Paradise Awakened Trilogy

by Mackenzie Morris

  They turn around and Katarina glares at Doss. "Leave us alone."

  "No." Doss walks in front of them and crosses his arms. "If it isn't Jarred Cunningham and his grumpy boyfriend."

  "Husband." Jarred says.

  "Husband?" Doss asks, surprised. "When did you two get married?"

  "About a year and half ago. Why? You got a problem with that?"

  "No. I just didn't think that coldhearted murderers cared enough to get married. What are you two doing here?"

  "We're not looking for any trouble, Doss. Just heading out on a mission for Isidore." Jarred says.

  "You're working for the president now? That's a big step up from protecting whores down in the under city. Or are you protecting a presidential whore now?"

  Did he really just go there? "Is that a shot at me?"

  "Maybe it is. How many men are you going to flirt with, Kat? Now you're trying to seduce these two? I'll let you in on a little secret. Jarred and Jayce have no interest in women, so unless you've got more in those pants of yours, then they won't even touch you."

  Jarred pushes Doss away. "Leave her alone before I let Jayce take you down."

  "I'm not scared of you two." Doss says as he steps up in Jarred's face. "When did the Inquisition let you out of your cage?"

  "For your information, after you dropped me off, I was able to talk my way out of it because I'm that much of a badass."

  "You killed four people and stole six thousand dollars." Doss says. "How did they let you go?"

  "That's my little secret. If I told people my awesome powers, then they'd eventually catch on. So far, it's worked eight times and each time it gets easier."

  Doss pushes Jarred up against the wall and punches him in the face.

  In one swift movement, Jayce lunges forward, kicks Doss in the head, drops him to the floor, then holds him down with his foot on his face. "There are razor blades in the sole of my boot that I can activate at will. Now, unless you want the closest shave of your arrogant life, I suggest that you scurry off back into the shithole you came from. These hallways could use some color to liven the place up. I'm thinking blood red."

  "Jayce, stand down. I'm fine." Jarred orders.

  Doss rubs his face as he pulls himself to his feet. "Kat, go back to your owner."

  "She's with her owner." Jarred says.

  "What?"

  "I bought her from Byron. She's mine now." He pulls a bundle of papers from his pocket and tosses it to him. "There's her papers and the bill of sale. It's official and permanently binding."

  Doss unfolds the papers and flips through them. "I'll pay you twice what you gave Byron for her."

  "No way."

  "I'll give you all the money I have."

  "Doss, I'm not-"

  Doss interrupts him. "Seven hundred thousand dollars."

  Jarred looks shocked and he braces himself on the wall. "I don't . . ."

  "Cash."

  Jarred looks at Jayce who shakes his head. "Ça ne vaut pas la peine."

  "But the money-" Jarred starts to speak, but is cut off.

  "Non. Arrête ça. Stop arguing with me. I already said no."

  The anger shows on Jarred's face as he clenches his fists and takes a deep breath. "Don't talk to me like that around other people, Jayce."

  "Then I'll just stop talking altogether." Jayce says. "You'd like that anyway."

  "What is wrong with you today?"

  "Just shut up." Jayce motions for Katarina to follow him as he starts down the hallway towards the metal doors. "C'est parti."

  Jarred shakes his head and follows them.

  "I'm watching you, Cunningham." Doss calls after him.

  "Then enjoy the show, buddy."

  Once they step outside into the darkness, Jarred pulls up a glowing blue holographic map of Paradise and places digital markers on locations. "Jayce, you get up in that office building on about the sixth floor. I'll take Kat with me into the school on the other side of the courtyard. We'll be able to see most of sector three from that area. Sectors one and four are nearly completely demolished so I doubt that he'll be there. There's not much going on in the under city except drugs, the black market, and drunks. Then sector two is the primary issue. It's been barricaded by Crowe's forces. There's no getting near that sector unless we want to kiss this world goodbye. Even if he still thinks Isidore doesn't know about who he really is, anyone who has been caught sneaking up to that sector has been shot on sight. So we perform surveillance for as long as it takes to find this bastard. That covers the four sectors. It's not the best plan, but it's a plan."

