Caine turned and walked past Dill but was stopped as Dillon forced his hand to Caine's chest, blocking him from leaving.
“Yeah, yeah and while I'm waiting for some god to look over me, you, Caine Roberts, brother of Dillon Roberts, let me tell you something of your life. You think you're better than me, but we came from the same place. We were taken from our parents by gangers. You remember, don’t you? Or maybe you’ve forgotten or chose to forget. I took care of you and you took care of me. As cops, we tried to bury our past. Finding our parents was the only thing that mattered. You didn’t go through Destitute Recruitment like I did. I took the risks for the both of us so that you could go through your career without Enforcers calling you undercity trash. You don’t know what it was like in Infiltration training. It was my only choice of progressing through rank with my background. And then you magically showed up years later with your university degree to soak up the reputation that Dad had already established.”
Caine’s lips trembled but Dill had never once spoken ill of Caine. He never tried to hold him back. “I found our parents. I became a cop the hard way! I saved us! You don't know pain. You talk about family when you couldn't even follow Dad's footsteps when you were of age. You ran away to school because you were too much of a fucking coward to follow our line!”
Caine began breathing heavily; a brother's quarrel was an understatement. Caine swung his fist against Dillon's face, cutting his lip. The punch was light. Caine didn't want to hurt him, only settle him. Dillon grabbed his lip and groaned as he sent a strong hook across Caine's face, causing him to fall backwards and knocking over a bench. Dillon turned around to walk out of the room, looking at the family photo float to the ground. Caine immediately regretted his conversation, his words of scolding. Dillon was all he had left now, as with him.
“Dill…” Caine muttered but Dillon stopped for a moment only to keep walking until he was finally out of the room. “I'm sorry, Dill...” Only the empty room heard him. Caine picked himself up and the photo. A tear went down his cheek as he looked at the unrecognizable family in the photo. He walked out of the room as well, in hopes of someday reconciling with his brother, but it wouldn't be that day.
Dill walked into the main enforcer pool and up the stairs to his desk, only to be greeted by the cold stares of his team. Their eyes were piercing into him with shock and disappointment. He stopped at the edge of the stairs as if he felt an invisible force-field of doubt preventing him from passing.
“Sir, what is this?” Dill said. McKenna stared out of the large window, his hand leaning on the glass.
“It was the one thing that never fit,” McKenna said. “The one thing that never added up.”
“Sir?” Dill asked in confusion.
“Why did the Council interview us separately?” Dill remained silent, his stomach turning inside out. “After all this, it's clear. How they knew everything I was doing, everywhere I'd been. It wasn't some tracker or someone hacking into my tool. It was their errand boy. Your mission was never to help me with High Science or the Taken or to get me on my feet. It was to keep an eye on the crazy Martian, make sure he didn’t overstep his purpose.”
“Sir, I—”
“I blame myself. I made the mistake of trusting someone on a foreign land. The Council hired the right man. An ex-Infiltrator trained to guise himself as any falsehood, anything to gain someone’s trust. The red herring in front of me the whole time.”
“Alan, I've been with you every step!” There wasn’t much to say. Dill looked around to the others but many of them couldn’t even look at someone like him. “Sir, when the Council calls you have to answer. I’m a nobody to them, how was I supposed to say no?!”
“Down in Red Sector, you talked a noble game, dreams of uniting a city, freeing the weak and helpless. You say you have this condition, jitters you can't shake. I've seen more combat than you'll ever read about, Dillon, and I can tell you that you're not suffering from some post trauma disorder or shellshock.”
He turned around to finally make eye contact with Dill and it was then he was truly the most fearful. McKenna's eyes were filled with fire, burning Dill’s soul. “You're just a coward, hiding behind a shield and an addiction. Yeah, how could you say no?” He walked up to Dill and it was then he truly feared for his life and questioned how far the Martian’s mercy would extend. “Get the fuck out of my station and give the Council my regards,” McKenna growled.
Dill looked to the rest of the team. No one wanted him there now. But it was all true; he knew what he did. He had no noble intentions anymore. Caine was right, his fire burned out long ago. With that in mind, he turned to walk down the stairs, seeing the entire station staring at him from below, the same look from the others. They had known him for years, but after overhearing that he was a snitch, they couldn't look at him in the same light any longer. He walked down in shame. When he got to the bottom he saw Caine in the corner behind the heads of several Enforcers, a look of disappointment but also grief. Dill looked down to the ground and out of the station. He was finished.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.L.M. (Robert Louis Martin) Sanchez introduces his debut series in the science fiction genre with VIRION. Dreaming by night and dreaming harder by day, he writes to share fun and entertaining stories as well as keep himself occupied by bringing what lives in dreams to life. He lives in the Lone Star State of Texas plotting his next adventure among the stars and the vast unknown.
The Bloodlust: (Volume Three of the Virion Series) Page 26
