Mr. Clear

by Stewart, Graham

  Ben was now fighting to keep his eyes open. “Tell me some more about this procedure,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Cole. “I’ll tell you everything. But later. You look tired, Ben. Hardly surprising. We’ve pushed you much more than I intended to today. Why don’t you get some rest?”

  ***

  Upstairs in the apartment, Cole showed Ben through the living area he had already seen, and into a bedroom he had not. The room was cavernous by anyone’s standards, with its own bathroom and a bed the size of a basketball court.

  “You put your head down. Take as long as you like,” said Cole. “I’m going to head back downstairs and get on with our preparations. Feel free to help yourself to whatever you like. The kitchen is stocked.”

  Ben heard the outer door close and sat down on the edge of the bed. He lay back and tried to relax. But his thoughts wouldn’t let him.

  Ben put his unease down to his self-instilled paranoia. He had never been around people, outside of the ones he grew up with, who actually knew he was in the same building as them. Trust was an issue. Sleep, if it was to come, would be with one eye open.

  He needed a shower. Ben never really smelled, even when he perspired, but he felt grubby after the hours running around Miami, and then the subsequent probing and prodding from Cole and his team.

  It took him a few minutes to work out how to operate the shower. There were chrome pipes and faucets everywhere and the thing looked like it needed someone with an engineering qualification to operate it. There was some temptation to sample one of the several bottles of shower gels and oils that sat on the glass shelf in the corner of the stall, but he resisted. No matter how close he might have been to attaining the same ability Cole had, he had to stay true to the habits that had served him so well this far.

  It also had more than a little to do with Freya mentioning how impressed she was by his lack of odorant.

  After what felt like an hour under the water, Ben dried off with one of the towels from the huge pile Cole had left. It felt weird putting on the bathrobe that had been left out, but it also felt good.

  He slid under the covers of the palatial bed and was asleep not long after.

  His slumber was short-lived however.

  He awoke with a start and saw that the time on the clock by the side of the bed had advanced only fifty minutes. Even so, he was wide-awake. He would not be able to go back to sleep.

  Maybe hunger was what had woken him. He had gone days without food before and not felt it. Maybe having it on tap like this was too much for his body to resist.

  Ben ducked his head out into the living room, listening carefully. There wasn’t a sound. He padded out into kitchen. Cole wasn’t lying. The refrigerator was stuffed with so much food Ben was afraid he wouldn’t be able to close the door again.

  Many of the items on the shelves he didn’t recognize. Judging by the labels, Cole had certainly developed a refined palate in the few years he had been ‘normal’. The man had become very at home in his visible skin.

  Would it be the same for him? If he had the option to alternate between states like Cole, which one would he spend more of his time in?

  He downed a bottle of water and decided hunger wasn’t what he was experiencing. Ben was feeling like a third leg. A spare. And he didn’t like it. He decided to see if he could make himself useful downstairs, see how Cole was progressing. But when he went to let himself out, the apartment door was locked.

  From the outside.

  There was no mechanism on the inside of the door. Ben looked about the place for a key, but there was none. Not that he had to worry. If there was one skill Jason had taught him, that had proven invaluable to him out in the big bad world, it had been the art of picking locks.

  One bent fork and two minutes later, he emerged into the parking basement to see Kane with his head in the trunk of the SUV, his back to Ben, examining an array of equipment mounted on a pullout rack. He hadn’t heard Ben enter the space, and Ben was not about to alert him to his presence. Kane was trouble. There were no two ways about it. Ben didn’t want him to know he was there and moved across the floor, finding the rusted blue door to the maintenance room open, as well as the concealed entrance within.

  He stepped through into the laboratory. The place was like mission control at NASA. Screens flickering everywhere. Hearing Kane come up behind him, Ben stood to one side. The man was not wearing the wraparound sunglasses from before. Kane closed the portal, the locking mechanism engaging automatically, and joined Cole and the rest of the team in the middle of the room.

