Finding Sage (The Rogue Book 1) (27 page)

50.

Grayson sat in his dark cell with trepidation.  What would happen to him?  Would he be tortured?  Beheaded?  Electrocuted?  The U.N. would not tolerate one of their own betraying them in such an extreme way.  He was doomed, destined for death.

The door opened.  He squinted from the sudden appearance of light.  He tried to put his hands up to the light, but his hands were shackled to the wall. 

“Grayson Flint,” the new Prime Minster began.  “You know Silas Knight once went by your name when he got in trouble?  We knew he was lying, quite simply, because you were already in our system.”

“What do you want?”

A soldier smacked him across the face.

“You will speak when spoken to,” the Prime Minister said calmly.  He looked at Grayson carefully as he spoke, intrigued in him. 

“You know what’s kind of funny?” he continued. “When you barged in with our previous prime minister, there was something familiar about you.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I think it was the eyes.  The fire in the eyes.  There was something familiar in that.  I kept thinking about it, but I just couldn’t place your face.  Then it occurred to me.  Of course I couldn’t place your face.  Because you’re getting more and more creative.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Show me what your face really looks like.”

He scowled, but did as he was asked.  Only a few days ago he would have refused, would have denied it.  Now, he didn’t care.  He was bereft of all hope, all courage.

Rodge watched as his face slowly changed.  Only subtle features changed at first: the shape of the nose, the size of the eyebrows, the length of the chin.  The changes grew more radical, and when he was done changing, he no longer looked like the same person.  He had shaggy red hair, and a scraggly hint of a beard from not shaving for the past few days.  He had a wide chin, high cheek bones, and bright blue eyes.  Rodge smiled

“Perfect,” he said.  “I have a proposition for you.  I see in you what I’ve seen in myself.  Determination.  Rage.  Indignation.  You have seen something that you cannot forget and you will tear the world apart to get it.”

Grayson scoffed.

“Don’t pretend that you know me.”

“I may not know you.  Yet.  But I am offering you a second chance.  A way out of this that I don’t give very many people like you.”

“What’s that?”

“A job.  A way that you can live out of this mess, and destroy the true enemy – them.”

“After what I’ve seen from you?” he asked.  “I know your plan.  You want to kill all of us.  Why would I work for you if I know that?”

“Because your life depends on it,” Rodge replied. 

“Then kill me.”

“I never said I was going to kill you.  There are worse things than death, my friend.  Much, much worse.  Think about it.”

With that, he turned his back to Grayson.

“How did you know who I was?” Grayson asked.

Rodge answered without turning around.

“If I were you, I’d take care as to what face I displayed,” Rodge said.  “You might be apt to inspire me.”

Grayson froze.  It couldn’t be.  It was impossible.

“Aiden?”

“Have a good rest, brother.  I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Aiden!  Aiden!  AIDEN!!!!!!!!!”

The soldiers slammed the cell door in his face, but he continued pulling on the chains, screaming until his throat grew sore and eventually numb.  He still screamed in the utter blackness, one word.  One name.  The name of his identical twin brother.  The brother who shared his DNA.  Who shared his ability.  Who had betrayed him and might have killed his friends; his followers. 

Aiden.

51.

              Aiden Flint walked down a dark hallway, constantly looking behind his back.  He felt the greasy tips of his long brown hair and scowled.  He resolved himself to ask how much longer he had to keep up this façade.  It was exhausting pretending to be someone else, but even more painful was the hair.  He was sick and tired of the stupid long greasy hair.  What kind of idiot kept his hair long like that anyway?  Not only did it look terrible, it was entirely inconvenient.  And this idiot had to be the one that Aiden needed to emulate.  Just his luck.

              He reached a couple of tall wooden doors with large old-fashioned metal rings for handles.  He pulled the doors open and went inside.  The dimly-lit room smelt of mold and rust, but he held back his grimace and knelt before the bed.

              “You may rise, Aiden.”

              He did so and looked in his master’s face with his hands behind his back.

              “All is proceeding as planned, Master.  Both of the subjects are within our custody, and one of the Knight boy’s friends is in our custody as well.  The wind is surely taken out of their sails.”

              “Proceeding as planned?” the man responded.  “Hardly.  Knight is completely useless in his current state, and the other is a mumbling mental case.  Not to mention that you let Knight turn the entire world against itself in riots!”

              “But don’t we want that, Master?” Aiden asked.  “That’s in response to a Prime Minister that is no longer in power.”

