by Adam Bender
“Whoa there, missy,” he said like a cowboy calling to a beloved stallion. “My men searched the place good.”
She was fuming. Didn’t these hicks have any sense of protocol? “But did you post someone outside the house? Or the church?”
He flashed a look of annoyance. “For God’s sake, lady, it was just a bar fight.”
Eve nodded several more times than necessary, and then began to pace. Rodriguez sank into his seat one inch per second.
“Okay,” she stated when she finally regained composure. “Would you mind if my partner, Rodriguez, and I paid a visit to Shaan’s place?”
The sheriff’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “I s’pose it’s a free country.”
Eve and Rodriguez darted across the dead lawn in front of Shaan’s town home. Eve pushed her partner aside at the entrance and pounded on the door. “This is the Guard! Open up!”
Bracing against the rail of the porch for support, Rodriguez gasped. “Is that necessary? I’m sure the doorbell is loud enough.”
She turned with eyes like daggers. “Part of this job,” said Eve, “is intimidation.”
While it wasn’t something she would admit, Eve did feel a little more charged up than usual. After all, all the evidence pointed to Jon spending last night in this house. Maybe he was still here.
“So what now?” asked Rodriguez. “Doesn’t look like any-one’s home.”
She gasped. “You’re going to make the assessment that this house is empty just because no one is answering the door? What makes you think they’re not just hiding? We are chasing someone you know.”
“No, sir. I made the assessment based on the fact that there aren’t any cars in the driveway. The targets drove here in a purple minivan, right?”
Eve looked where Rodriguez was pointing and frowned. “A fair point. But we still better check the place out. If they’re gone, we might at least find a clue about where they went.”
She pulled a thin silver tube about the size of a straw from her pocket and slipped it into the key hole. Pushing a button on the handle produced a low buzz and then a click. She turned the knob and the door opened.
Eve gasped. The place was a total wreck. A floor lamp leaned diagonally against an upturned sofa, and a large crack stretched diagonally across the TV screen. Clearly, there had been some kind of fight.
Rodriguez looked at the screen mournfully. “You think some-one got to him before us?” he asked.
Eve picked a worn paperback up from the floor and turned it over thoughtfully. “Well, it wasn’t Guard. We’re usually a bit…neater than this, even out here in the sticks. Also, as you noted before, their vehicle is gone. Seems likely they left the place on their own, unless someone decided to steal that van.”
He laughed condescendingly. “Not sure who would want to do that.”
Eve had a lump in her throat. On the way over she tried to prepare herself for the scenario that Jon wouldn’t be here. But the disappointment hovered like a dark cloud anyway. The Elites’ only lead had brought them here; now they were back to square one. Worse, she realized, Jon might be hurt. What had he gotten himself into?
The kitchen wasn’t in much better shape than the living room, though it was unclear whether fighting or negligence was to blame. Rodriguez nearly slipped over some yellow mush on the floor, but caught himself just in time.
Eve pointed at an antique-looking computer consuming a wooden desk in the back of the room. “Can you hack into that?” she asked Rodriguez. “They might not have cleared their browser history–maybe they looked up directions or something.”
“Yes, sir. No problem.”
She thanked him and headed back to the front door.
“Where are you going?” Rodriguez called after her.
“To see if the neighbors can spare any flour,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
Shielding her eyes from the beating sun, Eve scanned the houses across the street. A lone white face peering out at her from one of the second-story windows made her jump. “Probably as good a place as any to start,” she remarked to herself.
She raised a fist to beat the door, considered the doorbell for a second, and started pounding anyway. “Guard!” she shrieked.
A loud, fast clunk-clunk-clunk followed a shrill “Coming!” The door opened, revealing a rather short and chubby man in a grease-stained undershirt. He gave Eve’s body a once over and grinned sleazily. “Why, hello, milady.”
Eve sniffed and immediately wrinkled her nose. She flashed her badge. “I’m investigating a kidnapping at the house across the street.”
