SPARE PARTS (The Upgrade Book 4)

by Wesley Cross

  He closed his eyes again, giving in to fatigue. He’d make that decision soon. For now, all he could do was listen to the water dripping from one invisible surface to another.

  Drip plop drop. Drip plop drop. Drip plop drop.

  40

  Jason Hunt woke up to the sound of dripping water. It was a rhythmical drumbeat that repeated itself after each three notes that sounded slightly different from one another.

  Drip plop drop. Drip plop drop. Drip plop drop.

  The beat never stopped, never paused, and never changed. It was maddening.

  He blinked, opening his eyes, and then fought a wave of panic before realizing he hadn’t gone blind. It was pitch black. He blinked a few times, trying to adjust, and after a while he saw the outlines of things. A thin outline around the door. The gray contours of a rectangular cell.

  His chassis had rebooted while he was unconscious but the energy cells were almost depleted, giving him just enough juice to keep himself upright without crumbling under his own weight. All of his systems were offline, and the visual interface looked pixelated and glitched every few moments. He couldn’t tell how long it had been. His head was heavy, like after a night of hard drinking.

  He couldn’t remember much.

  A sheen of perspiration covered his face, and he reached with his right hand to wipe it off.

  Nothing happened. He groaned, and that’s when the memories came rushing back in. The fight on the bridge. The explosion. Souped-up Victor Ye standing on top of him and ripping his bionic arm out of its shoulder socket.

  The sensor implants in his shoulder were still wet-wired to his nervous system. Without the visual input, he could feel the arm, but it wasn’t there.

  His body ached. His left arm was shackled above his head and his feet were tied to an anchor at the base of the wall.

  “Great,” he said out loud. The word came out raspy and flat, stifled by the oppressive darkness of the cell.

  As if on cue, bright lights came to life on the wall panel, blinding him. Blaring music of Wagner’s Walkürenritt filled the room, swelling with each wave. It got louder and louder until it filled his chest cavity, making it pulsate with each note.

  Then, as abruptly as it began, the music stopped, and the lights dimmed, leaving the cell in a harsh uniform light.

  There was a clattering of keys and then the door to the cell swung open, letting somebody in. Hunt squinted against the harsh light as his eyes adjusted.

  Victor Ye was standing at the entrance of the cell. Glistening armor was covering the man up to his chin. A barely audible humming sound came from the inside of the shining surface as he moved around.

  “Dramatic,” Hunt said. “Playing the Ride of the Valkyries right before your entrance. Never took you for the theatrical type.”

  “There’s always a time and a place for the right amount of drama.” Victor gave him a tight smile as he walked to the center of the room and stood there for a few seconds, looking the prisoner up and down.

  “You padded your shoes? You looked much shorter in pictures.”

  “And you look naked and scrawny,” Victor shot back. “But I’m not here to trade insults. I thought after being locked up in the dark for so long you’d appreciate some entertainment. And boy, do I have some entertainment options for you.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “However, it wouldn’t be fair if you watched this alone. I brought your friend here as well.”

  He moved to the side, and two men wheeled a gurney into the cell. A naked man, his body covered in extensive bruises, was tied to it. Hunt’s chest constricted as he saw Schlager’s face. One of his eyes was swollen shut.

  “Max. My God. Are you okay?”

  Schlager forced a smile at his friend as the men unloaded him off the gurney and shackled him to the wall next to Hunt.

  “Look at that.” Victor clapped his hands and the harsh sound from the contact of his metallic fingers reverberated through the small room. “A reunion. I think the stage is set and we are ready for the main act, don’t you think, Jason?”

  Hunt didn’t answer. Whatever Victor Ye had in mind, Jason had no interest in playing along and giving him satisfaction.

