Several seconds passed, infuriating her further. She paced in front of the door, her hand raised as though contemplating whether to knock on it once more, but deciding against it at the last possible second. “If they don’t answer in one minute,” she said, “I say we move out, because—” The door opened before she could finish her sentence. On the other side of it stood a man just a hair taller than Jill. He had the beginnings of a beard that, in the dark, cast more of a shadow on his long face, which was framed by a shock of dark hair that had the appearance of having just been slept on.
“Jill,” he said with a smile as he inspected her thoughtfully.
“Well, someone has certainly let themselves go,” she said. He chuckled as though her comment had been more of an expectation than a surprise. “Thanks for keeping us stranded out here before you finally decided to answer the door, asshole. Any longer and the soldiers would have come around and shot our brains out.”
“I missed you, too, Jill,” he said, wiping the remnants of sleep away from his eyes before letting out a yawn. “I would have tried calling you, but the whole no electricity thing kind of killed that.” She scowled at him. And for a brief moment, I thought I saw her hand hover over the gun secured to her belt.
“That explains why she was less than thrilled with the idea of coming here,” I muttered to Ian, who laughed softly to himself.
“I’m Aron by the way, everyone,” he said. “Asshole works too, but you may find several other people answering to it if you call that out here.” He opened the door wider and motioned for us to come inside. “Mi casa es tu casa,” he said, letting another yawn escape.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you tell all the ladies,” Jill said as she blew past him without a second glance. He rolled his eyes and allowed her to pass by him unchallenged.
“Go ahead and follow the inexplicably angry woman,” he said. “I’ll stay back and lock up after everyone’s safely inside.”
One by one, we all filtered inside the warehouse, which was just as dark as it had appeared from the outside. When we entered through the back door, a narrow expanse of darkness greeted us, only wide enough to allow us to traipse through it in single file. At the end of the dark expanse, a light shown as though it had been propped against the wall to show us that, yes, there really was a light at the end of the tunnel, after all. A part of me appreciated the metaphor.
When we reached the end of the tunnel, we turned and entered the large open room of the warehouse. On each side of the room, tall, metallic shelving units, originally built to store pallets of merchandise, lined the walls, creating several aisles. But, instead of housing pallets, several of the units had been cordoned off with rope and bits of cloth, creating room-like structures that contained clothing, backpacks, and other belongings from the rebels they housed. In some of the units, rebels lay sleeping, completely unaware of our presence.
“They made the shelves into mini apartments,” Ian observed. “Gotta admire the innovation.”
In the middle of the room, another group of rebels stood around a table made out of several wooden pallets placed together in a line. On the table sat an array of boxed cereals and canned fruits, centered around a hot plate that was being used to cook scrambled eggs. As we approached, the rebels looked up, some of them recognizing and greeting the other members of our group.
“Welcome to our base,” the rebel operating the hot plate said. “I’m Nicholas, the informal commander of this unit.” He was tall with a receding hairline and a friendly smile that made me feel comfortable in his presence as though my subconscious had instantly made up its mind to trust him. “Given your premature arrival, it stands to reason that something bad has happened to your group?” Silently, several of the rebels and former soldiers in our group nodded their heads. He acknowledged our answer as he took a quick scan of our group, noticeably looking for someone. “Marshall?” he asked. “Has something happened to Marshall?” His question was met by further silence, which was all the acknowledgement he needed.
“Brooks probably already has his execution all planned out and the date set,” he said. He set his spatula down and turned off the hot plate. An empty chair sat next to where he stood, and it was all he could do not to collapse into its canvas seat as he took in the consequences the events of the night had presented. “All right, then.” A new resolve was reflected in his otherwise stoic eyes. “If Brooks wants to make a statement, we’ll just have to make sure our voices drown out his.” Nicholas glanced up from the table at his followers spread out around the room. “In light of recent developments, our demonstration will be moved up. We will show Brooks that we will not go down without a fight, that none of our men or women will be executed for his amusement. We will not be minimalized to nothing more than words uttered from the lips of that man in a public statement, or by the examples he’s made of our fallen brethren. No, in a matter of days, we will march on Brooks’ turf and show him that our voices will never be silenced. In just mere hours, we will go to war.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Ruminations of Victor Black
Twenty-six years ago…
“I swear he’s out to get me,” Victor said. He turned the knob to the lock on his locker, groaning when he overshot the last number and had to restart the process all over again.
“Who? Dr. Grant?” George Stevens asked, pulling his bright green scrubs off over his head. “Come on, Vic, you should feel flattered that Phillip Grant feels threatened enough by you to want you transferred out of here. It shows just how good you are at your job.”
“I know that, George,” he said. Victor lifted the latch up on his locker, opened the door, and paused, letting the door shield his face.
“But?” George asked.
“But what?” He removed the same bright green scrub shirt and the long-sleeved white shirt he’d been wearing for the last several weeks, and threw them to the floor inside the locker.
