Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

My eyes slowly floated open, reflexively closing again from the harshness of the light, then slowly squinting so that I could look around the room. It was a simple white room with strange equipment scattered everywhere, tubes leading from points of my body to a host of monitors. It was obvious that I was in a hospital, my last memories coming back to me with a rush of guilt. Eve had abandoned her ship to save me, she had given up immortality for me. The lights suddenly dimmed, a door hissing open. I painfully turned my neck to see Eve stride briskly into the room, a comcard in hand.

I could see a subtle change in her body. Her hair was a few inches shorter, her face a little smoother, her skin just a little rosier, it was almost as though she had gotten younger since I had last seen her. “I heard you were awake,” she said, taking my hand.

My mouth was dry as cotton, making it difficult to speak, but I rasped, “This is the third time in as many days that I thought I was dead.”

Eve brushed the side of my head with one hand, her smile fading just a bit with concern. “Actually, you’ve been in a coma for five months.”

“What? Where am I then?”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You’re on Earth,” Eve stopped, touching a button on her comcard, the sound of pounding waves suddenly flooded the room. “Back home in Waterford, Maine to be exact.”

“Why?”

Before Eve could answer the door opened, a man in a white labcoat entering the room. I almost didn’t recognize him with sandy hair and a goatee, but when I looked past that I could tell that the man was James Sirvenski. “Welcome home, Brent.”

“James, what the hell is going on?” I demanded, trying to push myself up to sit, but I didn’t have the strength. Eve touched something on her comcard, the bed tilting up so that I was more or less in a sitting position.

“We wanted somewhere secluded to keep you while you recovered, just in case anyone tried anything, so this seemed a logical place.”

“So what hospital is this?” I looked around but there were no windows to see out of.

“We converted one of the caves in the side of the bluffs, that way it will be hard for anyone to break in,” Sirvenski replied.

“How did you pay for all this?” I swept my hands around the room to indicate all of the machines as well as the building itself. There was no way that Sirvenski had that kind of money, Fischer’s expense account wouldn’t have covered such extravagances, and Eve was an alien…”Oh no.”

Sirvenski and Eve looked at each other, Sirvenski nodding and saying, “I’ll leave you two alone.” The door hissed shut behind him, Eve taking a seat next to my bed, looking into my eyes. We looked silently at each other for a long time, and I knew that whatever Eve was about to say I wasn’t going to like it.

“What’s going on?” I finally asked.

Eve sighed then began, “After you blacked out, I managed to find the research station’s doctor and we took you for treatment. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do for you. The internal injuries were just too severe, your left lung and kidney were shut down, your liver and heart were close to failing, your left arm was pulp below the elbow, and your spine was all but severed at the base of the neck.” Eve stopped, I could see the pain it caused her to think of the rough shape I had been in. “Even on Earth it would have been difficult for you to make a full recovery, but with the research station’s limited facilities it was impossible. All they could do was to keep you alive on life support, but even that could not last forever. I knew that I could save you, but I would need to recreate some of my planet’s medical technology from scratch and adapt it to your body. I had no money, no resources to speak of, nowhere to turn to, I could only watch you hover between life and death and do nothing about it.”

Tears came to Eve’s eyes, making me wish for the strength to comfort her, but I was still too weak to do anything but squeeze her hand. “When James found me, we decided on a plan to get what we needed to save your life. He used the station’s computers to finally track down the trillionaire behind the research station’s funding. We sent a message to her, threatening to implicate her in the murder of the Yellowknife crew and to reveal her connections to Lindsey Pettyjohn if she did not provide us with money and the components we asked for. It took over a month, but we finally convinced her by bluffing that the ‘artifact’ was really an alien weapon and that we had discovered how to use it. Two weeks later, we received what we asked for and began working on the means to bring you back. In return, nothing of what actually happened aboard the Poseyville and Yellowknife would be reported. Both ships were listed as lost with all hands after a fatal collision. James and I created a story that generally fit the facts, and with a few well-placed bribes, no one would investigate too deeply. We packed my ship in a crate, stuffing it in a lifeboat and sending it on a one-way trip to Jupiter on the way back to Earth.”

“It took James and I another two weeks, but we managed to redesign Sohebian medical equipment for human physiology. We kept the project secret, making sure that no one found out anything specific about the equipment we were using. It took another month to get you stabilized enough that we could transport you back to Earth, where we set up this facility so you could finish your recovery.”

