by Adam Bender
They looked at him skeptically. Talia asked, “What do you mean?”
“Is that the Enemy’s leader? One of their generals?”
They all looked stumped.
Seven shrugged. “All I’m saying is, maybe we should try to confirm the authenticity of that tape before we let Susan Levi steamroll us.”
Danny’s eyes lit up. “Talia!”
“Yes?” She sounded excited.
“Could you ask your brother to check on that?”
Her face fell. “Yeah,” she said without enthusiasm. “Sure.”
Danny seemed to pick up that she might be feeling left out. “Talia!” he exclaimed again.
Her eyes narrowed. “…Yes?”
“From a public comm standpoint, how much longer do you think we can stall the media?”
Talia glanced at her hot-pink wrist watch. “Well, ideally we’d have cleared your name already. But it’s a little after ten already, and in a few hours everyone we want to get the message to is going to be asleep. So like, first thing tomorrow morning, I guess, at the latest?”
Ana gasped. “That’s not a lot of time.”
“The longer we wait, the worse Danny is going to look.”
Their meeting was over. Talia excused herself to ask Shaan about the tape. Danny, seemingly aware again of what he’d stepped in, staggered toward a big blue sofa by the receptionist’s desk.
“Someone should check on Eve,” Ana said to Seven. “She sounded like she was in trouble when she called.”
That’s weirdly sympathetic of her, thought Seven. But she had a point–Eve had been up against the Saints tonight by herself. He knew she could take care of herself, but these shadowy soldiers seemed somehow beyond human.
The phone rang three times before Eve picked up. “H-hello?” she stammered.
“It’s Seven. We got Danny back to HQ. Have you seen the news?”
“Just saw it,” she said. “Doesn’t look good.”
Her voice seemed quieter than normal–weaker.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Where are you?”
It went quiet on the other end and Seven worried there was something terribly wrong. “Eve? You there?”
“I’m at the hospital,” she said. “I visited my dad tonight because I thought he might know something useful about the Saints. I was careless…and I guess they followed me. They–they shot him.”
For Seven, the clamor on the 114th floor seemed to dissipate suddenly. He saw himself, Eve and her father sharing a bowl of chips and drinking whiskey in front of the television. Football was on and outside the snow was falling.
“Which hospital?” Seven asked.
Eve sat next to her father with her head in her hands. One hundred tubes and wires held the old man down in his sick bed. The doctor had stopped the bleeding and removed the bullet. Daddy was going to be okay but needed some rest. That’s what he was doing now–resting. Maybe he was asleep, Eve wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t pull herself away from the bed. She just felt so damn guilty.
There was a knock at the door but Eve couldn’t bring herself to look up. “What?” she croaked.
“How is he?” she heard her former fiancé say.
Eve looked up. “Seven?”
He was standing at the door with a potted daisy. “It’s for him,” he explained. “I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate–”
“–for a man?” she snickered.
“For a priest, actually.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Well, I think that’s a very appropriate looking flower you bought.”
Seven placed it carefully by his bedside and turned awkwardly to Eve.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said. “I wasn’t asking you to.”
“I know,” he said. “But I think I remember liking your dad.”
She looked confused. “I don’t remember that.”
Seven shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t show it. I also remember being somewhat of a dick.”
She laughed. “I don’t remember that, either. But you were different.”
After some hesitation, Seven sat next to her. He dragged his chair a few inches away from hers and looked thoughtfully at her father’s blanket.
“I had to turn it off,” she said, indicating the small TV hanging over her father’s feet. “How’s Danny taking all this bad press?”
“Well, it’s going to be tricky to win back the public, but I think we might have a shot at clearing his name,” Seven said. “Shaan’s analyzing the tape–no one had bothered to check its authenticity.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “You think someone could have made the whole thing up?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s worth checking out, don’t you?”
As she agreed, her father groaned and kicked at his blanket. “Evey?” he rasped.
She sprung up and went to his side. “I’m here, Daddy.”
He looked at her bleary-eyed. “It’s not true.”
“What’s not true?”
“I don’t want them to hurt you,” he said. “Why are they trying to hurt my little girl?”
The concern seemed genuine and Eve choked up.
“I already lost your mom,” he went on. “When I found out I was going to lose you, too–they said it was heresy if I tried to help, if I even felt bad for you. I didn’t know how I could see you under conditions like that. That’s why I waited so long to visit you. Finally I realized that I had to see you–I had to just do the best I could to…”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said. “I–I forgive you. I’m the one who’s worried about you now.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Other than that, I think I’m okay, dear. God didn’t see fit to do away with me just yet.”
Eve smiled. She thought he was starting to sound a little more like his old self.
“You get me that big ol’ flower over there?” he asked, in-dicating the pot on his bedside table.
“No,” said Eve, glancing tentatively over her shoulder at Seven.
He got to his feet in a hurry but practically tiptoed to the bed. “I did.”
“Well, I’ll be,” said Eve’s dad. “Jon, it’s been a while since I last saw you, boy! You still treating my Evey right?”
