Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) (26 page)

“An upcoming event?” Jeremiah asked.

“Our execution,” Marshall said stoically.

“Yes,” Finn confirmed. “That’s one of the reasons why I came here to talk to you. I wanted to let you know that you have people in high places at your side and we will do anything and everything in our power to stop the execution, but—”

“But your first priority is commandeering the airwaves.”

“It has to be. It’s really our only hope, maybe our last hope of finally rallying everyone together to fight instead of cowering in the corner. Brooks plans on advertising the execution, making it mandatory for everyone to watch to show them what happens when you challenge him. It’ll be his biggest spectacle to date, but with the power on and everyone’s eyes glued to the television, it will also be our best opportunity.” He looked up at Marshall, catching a glimpse of the sadness in his eyes in the limited light inside the cell. “I’m sorry, Marshall.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Marshall said. “If the events surrounding our execution lead to Brooks’ ultimate demise, then everything—our suffering, our deaths—will have all been worth it. When I formed the rebellion, I knew I would most likely pay for it with my life, but I didn’t care then, and my position hasn’t changed since.”

Finn nodded. “I promise you I will do everything in my power to prevent him from carrying out the actual execution, but if I can’t, I wanted to thank you both for everything you’ve done for the movement. No matter what happens to you, to me, or to anyone brave enough to stand up for themselves and fight an injustice, your rebellion will live on long after we’re all gone because of your work and its reach across our country. Brooks, on the other hand, who he is and what he’s done, that will die with him.” Finn stood up, brushing off the knees of his pant legs.

“Thank you,” Marshall said. “Your words are ones I will take with me to my final resting place.”

“Yes, Finn,” Jeremiah said. “Though I’d like to be around to see Brooks being taken down a few pegs, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how it happens, only that it does happen. With that in mind, I can live with everything else.”

“It will. One way or another, it will.” Finn glanced down at the empty container on the floor next to Jeremiah. “I’ll have water and food brought down to both of you immediately.” He walked to the door and opened it just enough to allow himself passage. “Until we meet again.”

He closed the door behind him as Marshall and Jeremiah, once again shrouded in darkness, watched him disappear into the hallway.

Just before dawn, we arrived at the distribution warehouse, a hulking mass of concrete that seemed to be competing with the night sky for the rights to utter darkness.

“Are you sure this is it?” Ian asked. “It just seems too deserted. Like everyone just up and left.”

“What, did you expect them to throw us a party or something?” Jill asked with an obvious tension in her voice that had been building the closer we’d come to the warehouse. “This is exactly the way it should be. As still as death, and nothing more than unremarkable. The less attention drawn to you, the better.”

Jill motioned for us to follow her toward the back of the building where we couldn’t be seen from the street. When we approached the door, Jill walked up to it and, with an unmistakable scowl, knocked on its metallic exterior in a series of knocks that had clearly been orchestrated ahead of time for situations such as the one we found ourselves in. She took a step back, crossing her arms against her chest as though she was preparing to shield herself from something unpleasant. It was a side of Jill I’d not seen, nor had I ever expected to see it. “Come on, we haven’t got all day,” she said, tapping her foot rapidly against the pavement.

Several seconds passed, infuriating her further. She paced in front of the door, her hand raised as though contemplating whether to knock on it once more, but deciding against it at the last possible second. “If they don’t answer in one minute,” she said, “I say we move out, because—” The door opened before she could finish her sentence. On the other side of it stood a man just a hair taller than Jill. He had the beginnings of a beard that, in the dark, cast more of a shadow on his long face, which was framed by a shock of dark hair that had the appearance of having just been slept on.

“Jill,” he said with a smile as he inspected her thoughtfully.

“Well, someone has certainly let themselves go,” she said. He chuckled as though her comment had been more of an expectation than a surprise. “Thanks for keeping us stranded out here before you finally decided to answer the door, asshole. Any longer and the soldiers would have come around and shot our brains out.”

