In the end it wasn't Marla that called. He was sitting in his office looking over recent accounts of the dead coming to life; a dog and a child in just the last couple of months. The papers reported it as a joke but he filed it away as something he might investigate later.
Timothy's artificial face appeared on his computer screen: “sir, there's someone at the door.”
He sighed, he wasn't in the mood for another disturbance. “Show me.”
The screen flashed black and when an image appeared he found himself looking Sandra Sanctuary. He looked around the room as if someone might be playing a joke on him. He recovered quickly though, it didn't pay to let strange things put you on the back foot in his line of work. In fact it could be positively dangerous.
He opened the front door to her and effectively hid his surprise. “Sandra,” he said. Up close he could see she'd had a haircut since their last meeting which he thought a strange thing to make time for while her sister was missing. But strange was part of his job description.
She frowned. “Is that some sort of joke?”
“Mrs Sanctuary then,” he said.
The frown became a scowl. “Sandra was my sister,” she said. “She was found dead at my house last night.”
John nodded. He was annoyed to be caught out by something as mundane as twins. For a man who routinely dealt with vampires, werewolves, witches and ghosts, twins shouldn't have even been a blip on his radar.
“Please come in,” he said, figuring she would probably want to talk about what had happened, maybe find out what his connection to all this was. Then he remembered how all this had started. “You left me a message,” he said.
“I most certainly did not,” she said.
“You didn't?”
“Mr Kable, I came here because your address was on a piece of paper among my sisters personal affects.”
John nodded. In situations like this he found it was better to let the other person do the talking. She was bound to tell him what he needed to know eventually.
“I don't know what sort of involvement you had with my sister Mr Kable but I assure you she loved her husband very much. Do you understand?”
“She never gave me any reason to doubt it,” he said honestly.
“Gregory Sanctuary is a wealthy man but if you think you can blackmail him...”
John had no intention of standing on his doorstep being accused of sleeping with another mans wife. “Miss, I don't know what you think has been going on here but I can assure you that the relationship between myself and Mrs Sanctuary was purely professional.”
The sister looked at him. Perhaps she had just wanted to blow off steam or find someone to blame for her sisters death. Her hard expression softened and then she was crying.
“I'm sorry,” she said and stepped towards him.
“Would you like to come in. We can talk.”
She nodded and followed him inside. He sat her down in the same chair by the window that her sister had occupied less than twenty-four hours previously.
“Would you like a drink?” he said.
She shook her head and started to stand up. “I should go, I'm sorry I disturbed you.”
“Maybe I can help.”
She sniffed back her tears. “I don't think so.” The sister walked to the door.
“Wait,” said John, not sure why he wanted her to stay. “I don't even know your name.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, “Sabrina. Sabrina Ellis.”
It was a nice name. It suited her. “Please sit down Miss Ellis,” he said, feeling a little more in control of the situation now. “Your sister thought I could help her find you. Maybe instead I can help you find out who killed her?”
“What about the police?”
“The police will do everything they can, I'm sure. But I can offer a different kind of help.”
She appeared intrigued by the offer and walked back into the room, sat down in the seat she had just vacated and waited.
“You're sisters?” said John.
Sabrina nodded, unimpressed.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
He didn't know where the question came from but let it hang in the air, there was a chance that it was connected to something in their childhood. He'd got more from less in the past.
“We were orphans,” said Sabrina. Her hair, a shot blonde bob, shimmered in the sunlight. “We were brought up in Wreathing Children's Home.”
“Wreathing Children's Home?” said John. “I don't think I know it.”
She shook her head, interrupting him. “It closed down shortly after we left. I think the building is a science lab now, it's on Buxton Street anyway.”
John made a mental note of the information which, thanks to the BHI tinkering in his head, he would be able to recall perfectly later. “Go on,” he said.
She shrugged. “That's all there is really. After we left the home we moved into a flat together.”
“Your sister told me you were both lucky?”
Sabrina smiled. “Well I don't know about that. She wasn't lucky, was she?”
“But you both came into money? Through gambling?” He had an idea that casinos didn't like to lose and that this may have had something to do with Sandra's death. It was far outside his usual area of expertise but he was drawn to Sabrina in a way he couldn't quite explain.
“That's right. My sister also married into money.”
“Mr Sanctuary?”
“Yes.”
John hadn't heard the name before but he would check it out later. “Was there anything out of the ordinary in the last few days? Anything at all?”
Sabrina started to shake her head.
“Your sister said you missed your usual casino night?” And someone had tried to get in contact with him that sounded an awful lot like the woman sitting in front of him. That was a head scratcher but he would deal with that later too, for now he needed to get information out of Sabrina, although he already had a pretty good idea where he was going to start.
