by Cronan, Matt
She raised the Desert Eagle until it was eye-level with Gates, "Hey there, stud. Mind if we come in?"
"Fuck me," Gates managed. He turned back to the bedroom with enough force that the clasp on the gold chain snapped. The President took off in a sprint into the depths of his lair, leaving Sam standing in the hallway with a handful of gold and gray.
"Dammit," she said and threw the medallion to the floor. She pushed past Doc and sprinted into Gates' chambers, quick on his heels.
As she entered the foyer, her adrenaline spiked again, sending her alien senses into uncharted waters. She could smell ancient oils used to create the paintings hanging on the wall. She smelled the musty, old newspapers framed in their glass cases. She felt every imperfection, each cracked and chipped tile of the finely polished black and white checkered floor underneath her bare feet. Her body and mind merged and ran seamlessly on all cylinders.
The old man disappeared through an adjacent doorway and she pursued him like a lion stalking a gazelle through some African grassland. But she wasn't tracking a helpless gazelle. She was hunting a predator. A sexual deviant. She was trailing a child molester and a rapist. A bastard to the core.
And that was fine, because she was a predator too.
She was a finely tuned machine. A killing machine. And when she caught up to Gates, she would rip his heart out of his chest and feed it to him. Because that's what she had been designed to do. Her blood turned cold as the word "designed" repeated through her brain. She forced it away and continued the chase.
Sam sprinted into the next room and her heart lurched. Alex was splayed across the bed, her arms and legs bound to the four posts with heavy chains. Her face was bloody and bruised and she lay motionless.
"Alex!" Sam screamed. She ran over to the helpless girl, temporarily giving up her pursuit.
Thankfully, upon closer inspection, the girl on the bed was moving. Her chest rose and fell so slightly that even a coroner might overlook it. The only other indication of life was the girl's eyelids which fluttered when Sam had screamed.
Sam's heart broke a million times over as she rounded the bed and got her first full look at Alex. The girl's face had been bashed in. Both her nose and her lips were busted and gushing blood. Both of her eyes were swollen like a boxer's at the end of a 15 round war. Despite all the perverted surgeries, Sam thought Alex had been pretty. Now, her face was unrecognizable as human. She dropped the pistol onto the mattress and grabbed ahold of the chain wrapped around her leg.
"You're going to be okay," she whispered as she frantically tore at the metal knot. The girl let out an inaudible moan and the remaining fragments of Sam's heart fractured into even tinier shards. "I'm going to get you out of here, I promise."
A single tear emerged in the corner of her swollen eye and rolled down her cheek.
"Cole!" Sam shouted. "Bring Doc in here."
She finished unraveling the first knot when the girl moaned again. This one filled with fear and panic. Sam grabbed the gun from the bed and spun in the direction she had been chasing President Gates.
Sam took a deep breath, and the moment froze.
She saw Gates running at her, hands extended above his head, clutching a long-handled ax so tightly that his orange knuckles had turned stark white. The ax, an antique battle ax from the 15th century, had a four-foot oak handle and a broad, steel blade. Sam didn't know how she knew this, but the information came pouring into her just like it had when she grabbed the General's gun.
More data streamed in. The exact weight and length. The circumference of the blade. Probable manufactures. It flooded into her instantaneously as if a receiver was buried deep in her brain. She blocked out the data-stream.
The details about the weapon that President Gates was holding over his head didn't matter, because this wasn't a disarm-and-pacify situation. This was a murder with ill-intent and cause extreme amounts of damage while doing so situation.
Sam aimed and fired two shots. The report of the gun was deafening, but the high-pitched scream of President Gates was even worse. The two slugs found their mark and disappeared into his groin. Crimson flooded from the seat of his underwear and his face twisted into a knot of anguish and disbelief. His eyes rolled back into his head and he took a staggered step forward. Then he bellowed a guttural moan and crumpled the ground.
