When we reached the bottom, Lucas shone the light around the room, revealing that the basement looked just like I remembered. It was still a large, low-ceilinged room empty of anything other than a bit of dust. The chilly room felt fairly secure. There were no windows to allow anyone to see us hiding in here, and it didn’t look like anyone had been here in the eighteen months since I’d left the place. It seemed like a pretty safe bet that it would stay undisturbed for another couple of days. That’s all I needed.
Given the distinct lack of other options, we settled in to spend the rest of the night on the hard floor. Lucas leaned against the wall, and I scooted up between his legs to lean back against his chest with his arms wrapped snugly around me. Sharra laid down beside us, using Lucas’s thigh for a pillow. Roomie had his head and front paws in my lap while the rest of his big body stretched along Lucas’s other leg. The cat purred and shoved his head against my hand until I scratched beneath his chin.
“So we’re alone, finally. How about you fill us in on your plans?” Sharra spoke out of the darkness.
“Wait,” Lucas interrupted. Roomie protested with a growl when he and I were jostled by Lucas’s movements as he leaned over to grab his backpack. He rummaged through it for a moment, identifying items by feel, and then pulled something out and set it on the floor beside us.
A small green light flared to life as he turned it on, and I could hear a soft hissing noise like faint static interrupted every ten seconds or so by a quiet chime.
“Aural disruptor,” Lucas announced, sounding pleased with himself. “It sends out a frequency that breaks up sound waves. We can still hear each other because we’re at the center of the pattern, but to anyone more than about three feet away, it would be like trying to listen in on a phone conversation with a bad connection. Most of the sound is completely dampened, and what they do hear is pretty much just static. Probably overkill, but it can’t hurt, you know?”
“Besides, it’s an excuse to try out your marvi new tech, right?” I elbowed him lightly with a little laugh. He was such a tech geek; but he was my geek, and I thought it was adorable.
“Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly. “It’s new.”
“Very chill,” Sharra said. “I think we can’t possibly be too careful right now. We don’t want to chance a mech rolling by with parabolic mics engaged at just the wrong moment.”
I murmured agreement, and Lucas sat back again, satisfied with his precautions. The sound from the little device was quiet enough that it was easy to ignore, so I moved on.
“Martín already had a rebellion in place. He laid the groundwork and got all the players on board. I don’t know all of what he had planned because he was so secretive that he was literally the only person to know the entire plan. But what I do know is that he has rebel cells in major cities all over the country. The leaders of each cell are waiting for a signal, which is a story on the national news giving my side of the story from the night of Daddy’s assassination. Martín has it set up with one of the anchors, but I don’t know which one or what that arrangement is. We’ll have to figure something out there.
“When the leaders in each of these cities see that story on the news, they are supposed to activate their cell and they riot. Cruz isn’t saying anything about killing off Martín’s group, probably because he wants to keep his co-conspirators and me at the center of his rebellion story. But since he’s not talking about it, the cell leaders won’t know that Martín is dead. They have no reason to think the plan has changed, so we’ll just keep the plan in place.
“The cells are going to be concentrating particularly on government and military targets so that Cruz is forced to pay attention to those uprisings. That was to draw his attention away from whatever it was Martín planned to hide. Martín already gave instructions to all of these leaders about what to target, so we just have to figure out how to get them moving.”
“Won’t Cruz just send in the miltary and have them crush the rebels? He’s killed people for much less already, so for something like this he’s likely to just mow them all down,” Lucas worried.
“I know, and that’s where our agreement with General Tilden is critical. He’s in a position to delay and disable whatever military response Cruz orders. He’ll countermand orders and take prisoner any leaders he needs to in order to stop an armed response.” Sharra told Lucas. “That’s what we were working out during our meeting earlier today.”
“The mechs are still going to be a problem,” I admitted. “Tilden is in charge of the human forces, so he can countermand orders and do whatever he needs to ensure that human troops aren’t sent in with orders to kill … but Cruz doesn’t trust anyone else with command of the mech forces. Tilden can’t do anything there.”
