The Nightfall Billionaire: Serial Installment #1 (Scarlet McRae)

by Vanessa Blackstone

  “Agreed. Tulpa?”

  Rodrigo thought for a few seconds. “Maybe. You might have something there. The knowledge of how to create a tulpa is known by only very few these days. But that wouldn’t explain how the tulpa’s creator could have known about the sensitive equipment or its location.”

  “Unless the creator were in on certain of the Air Force’s secret projects. Or maybe just someone who cracked their computer systems and found out about their tech that way. Anyone can be hacked; not even the military is 100% airtight.”

  He stroked his chin in thought. “Tulpa. Sí. A possibility to keep in mind. What else?”

  “Extra-terrestrial,” Scarlet said, stepping through her mental checklist.

  “But no UFOs sighted anywhere near Quincy that night or that morning. Signals intel of air-traffic control at nearby airports was clean. Air Force’s was clean, too, as well as their satellite imagery. No evidence of UFOs anywhere around Quincy that whole night. I read the report the officers gave us. You should, too.” He smiled wryly at her.

  “Do ETs always have to have a physical craft, though?” Scarlet reminded him. “Or communicate via signals we can detect, let alone intercept? Remember that one we had, a few years ago? Its methods of transportation appeared to be entirely mental, or at least non-physical. He could teleport himself at will. The galaxy was just one big amusement park to it. It found physical distances to be irrelevancies, mere incidentals.”

  “Then why not just teleport into the hangar if she could have? Why break through two fences? Why kill people if she could just blink in and out whenever she wanted to?”

  Scarlet thought some more. The ET possibility was seeming less likely to her by the second.

  “AI?” she offered for his analysis.

  “Shit, chica, we don’t have anything anywhere near that level of sophistication yet. Besides, did you see how natural her movements were? She moved just like a flesh-and-blood. The robotic bodies that exist now are so easy to pick out because of how they move: a little jerky or a little too smooth. Ya know what I mean? It’s artificial, the way they move. You can tell. Besides, what kind of AI disables cameras at a distance?”

  “God only knows. But if you were a sentient AI, might you have some interest in humanity’s latest tech? You could bootstrap yourself up if you knew where to look and what to look for. It would explain her interest in breaking into the base and making off with some hush-hush, black-ops technology.”

  “Huh!” Rodrigo huffed. “What kind of AI wears ratty clothes like hers? AIs don’t even need clothes. Or if they would wear them, why wouldn’t they wear nicer ones? Why pick something out of a dumpster to wear, ya know?”

  “Maybe she was out in the woods for a long time before she entered the base.”

  “In the woods, doing what?” he asked.

  Scarlet shrugged, shook her head. “Maybe she had to travel through the woods for a long time before she got to the base.”

  “Which begs the question of where she came from in the first place.” A sudden insight burst into Rodrigo’s awareness. “Or when. What if this was a time-traveler? Maybe the Air Force was screwing with time, chica. Imagine the tactical advantages they’d have if they could manipulate time!”

  “There’s never been a time-traveler before, though. Not in the Bureau’s records, anyway.” She tilted her seat back, crossed her legs, and thought for a moment. “Besides, if you were a time-traveler, wouldn’t you have come a little better prepared than in a torn up dress and no shoes? And wouldn’t you have come at a time when it would have been easier to steal what you were after?”

  “You’re assuming she knew the precise time that the technology would have been the easiest to snag,” Rodrigo countered. “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she knew only the month or the year, or maybe our timeline is a little off from the one she’d calculated.”

  Scarlet admitted that this was one possibility, however unlikely it might sound.

  Rodrigo then suggested a Class-4 specter, then an undead, but they both agreed that those possibilities were, at best, a tremendous stretch. For one, such entities would have little motive to steal objects of any kind, let alone some deeply occulted tech from the military. The break-in at the base definitely seemed highly targeted, premeditated, and intentional.

  Or was the Air Force’s secret tech non-physical?

