Masked (14 page)

T
he explosion scared
the fuck out of me.
Until I realised that was what I was after.

But it hadn’t been us that had caused it. The drone still gripped my upper arm, the u-Pol officer still stood at the turn in the stairs behind me. And Shiloh’s empty mainframe room still waited at the bottom of the basement.

If not our explosion, then…

“Where does this lead?” the u-Pol officer demanded.

“To Shiloh’s mainframe room,” I replied immediately; the drone had me suddenly hanging a foot off the ground.

“What else? There is more you are not telling me,” the officer growled. The drone shook me.

With my teeth rattling it was hard to get the words out.

“Nothing. Nothing else. Just storage rooms and rats’ nests. There’s nothing else down here, not any more.”

“And before?”

“Before what?” I stupidly said.

The wall meeting my head left me reeling, but not enough to miss the cold edge of a laser gun muzzle in my side. The whine made my brain hurt. Or it could have been my skull, and the wall was the culprit.

“Before the Museum was closed,” the officer ground out when my eyes blinked open; at the insistence of the drone.

“Leave off,” I growled at the metallic beast. Then offered a pathetic distracting kick to its shin, as my forehead connected with the plate above its command module.

It staggered. The officer yelled something in that foreign language, and then I was dropped.

I’m not sure what I thought I’d accomplish, but I suddenly knew setting off the explosives in the Museum was not an option.

Lena, that beautiful, frustrating woman, had followed me here. How, I did not know. I couldn’t reason it out right then, what with the drone still staggering and the laser gun going flying, and my head throbbing as the u-Pol officer clawed at my eyes, and the cold tiled floor met my chin.

My teeth snapped together, thank fuck not on top of my tongue, but my jaw locked in agony as a swift series of punches met my kidneys, and one a little to close to my groin.

I kicked out and connected with the officer’s face, then scrabbled backwards until my hands found the laser gun. Not allowing myself to think on it, I fired that baby up and let her rip.

Pain lanced up my arms, shattering - or so it felt - both elbows. The smell of burned plastic and singed flesh met my nose, and then the zip-tie snapped, my arms came free, and I was swinging the gun around to the front of my body and blasting the shit out of the drone.

Red flashed from its eyes, and as the laser fire arced across its too human looking face, the red slowly died. The command module, already unstable, offered a weak
phifft
sound, and crumbled in on itself under the fire.

The officer screamed a series of commands, no doubt calling for backup. But I held the laser gun and he held only a knife. Wisely he stood back. Didn’t rush me like I was sure he wanted to. We stared at each other. Time slipped for a second. Then the gun in my hand did as well.

The sound of it clattering to the floor was too loud, even though the beat of my heart seemed to echo inside my skull. I looked down at where the gun had landed, and then noticed my burned hands were lying uselessly in my lap as well.

A few seconds passed, and then the officer merely crossed the small space between us and lifted the laser gun up off the floor, inches from where my limp fingers were lying.

“You found the one weakness our drones have developed,” he said in an amused sounding tone of voice. “Of course, they wouldn’t
be
weak, if we hadn’t have had to jump start them.” He leaned forward and stared me in my too wide eyes. “If they hadn’t stopped working just six weeks ago, when you stupidly unhooked Shiloh from the Global Net.”

“Shiloh didn’t work on the Global Net. Sat-loc made it imposs…” My words trailed off.

Of course she’d worked on the Global Net. She’d probably designed it for the sole purpose of controlling all those drones she’d exported. And kept us blind and ignorant through the use of sat-loc.

I stared at the drone now. It looked no different from ours. Apart from that weakness. A weakness this u-Pol officer and those back in Urip itself, I’d hazard a guess, believed was our fault.

Well, fuck me. What now?

The floor shook again, but this time not as violently. Just a tremble as if something heavy had fallen from a great height and thudded to the ground in a sonic boom of crushed pieces. Rather like the Sky Tower.

