Kade Read online

  Oh, the glory days of Obsidian. This had begun the Corporate Wars. The Fall of the world followed as the nukes rained down. Obsidian versus the World. There were things I had done for Obsidian that made me sigh in relief as the nukes ripped great holes in our cities.

  Damned if I hadn’t survived it. Who would have thought?

  The shadows were deep enough, so I stood and headed south toward Moreau’s. I wouldn’t have expected it, but I missed the banter between Wilson and me. Most of my life has been spent alone with the mess that rattles around in my head. Wilson had been a pleasant distraction. I found that I genuinely liked the man. His wounds weren’t life threatening if Bella could get him to Teresa.

  He shouldn’t have pushed me out of the way. I could take the punishment much better than he could. Some of the alterations from before the Fall made me a lot tougher than most. But he had, and when this was finished, Blechley was going to learn a final lesson.

  I reached the border and slipped into the shadows of the buildings to disappear. There were people in the streets, just like in Payne’s Zone. But there was a tension in the air. You would think something like that couldn’t be seen, but it’s visible through something more than sight—intuition, perhaps. Using all the senses to passively read the world around you. I could feel a sense of desperation in the people who lived along these streets, where booths were set up to sell food or goods, just as in any other Zone.

  I slid, silently, through the shadows toward the Scraper closest to the border. There were two, but this one was much larger. I stopped to survey the surroundings.

  “You should leave,” on older man said from the booth in front of me. His back was to me, and he never raised his head from the cookware he was cleaning. “Leave before the guard finds ya, boy.”

  “Can’t,” I said back, softly. “Have to find someone who disappeared into this place a few days ago.”

  “Ya can’t help ‘em, boy,” he said. “Moreau’s got ‘em now.”

  “You saw ‘em?”

  “It’s where any of the young go,” he said. “I was too old for his tastes. I was told to sell these, and if I tried to run, they would kill my daughter. She’s in the Scraper.”

  I was beginning to feel that rage building again.

  “They come through the streets every so often with our family members, just to show us they live. I saw Frea two days ago. She saw me, but she showed no signs of recognition. She didn’t know me.”

  I felt a hollowness in my stomach. Something was majorly wrong here. I looked around at the various people I could see. All were old. None were less than sixty. Where were the others?

  “I still have to find her,” I said.

  “A girl?” he asked. “A red head?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a pity. She was a beauty. They’re hard on the beautiful. Ugly and you can still be a guard. The beautiful are for one thing inside the Scraper.”

  That hollow pit stayed in my stomach.

  “They’ll catch ya, son,” he said. “But I’ll wish ya good luck, anyway. Maybe ya can get her outta there.”

  “Thanks for the wishes,” I said, the rage touching the surface. “But if they catch me, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

  “I hope you’re right, son,” he said. He never lifted his head, and his eyes never left his work.

  I slipped along in the shadows toward the Scraper. When I reached the side of the Scraper, I scaled the wall to the third floor, where I found a sliding window that wasn’t locked. I was inside in seconds and found an empty room with a bed.

  The door opened, and I backed into the shadows. The door closed, and a light came on. A pretty girl of about fourteen stood there looking at me. I was holding a throwing knife in each of my hands.

  She didn’t blink. I saw no fear, no surprise. Her eyes were filled with adoration.

  “May I please you?” she asked as she slipped her loose white robe from her shoulders.

  Something ugly twitched inside me. I had seen that look before. This wasn’t brainwashing; it was much more sinister. I had seen this tear our world apart once. Moreau had an imprinter, and my mission had just become a great deal more than saving a single girl.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  Tears sprang into her eyes, and I shuddered in rage.

  “I’m not pretty enough,” she said.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said and saw her tears slow. “And I would love for you to please me when I return. I must finish my job first. Wait for me here.”

  The smile changed her face to radiance, and I knew Moreau would suffer this day.

  I had lived the imprints of thousands. This was worse than the rape of a body. This was a rape of the body, mind, and soul.

  I walked openly out the door and down to the lobby where I knew there would be guards.

  “Take me to your Warlord!” I yelled as I entered the lobby. “He can’t just steal my wife and not face me!”

  The guards closed on me, and I put up a token fight, bloodying a nose or two. If Moreau had recovered some of the lost imprint tech, something would have to be done. What better way to find it than to get an escort?

  There are things that should never be recovered in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  I was dragged to an elevator and pushed inside. Five guards joined me, and one pushed the button for the penthouse. Old World or new, they always wanted to be at the top.

  “My wife…” I muttered.

  “Shut up,” one of the five commanded as he backhanded me.

  I restrained myself. Not yet.

  The elevator stopped, and I was pushed out of the small compartment into a lavish suite. They dragged me toward an extremely obese man who sat on a throne of sorts. It was a huge, padded chair.

  “Who might this be?” he asked. I could see his jowls shake with the movement of his mouth.

  “He claims to be searching for his wife.”

  Laughter rolled from the fat man.

