Cyber Apocalypse (Book 3): As Our World Burns

by Hunt, Jack

  That’s where they were keeping Ryan.

  They strolled up to the house, birds wheeling overhead, a blue sky stretching above them. The moment Sophie locked eyes on Ryan, he cast his chin down, expecting her to be angry, but it wasn’t anger, more disappointment. Allowed to approach him, she simply did what any mother might and wrapped her arms around him and told him that she was glad to see he was safe and well. She kissed the top of his forehead and he apologized.

  The reunion was short-lived.

  There was no time for deep conversation.

  They were quickly bundled into a sedan with dark tinted windows and escorted the rest of the way to the city. It was a short drive, twenty or thirty minutes at the most. Along the way Danielle went over what they were to do, three times, and even had them repeat it back to ensure they understood.

  The heavy burden resting on her shoulders only magnified as they got closer.

  Los Angeles was a fiery furnace of smoke, flames, and rubble. Everywhere they turned they were greeted by the sight of disaster. It felt like she was entering hell itself.

  Danielle stared at her. “Our team will ensure you arrive safely at the destination. You don’t have to worry about threats.”

  “Really?” Sophie said sarcastically as she closed the rear door. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Dropped off ten streets from the location, they began the hike toward a bar on the corner of South Los Angeles Street and 5th Street. Along the way, Ryan opened up to her, prior to that he looked reluctant to have a conversation.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Did you find your daughter?”

  “We did.”

  “I’m glad.” He smiled as they surveyed the empty streets. “What did Alex have to say about this?”

  “He doesn’t know. He was gone when they collected me.”

  “Gone?”

  “He headed off to check out a safe zone this morning.”

  Ryan’s eyebrows shot up. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, I hope to God it’s not one of those too,” she said referring to what the assistant director had told her. “Anyway, how have you been?” she asked.

  “They’ve kept me busy. I wanted to tell you, Sophie, but I…”

  “You don’t need to explain. Okay. In your shoes I probably would have done the same thing. How are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’re about to meet your parents for the first time since you were two, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Must be nerve-racking.”

  “Yeah, I guess I never imagined it would be under these conditions.”

  She nodded. “Did they really kill your guardians?”

  “Seems so.”

  She snorted. “Doesn’t give me much hope then.”

  “No. No, Sophie, it wasn’t like that. The Valez family tried to screw them over. For money. It was extortion.”

  “Is that how they explained it away?”

  He shrugged as they climbed over rubble to a section of the street that was blocked after a large building had been destroyed. Vehicles were crushed below massive concrete slabs.

  It was an eerie feeling knowing that Homeland Security was eavesdropping on their conversation. Sophie placed her hand over the button that recorded audio to muffle her voice as she stopped walking. “Ryan, they plan on sending you back to jail after this.”

  “No, they said they would clear me for helping.”

  She shook her head. “They lied.”

  He sighed. “I should have figured.” He breathed in deeply and continued. She caught up with him, keeping her hand over the button. “Well I guess I deserve it. I caused all of this,” he said gesturing to the rubble.

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Yes I did. I’m not stupid, Sophie. I might not have anticipated what they had planned but handing over flaws in code to an enemy of America wasn’t going to end well, now was it?”

  She nodded. “We do a lot of things that don’t make sense for the ones we love even if they don’t reciprocate.” He looked at her and perhaps he got a sense that she was referring to him or maybe Alex. She looked up into the sky. Were they observing them from a satellite? Could they see her holding her hand over the audio transmitter? She let it go, imagining that Danielle was cursing at the thought of what they had been talking about. Although it wasn’t a secret she didn’t want them to hear everything, as it was clear they weren’t telling Ryan the truth.

  She couldn’t help but wonder how much of what she was told was true and what had been fabricated to get her to agree. As they got closer she trembled at the thought of it all going terribly wrong and dying in some godforsaken hell that once attracted millions every year.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me but we are getting closer,” Sophie said.

  “You won’t hear a reply but I can,” Ryan said.

  She frowned. Why had they given him a way to hear them and not her? She figured they would want her to know just in case there was a change of plans, that’s when she learned that it wasn’t her who needed to hear, it was Ryan. They had outfitted him with his own transmitter and receiver, a tiny invisible earpiece that couldn’t be noticed.

  They eventually reached a six-story hotel called the King Edward that sat across from the notorious Skid Row in downtown L.A. Below, painted in black was a bar called the King Eddy Saloon. Strolling up to the door she half expected it to be locked but it wasn’t. Ryan pulled back the steel security door and then pushed his way inside. It was pitch dark, and musty from where no windows had been opened in weeks. The aroma of alcohol permeated the air. From what she could make out, it was an old-school bar that dated back to the 1930s. The floors were checkered, black and white, and there was a bar that extended almost the full length of the room with a few basic tables and stools.

  “Hello?” Ryan asked calling out into the dark.

