by Nick Thacker
“Your contact tells me she prefers you are better armed than you might think necessary,” Olaf said.
Ben smiled. Sounds like Mrs. E, he thought.
“This is a Heckler & Koch HK416N, used by the Norwegian Army. I am also including an Aimpoint CompM4 sight and a vertical foregrip — you can remove it if you’d like — as well as four additional magazines of NATO rounds. It is heavy, but you will be traveling light otherwise. My son can carry additional gear as well, if necessary. You will each carry one of the rifles, and you will have this —“ he pointed to the smaller case — “as a sidearm, just as you have requested. H&K USP.”
“Ammunition?” Ben asked.
“For the pistol, a few magazines. 9mm, so they are light.”
“Very good,” Ben said. “How much?”
Olaf Vanderstadt frowned. “I do not understand.”
“Money,” Ben said, waving his hand over the cases. “This stuff costs money, right? You’re doing me a huge favor, and I want to make sure we’re taking care of you as well.”
Olaf’s eyes brightened. “Ah, yes. Your contact has already arranged for the payment. Please, let us not talk of money.”
“Instead,” Clive said, appearing next to Ben, “let us discuss the plan. You are here to examine the grounds of EKG Corporation, no?”
Ben nodded. “Yes, I’m — we’re — hoping to find anything strange and document it. Anything that’s out of the ordinary down to anything we deem suspect or criminal.”
Clive and his uncle shared another knowing glance.
“You have information about EKG?” Ben asked.
“No,” Olaf said. “Seems as though no one around here does. No one works for the company, and hardly anyone sees any vehicles heading to their headquarters. There is a rumor that all traffic to the corporation comes from the other side of the mountain range. As ridiculous as that sounds, I tend to believe it — I am not sure I have ever seen anyone on the highway that leads to the western entrance.”
“I see,” Ben said. “Well, that’s what we’re going to find out. Anything that’s strange, or weird, or just out of place. We’ll document it all, then see if there’s a pattern or any useful data. I’m not really sure what exactly we’re looking for, but my, uh, client seems to think we’ll know it when we see it.”
He wasn’t sure how much Mrs. E and Julie had shared with this man and his nephew, but he wanted to get going, anyway. He needed to check in with his team back in Alaska and with Eliza here in town. She would want to see that he was prepared, and meet Clive. In addition, Ben wanted to extract as much information as possible about EKG before they disembarked, and Eliza seemed like the one with the most knowledge about the company.
The more he traversed through the streets of Grindelwald, the more he believed that this tiny, beautiful mountain town would be entirely better off without the presence of a secretive company nearby. He had no proof of that yet, so there was little anyone could do to change it.
But if they were able to find anything that corroborated Eliza’s claims — anything that even remotely suggested the images she’d shown him were true — he was going to do everything in his power to help her in her quest to take them down publicly.
He saw it as the CSO’s mission to extricate this amazing little mountain oasis from the oppressive grasp of the corrupt corporation. If there was any truth at all to any of this, Ben was going to find it.
And he was going to do what was necessary afterward.
He shook hands with both men and gathered up his cases, made plans to meet up with Clive in a few hours at the pub, and then turned to leave.
Olaf and Clive saw him out, Clive following him out the door to flip the sign back over to the “OPEN” side.
No one was nearby, and Ben wondered if the town had given them this privacy on purpose — so far, everyone seemed to know exactly why he was here, and what his mission was. They were rooting for him, hoping he could save the prized daughter of Grindelwald and destroy the evil corporation.
It all seemed like a fairy tale to Ben — a modern-day damsel-in-distress story.
He hoped he was the hero in all of it, and he hoped the author of whatever story was playing out was firmly on his side.
18
Alina
She felt nothing but fear. She couldn’t sense it, though. Not truly. It was as if her brain were telling her to ‘be afraid,’ but it was not allowing her the actual emotional response of it. Her skin was crawling with a million pinpricks, yet she seemed simultaneously desensitized to them.
Like being paralyzed over her entire body, yet unable to even register the discomfort. She had a knowledge of her predicament, and that was it. Her involuntary reactions to that predicament had somehow been stifled.
Perhaps it was something in one of the myriad cocktails of medications they'd pumped into her, were still pumping into her. Alina's arms and neck had been punctured; a hundred little needles jammed into her flesh. Bags of intravenous liquids hung from metal stands above her head.
She stared upward, at the stark-white ceiling. Some of the panels above her eyes were lights, yet all of them blended together in a wash of white and hospital-grade brightness. It was a blurry, fluid, singular image of blinding white. It reminded her of the time she had been in the hospital for a few days after eating shellfish in high school. She hadn’t even known she was allergic to shellfish until that moment, and it had nearly been too late. Her parents had waited with her there, her father even closing the inn and spending the night by her side.
But today — or tonight, or whatever time it was — there was no one next to her. She couldn’t see that, of course, but she knew. Her parents weren’t there. They couldn’t be there. They had no idea where she was.
Now that she thought of it, she didn’t know where she was.
She tried to think. When was the last time I was outside? What was I doing then?
