Revolution (7 page)

    Watson stood suddenly from her chair and ran toward the right-hand wall. She knocked a picture aside and pushed at a section of the wall. It gave way to a small video surveillance room about the size of a walk-in closet where two security officers sat staring in mute shock at a pair of television monitors showing the Chief of Staff slumped over his desk in a puddle of blood.

The closest guard reached for his gun, but she shot him in the throat with a plastic dart before he could draw it. The second guard stood from his chair and pulled out his gun as two needles struck him in the face. He fell back into the wall, clutching futilely at his punctured forehead.

    Cassandra entered the office, checked the monitors, and ran back to the chair where she left her purse. She pulled a small package out of the purse, set the timer, and ran back to the security office. She planted the package under the security console and ran back to the office as the timer on the explosives clicked back from the ten minute mark. She returned the dart gun to her purse and paused to compose herself.

Despite an adrenaline surge, Cassandra forced herself to assume an icy demeanor and stare calmly at a portrait of George Washington. George’s impassive face seemed to be saying,
So you killed the Chief of Staff? No big deal. Now what are you going to do
?

    Cassandra picked up her purse and headed for the door. She tried to ignore the sweat developing on her forehead as she walked briskly down the hallway, attempting to appear professional and unconcerned. She took a left into the next corridor and quickened her pace when she spotted the lobby door on the opposite side.

     Cassandra halted when she saw the door swing open. Her instincts took over as the lobby guards entered the corridor carrying hand-held machine guns. She sprinted around the corner before the guards could lift their weapons. The wall behind her was ripped apart by bullets as she turned into the next corridor.

   
How did they know so fast
? Cassandra thought as she sprinted down the corridor.

    According to the captured floor plans she studied, the adjacent surveillance room was the only one monitoring the Chief of Staff’s office in order to ensure privacy for top-level meetings. That was why the target was chosen in the first place. With the guards in the surveillance room dead, there should have been no one left to sound the alarm.

    But somehow they knew!

    Cassandra ducked into a side corridor and pulled the dart gun from her purse. She re-loaded it and dropped the purse on the floor, waiting around the corner with weapon in hand.

She heard footsteps in the hallway, so she turned the corner and dropped to the floor, firing a barrage of plastic darts. She struck the foremost guard twice in the face and ducked around the corner as the remaining guard opened fire. Metallic thunder resounded in the confines of the corridor as the guard advanced, firing. When she heard the firing cease, she turned the corner and fired her last two darts into his neck. She ran forward and grabbed the machine gun out of his hands as he slumped to the floor.

    Cassandra heard a crashing sound to her right and turned to see a heavily armored tactical team running down a side corridor toward her. She fired her captured machine gun around the corner at the soldiers as they advanced. The bullets only dented their body armor and knocked a few of them down. Most of them continued advancing.

She ducked around the corner, narrowly avoiding a barrage from their automatic rifles. When she turned the corner to fire again, a hail of bullets struck her. Cassandra fired her captured machine gun at the advancing attackers as she collapsed into a puddle of blood on the red carpeted floor.

********

    “Hey, Peter, you okay, or what? You look like you’re in a trance!” Henry shouted to his friend as the parade of protesters continued to march by unabated.

    “I’m okay, let’s get going,” Peter replied as he cleared away memories from his past and focused on his friend’s face.

    “Hey, check that out,” Billy said, pointing to a sleek, black, gleaming anti-grav limousine cruising twenty feet above the road on a nearby side street.

    The limo halted at the edge of the parade and turned on its left blinker, trying to edge out into the half-lane that was not occupied by the marching protesters.

    “What’s a limo doing in this hole-in-the-wall neighborhood?” Henry asked.

    “And what’s he doing trying to join the parade?” Billy added.

    “Now this parade is getting interesting,” Henry said, stepping from the sidewalk onto the street and standing directly beneath the flight trajectory of the limo to get a better view.

    Henry was stunned when the limo came to an abrupt stop directly above him. He stepped out from under it and stared up at its tinted windows. Surprisingly, the back passenger window rolled down, revealing the smiling face of a beautiful African-American woman. Her ears and neck glittered with gold jewelry.

    “I must be dreaming,” Henry said, gazing up at her like an infatuated schoolboy.

    “Hey, we have room for one more!” the woman shouted down at Henry without losing her perpetual smile.

