Chapter 15

I am weary of days and hours,

Blown buds of barren flowers,

Desires and dreams and powers

And everything but sleep.

"The Garden of Proserpine"

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

January 2020

Adam threw himself into his office chair, and Lincoln followed, lingering just inside the door. The briefing with POTUS hadn't gone well. Everyone was terrified of Hydra-1 and everything it represented.

"Dr. Kennedy at the CDC is doing her best to develop a vaccine, but they can't seem to grow a live virus in the lab. It kills the host cells too quickly for them to learn much, and it won't grow in isolated dormant cells."

"Adam," Lincoln said, clearing his throat. "Mr. Vice President. What can I do?" There had to be something, a mission, a race to find the right scientist, something. He couldn't stand feeling this helpless.

"What you can do is call your parents, Lincoln." It was the second time Adam had told him this, and knowing what Adam really meant chilled him to his core. They weren't going to win this fight.

"Do it here, my office." Adam nodded toward the black leather chair in the corner by a wall of bookshelves.

Lincoln sat, shifting his weapons, and pulled out his phone. He hadn't dialed that number in over a year. His heart raced as he put the phone to his ear and listened.

"Hello?" His mother's voice came through.

"Mom." He almost had to repeat himself, the word came out so rough.

"Lincoln?" Her joy at hearing his voice stung him with guilt. He loved his mother, but as long as she was married to his father, he couldn't talk to her without having to think about or interact with him.

"Mom. Listen, are you at home?"

"Yes, why?"

"Sit down, okay?" He waited until she confirmed she was sitting down. "Something bad is coming. You've heard about the virus on the news? It's going to spread. Things are going to get bad. Real bad. You need to buy bottled water, canned foods, bullets for Dad's rifles. And you need to move to the cabin by the lake. You understand?"

"My God, Lincoln" His mother, a true mother to a soldier, knew better than to ask a million questions or let emotions run away with her. "Where are you?"

"DC." He glanced to Adam, who nodded. "With Adam. It's bad, Mom. I want you to stay at that cabin. Do not go into the city, do not go looking for your friends. You have to close yourselves off. Do you understand?"

"II understand." Her voice trembled. He hated having to deliver such an awful warning to her, but it was the only way he could give her a chance.

"Mom"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

She sniffled. "I love you too, Lincoln. Do you want to speak to your?"

"No." He cut her off. Even if the world burned down around him, he wasn't going to talk to that man.

"But?"

"Tell him that if he gets stubborn and doesn't do what I just said, I'll kill him." Then he hung up before she could say anything else.

"'I love you, Dad,' might have been more appropriate," Adam said with chuckle.

Lincoln clenched his cell phone in a white-knuckled grip. "We both know I wouldn't mean it, so what's the point?"

"Fair enough." Adam stood and walked to the window overlooking the street outside. For a long moment neither of them spoke. They'd worked together for years, had been friends even longer, and their silences often said more than words.

Lincoln stood and joined Adam at the window, staring at the White House lawn covered in snow.

"It feels like someone stepped over my grave, you know?" Adam raked a hand through his hair and glanced at him. "I hate feeling this powerless."

Lincoln understood. Whenever he cleared out a village run by insurgents, he would kill them, but he had to leave behind the women and children knowing that more would come after Lincoln left and sooner or later those innocents would be tortured and killed.

Hydra-1 was worse than any tyrant, worse than any terrorist group. It had the ability to destroy everything, and there was no way to stop it. There was no playing the hero, not this time.

"Maybe it's time," he muttered.

"Time?" Adam turned, confused.

"Time to wipe the slate clean. Humanity gets a chance to start overassuming any of us survive, that is."

Adam faced his desk and leaned over it. He pressed his palms flat against the wood. He looked world-weary for a man in his mid-thirties.

"Don't ever forget what our purpose is, Lincoln. We may not be bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We may not be bound to succeed, but we are bound to live up to what light we have."

Leave it to Adam to quote President Lincoln at him, the sentimental bastard.

"What's your light, Lincoln?" Adam's face vanished, and his voice seemed to soften to an eerie whisper as though from a vast distance in the dark.

What's your light?

Light danced across the backs of Lincoln's closed eyelids as he struggled out of unconsciousness. Deep voices came from somewhere above him, dark laughs and mutterings. Where was he? A floating pain beat behind his eyes on invisible drums.

"That car was loaded. Looks like they were going somewhere."

"Well, they aren't anymore," someone said, and the others laughed.

Every muscle inside Lincoln tensed as he remembered. Carolinethe housea bullet tearing through his shoulder. He kept his body relaxed as he listened to the voices. Three men. Three. He almost laughed. He could handle three. He moved slightly, tensing his wrists as he tested for restraints. He wasn't bound. They must have thought the blow to his shoulder would immobilize him after they knocked him out.

Whoever they were, they were amateurs. Rule number onewhen you incapacitate an enemy, always make sure they are restrained or put down.

"We'll find out what this one knows first," one of the men said. "They came from the city. Might know where others are."

"And the girl? It'd be nice to have a piece of ass around for more than just a few hours."

"You want another mouth to feed just to have something to fuck?" one of the men snapped.

"She's small. She probably wouldn't eat m" The sound of a fist hitting flesh cut off that reply. He heard a grunt of pain.

Lincoln almost laughed, and his stifled snort silenced the room. He listened to the boots entering the carpeted area where he lay. He could feel the thick shaggy carpet against his cheek and knew which room he was in. He pictured the living room in his head, the couch, the chairs, and the kitchen table behind it.

Seconds before they reached him, he rolled onto his feet and lunged. He caught the man around the waist and tackled him into the couch. The second he had the man on his back, he swung a fist hard against his jaw. Then he dodged back, avoiding the other two men, who tried to grab him from behind. The one on the couch bellowed as he clutched his broken jaw.

Lincoln vaulted over the L-shaped couch, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. He had to let the adrenaline carry him through this. He sprinted for the kitchen counter and grabbed the nearest weapon, a kitchen knife. He stabbed the man nearest him. The man hissed and wheezed as the blade punctured his chest, and in a fluid motion, Lincoln drew it back out and drove it up into his neck. The man fell over with the knife still lodged there, and blood frosted his lips.

"You fucker!" The second man fumbled for his gun at the same time Lincoln grabbed one from the table. Lincoln was quicker. He shot the man in the center of his chest twice, then again between the eyes.

The man he'd punched lumbered into the room and froze at the sight of the two bodies lying dead at Lincoln's feet.

"Where's the girl?" Lincoln demanded.

"Upstairs. Tied to the bed."

Lincoln could barely keep his control as a red haze of hateful fury descended over his eyes. "Did you touch her?"

"Does it matter? You're going to kill me either way."

"True." Lincoln caressed the trigger, his body tensed for more killing.

"We didn't, though," the man said, his words slurred from his fractured jaw.

"Good." Lincoln squeezed off a shot, and the bullet tore through the man's skull and embedded into the wall behind him. The TV screen spiderwebbed with fractures outward from the two bullet holes. Sucking in a breath, Lincoln lowered the gun and then almost collapsed. Blood soaked his shoulder, and his vision was swimming in and out. Lincoln staggered out of the kitchen and toward the stairs.