Walter pointed to the screen and said,
“You have more there. What is it?”
Glad to explain, mostly glad to show that he was not just sitting on his butt passing the time, Isaac proudly continued,
“My connections at the University confirmed that although the equations were incomplete and dysfunctional they nevertheless touched on a new science called Refractive Matter Energy Phase Shifting.”
Knowing that the Sheriff would not understand, he looked up at him and explained,
“That’s just science speak for dimensional portals. The university scientists had to make it sound complicated in order to get funding.”
Although Walter’s glare demonstrated ‘smart ass’ he was nevertheless impressed and asked,
“So you think the missing children got lost in some sort of a different dimension?”
Isaac laughed and said,
“No sir, that’s a little too science fiction for rational police work. What makes it interesting is how all three children would know that same complicated math. There was correlation between what all three parents referred to as meaningless scribbling. Some lines of the equations were even identical.”
Impressed, Walter drew a conclusion.
“Clearly there has to be a connection between all three.”
“Well that’s just it. And I think I have located that connection.”
As his fingers blurred over the key pad, the screen went into scroll mod. When it stopped, on the screen was a picture of a woman. He pointed and said,
“This is Doctor Fran Jorden, a psychologist specializing in diagnosis and treatment of children’s mental and emotional distress. All three missing children were clients of hers. Here’s the good part, she admitted that she was paid to report children of a specific mental aptitude to the Factory, that so-called National Satellite Weather Research Station up on Copper Mountain.”
Looking hard at the picture of the Doctor, he asked,
“Where is her office? I think I’ll have a little chat with that woman.”
“Well,” said Isaac, “that’s another reason to tie her into this case. She shut her office down and if you pardon the expression, got the hell out of Dodge. I located her over in Valley North. Although denying she knew what the Factory was doing with the names she gave them, she admitted that she identified those specifically troubled children to the people up there.”
“You mean the children who wrote all that stuff on their walls.”
Isaac nodded and Walter asked,
“So that’s where this doctor is now, over in Valley North?”
“No sir. This is where the story gets interesting. On my advice, she moved her family over to her parents in Willow Brook. The following morning, the caretaker in Valley North noticed the trailer door was open and went in to investigate what he thought might be a robbery. That is when he discovered a pillow on her bed with bullet holes in it.”
After a thought, Walter drew the correct conclusion.
“So the people up in the Factory are obviously playing hard ball. Is she still in Willow Brook?”
“No, with a promise to testify against the Factory, I got her into the Witness Protection Program.”
“Good work rookie. Keep her there until we need that testimony.”
Walter then got to the real reason he walked over to see Isaac. He patted him on the shoulder and said,
“Come into my office, I want your opinion on a surveillance tape.”
Naïve to the real reason, Isaac was pleased for the slight promotion. Now inside the office an awkward moment presented itself. Isaac waited for him to sit at his desk but Walter said,
“No, sit down. I’ll tell you what to look for.”
Isaac fell into the trap, sat in the Sheriff’s chair stared at a blank screen. Walter pointed to it and said,
“Fire it up and tell me what you see.”
As soon as the screen lit up, Isaac saw the video Mr. Crow had taken of the invasion of Ruth Albright’s house. The one the nine year old girl had emailed to him. Isaac intently watched as the large truck trying to squeeze into the narrow driveway knocked over a corner of her fence. He saw men securing the perimeter of the house and move in and out of it. Isaac commented,
“They don’t look or act very professional.”
“No,” said Walter. “I think they are a private militia hired as security for the Factory.”
Isaac thought that was strange and said,
“And yet the Factory is supposed to be a Government operation. If it really was, then the security would be an army of professionals.”
Walter commented,
“Exactly.”
Isaac watched to the end of the recording and said,
“That’s a large operation for something resembling junk. What was it?”
“I don’t know yet but I intend to find out.”
Isaac added,
“That was not a government helicopter either. If it really was an official National Security operation, it should have been a Huey with proper insignias and ID numbers. Instead it was a common domestic Bell Ranger with no ID on its side.”
“Good point. Start the tape again, there is something else I want confirmed.”
After pressing one key, the video started again. Walter was shocked. He had been trying to use a mouse to rewind the video. Regretfully, he understood there was much to learn about this new computer. When the video started, Isaac asked,
“What am I looking for?”
“Watch Grant as he approaches the house. He is pretty much in the whole shot. He told me he responded to a Public Disturbance call and when he got there, National Security personnel confronted him. Grant said he was shown a badge and official search and entry papers. Yet when he approached what looked like the man in charge, they only shook hands.”
Isaac noticed and said,
“It sure looks like a friendly greeting, like they know each other.”
“Exactly.”
