by Morgan Bell
“Where’s Drake?”
“He went up on the roof after someone. We think it was Marshall,” Jamie said, pointing up at the buildings across the street.
That was when they heard the deafening whine of a perimeter sentinel bomb.
∞
Marshall was impressed. Drake didn’t fall over when the sound wave hit. He remained still and held his rifle on target. Marshall dusted himself off and got up. As he suspected, Drake was paralyzed by the sound. Marshall walked over toward Drake when he noticed something. He noticed that Drake was bringing the gun up to where Marshall was standing.
∞
“What was that?” Jamie asked, holding his ears.
“It sounded like a perimeter bomb.”
“Never heard of it,” Jamie said, louder than necessary.
“If you had, you wouldn’t forget it. “Blaise said, and then started to run across the seat.
Overhead was the sound of gunfire.
∞
Marshall applied the dictum of “run away to fight another day” before Agent Drake could aim at him, and he went down the side of the building on a repelling rope. It was nearly a full thirty seconds before Drake would regain full control over his limbs.
He went to the corner of the rooftop where Marshall had fled to, and looked down to see no one. A short distance off he saw a figure running across the street to a car. The car was the presidential limo. Drake saw him get in and the car started to move away. “Shouldn’t have left the top down,” Drake said, and dropped to the edge of the roof top. Drake took aim. He fired three shots. The first hit Marshall in the head, the second in the neck and the final one passed through his heart. The presidential limo drifted to a stop and Drake saw something that puzzled him. The top of Marshall’s head was all over the dash board. “All three hit and he went forward and to the right?” Drake said aloud.
Drake didn’t get to spend much time reconsidering the Warren Commission findings, because today there was a second gunman. Unfortunately for Drake the gunman was just behind him.
CHAPTER 24
FRB DOCUMENT DEPOSITORY
Blaise had just made it to the roof when he heard the three shots. Then, after leaping over a fire wall, he heard two more. He heard a door swinging and then he saw it. Agent Drake was crouching at the corner of the roof and a pool of blood was rapidly spreading around him. The size of the holes in his upper back and neck left no doubt that he was already gone.
He ran to the doorway, stopped to check for signs of any kind of trap or ambush, and then gave chase. The run down the staircase was easier than the run up. But Blaise was, after an afternoon of running, fighting for his life and those of his team members, starting to feel the burn. When he got to the bottom floor he looked out and saw a transport, nearly identical to their own, and saw a man in HDMP urban combat gear board the transport, and then the vehicle was gone. He watched it leave and then returned to where he had left Baxter.
“What did you find?” Jamie asked when he saw Blaise come jogging from around the corner of the building.
“We’ve got to go. Cronus is here and if we don’t get to the hub first they’re going to blow it up,” Blaise said.
“Where’s Drake?”
“Dead. He shot Marshall and then Cronus shot him,” Blaise answered, jogging toward the transport.
“We have to get him…we have to -” Jamie stammered.
“We’re not going to chase Cronus, and Drake isn’t going anywhere,” Blaise said, grabbing Jamie by his armor and dragging him into the transport.
“But -”
“Head to the library,” Blaise ordered, “Cronus might be ahead of us,” shutting the transport door.
∞
Fenwick brought the transport to a stop in front of the Detroit Public Library. He was reaching for his sidearm when Blaise checked him with a look. “We are going to need you here. Rosen will go in with Baxter and I will provide support.”
Jamie, despite understanding the urgency of this, was still thinking about Drake and the Cronus crew.
“We will catch up with them and we will get Drake,” Blaise said, as if reading Jamie’s mind. “But this is the mission and we have to do it here and now.”
Jamie nodded his assent and quickly inventoried the array in the case on his belt.
“You need to get to subbasement 13,” Fenwick informed them.
“13?” Rosen asked.
“It’s listed as subbasement 12B. But that’s just for appearances. The hub was installed in subbasement 13 during the federal reorganization. You will see the murals when you go in. There is a floor below and down from there you will find the access staircase,” Fenwick said, and the schematics played across display screens.
“Will our access pass work for the security doors?” Jamie asked.
“Yes, it should,” Fenwick confirmed. “But once you are in the access staircase, you will be off the map. I won’t be able to see you again until you come out in the subbasement.”
“12B,” Rosen said.
“13,” Fenwick amended and saw Rosen shoot him a nasty look.
“Which means once we get to the subbasement I will hold the staircase while the two of you get into the hub,” Blaise added.
The other two men nodded their agreement and Blaise led them out. “Be ready to roll when we get back,” Rosen told Fenwick, and then shut the transport door.
