“What?” she laughed. “You think I’m going to attack you in the middle of the night or something?”
“No. It’s just… I don’t know. I’m not really comfortable with all of this.”
“Okay. I promise to wear a bra around the house. Better?”
“No,” Rowan said glumly.
“And you can’t go telling people that we’re here or introducing Rowan to girls from Starbucks or whatever. If they find out I’m in town, you’re as good as dead for helping me. The best thing to do is keep our heads down and stay out of sight until things kick off. Please?”
“Yeah, of course, Bodhi. I didn’t mean to weird you out or anything. I’m a free spirit. That’s what drew me to the Revolution. We should be allowed to express ourselves creatively without needing a permit for every little thing. We should be allowed to go outside and enjoy the Mother’s gift of sunshine without being forced to cover every inch of our bodies. We should be allowed to grow our own food in our own gardens without the government destroying it because it’s not properly rationed. Yeah, that happened to my girlfriend. They came and burned her vegetable garden with a flamethrower. Can you believe that?”
“Unfortunately, I can,” I mumbled, wondering if I’d been involved in her friend’s woes. I’d been present at a couple of garden burnings by the Rationing Board. It had disgusted me each time, but I’d been determined to be a team player at the time. I’d been so incredibly misguided.
“Okay,” Beth said, slapping her hands on her thighs. “So it’s decided. The two of you will stay here. I’ll try to remember that you guys have some different personal boundaries than I do. We’ll all get along and everything will be groovy.”
I debated it for a moment. Rogan had said explicitly to not text or call him unless it was an emergency since he was worried they were close to exposing Taya, which would lead them to both he and Plummer and all of their movements via cell phone tracking that she’d covered up.
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “We have a deal.”
Beth jumped and hugged me again, squealing like a junior high schoolgirl. “Alright! So, you guys should get cleaned up. Take a shower and all that. Just put your dirty clothes in the hallway, plus any from your bags, and I’ll do the laundry real quick. Get everything nice and fresh for you. Then I’ll make some lunch.” She held up a hand. “Don’t worry. The Resistance gave me a bunch of extra food in preparation for your stay and there’s a guy down at the sanitation department who will cover up the extra water usage and any additional garbage that would be out of the ordinary for what I normally use.”
“You guys thought of everything,” I said, watching Rowan walk out of the bedroom toward his room.
“Well, not everything,” Beth said, slapping me playfully on the shoulder. “Nobody knew you were so strait-laced. I promised to be fully clothed around your brother, but I gotta warn you, I sleep naked.” She winked at me. “Just thought I’d warn you so you won’t be surprised tonight.”
“Ah…”
“Now, give me those pants so I can wash them.”
It was going to be a long couple of weeks in this house.
THREE
“Hey, Beth. You treating these guys alright?” Rogan asked once he’d come inside and removed his shoes. Rowan and I had apparently committed a faux pas against our host’s household cleanliness rule two days ago when we wore our boots inside her house and walked across the carpet in them.
“Yes, sir, Mister Army Soldier, sir!” Beth said with a mock salute.
He smiled and hugged her. “Dumbass.”
“Well, we had a slight issue on the first night,” Beth said, causing me to stare at her in mute horror. “Bodhi is a prude. I sleep naked. He wasn’t comfortable with that, so I had to wear a t-shirt to bed. I feel as if the Goddess can’t commune with me at night through my dreams because of the fabric separating me from her.”
Rogan turned to me with a look of faked shock on his face. “You can’t get between a woman and the Goddess, Haskins. I can’t believe that you would dare to say she can’t commune at night.”
“Beth let me know the next morning that she’d slept horribly and I felt bad,” I admitted.
“So, she was able to sleep naked last night?” he asked, clearly amused at the situation. I realized that he’d chosen the accommodations purposefully because of Beth’s quirkiness.
“Yes. After the lights were out.”
“Talk about the 1800s, right, Jason?” Beth said, chuckling.
“Yeah. I had no idea that your guest was such a prude, as you put it.”
Thankfully, she didn’t mention that she insisted on showering with me to “Conserve the Mother’s water” and some of the other things she’d tried to do to get me to sleep with her. My initial impression that she was a Revolution groupie had been spot-on. She was fully star-struck by my presence, which was a complete joke. Don’t get me wrong, the scenery was nice, incredibly nice, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d ever cheat on Cassandra.
“You guys see the news?” Rogan asked, changing the subject.
“That they knocked down the Autonomous Zone with a tank?” I asked.
“That, yeah. We told them not to do that shit. It wasn’t a tank though.”
“Looked like it to me,” I said.
“It was an MRAP,” Rogan scoffed. “The National Guard has a bunch of them. It doesn’t even have a big gun on it, Haskins. Or tracks. It has wheels. How the hell are you confusing it with a tank?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t in the Army before all of this, man. If it’s bigger than a truck, it’s a tank.”
He leaned back on the couch. ”The NAR and the WHO had to admit that they exaggerated the H5N8 death rates. When Plum—” Rogan stopped and glanced at Beth. “When Every American released all that data to every single media outlet in the United States, there was no way they could keep the truth hidden. Even though a bunch of the big media corporations tried to smother the details, there were just too many small, independent agencies that had the information. It snowballed after they were able to verify the claims.”