              “If he mentioned her by name, then yes,” he said.  “But he didn’t.  He’s turned the world against
us.
  All of us.  You’ve let yourself get screwed over in a big way.”

              “I—I’m sorry, Master.”

              “I know.  That’s why I’m keeping you in your current place.  The world isn’t ready for me yet.  You’re going to prepare them.”

              “Yes, Master.”

              He turned to leave, but stopped before he did.

              “Master?”

              “Speak your mind, Aiden.”

              “What happens when your plan works?  To me, I mean?”

              “Is it not worth the world to sacrifice yourself?  Now leave me.  You have work to do.”

              “Y-yes, Master.”

              Aiden bowed and turned to exit.

              “Oh, and Aiden?”

              “Yes, Master?”

              “Don’t lose your sight.  We may have lost Knight, but he isn’t the real problem.  The real problem is Sage.  He always has been and will always be our only real threat.  Never forget that.”

              “Yes, Master.”

52.

              Chicago, Illinois was once known for its culture and entertainment.  There were nightclubs, jazz concerts, historic landmarks, and grand cathedrals.  More recently it became known for its poverty, infamous for being the first North American city in which unemployment broke the seventy percent mark.  They groped after government handouts and dug through trash cans, trying to find what they could to eat.  The day that Silas Knight changed the world, however, Chicago residents became known for something else.  They later hoped it would outshine the city’s poverty, but that wasn’t what they thought of at the time.  At the time they felt outrage.

              Silas’ speech and the subsequent attack on him and his friends was broadcast on screens across Chicago, including a giant one in the city square.  Among the homeless watching was a middle-aged man named Manasseh.  Born to hippie Jewish parents, he’d been put out on the streets when he was seven when both of his parents died of malaria.  He quickly befriended a miserable group of low-lifes and never pulled himself out, even becoming their ringleader.  He’d killed some and he’d mugged some, but now he was just getting along.  Just surviving.  Just breathing.

              When Manasseh saw Silas’ speech, however, something swelled up inside of him.  He was motivated; encouraged.  He would even have described himself as impulsive, ready to pull himself out of the pits he had found himself in.  He’d leave Chicago, clean himself up, and get a new life.  That had nothing to do with the boy’s speech – he was going on about his parents’ deaths or something, but that didn’t change him.  What did change him was what came after.

              When the soldiers burst through the doors, and a battle quickly ensued, Manasseh was enraged.  In an instant, he forgot about all of his mistakes, problems, and sins.  He remembered the boy’s face.  Parts of his speech came back to him.  He was talking about being a rogue, about suffering hardship.  The boy’s parents had died just like his, but not because of sickness.  They died because of persecution. 

              It was because of this outrage that Manasseh found himself directly underneath the screen in the city square, yelling as loudly as he could, cursing at the government, cursing at society, but more importantly, calling for action.

              “ARE WE GOING TO LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS?!” he bellowed with as much strength as his fifty-year-old lungs could muster.  “THEY TELL US THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE TERRORISTS!  THEY TELL US THAT THEY ARE DANGEROUS!  BUT WHO’S HUNTING WHO?!”

              “They killed my son!” a woman yelled from the audience.  “His only crime was having the ability to move rocks!  They came and killed him in his sleep, broke into our house to do it no less!”

              “And they killed my sister!” a young man yelled.  “Shot in her in the head, just because she could control water!”

              Story after story poured out of the audience.  The soldiers were coming.  It didn’t matter.  This was bigger than they were.

53.

Eli leaned back in his chair, trying to reconcile in his mind everything that had happened in the past several months.  The children he had cared for so carefully in Indiana were dead.  Ishmael was dead.  Salah was probably dead by now.  Tariq and Silas were as good as dead.  And what could he do in such a scenario?  He blamed himself.

He heard Lilly sobbing in the next room, and Alice trying to comfort her.  Poor thing.  She hadn’t been able to completely stop crying but for small periods of time.  It had been nearly a week, and she was still a wreck.  She’d had only six months with Silas, but in a very real sense he was her father.  He thought back to his father.  A good man.  One who lived out his days in peace, and yet Eli still felt robbed of him at times.  He could hardly imagine what a girl, who had only six months with hers, as well as remembering every detail, would be going through.

Then again, sometimes he wished that he could remember every detail.  Other days he remembered how horrifying that would be.  What a curse.  What a burden.

