The Lucid: Episode Three

by Nick Thacker

  Adam nodded. Whatever was going on here was fascinating and curious, but they had their own agenda to follow at the moment. So without hesitating, Adam took two syringes from the bag, held one in his teeth while he uncapped the other, and then rushed forward.

  He went for the young man first. He was closer, and smaller. Adam grabbed him and pushed him against the panels near where the two Suppressed had been working, and then jabbed the needle into the man’s neck, thumbing the plunger in the same motion.

  The man struggled a bit, but it was almost as if all he wanted was to get back to work. Adam stepped back and watched as the young man stepped away from the wall and took a step toward the panel he had removed earlier. He lifted this, placed it just so, and was reaching for the screws on the ledge when he stumbled a bit. In a few seconds he dropped the panel to the floor with a clatter, and collapsed in a heap.

  The woman seemed not to notice at all. Instead, she stooped to pick up the panel and began to complete the task the young man had left undone.

  There’s some sort of protocol at work here, Adam realized. They’re running a program.

  It was a startling realization. It meant that something or someone was controlling these suppressed. But for the moment, it was irrelevant. He would have to look into this later, if they managed to get through this.

  Adam tossed the used syringe across the room, and then uncapped the one he’d held in his teeth. He didn’t bother grabbing the woman. Instead he simply injected her as she worked. She had actually completed the task of reattaching the panel cover before crumpling to the floor.

  Adam motioned for the others, and Carl ran forward with Lisa following behind, sweeping the area with her rifle.

  “What the hell is going on?” Carl asked.

  Adam shrugged. “Something is controlling them. We’ll have to look into that at some point.”

  “Grab the kid. I have the woman,” Carl said.

  They picked up their quarry and rushed toward the door they had used to enter this area. Adam had tucked the .45 into his belt, at the small of his back. Carl slung the rifle over his shoulder.

  Before getting to far, Adam made sure he had the two remaining syringes, still in their paper bag. He had tucked them into his back pocket for now.

  As they reached the door, they heard a strange pattering noise coming from somewhere in the facility. It took a moment to realize it was the sound of feet, running in unison, in their direction.

  “We have to get out of here!” Adam shouted.

  He kicked the door open and got through it by turning sideways, careful not to bang the young man’s head on the door frame.

  Carl followed, and Lisa brought up the rear.

  As they raced through the building, toward the exit, several suppressed entered the room. They were armed with tools and bits of conduit. No guns.

  “Run for it!” Adam said.

  They sprinted as fast as they could. Lisa raised the rifle, preparing to fire.

  “Don’t!” Adam shouted. “They have no idea what they’re doing!”

  “They’re about to kill us!” Carl said. “Shoot them!”

  Lisa hesitated, and Adam said, “Last resort. Ok?”

  Lisa nodded, and the three of them continued, finally reaching the door and bursting through just as dozens of Suppressed were closing in on them.

  They raced across the street, and managed to get to the Humvee before three of the Suppressed caught up with them.

  One, a large man wearing a clean and pressed suit, swung a pry bar and struck Lisa on the shoulder. She cried out.

  “Lisa!” Adam shouted. He dumped the young man in the back of the Humvee, as Carl brought the woman around.

  Adam ran for the businessman, and slammed a shoulder into his chest just as the man was raising the pry bar for another swipe.

  The other two Suppressed—two younger guys—piled on then. Adam was pinned to the ground, and the younger men were raising their fists and bringing them down mechanically and methodically. The blows seemed timid, but they were no less effective. Adam struggled to cover his face, to wriggle out of their grip somehow.

  He saw Carl standing beside the Humvee, and then turning, running around the front to climb in the driver’s seat. He heard the Hummer’s engine start.

  Then he heard a shot, and one of the young men rolled backward, falling to the ground. Dead.

  Lisa was there, kicking at the men. She raised the rifle and used the butt of it to strike the second young man, knocking him unconscious. She swung the rifle like a club, and knocking the businessman back.

  “Come on!” she said, reaching down to grab Adam’s hand and help him up.

  They scrambled into the Humvee, which Adam was relieved to see had not left them behind.

  Before they even had the doors shut, Carl punched it, and the Hummer squealed out into the streets. There was the sound of sirens in the distance—UVFs making their way to the scene. Carl had to dodge through numerous side streets, and even into a few neighborhood yards, hiding out as the UVFs sped by.

  It took a while to get in the clear.

  Adam nursed a busted lip and a bruised eye, but was otherwise ok.

  “Sorry about that back there,” Carl said, looking at Adam in the rearview mirror. Lisa was in the back now, tending to Adam. They had both scrambled into the Humvee together.

  “I thought you were a goner,” Carl said, though there was no real note of apology in his voice.

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “Me too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  If David could move his arms, he would have punched the screen in front of him.

  Still, he screamed in rage, and the med alerts from the MCU warned him about his blood pressure. He silenced them, and raged on as the entire series of events played out. He watched as Adam Bolland once again mucked about in his plans, screwing everything up right at the heart of what David was doing!

