Legacy (Alliance Book 3) (9 page)

“I want to let you go, Brandon, but I need to make sure my crew is safe if I do, and I don’t know how to do that with you,” he said evenly.

“I am not interested in harming your crew, just you. Your crew will be safe, but I will find a way to kill you for what you did to her, I promise you that.”

He looked over at Maxton, who was watching this intently now. Riley was still standing by the door, smiling.

“Hey Riley, I don’t trust this kid not to lunge for me. Please cut the tie at his feet. I don’t think he’ll kick you,” and he grinned at the kid. Brandon stared at him with a confused look on his face as Riley snipped the tie and helped him up.

He put his hands behind his back, looking at the kid, who was still standing there like a statue. “You are free to go, Brandon. Hallway, make a left, you’ll see the elevators.”

The boy didn’t move, still looking at him. “What’s going to happen to Maxton? It doesn’t make sense that you’d just let me go.... What will you do to him?” Finally a moment of decency. A first, less him protecting Hassinger.

“We are going to cut him up into tiny pieces and feed him to my girlfriend’s birds, Brandon. She collects crows, or some other ugly things, and they like feasting on that sort of thing. Get the hell out of my sight, before I change my mind, kid. You remind me too much of somebody who took someone from me. I don’t ever want to see your face again,” he said tiredly, and the kid was gone after that.

He walked over to Maxton and crouched in front of him, “Riley here wants to talk to you before we decide what to do with you. I trust you won’t make him any promises you can’t keep, because Riley.... He always keeps his.”

Maxton, May 31, 2236, Reston

S
eventy-eight nights of the same dream. The code on his screen, urgent, time frame for deployment twelve hours. That was it. Drop the code in and disburse to the population. He had to find a method of disbursement, and he did, after just a few minutes of running through all the options. Air vents at night. Everyone would be asleep. The heat would be on, given the cold outside. Code label said vaccine on it. He assumed it was. They weren’t supposed to ask questions, and there wasn’t anyone to ask. This lab didn’t exist, and he was in charge of making sure any urgent orders were handled. He had Dyrig program the neuro net with 2300 start time, and the rest of his men dropped the disbursement capsules into the four processors that pumped heat to the city.

He sent everyone to get some sleep, and was going over some old files when he saw movement on the screens, people coming out of the houses. It didn’t make sense for them to be doing that now. He glanced at the timestamp: 23:15. Far too late for anyone to be going anywhere, but there they were, tumbling out of their homes, not even dressed for what it was like outside, kids and all, spilling onto the street that led out of the city. He froze, watching the slowly moving procession, knowing that it had something to do with the neuros they just released. He switched the view to show the side of the city they were walking to and he could see a trickle of smoke rising in the air, seemingly from the woods, but nobody made fires there in the middle of the night. What he was watching was definitely a fire though, an entire wall of it on the edge of the field.

He got Dyrig up and had him go through all the code snippets, but he couldn’t read anything in any of them. Encrypted. Dyrig looked pale as he watched the screens. The people didn’t even seem to be talking to each other. They looked like drones.

“Please tell me there is a way to kill this bloody code or at least pause it.” The man just shook his head. He knew it. They all knew it. Once these things were live, they did what they were programmed to do, and that was that, only what they were programmed to do now looked insane. Suddenly Dyrig screamed next to him, pointing at one of the side views of the fire. People were walking right into it, women holding their kids, men holding women, walking right into the fire and staying there, and nobody was running in to save them, nobody was even trying to stop them.

He was screaming now too, couldn’t help it, “Turn it off, Dyrig. Just turn it off.” And in the last few frames before the screen went black he saw a man who didn’t look like a drone, pulling on the blue shirt of a little kid, moving him away from the flames but the kid kept going right back in, and he picked him up then, but the kid squirmed out of his shirt and ran in. The man dropped to the ground, people shoving him as they moved past him, kicking him, but he still wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t move.

