The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (10 page)

He opened one eye. Peeked down,
grimacing. No blood. No bullet hole. No nothing. He was unhurt. Then he
realized.

The bang was not a gunshot.

He looked across the lobby. Loudmouth
had collapsed to the floor with a bang. “Thank God,” Ward said, realizing what
the noise had been. He cackled an overly nerdy-sounding laugh before he could
stop himself. Then he stiffened up, tried to act tough again.

The manager looked at him with
wide eyes.

Just then, something grabbed his
wrist. Ward spun and nearly swung at it—when he realized it was just one of the
cuff-turrets which had finally started to spin. Great timing! Thank God he
hadn’t screamed.

And then he started to giggle again.
It was probably just the nerves. But he couldn’t stop. A sharp pain in his
forehead helped him focus, and he took a deep breath and swallowed the giggles
down. He was surprised to hear a few customers snicker too. Hopefully that was
nerves on their part as well. Or they were just laughing at him. Either way, he
was alive. That’s what was important.

The bank manager was still eyeing
him suspiciously.

Ward saw him and regained his
composure, though adrenaline was still pounding through him. “You in charge?”

“Uh, yeah,” the Manager said
tentatively, as if he didn’t want to hear the next question Ward might have for
him. Did he think Ward was another robber?

Ward forced himself to calm down
further. He took a few deep breaths, thought about being
Zen
,
and
then spoke gently.

“Call the authorities.”

“Already on their way.” He said it
like a warning.

Ward couldn’t blame the guy for
not trusting him. He had hid in his air conditioner vents, after all. “Good.”

Ward channeled his inner police
officer, assuming he had one, and surveyed the area one last time. All around
the room, gang members were immobilized. Paralysis darts stuck out of them like
well-used voodoo dolls. Ward tried to sound relieved and in charge as he turned
back to the manager. “Tell them this will wear off in about two hours. There's
no permanent damage.”

Ward turned to leave, and the now
rising customers gave him a thunderous cheer. The Brown Recluse was the most
notorious gang in the city. Every Bostonian knew their MO, and he had saved them
from their terror. Turns out he wasn’t the only one who wanted these creeps
taken out. Ward couldn't help but beam a wide smile.

The manager softened. “Who are
you?”

Ward paused. Thought of what to
say. “Haven't come up with a name yet.”

At that very moment, Ward noticed,
to his horror, that Loudmouth was awake again and reaching as stealthily as he
could for the Glock he had tucked into his belt. Somehow the serum had not had
its full effect. Ward hadn’t even thought to check him for a second weapon. Damn,
there was a lot to think of in these situations! Live and learn.

“How 'bout Dead Man!” Loudmouth
spit, grabbing the handle of his handgun. “See you in hell, you mother—”

Thwap!

A dart slammed into Loudmouth's
chest just as he palmed his pistol, stopping him in midsentence. Ward mused
somewhat darkly that had flappy gums down there grabbed his pistol
before
he started to yap he might have had a chance. More troubling was the fact that
the blood accelerator, which was supposed to send the paralysis serum into his
system immediately, had not worked upon impact. Ward had probably not thrown it
hard enough, he reasoned. It was triggered by the impact itself. Still,
definitely something to check out when he got back home.

The gangster's face eased into a
dumb grin. He suddenly looked serene. He smiled at them, and his gaze drifted
off, his body slumped limp, gun still in his hand. Not paralyzed. Relaxed,
happy. Ward had hit him with another little goody he called his “serenity
serum.” Completely immobilizing and a very addictive high. Which is why he
didn't use the serenity serum very often. Even as a masked hero, if that’s what
he was, he lived by the physician’s motto.
Primum non nocer
:

First, do no harm.

The little bastard was about to
shoot me, though
, he thought. Ward peered into Loudmouth’s slack face,
waiting.

“There we go,” Ward said,
satisfied the terrible little man was good and sedated. He breathed a sigh of
relief at his quick reflexes. “That'll wear off soon.” Ward considered the
pathetic little man and his foul mouth that was sure to resume flapping when it
did. “Unfortunately.”

Ward kicked the gun away from
Loudmouth. He turned to leave again but then thought better of it.

“Um…he might need a little…detox.”

CHAPTER
15

T
he night
was cool and clear. A soft breeze whipped across the old rooftops of South
Boston. Ward sat, nestled into a covey of an ornate wooden church steeple, as
the city stretched out below him. A narrow, circular walkway extended all
around the steeple, and Ward often found himself plopped there, looking out
over the city. This was in fact the drop spot for The Source. Or at least
inside the church was the drop spot. It was sort of Ward's unofficial
home-away-from-home home base.

