Whispers: The Reincarnation Series (Book 2)

by R. E. Rowe

  I rub my face as if it will help me think clearer. “Will you both just shut up?”

  The driver narrows his eyes through the rear view mirror. “If you need anything, sir, just let me know. We should arrive at the library well before it opens up to the public.”

  I groan “Peachy.”

  “He’s running out of time,” Bouncer whispers to someone other than me.

  chapter nine

  Chien walks with me as Franz gives us an update on the sprawling production level inside my massive oil tanker habitat. Thousands of person-sized glass tubes with 3-D printer builder-bots above them fill the level. Each printer connects to vats of raw materials on the level above required to print a perfect human form made of silica, carbon nanotubes, and titanium bones.

  This lifetime will be my last as a biological human. My pulse quickens when I flashback to my painful transformation, remembering how all my past lives flooded my young brain. Confusion. Headaches. Vertigo. Sickness.

  I refocus on Franz’s tour.

  “Soul entanglement with synthetic glia receptors implanted into silica is working,” Franz says. “Each imprint is downloaded from cloud memory, decoded, and transmitted to a designated builder-bot. Once printing is complete, each human 2.0 silica body is dressed in a blue jumpsuit—”

  I peer inside one of the tubes where a perfect clone of me is dressed in a black jump suit. Even its petite facial features match what I see when I look in the mirror. Shoulder length straight black hair, brown oval eyes, olive skin, and full lips. The clone stands at attention and stares blankly ahead, breathing with an occasional eye blink. She is alive, but lifeless.

  “When a soul takes possession of the new silica host body, it will be painless, immediate, and permanent until the soul chooses to egress. Replacement silica body parts and components are readily available.”

  I peer closer at the body in the tube, and watch its chest rise and fall in a constant rhythm. “Will new silica hosts have unique appearances?”

  "Of course." Franz nods. “For now, these first ones are clones of you. Our command centers will control them. However, each form will eventually take on unique shapes and sizes, each one paired with a different soul. Physical characteristic imprints from centuries of past lives have been downloaded from cloud memory. Every silica host is indistinguishable from a biological human.” Franz’s eyes sparkle. “We’ve even colored the synthetic silica veins of hydro-fluid to match human blood.”

  “Impressive,” Chien says.

  “Will the soul feel, hear, smell, and taste like a biological human?” I ask.

  “Yes, Carmina. Configuration parameters can be altered to provide more or less sensitivity.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “The host body may be fine-tuned with adjustable parameters to give it the scent ability of a domestic dog, the eyesight of an eagle, and the strength of a grizzly bear. We can control these parameters from the command center and can change them in real-time. In the future, the host itself will be able to control its parameters. But—” Franz hesitates.

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “I need more of the mineral red beryl to entangle souls beyond the ether to silicon forms here on Earth. Extraction mines in Utah and New Mexico are nearly depleted. We will soon need a new source.”

  I frown. “Can’t you manufacture a synthetic?”

  Franz shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, Carmina. It must be raw material.”

  “This should not be a problem,” Chien says. “We have a few sites identified. We have recently verified that one has a large deposit. All we need to do is mine it.”

  “Good,” I say. “In the meantime, you may access my Malta stockpile of red beryl, gold and silver. It’s time we add funds to QCC’s balance sheet. You are free to use my collection inside the hidden chamber. You’ll need to use one of the ancient keys to enter it. Then convert the ancient gold and silver to euros using our regular sources to stay under the radar.”

  “Understood,” Chien says.

  I beam with pride. Franz has thought of everything. We continue strolling along rows of silica bodies inside glass tubes. “Do not let General's enforcers find the Malta chamber. If they get to it before we do, it could ruin everything.”

  Chien's cell phone rings. When he peers down at it and sneers, I realize immediately we have problems.

  “What is it, Chien?”

  “You have just received a text message?” he replies.

  “From one of the team?”

  “No, it's from General,” Chien says.

