"They sent someone else in first."
"They did? You said about two or three months ago?"
Elias felt his back muscles tighten as he sensed the direction of the conversation. "Yes. That's about right."
"But that was before my sign."
Elias only nodded.
Her eyes flashing, Tillie raised her voice in agitation. "You didn't come here because of my sign. You came to look for this Eric!"
Trying to defuse her anger, Elias explained, "Both, actually. In fact, there were three reasons why I decided to come out of retirement. The first was that we found out Kreitzmann was in Aegis. The second was losing Eric. And the clincher was your sign."
"I don't believe you. And, besides, Kreitzmann's been in and out of here for years. Why would your people suddenly worry about it now?"
"Honestly, I'm confused about that myself. I was told, hell, I was shown a video with Kreitzmann entering three months ago. It wasn't until I talked with Wilson that I found out he's been here longer. And no one knew, or at least no one told me, that he basically has keys to the door. If you were at Wilson's, you heard me say the same thing when I was talking to him."
She paused for a moment, replaying the conversation upon which she had eavesdropped. "Okay, that might be true. But I still think you came here just to get your friend out."
"I would have," Elias told her honestly. "Your message was the clincher, though."
She flopped back into the cushion behind her, blowing out a loud breath.
Sensing the tide was turning a bit in his favor, Elias pressed on. "I know that you don't believe me, but I would have come here after I saw your sign, even if we hadn't lost Eric in Aegis."
Her eyes turned to look at his. He could almost feel them probing his thoughts, seeking the level of sincerity she wanted or needed. He could feel some of the tension drain from her as she apparently made up her mind. "You're right. You're here, whatever the original directive or motive might have been."
Elias remained quiet, allowing her to make the rest of the journey on her own.
Standing suddenly, she suggested, "Let's go look at that picture of your friend. Maybe I do know him."
He stood and snatched up his pistol and rifle. As they headed toward the door, they passed an alcove, equipped with several decorative hooks on the walls, many of them holding jackets and colorful scarves, her shoes lined up carefully against the back wall. Even that area sported some small shelves, adorned with porcelain statuettes and feather roses. He looked at her quizzically, and she replied, as if he should know, "Every home needs a mudroom." He chuckled at his quirky new acquaintance, and followed her out into the maze of concrete passageways.
They communicated in whispers, as the grilles installed in the floor of the walkways were open to the space below. After the ninth turn, she told him that there was no direct connection between her mechanical maze and his electrical raceways, so they would need to briefly descend to the public corridors until they reached an access point. Before taking one of the ladders down, she lay on the floor and shimmied to a return air grille until her head was hovering directly above it. Turning her head to the side, Tillie listened for the sounds of any residents below.
Quietly, she rose and whispered, "Sounds all clear. Let's go."
They proceeded to an access ladder and climbed down to a mechanical closet. Again, with great care, Tillie cracked the door open and peered out. Seeing no one, she opened the door the rest of the way and stepped into the corridor, immediately followed by Elias. The closest electrical room with access to the raceway was only fifty feet away, and they reached it without incident, quietly closing that door and swiftly climbing the ladder, a longer climb since the electrical raceways were positioned above the mechanical plenum. As Elias was following Tillie through the trip, he had an opportunity to admire her grace and fluidity as she moved, climbing and descending ladders as effortlessly as a gymnast.
Once within the raceway, Elias moved into the lead position, even though he was aware that she knew the location of his base. Within less than ten minutes they arrived, and he did a quick inventory and checked his discreet security measures. Everything appeared to be undisturbed.
Leaning over the laptop, he brought up the appropriate file and clicked on the jpeg of Stone. The face of his old friend filled the screen.
"There he is."
Tillie leaned closer for a better look and almost instantly recognized him. "Yes. I did see him come in. It was about that time, too."
"What happened?"
She turned to face Elias, her expression blank. "Not good."
"What, Tillie?"
"The Zippers got him. Right off the bat. Not too far from where the Zooks accosted you."
Elias felt an anger building inside and, with more of an accusatory tone in his voice than he intended, asked, "You didn't help him?"
Tillie flinched back, hurt by his inflection. "I would have. Really. But I didn't have any of the balloons with me. Normally, the only thing to worry about in that area would be the Zooks. Those guys I can handle without a problem."
Her unhappiness at not assisting Elias' friend was blatantly obvious, and he immediately felt like a bully for his comment. "It's okay, Tillie. I didn't mean it that way."
His attempt to reassure her did not have much of an effect. "Do you know where they took him? Or…," he paused, not wanting to know if the alternative was the case. "Did they take him alive?"
Relieved at the prospect of delivering a positive bit of news, she blurted, "He's alive. At least he was when they took him away. They took him to the lab."
"Do you have any idea where in Kreitzmann's lab they are keeping him?"
"I haven't seen him in there, but that doesn't mean much. There are several areas of that lab where I haven't gone, in the overhead area. What I have seen bothers me too much, so it's a real approach–avoidance deal."
With a hopeful tone in her voice, she added, "But I can start looking for him."
