He opened his eyes to look at the numbers. He tweaked a couple settings, estimating an efficiency improvement of a thousandth of one percent. Not much, but better.
Ted always did better, especially when it came to math.
The wolves were scattered in a parking lot devoid of vehicles. They lounged on the concrete, soaking up the heat. Ted was tired. He climbed down the ladder and laid down with his pack, making himself comfortable against their shaggy coats as he went to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Chicago
Char sensed something behind her. She turned her Werewolf head to see a flare rocketing into the early morning sky. The green light slowly descended, the parachute above it invisible.
She was both relieved and angry. She had not yet found Joseph and she wanted to talk with him, recruit him to go along.
The flare meant that Akio had been in touch, was maybe even on his way. Char hadn’t told Cory to wait for her, an oversight on Char’s part.
She had to decide.
Char turned and ran toward the tallest building of the downtown, picking up speed with each stride. She didn’t care if she was seen. None of that mattered as long as Terry Henry Walton was missing.
She reached out with her senses as she ran, looking for the Forsaken that she grudgingly called a friend. Terry had seen the potential in Joseph when they first met. He’d given Joseph a chance and from then on, the Forsaken had been one of Terry’s team.
He’d been one of the pack, the ultimate tactical team. They’d never failed in a mission, although they’d left bits and pieces of themselves behind. They’d even lost one of their own. In Cheyenne Mountain, Xandrie died at the hands of a Forsaken. In China, Gene almost died after a fight with a Weretiger.
Since then, Terry had spent a great deal of time turning the wrestler into a fighter, helping him understand how best to use his strengths while limiting his weaknesses. He no longer allowed an opponent to get close.
Char couldn’t help thinking about him. Her mind started to drift.
“As big as that fucking melon is on your shoulders, you’d think there’d be a fucking brain in there bigger than a fucking walnut!” Terry had yelled. No one wanted to see Gene injured like that again.
Char realized that she was trotting. The flare was long gone. She bolted forward, picking up speed.
She was relieved when she sensed the Forsaken. He was a few stories below ground and that had been blocking his presence. She stopped in an alley, changed back into human form, and dressed.
When she walked back into the street, three young punks were there, knives out, and ready to go after the big dog they’d seen just a few moments earlier.
Terry’s Prison
Terry’s mouth was dry again, but the food and water he’d been given earlier was providing the energy his nanocytes needed. He flexed to lean down and look, finding that the wound on his stomach had closed. His muscles were still sore, but he was recovering.
“How long are we going to keep this up?” he asked the empty room. Terry flexed his knee and found that it could support his weight again. He started working his shoulders and pulling on the chains, rocking back and forth.
His wrists were sore, but he pushed the pain out of his mind. He thought about the history of prisoners of war, those who were taken in Vietnam and returned alive after up to nine years in the harshest of conditions.
They were emaciated, but they smiled as they walked toward freedom. Terry recalled the video footage in great detail. He remembered every word of the biographies--Captain Floyd Thompson, the longest held American POW ever. Nine years in captivity. How much of his life was wasted behind the bars of a North Vietnamese prison?
Terry chased the thoughts away, gritting his teeth to strain against his chains. Work them a little at a time. Every minute of every day, he would pull on the eyebolts until they started to give, then he would redouble his efforts and tear them from the wall.
He thought back to the images in his mind of the survivors. He decided that he would rather die trying to escape.
Terry Henry Walton was okay with disappointing his captor. Stockholm syndrome? No. With each passing second, he only wanted to kill the Forsaken that much more.
North Chicago
“Where’s Mother?” Cory asked impatiently. Felicity shook her head. Billy tried to calm her down.
“She’ll be here when she needs to be here,” Billy said slowly in his rough, gravelly voice. “Your mother isn’t going to abandon TH. You know that she’s doing what she needs to be doing for your father.”
Cory looked at the old man seated in a rocking chair. The sound of dogs barking filled the air.
Dogs were always barking in North Chicago. Clyde’s descendants were every bit as vocal and happy as the old coonhound had been. The dog guaranteed his legacy when he had taken over the pack left behind by the circus-wagon Forsaken.
Cory had only been a baby back then.
A scrappy coonhound-mix pup ran into Mayor’s Park and started to squat. “You stop that!” Billy tried to yell before coughing himself silly. Felicity ran after it, but the dog finished his business and ran circles around Felicity. The community had put the tools to clean up the inevitable messes nearby.
The mayor took care of the dog’s healthy dump. She looked, but no one was there. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled. “Whoever is responsible for that mangy cur, you owe me!”
Cory tried not to make eye contact with the mayor. She walked down the stairs to the mayor’s building. The pup ran to her, putting his front paws on her thighs and expecting to get his ears scratched.
“Yours?” Felicity asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Afraid so. I guess I could have stopped you and taken over,” she suggested.
“Guess so,” Felicity replied, before slapping the taller woman on the back and continuing up the steps.