  He waved his hand and the two men retreated from the cell, only to come back a minute later, rolling in a table with a large computer screen set up on it. They moved it to the wall in front of the prisoners and then pulled the wires from outside to connect it. The screen blinked a few times and then displayed a high-definition picture of a forest clearing. It looked like a live, high-altitude feed from a drone or a plane. A small timer window in the upper corner of the screen was counting down to zero.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  Hunt squinted at the screen. For a few seconds, it looked like any other forest clearing shot from above, but once his eyes adapted to the unusual angle, he drew a sharp breath.

  “You do, I take it,” Victor said, satisfied with Hunt’s reaction. “There was a mothballed governmental project with a mighty name, Project Thor. Few people were aware of its existence, not even the president himself. But due to some fortuitous circumstances, I came across the project and I couldn’t help but think that sooner rather than later it could come in handy. Have you heard about it?”

  Hunt didn’t answer, his eyes glued to the black-and-white timer in the screen’s corner. There were only two minutes left before something happened. Something terrible, he had no doubt. Their missile silo hideout was discovered, and now dozens of the most loyal people—along with Rachel—were sitting ducks inside a trap without the slightest clue. But what could Victor possibly do? Those silos could withstand anything but a direct hit from a nuclear missile. He surely wasn’t going to…?

  “Of course, we wouldn’t want to use nuclear warheads on our own territory,” Victor said, as if reading his mind. “But Project Thor is a weapon that can generate almost as much force as a tactical nuke without generating a fallout. It’s a kinetic device. I don’t care to explain how it works, so I’d rather let it speak for itself.”

  Victor moved aside and waved his hand, as if inviting his prisoners to enjoy the opening of a show.

  “He’s bluffing.” Hunt heard Schlager’s voice.

  The clock had less than thirty seconds left.

  “Only one way to find out,” Victor said, without looking back.

  The clock counted down to zero and for a moment nothing happened, giving Hunt a glimmer of hope that it was indeed a bluff, nothing more. Then the screen went white.

  “No!” A harsh scream filled the room and bounced off the walls before dying out. Hunt pulled on the shackle with all his might, nearly dislocating his arm. “You bastard. You’re going to pay for this.”

  The bright light faded out on the screen, yielding the view to the dreaded shape of a mushroom cloud. A deadly circle of a shock wave moved deceptively slowly away from the epicenter. Then, without warning, the picture disappeared, replaced by white noise.

  “I’ve got to say, I knew what to expect,” Victor said, nodding in approval, “but even I’m surprised to see how powerful it was.”

  He waved to his goons and the two men rolled out the table with the screen out of the cell.

  “I will kill you, Victor,” Hunt said. “I don’t know how. But sooner or later, I will find you and kill you.”

  “I’m right here.” The man took a couple of steps and stopped in front of Hunt. Even in his armor suit, he had to crane his neck to look Jason in the eye. “And there’s nothing you can do. Look, you might not like our methods, but this war is over. And I say it’s good for everyone. We don’t have to be enemies. We could work together. You’ve shown that you have grit, ingenuity, and you’re not afraid to take chances. Alex can certainly use someone like you on the team. There’s no shame to switching sides when the only other alternative is death. I’ll tell you what—come work for us and help us build a better world. Don’t you want to have some input into shaping the future?”

  “
Fuck you.”

  “Alex and I didn’t agree on a lot of things,” Victor continued, “but we’ve always agreed on one thing: this world is dying. It needs someone like Engel. Someone who has a vision and is not afraid to get his hands dirty. We are building a new empire, Jason. And when we are done, our power will be rivaled by none. We will be gods.”

  Jason Hunt said nothing, looking at the man in front of him.

  “It’s a shame.” Victor studied his face for a moment and then turned on his heels and headed for the door, his boots clanking on the hard stone. “Suit yourself. I’ll leave you with my doctors then.”

  He walked outside of the cell and a moment later, two other men wearing plastic aprons rolled in a large wooden table. Then one of them disappeared, only to come back with a smaller plastic table. It was covered in black felt and a large array of gleaming instruments was laid out on top of it.

