Vices

  Chapter 20

  The next two days were spent tirelessly planning for the infiltration into Guerra’s faction. I got the chance to meet some of the incredible people who are a part of this rebellious little family, and was pleasantly surprised to see how accepting they were. Also, I got to know Kael better; he’s a little less of a mystery now, but not completely.

  We’ve been attempting to get the complete blueprints of Guerra’s house, but our hacker is having trouble breaking through the government’s firewall without setting an alarm off. Apparently they’re quite wary of hackers getting into their mainframe, so in turn their firewall is a bit more complex than our hacker is used to dealing with.

  Edan, the doctor and genius of the whole shebang, tries to dumb down the whole problem with their firewall for me. I never was really great with computers.

  “Aidan, it’s quite simply really. Just image a huge castle-- their mainframe, and then imagine the wall around their castle-- their firewall,” he says as he pulls his fingers through his brown-turned-gray hair. His tone of voice is proper, like that of a gentleman. “Normal castle walls-- firewalls I mean-- have a moat with a couple of crocodiles in it, but this wall is more along the lines of, hmm... a titanium wall ascending a thousand feet, with fifty moats and a hundred thousand crocodiles.”

  A smirk creeps across his face in sync with a bewildered one across mine.

  “Get it?”

  “Uh, yeah I guess so,” I say.

  Edan has a deep voice that he keeps at a low level at all times. He’s very straightforward and comes off being arrogant at times, but his will is good. He’s about average height and average weight, but he is fit. Edan seems like the type of guy who could do just about anything with as little effort as possible. He’s the clever one of the bunch.

  “Ah, it’s really not all that important really, you don’t need to worry about it-- Kane is the greatest hacker that a misfit bunch of rebels could ever hope for.”

  Kane is their all-around-skilled type of guy. He’s their go-to guy for fixing things, hacking into things, breaking locks, and when they need it done, breaking skulls. He’s almost always in the great room when he’s not busy doing something; he’s usually situated on one of the many brown leather couches, snoozing until he’s needed again.

  He’s rather tall, not all that muscular, but he’s as swift as lightning when called to do something in a hurry, striking with accuracy and speed all at once. All you’d have to do is blink and he’d be on the other side of the building. I have been told by a couple of people that his agility is a byproduct of inhaling the noxious fumes the government dispersed to kill off stragglers, most likely the same contaminator that caused my fast reflexes.

  Kane is similar to Kael in that he is always ready to help and more than glad to go out of his way to do things for others. Kane is also always ready to chat when he’s not too busy; he’s genuinely a very nice man. Those blue-gray eyes of his always seem to sparkle when you call his name.

  But Kael is a whole other story; he seems to be the type who doesn’t get close to anyone. I think he takes his job as the leader quite seriously; he’s nearly always helping someone or planning for how the group is going to live through the next month. Whenever he walks through the great room or kitchen, he’s always greeted fervently by the other inhabitants; everyone does really seem to love him here.

  If I had to peg why he’s so interested in his work, I’d say he’s trying to forget something-- or someone. Getting sucked into your work is a great way to lose track of time and any stray memories you’d rather not be keeping.

  My courage isn’t pumped up to its full capacity, so I really haven’t questioned him on it yet. I’m pretty sure that I’d actually have to befriend him before I can ask him that deep of a question. He doesn’t seem like a very open guy.

  Also, if you do get in Kael’s way, he can really be rather intimidating; when he’s focused he is completely focused. I’d say it’s somewhat similar to standing on railway tracks when the train is coming straight towards you-- it takes a miracle to stop it.

  For a while I thought that Kael and Kane were cousins or something, but it turns out that they became friends when they were deported out of the United Kingdom. Kane’s explanation really helped me understand why there were so many foreigners here.

  “The USA became the place to send your people if you needed them done with in large quantities, so when the human life quota in the UK was reached, the rest of us were sent over to the US to be disposed of. So that rather unpleasant boat ride over to New York was where Kael and I met. He helped me and I helped him,” says Kane as he wipes a dramatic tear from his eye.

