Last War (36 page)

     With only limited space to find for his feet, it became clearer that he was running out of places to latch onto. Hand by hand, foot by foot he continued to try.

     Where am I? He thought to himself. Why am I
climbing?

     He heard a cry out from below him. When he looked
down, he was on the wall of a large cliff. He looked up, and he was almost at the plateau. He heard his name, again.

     Without a clue to how he reached that point
on the wall, he became afraid. A dizzy spell swathed him. He felt a slight disturbance at the bottom of his stomach sure to erupt into full-blown nausea any moment.

     His arms and legs were weak. He had no more juice left. The people on the ground looked as if they were cleaning a disaster area of some sort. Without a harness, if he were to let go, he’d only plunge to his death, making more of a mess for them to clean up.

     Dead bodies covered the ground below him. He couldn’t make out where he was, but it appeared as if they were in the void of the Grand Canyon. He looked to see who he recognized, and couldn’t make anyone out.

     Then he heard Jason’s voice calling  him.
Frenziedly, he looked. Jason sounded close – almost right in front of him. “Jason! Where are you?”

     He heard nothing in return.
“I’ve been trying to reach you. They got me.”

     With an urgency he looked for a place to grab, despite being tired. “Get me down from here
, Jason.”

     “Where are you?” Jason asked.

     “I’m up here, where are you?”

     “I’m right in front of your face. You’re looking right at me.”

     Czyra looked in front of him. “I only see a stone wall.”

     His foot gave way, and slipped from underneath of him. Suddenly, he couldn’t hold his other foot firm and that let loose, too. Hanging there only by the grace of his arm and finger strength, he was about ready to die.

     His hands burned through the numbness just before slipping off of the rock sending Czyra to a swirling plunge towards the ground. There was no way he was going to make it to the ground without a heart attack.

     Czyra blacked out. 

     Pitch-black.

     T
he first sense that returned to Czyra was a spinning sensation; as if he were laying in the middle of a mary-go-round flat on his back.

     “Czyra.” He heard. “You still can hear me, or no?”

     With his heart racing through his chest, awareness began to bleed back into his consciousness. The initial bit of light that entered Czyra’s eyes hurt. It was too much. Everything was blurry and loud. “Where am I?”

     “Well, partner, you’re in a roadside ditch, left for dead.”

     Still in a dazed stupor, he tried to gain composure of his sore stiff body.

     “Hey, don’t move. We’ve got you.”

     He heard the man ask someone to grab his legs. The second pair of hands felt less strong than the person who had his upper body. Still feeling like he was spinning, he felt the soft sensation of leather on his back. A door closed under his feet.

     The two strangers
got into the front seats.

     T
he light inside of the car was much more dim due to the tinted windows. A man and a woman sat in the front seats. Once his vision focused, he was able to make out Jason’s face. Jason smiled at Czyra. He looked different.

     “How was it?”

     Czyra’s couldn’t afford to express his rage, the flaring headache that stretched down his neck into the back of his shoulders restricted him.

     “Go easy, there, son. You’ve been through a lot. Here, take these.”

     Jason handed him three pills and a water bottle. “Drink up, you’ll need the fluids.”

     Czyra tried to work up as much intensity as possible. “You were supposed to be at the end of my walk.”

    “I’m here. I didn’t tell you what kind of walk it was gonna be, did I?”

     “You didn’t—
”

     “If you’re conscious of your mission as a rookie, it will throw everything off. I had to do it that way.”

     “Well, we failed anyway.”

     “We sure did not, young fella.
We have the F.A.I.T.H. documents. While you were in your predicament, my friend here took care of grabbing the documents.”

     There was a brief silence.

     “How did she—“

     “Don’t worry about that part, yet. Just know from here, things get a little bit murkier.”

     “They stuck me with something.”

     “You’re chipped now. They’re tracking you and me. So, likely they know we’re together, and soon they’ll know we have F.A.I.T.H.”

     “Where are we going?”

     “We’ve got a flight to catch. We’re heading to New York.”

     “Who is she?” 

     The woman turned around. “I’m Tania. Nice to meet you.”

     She looked familiar to Czyra. “Do I know you? I mean—have we met before?”

     “No. I don’t think so.”

     “It’s probably just the body chip, Czy. She looks very familiar to me, as well. But, I mean, everything is looking familiar to me, at this point. It’s gonna take some getting used to in the beginning.” Jason interrupted. “You need some rest. By time you rest up this next time, you’ll probably be back to your normal self.”



     Christine and Clareese had found a lead to a cousin who had commented in an article about Tameka’s death. The cousin lived in the same town as Clareese. They figured that’d be a good place to start their investigation.

     The girls
pulled up to the door where the woman was just approaching her front door.

     “Ma’am.” Christine called out. “May I speak to you for a minute?”

     The woman, startled, looked back. Slowly, continuing to unlock her door she responded, “Can I help you?”

     “I was hop
ing you’d be able to help me.”

     “Well, who are you?”

     “My name is Christine, and this is my friend, Clareese. We’re looking for someone who may have known your cousin, Tameka. He has disappeared for four years.”

     “Honey-chil’ he’s gone.”

     “Wait, do you know that or---“

     “No.
I don’t even know who you’re talking about, but if you knew him well, you’d know how they do over there. People go away, come back different people, or don’t ever come back at all; buncha human chess pieces. Come on in; grab those bags for me, will ya.”

