Chapter 20
General Robert Mistlethwakey stood before
a barricade of concrete lane dividers and sandbags. “This is of course merely a stop-gap
measure,” he was saying. “At this point,
we're not fighting; we're trying to keep the fighting contained. So far, this is still a police action,
bolstered by deputized troops. I, along
with other ranking officers deployed with the National Guard, will be shifting
our attention to the California crisis as soon as we can get the airways clear
enough for us to fly.”
He smiled, then receded back into a
small box floating behind the anchor's shoulder. The anchor continued the story, but John
didn't listen. He waved the television
into silence, then sat upright on the sofa and looked around the living area of
his apartment. His tower stood in the
corner, the central support of a reality that had ended less than a week
before. He wanted to be at work, to
continue to fine-tune his designs, to do something, but the city was
still on virtual lock-down. He and
Reggie had barely made it back from the airport before the second round of
rioting had commenced.
He stood and walked to the tower,
felt its cold, smooth surface, then walked to the other end of the room, then
back. He felt trapped in here.
What was Rachel doing now? Last he had heard, she was trapped at Tulsa
International Airport. Where was Reggie doing
now? Last he had heard, he was going to
the hospital; that was twelve hours ago.
Likely, he was sleeping there, getting ready for his next shift. Likely, everyone was okay. That didn't help John. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he was
scared.
He returned to the couch, gestured
at the television until he came to a browser, searched until he found something
interesting.
Compressed footage, date-stamped
from sometime early that morning. A
group of rioters, harried and half-mad from a day and two nights of guerilla
combat, had ganged up on a patrol of national guards.
The footage started down low, close
to the ground, moving closer to an empty intersection. The unseen camera operator dipped behind a
newspaper dispenser, then poked the camera over the top to get a view of the
side of an old brick building.
For a few seconds there was
nothing, then a group of four soldiers—three men and a woman—rounded the
corner, weapons drawn but relaxed. Most
of the fighting in this neighborhood had burned out late Monday evening, so
they were just patrolling, expecting no serious threat.
As soon as the soldiers passed by
the traffic signal, the camera rotated to a line of cars that had been
destroyed in the riot. Their doors were
flung open and at least twenty young men and women, all dressed in "Defend
the Defenders" shirts tumbled out, brandishing clubs of all
varieties. The rushed at the soldiers in
a ragged line, swinging their weapons and yelling. The soldiers held their ground, tried to
speak, to reason with their attackers.
In the end, it didn't matter what
the soldiers did; this group of rioters was out for blood. They closed in and the image broke down into
a swirl of arms and legs. Moments later
the combatants separated, the soldiers standing in a circle, rifles raised, one
rioter on the ground, blood spreading across his shirt. The rioters rushed again, and this time there
were more shots, more people down—
John waved the video off. It was becoming too real. He didn't want this to become real...
A harsh ringing from the television
jerked him from his darkness, and he waved.
A click, a series of short gasps, and then a woman's voice, quiet,
scared: “John?”
He leaned forward, alert. “Alice?”
A sharp sob of relief grated
through the speakers. “Oh, God, I never
thought I'd get through. Oh, my God, I
thought I'd die in here...”
“Alice what's going on? Where are you?”
“I, uh, I—” Her breathing was heavy, frantic. “I've been trapped here since... since
Sunday. There was no power—the phone
lines were all jammed...”
“Where are you?” John repeated.
“Cohen & Associates. I was stuck in the riot, and—and lost my
phone, and—” She swallowed. “I came here, and they cut the power, and the
hard-lines were too busy to get through until just a while ago and—”
“Slow down, yeah?” John rushed to his bedroom, slipped into a
pair of jeans, scrabbled around for as much cash as he could find. “Are you okay? Hurt, need food, anything?”
“My ankle's pretty fucked
up... I've had food, though.”
“I'm going to come and get you,
okay?”
“Can you?” She sounded disbelieving, as if the thought
were too much to hope for. “I mean, can
you even get through? I have no idea
what's been going on...”
