(The Push Chronicles (Book 2): Indefatigable (12 page)

Chapter 13 Loyalty

I knew I wasn't dead because I dreamed.  Unlike the few lucid dreams I had in the past, these were incoherent, wild mixes of dream and nightmare.  I had a strong suspicion I was drugged, which I think would have accounted for the untamed state of my subconscious mind.  After an indeterminate time, I came out of the psychedelic haze and dropped into normal sleep.

When I woke up, I was sitting upright in a plush, high-backed chair.  The chamber I was in was dimly lit, but there were many subtle clues that I was still in some subsection of the Atlanta sewer system.  My injuries had been treated professionally.  In fact, I felt better than I had in weeks and I had been dressed in what looked to be white cotton scrubs.  Of course, that meant no communications gear and no GPS tracker.  I wasn't even restrained as far as I could tell.  If it wasn't for the fact that I was sitting across a table from Ian Mackenzie and that I had a strange weight around my neck, I'd have been rather happy.

"Ah, right on time," the terrorist madman said, certainly not sounding like a madman.  "I'm sorry that I had to hurt you as bad as I did, Dr. Roman, but you didn't really leave me much choice."  Okay, that sounded a little more unhinged.

"I'm only wishing I had given you no choice at all," I said.  My throat was dry and I found myself drinking from a glass on the table.  In fact, it looked like there was a full, if basic, meal laid out for the two of us.

"I understand that you feel that way right this moment," he nodded, "but you may change your mind after our conversation."  He arched an eyebrow and grinned as he watched me drink.  "Aren't you afraid the food or drink is poisoned?"

"Who would even think that?" I argued.  "If you wanted to kill me, I'd already be dead.  Who would tend to someone's wounds to wake them up to poison them?"

"A Pushed," Ian replied without hesitation.  "Or, to be frank, most people under the influence of the Whiteout."  I couldn't help but nod in agreement.  It was just so melodramatic; it would be perfect for that mindset.  "I know you think I'm a monster, an insane terrorist.  All I ask is that you hear me out.  Listen to my story and my plans."

"Why would I ever think you're a monster?"  I rolled my eyes.  "I mean, you just murdered your own colleagues, signed the death warrants on who knows how many people Reaper killed, jeopardized an entire city, and let's not even get started on the lives lost because of the Hogs and what you're doing to them now."  I stopped my mini-rant to grab a bite of chicken off my plate.  The hunger inside me was gnawing at my insides and I just couldn't help myself.

"Fair enough."  Mackenzie let out a deep sigh.  "You have to see, though, that those were acts of desperation in fighting an invading army, not random acts of malice."  He must have taken the sight of me eating as time to politely begin his own meal as he tucked into his food, cutting the meat into small, even squares before eating one bite at a time.

"Invasion?" I asked.  "Don't you think that's an extreme stance to take?  The Pushed are people too.  You have to know, you have to be able to see the same things I see."

"I do and yes, at an elemental level, they are.  What I think the problem is, Irene, is that the course you have taken has made it hard for you to look at the big picture."

"What do -"  He held a hand up calmly for silence.  I decided to give it to him for now.

"Before we get down into an actual debate, would you allow me to lay out my own cards on the table?  I think you would agree that it is poor science to jump to a conclusion without having as much knowledge as possible, right?"

"Fair enough, but remember your observational bias.  Try to stick to the facts."

"Duly noted, Doctor."  He chewed slowly at a piece of meat, swallowed, then began his story in earnest.  No matter what kind of crazy tale this was going to be, I figured that it was time for me to devise some way out of this mess.  I had no idea where I was, what had happened to my friends, or even how long it had been since Mackenzie and I had fought, but all of that was meaningless if I didn't get out of here alive.

