Evangeline’s birth happened centuries after the arrival of the Angels, so their presence had always been a matter of fact to her. She never understood the difficulties and hardships that had existed before their miraculous arrival.
There had always been a shortage of labor in the LTZ. Crops were lost because there were not enough people or machinery to harvest all the food. Goods and services were hard to come by due to the lack of available workers. Rampant illness plagued the population. The Great Recovery restored the basics of civilization, but the recovery did not cure the diseases that had evolved during the decades of chaos.
It was feared that the Angels would die once exposed to the naturally occurring diseases to which humans had developed immunities, or that the Angels had brought their own unknown diseases that could wipe out humanity.
In fact, the opposite turned out to be true. The Angels had an incredible immune system. Once exposed to any disease, they became immune within days, if not hours. Cures developed at an alarming rate, saving thousands from the slow, painful death from diseases thought to be incurable.
People had become healthier within the first generation of the Angels’ arrival. Harvests continued to improve year after year and the quality of life began to increase. The Angels were superior to Humans in every way imaginable. Angels had become such an integral part of society; no one could imagine life without them.
Evangeline had not heard the rest of Kevin’s story of his interest in the ministry. He sat across the table with a patient smile on his face waiting for her mind to return to the conversation.
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, and she cleared her head as she tried to recall the last thing he said. “What did you find at the crash site?” she asked with a wave of her hand, brushing away her flashback.
“I found Angels, dozens of them, among a handful of Humans. And most of them were already dead by the time we arrived.” The image brought to Evangeline’s mind the face of the dying Angel wrapped in a blanket with the back of her skull missing. She shuddered and tried to repress the image by focusing her attention on Kevin’s story.
He took a sip of water and continued. “That’s not the strangest thing I came across that day. One of the surviving Humans, a man, caught my attention while my partner was scouting the rest of the debris for survivors. He motioned me over. I found him impaled on a piece of the balloon’s frame. I’ll never forget it. His breathing was ragged, but there was a panic in his eyes, unlike anything I had ever seen before.
“I started to get the first aid kit off my pack, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward his face. He was trying to whisper something to me.” Kevin’s voice lowered as he relived the memory. “All he said was ‘Hide them, please. You must set them free.” He paused to swallow and take a breath. Evangeline was so wrapped up in the story she had been holding her own breath, and she also pulled in a deep lungful of oxygen.
“He was a Dissident, wasn’t he?” she asked, putting down her cup. “That’s how you were recruited by these people, the Dissident’s, isn’t it?”
Kevin’s eyes smiled at Evangeline, but she did not get the joke. “What’s so funny?” she asked. Kevin took a sip from his cup, thinking about how to answer her question.
“The Dissident Movement,” he said, gesturing in the air toward the room at large, “was a fabrication by the Quorum.”
Evangeline stared at him in disbelief. His words conflicted with everything that had been taught to her about the Angels, the Dissident’s, and the history of Olympus. “What do you mean by a fabrication?” she asked.
Kevin leaned forward, scooting his chair closer to the table with a weary smile. “The Dissidents didn’t exist until about thirty years ago, even though public records and news recordings suggest otherwise. Those who you know as the Dissidents were just a bunch of zoners who had a stronger than average distrust of the Quorum and began to see patterns emerging on Olympus and in the LTZ. The Quorum created an fictional enemy to preoccupy the public mind from taking notice of what was really going on around them.”
Evangeline’s eyes rolled as she sat back into her chair. She wanted to spout the arguments drilled into her from school, but after everything she had witnessed first-hand in the past few days, she could not deny the itch in her mind. She wanted to believe her old trainer. She trusted him with her life, and she saw no signs of fanaticism in his eyes. Kevin watched Evangeline for signs of her acceptance of her new reality, while Evangeline waited for Kevin to lose the charade and tell her the truth. They stared at each other over their empty food trays for several minutes, each of them pushing their facts and arguments into the others’ brain by the sheer force of will.
Just then, on the other side of the room, the mess hall doors swung open. Jack and Felicia emerged, and Evangeline could not help but cover her mouth to prevent her lip from quivering. Jack did not bother to pretend to be as strong. His eyes glistened as he navigated his way through the sea of tables and chairs.
“Told you he was in good hands!” B.B. called out after her.
Evangeline bumped the table, knocking over her cup as she stood up. She ignored Kevin’s comical outburst as he mopped up the juice that had poured off the table and into his lap.
Jack and Evangeline collided in the middle of the room in a fierce embrace, ignoring the confused stares around them. They hugged, kissed, and cried into each other’s necks for several minutes. Felicia stood a few feet behind Jack, her arms folded, rolling her eyes at the display.
“Ah-hem,” she faked a cough.
Jack and Evangeline gave each other one last tight hug, and then Evangeline took a minute step away. She brushed the tears away from her eyes with one hand while never letting Jack’s hand out of the other.
