Chapter Forty-Three
“I know where Sycamore and Blithe are,” Cora said. “It’s not that far from here. We can get there in just a few minutes.”
Leland shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?”
Leland didn’t want to deal with this. He had his daughter now. Yes, Henry had indicated that he was in trouble, but Leland wasn’t about to risk his daughter’s life.
“Henry just used a code phrase,” Leland said. “He said his left elbow was hurting him. It’s supposed to mean he’s communicating under duress. He’s been caught and they made him use his radio. Whoever they are, they want me to meet them at Sycamore and Blithe so they can catch me.”
“Oh,” Cora said, her shoulders slumping. “Well, what if I went instead of you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you would be there too, just hanging back,” she said. “They are looking for you. A man. They won’t come after me if I’m there. But I can probably find out how many people are waiting for you.”
“You don’t know what Henry has been forced to tell them,” Leland said. “He knows I was out looking for you, and he knows I was successful. They might be watching for you too.”
“So, they catch me and you step in and save the day,” she said.
He noticed a sense of sarcasm in her voice. “Wait, are you annoyed that I came here?”
“No,” she said. “I’m happy to see you, but I don’t need your help. You didn’t have to come here.”
Leland felt like he had just been slapped in the face. “I came here to get you.”
“And I’m doing just fine without you,” she said. “I know you have this savior complex, but not everyone in the world needs your help, Dad. I’m happy to make my own way to Hope without you coming in and telling me how to do it.”
Leland’s mouth was hanging open. He was unable to think of the words to say. Then, his face burned red. “Do you know what I had to go through to get here?”
“Do you know what I had to get through to get here?” she came back. “This situation is hell for all of us.”
Leland turned from her and stepped out into the dark hallway. He saw a man at the other end, his head buried in his arms as he wept.
“I have to go out there and help Henry,” Leland said. “Maybe I can get us a car, too.”
“Wait, you don’t have a car?” she asked. “How did you get here?”
“Well, we had one, but we were attacked over it.” He turned to face her. “Currently, we’re stranded.”
“It has been really dangerous at night,” Cora said. “That’s when most of the rioting starts. Large groups of people screaming and destroying things. They’ve been picking fights with the soldiers. I think Michelle’s mother got caught in the crossfire. That’s my theory, anyway.”
“So, we’re running out of time,” Leland said.
“I’m saying we probably shouldn’t leave tonight, no,” she said. “It’s too dangerous to move through the city. Too many people out.”
“I have to help my friend,” he said. “We came here with the understanding that we had each other’s backs.”
“I’m just telling you, it gets insane,” she said. “I haven’t been out in it, but I’ve seen it from my apartment and have heard it throughout the past two nights. If you go out there, you might not come back.”
Leland knew this was true anyway. Every step of this journey so far had been a dangerous one, and he didn’t expect that to change soon.
It felt like a betrayal to leave Cora at the hospital like this, especially to go after an escaped convict like Henry Tash. But it didn’t matter what a person’s background was—when you told them you had their back, that had to mean something. It especially had to mean something when the world had been thrown into darkness.
He looked around the hallway. He didn’t like the look of the man who was weeping, but he didn’t seem like he was doing anyone harm. There were other wails and shouts from distances away, but none of them seemed like an immediate threat.
“Will you be okay in here?” Leland asked her.
“Go help your friend,” she said. “Then come back and we will figure out a way to get out of here. But we don’t need to leave the city until the morning.”
Leland nodded. She was probably right that heading out in the middle of the night was madness. Not only was he dead tired, but setting out on foot and not knowing what lay ahead in the middle of a city was too dangerous. He reached out and hugged her tightly. She pulled him in and returned the hug. They held it for a long moment. Relief flooded over him, since he knew that she was safe and that she would be here when he got back.
Of course, he didn’t know what he would be getting himself into. Surely, it was nothing. A few scoundrels trying to beat someone up for money. Whatever the case, he planned to be back within an hour or so.
As reckless as it seemed, he had to do what was right.
Chapter Forty-Four
It was about thirty minutes before Elias came back into the room with a grin on his face. Two guards on either side of him stood tall and menacing. Henry looked at Sam, but Sam’s eyes were fixed on Elias. His face had gone white, and he knew something was about to happen.
“Turns out your encryption methods are somewhat archaic,” Elias said. “It took us such a long time to crack because, well, we expected you to be a little more sophisticated than that. Regardless, I think we have what we need. We have certainly proven you to be who we think you are.”
Henry struggled against his ropes. “What are you talking about?” He looked at Sam again. “What is he talking about?”
Elias looked at them, turning from Sam to Henry, then back to Sam. “Interesting. Your brother has no idea what’s going on?”
“He just came here to get me out of Chicago,” Sam mumbled. “He has nothing to do with any of this. If you let him go now, he won’t have anything to say to anybody. He has no idea what I know.”
Henry swore. “What in the world did you get yourself into?”
“Oh, I am delighted to let Henry in on what’s happening,” Elias said.
