Refraction

by Christopher Hinz

  JoJo headed west toward Pico Boulevard. It was a short ride to the airport.

  “I have some business,” Michael instructed. “Don’t bother me unless it’s urgent.”

  “Yes sir.”

  She raised the opaque window, isolating him in the back seat. He opened his encrypted laptop, keyed in the security code and brought up the seventeen-page breakdown of sequential events that would bring Tarantian to fruition.

  Nobe would have considered him anal for wanting to go over the assault yet again. They’d already vetted each detail, worked out countless variations to deal with every contingency. Still, there was always the chance of an unanticipated event throwing a monkey wrench into the plan.

  Such an event had occurred only last month. Who could have guessed those railfans would turn up at the same time Nobe and Kokay were doing their recon? Even though the trio was also trespassing and likely wouldn’t have reported the incident, the stakes were too high to risk letting them live.

  Nobe originally was going to bury the bodies. In that wilderness they might not have been found for a long time, if ever. But the grizzly attack gave him a better idea. It made more sense to leave the bodies in the open to be found quickly rather than risk search parties scouring the region for months and possibly interfering with Tarantian. Unfortunately, a survivor crawled out of there, prompting a full-blown investigation.

  Michael seethed when he thought back to Nobe’s mistake. But there hadn’t been anything to be done about it other than taking the merc to task. Nobe had countered his criticism with a shrug and a pointed reference to the classic fuck-up excuse, “shit happens.”

  Thankfully, according to Michael’s DOD contacts, the investigators misinterpreted what Nobe and Kokay were doing in that wilderness. And they remained oblivious to Michael’s secret weapon: his insider at Tau Nine-One. The young woman he’d recruited more than a year ago was a key part of the plan.

  The insider had reported heightened vigilance since the railfans incident but nothing likely to upset Tarantian’s timetable. An extension of Tau’s sensor net was in the works but had to go through the Pentagon’s complex procurement process and wouldn’t be installed for months. By then, the insider would have carried out her part of the bargain, for which the balance of her five million dollars in compensation would be placed in an offshore account.

  Michael’s phone beeped. It was Nobe.

  “Rosen called. He and Vesely have been watching the house. Two men showed up. There was some kind of confrontation with Princess at the front door. She had a shotgun and one of the men had a pistol. Rosen couldn’t hear what was being said. Everyone eventually cooled off and went inside.”

  Michael frowned. “Federal agents?”

  “Vehicle doesn’t look like government issue. An old Ford Bronco. Rosen’s running the plates.”

  “Did they get a look at these men?”

  “Wrong angle for the NVGs. Couldn’t see their faces. Might just be a couple of her mates who showed up unannounced and surprised her.”

  The drawing of guns didn’t sound like a misunderstanding among old friends. Michael couldn’t afford to leave the matter unresolved.

  “We need to know what they’re doing there.”

  “I’ll have Rosen and Vesely secure the house.”

  “Make sure Princess and her guests don’t make any emergency phone calls.”

  “Not a problem. The house is in a dead zone for cell coverage. Rosen had to hike half a mile to reach me. They’ll cut the land line before they go in.”

  “What if they have sat phones?”

  “Rosen and Vesely will hit hard and fast. No one will have a chance to make any calls.”

  Michael thought carefully. Capturing Magenta was one thing but taking out her visitors, who just might be federal agents, could have repercussions for Wednesday. Still, the need to know their identities and what they were doing there trumped such considerations.

  “Make sure your men understand we need all three alive.”

  “Want them to do a little prep on Princess, put her in a cooperative mood?”

  “No.”

  The word came out sharper than Michael intended. Unlike the interrogations he’d conducted with Blue and Green, he didn’t want Magenta sullied.

  Ten years ago, she’d snuck out of his LA condo before he could pry any useful info out of her. He’d been equally frustrated about not getting her into bed. She’d been one of the few women over the years who’d escaped his charms.

  To hell with celibacy. Tonight, after the interrogation, he intended to remedy that.