“Let’s take this over to Turner, shall we?” Felicia asked with a wry grin. Jack’s cheeks flushed, but he never took his eyes off Evangeline. She led him back over to Kevin, who sat there with orange juice dripping all over the sleeves of his shirt and soaking his lap.
FIFTY-ONE
Dodging the morning sun in the shadows of darkened alleys, the agents, Gabriella and Aban, wove their way through the industrial district of the LTZ. They finally found that which they had been seeking, the abandoned warehouse where Evangeline had disappeared from their radar. Their advanced gadgets and instruments were unhelpful as they tried to pick up her trail among the pieces of trace evidence they found scattered within the abandoned building.
Aban put away his tools and began sniffing the air, canvassing the warehouse in ever-widening circles. Gabriella followed his lead, pursuing her own search pattern in the opposite direction. With a prolonged inhalation through the nose, Aban found traces of Evangeline’s scent masked among the scents of several others that he did not recognize.
Gabriella joined Aban where he stood taking in deep gulps of air. From the memory of a distant nightmare, she recognized the familiar scent of one particular woman. She resisted the urge to flinch at the memory, forgetting for a moment that it had happened to the previous Gabriella.
“The woman that killed me was here,” she hissed.
She touched her arm console, activating the paired-mode function of her communicator which permitted them to have a three-way conversation. Campbell’s voice spoke into her ear.
“What have you learned?” he asked. Relief flooded through her body. Campbell’s voice was calm and even, a far cry from his hysterical rants after her debacle in Jack Evans’ home.
“The woman who disposed of my agent was here where Captain Evans went missing,” she answered. “Given the olfactory decay, it happened five or six hours ago. My guess is that they left in some kind of transport vehicle.”
Aban spoke up. “I detect iron oxide and fertilizer as well. The transport has been used in an agricultural area with very old buildings. I believe the iron oxide pre-dates anything in the LTZ.”
The female agent could swear she heard Campbell smiling on her headset.
“Excellent. T
his is the best lead we’ve had in years. Continue to gather trace evidence. I’ll task research to determine which vehicle left with Captain Evans and provide further instructions.” The channel died and and filled the warehouse with silence. The only sounds they heard were those of their own heartbeats echoing through the empty building.
Splitting up, Aban and Gabriella moved through the building like ghosts, absorbing the sights and smells around them, unwilling to pass up on the slightest clue that could lead them to Captain Evans. Gabriella followed her attacker’s path down a flight of stairs while Aban tracked the movement of the vehicle toward an overhead door on the far wall from where they had first entered the building.
Gabriella’s path led her to a submerged tunnel that connected with the basement of the building across the street. From the tunnel, she progressed through a series of underground storage racks, a maze riddled with spare machinery parts. On the other side of the racks, she saw sunlight cascading down a flight of stairs. The steps rose up a stairwell that exited onto the street.
“I’ve followed the woman’s trail to a street level exit. I can hear pedestrian traffic above,” she whispered into the air.
Aban’s voice came back, dull and muted, as if he were in an enclosed space.
“I’ve found the door where the transport left the warehouse. They went through an old decontamination wash. The scent of the vehicle ended at the outer door to the street. However, I may be able to track their course on the street now that I know what to look for,” he said, surrounded by his own echo.
There was no way for them to roam undetected among the public in their black uniforms. They had to leave the safety of the shadows and venture out into the dawn. Although they were invisible to each other on opposite sides of the building, the agents moved in harmony with the other in fluid motions. In unison, each had activated the cloaking function of their suits. The black body suits trembled and shimmered, morphing into the common white robes of Angels.
The female agent approached the exterior door, opening it just far enough to catch a glimpse of the people on the street. She waited for a gap in the traffic or some other distraction that would permit her to exit the building unnoticed. Laughter and shrieking caught her ears, and she spotted a large group of children playing across the street. She cracked open the door a little wider and discovered that most of the pedestrians were paying attention to the children and their game.
With the quickness of a lightning strike, she slipped out the door and onto the street, joining another Angel who had meandered into view. With her white hair and dark blue eyes exposed, and donned in simple robes, she took the arm of the Angel and adopted a serene countenance. The second Angel seemed unaffected by the sudden appearance of company. They exchanged pleasant greetings with each other, as well as with the other pedestrians they encountered on their path.
Within a few steps, the scent of her attacker was waning. Without a word, Gabriella departed from her new friend and retraced her steps back toward the open stairs from which she had just emerged. She picked up the zigzag trail once more, and like a blood-hound followed it for several blocks until it became clear her path led back to the maglev station. She broke off from the hunt - she needed to discuss her progress with Aban.
She found a small alley and looked both ways down the street to make sure no one would notice her disappear. She walked several paces into the dim, narrow space before ducking behind a stack of crates and boxes. It was not an ideal place to morph back into her uniform, but it would have to do.
Her robes retracted and darkened once again, revealing the equipment and compartments built into the fabric. She activated her communicator.
“Can you speak?” she asked. If his situation were unsafe, silence would be his answer.
