The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel by Michael Ivan Lowell Page B

emotional
journeys given that most of them had been long considered dead. Boston was healing. Slowly.
         Ward wished he could say the same thing for himself.
         He put his things down in the rather spacious room. As
soon as his guides left the room, he closed the door. Locked it. He dug out the
(now old and obsolete) bug suit, pulled a dart full of the serenity serum, and
pricked a vein in his wrist. He lay back on the bed.
         And closed his eyes.
     
    At
about that same time, Leslie received an urgent call from Blake Lane,
editor-in-chief of the Resistance-related newspaper, Common Sense .
Lane’s voice was normally calm and controlled.
         Not today.
         “I just received a message from William Howke,” Blake
said as she drew a long breath into her lungs, and Leslie figured the notorious
chain smoker was probably taking a drag. “And you are not going to believe it.”
         After the editor had replayed the content of the
message, Leslie dropped her phone onto her desk and plopped into her chair. Her
eyes wide. What the hell?   There was only one person to call.
         She sent an alert to the Revolution. It was time to
rally the leadership.
     
     
    CHAPTER 13
     
     
    PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
    THE HALL OF CHAMBERS
     
    T he
room was large, surprisingly dark, and slightly medieval. The Hall was tucked
beneath a dive of a tavern called the Green Dragon, which was itself located
inside an old abandoned power station on the banks of the Delaware River. A
destination designed to throw off the Council who had long wanted to find the
governing body of the Resistance.
         Members slipped in from a dozen smaller “side
chambers” scattered along the periphery. Some strode across the large circular
polished floor of the Chamber to find their seats; others simply stepped in
from their own private chamber rooms located just behind their designated
throne-seats. They each sat at tall leather chairs that circled the large Hall.
The members wore robes, making them look more like Supreme Court justices
rather than legislators.
         These were the members of the Congress of the
Revolution, or COR. COR was the highest authority the insurgency had. The
elected civilian leadership of the Resistance. One representative from every
state.
         Seated at the center of the circle, presiding over the
meeting, was Dr. Leslie Gibbons, Representative of Massachusetts and the
elected president of COR. Seated at the chair just to her right was the Revolution
himself. The only non-elected voting member of the body. The formal representative
of what passed for the military of the Resistance.
         “Today,” Leslie said, opening the session, “we have
important business before us. We start with two competing bills. The first
comes from the gentlewoman from Georgia and is an offer of amnesty from
Chairman Howke for every member in this body, The Suns of Liberty, and possibly,
though this is not clear from his communiqué, all the members of each HQ
might also be included in the offer.”           
         Murmurs broke out among the members. They had already
debated this issue heartily in the enormous compound’s living quarters located outside
the Hall of Chambers. The offer from the Chairman had come to the offices of Common
Sense . The gentlewoman from Georgia was the first to take up the offer’s
cause. There was widespread thought in COR that Boston would soon be attacked
and, without the help of the Fire Fly, the Suns would not be able to hold it.
Fear, Leslie knew, was driving this mood among some of the members of COR. But
there were others—more, she hoped—who had not succumbed to that fear.
         “The second,” Leslie said, quieting the murmurs, “is a
public declaration of liberty aimed squarely at the Council. To say that we, COR,
are here. And that we are not disbanding until true democracy is restored to
the Republic. And that we will not accept