Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (30 page)

Beck: Comment removed and disciplinary action taken.

T
he call is arranged by Minda, who somehow has a secure line directly to the Lifers. To Jarrod. Benson’s given up on wondering how she does half the things she does.

Although Benson expects to see the face of a monster projected from the screen, it’s just the face of an old man. Tired, worn out lines crease Jarrod’s forehead. Crow’s feet stick out from the edges of his eyes, which are underlined by dark purple circles, like bruises.

“Thank God you’re alive,” Jarrod says, licking his lips.

“No thanks to you. You tried to kill us,” Benson says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jarrod says.

Benson sighs. Of course he doesn’t. He’s as much a master of propaganda as the Saint Louis Times. Why does everything have to be extremes? he wonders silently to himself. Isn’t there any middle ground? As much as Benson wants to be fiercely angry at Jarrod, he’s not. He’s too tired to be angry. Too stuffed full of new information and secrets. Too ready to carry his father’s legacy forward. So he doesn’t refute Jarrod’s lie. Not today. Maybe not ever.

“I want to talk to my friends. To Check and Rod and Gonzo and Geoffrey,” he says instead.

“Why?”

“To make sure they’re okay.”

“They are. They’re happy here.”

Benson knows that “here” has probably changed several times since he was last hiding out with the Lifers. “Let me talk to them.”

Jarrod sighs. “Very well,” he says. “Let me know if you decide to rejoin our cause.”

Don’t count on it
, Benson thinks. But he says nothing, watching as Jarrod’s three-dimensional form fades away and is replaced by the familiar faces of his friends. Check’s smile reaches his narrow eyes when he sees Benson. Rod and Gonzo are pushing and shoving, trying to fight their way into the holo-area, and Geoffrey is standing sullenly to the side, noticeably apart from the others. Benson feels a lump of sorrow rise in his throat as he sees Luce’s eyes, her delicate nose, and the line of her jaw—all in her brother’s face. Like a ghost transposed on his skin. Like an echo from the past.

He swallows it down and says, “You all okay?”

Check nods. “Never been better. Glad we didn’t have to save your sorry butt this time around. Jarrod told us what happened. Glad you finally came around and realized Harrison was right. You killed your Death Match.”

“No,” Benson says, but Check talks over him.

“Fat lot of good it did though. We had Wire hack into the system again and he couldn’t find any record of Boris Decker ever being your Death Match. They screwed you over, Benson. You’re still the most wanted Slip on the planet.”

“I didn’t kill Decker,” Benson says.

Check winks and says, “
Sure
you didn’t.”

“No, really, I didn—”

Check waves him silent. Rod breaks free of Gonzo and pushes in front of Check and says, “Doesn’t matter, amigo. We’re all going to be free citizens soon enough anyway.”

Something in the Mexican Jumper’s tone makes Benson’s heart skip a beat.

“Yeah,” Gonzo says, knocking Rod out of the way. “They’ll have no choice but to listen to Jarrod after what he’s got planned.”

Minda exchanges a glance with Benson, but says nothing, extending a hand as if to say, “You ask.”

“He’s killing innocent people,” Benson says, trying to keep his voice even.

Check shakes his head, back in front after Rod and Gonzo go rolling to the floor. “No one is innocent,” he says. “Jarrod’s doing what he has to do. What no one else is willing to do.”

“Because it’s wrong,” Benson says. “He’s as bad as Pop Con is. He’s turning people into bombs.”

“Their sacrifices are for the greater good,” Geoffrey says, finally speaking. His face looks animated, more alive than Benson has seen it since his sister was killed. He stares right at Benson and all traces of Luce seem to disappear. “They made their choice.”

“Geoffrey,” Benson says. “We need to talk. In person. We’ve got a safe place. You can all come here. We can discuss this.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Geoffrey says. He’s a stranger. The innocent wide-eyed boy is gone, replaced by the angry, sad young man standing before him.

