Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

All those tiny details you don’t notice in the heat of combat catch up to you. King should have seen the door was modified, the situation was abnormal, Dane was baiting him. But he couldn’t. Despite his reflexes and experience, there’s a limit to what the brain can process in milliseconds. Half the battle of staying alive in warzones is refusing to hesitate, but sometimes it’s a Catch 22. You hesitate, you see clearly. You go, you don’t. But if you don’t go, you die.

King’s heartbeat spiked as he stood motionless, looking around the room. He gripped the Beretta tight as sweat ran down his back, condensing in his armpits, forming rivulets down the side of his head.

He was still panting for breath when reality set in.

There were no exits.

The only feature of the room was a tinted glass window running halfway across the right hand wall. King didn’t need to shoot at it to know it was bulletproof, and the shot would destroy their eardrums in such a confined space. He needed every sense firing on all cylinders if he hoped to get them out of this alive.

Slater said, ‘We still have guns.’

He didn’t sound confident.

King held up the Beretta. ‘Gun. Singular.’

Alexis twitched, but King barely noticed.

A silhouette passed behind the tinted glass, its features darkened. King recognised the gait.

Dane watched them patiently, studying his prey.

101

King saw the building for what it really was.

A jail.

A torture chamber.

On the other side of the glass, Dane spoke to them through a grate of fine holes identical to those in prison visitation rooms. ‘Sorry about all this.’

King said, ‘No you’re not.’

Dane looked at him. ‘Jason King.’

King froze.

Dane turned. ‘Will Slater.’

He turned again. ‘Alexis Diaz.’

And again. ‘Violetta LaFleur.’

Silence.

Dane said, ‘You boys are outcasts from a black-operations division of our government. You are two of the most feared and most successful field operatives in this country’s history. Violetta, you were their handler, and then you followed them when they split. And you, Alexis … you’re a wild card. I don’t have as much information on you. Supposedly, you’re an ordinary civilian who got sucked into their cult just as badly as you all pretended to get sucked into mine.’

No one spoke.

King said, ‘You’re reaching,’ despite there being close to zero chance of that.

Dane raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I? I must say, that’d have to be one of the more accurate guesses in the history of guesses. I should buy a Powerball ticket.’

Slater said, ‘Someone fed you bad intel.’

Dane laughed. It echoed through the air holes. ‘Someone fed me very, very good intel. We’ve had our hooks in an intelligence asset in Washington for months now. He’s been helping to keep us out of the media, put a suppression blanket over unexplained disappearances, turn everyone’s attention away from the Thunder Basin grasslands. Everyone with common sense, that is. He lets the naïve ones wander in and fall into our trap.’

‘So you finally acknowledge it’s all bullshit?’ King said. ‘I never thought I’d see the day.’

Dane said, ‘Did you take me for an idiot?’

‘I don’t know what to take you as.’

‘I get it,’ Dane said. ‘This chat of ours will stay between us, so I don’t mind venting to the four of you. My wife, it seems, has fallen victim to the timeless mistake of believing her own lies. I keep everything functioning smoothly when she goes off the deep end … when she really thinks she’s Gaia.’

King said, ‘You know what she’s doing. You know how dangerous that could be.’

Dane said, ‘I do.’

‘Then put a stop to it.’

Dane shook his head. ‘I can’t. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.’

‘We can help you,’ King said. ‘We can work with you to end this.’

‘Did you not hear me?’ Dane said. ‘Why would I? Do you understand the trajectory of this movement? Do you know where we’re headed? We own all the right people now. No one’s going to investigate us. The beauty of the way the outside world is structured is that if you have power, you’re untouchable. And if you know the right ways to entrap people, accumulating power is … easy.’

King said, ‘I figured you’d say that.’

Dane smiled. ‘Good for you. Now put the gun down and kick it across the room or I’ll leave you here to die of dehydration. That’s not the way to go, believe me. You’ll be begging for a drop of water through split, cracked lips. Or you can die with dignity. Your choice.’

King put the Beretta on the floor and punted it with his boot. It skittered across the concrete, came to rest in the far corner of the room, and lay still.

Dane signalled off to the side, to someone out of the line of sight.

The steel-core door opened and one of the disciples stepped in, brandishing a fearsome assault rifle. It was a military-issue M4 carbine, brand new and shiny, and King figured the weapon had never been used. Whichever intelligence asset Dane controlled had probably sent a crate of them to Mother Libertas free of charge in exchange for a never-ending supply of Bodhi. The arsenal was tucked away somewhere, maybe buried in the bowels of the Riordans’ farmhouse, and that’s where Dane had disappeared to in the early hours of the morning.

King thought about lunging across the space.

He wouldn’t make it in time.

The disciple was a guy in his thirties with a plain build and a plain face. His greasy hair was matted to his forehead in a bowl cut. His pupils were swollen with Bodhi. He’d do anything Dane commanded, and he was already bringing the carbine up to aim at them. This wasn’t the movies, so he wouldn’t deliver a spiel before he shot them. He was the grunt, carrying out the Riordans’ every wish.

King felt sickening helplessness.

He realised he was about to die.

Then Alexis’ hand came up holding the Beretta she’d taken off the body of the forty-year-old disciple. She’d had the pistol tucked into the small