Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1)

by Nicholas Erik

These were laser-guided scopes. And they cut through the dim murk like unwelcome and hellish nightlights.

  I clutched the Beacon in my hand. For a moment, my thoughts went to the rest of the artifacts. Maybe I could snag a souvenir for the road. Hell, it wasn’t like this whole mess could be traced back to me. My hand snuck back into the case and snagged a smooth, polished stone.

  But then the flight part of my programming took over.

  And it was telling me to run.

  I slunk low to the ground, using the cases as cover as I made my way to the back doors. The room was set up in symmetrical fashion, a large square. They’d blown the entrance doors, where I’d come in. This was the only way out. But there was an uninviting stretch of open terrain that lay between me and the exit, where cover had no purchase.

  I wasn’t an expert marksman, but even I could nail that shot. And I suspected that whoever was coming into this room, they were playing for keeps. There could only be one group after the same thing.

  The Singularity.

  The methodical tramp of boots echoed against the tall ceiling. They weren’t making fast time, but that didn’t matter. Whether it took a minute or an hour, they’d find me. I couldn’t hide in here. The steady procession filled my ears, like bells tolling to announce my death.

  Sweat and thin wisps of blood ran from my fingers, almost causing me to drop the stone. I clung to it with my thumb and forefinger, hatching a plan as I felt the indentations in the smooth surface. There was an inscription, writ long ago. Maybe it foretold of a prophecy, when it’d be used to save some small-time thief’s ass when he got in way over his head.

  There’d be one shot. Otherwise, I’d be dead.

  With a grimace, I torqued my arm to the side, aiming for an unbroken glass case near the front of the room. I could see the outline of soldiers equipped in riot or command gear, emerging through the settling dust and smoke.

  I hurled the stone at the case, sending a loud crack throughout the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the guns and lasers all turn the same direction. Hear them all lock and load. But I didn’t stick around to see what came next.

  In the smoothest motion I’d ever pulled off, I slid out from the case and flung open the doors, jetting inside. They shut behind me with a light click.

  It might as well have been a gunshot.

  48

  Hedge Maze

  The blueprint images flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t tell which way I should go. There was no time to make a lengthy decision.

  Whatever the choice, right or wrong, I’d have to live with it later.

  Or die right now.

  I tore to my left, running through an arched doorway. A living room, decorated with oriental rugs, the walls adorned with crests of arms. I vaulted over the wooden table and rushed through another corridor.

  Another room, maybe a little bigger, but furnished in much the same way. How many sitting rooms does a guy need? Maybe he seduced them in the little one, banged them in the more spacious one.

  No chance to figure it out; footsteps behind me, from all directions, descended like an aural net.

  Maybe the next door would yield better results.

  It led to a foyer, and my heart surged. Maybe this was the front of the house. A cavernous cathedral ceiling loomed above; this had the looks of an entrance. But there was no exit, at least not one that led outside. Just windows that tantalized and teased my thoughts with how nice it would be to get the hell out of here.

  All too small to get out of right now, though.

  There was a stairway in this vast space, however. I wasn’t sure whether elevation was the answer to my prayers, but I knew one thing: the Singularity, they weren’t upstairs. Not yet, at least. The echoes of their stomps told me at least that much.

  They weren’t doing that much to remain stealthy. But then, maybe a couple of them were, and then the rest of them were causing a scene, a distraction. Hell if I knew.

  I darted up the stairs, taking the giant mahogany slabs three at a time, winding my way to the second floor. Looking beneath me from the overhang, I could see a soldier, then another, following.

  I was slower than I’d thought. Figured I’d have a better head start than that.

  Another choice of halls; this mansion was like a labyrinth, a million dollar hedge maze, and I was the rat trapped in the middle of it.

  There was nothing to do but run.

  A voice nipped at my heels as I did, sending a chill through my body, but not halting my footsteps.

  “Come on now,” Otto said, his voice snaking through the halls like an oil-slick ruined river in a canyon, “just give us what we want.”

  If I’d had any breath left, I would have shouted something, maybe even come up with a clever retort. But I had to conserve my energy. This job was fast looking like it would be my last.

  “We do always get what we want, Mr. Desmond,” he said. “That is you, isn’t it, Mr. Desmond? Of course it is! Who else would steal such an odd trinket, unless they knew someone connected to it?”

  Well, I had to give him that. He’d have killed it on the inference portion of those standardized tests.

  “And the girl,” he went on, his voice an unwelcome accompaniment to my frantic journey, “she’s proven quite formidable. But that’s no surprise, given her heritage. Her father. We only thought that she wouldn’t be…as committed to the cause as she’s turned out to be.” There was a pause, where the silence was punctuated by my heart beating fast enough to drill a hole through my chest. “You two have surprised us quite a bit.”

  “Wonderful,” I said to myself, and glanced around to plan my next move. This was more familiar territory—the semblance of a normal residence. If it had fifteen foot wide halls and a half dozen guest rooms lining the sides.

