Claude backed his way out of the office and shut the door behind him. He positioned his feet beyond the right edge of the threshold, then leaned in and pressed his ear against the door. The sounds inside were faint, but he could hear their conversation.
The electronic startup tone for the inbound queue chimed on Cyrus’ desk. “Cyrus here.”
“Sir, we have someone here who wants to speak with you,” a high-pitched voice said. Claude thought it was a woman speaking, but wasn’t sure.
“Put him on.”
A few seconds later, a man spoke. “My name is Alfred Jenkins. I’m one of your Level Five operatives in Flandreau City. Thank you for taking my call.”
“What happened to your face, Jenkins? Looks like you went a few rounds with a Taku Beast and lost.”
“Well, sir, that’s what I wanted to speak with you about.”
“Go on.”
“Before I continue, I want you to know that I stand here voluntarily, as a loyal and humble servant. I ask that you take my candor into account and show mercy on me and my family.”
Cyrus grumbled. “I don’t have all day, Jenkins. What is it?”
“I was captured and interrogated by a man looking for the BioTex material. My chefs think the perpetrator was the East Side Exterminator. At least, that’s what they told the media.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday, in the basement of my old restaurant. He got the drop on me from behind.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing at first. I held out as long as I could. But he tortured me and then said he would kill me if I didn’t help him.”
Claude heard a loud bang from inside the SC’s office. It sounded as if someone had just rammed a fist into a table.
“I’m not going to ask you again!” Cyrus shouted.
The pitch of Jenkins’ voice shot up a few octaves. “He threatened to electrocute me. I had to tell him something, so I told him about the Dunn-Rite Café.”
“Goddamn it,” Cyrus said, before a long silence filled the room. “Jenkins, you do realize there’s no BioTex at that facility?”
“Yes, I know. I purposely sent him there on a wild goose chase.”
“That’s not good. Not good at all,” Freakshow said.
“What did this man look like?”
“I don’t know. He was wearing a mask. He was about six feet tall and skinny, teenager-skinny.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not much. He kept asking for my help to find his little brother. Then he made a comment about being from another universe, whatever that means.”
“Lucas Ramsay,” Freakshow said. “I didn’t think the Doc had it in him.”
“Things have obviously escalated,” Cyrus said, tension sharpening his words. “Did he mention why he was so interested in the BioTex?”
“No, sir. But he seemed very determined to find his brother.”
Cyrus didn’t respond, but Freakshow did. “We should have executed them when we had the chance, sir.”
Someone coughed and cleared his throat. Claude thought it was Jenkins.
“It is my sincere hope that my coming forward today will allow you to stop him in time,” Jenkins said.
“I appreciate your candor, Jenkins, and the fact that you didn’t give up the BioTex’s true location. You and your family will be duly compensated.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Cyrus out.”
Claude was about to stop listening through the door and return to his desk, but Cyrus and Freakshow weren’t finished with their meeting. Claude kept his ear pressed against the SC’s door.
“What do you want me to do about Jenkins?” Freakshow asked.
“He’s a traitor and a coward. You know what to do.”
“How many pieces?”
“Let’s make it an even dozen. Then put his remains on display in the Galleria for all to see. We need to send a strong message to anyone thinking of betrayal. Save his head, minus the eyes, for my trophy case.”
“Gladly. What about his wife and fourteen-year-old daughter?”
“Are they worth keeping?”
“Damn fine eye candy, SC.”
“Excellent. Bring them to the compound and add them to my personal stable. I’ll enjoy them tonight.”
“Should I pay a visit to the fat man?”
“No. The material’s location hasn’t been compromised.”
“What about Ramsay and the café? Kleezebee must be the one pulling the strings.”
“They’ll need to be dealt with swiftly,” Cyrus said.
Claude heard a set of caster wheels rolling across the floor, then the squeak of leather.
“Orders, sir?”
“Take a squad. When they show up, kill them and anyone who’s with them. Then torch the place, whether it’s empty or not. We can’t let anyone discover our plans.”
“But sir, that’s our most productive feeding—”
“You have your orders. Now see to it.”
“If Ramsey and the professor don’t show?”
“Find them. Bring me their heads. I don’t care what you have to do, just get it done.”
“Yes, sir. Any intel on their location?”
“Last report, they’re off the grid, somewhere near Flandreau City. Probably hiding up in the mountains, where it’s less populated.”
“That’s a lot of area to cover.”
“Talk to your informants. Shake them down. Someone must have seen them. Don’t come back empty-handed.”
“Consider it done, SC.”
Claude heard heavy footsteps pounding toward the door. He ran to his desk and jumped into his high-back executive-style chair. He swiveled his ass in the pleated leather seat to face the desk just before the door opened behind him.
Freakshow marched by his desk, pulling a draft of warm office air with him. He entered the waiting lift, then turned and stared at Claude, as if he were scanning Claude’s body language for signs of deception.
