by LC Champlin
“Buck?” Nathan blinked. Seeing the Red Devil Goats’ IT tech shouldn’t surprise him, though.
“Surprised? How do you think they were able to pull off that shit at the prison?” As she spoke, she withdrew a semi-automatic pistol from the drop holster at her thigh. “Computers and money, courtesy of my mad skills.” She sauntered past Birk as the hostage reunited with his sister.
“Let Sophia go,” Lexa ordered the other guards. “She works for me.”
The grunts obeyed, but Buck turned to give Lexa a questioning look. “You’re sure?”
The Ice Queen smiled like a chess champion making the winning move. “She’s followed my orders this entire time. She’s proved to be quite perceptive, too. I doubted Nathan would seek to contact the authorities, but she was correct in her assessment of him.” Lexa allowed a nod of approval.
“Wait.” Nathan whipped around to face Sophia, or as far as he could with his hands cuffed behind him and men the size of professional football players restraining him. “This whole time, you’ve been on her side? Then she never really turned on me at Mercury when I had Birk—”
“Yes, Nathan.” She wore an expression of resignation. “I brought you and your friends here. I said Lexa betrayed you so that I could gain your trust.”
What did he expect when partnering with one of Lexa’s minions? Sarge had done the same. Fool twice . . . However, he had possessed few choices. “What about stopping the broadcast at the stadium?”
“Did you stop it?” Lexa enquired.
“No . . .”
“There you are, then.” She spread her hands. “I admit that operation did not go quite as anticipated, but it has worked out. My contingency plan for if you escaped the FBI succeeded quite well: you’ve all come to the pen like sheep to the slaughter.”
“That’s not your call,” Nathan remarked. “It’s Crevan’s.” Hopefully.
“Mm.” Her cold smile dropped several degrees. “Neil Crevan would have been very pleased to have you back in government custody, but this will amuse him even more.”
“I’m not surprised.” Of course the old bastard would cheer at the news of Nathan’s humiliation. “You used your contacts to place me on the convoy with your brother. You planned to liberate Victor and me from it in New Mexico, but Cheel struck first.”
“Very perceptive.”
“But . . .” he murmured to Sophia, “you genuinely seemed to care about San Luis’s fate. Hah, you missed your calling! You should have pursued a career in acting.”
With the muscles in her jaw twitching, she turned a sad gaze on him. “Nathan, I really did care. I am—”
Bang!
Chapter 90
Live by the Sword
Counting Stars – OneRepublic
Shock registered on Sophia’s face as she staggered, her hand going to her right upper arm. Blood stained her skin crimson. She looked down at it, not comprehending. That made two of them. By reflex Nathan sought the source of the sound. Buck. Nonplussed, she returned her pistol to high ready.
“You—” Sophia dropped to one knee.
Upon closer inspection, he could see the bullet had traveled into her chest cavity on a horizontal trajectory. It used the arm hole of her vest as an opening. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Shot just as she had murdered the DHS officer: her .50 caliber bullet had liquefied his chest cavity’s contents. The slug Buck fired, however, lacked the hydrostatic shock for an instant kill. Sophia’s eyes grew glassy. She coughed, blood spraying. The red formed a puddle around her now.
Nathan swallowed, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. The handcuffs and mercenaries prevented him from going to her. Hollowness opened in his heart. She fought by his side, saved his life, yet . . . she did so for Lexa. But did that matter now?
Lexa, the murdering blight upon humanity, looked on as if watching a dull commercial. “Was that necessary?”
Buck shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Gray Fox said do it. She’s a risk and she killed Sarge. She let Cheel be attacked.”
Lexa looked thoughtful. “Live by the sword, die by the sword, I suppose. Crevan wished it, and we dare not cross him.” Which explained her chronic need for proxies to perform her dirty work.
One, two, three—The focus of a predator on the hunt sharpened in Nathan. “Lexa, now that Cheel is dead, you have one less adversary on your way to controlling LOGOS. But now you’re deficient in manpower. Albin and I have been captured after you threw us away. Now Sophia is incapacitated.” Dying, but one refrained from pointing out the obvious in front of the party in question.
