Six
“What nanotechnology?” Monica was certain she heard the woman wrong. Maybe she truly was beginning to lose her mind. Ah, that would be nice… “I barely even know what that means!” Truth was that she had sparse exposure to the possibility of microscopic machines someday making life much easier during her time at LSU, but from the little she learned it seemed that the tech was many decades from being really useful.
Rebecca held her mouth open and was looking at Monica over the top of her black reading glasses while tapping the end of her pin between her top and bottom teeth. It was all in all a fairly disturbing sensory mixture of sound and sight.
“So.” Becca said finally after setting her pen back down. “You’re an engineer – Mechanical right? And, your ever so loving… and handsome, might I add… husband is a civil engineer, correct?” Monica was slowly, and with very little enjoyment, beginning to parse Rebecca’s sick sarcasm out of her dialect.
“Yes, I’m a mechanical – he’s a civil! I told you we work at the same firm! Are you deaf, or just fucking stupid?” Yeah, I’m about to get it again, Monica thought after she screamed it. She knew delirium when she felt it, and now she could only hope the exhaustion would take her and she could wake up from her overly extended stay in this nightmare.
“Are you trying to say that Tim built nanotechnology?” Despite all of the pain and betrayal his name was siphoning up from her stomach; the thought of such nonsense almost forced a small laugh to escape her swollen lips. “He had to call a repairman to fix the damn food disposal! He couldn’t build Alisha’s swing set. Our neighbor had to come and help finish it. I can’t believe he could even understand what nanotechnology is.”
Rebecca was still writing. She had an infuriating habit of not letting Monica know how or when she would switch personas. Essentially, Rebecca Corrigan was the perfect interrogator.
“What about James?” She asked at last, but she never looked up from her paperwork.
“What about him?” Monica wished she would have just hit her again. It would have hurt less.
“Your ex – could he build the tech we’re talking about?” Becca glanced over her glasses and stared at Monica. Then she put the plunger end of her black ballpoint into her mouth and bit down. Thankfully Monica was spared the click-clack of her slamming the device against her teeth for the moment.
“James isn’t an engineer. He never finished college.” Sometimes Monica hated her own mouth and this was one of those times. She never could describe to anyone, even herself, why she said such things. Of course James is an engineer; look at the things he’s built. Sometimes her mind doesn’t let her immediately understand how someone can never finish college and still be successful. Her whole life was filled with the understanding that finishing an education was the only thing that would make her happy. James dropped out of his university only a few months after they first met. He made token attempts to finish throughout their marriage. Even finishing his calculus requirements; making A’s without even struggling! That thought alone made her flush with anger all over again. Even now!
“Okay, two things.” Rebecca replied. Monica knew what was coming – the same thing always came when she tried lying to herself out loud. Becca closed the binder she was writing in, removed her glasses and stood up. Then leaning over the table with her weight on the palms of her hands she continued, “one – how in the fuck do you function in a professional environment being so monumentally stupid? And, two – your ex husband finished his doctoral requirements at Cal-Tech last year. Most likely testing his way out of a lot of courses. He doesn’t share much with you, does he?”
Well, that was it then. The last thing Monica thought she had that made her more successful than her ex was just taken from her. The look on her face must have communicated her feelings because Rebecca started laughing. It was the kind of laugh one would expect from a chaotically evil villain standing over the funeral pyre of the world. Laughing because the world was ending – laughing because she was ending right along with it.
Then from the hallway she heard a limp body hit the floor, but she didn’t look towards the door. The idea that she was getting accustomed to hearing such things was nearly enough to make Monica freeze in place while Rebecca’s face provided her with the rest of the motivation. Frozen in fear, Monica saw something on her tormentor’s face that she would forever wish she had never seen. Rebecca Corrigan was – afraid. The mask of fear draped across her glossy features was the most blood curdling she had worn so far. Monica pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, but burying her face against her kneecaps would provide no protection from what happened next.
Rebecca signaled the soldiers in the room and sprinted to the wall mounted intercom near the door. Monica raised her head and saw the woman futilely hit buttons on the dead machine.
“We’re all his now!” Monica was surprised at how well she was dealing with it all and just decided to blame hysteria. But, there were still small voices in the dark recesses of her mind that sometimes screamed loud enough to get her attention; how much she would love waking and seeing his chiseled naked form still sleeping off the previous night’s round of orgasmic hip exercises. How his morning erection would still hold the faint white remnants of just how much she enjoyed having him inside her.