     Once they got into the small dark apartment
, the lady walked her grocery bags to the kitchen and sat them on her counter. Dusting her hands on her jeans, she stuck out her left hand to shake. “My name is Cinda. What may I do for ya?”

     “I’m looking for a man named Jason Upton.”

     “Upton? Black or white dude?”

     “White. He was Tameka’s boss.”

     “Oh. The guy who issued her that awesome work vehicle? Yeah. I knew him.”

     “He did what?”

     “Yeah. It was a project they were working on. Tameka was a physicist. She worked on a lot of things. They were working on a few new features for Mercedes. He was issued a vehicle, and he got her one too. He said it would help advance their study.”

     “She told you all of that?”

     “Well, she had to. I wasn’t stupid. With the money she made, there was no way she’d be able to buy a big-body Benz that held conversations with her. I mean, they’re not even talking about that stuff in rap music right now.”

     “But, still, do you think that’s the real story? Sometimes they lie.”

     “I really don’t know. After a while it becomes entirely too exhausting trying to piece their puzzles together in conspiracies. After a while, you just have to take them for their word. If the story makes sense, keep it moving. Don’t ask questions. At least they took the time to make a convincing story.” She shrugged her shoulders.

     “What else did she tell you about Jason?”

     “Who is Jason to you?”

     “He was—well,
is
my husband. He disappeared, probably 3 or 4 years ago.”

     “Oh. I’m sorry to hear. It’s cute you’re still looking for him after 4 years.”
She laughed.

“If my husband disappeared, I’d
thank the lord by going to church every Sunday from now until I died.”

     “Yeah.” Christine’s mood instantly dropped a notch. She saw a picture of family on the counter.

     “I’m sorry. I was just trying to lighten the mood. Yeah. That’s them.” Cinda walked to the shelf and brought the picture over to the women. “Tameka is the one in the center.”

     “She’s so pretty.”

     Tameka had rich Hershey brown skin. Her hair was short, and her smile was perfectly white and symmetrical.

     “I don’t know muc
h else about your husband.” Cinda said. “They worked on something she called ‘groundbreaking technology’ together. I don’t know how much they saw each other, or how many others  worked on it, or how directly they actually worked together. He was just ‘boss’ when she talked about him. Never had a bad word. All good. Very important stuff, I guess.” 

     “When’s the last time you saw her?”

     “I went out shopping with her—“ Cinda began to suddenly lose her composure. “I’m sorry.” She said wiping her tears. “I was with her on the day.”

     “Did you…see?”

     “No. We went to the mall that day. She told me about the frightening stories, and the men, too. When we left the mall, I went home and she did too. That’s when they got her.”

     “I’m sorry to hear that.”

     “It was eerie. It’s like she knew it was going to happen. She bought me this while we were there.” Cinda handed Christine a ring. “In hindsight, I don’t know why she didn’t just stay somewhere else. It makes no sense. Those guys were obviously persistent.”

     “This ring is beautiful. Where did she buy it?”

     “I think Tiffany’s. Look at what’s engraved inside.”

     “’You can’t suspect what you don’t know exists.’”

     “Isn’t that a weird thing to put on the inside of a ring to your family?”

     “Yeah. It’s even
more weird that Jason used that phrase all the time.”

     “Maybe it’s a sign?”



     A new tuning in from a subconscious blurry daze welcomed Czyra to the sensation of acceleration. His blurred vision focused to a television in front of him
as g-forces pinned his head to the headrest. He looked to his left, he saw the Jason. “How are you feeling, Mr.?” Jason asked.

     “How’d you get me on here?”

     “You still have the glasses on. You were in a daze.”

     “What about the glasses? And what did you do to your face? Some fancy disguise? And where’s the woman?”

     “Look, calm down. She’ll catch up with us later. You have temporary amnesia and probably face-blindness. I did nothing to my face. It’s just a minor side effect of the chip. The only thing you probably remember right now is anything associated with your last mission. I saved that on this.” Jason held up his device. “I’m making you a memory scanner. You scan your chip, and everything will slowly return. You’ll learn to work with it.”

     “So, basically, I’ve
been reset like a Sega Genesis?”

     “Not exactly. Most of your memory will gradually return.”

     “What, exactly, did it do to me?”

     “What they put in you basically rewired your body. The chip was carefully injected into your spine after they sedated you. All of your senses now run through this device. Due to it being like a
super hippocampus it will record all the info that runs through you.”

     “Where does it go?”

     Jason swallowed. “Well, sir, the NSA is storing it. On the bright side, your brain is now enhanced.”

     “Wait. So, I’m not getting this. All of my thoughts are being piped to the enemy, I’m going to have random amnesia, I can barely recognize faces and
you’re saying I’m enhanced? Forgive me if I don’t understand.”

     “Relax a bit, my friend. You make it sound terrible. Look, I created the device. What they have are neurology patterns. They need a human translator. They don’t have what we’ve got.”

     “Which is what, Jason?”

     “I have the device that will automatically translate the patterns into understandable terms. Like now,
this device is saying you’re angry and scared.”

     “That shouldn’t take a device to know.”

     “You’re currently hungry, or going to be; you’re running on an empty stomach. Your blood pressure is through the roof, and you need to relax. I’ll get you some airplane food.” Jason looked at the device. “Oh, you don’t like airplane food? Well, you need to eat.”