Joniver worried about a back exit from the room. So he determined to keep Hunter in sight.
“Seriously, Jon-,” Hunter said.
“Don’t call me Jon!” Joniver angled so Hunter had to move toward a corner of the room.
“I didn’t kill them, Joniver,” Hunter insisted. “Elizabeth did. Your mother did. Your mother killed your father because he didn’t like her plan to take over the company, and it is still her plan! You must believe me. I would never do anything to hurt you or your brother. You are my family.”
Joniver stopped. He had gained the positional advantage on Hunter, but he hesitated.
“You know I’m right, don’t you?” Hunter kept talking. “Isn’t that the reason you didn’t give her the correct codes?”
Joniver stared at Hunter. He’s guessing, Joniver thought. He has to be.
Hunter smiled. I’ve got him, he told himself.
Behind where Hunter stood, a plate glass window looked out onto a greenway. Hunter was so focused on Joniver, he had paid no attention to what was unfolding in the fading light of the November sky.
Joniver stopped. Hunter’s position was perfect, and Joniver stood frozen, his eyes fixed on Hunter. Hunter misunderstood Joniver’s hesitation, and he straightened up. “You know I’m right, don’t you, Joniver?”
Just then Jacob repelled from the roof and swung out from the building. He fired into the plate glass and watched it shatter as he swung through the broken slivers of tinted glass and onto the floor of the storage room.
Hunter hit the floor as did Joniver. The bullets flew as all three jumped to their feet. Hunter leaped for the door, but Joniver was younger and faster. He cut Hunter off with a bull rush into the door jamb, and both sprawled out into the hallway. The sword hilt with the shard of metal still attached bounced across the hall, hit the far wall and came to rest. Joniver pounced on it, grabbing the hilt and in the same motion jumped on Hunter’s back. Hunter splayed on the floor under Joniver’s force. Jacob joined them in the hallway.
Joniver flipped Hunter over, breathing heavily, with the hilt raised above his head in a fist.
“Joniver, NO! NO!” Jacob yelled. “Don’t do it, Dude. We got him and we can stop them now. You do not want to do it like this - not like this. I’m telling you, I know…”
“He killed our father, and he killed Nana,” Joniver said, tears in his eyes. His voice trembling like his right arm, rippled with muscles and swimming in sweat. His blood ran coarse with rage.
“No, he didn’t,” Jacob said as he pointed his gun against Hunter’s skull. “Get off him. We need to deal with him and then we’ll deal with the one who killed Nana and dad.”
Joniver had never heard Jacob refer to him as dad, and he had never used the term either. Hearing it now shook him. He loosened his grip on Hunter’s shirt and dropped him to the floor.
“Who did?”
“Not now, Joniver!” Jacob said, his eyes fixed on Hunter. Jacob backed away and Hunter got to his feet in the middle of the hallway with Jacob and Joniver angled to one side close to the wall. Joniver focused alternately on Jacob and Hunter.
“WHO DID?” Joniver screamed.
Jacob opened his mouth to answer, but as he did so, a black-clad figure stepped through a door. The doorway was on the opposite side of the hallway from Joniver and Jacob, but on the same side as Hunter. The gun pointed at Joniver and Jacob and then switched to Hunter. The trigger depressed and a three round burst of gut cutters entered Hunter’s body. He immediately felt the effects of the bullets, as his internal organs were shredded like tissue paper.
Jacob and Joniver jumped back in shock. Jacob trained his weapon on the intruder, but the intruder’s weapon fell to the floor. A hand removed the knit mask, revealing eyes filled with a mixture of hate and regret and relief and hope.
“Genevieve!” Jacob said. She dropped to her knees as the emotion pumped from her body in fits of sobs and waves of screams. She kicked like a giant tornado let loose inside of her.
Jacob knelt and wrapped his muscular arms around her, pulling her close as she thrashed until she had no strength. Seeing the two of them reminded Joniver of how Nana would hold him as a boy during a lightning storm. He forgot all about Hunter, as he watched Jacob hold Genevieve, but now he turned his attention to the dying - no, dead man. The bullet holes sealed themselves, another technological torture of the company, and so the blood from the internal bleeding pooled inside the body. Hunter oozed blood from his body orifices but was also bloated like a balloon.