  I tried to conjure up a mental image to get my bearings. Which ones overlooked the courtyard? And which ones would pin me against the ocean cliffs?

  I flung open a knob and peered through the dark, trying to catch a glint of light outside the window.

  All that I saw was the very, very small looking barrel of a gun.

  One lonesome and endless abyss.

  49

  Room With a View

  My arms didn’t have time to go into the air.

  Instead, I felt a familiar hand yank me into the room and shut the door.

  “I could have blown your fucking head off, Kurt,” Cassie said, now dressed in a little more clothing—but not much more—shaking her head, “you’re unbelievable.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said, and I meant it. That was before I saw Ames in the corner, watching our interaction. But hell, given the circumstances, I was happy to see him too.

  “Help me with this,” she said, pointing towards a dresser, “get it in front of the door.”

  Sure, why not. After all the other exercise that’d been forced upon me, this was the proverbial cherry on top of a shit sundae.

  But we managed, and in what must have been record time.

  “Search all the rooms,” I heard a commanding voice say outside.

  They’d find us. 30 seconds, a minute. Not much.

  “Plan?”

  Cassie gestured towards the bed.

  “I’d rather not, with your boyfriend here and all,” I said.

  She stuck her tongue out and grabbed one of the posts. “Wedge it against the dresser.”

  “They’re right outside—”

  “Just fucking do it.”

  Everything moving in slow motion, I yanked at the other end, every flimsy muscle in my body working in pathetic harmony to get this thing upright.

  “They have explosives,” I said.

  The door rattled.

  “This one’s stuck, sir,” a voice said, and the rattling became more violent, aggressive.r />
  “Blow it,” Otto said from down the hall, “blow it down, now.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The room was spacious, but I doubted any of us would come out of an explosion unscathed. My eyes ran toward the window, which I’d somehow missed to that point. Endless sea.

  “You chose the room with a view,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, he’s not in the best shape, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Ames groaned. I hadn’t noticed. Now I could see a dark stain near his belly.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Blowing those doors shook the house pretty good. Part of his collection fell on him. Knife.”

  “I knew all this shit wasn’t safe,” I said, but feeling better about the whole rich guy thing. Death by six-figure ancient Roman dagger. There was poetic justice in that—a timeless parable about greed and opulence.

  “Charge number one set, sir,” a voice announced.

  “We can’t rappel,” I said, stating the obvious, “not that we even have the equipment.”

  “Get in the closet,” Cassie said, “pull him in there with you.”

  “What the hell is that going to do?”

  “How’d you get in here?”

  “I climbed over the wall,” I said

  “You have a rope or something?”

  “Yeah,” I said, uncoiling the grappling hook from my pack, “here.”

  “The final charge is set. All personnel stand back. Ready to breach.”

  “Get in the closet,” Cassie said, hooking it the window sill and tucking her pistol into the sweatpants. “And shut your eyes.”

  I tugged at Ames’ prone form as she disappeared out the window. Maybe she’d just leave us here. That was impossible, though; the lip became too narrow to traverse past a certain point, and besides, there was a nice sized chunk missing from it.

  The cracks in the closet doors threw strange shadows over the interior as I closed them.

  Ames groaned. “I’m…sorry,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “For what?”

  “For breaking into your house.”

  I thought I heard a laugh. Nice to be on good terms with others when you’re about to go out. I doubted they let haters through the pearly gates.

  I closed my eyes and laid my torn up hand over his, applying pressure to the wound. That wasn’t pleasant for either of us, I was sure of that, but he could deal with it.

  And we waited.

  50

  Panic

  There was an eternity between those two moments. A lifetime; relativity on real-life display, proven by field test.

  What was taking them so long?

  The charges going off answered that, and then everything sped up, like an old tape on fast forward, skipping to a disjointed rhythm or no rhythm at all.

  Heat, dust, smoke rushed through the cracks in the closet door, slapped at my face.

  I clenched my eyes shut tighter. At least I wouldn’t know the end was coming.

  Amidst the noise, a ting, like the sound of a little bell, cut above everything else—angelic, a miracle. But there were no halos or wings coming to spirit us away.

  No, just a flash of bright light, followed soon thereafter by a series of pistol shots.

  “Open your eyes,” Cassie said.

  With my last remaining strength, I pulled Ames to his feet and started running into the hall. Pieces of the bed were thrown about as if a giant had come here to play. And, where the door had once been, the entire wall was missing.

  In the dust and haze, I could see the men hunched over, tearing at their masked faces.

  I glanced up, just in time to see Cassie pop a round in one of the unaffected guards at the end of the hall, then grab a rifle from a stunned soldier in one smooth motion.

  Hurrying behind her, I took a final glimpse behind us. They were starting to come to; there had to be a dozen of them.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We shoot. Grab a gun.”