  They were looking at one of the large wall-mounted screens. On it was displayed what looked like a computer-generated sequence of images familiar to Ben. DNA strands. Cell structures.

  His DNA strands.

  His cell structures.

  “What I’m saying is,” said Burke, “that it’s going to take longer than we anticipated.”

  “Than you anticipated. How much longer are we talking about here? A day? Two?” said Cole. “I used the last of the existing compound on myself today to snare the boy.”

  “Due to its nature, working with his blood is more difficult than I expected. To properly prep the replication process, we’re looking at a week. Maybe two,” said Burke.

  Cole was sat in a high-backed swivel chair. He turned his head to face Burke. Ben could see that his jaw was clenched. “Unsatisfactory,” said Cole.

  “We can’t rush this,” added Burke. “There can be no room for error.”

  “I, of all people, understand that,” said Cole. “If the demonstration isn’t ready on time, we’re going to lose Mir.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before squandering the reserves on your little pantomime act.”

  “I needed Ben to trust me. Putting myself under did that.”

  “Or you could have done it the old-fashioned way; waited a few hours until we had the equipment and sent these two to grab him,” said Burke.

  “Way I see it,” said Kane, “the old-fashioned way is the only way now. The solution is right under our nose. Let’s not waste time trying to clone his blood. Let’s use his blood.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Erikson, “but doesn’t the body replenish its blood supply in a couple of days?”

  Burke and Cole were listening.

  “And when it does,” said Kane, starting to laugh, “we’ll drain that out of him too.”

  “It would get us over the hump in the short-term,” said Burke.

  Cole considering what the men were saying. “Okay then, let’s do it.”

  “Charade over then,” said Kane. “No time like the present.”

  Cole fished a key out of his pocket and handed it to Kane. He turned back to the screen and Burke. Kane and Erikson started toward Ben.

  The wraparound glasses were clipped to the front of their jackets. They were under the impression that he was still upstairs locked in the apartment, so probably wouldn’t put them on to see him until they got up there.

  Ben controlled his breathing and stayed absolutely still as the two men stood next to him at the exit. He got a good look at the combination Kane entered on the keypad and committed it to memory.

  The door slid open and he stepped through after the two men, close enough to be their shadows. He made it through the rusty blue door in the maintenance room with them without their noticing. Ben felt vindicated in his decision not to sample any of heavily perfumed shower gels in Cole’s apartment.

  Kane and Erikson made straight for the door to the stairwell. Ben gave it to a count of three after the door had closed behind them and then headed for the garage exit.

  He searched the wall around it and the support column nearest, looking for a button, something that would raise the heavy steel shutter. But there was nothing. No lock to pick here.

  His thoughts went to the previous night, when he had arrived here in the cab. Cole had taken something the size of a cigarette lighter from his pocket an
d pointed it at the gate outside.

  A remote.

  He looked back the way he had come, to the black SUV that Cole’s team had arrived in.

  Of course.

  Any one of the men may have needed to use the vehicle at any time, so there was every chance a remote was inside.

  The interior of the cockpit was immaculate. Uncluttered. It took him no time to find and identify what he was looking for.

  He pointed the rectangular piece of plastic out through the rear glass and pressed the small circular button. He was worried for half a second that it had done nothing. Then hydraulics clanked into life somewhere and the shutter began to lift.

  The stairwell door burst open as it did, Kane and Erikson appearing, the wraparound sunglasses on their faces. Crap. They immediately looked in the direction of the shutter, drawn by the racket it was making, and began scanning the area, their heads tracking left and right.

  Ben slid down into the driver’s seat.

  That side of the car was facing away from Kane, but he knew he hadn’t much time before they figured out where he was hiding. The opening the shutter had made so far had only just become big enough for a person to crawl under. They would know he was still inside.