He gasped. “What? I’ve never seen any young miscreants there.”
“No,” she snapped. “It was a man–there were no children involved. I’m checking around to see if anyone saw anything suspicious, either today or last night.”
“Not I. Of course, I’ve mostly been engrossed in World of High Adventure.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, the MMORPG,” he returned.
Eve blinked. He might as well have been speaking an alien language.
“A computer game of the highest caliber.”
“Oh,” she said, pretending to understand. “Does anyone else live here?”
“My wife,” he said, dropping the royal embellishments from his voice. “She’s always staring out the damn window so she may have seen something. Want me to call her?”
“Will she be back soon?”
“Huh? She’s upstairs.” He turned around and screamed up the steps: “Cupcake! Lady here wants to ask you a few questions!”
Almost instantly, Cupcake dropped down the stairs. “I saw ‘em,” she announced.
Eve recognized her pale face instantly–this was the girl she’d seen in the window before. The woman’s clothes didn’t hide her heft. She wore a baggy smiley face T-shirt that hung loosely over a pair of tight spandex biking shorts. She had a dingy old baseball cap on, with a shock of wheat-colored hair sticking out the back.
“You saw who?” Eve managed eventually. The Elite wondered if Cupcake had been eavesdropping on the entire conversation thus far. And was it really necessary to be so sneaky in the first place?
“Saw the whole thing–happened early this morning, maybe a few hours ago,” Cupcake declared. “The door burst open and that shady fellow across the street comes out, carrying a huge duffel bag–no, a body bag. There was a girl, too, who kept yelling at the man and generally making a scene. But I guess she was helping him, ‘cause she opened the door of that van and helped push the body bag inside.”
Eve nodded. “Did you report any of this?”
Cupcake shook her head. “I’m not allowed to use the phone,” she said. “Am I gonna be on the tee-vee?”
“No,” stated the Elite.
Eve said goodbye and headed back. It appeared that Talia and Shaan had turned on Seven and packed him up to go. But where had they gone? She hoped Rodriguez had found the answer.
“I found some pretty messed up stuff,” the rookie announced when Eve stepped back into the kitchen. “This Shaan guy is definitely with the Underground. Looks like he was sent instructions to take Seven back to their headquarters, wherever that is.”
Eve raised her eyebrows. “Well, that meshes with what the neighbors said. Shaan and Talia were seen dragging an unconscious body into their van late last night. Do you have anything that might indicate where this Underground HQ might be?”
“I hacked into their network to find out, but got kicked out within seconds. Just had enough time to print out the message.” He handed her the paper.
Shaan:
Seven is wanted for questioning for his involvement in the capture and subsequent murder of Our Leader Daniel Alexander Young. Bring him to us.
HQ
“Damn it, Jon,” said Eve, shaking her head. Taking a deep breath, she began to pace. In the living room, the toe of her shoe kicked something small and plastic, and it rattled into the foyer. She chased after it and gasped.
“Oh, my God.”
Rodriguez leaned over in his chair so he could see out of the kitchen. “What happened?”
With fingers like tweezers she plucked the object from the floor. “It’s a memory stick,” she explained as she plugged it into her tablet. Eve’s eyes sparkled as its LCD backlight flashed to life.
Rodriguez’s eyes lit up. “You mean the memory stick?”
This was the lucky break we needed, Eve thought as the surveillance app loaded. If this was indeed Seven’s key, it meant she would have access again to Seven’s GPS location and live audio feed.
She tapped a few keys and grinned. “The chip’s still func-tioning,” she reported breathlessly. “I know where he is.”
The white concrete walls pressed in upon Seven. He struggled to stand but ascent was impossible from the heavy steel chair in the center of the cell. He was tied down with nylon rope, and the chair was bolted to the cement floor. The prisoner allowed himself a moment to cry out for help, but quickly corrected the emotion with a deep breath and a shiver.
