Chapter Nine:

Revelations

A few hours later, Gordon came to.

"Ow," he said, his head throbbing from the bump on the back of it. He blinked and looked up to find himself in a large room surrounded by armed Black Cross and EAGLE soldiers. Instinctively, he made to move his arms and legs, but found them bound to the wall by heavy shackles.

To his right and left, similarly bound, were four familiar faces: Joshua, Katie, and Doctor Kuchar.

"Hey, Gordon," Joshua said, looking up at him with a look of defeat on his face.

"Josh?" Gordon asked. "Doctor Kuchar? What are you doing here?"

Joshua and the doctor shared an uncomfortable look. Gordon couldn't quite decipher their expressions. "We . . . were picked up on our way to you," Doctor Kuchar said. "We were betrayed."

"Betrayed?" Gordon asked. "By whom?"

"I see you're all finally awake," a deep voice said, interrupting them. A door closed at the far end of the room, and the crowd parted to let Ivan Callahan step through, exactly as Gordon had seen him on the television: seven feet tall, with a serious face and a thick goatee. Following closely behind him was the last person Gordon would have ever expected to see in this context.

"June?"

Gordon's girlfriend looked up at him, then quickly averted her eyes, keeping her face in a serious scowl.

"June, what are you doing here?" Gordon pushed. "Were you captured too?"

"Gordon," Joshua said softly.

"What?" Gordon asked, looking back at him.

Joshua looked at him seriously. "Gordon, she's . . . with them," he said. "She's the one who betrayed us."

Gordon stared at his friend, his mind refusing to process the words it had just heard. He looked back at June, who still had her eyes on the floor. Then he looked at Katie and Doctor Kuchar, looking for any sign that Joshua was lying. Both shook their heads sadly.

He looked back at his girlfriend. "June?"

June looked back at him, their eyes meeting. He could see hers glisten with barely restrained tears. "I'm sorry, Gordon."

Ivan Callahan looked between the pair before smiling a cold smile. "Oh, yes," he said. "I forgot. You wouldn't know yet, Mr. Cherry, would you?"

He reached out and clapped June warmly on the shoulder. "Miss Quayle here is a member of our . . . outreach program, if you will. You see, the Fuhrer liked to keep a couple 'Non-Masks' on hand. Random civilians, people with key minor jobs, things like that, typically people who owed him a debt of some kind. Most were never called upon, and are still living normal lives to this day, but it was nice to have them around. Just in case. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the girlfriend of the person fingered to be the next ranger just so happened to be on that list."

Gordon stared at him, then back at June. "You owed them?" he said. "What could you possibly owe the Black Cross that would make you work for them?"

June scowled and turned away from him. "It's none of your business," she spat. "Just get over it."

Callahan smirked. "Now, June," he said softly. "I think you and I both know he has a right to know."

June stared at the Fuhrer, hatred and frustration crossing her face. She swallowed and turned back to Gordon. She looked down and pulled at her hair. "It was so that you wouldn't be caught cheating."

Gordon stared at her. "Cheating?" he said. "I have never cheated in my life. You know that."

June looked up at him with a look that sent a spear of dread straight through his heart.

"I haven't. Right?"

June's eyes shifted to Callahan for just a moment. "Only once," she said quietly.

In that moment, all of Gordon's life, his entire career, everything he had spent his life building, started closing in around him, making him feel claustrophobic. "June," he said slowly. "What did you do?"

June looked up at him, shaking, and swallowed again. "Do you remember the qualifying rounds, five years ago."

"The first time I was accepted into the Olympics?"

June nodded. She looked up at him with desperate, pleading eyes. "We were almost there, Gordon," she said. "You had worked so hard. We had worked so hard. But you were falling behind. Little by little, your competitors were surpassing you. You were wearing yourself out. I couldn't let you—On the day of the final qualifying round, I slipped you a steroid in your energy drink."

Gordon's heart sank. The life and career that had been closing in on him came crashing down as he remembered a strange surge of strength and energy he had felt that day, a surge that had helped push him over the finish line.

"June, what have you done?"

June scowled and turned away. "What I had to do," she said. "And it never happened again. You won every other match fair and square."

"Except for the first one," Gordon said. "The match that gave me my career."

"You had earned it."

"So had the person who didn't get to compete because I did!" Gordon looked down, shaking his head. "We had to take a drug test that day," he said. "How did you not get caught?"

Ivan Callahan smiled. "Well, that's the thing," he said. "She did get caught. Didn't you, my dear? But luckily for her, and you, the judge who caught it just so happened to be one of our spies, keeping a lookout for any up-and-coming athletes who might need a secret or two kept for them. Once we had determined that she had been the one to purchase the steroid, we approached her with what we knew and offered her a deal. Do a job for us, if ever the time came that we needed one, and your little indiscretion would be buried forever."

