by Gini Koch
These were two large connected rooms within the Bat Cave. As with so many other things, it always resembled a superhero inner sanctum to me. Lots of big screens, lots of computer terminals, lots of other things I still couldn’t identify.
That was the Field side. Imageering was the same, but it was loaded with monitors as well. Normally there was an A-C in front of every one. Today, there was no one. It was unnerving, a testament to how badly we’d been hit.
The next book in the Testament of How Much Things Sucked appeared onscreen. Both Field and Imageering had multiple screens that could be all one image or a variety of images. They each had a single biggie, too. And we had an interesting scene in front of us on the main Imageering screen.
Someone was filming live. It was easy to tell due to the fact that the camera wasn’t steady, it was panning around the room, stopping for a few seconds to show us the faces of the people in that room, and it had a convenient timer noting the date and the time, which was right now.
The hostages were all tied up to the walls, similar to how the guys had been in Paris during Operation Confusion. Clearly this was a look Ronaldo enjoyed.
The people were our missing members. Brian and Michael were stripped to the waist. The women were still in the female Armani Standard issue, but their shirtsleeves were ripped off.
They were all conscious, they didn’t look mind controlled, in part because they all looked frightened but as if they were trying to hide it, even Gladys, though she also looked furious. None of them were too successful in hiding the fear, possibly because A-Cs were terrible liars and because Brian had spent a lot of time around them.
“William, we’re here. Can you patch through to the command area instead of my phone?”
“Yes, but we need to patch through the audio as well as the visual.” My phone went dead and William’s voice came on over the com. “Screens went live all at the same time, all bases worldwide. Audio going live now.”
“I hope I have your attention,” a woman’s voice purred. It wasn’t a voice I recognized and yet it was vaguely familiar. “Gave you a couple of minutes to get everyone clustered around their televisions.”
“William, do we have two-way communications, or can they hear us even if we can’t respond?” I asked.
“No. It’s a broadcast feed. Barring them having installed a return feed in the Science Center somehow, they shouldn’t hear any of us, either.”
Christopher flipped on the Imageering Commander’s screen and put his hands on it. “I can’t feel anything,” Jeff said. “The emotional blockers are still in place. Should I get outside?”
“No,” Reader said. “They’ll have blockers with them, I can guarantee it. Christopher, what do you have?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” Reader asked.
Serene ran over and put her hands onto the screen. “I don’t have anything either!”
“They’ve found a way to block the imageers. That’s why they wanted to get in here. They could slag the computers from Home Base, but not install whatever imageering blockers they’ve created.” Had to give it to the League of Evil Geniuses—they were scary smart.
“Makes sense,” Jeff agreed. Chuckie nodded. He was staring at the screen intently. Of course, so was everyone else.
“Fine,” Reader said, in a tone that said it wasn’t. “Christopher, can you just find them?”
The camera panned around the room again and I realized that three people I expected to be there weren’t. “Where’re Walter and the Barones?”
“What do you mean?” William asked.
“Walter isn’t here, and neither are Jennifer and Jeremy. We figured they’d been taken with the others, but I don’t see them. William, can you read your screen?” William was the most powerful imageer after Christopher and Serene.
“No, I get nothing. And the Embassy has not been compromised. No imageer at any base can get a reading. No empaths can feel anything. Well, from the screen. We have empaths down already from the stress around them.”
Was suddenly glad that the blockers were here, if only because it meant Jeff wouldn’t be at more risk, though we’d both have taken the risk and more to get everyone back safely. “Chuckie, could they have sent an imageer blocker in along with the viruses?”
“Maybe, ask Stryker.”
“On it,” William said. “The computer lab is on with us as well.”
“I hope you’re all having fun discovering that you can’t tell where we are.” The woman speaking was either holding the video camera or staying behind the cameraman. “Don’t want this show interrupted, after all.”
“Christopher,” Reader snapped. “What do you have? Can you get a lock on anyone?”
