Fallout (Tales of the Other Universe Book 2) Read online

  She had also been told that Adam rushed out to the scene when he first heard what was going on. It was just like him, she thought, to rush in right away without thinking first. She could certainly understand his reasons for doing so, but it was still a foolish thing to do in her mind. Adam was a competent ruler and even more useful in crisis situations like the bombings, so Dee tried not to let herself get worked up about him. Still she found it hard not to worry about his safety, even if there was little that could be done to cause him permanent harm.

  A knock came at the door. “Come in!” Dee called. The door opened and the familiar powder blue haired palace attendant entered Dee’s guestroom. “Miko, have you heard any news?”

  “The palace has downgraded its alert after receiving word from the police force that the imminent risk of additional bombings has ceased,” Miko explained in her usual monotone. “It’s safe for you to move freely about the palace now.”

  “What about Greg? Has he come back yet?”

  “There isn’t any word on King Evans yet,” said Miko. “I would imagine he’s being held up in the city somewhere.”

  “He must be helping with the rescue efforts in the buildings that were attacked.”

  “That’s possible,” Miko said before slinking away. Dee stood up and exhaled. There couldn’t be anything to worry about. Adam was fine, he could take care of himself. He didn’t need her around to help him take care of things. He would be fine on his own. That was what she had kept telling herself ever since the night before. It was the only way she would be able to walk away from the palace with the Creator, even in the middle of a crisis, and not regret leaving him behind.

  There came another knock at the door, but since Miko had left it ajar Dee could see that it was the Creator standing in the doorframe. Dee bowed and welcomed him into the room.

  “How are you holding up, Ms. Gatti?” he asked.

  “I’m alright,” she said. “I’ve just been worried about Greg. He hasn’t come back to the palace yet.”

  “You mustn’t worry about Iilil-ja too much. This is a difficult situation, but it’s not as dire as when he disappeared to travel to Earth. There is a lot of work for him to do in the city and we must be patient and allow him to do what he must.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” Dee asked him. “There are a lot of people in need of medical help. Surely you and I can do something to help them.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you, Ms. Gatti, and I’m happy that you’re in the mindset of helping others. But even in the face of great calamity, it is not my place to intervene in the lives of the mortals. And although the threat appears to have diminished, I would rather not have you risk your life. As I said, please just be patient.”

  Dee frowned and sighed. That was the type of response she had come to expect from the Creator. All the power in the universe at his disposal and when the time came to do some good with it, he stands back and watches. She wondered how much better off the world might be if he actually involved himself in the things that really mattered. As she thought this, she shook her head with guilt. Who was she to say what the Creator did or didn’t do was right or not? He must have much more wisdom and insight than she, and if he didn’t act or intervene in a matter, there had to be a good reason. She looked back up to him and saw that he had been watching her as she thought. He flashed his characteristic smile.

  “Things should be dying down soon, Ms. Gatti,” he said. “Once Iilil-ja returns and I’ve made sure that things will be taking care of themselves, we can take our leave.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, his smile disappearing. When he opened them again he looked right at Dee. “It seems that Iilil-ja has returned to the palace, and things don’t seem to have gone well.”

  Adam stepped through the marble foyer, his clothes still stained with dried blood, and was greeted by a line of attendants eager to hear his story of what had happened in the city. He didn’t say a word, passing by all of them and moving up the grand staircase to the second floor. After all that had happened that morning, he didn’t want to answer any more questions to his own servants. He had enough of an explanation to give to the police commander when it was revealed that the hostages had been killed during the rescue. As the damages of the morning’s attack continued to grow, this would only further solidify what a disaster the bombings were for the city and for Adam’s credibility.

  Still flustered, he pushed his way through the doors of his office and shut himself in. The overcast sky left the room darker than usual and Adam resorted to using the ceiling light, something he tried to avoid doing during the day. He found the room in the same cluttered mess that it was when he left the night before, though it almost seemed like even more paperwork had piled up on his desk. On top of everything else, he still had all of the damn paperwork to sort through. To him, that wasn’t important right now. The people were going to want an explanation for what had happened in the city, and he would have to prepare a statement for them. The financial sector was essentially frozen and the economy would suffer a terrible hit for days and possibly weeks to come, and that too would need to be handled. In a matter of hours, the bombing had generated more trouble for Adam than the past five months of tribal warfare and the unsteady economy. Then there was the public affairs fiasco surrounding the dead hostages, all of whose blood was on Adam’s hands.

  Adam took his seat and brought his hands up to his head. What a fine mess he was in, he thought, and it was only going to get worse. He could kiss any chances of his recovery plan succeeding goodbye. More than that, he knew that there was an underlying problem still lurking where he could not find it: the white machine that had killed one of the hostages and attacked Adam didn’t just come out of nowhere, even if it disappeared without a trace. The walls didn’t just fire a hail of bullets into all of them for nothing. There was more to be seen in the Stock Exchange Central Building than had been let on, and Adam walked right into a trap someone had set for him. He didn’t have to guess who would have the means of coordinating such a plot: he was certain that the Oracle group was to blame.