  Nothing came back except the echo of his voice.

  11

  Los Angeles

  Where were they? Sophie scanned the empty saloon. No movement. No sound. The only light came from a flashlight given to them by Danielle. Stools were overturned on tables, the bar no longer had bottles of liquor. Someone had been through and smashed the mirror behind the bar, and stolen whatever stock they had.

  Had the terrorists unlocked the main door before their arrival or was this the result of a break-in? As Sophie drifted the white light farther into the back, she noticed a tablet propped up against a stack of books. It had a label on the front on it that said: Play me.

  “Ryan,” she said, gesturing toward it.

  He hurried, threading his way around the tables to reach it.

  Ryan picked up the tablet and peeled off the sticky note and turned it on. The screen lit up and flooded their faces with a bright light. Was the FBI getting this? Instructions were on the screen telling them to go to the main doors and lock them, then to shift a large cabinet that was to the side of the doors into place.

  Of course they weren’t here, she thought.

  Who in their right mind would pick a location and show up? Surely the FBI banked on this? Ryan set the tablet down and together they did as instructed.

  As they stepped back from the pile of chairs, tables and cabinets she glanced at Ryan and he simply shrugged his shoulders. Were there still things he hadn’t told her? Was this all part of a game he was playing?

  Back at the tablet, the instructions on the screen had changed as if they’d been observing and waiting for them to complete the task.

  “They want us to go down to the basement,” Ryan said.

  “Which is where?”

  The words on the screen changed again. “Behind the bar.”

  Ryan carried the tablet as they went behind the bar and located a door with a series of stone steps that led into a musty dark room. “Ryan. I’m not sure about this,” she said placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “I won’t l
et anything happen to you,” he said reassuringly.

  “I should be saying that to you.”

  He smiled and ventured down; the flashlight beam bounced off the roughly hewn walls of stone. At the bottom it opened up into a damp space full of shelves and storage. Most of it had been rifled through, so boxes were scattered, bottles of liquor smashed leaving glass everywhere. She sniffed the air. There was a strong smell of gasoline coming from somewhere. Sophie cast the light downward but the concrete was dry.

  All the while, the instructions on the screen kept changing, leading them farther back beneath the saloon. Who knew what trap might lay ahead? She was half expecting any second now to hear a voice or see one of the terrorists but it was eerily quiet.

  Danielle and Martin had been observing everything from inside a van several streets over. Although they’d told Sophie they would have them in sight at all times, she’d only meant via the video streaming back to them.

  They couldn’t get closer out of fear of being spotted. The video streaming back was choppy, it kept cutting in and out, but the tech guy said any number of things could be causing that.

  They’d watched them enter.

  Seen them find a tablet.

  However, upon picking up the device and turning it on that’s when they lost audio and sight. A lump formed in her throat.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Axe, what’s happening?”

  “It could be a glitch in the equipment.”

  “A glitch? You said this was state-of-the-art.”

  “It is but that doesn’t mean it’s without its flaws.”

  “You better get that back online in the next five seconds or we’re sending in the teams.”

  The basement had colorful but faded murals on the walls, one depicting a Dutch girl serving beer to a sailor, another showing a police officer addressing an angry mob. What had this place been used for?

  After they followed a series of narrow corridors, it led them to an opening. In front of it were piles of bricks as if someone had recently knocked a hole in the wall. Sophie nearly lost her footing as she clambered over until they were on the other side. Another huge dark passage fed off into a maze of more corridors. Above them were air vents, and rusty old pipes that snaked away into the darkness.

  “What’s it say now?”

  Ryan squinted then his eyes widened. “Run!”

  “What?”

  She heard a whoosh. As Sophie peered back through the hole in the wall, her jaw dropped. Bright orange flames licked up the walls, filling the passageway they’d just come through with fire and smoke.

  The SWAT team tore open the doorway after pounding the steel until they managed to warp the hinges. Seconds later it was peeled back like the top of a can revealing a barrier. One by one they yanked out chairs and pushed tables away, before one of them managed to climb through a small opening and squeeze inside.

  But it was too late.

  An explosion rocked the saloon, killing the officer inside as fire consumed everything in its path. Thick, black smoke poured out as the others retreated to a safe distance and looked on helplessly.

  Danielle’s stomach dropped.

  Were they dead or was this just a ploy?

  How did they even know? Few had been privy to information regarding the location until she gave the go-ahead to move in. Hell, even Danielle wasn’t told where it would be until the dropoff. Was Ryan right? Had there been someone in the organization working for IJO? Had they tipped them off? At a complete loss for what to do, she had to believe they wouldn’t go to all this trouble only to kill their son. “Martin. What do we know about this place?”

  “King Eddy, it’s a popular hangout.”

  “Is there any way someone might have had access to the bar through the hotel?”

  “No, except for...” he paused for a second. “No, that can’t be.”

  “What?’

  “It’s bricked up. They wouldn’t…” he stumbled over his words.