John stopped short. He didn't even know what was going on,
not really. He hadn't left his home
since yesterday's second round of riots, and he had no idea if C & A's part
of the city was one of the interdicted zones.
“I'm going to try, alright? Have you called the police?”
A wild laugh. “Yeah, that's not happening any time
soon. I got through once, after
hours of calling, and all I got was a recording telling the lines were fucking
busy...”
“Okay, I'll come and get you. You have any way to tell time? You don't hear from me in an hour, you call
again, okay?”
“Yeah, okay...”
John waited for the click of
disconnect, but instead all he heard was Alice's labored breathing. “Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to hang up, Alice.”
The breathing became more intense.
“Alice...”
“Please,” she hissed. “Please don't go. You don't know what's been happening, what
happened here...”
John swallowed. If he was having trouble coping with reality
while in the safety of his still-functioning home, what must she be going
through, out there beyond any hope of reality?
“Alice, I'm coming for you. Please, please trust me.”
The breathing continued for another
minute, then ended with a click. John
breathed a sigh of relief, then left the safety of his tower's shadow.
The barricade cut across the
street, a line of dusty green that killed all forward movement and left John
trapped for two hours. A small
chain-link gate wrapped in razor wire swung open, a truck trundled through, and
John pulled up to the edge of his world.
A soldier stepped forward, tapped on the window with his tablet. When the window was down, he leaned forward,
took a quick glance around the beige interior of the car.
“License and registration, please?”
John passed his ID out of the
window. “This is my brother's vehicle.”
The soldier nodded as he tapped at
the tablet. “He know you're borrowing
it?”
“We have an agreement, yes.”
“Hmm...” The officer returned John's license, then
glanced over the car. “Where you going?”
John tightened his grip on the
steering wheel; the sudden interrogation was unnerving. “Private matter.”
“Sorry, sir, but the city's under
lock-down; you better have a damn good reason to be out and about.”
John felt reluctant to tell the
soldier anything. He had grown rather
more suspicious of the military in the last few months, of their gifts, of
their implied oaths of silence. “I'm
picking up a friend; she's been trapped downtown for a couple days.”
The soldier nodded, rubbing his
chin. “We'll need to search the
car. You come up clean, you're free to
go. Just make sure you get back before
curfew.” The soldier gestured at two
others who stood by the gate.
“When's that?” John bounced as the car rocked, heard the
sounds of people groping around the undercarriage.
“Eight o'clock. Be on time.”
“Got it.”
The inspection ended and John was
waved through the opening gate.
Beyond the barricade, all was
still. Cars lined the road, looking
pristine and untouched. Buildings loomed
overhead, the fresh corpse of a dead city.
As John drove the death became more pronounced, the rot set in. Now, the cars were twisted at odd angles,
their windows smashed, some showing signs of having been on fire. Shops stood gutted, ragged glass standing as
the only hindrance to the goods that were once inside.
This wasn't real, couldn't be real,
couldn't be the world he lived in.
And then there was Coen &
Associates. John parked in the middle of
the street and stood from the car, his resolve draining away as he saw what had
become of the once beautiful facade.
The first two floors were gone,
nothing but steel girders and twists of wire leading into a lobby piled high
with iridescent drifts of shattered glass.
Above that the glass stood erratically, jutting from a pole here, a
girder there, up and up, becoming more whole as the top approached. The sparkling, cetacean forms that had leapt
from the ledges at each floor now stood stunted, sheared off, what remained
stained with smoke.
John approached the building, stepping
over glass floes and office equipment and human filth until he found a door
leading to an emergency stairwell. He
pushed on it; it gave, but wouldn't open completely. He dialed Alice's office number, waited,
waited...
“Hello?”
“I'm at the stairs; I can't get the
door open.”
“I barricaded it. I'll be down soon.”
Minutes dragged by, then John heard
something, many somethings, shifting and falling, Alice's voice cursing and
crying. More minutes dragged by, and
then the door swung open.