“That's right.”
“Why did you miss it? You didn't let her know?”
“My sister had a bad memory. I told her the week before that I was going to be away that day.”
“So you don't think that her believing you were missing and her being killed are related at all?”
“Not at all.”
John wasn't so sure but he let it go.
Sabrina left and John returned to his office. He knew what he needed to do next and he didn't expect to find trouble but it didn't hurt to be prepared. He had been caught out more than once by under estimating the risk he faced.
He packed two pulse pistols that could easily be hidden beneath his jacket and a knife that could be slipped into his boot. He put on the nano fibre bullet proof shirt that had been an experimental prototype at the BHI and would not only protect him from bullets but cast an electromagnetic shield around him so no one would be able to detect the weapons he carried.
It was dark by the time he was ready to go. He slipped in the earpiece that connected him to Timothy and headed out the door.
His contact lenses projected walking directions to what was now Coblance Labs. John had asked Timothy to research the history of the building before they left and now as he walked Timothy read it out to him, starting with the most pertinent information:
“Coblance Labs was founded in 1954. They have buildings throughout the world but the lab in Wreathing is the first and has stood on the same site since the early sixties.”
“The sixties?”
“That's correct sir.”
Either the twins were a lot older than they looked or something else was going on. “Timothy, search the archives for records of a Wreathing Children's Home.”
John made it fewer than three steps before Timothy completed the search: “no records found sir.”
John patted his jacket to confirm he still had his guns. He had a bad feeling about this.
5
An hour later he stood outside a monolithic building on the edge of the town. He could see a few lights still on but no sign of any security. That worried him, it probably meant they were confident enough of their hidden security not to need it.
“Sir,” said Timothy.
John nodded his head to let Timothy know he should continue. Timothy couldn't be heard but John certainly could.
“I've got the results back from a deep archive scan I started running in the office. Sir, records indicate that there is a connection between Coblance Labs and the Blood Hound Institute.”
Of course there was. At least this confirmed that there was more going on than a dead woman. This was now firmly in his area of expertise. “What sort of connection?” he said.
“Two men and one woman sat on the board of the BHI and Coblance in 1954. There is also significant circumstantial evidence to suggest technology and research was shared between the two organisations.”
John looked at the building and wondered if he would ever manage to get inside. All of his advanced technology would mean nothing if he was going up against the BHI. Everything he'd taken from them was at least five years old now. They would be light years ahead of that.
He could turn back. He didn't owe anything to the sisters. He hadn't signed a contract and they hadn't even spoken about a bounty.
“Sir,” said Timothy.
He nodded.
“There's one last thing: the current sole member of the Coblance board is a Mr Gregory Sanctuary.”
That decided it then. He zipped up his jacket and made his way towards the building.
6
John reached the building. Up close he could see that the solid grey wall was going to be impossible to climb. At a distance it had looked like it was made of concrete, the sort of thing he wouldn't have had any problem getting up. Now he could see that the surface was shiny, no doubt coated with a anti-friction paint provided by the BHI.
He walked on, hoping to find a door but not expecting to. The BHI building looked like a completely solid block from the outside and this one was the same.
There has to be a way in, he thought, although he knew that there didn't. There was no way into the BHI building that anyone had ever found. He kept going though, unwilling to give up this close to finding out some of what was going on.
“Can you see a way in Timothy?” he said.
“Negative sir, the walls are blocking out all my receivers.”
He kept going, around a corner into an area of darkness. His eyes adjusted and he could once again see an expanse of featureless wall in front of him. He stopped. Maybe it was pointless to carry on, he didn't know that he would find anything out on the inside and he wasn't really doing this for Sabrina's benefit anymore. He was just trying to get one over on the BHI and that was neither professional nor wise.
John turned around to leave.
“Sir?”
“What is it?” he said.
“We have company.”
He couldn't see anything but Timothy was never wrong. He had thousands of built in sensors and the ability to piggy back on any local ones that could provide information he needed.
“Where is it?” he said.
“Directly ahead sir and coming this way.”
John couldn't see anything and braced himself for impact. “Tune me in,” he said.
“Working on it sir, working on it.”
While John waited for Timothy to patch his contact lenses into whatever feed he was seeing he pulled out his pulse blaster. “Give me a direction,” he said.
“Sir, it would be unwise to discharge...”
“Just tell me where to aim,” he said, he didn't have time to listen to Timothy's built in health and safety lecture. In fact, when he got home the first thing he was going to do was work out how to disable it.
An area lit up in his vision. It wasn't whatever was chasing him yet but Timothy had highlighted the area of his vision where it was.
