Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy (26 page)

Riley was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows, talking with Landon. Around the bruises, his face had a healthy color. As she walked over he glanced up and grinned at her, his brown eyes alert. She stood at the foot of the bed, speechless.

Landon stood up and shook Riley’s hand. “Great catching up with you, Riley,” he said with a smile. “You’ll be on your feet in no time, I’m sure.” He turned to Angie. “He turned the corner.” He gave her a brief hug and left, closing the door behind him.

Angie stared at the closed door for a long moment, then looked at Riley, who was smiling back at her. “What… What happened?” she managed.

Riley shrugged. “I have no idea. Last thing I remember, we were fighting these two punks in the dark on the tracks. Next thing I know, I’m lying here and Landon is talking to me, and then you came in.”

“You were dying!” Angie said.

“Apparently not,” he laughed. “I feel pretty good.” Looking down at his broken arm, he said, “The arm’s a bummer but it doesn’t hurt much. How are the guys?”

Angie stared at him, trying to make sense of what her eyes were telling her. Finally, shaking her head, she sat down. “They’re fine. Bruised and sore but nothing serious. Clay broke a rib or two. You definitely got it the worst.”

“Those guys were high on something—they were crazy! I guess I was knocked out?”

“Three days ago. Abacus and Clay carried you to a warehouse. You stayed there for two days and then they carried you here. You had a fever, internal bleeding…” She stared at him, her hazel eyes glistening with unshed tears. “We couldn’t do anything for you, Riley. You were dying.”

He realized for the first time that she was serious. “Wait,
three days
? I’ve been out that long? But I feel fine!” He looked down at himself as if looking for the fatal wound. He took in the IV still in his arm and felt the bandages on his face. “So I was actually, really, dying? What happened?”

“Landon came,” Angie said. “That’s all I know. I was here with you, and he came in and told me to leave and not worry. I came back expecting you to be dead, and there you were, sitting up, talking and laughing. What did he say to you?”

Riley frowned, thinking. “Nothing. I mean, just the usual ‘hi, how are you’ stuff. I woke up and he was sitting next to me and his hand was on my forehead. When I opened my eyes, he smiled and asked how I felt. I said I felt like I’d been in a fight and he laughed.” Riley shrugged. “That’s it.”

“I’d better go tell the others. You stay here and rest. You may feel fine, but you weren’t fine two hours ago.” Angie put on her best stern-nurse face to make her point.

As she walked to the door, Riley called out, “Hey, Angie, can you bring some food? I’m starving!”

Chapter Thirty-Five

W
ord of Riley’s miraculous recovery
circulated throughout the tunnels, but no one else saw Landon. Abacus made an executive decision to send Jose, their ops leader for Spain, and Monkey to visit Michael de Santos’ house in Madrid and search for the Enigma machine. He and Clay needed time to recuperate; Abacus brooked no argument.

“Besides,” he said to Clay, who had come to his office to complain, “There’s word from Marty. He’s found some messages. We can send him a status update—you know he’s probably driving himself and everyone else nuts waiting to hear if we got a machine.” Abacus sipped his tea. “And I thought we could take a quick trip to Berlin.”

“Berlin? Why?” Clay asked.

“We’ll take the code books we found and let a German tell us what we’ve got. The portal in Berlin is close to one of the rebel cells so we can make a quick trip safely.”

“Okay, that makes sense. What about Marty? What’s he got?”

Abacus handed Clay a folder. “Here you go. He’s got an email trail between a Ukrainian scientist and some anonymous person at the LRTD with some very strange conversations. It’s all in there.”

“LRTD?” Clay asked, flipping through the pages.

“Logistical Resource and Task Division. They’re the ones who handle the prison.”

Clay pulled out an email with groups of five letters at the bottom. He read it through and laughed. “That’s gotta be code. So now all we need is the machine.”

“And the right code book.”

Jose and Monkey left that night. The portal was in Toledo, so they would have to take motorcycles into Madrid. Even though the de Santos house was in the middle of the city, Madrid was scantily populated so the mission would be relatively quick and safe.

