Deadlocked 8 (24 page)

Manipulating the will of others is the gift
of all true leaders.

Jerald Scott

I was in contact with the team that headed
out to the water tower to collect the scum that had been hiding
there. Normally I wouldn’t allow wireless transfer like this except
at night, but I’d temporarily activated the system so that I could
monitor this particular mission. A lot was riding on tracking down
the High Rollers.

My men had met little resistance when they
stormed the water tower, which was the first thing that concerned
me. They gathered everyone they could find and brought them down to
be taken prisoner. I watched from the viewpoint of a camera mounted
to a soldier’s helmet as he searched the motley den, looking for
any sign of someone hiding there. He was in the process of kicking
through a box of supplies when I instructed him to go back down to
ground level.

It was clear that these weren’t the Rollers.
We’d discovered a drug den, replete with evidence of a miserable
existence. Still though, there was a chance that they might know
where the Rollers were hiding.

I adjusted the microphone stand, pulling the
thin cord closer to me as I spoke to the soldier whose camera I was
watching through. “Ask them if they know where the Rollers
are.”

The soldier did as I asked, but was being
rough with the new prisoners. He grabbed a thin man by the neck and
threw him to the ground while shouting down at him.

“No, no,” I said. “Let him up. Don’t treat
him like that.”

“Sir?” asked the soldier.

“Treat him well,” I said. “Tell him we want
to help. Tell him we’re looking for the Rollers because we have
their friend, Levon.”

The soldier relayed my message. We could
always resort to torture if the kind approach didn’t produce
results. Doing it the other way around was a bit tougher.

After a while longer of timid interrogations,
I grew tired of waiting. The soldiers had also earned the attention
of zombies in the area, so I ordered them to leave. The soldier I
was communicating with asked if I wanted them to search the
grounds, since they’d only cleared the water tower, but I was
fairly certain these pitiful addicts had no knowledge of the
Rollers whereabouts. Even still, we would torture each of them upon
their arrival, just in case.

I flipped off the monitor and cursed as I sat
alone in my room. Finding the Rollers had been my last hope.
Without them, there was no chance of developing a cure that could
save the multitude of soldiers and families that depended on me.
Three levels above, hundreds of men, women, and children resided.
They were the families of my soldiers, and Covington had decided
they, along with my men, were expendable.

I didn’t agree.

I had to meet with Covington alone. I had to
speak to him without the snake spitting her venom in his ears. I
left my room and marched through the facility to confront the man
I’d once trusted implicitly.

General Covington had inspired me to join him
in his revolution against The Electorate nearly two decades
earlier. Even though I was entrenched in their machinations,
fulfilling my fealty without question like a dutiful knight of a
long lost age, I was seduced by the General’s words. It was him
that freed me of that drone’s existence, and gave me the right to
demand more of my life than a soldier’s grave.

His predictions proved true, and The
Electorate had been quick to send their assassins, despite how they
placated me. While they smiled and conceded when I argued with
them, they held their knives behind their backs, ready to cut me
down at their first opportunity. They used their failed experiments
as weapons, and the first nearly finished the job. One of the
clones of Ben Watanabe had tracked me during a trip south, and
attacked in the middle of the night. If not for the men that were
loyal to me, he would’ve succeeded.

The assassin was caught, and would’ve been
executed had I not recognized him. He looked nearly identical, if
not a slight bit older, than the Dawn that Covington was hiding in
this facility. We brought him back and underwent a long process of
determining if this was the real Ben Watanabe or just a clone like
the one Covington was raising. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a
clone, but he proved to be a more than adequate soldier. The
Electorate had perfected their eugenics program, and Ben (who we
eventually nicknamed ‘Bear’) was proof of it.

Covington had decided it would be best for me
to act as if I had no idea that The Electorate had turned on me,
and we continued our charade for several years. We knew that we
were sitting on a treasure that The Electorate wouldn’t be willing
to lose. The Dawn program was too important to them. As long as we
controlled the children, we were protected. That gave us time to
try and prepare for what Covington had learned was coming: The Noah
Initiative.

