Flip (The Slip Trilogy Book 3) (26 page)

“You think taking the lives of innocents is the way to fight?” the president says. “You’re a terrorist, Brother, nothing more.”

“With all the blood on your hands, I’d say that’s a little hypocritical of you.”

Michael notices the president’s furtive glances at the door, as if expecting the cavalry to arrive any second.

Noticing his brother’s eye movements, Jarrod says, “No one’s coming. They’re all dead. I killed them. I’ve gotten quite good at that sort of thing.”

Thunder continues to roll across the sky, although Michael thought the night was relatively clear. A storm must’ve moved in unexpectedly.

Jarrod/Terrence cups a hand to his ear. “Ahh, the sound of retribution,” he says.

Michael listens to the thunder, finally noticing something strange about the sound. It’s more like fireworks. Or…explosions.

“What did you do?” he accuses, releasing the president. But he knows. Destroying Pop Con has been the Lifer’s goal from day one, and Michael’s entire family is there, led by his very own pigheaded plan like lambs to the slaughter.
We needed that concert to move forward as scheduled.
A mix of fear and anger blooming in his chest, Michael doesn’t care about the gun in his face or the gun held by President Ford, which is now aimed at him from the side. Because both of these men are murderers, like him, and they all deserve to die together. He plucks the pin from his mouth, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t think so,” Jarrod says, cocking his weapon. “My brother is mine. But you first.”

Michael’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes and time doesn’t slow down, but he does see his family in his mind’s eye. Not the way they are, but how they should’ve been. If the world was different. A mom and dad who loves their children. Twin brothers who are best friends one minute and worst enemies the next. Shared history and experiences, and deep unconditional love for one another. And when Michael blinks he realizes that all that is true. The perfect image he’s created
is real
. Not even Pop Con could prevent his family from becoming who they were always meant to be.

As Jarrod’s knuckles turn white and he slowly pulls the trigger, Michael knows he’s ready. He’s achieved what he always wanted to. He’s given his family a life. Not a perfect one, but one together, regardless of what happens tonight.

Out of nowhere, there’s a snarl and a bark and a white ball of fury attaches itself to Jarrod’s wrist a split-second before he pulls the trigger. A shot rings out, but it’s somewhere over Michael’s head, and he watches in awe as Lola clamps down on Jarrod’s arm, shaking her head from side to side as he tries to dislodge her. “Damn dog,” Jarrod mutters.

President Ford grabs Michael’s arm, and when he turns, his former friend is staring at the pin between his fingers. The president’s chin lifts and his eyes meet Michael’s. The look Jeremy Ford offers is an unexpected one: surrender. And then he turns and shoots his brother in the chest, the sound deafening. Although shocked, Michael reacts instantly, shoving the pin deep into the president’s flesh, just south of his neck.

The president drops the gun and looks at him with wild eyes, foam already bubbling from his lips. His body convulses three times and then goes still.

Disgusted, Michael rolls away, turning his attention to Terrence, who’s on his knees, clutching his chest, blood bubbling between his fingers. His plastic face is stark white, his lips parted slightly. Lola has backed off, but continues to bark at him. He gasps, struggling to breathe, but then manages to speak. “If you have any conscience left, change this world, my old friend.”

When he collapses it’s with an unquestionable finality that Michael feels deep in his chest.

An hour later, government officials from the city find him buried under the desk sobbing into his hands, consoled only by a BotDog named Lola, licking away his tears one by one as they fall.

They quietly take him into custody and begin the investigation into the president’s assassination.

G
eoffrey is still pressing the button, over and over and over, wanting his pain to end, wanting to disappear, wanting to forget his life and his sister and go somewhere else, when Check pries the detonator from his grip. Geoffrey grabs at the wires, trying to shove them under his bulky shirt, trying to connect them, but Rod gently pulls them away, speaking in a hushed voice.

“Shh, little man. It’s over. It’s over.”