Abacus and Clay left before dawn the next morning. The doorway brought them into the Friedrichstraße station, in what was formerly East Berlin. Both the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn subway lines had once come through the station as well as regional trains. It was as well situated as any portal, being located in the center of Berlin.

Jogging up the quiet escalator, Abacus said, “It’s not far. There are only three cells in Berlin, and they’ve got a pretty low level of gang activity here. We’re crossing the river on the railroad tracks, so watch your step.”

Clay followed him across the wide metal bridge. In the dim early morning light, he could barely make out the water of the River Spree flowing below. The moon had set, but the sun hadn’t yet risen. The silhouettes of tall buildings loomed over the track ahead. A hundred yards on, Abacus climbed down a ladder into a tree filled space.

“Is this a park?” Clay whispered.

“No, it used to be the yard behind these apartment buildings. It’s all grown up now, which suits us fine.” He jogged down an overgrown path to a gray arched doorway, the only door in the back of the four story building. Knocking softly, they waited.

In short order, an old man with long grey hair pulled back into a braided ponytail answered the door, a pistol in his hand. When he saw Abacus he grinned and waved them inside with the gun, sliding it into the back of his pants.

“Ach, Abacus, my friend!” he said in heavily accented English, giving Abacus a huge hug. “And who do you bring to us?”

“Clay McClelland, this is Franz Amsel.” The two men shook hands. “Franz, we need some translating help.”

“Anything, anything! And did you bring me some tea?” Franz led them through the narrow building and up a flight of stairs. The windows were blacked out; the house was silent except for their footsteps on the old wooden floor.

“Of course. And a special treat.” Abacus slung his pack around and pulled out a tin and a small box.

Opening it, the old man’s rheumy eyes lit up. “Chocolate! Where did you find chocolate?” Franz popped a truffle into his mouth, closing his eyes and savoring the treat.

“Will has been experimenting. How’d he do?” Abacus asked. Franz kept chewing slowly, smiling, his eyes still closed. “I’ll take that as, ‘he did good.’”

Finally, Franz opened his eyes and sighed. “Thank you. That was the best chocolate I’ve had in many a year. Now, what do you have for me?”

Clay opened his back pack and brought out the large stack of code books. “We’re looking for a code book that’s from the Kriegsmarine for the Enigma M3.” He handed them to the old man, who stared down at them.

“The Nazis. They still haunt us, eh?”

“This time the Nazis may end up helping us,” Abacus said.

Neahle was surprised to see her brother sit down next to her at lunch. “I thought you went to Berlin.”

“There and back,” he said, taking a bite of his smoked fish salad sandwich.

“That’s some kind of record! Any luck?”

“Three of the books we brought back are Kriegsmarine M3 books. But they’re all different. Franz said they were probably from different battle groups.”

“Three’s not so bad,” Neahle said. “I read through what Marty sent over. Those messages aren’t long, so even if we use all three code books, it won’t take that long.”

“The problem will be if the message is double encoded, once with a regular code, and then using Enigma. None of them will make sense when we first run them through the machine, even if we have the right code book.”

“That’s your department. I can’t even unscramble the Jumble.” They laughed. It was true, she’d never been able to unscramble letters to form words and she was terrible at Scrabble.

“I’ll work on it as soon as we get a machine. I don’t suppose Monkey’s back?”

Neahle shook her head, chewing. “Too soon.”

“Yeah, figured. I hate waiting.”

Riley slid into the chair opposite Clay. His face was now a gruesome mélange of greens and yellows. “Hey, what’s up?”

Clay stared at him. “I heard you were better, but… Wow!”

Riley shrugged and took a big bite of his sandwich. “Don’t know,” he said, talking around the food. “Landon came and I was better. I don’t remember anything about it, but Angie said I was at death’s door.”

“You were halfway through it,” Neahle said. “You looked terrible. Not that you look fabulous now.”

“Gee, thanks,” Riley said, winking at her. “I feel pretty good, just the arm to worry about.” He held up his cast.

“Amazing,” Clay said. “Those guys beat the crap out of us and now you’re sitting here eating a sandwich.”

