August 2076
Location Unknown 

Alex peeked open his eyes. Instead of intense sunlight as he had expected, or the harsh glare of an interrogation cell, he found himself lying in a bed, his head propped up by a pillow. The soft glow of fluorescent bulbs let his eyes slowly adjust from the darkness they had been bathed in since his fight with Sebastian.

Sebastian! Cassie! 

His heart pounded as he looked around, alarmed. He was alone in a small room, though he could see figures moving quickly back and forth outside a doorway at the foot of the bed. He struggled to move, desperate to find someone he knew, anyone. If he had been recaptured he needed to escape. 

If they recaptured you, you’d be down in a cell, not in some nice room in a bed, idiot, chided a voice in his head that almost sounded like his sister. Rachel!

Was she even still alive? She had been with the Governor’s office the day of the attack on the convention. Alex still didn’t know what had happened around the rest of the country, but he knew it wasn’t good, from the little his father had told him. 

Alex struggled again and managed to unwrap his legs from the sheets and blankets that covered them. But as he moved his right leg out towards the floor, a soft beeping emitted from somewhere outside his room. 

Alarms! he almost shouted out loud though his mouth felt gummy as he opened it to talk.  He struggled upwards, and suddenly wished he hadn’t. His head swam and the world seemed to tilt as he fell back into the bed. His stomach rebelled and whatever his captors had fed him threatened to come back up the way it had gone down. 

Then the door burst open and the room filled with people. The figures were like shadows, their identities hidden behind the veil of darkness that surrounded him.

“Where am I?” he managed to shout at two of the figures as they hurriedly repackaged Alex back into bed. Another figure approached his side and pressed a button on one of the tubes that lay across his arm. He felt the pain and nausea recede, though the rest of the room began to grow murky. “Where are my friends? What have you done with the rest of them?” His words slurred together. 

Darkness and sleep took him again.

He awoke sometime later and was again greeted by an empty room, a different room from the one he had woken in last time. The lights in the room seemed dimmer, though why he had no idea. Shadows crowded the edges of the room and there seemed to be no windows. He slowly moved his arms, hoping that more sedate movements might not alert those outside his room. But as he brought up his arms, he found them bound by soft but tough bindings. He jerked his arm up once or twice, testing their strength, but they held.

“You won’t be able to break through those restraints, Alex,” someone said from shadows at the corner of the room, across from his bed. Alex jumped in surprise, his restraints rattling the metal supports of the bed.

“Who’s there?” Alex breathed. “Where am I? Where’s Cassie and the rest of my team?” 

He had dealt with enough of shadowy figures to last him a lifetime, he didn’t need any more. Certainly not when he was bound and helpless to fight back.

“Your friends are fine,” said the man, his sandpapery voice vaguely familiar.

“Do you work for the Council?” Alex asked, suspicious of this new, mysterious man. He spat on the floor in defiance, though he barely had the saliva to do it. “You might as well kill me now.”

“Kill you?” the man laughed, a deep, gruff chuckle. He stepped out of the light, laughing with a grin beneath his mustache. “Why on earth would I want to kill you, Alex? No, I suppose I should address you as Scope now, isn’t that right?”

Randy Rourke stepped out of the shadows toward Alex’s bedside. His fatigues had been traded for a pair of jeans and white t-shirt. Alex noticed his one-time neighbor had cut his hair. Where once long wispy hair had lay down to his shoulders, he now sported a military-style cut, the same high-and-tight style Darren Blake styled his hair. Another part of Alex’s mind briefly wondered what had happened to their former Commander, if he had actually been killed or if that was just another lie from the Council.

“Mr. Rourke? What? When?” Alex stumbled. He wasn’t expecting this. 

“Settle down there, son,” Rourke said, palms out and down. He walked over and began to unfasten Alex’s restraints. He paused for a moment, and looked at Alex. “If I undo these, promise you won’t try to bolt again?”

Alex nodded, still overwhelmed with surprise. Rourke resumed unraveling the restraints, in the process revealing that Alex had several that criss-crossed his body between the sheets and blankets. When Rourke was done, he helped slide Alex up his bed to a position somewhere between lying down and sitting up. When Alex felt he was comfortable enough, he nodded thanks to Rourke, who pulled up a chair and sat down at Alex’s bedside.

