by Judd Vowell
The easiest theory was that of a rogue Lefty, leaving the battle to defend his camp and his fellow soldiers in his own way. Daniel had said there was access to C-4 explosive compound at Overlord. Any clever and brazen soldier could have found it and used it to bring the bridge down. But Daniel had rejected the idea during the questioning. If one of his soldiers had done it, where were they? Why didn’t they return to camp after their heroic act?
Jacob tossed and turned in his hotel bed, frustrated that he couldn’t let it go. He had suggested that maybe the act had been a sacrifice, that maybe the Lefty had died in the explosion with the ANTs. But even he didn’t believe that. With a battle raging, what kind of soldier would leave to attempt such a lunatic strategy that might not even work?
He got up and went to the bathroom sink, thinking a glass of water might distract him. He turned on the light above the bathroom’s mirror. His face looked worn. It reminded him of his last twenty-four hours, and how his life had changed forever in such a short span of time. He thought of Simone, and he wondered how angry she might be. He was sure that she would come after him if Salvador would allow it. Just like she had with Jessica and her brother.
“Her brother,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. The recognition was like a flash of lightning in his brain. “That’s it. That’s got to be the answer. Jessica’s brother.” He smiled at himself in the mirror, and some of the wear disappeared from his face.
He crawled back into his bed and felt himself falling asleep without hesitation. “Her brother,” he said one last time just before he drifted off, satisfied that he had discovered the bomber who may have saved Lefty’s rebellion by bringing down a bridge.
8.
T wo weeks went by before Salvador summoned Simone. The concussion in her head healed in that time, and her spirit calmed, but only slightly. Salvador had made himself unavailable to her, and she felt more distant from him than ever when he called for her early one morning. She got dressed and went to the elevator that would take her up to Salvador’s suite, wondering who his mystery ANT could be. She wore her skepticism like a suit of armor.
When Salvador opened the door to his suite, Simone could see the stranger across the room, standing at a large window with his back to her.
“Come in, Simone,” Salvador said. “My friend has arrived. I’m excited for you to meet him.”
As she entered the room, the man turned from the window. His hair was a shimmering shade of silver, his face aged but not worn. He wore a tailored suit over his thin frame, with an expensive silk tie under a buttoned coat. He smiled softly when he saw her, and he walked toward her slowly. She couldn’t help but find him disarming and attractive, and the skeptic in her began to shrink.
“Simone Vincent,” Salvador said as the man approached. “This is Mr. Connors.”
The man extended his hand toward Simone. She placed her own inside it. “Nice to meet you,” she said.
“I can assure you,” the man said, leaning in closely to her as he spoke. “The pleasure is all mine. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time.”
“Let’s sit,” Salvador said. “We have a lot to discuss.”
Salvador had a breakfast of fruit and breads laid out on the living room’s center table. The three of them sat around it, and Salvador poured them each a cup of coffee.
“Patience is not one of my assets,” Simone abruptly said to the man, “so forgive me for being direct. I’ve been with this organization for more than twenty years. I know everything about it, inside and out. Except for you, apparently. So tell me, Mr. Connors, who the hell are you?”
Salvador chuckled, and the man smiled a broad grin. “I warned you,” Salvador said. “She doesn’t pull any punches.”
“Oh, I know,” the man said. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked her.”
“Ok, what’s going on here?” Simone asked in frustration.
“Excuse us, Simone,” Salvador said. “We’re having a bit of fun at your expense. Mr. Connors knows you because he helped me recruit you. You’re right, you’ve been with me for more than twenty years, but he’s been with me much longer. And without him, none of this would have been possible. ANTI- would not exist as we now know it.”
Simone stared at the two men in confusion. Then the mystery man spoke to her with an easy and slow rhythm to his words, not dense but thoughtful. He carried a masculine elegance about him.
“I’m sorry we’ve never met, dear, I truly am. That was my decision. I thought it was better for everyone if I continued to live behind the scenes. But now you need me, and I need you. There’s a war afoot. It’s on us, whether we like it or not. And it will take all of us to win it. We can’t do it without you, Simone. Can I count on you to stay focused?”
He was as convincing a man as Simone had ever met. She decided right then that she liked him very much. And she sensed that he could lead her to Jessica.
“Mr. Connors,” she said, relaxing her tone. “I don’t know a thing about you. Where you’re from, why you’re here, or what it is you do exactly. But if you can find those rebels out there, I’ll be the most focused bitch you’ve ever seen.”
“I had a feeling we’d get along just fine,” the man said. He leaned back in his chair and took a slow sip from his coffee cup before he continued. “Now that we’ve got the greetings out of the way, let me tell you a few things. Like where I’m from, why I’m here, and most importantly, what it is that I do.”
9.
M r. Connors, who eventually became the architect behind ANTI‑’s elite military arm called the Omega XT, was a man whom Salvador Sebastian had known since the inception of his revolutionary idea. The two had met over mostly innocuous circumstances, as strangers serendipitously sitting next to each other at the Peninsula Hotel’s bar in New York, some thirty years prior to the darkness they would cause. Conversation had begun as most do in those situations, with benign talk of occupation, geography, and family. But this conversation turned serious quickly, and the two men saw kindred pasts and ideals in each other almost instantaneously.