“That’s awesome,” I said. “What does that do to the Revolution?”
“It certainly strengthens our claim that the New American Republic is a fraud. Even the networks that ignored the results at first have been forced to report the truth or lose all credibility with their base. It should absolutely help us against them.”
“Do you think we can overthrow the government without firing a shot?” Beth asked, hopeful to avoid bloodshed.
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. The NAR has a stranglehold on power. In my experience, those in power like to stay in power. We’re talking about throwing out every election for the past six years and removing federal judges who’ve been appointed by the last several administrations. The idea is to clean out everyone from Congress who’s been there for all of this. Let them all run reelection campaigns and be elected by a population who is informed about what’s been going on in Washington for the last couple of decades. It should look very different from what it does today.”
I regarded him skeptically during his speech. When he was finished, I said, “That’s not going to happen. They’re not going to let that happen.”
He nodded. “You’re probably right. There are too many people involved. Hell, even the CEA, where we came from,” he said as an aside for Beth and Rowan’s benefit, “is split. There are a lot of hardcore supporters of the System who might not back down willingly.”
“It started out as a good idea,” Beth stated. “I like the universal health care and educational opportunities for everyone, and the prosecution against racism and bigotry, but they went way too far with all of that.”
I grunted as I leaned forward to pick up the glass of iced tea that Beth had made me. It had a flower or some shit floating on the top that I had to hold out of the way with a finger as I sipped the drink. “I don’t think we’re going to get away with a bloodless revolution.”
“Unfortunately, neither do I,” Rogan agreed. He sighed and asked, “So, do you have those images for me?”
“Yeah, hold on,” Beth said, getting up. I saw Rowan’s eyebrows skyrocket and I glanced at Beth.
She was bent over, digging through a drawer in the foyer. The half-shirt she wore drooped down, giving us a clear view of the fact that she’d decided not to wear a bra around the house anymore. I stared at her amazing assets as I tried to place a hand over Rowan’s eyes.
“Here they are,” she said, straightening. She held an envelope with several dozen photographs inside and a thumb drive on top. “Bodhi is extremely photogenic.”
“I’m sure,” Rogan chuckled.
“Um…” She pulled the envelope back. “I’m not all computer techie. I don’t know how to hide my IP address or computer name or whatever, so there’s—”
“Our people will strip all of that out of your files permanently and I’ll personally destroy the thumb drive. Nobody will ever know that you were involved.”
She smiled, showing a row of perfectly straight, white teeth, and extended the envelope. “Okay. Here you go.”
“We don’t let our people get burned,” he said. “Speaking of. We had to pull Taya last night. They found out it was her. One of our other guys still inside the CEA tipped us off and we got to her before they did. She wasn’t happy at first, and didn’t want to go, but then she tried to enter the CEA system and found a worm waiting to follow her back. She disconnected immediately and grabbed her stuff.”
“So, what does that mean?” I asked.
“It means our ability to block the cameras and passive sensors everywhere just ended. We need to destroy their systems to gain that anonymity back.”
“Let’s do it,” I said excitedly. “I came all this way to do something. I mean, Beth, you’ve been awesome, but I want to get involved. Where is their mainframe or whatever?”
Rogan grinned. “I knew you’d be all over it, Haskins. We’re working the raid up right now. The Austin municipal mainframe is in a building off of 4th Street. It includes the police department, the fire department, the Travis County court records, and the traffic camera control systems. Everything. We’ve already got a team assembled to go in and destroy it. I mean, they’re going to completely wreck it. But we also know there’s a backup system inside the CEA building. You remember the third floor?”
“Yeah. That’s where some of the computer nerds worked.”
“Exactly. They were busy little beavers setting up a server farm down there. Not only does it house all of the CEA systems, but they weaseled their way into convincing the city to back up their data on the upgraded CEA servers. What it was really for was to keep tabs on the city and to identify potential problem children in the community.”
“Sneaky bastards,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, they are. But they’re efficient too. Where do you think Every American got all that H5N8 data?”
“From the CEA servers?” Beth answered. I don’t think she understood the fact that Rogan had been asking a rhetorical question.
“Yup. The CEA servers have all sorts of dirt, some of it might prove invaluable to the Resistance, so we don’t want to lose it.”
“And that’s where we come in,” I surmised.
“Exactly. We infiltrate the building and Taya can upload a virus that steals all the data and sends it to our computers, then that same virus will wipe out the server farm once it’s done its job.”
“Taya’s involved?” I asked. “She just got out because they figured out she was the mole and now she wants to go back in?”
“She sounds like a badass,” Beth said.
“She is,” Rogan agreed. “She knows the score. If they find her, she’d dead. Same as you, Haskins.” He grunted. “Hmpf. Same as me too.”
“You guys aren’t really going in there, are you?” Rowan asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, buddy. It has to be done. Without the anonymity provided by controlling the city’s cameras, they can track our movements and zero in on where we are. Revolution over, man.”