“Now then, why don’t I catch you up on what’s been going on in the world, sound like a plan?” he asked, the same twinkle in his eye and smile on his face that Alex remembered, though with a more weathered look with slightly less resolve. Alex nodded in silence, unsure of what to say.

“First off, I heard your tale from Gemini and the rest of the bunch who made it out with you,” he started. “I suspected your father hadn’t really been killed when I received the package containing that box I gave you.”

“I thought you had kept it, or that you knew my parents had it,” Alex said.

“That’s what I knew you needed to believe. No, I found it on my doorstep the day after the trial, with a note indicating it had come from a trust at the Bank of the Pacific and that it was to be delivered to you,” Rourke continued. “Except, I know your father never had any accounts at that bank, so why would they be delivering personal belongings or safety deposit box contents. Not to mention, they certainly wouldn’t leave it at the door.

“But I couldn’t voice my suspicions to you, so I thought it best to let you find your own path. It didn’t take long after you left for Jordan Hawthorne to announce that she was vacating the office of mayor to take some time off, officially in light of her son’s death. Well, as your father no doubt told you, the only reason we stayed in Oakvale was to watch her. So I decided to follow after and see what I could find.

“I tracked her, careful to stay a step behind her, and followed her to Monterey and then to San Jose. She flew to Chicago only a week before the attack, but I lost track of her there. That’s when I realized they meant to attack the convention. I knew no one would believe me in the government, at least not in the federal body. So I left and made my way to Colorado, to get into contact with some territorial officials I worked with back during the Northern War. I told them what was happening, that I would bet my life something was coming, and that they needed a contingency plan.

“When the attack came, we were lucky enough to be prepared. Half of what used to be the United States is under either Mexican or Canadian occupation, though the Brits seized the opportunity to snag back New England. The Emergency Coalition of the Plains represents the easternmost portion still operating autonomously. The eastern and southern territories are in chaos, as is Alaska from what little we’ve heard. Canada and Mexico have formed an alliance and are parceling out American land. It’s like the Korean War all over again, except this time everything’s a whole lot bigger and we’re on the receiving end of the heavy firepower.

“And that’s not even the half of it. Jordan Hawthorne and several other members of the Council have taken power in the West. They’ve set up shop in almost all of what was the Pacific Territory, renamed it the Republic of the Pacific. But this is much larger than just dividing up the United States. We’ve seen troop movements all along the borders we share with them, as well as Canada and Mexico. Texas is massing troops all along their border area, setting up forts and airfields for strategic strikes. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to have a second civil war on our hands, or worse, a third world war.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but where exactly are we, Mr. Rourke?” Alex interjected.

“Well, we’re in what will now serve as the headquarters for the remnants of Lionheart Security. We’re straddling the border between the Republic of the Pacific and the Free Republic of Deseret,” Rourke replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“But you just said something about the Emergency Coalition of the Plains? Texas? The Council in power in California?” Alex said, more confused than he had been before their conversation. “How did we go from USA to multiple different countries in only a few days.”

“A month, Alex, it’s been a month since the attack on the conference,” Rourke replied with a concerned expression. “You’ve been in a coma for over two weeks, Alex. A lot has changed since you left Chicago.”

Alex felt his stomach tighten. He had been out for two weeks? The rest of the team must have been relieved to escape almost certain death, but then to have to wait for news of him, lying in a bed in some mysterious hospital and then in a bed in some bunker in the mountains. He shook his head, as if that would help clear the jumbled memories and ideas that clouded his focus.

“Alex, I’m part of a special liaison to the Free Republic to Deseret,” Rourke said again, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “We brought you and your team through both countries under diplomatic immunity. Word hasn’t gotten out that you all are the team that was in charge of the diplomats during the attack. Nor has it been announced that a majority of the men and women who served in the Congress and Senate were supposedly killed in cold blood by your team. But that won’t last long.”

“But we didn’t kill them!” Alex protested, straining to pull himself upright and nearly vomiting from the resulting dizziness in the process. He sank down into the bed, but his expression of anger didn’t change as he pleaded to Rourke. “I swear we didn’t kill any of them. It was Pride. Richard Malwood himself shot the President, I saw him do it.”

