Of Salt and Sand

by Barnes, Michael

  Teresa finally stepped up last. “Good to see you, metal man.” Then she paused, smiled and actually gave him a hug . . . well, sort of. It was a little awkward, and there was enough distance between them to squeeze in a third person, but it was a start for Teresa—a milestones for trust and camaraderie between human and android.

  Even as Teresa was patting him lightly on his shoulder, Three-of-Ten turned to Jessie. “We are in danger. If we are to survive, the Sandray must be repaired immediately and the stealth protocols engaged.”

  Teresa’s patting instantly stopped. She stepped aside. “By all means, get at it,” she said. “We need to get out of here before the welcome committee shows up again.”

  “Agreed,” nodded Brant. “They’ll have more helicopters in the air in no time.” His expression warped from smiles to a worrisome frown. “Can you get us moving again, Three-Of-Ten?”

  The android nodded and went right to work. He started his repairs on the most critical area first: the stealth control. He moved like a video in fast-forward. It was almost eerie. As quickly as the Sandray’s computer diagnosed the damaged areas, Three-Of-Ten’s built-in EMR hardware replicated the replacement parts. He then installed them at speeds well beyond any machinery of the day. Within minutes, he had the stealth module functioning again . . . and just in time. For in the distance, the sound of rotors thrummed. The pounding reverberation grew in volume until, like the heartbeat of a great winged demon circling in the night shadows above, it shook the Sandray and brought fear to her already emotionally drained, passengers.

  “It’s alright,” assured Jessie. “They can’t see us in stealth.”

  “I know. I know. But they’re right on top of us.” She sighed long and looked pointedly at the ceiling. She wrapped her arms even tighter around Sam. “Will this night ever end.”

  It would end, of course. All nights do. The real question was, how? How would it end.

  Chapter 54:

  Jimmy stepped into Tanner’s office at 9:15 A.M. His arrival was intentionally fifteen minutes later than the 9:00 A.M, unscheduled summons which had blasted from his voicemail just hours before. For Jimmy, Tanner’s meeting couldn’t have come at a worse time. He had better things to do than to play the subservient pawn in Tanner’s reformed game. As he shut the door forcefully behind him, Tanner’s head shot up from a hunched, angled slouch. The man glared for a moment before making a simple gesture toward a seat on a sofa, opposite his desk. “Have a seat.”

  Jimmy snorted, surprised that there was no snide remark of his being late—which was a shame really, he was all prepped for it. “What is it,” he demanded. “You know I hate being at Mole Hole while,”—he hesitated—“they are still here.”

  Tanner ignored the protest as if unheard. “We had an intruder last night in the salt subsection. In the outer perimeter, outside Quadrant 11.”

  “Quadrant 11?” Jimmy repeated, throwing one leg over another and leaning back promiscuously. “That makes no sense. There’s nothing there?”

  Tanner grinned disdainfully. “Oh, but there is. In fact, one of our Goliath AD patrols was sent to investigate,” he said, tapping a forefinger at the data screen in front of him. He leaned back, paused and drew an uncomfortable lock on Jimmy. “Our Goliaths were destroyed . . . all six of them.”

  For an instant Jimmy looked shocked, but he quickly melted into a mocking scowl. He nearly chuckled. “That’s impossible.”

  Tanner tossed a stack of images at him. “I can send these to your email if you’d prefer them in digital format.”

  Jimmy glared down at the spilled stack on the desk. His expression transformed from an irritating pink to a fiery-blotch of crimson. “But how! Who!” he growled. “Who could have done this to a fully armed Goliath patrol!”

  Tanner laced his fingers together. His silent, emotionless expression conveying volumes—unpleasant, fuming volumes. Finally he answered. “Apparently, one of your Four had concealed a rather impressive research and development laboratory within one of the rudimentary salt domes—far out beyond the perimeter of the rest of the complex. I say had because the facility was destroyed during the assault. Fortunately, enough remains to make obvious conclusions.”