The Detroit Public Library main branch was, like much of pre-reorganized Michigan, an edifice that depressed the viewer. In its time it had been a statement of the greatness of the city and the state up through the first half of the 20th century. The Italian renaissance entrance was the face that said to the world, “We stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest cities and the capital of this country.” The Cass Avenue entrance, with its mosaic, was, like the year it had been completed, the swan song of the city and the state. Despite its decrepitude and general disuse after the federal raids, the building had been resuscitated to some use as a library, and was now operating as a federal library center and depot for pre-reorganization documents, books and other publications. While the federal government could and did deny events, plots, schemes and systematic exterminations of its citizens, it nonetheless scrupulously archived evidence to the contrary. In the library and its numerous subbasements were the records of the names of people who never existed, census information about people who absolutely had not been exterminated or “culled” during the federal occupation, and the list of corporate executives who absolutely had not received any federal funds, settlements or other consideration for dismantling, through federally supervised incompetence, one of the remaining vestiges of American industrial might.
Like those documents, much of the art inside the museum was being maintained by federal art preservationists who had gone to great lengths to protect and restore the John Coppin murals. Jamie looked up at these images in awe. In his entire life he’d not seen anything like this. All the federal art of his school and university days were images of man held up by the state. Broken and lowly people redeemed by Uncle Sam, dead presidents, or images of the welfare bureau workers lifting up the depraved and downtrodden. Here he saw a man looking up at the sky and in either hand he held the creations of man. He was standing because he had created. Jamie felt a thrill at looking at an image that was so large and so subversive that it could only be a relic of the past.
“Blaise, do you see -” Jamie began to ask.
“We can talk about the art after we’ve used the hub,” Blaise said, and led them down to the entrance that would take them to the subbasements.
∞
The stairwell to the subbasements was an old, rusting steel frame structure that appeared to have been installed into the old stairwell at the turn of the 21st century. Every step they took sent a shower of rust and debris from the metal stair treads. What was worse was that the stairs shook and the bracing of the structure didn’t seem to be anchored into the walls. Jamie froze.
“Look dow
n just a few feet ahead and go fast,” Blaise ordered.
“I’m afraid that -”
“You misunderstand me, Baxter; if you don’t go down fast and stop instead, you may end up going down faster than you can run down these stairs.”
“What?”
Blaise gave him a shove. “9.8 meters per second, per second, Baxter. I doubt that these stairs will carry much of a load and I would rather run fast than fall through. So get moving.”
If Jamie’s head couldn’t make sense of this his feet could and he went as fast and lightly as he could manage the thirteen floors of steel tread stairs, taking care not to look all the way down and not to think about what it was he was actually doing. When they arrived at subbasement 12b – the thirteen having been only partially painted out – they saw the notice that read “Periodical storage closed due to the ongoing federal budget impasse. Essential personnel only.” It was posted next to a steel door. Blaise kicked the door open.
The subbasement was aisles upon aisles of boxes, each of which bore a distinctive ID number and a brief description. Jaime read one. “Back up records of documents stored in aisle 4, stack 11 of subbasement 12A,” he read aloud.
“Rosen, get Baxter to the hub and both of you, stay alert,” Blaise said, and chose a position that would allow him to watch the door.
“Follow me,” Rosen told Jamie, and started to jog down the central aisle of subbasement 12B that would lead them back to the hub.
∞
Fenwick saw them arrive in the subbasement and Rosen and Baxter running to the terminal. He also saw the blips on his monitors that signaled federal cyber warfare agents arriving in the airspace. Fenwick considered his options and decided to try and signal them.
The message he got back shocked him.
∞
“I don’t know if I can go back up those stairs,” Jamie said, waving the pass in front of hub door scanner.
“I wouldn’t worry about that right now,” Rosen replied.
The door opened and a man holding a gun stepped out. “Myself, I prefer the elevator,” he said, and then shot Rosen and Jamie.
CHAPTER 25
SUB BASEMENT 12B
“Isaid, ‘This is Lieutenant Fenwick, deployed by -” Fenwick was now shouting.
“You will stand down,” the message repeated. “Cyber Warfare is responding to a level four situation and you are ordered to immediately stand down and await the arrival of a superior officer. Failure to do so will be insubordination in a combat theater and constitute treason under the revised -”
“I’m providing support for deployed personnel,” Fenwick cut off the other officer.
“Shut down, stand down, or we will blow up your goddamn transport with you in it!” the officer bellowed.
Fenwick looked at the monitors. Three of the helicopters had already painted his transport with guidance signals. At the distance they were from him, there would be no time to get out before the transport was vaporized.
“Roger, shutting down and standing down,” Fenwick said, deactivating systems in the transport.
The last thing Fenwick saw before the displays went black was Jamie and Baxter arriving at the door to the hub access.
∞
Much to Jamie’s surprise, there were sounds and there were sensations. There was the sensation of movement, there was the sound of feet, and then there was the sound of something being dropped.
“How are you doing?” a voice said.
“I can’t see,” Jamie answered.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” the voice snapped and then added, “but don’t worry, that is temporary.”
“My vision will come back?” Jamie asked.
“No idea. I was speaking of life being temporary,” the voice said. “Mr. Blaise, if you would care to join us.”
Jamie heard the sound of a hand lightly slapping flesh.
Jericho Blaise came round to the sensation of having his face slapped. His world was blurry and there were irregular shapes in front of him. The last thing he could remember was a burning sensation at the base of his neck and then darkness. “What?”
