Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (8 page)

‘
Hear, hear,’ we all cried.

The next hour was bliss. We laughed, drank, ate. Chris
steadily became drunk, and started a wonky tune of Kelly Clarkson’s
‘
My Life Would Suck Without
You’
, drawing more laughter from the
group.

‘
No it’s true,’ he continued once he’d stopped. ‘You guys, you
guys are mine family. Mine family, my fami…’

We all
clutched our sides in laughter. Chris’s face crunched into a frown
as he sat there, contemplating his words.

‘
So, Lucas,’ Brian said from the head of the table, ‘what was
your life like before all things went to hell, and you turned into
a quivering little madam?’

‘
Ohhhhh,’ Anna laughed, tears forming in her eyes.

‘
Madam?’ I chuckled.

‘
Yeah, come on,’ Brian teased. ‘You were a little bit
whiny.’

‘
No he wasn’t,’ Anna defended half-heartedly.

‘
I guess your humour is an acquired taste, huh?’ I chuckled
then shrugged. ‘You’re wrong. I wasn’t a little whiny at
all.

‘
I was a lot.’

Anna and
Brian cackled, and we chinked beers. Anna sipped on a glass of
coke.

‘
Before, well, it was nothing spectacular, I lived with my
folks, went to college. Hung out with friends, you know normal
stuff.’

‘
What did you do at college?’ he followed up.

‘
Computers,’ I smiled, ‘studying them, hardware and software,
yada yada.’

Brian
brightened at the mention of the thing he was brilliant
at.

‘
How good are you?’ he shot.

I
laughed, and Anna joined in.

‘
Nowhere near you,’ I said. ‘The best thing I can do is open up
Internet Explorer and Google.’

‘
Oh, segue,’ Anna said. ‘We know you’re good Brian, but how the
hell did you get all this money?’

Brian’s
eyes crinkled as he smiled.

‘
The hacking part is easy for me, but I don’t take a lot of
money from one single account,’ he explained. ‘A few pounds here
from one account, a few there from another, only from thousands of
accounts. Just little amounts that people won’t realise are
gone.’

‘
Cool,’ I said, unable to keep the awe out of my
voice.

I was
about to ask how he had become so good with computers when Chris
and Paul erupted in laughter, both guffawing over something Chris
had said, and the question was lost. Anna shook her head with a
spreading grin on her face.

‘
What about buddies?’ Brian interrogated. ‘Did any of your
friends make it out?’

‘
No,’ I sighed. ‘I never even saw them the day everything
started. I didn’t really have many friends. A few I hung with every
now and again, but I guess I liked my own company.’

Anna’s
forehead wrinkled in pity.

‘
Hey,’ I said and smiled, ‘it wasn’t a bad thing. I mean I had
tons of friends when I was younger.’

‘
Who?’ Anna asked.

‘
Well I had my best friend, Samuel,’ I said, but the memory of
the boy closed my mouth.

‘
Did you guys drift apart?’ Brian pushed.

‘
Uh, no, um, he died not long after he turned eleven,’ I
replied and dropped my gaze.

‘
What happened?’ Brian said and Anna shot him a look. ‘Sorry, I
don’t mean to push.’

I
shrugged and tried a smile, a smile that no doubt looked like a
grimace.

‘
He was run over, an accident,’ I said. ‘At the time Greystone
didn’t have much of a hospital, you know, being the tiny town it
was. No college either. There was a building off the doctors’
surgery that was a makeshift sort of hospital, where I thought my
Dad had worked, but they weren’t equipped well enough to deal with
Samuel’s injuries.’

‘
He died there?’ Anna whispered.

‘
No, he died while he was being airlifted to the city,’ I
answered. ‘After that though more money was funnelled the town’s
way; a full sized and up-to-date hospital was constructed, and a
college too. It made the town more self-sufficient.’

‘
I remember,’ Brian said. ‘both weren’t really finished until a
couple years ago right?’