June looked down, ashamed.

"June," Gordon repeated.

June looked up at her boyfriend, looking like she was about to break down. "Please, Gordon. If we just get through this, everything can go back to normal. You can still have your career."

Gordon looked away from her. "No," he said. "I can't."

June's face changed. Her regret twisted into frustration and anger and bitterness. "Why not?" she shouted. "Because of your stupid integrity? That's a gimmick. Grow up and realize this is the real world, Gordon! People lie all the time. You don't have to throw away everything you have worked for, everything we have worked for, for most of our lives, just because you feel bad that one of your matches wasn't one hundred percent fair!"

Gordon stared at her, no longer seeing the girlfriend he had loved since high school, instead seeing someone he barely knew, a stranger who had lied to him for years. He turned away. "I'm sorry, June."

All of the anger on June's face imploded in on itself at those words. She tried to keep up her anger, to say anything more, but, in that moment, she and he both knew that something had shattered in their relationship forever. She blinked back the tears welling in her eyes and crossed her arms. "Fine!" she snapped. "Throw it all away. See if I care."

She turned and left the room, the crowd parting to let her pass. Ivan Callahan watched her patiently, turning back to his captives once she had disappeared through the door. "Now that we have that out of our system," he said. "Does anyone else have any minor concerns we need to address?"

"Where are my family?" Katie shouted, cutting him off.

Ivan stopped and looked at her. "Your family is safe, Miss Young," he said. "They are currently being contained inside their house, with only the Devil Killer left behind on standby mode to keep an eye on them, to make sure they don't cause any trouble. And as insurance to make sure you don't try anything."

He looked around between his four hostages. "Anything else?" he asked. "No? Good. Because I do have a flight to catch of my own. Hallstrom's already on his way to Silver City, as are your fellow rangers."

Joshua looked up. "What?"

Ivan stopped. "Oh, yes, you wouldn't know, would you? You see, in the last twenty-four hours, since the public reveal of your apparent treason and subsequent disappearance, an emergency summit of the United Nations has been called. Your three friends, Blue, Pink, and Green, have all been summoned to attest to your actions and answer for your crimes. It provided us the perfect venue to enact the final stage of our plan."

"Final stage?" Joshua said, looking at his companions. "What are you going to do?"

Ivan smirked. "Oh, you'll get to watch it firsthand," he said. He gestured to a monitor nearby, which a soldier switched on to display the inside of a large official-looking building. "In a few hours, that room will be filled with some of the most important people in the world. When the time is right, General Hallstrom will activate a third function of the virus he designed, which will give him full remote control of your friend's suits. Under his command, they will open fire upon the delegation at the same time my machines surround the building, slaughtering everyone in sight."

Ivan splayed his hands. "Many will die, and that is a true tragedy. But, before their reign of terror can spread too far, I, the new Fuhrer, and my loyal Black Cross followers will arrive, wielding a brand-new weapon, well, prop, that will deactivate your friend's suits and destroy their wretched machines once and for all. Your friends will be arrested for their crimes against humanity. You four will be handed over as well. And the Black Cross will be hailed as the heroes who saved the world."

Joshua stared at him. "You," he said. "You slaughtered so many people, nearly started a second war, nearly killed my best friend, and framed us for all of it, just so you could pretend to be the heroes?"

Ivan lunged forward, grabbing Joshua by the throat and forcing his head back into the wall. "What was I supposed to do, Captain Cage?" he shouted through gritted teeth. "Reputation. Public perception. It matters far more than you think it does. And after that filthy alien got his hands on us, our reputation was in the dust. Our people, our cause, everything we stood for was now a bloody stain on history, regarded with nothing but fear and derision. I had to change that. I had to salvage the scraps he left behind."

"You were a bloody stain on history long before anyone knew the Fuhrer was an alien," Gordon interrupted.

Ivan froze. His fingers loosened from Joshua's neck and he turned to look at the Olympian. "Excuse me?" he said.

"You heard me," Gordon said. "It wasn't aliens that kept children up at night in fear, that forced families from their homes and made them pray for relief from your attacks. It wasn't aliens who bombed public buildings and fired into crowds full of people. Joshua didn't go off to war to fight aliens, and it wasn't aliens who murders his brother and his parents. It wasn't aliens who held Doctor Kuchar hostage for years. It was you, Doctor Callahan. You, and your people, regular old humans doing exactly what humans have done for thousands of years. And you're still doing it. You have always been a bloody stain on history, and you always will be."

Ivan stared at him, rage boiling just beneath the surface. He removed his hand from Joshua and stepped over to face Gordon, looking down on him even with Gordon elevated slightly off the floor. "And what would a glorified gym bro know about any of it?" he said.