“I’m Salvador Sebastian,” Salvador had said to the stranger after just a few minutes, extending his hand over the empty barstool separating them.
“Quincy Connors,” the stranger had replied, taking Salvador’s hand in his. “But you can call me Quinn.”
The two men discovered that they shared a similar family history, both having come from multiple generations of successful farmers and land-owners. Salvador’s piece of Cuban countryside had been stolen from his family on the day he was born, and in an eerie coincidence, so had Quinn's.
The Connors' Tennessee farm had thrived for decades until America's government introduced overproduction legislation and agricultural subsidies in the mid-20th century. Although the compensation to stop farming his land was fair, Quinn's father fought the government interference anyway. His passion was crop and soil and seasonal growth, just like the Connors men who had lived off the land before him. But it was a losing battle. Quinn's father was forced to end production in the prime of his farming career. Combined with the death of his wife during Quinn’s birth, a life's depression set in on him when Quinn was just a baby. Quinn grew up virtually parentless. Then one fall afternoon, after years of watching his bitter father sulk and seethe, a teenage Quinn found his body in the middle of a once-farmed field, a single gunshot through the bottom of his jaw and up through his head.
After that, Quinn found his focus in life. He was smart, with a sharp mind for both math and manipulation. He studied business in school, then ventured into international banking with a large New York finance firm. He helped his high-powered clients move their millions offshore and into European bank hideaways. He assisted them in avoiding American taxes, allowing them to build their individual wealth while hurting the American government in his own way. It gave him some satisfaction, but never the assuagement he sought for his family's demise. That was something that only Salvador Sebastian could
provide.
ΔΔΔ
Quinn’s idea to infiltrate the world’s various military forces with ANTs had been clever, but it met with skepticism from Salvador at first. It would take two generations’ worth of soldiers to make it happen, and even then there was no guarantee that it would work.
“We can make this happen, Salvador,” Quinn had told him. “Trust me on this. You will need control of the armies. Otherwise, your revolution will be squashed in a matter of days, maybe hours.”
Salvador’s newest friend was savvy and convincing.
“But this will take so much time,” Salvador had said.
“Yes,” Quinn had responded flatly.
“And so much organization. The worldwide recruitment will be daunting.”
“You leave that to me,” Quinn had reassured him. “And while I’m at it, I’ve got another plan in mind. A plan for the protection of our people, once we do take control.”
Salvador’s idea for a global takeover was still in its embryonic form at the time, a shape without defined edges and features. The details were still abstract in his mind. Quinn would help to develop those details, with the Omega XT becoming his pet project.
“You will need a team,” Quinn had said. “A specialized force. Think something like the Navy’s Seals, or the Army’s Rangers. A somewhat secretive group, on a level far above the normal fighting men and women. When we take over, they will be your coup de grace.”
Quinn had a flair for drama, and that made him a natural salesman. Salvador put him on the Faultline Technologies payroll, but Quinn had nothing to do with the company in Silicon Valley. Instead, his travels took him to every developed country in the world, recruiting men and women to join ANTI- first and the armies of their home countries second. The Omega XT came later, and by then, the wheels of Salvador’s revolution were turning at a pace that couldn’t be slowed.
ΔΔΔ
Quinn remained a shadow within the ANTI- movement. For years, he traveled from continent to continent without much pause, recruiting at a breakneck pace. All the while, he stayed in constant contact with Salvador. But to the rest of the ANTI- leadership, he was a ghost doing the dirtiest work of the revolution. The work that was easy for them to ignore.
Once he had established a functioning network of secret recruiting centers across the globe, Quinn focused on creating the Omega XT. He started in the United States, his home country where he could develop his elite fighting force without language or geographic barriers. He knew it would take time and mistakes would be made. But he could perfect the process in America, then take it to the other countries of the world, placing his specialized Omega XT sleeper cells virtually everywhere.
Quinn set up the first Omega XT training base on a remote piece of land in South Dakota, hundreds of miles from people in all directions. The property was purchased by Faultline and written off each tax year as a technological infrastructure research facility. In actuality, it was eight thousand acres of undeveloped wilderness where prying eyes would be unable to see. Quinn erected a twenty-foot high security fence along the property’s borders, while Salvador provided the photo-masking technology needed to block overhead satellite views. By the time training began, Quinn had all the privacy he could ever need.
The best recruits for the Omega XT turned out to be former military men who had parlayed their combat experience into high-paying private security jobs, usually in dangerous areas of the world where not many others were willing to go. In short, they were mercenaries, soldiers for hire. And with Faultline’s financial backing, Quinn had the resources to hire the mercenaries away from other private military companies like Blackwater and Brown & Root. Typically, these men were aggressive and amoral, greedy and gun-loving, all characteristics that Quinn could exploit. Soon enough, he had built a small army of well-paid, implacable soldiers, and he kept them isolated from the rest of society in preparation for its undoing.
