Apocalypse: The Savior with System

39 The Rivalry

Good evening and welcome to the AMN’s Nightwatch Edition, I’m Sarah Dunn.

Today’s highlight is an unprecedented event that occurred during the Second Parliament Session of the year this morning…one that many have seen to be a long time coming, bringing to a head the years old rivalry between Ulysses Pearse and David Morgan, minsters on opposing sides of the bench. We head on to Zachary Thorne on the field. Zachary?

“Yes, Sarah. The second Parliament session opened peacefully enough and otherwise went on its usual course until an hour into the proceedings when Ulysses Pearse’s camp opened a discussion on the taking of an arsenal down in Texas. It is known that the arsenal is in the purview of Governor Hines, who is a member of Morgan’s political party, with Pearse demanding an explanation from Morgan on how a group of as yet unidentified rebels infiltrated a well-guarded military facility. This line of questioning sparked a debate, including insinuations from Morgan’s camp regarding the “deliberate” destruction of the Pearse-Sachly Institute, which ultimately led to a shouting match and Morgan jumping over to strike Pearse with his fist—”

Morgan’s secretary immediately turned off the television as he stood in obvious mild terror beside his superior’s desk. Morgan clenched his fist, yes, the same one he used earlier to give Ulysses Pearse the uppercut he had been wanting to give for years. The bastard did not even flinch but waited and baited him.

More fool him because he took the bait.

“Get out.”

His secretary moved quickly and was out of the door in seconds.

“Not you.”

He looked up as Maya and Raul went back to their seats.

Morgan did not speak for a long time, his thoughts going back further than their failed re-taking of the arsenal, to the time when he was an ordinary man living an ordinary life…an ordinary, miserable life. Memories of orange hair and bright blue eyes.

He knew that face because it had belonged to the woman he took to his wife before the virus upended their lives. The hair was dark now, possibly dyed, possibly a wig. But he knew it had to be orange, the same shade as his when he was a boy, a genetic inheritance from his Scot-Irish forebears.

And he lost her. Again.

Daddy, when are you coming for me?

There was no sign of his daughter in the arsenal, he was told. But Paul Justinos had been there and Maya acted quickly to kill him…only to fail. Again.

He refused to believe his daughter had nothing to do with what happened at the arsenal.

“Short of nuking the building, it will be next to impossible to breach their security,” Maya spoke up. “Rahu Knight would have already disabled the original security controls and replaced it with another.”

“Then get a goddamn hacker to get in!” he snapped.

“Already being done, sir.”

For a moment Morgan felt the stirrings of illogical anger urging him to lash out at Maya and her brother. To make it about their failure to kill Paul Justinos and rid that bastard Pearse of whatever he needed the ex-soldier for. Still, he reined in his emotions. Pearse and the rest of Parliament might see him as an undisciplined upstart but he could best all of them. He would have to calm down enough to think straight.

To decide what to do with the arsenal and then what to do about his daughter.

“Sir,” he heard Maya speak again, this time in a tone that made him look up. She motioned to her brother, Raul.

Raul signed. “While I was recovering from my injury, one of our staff intercepted a communications bit exchanged between a hospital in Houston and a treatment facility in Oklahoma. In four days, a train carrying sufferers with no more bedspace in Oklahoma will enter Texas. The railroad bisects the county where the arsenal is located.”

Without Raul signing anything more, the wheels began to turn in Morgan’s head.

An entire train carrying sufferers…

When he looked up, the twins’ eyes were on him, their gazes expectant.

He glanced at his massive desk and spied a horse-shaped paperweight.

Morgan chuckled low.

“You’re not yet done?”

Ulysses turned his head towards the office doorway where his wife Moira leaned casually. Still dressed in the navy dress suit she wore to the Parliament session, she looked undaunted and unfazed…even by the sight of a female staff member straddling him while holding an ice pack to his face. He pushed the girl off of him, tamped down the frustration of “unfinished business” and nodded for her to leave. The girl fixed herself quickly and exited the office by another door, leaving him alone with his wife.

Closing the door behind her, Moira sauntered over to peer at his face.

