So Jon fought Blastarr and a squadron of troopers.
Then he destroyed all the biomechs, leaving Blastarr as the last mechanical creature standing.
He escaped through the roof, destroying more biomechs as Hawk showed up blithely asking him if he'd called a cab.
He'd survived a huge battle, but what was all that compared to what Hawk just told him?
"What do you mean she was hurt bad?" Jon asked loudly. "I thought she was just bruised from the battle. Limping a little."
"She was holding her arm against her ribs and squinting her eyes. She basically told Christine she could have killed her and then she passed out, but she stayed awake long enough to get her point across," Hawk answered back. "I mean, we've seen her take a pounding and still keep coming, but whatever hit her, hit her hard."
"She was leaning on Elzer when she came back and saved me," Jon pointed out. "Why didn't I notice it was worse than that?"
"None of us noticed it because she was walking on her own when we left," Hawk pointed out. "It doesn't matter. I think it was a slow motion wound. We got her to a hospital in Boston. We'll catch up with them there."
"What about Larabee?" Jon shouted.
"Gave her to the leaders. They'll get her to the Passages their way. Good thing, too. That way, none of us have to take her through a jumpgate."
Jon didn't care about jumpgates. Larabee already knew they had teleportation capabilities somehow, just not exactly what or where they were. Given how much they traveled, it was bound to not remain a secret forever. She would have already told Dread, wouldn't she? Or maybe Dread had told her? Still, knowing that they had teleportation devices, jumpgates or otherwise, was a far cry from knowing where the jumpgates were.
But if Dread knew... they would have to change tactics.
So assuming that Dread knew about the jumpgates, the Resistance leadership almost destroyed... what the hell had he been thinking?
What had he been thinking?
Jon kept mentally kicking himself for being willing to do what a total stranger asked without checking the security himself beforehand. Sure, just get all the leaders of the five major resistance groups together based on someone else's word. Someone he'd never met but only had exchanged a few comms with. Someone he had listened to on the radio and thought he could trust.
Where were his brains? Don't answer that, Jon. You won't like the answer.
He helped an overunit. He helped lead the highest Resistance personnel into a trap.
And they still weren't united as a Resistance force.
Small guerilla units fighting independently without sharing resources...
They had to come together as a unified force if they were going to beat Dread, now more than ever. The problem was how. Dread knew about the radios, he knew how the masses were communicating, he had set up his own radio show...
Talk about irony. There was such symmetry between what had just happened versus what had happened years ago. Some resistance group had given out radios to try to unify the settlements in order to better fight Dread, but then they were systematically wiped out by Dread when he learned of it. Then Dread learned of the latest batch of radios and used their idea by only having one voice he controlled going out through to any radio, to anyone who would listen, unifying the Resistance forces just to set them up in a trap.
And he was more than willing to walk into her trap and lead others into it.
Where were his brains?
Jon liked to think he was a good judge of people, but the truth was that he got fooled. It didn't happen all the time, but when the wool got pulled over his eyes, it got pulled down good.
He'd seen the truth in Jennifer the moment he laid eyes on her. He didn't know the details, he didn't know the circumstances, but he knew he wasn't looking at a committed Dread Youth. He'd fought countless Dread Youth, seen many more, so how did Christine fool them all?
She had the act down perfectly. She even fooled Jennifer, and that was damn near impossible to do. She'd pick up on the small personality indicators emitted by the imposters. Usually, the tells were subtle. A way of standing, a form of speaking, the lack of a twitch, something 'small' and unnoticeable by others were red flags to her.
And Christine behaved like a wasteland survivor, not a Dread Youth imposter.
"Stop kicking yourself," Hawk admonished him.
"I'm not."
Hawk laughed. "Yes, you are. We all trusted her. We all took her at her word. And she was good. How else could she fool Jennifer? Elzer was impressed, that's for certain. He told us that Freedom One had been part of his interrogation. That means she had to be a diehard Dreadie. To pull off what she did -"
"Speaking of -"
"Tune in to 150 megahertz."
