Overthrown II: The Resurrected (Overthrown Trilogy Book 2)

by Judd Vowell

  “Yeah, I get it. But she’s strong as hell. What if I can get through to her another way? Maybe I can speed this thing up. Couldn’t hurt, right?”

  “You’re in charge, sir,” one of the men said as he stepped aside, allowing Jacob a clear path to Anna.

  He walked to her side. She looked up at him from the table where she was strapped down with a look of disappointment in her eyes. He tried to return the emotion, as his disturbance with what they had been doing to her was profound. Then he focused on the job at hand. He pushed his emotions aside and went to work.

  “Another day, Anna,” he began. “I hope this one is different. But if it isn’t, those boys are ready to drown you again, you better believe it. So please, talk to me today.” It was time for his cue. He had gone over it in his head repeatedly. He hoped desperately that she would catch it. “You’re not gonna hear me say ‘we’ or ‘us’ today. I don’t want you to think of me as a part of ANTI- for the next few minutes. Understand?” That was it, a chink in his armor she had discovered during their first encounter. He had to move on quickly so that it wasn’t an obvious signal. “Instead, today is just you and me, two people talking. And there are some things that I need to know.”

  Her recognition was nearly indiscernible, but he saw it. Now if she’d give him something, he could maybe hold them off and delay more of her torture. The tricky part would be leading her with his questions and making sure she gave vague and inaccurate answers. He could handle what the ANTI- analysts would do with the false information, at least for a little while. Jacob knew she was tired, so he took his time with her.

  “Let’s start with the camp. How long had Camp Overlord been in business?”

  Anna cleared her throat. She gave Jacob a hard look from beneath him, as if to say that he better not be setting her up. “Four months.”

  Jacob turned to the two specialists in the room and winked at them. Then he continued. “Ok. How many people were housed there?”

  “Six hundred and thirty-two.”

  “Got it down to an exact number, huh? How many more of you are there? Outside of Camp Overlord? Out there in the dark?”

  Anna’s response to this question would tell him everything about her state of mind, and whether or not she had the wherewithal to play along. She had already given him the truth about Lefty’s size when they first met alone in her jail cell seven days earlier, before Salvador had summoned his Omega XT specialists on her. If Anna still had her wits in place, she would lie, but not absurdly.

  “Two more camps, the same size. Same number of people.”

  “There you go, Anna,” Jacob thought to himself. “I’ll lead you, you mislead them.”

  “Two camps, you say,” he said, starting to pace alongside her. “Where?”

  She stared at him in silence for a minute.

  “Ok, Anna. I’ll make you a deal. You tell me where these camps are, and I’ll keep you safe from those guys in the corner today. No waterboarding, I promise. So tell me, where are they?”

  She hesitated, making her answer seem even more reluctant. Then she told him a complete fabrication. “One is three hundred miles south, the other is four hundred miles west. Both in the middle of nowhere. They’re training camps. Feeders for Overlord.”

  “See, Anna,” Jacob said, leaning over her. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

  He instructed the specialists to unstrap her and take her back to her regular cell. She had done well, but he wouldn’t know how well until he spoke with Salvador. Their unplanned game of misdirection had begun. How long they could keep it up was the only question.

  14.

  S alvador’s next request to speak privately with Jacob came the night after Anna had finally talked. The alert sounded from Jacob’s laptop. He was in bed, trying to sleep without success. He got up and walked on his bare feet to the living area of his hotel suite. When he opened the laptop, he saw that it was just after midnight. He moved the computer’s cursor over the flashing video-conference request and clicked on the “accept” button. His laptop’s screen darkened until the shape of Salvador’s silhouette slowly appeared. Salvador was sitting outside on his top-floor balcony, a cocktail in one hand and a cigar in the other.

  “Hijo!” he exclaimed in greeting. He leaned in closer, peering through the screen at Jacob. “Did I wake you?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Jacob replied. “Can’t seem to sleep tonight.”

  “Got your mind on the prisoner, eh?” Salvador teased. There was a hint of slur to his words, but only a hint. Jacob tread into the conversation carefully.

