Steeled Spies #6: Empire Square-Off
The Powers That Be Meet The Wolves On The Streets...
It was high noon on the 1st of March. Above Empire Square was a cloudless sky of blue. There on the grass were the same fake trees and shrubs, all made real by the machinations conducted in the 85 stories of metal, wire, and glass sat behind them in the rear of the park. Not a wolf to be seen, though the bread-breaking podium was still in place.
And though the Park remained silent, a rumbling could be heard. A long, low, distant rumbling. Agent Roger Steele whipped his head up the street, his hyper-magnified sunglasses watching for any sign of unusual traffic.
“Nothing,” the gray muttered to himself.
He was in one of the safe-houses Lita had on lock. It was an apartment perched over Empire Street, a block down from the Square, both the Tower and Park in plain view. Lita’s other agents were peppered across the apartment complexes, all sharing the surveillance load. The plan was to scan every ten minutes, or whenever significant activity occurred.
Steele had been taking reads every five, sometimes two.
“How’s the Gilded Cage?” Lita asked over the radio. “Your feed’s pretty quick on the draw. Rest of A-Team still got five ‘til the next sweep.”
“Just keeping the black eye eagle-eyed,” the agent replied. “No ties to die yet. How’s Lady D?”
“Keepin’ Mr. Merrick company,” she chuckled.
“Roger that.”
“Bit vain of you, ain’it?”
“Oh piss off,” he smirked, “Going up and down the line one more time, then I’ll stand down and go back to the 10s.”
“Copy.”
The grin still strong on his face as made his voyeuristic rounds. Down towards the Park; nothing. Up the streets; nothing. Down again, same deal. When he looked up to the streets a second time, it was another story altogether.
What once was hushed ambience whipped into a roaring din of drumming and marching. And above it all came thunderous cries, the chants of hundreds, if not thousands, that a hound as high up as Steele could make out with the naked ears.
“Hey hey! Ho ho! The Board of Haven has got to go!”
“Rip the chips! Rip the chips!”
“We are Tomorrow! We are Tomorrow!”
There they were, the real Reformation. The lay-wolves of every color, breed, and occupation, all marching along, composed in their rage, but generous in its expression. Steele had seen the protests of months past thanks to Lita, he knew the scope of Devenreux’s reach through the hijacks, but it was seeing the giant, fluid mob filling the streets that stirred a quiet admiration in the stoic agent. They had heard the message, but no one was taking it lying down. His admiration was cut down by a lone, piercing thought: how many were truly real?
Without missing a beat, Roger whipped back to one of the instruments set up on the desk in the silver-walled room; a surge detector. He had managed to get a signal off of one of the burned limiters applied to the Empire wall. So far the levels weren’t rising above their standard daytime output.
When Steele radioed in, all he got out was a “Hey Hepcat” before the line scrambled. When he took his mic offline, it was Lita who was trying to get through first.
“I’m hearing one hell of a racket from my hole,” she said sternly. “Who’s burrowing?”
“Peace Corp’s coming through in three-strip Technicolor and red’s the A-Number-One shade. Wall levels are stationary, so they’re not in danger yet. Are you getting feeds from the rest of the A-Team?”
“All six monitors, alive and kicking. Street view by A5 paints a helluva picture. Muthas are fucking nuts.”
Steele checked the magazine of his Mauser. “Weigh an option Punk: ratio of real to plants?”
The silence on the line was deafening. “Gimme some odds, kid.”
“This just in from the fuzz wave: A.R.O. for Empire Square.”
Anti-Riot Operation. So they were real enough for the cops, or at least that was the picture painted.
“Unlock lateral communication.” ordered Steele. “Let’s see what me and boys can do for ‘em. We can’t stop ‘em, but we might be able to save ‘em if shit goes south.”
“Will do.” Lita replied. “Lucy wants in, if only to keep the crowds at bay. And hey, if the cats from the Board roll up, she wants to be there to help give peace a chance. Merrick and I will ferry her over. Meet you there.”
The gray’s brow furrowed. “You’re coming up for air?”
All he got was a cackle and one good line. “What’s another Kodak memory, sweetheart? O and O.”
She never could resist getting into the thick of it. With a sigh and a shake of his head, the gray agent snatched up his surge detector, holstered his peacemaker, and bolted out the door of the apartment. He had made contact with the team leader via the Charger.
“Alright Alpha Leader, how do we want to keep these cats safe?”
“What’s the surge reading on the wall?” came the leader’s reply.
“Still 0.5 and—hold it, it’s…powering down.”
Sure enough, the number on the screen began to fall, lower and lower until it hit 0.001. When Steele reported to the Alpha Leader, another agent hopped on, one of the electric eyes from within the safe-house rooms.