  No, Scarlet thought. It must have been physical, assuming it really was being held at that hangar. Otherwise, there would have been little sense in trying to guard it by physical means.

  They both sat in silence, deep in thought, for what seemed like half an hour.

  At length, Rodrigo spoke again. “I wonder… What if she were the ‘technology’ that was ‘stolen’?”

  “Then why break into the base? What did she take, assuming she took something? You can’t break out of a base you’re already free from.”

  He shrugged. “Just an idea, mujer. Maybe the time-stamps on the footage they showed us were doctored. What if she were at the hangar first, then broke through the fences, rather than the other way around?”

  “You think they misled us by that much?” She was genuinely curious. “I wouldn’t put it past them, but I wouldn’t understand the point of them doing it, and I thought we were more-or-less on the same side. If it was a lie they flopped onto us, it was a big one.”

  “Think about it, McRae.” He brought his voice a little lower, as if he might be overheard. “They were fanatically tight-lipped about many of the details of this case, and they didn’t even allow us to keep copies of the security cameras’ recordings. It’s like they’re using us as… as… What’s the word? Peons. ‘You grubby little muchachos find her with the scraps we gave you while we attend to the bigger stuff we don’t trust you with.’”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I got that feeling, too,” Scarlet admitted. Her wrists were stiff. She cracked them carefully while she thought aloud. “Were they afraid we’d find out that that footage had been tampered with? All in all, they hid from us much more than they revealed. And do you remember what Abrams said about locating the supposedly stolen technology? ‘We have our own assets on the ground’ to trace whatever may have happened to their coveted tech. Why would they need to put boots on the ground, Perez?” She looked at him. “That girl’s likely long gone. Why not search from aerial craft or satellite, which the Air Force is already quite skilled at doing? Or search via SIGINT or otherwise? Why point out on the ground as being supposedly the most memorable or important feature of their search, especially when she’s supposedly so lethal at close range? And, for that matter, whose boots are on the ground? They said themselves that they had to keep this technology secret. Unless they kill those boots after the fact, as by some accident, the tech’s secrecy is going to be compromised. There’s no way they could keep a lid on it otherwise.”

  “It could have been just a careless remark,” Rodrigo offered, “or a bit of nothing. We were all under a lot of pressure at that briefing.” His hand fiddled with the knot of his tie, loosening it.

  “Could have been, but I don’t want to discard this puzzle-piece just yet. The shape of what was left unsaid or understated is important.” Her eyes grew narrower in thought, and she put her seat slowly back into its upright position. “And if we can find that shape, we might be closer to finding what’s at the bottom of all this.”

  “You have a nose like a bloodhound, mi amiga, but Occam’s Razor says the smart money is against you. And you know I’m telling you that as a big brother and as a friend. A tulpa working for its master seems most likely to me. Maybe its handler works for a hostile state? Or some terrorist organization? I’m going to play the base rates, McRae. Tulpa requires the least complexity, the fewest assumptions. Sí. It’s a good start. You?”

  “You mean well, Perez; I don’t doubt that. But simplicity be damned. I’ve never heard of a tulpa that had the psi abilities that that little girl must have had to take out those cameras from a distance. If she doesn’t fit any patter
n we have, then the category that seems most fitting to me to assign to her is simply: unknown.”

  Out of words, Rodrigo looked straight ahead, directly at the back of the seat in front of him, unconsciously clenching his jaw.

  Chapter Seven

  Their jet rumbled as it descended through patchy clouds toward one of the base’s runways. Its wheels struck the runway, sending a jolt through the cabin. The engines roared again, this time in reverse, and the jet shuddered violently, then slowed to a limp.

  On the tarmac, several of the Air Force’s vehicles, sirens flashing, were already trailing the jet.

  Scarlet and Rodrigo were standing up in the cabin, well before the seatbelt light had been turned off. The plane stopped, unfolded a walkway down to the ground, and the NSB agents were soon out on the tarmac.

  They were swarmed by three SUVs, one of which opened its doors. A small entourage from that SUV exited and then approached the NSB agents.