“I promised”—Benson bites his lip—“Luce…that I would take care of you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Geoffrey says. “I need to do something. They can’t kill my sister and not pay a price.”

“Revenge will get you nowhere,” Benson says.

“Like you would know,” Geoffrey spits. “You’re too scared to do anything but run and hide. Well guess what? Running and hiding is what got Luce killed. I’m done with that. Jarrod treats me like a man, not some little kid.”

Benson grits his teeth. What garbage has Jarrod been filling his head with? “You’re not a little kid,” he says. “I know that. But that doesn’t make you a soldier either. There are other ways to fight back. We’re not doing nothing here. I promise.”

“You promise a lot of things,” Geoffrey says.

“Okay, okay,” Check says, roping an arm around Geoffrey’s shoulders. He squirms away and stomps off. Only Check remains. “Listen, Benson, I know we’ve never exactly seen eye to eye on everything, but the Lifers are the only ones doing anything to help our cause. We have to trust them. They’re not the enemy.”

In some ways Benson knows his friend is right. The Lifers aren’t the ones that created the problems or created the laws that make him a wanted fugitive simply because he was born. But they’re also not making things any better.

He wants desperately to tell his friend that there’s another path, that they’ve got another plan, but when he looks at Minda and asks the question with his eyes, she shakes her head. Not over the holo-call, her gesture says. Which means he has to speak to him in person. But he can’t arrange a meeting with Jarrod listening in. Jarrod could very well tip off Pop Con again. Try once more to make a martyr out of him, use him to turn public opinion in their favor.

“Remember where we first met?” Benson says.

“Of course. How could I forget? It was the start of an era.”

“Meet me there tomorrow. Four o’clock. I’ll tell you everything that’s going on.”

Check says, “I don’t know. It might be hard to get there.”

“Please,” Benson says. “Bring Geoffrey. Rod and Gonzo, too, if they want to come.”

Check shrugs. “I’ll try, but no promises.”

“Thank you,” Benson says. Now that things aren’t as tense, he knows he has to ask the question he avoided earlier. As if anticipating it, Minda leans in. “What were Rod and Gonzo talking about earlier? What are the Lifers planning?”

Check raises his eyebrows, as if surprised Benson even needs to ask. “One more bombing,” he says. “A big one. We’re going to destroy everything. Then they’ll have to listen.”

Benson forces himself not to react, his eyes locked on Check’s. “When?”

“Exact date to be determined,” Check says. “But it won’t be long. A week at the most.”

Benson’s hands lock and his fingers squeeze against each other. The new Pop Con data system won’t be in place for a week, Minda said. “Can you make it two weeks?” Benson asks. If he can just delay their attack it might give he and Janice enough time to make it unnecessary.

Check says, “I can ask Jarrod, but I don’t have any pull with him. I doubt he’ll push it back much longer. There’s too much at stake and the longer we wait the greater the risk Pop Con will find us again.”

“Whatever you can do would be appreciated,” Benson says.

“What’s going on over there?” Check asks.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow,” Benson says.

Long after the holo-screen goes dark and his friends fade into oblivion and Minda realizes he doesn’t want to talk and leaves him alone in the conference room, Benson sits on the floor with his back against the wall.

His eyes are closed and he’s picturing another life. A life where Harrison and he grew up together in a normal home, playing together. A place where Harrison showed him how to balance on a hoverboard and Benson taught his twin to swim. A place where birthdays were celebrated together, filled with cake and songs and more laughs than there are stars in the sky. A better place.

A place filled with love.

That life was never his, like Harrison said. He never had a chance. Not by any fault of his own, nor Harrison’s, his path was a different one, seemingly set out before him from the moment he came in second place in the race from his mother’s womb.

And yet, if he had a choice whether to go back and change things, he wouldn’t. Like even the darkest clouds, every life has a silver lining.

