Fortified Dreams

by James, Hadena

  Eric was inside the Fortress because he had climbed to the top of a building to kill a cop killer, our father’s killer to be exact. Unfortunately, once the shooting started, he had not stopped with just one cop killer. He had aimed his rifle and started taking out all those that he thought were probably psychopaths. His aim had been true. He had not hit a single non-violent offender. He was like me. He knew his own kind, even down the scope of a rifle.

  Unlike most killers, Eric did not brag about his kills. He did not flaunt his kills to impress people. He did not have an appreciation for the other killers within the walls of the Fortress and if he were ever to get his hands on a gun, he would start taking down his fellow prisoners. Whereas most serial killers hated pedophiles and others who were lower than they were on the food chain, Eric hated serial killers. The irony of his imprisonment was not lost on anyone, even the US Marshals.

  As a result, he was treated well among the US Marshals within the prison. They felt a weird kinship to him. He had rectified a wrong, an injustice done against one of their fallen brethren and they respected him for that. Allowing him and Patterson to bond had been strategic. Patterson would agree to follow Eric. As such, two of the most feared killers inside the Fortress were allies of the US Marshals Service. The fact that I was a Marshal was either a perk, a bonus, or a strategic decision by the US Marshals. Recruiting me had ensured that Eric would feel a loyalty not just to law enforcement, but also specifically to the US Marshals. I could live with it.

  Patterson was along for the ride now. He had reunited with his grandson, two of his granddaughters, and had rights afforded to him that he had never had while pretending to be someone else. He was still manipulative and conniving, but he would do whatever the three of us requested of him.

  My phone rang. Nyleena’s name flashed on the caller ID. It was the middle of the day, so she would be working and it was not her lunchtime.

  “What is wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “I thought you were being paranoid.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” I pointed out to her.

  “You were right. It’s bad.” The line went dead. I jumped from my chair, letting it slam against the floor. I dialed her cell number again and got no answer. I dialed her office number with no results either. Nyleena worked for the federal prosecuting attorney, specifically, she was usually the head counsel for the government against serial killers and mass murderers. Serial killers and mass murderers ran in our family, so it made sense that we would all be on one side or the other of the law.

  A strange siren began to sound. The high-pitched screech was not the tornado siren. I had never heard it before. It hurt my ears. I went to the sliding glass door. Gabriel was already running towards my house. He was pulling on a Kevlar vest, as I opened the door.

  “Suit up, they’ve hit the federal buildings downtown.”

  “What federal buildings?” I asked, thinking of Nyleena.

  “All of them.” Gabriel was trying to finish putting on his vest while digging around in a duffle bag that swung at his side. I recognized it. He carried all his weapons in it. I left him struggling and went to get my own. My vest sat on top of it. I pulled it on, slapping the straps to make sure they were secure. All my guns and knives went into their special holsters and then onto their specific locations on my body. I looked inside the bag, frowned, and went to the basement.

  All the houses in the Federal Guard Neighborhood had panic rooms in the basement. They were steel reinforced rooms that could not be tampered with in the event of something awful happening. Mine didn’t sit under my kitchen like most. It was totally encased in the ground, sharing only a wall. It meant my basement and first floor were not the same shape. I punched in the code and watched as the door opened. I filled the duffle bag with canisters of tear gas, stun grenades, smoke grenades, extra Taser cartridges, and extra ammunition clips. I felt like the Terminator as the door closed and I marched back upstairs.

  The siren continued to warble out its terrible sound. I exited through the front door. On my lawn stood Xavier, Gabriel, Fiona, Christian Hunter, Malachi, and Caleb Green stood. Malachi looked like he was ready for World War III. He even had a machete strapped to his leg. I said nothing about it. Doors around us were opening. Cops and federal agents were pouring out of their houses, filling their yards, all of them in full tactical gear. They all turned to look at us. Malachi and Gabriel both nodded.

  “We’re going to need groups!” Gabriel shouted over the sirens. “They hit seven federal buildings, including FBI headquarters, the Federal Law Offices of the Attorney General’s Special Counsel, and the Federal Guard Apartment building. We know there have been fatalities, but we don’t know how many, and we don’t know who is responsible for the attack. Everyone will report to a member of the VCU or SCTU. Homeland Security believes this to be domestic terrorism of an unknown origin.” The siren suddenly died.

  Two

  I was dispatched to the Federal Law Offices of the Attorney General’s Special Counsel with a force of twenty-seven officers. I was in charge. This was a terrible idea. Not only was I not leadership material, but I had a vested interest in finding anyone responsible and punishing them. This punishment would be exceptionally brutal if I found Nyleena’s dead body somewhere within the building.

  On the street, several cars were burning. Smoke poured from the secure garage that attached to the building. Several windows had been busted. Gunshots could be heard from within. Screams pierced the sounds of chaos on the street around us. People ran around us like headless chickens. A few just stood still and stared, while a few others moved like zombies, being too traumatized to react.

  “Clear the street,” I barked. A group of five officers peeled away from us. They began trying to move the civilians away. “One group will go into the garage and the other with me. We will meet in the lobby and work our way up. Kill only when necessary. We need survivors.”