“We’ve known each other long enough now for me to be able to tell when there’s something you’re hiding, when there’s more to the story than meets the eye. So are you going to tell me what’s going on now, or do I have to wait until later? Because if there’s something Phillip knows or is threatening you with, I’d like to know about it before I’m called into some meeting.” Victor remained standing, shielded by the door to his locker as though he was trying to hide from the world. “Victor, you can talk to me. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll understand, and I’ll always stick up for you. You know that.”
Victor sighed; his shoulders sagged as though George’s words had somehow loosened the tension keeping his muscles flexed. “As much as I’d love to share the details of my life with you, my friend, I’m afraid even you may not be able to understand everything there is to know about me.”
“Try me.” George slid a blue t-shirt over his head and sat on the bench that ran down the middle of the room and separated the two rows of lockers. “Trust me, my level of understanding stretches quite far.”
“Okay.” Victor closed his locker, revealing the bare skin of his back. “For starters, there’s this.” He turned around to face George, whose eyes grew wide as the small pinpoint puncture wounds that dotted Victor’s arms came into view.
“Well, that certainly explains why you’re always wearing long sleeves. What are you doing to yourself, Victor?” George grabbed his arm and inspected the injection points. “Is it drugs? Medications? Look at all these marks. Fresh ones, older ones.” He let go of his arm and slumped back down on the bench. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not addicted to anything, if that’s what your line of questioning is implying.” He snatched a sweatshirt from the hook in his locker and hastily threw it on as he joined George on the bench.
“Then what?”
“Throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded by death. Death caused by cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, to name a few perpetrators. I’ve lost my father, mother, sister, and many others, until
my immediate family was basically wiped out, leaving only me as a testament to their ever having existed on this planet. Their bodies betrayed them, sending their spirits to an early grave.” He moved the door to his locker with his foot, focusing on that instead of the pity in his friend’s eyes. He’d seen that look in the eyes of others so many times throughout his life that it made him sick, further reminding him that he’d lost more than them, that he had been branded as nothing more than a victim. I am not a victim. I am more than just a figure cowering in the corner, he’d repeated in his head numerous times before, finally adopting it as his mantra.
“Death is inevitable, Victor. Although what you’ve been through at a young age is a tragedy, we’ll all be where you are eventually. Life isn’t defined by length, it’s defined by substance. How someone lived their life is far more important than the number of years they had or didn’t have.”
“What if death didn’t have to be inevitable?” Victor asked, ignoring everything else that George had said.
“That’s a nice dream, but our bodies were designed to die.”
“But what if we could rebuild them so that they weren’t? What if we could alter our own DNA to keep us alive, to fight off disease, and give us strength and endurance far beyond what our own biology could produce? We could cheat death, lengthen our lives—perhaps indefinitely. There would be no more pain, no more suffering.”
“Are you talking about immortality? Turning a human into a sort of superhuman? That’s impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. People here and across the country are just too scared to attempt it. They accept conventional medicine as being the only way instead of trying to find a better way. This is the way, George. I’ve seen the results myself, I just need more time to continue my research. I need to perfect it and then they will see there are other possibilities out there. We can eradicate disease.”
“What do you mean by, ‘I’ve seen the results myself?’”
“I’ve noticed an increase in my stamina, a deceased need for sleep; my muscles are becoming more defined by the day, and I feel almost as though my adrenaline has increased exponentially, or maybe it’s just my body changing. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m not the same person anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” George agreed. “So, this is what you’ve been doing, experimenting on yourself because you think you’re going to somehow unlock the secrets to living forever? You’re a brilliant man, but even you have to admit the insanity of it all.” George stood up from the bench and leaned his body against his locker door.
“I’m not performing procedures on only myself. There are things that are just too invasive for me to be able to do on my own body. I have a handful of patients of my own. People whom our own hospital has cast aside, telling them there is nothing they can do for them. They were given mere months to live and no hope for tomorrow.” He stood up to fetch his messenger bag from his locker and closed the door. The back of George’s head remained facing him, unmoving. “But I’ve been able to treat them,” he began again. “I’ve helped them regain some of their strength and quality of life. A couple of them are no longer confined to their hospital beds. Most have surpassed their original life expectancies. What I am doing here is making a difference.”
“No, what you are doing here is illegal.” George turned around to face him. The pitying look he’d held moments earlier was replaced with disgust. “You’re performing surgical procedures in your home as an employee of Hope Memorial, you’re using hospital equipment and medications, telling these people you can cure them. You’re giving them hope that’s not there. Not only is that wrong from a legal standpoint, it’s also wrong from an ethical standpoint. Not to mention, by telling me what you’re doing, I’m essentially a party now and could lose my license if you’re caught and someone finds out I knew all about it and did nothing.” He paced the floor next to the bench, his mind spinning through the possibilities. “Does Dr. Grant know about this? Is this why you think he’s out to get you as you stated?”
