Vendetta Nation (Enigma Black Trilogy #2) (32 page)

Ian climbed up the rocks that created a barrier between the river and the shore, which made me feel all the more worse for the obvious physical burden he was carrying in the form of my limp body. Soon, I felt him jumping into the air and his feet striking the soft, uneven surface of the sand. At least we were ashore. Now the only hard part would be getting to the car, and me surviving the ride back to The Epicenter.

“I’ll be right back,” Ian whispered. He knelt to lay me down on the ground. After seeing the others slipping on the rocks, genuinely struggling in the icy waters, he raced over to them, grabbed their hands and, one by one, he helped them all to shore. “Thank you for letting us hitch a ride back with you,” he said to Harold.

“You’re welcome,” Harold grumbled under his breath, still not totally convinced that we were on his side.

Ian scooped me back up into his arms. “Whatever you do, try to remain unseen,” he told the others. “Keep low and in the shadows until you reach a secure location.”

“There’s no such thing as a secure location anymore,” one of the sisters muttered.

“We’ll be safe, you just worry about getting her medical treatment,” Candice said.

Ian nodded and took off in the direction of The Park View while the others ran further up the shore. I wanted him to put me down, to tell him to let me try and run for myself, but my body felt limp, and the best I could do was a low moan.

When we reached the road, a sudden commotion back down by the river made Ian stop dead in his tracks. “Halt,” a voice off in the distance commanded. Ian turned around to see Harold, Candice, and the others being swiftly approached by soldiers.

“Shit, Brooks must have had them waiting for us,” Ian fumed. It was naïve to believe that there would be no retribution against us for our disobedience tonight, and even more so to think that Brooks had no idea about our mode of departure. A spotlight was shone on them with no indication that Ian and I had been spotted too, and I could tell by Ian’s hesitancy that he debated running to their aid. But the prospect of leaving me behind in the state I was in kept him rooted where he stood.

“What are you doing out past curfew?” one of the soldiers asked. “Leading a rebellion against our country, perhaps?”

“What are you talking about?” Harold asked, surprisingly cool under the circumstances. “It’s not ten yet.”

“Curfew’s seven.”

“What?” Candice piped in. “Since when?”

“Since the attempted assassination of our President and the war you have declared on his people.”

“
His
people?” Harold stated incredulously. “That man is no king; he has no subjects. The people of this country are free—or at least they used to be.”

“As long as people like you exist, they will never be free,” the soldier answered in response.

“He truly does have you programmed, doesn’t he?” Harold broke away from the group, and approached the soldier. “Tell me, when did you lose your humanity? Where has your common sense gone?”

“Don’t step any closer to me,” the soldier stated, drawing his gun and pointing it directly at Harold’s forehead. “By order of the President and our country, you all are under arrest for attempted homicide and treason.”

“Open your eyes, man.” Harold stepped closer to the soldier, undaunted. “It wasn’t
our
people who fired the gun. It was one of yours. It…” Whatever Harold’s last sentence was going to be was lost to the sound of the gun in the soldier’s hand being fired and Harold’s limp body crumpling to the ground.

Candice shrieked, “What the hell! You’re all nothing but animals. You…you didn’t have to shoot him…you—”

“Enough, ma’am,” the soldier aimed his gun at Candice, silencing her. “The rest of you will come with us,” he announced to Candice and the three sisters, who stood huddled together, sobbing. “Cooperate and you may or may not live to see tomorrow.”

“What do you want from us?” Candice asked.

“Where are the superheroes who traveled with you, for starters?”

Tell them, Candice
, I thought.
Point in a direction, any direction, just answer his question.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. We traveled here by ourselves.”

No
!
No
!
No
!

“You see,” the soldier said with a sigh, “it’s lies like that which make it hard for me to trust you, and even harder for me to justify keeping you alive.”

The damp cells of the underground prison smelled of mold and defiance. Defiance. The air was so thick with it that each of President Brooks’ footsteps felt like they were slicing through the air. Guards stood in front of each of the newly occupied cells, filled to capacity with rebellion members, whose spirits were far from dampened.

“Look at the big man now that we’re all behind bars,” one man heckled. “There’s no need to run away with your tail tucked between your legs now, is there?”

“Where’s the guy you planted in the audience to take that fake shot at you?” An older rebel went up to the bars to say his piece. “Didn’t feel the need to lock him up too, to keep the illusion alive?”

Brooks allowed the jeers to roll off his shoulders, choosing, instead, to let his men handle the situation the only way they knew how. Raising his arm, he signaled them to spring into action, and like trained monkeys, they obeyed their master. One by one, shots were fired into the cells, each one in tune almost perfectly with Brooks’ footfalls down the corridor, ceasing as he rounded the corner to the solitary cell at the end of the hallway.

“Open the door,” Brooks commanded the soldiers standing guard in front of the solid steel door. Obediently, the men unlocked the cell and pulled the door open. Being windowless on the inside, the pitch black cell became illuminated from the shard of light that entered it from the corridor. In that narrow beam of light, Senator Delaney looked up from behind bruised eyelids to take in his former friend. Having been imprisoned in complete darkness for a measurable amount of time, the light in his eyes was blinding. He tried to move his arm to shield his face from its assault, but the chain shackling his arm to the wall ran out of slack, leaving him defenseless.

“Jeremiah, it’s a pity we have to meet under such circumstances, and a downright shame that things aren’t going to improve much for you here on out.”