  Jimmy’s gaze turned anxious. “What conclusions?”

  Tanner smirked. “Jacob,” he announced. “It was the boy, Jacob, who orchestrated this workshop area—probably in secret, since there is no record of the facility on any of the HOPE databases.” Tanner fumbled with the documents, then continued. “And because it was his android, Three-Of-Ten, which attacked and destroyed the Goliaths.”

  Jimmy shook his head and went frigid. “I knew we hadn’t seen the last of that meddling companion droid! It has to be–-”

  “The android was not alone,” Tanner sliced in, his eyes rising from the table in a strangling lock.

  “What do you mean? Another android, then? A sentinel system that escaped our Goliath’s attack during the underground siege?” he managed.

  “No” replied Tanner, coldly. His eyes narrowed. “Three-Of-Ten was accompanied by humans—four of them.”

  “Humans!” At this, Jimmy’s apparent façade took a shattering hit, and he—master of subdued emotions—crumbled. His narrow cheeks sank and he grimaced unwittingly. “What . . . what are you saying? Who . . . how!”

  “Yes. Now doesn’t that seem to be the question of the hour,” Tanner replied, contemptuously. “We don’t know who they were,” he continued with a sense of uneasiness. “But it was clear that the android assisted them, and they eluded us.”

  “Your people let them escape!” Jimmy blasted back.

  Tanner jumped to his feet. “That is not the issue! There should never have been human intruders in the underground to start with! And they certainly should not have had the android, Three-Of-Ten as a collaborator! It appears you have not told us everything. Who else knew about the HOPE underground, Doctor Reitman!”

  The question didn’t bear well. Jimmy exploded back in a boiling rage. “How dare you make such an accusation! Do you really think I would conceal such information? Countenance such a risk?”

  Tanner eased and stood down. He grinned and shook his head. “Uh-huh,” he replied, calmly; too calmly, as if bating the hook. “Perhaps I can help you out . . . offer a plausible explanation.” He reached for another document and tossed it across his desk. “What do you know of a Miss Teresa Henington, with the Division of Child and Family Services?”

  Jimmy let the paper slide past him and onto the floor. “Teresa Henington?” he parroted back in a look of veiled confusion. “You’re not suggesting—”

  “I am suggesting!” Tanner spewed with a fist to the desk, his eyes accusing and red. “And let me tell you why.” He pushed back from his chair and leaned provocatively over the desk. “Immediately following last night’s intrusion, I put my people to work. Who were these humans and how did they come to associate themselves with a rogue, top secret android, I asked myself. This morning, I was handed my answer.” Tanner’s incensed gaze broke for an instant as his hand reached for another document. “You remember our old annoyance, Professor Brant Stephens? The one who was supposed to be eliminated—wiped out, along with his camp and incriminating data?”

  Jimmy said nothing, but his stomach twisted and his pulse skyrocketed.

  “Oh we ransacked his camp alright; destroyed his equipment and took his data. But because of your sense of conscience—your lack of courage and inability to tie-up lose ends—we allowed him to live. Now he can return to his university with a head full of . . . who knows what crazy ideas and theories!”

  “What does Stephens have to do with—!”

  “Let me finish!” Tanner spat, his jaw setting taut. “Evidently, our proficient Professor Stephens and the lovely Miss Henington have a history. In fact, they have recently announced their engagement. And to make matters more interesting, as of this morning, they, and your stepbrother’s two grandchildren, Jessie and Sam Goodwin—who just happen to be Miss He
nington’s charges from the DCFS—have all vanished!” He paused, huffing out in an exaggerated breath. “Coincidence? I think not!”

  Jimmy shook his head in a slow, uncontrolled reaction, as though unaware of the motion. His eyes glazed and his mind began to perceive. Could it really be? Was it possible that Tanner’s claim held credence? “But she would never . . . the Four would never . . !” he mumbled incoherently.