  He angled his head to see if he could catch a glimpse of them in the wing mirror. When Erikson jogged through his field of vision toward the exit, Ben saw that the keys to the SUV were still in the ignition. He pulled himself up in the seat.

  He had never driven a car before. But how hard could it be?

  The woman in the sports car yesterday had pressed her foot on the left hand one of the floor pedals in order for the car to start. He did the same as he turned the key, and the engine purred into life.

  Ben looked down at the gearstick and concluded R was for reverse. He floored the gas and the tires scrabbled for purchase on the dusty concrete, the truck wheel-spinning across the space and smashing hard into another vehicle. Erikson was blocking the way out, standing right in the mouth of the entrance.

  Kane ran and scrambled around to the passenger side of the SUV, wrenching on the door handle. It opened as Ben jerked the gearstick into drive and stamped on the gas. Kane lost his grip on the door and was sent rolling across the floor.

  Erikson had a gun pointed at the windscreen but chose not to fire, instead stepping aside as the SUV sped under the shutter and up the exit ramp.

  Ben grabbed at the rear-view mirror and saw Erikson’s face. He was edging along the back runner board, clinging on to the roof. Ben looked into the passenger seat behind and saw that one of the passenger windows was open. Erikson was trying to pull himself around to it. Ben took his foot up off the gas and slammed it down hard on the brake. There was a thud as Erikson slammed against the trunk. It was just enough to loosen his grip. When Ben got back on the gas, Erikson fell into the road.

  Ungainly and powerful to boot, the SUV was a handful to control. Ben veered into the wall on one side of the alley that led up on to the road, only for the car to bounce off it like a pinball and head for the wall opposite. He wrestled the vehicle under control and brought it on to a straight heading.

  There was no one behind him, and nothing but the night sky and a clear road in front of him.

  Ben had no idea here he was going yet. He just knew it needed to be as far away from here as possible.

  12

  “Who are you?” said the grizzled traffic cop with more than a hint of irritation in his voice.

  Powell flashed his identification. “What happened here?”

  The right lane of the MacArthur Causeway had been closed off and a tow truck was slowly winching the drowned carcass of a black Chevy Suburban out of the water.

  “What can I say?” the cop started. “I reckon the guy jacked it downtown and decided to take it for a spin out to the beach. Sounds like he might have needed the air. Off his head by all accounts. Driving all over the road, running red lights left, right and center. He had two or three near-misses before he put it in the drink. Thankfully. We’re lucky he didn’t kill someone.”

  “You caught him then?” said Powell.

  “No, he got away,” the cop growled.

  “How do you suppose he managed that?” said Powell looking around and inviting the cop to do the same. They were standing on a fifty-meter wide, two-mile long area of flat land with nothing but six lanes of fast moving traffic around them, nothing but water on either side.

  “He must have jumped.”

  “Jumped?”

  “Well he didn’t just disappear into thin air now, did he?” the cop said, his face growing redder with irritation by the second. “I’d lay my house on it that he’s face down on the seabed, stone dead. No more than the scumbag deserves.”

  “We’re going to need to know that for sure. Are the divers here yet?” said Powell.

  “They’re suiting up right now. Any other questions Agent man? Or can I get back to doing my job?”

  “I would have thought this is your job,” said Powell. “Have you run the plates on the SUV?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I have. They were already processed by the intercepting unit. They’re fake. Jacker must have swapped them out.”

  “The out-of-control, off-his-face car jacker that drove it into the sea?”

  The cop pursed his lips. “Is that all?”

  “It is,” said Powell. “Thank you so much for all your help.”

  The traffic cop muttered something and walked away, kicking the ground like a four-year-old.

  The tow truck driver unhooked his winch from the rear of the SUV and Powell signaled Dyson to move in. One of the CSIs made some comment to them about interfering with a crime scene and waiting for them to carry out their examination first, but one unimpressed look from Morgan soon put paid to his protests.

  Powell watched the divers trawl the waters around where the Suburban had entered the water for over an hour.

