by David Brush
“I’m telling you right now, there’s no way in hell that kid made that. They’ve got a new chemist somewhere and we need to get our hands on him before he does some serious damage.”
“A chemical prodigy isn’t unheard of.”
“You aside, I have trouble believing that kid is capable of this. According to the report I got back from Central Intelligence, his name is James Mercer and he just turned eighteen. He’s actually an employee… errr, former employee of Neuro Corp. The kid disappeared with his girlfriend and fellow employee, Haley Hall, a few days before his birthday. That’s her in the video with him.”
Nightrick’s brow furrowed a touch. “Hardly a coincidence, the CLF preys on that dividing line. What project were they working on before they disappeared?”
“Apparently they were assigned to the IMMORTAL Initiative, project 2137, working under Dr. Omar Karich on photosynthetic cells.”
“Really?” said Nightrick, leaning back in his chair. “I haven’t seen Omar in ages. Perhaps it’s time we caught up. Does Mercer have any family that might be able to help us locate him?”
“Report says he’s an orphan, adopted by Dr. Karich at age six.”
“Adopted? Omar never mentioned anything to me about a son. How curious. Bring him to the Charon Detention Facility. I’ll be on my way there shortly. I want to meet this James Mercer.”
Megan and Matt approached James and Haley as they keyed their way out of the large lab in Fort Condat.
“Hey, guys,” said Matt with a friendly nod. “What’s up?”
“Oh, just unwillingly helping our slave driver mass produce the compound I designed,” said James with a sigh. “What about you two? You seem…happy?”
Matt smiled. “We finally found him. We found the bastard.”
“Found who?” replied James, sliding his keycard into the front pocket of his lab coat. “What are you talking about?”
“Dr. Hernan Cortez, the chemist responsible for killing my brother,” said Megan. “Or as he’s known now, Dr. Truman. Nine years ago that asshole was responsible for overseeing Inductions in my hometown of Claynor. If you were to do a search on him now, you wouldn’t find much, except that he’d been assassinated five years ago by Crusaders. That would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that he’s alive and well and responsible for literally hundreds of short-outs that could have been avoided. See, Hernan liked to amp up the volume of the chemicals that he used in the procedure so that many of his patients suffered strokes following the treatment, my brother and his wife among them. While short-outs were fairly common back then, his rate was nearly fifty percent, and it didn’t take long for him to catch the eye of his superiors. The sadistic animal was carted off to prison, where he was supposedly killed during an attack by the Crusaders. However, two years ago a defector from Neuro Corp let us in on a little secret. Hernan didn’t die that night. Instead, he simply vanished into thin air and no one had any clue where he’d gone. Until now, that is.”
Haley raised her eyebrow. “Well where is he?”
Megan leaned in a little bit. “From what we’ve gathered, he’s serving as the head scientist at the Atria Plant now. I owe Dr. Truman a visit. Only problem is we’d never be able to break into the plant and kill him there. The place is literally a fortress. It would take a full army to even begin to mount an attack. But going there won’t be necessary. We have it on good authority that Truman is traveling out towards the Valker Plant in three days to help oversee the next phase of reconstruction. We’re going to intercept him en route and show him that though he was gone, he was never forgotten.”
“And how exactly did you find this out?” asked James, trying his best to avoid frowning.
“Nightrick isn’t the only one with spies. I don’t know if the intel is any good or not, but I’m not going risk letting that bastard get away again. My brother deserves justice. Now usually we’d put a strike team together for this sort of thing, but given the target, we need to keep everything hush-hush. Truman is too high priority, and if he catches wind of anything, he’ll either avoid making the trip or bring a larger force. Either way, it’ll put him out of reach. I need people I can trust. We’re going to be surgical about this.”
“Well then…,” James replied with a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Looks like it’s back into the field.”
CHAPTER SIX
Megan and Matt continued their grueling descent down the steep, rocky hill towards the abandoned highway below. The desert camouflage the two had donned danced lightly in the warm wind blowing down through the elevations on either side of the road. Overhead, the sun beat down in an unforgiving torrent of heat.
Matt wiped away a bead of sweat that was dripping down onto the thick, dark-lensed goggles he had positioned on his face. “If we don’t get down there soon, I’m going to vomit. Why the hell did James and Haley get to stay with the jeep while I had to come down here with you?”
“Well,” Megan started. “Probably because James and Haley have never set up a laser relay before, but you have. Having them come down here with me would be pointless.”
Matt grunted. “It’s not rocket science, Megan. You just position the two nodes on either side of the highway, make sure they’re perfectly aligned, and program the desired height.”
“And if they’re not aligned properly, the weapon won’t activate and Dr. Truman will drive right through unhindered, which is why you’re here and they’re not. Now stop bitching, you’re wasting energy.”
“Pshh, whatever. I still can’t believe Command is letting us try this. You must be closer with General Harkon than you let on,” said Matt as he huffed his way down the last stretch of the descent. The duo paused for a moment, taking in the barren road shadowed by the cliffs looming over it.