  I was used to being the first one in. I was used to being the one to kick down the door. In this instance, someone had kicked the door down for me, and given the chance, I was probably going to put a bullet in their head. While we did need survivors, we did not need many, because I could be very persuasive. We used hand signals to communicate.

  The lobby looked as if a bomb had gone off. Blood was still pooling up in places on the floor. Glass, metal, and plaster coated the ground, creating obstacles for the blood to flow past. There were no groans or moans from the bodies on the floor. It was apparent that the US Marshals in charge of protecting the building had gone down in a firefight. Several men with masks were among those in suits and uniforms. A few of the officers with me began checking for vital signs. I scanned the room, expecting a sentry to start firing on us, but none did.

  This situation did not make sense. Anyone who entered this building must have known it was going to be a one-way trip. I hated zealots. They were irrational, illogical, and unpredictable. I heard more gunshots above us, causing my muscles to tighten. I wanted to run up the stairs, find whoever was shooting and make them stop. No one in this building deserved to die.

  The other team joined us. They shook their heads. I nodded once, and we headed for the only two staircases in the building. The law office was built to be tall and narrow. It was a safety measure. If it were tall and narrow, anyone trying to do exactly what had happened here would be trapped by a lack of an exit. Yet, it still allowed people to flee in the event of an emergency.

  I took one group up one set of stairs. A man I barely knew named Demetrius Lazar led a team up the other one. Lazar and his brother, Dominic, both lived on my street and were US Marshals. They were identical twins, except for some scarring. Dominic Lazar worked in the Fortress. Demetrius worked for Witness Protection. I was willing to trust him not to be killed or get anyone else killed. The others in my group, I did not know as well and therefore, did not trust to do the same.

  Opening the door to the emergency stairs, I expecte
d to find bodies piled on the steps. However, it was oddly empty. Either no one had tried to flee or the stairs above us were going to be blood soaked. After all, we were only on the lobby level. Most of the important stuff happened on the fifth floor and above. Nyleena’s office was on the twelfth floor. I wanted to head straight there, but knew I could not. There could be survivors or perpetrators on the lower floors and I had to deal with them first. Sometimes, it was hard to prioritize when you were a sociopath, because there was a great deal of narcissism involved, and the world essentially revolved around my needs and what I needed was to know that Nyleena was safe and sound.

  We moved as a unit, swapping positions to gain vantage points as we moved up the stairs. A group of four officers broke from the group and stayed in the stairwell. The rest of us moved inside. As we entered the main common area on floor one, Demetrius Lazar did the same. He nodded to me and we moved down the corridors and through the cube farms. On this floor, we could hear people sobbing. No one dared make more noise other than a sob. As our footsteps crunched on debris, we could hear others trying shush the sobbers.

  “US Marshals Serial Crimes Tracking Unit!” I shouted. “US Marshal Aislinn Cain! Put your hands up and step out.” We all had our weapons leveled at a spot near a door, a door that was closed. There was movement behind the door and it began to open slowly. A young man in his twenties timidly stuck his head out. Seeing us made him sigh. His shoulders slumped, his face relaxed.

  “Come on,” he said to other people that I could not yet see. His hands were in the air as he exited the room. “There are some people in there too wounded to walk out,” he told us.

  “Fine,” Demetrius Lazar began to move forward, and I mimicked his movements. We both turned on the door at same time. It appeared to be filled with office workers. They were a mess. Some were bleeding.

  “Damn,” I said. We were going to need paramedics. “Everyone who can walk out will need to do so now. A group of officers outside the emergency doors will escort you outside. We will get first responders for anyone left.” With help, everyone got to their feet. Their coworkers were helping, even those that probably should not have been moved. I did not protest this. The faster they left, the less likely they were to be shot at.

  Suddenly, I realized there was a flaw in my plan. We couldn’t keep sending officers down with people. We also couldn’t keep searching both stairwells. We just didn’t have the manpower. I looked at a group of FBI agents.

  “I want you to go downstairs, go into the lobby, and stand sentry. I also need you to make sure that none of the survivors walks out that front door until we are finished sweeping the building. There could be snipers on the higher floors waiting for them to exit. Do you understand?”

  They nodded and went to join the officers in the stairwell. I could hear some whispered noises over the communication earpieces. They were repeating my instructions. This was good. I still wasn’t much of a leader, but if we could sweep the building and not die, I would consider it a win.

  Floors two through seven were similar to the first floor. Survivors were huddled in clusters inside offices that were meant to be protective areas. I was finding that every floor had these special offices or conference rooms. No glass windows looked into the office. The doors were reinforced steel with a wood veneer over them. The frames the doors were set in were also steel. The walls that held the frames were concrete with plaster over them. They were marked with three blue dots. On the eighth floor, I began looking for the rooms with the blue dots. We found it. The door was open, and a woman was screaming from within. Two men with masks had their pants around their ankles. This was not their day. Lazar and I both shouted out that we were US Marshals. They turned, fumbling for weapons or maybe their pants and both of us fired. My shot hit one in the head, just above his left eye. Lazar’s shot made the other man’s nose explode. Blood rushed from the wound. Both men fell to the floor, eyes still wide with surprise. The victim in the safe room was still screaming. Several people lay on the floor around her, dead. I checked the door while a female FBI agent went to the woman. It hadn’t been forced. They just hadn’t made it inside fast enough.

