World War 97 Part 2 (World War 97 Serial)

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Author’s Note

  COPYRIGHT

  Book Description

  Jordi set out to find the truth—and discovered the unthinkable. President Darius Roberts, his own brother, was a member of the terrorist organization Celeste. After Darius’s death, Jordi discovers a holographic message left by Darius, urging Jordi to join Celeste.

  He has to decide between loyalty to his country and love of his family. When he tries to do the right thing, he finds that the two people now in charge of the American Conference, Chief of Staff Sam Burnett and Bureau Director Mari Larsen, have their own agendas, which seem to have nothing to do with the good of the people.

  All he really wants to do is drink and forget, but first, he has to let the American people know the truth—before Burnett and Larsen can bury it. As the lies unravel one after another, Jordi finds he can no longer trust anything he believes or anyone he knows.

  Part 2 of a 5-part serial. Each part is around sixty pages long.

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  Chapter 1

  Christina climbed down the metal rungs into the maintenance shaft. I waited until she was halfway down then followed. Neither of us had said anything since leaving the train. My mind was still in so much turmoil that I couldn’t get my thoughts straight. On one hand, everything pointed toward the message from Darius being genuine; on the other hand, it made zero sense. He couldn’t be part of Celeste. He just couldn’t.

  At the bottom of the shaft, Christina poked her head into the vent, about to go back through.

  “Wait.” I stopped her. “We need to decide what to do.”

  Christina turned to face me, and the light of her headlamp shone into my face. “What do you mean?” She took a step toward me. “You can’t plan to hide what we found. Are you on his side?”

  “No, of course not. I certainly don’t want to protect Celeste—no one hates them more than I do.” I just realized that Darius hadn’t addressed Celeste causing my accident in his message. Perhaps my brother had been involved in that somehow.

  I had tripped on the rocks several times on the way back from the train, and I now rubbed at the cuts on my hands, wanting to feel pain. My legs had threatened to buckle with every step, so I was only surprised I hadn’t fallen more. “We don’t know that what Darius said is true. What if he was forced to say the things he did? What if… it just doesn’t make any sense. We can’t ruin Darius’s reputation until we’re sure.”

  “Come on, Jordi. Don’t kid yourself,” Christina said. “We both saw the same hologram. I’m as shocked as you, but there’s no way that wasn’t real. America is surrounded by our enemies outside; we can’t allow ourselves to be blindsided by the enemy within right now. This is not something we can keep quiet about.”

  “Let’s just wait until we figure everything out. We need to be sure that the holographic message wasn’t faked or that Darius wasn’t forced in some way. He’s family. He deserves a little time, at least. I owe him that much.” Darius had wanted me to find the message alone. He had probably expected me to hide what I learned.

  “I can’t believe you’re even asking this. Come on.” Christina reached down and pulled herself through the vent.

  “Is that a yes?” I wasn’t even sure what answer I wanted. I had no intention of protecting a terrorist. And I still hadn’t figured out how the message could have been faked. I just need more time to think.

  Christina popped out the other side, and I crouched, stuck my head into the vent, and started after her. Once I was inside and felt a squeeze around my shoulders, I remembered getting stuck on the way in. I couldn’t waste time on stupid shit like getting stuck, though. I pushed hard with my legs and twisted my shoulders back and forth. Once my hands broke free through to the other side, I wrapped my fingers around the edge and wrenched myself forward, making sure to keep up the momentum all the way through.

  My shoulders were out the other side of the vent when Christina shouted, “They have me. Go back. Go back!”

  Before I had a chance to figure out what to do, a hand grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me to the ground.

  I landed on my face with my left foot caught inside the vent. A glimpse of two pairs of black boots told me the two mibs from earlier had caught us. I jerked around onto my back, freeing my leg. The taller mib had his gun trained on me, and his partner had shoved Christina against the wall, with her arm twisted behind her back. She struggled to get free, but that was only making the situation worse.

  “Stop hurting her.” I sprang to my feet.

  “Get back down on the ground.” The other mib took a step back, flipping a switch on his gun.

  “Release my wife, and I will,” I shouted back. “We have no weapons. We aren’t a fuckin’ threat. There’s no need to attack us.”

  White lightning shot from his weapon. I shuddered violently, then everything went black.

  When I came to, I was strapped to a chair in a small interview room. A steel table pushed against my stomach, and a second chair, empty, sat on the other side of that table. Glaring light reflected off the white walls. The stale air and cloying heat told me that the air conditioning unit wasn’t working—probably broken deliberately to make conditions uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, though I sensed it’d been a while. The electric stun on one of those guns could knock someone out for twenty minutes, or for twenty hours—it all depended on the person. Since my insides felt as though they’d been liquefied into soup, I figured my body had reacted rather badly to being shot at point-blank range, so I likely had been unconscious for quite a while. At least the gun wasn’t set to laser. I wouldn’t have been doing any thinking if it had been. I would have been on a table in the morgue, with smoke spiraling out of the hole in my chest. I tried to move, but my muscles had no strength. I could barely lift my fingers an inch before they collapsed back down to the arm of the chair.