  "Sounds good." Jayce says as he walks off. "I'll keep in touch. Don't let your communicator die this time."

  "Don't worry about that. It's charged and good to go."

  Katarina follows him across the cracked and scorched pavement that is now littered with broken glass, corpses, and all manner of shrapnel. Shell casings glimmer in what little light there is out here from the emergency streetlights that are still functioning. The city is surprisingly quiet aside from some screaming from far off as more gunfire echoes against the cavern walls. The city has never been this empty. It's an eerie and cold feeling to see the deserted and decrepit buildings where just a week ago, people had been shopping and talking. The cafes where people would get coffee after work and have business meetings are now desolate. The building she follows Jarred into isn't much better. The stairs are crumbling below her feet as they climb higher up to the fourth story where three windows overlook the streets.

  "I'll take this one. You get the window next to me. Don't shoot at anything until I give the order, okay?"

  "Gotcha" She sits down below the window and takes off her rifle and pack. "So, I couldn't help but notice that you don't like Doss."

  "Don't get me started on that Inquisition idiot. Really, we're not discussing him right now. Put your earpiece on. Communication is invaluable while on a mission." He slips his earpiece in his right ear and Katarina follows suit. "Come in Jayce."

  "What's up?"

  "Anything happening over there?" Jarred asks.

  "Not much. Got some children playing in a garden and a lone inquisitor patrolling some wreckage, I guess fending off looters. At this point, I don't understand why they're worried about looting. It's not like the people who used to live in these places are alive."

  "True. Oh, I got the report back from Donnie."

  "Tell me good news."

  Jarred scoffs. "There is no good news anymore. One week ago, there were 1.2 million humans and androids living in this city. As of yesterday morning, there were sixty-five thousand."

  "Damn. That's catastrophic."

  "Tell me about it. I don't know what we can do. Will they even be able to recover if we end this today?"

  "You do realize that if we find this guy and Isidore kills him, this conflict is far from over, right?" Jayce asks. "Plus, you didn't give me the number I'm really worried about. Of those sixty-five thousand, how many are humans?"

  "Seven thousand."

  "Mon Dieu. You're not joking, are you?"

  "Not at all. Come on, focus up. Get your head in the game. We'll talk more about that later."

  Katarina takes this chance to ask her owner something she has been curious about. "So you two are married?"

  "Yep. It was the happiest day of my life, following one of the most painful."

  "Why was it painful?"

  Jarred laughs and pulls a necklace out of his shirt where a bullet is hanging. "One of these."

  "You got shot?"

  "It's a funny story, actually. The day before we got married, we were on a job down in the under city when fighting broke out between two rival gangs. It was some stupid dispute about a drug deal gone wrong. Well, our client wanted to be a hero so he ran in to break it up. Needless to say, bullets don't discriminate. He went down then Jayce and I were left hiding behind a stack of bricks. When the fighting continued for a while, we decided to make a run for it. Before we could reac
h the elevators, Jayce took a bullet in his leg and I had one buried deep in my left shoulder. We were pretty banged up. He was limping and I was holding my shoulder, both of us leaving a crazy trail of blood all across the city until we sneaked into the presidential gardens so we could have a safe and quiet place to tend to our wounds. Under those apple trees, we took out our knives and dug the bullets out of each other. As Jayce was stitching up my shoulder, he asked me to marry him. The next day, we got married and kept the bullets. So there ya go. This is the bullet I took out of Jayce's leg and he has the one from my shoulder. They're like our version of wedding rings."

  Bullets? "Wow. That's . . . manly."

  "Of course. Did you expect anything different? Like Jayce says, if we wanted to be around girlie stuff, we would have married women instead of each other."

  Jayce's voice comes over the speaker. "You talk too much."

  "What? She asked so I decided to tell her. She's one of us now, remember? She deserves to know."

  "Go to hell, Jarred."