  She was the only survivor from the eighth floor and I was certain she was broken. Some things could not be repaired. The female officer had to escort her down the stairs, half dragging her, half carrying her.

  The door of the ninth floor loomed before us. The small window was smeared with blood. Whatever lay on the other side was not going to be pretty. Lazar and I exchanged glances. He knelt down, putting his hand on the pull for the door. I drew both guns and slid against the wall. I took a breath. As I inhaled, the door was jerked open. I was in before Lazar had even finished. Three men were in the room, standing over a group of people who were on their knees.

  “US Marshals Service, SCTU! Drop your weapons, and get down on your knees, now!” I shouted as other officers moved in behind me. I heard one of the men repeat SCTU as he tried to exchange a glance with his partners. I fired, putting a bullet in his thigh. As he reached for it, I shot him a second time, a little higher, burying the .9mm bullet in his hip. His leg gave out and he fell to the ground, his weapon skittering away from him. Someone from the floor screamed. The other two held up their hands, but didn’t drop their weapons. I considered shooting a second one to prove just how serious I was, but decided to make it a little more real for them. I charged forward, not running, but moving swiftly. Behind me, someone gasped. I hit the bigger of the two men and he lost his footing, sprawling onto the floor. I swung the gun, catching the second guy in the face. His cheekbone crunched as the force of the Beretta and my hand, smashed his cheekbone. The skin split open, instantly causing blood to pour from the wound. I hit him a second time. He dropped his weapon and his body. He lay still, his hands behind his back. I holstered one gun.

  “US Marshals Service,” I repeated to all three men. The one that was sprawled on the floor moved. I caught him with my boot, my foot slamming down squarely on his ankle. The noise was even louder and more satisfying as his ankle dislocated and the small bones broke. I ground my toe into the wound until he screamed. Once the sound exited his mouth, I let up.

  Lazar and several others moved in. They put handcuffs on the bad guys and gave instructions to those we had just saved from being executed. As they stood the second guy up, he went to struggle. I yanked my baton off my belt and flicked it out at the same time. I stared at him. He met my gaze, hate burning on his face. I smiled and he paled. The struggling stopped.

  “I will see you a little later,” I smiled wider. “I think we are going to have a long chat and become very good friends.” He tore his eyes away from me and stared at the floor, all the fight and gusto gone from him.

  The tenth floor was eerily quiet. The doors with the blue dots were all securely fastened. Agents began to knock on them. People began to straggle out. This floor had been prepared more than the others had. There were almost no dead bodies in the main area or unsecured offices. Those coming out of the secure rooms looked terrible, but they weren’t full of holes.

  The same did not go for the eleventh. Most of the carnage was located near the two stairwell doors. They had been mowed down as they tried to flee. Only two rooms had people in them and the number was small.

  I wondered about this. Why had the tenth floor gotten behind closed doors, but not the eleventh? I stopped a young woman who was coming out of the room. Her arm was bleeding and it looked like she had been shot.

  “Why did you not stop…” I stopped. I didn’t know how to ask a survivor why there were so many dead people around us. “Go on. Get your arm looked at.”

  “What was that?” Lazar asked me.

  “Why did so many people survive on tenth floor, but not the eleventh?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he seemed to think about it. “The way they planned and carried out the assault maybe?”

  “Like perhaps they picked floors?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and used
the elevators to coordinate the attacks as much as possible,” Lazar answered.

  “What is this floor?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “We should find out,” I told him and walked towards the stairs. I had a feeling that I knew exactly what floor this was. If I were right, the twelfth floor would be even worse.

  Three

  The door to the twelfth floor had no blood on it. We stood outside of it. Lazar knelt down and I shook my head. There were a lot of small noises coming from the other side of the door. It also didn’t have the same smell as the floors below. At all those doors, I had smelled blood, bodily fluids that were excreted after death, gunpowder, and body odor. This door only smelled of body odor.

  There was only one floor above us, the fourteenth, because they had not numbered the thirteenth. I always thought this was superstitious nonsense, but the Federal Law Offices did not have a thirteenth floor. I motioned for a group to stay here and took everyone else to the fourteenth floor. The metallic tang of blood filled my nostrils again as I leaned into it. There were definitely dead people on the other side. Lazar gave me a cryptic look, but knelt down. We entered the fourteenth floor just as we had the eleventh. There were no sentries, no sadists, no one torturing anyone, just dead bodies and locked doors.

  We evacuated the floor as quietly as possible. As the survivors left, I stared at the elevator.

  “Give me power to elevator four,” I said.

  “Why?” The voice came back.

  “I believe they are holding hostages on twelfth floor. If they are, we cannot breach the floor through the stairwells without a gun battle. I need a distraction.”

  “Hostages?” Lazar looked at me.

  “I did not smell blood or gunpowder when we were standing outside the door. That means they had not been firing many weapons on that floor. Why would you not fire weapons on it?”