  Time crawled. I heard no noise from outside, indicating that the room was soundproofed. Shouting wasn’t going to help me. My skin was clammy, and rivulets of sweat trickled down my forehead, to drip from my nose and chin. Gradually, my strength returned. I struggled against my bonds, but all it got me was raw wrists and forearms. A patch of skin on the right side of my chest itched with a strange burning sensation—obviously where the worst of the electricity had entered my body. My mouth was dry, and a deep thirst cried out to be quenched. For once, it was more than a desire for alcohol—water would have been almost more welcome than whiskey.

  Trying to distract myself only made me feel worse. I had no idea what had happened to Christina. And when I thought of what I’d seen in the train, any explanations that didn’t involve my brother being a monster contorted under the weight of their own contradictions. I thought it better to experience my gradual desiccation in harrowing detail than to think of what Christina and I had discovered.

  More time passed, with the sweat drip-dripping from my nose marking the long seconds. Finally, I heard the door open. The rattle of a key in a lock had never sounded so wonderful. I was ready for anything to break the monotony of mindless waiting. I didn’t even care if the person entering intended to shoot me.

  A mib entered, an unopened bottle of Invernes Red in one hand,
a crystal whiskey glass in the other. Saliva squirted into my mouth at the thought of getting a drink. The mib didn’t look at me; he just placed the glass on the table, twisted the cap off the bottle, and poured a generous measure. The golden liquid splashed against the crystal contours at the bottom of the glass. The smell of the whiskey burst through my nostrils, so sweet, sweeter than life itself. I could barely believe it was happening. Am I dreaming? Maybe I fell asleep.

  The mib picked up the glass, and I opened my mouth and leaned forward. He didn’t touch it to my lips, though, even as I was imagining that happening. Instead, he lifted it above me and upended it onto my head. The alcohol cascaded down the side of my face and soaked into my shirt.

  “What are you doing?” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  He ignored me, replacing the glass on the table.

  “You can’t just leave me here. At least tell me what’s going on. Where’s my wife? Did you hurt Christina?”

  He exited the room and locked the door behind him.

  I threw myself against my bonds in frustration. They didn’t budge, and the attempt left angry grooves in my arm. The waiting began all over again, only worse. The smell of whiskey was steeped in every breath I took, amplifying my craving. I was permanently on the edge of my seat, straining hopelessly against the metal cuffs. I licked at the sweat on my top lip, and the occasional bead held the merest hint of whiskey, which heightened rather than sated my thirst.

  My energy waned. The second wait was longer than the first, and by the time the lock turned on the door again, I couldn’t summon the energy to raise my head. My gaze shifted upward enough to see the lower half of a woman in a black uniform. She held a plastic bottle of water in one hand. The condensation on the outside told me it was ice cold. Another trick? I didn’t get my hopes up. I heard the water being poured into the glass. Then the glass was touched to my lips.

  “Drink, Mr. Roberts.” Her hand touched the back of my neck and guided my head forward as she tilted the glass. The water, gloriously cold and wonderfully refreshing, trickled into my mouth. “Slowly,” she said, when I strained forward and gulped.

  Even at the slow pace, the glass emptied too quickly. My parched throat still felt raw.

  “More,” I croaked.

  “More? Maybe if you are good and answer my questions.”

  My eyes focused on her face, and I recognized her. She wasn’t just any mib—she was the chief mib: Mari Larsen, the Bureau director.

  I glanced across at the bottle of whiskey, full except for that one glass that had clumped my hair into a sticky mess.

  “You ask for more water, but I know what you really want,” Larsen said. “All the water in the world won’t quench your real thirst.”

  “You know nothing about me.” The single glass of water had made a big difference. My voice sounded halfway normal, and a spark of energy had returned to my limbs.

  Mari swirled her finger around the threads at the top of the whiskey bottle. “Did you know I had this bottle brought in especially for you? Not today, but months ago. I knew I’d have you sitting here in front of me.”

  I frowned. I could have understood her checking on me after my outburst at Darius’s funeral. But why would I have been on the Bureau’s radar months ago? “Where’s Christina? I demand to see her.”

  Larsen stepped behind me. I twisted my neck to follow her movement. She reached up toward a camera in the far corner of the room—I hadn’t noticed it before—and pulled a cable to disconnect it. “Your wife is a beautiful woman,” Larsen said.

  “What have you done with her?” There were surely other cameras in the room. Not that it mattered—I had nothing to hide.

  “She was the one holding that rather incendiary message, even if it was directed at you. She’s no innocent in all this.”

  “She’s not involved. She just came along to help me. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “How noble. You want to protect her.” Larsen fiddled with the bun at the back of her head, and her hair came free. She shook her brown curly hair down around her shoulders and sat down opposite me. “It’s hot in here. Isn’t it?” She fanned herself then pulled down the zip in the front of her uniform. Her cleavage and the edges of her black bra were visible. “That’s better.”

  I swallowed hard. Whatever interrogation I’d imagined, it hadn’t been anything like how it was actually turning out.