“You are an incurable liar, Nathan.” Smiling in the way of the accused but confident, Lexa took a step closer
“Leave us, Dr. Lexa Birk,” a voice from on high ordered.
“Why?” she retorted. “I brought these people to you. I—”
“You are becoming irritating. You engaged in the infighting which Cheel was also part of. I’m not sorry to see him fall, and by our enemies’ hand no less. Evidently he was not the mastermind he claimed.”
The mercenaries took Lexa by the shoulders, but she held her ground, eyes flashing. “Don’t I deserve a reward? I am loyal.” An admirable attempt to play all sides!
“Go. ‘These people,’ as you call them, are mine,” the old traitor decided. He sounded as bored as she had looked a moment ago. “Remember your mercenary’s fate. You live by the sword as well.”
With a glare at Nathan, Lexa turned and strode with the mercenaries out of the great hall.
On the floor, Sophia wheezed her last breaths. Her eyes no longer saw life.
Nathan sighed. The death of the part-time ally—a murderer of DHS officers and a human trafficker—ached in his soul. “Goodbye, Sophia. We worked well together. I hope you’ll be happy with your cousin, if that really was him.” But as a murderer, she would likely end in Hell with the rest of the Red Devil Goats.
“I’m . . . sorry.” With a last convulsion, she lay still.
Buck eyed him. “Got anything smart to say?”
He maintained eye contact but held his tongue.
“Now that that’s settled,” Neil announced, “let’s get on with the show.”
++++++++++++
Another panel in the wall slid aside, this one at the far end of the room. Nathan squinted at the rectangle of darkness. Metal glinted and a motor hummed. An electric wheelchair rolled into the light. In it slouched Neil Crevan. At last, face to face with his rival, Gray Fox, the betrayer of humankind.
A smirk came to Nathan’s lips. “It’s a family reunion, isn’t it, Neil?”
Head lolling to one side due to the weakness of his muscles, the old devil guided his chair forward; he operated the control with one finger. The rest of his body lay weak and largely useless after his latest decline.
“If you think I’ve given you a last chance to gloat, you despicable devil,” Crevan rasped, “you couldn’t have gotten it more wrong. I’ll be the one gloating, but in righteous triumph. Like Saint George killing the dragon.” The lighting deepened the shadows under his cheekbones and about his eyes while revealing his face’s liver spots.
“I’ve been upgraded from serpent to dragon now? My, I do feel special.” Crevan wouldn’t order him killed just yet. The half corpse would toy with him first.
“I hope you like the taste of those words, lad, because you’ll be eating them soon enough.”
“Don’t keep me waiting. I would like to get on with my life at some point today.”
“Your life?” Crevan coughed a laugh. “Tell me, what have you done lately? No, tell your wife.” A projection appeared on the wall. Janine’s face. Nathan’s legs went weak. He locked his knees and stood straighter before the eyes of the goddess who would judge him. Take me to church. “Janine.” He grinned in relief despite the shame that clung to him like a grave shroud. “Thank God! I tried to call you, but I couldn’t get through.” He did try to call . . . in the beg
inning, at least.
She regarded him with a hint of sadness in her emerald eyes. “Oh, Nathan, Albin called, but . . .”
“I apologize.” Head bowed, Nathan’s gaze fell to the floor. More precisely, to Europe on the painted map.
“Is that all?” Neil demanded. His lips pulled back from his piss-yellow teeth in a rictus; he lacked the fine-motor ability to form a true grin.
Nathan couldn’t tell Janine the extent of his sins. If she didn’t know them yet, and he told her, she would . . . Would she divorce him? Would she ask her father to dispose of him? She should.