"Now, I'm sure that Duane and Rachel have told you about my past.  Bright-eyed and eager out of high school, I spent six years in the U.S. Army.  Apparently I had just the right stuff to be brought into military intelligence and then, after that, I pursued a career in law enforcement.  With my qualifications, I wound up working for the FBI.  The precise details are unimportant; it's all very mundane."

"In the Bureau, I became something of a go-to man for unusual cases.  To be quite frank, I relished it.  I have always wanted to believe that there was another layer to human experience that lay right around the corner, so looking into cults, unexplained disappearances, bizarre crimes, and all manner of oddities scratched that intellectual and spiritual itch."

"Rachel mentioned something about that," I nodded.  "She said that you had been very open-minded before the Whiteout."

"True.  I still am, if you can believe that."  He chuckled.  "I'll also ask not to repeat what Mr. Brooks has no doubt recounted about me.  Very colorful, I imagine."

"That's one way to put it."

"Well, in time, I hope to be redeemed.  Now where was I?  Oh yes.  This was how life was before the Whiteout for me.  To my dismay, I never found any true evidence of the unnatural.  Every once in a while I thought I may have come close, but nothing concrete.  It should be obvious, then, that when the Whiteout happened and the Pushed appeared immediately after, I wanted to be at the top of the list of people the government wanted working on the situation.  Fortunately, my superiors agreed and assigned me before I could even present my request."

"Within an hour of the event, NASA had worked out the probable origin of the event: here in Atlanta.  Before noon of the first day, I had already sent Agents Brooks and Choi to track down information which, as you already know, led to you."

"That's what I have never quite gotten," I mused.  "How did you know to put them on the trail to Eric?"

"The Bureau was already investigating Dr. Eric Flynn when the Whiteout happened."  Mackenzie twirled his fork as he spoke; more and more he seemed like a scholarly uncle than a criminal mastermind.  "From the report Choi sent me, I know you were there at his laboratory.  Do you really think, even as brilliant as Eric is, that he could have absconded with all that equipment over the years and not started leaving some trail behind?  If only they had found more evidence before hand to press charges, it is possible the Whiteout could have never happened."

"This all sounds well and good, but it hasn't explained why you decided during those first three days to go all 'terrorist ringleader'.  You had to have done that within the first day, because you personally unlocked Pandora's Box when you talked to Gerald Schuller."

"That's simple, Doctor.  All it took was observation and that first interview with Epic to make it all plain as day."  He paused for a moment and I gestured for him to continue.   "Come on, you know what I'm talking about.  The entire human race has been mentally altered against it's will and, the same day, a supremely powerful being puts himself forward not only as the first among a new race, but one that promises to lord over and protect the mere, mortal, human race."  He sipped at his drink.  "That doesn't sound like a savior.  That sounds like an invader justifying his actions."

"You put it that way before.  An invasion.  Why exactly do you see it that way?"

"Why don't you, Irene?"  He sighed.  "Very well, I'll spell it out for you: The Pushed do not think or act in a way that aligns with human thought, even human thought influenced by the Whiteout.  More than half of the Pushed population believes in taking over the world, either in mock beneficence or in honest subjugation.  They have more in common with a hypothetical alien invasion than a human condition."

The worrisome thing to me was that I could find few faults in his beliefs so far.  How far off were they from my own, to be honest?  Sure, I wasn't organizing a guerrilla war on the Pushed, but I still was trying to work towards their eventual elimination from the planet through ending the Whiteout.  Maybe Archer was right.  Maybe I really did hate the Pushed and simply tried to deny it.  Still, did those beliefs justify the lives Mackenzie had taken?

"Assuming I believe you and I recognize your logic as valid, why the terrorism?  Why the murders?  Why Reaper?"

"I knew that I would need time to organize.  Time to prepare an answer to the invading forces.  You see, during my time investigating bizarre cases, I spoke with many very intelligent people about the hard realities of the possibilities of aliens.  It was universally accepted that any civilization that could devise the means to travel the stars in a reasonable time would be so dramatically advanced over us that we would be as ants are to us.  If they wanted to take over our planet, there would be nothing we could do."