“Doesn’t look like it damaged anything vital,” she muttered, turning to perch herself on his desk. “Be grateful the man’s boxing days were that of an amateur.”

Ulysses shook his head. David Morgan was a bear of a man, in manner and appearance. His fist was all meat and bone and when it had slammed under Ulysses’ jaw, he wondered how he had not died on the spot. Before he could retaliate, pandemonium had broken out inside Parliament and the session abruptly ended.

“I found it quite strange why you kept baiting Morgan,” Moira remarked. He met her curious gaze. “Have you found out something?”

Ulysses remembered easily how it had begun. Morgan never liked being told off for his failures and what happened to the arsenal under his command was a grievous error. Millions of tax money along with international funding lost…all because of a handful of rebels. And the man had the audacity to demand more funding and staffing to recoup the arsenal. He would have let it go, knowing the Prime Minister would never accede to Morgan’s demands until the madman dared to debate on what happened to the institute.

Morgan wanted in, desperately so. And Ulysses wanted him out, just as desperately.

“Paul Justinos is one of the rebels inside the arsenal,” he said. “High-mag satellite shots caught him.” Moira’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Interesting.”

“And I would hazard to say, though we have no evidence yet, your prodigy is in there with him, too.”

Moira nodded absentmindedly and he knew she had gone to that place in her head where no one has ever gone. But only for a moment because her eyes quickly took that look of acuteness. She’d taken something from that place in her head and she was ready to use it.

“That is highly likely, as her remains were never found before the institute burned down,” she said. “If she’s with Paul Justinos…how serendipitous.”

“Morgan will act, I know he will, whether with the government’s permission or not,” Ulysses said. “I have to give it to him, though. He’s starting to become a worthy challenge. I don’t know what information he has but it is safer for us to assume he knows about Hephaestus.”

As to what Morgan will do with that information, Ulysses still has to figure it out. If he already knows about Hephaestus but has not come clean to the public about it yet, then he could use it for his own ends. Ulysses has always been several steps ahead of Morgan. But while several was enough before, perhaps it wasn’t enough anymore.

“If he knows about Hephaestus, then he knows about Justinos, and about me,” his wife stated. “Not that I’m worried. He will have a hard time proving anything, even if he captured Judith Merkel and the rest of that troublesome merry group. I’m not worried, we have eyes everywhere, Ulysses, but you still look out of sorts and that is unacceptable.”

He saw her eyes rake down at him, splayed on his seat, trousers unbuttoned and his turgid organ on full display. “Your girl didn’t get past Act Two, I assume,” she said, her face an expressionless mask as she left her perch on his desk, hitched her skirt up to straddle him, and initiated what was left unfinished earlier.

“David Morgan, like all of you men, has secrets,” she whispered, her voice and the scent of roses enveloping him. “And I know all of them. What men would not do to keep their secrets secret. And he has no idea of what I know.”

Ulysses opened his mouth to ask but she gave him an open-mouthed kiss instead, a mimicry of what was going on below their waists. It was over in minutes and when Moira detached herself, she told him, “If Justinos and Judith Merkel are together, then that is what I prefer.”

“Why?” he asked, zipping himself up.

“I liked her, truly. She was easily readable but not so easy to change,” replied Moira, a gleam in her eyes. The kind he saw when she realizes her prey. “She will protect Justinos even to her death. And we need him alive, remember?”

Ulysses nodded. Moira sighed and patted her hair. “Let Morgan do what he wants.”

“For now,” he said, agreeing.

She glanced at her watch and scowled. “I’m late.”

Ulysses knew her schedule down to the last second. He knew she was supposed to meet the chair of the board of directors of a chemical processing plant from Dallas. A cowboy rancher who looked the part, too, and something he knew Moira liked very, very, very much.

“Will he mind and leave?”

“No.”

“Will you mind when he does?”

“Yes.”

“Thank me, then, for not going beyond five minutes, darling. You better run.”

Moira threw him a disgusted look, turned her nose up, and walked out of his office, her fingers waving goodbye.

Ulysses laughed humourlessly.