22
He was becoming invisible after all. First time out, the state obviously took longer to engage. Maybe there was a way out of this for him. But not if they knew what was happening to him. He couldn’t be sure how long it would take for the transformation to be complete. He couldn’t let it happen here. As soon as Morgan copped it he would alert his commander.
Burke carefully hid his hands underneath the clothes on his lap and cleared his throat. “Is it okay if I get dressed now?” he said to Morgan. “And I could really use the bathroom.”
Morgan just looked over at Powell, who nodded back in approval.
“Come on then,” said Morgan, motioning for Burke to lead the way.
“What? Are you coming with me?” said Burke. “I can go on my own, you know.”
“Not anymore you can’t.” Morgan leveled the shotgun at him. “Don’t get any ideas. You so much as walk too fast and I’ll blow you in half.”
With that in mind, Burke got to his feet, trying not to appear too eager. He pushed through the door and into one of the stalls.
“I won’t come in with you,” said Morgan. “If it’s all the same.”
Burke moved to close the stall door behind him.
“Leave it unlocked,” Morgan said.
Burke lifted the toilet seat for effect and set the clothes down on the floor. His fingers were now completely invisible and his toes were following suit. The transformation was picking up speed, the state of invisibility spreading like an infection through his body from his extremities inward and upward.
“Come on, what’s the hold-up?” Morgan said through the door.
“I can’t go, knowing you’re standing out there waiting,” said Burke.
“Do you want me to point my gun under the door? That will run it out of you pretty sharpish.”
“No. No, that won’t be necessary. Just give me a minute please,” said Burke. His legs were gone now, up to the knees, as were his arms, up to the elbow. Before he could take in the magnitude of what was happening to him, his whole body was under. Burke crossed his eyes and focused on the end of his nose. He couldn’t see it. He ran his fingers over his face, across his day-old stubble and guessed that his face too must be invisible now. It had better be, he thought, considering what he was going to try next.
Burke knelt and looked under the door at Morgan’s boots. He tested the height between the floor and the bottom of the dividing partition with the neighboring stall. Burke was thin. Something Kane liked to remind him about with annoying frequency. He could crawl beneath, no problem. He scooted around on his bare ass and put one hand on the floor to steady himself. He reached up with the other to the cistern on the back of the toilet and flushed.
“About time,” Morgan groaned.
As the water gurgled through the pipe work, Burke lay flat on his back and pushed through into the next stall, across the floor and through the gap, wriggling under the partition of the next. He emerged out into the rest room proper, around the corner from where Morgan stood. With as much stealth and speed as he could muster, he stood to his feet. He caught his reflection, or rather the lack of one, in the mirror over the sink.
Ironically, he now felt the urge to go to the toilet, which he now heard was completing its flush cycle.
He treaded softly around to where Morgan stood, no more than five feet away, one of his boots holding open the exit. He did not appear to sense Burke’s presence.
“Come on, let’s go,” said Morgan. He nudged the barrel of his weapon at the stall door and it swung open. Morgan leaned his head to one side to look in and then pushed the door with his fist.
“What the-“
He stepped back out and kicked open the door of the stall next door. Burke had to sidestep to avoid Morgan barging right into him as he came forward.
The exit door had a soft close spring. It would give Burke the vital seconds he needed to escape the room without detection.
He slipped past Morgan into the hall knowing his next move had to be fast.
The MRI machine.
It had been warming up all this time. No one had shut it down. By now it would be ready to go, waiting for nothing more than a simple button press. If he could make it back there and zap himself before Morgan alerted Powell and Dice, he would have a fighting chance.
He sprinted down the hall on the tips of his toes. When Morgan raised the alarm about him vanishing, Powell was sure to put two and two together and conclude that they would find him where they had originally.
Burke almost slammed into the doorframe as he skidded on his heels into the scan suite. He grabbed the remote unit and lay down on the table, wiggling into position under the camera and depressing the trigger on the remote. There was a succession of loud clunking sounds as the machine did its job.
He didn’t feel anything, but he knew he wouldn’t anyway. Over the din he heard the large fire door that led to the main room slam into the wall as it was thrust open violently.
Footsteps, more than one set, were galloping down the hall in his direction.
He rolled off on to the floor and scurried into the furthest corner of the room, like a spider hunting desperately for shade.
The men were moments away from the door. Had the process worked? He closed his eyes and realized he had the answer right in front of his face.
The microscopic sensors attached to his optic nerves were based on the same technology as the nanotransmitters now present in his blood. They should have been rendered out of commission too.
Burke crossed his invisible fingers and brought his hands up level with face, hoping and praying. The three men raced into the room and fanned out in front of the MRI machine.
Powell was barking words at the other two, and they were answering with clipped sentences, but their words may as well have been a foreign language. They were nothing but white noise to Burke who was as good as a million miles away, looking into thin air where his fingers and the backs of his hands should have been.
There was nothing. Burke was totally invisible. Even to himself.
Success.
He readjusted to what was going on in the room.