"Just like now, at least in your eyes."

"Exactly, Irene, exactly.  Gold star.  And really, how far from the truth is that?"  He put down his silverware and steepled his fingers.  "The Battle of Washington changed little except for adding a division in the ranks, thanks to you.  No governmental regulation can do more than incite counteraction.  No military force can hold a candle to the destructive power of the Pushed, especially if they continue to unite into groups and then factions as they already are doing."

"We're holding out just fine," I argued.  "And the Pushed I work with aren't like that.  There are good people among them; they just need to get organized and unified to counter-balance the bad seeds."

"I don't want to burst your bubble, Irene, because frankly I'm rather impressed with what you've managed to do so far.  There's a reason I haven't overtly interfered in Atlanta until now.  Let's be realistic though: you are one woman, and you have a small cadre of elite forces.  Let's be generous and say you and your friends are the equivalent of ten of Epic's so-called heroes a piece.  Congratulations, it is now sixty to a thousand odds instead of six to a thousand.  You are inevitably going to be crushed all the same."

"Then why haven't we?"

"Irene, please," Ian tutted like he was actually my professor.  "You know the answer to that already."  He was right, of course.  I did know.  He was right on many things so far and I wanted to punch him in the nose for it.

"He's still obsessed with me."

"Gold star.  That won't last forever though.  Well, the holding back part.  The obsession part I think is part of his psychology.  The point is that his initiative has already begun.  That's what's forced my hand here in Atlanta."

"You can't possibly mean the Argent Archer.  Not that he couldn't be dangerous, but he's too, well, good to be some kind of secret saboteur."

"I can and I do," he stated bluntly.  "But before I expound on this, let me ask you a question.  I'm being so very open about myself that I would wager you should do the same.  Why do you do it?"  He pulled my mask out from under the table and waved it in the air.  "You know this is a lie, that you are so elementally different from them that you are the very antithesis of what they are.  You can't even touch what they consider to be their real bodies, yet you dress up like them and play the same games they do.  Why?"

I looked down at my empty plate and thought about that question.  To be honest, I had been so busy doing it that I hadn't thought about why I did it, not for months now.  In the beginning, it had been a ruse, a disguise, something to let me get close to the Pushed and try to turn things around.  To either stop the Whiteout or influence it.   What was the reason now?  I wasn't stopping the Whiteout and I didn't know if I was even changing anything anymore.  I just didn't see what else I could do but save what lives I could.

"It's the only way I can think of anymore to mitigate the damage.  I feel like I'm partly responsible for all of this and I would stop it if I could but -"

"You feel justifiable guilt and you have the ability to save lives, so you do that.  There are always more lives threatened by the Pushed, so many that you never have time to think about other courses of action.  Indomitable, our tireless protector."  He tossed the mask into the center of the table.  There were bloodstains on it, I could see now.  My blood.  "Can't you see how pointless it is?  That mask will never solve the real problem."  He sighed and tossed his sidearm into the center of the table.  "And, sadly, neither will that pistol.  To be honest, both of our chosen methods are dead-ends.  You'll never change enough hearts and minds to domesticate the Pushed and no military might can stand against them."

"If your suggestion is that we just stay in an underground bunker and wait for the dust to settle, I'm going to have to decline," I pointed out.  "I just don't think that household will work out."

"As much as that sounds enjoyable, Irene, I vowed not to remarry after my dear Patricia died," he answered with a sigh.  "No, what I propose is that there is a third option, one that requires both of us.  It's the option I am sure you have always thought to pursue but could not and the option that I always wished for but didn't know was possible until now."

"You want to reverse what Eric did.  Stop the Whiteout entirely."

"Close.  I want to rewind it all.  Think of all the lost lives, think of all the displaced people, think of all the ravaged minds.  All of that could be swept away and everything placed neatly back into the natural order."