Powerlines

by Kurt Newton

"Who is it, dear?" said Marlene.

  Knox held up his hand, more firmly this time.

  "Is that your wife?" said the man on the phone.

  "Leave her out of this."

  "But she's already in this, Richard. She was in this the moment you accepted our agreement. And the money. You haven't forgotten about the money, have you?"

  How could he forget? That money is what helped pay off his debts and build a new life with Marlene all those years ago. That money is also what was going to fund their way out. He had to be smart about this.

  "I'll take care of it," Knox said.

  "That's good to hear. But I'll need an insurance policy."

  "Insurance?"

  "Of course. A finger. A hand, preferably. Something I can keep under lock and key in case you ever decide you can't do this anymore. You'll receive instructions on where to send it."

  "Anything else?"

  "If there is, you'll be the first to know. And Richard?"

  "What?"

  "Don't be a hero."

  The static returned as the phone went dead.

  "Who was that?" said Marlene, her voice timid, her eyes as innocent as snowflakes.

  Knox smiled. "We're going on a vacation."

  "What do you mean we're going on vacation?"

  Knox holstered the loaded 38 and put his jacket back on.

  "Remember when I told you there might come a time when we'll have to just up and leave?"

  "Yeah, but —"

  "Well, now's that time."

  "But why?"

  "Never mind that. Remember that place we talked about last year and how you always wanted to go there."

  Marlene went to open her mouth.

  "Shhhh, that's where we're going. It's all taken care of. You've got the number right?"

  She nodded.

  "Okay. If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, you get going without me. It just means I got held up a bit. But don't worry, I'll meet you there."

  She nodded again. She looked around the bedroom as if she were sleep walking.

  "I've got to go help someone who's in trouble. Now give me a kiss."

  He stepped up to his stunned wife and kissed her on the lips. He hugged her then, tightly, unsure if he would ever get the chance to hug her again.

  He then stuffed the ammo boxes in his jacket pockets and grabbed the rifle case off the bed. On his way out he stopped. "I love you," he said.

  And he was gone.

  It was near dark. As Pike walked through the woods, the smell of wet pine filled his lungs. It felt good to get out. He remembered now the high one could achieve through exercise and fresh air. He could almost feel the excess oxygen riding in his blood. It served to reinforce his belief that this was his kingdom, his domain. There was no man or beast he could not tame, or could not defeat. His purpose as an agent of change had never been more pronounced than tonight. The lives he had touched. The lives he will touch with his processes once perfected. His work will be heralded as the benchmark that will usher in a new age — an age of peace and longevity. No one need know the unpleasant details surrounding the early beginnings of his work. Some secrets were better kept, for the protection of those uncomfortable with the truth. And the truth was nothing great was ever achieved without great sacrifice. The truth was the needs of the many would forever outweigh the needs of the few, no matter how special society deemed us to be.

  A flash of white appeared in the woods ahead. Pike faltered in his pace. As the trees thinned in front of him it was soon apparent that Schrodinger had followed him.

  Pike decided to test a new theory. He squatted into a crouch, held out his hand and called, "Here kitty kitty."

  The all-white cat, which sat no more than ten feet away, gazed at him with eyes as blue as sapphire.

  As blue as Anna's eyes.

  The cat turned and disappeared behind a nearby tree. Pike rushed to catch up to it, his heart pounding, but where the cat should have been there was nothing but a clot of white mushrooms growing on a rotted stump. The intermittent patter of raindrops falling from the branches overhead amplified Pike's aloneness.

  He felt foolish. And a bit angered.

  He marched ahead, returning to Backbone Ridge. He picked up Jared's book bag along the way, his thoughts on his new subject: the girl. He wondered what new and interesting data she would reveal.

  These were exciting times indeed.

  Ethan moved down the hallway to the Pit #3 door. Again, he stared at the keypad, tracing the numeral 3 on the rows of numbers. 1-3-5-9-7. The door magically opened. When it did, the mystery woman stood just several feet away. Something in his brain must have shorted out because what happened next he was not prepared for.

  "Ethan?"

  The woman hobbled over to him and hugged him tightly.