“You really hate us, don’t you?” I said, my words sounding a little slurred at the edges.

“Completely despise your small minded selves,” he confirmed with relish. “You gave up invincibility. Your country’s security through its superiority. You stripped yourselves bare and shouted it out to the world. You are ignorant and isolated. You have no vision nor willpower.”

Oh, he was so wrong there.

“You think a utopia exists.”

Nope, wrong again. Been there, barely survived it.

“If only you homogenise your people, give them free will in a cloak of depression. Let them wander aimlessly in a lawless society.”

“We have laws,” I mumbled, the words barely coherent.

The officer snorted.

“You are adolescents on the road to adulthood. Children with new toys. You neither comprehend what you have nor protect it. When it doesn’t suit your feeble ideals, you throw it out.”

General Chew-wen had once said our former society had been disposable.

Wánměi was meant to be better than that.

And yet he’d had our people wiped.

Maybe we
were
infants in the scheme of things. Maybe Urip and Merrika had seen and done more.
Remembered
more.

But maybe that innocence is what makes Wánměi so special. Young and promising, with a look to the horizon filled with awe.

Yes, we had ideals. Yes, we’d forgotten more than we could remembered.

But we were free.

My vision was getting hazy, but I could see her. The Elite who epitomised Wánměi. Vibrant. Accomplished. Poised. Decadent. And free.

She was no angel. I wasn’t going to die here, today.

But he was.

The laser gun whined only briefly before she pulled the trigger.

The u-Pol officer’s body arced through the air and landed in a smouldering pile beside me.

I glanced down at his vacant eyes, then flicked heavy lids up to Lena.

“Baby,” I think I said.

And she smiled.

I
t wasn’t
easy meeting the man who would become my father-in-law. But, then, I’d come to understand that life was not meant to be easy. Even when you believed you had it all.

Easy meant you didn’t work for it.

Easy meant there was no challenge to keep you keen.

Easy was for losers. And I had every intention of winning.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, knowing she could tell me anything.

“I’m right here,” I replied, watching them wheel his chair off the boat from Mahiah.

“Ten years,” she murmured. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to hear that one, so I just stood silently beside her.

I’d stand wherever she needed me, for however long she desired.

Drones flanked him. It was a slightly unnerving and surreal sight. The Masked Mahiah woman greeted him familiarly. Lena stiffened. I wrapped a supporting arm around her shoulders. But my eyes kept being drawn back to the blue-eyed drones. I didn’t trust them. But apparently they’d followed commands in the tunnels that had led to their destruction.

It didn’t make me feel any better, the red-eyed drones had done the same thing.

Drones, even non altered drones, were scary as fuck. But these drones, I really didn’t know what to feel.

Bone deep terror was an option.

Everything was changing, and I thought I’d been prepared. Sat-loc was down. Calvin was operational. We were one step away from our own recent history.

And then there was this man. This ghost from our past. The person who at one time was thought to have killed my father. And wasn’t that a kick in the guts? Knowing my dear old dad had been buried in an Elite cemetery, marble tombstone proclaiming to one and all how Honourable he’d been.

Of course, they’d got the name wrong. Calvin Richard Carstairs was the man slowly being wheeled to our side.

Lena’s body shook. I wanted to take her away from all of this and keep her safe from harm. Safe from the agony of seeing the father she’d loved and lost again after ten long years.

Shouldn’t it have been a celebration?

But like me, Lena didn’t trust so easily. I was proud of her, but it left a hollow sensation in my gut. I wanted Lena to be able to trust again. I wanted her life filled with only happiness and love. I wanted the past ten years to have never have touched her, and the man who sat before her now to have been as familiar as he’d once upon a time been.

But then, Calvin Carstairs had not been as familiar as Lena had believed.

“Hello, baby girl,” he said, his voice catching. A flush washed up his cheeks. He was a handsome man, if you looked for that sort of thing. Even confined to a wheelchair he had a kind of presence. A command of the space around him.

