Bide your time, Will reminded himself.
"Only the thirteen chips that we copied from Rydel's work as backups are left. Rydel took the rest from the lab and crashed all his work here at Genesis."
John Adams stopped pacing and stared out the same window Will had fixed his own attention on.
"Of all people. Fuck!" The colonel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He remained that way for thirty seconds. He opened his eyes and stared down at Will. "Okay, send me back to when Rydel entered the lab tonight."
"Yes, sir."
__
The colonel looked out the window behind his desk with his arms folded across his chest, waiting. It had been over half an hour since Will had left the room. He turned to reach for the phone on his desk, and just as he did, Will entered the room. The look on the man's face told the story.
"What is it, Will?"
"Rydel got to the backup chips."
"Destroyed?"
"No."
"Damaged? How bad?"
"I can't send you back the way you want. He altered every chip to make sure that could not happen. A virus of some kind. But Rydel wasn't able to totally ruin my backups because of a backdoor I installed into the program. I don't trust anyone, sir. Let us be grateful for that. But we need to know where he went. And as of now, I can only send you back fifteen, maybe twenty years because of the virus, if that is of any help. I can't do any better. It would take months or even longer to undo what Rydel has done. He got to the weapons room as well, sir. I haven't had a chance to check what is missing yet."
"Let's go."
The two made their way to the weapons room without saying a word. Will opened the door and led the way inside. Following behind, John slipped his hand around the grip of his gun under the long coat he had on. He had no idea what was going on tonight or whom to trust. But he knew for sure not to trust the asshole in front of him. Not one bit.
Will started to open the black glass cabinet doors around the room. He stopped after opening the eighth door, revealing empty black foam cavities where ammunition and weapons were once stored. John joined Will at his side and looked over what was missing. Unsure, he turned to Will for an explanation.
"He's got the prototype Smartround LM rifle, a large number of rounds, and the Smartround handgun I was working on."
John took in the situation, breaking it down in his head. "I need to use some of your S-7 you say is now ready, Will. You're coming with me to find out exactly where Rydel went back to in time."
__
The rain, which almost seemed to be coming sideways, slammed into John and Will as they ran toward the entrance to Lenox Hill Hospital. Undetected upon entering because of a planned disturbance between four screaming women, John and Will walked over to the elevators. They knew what room the woman they wanted to see would be in and would not be denied because of the late hour or for not being blood relatives.
The elevator doors opened, and as luck would have it, an empty hallway faced the two. John and Will approached a room to their left. The two quietly slipped inside.
The woman in the room slept on a slightly raised bed facing a window, her body fighting to take in each breath. John let out a sigh of disappointment for having to do what he was about to do. He then nodded at Will without further reflection of his feelings.
"Okay, Will. Do it."
Will fell to one knee by the side of the bed and from his coat pocket removed a small clear cylinder with what looked like a four-inch black pushpin inside. Will slid S-7 out from the cylinder. He took the woman's limp left arm and stuck the black pushpin into it. He stood up and waited.
Karen turned her head away from the window and opened her eyes, staring up at the two. John stepped closer to the bed. Karen's head tilted slightly, and John’s gaze connected with hers.
"Hello, Karen," John said in a calm, reassuring voice.
"Hello…" Karen replied weakly.
John glanced at Will. Will administered the rest of the S-7 drug into Karen's arm, and her eyes changed. The only part of Karen that hadn’t succumbed to sickness were her vibrant blue eyes. That vibrancy was now gone as the drug took complete hold. Her blue eyes became the eyes of a doll with the ability to blink, which they did at John in slow intervals.
Will removed the S-7 needle from Karen's arm. "She's completely under. Since you were the one to speak to her first, you now control her. Ask her anything."
Staring down at Karen in her zombie-like appearance, John felt something break away from the pride he took in defending the people of America he cared so much about: a woman with maybe weeks to live put into this hypnotic state. Regrettably, this scenario, like others, would always be part of the job. What Rydel took could possibly cause the death of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children he’d sworn to protect. Sometimes, difficult choices had to be made, like doing this to a dying young woman looking at him with her vacant eyes.
"Karen, tell us the exact date Rydel traveled back to in time. And the reason why Rydel stole Placement. Tell me now, Karen."
Karen's doll eyes closed for five seconds and then snapped wide open.
"Okay. I will tell you."
__
John and Will were over Manhattan inside a private jet two hours later, headed back to Genesis. With the aircraft to themselves, the two sat across from each other, staring out of their respective passenger windows. What Karen had told the two was starting to sink in, as both men sat in a daze. John finally turned to Will.
"I talked with General Dowling before takeoff. He wants Ray and his Unit on this so we can find Rydel fast. You are a part of this, Will. I'll need your help to get Rydel back."
Will turned away from the window beside him to face John. "Of course."
"I don't want anyone in Ray's Unit knowing where or when we are traveling back to. Including Ray—understand?"
