Chapter Two: The First Motion
Putting on a shirt still hurt, but at least at this point, he had gotten used to it. Torn left an idle hand over the half-healed stitches, lost momentarily in the perpetually authoritarian lines of the tile in the examination room.
"Well, you're getting there."
The doctor, a white-blonde stick insect of a man named Brose, stuck some X-rays onto a viewing panel and pondered them, fingering his pointed chin. Torn glanced up. The synthetic materials they'd fashioned to replace the shattered portion of his ribcage stood out in sharp relief next to the foggy image of natural bone next to it. A smudge of swollen and scarred tissue blurred the edges.
"What the hell does that mean?" Torn asked, wrinkling his nose as he reached for his armor.
Brose's thin eyebrows rose appraisingly as he examined the image. "You're not coughing up black phlegm yet, so the synth must be compatible," he replied, tossing a hand around lightly. "Which is a Precursor's-damned miracle in the first place, because that was a risky move."
"Good to know. Now. Weeks later."
The doctor waved a hand flippantly again at Torn's sarcasm like he was swatting away a bothersome gnat. "Half of the synth projects have completely rejected whatever we've put in them, but push comes to shove, you simply must replace bone structure that's been lost, and nobody wants to put money into a long term solution. And, we don't have the Eco to keep people in a stasis tank." He eyed the image for a beat of silence, brushing his fingers over it idly as if touch could glean more information than merely looking at it. "Well, that was a large projectile that hit you."
Torn fought and lost against an exaggerated roll of the eyes. Dr. Brose plucked a transparent flimsy from the folder in his other hand and held it up against one of the images on the viewing board, comparing the day's X-rays to an initial one done right after Dead Town. "But, yes. You're getting there," he mused. He turned smartly on one heel and sat down at a desk across the room from where Torn stood snapping his armor into place next to the exam table. "Give it another few weeks, and you'll be right as rain. Take it easy until then. The restriction on heavy lifting and aerobic exercise stays, but I'll clear you to do some light physical activity. Like being out of bed." He fired a disgruntled look at Torn. "Oh, wait. You're already up."
"And then, what? A six month prescription to whatever painkiller of the month you've been giving to every grunt who comes in with a sore knee or a cold?" Torn shot back as he worked the snaps on his breastplate.
Displeasure turned to genuine ire as Brose shot him a sour look over his oversized spectacles. The action wrinkled the four-pointed star tattoo on his forehead. "You're lucky to even be walking right now, so watch your tone with me, Captain."
If the doctor didn't already outrank him by some years, Torn might have let himself get offended. But, he had a point. Brose was from a time where to be a certified Krimzon Guard physician was to be one of the more gifted trainees to go through the candidate process. His tall, harsh frame had been through every ounce of abuse Torn's had, and he had to learn proficiency in battlefield medical skills the entire time. Only KG handled KG, and barring the Intel agents, even their doctors earned their tattoos. So, Torn bit back a retort and adjusted the last plate of armor on his shoulder.
"Sorry, Doc," he managed.
Brose looked less than convinced. He rummaged around in a drawer for a note pad. "We told you to stay put after the surgery. You'd have made much better progress with an extra week off your feet," he said without looking at Torn. "Here's a prescription for a refill on non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. Thins the blood, so don't get shot again. Over-the-counter will do for pain management if you really need it. I'd have liked to run you through one last round of Eco treatment, but the stuff's damned hard to come by these days, as you know." He held out the slip of paper with something unintelligible written on it but didn't let go when Torn went to take it from his hand. He levelled a stern, piercing look at Torn over the wire-thin frames of his lenses. "In all seriousness, Torn, take it easy. You'll already have a hell of time in the future with this sort of injury, and if you keep stressing it, I'm not going to volunteer to carve scar tissue out of you so you can breathe again, you ungrateful thing."
Torn wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or be annoyed. "You gotta work on your bed side manner, Brose. It's awful."
Brose clicked his tongue and released the paper with a sigh. "The Baron asked me to keep his men on their feet, not coddle them."
"Have a good day, Brose."
