Vendetta Nation (Enigma Black Trilogy #2) (33 page)

Ian’s pleas were the last sound I heard before I retreated back to my world. The place between life and death; the place with the tree in the middle of a flowering meadow; the place where my brother stood waiting for me.

*****

“Come on, Kara,” Ian pleaded. “What can we do to save her?” He was exhausted, having been beaten down both figuratively and literally.

“Would you quit screaming at me?” Kara demanded, sliding an oxygen mask over Celaine’s face. “We haven’t lost her yet, and I don’t intend to.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been trying to keep it together for her all night, but seeing her like this, it’s as though I had been shot too. I love her, Kara.” He moved his hand on top of hers, and looked for a sign—any sign—that she was still with him, only to be greeted by nothing.
Please, Celaine, wake up
.
Don’t leave. Don’t leave me now.

“I know you do, hun,” Kara said to him, her tone softening. “That’s been pretty obvious for a while.”

“I have the blood, Kara.” Ian turned his head to see Drew rushing into the operating room, bag in hand.

“Thanks, Drew.” Kara took the bag and looked back up at Ian. “We have little supply of our donor blood left; absolutely no O negative at all. I have no idea where it all went, or what it was needed for. Thankfully, Celaine is AB positive. It’s the one blood type that’s considered a universal recipient.” Kara attached the IV line to the bag and looked up at him. “Help me get her suit off. I need to get an IV started to begin a saline drip and transfusion.”

“On it.” Drew rushed over to the gurney.

“Not you, Drew. I meant Ian,” Kara hissed. “Drew, you stand aside.”

“Um…oh…okay,” Ian hesitated before helping Kara unzip the back of her suit. Together, they slid her arms out of it and peeled it down the rest of her body, taking care around the wound. Blood, both dried and fresh, soaked both the material of the suit and her flesh, which made for a grisly scene and made Ian’s heart sink. “With all this blood, how is she still alive?” he asked. All color drained away from his face, and his stomach tightened into a hard knot.

“Rest assured, had the bullet hit a main artery, she probably wouldn’t have made it here in the first place,” Dr. Harris said, rushing through the door, scrubs on, ready to go. He walked over to the gurney to inspect the wound further. “It looks like she was shot high enough that I don’t think any vital organs were hit, but I want to do an x-ray just to be sure. Kara, grab the portable machine and wheel it over here.” Kara nodded and ran to the corner of the operating room to retrieve the machine. “Most likely, she’s just in shock from blood loss.” He grabbed his stethoscope from around his neck and put it to her chest to listen to her breathing. “Her breaths sound labored. Perhaps a partial pneumothorax,” he spoke mostly to himself.

“A what?” Ian asked.

“A collapsed lung.” He looked up at him and smiled. “Don’t worry, I can fix that, too. Our best case scenario is that her x-ray will show no internal damage and we’ll just cut the bullet out and give her some blood to replenish what was lost.”

“And the worst?” Ian ran his hand through her hair to try and distract himself from thinking the worst, completely losing his composure altogether.

“Well, there are a lot of worst case scenarios, but one of them would involve the bullet ricocheting off a bone and lodging itself near a vital organ or major artery, wherein making my job a little more difficult.” Kara wheeled the portable x-ray machine near the gurney. “Let’s move her onto the table to do the x-rays,” he addressed Kara. “We also need to get her vitals—blood pressure and heart rate. I see she still has her leads on. Kara, check her for me while I take the x-rays. After that, we’ll hook her up to the saline and blood.”

“Drew, help me gather the monitors,” Kara called out to him. She rushed around the room to locate the blood pressure and heart monitor while Dr. Harris positioned the machine over Celaine’s chest.

With the others scrambling around to help his partner, Ian couldn’t help but feel helpless. He knew there was little he could do without an ‘M.D.’ after his name, yet he felt that just simply standing back out of the way of the others did little justice for the feelings that were spinning out of control in his head. And as his adrenaline began to wind down, the feelings of guilt poured in.
Why wasn’t I there for her
?
What could I have done differently
?
Why her and not me
? The pervasive thoughts invaded his mind, making him feel even more inadequate.

Kara attached the heart monitor at around the same time Dr. Harris completed his imaging. “Don’t worry,” she said, breaking Ian out of his trance. “She’s going to be okay.” He nodded, unsure how to respond. In his head he wanted to believe that, though in looking at her bloodied, unresponsive body, a twinge of doubt entered his mind.

“She looks different,” he said to no one in particular. “Her color, she’s paler.”

Kara sighed before turning around to look at the heart monitor. “Look right here, Ian, her heart rate is…” Before she could finish her sentence, the alarm on the monitor sounded, and the slight smirk that had been present on her face just moments earlier morphed into an expression of terror. “Dr. Harris, she’s crashing
!”

*****

Marshall, Bruce, and a handful of the other rebellion members fortunate enough to make it out of Potomac Park alive and relatively unscathed, ducked from alleyway to alleyway in the pitch black streets of Washington, D.C. Some had taken to the river, relying on water and the approaching darkness to cover their tracks; others had successfully forced their way through the soldiers, blending in with those who’d attended the address. In all, the best guess was that almost half of them had been lost in the battle, while the soldiers’ numbers had barely sustained any beating at all.

Every once in a while, a light from a motor vehicle manned by one of the soldiers, or flashlights from those patrolling the streets by foot appeared, driving them to seek the sanctuary of darkness like cockroaches after the flick of a switch. With the power out, and without flashlights or a light source of their own, spotting impending danger, or a way around it for that matter, was next to impossible. Collectively, the group knew they couldn’t return back to the hotels where they’d stayed the night before, which left them to their virtual prison without bars on the streets of Washington, D.C., trying to find a way back to their former lives.