What Joniver found strange were the imprints in his skin along his scalp and neck. He pulled back Hunter’s shirt and they were lined up and down his chest as well as into his shoulders. They looked like circuit boards of some kind, and Joniver reached out with the sword shard to cut open the flesh.
“Don’t,” Jacob said to him. Joniver turned.
“He’s been genetically enhanced and surgically modified,” Jacob said, lifting Genevieve to her feet. “He was more machine than human.”
“That doesn’t explain-"
“No, it doesn’t,” Jacob cut him off. “But it’s true enough. I heard stories about it all the time and with his erratic behavior, I figured it must be true. The implants tend to drive people mad.”
“But you’ve got implants,” Joniver said. His statement was part question.
Jacob nodded. “That will happen to me, too. Why do you think I wanted them out so bad?”
Joniver thought back on the training sessions and the many times he had envied the good side of having the implants. He had been sure if he possessed the implants like Jacob, he would have been just as good as his brother, and he both coveted and disdained Jacob’s advantage. He now saw the truth of what his brother said to him. What Jacob told him really was for Joniver’s own good.
“Joniver!” Jacob had been calling his name. He looked up. “I need your help! Let’s get Genevieve somewhere safe, and then we still have work to do.”
Joniver realized two things at the same time. Genevieve had yet to speak, and there were all kinds of questions he had for her about Olinar. Did she know they had him?
Secondly, Jacob said Hunter didn’t kill dad. If not Hunter, who did kill him?
“Where do we take her?” Joniver asked. Then to Genevieve, “Hey, are you okay?”
“She’s in shock, Dude,” Jacob said. “I’m not sure she knows she’s even here right now.” Jacob looked at Joniver and shook his head as if to say, don’t mention Olinar!
Joniver got the message, and he knew to hold his questions.
They strode down the hallway toward the room across from the elevator. Jacob keyed his com-pod, “Send me a medic and two guards to level four, room twenty-three.”
Joniver mouthed to Jacob, “Who did it?”
Chapter 34
He raised his left hand a few inches, and his eyelids fluttered. Someone stood by his bedside.
“Hey!” she said. “You awake? How do you feel?” She had such a soothing voice.
Olinar’s hand moved, but he lacked fine motor control. He formed a “thumbs up” sign, but it was loose; he couldn’t make a fist. He moved his lips, but no sound came out.
“Everything’s ok,” the Voice said. “Don’t try to do too much right now. Let me get you some water.”
His eyelids continued to fight against the inertia of rest, but he had rested too much, hadn’t he? He saw light and the blur of objects in front of him, then the room moved in circles and he shut the eyelids tight. The effects of motion sickness wrapped around him. If there had been anything in his stomach, it would have exited. The nausea lasted for a few seconds, and then he relaxed.
He felt the return of the Voice, “Hey, Olinar, I’ve brought you some water. Do you want to take a sip? I’ve got a straw for you.”
A thumbs up sign, the answer, was made with a little less struggle this time. Olinar felt the rough plastic edges of the straw on his dehydrated lips and he opened his mouth, trying to grab the stra
w’s smooth sides. He felt the water cool his lips as it passed through the straw and then there was a cold burst and his mouth awakened into life. He smiled, but only the right side of his mouth moved. Water trickled out of his mouth on the left side and ran down his chin and neck wetting his hospital shirt and chest.
“Oh, hang on,” the Voice said. “Not too much!”
He felt the rough surface of a towel on his chest, neck and face. He swallowed the water and enjoyed the refreshing feeling as it moved over the back of his throat and down into his stomach. He had been given nothing but liquids for the last four days, and then only enough to keep him alive. He was emaciated, weak and disoriented, but he was here.
“Want more?” he heard the Voice ask.