    Peter thought she looked like an actress on a television commercial with her sculpted black hair and attractive face overdone with make-up. The woman opened the door as the vehicle lowered to the ground. When the limo reached ground level, she stepped out, revealing a stunning figure in a tight black evening dress. She continued to smile her dazzling commercial grin.

    Billy stood on the sidewalk with his eyes wide and mouth gaped open. Peter thought he looked like a trout that had just been hooked. Peter watched Henry scan the woman’s figure and peer into the interior of the limo where the silhouettes of two other women were sitting in the back. It looked like they were passing around a bottle of champagne and pouring it into sparkling crystal glasses.

    “Come on, what are you waiting for?” the tall black woman asked, as she grabbed Henry by the arm and dragged him toward the open door.

    Peter felt a sudden surge of apprehension and ran to his friend’s side. He grabbed Henry’s free arm and whispered into his ear.

    “Hey, Henry, they’re either prostitutes or drug dealers! I don’t think you should go!”

    “What? Are you crazy? A man waits a lifetime to party with a bunch of models in a limousine!” Henry replied, gesturing toward the women in the limo’s interior. “This is my lucky night! I’ll see you at work tomorrow, Pete!” Henry forcefully pulled his arm out of Peter’s grasp. “And besides, you know what a cautious guy I am,” he added, patting his automatic pistol in the hidden shoulder-holster beneath his jacket.

    Henry glanced back at Peter and Billy, flashing them a wide grin as he entered the back of the limo with the woman. Glaring at Peter, the woman’s commercial smile transformed into a menacing frown. Henry was oblivious to her change in mood as the women passed him the champagne bottle with an accompanying glass.

The woman continued to glare at Peter as she reached over Henry’s lap to push a switch, rolling up the tinted windows. Peter found himself staring at darkened glass as the limousine pulled away from the curb and lifted steadily off the street until it was hovering twenty feet above the heads of the crowd. The limo continued to travel in the right lane toward the front of the parade at a leisurely fifteen miles per hour. Peter and Billy watched it go in mute shock.

    “Hey, man, how weird was that?” Billy asked. “I feel like our friend, Henry, just stepped into one of those really good beer commercials! Those women were gorgeous! Why couldn’t they make room for one more person?”

    Peter glanced, uneasily, at his friend.

    “I have a bad feeling about this, Billy. What’s a limo like that doing at a protest rally?”

    “I don’t know. Maybe they happened to be in the neighborhood when the parade started going by. They stopped to check out the spectacle. Now, they’re probably heading toward the Club District to do some partying,” Billy suggested, innocently.

    Peter thought his face looked more boyish than ever in the luminescent glow of the nearby streetlights.

    Peter ruminated for a moment as he watched the limousine pull farther away over the heads of the protesters. Some sort of bizarre sixth sense was telling him that something was wrong and he couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that had suddenly overcome him.

   Peter turned away from his friend and began pushing his way past the spectators on the sidewalk, as he moved in the direction of the limousine. He found a clear strip of sidewalk and began sprinting after it.

    “Hey, where are you going? Wait up!” Billy shouted as he pushed his way past some spectators and ran after his friend.

    Peter sprinted down the sidewalk as if his life depended on it, dodging groups of spectators as he encountered them. Billy followed for a short while and then gave up, coughing. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up.

After thirty seconds of sprinting, Peter reached the vanguard of the parade at the same time as the limo. He slowed his pace and began walking alongside the marchers at the forefront as the limo drove past them and continued down the street. Halfway down the block, the limousine stopped and began a smooth, mid-air, one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. It remained stationary, hovering next to the left-hand sidewalk as the front line of protestors approached it from a hundred feet away.

    “What’s that limo doing?” Peter whispered as he joined the protesters at the edge of the parade as they marched toward the hovering limousine.

   A cold shiver crawled slowly up his spine like an icy-legged spider, as he observed the tinted back window of the limousine slide open. He spotted a gleam from a metal object in the limo’s interior and began to back away from the crowd.                         

    Metallic thunder blasted through the air like a sudden storm as white sparks exploded from the open window of the limousine. Peter dove into a group of spectators on the sidewalk to avoid a bullet storm ripping into the street. His body smashed into the body of another spectator, taking them both down. Hitting the ground, he instinctively covered his head.

