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AXEL ALVARES
“What kind of caralho is this?”Axel murmured to Daisy, hardly believing his eyes.
Below them, plants writhed through the gaps in the chicken wire cage. The undulating mass of shadows hinted at something behind the leaves. Axel did a double take. Did that vine unfurl and try to hold onto the arm of the Faithful pushing the cart?
His experience as a Faithful had been running terrorist type attacks, and toward the end, he’d learned a little about the Lazarus family, but plants that moved? What other pies did the Syndicate have their fingers in?
“I didn’t know he had any left,” Daisy murmured, aghast.
“Any left of what?” Axel asked. “Plants?”
“One of the Syndicate scientists bred biologically enhanced vegetation that hunt sin. I let one escape.” She was silent for a good while before continuing. “At the time I didn’t care about the damage it might have caused. I felt its despair and wanted to help it. As it turned out, the plant fed on innocents. It evolved and took on their traits. It became a monster. In the end, its despair worsened. If it wasn’t for Tony’s fire, it would still be alive hunting and feeding on anything that moved.”
“Shit.” Axel scrubbed his face. “I never heard about these.”
“You wouldn’t. Julius kept them at the black site along with sin-sensing animals, mech suits and other weapons. After the plant I released created too much public havoc, Julius decided they didn’t have the funds to fine tune the process and said he destroyed the rest of them. They were too hard to control… but I guess, lack of control is an asset now when—”
“When chaos is what they want.”
With a growing sense of doom, Axel and Daisy quietened themselves to hear the proceedings. A platform dais made of packing crates had been set up between the fire barrels. A hush fell over the waiting Faithful. One stepped onto the platform. He removed his mask. Firelight flickered on a saggy face. Axel narrowed his eyes at the aging man.
“I know that guy,” he whispered. “Sam, or something, I think. He always argued with me when I had to give orders. Said he had better ways of doing it.”
“He might be the one in contact with Julius now,” Daisy suggested.
“Maybe.” But he wasn’t convinced. Axel himself had gone from a nobody in the Faithful ranks to a potential right-hand man of the boss simply by being in the right place at the right time.
Axel had never agreed with Sam. There was nothing appealing about his personality. Sam was a smoker who had something wrong with his lungs. Maybe emphysema, maybe cancer, Axel wasn’t sure. He only knew that the man blamed everyone and everything except himself for the state of his health. Axel hated him. Elena and his parents had done everything right for their health, yet they copped a mystery disease no one had a cure for. And then here was Sam running headfirst into sickness, expecting a handout for his second life. He still smoked like a chimney any chance he could get.
He used to call Axel a boy scout.
Another cage wheeled in. A second Faithful stepped up to the podium. His mask remained on.
“The time for enlightenment has finally come!” came the muffled voice from behind the mask.
Cheers rang out.
“Your patience and loyalty will soon be rewarded,” Sam said, taking over. “You can see with your own eyes the future the Syndicate predicted is coming to pass. Sinners are being wiped from this earth. The bridges have been destroyed and no one is coming to save the citizens of Cardinal City. Only one question remains. Do you want to stick around to see it?”
Murmurs rumbled through. People shifted uncomfortably. Seeing them from up here, Axel saw the truth. They were just like him. People who’d been conned into believing it was every man for themselves. Unease pulled his stomach into knots. Some of the Faithful behind those masks were just women and men with sad lives. People who should be pitied. Helped.
That woman in the dress with socked feet and slippers. She had three grandchildren. Axel had seen her knitting at one of the clubhouses. He was never a regular visitor like the other lost Faithful, but he’d gone a few times to check them out. He’d never asked this grandmother why she’d joined the Faithful—it was taboo to do so—but he knew she was loved by her family. She wore colorful friendship wristbands. Someone’s child must have loved her enough to make them for her.
Next to her was a vet who’d lost his leg in action and lived on the street. Another Faithful Axel recognized had a drug habit he’d struggled with his entire life. He was a family man and believed his wife wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if he came back as a clone. Another woman wanted her life insurance to go to her daughter who couldn’t afford to go to college.
They all had sob stories. Some of them worse than others, and some of them nastier and greedier than others. Not all of them criminals.
Axel turned to Daisy. Her head canted as she took in the crowd, and then the plants.
“They’re going to feed the people to the plant,” she murmured.
“Like a sacrifice?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“It’s how the plants evolve into something that hunts.”