“Do you know what’s going on? Talk or you’ll wish you had!” Rebecca screamed at her.
“No clue! But, what I do know is that we’re all pretty much fucked!” Monica said, and then thought; not that it would be altogether unpleasant!
Then it started.
Black sand started flowing in from under the door. It split apart and flowed around the feet of the two soldiers closest to the door like long black tentacles. The sand never seemed to spill away from its flow as if it were thick black water determined to disobey gravity. Once the black mass reached the center of the room, it started congealing on itself and the pile grew to half the height of a person while the black stuff continued to flow in from the hallway.
Monica had to make an effort to close her jaw, along with everyone else in the room except one. Rebecca’s face read like a horror movie cover. She was frightened beyond all means of comprehension and the black mass forming in the middle of the room owned all of her invested attention. It was as tall as an average human man when the last eighteen inches of tentacle melded into its amorphous shape.
Arms suddenly sprouted from the blob and a head formed on instantly formed shoulders. It lacked any facial features – just an oblong appendage on top of what was now a very distinct humanoid form. It held no features on what would be called its head, but somehow Samera knew it had turned its attention to her. Somehow everyone in the room felt its eyeless gaze. Knowing who the creature decided to target turned out to be highly useless information, though. With speed reserved only for mythical creatures or comic book characters; it fluidly stepped to Samera and delivered a left hand open palm jab to her unguarded rib cage before she could reasonably believe she was even under attack.
Monica heard the sickening crack of ribs, but before the poor girl could even hit the floor; the creature dissolved itself into a large black puddle looking blob and instantly streaked away from Samera. In one motion it reformed itself in perfect position to land a powerful right hand punch to the jaw of the darkly clad soldier in the furthest corner. It dissolved again only to appear directly under the man standing closest to Monica. Like a stalagmite, it extended back to its full height fist first and caught the mortal man directly under his chin with enough force to lift him from his feet.
Then everything turned quiet long enough for Monica to hear the scuffling of their limp forms. In the time it took Samera to fall, this thing had dispatched the other two guards and placed itself between her and the rest of her keepers. After the first unfortunate three finished their appointments with gravity it just stood there like an onyx statue.
Rebecca almost managed to say something before the door came flying into the room – almost. With a loud booming crack it flew from its hinges and slammed into the wall on the opposite side. Through the new and wildly more efficient portal walked a second identical creature. It hit Rebecca hard enough to send her flying into the makeshift desk – knocking it over and spilling its contents all over the room. Rebecca herself was on the floor writhing with an agony that brought Monica more internal joy than she was apt to admit.
The remaining two guards looked at each other and turned to run through the makeshift entrance in unison. They needn’t have concerned themselves with such haste because the attackers were certainly not concerned with any pursuit. Monica felt her heart racing to previously unexplored levels when she finally pieced together their real quarry. The thought of turning and running made it about halfway through her consciousness when the second black humanoid turned its eyeless face towards her and began melting. Before it had even finished its dissolving technique, she felt a force lifting her by her waist. Then she was strewn over a hard black shoulder and pinned down by a force that felt like solid steel.
A loud crash from the direction of her backside, or in front of the thing carrying her, signaled what could only be an escape and she was being brought through the wall of the interrogation room at a full sprint. More crashes followed and from her point of view lying on her stomach on the creature’s shoulder – she realized they were running through a small area of cubicles that were, until very recently, occupied by the terrified people running away in every direction. Before she could really get the desire to be among them to form in her overloaded mind – she heard the loudest crash yet. It sounded like someone had driven a large truck into a larger piece of glass.
Then she was outside the building. Fresh air blasted across her face and Monica felt a sudden feeling of freefall, then thankfully shortly thereafter – she felt nothing.
*****
The room became the embodiment of chaos!
Thankfully for her own psyche, Isa functioned extremely well under such conditions. Not that these events were truly chaotic – someone was controlling the flow of action. She simply resigned herself to just ride it out until she figured things out. The blank but intense look on James’ face only gave promise that the ride was going to be long indeed.
“What does that thing mean, ‘under attack’?” Marcus dug himself out of his depressed stupor to blurt out the question. He always seemed to need something to champion for, and his federal office being attacked was enough of a reason. If a Paladin needed altruistic fuel to live – this one just found some.
