Legacy Of Ashes

by Ric Beard

  It was doubtful. Even with a genius like Morgan pulling his strings, the mayor had screwed the pooch. Every time he gave an interview, he stuck his foot deeper down his throat. Mikael Jensen would undoubtedly shred him in the upcoming debate.

  Morgan switched to another grouping of images. They were the culminations of Kade Reynolds’s public appearances, as identified by the city cameras over the last two years. He began flicking through them, one-by-one.

  Options, options.

  His mind wandered as he perused the pictures.

  Morgan’s little side-ventures were bound to leave him a rich man. He needed only wait until he had the veritable golden goose in hand, assuming the golden goose survived the trip across country. If Alexandria was true to her word, this Stone character was a real windfall, and Morgan could resign, unblemished, while leaving the dirty deeds about which the mayor had no clue at his back. If the public learned the extent of the atrocities of this office—the protection schemes and the beatings of people who didn’t comply, the fallout would dip Vaughn into a steaming vat of shit out of which he’d never climb.

  I could get the bastard banished.

  Morgan scrolled to the next image and thought his eyes might explode out of his head as they shot wide open, and his hands went limp on the desk. All thoughts of treason and blackmail left his mind as he pinched the screen to zoom in on the final image. As the pixelated portion became crystal clear, Morgan gasped. It was Reynolds, of course. He stood in the sun next to a woman in a black cap, rim pulled down in the same fashion as Reynolds’s pictures from the day of the truck bombing, hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Well, shit.”

  She was wearing sunglasses instead of using the filter features found in SmartGlasses. She kept her head intentionally low, but there was no mistaking that fiery red hair, that lean, taut figure, and that slightly up-turned nose.

  Shaw was fresh out of jail, sprung by the man Morgan assumed would be mayor in a few months. Though he’d just as soon leave Shaw alone, word of his suppression of this photo would land him outside the walls. He had business going on that would spring him from the jail that was this job today, but he didn’t want to leave a trail of his misdeeds behind for his replacement to find and end up in a real jail he couldn’t escape—or worse, the outside badlands.

  Morgan sighed.

  Oh, well. Perhaps he could leverage it for a little gratitude from the bastard so that when he left his service, he wouldn’t send his goons to cover his own trail.

  He tapped the glass three times, and an image of the mayor sitting at his desk appeared.

  “Mister Mayor, I have some intelligence you should see.”

  “Can it wait?”

  Morgan tapped the live image of the mayor’s face and then a purple icon in the corner of the screen. The image changed from Morgan’s picture of Lexi Shaw to another live video capture displayed on the mayor’s desk. A woman was stretching in a yoga studio. She was young, she was firm, and she was wearing only panties.

  I offer the man career-changing intelligence, and he doesn’t want to interrupt his invasion of a woman’s privacy to take a look.

  “I think it would quite be worth your time.”

  “Don’t be a smart ass.” After a moment of silence, perhaps spent zipping his pants discreetly under his desk, the mayor said, “Okay, bring it in.”

  “Sending it to your screen now, sir.” He swiped to shoot the images to the mayor’s screen as he strode into the office.

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “His name is Kade Reynolds.”

  “Kade Reynolds. Why do I know that name? Kade Reynolds…”

  Morgan stayed quiet, allowing the machinery to work inside the mayor’s lacking brain.

  “Ah! He was the bastard who disrespected me in my own office. How I’d like to—.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morgan said. “Very good, sir.”

  “Don’t patronize me, weasel.”

  Morgan clinched his fists.

  “Yes, Mister Mayor.”

  “You got a problem, Morgan? You sound irritated.”

  Morgan pressed on.

  “Reynolds was the attacker of the oil truck outside the city last week,” Morgan said simply.

  The mayor swiveled in is chair and looked up at him.

  “We can’t be that lucky.”

  I go a week with no sleep, and he calls it luck.

  “Thousands of hours of footage were scrubbed to come up with these images, sir,” Morgan said. The lack of sleep combined with the mayor’s exacerbating tone made it impossible for him to conceal his irritation any longer. “There was no luck involved.”

  “I do not like your tone,” the mayor snapped.

  He snaps his fingers, like I am a child. He snaps them as if only his own ego is permitted in his office. Perhaps I am his dog.

  Shaw’s release from City Jail just hours ago was obviously grating at his nerves.

  “You’ve circled this woman. Who is she?”

  “Mister Mayor,” Morgan said, his tone dripping with derision. He couldn’t take it anymore. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but he wasn’t going to be associated with this man any longer. He would fall back to plan two and wait for Stone before he worked for this man even one more moment. He would consider the picture his parting gift. “Do I need to spell it out for you? That is Lexi Shaw.”

  Vaughn jerked himself out of the chair, the backs of his knees pushing it on its wheels to slam into the wall in the rear of the room. He stomped around the desk and stood nose-to-nose with Morgan.

  “I have enough problems without your insubordinate tone,” the mayor spat. “Get a warrant out on Shaw, and get her ass back in here. She won’t be leaving this time. While you’re at it, get some sleep and get your brain back inside your head before you make me do something I’ll regret.”