The Fuhrer raised his right hand and brushed the side of Gordon's face. "Were these fingers blades, I would not hesitate to tear those words straight from your throat." He lowered his hand. "But I will not kill you, Gordon Cherry. I have a promise to uphold."

He turned away. "Prepare my ship," he said. "It is time for us to go."

As several soldiers hurried from the room, Ivan Callahan stopped, and turned one more time, looking at Doctor Kuchar. "Don't you have anything to say to me, Daniel?" he asked. "After all we've been through together."

Doctor Kuchar stared at him for a moment, his thick mustache bristling. Finally, he said, "My enhancements. When did you inject yourself?"

Ivan looked a little surprised. He glanced down at his arms and flexed his fingers. "You noticed," he said. "I took the serum eight years ago. After I turned you in to the Cross, I slipped one of the old prototypes from the lab. One of those last batches you tried on the rat."

"Hamster," Doctor Kuchar corrected.

Ivan moved around his arms, which Gordon now noticed had a slight metallic sheen to them. "It's nowhere near the level of perfection of your modern versions, but it's served me well enough over the years."

"I assume the Fuhrer didn't know."

Ivan smirked at him. "Well, I had to keep a few secrets here and there. Even back then."

He turned away. "Enjoy the show, my friends," he said. "We will see each other again in a few hours' time."

An hour later, Gordon, Joshua, Katie, and Doctor Kuchar still hung from the wall, their shackles still holding despite anything the four had tried to do. Gordon pulled and strained with all of his honed muscles, but nothing made a difference. Joshua and Katie beside him both tried to work their wrists and fiddle with the locking mechanisms, but they weren't making any headway either.

"We've got to get out of here," Gordon said in frustration. "We can't just let him do this."

"I know," Joshua said. "But I don't know what—"

"Hey, shut up over there," one of their guards, dressed in an EAGLE uniform, shouted, leveling his gun at them. "The show's about to start in about half an hour. Just sit back and enjoy for now."

Gordon looked up at the screen. Several delegates had already started to file in and find seats. The soldier smiled at them sadistically. "Or perhaps, you'd like to watch another channel." He stepped over and tapped on the monitor, switching it to a live feed of the Young house, the same shot they had seen before, but now, the family were huddled together on the couch, the father with a large lump on his head and a bandage covering the cut on Taran's throat. The robot designated "Devil Killer" loomed in the background behind them.

"Ah, yes," the soldier said. "This show's much better."

Katie scowled, pulling against her restraints with everything she had. "Let them go!"

"Sorry, I can't do that," the man said, looking smug. "And you better not try anything either. The Fuhrer gave me full control of Killer over there. If I don't send a signal to him every twenty minutes or so, he'll wake up and, well, do what he was named for."

The soldier looked back at the screen, at Katie's mother glaring at the camera. "In fact," the soldier held up his wrist and tapped on a device. On the screen, Devil Killer's eyes flashed red for just a second in response. "There you go. They get to live a little bit longer."

"So, we have at least twenty minutes, then," Doctor Kuchar said.

Everyone turned to look at the doctor in surprise. Doctor Kuchar worked something around in his mouth for a second and said, "Algernon, it's time to bring it up."

The soldier stared at him in confusion for a second before the entire building began to shake violently, knocking every guard to the ground. The soldier with the controls struggled back up and tried to punch a command into his wrist only to be thrown aside as the cement floor started to crack open from underneath, sending chunks and rubble flying everywhere as a white-and-blue tank emerged, burrowing up from underground. Guns shifted around on all sides, targeting the guards and opening fire.

Gordon closed his eyes. He heard a loud clink directly over his head as his hands came loose from their shackles. Another clink released his feet and he fell forward into the debris, his fellows falling all around him. Gordon kept down, covering his head with his hands until it was all over.

Finally, the laser fire stopped, and the tank settled in the middle of the room. Gordon waited a few seconds before raising his head and looking around. "What the heck is that?" he said, staring at the tank, the letters J.A.K.Q. printed along the side in bright, bold colors.

"Sorry about that," Doctor Kuchar said, already on his feet, digging around in his mouth and pulling out a tiny tracker. "And sorry I haven't been very talkative lately. Didn't want to disrupt the tracker too much."

Joshua got to his feet. "Tracker?" he said. "You've been having someone follow us?"

Doctor Kuchar smiled, looking quite pleased with himself. "Yes, I have," he said. "Someone I trust absolutely."

He stepped up to the tank and knocked on the door. "Algernon," he shouted. "Come on out. The coast is clear."

He stepped back as the door popped open, rising from the top like a Delorean. Standing in the middle of the doorway, barely an inch tall, was a tiny hamster.