  "You're alive. I knew it. I was so worried."

  She smelled pretty like body wash. Her hands were on his face. She kissed him. Her mouth tasted fruity like candy.

  He glanced over to the place in the wall where James had entered, expecting it to be open again. The young woman in front of him continued to talk.

  "What the hell is going on here? Who was that man with the rifle? Ethan? Talk to me..."

  She stared at the collar around his neck, the bandages on his shoulder and arm. "What did he do to you?" She stepped back as if she no longer knew him.

  "I..." Ethan faltered. His brain just wasn't cooperating. Everything was telling him this girl was an imposter; she was just a dream, a figment of his imagination, like his brother. "I..." He struggled to speak. Her eyes were on him, imploring him. The weight of the moment — the weight of his very existence — hinged on what he was about to say next. "I...love you...Lindsey," he said at last.

  Lindsey smiled. Tears filled her eyes. She flung herself against him. This time he returned her embrace, his lips at last feeling her contact. It felt good. It felt real.

  But there was no way to be sure. He had been fooled before.

  "We have to get out of here," she said, grabbing his hand.

  They left the room. Lindsey turned toward the dark end of the hallway, toward the bulkhead with its thumbnail of light marking the exit. "No...This way," said Ethan, pulling her toward the light of the kitchen.

  "Ethan — where are we going? Is there another exit?"

  Lindsey suddenly stopped when she spotted Wolf.

  "It's okay," he told her.

  Wolf got to his feet and began walking over to them.

  "Wolf...stay." Ethan imitated the command he had heard Dr. Pike repeat daily. Wolf looked at Lindsey and sat. "Good boy."

  Ethan pulled Lindsey up to Pike's bedroom door, which was still closed. He pointed to the door. "In there." Lindsey stepped forward. She gripped the knob and the door swung inward. The computer terminal was directly ahead. Bookshelves packed from edge to edge surrounded it like a medieval archway.

  "The internet? You want me to go on the internet?"

  Ethan shook his head. He pointed to the screen. Lindsey approached the terminal and searched the icons on the flat screen monitor. There was nothing she was familiar with. One icon was labeled Comsat. Others were labeled Subject1, Subject2, and Subject3. Ethan put his finger on Subject3. "Here."

  Lindsey clicked on the icon and a series of file folders appeared, each one dated one day later than the next, the oldest dating back to July 5th, the most recent dated just yesterday. Ethan pointed to the first folder. Inside were a text file and a video file. He pointed to the video file. Lindsey clicked on it. It was a video of himself in Pit #3 pacing the room, acting like a caged animal. Ethan pointed to another folder dated one week later and Lindsey clicked on it. The video inside that folder showed Ethan in a different room, like a bedroom, waking up from sleep and walking into the bathroom like a robot. The last one Ethan directed her to open showed him cleaning the plexiglass animal cages.

  Lindsey then opened up the Subject2 folder. These files dated from nearly a year past. A random sampling showed a
man with long hair climbing the walls, pulling fistfuls of hair out of his skull. The video ended with the man running full force into the cement wall, knocking himself unconscious, blood streaming from his shattered nose. Lindsey moved to the Subject1 folder, hesitated, then clicked on a random video. It showed a young woman with blonde hair, a bandage around her head, asleep on a cot. Moments later, to the left of the video, a door opened and in walked Pike. Pike hovered for a moment before sitting down on the cot beside the girl. His hand reached out and began caressing the sleeping woman. Then he proceeded to unbutton her torn and tattered shirt. Pike halted then, turned toward the camera as if he were looking directly at Ethan and Lindsey. He aimed a handheld remote at them, pressed a button with his thumb, and the video ended.

  "Bastard!" Lindsey pushed away from the terminal, repulsed. She turned toward Ethan and ducked just in time.

  Ethan swung a chair at the terminal, smashing it with all his strength. He struck it several times more, reducing it to a broken shell. Lindsey grabbed him by the shoulders. "Ethan — we need to leave. We need to leave now!" she said.

  He stared at the smoking monitor, his energy spent. At last he acknowledged Lindsey's request. "Wolf, too?" he said. He lifted his bandaged arm. "He bit me but he didn't mean it. He's a good boy."

