by Toby Minton
The tapping sounded again, a little louder this time, and then a voice stage-whispered, “Miss Flux?” through the door.
“Go away,” she shouted. Or at least that’s what she meant to shout. Not even she could understand what came out around her second mouthful.
“Miss Flux, it’s me, Dr. Allayne.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Allayne—uh, Radij.”
“Not any clearer,” she said before ripping off another bite of chicken with her teeth. She’d already wiped out the veggies.
"From the lab. I—I put you in the tank.”
That rang a bell. Nikki’s mind finally matched the voice to the kid from the lab. She popped the last of the chicken in her mouth and reached up to slide the empty tray onto the cabinet. She snagged the drink bottle she almost knocked over and flipped the top open.
“Miss Flux?”
She drank half the water from the bottle and spent another long minute doing nothing before she replied. “Yeah, I remember you. Kid Technician.”
“I’m twenty-two, Miss Flux.”
“No shit?”
“No shit, Miss Flux.”
“Well then quit calling me Miss Flux, grandpa. You here to apologize? Make yourself feel better?”
It was his turn to stretch the silence. “Would it make a difference?”
Nikki drained the last of the bottle and snapped the top back down. “Not the slightest.”
“Then I won’t waste your time.”
More than you already have, she thought. She cut the guy enough slack to keep that to herself though.
“I want to help you.”
Nikki laughed to herself. She left the bottle on the floor and pulled herself up. Her legs were feeling steadier by the minute, but with food in her belly, she was ready to put them back to sleep. She walked to the bed and flopped face down.
“Little late for help, Doc,” she said, half into the pillow. “With your tank busted, I got things right where I want them.”
“No, you don’t understand—”
“I think your boss might even be going sweet on me,” she went on, turning her head the other way and deeper into the pillow. The Doc probably couldn't hear her as well, but she didn’t get why he was there anyway.
“Miss Flux—”
“You watch. I’ll run this place in a couple of days.”
“Miss Flux—Nikki! There are other tanks.”
Nikki was wide awake. She rolled onto her back and stared at the dark ceiling, feeling a coldness inside that had nothing to do with temperature.
“Four backup tanks, to be precise,” Radij continued. “The first will be online in a few hours. The investors are impatient for results.”
Another tank. So much for her big win. She’d just bought a little time, just a few hours respite. When they got the next tank online…
“Nikki?”
“Open the door,” she said, rolling up and off the bed. She was at the door with both hands pressed against it in a heartbeat. “Get me out of here. Now.”
“I—I can’t, Nikki.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” she barked. “You just said you wanted to help me.”
“Only the guards have keys, and I know nothing about locks.”
“You have tools. Get a saw, a torch, something! Cut it open.”
“The guards would hear. We’re making too much noise as it is.”
Nikki slapped her hands against the door and growled a curse. “Then what good are you?”
I can’t go back in that thing, she thought. Not again. But she didn’t see any options. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything on her own. She needed Michael.
“I can get a message out. If you can tell me who to contact…”
The surge of hope in Nikki’s heart was short lived. The people she needed to reach weren’t exactly on a registry. Gideon and his crew lived off the grid. They had no published numbers or addresses, and Nikki hadn’t bothered to memorize any frequencies or web addresses they monitored. Not that it would have mattered. They were constantly changing those things anyway to throw off Savior.
My lazy, stubborn attitude strikes again. Why don’t I pay attention to anything? She’d had ample opportunity to memorize the channels and frequencies they’d used. Yeah, they’d probably been changed a dozen times since then, but maybe Kate recycled them eventually. Just memorizing one of them would have given Nikki something, anything to tell Radij to try. But no, she’d never bothered. The only time she’d memorized anything had been when Sam had made her—
“Holy flaming right-in-my-face crap!
“What is it? What happened?”
Nikki took a deep breath and tried to temper her excitement and the smile it was causing. Even if this worked and she got a message out, any help that might come surely wouldn’t arrive before she had to go back in the tank. Meaning she still had pain beyond belief to look forward to, and of course the possibility of giving Savior a working Gateway on her conscience. Still, she had something to hope for now. And that meant everything.
“OK. Pay close attention,” she told Radij. “This is going to sound stupid complicated, but just trust me.”
Padre
The sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours, but Padre was already awake, sitting on the hard ground beside the skimmer, watching the eastern sky like he could will the sun to hurry.
He’d stowed his bedroll, eaten, and cleaned up as best he could with his limited supplies, so there was little left to do other than wait for enough light to recharge the skimmer. At least then he’d be able to make out the land around him as he waited for the batteries to recharge. Not that there was much to see. This place was called the Wasteland for good reason.
Padre reached over and fished another gel packet from the skimmer’s saddle hatch. With only a few hours’ sleep to tide him over, he’d need the energy boost before long. He should have slept longer, he knew, but sleep had been hard to come by since Seattle. Until Nikki was safely back at base, he just couldn’t make himself rest.