  “Lovely. That kind of party,” Jason said and closed his eyes. “Do what you will, assholes. Just don’t play me any more Wagner. Your music choices are atrocious.”

  41

  “We have to get to him,” Connelly said as they passed the ambulance. “He’s as good as dead if we leave him there.”

  He drove until the armored police cruiser was no longer visible and slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to an abrupt stop.

  “What are you doing?” Chen said.

  “Come on.” He jumped out of the van, ignoring the angry honks of the cars piling up behind them. “By the time we get across and come back, they’ll be gone and we’ll never find him. Grab the box.”

  He hopped over the barrier separating the opposite side of the highway, not waiting for her to follow. An old sedan almost swiped him as it zoomed by, the furious honk fading in the distance. Then there was a Jeep barreling down on him, a middle-aged mustachioed man laying down on the horn as he got closer and closer. Connelly tensed as the car’s grille came to a stop a few inches from his chest.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” The man rolled the window down and stuck his head out. “I could’ve killed you.”

  “I’m sorry, pal.” Connelly slid around the front of the car and smashed an open palm into the man’s face. Then he reached inside the vehicle, grabbed the handle to open the door, and pulled the dazed driver on the side of the road.

  The man tried to take a swing at him, but Connelly swatted his hand away and hit him in the face again. “Please don’t struggle. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He climbed into the Jeep and opened the passenger door for Chen. She heaved the bankers box into the cabin, climbed in, and a moment later they pulled into the lane, accelerating away.

  “The cops,” Chen warned him as they approached the police cruiser.

  “Look around at the wreck,” he said. “That would be a natural reaction of anyone driving here. Don’t be too calm.”

  They crawled past Sorkin’s trailer, waiting for the drivers in the cars ahead of them to get their fill of rubbernecking. Two police troopers in full battle gear were walking around the wreckage, but there was no sign of any bodies.

  Finally, the flow ahead of them started picking up speed and Connelly bullied his way between a few cars and stepped on the gas.

  “I can see the ambulance,” Chen said, pointing ahead.

  He could see it too—a large white minivan with a red stripe across, a few hundred yards ahead of them, its bright, pulsating lights making the cars in front of it scurry away like roaches in the kitchen.

  “How do you want to do this?” she said. “We can try to get to him in the hospital. You have a laceration on your forehead. We could pretend to look for help. You actually need to get it stitched, anyway.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Too risky. We have to assume that Engel already knows who Sorkin is. If he’s in the hospital, he won’t make it out. We’re going to have to grab him before that.”

  “We don’t know the condition he’s in. He might be critical.”

  “That’s a chance we’re going to have to take.”

  He followed the ambulance, keeping a few cars behind it, and when it took the exit, Connelly sped up, overtaking the van and cut in front of it, forcing it to the shoulder. There was a mall on the other side of the road and a gas station farther down by the traffic light, but there were no cars nearby. The siren blared and died out as quickly when the driver saw the barrel of a HK Mark 23 pointed at his head.

  “Get out of the car and get down on the ground,” Connelly shouted, keeping the Jeep between himself and the driver in case the man tried to ram him with the ambulance. “Right now.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the driver obeyed and soon Connelly was tying the man’s hands behind his back.

  “How many people in the back?”

  “Two EMTs and the patient.”

  “Stay here,” he said and ran to the back of the van. He opened the door, dodging a fire extinguisher in the hands of a stocky technician. He trained the gun on the man and waved him out of the vehicle. “Don’t do anything stupid. Get out. You, too.”

  He forced the two men out and down on the ground next to the driver and tied them as well.

  “Is that you, Mike?” Sorkin groaned when Connelly stepped into the ambulance. “I thought you were dead. What the hell happened on that bridge?”

  “We got our asses handed to us, that’s what happened,” he said, undoing the belts that secured the man to the gurney. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live. Some cuts and bruises.” The man gingerly touched the side of his head. “My head weighs a ton of bricks, so probably a concussion, too. Did everybody make it out alive? Where’s Chris?”

