The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

I tried reading a novel a couple of months ago, but I crashed on the romantic relationship—just not something I can handle right now—and in a flash of temper I deleted all the fiction I had stored.

It’s hard not to snap sometimes. But my skullnet makes it mostly bearable, and when it gets too hard I just lie down in my bunk and think,
Sleep
—and my skullnet makes it happen.

I sleep maybe twelve hours a day—an article in the encyclopedia says that’s bad for your health—but what the fuck, it’s better than banging my head against the concrete wall until I’m bloody.

•   •   •   •

Sunday comes. Visitors’ day. We’re allowed one visitor each, but I’m usually the only one who gets escorted to a consultation room. My dad lives in Manhattan. Restoring train service between New York and Washington, DC, was a priority after Coma Day, so he’s able to ride in Sunday morning and take a cab to the courthouse. He’s well off, so it’s not a burden for him to handle the post-Coma inflated fares.

It’s different for the rest of the squad. Both Jaynie and Flynn are estranged from their families, while Nolan, Tuttle, and Moon are all from the west, their families too far away to stop in for a weekend visit. Harvey’s mom has come in twice from Pittsburgh, but today I’m the only one who gets to leave the cellblock.

The senior MP on shift, Sergeant Colton Haffey, presents himself at the glass door of my cell and right away I get a bad feeling. He’s not carrying a sidearm and he’s not rigged in a dead sister. He doesn’t even have a helmet on, just an audio loop. Behind him is Private Dominic Pasco, similarly unrigged.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask Haffey.

“Special circumstances, sir.” My overlay confirms the nervous tension I see in his face. He doesn’t like what’s going on. He’s worried. “Please step to the front of the cell, sir.”

I do it. Haffey unlocks the door. “Present your wrists, sir.”

I do that too, and he cuffs me. “What special circumstances?” I ask, imagining an assassination squad outside the cellblock.

Why not just shoot me inside the cell?

Maybe they want it to look like I went berserk and tried to escape.

“You have a visitor, sir.”

“Not my dad?”

“No, sir.”

The steel door to the cellblock buzzes open. On the other side are two men in dark business suits, opaque farsights hiding their eyes. Another man and a woman, similarly dressed, are stationed farther along the corridor, outside the first consultation room.

“Advance,” Haffey tells me.

One of the suits intervenes. “We search him first.”

Haffey looks at me, apology in his gaze, but he steps away. The shorter suit tells me, “Turn around, Lieutenant. Put your hands against the wall.”

I do it and he frisks me, finding nothing, of course. The other one runs a scanner over me. It picks up my skullnet, my tattooed antenna, my embedded audio buds, the ID chip at my wrist, and my titanium legs.

“Why isn’t he shackled?” the shorter one asks.

Haffey says, “It’s not procedure, and the lieutenant is fully cooperative at all times.”

“Unacceptable. I want shackles on those cyborg legs, or I want the legs off.”

“No, sir!” Haffey snaps. “I will not allow you to abuse the dignity of an army officer.”

“Cuff me to the fucking chair,” I say.

The suit nods, and I am escorted to the consultation room. The table has been removed. There is only one chair,
and it’s been placed near a corner, away from the door. “Sit,” the suit tells me.

They make Haffey cuff my ankles to the chair legs, worried, maybe, that if they do it, I’ll try to kick their faces in. Haffey finishes the task, then stands beside me, facing the door. One of the suits takes up a post beside the door; the other positions himself halfway across the room.

We wait in silence for almost three minutes, during which I go over the possibilities in my head. When the door opens to admit the president, I’m not even surprised.

The door closes behind him as he comes a few steps into the room.

Like most successful politicians, he’s a tall man, six three. He’s trim and good looking in a dark business suit, but there’s a lot more silver in his thick, wavy hair than on the day he was elected two and a half years ago.

I met him once before, on the night we were evacuated from Black Cross.

His expression is stern as he stands there, studying me with his dark Hispanic eyes. When he speaks, it’s with the steady, reassuring tone of his signature voice, the one comedians always try to imitate but never get quite right: “I’m told everything you see, everything you hear, is recorded, Lieutenant Shelley.”