    Peter glanced up to see the crowd of protestors at the front of the parade being torn apart by machine gun fire. Bloody red bullet-holes appeared like black magic in convulsing bodies. Glancing left toward the limousine, he saw machine gun lightning flashing from the back window. He could barely make out the shadowy silhouette of a person firing from the interior. The firing seemed to last for hours as the panicked crowd screamed with pain and fear, rushing to escape the onslaught. Peter watched them get cut down like wheat by a reaper’s scythe. 

    Peter was too stunned to think clearly as he watched the limo’s back door suddenly fly open and a human silhouette drop to the street from the rear compartment. The firing ceased as the limo initiated another smooth 180-degree turn until it was facing the opposite direction.

    The jet engines roared like thunder as the limo raced down the street at top speed. A lone human silhouette remained lying on the street in its wake, crumpled in the road in front of the bloody massacre. Peter stared in horror at the blood-spattered bodies stretched across the road like piles of human debris.

The remaining protesters broke apart and ran screaming in panic in all directions. Peter got to his feet when he realized he was going to get trampled in the mad stampede. He ran over to the closest run-down apartment building and ducked into the adjacent alleyway, watching the protestors scrambling madly in various directions like a herd of gazelles being attacked by a rampaging lion.

    When he realized most of the spectators had scrambled for cover in nearby doorways and alleyways, Peter stepped cautiously out from his place of cover and moved toward the slaughtered bodies. He stopped next to the body of the man who Ryder had identified earlier as the famous Civil Rights Activist, Martin Prince.

Glancing down at the man’s body, Peter noticed he was holding a small black metallic object about the size of a wallet. He thought it was strange that Prince would still be fiercely clutching an object in his hand after being shot half-a-dozen times. Reaching down, he pulled the object from Prince’s bloody grasp.

Peter wiped the blood from it with the sleeve of his jacket and discovered it was a pocket computer. He stared at the luminous numbers and letters flashing across the small computer screen. He instinctively shoved the mini-computer into his front jacket pocket.

    Peter turned away from the human carnage on the street and gazed toward the lone figure he saw fall from the limo earlier. His eyes widened when he saw the figure struggling to rise from the pavement.

Chapter 7

    Campion leaned back in her plush office chair on the fiftieth floor of the Hovercrafts International downtown office building, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. As usual, her polished shoes rested comfortably on the mahogany desktop.

If everything went according to plan, her operative was making her escape from the capitol city right now. Any second now the White House would be reduced to smoke and rubble.

Jane picked up a television remote with her free hand and switched on the small 3D television perched on the edge of her desk. She switched it to mute. She watched the image of a young newscaster mouthing words at the camera. Turning away, she took another drag off her cigarette. She inhaled, blew another smoke ring toward the ceiling, and closed her eyes. 

    She had spent most of the day worrying about the mission. They hadn’t hit a high-profile government target in a while. They needed this. They had to do something big to inspire people in the organization. Otherwise, they might lose interest in the cause and give up. She snuffed her cigarette out in the ashtray and looked at the screen again. A different newscaster was mouthing words at the camera.

    She was disappointed the screen didn’t show a picture of a large smoking crater in the center of New Washington. She used the remote control to turn up the volume. The newscaster was talking about the stock market. She switched on the desk’s intercom.

    “Connelly, you there?” she asked.

    “Sure, Jane, I’m here. Where have you been?” Rick asked.

    “I fell asleep in my office.”

    “Maybe if you slept at night, like everybody else, that wouldn’t happen.”

    “Thanks for the advice, dad. What’s going on? What does the news say?” Jane asked.

    “Nothing,” Rick replied.

    “What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

    “That’s what I said. There’s nothing on the news about the White House,” Connelly said.

    “Do you think the government could have suppressed the bombing from the public?” Campion asked.

    “I don’t see how they could. There’s bound to be someone in the city viewing the explosion and calling a news station.”

    “This could be bad,” Jane commented.

    “Very,” Connelly agreed.

    “I’m coming back to headquarters.”

    “Good. We need to talk.”

    “Right,” Campion said, switching off the intercom.

    She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her forefingers. If this mission failed, people in her organization might lose hope. Once hope was gone, everything deteriorated.