  THIRTY

  Jessie had grown quiet since mentioning Michael’s desire to become a god. The house mirrored her quiescence. The only sound was the ticking grandfather clock.

  Aiden broke the silence. “You OK?”

  She snapped out of her reverie and put down her beer. “I’ve been trying to decide if I want to show you.”

  “Show us what?”

  She came to a decision and opened a squeaky door under the staircase. Wooden steps led to the basement. She motioned to them to follow her down the rickety staircase.

  The basement was unfinished, with an undulating floor of packed dirt and three walls of whitewashed concrete. The fourth wall facing the rear of the house was composed of unpainted wooden slats. Rafter-mounted fluorescent lights revealed a small fridge, a sink and a washer-dryer set. A short flight of steps at the front of the basement ascended to an outside storm door.

  Seven toilet bowls were lined up in the center of the basement. The bowls were without their tanks, which explained the unusual planters in Jessie’s garden. The original plastic or ceramic lids on the bowls had been replaced with slabs of clear Plexiglas.

  Jessie led them down toilet row. The inner surfaces of the first three bowls were antiseptically clean. But half-submerged in the fourth bowl, sloshing in a thick broth, was a gelatinous brown clump. It resembled one of Aiden’s chunkies.

  Except it was alive.

  “One of my little children,” she said without apparent sarcasm. “I manifested this morning. Want to pet it?”

  “I’m good,” Aiden said, adding what happened when he touched a fresh chunkie.

  “Yeah, mine are sticky too. But once they’re in the broth they’re not nearly as bad.”

  “You get the urge and one of these appears?” Keats asked.

  “Yeah. A kind of energy builds up inside me. It’s hard to explain. But that energy, it’s got to be released. Or else I start feeling all kinds of crazy.”

  Jessie, and presumably Red, had a degree of conscious control over their manifestations. Aiden was impressed by what they could do. But also a bit jealous.

  “They started when I hit puberty,” she said. “Mom helped me recognize when I was in a certain mental state, when the energy was present. It has to do with my emotions, my mood. When I was a teen, sex was a big trigger. Just fantasizing about a new boyfriend could manifest one. I call ’em droppers, by the way.

  “First time I was with a guy, we were on a mattress in the back of his pickup. At a moment of intense passion, I splattered a dropper across his rear cab window.” She barked a laugh. “Fortunately, he was too preoccupied to notice.”

  Aiden sensed that he and Jessie were alike in one respect. Because of their abilities, both of them likely had soured on having good intimate relationships.

  “Eventually I learned to control the energy, direct it. These days I can bring it on at will, sometimes as often as once a day. Naturally, Mom and I kept things under wraps. She was worried those Tau Nine-One assholes would drag me away for more experiments.”

  Aiden moved to the fifth toilet bowl. This dropper had begun to sprout nodules.

  “Are they some sort of embryos?”

  “Of a sort. That one’s from two days ago.” She gestured to the sixth bowl. “And this little bugger is five days old.”

  The dropper in bowl six had at least a dozen nodules. Several had grown into
five-inch tentacles that thrashed violently in the liquid, making thwapping sounds as they smacked the underside of the plexiglass lid.

  Jessie moved to the final bowl. This manifestation was similar to the previous one but wasn’t moving. The tentacles hung limply.

  “Is it dead?” Aiden asked.

  “Close to it. Once they’re about a week old, that’s what happens. I’ve tried removing them from the bowls, putting them in different types of solutions. So far, nothing’s worked.

  “When I was younger, I used to dream of finding a cure, putting an end to the manifestations. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I was probably never going to be free of them. Finally I decided to start my own little science project.

  “My droppers sound like they’re similar to Gold’s in that they shoot away from my body. Had lots of splatter jobs in the early days. After some trial and error I figured out how to incubate them. The broth is an isotonic saline solution enriched with minerals, similar to the amniotic fluid found in the womb. I mix up batches from off-the-shelf chemicals and nutrients. When I feel the urge to manifest, I come down here. I’ve learned to direct a dropper’s trajectory and control release velocity. As long as I’m close to a bowl I can make them land softly in the broth.”