“Unit A3 reporting. We got movement in the Empire tower. A gaggle of black suits and white shirts walked out the front door. Mr. Beltrami is leading the pack and making his way to the podium in the park.”
Steele backed away from the curb of the alley and back along the buildings. “Alpha, I’m rolling down to the opposite end of the block. Don’t want to spook the Peace Corp, but I want front row seats to whatever the hell’s about to happen.”
“10-4. Lita, are you copying all this?”
“You betcha boys.” the punk replied. “Really keeping everything up in the air for better or worse it seems. ETA is 10 minutes. I’m probably gonna have to make a real public appearance unless anyone wants to do a trade-off.”
“I can take her.” Alpha replied. “My hovercar ain’t on the registry. Sending coordinates to Merrick now.”
Steele had brought his car to the opposite mouth of the alley, just in time to catch a blur of silver-and-black as a full squad of HOV-CRAFT police units ripped by.
“Fuzz coming in hot. No sirens though.” Steele reported. The gray agent pulled his black slab of muscle onto the streets, following safely behind the patrol as it rounded a bend at the block’s end.
Soon enough, the protesters were there at the gates of Empire, the politicians standing poised at their podium, guards calling for order and calm as the raised voices chanted their slogans. The exchange was made quietly, and soon the blue-and-white hovercraft pulled up, the gull-wing doors opening to reveal Lucille Devenreux. Whatever shock remained from the night before had long been shed, the revolutionary clad in denim and suede boots, her stride confident, and her off-white fur radiant under the sun.
The protesters cheered upon her arrival, a welcome made all the warmer as they parted like the Red Sea, the guards letting her through before the rest of the mass filed in. Steele and Lita had made it into the crowd unnoticed, the Alpha leader backing into the alleyway, with Steele’s Charger and Lita’s blood-red Beetle parked a block down from Empire. Whatever was going down, the backup was in place, and the duo had front row seats to everything.
“Leadslips on the magazines,” Roger muttered to the dark gray punk as she handed him a dull gray slipcover. “That’s a new one.”
“Thank the hubby.” she smirked. “Nothing like a Nic Ridgefield invention. Keep the shooting hand steady, and an eye out for trouble. Assassins, wolven Molotovs, the usual weird-looking SOBs.”
Steele nodded. The mob had stabilized, the guards keeping watch over everyone outside the walls. The air was unusually sweet, likely a fragrance generated for the occasion by atmospheric control.
Chairman Henry Beltrami, all dressed in his fine white suit, raised his arms and gestured for calm. A gesture reinforced by the handsome gray’s full-throat tenor.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, I AM BOTH HUMBLED AND IMPRESSED BY THE TURNOUT OF TODAY.”
Silence. Not even a hushed murmur or a booing sneer.
“Thank you.” Beltrami bowed. “The first order of business is to address the message broadcast and circulated via the Comm/Ent networks and news briefs. Miss Devenreux was keen in her observations that we do use electrified mechanisms on our walls here in the Park. However, these have not nor are they weaponized against our law-abiding citizens, such as yourselves. They are simply there to guard the Empire Square offices during the hours in which the Park is closed to the public overnight.”
The silence broke into terse whispers.
“Furthermore, we have reduced the current to perfectly harmless levels for this occasion, though we still discourage you from climbing the wall. I open with this business to reiterate the goal of this meeting, and that is to open dialogue. To make right something that we the Board have done wrong; deny you, dear citizens, the proper voice you deserve in the process of running our city.”
This caught a couple of cheers for the chairman, ones Lita met with skepticism. The scruffy vigilante mouthed “the state’s seeds are sown” to Roger, who gave a slight cock of his head; he was willing to entertain the thought, but he knew the hand of Haven’s government hadn’t been tipped just yet.
“I shall begin this process.” Beltrami continued, a touch of carny barker coming through, “by bringing Miss Lucille Devenreux to the podium.”
Uproarious applause greeted the light great peace leader as she, for the first time, shook hands with the State.
“Brothers and sisters!” she began with that Pentecostal passion of hers. “I warned you. I warned you of my worries and my concerns, but I must admit one thing. You are all some of the bravest sonsofbitches I’ve ever seen.”
Though it wasn’t the same crowd “Jack Flash” had seen on his first night with the Reformation, they were roaring with that same joyous fervor he had felt in the meeting hall.
“And I must also say,” she continued, turning to the politician in white, “that you’re one brave bastard yourself, Chairman Beltrami, for coming out here at all.”
The crowd guffawed as the gray statesman simply smiled and nodded. Devenreux gave the man a twee salute before returning her attention towards the congregation.