She remembered walking down the pathway near the forest. She had been in a hurry, but then…
She couldn’t get her mind to recall what had happened.
She remembered fear. A visceral, terrible fear. Something had been behind her, right?
There was a noise. A scratching sound, something from the forest. But then it had seemed to multiply as if it were coming from more than one place.
Now… she was somewhere else. How much time had passed? Alina wondered. Where did they take me?
She could feel the hundred needles pushing liquid into her veins. She felt the fiery concoctions coursing through her. Whatever it was, it was both relaxing and painful. It felt like a bath of scorching-hot water, just before her body got used to it, but it was inside her body instead of on the surface of her skin.
A noise.
Someone had entered the room.
“Hello, my dear,” a voice called out. It was Swiss German, but it sounded as though they had a slight accent. Not French. Perhaps English was their natural tongue? Or Italian?
She couldn’t respond, though she didn’t try, either.
Footsteps, and a silhouette appeared over her head.
“I hope you are not in pain,” the voice said. It was a man. Small, beady-eyed, with black glasses. He wasn’t balding or thinning, but she couldn’t see clearly with the bright lights behind his head.
She tried moving her neck, but it felt as though it were fixed in place.
“Please,” the man said. “Try not to move. The examination is nearly complete, and your body is still reacting to the chemicals. It won’t be long now…”
She wondered what that meant. But again, it was a wonder that seemed out-of-body, as if she were wondering how a rag doll that had been run over by a car felt.
“I will have the staff bring you a pillow, although you will not need it in the next couple of days.”
He paused and grunted under his breath, as if he were chuckling about something.
What does that mean? she wondered.
She forced her mouth to open
. It stung, and her jaw immediately tensed up and froze. Still, she forced it open and closed. A few times, slowly.
He saw her and leaned in. "Are you okay, my dear? Do you need water?"
She tried to nod, but couldn’t. Still, he seemed to understand. He pulled up a hand, and she could see a tray behind him. On it, a large cup with a handle and lid. And through the top of the lid, a straw. He grabbed it, then pulled it over to her.
She sipped, then coughed. She tried again.
“Slow, my dear,” he said. “For the first surgery two days ago, we couldn’t allow you to drink any water beforehand. Now it is okay. You are on an IV drip to keep your hydration levels, but a bit of water will not hurt, either.”
She couldn’t react, so she just kept drinking.
"Unfortunately, it will have to be the last ingested water you receive, as the next surgery is the big one. We have it scheduled, but we must ensure your strength is up for it. That's what I am here to do."
He didn’t seem to mind having a one-way conversation, but Alina wasn’t sure what she would have said to him if she could speak. He began humming to himself, his tiny eyes peering down at her naked body from behind his glasses.
She had just noticed that she was on the table, uncovered. Unclothed. As with the rest of the emotions she had been feeling, she could sense them but couldn’t truly feel them. They were part of her, but in the way a favorite pair of socks was a part of her. Her hair was hers, but it wasn’t like she could feel it.
The man — or doctor — examined her, taking in her body and marking notes down on a clipboard. He had a detached expression on his face as he hummed along as if he were simply examining the table itself. He worked for a few more minutes, then dropped the clipboard on the tray behind him, where he'd placed the water after taking the straw from her lips.
Finally, he took a step back, then clasped his hands together.
“Well, my dear. It has been long enough. I believe you are finally ready. My name is Dr. Canavero, and I will be with you until the very end.”
She felt something new, something she hadn’t felt yet. Was she about to cry? There were no tears, but there was the feeling of tears, something from deep within her that couldn’t quite come out.
“I will alert the team and prepare the other patient. Thank you for your cooperation.”
He made the grunting, weird laughing noise once again then turned and left the room.
She heard the door slam, but her eyes were still affixed to the ceiling above her.
The sense of crying was stronger now, and she began breathing in slighter, faster breaths.
19
Ben
“I see you stopped by Roth Toni,” the barman said with a chuckle. He was looking at Ben’s new hunting coat that he’d picked up from the store earlier.
Ben had barely stepped over the threshold of the Downtown Lodge once again when the older man behind the bar had yelled to him. Three patrons, two sitting together at a table in the corner of the room and one sitting at the bar itself, glanced up as he walked in. None of them seemed to care, as they all focused back down at their drinks.
Ben grinned. “I did,” he said. “Had a few errands to run this morning, but I had time to stop in this afternoon.”
The man looked at his wrist for a watch that wasn’t there. “It’s half-past four,” he said. “Seems like it’s still afternoon.”
Impressive, Ben thought. A man who always knows what time it was. His own father had been like that — a seeming perfect sense of time, no matter the hour of day or night.
“You saying it’s too early for a drink?”
The man waved him over and gave him a distressed look. “Now that’s not at all what I’m saying, friend. Here, first one’s on me.”
He slid a glass over. Beer, the same Ben had been drinking before, ice-cold as if it had been poured only seconds before.
“Wow,” Ben said. “You know I was coming or something?”