  “I got him. I’m good, thanks.”

  She shoved the pistol into my arms and plunged into the next hall.

  Ames, he wasn’t doing too good, and I doubt the stop-start escape and my less than stellar support were doing him any favors. It seemed to me that the dark stain on his white undershirt had grown, but that could have just been my negativity about the whole situation clouding my judgment.

  Another shot snapped my eyes back to the immediate present.

  Ahead of us, another commando crumpled.

  “How’d you get them back there?” I asked.

  “Flashbang.” Cassie said it like she carried them everywhere she went. Whatever. I was just glad that it wasn’t Bob and his strange spacecrafts. I’d had enough of their antics for a while. Though, when I considered everything, their presence would have been welcome at that moment.

  “A flashbang?”

  “I pack a kit. For emergencies.”

  That was news, but then, a lot of things that day were becoming news. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She was always intense.

  We were at the stairs.

  She knelt down for a moment, and ran a trip wire along the hallway floor, attached to another flashbang.

  I turned to head down.

  “No,” she said, “Keep going this way.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but then thought better of it. Bumbling my way through the house hadn’t cost me any limbs or my life—yet—but I wasn’t going to keep going back to that well.

  With a forlorn look at the stairs, and the hint of freedom that seemed to scream from the well-polished wood, I followed Cassie, trying to keep my eyes forward. My left hand gripped the pistol. A lot of good that would do; my right side—the dominant one—was all tied up with dragging Ames through his gigantic house.

  And the man was becoming less like a human being and more like a sack of heavy, bleeding potatoes.

  I passed by a room that, from behind closed doors, sounded like a zoo.

  “The hell is that?”

  “Birds,” Cassie said as we rounded yet another corner, “he’s got an aviary.”

  Birds.

  I hoped the Singularity would open fire on them by accident and turn them into a pile of feathers. At least then they’d be decent for something.

  Footsteps rang out from behind me. Not what I was looking for. I quickened my dragging of Ames. Then another flash of light, followed by curses.

  Twice in a couple of minutes. These Singularity soldiers had to be getting pissed, if they weren’t having seizures by now.

  Cassie threw open a majestic looking pair of heavy doors, and we were in what looked like an 18th century ballroom. This guy had to be kidding.

  We jammed the thirty foot long dinner table in front of the door.

  “You know they have explosives, right,” I said, just in case she’d forgotten.

  “Keep going,” she said, “pick him up.”

  Again. This was like a bad record on repeat, running all over this house with a bleeding millionaire. If I was a smarter man, I’d let him die.

  “Hurry up,” Cassie said, standing in front of a painting on the other side of the room, “get him over here.”

  “What, now we need to save his precious art? Don’t tell me that this thing has secret powers, too.”

  “Just prop him up so I can grab his finger.”

  “Whatever,” I said, tears stinging my eyes as I thrust my ruined hands underneath his arms so that he was somewhat straight up and down. My only consolation was that, by the noise Ames made, he enjoyed it even less.

  Cassie yanked his hand—someone else, it seemed, needed to work on their bedside manner, too—and placed it underneath the painting. Nothing happened.

  I wasn’t sure w
here this was going.

  She pressed it in harder, and a hidden panel lit up a bright shade of neon blue. A motor started whirring, and the wall shifted, revealing a brushed metal door.

  “A panic room?”

  The doors shifted open to reveal, indeed, what was a panic room. Rather spacious, too.

  We slipped inside and Cassie pressed a button. I got to set Ames down. On the security monitors, I could see the soldiers blowing through the door from their endless bag of explosives, filling the room like an unwanted rodent infestation.

  She picked up the emergency hardline from the wall and held it up to her ear, pressing the buttons.

  “Hello? Yeah, I need help. We’re being overrun by a small army. Call the police.”

  Calm, collected. The whole conversation was fifteen seconds, maybe twenty.

  “Who was that,” I asked.

  “The Guardians’ private security.”

  “How far out are they?”

  “Far.”

  “And the cops?” I asked the question without much hope.

  “Too much for Seaside Heights PD to handle.”

  “So now what,” I asked, looking at Ames, who was breathing shallow, and then at Cassie, who was fixated on the screens.

  “Now we wait.”

  51

  Story Time

  I was ordered to administer first aid from the kit while Cassie kept an eye on what was going on in the outer room.

  Needless to say, our pursuers were confused—at least from what I could tell between tearing open alcohol swabs and trying to patch Ames up. To be honest, looking at my handiwork, I doubted if it would extend his life much, if at all. The gauze was almost soaked through with blood before I was halfway finished.

  There was, at least, a shotgun in the room. Even if it looked more like something your grandpa would take hunting rabbits than one of those bad ass pump action jobbies in an action flick, it felt like an upgrade over the pistol. If only for the manliness factor.

  “They find us yet,” I said, Cassie still glued to the monitors.