by James Hunt
They all looked back at one man, whom Sarah determined was their “leader” and the brains of the operation—and who just so happened to be wielding the pistol—waiting for their orders. All of them were crouched low, poised to strike if the order came. All the while, Sarah couldn’t stop staring at one of the men’s tattoos. She tilted her head to the side and scrunched her face, trying to figure out what the hell it was. She pointed her finger at it. “Is that a skunk on your arm?”
“Get her!”
The skunk-tattooed man lunged first, and Sarah quickly swung the tip of the crowbar across his face, sending three teeth out of his mouth and his body to the ground. Two more assailants with pocketknives jabbed the air around her stomach as she swiveled left and right, avoiding the blades. She gripped both ends of the crowbar and brought the side of it down against their forearms, cracking bones and forcing them to release the knives from their hands. She kept the same grip on the crowbar and shoved the piece of iron into the top rows of their teeth.
With four of their group down, the remaining eight—minus the fearless leader—circled Sarah with what was left of their gumption, each of them jerking nervously, jutting their knives, bats, and sticks like Neanderthals prodding a saber-tooth during the dawn of men. Finally, one of them broke ranks and entered the circle of death, where Sarah jabbed the end of the crowbar into the man’s eye, and he dropped to the ground, moaning in pain.
Another lunge came from behind. Sarah ducked, missing the swing of the bat, and swept the man’s legs out from under him, where he joined his comrade and received a swift crack across the jaw from the crowbar’s end. Both men gripped their injuries, acting as though their hands would be able to heal their wounds as long as they kept hold really, really tight.
The remaining five bum rushed her with a variety of punches, kicks, swings, and jabs, which she blocked and counterstruck. Except for a fist that managed to land on the tip of her chin—to which she immediately retaliated with the crowbar to the groin—she didn’t have a scratch left on her. When she was done, all but the leader were crawling around on the asphalt, trying to escape any further punishment.
The pistol shook in his hand, and he finally dropped it and put his hands in the air. “It’s not even loaded, all right?”
Sarah took a few steps forward, making sure to step on as many hands, arms, and legs as she could on her way over to him. She patted the end of the crowbar in her palm in an ominous cadence until she was standing right in front of him. “I knew it wasn’t loaded.” Confusion spread over the man’s face as he slowly took a step back. “Because if it was, I would have shot you before you left the alleyway. Now, are you going to be doing this again anytime soon?”
The man shook his head. “N-no. No, I w-won’t.”
“Good,” Sarah said. “Because the next time I see you, or any of these thugs, thinking you can muscle your way into getting whatever you want, I won’t be taking it easy on you.” The man nodded, and Sarah smiled. She stood there for a moment, letting the suspense build along with the man’s trembling. “Boo!” Sarah jerked her head forward, and the man flinched then sprinted as fast as he could in the other direction while the rest of his men joined him in the full retreat.
Sarah twirled the crowbar in her hands, chuckling to herself at the sight of the goons running with their tails between their legs. She dropped the crowbar, and the piece of iron smacked into the concrete with a sharp clank. The store owner came out of his shop, looking at her as if he’d just seen a ghost. “I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon.”
The old man didn’t have much hair left on his head, with the exception of a few wisps of white that fell across the very top. His hands were crooked with arthritis, and he walked with a limp and a hunch in his back. He gently took Sarah’s hand and held it between his wrinkled and calloused palms. “Thank you.” He spoke with a slightly broken accent that she couldn’t place.
Sarah didn’t respond with anything else. She found herself staring into his eyes, and she couldn’t figure out why until she realized that they were the same color as Ella’s. She quickly pulled back her hand and started running. The increased speed of her jog accelerated her heart rate, her breathing, and the sweat forming on her face and under her clothes. She could hear Bryce’s voice echoing in her ear, asking her if she was all right, asking her what she was doing, but she just kept running.
Move. Just keep moving until you find them.
