Red Awakening (Red Zone)

by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

  This time, Miriam did throw her glass paperweight at the screen.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Being the rescuer is so much better than being the person rescued,” Keiko said as they made their way into the empty penthouse apartment.

  She was giddy with her success and high on the adrenaline. It was a good look on her. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were flushed pink, and her smile was dazzling. She threw herself into the corner of one of the vast white sofas that dominated the living area of the apartment. An apartment that was decorated in shades of cream; even the art was black and white. She stood out in the sterile space like a rose in the desert.

  A bruised rose.

  The marks around her ankle from where he’d grabbed her when she fell were abhorrent to him. Even though he knew they’d been put there for a good reason, he still couldn’t bear to see bruises on her skin—especially ones he’d caused.

  “Is it possible,” she said, still hyper from the fight, “for someone my size to take down men bigger than me?”

  “Sure.” Crouching in front of her, he gently lifted her foot and examined the red finger marks.

  He needed to get some of that magic cream for it. The medical advances made in the past century were one of the few things Mace liked about his new life, and cream that helped a bruise heal at record speed was top of his list.

  “Really?” she said with wide-eyed wonder.

  He nodded. “With the right skills, you could be deadly. Men always underestimate an opponent who’s smaller than they are.”

  “Even you?”

  As she studied him, he found himself smiling. “You planning on taking me down, princess?”

  “No. I’m over my anger with you.” She smiled mischievously. “Plus, now that I know you wouldn’t hit back, it just isn’t a challenge for me.”

  “Smart-ass,” he grumbled.

  “Seriously, Mace, you can’t do that again. There are a lot of female Freedom fighters who would be more than happy to take the advantage you gave that one.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t hit women.” Not. Ever. He’d rather die first.

  “Not even if you have to? To protect someone else?” Her unsaid words hung in the air between them. She was talking about herself, and they both knew it.

  For the first time in his life, Mace honestly didn’t know the answer, and it tore him apart.

  Suddenly, he had to put some space between them. “I’ll find some cream for that bruise.”

  Striding from the room, he went in search of a first aid kit and found it in the bathroom. The cream was unopened, like everything else in the apartment, which made him wonder if Miriam Shepherd ever actually spent any time there.

  Grabbing the tube, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror over the washbasin. Nothing had changed since the last time he’d seen it. He was nobody’s hero, no matter how much Keiko felt like painting him that way, and it was only a matter of time before she came to the same conclusion. He was just a guy who’d spent his life fighting against his heritage. Desperate that his family history would end with him—no matter what it took.

  Because evil ran in his veins, and he always had to be on guard against it. It was a message branded into his soul with each violent stroke of his grandfather’s belt.

  Memories flooded his mind, and he closed his eyes against them. It made no difference. He saw them anyway. Heard them. Felt them…

  “Your momma was a whore, and your daddy a murderer. You’re evil, boy. A monster.” His grandfather raised the leather belt over his head. The strap wrapped around his hand. The buckle hanging loose.

  Mace tried to make himself as small as he could, pressing his body into the floor, his front to the wall. It wouldn’t make any difference. It never did. There was no protecting himself from his grandfather.

  “If’n you’d been good, like the good lord intended, you woulda saved your momma from that man. But you let him kill her. You were born with the evil in you, just like your daddy. He took my girl and made her into his whore, an’ then he killed her, same as he killed those other women.”

  The old man’s eyes seemed to glow red as spittle escaped from the corner of his mouth. “Fourteen kills, that’s his number. The number of the demon who lived in your daddy, and that demon lives in you.” He swung the belt. “Don’ matter how long it takes, I’m gonna beat the demon outta you.”

  Thwack!

  The buckle struck his side, and lightning shot through him. Mace knew if he didn’t count aloud, his grandfather would add to the number until he did, so he forced the word past his clenched teeth. “One.”

  The belt swung again, and fire exploded through his hip. He’d never made it to fourteen before passing out from the pain. And he expected that today wouldn’t be any different. There was no escape. Nowhere to hide that his grandfather couldn’t find him. No one to come to his aid. All he could do was endure.

  “Count!”

  “Two.” Mace swallowed a sob. Tears made the old man angrier, and anger made him swing harder.

  “You’re evil. There’s nothing good in you. Nothing. You come from depraved stock.” The blow hit his shoulder this time, and he felt blood trickle down his chest, under his threadbare shirt.

  It would pool beneath him. The blood. He’d lie in it until it congealed and glued his skin to the floor. And when he managed to get up, the places where he’d fused to the floor would rip open, and he’d bleed all over again.

  It was the pattern of his young life. First his da had hit him when he’d tried to save his ma from beatings. Now his grandfather hit him for not saving his ma. He closed his eyes tight and held onto the image of his mother. Her honey-colored hair falling around her shoulders. The gentle warmth in her clear blue eyes. The feeling of her hands, soft and comforting, as she held him close…

  Thwack!