"That would be great," Elias said, smiling at her.
He closed the image file and began clicking through the video menu, checking first on his available views of Walden. Seeing nothing unusual, he switched to the Madison views.
"What are you looking for?"
"Nothing, specifically. I've been away from here for a little while, so I thought I would do a quick check to see if anything was happening."
He finished checking the video feeds from Madison and clicked on ZooCity. The first two views were of empty rooms. As he was about to change to the next feed, Tillie pointed at the screen. "What's that?"
"What?"
"I don't know. I think it looks like a foot and leg."
Elias blinked and stared harder at the screen in the spot where Tillie pointed, before remembering that he had the capacity to zoom in on a region of the view. Doing so, the vague blob at the corner of the screen resolved clearly into precisely what she had described.
"You're right. That's exactly what it is."
"It doesn't look like he's moving. Do you think he's asleep?"
Elias turned and looked at Tillie. "Do you?"
She did not answer.
Satisfied that there was nothing more to see in this view, Elias clicked on the next, and all of his questions were graphically answered.
"Oh, my God," Tillie gasped. "Are they all dead?"
"I can't tell for certain, but it surely looks like it," Elias answered softly, his eyes taking in the apparent mayhem in the room he now viewed. Strewn about the floor, arms, legs, and torsos were twisted at all impossible angles; he could not imagine they were still alive. His finger moved on the touchpad, and he clicked on the stored-video menu, leaving the live mode and beginning a slow rewind. Other than the screen flicker, the fact that he was watching the past in reverse at 3X speed was not apparent, as nothing moved. With another click, Elias increased the speed to 16X, intensifying the flicker. As the clock counter in the corner of the monitor passed the previous
hour, all of the inert bodies suddenly flew into motion, almost comically.
He quickly paused the reverse mode and clicked on play. There were at least nine men and women visible in the frame. They were eating a meal, talking, and laughing. Elias and Tillie stared at the video silently, waiting in dread for the outcome that they knew was coming at any moment. Within a minute, one of the men stopped in mid-stride as he was returning to the table with a glass in his hand. His right arm suddenly jerked upward, the glass flying across the room, and a moment later his head twisted violently. He fell limply to the floor. Before the others could even react, Elias saw that, one by one, each of them met a similar fate. The attack, in total, took less than a minute, according to the clock counter.
At no point was Elias able to distinguish the attackers on the high-resolution monitor.
"My God!" Tillie echoed her sentiment from earlier. "The Zippers!"
"Let's try this," Elias said as he backed up the video to the moment the first man was walking across the room, then clicked on the playback menu, and selected the mode which allowed playback at a frame-by-frame speed. The man's gait instantly froze until Elias, clicking with the pointer, began to advance the motion one frame per click. After approximately twenty frames, a figure suddenly appeared in the picture, sheathed entirely in a beige body suit which extended to cover his head, except for the eyes, nose, and mouth, his arms reaching toward the walking man. In the next frame, the figure's hands were gripping the walker's head on both sides. The following frame showed the walker's head twisted at an angle normally impossible. In the next, the beige figure had already released the walker and was moving toward the next nearest victim.
"I can't watch any more of this," Tillie whispered, her voice raspy, and turned away.
Elias spent a few more minutes scanning rapidly through the remaining frames. He wanted a clear understanding of their techniques. He found that there had been only two of the Zippers, as Tillie called them. That was all it took to kill, by hand, an entire roomful of nine people.
Finishing his study of their actions, Elias quickly checked the live feeds from the balance of the cameras he had placed around the ZooCity area. Everywhere else he looked, he found more bodies and, apparently, no survivors.
"Elias, are you ready to go yet?"
"Thank you."
"Thank you? For what?"
"For calling me Elias and dropping that whole ‘Mr. Death' thing."
He was rewarded with a sardonic half smile. "That doesn't mean you get to learn the club handshake yet, mister."
"I am just about ready. I need to do one thing."
Changing programs on the laptop, he typed a report to Faulk, filling him in on what he had learned about Kreitzmann and the Zippers, the apparent status of Stone, and the demise of the Zooks. Without consciously knowing why, he left out any reference to Tillie or Wilson.
"What are you doing, a paper on how you spent your summer vacation?"
"I'm preparing my daily report."
"How can you report? There's no way."
"Ah," he began, glad to be giving her a revelation, "but there is." He explained the comm system to Tillie while he finished the report and instructed the program to encrypt and compress it for transmission. That done, he transferred the compressed report to the phone with a USB cable, making certain the phone had a full charge and was still set to automatically upload and download the day's transmissions.
As he placed the phone back in its location, Tillie asked, "Aren't you bringing it with you? We might need it."
"No reason to. It's no good as a regular cell phone since it only works for about one second a day. It's only good with the laptop."
"Bring them both."
Elias turned around to face her, a slight grin playing across his face. "Both? Tillie, are you asking me to move in with you?"
She punched him on the arm. It stung. "Creep. No, I'm not and you know it. But we might need to get a message out, and why should we have to come back here to do it?"
