This room made her realize that they definitely didn’t live in tents. And if this was a cave… well, she loved what they’d done with the place. No sign of stone or moss or nasty, skittering critters here.
When she finally turned and looked behind the sofa for a door, she realized how laughably wrong her preconceived notions of this group had been.
The wall behind the sofa wasn’t the opaque surface she’d seen on the others, but clear glass, a material that gave the impression of thickness and strength. It showed her that she was within a multistory living area that could only be described as an enclosed city. A large plaza area filled the lowest area, and she saw at least fifty people bustling about. There were five levels in total, hallways ringing the open air above the plaza on each level. The primary building material seemed to be a cool, smooth looking metal of a similar look and feel to the prominent Diasteel material she’d encountered so often in her life. Expansive windows gave her an insight into the purposes served by the different levels. This floor, just above the plaza, seemed reserved for meeting spaces of a more private nature than one would find in the open area below. The next floor up housed shops providing food, clothing, and furniture. She glanced up and, though she couldn’t see quite so clearly to that height, discerned from the more opaque walls on those levels the likely sleeping quarters for the residents here. She didn’t see where they might grow crops or raise animals for food, where they might produce the furniture and other goods sold in the shops, but suspected those working areas might be found around the bustling lower level plaza.
They’d hidden a city that could house hundreds, perhaps thousands, and nobody from Phoenix had the slightest clue.
She wondered if this group had other cities around the world as well. Assuming they didn’t would be underestimating them yet again, and she suspected underestimating Miriam’s fellow residents—again—would be one of the more foolish things she could do.
She watched those walking on the walkways around the various levels, noted with interest the personal technology each of them carried, not dissimilar to what she herself had used in the days before the Ravagers eliminated everything. Those on the lowest levels sat on sofas that seemed to change shape and locations each time she looked back, or sat around tables eating, drinking, and enjoying animated discussions she wished she could hear. After watching them for twenty minutes, she suspected there were at least five hundred of them living here now. Something about their mannerisms led her to raise her already heightened opinion of them. These weren’t people just trying to survive. They’d built something amazing here.
And she understood why they’d be so harsh toward even the thought that someone like her would come in, expose this location, and subject them to destruction and ruin. Why they’d knock her out cold before driving her here, make certain she couldn’t find this place again.
Of course, with any possible landmark gone, that was—
The knock at the door came, startling her, and she jumped, whirled in the air, landed in a defensive posture.
Miriam walked in and saw Deirdre’s warrior posture. “At ease,” she said, her voice silky smooth and calm. “Nobody’s attacking you today.”
Deirdre let her arms drop to her side and stood up straight. “When we met, you pointed a gun at my face and then you knocked me out cold.”
Miriam’s mouth crinkled. “You aren’t injured.”
Deirdre’s eyes narrowed.
“Nobody’s attacking you again today?”
“That’s better.” Deirdre looked around. “This place… it’s amazing.”
Miriam nodded. “It’s taken quite some time to get it functioning as well as it does, especially given our unique security requirements.” Her eyes fell fondly on the scene beyond the clear wall. “It’s home.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
Deirdre paused. “I understand at an intellectual level. This place is home. These people… they’re your family. You’ll do anything to protect them. Anything to help them.”
“They aren’t my children, Deirdre.” Miriam offered an amused smile. “But the sentiment you describe is correct, though incomplete and lacking in the fervency it compels in me. There are lifetimes of work and sacrifice represented in what you see out there. If I make a decision that leads to the destruction of this place, or worse, that costs us lives? I’ve let down everyone who’s come before me. And I’ve ruined or cost the lives of those who rightly call me family. There is no risk I won’t mitigate to protect everything here.” She let the threat hang in the air.
Deirdre assessed the message. “I’m here, and still alive, because you assess that the benefit of bringing me here outweighs the likely risk at this point. But if the risk increases or the benefit decreases…”
She’d hoped Miriam would offer some level of comfort, some words to suggest that her life wasn’t hanging in the balance. She got nothing of the sort. Miriam’s hard eyes, her stone-like face, told Deirdre that she’d correctly assessed the situation… and her frail fingerhold on life if she became a threat.
A tremor of fear ran through her, not because she intended mischief and betrayal, but because she knew ulterior motives were suspected, too easy to interpret in a movement or a careless word.
She’d have to be careful. Her life depended on it.
For some reason, that lingering threat of death gave her energy.
She held out her hands. “What benefit do you hope to derive from my presence, then?”
“Oswald Silver has been an enemy of my friends and allies for a very long time.” Miriam watched Deirdre’s face intently, as if reading the emotion in every pore of her skin. “The organization he now represents would see my people destroyed.”
“I’m aware of that now.”
“The benefit you bring to us, Deirdre, is that you allow us to go on the offensive. While we have no great desire to participate in the events of the world at large, we hide out of a sense of fear. Phoenix controls weapons and resources we cannot match, but we are not helpless. We have our own firepower that we can deploy. But our weaponry, such as it is, is limited, best suited to targeted strikes rather than world-destroying scourges.”