  "What is your problem?" Jarred asks. "You haven't been this pissy since the last time you-"

  "Not another word. That is too private."

  "Oh my God. It happened again, didn't it?"

  "Oui. Now drop it." Jayce says.

  "I'm so very sorry. I had no idea. Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I don't like feeling weak."

  Jarred sighs. "PTSD is not you being weak. What about the pills I gave you?"

  "I don't like the side-effects."

  "Neither do I, but we can stop for a while. I'd rather you be healthy and sane than having that every day. It's okay."

  "I'm done talking about this." The transmission goes silent.

  Jarred sighs and rubs his eyes. "Sorry about that, Kat."

  "Are you two going to be okay?"

  "Yeah. It's just tough when he gets like this. He has flashbacks and nightmares about what his creator did to him. The only thing we've found that helps is his pills, but they make it to where he can't always . . . um . . . function sexually."

  "Oh."

  "He won't listen to me, though. Between you and me, I could use a break."

  "I'm going to kill you!" Jayce shouts over the speaker again.

  "I didn't know you were listening."

  "We're on a mission, idiot. Of course I'm listening to my earpiece. You need to stop. There are some things that should be kept between me and you. She doesn't want to hear about our love life and frankly, neither do I right now. You'll get your wish, Jarred. Have fun sleeping alone. I'm done with you."

  "Jayce, don't. Jayce?"

  Jayce sounds furious as he shouts over the transmission. "I don't want to hear your voice over this channel unless you've found Crowe. One more word out of your worthless mouth and I'll beat the hell out of you until you're bleeding and begging for mercy. Don't push me to go somewhere neither of us wants me to go. I've put you in your place before and I'll do it again. Now focus on the job at hand and stop gossiping like a woman."

  Jarred mutes his communicator and leans against the window pane. He programs something into the control panel on the side of his rifle then holds it up and looks through the scope before placing back down. His brows are furrowed and he crosses his arms as he watches the courtyard below.

  Katarina mutes hers as well then moves closer to him and tries to comfort him. "Is there any way I can help?"

  "No. He'll get over it eventually. It's my fault, though. I shouldn't have been talking about him."

  "Has he really beaten you before?" She asks.

  "I don't want to talk about it. But I told you about him, so I'll let you know. Yes. He has a temper and when he gets like that, I lose any will to fight back. I could fight him if I wanted to, but when it happens, I just want it to be over and for us to be happy again."

  "Are you scared of him?"

  "Not at all." Jarred says. "He knows that if he goes too far, the law is on my side as his owner so he makes sure to not hurt me too bad. He's not a bad guy. He's just a bundle of emotional and mental stress. And at the end of the day, I have the key to his slave collar and even though I let him have control, the ultimate power belongs to me. He knows that. Jayce also knows that if he ever goes too far and I get tired of it, I can turn him in to the Inquisition for killing his owner. Only you and I know about it so you guard that secret with your life. He made it look like an accident so no one ever figured it out. Then he went to the android auction to find himself a new owner. He's always been crazy."

  "Silver, I've got some suspicious activity about two klicks east of your location." Jayce says.

  Jarred press a small button on the side of his rifle. "Turning on thermal imaging now. If it's alive, I'll see it."

  Katarina looks as well. There doesn't seem to be much going on at all, until she finds what they're looking for. "Guys, it's him."

  "I've got him in my sight." Jarred says. "You don't know how bad I need to take this shot."

  "Don't." Jayce warns.

  "We can't let him get away."

  "Steady, Silver."

  Katarina leans close and whispers to him. "Silver?"

  "He says I have a silver tongue and can talk my way out of anything like I did with prison."

  "Does he have a nickname?"