“That’s correct, sir.”

His chin drops as quiet fury enters his voice. “Then let
this
be recorded for posterity. If it were up to me, I would have you hanged. Tonight, Lieutenant Shelley. Your heroism at Black Cross cannot excuse what you’ve done. During a state of emergency like no other this country has ever known, you chose to strike at the heart of our citizens’ faith in government, undermining the effort of countless dedicated individuals who are striving every day to reclaim our future. I would have you hanged, Lieutenant. But I swore
an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I respect our American system of justice, and I trust that system to find you guilty, as it must. As it will.”

His outrage is so cold and so real it shocks me. In that moment I know, I absolutely know, that the conspiracy to protect Thelma Sheridan goes all the way to the top. I want to tell him I know he’s part of it, that I’m looking forward to seeing him fall, but Colonel Kendrick’s ghost is in my head, warning me to keep my smartass mouth in check. So I say nothing.

It doesn’t matter though, because the show is over. The president gestures at the suit standing in the middle of the room, and my overlay shuts down. The half-seen icons that float on the periphery of my vision wink out, leaving only a pinpoint red light in the lower left corner to indicate that the overlay exists at all.

From this moment forward, no one outside will ever know what happens in here.

My gaze shifts from that tiny red light to the door. I am sure it will open, admitting the black-ops soldiers who constitute the president’s personal army. I wonder if they’ll kill Haffey too, and I decide that they will. They’ll probably blame him for murdering me. I wait for death, one second and then another, but the door stays shut.

I look again at the president, beginning to understand he plays a more complex game than I’m used to. “Sergeant Haffey,” he says.

“Yes, sir!”

“Will you please leave the room?”

I can almost hear Haffey sweat. “Sir, my orders are to stay with the prisoner at all times.”

“I am overriding your orders, Sergeant. Get out.”

“Yes, sir.”

I keep my gaze fixed on the president as Haffey crosses the room. Someone in the corridor opens the door for him. When it closes again, the president speaks. “You have been misled, Lieutenant Shelley. You have been misinformed. I understand you believed you were serving some abstract justice when you helped to kidnap an American citizen. But you did not have all the facts and you do not understand the repercussions. For the good of the country, I want you to stand down.”

“That’s not possible, sir. This is a capital case. Even if I wanted to, I’m not allowed to enter a guilty plea.”

“I am aware of that,” he growls, letting me know he’s not an idiot. “I am asking you to stand down, to mount no defense. Make your statement if you must—I don’t begrudge you that—tell us how you felt compelled to do what you did, and
then tell us you were mistaken
! Fall on your sword. Accept the charges against you without expanding the scope of the evidence, and when you are found guilty and sentenced, I will issue a pardon—and the country can begin to heal.”

Colonel Kendrick once called him a performance artist. It must be true, because I believe him. I believe he’s speaking from his heart, that for everything he’s done, he’s had the best interests of the country in mind, and if I do as he asks, he will keep his word.

“I’m not the only one on trial, sir,” I remind him.

His eyes narrow. “Your squad will do what you tell them.”

He’s more confident of that than I am.

It doesn’t matter.

“I cannot accept your offer, sir.”

I don’t want to die. Jaynie thinks that, deep down, I’d put a bullet through my own brain if I could. That’s not what I want, and I don’t want to be a martyr to anyone’s cause—but I’m not going to back down either. Matt Ransom died to
see justice done, to see Thelma Sheridan called to account for her involvement in the Coma Day insurrection. Steven Kendrick died for the same thing. And it isn’t over.

“We did what we did, sir, because the republic has been hijacked, because justice is for sale—”

“
Don’t
play your patriot games with me, Shelley. You and I know it’s a complex world, and eighteenth-century philosophies don’t work anymore.”

“Who is it you serve, sir?”

“Watch yourself, Lieutenant. I am your commander in chief. I hold your life in my hands. Your life, and the lives of your companions. As you were so quick to remind me, this is a capital case. You need to consider very carefully what you’re willing to die for.”