The real reason Isaac was called into the office now became apparent. Walter pointed and said,
“Get onto the Facial Recognition Program and run that man’s face. I want to know who he is.”
Flying fingers accessed the program and Warric’s facial features were pixilated and entered into the database. A few minutes later, as Walter hoped, up popped a window announcing, “match’. Isaac ran the data and read aloud,
“Apparently he is Demetri Warric, the CEO of what you and I believe is the fictitious Department of National Satellite Weather Research station up there.”
While watching the rest of the video, at no time or anywhere did Walter see Demetri Warric present his badge or papers to Grant. It didn’t take long to add two and two together. Grant had lied to him. Walter said,
“Print that face for me.”
The video was still running and now showed another man coming around the corner of the house and suddenly face to face with Grant. Walter asked,
“Do you recognize that man?”
After a hard look, Isaac had to admit,
“No sir, should I?”
“No, but get to know him. That is Rick Calhoun, a man with a rap sheet as along as your arm.”
What Walter suspected about Grant now soared. Isaac added to Walter’s suspicions when saying,
“The way they are talking, it looks like they know each other well enough.”
They continued to watch as a large piece of the attic wall came crashing down to the ground. A few minutes later, they saw Gary’s strange contraption pushed out and onto the pallet suspended under the helicopter. Isaac drew another opinion.
“Whatever that is, it doesn’t look like a national security risk to me.”
Walter asked,
“Did you see papers or badges or any identification at all shown to Grant?
“Nope.”
A minute later, they saw Rick talking to Warric. Again, Isaac drew a correct assumption.
“They seem friendly to
wards each other too, huh?”
Walter cringed.
Chapter 38
Warric was in his office shouting into the phone.
“What? You mean they saw the plasma lab and the experiment on the kids?”
This was terrible news. His request for more financing hinged on silencing those two intruders. He had to prove one hundred percent security efficiency. He was irate. But then when something else was explained to him he calmed and asked,
“Into the crystal cave? Are you sure?”
After hearing the reply, he smiled and said,
“No, that’s good. Leave them there.”
He hung up and gloated at his good luck.
Fascinated, Gary gazed at the large crystal formations in the cave. Colorful slow light patterns surged through the air as if gentle waves lapping a tropical beach. Sam too saw it and like Gary, was held spellbound. It was all around them, above and under as if standing inside a rainbow. Neither was sure that they were even standing on the ground or floating through a magical apparition. Although they should have been, they were not afraid.
By an instinctive desire for security, Gary reached out for Sam’s hand. By the same need to know that she was not alone, and a hope that everything was all right, she accepted it. As beautiful and pleasing to the eye that the rainbow lights were, Sam’s intuitive sense of danger was clanging like a speeding firetruck. Gary however, not sensing danger but rather an idealistic sense of comfort, uttered,
“It’s beautiful.”
Snapping alert to where they were, Sam had a different sense about it and blurted out,
“It’s deadly. We have to get out of here.”
Turning around and with Gary following, Sam ran up to the cavern wall and started pressing on the stone. Gary understood that she was feeling for a wall that really wasn’t there and quickly joined in the search. Just a few feet along the wall, it turned to glass. They looked through it and saw another tunnel. On that tunnel floor there appeared a shadow followed by another guard walking past the glass wall. It was as if the guards could not see them and kept walking. In a panic, Sam started pounding on the glass and yelling,
“Here we are. Help!”
Gary too joined in the panic and yelled.
“Help, help us. Here we are.”
The trailing guard was the same one who looked right at Sam back in the tunnel and put his hand through her chest. This time he shot out his hand to stop his partner and asked,
“There. Did you hear that?”
Intently listening, he too heard frantic voices screaming for help. They looked around but from their side of the glass all they saw was a solid wall of stone. The screams seemed to come right out of the wall. One of them said,
“It’s those two kids we are looking for.”
As Sam and Gary saw it, the guards were looking straight at them. Why couldn’t they see them? Both frantically screamed,
“We are right here. Save us!”
The other guard said.
“It’s just like the other miners who got lost in the tunnel.”
A dire conclusion was drawn and voiced by the other one,
“Then they will be dead soon.”
Gary could not believe that their clear and frantic calls for help went ignored. The guards just stood there looking at them as if they were invisible. Then, to the horror of both, they turned away and continued into the depth of the tunnel. When out of ear shot of the pleadings for help, one of the guards said to the other,
“We should report to Warric that the kids are now in the stone.”
“Yeah, I’m just glad that I didn’t have to shoot them. I’m not sure I could have killed a kid.”
“Well, now you don’t have to.”
Stunned that the men simply turned and walked away, Gary turned to Sam and asked,
“Why didn’t they help us?”
Sam didn’t know either but had her suspicions.
“I don’t think they saw us.”
“Yes they did. They were looking right at us and we could see them too.”