  “Actually, yes Salvador, I do. I’m worried. I don’t know how much she’s going to tell me. It might take a lot of work to gain her trust after all that waterboarding.”

  “Don’t worry about that, hijo. You’ve got her talking, that’s all that matters right now. Not what she says, just that she’s talking.”

  “What do you mean?” Jacob asked, truly confused.

  “I mean, you did well. Really well. She’s probably lying to you, but at least she’s saying something.”

  “You think she lied to me today?”

  “I do, hijo,” Salvador said with almost certainty. “I’ll send some excursion teams to the locations she described. But I don’t expect to find anything.”

  “Why not?” Jacob asked. He knew Salvador’s next answers might predict Anna’s future. “Why would she be making it up, after all we’ve put her through?”

  “Because she doesn’t care. I’ve been watching the interrogations all week. Her will is magnificent. And she’ll die before she gives us anything worthwhile. Now that’s a truth you can rely on.”

  Salvador had seen right through what Anna had said that day. Jacob could only hope that his own acting hadn’t been transparent, too. “Then what’s the point, Salvador?”

  “She has to know what lengths we’ll go to.” Salvador paused, waiting to see if Jacob might understand. “She may not care about her own well-being, but we’ve got other options.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jacob said in frustration.

  “The girl, hijo. I’ve just been told that her condition is improving. And once we go to work on the girl, Anna will tell us anything we want to know.”

  ΔΔΔ

  Jacob crawled back into his bed after the call with Salvador was over, his changed opinion of the man confirmed. Salvador was no idealist, at least not the kind that Jacob had thought. The ANTI- leader’s ultimate intent was still blurred, but at least Jacob knew that Salvador had a sadistic side to him. And that was all he needed to know.

  His situation, his yearning for escape, had grown more complicated though. Salvador’s plans included Jessica, once she recovered. Jacob should have seen that coming, but he hadn’t. And the endgame for Anna had become painfully obvious. There was no doubt left that he would have to help them both. And that led him to an incomprehensible concept: that he couldn’t do it on his own.

  15.

  W hen the doctor removed Simone’s bandages two days after her surgery, she steeled herself, not knowing what her new face might look like. The doctor forewarned her that there would be swelling and discoloration, but she wasn’t truly prepared for the disfigurement that she saw. There were stitches that zigzagged across her cheeks and chin and forehead. Her right eye appeared to be a sunken slit buried inside a swollen mass of damaged skin, while her left was still covered with thick gauze. Her nose was not pronounced as it should have been, and her lips almost invisible. She withheld any outward reaction, but sadness simmered beneath her exterior. As she continued to stare at the ravaged face in the mirror, she focused her growing rage on one thing: the young girl who had shot her.

  Jessica lived the first of her days after surgery without much change, asleep in a medically-induced coma. The gauze that the doctors had packed into her midsection seemed to have worked. They decided to remove them on the fourth day, opening her up again in a fast but risky procedure. She made it through without any
complications, and the bleeding remained stemmed once they were finished. Jacob had requested daily updates, and the doctors’ reports continued to indicate improvement, just as Salvador had mentioned.

  Simone had also asked to be told of the girl’s progress. When Simone’s doctor released her soon after her bandages came off, she made sure he knew what his next job would be. “You will keep me informed on the girl,” she instructed him as she left the hospital. “You will not intervene, understand? Just send me her updates. Every day.”

  She went back to the hotel where she and Jacob had been staying before the battle that made everything worse. She knew that Jacob was still living there, too. She had made sure of it before she left the hospital. But she also made sure to keep herself hidden from him, at least until she had healed a bit. Vanity affects every woman, and Simone was no exception. Food was delivered to her suite on a schedule, as was news about the battle’s aftermath. For more than two weeks, Simone was a hermit and the hotel room was her sanctuary. By the time Jacob came to her, she was anxious to see him.

