Shadow Fall (The Shadow Saga) (2 page)

The soldiers obeyed, and the boy—now exposed—looked up at Alexander with every ounce of courage he could muster. He wanted to run, but he did not so much as back away. He simply stood firm and unmoving, eyes shifting between his mother’s helpless face and Alexander’s hateful glare.

“What is your name?” Alexander asked.

The boy did not answer, but screwed his features into his best attempt at disdain. What had the man called his mother? Defiant? Well, he would be the same.

Unsettled by the child’s seeming lack of fear, Alexander grabbed him by the shoulders and demanded, “What is your
name
?”

“His name is Elijah,” Lauren answered.

“Elijah Charity,” he mused. “The spitting image of his father…though he has your eyes. I used to think there was power there, in those depths…that they could read me like an open book.”

“Let him go,” Lauren pleaded. “Your fight is with me. He has nothing to do with this.”

“And what then, my dear? March my soldiers back down this alley and leave him here alone, to starve in the Wilderness or die of exposure to the cold? No, a quick death would be so much more merciful, and he can have it, with your help. Unless…” Elijah saw a sudden glint in the dark man’s eye. “Perhaps you wish for me to mold this child into something else…something more amenable. The son of Jonathan Charity, a loyal servant of my World System. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony?”

Elijah, understanding Alexander’s intentions, leaned forward and said in as strong a voice as he possessed, “Never.”

Alexander's expression soured, “I suppose I should have known better. He has his father’s stubborn heart. Yes, I believe the quick death will do.” He picked Elijah up by the shoulders and held him about a foot from his mother, “Say goodbye to mommy, Elijah.”

Elijah was pulled out of Lauren’s reach before he could speak a single word, and the next thing he knew he was in the arms of one of the soldiers. That was when he decided to start screaming.

“Take him into that room there. Wait for my instructions.”

The soldier did as he was told and carried Elijah into a place of even deeper darkness, followed by the slam of a door that shut the two of them off from his mother, Alexander, and the rest of the dark men in the alley. He could still hear their voices on the other side of the door:

“Lieutenant, draw your sidearm and prepare to execute the child on my command. Confirm!”

There was a click next to Elijah’s head and the soldier holding him yelled out, “Understood, sir!” Elijah began to scream louder, but the soldier clamped a hand over his mouth to silence him.

“You monster!” his mother shouted. “May God exact justice on you for your inhumanity!”

“A choice is before you now,” Alexander began. “You can renounce all that you are and leave your life in Silent Thunder behind. Do so, and your son will live. Not by your side, of course, but any life is better than none at all. Refuse me, and both you and your son will die today.”

She did not respond.

“I’m going to count to three.”

“Patrick—”

“
One
.”

“Wait!” his mother pleaded. “He’s just a child! He doesn’t have anything to do—”

“
Two
.”

“Okay!” she wailed, her voice betraying utter dejection and defeat. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just please, leave him out of this.”

There was a moment of silence, broken suddenly by a long stream of Alexander’s cruel laughter. “Well, it seems that everyone does have their price. Even the great Lauren Charity. Unfortunately, however, I have no real interest in you. It just made sense that if I was to take everything from you, I should take your dignity as well.”

“You unimaginable son of a—”

“What was it your father used to say?” Alexander cut her off. “That quote you were always so fond of? Ah, yes… ‘No matter how deep the darkness of the night, the sun will still rise tomorrow.’ Well, I’m afraid there will be no more sunrises. Not for you, and not for your son.”

“Wait! There must be something—”

“Lieutenant…” Alexander’s voice was calm, regal, and emotionless. “Fire.”

Lauren screamed, and the shot rang out.

301-14-A sat up straight in bed, ears ringing as though the gun had gone off right next to his ear. His breath came in ragged gasps and his heart pounded wildly—he was terrified half out of his mind. He reached up to his face and found it wet with tears, then ran his hand through his hair. Surprisingly, it was dry.

But the storm, the rain, the pursuit…it had all seemed so vivid and real. Almost as though he had actually been there.
No
, he thought.
I’ve been here the entire time
. Liz lay peacefully beside him, the sheet covering her up to her neck. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically, confirming that she was still asleep. He sighed, thankful he had not woken her. This was one dream he was not eager to explain.

He slid carefully out of the covers and stepped onto the carpet, stumbling through the darkness toward the bathroom. He flipped the light on and steadied himself against the wall. His entire body was numb with exhaustion, both physical and emotional. Maybe that was what had sparked the dream. He reached for the bottle of paste on the sink and applied some of it to his wounded left shoulder.
Miracle Heal
, soldiers called the stuff. It had been two days and already the shoulder felt good as new again.

He shook his head. Two days since Silent Thunder staged that false ambush on him and Derek Blaine. Two days since the battle at the Weapons Manufacturing Facility. Two days since Jacob Sawyer’s death. It seemed like it had been much longer than that.

301 finished with the paste and lifted his gaze to the mirror. As he stared into his own eyes, echoes of the dark alley resurfaced, and he shook himself back to reality. It had only been a dream, probably a result of the multitude of irrational fears that had cropped up in his mind over the last couple of days. That one had been the most vivid, but there were also others. Dreams of terror, dreams of tears, and dreams of blackness. Pain, sorrow, and loss. Rain and fire.

Pax Aeterna
.

The words were burned into his mind, as dangerous as they were frustrating, Jacob Sawyer’s final testament before passing into the abyss. Seemingly innocuous, unintelligible even, except for the fact that they had followed 301’s question:
You knew my father? Who is he? Where can I find him?
And then, what Liz had told him:
Pax Aeterna
was the name of Jonathan Charity’s Spectral Gladius. At first his mind had reeled from the shock that he could be the son of the System’s most notorious enemy, but almost immediately he began to discount it.