"True, but if I bring the laptop to your place, I won't have my surveillance anymore. The video feeds are through these conduits," he explained, pointing at the groups of pipes mounted to the walls, "and they don't enter your mechanical area."
She stared at him, her gaze drifting to the pipes and the wires dangling from the pipes down to the connections at the side of the laptop. "Okay. We'll leave it here. Can we go now? I want to get back to my place."
"I'm ready to go, but I'd like to check out ZooCity."
"Why? They're all dead."
"Maybe not. One of them might need some help. Besides, there might be something we can learn. Come on, it won't take long."
Without waiting for an answer, he started walking down the raceway that led to the sector with ZooCity.
"Oh, all right."
When they arrived at the access ladder into the ZooCity area, Elias went down first, followed quickly by Tillie. Duplicating her actions at the previous entrance to the public area, he cracked the door open slightly and listened first, then peeked out before exiting.
The silence was disconcerting as they entered the formerly occupied enclave.
He paused and said, "Wait here," wanting to spare her the ghastly scene which would begin around the next corner.
"Nope," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
Elias saw no point in arguing and continued forward. As he threaded his way through the first of the bodies, there was only one soft gasp from behind. After that, no sound or comments came from his companion.
He proceeded methodically, room by room, checking every closet and every cabinet which might be large enough to contain a person. Most of the way through the enclave, Elias was beginning to admit to himself that Tillie might have been right. Not only had they encountered no survivors, he had seen nothing which could be considered helpful in his search.
They came to the end of a long hallway and Tillie, who had passed him as he checked the previous room, reached for the doorknob – when Elias heard a distinctive click-clack from the other side of the door. In an instant, he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her forcefully to the side. They slammed into the side wall of the hallway at the same moment that a large chunk of the door Tillie had been about to open exploded outward.
Handing the rifle to her, Elias pulled the 9mm from his pocket and shouted, "Who's in there?"
He heard the person inside pump the shotgun, loading another round in the chamber.
"We're not here to hurt you. We're here to help."
A nervous voice shouted through the hole in the door, "Go 'way. I don't need no help."
Tillie spoke up. "Look, we saw what happened to your friends. We're checking for survivors. Are you hurt?"
"No!" The voice from beyond the door sounded young and terrified.
Trying to make his voice sound gentle, Elias reassured the stranger, "We're not with the ones who did this. They're gone."
"You sure?"
"We just checked the whole area," Tillie answered. "This room is the last one. They're not here."
"They might be. You can't even see them."
"If they were here, we would be dead, not talking to you."
There was a minute of silence from the stranger as he tried to figure out his next move. To help him decide, Elias said, "Look. We're going to lay down our guns and step in front of the door. You can see both of us."
"Are you crazy?" Tillie whispered.
Elias, instead of replying, tucked the 9mm into his waistband behind his back, making certain it was covered by his windbreaker, and stepped back from the door, walking to the center of the hallway so the stranger could partially see him through the hole in the door.
"You are crazy," she muttered and carefully leaned the AK-47 against the side wall, moving to follow Elias.
Both of them stood about twenty feet from the splintered opening, both making their hands visible to the man behind the door.
Elias spoke slowly. "Okay, see, we'r
e unarmed and there is no one else out here."
The barrel of the shotgun slowly protruded unsteadily from the hole, centered on the area between the two of them. Elias could feel his muscles tighten while he waited for the second blast from the shotgun. Moments later, the stranger's face appeared next to the side of the gun, his eyes darting around as he checked the hallway for anyone who might be hidden.
"I told you, we're alone."
The barrel withdrew and the door opened. A young male, no more than seventeen or eighteen, stepped out into the hallway, still clutching the shotgun and keeping it aimed in their general direction, as he quickly glanced from side to side to make sure no one was crouched on either side of the doorway. Seeing that the hallway was empty except for Elias and Tillie, the teenager lowered his weapon.
Elias heard Tillie release a large exhale. She had obviously been holding her breath. Talking a cautious step forward, he asked, "Is anyone else in there?"
The boy shook his head. "No. Only me."
"Are you sure you're all right?" Tillie asked, following Elias' lead and slowly moving forward. The boy no longer cared whether they kept their distance, and did not react. Elias covered the remaining distance and gingerly took the shotgun, now held limply, from the young man, leaning it against the wall next to the AK-47.
As soon as he was relieved of the weapon, the teen seemed to crumble, as if every muscle in his body had simply given up. Elias and Tillie both grabbed him by the arms and supported him.
"They're all gone, all dead," the teen said in a voice which was closer to a whimper.
The two of them walked him to the side wall and slowly lowered him to the floor. Tillie sat down next to him and held his hand.
"What's your name?" she asked softly.
The teen, who was staring down blankly, as if he were examining his sprawled legs, murmured, "Zack."
"Zack, I'm Tillie. This is Elias. Tell us what happened."
The young man seemed to be slipping deeper into a daze. Elias leaned over and snapped his fingers in front of Zack's face. "Zack! We need you to tell us what happened. We will get you someplace safe in a minute, but we need to know what happened and why."
The Aegis Solution Page 20