Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3)

by Furlong-Burr, Sara

  “Celaine,” Jill said through gritted teeth while Starla’s eyes widened with fear. Slowly—probably a little too slowly considering the circumstances—I dropped the gun back down to my side and apologized to Starla.

  “I packed your usual,” Starla said to Jill, her voice shaking. “Canned meats, peanut butter, a few loaves of bread, water, and various other canned goods. I’m sorry, but it’s all I can afford to spare at the moment.”

  “That’s quite okay,” Jill said. “Your generosity—no matter what the quantity—means the world to us.”

  “The bags are at the back door,” Starla said. “Please take them and leave the premises before one of those soldiers comes back and I’m forced to lie to them.”

  “Thank you for accommodating us, Starla, you’re a life saver,” Jill said.

  “Just do me a favor next time and leave trigger-happy there home.” Starla pointed at me. Jill whipped her head around and shot me a look somewhere between embarrassed and I’m going to kill you when we get home.

  “You’ll have to excuse her, she’s been through a lot,” Jill said. “It’s made her not quite right in the head, if you know what I mean.” She lowered her voice, obviously forgetting—or not caring—that my enhanced hearing meant that I could still hear her.

  “Explains a lot,” Starla said, shooting me a sympathetic smile.

  I smiled back as though I was blissfully unaware of what was going on. Starla motioned toward the exit, and Jill opened the door, cautiously assessing the back of the building and the back alley we’d walked in from. She looked back at us and nodded.

  Our way back to the alleyway where we’d separated with the others was unexpectedly uneventful, a blessing considering the extra baggage we were carrying. Still, I had a nagging sensation in the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right; this had all been far too easy. As hard as I tried to shake it, the feeling refused to leave me, gnawing at my mind, a cancer that couldn’t be cured. And I would have chalked it up to paranoia, to being in an unfamiliar place with people I barely knew, if not for the gasp emitted by Jill as we rounded the corner to turn into the alley.

  On the ground, lying in a pool of blood from an obvious wound to the side of his abdomen, was Brad. Next to him, Britta tended to him as best she could, in obvious distress.

  “What happened?” Jill asked, running over to Brad and dropping down to her knees at his side.

  “Soldiers. Ambush. Stabbed him,” was all Britta could get out.

  I looked around the alleyway, my heart sinking into my stomach. “Where’s Ian?” I asked Britta. She remained silent, instead staring stoically down at Brad, her bloodied hands covering his wound. “Answer me, Britta,” I said, demanding her to snap out of her trance. No answer. Infuriated, I stomped over to her, knelt down, and more gently than I wanted to, forced her head up with my hand until we were face-to-face. “Britta, please,” I said, practically begging her as I staved off the tears forming in my eyes. “Please, answer me. What happened to Ian?”

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  My hand fell limply to my side. Britta’s head dropped back down and faced the ground again. “What did you say?” I asked, bile rising in my throat. “Britta, what happened to him? Where is he? What do you mean?”

  “He’s gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Betrayal

  “Is he?” I tried asking Britta the only question that came to mind, but the word, that one soul-crushing, heartbreaking word, became trapped in my throat as though my tongue refused to speak it for fear it would breathe life into it. “Dead?” I managed to eke out, but not before my body nearly crumpled the rest of the way to the ground in the process. “You saw him, then? You know for a fact he’s gone?”

  “No,” Britta said. “Not dead, just gone. He ran off, led the soldiers away from us. I don’t know where he is. He’s gone.”

  Relief, so sudden and great I thought my heart would give out from the upswing, poured over me. “Oh, thank God,” I said, leaning against a wall to keep my legs from buckling. “Seriously, Britta, you can’t say things like that.” She remained silent, hunched over Brad, most likely not having heard a word I just said.

  “We need to move him back to base,” Jill said.

  I stood up and walked toward the street to peer out along the crumbling concrete roadway. “I’m going to find Ian.”

  “What? Celaine, no, you can’t.” I turned around to see Jill struggling to lift Brad up from the alleyway. “Seriously, he’s dead weight and between the sulking dead over here and Drake, who weighs a buck twenty soaking wet, there is no way I’m going to be able to move him back to base. We need your help.”

  “And what about Ian?” I asked, furious. “Are we just going to leave him out there to fend for himself against who knows what? What if the soldiers caught him, imprisoned him, and are now torturing him? I can’t just turn my back on him and hope he shows up later.”

  “Really, and what do you think Ian would want you to do, Celaine? Go out there alone and put yourself in danger? Better yet, what do you think Ian would do?” Jill asked, struggling once more to lift Brad from off the concrete. “Besides, you have no idea what direction he ran. He could be anywhere in the city and perfectly fine right now, which is more than I can say about Brad.”

  Reluctantly, I took one last look back at the street, hoping beyond hope that Ian would come running into view. But all that was there to be seen was the vast emptiness of the abandoned store fronts. With a sigh and torn beyond belief over leaving Ian in the Capitol to fend for himself, I walked over to Brad, lifted him up and propped the bulk of his body against my back, leaving his legs to drag on the ground.