Jacob Sawyer had been on the verge of death. Attributing his last words as the answer to 301’s question might assume too much.

The files from the Capital Orphanage recorded him arriving when he was one year old. While it seemed he and Jonathan Charity’s son were of a similar age, the boy would have been five or six around the time of his father’s death. The dates simply didn’t match up.

To cap it all, the death of the child had been confirmed in the palace records by the Ruling Council. It didn’t get much more official than that.

Still, the entire situation gnawed at him. Perhaps that was where these dreams were coming from: a projection of the fears that this ordeal had created. He took a deep breath, thankful that the effects of the dream had begun to fade.
No need to worry
, he assured himself.
They were just dreams. They don’t have to mean anything.

He found himself wishing he could talk to Grace. They had shared so much while in one another’s company, he had no doubt she would have some insight.

But then he felt a heaviness in his chest as it hit him what Grace must be feeling in that moment. Her father was dead. Silent Thunder, in all likelihood, was finished. For all he knew, she had already fled to the Wilderness with whatever remnants of the rebellion Jacob Sawyer had brought to the city. But wherever she was, she was in a lot of pain...pain he was partly responsible for.

His gaze shifted to the clock on the wall, and he sighed. Still a good while until dawn. Sleep might not find him again, but it would be foolish not to try.

2

S
COTT
S
ULLIVAN STOOD COMPLETELY
motionless, hands behind his back, watching as the first traces of light crept up onto the horizon. His expression was blank and his eyes were cold as he surveyed the city that would one day be his—the city he would soon be forced to leave. But it would only be a temporary exile. In the courts of the World System he had known power, but it was power limited by Alexander’s whim. When at last he returned to take this city for his own, he would reign supreme.

Emperor. The title evoked greatness and strength, connecting him to rulers of the past all the way back to the Roman Empire and beyond. But what was Rome next to the Imperial Conglomerate of Cities? Who was Caesar, next to him? Rome and its emperors were but a prelude to him, a foreshadowing of the conqueror who would surpass them all. Where they had failed, he would succeed; where they had fallen, he would stand. He would be feared and remembered in life as well as in death: the great Emperor Scott Sullivan, vanquisher of the mighty World System.

But that was not the man he saw staring back at him from the reflection in the darkened glass. He saw a man broken by countless compromises to his principles and his passions, all in the name of a government he had only supported for fear of death. Could he continue onward with the illusion of the untouchable ruler? Could he continue to fool those around him and even himself, when deep within his soul sounded the cry of the man—the man of principle—he once was?

Or had the tragedy of his circumstance placed an irrevocable imprint upon him, banishing that man of virtue to the recesses of his mind forever?

Lust for power had taken its toll. After all, of what worth was humanity when the divine was right in his grasp? He could become a god…a savior who would deliver the world from the cruel hand of its oppressor and grant it new life. His name would be spoken among the legends for centuries to come.

All he had to do was sacrifice millions of lives to get there.

The sudden snap of his office doors startled him from his reverie, and he turned—half-expecting to find a column of the palace guard there to place him in chains. The longer he stayed in the palace, the more paranoid he became. He breathed a sigh of relief, however, when he recognized Orion. The man wore a grave expression—one that suggested his relief might be short-lived.

Orion shut the door carefully and strode forward, a blue folder clutched tightly in his right hand. He looked around the office suspiciously—an act that always sparked a flare of jealousy in Sullivan. His quarters were impressive, but nowhere near as lavish as those of the MWR. For that reason he preferred to receive his guests in the Hall of Advisors.

“Is this room secure?” Orion asked.

“Yes,” Sullivan replied. “What do you have?”

“The results of the investigation into the Shadow Soldier’s file,” Orion said. “I suggest you read it, sir…right now.”

Orion placed the folder on the desk between them and slid it forward, then stepped back as though to get out of the way. Sullivan reached down to open the folder, and the room went eerily silent as he read the first page—the silence before a tempest.

At long last Sullivan spoke, his voice barely a whisper, “Is there any chance, Colonel, that what I’m seeing is a mistake?”

“No, sir,” Orion said. “I checked and rechecked. The Shadow Soldier is not who we think he is.”

“Does he know?” Sullivan tore his eyes from the page and returned them to his Chief of Staff. “Does the Specter Captain know the truth?”

“Does it matter, sir?”

“No,” Sullivan closed the file. “I suppose it doesn’t.” He stepped back to the window behind his desk and gazed once again upon the horizon. The sun’s gleam turned the skyscrapers into burning embers, his favorite time of the day. “It would appear our last excuse for delay has been removed. We cannot use the Shadow Soldier now. The time has come to move.”

“Move, sir?”

Alexandria, pearl of modern civilization, center of Earth.
I will return for you
.

“Yes, Colonel,” Sullivan closed his eyes, shutting out the vision of the great city which he now must leave. “There’s no longer any reason for us to be here. Begin the final evacuation.”

-X-

Elizabeth Aurora’s bright blue eyes stared blankly at the ceiling in 301’s bedroom, the pit in her stomach growing larger as the guilt of the previous night washed over her. She felt dirty, covered in the grime of her transgression—not because she had seduced 301, but because she had used him. There was something she wanted, and sex had become the only currency by which she could get it.

But that wasn’t how it started. She and 301 had been on-again, off-again throughout their teenage years. In many ways it had been the only thing she could really count on. When she returned to Alexandria after their year apart, she had hoped to rekindle that old spark. And then came Sullivan with his mission, and his promise, to corrupt it all.