The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (16 page)

“General, that girl gets hit on by
every guy in this place until you shut 'em down.” Strangely, the Revolution was
referred to as “General” in this place as much as he was by his adopted
superhero moniker, if not more so. It had rankled him a bit at first, but as
the years had worn on he’d come to accept it. To like it even.

“She's just a child. And I…” He
searched for the right words. “I'm responsible for her.”

“Yeah, well, she
loves
you.
You’re keeping her awful close, aren't you?”

“She's seventeen.”  He tried
to sound irritated at her suggestion, but Leslie was the one person he did not
intimidate. “The girl is special.”

Leslie glanced over at Fiona and
caught her watching them. The teenager swiftly gazed back at the screen. Her
beauty was unmatched and undeniable. She was a true heartbreaker in the
making. 

“Yeah, clearly” Leslie said. “But
did it ever occur to you that maybe she
wants
some of that attention
you're always saving her from? It's lonely in here for her. Why do you think
she follows you around like a puppy dog?”

Revolution sighed in the echoes of
his mask and pushed the button on one of Leslie's carefully calibrated
displays. A deep hum of power droned out of the chamber in front of them. A
bright yellow-green laser streaked to life, searing across the glassed-in
enclosure from the powerful cylindrical gun-like device in the center of the
far chamber wall.

The beam struck a solid block of
steel. The block sat upon a steel pedestal like a sacrificial lamb. The light
surged across it. Enveloped it. When Revolution pushed the button again the
laser went dark, but the steel block continued to glow. It pulsed.

“Looks like we're ready,” he said.

“Speaking of being ready, you
ready for this?” came a voice from behind them. Willard, Leslie's tall, lanky
assistant, in his midtwenties, lurched up to them. “Found what you wanted on
your Spider Wasp friend,” he said.

“Who is he?”

“Name’s Paul Ward. Used to be a
hotshot surgeon, published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
.” 

“Harvard,” Leslie added. “I’ve
heard of him. But several years ago he became a general practitioner.”

“Not your normal career path.”

“No, not at all,” said Willard.
“Get this, his son was killed in a drive-by. Caught between rival gangs. And
guess what gang?”

“Of course. I kind of remember
that now,” Leslie said.

“The police fingered Fiddler
himself as the shooter.”

“Now we have a motive.” Revolution
nodded.

“For the bug suit? Yeah. And the
police couldn't make it stick with Fiddler. This is before Fiddler was in
charge, back when he was a main enforcer. So, now we know what he wants more
than anything.” Willard smiled at them, feeling important.

“We also know he's legit,”
Revolution said.

“I hope so, since you showed him
the candy store already,” teased Leslie.

Revolution nodded. “Then let's see
how much of sweet tooth he really has.”

CHAPTER
27

J
ust past
the lab was that large steel door that led to the second half of the complex.
The part Ward had not been shown. On his fifth visit, two weeks later, Ward got
to see it. The whole thing had been converted into something resembling an
aircraft hangar. They even called it
the hangar
.

Revolution and Ward toured the
facility. The room was used for battle practice, as evidenced by the large
array of weapons and targets of all kinds and sizes. Some of which showed the
charred signs of recent usage. It was straight out of the military. Ward’s jaw
dropped when he noticed that the “Media Corp” chopper from their encounter with
Lithium was there.

“I'll be damned. Is that what I
think it is?” He pointed at the chopper.

Revolution nodded.

“That was a rescue! And Lithium
just let you fly away!”

“It’s been well used. No one ever
stops a Media Corp helicopter, and the irony makes for good press if I’m ever
spotted. I even rode it to State Street the night of the massacre.”

Ward was impressed. Then he looked
up. “Wait. How do you get it out of here?” 

“See those?” Revolution pointed up
toward a large mechanized system of sliders. Ward marveled. A whole section of
the roof could slide away allowing the chopper to lift off without anyone on
the street realizing it. From the ground it just looked like it was taking off
from the roof. There was rarely anyone around to see it anyway. Ward
smiled.  

