Baxter stopped.
Shit!
He threw the radio on the floor and smashed it with the handle of the handgun.
As he was bent down he noticed the fire alarm switch on the wall. He reached up and smashed the glass and instantly the ear piercing sound of the fire alarm rang out throughout hospital.
That’ll shake ’em up!
The fluorescent lights extinguished and the corridor was illuminated by the emergency lighting. He stood up and rushed towards the emergency exit.
He crashed through the exit doors and descended the stairs as fast as he could. He held the gun in front of him and pointed it at each emergency exit door as he passed.
He felt relieved that no one appeared unexpectedly as he neared the basement exit.
He pushed through the last single door and discovered that he had arrived in the underground car park. He quickly looked around for a vehicle.
Apart from a couple of derelict ambulances, the only car in the car park was a rust-coloured 1968 Chevrolet Camaro.
Baxter was just about to head towards the car when he noticed that it had someone sitting in the front seat.
He stopped suddenly and ducked behind a pillar. He peered cautiously around the pillar and could see that whoever the person was he was just about to get out.
From his vantage point Baxter could see that the man was menacing. He had a hideous scar slashed across his face.
In one hand he carried a metallic briefcase and in the other hand he was wielding a very large hunting knife. He vaguely recognised the face.
Then it hit him, it was Stringer, the ‘unsub’ from the report that Lewiston had shown him.
Edward Stringer!
The man who was supposed to be dead and was the number one suspect in the assassination of Senator Baker and the brutal murder of Bob and Betty Stringer.
These thoughts raced through Baxter’s mind as he watched Stringer disappear through an emergency exit doorway on the opposite side of the car park.
Baxter cursed under his breath.
He had to decide whether to flee the hospital and summon help or go after Stringer. He cursed again, he was too late.
Fuck it!
He thought as he ran after Stringer, a string of questions flashed through his mind.
Is he somehow involved with the organ harvesting trade? What did this have to do with the Senator’s death? More importantly, why is he here?
Baxter thought about the last question and then thought about Sylvan Peters and how she had asked him about her son Justen.
A horrible thought dawned on him as he flung open the emergency exit door and started sprinting as quietly as he could up the stairs.
Was Justen here? Had he been kidnapped as well? Did Stringer know that Justen had seen him and had come in here to silence him?
This last thought spurred Baxter on as he knew that he had to catch up with Stringer and if possible capture him alive. He had a lot of questions and he wanted answers.
He fought against his pounding head and his growing feeling of nausea as he exited the flight of stairs.
He entered the corridor and realised that he had been too slow – Stringer was gone.
He lent on his knees and caught his breath.
He could see that the corridor curved away in both directions from the emergency exit door and with the alarms blaring he had no chance of listening for the sounds of footsteps.
He also realised that he had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right direction and he did not like those odds.
After several moments he decided that it was hopeless. He couldn’t just stand there and wait to ask if anyone had seen him so he decided to head back towards the ward where he had found Sylvan.
He realised that his best course of action would be to make sure that Sylvan and as many of the homeless escape.
He put the gun into his pocket and started running as quiet as he could towards Sylvan’s ward.
He knew that he needed to get there quickly. He also knew that he had to be alert for any sign of Stringer.
Just what this hospital needs, he thought as he ran. One more psychopath!
Twenty Six
The ride to her next destination was slow as the dilapidated cab battled with the peak hour city traffic.
Susan clutched her handbag to her chest as she watched the steady parade of humans scrambling through the city on their way to who knows where.
She thought of the poor excuse for a human that she had just left behind. She doubted that the harvesters would be able to use any of the organs that belonged to that pig.
She was confident however that that was the last time she would have to deal with Dacquiri.
She smiled at that thought and patted the handbag which bulged with the legal documents that had enabled her to proceed with the next stage of the mission.
It never ceased to amaze her how the inhabitants of this Earth were so pre-occupied with these worthless scraps of paper they called ‘money’.
Between talking to some invisible man in the sky and worshipping scraps of paper it was a wonder that anything got achieved on this horrible planet. Little wonder they are all so primitive, she thought as she reached into the handbag and pulled out a small tablet computer.
She placed her handbag next to her on the seat and then held the tablet close to her lips as she whispered, “Power on and validate”.
The screen instantly glowed with the ghostly image of a fiery phoenix, the Mundus Nova logo. She held the screen close to her face so it could perform the retina scan.
After validation, she placed the tablet on her lap and tapped the screen. She scrutinised the schematic layout that appeared.
She used her fingers to rotate the image and expanded two of her fingers to cause the image to zoom, highlighting each portion in turn as she swept her hand across the display.
