The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (34 page)

Inside, Nico made sure he wasn’t being watched, removed his protective glasses and revealed his bruised face. He had the boys’ full attention.

“Listen up, no time to repeat anything, no time for questions. I’m Nico Renaldo, leader of the Vaqueros. The sister of one of you guys was working with us, trying to spring you loose when we got caught. She was brought here while this,” he pointed to his face, “happened to me. But we are gonna break in here and get you out. It’s not going to be a quiet affair so when you hear it, be ready to distract, be ready to fight and toxin point anybody in sight.”

The mention of the Neo-Spartan technique convinced the boys an ally was talking to them. Nico scanned the faces, who nodded at him in understanding.

“Where’s Gabriel?”

“They don’t keep him here. He’s in isolation,” Davies volunteered.

“Is anything easy with that kid?” Nico let slip.

“I guess you do know him,” smiled Davies.

“Where’s isolation?”

“It’s around the corner, you can’t miss it. The entire national guard is in front of that door.”

Nico rounded a corner and immediately spotted his target: a separate area set aside from the rest of the facility with some space around it that made it look like a waiting area. If this were a hospital the place would clearly be marked as the isolation unit. But any resemblance to that environment ended there, because the half a dozen guards posted in front of the door and around it made it look like a maximum security prison cell.

He quickly flashed his ID and commanded, “I need to question him.”

“On whose orders?” asked the guard.

“Who do you think?”

The guard scrutinized Nico, unwilling to give in to his authoritative manner. He spotted the bluish hue under the glasses, “What happened to your face, lieutenant?”

Nico’s retained his composure and went for broke. He lowered the glasses enough to reveal the nasty bruises but not enough for the guard to get a close look at his facial features.

“I questioned Grisner’s orders. You want to do the same?” and he stood as tall as possible, hoping to intimidate the guard even more. It worked. The guard vigorously shook his head and opened the security door to Gabriel’s isolation cell. Nico stepped in and the door was immediately locked behind him.

Inside, he found Gabriel sitting on a cot, leaning against the wall, in not the greatest shape. When he saw the man in the uniform that entered the room, he feigned indifference and defiance, which quickly changed to panic and terror when Nico removed his glasses and Gabriel recognized in his face the abductor who was responsible for his current predicament. He jumped off the cot and attacked Nico with the force his ailing state allowed. Surprisingly enough, he was still strong and Nico had to fend off his attack in earnest. He managed to push Gabriel back on the cot.

“Kid, it’s not what you think,” said Nico.

Gabriel answered with another flurry of kicks and jabs. Nico managed to grab one of his arms and twisted it to the side enough to make it difficult for the kid to hammer him with it.

“Stop it, before we’re all screwed.”

Gabriel glared at him like a wild animal.

“I’m not one of them, I’m a Banger. I’m trying to figure out how to get you and Quinn out.”

But Gabriel sprang on him with another attack.

“I got beaten to a pulp by Grisner for you people, now you’re going to toxin point me?”

This stopped Gabriel in his tracks. “How do you know about that?”

“From your sister. I’m trying to get you out. Now, where is she?”

“She told you about toxin points?” Gabriel was astounded. His astonishment quickly gave way to shock when he realized what that implied, “You’re the Eugenic she fell for?! You, the guy who kidnapped me?! Oh, this is messed up.”

Nico looked away, suddenly finding it hard to deal with his guilt in front of Gabriel.

“Not that I’m looking for excuses but I had no idea… I was just following orders. Rules of the Sanctuary.”

“Rules. Yeah. That’s why I break them.” Gabriel sniggered.

“I’ll tell her when I find her. Now where is she?”

“Grisner’s got her. The sicko has her locked up in his penthouse. Top floor, real tight security. I don’t know what you have in mind, but short of kamikazing your way here with a plane you’re not gonna have much luck.” Gabriel quickly painted a picture Nico didn’t exactly like.

“Well… I’ll plan accordingly. Tomorrow, we are gonna come for you guys. Be ready.” Nico gave him a brief sketch of what might happen when the Vaqueros attacked the Citadel, and knocked on the door to be released before his stay inside became too suspicious.

* * *

It was peculiar heading back to the sports arena by himself. He had promised Gabriel and the boys freedom, and he knew had to win back the Vaqueros. He had lost his guys and if he were going to resurrect their loyalty he’d better resurrect that former version of himself and present that to a pack of people who now felt betrayed.

He limped forward, gradually picking up speed, desperately trying to talk himself into guiding them toward the one thing he’d always steered his people away from: the truth.

He climbed the stairs and people began to stir upon seeing him. Whispers grew into groans and shouts and pretty soon his mere presence had awakened the entire zoo. People gathered and closed in on him. Nico smiled and nodded, but he was met with less than enthusiasm.

“You gotta lotta sand coming here!” shouted somebody, and was followed by a chorus of “Yeah!”

With his hands Nico indicated bring it on, as he nodded agreement. The jeers and jabs grew to a cacophony. Suddenly the crowd parted as Tyra appeared carrying a riding crop, a pair of the Vaqueros’ biggest guys serving as her bodyguards.

“What is the racket out here?” screeched Tyra. “Some wet cur stumbles in and you all turn out to shout at him? How many of you does it require to toss out the trash?”

Nobody moved. Tyra paced across the front row of hulking fighters. “Well, go on! There’s one of him. Are you scared?” She whacked a big guy with her riding crop.

“You haven’t lost your touch, Tyra,” said Nico. “In fact, this looks like a whole new bag of tricks.”

“You’re the tricky one, Nico. And everybody knows it!” she said, and gestured to the gang. She was met with silence. “Well, come on, let’s hear it.” And she repeated, “And everybody knows it.”