"I'm not treating you if you let yourself get pneumonia either!" the doctor shouted after Torn as he left the room.
An hour after visiting Doc Brose and a quick visit to the pharmacy, Torn went straightaway to his next errand – cleaning up Dead Town. 'Cleaning up' was used in lieu of any better term, as he'd learned in the couple briefings he'd attended with the Council. The anti-inflammatories seemed to work. He didn't feel like he was breathing through a straw anymore, at least
Enroute, straddling a red one-person zoomer high over the civilian lanes below, he mentally chewed on his other source of anxiety besides the half-healed hole in his chest. It had been two weeks since he'd turned on Cass. The mere thought of it made his guts clench like his soul was imploding and sucking the rest of him into the subsequent black hole. He'd caught himself jiggling a nervous knee in meetings now, a habit he'd never had before. Loud noises made him jump. He didn't sleep well.
How would they get a message to him? Did they have a mole embedded somewhere in the KG? Would it be a late night kidnapping? What had they done with Cass? They'd already fled their previous hideout and still the forensics team hadn't discovered any leads. He'd been back enough to grill the investigators; it made sense, since he'd started heading up the project, and he did have a vested interest in finding them. What the rest of the KG didn't know was that it was to help the rebels avoid capture. Well, that was his intent, anyway. Hard to give them the tip off if he couldn't get a hold of them.
The city gave way to the sea when he crossed the far eastern wall. Another zoomer hovered roughly a hundred feet or so out over the water as Torn approached on his own machine. Erol's bug-eyed mask turned to regard him as he approached. "It's about time, Captain," he said. A yellow-gloved hand gestured to the activity going on below them at the base of the old wall. "You almost missed the opening volleys."
Torn didn't answer. Erol managed not to sound combative today, but Torn still didn't quite feel like he had the strength to discuss the event without emotion. He sideslipped into position roughly within arm's reach of Erol's zoomer, using a pattern of rapid blinks to command his mask to zoom in on the site below.
The Council's grand plan to 'clean up' Dead Town was to flood it. A quarter of the sector touched up against the desert where the Metal Heads had converged a month prior. Water surrounded the rest of it, a feat of engineering in Mar's time to claim ground for the city from the sea and provide a natural barrier in addition to the wall itself. Several Assault Cats, a heavier attack version of the average Hellcat cruisers the beat cops used, hovered at regular intervals near the base of the wall where it met the water. The gunship commanders checked in over the universal comm channel used by the City Defense Group, and then the ranking air boss gave the command.
"Drops at the ready…Release."
From the bottom of each cruiser dropped a red barrel with a blinking light on it. The barrels splashed into the water next to the base of the wall. Simultaneously, the cruisers turned and hovered some hundred meters or so away.
"Light it up."
One by one, huge explosions created geysers in the water at the base of the wall. Chunks of debris followed the water. Some of it pinged off the bottom of the cruisers.
Torn grunted. "Didn't hold back, did they?"
"Would you have held back?"
"Fuck no."
Follow-on explosions from smaller charges blossomed in lines running up the wall from where the barrels dropped. More than a few sections of wall collapsed. The fall of the debris pushed large waves out into the water only to have it rush back into the sector through the new holes. Displaced sea water ran in rivers down the deserted streets, covering stone and metal and even collapsing several buildings as it pulled at their foundations. Towers and high-rises now poked up from the dark waters like the fingers and arms of men drowning in mud.
Slowly and surely, the sea took back its lost ground, and Dead Town was flooded. Torn zoomed back out on his viewpoint, thankful for his mask. The flooding wouldn't reach every inch of the sector, but at least it would wash out most of the dark Eco left by the Metal Heads. They would see in time if it helped any. The environmentalists complained about the impact on the sealife, but a short meeting between the Baron and Environmental Engineering Commander ended the dissent.
Erol crossed his arms. His armor creaked audibly. "Well, that's that. All your 'blood and sweat' washed out to sea."
By his tone, he wasn't lamenting the swift erasure of the place where KG gave their lives. Torn mulled over his words a moment, letting them create an anger to eclipse the anxiety in his chest.
