The Warning

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Why … have you come back?” she asked.

  “We’ve come to put an end to Linden’s work. Do you know that he’s hiding something in the East Wing?”

  “Of course I do, but whatever it is, he’s kept everyone, even me, from entering the area.”

  “I have to go there. I won’t kill him.”

  “But you’ve killed so many already.”

  “They had guns.”

  She considered his point. They might have human feelings, but they’d been programmed to kill anyone who attacked them. And the need to defend oneself was part of the basic instinct of being human.

  Before she could say anything, she heard a voice from behind. “It’s okay, Doctor Waver.”

  The sight of Christos approaching stole her breath. The boy wore casual clothing and carried a backpack. A motherly instinct came over her to protect him. “Christos, get out of here!”

  The boy ignored her and continued toward them. He looked up at Seven and said, “I’m glad to see you made it.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” Seven said with a smile.

  Waver’s eyes widened. “You two know each other?”

  “Yes,” Christos said. “I was the one who helped them escape.”

  Her jaw dropped in utter amazement. Her head spun as though she was looking down from dizzying heights. “You! But … why?”

  “We don’t have time to explain,” Seven cut in. “We need to reach Linden before he does something drastic.”

  “Go ahead,” Christos urged her. “Take him to the East Wing.”

  Sakura watched the footage stored on the MIR card in the back of the van. I can’t believe this. They’re actually planning to wage war against this country?

  She recognized the two men on screen, but wondered who the third one was. Oh, my God, it’s Sho!

  “This can’t be real,” she argued when the screen went blank.

  “Keep watching,” Crowe said, sitting next to her.

  She turned back to the monitor as Jade Sho appeared. “She filmed this?” She turned to Crowe. His head was lowered and she noticed the pain in his half-open eyes. For a moment she believed the guilt of killing his ex weighed heavily on him, but a little voice told her that his pain was something else entirely. She focused back on the screen and watched the rest of the footage.

  “She could have used CG to put the faces on other people’s bodies,” Kenny suggested, sitting behind them. “It’s easy.”

  Crowe whipped his head around. “Why the hell would she do something like that?”

  Kenny shrugged. “It’s common knowledge that she and her father weren’t close. Maybe she wanted to hurt him in the worst way she could.”

  Crowe threw a punch and knocked Kenny off his stool. Marko grabbed Crowe and held him in a bear hug when he tried lunging at the cameraman.

  “She didn’t risk her life over a lie!” Crowe yelled. “She wasn’t like that, you fucking asshole!”

  Kenny scooted toward the doors.

  “Easy, Crowe,” Marko said, holding him back.

  “What are you saying?” Sakura cut in, ignoring the confrontation. “That you’ve been framed for Jade Sho’s murder?”

  He looked over at her, his face burning. Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself. “Yes.”

  Marko released him and took a file folder from his backpack. “The footage is legit,” he assured, handing the folder over. “This file contains the names of the people involved in contributing money towards buying weapons for war.”

  She scanned the information in the file. There were hundreds of names, many she recognized. Names, occupations, addresses, and the amount of money they’d contributed were all there in black and white.

  “My God,” she gasped, “you’re right. I … I can’t believe it. But how was the money raised without drawing attention from the FBI?”

  “Look at the pink sheets,” Marko said.

  She flipped to the back half and read off the names of New York City businesses, hospitals, and churches. She looked up at Marko in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “The names in the front half weren’t the only ones donating money towards weapons. We need to get this out to the public as soon as possible. The people of this country need to know what’s on the way. In the meantime, it’ll clear Nikolai’s name.”

  She gazed over at Crowe, whose expression was earnest yet pleading.

  “Will you help us?” Marko asked.

  I’d be crazy to pass this up.

  It took Kenny only a few minutes to set up his camera.

  Crowe sat on one of the stools in the van, waiting for his cue. Sakura stayed close, taking in what she’d heard.

  He was right; this is the story of the century. After tonight, I’m going to get a seat at the anchor desk for sure.

  “Ready when you are,” Kenny said from behind his camera.

  Crowe let out a nervous sigh before nodding. “I’m ready.”

  “Okay, in three … two …”

  A bright light washed over Crowe as the camera began recording. He hesitated for a second before speaking.

  * * * * *

  Waver led Seven and Christos through the lab. They reached the East Wing and hurried down the hallway to the elevator at the end. When she stopped in front of the door, she tried to access it with her identification card, but the automatic lock buzzed in decline. Her expression soured at the flashing red light.

  “I didn’t think my card would work,” she admitted. “This area is restricted to everyone except Linden.”

  Seven handed her his rifle. “Hold this.”

  She wrapped both arms around the weapon as the sheer weight of it forced her against the wall. As she struggled to hold the bulky weapon, Seven ripped the steel shell off the automatic lock and played with the wires inside. The light switched from red to green and the doors slid open. He took the rifle from her as he and Christos stepped inside.