“Luna was on tap to deal with them,” Sharra noted sadly. “She had some kind of backdoor into their control center and was going to shut them down, but that’s as much as we know about that.”
“The only good news as far as the mechs go is that there’s not an unlimited supply,” I told them. “The mechs are only based in a couple of key cities around the country. But Cruz can use the mechs to subdue the rebellion in one city and then send them out to a new location. If they’re ruthless enough, there won’t be anyone left to stir up the fight again once the mechs head out to the next city. And I think we can count on Cruz to be ruthless.”
“Let me think on it,” Lucas said, his voice rumbling in his chest beneath my cheek. “I have some ideas there.”
“That would be great,” I said. “The mechs worry me.”
“So we have the country engulfed in riots and the military refusing to shut it down,” Lucas said. “And then what? Martín was planning all of that as a distraction, but you don’t know what he was planning as his main event?”
“No, I don’t know what he was planning,” I admitted. “He probably had something brilliant in mind, and I wish I knew what it was, but we’re going to have to go ahead without it. I figure we should keep it simple. While the riots are distracting Cruz and presumably keeping some of the White House security forces busy elsewhere, we take the escape tunnel in the other direction and sneak into the White House.”
There was silence for a minute as Sharra and Lucas thought about my idea.
“Yeah, that rings for me,” Sharra agreed. “What are we doing once we’re in? Just taking him out?” She didn’t sound bothered by the idea, and I knew Lucas would be fine with that plan, too.
“Honestly, that was my first idea. And it may still come to that, so I’m holding it as plan B. But if we don’t reveal the full truth about who Cruz is and what he’s done, it’s too easy for someone else to just come in and do the same thing. And next time, we might not have the inside resources to take it down. For this to really end, I think we have to be sure that the nation and the world know the whole story.”
“Especially since Cruz is trying to pin so much on you,” Lucas pointed out. “We don’t want you taking the blame for things he’s done.”
“I’d rather not. The plan is kind of a cliché, but things become cliché for a reason. I think we just need to get Cruz on record admitting to having done all this himself or ordering it to be done. We get his admission on record, we beam it out to every news outlet we can reach, and we take him prisoner, if possible. If it’s not possible … at least we have his own words to defend ourselves.”
“And we disappear back to Denver when it’s over,” Lucas added. “As far as I know, you didn’t tell anyone that’s where you’d been, right?”
“Yeah, I think people are under the impression I was hiding here all along.”
“So they won’t know where to look. We take care of the problem at the top, and then let people sort it out from there. Unless you were planning to step in?”
“Cha! Not a chance. I’m done with politics and intrigue and all that. The way I see it, my job is to clean up the mess that my father was involved in. Once things are on track to have a truly free election where l
eaders are actually chosen by the citizens, I will happily bow out and let someone else deal with it all.”
An enormous yawn caught me by surprise, my jaw popping loudly. Yawns being contagious, Sharra yawned too.
“It’s been a very long day,” Lucas said, stifling a yawn of his own. “Let’s get some sleep tonight and tackle the details tomorrow.”
He turned off the aural disruptor, and the little green light winked out to leave us in complete darkness. I turned a little to lean into Lucas’s chest. I could feel the faint thump of his heart beneath my cheek and hear the soft sounds of Sharra breathing as she dropped straight into sleep. Roomie was sprawled across my lap and snoring loudly.
Surrounded by my new family, I fell asleep.
30
I woke slowly, realizing I was no longer snuggled up with Lucas. I was curled on my side on the chilly concrete floor with my hands tucked under my cheek as a pillow. Sharra was in an almost identical pose a few feet away. I could hear the distinctive rumble of Roomie’s purring but didn’t see him.