His helmet sat beside him, and his
wings were retracted and folded up behind him. They actually provided a nice
cushion to lean against. On this night, he held a copy of the
Boston Globe
.
Inside it, a full-page story on his takedown of the Brown Recluse gang. A
blurry cell phone picture of him in action was included. He regarded the
headline that blared across the page: MYSTERIOUS “SPIDER WASP” PARALYZES BROWN
RECLUSE OPERATION.  

Ward grimaced. “Spider Wasp?” He'd
not considered that the media might provide a name for him.

Ward leaned back and stared up at
the night sky. There were the constellations that he used to trace with his
boy. He could remember each one that little David had memorized. He felt his
throat begin to tighten; his vision clouded. He was a good boy. He’d been Ward’s
world. He shrugged it all away brusquely and thought about “being in the
moment.” This little covey provided him a space away from the world and yet
right in the heart of it. He could watch over his precious Boston from the
perch. And he could think clearly up here.

Nights were always hard. If he let
himself think about the past too much...

No. He would not think of it. He
would put it out of his mind as he always did. And if his thoughts betrayed
him—he thought about Fiddler wanting a younger victim today—if they wouldn't go
away, if all else failed—he thought about how, in the moment, he wanted to kill
Fiddler, not just bring him to justice—he knew one sure way to bring the world
back into balance again.

He sighed and slowly slipped off
his gloves, exposing his bare wrist. From his utility belt he pulled out a long
needle like the one he had fired from his wrist turrets earlier. Slowly, he
injected a small amount of the serenity serum into his veins.

A sheen of total relaxation washed
over him. He slumped back into the covey. Peering up at the stars, his face
slackened. He closed his eyes for a moment as the drug surged through his
bloodstream. He opened them again and reconsidered the headline.

Ward put his helmet back on.

“Spider Wasp. Yeah.” 

“Spider.” 

“Wasp.”

Maybe it was his buzz, but he
actually kind of liked it. Spider Wasp sat watching over the city.

And he was as high as a kite.

In another part of South Boston, the night was not
so serene. A curfew had been set following the State Street incident the
previous night. Police now prowled the streets looking to enforce it with all
means at their disposal. Tensions were high. Without the curfew, officials were
sure violence would erupt again.  

Boston, like everywhere else, had
good cops and they had bad cops. But in the past ten years, it had seemed that
the proportion of corrupt police had grown to increasingly outnumber the
virtuous. The salaries for all public employees had been slashed during the
Depression and then frozen at those paltry levels once the Freedom Council took
power. Maybe it was natural that desperate people would take to a little
business on the side under such conditions. Cops on the take—not a new idea.

A night with a curfew provided
just such an opportunity.

As the deadline had approached,
well-worn Bostonians cleared the streets. Boston had seen its share of trouble,
being the home of the insurgency. Most folks knew how to stay out of harm's
way. But there was always somebody...

On this night, a trio of partying
teens hurriedly passed by a shop window, seeing the time:
9:07 p.m
.
Blinking in red LED. 

“See, I told you, dumb ass. I’m
gonna be in so much fricking trouble,” a pretty blonde shot at the handsome
young man named Jake strolling beside her.

“Sorry.” 

“I think it’s kinda funny” slurred
their tall, obviously inebriated comrade, a C-student wrestler named
Tommy. 

“Shut up, Tommy! You're drunk
anyway,” said Jenny, the blonde honors student.  

Tommy, a lean kid all of seventeen,
snorted a laugh and chose that very moment to lose the grip on his Bud Light.
The bottle plummeted to the pavement and shattered in a loud crash that echoed
across the empty, curfew-cleared streets.

“Jesus, man, somebody's gonna hear
us,” said Jake.

As it turned out, someone did hear
them.

One street over, a group of cops
taking a smoke break heard the commotion and sprinted toward the sound, hoping
for something to break their boredom. They rounded a corner, and there they ran
right into the group of teens, who had decided to take a shortcut across a
dark, isolated alley.

Kids.

The bars on this strip of streets
catered to the underage set with more money than sense. Rich kids slumming it
in South Boston, or locals just too dumb to stay out of trouble. Officer Watson
Timbeck knew this. He and his crew had set up shop here—even though their
official beat was blocks away. A curfew was too good a chance to pass up. This
was gonna be too easy.

Watson was known throughout
Boston's law enforcement community for being a “son of a bitch.”  His long
years on the force, his “balls to the walls” attitude, unerring courage, and
nasty temper all made him someone even his superiors thought twice about
crossing. That was probably why nearly everyone looked the other way to the
fact that he was also as crooked as they come. Watson was always on the take. A
group of dumb-ass teenagers such as he was confronted with now was the easiest
of pickings.