But time had run out, and now Covington’s
former revolutionary zeal had been usurped by his fear of
death.

I was one of the few people in the facility
that had access to Covington’s room. There were a couple of doctors
that were allowed in, but only in the event of a crisis.
Covington’s health was tenuous at best, and he needed constant
attention from the medical staff. How he managed to stay sane while
locked up in this room for so long was a mystery to me, although
now I was questioning whether or not he’d retained his sanity at
all. He had to know that The Electorate would turn on him the first
chance they had. Accepting their bargain wasn’t a way to save
ourselves. It was, at best, a short lease on a life that would end
at the first opportunity the snakes had to strike.

I passed my badge over the pad beside his
door, causing the circular entrance to yawn open. The short hall
before Covington’s room trapped me momentarily as the sanitizers
hissed. I was granted access, but an empty chair and the whir of
machines was all that greeted me.

Covington had retreated to his Dawn’s room,
and I walked over to the console on the wall that would signal to
Richard that I needed to speak with him. While I could’ve
interrupted him if necessary, I knew that he would never forgive
me. The only reason anyone other than himself had access to his
Dawn’s chamber was in case he became ill while in there and needed
assistance. Any other interruption would incite Covington’s
rage.

It took several minutes, but the wall finally
hissed as the hidden separation revealed itself, pushing wide until
a hall was revealed behind it. Covington stepped forth, his weight
reliant upon his cane.

“Jerald, what’s wrong?” asked Covington,
surprised and concerned by my uncharacteristic interruption. He
assumed something terrible had happened because I’d only summoned
him from his Dawn’s room a handful of times.

“I need to speak with you about Beatrice, and
your plan for dealing with The Electorate.”

His shift from concern to anger was evident
in the scowl that formed on his burned face. “Jerald, we’ve already
spoken about this.”

“I know, but this is important. You’re asking
me to sacrifice the lives of my men and their families. The reason
I sided with you in the first place was to save them.”

“And you did save them,” said Covington as he
passed me on his way to his LiMM chair. “Without you, they would’ve
died years ago.”

“But now we’re just going to sacrifice them?”
I couldn’t believe that this was his plan; that he hadn’t concocted
some other devious scheme to get the upper hand.

“We all die,” said Covington as he pulled
himself back into his chair. He began to focus on reattaching the
tubes to the ports drilled in his side.

I countered, “Not all of us.”

He was amused by that, and gave me a rare
grin. “Transferring to a Dawn is the same as dying, Jerald. All
we’re doing is passing on our memories.”

I had to stop myself from arguing with him.
My purpose here wasn’t to change his mind, it was to discover if
his mind had already been made up.

“I’m worried that The Electorate’s just
waiting for an opportunity to kill us without putting their Dawns
in jeopardy.”

I saw a mischievous spark in Covington’s eye
that gave me hope. I’d come here hoping that my confidence in his
wile would be affirmed. I was positive he couldn’t have bent to The
Electorate’s will so easy.

“There’s more going on with The Electorate
than you or I realized.”

I took a step closer, as if my curiosity
compelled me forward. “What is it?”

“We’re not just fighting for our lives
anymore, Jerald. We’re fighting for the lives of every Dawn on
Earth.” He spoke with a pompous grandiosity that he assumed would
inspire me. I could see it in his expression as his brow raised and
his lips curled in a smirk.

“The Dawns?” I asked, dumbfounded that he
thought this would erase any doubt I had about our plans.

“Yes, Jerald. You see, there are a good
amount of members of The Electorate that are pushing to end the
Dawn program entirely. They’re using our insurrection as an example
of how they need to sever ties with the program. They’re willing to
trash decades of work on eugenics. That’s why I have to tread
carefully with them. This isn’t just about securing my transfer,
it’s about saving the lives of thousands of Dawns in facilities all
across the world.”