The stalker drone closest to Marcus turned towards him as he stood, but offered him no further aggression. Likely because ten more of its identical siblings silently dropped from their own holes in the room’s drywall ceiling. Well this room is fucked! She thought. Surprisingly though, her SitHud never exploded with new information – only showing her the feverish panic that was starting to spread through the room like a parasitic host. The stalkers didn’t register in her heads up as friend or foe. Either she was not supposed to know where they were, or there were too many to visually track. She guessed the latter; if she wasn’t supposed to know about their hidden whereabouts, there would be no reason for the ones in the room to be hidden from her overlay.
James had the beginnings of a small genuine smirk when he panned the room to see the government employees furiously tapping their earpieces and flashing each other dumbfounded looks. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who enjoyed chaos. No, in matters James Bruce concerned himself, there was always only absolute order – sequences of well planned and meticulously timed events that only held a small opaque layer of chaotic sheen. There was a plan somewhere. She just wasn’t fully briefed on the details, nor did she believe anyone else not named James Bruce would be.
He reveled in their confusion for another half second and finally asked; “Flynn, what do you mean by attack”?
“Sir, I detected a high concentration of Xenon gas on level four. Two point seven seconds later an unfortunate National Guardsman was debilitated outside interrogation room alpha one. Two HOST devices infiltrated the room, disabled another Guardsman, two soldiers and Ms Corrigan before escaping with Mrs Weathers. I am currently in pursuit utilizing seventy-seven Stage One Stalker Drones. Eighty-one Stage T-“
“That’s enough, Flynn!” James screamed the interruption through the burning embers of anger swelling on his face. He turned to Marcus and yelled; “what were you doing with my wife?”
Marcus was still taken too far back to answer James’ gaze and stood silently trying to avoid his piercing eye contact.
It was the exact wrong response!
James sprinted to Marcus’ spot at the table and grabbed the smaller man by the fabric of his short sleeved polo style shirt! “Fucking open your worthless mouth and speak, or I’ll have Flynn flay the information from your exposed brain!”
“That’s enough, Bruce!” The stupid Marine stood and shouted.
James responded by slowly turning his jade eyes towards the unruly Marine. The man was a soldier, though, and harbored no fears of exchanging eye contact with the green eyed genius. With a sociopathic display of skill, James calmly smiled back at him. Still holding Marcus by his shirt, he threw him backwards against the room’s double doors exhibiting strength he shouldn’t have.
James then turned an open right palm towards Sergeant Montgomery and gave him a wry wink. The air surrounding his hand began to distort like the mirage on a desert road and when he flicked his hand fully open a blinding flash came from three of the closest hovering drones. An intense wave of energy rippled through the air faster than he could react and the visible shockwave hit the man flipping him over on a backwards course; he splintered through the wooden door face first and upside down. If Marcus hadn’t cleared his head and moved quickly, he would have been crushed by the short Marine’s flying momentum.
During the planned chaos the remaining drones were efficiently herding the suited secret service agents away from James and his powerful swath of anger, or what he was pretending to be wrath. Growing up primarily among men, Isa knew how the alpha would demonstrate his strength. He definitely has tanker loads of buried rage to channel, but this certainly wasn’t his boiling point. However, he wanted to convince his current audience that he was furious, and doing an absolutely masterful job was only to be expected. She had something in common with the suits though; she could only watch blank faced as James quickly reached back for Marcus with his right hand and lifted him two feet from the ground. The same air distortion was around James’ hand as he held the frightened man above his head.
The head of Bruce Company was wearing his usual tight denim jeans and long sleeved untucked button down dress shirt. His stance was straight with his weight on the toes of the left brown leather casual shoe clad foot. It was slightly behind the right and made his left knee bend slightly and his yellow shirt was pulled high over his waist as he lifted the man. Isa could see thick muscles writhing under his jeans and the vacated shirt showed his tanned abdominal and oblique muscles clearly. The combination of James’ six foot two inch frame and long thick arms had Marcus pinned within a couple inches of the room’s ceiling.
“I asked you a fucking question, Captain! What were you doing with my wife?” James’ voice was different then. It was being projected the same way Flynn spoke to the room and Isa’s earpiece was gently vibrating a confirmation. Marcus looked to be in tears already and Isa could hardly blame him. James now sounded and looked much like the god he thought himself to be.
“Becca was asking her questions, she was supposed to be nice to her!” Marcus’ tone sounded like a child bringing home a bad report card to overbearing parents.
“Why wasn’t the interview on your closed circuit feed?” James began a string of back to back questions while still projecting his voice through Flynn’s audio.
