by Doug Felton
To the left of Josh and Raisa, a young couple had been stopped by a soldier. He was looking at their IDs and asking them questions. From a distance, they could have been Josh and Raisa. If the girl in the Baltimore station had reported what she’d seen, then Zeke would know by now. Of course, he would stick to the cover story that Raisa was really someone wanted in connection with the kidnapping, but the thought that he and Barrymore knew what she looked like now and where she was heading made her momentarily nauseated.
“You okay?” Josh asked as she stumbled.
“Yeah, but we really need to get out of here.”
There was no guarantee that even if Raisa could prove her identity, she’d be safe. After what she’d had seen the last couple of days, she knew Zeke would happily frame her as the villain to protect his power. In fact, he could pin the whole Tom Cruise thing on her if he wanted to. Scott, the tech guy, could probably put her digital fingerprints all over it and maybe even show an “unedited” take, revealing Raisa as the person in front of the camera. Zeke would have to work on coming up with a motive for her allegedly bizarre behavior, but no one would care why she had done it if they believed she really had.
Reaching the top of the steps, Raisa could see people coming and going on the sidewalk outside. It was dark as if it were about to rain, adding to the foreboding feelings taking over her emotions.
“Hold up,” a commanding voice said behind them.
Raisa cut her eyes to Josh, who gave a slight shake of his head and squeezed her hand as he kept his pace steady. She did the same. Only a few more meters. Maybe the soldier was talking to someone else.
“You two, stop!”
No, he was definitely talking to them. The door was almost in reach. Raisa allowed herself to glance over her shoulder and saw that the guard would reach them before they’d reach the door.
“Go,” she said, as they ran the last several steps towards the exit. Forgetting her newfound speed and strength, she hit the door before she knew it, shattering the glass and busting through it.
People screamed, and Raisa couldn’t blame them. The whole city must have been on edge with talk of the Ten Thousand coming.
Josh joined her on the sidewalk outside the station. “Nice way to keep a low profile,” he said.
The scene on the street was dichotomous. People came and went, going about their daily business as best they could, while New World military transports, barricades and protesters with anti-Ten Thousand signs blocked many of the streets. It hadn’t taken the protesters long to organize after Zeke’s announcement earlier in the day. The city felt like a balloon ready to pop.
“This isn’t good,” Raisa said as the first drops of rain fell from the dark and jagged clouds.
As it fell more heavily, the wind pushed the rain sideways, sending people on the busy downtown sidewalks scurrying for cover or opening umbrellas. New World soldiers were stationed at every corner, reminding Raisa of what Charlotte was like when she was a little girl. A heavy concentration of soldiers to her left stood in front of the barricades, redirecting pedestrian and motor traffic away from that part of the city.
“What’s all this?” Josh asked.
Behind Josh and Raisa, the soldiers from the station reached the door and stepped through. Up the street, soldiers ran toward them. Across the street, the sidewalk was clear of military personnel.
“There,” Raisa pointed to the sidewalk on the other side as the soldiers closed in.
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Good idea except for the ton of traffic between here and there.”
Without waiting to explain herself, Raisa took two steps and jumped over the cars whizzing by on the street and landed on the other side. It felt effortless.
“Come on,” she yelled.
Josh backed up and took a couple of steps, leaping as the guard from the station reached him. Having not yet explored the bounds of his strength, Josh overcompensated and landed on a ledge of a brick building in front of Raisa He was at least six stories high. It was another fourteen floors to the top.
“Go!” Raisa yelled, looking up to him as the rain pounded her face.
Soldiers were stopping traffic and crossing the street as she rounded the corner of the building. Raisa ducked into the first alley she came to. With the rain clouds already blocking the sun, the alley was nearly dark. Halfway down the alley, she stopped and scanned the building rising above her. This side of the building was completely flat, with no windows, or fire escapes, or anything she could use to get to the top. She’d have to do it on her own. Here goes nothing. With all the strength and energy she could muster, she crouched and then jumped, willing herself towards the roof, twenty stories up.
As the roof of the building rushed toward her, Raisa extended her hands, ready to grab the ledge, but her adrenaline converted exhilaration to panic as gravity’s claws grabbed hold of her, snatching her just short of her goal. Raisa’s stomach leaped into her throat as her upward motion shifted gears and became a downward pull. A quick glance down showed her there was nothing to break her fall. All she could do was hope to land on her feet and diffuse as much impact as possible with a roll. And hope her broken bones healed quickly.
“Gotcha.”
Raisa heard Josh’s voice and felt his grip at the same time. He had caught her just in time. She felt like a soaking wet rag doll, dangling twenty floors off the ground until he pulled her up and over the side of the roof’s ledge.
“Have you always been this hard to protect?” Josh asked, breathing hard.
“No,” she said. “Sometimes harder.”
Josh smiled and then got back to business. “The buildings are close enough together that we can jump from roof to roof to get out of here. With the rain, hopefully, no one’s looking up.”
The sound of feet hitting the roof behind them caused Raisa and Josh to spin at the same time. In the darkness of the storm, Raisa could make out three silhouettes.
