The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (30 page)

At last he approached the holding
cell: room 217. Just before he opened the door, a voice called out to him. It
was the ranking officer stalking up from behind.

“Lithium, wait!”

Arbor didn’t wait. He’d waited
long enough, and now he was going to see his enemy right where he deserved to
be.

The officer paused, thought it
about for a moment, and yelled down the hallway, “Captain!”

Arbor stopped and turned, half out
of pride for hearing his rank invoked for the first time in a very long time,
and half in incredulity that someone would acknowledge that which was never
supposed to be acknowledged.
The Freedom Council’s worst-kept secret.

“When was the last time you
commanded a mission, sir? A real mission?” the officer asked him.

Arbor spun back toward the door. He
was torn. He eyed the door like a starving man would eye a juicy steak. But he
turned again and strolled back to the officer. The answer was it had been a
long time. A hell of a long time.

Clay Arbor had become a showman, a
spokesman for the Council. He longed to get back to something that resembled
real combat. Besides, the freak wasn’t going anywhere.

Ward's condition had deteriorated. The prod was
turned up to fifteen. The shock was so strong it contorted Ward’s body in the
chains. There was a loud snap and pop as blue bolts danced into his skin. His
flesh blistered and split open, rupturing in a matter of seconds at the point
of contact. He screamed a hoarse, guttural, soulless cry.

“He's pissed himself!” said Fox
Face, laughing.

The big Guard stalked forward into
Ward’s face and spit at him. He glared down at the pool beneath Ward’s feet.
“Pathetic!  What made you think you were good enough to put on that bug
suit anyway?”

Ward’s mind was reeling; his
spirit was breaking. He tried his best to hold on. He spoke the words he was
trying convince himself of. “I'm a hero,” he whispered through shooting pain.

The guards hooted and sneered.

Ward began to cry. He had fought
it off for as long as he could, but his entire body was burning. He was about
to die, and they were going to kill him slowly and painfully, laughing as they
did it.

“You're no hero. What you ever do?
Chase away some bank robbers? Couldn't even catch your little boy's killer,”
Owl Face said. They laughed harder at this and high-fived each other. Ward
thought they were circling him for the kill. His last moments on Earth were
upon him.

“Yeah, we know all about you, Bug
Boy!” Fox Face chuckled.

“You let your son die right in
front of you,” Owl Face said. “Let your wife commit suicide, and let the guy
who done it get away. Ewwww, you're real scary!”

They had worked themselves into a
frenzy. Ward tried to respond. He knew he needed to say something to stall
them, stop them. Make them want to keep him alive. In the end, he just cried
harder.

Owl Face was feeling the
adrenaline rush of destroying Ward. He had a sadistic gleam in his eye as he
leaned right into Ward’s face again. “Why don't you tell your boy you're
sorry!  Tell him what a sack o’ shit you are.”

Ward could do nothing but sob. His
whole body shook. Snot and spit hung from his face. His eyes bugged. The veins
on his neck and forehead bulged out, blue and swollen.

“Say it!” screamed Fox Face. “Tell
your little boy you’re sorry. Say it!”

“I'm sorry, David. Daddy's sorry.”

“Sorry as hell,” Fox Face added.

Ward could no longer hear them.
The blood pounded in his ears. The acrid smell of his own burning flesh made
him retch, but nothing came up. They all watched him in disgust. After a few
seconds, Owl Face surged forward. “The hell with this! You tell us what we need
to know or I'm fryin' your ass!”

He stabbed the prod into Ward's
neck.

“No!” screamed Fox Face. Their
orders were to break him and get the information. Killing him would have severe
consequences. “You'll kill him. For real.”

That broke the spell. Owl Face
pulled the prod away regretfully, stunned at his own actions. He knew he’d lost
control.

The change in tone snapped Ward
back to reality. “Just do it! Go ahead!” Defiance or surrender? Even Ward
didn’t know.

“Why don't you just tell us what
we want to know?” Fox Face said.

Owl Face shook his head—and turned
the dial to twenty and slung it into Ward’s ribs. The zap and sizzle was
sickening. A loud pop followed, and Ward's body convulsed wildly. He vomited
the fluid he could not muster only moments earlier. He just hung there in the
chains, shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head. And then everything went
black.

CHAPTER
48

R
evolution
stopped outside of Ward's interrogation room and waited. A hand appeared out of
thin air as Rachel revealed a small explosive device. She could make her gloved
hand visible at will. Yet another facet of Rachel that many people found
off-putting. Revolution had much more weighty issues to worry about. He grabbed
the explosive charge from the disembodied hand.  It looked like a blob of
silly putty with a clock in the middle of it. He placed it on the door lock,
and Rachel kept the lookout. He pressed a small button near the readout and
backed away. The clock was set to count down thirty seconds.

