Swan Song (Book Three of the Icarus Trilogy) (43 page)

When they exited onto the 30th floor, there was another barricade of soldiers lying in wait for them.  Jenkins could hear over Comms that the other teams had made it inside the tower, but they were having similar difficulties. 

The four men would just have to find their own way out of this.

"Alright, we got three guards past the barricade.  There's an empty office on the other side of the stairwell.  We need someone to get over there," Jenkins said hurriedly, but almost immediately Templeton nodded.

"I got it, just as long as you cover me."

"Alright, on three," Jenkins said, starting the count but not bothering to verbally say the last two numbers.  He swept around cover just as Templeton jumped past him.  The messiah figure shot off a couple of rounds while Darius tried to make it to the other side of the hallway, but neither of them had expected the concussion grenade which landed in front of them.

The force of the grenade was enough to throw Jenkins against the other side of the doorway, forcing the breath from his throat, but almost immediately he knew he couldn't stay there.  He watched the flash of Templeton's unconscious body tumbling through the hallway, bouncing end over end, and before he should have been able to react Jenkins was already running after him.  He had to.

Templeton was only a few meters away from bursting through the window at the end of the hallway.

Time seemed to slow down in that moment.  Kaspar's training took over and he dived through the doorway and into the empty office, occupying the space meant for Templeton, while Carver took up Jenkins' former position.  They did what they could to protect the two men flying down the hallway, firing on the barricade enough to force the security guards behind cover, but even then a number of deadly shells flew past the tumbling Templeton and Jenkins sprinting after him, breaking through the reinforced glass of the skyscraper.

Ryan stretched out his hand to catch his teammate, but before he could grab hold, reality warped around him.  Instead of the 30th floor of the tower, Ryan's world became the bright sky and the endless ocean.  He could feel the sun burning his skin and the salt air scratching his exposed chest as he flew.  The shore seemed closer, but not close enough.  Ryan didn't want to be here, especially since danger was waiting for him back in the real world, but what he saw disturbed him. 

He felt himself start to fall from his height and pumped his wings harder.  He was still losing altitude and looked below to find the tentacles rising from the dark waves beneath him.  What was worse were the dozens of black feathers falling towards the water, which caused the flying man to look at his wings.  There were still plenty of feathers held together in those artificial wings, but he watched as more of the Crows' sacrifices came undone.  Ryan panicked a bit as he saw the feathers, but he looked back to his outstretched hand just in time for him to snap back to the present.

There was no office carpet beneath him; thirty stories of air promised death below him.  After that terrifying moment, his instincts and training kicked back in and he grabbed at anything that could help him.  One hand grabbed hold of Templeton's arm, the soldier still dazed from the explosion and completely helpless in the empty air outside the tower's window.

But soon the two soldiers were halted in their fall to the ground and they were hanging on the outside of Babylon Tower.  Jenkins looked up to see that his other hand had grabbed onto the broken frame of the window.  While relieved that he wasn't falling anymore, fear gripped him when he realized that the frame could drop at any second.  Ryan hyperventilated as he tried to consider his options.  He didn't have the strength to climb up to the ledge without dropping Templeton, but there was no way he could consider letting go of the revolutionary.

"Ryan!  I'm coming!" Carver shouted, but before he could make it past the doorway the three security guards pelted his position with bullets.  The old man cursed as he ducked behind cover again, panicking as he realized that his surrogate son might die right outside that window.  He was terrified; Ryan was helpless and in danger.

Ryan Jenkins looked down and felt his grip slipping on Templeton's arm.  He grunted at the effort, trying to keep the revolutionary in his grasp, but the thin man was becoming heavy.  Over the noise of the gusts battering the outside of the tower, Jenkins couldn't hear a thing; he couldn't hear Carver cursing or the gunfire above him.

He was alone.

"Help me," Ryan pleaded to no one in particular.  He didn't want to die like this.  Not when so many people looked to him to save humanity.

When he felt his grip loosen, he looked down in a panic.  He didn't want Templeton to die just because he wasn't able to hold on, but almost immediately he felt the revolutionary's hand grab a hold of his own, causing the frame to shudder.

"Way too fucking close," Templeton said over the private channel.  Jenkins breathed out in relief at that, but then he felt the window frame shuddering again.

"We're not out of this yet.  We gotta move," he shouted, seeing Templeton nod in response.

"Try to throw me up if you can.  I'll pull up and maybe get enough momentum to reach the edge," Darius said, which caused Ryan to bite his lip.   "I know, it sucks, but it might be our only chance."

"Alright... on three," Jenkins said, but Darius shook his head.

"Fuck that.  Right now," Templeton stated as he pulled himself up, which caused Ryan to heave the soldier up as much as he could.

For an instant, Templeton's body was floating on the outside of the 30th story window, his life in the hands of whatever God held power there.  For the first time in years, Darius prayed, but soon afterwards he reached out his hand and was able to grab hold of the ledge.  He slammed against the side of the building and breathed out in relief.  He looked over at his compatriot and laughed at his fortune.

"Don't say I never did you anything," Ryan said with a slight chuckle, which caused Templeton to smile briefly.  As soon as he did the window frame broke from its mooring and Jenkins fell with it, causing the messiah figure to gasp out in terror.

But this time Darius caught Ryan by the hand.  The revolutionary grimaced from the effort, but he realized that he didn't want to take Ryan's place after all.