  He knew something was wrong the moment he saw the gunmen. A group that small couldn’t have planned such an elaborate bombing by themselves, and had nothing to gain from capturing hostages and trapping themselves in one spot. He couldn’t prove it, but Adam suspected that the entire bombing had been a set up all for the sake of drawing him into that room. Did they expect to kill him? Given their knowledge of him and his other half that they had obtained during the ordeal in Kyoto, they must have known that Adam couldn’t be killed by ordinary means. That meant if it really was a set up, they had something else in mind by luring him there. A few thoughts came to mind: disrupting Adam’s recovery plan, weakening his credibility among the people, or even just distracting him while something much worse was put into motion. He began to fear that the bombing may have accomplished all of these.

  Adam’s stomach felt like a lead ball. His focus was shot and all of his drive to keeping working was draining out of him. He knew if Dee were still around she might tell him to just keep going because she believed in him and knew that he would be able to fix everything. Given the lockdown, it was more than likely that she was still in the palace, but he couldn’t see her. After saying goodbye the night before and after his failures from the morning, Adam doubted he’d be able to face Dee again. He flipped his left wrist around to catch the sight of the white stone on his bracelet, the engraved symbol for serenity staring back at him. The stupid little trinket was supposed to remind him of how peaceful his life was going to be once his anger was gone. Now it just seemed to weigh down his arm.

  Unfocused, Adam stood up and paced around the room. He needed a way to fix things, now more than ever. It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would take longer than his first plan, but he had to find a way. He needed to save his kingdom even if it killed him. It would start with a statement to the people. He needed to let them know that things were not lost,
and that Magid will rebuild itself. There was going to be a lot of anger and disbelief, but he had to make people believe that things could get better. If he wanted to succeed, he would have to convince everyone that he could do so, even the venomous leaders of the Western Liberty Movement.

  He paused, staring at the table sitting against the wall of his office. The wooden radio was silent, but he knew that if he turned it on there would be a lot of coverage of the bombings, including more insidious remarks by the Western Liberty Movement. If that were the case, he would need to know what they were saying so that he could counter them in his address to the people. Adam walked over to the radio and clicked it on, waiting for the reports from the Central News Station to come through. Instead he heard jumbled static that crackled through the speakers on the radio. Confused, Adam adjusted the knobs and searched the airwaves for something. At last something intelligible came through near the end of the frequency set, which was a channel reserved for emergency broadcasts.

  “—inexcusable. I have said it before and I will say it again, the king is not someone to be trusted. The king’s actions in response to the attacks on the financial district were unjustified and are the kind of behavior expected from a dictator like Pappade Klauss, not from a so called ‘beacon of justice’.”

  Adam recognized the speaker as the same leader of the Western Liberty Movement who had vilified him the day before. Somehow he had gotten access to the emergency broadcast frequency and was continuing his attack on Adam from there. Adam soon realized that there was more than one speaker. A female voice came on and began to speak as well.

  “Some have called the king a hero and a champion of the people, but I can tell you all that he’s not. I was among those who were captured by the terrorist group during the attack on the Stock Exchange Central Building and I saw first hand how much Adam Evans really cares about the safety of innocent people in danger.”

  Adam’s tensed up. Who was this person? He was certain there weren’t any survivors among the hostages.

  “We were all being held in a large room on the top floor of the exchange,” she went on. “The gunmen were all nervous because of the police outside surrounding the building. They were talking about surrendering because there was no way for them to get out alive. That was when the king ran into the room. He went after the gunmen with his sword and things turned chaotic. They started firing at him, but he was moving around so much that it just drew their fire at us. I was facing away so I didn’t get hit, but a lot of the hostages were killed in the crossfire. One older woman got free and tried to escape, but she was stabbed by the king while he was blindly going after the gunmen. In the end the king got control of one of the automatic rifles and fired across the whole room. There was so much blood and everyone around me was dead. I was so scared, but I just lay on the ground and pretended to be dead because I was afraid of what the king might do to me if he knew I was still alive.”

  Adam’s blood ran cold as he listened to the false testimony, made more real by the woman’s failing voice towards the end of her account. He didn’t know what to think. Whoever this woman was had to have somehow seen what was going on based on her accurate descriptions of the room and those inside, but Adam knew there were no survivors. She had to have been watching from somewhere else. Adam realized she had to have been one of those behind the wall who unleashed the gunfire into the room. If that was true, then Adam’s suspicion of a conspiracy to discredit him was becoming much more plausible.

