Page 33 of Stalker
They went to eleven other rooms for Stalker to give the rescue speech. The last room had ten little boys between ages four and nine. The smallest started to cry because he didn’t know where he lived or where his mommy was.
Neely was about to comfort him when a woman down the hall cried “Donnie!” and came running. She was hardly more than a girl. She slipped into the room between Stalker and Neely to scoop the little boy up into her arms. “Oh, baby, I was so afraid they left you there on your own.”
More women came down to learn if their boys had been captured. All but one of the boys was spoken for. He was about six years old and of mixed heritage. He stood off on his own, stoically watching the reunions. Neely went over to him.
“Hi, my name is Neely. What’s your name?”
“Manny,” he said. “They took my brother away after we got here. We don’t have a mother anymore. Bad men killed her.”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“His name is Jorge.”
With all the cells open, the captives began to mingle and talk as they looked for friends and relatives. Even shouting for him would do little good because of the noise.
Neely offered the boy her hand, and he took it. “Let’s go look for him.”
“Okay.”
As they walked between the little huddles of people, Neely counted the rest of the people. There were thirty women and girls, ten little boys, and fifteen males in their teens and twenties. A few had gone over by the women, and a few girls had gravitated toward the teenage boys.
Jorge wasn’t among them, so Neely took Manny with her to check all the cells to make sure everyone was out. They found him on a pallet in the third room. The boy recognized his brother immediately. Slipping his hand from Neely’s, he hurried to Jorge’s side.
“Jorge, wake up.”
Neely went down onto one knee when Manny got no response and pressed two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. It was there, and she could see he was breathing in the dim light.
“Stalker, we found Jorge, but we can’t wake him. Can you come to take a look?”
“On my way,” he responded immediately and was there in seconds. Scanning the teenager with his internal scanner, he quickly found the problem. “He has a concussion and bruises. Someone beat him, but I think he will recover. The medic will treat him when he arrives. It should only be another twenty minutes. I will contact them to bring in a stretcher for him.”
“There are only two choices of who hurt him. Either his roommates or the guards,” said Neely.
“I will question them.”
Stalker found three teenagers from Jorge’s room in the hall to the lobby. They watched him nervously as he approached. Even without his armor and weapons strapped to his body, Stalker appeared formidable.
“Can you tell me what happened to the other male in your cell?”
“He went at the guard about his brother. That guard whacked him with his shock stick several times on his body and then in the head.”
Stalker assessed his respiration and heartbeat. The young male seemed to be telling the truth. “Thank you. I will add that to his charges.”
Only then did they note the circled star embossed in his armor. “What does that star mean,” asked one of them.
“I am a law enforcement ranger. The people who kidnapped and held you here have violated your rights. They will be punished.”
The medic arrived with the reinforcements exactly twenty minutes after Stalker contacted them. He had the universal nanites to treat the injured boy, whereas Stalker carried only gene-specific for himself and Neely.
The cyborg medic loaded Jorge on the hover stretcher and guided it out to the transport craft with Manny tagging behind him.
Only then did they direct the rest of the captives to three of the transporters ready to take them to the old military base near the mountains. It was far enough from the city that it had escaped all but minor damage in the bombings.
They would use it to house the cyborg protectors and technical staff while they did demolitions and built new housing for people living in the ruins. Those residents would also be sheltered at the base while waiting for their new homes’ completion. The Enclave planned to add temporary housing near the base to rotate people through as work began in their ruins.
After the captives left, the protectors came inside to hear Stalker’s plans for the raids on Vradin Blackwood and his gangers. He shared the coordinates and images of the people they were to capture. They were mostly males, but a small percentage were females.
Stalker and Neely had scouted Blackwood’s gangers between the meeting and passing out com-tablets to people they oppressed. The plan was quickly distributed to all one hundred cyborgs through their internal network.
