by Gary Sapp
from their respective positions in the warring parties. Dr. Seth Dupree is shocked to see a large band of Pandora allies surround the Peacekeeper cell he’d been tethered with over night—only to see them turn their backs of their leader James Carter as Quincy Morgan and his crew beat him to death and finally behead him. Seth soon learns that the treachery was sanctioned by Serena herself to rid her organization of hatemongers who don’t have a place in her view of a new world order. Thomas fights against his instincts to stay in his hotel, in relative safety, and ventures out into downtown in a desperate search for Lucy Burgess who he gave up to a House in Chains in exchange for an extention of the Zero Hour hours earlier. He finds death along every step of his journey including Lucy who has been torchered and stripped of her dignity and her clothing before she dies finally succumbs to her injuries in his arms. Roxanne and Angel finally square off with both women airing their grevinces before an earthquake hits the city and tosses the marta they were riding on it’s side. And yet it is Seth who witnesses that manmade destruction can be as or even more devastating at he witnesses the middling stage of Scar—young suicide bombers detonating themselves in highly populated areas of the city.
Chris
Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan, serving as the interim head of the FBI, showed up at the foot of the Riverside Road Mansion with a force of armed personnel in his wake to be reckoned with: He’d summoned at least three dozen FBI, ATF and at least three other law enforcement folks that he could scrape up; it as a damned impressive feat, especially considering the extreme short notice and all that had went down in the city and countrywide in the past 48 hours or so. Chris had heard rumors of the APD going to complete shit, with the entire force splitting into half a dozen smaller units with an as many different allegiances and agendas.
Christopher Prince understood how much Sheridan had put his ass on the line too. If he’d pushed resources away from where they’d truly could have been an asset—if he were wrong…
“What’s our status?” Chris said to Sheridan as a means of greeting. He hadn’t been in the other man’s presence since before Lucy Burgess spilled his personal beans all over the kitchen floor for everyone to trip over.
“I received your report, Agent Prince.” Sheridan shook Chris’ hand with feeling. “And I’m inclined to believe you when you say that there are dozens of House in Chains members who have sealed themselves inside that mansion.”
“Do you have a plan to get them out of there peacefully?”
Sheridan nodded but told Chris that he wasn’t going to like it. Chris followed Sheridan’s eyes to where they circled and fell…on Senior Hostage Negotiator Justin Ryan as he pulled his long self out of the deputy cruiser. He worked his way over to where the two of them were standing, straightened his tie and offered his hand to Chris who shook it, while never taking his eyes off of Sheridan.
Chris repeated his question to Justin Ryan.
“There is no plan in place for extracting them peacefully as you say, Agent Prince.” Ryan told him. “We storm the mansion and force them out—alive if possible.”
“Tell me that you aren’t going to sign off on this?” Chris asked Sheridan in a desperate tone.
Sheridan reminded Chris of the information that he’d faxed over in the report about Grace Edwards, the assassination of his brother Xavier Prince by a traitorous element of the Peacekeepers and now this potential mass suicide ritual serving as the final chapter of Scar by a House in Chains.
He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his snowcapped hair and his day old beard.
“Give me something concrete to go on here, Agent Prince. Give me something fathomable that tells us anything other than what your report has already informed me on and I’ll consider alternatives.” Sheridan said. “A mass suicide does no one any good here. I would rather have them arrested and tried for the crimes that have been perpetrated tonight.”
“You want something concrete?”
“I do, Agent Prince.”
Chris pointed his index finger at Ryan.
“Tell this man to get back in the car that brought him and lock his door.”
Ryan frowned up and snorted.
“What? I won’t do such a thing.”
“I mean it,” Chris said and folded his arms and stood his ground. “A House in Chains has done all of the damage that it’s going to do. No one else in that building is alert to our potential presence outside of Grace Edwards. We don’t know what the conversation has been like after everyone arrived. Maybe—just maybe cooler heads have prevailed. Hasn’t there been enough ciaos tonight? Hasn’t there been enough death tonight?”
Sheridan scrubbed at his beard until Chris could actually hear the man’s fingers on his skin.