‘
Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘3/4 of the hospital had been running for a
while until the rest of the place could be finished, and the
college was finished just before I was nineteen.’

‘
At least something good came from Samuel’s death,’ Anna
interjected.

I
nodded.

‘
Yeah,’ I smiled. ‘Well after that I wasn’t much fun to be
around for a while. My Dad flipped for some reason.’

‘
Flipped?’ Brian said.

‘
Yeah, I don’t know wh-’ I started, but my mine nudged me. ‘Of
course I know why. Dear old Dad was trying to keep me as complacent
and safe as possible for his experiment, he probably thought having
friends put it in jeopardy.’

Brian
nodded sadly and started to push the food around on his plate. Anna
sensed the dark cloud and banished it with another
smile.

‘
Come on,’ she said, ‘it’s gift time!’

She got
up and grabbed the shopping bag lying on the couch, then raced back
over with the already wrapped gifts. She sat them in the middle of
the table, and handed us tightly wrapped and heavily taped
packages.

‘
Jesus, Anna,’ Chris slurred, ‘d’ya expect me to break into
this? This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,
sweetheart.’

Anna
took the package from him and laughed. Chris narrowed his eyes and
stared intently as Anna revealed his gift. It was a toy soldier, in
army clothing. A big heart was painted on its chest, and a sweet
smile separated its lips.

‘
For the man with a plan, and a big heart,’ Anna
smiled.

Paul
laughed maniacally, but tears came to Chris’s eyes and he smiled
brightly, making the scars on his face far less
menacing.

‘
Thanks, sweetheart,’ Chris whispered and took the doll from
her.

‘
It’ll give you sumin to do in your spare time,’ Paul
squealed.

I laughed, and Anna frowned playfully. She handed Paul his,
and he unwrapped it. The smile fell from his face, and as we all
caught sight of his gift, we nearly fell off our chairs. In Paul’s
hands was a large mug, a head with steam billowing out from the top
plastered on its front. Words underneath dictated:
‘
Chill out. Don’t panic. The world is not
ending.’

‘
Couldn’t have said it better myself!’ Brian smiled.

The
smile finally returned to Paul’s face, and he joined in on the
laughter. Chris with slurred words poked fun back at him. Brian’s
package was a toy laptop that beeped, and after pressing a few
buttons, a robotic child’s voice echoed from the
speaker.

‘
You’re a star!’ it screamed.

Brian
beamed.

I went
to lift mine, but Anna covered my hand.

‘
Not now, open yours later,’ she said, and the rest of the men
at the table broke into cat calls and jokes.

Anna
laughed along with them and winked. We continued to polish off our
plates, and when we were done, we sat there blissfully. Chris sang
in a dull quiet voice, and his eyes were almost closing. A burp
erupted from his mouth.

‘
Go to bed, Chris,’ I said.

‘
Zat is a good ideal, no, ideal, no,’ Chris’s forehead crunched
in confusion, but he slouched off anyway. ‘Thanks for ze gift,
Anna.’

‘
No problem,’ Anna said, ‘sorry it’s not something
spectacular.’

‘
No, Anna,’ Brian said as Chris’s door clicked shut, ‘they’re
perfect.’

I helped
Brian clear the table, and then moved it back to the wall on my
own. Anna was smiling from the couch, watching me with drooped
eyes. She looked tired. I grinned, my insides aglow with my
feelings for her, well alcohol was a factor as well. It was all
going brilliantly, until Paul’s voice shattered everything Anna had
worked to create.

‘
What the fuck are we doing!!?’ he screamed, making even me
jump.

His head
rolled slowly around, and his speech slurred. The previous laughter
and joy he had exuded had vanished, and his face turned a horrible
shade of purple. Brian’s face fell, and he walked over and tried to
lift his father up and move to their room, but Paul slipped out of
his grasp.