  “Yeah, I was about to do that,” Jill said, clearly in awe.

  “He must weigh twice what you do,” Drake added. “How much can you bench, anyway?”

  “As much as I have to.” With Brad securely on my back, I began to walk in the direction of the bed and breakfast. “Drake,” I called back to the others behind me without stopping, “will you and Jill please help Britta up so that we can get going? The sooner we get them back, the sooner I can go out looking for Ian.”

  *****

  A knock on the door roused President Carver Brooks from his review of the surveillance footage from around the city. “I thought I asked to be left alone,” he grumbled.

  “I apologize, sir,” the voice of Sid, one of his aides, said from the other side. “But there’s someone here I think you’ll be very interested in speaking with.”

  Carver raised his eyebrow and turned the video off with a sigh. “Okay, Sid, you have my attention, but only for a few minutes.”

  The door opened, revealing Sid, dressed in his usual freshly-pressed suit and neatly slicked-back hair. Behind him, a blindfolded man also entered the room, a gun pressed to his back by the soldier bringing up the rear of their short convoy.

  “A rebel?” Carver asked.

  “Yes,” Sid said. “He showed up about an hour ago when he presented himself to a group of soldiers down the block.”

  “And I’m assuming he was thoroughly searched and blindfolded well before you decided to bring him down here for this little field trip?”

  “Of course, sir, we made sure all those details were taken care of before we made the trip to the bunker.”

  “I never should have doubted you, Sid. You’ve always been one of my more loyal employees,” he said, standing up to stand face to face with their captive. “Now, what can I do for Mr. Rebel here?”

  “He says he wants to cash in on the bounty, sir.”

  “Does he now?” Carver’s lips curved upward into a grin that he couldn’t control if he tried. “Well, does he realize that I need to have the subjects of the bounty in custody before I will even think of allowing him to cash in, so to speak?”

  “And you will,” the still-blindfolded man spoke confidently. “I know right where you can find them. The only thing I ask is that no one else gets hurt in the process of
their apprehension.”

  “Well, young man, you certainly have some audacity to even think that I can be bargained with in that way. Sid, please remove the blindfold so that this gentleman can look me in the eyes when he makes his requests.”

  Sid obediently untied the cloth covering the man’s eyes. Upon its removal, the man blinked, rubbing his eyes to adjust to the sudden stream of light. They widened as he caught a glimpse of Carver for the first time; a profound fear replaced the cockiness that fled from them, never to return.

  “That’s better,” Carver said, eyeing the man thoughtfully. “Now tell me, rebel, what is your name?”

  “Max,” he said, his voice shaking just enough to be discerned.

  “Max,” Carver let the name roll off his tongue. “Well, Max, how do you know the whereabouts of the superheroes in question?”

  “They joined the rebellion not long ago and are staying with us back at base, an old bed and breakfast on the north side of town.”

  “Okay,” Carver said, “my next question is, why are you doing this? Surely, you must know that giving up their whereabouts—allowing my soldiers to apprehend them—is going to anger the others somewhat profusely.”

  “I know. It’s something I’ve been grappling with since you made the announcement. But after putting a lot of thought into it and taking into consideration everything I’ve been through over the last several months, I’ve come to the conclusion that I must look out for my best interests for once.”

  “Oh, and your leader, Marshall Leitner, is it? Has he not been looking out for your best interests?”

  “In the beginning he was a great leader, but after the address I began to question his authority, his poor decision making. We’re beaten. Marshall knows it. The rest of them know it, too—they just don’t want to admit it to themselves. The only hope the rebellion has is lost in the future somewhere, and even that seems bleak.”

  “So, instead of dying for your convictions, you’d rather turn your back on everyone you’ve ever known, your friends, family, and whoever else has been working with you to support this misguided cause of yours, in exchange for saving your own skin?”

  “I prefer to look at it as coming to my senses, a willingness to admit that I was wrong, and a desire to change for the better.”

  Carver laughed as he turned to walk back to the chair behind his desk. “I certainly like your answers, Max,” he said, sitting down and propping his feet up on his desk. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of scotch, setting it and two shot glasses down on the mahogany desktop. “Drink?” he asked, filling up one of the glasses.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Suit yourself.” Carver opened the drawer, threw the bottle and empty glass back inside and took the shot he’d already poured. “You know, Max, you seem like my kind of man—exactly the sort of person I want to have by my side to weather the shit storm your comrades have caused. Throw in some information, some organizational details about the rebellion, and I think we could potentially have ourselves a deal—as soon as those superheroes are apprehended, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Now, I want you to go back to that base you spoke of and act like we never had this little conversation tonight. Everything is to be very business as usual, do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Perfect. I’ll soon be dispatching a company of my men to ambush the two fugitives and bring them into custody—”

  “Wait, why so many of them? Surely, you wouldn’t need that many soldiers just to bring two people down?”

