Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (39 page)

“No, Carver!  Of course not!  I would never want to do that,” Cortes said, his voice shaking and his throat hurting from the sobs he was holding back.  Carver backed away from the soldier and let the Spaniard sink to the floor.

“I know, Hector.  I know that you would not have wanted to do that.  You loved your younger brother,” Carver said, feeling a great deal of pity for the soldier.  He had not wanted to break the man like this, but the old man couldn’t allow the Spaniard his blind faith in this coming fight.

“It was an accident.  Your brother was there at the wrong time and you felt such guilt for it that you have since let yourself die in horrible and painful ways as a way to make up for it.  And that doesn’t even help, does it?” Carver asked, knowing well the answer.  “Because of your guilt you see your brother every day and it just forces the point home that you destroyed your family.”

“Luck played a role in that, Hector.  In my world, in my world without faith that was just plain coincidence and chance.  But in your world, Cortes?” Carver said, kneeling down so that he was on the same level as the breaking soldier.  “In your world that means that God allowed it to happen.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” the Spaniard said, weakly, only allowing the words out of his mouth as a force of habit.

“You could say that, Hector.  And you could say that reason is that your God is a cruel, malicious, little sky fairy,” Carver said, his resentment boiling within him. 

“That’s not true,” Hector said, shaking his head and causing tears to fall off in different directions.  The old man sighed and looked at the floor.  He had gone out of control again and he was starting to regret it.

“I hope so, Hector.  But if it is, and your precious God is against the resurrection of our friend and our greatest hope for taking back our freedom,” Carver said as he rose and stood over the broken man, realizing for the first time since he had started his rant that his fellow revolutionaries had been staring the entire time.

“Then I say fuck your god, and I say it with all the respect I can muster,” Carver said, hoping that Cortes would recover in time to fight if need be.  “But I don’t think that’s the case, Hector,” he said, seeing the young soldier looking up at him with tears flooding his eyes.

“What do you mean?” the Spaniard asked in his desperation.  Carver had shaken him to the very roots of his faith; he needed something to fall back on, some hope that he had not wasted his entire existence.

“I mean that…” Carver began, trying his best to choose the right words.  “I mean that neither of these Jenkins are the messiah.  They’re just men.  But maybe they’re going to fight for this cause for a reason.  And maybe you’re here for that exact same reason.  If you want to have faith,” Carver said before waving his hands at the men all around.  “Have faith in us.  Have faith in them.  Have faith,” he said before kneeling down and touching his finger to Cortes’ chest just above the heart, “in yourself.”

“What a crock of shit,” a voice came from the other side of the room.  Carver whipped around to look at the speaker and noticed Hawkins smiling with blood dripping from his lips.  He was about to jump at the scientist before he noticed Roberts strike the man and then drag him from the room.  As Roberts left, he looked Carver in the eye and nodded.  Carver lost his fury and turned back to the Spaniard, who was giving a soft smile.  Carver could only be surprised by the expression.

“I’ve never had that before, old man.  Faith in myself,” Cortes said, his eyes sad, his hopes laid out for all to see.  Carver shook his head and laughed.

“Me neither, Hector.  Though,” he said as he picked himself up to his feet and dragged Cortes with him, “this might be a good time to find it.”  Cortes dropped the smile from his face and breathed in deeply before nodding.

“I guess we can hope for the best.  Might be all we can do,” Cortes said before looking around at the men in the Control Room.  He felt a degree of shame when he realized they had all seen him destroyed and rebuilt.  As he scanned the room he found Sam looking back at him from Albert’s side.  Cortes smiled at the hallucination, but felt sad as he realized that’s all it was.  Before he could turn to the other soldiers the apparition spoke directly into his mind.

“It doesn’t change anything, Hector.  What’s stopping both of you from being right?” he asked with a soft smile playing on his face.  The Spaniard thought about the words and laughed, not caring if his fellow soldiers would understand.

“I’ve…. He’s coming.  I started the process,” Charlotte said from her chair.  Even though she had wanted to resurrect Jenkins as fast as possible, the argument between the two men had been far too distracting.  The veteran had eased off the soldier towards the end, but it was still enough for the woman to feel sympathy.  As soon as they had finished speaking, however, Charlotte was able to focus and started the procedure to bring the cell out of the storage area.  It would only be a few minutes before Jenkins would be lying in the resurrection chamber and breathing in the air of Eris.