  “Spit it out, Martin.”

  “King Eddy Saloon was known to have a speakeasy below the bar. You know, in the time of prohibition. There was a network of tunnels that led from the bar to City Hall and other areas of the city.”

  “You are joking, right?”

  “No but they’d bricked up those entrances. It was too dangerous for people to travel through and…” he trailed off.

  Danielle balled a fist. “Shit! I want a map of the underground now! Dispatch teams to every known area that those tunnels come out at. And get me eyes in the sky. Lock this place down. No one gets in or out without my permission.”

  Sophie gasped, holding an arm over her face as she crawled to her feet. The explosion had rocked the ground, creating fissures that turned walls into rubble and caved in a large section of the passageway. One moment she could see, the next it went black with smoke and grit. “Ryan? Ryan!” she yelled, coughing hard.

  “Over here,” he croaked.

  She tapped the flashlight against her hand a few times as she headed in the direction of his voice. Sophie stumbled over debris and nearly lost her footing as she climbed up a large section of fallen wall and squeezed through a gap of wood, brick and metal to where he was stuck.

  “Are you injured?”

  “No, but…” He strained as he pushed on a section of wood that had fallen and pinned him into a tiny space. Sophie wedged her flashlight between two pipes running along the wall and then looked for a piece of wood or steel she could use to wedge between and create some leverage so he could slip out. Coughing and gasping, she felt around on the ground.

  “Quite the homecoming,” she said jokingly.

  “Yep.”

  “Well we can forget the cavalry coming to save the day. The FBI probably think we’re dead.”

  “I’m sure they’d like that,” he replied.

  “Can you hear them?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan replied pressing a finger into his ear.

  Finally, she found some piping that had come away from the wall in the collapse. It was heavy and longer than she wanted but it would have to do. She dragged it up to where he was and threaded it through the small opening until they could get it wedged in a tight spot. Next, she used her body weight to push down. Wood creaked and metal groaned as it began to shift.

  “C’mon you bastard!” she bellowed as she strained to get it to lift high enough for him to get out.

  “Hold it there. Just hold it.”

  Fortunately, he managed to squeeze out before she lost her grip and the whole thing gave way, disappearing in a plume of dust and grit.

  Ryan took a second or two to catch his breath before he lifted the tablet. The screen was cracked but it was still working.

  “Where now?” she asked.

  Before them on the tablet was a grid of tunnels underneath the ground, and a red pulsating dot on the screen indicating where to go. It was City Hall, a good ten-minute hike according to the instructions. Sophie shone the light into the darkness and they carried on, breathless and trembling.

  On the surface, Homeland Security and the FBI were frantic. Two Black Hawks circled overhead, they had drones surveying each of the streets within a three-mile radius, while one of the team had brought up a list of locations that the tunnels might come out at. Martin reeled off the history as if that would somehow prove that he wasn’t a complete moron. Unknown to many, unless they were history buffs or friends of those owning local establishments, far below downtown Los Angeles was 11 miles of underground tunnels and even more waiting to be discovered. The tunnels had been used by the bootleggers of old, during the prohibition era when Congress banned liquor to prevent people from becoming intoxicated. It was meant to benefit families, and help wives who had to deal with a drunken husband, abuse and poverty. The tunnels were created back in the early 1900s to deal with congested streets, but by the mid-1920s they were being used to sneak booze into illegal drinking establishments
called speakeasies.

  “So what have we got?” she asked, hoping for anything worthwhile.

  “City Hall, the Civic Center, Millennium Biltmore Hotel, and of course the King Eddy, and any number of establishments throughout this region,” he said using his finger to draw a red circle on a touchscreen.

  “Perfect!” She brought a hand up to her face and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Danielle. Had I known sooner I would have said, and well, those tunnels have been closed off beneath establishments for years. I didn’t expect this.”

  “No. None of us did but that’s of no use to them now.”

  The steady trickle of water running down the walls from the street above dominated as they trudged along the musty passageway. The air was thick with humidity, overbearing and suffocating. Decades of grime, dust and God knows what else had formed over brickwork, pipes and boards of wood.

  “You getting anything over the receiver?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It went dead when we picked up that tablet. They probably used some kind of countersurveillance equipment to block the recording,” Ryan said looking down at the screen.

  “We getting closer?”

  “Nearly there. Just up ahead.”

  “When we see them, if they let me go, I want you to know, Ryan, I’ve enjoyed being your mother, if only for a short while.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, right.”

  She glanced at him with a smile. “Okay, it’s been hell but at least it wasn’t boring.”

  He nodded. “That’s for sure. So do you think you and Alex will work it out?”

  “No but that’s okay. Not everyone does. I used to think that I would grow old with one person, you know, end up in a porch rocker with my grandchildren but… well… I also thought the world wouldn’t go to hell in a handbasket.”

  “Do you still have feelings for him?”