I’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about that. “I’m all in, sir. No way out but forward. How about you?”

He doesn’t answer. He just stares at me for half a minute or more. Then he turns and walks to the door. It opens for him and he steps out without another word. The two suits follow him.

I’m still shackled to the chair. My overlay is still switched off. After a couple of minutes Haffey comes back in, looking scared. “You fucking pissed him off,” he whispers.

I have that effect on people.

Haffey frees my feet. “I’ve got to take you back to your cell, sir.”

“What about my dad? Did he come today?”

“Yes, sir. He checked in upstairs, but orders came down. No visitors.”

“The president must have cleared out by now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So is something else going on?”

“I’m not at liberty to talk about it, sir. If you’ll come with me.”

I’m escorted back to cellblock B, where Haffey removes my handcuffs.

My overlay is still off as the cell door is closed and locked, but I’m not too worried about it. Sooner or later, the Red is sure to switch me back on.

•   •   •   •

There is a network node above the cellblock door. The MPs installed it the day they brought us in. Here, underground, they need the node to ensure their helmets always have connectivity.

I have stood here by the glass wall innumerable times, in the murky darkness of the cellblock at night, gazing at the amber point of the node’s indicator light, positioned a few feet above the faint, reflected gleam of the door’s tiny, rectangular window. The window just looks into another part of the jail as closed and locked and impenetrable as my cell, but that light is a connection to the outside world. Beyond it are people I care about: my family, my friends, my handlers at Guidance—Delphi, especially.

Soldiers aren’t supposed to meet their handlers or know them as anything other than a voice that relays orders and advice through their helmet’s audio, but I got to meet Delphi once when Colonel Kendrick included her in a debriefing session. When I first saw her, I had no idea who she was. I admired her: a petite and athletic woman, no older than thirty, blond hair in a ponytail, bright blue eyes. A stranger, until she spoke.

I wish I were linked to Delphi now. I wish she could give me a sitrep, let me know what Intelligence believes is happening outside this cellblock, because I think something out there has gone wrong. For the first time since I’ve occupied this cell, I cannot see the network node’s indicator light. It’s been switched off, isolating us in here, and I want to know why.

The night-lights are still on—three-inch round panels in the ceiling that emit a dim red glow from the far end of the visible spectrum—but the only point of light I can see is the red pinpoint in my overlay, telling me I am still shut down. Without the network node, Guidance can’t get in to switch me on. The Red can’t reach me. What the fuck am I supposed to do without my goddamn overlay?

Sleep.

I should sleep.

But I’ve already been sleeping for hours; I was asleep long before the lights went out because there is fucking nothing to do in a six-foot-by-eight-foot cage when your overlay goes down. I don’t even have a fucking paper book and I have no idea what the fucking time is.

Sometime later—a long time later—I see movement beyond the window in the cellblock door, and then the door opens, admitting a figure rigged in a dead sister, one that advances to stand facing me, just on the other side of the glass door. It’s too dark to tell who it is, but then the figure speaks. “You’ve been awake a long time, Lieutenant.”

Master Sergeant Mary Chudhuri.

“The network node is out,” I tell her.

“You noticed that?”

“I did. What the hell is going on?”

“Officially? We’re on lockdown. Preemptive action to curtail a suspected security hole in our local network—which means we’re cut off from direct communication with Guidance. I’ve got Phelps stationed down the hall beside a landline, but I’m not feeling very secure. How about you, King David? Any insights? Any particular shit we need to be ready for?”

I shake my head. “God doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

I used to have a sixth sense when it came to impending danger. Matt Ransom wanted to believe it was the voice
of God that guided me. It turned out to be God in the form of the Red, but even the Red can’t reach me with the local network shut down. I am the sparrow that has fallen out of God’s sight after all. That doesn’t mean I can’t sometimes figure these things out on my own. “Just as a gut feeling?” I tell the master sergeant. “Fuck yeah, something is up. Court-martial starts tomorrow. If a coalition of dragons wants to shut us up”—
if the president wants to shut us up
—“the time to slam us is now. With no network access it’ll be easy. No call for help can get out.”