  “Then, by all means, let’s reunite them!” he said. “What is her name?”

  “It’s Maddy,” I said, “Maddy Hale.”

  He bellowed his laughter, again. “The new one? Oh. This is going to be wonderful!”

  He pointed to one of the men. “Bring the new girl to me!”

  The guard left and was gone for a few minutes. He returned, followed by Maddy Hale. She was in one of the white, flowing robes.

  “Maddy!” I yelled.

  “May I please you?” she asked me.

  The fat man laughed.

  “Come here, girl!”

  She turned and almost ran to him.

  “This is what is going to happen,” he said, with an evil glint in his eyes. “First, we’re going to strap you into this machine.”

  He pointed to a chair with straps that had a helmet hanging above it.

  “Then your little darling, here, is going to service me right in front of you. Then she is going to service all twenty-five of my guards.”

  He waved his arms, indicating the twenty-five guards in the penthouse.

  “Then we are going to turn on the machine, and you are going to come out of it with your only waking thought being to pleasure us. Then you will take your turn and service each and every one of us.”

  I decided it was the perfect time to call in the reinforcements.

  My head sagged for a second, then I stood erect with the guards around me.

  “No. This is what’s going to happen. In ten seconds, I am going to break this man’s arm. Then I’m going to incapacitate all your guards, from the right side of the room to the left. I’m not going to kill them because they are victims, just as much as she is. And when I’m done, I’ll deal with you, Tubby.”

  “What the hell?!” he exclaimed. “Who are you!?”

  “Just consider yourselves lucky,” I said to the guard on my left. He was the one who had backhanded me. “Be happy he didn’t send Gaunt. My name is Willi
am Childers, Obsidian Special Forces.”

  I snapped the arm of the man on my left. My stiffened fingers sank into the one on the right, and he toppled, trying to draw a breath. My elbow punched the side of the next one’s neck hard enough to drop him into unconsciousness. I spun around and put stiffened fingers into pressure points on the other two that left them paralyzed. They toppled backward.

  This had taken two and a half seconds. I spun again and launched myself forward toward the ten guards on the right who were just realizing something was happening. I had put down four more before the first gunshot boomed in the room.

  I felt a tug at my leg but ignored it and ripped the gun from the hand of the man who had just shot me. I threw it, and it slammed into the throat of his partner. Then I dislocated both the man’s arms as I twisted them backward with a pop.

  I moved on to the next. His shot went wide as my foot sank into his solar plexus. He was done. The next three took stiffened fingers to pressure points.

  I heard the guns and felt the tug of another hit in my side. I didn’t slow down. I was among the ones on the left, and they would have trouble shooting me without hitting their friends. The guns still fired, and three of them fell from friendly fire. I felt the bullet go through my shoulder just before I throat-punched the last man.

  I turned to Moreau, who cringed.

  “Time for a change of regimes, fat man.”

  I dragged the blubbering Warlord from his throne and over to his own imprinter. I strapped him in and dropped the helmet down. A vacation printer. I felt a swell of relief as I saw what type of imprinter it was.

  These had been used to give someone a month of being someone else. The imprint would fade. He’d been re-imprinting whenever the imprint started to run out. I flipped the switch on the side and Moreau’s begging stopped. I raised the helmet.

  “May I please you?” he asked.

  I turned to the guards and retrieved my weapons, then I returned to Moreau. I unstrapped the former Warlord from the chair. There was a mark tattooed on his arm, so I drew my razor and cut it away.

  He cried.

  I walked to one of the guards I had paralyzed. I hit another pressure point and showed the guard the mark I held in my hand.

  “Master?” he asked. “Orders?”

  I pointed at Moreau. “Doctor his arm and chain him to the wall. His sole purpose is to pleasure every guard in the Scraper. He will do this every day. You will make sure it is done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I looked at Maddy Hale, who stood beside the throne with a blank stare.

  “May I please you?” she asked as I approached. I showed her the mark.

  “Master,” she said, with complete adoration.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  “Will I be pleasing you, Master?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Soon.”

  I returned to the imprinter and removed several parts, including the limited database. I placed the parts in my pockets.

  I led Maddy to the elevator, and we descended to the third floor where we returned to the room I had left the girl in.

  “Master,” she said, “May I please you?”

  “Come with me,” I said.

  She followed along, and we descended to the lobby.

  “Orders?” the first guard asked when he saw the mark I held out.

  “Gather every guard in the Zone and report to the penthouse. Orders will be waiting.”

  Moreau was in for a hell of a month. All his men would deprogram before he would. They would retain the memories. He might survive that, he might not.

  The girls followed me out of the Scraper. We walked north up the street. I stopped at a stand that sold cookware. The man looked up from his work. I handed him a flap of skin with a mark on it.

  “Show this, and no one will interfere with you,” I said. “Go find your daughter.”

  “I can never repay you, son,” he said.

  “Use that wisely,” I said. “Stay away from the penthouse. A chapter of the Society of the Sword will be moving in here. Give that to the leader and go…or stay. This Zone is changing. May be worth watching.”