“I missed you, too, Jill,” he said, wiping the remnants of sleep away from his eyes before letting out a yawn. “I would have tried calling you, but the whole no electricity thing kind of killed that.” She scowled at him. And for a brief moment, I thought I saw her hand hover over the gun secured to her belt.

“That explains why she was less than thrilled with the idea of coming here,” I muttered to Ian, who laughed softly to himself.

“I’m Aron by the way, everyone,” he said. “Asshole works too, but you may find several other people answering to it if you call that out here.” He opened the door wider and motioned for us to come inside. “Mi casa es tu casa,” he said, letting another yawn escape.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you tell all the ladies,” Jill said as she blew past him without a second glance. He rolled his eyes and allowed her to pass by him unchallenged.

“Go ahead and follow the inexplicably angry woman,” he said. “I’ll stay back and lock up after everyone’s safely inside.”

One by one, we all filtered inside the warehouse, which was just as dark as it had appeared from the outside. When we entered through the back door, a narrow expanse of darkness greeted us, only wide enough to allow us to traipse through it in single file. At the end of the dark expanse, a light shown as though it had been propped against the wall to show us that, yes, there really was a light at the end of the tunnel, after all. A part of me appreciated the metaphor.

When we reached the end of the tunnel, we turned and entered the large open room of the warehouse. On each side of the room, tall, metallic shelving units, originally built to store pallets of merchandise, lined the walls, creating several aisles. But, instead of housing pallets, several of the units had been cordoned off with rope and bits of cloth, creating room-like structures that contained clothing, backpacks, and other belongings from the rebels they housed. In some of the units, rebels lay sleeping, completely unaware of our presence.

“They made the shelves into mini apartments,” Ian observed. “Gotta admire the innovation.”

In the middle of the room, another group of rebels stood around a table made out of several wooden pallets placed together in a line. On the table sat an array of boxed cereals and canned fruits, centered around a hot plate that was being used to cook scrambled eggs. As we approached, the rebels looked up, some of them recognizing and greeting the other members of our group.

“Welcome to our base,” the rebel operating the hot plate said. “I’m Nicholas, the informal commander of this unit.” He was tall with a receding hairline and a friendly smile that made me feel comfortable in his presence as though my subconscious had instantly made up its mind to trust him. “Given your premature arrival, it stands to reason that something bad has happened to your group?” Silently, several of the rebels and former soldiers in our group nodded their heads. He acknowledged our answer as he took a quick scan of our group, noticeably looking for someone. “Marshall?” he asked. “Has something happened to Marshall?” His question was met by further silence, which was all the acknowledgement he needed.

“Brooks probably already has his execution all planned out and the date set,” he said. He set his spatula down and turned off the hot plate. An empty chair sat next to where he stood, and it was all he could do not to collapse into its canvas seat as he took in the consequences the events of the night had presented. “All right, then.” A new resolve was reflected in his otherwise stoic eyes. “If Brooks wants to make a statement, we’ll just have to make sure our voices drown out his.” Nicholas glanced up from the table at his followers spread out around the room. “In light of recent developments, our demonstration will be moved up. We will show Brooks that we will not go down without a fight, that none of our men or women will be executed for his amusement. We will not be minimalized to nothing more than words uttered from the lips of that man in a public statement, or by the examples he’s made of our fallen brethren. No, in a matter of days, we will march on Brooks’ turf and show him that our voices will never be silenced. In just mere hours, we will go to war.”

Twenty-six years ago
…

“I swear he’s out to get me,” Victor said. He turned the knob to the lock on his locker, groaning when he overshot the last number and had to restart the process all over again.

“Who? Dr. Grant?” George Stevens asked, pulling his bright green scrubs off over his head. “Come on, Vic, you should feel flattered that Phillip Grant feels threatened enough by you to want you transferred out of here. It shows just how good you are at your job.”

“I know that, George,” he said. Victor lifted the latch up on his locker, opened the door, and paused, letting the door shield his face.