Satisfied that the images were suitable she tapped the screen again and whispered “Safety protocol Omega.”
The image on the screen instantly disappeared and was replaced with the flashing red word ‘validate’.
She tapped the word and then raised the device up to her right eye again.
An instantaneous flash scanned her retina and the single word, ‘confirmed,’ flashed onto the screen before the screen suddenly went black.
She looked up from the tablet and realised that the cab had reached the destination she had specified. She shoved the tablet back into her handbag and pulled out her purse. She opened the purse and thrust a bundle of one hundred dollar notes towards the driver.
“Here driver, this should cover the fare.”
She ignored the confused look on the driver’s face as she put the purse back into the handbag and got out of the cab.
She stopped and looked up at the building in front of her and then scanned the row of buildings which formed the entire block.
She walked up to the entrance of the first building and sighed as entered.
She realised that it was going to take some time to investigate each building to find the most suitable one for her mission and this was just one city, the whole process would have to be repeated many times.
It took two hours to make her way through each of the buildings in the block.
The condition of the buildings was far worse than Susan Smythe could have imagined and she tried to breathe as shallow as possible as she cautiously made her way through the darkened corridors.
Even though she had a securely fastened re-breathing apparatus on her face, she imagined that the fetid air would be full of horrible nasties.
She silently fumed. The block of buildings that she had recently acquired was smaller than she had anticipated.
One of the buildings was missing and from the tell tale evidence, she realised that it had been recently vaporised. She knew that this meant that Stringer had been there and had used his usual crude method of cleaning up after himself.
Fucking Neanderthal, she thought as she made her wa
y down into the basement area.
He should have checked with me first before he decided to waste Mundus Nova property.
Luckily, she thought there were still four other buildings in this block that would suffice.
She had explored them all. So far, the building that she now occupied showed the most promise.
The building was reasonably structurally sound. It had a large, working cargo elevator and a very large basement area.
Perfect, she thought as she scanned the area, Father will be pleased.
She had been very methodical.
Before her arrival, she had organised a team of harvesters to clear out any remaining occupants. She had authorised the use of a powerful airborne narcotic to make their job easier.
She knew that she had to act quickly. She had to get a team in to reconfigure this building so that it could house the new off world Mundus Nova Headquarters.
The building would also need significant modifications to power the Traverser and organ storage. The building would also be modified to accommodate the new ‘shelter’ and harvest facility.
The whole complex will be a triumph for the cause, she thought as she reached into her handbag and pulled out another communicator and placed the bud into her ear. She tapped her head and listened to the device buzz and click as it made the connection.
Hello Susan, do you have news?
Her Father’s voice swept into her ears in waves, rising and falling in volume like the sound a wave makes as it washes across the shore. She smiled when she heard his voice.
“Yes Father, I have selected the perfect site. I will organise for the construction teams to begin the transformation.
I will organise for the organs to be sent here as soon as the building can replicate the required environment.”
She waited patiently for the response.
Good work. How soon can we begin the next phase? I’m getting a lot of pressure from the President.
Even through the filtering, Susan could tell how weak her Father’s voice was becoming. She tried to bolster his spirits and smiled as she replied.
“I will personally oversee the construction. I promise I will have it ready in three days.”
This time the response was even slower and she chewed her bottom lip as she waited.
Our current setup has been compromised.
We have been given one day. You have to work faster. Thousands are waiting, several hundred have already perished.
Susan swallowed the lump in her throat as she listened to her Father. She felt the pressure of expectation rising within her. She took a deep breath through the re-breather.
One day! That’s impossible!
She thought as she took another breath. She steadied her voice before replying and tried to sound calm.
“I’ll do my best, Daddy. You hang in there ok,” she said as she pulled the bug out of her ear and crushed it between her fingers.
She did not wait for her Father’s response. She had an urgent job to do.
She pulled out her mobile phone out of her pocket that she used on this world and hit the speed dial.
Twenty Seven
Stringer cursed under his breath as he strode down the corridor of the hospital.
He hated the stench. He always tried to avoid hospitals as much as possible and yet here he was forced to endure another cauldron of disease.
They’re full of fucking sick people, he thought as he flung open the dual connecting corridor doors.
He glanced up at an information board on the wall of the corridor and checked out where he was in conjunction to the rest of the hospital.
He needed eyes on this place and he knew that he would have to de-activate the alarm before any nosey authorities arrived. He knew that his best option would be the security office.
He ignored the fire alarm as he moved towards his destination. He had to increase his vision capability to cope with the dim lighting afforded by the emergency lights.
He had already dialled down his hearing so that the blazing sirens would not affect his concentration.
He had located the security office. It was located two floors up in the west wing of the hospital.