  “You can’t be serious, Max? Because up until five seconds ago you seemed like a pretty reasonable man to me. You’ve seen them, what they can do, and you still believe that they couldn’t easily dispatch a dozen or so of my soldiers? Why, I wouldn’t even conceive of sending any fewer than a hundred of my men and women out there. Do you have a problem with that—with the way I propose we handle things?”

  “No, but I just—I just don’t want any of the others hurt in the process.”

  “I will make sure to give my soldiers strict instructions not to harm a hair on anyone else’s head unprovoked, but I cannot sit here and tell you that I am going to expect them to just take whatever fire is being flung at them by your associates. If they are fired upon, I expect they would retaliate. Are you okay with that, or should I just call this whole deal off right now?”

  Max looked down at the floor as a myriad of potential scenarios played out inside his head. “It sounds acceptable,” he said. “After they are apprehended, then what? What becomes of me?”

  “I will instruct them to ‘apprehend’ you as well,” he said, making notations with his fingers as he spoke the word ‘apprehend.’ “That way, you don’t look like a complete traitor in their eyes, and I can still get what I want. When they bring you back here, we’ll discuss the details of your earnings.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “That’s me. Fair as a summer’s day.” Brooks smiled, extending his arm across the desk. “Do we have a deal, Max?”

  “Yes,” Max said, taking his hand and shaking it. “We have a deal.”

  *****

  “What happened?” A rush of rebels greeted us when we entered the base.

  “Brad, Britta and Ian were ambushed,” Jill said, still helping Britta along. “Brad was stabbed and Britta lost her freaking mind.”

  I carried Brad over to a couch and gently lay him down, where he was tended to by Jill and another rebel whose name I was uncertain of, though I’d heard he’d been a doctor before joining the rebellion. Together, they cut Brad’s shirt off and began ordering everyone and anyone within earshot to fetch various supplies.

  “And what happened to Ian? Where is he?” a woman called Dawn asked.

  Jill answered her, taking pity on me. “We don’t know. He apparently led the soldiers away and hasn’t returned yet.”

  “Oh.” Jill’s answer seemed to have satisfied Dawn for now.

  “Do we still have antibiotics?” the former doctor asked.

  “I think so,” Drake said, turning to run toward the back, presumably to check their supply.

  “Celaine,” Jill said, “would you mind running up to my room and grabbing my suture kit? It’s in the top drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. My door should be unlocked.”

  I nodded and turned to run up the stairs, selfishly wishing I’d slipped out unseen after positioning Brad on the couch. With every step I made, all I could think about was Ian. Where he was, whether he was okay or not. My mind wouldn’t rest, wouldn’t stop projecting a litany of scenarios in my head. No matter how hard I tried to push them away, they kept coming back. He was out there somewhere, and I had to find him or I’d literally drive myself crazy.

  I entered Jill’s room and headed directly to the nightstand, finding the suture kit in the velvet-lined drawer where she said it would be. Without wasting any time, I snatched it from the drawer and bounded out of the room with the intention of handing it to Jill and then promptly leaving base before anyone noticed what I was doing. But as I made my way downstairs, I noticed a strange commotion, frantic, as though Brad had taken a turn for the worse. With each step I took, the commotion grew louder and louder, becoming a crescendo of utter madness by the time I reached the bottom of the staircase.

  Amidst the ruckus, a moan broke through, though it didn’t sound like Brad. No, it was a moan from a familiar voice, obviously strained and in a great deal of pain. My heart beat frantically as though it were attempting to claw its way out of my chest, the identity of the source of those moans already known to it and the depths of my soul.

  “It’s okay, Ian,” Jill said, worried. “She made it back with us and should be back down here in a minute.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hero

  “And you designed all of this yourself? This is your program?” Kara asked Cameron as they sat in the simulation room.

  “Yeah, I’ve
been designing software and coming up with different programs for gaming since I was a teenager,” he said proudly.

  “That’s incredible. You’re really something of a savant. No wonder Victor selected you to run the simulator.” Cameron winced at the mention of Victor. “What—what does this do?” she asked, quickly trying to change the subject, resting her hand on his arm.

  “Oh, that,” he said, his mood perking back up. “It’s the avatar designer where I get to play mad scientist and come up with designs for the bad guys in each of my simulations.”

  “Incredible.” Kara glanced up at Drew, who stared back at her, an eyebrow raised in perplexion.

  “I know, right? Here,” he said as he stood up from his chair, “let me go back to my room to grab the discs that contain some of my original programs from way back in the day. If you like what I’ve done now, you’ll love seeing some of my older work.”

  “Great,” Kara said, gritting her teeth together. She watched him leave the simulation room, putting her head in her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t know whether I can take any more of this.”

  “Then why are you doing it?” Drew asked. “Hell, I was actually beginning to think you were enjoying yourself. I contemplated asking you whether pickin’s were really that slim on the outside that Cameron was now actually looking good to you.”

  “Don’t make me throw this laptop at you, Drew. And, no, I’d much rather remain single, thank you.”

  “Okay, well, why are you doing this then? Why are you spending all your time with him, feigning interest in his life, if you really have no interest in it at all?”