“Look what you did, Clovis. You got me in trouble with the mayor!” Cory corrected the dog, but in a playful voice. She needed to be stricter, as Sue kept telling her. The pup was eight months old and getting bigger by the minute. She wondered how big he was going to get.
Her father had an innate love for canines of all sorts, dogs or wolves. It didn’t matter. “Man’s best friend!” Terry would yell from anywhere, usually earning himself a punch from his wife. Cory smiled, thinking of her parents. Her father had been taken and her mother was off on a private mission to find anything or anyone who could help them.
The tears threatened to fall. She wasn’t prone to crying. Crying had never helped her with anything. Charumati taught her that physical activity was the cure for tears. That was why Char made such an effective pack leader, the alpha dog, because if she got too frustrated, someone would get their ass kicked.
Cory felt the adrenaline flowing through her veins. She couldn’t wait to unleash her anger on those who had caused her family such pain.
***
“Company, Ah-ten-shun!” Mark bellowed, using his diaphragm to project the words in the compound between the barracks and Claire’s Diner. The Force de Guerre snapped to attention.
Nearly one hundred men and women were split between four platoons. The only constant was the physical fitness demanded of the Force de Guerre. They needed to be able to function in any environment, carrying any load. Everything else was secondary. From young to old, all shapes and sizes filled the ranks.
“Report!” Lieutenant Blackbeard ordered from his position in front. The platoon sergeants each reported all present. He executed a sharp salute, followed by an about face. He saluted the captain. “All present.”
Mark saluted back. He stepped close to Blackbeard. They’d served together a long time, but they were getting older.
“One last hurrah, Blackie,” Mark said in a low voice, not wanting the others to hear. “Somebody took the colonel and we need to go get him. Let’s see who measures up, see who’s next in line to lead these fine warriors.”
Blackie didn’t
move. He was contemplating the fact that Colonel Walton had been taken. “Who could pull that off?” he finally asked.
“Forsaken. The colonel killed eight of them, if I heard right. But Akio will come and get us and then we’ll go get him,” Mark replied, looking past the lieutenant. “Let me talk to our people.”
Blackbeard stepped aside, opening the way for Mark to address the Force.
“Who’s up for a rescue mission?” Mark belted out.
Oorahs and cheers answered him.
“The colonel’s been taken by a bunch of Forsaken and we need to go get him. Any of you goofy fuckers wanna stay home?” The cheering stopped and there was a brief silence.
“Fuck no!” somebody yelled from within the formation. Mark would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so dire.
“We have no idea about anything except that Akio will bring the pods. We’ll load up everything we can, and then we’ll hunt those bastards down.”
Mark stepped back. “Platoon Sergeants, front and center,” he ordered. The four at the front of the formation hustled to reach the captain. Sergeants Boris, Allen, Allison, and Nickles reported smartly. The platoon sergeants were young, a newer generation of warrior. All of them had been born during the time of the rebuilding.
Gunnery Sergeant Lacy was there, too, as the company gunny. Jim and some of the other originals were in the back row. They were too old or too broken to keep up. They’d surrendered their positions to younger, more capable warriors, but they were always ready to go and for a mission like this, they wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“Inspect your people. We need a good variety of weapons and equipment, because we don’t know anything. They could be in the greatest fortress known to man or they could be in a paper shack in the middle of the Wasteland. If it’s the fortress? We need to be able to breach it. Fix your load out and get ready to move to Mayor’s Park and wait for pickup. Questions?”
Nobody had any.
“Go.”
Mark pulled Blackie aside as the platoon sergeants got to work. “Nothing is more important than this, Lieutenant,” Mark emphasized.
His words were unnecessary. They saluted each other and went their separate ways, each committed to their jobs. Gunnery Sergeant Lacy, affectionately called Gunny in the style of the old Marine Corps, joined Blackie to map out the deployment plan and to inject their own preferences into the equipment load outs.
Chicago
“Hot mama! What brings you to our side of town?” the first young tough asked, presenting a knife blade and making a show of licking it. The other two laughed and nodded.
“No time for the likes of you. Get the fuck out of my way,” Char growled.
“Kiss your baby with that mouth?” the young man taunted. He spoke over his shoulder. “Grab her.”
The other two hooted as they rushed in, each heading for an arm. Char was thinking the same thing. She only needed one arm to deal with the likes of them.
She balanced on the balls of her feet, flexing in anticipation. As they came within arm’s reach, she rushed forward, grabbing each young man by his throat. Char picked them off the ground and slammed their heads together. She let them both drop to the ground.
“I told you that I had no time. Now take these two and leave this place,” she ordered with a half-growl.
The young man wasn’t going to give up that easily. He turned the blade point forward and charged. Char dodged the clumsy attack, blocked the knife away from her, and with her follow through, she elbowed the man in the face so hard that it snapped his neck.
His head flopped sideways on his shoulders as his dead body fell across the other two.
“Won’t you be surprised when you wake up,” she told them as she ran to the front door, through it, and down the stairs. She’d been there many times before.
She knew the way.
