The Light, the Dark and the Ugly (24 page)

Sandra let her teeth show as her hands slid off Natalie's neck. "Right answer."

When Sandra left the room, Natalie slunk down into a seated position. She was right. There were no other options, and if the dark souls ever had no more use for her, it's unlikely she'd last long.

Natalie tried to steady her breath. "I've gotta get 'em in. And get myself out."

After she got dressed, she found Stucky waiting for her in the hallway. She supposed he was the closest thing she had to a friend inside the caves.

When a murderer is your best friend, what does that make you?

Stucky lifted his chin. "So, Sandra gave you a pep talk?"

Natalie smirked. "Can you call it a pep talk when you have your hands around someone's throat?"

Stucky gestured for Natalie to follow him. "We weren't always like this. There's something about the magic that lets us cross over to Earth." Stucky's eyes looked hollow as he spoke. "He trains us to be fighters, but it's the magic that turns us into killers."

Natalie remembered the symbols on Jason and Phil Torello's arms. She figured that must be the magic Stucky was talking about. "Before you were a… killer, what did you do?"

He sighed. Just accessing the memories seemed to cause him pain. "A farmer. A husband. A father to a little girl. I lived in one of the villages in the wasteland."

Natalie smirked. "Your wife's name wouldn't happen to be Razellia would it?"

Stucky's face lit up. "It is!" He grabbed her shoulders. His grip was tight enough to cut off her circulation. "Have you seen her? Have you seen Vella?"

Natalie could barely believe her attempt at a joke was reality. In a planet of millions of strangers, she supposed it was destiny she'd run into her landlord's deadbeat husband. Natalie rolled her shoulders back, but Stucky continued to squeeze in his thirst for information. She gently pushed his chest, and he pulled his arms back.

"They're safe." Natalie shook her head. "Why aren't you there with them?"

Stucky tapped at the wall and looked away. "I told you. I'm changed. It's much better if–"

"If you leave them thinking you might be dead? If you keep Vella from having a father?"

Stucky nodded. "Yeah."

Natalie huffed. She thought of Razellia and Vella all alone in that house. She wondered what would happen if another wave of raiders struck.

This time she took Stucky by the shoulders. "Look, I don't know what those symbols do to you, but I think you should know that you not being in Vella's life is changing her, too. She needs a dad."

Stucky's face turned grim. "The rebellion needs me more."

His words were hardly what Natalie would call convincing. She pulled away and started to walk toward her room. "Just keep telling yourself that."

Later that day, Natalie joined the dark soul rebels to discuss strategy. There were several dozen people in the room, but she hadn't seen Stucky since their little conversation. Sandra pointed to a makeshift map of the stronghold. It looked pieced together at best, and since she'd been there, Natalie had been able to correct a few misguided representations.

"The General has made a potentially fatal mistake." Sandra's eyes shined with confidence. "Our sources have told me that one of the underground entrances was blown wide open during the light soul attack. They haven't had the manpower to patch it up."

Natalie looked around the room. She wondered how many of the people around her had been turned into murderers and thieves like Sandra and Stucky. They seemed excited by the prospect of getting revenge. Would that have happened if they'd never crossed over to another planet?

Sandra continued. "Tomorrow, once we're in the palace, our new friend is going to help us find and kill the General."

A loud whoop went up among the crowd as those in the know turned to Natalie. There was way too much trust in those eyes. A ragtag group like this needed something to hope for. Apparently, she was exactly the confidence-booster they needed.

"Natalie, why don't you come up and say a few words?"

Natalie gulped. She already felt like the people surrounding her would kill her at a moment's notice. Now she needed to speak to them publicly as well?

Maybe speech and debate class would've been a good idea.

Natalie complied with the request and stood by Sandra. As she looked out, she wondered when her opportunity to escape would come. Natalie had seen tens of thousands of troops training in the yards of the stronghold. As soon as the soldiers got word of the breach, there would be far too many men for the rebels to have a chance. She'd need to pinpoint the moment immediately before that happened, or she'd likely end up on the wrong end of a deadly energy blast.

Natalie cleared her throat. "You're here because the General messed with your lives."

A grunt of assent went up throughout the room.

"He tortured me half to death, and I don't even have half the claim you do." Natalie was pretty sure she was laying it on too thick, but nobody in the room seemed to notice. "There are few guarantees on this or any world, but I know for sure that if you never fight, there's no chance of freedom." Natalie felt like she was giving a halftime speech to the most captivated group of teammates she'd ever seen. They were eating out of the palm of her hand.

"That's what this is all about. Freedom. Stopping the General and this ridiculous war. Well, I'm going to help you do that. And together, we'll all get what we deserve!"

As the crowd around her cheered, Natalie hoped that none of them caught her double meaning. If she had her way, the rebels would be her ticket in before she split off and found a way to get back to Ted. She'd been right that there are few guarantees. Natalie just hoped she could ensure that she didn't become the suicide mission's first sacrifice.  

Chapter 39

Dhiraj strained to keep his eyes open. For the last day and a half, he'd been poring over Victor's collection in an effort to make sense of it all. Most of it reeked of shoddily assembled UFO footage. Even though it was true, Victor had cobbled together the videos and articles in such a crazy way that it looked completely unbelievable. Dhiraj had made some headway in making everything a bit less nutty, but it felt like he was untangling the largest, oldest ball of string in the world. His neck and eyes ached, and the only thing that kept him from passing out right there was Jennifer scurrying around the room beside him.

She was incredible. Dhiraj figured she had to be earning some kind of world speed-reading record at this point. She wore a determined look as she gobbled up hundreds of clippings and scribblings. She'd even spent half an hour with Victor to ensure she understood every letter of his indecipherable handwriting. Despite the fact that she'd found almost nothing useful in the last dozen hours, she was undeterred. He knew that nothing would get in the way of her revenge.