Somewhere in the distance, a series of explosions rock the city,
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!,
while Geoffrey clings to his friends and soaks their shirts with his tears.

~~~

The Control Room glows with eerie red light. Along the right-hand side is a massive holo-screen, full of boxes with various status reports and other information that means little to Benson. Various controls are mounted on a long desk that runs the length of the screen. Five empty chairs sit at haphazard angles to each other, abandoned.

His father was wrong
, he realizes. Even those who were meant to stay to the bitter end abandoned ship when the earth started shaking. He lets out a deep breath, relieved that the hardest part of the mission has suddenly become the easiest. Punch in the codes and get out.

“Mom,” Benson says.

“The key,” she answers, smiling and stepping inside.

“You’re up,” he confirms.

As Minda shows her where to sit and instructs her on what she needs to do, Benson scans the opposite half of the small room. Five large black rectangular servers take up the entirety of the back wall. They cast building-like shadows across the floor, spilling to Benson’s feet.

Another shadow appears, but this one is moving and looks like a mutated person with four arms, four legs, and two heads. Before Benson can raise his gun, a voice says, “Drop it.”

He hesitates, glancing at Minda, who’s on her feet, standing in front of Janice forming a human shield. A man steps from the shadows, one arm cinched around the neck of another man, a gun to his head.

“SamAdams,” Benson says, immediately recognizing the inner member of the consortium who saved them from certain death once before while they hid in an igloo on a snowfield.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I came here to try to provide cover for you, but he got here first.”

Benson recognizes the other man, too. Charles Boggs, the interim Head of Pop Con and tenured Crow boss. “Enough chit chat,” Boggs says. “Drop your weapons or I’ll blow his freaking head off.”

Benson doesn’t want anyone else to die on his behalf, but he also knows he can’t drop his gun. Not when his mother is speaking the key slowly into some sort of microphone, not when her life is at stake, as well as the success of a mission so important it dwarfs the value of any of their individual lives.

“Shirley,” SamAdams says, using the first part of Minda’s old codename. “Cut off the arm to save the person.”

“Shut your mouth,” Boggs orders, but Minda’s already nodding, aiming her gun at her friend, and pulling the trigger.

~~~

Harrison swears the labyrinthine corridors of the Pop Con building are part of some mad scientist’s experimental maze where the mouse is never supposed to find the cheese. Or maybe he just didn’t pay enough attention during the planning sessions, which is probably because his and Destiny’s part of the plan was supposedly confined to distractions and comedic relief. Instead, they’re now part of the rescue squad, although he suspects they’ve gotten themselves so lost they’ll need someone to rescue
them
.

At least the ground isn’t shaking anymore. Even on a hoverboard and hoverskates, the shaking floors were so vertiginous that they had to stop a few times and cling to each other for dear life.

Suddenly Destiny races ahead of him, shouting “This way!” just as the
bang!
of a gunshot rings out from the exact direction she’s heading.

When they turn the corner, a large door stands wide open and Harrison watches a body collapse to the floor. As he races forward, hot on Destiny’s heels, more gunshots shatter the silence and someone cries out in pain. Ahead of him, Destiny bashes into someone, and he realizes it’s Benson. As Harrison fills the space just behind them, a bullet whistles past his ear, narrowly missing. He glances left to find the man who was once a father to him clutching his abdomen and aiming his gun. Not at Harrison, nor at Benson and Destiny, who are in a pile on the floor, nor at Minda, who lies motionless nearby, but at a smallish woman hunched over a control panel, murmuring a series of letters and numbers.

His mother.

Harrison shoots forward, and leans back all the way, using a reckless and difficult maneuver he and his friends used to occasionally attempt at the end of hoverball practice just for the hell of it. Now he does it because he doesn’t know what else to do.