“It’s not the people looking up that you’ve got to worry about,” one of them said in a deep voice. “It’s the people already up here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Same Night
A light rain fell as Zeke stepped out of the New World transport. Someone with an umbrella stood at his side and walked with him up the steps of the building that housed Mayor Reeves’ office. Zeke’s suit and tie were a different look from his usual attire, but he didn’t mind them any more than he minded the costumes he wore on stage. In both cases, he was playing a part.
This would be the last big meeting Zeke would have before the Ten Thousand arrived in Pittsburgh. He knew Colton Reeves didn’t want them there, but Zeke wouldn’t give him any other choice.
Reeves was like a distant uncle to Zeke. He’d been the mayor of Pittsburgh for as long as he could remember, and because Reeves was a man of influence, Zeke’s father used his money to forge a friendship. There’s nothing quite like large campaign donations to create a bond between two people. Zeke could remember the mayor at his house for dinner parties on more than a few occasions, Reeves patting him on the head as a youngster. Zeke couldn’t imagine how the legendary mayor must feel now, taking orders from a young upstart, but he didn’t really care.
The doors to the elevator opened, and Colton Reeves was waiting, along with two associates, to greet him.
“Welcome. It’s good to see you again, Ezekiel.”
Zeke was sure that using his full name was a subtle reminder that Reeves knew him back when everybody called him Ezekiel. Reeves was a shrewd politician, and he had survived all these years by following his political instincts. But those instincts wouldn’t work with Zeke. He wasn’t subject to the limitations of beings bound by morality or mortality. Having shed both, he possessed a sense of freedom that few others had.
Zeke’s first instinct in response to Reeve’s posturing was to kill one of his two associates, establishing the pecking order. But then he remembered how impulsive decisions often made life more difficult. Taking c
are of the doctor’s body in his office had been a waste of time and resources. No, there were other ways to convince the mayor to be a team player.
Zeke extended his hand. “It is so good to see you again.”
Until this point, it had been Barrymore who dealt with Mayor Reeves about bringing the Ten Thousand to Pittsburgh, but their discussions had been about a temporary solution. Zeke was there to let Mayor Reeves know that it wouldn’t be temporary, after all. Pittsburgh would become the first colony of immortals.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Zeke said.
“Yes, congratulations on your new position. I must say that I was surprised.”
Zeke sat in a chair across from Reeves in his office. “These are troubling times, and I’m glad to lend whatever insight I might have if it means bringing about a satisfying solution.”
Reeves must have known Zeke was about to drop something big on him because he didn’t smile or comment. Zeke continued. “I need Pittsburgh.”
“You need Pittsburgh?”
“I do.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why do you need Pittsburgh?”
Colton knew why Zeke wanted Pittsburgh. If he didn’t, he was an idiot, and Zeke knew that whatever else might be true of Colton Reeves, he was not an idiot. These were the games politicians played, only Zeke was growing tired of them.
He dropped his polished politician act and dug at an itch in his ear before he spoke again. “Look, Colton, the Ten Thousand are coming to Pittsburgh, and they will stay in Pittsburgh. There’s no way after everything that’s happened for them to just fade away. Raisa’s dream that they will integrate into society is a fantasy. They’ll always be different, so I want to give them a home, and it's Pittsburgh.”
Reeves’ face turned red, but his expression never changed, nor did his posture, the way he sat in his chair like King of Pittsburgh. “I have spent the last two decades of my life rebuilding this city after that damned virus. I have sacrificed my family and my health, at times, to hold this place together. If you think I will give it up because some snot-nosed kid comes in here and tells me to, I don’t care what your title is, you’ve seriously underestimated me.”
“Good, Colton. Now we’re being honest with one another.” Zeke reached over and slapped Reeves on the arm. “So, in the spirit of full disclosure, you need to know something. You can’t stop the Ten Thousand. No one can. I mean, maybe some heavy munitions dropped on them from drones, but that’ll never happen. You don’t have enough power to slow them down, even if you combine your police force with every gun-toting nut in the state. Hell, you could combine all the police forces in Pennsylvania, and you couldn’t stop them. And we both know that’s not going to happen.
“Do you want to know why you won’t be able to stop them, Colton? Because we are not like you. We are not weak. We are not fragile. Did you see the video of the attack at the pizza shop?”
“I did.”
Zeke got up and riffled through Reeves’ desk drawer until he found what he was looking for, something sharp. He pulled the letter opener out of the drawer and walked back to where Reeves was sitting.
He removed his jacket and laid in over a chair as he said, “In that video, Hudson Phoenix was stabbed in the abdomen and healed immediately before scaling a wall and escaping. Would it surprise you, Colton, to know he’s not the only one like that?”
Zeke unbuttoned his shirt at his stomach. Reeves didn’t try to stop him from completing his demonstration. With his shirt pulled aside, he plunged the letter opener into his stomach, twice. Zeke dropped the makeshift knife and grabbed the chair to steady himself. The pain seared through his abdomen, but almost as quickly, the tingling sensation started, and his bloody wound closed. In a matter of minutes, it was gone.