The General bounded into the room and nearly fell to the floor. The imbalance caused by the shove of the giant behind him. Sam barely paid him any attention and instead refocused her attention to the chains wrapped around the girl's bruised wrist. Cole and Doc ran into the room a second later, Cole's rifle was drawn and the Doc's eyes were saucer wide.
"Oh, dear god," Soto cried out. "What have you done?" He dropped to his knees and stared at Gates.
"No!" Sam screamed. She crossed the room, blind with rage. "Don't you dare feel bad for this piece of shit." She waived the Desert Eagle at the fallen pedophile. Gates moaned as he convulsed on the floor and held a feeble bloodied hand above his face to shield himself from the oncoming blast.
"You should feel sorry for the child that's tied to the bed. You should feel sorry for the children you abuse here. Your daughters and your sons. You've turned them all into slaves."
She turned the pistol around in her hand, so she was gripping the metal barrel, and whipped Soto in the back of the head. He dropped to the ground and his face slammed into the puddle of blood originating from Gates' lap.
Sam returned to the bed. Cole had already freed one of Alex's legs and was working on the chain wrapped around her left arm. Sam worked on untangling the chain around her right and fought back the tears forming in her eyes. She managed to undo the knot after a few seconds.
Doc knelt on the bed and shined a penlight into one of Alex's swollen eyes and then the other. He placed the miniature flashlight in the breast pocket of his lab coat and extracted a pair of latex gloves from one of the lower pockets. He pulled them on and gently touched Alex's face, first under her cheeks and then around her jaw.
"Well?" Sam asked.
"Hard to know for sure," Doc said as he continued the examination. "Her right cheek bone is fractured and I'm fairly confident her nose is broken. Probable concussion." He slid his hand down the girl's torso and examined her chest and ribs. "I'll need some things from my medical bag to be certain or better yet we should get her to the medical unit."
"No," Alex whispered. "No surgery."
Sam's heart skipped a beat at the girl's voice and she grabbed Alex's hand. "You're going to be okay, sweetheart. Just stay with us." Alex didn't answer.
"Where's your doctor's bag?" Cole asked.
"There are several," Doc said. "My primary bag is in the office, but I have emergency kits spread throughout the facility."
Sam nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on Alex's battered and bruised face. When she finally broke her gaze, she turned to Cole. He had also been staring at the girl. His face was flustered and red, and his bloodshot eyes were glassy. A trail of tears ran from each eye and disappeared into the depths of his bushy beard.
"Don't no one deserve nothin' like this, Miss Sam."
"No," Sam said quietly. "No one does."
Sam rummaged through the wardrobe next to the bed and found a sheet. She moved Doc aside and covered Alex's naked body. She whispered in her ear, "You're going to be okay."
"We need to find her clothes," Cole said.
Sam nodded but didn't immediately leave Alex's side. This girl had come to her when Sam was at her weakest and tried to help her escape. Sam wouldn't leave her now—when the girl was at her weakest. She deserved better.
Sam continued to stare at the girl's broken face, as Cole and Doc went to find her clothes. As much as she wanted start working on an escape plan, she couldn't push past the hatred she felt for the two men behind her. Sam thought of how large the bunker was, of how long this had been going on and how many girls had been made sex slaves of these disgusting men. Instead of an exit strategy, a white hot ange
r flooded her senses. She picked up the pistol and held it in her hand. There was more work to be done, and that work started now.
Sam spun on her heel. Soto's face was half smeared with blood and was slowly crawling toward his fallen comrade. Soto was the least of her worries. Sam would use him until he was useless to her.
She marched across the room and once again lifted the gun. This time Gates didn't lift his hand in fear. His skin had grown a sallow shade of white. His chest rose and fell at a breakneck speed matching each shallow breath.
"I hope there is a hell," Sam said coldly, "and I hope you rot in it for eternity."
Sam unloaded the remainder of the magazine into the vile man's face. Six shots in all. By the time the last shot was fired, his face was nothing more than a bloody wad of hamburger meat, completely devoid of any recognizable facial features. She continued to pull the trigger well after the sixth round had lodged into the dead man's face.