  Lindsey smiled. "Wolf, too. Now let's get the hell out of here."

  They reentered the kitchen. "Wolf, come," said Ethan and Wolf joined them as they headed back down the corridor past Pit #3 to the bulkhead at the end of the hall. This time the code wasn't so easy.

  "E for Exit," Ethan spoke aloud. But the pattern didn't work. Ethan tried it forwards, then backwards, but neither combination unlocked the bulkhead doors.

  "C'mon, Ethan, think," said Lindsey.

  "O for Outside?" He said this more to himself than to Lindsey. But O didn't make any sense. He couldn't construct an O using only five numbers.

  "Ethan, just run through the alphabet. Hurry, please."

  There had to be a pattern, thought Ethan, a logical reason behind Pike's naming of each security door. Exit. Outside. And then it dawned on him. He turned to Lindsey.

  "Do you know what the most common force in the universe is?"

  Lindsey stared at him dumbfounded.

  He looked down at Wolf. "Wolf?"

  Wolf wagged his tail.

  "EMF. Magnetism. M." Ethan punched the letter M into the keypad. 7-1-5-3-9. The bulkhead disengaged. Ethan climbed the steps and pushed the doors open. Spotlights glared in the dusk above them, and like an armed guard, Pike stood at the entrance, rifle in hand pointed down at them.

  "You better run, Lindsey," said Ethan as he casually blocked Pike's line of sight. "Run!" he said more forcefully when he didn't hear her move.

  Footsteps echoed down the hallway behind him. Pikes eyes glinted as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a remote. Moments later, Ethan felt the ground beneath him shift.

  42

  Knox sped along Pumpkin Hill Road on his way toward Kenyonville. He felt bad about leaving Marlene without a proper explanation. But he knew she trusted him, and if he said it was time to pack up and leave, it was time to pack up and leave. A part of him must have known all along there would come a day like this. Once a cop, always a cop. A good cop always had a backup plan. And he had been a good cop. But for a long time now he just hadn't been a very good person. As the windshield wipers beat back the rain, clearing the way ahead in one-second glimpses, Knox remembered back to where it all went wrong.

  By the time he had graduated from the police academy he had a wife and two kids in diapers waiting for him at home. His first assignment: Hartford. They gave him a gun and a uniform. His presence actually struck fear into people, and he liked that. He liked the power it gave him. Perhaps he liked it too much. As a rookie, graduating with honors and a marksman's metal, he thought he was invincible. His cruiser was the Millennium Falcon, and the bad guys were Stormtroopers. For two of the best years of his life everything was just fine...until he killed someone. Three someones, to be exact. Three kids who were just innocent bystanders. As innocent as his naive notion of invincibility.

  Knox recalled the chase — a chase he had dreamed about so many times afterward it had taken on a surreal, almost mythical, dimension. A high-speed chase through the vehicle-clogged streets of the North End...the streaking blue mirage of the Grand Torino in front of him, a suspected getaway car in an armed robbery...the way the sunlight reflected off the Torino's back windshield...the way the May air smelled of fresh apple blossoms instead of the usual stench of car exhaust and sun-baked garbage. It was a beautiful day, a perfect day — a perfect day to catch a bad guy. Down one street, then another, a left here, a right there. Tires complaining but the adrenalin was pumping, the noise and the movement and the sunlight and the color all conspiring to create the illusion of God's intervention, God's unseen guiding hand. But seconds before the Gran Torino reached the end of Maple Street, that hand must have been ripped away, replaced by an ending only found Greek tragedies. Knox remembered watching the Torino barrel through the stop sign and leap into the unknown. Knox remembered his heart jumping into his throat as if he knew what was going to happen next, but it was too late, everything was in motion, a kind of slow motion dream where even the individual wingbeats of a hummingbird could be seen. The dream suddenly crumbled, speeding back up to real time, as the Torino slammed into an oil truck, filling the intersection with debris, causing Knox to grab the wheel and swerve to avoid joining the mess...running up onto the sidewalk. How was he to know three girls — ages seven, eight and ten — were playing double-dutch there? How was he to know he would be the instrument that would change so many lives, including his own?