A slight nod this time, and he tried to lift his head. Pain shot down the back of his scalp and into his neck. The muscles in his upper back howled with the torment. His head throbbed as if there were someone banging a bat against his skull, and the shooting pain down the left side of his neck felt like a screwdriver driven down his ear canal.
He screamed but the sound came out in garbled and muted noises. He sounded like a Crazy.
“No, no,” the soothing Voice said. “Don’t try to sit up. The doctors said you could move your arms but not sit up.”
Olinar lay writhing in pain.
“Let me get you something,” she said. Someone new came to the bedside, and injected something into his IV. In a few moments, Olinar lay still, caught in intermittent fits of sleep.
Soon the hand went up again, and the Voice was by his side.
“Yes? Olinar?”
His lips moved again, but this time there was a whisper, “Genevieve?”
“Genevieve is fine,” the Voice said.
Olinar’s finger pointed at her.
“No, I’m not Genevieve,” she said.
“Talk…Genevieve,” he said. His speech was slow and slurpy and his tongue was thick in his mouth.
The Voice was quiet.
“Talk…Genevieve…bring here…” He strained each fiber of his being to form the audible words.
Olinar rested after speaking and then swallowed with visible effort. The Voice gave him more water, and this time with less trickle, Olinar attempted a smile. He moved his eyelids to create small slits for his eyes. The room was blurry and the light was offensive, but the room did not spin, and he did not feel sick. He opened his eyes wider and focused on one object, then another and another, alternately sliding his eyelids open then closed. Olinar’s determination was a force of will and after an hour, he saw with reasonable clarity. He looked up and turned his head, inviting the pain to return. The sting and shooting barbs raced along his neural pathways, but they were not in full force, thanks in large part to the synthetic opioids riding herd in his bloodstream. He looked for the Voice. “Where…Genevieve?” Olinar’s voice was not clear but his tongue no longer stuck to the sides of his mouth.
“Genevieve’s resting,” the Voice said.
Olinar tensed his core and moved to sit up. The pain rippled through him once again like the sound from a ringing church bell, but he was not to be deterred. The Voice was by his side in seconds. “You’ve got to lie back down!”
“No…to see Genevieve….got…tell her…”
“Wait! Wait,” the Voice said, as she moved around in front of him. “Ok, I’ll take you, but let’s talk first.”
Olinar nodded and eased back against his bed. “More meds…”
Olinar wasn’t sure if the room was dark or if his pain and state of mind were coloring what he saw. Everything had been so bright when he first opened his eyes. Did they do something to the lighting in here, he asked himself.
“More meds…”
“Genevieve is not physically hurt,” the Voice said. “She is in shock, so she may not talk. I know you have a lot of questions, but the best thing is for you to talk with her. But it must wait until tomorrow.”
“No - now…more meds…”
A nurse walked in the room and pushed pain killer through Olinar’s IV tube. He stood and watched as the medicine pumped into Olinar’s veins. The liquid dulled his pain and escorted Olinar into a deep and full night’s sleep.
***
The morning light broke into Olinar’s room bright and clear, shooting sharp knives of light through the cracks in the window coverings. After breakfast, an orderly with a wheel chair rolled in, and he helped Olinar out of bed and into the chair. His pain subsided some overnight, but his head still felt heavy and sluggish. Olinar’s head felt as if water sloshed inside his skull, splashing from side to side when he moved. He dropped his face in his palms as the orderly pushed him down the hall.
Olinar felt the chair turn right, and then take another right and slow to a stop. He opened his eyes and focused on the bed in front of him. He was not in his hospital room and someone lay in this bed.
He blinked and gazed into the face lying on the pillow.
Genevieve stared blankly. She looked at him, but also through him and past him somehow.
“Genevieve?” Olinar said. This was his first word today and although there was significant improvement, he still struggled.
Genevieve blinked, but made no movement.
“Hey,” Olinar said. “How - are - you?” Olinar fought to get the words out.
She moved her head a little. As he sat staring at her, Olinar realized the Voice traveled with him to Genevieve’s room.
“Open…blinds…let light in,” Olinar said. “She likes - light - in room.”
