by J. L. Lyon
The man in the chair stirred, his groans becoming more pronounced. Soon they would be full on screams of terror and pain. Rowan took a step toward the door.
“There is one more thing,” his master said. “This time I want proof of your kill. There is a small token Shadow Heart carries on her person at all times: a ring with a round blue stone. Bring it to me, and I promise you will be greatly rewarded.”
“Where am I?” The man in the chair sobbed. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Our time is up, Rowan. Best of luck in your mission.”
Rowan was already on the threshold, and took that as his leave to go. He shut the door quickly behind him as his master descended toward the poor fool, and was halfway down the hall before the screams began again in earnest.
Suddenly putting a few hundred miles between himself and his master didn’t seem like such a bad idea. He would accomplish his mission or die trying, there was no doubt about that. His master had given him a direct order. But once it was done—once Shadow Heart was dead—who was to say? Perhaps he would be free to choose his own fate. The world outside Alexandria was wide, and there were plenty of places he could go.
He emerged back out into the fresh cold air and immediately vomited on the steps, coughing back laughter at the mere notion of disappearing. He knew what kind of man his master was. No matter where he went, or what he did, he could only ever count on one thing:
There was nowhere to hide.
7
FOOTSTEPS ECHOED DOWN THE decaying hall, a welcome respite from the oppressive silence of the ruin. All of the Wilderness was quiet, but there was something more complete—more melancholy—about those places that humans had abandoned. Perhaps it was the knowledge of all the feet that had traversed them, the voices and laughter that had once filled them…the lives, free and happy, that had once been commonplace.
Now all was darkness, and only their ghosts remained. She found comfort there in her solitude, at home among those ghosts of happier times. The world was a better place in the memories of those long dead…and of those gone for not so long. She permitted herself only these brief periods of peace to think of them, to regret their loss, and to remember them with honor.
But the footsteps meant that her moment of mourning was at an end.
Grace Sawyer—Shadow Heart, as she was now commonly known—rose to her feet from the place where she had been sitting at the end of the hall. A figure emerged from the darkness, one she had come to know well in the past several months. During her childhood she had referred to him affectionately as “Uncle T.,” but now that she was commander and not her father, Colonel Traughber had become one of her most trusted officers. Perhaps the most trusted, depending on Crenshaw’s secrets and Davian’s mood.
She met him halfway, where he greeted her with a smile and a respectful nod. Before the men he was all ceremony, but when they were alone he took on a more fatherly air, “All is prepared. We await only your word.”
“The scouts?”
“We believe the Spectorium is nearby,” Traughber replied. “But we haven’t been able to nail down their location. The sooner we’re in, the sooner we’re out. Let’s just hope we leave those assassins none the wiser.”
She nodded, and the two walked side-by-side toward the exit, “They say Derek Blaine is hunting me. That he believes I’m responsible for Elijah’s death.”
Traughber kept his gaze forward and said quietly, “You did everything you could for that boy, Grace. In the end he chose to face Napoleon Alexander, and that choice killed him. That was not your failure.”
“Some days I wish I could forget him,” she admitted. “Some days I wish that the little boy I knew had actually died sixteen years ago. If he had…maybe things would have gone differently.”
“Maybe they would,” Traughber said. “But you should keep in mind that it was not the boy you loved. It was the man. The man just happened to have been the boy, once.”
They plunged into the darkness of the hall, but Grace was not afraid. She had grown accustomed to night and shadow, and had learned to make them serve her purposes. If you became the monster in the night, there was no longer need to fear one.
“And that love became my destroyer,” she whispered. “It fled from me, but only after ripping away everything I cared about. Never again, Colonel. I will never make that mistake again.”
“That’s news that several young men will be devastated to hear.”
Grace smiled, “Oh, yes, I’ve heard about the bets. But it’s Shadow Heart that intrigues them, not Grace Sawyer.”
Traughber sighed, “I really wish you would have put a stop to that nonsense when it first began. You never liked being called that when you were a teenager, if memory serves.”
“What teenage girl wants to be labeled with a term that implies she does not have the ability to love?” Grace asked.
“What young woman does?”
“That’s not what the name means now, Colonel. Back then it was a cruel taunt. Now it is a title of honor. A rallying cry for the rebellion.”
“Yet it is still this persona of the cold-hearted warrior that you embrace. I understand that you have lost, Grace. I understand the tragedies. But I don’t understand losing yourself in them.”
“My father led with passion, Colonel,” Grace said. “I lead with poise. His Silent Thunder was fire; mine is ice. We were a breath away from extermination when I became commander of the 2nd Battalion. Now we are the shadows they fear in the night. ‘Napoleon Alexander controls the cities,’ they say, ‘but Shadow Heart rules the Wilderness.’”
“I have heard what they say,” a bit of sternness entered into the colonel’s tone. “The foolishness of young men.”
“Not foolishness,” Grace insisted. “Hope. And if I must sacrifice my personal happiness to give them that, I won’t hesitate.”