His silver lining was Luce, and though their time was cut short—far too short—he wouldn’t change it for anything.

~~~

Private Forum for Agriculturists, by invite only:

Password required: **********

Password accepted, access granted.

JoseCuervo: Hello?

SamAdams: Here.

BloodyMary: Me too. ShirleyTemple?

ShirleyTemple: Yes.

JoseCuervo: We were worried when you went dark again.

ShirleyTemple: It was necessary for a time. But I’m back.

SamAdams: And the key?

ShirleyTemple: Safe. For now. She realizes what she has now. What JackDaniels told her.

BloodyMary: And her son?

ShirleyTemple: He knows too. He’s going to help us.

JoseCuervo: We got lucky. This could’ve gone very badly for us.

SamAdams: But it didn’t. There’s still hope for our plan.

BloodyMary: Is it a fool’s hope?

ShirleyTemple: All that’s left is a fool’s hope. Let’s make the most of it.

JoseCuervo: BloodyMary, any more info on the food surplus you discovered?

BloodyMary: There is no surplus.

SamAdams: But you said…

BloodyMary: There’s something big going on, something that’s happening at the highest levels. I pushed as far as I could but there was a brick wall at every turn. The food surplus I thought I found disappeared. The official reports show that there is no surplus.

ShirleyTemple: But you think otherwise?

BloodyMary: What I originally found wasn’t an error. The only error was me finding it. I fear that someone was killed because of the screw up. My source has gone underground. I can’t keep asking questions without drawing too much attention.

JoseCuervo: Your best guess?

BloodyMary: There’s been a massive cover up.

JoseCuervo: Okay. Keep us posted. One way or another, in a week we’ll know everything or be dead.

***Chat terminated by chat leader***

P
op Con is nothing. Corrigan Mars is nothing. Life is nothing. A beating heart is nothing. Oxygen filling his one human lung is nothing.

Death is
everything
.

Not his, but his enemies. The Saint Louis Slip and his brother and that filthy Slip girlfriend of his.

They should’ve killed him when they had the chance. But his nothing heart is still beating and his nothing lung is still processing oxygen and his nothing eye is still a bloody crater in his face. His one remaining eye is like a laser honing in on his enemies.

Yeah, something malfunctioned when the knife pierced his skull. He lost control of his perfect body. Up felt like down and down up. Left was right and vice versa. The letters of the words he was trying to speak fell in the wrong places. However, when he came to, he had enough sense to restart his system, the in-built program automatically assessing the issues and repairing the vital connections to his brain. He might not look it on the outside, but he feels like a million bucks again.

But that doesn’t change the fact that his friends have become his enemies. Like Corrigan Mars, for example, who’s practically radiating anger, his face a seething mass of red skin and protruding veins.

He’s pointing a finger at the Destroyer, but isn’t coming any closer, content to berate him from across the room. The Destroyer knows it’s because Mars fears him, regardless of the power he wields over him. As he should.

But this time Domino Destovan is ready.

“You’re pathetic!” Mars screams, his face getting even redder, like his skin might burst into flame.

The Destroyer doesn’t react, just stares at him darkly, his own anger simmering just below the metal surface of his body. His hot knife, thankfully, cauterized the wound in his eye the moment the bitch inflicted it. All of his other injuries are superficial, the pain they caused another example of nothingness.

Mars continues his tirade. “I handed you the Slip’s brother and another Slip and you
let them get away?
And you got ZERO information from them? You’re useless! You’re supposed to be a monster but you’re more like a toy doll.”

The Destroyer remains calm and says, “They defeated me and I hate them for it. But I’m not dead and I will have my revenge.”

“Revenge?” Mars says. “You’ll have nothing. You’ll stay down here until the land sinks into the sea and the earth crashes into the sun. You’re finished.” He drops his hand and grabs the device that the Destroyer has come to hate but not fear. He holds it up as if threatening the Destroyer to make a move.