  The knock on her door came at a strange time, different from any of her normally scheduled visitors. It was morning, but not early. Her breakfast delivery had come and gone an hour before. She went to the door and took a deep breath before she answered it. Instinct told her it was Jacob, and she wasn’t wrong.

  “Hello, Simone,” he said with a forced smile as she opened the door. They had not seen each other since before her bandages had come off.

  “Hello, Jacob,” she answered, standing with as much confidence as she could muster. “Please, come in.”

  He walked into the room slowly, as if he carried a weight around his shoulders. She closed the door and followed him to the suite’s living area.

  “Everything ok?” she asked. “You seem like you’ve got something on your mind.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He turned and looked at her, tilting his head a bit as he analyzed her face. The wounds had healed, but the scarring was evident. Medical gauze remained over her damaged left eye. “The doctors did an amazing job, Simone. You look great, considering what they had to work with.”

  She didn’t know if that was an intentional insult, but it stung her nonetheless. “Glad you think so,” she said, shaking off the comment. “It certainly looks better than it did. The doc came and removed my stitches a few days ago. Hurt like hell. But I’m a big girl.”

  “I know you are. And I haven’t bothered you while you recovered on purpose. But now I need you. Salvador’s here.”

  Her stomach dropped. She had been hiding from the repercussions of ANTI‑’s loss at Camp Overlord as much as anything else. Apparently, it was time to face reality. “He’s here? In Sector 3?”

  “Got here yesterday,” Jacob answered. “He wants to see the two of us. Together.”

  “Shit,” Simone said. Her emotions resorted to anger, as they seemed to be doing more and more. “I was hoping everything would have died down while I was recovering. I was hoping that you would have handled this, Jacob.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to, Simone. Salvador wouldn’t let me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s been waiting for you to heal.” He could see that she was distressed, something he had never seen in her before. He felt a surge of satisfaction watching her squirm. “C’mon, Simone, you know Salvador better than I do, so you know he’s a patient man. Now get dressed. He wants to see us in an hour.”

  16.

  S alvador had set up his residence in the Sector 3 grid in the same hotel where Jacob and Simone were living. They rode the building’s elevator up five floors to his spacious suite. He greeted them at the door.

  “Jacob, Simone. Welcome. So good to see you both. It’s as if I’ve been missing part of my brain in your absence.” He placed his hands on Simone’s shoulders, looking closely at her face. “As beautiful as ever, my dear. How’s the eye?”

  “Better, they tell me,” Simone answered. “Don’t know if I’ll ever get my sight back, but they don’t think they’ll have to remove it.”

  “Silver lining, I suppose,” Salvador said.

  “I suppose,” she reluctantly agreed.

  “Well, come in, sit down,” Salvador said. “We have a lot to discuss.”

  The three of them walked to the center of the living area and sat, Jacob and Simone on the luxurious sofa and Salvador in a wingback across from them. He ended the pleasantries and began asking direct questions about the battle at Camp Overlord.

  “Simone, what in the hell were you doing out there?”

  “Taking care of the original problem, Salvador. Eliminating hope.” It was a strange answer, but one that Simone had prepared before she and Jacob went to the meeting. She had a feeling that Salvador’s ire would be focused on her.

  “What ‘hope’ are you referring to? Anna's?”

  “That’s exactly the hope I’m referring to,” Simone answered defiantly.

  “And in that moment, eliminating this so-called ‘hope’ was more important than seeing the battle through?”

  “Yes, it was,” she answered calmly.

  He turned to Jacob. “And you didn’t stop her?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Jacob asked with a laugh.

  “Let me tell you both something right now. What you did out there was a complete breakdown in leadership. Your priorities became blurred, and your decisions were flawed. But you’re alive, and you wouldn’t be if you hadn’t made those choices. You would have died on that bridge like the others. So now you’ve been given a chance to learn from the choices you made. I expect you will.”

  He stood from his chair and began to pace the floor behind it. “Now let’s talk future, because things have become complicated rather quickly. I need you two to help guide us through it. I won’t say that what’s happening wasn’t predicted. I assure you it was. But it’s gotten here much sooner than I ever thought it would.” He stopped walking and turned to look directly at them. “Camp Overlord is just the beginning. We’ve got to find the rest of these rebels, and soon.”