“This was all in an EMP attack right?” Henry said.
Elias looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but sure. The best part about the situation is the fact that your little brother knew it was going to happen before it happened. Of course, there was absolutely nothing he could have done about it, but I would have loved to see the terror in his eyes.”
Henry stared at Sam, his mouth hanging open. The pieces were falling into place. Sam, with all of his knowledge, with all of his brains, had spent most of his time hacking and stealing from secret organizations in the government and had apparently gotten so good that he learned of the attack and who was behind it. Of course, they were going to kill him and they were going to kill Henry, too. The brothers were probably of no consequence to the bad guys, but an organization like this wanted to leave no loose ends. That was why they weren’t dead yet. They wanted to figure out who Leland was and then kill him, too, just to make sure everyone was out of the picture. Leland being alive and away from them was the only thing keeping them alive right now.
“Now that we have everything,” Elias said, “I will wait for your friend to get here.” He walked out of the room with his two guards and shut the door behind him.
Henry gritted his teeth. “What’s he waiting for, anyway?”
“Bait,” Sam said. “He doesn’t want to kill either of us in case he needs to use us against your friend.”
Henry nodded. A heavy silence hung in the air, and Sam didn’t seem interested in talking about the situation. Still, Henry had questions.
“How deep did you get, Sam?”
“What do you mean?” He didn’t look up at Henry.
“Obviously you got pretty deep,” he said. “You do realize that the soldiers out there aren’t instituting martial law. They were lo
oking for you.”
Sam looked up.
“That’s some pretty deep stuff,” Henry said. “What do you know?”
“They’re probably listening to us,” Sam said.
“What does it matter? Aren’t they going to kill us?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. He sighed, then finally looked at Henry. “They’re called the Horsemen.”
“Government?”
Sam shook his head. “Sort of. They have people in government. They have people everywhere. I don’t really know how big they are, but I just know they are in all facets of society, and they’ve been there for a while. I don’t know their goals. I don’t know their ideologies. I just know they are responsible for all this.” He nodded toward the door. “That computer they stole from me has everything I could find on them, but it’s so much I haven’t been able to comb through it all. I’m sure all the answers are there. That’s why they want me dead.”
“How did they do it? The EMP?” Henry could feel his skin rising. To have this sort of insight, even if he was about to die, was fascinating.
“I don’t even know that,” Sam said. “Conventionally, one would set off a series of nuclear blasts in the atmosphere. If it’s powerful enough, that would do what we’re seeing, but again, I just don’t know. It could take me months to find out that kind of thing just sifting through the files I have.”
Henry swore. “Months?”
“Yeah, it’s not just a few news articles. It’s pieces of documents scattered over time. Memos. Code words and phrases. Emails. Seemingly meaningless chats.”
“And you’re able to sort through all that yourself?”
“Of course not,” Sam said. “I built a program to look for patterns, but there is just so much information it would take the program months to come up with an analysis. Even then, it’s not a sure thing. My job is to adjust the programming as needed. If I were just clicking around and reading, I would do it until I was an old man and not come up with anything substantial.”
Henry swore again. “So, this is a deliberate attack. There’s no question.”
“It’s worse than an attack,” Sam said. “It’s an extinction. Even if we could rebuild, life would never be the same, and that’s the point.”
At that moment, Elias burst through the door, and this time there were two guards and another man carrying a briefcase. Elias’s face was red, and his teeth showed in a snarl. He stepped in front of Sam, reared back, and slapped him across the face as hard as he could.
Henry screamed out in defense of his brother, but no one listened to him.
“I want to know everything you know about Keystone,” Elias demanded.
Blood trickled down Sam’s nose as he looked up at Elias. “You can burn in hell.”
Elias stood straight and pulled down on his shirt. Then he looked over at the man with the briefcase and nodded at him. “As I told you before, I don’t have the stomach for performing torture. I want to know everything you know about Keystone, and the more you tell me the less he will hurt you.”
Sam didn’t seem so confident this time when he looked at the man and his briefcase. The man was devoid of any emotion. Bald and looking too clean, he bent down in front of Sam and opened the briefcase so Sam could see inside. He pulled out a syringe and a vial and filled the syringe with the liquid.
“Come on!” Henry screamed in desperation. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s got a lot of crap on the computer, but that doesn’t mean he’s read it all.”
“We found several references to Keystone,” Elias said. “These aren’t just files that you conjured up, but they are notes typed out by you, and your notes reference Keystone. I want to know what you know about it.”
“Then why don’t you just read my notes?” Sam said. “Don’t you think I would’ve typed out what I knew on my notes?”
“Maybe,” Elias said. “But we’ll find out soon enough.” He nodded at the man, and the man stepped forward. They didn’t give Sam another chance to answer the question. They didn’t even hesitate. The syringe entered his arm and the man pushed in the liquid.