"We still haven't had that talk I promised you," Torn said.
"What talk was that?"
Torn pointed to the last standing guard tower on the northern portion of the collapsed wall. "I was in that pillbox. Gus had half his head blown up. Metal Heads were overrunning the wall. You were trying to get me to abandon my post and then pulled my men out from under me. And, you had the gall to suggest that I was wasting my time on a bunch of, how'd you put it? Bottom-feeding peasants living off the Baron's handouts?"
Where Sears made her last stand with Bravo.
Where he watched the last of First Legion's deserters flee into the streets below.
An echo of the fury from that day rumbled in the back of his mind. There with it floated the image of how easily he could draw his weapon and end Erol's miserable little existence here and now. How his body would fall from his zoomer to hit the water below. How nobody would even turn a head at it back at Headquarters. Torn felt a muscle in cheek clench.
"And, I wanna say there was…" Instead, he chuckled and put his hands on his hips. He had Erol's rapt attention now. His second-in-command's eyes burned at him from behind their red lenses. "And this is crazy talk probably, but…from what I remember, you said, right after Emerys came in to tell me who tucked tail and ran like cowards…you said, save a space for me in Hell, Torn. That's what you said." Torn barked out a short harsh laugh. "Kinda made it sound like you've wanted me dead."
Erol didn't speak, but Torn could feel the ice in the silence even over their mask comms. It was an interesting silence, equal parts deference and defiance. Torn had been a constant presence in Erol's career, from his first step onto the training grounds to now as Torn's Lieutenant; no matter the situation, that element of fear and intimidation would always be there. Torn had known for a while his primary challenge as Marshal would be to keep the wolf at his side from taking him by the throat. He needed to make an impression.
Torn lashed out. He snagged Erol by his armor and dragged him from his zoomer. Simultaneously, he kicked the aircraft away from them with a long leg so that Erol hung from Torn's grip. Erol's hands scrambled for purchase against Torn's pauldrons and his feet kicked the air. Torn put his face close to Erol's, close enough for their foreheads to touch. He fought to keep his voice under control as he felt the stitches in his side start to strain. Thankfully, Erol stuck to relatively light armor.
"It's gonna take a lot more than that to kill me, you pissant," Torn hissed. "I'm giving you a pass today. You better fucking try harder next time, though, or there'll be Hell to pay."
Erol didn't get the chance to reply. Torn opened his hands. With a clatter of armor as he tried to grab the zoomer in his descent, Erol plummeted towards the water below. Torn leaned over slightly to make sure the bastard didn't hit head first and kill himself, kicked his zoomer into drive, and headed back to the city.
Smoke drifted lazily up towards the ceiling from the end of a cigar left to burn itself out in an ash tray. Praxis had long since banned the use of tobacco within the Palace. It promoted unprofessionalism and in his opinion, addiction made men weak. Ashelin very much doubted the Baron would make his way to her lowly quarters with the rest of the ranking KG. That would require him to leave the lofty heights of his throne.
Ashelin allowed herself a smoke very rarely, but tonight was one of those nights. The last time she had partaken in a cigar, she had been standing on the edge of the parade ground with her fellow Officer Candidates fresh from graduation. Cass had been among them, an earnest classmate with more than skill than any of them at talking his way into someone's trust.
Now, all that remained of him was a year's worth of reports and some less than satisfying details of his disappearance.
Ashelin pulled her feet from her desktop to lean forward and review the notes she had made so far on a small datapad. She estimated she was about halfway through Cass's reports. He really did talk too much. She sighed, glancing at the forgotten cigar. Reaching over, she finished it off, jamming the smoldering end into the tray.
She did not possess the patience required of Krimzon Guard Intelligence operatives to carefully work a case nor did she have Torn's gruff respectability, so following a more detached investigative authority track after her mandatory tour as a beat cop made sense. But Cass was damn good at being a Ghost, KG slang for their spies. Hence why this particular project had engrossed him so thoroughly. To get the chance to infiltrate the first whisper of rebellion in Haven City would have been irresistible, and he would have given his all to make it work and to bring them to justice.