Domino wasn’t planning on making a move anyway. Not yet. He says, “I’m not finished. We can still use our secret weapon. We can still win.” He doesn’t expect Mars to agree with him, but it doesn’t matter, so long as he gets a strong reaction from his once boss.

He gets exactly what he was hoping for. “
Our
secret weapon? There is no ‘our.’ And that weapon is a last resort, one that
I
will decide to use, if absolutely necessary.”

Time to poke the dragon, the Destroyer thinks. “You’ve stifled me,” he says. “This would’ve been over already if you hadn’t kept me on such a tight leash.”

Mars scoffs. “Is that right? A dumb beast should always be kept on a leash,” he says, raising the device. The Destroyer is ready for it, already going to another place, numbing himself against the jolt of pain, which is meaningless to him.

He’s faintly aware of the electricity coursing through his body, of the way his arms stiffen, of how his legs fail him, dropping him down to one knee.

“Did you like that?” Mars says, but the Destroyer’s not listening. He’s hiding inside himself, not feeling anything, forcing agony to the ragged lines of what’s left of his face. Agony he’s not feeling. Agony he’s pretending to feel.

Mars stomps forward and the Destroyer thinks he pushes the button again, because he slumps to the side, his body reacting to some kind of stimuli that he refuses to let his brain register.

He hides in the dark, waiting.

Gaining in confidence, Mars gets in his face, his foul breath washing over him. He jabs the device into his cheek and says, “This leash is all you have left.” And he presses the button and the Destroyer feels nothing, but contorts his face like he does, closing his eyes.

And Mars laughs in a way that makes the Destroyer’s blood boil in his veins.

When he’s sure the electricity has ceased to course through him and Mars thinks he’s unconscious, his eyes flash open and he lashes out with his right hand, quicker than a snake. Mars gasps as the device sails from his hand, clattering across the hard ground. He tries to scrabble away, to reach for the controller, but the Destroyer is like a lion, pouncing on his prey with inhuman quickness.

In one swift motion he regains his feet and picks Mars up by the throat, slamming him against the wall.

He relishes the look of fear that widens Mars’s eyes and flares his nostrils as his lips gulp at the air, trying to suck a breath through his sealed-off windpipe.

“Sometimes a dog chews through his leash,” the Destroyer says.

Corrigan Mars tries to say something, perhaps a final plea for his life or a false apology, but it comes out as nothing more than bubbles of spit on his lips and tongue.

When the Destroyer walks away from Corrigan Mars, he wonders how long it will take Pop Con to realize their leader is dead. How long it will take them to replace him. Doesn’t matter, he realizes. Pop Con is dead to him and he’s dead to Pop Con. This place—this dungeon—was kept secret. Mars insisted on it because he didn’t trust the Destroyer, didn’t want him to be a part of the public’s view of their organization. He was ashamed of him.

No more.

Now he can do what he wants. Now he can kill anyone in his path.

He stomps on the device that caused him so much pain, enjoying the crunch of the thousands of shards beneath his metal boots.

Now he can use
his
secret weapon. He exits the chamber where he tortured Harrison Kelly and strides down the corridor. On his left, shrouded in shadow, is another door. In their frantic flight to escape, they probably hadn’t even noticed it. He lets a device read his final retina and the door opens. The lights flicker on and there’s a groan.

His secret weapon says, “Just kill me and get it over with.”

He laughs, and it feels so good, almost like a human laugh. Almost like a child’s laugh, like a memory from his childhood, when he used to laugh when he saw someone get hurt. “Tempting,” he says. “But not just yet. I still need you. You’re going to help me.”

“Never,” the man says, his words bubbling out like blood over his swollen, cracked lips.

Although his face is nearly unrecognizable because of the bruising and slashes, his eyes will tell the true story, just like everyone else’s.

Michael Kelly’s eyes shine like crystal orbs through the murk.

~~*~~

Keep reading for a sneak peak of
Brew
, the first book in David Estes’ action-packed witch apocalypse series, Salem’s Revenge, available NOW!

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