  “I’m so sorry that you had to go through such an ordeal,” the party leader said. “I am even sorrier that the city had to deal with such an attack in the first place, one that could have been prevented if not for the oversights of a bumbling government. My friends, haven’t I been saying for months that it was only a matter of time before the kingdom would fall victim to such a senseless act of terrorism? How many lives were lost today that could have been avoided if not for the utter failures in policy by King Evans to deal with the ongoing problems across our nation? How much longer will we sit back and allow someone like Adam Evans to let this great land fall to pieces. He is the tyrant that rules but does not govern.

  “Well I say no more! No more should we be lied to about the secrets the king keeps about what goes on behind closed doors. Never again should the existence of a menace like The Baggins hiding within our borders or a lengthy leave of absence by the king to another world be kept from us. Never again should innocent people have to die when those deaths could have been prevented, and never again should anyone have to live in fear of their government or their king! Did the brave patriots stand up against dictatorship three years ago only to be left with this? I ask why? Why allow it for one moment more?”

  Adam’s hands trembled. How did the Western Liberty Movement know about his absence while he was in Kyoto? Only a few people within the palace and those who had followed after him knew that he was gone. Someone had to have leaked information. A new fear gripped Adam has he came to a realization that he hadn’t even thought possible: Oracle could have infiltrated the palace.

  The tirade went on. “Those of you who are in the streets now, continue your protests! Remember those who died, both today and three years ago! To all within range of this broadcast, I’m calling on all those who value their own safety and happiness to put an end to this failure once and for all. It is time for Adam Evans to go! We must rise up and take back the palace for the people, not for despots. Stand up for yourselves and proclaim once and for all that you will not tolerate this failure any longer! The Western Liberty Movement is with you all! Believe in the strength of the people and march forward!”

  Adam couldn’t take anymore and shut off the radio. He stumbled back, trying to take in everything. There was no ambiguity in the radio address: the Western Liberty Movement was declaring war on the government and inciting the citizens to stand up against him. The very notion was preposterous. Some people would undoubtedly be upset with Adam and the government following the attacks, but not enough to launch a spontaneous revolution. Yet whether or not the people were behind them or not, the Western Liberty Movement had made its intentions clear. That was enough to constitute treason in Adam’s mind and it gave Adam the legal authority to go after the party’s leaders. He realized, however, that such a prosecution was exactly what the Western Liberty Movement, and more than likely the Oracle group, wanted him to do.

  There was no doubt that Adam was unpopular with the people, especially after the events of that morning. For him to go after the party who was starting to make a lot of sense to the people would only incur more anger and make the revolution that the party had called for more likely. Everything that had happened in the last two days, between the clamor over The Baggins to the botched hostage situation and the bombing, had done nothing but hurt Adam’s credibility in the eyes of the people. Now the Western Liberty Movement was taking advantage of that frustration towards him and advancing their own agenda by calling for a revolution. Adam was certain that all of this was just what Oracle had wanted to happen. If the people did rise up, Oracle would take advantage of the chaos and go after Adam.

  The situation was bad, but Adam knew it wasn’t too late to stop things from getting worse. An address to the people might help quell the flames, but if the city was as angry with him as the Western Liberty Movement had called for them to be, his words might mean nothing. As much as he was opposed to it, his only hope might be in the Creator. The people would never turn their backs on their god, and while he may outright lie to them when he deems it necessary, the Creator had been able to settle the anxious public in the past. Given the situation in the city, Adam figured that the Creator had not left the palace yet. He would need to track him down before tensions between the people and their government got any worse.

  Adam didn’t even need to leave the room. He turned and found the Creator standing in the office again, having appeared from nowhere rather than using the door. Just as the night before, the Creator’s normally chee
rful look was replaced by a frown and stony eyes.

  “Have a seat, Iilil-ja,” the Creator said. “You and I need to have a serious conversation.”

  “I know what you’re going to say, but there isn’t time for that right now,” said Adam. “The Western Liberty Movement has called for the people to rebel against the government, and after everything that’s happened today I don’t doubt that that may happen. I need you to go before the people and calm them down. They need to know that I’ll be able to make everything right again.”

  “I’m sorry Iilil-ja, but I’m not going to do that.” Adam’s mouth hung open, stunned at the Creator’s blunt refusal to help restore order.

  “Why not?” Adam asked, scowling.

  “Because I don’t believe that to be true anymore,” the Creator answered. His response came like a sudden blow to Adam’s stomach. He remained silent, staring at his progenitor as the Creator began to explain.

  “I wanted to believe that you had come a long way since you first split off from me as an unfocused ball of rage. For a while, I had faith that you had. The seed of a conscience I planted in you grew over the centuries and turned you into a somewhat respectable individual. But it didn’t change your impetuousness. Whether going after your other half in Kyoto or rushing into the center of a terrorist attack with no knowledge, you’ve shown time and again that you lack the foresight needed to hold such an important position of leadership. How the Khazaki didn’t fall apart is a mystery to me.”