I numbly took in what Eve said, scarcely believing it. They had allowed this mysterious trillionaire to get off the hook, to get away with murder, all because of me. Justice for those who had been killed had been traded for my life. How could I live with the guilt, the knowledge that the families of the slain would never truly know what happened because my life was deemed too valuable? “How…how could you be so selfish?” I demanded as loudly as I could. I pulled my hand away from Eve’s, hoping that my eyes could convey all of the rage I felt.

“I didn’t…I wasn’t…” She began to stammer, then ran crying from the room. Sirvenski came in a second later, looking at me with concern.

“What happened?” He asked.

“Get out!” I roared. Sirvenski hesitated a moment then backed out of the room, leaving me alone, tears I was too weak to brush away coursing down my face.

Over the next two months of physical therapy I had plenty of time to think, mostly about how to get the justice that had been denied. Eve, Sirvenski, and I rarely talked during that time, I couldn’t forgive them for their selfishness in covering up the truth to save my life. I knew that I should be grateful to them, they had saved my life, but yet my heart felt only sadness.

Another murderer walked away free, just like when my wife and son had been killed, only in a way this was worse. My family’s murder had been a random act of violence, while the trillionaire behind the murder of the Yellowknife crew had coldly calculated her crime, hiring an assassin to infiltrate the Yellowknife’s crew to steal Eve’s ship. The trillionaire was not some street thug looking to make a few dollars, this person probably had all the advantages that a modern society could provide, yet they still wanted more.

I wanted so badly to teach the trillionaire a lesson, to make her pay for her crime. I wanted to finally take a stand against the evil of the world, to make things right for a change. It was ironic that I had spent the last five years cynically living outside of the law: bribing, smuggling, misusing prescription drugs, but now I only wanted to enforce the law on an individual who obviously thought they were above it. I had see so many innocent people die, each time I was so powerless to do anything about it, but maybe this time there was something I could do. Maybe I could get some small measure of revenge for Turgeon, Gill, and the others.

After two months of hard work, and use of the equipment Eve and Sirvenski had designed, I was in the best shape of my life. According to Eve I had the body of someone almost half my age, my body was trim, my muscles were strong, my hair was back to its natural color, and my face was free of wrinkles. I had no idea exactly how the machines worked, but it did not matter right now, all that mattered was getting the justice so long overdue.

I was healthy enough now that I was able to actually go into town for brief periods of time. Eve or Sirvenski always went with me, they said to protect me, but I knew that it was really to make sure that I never did anything rash. A couple times a week, Sirvenski and I would go out to the farm outside of Waterford where Sirvenski’s family now lived. With some of Eve’s help, Sirvenski’s mother had made a complete recovery and his sisters were starting to make friends with some of the local girls, which seemed to take a lot of pressure off of the young man’s shoulders.

One day while we were visiting, I convinced Sirvenski to let me help his mother with the dishes after dinner. While we were washing the dishes and chatting, I slipped a butcher knife into a pocket. I nervously went through the rest of the evening with the knife in my pocket, hoping that no one noticed it or things would get very awkward very quickly. Fortunately, no one found the weapon and I left the farm with Sirvenski without incident.

We drove back to the bluffs, and as we were walking towards our hidden base, I made my move. I took the knife from my pocket and slammed into Sirvenski from the side. We both tumbled to the ground, but I rolled on top of him, holding the knife to his throat. Sirvenski’s eyes went wide with horror. “Brent, what the hell are you doing?” He gasped.

“I want to know who this trillionaire is and where I can find her,” I growled.

“You know I can’t tell you that!”

“If you don’t, I’m going to give you an unscheduled tracheotomy. Now tell me!”

“This is crazy, Brent, I’m your friend!”

“Some friend you were, you should have just let me die!”

“I couldn’t do that, neither could Eve!”

“I want a name.”

Sirvenski looked at me for a long minute, the knife pressing just a bit harder into his throat. Finally, he relented with a sigh. “All right, if this is what you think you have to do. I’ll take you there.”

“Tell me who it is!”

“No, I want to go with you, to make sure you come back alive…for Eve’s sake.” I let Sirvenski up, following him to the car. There was an awkward silence for a long time, until we were out of Waterford and on the road heading west. Finally, Sirvenski said, “During those five months you were out, all Eve talked about how much she loved you and how much she wanted you to recover. That’s why she tested that equipment on herself first, she couldn’t bring herself to risk killing you. She could have shriveled up to a hag or shrunk down to just a zygote, but she would rather have that happen to her than to you. I wish I had someone like that.”

“I know that Eve loves me, and I love her too, but this isn’t about that. Some good people were killed and someone has to be held accountable for it,” I replied quietly.

