Powerless (6 page)

The guard warily stepped to the side and let us pass, but I noted him going immediately to his comm, likely to notify Neveed that Armise and I were leaving the bunker. Especially since neither of the two of us had any chips remaining in our bodies that would allow us to be tracked.

I pushed through the door and into the dark grey sky of winter in the capital. It was January but the temperatures had yet to hit freezing. Each year the cold spells grew shorter and we rarely saw snow anymore. Neither Armise nor I had bothered to stop for any kind of a jacket and we both wore the black T-shirts and sweatpants emblazoned with the Revolution seal.

The city around us was war-torn—the destruction of grenades, bombs, and bullet holes riddled the concrete walls. I led Armise down an empty alley, heading towards the gates of the Underground. I had to see for myself that it was abandoned.

Where there had been heavily armed guards five months ago in this same spot, the gates to the home of the jacquerie were now left open and unprotected.

Armise quickened his steps, taking position at my right shoulder, his demeanour immediately switching to that of a soldier. “Why didn’t we bring any weapons?” he growled in my ear.

“There’s no one here,” I answered simply.

We passed through the gates and into the tent city. The detritus of a hasty departure filled the dirty streets. Whole tents had collapsed in on themselves and crinkled in the weak, cold wind. Neither of us spoke as we moved through the Underground, working our way in a grid pattern so I could confirm there was no one who remained. With each step Armise tensed further, his boots thudding over cracked concrete even though I knew he could move silently when he wanted to.

We stopped at the fringes of the tent city, where the PsychHAg headquarters had once stood, and only a pile of rubble now remained because of the order I had given for the buildings to be destroyed after Ahriman had killed the President’s wife, Sarai.

“Talk,” was all Armise said.

I put my hands on my hips and faced him, trying to figure out how to explain to him everything Jegs had told me. But instead what came out of my mouth was a continuation of the conversation he’d walked out on in the control room when he’d left me wondering what the hell he meant when he’d said if only it was that simple.

“Don’t fuck with me, Armise. We don’t do simple,” I accused.

Armise opened his mouth as if to reply then closed it. He swore under his breath and tracked away from me, kicking a piece of rubble into a pile and launching a cloud of dust into the air. “That was my point,” he finally replied with a scowl.

And for some reason, his dejectedness made me furious. “In what world or iteration of worlds could you and I ever be ground down into something that isn’t complex? To wish for something we can never achieve is futile. This is our existence. Our histories and the wounds of our missions are the madness we will carry for the remainder of our lives, regardless of the number of days we’re granted. What aren’t you telling me, Armise? Within minutes, you went from trying to convince me that the remaining Committee members had to be next to die, to trying to convince me that Ahriman had to be the next to go. Maybe Jegs is right and I should just let you kill yourself going after him.”

His brow furrowed deeply. “What does Jegs have to do with any of this?”

“What does anyone have to do with any of this? Are you serious or just being difficult? We don’t operate in a void. You and I are tools in this war. A war that is about people and the right to freedom. It’s not just you and I that occupy this planet. We’re pawns but we are willingly charging into the front lines.”

“I have no stake in this war. I am not a pawn to anyone. I willingly follow you and if that takes me into this battle then that’s where I’ll go.”

I laughed, the rough sound echoing in the emptiness of the tent camp. “Says the man who just declared he’s leaving to go after a madman intent on killing anyone who stands in his way.”

“How does this possibly end well? How do you not look around you and see that there is no way for us to ever survive this long enough to actually fucking live for once? There will never be peace on this planet. Humanity isn’t capable of it. And yet you still believe it’s possible. I can’t see the future you envision. Of people who aren’t down-trodden or hunted or struggling minute by minute just to make it to tomorrow. I don’t buy that it’s possible. But for some reason you do. And that has to be enough for me. You want it and I want to give it to you. And if eliminating Ahriman is going to bring you one step closer to this Utopia you see around the corner then I’ll give my life for it. The world doesn’t need more people like me, it needs people like you. All you’ve ever seen is destruction and yet you hope. If hope is all we have—all you have—then my life is worth that price.”

