The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (29 page)

Anger flashed in the girl's eyes.
“I think I need to be alone.” Her body blazed, and she flashed away.

“Honey—” Becky started, but she
was already gone.

At that exact moment the doorbell
rang. Becky jumped. She hurried to the door in case it was Fiona. Peering out
the peephole she spied a smiling delivery man. “Delivery for Rebecca Collins,”
he said through the door. Becky unlatched the door and swung it open.

The door flew out of her grasp and
smashed into the side of her face. Two large men stormed in. Becky slammed to
the ground. She sprawled on the floor. The delivery man leaned down, grabbed
her by the shirt, and jammed the gun barrel into Becky's bleeding lip as he
lifted her to her feet.

“Turns out we have really good
surveillance equipment outside the Hall of Records. Do you know how badly we
frown on former employees selling secrets?”

“I'm not going to.”

“No, you're not.” The delivery man
forced her back onto the couch. She landed hard, bounced once, and slid down
onto the cushions. “What you are going to do is be the victim of a home
invasion. So tragic. Cut down in the prime of life.”

He placed the gun at Becky's head.
His finger curled around the trigger. She closed her eyes. But the shot that
would take her life didn’t come. Her eyes popped open. The two men were frozen
in place.

Suddenly, they seemed to swoon. A
bright light grew behind them.

 Fiona's light.

The Fire Fly's arms emerged from
their chests, glowing as she rose above them from behind. A dumb smile crossed
the delivery man’s face. Then it hit. Agony. Every pore of their bodies bled
light. Their skin split open as daylight came streaking through the cracks.
They ripped apart. Consumed in the radiance.

Becky shielded her eyes from the
intensity and the horror. Then there was nothing. No sign the men had ever been
there at all.

The Fire Fly floated in the center
of the room, basking in the glory of her own power. Tears streamed down Becky's
cheeks. She'd never experienced anything like that, and the waterworks came
before she could even think.

Fiona saw her tears. Even in her
powerful form, the Fire Fly sank into Becky's lap, like a scared child. Fiona
seemed to fear the very fact that Becky had seemed to be afraid of her for an
instant.

Becky regained her composure and
ran her fingers through the girl's pulsing hair. The feeling was one of plush
velvet power. Fiona raised her hand to Becky's bleeding lip. Her finger blazed
and brightened. Faint smoke trailed upward. It caught Becky off guard. She
flinched, her eyelids bounced, but the bleeding soon stopped. Fiona had
cauterized the wound. The Fire Fly rose to her feet, determined.

“Don't be afraid. You never have
to be afraid.” Her forehead scrunched in anger. “No one will ever hurt you
again.” 

And then she was gone.

Becky sat bewildered. And more
than a little worried. What did she mean by that? Fiona had just killed two
men. To save her life, true. But the question remained: what more was she
capable of?

CHAPTER
46

O
ne
second later...

The workday was just starting at
the Freedom Council's local office in Sacramento. The main floor was open,
large, and busy. Desks in rows, no cubicles.

Fiona materialized in the center
of all the action.

She floated near the ceiling,
gazing down at the room, seething with hatred. The entire office staff could
see her. More importantly, they could
feel
her. Her power radiated out,
hitting them like a wave. They just gaped in shock, unsure of what they were
witnessing. She pushed her arms out to the sides and smirked. A concussive wave
of light energy blasted outward.

The windows shattered.

Anyone near was thrown to the
ground. A low rumble began to build from somewhere deep inside the bowels of
the building. Those not on the main floor thought it was another California
earthquake. 

“Get out now or you'll die,” she
said matter-of-factly.

People scattered. Word of mouth
spread. The building emptied in a matter of moments. When she sensed it was
empty, the Fire Fly began to concentrate. Light exploded out from her entire
body and encircled everything in the room. The light snaked across every inch
of the empty building. Down every hallway, across every floor. But it was not
enough. She wanted more. Wanted it all. She screamed, her anger feeding the
expanding light. Tears streaming from her eyes in large droplets of lava, her
anger growing, the light swelled up and down, twenty-five stories. Every square
millimeter, every dark crevice, until the entire massive structure was bathed
in her light. And she could see it all. See with the light. It was an extension
of her eyes, her hands...her anger.