They reached the end of the hall, and Traughber stopped. He turned to face her with a grave expression, “I would be remiss, in this moment, if I didn’t mention that this is not what your father would have wanted.”
“My father wanted many things he never received, Colonel,” Grace said, her features tight. Elijah’s face appeared briefly in her mind. “And so did I.” She sidestepped Traughber and rounded the corner, where her team waited in the foyer. They saluted at her approach.
“At ease,” she said. “Gentlemen, get ready to move. We have an estimated window of three minutes to pass from here to the target without being seen by the infrared sensors. Lieutenant, report: the Spectorium?”
As the six soldiers prepared their weapons the young officer replied, “Their last known location was just over twenty miles north of here. We lost track about an hour ago. Lieutenant Commander Davian attempted to lead them on a path north and away from the target, but we have had no word of him and know nothing of his success. Truthfully, Commander: they could be out there waiting for us, right now.”
“Then that just means we need to be prepared for anything. Form up. We move as soon as the infrared blind spot opens.” They made their way to the doors and waited in silence.
Traughber stepped up beside her after a few seconds had passed, his hands holding nervously onto the rails. Grace refused to acknowledge him at first, but soon felt guilty. He was only trying to help, after all.
“Okay, Colonel,” she said. “Out with it.”
He sighed heavily and whispered so that the others couldn’t hear, “I think that sometimes you forget that, despite the state of the world, you are still a beautiful young woman who deserves happiness. My greatest fear for you is that you will expend every last ounce of your strength in battle…and forget to live. Isn’t that the reason we’re doing this? To live?”
“I fight not that I might live, but that others might live free.”
“How can you give hope if you keep none for yourself?”
“Commander,” the lieutenant’s voice cut in. “The blind spot is open. We’re in the clear.”
G
race nodded. She spared a look for Colonel Traughber, who watched her with concerned eyes—the same look she had seen many times from her father. She touched his arm affectionately, “I hear you, Colonel. Later, okay?”
He grinned, “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she couldn’t suppress a smile as she pulled Novus Vita from its place at her side. “Let’s go.”
The doors flew open and they filed out in formation, greeted by a gentle breeze as they stepped into night’s embrace. A low bridge connected the building they had just vacated to a taller building a few yards away, and they used it for cover as they made their way to the latter structure. Grace’s gaze shifted to the left and beheld their target: an odd structure that stood out from the other ruins nearby. The floors, each one smaller than the one below it, formed a stair-step design that made it appear unfinished—like only one piece of a puzzle that the inquisitive mind longed to complete. Appropriate, as she remembered it had once been a library.
But it was completely open terrain between the stair-step puzzle and the tall building under which they hid. If the Spectorium was out there, that would be where they would spring their ambush. “Be cautious,” she whispered. “Should we fall under attack, you know what to do. Go.”
The team moved slowly and purposefully out from cover and toward the target, eight sets of eyes sweeping the vicinity for any sign of a threat. Darkness limited their vision, but she hoped it limited their ability to be seen as much as it did their ability to see.
Grace and the colonel took positions at the front as they reached the stairs: the first set of two. They glided down silently, like phantoms, and reached the midpoint of the trek. Grace felt a brief panic rise in her chest, but no ambush came. They were clear.
They made their way down the second set of stairs and trod lightly over the broken concrete, passing a large seal that represented the institution to which all these buildings had once belonged. It was cracked down the middle, the words agriculture and commerce barely recognizable from years of erosion and neglect. All flesh is like the grass, and all its glory like the flower of the grass, Grace quoted in her mind. The grass withers. The flower fades.
The team of Silent Thunder operatives ascended the stairs up to the ornate doors of the library, and Grace pulled them open. They shuffled inside to the second doorway and stepped through the frame, the glass shattered long before by looters or other Undocumenteds who had passed this way over the years. The shards cracked beneath their boots as they made their way into the dismal foyer.
Grace pressed a finger to the comm in her ear, “We’re in.”
“Good,” Crenshaw’s voice answered from the other end. “Tell me what you see.”
“We’re in the foyer,” she replied. “An old desk is to our right, looks like a checkout counter. There’s a stone staircase on the left, and it looks like there might be another on the floor above us.”
“Take them.”
The team followed as Grace led the way up the two stone staircases—weathered, but still sturdy—and came around to the main part of the floor. “Now we’re in a wide hall. I see a few large rooms on either side…maybe a couple of hallways. There are doors at the end that lead back outside.”
“The package is on the top floor,” Crenshaw said. “You’ll have to find some stairs.”
“Got it.”
“Grace,” Crenshaw went on sharply. “Davian and his team just reported in. They do not think that the Spectorium took the bait. They’re on their way back to the rendezvous now.”
“If the Spectorium isn’t tracking him, it’s likely they are tracking us.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated, “We’ve come too far to abort.”
“I know,” Crenshaw said. “Get in and get out as quickly as you can.”
“Understood.”
The connection on her earphone died, and she answered Traughber’s concerned stare with a lighthearted smile, “Another day at the office?”
Colonel Traughber nodded, “So it would seem. Let’s be quick.”
