by Thomas Babak
“Everyone is after you. There’s nowhere you can go that they won’t find you. Give up. They’ll give you a lab, money…” she looked over at Kate with the last couple of words and Kate nodded.
“…they’ll pay for everything. School, cars, everything,” she said pleadingly. “Just come in. Stop running.”
Tears were rolling down her face now and Sandy wanted so badly to go to her but he stood frozen. He beat his emotions down and said, “Are they threatening you, Tasha? Why are you helping them?”
“I have to. They’re the government. They’re in charge of everything,” she wailed.
Kate was still half-turned. Now, she turned back and said “Sandy, she is right. We will take care of your every whim for the rest of your life. Just give us the Bubble Tech.”
Sandy looked back at her and said “It’s not yours. It’s mine and I’m keeping it. Tasha, last time I checked they work for us… not the other way around. Do… do you want to come with me or not?”
Tasha took another few steps forward and wrapped her arms around him. Sandy reached up and tried to hold her but he had the Stator in one hand and his van keys in the other. He pulled her close with his wrists and clenched hands. She felt so good. He had missed her so much.
“Sandy” she whispered, “I can’t. I’m scared. They know so much about everything. You. Me. My dad. They only want to help. They’ll give us everything we want.”
“Tasha. I love you. Please come with me,” Sandy said quietly back. It was the first time he had said those three words aloud to her.
“I can’t Sandy. I won’t. I don’t want to be on the run for the rest of my life. I don’t want to be scared all the time,” she sobbed.
“Please Tasha. It will be okay. Come with me. Please,” he pleaded.
“I wish I had never called them,” she said into his chest.
“What?” Sandy said, confused about what she had just said.
“I called the police that day…the day they came and…and Mr. Bullock died,” she whispered, crying into his chest.
Sandy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Tasha had called the police?
“But…but you promised,” was all he could say, shock in his voice.
“…and you called to warn me” he tacked on as he thought about it.
“Yes…so many came and they were so scary. I got scared for you. I wanted to warn you so you wouldn’t do anything stupid. For you to just let them take you in. But so many of them came. There were only supposed to be a couple… ” she said.
“…but you promised…” Sandy whispered.
“I know Sandy but…” she said.
“You promised!” he roared.
There was a small sound from behind. Sandy didn’t know what made him hear it or even react to it as he turned sharply, suddenly paranoid. All his senses on alert. A loud crack of a rifle could be heard from the SUV, the bullet missing him by inches. Sandy jerked his head back towards the SUV. He tried to turn but Tasha was holding him.
His glance behind him had shown the tactical team less than a hundred yards away. One of the team members, though a professional with years of experience had made a mistake. He had tripped on the scramble from the wood line and had fallen. He hadn’t yelled out, but the grunt he made as he hit the hard, corn stalk stubble and ground had alerted Sandy.
“Come with me Tasha,” he said quickly, one last time trying to convince her to go with him as he took a step backwards dragging her along.
“No!” she yelled.
Sandy tried to push Tasha away. Kate made a sudden lunge to close the distance and grab him too, but turned her ankle on a high heel caught by a dried corn stalk and fell herself.
“Tasha, let go!” Sandy yelled.
“No Sandy! You have to let them take you. It’s the only way you’ll… ” she yelled back tightening her grip on him.
He did the only thing he could do.
He let go of the Stator and hit her on the side of her head with his fist. She suddenly let go and dropped to the ground stunned. Another crack of rifle fire from the SUV. He ignored it. Sandy pressed a button on the key fob as he turned towards the tactical team. All thoughts of stealth gone, they were sprinting towards him. He had a split second sight of them running as the Bubble Van reappeared between him and them, blocking them from view.
The side door was already open and Sandy leaped through it slamming it behind him. There was another rifle crack and a couple of the tactical team members opened fire at the van even though they were in danger of hitting their boss, Kate, on the other side.
“Cease fire! Cease…” Sandy could hear Kate yell as he clicked another button on the fob and everything went silent as the Bubble field formed.
Sandy got up off the van floor. Canned food was rolling around on the floor and the cabinet door from where they had fallen from was hanging by one hinge. There was red sauce over everything. One of the bullets the tactical team had fired had blown it open.
He looked back at Kate and Tasha. They were both standing there looking but not seeing. Tasha was sobbing, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
Her broken promise still seethed through his mind. He didn’t see or hear one of the tactical team members bounce off of the Bubble field. The rest of the team members froze. The team member leaned forward and pushed his barrel against the field but it slid in one direction or another.
Sandy stood watching Kate and Tasha through the side window. What Tasha had said still boiling in his mind. She had not only broken her promise not to tell anyone, she had called the agents on him. Kate and Tasha both stepped forward, Kate limping as she reached out to touch the Bubble field. The sight of her doing this enraged Sandy more.
“You promised!” he screamed at Tasha. Neither Tasha nor Kate heard a thing.