Christopher turned around, shooting Patented Glare #5 at everyone. “No. I can’t lock on them.” He looked right at me, lost the glare, then looked down. “I . . .”
Why he was ashamed was beyond me, but I didn’t want anyone haranguing him to do something he no longer could. “Christopher’s Surcenthumain boost is gone, other than that he can still run at Flash levels. Someone find a picture of anyone in the room. Let’s try this the old-fashioned way.”
Chuckie pulled out his wallet, took out a picture, and handed it to Serene. She could “see” someone if they were in range. Normally she wouldn’t need to have a picture if it was someone she knew, but with everyone this stressed it was a good idea to make it as easy as possible.
She touched the picture and shook her head. “My range is still only about fifty miles. They aren’t within that radius.”
“Well, that tells us something.” Had to stay Polly Positive, because things were not looking good in the room with the captives. There were two people in with them, though, because the camera was still panning from the center of the room, but as it went around again, it was clear that the captives had been roughed up, more so than when we’d first seen them. “Christopher, what do you get?”
“Nothing relevant to the situation. We get what the person’s done up to the point of the picture. Not what they’re doing right now.” He handed the picture back to Chuckie. “She was really happy.”
Risked a glance. It was a picture from their honeymoon. Started to get extremely angry. Good. Went nearer to the big screen. “Where’s Walter? Where are the Barones?”
“No idea,” Jeff said.
“Can we track them? And the others? I know that’s normally done out of the Science Center, but can anyone else give it a go?”
Heard a lot of cursing. “Kitty, more bad news,” Stryker said. “All tracking is offline.”
“Bring it up online, Eddy.”
“Can’t. I mean it’s gone. The chips are deactivated.”
CHAPTER 42
THAT SAT ON THE AIR for a few long moments. We could hear the sounds of people being hit and trying not to let on that they were being hit.
“That’s impossible,” Jeff said finally. “They’re all internal, and the only way to deactivate them is to remove them.”
“Or dissolve them,” White said quietly.
“And that’s what we think was done,” Stryker said. “NASA Base has done the confirmations.”
We were all quiet again. More sounds of abuse coming from the room, and as the camera panned again, the team again looked worse for wear. “Well,” I said finally, “at least the chips didn’t self-destruct.”
“Failsafe,” White said.
“Yeah, you’re big on them, I remember.”
“Now that I have your full and undivided attention,” the woman in the room with our friends and family said, “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I’m going to do terrible things to one of your friends here until I get what I want.”
Something caught my eye, but the camera went out of range. “William, Eddy, someone, are we recording this?”
“Yes, Ambassador.”
“Great. Toss the recording up onto our many other screens. I need to see something that needs
a freeze frame.”
“Kitty, it’s Henry. Yuri and I have some vocal confirmation. Female speaker is likely from South Florida.”
“You and Omega Red rock, Henry. Okay, that means this is Raul the Pissed Off and Now Dead Assassin’s chick, Annette Dier, who is also an assassin.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Jeff said.
“Yes, actually, I can. I have my Megalomaniac Girl hat on and everything.”
“This is her area of expertise,” Chuckie said curtly. “Let her work.”
“Thanks. William, Eddy, someone rewind on a non-main screen to right when she was threatening a few seconds ago. I don’t need the audio, just the visual.”
Dier went on talking as a couple of the smaller screens in the room rewound. “We’re going to start with the human.” Serene sobbed and Chuckie put his arm around her again.
“Why Brian?” Jeff asked.
“Because he can’t regenerate and he has no fast healing. William, slow down the forward on my special view, will you?” The frames slowed down. “There! I thought I saw something.”
What I’d seen was Michael Gower. “What’s he doing?” Claudia asked.
“He’s working to get his hands free using hyperspeed. The camera only caught the start, when he was moving at human speeds.”
Couldn’t be sure, of course, but it looked like Michael was going to manage to get his hands free.
