Multiplayer (32 page)

Hector listened reluctantly, unsurprised that the man next door had been in the Iranian military or that he built weapons.

“Until one day,” said Pappous nonchalantly, “the secret police came to their home and took away his wife for questioning. Steve never saw her again.”

Hector sat up straight. It was suddenly interesting. “What happened to her?”

Pappous rose from the bed, striding slowly around the room with his hands clasped behind his back. “Asking questions about that kind of thing can get you taken away, too. Eventually, he paid off the right people and learned that she had a heart attack while being tortured.” He kept speaking as if discussing the weather, occasionally bouncing on his toes while he spoke. “Steve never found out why she was taken. Could never honor her with a burial. And he knew there was a better way to live. A place governed by rules that everyone must follow – even the people in charge. He took Shah with him and escaped to America. Almost didn’t make it. Lost an eye. Was severely burned.”

Hector’s head felt like it was in a cement mixer. Mr. Zahedi was here to escape the same Muslims his father had fought? Or was it a trick? And … “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“It was none of your business, Hector. It is very personal to Steve and he told me in confidence. I don’t break the trust of my friends. Ever.”

“But you just did. You just told me.”

“It’s your business now. And he said it was okay.”

Hector nearly swallowed his heart. His face flushed. “Mr. Zahedi knows we’re talking about this?”

“He knows you’ve been struggling.”

He remembered celebrating the news clips of Mr. Zahedi being lead off in handcuffs a few weeks ago. Carted off for questioning because of him. And it all came crashing down inside him. “So when he got arrested by the FBI… he had to relive all that. Shah’s mom getting taken…” Hector closed his eyes, unwillingly imagining that pain and horror as his voice trailed off.

“Yes,” Pappous said softly, and sat back down on the bed.

“You told him, didn’t you, Pappous? That I was the one who turned him in to the FBI.”

“Yes, Hector. I knew you needed the forgiveness. And he gave it. Gladly.”

Hector just sat there wondering if it would have been possible to screw things up even worse. He’d taken on a battle against religion and nationality, when it should have been good versus evil, just like his dad had told him. And maybe one couldn’t be measured by the other. Maybe the Zahedi’s weren’t spies, but refugees looking for a world without secret police, and torture. But he’d refused to see it. Refused to look past the easy answer.

“You are a leader Hector,” Pappous went on, after he’d watched him for a while. “A Spartan. I have seen it.”

“Don’t try to make me feel better,” Hector said thickly. “I don’t deserve it.”

Pappous just smiled. “The blood of King Leonidas himself runs in your veins. My village was in the south of Greece, in Lakonia, near the ruins of old Sparta. My family lived in that valley since the dawn of our civilization. It is said my mother came from a line of ancient kings and she was as beautiful as Helen herself. Like your mother, and your sisters. The radiance of that ancient queen lives on through them. And the majesty of the kings lives on in you.” A thick, gnarled finger poked Hector in the chest.

“We are warriors, you and I,” Pappous went on. “We fight for what we believe to be right – even if what we believe is sometimes wrong. But it is all for nothing if we don’t have honor. The Spartans cherished honor even above physical prowess. It is what drove them. It had nothing to do with bravery. It wasn’t the will to die. It was honor. Without honor all your sacrifice, your very life, is nothing.”

Hector sat in silence, digesting everything his grandfather said. Mr. Zahedi was not what he’d thought. His
grandfather
was not what he’d thought. Hector felt like his eyes were opening for the first time after a long night. But it was too late.

“I haven’t been honorable,” he confessed to his grandfather, feeling like he’d taken a dump on his rich heritage. “My friends hate me now. And they should.”

Pappous smiled sympathetically. “Yes, maybe they hate you, Hector. Or, maybe they do not understand what you have done and are hurt. You must go to them and let them decide what to do with you. You may be surprised with their answer.” Pappous rose from the bed, but turned back before leaving the room. “Just change your shirt first.”

Ω

Sanjar was the key. Hector could fix this – he could fix everything – if Sanjar would listen.

Hector knocked on the door. He had never been inside the Zahedis’ house, despite living next door. He knocked on the door again and waited. Somewhere in the distance thunder rolled and clouds overhead were filling in the last scraps of blue.

“Hello, Hector,” Mr. Zahedi said kindly when he opened the door. “Are you okay, son?”