The six monitors on Bryce Milks’s desk were filled with everything from Sarah’s escapades in Chicago to other field agents in Moscow, London, Beijing, Paris, and Rome. Any major city that the GSF could deploy assets to help with the global grid failure where they had boots on the ground, they did. And as busy as Bryce was, the rest of the HQ was in just as much chaos. There wasn’t a single support or field agent who wasn’t stretched beyond their means. But probably none as much as Sarah.
Despite both his and Mack’s warnings that she was going to burn herself out, she would only come back to HQ for food or a quick restock of ammo or water. She had turned herself into a machine, but even Bryce knew that machines could only run for so long.
“Has she taken a break yet?” Johnny asked.
“No,” Bryce answered. “Not yet.”
Johnny shook his head and went back to his monitors. “Christ.”
Each time Bryce brought it up with her, she would shrug it off, chalking it up to the fact that the rest of the field agents didn’t have the luxury of returning to HQ the number of times she did. The field agents abroad had a safe house, which Bryce reiterated each time she brought that up, but she would respond that he needed to go and pull his head out of his own ass.
It was all a coping mechanism, though, and Bryce just so happened to be on the receiving end of it. If it weren’t for the fact that he was in her ear the entire time, providing support, then she probably wouldn’t even be talking to anyone. He had to keep the lines of dialogue open. The worst thing for her right now was to be alone.
“Bryce!” Mack said, stepping out of his office in the middle of the floor.
Bryce quickly transferred the feed from his monitors to his phone, slid it into his pocket, and kept his headset on as he hurried over to the boss’s office. He shut the door behind him, and Mack pointed to the video feeds mounted on his office walls. “This isn’t good, Bryce. It’s been over a week, and we have no idea where this guy is?”
Bryce fiddled with his hands then pulled the phone out of his pocket, manipulating some of the satellite’s recent data. “Sir, I understand your frustration, but if they don’t keep the piece of software that’s doing this turned on, then I can’t track it.”
Mack stomped back and forth behind his desk, rattling the stained, empty coffee mug, which he absentmindedly picked up and brought to his lips. When the life-sustaining liquid didn’t greet his mouth, he pressed his intercom button so hard, he almost broke it. “Grace! Where the hell is my coffee?”
The voice that responded was polite and even toned. “Right away, Mr. Farr.” Three seconds later, Grace walked in at a deceptively leisurely pace and poured Mack a fresh cup. She gave Bryce a smile that made his cheeks flush, and he turned to watch her leave. Even after she was out the door and it closed behind her, Bryce stared at the space she had left.
“Bryce!” Mack said, thumping his fist onto the desk, causing the fresh coffee to slosh over the side of his mug.
Bryce snapped to attention with a deer-caught-in-headlights face. “Yes, sorry, the door... I just think that... something... the door...” Bryce continued the pointing and rambling for another few seconds and quit just before Mack looked like the top of his head was about to erupt in a fiery explosion of death threats.
“We need to find these people,” Mack said, his voice slightly calmer. He pointed back up to the screens behind him. “There are millions—millions, Bryce—of people who are struggling to stay alive right now. The governments can’t handle this type of chaos, and neither can we.
We have to get the power back on.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll try reworking a few of my coding sequences with the satellite to see if I can pick up a trail.” Bryce turned to leave, and just before he got to the door, Mack called out to him.
“How’s she holding up?” Mack asked.
Bryce figured he’d ask about her, and he’d fought back and forth over how he wanted to handle it. He knew that Sarah wouldn’t want Mack knowing anything, but at the same time, he knew Mack just wanted to help. “She’s trying her best, sir.”
Mack nodded, his head hanging low between his shoulders as he hunched over his desk. Bryce watched the lines on his face fold in the strained effort of concern. “Keep an eye on her, Bryce. She’s going through a lot right now.”
“Just one more reason to find the bastards behind all this,” Bryce answered. Mack smiled and nodded.