Cole put a gentle hand on her arm, forcing her to lower the weapon. Unwelcomed tears were streaming down her face as her heart broke over and over for the girl on the bed. And for all the children in Lost Angel. And for Rebecca. And for Jordan. She turned to her friend and buried her face in his chest.
"Don't you cry, Miss Sam," Cole whispered. "That was a bad, bad man. You did good by that girl."
Sam cried silently, and the tears abated soon after they started. She was growing cold on the inside. It was her training kicking in. What training? A blurred memory surfaced and vanished before she could grab hold of it.
"I found the girl's clothes," Cole said. His words brought her back.
Sam pulled away and let out a weak laugh as she saw the wet imprint of her face on the big man's white dress shirt. "Sorry." It was all she could manage.
"Don't you apologize to me, Miss Sam," Cole said and squeezed her shoulder. "Ain't no need for it."
"Okay." She wiped the remnants of her tears away with her bare arm.
"Doc found some pants and boots that might fit ya. Only found one top though. Figured we'd give it to the girl."
"Where's her clothes?"
"Torn to shreds."
Sam screamed and buried her foot into the General's bloated gut. Cole grabbed her before she could kick him again and carried her back to the bed. It took her a minute to calm herself.
"Thank you," Sam whispered.
Sam went to the bed and together with Cole and Doc they dressed her in Gates' long T-shirt over the girl's head. It hung down to her knees. The underwear had been ripped off of her as well as the rest of her clothes.
They placed her back on the bed and Sam pulled on the pair of khaki cargo pants. They were three sizes too big for her. She cringed at the thought of wearing the dead man's pants, but the repulsion quickly passed as the comfort of wearing something other than the skimpy dress took over. She unwrapped one of the chains from around the bed post and wrapped it twice around her waist, tied it in a crude knot and pulled the length of the dress over it. The pants were still loose but she would have to manage.
She wiped the blood from the bottom of her feet onto the bed sheet and slipped into the boots. They were only a size larger than her New Hope-issued tennis shoes. She tucked the excess fabric from the cargo pants into them and tied them as tightly as she could.
"How many bullets do you have left?" Sam asked Cole.
The firefight in-between the dining hall and the President's suite had been over quickly. Sam dealt the three fatal shots, but Cole had sprayed a wave of bullets of his own.
Cole pulled the clip from his rifle. "Ten in this mag." He snapped it back into place. "Plus a full mag in my pocket. You?"
"I'm empty," Sam said and motioned to the Desert Eagle on the floor.
"You wanna backtrack and pull a gun off one of those ingrates we left in the hall?"
Sam shook her head. She walked past Gates' body and picked the battle ax off of the floor. The oak handle was covered in blood. She stepped over to General Soto and wiped it on the back of his pressed shirt.
"No," Sam said. "This will do just fine."
Cole looked at her with an odd curiosity in his eye. "There's something different about you, Miss Sam."
Sam only nodded. There wasn't time to tell him about what she had seen in the dining hall or the terabytes of data sporadically downloading into her mind.
"Can you manage her?" Sam said and motioned toward Alex.
"Carried tool bags twice her size back in New Hope," Cole grinned.
The General groaned and lifted his head from the crimson puddle. Half of his face was coated in blood and dripped off him as he stared wide-eyed at what was left of Gates.
"What about him?" Cole asked and pointed to Soto.
"Kill the son of a bitch."
"Wait!" Soto screamed out. He shot up to his one good knee and held his hands up as if he planned on surrendering. "Please don't kill me. I can help you get out of here."
"I think we're capable of doing that on our own," Sam said. "We've got Doc to guide us out of here." She looked apprehensively at the doctor who gave a quick nod and looked back to the floor.
Cole raised the rifle and aimed it at Soto.
"There's more," the General screamed and squeezed his eyelids shut in the process. A fresh trickle of blood slammed out from the hollow eye socket when he did but Sam felt no sympathy for the man.