  “Then we decided we’d rather be livin’ than dead, so we busted out and formed this little group. We had been on the way to Utah or something, so when we escaped, we found ourselves in the Midwest.

  “It was completely by chance that we found this place. It was also completely by chance that we came across Devlin, Kael’s cousin, on the way. Scotsmen got to stick together, eh?” He says with a chuckle. “We had figured that whoever was living here was actually living, but it turns out he had just been rotting in this grand house alone. He had paid off the government to be left alone, so they don’t pay much attention to us ‘cause of that,” explained Kane.

  That was one of the other things that I liked about Kane-- the fact that he was always there to answer any of your questions.

  “The bloke was, quite literally, rotting when we found him, by the way,” Kane said with a laugh.

  After I say my goodbyes to Edan, I think back to Kane’s sarcasm and jokes and smile to myself as I walk down to the kitchen. Kane is always the one brightening up situations when somebody needs to. I jar myself from my thoughts and remember the task at hand. Kael had sent me down this way to find Pete, who was needed for some old files or something of the sort.

  As my feet tread lightly on the ebony staircase, I spy Os lying on one of the leather couches. I’m not sure if I could even look Os in the eye after having watched Kael drill into him so hard the other day, but he acts as if nothing happened.

  “Hey Aidan,” Os says with a smile.

  “Hey Os, how ya feeling?”

  “Much better after getting cleaned up and stitched up by Edan-- he’s a miracle worker, that man,” he answers with a half smirk.

  “Well, that’s really good to hear,” I say as my eyes trace the cut in the wood floor. “Nobody would want you to go dying on us.”

  “Yeah, nobody other than Kael,” Os says.

  A throbbing silence encompasses the room as Kael walks in, with such perfect timing. He came through the door in the corner that leads into the training room; the sweat on his brow pays testament to his being there.

  Kael doesn’t even look at Os, but makes eye contact with me, speculating on what Os has just said. I scramble to come up with a lie to hide Os’ poor timing.

  “Yeah, Kael is always helping somebody,” I stammer.

  The man who had been sitting near Os gets up and trots off so he doesn’t have to get stuck in between Os and Kael.

  Kael’s gaze burns into me and I can tell that I probably have a slightly terrified look on my face. I never was all that good at hiding my emotions.

  Kael looks rather skeptical, but he moves toward me and the stairs, shrugging off the situation and leaving it in the dust.

  “Have yeh found Pete yet, love?”

  “Uh, no. I was just on my way to go look for him actually,” I confess.

  “A’right,” he says as he pats me on the back. Keep in mind, the pat wasn’t like a “pat your dog” sort of pat, it was more of an, “I don’t know what to do to show my thanks so I’m patting you” sort of pat. He shrugs off and walks up the huge staircase, never looking back.

  “Looks like Kael has made you into his faithful little lap dog, Aidan. I thought you were the type who didn’t take kindly to people who liked bossing other people around,” Os retorts. His s
udden distaste in me is almost shocking; his blatant rudeness nearly knocks me off balance.

  “No, I’m not. I’m just trying to help out,” I say, attempting to hide my disgust.

  I walk out of the room without another word, thrown off by how random that was. Os has been a nice guy to me and then all of a sudden, even after I save his skin, he criticizes me. This is certainly a side of Os I haven’t seen before, and to be honest, it’s a bit troubling.

  I find Pete, who’s sitting on the marble counter in the kitchen licking cookie dough off a spoon.

  “Hey, Kael needs some files. He said you’d know what I was talking about,” I say.

  Pete’s mouth is ajar mid-lick and he looks around, confused, until he remembers.

  “Oh yeah, I’ve got ‘um here,” he says as he wipes his hands off on the nearest towel and brings out a small folder. “Are you our courier for the day? Or ya want me to take ‘um up there myself?”