Given the amount of detail in his reports, the Council likely skimmed most of it. They generally didn't take things seriously until it affected them, and an at-the-time grassroots dissent movement would not have been on their radar nearly as much as, say, tracking down Damas's missing son.
The early entries laid out the identities of the original founders – a man named Lanus and some obscure figure called 'The Shadow.' Ashelin wouldn't be surprised if Lanus himself was The Shadow and merely used the moniker as a decoy to keep the attention off himself. Cass then went on to describe the addition of a few other people added into a trusted group of cadre. Most of this information he uncovered after gaining entry. Lanus and The Shadow recruited via several locations around the city, mostly seedy areas in the Slums and around the Port. One or two came from Main Town.
Ashelin had to hand it to the citizens of Haven City; they weren't fools. Living under the sort of authoritarian rule that Praxis enjoyed, they knew that to be indiscrete meant their lives. By the end of month two, the rebel network stretched across half the city, even reaching as far as the Stadium due to Lanus's position as a mechanic there. Influential they might not be, but even Ashelin conceded that, were it stronger, dissent that deeply embedded in the population could become difficult to uproot.
Cass recorded everything – cache drops, locations of their rotating monthly meetings, rosters of those attending, how many guns they had, where they recruited from, weekly code words, the works. Like the people he hid among, he knew better than to be indiscrete, and he would have made note of any potential discovery. Had it gotten too bad, he would have bugged out before getting discovered.
She glanced over at the other files on her desk – Intel's report on the night of Cass's capture, and the details of the forensics findings from the hideout. She had looked through the Intel report so many times at this point, she nearly had it memorized. The forensics report, though, she would need a little more time with. She needed to understand this Underground before she could even begin to guess how they knew about Cass and where they might have fled.
And once she had that, there wasn't a place on the continent she wouldn't be able to hunt them down.
Some distance away from the Palace, Torn also found himself mired in paperwork in his small two-bedroom apartment. A disheveled stack of papers that used to be a copy of the forensics report from the abandoned rebel headquarters covered most of his desk next to a cup of caf that had long gone cold. From the window above his desk, he could look out over Main Town. Even in this part of the city, where people could forget about the inconvenience of war and poverty and martial law as long as they had their money, the sector looked harsh and grim through the light rain pattering against the window.
Forensics found Cass, or what they thought must have been evidence of him. Torn flicked the edge of the flimsy image. The image was of the red scarf Cass had been wearing that night next to a small yellow placard with a number on it. A knife pinned the scarf to the floor in macabre fashion. Given the distinct lack of other evidence, it had to have been left on purpose. The rebels wanted them to know they had one of their men. They wanted the KG to know they weren't blind to traitors in their midst.
Torn cleared his throat stiffly, trying to ignore a bout of heartburn brought on either by his own guilt or the four cups of caf he'd downed in the last hour. A year of undercover work and two lives down the drain. He drummed his fingers on the small stack of papers. "There's gotta be more," he murmured in spite of himself. He could go back to the Intel desk, try one more time to get the info file on the other spy they'd sent. …No, they'd only turn him away again. There were only so many times he could ask about a restricted file before they would get suspicious. The desk stooge had said the other file was restricted because it was still an open investigation. That didn't answer the question as to why Cass's file was accessible still, of course, but again, the clerk deigned to at least condescendingly explain the difference between an outright disappearance and a confirmed capture. Still, Torn wondered. Perhaps there was something that spy had discovered that Cass hadn't…
Instead, all Torn had to go on was this meager forensics report and whatever Cass had collected. Which he still couldn't access because Ashelin had the program file – and all of Cass's findings – checked out. He had perused the file upon first assuming command of the project in an attempt to commit as much as possible to memory, but Intel wouldn't let the original files out of their site unless it was for a good, i.e., Baron-level approved, reason. Granted, it was in Ashelin's wheelhouse to have control over the relevant files; given Torn's proximity to the incident, project manager or not, the Office of Investigative Authority put her in charge of leading the effort. Torn sighed and rested his forehead on his knuckles. He was at an impasse.