“Their feet aren’t tied,” Chuckie said. “Just their hands. He gets free, he has a real shot at doing something.”
“How can he get out when the others can’t?” Adriana asked.
“He’s an astronaut, so he’s in incredible shape, he works with us all the time, and for all I know he and Caroline do interesting things in the bedroom. But either they didn’t tie him as well as they thought, he knew what he was doing, or he got lucky, because I think he’s going to get free.”
There was no way anyone, not even an A-C, could be this close to getting free in just a couple minutes. Meaning they’d been wherever they were for a while. Our enemies had had plenty of time to get anywhere in the world and tons of mind-controlled A-Cs to help them get there.
“Kitty, we’re still unable to trace the feed,” Stryker shared. “It’s being bounced all over the world, but we can’t get a reading on the origination point.”
“They’re in the tunnels. Exactly where Mahin thought they were.”
“How can you be sure?” Reader asked. “Letting her work, Reynolds, stop shooting me the death glare, just need the confirmation of how she’s making these leaps.”
“During Operation Destruction video went out of the tunnels with no problem, but no empath or imageer could read through them. They’re not sending via one of our cameras, so we can’t trace it. And they told Mahin that’s where they were going.” Heard Tito quietly explaining who Mahin was for those who’d missed the outdoor entertainment.
“The tunnels are worldwide,” White said. “We’ll have a challenge finding them in time.”
Dier moved into camera range. She was blonde. She also had a knife. A very nasty, very sharp-looking knife. Aimed at Brian. Went for the crazy and sent a text to Buchanan and my dad.
“I think we’ll start with the smaller things first,” Dier purred as she did the Typical Bad Guy Knife Move and ran the flat of the blade against the side of Brian’s face. “Fingers. Toes. Eyes. Parts that will ensure you’re no longer a man.”
Brian blanched. “You’re a crazy psycho.”
Dier laughed. “You wish. No, I’m a professional.”
“Confirmation, that’s Annette Dier.”
“I agree,” Chuckie said.
Dier leaned closer to Brian. “And I’m very good at what I do.”
“Leave him alone,” Gladys said, with a lot of authority in her tone. “You want to terrorize someone? Try me.”
Dier went to Gladys, camera following her. She backhanded Gladys hard across her face. “You’ll speak when spoken to, and not before. You’re no longer necessary, didn’t you realize that earlier?”
She went back to Brian. “Now, where were we? Oh, right, I was about to torture you, slowly, and cut you up, bit by bit.”
Serene was sobbing and I was pretty sure she was only upright because Chuckie was holding her up. “Why are they doing this?” she asked. “They haven’t even asked us for anything.”
The realization of what they were doing dawned on me. “They can’t ask us for what they want.”
“Why not?” Jeff asked.
“Because they want Patrick. And Jamie.”
“How would this get them?” Adriana asked. “None of you would put the children at risk. No one in that room would agree to that trade, not even to save their own lives.”
“I agree. However, this set of bad guys has an interesting view. They thought Jamie could time warp to Jeff in Paris. They undoubtedly think Patrick can do the same. And if he can and if he goes, she’ll go with him.”
“How do you know that?” Jeff asked quietly.
“Because I wouldn’t let my friend go alone and neither will she.”
“Why take anyone else, then?” Reader asked. “Why not just take Brian?”
“They want ACE. They either want to bring him to them or have Paul bring him to them. Maybe they think they can contain ACE, destroy him, something. Ronaldo spent a lot of time with the Z’porrah, remember. I’m sure he has tricks we know nothing of.”
“I could be wrong,” Tim said, as Dier ran the side of the knife over Brian some more, “but this seems like a time to ask ACE for help, Kitty, Paul.”
Looked at Gower. He looked trapped. Time to come clean. But, as with Christopher, clearly I was the one who was going to have to do it. “ACE can’t help us. ACE isn’t here. He hasn’t been here since the tunnels went back to impenetrable, after Operation Destruction. He’s . . . hurt and in trouble, but it’s trouble we can’t help with. We don’t know how to get him back, only that he’s still out there somewhere and hasn’t really left us. But ACE intervening is not an option.”