    Jane glanced at the 3D television. The image of a gigantic roaring dinosaur filled the screen and switched to a Casino shootout, where two groups of suited men were firing old-fashioned machine guns at each other from behind overturned blackjack tables and slot machines. The image became a laser gun shootout in a futuristic space station and ended with a woman having a sword fight with an ancient armored knight. As she expected, it was a commercial for the government’s high-tech theme park, Virtual-world.

    Campion felt a cold chill prickling up the small hairs on the back of her neck, as she suddenly had an inspiration. Virtual-world was on the same island as New Washington. Except for the wall separating them, they were practically touching each other.

   
Maybe there’s a way to get into the city from Virtual-world?

    They had discussed the idea before and it had always been shot down for being impossible. For some unfathomable reason, she now thought that Virtual-world was the key.

    Campion switched on her desk computer and logged on to the Internet, searching for the Virtual-world web site. She didn’t have to look for long. A gaudy, full-screen advertisement for the government’s high-tech theme park appeared on the monitor. She entered the Virtual-world site and explored it with wide-eyed fascination.

Fantastic images of ordinary people doing battle with extraordinary robotic opponents filled the screen. They were real pictures taken inside the Powerdrome; Virtual-world’s largest and most famous attraction. The people in the pictures were real tourists who had paid money to go to Virtual-world in order to experience the thrill of a lifetime. The advanced robotics of the Powerdrome ensured no limit to the artificial enemies that could be thrown at the thrill-seekers.

    This place
is incredible
.
I can’t believe I’ve never been there. When this is all over, I
might have to pay a visit
.

    Campion thought she would do pretty well against the Virtual-world robots.

   
Of course, why do I need to fight robots when there are plenty of real enemies to fight?  

   
That was the real reason Campion hadn’t taken a day off to visit the high-tech theme park. With all the real missions that had to be completed, she didn’t have time to partake in fantasy challenges. Like many things in the late twenty-first century, Virtual-world was larger than life
.

    I
mean, we’ve only had air-cars for what? Fifteen years? Virtual-world has only been around for the last ten years
.

    Campion remembered when they began construction of the high tech theme park. It was about fifteen years after they had put the finishing touches on the nation’s new capitol city.   

    During the year 2046, the capitol city’s Recreation Director or RD realized that half the island, which the city was built upon, was still unexploited. At that time, the recreation industry was booming. There were more rich people in society than ever before; rich people who needed entertainment.

Advanced robotic theme parks became the “in” thing for the nation’s wealthiest citizens. Robotics technology had reached a stage where people couldn’t differentiate between a real person and an android. This made the technology ideal to create fantasy environments where people with enough money could battle fantasy villains to the “death.” Or at least until the villains were re-programmed or repaired. 

    New Washington’s RD decided to utilize the unexploited portion of the island to build a superior robotics theme park that would blow all the other high tech parks out of the water. The Government Entrepreneurial Division or GED would provide the initial investment. That meant the GED would also control the profits, but there would be room for healthy salaries for the park’s Board of Directors with the RD as the chairwoman. So the RD teamed up with the GED to begin work on the greatest theme park in the world.

    The Government Entrepreneurial Division consulted its investment contacts in the country’s most advanced robotics industries and formulated an idea to construct the premiere park on the planet. The robotics experts claimed that a significantly large investment by the GED would enable them to construct advanced humanoid robots that would interact with people in a complex, unprecedented way. They said the result would be so spectacular that people from all over the world would pay any amount of money just to visit the site for a few hours. The construction of Virtual-world began during August of 2046 and by October of 2048, it was completed.

    The first robotic attractions were introduced in 2047. It began simply; people got into a boxing ring and swapped punches with realistic-looking robot fighters. Eventually, the theme park escalated into the sophisticated, inter-connected Powerdrome attraction where tourists could interact with creatures and characters in vast, complex robotic worlds.

     Business was booming. By 2050, people were paying $5000 a day to visit. However, that kind of price couldn’t last forever and eventually the GED had to start running specials. The park eventually gave access to people other than the super-rich when they offered tickets to all those with Executive Status nationwide. Level Four Executives and higher were issued “Green Passes,” which allowed the holder to purchase a five hundred dollar-a-day family ticket to the park. The theme park also opened for international visitors of the same status.

    Due to the terrorist bombings plaguing the mainland, security at the island theme park was extremely tight. The section of wall, which divided the capitol city from the theme park, had been relieved of its Automated Defense Systems after the defenses mistakenly vaporized some tourists in the park.