Kate said something to Tasha and she turned and put her arm around her, Kate’s arm draping over her shoulder. They only stopped for a second so that Tasha could reach down and pick up the Stator. She handed it to Kate and resumed helping her back to the SUV. Sandy could see the Nasty Man standing outside of it now. A large rifle held in the air, the butt against his hip. Even from here Sandy could see that he had a huge grin on his face.
“You promised,” Sandy whispered, the words encompassing not just the promise she had made to keep Sandy’s invention secret but the promise that she would be there for him. The unspoken promise that they would be together.
He finally felt the wetness on his chest and looked down. There was a red, wet stain spreading down his chest over his white T-shirt. Spaghetti sauce, flashed idiotically through his mind. Blood.
He suddenly felt dizzy. He didn’t remember getting shot nor did he feel any pain. He sat down at the kitchen table bench. The blood dripped down onto his pants. He tried to stretch his head and look down to see where he had been hit. The pain hit suddenly and he felt even more dizzy. Shock. I’m experiencing shock, he thought analytically.
Something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He looked over and out through the windshield. One of the Tactical team members was running his hands over the Bubble field in front of the van and yelling something. Sandy jumped up, dizziness hitting him for a second before he went and sat in the driver’s seat. He looked out the side window and at the rear view mirror. They were surrounding the van. He looked back at the man in front of him who was still waving and yelling. Looking up, he saw a helicopter approaching. Several helicopters approaching.
Angry, Sandy put on his seat belt on, the belt rubbing against the bleeding wound in his shoulder near his neck. He didn’t notice the pain much yet. He pushed the Thruster forward while pulling back on the stick. He knocked the man in front down and missed one of the helicopters by inches. He didn’t care. He pushed the Thruster handle forward and the ground began to blur past.
He disappeared.
Epilogue
“He’s disappeared,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins and Travis sat in front of Kate’s d
esk in her DC office. They had been back almost a week. The transition to the Joint Task Force or JTF which was now looking for Sandy as well as working to figure out Bubble Tech was complete. The JTF was comprised of elements from various law enforcement agencies, the scientific community and other “selected individuals” with needed skills and abilities. Mostly, it was comprised of military personnel. They’d even taken Dr. Fossberg from her.
Jenkins continued, “Even the nut job reports have slowed down.” There hadn’t been really anything to discuss. They’d transitioned to the JTF and the calls from them had slowed to almost nothing as they got up to speed. Anything new went directly to the JTF rather than Kate’s team now. Even the cell phone number Kate had set up for Sandy had been transferred to them.
The one detail that Dr. Fossberg did tell her a couple days ago was that the “Stator” that they had recovered was worthless. It was just a tin can with a piece of red painted cardboard wrapped in wire bolted inside of it. It had been a decoy. Kate almost smiled at the thought of how the kid had played it.
“Anything else?” she asked Jenkins.
“No, ma’am,” he said looking down at his tablet.
She shifted her eyes to Travis.
“They found blood on the ground. It matched his DNA. I did hit him,” he said righteously. “With no word from doctors, hospitals, or vets, we don’t know how bad the injury is. The JTF is working on it.” He stopped talking and looked over at Kate.
“What about the girl?” she asked finally. Travis knew that Kate wanted to know but made her ask: His petty punishment for no one believing that he shot the kid.
“The JTF has her. They’ll probably let her go when they’re done with her.” He shrugged at the last sentence.
“Anything else?” she said to both of them. They both looked at her silently.
She turned her chair a looked out the window as they both got up and left.
Poor kid, she thought to herself. He just doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, thinking of the full force of military, diplomatic, media and political powers that would be after him now. Even a seasoned professional would not be able to hide from that.
She shook her head, turned back to her desk, and looked at her monitor to see what was next. There was a hacker group threatening retaliatory attacks against the U.S. for overseas policies. Soon she was deep into the details and had forgotten completely about Henry Alessandro Kane.
Sneak Peek: Safe Haven
Bubble Tech, Book Two
The old man was on his daily walk through the woods surrounding his house. A hundred year old carved walking stick that had belonged to his father and his grandfather before him clutched in his hand and sometimes used to help navigating the snowy path. A huge, black shaggy dog walked at his side enjoying the cold air and his masters company. He would have to be careful the old man thought to himself. It had snowed last night and the path he had worn with his and his family’s steps over the years was a little too slippery in places.
He wasn’t able to walk the path that meandered around his woods for most of the year. Not because of his age which was somewhere in his early 70’s but because the snow would get too deep during the harsh cold winters. This far north it was cold most of the year. He had walked this path for almost forty years. He paused thinking of the past with a smile at the memories and yet with some sadness of his long gone wife and his dead son.
Thinking of his wife and son he had brought him to a complete stop without realizing it. He looked down at the dog that had stopped next to him, eyes in its massive head looking back up at him. He laid his gloved hand on the dog’s head and said, “We must get going Sasha” speaking the dog’s name “or Nika will worry” thinking of his grand-daughter and the breakfast she would have waiting for him.
