Chapter 15

 

There it was. In all its middle-class glory.

Calvin stood outside a large residential tower. Like many of the other nicer buildings in this section of West Central District, it had a small garden in front. It was well-maintained, with lush green grass that was kept short, along with a handful of pruned trees. The dark green was offset by pockets of white, yellow, and red, as perfectly rectangular flower patches grew in patterns so organized Calvin thought the plants looked like they’d spent time in the marine corps.

He walked through the gate and along the short path that led to the entrance. Then, after taking a deep breath, he went inside. The doorman saluted when he saw him, even though Calvin had left the better part of his personal escort outside. Undoubtedly the doorman watched the news and recognized the face of the newly appointed Executor of the Empire. It was a strange thing to have people notice him everywhere he went, to have become a household name in a matter of a day. He didn’t like it, not truly, but it did have certain advantages.

“I need access to level nineteen,” he said. “And I need the key to room nineteen eleven.”

“Of course,” said the doorman. He handed Calvin the room key and then unlocked the elevator. No doubt being so cooperative because he didn’t want to be seen as obstructing an investigation.

Nikolai followed Calvin into the elevator. He stuck close to Calvin at Kalila’s instance. She’d somehow realized that Calvin would be uncomfortable with an escort of bodyguards following him around everywhere, so she’d specifically instructed Nikolai to remain vigilantly at Calvin’s side at all times. Apparently he was one of her most trustworthy, and deadliest, people. Calvin had not objected—there was something about Kalila’s smile that simply made him want to agree with anything she said.

“So this is home?” asked Nikolai as the elevator sped toward the higher floors.

“This was home,” said Calvin. “Once upon a time.”

His mother had moved them here once it was clear Samil, Calvin’s father, was not coming back. Calvin had resented the move, believing that if they left their old home Samil would never find them. That they only needed to keep waiting and be patient; that he’d certainly resurface. And when he did, he’d have a good explanation for his absence. You’ll see—Calvin recalled telling his mother. But he’d been young and naïve, and his mother had been wise not to listen. Samil had never returned to Capital World. Or, if he had, he’d never made an effort to let Calvin or Olivia know.

“It is… nice,” said Nikolai. Probably just to make conversation. Nikolai didn’t have the greatest people skills, but Calvin was already starting to get used to having him around. The lean, yet thickly-muscled warrior with his shaven head and fierce, sun-damaged skin wasn’t the subtlest of shadows, but thus far no one had given Calvin any kind of trouble while Nikolai was around.

“We lived here, but it wasn’t anything special,” said Calvin. The elevator came to a stop and opened on the nineteenth floor. Calvin stepped out into the hallway, followed closely by Nikolai.

The sights of the nineteenth floor were eerily the same as he remembered them. The old woman who kept the floor clean was there, fiddling with a cart of supplies—except now she looked positively ancient. The reddish-brown carpets and faded off-white walls were all the same, and so were the metal doors coated in cheap pseudo-wood paneling. Even the tacky art hanging on the walls was the same, as was the fake plant at the end of the hallway next to the window. That green thing—whatever it was—had been sticking out of that pot since before Calvin had moved-in as a child. And, most likely, it had taken up its residence at the end of the hall even before he was born. Probably had been there since the building was erected a hundred years ago. Capital World with its limited space and high population was unlike other worlds in that it repurposed its structures more often than replacing them. As such, many of the buildings—particularly residential towers and commercial enterprises—were actually quite historic.

“This way,” said Calvin.

They went to room nineteen eleven and he rang the chime. When no response came—as expected—he knocked on the door. No answer.

“Well we gave her a chance,” said Calvin, still hoping, albeit desperately, to open the door and see his mother there, wearing her scrubby clothes and half-finished with another of her deep cleanings of the apartment, which she was prone to do when stressed or preoccupied. He inserted the keycard and the door unlocked. He pushed it open.

No one was there to greet him. The front room was open and minimally decorated. There was a new amateur piece of art sitting on a painting easel that his mother had undoubtedly been working on. He walked up to and touched it, hoping some of the paint was still wet. It wasn’t. And the picture wasn’t finished enough to know what it was supposed to be.

“Mother,” he called loudly as he stepped past the small kitchen and down the hall. He knocked on each of the three bedroom doors before opening them. “Are you here?”

The first room was completely empty. It had been Calvin’s room and, now that he was grown and gone, there was nothing in it. No child’s sized bed, no box of his things all packed away, none of the scribbles he’d markered on the wall because he’d thought they were funny. It was as if he’d never lived here at all.