Guard towers manned by sharpshooters were built on the half-mile section of wall facing Virtual-world. The sharpshooters were armed with machine guns, heat-seeking rocket launchers, and high-powered rifles with scopes. There were no entrances to the capitol city from the theme park and officers were instructed to shoot anyone who got within fifty feet of the wall.

    New Washington Harbor and the Ronald E. Frump Airport remained the only legitimate ways to access the capitol city. A perimeter of police gunboats surrounded the island so no unauthorized ships could dock. The only access to the theme park was a small fleet of ferryboats that went back and forth between the island and the mainland. Each boat had two squads of Federal Police Officers on board. Each visitor had to be cleared by Federal Security before they got on the boat and checked by Federal Security again when they reached the island. So far, they hadn’t had any trouble with terrorists.

********

    Peter ran toward the distant human silhouette as it struggled to its feet. Arriving by the figure’s side, he realized it was his friend, Henry.

    “I’m all done, Peter. I’m all done,” Henry groaned as he leaned on his friend’s shoulder, favoring the leg that wasn’t injured.

    “Henry, what happened to you?”

    “As far as I can tell, they needed a fall guy for the assassination,” Henry said as his face contorted with pain.

    “Who, Henry? Who needed a fall guy?”

    “Someone who doesn’t like Prince.”

    Rayne glanced at his friend’s right hand and was shocked to see him carrying his handheld automatic pistol.

    “Why are you holding that?” Peter asked, shocked.

    “Forget it, Peter. I can’t get rid of it. They grafted it to my skin with a laser scalpel.”

     Peter’s eyes widened when he saw the skin of Henry’s right hand melted into the grip of the gun. His mind reeled with terror.

    “We have to get out of here, Henry!”

    “Too late. Looks like the cavalry have arrived,” Henry said when he saw the flashing blue lights of police cruisers approaching on the horizon.

    “Come on, Henry, let’s go!” Peter shouted as he led his friend toward the nearest alleyway. 

    Peter Rayne helped Henry Johnson walk by letting him lean on his shoulder. As they reached the alleyway, the police cruisers closed in.

    “Get out of here, Peter. If they find you with me, they’ll kill you.”

    “No, you’re coming with me, Henry. Let’s go,” Peter insisted as he forcibly led his friend down the alleyway. Henry pulled away, balancing on his good leg while leaning against the alley wall.

    “They fired this gun at Prince before they grafted it to my hand. The bullets in Prince’s body are going to match the bullets in this gun. There’s no way out of it for me. You have to get out of here.”

    “Hey, if you’re innocent-”

    “You know the way the law works.”

    Rayne was stunned into silence for a moment. He had heard of people being put away for life for crimes that didn’t involve violence.

    “Go, Peter,” Henry said, turning so his other shoulder was leaning against the brick wall. He began hobbling toward the street.

    “I’ll help you, Henry,” Peter said, returning to his friend’s side and helping him along to the sidewalk.

    An anti-grav police cruiser pulled alongside the curb and a spotlight shined in their faces. A short way up the street other cruisers were doing the same to the former parade marchers and spectators.

    “Put your hands on your heads and step into the street,” an amplified voice droned over the car’s loudspeaker.

    “I really think you ought to go now, Peter,” Henry said, backing into the alley so he was shielded from the cruiser’s spotlight. Peter followed suit.

    Henry aimed his gun around the corner at the cruiser and fired. Peter planted himself against the wall as he listened to bullets ricochet off the cruiser’s metal hull. Henry had to duck around the corner as a hail of bullets tore the pavement apart where he had been standing moments before. The automated police-issue M-60 turned the pavement beneath their feet into concrete shrapnel and put holes in the brick wall as if it was made out of cardboard. Henry turned to his friend once more.

    “Go,” Henry said. “Someone has to make it out of here alive so people will know what really happened.”

    Rayne hesitated, but he knew his friend was right.

    “Okay, Henry,” he agreed, reluctantly. He turned and sprinted away as the cruiser opened up with a second barrage.

    Rayne continued running even when he heard the M-60 cease firing and recognized the distinctive firing of his friend’s gun. He glanced back over his shoulder to see a group of armored Federal Police Officers wrestling Henry to the ground. He knew there was nothing he could do for his friend now, so he kept running. Glancing over his shoulder again. he saw police officers chasing him down the alleyway.