He had only walked a few steps more, carefully but more quickly stepping through the hand high snow when he stopped yet again. The sight that met his eyes from the clearing where they had picnics at the height of summer when the sun was shining so bright had stunned him.
There was a vehicle sitting in front of a small downed tree. The tree had been knocked over and with a start he realized there was no damage to the front of the vehicle. It was an odd looking vehicle as well. Not Russian at all. Maybe American or British he thought. The old man had always been very observant and had traveled the world when he was younger.
As he got closer he also noticed there were no tracks in the snow of the little clearing, not that with the denseness of the woods that surrounded it, that any vehicle this size could drive into where it now rested. That made it not just odd but improbable. He saw where the snow had been pushed away and the dead grass showed for several feet behind the van. It was as if the van had been dropped from the sky. There was no snow on the van either so it couldn’t have been here for very long. Very odd and puzzling the old man thought.
He walked slowly over and could see someone slumped over on the other side in the driver’s seat. American and not British flitted through his mind from where the driver sat on the left side. He walked around the vehicle, the dog dutifully following, its tail up and eyes alert. He tried the door. It was unlocked so he opened it.
So much blood! He thought at first glance. It’s a boy he thought to himself as he reached out and lifted the boy’s chin. He’s just a boy.
Sandy opened his eyes. There was an angel hovering over him. He smiled minutely at the angel and then saw nothing, his eyes closing again as he passed out.
Sometime later he opened his eyes again to darkness. There was no angel. He felt sadness – where was the angel? he thought dreamily and closed his eyes, sleep taking him again within seconds.
Later he opened his eyes again and the angel was there again. She looked away and called “Dyedooshka!” and looked back at Sandy. Sandy had already closed his eyes and was gone again.
He opened his eyes. The pain was a dull throb in his shoulder. It was hard to move his head as he tried to look about the room. He barely could. His head felt so heavy. He could see the ceiling, white with a dark wooden crossbeam with artistic hatchet marks on it crossing his vision. He could feel that the bed was a couple inches too short for him, the heels of his feet hanging off the mattress but the coverlets wrapped around to keep him warm and snug.
He tried to speak but all that came from his mouth was a mumble. He tried to clear his throat mostly unsuccessfully.
The angel leaned in over him, light from somewhere in the room illuminating her face and causing her hair to glow around her like a halo. Sandy whispered “The Angel” a small smile spreading over his face.
The Angel said “Angel?” with a surprised look on her face while she reached down and put her palm on his forehead and then moved it, putting the back of her cool fingers to his cheek.
“You are so beautiful. A beautiful angel…” Sandy whispered trailing off, his eyes closing and then lost to sleep again.
Sandy woke up. Sunlight was washing through the room. He looked around and tried to sit up wincing at his shoulder, giving up and lying back again. The single window showed pine trees covered in snow. The room was small with the bed taking up a good part of it. A wooden wardrobe sat against the wall with a large chest next to it on the floor under a window. Several blankets and a pillow piled on top of it. There was a wooden chair pulled up next to the bed and the bedside table had a brass lamp on it. Bookshelves attached to the far wall were full of books but Sandy couldn’t make out any of the titles from where he lay.
He heard footsteps and looked up at the door, raising his head off of the pillow.
The Angel… the girl, walked into the room and stopped, seeing that he was awake.
“You’re real?” Sandy said quietly, more as a statement than a question from the barely remembered face that had hovered over him before.
“Da…Yes” she answered a small look of confusion on her face.
“I thought you were an angel” Sandy said tiredly and breaking contact with her ey
es as his head slumped back to the pillow. He missed the smile spreading across her face from what he had said.
She wiped the smile off and called “Dyedooshka!” over her shoulder not moving until an old man came down the hallway. He stood in the door looking at Sandy, the girl standing to the side so he could see.
She then marched over to the bed and sat in the chair.
She started to reach over and Sandy flinched away causing her to freeze. She moved more slowly, a sad frown crossing her face at his reaction, and felt his forehead. Her hand was cool and soft. Sandy relaxed.
She said something to the old man too quickly for Sandy. Not that he would have understood if they spoke slowly. He could tell it was Russian or some other Eastern European language.
The old man having seen Sandy flinch didn’t say anything but shook his sadly.
“English Nika. For our guest!” he said.
She looked at Sandy and said “You do not have a fever” her voice sweet and her English heavily accented but understandable and clear.
Sandy attempted again to sit up, wincing as he did so.
The girl stood quickly up and helped him, holding him with one hand while she adjusted the pillows.
Sandy looked from the old man to the girl and back to the old man.
“I’m Sandy” was all he said.
The old man smiled and said “I am Piotr. This is my granddaughter Nika”.
“Thank you for… for helping me” Sandy said simply looking from Piotr to Nika.
They both smiled in response.
“Where am I?” he asked anxiously before either of them had a chance to say anything.
Piotr answered “You are few kilometers outside of Severodvinsk.”
At Sandy’s puzzled look Piotr continued “You are in Russia, Henry Alessandro Kane” with a chuckle.
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