A half-hearted refrain of “yeah, tricky” rippled through the crowd.

Tyra carved her way through the crowd to the biggest Vaquero among them. “You!” she said, as she tugged him forward.

“That’s Mike,” said Nico. “How you doin’, Mike?”

“Okay, Nico…”

“Don’t talk to him. Beat him up. Throw him out of here,” bellowed Tyra as she whacked Mike with her riding crop and pushed him hard toward Nico, who caught him and set him upright him.

“Nico, I’m sorry about this, but…” said Big Mike.

“It’s okay. Look, I know you’re mad.”

“Well, yeah, we are. We all are.”

“I know you think I betrayed you,” said Nico.

“You DID betray them,” hollered Tyra. “Throw him out!”

Nico deftly ignored her and raised his voice for everyone to hear him. “I know you’re thinking I screwed up, that I let this girl in and that I listened to her. The truth is I did lie to you.”

“There, enough! Attack!” shrieked Tyra.

Again, nobody moved.

Nico hobbled his way up the stairs and out onto a promontory where he could be heard better. A couple guys helped him get there. Tyra saw this and seethed.

“But you gotta know the rest of the truth. The why of what I did. It’s a much bigger truth that’s been withheld from you. Julius and Grisner… they’ve got us taking these kids to steal their organs to guarantee themselves longer lives.”

“It pays good,” shouted somebody.

“Guys, you gotta look at the big picture. The people who are responsible for all this wreckage and misery are the ones who will benefit by our dirty work. All this time we thought we were rebelling against them here in our Sanctuary, we’ve been suckered into working for them. The fact is, straight up, the kidnappings we’ve been doing have been for the select few. Starting with Grant Hughes and moving through the rest of the self-appointed important, they’re going to fix themselves with Neo-Spartan organs. What about us? Anybody promising us that? Look, I know you might hate her and say our idiot leader listened to a skirt, but the truth is, all these years I was offering you entertainment and escape from the thought of imminent death and she… she’s the only one who offered you real hope. You saw what Quinn did. She gave you life. And now she needs our help. Is there anybody with me?”

One by one the Vaqueros raised their clenched fists in support. Tyra started away. She looked back to see if anyone was following. Nobody was. She knew it was time to look for a new gang.

* * *

A phalanx of Social Defense Force cars led by Grisner’s vehicle pulled up to Julius’s crowded brownstone stoop. Face still burning red from his confrontation with Quinn, Grisner stomped out of the car. A contingent of helmeted men emerged from their vehicles, neuro-blasters at the ready. Grisner pushed past Julius’s bodyguards, who eased away on seeing the back-up forces. Grisner didn’t have to go far as Julius stepped out to greet him.

“We need to talk. I have an assignment for you,” growled Grisner.

“Hold on right there. Since when do you assign Julius? You have a proposition for me, is that how you wish to correct yourself?”

“I want you and your best people to annihilate the Neo-Spartans. Make it look like a couple gangs got into it and it went out of control. I want them gone. Do you understand? Disappeared like so much trash.”

Julius took a moment then snapped his fingers. The bodyguards stepped forward and each fired two shots in the air. The masses of folks retreated in seconds. Julius slowly got to his feet. He moved in close to Grisner.

“How many kids we bring back this time?”

“No kids. Flag on the play. Research team says it’s not gonna work.”

Julius looked hard at his old business associate. He didn’t know what was motivating this error in judgment, but there was no way he was going along with it.

“Julius declines the invitation to destroy the Neo-Spartans,” said Julius.

“You what?!” Grisner threw a look to his security force chief, and the forces rose together, weapons cocked.

Julius’s face darkened. He nodded at a bodyguard. From the rooftops a much larger legion of Julius’s people emerged and cocked their weapons toward Grisner and company.

“I believe what we got here is what they used to call a Mexican stand-off,” said Julius.

Grisner looked him up and down, grunted and headed down the stoop. He climbed in his vehicle and took off like a rocket followed closely by the security vehicles.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Nico had pulled off his share of operations but they’d usually involved achieving some off-the-wall stunt: stealing enough cars and surfboards for the annual ride-the-wake contest in the flooded streets, locating a hot air balloon to go bungee jumping from it. Kid stuff. What lay ahead of him now was both far more important and far more challenging.

He and a contingent of twenty of Vaqueros followed the path he’d learned from Marisol the previous day toward the rusty access door. Nico tried to force from his mind a poem he’d memorized long ago, “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred…” He vowed to find lighter reading material if they survived this action. Besides, it wasn’t relevant, they weren’t stupidly, however valiantly, riding into the hands of a far greater force. No, Nico and the Vaqueros had a good plan, and they had bartered for, bought, and borrowed every weapon they could find in the Sanctuary.

Elsewhere, that plan unfolded in conjunction with Nico and his team. At the tunnel that Quinn had discovered when she first uncovered the Citadel’s whereabouts, a familiar black van squealed through a U-turn, and through the clouds of dust lingering in the air behind it could be glimpsed two unconscious Social Defense Force guards, one of them down to his underwear, his uniform now worn by the driver of the van: a large, blond, spectacularly tattooed Vaquero named Shad. Shad flashed a purloined ID card bearing a holographic thumb-print at the metal grating that had captured Quinn’s thigh and wounded her. The grating opened and Shad shot the van down the long dark tunnel.

More aspects of the plan rolled out at the building next door to the factory that disguised the Citadel. Two Vaqueros rode their scrambler motorcycles up five stories of stairs to the roof level. There, under the supervision of Vaquero lieutenant Chainmail, four more Vaqueros were ready with a pair of four by eight pieces of plywood, hammers and nails. They went about laying the plywood against the air vents atop the building and securing them in place.