“You’ll be mildly disoriented,” the voice said pleasantly. “It’s the normal side effects of a neural disruptor. You should be seeing clearly in a moment.”
Jericho saw a face come into focus. It was a face he’d seen before. The face had been younger and it had been talking to Dr. Gottfried fifteen years earlier at the hospital. “You were part of the Cronus group,” Jericho said.
“Yes, that’s right,” the man smiled.
“What do you want?” Blaise asked.
“What we wanted was to meet with you,” the man informed him.
“Why?”
“Yes, why?” Jamie cut in. “You had Marshall on the inside. You could have -”
“There are some unusual qualities to this group,” the man said, ignoring Jamie and speaking to Blaise instead. “We needed to see how you would operate. What you still knew and what you could do.”
“Marshall is dead,” Jamie, still blind, mocked.
The man sighed. “Yes, I know. Your Agent Drake shot him.”
“That’s right!” Jamie spat back.
“And I shot your Agent Drake,” the man sighed again. “I didn’t want to do that; without Marshall here to help me with this it was necessary.”
“Fuck you!” Jamie spat.
“Dr. Baxter, you are of interest to me. But you are becoming very tedious and tiresome. If you don’t desist I will be forced to terminate you.”
Jamie fell silent.
“Jericho - I hope you don’t mind me calling you Jericho - we have a very brief time before circumstances become…complicated. So if you will just stay still,” the man said and approached Jericho with a pair of goggles.
Blaise felt them tighten into place. “This will take just a moment,” the voice said and Blaise heard a humming sound. “You will, no doubt, remember your time at the federal youth military camp.”
Blaise did not speak. There was a bright orange flash in the goggles.
“Your memory will no doubt be of being an orphaned child and ward of the federal government just after the military induction equalization act,” the voice said.
Blaise was shaking now and the goggles were flashing red and purple.
“You would have been fourteen when they moved the draft age to 15. One year pre-basic training in the federal orphanage while doing the federal standardized curriculum. The following year you were transferred to basic, and nine months later deployed,” the voice continued.
Blaise saw white and purple flashes and then felt his eyelids being pinched and pulled backwards. A pair of needles slid into place in front of his eyes and Blaise was paralyzed as they descended into his eyes, penetrating the sclera.
“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “That is just a cortex stimulant to jog your memory. In three, two and one you should be seeing a sign.”
In Blaise’s eyes there was a sign. It was a sign he’d not seen since he was a child. The sign was large and on every wall. It read “We Rule By The Consent Of The Unconscious.”
Blaise was now twitching; his breath was becoming erratic. The needles withdrew from his eyes and he felt the goggles being taken off of him.
“We were gengineered soldiers. Half of us were placed in the federal orphanage system and half were ‘adopted.’ Some of us who were adopted showed our skills early and were swept up by Dr. Gottfried. Some of us weren’t detected, and some like your Dr. Baxter never showed any sort of gifts whatsoever. Then there were those of you,” the voice said, “those who were trained up by the federal government -”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jamie demanded.
Jamie heard the explosion and felt the bullet rip through his body armor and into his body.
“I did warn you,” the man drawled. “I have to leave now. Once the cortex stimulant fully activates your memories, you will understand.”
“Why?” Blaise
gasped.
“There were seven of us after Cronus. There are only five of you left. We are waking you so that you can participate.”
“You are the good guy? The winning side? The right?” Blaise asked.
“No. We aren’t. We are a product or - if you prefer - byproduct, and you can’t join us or anyone else. You can only participate as you are meant to.”
“But why…”Blaise trailed off.
The man leaned in and whispered, “We didn’t create any of this. The meat puppets you call ‘KVs’ and ‘KVBs’ weren’t our doing. All we’ve done is push the button before anyone else could. The only reason they haven’t shut it down is they want to see how it plays out and what advantage it gives and to whom. Never think for a minute that they couldn’t shut it down if they wanted to.”
Jamie felt the pressure of his own blood pushing back against the plate of his body armor. He felt the cold stealing over him and then his eyes cleared; he saw the man stooping over Blaise. It was at that moment that he felt a cold and awful anger that seemed to reach back to the very beginning of his life.
“It’s as I’ve said. We are only participating. We cannot win; we can only delay and disrupt -”
The man was interrupted by feeling the sharp and sudden pressure of Jamie’s thumbs plunging into his eyes. He didn’t yell, but instead grunted, twisting and scrambling for the unyielding hands that were now gouging out his eyes. Jamie felt the muscles in his forearms tremble as he squeezed the man’s head. He was alive and for this moment he was filled with a terrible joy as he crushed the man’s skull with his bare hands. Then, when the man stopped moving Jamie felt his power ebb, his fingers opened and the man slumped forward, blood flowing the gaping holes that once were eyes.
“Who else is there?” Blaise asked, his world now a series of flashings and flickering of memories and images not present.
Jamie fell to his knees. “Just me,” he managed to say.
“Where’s Rosen?” Blaise asked.
Jamie looked at Rosen and saw that his body was immobile and in a pool of blood. “Dead,” Jamie replied.
“Did you send the signal?” Blaise asked.