“It’s like dad said, the miners were lost in the stone and eventually died.”
Shocked, Gary questioned,
“Are we are going to die here?”
She seemed resigned to her fate and in a defeated tone said,
“Yeah, unless my dad shows up again.”
It was almost impossible to feel threatened in such a playground of calming color of lights but regardless, the weight of Gary’s sudden jolt to reality hit him hard. He understood that Sam was correct. This was a bad place.
Filled with despair both turned to face the twinkling crystal shards. Although beautifully hypnotic, soon both filled with a sense of doom. No longer were amazed eyes held captive by a magical display. Both now understood that they were looking at the crystals as if a portent to death. Gary slowly turned to Sam and while laced with hope asked,
“You know how to get us out of here right?”
With a dejected feeling of having failed, she turned away from him and he knew the silent answer.
Suddenly a single lightning bolt shot out from one of the crystals as if from a rifle and struck Sam in the chest. An idyllic garden of hypnotizing lights had suddenly turned into a shooting gallery. The force was so severe it sent her flying into the wall. Other bolts shot out and started feeling the air, searching as if tentacles of a massive octopus hunting for another victim.
As Gary ran over to help a stunned Sam, another lightning bolt suddenly struck him in the back. He screamed in pain. Both were now on the ground and facing the crystals of death. Like the plasma ball back in the laboratory, electrical fingers filled the cavern and as Gary knew, were looking for them.
Frantic eyes swung left and right looking for a safe place to run but there was none. They were trapped. As the electrical fingers came closer, both shot to their feet and prepared to avoid getting touched by them. Gary yelled,
“We have to avoid them.”
Above the thunderous crackling of electricity in the air, both heard Gordy’s voice boom.
“No! Do not run away from it. Run toward it.”
Sam stood stunned and uttered,
“Dad?”
Gary was the first to voice concern for what didn’t sound like good advice at all.
“I’m not running into that. It hurt.”
Confused, Sam again questioned,
“Dad? Is that you?”
The disembodied voice replied,
“Trust me Sam, the other miners died because they were afraid and ran away from it. You have to run into the tentacles and into the colors.”
As if to heap importance onto the strange instruction, he added,
“Trust me Sam.”
Sam’s choice was simple. Run away from the approaching tentacles and die or listen to dad. It was a no brainer. Gary saw in her eyes what she was going to do. He did not have the same faith in her dad and resisted, saying,
“No way, I’m not running into that.”
It was then that he discovered something about Sam. She may be skinny but she was strong. She grabbed his hand and with one mighty heave, dragged him past the painful tentacles and into the colorful light. In the blink of an eye, the lights were gone as were Sam and Gary.
Chapter 39
The Guard at the main entry gate of the Factory had his attention drawn to a most spectacular sight. Perplexed, he was held spellbound staring at it. Just past the security gate, maybe only a few yards down the Copper Mine Road and right in the middle of it, he saw a ball of ever intensifying colorful lights. It was as if a rainbow had touched the ground and pointed to a pot of gold. What he did not realize was that the rainbow started from the road and disappeared up into the heavens. He understood that it was a cloudy afternoon and there should be no rainbow. As if that was not confusing enough, two kids suddenly ran out from the glow of the light. He saw that the girl was holding the boy’s hand and after a quick look around, both ran into the f
orest.
His orders were simple enough. ‘Report all strange activities’ and so he picked up the phone and stabbed at three keys. The man on the other end sounded pleasant and why shouldn’t he? The last report was that the two kids had been tricked into running into the cave of crystals, or as he knew by what happened before, the cave of death. He had now secured his extra funding by silencing the two pesky kids who had somehow gotten past what was supposed to be an impenetrable security. He was about to call the International Investment Council and tell Otto Schmidt that all had been corrected. Go ahead and transfer the funds.
Just as he reached for the phone, it rang. A calm and satisfied voice said,
“Yes, what is it?”
After listening to the report, suddenly his pleasant demeanour changed from smug satisfaction to an exploding rage. With spittle spewing, he yelled into the phone,
“Every security guard on the premises, do you hear me, everybody and I mean everybody is to chase those two brats down. I don’t care what it takes. If those two bodies are not presented to me within the hour so help me I’ll throw everybody into the crystal cave.”
After blindly running into the crystal tentacles, neither Sam nor Gary understood what happened to them. As if by magic it seemed like they had only walked from a bright room and into the cold air above ground. There was no pain and when standing on the road, as Sam quickly discovered, there was no death. When transported from the crystal cave, Sam was quick to recognize that they were now standing outside the Factory and on the Copper Mine Road. In the distance, she saw the guard up at the gate looking at them and with a tight grip still on Gary’s hand darted off the road into the forest.
The Factory Page 22