  “Like what, Vaughn? Fire me? Do you honestly believe—”

  Vaughn raised his finger and punched it into Morgan’s chest.

  “Do-not-push-me-today, fool,” Vaughn growled.

  Morgan looked into his boss’s wide, bulging eyes and tilted his head slightly. Then he looked down at the finger jabbed into his chest.

  Morgan grabbed Vaughn's finger and squeezed.

  “I am finished with your insolence, Vaughn.” He gave the finger a little twist.

  Vaughn cringed. “Let go of my finger, you shit.”

  “For more than three years I have listened to your snivel and bitch because your incompetent policies keep leading you down rabbit holes from which I have to extricate you.”

  “You—!”

  Morgan gripped the finger and pulled so Vaughn’s face was again inches from his own.

  “You are but a pawn. My pawn. If you didn’t have your pudgy head so far up your own fat ass, you might have seen it before now.” The mayor’s lip peeled back in a sneer. “Yes. You see it now, finally. I warn you, fool. If I see so much as the shadow of Jack Stevens anywhere near me, I will murder you both. What I have given you is the very gift that could save your pathetic career. You could implicate Shaw, your opponent’s chief of security, in a conspiracy and convict her of treason with virtually no effort, but you are too stupid to just say thank you. Consider this our final lesson, fool.”

  Morgan smiled. He twisted the finger and pulled it back until he felt it pop.

  Book Five

  Part Eighteen

  Triangle City

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Unknown Origins

  Day 9

  Wednesday, Mar 27, 2137

  Triangle City

  The following morning, Lexi limped off the elevator onto the top floor at JenCorp. Adding to her soreness and mentally beaten frame of mind was a deeper resentment as she saw the gaunt rail of a man who acted as the mayor’s tool leaving Blake’s office. The image of the two men standing in that same office the night her Tab had been invaded washed through her mind. He looked up as their paths crossed and furrowed his eye
brows, reminding Lexi that she looked like she had survived one of The Chain’s internal death battles. The gaunt man swept his eyes elsewhere, anywhere but upon her face. She turned her eyes forward and kept walking. Blake’s assistant sat in her normal, straight-as-a-board posture in her chair as she pretended no one else in the world existed. Her hair was lavender today.

  Blake stood by the, massive window, looking down onto the rooftops of adjacent buildings to the west. Lexi walked over to one of the chairs across from the desk and lowered herself gently into it, drawing Blake’s attention.

  “It’s worse than I imagined,” Blake said. He walked over and sat on the edge of his desk. “It’s even worse up close.”

  “You’re all heart,” she said.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a low tone, looking down at his hands.

  Lexi saw the chewed ends of his fingernails and frowned, a twinge of pain reminding her of the crack in the skin on her lip. She winced, tapped her finger to it, and held it up. No blood, at least.

  “I could ask you the same. What is it?”

  “It’s a lot of things,” he said. “You not being the least of them. Say the word, and I’ll have that son of a bitch killed.”

  “That’s not your style. But I appreciate the gesture.”

  “Sure,” he said, his tone still distant, half-engaged.

  Lexi looked him up and down, taking in his tailored suit, his perfect hair with not a strand out of place, and his chewed-up fingernails that had no place with the rest. His shoulders slumped, and he wasn’t raising his eyes to meet hers. So he knew why she was here.

  “Tell me what’s going on. Can I help?”

  “You know, that’s a funny question. You sit there, barely able to lean back in the chair, your face swollen and cut, and for the first time since we became involved, you show—what is it? Empathy?”

  “So, this is going to be one of those conversations.” Although she’d spent the evening under the care of Mikael’s private nurse in the mansion outside of town, the pain drugs left her feeling groggy, and she’d refused more when they wore off, allowing the pain to crawl across her body again. She looked down at her own hands.

  “Lex, I know that you’re not the romantic type. I’m not stupid. I get that. I resisted initially in the combat room because I could tell by the way you walked around here like a sexy robot for the last five years, that you were a pecan that a titanium cracker had no hope of cracking. No delusions, whatsoever. But in the end, I surrendered to the idea because I didn’t need attachments either. Why do you think I spent time with a virtual woman?”

  Lexi smiled, but only with her lips. She had known about his patronage of the ‘Virtual Girl’ service prior to their little…relationship. It was her job to know where he went, what he did, and which employee she had guarding his ass from the shadows. It only made sense that he knew the extent of her work included following him.

  “Things have gotten complicated for both of us, now. Thankfully, this relationship or whatever it is doesn’t fall into the category of complicated.”

  He was making it easy for her. But something told her that Mikael had preempted her with a phone call to soften the blow to his only child—which showed Mikael didn’t understand the nature of the relationship.

  “What else is complicated?” She asked quietly, without looking up.

  “The mayor’s interest in you is pretty complicated.”

  Lexi looked up through one swollen eye. She wondered if he could even tell it was squinting.

  “What he did to you…” he said, trailing off. She could see his jaw working.

  “It’s okay. Think of it as politics.”

  His tone harshened as he snapped out his next words.

