Retribution (The Praegressus Project Book 5)

by Aaron Hodges

  Looking around the table, he searched for an ally, but the eyes of the others were downcast, avoiding his gaze. Even Jocelyn looked uncertain, but after a moment’s hesitation she nodded. “Sam’s right. We can’t forget how ruthless this man is. So long as he’s at large, the WAS will never be safe.”

  “We’re not safe right now!” A woman cut in. Her sleek black suit and manicured nails marked her as one of the elite—one of the few who hadn’t fled when the riots broke out. “Hooligans are marching in our streets, burning out property, threatening our lives. My husband was killed because he ran into the wrong people.”

  “Your people have been killing mine for decades,” Smith growled.

  “How dare you—”

  “Enough,” Harry said over the top of them. His eyes swept the table, ensuring silence before he continued. “We will find a way to deal with the President in due course. But as you say, Grace, we must also restore order at home. Commander, we return to the reason I asked you here. Your men are the only organised force left who can help bring peace to San Francisco. Will you do your duty, and help us?”

  A smile flickered across the commander’s face as he nodded. “I will, sir. But as I said, there are conditions.” His gaze wandered across to where the refugees sat at the other end of the table. “But peace must also mean restoring law and order. How can that happen, when I am told you have a known traitor in your custody, sir?”

  Sam’s heart started to race as Harry shook his head. “According to our illustrious government, I am a traitor, commander. You might have to be more specific.”

  “The boy, his friend,” the commander said, nodding at Sam, “the one who killed the Texan on live television.”

  For a long moment, Harry said nothing. Sam held his breath, waiting for the veteran to deny the accusation. But in the end, the old man nodded. “It’s true. We have Christopher in custody.”

  “I knew it!” Smith was on his feet again, teeth bared. He looked like he was ready to throw himself across the table at Harry. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted, old man!”

  Harry raised his hands in surrender. “As I said, he is in custody, Smith. He’s not going anywhere. When the time comes, he will face justice for his actions.”

  “I want him to see justice now.” The commander cut in. “I want to see whether you really mean to uphold our laws, or if you intend to let the injustices of the old government continue.”

  Sam’s chair clattered to the ground as he leapt to his feet. “You can’t be serious!”

  Across the table, Smith sneered. “Guess we know where your boy’s true loyalty lies, Harry.” His gaze turned on the old veteran. “What about yours?”

  Sam started to open his mouth to reply, but Harry spoke over the top of him. “Samuel, sit down,” he growled, even as he stood.

  “You cannot be considering this?” Sam snapped, refusing to back down.

  Harry met his gaze. “I’m sorry, Samuel, but you saw the footage, the same as the rest of us. Do you deny Christopher killed the Texan?”

  Teeth clenched, Sam shook his head. “None of you were there, none of you have gone through what we had too, just to survive.”

  “Maybe not,” Harry replied, “but this is real life, Samuel. The decisions we make have consequences. Like it or not, Christopher killed an innocent man. That cannot go unpunished.”

  Sam swallowed, his gut churning. He glanced across at Smith, then back at Harry. “So what, suddenly it’s okay to punish people without a trial?”

  At that, Harry’s eyes lowered half an inch. “Maybe.” Sitting back down, he looked up at Sam with weary eyes.

  “I won’t stand by and let you do this,” Sam all but roared.

  “I know, Samuel,” Harry answered, his eyes sad. “But I suspected it would come to this. Which is why I took measures before this meeting to have Christopher moved.”

  Sam stared at the old man, breath held, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You betrayed us?” he asked.

  Closing his eyes, Harry nodded.

  Chapter 11

  Chris glanced up as the door creaked open, then looked away again as Ashley stepped inside. Hours had passed since Liz had stormed out, and now darkness hung over the city beyond his window. With nothing but the television to keep him company, Chris had been drifting towards sleep. Now his heart raced as the patter of Ashley’s footsteps crossed the room.

  “Hello, Chris,” Ashley said as her footsteps came to a stop beside his bed.