A creak in the hallway spun him around, pistol aimed towards the door. Seven seconds of heart-pounding silence went by before he relaxed. Precursors, this was getting old. He set the pistol down on the desk and got up with his mug. Someone better come either kill him or deliver him from the Baron before he had a heart attack from the stress and caffeine overdose. He half-heartedly joked with himself that it would be Erol. His Lieutenant had walked back into HQ later that day in dry clothes like nothing had happened. He wouldn't, however, meet Torn's eyes.
Halfway across the room, the lights went out.
Torn froze, ears straining to make up for the sudden loss of his eyes.
There.
The subtle swish of someone moving behind him. Over by the door, the faintest of rattle of what must be a shoulder strap against the metal of a rifle stock.
He tightened his grip on his mug, holding it in his hand rather than by the handle, ready to strike.
With a click of the switch, the lights came back on. Torn blinked against the brightness to find Tess leaning against the door frame leading into the hallway. Her hand lingered on the light switch, and she shot a fake smile at him. She cradled her Scatter Gun in one arm. A chuckle burbled up from Torn's throat in relief.
"You move pretty light for a fat man," he said before turning around to face the man at his desk.
Lanus smirked at him from Torn's desk chair, thick arms crossed over his chest. "I prefer the term big-boned," he replied lightly, patting his stomach. "You look surprised to see us. I figured at this point, you'd be anticipating us showing up."
"I was actually starting to wonder if it had just been a hallucination given how thoroughly you managed to disappear."
"The Shadow wanted to send a message," Lanus said.
Torn nodded towards the files on his desk. "Message received. Not even Forensics has been able to glean anything besides what you left on purpose."
Lanus only smiled enigmatically. He seemed to be in a better mood than when they first met. Torn still had to battle the hammering of his heart trying to escape from his chest. "I assume you being here means you're about to ask me to do something, right?"
"Don't make it sound like a chore. You were the one that volunteered." Lanus turned in his seat to glance over the files on the desk, ignoring the gun. He lingered on the photo of the scarf. "Your first test is to get us more intel like this." He held the photo up over his shoulder so Torn could see it from across the room. "I know that spy must have a collection of reports on us somewhere. I want them. I want to know what the KG has on us, and you're going to get it for me."
Torn crossed his arms. "That file's in the hands of the lead investigator. Not even Intelligence can get to it."
"Then, it's good you're canoodling with the lead investigator …Oh, c'mon now, don't get offended," he added rapidly, holding out a warning hand when Torn started to step forward, hands clenched in fists. Behind him, Torn heard Tess rack a round into the chamber of her gun. Lanus's eyes twinkled harshly at him. "Don't be so naïve to think that we wouldn't dig up everything about you before letting you in. You're not the only organization with resources."
Torn hated how his face burned at the comment and how obviously it affected him, but more than anything, he hated the smug look on the man's mutton-chopped face; Lanus had Torn exactly where he wanted him. The rebel took out a small recorder and made scans of the forensics report with it.
"I'm going to give you the coordinates to the new hideout in good faith. As much as Tess here doesn't like you, it'd be quite the waste to not take advantage of the service you're offering." He got up from the desk and turned to Torn. "For a man who's seen what you have, I don't expect infatuation to get in the way of what's right."
The way he met Torn's eyes left little room for anything but sincerity. Despite the icy anger in his chest at a stranger making assumptions, Torn didn't look away. "It won't," he replied.
"Then, like I said, we'll be in touch."
Lanus stepped around him and walked towards Tess and the hallway. "Before you go…" Torn started. Both rebels paused to look back at him. "Did you ever know about a second Ghost in the Underground?"
Lanus and Tess shared a brief, genuinely surprised look. "A spy, you mean? A second one?" Lanus said finally. "What can you tell us about them?"
"Not much. They would have tried to join about the same time Cass did, but we lost track of them about six months ago. The KG is tightfisted with its intel, obviously, or I'd know more. The file's been restricted."
Lanus nodded, mostly to himself than anything. "Good to know. Keep us informed if you find anything."
And with that, they disappeared into the hallway. Torn didn't even hear the door open.