  “You can come if you want,” he offered.

  She hesitated before following them into the elevator. I’ve worked with the bastard all this time. I have the right to know.

  When she joined them, he pressed one of only two buttons available. She stood between the Replicas and as the doors slid shut, a bad feeling started creeping into her gut.

  The camera light went off after Nikolai finished speaking. He had said everything he needed to in one take.

  “How long before this airs?” Marko asked.

  “The footage has to be e-mailed to editing at the station,” Sakura said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.” To Kenny, she said, “E-mail everything to Lee.”

  Nikolai stood and left the van. Outside, he smelled cigarette smoke and followed the scent to the side of the van, where Kip and a young woman smoked.

  “Can I have one of those?” he asked the woman, throwing the hood over his head.

  She handed him her pack.

  “Thanks,” he said as Kip flicked his lighter. He leaned over the flame with the cigarette in his mouth, then rose to his full height and inhaled smoke into his lungs. It had been a year since he’d had a cigarette. Jade had convinced him to give up the habit. Smoking it made him lightheaded and a bit sick to the stomach.

  “Um, sorry, I never caught your name,” he said to the woman.

  “Her name’s Mockingbird,” Kip answered. “She can’t talk, ’cause of a cyst on her vocal cord as a kid.”

  “Oh,” he said, turning back to her. “Sorry.”

  She just smiled and shrugged. He took another drag.

  “You okay?” Kip asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, kicking an empty aluminum can. “Just tired. It’s been a hell of a long day.”

  “Yeah,” Dog said, coming up to them. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “No doubt,” Kip agreed. “We’re all grateful for whatcha done for us tonight. Jade would’ve been proud.”

  He gave them both an exhausted smile of appreciation.

  �
��Nikolai.”

  He turned to Sakura.

  “I wanted to tell you that you’ve done a brave thing.”

  “Thanks,” he said, lifting the cigarette to his lips.

  “When this story is aired, I’m sure you’ll be cleared of the charges against you.”

  A great pressure lifted off him as if he’d been stuck under a slab of concrete. Once they got the truth out, a chain reaction would begin to flush out the guilty, proving his innocence. He could then turn himself in without the fear of being killed by a bunch of crooked cops.

  His phone rang a few times before it registered that it came from him. Taking out the hospital phone, he read an unfamiliar number on the screen. “Jean?”

  “Nikolai,” she said on the other end. “I need you to come to my place. It’s urgent.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  Before he could respond, she hung up. He pulled the phone from his ear as Marko exited from the back of the van. “Kenny is about to e-mail the footage over to the station.”

  “I need to get to my sister’s place in Morningside.” he said to Marko, pocketing the phone.

  “You do like to press your luck, don’t you? All right, we’ll take you.”

  Kenny waited by the computer for the footage to upload. His face throbbed where Crowe had struck him, making him feel like a punished animal that had misbehaved. He heard the van’s engine crank up. Looking toward the driver’s seat, he saw Sakura behind the wheel. “What are you doing?”

  “I just overheard Nikolai speaking to his sister. We’re going to follow him to her place.”

  “What about the story?”

  “Just make sure Lee gets it,” she said, shifting the van into gear. “I have a feeling our business with Nikolai isn’t over yet.”

  “What makes you say that?” He really didn’t want to see Crowe again anytime soon.

  “Let’s just say that for the first time, I know what Knox must feel like whenever he has one of his little hunches. I think something big is going to happen, and I want to be there when it does.”

  The Betas cautiously entered the dark Programming room and fanned out. Shattered monitors and other broken computer parts crunched under their feet. Model One stopped and raised her eyes to an overhead walkway where a shadow loomed. Without a thought, she raised her rifle and began firing. While her actions distracted the others, the Alphas shot up from their hiding places and opened fire.

  The female Beta realized it was a decoy and rushed out of the path of bullets. Model Four of the Alphas kept firing as she bolted toward him. She grabbed him by the throat, raised her handgun, and squeezed the trigger point blank at his chest. Four gasped, and she shoved him toward the wall.

  Feeling a rush that she never experienced before, she thirsted to relive the sensation. Something powerful had come over her, and she charged back into the battle, looking for more kills.

  The doors slid apart after the elevator came to a halt. Ebenezer exited first, scanning the room for anyone who might be in sight. The coast was clear and he moved forward with Waver and Christos behind him. They entered a long room with one window in front of the elevator. A single door was located to the far right. Ebenezer approached the glass and sighed as Waver came up beside him. The sight struck a blow to her chest, knocking the wind out of her.

  Sixteen hundred Replicas were lined head to toe, side by side, throughout the entire room, like a warehouse of zombies, each of them unconscious. Eighty rows of Replicas lay on stainless steel slabs in sets of twenty identical clones. Plugs were implanted in their temples and connected to individual computers beside them.