It was the middle of the night when Jennifer roused Dhiraj from his hazy half-sleep. She was smiling, which in turn made him smile.

She thrust a stapled pile of documents into Dhiraj's hands.

He began to leaf through the pages. "What's this?"

Her smile grew wider. "A timeline."

Dhiraj shot awake. If they could reasonably show Adam's transformation into Kit Kable, that'd be more than enough for the media to pull at the threads.

He shut his eyes tight and opened them to lift the haziness. The first file was from a suburban hospital nearby.

"Tell me what I'm looking at."

Jennifer scrolled her finger down the page. "Montoya Park Hospital. Meticulous with its records for the last 30 years. Except for one day exactly one week after the building crash."

Dhiraj could already see holes in the story. Just because a day didn't have records didn't mean anything shady happened, but Jennifer's encouraging eyes told him to press forward.

"Okay. Then what?"

Jennifer flipped the page to what looked like an old lease agreement. "This is three days later. A Kit Kable rented a room for about a year in the next town over."

Dhiraj felt the excitement growing within him. Maybe this would lead to something after all. "He was sloppy. Good news for us." He flipped to the next page. It looked like some kind of rejection letter. "Northwestern University law school?"

Jennifer nodded. "As you know, Kable went to University of Pennsylvania Law School." She turned to the following page. "And those records say he never left Pennsylvania. But this Northwestern rejection was forwarded from a P.O. Box in Chicago."

Dhiraj knocked his hand on the desk. "He wanted to be a good old boy in the state of whatever law school he could fake his way into. When he got into Penn, he pretended to be born and raised there."

Jennifer made a motion with her hand. "Because…"

Dhiraj licked his lips. "Because he knew he was gonna get into politics, run for office, and then go for the Presidency." He tossed the papers on the desk and reached for Jennifer's face.

She leaned into him for the kiss. "It's pretty good, right?"

Dhiraj laughed. "Pretty good? Even if they don't believe any of the Adam stuff, he still lied about what state he came from." He kissed her again, and the softness of her lips rejuvenated him. "You are the stuff of miracles."

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "And you need about 40 hours of sleep before you're allowed to talk again."

He smirked. "Fair enough."

Dhiraj started when he heard the sound of footsteps. Victor carried two mugs, and Dhiraj was grateful that Adam's former friend had stopped brandishing his weapon.

Victor set the mugs down. "You guys seem happy. Did you make some progress?"

Dhiraj walked to one of the mugs and took a big slurp. "Victor, I need a video camera and a mic."

He nodded. "I've got an old camcorder in the garage."

As he turned to go, Dhiraj put his hand on Victor's shoulder. "One more thing. Are there any late night Internet cafes around here?"

It was just an hour before dawn when Victor dropped off Dhiraj and Jennifer at a 24-hour computer cafe about 40 minutes away from the rundown house. It took some convincing, but Victor let them take some of the documents so Dhiraj could scan them in. These files would pair well with the 10-minute documentary Dhiraj had assembled about the Kable timeline. Getting the video file into the right format to upload was a pain with Victor's ancient equipment, but now everything was set in the near-vacant cafe.

Dhiraj could see the lack of sleep weighing on Jennifer now. She knew as well as he did that everything would change again as soon as he hit that send button.

Jennifer yawned and covered her mouth. "You really think this is the right way to go?"

Dhiraj couldn't help but let out a little yawn himself. "Kable's people won't be up for a few hours. If we send this now, the news networks will have the world whipped up into a frenzy before they have a chance to do damage control."

Jennifer gave him a sidelong glance. "How are you going to make sure everybody sees it?"

Dhiraj gave a cool nod. "Ted's email list has over two million subscribers. How much would you bet that at least half of them share this?"

Jennifer laid her hand on his. "Who knew your marketing would save the world?"

Dhiraj winked. "Me."

Jennifer shook her head and rolled her chair back to her own computer. He'd already looked at the Facebook post she'd penned. She planned to put it up the moment after Dhiraj sent his email. It read as follows:

"Being out on the road is hard. Especially when you're running from something you didn't even do. It'll all be over soon, but my father, Sheriff Michael Norris, won't be able to tell his story. He was killed by a man we think was commissioned by Senator Kit Kable. It's difficult to prove that, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is that you never know when the last goodbye will be. Tell your friends and family you love them every day. It's advice I wish I'd taken before losing my dad."

Jennifer leaned forward on her knuckles as she checked the post for the 20th time. 

Meanwhile, Dhiraj wrote an email for the Ted Finley LLC list. It included links to the video and the documents for all to download. Dhiraj scanned over the words one last time.

"Dear Ted Heads,

My apologies for the radio silence. We weren't going to poke our heads out unless we could clear our names, but instead, we're going to turn ourselves in. No, that doesn't mean we're guilty of the crimes we're accused of. It means we need to make some very important things very public.

Senator Kit Kable is a liar and a murderer. This video and the enclosed documents prove the first. We'll leave it up to you, Internet, to prove the latter.

The moment we release this info, we'll be apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security. Here's the address of the department office closest to our current location.

To those of you who've never wavered in your support of Ted Finley and all he stands for, we thank you. We hope to appeal these charges with Ted by our side in the near future. Until then, stay turned for our next up, up and away message.

Sincerely,

Dhiraj Patel & Jennifer Norris"

Dhiraj sighed and ran his hands through his hair. After they were both happy enough with their messages, they clicked send at the very same time. In the next three minutes, they watched as the Internet blew up with activity. The first tweet by the official Twitter account of Free Ted Movement leader Detrick van Housen was shared thousands of times in a matter of seconds. Jennifer's post was trending on Facebook by the time the sirens blared in the parking lot.