“In about thirty seconds this stuff is going to make you feel like you are on fire on every part of your body,” Elias said. “There is medicine to make it stop. You just have to talk. We can only do this so many times before it kills you, but I don’t suspect it’s going to take that long.”
Sam looked at Elias with his defiant stare. It was almost as if he didn’t believe Elias. But Henry had heard about these kinds of things, and he knew Sam was in for a world of hurt.
“Sam, just tell them everything you know. It doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t know anything,” Sam said. “Everything I know is in the notes on that computer.”
“We’ll see,” Elias said.
Every man in the room watched and waited as the drugs went through Sam’s system. Henry already felt sick to his stomach at the idea of Sam being tortured.
What could Sam possibly know that he wasn’t telling Elias? What was Keystone? It must have been of some interest to his brother, or they wouldn’t have found references to it on his computer.
Henry cringed when he watched Sam twist his face as it burned red, and his knuckles tensed and shook. Finally, Sam let out a huge gasp, then a scream. “Please! Please!”
“Are you ready to talk about Keystone?” Elias asked.
“I said you could go to hell!” Sam yelled.
Sam writhed in his seat as though they had poured gasoline over him and lit a match. The screams ripped past Henry’s eardrums, and it made him ache just to see Sam’s pain.
It was only a few moments before Sam was screaming that he was ready to talk. “I’ll say anything! I will tell you anything!”
The man with the briefcase waited for the nod from Elias, then injected Sam with another serum. Sam continued to writhe and scream out in pain for another thirty seconds until the medicine worked its way through his body, numbing the pain and putting out the invisible flames on his skin.
Sam sat slumped over, and it seemed like he was barely breathing. Elias stepped forward, grabbed him by his hair, and pulled his head back until Sam’s eyes met his own.
“What do you know about Keystone?” Elias said.
For a moment, Henry thought Sam was about to tell Elias to go to hell again, but instead he tried to be accommodating.
“I know it has something to do with the plans you have,” Sam said. His voice was low and his speech slurred. “I know there’s something you’re going to do months from now, but that’s it. All I know about Keystone is that this whole thing isn’t over.”
Elias let Sam’s head drop, and the man stood over Sam for a long moment, tapping a finger to his lips. Henry knew he was trying to determine whether or not Sam was withholding any information. At this point, Henry couldn’t tell. He had seen his little brother only a few times over the past few years. Henry had no insight into his brother’s life.
“Inject him again,” Elias said.
“No!” Henry shouted, but he was ignored.
The man stepped forward and injected Sam with the fire serum. Sam tried to resist with all his might, but he could barely move his muscles. He sat slumped over in the chair for about thirty seconds until the serum worked its way into his veins. Henry couldn’t bear to watch Sam writhe in pain a second time. The screams pierced his eardrums and sent a wave of nausea through him.
“Just leave him alone!” Henry shouted. He tried to kick and pull away from the ropes that tied him down, but he couldn’t budge unless he fell over in his chair.
Sam’s screams turned into a teeth-baring growl as his eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets.
“What do you know about Keystone?” Elias repeated, calmly.
Sam couldn’t hear him. He was focused only on the pain. He pulled against the ropes so hard his shoulders looked like they would pop out of their sockets.
Finally, Elias turned to the man with the briefcase and nodded. The man adm
inistered the medicine, though it took another thirty seconds for Sam to calm down. Elias asked him again about Keystone, but Sam sat slumped in his chair, unconscious. At first, Henry thought they had killed him. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief when he saw his brother breathing.
Henry looked up at Elias, but he didn’t have anything to say. All he could think about was how much he wanted to murder this man, whoever he was.
“I think we’re done for now,” Elias said.
The man with the fire serum frowned. “He could take a couple more doses.”
Elias shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s find out who their friend is, then we can deal with all of them at once.”
Henry looked at Sam, desperate for him to wake back up. When the others left the room, Henry called out to his brother but got no response.
“Sam, we have to figure this out. We’re running out of time.”
No answer.
Henry hoped Leland had gotten the message. If he didn’t, the sheriff would be in here, tied up and tortured. Then, they would all die.
Sam was still out when Elias came charging into the room again, this time holding the radio out in front of him and shoving it in front of Henry’s face.
“Tell him you’re sitting at the corner!” Elias growled.
“What?”
“Just do what I say!” He pressed the button and held the radio in front of Henry’s mouth.
“I’m sitting on the corner. Do you see me?”
Elias let go of the button, then reared back and slapped Henry across the face. “Don’t say anything I don’t tell you to say, or we’ll inject your brother with another dose of serum! Do you understand me?”
Henry’s lip felt wet and he wanted to tackle Elias.
“No, I don’t see you,” Leland said. “Maybe I’m not in the right spot. What do your surroundings look like?”
Henry wanted to tell him that he was in a dank room with a crazed lunatic standing over him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t let his brother go through the torture again.
“Repeat only the words I say,” Elias commanded, “or your brother will be tortured to death.”
Fallen Earth | Book 2 | Aftermath Page 22