“It wasn’t Harkon that authorized the attack, it was Commander Fluron. He probably appreciates that we’re not going to get another shot at Truman while he’s this exposed.”
“That might be it. Or maybe he’s hoping to get rid of us,” laughed Matt.
Megan smiled. “Or one of us anyway. Alright, this should be good. If we can tuck these in at the bend here, they’ll be practically invisible.”
She tossed Matt one of the two metallic nodes out of her rucksack. Snatching it out of the air, he examined the cylinder for a moment, then crossed the single lane highway that led through the pass. A sharp spike jutted out from the bottom of the instrument, and a circular indent with a thin metal tube rested near the top. He stuck the cylinder into the ground and tapped his datacuff, bringing the node online.
“OK,” he said. “Ready for alignment?”
“Roger,” she replied, swiping her finger across the display on her own datacuff. “Relays are synchronizing. Move yours left by five degrees.”
Matt tapped the command into his cuff, then swiveled the metallic cylinder until his readout flashed. “Should be good. Input the height and give it a shot.”
Megan’s finger flourished across the display, bringing the relay online.
The two cylinders shot up on either side of the highway and fired off a high powered laser line that would bisect any vehicles coming through the pass when activated. After ten seconds, the beam faded and the spikes on the nodes began to retract, returning the cylinders to their original height, just protruding above the sandy surface.
Megan nodded. “OK, I think we’re ready. Now all we need is Dr. Truman.”
James and Haley sat huddled together near the lightless generator that was emitting a cozy heat into the frigid night air near the jeep that they had arrived in. Overhead, the moon and the stars shone brightly down through the cloudless sky. James looked around at the open expanse stretching far away from the plateau. Only sand and darkness met his gaze. He smiled as he felt Haley shift a little closer, resting her head against his chest.
“Happy birthday,” he said, putting his arm around her. “I wish we were somewhere nicer to celebrate. Eighteen is a big one.”
“Where wo
uld you have taken me?” she asked, looking up at him with a smile.
“Oh, I’d probably have given you a pack of smokes and a bottle of bourbon, and we’d have gotten drunk on your porch,” he said with a big grin.
“Stop,” she laughed, hitting his chest lightly. “It’s too romantic.”
“I know, I know. I’m a real sweetheart. But seriously, I was thinking maybe we’d have had lunch in Kingswood Park, underneath the giant oak tree where we met. Then I probably would’ve have taken you across town to that gallery they were building when we left. I’m sure it’s open by now. You’d have loved the paintings, I bet, and I would’ve pretended to, because I love you. After that, I’m guessing we would’ve gone back to your place, and lay out in the backyard like we used to, staring up at the stars all night and dreaming about visiting them one day. I guess we get to do one of those things at least.”
“I’m just happy that we’re here together. We made the right choice.”
“Here,” he said, leaning over and reaching into his rucksack. “I got you something. It’s not much, but I hope you like it.” He pulled a small book out and handed it to her. “It’s a brief history of Coren. I would’ve gotten you something nicer, but…”
“I love it,” she said, flipping through the pages for a moment before setting it down. “It’s perfect. I can’t wait to read it when we get back to base.”
He gave a small nod, but the smile had faded.
She studied his face for a moment. “What’s wrong, babe?”
“It’s just… I don’t know how I feel about all this, Haley. Is this really who we are now? We just drive around killing random people?”
“The man’s a murderer,” she responded, looking into his eyes. “The world will be better off without him.”
“I hate to break this to you, but we’re not exactly innocent anymore either. Who are we to decide whether this man lives or dies now? I don’t even know who I am anymore, Haley, or who I’m becoming. I don’t think this war is ever going to end by us slaughtering each other. There are no spoils of war if everything burns along the path to victory. This is nothing like we planned it.”
“We always talked about the future like we had one already. But we were never guaranteed a future. We have to earn it. If we don’t fight the war now, while we can, then there won’t be a future for us.”
James sighed. “You know as well as I do that we can’t go back to Fort Condat after this. Our time in the CLF is done.”
“I know. Once they realize that the formula we gave them for the hypervolatilizer is unstable, they’ll probably kill both of us.”
James nodded. “Unstable is an understatement. With the Corrak catalyst, that formulation probably has a half-life of around two minutes. I’ve been telling them for weeks not to use any of the compound that they’ve been synthesizing because it has to age before it gains full stability, but I can tell they don’t believe me. They’ve produced tons and tons of the stuff, Haley. When they realize that they’ve been mass producing nothing more than a useless solvent, we’ll be lucky if all they do is kill us. Once Dr. Truman is dead, we have to get away. I think it’s best if we don’t tell Megan and Matt.”
“I agree.”
“So where will we go? I’ve been thinking maybe we could go back to Dunton, for a little while at least. It’d be nice to get home, even if it is just for a short visit.”
“And be detained? I don’t think so, James. We need to find our way into the Free Thought Brigade. That’s probably our best option right now. At least there we should be relatively safe until we can figure out a better plan. They’ve been operating on the outskirts of the country for years. They’re hardly on anyone’s radar anymore.”