“Why wasn’t she listed as a detainee?“
“Why did you not fucking listen to me when I told you she was in danger? I begged and pleaded with you to release her to my custody where I could protect her from Corinth. Now Volicorp has her and I will have to go to war with them to get my wife back alive!“
“I hate you stupid fucking government pissants!” James looked away from his eyes and lowered him slightly before shaking his head and, not quite done with his tirade, lifted him back to the ceiling. “You all fucking think you know what’s best for everyone! Like God stopped making rational minds once he made yours! How is the decision to detain Monica sitting with you now, dumb shit?” He pushed Marcus higher into the chaotic air and curled his left hand into a fist radiating the same physical air distortion as his right.
When she saw more drones take places behind him, she couldn’t take it anymore. “James!” Isa heard herself blurt out. “Please, put him down. He didn’t mean for Cuba to be taken. He’s sick and mad with grief over Mo. Please, just let him go home.”
James looked at her with remorse then back at the quivering man he was still holding high and dropped him. Marcus quickly scurried through the broken doors and his fast footfalls could still be heard for a few terrifying seconds before they finally muffled out as he slammed the door to the building’s stairwell. James looked back around to Miranda who had found a chair during the ordeal and was examining a fingernail over the top of her black framed glasses.
Sitting cross legged, she looked up at him over the rims of her glasses and asked; “you done?” Boredom was oozing from every line on her menacing skeletal face.
“Yes, quite.” James replied with his own voice and an increasing level of calm. “Get the Sergeant back to Washington – Use my jet and go with him. Attend whatever hearings the Senate will call you to and stall them until you hear from me. Once he comes to, make it very clear that he is not being detained unless he makes you. I trust you to do what you need to do. Don’t let any fighter jets near you. If they come too close you have kill clearance.” He looked towards the comically helpless secret service agents and added; “oh, take his lackeys with him, and they should understand that they are certainly being detained. Flynn?”
“Sir?”
“Detain any secret service personnel involved with this meeting without harming them. Treat them well and see to their wishes, but they are not to make any communications or come close to any weapons. Force is authorized as needed, and as always no one touches Miranda. Let no one see any unmanned weaponry unless the preservation of her life is in doubt or she is at risk of detainment! Understood?”
“Sir, it is my honor to protect Ms Cooper!“
“Excellent! Evacuate, lock down and quarantine this building and surrounding property then have Mr Scott Leblanc released into my personal care. Where are Alisha and Marcy?”
“Mistress Alisha is currently playing safely with her maternal grandparents at your leased dance studio. Ms Bergeron is clandestinely keeping vigil as she always does.“
“Okay, secure Marcy and Alisha instantly and see that our two Guardsmen are safely escorted home.” Pausing briefly, James looked towards the two frightened men still glued to their chairs by paralysing fear and continued.
“Make sure they understand how much we value the confidentiality of these events, and how much we discourage violation of our trust.”
“Also very politely detain Monica’s parents, and I mean – Very! Put them in my Crown Penthouse in the French Quarter and forbid any outside contact. Make them as comfortable as you would me, but keep them secure as you would a prisoner. As of now we are assuming Echo protocol.”
“As you wish, sir! Echo protocol acknowledged!“
“Isa,” James looked back at her to say. “Come walk with me, I’m guessing you have a few questions.”
Yes, questions… Let’s start with some questions. Isa had plenty of those pesky things swimming around in her mind.
*****
Miranda Cooper yawned and stretched her short frame as she stood from the luxurious leather office chair she acquired to watch the Bruce peacock show. She grabbed her hand full of documents, a small tablet PC, and her briefcase. She stepped lightly over the toppled chairs in the room to reach the broken and ruined set of wooden doors and stood over the still unconscious form of Gabriel Montgomery. A swift kick to the man’s side with an expensive violet heel forced a small grunt from his drooling mouth.
“I guess he’s alive, that’s… unfortunate.” She said with only marginal hints of humor. “Oh well, pick him up and let’s go.” The command was said to no one in particular, but after a few seconds she turned to the confused secret service personnel and cocked her head sideways with her free left hand resting on her hip.
“What are you waiting for? Pick him up and let’s go!” She said to them. They looked at each other, then back to her without really offering any indication that following her orders was of any importance to them.
That was until the first of them was shot.
A single stalker fired what looked to Isa like a standard bean bag pellet. It hit the large one that warned her not to tackle the Marine full in his dumb face. Isa managed to suffocate a laugh, but Miranda couldn’t care less. She doubled over in a full guffaw at the guy’s pain and pointed again to the unconscious advisor.