Jon adjusted his earpiece to receive the frequency, and Elzer's voice came over the small speakers. "... won't be back, but the voice of the Resistance will stay on the air. I make that pledge, and I mean to keep it. This is the new Voice of the Resistance. Freedom Two. And if anything happens to me, there's going to be a Freedom Three. And Four. And Five. We didn't start this war, but we're going to finish it."
So the new leader of Gundar's team will now be pulling a second shift as Freedom Two? Elzer was going to be busy.
~0~0~0~0~0~
The Boston "hospital" came into view.
"That's it?" Jon asked. He'd never seen the site before.
"Looks like it," Hawk told him. "It used to be the public library. Locals converted it to a hospital and a school some years ago. Dread has already bombed this area so many times, he probably thinks it's unlivable and has left it alone. I've got a bead on the other bikes. Looks like they found cover for them. I'm going to let you go on in. I'll catch up after I park."
Hawk hovered just high enough off the ground so Jon could jump from the skybike and deactivate his suit. He walked quickly through the corridors, followed the signs that said "Medical Center This Way." If he didn't know that they were in a demilitarized zone, he'd have thought he was in a hospital from before the Wars. He passed by various individuals, all stopping to glance at him as he passed by. News of the attempt on the Resistance leaders and how they stopped it was already being talked about. There was no way to keep information like that secret. The news would have hit the airwaves already, but then again, it was another story of how Resistance forces defeated the best that Dread could throw at them.
Freedom Two was already making inroads with the listening public.
Now where was his team?
He kept on walking until he heard familiar voices.
"I keep wondering what happened between Jennifer and Elzer," Tank's voice was quiet. "He was being very...uh, friendly toward her. Did you notice?"
Scout looked back toward the exam rooms. "He said she saved his life. Got in between him and Blastarr when he shot at them and even took the brunt of the wall when it fell on them. He was impressed."
"Larabee wasn't. Did you see the look on her face when they were taking her away? She was still talking about how you can't resist the will of the Machine and how we're all doomed. You know, the usual spiel they speak."
"Jennifer didn't even try to convince her of the truth," Scout pointed out. "I think that's the first time she's ever not tried."
Tank chuckled. "That, my friend, is the sign that our pilot was very angry. That, plus... there was something in the way Jennifer looked at her. It was almost like..."
"What?"
"Remember the look she had in her eyes when she had to sneak into Medlab One? When she had to pretend to be a Dread soldier again and went in on her own?"
Scout nodded. "She hated putting on that uniform again."
"She was seeing herself the way she could have been if she hadn't realized the truth. I think that when she looked at Larabee, she was looking in a mirror and seeing herself if she never got out. It was the same look in her eye."
"I didn't think of that," Scout admitted.
They hadn't seen Jon walking toward them, but what they were saying - Jon didn't want to hear that. There was nothing similar about Larabee or Jennifer, even if he had thought something similar when he first made Freedom One's acquaintance.
He hurried up to his friends. "How is she?" Jon asked.
His two teammates quickly stood the moment they heard his voice. "Beat up but fixable," Scout quickly answered. "The doctor came out a little while ago and said that Jennifer had a cracked rib, a couple of bruised ribs in some not-so-good places, some other bruised bones, slight concussion, pulled muscles... basically, the suit protected her, shocked her when it shut down but she still got the crap kicked out of her when that wall fell on her. Their regenerator isn't working too well, but they've got her in it to see if it can help. I think we'll be here until morning."
Jon breathed a frustrated sigh. "I didn't know she was hurt that bad. She wasn't acting like it."
"Where's Hawk?" Tank asked.
"Parking the skybike," Jon explained. "What about -"
Scout quickly interrupted him. "All the leaders are safe. They've got Larabee, and Cypher has promised us that she'll get delivered alive to the psych people at the Passages. We overheard a conversation from two of the hospital's guards that they're putting captured soldiers on a suicide watch in the prison wards."
"Suicide watch?"
