The Road to Hell (23 page)

“
Nice of you to join us,” said Special Agent Kane, nudging Harrison with his boot.

Harrison was groggy. He propped himself up on his elbow as he lay on the damp, cold cobblestones outside the cafe. The sun was low on the horizon, bouncing off the water on the lake. He glanced at his wrist-strap computer. The time read 5:48 PM and he realised he'd been out cold for six or seven hours. His lips were dry and his head ached. He rubbed his temples, trying to relieve the stabbing pain.

The park was empty, the cafe abandoned, with half-drunken cups of coffee and plates of food left uneaten on the outdoor tables. Sparrows and pigeons fluttered between the back of chairs and tabletops, cleaning up scraps of food and looking for crumbs.

Olivia rolled to one side. Over the course of several minutes she awoke and sat up, resting her back against a low stone wall running around the edge of the lake.

Susan sat to one side sobbing, her head buried in her hands. Kane paced back and forth talking to someone over his earpiece, a blaster in his hand. Harrison looked around. There was no one else in sight, no joggers, no cyclists, no families out for an evening stroll, and no cops. It made no sense. Harrison struggled mentally to grasp what was happening as the drug wore off.

“
You always were a sucker for a skirt, Harry,” said Kane. The soft light reflecting off his dark, cold, impersonal glasses.

Harrison was still groggy, but he got to his feet. The mini-blaster normally tucked into the small of his back had been removed. His overcoat with the sawn-off shotgun was gone. He looked over at Susan and asked, “Why?”

Olivia looked up at her sister sitting across from her on one of the ornate, cast-iron chairs scattered around the courtyard. Susan raised her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, her makeup smeared, her hair ruffled.

“
Why, Susan? Why did you do this?” She asked.

“
He's a monster,” cried Susan, looking straight at Olivia.

She turned to Harrison. “You don't understand. You won't understand. You can't. You don't know what it was like, growing up thinking she was dead. And then to discover this. That your sister has run off with a terrorist. That your sister has killed people, killed police officers, killed anyone that got in her way. You don't know what it's like to have a sister that's a murderer.”

There were tears in her eyes. She turned back to Olivia.

“
How many more people have to die, Olive? The war is over. You lost. The rest of us have moved on with our lives, we've accepted the change and the change has been good. It worked. But, no, you and Artemis can't let go. So how many more people have to die before you two get the message? Well, I realised the answer was simple, it was just two. Artemis and you.”

Olivia was shocked, but the frustration and anger didn't end there.

“
How could you believe his lies about freedom? And you carried his children. My God, he's not even human, he's an abomination, and you slept with him. He deserves to die.”

Both Olivia and Harrison were silent and their silence cried out louder than any condemnation in reply.

“
You think this was easy? You think I wanted to do this? I had to do this. I had to end this, for Mom's sake.”

“
Mom and Dad-” began Olivia, but Susan cut her off.

“
Dad died of a broken heart. You killed him, Olive. You killed him. It was bad enough when he thought you were dead. But the last five years were too much for him. They showed him what you'd done, they asked him for help. He knew what you'd become. You betrayed him. You betrayed everything he believed in, everything he fought for during the war. And he died a broken man.”

Olivia was silent.

Harrison was reeling from the implications. He felt like such a fool. In his mind, dominos began to fall as he realised she'd never answered one of his first questions, who sent you? It should have bugged him, it should have been a red flag, an inconsistency that exposed something deeper. But no, she was so pretty she had him thinking with his dick.

And at the Astor, the puncture wound in the dress was on the left-hand side while Susan was a southpaw.
Frack
! It had been staring him in the face all along and he had it right at the Astor, he had it all worked out, but he doubted himself. Damn, he thought, and there was sweet, pretty little Susan, with her petite frame, her soft curves, her blonde hair and her alluring smile. She always was too good to be true. She sucked him right in.

“
And the Astor,” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“
Yes, it was me,” replied Susan, her hands shaking.

“
You think I'm the monster,” she added, seeing the look on Harrison's face. “But you don't know how hard this was for me. It had to be done. Someone had to stand up and do what was right. Someone had to end this madness.”

Harrison looked over at Kane.

Kane responded as though he'd read Harrison's mind.

“
Oh, no. We didn't turn her. She came to us. She volunteered for this.”

Harrison was silent. He felt cut, betrayed. He wondered why he didn't see it coming. But he knew he never would because he'd never look for it. He was too damn trusting, too much of a sucker for a sob-story.

Kane continued.

“
You didn't think you could get away from us that easily back at the factory, now did you? Quite a good performance, I thought. And Susan handled herself like a pro. But you, you were predictable as always. It was like flushing out a pheasant with a couple of game dogs.”

“
And the cube?” asked Harrison, wanting to know just how far he'd been duped. His mind was already kicking into damage control, trying to clarify as much detail as possible so he could distinguish between fact and fabrication.

“
Oh, the cube was masterful,” replied Kane. “We missed that cold. Artemis had us on that one. But you, Harry, you always were that little bit sharper than the rest. I knew it was a good idea bringing you on board. I had faith in you, Harry. I knew you wouldn't let us down. And the bad blood between us, well, that made it a certainty Olivia would take the bait.”