Deirdre considered this. “You need information from me. You need to know those truly in charge of Phoenix.”
Miriam nodded. “Correct. We cannot destroy the space station, nor would we want to if we could. There are many innocents living aboard who do not deserve that fate, and information stored there must be preserved. But if we were to eliminate the head of the organization, that which drives all of the action we’ve seen… it frees those who’ve survived this ongoing calamity.” She narrowed her eyes again. “And it eliminates the threat to my people. We would no longer need to hide in fear, for those left behind would have no reason to fear us or think us enemies worthy of death.”
“That seems a worthy goal.”
“Conveniently, at a time when we’d most like to strike, the daughter of one of those on our list shows up near enough to our home that we have to take action.”
“But it’s not…” Deirdre paused. “I see your concern.”
“So why are you here, then, if not because someone’s become aware of our existence and needs our home’s coordinates for a final strike?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be here. I… missed my flight.”
“Hilarious.” Miriam’s face registered no humor. “You missed your flight and instead take a ground car out for a drive, a car that was loaded with all manner of tracking devices, as I mentioned.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You went from a ship that would take you safely away from the surface to wait as your weapons scoured the surface of life, ended up at a Phoenix facility, and drive here in a ground car laden with tracking devices. Again, Deirdre… convince me this isn’t a trap.”
Deirdre paused. “You’re already convinced of that. You said so yourself. If you believed I was sent to expose your e
xistence and location, you would have fired those rifles, or executed me in the ground car and tossed my body out.”
“Clever.”
“As was trying to trigger an emotional response in me to get me to give up information I wouldn’t have provided willingly if I was here for nefarious purposes.”
Miriam studied her. “You’re far more clever than I suspected, Deirdre.”
“I’ve lived a life of people offering me fake praise, Miriam.”
“That was genuine.” Miriam walked back toward the table, reached underneath, and pulled out a sheath of papers. “We have here names and faces and biographies of about two hundred top people in Phoenix. Our analysis and intel suggests thirty of them truly run the show and decide objectives and primary courses of action. The others are just public figureheads who carry out those plans. We need to know who those thirty people are.”
“I’m not sure I know that—”
“You likely do. Pick out the ones your parents—sorry, your father—met with in a more secretive manner. Public meetings with the public leaders of the group do us no good. It’s the ones he tried to hide relationships with that clarify who’s truly in charge.”
Deirdre thought about it. “I’m not sure I know that, but I’ll try.”
They went through the list once, and she quickly discarded many. They went through those still remaining, and she thought in more depth about meetings her father murmured about, those he told her not to mention. She started setting aside the people who met those criteria.
An hour later, she’d identified twenty-five members of the inner core.
Miriam pulled three more names from the stacks. “We have other intel that tells us these three are part of the core group as well.” She pushed all the others aside and spread the twenty-eight Deirdre had helped identify on the conference room table. “This is our list, then.”
Deirdre swallowed, recognizing what type of list she’d helped build. Miriam’s team meant to murder every person on this list.
She studied their faces, the people Miriam wanted dead. She’d met them all, beginning soon after her mother’s death. Remembered the interactions. She didn’t like a single person on the list. Memories flooded back from the days of early childhood, remarks that would charitably be called creepy, remarks that changed gradually and subtly as she aged and matured, remarks that left her wanting to run away, to scream, to scour her skin and purge her memories. Memories of other types of remarks, more publicly made, often in front of her father, commenting about how deep a disappointment she must be to him, his nods of agreement, the cruel laughter and the mocking stares.
The anger the memories triggered changed her motivation. Her eyes, now burning with fire, turned upon Miriam, who looked startled at the intensity of her expression. “Let me help clean up that list.”
Miriam composed herself quickly, studied the twenty-eight pictures spread out over the table. She frowned. Tapped a finger to her lips as her eyes scanned the images again, searching for something. Then she turned toward Deirdre and pulled two folded pieces of paper from a pocket Deirdre hadn’t before noticed. “Two of the thirty aren’t there, Deirdre. Two people you’d be uniquely capable of reaching and terminating for our cause.”
She unfolded the two pieces of paper and set them on the table.
Deirdre stared down at her parents’ faces. She felt the blood leave her face, felt the hint of tears swell in her eyes. Whatever anger she felt toward Oswald and Delilah, it didn’t mean she wanted to… to… “You… want me to… kill… them?”
Miriam showed no sign of backing off. “Yes. They are part of the problem, Deirdre. They, like the others, must be eliminated for the rest of the world to live in true freedom. If they live, they will not rest until I and all of my people are destroyed.”
Deirdre took deep breaths, almost hyperventilating, steadied herself against the table. “I will do whatever you ask, help find and destroy everyone else on your list.” She slapped the papers with her parents’ photos to the floor. “But I will not murder my parents.”
Miriam watched as the papers floated, zigzagging back and forth, falling with each swaying motion, until they landed on the ground. Oswald’s smirking face still faced them. Delilah’s image faced the ground.