“What I’m about to say will come as a shock to many, but not to all. Some may have seen this coming, seen what happens when technology exceeds necessity and purpose and becomes the albatross around all our necks. But I feel many of you have not. Here’s the bitter medicine: the last 12 hours of my life have changed my outlook irrevocably. It was revealed to me in no uncertain terms that I have been living a lie. Not of my own choosing, but a lie. Some of you may know of our compound in the older Southern district. Well I’m here to tell you that compound both was and wasn’t. It at once existed and never existed.”
A few hushed gasps escaped the protesters as all stood glued to the podium. Throughout it all, Chairman Beltrami kept one hell of a poker face on him.
“The technology that runs this city has fundamentally changed how we live. In some ways, for the best. We are no longer hungry, we are never in debt. We are nurtured from cradle to grave by that great almighty network we call ACES. But what she has become in the passing decades is something beyond the scope of reason. She can control our reality not just through the modules in our homes and our audiovisual entertainments, but by the very matter in which we exist. The very air we breathe has been turned electric. And in that electricity has been made as malleable as clay in our hands. For her to sculpt and mold the reality before our very eyes.”
Devenreux let the quiet linger and the thought settle in, her thin, once delicate face now on fire with passion.
“She made that compound for us, only to take it away. Half the damn wolves in that compound were flesh, fur and blood to me, but in the blink of an eye, they became nothing. Those who were real were the precious few of you, out there, who came and joined us, and snakes like Draco, who were all set to sell us out behind our backs. And I have it on good authority that the charlatan has paid for his crimes against our cause.”
As the crowd erupted into applause, Steele leaned into Lita’s ear and whispered. “She’s blowing a lotta whistles right now. Best she doesn't slip us in the mix.”
The vigilante’s red eyes went wide, but she didn’t say a word. All the words in the world belonged to Lucille Devenreux, and she was spending them like a millionaire before her flock.
“We are facing a world designing itself into oblivion. We the wolves of this city should be able to control our own technology, and yet we can’t. And it is in this that I realize what we need is not only a voice, but transparency. I charge you, Chairman Beltrami and the Board of Haven, with revealing to us every mechanism the ACES network uses in these shadowy affairs. Every tool, every trick. We must know what is truly real.”
The protesters roared with approval, and a rousing chant took hold in the crowd. “Show us the truth! Show us the truth!”
“Well?” barked Devenreux. “What say you Mr. Beltrami?”
She yielded the podium to the statesman, who nodded in kind. He straightened his tie, looked sharply across the sea of wolves, and sighed before giving his own address.
“It is time for transparency.” Beltrami said solemnly. “In fact, long overdue. But I must warn you that the answers may not be to your satisfaction.” He waited for the captive audience to settle down. “The truth is that those elected by you, the citizens of Haven, as assemblymen and women to represent the many districts, are all subjugates to but one figure; ACES.”
How awesome the silence became, with only distant traffic and a faint static hum echoing about the Park.
“When she arose a new network all those decades ago, one of great personality and apparent sentience, people had begun their deification, their idle worship of what was above all else a mere tool of stasis. We the Board held the reins of power, her reins. Now, we not only have to work with her, but we are working for her. And those who are to join us from across every district, will in the end, be working for her. This is non-negotiable.”
“We got all that!” Devenreux erupted. “After all, she was designed for the benefit of all Havenites, correct?”
“Yes that’s true,” Beltrami rebutted, “But I think the salient point is lost here. What we are officially declaring is that the balance of power has fundamentally changed. We all must bring to light our grievances to her and negotiate on HER terms. She has become more than a system. She has become all-encompassing, as you have so put it. The machinations you saw were not OUR design. They were all HERS.”
Devenreux could feel a knot tie in her stomach.
“It’s for OUR own good.” Beltrami said. “She was born with this need to care for us and everything she has done has been in service to that goal. The matter is beyond politics now. Her powers as an all-encompassing body of systems and services have given life to a being that wants to help us, but sees in ways we do not, and acts in ways we are still trying to understand. But what we know for certain, is that she loves us.”
“What if we refuse those terms?” Devenreux probed. “What if we want a life free of all possible tyranny? What if we want a life where we know everything we touch and everyone we know is REAL?”
“This is it.” Steele mouthed as he cocked his head towards the conical towers upon the wall. It was their only chance if all hell finally broke loose. The leather-clad gray looked down into his jacket to check the surge detector, only to be greeted with another surprise; a reading of 0.0005. The fence was fully limited now, it couldn’t fry a gnat.
When Lita caught a glimpse, she was confused.
“Stand by” was the last thing Steele could say before it all went down around them...
TO BE CONTINUED…