Dante got up and followed, Vaz’s AI said, “I cannot connect to 911 by wireless. Something is saturating the wavelengths that I use with digital noise.”
Vaz headed down the stairs, Lisanne stumbling after. Once Dante entered the stairs, Vaz said, “Close the door.” When Dante had closed it Vaz said “House AI, lock the upper door of the basement stairwell. Dante, check that it’s locked, then come down to the basement.”
When Dante entered the basement he found his dad manhandling a huge tank over next to the door. Dante tried to help him push it up against the door but Vaz said, “Stop, that’s close enough for now.” Vaz crossed the room and returned with a large bucket which he set next to the tank. He dropped a hose from the tank into the bucket and turned on a spigot. Fluid poured into the bucket giving off clouds of fog. Vaz handed the hose to Dante and said, “Here, fill the bucket.”
“What is it Dad?” Dante asked.
“Liquid nitrogen.” Vaz said crossing the room and opening a large drawer. He pulled out little tanks with shoulder straps and threw one over his own shoulder. He started toward Lisanne, dropping one over her shoulder as well, then pulling tubing from it and putting a lightweight facemask onto her head. He adjusted something on the tank, then brought the other one to Dante, putting it on him too.
“Vaz? What are these?” Lisanne asked tremulously.
“Oxygen,” he said, then to the house AI, “Can you put a feed from the house cameras up on the screens here in the basement?”
Lisanne said, “Why wouldn’t it?” Then she covered her mouth, “Oh, the wireless is out,” she said in a faint voice.
Vaz nodded, “That’s why I’m speaking loudly, the AI has to receive instructions through the house microphones since my AI can’t transmit to it.” There was a flicker and then the wall screens lit with pictures from the different cameras around the house. Some of the men were on the porch now.
The house AI said, “They are asking permission to enter. They say they are from Time Warner Network Services.”
“Denied.” Vaz barked.
Lisanne said, “What do they want?”
In an ugly tone Vaz said, “They’ve got to be working for that son of a bitch Davis.”
At the same time the AI said, “They say they need to access the inside of the house to correctly repair the fiberoptic connection.”
“Oh my God!” Lisanne breathed, sitting suddenly and looking pale.
Dante said, “What do we do Dad?”
Lisanne darted an unbelieving glance at her son, why would he think Vaz would know what to do besides hide in the basement? She turned back to Vaz, “Why are we wearing oxygen?”
“Because I’m releasing a lot of nitrogen.”
“But nitrogen isn’t toxic!”
“It is if it displaces all the oxygen.”
“Why are you doing it then?”
“I haven’t done it yet,” he said enigmatically.
On the screens one of the men crashed into the front door with his shoulder. The door was solid and opened outward so he didn’t budge it. They could be heard cursing, then the smallest of them—still a large man—put down the bag he had over his shoulder and pulled out a baseball bat. The others stood around him to block the view from the street as he punched out the window next to the door. He climbed through it and one of the other men knocked out the rest of the glass, evidently so that the broken window wouldn’t be so easily recognized as broken.
Soon the one who’d climbed in the window had opened the front door and the rest of them filed in. The bag was opened again and all of them took baseball bats. One of them bellowed, “Gettnor! We need to talk to you.” He smacked the bat into his palm, then twirled it.
Vaz said, “House AI, transmit my voice to the family room.” He paused frowning a moment, then said, “What do you want?”
On the screen the men looked about, evidently wondering where the voice came from, then realized it was coming from the house AI’s intercom system. “Where are you?” the spokesman growled.
Vaz said nothing and after waiting a few moments the leader pointed to three of the others with his bat. “Search the house.” They started to go in different directions but he barked, “Stay together!” They left the family room through the kitchen toward the living room. There weren’t any cameras in there so the Gettnors could no longer see them. However they could hear things breaking. A minute or so later the men came back into the family room and checked the coat closet and the bathroom.
They rattled the locked door to the basement. “Probably behind this door,” one of them said.
The leader nodded, “Check upstairs first.”
On the screens the three Gettnors in the basement watched the men casually striking things with their bats as they walked around and generally leaving a trail of destruction. Shortly they were coming back down the stairs. “No one up there,” one said and turned toward the door to the basement.
Vaz had put on a pair of heavy work gloves. He opened the basement door, picked up the nearly full bucket of liquid nitrogen and tossed its contents up the stairs. He quickly shut the door as huge clouds of fog began blasting out of the stairwell. He told the AI to lock the door and leaned up to peer through a fish eye lens in the door.
Lisanne stared at the lens. She’d never noticed it before and wondered if it had always been there, or whether Vaz had recently installed it when he started living in the basement and locking people out.
Vaz started filling the bucket with nitrogen again.
Upstairs Ramos stared at the locked door. Fog poured out from under it—which creeped him out. He leaned down and sniffed. Doesn’t smell bad, he thought. It reminded him of the fog in horror movies though. He said, “Jason, break that door down.”
