Revolution (14 page)

    “My friend didn’t shoot Martin Prince. He was forced to shoot him,” Rayne said.

    “What happened next?”

    “They dumped him out of the limo and I ran over to see if he was all right.”

    “And was he?”

    “Not at all. He had an automatic handgun grafted to his hand with a laser scalpel.”

    “Grafted to his hand?” Campion asked, glancing over at Connelly.

    “He’s telling the truth,” Rick said.

    “Okay, grafted to his hand. Why weren’t you picked up by the Federal Police with your friend?”

    “I got lucky. The cops were there in less than a minute. They must have been waiting not too far away. My friend distracted them by starting a firefight and gave me a chance to get away. I ran and the cops chased me down an alleyway. I escaped by finding a manhole cover and going down into the sewers.”

    “The sewers? This story keeps getting better,” Jane commented, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

    “He’s telling the truth,” Rick interjected a few seconds later.

    “Okay, then he went into the sewers. Swell,” Campion said, rolling her eyes. “What happened next?”

    “I found some bodies down there. It was disgusting. They were wearing prison attire. My only guess is they’re executed prisoners.”

    “Prisoners? In the sewers?” Campion exclaimed.

    “Possibly hundreds of them,” Peter said.

    “Hundreds of them. Okay. Hundreds of them,” Campion repeated, glancing toward Connelly.

     Peter ignored the rattling of the machine as he continued his narration.

    “Then, they tried to flood me out of the sewers. I don’t know how they did it, but the     tunnels began filling up with water. I almost drowned. I barely escaped through another manhole cover.”

    “Almost drowned in the sewers,” Jane repeated, glancing over at Rick. “Okay, what happened next?”

    “I returned to my apartment, got rid of my slimy clothes, and turned on the television. That’s when I found out my friend was going to be executed on Monday Night Justice.”

    “That must have been quite shocking,” Campion said, raising an eyebrow again.

    “It was a fucking nightmare,” Rayne said, becoming annoyed. “I thought my friend was going to get away and then he was tackled by an army of guards. That’s when I turned off the TV. I assume that he was executed after that. I don’t know for sure because I didn’t watch,” Peter said, looking down.

    All the dark emotions of the previous day came flooding back to him like a contaminated tide.

    “Then what happened?” Jane asked.

    “Then I went to sleep. I was exhausted.”

    “I’ll bet you were. You had a busy day.”

    “I woke up the next afternoon after sleeping for more than fourteen hours. I had breakfast and remembered I had placed Martin Prince’s pocket computer on the coffee table in my living room. I turned it on and searched through the files. That’s when I found the New Washington blueprints. I also found the name of your company in the files. I figured that you guys were somehow connected to what was going on. I put on my winter clothes and trudged halfway across the city until I got here. You know the rest.”

    “I only have one more question to ask and we’re done,” Campion spoke softly, but clearly. “Who really sent you here?”

    “I already told you. Nobody sent me here. I came here to find out what’s going on. I wanted to know why Prince was set up and why my friend was killed for it. It’s as simple as that,” Rayne said.

    The machine whirred as Campion glanced over at Connelly.

    “It’s the truth,” Connelly said.

    “It’s the truth,” Campion repeated, as if to convince herself. “It’s the truth. Rick, what is the failure rate of that machine?”

    “Its ninety nine percent accurate. This new model is greatly improved over the twentieth century model, which was only about 80% accurate. The only people who have been able to beat this model are those who have been genetically enhanced.”

    “Well, there are a few simple tests we can do to find out if he’s been genetically enhanced. Rick, why don’t you set up a blood test for our friend. In the meantime,” Campion said, standing from her chair and walking to the back of the room. “We can turn off this damn light.”

    Rayne wasn’t prepared for the spotlight going out and the complete darkness that followed. He squinted with pain as bright green spots flashed before his eyes. After a few moments, his eyes cleared and he could make out the faint outlines of the people in the room from the dim light of the nearby hallway.