“Hey, I could fix you up with a
jet pack. It's a lot more convenient, and no more flying coach.”

“I have a thing about flying.”
Revolution was his normal deadpan.

“Oh yeah, what's that?”

“I don't like to.” Revolution
stopped and put his hand on Ward 's shoulder like he was about to tell him
something important. “There are a few rules we have to get straight.”

“Well, I already let you blindfold
me on our first date. I think that speaks for something.” Ward laughed, but
Revolution was a tough crowd.

“You have to be comfortable with
being Paul Ward around here, while knowing me only as the Revolution.”

Ward's mouth dropped open. He
unlatched the helmet and slipped it off. Revolution gave him another nod, and
they walked on past the helo.

“Wow. That was easy. Who else
knows?”

“You can trust everyone inside
these walls with your life.”

“So…everyone.”

Revolution said nothing. 

“And who knows your identity?”
Ward asked.

“Not even my mother.” Revolution
stopped. Put his hand on Ward's shoulder again. “Paul. There is no ultimate
weapon.” His tone was sympathetic.

“What?” Ward was confused. First,
he was pretty sure the man had just told a joke—that was nearly headline
worthy; and second, he wasn't sure he had heard the last part right. And even
if he had, it made no sense. From what he’d been told, it was the warning he
gave them about the ultimate weapon that had gotten him a ticket behind the
curtains. “What do you mean?”

“Council isn't working on an
ultimate weapon. That was a rumor that we planted. Waited for it to come back
to us.”

“But how? I mean, my source is
really reliable.” Ward couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I've no doubt. But Council isn't
working on it. We are.”

CHAPTER
28

F
iona
plopped onto her bed and cuddled up to the small mountain of pillows piled
against her headboard. Blinky, her sleek black cat with streaks of white above
each eye, bounded across the bed and leaped onto the floor. Everything was a
game to that cat. Chalk it up to cabin fever.

Fiona twisted over and grabbed the
remote from her bedside table and aimed it at the TV. The screen blinked to
life from the wall in front of her. Fiona hated her room. Its stone walls, flat
ceiling, and concrete floor. She’d done her best to hide them. The walls
screamed teenager, covered in posters of the latest singers that teens her age
obsessed about. Slashes and splashes of vibrant, neon colors were everywhere.
Lighted butterflies were strung around the periphery of the room, just below
the ceiling. Normally these were the only light source she used, unless she was
reading or studying, which was quite often. Images of hot actors and actresses
were also in abundance.

And the Revolution. Lots of the
Revolution.

The video was old. It beamed to
life with wavy lines across the screen and blips of static. A woman with long,
blonde hair glided gracefully across the screen, dancing a ballet to barely
audible music. The woman was Fiona’s mother. She watched her dance, and as the
film continued, Fiona found herself rising from the bed. Taking in her every
move. She began to mimic the moves. She’d watched this a thousand times. She
knew it by heart. So did Blinky. When her mother pirouetted, she pirouetted.
Her mother had been a professional dancer. Ballet, Latin, Middle Eastern. Her
mother had done all of them and done them well. But it was in belly dance that
she’d found her true calling. She had traveled the world with the
Bellydance
Allstars
. And she had combined all three of her other styles into a fusion
that confounded purists in all three camps. Fiona respected that. She emulated
it. Every month or so she would put on a recital of sorts for the
entertainment-starved staff of the HQ. Like her mother, she would dance a
fusion of all three styles. Fiona knew her true path lay in science, just like
her father. But her real passion was dance. 

She wondered if this war would
ever end. If someday she might be able to see more of the world. If she might
be able to dance for audiences she didn’t know by their first names. How
different would her life be if there was no war, no Resistance? She dreamed of
getting out. Going to a university. Meeting people her own age that she could
actually interact with and get to know, not flee from—pretending she was better
than they. She hated that game. Fiona had no choice but to be a loner.
Regulations.