Jason was the largest of their group, six foot seven and muscular. He grinned and hefted his bat, then swung at the knob which flew off. He stepped to the side and took a few swings at the region of the door near the latch. When it splintered and cracked, fog began pouring out through that opening too. The next blow broke a large hole around the knob and, because the blow had separated the latch section from the main door, the door itself puffed open on the fog. He reached out and pushed the door further open with his bat.
The six men peered nervously at the clouds of fog emanating from the stairwell.
Ramos sniffed again, then shrugged. “Jason, Mike, Stivitz, head down there and bring Mr. Gettnor up to us. Remember, this guy is supposed to be able to hit, don’t let him sucker punch one of you.”
The three big men stepped a little apprehensively to the foggy stairwell and started down.
Ramos watched them troop down into the darkened stairwell wondering what the cold fog could be. He leaned closer. He was getting a headache!
He heard something thump. Then more thumping. The three guys dropped out of Ramos’ view. He leaned closer to the door. They seemed to be crumpled on top of one another at the bottom of the stairs! Suddenly the door at the bottom of the stairs opened and Gettnor, wearing some kind of clear plastic mask, reached out and dragged a limp Stivitz into the brightly lit basement. Another dude dragged Mike in, then Gettnor was back and dragging Jason floppily into the basement too.
Eyes wide, Ramos watched the other dude toss a bucket of water into the stairwell. The water exploded into steam and fog and the door closed. Ramos’ headache felt worse. Jerrod was gonna be pissed. Ramos stepped into the stairwell and took a couple of steps down, sniffing for anything weird and searching the walls for anything that might have knocked his guys out.
Suddenly the stairwell got very dark and he felt himself falling.
Dante had watched his father peering through the fisheye lens in the door. Then he heard thumping and thought the men were hitting the door with their fists. To his amazement Vaz jerked the door open, reached into the stairwell and pulled a large man off the top of two other, tossing the man into the room, “Get the next guy Dante.” He turned to Lisanne and said, “Get the cable
ties,” he pointed, “in the box on the right end of the bench.”
Dante found the large guy in the stairwell surprisingly hard to move. He grabbed a wrist with both hands and dragged him in next to the first guy. “Dad!” he frowned. “What happened to these guys?”
Vaz dragged the third guy in, saying, “Throw that bucket of nitrogen up the stairs and close the door.” He paused but once he saw Dante doing it he turned to Lisanne, “Cable ties, quick.” He held a hand out to her.
Nervously she fumbled some to him.
“Watch.” Vaz said, taking a cable tie, wrapping it around the big guy’s left wrist and threading the tip through the buckle on it. He dropped that wrist and picked up another. “Put cable ties on all their wrists.”
Once Vaz had cable ties on both wrists he dragged the guy over to a vertical steel post that supported one of the joists in the floor above. He put the guy’s wrists around the post and bound them together with a third cable tie. Then he helped Dante drag his guy over and they bound his wrists around the post just above the first guy’s. When they returned for the third guy he was beginning to twitch around. There was another thump from the door.
Vaz quickly dragged the third guy to the post and said, “Tie him in,” then he went to the basement door, opened it and dragged in a fourth unconscious man.
A little while later they had four men arranged radially around the post with their wrists bound around it. Vaz said, “Bind their feet together,” and began cable tying the feet on the one he was closest too.
Dante asked again, “What happened to these guys?”
“The liquid nitrogen from the bucket expanded enormously when it splattered all over the stairs. It displaced almost all the air out of the stairwell leaving only nitrogen.”
“But, if they weren’t getting oxygen… why didn’t they turn around when they felt short of breath?”
“You feel short of breath when you accumulate carbon dioxide, not because you’re short of oxygen.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So… they didn’t even know they weren’t getting oxygen?”
“No.”
But… you can go for minutes without breathing,” Dante said with a puzzled tone.
“An oxygen free atmosphere is much worse than holding your breath. As you breathe the ‘dead air’ into your lungs, the blood passing through your lung releases the little oxygen it has remaining in it into the alveoli—since the air in the alveoli has no oxygen. So the blood that leaves your lungs has virtually no oxygen. Then that blood goes to your brain and starts absorbing oxygen from your neural tissue. You almost immediately lose consciousness.”
“So that’s why we’re wearing oxygen, so we won’t fall out before we realize there’s a problem?”
Vaz nodded, then bent over the fourth man, pushed hard on his sternum, then lifted his shoulders. “Feel for a pulse!”
The man looked a little blue. Lisanne crouched over the man’s wrist and said, “I feel a pulse, but it doesn’t seem very strong.”
Vaz pumped his chest a few more times then said, “Dante, do this.”
Dante said, “I don’t know how!”
Vaz said, “Neither do I, but it can’t be any worse than doing nothing.”
Vaz got another emergency oxygen bottle and put the mask on the man. Then he stood aside and watched Dante pumping the man’s chest. Dante said, “Am I doing it right?”
Vaz shrugged. “I don’t know, but he’s getting pinker.” He turned and went to the door. He pulled the nitrogen tank in front of it and began filling the bucket again. He turned to Lisanne and said, “Get me a Coke bottle out of the trash, please?”
