Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (18 page)

“Well, I wouldn’t say that… but one of my goals is to change him to how he was before,” Charlotte said, trying not to make it sound awkward, but she could tell from Laurence’s startled expression that he felt more awkward about it than her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed,” he started, but the woman interrupted him and smiled.

“It’s fine, I understand,” she said while laughing.  Laurence put his head behind his neck and scratched it nervously.  Albert just sipped at his beer and didn’t make eye contact with either person.

“Well,” Laurence continued, “it turns out that this Jenkins is a priority for us, anyway.  We’re going to help you do it.”  Charlotte looked at him and felt slightly relieved but then she thought about the logistics again.  She shook her head and tried to take another sip from her vodka tonic, but found it was empty.  She wondered how that happened.

“That’s fine and all, but I’ve tried to work it through my head.  Hawkins is a genius at this kind of thing but I don’t even think that
he
could change it back if he wanted to.  The man’s brain-mapping is so completely damaged at this point.  I just don’t know how to do it.”  She looked up from her drink to see Laurence looking at her bewildered.  He tilted his head slightly and opened his mouth to speak but the words retreated back into his throat.  The older dissident cleared it and shook his head before looking her in the eye.

“You know that Hawkins kept a backup, right?”  The good doctor looked at the EOSF guard and thought about his words.  She hadn’t even considered that the scientist would keep a backup of Jenkins’ brain somewhere in the office.   Charlotte had difficulty trying to understand how she hadn’t considered it.

“Well… no.  I thought he just worked off a template,” she said, mostly just working through her own thoughts, but Laurence thought it was directed at him.

“Not according to our intelligence.  He kept a backup of Jenkins’ brain mapping in case he screwed things up so badly that he needed to restart.  Jenkins’ personality exists somewhere in some code hidden in some file.  It won’t be easy, but we could transmit the file into an empty clone and then the boy would be right back with us.”

Charlotte looked at the two resistance agents in front of her.  Somehow the two of them had come across a plan that she hadn’t considered.  She felt foolish considering her degrees and accolades from school proving to be of little use, but she felt a small sense of relief.  Charlotte looked at the elder undercover agent and furrowed her brow a little.

“Wait, how do we get the file?”  Laurence looked down at the table and sighed at that question.  Charlotte knew she didn’t want to hear what was going to come out of his mouth next.

“Well, that’s up to you.  We can’t really access files like that.  If we get caught snooping we’re probably going to get found out and labeled dead men.  You have to find the file; you have to prep the upload and the clone and then bring our soldier back to life.  We know how to do that last part, so you don’t have to figure that out, but the file’s on you,” he said, biting his lip as he emphasized her role in the rescue.  She turned her head slightly and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

“How am I supposed to do that?  Hawkins is going to know if I’m snooping, too.  He doesn’t trust me at all.”  Laurence looked down at the table again and downed half of his whiskey.  Charlotte
knew
she was going to dislike this part even more.

“That’s the part that has to change,” he said slowly before looking back up into her eyes.  He pursed his lips and sighed while she looked down at him in a slow-building fury.  “You know how he is.  He’s egotistical, narcissistic, evil and smart as hell; basically he thinks he’s God.  Well, you have to praise him.  We know how horrible it is, but you have to suck it up.  You have to make him trust you.  You have to,” Laurence said before looking away, “participate.”  Charlotte looked at the man in horror; he was still recoiling from fear.  Laurence knew what he was asking of her.  Her voice shook as she continued the conversation.

“What the hell do you mean, Laurence?”  The older man looked up at her with guilty eyes.  He drained the rest of his whiskey and let the liquor burn the back of his throat.  It was rotgut, it wasn’t classy, but he wanted to feel the pain.  He didn’t appreciate sending pretty girls into the bowels of Hell.  Not when they reminded him of his own little girl.

“His experiments.   The only way he’s going to trust you is if you dive right in.  You have to show the same malice, the same cruelty, the same wanton disregard for human life and decency as that little monster.  You don’t have to become him, Charlotte,” he said before reaching out to cover her hand with his.  She snatched it back and he looked down, obviously disgusted with himself as well.  “But you do have to look like it.”