  The room was half the size of an aircraft hangar. On a steel platform in the back were four blocks embedded in the wall, two on top and two directly below those. Inside the cubes were twenty-one-inch monitors with a keyboard resting on a shelf between the four cubes.

  This was the East Wing, the secret place Linden had been willing to sacrifice so many lives to protect.

  Waver stood aghast. “What the hell is he planning on doing?

  Chapter 21

  Jean hung her coat up in her locker. Her exhausting shift had finally come to an end. She worried about her baby brother, who was out there somewhere, surrounded by danger. Whenever the thought of losing him came to mind, the acid in her stomach went round and round, like clothes in a dryer. Her job had kept her distracted, but she expected someone to come by with news of his death at any moment.

  “Doctor Crowe?”

  Knox entered the room and her heart skipped a beat, causing her voice to catch in her throat. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Just tell me.”

  He stopped beside her open locker. “I don’t know. No one seems to know where he is.”

  She buried her face in her hand. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  He leaned over a bit and whispered, “I know he’s innocent.”

  It took a moment to process those shocking words in her head. She turned to him as she brought out her backpack. “What? How do you know that?”

  He glanced at the door. “I can’t tell you the details here, but I have three witnesses who can verify it.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “I need to find him. I know you gave him a phone. Don’t worry,” he assured quickly, “no one needs to find out that you helped him.”

  Shaking her head, and the look off her face, she turned away, slipping the straps of her backpack over her shoulders. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to turn him in.” She slammed the locker and walked past him.

  He gently caught her arm. “As long as he’s out there, he’s at risk of getting himself killed. Do you want his death on your conscience?”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she said, shaking off his hand. “For all I know, you’re trying to use me to trap him.”

  He produced a voice recorder and pressed PLAY.

  “I … I was chosen because I have the same physique as him,” a voice said.

  “As who? I need details.”

  “As Nikolai Crowe. He and I are nearly the same age and height. The outline of my face matched his. All I needed to do was to grow my hair out and color it, get a nose job, reshape my chin a bit, put in blue contacts, and I was a spot on. I’d been instructed to go to the girl’s apartment and make sure I was caught on camera when I entered the building …”

  Knox clicked the recorder off. She took advantage of the silence to absorb what she’d heard.

  “That’s the voice of one of the men responsible for Jade Sho’s death.”

  Confusion grabbed her. “I don’t understand. What was that man talking about?”

  “It isn’t safe to talk here.” He shoved the recorder into his pocket. “But your brother will get killed if he stays on the run much longer. Help me find him. I can protect him. You have to trust me.”

  She stared into his eyes, trying to read his thoughts. She lowered her head in thought when she couldn’t continue the inspection. What if what he says is true and he does have witnesses? How can I live with myself if I stand by and do nothing?

  “Will you help me?” he asked.

  She hesitated a moment longer, then raised her chin to meet his gaze. “Yes, I’ll help you find him.”

  Geiger and Cooper waited in the hospital garage, parked a half dozen cars down from Jean Crowe’s car.

  “Look,” Geiger said when he spotted her in the next row of cars. “There she is.”

  “This is a waste of time,” Cooper groaned. “Crowe isn’t stupid enough to come anywhere near her. Don’t know why we have to be on this stakeout.”

  Geiger was about to agree when he saw who appeared next. “Holy shit. Look who it is.”

  “Huh,” Cooper said mildly. “Looks like we might be onto something after all.”

  He waited until Doctor Crowe pulled out from her parking space before he cranked the engine and followed.

  Knox played the entire confes
sion as Jean drove toward her apartment building. Once the recording ended, he clicked the device off.

  “Someone paid a plastic surgeon to reconstruct this guy’s face to look like Nikolai, and another person killed Jade?”

  “That’s what I’ve uncovered. I can’t tell you who’s behind it—not now—but I can tell you that your brother is innocent.”

  He was mesmerized by her beauty. Although the sight of her captivated him, he kept his expression serious, telling her only that he needed her help. Playing the recording had convinced her to do that and she produced her cell phone.

  He grabbed her wrist. “Wait. When he came to you, did he mention anyone else was with him?”

  “You saw it too?”

  He slid his hand off hers. “It could complicate matters if that thing is with him.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, dialing a number and putting the phone on speaker. “It’s not around him anymore.”

  The phone rang a few times before Nikolai answered. “Jean?”

  “I need you come to my place. It’s urgent.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.” She pressed END before he could reply and tossed the phone into the backseat of the car. “There. It’s done.”

  “Is he going to show?”

  “He’s my brother,” she said simply. “He’ll show.”

  Nikolai rode in the passenger seat as Marko drove. Roadblocks covered several roads, mostly main thoroughfares, but they had plenty of vacant back streets to slip by on.

  With the help of Dog and his laptop, they were able to bypass at least four roadblocks. He used real-time satellite to navigate around every roadblock between East Harlem and Morningside Heights.