“Just because things are looking up for you, Carver, it doesn’t mean you’ll always have the upper hand. You can imprison me and execute as many rebels as you want, but there will always be more to take our place. You’ll be putting up a fight for the rest of your life, and you’ll grow tired of it soon enough. It’ll beat you down until there’s nothing left of you, ultimately ending your reign.”

“Bold words, my dear friend. It’s too bad your hands are indisposed at the moment, or else I’d have you write them down to recite at your execution.”

“What happened to you, Carver? Were you always this evil, or did it consume you the minute you gained the power you so desperately sought? We were brothers once, you and I. There was a time when we held the same ideals. I believed in your passion and in your dreams for our country. At what point in time did those dreams turn into nightmares?”

“You have yet to experience a nightmare…brother.” Brooks closed the door, leaving Senator Delaney to the darkness. “His execution will wait,” he said to the guards. “I want him to see what I have planned for the rebels. If he thinks he was a part of a nightmare before, he’ll soon find himself in a living hell.”

With a new determination fueling him, Brooks journeyed back up the corridor to ready himself for his impromptu announcement.

*****

“It’s finally quiet out there,” Paige said, leaning into Chase’s arms. In their own little corner of the world, safe in the stillness of the hotel room, they sat alone on the couch. Flames flickered from candles scattered throughout the room. With the power out throughout the city, they provided the only source of light in the room.

“Yeah,” Chase answered warily, “though I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The silence is even more deafening than the gunfire could ever hope to be. At least you knew what to expect when the gunfire went off and the shrill alarms of the sirens cut through the air like a machete. In the silence, anything can happen. It’s full of endless possibilities just waiting for someone to make one of them a reality. Actually, I fully expect the end of civilization as we know it to begin with a whisper on the wings of a gentle breeze.”

“What’s wrong, Chase? You’ve been distant since we got back here this evening.”

“We could have died tonight, Paige.” He squeezed her arm as though the gesture would take the sting out his words. “I had a gun pointed at my head. Had that super human, superhero—whatever they call themselves—not intervened, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Paige sat up, turning her body to face him. “But you are. You are sitting here right now, and we all—including that big lug you call your best friend snoring in our bed—made it out alive. That’s the reality. You can’t dwell on all the what-ifs or the alternate possibilities when the reality is all that matters.”

He brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face, and admired the way the flame played off its golden hue. “It’s funny, after she knocked that soldier away from me, and you ran into my arms, I looked back up at her to thank her. You would have thought I’d slapped her across the face. Even though I couldn’t see her expression, her pain was apparent.”

“Maybe she has a crush on you,” Paige laughed. “You’re so hot even superheroes can’t resist you.”

“Or maybe she just lost someone she loved. Perhaps she remembered something from her past just then.”

“Where do we go now, Chase?” Paige asked after some silence had passed between them. “Now that the world has officially collapsed around us.”

“We get as far away from it as we can, to a place we can hold onto. One that still has a shred of sanity left.”

“Where is this place? In your dreams?”

“No. It’s out there. We’ll find it together.” He looked into her eyes, seeing for the first time the gold striations hidden within the blue of her irises. “After our lease is up on the apartment, I’ll put in my resignation at Hope Memorial and we’ll leave. With a medical degree, I can find work anywhere. We’ll go wherever we need to if it means getting away from all of this. I just want normalcy again…” he paused for a moment, considering the words he was about to say. “I want to raise a family completely oblivious to the rest of the world, where all we have to worry about is each other.”

Paige’s eyes widened. “Chase, what are you saying to me right now?”

“Where is everyone?” Ian demanded frantically. “Where’s Harris? Where’s Martin? I thought you said they were going to meet us here.” He threw the passenger side door of the car open and proceeded to unbuckle my seatbelt. I’d regained consciousness again, though for how long, I didn’t know. My eyes opened just enough for me to take in the scene unfolding around me, enough for me to make out Kara’s frightened face.

“Dr. Harris is on his way,” she reassured him.

“And Martin? What about Dr. Martin? Kara, she’s dying here. We need everyone, and we need them now.” Ian lifted me out of the car and laid my dying body down on the gurney. Together, both he and Kara ran with it out of the garage and down the hallway.

Kara lifted off the bandage that Ian had placed over the gunshot wound and gasped, her eyes watering. “We don’t know where he is. Nobody has been able to reach either him or Victor all night.”

“Seriously? What the hell, Kara? Of all the nights they should be reachable…this is just…just…she’s dying, Kara.” For the first time tonight the totality of everything struck Ian, and the tears fell from his face like the dam he’d put up to block them had suddenly burst. All hope in his face steadily washed away. Through my haze, all I wanted to do was comfort him, to tell him that things would work out no matter what the outcome.

“Stay with me, Ian. We’re going to save her, okay. Dr. Harris will be here soon, but until then, we can work on her.” My eyes grew heavy again as I watched Kara punch in her code to open the steel doors that blocked our passage. Obediently, the doors opened, leading to a shortcut to the operating room that I’d never been through before, down a hallway I’d yet to explore.

Slowly, I allowed my eyes to fall closed. Soon afterwards, I began to succumb to the darkness. I could feel my body drifting away again, and I wondered whether it would be for good this time, or whether I would return from my journey to face Brooks and The Man in Black. But most of all, I wondered whether I would get to see Jake again.

“Celaine, stay with me,” Ian’s voice sprang my senses back to life, if only briefly. “Celaine, please, don’t leave me.” The desperation in his voice made me want to fight, but I’d been fighting too hard for too long tonight already, and I was tired. There was no struggle left, just acceptance. “Kara, do something! Do something!”