Charlotte Kane tried to absorb what the man was saying and couldn’t justify it at all.  The conditioning that she had forced herself through, all the training she had done so that she wouldn’t cry seeing all the horrors on this planet devoted to war seemed to be useless.  Tears were streaming down her face now.  She wanted anything else to be true.  The raven-haired woman looked at Laurence and hoped he was a liar.  She didn’t want to be part of something like that.  But the older man just looked back at her with sympathy filling his gaze.  He wasn’t an awful man, it seemed, but he was asking awful things of her.

“You don’t understand…” Charlotte began, but she couldn’t continue.  Her throat hurt trying to suppress the moan she wanted to utter.  The only thing stopping her was the amount of people in such a public place.

“I do, Charlotte.  I actually understand more than you can know.  But it’s necessary, Dr. Kane,” he said, adopting a formal name for her, recalling his own horrors in the back of his mind.  “It’s the only way to save your Jenkins.”  Charlotte had been looking down while she wallowed in her misery but at the mention of the soldier’s name she lifted her gaze to make eye contact with the guard.  It was a terrible thing for Laurence to do, summoning her sympathy for the man.  Charlotte asked the question that she had ignored from the beginning.

“Why is he a priority?”  Albert looked at her, now.  The young officer had been doing his best to sit there and drink his beer, but this was becoming too much.  He looked at his superior officer and panicked slightly.  They hadn’t told her this part of the story.  He could see Laurence struggling with the answer.  Albert felt bad for the man.  Laurence looked dour and miserable all the time, he played by the rules and never had fun, but he had such a good heart.  Albert could take this burden from him. 

The oaf put down his glass and reached his hand out to the doctor.  The young woman looked at him with tears still running down her cheeks.  She was beautiful and Albert could see legions of men fawning over her.  Jenkins was a lucky man.

“He’s going to be our messiah.  He’s going to come back from the dead and deliver us from evil.”

-

Cortes couldn’t sleep.  It wasn’t the pain of resurrection; he had lived through the last two games.  Unlike the rest of the soldiers this was no boon to him; he wished he had died again.  He wished he could feel the pain.  This was his penance; this was his punishment.  He was supposed to die.  That’s why he was here.

The Coward lives on
.

Cortes threw his pillow against the wall.  It was only during the quiet times that he heard his father’s voice.  It was only after Earthrise that the baritone memory repeated the family’s credo.  It was only when he was living without the pain that the awful truth stared him in the face.  The motto broke right through Cortes’ fantasy of the perfect penance.  It was no atonement.  He would live on; a coward’s life.

After his brother’s murder he had chosen this eternity of deaths as a way to atone instead of just the one death sentence.  He had the choice to die right there and rid the world of his existence.  Instead the coward had chosen to run from his fate; the fate that his father wanted to choose for him.  His parents had abandoned him after the incident with Sam.  They had cried for his death just like so many of his neighbors.  Cortes had committed fratricide; it was unforgivable.

Only in the quiet times was it so transparent that he had run away; that the coward was
truly
living on.  Cortes died over and over again but he came back to life just the same.  When Cortes saw his brother sitting there at his desk watching him while he tried to sleep, the soldier knew what kind of man he really was.

Cortes sat up and walked over to the window.  He tried to ignore the orange shirt that was just at the edge of his field of vision.  He tried to remind himself that Sam wasn’t really there.  That the young boy wasn’t actually watching him sleep.  He tried to tell himself that he was doing what he could.  This was certain; the afterlife was not.  He would experience the closest thing to Hell on Earth.

The Coward lives on
.

He sighed and turned to his brother.

“It’s alright, Hector.”  Cortes breathed out hard.  He knew he shouldn’t talk to him.  Cortes didn’t want to acknowledge that he was losing his mind.

“It’s alright that you see me.”  Cortes closed his eyes and tried to count.  He tried to block it out.

“I’m here for a reason.”  Cortes shook his head.

“Shut up,” the Spaniard said under his breath.  “Just shut up.”

“Hector, I have something to say.”  Cortes felt a chill run down his spine.  If he just ignored it Sam would disappear.  He could go back to trying to sleep and figuring out how he’ll die next time.

“Please, look at me, Hector.” 
No, no, no, no, no…

“Hector!”