James moved to argue, but before he could get a word out, Haley pulled him in, pressing her soft lips up against his. When they finally separated, she lay down on the blanket next to him.
“Guess that’s that,” he mumbled, leaning back. He put his arm around her and closed his eyes, falling into a trance-like sleep.
The young chemist found himself looking out across an empty vacuum, floating freely in the ether. There, in the distance, he could make out a fire dancing wildly through the abyss. He willed himself towards the light, and his body responded by swimming into the flames. As he drew nearer, he could tell that the source of the blazing fire was Haley, her hair burning brilliantly without being consumed in the inferno. Her back was turned to him as he floated up next to her. He reached out for her shoulder, fearing the inevitable approach of her melting visage, as the chemicals began to warp his reality. But to his horror, as he turned her around, his eyes met her once turquoise stare, now dulled by the glaze that coated it. He spun around to face the mirror, only to find that it was he who was melting away this time. His features slowly oozed off of his face as he looked on in disgust. He tried stopping the flow with his hands, but he couldn’t halt the current no matter what he did. The flesh just kept slowly slopping down until it reached a deep, viscous sag, and then it began to rescind back onto his head. When the last of the tannish goo had solidified, he looked out on himself again. This time he recognized his features, but they were blurry and distorted, as though he’d never be seen correctly again.
He woke up in a frenzied panic, shooting onto his feet as fast as his body could manage it. His heart raced as he looked out over the mesa, into the darkness. To his relief, he saw the light emanating from his friends’ equipment as they trudged back into sight of the camp.
“Whoa, bud, relax, it’s just us,” said Matt, breathing heavy as he walked over and set his pack down near the truck.
“Sorry,” mumbled James. “Must’ve been dreaming.”
Matt smiled. “Lucky bastard, getting to sleep. I’ve spent the day on a lovely hike with Megan here, who needs a surprising amount of breaks for someone who likes to bust my balls about fitness.”
Megan set her pack down next to Matt’s. “Matt, I offered you those breaks because I didn’t think I’d be able to carry your ass up that incline if you finally gave out halfway up.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh I’m sure.”
“Look, why don’t you two get some sleep,” said James. “I’ll stay up for a while.”
Matt patted him on the back. “Much appreciated, brother.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Megan, walking over to her sleeping bag.
And so James sat down, alone in the camp for what felt like an eternity, watching the sun rise in a cascade of pink and red. He barely noticed it as he reflected on the return of his nightmares. Haley woke up a few hours later and joined him for a modest breakfast. They ate their bland cereal in silence, with an unspoken understanding floating between them. By midday, he had returned to normal, laughing and teasing like he always did, but as twilight approached, he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He dozed off as Matt and Megan began their third game of chess for the evening. Just as he started to float through the vacuum that he so loathed, he felt himself being shaken. He woke up with a start, looking out across the plain at headlights approaching.
“This is bad,” said Matt, who had woken him up. “No one should be out here, especially this goddamn late. It’s nearly four a.m. The convoy must have sent out scouts.”
Megan had already taken up a firing position behind one of the heavy truck doors, with Haley on the opposite side cradling her own coil rifle.
“Shit,” James said as he wiped the sleep out of his eyes and reached for his own weapon.
“Put your damn guns down. Are you guys crazy?” hissed Matt at the group. “If they alert Truman’s convey, we’re never going to get another chance at him. Just let me do the talking here. I’m great under pressure.”
Megan rolled her eyes, but lowered her weapon all the same. “Fine, I’ll jam their transmission signal and prep an all clear ping, just in case your no doubt brilliant brand of diplomacy goes tits up.”
She leaned into the truck and started fidgeting with her datacuff while Hale
y and James quickly covered their rifles with blankets nearby. As the charcoal black, armored truck pulled up, Matt approached the vehicle with a friendly smile. Two equally black-clad soldiers hopped out, wearing the signature fatigues of Special Branch. The men were relatively unarmored, not bothering with the usual full suits of plate or helmets. They had handguns holstered to their sides, but didn’t concern themselves with anything bigger.
“Gentlemen!” Matt started. “How can we…” One of the men grabbed him by the arm and swung him around, slamming him hard into the hood of their armored truck. Pinned down and with the wind knocked out of him, Matt did his best to continue.
“I believe there must be some misunderstanding,” he huffed out with what little air he could spare. “How can we help you on this lovely evening?”
“You’re all being detained,” said the soldier who was pinning him to the truck.
“For what exactly?”
“For breaking curfew and suspicious activity. You have no business being out here in the middle of the night.”
“We’re camping. Come on, guy, cut us some sla…”
Matt felt the soldier pull him off of the hood and knee him square in the chest, knocking the newly returned air back out of him. He gave a pathetic wheeze as he fell over onto the ground. The soldier moved to kick him, but Megan was quick on the draw. She tapped the all clear ping on her datacuff, then leaned back into the truck and pulled her concealed rifle out of the driver’s seat. Leveling the weapon, she opened fire on the soldiers. Both men drew their pistols and returned fire, quickly moving to cover behind their own vehicle, leaving Matt squirming along on the ground.