    “Sit tight for now and we’ll get that blood test going,” Campion’s voice spoke from a dark silhouette. “After that, we’ll let you go and maybe answer some of your questions. How’s that sound?”

    “It sounds great,” Rayne replied, feeling relief flooding into his system. “I just hope you guys aren’t lying to me.”

    “We’re not,” Campion said. “You’re going to be all right.”

    Rayne sat anxiously in the dark for the next ten minutes. Someone came in, told him to relax, and stuck a needle in his arm. They held it there for thirty seconds and pulled it out. Peter waited in the dark another five minutes. Then, the lights switched on and he found himself squinting from the glare. When his eyes adjusted, he realized the lights weren’t so bright after all. Only a few dim fluorescents in the ceiling above. Rayne felt someone fumbling with his cuffs and he was free. He stood from the chair and stretched his aching muscles.

    “Follow me,” a guard said.

    Rayne followed the guard down several labyrinthine corridors until they were standing in front of a wooden door similar to the door to Connelly’s office.

   
We’re back at Connelly’s office. At least they have some comfortable chairs in there.

    The guard spoke into the intercom and the door opened. Rayne was led into a spacious office, which he at first mistook for Connelly’s. After a few moments of looking around, he realized he was actually in a different office. Chairs and reading tables were set up in the corners, different paintings were on the walls, and one of the walls was actually an immense bookcase. Other than that, the office looked as comfortable as Connelly’s.

The security guard led him to a reclining office chair set in front of a wide desk. Campion reclined in another chair behind the desk with her black shoes resting on the smooth, polished surface.

    “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired after asking all those questions,” Campion said, smiling. “Have a seat.”

    Rayne sat down in the comfortable chair and sighed with relief. The security guard remained standing beside him. Jane turned toward the guard.

    “Why don’t you get our guest some refreshments. He’s had a long day.”

    “Yes, sir,” the guard replied, leaving the room.

    “You’re all right, Rayne,” Campion said, grinning. “I didn’t like you at first, but you’re really all right.”

    Peter leaned back in his chair and enjoyed the comfort of its soft surface. It was a pleasure to sit in the recliner after sitting in a hard wooden chair in the interrogation room.

    “Relax, Peter. Make yourself at home,” Jane said.

    “I am,” he said, returning her smile. “I must admit your hospitality has improved dramatically since we first met.”

    “That was just a misunderstanding. I thought you were one of them.”

    “And by one of them, you mean?”

    “A government spy. Someone sent here to set us up. But you’re legit. You’re just like us. Someone who isn’t happy with the system.”

    Rayne thought about her statement as he heard the office door open behind him and footsteps entered the room. The security guard returned with a tray and a folding table. He placed the table in front of Peter and put the tray on top of it. Peter’s mouth actually watered upon seeing the sumptuous steak dinner set up on it. The first thing he did was grab the tall glass of ice water on the back of the tray and drain it.

    “I think Mr. Rayne might need some more water,” Campion advised the security guard. “Why don’t you get him a full pitcher?”

    “You got it,” the guard replied, turning and leaving the room again.

    Rayne didn’t wait until the guard got back to dig into the steak. He went to work on it with the silverware immediately. He had finished more than half by the time the security guard returned with a pitcher of water, which he placed on the edge of the tray.

    “Thank you very much,” Peter said, between mouthfuls.

    “I guess you really did work up an appetite,” Jane observed, watching Peter attack the steak like a voracious animal.

    “You got that right,” he agreed.

    When he had finished the meal, Rayne moved the tray aside and leaned back in the recliner.

    “That was great. Thanks, Campion.”

    “No problem. It is my pleasure after everything we put you through. Would you like a cigarette?” Campion gestured to a pack resting on the desk by her feet.

    “No thanks. Those things will kill ya,” Rayne said, smiling.

    “Yeah, right,” Campion said, raising an eyebrow as she took her feet off the desk and swung around on her reclining swivel chair so she could reach the pack of cigarettes. She took one out and lit up.

