Chapter 3

"Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase."

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

LEGION

Legion is the question. Legion is the answer.

The headline was in a small, bold font at the top of the Legion site. Agent Rice was sitting in his tiny office, looking the site over on his laptop, and trying to figure out his next move. The site was exceedingly simple. The name, the tagline, all on that green background, then a list of names, each one hyperlinked. They were the names of the victims. When you clicked on a link, it took you to an article, or a news report, or something of the sort that outlined what the person had done. The list was daunting already, and Rice knew that it was only going to get worse.

The list had been updated less than an hour ago, listing three victims who had been murdered by another sniper while protesting outside the cemetery where a funeral for an army soldier was being held. Rice clenched his jaw at the thought, but had to acknowledge that, in this instance, perhaps the Legion had done them all favor. The first victim was the leader of the extremist, media-obsessed church, which had gained it's infamy through similar protests across the country, utilizing their First Amendment rights to get their name in the news. The other two victims had been congregants, but their names were listed and linked, as well. The links for all three names opened a news article that the New York Times had written some time before, outlining their despicable actions.

At the bottom of the site, after the list of names, was another quote.

Legion is the answer to all the most important questions.

Agent Rice closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He desperately needed some sleep, and his stomach was sour from all the coffee he had been quaffing to stay awake. He was in charge of a task force which had been given access to any resource it needed. He had been told that he could call on any team, any specialist, and any intelligence he required, with the full authority of the White House, and he had so far done nothing. of the sort

He trusted his team, and like most in the FBI, did not trust the CIA or the NSA. The military was almost worse, though he acknowledged that he might need to utilize some of their men and equipment before this whole mess was over with.

The site was a problem, but everyone agreed there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. The President himself had professed grudging respect for the Legion in putting up the list, believing that it would somewhat limit the number of copycat vigilantes trying to operate under the Legion's banner. The site was what it was, and so long as it stayed a list of names, it was a problem that could be put aside for the moment.

The deeper problem, and one which was currently mystifying Brad Wilcox, the top FBI computer tech in the Northeast, is how in the world the site was being distributed. It didn't match any known virus activity, and appeared able to seamlessly detect, integrate, and take control of a server within minutes of the server being opened up to it. Even more puzzling, according to Brad, was that once the site was up, the server was instantly secured. None of the servers currently hosting the site could be hacked, and some of the best hackers in the country were trying their damndest. Brad himself had tried for about ninety minutes before reporting that it was as close to unbreakable as he had ever seen.

Agent Rice wasn't a computer guy, but he trusted Brad's judgment. Add that to the same bucket of impossible things that contained the Times Square power outage, the bomb which had taken the FBI Director and White House Chief of Staff, the complete takeover of the largest digital billboard in Times Square, and the mindbending fact that nobody had come forth with any sort of decent lead.

The Legion had to be fairly large in number. Estimates in the War Room ranged from fifty to three hundred, though everyone agreed that it was just plain guesswork at this point. One thing that they DID know was that thirty-four people had been killed in Texas at virtually the same moment. That naturally guaranteed that there were at least thirty four Legion members out there running around. But why hadn't a single one of them been seen?

There had been the street performers in Florida. According to the Legion site, they were spotters for a semi-professional kidnapping ring, which would abduct children to sell into slavery in South America. They had been killed with a knife in broad daylight, the three of them with their throats cut and no sign of defensive wounds. Where were the witnesses? They had to have been seen.

The Vice-Principal of an elementary school in Nebraska had been gunned down with a large-caliber handgun in the lunchroom minutes before the room had been flooded with hungry kids. Several people reported the loud noise of the gunshot, but nobody had seen anyone fleeing the scene, and no gun had been found anywhere near the premesis.

None of it made sense, and Agent Rice was afraid he knew the reason why. They all did, he thought, but were too scared to acknowledge it. The Legion was popular. A lot of Americans agreed with what they were doing. The ends justified the means, they said. They claimed that the Legion was cleaning up the mess that fell through the cracks of a broken, outdated legal system. They cheered, while American citizens died without any due process, or any chance to defend themselves.

It was nauseating, but it was also easy to see where the people were coming from. The media was full of stories over the years where someone who was almost undeniably guilty had walked away with a full acquittal either on a technicality, or because of their level of fame. Rice had to admit that he could see the appeal of some street justice being applied to those who had escaped their just desserts. But there was no room for vigilantism. The system wasn't perfect, but that just meant it needed to be fixed, not that it should be discarded.