Charlotte exited the room without another word and hoped that everything would go as planned.  She didn’t know if she could take it if a mindless broken thing came out of that resurrection chamber.

-

Roberts dragged the chuckling scientist down the hallway with a stoic face.  He was angry, furious at the world, but for some reason he felt no enjoyment now that the tables had turned.  Hawkins had ruined his life forever; Roberts would never be rid of the pain that still echoed through his bones and gnawed at his muscles.  This body, this pale, frail little thing that currently housed his spirit or personality or essence or whatever the hell they wanted to call it, would be the last one ever given to him. 

He found it difficult to find the bright side.

Roberts walked backwards to the nearest research room and opened the door to find the corpse of Lewis, still open from Hawkins’ earlier autopsy.  Roberts sighed in disgust and backed out of the room.

“Heh, I’ve done that to you plenty of times, action figure.  I’ve caused so much death and pain for you that I’ve become quite fond of your company, even if we never really do speak.  Tell you what,” Hawkins said as Roberts left the man sitting in his chair.  He checked each room to find another ghastly experiment gone wrong while Hawkins continued to speak condescendingly towards him.  “If you help me get out of here I’ll convince the Commission to give you a new body, free of pain.  What do you say?”

Roberts’ eyes twitched at the mention of a new body, but instantly he was disgusted with himself for even considering it.  No matter what the scientist offered, Roberts would die a thousand times just to see the man suffer once.  He checked one of the rooms and found it empty, save for a table with a set of restraints and some medical tools.  The boy soldier calmly walked over to the grinning scientist and grabbed the back of the chair.

“This pain?  It’s nothing; not compared to what you’ve done before,” Roberts said as he dragged the chair behind him and led Hawkins to the room.  The scientist started to stammer as Roberts spoke, quickly realizing that he might be in trouble after all; that maybe he wouldn’t be able to weasel out of this confrontation.

“Now wait a min-“ Hawkins started to say, but Roberts had untied the intellectual and heaved him onto the table.  They were of similar size, but Roberts was still wearing his power armor and could lift the man as if he was nothing.  As Hawkins slammed against the table he was dazed momentarily, but he realized after just a moment that Roberts had gone to work restraining his arms using the same bands Hawkins had used against Markham and Haywick and all the others.

“Now just wait a minute, Roberts!  We can fix this.  I just need your help.  They aren’t going to reactivate the satellite relays until this little uprising is over, but if you switch sides n-” he said, but he was interrupted by the boy soldier’s armored hand slamming into the side of his face.  Hawkins could feel his molar fly out of his mouth along with blood and saliva.

“We’re not going to wait anymore, Hawkins.  You’re not going to be able to get me to switch sides or anything.  As far as I’m concerned, the only words out of your mouth that I’m even going to pay attention to are ‘no,’ ‘please,’ ‘don’t,’ ‘stop’ and maybe ‘oh god.’  I’ll especially like that last one, considering how you and God don’t really get along,” Roberts said as he walked to the medical tools and swept his hand over the scalpels and tongs.

“L….look, Christopher,” Hawkins said, fear starting to creep into his voice, but as he said the words Roberts spun around quickly and jumped to the scientist’s side.  He grabbed a hold of the man’s right thumb and yanked it back towards the man’s arm.  Roberts could feel the pop and a little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  Hawkins’ screams were rather satisfying, as well.

“You… you….”

“Oh, c’mon, Hawkins.  This is nothing,” Roberts said as he grabbed the man’s pinky finger by the middle knuckle and cracked it sideways, forcing Hawkins to let out another yelp of pain.  “I mean, really, this is the kind of pain I got when I clenched my fist during some of those incarnations you gave me,” Roberts said as he shook his head, a malicious glint in his brown eyes.

“Please,” Hawkins said, unable to consider any more pain coming from his right arm.  He had never felt anything like this.  Roberts merely laughed at the man’s words and then rotated the right thumb along the break.