Zeke wiped the blood away with a towel he found in the private office restroom while Reeves watched him, mouth agape.
“You can’t kill us,” Zeke said. He knew it wasn’t true; they could be killed if a major organ were destroyed, but why ruin a powerful presentation with details. “The Ten Thousand are a tsunami heading your way, and the best way to handle a tsunami is to get out of the way. So, here’s what we’re going to do. You and I will hold a press conference tomorrow in which we announce that Pittsburgh is to become a colony for the Ten Thousand. You can refuse and resist but, if you do, many people will die in your city.”
Reeves looked as if he were at a loss for words for the first time in his life. His mouth opened and closed several times before he got a sentence out. “I can’t guarantee that citizens won’t try to stop them.”
“Oh, I can guarantee that they will,” Zeke said.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get hung up on the details. What’s important is that you direct the residents living east of I-579 to leave.”
“Where will they go?” Reeves asked.
“I don’t care. It’s your city. Figure something out.”
Reeves stood and stepped close to Zeke, who didn’t move. “I swear, if I ever find a way to kill you, I will.”
Zeke smiled and put his hand on the Mayor’s shoulder. “That’s fine. In the meantime, we have a press conference for which to prepare.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The three figures drew closer to Josh and Raisa, revealing their rain-soaked faces. Raisa didn’t recognize them, but they weren’t dressed as soldiers, and given the fact that they were all her age and had turned up on the roof of a twenty-story building, she guessed they were part of Zeke’s private little army.
“What are you doing up here?” the stranger asked.
“Same as you, I suspect,” Raisa said. “Trying to stay away from the soldiers.”
“You were down on the street, I thought we agreed to stay off the streets.”
Good, they don’t know who I am. The new-look combined with the nighttime rain must have concealed Raisa’s identity. And, as far as she knew, they didn’t know who Josh was either.
“We thought it would be okay,” Josh answered. “Obviously, we were wrong.”
The man tilted his head with a suspicious look. “What are you even doing away from the group?”
This guy was obviously the leader of this trio and the only one who looked as if he could put up a fight. Former army or law enforcement, maybe. The other two were probably flipping burgers or studying chemistry with their friends a week ago. If they had been with Zeke since he had left Raven Rock, then they’d seen fighting, but that hardly made them trained soldiers. Raisa felt comfortable that she and Josh could handle them if they needed to. And it looked as if they might need to.
“We thought it would be okay to stretch our legs.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
“You thought it would be okay? What are your names?” As the man spoke, his stance became more cautious.
“Look, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, we just wanted to get some fresh air.” Josh was working hard to sound casual. “We’ll head back right away.”
“Okay,” the man said. “Lead the way.”
End of the line, Raisa thought. She readied herself for a fight when Josh shrugged as if it were no big deal and took three confident steps in the direction that the men had come from. As he was passing them, he pivoted and struck the leader in the throat. The man grabbed his throat as Josh launched his heel into the man’s chest, sending him sprawling.
The other two hesitated, surprised. That was all the invitation Raisa needed. Feeling the energy of her newly-gained strength rippling beneath her skin, she launched herself toward one of the two, leading with her feet. Raisa caught him squarely in the chest, and he crumpled in a pile. Without pause, she swung her foot in a roundhouse kick at the second man. His head snapped to the side as his body dropped to the roof. Fighting Elliot had given her a distinct advantage. Both men were down, but Raisa knew they wouldn’t stay down. They may have been inexperienced fighters, but they were still superhuman.
The man Josh had take
n down was up again and on the offensive. He and Josh traded blows with neither gaining the advantage. Raisa wondered how to end a fight with augments since knocking them out was so difficult. She watched as one of the two guys she’d taken down got to his feet. His fall had taken him close to the edge of the roof, which had a waist-high barrier around the edge.
Raisa charged the man, lowering her head, driving her shoulder into his chest. The impact sent him scrambling backward and over the edge of the roof. Raisa blocked out his scream as he fell and turned her attention to her other opponent. He looked scared now, but also highly motivated.
He rushed Raisa, tackling her. The rough surface of the roof scraped her skin as he straddled her and began punching her in the face and the side of her head. Even as he struck her, healing power raced through Raisa’s body to repair the damage he was doing, but he was strong, and his beating was taking its toll, with blood gushing from her nose. She got her hands up to deflect as many blows as she could, but it wasn’t enough. Soon he’d weaken her to where she couldn’t fight back.
Panic gripped Raisa when the man hitting her jerked to one side and rolled away. Opening her eyes, she saw Josh turning back to his opponent, who had been down but was getting up. He must have taken the split-second break to level a kick at her attacker.
Rolling to her knees, Raisa found an eighteen-inch piece of rebar next to her hand. She grabbed the steel bar and brought it down hard on her opponent’s shin. His leg snapped as he screamed in pain. She brought it down again on his other leg with the same results. Raisa was panting now, but she used the energy she had left to pick up the man. Lifting him above her head, she walked to the edge of the roof as the man pleaded for his life.