“I know that, Alex,” Rourke replied calmly, his hand rested lightly on Alex’s arm. “We have several informants inside Pride Security, at least one of whom personally witnessed the executions. Unfortunately, we can’t just waltz in and accuse the man of it. We’ve no physical proof.”

Alex shook his head, disgusted at being told that his worst fears had been confirmed. He had known deep down that it would be his word against what now amounted to an entire government. 

“And there’s one more thing, Alex,” Rourke said, his voice quiet with reverence. “The day of the attack on the Convention Center, several low-yield nuclear devices were detonated in major cities across the country.” 

Rourke’s eyes took on a far off stare.

“Several?” was all Alex managed to choke out. He knew the implications of even just one of those bombs detonating in a major city, let alone more than one.

“New York, Washington D.C, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, and Atlanta,” Rourke said, his voice down to almost a whisper. 

Alex knew why the older man had gotten so emotional. Beside the fact that the attacks probably killed more than the number of Americans killed during the height of the Civil War, Randy Rourke was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. His family and friends still lived there.

Or did live there, Alex thought bitterly. He tasted bile at the back of his mouth. More pain, for the petty goals a few who just wanted more power.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud. “They’ll pay for that they did, Mr. Rourke. I promise you that.”

“I don’t want them to pay for anything, son,” Rourke said. Alex raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I just want people to stop fighting over the scraps of power left in the world. Go back to the times of my granddad, when people actually tried to work together. Try to make the world a better place, you know?” 

He grinned at Alex’s expression of shock. After a moment, he shook his head and rose from the seat near Alex’s bed. He looked down on the boy he’d known, at the young man who had taken his place over the last few months.

“You’ll understand what I mean when your bones are old and creaky like mine, Alex,” Rourke said in a knowing tone. “So, you feel like getting up? Everybody has been waiting for you to come around.”

“Waiting for me? To do what?” Alex asked, confused. Thoughts of everything Rourke had just told him still lingered, but it was too much to process at the moment and he pushed it aside. He’d grieve when this was all behind him. 

“To fight back, of course. Nobody knows we’re all up here, and I’ll make sure no one finds out when I head back. Pride Security is out of the picture for the moment. We kept Malwood and his men locked up, for illegal weapons possession and crossing the border without a pass, just long enough to get you transported over the border. I dropped our tracking equipment a mile over the first hill and we moved up here as quick as we could.”

“So what now? What am I supposed to do?” Alex asked, still confused.

“That’s something you and your team will have to figure out for yourselves,” Rourke said with a brief smile. “By the way, I had a new uniform put together for the team. Your rifle and a few other tools were brought along as well. It’s all in the locker over there.” He pointed to a tall, plastic locker in the corner of the room. “Get dressed and go left out the door.” He got up to leave, then paused a moment and looked back.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Rourke said, placing a small screen on the bed next to Alex. “This is the file from the memory chip you had on you when we got you to the hospital. The chip itself was smashed during your fight, and we only managed to recover one file, a video. I’ve looked at it probably a hundred times while we watched you, but even I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Your father gave it to you for a reason, I’m sure of it. It’s good to have you back, Alex.”

“Mr. Rourke,” Alex said before the older man crossed though the threshold of the room. “I need you to tell me something, without hiding anything, just give it to me straight.”

“Sure thing,” Rourke replied with a questioning look as he paused at the door. He leaned back against the frame. “Shoot.”

“I need you to tell me about Operation Angelfire,” Alex said seriously, the datapad Rourke had given him forgotten for the moment in his lap. “Dad said I should ask you, that you knew more than anyone else what it was and what the consequences of it would be.”

Rourke stood silently. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else other than in the room with Alex, being asked that particular question. After a moment he sighed and nodded.

“I suppose you had to find out sooner or later,” he began heavily. “Where would you like me to start?”

“At the beginning,” Alex said, more harshly than he meant to. “Start at the beginning. What is Operation Angelfire?”

“Operation Angelfire was a covert black operations team led by your father during the Northern Wars,” Rourke said bluntly.

“But you said you and Dad were in military intelligence, with the army,” Alex asked, bewildered.