"I understand. I'll need at least three days to make sure the chips—"
"You have two days. No more."
Back at Genesis an hour later, Will and a team of techs went to work on the remaining chips, working through the night.
Later, as the dawn lit the east side of the lab, John walked outside onto the lab's helipad and stood in the light of a new day. After a few peaceful minutes alone, staring at a grouping of emerald-green treetops swaying in the wind below, the sound of an incoming helicopter broke the morning silence. John stepped back a few feet and waited to greet Ray and the members of his Unit.
__
By late afternoon, the members of Ray's Unit were situated inside an airplane hangar located near the back of the lab, all seated on folding chairs. The Unit stared at John and Will standing in front of them, with Ray standing off to the side.
"We've had a breach in weapons. It was Rydel," John said to Ray's Unit point-blank.
John waited before speaking again. He wanted to take in the reaction of the members of Ray's Unit, knowing how most of them felt about Rydel. And what he saw were their subtle, shifty looks at one another, the Unit confident the colonel had not picked up on it—but he had. John was not surprised. He knew he had some convincing to do.
"I know how all of you feel about Rydel. I feel the same way. He's a good man, but a man who has lost his way."
John looked at the operators in front of him, slowly making eye contact with each one. "Although it is confidential and understood never to be spoken of again, you all remember what happened to Martinez with Shutdown. Correct?"
John waited for a response, and all in the Unit replied back with a "Yes, sir" at the same time.
"From that, we discovered something here at Genesis that has not been fully tested yet. Placement…sending someone back in time to try to correct a situation that’s already occurred."
Ray's Unit stared blankly at John. Out of the nine now making up the Unit, Ben was the first to comprehend what Colonel Adams just said.
"I'm sorry…time travel, Colonel?" Ben asked.
"Placement.
A way to go back to a certain time in the past and make corrections when the worst has happened to our nation," John answered. "You are all here because we need to find Rydel fast. Changing events in the past with Placement at this time is extremely dangerous to the American people here in the present."
John turned to Will with a slight nod for him to explain the dangers of Placement to the men and women of the Unit. Will tried to smile at the Unit as a hello, only to come off looking creepy as fuck. He spoke in the monotone voice they all remembered and found disturbing about the man from their first days at the lab.
"It appears to be fortuitous for all of you that one of my projects here at Genesis is ahead of schedule. S-7 will change everything about getting the information you need out of an individual. I will show all of you how to use S-7 today; it will help in your mission like nothing before. As for Placement, during a previous test run, we changed something in the past that affected just one person. By doing so, we believe it caused an incident of severe damage to the present. Lives were lost. We have no idea what Rydel wants to change in the past. You people have to find him, and find him fast."
Mistake, John quickly realized.
"Thank you, Will." John motioned for Will to fall back, and he did. John didn't like the way "you people" sounded when Will said it, and neither did anyone in Ray's Unit. He said it as though they were something created here at the lab. Will always reminded John of the android no one knew about on the ship in the first Alien movie. Shit, maybe Will was an android.
With Will now standing behind him, John took over and continued to explain the situation to the members of the Unit.
"We tested Placement three times. The first two times, we changed nothing. The third time out, using Shutdown, we gave a man in the past one more minute to live. And the tsunami that hit our base in Japan happened the second we returned after altering what we thought would be something minor in time. We were fine when we returned because the base in Japan is underground. For those above, you know what happened. If Rydel changes something significant in the past and is able to return, just imagine the damage it will cause to the world. Questions?"
Jack cleared his throat, paused, and then spoke. "So…um, I can't believe I am saying this…when in time are you sending us back to…to hunt Rydel down?"
John took a moment before answering. "Rydel erased the time on the chip he stole from the lab. However, the chip he took went through one of Will's projects here—a computer keeping all the chips in line as to where they are going. We will program that information into backup chips we have that will take us exactly where Rydel traveled back to in time. From what Will has been able to find out so far"—the colonel held up his hands, a calm gesture for all not to freak out—"he thinks it is in the range of over a thousand years back in time, maybe a little more. We will dress you as best as we can to blend in with the people of the time. Unlike the backup chips all of you will use, which can't be tracked, you can track Rydel by the Placement chip inside him. He had no time to alter the chip he took in any way before he used it. Any other questions?"
Silence. They all looked a little overwhelmed. John glanced at Ray standing off to the side and gave him a slight smile. The colonel returned his attention back to the Unit.
"The scientists here need maybe another day to make sure Rydel did not tamper with the remaining backup chips we will use. So now all I need from each one of you is your favorite meal and adult beverage so we can set it up in this hangar tonight."
In front of John, Sal leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands together behind his head. "Sending us out in style, sir?"
"Abso-fucking-lutely."