As he falls, his board flips up, still attached magnetically to his shoes. He feels more than hears the thud of the barrage of bullets that smash into the bottom of the hoverboard, the impacts punctuated by the blasts in his ears. The force of the blows knocks his heels over his head and he spins, twisting in midair to try to get control, face planting hard between Minda’s fallen form and the Benson/Destiny pileup.

Charles Boggs’s gun clicks, his ammo expired, and he reaches for another clip.

There’s ringing in Harrison’s ears and his leg is bent awkwardly beneath him, screaming with pain. He thinks it might be broken, but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing the back of one of the chairs and attempting to drag himself to his feet, the board scraping the floor.

Boggs snaps the clip in place and lifts the gun and Harrison knows he doesn’t have enough left in the tank to stop him, but then—

Boom!

There’s a flash of flame from near the ground and Boggs is twisted around by the impact as the slug from Benson’s gun rocks him back. His gun goes flying, flipping end over end and bouncing off of one of the large black servers.

In the background, Janice says, “…D46K. Key confirmed.”

Key confirmed
, the computer drones.
Fingerprint confirmed. Retinal signature accepted. Program modification accepted. Initializing transfer. Transfer in progress. Transfer to be completed in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…transfer complooooooooohhhhhttttttttttttt

And just like that, the giant holo-screen and all the flashing lights on the control panel wink out.

Harrison throws his head back and screams at the ceiling in victory.

I
f the right kind of care is received, most physical wounds will heal. Benson knows this. He’s counting on this. Harrison’s broken leg, now in a cast, will stitch itself back together and allow him to run and hoverboard and be an athlete again. After two emergency surgeries, Minda’s through-and-through bullet wound will close off and repair itself, and Benson suspects she’ll be kicking ass and taking names soon enough. If not for Simon, who knocked out a guard, stole his keycard, and showed up to carry her out, things might’ve been different for her, but that’s what friends are for. Even good old SamAdams, whose real name, Benson has recently learned, is Devon McDermott, made it through thanks to the pinpoint accuracy of Minda’s flesh-wound shot to his leg. Benson’s pretty sure he’d meant for her to kill him to save the world, but she found a way to save him
and
save the world.

However, for Benson, emotional wounds are a completely different matter. The deep pain from the deaths of his friends and loved ones is always there, a constant reminder of what he’s had and what he’s lost. He doesn’t think those internal wounds will ever heal, not entirely.
And maybe they shouldn’t
, he thinks.
Maybe this is our burden to carry as the survivors.

He knows the world is changing for the better, but it’s going to take time. Sadly, thousands died in the Saint Louis bombings orchestrated by Jarrod and the Lifers. More senseless killings in a world where violence is becoming all too commonplace. And yet, surely, slowly, the wheels of change ease forward, trying to gain momentum as they bounce over rocks and imperfections in the road. Events of the magnitude that occurred in Saint Louis, as well as their subsequent fallout, pretty much guaranteed that the RUSA would have to take a long hard look at itself. For that, Benson is glad.

So while somewhere out there bodies are still being pulled from the wreckage, debris is still being moved from the streets, and scared people are still comforting each other, it’s not for nothing. As they rebuild their city, they can reshape the world, too.

His father is coming home today. The trial was short and took place behind closed doors, but in the end the shattered government told the story they wanted to tell: That Michael Kelly was a hero. Jarrod, the leader of the terrorist group known as the Lifers, besieged the president’s private residence, killing his entire security detail. Michael Kelly, who happened to be there as a guest of the president, did everything in his power to save President Ford, but failed, barely managing to kill the terrorist himself, and escape with his own life. Any sins he may have committed in the past have been forgiven, and he’s a free man. The city needed a hero, and they got one.

Benson laughs as he rereads the news article, amazed how powerful the press really is. If they write it, it must be true. His father told a very different story when he was permitted to visit him in prison.

“Insane, right?” Harrison says, crutching over awkwardly and plopping down next to Benson. His brother’s hair is starting to fill in again, as is his. Seeing Harrison’s bright blue eyes up close is once more like looking in the mirror. Which is the way it’s supposed to be.