Alice stood in the darkness, her
clothes rumpled and dirty, her right ankle swollen. “Office chairs,” she said, her voice hoarse
and barely audible. “I threw them down
the stairwell after the first group got up.”
It took a moment for the words to
sink in. “How many?”
“Three... I... I don't know what they thought they
would find here, but... No one else got
up.”
John swallowed, stepped forward,
led Alice outside and into the car. She
hobbled along, gasping with every step.
“Oh, God, I can't wait to get out
of here. I assume there's somewhere
better to go?”
“Yeah.” John opened the passenger door and lowered
Alice inside. “Still have power in Sky
Crest.”
She chuckled. “You always did love Sky Crest, huh? It's gotten you through a lot...”
Something she said clicked inside
John, and he aborted his circling to the driver's side. He opened Alice's door, leaned inside. “I'm really sorry, but there's something I
have to do.”
“What?” Her eyes dilated in fright, and she began to
shake a little. “John, what are you
doing? Where are you going?”
“I've got to do some looting of my
own.”
“John? John—”
She continued yelling his name, her voice muffled as he closed the door
and walked back to the shattered building.
It bothered him to leave her here, but there was something he needed,
something that had gotten him through so much, the tower holding up what little
was left of his reality.
In through the door, up over the
shifting mass of broken office furniture that littered the bottom of the
stairwell. Up seven flights of stairs,
through a fire door—
The smell of human refuse and
rotten meat rolled over John as soon as the door was opened. He gagged, coughed, and looked out over the
loft that had been his home away from home.
This high, the windows were still intact, but streaked with smoke. In the light that filtered through, John saw
collapsed cubicles, small barricades of desks and computers. In a pile under the half-floor of offices
hanging overhead were three bodies, each crushed under a small piece of
furniture.
Alice was right; he didn't know
what had happened here.
He sidestepped the bodies, made his
way to the narrow hallway at the far end of the loft, and pushed open a door
that led into darkness. A moment later
his mobile illuminated a small room filled with wires and short, rounded
plastic towers. Each was labeled, Work
Group A through D, with a series of names below the initial designation. He found his name, Work Group C, and
disconnected the wires that held the tower in place.
As he left the loft, left the
remains of Alice's brush with madness, he smiled, secure in the knowledge that
the tower, his tower was now firmly in his hands. All his plans, every detail of construction
and material, was his for the taking.
Now all he needed was an underwriter.
Downstairs, Alice sat hunched in
the car, glaring murder at John. He
deposited his bundle in the back seat, then slid into the driver's seat and
started the car.
“That's what was so fucking
important?”
Her tone cut at him, made him
regret what he had done. She had been
through so much in the past two days, and all she wanted was to be home...
But what about me, what about
John? He had been through worse, had
lost ten years of his life, had been dead.
All he had to show for his life, for his second chance, was stored in
the foot-and-a-half of plastic in the back seat. The ten minutes it took to retrieve his
legacy hadn't hurt Alice.
“What happened up there?”
Alice looked down at her lap. “They just... came up and were just going to
wait it out, like me, just set up camp in the middle while I was up above. Then I heard them talking, heard what they
were planning to do on Monday, when things had died down a bit and... and
I...” she fell silent, chewed at her
nails. “After that I barricaded the
stairs. Did you know the water fountain
doesn't work with no power?”
John shook his head and turned the
car around, avoiding the piles of glass.
“Power's out in most of the town.
Kensington's pretty much the hub of civilization here in the south. We've got power in Sky Crest; you can stay
there a few days if you want.”
Alice nodded, then sniffled. She was already relaxing, slumping down in
the seat, putting her ordeal behind her.
A car turned onto the road ahead of
them, and John followed it for a mile before two other cars joined them. Another two miles, and seven cars were lined
up at the barricade.
John put the car in park and
adjusted the heater.
Alice was tensing, grinding her
teeth.
“National Guard barricade; they set
it up yesterday. There's one here, and
another couple around Penn Square.
They're trying to keep most of the rioters contained southeast.”
Alice nodded, but she didn't seem
happy about this development.
