The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

“By all means.”

“Can you contact the other Boston families to see what they know? Maybe some of their Solomons fled, too.”

“Been doing that since yesterday, when you didn’t catalyze your amp as scheduled. I’m using what leverage I have, which is limited. So far, little progress.” He frowned. “I don’t wish to compound the misery, but there is something strange.”

“What now?”

“Finnegan Moss and his chief of staff, David Ellstrom. They are incommunicado. Outside the NAC. Apparently, they’ve been gone for several days. I spoke with the Moss EM. Their trip was unplanned, and they left no itinerary but gave orders not to contact by amp.”

Sam didn’t want to think this important, but the last time she and Michael met with Finnegan, he offered an open-door policy. “Amp in anytime,” he said. “Important evidence? Send it directly to my admin stack.” He provided the access algorithm.

“Let me try him,” Sam said. She expanded her holocube and fingered relevant directories then pushed through a stream pulse. Her signal died in darkness. No bounce-back, no return message.

Sam vowed not to let paranoia set in.

“Keep trying your contacts, Merton. Be discrete.”

“Always, Samantha. I’ll have dinner on the table when you arrive. Would you like the twins to join you?”

“Yes, but not right away. Give me fifteen minutes in my suite. I need to pull myself together.”

She instructed her pilot to land on the rooftop Scram perch. From there, she took the back stairway to the master suite, avoiding all staff. She thought closing the bedroom door, shutting off everyone, would give her a chance to breathe.

Sam was wrong.

The bedroom was immaculate, highlighted by garden-fresh flowers in vases and her favorite herbal infusion. Yet nothing camouflaged Michael’s musk. Every part of this room belonged to them equally. They might have learned how to make love at the Pacific Riviera outpost following her rehabilitation, but it was here that they became masters in how to love.

They transformed their moments into a type of art, with a rhythm suggesting the possibility of permanence. Sam never expected this depth of love in her life, certainly not after her father trained her to be cold-blooded. Michael was the least likely and the only man she could ever love.

“Please, sweetie, take care of yourself.” She grabbed a pillow and sniffed for a hint of Michael. “Do whatever you have to. Kill whoever you have to. I’ll fix this. I promise.”

The words rang hollow, unlike weeks ago when she returned to Earth resolved to go to war. Sam looked around the big, empty bedroom. What did she have now? No Pat. No Michael. Not even Finnegan Moss, apparently. Lucinda Blanche and her other allies left the GPM deflated. Would they concede without a fight?

“I don’t know how to do this.”

In the bathroom, she ran a cold cloth over her face. Shadows lagged beneath her eyes. Yet a more profound reality shook Sam, the thing she’d spent two years trying to deny.

She wasn’t an adult at all; just a naïve girl playing a part. She wore beautiful saris, entered rooms with the stiff upper lip of a Chancellor, spoke with fervor when angered. She made a name for herself, commanded attention with wealth and inside knowledge about humanity’s most dangerous terrorist. But how did she respond when the true puppet master of the Chancellory arrived as hell on wheels? She fainted.

For the first time since crossing the fold, Sam needed her father’s support. He’d provide the bluster and iron-fist theatrics to light a fire. He’d tell her how to whip them “ten ways to Sunday.”

The thought amused Sam as she brushed her hair. Yet those nostalgic feelings disappeared when she acknowledged where her father would stand in this fight.

“You’d be shoulder-to-shoulder with Celia Marsche. Right, Daddy?”

Sam’s heart burned with self-pity when she stepped out of the bathroom and into a new, sudden terror. She fell back against the door at the sight of the twins sitting on her bed.

They jumped up. “We’re sorry, Samantha,” Brayllen said. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, no. It’s OK. How did you know I was back?”

“We saw your Scram from our window,” Rosalyn said. “We went downstairs to greet you but …”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to avoid you. I just needed time … it’s been a tough few days.”

Brayllen smiled like a best friend. “That’s why we’re here. We felt you’d need us after everything that’s happened.”

“Merton thinks he’s been shielding us, but the public streams are too easy to access,” Rosalyn added.

“I just wanted you left out of it. You’ve been through so much lately. You shouldn’t be worried about these other matters.”

Brayllen reached out his hand, which Sam took.

“But they worry us. Michael’s in trouble, and we heard rumors of the peacekeepers being sent in to keep order.”

“Michael can take care of himself. You’ll see. And as for the Guard, well, those aren’t rumors.”

The twins shared identical glares. “You can’t let that happen, Samantha,” Rosalyn said. “The Guard will only bring death.”

“No. This is Earth. They’ll have a few battalions in places where things get out of control. They’ll …”

Brayllen tightened his grip. “They’ll kill innocent people just because they can. We saw it happen. On G’hladi, they wiped out whole villages just because of a few protestors. I mean, we didn’t see it happen, but everybody knew. Everybody on the Carrier talked about it. And most people, they liked it.”

“What do you mean, Brayllen?”

“They were always so angry. The hardliners. They talked about G’hladis growing too wealthy and gaining too much influence in the Sanctums. They said indigos didn’t treat Chancellors with the same devotion they used to.”

“Sometimes,” Rosalyn added, “we’d get into fights with our peers over it. Most days, it was just me and Brayllen against them all.