The great building suddenly lifted
and ripped from its foundation, trembled, shook—and burst apart into a million
pieces. It simply burned away to nothing, just as the Guards had done in
Becky's living room only minutes before. The brilliant light vanished as well.
Nothing remained but Fiona floating in the air. Below her lay only a swath of
barren earth.

Across the street stood the Hall
of Records, which she and Becky had visited the night before. Fiona telescoped
to the building's front steps. Office workers were already rushing out,
panicked.

She raised her arms, and beams of
light jetted out, blasted into the structure. A low rumble drifted out from
inside the building. The remaining onlookers fled at that point, expecting more
fireworks. Instead, the front of the building—the large windows and the
concrete facade— exploded outwards and smashed onto the avenue, ripping great
gaping holes into the street. The entire massive filing cabinet system ripped
out of the walls, riding on rays of light. Fiona lifted it and held it high in
the air. She dropped her arms to her sides, and the cabinets crashed into the
street, sending explosions of paper into the air.

It rained down like confetti.

“The truth sees the light of day,”
she said profoundly and disappeared.

BOSTON

TWELVE HOURS LATER

Revolution sat upright on the single stool in his
holding cell, catching a few hours of shut-eye. Meanwhile, his onboard
communications searched for a breach in the firewall to contact Lantern. All to
no avail. His odd slumber was interrupted by a motion sensor alarm programmed
to wake him automatically. As he opened his eyes he saw the door to the room
closing, but the room was still empty. He shook the sleep out of his head, but
the motion detector was still beeping at him...and the room was still empty.

Rachel materialized just outside
the energized bars to his cage. “It's good to see
you
,” he said.

“That's what all the boys say.”
She winked at him, strolled over to the kill switch for the electrified bars,
and pressed it down. “Thanks for letting us know you two were still alive, by
the way. Didn’t know we were broadcasting team status reports through Media
Corp?” she teased. Revolution realized the Suns must have assumed he and Ward
were dead. Without skipping a beat, she reached into her coat and pulled out a
small, thin, flat piece of what looked like silly putty. She placed the putty
into the cell's keyhole. Inside the keyhole, the putty molded itself to the
shape of the locking device. She pulled it out, and Revolution could see it had
formed into a key.

“I just need a second,” she told
him. They watched as the mold turned solid. It took half a minute. She inserted
it in the lock, and the cell door swung open. He nodded a thank you and exited
in a hurry. His thoughts turned somber. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“I have to find Paul.”

Rachel smiled at him reassuringly.
“Already did.”

Clay Arbor had waited all day. He was pissed that
the deputy chief had taken so long to find out where in the city the Guard had
taken the Revolution. He began to wonder if he'd picked the wrong man as his
inside contact. But finally the deputy chief had sent him the info, and Arbor
had suited up as Lithium and headed out from his country estate just outside
the city.

Arbor used his celebrity status as
Lithium to get into the building. Amazing how many lower-tiered Guardsmen would
pull favors for him just to brag they'd done so later. Arbor had to sneak onto
the prison wing, but he had done so before. Now he found himself marching down
a long hallway, peering into each room as he passed by. Searching for the man
in the cape. Behind him, the floor’s ranking officer stuck his head out a door,
having caught the big man's image out the corner of his eye as he was passing
by.

“Lithium! You don't have
authorization to be up here.” Arbor didn't stop. So the officer followed.

“I know he's here. I wanna see
him,” Arbor barked, never turning around or breaking stride.

“Sir, you're not
authorized
to see him.” The officer was trailing; his anger sounded in his voice.
Technically, Arbor outranked him, but
here…

Arbor stopped. Spun. Pointed his
palm turrets at the officer. “You wanna be comatose for an hour or a life?”
Arbor figured this would stop him in his tracks.