  She led them toward the rear wall, the one made of boards. Aiden hadn’t noticed from farther away but there were seams outlining a rough-hewn door. Jessie slid her fingers under the edge and swung it open. The light spilling in revealed a furnace and an oil tank. A ground-level window high on the wall had been spray-painted over.

  The corner opposite the furnace was piled almost to the ceiling with dead manifestations. They gave off an unpleasant odor, like rotting fruit.

  “I didn’t know what to do with them,” Jessie said. “I tried burying them out back but they kill the plant life. Some kind of natural herbicide, I’m guessing. But when this place fills up I’ll have to find another means of disposal.”

  “Ever have them examined by a lab?” Keats wondered.

  “Never found anyone I’d trust enough to do it on the sly. Couldn’t risk some asshole blogger putting it out there and making me public spectacle number one.”

  “Do you think Michael’s manifestations are similar to yours?” Aiden asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll bet anything he’s also been cultivating them. From what you’ve told me, either his abilities are far more advanced than mine or fundamentally different. Those shadows of his, transmitting a kind of hologram of himself to distant locations. Wow, that is some amazing shit. I’ve never even imagined something like that…”

  She trailed off. Her face blossomed confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” Aiden asked.

  “I don’t know. I feel kind of… funny.”

  Jessie moved unsteadily toward the door. She was losing control of her muscles. Aiden was certain of the diagnosis because the same thing was happening to him.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him. He tried to reach out to the wall for support but never made it. He dropped to his knees.

  “Something’s wrong,” he whispered. A distant part of his brain realized just how inane that conclusion sounded.

  Keats wrapped his arms around a furnace pipe, struggling to stay upright. Jessie sat on the floor shaking her head, trying to fight grogginess. The last thing Aiden saw before unconsciousness took him was the huge pile of dead manifestations.

  THIRTY-ONE

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, awakening brought terror. Aiden slithered from a dreamless sleep to realize he was once again a prisoner.

  He was slumped on a sofa in Jessie’s living room. His ankles were tightly secured with plastic flex cuffs and his wrists were bound in front of him the same way. Keats, similarly restrained and still unconscious, was sprawled in a chair closer to the front door. Jessie sat stiffly upright on the second sofa, also bound. She was staring at the TV. The set wasn’t on.

  The house was silent. There was no sign of their captors.

  Aiden realized Jessie wasn’t looking at the screen. Atop the TV cabinet was a pair of night vision goggles as well as the contents of their pockets. Wallets and keys. Keats’ knife and gun.

  “Jessie,” he whispered. “You OK?”

  She turned to him. He saw the fear in her eyes. He gestured toward the TV.

  “I’m going to try to get the Glock.” He might be able to fire it even with his wrists bound.

  But when he tried to squirm off the sofa, he realized there was another obstacle. He couldn’t move his feet more than a few inches. He leaned forward and looked down. A longer flex cuff was looped around the one binding his ankles. It was fastened to a fat screw eye that had been twisted into the floorboards.

  Keats and Jessie were afflicted with similar hobbles. They weren’t going anywhere.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs. A man trotted down from the second floor. He looked to be in his thirties. Long brown hair streamed out the back of a Texas Longhorns football cap. His dark windbreaker was unzipped, revealing a holstered pistol.

  Seeing that Aiden and Jessie were awake, he hollered up the steps.

  “Hey, Rosen. Guess who’s up?”

  The second man joined him. Rosen wore a similar windbreaker, the bulge of a holstered gun visible beneath it. With thinning brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded Aiden of an unpleasant elementary-school teacher he’d endured, a man who seemed to have no love of children.

  Rosen had found Jessie’s wallet upstairs. He removed the driver’s license and compared the ID photo with an image on his phone.

  “Definitely her. We need to call it in. Hike out to where you can get a signal.”

