Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2)

by Jay J. Falconer

  His mind drifted, imagining Carrie Anne sauntering down those same steps, making her way to the very spot he was sitting and leaning over the food table to spread out a few cups of flour in preparation to knead a batch of homemade dough. His favorite treat was her famous twenty-four-inch, hungry-man Danish. It was rolled out like a long, one-inch-thick breadstick, then twisted into an over-under, rope-like pattern until it formed a giant ampersand symbol. It was smothered with powdered sugar and a mound of fresh-picked cherries. Damn thing was so good, he ordered it every time he came to visit her. Not exactly healthy for his arteries, but he didn’t care. What a sugar rush.

  A minute later, Rico trotted down the stairs with a stack of invoice-style papers in his hand. He fanned them out and gave them to Lucas. “What do you make of these, Doc?”

  Lucas flipped through the cream-colored receipts, counting them as he went—there were eighteen. Each one was for the amount of $497.50 and dated on the twenty-fourth of the month. “These are tollway receipts from Earth, the Boston Embarkation Station.”

  “Did you notice the date of the first invoice?”

  Lucas scanned the paperwork, looking for the earliest receipt. He found it and studied it. He didn’t recognize the significance of the date. He shook his head.

  “It’s the day of the Krellian invasion,” Rico said.

  “You’re right. I totally forgot that date. If I remember right, the time stamp indicates he had just left Earth when the bugs attacked.”

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “I’m not so sure it was luck,” Lucas said.

  “You think he was involved? How?”

  “I don’t know, but it has to mean something. Things like that just don’t happen by accident,” Lucas replied, searching his memories. He didn’t recall Carrie Anne ever mentioning that she had been to Earth or that her old man had been there, either. “Why would Fisher ever need to go to Earth? And how would he get there? The man can barely walk.”

  Rico nodded. “Transports are ridiculously expensive.”

  “Yeah, no shit. So are the tollway taxes,” Lucas said, flipping through the receipts a second time. “Did you notice that this month’s receipt is missing?”

  “Is that significant?”

  Lucas shrugged. “Just seems odd, that’s all. Why this month?”

  “Cyrus has been cracking down on civilian use of transports. Maybe that explains it?”

  “You’re probably right,” Lucas said, even though it all felt a little too convenient. He had a hard time believing in coincidence or luck, not after all the bullshit he’d been through. But it didn’t seem worth the effort to argue with Rico, so he let it go. For now.

  “You find anything?” Rico asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Lucas said, holding back a smile. He waited for a reaction from his boss.

  Rico didn’t respond. He pushed his chin out and folded his arms across his chest.

  Not the reaction Lucas expected. “There’s nothing interesting in the kitchen. But I did find a hidden compartment in the back of the walk-in.”

  “Everyone loves their hidden compartments. You’d think people would get the hint: It’s the first thing we look for.”

  “It was tucked behind several stacks of empty boxes. It doesn’t look like Fisher throws much of anything away.”

  “Did you check inside?” Rico asked, with a thick layer of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Wanted to. But the Door Nazi had other plans.”

  “The what?”

  “A bio-sentry scanner.”

  “What kind?”

  “Retina. We’ll need to drag the old fucker back there and stand him up. Gonna take both of us.”

  “Not necessarily,” Rico said, searching the slide-out drawers under the food prep station. He pulled out a thin-handled carving knife. He ran his index finger over the blade. “This will do nicely.”

  “I think I’ll just wait here,” Lucas said, not wanting to watch Rico carve a melon ball out of Fisher’s eye socket.

  “I need you to hold his head still. Otherwise, I won’t get a clean removal. We only get two shots at this, so we better make them count.”

  “I take it you’ve done this before?”

  “A few times. It’s really not that difficult once you get the hang of it.”

  Lucas couldn’t imagine ever needing to perform this type of removal again—not if he had anything to say about it. He followed Rico into the seating area and knelt down next to the old man’s lifeless remains. He put his hands around the sides of Fisher’s bloody skull, turning the man’s head to face straight up.

  Rico put the tip of the knife close to Stump’s left eye.