    “Don’t mind if I do,” Jane said, resuming her reclining position in her chair and placing her feet back on the desk. “I do my best thinking this way,” she added, leaning the chair back as far as it would go until she was almost lying flat on her back. She took a deep drag from the cigarette and blew out an almost-perfect smoke ring, which traveled upwards toward the ceiling before slowly dissipating into whirling gray smoke.

    “I’m sure you do,” Rayne said.

    “Now that we’re on friendlier terms, Mr. Rayne, I think it’s time to discuss your employment options with our organization.”

Chapter 12

    Campion stared out the window of her fiftieth floor office at the Hovercrafts International downtown building, looking down on the traffic below. She watched the people scurrying about on the sidewalks like ants and the vehicles moving slowly on the road like tiny toy cars.

She liked the downtown office because it gave her a change of scenery. Being trapped in the confines of the underground base below the warehouse could be stifling at times. Her legitimate position as a Marketing Executive in the company gave her the cover she needed to move about the city freely without raising any suspicions. It also gave her access to a larger communications network, which allowed her to contact agents, who had infiltrated a number of large corporations all over the country.

    Campion returned to her desk and sat in the plush leather office chair. She placed her feet on the gleaming mahogany desktop, leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes.

     What a strange week. We’ve been searching for the right operative for months and then from out of nowhere comes this raggedy homeless-looking guy, Peter Rayne. What a tremendous stroke of luck. The guy’s an ace with a computer and he’s as tough as nails. Well, for a computer nerd anyway. Still, I think he’s going to work out just fine.
 

   
Rayne aced the test we gave him on the computer
.
He hacked into a government system faster than any of our guys could. Maybe only a handful of computer experts in the country could do what he did. He shouldn’t have any trouble with the automatic defense systems in the capitol city.

    Rayne also did well on the physical fitness test. Two of our best guys attacked him and the wiry little computer nerd actually held his own. Boxing in college, he says. Boxing. Well, who cares why as long as he can defend himself?

We give him a quick handgun test on the shooting range and he almost shoots a perfect score. Video games, he says. Video games. Unbelievable. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. His shooting score was only 2 points below mine, and I’m one of the top ten shooters in this organization. Amazing. Yeah, this guy definitely has what it takes. Computer expertise and natural covert operations ability.

I just hope he doesn’t crack under pressure. It seems unlikely, considering what he’s been through in the past few days. He certainly hasn’t cracked under pressure yet.

   
I can’t worry about every contingency. We have
someone for the mission and that’s what’s important. Now, it looks like our organization is moving forward, even if it really isn’t. The important thing is that people think we’re making progress. That way, they won’t quit or give up.

   
But what about today
?
Will Rayne be able to handle what happens to him? I talked to Mr. Leland about it last night. Leland seemed confident that Rayne would be able to get through his first day back at work without any problems. Who am I to argue with the president of Hovercrafts International?

   Jane leaned further back in her chair and thought about the president of Hovercrafts International Corporation, Timothy Leland. He was an unusual man. He was one of the richest entrepreneurs in the world, and yet he was part of an underground organization with the goal of toppling the government. He wanted to overthrow the very system that had enabled him to become rich. This contradiction was often hard for Campion to understand.  

  
On the surface, it didn’t make any sense. But when one delved deeper into the man’s mind, it became obvious who he truly was. Quite simply, Leland was a fanatic like Campion. An obsessive sense of higher justice plagued both and made them unable to enjoy the prosperity they had, while they thought others were suffering. Leland met up with Campion in 2050 and the rest was history. They began building their extensive organization from the ground up. Leland provided the financing and Campion provided the destructive expertise.

    This new guy, Rayne, is quite a character. It seems like a miracle he survived the obstacles he faced in the past few days and still brought Prince’s disc to me intact. It
’s
almost too perfect
.