"Apparently, there's a new directive from Dread we haven't heard about," Tank explained. "Any of his soldiers captured by the Resistance must either escape or ensure that they don't divulge any information by any means possible. There are reports of some prisoners committing suicide."
Jon sighed. "We'll have to be in on her interrogation. I think she knows how we travel."
Scout sighed. "You mean... specifically... how we travel? Not just guessing?"
"I've got a bad feeling," Jon said. "I'm hoping that's all it is."
"I'll start running diagnostics on the system again," Scout volunteered. "Make sure it's all secure. Maybe those anomalous readings I keep picking up may give us a hint. Jennifer and I can go over the details when she's feeling better." Scout chuckled. "Dang it all, Jon, we could use a day off, and I don't think we're going to get one any time soon."
Jon nodded. "I know. You're worried about these readings."
"We shouldn't be getting them," Scout explained. "We've been so busy, we haven't had the time to really study the sensor readings and figure out what's going on."
"Day off," Jon smiled. "Yeah, we'll have to arrange that." Then he took a deep breath. "So, catch me up with the rest of it. Give me the details."
~0~0~0~0~0~
2:00 a.m.
2:00 in the morning.
When did they invent a 2:00 in the morning? Shouldn't someone have sent out a memo about that? Or, better yet, taken a vote?
Hawk had spoken with the doctor and decided that there was no way he was going to allow Jennifer on a skybike. He flew back to the base so he could get the jumpship to carry their pilot back home. Scout and Tank had found a quiet spot to get some rest, but Jon was still too wound up. He was wandering around the hallways to walk off the extra energy when the doctor found him and told him that he could see Jennifer.
Whereas the corridors reminded him of a pre-war hospital, the examination rooms seemed more like something out of a temporary shelter. The ward he entered was sectioned off by cloth partitions. Each area had one bed, an IV stand, a stool that could fit under the bed and a water jug and cup on a makeshift shelf. A few areas were better equipped for more seriously injured patients, some with EKG monitors, one outfitted for emergency surgery. Jon walked by and glanced in each one looking for Jennifer. There weren't many injured there. One burn victim, one with a broken arm, one post-surgery patient - but most of the beds were empty.
Just as he reached a cordoned off area at the end of the row, he saw her lying on a regenerator bed, its power indicator showing it was working on low power, her hand on her forehead. He walked in and stood next to her bed, touching her arm to let her know he was there. He heard a mumbled, "Hey."
"Hey," he said as he took her hand, leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. He saw a few bruises forming that he hadn't noticed before. "How are you feeling?"
"Not as bad as I was," she said. "I think I felt my powerpack shock me before my suit shut down. That's what did the damage. Sore muscles, a concussion ... nothing I haven't had before."
"It was a little worse than that," he told her. Jon looked down at the regenerator indicator. Low power... that usually meant a power supply was going bad. Still, it could help heal her a little, enough to make the trip back to the base safely and get her into their own regenerator. "I'm glad they could get you into it quickly." He took her hand in his and wove their fingers together.
Jennifer smiled slightly. "The doctor said they weren't too busy." She squinted up at him, frowning. "You okay? You look like you're angry."
"I am. Just kicking myself for being taken in by Christine Larabee. I still don't know why I agreed to help her as quickly as I did."
Jennifer moved slightly, wincing from sore muscles letting their unhappiness known. "It was a leap of faith," she said.
"That almost cost us the major Resistance leadership and you."
Jennifer smiled up at him. "You ought to know by now I'm indestructible," she joked. "Besides, what's a few bumps and bruises? We all get them."
"You've been getting more than your fair share lately. In fact, you've had a lot of bad luck this year," he said. He noticed the small stool sitting underneath the bed. He pulled it out and sat down. "Blastarr shot at you."
"Not the first time," she shrugged painfully. "Probably won't be the last."
"A wall fell on you."
"Happened before. You took on Blastarr and some clickers. How did that go?"
She was diverting the conversation, pretending to not take her injuries seriously. It was old behavior. Jon knew there were times when falling back to previous behaviors was a coping mechanism and was the best way to deal with a situation.