He fired blindly and waited. The bolt seemed to vanish about twenty metres in front of him. He could hear his gun reloading.
“Did I get it?” he said.
“No sir,” said Timothy.
“But it was right there.”
“As I was trying to explain sir, it's a jumper.”
“Oh,” he said. A jumper was a creature, alien or native to earth, he wasn't sure, that could move instantly between any two points in an area of about two-hundred metres. It was pointless trying to fire at them because their conscious mind existed fractions of a second ahead of their physical bodies meaning they appeared to predict anything you might think to do and react before you'd even done it. If they were using jumpers to guard the building then there really was something going on inside. “Where is it now?”
“Patching you in sir,” said Timothy.
His vision turned to shades of red and he looked around. A creature that looked surprisingly human despite its slick amphibious skin and overlong limbs stood behind him. It wasn't moving. Jumpers were class 1 which meant he had to be very careful.
He dropped his pulse gun on the floor and raised his hands above his head. “I don't want any trouble.” Some jumpers understood English and some didn't. He had no idea whether this one could or not but he hoped that hands up was a universal signal.
The jumper walked towards him, its giant feet slapping on the ground and puffing up little clouds of red dust.
John tensed, waiting for it to strike him. He didn't dare move or even think of any way he could escape or overpower the creature. It couldn't read minds, of course, but sometimes it seemed like it.
The jumper reached him and John nearly closed his eyes.
“John Kable?” The jumpers voice sounded like someone was standing on its voice box.
John looked again at the jumper. It took him a moment to realise who it was. “Stafford?” he said.
The jumper smiled, well, it grimaced which was about as close to a smile as it was capable of. “The very same.”
John lowered his arms. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“I should ask you the same question. You tried to shoot me!”
“Sorry about that,” said John and nodded at his gun. “Do you mind if I?”
“Go ahead.”
John picked up his gun and put it back in the holster. Stafford was an old friend from the BHI days. They'd both left around the same time. He had no idea that Stafford was back working for them.
“So what brings you out here?” said the jumper.
“Working on a case.”
“I heard you went rogue.”
“Private,” said John.
“Rogue, private, it's all the same to me. You get some good stuff before you left?”
“What are you doing here Staff?” said John, changing the subject. “I thought you left, same as me?”
“Not quite the same as you. I can't just walk around and get another job can I?”
“I guess not. But how'd they get you back?”
“Back?” said Stafford. “What do you mean?”
“You're working for the BHI again aren't you?”
Stafford laughed. It sounded like a frog. “You must be kidding. No way they'd take me back now.”
“I thought this place ... aren't they connected?”
Stafford shook his head. “Not for about twenty-years. More like rivals now.”
“Sorry John,” said Timothy in his ear, he was following the conversation as well. “I just got the update. Seems they had a massive falling out in the eighties.”
He smiled at Stafford and wondered how far he could push their old friendship. Stafford had been one of the good ones but he was right, he couldn't just walk into another job if he lost this one. Maybe it was unethical of John to ask him for help, but he did it anyway.
He explained the situation to Stafford as best he could but it was difficult as he wasn't really sure he understood it himself. He needed to get inside because a woman who was in shock
after her sister's murder said there used to be an orphanage here. It sounded ridiculous but for John and Stafford ridiculous was the sandpit they played in. Even so, by the end of his explanation, John was starting to wonder whether this hadn't been a mistake; maybe Sabrina was confused about the orphanage, grief did funny things to people sometimes.
Stafford nodded. “I'd like to help,” he said.
“I understand,” said John, somewhat relieved. He wasn't a detective, he was a bounty hunter. The lure of the mystery was starting to wear off.
“Hold on,” said Stafford and then he vanished.
John stood in the dark outside the building with only Timothy for company.
“Sir,” said Timothy, “there is a visitor at the house.”
“I can't do much about it now, can I?” he said.
“No sir, just letting you know sir.”
“Do I know them?”
“No sir.”
“Then they'll just have to come back another time,” he said. He was starting to think that moving on would be the wisest decision. Too many people seemed to know how to get in touch with him these days.
The air hummed and Stafford appeared with a 'pop'. He grabbed John's hand without a word and then everything seemed to go fizzy.
John had never 'jumped' before. It was a singularly unique experience. He could see the space that he was jumping through but it appeared to compress, as if he was moving through it at extremely high speed, but he could see it all as if it was happening in slow motion.
On the other side Stafford let go of his hand and his knees buckled. He grabbed Stafford's slimy shoulder and dry heaved. That was not an experience he wanted to repeat any time soon.
“You alright?” said Stafford.
“I've been better,” he said straightening up.
“Come on, we don't have much time.”
Three Stories Tall Page 10