Olivia gave Kent a sideways look and said, “Seriously? Filter back? Overpopulation is already a problem in your time. The world’s population has quadrupled since then. Where exactly would they go? You have some extra room at the Blackbird Inn?”
“Not funny,” Kent said with a frown.
“So they decided to just wipe out the population of the past to make room,” I said soberly.
“That’s about it.”
“And our government had no idea it was coming,” Tori said, dazed.
“Oh they knew,” Olivia said. “Or at least they suspected. That’s why they created SYLO. SYLO was supposed to be the force that held us back. But they had no idea of the firepower the Air Force was building. It took years, but the Air Force created a massive, lethal attack force. The people of the past didn’t stand a chance.”
“These guardians protect us from the gates of hell,” I said. “Or not.”
“Yeah, or not,” Olivia echoed.
Olivia turned off the hologram and sat back into the couch with a sigh.
“I joined the Air Force to help feed my family,” she said. “The military figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t one to carry a pulser and fight, so they made me a spy. An infiltrator. There were thousands of us who leaked through time over the years to blend in and learn about SYLO and the bases they were creating to stage their defense. That’s why I was on Pemberwick Island. There were dozens of us there. Granger knew that, he just wasn’t sure of who was who. Those people who were shot or arrested weren’t innocent islanders trying to escape, they were Retro spies.”
“Not all of them,” Tori said, bristling.
“No, not all of them,” Olivia said with sympathy. “Your father got caught in the crossfire. I’m so sorry for that.”
“We all got caught in the crossfire,” Kent said. “I lost my dad too.”
Olivia said, “Those SYLO bases were meant to preserve your old way of life and rebuild once the Retros were turned back. SYLO had no idea that so many of us were already inside those bases, waiting for the command to rise up and finish the job.”
“And SYLO had no idea how powerful the Retros really were,” I said.
There was a painfully long silence as we let the incredible information sink in. Everything Olivia said rang true. It all fit. It answered every question and made total sense . . . even the concept of stepping through time. That may have been the most outlandish concept of all, yet strangely it was the least disturbing.
“Can I ask you something?” Kent said in a meek voice.
“Sure,” Olivia replied.
“You talk about your government like they’re villains who fooled the people of the past into believing they were trying to help them while secretly planning their destruction. I get that, but what makes you any different? You’re just as cold-blooded as they are. Did we mean anything to you? Or were you just sticking with us to help root out survivors?”
Olivia didn’t answer right away. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to speak but her voice cracked.
We all just stared at her, waiting for an answer.
“The more I learned about what they were planning, the more disgusted I became,” she said. “I tried to hide my real feelings because they don’t have much patience for traitors. I guess I didn’t do such a great job of keeping it to myself, because I was approached by the Sounders. They saw I had doubts. I learned that I wasn’t alone in thinking that the invasion would be a monstrous act against humanity. I planned on working with them from the inside to try to put an end to the madness, but that’s when I got shipped out to Pemberwick Island.”
“So you went along with the Air Force program after all,” Tori said.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said, trying to keep her emotions in check. “I was being watched constantly. Even after the attack began and we escaped from Pemberwick, I had to report in daily. Just like Jon Purcell.”
“Did you know Jon was a Retro?” I asked.
“Eventually. It made it that much more difficult to tell you the truth, but I did what I could to protect you. I didn’t want to go to Fort Knox because I feared we’d uncover another SYLO base. I didn’t want to go to Nevada and find survivors because I knew I would be leading the wolves to their door. That’s why I wanted to bail and go to Florida. I thought maybe we could just get out of the crossfire until everything settled. I was fully prepared to desert.”
“But you didn’t,” Kent said.
“I didn’t because I cared about you guys,” she said boldly. “And because I’m a Sounder. There are hundreds of us. None of us wanted the invasion but we didn’t have the power to stop it. I’m not even sure we had the will to stop it. That is, until it was too late and the horrible theory became a reality.”
“Why do you call yourself Sounders?” Tori asked.
“They had to come up with something that we could use to refer to each other without raising suspicion. Sound thinking doesn’t lead to genocide. There’s no justification for mass murder. I’m not sure I fully understood that until I saw what happened for myself. In Portland. And Boston. And every other place we visited from there to Las Vegas. The idea that so many lives, so many stories, had just ended was . . . it was mind numbing. All I wanted to do was get back here and reconnect with the Sounders. They needed to hear about what I saw. What we saw. They had to know the reality. It was the only way to convince them that we had to take action and do something before the rest of the people from the past were executed.”
“That all sounds very noble, but are there enough Sounders to derail the Air Force?” I asked.
The mischievous sparkle returned to Olivia’s eyes. I hadn’t seen that in a good long time.
“In pure numbers, not even close,” she said. “We can’t battle them outright. But there is a plan. We couldn’t set it in motion until we found a critical piece of the puzzle. Now we think we’ve got that piece.”