“Olinar,” the Voice said. “She has not spoken since she came here. The doctors think it would be better-“
“Open windows!” Pain rippled in waves through Olinar’s limbs.
The Voice complied and shafts of sunshine burst into the room. Olinar raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Too much?” She asked.
“No. Good.”
“Genevieve,” Olinar said. “I know - you like sunshine…I know you like…morning sunshine…we open shades.”
“Hey,” he said. “I just woke up myself. I don’t know what’s going on. I still feel pretty numb - not everything working right just yet…but I had to see you. I don’t know what’s happened, but I want you to know it doesn’t matter. I love you no matter what…I had to get to you as quick as I could…I’ve been a jerk. We didn’t say goodbye like we should have…that’s my fault. I’m sorry. Please forgive me, because I love you. What’s happened or what you’ve done or what I’ve done doesn’t matter. I love you…if something happens today, I don’t want you to doubt it. OK?”
“Genevieve, I hope you can hear me. I love you.”
She lay unresponsive. Genevieve blinked and at times appeared to look at Olinar, but suddenly the expression would change to something, somewhere else.
The Voice broke in. “Hey, Olinar we need to go, and get you back in bed."
He suddenly recognized the Voice. “Emily?”
“Yes,” she said. “We need to get you back.”
As they left the room, a single tear formed in the corner of Genevieve’s right eye. The watery signal rolled out of her eye, crossing the skin of her cheek, and onto the pillow where her head rested.
Olinar motioned to Emily as she pushed his wheelchair. “What’s wrong?”
“She missed you terribly, Olinar. She thought you were dead and she gave up. Nothing anybody said or did helped.”
They arrived back in his room, and his pain rolled back in as well. Olinar shouted when they helped him onto the bed.
“I’ll get you something,” Emily said. She did, but as soon as the pain subsided, Olinar insisted on seeing Genevieve.
Over the next several hours and days, he made many trips to see the woman he loved. He hoped against hope to see her return.
Chapter 35
Hunter was down and the remaining Guardsmen neutralized. The Angriff secured the other buildings in the compound, and the technicians systematically took the donor tanks offline. They reported finding
Buscar in one of the last tanks. The son of Hunter was just another victim of his father’s evil lunacy.
This was a start, Joniver knew, but Elizabeth was still out there, and until she was neutralized, they could not take control of company systems.
If they entered the codes without having her, she would override the system and lock them out, creating new codes. They would have succeeded in replacing Hunter with someone worse.
Was it even possible? Joniver asked himself. He thought about it. With his mother taking control from Hunter, they would jump from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
Today had been a full day, and will as they might, soldiers need rest and food like anyone else. This group of Angriff had not had a continuous eight hours of sleep in a week. Dunston set up the watch, taking the first shift himself so his men could sleep. Under normal circumstances, Peters and Beetle would have protested, but tonight, no one did.
Dunston observed that even the brothers needed sleep. His eyelids were heavy as well, but the thought of Elizabeth still out there was enough to give any man insomnia. He anticipated that she would have a small group of Guardsmen, but he did not worry about a fire fight. Her group was no match for the Angriff.
What bothered him was the codes. The codes would need to be entered, and entered correctly, with Elizabeth neutralized. Like her brother, Dunston did not trust her an inch, and their next mission gave him a deep sense of foreboding. There will be surprises, he thought.
He heard from Huá Lōng, and she, along with Mganga, had some success with the Guardsmen and the people at the Station. The programming of the Guardsmen still worried him though. If they could not get control of those computers soon, the Guardsmen with the implants might turn and start shooting anything or anyone. The citizens would no doubt blame the “terrorists,” and Elizabeth would swoop in to save the day.
She is Hunter in a pant suit, he thought. He wondered if she ever wore a skirt like a real woman, and his mind wandered. He caught himself and spit.
“That is gross and disgusting,” Dunston said out loud. His curse was much too loud and he almost woke up the unit. As he patrolled his security rounds, he attempted to remove the ugly mental image, but found it was like trying to rid his hair of a spider web.
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