They’re in the house Harrison grew up in, the house Benson should have grown up in. Although it feels weird, after a few weeks it’s starting to feel like home. He thinks it might be because of all the people living in it with him, like maybe home is wherever your loved ones are, and not some place on a map. “Why isn’t there a story in there about my hoverboard move that saved Mom and destroyed all the Pop Con data? Or your lucky shot that took out Charles Boggs? We should’ve been the heroes, not Dad.”

Benson laughs, because his brother is grinning. “Lucky?”

“Looked like luck from where I was,” Harrison says, shrugging.

“As the older brother, I’m pretty sure I taught you everything you know,” Benson says.

Although his brother smiles and punches him on the arm, he can still see the grimace at the reminder that Benson was really the first one born. “My leg,” he grunts. Benson lets him have his little lie.

“I think we probably aren’t getting called heroes because we fled the crime scene and no one actually knows who we are,” Benson surmises.

“You think? Yeah, that’s probably it,” Harrison says, flicking on the holo. A Hawk-eye view appears of an aut-car coasting along one of the intact roads left in Saint Louis. All around the vehicle are patches of destruction, like black eyes on the face of the city. “I still can’t believe Jarrod blew up half of Saint Louis,” Harrison murmurs.

“Technically it was a quarter of the city,” Benson says.

Harrison makes his voice high-pitched and annoying, nothing like how Benson thinks he really sounds. “Technically it was a quarter of the city,” he mimics.

“Just saying.” Check told him what Geoffrey did, and why Pop Con headquarters didn’t blow up with the rest of the city, killing them all. Check and Rod managed to stop Geoffrey from connecting the detonator to his explosive vest. Which he supposes makes his best friends heroes too. Saint Louis is full of heroes, it seems, and the people don’t even know it.

“You know what’s weird?” Harrison says.

“The fact that we look exactly alike and I’m still better looking?” Benson says.

Harrison ignores him, although he does get a smirk. “As soon as we found out I’m really the Slip and you’re not, everything went back to zero. I feel like I hit a big reset button and avoided a part of my life that would’ve been terrible.”

Benson is somewhat surprised that his brother would speak so openly about what they learned about their births. He tries to catch his twin’s eyes, but Harrison continues to stare at the holo. “I guess that’s kind of funny,” Benson says. “In a good way. No one should have to go through that. No one should have to feel like they’re not wanted, hated simply for being born. In the end, we’re all just humans, connected by things we can’t touch, like laughter and love and our fear of being left behind. Our fear of death. Of not being included in something we think is important and great but don’t really understand.”

Harrison finally turns to meet his gaze. “Nice speech, bro,” he says, and Benson can tell he means it.

Just as the aut-car on the holo turns down a familiar road, Janice comes tumbling down the stairs with Destiny in tow. Check, Rod, and Geoffrey aren’t far behind. Simon and Minda, descending gingerly, bring up the rear.

“He’s home!” Janice shouts, throwing the door wide open. Benson smiles and glances at the screen, where their house comes into view, the door opening outward and Janice stepping onto the front porch.

“So weird,” Harrison says, but he lets Benson help him up.

With Janice’s arm around his waist, Michael Kelly steps inside carrying a ball of fur that immediately leaps to the floor and bounds into Harrison’s waiting arms. “My little hero,” he says, kissing Lola’s forehead. Benson scratches her under the chin and goes to embrace his father.

“Welcome home,” he says.

“You too, Son. You too.”

Once Michael Kelly is inside and the holo-news reporters have been chased away, the real celebration begins. There are hugs and kisses and war stories. And the tale of a brave little BotDog that refused to obey her own programming; Lola’s an example to them all that you don’t have to be what someone says you are. You can be whatever you choose.