The driver at the head of the line
was offering up his ID to the soldier who stepped through the gate as a small
truck pulled out into no man's land.
The car rocked violently, and Alice
screamed, struck out at the window. John
stared in wide-eyed confusion, saw a shape hunched on the hood in front of
him. The shape extended an arm, rapped
on the windshield, and shifted to reveal the gaunt face of a small, dirty
woman. Spilling out of the layers of
coats she wore was a spray of bright-red hair.
“Hiya, John!” she called through
the windshield. “Piece of fuckin' luck
finding you here!”
John swallowed back a curse; he had
hoped all this was behind him.
“Is that Cyd?” Alice asked.
“You know her?”
“I watch all her videos. I just... never brought it up with you.”
Cyd knocked again. “You're a celebrity, Johnny!”
John wrenched open the door, slid
for a moment on a patch of black ice, and stood glaring at the woman on his
hood. “Cyd, this isn't funny. I told you last time, I'm not who you think I
am.”
She stood, and the stink of smoke
and stale urine waved over John. If
anything, it smelled worse than Cohen's building... “Sure you are, sure you are! You can't leave me hanging here, John, you
see what I've become!”
The soldier at the head of the line
had become aware of the commotion, and had waved at two others to join him.
John clenched his fists. “Just what the hell do you want from me,
huh?”
“Lead us, John! Allen picked you, knew you were the only one
who'd get the Q-bomb!”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
Cyd began to bounce, rocking the
car. Inside, Alice gasped, looked
nauseous, nervous, ready to scream.
“Cyd, get off the car.”
“Nuh-uh!
The soldiers were approaching now.
“Cyd, off.”
“Not 'till you agree to help! Maria fucked up something awesome, huh?”
“Cyd.”
“Nope.”
“Cyd.”
Cyd laughed, continued to
bounce. The soldiers were only two cars
away now. John didn't want this. He just wanted to be back in the tower, his
tower, the place he was safe, where Alice could be safe, where he could
pretend his life was the same as it had been a year—a decade—ago.
“Cyd.”
“Not until you say please!”
“CYD!”
The soldiers stopped short, too socked
to ready their weapons. Alice, on the
verge of a panic attack, stared blankly at the dashboard. Cyd's face peered up from the far side of the
car, shattered windshield sparkling in her hair.
There was a moment of total silence
as John stood, staring at the gently rocking car, its shattered windows
tinkling out onto the icy streets, the shards of glass adding their iridescence
to the thin snow.
Cyd's low, throaty chuckle echoed
off the empty buildings lining the streets, and the world collapsed back into
sharp focus for John. He saw Cyd, not as
she was, but how she once had been, tall and naked and glowing with a fierce
pride. Saw her as she joined with him,
with Allen, in overrunning the guards, making a break for the door, for escape—
The lead soldier yelled, raised his
carbine, fired. Alice screamed, kicked
open her door, fell into the street.
John grunted, clutched his left arm, looked down to see a small white
beanbag stark against the blacktop.
He knew it wouldn't hurt him, knew
his jacket had padded him enough that there likely wouldn't even be a
bruise. He knew too how many rounds the
soldiers had left, what their standard protocol would be from here on out, what
the likelihood of them panicking and ignoring protocol was.
He blinked, fought down the torrent
of memories that was flooding into him, the half-remembered reflexes that were
urging him to action. One reflex, an
instinct even deeper than his training, finally brought him to action: he ran.
Around the car, past Alice, stumbling
towards an abandoned truck, out of range of the soldiers. He was two blocks away now, coming across
another barricade, this one with no gate.
He continued on, his body demanding more and more breath until he
collapsed, gasping, into a drift of snow in an abandoned alley. His legs twitched, cramped, finally lay
still.
He sat up and pushed himself into
the wind shadow of a dumpster, tried to bring his memories under control. He was upside-down, surrounded by a galaxy of
glass, saw the road coming at him—awake now, in the dark, naked, cold. Someone was beside him, he saw her, held
her—she was gone now, but he wasn't alone, was surrounded by others like
himself, the children of Allen.