“As much fun as seeing you all shot in the face would be, we have work to do. Let’s go!” She wiped laughter tears from her face and pointed again. The remaining suits quickly came over and started picking the man up. One slowed to throw the stalker’s bean bag victim over his shoulder. James gave her an inverted nod towards the elevator and Isa began walking with him.
“What is Echo protocol? Or, do I even want to know?” She asked.
“Echo is defensive; I will only echo the aggression of an outside entity. But sadly, there will be aggression because the alpha predator has sensed a rival. The Joint Chiefs will be incensed that I had the audacity to lure Gabriel into a situation to harm him. I’m not the only peacock on the block – They will want to show me who’s boss” He answered without looking at her.
“He wouldn’t have been touched if he would have shut his stupid mouth and listened.” She followed.
“Stupid people don’t know they’re stupid, Isa. You know that. Thankfully their actions can usually be predicted.” His head was lowered as he walked, but he looked at her quickly and offered a half hearted smirk.
“You never intended to answer their questions did you?” She asked him as they made their way across the white marble of the floor’s atrium.
He stopped mid stride and looked back at what had become of the meeting. There was a hint of genuine sorrow in his eyes. “No, I would have had they actually been asked. I just knew he wouldn’t listen to a civilian. It truly is a mystery to me how I’m smart enough to build their weapons systems, but my judgment is akin to a child’s in his eyes when it comes to governmental ideals. Of course you realize I was merely trying to give the impression of real anger, but I meant what I said to your captain. They think they know what’s best for everyone. They don’t, Isa! That is what I am determined to change. That is what I will change!”
“I feel like I’ve made a mistake. Not that I really know what not making a mistake feels like by comparison.” She said to him as he caught back up to her. Then followed; “as in – I always tend to choose the wrong path. This one doesn’t seem any different so far. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m opening up to you like this. You’re essentially a diabolic evil genius trying to overthrow the government.”
“I don’t believe in mistakes.” He didn’t break his stride as he approached then walked passed her. His face was a neutral blank, but he kept talking. “The word mistake is such a negative way to address something that is both positive and essential to human evolution. You say mistake and I just say lesson. Everything we do, successful or not, is a lesson. You don’t always choose the wrong path – you choose the path that best fits your current level of development, and you learn. Those who choose against learning are stupid and I don’t waste my precious time worrying about them.”
They reached the elevator and, not surprisingly, the door was open waiting for them. After they stepped in he turned back towards the beautiful atrium. “It’s a shame that such beauty is wasted.” James said, and then made a noticeable eye gesture. The elevator doors closed as he continued; “Flynn, take us to the floor they have Mr Leblanc detained. Is he conscious?”
“Mr Leblanc, Sir?” Flynn answered in their earpieces.
“Yes, Mr Leblanc.” James answered through a deep sigh.
“Mr Leblanc’s vital signs are healthy. He is lying on an examination bed awake but unresponsive.” As Flynn spoke, James’ eyes were frantically reading from his SitHud.
“Okay, take us to him. See if you can get him lucid enough to talk.” James responded and after a couple of seconds the elevator began descending.
“Did your heads up tell you about his injury?” She asked.
“Yeah, yours would have too if you gave it the right commands. You’ll learn all of that in time. I’m not a believer in overwhelming people with instructions that they will forget within a few minutes.” She should have been offended by his answer, or would have been if it weren’t coming from him. He valued logic over feelings, and his statement was undeniably true.
Thoughts of how much information she saw earlier swirled in her mind prompting an embarrassing question; “James, were you using the SitHud when you first visited Monica downstairs?”
“Yes.” His answer brought with it the feelings of betrayal she had expected.
Slightly angered, she continued her thought; “so you knew who was and wasn’t attracted to you before you even spoke to me?”
“Yes, you all were.” His answers were giving her a cold chill of exposure. She expected he would lie, who would be so overt about their actions? Did he care if he hurt her? Her pain was evident and she knew well enough that trying to hide anything from him was useless. She leaned against the wall of the elevator and started crying into the heels of her hands.
“Isa, what is the difference between recognizing attraction on my own and calculating it within a heads up display? I wrote the algorithms that determine attraction to begin with.” He looked down at her and tenderly pulled her hands away from her face. “Finding you within this mayhem has been such a beacon of joy for me. I know you don’t trust me, which is a very wise action in itself, and I scare you. You don’t know me well enough to take me at my word, but I’m not evil, Isa; I’m dangerous, there is a difference. I’ve been wronged alongside you and everyone else under the heel of leaders more concerned with their own power and influence than the interests of their people. I have the power to free us, and it’s my duty to see it to the end.”