He saw her wince in pain again. "I didn't get a chance to thank you," he murmured as he pushed her hair away from her face.
"Thank me for what?"
"Rescuing me. Again. Shot that weapon right out of Christine's hand," he said as he gave her a gentle kiss. His finger trailed down a small scar just below her jaw. New scar. Did that happen when the wall fell on her? "How about a new type of thank you?"
"New type?"
"I was thinking... dinner at the Passages when you're feeling better? Just you and me? I recently heard a rumor about a new restaurant there. Maybe they have good food."
Jennifer smiled. It was a bold question though. It would mean being seen together publicly. And if Dread had any spies around...
The state of their changing relationship hadn't gone beyond the two of them - despite what they were sure the rest of the team knew but didn't talk about and what Christine Larabee had said. Were they ready to go someplace where people could see them? Could they pass it off to any passers-by that it was merely dinner between teammates?
The moment Jennifer smiled and said, "I'd love to," Jon didn't care if anyone saw them. The war shouldn't take over every aspect of their lives, should it? There should be personal time, right?
Then Jennifer became overly quiet. If there was one thing that Jon had learned over the years, when Jennifer got that look on her face, it meant something far different than anything anyone thought. "Hey, what is it?"
She frowned. "I never saw it," she muttered.
"Saw what?"
She glanced up at him, her eyes almost dark with doubt. "Nothing about her indicated she was a Dread soldier. Nothing. I've never seen that before. How did I not recognize her as one? Did I miss something or was she that good of an actress?"
"She was good at pretending," Jon agreed.
Jennifer shook her head slightly, wincing at the slight pain the movement caused her. "No. Her posture, her movements, even her speech... nothing indicated she was working for Dread." She waited a moment. "Think for just a moment. Every single soldier we've come across over the last few years - they couldn't behave like someone who lived in the Wastelands. They couldn't assimilate the behaviors or the speech. And Christine didn't talk like a Dread soldier."
That definitely got Jon's attention. "What do you mean?"
Jennifer chose her words carefully. "Remember when you met me? How I talked? How I had trouble carrying on a conversation about almost any subject? Tank described it to me once, about how my speech was mostly unemotional?"
Jon nodded his head. Then, she had struggled to learn to converse easily with others. Sharing in ordinary, inane conversation? Laughing at a joke? Talking about nothing in particular just to pass the time of day? She'd had trouble at first, but eventually, she learned how to speak like others living in the Wastelands just by being around people and listening to them. More to the point, just by being around the team. It hadn't happened overnight either. It had taken months before Jon had noticed a change in her speech patterns. Then what she said registered with him. "Christine didn't speak like that." How long had she been away from Volcania?
"No, she didn't," Jennifer pointed out. The regenerator made a sound, seemed to turn off and come back on - definitely a power supply going bad. Jon saw her eyes squint slightly as the pain returned. "That means that she had been out here in the Wastelands for a long time. We've been listening to her on the radio for months. Not once during all that time did she come across as anything else other than a survivor. That might mean she's lived out here for longer than she was broadcasting. She's seen the truth of Dread's lies. She's seen people suffering and dying and surviving, and she is still loyal to Dread. How could anyone pretend that much or that well? And I didn't see it. I didn't recognize anything that would have given her away. I've never been fooled like that before."
Jennifer wasn't the only one fooled. Christine Larabee had fooled them all. Yet, the impact and the import of what Jennifer was saying did indicate a key element to their success as a team. Jennifer had always been able to spot Dread soldiers working undercover because she could recognize the signs before anyone else could. Christine got right past her radar. But there was one rule that Jon knew and had taken to heart long ago - there was a first time for everything. "Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. She learned to mimic the speech patterns of people out here. She probably studied that before going undercover. And you were only with her a matter of minutes before you flew off to get Gundar. She didn't do or say anything that would have alerted you, right?"