  He calmed himself, eventually. He watched from local security cameras as Adam and the other two struggled against the Suppressed. There was hope, for an instant, when Adam went down. David thrilled to it. He had him! The others he couldn’t care less about, they could just run—he had his prize.

  But that was his mistake. In his haste to grab Adam, to tear Adam apart—he’d forgotten that people tend to stick together.

  The woman, armed with a rifle, clubbed her way through the small cluster of Suppressed, and pulled Adam free. Then they were in the vehicle and speeding away before David could get any of the Unmanned Vehicle Force to the location.

  Again, David raged.

  It was all just so infuriating! Here, David had managed to take control of an entire network of automated systems, and beyond that an entire population of suppressed. He had established protocols and programs that had his people rebuilding the infrastructure of Denver—making it the first of many cities worldwide, where David could pick and choose Suppressed at will!

  But this went beyond David’s on personal plans and goals. Having a selection of bodies available, so that he could be anywhere, any time, was amazing and wonderful. But he was also making the world safer for the Suppressed. He was building a way for them to stay healthy, to stay alive, unthreatened by their own mindless wanderings.

  In effect, David was saving the world.

  And Adam Bolland was ruining it.

  But Bolland had finally made a mistake that would end him, once and for all.

  He’d taken some of the Suppressed.

  And not just any Suppressed, but a pair that were already under David’s control!

  Realizing this came as such a surprise and shock that David laughed out loud. He had the sudden feeling of receiving a special gift, out of the blue. Like when he was a child, and Mother would bring him something special. A ‘sussy,’ as she called it. And then, later, Ms. Halpern would give him some new toy, some new bit of research or new technology, and he’d get that same feeling. That special feeling, as if he deserved only the best things in l
ife.

  “Someone up there loves me,” David beamed.

  The UVFs closed in on Bolland’s last known location, but David knew they wouldn’t find him. As a police force, without someone continuously monitoring and controlling their activities, the UVFs were proving to be less than ideal. They couldn’t make decisions on their own, they could only carry out directives. They needed someone to act as dispatch constantly. They were a good deterrent, and they helped slow down rebellious actions, but they were not much good for apprehending someone like Bolland.

  No, getting to Bolland was going to take more finesse. It was going to take something more subtle.

  David tried to access the Suppressed that Bolland and the others had taken, but found that they were unconscious. He could inhabit them, but the drugs in their systems kept him in a haze, unable to move.

  That would wear off, in time. And when it did, David would be ready.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They rushed into the labs—Adam carrying the young man and carrying the woman. Lisa moved the Humvee to a hidden spot between buildings, camouflaging it with pallets and loose hurricane fencing.

  Jocelyn and Milton met them in the corridor and rushed alongside them as they raced into the lab where the tests would be performed.

  “They’re in better shape than I expected,” Jocelyn said as she eased the woman onto a table. Milton was guiding Adam in placing the young man on an adjoining table.

  “There’s something odd going on,” Adam said.

  Jocelyn looked at him, and her eyes went wide. “You were attacked?” she asked, apparently noticing his bruised face for the first time. She rushed to him, and raised a hand to his chin, examining him.

  “They were acting out some kind of programming,” Adam said.

  “Then they attacked our boy here,” Carl said, amicably. He was smiling and nodding, as if trying to ingratiate himself to Adam.

  Adam ignored him. “They were repairing one of the power stations, and when we grabbed them all hell broke loose. I’m not sure how, but I think someone is controlling them.”

  “Controlling them?” Milton said. He shook his head. “I don’t see how.”

  “The heavy metal network,” Jocelyn said. She turned to Milton. “The lattices of metal, in the bloodstream. The heavy metal is very receptive to certain frequencies. We discovered it in our research at the facility. I wasn’t part of the experiments being done, but I know that we were testing to see if radio waves might reduce the metal’s reproduction. We had some limited success with that.”

  “Could someone use that to actually control the Suppressed?” Adam asked.

  Jocelyn turned back to him, her eyes wide. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Well someone’s figured out a way,” Carl said from behind them.

  They turned to see him, and Adam fought the urge to pull the .45 on him. His hand went involuntarily to his side, at least, and then brushed back just enough to feel a lump in his pocket.

  The syringes.

  They were plastic, and capped, and wrapped up in so much crinkled paper they must have been protected during his scuffle.

  He let his hand fall back to his side. “Whatever you need these two for, I think it’s best if we get started and done as quickly as possible.”

  Jocelyn nodded, and glanced at Milton, who moved away to one of the machines near the tables.

  Adam watched them for a moment, then walked out of the lab, down the corridor, and into the break room.

  They’d brought in several five-gallon bottles of water, to replenish the supply of a cooler that rested against one wall. Adam took a paper cup and filled it, then chugged it down and refilled it. He repeated this several times. Somehow he’d become dehydrated during all of this.

  He stared into the blue-tinted plastic of the water bottle, watching as a series of bubbles glugged to the top.

  This had all started with water.

  It was their biggest vulnerability. Their greatest weakness. They had to have water to survive. And so water was the best means possible for spreading some kind of infection or contagion or, in this case, heavy metal poisoning. Water was vital to life—but it may have just been the agent that brought about the end of life as they knew it.