  Lucas turned his face away, keeping firm pressure on the victim’s head to hold it still.

  “This is a skill that all field operatives need to know,” Rico said, with an authoritative voice.

  Lucas shook his head, still not looking down. “No, I’m good. Go for it, Major.”

  “You need to learn this. That’s an order!”

  Lucas looked at Fisher’s face, staring at his cauliflower-shaped ear instead of the knife. Maybe he could get away with using his peripheral vision, that way he didn’t have to actually watch the barbaric surgery that was about to come next.

  “Eyes here,” Rico said, pointing his index finger to Fisher’s eye.

  “Okay, but if I yak, don’t blame me,” Lucas said, adjusting his eyes. The partially-digested food in his stomach began its march up his throat.

  Rico’s pressed the knife against the inside of eye socket. “The key is to keep the angle straight along the side, using even pressure as you go,”—he leaned forward, pressing the knife inside; it went in deep—”then you just ease it out, carefully,” he said, leveraging the knife to the side. The man’s eye slid out.

  Lucas turned his head and blew a stream of chunks several feet past Rico’s shoulder, but he never let go of Stump’s head. Some of the vomit dripped down his chin, clinging to the underside of his neck. He leaned his head to his arm, using his shirt sleeve to wipe off as much of the puke as he could reach.

  Rico held the eyeball in his fingers, still close to the man’s socket. “Then you just clip the tissue connecting the eye, and bingo, it’s free.” He held the eye in front of Lucas, close enough for him to smell it. “Piece of cake, Doc.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Lucas said, pulling his hands away from Stump. He finished wiping the hurl off his chin, then stood up and followed Rico into the kitchen. They walked to the walk-in fridge. “It’s all the way in the back. To the left.”

  Rico pulled the heavy door open and he and Lucas entered, quickly moving to the rear. They stood together in front of the scanner. Rico held the eyeball in front of the sentry unit’s optical scanner for a three count. Moments later, the LED view-screen flashed Stump Fisher. Access Granted in bold, red-colored letters.

  Lucas pulled the door to the compartment open, waving his hand to tell Rico to enter first. He did. Lucas went in next.

  The hidden room was not very big, maybe six feet by four feet, but it was filled from floor to ceiling with stacks of moving-box-sized containers. Each box was made of composite plastic-like material and its edges were reinforced with wire straps. The phrase THIS END UP - FRAGILE was handwritten in black ink on the sides of each box.

  “High tensile steel banding—something heavy must be inside,” Rico said, his breath billowing into the chilled air. He pulled out a multi-tool knife, flipping open the wire-cutter attachment. He used the tool to make quick work of the metal strapping surrounding the box that was sitting on top of the first stack. He removed the top of the box and looked inside. “I’m not sure what this is. Some kind of liquid in a glass container.”

  “Let me have a look at it,” Lucas said, nudging Rico aside. He looked inside. He smiled. “Fuck me. We finally found them!” he said, thinking about all the times he had stopped at the bakery to see Carrie Anne. “I can’t believe they were here
the whole damn time.”

  “What are they?” Rico asked, with a whiff of excitement in his words.

  “It’s the BioTex we’ve been searching for. These are the rest of our crew,” Lucas said, counting the containers in the room—twenty three. Lucas counted the boxes a second time. Same answer. “Looks like one is missing.”

  “Fisher must have been storing them for Cyrus.”

  “Yeah, in the one place we would never look for them. Talk about hiding them right under our noses.”

  “But why here? Why not at his base in New Robyn City?”

  “BioTex is completely useless without the activator enzyme. Probably didn’t know what else to do with them.”

  “You don’t think Fisher was planning on serving this stuff as filling for a pastry?”

  “God, no. That’s disgusting.”

  “Which one is your friend Bruno?”

  “Any of them. All of them. It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said, deciding how best to describe the reactivation process in terms that Rico would understand. “Once we apply the enzyme, we just need to inject his consciousness to revive him. We could make one Bruno or twenty-three of him. It’s really up to Kleezebee. He has digital copies on backup.”

