Run! - Hold On! Season 3

by Peter Darley

  They arrived at the top, climbed over the railing, and detached the cable claws. Drake shook his head trying to assimilate the strange sensation that had come over him.

  Slamer ran across the roof to the other side, took out a set of small, advanced, electron binoculars, and brought them up to his eyes. “Got it . . . Oh, fuck.”

  Drake hurried over to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  Drake took the binoculars. “Which apartment is this guy supposed to be in?”

  “Third level. Fifth from the left with the entrance steps at the front.”

  Drake immediately saw the problem. Crane’s was the only apartment in the line where the drapes were closed. If they couldn’t see their target, they weren’t going to be able to take him out. “Shit.”

  Slamer removed his helmet, took out his sat-scrambler cell phone, and selected his contact. “Wilmot? Slamer. We’re going to have to go directly into the apartment. The son of a bitch has the drapes closed . . . Right, I’ll tell him.” The call ended.

  “Tell me what?” Drake said.

  “Switch on your helmet camera and radio. He’s gonna be monitoring the operation. We’re taking it from the rear.”

  Wilmot stood with Garrett in the Mojave base’s situation room facing a wall filled with monitor screens. Several technicians attended the control panel.

  A young male technician approached the director and handed him a head set and mike.

  Two of the screens suddenly showed images of the favela. The movements were shaky and difficult to decipher. Drake and Slamer were apparently leaping down onto the balconies of the homes beneath. Occasionally, the screens became blank flashes of white as the two operatives tore through numerous clotheslines of sheets and threadbare towels. Sweeping shots of screaming women appeared for fleeting seconds. The residents were clearly startled by the two aggressively-contemptuous, armored soldiers wading through their homes.

  Drake and Slamer arrived at the bottom, and the jerky movements indicated they were running across the street. Perturbed looks on the faces of the pedestrians were cause for concern.

  Wilmot gripped the mike. “Boys, you don’t have much time. You’re creating a scene, and there’s a risk of alerting Crane.”

  Slamer’s breathless response came through Wilmot’s head set. “You think we don’t know that?”

  Wilmot rubbed his eyes with anxious tension. “Don’t screw this up, Slamer.”

  The screens became clearer. Drake was ahead of Slamer as they ran along an alley. They turned right and came up behind Crane’s complex. A few steps later, they stopped at a rear metallic door.

  “This is the one,” Drake said. “It’s locked.”

  “Blow it!” Wilmot ordered.

  Drake took a small, C4 charge device from his belt, placed it against the door, and it adhered magnetically. After setting it to five seconds, he and Slamer rapidly moved away a few feet, shielding their faces.

  The door blew open. Smoke shrouded the immediate area, accompanied by the unmistakable scent of pitch and burning metal. They drew their automatic rifles, discarded the leather carrying cases on the ground, and ran inside.

  Taking three steps at a time, they scaled the stairwell, oblivious to the screams and protestations of the first floor occupants.

  They arrived on the second floor. A middle-aged, slightly overweight male, wearing a filthy off-white singlet and what appeared to be pajama pants, stood before them, angrily. Without hesitation, Drake drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s face, breaking his nose, and knocking him to the ground.

  Within moments, they were on the third floor. Crane’s floor.

  Drake heard sounds of commotion coming from below. He looked down three flights of stairs to see a team of police officers entering through the open rear door.

  “No, no, no!” Wilmot bellowed through their headsets. “I covered this and ordered them not to interfere. This is a top secret operation. What the hell are those assholes thinking?

  “What do you want us to do?” Drake said.

  “It’s on their heads. Blow out the stairwell.”

  Drake took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin out, and dropped it down the stairwell. The first floor steps shattered, and the detonation sent two officers flying out through the open door. Two others careened into the walls with bone-shattering force before falling, lifelessly, to the ground.

  Flames rose through the remains of the stairwell, filling the complex with smoke.

  Slamer turned around, his rifle poised, ready to dispatch any who might try to interfere.

  Drake came to Crane’s apartment door and kicked it in, surprised by how easily it came open. It wasn’t even locked.

  With his rifle raised, he cautiously stepped inside, rapidly aiming his weapon in every direction. It was a basic room with no wallpaper, paintings, or plants. There were only bare stone walls, but nobody was in sight. The smoke impaired his visibility, but it was clear enough to see nobody was there.

  He moved around and kicked open the kitchen door. Huddled in the corner was a twenty-something, Latina female, weeping and clearly terrified.

  “Where’s Jed Crane?” Drake demanded.

  “I-I no know,” she said, quivering in broken English.

  “I said where the fuck is he?”

  “No know. P-please don’t kill me.”

  Suddenly, an excruciating, stabbing pain shot through his head. It felt as though his skull was being crushed. The rifle fell from his hands as he dropped to his knees, screaming.

  The smoke and the woman’s words merged into voices from elsewhere:

  P-please don’t kill me.

  I’m not going to kill you.

  “Oh, God!” he cried, and tore his helmet off. He grasped his head, unable to bear the pain, and collapsed into a fetal position.