Hector took in the scars down the man’s face. How could he have been so blinded by hate? He’d never considered that they could be from fleeing bad guys rather than being one. “Yes sir. Is Sanjar here?”

“I’ll get him.” He turned to go but Hector stopped him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Zahedi,” Hector said quietly. “About everything.”

Mr. Zahedi smiled and nodded. “And I’m very sorry about your father. He was surely a fine man and a brave soldier.”

Hector’s gut twisted in knots and he blinked back the tears that flooded his eyes. “He was.”

Mr. Zahedi put his arm around Hector’s shoulder and squeezed. They shared a bond now. They’d been touched by the same war. “It is hard growing up without a father. I am glad my sons have a father, but,” he looked down at Hector with a twinkle in his one good eye, “they are weak. My boys are weak. We try to give our children a better life, even though we know it is our hardships that have made us strong. And my boys don’t have that.” He looked at Hector again. “Is being strong worth growing up without a father?” He shrugged. “Only Allah knows, but your father would be proud of you now Hector, because I see you have become strong. And I’m sure he knows that, too.” He patted Hector on the shoulder. “Let me go and get my son.”

Hector waited awkwardly out on the porch. The shape of the wind chimes. The fashion of the door. The door knocker. The door mat. Islam was all around him. The similarity between the symbols used by those who had killed his father and the ones embraced by this family still churned inside him. But maybe that didn’t make the Zahedis bad.

The door opened. Sanjar stuck his bruised face in the crack as if he were afraid to come outside.

Hector cleared his throat. “Sanjar, I… I’m sorry,” he stammered. “About everything. And Alkindi. And, just being a lousy neighbor. I’m sorry.”

Sanjar nodded weakly. “Okay.” He pulled his face out and started to close the door exactly as Hector remembered he had done when Sanjar came to apologize to him.

“Sanjar, I said I’m sorry,” said Hector, stepping forward.

“What do you want me to say, Hector? I tried to be your friend. You pushed me away. I’m sorry about what happened to your father. I think it is terrible. But it was not me that did it.” Sanjar’s face twisted up in anger. “And just because I am proud of my Persian heritage doesn’t mean I approve of what happens over there now. You say you are sorry, but you turned my father in to the FBI, when he’d done nothing, you son of a bitch. I can’t forgive you for that.” He stepped back and shut the door.

Rage tried to well up inside Hector, but he forced it down. He deserved this. He’d been the one to set all this in motion. But Sanjar wouldn’t even talk to him. Just as Hector had once behaved. He turned and marched across the yard. A gust of wind hit him and the wind chimes on Sanjar’s porch broke into a cacophony of bells. A storm was coming.

Hector stopped in his tracks. The apology wasn’t the only reason he had come. Hector turned back. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. This time, he knocked hard.

“I’ve got to talk to your little brother,” Hector said firmly when Shah opened the door.

“Or what?” said Shah meanly. “You’ll call the FBI?”

Hector sighed painfully, “Please, Shah. It’s important.”

Shah’s eyes remained firm and his voice flat. “I think you said enough with your fists.”

“Let him in,” came Sanjar’s voice from inside.

They stood in the foyer staring at one another. Sanjar had changed out of his Iranian jersey and wore a simple yellow T-shirt. It was clean inside with a hint of cooking smell. There were Islamic motifs everywhere. Stars, half-moons, colorful woven rugs, stylized minarets, even a framed scimitar. “Can we go somewhere a little more private?” asked Hector.

Sanjar led him through the house to the game room where there were multiple game consoles, a row of networked computers, Dolby surround sound, and a plasma TV that covered an entire wall. Hector reeled. Gamer Heaven!

“So what is so important?” Sanjar asked flatly.

Mr. Zahedi walked in. “Hi, Hector. Decided to stay, huh? Good. Sanjar, I’m going up to the store.” He looked at Hector. “Your grandfather is coming by later for a game of checkers.” Then he turned his attention back to Sanjar. “Your mother should be home after a while. There’s a storm coming, so if you need anything, Shah is here.” He glanced at each of them. “Is everything okay, boys?”

“Yes, sir,” they said together. Mr. Zahedi nodded and left the house as another low rumble of thunder made its way through the walls.

“Well?” Sanjar asked, turning to Hector.

Hector swallowed, knowing how idiotic it was going to sound, but he had to do it. “Your life is in danger, Sanjar.”