Dead silence met this announcement. Which meant I didn’t have any trouble hearing my phone’s text sound alert. Checked it out. “Great. William, Malcolm is going to call you. You need to get a camera feed of what’s going on into wherever he is, pronto.”
“On it Ambassador, and on with Mister Buchanan right now.”
“What’s having him and your dad see this going to do?” Jeff asked.
“Other than upset Dad and piss Malcolm off? Nothing. But we have only one shot to figure out where our hostages are. It’s a shot in the sandstorm, but when all you’ve got available is the crazy, then the crazy is the shot worth taking.”
CHAPTER 43
COULDN’T WAIT FOR DAD and Buchanan to show Mahin the video and get her to crack. Could be fast. Might be slow. Had to think of something else.
But events in the room with the hostages weren’t waiting. “Did you know that there are places where I can cut you and you’ll bleed out slowly?” Dier cooed at Brian.
“Isn’t that pretty much anywhere?” Brian asked. I was impressed. He sounded insolent.
“Leave him alone you raving bitch,” Michael growled.
She turned and was in profile to the camera. Only for a moment, then the camera got behind her again. “William, we need the frames with her face frozen and possibly blown up.” These flashed onto some other screens. “Jeff, Chuckie, does she look at all familiar to you? Even a little?”
“Not really,” Jeff said.
“Maybe,” Chuckie said slowly. “But I don’t know why.”
Dier was in front of Michael now. “So brave. But don’t worry, you’ll get your turn.”
“Ambassador, Mister Joel Oliver is here. He feels the woman is familiar, too.”
“Have Pierre take a look. I’m certain this is the same woman who was casing us all during Operation Sherlock’s horrible Dinner Party of Death.” But there was something else about her—I felt I’d seen her somewhere
else.
“Untie me and let’s see how brave you are,” Michael said. “You’re nothing but a tall woman, about five foot nine, a hundred and forty pounds, brown eyes, hair’s obviously dyed, about thirty, and—”
She backhanded him. “Shut up. I told all of you to shut up.”
“Why should we?” Gladys asked. “You’re going to torture us no matter what. We might as well talk about how the man with the camera isn’t the man in charge. My half brother isn’t here, because he’s too much of a coward to take the risk.”
“But the man with the camera’s also your brother, Gladys,” Melanie said. The camera swung to her. “He’s just got no actual talents he’s shown, other than being subservient to Ronaldo Al Dejahl.”
“He’s short for a man, about the crazy knife wielder’s height,” Emily added. “Dark, swarthy, sounds Middle Eastern. Kind of chubby. Definitely unattractive.” A swarthy man’s hand slapped Emily across her face.
This put the cameraman closer to her and, because of how they were tied up, to Melanie. It was hard to be sure, but it sounded like Emily kicked or kneed him in the balls. At least the camera dropping to the floor while we heard the sound of male whimpering was indicative.
Heard another kick. “I think I just kicked your helper in the head,” Melanie said. “Sorry. Not really at all.”
“I love our team. I just have to say. They’re awesome.”
The rest of the hostages were getting into it, tossing off descriptions, sharing what they could remember of the abduction, and so forth. What was the most interesting was that Dier didn’t actually cut anyone. Meaning Ronaldo wanted most of them alive and presumably in one piece.
“Ambassador, a Peregrine is here,” William said. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
“Seriously?” Tim asked.
“Yes. Put Bruno on.” Assumed it was Bruno, anyway. Heard some bird screeches. Yep, Bruno. He screeched, clucked, and warbled. “Got it. You da bird, Bruno.”
“Do we want to know?” Jeff asked.
“Bruno says she’s who set the bomb in Cliff Goodman’s car. She was also in the crowd of reporters. She was the one trying to incite them to riot on us right after the explosion.”