“Hey, you're not supposed to be
out here,” Watson spat at them.

“We're on our way home now.” Jake
tried to sound cooperative and confident, but the fact that his nervous,
maturing voice broke on “now” greatly undermined his show at bravado.

“Too late. Gonna cost ya. How much
money you got on yas? Check 'em out.” Watson flashed a menacing grin.

The other officers pushed the
teens harshly against a wall and began to frisk them. A rough, degrading
shakedown. The largest officer grabbed Tommy by the hair and spun him around,
slamming his chest into the wall. The big man went by Davey.

David “Davey” Timbeck was Watson's
younger, dumber brother. Everyone knew he would never have become a policeman
had Watson not been there to pull some strings. But he was also kind of a
mascot for those less ethically inclined members on the force. And he did
whatever his big brother wanted, no matter how questionable. In school, the two
of them had ruled with an iron fist the same way they now bullied these teens.
Watson was the brains, Davey was the brawn.

A third officer, a red-haired, rat-faced
thin man nicknamed Stinny, yanked Jenny's purse from her arm and shoved her up
against the wall with an elbow to her back. She grunted from the impact. Even
at sixteen, the young woman did not suffer fools very well.

“Whatever happened to protect and
serve?” she shot at them.

“You're protected, honey. Nobody's
gonna mess with you while we're here. 'Cept maybe Davey over there,” Stinny
chuckled as he watched the big man emptying Tommy's pockets.

“Yeah, now
serve
up your
wallets.” Watson was already impatient. As soon as the money shifted hands, he
knew they’d be home free, but with as many damn cameras as there were these
days, Watson also knew he needed to make this “transaction” go smoothly and
quickly.

It was then that the strangest
thing happened.

A voice suddenly echoed from their
left.

“The right of the people...”

They turned, saw no one. They
heard no sounds, no footsteps. True, they'd been busy, but all four had been
trained to mind their surroundings. To be on the lookout for an ambush, even
from the most unlikely of sources—like these kids. It was basic police
procedure. Second nature.

Suddenly, the voice stabbed at
them from their right:

“Against unreasonable searches and
seizures...”

Again, they spun and saw no one.

“The fuck?” spat Davey as he
slammed Tommy's already bleeding head into the bricks for emphasis. Or maybe
just out of habit.

A dark figure suddenly stepped out
of the shadows behind them. They could see the glint of his clothing. Shiny,
bulky. Odd.

His voice continued, clear now.

“Shall not be violated.”

They spun, forgetting about the
kids as the Revolution stepped into the glare of the streetlights.  

CHAPTER
16

“S
on
of a bitch!” Watson palmed his Glock and pointed it straight at the armored stranger.
The Revolution simply stood there, his cloak fluttering lightly at his side.

The officers had all drawn their
weapons when Kent, tallest of the four, verbalized what all of them were
thinking.

“Oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
Why's
he
gotta be here?”

All four trained their weapons on
him. Shuffled from foot to foot. Nerves on edge. This was a guy who took on
whole armies. Or so they said.

Watson just stared at him. He
wasn't moving; he wasn't talking. He was just fucking standing there! 

“It's okay,” Watson assured them.
“There’s four-a us and only one-a him.”

“Watch him!” Davey yelled.

“Don't let him grab a weapon!”
Stinny warned. “He's got all them fancy gadgets. Fucking blow him away if he
goes for one.”

Kent shook his head. “Yeah,
you
shoot first. I heard bullets just bounce off him.”

“Put your hands up, where we can
see 'em,” Watson commanded, returning to officer mode.
This freak is still
just a civilian
, Watson thought, and he had no intention of being scared
out of his wits.

Revolution slowly, carefully
raised his arms. The officers nervously tightened the grip on their weapons,
keeping aim firmly planted on his midsection. The hero's red armored hands
settled at face level...

...into an obvious martial arts
pose. He said nothing, freezing perfectly still. Technically, he had followed
their orders, but Watson couldn't help but feeling like he was being flipped
off.

And then nothing. He just stood
there.

The teens were scooting out from
behind the distracted cops, but Watson noticed them.

“Naw. I don't think so. Just stay
right where you are.”

Watson turned back toward the
Revolution. He had not moved a muscle. It wasn't even clear to Watson that he
was breathing. His eyes were shrouded in shadow. The grill-like covering over
his mouth reminded Watson of the paintball mask he sometimes wore at the game
park. He probably breathed through it, but you couldn't have known it by
looking at him now.

This was stupid. Something needed
to give. Watson didn’t like it at all.