The man just winked. He left to check on the three other customers in the bar, poured a few drinks, then returned to wiping down the bar top.
Ben took the time to think. He sipped at the beer and thought about Julie, about Alina and Eliza. About the newcomers Clive and his uncle Olaf. The Vanderstadts seemed like good people, and Ben would be happy to have Clive along with him tomorrow when they set off.
The trouble was that Ben still wasn’t quite sure where they were setting off to. EKG’s land was commonly used for hunting, through a deal between the canton and the company, but it was all highly regulated and — Ben assumed — highly scrutinized. He figured EKG at least would have solar cameras in the woods, at least on the property line. Would they allow trespassers like Ben and Clive?
There really wasn’t any way around it. Eliza seemed to have a good plan, a route through the region toward their headquarters that she’d given Ben yesterday. It led to where she claimed the massive buildings and campus lay on the other side of a ridge, invisible to the town of Grindelwald.
But what sort of security EKG had out on patrol was information Eliza hadn’t given him. She couldn’t, as she didn’t have any idea. She’d told Ben that the route would get them there unseen, but it was still unnerving for Ben to go in blind. He’d grown accustomed to Julie’s and Mrs. E’s tech capabilities, and Mr. E’s connections in the communications sector.
On previous missions, Julie had guided Ben over and around the area behind their cabin using GPS and drone technology, and he'd even seen her tap into a satellite feed that Mr. E had somehow had repositioned over their area.
Out here, in the middle of the Swiss Alps, he would be flying blind. Cellular service out here was nonexistent, and Julie had warned him against even trying — if EKG was monitoring the right frequencies, or scraping data from any nearby cellular towers, it could easily ping his location directly to them.
So tomorrow, anything he could see with his own eyes would be the only ‘intelligence’ available to him. Clive was certainly an asset he was happy to have along, but he still missed having the heads-up GPS location constantly updating on his phone.
He took another sip as the bartender sidled over. “Everything okay, son?” the man asked.
Ben nodded, raising an eyebrow. “Just enjoying a bit of peace before the storm.”
“Ah, the tempest sets in,” the man said. “Sounds like you’re leaving tomorrow.”
Ben frowned.
“Good guess?”
“We — I mean, I am,” Ben said. “Why? Have you heard something?”
“I hear everything here, son,” the man said. “I even heard you spoke with Ringgenberg.”
Ben nodded again. “I did. I’m hoping we’ll come across Alina, but I’m afraid I’m not trained for that sort of thing. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”
“You’ll be just fine. If she’s out there, I know you will find her.”
Ben was starting to grow slightly annoyed with this superhero treatment, but he kept his face blank and expressionless. “Yeah, well, I hope so.”
The man seemed as though he might be about to leave, but then he leaned forward and glanced side to side. “Listen,” he said, a bit of his French accent slipping out as he spoke. “I just… I want to make sure you know the danger you might be putting yourself in.”
Ben wasn’t sure how to take that. “What do you mean? I’m just going to poke around, check for Alina, and help Eliza find —“
“I know, I know. It’s just… there’s been some changes.”
“What changes?” Ben asked. He was definitely growing annoyed with the fact that everyone in Grindelwald seemed to know more about his mission than he did. “If there’s something I need to know, I’d appreciate it if —“
“I just heard that there’s another group going out tomorrow as well. Three men. One looks like a military gentleman. The other two, I’m not sure.”
“They were here?”
The barman nodded. “Came in late morning, maybe arou
nd lunchtime. Two of them ate. One of them, the military fellow, seemed to not want to be here.”
“What did they say?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just overheard that they were ‘heading out tomorrow,’ out into the land you are off to.”
“And I should be worried?”
"Well, that's just it — I don't think so. But I don't know. They didn't seem… hostile. But it also seems strange, you know. That they would be hunting the same land you're on, at the same time."
“Hunting?”
“I assume that’s what they’re planning. Seems like a hunting party. We get them from time to time, you know. A richer fellow, with an assistant or helping hand of sorts. And a professional, someone who actually knows what they’re doing out there.”
Ben took in this information. He, too, wasn’t sure how to interpret it. It did seem strange. “But you seem to know everything about me,” Ben said. “How come you don’t know about these guys?”
The barman and innkeeper shrugged again. “Who knows? They have been relatively quiet, slipping in sometime a day before yesterday, I believe. Ringgenberg, the others, no one’s seen where they’re staying. They eat, drink, get coffee, that’s it.”
“I see.”
The bartender held his hands up, palms facing Ben. "Look, son, I'm just saying to watch your back. Seems it's a strange time in Grindelwald. Poor little Alina's lost, your friend Eliza seems to want a piece of that weird, mysterious company up there, and these gentlemen are in town for some reason no one knows about."
“And the deaths,” Ben said.
The man stepped backward. “What do you know of ‘deaths?’”
"The dog and the two others. They went missing, right?"
“No one said anything about deaths, son.”
“Right,” Ben said. “Sorry, really. I just meant —“
“I’m just saying to watch your back. That’s it. No one wants this, and we all want to see Alina back.”