They celebrate not only for each other, but for Luce and Gonzo, who sacrificed everything to save them. For the thousands of children who could now be born without needing authorization, without fear of termination. For those that paved the way before them, and for those who never gave up.

There will be a bold new world of their creation, and they celebrate that too. Benson knows that the Kelly’s started out as four, and they’ll end as four-plus. No matter what.

No matter how hard the fight.

No matter what trials await them.

They’ve got each other’s backs, because that’s what families do.

~~~

Geoffrey clings to the memories of his sister and Gonzo, because that’s what he has. As much as he’s lost, he can’t lose those.

He’s slowly coming to terms with the hand he played in the events that transpired on the night of the Sonic Boom concert. How wrong he was, about everything. He knows it was grief and anger that drove his actions, and that if he’d listened to his heart for a single second, things might’ve been different.

It’s hard not to blame himself, but Check says he shouldn’t. A detonator linked to the bombs that destroyed the city was found on Jarrod’s dead body. If Geoffrey somehow failed to press the button, Jarrod would have anyway. The only explosives Geoffrey was solely responsible for were strapped to his chest, and those ones were never detonated. Even if he might’ve done it—like really really might’ve done it—he didn’t. His friends saved him from himself, which is what friends have to do sometimes. They saved far more than his life that day. They saved his soul too. He hopes he’ll be able to pay them back someday.

In the moments just before sleep, he sees Luce in his mind, her memory more vivid than the clearest image from a holo-screen:

“Last time,” Luce says. She picks him up and twirls him around and he feels like he’s flying. Since she saved him from the orphanage, he always feels like he’s flying. Like he’s living. There’s not much to eat, but it’s enough. Because he has her. And she has him.

She tosses him onto the couch and he giggles. “One more time?” he begs.

Her smile is a million miles wide, her blue eyes sparkling. “One more last time,” she agrees, scooping him up again.

~~~

“I’m surprised your dad didn’t lay down the law and make us sleep in separate rooms,” Destiny whispers in his ear.

Harrison grins in the dark, relishing the body heat they get to share. “I think it might be more a matter of limited beds than anything else.”

“Are you saying we’re only doing this to make sure everyone gets a bed?”

“Well, my bed
is
the biggest…”

Destiny throws off the covers. “Well then, I guess we could invite a few of the smaller people to squeeze in with us. Geoffrey, your mom…”

Harrison grabs Destiny and she squeals as he drags her back. “And not be able to do this?” he says, his lips finding hers. Their bodies intertwine and they forget about limited sleeping space and coming home parties and the damaged world they live in.

~~~

Janice is happy. So happy. For a while she thought happiness was the sun that never reached her room in the asylum. The wind that battered the window but never came inside. The birds singing their hearts out but never loud enough for her to hear their songs. She thought happiness was unreachable, as angry as Zoran the Adventurer trapped on a wristwatch strapped to her arm.

Now she knows it was just hiding, for a while. She thinks maybe happiness isn’t an automatic thing—that sometimes you have to go through a whole lot of awful to find it. That sometimes it comes when you least expect it, and so you should enjoy every second of joy you get.

That’s what she’s doing now. Feeling her husband’s hand against hers is part of it. In the asylum his hands would burn her, but now they feel so gentle, so loving. It’s not that he changed into a monster and then changed back—no, he was always the same person—it’s that he hid his true self so he could do the impossible things that he never wanted to have to do. Now his smile is worth a million years in the asylum.

Benson seems happy too, talking with his friends, Check and Rod, joking like normal teenagers should. Not planning missions and wearing disguises and diving in front of bullets.

“The time after,” as Janice likes to call it, seems to be helping Minda and Simon as well. Minda isn’t so serious all the time and Simon doesn’t curl his fists as much. They’ve been talking to each other
a lot
. She can see them having a future. And beautifully giant babies.

As for her, she’s content just to be herself. Mom and Janice and Mrs. Kelly and, if they ever need her again, the key.