“What is it?” Tori asked.
Olivia smiled slyly and said, “You.”
FIFTEEN
I had heard enough.
“Why?” I asked, staring straight at Olivia.
“Why what?” she asked in her most innocent voice.
“Why should we believe anything you say? You’ve been playing us. Every single thing you’ve said about yourself for the last five months has been a lie. Give us one good reason why we should trust you now.”
Olivia took a moment to collect her thoughts, then stood up slowly and faced me.
“Because you want your life back, or at least you want to live the rest of your life as close to normal as you can. If that’s what you want, Tucker, I’m your only hope. The Sounders are your only hope. Is there anything you’ve seen since stepping through the Bridge that makes you think I’m lying now? Is there anything you’ve seen since it hit the fan on Pemberwick Island that makes you think I’m not telling the truth about all this? Tell you what, I can show you something that’ll freak you out even more than the story I just told you.”
“Oh please don’t,” Kent said.
Olivia reached down to the control panel and let her fingers hover over the keyboard.
“I can show you history. My history. When that bomb opened the Bridge in 1952 it started the clock on an entirely new existence. But the old existence didn’t go away. It’s still there. You’re in it right now. Like I said, you can’t change events that already happened.”
She waved her fingers over the controls, teasing us.
“You want to see the history of my time, Tucker? This time? I can show you what became of you as an adult. What do you think of that? Do you want to know the day you died? What about you, Tori? Your dad lived to a ripe old age. You know what else? Marty Wiggins went on to play for USC. Your father didn’t die from an overdose of the Ruby, Kent. And Quinn wasn’t killed out on that boat. I looked it all up.
That’s my history . . . the history that led to the world you’re in right now. When we go back through the Bridge, we’re not just going back in time, we’re going back to a different existence. A new existence that was created when that bomb went off. The future of that reality hasn’t been written yet.”
“I think I like our old existence better,” Kent said.
“Really?” Olivia shot back. “You like this? You like how the world turned out?”
“No, but I like that the Retros didn’t wipe out billions of people. And oh yeah, my father.”
“There’s the trade-off,” Olivia said. She walked toward the large window and stared out at the filthy desert city. “Which is the bigger crime? Wiping out most of humanity in a single invasion, or slowly destroying an entire planet for multiple generations to come?”
“It sounds like you’re agreeing with the invasion,” I said.
Olivia spun away from the window to face us. Her eyes were wild and her breathing was heavy. She was way more upset than I had realized.
“Nobody is innocent here,” she said. “But we have to live with what we do and I can’t live with being an executioner. That’s why I’m a Sounder and that’s why I want to stop the invasion. But don’t think for a second that going back to your old life would make everything all better because it wouldn’t.”
Through the window behind her, a large dark shape floated down from above and hovered outside.
“What the . . . ?” Kent said.
“Get down!” I screamed.
Olivia’s eyes went wide and she spun around to face the black attack drone that loomed outside.
I reacted without thinking, jumped at her, and tackled her to the floor. An instant later the window exploded from the impact of the energy cannon that had been fired at us.
The Retros had tracked us down.
Bits of glass and recycled garbage rained down on us as the plane continued to fire, pulverizing the outside wall and the contents of the small apartment.
“Crawl back to the door!” Tori screamed over the sounds of destruction.
We were all flat on our bellies. Safe, but for how long? Once the outside wall was destroyed there would be no more protection.
Olivia went first, crawling for the front door of the apartment. The rest of us followed, pushing our way through the growing rubble as the black marauder pounded away unmercifully. Kent shot past her and got to the door first. He bravely reached up and opened the door so we could all scramble into the corridor.
“The elevator,” Tori yelled and started running for it.
“No!” Olivia shouted. “They’ll take control of that. The stairs.”
She led us in the opposite direction, sprinting for the stairwell on the far end of the corridor. As she ran, Olivia held her communicator up to her ear.
“They tracked us to my quarters,” she screamed over the sounds of her apartment being blasted apart. “We need to come in. Now!”
She pushed open the fire door that led to the stairs and ran down faster than was safe.
“Four of us,” Olivia shouted into the device without breaking stride. “Give me a location.”
“Location for what?” Kent asked, breathless.
“We’ll get picked up and taken somewhere safe,” Olivia called back to him.
“Safe like this place?”
Olivia didn’t have a comeback to that.
“Understood,” she said into the device. “Five minutes.” She jammed the communicator into her pocket and called back to us, “We’ll get picked up five blocks from here.”
“Or they’ll pick up our pieces downstairs,” Kent said. “What the hell is going on?”
“They must have identified me from the roof of the Academy,” Olivia said. “Like I said, they don’t appreciate traitors.”
We hit the ground floor and blasted out of a back door to find ourselves in a narrow alley between buildings. All four of us instantly looked to the sky for fear of seeing the black plane hovering above.
“Gee, just like old times,” Kent said.