Inside the room, the dial was
turned down to five. Owl Face jammed the prod into Ward’s bleeding, cooked ribs
yet again, and Ward jolted back to consciousness. “Wakey, wakey. You still want
to die?” the big man teased. He turned the dial to twenty-five and showed it to
Ward. Then he took a long step back from Ward and aimed the prod at his
testicles. “I don’t think he’s got the balls for this,” Owl Face taunted with a
sadistic smirk. Fox Face squinted and turned his face away. Ward tried to panic,
but his body would not respond to the terror in his mind. Just as the prod
reached the soft skin… 

BOOM!

The door blasted open. The wall
around it shattered.

The door itself swung free with
such force it ripped out of its hinges and knocked Owl Face into the corner of
the room, trapping him behind it. The door actually lodged into the wall,
canopying over the dazed Owl Face.

When Revolution entered the room,
he did not even see Owl Face. The 360-degree mirrored imaging in Revolution’s
helmet caught the image of the damaged door but did not make out the man behind
it. Or the prod he’d managed to hold onto in his clammy hands. Revolution stood
on the other side, two feet from one of the Junior Guards. The first of them
barreled toward Revolution, who slammed him with a right cross, and the man was
out.

One down.

Behind the door, sprawled on the
floor, Owl Face rubbed his throbbing head and charged the prod to thirty-five.

Arbor was headed back toward room 217 when he heard
the blast. Little did he know he was the only soul in the building that did. It
was faint, coming from far away. The isolated prisoner wing was only really
used for interrogation, and the fewer people who saw that the better.

Arbor stopped and listened but
didn't hear anything else. He turned and continued toward room 217. But then he
thought better of it—he knew an explosive device when he heard one, couldn’t
hurt to check it out—and retreated back toward the sound of the blast.

Revolution swiveled from his punch and in one fluid
motion kicked the other Junior Guard into the wall with a speed the eye
couldn’t follow. He hit with a hard thud, headfirst. Rachel, invisible in the
doorway, heard something crack when the man hit the wall and assumed it was his
skull.

Behind the door, the prod reached
seventy-five...

Revolution turned to see Fox Face,
who had cowered on the far side of the room, as far away from the infamous Dark
Patriot as possible. For the first time, Revolution took a good look at Ward’s
condition. His gross injuries. Anger welled up inside him. He’d come to care
more than he wanted to for the good-natured academic. That Ward could pierce
his thick veneer spoke volumes for the man. Revolution lowered his head and
stalked toward Fox Face.

Behind the door, Owl Face maxed the
prod out at one hundred. He looked out into the room. Revolution had his backed
turned toward him, concerned with his skinny partner.

Owl Face made his move, flinging
the door off of himself, leaping to his feet, lunging at the Revolution. Ward
and Rachel saw him at the same time and yelled in unison:

“Look out!”

But it was too late. All they did
was cause Revolution to pause, giving Owl Face an easier, stationary target.
The prod hit Revolution at the neckline. Electricity danced over his armor, and
he convulsed from the massive shock. One hundred thousand volts surged through
him. The lights in the room flickered on and off. Owl Face felt his whole body
vibrate from the flow of energy, and for a moment he thought he would lose his
grip on the prod. Revolution collapsed to the floor, smoldering. And the big
Guard breathed a sigh of relief.

They all stared at his body in
disbelief for a long moment.

In the doorway, Rachel did not
move a muscle, hoping the Guards had not heard her voice. Would she have to
fight? Would she have to flee? She waited to make her move. If she could just
figure out what that move would be.

Ward was watching for Revolution
to get back up. But he didn't. He just lay there, smoldering. He'd never seen
that. Not even when the Fire Fly had blasted him.
He had no
time to
prepare
, Ward thought. The Revolution was dead, and Ward knew who was next.

“I just killed the frickin'
Revolution!” Owl Face shouted.

Fox Face was unsure. “I
dunno...not like you can check his pulse.”

“Nobody can survive one hundred
thousand volts. Nobody.” Technically, Owl Face was wrong. The prod's levels
increased voltage and amps. It was the amps no one could survive. Not even the
Revolution.

“I dunno...” Fox Face was still
unsure. There were just too many stories about this guy. All he wanted to do
was call for backup, but his always ambitious partner was flush with the thrill
of the kill.