  The memory shattered, and he was alone on the floor of his grandfather’s house.

  “Three.” The word was a croak, but he made sure it was loud enough for his grandfather to hear.

  “Fourteen women dead at his hand. And all he left behind was his spawn. I won’t let you grow up to kill like him. You’re gonna learn your lesson, boy. Learn it good.”

  Thwack!

  The pain from the individual strikes began to blend. Turning his body into one large, open sore.

  “Four.” He managed to find the strength to cover his head with his arms.

  “Begone, demon!”

  Thwack!

  “Five.” To his shame, he cried. He’d promised himself there would be no more tears, and he couldn’t even do that properly. The old man was right. He was no good. Just like his ma. Just like his da.

  “Evil… Monster…”

  Thwack!

  “Six?” It was a guess. The agony racking his body made it hard to think. His thoughts blurring as his mind fought to distance itself from the pain.

  He barely felt the next blow. His mind was leaving. Taking him away from the hell he lived in day after day. A hell he deserved.

  Because he was a monster.

  “Stop him,” a stranger’s voice shouted. “Ambulance. We need an ambulance.” A hand on his head. A strange, soft caress. “It’s going to be okay. I won’t let him hit you again.”

  “He’s the devil,” his grandfather screamed. “A monster.”

  “Monster,” Mace whispered as his mind shut down. “Can’t remember the number.”

  “Where’s that ambulance?” the woman shouted. “We need it now.”

  Mace blinked several times, and his reflection came back into focus. He’d been unconscious when they took him from his grandfather. He never saw him again, and he never found out who’d saved him. His life in the months after that beating had been a blur of hospitals, courts, offices, and then finally foster care.

  At nine years old, he’d been placed in his first foster home, and he hadn’t been surprised when his new parents turned out to be monsters, too. He’d known for years that th
e world was filled with them.

  He was living proof. His father and grandfather’s genes lived on in him.

  “Hey.” Keiko’s voice snapped him back to the present. “Stop admiring your pretty face and come with me. I found something.”

  She was staring at him as though she was worried for his sanity. He almost laughed. That boat had sailed a long time ago.

  “Interesting new look,” he said as he pushed away from the washbasin.

  She’d found a pair of cream pants that were far too big for her and cut off the legs to make shorts. They were fastened at the waist by a belt that almost wrapped around her twice. Her dress hadn’t been spared her scissors, either. She’d cut off the bottom section to turn it into a top.

  As though she’d already forgotten what she was wearing, she glanced down at her clothes. “Can’t kick or run in that dress. This will have to do until we get out of here. I couldn’t find shoes that fit, though.”

  The look of disgust on her face made Mace laugh. “That’s because you have tiny, baby-sized feet.”

  “My feet are perfectly in proportion to the rest of my body.” She waved a hand at him. “And you can hardly talk. You’re not exactly average sized. Your feet are huge.”

  “You know what they say, the bigger the feet, the bigger the…”

  Other women might have been embarrassed. Not Keiko. She laughed at him. “I have experience with your perfectly proportioned body. As far as I can see, the only part of you that doesn’t measure up is your brain.”

  “Now that’s just plain mean.”

  “You’ll cope. Now come and see what I’ve found.”

  Clasping his hand in hers, she dragged him from the room. He couldn’t help but thread his fingers through hers and go where she led. It was a compulsion, the need to feel closer to her. The smile of mischief and approval that she shot him over her shoulder made his stomach fill with butterflies.

  It was official. He’d turned into a fourteen-year-old girl.

  She led him down the corridor decorated with black-and-white photos of abandoned buildings. Some of them Mace recognized from his childhood. One had been an insane asylum, famous for illegal lobotomies. Another was a high-security prison that specialized in death-row inmates.

  “Miriam sure does love her cheery art,” he muttered.

  On the far side of the living room, Keiko let go of his hand to open a door. She waved him inside. “Voilà. The office. And it’s connected to the security hub. Maybe you can check the building cameras from here instead of going down there.”

  “Hot damn.” He rubbed his hands together as he headed straight for the control panel. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Her bare feet were silent on the carpet as she came to stand beside him. It took all of his self-control to stop from pulling her close to him. Instead, he stabbed at the screen. And nothing happened.

  “It won’t let me access it,” he said with frustration. “It’s probably a security thing. You’d need the right code to remotely connect with it.”

  “I can’t remote access anything because of the signal jamming, but I might be able to tap into the panel and get the cameras up for us.” She waved her fingernails at him.

  Mace scanned the room. “I don’t see a keyboard around here.”

  “Keyboard? The only keyboard I’ve seen in years was the one your tech guy was using. No, I mean my nails are hardware. There are chips embedded in them. Watch.”

  She spread her hands apart, and an image appeared between them. It was of him, laughing at her. He looked happy, relaxed, delighted. Seeing it had the same effect as someone throwing a bucket of ice water over his head.

  “You recorded me?” he demanded. “You can do that?”