  Wilmot and Garrett looked at one another, mystified. They’d seen enough to know Crane wasn’t in the apartment. Who the woman may have been was irrelevant. A neighbor? A prostitute? Crane’s roommate? It didn’t matter. Whatever was happening to Drake had negated the operation.

  “Slamer, abort the mission,” Wilmot ordered. “Something’s happened to Drake. I’m having you picked up out front. Get him the hell out of there!”

  Slamer headed into the room and saw the writhing figure of Brandon Drake on the floor. The pain in his eyes was so extreme he almost felt a surge of pity for him. “What the hell . . . ?”

  He picked up Drake’s rifle and gripped his hand to pull him up. Drake slapped his hand back to his temple immediately, and Slamer realized he could barely stand.

  He glanced at the hysterical woman, but she wasn’t important. Looking out onto the balcony, he recalled the front entrance steps. The purpose of taking the rear entrance was to reduce attention to a minimum, obviously to no avail.

  He placed his head under Drake’s armpit and lifted him across his right shoulder. With two heavy rifles braced under his free arm, he headed for the outside stairwell. He was heavily weighed down with little opportunity for grasping the railing. Hell, this is gonna be a joy.

  Jed Crane emerged from an alleyway and fed himself through a crowd of stationary onlookers. He hadn’t shaved for over a week. His hair had grown and was visibly protruding from beneath a baseball cap. Using an assumed name, he’d survived, since his arrival in Rio, working in a meat-packaging plant on the far side of town for the minimum wage. He’d managed to subsidize his income by sharing his apartment with Juanita, his roommate. She was a poor woman who worked in a souvenir store, but every little bit helped. It was only intended as a temporary measure until he could figure out a way to expose Wilmot and return to his position at SDT. So far, he hadn’t formulated a plan.

  His heart ached for the touch of Patricia, his fiancée. Forced to live on the run, he’d lost everything, with no idea how he would restore himself to his former life.

  He saw smoke coming from his apartment, and froze. Oh, God! Th
ey’ve found me. He was seized with horror at the thought of harm coming to Juanita. She had nothing to do with any of this. Frantically, he made his way to the front of the crowd, keeping his head bowed.

  A man wearing a helmet, with another man over his shoulder and two automatic rifles under his free arm, seemed to be struggling to reach the end the outside stairwell.

  Jed took out his iPhone, set it to camera, and aimed it in the direction of the man in the helmet. He then selected the zoom option.

  A white sedan pulled up outside the apartment. The man in the helmet awkwardly prized open the rear door with his fingertips and threw the rifles inside. He eased the other man from his shoulders, and as he helped him into the car, the face of the other guy appeared up close on the zoom screen. Jed’s eyes widened. “Brandon?”

  But how could that be? Brandon Drake was dead. What was wrong with him? His face registered pain, even though he seemed barely conscious. And what was he doing working for Wilmot, in what was obviously an assassination attempt?

  A memory came back to Jed. On the day he’d helped Drake to escape in Nevada, they’d been racing away from Wilmot. Brandon told him Treadwell had subjected him to a memory revision operation. Could they have done it to him again?

  In the moments before Brandon’s face became obscured by the car door, Jed snapped three photographs of him. Combined with the date and time recording of the shots, he finally had something he could use. Wilmot had fabricated the death of a fugitive, and had most likely brainwashed him.

  However, his sense of hope was diluted by his concern for Juanita. The sedan sped away, ensuring his safe return to the apartment. He ran to the steps, filled with apprehension of the horror he may find when he arrived.

  Eight

  The Voice in the Darkness

  Drake lay unconscious in a hospital bed in the Mojave Desert facility. Fifteen hours had elapsed since the incident in Rio.

  Wilmot looked at Drake, puzzled. Dr. DeSouza stood over him in a white coat with a hypodermic syringe in his hand. Slamer, having showered and changed, stood watching in the doorway.

  “The sedative I’ve administered should keep him unconscious for approximately twelve hours,” DeSouza said. “At least it will spare him any further pain.”

  Wilmot turned to Slamer. “Did he give you any indication that anything was wrong on the way down there?”

  “He was asleep most of the time. We both were. But he seemed fine to me.”

  Wilmot tapped his fingers on his lips, shaking his head. “What the hell happened?”

  “I think I may know,” DeSouza said.

  “What?”

  DeSouza glanced up at Slamer, and then back at Wilmot. “Do you think we could discuss this in private?”

  Wilmot took the hint and approached Slamer. “Go home. Take some time off. I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got this sorted out.”

  “OK.” Slamer exited the room and disappeared along the corridor.

  After closing the door, Wilmot ensured his displeasure was apparent. “I want to know what the hell happened out there.”

  DeSouza chuckled, demonstrating his lack of concern for the director’s anger. “You may recall, during our first meeting, that I told you there was no known way of completely eradicating a previously-experienced persona. A memory revision simply relocates it to the subconscious.”

  “Go on.”

  “I believe something happened to Brandon in Rio that triggered a flashback.”

  “A flashback?”

  “Yes. Something that reminded him of an incident that occurred during the four years he was living under the other personality.”