Sirvenski snorted, “I hate to burst your bubble, Brent, but Parker and his gang were not saints. They were going to kill us, remember?”

“They were left alone on a dying ship for weeks, it’s no wonder they went a little crazy, especially when Palmer offered them such a tantalizing deal. You and I might have become just as desperate if we were abandoned on the Poseyville for weeks. And what about Turgeon, or Murray Gill, what did they do to deserve being murdered?”

Sirvenski shook his head, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out the picture of Turgeon and her family I had taken from her quarters on the Yellowknife. “I found this with your personal effects. She was a pretty girl, but I don’t think…”

“Just drop it!” I shouted angrily, ripping the picture from his hands. “You don’t understand.”

“I’d like to, Brent. I know I haven’t known you that long, but this doesn’t seem like you.”

“Maybe I’m just tired of being me,” I replied icily.

“So what are you going to do when we get there? Wave your knife around? Drop in through the skylight?”

“I’ll think of something. It might help to know where we’re going first.”

Sirvenski nodded deliberately. “All right, I think it’s safe to tell you now. Have you ever heard of Halle Bradford?”

“Halle Bradford of Sirius Industries? I met her a few times at cocktail parties in Chicago, I never thought she was a trillionaire though.”

“It’s not widely known, but her family bought up huge tracts of land in the city when the Mafia families were taken down. She owns almost all of downtown Chicago, but the contracts are a carefully guarded secret.”

I started to chuckle, Sirvenski looking at me oddly, probably wondering if I was going to kill him now. “You realize the irony in this, don’t you? Sirius Industries built the Yellowknife, so her company built the ship we used to help unravel her scheme.”

Sirvenski joined in my laughter, “Well, then I guess we can tell her in person how durable her ships are.”

I shook my head. “First, though, we’ll need a few supplies.”

Sirvenski and I left the car in Montreal, taking a transit pod across Canada and Michigan to Chicago, the city I had left behind five years ago to escape the grief of my family’s murder. Now I was back, this time hoping to alleviate some of the grief I was feeling. I could see the immense silver skyscraper that dwarfed all of Chicago’s other buildings, the headquarters for Sirius Industries, from about twenty miles out over the lake. Our pod finally stopped downtown, depositing us about five blocks from the Fletcher A. Bradford Tower.

Halle Bradford’s father built the tower almost forty years ago, it had originally been named the Polaris Tower, because like the North Star, the tower was visible for such a distance that it could be used for navigation. Halle Bradford renamed the tower for her father almost ten years ago, after he had passed away. My old firm of Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss handled some of Sirius Industries’ investments, I had been sent over to the tower in my first year with the firm, I could still remember the awe I felt when I entered the majestic lobby, my years in Maine never preparing me for such a magnificent place.

I felt barely even a twitch of emotion this time as I walked through the gold-trimmed doors, although I could hear Sirvenski gasp beside me. During the trip across Lake Michigan, Sirvenski had programmed a comcard that would scramble the weapons detectors in the tower, the lack of any overt alarms as we walked through the lobby was a good sign that the comcard was doing its job. I brushed past the tropical garden, the waterfall, and exquisite sculptures in the lobby, my eyes on the reception desk just in front of the elevators. If our weapons had been detected, it was a good bet that security guards would be waiting for us at the elevators to keep us from going up.

The reception desk an imposing barricade of dark wood trimmed with gold, a young blonde woman staring at us coldly as we approached. “Can I help you?” She asked.

I casually glanced around, trying to see if any guards were waiting to pounce on Sirvenski and I, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “I’m here to see Ms. Bradford,” I announced, trying to heap as much confidence as I could into my voice.

“Do you have an appointment?”

This next part was risky, but if my guess was right, it would be the most direct route to Bradford’s office. “No, she’s not expecting me, but tell her that Mr. Gallowes is here to see her.”

The receptionist looked skeptical, then tapped a few buttons on a terminal hidden from my sight by the desk. “He says his name is Mr. Gallowes…” The receptionist stopped and nodded. She looked up at me with a well-trained smile, “Here are your access chips, gentlemen, Ms. Bradford will be expecting you.” The receptionist handed us each a tiny circular chip to pin on our lapels, the chip would allow the building’s security personnel to keep track of us, and also to keep us from accessing any part of the tower they deemed we were not cleared for. I smiled at the receptionist and pinned the chip to my suit’s lapel, trying not to let my nervousness show as I walked to the elevator.