Dice held up some kind of smartphone and panned it around the room like a metal detector.
“Nothing. He’s not here,” he said.
Burke checked his breathing, opening his mouth slightly to eliminate any sound.
Powell didn’t answer his colleague. His eyes moved around the room, crawling over every inch of it. They rested for a beat too long in the corner where Burke was huddled. Air hissed from the cushion on the table in front of the scanner as it regained its shape, Burke having just leapt off it moments before.
“No, he’s here,” said Powell. “Very much here, I think.”
Powell took small tentative steps toward the door. Burke knew instantly what he had in mind, to shut off his route of escape, trapping him.
The time for stealth was over.
Speed was what mattered.
Burke sprang to his feet and bolted for the exit. He was surprised at how little noise he made in doing so, his deep intake of breath the only sound threatening to give away his position. Burke ducked underneath Powell’s outstretched arm and slid out into the hall.
***
There was a breeze past the side of Powell’s face. His sleeve flapped and he immediately recognized it for what it was. He extended his leg into the space between him and the door a quarter of a second too late.
There was dull thud on the wall across the hall followed by a stifled groan. The invisible Burke had got past him at such speed that he hadn’t been able to prevent himself from slamming straight into it.
“Morgan!” Powell shouted. “The exit. Double-time it.”
Powell moved out into the hall, closely followed by Dyson. “He makes it out of here, Dice, we’ll never catch him,” said Powell. “Lock the place down.”
“All over it,” said Dyson. They reached the main area to see Morgan already over the
far side of the room, disappearing through what was left of the breached entrance.
The place looked like a small tornado had ripped through it. Swivel chairs were lying on their sides. Notes and files had been swept on to the ground. Dyson drew Powell’s attention and pointed silently to a sweaty footprint that was fading from the surface of one of the desks.
Dyson jumped straight on to Burke’s console and furiously scrolled through the menus of the building’s security system.
“None of the outer doors have been opened yet. And they won’t now, unless I say so.”
“Good,” replied Powell.
“He’s not getting out of here without getting noticed.”
“He’s going to know that,” said Powell. “So he’s going to hole up right here and hope the cavalry returns before we find him.”
“That not exactly what you want?” said Dyson.
“Sure. But as soon as Cole gets the first hint that all is not right here, he’s not going to come back,” said Powell. “In Ben he has everything of value right there with him. He can hire another Burke if he wants. He doesn’t really need him. But I do. Maybe we can get something out of him we can use to track down Cole.”
“Guy fitted all of the security in here himself,” said Dyson. “Check it out – he knew we were coming because he’d installed a secondary CCTV network independent of the mains power. He must know this place like the back of his bony little hand. He’ll know all the hiding spots.”
“This guy doesn’t need to hide. He could be standing right behind us laughing to himself, while we’re digging around in corners,” said Powell.
“If we could flood the place with smoke or something, he’d show up fast enough,” Dyson thought aloud.
“Don’t think Morgan’s carrying enough smoke grenades to pull that off,” Powell quipped.
“We could set the place on fire,” said Dyson with a half-smile.
Powell turned to him and smiled. “Genius,” he said, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “Tell me you haven’t given up smoking, Dice.”
“Still trying, still failing,” said Dyson.
“Great. Give me your lighter.”
Powell grabbed a sheaf of paper from a nearby desk, checked to make sure there wasn’t anything on it that could prove useful first, then set it alight. He climbed on to the desk and held the flaming paper over his head like a torch, waving it under the nearest ceiling sprinkler.
“Don’t just stand there, Dice,” said Powell. “Get on the monitors.”
There was an ear-piercing shriek as the fire alarm went off, and the sprinkler system kicked in, soaking Powell point-blank. He dropped the charred, sodden paper and jumped down to the floor, joining Dyson at the monitor. Real time images from each of the CCTV units were being relayed to the screen, tiled in four rows of three.
The two men’s eyes scanned and processed each of the frames, left to right, down, right to left, and repeat. Each scene showed the sprinkler system hard at work spraying an intense mist throughout the building.
“There,” said Dyson. He put his index finger on the screen. Powell had been right. The weasel had figured he could hide in plain sight. He hadn’t gone very far, skulking about right outside in the garage.
Burke was running from vehicle to vehicle, trying the doors, desperately trying to get into one of them for cover or a way out. “Should have done that in the first place, my friend,” Powell said.
Dyson had already radioed it through to Morgan. The big man was on the monitor stalking toward Burke, who had seen him approaching and was now crouched behind the cars.
By the time Powell and Dyson had made it to Morgan, the sprinkler system was starting to run dry. Burke had retreated into the corner where Morgan had his shotgun trained on him, well and truly trapped.
“Dice,” said Powell, “we’re going to have to tag our friend somehow, before he gets the inkling to go play hide and seek again. Got anything in your bag of tricks that would work?”
Dyson was about to voice his answer when Morgan interjected. “Not every answer has to be a complicated one,” he said. “Sometimes what you’re looking for is right under your nose.”