I sat up and looked around until I found Lucas sitting against the wall behind me, Roomie stretched across his lap and purring. The aural disruptor was turned on and chiming quietly beside them to mask any noise we might make.
I staggered to my feet and tossed a little wave in Lucas’s direction as I headed up to the bathroom. I woke up enough as I climbed the stairs to remember to be careful as I opened the door and check for any sign of intrusion. Seeing nothing, and I hurried over to visit the facilities.
It wasn’t until I was on my way back down the stairs that I realized that there was light in the formerly dark basement this morning.
“Did you find a light switch?” I asked Lucas as I crossed the room.
“Nope, none of my doing. The lights must still be connected to the solar network and set on timers to turn on during business hours. When I woke up this morning, the lights were already on.”
The windowless basement offered no clues to the time of day, and I hadn’t paid attention during my short time upstairs. “What time is it now?”
“Almost ten. You two were obviously worn out, so I just let you sleep.”
I slid down the wall to sit beside him and peered at the holo display hovering above his tablet. “What have you been up to while we snoozed all morning?”
“I’ve been trying to get into Martín’s accounts to see if I could get any more information about his plans, but whoever handled his tech security was too good. The bytes are locked down, and I can’t get in.”
“Luna was the techie for Martín’s group: she was really, really mag.” A wave of sadness tugged at me, but I shoved it away. Yesterday had been my time for mourning, but now I had to focus on our plans for Cruz. I would deal with my feelings later.
Lucas reached over to squeeze my hand, and I looked up into his warm, understanding eyes. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to not think about it?” he asked.
I squeezed back gratefully. “Not thinking about it for now,” I told him. “Tell me more about what you’re trying to do.”
“Well, like I said, there was no cracking into Martín’s accounts. You mentioned last night that Martín was in touch with a news anchor who was going to break the real story of what happened that night at the White House. I’ve been playing the odds that anyone he trusted enough to do this would be someone he’d worked with. And it would have to be someone with enough rank at the station that they could do this. So I started data-mining the various anchors at Martín’s old station. All of them have security on their comms, of course, but nothing so tight that I couldn’t get into it.”
“Not that you’re bragging or anything,” Sharra chimed in from her spot on the floor. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been awake. Knowing Sharra, she could have been sound asleep until this very moment and just woken up with a snarky comment already springing to her lips.
“It’s not bragging if it’s true,” Lucas pointed out smugly.
Sharra rolled her eyes and pushed her body into a sitting position with her legs crossed. “So you hacked into all the anchors’ accounts until you found someone who’d been messaging with Martín.”
“Yup. Our lucky winner is Ms. Sanna Starr of ‘The Nation Tonight.’ She has an extensive string of messages with Martín hidden under a few layers of encryption but not deeply buried. She wanted to be able to get access easily if she needed the data.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “So we need to get in touch with her and explain what happened to Martín and then hope that she’ll still go through with her part of the plan?”
“Ah, here’s the beauty of Martín’s plan. We don’t have to explain anything to her. She’s just waiting for a message from a specific account telling her to run with the story. As soon as she gets that, she breaks the news and gets out of there before anyone can target her.”
“And you can clone the account, so we can send her the message?” I asked.
He looked wounded. “You have to ask? I cloned the account an hour ago and sent the message. Since then I’ve just been watching her online activity for signs that she got the message and is ready to act on it.”
“What’s she up to?” Sharra asked.
“She’s keeping to her regular routine for the most part but doing a bit more messaging with people than seems to be her usual habit. Very commonplace messages that don’t raise any flags other than the fact that she doesn’t usually bother with the chit-chatty stuff.”
“So maybe she’s putting out some coded messages of her own,” I said, chewing on my lip thoughtfully.
“That’s my take,” he agreed. “If I dig deeper into her message history, I could probably figure it out. But I don’t know if that’s our priority.”
Sharra’s stomach rumbled, and she clutched at it dramatically. “Is our priority breakfast? Because I’m starving.”