  Jarred mutes his communicator so Jayce won't hear him. "Jolt. But he might get angry at you if you call him that. It's kind of personal. He'll tell you it doesn't bother him anymore, but I know it does. He survived what should have been a fatal electrocution at the hands of his creator. Then that bitch just left him there after his heart stopped. She told him it was because he looked her in the eyes instead of staring down at the floor all the time. It's that kind of owner that should never have access to androids. And she did that after forcing him to sleep with her. Jayce has some major emotional trauma issues that I have been helping him through. He usually won't even stay in the same room as women, but in the past month or so, he has relaxed about it a bit. He wears his hair long like that to hide the scars." He turns his earpiece back on. "Jolt, Crowe just went back inside. What kind of crazy vindictive streak does Isidore have that he would risk losing a target just so he could get the shot? This is ridiculous."

  "C'est la vie." Jayce says. "Just wait until we can get Isidore out here. He should be on his way shortly. Keep an eye on that building."

  Katarina turns to Jarred. "Do you speak French too?"

  "Un petite peu."

  Katarina stares at him blankly.

  "That means a little bit. I can understand a lot of it, but I can't speak more than a few sentences here and there, only what I've picked up from Jayce. He doesn't speak it except for every once and a while. Oh, and we always tell each other how we feel for the other in French. That's how he told me the first time and we ran with it."

  "Do you hear that? Is it a vehicle?" Katarina asks.

  "Hey, Jolt, you hear that?" Jarred asks.

  "Helicopter. See if you can get a vision on the LZ. Get Isidore on here if you can. I need to know what kind of activity is expected in this airspace. That bird is way too armed to be civilian."

  "This is Isidore. Sorry for the delay, but I'm on my way now."

  "Hey. Get over here ASAP." Jarred says. "We have Crowe's location."

  "Is my daughter with you?"

  "I've got her." Jarred says. "Who knew she was good with a rifle?"

  "Stop your yammering and find that landing zone." Jayce snaps. "I want to know specifics about this aircraft."

  Jarred looks through his scope for a while then growls in frustration. "I have a visual on the LZ, but . . ."

  "But what?"

  "I've never seen a helicopter like this one." Jarred says. "I'll take a pic through my scope camera. Sending it to you now."

  "Huh."

  "Well? What do you think?"

  "Isidore, you there?" Jayce asks.

  "I'm here."

  "Are all the entrances down into the city closed off?"

  "The
y should be, but with the power being spotty, I don't really have a way to know for sure. Why?"

  "Because this isn't a helicopter. It's a space sweeper drone. Plus, there's a large red and yellow skull painted on the side. Seems like whoever owns this thing isn't worried about being covert."

  "Red and yellow?" Isidore asks. "Dear God, help us all."

  "What is it?" Jarred asks.

  "The Imperial Galactic Reich. They've found us."

  21

  Katarina is trying everything she can think of to not fall asleep in this room that is seeming more and more like a coffin than anything else. The dark green paint on the walls is peeling where thin spider webs sway ever so slightly in the air. Bits and pieces of plaster from the crumbling ceiling are scattered around the filthy, sticky yellow shag carpet. As the quiet minutes change from being excitingly suspenseful to monotonous and mind numbing, Katarina is forced to revert to more primal forms of entertainment to keep herself from going insane.

  Some of her newfound activities include watching the mating cockroaches in the far corner, counting the grimy tiles on the windowsill, and spying on the abandoned buildings across the street through the scope of her rifle and trying to picture what kind of people would live in a place like that. It's actually very sobering and creepy to see the apartments still furnished and most of them are exactly the way they were left when the families were evacuated . . . or taken forcefully by Ben's rogue androids. With the dim light from a few emergency street lights along the sidewalk in this sector, she can see every haunting detail of their personal everyday lives. It is when she sees these unfulfilled lives trapped in their frozen stasis that she accepts the finality of their situation. The damage that has been done is beyond anything that can be repaired in months or even years.

  If the population and casualty counts from those reports are as devastating as Jayce had said, then there is a very real possibility that humanity won't recover. Android technology might be the sole saving grace here. The remaining human population may be forced to reproduce with androids and half androids in order to keep some human DNA in the gene pool. While it is a daunting eventuality that will have to be dealt with once this civil war simmers down, there doesn't seem to be any other promising solutions to the dwindling human reproduction rates that were faltering even before they were being blindly exterminated.