He searched his foggy mind for answers. When exactly had he been captured? He remembered giving the Guard the slip and running with Talia back to her brother’s place. He’d gone almost immediately to sleep on the sofa. The next thing he recalled was a needle and syringe glinting in the morning light. He remembered a struggle and a quick fade to black.
Seven scanned his surroundings for weak points and possible areas of escape. The wall directly across from him was empty except for a poster featuring one of the Guard’s most famous slogans. The last three words were struck out by lime spray paint, so that it read: PATRIOTS ARE THE TRUE. HERETICS ARE THE DAMNED. Stenciled beneath the words was a black visage with fiery red eyes.
He turned to a solid black door on the left. Hanging above it, a mechanical eye watched without blinking. Next, he traced two dim yellow rectangles on the floor up the wall on his right to a pair of single-pane windows. Dirt, grass, and weeds pressed up against the glass. The cell seemed to darken as he looked into the sunlight.
Seven smiled. The irony of an organization calling itself the Underground locking him in a basement had not been lost on him. Suddenly, Seven was ludicrous with laughter.
A sharply rational fear that he might be going insane shut him up. He couldn’t stop his right leg from shaking.
A low rustle shifted his attention to the left. The door to the cell popped open, and a lanky young man pranced inside with the bounce of a court jester. The newcomer’s pale fingers combed through short and slick blond hair and dropped cold onto the prisoner’s shoulders. “Welcome, Seven,” the man said with a roguish smile. “Do you know who I am?”
The prisoner blinked a few times. This was getting weird.
“I’ll take your silence as a no. I guess it’s true then, what my people tell me about you.”
If his hands were free, Seven might have tried to cover his amusement.
“Something funny?” his captor asked curiously.
“You’re old enough to have ‘people?’”
The corners of the other man’s mouth upturned so slowly that it unsettled Seven’s own smile. “It’s recent,” the stranger explained. “You see, I’ve just become chairman of DAY Corporation. The name is Daniel Alexander Young, Jr., but please, call me Danny.”
Seven remembered the name from the radio. Danny looked about his age, but was far more fashionable. He wore a tailored, chocolate suit with matching leather boots; he was a veritable urban cowboy.
“I heard your statement about severing DAY’s ties with the Underground,” Seven said. “I’m going to guess that wasn’t completely accurate?”
Young smiled. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even write that statement. But, you know, that’s the game we have to play.”
“And where do I fit into your game?”
“Straight to the point–very good!” Danny grinned. His teeth were even whiter than his skin. “We got your email. That was one hell of an attachment, I must say. We’re still working on the transcript.”
It was hell getting that memory stick, thought Seven, recalling the horrible exchange with Eve, the narrow escape from the crumbling Capitol Tower, and the long run to the Underground hideout. Annoyed to hear it wasn’t more of a priority, he seethed, “I was hoping you’d be able to use the information against the Guard.”
Danny’s expression turned severe. “You are some kind of enigma, aren’t you? What, do…do you think you can just switch sides at will? Providing the cause with new ammunition doesn’t change the fact that you crippled it first!”
The prisoner felt his blood boil as he realized his fears were coming true. The Underground had heard enough of Seven’s recordings to piece together that it was he who had exposed the senior Daniel Alexander Young as the leader of the Underground. He had known this would happen–expected it–from the minute he clicked send, but he had held out hope that he would find a place to hide and escape any attempts at retribution.
“You want revenge,” said Seven with only the faintest crack in his voice. “I get that, but I swear to you that I didn’t know what was going on–what the Guard had done to me. I’m–I’m sorry about what happened.”
Young’s pole-like arms stabbed into the seat of the chair around Seven’s legs. He screamed. “You’re sorry? You’re sorry?”
Their eyes linked.
Unexpectedly, Danny laughed and fell whimsically back onto his heels. Seven wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or relieved.
