Crimson Son - Chapter Two
CHAPTER 2
I’M STARTLED AWAKE by the door from Danger Bay hissing open. The coaxial cable whips out of the monitor and the door grinds closed. For a moment, I wonder what’s at the other end. Do I even care?
Dad stalks into the living room, back straight, head swiveling with the cable coiled loosely around his fist. He’s still keyed up, scanning for hidden threats. His skin-tight black and crimson suit has seen better days. Dark black. A black that gets lost in the darkness of the hallway and a deep red vertical stripe from his forehead on down that’s only a shade lighter than the shadows. Scorched and frayed, a small rip near his stomach shows a nasty gash along rippled muscles.
His eyes stop on the monitor, and I watch his jaw flex. He’s got muscles where he doesn’t need them. Deflection is never a good strategy. I might as well be waving a red cape in front of a bull.
“We’re almost out of cardboard to eat.” I sit up and scoot my back to the wall.
“You turned off the proximity alarm?”
I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question. We wouldn’t be having this conversation had I left it on because we’d both be deafened by the ear-bursting klaxon.
He crosses the room toward me. I try to play it cool but my muscles tighten. He stops next to the television and stares at the cable held between his fingers. “We’ve talked about this, Spence. No signals except the secure array, and that’s only for emergencies.”
“I’m not transmitting, only receiving. It isn’t a problem.” Robot-fighting badass, maybe. Tech guru, he’s not. But he never listens to me.
“You’ve got the heat working overtime without the doors completely sealed. No telling how much fuel you’ve wasted. You’ll freeze to death in minutes if that gets overloaded.”
I’m not going to respond to that either. I’m not sure I want to hear my own answer.
“Son…” He exhales. I feel the warm air strike my skin. Ice- blue eyes, cold as the bunker air, peer out of the mask. “We’ve got to be extremely careful.”
“Don’t you have the world to save?”
“We’re not doing this right now,” his neck stiffens and he starts to leave the room. “Clean this up.”
“How was London?” Before he can reply I twist the knife. “I’m never getting out of here, am I?”
“I’ll fix this.” He’s facing the hallway and a heat radiates off the words that could thaw this little prison. He’s juiced up from his fight, muscles twitching, eyes restless.
The standard drill is to leave him alone. Let him disappear into his office until he reemerges with some new lead or the next group of complete strangers to rescue, but I can’t let it go this time. Could be the frustration, the lack of any real sleep, or that taste of popsicle freedom when I stood outside in the howling snow.
“Keep telling yourself that. Tell it to Mom.”
I don’t see him move. He’s hunched over me, his foot grinding the satellite phone into a fine powder. My heart pounds against my ribcage like a desperate prisoner. A fist hangs inches from my face, a fist that could hole-punch a sheet of titanium.
His eyes flare, wider than the mask holes will allow. Shaking with rage and whatever fuels his unbelievable strength, he growls, “Spencer, this is about keeping you alive.”
“I’m already living in a morgue. What’s the point?” I man- age to speak without my voice cracking.
He snatches the mask off his head, a flash of crimson passing between us. A green welt takes up much of his cheek, and dried blood clings to the corner of his mouth. I’m not sure what kind of force it took to do that and I’m not sure I care.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s too risky for you out there.” Talking quietly to the floor, he struggles to rein in his strength. I see a way out. I press.
“So I’m stuck here until you get your shit together? Is that it? You couldn’t save her, what makes you think you can save me?” His eyes flare again and I stand and stride past him toward the hall. A raging furnace of anger rides the back of my neck. Without looking back, I continue down the hall, breath paralyzed, heart racing. I slip inside my room and lock the door. I huddle on my bunk and listen for the next sound I’ll hear above the pounding of blood in my head. Heavy footfalls accompany the snap and twang of the floor’s metal grating.
“Spencer, open the door.”
A current of fear courses through me, but I let it pool and harden, casting it into the darkness where a dying light outlines an insectoid face. I can’t move. I can’t care anymore.
“Open the door. Now.”
Metal bits cascade to the ground as the lock snaps. Dad’s frame fills the doorway. No mask, but his face is a violent shade of red. He reaches out and grabs my arm between two fingers. My bicep crunches and wriggles against bone, sending burning pain shooting through my arm, but I let the dark vision in my mind devour the pain. With as much effort as a normal person might use to squash a bug, he lifts me from the bunk.
I close my eyes and think of the button. I wait for him to pulp my skull against a wall.
“You need to take this seriously.” His voice shakes as he pulls me into the hall. He drags me through the library, shoving me into the safe room. “Do the drill.”
He stands imperious in the doorway. I don’t want to do it, but my feet shuffle zombie-like to the control panel as he repeats his mantra, “There’s no thought, Spencer. It’s all action. Training. Do it, now.”
Clutching my injured arm, cool puddles gather on my eye- lashes and I will them not to splash on the panel. I swallow and step through the sequence.
First, I mimic pushing the door seal button so he can continue to watch from the doorway. Next comes the emergency beacon. Sometimes we give this one a full test, but not often because it does transmit a signal. After the band on his wrist beeps, we’ll quickly shut it off. I wait for a few seconds that flow like minutes. There’s no response, so I mime these motions as well, wincing as I raise my arm. On the panel’s opposite side are two flashing orange buttons labeled with a stylized flame.