“He caught me putting supplies and boxes of medications into a backpack. All he knows right now is that I’m most likely stealing from the hospital, nothing else.”
“Nothing else? That’s plenty. It’s enough for him to call the authorities, to have your home searched and for them to discover what you’re doing. When that happens, that’s it, you’re done. You’ll never practice in another medical establishment again.” He stopped pacing and braced himself against his locker again. “Look, I think your intentions are admirable, I really do, but the way you’re going about them is nothing short of criminal, and I won’t be a party to it. I have too much at stake.”
“So you’re going to turn on me and abandon me like everyone else in my life? I thought we held the same ideals and a genuine love of all the possibilities found in the practice of medicine.”
“No, you turned on yourself. You aren’t practicing medicine, you’re conducting science experiments that are going to end up seriously injuring, if not killing someone. In this case, you’re your own worst enemy, Victor. No one else. And I have a moral obligation not only to this hospital and those patients, but to myself and my family.” George turned and walked down the row of lockers on his way to the door, pausing before he reached the end of the bench. “I’m sorry, my friend.”
“No, you’re not sorry now. However, if you turn me in and cause me to lose my license and my research, you will be. You and anyone else remotely responsible for my downfall. I promise you.”
*****
Victor sat in his recliner in the living room of his apartment, drink in hand. Memories of the past replayed in his head. You were sorry, weren’t you, George? He couldn’t help but think as he leaned back in his chair and smiled. In the end, after he’d successfully hunted them down one by one, they’d all been sorry for what they’d done to him. It may have taken some time, years of tracking them all down after some of them had retired and moved away from the area, but in the end, he was able to look them all in the eyes before they died. All of them except Dr. Phillip Grant, who had died in a car crash. Every one of them but Dr. Grant was able to look him in the eyes when he removed his mask. Every one of them knew that he would have the last laugh. They may have been responsible for the end of his career, but he had been responsible for the end of their lives.
And it wasn’t just them. Over the years, he’d kept track of their families, offering some of them jobs at The Epicenter, which they had readily accepted because their grief wouldn’t allow them to do otherwise. Then there were the others, Ian, Blake, Celaine, Liam, and the others who he’d turned into the very things their relatives had tried to prevent him from creating.
He chuckled softly at the beauty of it all and the devastation yet to come. Soon the final nail in the Stevens’ family coffin would be driven in to seal it forever. Any trace of George Stevens’ existence in the world would be eradicated, making it as though he’d never existed, and in the process, a piece of Phillip Grant would be taken with her in the form of the son of the brother he’d disassociated himself from so many years prior.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Secrets and Lies
Kara sat reading a magazine on the couch in the sitting room. A cushion away from her, Cameron relaxed with his feet propped up on an ottoman, flipping through the television channels.
“Back up,” Drew said as Cameron passed by a channel featuring news coverage of a skirmish in the Capitol.
“Why?” he asked. “It’s just going to be more of the same.”
Drew glanced over at Kara, who met his gaze. “Man, just flip back to the station for a couple of minutes.”
Cameron sighed, complying before Drew had a chance to swipe the remote from his hand. On the screen, a ball of flames appeared to be consuming a building. Below the footage of the building’s fiery demise was a caption informing the audience that Marshall Leitner had been captured three days prior and the rebels had been sent fleeing into the night.
>
“It’s about time they caught him,” Cameron said, drawing a scowl from Kara, which she kept hidden behind the pages of Cosmopolitan. “I wonder whether Celaine and Ian were there.”
Kara and Drew remained silent, their eyes focused on the screen and the ensuing coverage. Tense, Kara discreetly chewed on the nail of her index finger until a message flashed across the screen indicating that there had been no notable fatalities. Relieved, she relaxed, letting out the breath she’d been holding as she returned to her magazine.
“It’s a wonder we haven’t heard any kind of announcement from Brooks about his capture,” Drew said. “I imagine it’s only a matter of time before an execution is scheduled and a spectacle is made. Why do you think we haven’t heard anything, Cameron?”
“How should I know?” Cameron asked. “It’s not like I work for the guy.”
Kara glanced up at Drew, her eyebrow raised as though warning him to stop any further questioning and ruining all the work she’d put into Cameron. On the screen, images of war faded away to reveal statistical graphs depicting attacks made by the rebels since the inception of the rebellion and how many civilian lives had been lost as a result.
“Anything to take the public’s attention off Brooks and thrust blame on another entity,” Drew muttered.
“Are you saying the rebels are the good guys?” Cameron asked, incensed. Before Drew could answer, Cameron’s cell phone rang from inside his pocket. Noticeably shaken, he retrieved it and hurriedly answered the call before it could ring again. “H—h—hi, Victor,” he stammered. “Yeah, I know where it is.” Kara pretended to read as she strained to hear Victor’s voice at the end of the line. “Okay, I’ll make sure it gets done.” Cameron then promptly ended the call and stuck the cell phone back into his pocket. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Kara, patting her arm.
Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) Page 21