“Shit!  Everybody treats this
guy like he's some kinda ghost,” Owl Face said. “That's body armor, right?”

“Guess so.”

“Then it can be scanned. Hand me
that scanner.” Fox Face handed him a small device from his belt. Owl Face
leaned down next to Revolution. Being that close to him stirred up a little
doubt in the fat man. He peered back up at Fox Face, looking for reassurance.

Fox Face just shrugged
.

Owl Face took a deep breath.
Here goes nothing.
Slowly, he ran the device over Revolution's prone form.
A readout dotted across the device's small screen. Owl Face read it and
grimaced. “What the...?”

“What is it?” Fox Face said,
suddenly ready to flee.

“That can't be right.” Owl Face
scanned again. Same result. He rose with a bug-eyed expression. Just like he’d
seen a ghost.

“The armor. It’s grafted onto his
skin,” Owl Face said.

Now Ward and Fox Face spoke at
once: “What?”

Rachel kept silent that time.

“I'm tellin' ya, it’s grafted onto
the dude's skin. He couldn't take it off if he wanted. It'd kill him.” Fox Face
just shook his head in disbelief.

“'Course, I guess that ain't a
problem now,” Owl Face laughed. He and Fox Face smiled at each other, and Ward
sank further in his chains.

“The prod did it probably, right?
Burned it on there?” Fox Face asked.

“Naw, had to already be like that.
Hey. Let's find out who this dude really was.”

“Don't you think we should call
for backup?”

“Backup? He's dead,” Owl Face
sneered.

“Don't ya think we should call it
in?” Fox Face glanced around at their fallen colleagues. Owl Face was focused
only on the Revolution.

“Let's just see for ourselves
first.”

Fox Face turned his head slowly,
like he was working out a kink in his neck. “It could be booby-trapped.”

“Don't be stupid,” Owl Face shot
back. The fat man reached under Revolution's mask. Out of sight from the
Guards, Revolution moved his hand.

Rachel saw it. It was the sign she
had been quietly praying for. Fighting was not her best skill, and she had no
idea how she was going to rescue Ward alone. But this confirmed her hope.
Revolution was playing possum the whole time. 

Owl Face fumbled for a seam to
lift the mask off and found nothing.

Suddenly, spikes shot out from
just above Revolution’s wrists, and he jammed them into Owl Face’s chest with a
loud splat. The Guard's face turned from shock to terror to agony.

Revolution lifted his head until
the two were face-to-face. “Don't tread on me.” Revolution's armor hummed, and
suddenly the Guard's body convulsed with energy. An electric shock. Skin
sizzling grotesquely. The Guard fell over, sliding off the blades. Smoldering
and charred. Very dead.

“Your armor absorbed the electricity
and then released it into him!” Ward was ecstatic. For the first time in this
whole ordeal he began to think he might survive it.

Revolution nodded.

The thin Guard backed away. Sheer
terror mapped across his face. He couldn’t even run. He just stared at the
Revolution as the man in the metal rose to his feet and stalked toward him once
again. “Oh God! Please don't kill me.” Revolution stopped just in front of him
as Fox Face crumpled into a ball on the floor.

“Okay, I won’t.” It was a threat. Revolution
grabbed Fox Face’s arm and twisted it  behind his back as far as it would
go. The snap of the bone was audible—as was the skinny man's scream of agony.
Rinse and repeat with the other arm. The Guard collapsed. Crying, dribbling
spittle. Revolution grabbed a handful of his hair and slammed Fox Face into the
floor with a crack, knocking him unconscious.

Then he spun quickly, hit a button
on the wall, and Ward fell out of his chains into Revolution’s waiting arms.
“Let's get you out of here,” he said to Ward.

“You came for me,” Ward said in a
near sob that made Rachel hurt for him. She knew then that he had thought he
was going to die in this room. Revolution helped Ward to his feet. He could
barely stand. Rachel reappeared—with bandages to address Ward's wounds. She had
come prepared for this contingency, and much worse. Revolution grabbed Ward’s
torn uniform. He scanned the cuff darts, assessing their internal mechanisms.

“The darts still work. Let's bring
back the Spider. I need him.” Ward's tired, defeated eyes twinkled slightly. He
tried to grin.

“Me too,” Rachel added. “He has a
nice ass.”

CHAPTER
49

W
ard
appreciated the humor, even if he couldn’t really show it. The rest of them
seemed to find Rachel's humor distasteful, especially Sophia, but he liked it.
He would tell her that one day. One day when he was fully clothed and fully
awake. And less likely to puke all over her. It was all he could do to stay
conscious.