She looked up through tear choked eyes to see him smiling down at her. “This is scary, James.”
“I know. I’m frightened beyond all measure of my understanding.” The elevator slowed to a stop as he spoke, then the doors opened to the sterile smell of an infirmary hallway. They stepped out together and another bang of doubt entered her mind.
After a few meters out of the elevator she stopped and asked; “James, who killed Mo?”
“Pamela Corinth.” He said the name then turned back to face her. They both stood still in the white walled hallway for many heartbeats before he continued; “she is the COO of Volicorp Global, and Mo’s sister. On the side she moonlights as a bipolar sociopath.”
“How? She wasn’t there, I saw Weathers pull the gun!” It was nice to remember what true shock felt like.
“No, but one of her remote devices acted in her stead. You saw what you wanted to see.” He was standing in a pose that Isa was quickly learning meant that he was going to be delivering hard truths.
“Explain that!” She wasn’t about to budge from where she was standing now that she was getting answers.
“The two guardsmen that were in the meeting, how much do you know about their Timothy Weathers abduction debriefing?”
“Not much, Marcus was closed lip about it.” At her answer, James put his right hand across his forehead to apply pressure to his temples and shook his head.
“Okay, well if he was doing his job; he would have told you that they both saw a different camouflage on the face of the person who just strolled into the hospital and took Weathers.” A look of real disgust was evident on his face when he continued; “it’s quantum nanotech. Highly experimental and highly unstable. The tech is just about useless because of energy consumption and processing power requirements. It’s why I abandoned the research and sold it to Volicorp.”
“What?” She blurted out and blinked in astonishment.
“People don’t just hand out the resources needed to pursue a technology company to a fat divorcee without any sort of formal degree. I had to start somewhere, Isa.” His face was flat, but his tone sounded offended.
“What do you mean quantum? How did we see Weathers pulling a gun? How does any of this tie back to the DEA?” The bevy questions were streaming easily out of her.
“Quantum particles are in a constant state of having no state. They don’t congeal into anything until they are observed. Your eyes will trick you into thinking you are seeing what you want to see.”
“We didn’t want to see a gun drawn on us!”
“Think about that, Isa. A squad of adrenaline charged agents storming into a helpless man’s bedroom – you went in under the assumption he would be armed and dangerous. The nanotech just soothed your mind’s assumptions and put a gun in his hand. So yes, you wanted to see him armed. Your psyche couldn’t handle him not being a bad guy. They’re all bad guys, right?”
“Why were we there to begin with?” She asked, realizing it would be the question of the hour.
“Every transaction I ever made with Pamela Corinth was made as Timothy Weathers.” He paused for a long moment, lost in thought as though he were trying to find a way to tell his story. Satisfied, he continued; “Timothy Weathers married my ex-wife then proceeded to fund her all out legal assault to remove me from my child’s life! I was broke and broken. I had just lost the person I loved and trusted the most in this world. Trust me when I say that I had plenty of opportunities for lessons in those days. Finally, after a year of tortuous legal hell – I lost. I was relegated to an every other weekend dad while Timothy Weathers sat his fat ass on his couch enjoying my family! My family, Isa! Monica was actively trying to get the court to only allow me a few hours of supervised visitation a month! I have no concerns if Corrigan was hurting her! In fact, I very much hope she was!”
The opportunity to talk about the source of his continuous pain energized him. His face flushed and his voice got higher as he continued; “the DEA was a contingency plan to get Alisha away from them. The problem I had to sort through was that both plans worked. I didn’t expect that, nor did I know Corinth’s relationship with Mo. Heredity and family ties are now built into Flynn’s DNA processing algorithms, but they weren’t active during our initial planning stages; I can and do make unfortunate omissions from time to time.”
“Wait, back up the train! You framed Weathers?” She was mad now, which felt a lot better than being sad at least. “I studied the evidence, James. He was there – those images weren’t doctored! I fucking took a lot of them. The man was there!”
“Okay Isa, this is where you freak out. Please keep an open mind and try not to faint. Flynn, are we alone and free from recording devices?” James almost looked excited.
“Of course, Sir; though might I suggest against demonstrating Advanced Phantom Camouflage in such a public space.” Flynn actually sounded quite worried, for a machine.