He expected more than capitulation from me;
he was expecting a passionate accord on my part, which I was unable
to deliver. I couldn’t match his zeal for this path, and my loyalty
suffered a final break. This man before me wasn’t the General
Covington that I’d followed for so many years. He was right when he
said that transferring into a Dawn was the same as death. For all
these years I’d held onto the belief that when Covington was
murdered by Charles Reagan, he’d been transferred into the clone
that sat before me now. While it wasn’t technically the same man,
this version of Covington proved himself to me time and time again;
until now. I realized that his interest in saving the Dawn program
was a result of him being a product of it.

I was being asked to kill my men, and their
families, so that the Dawn program could survive.

I did my best to feign complacency, but I’m
not a good liar. “Okay,” I said with little spirit.

“You understand why this is so important,
right?”

“Yes, of course.” I nodded as I backed away.
“It makes sense now. You’re right, we have to protect the Dawns.
That has to be our priority.”

“Good, I’m happy you understand. We’re
running out of time to set things right for us.”

“Yes we are,” I said as I turned to
leave.

I resolved to never set my eyes on Covington
again. It was better that I thought of him as dead now, as if
Reagan had truly ended him twenty years ago.

A sense of freedom surged within me as I
started to plan my escape. I would take my men and their families
with me, and we would find a way to survive, despite whatever
horrors The Electorate had planned for us. Even if we only survived
a few weeks outside of this facility, it would still be better than
starving down here while The Electorate’s precious Dawns survived,
unaware of the hell outside their doors. That thought ignited a
new, mischievous plan.

We’d deactivated the purge system years ago
to prevent The Electorate from remotely turning it on, but the
escape of two Dawns had compelled us to reset the locking
mechanisms that were tied to the purging. This helped ensure that
the girls were safe in the event of an outbreak by locking them
down, that way no zombies could make it to the Dawn’s floor.

Beatrice had also been asking endlessly about
the system, and I knew that whatever scheme she was cooking up it
involved the purge somehow. It was clear that both Covington and
Beatrice needed that system to operate effectively.

It wouldn’t be hard to reprogram the purge
lockdown to reset. All I had to do was wait for Covington to go
back into his Dawn’s room and I could use his system to get into
the purge apparatus, refill the tanks, while also reworking how the
doors responded. This way, the Dawns level would become unlocked,
giving the girls the freedom they’d never had before. All they
would need to do would be to peek their heads out and they’d be
immolated with all the rest, ending everything Beatrice and
Covington had been working for. I decided that my last act of
defiance before abandoning Covington and The Electorate would be to
set a timer for the eventual demolition of this entire facility,
giving my men and me time to evacuate.

The majority of the facility’s guards would
go with me, which would leave Covington woefully underprepared for
the Dawns’ exodus. Many of the staff that worked as administrators
in the Dawn program were family members of my men, and several of
them had children. They would come with me, which would put the
facility in disarray and leave few people here to stop the Dawns
from escaping.

I lingered near Covington’s room, and waited
for my chance. He was quick to re-enter his Dawn’s chamber, and I
went back in to begin reprogramming the purge system, setting a
date and time that would give me a chance to get my men and their
families out. Then I locked the system in place, preventing
Covington from altering it without my passcode.

I was on my way back to my room,
contemplating how perfect my plan was, when I heard someone
coughing in the restroom near the elevator. The cough was followed
by a thud and a rattle, and I paused to listen.

I could hear someone inside gasping for
breath and I opened the door to see what was happening. “You okay
in here?” I asked as I peered in.

Only a growl came in response.

I took my pistol out of its holster and eased
my way inside. I walked past the urinals and sinks to the stalls on
the other side of the room. The harsh white light blazed, sending
flashes of reflection off the steel faucets beside me as I took
careful steps across the tile. Blood seeped from beneath the door
of the last stall.