He heard the door open and watched Riley and Ellis walk in, Ellis looking strange, embarrassed almost. Something must have happened between those two. He’d screwed up with Brandon, he knew. Shouldn’t have tried to protect him like that. They might have just let him go if he hadn’t. He hoped they would eventually, once they got whatever else they wanted out of him; once they finally ended it with him. He watched, surprised, as Ellis cut the ties at Brandon’s wrists, telling him they were letting him go. He thought for sure Ellis would change his mind when Brandon threatened to kill him, but he seemed amused by it, and Riley was flat out smiling. Whatever happened between these two, he was pretty sure the Zoriner kid had something to do with it, with letting Brandon go. He owed him now.

He was still thinking through what Ellis just said to him before he left when Riley crouched in front of him, snipped the tie at his feet, and then freed his hands.

“You can get up, Maxton. Walk around a bit or something, get the blood moving.”

The kid wasn’t pointing a gun at him, and he had to know that he could get hold of that knife in a flash if he wanted to. The kid was looking at his face. No fear in it, just concern. He stood, Riley leaning on the edge of the table, watching him, knife back in his belt.

“When did you eat last, Maxton?”

He couldn’t remember. He just knew he wasn’t hungry. It didn’t matter. The kid was up to something.

“What do you want, Riley? Not to sound ungrateful, but I don’t do well with not knowing. I know you had something to do with making him let Brandon go, so I owe you. Whatever it is, I’d rather you just tell me.”

The kid walked over to him, standing close enough to where he could strangle him if he wanted to, or knock him out with one quick jab to the throat. His hands were behind his back too. Not worried then. Stupid of him, not to be worried. The kid needed a lesson. That much he could do for him, so without any warning or moving anything but his arm, he grabbed him by the neck, not squeezing, just holding him. The kid flinched, but his eyes didn’t leave his.

“I don’t know who trained you, kid, but you’d be deader than dead in the real world. You don’t untie your prisoners like that, not ones that are a lot bigger and better trained than you. It was a stupid thing to have done. I can end you in under a minute, Zoriner.”

The kid didn’t move, hands still behind his back. “I know, Lancer, but I don’t think you want to kill me. I don’t think you want to kill anybody. I needed to be sure. For the others.”

He let go, feeling not a little impressed with him now.

Riley walked away and pulled up a chair, straddling it in that way he had. “I want you to help us, but not in the way you think. Not in the way of getting you to tell us what you know and putting a bullet through your head when you’re done. Something tells me it’ll be easier for you if we just did that. I don’t think you’d know where to go if we let you walk out of here, and I can’t picture you going back to that lab. Tell me if I am wrong.”

The kid was looking up at him. He wasn’t wrong, so he shook his head.

Riley just nodded, face serious. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, just things we’ve picked up along the way. But between what we know and what you know, we might be able to help stop at least some of it. The girl I told you about, the one Brody lost, she was at Crylo. They kept her as host to Alliance babies, Lancer, making her have these kids, and then taking them from her. That’s why they took her. There are other girls there. And that’s just one of the places we know about. That’s where we were going, only Brody’s girl accidentally stunned him near to death and we had to fix his heart. We came here for that, and some other things. The people you’ve seen already—that’s all of us. There isn’t anybody else, and only four of us are trained. I’m not one of them, as you’ve pointed out. The girls can shoot well enough, but that’s about it. Ella is a medic, and good at it. We have us, some weapons and the flier. I would like you to come with us, help us stop what we can. That’s as simply as I can put it.”

He slid down the wall, so the kid didn’t have to keep craning his neck at him. He knew he just told him more than he should have, too much for someone to know if they ever planned on letting him go. “Are you asking if I’d rather help you with whatever you have planned and live than have you kill me?”

Riley shook his head. “No, Lancer. I already know the answer to that. I know you’d rather I just shoot you. I know you probably haven’t slept since that night, not without nightmares, and you want out. I knew it when I met you.”