  “Thirsty?” Lisa’s voice said from behind him.

  He turned to see her, rifle slung over her shoulder, standing in the doorway of the break room.

  “A little. It’s room temperature, but still pretty refreshing. Care for a sip?”

  She smiled, and moved toward him, accepting a hastily filled paper cup. She drank quickly, just as he had, and went straight to the spigot to refill the cup herself.

  “I’m sorry about what happened, back there,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You saved my life. Don’t be sorry about that.”

  “But Carl …” she started, then stopped. She drank the next cup of water. “I couldn’t believe it. He was going to leave you there.”

  Adam glanced at the door. The last thing he wanted was for Carl to hear this conversation. He’d had his suspicions about Carl already, but the events at the power plant had cemented everything. Carl couldn’t be trusted. Which meant that Carl’s men couldn’t be trusted.

  But what about Lisa?

  “I think he just panicked,” Adam said, forcing a slight smile.

  Lisa was shaking her head. She bit her lip, as if debating what to say next. Without looking up at him, and with her hand hovering on the lever for the spigot, she said quietly, “I don’t think so.”

  She filled her cup, and turned to stare at the break room door. She leaned against the countertop next to the cooler, and looked at Adam. “We were told to watch you closely. Anna gave us orders. She didn’t trust you. She especially didn’t trust Dr. Wu.”

  “Because we were in that … the facility,” Adam said.

  “Yes. Our own people—she knew they’d been captured. But she said you might be a plant. And when we left, those helicopters flew in.” Lisa shook her head and closed her eyes for a second. She looked back up at him. “When we got here, Carl pulled us aside. He told us he was pretty sure you called for that attack, somehow. And he said we were supposed to watch you closely. And if you did anything suspicious …” She let it hang, but it was clear what she meant.

  “Then why let me live at all?” Adam asked.

  “Anna thinks Dr. Wu might actually know a way to cure this, so she wanted us to let it play out. But no matter what happens in there, our orders are to grab anything we think is useful and come back.”

  “Without me or Jocelyn,” Adam said.

  Lisa nodded, grimly.

  “But you’ve changed your mind?” Adam asked.

  “Carl changed it. The way he’s acting. Trying to leave you to be torn to pieces by the Suppressed. That’s … this isn’t right,” she said. “Anna saved us, but she’s kind of not all there, if you know what I mean. And Carl—he’s loyal. He’ll do anything Anna tells him to do.”

  Adam took this in. He knew it was true. All of it. And he knew what it meant.

  Once Jocelyn and Milton found something, or once they determined there was nothing they could do, Carl would order his men to open fire. Adam, Jocelyn, and Milton would be dead, and Carl and the others would grab everything they could carry, load the two Hummers, and speed back to Garden of the Gods. They might get there to find a smoking hole in the ground, but they would stick to the plan.

  But then there was Lisa.

  “So I need to know,” Adam said. “Are you with Carl, or are you with me?”

  She thought this over, and shook her head. “I never wanted to make a choice like that.”

  Adam said nothing. He just watched her.

  “You,” she said, finally. “I’m with you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We’ve compared the blood tests from both Suppressed to Sara’s blood,” Jocelyn said. “There are similarities, for certain. But the latticework is very different. The heavy meta
l is more pronounced in the Suppressed, with thicker strands. And it permeates more cells. It has a particular fondness for brain cells. With the portable MRI we were able to see high concentrations of it in key areas of the brain.”

  “You put them in an MRI?” Adam asked.

  “Portable scanner,” Milton said. “Fairly new technology. A small halo, and a wand. Not like the big machines.”

  “But you just said their bodies are full of this metal,” Adam said.

  “Non-ferrous,” Jocelyn said. “We can see it, but magnetic fields don’t affect it.”

  Adam nodded. For a brief instant he had this horrible mental image of billions of particles of metal being ripped out of someone’s bloodstream, like a swarm of gnats eating their way out of a host. He shook his head, trying to clear the image.

  “The latticework is what makes it possible for a radio signal to actually send commands to the Suppressed,” Jocelyn said. “We have spectral analyzers in the lab, so we can actually see the frequencies that the Suppressed are receiving.” She turned to a piece of equipment on the table behind her and turned it on. She used a wand from the machine, and passed it over the woman they’d brought back from the power plant.

  On the small screen, a rainbow colored wave appeared, fluctuating rhythmically.

  “You can see the pattern,” Milton said. “It’s definitely a man-made signal. It’s a set of instructions, but we can’t interpret them.”

  “It’s telling them to rebuild,” Adam said. “Whoever is controlling this is trying to rebuild the infrastructure of the city.”

  They all looked at him, expectantly.

  He shrugged. “We took these two from a power plant, where they were making repairs. There were a lot of Suppressed acting in unison. It’s not much of a leap.”

  “But why?” Carl asked. “And who’s doing it?”

  “The why is pretty obvious,” Jocelyn said. “Restoring the infrastructure would be the first step in getting life back to normal. Or as close to normal as we can expect, at any rate. And who … I think that’s pretty obvious as well. David Priseman.”