Agent Rice shut down his laptop and headed for the third floor. There were some cots up there, and a shower. He had slept there the previous night, and fully expected to do so again for the foreseeable future.

Eddie had fully expected to shock everyone at school when he showed up with a hand-made LEGION T-Shirt. He had carefully removed the logo on the front of an old T-Shirt, making it uniformly green. The green color wasn't quite right, but it was close enough. He had washed it several times, trying to get the faded area that had been underneath the logo to match the rest of the shirt's tone, but with no luck. He didn't let that deter him, though. He just used the previous logo's outline as the border for the new Logo he was adding.

He had printed out a template from the web, using the same font as the Legion's site was using. He had carefully hand-inked the name LEGION across the front of the shirt, using the template, then set it out to dry overnight. In the morning, he'd thrown it on with pride and headed for the bus stop. His bus driver stared at him as he boarded the bus, and there was a slow wave of silence that spread as more and more people noticed his shirt.

Eddie was an outcast, and always had been. Stuck in the 10th grade when he should have still been in middle school, and before he'd hit any significant growth spurt, he was constantly ignored, if not mocked outright. The bus crowd usually dismissed him, save a few occasions when someone or other decided to take a few verbal jabs, to general laughter. Today, though, was different.

The bus driver still hadn't closed the doors, and was staring at Eddie's back. The bus was quiet, all eyes on Eddie as he looked at the floor while making his way to an empty seat halfway down the aisle. His face burned, but he also felt a wide grin across his face. He wasn't a nobody any more. He had their attention, for sure.

It wasn't clear who started it, but a clapping noise started in the back of the bus. It quickly spread, until the majority of the bus was applauding. A few of the more boisterous riders shouted and whistled, then started up a chant. Eddie gleefully followed along, raising his fist in the air.

"LE-GION, LE-GION, LE-GION!"

Martin didn't have an internet connection at home, but his mother did. She had called him after going onto the Legion's site, explaining how his brother Miguel's name was on there, listed as a pedophile and a sexual predator. Martin attempted to calm her hysterics, but inside he was burning with the same outrage as his mother. It wasn't right, he thought. They had been wrong, they had made assumptions, and killed a man undeserving of their punishment. They had killed his brother, and his mother's eldest son.

Someone had to do something. It wasn't right.

Agent Rice was awoken a mere three hours after finally falling asleep. His phone was going off, and he answered it with a groan.

"Rice."

"Sir, this is Jenny, from the team in Arizona. We found something interesting here, and I was told you were the person who needed to be told."

"Go ahead, Jenny. What do you have?"

"We've finally finished the cleanup from the Death Row bombing, and, well, we found an extra body, sir."

"What do you mean an extra body?"

"Well, we had the manifest of everyone who was supposed to be there, and we were able to find at least some identifiable remains of all of them. But there was another body, or at least pieces of it, located near the guard's station."

"So ... they blew up a guard? Do we have an ID on the body yet?"

"No Sir, but we're working on that currently."

"Move that to the top of the list out there. I want to know who that person was."

Agent Rice then had a thought, and closed his eyes and sighed.

"I suppose we should check the Legion site and see if we can match up one of the names there to our mystery body."

"Well, Sir ... I did think of that, and he's not on the list."

Agent Rice sat up quickly.

"What do you mean, he's not on the list?"

"Exactly that, Sir. Every name on that list has been verified thus far. We've found and catalogued the bodies. And we have one more body than we have names on the list."

Gabe groaned as he awoke, back in his apartment. His head felt like it was splitting, and he rubbed the back of his neck as he sat up. He knew what had happened, and felt like a fool. He'd attempted to break the parameters of his mission, and they'd stopped him. It was the first time he'd tested that particular leash, and he was forced to admit it was devastatingly effective. He didn't remember anything after starting to pull the trigger.

Gabe stood up, groaning again, and stretched out his back and shoulders. He made his way to the door of the apartment, intending to head down to the cafeteria for some much-needed coffee, but his door was locked. Gabe blinked, then tried it again. Still nothing. He cursed under his breath and tried it once more, harder, and still no sign of movement.