The second room had been converted into a kind of office-gym combination. There was a rowing machine set up, as well as an exercise mat, and on the other side was a desk with a computer terminal. Calvin turned it on, hoping to find some kind of clue, perhaps his mother had used this terminal to arrange her travel plans, but the computer was dusty and had clearly not been touched in months. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Calvin knew his mother rarely touched a computer unless she absolutely had to.

The third room, the master bedroom, looked neat and tidy. The bed was made and there was no sign that someone had left the place hastily. No indication that anyone had rummaged through the drawers and dressers, no sign that the closet had been swiftly raided in a mad packing frenzy. Everything was orderly and in place. And nothing seemed to be missing.

He checked the bathroom, the closets, and the storage alcove. Once he’d combed every square inch of the apartment, he returned to the front room in dismay.

“No luck, eh?” asked Nikolai. He’d helped himself to a sandwich he’d made from materials left in the refrigerator. Rather than getting on the man’s case about tampering with potential evidence, Calvin went to the refrigerator and inspected the meat. It didn’t smell foul. True it remained in its original airtight container, but that was some indication of how recently it’d been placed here. The bread too showed no signs of mold or decay. The lettuce on the other hand did. So he guessed that his mother had last purchased groceries and left them here no more than ten days ago. Or, if she hadn’t, someone else had.

“So now what do we do?” asked Nikolai once he’d polished off his sandwich and wiped the mustard off the corner of his lip.

“Radio down, tell them to send the forensics team up. Dust for prints and search everything over multiple times—they know the drill,” said Calvin. He didn’t like being back here, he’d never had fond feelings for this apartment, but now that his mother was missing it made him feel especially uncomfortable being here.

“And what about you and me?” asked Nikolai.

“We’re going to ask the neighbors some questions.”

“All right then,” said Nikolai. He radioed Calvin’s instructions and then followed Calvin out of the apartment. Calvin locked the door behind him—he didn’t want anyone else to disturb apartment nineteen eleven until his investigation team had a chance to comb through it.

While he waited for them, he began calling on the neighbors and asking them questions. He didn’t forcibly round them up for interrogation, but he and Nikolai made it clear that non-cooperation was not an option. Using his authority as the Executor of the Empire, he compelled even the shiest of the resident of the nineteenth floor to answer a few questions for him. But, in the end, he needn’t have bothered.

Ultimately they all said variations of the same thing. They’d last seen Olivia Cross weeks ago, some claimed not to have seen her for months—though most of these claims were by people who were not very outgoing and, by the look of things, left their apartments under only the rarest of circumstances. No one said they’d seen anyone calling on Olivia, nor did any of them notice anything suspicious or hear any noises. The likeliest thing, based on the lack of evidence of a struggle, was that Olivia had left of her own free will. The question was, however, why would she? And why wouldn’t she tell anyone? Calvin wondered if that meant she had been abducted while she was out and about, leaving no evidence of her capture behind at her apartment.

By the time he was through interrogating the residents of the nineteenth floor, and had managed to talk to every one of them—which had meant waiting around for some to return home—his forensics team had a preliminary report for him.

No sign of anyone inside the apartment, other than Olivia and now Calvin and Nikolai, and there was no indication that there had been anything unusual—such as an altercation—that’d gone down. No scratch marks, no slammed doors or forced locks, nothing suspicious whatsoever.

Calvin nodded. He gave them instructions to complete the investigation but he realized this was a dead end. He would never give up on finding his mother, just like he would never give up on finding Rafael, but he knew that throwing all of his resources and attention at this wasn’t going to buy him anything right now. Whoever had taken her—if she had indeed been taken—had gone to great lengths to ensure that there was no trail left behind. That meant, as much as he hated to admit it, he had to focus on his other priorities and await either a ransom note—if that was the abductors’ intentions, assuming they were going to use Olivia as leverage on him—or else wait for new leads to be found by his investigation team. In the meantime he had to do his duty and focus most of his efforts on the Phoenix Ring and finding Rafael. Hopefully his mother would resurface along the way, and that she’d be unharmed. He wished beyond wishing that his mother’s absence would prove to be nothing more than a false alarm.

 

***

 

He raised an arm to screen his face from the raging fire as he walked down the street adjacent to the burning building.

“Oh god!” croaked an old man who stood in the street, staring aghast as his flat—and those of hundreds of others—was consumed by the inferno. “Why?” he asked, staring up at the sky.

He was one of the many in the crowd who’d escaped when the alarms went off. Now people from adjacent buildings were pouring into the street, joining the mob, curious and terrified. A few ran around in a panic, shouting, or struggling to find a way to combat the flames—to no avail—but most were too stunned to do much of anything but chatter nervously amongst themselves and stare up stupidly at the dying building. Little did they know that thousands of such incidents were happening all over the planet’s surface right now. And not one of them an accident.