“You’re lying to me. There’s more to your decision to go after Ahriman than just this ridiculous notion of hope. Just tell me the truth!” I demanded.

“In war, truth is the first casualty.”

“Fuck you. Are you just going to keep spitting adages out at me?”

“Are you just going to keep asking me questions?”

I began to pace, trying to get my anger under control. I stared at the remains of the PsychHAg facility and tried to remember the conversation I’d had with Ahriman when those walls had still been standing. There had been something Ahriman had wanted me to ask Armise, but I couldn’t grasp onto the memory without recalling it all. Sarai in that chair, her hands bound, her cries and tears, and Ahriman’s bullet shredding her brain because I hadn’t been able to act fast enough. Ahriman had been a man possessed. Intent on forcing me to bring Armise to him, because there was something he needed him alive for. Then Ahriman’s exact words snapped into focus in my head. I glared at Armise. “Ahriman told me to ask you about the key.”

Armise drew his eyebrows together and frowned. “Chen?”

I shook my head. “No, I said the same thing. Not Chen Ying. Another key. He said you were hiding something from me.”

“And you believe him?”

“Give me a reason not to.”

Armise shut down, the same unemotional guarded response he’d had in the control room controlling his features. “I can’t.”

And I swore I could feel the mark on my back—that bullet and knife bound by a length of frayed rope—as it had been freshly cut into my skin. As if the scar Armise had stitched with such care was ripping at the seams, tearing my tattoo into separate pieces.

I stepped towards him, trying to bridge the distance that had inexplicably grown between us within seconds. “You can’t leave. There is no one else I can trust besides you. No one.”

“Then your trust has been misplaced.”

“You’re lying again.”

Armise stepped up to me. “Who am I to you?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple enough question.”

“If only it was that simple,” I ground out, spitting his own words back at him.

He tipped my chin up and forced me to look him in the eyes. Those blue-silver eyes that would haunt me just as readily as every other vision of war that had been burned into my memory. “Who am I to you, Merq?”

I couldn’t give him the answer I knew he wanted. “You can’t leave. I need you here. With me.”

Armise shook his head. “Someday you’ll understand that I’m always with you.”

And that’s when an explosion ripped through the city and the ground started to give in under our feet.

Chapter Three

Armise and I swayed with the movement of the ground and he yanked me back from the gaping hole opening up below us.

“That explosion came from underground,” I said. “We have to get back to the bunker.”

Armise and I took off at a sprint, blowing past the abandoned tent city and careening around the alleys back to the door leading into the President’s stronghold. The metal door had been blasted from its hinges—whether it was from the force of the explosion from elsewhere underground or whether this had been the point of entry I wasn’t sure.

The guard that had been stationed at the door was dead, crushed under the hunk of shredded metal. I flung the door off his body and stripped the weapons from him. I threw the rifle to Armise and, taking his pistol in my hand along with his extra clips, I pocketed the grenades pinned to the dead soldier’s uniform and kept myself in a crouched position listening.

The whiz of sonicbullets reverberated down the stone passageway leading into the bunker and filtered back to us. I looked over my shoulder at Armise. He had the rifle pointed down the entryway, his eyes scanning the darkness for movement.

I gave a hand motion indicating I was moving inside the hallway, knowing that Armise would take up position at my back. The echoes of a firefight bled back to us in harsh staccato. Both sonicbullets and real ones were being fired within the belly of the bunker.

We moved with deliberate speed, seeking out the clash of active combat. I mentally tried to place where we were in the bunker and where the fighting seemed to be the heaviest. From the intensity of the fighting I guessed that the invading force had entered the bunker through the main transport rooms and were moving through the underground stronghold engaging Revolution soldiers.

We came around a corner and I stopped dead in my tracks when I spotted a figure ten metres ahead of us facing one of the main hallways. The tall black man with a head of greying, shortly-cropped hair stood with his back to us. Even without seeing his face, I knew who he was. With the delicate tattooed lines of ivy twisting up his arms, under his shirt, out of his collar and snaking up around his neck, Grimshaw Jegs was unmistakable.