Claude gave Freakshow a subtle half-smile with a quick nod, pretending all was normal. The elevator doors swooshed together in front of the hooligan’s face. Claude let out the full breath he was saving in his lungs, sending a frigid chill bubbling across the nerve endings of his upper back. He checked the gray holo-clock embedded in the wall of the reception area: ten minutes before lunch. His legs were begging him to sprint home to check in with Kleezebee, but he had to wait until it was the scheduled time to clock out. He didn’t want to draw the SC’s ire, who was probably pacing an angry trench in the dusty floorboards of his office. Play it cool, he decided. Another few minutes won’t matter. Just skip the grocery store errand and head directly to the encrypted transceiver to inform the professor.
The speed of the display on the wall clock seemed to slow down, cycling through its numerals as if it were waiting for a last-second work duty to pop up and cancel his lunch hour.
ELEVEN
Lucas continued his search in the back corner of the room where an orange plastic chair was sitting with its back against the wall of the diner’s cold-storage area. The corner was not lit as well as the rest of the room. The light directly overhead was broken, smashed beyond repair. He pulled the chair out and sat down in front of a shelving unit that ran the entire width of the room.
He opened the first of a dozen gray-and-white boxes stacked neatly on the bottom shelf. The words PROPERTY OF THE BAAKU were written across each of their cardboard sides. He had never heard of the Baaku and assumed it was an outlying farming village. He opened the first box and found it stuffed with leafy green vegetables and a single wooden crucifix wrapped in warm, thermal plastic. The veggies reminded him of lettuce back on Earth, except these had beaded yellow ridges running lengthwise along the veins of each leaf. Sort of like lettuce with chicken pox. He opened another three boxes and found more of the same, including a wrapped crucifix in each.
He removed the plastic coating from the crucifix and ran the
tip of his index finger over the strange figurine carved into the wood. He hadn’t seen this type of cross before. Jesus wasn’t nailed to the cross as he expected; the figure was some type of birdman with shackles on its wrists.
“Crazy Larry would love this,” he mumbled, thinking of the preacher’s reaction when he learned someone was worshiping an animal god, instead of the One and Only. The Baaku must be a group of spiritual salad farmers that worshiped birds, he mused. You get a free religious symbol with each order and a practice range target. All that was missing was the donation envelope, a tax deduction receipt, and a dozen shredder rounds.
Something sharp stabbed him in his right palm, and he dropped the crucifix. When the cross hit the floor, it bounced on one of its ends, then dissolved into a flurry of ashes before it hit the ground a second time. He turned his hand over and inspected it. A tiny amount of blood had pooled in the center, right where he had felt the pain from the crucifix. He put his hand to his mouth and removed the blood with his tongue.
“Goddamn bible thumpers,” he mumbled.
He decided to check the orange containers on the shelf above the lettuce. They were made of molded plastic and contained soft, squishy red fruit, like tomatoes, except they were shaped like a cucumber. He grabbed one of them and took a whiff. It smelled like a combination of wet dog fur and old gym socks.
“That’s fucking awful. . . . Reminds me of the crap they fed us in the orphanage. Shit-on-a-shingle served with a fresh helping of guilt.”
He tried to put the smelly fruit back in its container, but his hand caught the edge of the plastic by mistake. The fruit shot out of his fingers, ricocheted off the second shelf, and landed next to his foot. He bent down to pick it up, but stopped when two identical scratches in the cement floor caught his eye. He stood up and slid the chair out of the way.
The white scratches were about four feet apart and appeared to lead away from the wall. They were parallel to each other and several feet long. “Rico! I think I found something.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. You better come take a look.”
Rico arrived seconds later. So did T-Rex and Stonebridge. “What do you have?” his boss asked.
“These scratches on the floor—they’re perfectly straight and appear to lead away from the wall.”
“You’re right. Those didn’t get there by accident. Something heavy cut those grooves.”
Lucas put his hands on the wall and felt around. His fingertips tingled as he ran his hands over the pitted surface of the masonry wall. “Might be a hidden door somewhere.” He put pressure on each brick in the wall. Nothing budged. “Doesn’t seem to be anything here. Feels solid.”
“Maybe there’s a trigger mechanism,” T-Rex said.
“Yeah, now I’m thinking,” Lucas replied, a slight smile on his lips. He tugged at the corner of the shelf containing the red fruit and spotted lettuce. The wall didn’t move. He tried lifting each box on the shelf—again, zip. He continued searching the rest of the shelving unit, but found nothing that acted like a trigger—just everyday restaurant items and food supplies.
Lucas returned to the cement scratches in the floor. He stood for a long minute with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. He must be missing something, he thought. He craned his neck to look at the ceiling. He noticed a round, half-inch circular protrusion embedded in the overhead concrete. It appeared to be centered above the two scratches in the floor. Its opaque surface was made of some type of black, shiny material—much like the dark tinting material you’d find glued across a low-rider’s side windows. He couldn’t see inside the protrusion. “Looks like someone’s watching us.”
“It’s probably that cocksucker, Freakshow,” T-Rex said.
“Why would they have installed it pointing straight down? Can’t see much of the room,” Lucas said. “It’s like they only want to keep an eye on this one spot.”
“If that was true, where’s the light source? Hard to see in the dark unless it’s night vision,” Rico said.
“Maybe it’s not a camera,” T-Rex said.
“Could be the trigger,” Rico added.