Harrison felt sick to the stomach. He felt used.

“
Who is Daniel?” asked Kane, looking at Olivia. Her lips tightened as Kane continued. “It doesn't matter. Soon, Artemis will be dead, the revolution will be crushed and Daniel will be irrelevant.”

“
You won't get away with this?” said Harrison, saying what Olivia was thinking. “Artemis will come.”

Kane laughed. “Oh, I'm counting on it.”

He walked over toward Harrison, checking the charge on his blaster.

“
I'm sorry, Harry. Really I am.”

Harrison went to say something in response but no words came out of his open mouth. He never even heard the rapport of the blaster as it fired. A flock of pigeons took flight, but even they seemed to do so in silence.

Harrison raised his hands up to his chest. The blast had carved a hole through his ribs, heart and lungs, passing out through his back, just below his right shoulder blade. The smell of burnt flesh lashed at his nostrils. At 4000 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat cauterised the arteries, nerves, veins, bones, blood vessels, muscle and sinew around the gaping hole. The mass of internal compression around the open wound jolted his body into shock. He tried to speak, tried to breathe but spasms of pain shot out through his body.

The sun was setting. The sky was radiant with streaks of orange and red slowly blending with the deepening Prussian blue of the coming night. Cirrus clouds up high in the stratosphere shone in golden hues.

Olivia was screaming, but he couldn't hear her.

Harrison's lips were dry. He tried to swallow but simply choked. Blood pooled in his arms and lower legs, dragging him down like lead weights. Slowly, the darkness overwhelmed him, and all the while his only thought was how beautiful the sunset was and how he'd never really appreciated it before. He wished he had.

His lifeless body slumped to the ground.

Kane stood over him, steam rising from the barrel of his blaster. Susan was crying, the brutal reality of her betrayal sank in, the necessity of the moment being overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and shame. She turned away, unable to face what she'd done.

Olivia buried her head in her hands, knowing what lay ahead of her and Artemis. This was the end of the road. They'd arrived in hell.

“
You see,” said Kane, quite methodically. “The problem with trapping a daemon is you've got to think in four dimensions, not three.”

“
He'll get you,” snapped Olivia. “He'll kill you for what you've done.”

“
Several times over, I'm sure,” replied Kane. “But eventually he'll realise all those time streams end in your death. Artemis was pretty impressive back in the Astor, but seven hours, that's asking too much, even for him.”

Olivia wiped the tears from her eyes.

Kane continued.

“
You're bound to normal space-time, just like all the rest of us. You've been here, in one spot in space, for too long in time. Even Artemis has his limits. And we've been probing them, exploring them, figuring out exactly what they are.”

“
Time is linear, even for Artemis. Oh, sure, he can flip flop back and forth a few seconds, a few minutes, even a few hours. But, just like us, he gets swept on relentlessly into the future, dragged along by the current as it flows swiftly by.”

“
Maybe if he'd been here earlier he might have stood a chance, but now, it's too late. This whole area is covered by snipers. Should either of you have moved at any point during the day, they'd have opened fire. Any point he can dive back into within local time is still within our field of fire. It's over. We've already won.”

Kane left her sitting there and strolled back and forth along the edge of the lake, talking to the various police units cordoning off the park. Olivia couldn't hear everything he said, but she did catch part of the conversation.

“
Open the cordon for him. Under no circumstances are you to engage him. You are to let him come freely to me, sealing the park behind him.”

Susan shivered against the chill of the coming night. Her eyes were deep set within her face. Pangs of guilt ate away at her heart, seeing Harrison die so violently. She may not have felt anything for her treacherous sister, but she had felt something for Harrison. She hated herself, hated Kane, hated what she'd become, hated what she'd allowed herself to become. In her mind's eye, it wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to feel good, it was supposed to feel like she'd won, but deep inside, she felt she'd lost.

Susan got up and started pacing, she couldn't sit still, it didn't feel right, she had to move, it was impulsive. She wrapped her hands tightly around her waist, trying to shut out the cold she felt inside. She looked down at the cobblestones as she walked mindlessly back and forth, her feet shuffling before her, seemingly on their own. Her mind was in anguish, in turmoil with what she'd done. It all seemed so simple before, it all seemed so clear, even at the hotel. But now, she felt dirty. She felt as if she could never wash herself clean again.

Time seemed to crawl.

Kane sat looking out over the lake. He seemed disinterested, distant, like he was lost deep in thought. It was as though he didn't care to be there. Olivia looked around, trying to figure out if she should make a run for it, dash for cover in the cafe. But it was useless. Kane wouldn't be so relaxed unless he had the area completely covered. It was just wishful thinking on her part and she knew that.

The sun set.

Floodlights from the cafe lit up the forecourt in front of the lake. Ducks sailed past on the murky water, oblivious to the drama unfolding around them. Fireflies danced across the field behind them. Stars shone through the clear dome above. The moon rose in the distance.