  “I’m Lt. Col. Frank Pedone, the AOIC here,” said a short Italian-American man in a dark-blue uniform. He took his cap off, revealing a head of dark, slick hair, and extended a hand to greet Scarlet.

  “Agent Scarlet McRae, NSB’s primary investigator for the case.” She shook his hand. “You said you’re the assistant officer in charge. Where’s the OIC?”

  “The boss is busy right now. He put me in charge of dealing with the likes of you.”

  “The likes of us?” Scarlet wondered.

  She searched her thoughts for what might have been a higher priority for “the boss” than solving this case, but nothing came to mind.

  Some things about the military would never make sense, she remembered.

  “This is Rodrigo Perez,” Scarlet said, gesturing to her partner. “He’s secondary on the case. There’s Rick Watanabe, our tech specialist, and Beth Summers, our newest addition to the team.”

  The agents took their turns shaking Pedone’s soft, cold hand, which gripped theirs like a steel trap.

  “I was under the impression that there’d be more of you. The jet and all,” Pedone said, nodding to it. “And boss said we had two PIR Units coming.”

  “We find our jets to be… expeditious,” Scarlet offered. “In many ways. We needed to get here fast to investigate—”

  “The break-in. The one that never happened,” Pedone interrupted.

  “Yeah, that one,” Scarlet answered, looking slightly annoyed at the officer in front of her. “As for our sister unit, they’re back at the Bureau, scanning intel for any leads, and preparing their own angle on the investigation. We share intel, but we prefer to work independently. It gives us two more-or-less independent angles, and thus a greater chance of unraveling—”

  “They sound like a bunch of fuckin’ hacks, sittin’ up in that fancy tower of yours,” Pedone remarked, his cap still respectfully tucked under one arm. He spat scornfully on the pavement. “Look, we don’t need this civvy bullshit.”

  “Hey, watch your mouth, cabrón,” Rodrigo said, stepping between him and Scarlet. He got chest-to-chest with the Italian and stared down at him.

  Several startled Air Force officers behind Pedone pulled their rifles level and aimed them at Rodrigo.

  “Sir, step back,” one of them said. “Now!”

  Rodrigo glared at the minion who had tried to order him.

  Slowly, and never taking his eyes off the guard who had spoken, Rodrigo put his hands up and stepped away.

  The guards lowered their rifles.

  Scarlet let her hand off the pistol at her hip.

  Beth stood with eyes wide, while Rick stared intently at the diminutive colonel, watching him carefully for some reaction.

  “Let’s be clear,” Pedone said, a small bead of sweat forming on his brow, a scowl on his face. He still had his cap tucked neatly to his side, holding it carefully lest the wind snatch it away. “We don’t like you. We don’t trust you. Goddamned civvies like you have burned us before like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe. The only reason we’re allowing civvy-slime onto our base now is because we want this case solved yesterday. Am I clear to you? Am I getting through to you? Through your thick, bureaucratic, civvy skulls?”

  Yes, thought Scarlet. Crystal clear message. Getting more military personnel wasn’t the answer to finding the girl in time, and the Air Force had no better option at present than to bring in someone they despised. The Air Force must be enormously desperate. Without telling us, he’s told us.

  She wanted to remark that he should just throw more of his men on the case and send her and her team home, if being a civilian was an issue, but diplomacy was called for if she wanted to proceed with her investigation.

  “We don’t like it, either, Colonel Pedone, but we’re here. We may as well see what we can do. Then we’ll be out of your hair, and maybe we’ll all get to live. How does that sound?”

  “Like a fuckin’ joke, civvy, but I’ll take it,” he said to her, then spat on the ground again, just to his side. At the rest of the PIR Unit, he said bitterly, “Get your sleazy rat-asses inside. We’ll drive you where you need to go.”

  At the place where the base’s fence-line had been breached, a small squad of MPs stood guard, and extra lights had been brought in on small, wheeled vehicles while it had yet been dark. The enormous lights were off now, and a makeshift fence had been hastily erected in a half-circle around the holes. A small guard-tower stood off a short distance from the breach. An MP stood on top of it, peering out into the surrounding, mist-laden forest through a pair of binoculars.