But there were benefits of being
locked up in here. She thought of
him
. Every woman in the world wanted
him, Fiona was convinced of this. Why wouldn’t they? And she was the closest
thing he had to a girlfriend. Right on cue, Blinky leaped onto a bookshelf and
rubbed herself against a full-length portrait of the Revolution. “Good girl.”
Fiona laughed. “See, even you know.” Blinky rubbed the poster again and let out
a little mew. The fact that Blinky’s empty food bowl sat just beneath the
poster had nothing to do with it.

Fiona wondered what Revolution’s
ultimate role for her would be in the Resistance. She knew what she wanted it
to be. She knew she could dance her way into his heart. In fact, she was sure
she already had. He could deny it, but she knew his interest in her had changed
in recent months. She could feel it.

She clicked off the set, tossed
the remote onto the bed, and went out to find him.

The Revolution led Ward around the large
see-through chamber. He explained that they referred to it as the
Fire Fly
chamber
and promised to explain. It was a smaller laboratory inside the
larger. The walls of the chamber reached to the ceiling. High-tech work
stations abounded inside it. Ward found himself scanning the various machines.
A few were familiar, but he had no idea what the purpose was for most of them.
Revolution was trying to explain the insurgency's ultimate weapon. Even for a
Harvard professor, it was a stretch. Revolution tried to keep it simple.

“We call it bioluminescence, or
Fire Fly,” he said. “A new form of energy. And our plan is to apply it to a
human being. A person we have codenamed the Fire Fly”

“The Fire Fly chamber creates the
Fire Fly.”

“Exactly,” Revolution said.

“Okay. What will it do to them?”

“We don't know for certain. We do
know what it does to inanimate objects. Take the whip.” They strolled over to
the far wall of the chamber. Revolution pulled his whip out of a small
compartment. It was fully charged. Glowing and pulsing. He held it out for Ward
to see. “With it, we can cut through steel, elongate its reach, speed it
up.”  He flicked it toward a solid steel cylinder target that sat on a
steel pedestal at the other end of the chamber. The whip stretched
impossibly—twice, three times its normal length—and sliced the target in half.
The two halves clanged loudly to the floor, confirming their solid steel construction.

“Essentially, bioluminescence
converts matter to light. Very intense light. A moldable laser.” Revolution
gave him a proud glance. “No known element can resist it. It cuts through
everything.”

Ward was amazed. “What about this glass?
Does this contain it?”

“Only its residual energy. A
direct hit would burn right through it. We have to be careful when we are
running tests, as you might imagine.”

Ward laughed at the
understatement. “How in the hell did you come across this?”

“It was discovered by Dr. James C.
Scott.”

Now there was a name Ward knew.
Every academic did. Scott had been a legend before his death ten years ago.

“There was an accident,”
Revolution said. “A project that Scott was supervising. Many lives were
lost...” Revolution paused, as if he was remembering the event.

“Anyway. Out of it, Scott realized
that he could bind DNA protein to this new light substance.” 

“So, it's alive?” Ward asked.

“In a way. Think of it as
supercharged algae that alter the properties of their host—”

“Yuck.”

“But he died before perfecting it.
Our engineers have been working on it ever since.”  Revolution regarded
the whip for a moment. “Truth is, Scott never intended it to be used on
anything other than a human being. That's why he called it
bio
luminescence.
The living cells needed a host to survive, or so he thought. He believed it
would create a human of unlimited energy and power. Power that could be called
on at any time, just as a firefly with its light source. He died testing his
theory. He was test subject number one.”

“He tried it on himself! That’s
not exactly protocol.”

“Scott always wanted to be a hero.
He was convinced it would work, but he also knew it was dangerous. I don’t
think he wanted to risk anyone else’s life. I don’t have that luxury. Now we're
looking for lucky number thirteen. We've not been so lucky.”

“What happened in the other
tests?”

Revolution glanced toward Fiona,
who was working on the far side of the room. For months now Revolution had
noticed that she had requested office or lab tasks that kept her within sight
of him. If he was there, she would watch him all day long. It concerned him.
Her searching eyes caught his glance, and she smiled. She never failed to smile
at him. And he never failed to notice. He quickly turned back to Ward.