    But Campion saw a stubborn tenacity in Rayne that she hadn’t seen since she had met her partner, Tim Leland.

   
Rayne’s hungry, survival-oriented personality and his computer expertise might make him the ultimate spy and saboteur. It’s too bad I have to send him on a suicide mission.

    Campion paused her rumination to stub out her cigarette on the desk ashtray. Then, she narrowed her eyes

   
There is one more concern.
Tomorrow is going to be a big day for him. Not big in the sense of being dangerous or challenging. It’s going to be a big day for his ego. I’ve already talked to Tim to make sure everything goes as planned.   

    I hope Rayne can handle it. I should have prepared him better. He should have had a lot more training. But he has to return to work tomorrow. If he doesn’t, it will look suspicious. So far, he’s only missed one day. Rayne said he called in sick, albeit nine hours late. Normally, it’s a breach in the rules resulting in termination. Still, Mr. Leland will handle that for him. I just hope Rayne can handle what’s going to happen to him today without losing his composure.

********                                                                                                                                                                                           

    “SEVEN FIFTY-EIGHT AM, FEBRUARY 13, 2058, PETER RAYNE, ON TIME,” the computer stated in its pseudo-female voice.

Rayne had made it to another working day at the great Breechlere Corporation, and although he thought this with a hint of sarcasm, he actually did appreciate being there on that particular day. Peter was determined to get his life into some order after experiencing the harrowing events of the past two days.

   Rayne walked past the suited security guard, who was scowling at him from behind the bulletproof window of his temperature-controlled security station.

Peter convinced himself that he must have called in sick legitimately yesterday because everything was going the same as before his two-day ordeal. If he had actually been absent from work without a legitimate call-in, the computer would have indicated that fact and he would have been detained and questioned. Instead, he walked unhindered on the heels of hundreds of other employees as they made their way down the short concrete hallway to the main warehouse.

Twenty enormous steel shipping doors were just beginning to ease open on their mechanical tracks as he passed along the bright yellow walkway lines on his way to the freight elevator. The hum of electric forklifts was familiar and oddly comforting.

    Rayne paused to gaze at the frenetic work activities in the Breechlere Warehouse. It seemed that every area in the place was occupied from the upper tiers of the massive six-story warehouse aisles to the ground floor. The place was packed with frantic human beings scurrying like rats toward their workstations.

    The freight elevator to Level Six, Section One of the Breechlere Warehouse was filled to capacity as usual. As the chicken wire door slid open, he saw the familiar faces of at least twenty of his male and female colleagues. On this day, he actually had some energy to recognize the attractiveness of some of the shapely female forms, even in their drab gray jumpsuits.

Rayne pushed his way through the silent crowd to reach his traditional spot at the rear of the lift, when he inhaled a familiar odor. Glancing left, he realized the stench originated from the lit cigarette hanging from the lower lip of his friend, Billy Ryder.

    Billy stood in what he claimed was his “reserved” spot in the rear. It allowed him to throw used butts out of the circular spaces in the chicken wire during the ascent. Peter wanted to grab his friend and hug him. His excitement upon seeing that his friend had survived could not be suppressed. Peter slid through the crowd toward Billy as Billy stared at him with squinted eyes through a cloud of smoke.

    “Billy! Where you been, buddy?” Rayne exclaimed.

    He reached to give Ryder a friendly pat on the shoulder, but Ryder shrugged off his gesture and turned his back to him.

    “Ryder, what’s wrong with you?” Peter asked. “It’s me. What’s wrong?”

    The elevator screeched to a halt on the sixth level and they had to grab hold of the wire wall to keep their balance on the swaying contraption. Twenty or so employees began to exit as Ryder remained in his spot with his back turned toward him.

    “Billy, what’s wrong with you, man?” Rayne asked, jabbing his finger into his friend’s left shoulder blade.

    He was caught off guard when Ryder turned suddenly toward him, grasped his shoulders, and glared at his face with wide, terrified eyes.