  “Sure. Everyone who’s implanted can record for personal use.” She tapped the space below her eye. “The camera in my lens can record or take photos. It isn’t capable of the kind of resolution the cameras on a reporter’s drone can achieve, but it’s good enough for taking notes or making memories. It’s a standard function on a basic lens. Don’t yours do that?” Her nose scrunched as she frowned at his eyes, as if she could gauge what comm lenses he wore.

  This wasn’t the time to share that he didn’t have any lenses in his eyes or, for that matter, any tech implanted in his body at all. In the territories, if a person didn’t have implants, then they didn’t belong. Even government mandates demanded that newborns were implanted within days of being born. It was the bare minimum for survival. The only people who didn’t have implants were either visitors from outside of the territories or criminals and terrorists who’d had their implants removed.

  “You can’t keep photos of me in your databanks. It’s too dangerous—for both of us. I can’t have my image getting out there.”

  She laughed at him. “I’d say after that news chopper pinned us to the ledge with its spotlight, that ship has sailed.”

  He looked down at the transparent image playing in the air between her hands. She had a point. “Have you recorded my team, too? Did you record our conversations?”

  “Not intentionally, but there might be something in there.”

  “When we get somewhere safe, you need to go through your data and eliminate all references to my team. Any information you have stored is dangerous to us.”

  “Nobody knows it’s there.” It was clear she thought he was overreacting.

  “When we get out of here, CommTECH will debrief you. That’s standard procedure. What’s to stop your boss from getting hold of the data in your head?”

  “Me, that’s what will stop her. She has no right to access my personal data storage chip without my permission. It’s a matter of privacy.” The image blinked out, and Keiko folded her arms.

  Was she really that naive? Did she really have that much faith in her company? “What happens when Miriam has someone strap you to a table and download your data, whether you like it or not?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “She wouldn’t do that. That only happens to criminals. You need a court order to mine someone’s implant without their permission.”

  Unbelievable. Was she really that clueless about who she’d been working for these past few years? “Think about it for a second. Who runs the courts? The government. And who is the government? CommTECH. Trust me when I tell you that Miriam Shepherd would have no problem at all getting all the paperwork she needed to do whatever the hell she wanted to do to you. I’ve seen the bodies to prove it.”

  With a shake of her head, she took a step away from him. Probably the most sensible thing she’d done since they’d met. “You sound like one of those obsessive conspiracy theorists who hack the media network to spread their beliefs. You’ve been listening to Freedom’s propaganda. CommTECH is the good guy. Look around you. CommTECH is under attack. We’re the victims in this.”

  “So your parents are wrong? They’re part of this conspiracy against CommTECH, too? Because they sure as hell don’t think the company is as pure as the driven snow.”

  “Leave my parents out of this. You’ve done enough damage where they’re concerned. CommTECH—Miriam—would never do anything so awful as forcibly remove my implanted data.”

  Mace lost his patience. “Do the good guys set up illegal mines in coalition countries and rape them of their resources? Do the good guys hunt down an innocent woman, just because she accidentally saw something she shouldn’t have? Something they didn’t want to be made public? Do the good guys rush a datachip into development when they know it will kill its hosts? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hosts. You’re deluded, princess. Miriam Shepherd and the rest of CommTECH don’t give a damn about your personal space or your rights. If she wants something you have, she will reach out and take it, and she won’t give a flying fuck about the consequences. Because she’s untouchable. She’s judge, jury, and executioner in this territory. And nothing—not even her precious press secretary—will stand in the way of her getting what she wants.”

  “Will yo
u just stop lying to me?” she shouted. “I work with Miriam day in, day out. One of my closest friends is a scientist in this research facility. If any of these things were going on, I’d know about them.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Because if you did, you’d be dead already.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. If she wasn’t naive, then she was willfully ignorant. “Forget it. Okay? Do your magic with the screens. I need to see what’s happening in the building.”

  “CommTECH helps people,” she said stubbornly as she faced the panel. “We provide education and jobs. We develop tech that makes the world a better place. I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you’re wrong. I know everything that’s going on in this company. I’m the one that has to put it all into layman’s terms for the public. Don’t you think I would notice if they were breaking laws left, right, and center?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think you’d notice unless it slapped you on the face. People like you, people on the privileged inside, only tend to see what they want to see. Now turn on the screens.”

  With a glare, she inserted the tip of her index fingernail into a slot on the panel, and the screens sprang to life.

  “Abigail would tell me if a dangerous datachip was about to be released,” she pointed out stubbornly.

  “Abigail specializes in lenses, not datachips,” Mace said. “And from what I’ve seen of her, I doubt she notices anything outside of her own expertise.”

  For the first time in their argument, he could see doubt in her eyes. “She isn’t that clueless,” she said, but her words lacked conviction.

  “Delete everything you have stored on your datachips that has anything to do with me or my team,” he repeated. “I don’t have your faith in CommTECH, and I want the risk gone.”