  “But how is he able to communicate? We've hacked the system and disabled logins, yes?”

  “The General must have used high frequency harmonic vibrations. His messages are riding one of the many subatomic particles or perhaps a harmonic vibration.”

  “Can he trace our location?” I ask.

  “No. Our position is hidden when we scatter our transmission broadcasts,” he replies.

  “Please let me see the message.”

  Chien hands me the phone.

  I study the display:

  GENERAL: My souls will find you, Carmina.

  “So I can message him back without comprising our location?” I ask.

  Chien nods.

  Using my forefinger, I tap out a text message:

  CARMINA: Good luck with that, General.

  An immediate response appears:

  GENERAL: Not only will you fail, Carmina, I will see to it your spirit is squelched into the dark void for the next eternity.

  CARMINA: I have tried to reason with you. Changing the rules would have been simple for you to do. But you have not listened.

  GENERAL: The rules are perfect.

  CARMINA: The suffering of innocents is perfect?

  GENERAL: You will never understand.

  CARMINA: Good-bye, General.

  I hand the phone back to Chien. “We must up our game and finish this war quickly.”

  chapter ten

  The driver abruptly stops the car. “Sir, we have arrived.”

  I wake up and try to focus outside the window. The sun tags the sky orange above a four-story flat roof building with a taller building adjacent to it. “Arrived where?”

  “The Library of Virginia.” The man promptly gets out of the car and opens my door.

  It feels like I’m waking up from a dream, hearing Aimee inside my head, holographic images of Bouncer and Honesti, a blown-up bus. I can’t get myself to move.

  “Get your rear in gear, Reizo!” Bouncer shouts.

  “Do you have the key?” Honesti asks.

  I wipe my face and groan. “Where’s Aimee?”

  “Excuse me, sir, who?” says the driver.

  I ignore him.

  “Reizo,” Honesti says. “Do you have it?”

  “He better have it,” Bouncer says.

  I grab my backpack. When I shake it, I hear the old key I’d found in the shelter rattling against the spray paint cans. “Yeah. I do.” I pull the backpack over one shoulder.

  “Sir?” the driver asks.

  I shake my head and glance away. “Sorry, nothing.”

  “Follow me, please,” the man says.

  He quickly escorts me up cement steps to the library entrance where a slim woman with shoulder length brown hair and a gray suit unlocks the glass door from the inside.

  “Good luck, sir,” says the driver. He returns to the car.

  The woman lets me inside the two-story-high lobby with stairs going up to a second level. The library has a modern look to it, definitely not like a place where someone would use an old skeleton key.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Rush,” says the woman as she licks her front teeth and rubs her lips together as though she just applied lip balm. “We’ve been expecting you. I’m Kate Jacobs. Did you bring your key?”

  Her question surprises me. She knows about the key? How’s that possible?

  “Yeah. In my backpack, but it’s an old key. This place looks n
ew.”

  Kate leads me to an elevator in the back of the lobby. Her calm voice puts me at ease. “You are indeed correct. The library was built in 1996. However, you won’t need your key here, dear boy. We are going somewhere else. Please follow me.”

  I hesitate and look around. “I thought I was supposed to go to the hall of records in a library—”

  “Please, Reizo, just listen to her,” Honesti says. Her voice feels like a sting, causing me to flinch.

  “Do it,” Bouncer adds.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Pardon me?” Kate asks.

  “You can trust her, Reizo,” Honesti says.

  I clench my fists. “All right, fine.” I look at Kate Jacobs. “Where are we going?”

  Kate smiles and presses the down button of the elevator prompting the doors to open. “Welcome to the original Library of Virginia,” she says, and guides me into the elevator with a hand. She taps a button marked “BB.”

  Her touch feels blizzard cold. Who is this woman?

  “Relax,” Honesti says. “She’s not going to bite you.”

  “Be a man, boy,” Bouncer says, chuckling.

  I groan. “Whatever.”