Lucas chuckled. “Food is definitely a priority,” he agreed. He gently pushed Roomie off his lap and climbed to his feet. “I was just thinking about going out to find a little something. Obviously you two will need to stay here since Cruz could have released Sharra’s description by now also. It’s not on the official feeds but no telling what information the police and mech units have.”
My hands were full of Roomie, who was feeling affectionate and had moved into my lap where he was rolling around demanding pets and scratches, so Lucas handed his tablet to Sharra. “Keep an eye on this feed. The plan is for the riots to kick in exactly twelve hours after her broadcast of the story, so we need to know when she goes live with it and set our start clock from there.”
Sharra and I settled in to pet Roomie and watch some daytime television on the feed while Lucas headed out to get provisions. I was disappointed to see that my message to Cruz had already been scrubbed from the feed, but I hoped enough people had seen it before it was taken down. More importantly, I hoped Cruz had seen it and was going crazy over my taunting words.
By the time Lucas returned, Sharra and I were glad to abandon our television viewing for a few minutes. The morning programming was a mind-numbing mix of gossip shows about people neither of us recognized and blaring commercials thinly disguised as comedic skits.
Roomie sped across the room to greet Lucas at the bottom of the stairs with a demanding meow, letting us know that he was ready to eat. Lucas obligingly pulled out Roomie’s meal first, opening two plasticene containers of tuna and setting them on the floor. Roomie wolfed down the first serving and licked the bowl clean before settling in to make a more leisurely meal of the second.
While Lucas was setting out food for the humans, I broke the seal on one of the water tubes and dumped it into Roomie’s empty tuna dish. He paused his eating to nudge his head against my hand in thanks, and I gave him a quick scratch between the ears before rejoining Lucas and Sharra.
Lucas handed me a sandwich and I bit into it with—I hoped—a little more decorum than Roomie had displayed. Only a little more, though. I was rea
lly hungry. When we’d polished off our sandwiches, Lucas pulled out a large pouch of veggie crisps and we passed it around as he filled us in on what he’d seen at the market.
“No-one in the market is even talking about Cruz’s announcement last night. I don’t know if they’re afraid to talk about him or if they’re just too desensitized by his behavior to pay attention anymore. I don’t have a read on whether people believe him because no one said anything about it.”
Sharra and I told Lucas all about what we’d learned that morning—fascinating information about who got a tummy tuck last week (no one we recognized) and the latest innovations in kitchen gadgetry (nothing that would be especially useful to us in Denver).
As time for the noon newscast finally arrived, Lucas pulled out a final treat. It was a twelve-pack of Pepsi tubes carefully packed in cold-wrap to keep the drinks chilled. I gave a surprised squeal of delight and then clapped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed by the undignified yelp. I took the pack from him and cradled it gently in my lap.
“You remembered my favorite drink?”
Sharra and Lucas laughed. “Sweetheart,” Lucas drawled, “everyone in the pack remembers your favorite drink. You were so thrilled the day the scavengers brought in three cases of the stuff from that old convenience store that you almost passed out.”
“Everyone is entitled to a vice,” I said with firm dignity. “And you’d better be nice to me or I won’t share my Pepsi.”
“I never imagined that you would,” Lucas agreed, pulling out tubes of fruit juice for himself and Sharra. That was just fine with me. I really didn’t want to share; I’d only suggested the idea to be polite.
We watched the noon news-holo while sipping our drinks, but there was no sign of Sanna Starr with a breaking story. Disappointed, we settled in for an afternoon of more mindless holo viewing. I pulled out another Pepsi to console myself.
Sharra nudged Lucas with an elbow. “Here’s your proof that Cruz isn’t as bright as he thinks he is,” she told him. “Instead of creating this elaborate plan with Mateo and bombs and whatnot to lure her in, he should have just baited a trap with Pepsi and she’d have captured herself.”
Into Light (Shadow and Light Book 2) Page 16