There were no security guards in the elevator waiting for us, the transparent car was completely empty. “Ms. Bradford’s office, please,” I commanded the elevator, bracing myself as the elevator shot upwards. “Well, I guess we’re in.”

“I guess,” Sirvenski replied. “You know Brent, I’ll make sure that no one kills you, but I’m not going to help you kill Bradford.”

“I understand,” I nodded as I took out the pistol I’d liberated from Sirvenski. During our stop in Montreal I had also bought Sirvenski a gun, which he took out now with a decidedly unhappy expression on his face. “Just stay out of my way.”

The Bradford Tower was over four hundred stories, but the elevator reached the top in just about a minute. I took a deep breath as the doors opened, ready for the trap I knew was waiting. Bradford was not stupid, she had four guards waiting just outside the door. Sirvenski and I each took two, using fléchettes coated with a tranquilizing chemical that immediately knocked out the four guards.

A middle-aged redhead, looking very much like an older version of Francesca Turgeon, stared at Sirvenski and I in horror, too paralyzed with fear to even reach for the emergency call button. “We’re not here to hurt you,” I said gently, firing a burst of fléchettes into her right leg. The woman collapsed to the floor, an almost tranquil expression on her face. “Don’t worry, we’ll show ourselves in.”

I pulled open the heavy wooden doors, my eyes darting around for more guards, but I didn’t see any. The only person in the enormous office was an elderly black woman, her grandmotherly appearance spoiled by the steel in her voice. “I expected that you’d find your way here without the help of my bodyguards,” Bradford said coldly.

I made a show of dumping out the tranquilizer rounds, replacing them with regular bullets. The gun finished loading with a click, then I leveled it at Bradford. “Put your hands on the desk and keep them there,” I ordered. Sirvenski stood at the back of the palatial office, his back turned to me so that he could watch the doors and try to ignore what I was about to do.

“Of course,” Bradford complied, setting her withered hands on the surface of the desk. “I imagine that you’re here to kill me, even though it was my money which allowed your friend to revive you.”

“I never asked them to save my life. I would have been just as happy dead, with you rotting in prison for your crimes,” I hissed.

Bradford looked me in the eyes, her voice level, “Tell me, Mr. Gallowes, did you think I enjoyed hiring a thug like Lindsey Pettyjohn? Did you think I wanted those people to die?”

The question stopped me in my tracks, but I quickly recovered. “I don’t think you care about anyone so long as you get what you want.”

Bradford shook her head, one eye watering just slightly. “You may think of me as a rich, powerful woman from an elite family, but my father worked his way up from the assembly line at Sirius Industries to run the company. He worked himself into an early grave just so that his children could have more than he did, so that his children could be something. I loved my father, and one of the things he taught me was to respect life, but…” Bradford stopped, taking a deep breath and wiping a tear away. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

“Sacrifices? Is that all they are to you?”

Bradford glared at me with barely-controlled anger. “Do you really think that Parker and his gang were going to just give me the artifact for the money I asked for? That girl Turgeon called me from the mining station in the asteroid belt demanding two hundred billion dollars and parts to repair Parker’s ship, or else they would destroy the artifact. I knew from that conversation that they would have sold it to the highest bidder, and who knows what that buyer might have done with it!”

“Probably nothing worse than what you were planning on doing.”

Bradford shook her head sadly, “Have you read the story of Prometheus, Mr. Gallowes?”

“I vaguely remember it,” I replied, wondering why Bradford would bring up Greek mythology when I had a gun aimed at her head.

“Prometheus was the Greek god of foresight, he stole fire from Mount Olympus and brought it to humanity. For this crime he was punished by being chained up, an eagle tearing out his liver every day for all eternity.” Bradford paused, perhaps to let the image sink into my brain. “Objects like that artifact are the fire that can make this world a better place, but with the knowledge we gain comes a cost. I despised Lindsey Pettyjohn, but it was a necessary evil to make certain that I obtained the artifact, so that I could use its technology to benefit all of humanity.”

“And yourself of course.”

Bradford snorted, “You seem to have benefited quite a bit from it.” Sirvenski turned around suddenly, looking as though he had been slapped in the face. “Yes, your friends think they pulled one over on me, and while I do not know the details, I do know that they used the artifact to create medical technology light years ahead of anything produced on Earth. Technology that saved you from life as a vegetable, Mr. Gallowes.”

“I didn’t ask them to do that,” I hissed.

Bradford smiled, spreading her hands wide on the desk. “Who is more the villain here, Mr. Gallowes? I would have shared what I learned with everyone, while your friends have hoarded beneficial technology for themselves. Technology that could save millions, perhaps even billions, kept a secret.”