“You?” the old man pointed a crooked finger at Ryker as he approached. “You did this!” the old man turned to get support from the mass of people around him. “I saw him come out of the building—he started that fire! I’m sure of it!”

Ryker did nothing to contradict the rumor. On the contrary, he welcomed it. Even though it wasn’t technically true—Micah had started the fire. Not Ryker.

“You did this?” a large man shouted. He was looking at Ryker. They all were.

“For crimes against the Crown and the Empire,” said Ryker. “I hereby sentence this building to burn in the Name of the King.” He stopped when he was a few meters away from the crowd and took them in—they were an innocent enough looking lot, probably loyalists who’d avoided getting involved in the rebellion sweeping the planet, just like he’d hoped.

“We’re no rebels!” a voice shouted. Others joined in. Some of them screaming at the top of their lungs. A woman shrieked and babes in arms began to cry.

“Continue to rebel, and next time it will be your lives,” said Ryker, loudly and clearly. Wanting as much of the thick crowd to hear him as possible.

“Our lives?” someone asked.

“The King? What right does the King have here?” someone else asked, louder than all of the others yelling. Shouts of agreement joined him. “These were our homes! The King has no right to do this!”

“The King has every right,” said Ryker. “Everything you are, everything you have… you have at the pleasure of the King!”

The crowd reacted very negatively to this, just as Ryker hoped. There were shouts of “Get him!” and a few of the men broke away from the others and headed Ryker’s way. He raised his rifle but the shot that burst into one of the approaching men’s head—killing him on the spot—didn’t come from Ryker’s gun.

The men stopped in their tracks. Two of them dropped to their knees to examine the newly made corpse of what Ryker supposed had once been their neighbor.

“He’s dead!” someone yelled.

People shrieked. Some turned away. Others rushed forward to see the body. “He killed Tommy White!”

“Murderer!” someone else shouted. The crowd became increasingly hostile and Ryker knew it was time to make himself scarce. “Murdered by the King!” someone cried.

“Do not forget the lesson!” said Ryker. He took out a stun grenade and tossed it into the crowd, deliberately aiming for a group of women with babes in arms. Hoping that at least one of the babies was severely injured or killed. The death of one baby—or even a million babies—didn’t matter. Not on Renora. They were too young to raise arms and rebel. But if injury to them could aggravate the populace—and help Mister Martel’s cause, and by extension Ryker’s—then all the better.

He turned his back to the crowd, dropping another stun grenade as he went, and walked away. Micah joined him, getting away from the rubble, the refuse, and the scorching building. He was dressed like Ryker and all of the other Black Phantoms—they wore the military fatigues of the Imperial Marines. Light-weight, durable, and most importantly—easily identified. Ryker doubted a false flag operation had ever been so large, and yet it was almost too easy. Everything was going just as Martel said it would. Ryker had to give the man credit, scheming bastard that he was. He’d managed to plant the uniforms, weapons, and other supplies in warehouses and storage units all over the planet months in advance, and all without letting anyone get the least bit suspicious.

In the distance, emergency sirens could be heard and at least one Foxtrot Transport was closing in, flying low. Its troops no doubt were coming to help fight the flames but they’d get a lot more than they bargained for once the locals caught sight of them.

“Report,” demanded Ryker.

“Tank says the other cells are active. They know their instructions and are doing like they’re told. Major cities are being lit up like candles.”

“Good,” said Ryker. “So long as they know to fade away once they’re seen. Do not engage the enemy.”

“They know,” said Micah. “Everything is happening just like you said.”

“And this is just the beginning. Once we begin Phase Two…”

“Why do we wait? Do it tonight!” said Micah. “Let the whole world shake at its core and not know what hit it.”

“Phase Two cannot be the same night as Phase One, that would be far too much at once. We want to create sympathizers, not crush the spirit of everyone on the planet. Besides, Phase Two is impossible so long as that damn Harbinger is near.”

“How do you know that ship is even out there?”

“Martel will tell me when it leaves. We will do Phase Two then, not before.”

“Whate’er you say. I still think we should do it now, and be done with it. Let someone else clean up the mess.”

“And that is why you follow and not lead.”

They caught up with Vulture, who’d been covering them with his sniper rifle. Together they ran to their waiting vehicle. It was time to disappear and move on to the next target. Even if the Imperial troops were wising up to their tactic, there was far too much planet for them to try to cover. Especially when the rebellion was growing with speed and strength like never before. A wildfire of anti-Imperial hatred was burning across the planet tonight, and all Ryker and his Black Phantoms had to do was give it kindling.