Cardinals all stood to attention.

His Masked followers all watched on with respect and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a little star-struck.

He was flanked by not only laser-touting drones, but black-clad armed soldiers. Merrika emblazoned above their hearts.

“Hello, Father,” Lena said, her voice ringing clear and strong. I was so proud.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, his hand shaking where it rested on the arm of the chair. He wanted to reach for her.

And all I wanted to do was pull her back.

“I’d long ago given up on ever getting you back,” he said. I almost told him, “You haven’t.”

But in all honesty, I wasn’t sure.

Lena remained mute, making the men who loved her both liars.

“Well,” Carstairs said. “I guess we need to get on with this, then.” His eyes landed on me for the first time. “Trent Masters?” I nodded. “Thank you for freeing Wánměi.”

He didn’t say my father would have been proud, which made me realise, he really had known the bastard.

“Will you take me to President Tan?” he said instead.

“Of course,” I replied, flicking my eyes to Cardinal Beck. I hadn’t got used to him, but so far he’d behaved admirably.

He’d had my woman’s back. And I was quite sure he still had it.

For now, I’d leave him be.

“Your drones must wait here,” the Cardinal told Carstairs. And if Carstairs was put out, he didn’t show it.

“All right,” he said with a nod of his head. “Captain,” he addressed one of his soldiers, “will you set some men to look after them.” It wasn’t a question, nor was it an avoidance of our distrust. Calvin Carstairs, I thought, was used to being in charge, and calling a spade a spade while he was at it.

I wondered how different he was from the man Lena had known.

I glanced down at her now, her eyes soaking up every feature of her father’s. If she noticed the differences, she was silently cataloguing them. I knew she’d find her way to talk about it later. When it was just her and me, and no pretences. No need for that Elite armour.

And I’d be waiting and ready to hear her. Always.

The trip to the nearby safe house we’d established for this meeting was silent. Carstairs in the back of the van, sitting regally in his wheelchair, his eyes on his daughter. Lena, for her part, was staring resolutely forward. Alan drove, Beck covered our backs. And the Mahiah woman and the Captain of the Merrikan soldiers accompanied us with attentive stances.

A merry little band of men.

Lee Tan met us on the doorstep of the house. I realised whose house it was a second after Augustine Tengku let out a surprised gasp of air as he alighted the vehicle behind us. My eyes met Tan’s; was it a concession to make them feel more welcome? Or a warning?

With Lee Fucking Tan anything was likely.

I suddenly felt a whole hell of a lot better about this.

“Calvin,” Tan said, offering his hand for the older gentleman to shake. “I must admit, this feels a little bizarre.”

Carstairs laughed, a surprisingly hearty sound. Then he sobered.

“I was so sorry to hear about Aiko.” He sounded genuine; an ache was obvious in the timbre of his words.

He’d known Lee Tan’s sister very well, if I remember rightly.

Tan lowered his head and let out a soft exhalation, but when he looked up again, he’d banished his ghosts and smiled. It was a small smile, but it set the tone for the entire meeting.

I felt Lena’s shoulders relax beside me, as if Tan’s acceptance of her father was all she’d been waiting for. I felt a little pissed off at that.

But I pushed it aside as I followed the entourage into the house, my guard still up, even if Tan’s and Lena’s was falling down. I glanced at Alan, who nodded and scowled in answer. He had my back.

Carstairs didn’t beat about the bush. “They will come back,” he announced into the quiet, once everyone had taken their seats and brought themselves down to his height. “Mikhail was their attempt at subtlety.”

“Fighter jets and drones are subtle?” Alan muttered behind us.

“The fighter jets were a warning. The drones a necessity, and because they have not learned to live without them,” Carstairs replied.

He looked around the room, taking in the measure of each one of us, and then settled his gaze on his daughter.