"More what?" Sam asked.
"The President's room," Soto cried. Fat crocodile tears rolled from his good eye and trailed down his bloody cheek.
"We're in the President's room," Sam said.
"Not this one," he spoke quickly. "The one in the mines. Close to the common area I showed you."
"So? Why would we care about some room down there?" Cole asked.
An awful smile emerged on his face—the wicked, horrible trademark smile—and Soto opened his eyes. "There's a computer down there. A secret computer. Only the President and myself, well, only I know about it."
"What's on it?" Sam asked.
"That I don't know, but—"
This time, Sam lifted her weapon. She reared the ax far behind her head and readied it for Soto's execution. She had every intention of splitting the man's stupid skull in half and ending his miserable excuse of a life. But right before she started her downswing—
"All it says is Concordia."
8
The group didn't encounter any guards on their way from Gates' Presidential Suite to the entrance of the mines. The great halls were empty and much to Sam and Cole's displeasure, General Soto couldn't—or wouldn't—provide any reasonable explanation for it.
"Maybe they've all left," Soto said. He chuckled and Sam kicked him swiftly in his bad leg.
They hadn't left. Invisible warning signs burned hot in her guts. Somewhere in the complex, a trap was waiting for them. She half-expected it to be wherever Soto was leading them, while the other half of her was terrified that it would be sprung as the group tried to exit Lost Angel. Either way, they were low on ammo and had only Soto as a bargaining chip…or a shield if it boiled down to it.
They continued to plunge deeper into the dark abyss. Soto led the way and Sam followed right behind him with her hand on his shoulder. Doc walked beside her and Cole brought up the rear. He carried Alex in his giant arms. Her broken body barely moved as she struggled with each breath.
"How much further?" Sam asked as they passed the mess hall. She couldn't see the door through the darkness but recognized the break in the lighting. Her voice echoed off the cavern walls and her arms erupted in gooseflesh.
"Not much," Soto said. "Near the bottom of the hill."
As they descended further into the mines, the pathway canted at a steep angle. By the time General Soto said 'Not much further' for the third time, the majority of her weight was on her heels to keep her balance.
Her other senses adjusted and compensated for her lack of vision. She heard each footstep of the General's hard-soled shoe followed by the other foot sliding along the ro
ck floor. She heard water rush through unseen pipes running above their heads. Somewhere far off in the distance, she heard the soft thrumming of the generators.
She also grew alarmingly aware of the sudden drop in temperature and she thought of all the unfortunate souls that worked down here in the pitch-black cold. The child slaves. The true Lost Angels.
"Where are they?" Sam asked, taking a cue from Soto and dropping her voice to a barely audible whisper.
"I told you," Soto said. "They've probably left."
"Not the soldiers," Sam said. "The workers. Where are the children?"
"Still working. You don't think they'd up and stop production because of a couple alarms, do you? What kind of operation do you think we run here?"
Sam gave him a shove with the handle of the ax and the General stumbled forward. "The word enslavement comes to mind. What are you going to do after I free all the children? How will your precious Lost Angel survive?"
Soto didn't answer. Instead, he slowed his pace and placed his hand on the side of the cavern wall. Sam lifted the blade of the ax from her shoulder and her grip tightened around the wooden handle. It felt slick in her hands, the weight of it less than ideal, but she had no doubt that she could do what was necessary when the time came.
"I asked you a question," Sam said. She angled the steel blade of the ax and pressed it against the man's neck.
"We're here," Soto said.
Sam noticed the break in the string of lights and lifted the blade from Soto's neck. She placed her hand on the wall and felt where the jagged rocks became smooth, cold metal. She let her fingertips slide down the frame until they touched the steel handle. She tried to turn the handle, but it held firm.
"It's locked," Soto said.
Sam sneered at him. "I can tell. Open it."
Soto's hand darted for the utility belt around his waist. Sam let go of the door and gripped the handle of the ax with two hands. The General froze.
