The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (9 page)

              His demeanor changed in an instant, the nasty cop replaced by a smitten boy, composure unsure. He moved a hand toward her face slowly, gently rubbing away the streak of dirt Quinn had deposited there.

              “What brings a girl like you out here, doing manual labor on a farm?”

              Quinn was so undone she could hardly inhale; she stood frozen as Grisner resumed his usual form and drifted back to his men.

              “Bring in the truck,” said Grisner. “Take it all. Every stalk of every kind. Leave it at the depot and vacuum seal it so that the poisons don’t get out. We’ll burn it tomorrow.”

              “No, please, don’t do that,” Quinn pleaded.

              Kilbert appeared at Quinn’s side, sensing her whirling out of orbit. He shook his head and led her away from Grisner.

              “Why did he act like that? What was all that?” she asked.

              A flicker of something dashed across Kilbert’s face before he said: “There’s no telling with a man like that.”

              “Why do we put up with this?”

              “One thing we learned from your father’s death is that we don’t want an open confrontation with John Grisner. He’s a multi-headed dragon,” said Kilbert.

              Quinn swallowed as she helplessly watched Grisner commanding his people. The crops were hauled to a truck and carted away.

* * *

              Gabriel’s long strides closed the gap between him and his pals. That’s what he loved about this the most—it was so perilous and dangerous, in need of such focus that it emptied his head of anything but itself. The guys were exploring an erstwhile multi-level department store. Dead escalators and partial walls made for great parkour. Gabriel climbed to the top of an elevator shaft and dropped down into it. He landed on his feet a floor below on a support beam, but it gave way under his weight so he whirled and grabbed onto the elevator cable that ran from roof to basement and went for a ride, whooping wildly as he plummeted downwards. Through the dilapidated walls, he spotted something that made no sense: a girl, skin-tight leather hugging her body, moving across an open floor toward a couple of the guys.

              Gabriel hit the bottom, then dashed for a dusty escalator. He scrambled upstairs to the second floor to find leather girl and his pals chatting. Several guys Gabriel didn’t know were walking up behind his guys. Maybe more recruits, thought Gabriel. What the heck, the more the merrier, and if they’d brought her—well, props to them.

              “Hey, what’s up?” shouted Gabriel as he catapulted off the escalator. Leather girl Tyra whirled toward him with a smile that turned him inside out. He stood there frozen, a silly grin on his face. She took a few steps toward him. She was overpowering; it was all he could to keep from backing up.

              “Hey, hot-stuff. You one of these parkour nuts?” she whispered as she circled him.

              “I am
the
parkour nut,” he said with a cocky grin. Maybe this was his lucky day. He’d spent the night out, fed himself, found his guys. This is what she was seeing in him.

              “Oh, that’s excellent.” She came closer and ran her black phoenix-flamed nails under his chin. “Maybe you could show me how…?” and she leaned in and breathed on his neck. It was hot. She looked up into his face… and grinned.

              Gabriel tried to work out what that meant but suddenly Tyra whistled, loud and sharp. Nico appeared in Gabriel’s peripheral vision. Gabriel turned toward him—and for the first time his defensive reflex flickered to life. Nico marched toward him with two more Vaqueros. Gabriel turned back to Tyra as if she might explain what their intentions were, but she just looked at him, laughed, and shook her head. Finally, Gabriel heard a voice within. “Run,” it said. “Run!”

              Gabriel glanced at his Neo-Spartan as Nico’s posse tightened the ring around them. In an instant, they scattered to the winds. Gabriel flew up the broken escalator like Mercury.

              Nico glared at Tyra, “
Hijole
, you had to diss him? Laugh in his face?”

              “I gave that nimrod all I could.”

“That’s your job. You lure, we trap. Ai, Tyra,” growled Nico.

              “Hey, he’s here, ain’t he? Anyway he was. So, trap.”

              Nico and the Vaqueros headed for their scramblers parked just out of sight. Their engines roared to life. Nico gestured for a squad of guys to pursue Gabriel’s buddies, while Nico’s group took off up the escalators after Gabriel.

              A couple flights above, Gabriel heard the machines come to life and he poured it on, blasting out onto the rooftop. Nico and bikers pursued like cruise missiles and were roof-side in seconds. Gabriel tried to run but they herded him to a corner. Or so they thought. He dashed past, looking for an angle.

              “Forget it, kid, you’re ours. Don’t get hurt now,” Nico said calmly.

              But Gabriel darted around like a fly in a jar until he saw a way out—a roof lower than where they were but a good twenty-five feet beyond. Nico followed his gaze.

              “Kid, don’t even think it.”

              But Gabriel was off like a bullet, shooting past Nico’s herders and out across the open air. Nico and his guys rode to the edge on time to see Gabriel land with a thud on the neighboring roof. Gabriel arose, got to his feet with a limp.

              “Damn… color me impressed.” He produced a cell phone and walked to another edge of the roof. He looked below to the wicked black van that had captured the Neo-Spartan at the amusement park.

              “This one’s all yours,” said Nico.

              Armoire man emerged from the van as two more Neo-Spartan parkourians were delivered.

              Nico looked over again as Gabriel desperately sought a way out. But between the limp and nothing available to parkour to, he was simply a hobbled boy. The door to the roof to which Gabriel had jumped exploded open and he was suddenly swarmed by Nico’s Vaqueros. Gabriel cried out, but nobody listened. Nobody cared who he was. The Vaquero tried to gather him up and shove him through the door, but Gabriel fought like a wildcat being stuffed into a suitcase, while the Vaqueros laughed and scoffed at his attempts at freedom. But nothing made him quit. He became a hurricane of elbows, fists, and kicks, trying to apply the martial arts he’d worked so hard at, but he was simply outnumbered. The Vaqueros winced at the flying limbs. No longer laughing, they held him down and hit back hard.