    “You must be some kind of ghost because the Peter Rayne I knew is dead!” Billy whispered to him in a raspy voice. “Everybody knows it! Where have you been, Rayne? You didn’t show up for work yesterday! Why did they let you in here?”

    Peter flinched as he felt Billy’s fingernails digging into his shoulders. He hardly recognized his friend as Ryder glared at him with wild, unfocused eyes.

    “Get off, grunts!” the Floor Supervisor’s voice shouted from across the platform.

    Billy released Peter’s shoulders and sprinted through the cage door, leaving a stream of gray tobacco smoke floating in the air.

    “Billy, will you wait up!” Peter yelled as he sprinted after the only familiar face he had seen in days. “Billy, I saw it all! They killed Henry Johnson! They tried to kill me!”

    He ran up to Ryder and grabbed his right arm as he stepped onto his forklift,
Porky.

    “Ryder, you were there! You were with us! Henry is dead! They killed him!”

    “No, Rayne!” Billy shouted, smashing Peter’s hand away. “They told me Henry Johnson is on vacation! Now stay away from me! You can’t be here! They told me you were dead!”

    There was no reason he could think of why Ryder would behave so irrationally. Henry had been executed on national television and he had witnessed it, but Ryder did not seem to accept the reality of the situation. Rayne watched his friend jam the control lever of his machine forward and race away. Wisps of smoke from the lit cigarette hanging in Ryder’s mouth trailed in the air behind him.

    Rayne stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head as he watched his friend speed out of sight behind a stack of cardboard boxes. He heard a familiar voice, slightly amplified, originating from his right. Turning, he saw the familiar wooden podium perched in front of a backdrop of brown numbered boxes piled from floor to ceiling on steel-framed shelves.

    Rayne walked to the rear of the orderly line of employees that was forming in front of the towering, muscular black man behind the podium. Twenty or so employees, dressed in the standard light gray jumpsuits, stood in front of Sinbad in line. They waited in silence as the Herculean scowling man at the head of the group brusquely handed out the perforated computer pages indicating the day’s work.

    Sinbad didn’t look like he was in a good mood. His sweating, muscular body and gleaming bare skull indicated to Peter that he must have started work a couple hours before the bell rang for everyone else. Overtime could be tough. The extra money was nice, but the damage it inflicted on a person’s mood was sometimes irreparable.

    The long line of employees diminished and Rayne finally stood face-to-face with the colossal man. Although he had just partied with him several weeks before at the Nexis Club, Sinbad seemed to stare past him as if he were examining something interesting on the far side of the warehouse.

Sinbad shoved the perforated computer sheet into his hands and pushed him onward with a heavy shove from his right arm. Peter stumbled backwards from the podium, almost losing his balance. He quickly regained his equilibrium and glared at another one of his so-called “friends.”

Sweat trickled down the bridge of Sinbad’s nose, accumulating on his upper lip and chin, before finally dripping to the concrete below. The eye that wasn’t covered by the thick black patch gleamed maniacally as the giant tore loose threads from his sleeveless jumpsuit and handed out work assignments. Rayne didn’t move from the spot as he glared at his Floor Supervisor.

   
First, Ryder. And now, this guy
, he thought.
A close friend of ours dies and they won’t even acknowledge my presence.

    Each time Sinbad handed out a computer sheet to an employee, he glimpsed briefly over to see if the ghost of his former acquaintance was still standing there.

   
If this had been only a few days ago, Sinbad would have chewed me a new asshole for standing idle
.
Now, he’s actually trying to ignore me
.

    “Sinbad, what’s wrong with you? What’s with Ryder?” Rayne asked. “Our friend was killed on national television and all you can do is-”

    Sinbad’s left hand darted to Rayne’s throat like a striking cobra and clamped onto his neck in a deadly chokehold. Peter felt his eyes protruding from their sockets. He could scarcely breathe as his supervisor’s iron grip closed around his windpipe.