He felt his face flush, and put his head down, but the kid ignored it and kept going, voice measured, calm, “What I’m asking is if you can get angry at whoever did this instead of ashamed that they used you to do it for them. Angry enough to want to help fix it, instead of checking out, so maybe you can sleep again. Not now, but someday; so you can live with yourself... and selfishly, so we get one more person who can fight, and who isn’t afraid to die if they had to. That’s what I’m asking.” Riley got up and walked over to him, making him stand. Brown eyes looking at him, patient, serious, old eyes, nothing that should be on a kid that young, but then again, this kid probably stopped being a kid a long time ago, when they took his sister maybe. “I need to know something.”

The kid nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me what that woman did to you when you were telling me everything else? It doesn’t add up for me....”

The kid looked embarrassed for some reason. “It wasn’t really relevant to how Brody would see him, so it didn’t matter to tell you that... and I didn’t want your pity. That’s the whole of it,” he whispered, looking down, uncomfortable.

That explained why he bolted out of the room like that. He liked this Zoriner. Trained or not, this kid was all brain and heart. And what Ellis told him before made sense now too.

“I don’t think your crew trusts me, Riley. I know you do, but that won’t be enough. It’ll put them in danger if they don’t. Not from me, but it’s hard to protect someone who doesn’t trust you, impossible maybe. What I’m saying is I won’t be able to do much for you with my hands tied behind my back or a gun to my head. So if that’s the only way your crew will be comfortable, you will need to shoot me.”

Riley had his hand out, “Understood,” face serious, eyes on his. And he shook this kid’s hand, hard, harder than he probably should have, suddenly wanting to hug him instead, but he couldn’t let himself do that. Riley must have sensed it, and lunged at him, hugging him, not even looking embarrassed about it.

“I need to tell you something, Riley. When you first woke me up in that big room, all those things I said, what I called you... I didn’t mean them. I was just trying to piss off Ellis enough to shoot me. I don’t know if you believe me on that, but it’s the truth. And what I said to you afterwards....”

Riley smiled up at him, stopping him. “I know, Lancer. I figured all of that out a long time ago.... So, when did you eat last? How many days, Maxton? Let’s go eat, and I need to sleep some, I think, and then we’ll figure out how to make you less scary to the rest of my crew. I think they’re going to bloody love you,” and he beamed at him, looking suddenly kid-like for the first time since he met him.

He would gladly die protecting this kid. It would be the easiest thing in the world.

Riley, June 3, 2236, Reston.

H
e was furious at them, at Brody and Drake and everybody for not bloody listening to him about Maxton, for keeping him under guard like that. He wouldn’t talk to anybody, wouldn’t eat or drink anything either. When he walked him into the room with everybody in it after running into the kitchen and stuffing him with Drake’s stew, telling them that he was in, and would help them, Brody pointed his gun at Maxton’s head, and told Loren to tie his hands and put him under guard. It didn’t make any sense for him to do that, but Brody insisted they keep him like that for a few days at least, until they were sure they could all trust him. Until they were sure his men wouldn’t come for him, now that they let Brandon go, he said, and Lancer didn’t fight him on it, didn’t even try fighting him. He just walked over to Loren and put his hands out for the ties, not saying a word to anybody.

He found him where he knew he would, lying on the cot they put down for him in the old closet room, his hands tied in front of him. He sent Trelix away and crouched next to his head. He brought him food and tea again, and a small thermos of water, hoping he could at least coax him to drink something. He tried forcing water into him yesterday, but Maxton swatted at his hand, spilling it all over himself, and he didn’t want to do that again.

“I know you’re not asleep, Lancer, and I know you’re mad, mad as hell, but you’re going to kill yourself in the worst way if you don’t at least drink something. We’ll figure it out. I’ll get them to listen to me, I promise. Please, just drink something.” Lancer sat up, looking at him, and reached for the water. He smiled at him, watching him drink. That was something, at least.

“Your friend told me you always keep your word. You made me a promise when we talked last, and I need you to keep it. I’ve had about as much of this as I can take.”

He knew it would happen, that he’d ask him to shoot him if they kept him like this, but he couldn’t do it. It would be all kinds of wrong to kill this man because Brody was too paranoid or stubborn to trust him. He couldn’t let that happen.

Maxton was watching him, shaking his head. “Just as I thought, Riley,” he said, and lay down and closed his eyes again.