“Possibly,” Lucas replied. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“I don’t think we should be doing this,” Stonebridge said, with a heavy look of worry in his eyes. “We should leave. Now.”
“You can leave if you want, but I’m gonna stay and figure this out. Can’t leave empty-handed. My brother’s life is at stake,” Lucas said, sliding the orange chair back to its original spot, with its back against the brick wall. He climbed up and stood on the seat. He waved his hand across the protrusion’s black surface. Nothing happened. He touched the device’s surface. Again, nothing.
T-Rex gave him a lighter from his vest pocket. “See if heat triggers it.”
Lucas held the lighter an inch away from the ceiling device and lit it. He let the flame burn for a good thirty seconds. Nothing happened. He tossed the lighter back to T-Rex.
Rico removed the torpedo light from his shredder rifle. “Try this. Maybe it’s light-sensitive.”
Lucas flipped the power switch on and off to make sure the light worked. It did. “That would explain the absence of light in this area. They sure wouldn’t want it triggered by mistake.”
“But wouldn’t the lighter’s flame have done the trick? It produces light,” Stonebridge said.
“Unless it needs a focused light source,” Lucas said. He held the torpedo light up to the ceiling, aiming the charged beam at the center of the device. Nothing happened.
“What about this?” T-Rex asked, pointing at the laser scope on his shredder rifle.
“Worth a shot,” Lucas said, jumping off the chair. “Go ahead. Give it a try.”
T-Rex aimed the laser at the ceiling. As soon as the red dot centered on the device, the walls and floor began to vibrate. A section of the wall began to move. It slid to the left slowly, until it was four feet out from the rest of the wall.
Lucas pointed the torpedo light into the opening. “There’s a chamber inside.” He stepped toward the opening, but Rico stopped him with an arm bar.
“Not until T-Rex checks it out,” Rico said, signaling with his hand for T-Rex to proceed.
“Time to nut-up or shut-up,” T-Rex said. He flipped his shredder flashlight on, then turned his body sideways and slid behind the protruding wall section.
Lucas figured he could’ve walked straight in, but T-Rex’s shoulders were twice the size. A short minute later, he heard a click, then the chamber filled with light.
T-Rex returned. “All clear.”
“What did you find?” Rico asked him.
“Equipment. But I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Rico looked at Lucas. “Go ahead. I know you’re dying to get in there.”
Lucas gave the flashlight to Rico, smiled, then rubbed his hands together. “He who has the most toys, wins.” He went inside.
Rico and T-Rex followed, as did Stonebridge.
TWELVE
The chamber was about the size of a 7-Eleven convenience store. Two side-by-side stacks of blinking electronic equipment were to the left, and a metal desk and twenty-inch, flat-panel computer monitor was sitting on top. A clear cylinder about the size of a phone booth was to the right, about ten feet away. It was a few feet taller than Lucas, and resembled an oversized pneumatic tube, like those used by a bank in its drive-through lane. A bundle of gray-and-black cables on the left side of the tube snaked their way along the floor, connecting the tube to the electronic equipment.
The cylinder’s base was a round pad about three inches thick and four feet in diameter. Its surface was shiny and appeared to be made of glass, or possibly an acrylic. The pad was sectioned off into four pie-shaped triangles of different colors: red, blue, orange, and green.
Stonebridge stood next to Lucas. He seemed excited. “Looks like some kind of machine.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Of course it’s a
machine,” Lucas snorted.
“That’s ‘Sergeant’ to you, Doc,” Stonebridge said, his jaw thrust out.
When Lucas approached the cylinder, its enclosure rotated automatically, revealing two clear, overlapping glass tubes, one inside the other. The glass rings continued moving in opposite directions until a man-sized opening appeared. “I was wondering what happened to this. Cyrus must have figured out how to use it.”
“What is it?” Rico asked.
“One of Kleezebee’s jump pads,” Lucas said, running his fingers over the smooth glass surface. It’s a tele-pod. Like in beam-me-up-Scotty.”
Rico squinted and cocked his head.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Gene Roddenberry ended up in my universe, not yours.” Lucas stepped onto the device’s pad and turned around to face his friends. “It’s site-to-site transportation device.”
“For people?” T-Rex asked, a concerned look on his face.
Lucas nodded. “It disassembles your molecules, transports them to another location, and then reassembles your atoms—all in the blink of an eye.”
“Fuck me,” Stonebridge said.
“That can’t be safe,” T-Rex added.
“Trust me, it works like a charm . . . unless there’s a power failure in the middle of transport. They’ll be mopping you up with a sponge, if so.”
Rico laughed, though it wasn’t for long. “This must be how Cyrus is positioning his men. Getting his guards in and out of the restaurant without anyone seeing them. A distinct tactical advantage. I can see why he wants to protect it.”
“Wonder where it leads?” T-Rex asked.
“Good question.” Lucas walked to the computer desk, where a rotating 3D font was spinning on the computer monitor. The phrase BTX ENTERPRISES danced across the screen in block letters, taking turns bouncing off the four edges of the display. “That looks familiar.”
“Can you operate it?” Rico asked.
Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2) Page 9