"Same to you," he said before heaving up the soldier to the other side of the ledge.  The two soldiers hung there for a moment to catch their breath, but they knew they needed to get back inside the building as soon as possible.

"Carver, Kaspar, anyway you can give us enough time to get to you guys?" Jenkins said over Comms, hoping that they wouldn't die here on the 30th story.

"I ... I can't," Carver said in desperation, unable to help two of the most important people in his world.

"Why is it I'm always coming to the rescue, mate?"

Suddenly the wind whipped around the two hanging soldiers and it took every ounce of their strength to hold onto their ledge.  After a moment of silence they heard someone talking in a cheery English accent.

"You can get up now, you lazy bastards.  No enemies are gonna shoot you," Norris said over Comms.  Neither Crow needed more incentive than that and quickly clambered up to the inside of the hallway.  When they were finally on solid ground they looked out of the shattered window to see an air transport four hundred meters away.

"E....Ed?" Jenkins asked in amazement.

"Of course, buddy boy!  Went and grabbed another rifle, that's all.  What, did you expect I'd run away because my weapon didn't work?" the sniper asked over Comms, but Jenkins knew the Crow was just playing at levity.  He gave a sorrowful smile before picking himself up and turning from the window.

"Thanks, Ed."

"No problem, mate," Norris said cheerfully over Comms.  "You better get up to the top floor, there.  I have a hunch Jasper's itching to hit that button now."

"Yeah, yeah, we'll do that," Jenkins said as he motioned for the other Crows to follow him down the hallway.  "But seriously, Ed."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks.  I'm ... sorry."  There was silence for a few moments as Jenkins and his colleagues made it down the hallway towards the other stairwell, but as he pushed open the door, Edward's voice crackled from the other end, his voice low.

"Yeah.... me, too.  Make us proud, mate. We're all countin' on you."

-

Elizabeth was walking down the street in a daze.  She was only barely aware of the asphalt beneath her, or the fact that she was wearing slippers.  The young woman had not changed out of her pajamas and was only vaguely aware of what was happening around her.  She could see the people by her side, but she didn't understand why they were walking in such a rush.  Elizabeth didn't know why she was walking with them.

She sniffed as her feet moved along the pavement.  The young woman had experienced too much trauma in the last day; she had experienced far too much pain for her years.  It had almost seemed like she would move past her sister's death, but the universe had not been kind.  The first man she had ever loved had abandoned her for death and just an hour later her father had been gunned down on television.

It was too much to ask the girl for her to keep her sanity.

Deborah Kane had been kneeling on the floor when Elizabeth had left the house.  The woman hadn't even tried to compose herself; her dark hair had come undone from the tight bun and she wore the same clothes from yesterday.  Elizabeth had prepared for bed in a show of normalcy, a willing repression of what had happened during those terrible hours, but once she had laid down in her bed everything had spiraled out of control. 

Her thoughts that night had been nothing but horrifying recollections of the horror that had become her life.  In her waking hours tossing and turning in her sheets, she continued to pick at the mental scabs covering her trauma.  The scar of Charlotte's loss had opened up and buried her mind in pain; the two most important men in her life had opened the floodgates of her misery.  Elizabeth had cried herself to sleep, but when she woke her mind had retreated from reality.

Elizabeth barely remembered her name.  All she could focus on were the memories of what had been; the happiness that she used to have.  It had all been stripped from her, but fragments of her mind could return to the past and see Charlotte's easy smile.  Parts of her could return to that bed with James.  Slivers of her consciousness could remember the days when Charles Kane hoisted her up and carried her through bright meadows.

She smiled before she tripped on a stray rock and was catapulted back to the present.  The young woman looked up to see the masses roiling about in front of her, but she didn't quite understand why they were so noisy; she didn't know why they were so angry.  The only thing she knew was that it felt like the right place to be.  These people were upset, just like Elizabeth.  They might not have been concerned with her losses, but it was a comfort to see other people consumed by their misery and fury.  It felt like she was with kindred spirits; unlike what she had seen from her mother.

The former college student looked up from the masses and could see the giant Tower of Babylon rising above their heads.  She felt nothing for the building; it represented nothing to her.  Yet here she was, just one of the crowd gathered to see it destroyed; to see what it represented destroyed.  The young woman wished she felt what these people held inside them; she certainly didn't want to feel the emotions coursing through her.

Elizabeth lowered her gaze and kept it at chest-level.  She wanted to see the people in front of her as she moved through the crowd.  Her body was moving absent her will, for some reason it wanted to push through the crowd, but she allowed it to continue forward.  The broken girl was curious where it wanted to go.

And after these last few months, she really had nothing left to lose.

-

"Jasper, we have to leave," Darren pleaded with his master.  Montgomery used to be everything that Darren wanted to become, but now all that the young executive could see was a twisted, old man.  The mad puppeteer had decided to stay in his office and pretend that an entire city rising up against him meant nothing.

"I'm not abandoning my city, Mr. Christiansen.  I've worked far too hard, slit too many throats and destroyed too many empires to see it all crumble away because I did not have the
resolve
to wipe out a few pesky ants," Montgomery said as he stared out of the wall of windows in his office.  He could see the common man hiding at the ends of each street, the traitorous EOSF holding them back beyond the square.  They meant nothing to him in the end; his private security was more than enough to kill the people flooding his streets.  The EOSF would be dealt with, their ranks culled and replaced once they remembered who really controlled Earth.