“Okay, he's unarmed. Take him in,”
Watson barked at Stinny.

“You take him in. I ain't doing
it! 

“I said take him in. Now do it.”

Revolution cleared his throat to
get their attention again, and it was all he could do to not shake his head at their
antics. All four reengaged him. But no one moved forward. They just stood there
looking like they needed to pee, shifting weight from one foot to the other.
Nervously waving their guns at him.

Suddenly, Revolution snapped his
hands to another pose, toying with them. All four of them jumped and took a
step backwards. He looked like he was imitating Jet Li or Bruce Lee or
somebody, and it was really starting to piss Watson off.

“That's it!” Watson howled, fed
up. “See, he's got nothin'. Now take him in!” Watson motioned toward Stinny and
Davey, and this time his ever-loyal brother took the bait. Stinny followed,
taking a step toward the “Dark Patriot.” Only
one
step.

This time Revolution's hands
flicked again, but unlike before, a sound like rushing wind now echoed through
the alley. Watson had been looking right at him, and though the sound disturbed
him and his instincts screamed it meant trouble, he was sure nothing had left
the armored hands of his adversary. It was just another pose.

Stinny and Davey stepped right
into the spinning paths of two black shurikens. The serrated edges sliced into
the two men's throats. Stinny's struck him first. A glancing blow, but the
razor-sharp edges still sliced through skin, veins, and tendons. Blood spurted
from the wound. The officer grasped his neck and fell to the ground. His hand
clamped tight. Blood pulsed over his fingers. It was a serious wound, but not
fatal.

Davey was not so lucky. His
millisecond reaction to Stinny's predicament caused him to flinch, to move ever
so slightly to his left. And when he did that he slid his jugular vein right in
front of the carefully aimed blades of the second throwing star. The razors
sliced it with ease, and Davey fell hard, already choking on his own blood.
Unless he got help quickly, he could bleed out.

“What the...?”  It all
happened so fast that neither Watson nor Kent could tell just what had befallen
their mates. But they both knew it wasn't good.

“Shoot him!” screamed Watson.

Both men opened fire, but by this
time the Revolution was in a full sprint toward them. A bullet grazed
Revolution's shoulder—didn't even slow him down. Watson fired point-blank right
into his metal-clad, star-laden chest. He saw the spark and glint of the bullet
as it bounced right off, just like all the stories had said. Watson ducked out
of instinct, not knowing where the ricocheting projectile might fly.

Revolution spun and kicked Kent
straight in the head. The speed of the movement and the titanium of his boot
cracked the tall officer’s skull in an instant. The servos in his leg armor
reacted immediately to the direction and pressure his leg applied to them. The
speed at which he moved was hard for Watson to even see. Let alone follow.

Inside his HUD, Revolution clocked
the move at forty miles per hour.

Watson raised his gun to fire
again but Revolution was already on him. He'd moved so fast that Watson hadn’t
seen him grab a whip out of his silver belt. And before the stunned officer's
mind could focus, Revolution slung the whip directly at him, all the while
spinning to minimize the impact of any gunfire Watson might send his way. This
was not to protect himself—their guns couldn’t begin to penetrate the T-O4
shell. It was to protect the teens and hopefully send the shells zooming off
safely into the street. As it happened, Watson didn't even get off another
shot.

The lash of the whip burned into a
brilliant yellow-green. Yet another spectacle to distract and disorient this
thirty-year vet of Boston's worst streets. But nothing had prepared him for
this.

The glowing whip curled toward
Waton's Glock and constricted around it. One simple pull aided by mechanically
enhanced strength and Watson's firearm went flinging across the alleyway,
clanging into the shadowed gutter.  

Watson was dumbstruck. He'd not
lost the will to fight back, he was mostly just trying to catch up, but the
effect was the same. His arms flew up in front of his face in an instantly
defensive pose. He saw Revolution complete his impossibly fast spin. The whip
wrapped back up under his cloak and into the belt he wore at his midsection.
All like choreography.

The officer gasped. And that's
when it hit him. A shuriken that is.

Slicing deep into the midsection
of his back. Missing his spine, or any vital organs, by less than an inch.
Watson screamed in pain and tried to reach the source of his agony, but it was
situated most cruelly in the middle of his back below his shoulder blades. His
reach was no good. The burning pain stung him with fire.

Adrenaline will kick in at times
like these, and Watson, somehow, spinning like a cat chasing its tail,
stretched his arms, further, further, painfully further. Until his fingertips
sliced over razor-sharp metal, and then, as he grasped his now bleeding hand,
he knew what was eating into him.

And it was impossible. He had
watched the Revolution the whole time. His hands had never moved. There had
been no time for him to make his throw.