  Knox's stomach still soured at the memory of it all. He reached into his pocket and peeled off a Rolaids and popped it into his mouth. Why was he punishing himself?

  Because I fucking deserve it, that's why, he grunted silently.

  After that day his career — his life — was never the same. To relieve some of the guilt, he had found a friend in alcohol. His wife didn't like his newfound friend; didn't like what his newfound friend had turned him into. They argued. When the arguments got physical, she took the kids and left. After that, he must have thought about suicide on average of once a day. In fact, he was sitting with a near-empty bottle of Jim Beam in one hand and his revolver in the other when he got the call. "Come work for us," a slippery voice had asked — his first encounter with the mysterious Mr. ???. The work was with a corporation called Bronson Securities. They were sub-contractors used by the U.S. Government. They had a special project in need of a few good men who could keep a secret at an out-of-the-way place called Backbone Ridge located in the northeast hills of Connecticut...

  Knox took a deep breath as he turned onto Rural Road #2. He knew these back roads in his sleep, knew where every access point to the utility right-of-way was located. The one he was driving to was the closest entry point to Backbone Ridge. As he navigated the slippery ruts and juts, his hand began to flutter on the wheel. He released his grip and shook out the tremors. It had been a long time since he had experienced that. It used to happen a lot back when he was drinking and had to sober up just so he could make it through his shift. Sometimes it got so bad he couldn't even hold a pen to write a traffic ticket. After he took the job with Bronson Securities, however, the tremors went away. At least for a little while.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the tightly packed woods around him. Rural Road #2 was now no more than a muddy path wending its way through the rain-soaked night. The truck lurched and Knox's head rapped against the doorframe, knocking his hat off. The hat fell down between his legs and came to rest against the foot pedals. He reached for it but he couldn't bend far enough while still watching the road. Before he did something foolish, he stopped the truck. He plucked the hat off the floor mat and smacked it against his thigh as if it had been bad. He then calmly placed it back on his head and pulled it tight.

  "
There," he said.

  He put the truck back in gear and drove on. No sooner had got back up to speed, a deer dropped down from the embankment directly in front of him. He reacted instinctually, pulling the steering wheel to the right to avoid the deer's hindquarters. The truck nosed into the embankment and bounced off, causing the truck's rear-end to slide sideways toward the softer shoulder. In an attempt to right himself, Knox punched the accelerator, but the mud merely wrapped around his tires, providing little traction. The truck came to rest, headlights — one now busted — facing the embankment, rear wheels in a ditch buried in mud up to the hubcaps.

  "Well, fuck me," said Knox, trying once to pull himself free, only to hear the disheartening whine of rubber spinning on wet stone. "Nothing's ever easy is it?"

  Lightning flashed again and he looked around for the deer but it was long gone. He shut the truck's engine off, grabbed his rifle and a flashlight, and stepped out into the rain.

  Lindsey bolted down the corridor half-dragging her injured foot. When she reached the kitchen, she was indecisive as to which way to go. Bedrooms and corridors, Wolf's holding pen, and the Recreation Room — every door was open, inviting her in like the mouths of beasts. All she needed was a place to hide. The sound of the bulkhead door closing prompted her to choose.

  She skirted the island and was about to enter the Recreation Room when she spotted a block of knives on the counter. She quickly grabbed the biggest handle — which belonged to a large chef's blade — and ducked into the subdued lighting of the Recreation Room.

  The soft glow of white upon white surrounded her, reflected in dozens of plexiglass animal enclosures. The subtle hum of the facility increased as she hurried along the room's outer perimeter looking for a place to tuck her body out of sight. But the spaces beneath the workbenches were much too open, like the rows of tables supporting the animal enclosures. There was too much space. Anything hiding underneath would be seen. She hurried toward the back of the room where the darkness pooled, her heart pounding. Here, she found a curtain as sheer as mosquito netting partitioning the room. She lifted it and crawled beneath. To her left she saw a large plexiglass enclosure half-filled with what looked like a liquid nitrogen mist. A refrigeration unit? She scrambled over and hid behind it.