"What the fuck..." he muttered.

He headed for the phone in the kitchen and picked it up. Before he started to dial, he noticed that there was no dial tone. He felt a seed of panic take root in his stomach as he set the phone back down and looked around his apartment. There, on the wall, was a red sheet of paper. Gabe walked over and ripped it down from the nail holding it in place, and read.

Gabe,

Due to your intent to violate the agreed-upon parameters of your mission, you are under a one-week suspension. You will receive no amenities, and be confined to your apartment for the duration of your suspension. This is your one and only warning. Attempt to deviate from orders and you will be discharged from Legion.

The letter wasn't signed, but Gabe knew who had left it regardless. He ground his teeth together as he looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep his temper under control.

"Vaughn," he growled.

William Carter was a burglar, plain and simple. He hadn't come out of high school to be one, but he had ended up there nonetheless. He'd gotten laid off at one point, and was desperate. So he broke into a house in the middle of the night and stolen some electronics, some jewelry, and some liquor. In and out without a sound, and the next day he was busy pawning the electronics and liquor. That night he had a one-man party with the booze.

Since then it'd been fairly simple. He'd acquired a partner of sorts, after about a year. Teddy knew someone who was willing to fence outright stolen goods, and the friendship had bloomed from there. William drove, picked locks, and was great at spotting likely targets. Teddy was the brute force. He could kick down doors, move furniture, and had even carried an unopened safe at one point. And he had a fence.

The two of them did fairly well for themselves, all things considered. They never went for a big score, or tried to accumulate unexplainable wealth. They liked the fact that they were relatively small-time, hoping that it kept them below the radar of the cops. That had been their routine for three years now. They never went out more than twice a month, and always made sure to work far away from home.

Until this job. William had noticed it one day while taking a different route to the pool hall. A huge house, with a gated entry, sitting on what had to be forty cleared acres. It was a mansion, no doubt about it, but the thing that caught William's eye was the dilapidated fence on either side of the gate. It was interesting enough for him to take a night walk past the place, and he did so the next night. Up close the fence was in even worse shape than it seemed, though the gate was nice and sturdy. He used a bright flashlight, waving it around and making lots of noise as he walked back and forth.

"Skippy! Here boy! Come on, Skip!"

He'd holler it over and over. It was a great ruse, as people would instantly feel sorry for him, and it would justify his wandering patterns and habit of shining the bright light into every nook and cranny.

The beam of the flashlight showed the cleared area around the house to be fairly ragged. It had a decent invasion of weeds going on, and the edges were far from sharp. The house itself was too far away to see very clearly, but the whole place seemed somewhat run down. It was obviously still occupied, and the fairly new gate made it possible to make some safe assumptions.

"Look Teddy, this place is perfect. It's got old money in it. Lots of heirlooms, old jewelry, old art, old wine ... all of that stuff. Probably not many computerized systems of any kind, because it looks like the cash might be starting to run out. They had the money to replace the gate, but not the fence, and it looks like the gardeners probably got set back to once a month here recently."

Teddy had glared, but his greed was aroused. They had agreed to move very slowly, and picked a date 90 days out to give it a try. In the meantime, they did their homework. Property title searches are public records, and they had names, incomes, assessed values, family trees, and sale history within three days. Then it took two more to get death and wedding records. After that, it was a matter of mapping out habits.

The Millners, Kathy and Marcus, lived alone. They had three cars between them, and both were retired. Marcus had been a CEO of a local bank which had been bought out for a handsome sum by a national chain, and they'd both retired within a month. No children, and no other verifiable income, meant they were living on their nest-egg, and not worried about any sort of inheritance.

The couple went to church twice a week, and Bingo every Thursday night. In the eleven weeks that Teddy and William had watched, they never missed a night, and never got back before eleven at night. Teddy had spent a day sitting in the bushes outside the gate, hidden, running an electronic scanner, looking for any remotes or trigger devices. William had arranged the car, and they were all set.

The car had been across the street for two days, with fake tickets sticking out from under the windshield wipers, and a fake boot on one of the front tires. William and Teddy walked in from three blocks out, backpacks full of the tools they'd need, to include large contractor-sized black garbage bags. They reached the fence and were over it within minutes, without a sound. No traffic on the road to reveal them, and the two men hurried for the house.