He dropped to his knees, belching
a line of drool onto his uniform. He just peered up at his attacker, his eyes
begging for mercy.

“How...how did you?  I was
looking right at you!” Watson nearly sobbed. No longer the tyrant of the night,
he had been reduced to a pleading child. And the Revolution smiled behind his
mask. Watson was right. He’d not thrown a thing. It was another of his closely
held secrets...

Finally, Watson’s assailant spoke
again.

“I throw a hell of a curveball.”
And with that Watson saw one more impossible feat before he lost consciousness.

In one fluid motion Revolution
spun a set of
nunchaku
from somewhere behind his cloak directly into
Watson's forehead with a sickening crack that was so fast his brain was still
thinking about it a second after he lost consciousness.

Revolution spun the nunchaku from
his left hand to his right and back up under his cape as he drew them around
him in one seamless move. In the blink of an eye, his hands were empty again.

The teens cheered. Two officers
writhed on the ground, their consciousness fading fast from blood loss. And two
were just out cold.

“Get home now!” Revolution barked
at the teens, who rushed away like they'd been shot at. He held his hand up to
his head. A phone line crackled in his ear. A 911 operator answered

“What is your emergency?”

“Officers need medical assistance at
Eighth and Grimes,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. Pausing for a moment, he
considered them for a long second and then added, “I'd also suggest sensitivity
training.”

Revolution was not unconcerned for
the men he had wounded. The thought raced through his mind that if an ambulance
did not arrive soon, the big one could easily die. That had not been his
intention. But he knew that in the psychological war he was engaged in with the
Council and its allies—like these officers—every move and countermove mattered.
He subscribed to the old gentlemen's agreement of war: casualties should be
avoided and quarter should be given whenever possible. But this was still war.

And in war people die.

He had sent a clear message
tonight that this curfew would not go unmonitored by him. If the Council's
allies wanted to take advantage of the people in a time of crisis, they would
have to go through him. And they would pay the cost with their own blood.

CHAPTER
17

GOVERNOR 'S MANSION, BOSTON,
MASSACHUSETTS

ONE DAY LATER

G
overnor
Copley Adams, late sixties, distinguished and graying, was perched behind his
large, ornate desk. He scanned the day's agenda and the bills up for signing.
Sunlight beamed in from the large colonial-style windows. The limbs of oak
trees swayed just beyond them. Adams was a distant relative to the Adamses that
had founded the country: John, John Quincy, and Samuel. He had originally
started out as a Republican, but as the Depression ravaged the political system
as well as the economy, he had switched his allegiance to the Freedom Party
rather than follow many of his mates into the conjoined Democratic-Republicans.
The Unity Party, as it was sometimes called, had unified to
kill
the
Republic, Adams thought. That much he was sure of. The Freedom Party had been
the only other alternative. So he had held his nose and joined.

He'd never been an enthusiastic
supporter of the Council, but he had seen their time coming a long way off. If
you gave the country no other alternative, then you had to expect something
like the Freedom Council was going to happen. Sometimes to save democracy you
had to put it on life support. Abraham Lincoln had known this.

The truth was he had never thought
the Council's rule would last this long.

Ten years. Jesus Christ.

But in a way he understood. It was
hard to give up power once you had it. He should know. His party switch had
been early on, and he had been rewarded ever since with “reelection,” no matter
how popular his opposition became. One of the perks of—

His intercom beeped.

“Governor, the deputy chief of the
Council Guard is here to see you.”

“Tell him to make himself
comfortable. I'll be down as soon as I can.”

The retort came quickly over the
intercom as his secretary realized he had not understood what she meant. “Uh,
no, sir, he's on—”

The door swung open, and an entire
regiment of uniformed officers filed in with purpose. A short, serious-looking
man, midforties with a crew cut, emerged from their center. He was the only one
not wearing a helmet—standard gear for Council Guard, who always looked a bit
like they were suited up for a SWAT mission. Hard blue-gray steel shells
protected their chests, arms, legs. The abdomen sections were black steel. The
helmets were made of the same blue-gray steel.

All that gear looked like it’d be
hot as hell to wear.

Adams didn’t know the armor
actually had coolant systems that kept the Guards quite comfortable. A rare
splurge by the Council, something the military, for instance, did not get.
Soldiers on the battlefield were using the same basic gear they’d been using
for half a century. It was another thing that irritated Adams about the
Council. Two-plus decades of fighting in Africa had made that place a hellhole,
yet the men and women stationed there still had antiquated equipment because
there was no profit to be made in upgrading it. 

The deputy chief placed a document
down on the governor's large, ornate desk.