Rise and Run (Broken Man Trilogy Book 1)

by RJ Plant

  I couldn’t hear. My vision started going. I think I said his name. I think I said …

  Let go!

  *****

  31 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic

  Based on the last time, I expected another quick recovery. But that’s not my luck.

  I was kneeling, torn skin pulling itself back together. My vision seemed to be repairing itself, progressing from a jumbled blurry mess to sharp images. I looked around to find Rian holding Shaina. She’d have collapsed otherwise, I’m certain.

  Rian wore an expression I’d never seen before; one Felix had never seen. I thought maybe it was shock or even terror. The longer I looked at him, the harder it was to read, like his face was tumbling down through an emotional roller coaster, never able to really settle on anything.

  Seth was already dead.

  My shoulder burned from the bullet wound, but not nearly as badly as it probably should have. Maybe whatever was healing my body from the virus was working on the wound as well. I looked down. The pinky finger on my right hand was clinging tragically by a piece of skin about half an inch long.

  I inspected the digit more closely. Both the exposed end of my finger and the flesh on my knuckle where the bullet had torn through were already mending. With no chance of saving it, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and on the exhale, yanked the finger the rest of the way off. It came off easy, hurting less than I’d expected it to. The skin that had been holding it on looked dried, dead.

  I stood up and was a little off balance at first, like my bones were trying to solidify. Once I felt I could move properly, I grabbed the duffel bag and headed for the door.

  “Best not to touch the body directly,” I said in passing. I closed the door behind me so Kaitlyn wouldn’t see. I leaned against the doorframe, and just breathed. There wasn’t … There wasn’t time for this.

  My shoulders were tense—although the left one drooped a little—the entire walk to Kaitlyn’s flat, so sure I was that Shaina would break free from Rian and put a bullet in me.

  I slammed open the door to Kaitlyn’s flat, grabbed what few pieces of clothing I had, and shoved them into the weapons duffel.

  “I heard—” Kaitlyn started.

  “We’re leaving. Now.”

  Kaitlyn didn’t ask questions, just threw some clothes into a bag, grabbed the bloodbox and the thermos with Esposito’s sample, and followed close behind me.

  I took the stairs as quickly as I could, considering my baggage—by which I mean the duffel bag, not Kaitlyn—and slammed to a halt at the front door.

  “Could you be a dear?” I asked Kaitlyn, motioning with my head toward the door.

  She helpfully unlocked and opened the door for me, then ran into me when I stopped short just outside the threshold.

  Brinly stood at the bottom of the stairs, as though caught on her way up. Her wardrobe, dark green trousers and a khaki-colored turtleneck, was a stark difference to the previous white dress. It was a good look. Hell, I couldn’t imagine a look on her that wasn’t good. She wore a gun at her hip.

  “Suspicious,” I said.

  “Rian called,” she said. “He told me to meet him here. He said there was a plan.”

  “There’s a bit of drama in there just at the moment, so. We’re off.”

  “Heading anywhere fun?”

  I shrugged. “Got errands to run.”

  I started walking again with Kaitlyn close behind. Once again, she ran into me when I pulled up short. I looked over my shoulder at her. She raised her eyebrows. I turned back to Brinly.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where the server that’s linked to GDI’s laptops happens to be, would you?” I asked her.

  “Stateside,” she said. “Where Bernard is.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “The Magic City, dear,” she said, and I’d have called it purring, but it seemed somehow deadlier.

  “Birmingham,” Kaitlyn whispered. “Alabama.”

  Brinly leaned to the side, trying to steal a glance at Kaitlyn. I blocked her.

  “You blow up the base in Stockholm, then?” I asked.

  “Not before stealing myself a fun new toy,” she said. “Would you like a ride? I find I could be headed Stateside.”

  “Love one,” I said. “But I’ve got to grab someone first.”

  She rattled off an address not far from O’Cairn’s and I told her we’d meet her there in ten. I wanted to move. I had that itching feeling, like someone was watching.

  Kaitlyn was polite enough not to ask about what happened. When we got to O’Cairn’s, the same couldn’t be said of Sully.

  “What the fuck happened to you, kid?” he said.

  It looked like he was shutting up the pub for the night.

  “Had a disagreement,” I said. “Get your shite and let’s go.”

  While Kaitlyn and I waited, a thought occurred to me. I took my lonesome pinky from my jacket pocket and held it out to Kait, asking if she could use it.

  “I think I have everything I need,” she said, nodding to the bloodbox. “But I think I know just where you can stick it in case I change my mind.”

  “You’re very mean. Has anyone ever told you that before?” I said, returning the finger to my pocket.

  We headed for the meeting spot with Brinly, which was less than a block away.

  “You took one of the Raiders,” I said to Brinly when we were close enough.

  She smiled brightly and climbed in.

  “Of course,” Kaitlyn mumbled. “Of course the secret agent can fly a helicopter.”

  18

  1 November 2042, International Waters

  “You’re going after Bernard by yourself?”

  Brinly’s voice got lost somewhere in the Raider’s whistling rotors and whining engine, but the headset relayed it clear enough despite the static.