“Let me worry about that, initiate APC – subject G117, Timothy Weathers.”
“Right away, Sir; camouflage mask active in five seconds.” As soon as Flynn acknowledged the order, a cloud of translucent material floated around James’ entire head. It swirled around and lost transparency until it completely obscured his features. Colors began to streak their way up, down and around the material as if they were being broadcast from the inside by tiny spotlights. A crude outline of a man’s face and hair formed then a bright thin line of white light started running up and down the features enhancing them with each pass until Timothy Weathers’ face replaced James’.
“Damnit Isa, I asked you not to faint!” Was all she heard from James in the Timothy Weathers mask before the cold green tiled floor jumped up to greet her.
*****
She was the real stalker.
She wasn’t made from whisper quiet servos and turbines. No, she was comprised of sinew, bone and brain. Hot blood raced its way through human arteries providing much needed oxygen to every agile cell in her taut, but at ease body. This was her domain, where she was free, and most importantly where she could forget.
High above the floor below, she sat on the darkened catwalk in a classical meditative pose with her legs crossed. Her back was arched inward to allow for better negative pressure to scrub the carbon from lungs as she breathed in and out with a slow cunning rhythm. She preferred meditation with her arms crossed over her modest breasts and her hands lightly caressing their opposing collar bone.
Thoughts fluttered into her mind and left as quickly as they came. The act of meditation wasn’t always a simple one for her, and during this particular attempt she was having extra difficulty grabbing one of the elusive focusing points as they slid out of the reach of her mind’s grasp. She was an adept though, and adepts aren’t allowed the recreation of failure. She further slowed her breathing and forced stillness into her overactive mind by practiced will. It was then, after she saw only blackness in her mind’s eye that a focus-able thought emerged. It was a familiar memory. A memory that she had focused on before, and should she survive the day; would likely focus on again.
Her eyes were furiously moving under her calm eyelids during the calming meditative trance. Images started pouring into her mind as if she were lying on her back and the memories were falling directly onto her face from an unseen faucet. Lights and darks mixed with greens, blues and reds. Involuntary smiles as well as painful grimaces raced their way across her delicate face. Then suddenly she was staring down at her own sitting form.
Scientifically the experience could be described as lucid dreaming. One of her first lessons after mastering the art was to understand that she couldn’t explore her surroundings to glean situational information. While, yes, she could consciously drift her way around the building; what she would see would only be based on her mind’s perception of its surroundings. Not the actual truth. So, the best thing to do was to sit and meditate on the thought that focused her mind enough to enable the lucid dream…
The brothers called the water a lake, but she didn’t believe them – lakes have an end. The dark water was all they could see until it joined hands with the bright white of the overcast sky. Sometimes they were given sunshine and a deep blue sky, but like most days – this was not the case. She didn’t mind though. Summer didn’t last long and it was warm enough to swim.
On the rare days when their lessons were completed and chores could wait, they were given a couple of hours of meditation training. She had no clue how playing with her fellow acolytes was supposed to teach her how to meditate, though. Some of the brothers would meditate for days at a time, only stopping once they were so near death they needed weeks in the infirmary to recover. Well, if this was how she would learn, it was the easiest of her lessons.
Other than the brother monks, there weren’t many other people living in the old hermitage. The eight children that comprised the non-shaman population sprinted down the stone carved steps when the hieromonk called for tegsh after their balance beam drills within the courtyard. By this point they were never chastised for running down the steps. Not one living soul among their teachers believed any of them would ever stumble or fall. Three boys and five girls there were, although she remembered a time when both totaled five.
They reached a shelf of rock cut under the cloister entrance in an ordered frenzy. There they nearly bowled over the man sitting cross legged on a well worn jut of rock spared by the ancient stone cutters pick; likely for the sole reason of sitting. Undisturbed by their exuberance, he sat facing the water with the hood of his dark brown robe pulled over his head with no real way for the children to identify him. Identity was not something the brother monks cared a great deal about. Not that it would matter anyway, not one of them carried a name. After what seemed like minutes, the robed figure pointed to another set of stairs carved into the stone and simply said. “Tegsh.”
With the careful restraint usually shown by a group of excited children, they ran down the stairs as fast as was allowed by the tenuous purchase their bare feet made on the hard rock. The stairs were not yet wet from the lake, which made their flight that much faster.