The final drops of water fell from the pipes overhead.
Burke wiped and dabbed at the moisture on his transparent form. It was remarkable how fast he was already beginning to disappear once more before their very eyes.
Morgan moved around to the front of the vehicle nearest him: a beige, well-loved station wagon. He knelt by the front tire and peered under the wheel arch. He looked back up at Powell and winked as if to announce he had just spotted what he was after.
He threw his weapon to Dyson and grabbed Burke, wrenching him over to the station wagon and slamming his head down on to the hood. He pinned it down in place with one hand while he knelt again and reached in past the wheel with the other, grabbing hold of something on to which he gave a short, sharp tug. Morgan came out with a hose spurting greasy black fluid.
It was hard to tell which way Burke’s face was facing now, but he must have been able to see what was in Morgan’s hand judging by the strangled scream that left his throat.
Morgan pulled Burke down to the ground next to him and sprayed the dark grease all over Burke, coating him in the stuff. “Be a good boy now,” said Morgan. “Rub it in.”
“What?” Burke spat, disgusted.
Morgan retrieved his weapon from Dyson and pointed the shotgun at Burke. “And make sure you get in behind your ears.”
What was visible of Burke’s blackened face looked in Powell’s direction, perhaps hoping for some leniency and understanding from what this mad man was requesting.
None was forthcoming.
“Best do as he says,” said Powell, who then looked at his field specialist. “Inspired, Morgan. Truly. Inspired.”
He turned to Dyson. “We got everything we need, Dice?”
Dyson held up the portable drive. “Right here. I wiped everything inside. Like you said, I’m sure they’ll have back-ups. But it’ll slow them right down retrieving it all.”
“Good,” said Powell and looked Burke up and down. The man cut a very strange, haunting figure now. Parts of his features were much more defined by the black grease than others. There were still large patches of invisibility.
Burke scowled up at Powell with half a face, snorting through his nostrils, only one of which could be seen.
“Cole may not have told you where they were going, Burke, but I think you know anyway. And unless you want me to give Morgan here the go-ahead to tar and feather you as well, I strongly suggest you point us in the right direction.”
23
Ben sat on the back seat of the Yukon with Erikson, who was sitting eyes straight, not so much as casting a glance out the window of the truck to look at the surrounding traffic.
There was plenty of it on the freeway. That was for sure. It was evening now. Smack bang in the middle of rush hour. They had been doing a steady ten miles an hour for the last forty minutes or so, the only form of conversation inside the vehicle so far Kane’s regular and pointless verbal outbursts to no one in particular and his repeated slamming of the steering wheel with his fists. Cole was not reacting in any way to Kane’s tantrums. His head was not in the SUV, but on wherever it was they were going, and whoever it was they were meeting.
Ben found himself thinking to when Cole had made him on the train. And more pointedly, when Ben had made Cole. He was on high alert for anyone who he suspected was aware of his presence. He never forgot a face, and was certain he had never seen Cole’s before. If Ben had the nanotransmitters inside him all these years, then why had Cole waited all this time to come find him? If Ben had been in Cole’s position, he would have reeled him in when he was much younger and a whole lot more impressionable.
Why the wait?
It wasn’t as if Cole was waiting for the perfect moment. By the sounds of things he, and more importantly his project, could have done with Ben’s help, and h
is blood, a long time ago.
Then it came to him. “The school.”
Kane’s anger may have not been enough to get through to Cole, but Ben’s calmly delivered words were.
“What’s that?” he said.
“The trackers inside me,” said Ben. “They were dead up until a couple of days ago. Weren’t they?”
Something registered in Cole’s eyes. “They were deactivated. Probably to keep me from finding you. That much I figured. Even so, I’m an optimistic type. I kept scanning, hoping one day you or your mother might pop up on the radar. And then, the other day, you did. And not a moment too soon.”
“Electric fence at the school zapped me,” Ben said. “Jolt must have shocked the transmitters back into life.”
“Trespassing, were we?” Cole mused.
“It used to be easier.”
“Everything happens the way it does for a reason,” said Cole. “With the means we have at our disposal, all of the doors locked to us in life will soon be open.”
***
Invisible to the naked eye, the nanotechnology Cole spoke of would be key to the success of this venture. Without it, invisibles were vulnerable. Ben was more naked than he knew to the threats out there, of which there were more of than he could ever suspect.
The transmitters were, by comparison, primitive against the rest of what Cole had up his sleeve. Where the team had microscopic visual receivers attached to their optic nerves, Cole had a full suite of sensory augmentation units in his body.
To understand the full potential of invisibility, one had to think its possible applications out fully.
Being unable to carry a phone when he was under, Cole had a communications unit implanted in his inner ear. People often heard a ringing in their ears after a loud bang or crash, but the one Cole heard right now meant he had an incoming call. A trained muscle movement was all it took to pick up.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Cole,” the caller said.
“Mir. We’re all set. We have the merchandise. Where are we doing this?”
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