Poking his head out from behind the brick wall of an abandoned building, Marshall motioned for the rest of the group to follow him. Without a sound, everyone obeyed, finding themselves hurriedly running down the street into the next alleyway. Before heading back into the shadows of the alley, Marshall stood outside on the sidewalk and did a quick head count. Enough of his people had been lost tonight already.

He tried not to think of the deaths and devastation the evening had brought, trying to focus only on the footage they’d obtained and the seed he hoped they would plant in the minds of the public. Sure, Brooks and his people would spin their own scenario, but if they could even get a fraction of a percent of the population to side with them, then the rebellion would come back thriving. When the last head was accounted for, Marshall turned to go into the alley, only to find himself suddenly blinded by a pick-up truck that had abruptly started up just a block down the road.

“Everyone, hide! Quick!” He turned the corner and ran down the alleyway. In front of him, the frenzied footfalls of the other rebellion members pounded fiercely on the concrete, pure fear taking over. “Faster,” he called, looking back to see the truck turning into the alleyway. Its headlights searched the pavement until they enveloped him like a spotlight on a prisoner. “Keep moving, everyone!”

“Marshall, we can’t go any further,” Bruce called back from up ahead. Marshall looked up the alley in Bruce’s direction, disheartened to see the fence that blocked their path.

“Try to climb it, Bruce,” Marshall called back. The truck moved further and further down the alleyway, its headlights uncovering everyone in their group.

“It’s completely smooth. No footholds whatsoever,” Bruce called back.

Of course, that would be asking too much
, Marshall thought as he tried to decipher what to do next. Along the sides of the alleyway were boxes and other bits of discarded items and trash. Instantly, a light bulb went off in his head. “Bruce, start stacking the garbage. Maybe we can climb up that way.”

The other rebellion members, three men and two women, grabbed whatever they could get their hands on and began stacking it alongside the fence. “I’ll stand on the mound and help hoist everyone up on top of the fence,” one of the men—the youngest and decidedly largest of the group—said.

Behind them, the truck stopped; its doors opened and slammed closed. The footsteps of its occupants struck the ground heavily. Their blackened, unidentifiable forms stepped in front of the headlights, casting eerie silhouettes on the fence.

“Come on,” the young man motioned for one of the women to place her foot in his cupped hands. “I’ll give you a boost.”

“Wait,” one of the male indiscernible figures said. “We want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, sure you do,” Bruce answered the man. “What could you possibly want to talk to us about? Whether you should kill us now or wait until you’re in front of a live audience?”

“No, you don’t understand.” The figures from the truck—nearly a half dozen in all—approached them. “We’ve defected after having a…a change of thought.”

Although still suspicious, Marshall waved at Bruce, signaling him to be quiet for a moment. “Why?” he asked. “Why would you defect?”

“We have reason to think that Brooks has been controlling our minds and our actions.”

“Think?” A woman from the rebellion asked. “Think nothing. We
know
that’s what happened.”

“Mind control,” Marshall let the phrase playfully roll off his tongue. “Son of a bitch.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” the male figure agreed.

“Of course, that would make a lot of sense.” Marshall leaned against the side of the building in the alleyway incredulously. “That’s why they fight with no emotion or regard for their actions. He must have thousands of people under his control without them even knowing it. Tell me, how on earth did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“One of those superheroes—the woman. She took my helmet off, and I just snapped out of my trance. It was her hunch that something about our helmets was causing us to fight against our will without us ever even knowing it. So I tore as many helmets off as I could until the other soldiers—our own men and woman—turned on us and chased us off.”

“None of you remember anything? Not the fighting, the address, nothing at all?” Marshall eyed the figures, many of whom shook their heads.

“We don’t even remember leaving for the park in the first place,” the man responded.

“If that’s true,” Bruce chimed in, “then who knows how far Brooks will go or whose minds he already has control over.”

“That’s very true,” Marshall agreed, “but there is one thing we have working for us, and that’s the support of those superheroes he’s banking on to keep him in the public’s good graces.”

“Well, then, I probably shouldn’t have been so trigger happy,” Bruce grumbled.

“I don’t think she’ll hold it against you, Bruce.”

“We want to join you,” the man said. “If you’ll have us, that is.”

Marshall looked to Bruce and then back to the other members of the rebellion to gauge their reaction. All peered back at him; the final decision was his. “We’d be honored to have the six of you. With the hit we took today, we need all the recruits we can get.”

“That’s good news, because there’s more than just the six of us.”

“How many more of you are out there?” Behind the six former soldiers, from out of the endless darkness, more figures appeared, until the alleyway was consumed.

“There are seventy-three in our group, all holed-up in this building here, and another hundred or so across town.”

“Almost two hundred of you, then” Marshall eyed Bruce, who couldn’t help but smile. “All with your own weapons?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Welcome aboard…”

“Brad.”

“Brad, I’m Marshall.” He took the man’s hand in his. “We’re pleased to have you and your comrades on our side.”

“We’ve always been on your side. We just weren’t allowed to realize it. Come,” he motioned to Marshall and the others to follow him, “let’s go inside so we can talk in a more private forum.”

One by one the members of the rebellion, both veteran and newly inducted, filed into the building next to the alleyway until only Marshall and Bruce remained outside. For the first time that night, a sense of peace settled over Marshall. A newfound resurgence of hope took hold, creating a belief that all had not been lost after all.

“Marshall, what is it?” Bruce asked, stopping himself just short of the door where the others had entered. “What’s going through your mind right now?”

Marshall smirked, his gaze returning to his long-time friend and right-hand man. “Let the revolution begin.”

*****

“I need the defibrillator, now!” Dr. Harris ordered Drew. “We’re going to have to open her up after we shock her heart. This can’t wait any longer. Obviously, more damage has been done than what meets the eye.”