Chapter 32
As Blake and Ox entered the main floor, Sophie came to meet them. She wasn’t crying, but her face was red and puffy. She maintained her composure and smiled at Blake, not acknowledging Ox. “Special Agent Blake, welcome back.”
“Thank you, Sophie. What do you want me to do with him?” Blake shook his cuffs, Ox winced as they cut off his circulation even more.
“Take this scum to the holding cells. The Secretary is coming down to see him before he’s sent away.”
“Where are they taking me?” Ox spoke in a defiant voice but it didn’t hold any weight.
“Some place I can’t pronounce, and don’t care about. Jules Oricks, as far as this country is concerned, you no longer exist.” Sophie said the last sentence with a satisfaction that couldn’t be hidden.
Blake returned from the lower level to the main floor and headed towards Ox’s office. Sophie was now sitting behind the desk, rubbing the polished marble edging.
“It suits you.”
“Really, I thought I was more of a maple person.”
“Perhaps you should take it up with the Sec.”
“I already have. He is having me instated as interim Chief at Osiris.”
“Well congratulations then, sir.”
“You know, Blake. I need a solid second in command. You’ve shown you are of strong character and will.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment, Sophie. But, for now I’m going to take a leave of absence. I have some friends that need help with a few special projects.”
“I hope they aren’t felon’s Blake. I’d hate to have to track you down.” She gave a slight smile and wink, then handed him an envelope with the Presidential seal on the back.
“Oh don’t worry, Sophie.” Blake got up from his chair and shook her hand. “I’ll find you long before you need to find me.” He turned and left the office, taking one last look around the main floor as he left. He knew he wouldn’t be back.
The drive to the house was slow, he didn’t see the point in rushing anymore. He started going through his mind all of the tasks he had to get done. First and foremost, was finding out what the rest of the team had planned. He could make a difference to the cities, help clean them up. Until recently that was inexorably linked to working on the Force, but he had seen things in the last while that showed there were more effective ways of getting things done.
Back at the house, Jack was reflecting on what his new found freedom meant. It wasn’t long since the last time he was free, but was he really free? His world had become a pointless rotation of running jobs, drinking and taking drugs. He had been lost, but couldn’t peer through the fog to see it. Hell, he didn’t even have a real house to go back to, and the few crappy possessions in the basement room he rented weren’t worth the trip back to the slums to collect.
Looking around, he saw a nice home, two people he felt he could actually trust, and hopefully a third one coming that he could learn to. They were more a scrambled group of loosely tied acquaintances than a family, but Jack liked it that way.
One thing that wasn’t scrambled was how he felt about Sin. He knew he loved her, but no longer wanted to be her lover. He would do anything he could to protect her though. She had now twice given him his life back, and that would be a debt not easily repaid.
“You OK there slugger?”
“Huh, what was that, Sin?”
“Jesus, Jack, I was just saying to Ping how we’d go back to Jay’s and get everything we could for Ping. Where were you?”
“Ahh, nowhere important.” Jack looked across the table to Ping, who still had red eyes. “I am sorry about your uncle, Ping. If there was anything I could have done to get to him, I would have.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it, man. Jay lived in a world where he could have been taken any day. Besides, I saw the whole battle play out, you stayed there for longer than most would have.”
Jack appreciated the sentiment, but it didn’t make him feel any better. This was the part of combat that he always hated, the come-down. It was worse than a night on the turps.
“Anyone heard from Blake,” Cindy added.
“Not for a few hours. We split when we left the Third Quadrant, I had to take the back roads back, not everyone knew I was cleared.”
“They will now.” A voice came from behind.
“Dammit, I was hoping you’d realise I was an arsehole and not come back.”
“Jack, I know you’re an arsehole, but I’m getting used to it.” He placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and handed him the envelope.
Jack didn’t open it, he just placed it on the table, looking at the others. He knew what it was, it was a pardon, he had already been told he was getting it. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to open it, but it was probably down to the idea that once their mission was done, there was no reason for them to stay together.
“Aren’t you going to open it, hun?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On where we’re going from here. I mean, I don’t really have anywhere else I want to go. I hadn’t really thought about it till now, but the mission is done, game over.”
Blake sat across the table from Jack, next to Cindy. “Well I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think the job is anywhere near done. There are still some nut jobs out there on the hill, and the force can’t touch them.”
“But we can,” Ping added. “In fact, I owe those buggers a whole world of pain.”
Everyone sat still looking across at each other. Jack compared it to that moment when he kissed his first girl. There was a silence and he thought he’d just made the biggest dick in the world of himself. But the moment then passed on to better things. As it was about to now.
“Well boys, let’s bring it to them then.” Cindy smiled, leaned back in her chair and made a smoking gun gesture with her hand.
So this is it, thought Jack. Out of all the places in the world he figured he might be this month, sitting around a table with three other misfits, about to plan an assault on some of the most powerful people in the country wasn’t even at the bottom of the bottom list. But so be it.
Jack got up from the table and walked down the hall, the lights illuminating as he walked through. Walking down the stairs, he was looking at the surroundings and observing everything in slow motion. He was feeling more at ease now than he had in a long time. He was getting his head back into combat preparation mode, making the most of the lull, but getting ready for the conflict.
