friends. We are even now. I am going to try my best not to kill you. We are going to talk, and see how it goes. Okay?”
The man didn’t move. Brody wiped the blade on the man’s pants, staining the tan fabric red, and stuck the knife into his belt, the soldier still ignoring him. He was bleeding hard from the wound, and Riley worried he’d pass out from blood loss before Brody got anything out of him. He took a step toward them, but Brody stopped him where he was.
“Leave, if you can’t take it, Riley. If you are going to stay, you need to make yourself invisible. I mean it.” Brody took the tape off, leaving a red mark across the soldier’s face, then took out the screen he and Loren were staring at earlier and shoved it in the man’s face, making him look at it. “I need to know who she was talking to, Maxton.”
The man shook his head. “Go to hell, Ellis, or whoever you are. Go to hell,” he said quietly, eyes on Brody’s, unblinking, and Riley knew for sure that they got the wrong guy, because this one didn’t seem afraid at all, even after Brody hurt him like that.
Brody lifted a vial of something out of the bag, unscrewed the cap, and poured all of it on the soldier’s wound. His face contorted in pain, and he screamed and dropped his head. Brody lifted it up by the hair, but it just went back down again.
“Riley, I need you to get me the salts box from Ella, please,” Brody asked calmly as if what he just did was perfectly normal. Everyone in the room stared at him with questions in their eyes when he got there. They must have heard the scream, but he didn’t want to tell them any of it, didn’t know how to explain this Brody to them. He shook his head and ran back with a small box Ella gave him.
Brody held the open box under Maxton’s nose, and after a few seconds, his head jerked up and stayed up, eyes open, fixed on Brody’s.
“Here, drink this.” Brody tilted an open thermos at him, spilling what looked like water over his face and chest.
Maxton shook his head, not drinking.
The screen was in front of his face again, but he didn’t even look at it, just stared at Brody, and he could tell by the way his eyes were that he decided not to talk and that whatever Brody was going to do to him wouldn’t change it. He just couldn’t figure out why. It’s as if he was more afraid of whatever he knew than this. Whoever they were working for in that secret lab, he was more afraid of them than he was of Brody.
He needed to talk to Loren. That kid was great at digging through stuff. Loren was sitting at the table going through a half dozen screens in front of him.
“I need you to find out everything you can about that man in there, Loren. It doesn’t add up. He isn’t talking, and he should be by now, but it’s like he really can’t.”
Loren grabbed his screens and walked him out into the hallway, whispering: “These guys in the lab, they aren’t like us, like regular soldiers. They are indies. Sorry, it means they don’t have implants, by the looks of it, never had them. I ran checks on everyone who was there. All single, no kids, no attachments that I could find, so there is no leverage for us.” Loren looked down and swallowed hard, and then lifted his eyes to him again. “There is something else you should know. This guy, Maxton, went through the kind of training where whatever Brody is doing to him won’t work on him. He needs to know that, so he doesn’t do something he can’t live with, and I am not going in there unless I have to.” He looked angry when he said it, which didn’t make any kind of sense.
Brody met him outside the door. He told him what he just learned, all but the last thing, the way Loren looked, and that he couldn’t go into this room for some reason, Brody just nodding.
“Watch him for a bit, will you? I need a moment to think,” he said and walked away.
Maxton looked the same, only he could see small drops of sweat on his face now. He pulled up a chair and straddled it, watching him, not saying anything. The man’s gray eyes looked back at him. He didn’t see the anger in them or hatred. They were calm, cold maybe, the way Ams’ eyes got when she saw someone do something awful, and he could tell he was in pain by how large his pupils were, the one thing on his otherwise relaxed face he couldn’t hide.
“What’s your first name, Maxton? I am at a disadvantage, given that you know mine now,” he asked flatly, watching his face for any change in expression.
The man’s eyebrows went up slightly for just a fraction of a second, enough to know he surprised him by asking. “Lancer, Zoriner. But I’d rather you didn’t call me by that.”
“Why tell me then?
Maxton just shook his head and closed his eyes.
The man wasn’t adding up. There was something about the way he held himself that made him like him. The hole in his shoulder finally stopped bleeding, but it would start again as soon as he moved. Brody went deep enough to really hurt him.
Maxton was watching him intently again. “It’s almost amusing, Zoriner. I’d bash your brains in without hesitation if I could, and I am pretty sure you know that, and yet, here you are, worried about a bloody hole in me. No wonder your people gave up the way they did. That’s who you are. You run, saving your own skins, hoping you don’t end up having to kill anyone in the process, letting us take your women and your kids, but still you run. Bloody cowards.”
He wasn’t just trying to piss him off. He sounded like he meant it, but he could sense something else in that monologue, a twinge of guilt. This man did something he regrets. That’s why he isn’t talking. He isn’t protecting anything or anybody, he is honestly okay with this….
He leaned in closer to his face. “Who did you kill, Lancer?”
The man w
inced, eyes darting down for just a flash.
So he was right, and he felt he knew what it was then. The field outside this city—this man was responsible, and suddenly, he knew what they would need to do to get him to talk, only he hoped he could convince Brody.
“You don’t need to answer that, Maxton. I think I know.”
Brody was pacing in front of the wall when Riley got there, but he felt he could say this in front of everybody, so he did, telling them what he thought was going on with Maxton, and why he wasn’t going to tell them anything, and that they needed to take him to that place; make him see it the way they all did. He felt it would break him, knew it would, just looking at his face. Loren nodded and said that it made sense and they wouldn’t lose anything by trying and that he was more okay with this than whatever Brody had in mind, something he didn’t want to know about.
They untied the man’s feet so he could walk. There wasn’t much he could do with his hands tied with biters the way they were and Brody’s stunner pointing at the back of his head. They left Drake and Laurel behind; there was no point in making them see that place again, and Ella was still watching over Ams, waiting for her to wake up.
Maxton didn’t say a word when they got on the flier, or when they landed. Brody shoved him down the steps right in front of the field, walked him right into it, gun at his back, and kept shoving, but Maxton stopped, not taking another step.
“Walk, Maxton,” Brody said sharply.
“No.”
And he knew for sure that he was right about this. Brody seemed to know it, too. He handed him the stunner and took a few steps back, nodding to him to take over.
Riley got in front of the man and knelt on top of the bones, looking up at his face, the man staring down at him. “I spent the last two days sitting here like this. I did something shitty and couldn’t think of a worse place to go so I came here and sat in this field looking at bones. I’d been here once before but I was too hurt to pay attention then… I was paying attention now and I started finding these tiny pieces amidst all of this, not even kid tiny—baby tiny—and the more I kept looking, the worse it got. So many little bones….” He scanned the ground around him and found one of the tiny ones, and clenching his jaw, leaned over and picked it up. “How old do you think this child was?” Riley held the bone fragment up in front of Maxton. “One maybe? I’m no good at anatomy, but it feels little. And charred as it is, I couldn’t tell you what that kid looked like. I can’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl, never mind if it was Zoriner or Alliance. Can you?” He got up and took a few steps to him.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 37