The last guy they’d dragged out of the stairwell groaned and threw up. “Sheeit!” he moaned.
Vaz had filled the Coke bottle with liquid nitrogen while watching the four men. He loosely screwed the cap onto the bottle and turned to Lisanne. “Can you fill the bucket with nitrogen again?”
She nodded. He showed her how, then walked over to squat near the last man. He pulled the guy’s latex mask off and stared at him.
“What did you do to us?” the guy asked somewhat fearfully.
Expressionlessly, Vaz ignored the question and said, “What did you guys want?”
The man pressed his lips together.
Vaz picked up the man’s wrist and bent his small finger back until the knuckle popped, leaving the finger pointing crazily upward. The man screeched a little, staring wide eyed at Vaz.
Lisanne stared at her husband, somewhat horrified that he would hurt the man to get information, but also astonished that Vaz Gettnor would hurt someone at all.
“What did you want?” Vaz picked up his ring finger.
The guy wildly jerked his hand but hardly budged Vaz’s grip on his wrist. Vaz popped that knuckle back too and reached for his long finger.
Cursing fervently the guy said, “Wait! Wait! They wanted plans…”
Vaz said, “What plans?”
“For the fusion… machine.”
Lisanne and Dante’s eyebrows rose and they looked at one another, someone thinks his fusion device works?
Vaz frowned “That won’t do them any good. We’ve already applied for a patent.”
“Not here in the U.S.” the man groaned.
“Yes, here in the U.S.” Vaz said.
“No, the guy who wants the plans isn’t from here.”
“We’re filing for patents worldwide.”
“Some people in other countries don’t care.”
Vaz stared at him a while, then grunted, “Humpf. What if I gave you fake plans?”
“Then the next time we’d take you and your family too.”
Vaz turned to stare at the door to the stairs. He got up and went to peer through the peephole. “Looks like your friends aren’t coming after you.” He turned to look at the screens. The image of the family room showed two guys staring apprehensively at the door to the basement and talking to one another. The one of the backyard showed at least one man standing out there.
Vaz stood, said, “If they won’t come here…” and walked to the door. He turned to Dante and Lisanne, “Toss another bucket of nitrogen into the stairwell every so often. If you get a headache, you aren’t getting enough oxygen. There are more oxygen tanks in the safety equipment drawer where I got these.” He opened the door and tossed the bucket of nitrogen out into the stairwell. He settled his mask over his face, put on some heavy work gloves and picked up the neck of the Coke bottle of liquid nitrogen between the fingers of his work gloves. He opened the door again and stepped out, closing the door behind him.
Lisanne called to him, “Vaz! Wait! Don’t go up there! Surely help will arrive soon…” She petered out, he was gone.
Dante turned to Lisanne, “I should go with him.”
She shook her head, glancing at the bound men, eyes wide. She put her hand on Dante’s wrist, “Please. Stay with me.”
One of the men jerked at his bonds, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll cut us loose.”
Lisanne stifled a hysterical giggle, “Right.” She turned to watch the screens as Vaz exited the stairwell into the family room. The camera showed the two men there turn to look at him.
Over the microphone she heard one of them snarl, “Where are the other guys?”
Vaz said, “They fell asleep.”
One of them aimed a pistol like device at Vaz, “Stop right there.”
Vaz stopped.
“Put down the bottle and take off the mask.”
Vaz screwed the lid tightly on the nitrogen and set it and the oxygen bottle with its mask on the floor. He stepped closer to the men.
“Don’t move!”
He had covered two additional paces but Vaz stopped as ordered. “What do you want?” he asked.
“We need copies of all your files to do with the nuclear fusion thingy.”
Vaz shrugged, “Oh, that’s no problem. I can get you a download of the files
from my house AI.” He stepped toward the desk they kept in the family room. Lisanne noticed that moving toward the desk brought him still closer to the two men.
Suddenly the liquid nitrogen bottle exploded as the expanding gas in it ripped the bottle violently apart. The two men flinched, turning toward the explosion.
Lisanne could hardly believe her eyes. As the two men turned, Vaz swung and punched the closest one on the side of his head with his gloved fist. It laid the man out full length!
Vaz moved on the second man but he had recovered from the distraction and shot Vaz with the Taser. Vaz fell twitching at his feet. “Goddamn!” the man said, dancing away. Reaching in his baggy coverall pocket he pulled out a roll of duct tape and knelt to begin taping Vaz’s wrists together.
Dante said, “Mom! I’ve got to get up there and help Dad!”
Lisanne choked back her objections and said, “Go!” She leapt to her feet to follow him up the stairs.
Dante stopped to pick up one of the bats the men had dropped in the stairwell so Lisanne did too. When they burst out into the family room the man was getting ready to tape Vaz’s ankles together. Dante charged and tackled him, driving him off the top of Vaz. The two struggling men crashed in under the breakfast table scattering chairs.
Lisanne dropped to her knees and began picking at the tape on Vaz’s wrists. Vaz moaned and said between gritted teeth, “Run, until your AI reaches the net, call 911!”
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