As he walked into the workshop, he focussed on the Biotronics decoder in the corner. What the hell were they going to do with it? The Government couldn’t protect it if their lives depended on it, they already proved that. They obviously weren’t going to sell it. I mean, they could, but he seemed to be developing a conscience again. That left one option, use it.
“What should we do with it, Jack?” Blake’s voice from behind startled him a little, but he didn’t show it.
“You’re the law-man, Blake, you tell me.”
“I’m not a law-man anymore, Jack. In fact I have a feeling I’m going to become quite the opposite.”
“We could give it to the Feds.”
“We could. But do you really think they’re going to use it for anything good. Or even be able to hold on to it.”
“It may become a moot point anyway.” Ping entered the room. “Loach is still out there, and although he doesn’t have this machine, he helped build it. He will be building another already I assume. And if he’s in with the Alphas, resources will be of no concern.”
“It’s settled then. Until we have taken down the Alphas, we keep the tech, and use it to aid our cause.”
“Doesn’t sound overly noble, Jack.” Cindy was now standing beside the other three.
“Who gives a toss about noble, Sin. We’ll need every edge we can against those arseholes.”
“Hey, you had me at ‘wh
o gives a toss’, soldier.”
One thing they all knew, they could have all the tech in the world, but in the end it was going to come down to their skill, and a truck load of hand-outs from lady luck.
Still to come…
As the hills gave way to the open highway below, Blake opened the throttle on the Beast. Although it was an ugly bastard, and twice the mass of most vehicles on the road, it handled like a dream. Blake put it down to the work Ping and Cindy had been pumping in to get it up to scratch. He took a corner far too fast and got a bit twisted up on the controls. Looking over at Jack he could see him grip his side-bar a little.
His comm flashed up, it was Sophie. “Blake, we need to talk.”
“So talk Sophie, what’s on your mind?”
“When you are in private, Blake.”
Blake looked over at Jack. “No dice honey. Jack is part of our team, what you can say to me, you can say to him. I’d only tell him anyway.”
“Very well then.” There was a slight anger in her voice, but was faintly covered. “As you know, Osiris isn’t running by the standard rules. Now, we have Oversight, which keeps a bit of a tab on us, but they’re politicians, they don’t want their hands too dirty.”
“So what does this mean to us?” Blake sensed he was about to get shafted, but felt he was owed a break by Karma. Probably him more than Jack, that is.
“It means, Blake, that I want your lot on our side.”
Blake looked over to Jack, who had his eyebrows raised so high he looked like a circus clown. Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Why us, Sophie?”
“A few reasons. You have some good contacts in the under-world, and no-one has tied you to us as far as we know. Also, there are some jobs we may need doing that even Osiris won’t touch. You would be compensated, of course.”
“Who says you don’t just set us up to get the Biotronics as soon as you can.”
“Blake, I could have already done that. Truth is, while it’s with you, I know it’s safe. Give me a reason to doubt that trust, and I’ll squeeze your nuts so hard they’ll pop.”
There was a silence for a moment. Most of it was both Jack and Blake imagining their good bits being made into chopped-liver. “I’ll talk to the team. There will be terms.”
“On our end too, Blake. Just look after that tech. Every man and his dog wants it, and you can bet they’re already starting to develop systems from scratch.” Sophie cut her comm.
“So, what do you think, Jack?”
“I think she’s a politician herself, but I like her voice.”
“But do you trust her voice?”
“I don’t trust much about women these days. How are the new enhancements on the Beast treating you?”
“Great, the sensors Ping implanted in me don’t hurt anymore, and the vehicle is responding to some of my thought-input already.”
“Good, now don’t hit the corners too hard, I’m stuffed; taking a nap.”
With that, Jack rolled his head over and was asleep in an instant. A few minutes later he heard a grumbling noise from beside him. He looked over with groggy eyes to see Blake trying to speak. Looking down, he could see him trying to pull his hands from the wheel. Jack grabbed one and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge.
He let go, and saw an array of thin tendons stretching from the wheel onto Blake’s hands. Looking up, Blake was wide eyed and panicked. He managed to stomp on the brake, and the Beast slammed to a halt.
Jack looked at his eyes and could see them starting to glaze over, as the tendons stretched up Blake’s arms. Jack started hitting the door, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. He hit the window area hard, the pain was instant, he awoke startled.
Blake swerved across the road, and back into his lane. “What the hell, Jack!” he shouted.
Jack was puffing hard. “Sorry man. Bad dream.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack, I nearly turned us into road-kill. What was that about?’
“Never mind. Just a screwed up dream. I need some downtime.”
“Yeah, well we ain’t gonna get much time for that, sunshine. Sophie already has a job for us. We need to have a briefing with Sin and Ping, see if we’re in.”
“Doesn’t mess around, does she?”
“Not part of Sophie’s M.O., I’m afraid.”
As they approached the brow of the hill, Jack could see the setting sun slowly creep over to greet them. He suddenly felt like he was a character in an old-fashioned Western, riding off into the sunset with his trusty sidekick. He imagined Blake with a head of feathers. It didn’t work.