by J. L. Lyon
Pax Aeterna, 301’s alleged father. He hadn’t been able to pause long enough to puzzle out his thoughts on the possibility…but neither did he have time to do so now.
“No idea who they are,” 301 said. “But surely the rebels didn’t do all this just to carve a symbol into the floor? Is this all you were able to find, Lieutenant?”
“Just this and the smashed stores I mentioned,” Holcomb replied, still refusing to come any nearer to the Spectral Cross. “Not everything was destroyed, but enough to disrupt shipments for a couple of days. Other than that—and this—the plant is untouched.”
301 rose and turned to his team, “Specters, I want you to check everything again and recheck it. Whatever they came for, it wasn’t drawing pictures in the floor and smashing a few vials of Solithium. This is all misdirection, Admiral…” Looking upon McCall for the first time since they had entered, 301 realized his eyes were glued to the message etched within the symbol, glistening with that same melancholy expression he had worn after learning of Jacob Sawyer’s death. 301 spoke more forcefully, “Admiral.”
McCall tore his eyes away and appeared to come back to himself, “Yes, Captain?”
“Any ideas on this one? What would be the rebellion’s interest here?”
“To blow it up, I suspect,” McCall said, and the sound of his gruff voice allayed 301’s mounting suspicions—at least for the moment. “Perhaps the teams arrived intending to lay the facility to waste, but something prevented them. Or, maybe they hid the explosives so that they would detonate once we were inside.”
The Great Army soldiers looked around fearfully, as though the walls might blow in upon them at the admiral’s mere suggestion. 301 smiled, “I doubt that, Admiral. So far their focus seems to be on infrastructure, not personnel.”
“But what else could they do besides destroy the place?” Marcus asked. “That would be the only way to stop Solithium production…and that was their objective at the Weapons Manufacturing Facility, so they’ve set a precedent.”
“With the rebellion what you see is not necessarily what you get, so don’t trust it.”
“You speaking from experience on that one, Specter Captain?” Marcus asked. A general feeling of tension rent the air. Every Specter knew to what—or rather, whom—he referred.
“Out of line, Marcus,” McCall spat. “I hear you speak to a superior officer like that again and I’ll strap you to the next rocket we find and hit the launch button myself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” Marcus replied, snapping to attention. “Sorry, sir!”
“Now, Specters, your captain has ordered a thorough search of the plant. Divide up by teams and look for clues at each of the three entry points. Sweep the whole place for explosives, just to be sure. Lieutenant, you’re with me. Let’s move!”
Holcomb left with McCall, and 301 conversed briefly with the others, deciding to send them all to the main entrance as there would be more ground to cover. He and Derek took the north entrance, where the Solithium stores had been hit.
“You thinking what I’m thinking here, Captain?” Derek asked once they were out of earshot.
“I’m thinking a lot of things right now,” he replied grimly. “But what’s your theory?”
“Not a theory so much as an observation. Three teams, each large enough to overwhelm a guarded entry point without sustaining casualties—”
“But they were all civilian guards,” 301 interrupted. “No weapons.”
“No firearms,” Derek corrected. “They’re armed with tasers, batons, mace. There’s no mention of any resistance with those weapons in the after-action report, which means the rebels hit with sudden, overwhelming force. It would take a good deal more numbers to accomplish that than the few men we faced in the Weapons Manufacturing Facility.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know,” Derek thought quickly, computing the numbers in his head. “Ten to twenty per team, maybe?”
“Sixty Spectral-adepts,” 301 shook his head. “That’s a grim thought.”
“But it reveals one of our greatest weaknesses. We don’t really know how many of them there are. There could be a hundred or more.”
“It would be tough to conceal a hundred men in Alexandria,” 301 said. “Even with the benefactors at their disposal.”
“True,” Derek conceded. “But they once constructed a dome in the northeastern ruins—a base that housed nearly a thousand warriors and their families. Not even our satellites detected it.”
“Your point?”
“They’re good at concealment and misdirection. If I hadn’t killed Jacob Sawyer myself, I would almost doubt he is dead. Who could have risen to lead them so quickly? You think it’s this Renovatio?”
“No,” 301 said. “That’s what the MWR told me when we spoke alone. They got a picture of the new leader from one of the cameras out in the fields.”
“Who is it?”
301 hesitated, unsure how his partner might react to the news. But he would learn sooner or later, once the secret was out. “It’s Grace Sawyer.”
Derek stopped walking, his mouth open wide, but 301 kept going. He didn’t want to pause to answer twenty questions. Not now, anyway. There might be a better time for that later, once he had gotten the chance to process everything that had happened.
Luckily, they reached the north entrance before Derek could say anything more. A few guards waited there for them, and they quickly explained the primary difference on this side: there were witnesses. Not all of the depot workers on the north end had been hit with tranquilizers. A Great Army specialist led one of the civilians to meet the Specters, though neither seemed particularly enthusiastic about the encounter.
“Specters,” the specialist said. “This is Terry Roeper, the plant supervisor. He managed to avoid being put out by the rebels during the attack.”
“How did you do that?” Derek asked the man.