“I’m sitting at an empty shuttle stop,” Aban answered in a whisper. “I lost the scent of the transport at the closest intersection. There were too many similar vehicles passing through. I couldn’t determine which one was theirs.”
“My trail resulted in a similar dead-end,” she responded. “It looks like after they abducted Evans, the woman went back to Olympus. I assume it was to track down the husband where she killed me.”
“Understood,” he answered with another low whisper. “Inform the director of our situation and request instructions, then rendezvous at my location.”
She deactivated her communicator and began typing a message to Campbell on her arm console. After expressing the dead-end trails and requesting additional directions, she deactivated all her equipment and morphed her uniform back into her Angel robes.
She walked out of the alley as if she belonged there, dismissing the confused glances of the pedestrians with a slight nod and a warm smile. She made her way in a steady but unrushed pace to the shuttle station. From several blocks away, Gabriella watched Aban skipping multiple shuttles as he busied himself reading the schedule scrolling down the display glazing outside the covered area.
She approached and he seamlessly fell into step beside her. They walked a few yards down the block before sitting down on a low wall that divided the sidewalk from a small office plaza. They did not speak to each other, but rather they watched unaware pedestrians strolling by, making eye contact and flashing them their best Angel smiles as they went along their unassuming way.
FIFTY-TWO
Although Gideon carried out Jack’s orders by searching for Evangeline through all means accessible to him, he had not ceased monitoring the warehouse where Evangeline was last seen. Two mysterious shadows entered the building, but several scans of security footage never depicted them leaving.
The only figure Gideon witnessed leaving the building was a male Angel who had walked out of a vehicular airlock door. Gideon knew this was peculiar behavior for an Angel, to be in the warehouse in the first place then leave through an inconvenient exit. He resembled the other Angels on the streets, but there was an inexplicable, almost unnatural, urgency to his gait. This behavior did not exist in other Angels Gideon had observed. The subtleties were not significant enough for Human eyes to detect, but to his AI programming, they were stark differences.
Gideon attempted contacting Jack on his communicator once again, but the signal failed to reach him, just as it had the last one-hundred-seventeen times Gideon had tried to establish a connection. Gideon had lost the signal once Jack had traveled several hours outside the LTZ toward one of the uninhabited parts of the continent. Gideon would continue searching for Evangeline, as per his directive, and he added Jack’s unknown status to his task list as well.
The atypical Angel had seated himself at a shuttle station, and Gideon fixed him on a display in attempts to study why that one behaved in a different manner.
FIFTY-THREE
Campbell’s team of analysts poured over thousands of hours of security recordings from the LTZ, trying to identify the transport vehicle used to smuggle Evangeline away from the warehouse. Once Gabriella and Aban had informed them where the vehicle had left the building, as well as the vehicle’s approximate age and use, the analysts were able narrow their focus to a few dozen specific feeds. They had started with feeds adjacent to the warehouse, and then they expanded their range when they discovered the records of several key cameras were distorted and indiscernible.
Prior to receiving the updated report from the agents, the team had been tracking the refuse transport that carried the damaged agent that had been dumped from the Evans’ balcony. That particular vehicle had been loaded with flammable waste materials headed for the textile district to have its contents incinerated in an older fuel-burning furnace.
Campbell considered the cremation of agent’s body both a hindrance and benefit. He had hoped to recover the body in order to conduct an autopsy and gather any evidence that would help him discover the Dissidents’ location. However, he was also relieved that the public would not be able to happen upon another Angel’s body. He had grown weary of the risks of the sterilization procedures he had to
perform to keep the truth contained.
If it had been up to Reynolds, the Quorum would have accelerated the plan long ago; it would have no longer mattered if the truth was discovered. Campbell, on the other hand, believed that the slow pace set by Zeus himself was the wiser course of action.
Campbell’s attention switched from his understanding of the plan to the group of technicians gathered around a single display in the corner of the lab. The growing din of their voices talking over each other made him exit his office and see what was causing the commotion.
He stalked toward the excited analysts. His ears picked out their voices leap-frogging over each other.
“Zoom in on the ID plate!”
“Double-check that time code.”
“Can you get an image of the operator from the camera across the street?”
“Report!” he barked to the crowd.
The startled technicians all looked up at their director, the racket of their overlapping conversations silenced as if with a mute button. A path opened up in the crowd like the parting of the Red Sea, giving Campbell a clear path to the analyst’s station at the center of the frenzy. He strode between the technicians, progressing toward the one seated at the console. Campbell stood behind the chair, waiting. The oblivious analyst sensed the foreboding in the room, turned around in apprehension, and stood when he recognized the cause of the silence.
“Sir!” he said. His eyes darted around to his colleagues in the group. He was a newer member of the team and displayed uneasiness being the focus of his superior’s attention. Clearing his throat, he threw back his shoulders and met Campbell’s piercing stare.
“I think we’ve found it,” the rookie said. Campbell walked around the man, rolling the chair off to the side so he could review the findings for himself.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 29