  “Yeah—er, no. I can take it up there,” I answer. “I’ve got nothing else to do currently.”

  “Thanks darlin’!”

  After receiving a spoonful of cookie dough and the folder, I make my way out of the kitchen and into the great room, somewhat wary of seeing Os again. But my concerns are quickly put to rest when I see no sign of Os and I let out a heavy sigh.

  “You trying to avoid somebody, girlie?”

  I nearly jump out of skin as I turn to the voice and see Edan sitting on the arm of one of the couches, looking rather amused at my startled reaction.

  “Eh, somewhat,” I admit as I look to him, hoping he won’t question me anymore.

  According to everyone (Kane, Gent, and Tully), Edan is an Australian who was taken from his family due to his prowess in the field of medicine, and forced to work for the government to create one of the many toxins that were shot throughout the atmosphere during the cleansing. But instead of cooperating and working for them until they decided to kill him off, he escaped and ended up with Kane and Kael. He did admit that he made a prototype for one of the toxins, but he made sure that his toxin had no perverse side effects. In fact, he jokes that his toxin may be the cause of all of the positive mutations on people.

  “Alright, fair enough, are you headed back up to the meeting room?”

  “Yeah, I got the files from Pete for Kael,” I reply.

  “Ah, well then I’ll be coming with you. Apparently Kane made a breakthrough with the firewall.”

  We both hurry up the staircase and take a right on the landing, and then a left into a small meeting room filled with computers and monitors. Kael is leaning over Kane, looking at a computer monitor with some serious concern on his face.

  “Any success? I heard a couple of the younger blokes talking about a breakthrough,” says Edan.

  “We’re going to be able to get in, as hard as it may be,” says Kane as he looks over at Edan with a rather skeptical look on his face.

  “Here are the files from P-,” I begin to say before Kane and Kael both scramble to look at the folder’s contents.

  After some difficulties in attempting to open the folder, Kael just tears it open. They spread the few sheets out on the table and begin examining the information they’ve been given. It looks to be blueprints and codes.

  “So we will be able to sneak in through the tunnels underneath,” Kane admits. He points to the tunnel in the blueprint of the lower levels of the building.

  “Aye, we will, let’s just hope there isn’t anybody there guarding it,” says Kael.

  I bring myself closer to the table and take a closer look at their sheet of interest. I notice something rather unsettling written at the top of the sheet of paper.

  Town Hall Schematics.

  Wow, so we’re breaking into an old city hall. I thought we were breaking into Guerra’s house, but apparently he took up fort at the epicenter of the city. How cliché. I feel my facial expression change into a look of shock and I look up to see the rest of them looking at me. Kane and Edan look rather amused (what else is new?) and Kael just looks, well, unamused.

  “Problem, love?” asks Kael.

  “Uh no-- just surprised about where we’ll be breaking into,” I admit. I scan the other blueprints, hoping that the layout of the building will be easy to navigate through, but from the looks of it, it won’t be a straightforward trek to find Taylor.

  “It shouldn’t be all that hard, we’ve done worse,” Kael says with a smirk.

  “So Guerra was just given this place to do his bidding or what?” I ask.

  “The Groundbreaker divvyed up the states and gave them control over the three sections he created,” Edan explains. “Guerra got the middle and his other two commanders got the adjacent sides. It just so happens that Guerra has a soft spot for the architecture of the town hall here, so he made it his home base.”

  “He also liked the fact that the basement was so incredibly large and that he could store away all of his favorite criminals there for his own personal use,” chimes in Kane. “You know, like prod ‘em with sticks and laugh as they starve to death.”

  The last comment grants Kane a rather nasty glare from Kael, who clearly doesn’t like the sound of Taylor getting prodded with sticks.

  After looking back down at the blueprints for a moment, Kael looks back up at the three of us with a rather solemn look on his face.

  “We’ve got to do this. We leave at midnight.”