  Swallowing, Chris steeled himself and looked up. “Ashley…” he began, then trailed off.

  Her amber eyes were staring across at the broken chair, but they flickered back as Chris spoke.

  “I see things went well with Liz,” she said, eyebrow arched.

  Chris looked away again as a lump rose in his throat. Swallowing hard, he managed to find his voice. “I’m sorry,” he croaked, eyes fixed on the far wall. “I’m so sorry, Ash.”

  “Oh, Chris.” He looked up as Ashley’s voice cracked.

  His mouth fell open as he saw the tears streaming down her face. Before he could react, she practically threw herself at him, drawing him into a hug. For a second he stiffened, shocked at her reaction. Then he was hugging her back, clutching desperately at her, feeling her soft feathers beneath his hands, her warmth against his chest. Burying his head in her shoulder he started to sob. He clung to her as though she were his last grip on reality, as though if he let go, he would fall away into the darkness, would lose himself forever.

  “What have I done, Ash?” he choked, eyes clenched closed.

  “It’s okay, Chris,” she cooed, stroking his hair. Drawing back, she pressed her forehead against his. “It’s okay. I’m here, I’m alive. We’re safe, we survived.”

  Shuddering, Chris nodded, still choking on his sorrow. With his hands chained to the bed, he couldn’t wipe away his tears, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was they were safe, free of their tormentor.

  When they finally broke apart, Ashley sat on the bed and looked down at him, her amber eyes shimmering. A soft smile touched her lips as she reached out and wiped the tears from Chris’s cheeks. Hiccupping, Chris nodded his thanks. A wave of nausea sweep through him at the movement. Beside his bed, a machine continued to beep, delivering morphine through a plastic tube into Chris’s arm.

  “How do you feel?” Ashley asked finally, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  Chris shrugged. “Drunk, sluggish. At least it numbs the pounding in my head.”

  “Head wounds take the longest to recover from, apparently,” she replied. “But your last x-ray showed the fractures in your skull have all but healed.”

  Laying back on his pillow, Chris closed his eyes. “Well, that’s something,” he mumbled, then swallowed. “I don’t deserve your kindness, Ash. I don’t deserve your friendship.”

  “Nonsense,” Ashley replied tartly. She hit his leg, drawing his attention back to her. “We’ve all done despicable things, remember. Should be our motto.”

  Chris fixed his eyes to the floor. “But Mike was…different. He was our friend.”

  “So was Liam…but I still killed him.”

  Chris looked up at that, his eyes widening. Ashley never talked about her fight to the death back in the facility.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Ashley continued. “At least you and Liz weren’t friends with them. Liam…he was…he was almost like a brother to me.” She shook her head, eyes distant. “Whenever I fell, he would be beside me, lifting me up, urging me on. Without him and Sam, I never would have survived those first few weeks.”

  “You always seemed so strong, when we were locked in our cell…” Chris murmured, remembering the girl he’d first met in the prison deep in the Californian mountains, the girl who’d told him they were all in this together.

  “I had to be, didn’t I?” Ashley was staring out the window now. “He told me I had to go on, to be strong without him.”

  “He refused t
o fight?” Chris breathed. “Like Jeremy?” Jeremy was the boy who’d sacrificed himself rather than fight with Richard.

  Ashley pursed his lips. “No,” she murmured, her amber eyes looking back at Chris. “Liam…made me kill him. He threw me around that room like a ragdoll, screaming for me to fight back, to attack him. Until…I did. Only at the end, when he was lying there dying, he looked up at me and smiled...and told me to be strong.” Ashley’s voice cracked as she finished.

  Reaching out, Chris squeezed her arm. “I never knew,” he breathed.

  “Not even Sam does.” She clenched her eyes shut. Her chest swelled as she inhaled. “I’m only telling you because you need to hear it, Chris.”

  Chris’s gut clenched. “It’s not the same. Even if it was, I still abandoned you, Ash, left you to die alone.”