There was a television in their hotel room, and despite his better judgment, Eli had turned it on.  It was against his own rule, he knew, but he had to see what was announced.  What would change?  What he saw shocked him.  Demonstrations.  Graffiti.  A series of images flashed through the television in rapid succession.  Then a replay of Silas’ speech.  Eli was shocked.  Shocked beyond belief.

“GUYS, GET IN HERE!!!”

They ran to his side and saw the television.  There was not violence.  These were not riots.  They were demonstrations.  People with signs.  People talking in the streets.  In some images and videos there was violence from the soldiers, in some the soldiers appeared to be at a loss as to what to do. 

Suddenly, the images were cut off. They were replaced by an image of Rodge.  He spoke of the Prime Minister’s death, her service to the world, and living in honor of her memory.  He spoke lie after lie after lie, but then he addressed someone.  An individual.

“Eli, if you are watching this, I want you to know that you will not escape.  The deaths that you are seeing around you, they were not accidental.  There is a reason that they are happening.  Your skeletons are coming out of the closet.”

With that, the broadcast ended.

“What was that all about?” asked Jax.

“Oh, it’s just fear tactics,” Eli said. 

He turned off the television and went to the bathroom.  He shut the door and made sure no one was listening.  He took off his shirt and looked regrettably in the mirror.  Across his chest in colored ink was the symbol he tried to avoid seeing every morning.  The symbol that held a place so dear in his heart but nearly drove him to madness when he remembered so many things that he wished he could forget.

              An orange bird, rising from a pile of ashes.

54.

In a sea of darkness, a young man sat, shackled in chains, breathing slowly.  He had long ago stopped keeping track of the days.  He had tried to keep an approximate record of time; he guessed that they fed him about every other day, which meant that he was due to be fed today.  One thing kept him going, one thought and motivation which drowned out all else.  The voices in his head, his growling stomach, his shaking extremities; none of it would deter him, because of one prevailing thought.

              His thoughts were interrupted as the thick metal door opened.  He didn’t look up, but kept his eyes down to avoid being blinded by the light.  They set his tray of food on the floor in front of him and left the door open so he could see to eat.  He devoured the cold bread and chicken breast in a couple of minutes, and drank the water in two huge gulps.  He set the tray and cup in front of him, and the soldiers took it up and left without a word. 

              He went back to his meditation, repeating a simple sentence over and over again, his strategy for keeping his sanity, for keeping hope.

              His meditation was interrupted when the door was opened again.  In his first few weeks he was thankful for the glimpses of light he received, but now he found them irritating; a grim reminder that the soldiers controlled every facet of his life. 

              The soldiers threw another prisoner into the cell with him, then locked the door.  He thought it strange that they didn’t bother to tie him up.  Was he not important?  Was he too weak to escape?  Once the door closed again, the complete darkness returned.  He couldn’t see his cellmate, but he heard him shift to a sitting position against the wall. 

              He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t help but trust the faceless stranger.  After all, they were both enemies of The Wreath, right?  Surely he could be trusted.  But could they speak?  Were the cells monitored?  He mulled this over for a few minutes, and decided to speak, since he was never out of his cell, and would never have another opportunity to speak to the man.

              “They didn’t tie you up.”

              Nice.  Way to start with an obvious comment.

              “They don’t think I’m much of a threat,” the man replied. 

              The stranger’s voice was stiff and frightful, and hinted at a North American accent.  The prisoner uttered a thanks to Heaven under his breath, simply because they spoke the same language.

              “Why is that?” he asked the stranger.

              “My mother used to tell me a story about a very strong man,” the stranger said.  “When his enemies finally captured him, they gouged out his eyes.”

              Rodge sat in silence, waiting for the man to explain.  If he expected him to get some sentiment out of an old wives’ legend, he was talking to the wrong person.

              “What’s your point?”

              “My point is that they took away more than my freedom,” he said.  “Even with the doors are open I’m in utter darkness.  That removes me as a threat,” the stranger said.

              The prisoner thought on this for a moment.

              “Doesn’t that make you more of a threat?  The fact that darkness has no effect on you?”

              “I’ve never thought of it that way before,” the stranger said.  He chuckled at his next thought.  “I imagine my brother would be insulted by the notion that I could protect myself,” he said, to nobody in particular.

              The prisoner smiled, even though the stranger could not see it.  He hadn’t smiled since before his imprisonment.

              “My name is Salah,” the stranger said.

              “Pleased to meet you,” the prisoner said to Salah.  “My name is Rodger, but you can call me Rodge.”