  Scarlet told Pedone, “We’re going to need to inspect the site of the breach.”

  “We left it undisturbed,” was all he said in response. Pedone then nodded to his men, and they let the NSB agents pass through the semicircle barricade.

  Beth latched onto her camera and began photographing and videoing the scene in meticulous detail, making the occasional audio note to supplement her findings.

  Meanwhile, Rick took a small, rectangular device from his bag and began scanning the area.

  “No atomic radiation detectable above baseline,” he said. “Magnetic field: normal. Electrical field: normal. Broad-spectrum, pulsed microwave radiation coming in at moderate-to-high intensities from the direction of the base, though. That’s probably one of their comm towers.”

  Scarlet pulled him close so the guards couldn’t hear her. “How much? Is it dangerous to us?” she asked.

  “Around 12 milliwatts per square meter at this distance,” he whispered, “mostly in the upper band, but also some in the lower and middle bands.” He sighed in exasperation. “It’s a nasty mix of a lot of stuff. Not immediately fatal, but not something I’d want to stand in for too long. Carcinogenic, slow-cook levels. Harmful effects on cognitive and emotional processes. No wonder these guys are so tilted.” He looked back over his shoulder at the guards. Pedone stood with his hands behind his back, his scowl intact.

  “Understood,” Scarlet said. “Tell Summers. I’ll inform Perez. See what else you can find.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Unlike many other organizations, the NSB had been quite careful about microwave radiation, which saturated the streets in any normal city of the AFE, but which the Bureau had chosen to protect itself against, as microwave weaponry had commonly been used by terrorists, high-level criminals, and hostile states since at least the middle of the last century, and some of it was still in use today. In many ways, microwaves were the perfect weapon: utterly silent, invisible to the naked eye, inexpensive, capable of modulation for different cognitive effects and different intensities, easy to focus, hard to trace, and effective at range. With microwave weaponry, one always had plausible deniability and stealth on one’s side.

  The list could go on, Scarlet thought. Nasty stuff.

  Her eyes hardened in memory of all the awful effects she had, through hard-won experience and her own training, learned it could have.

  She went to Rodrigo, who was already inspecting some tracks he found. />
  “Try to be quick. Watanabe picked up harmful levels of electromagnetic radiation here. Military comm towers.” She cast her eyes toward one of the towers on the base.

  Rodrigo discreetly looked at the tower, nodded once.

  Turning his attention back to his task, he asked Scarlet, “What does this look like to you?” He knelt beside what appeared to be the footprints of a human child. The prints were staggered and uneven, as though whoever made them did not do so with a steady gait.

  “The girl’s tracks,” she said, kneeling down to take a closer look at them herself. “There’s some leading both toward the base and away from it. There goes my theory of her being the stolen tech. She appears to have walked in and out from this location.”

  “Sí, but that’s not any girl I’ve ever met. To make tracks this deep in these soil conditions, she would have had to weigh about twice a human girl her size. If she’s not human, and I don’t think anyone thinks she is, chica, then the depth of these tracks gives us her approximate weight. Ya know?”

  Scarlet nodded. “You’re probably right, but there’s something we have to check to rule out something else that might explain the unusual depth of the footprints: a gravitational anomaly. If gravity were distorted here to a higher value, anything in that gravitational anomaly would weigh more, thus have deeper tracks.”

  Rodrigo shook his head and objected, “Or less. And gravitational waves are way out of the ballpark, chica. Odds of a gravitational hiccup are so slim.”

  “And we know nothing about her,” Scarlet answered. “We’re not even sure what to look for, beyond the obvious. We’ve got to be thorough. If we don’t know something about this girl, we can’t just assume it. We’ve got to find out for sure.”

  “So, remind me what we’re looking for here again,” Rodrigo said.

  “Because we don’t know any particular thing, we must look for anything.”