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To Kill a King
Part 3 of 3: Stand Alone Complex
David stood on the edge of a massive cliff, and at the base of the cliff rested the eerie device known only as the Ark Portal Generator. The wind kicked up as an image of Lord Hood floated several yards away. Hood was speaking about peace, and tranquility for all of humanity, and something else about Sangheili and alien relations, but David didn't care about that. A crowd of several thousand people stood near him, all cheering after Hood finished speaking nonsense about returning to space and joining hands with the Sangheili, the Unggoy, and a localized colony of Huragok.
David bit his lip; fought back the urge to scream in protest of such a worthless idea. He adjusted the receiver in his ear as he turned away from the North Eastern Ark Portal Observatory Deck. His little Welsh Corgi, Rex, happily waddled at his side. He pushed his way through the crowd and walked up to a nearby mobile food cart.
"Beer." David ordered as he reached for his wallet.
"What brand?" The owner asked.
"Whatever's cheap and cold."
The man gave David the first thing he grabbed and David quickly paid the man. He then turned and sipped the cold bitter flavor.
His COMM blipped, "Abort," and then died. It was Rachel's voice; her prerecorded warning.
He walked away from the crowd as Hoods voice boomed in the background. He adjusted his shirt collar and contacted another team member. Speaking into the top of his shirt he said, "Did you copy that?"
"Yeah, I did." The man replied. "The gig is up. We need to pull out."
"We may not get another shot." David swayed. As much as he was against the idea of killing Lord Hood, he was certain that this would be the best chance the Shield would ever get of ending the peace talks.
"OP leader said 'abort' on the emergency frequency. That means she's been flagged or even worse, they grabbed her. Chances are they're looking for all of us directly. There is a spy in our group and I am not sticking around to find out who it is. You and Rex need to get while you can. Good luck." The COMM died. David could only imagine that the rest of the group was thinking the same thing.
"Is anyone staying?" He asked to the other three team members. No one responded. David pulled the small communication's device from his ear and tossed it into the trash. He then walked into a portable restroom facility and began to apply a disguise; a quick wig and glasses that he had planned to use after he took the shot at Hood. The whole plan needed to be scrubbed, and everyone bailed. Of all the members in the Shield, he didn't think that his group would be scared off so easily. But it didn't help matters when the team found out that someone knew who Rachel and David were.
David walked out of the restroom; Rex waited patiently at the door, and made his way to the parking garage. Unlike the rest of the team he had purchased a room in a nearby town and rented a car. David walked with haste but tried to make it seem as casual as possible. He kept his eyes open for ONI spooks and Marines or UNSC personal in general. He gave all crowds wide births, but stayed away from posted cameras overlooking the crowds. After a few minutes he relaxed into his car, Rex hopped into the back, and turned on his secondary radio.
"Sir, do you copy?" He softly questioned into the line.
"What happened? You aren't supposed to contact me until after the target was taken care of."
"We had to abort. Our team leader was grabbed but we don't know who it was." David stated. He cautiously looked into all of his mirrors to make sure no one was sneaking up on his car. He put the vehicle into auto drive and set the course for the hotel. The vehicle powered up and slowly began to pull out of the garage.
"Very well. We should have known that security would be too tight around this target. We got to aggressive."
"Agreed, Sir." David huffed; he had known that from the beginning of the operation.
"Contact the others and get back to your fall back position in England. Get out of Africa. I'll meet you all there."
David remained silent.
"Did you copy that?" The man replied on the line.
David disconnected the COMM, rolled down the window and tossed the it out. It was a setup. The head of the group never gave direct location names over the line, and he didn't meet with them either. Had this been setup from the beginning? David rubbed his chin as his stomach began to do flips.
"Ten days!" David shouted. His last time speaking with the director was after killing Mr. Drake and Senator Rimo. The director said he would contact him in ten days, but only an hour later he had received the operation to take out Lord Hood. Had the Shield been compromised?
David's ears began to hum loudly as a distant roar of a powerful engine echoed outside his car. He looked in the rearview mirror as three warthogs and two Hornets began to bear down on him.
The Marines had arrived.
"Pull over!" Came a shout from a bull horn.
David gripped the steering wheel. "Manual control!" He shouted to the cars onboard computer. The steering wheel suddenly responded to David's every touch and he floored the accelerator. The small rental car pulled ahead of the much slower warthogs but the airborne hornets kept pace.