The minute Elias had approved his grid search of the Wasteland, he’d taken the skimmer, a solar charger, and supplies to keep him going for a few days. And he hadn’t been back to base since. He needed to go back to resupply, but he wanted to clear one more grid before he headed back.
It helped to know that Michael and Corso had joined the search. Theirs was a less conventional approach, but one that allowed them to cover more ground faster.
A day into Padre's search, Michael had come up with the idea to try to locate Nikki using their link. Apparently they could feel each other and use their power if they were within a certain range, which he estimated to be within a few hundred meters. So he and Corso were now taking a transport out each day and tackling one of the grids Padre had mapped out. They flew fast and low, hoping to pass close enough to Savior’s hidden facility for Michael to sense Nikki.
Their approach was fast for sure, but not without risks. If the twins’ range was only a few hundred meters, Corso would be flying well within the kill zone of whatever defenses Savior was sure to have in place. But both Michael and Corso knew the risks, and they were willing to do whatever it took locate Nikki.
Padre knew why Michael took the risk, but Corso was a trickier puzzle. Getting a solid read on the thief was almost impossible. He kept up a constant screen to hide his true emotions and motivations. While Corso claimed to feel guilty for his part in Nikki’s capture, Padre suspected he wouldn’t be so eager to risk life and limb if it were Michael he’d betrayed instead of Nikki. Not that Padre could throw stones.
The long range com on his belt clicked twice, indicating a call from base. He checked his watch and frowned. For them to contact him at this hour, something must have happened. He clicked the channel open, trying not to get his hopes up. It could just as easily be bad news as good. “Route One here.”
“Great,” Kate said over the com, dragging the word out on one long sarcastic arc. Her voice
sounded like she’d just woken up from even less sleep than Padre had snagged. “So it was a joke. Funny, Padre. Really funny, especially at oh three thirty.”
“I don’t understand, Command.”
“Three-thirty in the morning, Padre. Way too early for code names, especially with my new system. We’re secure. Which is why I told you we don’t need the Padre channel unless other lines are down or compromised. So…stop it.”
Padre lifted his eyes from the com in his hand and checked his surroundings, instantly on alert. He slowed his breathing and relaxed his focus, letting all his senses go to work to warn him of anything out of place around him. But there was nothing.
“Scramble two,” he breathed into the com. Then he made a slow ten count before switching to the designated channel.
“Line secure,” Kate’s calm and much more awake voice said over com. “Why’d we scramble, One?” She was all business now.
“I’ve sent no traffic since twenty-two fifteen, Command.”
“Confirm no traffic since twenty-two fifteen, One,” she requested, the edge in her voice clear.
“Confirm, no traffic.”
“Dammit, One. Somebody’s fishing on the P line. I’ve had two pings in the last half hour, but not with the latest codes. I thought you were messing with me. I should have realized.”
The Padre channel had never been compromised before. He and Kate were always careful to send only the coded channel requests over the chosen line, and only in emergencies. And now that her new protocols were in place, Kate had hoped to make the channel a thing of the past. They continued to set up Padre channel codes every time he left base, but only because he insisted.
“I’ll shut it down,” Kate said. “Looks like the last of our dinosaur channels is biting the dust. Sorry, One. I know you loved that thing.”
“Which codes, Command?”
“Say again, One?”
“Which codes were transmitted?” he repeated.
After a pause, Kate said, “126.39.728, click four. And then 126.39.788, click five.”
Padre mouthed the last two numbers before Kate said them, and this time he let his hopes rise. He hopped on the skimmer and powered it on. The battery display read twenty percent. Not enough for scouting another full grid, but enough to get him back to base. He allowed himself a small smile as he spun the skimmer around and accelerated across the desert toward the mountains he could barely make out to the west.
He snapped the com into the skimmer’s cradle and activated the earpiece. “Command, when you get the next ping on the Padre line, open the channel. Copy?”
“Copy, One,” He could hear the question in Kate’s voice, even before she put it into words. “What the hell is going on, One?”
“Just wake the others, and call Route Two back to base, ASAP.”
“Route Two is here, One,” Kate replied. “They don’t leave for their next run for another two hours. They’re asleep, like the rest of the smart people.”
“Then wake Michael first,” Padre said over the rushing wind as he reached cruising speed. His smile broadened as he pictured the expression that no doubt accompanied Kate’s stunned silence at his lapse in radio security. She shouldn’t be so surprised. She was the one who kept telling him her new protocols made com traffic as safe as face-to-face conversations.
“Tell him his sister’s calling.”
Chapter 34
Michael
“Stop. Back it up again,” Gideon ordered.
The playback of Dr. Allayne’s transmission froze on the center screen then reversed as Kate dialed it back slowly. Michael might have been frustrated at yet another break in the flow of the replay, the third in as many minutes, if he hadn’t witnessed the transmission firsthand, and, like Gideon, re-watched it a half dozen times already. For different reasons, it seemed.
“Play it forward, slowly,” Gideon said to Kate as he leaned on the rail and craned closer to the screen hanging over the server pit. “Stop. Freeze it there.”
