Free The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds by Michael Rizzo

masters?”
Abbas sums up the “legend.” Jon is now looking at me like a rapt
pupil.
    “There are clearer ways of putting it,” I explain
with a sad chuckle. “What I did before was discover that a number
of the key players behind the United Nations Counter-Terror
Committee that coordinated us had been complacent in manipulating
terrorist attacks to further their own political agendas. This
included some powerful government and corporate figures. It was one
of the most wanted terrorist masterminds of the time that had
brought me this intelligence, and I found myself working with
him—despite what atrocities he himself had committed—to expose and
destroy this conspiracy. Needless to say, a number of my former
‘masters’ tried to kill me to protect themselves—and tried to
eliminate the other members of my team who may have supported me.
Colonel Burke himself suffered a great loss: the woman he’d loved
was killed by a sniper’s bullet meant for him.”
    “But you did what was right,” Abbas half-praises and
half-reassures.
    “I hurt them back because they had used me,” I
rephrase bitterly, “used me to kill. And they’d killed many
others—many innocents—in their bloody games. I was beyond rage.
What was ‘right’ was incidental. I only cared about what was wrong .”
    Abbas digests it. Smiles a little under his mask.
Nods. Chews a few seeds. Sips from his water bottle. Jon is looking
at me like I just told him God is an asshole.
    “Is that what you did when you came here?” Abbas
challenges gently. I think about that for a few seconds, shake my
head.
    “Same man, just older,” I answer. “They use me
because I’m good at what they want me to do, but they also know I
never fully trust, not unless I’m sure, not until I see for
myself.”
    “Would they not have anticipated that, sending you to
fight more of their ‘villains’?”
    I shrug. “Maybe some did,” I allow. “Maybe I was
their way of undoing something ugly. Or maybe they just figured I
would get killed and they’d have a martyr in the deal. But they
certainly never meant me to be placed in command of their entire
planetary operation. Colonel Burke and I were only assigned as
ground force commanders, guns in the fight.”
    I see him smile under his mask.
    “But you did a great right in your rage against the
wrong, friend Ram,” he soothes paternally. “You are an instrument
of something larger than yourself, larger than them. I believe
this. And not only because I am a Muslim.”
    “And what am I doing now?” I ask wearily.
    “Those who would be your masters now are the
children’s children of men you did not trust in their own time,” he
shrugs. “Do you have good reason not to trust these people?”
    “I don’t fully believe what they’re telling us,” I
admit, realizing I’m doing something my new handlers would deeply
disapprove of. “It isn’t about trust—some may just be doing their
duty, following orders whether they agree or not. I don’t know them
well enough to trust or not trust, but I have doubts, questions.
What they say about the delay in responding to us—I don’t believe
it was innocent ignorance or confusion. There’s more fear driving
their decisions than they’ll admit. And I admit I am very hesitant
to tell them anything about this world that might feed that
fear.”
    “About us?” he asks offhandedly. I shake my head.
    “I worry more that they’ll be eager to study you like
some kind of new species,” I consider. “You’re safest as long as
they think you’re harmless.”
    “They are afraid of the Jinn,” he assesses
directly.
    “They are terrified of the Jinn,” I clarify.
“And not just because they’re afraid of the ETE’s nanotech. They
know the ETE control this world. Any claims of benevolence don’t
matter.”
    “And the Jinn have not been so benevolent lately,”
Abbas adds, his voice weighted with something beyond idle
assessment.
    “What have you heard?” I