Jennifer shook her head. "No, that's just an excuse -"
"No, it's a reason," Jon countered. "When I think back on some of the things she said, maybe I should have realized that she wasn't all that she said she was. It was just a word here or there... I can't really remember what, but when I think back on it, there were words in her conversation that you would have picked up on if you'd been there. I just wasn't paying close enough attention." He had the idea that there was something else bothering her, not just the fact that Larabee had gotten past her. "What is it?"
"I keep thinking that if I hadn't seen the truth and stayed in the Dread Youth... that could have been me instead of her," she said.
Jon took both her hands in his. "No, not you. You could never be anything like her."
Jennifer smiled. "I was a true believer once, I bought into all the lies -"
"But you never set up a trap to murder people," Jon pointed out. Before she could protest, he placed his finger over her lips and said, "And you know that's not what you did at Sand Town. You saved lives where you could, and that wasn't easy. Plus, as soon as you saw the truth, you turned your back on all of it. She didn't. The only person whose fault this is, is hers. Not ours, and certainly not yours." He paused, then, "I shouldn't have been so willing to go along with her plan without looking closer at the details or considering the ramifications. I didn't do my job on that, and we almost lost the main leadership of the Resistance."
"It was a chance to strengthen our numbers," she told him. "It was worth the risk - if it had been the truth. How are the leaders doing?"
"From what Scout and Tank told me, Cypher's not happy he risked his team to pull off a so-called rescue for Larabee. It cost him one of his people, and it wasn't even real. The others began planning a few contingencies and maybe organizing another date for a meeting when we can discuss unifying our resources."
Something else seemed to be bothering Jennifer.
"This will hit everyone who listened to her pretty hard once they find out the truth."
John sort of chuckled. "Maybe not. Your friend Elzer is on the air as Freedom Two. He told the listening public that Freedom One won't be back, but he will and if necessary, there'll be a Freedom Three and a Freedom Four."
Jennifer frowned. "So no one other than us will know the truth?"
"I think the truth about Freedom One is what they used to call a public relations' nightmare." Seeing Jennifer didn't understand the term, he just shook his head. "For now, it might be the best thing if no one else knows all of it. But the leaders know, they'll undoubtedly tell their teams, eventually some parts of the story will get out, but it might take a while and by then, listeners will be trusting Elzer as Freedom Two."
The regenerator thrummed, as if more power was being used. Jon noticed her pained frown lessen a bit. They could discuss everything later. "Why don't you get some sleep? Scout said you'd be here until morning. Well, sunrise at least since it's already morning. And it might help. We'll talk later."
She nodded. "I'm going to have to tell Hank about Gundar. They were friends."
"Hank's here on the East Coast, right?" Jon asked her.
"Yeah."
"Maybe the grapevine around here works pretty well. He may know by morning."
"Maybe," Jennifer answered lowly. She covered her mouth as she yawned.
"Why don't you get some sleep?" he suggested again.
She nodded, closed her eyes and drifted off within minutes.
Jon sat there quietly, watching her. I could have lost her today, and it would have been my fault for falling headfirst into a trap, he thought. The leaders could have been killed, his team... and why? Because he didn't use caution? Because he believed the proverbial snake oil Larabee was selling?
But if it had been real, if they had brought the teams together... not that the leaders couldn't do that now. They didn't need someone like Freedom One. The other leaders were willing to join forces. But were they only willing to do that if Jon took the lead? What was their opinion after everything that had happened? Would they still only join forces under that condition? And if they did, would Jon want to be the leader of the overall Resistance? He'd never sought that type of leadership role. He had his team, and they worked well together, but they were a small team. The entire Resistance... how many people did that mean? There were how many Resistance cells in the country? Small two-men units like Andy Jackson's 'team?' Small units like his own? A few larger groups consisting of over twenty fighters? Some of the smaller cells would want to remain independent, but a united Resistance...
The very idea boggled the imagination.
The truth was that he didn't want to lead that many soldiers. It meant a loss of maneuverability, a loss of efficiency and speed. All his tactics were geared around using those capabilities. Still, he would have risen to the occasion if he had to, but he had to admit to himself that he was relieved that it hadn't come to that.
Not that he would admit that to anyone but himself.