  “Speaking of Kleezebee, it’s time to call this in,” Rico said, stepping toward the door to the compartment. “We’re gonna need help transporting these containers back to the cabin.”

  THIRTY

  Lucas carried the last container of BioTex up the front steps leading into Kleezebee’s cabin. He turned his body sideways in order to fit through the front door and walk inside. He hauled the two-gallon-sized glass jar to the trap door leading down to Fuji’s basement. He gave the liquid-filled cargo to Rico, who slipped the container into a makeshift leather sling that hung from a ceiling-mounted pulley system.

  Rico used the rope to lower the BioTex through the opening where Fuji and Kleezebee were waiting to receive it. The monk and professor worked together as they pulled the container from the sling and stacked it next to the rest of the BioTex inventory.

  Lucas bent over, flexing his back and hips in a round-about way. “Glad that’s over with. I’m not built for this shit,” he said to Rico, thinking about his muscle-bound friends Zack and Trevor, neither of whom would have struggled to carry the fifty-pound payload. “I’m going to feel it tomorrow.” He waited for Rico to step out of the way. “Well, might as well head down,” he said, swinging his ass around to grab the top of the ladder struts. He eased his left foot onto the second rung, then his right, before pulling his body into position. It only took seconds to reach the bottom.

  Rico followed him into the basement.

  The four men stood together in a semi-circle, admiring the stack of BioTex containers—each man smiling and giving each other a high-five hand salute.

  “It took a lot longer than expected,” the professor said, “but we’ve finally managed to bring our people home.”

  “Except two,” Lucas said, thinking about Drew and the missing container of BioTex. “Actually, three, if you count Abby. I almost forgot about her.”

  “Your brother would have appreciated that,” Kleezebee said.

  “Shall we begin?” Fuji asked, folding his hands and slipping them inside the sleeves of his tattered monk-suit.

  “Have you decided who we’ll revive first?” Lucas asked his mentor, hoping it would be the friendly, tattooed security guard.

  “I think you already know,” Kleezebee said, searching his digi-stick collection. He pulled out one labeled Bruno. He gave it to Fuji.

  “Where are we going to revive him?” Lucas asked, scanning the contents of Fuji’s lab. He didn’t see a medical examination table, like the one Kleezebee owned in the underground silo on Lucas’ version of Earth.

  Kleezebee pointed to Fuji’s bathroom. “The tub.”

  “Seriously?”

  “We don’t have all the proper equipment, so it’ll have to do.”

  “How does this work, exactly?” Rico asked Lucas.

  “Hand me your K-Bar,” Lucas told him, prying the lid open to one of the BioTex containers with his hands. Rico pulled his knife from its sheath and gave it to him. Lucas dipped the weapon into the container, allowing time for some of the scarlet-colored sludge to cover the length of the blade. He held it up. The gelatinous material oozed down and dripped into the jar.

  “This is one of Kleezebee’s greatest inventions. It’s called BioTex, which is short for Bio-mimetic Latex.”

  Rico furrowed his brow.

  “Think of it as living latex. This amazing stuff can copy someone right down to the person’s DNA, memories and all. The professor discovered the base substance a long time ago, in a stellar nebula on the other side of the galaxy, then he and his lab geeks tweaked it for deployment. Normally, we use this material to make a perfect copy of someone, which only takes about fifteen seconds of direct contact in order to create a genetic map of the donor’s body. However, in Bruno’s case, we’re going to infuse the BioTex directly, to reconstitute him from a digital backup copy.”

  Rico nodded. “Okay, I get that. Sort of—”

  “It’ll make more sense if you watch it happen. Grab the jar,” Lucas told him.

  Rico carried the container, following Lucas to the bathroom. Fuji and Kleezebee joined them, each carrying different parts of the technology. Lucas plugged the drain in the bottom of Fuji’s tub, then instructed Rico to pour the substance in. Rico tipped the jar, allowing the BioTex to trickle out like a gallon of semi-frozen pudding.

  “Now we are going to activate the BioTex with a special enzyme,” Lucas said. “It’s how we control access to this tech. Without it, you might as well use this stuff as jelly on your toast.”