  17.

  J acob and Anna’s secret game of deceit had continued during Simone’s self-imposed confinement. He was able to keep the waterboarders at bay leading up to Salvador’s arrival in Sector 3, getting tidbits of false information from her each day. The knowledge that Salvador was doubting everything she said actually made the interrogations easier. Jacob had to hide only his own deception, and he found that he had a knack for it. While the stresses of calculating a near-impossible escape plan kept him edgy, the short times he spent acting with Anna were moments of relief. He enjoyed fooling Salvador.

  Jacob told Simone about his daily interrogations of Anna at their meeting with Salvador. She smiled as he described Anna’s water torture, and she agreed with Salvador that any information from the imprisoned woman would be tainted with untruths. “I know this woman, Salvador,” she said. “She’s not going to give us anything.”

  “Don’t worry, Simone,” he assured her. “I already have a contingency plan in mind.”

  “The girl?” Simone asked.

  “That’s right. You catch on quicker than your compadre here,” he said, glancing at Jacob. “We’ve already confirmed Anna’s duplicity. She claimed there were two other camps nearby. My teams have investigated it. There are no camps where she said they were.”

  “What else has she told you?” Simone asked.

  Jacob spoke up. “Does it matter? If we know she’s lying to us, what’s the point?”

  “It’s the nuggets, hijo,” Salvador said. “Inside every lie, there is a nugget of truth. That’s what you’ve been digging for: the bits and pieces of honesty. For instance, she told you yesterday that she has no husband, no family. Except for the kids, of course. She had to remind herself of that part. There was something true in that first response, I just can’t quite decipher it yet. And then there’s the story of the camps. She could have said that Overlord was the only one. But she didn
’t. What she unknowingly revealed was that there are actually many more camps. And who knows how many more rebels. Nuggets, hijo. We get enough of them, and we might just piece together something she doesn’t want us to see.”

  “But like you said, Salvador, we’ve got the girl,” Simone reminded him. “We dangle her out there and Anna answers whatever we ask.”

  “Slow down, Simone,” Salvador said. “The girl is still very weak. The doctors don’t know when she might wake. The nuggets may lead us to something first.”

  “And if they don’t?” Jacob asked.

  “Then we use the girl, once she’s healthy enough to be used,” Salvador answered.

  Jacob could feel heat surging throughout his body. The way that Salvador spoke of Jessica was ominous. He felt a real fear for her and Anna. And, for the first time, he was afraid of the repercussions if Salvador found him out.

  18.

  J essica’s waking thought after sleeping for over a month was of her father. It made sense, as one of her last conscious moments had been watching her father die. Next came the woman in the jeep, and Jessica leaving Henry behind as she became distraction. She had almost made it across the highway, abandoning the cover of an overgrown field to try and reach the dense forest on the opposite side. But then her memory went black.

  Now she struggled to open her eyes, the muscles of her eyelids lethargic from so many days of stillness. The dim light was assaulting at first. The area around her appeared blurry until her unused corneas adjusted themselves. She began to recognize her surroundings. Stark, undecorated walls. Metal gates on each side of her bed. IV bags of clear liquid hanging above her head. She was in a hospital room.

  She tried to raise her head, but the task proved to be impossible. Instead, she moved her eyes around, trying to gather as much information about her situation as she could. To her right, she could see a stack of monitors and machines with wires and cords that led to different parts of her body. They whirred with constant noise and every few seconds one of them emitted a dull electronic beeping sound. To her left, the wall was made up of cabinets with glass doors where medical equipment and tools were stored. She could see her reflection in the glass, a thick tube coming from her mouth and attached to a machine that was breathing for her. She immediately felt the discomfort of it in her throat and on her tongue. Her reflexes tried to bring her hands up to her face to touch it, but her arms remained lifeless. She suddenly realized that she was paralyzed.