“That isn’t how it is at all!” Sirvenski shouted at Bradford, his face flushing red with anger.

“No, of course not, but think how many lives have been lost that you might have saved all these months while you camped out in some damp cave, nursing your friend back to health.”

Sirvenski’s body quivered with rage, for a moment I thought he might actually kill Bradford before I could, but he stopped. “How dare you try to compare us to you!”

“Enough!” I interrupted, before Bradford could reply. “You are not any better than Lindsey Pettyjohn, Ms. Bradford. You are both cold-blooded killers, the only difference is that she enjoyed murder while you saw it as a necessary evil. You talk about improving humanity, about making sacrifices to create a better world, but what kind of world will it be with people like you at the controls? People who so casually throw away human lives, who arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies, because they think that their view of the world is the only right one. You may think of yourself as some great crusader, but you are nothing more than a murderer, and I am here to make sure that you pay for your crimes.”

“Really?” Bradford asked nonchalantly, cocking an eyebrow. “Exactly what good do you think will be achieved by my death?”

“It will bring justice for those killed by your greed.”

Bradford laughed, a very grandmotherly smile coming to her face. “I’ve studied your history, Mr. Gallowes. I know that you are not a killer. You may have been living on the fringes of civilization these past five years, but deep down you are still the same man who worked in this city for twenty years, a man who never had so much as a ticket for littering. Murder is beneath you and we both know it.”

Bradford started to ease her hands off the desk, but the click of my gun’s safety was enough of a warning for her to put them back where they were. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work. You think you can manipulate me just like you manipulated Francesca Turgeon, you tricked that poor girl into waiting for what she thought was a ship to take her back to her comrades, but instead it was an assassin that you hired to kill her and infiltrate the crew.” I stopped, my anger rising. “You had Lindsey Pettyjohn butcher that girl and I’m going to hold you accountable!”

I noted with some satisfaction the way that Bradford’s eyes widened as I started to squeeze the trigger. A single shot would probably do it, would bring justice for Turgeon and Gill. Just a tiny pressure from my finger would exorcise the demon that had been haunting me for the last two months. Yet, I could not will my finger to pull the trigger.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a picture on Bradford’s desk, a picture of the old woman with three young children, presumably her grandchildren. My justice would rob those children of their grandmother, would deny them from ever seeing her or hugging her or telling her how much they loved her. My pulling the trigger would make me little better than whoever had killed my wife and son five years ago. Over the last two months I had become so twisted with thoughts of revenge that I never really considered the consequences of my actions, but now, looking at Bradford sitting there helplessly in her chair, the stark reality slapped me in the face. This was not justice, it was only a descent into madness, into the dark recesses of my soul, from which I would never be able to return. If I pulled the trigger I would become someone else, I could never look at myself in the mirror and see the man who had been a loving father and husband.

So I let up on the trigger, reaching into my coat pocket to take out the picture I had taken from Turgeon’s quarters in the Yellowknife. I set the picture down in front of Bradford, leaning forward to growl, “This is the woman you had killed. Every day you look in the mirror I hope you see her face and think of what you did, and what you almost made me do.” Bradford swallowed, visibly shaken by her brush with death. “If I hear that you are ever involved with any criminal activity, I will be back, and next time there will be nothing stopping me from finishing what I started today.”

I left the picture on the desk, turning and walking quickly towards the door. I stopped and turned back, but Bradford was just staring numbly at me. “Let’s go,” I said to Sirvenski and left Bradford, wondering if I had gotten through to her.

It was a long, silent ride back to Montreal. Sirvenski looked about to say something once or twice, but thought better of it. When our transit pod reached the station, he finally said, “I’m proud of you, Brent.”

I didn’t reply, I was too lost in my own thoughts. Walking in the rain towards where we had left the car, I stopped Sirvenski and shook his hand. “Tell Eve that I love her and I’ll be back…someday,” I said, tears coming to my eyes.

“What? Where are you going?” Sirvenski asked.

“I have to work some things out,” I replied, disappearing into a crowd of people, leaving Sirvenski to stand alone in the rain. I bought a ticket for a transit pod, but I had no idea where it was going, nor did I care. I had thought that killing Bradford was the answer to ridding myself of the guilt I felt, yet when it finally came time to do it I realized that it would not make me feel better at all. Until I could rid myself of my demons, I couldn’t go back to Eve, her love would only be a constant reminder of my shame. The transit pod started down the tube, setting me on my way for the longest journey of my life.