Oh God, thought Eve. She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks and looked apologetically in Seven’s direction.
“As well as I can,” Seven replied cheerily, not missing a beat.
Daddy beamed. “Have you kids settled on a date yet?”
“–No,” Eve broke in, perhaps too enthusiastically. She tried to laugh off the anxiousness. Second guessing herself, she covered her mouth with her hand. Realizing she didn’t have her engagement ring on, she slapped the hand down and hid it behind her back. “Just been so busy, you know?”
“I would imagine trying not to get shot would get a trifle distracting,” Daddy replied thoughtfully. “Maybe I can help. Tell me what you want to know about the Saints.”
She placed a hand gently on his wrist. “Are you sure? Talking to me has already landed you in the hospital…I don’t want to make it worse.”
“The Saints shot me; you saved my life,” he said. “Don’t pretend it was the other way around.”
She smiled lightly. “Okay. Well, you were saying the Saints worked for the Headmaster.”
“The Headmaster has always had bodyguards,” Daddy said. “The Saints take care of matters that the Guard won’t. It’s the Headmaster’s view that the Guard are constrained by the law of the nation. The Saints, on the other hand, follow only the commandments of God.”
Seven smirked. “Which I imagine are pretty flexible when the Headmaster is the one interpreting them.”
“Maybe so,” he said, considering. “Look, I will teach and follow the lessons of God until the day I die. But if I’m being honest, I’ve never felt right about the Headmaster directing his own small army. I believe in God, but I also believe in laws and the need for them in our country.”
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“Are there other priests who feel that way?” Seven asked.
“Yes, I think there are at least some. But no one has ever had the strength to stand up to the Headmaster. I’ve always known that questioning him would be the end of my career and maybe my life. I couldn’t do that to Evey.”
She kissed him gently on the cheek. “So Daddy, where do the Saints go marching in when they’re not breaking the law for God and country?”
“The Saints go where they are most accessible to the Headmaster.”
“Thanks,” said Eve, closing the door to her father’s room.
Seven felt absorbed by the blond girl’s smile. “For what?”
“For playing along,” she said. “I haven’t told him yet, obviously. About us, I mean–or rather, that there is no ‘us,’ anymore.”
“Aha,” he said. Even though he knew it was true, he felt somewhat let down hearing her say it.
“There just hasn’t been an ideal time to tell him. Tonight was especially non-ideal.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m not worried.”
That was a lie. He was very worried. Why was he being so nice to her, considering everything that she’d done? Did he really love her, or was it just Jonathan Wyle? He felt like he needed to add something malicious just to balance things out. “I played along for him, not you.”
Eve’s smile vanished and he felt pained to see it go.
Seven’s phone buzzed. He picked it up quickly.
“Seven, it’s Shaan,” he said.
“Shaan!” he repeated for Eve’s benefit. “What have you found out?”
“The Elite Guard keeps an extensive audio database containing speeches and other recorded communications of the Enemy. So I ran the recording we received against all of those.”
“And?”
“There were no matches.”
“No matches? Could it just be someone the Guard doesn’t have a recording for?”
“I thought the same thing, so I expanded the search to include people in this country. No results again, but then I remembered there was someone we met who’s not in the database.”
“Rodriguez,” guessed Seven.
“Bingo. So I grabbed an audio clip of his voice from when he was our prisoner and compared it to the Enemy’s tape. And guess what? It was a perfect match. His voice was scrambled to sound like someone else, but it was easy enough to break through.”
Seven gasped. “Well done, man! I think this might be a good occasion to yell, ‘Stop the Presses!’”
“No, Seven,” said a new voice on the phone. It was Danny Young–apparently they had Seven on speaker. “I’m tired of playing defense. I want to do more than just clear my name. Talia says we have until morning to respond. That gives us about eight or nine hours to find as much evidence as we can to nail these bastards once and for all.”
Eve touched the doorbell just lightly enough to make it ring. Seven looked at her oddly, as if recognizing this was unusual behavior. When the tap resulted in an electronic version of the national anthem, Eve wished she had gone with her instinctive approach of pounding the door.
It wasn’t the song that annoyed her–Eve considered herself as patriotic as the next girl. What really irked her was the person using it as her doorbell chime. Eve couldn’t place her finger on exactly what it was about Susan Levi, but everything she did seemed fake, forced, and phony. Levi didn’t likely have the national anthem playing because she loved her country. She just wanted people to think that she loved her country.
Then again, maybe she was just jealous of Levi’s house. The stone siding, big picture windows, and round-cut bushes made it look like something out of a holiday catalog. The ocean literally roared from the backyard. People bought overpriced alarm clocks from airplane catalogs to hear sounds like that. If you lived here, all you had to do was crack a window.
The door clicked and swung inward. A heavy man who looked like a club bouncer appeared in the open space. He didn’t say anything, so Eve introduced herself with a flash of her badge. “We’d like to have a word with Ms. Levi,” she said.
“She’s sleeping,” said the bouncer, closing the door.