He heaved a sigh from the depths of his spirit. Come clean and lose everything, or keep a secret and hope the truth never escaped? Assuming he escaped LOGOS with his life, and Crevan didn’t detail Nathan’s charges. If he could complete his deal with the government, he had a chance at freedom. They needed proof, and he could still provide it. She didn’t have to know anything. His heart hammered in his chest as his extremities went numb.
“Nathan?” she prompted.
Chapter 91
After I Strayed, I Repented
White Blank Page – Mumford & Sons
Nathan’s words to Albin returned: I can’t lie to my family. He sank to his knees beside the corpse of Sophia. Her blood pooled over Australia.
He looked up at the screen. “I’m sorry, Janine. I have to confess. I took over a neighborhood and betrayed people. I wanted to control the cannibals for my own gain. And worst of all, I tried to kill Albin.” His throat closed, forcing him to clear it. One, two, three—He looked up. Tears blurred his vision. “He’s a better man than I on every count. He refused to abandon me. He almost died attempting to save me from myself.
“The DHS arrested me. I made a plea deal with them, but I don’t know if I can uphold my end. I need to stop LOGOS and the cannibals, or at least provide the government with proof of what LOGOS is doing.”
With the abscess of his sins lanced, the guilt could leave him in all its putrid shame. He pressed on: “Albin tracked me down and saved my life. Now I’ve led him here. I don’t know what they’ve done with him.” He shook his head. “I have failed you, David, and Albin.”
“Nathan.” What strained in her voice? Relief? Sadness? Disappointment? All blended into one. “I wish I can say I was surprised. I wish I can say my dad was wrong about you. He said you would turn into a mad tyrant if given the opportunity. I said he should prove it to me rather than cast aspersions on your humanity. I know you are an ambitious, driven man. It’s part of why I loved you.” Loved. Past tense. “When you sink your teeth into an idea, you don’t let go. You’re like a force of nature. But now you’ve exceeded even my expectations. What you did . . .” She sighed. Then came the verdict: “I’m sorry I chose you.”
Chin to his chest, eyes squeezed shut. His ears rang with the inevitable words. Though he expected them, and though Janine whispered them in his nightmares, hearing them in real life stung deeper than he could have imagined. It pierced to the dividing of soul and spirit.
“I guess I’ll be having the tattoo of your name removed from my back.”
What? She had no tattoo of his name. She had a highly realistic image of a serpent crawling up her left scapula, its forked tongue flicking toward her ear as if to whisper sweet wisdom in it. She had gotten it shortly after her father called Nathan a villainous viper. But what did her statement mean?
“You really are Ragnar in the snake pit.”
Ragnar in the—Aha, the story he told Davie! It followed Ragnar and the Wolves. Legend said Ragnar died after his enemies threw him into a snake pit. But in Nathan’s version, his shield maiden wife Lagertha rescued him. Did that mean . . .
Sniffing, Nathan squinted up at the screen. “I understand.”
“Nathan—” The projection clicked off.
A growl rumbled from Crevan. “That’s enough of that. It seems you’re as cunning as ever. You admitted, knowing she had already heard of your sins.”
“What?” She already knew? “Is this your ‘show’? I’d give it two stars.”
“That was just the prelude.” Crevan’s smile evened out into a normal human’s expression of pleasure. His spine straightened, his head pulling up. The bastard feigned illness?
Still on his knees, Nathan sat up with the balls of his feet pulled under him.
Crevan launched into his inevitable monologue: “You want to know why we did all this, you devil? We wanted to bring peace and harmony to Earth. Dr. Lexa Birk was one of our biggest supporters. She saw there were too many humans on the planet, and they were destroying it. They would suck it dry like ticks on a deer. But why should we save it for the miserable creatures who crawl over it? They would just kill each other. After all, what is the cause of man’s suffering?” Crevan raised his steering finger from the wheelchair’s control. “Man. All the food and money in the world can’t feed a starving child if the dictators won’t distribute it. But what if everyone thought like us?” His brows climbed. “What if everyone could be in harmony?”
“And be ruled by you?”
“There must be leadership. If we can invent the technology, then it’s our right, because we’ve proven superior. Survival of the fittest.”