He moved towards the elevator and noticed that the power had been removed as a result of the fire alarm. He swore as he barged through the stairway door and sprinted up the four flights of stairs.
He noticed that the corridor on this floor had stronger illumination compared to the ones below. He realised that, like the operating theatres, the security section had back-up generators.
He normalised his vision and proceeded to enter the security centre.
The room was empty. Obviously the security personnel had taken the fire alarm seriously.
Idiots!
He thought as he shook his head.
He wondered whether they were stupid enough to alert the emergency services instead of just de-activating the alarm.
He dismissed the thought, he had planned to be out of the hospital long before any cops or fire fighters arrived.
The room was a standard security hub. There was a console with at least a dozen monitors on the wall above it. Each monitor flickered with a grainy black and white image gleaned from the myriad of security cameras that were interspersed throughout the building.
The computer server and archive room was attached to the office. This was a fireproof room which held the computer storage and hub for the hospital’s intranet service.
Stringer scanned the console and again cursed this inferior world for not having a neural interface which would have made his job very easy.
Unfortunately he realised that he would have to go ‘old school’ and go over each camera’s playback.
He needed evidence to prove that his target had been brought in and whether she had already been processed.
He tossed up the idea of just vaporising the whole building. He smiled at the thought and then dismissed it as he knew Mundus Nova would not appreciate him sabotaging their entire operation just save his skin.
First things first, he thought as he quickly scanned each monitor.
“Yep, just what I thought. No fire, no smoke, no nothing,” he said angrily as he thumped his fist onto the console.
Those incompetent dickheads, he thought as he reached forward and reset the fire alarm.
Lucky for them, the Inergen system and the sprinklers had been decommissioned!
He looked at each monitor and determined the number of the camera that was assigned to monitor the drop off point in front of the hospital. He then proceeded to the Archive room and retrieved the data disk which contained the video feeds from that camera.
He placed the data disk into the front of the main PC. The caddy slotted perfectly into place and automatically powered up.
Stringer grabbed the PC mouse and started the search for the past three days of video feed. He brought up the video console graphical user interface and clicked on the fast forward button.
He reclined in his chair and placed another infuser on his tongue. He relaxed as the drug melted into his bloodstream.
The image on the PC monitor showed the accelerated camera feed of the comings and goings at the front of the hospital. He enhanced his vision and carefully scrutinised each image.
His facial recognition routines ran in the back of his mind, constantly reconciling each of the Immortal Harvest victims as they were presented to the collectors.
Suddenly he leant forward and froze the image on the screen. The red flash in the extremes of his peripheral vision confirmed the identity.
Stringer smiled as he stared at the image and whispered quietly as he ran his finger down the screen.
“Hello Sylvan, where’s your little boy?”
He synchronised his neural net to the camera network and rushed out of the room to find his prey.
Twenty Eight
By utilising the Lo-Jack system, the two agents had successfully located Baxter’s abandoned car.
Unf
ortunately by the time Agents Durning and Webster had arrived in the nearby alley, there was an established crime scene, complete with barrier tape and a Police Department Forensics team.
Durning noticed the worried look on his partners face when she saw the body bag lying beside the Coroners van.
“It looks like we might be too late,” she said as her voice betrayed her outward visage of professionalism.
“Now hang on a minute Drew, we may have found his car but we don’t know for sure if that’s the boss.
“Let’s just take a look shall we,” Durning said as he strolled over towards the van.
He nodded acknowledgement at the Coroner and flashed his badge.
“Hello, I’m Agent Durning of the FBI and this is my colleague Agent Webster.
“Do you mind if we take a quick look at the deceased?” Durning said as he lent down and started unzipping the black body bag.
The Coroner grabbed Durning’s hand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t believe the PD boys had called the FBI, I don’t think this comes within your jurisdiction.”
Durning stopped what he was doing and stood up to confront the middle aged Coroner and noticed that one of the forensics team had arrived on the scene. He recognised the young officer.
He decided to ignore the Coroner and extended his hand towards the young officer as he approached.
“Dan, how are you? What’s the story here? Are you taking the lead on this?”
He could see the confused look on the young officer’s face. He moved towards Dan and put his other hand on his shoulder as he directed him away from the Coroner’s van.
They walked a few paces and then Durning turned and directed the officer’s attention to his partner who had followed them.
“You remember Drew Webster? She went through Quantico with your brother.”
The young officer blushed slightly and extended his hand towards Drew.
“Hi, yes of course I remember you. I met you at Phil’s graduation. How are you?”
“I’m ok”, Drew said as she shook Dan’s hand and then pointed to the van.
“What has happened here Dan? Who’s in the body bag?”
The Immortal Harvest Page 19