I milled in with the women around Eibling. I had on an army-issued stocking cap, but I’d misplaced my gloves. I pinched and worked my fingers so they wouldn’t freeze.
Eibling, holding the mysterious cylinder, talked to the Severin. “Marjorie, we’re having issues with dissidents. This area is no longer secure. President Jack is not giving his speech today.”
Marjorie the Severin frowned. “This is our only chance. If we call it, we are not going to get another chance.”
That didn’t sound right to me, and it hit Eibling wrong as well. “What do you mean? We can reschedule.”
The Severin shrugged. “I can’t guarantee the ARK resources. I would have to check with Hoyt.”
The ex-president was descending down the wooden staircase, encircled by secret service agents, dressed in fatigues and holding AZ3s. He was right there, in his blue suit.
It was well-known that the office of president ages a man. President Jack had done it for twenty years, and yet, he looked good. He was shorter, thinner than I would’ve thought, with an impish face, whipped red by the wind, under a shock of thick bright white hair. While I wasn’t a fan, I had to admit—he looked presidential.
However short.
He and his detail approached. He smiled broadly. “So I hear the crap has hit the jack. I’m assuming this drama is going to prevent me from giving my speech. All those years in the Sino, and I never got to make a battlefield speech. And I even practiced.”
I was listening to him talk, prolly the most famous man alive. Starstruck, I stood there blinking, trying to figure out what to do. He exuded a charisma that was staggering. No wonder he’d won the election twice and then people just gave up and gave him three more victories.
I had to capture him. But how? Steal a pistol, hold it up to his head, and hope I didn’t get massacred? Or chase him back into the zeppelin?
“Sir, the safest course of action is for you to get back into the zeppelin and leave,” Eibling said. “But first, someone went to a lot of trouble to meet you.”
I hadn’t been forgotten. Eibling motioned for me to step forward.
All eyes turned on me.
President Jack took me in, as did the Severin, Marjorie.
Both recognized me at once.
The Severin pulled her pistol, a Desert Messiah, of course.
President Jack let out a hiss of disbelief. “Cavatica Weller? Is this some kind of joke?”
Not sure how they knew me. I’d shaved my head and lost weight and gained a mad-dog stare in my eyes. I’d become a face you were worried over, not one you recognized.
Marjorie the Severin shuddered forward and pitched down onto her face.
I didn’t hear the bullet, only saw the back of her skull blown out like an empty bowl.
“Snipers!” Eibling flung herself in front of President Jack, but I knew the sniper, and he wasn’t gunning for a man. No, he’d shot the Severin before she could put me down. The other Regios took up a defensive position.
President Jack’s security escorted him back up the steps, forming a wall around him. They were taking away our prize.
No, no, no this couldn’t be happening. I’d come so close.
Even worse, President Jack would spread the word that he’d seen Cavatica Weller in the Juniper. We had lost it all in seconds.
My heart squeezed sweat from my skin. I went for him. Eibling tripped me, and I went down on my face.
“Take her,” she said. “We still have the cages?”
One of her soldiers nodded.
I flung my head back, smashed a nose, and reached to steal a sidearm from a soldier in front of me. No way would I go down without a fight.
Eibling stepped forward and blasted me in the face with pepper spray.
That cylinder. It was June Mai’s pepper spray. I wouldn’t be alone in the cages. Not hardly.
Chapter Nineteen
THE NIGHT IS LOVE ABOVE
As hell is hate below
Here in the middle we’re dirty
Here in the middle we glow
—Janis Keeve. “Middle World.” In the Between, Seventeen Records, 2055
(i)
Cages.
Eibling had mentioned cages—that was where they took me, took all of us, even Pilate. They’d eventually found him, and he’d given himself up.
Like I said, Elitch Garden’s junk was everywhere, and that was where the cages had come from. They had been connected to some kind of tilt-a-whirl ride, metal bars, screens, two little seats with old canvas seat belts. At one point, the cages would’ve been connected to a swinging arm, but those days were far behind them.
I got my own. Once I was inside, a soldier sparked up an arc welder and sealed the door closed. I bit back curses as the sparks of molten metal hit me. No escape. We were literally welded inside metal boxes.
The cages lay in a circle in the crust of snow, near the banks of Cherry Creek. We were going to have front row seats watching President Jack’s zeppelin flee our little trap.
The battle had subsided, but I heard women talking about the rivers and the mined fence.
I also heard that the ARK had driven the dissidents away.
“How about you call us freedom fighters?” I screamed. “Or patriots? We’re not jackering dissidents. If you want, call us outlaws, ’cause that’s more to the point!”
“Hush now,” June Mai called out through the wind and snow. “Don’t give them anything they can use.”
I was alone in my cage, but the others had two or three bodies in them. Sharlotte and June Mai, Baptista and two other outlaws, and Pilate, who was bent over, trying to breathe through his pain and coughing. Such a mistake bringing him, but if he hadn’t sniped that Severin, I’d have been gunned down right there.
It was all over. We’d lost. And