“Yes, my next door neighbor wants to kill me.”

“Sanjar. I know what I did was wrong. And I’m sorry. And I’m just going to have to live with it. But you are in real danger, and not from me. I don’t know how they do it, but when the guys in Alanya kill you, they can figure out who you are. That’s why Chaz is dead.”

“Deion told me all about your,” Sanjar quoted the next word with his fingers, “theory.”

“That guy just can’t keep his mouth shut, can he?”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” said Deion, stepping into the room.

“Deion!” Hector was overjoyed for a split second, then crushed. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m at my
friend’s
house, but this asshole keeps bugging us.”

“You never came over to my house,” Hector almost whimpered, growing more hurt by the second.

“Soccer’s over, Hector. It doesn’t last forever,” Deion sneered back.

“Just let me show you,” said Hector, swallowing over the lump in his throat. “Please. They might come here and kill you. Just like they did with Chaz. And it’ll all be my fault again.”

“What did I tell you?” Deion said to Sanjar. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Sanjar nodded with a hint of a smile. “Too much video game playing. No life.”

Hector couldn’t tell if they were being serious or not. He wanted to scream at them to listen but he forced himself to remain calm. “Just let me show you! Please. We’ve only got three days until the Summit. If I’m wrong, you can all make fun of me. In public. I won’t stop you.”

Sanjar rolled his eyes. “What could it hurt?” he said, and motioned toward the TV.

The game console was already running when Sanjar turned the TV on. Hector wanted to cry. There was Darxhan and another character that looked like a scientist in a white lab coat. He was bald with black, horn-rimmed glasses. Hector recognized the inside of Alkindi’s tunnel – the road tunnel that he was converting in to an armored garage. Both ends were secured with large, iron doors and outside the mouth were thick concrete barriers and earthen ramparts. Inside they were working on a massive, steampunk-like fusion of a bulldozer and tank.

“I’m sorry about Alkindi,” Hector said again. “I really am.”

“Were you were hoping I would be killed, too?” Sanjar asked coldly.

“I wasn’t hoping that.” Hector sat down stiffly on the couch in front of a black table with Sanjar’s thick, leather-bound copy of the
Omega Codex
sitting on it. He felt very unwelcome. “But it could happen. So, I just need you to listen to me now.”

Sanjar opened up another game window that pushed the other two into the top of the screen so Hector’s window took up the whole lower half. But the two smaller windows were still almost as large as Hector’s largest TV. He logged in to his account and awoke Izaak. “Where’s Veyron?” he asked, glancing around their bedroom. The empath was missing.

Deion shrugged. “She was gone when we logged in.”

Hector paused for a moment, thinking. “I need to get up to the hotel. Is V-2 ready?”

“Vera-2 was ready last night,” said Sanjar. “Instead of murdering Alkindi we –”

“Okay, I get it,” Hector snapped. “I was bad. I was wrong. When we’re done, I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again. So what do I have to do?”

“I’ll show you.” The character in the white lab coat led Izaak to the antenna-gantry.

“Who is this guy?” asked Hector. “He looks like a scientist or something.”

“He’s my fabrication Cybertech, Goddard. I only use Alkindi out in the field. I actually have a tighter bond with Goddard than with Alkindi.”

“Goddard?” asked Izaak, staring at the name as it appeared at the bottom of Sanjar’s screen area. It was spelled ‘G0dd4rd.’

“Robert Goddard,” said Sanjar. “The father of rocketry? You never heard of him?”

Hector shook his head. “No.”

“He was an American who worked on rockets before World War II. My dad told me all about him. Cool guy.” Another wave of guilt swept through Hector. Maybe he should have gotten to know Sanjar a little before he tried to kill him.

They climbed a ladder to a small platform at the back end of Vera-2’s gantry. Resting on the rails was a large bullet-like capsule which tapered to a point at each end. At the rear was a set of fins and in the center was a long hatch, just large enough for Izaak to squeeze inside. It was similar to
Uber Pwn’s
merc torpedos but smaller and only carried one occupant.

G0dd4rd explained that Vera-2 would launch the pod, with Izaak in it, toward the citadel. At the correct time, Izaak would be ejected. A small parachute would slow him for an instant, then Izaak would activate a bubble shield and fall onto the roof of the hotel. The pod would continue on over the peninsula and splash into the sea.