“Not to mention,” Rogan said, “there’s probably so much dirt on the CEA that we could bring them down without firing a single shot.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?” Beth asked. I knew she’d be intrigued by the chance of ending the war peacefully before it even started.
“Maybe,” Rogan answered noncommittally. “To be honest, I’m not sure it will happen, but we have to try. The people deserve a shot at freedom, no matter the cost.”
“So… What do I do while you guys are off on this special operations raid to save the universe?” Rowan asked. He’d obviously been playing too much Call of Duty.
“You stay here with Beth,” I replied. “We need to keep our safehouse, uh, safe. Maybe the two of you can get to know each other better.” Yes, I was willing to throw my little brother to the she-wolf if it meant she’d leave me alone. Hell, maybe he’d even get laid for the first time.
“I can fight,” he insisted.
“I know, bro. But this one will need people who’ve been trained for it. I got SWAT training when I was at the Assessment and Training Course and participated in several raids while I was with the CEA. Rogan is a Green Beret. He’s been doing this shit for years, taking out terrorists in all sorts of places. You can get in on the next fight.”
Rowan nodded glumly, his eyes drifting to where Beth sat on the couch.
Please, please, PLEASE, let those two hook up, I prayed under my breath. I enjoyed the view as much as the next guy, but even I was starting to be tempted by her full-court press tactics—especially during the “water saving” showers. There had to be some places on Rowan’s body where he couldn’t reach to wash, right? God knows I needed some alone time to release some pent up frustration and I would welcome a shower by myself.
“Alright, so it’s settled,” Rogan said, exhaling sharply as he stood. “Stand by for a couple of days. Taya needs to finish developing her worm, then we’ll gather to discuss the mission. Until then, continue to keep out of sight. After we have control of the cameras, we can kick off Phase Two.”
We clasped hands and Beth gave Rogan a kiss on the cheek before he departed. He held up the packet of pictures. “We’ll get these uploaded. The Face of the Revolution is back in town.”
I groaned. “That is not why I came back.”
“We all have to play the hand we’re dealt, Haskins. You just happened to be the one who was given a Royal Flush. Be proud of the fact that you didn’t fold under pressure from Goodman to throw it away before all the cards were dealt.”
I hated analogies, especially bad poker analogies. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll keep on playing.”
“Good,” Rogan said. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“Rowan,” I said once he’d left. “It’s time I started teaching you some tactics that we learned at the ATC. Go grab your gun. Make sure it’s unloaded.”
The grin on his youthful face extended ear to ear. “Alright!” he whooped, rushing back to the bedroom.
“Make sure it’s unloaded!” I called out again.
I stiffened when I felt Beth’s arms slip around my waist and she rested her head against my back. “You heard Jason,” she said. “You’re the Face of the Revolution. You can’t risk getting killed in a raid. Why don’t you let somebody else do it?”
I turned and grasped her shoulders firmly, then extended my arms to push her away. “I didn’t come here to stay on the sidelines. I won’t be a coward and let somebody else risk their life to do a job that I’m capable of doing. It’s not who I am or how I’m wired. It’s a non-starter. As long as Rogan needs me, I’m going on the raid.”
She stepped back, away from my grasp. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“That’s not in my plan, but if it happens, it happens. At least I’ll have died trying to make this nation a better place for my wife and kid.”
I saw a momentary flicker of annoyance
pass across her pretty face before she hid it once more. I’d inadvertently cracked her code. She was jealous of Cassandra and Bathtub—my nickname for the baby since that was where he was likely conceived. Beth was jealous of people she’d never met because I stayed true to them, despite her attempts to get me to stray.
I needed to keep an even closer eye on her than I’d thought. Jealousy was a dangerous thing. It was the type of emotion that drove people crazy and caused them to do stupid shit. Like betraying the Revolution. Dammit. Damn Rogan and his misguided attempts to keep me content and out of sight during isolation. This whole thing could end up backfiring on us all.
FOUR
“Let’s do this,” Rogan said, opening his door and stepping out of the vehicle.
We needed to hurry. Taya had been able to hack into the building’s security systems and camera footage remotely, but it had taken her much longer than anticipated and she said that the brute force attack method she’d used would be noticed in just a few minutes by somebody in Washington. Then they’d need to contact people here in Austin to respond, so she estimated that we had less than ten minutes to get to the server room, plant the thumb drives and get back out.
“And you’re sure that all we need to do is plug the thumb drives into the server stacks?” I asked, verifying the plan for probably the twentieth time.
“Yes, dammit,” Taya hissed. She was annoyed at me. One, I was acting as if I doubted her skills, and two, I was interrupting whatever the hell she was doing on her laptop. Her fingers flew over the keyboard at dizzying speed. She must be actively combatting the CEA’s security system or one of their cyber agents, vying for control of the network for the next few minutes. It was better to leave her alone with Jake, the security guy for the van, to do her thing.
I jogged over to where Rogan pressed buttons rapidly on the stairwell security panel. Taya had given us the “master key” for the building, but she wasn’t sure who, if anyone, it alerted when used.
American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent Page 3