Ryan spoke first, “Don’t be foolish enough to believe that last statement, Sheridan. If I heard through the grapevine correctly, Grace Edwards not only was in the Circle but is the admitted architect of Rapture and Scar. She could have easily set you up which in turn sets us up, Agent Prince. All of this may be grand theatre in an elaborate ruse to lure FBI forces into an ambush—“
Chris snapped.
He reached across Sheridan and grabbed Justin Ryan around his bony neck and pulled his close enough to smell the peppermint on the man’s breath. Sheridan reacted as quickly as his own weariness and surprise allowed him to separate Chris from Ryan.
“I want you hear this and hear it good, Ryan,” Chris said as he tightened the hold on Ryan’s collar. “Scar was madness. Scar was a tragedy of epic proportions. It was madness—but it is over now.”
Sheridan finally succeeded in getting in between the two men and Chris gave him one final shove that nearly toppled Ryan once he was free. The oldest man of the group rubbed at the sore neck and straightened his tie back out.
“Oh my God, Sheridan, don’t tell me that you’re going to even remotely consider going along with this crap of a plan. That mansion is huge. Shit, like I said, they could already know that we are here. They could be either entrenching themselves in the bowels of that place or tunneling out from some unknown passageway as we speak. In fact, your man here, Sheridan, your man Agent Christopher Prince himself, could be stalling for them for all we know. He never disclosed the full measure of his relationship with Grace Edwards.”
“Of course I’m aiding them,” Chris laughed at the notion and then his tone boarded on contempt in a minute. “We’re all the same aren’t we?”
Justin Ryan swore.
“Save that racist bullshit for someone who gives a damn, Agent Prince. That’s not what I meant and you know it. You are, however, the lone surviving sibling of Xavier Prince. It would be foolish to for anyone in this bureau to dismiss that you may be carrying emotional baggage in this matter. Call me what you want, Prince, I am not a fool.”
“None of us are fools, Ryan,” Sheridan stepped between the two men again in case things got out of hand again. He turned his attention to Chris. “What if you’re wrong, Chris,”
Chris twisted his head away from the other two as if the question physically stung him. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He’d let his temper get the upper hand far too often lately…that had to change.
He wanted to assure his boss. Although Grace Edwards played a major role in his reinstatement, Sheridan still had to vouch for him somewhere along the way to get him back into this game. Chris owed the man.
And then he saw it.
A vision of his dead brother and Agent Blue being shot by his discharged weapon flashed in front of him—so real that it was almost tangible enough for Chris to reach out and touch it.
And it wasn’t like he’d been above making mistakes. Grace had abandoned him at the triage center inside the Georgia Dome while he’d talked back and forward with Dr. Seth Dupree. He had thought that there was enough of a bond…enough trust to allow her enough space and belief that she wouldn’t dip on him during a point of vulnerability for him.
He’d made one miscalculation after the ot
her in the past few days and hours. And shit, he was exhausted physically. He was sleepy. He was hungry.
And he was dying.
Never forget, my brother, you are dying of the same stomach disorder that killed mamma.
Ryan said, “I’ll answer the question for you, Sheridan, if you are wrong in your judgement of this man and his motives, you are endangering every law enforcement person on duty here. You are also lessoning the death of every city servant who lost their life tonight serving their country all while—the madness—as Agent Prince proclaimed it, unraveled around their ears.”
Chris ignored Ryan for the moment. Instead he turned around to take in the panoramic view of the mansion. The earthquake had damaged a quarter of the windows that he could see. And if only a third of those windows had rooms—this place was indeed enormous.
And yet, it only had one front door.
“I know a way to settle this,” Chris said and by the time he looked at Sheridan, his boss already knew what he had in mind. “Hear me out, Sheridan. I can’t tell you not to go with Ryan or anyone else’s recommendation on this. The majority of the hardcore violence nationwide has passed. We are in a period of intermission. This resulting earthquake may have pushed us into here faster than it would have happened otherwise. But now we’ve got to think about tomorrow. What happens tomorrow when people of color switch on their TV’s and tablets