David turned several curves at high speed, swerved through traffic, and hopped several speed bumps. The tiny electric engine in his car whirled loudly, and he knew the batteries would not hold out for long at these speeds, and then there were the snipers on the side of the Hornets. David imagined a marine with a heat signature body lock on him. The man's iron will would be to send an accelerated round through the back of David's head. David knew he couldn't outrun the hornets and he couldn't outrun the sniper's steady computer aided eyes.
He swerved randomly from side to side; every inch counted to prevent the sniper rifles target lock from tracking him. And then, as if a blessing from God, David swerved into another parking garage. The overhead levels would help keep the hornets at bay, and give David time to escape on foot. It was mid day in a populated new city and it would be easy to blend in with the crowd.
He parked the car naturally, opened the door and looked at Rex. "Sorry boy, you stay!" He turned and crawled along the sides of other cars. He ducked into a stairway and then emerged on an upper level where there was an exit to the street and a thick crowd of pedestrians. After carefully weighing his options he took one step forward. He then heard a high pitched whine fill his ears. David turned and saw a small disk floating several feet behind him. It was an ARGUS drone. The tiny disk with a single propeller for a core had been tailing him the entire time. He had completely ignored the hum of its tiny engine as he ran, but in the silence of walking the sound became obviously clear.
There really was no escape.
The drone was the military's eyes and ears. David turned, prepared to run, and a loud zip split the air near his head. He looked down and there was a hole in the polycrete floor in front of him. He took a step back and there was another supersonic round cutting into the garage floor behind him. David worked for ONI in the past three years since the war ended, and he knew the power of the much discussed M99-B Stanchion Gauss-rifle. The round was accelerated through magnetic coils, could cut through three polycrete buildings and it would still hit its target without varying by a millimeter. The sniper's warning shots were simply telling him to stay put.
David turned toward the floating Argus drone and glared at it. The tiny machine was most likely the snipers eyes from outside the garage. David put his hands behind his head and knelt to the ground. If he ran the sniper would put a round through him and the garage, and David knew that his body would simply explode from the high velocity round as it cut through him; he would become a pile of spliced meaty flesh before he even realized his was hit.
The sound of marines' boots echoed up the garage pathway that David was just about to use as an exit. That was then followed by the soft clicks of Assault rifles' safeties flicking off as the men surrounded him.
David felt a knee spear into his back and he landed face first on the pavement, knocking his glasses off. A hand gripped his wrist and pulled his arms back, and a plastic tie was secured to both of his hands. Someone then yanked his wig off as they dragged him away.
"Where was Rachel?" David questioned to himself. "Did she get away?" He wanted to ask the soldiers if they had captured a woman, but he dare not speak. It was true that Rachel had used her emergency signal to the team, but maybe she had eluded her pursuers. David was being hopeful, fearing that his lover had been grabbed.
The drive was long and enduring and David had no idea where they were taking him. The box like car that was transporting him had no windows in the back where they had stored him, and when they finally took him out of the vehicle they blindfolded him. He walked for a good distance and eventually arrived in a small square room with no windows and only one door. A camera sat in the upper corner but the overhead flood light quickly blinded David from seeing anything but himself, the chair he was cuffed too and the floor beneath him.
It felt like hours had passed before anyone came into the room. David's arms were numb and his back was getting sore from sitting in the awkward position. The door opened and the light turned off. David didn't have time to adjust his vision in the pitch black of the room, so he strained too see who had entered. He could only see silhouettes in the darkness; moving figures that almost melted into the walls of the room. And then the light came back on just as he was starting to get adjusted to the dark. A man walked into the light, he looked like an older Marine but David had no way of being sure.
The man knelt down in front of David and said, "I just spent the better part of the afternoon beating the crap out of your girlfriend. She's dead now. I put the bullet in her myself." David felt his heart die. He couldn't believe it, he didn't want to believe it, but his anger and sadness overwhelmed his logic. He screamed, cried, and yelled curses and threats at the man. The man's face was like stone as David released his tantrum but then the man added, "Now kid. You tell me everything she didn't. Who was on your team, and which one of you shot Lord Hood?" David glared into the man's eyes. No one took a shot at Hood as far as he knew; unless there was another team. The man added. "Seeing that you fled the scene, you probably didn't know. Someone killed Hood. We want everyone involved and we know that you weren't alone! Names... now!"
"I'll tell you after I'm dead." David smiled with tears flowing loosely down his face. Even if there was another team, he wanted to see Rachel. He didn't care about Hood anymore. He wanted to hold Rachel one last time and kiss her and never let her go.