  “Excuse me?” Kate asks.

  I look away.

  The elevator doors open up to a narrow hallway. We walk past a security guard in a gray suit, white shirt, black tie, and dark sunglasses, and continue onto a tram like you might see at an airport, except there is only one section to the tram, sort of like a high-tech cable car.

  Two husky men with short cut hair are standing on either side of the tram’s open doors. Both men are dressed in gray suits and are wearing dark sunglasses.

  The idea of sunglasses inside a basement is ridiculous. This is all getting weirder by the second.

  Kate puts out a hand and points into the tram. “Please. It’s a short ride to our facility.”

  Before I can react, one of the men gives me a gentle nudge, prompting me to walk inside the tram. Kate steps in and another man in a gray suit reaches in and inserts a small, funny-looking key into a small slot. He turns the key and presses a button.

  The tram’s glass doors slide shut in a burst of air. It lurches forward in a sudden surge of acceleration into a darkened tunnel as I grab ahold of a metal pole. Kate says nothing when the florescent lighting switches on.

  “You’re doing well,” Honesti says. “Isn’t he?”

  “I suppose,” Bouncer grumbles. “If you call hanging onto the pole for dear life ‘doing well’.”

  A couple minutes later, the tram’s air brakes engage and it emerges out of a dark tunnel into a large, open lobby with polished marble floors and freshly painted walls. The tram slows to a stop as a loud chime rings. The doors open.

  Kate continues. “Mack owns the building here on the east side of Capitol Square...”

  Who is this mysterious cousin named Mack?

  “Along the street, the building is a brand new office building that replaced the original library.” Kate pushes me out of the tram. “These lower levels have remained intact since they were first constructed in 1895.”

  She notices me frown, but ignores it. “Mack recently redecorated most of the old place.”

  Three men and a woman in gray suits and dark sunglasses watch me as if they’re a security patrol on alert and I’m a criminal. I glance back, noticing two more men in gray suits and dark sunglasses shadowing me, but continue on as Jacobs leads the way down a long hallway lined with ceiling high shelves packed with old hardbound books. The books remind me of the ones in the old storm shelter. Aimee, why don’t you talk to me?

  We pass closed office doors every twenty steps or so. Another man in a gray suit and sunglasses walks quickly past us.

  “What’s up with the gray suits and sunglasses?” I ask Kate. “Some kind of team uniform?”

  She ignores me and keeps walking until we reach the end of the hallway and stop at a dark wooden door taller than me. A solid gold placard framed in colorful jewels is mounted at eye level on the door. In the middle, raised black letters spell out “MACK.”

  It takes Kate a moment to place her hand in some kind of security control-box on the wall that causes a latch to disengage.

  “Scan complete,” says a pleasant sounding female voice. “Have a wonderful day.”

  “Thank you, Ellen,” Kate says to the wood door.

  Weird. “You named a door?”

  “Please, Mr. Rush.” Kate pulls open the heavy door. “Mack is waiting.” She points across the room at an unfamiliar man sitting at a desk reading papers with a pen in his hand.

  “I know, you told me that already.”

  Kate doesn’t follow me as I walk into the room, and the door abruptly shuts behind me.

  The room is twice the size of Theodore High’s entire administration area. A giant flat screen television fills one wall, displaying live news on a war somewhere. Nearby glass walls surround a long table and chairs. A complete wet bar behind a pool table is at the far end of the room. The man at the bulky oak desk abruptly stands. He's well over six feet with a solid muscle frame. Gray hair and eyebrows say “retirement," but his tan skin, hazel eyes, and clean-shaven cleft chin say “adventurer.” He’s wearing the same style gray suit everyone else is wearing, and looks to be in marathon shape. Not bad for an old guy.

  As I slowly stroll towards him, I notice a massive rock the size of a beach ball. It’s in a glass display case alongside the polished desk. The rock is unreal. It’s white with patches of gray, and peppered with rectangular, orange-red and purplish-red gemstones all around it like a meatball with colorful peppercorns stuck in it.