Once he made it back to his desk, Bryce collapsed into his chair and transferred the images from his phone back to his computer. Johnny looked over at him, raising his eyebrows in the hopes of hearing any good news, but Bryce simply shook his head. He turned his attention to the screen in the bottom left-hand corner that was always up, no matter what.
The window Bryce maximized brought with it millions of data points. This was the GSF satellite. It was the nerve center of their entire operation. It allowed Bryce and the rest of the support agents to track and assess any situation, anywhere in the world. The satellite was the hub of their communication, intelligence assimilation, and security. It was one of the most sophisticated pieces of hardware in the world, if not the most sophisticated. It was Bryce’s baby, and he made sure to always take care of it.
While Bryce did his best to try and locate the software, known as Global Power, that was responsible for knocking out every modern power grid in the world, the rest of the images on the screen continued to be filled with nothing but destruction. Gangs, looters, terrorists, extremists, all taking advantage of those who didn’t have the ability to protect themselves. A sour mix churned in his stomach as he watched the feed. It was the perfect environment for the rats and cockroaches to scurry out from the cracks and shadows.
Bryce glanced over to his neighbor, Johnny, and noticed his agent on an unintentional path to a group of armed men. “Johnny.”
The noise brought Johnny out of whatever daydream he was caught in. “Shit. Thanks, Bryce.” Johnny pulled up the screen and notified his agent. “Vinny, you’ve got a lot of action happening at the intersection of Karmanitskiy and Troilinskyiy. No firearms in the group, but quite a few blades.”
Every single agent in the field was putting him- or herself at greater risk of exposure the longer this went on. As well trained as these guys were, Bryce knew that with the amount of people in the city and the longer they went without any supplies of food and water, the more desperate they would become. All it would take would be one stray ricochet to bring an agent down. No amount of training could prepare you for something like that.
2
The room was dark and damp and smelled of shit. The width of the box was less than an arm’s length, but Ben had given up trying to maneuver around what little space he had. He just sat in the corner, tucked in a ball, doing his best to stay out of the mess he’d reserved for the corner opposite where he sat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen sunlight—or any light, for that matter. He could have been trapped inside for days, weeks, or months. But he knew it couldn’t have been that long. While his urine stung when he peed, he was still secreting water.
Whenever Ben felt his mind slip into the blank space of insanity and madness, he forced all his concentration onto his family. His whole body would shake, his eyes squinted shut, looking at the faces of his daughter, his son, and his wife. He just wanted them to be safe. He just wanted to make sure they were all right. That’s all that mattered to him now.
The door to his cell opened and blinded him with the whitest light he’d ever seen, revealing the slop and mess he’d been living in. His face was slightly bruised, and his lips were chapped and split. He knew his body was dehydrated, but everything had become so foggy that he sometimes forgot how he’d arrived in the tiny death cell.
Two pairs of arms lifted him from the ground and dragged his motionless body out of the cell and into the white light still blinding him. Slowly, the light morphed into blurred shapes, and he felt himself being pulled into another room and set on a chair. The room was clean, and he became aware of the polished-steel table in front of him.
More figures entered. Ben couldn’t see their faces, but the shapes of their bodies started to come into focus. They looked more like people and less like the shapeless aliens that had extracted him earlier. One of them was talking to him. Ben could hear his voice, but it was nothing but mumbled jargon. It wasn’t until the hard smack across his face, stirring him awake from his stupor, that the man’s words finally reached his ears in the coherent manner in which they were intended.
“Mr. Hill,” the man repeated. “Where is your sister?”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, and the features of the man standing in front of him finally came into focus. The man was tall—taller than anyone he’d ever seen before. The face was hard, emotionless. Behind the emotionless man was a large piece of mirrored glass. He caught a brief glimpse of himself and recoiled.
“Where is your sister, Mr. Hill?” the man repeated, keeping the same robotic tone as before.