  “It was what I wanted, Chris.” Her eyes glinted. “If she hadn’t…if things had continued, she would have broken me—same as you.”

  Chris hung his head at that, unable to find the words to reply. He saw again Ashley being dragged out into the corridor, felt again the last spark of hope dying in his chest. In that moment he’d truly been broken, had found himself truly, completely alone.

  “So what happens now?” he asked finally.

  “They’re going to execute you, Chris,” Ashley replied.

  Chris’s head jerked up, his eyes widening, but there was no trace of humour in Ashley’s face. Taking a breath, he bit his lip and nodded.

  “So be it,” he said. Turning, he stared out the window.

  Beyond the glass, the orange lights of distant skyscrapers lit the darkness, but overhead the sky was black, the stars hidden behind a blanket of clouds. Sadness weighed on Chris as he realised he would never soar through those skies again, never feel the wind in his feathers, or watch as the ground fell away beneath him. No, his end would be here, trapped in this concrete room, chained up and helpless.

  “No,” Ashley growled. Chris turned at the anger in her voice, and flinched when he saw the fire in her eyes. “No, you don’t just get to give up, Chris.”

  “What are you saying, Ash?” He frowned. “I know what I did. I have to accept the consequences.”

  “So you’re just going to check out?” Suddenly Ashley was on her feet. She towered over Chris’s bed, wings spread, eyes aglow as she glared down at him. “You’re just going to abandon us? Leave the world to wallow in the mess you’ve created?”

  Chris blinked, shook his head. Opening his hands, he rattled the handcuffs. “What do you want me to say, Ashley?” he cried. “What do you want me to do? Fight my way out when they come for me? What good will that do, other than hurt more innocent people?”

  “I expect you to do something!” Ashley gestured wildly. “Your grandmother died for you. She stood up to the Director, gave away her life to show you the way, to remind you who you are, what you’re capable of. And now we finally have a chance to make this world a better place, to finally have peace, and you’re just going to give up?”

  “I deserve to die for what I did, Ashley!” Chris shouted, sitting up in bed. His heart was racing. Fists clenched, he strained against his cuffs. “Don’t you see, it’s the only way I can make up for it? The only way I can make things right!”

  “Coward!” Ashley shot back. “Your death won’t change anything. It’s the easy way out, a way for you to escape your own guilt. Why don’t you do something decent with your life for once, instead of running away from everything?”

  Metal rattled as Ashley tossed something at his chest. Chris looked down at the keychain lying on the sheets, and then back at Ashley.

  “You’d better get moving,” Ashley said softly, her anger gone as quickly as it had come. “They’ll come for you soon. Sam just left for a meeting with Harry’s council. They’re going to take you while he’s distracted.”

  Chris stared for a moment longer at Ashley, then reached down and grasped the key. Awkwardly he began to unlock his cuffs. While he worked, Ashley pulled the stent from his arm and then went to the wardrobe in the corner. Rummaging inside, she came back with a pile of clothes. Unlocking the second handcuff, Chris rolled out of the bed and quickly tore off his hospital gown. After their time together as the Director’s pets, he didn’t worry about Ashley looking. By now, they knew every intimate inch of each other’s bodies.

  When he was dressed, he glanced at Ashley, still unsure. He’d followed her directions this far without thinking, his drugged-up mind hardly able to resist his friend’s urgent commands. But now he hesitated, looking from her to the window. Silently he wondered whether running away was the right thing to do.

  “What if…”

  “No,” Ashley cut him off. Moving to the window, she pulled it open. A cold breeze whistled inside, tugging at their feathers. “No more arguments, Chris. You want to make up for abandoning me? Then live! Get out there and do something, anything to help. Don’t stay here and die for nothing.”

  Swallowing, Chris nodded and stepped up to the window. The muscles down his back twitched as he spread his wings. He shivered as his dream returned, and he wondered if he even had the strength to fly. If not, this argument would hardly matter in a few minutes. Five stories up, it was debatable whether he would survive the fall.