  “Fuck no,” I said. Bernard could sod off however he liked. That was Rian’s business now, not mine. “Apparently if we can load a virus onto GDI’s server, we can wipe the Kazic data.” I wasn’t sure who I even meant by “we” anymore. But wiping that data was probably my best move toward freedom.

  “Yes, Rian had mentioned that on our call. And … do you know how to do that?” she asked. There was a polite lilt of doubt in her voice.

  “It can’t be that hard,” I said, wincing as I rubbed my injured shoulder.

  The long hours confined in my seat were giving me the time to really notice the wound. I maneuvered part of the way out of my shoulder holster and pulled my shirt up, taking my left arm from the sleeve and letting the shirt rest against my collarbone. The wound looked more like a burn than a bullet hole, but it was hard to tell with the mixing layers of fresh and drying blood.

  “You need a virus to upload first,” Brinly said.

  “Uh, huh,” I said, distracted.

  I licked my thumb and ran it over the wound a few times, trying to clear away some of the blood to get a better assessment. Instead of a hole there was fresh scar tissue, the fleshy white standing out against the angry red edges.

  I pulled my shirt and holster back in place, wincing at the movement. It may have looked fairly healed, but it still hurt.

  Brinly glanced over at me. “You’ll need something that can go in undetected while it wipes everything they’ve got before they can stop it. Preferably something with a back door so you can trigger it remotely.”

  “That would have been a job for Seth,” I said, not bother to talk about him in the present tense. “Unless that’s why Rian wanted to meet. Don’t suppose you have something like that?”

  She produced a flash drive from … nowhere in particular.

  I grabbed it and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

  “Ta,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “How’d you get this?”

  She glanced at me. Her smile faded a bit. “That’s not something I can tell you. Not yet.”

  “Then when?”

  “When the person I go
t it from says I can. In the meantime, what do I tell Rian?”

  “That I’m a far more entertaining employer,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “So, where are we stopping first?”

  “Boston,” I said.

  *****

  1 November 2042, Atlantic Ocean Checkpoint/Fuel Station

  We landed on a raised platform a couple of stories up from the main deck of the fuel station. The only thing keeping it from being literally just a platform was a shack at the far end. Just to the left of the shack was a massive pump mechanism with hoses as thick as my thigh.

  Brinly headed to the shack while Kaitlyn, Sully, and I got out and stretched. GDI’s modified Raiders were capable of traveling just over eleven hundred miles before they needed refueling, and at cruising speeds of around two-hundred and sixty miles per hour, they made better time than anything else traveling through the air. And they were roomy.

  But comfortable? Well, that’s pushing it.

  Brinly wandered back over to us, tucking something away in her back pocket. She motioned us toward a ladder at one side of the platform. It led down to the actual station, the deck of which was exceptionally large and mostly covered by porous asphalt to absorb excess water. The station was broken down into sections that consisted of several docking areas for all sizes of watercraft and a deck-level helipad.

  The elevated helipad rose from the center of the deck, held up by thick—as in three or four people wide—steel support beams. Running almost invisibly down the center of the support beams were the hoses that connected to the pump mechanism above.

  Brinly opened a hatch near the deck-level helipad and disappeared down a ladder. Sully followed, and after looking back at me, Kaitlyn descended as well.

  The ladder, attached to a solid steel wall, took us down about twelve feet. The hallway leading away had six doors on either side before opening into a much larger area. To one side was a cantina, to the other, what appeared to be a mix between a duty-free and a supplies shop. Running right through the middle of the room was the steel and hose support structure leading up to the elevated helipad and, presumably, reaching down several decks below.

  “This is one of the neutral fuel stations,” Brinly said. “GDI isn’t allowed near here.”

  “Says one former agent in a GDI Raider to the other,” I said.

  “It pays to know people,” she said by way of explanation. “Hey, Jim.”

  A man of above average height in heavy dark blue coveralls waved to Brinly.

  “Welcome back, Brin,” he said. “It’s been awhile.”

  His dialect sounded familiar, all forward vowels and upward inflections, but I couldn’t quite peg it.

  “South African,” Brinly said when I asked.

  “Huh,” I said. “And who owns this station?”

  “A company called Truepenny. As far as resources go, Truepenny is second only to GDI. The company is massive, widespread, very resourceful.”

  I tapped into Felix’s memory bank but couldn’t find a single mention of such a company. No point in admitting ignorance.

  “What’s your affiliation with Truepenny?” I asked.

  “Contract work,” she said. Before I could ask anything else, she added, “A mechanic is taking a look at the Raider, making sure there are no active telematics systems or tracking devices. Now come along; we have about an hour to rest up before we leave.”

  Brinly led us to a hallway at the opposite side of the room. Like the hallway leading in, there were several doors to either side. Brinly opened the first door on the left and ushered us in.

  Cots lined the walls to either side, all made up, all pristine. Dull brown blankets were folded up at the foot of each cot, some more tattered than others, but all in seemingly usable condition.

  Brinly sat on the first cot she came to, then settled back and stretched out, arms behind her head.

  “I suggest you take some rest where you can. We still have just over eight hours and another fuel stop to go,” she looked over at me. “What happened to your finger?”