The team made their way into the hall and headed swiftly for the stairs, urged onward by the warm breath of their enemies that wafted threateningly down their necks.
-X-
Specter General Tony Marcus ran a line with his finger down the right side of his face, feeling the long scar that was now his defining feature. The man from whom he’d received it was dead, but those who drove that man to his treachery were still alive and well, a constant thorn in the System’s side that had yet to be eliminated.
He smiled darkly as he approached the building into which the rebels had entered, his subordinates formed up behind with impressive discipline. He still marveled at how quickly they had been able to raise Specter from the ashes of 301-14-A’s betrayal. All but two had been slain in the Central Square that day—the Grand Admiral and himself, though he had escaped death by a mere inch. He still remembered waking on the cold concrete of the Square in a pool of his own blood, and shivered. To escape the reaper so closely…it was something from which he would never recover.
Marcus had lost his partner and his companions in arms that day, but he had also inherited the leadership of Specter. He looked to his right and to his left at those deemed the greatest and most deadly warriors in all the World System. They had never met an enemy they could not defeat, and had established themselves as a nightmare for all who would oppose them.
They were the Spectorium.
While their counterparts in Specter assisted the Great Army in countering the moves of the Imperial Guard, the Spectorium’s focus lay in the mission that at long last seemed within their grasp: the complete and total destruction of the Silent Thunder rebellion.
“What are our orders, sir?” one of his captains asked.
Marcus was not thrilled with the orders he had been given, but he knew better than to question. As great a fighter as he was, there was still one man far greater than he. To defy his wishes was tantamount to suicide...at least for now.
“We wait,” Marcus replied harshly. “Cover all the exits. No one goes in or out.”
8
GRACE PASSED SEVERAL ROWS of books as she made her way across the top level, breathing shallow so as not to inhale the dust rising from the floor at her every step. Countless volumes lay scattered and destroyed on the floor, discarded by those who had looted the library over the years. She had trouble judging them for that—what could be more valuable to a fallen civilization than the knowledge of the one that came before it? No doubt many had entertained notions of rebuilding the planet with such knowledge, herself among them. But no amount of books could remove the greatest obstacle to the Old World’s return: Napoleon Alexander. For him, there could only be bullet and blade.
Traughber shadowed her steps as the rest of the Silent Thunder operatives fanned out to secure the area. All were silent as phantoms, chosen for their skills in stealth from among the dozens that had volunteered for this mission. Bringing the full force to a confined area with the Spectorium on their heels had been too risky, so a small team was dispatched instead. It had been Davian’s idea, though he had not been happy when she told him that she would lead them, not him.
She spied a door at the end of the aisle between the stacks, and motioned to Traughber. He made several hand signals, and the other operatives converged on their new objective. That was when she felt it: a shift in the air, a general feeling of wrongness that warned of impending danger. By the time the first shot pierced her ears, the bullet passed through the neck of the operative on Traughber’s left, spraying blood on the dusty shelves.
The rest of them scattered as their comrade fell, and Traughber grabbed Grace’s collar, pushing her into the stacks and out of the line of fire. More shots rang out, and she prayed they found no more of her companions. Angry, she reached for her Gladius.
Traughber stopped her, “You must continue on your own, Commander. You can make the door if I cover you, and we wil
l provide a screen to give you time.”
She shook her head, “I’m not going anywhere, Colonel. I don’t order men to fight battles I can’t fight myself.”
“The entire Spectorium could be on the way,” Traughber argued. “There’s not much time, Grace. We will do our part here. Now you must do yours.”
Grace had seen the expression currently on Traughber’s face many times, and knew there would be no swaying his decision. In her time as commander she had learned that there were times when a leader could hand out orders, and others when she could not.
“Good luck, Colonel,” she said. “I expect to see you when I am done here.”
“Block the door once you are inside,” he raised his sidearm. “Ready?”
She nodded.
“Go!”
They sprang from hiding, Traughber emptying his clip in the direction of the shooter as Grace raced for the door. She took hold of the knob and threw it open, allowing her momentum to carry her inside before pulling the door shut again behind her. Shots continued to fire on the other side, muffled, as she scanned the room for some means to block the door. In the end she tipped over a relatively full shelf of books so that it leaned against the doorframe, and turned to the task at hand.
Breathless, she counted off her steps just as Crenshaw had instructed, and arrived before a bare stretch of wall. Slight discoloration suggested there had been a painting there of some kind, but it had been taken—with little thought to what its presence concealed.
More sounds came from the other room, but not gunshots this time. Nothing could make that noise but the clash of two Spectral Gladii. So, the Spectorium had found them. She needed to hurry, or all would be lost.
She ran her hand over the wall, wiping away years of grime, and frowned. There was nothing there. She fought an urge to scream. To have come so far and sacrificed so much…for nothing. She started to turn away, but a glint of the light caught her eye. She reached out and wiped away a wider swath of the grime, and sighed with relief. There upon the wall, barely visible lines joined together to create the intricate design of a rose—the symbol she had been instructed to find.
