Capital City Chronicles: The Island by S.E. Goss Page A

out of the room. I looked again at Serious One. Something had changed in his expression, something so subtle, I couldn’t place it. His eyes had… lightened somehow. The formerly blank, hard expression seemed softer, but just under the surface as if the stone that built his face had been replaced with actual flesh. His large, scarred hand crept to his face. Two fingers extended and knocked away an itch under his eye.
    Then he nodded, once.
    It was a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, but I saw it and instantly felt brave. I knew then that I may just make it to the elevator.
    “Well, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again,” the talkative agent leered. After a few seconds, he released my wrist.
    * * *
                  Outside, under the giant, flashing awning, a line of limousines waited, the drivers all standing by the back doors. I had ducked into a restroom on the gaming floor, removed the collar and cleaned my face, and now as I approached the first driver he smiled and swung the door open for me.
                  “Where to, Madame?” he said.
                  “304 Heart, please,” I answered as I climbed in.
                  As the car pulled away, I melted into the warm, cushioned leather seat and pressed a small button on the door. The divider window at the front faded to black and I was alone. The limo pulled away and I watched the city flow by, wondering how this would all end.
                  The night was stretching into the early morning hours, yet still the parties raged. I imagined come daylight, Capital City would be quieter than it had been in years. As the noise and the lights blurred past the window, I tried to replay the night, from the moment I received the job, yet I could only seem to get as far as standing on the CCTA platform, before the image of Whitten’s destroyed face jumped into the foreground. I decided to try to focus on the city rushing by.
                  Someone else to lead it, he’d said, the Revival has already been approved…
                  ...Sophia…
                  His voice replayed over and over in my head, repeating those same last words. Perhaps it was just my own shock, my own psyche coming to the realization that I had just taken a human life. But, perhaps, it was something else. My subconscious attempt to remember a crucial detail, a fact that I had neglected in my shock.
                  ...has already been approved…
                  ...Revival…
                  I thought again of his plan, GCI’s plan to clean the city, the images that had led to my sloppy plot to seek out and murder James Whitten, the beloved, hero cop turned firebrand senator.
    I again saw resistance fighters mowed down in the streets by storms of bullets…
    I saw NerveTown on fire…
    ...already been approved…
    I saw burning satellites raining down over fields of bodies; the videos of The Praetorian Disaster I’d watched as a girl. But why? Why was I seeing this?
    Just as the limo swept up onto the highway and away from downtown, the answer, all at once, came to me.
    I dumped the contents of the clutch onto the seat next to me.
    My PDA landed face first onto the pistol, cracking the screen. I swiped my finger across the glass, and the screen popped on. It still worked despite the spiderweb crack that spread across the face. Running my thumb along the bottom edge, I felt the flashdrive, still tucked into the tiny slot.
    With another few swipes of my finger, I accessed the Underground, pulling up the bulletin board of postings for illegal goods and services. Scrolling past the ads for serial number free guns, low rank hitmen, hackers for hire, new designer narcotics and libraries of pornography, I reached the section of announcements. I posted an anonymous announcement, and after a brief moment of thought, titled it:
     
    GLOBECORPS INTERNATIONAL’S
    PLAN FOR