“So are you,” Riley pointed out. “What happened to them?”

Clay glanced at Neahle, and then looked at Riley. “One of them died. The other was in about as good a shape as you were. Well, as you were before Landon came.”

Riley sighed and put down his sandwich. “Dang. They just wouldn’t let up, would they?”

“Nope. I don’t understand why do they hate us so much.”

“I don’t think it’s us. I mean, yes, it’s us. But it’s everybody who’s not them. The gangs, they’re like dysfunctional families. Mostly, they’re kids of rebels who’ve either seen their parents killed or captured, or who don’t know enough about how this world was before the Firsts took over to care about getting it back. They weren’t even alive before the war—this is all they know. They’ve set up their own societies and people like us are enemies to their way of life.”

“But we’re trying to bring freedom!” Neahle said.

“They think they’re free now. No one tells them what to do, they live where they want, do what they want. They think staying alive until they’re twenty-five is the best they can expect and that’s all they’re trying to do.”

“But that’s not freedom,” Clay said, frustrated.

“It’s living with tyranny,” Riley confirmed. “Trust me, they don’t care about you, about the rebels, or about Darian. They see us as being as much of a threat as the Firsts. Don’t forget it. Your life depends on it.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

A
s they were relaxing in
the living room after dinner, Hannah came in and waved for Neahle to join her. Neahle sat next to her on a bright orange cushion in the corner under a hand painted copy of a Japanese print. Depicting a huge stylized wave, the painting covered three walls with bright blues, oranges, pinks and yellows. Amidst the dim light of the claustrophobic underground, it was refreshing.

“Hey! How was topside?” she asked, hoping for news of Gilles.

Hannah looked around to make sure they were alone, then said, “I talked to Rod.”

“
Your
Rod?” Neahle asked.

“Yeah… My Rod.” Hannah sat back and closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Neahle. “He saw me when I went up the other day by myself. We don’t usually do that, you know. Go alone. Of course, he knows where the tunnels come up. He says he’s never told anyone. We worried about the tunnels being overrun when he first left, but no one came, so he must be telling the truth.”

“So he saw you…” Neahle said, trying to get to the point.

“Yeah. He waited for me at the Depot. I knocked him out with a wrench.” She smiled. “I kinda liked that part.”

Neahle laughed. “What was he trying to do? Rob you?”

“No. He says he wants to come back. Here, I mean. Come back to the tunnels and help the rebels again.”

“Can he do that?” Neahle asked.

“I don’t know. It would be up to Abacus and Vasco, and Landon if he were here. I’d like to talk to Landon first but apparently he didn’t stay around after he did whatever he did to Riley.”

“Do you trust Rod?”

Hannah blew out a sigh. “That’s a big problem, isn’t it? For everybody, not just me.” She stared at the bright wave on the wall for a moment, then looked at her friend. “I don’t know. He seemed sincere. And he hasn’t given us up in all these years, so that’s a point in his favor. He said he’s tired of life on the streets, that he has been for awhile. A lot of the people he knew at the beginning, the ones he liked that he left us for, have been killed, or died from drugs, or captured by Firsts. Life expectancy out there’s not so good. And he said they don’t
do
anything. There’s no point to life. They make moonshine and meth, they search for food when they need to, fight for territory, but that’s about it. There’s no… Greater purpose, I guess you’d call it.”

“Was Rod a ‘greater purpose’ kind of guy? Back home, I mean,” Neahle asked.

Hannah thought about it for a second then gave a small nod. “He was raised in church by a good family. We come from a small, traditional Southern town outside Charleston. You know, God, apple pie, the American flag, Memorial Day parades, Fourth of July fireworks. Church on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday. His dad’s a fireman and his mom’s a nurse. Just a regular American family. Rod rebelled, but not… Well, not over the top. He didn’t become a criminal or anything. He partied some, grew his hair long, pierced his ear, got tattoos. Went through a definite ‘it’s all about me’ stage that went on a lot too long. But deep down, yeah, he probably is a ‘greater purpose’ guy.”