Instead, the officer drew his
weapon. Drew it faster than Arbor had expected. The guy was good. And he was in
the right, just doing his duty.

Arbor dropped his arms. Dropped
the attitude, too. “Just wanna see if I can get him to talk. He's my charge, ya
know?”

The officer lowered his weapon. He
exhaled deep and rubbed the steel out of his neck. For a moment he peered
around, probably checking to see if anyone else was seeing this. He seemed to
be weighing options.

Arbor actually recognized his face
but couldn’t place it with a name. It was the officer’s charge to watch this
floor. He was probably conflicted. Arbor figured the guy knew a lot about the
Clay Arbor/Lithium story, his secret identity being the Freedom Council’s
worst-kept secret and all. He probably respected what Arbor had accomplished in
his life. “You’re a living legend,” people would say.

The officer shook his head as he
thought it over. Then, with what sounded like a resigned sigh, he said, “He's
on the other wing. Room two-seventeen.” Arbor nodded in thanks and headed for
his new destination.

At that very moment, one wing away on the other side
of the large structure, Rachel aimed a small RDSD at the wall of room 217. A
ray of light pulsed out and scanned a wide aqua-blue beam across the room. The
wall seemed to become transparent, and the entire compound revealed itself in
aqua-blue 3-D. At the other end of the compound, Ward's figure was strung up in
his cell. He showed up in red—keyed to his DNA signature. One of Lantern’s
favorite toys.

“I see him!” Revolution said. He
spun for the door.

“Wait! Ladies first, remember?”
She handed him the RDSD, pulled on the invisibility cloak, and disappeared. Had
she thought to scan behind her she would have seen Clay Arbor coming up from
the other prisoner wing.

Owl Face and Fox Face had been joined by two Junior
Guards, young men still in training. Owl Face picked up a high-tech
cattle-prod-looking device. He pressed a button, and the weapon began to buzz.
Fox Face pressed a button on the wall, and Ward was spun around to face them.
Owl Face waved the prod in his face. “You see how this says level one?  It
goes up to one hundred. I'll stop as soon as you tell me what I need to know.”

The guard pressed the prod's metal
to Ward's chest. A loud zap echoed across the room. Ward screamed and
convulsed. He twitched in agony. To Ward, the lights in the room seemed to
glare with colors so bright he could not keep his eyes open, and he could hear
the cold chains jingle in his ears. He couldn’t control the shaking. Of course,
it was just a physiological stress reaction to the pain.
Focus on what you
know
, he thought. Maybe he could detach himself. Experience it all from a
medical perspective.
Don't let them break you
.

“Ewwww. That musta hurt,” laughed
Fox Face.

“Let's try level two,” one of the
Junior Guards blurted out. Owl Face smirked and turned the knob. Shoved the
prod back in Ward's face. And then jammed it into his ribs.

ZAP! Ward spit up whatever was in
his stomach and convulsed harder. Tears streamed down his face. The room began
to spin, and sweat popped out all over his naked body.

“Another?” Owl Face spat. He
turned the gauge to three, smiling as he approached his victim.

CHAPTER
47

R
evolution
snuck down the long hallway, guided by the device—and Rachel. She kept several
yards ahead of him and sent a warning from her RDSD to his when someone was
coming. Fortunately, the prison wing was surprisingly empty. At one point the
RDSD vibrated, and he slipped into a room just before two Guards turned into
the hallway. He could hear their banter about the Red Sox and Yankees and
waited for it to fade down the corridor before he continued.

Rachel was watching Ward's ordeal
through the walls. She could see it thanks to the special glasses Lantern had
made for her. To others, the scan she was watching was invisible. She could
relate to that. She kept the RDSD pointed ahead but focused on Ward at all
times. She didn’t like what she was seeing, so she fell back.

“We need to hurry,” she whispered
when Revolution came closer.

Arbor marched toward the holding cell. The numbers
seemed to pass by exceedingly slowly. He'd waited a long time to see the
star-spangled freak behind bars. It was like the two of them had always been
playing this intricate chess match, and he finally had him in checkmate.