And there she was, his strength,
the woman he had vowed to get back to, the woman he loved and needed to survive
here: Lucy.
He fumbled in his jacket, surprised
he had it, found his mobile, scrolled through until he found her name.
Three rings, click.
“Lucy!”
“Who is this?” a man's voice
answered.
John cursed; Shaun had answered. “I need to talk to Lucy.”
“Who is this? Is this John?”
“Let me talk to her!”
A moment of indecision then,
“Lu. It's for you.”
“Hello?” She sounded tired.
“Lucy!” He felt elated, relieved beyond measure. “Oh, God, Lucy, it wasn't the wreck, I didn't
forget you, I always remembered—”
“John? What the hell are you—”
“It wasn't brain damage! I didn't forget you; someone took you from
me! I remember everything, Lucy, or most
of it or—I'm a goddamned Defender, Lucy, and someone took you out of my mind,
made me forget you, and my decade, and made me think I was in a coma,
and, and...” He was pating, drifting in
and out of reality; there were no walls now.
Was he talking with Lucy? Was she
really there this time? Or was it
Suzanne, was he telling her about Lucy, or—No, Suzanne was dead, he
couldn't forget that, could never forget that.
But he had forgotten Lucy, hadn't he?
How could he have forgotten her for all these years—
“John.”
He was sitting behind a dumpster,
his left biceps throbbing, his jeans soaked in snow. Lucy was talking.
“John, I don't know if this is some
kind of sick joke, but I don't need you dredging up the past. I'm happy with Shaun now, I don't need you.”
“Shaun? Wha—no one was talking about Shaun! Lucy, this is about us, about a second
chance. I remember us now—”
“I'm happy with Shaun.” Her voice was strained, distant. “Goodbye.
Don't call again.”
Click, and the call was over. John sat in the snow, felt the cold creeping
in on his limbs, felt the fire raging in his lungs, in his heart, dying
down. He struggled to his feet, got his
bearing, and trudged off in the snow, towards Sky Crest. He was only peripherally aware of his
destination, only vaguely felt the pull of his tower. As he walked his mind swirled, a decade of
forgotten memories fighting for their moment in the sun, fighting to be
remembered...
The human leg was a many splendored thing. Edgar rested on a colossal metal beam,
looking out at the endless bridge of crystalline bone stretching off into the red-black
void. He drifted from his perch, found a
place where the brown crystal had sheared apart, opening a crevasse that
stretched down to the marrow. He stroked
the end of the crystal, reached out and caught a globule of plasma, ripped the
sugars from it, pressed it to the crystal, willed it to grow—
A high-pitched whine shivered
through the superstructure, reverberated up the small metal pin, brought a
slight ache to Edgar's shattered knee, and caused Edgar to shift in his
wheelchair and look around.
He was in a large bedroom,
decorated to look like the official bedroom he now doubted he would ever sleep
in. His leg was propped up before him,
white cast wrapped in a blue support. It
wasn't going anywhere soon.
The whining continued, and Edgar
realized it was the intercom hailing him.
He pushed a button on his wheelchair, and the whine stopped. “Fuck off!” he shouted.
He waited a moment, heard no
response, and grunted in satisfaction.
It had taken him twenty minutes to get his mind down and into the
minutia of his damaged leg; he didn't need any further distractions.
Back to it... Breathe out, relax,
settle back into the seat... disconnect, feel the room around him, his body as
a separate entity... feel the heat, the inflammation of the torn tissue around
the surgical pins, the patella sewn together with wire, the bone straining out
to reform itself in its intended shape.
Scattered about the smooth plate were small protuberances, shafts of
bone that had grown too quickly, too poorly, experiments by an untrained god in
the arts of healing. It was a good thing
Frease knew the secret; the bizarre spurs would worry any other doctor.