Seven suddenly charged, slamming door into man with a heavy thunk. The bouncer staggered backwards, giving Seven an opening to strike. But the punch was consumed by the fat man’s belly and the bouncer got a tight grip around Seven’s wrist.
“Boys,” remarked Eve, pulling a silver pistol from the inside of her short black jacket. She aimed it at the bouncer’s head. “Please let go of my partner and wake up your boss.”
Startled by this latest development, the bouncer let go of Seven and froze.
“Now,” she prodded.
The bouncer was only halfway up the stairs when Susan Levi began to step down. It was obvious that she had not been sleeping. Levi was dressed in a pants suit and her hair was up in the same prim fashion as it had been at the debate. Eve concluded she had been waiting on the top of the steps the whole time, like a child listening in to a fight between her parents.
“Nice to see you,” Levi said as if she was greeting guests for dinner. But her eyes appeared strained beneath all the makeup. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Good evening, Ms. Levi. My name is Eve and this is my…uh…partner, Seven. We’re with the Elite Guard. Sorry to visit so late, but we have a few questions about tonight’s debate.”
Levi nodded more times than necessary before waving at a pair of sofas. “Why don’t you have a seat?” she suggested. “Larry, get us some coffee, would you?”
The bouncer named Larry shambled off to the kitchen. Not wanting Susan Levi’s henchman out of her sight, Eve pointed the gun in his direction again. “I’d prefer it if Larry would stay with us. We won’t be long.”
The four of them took seats, with Seven and Eve on one side and Levi and her lackey on the other. Between them stood a coffee table smothered in magazines. They covered a variety of interest areas. Eve observed that they were in impeccable condition, and in fact several were still in their original plastic sleeves. Seven dropped a digital tape recorder on a magazine called Church and Garden.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” said Eve. “We’re going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them truthfully. If I think you’re lying to us…well, let’s just say we’ll have a problem.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong!” protested Levi suddenly over the surprise of the encounter. “You can’t do this to me! When I’m president, you’re going to regret this!”
Eve pointed the gun at Larry and fired. The bouncer howled but the only damage was a hole in the sofa inches from where he was sitting.
“Are you insane?!” screamed Levi. “Do you have any idea how much that will cost to reupholster?”
“I have an idea,” smiled Eve. “I bet you’ve got a lot of rare, expensive furniture in here, don’t you? Would be a shame if any more of it was damaged.”
Now she took aim at a crystal chandelier above the foyer.
“Stop!” cried Susan Levi. “Ask me your questions.”
“Did you know about the audio tape of the Enemy before the debate?” Eve asked.
“It was played to me, yes,” Levi said. “And I’m glad it got out. We don’t want an ally of the Enemy running our nation.”
“Did you know it’s a fake?” Seven interjected.
“Excuse me?”
“We ran an analysis of it. The Enemy didn’t make the recording.”
Levi appeared skeptical. “Then who?”
“Have you heard of the Saints?”
“…No,” said Levi, but Eve caught the hesitation and brought her weapon back to the chandelier. The bullet cut through the wire holding it to the ceiling and the whole thing crashed tragically to the floor.
“I’ve heard of them!” Levi squawked. “They were with him when he convinced me to run.”
“Who convinced you to run?” snapped Eve.
“The
…the Headmaster,” Levi said. “He told me that if I ran for office he would make sure that I won. I didn’t want to run–I didn’t think I was ready for at least another four years–especially not with the attack and everything else that had just happened. But then these men with him, they said I had to run, that it was God’s wish and that I couldn’t say no. They said refusing God was heresy.”
Seven asked, “How did you hear the tape for the first time?”
“One of the Headmaster’s men brought it to me. I wanted to send it to the authorities right away, but the man with the Saints told me it wasn’t in God’s plan. He said that God wanted the tape to come out in front of the public on national TV so that everyone could hear the truth about Danny Young.”
Their next stop was Old Town. Eve had always thought it was the most beautiful neighborhood of the city, but unfortunately it was too expensive to buy a home there. At this late hour it was quiet and the lights were out in most of the houses.
Walking with his black labrador in the dim, flickering light of street lanterns, the former President William Drake looked like a shell of himself. Eve thought his hair looked grayer, as if he’d aged many years since resigning from office.
He never saw them coming, but the dog did. When they were a few feet away the animal spun around, barked and gnashed its teeth.
Eve gasped and backed away, but Seven stood strong. “Drake,” he called.
The former president bent down to stroke his pet’s neck. “Whoa, Hoover,” he said. “It’s okay, boy.”
The dog woofed uncertainly. After a few more strokes, the animal began to lick his master’s hand.
“Good boy,” said Drake, ruffling the fur on Hoover’s head in such a way that it pulled back the dog’s eyelids. “Now sit.”
Hoover sat. When the animal was sufficiently calm, Drake stood up and met his pursuers’ eyes. He had bags under his eyes but the man was still strikingly handsome, and tall enough to make Eve feel like a child. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Who are you?” Drake asked with a trace of exasperation.