Deirdre watched the pages as well.
She didn’t notice Miriam moving, not until she’d moved behind Deirdre. Not until she’d produced the blindfold from earlier and clamped it atop Deirdre’s face.
As she felt consciousness flee once more, as she felt her legs give out beneath her, she realized her mistake.
After being warned that they’d take any hint that she came here to destroy them, intentionally or otherwise, she’d done just that.
In refusing to kill her parents, she’d just given them all the evidence they needed to believe she’d use them to eliminate her parents’ competitors in ruling the new world.
And if she’d do that… they had no reason to believe she wouldn’t then turn the Phoenix war machine—by then controlled exclusively by the Silvers—upon those who’d helped them achieve their goals of true world domination.
Chapter 6
The Island of Eden
“Why do you think they went to the mainland?” Micah Jamison asked.
The holographic image before him shifted and the mouth moved as words echoed over his speaker. “If I was them? I’d think everyone I knew, everyone I could possibly reach out to… I’d think every one of them was dead.” Desdemona crinkled her face. “In the short term, they could survive on that giant boat and the supplies likely stored there for weeks. Maybe months, maybe years, depending on how quickly they devised a means to fish and find some vegetation, maybe develop a taste for floating seaweed. Eventually, though, the boat would run out of fuel, the electrical systems would stop, the refrigeration would give out, and they’d lose the ability to store food. At some point, they’d have to make their way back onto land. Perhaps they reasoned they ought to make landfall sooner rather than later, if for no other reason than to see what might be available for foraging.”
“Maybe they just wanted to fetch long branches to use for fishing poles,” Jeffrey added.
Micah’s analysis function suggested a fifty percent chance that Jeffrey was joking, and raised the percentage when the man’s wife smiled. Micah’s eyes flicked to the side as he pretended to look at the map of the world here in a smaller room he used for communications with allies like Jeffrey and Desdemona.
“That makes sense to me if we assume they believed we were all dead. But what would they do if they thought at least some of us remained alive? Would they still seek the mainland? And so quickly?”
The couple looked thoughtful. Jeffrey finally nodded. “Mary was aware of Phoenix’s global reach, and I have to suspect her new friend from the space station, and your colleague, had awareness of them as well.” He paused, waiting for Micah’s reaction, and Micah nodded at him. “They would correctly believe that the telecommunications infrastructure within cityplexes would not allow contact outside the relevant Alliance’s territory; marching into a cityplex in the East wouldn’t help them reach us here, besides the obvious risks they’d run in exposing themselves as people from the West. But… I might well reason that telecommunications systems established outside the cityplexes, on land and on the waters outside, would be considered safe for the masses… I could reasonably think Phoenix would set those sections up to allow for global connectivity with colleagues around the world and beyond.” He drummed his fingers on the table where he sat with his wife. “Going ashore to find just such a communications tower in an effort to reach us, or reach you… that would make sense.”
Desdemona offered him an approving look. “That was cleverly deduced.”
“I am, on occasion, quite clever.”
“I’m inclined to agree with that quite clever assessment,” Micah said, as Desdemona gently punched Jeffrey’s shoulder.
“One thing I’m not clear on, though.”
Jeffrey massaged his “injured” shoulder with exaggerated movements. “They’d taken control of a yacht made for and used by Phoenix. Given the size, it was either a mass mover of people, or it was used by some of the ultra elite, like the Silvers or Damien Howell.”
“Reasonable,” Micah murmured.
“Wouldn’t that ship be able to communicate with the West as well?” He glanced at his wife and back at Micah. “Why wouldn’t they try to make contact from the boat itself?”
“Security,” Desdemona said. “If I’m on that boat, and I just stole it, I disengage everything I can that might make it trackable. That includes the comms system. They could try to reach us, but likely recognized that in so doing they’d disclose not just their own locations, but ours as well.”
“Mmm,” Jeffrey said. “But wouldn’t there be a similar risk in attempting something like that from the mainland?”
“Depends on who they contacted,” Micah replied. “If there’s a communication to New Venice, I doubt that would get flagged unless Phoenix is specifically looking for such a connection. If they were… I’d think the two of you would already be in trouble. But if there’s a communication sent to me? That would be unusual, and that would probably trigger a response from Phoenix.”
“Once Roddy finds them, though, and gets them into the sphere… they can communicate safely with any of us,” Desdemona declared.
“That would seem to be the plan,” Micah agreed. “Roddy will reach out to the three of us, let us know everyone’s safe, and then fly them back to New Venice to be hidden away until all of us can rendezvous. I’ll make arrangements to get there as soon as we hear from Roddy.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best plan, Micah.” Jeffrey’s face looked tight. “We’ve made a lot of headway in converting people here to our cause, but it’s hardly a majority. We could hide Roddy reasonably well until his departure. But it will be difficult to smuggle enough food for the kids, for Mary, and for Wesley and the other man… and not raise suspicions among those who don’t know our leanings. And…” He glanced at Desdemona.
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