  Looking out into the darkness, his stomach twisted, his fear rising up from the past.

  Gritting his teeth, he pressed it back down. Silently, he reminded himself that if this was the end, if his strength failed him and he plummeted to his death, it was what he deserved. It was only right he pay for Mike’s death, for the deaths of the teenagers he’d helped the scientists murder. For betraying Liz.

  At the thought of the blue-eyed girl, Chris glanced back from the window.

  “Liz…” he murmured.

  Ashley stared back at him, eyes sad. “Fly away, Chris,” she said softly. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

  Swallowing, Chris nodded and closed his eyes tight. He read the message behind her words. Liz would never accept him now, never find it in her to love him again. Their future had died the night he’d accepted the Director’s offered hand. Nothing he could do now would ever change that.

  “Goodbye, Ashley,” he murmured.

  Without another word, he stepped out into open air.

  And flew.

  Chapter 12

  Flying back towards the embassy, Liz quickly realised her fight with the thugs had left her with more than a few bruises. The itching started in the small of her back, but quickly spread until it felt as though her skin was alive. By the time she landed on the roof of the embassy, she was ready to tear off her clothes and hurl them into a furnace. Obviously, in addition to being idiots, the thugs didn’t know how to bathe, and now her clothes were infested with fleas or lice or some other awful insect.

  Swearing under her breath, she stalked through the rooftop door and raced down the stairs four at a time. It took her less than a minute to reach the fourth floor, where she rushed down the corridor and slipped quickly into her room.

  There she tore off her infested clothes and hurled them at the waste bin in the corner. Without pausing for breath, she headed for the bathroom. Marching across the tiled floor, she stepped into the glass box and flicked on the shower. She cursed as a stream of cold water engulfed her and quickly fiddled with the knob until it started to heat up.

  Letting out a long sigh, Liz lifted her head and let the water pour down over her hair and feathers. The hot water brought immediate relief to her itching skin. Closing her eyes, her mind started to drift. She started to shake as the girl’s words came back to her.

  Freak!

  Teeth clenched, Liz lashed out at the wall. Pain seared through her knuckles as they struck the tiles. Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she opened her eyes. Blood dripped from her hand where a sliver of broken tile had embedded itself in her flesh. Teeth clenched, she pulled it out and then ran her hand under the hot water. The floor of the shower turned red as her blood swirled
into the drain.

  When the bleeding finally stopped, Liz grabbed a bottle of shampoo and emptied it into her hair. Tossing it aside, she started to scrub herself down, praying the soap would kill whatever bugs still clung to her. Then she leaned forward and let the water run over her wings. She sighed as the heat seeped through her feathers. They would take hours to dry now, but the relief was instant.

  Afterwards, she wandered out of the bathroom with wings extended, still drying her naked body, only to find Ashley waiting for her.

  “Did you have a good flight?” her friend asked, her lips twitching.

  Rolling her eyes, Liz finished patting herself down and wrapped the towel around her chest. They were both well used to seeing each other naked, but there was no point being overly familiar. Crossing the room, she sat down on the couch beside her friend, though she was careful not to sit too close. Without her long sleeves and gloves, she didn’t want to risk poisoning Ashley with her touch.

  “They hate us,” Liz said softly.

  Ashley shrugged. “Harry said we shouldn’t go into the city.”

  “He was right,” Liz sat staring at the coffee table, “but I had to get away, had to clear my thoughts so I could think…”

  “About Chris?” Ashley asked.

  Liz shrugged. “Chris, Maria, Jasmine, Mira.” She shook her head. “It’s all too much.”

  Ashley pursed her lips. “Chris is gone.”

  For a moment, Liz wasn’t sure she’d heard Ashley right. Shaking her head, she looked across at her friend. Slowly the meaning behind Ashley’s words seeped through. Her fingers dug into the sofa. “What do you mean?” she croaked, even as her mind raced through the possibilities. Had the doctor’s missed something? Suddenly her heart was racing. Her skin tingled at the thought her conversation with Chris might have been their last.