I meet his gaze firmly. “With all of my heart.”
“And are you willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that task?”
“I am.”
He gazes at me, silent for a moment before he nods. “We will see. Time is not our friend right now. The agents of Sovereign are close. They should be — we’ve left enough breadcrumbs for them to follow. For this gambit to work, the trap must be sprung. It is time you delivered the Coalition to your superiors. Doing so will gain their trust and allow you in the Inner Circle. You will have access to doors we have been unable to open.”
His eyes glimmer. “And when you do, you will open them.”
“When is this supposed to happen?” I ask.
“Soon.” Jack holds out his hand. In it is a small red capsule-shaped object.
“What’s that?”
“What you need. Place it in your ear.”
I pause for a second before obeying. Immediately I wince as fire laces my inner ear. I clap my hand to my head, but the pain continues to torment in tingling waves.
“It hurts!”
Jack nods. “It’s prototype tech. The pill dissolves and forms a lining in your inner ear. The gel is filled with tiny machines which will disrupt the Sovereign’s signal and completely liberate your mind from their dominion. It will also allow you to communicate with Emily when it becomes necessary.”
The pain gradually subsides. I look at Emily, who smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Franklin. I’ll be there when you need me.”
I turn back to Jack. “Why won’t you be on the line? Where are you planning to be?”
For the first time since I met him, Jack’s eyes become troubled. But the instant passes quickly, and his customary smile returns. “Best not to ask. Let’s go over your responses before you get some sleep, Franklin. You will need your wits about you tomorrow.
“Because an Empire is about to fall.”
Chapter 8
They live only in my dreams.
The woman with autumn hair and laughing eyes along with the child who shares her features. I see them night after night, always the same scene. The moment is captured in my mind like a hummingbird in hand; beautiful and ever so fragile.
It is breakfast time. The table is chipped and as threadbare as their clothing, but somehow that doesn’t matter. There is something precious there, something poverty cannot touch. It’s in the light in her eyes as she gently pats her son’s cheek. It’s in his answering smile. Streams of light effuse through the blinds as though the sun shines harder for them, illuminating the room in saffron shades like a photograph dusted in gold.
Yet the only thing I feel is fear.
For I know what happens next: the booming sound at the door that rattles the hinges, the look of animal fear in her eyes. Her hair swings as she protectively clutches her son, the child who now wears a mask of fear instead of a face.
The door splinters inward, and I see the twisted, inhuman faces. The suited figures snarl, delighting in her screams. She pulls her son away from the table, disrupting the tablecloth. A mug of coffee slides across and falls to the floor.
The pottery shatters. Warm liquid pools across the tiles. I see my reflection upon its surface: the fear on my face, my mouth open in a scream of pain and rage and hate. I stretch out my hand, but cannot touch them, cannot come to their aid. The Dogmen that have me pinned to the ground are too heavy, their blows rain upon my head with relentless insistence for my submission.
I feel no pain, only terror as she and the child are pulled away from me, lost in a sea of flailing limbs and snarling faces. Our screams mingle in chorus as they are snatched through the door while I lie helpless, my face shoved against floorboards slick with my own blood.
Something snaps inside of me. I become weightless as I rise with a wild roar, hurling the Dogmen away like small children. I have to reach the door, to follow my wife and son before they are gone forever.
I stagger forward as the Dogmen snarl behind me, reaching for their batons. The door leans drunkenly on its broken hinges, exposing the smoggy view of the outdoors. My wife calls out my name. The fear in her voice swells in my head until I feel I will go mad from the agony. I stumble forward out the door.
The area is swamped with flashing lights. Men in black uniforms aim rifles at me as their mouths open to spill out cautionary demands. I ignore them as I search for my wife and son. They are forced to their knees. Our eyes lock, and the fear I see makes me want to howl until my voice shatters.
Something explodes in the back of my head.
When I open my eyes, everything is hazy. I am still clubbed relentlessly by the Dogmen batons. The sound of their blows turning my flesh into pulp is distant, a torture that affects another man, a man I used to be before everything I loved was torn from me with brutal persistence.
Two shots ring out.
Their bodies plummet like the last leaves of autumn, collapsing upon crushed gravel and broken asphalt. It is blasphemous somehow. They deserve so much better than mere dirt to rest upon.
Crimson rivulets creep from their bodies in abstract patterns.
A pair of polished boots enters my vision, obscuring the sight of the corpses which only moments ago were my wife and son. A pleated uniform. An officer’s hat. A smoking gun in a gloved hand.
“That is what becomes of traitors,” a familiar voice says. Only it is so cold, so devoid of humanity.
The figure turns. The face is a frozen mask of indifference, but I know it well.
It is Jack.
WA
KE
UP
I arise to a world that I do not know. The very fabric of my being is suspect, my reality a disturbing mirage of instances I cannot verify. The Smiling Man is on the screen, but his words are mute to my ears. Flickers of distorted images form and shatter in my mind, slicing my sanity with razor edges. I put on my uniform with a mind full of static, incoherent to the new world I have awakened to.
I know now that Ursula has lied to me. That in itself is no surprise. The truth was always there, buried deep within my subconscious where reason and hope could not reach it. My wife and son are long dead, crushed beneath the unfeeling wheels of the Sovereign’s machine. Murdered in cold blood by Agent Jack Kilgore, the very same man who has awakened me from the haze of indoctrination that has drugged my mind like opium fumes.
I have every reason to hate Jack. And I have every reason to thank him as well.
There is nothing I can do except continue on. Obedience is a familiar mindset for me, like stepping into well-worn shoes. I stride down the massive, overbearing hallway. Somehow it appears less grand than just the last time I passed through. It appears…dated. Cracks lace the walls in web-like patterns; the tiles on the floor are scuffed and worn with use. It is impossible for my surroundings to have altered so drastically, but there is no mistaking that things have changed.
Citizens part before my black uniform in choreographed fashion as I make my way to the belly of the beast. I have never had reason to go into the officer’s wing except when meeting with Jack. But it is not Jack’s door I stop in front of.
It is Ursula’s.
“Come in.” Her voice interrupts my knock. I am sure she watched me approach via the hidden eyes installed in every sector of the building. When I enter, she looks up from the head of a table full of officers. They wear cloned faces as they gaze at me in supercilious curiosity.