“But?” George asked.

“But what?” He removed the same bright green scrub shirt and the long-sleeved white shirt he’d been wearing for the last several weeks, and threw them to the floor inside the locker.

“We’ve known each other long enough now for me to be able to tell when there’s something you’re hiding, when there’s more to the story than meets the eye. So are you going to tell me what’s going on now, or do I have to wait until later? Because if there’s something Phillip knows or is threatening you with, I’d like to know about it before I’m called into some meeting.” Victor remained standing, shielded by the door to his locker as though he was trying to hide from the world. “Victor, you can talk to me. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll understand, and I’ll always stick up for you. You know that.”

Victor sighed; his shoulders sagged as though George’s words had somehow loosened the tension keeping his muscles flexed. “As much as I’d love to share the details of my life with you, my friend, I’m afraid even you may not be able to understand everything there is to know about me.”

“Try me.” George slid a blue t-shirt over his head and sat on the bench that ran down the middle of the room and separated the two rows of lockers. “Trust me, my level of understanding stretches quite far.”

“Okay.” Victor closed his locker, revealing the bare skin of his back. “For starters, there’s this.” He turned around to face George, whose eyes grew wide as the small pinpoint puncture wounds that dotted Victor’s arms came into view.

“Well, that certainly explains why you’re always wearing long sleeves. What are you doing to yourself, Victor?” George grabbed his arm and inspected the injection points. “Is it drugs? Medications? Look at all these marks. Fresh ones, older ones.” He let go of his arm and slumped back down on the bench. “How long has this been going on?”

“I’m not addicted to anything, if that’s what your line of questioning is implying.” He snatched a sweatshirt from the hook in his locker and hastily threw it on as he joined George on the bench.

“Then what?”

“Throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded by death. Death caused by cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, to name a few perpetrators. I’ve lost my father, mother, sister, and many others, until my immediate family was basically wiped out, leaving only me as a testament to their ever having existed on this planet. Their bodies betrayed them, sending their spirits to an early grave.” He moved the door to his locker with his foot, focusing on that instead of the pity in his friend’s eyes. He’d seen that look in the eyes of others so many times throughout his life that it made him sick, further reminding him that he’d lost more than them, that he had been branded as nothing more than a victim.
I am not a victim. I am more than just a figure cowering in the corner,
he’d repeated in his head numerous times before, finally adopting it as his mantra.

“Death is inevitable, Victor. Although what you’ve been through at a young age is a tragedy, we’ll all be where you are eventually. Life isn’t defined by length, it’s defined by substance. How someone lived their life is far more important than the number of years they had or didn’t have.”

“What if death didn’t have to be inevitable?” Victor asked, ignoring everything else that George had said.

“That’s a nice dream, but our bodies were designed to die.”

“But what if we could rebuild them so that they weren’t? What if we could alter our own DNA to keep us alive, to fight off disease, and give us strength and endurance far beyond what our own biology could produce? We could cheat death, lengthen our lives—perhaps indefinitely. There would be no more pain, no more suffering.”

“Are you talking about immortality? Turning a human into a sort of superhuman? That’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible. People here and across the country are just too scared to attempt it. They accept conventional medicine as being the only way instead of trying to find a better way. This is the way, George. I’ve seen the results myself, I just need more time to continue my research. I need to perfect it and then they will see there are other possibilities out there. We can eradicate disease.”

“What do you mean by, ‘I’ve seen the results myself?’”

“I’ve noticed an increase in my stamina, a deceased need for sleep; my muscles are becoming more defined by the day, and I feel almost as though my adrenaline has increased exponentially, or maybe it’s just my body changing. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m not the same person anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” George agreed. “So, this is what you’ve been doing, experimenting on yourself because you think you’re going to somehow unlock the secrets to living forever? You’re a brilliant man, but even you have to admit the insanity of it all.” George stood up from the bench and leaned his body against his locker door.