“That was always our cover, yes,” Rourke said. “We were part of a team made up of soldiers from the Army, like myself and Darren Blake, and the Marine Corps, like your father and Richard Malwood.”

Alex stared at Rourke, completely overwhelmed by what he was hearing. Rourke moved back to the side of Alex’s bed and took back his stop on the chair beside him.

“Angelfire was a designated black operations team, sanctioned by the CIA and elements of Special Forces Command,” Rourke explained. “We were tasked with taking out targets deep behind enemy lines inside of Canada. It was more or less your run-of-the-mill, off the books kind of setup. But our mission drastically changed after the fall of Seattle.

“When the Canadians took Seattle, our Angelfire handlers told us we were going to be the first in a team of ultimate special forces operatives. We assumed that meant new weapons, increased lethality, that sort of thing. After we had all agreed, we were carted up and shipped off to a facility in New Mexico. Two guesses where we went.”

“Area -” Alex practically choked out, but Rourke cut him off, diving into the rest of his story.

“They juiced us up with all sorts of drugs, we didn’t really know what they were doing. They monitored us for several weeks, running us through courses and obstacles that hardly seemed to mimic this new type of special operations they spoke so seriously of. After two months of failed results, Angelfire was scrapped. Apparently, whatever those scientists were looking for, they never found. We were split up. Your father, Darren Blake, myself, and several others, were returned to the service, into Military Intelligence. Richard Malwood left completely. He took the dissolution of Angelfire as a sign the government was giving up on the war. That’s when he met up with Jordan Hawthorne and started the Council in earnest. The only reason we even stumbled onto their plans was that your father and I tried to keep tabs on everyone from the team, in case anything about Angelfire resurfaced.”

“Did it?” Alex asked. “Did anything from Angelfire ever surface?”

“Yes, though it wasn’t what we expected and none of us really know exactly why,” Rourke replied cryptically, again looking extremely uncomfortable.

“Tell me, Mr. Rourke,” Alex said, staring into the older man’s eyes. “I need to know everything you know. My dad seemed to think this would be vital in the war to come, or the war that’s already here at this point.”

“You’ve been a crack shot your whole life, right Alex?” Rourke asked after a moment. The question caught Alex off guard.

“Yeah, I guess,” Alex replied, unsure of the line of questioning.

“You ever think it was weird that you’ve been hitting birds at 50 yards since you could hold a rifle? You took first in your shooting division at the Territorial Fair every year you participated,” Rourke said. “That never struck you as strange?”

“Well, no, I guess not,” Alex replied. “I just always had a talent for it.”

“And then you go off to merc school and not only break, but utterly shatter the record for confirmed kills in a final exam mission, with relatively little formal training outside of basic,” Rourke said. “Odd that you seem to have such an innate talent for soldiering, despite not having grown up in anything remotely resembling a military family. Mike hid his military history fiercely. He didn’t want you or Rachel following the path he took, not after Angelfire and what we found out about the Council.”

Alex thought back to his experience over the months since his parents were killed. Every stressful confrontation he had been involved in had triggered that familiar feeling of focus, the same state of being he had always felt when hunting or shooting targets, just more intense. He couldn’t argue with what Rourke said, no matter how much he wanted to.

“So what are you saying, Mr. Rourke?” Alex asked suspiciously. “That I’m some sort of savant killer? That my natural talents are only good for fighting?”

“More or less, yeah,” Rourke replied. “But I don’t think it had anything to do with a naturally developed talent.”

The realization of what Rourke meant struck Alex like a sledgehammer to his gut. He felt sick for a moment as his mind reeled, thinking about what Rourke’s words could possibly mean.

“Whatever they did to you and Dad, it didn’t work on you guys,” Alex said quietly. “But it got passed off to the next generation and stuck.”

Rourke nodded solemnly. He looked deflated, like the secret of Operation Angelfire had been weighing him down and now he had finally left the weight behind. His eyes were sad and his voice tired, more so than Alex had ever heard it before.

“That’s all I know, Alex, I swear to you,” Rourke finally replied with a sigh. “I don’t know exactly what they did, but I do know several others who were involved who had kids after the Wars. Several of them are with us here.

“Shawn’s father Dennis was on the team, as was Jorge’s mother Rosie. Richard Malwood, of course, who I mentioned earlier, and Garrett Hawthorne,” Rourke said, listing off each person with his fingers.