The man smirked and looked as though he wasn't surprised by the answer. "We'll start with your left foot, then your right and slowly work our way up. We'll cut each appendage off, heal the wound and keep on going. The pain is unreal, kid. You'll probably pass out after we start cutting off your second foot, but you'll still fell it. It'll be slow. Hell, I may even throw up, but I'll keep cutting and so will the next guy. The moment you give me names, we stop. In the beginning you'll try to be strong. You may even hold out until we get to your hands, but you will tell me names. You will tell me because pain is a lot scarier then death." The man stood with a sour glare in his eyes. He then pulled a rolling cart from the corner and picked up an old wood saw. The serrated teeth on the triangular metal blade reflected a glare of light into David's trembling eyes.
Water began to spray from the wall and onto the floor beneath David. David hadn't noticed the water drain beneath his seat. The man sighed heavily, "That's so that the blood doesn't pool up under you. And for the urine... cause eventually you're going to piss your pants." Another soldier walked out of the shadows and grabbed David's leg and began to pull off his boots. David kicked in retaliation but the men held him firm.
"Stop it!" David screamed and begged.
"Tell me names, David." The man replied as he tied David's leg to the chair. He placed a strap around David's ankle and another under his knees. He then gripped the Saw and without a show of hindrance he dug the teeth of the saw into David's ankle. Flesh ripped off from the first stab and tissue followed as he cut deeper. David cried out a blood curling scream as the saw dug into his ankle bone.
But David didn't talk, not then, but he didn't want to feel the pain anymore. There was no way he could not tell them everything they wanted to know.
- - - - - - - -
Lord Hood watched the young men and the lone woman lying on the tables of a large oval room. Various instruments were connected to their heads and several of them where twitching in response to the subconscious visions that filled their heads.
Hood removed his freshly cleaned hat and spoke casually to the man at his side, "Did we catch all of them?"
"We believe so, Sir?" The man in a white trench coat stated. "The one named David Rawls believes that his superiors were either caught or betrayed them. He is the closest to the truth and quiet possibly will be the first to crack. His pain tolerance just spiked, so he is most likely being tortured as we speak."
"How long before they all crack?" Hood questioned.
"It usually takes six days of mental torment to crack them, but Rex is sure that he can make them talk in three days; maybe sooner if David continues at this pace. We shall know how deep the Shield goes very soon."
"Rex." Hood stated as he walked near a holographic table.
The image of a happy Welch Corgi appeared on the table. His golden fur shined as his tail wagged happily. "Yes Sir." The tiny dogged mouthed.
"Send me a full spreadsheet of everyone involved in the Shield. Do not transmit that information to anyone but me. Understand?"
"Yes sir. You are worried that the Shield may have slipped into my interrogation facility. I fully understand your concern. I will handle the gathered data personally. May I have a treat?" Hood extended his hand onto the holo panel and moved his hand in a tossing fashion, but he tossed nothing. An image of a doggy treat appeared as if it was being thrown toward Rex and he caught it in his mouth, chewing it happily. "Thank you!"
Hood turned back to the glass window and looked at the rows of men and women that stretched before him on the tables. "Hard to believe they've experienced three weeks of their lives in less then two days."
The man in the white coat agreed. "Mr. Drake and Senator Rimo did a good job of gathering intelligence for us before they were killed. Poor bastards never knew what hit them, but if it were not for their sacrifice we would not have been able to catch the Shield's little fish. Now we have a chance of catching the leadership."
Hood pulled his hat back on. "I know we planted the idea of assassinating me, but at what point did we slip them into their dream states?"
"To them, the dream began when they first saw Rex within their normal lives. For example, in David Rawls the implanted dream state began when he came home and saw Rex waiting for him at the door. However, in reality there was no Rex. David went to bed a few moments after he came home. Made love with his female friend and then went to sleep. David and Rachel were captured the next morning, brought here and placed into the interrogation suite. Rex's image is the bridge modifier for the dream sequence away from what they all believe was reality. Rex is the unique combination to all of their dreams. Every Shield agent believes that Rex is their dog. Yet Rex, in reality, is only a forced figment of their dreams. He is snooping into their combined dream and gathering information about the Shield. He is a stand alone complex to their mental dream array."
Hood turned and walked away. "I have the Ark Portal Generator plans to see too. Make sure your guests are as comfortable as possible. The Shield must be taken down. No matter how much we frown upon the idea, humanity needs the elites and they need us. It's hard to believe that they would actually go through the process of assassinating me to prove how devoted they are to their cause." Hood stopped at the door leading out of the facility. "With them out of the way, we should be able to have the Ark festival without any fear. And Rex."
The little dog turned toward Hood and panted happily. "Yes sir?"
"Good boy."
The end.
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