“My family. I want to see my family.” Their faces came to his mind slowly, like a beached vessel rising with the incoming tide. The longer he concentrated on them, the higher the water rose, lifting his mind from the muck it’d been stuck in for the past several days. The tall man paused then snapped his fingers, and the mirrored glass transformed into a window. Inside, Ben could see his wife, Becca, his son, Matthew, and his daughter, Ella.
The three looked healthy but tired, especially his wife. She sat in the corner while the kids played on the floor with a few toys. She bounced her knee, chewing her fingernail with an obsessive nervousness that she reserved for moments when she felt stressed.
Ben rose from his seat, the restricting hands no longer keeping him down. His eyes watered, and his bottom lip quivered more intensely the closer he moved to the window. He pressed his hands against the glass, his fingers and palms spreading flat. “Becca.” The word came out as a whisper, followed by the names of his children. He patted the window with his hand. The glass had the feel and thickness of concrete, each hit with his palm doing nothing more than creating a dull smack. He beat the glass harder, his voice rising, screaming their names. But no matter how hard he beat the glass, no matter how loud he screamed, they never looked up. He was invisible to them.
Tears and snot dribbled down his face as the two guards pulled him from the window, leaving nothing but his smudged fingerprints on the glass. When he was forced back down into his chair, the stone-faced man snapped his fingers again, and the window returned to the mirrored glass, where Ben saw his reflection once more, but in a graver state than before. “Bring them back. I want to talk to them, now!”
The tall man stepped around the table and sat on the edge, right next to the dribble of spit that had flown from Ben’s mouth. He pulled a napkin from the inside of his suit jacket and wiped the table down, restoring it to the same pristine cleanliness as before. He folded the napkin up and left it rested neatly on the table.
Before Ben had time to react, a hard right cross knocked him out of his chair and onto the ground. The blow brought back the dizzying confusion and blurred figures from before. He wobbled on all fours, his arms and legs almost too weak to support him. The left side of his face felt numb, tingly, and swollen. He looked up from the floor, and the blur of another fist crashed into his nose, knocking him backward.
The tall man lifted Ben off the ground and slammed him up against the wall, his feet completely off the floor. The back of his head cracked hard against the concrete, sending another wave of
pain through his skull. Ben did his best to focus, but the pounding in his head combined with the ringing in his ears made it hard for him to just breathe.
“If you don’t tell me where your sister is, I’m going to bring one of your kids into this room, and I’m going to shoot them in front of you, and that will continue until you’ve either told me where to find your sister or you’ve run out of children.”
“Chicago,” Ben answered.
“Where in Chicago?”
“3324 North Clifton Avenue.”
The man let go of Ben’s collar, and he dropped to the floor. The two guards picked Ben up and carried him back into the dark cell from which they’d collected him. The door clanged shut, and Ben was once again sealed into darkness. He crawled back into the corner and curled up into a ball, shaking, the sting from his wounds still fresh on his skin.
Why did these people want his sister? What did she do? He may have just sentenced his sister to a fate worse than his own, and for that he would always be regretful, but he hoped she’d understand why he did it. Matt and Ella were just as important to her as they were to him.
Heath wiped the blood from his knuckles and tossed the dirty rag into the trash can. His steps were quick and precise down the hallway. The men behind him had trouble keeping up with his long strides and had to step twice as fast to keep pace.
Rick’s secretary was just outside his door, and she gave him a smile as he approached. “You can go right in, Heath. He’s been waiting for you.”
Heath nodded, and he straightened his tie and buttoned his jacket upon entering. He pushed the door open, and the men following him halted, standing outside the door as it slowly closed and fighting like children trying to sneak a look into the closet where the Christmas presents were stored.
Heath had worked for men of all different varieties with different rules, but none of them aligned as closely with his own until he’d met Mr. Demps. He’d heard of the man long before he started working for him. In fact, it was a referral from another client that had brought him under his wing. That was nine years ago. After that, he decided that this was the last man he’d render his services to.