“So then Cassie...” Alex began, his eyes unfocused as he absorbed the information.

“Garrett was the only one who had any noticeable reaction to the treatment we received from Angelfire,” Rourke explained. “He and his daughter don’t share naturally occurring purple irises, whatever she may tell you.”

Rourke stood up again, pacing slowly to the door where he turned to look at Alex once more.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel even more confused than you were before, Alex,” Rourke said. “I know you must feel alone in the world right now, but remember that the rest of your team is still with you. They’ll back you up, whatever you decide to do and wherever you decide to go.”

“Yeah,” Alex said as he tried to process everything he had just learned. “Don’t tell Shawn, would you Mr. Rourke. I’ll tell him soon, but I don’t think anyone else is aware of Angelfire, besides you and me and anyone else who was involved. I want to keep it that way until the right time.”

“Fair enough,” Rourke replied with a nod, a small smile on his lips for the first time since Alex had awoken. “You’re the boss, after all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get going. Your team is outside waiting for you, but I need to leave before nightfall and get to the bottom of the mountain to meet up with my own guys. I’ll see you around, Scope. Keep up the fight.”

With that, Rourke nodded once more, then slipped out the door into the dark hallway. Alex was alone again, left to contemplate everything he had learned. The thoughts were unsettling as his memory flashed through each piece of information and experience. Rourke didn’t have all the information, but someone, somewhere, had to know more. He moved slightly in the bed as he sought to climb out. The room was claustrophobic and Alex desperately wanted to see his friends, whoever was left.

The datapad on his lap slipped off the bed as he moved. Alex’s hand flashed out before the thought to catch it even crossed his mind. Another side effect of Angelfire? He gazed down at the screen and softly tapped the play button for the video loaded up on the device. The video began and Alex instantly understood the content of the video. Two hands, his father’s hands, flashed back and forth across the screen, signing a message for anyone who viewed it. 

Lots of numbers, but what do they all mean? Alex wondered. 

After watching the video a few more times, he turned it off. There would be plenty of time for it later. Right now, all he wanted to do was get out of bed and find everyone else.

Thirty long minutes later, Alex was fully dressed in his new uniform. Digital camouflage fatigues, colored dark green and grey for forest operating, but also good for nighttime and urban operations in a variety of environments, were supplemented by lightweight body and leg armor that fit tight beneath the uniform. Dark brown boots and matching gloves were accompanied by a helmet done in the same color patchwork of the uniform. Alex left the helmet on the bed, confidant with what Rourke said about them being in a secret location.

As nice as the uniform was, the extras were what really piqued Alex’s curiosity. Night-vision goggles, infrared scope attachments, and electromagnetic pulse-hardened radio equipment would be vital in their fight against the Council or in the event of another major nuclear attack. Portable anti-personnel mines and anti-vehicle C4 would help in the event of a running fight.  Fragmentation and concussion grenades rounded out the order.

The rifle he had liberated from the Council’s own armory in the cell block during the escape rested against the wall next to the locker. Fastened in front of the iron sights was the scope Alex had found in the box left by his father in the aftermath of the attack on his home all those months ago. Alex reached out and lifted the rifle. He gazed down the scope with the weapon pointed at the floor. 

Images flashed through his mind’s eye. His mother, doing the laundry outside, his father and sister playing catch with a football. Rachel had always been the sporty one. Alex had preferred the solitude of nature, walking alone in the woods. Then the images blurred and warped to scenes of violence. His mother lying in the kitchen, unmoving as his sister ran from the young men who had been sent to kill his family. The scenes shifted to Eddie’s death down on the border during their training mission, then to the execution of the delegates at the convention center. Alex felt angry, until he thought of his father, and of Rourke. They had been science projects and political pawns. Michael Samuelson had just wanted to protect his son. Randy Rourke just wanted to live in peace and quiet. Alex’s anger subsided after a few moments, replaced by a sense of purpose. 

“This isn’t about revenge, is it Dad?” he asked quietly, alone in the empty room. “It’s about doing what’s right.” 

Alex stood for a moment in silence, then pushed through the doors.

Next Chapter: Ch. 20 - Traitors and Patriots