The nervous scientist on the screen froze as he shifted and glanced offscreen, something he’d done repeatedly throughout the short transmission. In the darkened laboratory behind him, the freestanding metal doorframe was just visible over his hunched shoulder. The Gateway.
“Can you enhance it?” Gideon said softly. He didn’t have to say what “it” he meant.
Kate zoomed in on the Gateway and the image gradually sharpened and brightened as she manipulated the virtual controls surrounding her right hand.
Seconds ticked by as Gideon studied the image. He said nothing, but his expression, what little Michael could see of his shadowed profile, tightened further, getting even darker, if such was possible.
Michael had seen that look on Gideon’s face a few times in the last few weeks, where the normally intense strength in his mismatched eyes hardened and cooled as what little human expression and emotion the man displayed withdrew. Each time it happened, he got the feeling Gideon was trying to hide whatever he was thinking or feeling. Or worse, hide from those thoughts and feelings. If that was the case, if whatever Gideon saw on the transmission scared him after all he’d been through—
Michael’s thoughts didn’t need to go any further down that road. To keep his cool and continue to think rationally, he needed his thoughts to travel in the opposite direction. While Gideon had watched the transmission again and again in search of clearer views of the Gateway, Michael had searched for something, anything to tell him Nikki was OK.
When Michael had asked how Nikki was, Allayne had hastened to say she was holding up surprisingly well. But his nervousness and poorly masked guilt had given him the lie.
Michael shifted his gaze from Gideon to the screen. The last thing he needed was another reason to worry. What he needed was something he knew he wouldn’t find in the transmission, no matter how many times he watched it.
Kate’s hand covered his own, but the warmth and comfort he felt from her couldn’t untie the knots of concern that had been building and tightening inside him every day since Nikki’s capture. The fact that he felt a surge of excitement and happiness at Kate’s touch while Nikki might be suffering just made him feel guilty.
“Resume,” Gideon said, his voice noticeably colder than before.
The transmission played through with no further interruption. Michael kept his gaze on the screen as the nervous technician explained what they were doing to Nikki, and why. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Gideon straighten up and turn away.
When the playback ended, Kate squeezed Michael’s hand again. He looked over to see all the reassurance and hope he could ask for in her smile. “We know where she is now,” she said. “We’re going to get her back.”
“She’s right, kiddo,” Mos said from behind them. As Michael turned, Mos slapped a hand on his shoulder and gave a squeeze so strong it would have given Nikki a boost, if she’d been there. “Don’t you worry. We’ll hammer out a plan and have your sis back here making life miserable before you know it.”
As Michael focused on the tactical display behind Mos, and the discussions going on around it, he wasn’t so sure. He’d tuned out the debating and analyzing around the table while he and Gideon were replaying the transmission, hoping that Elias and the others would settle on a plan of attack in the meantime. But they didn’t seem any closer than they’d been half an hour ago. As Michael stepped up to the table, Ace was telling Coop why his latest idea wouldn’t work, in a tone that implied this wasn’t the first time she’d been through this. The rest of the team was around the table talking quietly in pairs like Gram and Padre, or studying the map in solitary silence, like Impact and Elias at opposite ends of the display.
Michael looked down at the three-dimensional hologram Kate had called up of Savior’s facility. She’d hacked a Chinese surveillance satellite to get an image of the coordinates provided by Allayne, coordinates that pointed to a small group of buildings on the southern edge of the Wasteland in New Mexico. Even the h
olographic display of the site looked rocky and dusty, but there were a surprising number of trees around the buildings—smallish trees with thin foliage, but they provided at least a little cover for a possible approach, a point Coop was still trying to make.
“It’s too thin, Coop,” Ace was saying. “We could get close, maybe, but if we tried to slip past the perimeter, they’d see us coming, for sure.”
“Whatever,” Coop disagreed. “Padre could do it. Easy.” He gave the smaller man across the table an upward nod. “Couldn’t you?”
Padre gave a slight shrug and nod, his gaze still on the display.
“Then what, Coop?” Ace said. “You want Padre to go inside alone? What about the rest of us?”
“Well, if he can do it…”
Padre glanced up this time, the look in his eyes enough to make Coop trail off, but not give up, apparently.
“So we’re back to an air drop, hard and fast, like I’ve been sayin’,” Coop pressed.
“With who flying?” Corso cut in. “You?” The thief was leaning back against the rail around the platform, his natural languor making him look both amused and bored at the same time. The laugh that punctuated his question was two parts derision, one part sarcasm, and zero parts complimentary. Perfectly designed to set Coop off.
Michael focused on the hologram and tried to tune out the ensuing argument.
The facility consisted of one large building with three smaller structures spaced out around it. Someone had labeled each structure according to their best guess as to function and contents. The two smallest structures—one up on a ridge about two hundred meters off the main building’s northeast corner, the other on lower ground behind a thin screen of trees the same distance off the southwest corner—were labeled “power relay” and “security checkpoint” respectively.