  “Someone did!” Tanner said, mockingly. “Whether or not any of those to whom you once associated had knowledge of this collaborating violation, is now a moot point. What is relevant is that contact between the android, Three-Of-Ten, and unknown human partisans, has taken place. These four individuals are the only people on the planet to have frequented Sandcastle in the last month.” Tanner let the document fall from his grasp to his desk. “We know your mother secretly arranged for the two children to live at the estate . . . to live there for crying-out-loud, Reitman! How did we allow this? And, according to our latest intel, they weren’t the only ones to enjoy the estate’s accommodations during this adolescent get-away. Gracie Reitman personally authorized nearly unmitigated access to and from the Sandcastle property for Miss Henington, and her boyfriend, Stephens. It’s a wonder the HOPE underground, with all of her secrets and abilities, isn’t plastered on the front page of every tabloid in the nation!”

  Again, Jimmy remained uncharacteristically silent. But it was a silence spawned of the unthinkable, of shock and absolute astonishment.

  Finally, Tanner eased: “I allege, Doctor, that somehow, while at Sandcastle, the HOPE underground was revealed to one or more of this group. And in so doing, an acquaintance with either Jacob, and/or his android, Three-Of-Ten, was established. How else can you explain the android’s need to seek out, find and make contact with one or all of these individuals?”

  “I can’t explain it,” Jimmy spoke finally, his voice low and impassive. “But what you are suggesting is ludicrous. My mother and her Four are bound by oaths—by their lives. They would die before revealing the HOPE technology to anyone, let alone a group such as this. There must be another explanation.”

  Tanner’s eyes burned across Jimmy in a heated swath. “Perhaps,” he uttered. “Perhaps the breach was unintentional. Perhaps the android searched these individuals out of its own volition—some algorithm designed to execute in an attempt to aid Jacob, his human charge. But for whatever reason, we now have a problem . . . an unexpected, substantial problem.”

  Jimmy paused as if to rebuttal, but simply nodded. “Agreed,” he conceded. “And if, as you suggest, Jacob’s android has been programmed to make contact, then it is also likely that it has been programmed to find and retrieve my mother—to return her to Sandcastle. It is more intelligent, and far more dangerous than any of us realized.”

  “Apparently,” toned Tanner, playing his bony fingers on his desk with one hand, while rubbing across his unshaven chin with the other. “We cannot risk it. Gracie Reitman must not be found. I want her moved from her current location, immediately. And I want her security doubled.”

  Again, Jimmy affirmation came with nothing more than a nod. He pushed back on his chair and stood. “And the others?” he questioned, turning to the door.

  “My people are already on it,” Tanner’s voice slithered back. “It won’t be long. We will find and eliminate them—all of them, including that troublesome android. The leak will be sealed.”

  Jimmy hesitated just briefly then left the room. He didn’t bother shutting the door.

  Tanner glanced down at the jumble of papers on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and stared in a riveting gaze at the ceiling, his mind scheming in a grinding furry somewhere far from the realm of his Mole Hole office.

  For some time the man continued in this peculiar stance. Then, rather suddenly, the firm set in his jaw relaxed, and his eyes drew down to his one, habitual tick. The impulse brought his hand to the pen sitting on his desk—the nervous routine began. From one finger to the other, he rolled it back and forth. When Tanner finally sat the instrument down, a crease had formed across his narrow lips. “Time to pay Jacob another visit.”

  --

  Gracie sat quietly in her chair. The morning sun streaked through the room’s stained-glass windows and onto her skin in a friendly, vibrant hue. In the sullen ambience of the room’s foreign isolation, the warmth brought a touch of peace to her troubled soul.