The Coward lives on.

“What?  For god’s sake, what do you want, Sam?  Do you realize what you’re doing to me?”

Sam looked just like he did all those years ago.  The crimson bloodstain on his chest still blooming.  The sad look on his face mixed with the happiness of seeing his brother.  It was like the boy hadn’t aged; like he was still living that one day.  He was trapped like that in Cortes’ mind.

“It’s ok, Hector.  It’s alright.”  Cortes’ face twisted in anguish.  The coward couldn’t help the sobs coming from his throat or the tears from his eyes.  He sat on his bed and buried his face in his hands.  He continued on for a while before gathering himself and looking at the delusion sitting at his desk.

“It’s not alright, Sam.  I killed you.  I’m trying to pay for it.  I’m trying, but it’s not good enough.”  Sam sighed and stood up from the chair.  The small teenager walked over to his living brother and set his hand on Cortes’ shoulder.  Hector knew it was just a trick; he didn’t really feel anything, but to him it was almost as if his brother was really standing there.

“I know, Hector.  I know you’re trying.  And,” he said before leaning in, “I know you don’t think it’s good enough.  I know Dad is always in your head, too.  I’m sorry about that.”  Cortes looked at his brother and had to look away.  The guilt was too much for him.

“I can’t stop it.  It’s true.  I’m a coward,” he said before breaking into sobs once more.  He could hear his brother consoling him; he could feel a warm hand rubbing his back.  He stopped trying to convince himself that it wasn’t real.

“We’re all cowards, Hector.  It’s alright.  You can’t be strong all the time.”

“I…I…..”

“I know, brother.  I know.  But,” he said before standing back to his full height.  He was only just taller than Cortes’ head when he was sitting on the bed.  “Soon you’ll have to be strong.”

“What…. What are you talking about?” Cortes asked.  He was too confused to keep crying.  Sam just looked at him and continued.

“Soon you’ll be able to redeem yourself, Hector.  The time is coming.”  Cortes looked up at his brother; he was smiling ever-so-slightly.

“Sam…”

“He is coming and he needs your help.”

“Wh….who?”  Sam turned slowly and looked towards the doorway.  Cortes followed his gaze but didn’t see a thing.  He looked back in his puzzlement and found that his brother had disappeared.  He turned around each way and looked desperately for any trace of the delusion.

He was just gone.

Cortes couldn’t help but cry himself to sleep.

Douglas was having a difficult time trying to keep his behavior in check.  He knew what his co-conspirators were like when the cameras weren’t rolling; he knew what they were thinking when they saw the soldiers killing themselves on the big screens behind them.

But as he watched he realized they were so much better at hiding it.

It was a good thing.  Unlike Douglas, Eric Jones was in front of the camera every day.  The plastic smile had to be perfect, fortunately the television anchor had made sure it was.  No one watching the show would have had any clue that the celebrity was tied to an insurgent force.

Douglas turned his gaze from the anchor’s desk looking for Jamie.  The producer was standing near two cameramen off to the left of the stage.  Franklyn Stone’s recent antics had led him to jump out of his seat and the cameramen were not prepared for it.  It was lost footage and wasted money to a producer like Jamie Caswell.

It was almost impossible to remember the kind and gentle soul who had indoctrinated him in the Eris Freedom Initiative just two days prior.  There was no semblance here of the man who had taken them out for drinks;  only an angry producer underneath that helmet of slicked-back hair.

Douglas was sitting at his announcer’s desk like always.  The broadcast would begin in a few minutes; just after the television anchors would be freshly plastered with makeup.  Douglas watched as the artists put the finishing touches on Eric’s face.  The man almost looked like a statue.

He turned his attention to Eric’s co-anchors.  Jones clearly had the run of the show, but three others helped fill the commentary with color.  To his left sat Patrick McEwen.  He was a veteran of the games and it definitely looked like it.  The man had sunken features and thin white hair and makeup was applied liberally to hide the liver spots.  The former Crow was half-delirious from the medication which men like Jamie shoved down his throat.  It was just one of Caswell’s duties to make sure the old man didn’t make any inappropriate remarks.  Douglas wondered how hard that hit Jamie’s conscience.