  They found nothing.

  But Dyson was much luckier.

  “Well, well,” said Powell as Dyson showed him what he had found in the back of the truck.

  “Electronic tagging equipment, motion sensors. Whoever this thing did belong to, they were wired for sound, and dealing with persons of a transparent nature,” said Dyson. “But there’s something else. We pulled prints off the steering wheel.”

  “You run them?” said Powell.

  “I didn’t need to,” said Dyson.

  “They’re the same ones from the bus. The guy who was with Cole at the airport parking lot last night. The dead one.”

  Powell didn’t reply.

  “Jason?” said Morgan. “I accept we work on a need-to-know basis, but things would work a whole lot more fluid if you tell us who or what the hell we’re dealing with here.”

  13

  It was proving difficult for Ben to erase the previous night’s events from his memory. He had thought returning to his old routine might help with the process. But if Cole and Co. had designs on finding him – and it sure as hell sounded as though they might - they would surely assume the same. Cole had been tracking his movements for some time.

  His usual haunts were out of the question, which was one of the reasons he had ended up in a mall.

  Ben’s very own vision of hell.

  He hated shops. Even more, he hated that breed whose sole purpose in life seemed to be frequenting them. Outside these air-conditioned environs they were probably very normal, likeable people. Inside them, they were transformed into insufferable, monumental jerks.

  Ben sat on a bench on one of the avenue-sized aisles watching the worst examples of the species pass. There was a commotion behind him as two girls with sunglasses perched on top of their head sat down with huge, over-exaggerated exhalations of air. They were carrying more bags than it should have been humanly possible to hold, and immediately set about going through each of them, cataloguing their respective hauls.

  “What’s that smell?” one of them said. “Do you get it?”
r />   Her friend sniffed the air. “It’s like… seawater.”

  “Bad seawater. Ugh.”

  Ben dipped his nose to his chest. He couldn’t smell it, but he knew it was him.

  Initially he had started south, not by choice but by coincidence. With a million thoughts of Cole’s treachery and feelings of being used jostling for position in his head, he had just kept on driving straight, his attention on the direction in which he was travelling only coming into focus when he realized that there were no more buildings lining the side of the road, only wide expanses of grassland.

  Concerned that he would run out of fuel and be left stranded out in alligator land, he turned around and headed back for civilization.

  Ben’s driving and knowledge of road etiquette was so bad that it wasn’t long before he attracted the notice of the police. By the time he got into Central Miami he had about a dozen cruisers in his rear-view mirror, and a half-dozen either side of him too. He had been tremendously thankful the SUV had tinted windows. God only knew what the police would have made of the apparently empty driving seat.

  When they herded him out on to the causeway he knew he was running out of road fast. The chances were they would have the far end of the road blocked off.

  Ben had seen clips from those police chase reality TV shows. If they blew out his tires or wedged him in with their cruisers, he’d be trapped in the car with no hope of escape. They would order him out of the car, and if he didn’t, they might open fire on him.

  If they broke into the car to come get him by force, there was no way they wouldn’t discover him. And that could have ended in a fate much worse. He could have wound up in that facility Cole had spoken about – if indeed the ‘facility’ existed in the first place.

  Ben’s eyes had drifted to the right.

  Water. Everywhere.

  He could swim.

  He could swim right out of here if he needed to. And he needed to be out of here.

  Ben whipped the steering wheel hard to the right, the powerful Chevy, at the velocity it was moving, slamming into, mounting and vaulting the 4-foot wall with ease. When the airbags engaged, the wallop in the face from the one housed in the steering wheel left him seeing stars. In the haze, he fumbled with the door controls and lowered all of the windows in the Suburban as it bobbed up and down, water sloshing in. The car pitched forward and Ben slipped out of the window before it went under. The commotion in the water and the resulting explosion of bubbles around provided the ideal camouflage for him to cut through the water to the cover of the wall, away from any eyes scanning the water up above.