“Does the Air Force know about the Sounders?” I asked.
“They know there’s an underground but I don’t know how much they actually know about us, or who any of us are.”
She took off running down the alley and we followed closely. When we reached the corner we all cautiously peered out to see two Retro attack planes hovering high above the building, pulverizing the spot that used to be Olivia’s apartment.
“I guess they know about you,” Tori said.
Olivia shrugged and said, “Yeah, guess I’ve been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.”
She then led us on a race through the narrow streets of the filthy city. Olivia seemed to know exactly where she was going, dodging down multiple narrow alleyways while keeping off the wider streets. We passed hundreds of people who were either dressed in camouflage fatigues or the dark-pants-colorful-shirt uniforms. None of what we were seeing seemed real, least of all Olivia, who led us with such confidence.
She had played the role of the spoiled rich girl well. The only hints she had given up that there was more to her were the few times she did something totally uncharacteristic, like when she cared for Tori’s wound after being shot by the SYLO sniper or when she saved Kent from being crushed in the Las Vegas casino. I saw her perform heroically those few times but thought it was a fluke. I had no idea just how much she was hiding.
“Walk,” she commanded. “There’s less chance of us being spotted.”
Gratefully, we slowed to a walk. I was totally winded. It was torture sprinting through a jammed, polluted city in the burning desert.
“This city only exists because of the Bridge?” I asked.
“It’s the training and staging area for the invasion and colonization,” she answered. “Every last person here is preparing to move into the past. They all have specific jobs and have already been assigned a new home.”
“What’s your assignment?” Tori asked. “Pemberwick Island?”
“Hardly,” she said with an eye roll, flashing a hint of the Olivia we used to know. “Because of my advance work I was given my choice of where to settle.”
“And where’s that?” Kent asked.
“Paris. I always wanted to see the City of Lights.”
“You’ve never been there in your time?” Tori asked.
“It doesn’t exist in this time. Paris is a polluted salt marsh.”
There was no escaping the reality of what the world had become. It almost made me feel sorry for the people of 2324. Almost. They may have been backed into a desperate corner by the ignorance of those who lived before them, but they were still a cold-blooded society who believed mass murder was the solution. At least most of them did.
Then there were the Sounders—proof that some people still had a conscience. Whatever their plan was for derailing the invasion, it was looking more like the best (and only) hope for salvaging whatever remained of the world we knew. Our world.
As we moved through those dusty desert streets I knew in my heart that I would do whatever it was they asked of me. I was going to have to become as cold-blooded as the people we were trying to defeat. I would become as ruthless as Feit. As callous as Bova. I would do whatever it took and I welcomed the chance. I owed it to my friends, and to my family. My mother was back in that Retro camp. As far as I knew, my father was still on Pemberwick Island. I had to fight for them. For us.
Olivia threw up her hand and we stopped at the edge of an intersection that was crowded with people. I listened for the telltale musical sound of the attack planes, but only heard the white noise of a few hundred people shuffling on their way to wherever.
“There it is,” she said and took off quickly, leading us through the intersection until we came upon a black military-looking vehicle.
“Get in,” she commanded and went for the shotgun seat.
Kent grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Tell us where we’re going,” he said.
“To a safe house,” she said.
“I’m not going,” Kent said adamantly. “Being with you guys is too risky.”
“Seriously?” Olivia shot back. “Taking you in is a far bigger risk for us. Feit wants your heads.”
“So then why protect us?” Tori asked.
“Because the invasion is about to happen. People are going to start moving through the Bridge to repopulate the past. Before that happens they plan on wiping out millions more from your time. Either we stop them now, right now, or blood will start flowing again. We have a plan but we need you three to pull it off. I’m trusting you. Can you trust me?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Kent said.
He wanted to grab some control over the situation, but he was floundering.
Tori shot past him and got in the car.
“Wait, no,” Kent whined.
We were starting to draw the attention of people in the street.
“Get in, Kent,” I commanded. “Now.”
Kent snapped a surprised look at me. He’d never heard me talk to him like that before because I hadn’t. But this was no time to worry about hurt feelings. The Retros were coming after us. They were coming after the Sounders. People were going to die. It was now or never.
“C’mon, Kent,” Tori said, coaxing him sternly. “We don’t have a lot of choice here.”
Kent was mad and still hurting over Olivia’s deceitfulness. I wanted to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t. Not just then.
“Please, Kent,” Olivia said gently, sounding like her old self.
Kent may not have trusted Olivia. But he still cared about her. With a huff, he climbed into the backseat.
I jumped in right after.
At the wheel of the vehicle was a bald guy with dead eyes wearing Air Force fatigues. Under any other circumstances I’d be afraid of that guy, but I was glad he was in charge of getting us out of there and away from a predator drone. You want that job to go to a steely eyed professional.
Strike: The SYLO Chronicles #3 Page 18