              Dude, man, you really screwed up, thought Gabriel. But somebody clubbed him hard and he fell mercifully unconscious. No more second guessing, no more thinking.

* * *

              Grisner slid into the truck into which he’d instructed the Neo-Spartans’ seized organic foods be loaded. He drove the truck away from the depot where it had been left, and in a short time arrived at his digs. Grisner went to the truck’s loading bay and took out the four large garbage bags of foods. He carried them inside.

              With dedicated skill and delicacy, Grisner went about taking care of the newly picked crops. He wrapped the chard, stored the corn, treating and putting the baby onions in jars. Grisner knew the value of organic food. For years he’d made himself into a hybrid, born Eugenic but eating non-manipulated food. It was what made him strong, he made no bones about it.

              But the day’s events had stirred him up, there was no denying it. He poured himself a stiff drink, chugged it back and paced like a caged animal. He riffled through a drawer and pulled out an old plastic digital device, its viewing screen yellowed and broken. He punched a button. Nothing. He shook it and a picture appeared. A young woman in her early twenties with a remarkable resemblance to Quinn. A thousand thoughts filled his head. He lowered the viewer and threw it across the room, smashing it into an equal number of pieces.

CHAPTER TEN

              Quinn tried to calm her nerves by telling herself that Gabriel had spent the night out plenty of times. He was fourteen; it was good for him to get a sense of independence. A sense of life without her… but it wasn’t working. By ten in the morning she’d cleaned the little dwelling they shared a dozen times, and had worn a hole in the all-too-clean floor from pacing. A sound at the door and she raced to it, her fear replaced by fury.

              “Gabriel, I can’t even say aloud what I’m about to do to you!” she bellowed. It hadn’t been Gabriel though, but another kid, younger, shrinking at Quinn towering over him red-faced. Quinn looked past him and tried to recover. “What is it?”

              “Mr. Kilbert says they need to see you. He says it’s important.”

              The blood drained from Quinn’s face but she corralled her strength and stormed past the shaking boy. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” The boy clicked closed the door she’d left open.

              Quinn marched into the Neo-Spartan meeting hall, an old wood-frame church. She looked at the long faces all around. Whatever had happened, it was even worse than she had thought. She surveyed the room. Three young Neo-Spartan warriors, about twenty, eyed her, muscles rippling, noses in the air. One of them cracked a joke and the others laughed and looked at her. Quinn pretended not to notice. And suddenly she spotted him—Gabriel’s parkouring pal Lucas, face dirty, arms and hands bathed in blood and being tended to by a woman with a first-aid kit. Quinn marched across and tugged him to her.

              “Tell me,” she hissed.

              “Everybody knows,” he said.

              “That’s everybody. Tell me!” she shouted.

              Face red, tears welling, Lucas managed to blurt out, “Somebody took him.”

              “Took him. Right. While you were playing? Goofing around climbing? And you what? You helped him, you tried to fight them off? Or you ran away. Like a baby?”

              The woman doing first-aid touched Quinn’s arm, “Quinn, please…”

              “No, I want to know. I have the right.”

              Lucas hung his head, gasping, “We did, we tried to fight. But there were just too many of them. It wasn’t just Gabriel they got. There was Jake and Dave too.”

By now everybody in the room was watching Quinn’s meltdown.

              “How many times did I tell you idiots not to mess around in every broken building in the city?” she said, her voice quavering.

              One of the three Neo-Spartan warrior boys eased his way over, “Quinn, cool your jets. If Luke hadn’t fought his way free we wouldn’t know at all.”

              “At least this way we have a lead,” said the second warrior boy.

              “They were Bangers. On motorcycles. All tattoos and piercings,” said the first. “There was a black van too.”

              “And that girl. The one in leather. It all happened because of her…” moaned Lucas.

              Quinn tried to calm herself as the information filtered past her rage. Why would Bangers kidnap her brother? What sense did that make?

              “Where’s Kilbert?” she asked, whirling and looking for him.

              One of the warrior boys sneered at her, “Where do you think? They’re having a parlay. Trying to figure out which of us oughta go after him.”

              Quinn glanced up at the raised choir area where the Elders were meeting. She started in that direction, but the warrior kid grabbed her arm. “You can’t just waltz in there,” he scolded.

              “So maybe I’ll foxtrot.” She shook him off and moved on.

              “Must run in the family,” he stewed.

              Quinn climbed the stairs and stopped behind the tattered screen that separated the Elders from the rest of the on-edge clan. She found a spot from where she could see in, but remain hidden from view. A stressed-out Kilbert sat among the other second-generation founding fathers; the carriers of the torch lit by their fathers—the decision makers, appointed for life by daring deed or by brilliant notion, but more often than not by right of birth, a primal, deep-rooted concept within the Neo-Spartan community. Nothing spoke more loudly or clearly than the value of family. The Elders was a group designed to guide the clan through the ever-changing landscape they inhabited. Quinn leaned in and listened closely.

              “Look, Quinn and Gabriel are simply not what we’d hoped for…” It was the oldest of the lot, the most respected and feared. A single wizened eye looked out at the world, the other one lost in some fight with the authorities, a common punishment for those who dared question openly the powers that be. “As elegant as it would be if one of them were capable of living up to Declan’s bloodline, there is nothing in their behavior to suggest they’ll ever hack it.”