  A smile stretches over the old guy’s face as he closes the gap and sticks out a hand. “Well, hello, Reizo Rush, son of Sharon, daughter of John, son of John Senior, son of Thomas, son of Wesley.”

  Weird. I reluctantly shake his hand. This guy knows more about family history than I do. Trying to impress me?

  I glance over to the large television and watch a CNN reporter talking about a riot in Texas. “More trouble at Quantum Corp’s Austin community...”

  A booming voice replaces the television volume. “I’m Mack, your third cousin.”

  I glare at him. “I’m related to you?”

  He smiles bigger. “We share second-great-grandparents. Great-grandpa Thomas Rush, to be specific. I believe you found his father’s old storm shelter some time ago.”

  How the hell does he know about the shelter? Aimee was the only other person who knew. I remain standing, unable to formulate a question, but not comfortable enough to sit.

  Mack makes his way to a large leather chair behind the desk. “You must have questions, but our first order of business is your mother.”

  Oh dammit. Mom must be freaking. She’s probably called the cops by now. “Can I use your phone—?”

  “Don’t worry. Relax. She knows you’re here. Well, actually, not here in this particular room. She thinks you checked yourself into the local hospital’s psychiatric clinic to be exact.”

  “What? Why—?”

  “You’ve been through a lot, Reizo.”

  “Huh? But, how do you—?”

  “Look. I know a lot of things. Right now we need a believable cover story or your mother will be in grave danger.”

  Danger? I remember the bus exploding into a fireball. My stomach sinks. I’m not sure what to think, or what to say, for that matter. All I know for sure is Mom’s seriously going to freak.

  “Your mother is on her way to see you.”

  “Do you know my mom?”

  “No, never met her. She probably has never heard of me either.”

  I point around the room. “Does my mom know about this place?”

  “Nope, I’m afraid she can never know about this place—or me for that matter—but more on that later,” he says in a calm voice. “We’ll get you set up in a regular room over at the hospital before she arrives in a few hours. Just tell her you’re still grieving over th
e loss of Aimee and you needed to get away for a while. When you arrived here in Richmond, you saw the hospital and checked yourself in. You know, to clear your head.”

  “You want me to lie to my mom?”

  “No, not really lie. You’re protecting her. The cover story will put her at ease while you help us.”

  “Help you? Why would I do that?”

  “Didn’t Aimee tell you?”

  “You know Aimee?”

  Mack smiles. “Of course. Come on, don’t play stupid, we know she reached out to you on behalf of General.”

  Oh man, this is getting seriously crazy. “You know General?”

  He nods.

  “Who is he anyway?”

  “Look, we’re short on time at the moment. We’ll brief you on all of this soon. But first, you need to put your mother at ease. Okay?”

  “My mom will want to stay here with me, you know.”

  “Of course. We’re prepared for that possibility. She’ll be comforted to know you’re receiving the best care and education in the country—free of charge, thanks to Great-grandpa Wesley. We’ll tell your mother he was an investor in Richmond back in the day before he moved to Franklinville. Richard will go on to say the hospital wants to help you. Something along those lines.”

  “But she can’t afford to travel back and forth between Franklinville and Richmond.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s taken care of too. We've made arrangements for her to visit you every few months. Once we clean up the mess we’re in, your life will get back to normal and you’ll return home.”

  “Mess?” I remember the bus explosion. “Real people died.”

  “True. That’s why we need your help, Reizo. If we can’t stop Carmina, there’ll be a whole lot more casualties.”

  “I want to talk with Aimee. Can you arrange it?”

  Mack frowns and shakes his head. “I get it. You loved her. Sorry for your loss. I’m sure General will arrange something once everything is back as it should be. But for now, we need to focus on you helping us stop Carmina.”

  “Who the hell is this Carmina chick and why do you need my help?”