Apparently the Nationalists had chosen their side in the war. And it wasn’t with us.

I stayed in the shadows and motioned for Armise. He moved silently to my back, his lips grazing the shell of my ear. “Who is that?” he whispered.

“Grimshaw. Leader of the Nationalists.”

I felt Armise move away from me then the barrel of his rifle appeared to my left, the sights aimed at the back of Grimshaw’s head. I trained my pistol lower and to the left, aiming for Grimshaw’s heart. At this distance neither Armise nor I would miss our mark. I nodded and we pulled our triggers at the same time, the thunder from the rifle and the pistol making my ears ring.

Grimshaw should have dropped to the ground immediately, but in that split second I realised he had to be using the same shielding technology Ahriman had used in the PsychHAg facility.

He turned slowly, cracked his neck, and surveyed Armise and I. He didn’t lift a weapon, he just took a step backwards, directly into the line of fire of the opposing forces battling out in the hallway and gave an evil leer. Grimshaw raised his hands as if he were welcoming us to try again. But I wouldn’t waste the bullet. He was invincible.

For now.

“Control room,” I said to Armise and walked backwards, keeping Grimshaw in my sights, even though a bullet from my gun wouldn’t harm him.

We retreated around the corner then took off running as I reviewed the map in my head of where the control room was located. The sounds of fighting seemed to fade as we got closer to the main room. I sprinted ahead of Armise, exposing myself in the hallway and pounding on the doorway, deciding—hoping—that whoever was in there had at least been smart enough to lock it.

The lock clicked free and the door was thrown open. I pushed inside, Armise only steps behind me, and the door slammed shut.

“What the fuck are you doing here? We were told you had gone up top,” Jegs said.

I ignored her and went straight for Neveed, who was standing at the front of the control room staring at the screen. The main screen was a grid of gruesome images from throughout the bunker of our soldiers being mowed down as they attempted to hold the Nationalists back.

“Neveed. What the fuck is the plan here?”

Neveed’s head turned and I could immediately see that I would be getting no help from our supposed General. His jaw hung slack, mouth open as he tried to form a response, but he appeared to be in shock. All the confidence from earlier had bled from his features.

“Is he injured?” I asked Jegs.

She shook her head. “Not physically.”

I spotted Chen across the room, her fingers moving rapidly over the bank of BC5s in front of her. “What’s our status, Chen?”

“The shields are down. We don’t have any protection against sonic weapons. They’ve attacked the transport stations and the generators. And not just here—all across the continent simultaneously. We won’t be able to transport for much longer.”

“Jegs, get her out of here.”

“I have to kill him first,” Jegs snarled.

“Revenge later. You have your orders.”

“We have to get the President out,” I thought I heard Neveed say, but I couldn’t be sure.

I spun and faced him. “What? Where is he?”

“He’s here,” Neveed answered quietly, still staring at the sheer number of Revolution soldiers dropping bloodless to the floor.

“What do you mean he’s here?”

“He never left. We just made it appear that he was elsewhere.” Neveed finally looked away from the screens. He pointed down. “He’s in the sub-bunker. Simion is with him,” Neveed said.

I noted the unfocused glaze in his eyes as if he wasn’t really seeing anything in front of him.

I gripped Jegs’ arm and pulled her to my side. “Forget everything you told me for right now. Can I trust Simion with the President?”

Jegs gave a clipped nod. “Yeah.”

“Give me a line to Simion,” I ordered Chen.

When the comm was open she pointed to the main screen where Simion’s face had replaced the slaughter happening around us.

“Ricor, you have to get the President out. Quickly, before they disable transport capabilities and he’s trapped.”

Simion nodded and clicked off the comm without a word and the main screen switched back to the surveillance of the bunker. I had to assume that, despite his unsteadiness on his synth, he was capable enough to handle keeping the President alive until I could get to him. We had no other choice.

“How are we going to get to Ahriman now?” Neveed whispered, as if he were baring his greatest fear to the world.