  Fuji used a six-inch syringe to inject the compound into the gelatinous mass.

  “Now that it’s activated, we can begin the reconstitution process,” Lucas said, taking an electronic device from Kleezebee. It was roughly the size of a paperback book and had two sets of wires hanging from its back. Lucas held the unit upright, as Fuji inserted a digi-stick into the slot along the top of the device.

  “This downloads Bruno’s bio-copy directly into the BioTex,” Lucas said, inserting the wire leads into the substance. He pressed a series of buttons on the front of the device.

  “How long will it take?” Rico asked.

  “Not long. Watch.”

  The BioTex jiggled for a moment, then spread itself out along the bottom of the tub as it coagulated and thickened. Moments later, it rose up like bread dough, eventually taking the shape of a featureless human body. Soon after, its facial structure began to materialize and show through the scarlet substance. Its mouth, eyes, and nose formed first, then a mane of dark hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee sprouted and grew to full length. Eventually, its entire body, including genitalia, took shape. The final step was the appearance of the security guard’s clothes and the ferocious-looking creature tattoos on his arms. When the metamorphosis was complete, an exact copy of the Bruno was lying in the tub, face-up.

  Bruno opened his eyes, grinned from ear to ear, and then sat up. “What’s for lunch, boys?”

  “Good to have you back, old friend,” Kleezebee said, extending an open hand to Bruno. He pulled the rotund guard out of the tub.

  “How long have I been on ice?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “No wonder I’m starving,” Bruno replied, rubbing his oversized belly with both hands. He grinned. “If I’m not careful, I’ll lose my girlish figure.”

  Lucas whispered in Rico’s ear. “It really doesn’t work that way. He just needs sugar on a regular basis to maintain cohesion.”

  The replica security guard yanked on the waistline of his trousers, pulling his pants up. “Anyone seen my belt? Damn, I think I lost some weight while I was in the fridge.”

  “Unlikely,” Kleezebee said with a smile. “Knowing you, you put on weight.”

  Bruno slapped Lucas on the back. “Hey, Doc, how’
s it hanging?”

  “Good to see you, too,” Lucas said, reciprocating with a one-armed, man-hug. “It hasn’t been the same around here without you.”

  Bruno looked around. “Where’s Little Chief?”

  “We still haven’t found Drew,” Kleezebee said, with a solemn tone in his voice.

  “But we’re getting close,” Lucas said. “Especially now that you’re here.”

  Bruno looked at Rico. He held his hand out for a shake. “I’m Bruno Benner.”

  “Rico Renaldi,” the Italian stud answered, shaking the replica’s hand. He pulled his hand away after the shake, then wiped it on his pant leg. “So, you’re a replica?”

  “I prefer the term ‘bio-mimetic person.’”

  “He can copy any living organism right down to its DNA,” Lucas said. “It’s pretty impressive to watch.”

  Bruno turned to Kleezebee. “Can I show him, Boss?”

  The professor didn’t answer. Instead, he strapped a pentagon-shaped watch to Bruno’s wrist, then looked at Rico. “Major, why don’t you take our friend upstairs and get him something sweet to eat?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rico said sharply before escorting Bruno up the ladder and out of the basement.

  “All right, who’s next?” Lucas asked the professor.

  “Just Bruno.”

  “Only one?”

  “We don’t have sufficient glucose supplies to activate and maintain anymore.”

  “There’s plenty of sugar at Fisher’s bakery,” Lucas said, thinking of Carrie Anne delivering a cherry-covered Danish to him. It was almost as sweet as her.

  “And that helps us how?”

  Lucas shrugged.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “Still, it seems a bit risky to only send in one man to infiltrate Cyrus’ compound.” Lucas looked at Fuji. He hoped the brilliant mathematician would join in and convince Kleezebee otherwise. But the hairless monk didn’t say a word.

  “All he needs to do is assimilate one of Cyrus’ squad leaders, and then he should be able to walk right in. Shouldn’t take him long to locate our E-121 modules.”