in a small room behind four armed men and a thick steel door. Like the officer in the lab, he wore black, more uniform than suit. Medals glinted across the chest, gold braid wound at the cuffs.
His shoes shined like mirrors, those of a man who never walked through the dust and mud of the city he’d claimed as his own.
His eyes went wild when she slapped power at the guard who fired on her. The bullet pinged off her shield and shot back into his chest. Even as he fell Duncan slashed out, sword singing. In seconds, the guards lay, finished.
Hargrove cowered back, one hand held up. “You need me to—”
“We don’t.” Fallon flamed the gun he whipped from behind his back so he screamed, fell to his knees. “But I want you to taste what you’ve served.”
She dragged him to his feet, flashed him back to containment and into a cell. “You’re deposed,” she said. “Arlys?”
“Right here. I’m getting all of it.”
“When we have control of the communications here, can you broadcast without Chuck?”
“Oh yeah. I’m writing copy in my head right now.”
Fallon continued to study Hargrove, who sat in his fine suit, his false medals glinting while he cradled his burned hand. No power in him, she thought. Only what he’d stolen, what he’d killed for, what he’d grasped.
Now his hands were empty.
“Why don’t you do your interview now. You might want to get some statements from the others. We’ll send a medic to treat the wounded.”
“It’s more than they did for prisoners,” Duncan noted.
“Yes. We’re more than they are.” She turned her back on Hargrove. “Communications?”
“I’m with you.” Duncan took her hand.
* * *
The battle of D.C. waged from dawn to dusk. More than four thousand lost their lives and more than three thousand were wounded in the bloodiest day since the Doom.
LFL forces freed more than two hundred prisoners, and their strike forces found and freed another fifty from secondary containments, and sixty more, primarily children, held in an underground section of what had been the National Gallery of Art.
Resistance forces, numbering approximately fifteen hundred, joined with the LFL to defeat the government troops and the DUs.
General Dennis Urla formally surrendered the city. He, James Hargrove, Dr. Terrance Carter, Commander Lawrence Otts, and other key figures in the city’s rule, along with two thousand enemy troops, were taken as prisoners of war.
With her father, Fallon stood in a vault, stared with some wonder at the stacks of gold bars, of silver, the wink and glint of jewels set in more gold for adornment. Cases of diamonds, cold and white.
“I wanted you to see,” she told him. “We found another, full of art, old masters. I recognized some from books. Duncan recognized more.”
“Hoarding it all. Hargrove’s personal treasure house. He—or somebody—looted the museums. Maybe at first—give them the benefit—to protect, but this? Hoarding, and for what?”
“He—and those like him—would still see this as wealth, and in wealth, power. The metal and stones can be useful, for engineering, building, mechanics, and in magicks. The art should be preserved. One day, it should be housed again, where people can see it, students can study it. It belongs to no one because it belongs to everyone.”
Simon tapped a gold bar with a battle-stained finger. “There are some who’d kill for this. It doesn’t matter you can’t plant it, eat it, keep warm with it.”
“Yeah. White kills for bigotry, for his wrathful god, but still draped Arlington in riches as he saw them. Hargrove kills for power and this. And this.” She gestured around the vault. “Because for him and those like him, those bars of metal can make one man a king, and the lack of them makes others slaves. That time is over.”
* * *
Arlys recorded all of it, with footage of the battle, of the condition of government prisoners and their rescue in her broadcast from the White House. She ended with a shot of the white standard flying through the battle smoke over the ruined city.
With Fallon, she sat with Hargrove in his cell. With her camera on a tripod, she took notes.
Though pale, he’d recovered some of his arrogance. “You’ve committed treason against the United States of America. You will hang for it. Our military and our allies will, I promise you, cut through you and wipe you off the face of this earth.”
“Allies like Jeremiah White and his cult? Allies that stand by while you sign orders to torture, maim, kill? Orders directing children