She also knew the code to get into Joseph’s chambers, but she didn’t need to use it. He was waiting for her. By the time Char arrived six levels down, he was walking toward her, having already explored her mind and seen the urgency.
“There’s no time to waste,” he told her as he hurried past her. She turned and followed him. They ran up the stairs, through the lobby, and out the door. The three men were where she’d left them.
“Your handiwork?” he asked.
“They were in my way,” she replied.
“Clearly,” he agreed. Together, they ran like the wind for North Chicago.
CHAPTER SIX
Terry’s Prison
Terry pulled himself from his meditation, feeling much better. Kirkus was standing there, looking at him.
“What’s for breakfast, huggy muffins?” Terry said casually, not surprised at how silently the Forsaken moved. It didn’t matter. Terry couldn’t do anything about the Forsaken’s movements.
Terry wasn’t going to watch the corridor like a psychopath, fixating on the anticipation of the next visit, the next bout of pain that would be inflicted. It was a self-defeating approach, mind and soul-crushing.
And that wasn’t how TH lived his life.
“So, you think you can break the eyebolts from the wall?” Kirkus said casually, staying out of his prisoner’s reach as he checked the chains and the attachments. “I honestly don’t know if you can or not, but I’ll keep checking. We simply cannot have you running free in here.”
“In here? Where would that be, you warthog-faced buffoon, you miserable vomitous mass?” Terry smiled pleasantly, flexing his shoulders to keep them limber, just in case.
“Honestly, TH, I thought you would be more intellectual than quoting bad movies,” Kirkus replied.
Terry rattled his chains. His lip curled and he yelled, “Hey! There’s a line that you just don’t cross. Why do you have to use such hurtful words?”
Terry chuckled at his joke.
Kirkus spun and kicked the prisoner in the abdomen, where the muscles were still knitting back together. Terry gasped and fought the urge to power puke. He calmed his breathing. As soon as he took his second slow, deep breath, the Forsaken kicked him again.
There wasn’t much of Terry’s meal remaining in his stomach, but it spewed forth. He arced it, trying to get some on the Forsaken, but Kirkus moved lithely out of the way, similar to Akio. Despite some of the best efforts of baby Cory, Akio had never gotten puke on him.
Terry’s shoulders ached as he’d been thrown backward by the Forsaken’s power. Terry struggled to get his feet back under him, but his stomach muscles protested, suggesting that he should stay doubled over. He ignored their protests and forced himself upright, managing a smile along with it.
“Is that all you got, little man?” Terry taunted.
“As you wish,” Kirkus replied.
Terry was in the middle of saying “Touché” when the next blow landed. Two minutes later, Terry’s shoulder had popped back out of the socket and he hung like a limp rag, sweat running from him in small streams.
Kirkus left the room, leaving the door open and the lights on. It was the next step in getting Terry Henry Walton to watch the corridor in anticipation of pain.
It might take a while for Terry to fixate on the anticipation, but Kirkus didn’t care. He had time. Kirkus’s was the superior mind and with that, the entire world was his laboratory in which to work.
A shadow darkened the doorway as the servant entered, carrying a tray of food and a pitcher of water.
Beijing
Akio set the pod for maximum acceleration. He steeled himself against the forces imparted on his body as the ship raced from China back to Japan. The short trip ended with the pod landing and Akio jogging impatiently from it.
Once in his command center, he engaged Eve to search for the aircraft. If the Forsaken had a pod, he expected he’d be able to find it because of its unique technological signature. He’d searched for such technology after Bethany Anne left, but that was long ago.
The worst case that kept coming to the fore of his mind was that
someone had used the Queen Bitch’s absence to their advantage, coming to Earth for whatever reasons drove them.
He sat on his meditation pillow while Eve and the computers worked. He needed to clear the pre-conceived notions from his mind so they didn’t distract him from the mission at hand. First order of business was to find Terry Henry Walton. Second, collect Char and the others. Third, ruin someone’s day, but they should have expected that by taking the one man who strove to bring humanity back to civilization.
Akio wondered if the lost pod had been recovered. They’d looked for it after the events with the Sacred Clan, but it had never materialized. Akio hadn’t thought about that missing pod in over fifty years.
“There are two blimps in the skies over Europe,” Eve reported emotionlessly. “One over China and one outside the city of New York.”
Akio didn’t respond. Yuko sat patiently, waiting for the information that Akio was looking for.
“Eve. Factor in the notification from the Forsaken for the last raid. Analyze how the information came to us and use that as a base signature. That was a diversion to get me out of the way for their main effort, which was to seize Terry Henry. I am convinced of it. The Forsaken are rebuilding a global network,” Akio stated, speaking slowly as he thought through the implication of his words.
That meant communications. China was in touch with someone else. If they were in the area, then the long flight over or around Japan would have been obvious to the satellites that Akio could access.
It was taking time, and Akio knew that the longer it took, the colder the trail would become.
He opened his eyes and activated his communication device. Cordelia answered immediately. “We are searching for your father with all the resources at our disposal. We will dispatch the pods shortly so we are in position when we find him,” Akio explained.
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