  “Christ, why bother. They’ll be here in an hour or so.”

  “It’s the way the Clerk wants it, Vesely. And I went last time.”

  Vesely snatched the keys to the Bronco from atop the cabinet.

  “No,” Rosen said. “On foot. Leave their vehicles where they’re parked. Get our car and drive it back here.”

  “What the hell does it matter?”

  “It matters,” Rosen said, punctuating his words with a glare.

  Vesely grimaced but put down the keys. He planted himself in front of Jessie, stared down at her with a lecherous expression. She averted his gaze.

  “Goddamn, you are one hot bitch.” He turned to Rosen. “Why don’t we do her?”

  “The Clerk says she’s not to be touched.”

  “Who’s going to know?”

  “Nobe will. Want to deal with that shit?”

  Vesely clearly didn’t. Muttering under his breath he headed for the door. But he stopped at Keats’ chair and kicked the unconscious man in the ankle.

  Keats’ eyes snapped open. He glared up at his tormentor.

  “Thought you were awake. The gas doesn’t have that long an effect.” Vesely grinned at Rosen. “Old fart thinks he can play games, pretend to be out of it.”

  Vesely grabbed the cuffed wrists to prevent Keats from moving his arms and squeezed his neck.

  “Like to play games, you acne-faced prick? Well, Mr Decimus Dionysius Keats, real soon we’ll be doing a number on your ass. Whadda ya say to that?”

  Keats said nothing. His eyes, hard and unyielding, never left his captor’s face. Sneering, Vesely released him and stomped out the door.

  Aiden’s spirits sank lower as he digested their predicament. Nobe was on his way here with the Clerk, aka Michael de Clerkin, aka Red. Painful interrogations would be on their agenda. Aiden and Keats would be asked about the garage and about Farlin. Jessie would be quizzed about her manifestations. And after Red was satisfied with their responses…

  He tried to repress a shudder, failed. This time, more care would be taken. This time, the mercs would make sure their executions occurred without any hitches.

  Jessie had turned pale, aware of what awaited them. Judging by Vesely’s lewd outburst, things might go even worse for her.

  The sit
uation seemed hopeless. The three of them were in the middle of nowhere, bound hand and foot, guarded by two ruthless mercenaries. There was no way out.

  He turned his attention to Keats. No trace of fear marred his features. That fortitude helped Aiden to recover his own.

  We’re not going to die. We’re going to get out of this.

  But how?

  Rosen strolled into the kitchen. Aiden heard the refrigerator open. The instant the merc was out of view, Keats tried yanking the screw eye from the floor by jerking his legs back and forth.

  It wouldn’t budge. He switched to a new strategy. Gripping the metal loop with his fingers, he attempted to unscrew it from the floorboard. Aiden mimicked his effort.

  It was no use. The screw eyes had been driven deep into the grain, probably with a drill to make a starter hole. Their shackled wrists prevented gaining enough leverage to twist them out.

  “That’s the spirit,” Rosen said, grinning at them from the kitchen portal, a bottle of Heineken in his hand. “FYI, though. First one who gets loose, I shoot out a kneecap.”

  They gave up the effort. Aiden knew there was little chance of undoing the screw eyes anyway, not without some kind of tool.

  But they had to do something. Any hope of escape would end the moment Vesely returned. Against a single merc they had a chance, however slim.

  Rosen returned to the kitchen. The sound of cabinets opening suggested he was hunting for a snack.

  The thought of eating gave Aiden an idea. It was outrageous and unlikely to work. But considering their predicament…

  He caught Jessie’s attention. Keeping his voice at a whisper, he conveyed his desperate plan.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Rosen returned, nibbling crackers between swigs of Heineken. Jessie wasted no time.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said, indicating across the room.

  The end table held her unfinished beer. Rosen shook his head.

  “No booze.”

  They don’t want her to feel relaxed, Aiden realized. Alcohol prior to tortuous interrogation could defeat its purpose.