At the end of the stairs there was a small stone alcove no more than about ten meters square. It was nearly level with the water and protruded enough to allow diving from all three sides not facing the hard rock face. And dive they did. Most of them were naked before even reaching the bottom of the stairs while the rest soon followed. Not one missed even a single step as they wrenched off their tunics and breeches. They all launched their pale bodies into a graceful, head first leap into the cold dark water…
She expected to feel the cold water hit skin, but she continued floating on air for far too long… Then her dreamscape changed.
There were hundreds of miniature points of pain to remind her of where she landed. The boy feigned an overexertion and she foolishly took the bait. He was tall and probably carried the most muscle of any of them. Assuming that his size meant he was easily set off balance, she completely underestimated the large boy’s agility. After deftly deflecting his overhand slash with her off-hand dirk, she lanced forward with the pommel of her main-hand long blade into his bare rib cage with similar results one would expect against a stone pillar. His cut was powerful. She could never in a million tries actually block the attack, and her mistake was in believing that a momentum deflection would spoil what she believed to be an oaf-like balance.
Of course he wanted her to deflect the attack and he sold his misdirection to perfection with the power he had behind his large hand and a half bastard sword. Her cunning and speed were being used against her when she realized that her deft defense had placed her dirk facing down and away. Her futile blow to his midsection left her own fine long blade extended upward with no way to reverse it in time to intercept the strike she sensed would already be on its way to her now exposed abdomen.
So she did the only thing she could. She dropped her main hand sword.
It fell straight down and was immediately hit in the center by the boy’s heavy kill stroke. There was no skill involved in what happened next. Every second of her life that would follow would be owed to that instance of pure dumb luck. After being struck, the flat of her blade slammed into her chest as though she were standing in the path of an agitated and sprinting ox. The pommel hit her below the abdomen simultaneously and she found herself flying then falling towards the hard packed and pebble filled soil of the cloister grounds.
She landed hard and slid across the yard. The thin tunic she wore offered no protection from the small pebbles and she had to fight a scream as hundreds of tiny lesions opened across her back. Swallowing hard, she ignored the red hot pain and began using the momentum of her flight to roll into a back handspring and into an unarmed defensive stance.
A very large blur in her right peripheral instantly called her tactic into question.
The clever oaf had expected her back handspring and defied everything she had been learning about physics and mass to position himself for acrobatic single hand swing that would certainly relieve her burden of having to carry around a heavy head everywhere she went.
Perpendicular to the ground now, she made the choice to simply slacken her elbows and fall headfirst towards the cold black earth. She rolled forward and felt the wind from the kid’s arching attack that should have intercepted her at the neck had she continued to vault herself from her hands to her feet. The idea that it would have been an extremely graceful way to die left her with little solace.
The attack cost him a lot of balance, enough so that she had enough room to roll between the oak trees he used for legs and his readjustment gave her enough time on the ground to turn her body back toward his now increasingly frantic form. The disbelief was evident on his reddened barely pubescent face. He thought he had her, and by all rights he should have had her. When he brought the bastard sword around for a partial defense, he had less than a second of precious life left.
She had powerful legs curled under her thin frame and used every last ounce of their reserve energy to catapult herself into the air. Her bare feet and muscled calves arched gracefully upward and over her head as she straightened then curved her body backwards. Then she felt the satisfying heat of the boy’s hamfisted grip on the ball of her left foot. He was the strongest person she knew, but even his thick swordsman’s wrists could not counter the mechanical advantage of her backwards summersault. Once she knew the purchase her foot had on his grip was solid, she continued to fully extend her body. Arching her back and extending her arms towards the ground gave her the leverage she needed to push the T shape of the large blade’s hilt into the poor lad’s right eye socket.
It went in easier than she thought it should have, and the loud pop rang in her mind as she finished her graceful backwards round off in a balanced crouch facing the large boy turned corpse. His was the first corpse she had ever made, but something deep inside of her was finally satisfied. She knew then that she would continue making corpses until one day someone would make one of her. The dead boy was still standing when the smile edged itself through caked dirt and grit on her face. The unlucky sot somehow found the way with all to seek her out with his left eye before realizing he needed the bits of brain destroyed by the heavy metal lodged in his skull to stand. A small trickle of bright red blood finally escaped the ruined eye socket before he finally fell forward. His height made her spring out of the way, or be sliced into halves by the side long heavy sword he still held tightly with both hands and an eye…
Her eyes snapped open. She doesn’t really know why, but she always seemed to wake up before the large body slammed into the dirt.
“Ms Bergeron, your SitHud will be active in fifteen seconds.“