Roeper’s eyes shifted to Derek’s Spectral Gladius and sweat broke out on his forehead, “I, uh…hid…sir.”
301 guessed the man to be in his mid fifties, his hair graying and back stooped from years of manual labor. His life under the World System had obviously taught him to be wary of soldiers who thought he might be guilty of some oversight. 301 wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the man came into his position after a predecessor died for failing to please the higher-ups. Still, it startled him at times that someone more than twice his age so easily deferred—a testament to the power of the uniform.
Which, he reminded himself, You only got because of a test you took when you were ten.
Strange to think that a singular event determined a man’s standing in his world. If 301’s OPE had gone differently, he might be one of these civilian workers, subject to the terrified man standing in front of him.
“Where did you hide?” Derek asked.
“In the storage room,” Roeper pointed down the hall opposite from the direction 301 and Derek had come. “That way.”
“Did you see anything?”
Roeper nodded, “The rebels spent the majority of their time there, smashing up our reserves of Solithium. I can show you…if you like.”
“Take us there,” 301 ordered.
The plant supervisor led the way down a short hallway to the storage room, a large cubic space that 301 imagined was normally kept painstakingly organized. Once it was likely lined floor-to-ceiling with harvested Solithium vials waiting to be shipped out of the facility. Now it was chaos, covered with shattered glass and remnants of the glowing liquid that had not yet seeped through the cracked concrete into the ground. Even in the brightness of the room it retained a barely visible sheen of light.
“Such a waste,” Roeper said disgustedly. “An entire day’s crop lost in a single act of violence.”
301 observed the destruction for a moment in silence and couldn’t help but agree, especially considering that civilians were the ones who would feel the loss. The military received first priorit
y on Solithium shipments, which meant that any shortage would be felt hardest in the lower classes. That didn’t seem like Silent Thunder’s style, which brought him back to the nagging feeling that something here just wasn’t right. More misdirection and distraction—what was their true goal?
“Where were you, Mr. Roeper?” 301 asked.
Roeper pointed to a steel door on the other side of the room, “When I heard shouts from the entrance and saw men come in with weapons I dove inside immediately and locked the door behind me. I don’t think they saw me beforehand.”
“What’s in that room?”
“Nothing…it’s a janitor’s closet.”
“With no windows, I see,” Derek said. “So you didn’t actually see them doing anything?”
“No, sir,” Roeper’s voice shook. “But I heard them—”
“So you have nothing useful to tell us.”
“Well, Specter…I uh…”
As Roeper stuttered nervously through the sounds he heard while hidden in the janitor’s closet—most of which was, in fact, useless—a faint glimmer on the back wall caught 301’s eye. It was lighter than the glow on the floor, almost like some of the Solithium had splattered during the destruction. 301 stepped up to the wall and touched the glimmer with his fingers, confirming that it was indeed wet with the chemical. But upon closer examination he knew that this could not have been splatter. The distribution was too even, the lines too clean. Someone had applied it with purpose. Thinking of the Spectral Cross carved in the lobby at the south entrance, he felt his heart sink with dread.
“Cut the lights in here,” he said, stepping back from the wall.
“Sir?” Roeper asked.
“Turn off the lights,” 301 said. “There’s something here, on the wall.”
Derek watched 301 warily as Roeper returned to the doorway and hit the switch, cutting all overhead illumination in the room. Enough light still shone from the Solithium on the floor to see by, but all eyes turned to the back wall.
There, twice as tall as a man, were three glowing letters.
E-L-I
10
301 STOOD FROZEN IN the darkness, eyes glued to the letters on the wall, sure he had strayed into a nightmare. Eli. Who could possibly know about that? The only person he had ever confided in about the boy was Liz, and he had never mentioned a name. It had to be a coincidence—it had to be. Unless…could they have caused it somehow? The visions began the very day that Jacob Sawyer had ambushed his team. Was it possible they had been behind his hallucinations all along, using the boy as a tool to unhinge him?
“E-L-I,” Derek said. “What do you think Captain? Some kind of acronym? Another warning, like the Spectral Cross?”
301 turned to his partner, confused. But of course, Derek had no more reason to see the name Eli than he did three independent letters. In fact—why did 301 assume the letters referred to the boy? Perhaps they were an acronym.
“Yeah…” he replied distantly. “Maybe so.” Just when he had nearly convinced himself it might be true, he caught a glimpse of movement at the base of the wall. Eli stood there, smiling as though there was no doubt to what the letters referred.
301 stepped forward and opened his mouth to ask the boy what it all meant, but Eli put a finger over his lips in a silent warning, and 301—luckily—stopped. He couldn’t talk to Eli in front of Derek, not unless he wanted his partner think him insane.
Maybe I am insane, he thought. I invented Eli when I was about to die, and he always returns in my moments of crisis. Now, looking at Eli standing before that brick wall, something clicked in his mind. A memory…an inkling…something just out of reach. He sought it out in his mind anyway, and suddenly felt nauseous. The world around him seemed to go out of balance, and he heard an echo in his ears:
“What is your name?”
“His name is Elijah.”
“Elijah Charity.”