ΔΔΔ
While Quinn’s job forced him to be cold and calculated, he didn’t live completely without emotion and connection to society. He had started a family before he ever met Salvador, something he regretted as his dedication to ANTI- grew. He kept his secret life from his wife and daughter, as they would never understand what propelled him down Salvador’s path. He justified his actions and the future he was defining with a belief in something bigger than all of them, including his family. They would all have to sacrifice for change, as much as it might hurt the ones they loved.
And so it was, by a chance meeting in a hotel bar some thirty-plus years before the Great Dark, that Meg’s father altered the direction of his young daughter’s life without her knowing it. But he did something else that night in New York – he unwittingly destined the end of his own.
10.
N ot yet fully recovered from her time in ANTI‑’s Sector 3 hospital, Jessica remained in her room for her first two weeks at Camp Forager, venturing out only at dawn and dusk for fresh air and a dose of scenic serenity. Two Lefty doctors had attended to her the first day she was there, examining her healed wounds for any regression she may have experienced during the escape. With her injuries still mended, their assessment left her with only one instruction: bedrest for two weeks.
Anna watched over her when she could, but the former Overlord leader fell back into a dedicated military role at Forager quickly. She left their shared room at sun-up every morning and returned after dark. She would tell Jessica about the camp’s operations and intelligence, of how they were preparing for the next phase of the war that had begun at Overlord. Her excitement was palpable.
On the fifteenth morning of their stay, she woke Jessica with a shake. “Wake up, kid,” she said. “You’re coming with me today.”
Anna gave her the full tour, showing her the areas that McKay had skipped that first day two weeks before. They walked out to the interstate and crossed it just as the sun was coming up along the road’s eastern horizon. In the budding sunlight, the two former stadiums began to flex their gargantuan size as Anna and Jessica got closer to them. First was the baseball stadium, the one that had been converted into a massive campground for the rebels who weren’t living in the hotels. They walked up and down the rows of tents that arced in organized curves from home plate to the outfield. The Leftys there were just beginning to stir. Small cooking burners were being lit to warm canned breakfasts, and the smell of coffee permeated the air around them. Jessica noted that everyone she saw was young, men and women in their twenties and thirties. She even noticed some teenagers like her. Her schooling came back to her as she moved past the soon-to-be soldiers. Hers was a generation who had never known war like the ones before it. But she had been at Overlord, and she knew that that was all about to change.
They left the campgrounds and trekked across an asphalt parking lot to the training arena, inside Kansas City’s former football battleground. Jessica was surprised by the vehicles parked throughout the lot that forced them to walk in a zig-zag pattern.
“Where did all these cars come from?” she asked Anna.
“Not just cars, kid. Pickups, jeeps, SUVs. Look there,” she pointed to a row of at least ten semi trucks with giant trailers. “They’ve been stockpiling these vehicles for months. They have a crew of mechanics whose only job is to journey out and find working cars and trucks. Then they bring ‘em here and get ‘em ready.”
“Impressive,” Jessica said.
“You bet your ass it’s impressive,” Anna said. “Just wait ‘til you see the training grounds.”
They entered the second stadium through a lower level gate that led into a huge concourse after just a few steps. The concourse encircled the lowest level of seats, and Jessica could see the field clearly as they walked around it. Training for the day had not begun yet, but the concourse itself was busy with Leftys setting up for the day’s activities. Most of the concession stands were still being used to serve food to the hundreds of trainees throughout the day. Others had been transformed into military su
pply stations. The stations were stocked with supplies varying from fatigues and boots and helmets to pistols and rifles and shotguns.
“Don’t worry,” Anna said as they walked, seeing a look of concern on Jessica’s face. “They don’t let just anybody grab a gun. You have to earn the right to carry around here.”
“Makes sense,” Jessica said.
“Damn right, it makes sense. It’s just like Overlord was, and I’m sure the other camps are: we don’t know who you are or why you’re here until you’ve been through the process. The world is crazy enough without some nut coming into one of these camps and trying to kill everybody. McKay’s got this down to a science.”
Once they had circled the stadium, Anna took Jessica down an aisle that led them to the field level. The field itself had been sectioned into smaller perimeters, each one blocked off with partitions made of plywood and two-by-fours. As they neared the field, Jessica could see that the area closest to them had been made to look like a building, complete with a second and third story. There were cutouts of simulated doorways and windows throughout.
“We figure that most of our fighting will take place inside the cities as we near the grids,” Anna explained. “We’re training our people to fight like guerillas, to use those surroundings to our advantage. We’ll be ready to fight room-to-room, no doubt.”
“If you can get that close,” Jessica said.
“Oh ye of little faith! And what’s with this ‘you’ thing? Don’t even think you’re not gonna be right there with us, kid.”
“This is great and all, Anna,” Jessica said with sincerity. “And I believe in what you guys are doing. I really do. But I’ve got to get home soon. I’ve got to see if my family is still alive.”
“And if they’re not?”