  “We don’t know. We might be the lucky ones.” Connelly helped the man stand up and guided him out of the van. “We almost drowned and by the time we made it back to the bridge, everybody was gone. I only saw Martin. It’s hard to tell for sure, but it didn’t look like he’d made it. There was nobody else. Did you see anything?”

  “No.” The man moaned as Connelly pushed him inside of the Jeep. “Damn, that hurts. I was out for a while. The last thing I remember was that man in shiny armor hitting your car and you guys flying over the rails. I thought you were goners. When I came to, all the excitement was over and I saw you driving on the other side of the bridge. I hope Chris is alive. There was a lot of blood on his seat. Geez, I can’t believe it was all for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Chen said as the car pulled away from the ambulance and accelerated away. “Mike saved a box of ballots.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.” Connelly glanced back at the man. “I fished it out of the river. It’s not what you might call mint condition, but it didn’t spend too much time under water. I think some of it should be salvageable.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Here.” Chen passed the bankers box back to Sorkin.

  “Oh boy. We need to find a place to separate the paper and dry them properly. If we keep them like this, they’ll all glue together.”

  “You can come back with us.”

  “I’d love to, but no, I cannot. Despite all of this—” He stopped himself. “No, especially because of all of this, I need to get back to New York as soon as humanly possible. That’s the only way I’ll be able to put this out there before it’s too late. One box of soggy ballots isn’t quite the same as the entire batch, but still. But first, we need to stop somewhere and save these documents. Is there a motel around here? I don’t know the area and I left my phone in that trailer.”

  “Can you find a place?” Connelly looked at Chen.

  “I don’t know. Let me try.” She closed her eyes and leaned back on the headrest.

  “What’s she doing?” Sorkin asked.

  “She has an implant,” Connelly said. “Hopefully it’s working.”

  “There’s a motel about two miles from here,” Chen said, opening her eyes. “I can guide you there. Do we have any money?”

  “I have cash,” Sork
in said from the backseat. He laughed, a bitter edge to his voice. “I don’t know why, but as I was dressing this morning, I thought I had better take cash. Stupid, I know, but look at us.”

  The motel, proudly named Noble Inn and Suites, was a sad, oblong, two-story property painted in bright yellow. The manager, a pot-bellied woman with an eighties hairdo, gave the disheveled group a suspicious look, the crease on her forehead deepening even more after they asked for only one room. But she took Sorkin’s money and then produced a key, chained to a card with the painted number of the room.

  “Room twenty-two. Make a left when you go upstairs. And I don’t want to see any stains on the sheets,” she warned them as Sorkin took the key.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, visibly cringing.

  “At least no new ones,” Chen added when they were out of the woman’s earshot.

  The room, with beige wallpaper and a queen-sized bed with a faded red headboard, was cleaner than Connelly had expected. He pulled the flower-print comforter off the bed and spread it on the floor. Then they spent the next twenty minutes carefully pulling papers out of the bankers box and laying them out to dry.

  “What do you think, Brian?”

  “They will do,” the man said. “I saw a hair dryer in the bathroom. That’ll speed up the process. I should be able to get going in a couple of hours.”

  “All right then.” Connelly threw the keys to the Jeep to him, and Sorkin caught them in the air. “Keep the car. Helen and I will find something else. Thank you for what you’re doing.”

  “I owe it to Sofia. Now go.”

  They left Sorkin in the room and went outside, the manager watching them from behind the desk the entire time.

  “Do you think they are all gone?” Chen said as they stepped out to the parking lot. Something in the tone of her voice made him stop in his tracks. “Max, Jason, everyone?”

  “I don’t know.” He put a hand on her shoulder, feeling her shiver under his fingers. “I hope not. They might’ve been taken. We’ll get them back. We need to find out what happened.”