Rydel in the Past
As Rydel sat on the slanted ground with his head lowered, the sun began its descent behind the distant mountains to his right. The clothing and footwear he had chosen to wear to blend in for this trip were flawless because he stole the whole getup once he arrived. No one gave him any sort of odd look as if he did not belong in this time or was in some way out of place.
Rydel lifted his head, watching the sunset beside him. He gave the sunset a few more seconds of his time and then rose to his feet. He took six steps up the mountain, reached down for a shrub, and pulled it out from the ground with ease, then placed it off to the side, leaving a large hole in the ground. He reached in the hole and pulled out the Smartround rifle he had stolen from the lab, leaving behind the magazines—each holding one thousand smartrounds—for the weapon. He stood up with the gun in his hands and pressed a black button on the side of the weapon. A small screen with a mini keypad slid out from the side of the gun. Rydel stared down at the flashing red lettering:
Record targets?
He lifted the weapon up to his eyes and scanned over the ancient city of Jerusalem below. Behind the walls of the city, torchlights began to ignite sporadically in orange-shaped spheres here and there as night approached.
Rydel took in the city of Jerusalem with the gun's slide-out screen, closing in on the scattered people walking the streets.
Satisfied with his test run of the weapon, he lowered the gun and typed in a response of No on the keypad’s small black keys. He placed the gun back in the hole in the ground. Rydel knelt down and reached deeper inside, then removed the smaller handgun version of the weapon and placed it under his cloak.
Back on his feet, Rydel turned to walk away and spotted a shadowed man standing near the top of the mountain, looking down at him. He blinked, and the man was gone. He was alone.
Rydel closed his eyes. He was tired, weary. His mind—his best asset—was begging for sleep. His thoughts needed to be clear and sharp to do what had to be done.
Rydel opened his eyes and made his way to his camp with the lean-to he had set up and got the rest he needed.
Brothers
Colonel John Adams sat behind his desk, typing on his computer, when a knock at the door took him away from his work. He let out a frustrated grunt, saved what he was working on, and acknowledged the person on the other side of his office door.
"Come in."
Ray opened the door and shut it behind him.
"Oh, it's you. The hell did you knock for?"
Ray glanced up at the office ceiling, then at the walls and the door behind him before looking back at John, shrugging his shoulders, a gesture saying, You never know who is listening.
John waved a dismissive hand at Ray's worries. "Not in my office, brother. Speak as fucking freely as you want."
"Okay, I will. Go over again with me how this Placement works."
"I'll show you."
__
The overhead lights inside the Viewing Room at the lab came to life one section at a time.
To the right of the now bright room that resembled a theater with auditorium seating, John and Ray entered through a side door. A giant black screen waited. The two took seats in the front row with a console between them. John hit a button on the console, and the room went dark as the screen glowed light blue. A scruffily bearded man in his late twenties appeared on the screen with mountain topography behind him. To the left of the man, a pitched tent flapped in the breeze alongside a smoldering fire.
John hit a button on the console as he turned to Ray, and the image of the man froze on the screen.
"First one to use Placement. A volunteer here at the lab. Had the campsite set up months before, and I told him not to move from it," John said.
John hit another button, and the man on the screen slowly lifted a black pill in the palm of his right hand. The man raised his eyebrows and grinned at the camera taping him. Smiling a cocky smile, the man on the screen swallowed the black pill and closed his eyes. He then disappeared. A patch of the dirt ground he stood on sent up a swirling cone of soil five feet high. The dust settled, and there was nothing left of the man.
Ray stared down at his clenched fists for a moment, remembering what had happened to Martinez. He then turned to John seated next to him.
"The pill dissolves q
uickly once you swallow it," John said. "Rydel encased the chip in a pill because it needs to reach and attach to the stomach wall. And when it does, rock and roll. And it won't just plop you into a pool party surrounded with people or place you in the middle of a tree. Remember, its origin was Shutdown; it will keep you safe and alone when you arrive. The time travelers themselves may be a little scattered, but they’re generally in the same area. After the chip returns you to where you came from, it detaches and, well, you know what happens. It's useless, but just make sure to double flush."
A slow smile started to spread across John's face.
"Now take a look at the video from a micro camera Will had inserted into a specific area of the man's brain that actually caught a glimpse of him being sent back in time."
John pressed another button on the console, holding it down for a few seconds.
"Take a look at this."
Ray fixed his attention on the screen fading to black. After staring at the black screen with nothing happening, Ray was about to turn back to John and ask him what exactly he was supposed to be looking at, and then it started to come into view in front of him: dotted lights on the screen. A constellation of stars in deep space is what Ray thought he was looking at, with a turning, tornado-like black circle in the middle of it all.
Ray turned to John and at the same time tried to keep an eye on the screen, stunned at what he was seeing.
"That's time travel?" Ray mumbled.
"A form of it. Not where we want it to be yet, but he sure as hell went back in time."
Save Him Page 9