Paul
himself shook, his teeth suddenly chattered and sweat slid down his
face as if a bucket of water had been dumped over his
head.

‘
We brought you guys here to fucking stop all this shit,’ he
spat, ‘and we’re all sitting here, pretending we have happy little
9-5 lives.’

‘
Dad,’ Brian said.

‘
Well we don’t!’ Paul bellowed and he lifted Anna’s mug and
smashed it against the wall. ‘We don’t because of YOU! You and your
fucking father.’

‘
Dad!’ Brian shouted.

Paul
looked around at his son, his face maniacal. He finally grunted,
pushed past Brian and slammed the door. Brian opened his mouth, but
the apology died on his lips. He sighed and walked out after his
father, leaving Anna and I open-mouthed and completely
rattled.

*

‘
I shouldn’t have pushed it,’ Anna whispered.

We’d
changed and gotten ready for bed, reality finally taking
over.

‘
No, you were right,’ I assured her, ‘we needed something like
this. Don’t be so hard on yourself over that arsehole. I honestly
think there’s something wrong with him.’

Anna’s
face had hardened, her jaw clenched. I could see the internal
struggle she was fighting. She wanted the comforts of a normal
life, to balance them with what we had to do. She was
losing.

‘
No,’ Anna whispered. ‘I won’t be making this mistake again.
Tomorrow we plan something. Tomorrow, we hunt your Dad down, we
find my brother, and we put a stop to this, once and for
all.’

She
turned and lay down, closing her eyes.

It broke
my heart.

The Hunt

When I
woke the next morning, Anna was already up. Once I’d showered,
brushed my teeth and changed, I headed out into the main room.
Anna, Brian and Chris were bent over one of the screens of the many
computers. Paul was nowhere to be seen, and the thought of his
sudden outburst coupled with his new attitude for the most part,
sent chills up my spine. Something was wrong with him, that much we
could see, and the conversation I’d overhead was never far from my
mind.

I walked
to the kitchen, poured some coffee, and joined the group. The
screen they were staring at had some sort of outline on it. Small
boxes and large boxes, names in the middle, and I finally realised
they were building schematics.

‘
What’s up?’ I said as a way of greeting.

‘
I asked Brian to find out everything he could about the
address he got,’ Anna answered, never taking her eyes from the
screen. ‘The layout, security, what the building’s for.’

‘
And?’ I asked.

Brian
swivelled in his chair, his eyes hooded and dark.

‘
It’s an information centre kinda deal,’ he said. ‘People or
businesses can hire one of the floors, and store information
there.’

‘
It’s a file room for the rich?’ I said.

Chris
nodded and sighed.

‘
They offer different packages depending on how much the client
needs memory wise. Since most things are done digitally now,’ Chris
replied, but he wrinkled his forehead, and the gears in his mind
looked to be whirring.

‘
Can’t businesses and such not store their own information?’ I
asked.

‘
It’s less about capacity of storage, and more about security,’
Brian said. ‘High quality protection, guaranteed
apparently.’

I took a
sip of the hot liquid in my hands, and stared at the screen. The
building had around twenty-four floors, but the screen only showed
one. That floor, being the twenty-fourth, didn’t have many rooms.
From what I could see, the elevator stopped at a corridor, which
led along to a large oval-shaped room. The schematic didn’t show
what the room contained though.

‘
Why are you guys focused on this floor?’ I said, pointing my
finger to the screen.

Chris’s
face tightened and he looked into my eyes.

‘
Brian managed to pull this from the city’s database of
buildings,’ Chris started, ‘although, we’re pretty sure your Dad
isn’t here, but it’s definitely where the files came from, so he’s
got a floor there. Brian tried hacking through each
one.’

‘
I was going to go through each floor’s file system,’ Brian
continued, ‘see if any of them had files that matched what we took
from the USB.’

‘
And?’ I pushed.

Brian
exchanged a glance with Chris, and Anna just stared at the
screen.