  I smiled. “Lost it in a gunfight.”

  She looked at the nub where my pinky used to be, then at me with a raised eyebrow.

  *****

  1 November 2042, Boston Settlement, Former U.S. Territory

  “Brinly,” I said. “The helipad is over there.”

  I pointed out my window at the large pinkish circle with an equally pinkish H inside it. The grim light of the dying sun washed out the colors as much as the years had.

  “Not putting my bird on the ground for an undisclosed amount of time,” she said. “Which building, Sully?”

  “How the fuck you going to see me point from back here,” came Sully’s voice.

  “Just describe the fecking building, like,” I said.

  “It’s the uh, the sandy colored one. With the big … Fuck. With the big thing cutting through it.”

  Which wasn’t much of a description in and of itself, but only one building around even came close to the pseudo-description.

  “Look here, love, I’m not doubting your skill, but there is no fecking way you can land on that,” I said to Brinly. “Just put her on the ground.”

  She swore but set us down on the street in front of the building and powered the Raider down. I hopped out, ducking a little, and opened Kaitlyn’s door to help her to the ground. She reached back into the helicopter to grab her bloodbox. I grabbed the weapons-laden duffel.

  We met Sully and Brinly at the side of the building, all of us breathing a little harshly under the weight of the damaged atmosphere. Though the intel Brinly had gotten at the fueling station claimed Boston’s atmosphere to be okay sans breather, it would have been nice to have one anyway.

  “Think anyone’s inside?” Kaitlyn asked.

  “I doubt it. This place looks fuckin’ deserted,” Sully said, although he was looking around a lot, like someone might jump out at any moment.

  The seven-story building had been a sandy color at one time and still sort of looked that way when you wiped away some of the gray ash that coated it. Some of the surrounding buildings were in the middle of collapsing, held up mostly by strategically placed two-by-fours—an abandoned construction zone, as if people had tried to repair and rebuild early on but inevitably gave up. Lower windows were covered, some with wood, some with cardboard. I could see into a few of the buildings through gaping holes in the structures.

  Vehicles were scattered haphazardly, some parked on curbs. Car doors hung open as if everyone decided to vacate at once—and in a hurry—leaving the rusted metal ghosts of the past behind.

  We walked along the face of the building until we found the front entrance. The door opened at the tug of the handle, then fell from the hinges. I thought about leaning it against the building, but even if this particular building didn’t look to have taken severe damage, I was still afraid it might give way at a sneeze, so I set the door on the ground.

  I stuck my head through the doorway. The last of the day’s sunlight still breached the shoddily boarded windows. We had an hour, maybe less, of light left.

  “The lab should be on one of the top floors,” Kaitlyn said from behind me.

  “All right. Stay here. I’ll go have a look. Brin, keep this safe for me,” I said, handing the weapons duffel to her.

  A true sign of trust, that.

  *****

  1 November 2042, Boston Settlement, Former U.S. Territory

  “Well … this seems fine,” I said to no one.

  I stared out over the landscape revealed by the fecking enormous hole that had been blown out of the back corner of the building. The floor fell away before me, steel beams reflecting the lingering orange-red glow of the setting sun. A disturbingly eerie calm settled over me as I took in the ruined city.

  I sat at the floor’s edge, the edge of the world, letting my feet dangle over the abyss below. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it was apparently long enough for someone to come look
ing.

  Kaitlyn sat beside me.

  Neither of us spoke for a long time, just stared out over the distraught landscape where small hills of pushed-up dirt rose from the ground, having tried to escape the impact from the bombs. The dirt hills looked compacted, solid, ready to stand the test of time; only the little streams of dirt and debris carried off their summits by the wind betrayed their newness.

  “Did you go up any farther?” Kaitlyn asked.

  “Does it look like I want to die?” I said.

  More silence.

  “I doubt the negative air pressure system would work with this much structural damage,” Kaitlyn finally said.

  “We’d have had to find a power source, anyway.”

  “There’s a generator in the Raider.”

  I must have looked surprised.

  “One of us thinks ahead, at least,” she said. “Brinly made sure one was loaded for us the second time we stopped for fuel.”

  “Yeah,” I said, voice low. “At least one of us thinks ahead.” I shook my head, only seeming to realize too late what a make-shift plan this had been. I didn’t have enough experience in the world for this. My life as a passenger left me completely unprepared.

  Kaitlyn’s hand appeared on my shoulder. It looked small.

  “There should be a few safe spots up there,” she said as she stood up. “I’m going to take a look, see if we can salvage something from this trip.”

  “Guess I’ll tag along,” I said. After all, that seemed to be my lot in life.

  She held her hand out to me. I looked at it, then at her, and shook my head.

  “I’m not falling for that again, pretty little Kaitlyn.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” she said, a blush spreading across her face and neck. “Sorry about that.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said, pushing myself from the floor.

  Kaitlyn followed me to the stairwell and we headed up.

  “Looks like this is as high as we can go,” I said when we reached the fifth floor. I peered out through the opening where the stairwell door had been, then gingerly stepped forward, testing the floor’s ability to hold my weight.