  Wilmot lowered his head in thought. DeSouza’s words made no sense. “How the hell would a recollection cause him to fall down in agony?”

  “It’s what’s known as phantom pain. There was nothing wrong with him in the physical sense. The pain was a manifestation of his mind, caused by a moral conflict.”

  “Dammit! That means he’s utterly useless.”

  “Everything he did, and everything he experienced during those years, is recorded in his muscles. In his bones. He will not remember them, but he will feel them.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I did tell you, and as I recall, you said that you ‘always paid attention in class.’ Perhaps you should revise your position on that.”

  Wilmot grimaced in defeat. He knew he wasn’t justified in taking it out on DeSouza. He’d been provided with comprehensive information about what he was doing, but in his arrogance, he’d chosen to ignore it.

  DeSouza rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “To the best of my knowledge, the reversal of a memory revision had never been attempted before. It was experimental.”

  “So, what can be done about it?”

  “I honestly don’t know. What we are dealing with are two conflicting personas occupying the same mind. One is violent and malevolent, and the other is a compassionate rescuer. Anything could trigger a conflicting episode.”

  “All right. Take care of him for now. I’ve got to figure this out.” Wilmot walked out the door and made his way to the elevator.

  His descent to the lower floor was a thought-filled period of angst. He couldn’t fulfill his plan for Operation: Nemesis with Kane Slamer alone leading the team. They needed Drake, who was now an unreliable, ineffective option. That presented a serious problem. What were they going to do with him?

  He walked out of the elevator and along another corridor until he reached the situation room. Stepping inside, he saw Garrett preparing a slew of report files.

  She looked up from her position at the end of the long table. “What did the doctor say?”

  “Basically, that it’s over. It seems the personality Treadwell created is still inside him, and they’re at war. If he does something that the other doesn’t approve of, it will knock him down, just like we saw.”

  “So, what are we going to do with him?”

  “What else can we do?”

  Garrett shrugged.

  Despondency filled Wilmot’s heart as he summoned the courage to answer her. “We’re going to have to put him away. The world will be none the wiser.”

  Garrett came closer and kissed his cheek. “Leave it to me.”

  ***

  Drake looked around him. There was nothing but blackness. No light. He couldn’t make anything out. He looked down and saw he was standing in exactly the same darkness, as though he was suspended in a void of nothingness.

  A chill gripped him. He didn’t know where he was, and he could see no way out. He moved forward but it was more of the same. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but darkness. Is this Hell?

  He felt his heart racing and ran forward, panic-stricken. However, his legs didn’t move as they should. It was as though he was trying to run through water.

  Finally, panic got the better of him. “Help!” he cried. “Somebody. Anybody!”

  He continued to fight through the strange, fluid-like emptiness, but the blackness persisted. There were no discernible shapes or anything that represented existence. How could he even see the blackness if there was no light? He raised his right arm and could see it as clear as day.

  He wandered aimlessly through the void, unable to assess how long he’d been in this place. A minute? A day? A year? Many years? Time had no meaning here. It seemed eternal.

  He sank to his knees in despair. Only then did he feel the presence. He looked up sharply. “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer.

  “I know someone’s there. Show yourself.”

  Hey, Scorp. How’re you doing?

  The voice echoed throughout the void. It sounded familiar, and yet unfamiliar. “Show yourself, you son of a bitch!” Drake roared.

  How do you like Shitsville?

  “Where are you?”

  Did you really think I was gonna let you hurt that girl? She reminded me so much of . . . her.

  “Who?”


  I stopped you once. I will stop you again.

  Drake felt a cold gust of wind blow past him with dazzling speed and knew it was the one who was talking to him. He still couldn’t see him. It was just him alone with the voice in the darkness. “Who are you?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  Rage and frustration filled Drake’s heart. “I said who the fuck are you?”

  You know who I am.

  Drake’s eyes opened, and he shot bolt upright in his hospital-style bed, coated with perspiration. What was it about the voice’s last words that had affected him this way?

  Ultimately, he was forced to admit that he was afraid.

  Nine

  Comic Book Hero

  Emily attended to a pot of stew in the kitchen of her workplace, The Sanctuary Street Mission in downtown Dallas. A humble and mundane occupation, it provided her with a sense of purpose and joy. It was a secular continuation of her previous vocation, but without the baggage and personal restrictions of the convent. She was free to come and go as she pleased, and under the domination of no one.

  Day by day, she felt the changes in herself. Belinda had been a tremendous friend, and the source of some envy. Belinda was strong, humorous, and a pleasure to live with. Emily constantly wished she could have been more like her from the beginning. Nevertheless, she was finally sensing the spark of confidence within.

  She looked out through an open porthole into the very basic dining hall with minimal décor. She noticed Jake, a young man who had arrived a week ago. He was nineteen, and had fled from a violent home without a penny to his name. Emily couldn’t deny she was attracted to him. Despite Belinda’s constant encouragement that she should embrace that part of herself, it was extremely difficult. It had been her most troublesome challenge, having spent her life suppressing such feelings.