“Thermite one away. Thermite two away,” I mutter—these never get tested. They let loose localized charges that will melt the server into a silicon cinder. If the facility is compromised and I have to “evac” as he puts it, the information collected here needs to be destroyed. Every time we do this, thoughts of pressing the buttons race through my mind. I never did because of the fear he’d go ballistic. Now, I’m worried about the off chance that he wouldn’t and I’d be condemned to live in the Icehole computer-free.
Finally, I walk to the far corner of the room and stare into the pod, my home away from home. Eyes dry and matted, I steal a glimpse at the doorway. Dad isn’t there. Beyond the library it’s dark and quiet. I climb inside and close the hatch looking out through the thick window, wishing I was anywhere but here, staring at the little red button.
I want to press it. I’m going to press it. But I need to see her one last time.
Sleep overwhelms me. Before long, I’m drowning, gasping for breath in a glass bubble and sinking slowly into murky waters. Nightmares, dreams, they are the same. For two years, always the same.
Home. I was seventeen. After years of moving, Mom put her foot down and we’d been in the San Francisco area for three years. She’d found a rental in an older neighborhood overlooking San Pedro Valley Park, one of those stucco homes with a tile roof. Mom loved the place. I did too.
Mom sighs as she tries to feed a page into the fax machine. “Spencer, honey, do you have any idea how this works? I think I might’ve broken it,” she speaks without looking up and tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear. She does that when she’s frustrated. That mostly includes any time she’s faced with gears, transistors, chips, batteries or so much as a stray piece of copper wire. She refers to herself as “technologically challenged.” Really, she wants an excuse to get me to help.
I eye the aging fax machine with contempt. “I could figure it out. But, what about your phone?”
She looks puzzled as she asks, “What about it?”
“The phone takes pictures, right? I can take pictures of the papers and send those to Dad.”
She smiles. My favorite part of this dream, nightmare, memory—whatever it is. I always try to stay at this point. Stop time. Freeze her face and burn it into my brain so I can see that expression, always.
“Honey, that’s a great idea. You want to take over here?” I’ve lived through this so many times, I know what she’s
thinking at this very moment. Nothing to do with sending papers, she’s watching me work. She knows I’m happy with a new gadget. She gets me, even if she doesn’t understand what I do. I miss that the most.
“What’s this for?” “Paperwork for the house.”
“Are we finally going to buy it?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She turns away, busying herself with the fax machine again. The room empties without her smile.
I take the phone and spread the papers on the floor. More rental paperwork.
“I don’t understand why we don’t just buy the place. Didn’t you say the owner wanted to sell?” I ask. She shrugs.
With careful motions I start snapping away, attaching the pictures to an email. I’m not sure where Dad is going to print these, but wherever he found a fax machine, chances are they’ll have what he needs. I hit send. An hourglass pops up, followed by “Connection Lost”.
This part always comes so fast.
I hand the phone back to Mom. “You’ll need to send later, I guess. The signal dropped. Should be in your outbox ready to go.”
As she takes the phone, the wall of the room explodes. Here. Dream becomes nightmare. For a moment, I feel I
can make it stand still, but why would I? Events unfold with the emptiness of the bunker gnawing at my insides. I can identify every stray chunk of plaster and splinter of wood in this time- robbed moment.
Fragments of home spray like a swarm of locusts. Mom screams and the world spins under her protective dive. I struggle to see through a haze of dust. Glimpses of the valley filter past a humanoid silhouette. A long, pincered arm lashes out. The arm clamps tightly around Mom’s waist and retracts, drawing us closer.
“Release the boy and he will live,” the Black Beetle speaks with an unnatural vibration. “He can relay a message for your husband.”
Mom squeezes tighter but her screaming stops.
I search her face, knowing what I’ll find, all the while scrambling to find an anchor as we slide across the room. She’s bleeding from a gash on her forehead and the pincer cinches tighter. Her eyes are full of fear, but focused. She’s calculating, deliberating. A hundred times? A thousand? It always hurts.
“No, Mom, please!” I throw my hands around the leg of a toppled chair which drags uselessly behind us. Countless trips through this nightmare, I know I can’t keep us here, but I reach out anyway. And always, she lets go.
I grab her arm, trying to pull her back, cursing my stunted size, my weak limbs, my feeble grip. Sweaty hands slip as the pincer continues to retract. Her trembling lips form a final smile and she watches me with a sad but determined expression. She mouths the words, “I love you.”
“Mom!” I glance at the lifeless phone, shrouded in dust. The screen is dark and covered in spidery cracks.
“Tell your father it is time to turn himself in,” the Black Beetle says. “Is that clear?”
With a pneumatic hiss the ebony battle armor backs into the afternoon sun. Blinding light floods in. The armor takes flight on a column of flame and the deafening roar rattles our battered home. I rush to the opening. She’s an angel, floating away, the shadowy beast burning behind her. All I can do is stare and cry.
Only this time, the tears don’t come.
Every time this nightmare strikes, I stand there, clinging to that last glimpse as she’s torn away. But this time, on her face, a different expression quivers through the waves of heat and exhaust. All of her fear is erased. Her eyes search mine as though she’s seeing me for the first time.
I continue watching the brilliant rocket flares long after they dissolve into a sunless sky. Then, the points of light burst outward into the bright edges of an eclipsed sun. A ring of light that seems so close, yet so far from home.
* Enjoying the story? Come back next week for more of Spencer's adventure! Also, don't forget to follow and upvote! For more about my fiction, visit my [webpage] (http://www.russlinton.com) and for a free eBook with stories from the Crimson Son Universe click here: http://smarturl.it/tft2ou *