301 took a deep breath and stumbled. Derek was there in an instant to grab him by the shoulder and prevent him from falling down upon the shards of glass. It was the dream, he realized. The dream from this morning. He raised his eyes back to the wall as his world righted again, but saw nothing. Eli had vanished.
“You sure you’re alright, Captain?” Derek asked, releasing his arm but remaining close by. “You seem…tired.”
“I’m fine,” he replied, trying to shake off the doubts that threatened to overwhelm him. “It’s just been a trying day.” He turned to leave the room, wanting to put as much distance between himself and that wall as possible. He needed to get away from Eli, away from the glaring evidence that someone else knew he existed.
Derek caught up with him as he passed back into the depot’s light, “So what now, Captain? I’m not sure anything we’ve found here is actionable, unless we can find someone to tell us what it all means.”
“I’m open to ideas.”
His partner hesitated, “I do have one, but you’re not going to like it.”
301 stopped and stared at his partner expectantly, “What’s the idea?”
“We need a rebel to decipher a rebel message. And there’s only one in custody, so far as I know.”
A moment of silence passed between them, and then 301 sighed, “You’re right. I don’t like it.”
-X-
301 convinced Admiral McCall to take the Halo straight from the Solithium Depot to the palace. En route, Derek learned that the rebel major’s daughter and her family had been located and teams dispatched to their position. On the whole it was not looking good for the man, as Donalson would cross any line to get answers. Worse, he would relish every moment.
So when he and Derek arrived at the Hall of Mirrors and found the rebel major still alive within, 301 breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Finding the rebel’s family and setting up Donalson’s sinister game had delayed the interrogation considerably, and the grand admiral apparently wanted him in full control of his wits this time around.
Donalson stood opposite the major with the table between them—eyeing him as he might a disgusting piece of trash—while the soldiers set up a view screen on the furthest wall. The blank screen tempered the mind-crushing effect of the endless reflections, but what awaited the major in the next several moments would be so much worse.
“Looks like we haven’t missed anything,” 301 said, coming to a stop before the observation glass.
“Should we go in?”
“Not yet. The last thing we need is for Donalson to contact the MWR and bar us from the major. If we let it play out, we might get our chance after.” Not to mention that I’d rather keep Eli a secret for as long as possible.
“And if there is no after? If Donalson kills him?”
301 frowned, “Then it’s back to square one. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do. The MWR gave this mission to him.”
The Specters turned their attention to the room as the grand admiral began, “You lied to us. You know what that means, don’t you, Major? Any leniency you might have gained—any mercy—is now gone.”
“I did not lie,” the major replied. “You wanted to know the location of Silent Thunder’s attack, and I told you. It is no fault of mine if you were unable to stop them.”
“You told us that an army of Spectral adepts not seen since the days of Jonathan Charity had gathered in Alexandria! That was a lie, engineered to fool us into mobilizing our forces to that facility so your traitorous friends could sneak in and lay it to waste.”
“They succeeded then, did they?” the major smiled.
301 half expected the grand admiral to strike the major in response to his mockery, but Donalson showed surprising restraint. He pulled the chair out from the table and sat down calmly across from the rebel, “Yes and no, Major. The Weapons Manufacturing Facility was destroyed, it is true. We will have to import weapons and ammunition from other divisions—a nuisance, but one well worth the price Silent Thunder paid to see it done.” Donalson folded his hands and leaned forward for the blow, “
Jacob Sawyer is dead.”
The major shifted in his chair, eyes narrowed with suspicion and fear, “Now it seems you are the one with the lie, Grand Admiral.”
“Maybe I am,” Donalson laughed. “Sure enough, after the destruction of the facility it seemed your usefulness had run its course. History has shown that Silent Thunder does not easily survive the loss of a leader. But when they struck again last night, I knew I had to get you back in this room. I don’t care if you believe me about Jacob Sawyer, Major. All I want is to know the rebellion’s next move. Then, and only then, will I let you die.”
“Do what you will. You won’t get an ounce of information from me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Donalson said. “You could withstand any physical torture we toss your way, undoubtedly…it’s in your training. CIA black ops before the war, Special Agent Graves?”
301 turned to Derek with surprise, “They identified him? How?”
“I don’t know.”
Graves was rendered speechless by the use of his name, so Donalson went on, “That is your name, isn’t it? Timothy Graves, a loyal operative of the United States of America. We had trouble finding you at first, because we checked your DNA and fingerprints against those living at the time of the Old World’s demise. But you had been presumed dead, likely redacted on the eve of some great patriotic mission. Thankfully one of our analysts was astute enough to check your DNA against the dead.”
The grand admiral sneered, “An admirable sacrifice, to give up everything for your country. Pity you couldn’t show that same loyalty to its successor.”
“The World System is not a successor to anything,” Graves snapped. “You are all murderers and thieves, taking what you can from the shattered world to feed your own lust and greed. Do not speak to me of loyalty, Grand Admiral Donalson—you who were nothing more than a clerk when the United States fell; you, who care nothing for the value of human life. Hell was made for creatures like you, rapist of Rome!”