“And then there’s the Wiped to consider,” he said, knowing exactly how to push Lena’s buttons.

“What Wiped?” I jumped to say, saving Lena from asking.

“Urip’s Wiped,” Carstairs said. “Not everyone was lucky enough to be shipped to Merrika.”

And there was the big elephant in the room. Not the Wiped, who
would
require an answer. But this unknown threat that held the puppet strings of Lena’s father.

The man responsible for Shiloh.

I opened my mouth, saw Tan doing the same thing across the way from us, but it was Lena who spoke the words first.

“How do we trust Merrika?” she said in that soft, lilting Elite voice. “How do we trust you?”

Fuck, you’d think he’d just seen her die before his very eyes. The grief that consumed him was palpable. Even I shifted back in my seat in an attempt to distance myself from such agony.

No one said a thing. The question hung on the air as though tangible. As though its presence was greater than the mere words had been.

“I told you, baby girl,” Carstairs finally managed to say; his voice laden with heavy, and an almost physical, emotion. “I’ve learned from my mistakes. There will never be another Shiloh. There will never be another Chew-wen. Wánměi is free, and will always be free, but to do that we need allies.”

“Allies?” Tan queried.

“Merrika. Mahiah. Allies,” Carstairs explained.

“But can we trust them?” Beck asked.

“Lena,” Carstairs called. Lena lifted her eyes from the floor where she’d been blindly staring and looked at him. “If I have to spend the rest of my life proving to you how much I love you, how much I’ve
missed
you, then I will. If I have to fight with every ounce of my being to get back here, again and again, then I will. If I have to destroy every single drone I’ve ever created since then, to make you understand what you mean to me,
then I will
. If it means deactivating Calvin and fighting this battle without the technological advancement that he provides, then we’ll do it.

“Whatever you want, baby girl. Whatever you need to believe in me again, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

Words are easy, I thought to myself.

And then I looked at the place where his leg was meant to be. I looked at the shape of the stubbed limb under his blanket, and remembered how he’d lost it.

In Ohrikee. Fighting beside my father for Wánměi.

We’d seen the footage. Si had confirmed it was legitimate. Carstairs, the crafty bugger, had known exactly what he’d been doing when he’d sent it through before he came. Overseer Calvin Carstairs had been a rebel sympathiser, and had given up his life as he’d known it that day.

Ten years. Ten years she’d thought him dead. Ten years he’d lived with the reminder of what that battle had cost him.

How he had failed.

None of it had been easy. And every step he took from here on in wouldn’t be easy either.

I turned my head and looked down at the woman beside me, wishing I could make this all go away. Make her world perfect.

And then I smiled. Who needs perfect? We just needed each other.

“Your call, baby,” I whispered, slipping my hand into hers and holding on tightly. “Whatever you want to do, I’m right there with you. Whatever you choose, I’ll back you all the way. Wánměi,” I shrugged a shoulder. “Urip. I’m game. Whichever you want, I’ll make it happen.”

In other words, I’d just emasculated myself in front of a bunch of strangers.

Alan snorted at the look he saw on my face.

My eyes skittered off his amused ones and met those of Calvin Carstairs’; a strange understanding passing between us I couldn’t identify. I think he might have been saying,
Thank you.

Thank you for looking after my daughter.

Thank you for loving her as much as I do.

I nodded my head; whether he could be trusted remained to be seen, and if Lena didn’t want a bar of him, I’d go with it. But if she
did
want him to stay, then that’d be all right too, I guess.

I looked down at Lena, knowing everyone else in the room was too and probably holding their breaths as they did it. You’d think the President would have something to say about all of this, but Tan, like the rest of us, had always been a little in awe of this Elite.

Lena let out a slow breath of air, gripped my hand tighter, and said, “We send them a message.”

I’d already started to smile before she’d finished speaking.

“Return Wánměi’s Wiped or prepare for battle.”

The smile widened.

That’s
my Wánměi Girl.