  It had been several days now since she awoke as a prisoner, and still, she knew nothing of the uncaring eyes which followed her every move, nor of the place she was being held. What she did know was nearly too terrible to conceive: that her son, Jimmy, had betrayed her and the Four, in some treacherous collusion, bartering Sandcastle’s forbidden technology like some contraband out of a drug-run gang. But it was the unanswered questions which truly tore her into emotional shreds; the uncertainty which hung over her like a sword on a thread . . . the not knowing. Not knowing what each passing hour might bring to her precarious situation; not knowing if the Four were dead or alive; not knowing what became of Jessie and Sam; and not knowing if she would ever see her Sandcastle paradise again. She had pleaded for some explanation—a repose from her mental anguish. But all of her petitions had fallen on cruel ears, for this was a prison. Pull down the elaborate draperies; remove the fancy wood trimmings; take away the plush furniture, fittings, appliances and expensive hangings; get rid of the wallpaper, paint, carpeting and hardwood floors, and there it was . . . revealed in its true restraining form: a prison. Gracie felt like an item locked away in some vault; an artifact that was to be protected, secured and touched only by gloved hands. She was nothing more than a painting, sculpture, or piece of pottery; another item on a list of rarified valuables . . . lifeless, monetary valuables. Oh they saw to her needs—she was well kept, fed and occasionally left to her own thoughts—but like robots, they attended to her with mechanical actions and curt words. There was no conversation, and certainly no hint of caring or kindness. It was obvious that these were paid mercenaries. They were there to earn their money, period.

  The door flew open so suddenly that Gracie startled in a slight gasp. She whirled to the shadowy profile of a stout, homely woman standing in the doorway. “We’re leaving in thirty minutes,” came the all too familiar voice of Miss Martz. “If you want, you may get a small travel bag ready. But be fast. And I suggest you use the bathroom. We’ll be traveling by helicopter. No toilets on those cramped things.”

  Gracie’s shocked expression rebounded, and she tried to articulate some kind of response.

  Martz stomped into the room and clapped her hands together rudely. “Chop! Chop!” she barked. “Move it!”

  “But . . . but where are we going?” Gracie stuttered out.

  Her question was ignored.

  “Your personal belongings will be delivered later,” the woman dictated as she romped around the room. She was about to cackle on further when her phone rang. She grabbed it up quickly and answered: “Yes,” she said sharply, pausing to listen. “Almost,” she spoke into the receiver, then eyed Gracie irritatingly. “Look. I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back.” She snapped the phone shut.

  Miss Martz was the type of individual who, if observed for any length of time, could be forecast like the approach of a mounting hurricane. She wasn’t an intelligent woman, and followed a quotidian routine. In just a few days, Gracie had easily read the woman’s odd habits, ticks and peculiarities like a bestselling novel. She had noticed, among other things, that Martz was a chatterbox. The woman was always leaving the room to either answer a call, or to make one—Gracie’s ears were obviously toxic. There was an exception, however. If Gracie was in the bathroom, with the bathtub water running, Martz would risk a call while sitting just outside the bathroom door. Gracie had tried to eavesdrop at the door on several occasions, but was only able to catch bits and pieces of broken sentences. But if the bathtub water was not running, the woman simply sat outside the door and waited, knocking occasional
ly to hurry Gracie along, or to see if she needed assistance; which of course she neither wanted nor would have.

  As Martz glared at her, phone in hand, Gracie got an idea—a last attempt at finding out information. “Would you mind if I took just a few moments to run some hot water over my legs? I’ve had terrible cramps in both of them this morning.”

  Martz threw her a disgusted look and sighed irritably. “I don’t have time to help you. You’ll have to just deal with it.”

  “But I don’t need any assistance. I can run the water over my legs myself. Really. It will just take a few minutes.”

  Another annoyed glare. “Fine! You’ve got five minutes.”

  “Thank you. I’ll hurry.” Gracie quickly wheeled herself into the bathroom. She shut and locked the door, then immediately turned on the bathtub water. After just a few seconds, she took a drinking glass from the counter, put it to the door and pushed her ear as tightly against it as she dared. Sure enough, Martz had called the person back and was chatting away on her phone.

  “ . . . I’m not a moving service!” the woman’s words came muffling through the door. “ . . . doing the best I can . . .” And then finally, almost as a gift from Heaven, Gracie heard Martz say: “. . . to some island off the coast of Maine . . .” It was an electrifying moment . . . okay, it was a start.