Nathan laughed a full, genuine laugh. “You’ve got to be joking. You are the most unfit of humans. You’re barely above a vegetable. Another decline and you won’t be able to speak. Oh, how I long for that day!”
“Disrespectful and cocky to the end.” Neil shook his head. Since when could he do that so easily? “And deluded. Do you think that with our technology we wouldn’t use it for our own benefit?” He leaned forward, claw-like fingers curling around the arm rests of his chair. “No indeed. One reason I supported this program so tirelessly and why I wanted Doorway’s research was for me.”
“The neural regrowth data.” The very technology Nathan had intended to develop to save the old man. More precisely, to give David and Janine extra time with their relation. “Good to know I was on the right track.”
“It was partly their research that provided a key bit of information. And now you’ll have the privilege of experiencing the fruit of it.” A predator’s grin grew to match the wild eyes.
“The fruit of the poisoned tree?” A legal term Albin used on occasion, referring to the evidence that would be inadmissible in court if obtained illegally. The offending party would forfeit all evidence after it as well.
“The forbidden fruit, you might say. It’s fitting we’re in the Garden of the Gods.” He spread his arms, an action he had not performed for many months.
“I’m not hungry.” Nathan stood, under the watchful eye of the guards and Buck.
“You don’t have a choice. We’ll control the population of the world, except for those who supported us. We’re going to remake Earth in our image.”
The unmitigated pride! “Satan had free run of Earth after he was cast from Heaven. He couldn’t do a thing with it.” Nathan studied the derelict. “Are you going to be any better?”
Chapter 92
In the Seat of Gods
Snake Eyes – Mumford & Sons
The old man pushed to his feet, as tall and proud as a twenty year old. “You are the only devil here. And as for God, He gave us the authority. After all, if He didn’t want this, He would have stopped it. We have healed the lame, given sight to the blind, and made the leper clean.”
Nathan snorted. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone outside—the cannibals, I mean—seems to be decidedly scabrous. Their name, Dalit, even means unclean.”
Crevan rolled his shoulders. He put his head to either side, popping his cervical vertebrae in a way they had likely not experienced in a considerable time. “I brought you here because I wanted you to see this before the end. I wanted you as you are today to be rejected by your family and friends. But I’ll still give you a chance to live. Swear allegiance to us. Submit to the injection of the serum—”
&
nbsp; “You’re going to infect me with the contagion? The venom? Killing me isn’t enough for you, is it.” Transform into a cannibal, lose his mind, attack his friends? God, please, no! “You called me a serpent, but you are the true servant of Satan. If I bow down and worship you, you will give me all these kingdoms, eh?” Nathan nodded to the map of the world spread before them. Already blood polluted it. “I’m not going to be your mindless slave. I want to live, but I will live as a man, not a puppet, and not as an enslaved beast.”
“Like them?” Neil gestured to the wall. The projection blinked on to show a feed from the Broncos stadium. The cannibals waited in rows. “No, that’s for the inferior. I myself have taken the venom, as you call it. But it’s a refined, amplified version.”
“Like refined cocaine?” Addictive and brain-melting.
“You see the benefits.” He flexed his fists as he stepped away from his wheelchair.
Nathan would have retreated, but the guards continued to pin him. Seeing the old man on his feet, mobile and healthy—The people watching Lazarus emerge from his tomb must have felt similar. But Lazarus brought good news. Neil could bring only tales of the terror to come.
“You hate me. Why would you offer me a chance to be better?”
“Not so resistant now, eh? You’re a greedy bastard.”
“I’m an opportunistic bastard.”
“With this serum, you and I can think alike. We can at last have peace. While I wish Albin had married my daughter, he didn’t. You are the father of my eventual heir. He’s your blood, whether I like it or not.”
A trap if ever one existed. “Allow me to confirm I understand: you’ll give me the contagion, which will make me superhuman with, I gather, improved healing abilities and . . .” He shrugged, inviting explanation.