The leader of the Underground kicked at a dust bunny and chuckled. “Fortunately for you, I see the bigger picture. Don’t get me wrong–I certainly was mad about what happened, but time and meditation have convinced me to direct my anger more constructively. Let’s be honest: killing you would accomplish nothing for the cause. I mean, you were just the Guard’s weapon, really. A white knight wouldn’t focus his energy breaking the black night’s broad sword, would he?”
Seven wasn’t quite sure what his captor meant by this, but nodded encouragingly since it seemed to support keeping him alive.
“Truth is, Seven, I need your help. The reason for all the dramatics–tying you to a chair and all that–is just that I wanted to make you squirm a teensy-weensy bit. Consider that my revenge…for now.”
The prisoner froze.
“Joking!” Danny laughed. “Loosen up, will you?”
Seven breathed. “Kind of tough when I’m tied to a chair.”
“Never mind that–hey, that was kind of a pun you just made, wasn’t it? I like that! Seven’s coming alive, everyone!” Danny’s head moved up and down giddily as he laughed. “Seriously, though, I’ll cut you free as soon as I decide you can be trusted. You were an Elite Guard, after all. Can’t be too careful you know. Why don’t we just chat a little bit more, and when I’m feeling a little more comfortable, we’ll let you loose, okay?”
Seven kept quiet.
“Now,” said Young, pacing toward the windows and back. “Tell me what it was like when you woke up with no memory a few weeks back.”
“Um, well–”
“I mean, philosophically I just think it’s so interesting! All of the propaganda fed to us by the Guard our whole lives–forgotten! Overnight! I mean, you became tabula rasa!”
“Yeah, it was–”
“–amazing I bet. You don’t know what I’d do not to have a past. My life would be far easier, let me tell you.”
Seven raised his eyebrows. “Easy is not the word I’d use.”
Young ignored the remark and continued. “And how do you see our country now? Our way–the Underground way! You see this corrupt, broken government exploiting man’s natural fear of God to keep everyone in check. You see everything my father taught, but without his teaching! Let me tell you that he would have loved to have met you. I know that might sound a bit ironic considering you indirectly killed the man–but it’s the honest truth!”
Seven felt his blood pressure rising. “Look, all I’ve done since waki
ng up this way is destroy lives. If you’re trying to tell me all this is some kind of blessing–”
“Oh but don’t you see? It absolutely is a blessing! You have the power to see things the way they are!”
“I’m not sure I–”
“The Cave!” interrupted Danny, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.
“Oh,” Seven said. “Wait…what?”
“You’re not familiar with the story? No, I suppose you couldn’t be, even if you once did.”
“What does this have to do with–”
“I apologize. Lend me a few minutes and I shall orate from the beginning. I’m not talking geology with you. The Cave is a famous philosophical allegory. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain.”
Seven got the feeling he didn’t have a choice. Young’s enthusiasm was exhausting.
Young began his retelling. “The Cave imagines a group of prisoners, chained inside a cave so that they can only see the wall. There’s this…bonfire behind them–but they’re unable to turn their heads to see it. And for their entire lives, their captors parade statues of various everyday objects–pots, fruit, animals–in front of the unseen fire, casting shadows on the wall. Because the prisoners are chained, they see only these shadows, and they believe them to be the true, natural form of the objects. Suddenly, their entire society revolves around this illusion. And in fact, they honor and elevate the prisoners who are most adept at reading the shadows and construing meaning from them.”
Young’s pointer finger sprung up into the air. “The exact same thing,” he grinned, “happens in our nation. The people here see only the shades of reality cast by the Church and the Guard. To the average citizen, the priests teach the good, and the president is infallible. What’s more, we place upon the pedestal those of us who most embrace the distortions. We call them Patriots.”
Seven began to understand. “And the people who don’t are called Heretics.”
“Hey, look at that, you’re getting it! This is great!”
Seven tried to force a smile but failed miserably.
Danny continued undeterred. “So anyway, the next chapter begins with an experiment: What happens when you release one of the prisoners from his chains? The freed man turns around and sees for the first time that all those shapes are just shadows. He sees the fire and the true form of the objects.