“There we go, Hawkins,” the boy soldier said while the pudgy man soundlessly screamed in agony.  “If you start using that kind of vocabulary, we could get somewhere.”  Roberts backed away and grabbed the scalpel from the side table.  He brought it up in front of his eyes and examined the blade.  “I imagine you’ve used this plenty of time on my comrades.  Bet you got a sick pleasure out of it, too.”

“Is this…. The best you can do?” Hawkins asked, punctuating his question with laughter.  “It barely hurts, you know.  It’s easy to deal with the pain when you know…. When you know you’re going to die,” Hawkins said, admitting the truth to himself, now.  He looked over to the boy soldier and gave a twisted smile.

“My works, my experiments… they’re recorded…. They’re
respected
.  I live on even if you kill me, even if you cause me all kinds of pain.  Hell,
Christopher
,” Hawkins said with a dose of venom, “I’ll live on in
you
.”  He turned his face to the ceiling and laughed at the fluorescent light above him.

“You familiar with “death by a thousand cuts?’” Roberts asked as he grabbed a stool and sat next to the wicked scientist.  Hawkins merely looked over Christopher out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m familiar with it.  I am a sadist, after all,” he said while trying to remember his life and his worth.  None of these action figures and slave soldiers were anything in comparison.  Roberts brought the scalpel slowly across the man’s chest, just enough to cause a trickle of blood to pool out of the man’s flabby torso.  Hawkins grimaced in response but did what he could to maintain his composure.

“I’m not gonna do that, but I think you know what I’m getting at.  I don’t mind killing you slow, but really, all I want is for that little spirit of yours to break.  I want you to realize how bad of a person you are; I want you to admit that you were wrong,” Roberts said before grabbing the man’s face and forcing him to look Christopher in the eye.  The malice was gone, but Roberts wanted Hawkins to realize that he was determined to make the scientist suffer.  The weasel-faced man scrunched his face in a smirk at that.

“You screwed up, then.  You shouldn’t have told me.  I’m quite stubborn when it comes to principle,
Christopher
.  You won’t be able to say or do
anything
that will make me admit I was wrong,” he said before turning back to the stale, white light above him.  Roberts shrugged and looked at the scalpel in his hand, the blood already starting to collect into a droplet at the end.  It fell to the floor and Roberts watched it splash against the tiling.  He looked back at the scientist and sighed.

“Well, let’s see what we can do,” Roberts said as he brought up the scalpel and cut off the man’s ear lobe.

-

Norris looked along the rooftop and smiled.  When he had helped raid the armory just an hour ago he had a nervous glee about him. and as he peered from one end of the roof to the other he saw nine sniper positions and an assortment of rifles to accompany them.  Laurence and Goldstein had told the Englishman that he could borrow Lewis, Chang and Markham to help with the rooftops, but Norris knew that the three of them would be largely useless.  The sniper rifles were all for him and when he ran out of ammunition for one he would just grab another.

He could think of worse ways to spend the day.

Norris was busy calibrating one of the rifles when he heard a sound coming from the ladder behind him.  The Englishman turned his head to see that Jenkins had decided to join him and gave the artificial soldier a big smile.  Jenkins returned one of his own, but Norris knew that it was just a courtesy.  The jester let out a bark of a laugh and then turned to face the soldier before plopping down on his butt.  He patted the ground beside him and nodded at the soldier.  Jenkins gave a weak laugh and then sat down a meter away from the Englishman.

“No thanks, Norris.  I’ll keep my distance for now,” the soldier said as he spread out his legs in front of him.  Norris shrugged and went back to calibrating the weapon in his hands.

“Up to you, mate.  Offer stands in any case,” the Englishman said before winking.  Jenkins had to smile at that, but he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.  So much was happening at the same time and there was so little he could do about it.  He had helped Laurence and the others for the last hour, creating makeshift barricades against all the entrances and helpful pieces of cover in case those barricades fell.  The artificial soldier had helped Feldman lift up massive bookcases and shove them against doors, though the giant had taken most of the weight.  Jenkins had felt largely useless and after an hour of sidelong stares and sparse conversation he just had to get out of there.  That’s why he had come to the roof.  He hadn’t expected Norris to greet him with a smile.