  “You already dragged your wife into this.” Larsen leaned closer to me, until her face was inches from mine. “Tell me. Do you love her?”

  I would have pulled my head away if I weren’t strapped down. To avoid her intense stare, I found myself staring at the slopes of her breasts. “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Is the question difficult for you?” Larsen touched the side of my face with her fingers.

  I jerked my head away. “None of your business.”

  Larsen stood up. “Are you a philosophical person, Mr. Roberts? Probably not. You’re a military man. We live in an era of war, a time for people of action, not thinkers. Having little time and inclination for reflection suits people best. We like to think of ourselves as special. We aren’t. We are bags of flesh with reproductive organs. I like to read about the animal kingdom to get insight into survival and evolution. Some spiders and insects engage in sexual cannibalism.” Larsen stood and walked behind me, letting her hand drift across my shoulder and across my neck. The gesture sent shivers racing down my spine, and not the good kind. “The female spider will kill the mate during or after copulation and eat it. That seems perfect to me. Males are sperm donors, and once that is done, the father can provide sustenance for the mother. So I wondered why humans haven’t evolved in such an elegant way. Then I realized human babies and children are quite frail things. So the mother and her children require protection. So that’s where your instinct comes in. You don’t even love your wife, and still, you are desperate to protect her.”

  “I never said I didn’t love her.”

  “Do you know I would have brought your wife into the station even if she hadn’t been with you? Always better to have someone’s loved ones close by when they are being questioned.”

  “Don’t hurt her.” I didn’t know what kind of crazy pills Larsen was on, but the threat she carried felt real.

  “So we understand each other. Good.” Larsen sat down opposite me again. “Now tell me what you know about Darius and Celeste.”

  “All I know is on that damn hologram. Wish I’d never seen the bloody thing.”

  “Come on, you’ll have to do better than that.”

  I wished I knew something more. “Darius came to me the day before the Battle of Rockall and wanted me off the Eisenhower. He also mentioned the tunnels we used to play in when we were kids. When the attack happened, I wondered if Darius had been trying to protect me by ordering me off the devastator. That didn’t make much sense, but I decided to visit the old tunnels anyway. I brought Christina with me. We found that hologram that you now have. I still don’t understand how any of it makes sense. You arrested me and now tell me that the Bureau have been watching me for months. The more I find out, the less I know.”

  “Are you really as clueless as you seem?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.” Finally, a question I can answer with confidence.

  Larsen smiled and reached across the table again. She touched my cheek again, and I didn’t move away, trapped by her gaze. “Imagine what’s it’s like to be one of those male spiders, knowing that success will likely mean death, but still driven by instinct toward the powerful female. Can you imagine what that would feel like, Mr. Roberts?”

  Her hand drifted down to my chest. Her finger pressed down, pushing the fabric of my shirt against my nipple, causing it to pucker up. She licked her lips. My gaze drifted to her cleavage, and I swallowed. In spite of myself, I felt a stirring between my legs.

  Larsen smiled. “I can see you don’t need to imagine it. Instinct wins every time.” She stepped back. �
�You really don’t know anything?”

  I nodded, my throat dry.

  “Well, I’ve exhausted my temptations for now.” She recapped the bottle of whiskey and picked it up. “This will have to wait until next time, when hopefully, you’ll tell me more. I’ll have you released shortly. Don’t tell anyone about what you saw on that hologram. That’s restricted information.”

  “I thought you’d let the world know.”

  “Is that what you want, Mr. Roberts? You’d do that to your own brother?”

  “If it’s true, then yes. There’s no other choice. Everyone must know.”

  A light chuckle escaped Larsen’s lips. “You really are that naive, aren’t you?” She unlocked and opened the door.

  “Wait. What about Christina?”

  “Oh, I released her hours ago.”

  Anger surged through me. “Bitch,” I spat.

  “Bitch. That’s cute.” She paused in the open doorway. “Couldn’t you come up with something more imaginative? My favorite was being called a black widow cunt, even though it makes no sense since I’ve never been married.”

  Chapter 2

  After two mibs dumped me outside the Bureau headquarters, I didn’t take long to decide what I needed. My hair was still sticky with the stench of whiskey, and if I didn’t get a drink soon, I was going to fall to pieces. The Fallen Tree, one of my favorite bars, was close by, so I took off in that direction. My walking pace increased the closer I got, and I was practically running by the time I reached the door.

  The Fallen Tree was a “Goldilocks bar.” It was never too full or too empty, never too noisy or too quiet, never too dirty or too clean. It was always just right. I had spent too long thinking about things like that over the past year.

  Usually, when I stepped inside a bar, I took a moment to savor the atmosphere and aroma, but I was already doused in the smell of whiskey and rather desperate, so I scooted straight for the nearest barstool. I stepped aside to let a bearded man pass me on his way out. I glanced at him, and as our gazes met, I felt a jolt of recognition. I twisted around to get another look, but he was gone before I could figure out who he was. I sat and raised my arm toward the barman, ignoring the tremble in my fingers. “Invernes Red,” I said. “Double.”