Edgar finally found the site of his
last awkward fumble, found the crystal that had begun to swell in his moments
of distraction, pulling sugars and minerals haphazardly from the surrounding
fluids. Edgar touched the spot, found
the life growing in it, killed it, watched as the new growth crumbled away. Without his constant attention, growth that
fast could become cancerous.
He had just gathered the scattered
minerals, had just begun to sculpt them back into new growth when movement
pulled at his attention.
Focus returned to his eyes just in
time to see the double doors leading into the room burst open, and the small
form of Joan Ashby storming in.
She stopped just inside the room,
looked over the shriveled, robe wrapped form slouched in the chair. “Well, at least you're wearing clothes.”
Edgar straightened, tried to look
presentable. “Leave me alone!”
“Hey!” Ashby clapped her hands and stalked
forward. “I don't give a damn about your
personal life, or your injuries, and I know for a fact you're not on any
pain medication right now, so don't try to act wasted! You are the president sir, and the
country is going to hell out there!
Focus. You have a job to do. Everything else, I've been more than happy to
delegate, but you need to listen to
this.”
Edgar looked away from her, slumped
sideways, tried to focus all his attention on the carpet. He didn't want to be president anymore, had
more important things on his mind.
“We've found a Defender sir.”
He trembled, and glanced sidelong
at Ashby.
“In Philadelphia, a Defender just
used his powers in front of a National Guard blockade. As far as we can tell, he didn't injure
anyone. More importantly, he's alive,
he's been identified, and we know where he's going.”
Edgar lifted his eyes to Ashby, the
rest of him following as he straightened.
“Who? Where?”
“John Donalson. He's heading toward his home; Sky Crest
apartments.”
Edgar swallowed, then ground his
teeth. Donalson: Allen's hand-picked
successor, the one he had entrusted with carrying on the Q-Bomb, just before he
was executed. The thought of Donalson
out on the streets, rogue and with full powerful, was terrifying. But if he could get to Donalson, strike a
deal with him... Then all the Defenders
would be on his side, or at least enough to sway the balance of power. Then Mistlethwakey's entire mad scheme would
be fulfilled, all the pointless plotting and second-guessing would be over—
Mistlethwakey.
“He lives at Sky Crest?”
Ashby nodded.
Of course he'd live at Sky
Crest. Where else would the General put
such an important piece of his plan?
Edgar felt a brief stab of regret for sending Amanda and Ethan into the
lion's den, then remembered that Donalson and he were on the same side. In fact, the only possible threat towards
alliance was the General himself, unless he had edited himself from the
Defender's memory. If that wasn't the
case, Edgar would lose no sleep in throwing Mistlethwakey in as a bargaining
chip.
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Twenty minutes. Police and National Guard are tracking him on
foot, and we have a satellite lock on his mobile. Everyone has standing orders to hang back and
observe.”
“Perfect.” Edgar rose to stand, gasped as his leg caught
on the wheelchair's supporting arm, slumped back down. “I want someone waiting for him when he gets
home, an agent we can trust, someone personable.”
“The NSA is still on site in Phil—”
“No!”
Ashby snapped her jaw shut with an
audible click.
“Not... not Mistlethwakey. I want someone a little lower-rank, a little
less intimidating. I want a helicopter
standing by. I want whoever we have
there to talk to Don—to whoever the Defender is, cordially invite him to a
conference with me, to advise me on the Defender situation, and to help improve
relations. This is strictly
voluntary. Hell, I'll go to him,
if he wants that.”
Ashby looked uneasy. “Neither of those options sounds good. This is the most dead-end hole we have, and I
don't want any security breaches, especially not after what happened at
Eglon. And I definitely don't
want you out and about.”
“Well, that's not really your call
to make, is it, Chief of Staff?” His
smile was designed to annoy.
Ashby frowned, then nodded. “I'll get everything ready.” She turned on her heel and strode from the
room, pulling the doors to behind her.
Edgar chuckled, then leaned back and put his hands
behind his head. He glanced down at his
leg, then decided to ignore it for the time being. If everything went well, by this time
Thursday he'd have someone who could show him exactly how to fix the useless
thing...