  “The imprinter?”

  He was old enough to remember the imprinters.

  “Destroyed.”

  “Who are you, son?”

  “Mathew Kade.”

  “I’ll remember it,” he said and turned away. He almost ran toward the Scraper.

  “Alright, girls, let’s go.”

  “Will we be pleasing you?”

  “Soon,” I said.

  We walked out of Moreau’s Zone to the astonishment of those inside Payne’s. No one approached. They stayed out of my way. It was the first time I had ever traveled at night that I didn’t have to defend myself. We walked, unharmed, through Payne’s, then Overton’s, and on through Stiner’s, to the warehouse that was the home of the Society.

  The guard at the entrance recognized me immediately.

  “Kade,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m ok,” I said. “They’re not.”

  He chuckled.

  “I need you to take these two ladies to Teresa,” I said. “I have some unfinished business to take care of.

  “Protect them,” I added. “Especially from themselves. You’ll understand in a minute.”

  “Will do.”

  “Girls, go with him.”

  “Will we be pleasuring you?” they asked simultaneously.

  “I see.”

  “Tell her it’s imprint tech. It’ll fade, but they’ll need help when it does.”

  “I will.”

  “Wilson make it back?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Too stubborn to die.”

  “True.”

  I nodded at the Squire and strode back into the night. There are more than blights in this broken place. Sometimes there are beacons in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Epilogue

  Simon Blechley awoke with a start. There was a wetness on his face. He reached out and turned on the lamp beside the immense canopy bed. He looked up and saw that the canopy was sagging and dripping something on his face.

  He wiped his hand across his face, and it came away red. He started to scream just as the canopy split and the heads of all his lieutenants cascaded down over him.

  His screech was cut short as a hand seized his throat.

  “Hello there,” a voice whispered to him. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

  “K-K-Kade?”

  “Not today, Simon,” the voice answered. “Stephen Gaunt, at your service. We have so much to talk about.”

  * * *

  I walked across the floor to the vault I had built into the solid concrete of the platform. I turned the dials to open the vault door. I pulled the various pieces of the imprinter from my pockets and lay them on a shelf. Then I took the database from another pocket and placed it on a shelf with five others.

  Some things never should have been created and never should be where people could get to them.

  I left my vault and began to doctor my wounds. The quick healing from the alterations was a great boon to someone in my line of work.

  Perhaps I would soak in the huge tub for a while.

  * * *

  Kade had been on her mind a lot lately.

  SSWWSSSHHH

  Too much for her comfort.

  TTHHSSSSS

  Kade. How was he still alive? Especially after the last days. And why did it matter to her? But it did, didn’t it?

  SSHHAAPP

  The head of the practice maniq went flying as she twisted the katana blade at just the right moment. She didn’t stop moving as the sword came back around and ended up in the scabbard at her side, without seeming to slow from the killing stroke. She loved the katana. It had been her mother’s before the Fall and rested in a place of honor with its twin when not on her side or across her back. She placed it in the wooden wardrobe and closed the dark-grain
ed door with a smile. For some reason, the thought of Kade gave her the same feeling as the thought of her mother. Well, not exactly the same, she thought with a wry grin.

  “One of my weaknesses,” she said quietly, “of which I have far too many.”

  A throat cleared across the room, and she came back to full realization of her surroundings and out of the heightened awareness of the fight. While in the practice session, she had felt and seen everything around her. She had felt Poe as he came up to the door and patiently stopped to wait for her to finish the bout. She had immediately dismissed him as a threat and continued to contend with the maniqs that attacked her from the floor and ceiling. Seven this time, a good workout coming right after the half hour of parkour training in full armor.

  “What’s up, Wilson?” she asked the big man. He was recovering from his wounds nicely.

  “You have a visitor from the Tees, ma’am,” Poe rumbled with head bowed.

  The Tees was a tunnel system that ran beneath a large part of the city. After the bombings that led to the Fall, it had been blocked off. That was the story everyone believed. The Society of the Sword knew better. She had known about the system for several years and had dealt with the Mardins that inhabited the dark, damp labyrinth. She did an occasional favor for them and provided certain foodstuffs they had no access to, and they provided information and safe passage when needed—when it did not endanger their secrecy.

  “Must be important for them to send an emissary above ground. Any idea what it’s about?” She leapt effortlessly up from the sunken training area, plucking a damp towel from the rack on the way.

  “No, ma’am. Only that it was of interest to you and that you would want the info immediately.”

  “Well, let’s go see what’s so important,” Teresa Manora, matriarch and absolute leader of the Society of the Sword, said with a small smile. “Maybe they want a Chapterhouse opened.”

  “That’s possible,” he said. “Nothing would surprise me after Blechley’s one remaining lieutenant came in asking for a Chapterhouse when he couldn’t find all the pieces of his boss. But I think it’s unlikely, since I don’t think Kade has a beef with the Tees.”