  “Do you think I’m stupid? Politics? Really?” Blake stood up and walked back to the window, his back to her. She watched as he took a few deep, cleansing breaths and glanced at the ceiling. In the tinting of the window against the morning light, she could see his reflection as he turned his head downward and to the left as he spoke. “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “This Reynolds guy. Do you know him? Have you been working against me the whole time?”

  “You have a way of believing the worst, Blake. But if you want to take my word for something, now is the time. I have protected you, your father, and JenCorp for the last five years. I have never deviated from that purpose, regardless of my own agenda against the mayor. Why do you think you never actually felt any repercussions from The Underground?”

  He was silent for what seemed like minutes to Lexi. She watched his back as he hammered the situation out in his head. Then he released a deep breath and spoke.

  “Did you pass Morgan in the hallway?” He asked, his tone softer now.

  “I did. That guy is creepy.”

  The joke fell flat. Neither of them smiled.

  “He left the mayor. Some kind of falling out.”

  “No shit? I thought those two were like peas in a pod.”

  “I guess everybody has their limits. But look, I don’t like him either. Actually, he looks like one of the vampires from those stupid movies you like to watch.”

  Lexi laughed under her breath.

  “So, what did he want?”

  “He was warning me because he didn’t want to risk approaching you directly.” He turned around and leaned his back against the window.

  Lexi nodded.

  “He said they have a picture of you with a known Underground traitor. That’s why I asked you about Kade Reynolds.” He showed her his palm to stave off her response. “Hear me out, Lex. I get the distinct impression that he was here because he is scared of you. Morgan seems to want to stay off your shit list or your hit list. Which tells me he knows who he’s dealing with.”

  Lexi smiled a genuine smile, crack on her lip be damned!

  “Of course that makes you happy.”

  The smile faded.

  “Look, no one knows better than you who you’re dealing with. Regardless of the miracles that got you out of the jail cell alive, you’ve gotta take precautions and you’ve gotta do it now. I know this isn’t a love thing between us, but I care about you. You’re my friend, Lexi.”

  “I know.” And she did. “You’re my friend, too.”

  “Who are you kidding? You don’t do friends.”

  She stood and took a few steps forward, taking his hand in hers.

  “You and Mikael have changed that. Maybe I don’t do friends so well, but you guys are family.”

  He stared at her, probing with his maple syrup-colored eyes. A long moment passed as they absorbed each other’s faces for what she knew would be the last time for years, if not forever.

  “That’s probably the first time I’ve seen the pecan get cracked. I actually believe you.”

  “Good,” she said, feeling tears form in her swollen eyes. They were thicker in the swollen eye, and it stung.

  Blake gently rubbed the tears away, careful not to push on the swelling and bruising.

  “Don’t do that. You’ll go blind.”

  Lexi hugged him gently, so as not to send screaming pain through her bruised torso.

  “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re wearing your combat suit under your clothes?”

  “Because you know I’m trouble,” she said. She drew back and looked up at him, their arms still locked around each other.

  “My father thinks you’re going to leave the city.”

  “What?”

  “He seems to know things about you that I don’t know. He thinks you’ve got people out there somewhere and that you’ll probably need to return to them soon. From what Morgan tells me about this Reynolds character, I hope you do have people out there.”

  Whoa. Not good. Mikael knows I have people ‘out there?’ What does that mean? How does he know?

  She decided to evade the discussion about people outside the wall.

  “So, he warned you that Vaughn might be coming back for me.
He spilled the beans.”

  “He did. But don’t worry. I’ve earned it from him.”

  “Blake! What did you give him?”

  “We had a pre-arranged deal. I’m going to leave it at that.”

  “The deal you made at midnight in your office a week ago?”

  Blake jerked.

  “What do you know about it? How?”

  “If you’re that surprised, you underestimate me. Did you really think taking down the facial recognition software while leaving the cameras up was going to fool me?”

  Blake smiled. Lexi didn’t know why. She’d busted him, plain and simple. And before she left this office, she was finally going to know what it was about.

  “When did you find out?” Blake asked.

  “The morning after my Tab got hacked at home. I had a back-door security alert installed in the JenCorp system. You should probably route the alerts to your Tab now, since I won’t be here anymore. Now, are you going to tell me?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Blake asked. When Lexi didn’t respond, he continued. “Fine. What does it matter? There’s this woman named Alexandra Bingham in OK City. She’s somehow acquired a piece of technology of unknown origins.”

  “Unknown origins? What’s that mean?”

  “It means ‘unknown origins.’ It isn’t from OK City.”

  “Space aliens?”

  “Always funny and yet somehow distant. My mysterious Lexi Shaw. No, not space aliens, but Alexandra wasn’t forthcoming with the source. Suffice it to say, someone out there is interested in the two cities’ security and they’ve made contact with this woman in OK City. Apparently, one of their contingencies for this gift was she find a way to share the technology with Triangle.”

  “Interesting. Who are these people?”

  “Are you dense?” He tapped her forehead. “Unknown origins.”

  She pursed her lips and squinted at him with her good eye, blurring the world.