AMPED

by Douglas E. Richards

  His wife was standing at the entrance, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

  Below her, a tiny figure looked up at him.

  “Daddy!” squealed little Jessica excitedly, her voice tiny and endearing.

  Seth Rosenblatt fell to his knees, and his daughter ran forward and launched herself into his arms.

  He drew her close, hugging her as though he might never let go, drawing sustenance from this tiny, precious, perfect little girl—one he had been sure he had lost forever.

  Quiet tears poured down his face. Jake had not lied about her, after all.

  “I love you, Honey,” he said. “I love you so much.” He continued to cling to her as desperately as if she were a life preserver in a roiling sea.

  “Daddy, are you okay?” asked Jessica, pulling away and looking at his face uncertainly. She had never seen her father shed a single tear, yet multiple streams continued to roll down his cheeks.

  He nodded. “I’m more than okay, Sweetie.”

  Jessica’s mother knelt down beside her. “Sometimes grown-ups cry when they’re happy,” she explained.

  The little girl looked up at her daddy, who was smiling through his tears, but she still wasn’t entirely convinced. “Are you happy, Daddy?”

  Seth Rosenblatt pulled his daughter close once again and squeezed, his tears continuing to fall. “Oh yes,” he said euphorically. “Happier than you can even imagine.”

  22

  Kira’s eyes finally fluttered open as the last of the tranquilizer was reversed by the agent Colonel Jacobson had administered several minutes previously. She was dressed in a gray, zippered jumpsuit, and every means of ingress into her body—ears, nostrils, throat, anus, and vagina—throbbed slightly, or in some other way advertised that they had been thoroughly probed. Her hands were bound together with tough plastic cuffs and had been placed in her lap.

  She shook herself fully awake and took in her surroundings. She was in a large office, although it was non-descript and hadn’t been personalized in any way. She was sitting before a large desk, facing the man who had appeared on her computer screen to arrange the swap, this Colonel Jacobson. Behind him, an eight-by-ten picture frame was lying face down on a credenza.

  The colonel studied her calmly, in no apparent hurry to get the proceedings started.

  She gestured to her surroundings with her head. “What, no interrogation room? No leg irons? No spotlight shining in my face and a team of experts behind a two-way mirror?”

  “I like to start on the civilized side when I can. And in these days of video cameras, two-way mirrors are only useful in bad spy movies.”

  “Good point,” she admitted. “I must still be a little groggy from your knockout drug.” She raised her eyebrows. “Although I can’t say I’m sorry I was unconscious for my proctology and gynecology exams.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Jake, with enough sincerity that Kira believed he really was. “If it makes you feel any better, we had a woman conduct the examination below the waist.”

  “How gallant of you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Find anything interesting?”

  Jake shook his head. “Not for lack of trying. On the other hand, after my experience with Seth Rosenblatt, we’ve taken your clothing—including your panties and bra—to a lab where everything will all be taken apart atom by atom. And we’ll assume we’re being listened to when we do. We made a mistake with Rosenblatt’s clothing. When our scans indicated no activity, we didn’t examine it further. Now we have, and we’ve found some advanced electronics in the waistband of his jockeys, very nearly microscopic. Desh’s too. I’m looking forward to finding out what’s inside your panties.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” said Kira with a wry smile.

  Jake couldn’t help but return the smile, but this quickly faded. “We’ve already begun reverse engineering the technology. We should know how you’ve managed it soon.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Kira, unconcerned. “But before we go any further,” she added, “can I assume you held up your end of the deal? That David and Seth are free and unmolested?”

  “I held up my end of the deal, yes. Which means I have no idea if they’re free. All I know is that I texted their location to the e-mail address you gave me.”

  Kira studied him. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where we are and how long I was out for?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me about your work on WMD and interactions with terrorist leaders and dictators? And details of your husband’s activities?”

  “Since I’ve been framed—yet again—and none of this is true, I’d be more than happy to tell you everything I know.” She paused. “But you first. Where are we? And how long was I out?”

  Jake studied her with a renewed intensity, perhaps seeing if she would begin to squirm. She waited patiently, her cuffed hands folded in her lap, the scrutiny not appearing to intimidate her or make her uncomfortable in the least.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “My instinct is not to tell you. You’re cuffed and have no weapons—or gellcaps. No technology, period. You’ve been stripped and probed extensively. Even if you had an invisible bug and transmitter—which this time I’m sure you don’t—your friends couldn’t rescue you. You’re going to tell me what you know, one way or another, and be a prisoner for the rest of your life. So I have no reason not to answer your questions.”

  Jake stared at her once more for several seconds. “But you’re so damned relaxed,” he continued. “You’re not playing the captured terrorist about to rot in prison. You’re playing the carefree, affable young woman, chatting with a friend. Almost as if you arranged this just to size me up.” He paused. “What have I failed to take into account? Is there another shoe about to drop? Tell me, Kira Miller, what am I missing?”

  “Not a thing. I’m not nearly as dangerous as you seem to think I am. You’re as thorough as they come. I did have a few rabbits up my sleeves,” she added with a grin. “But then you took away my sleeves.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Your charisma is remarkable. They say Steve Jobs was so charismatic, he projected something that came to be known as a reality distortion field. But I’ve never experienced something like this in person. Until now. And Jobs didn’t have your looks.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. To be honest, I had expected to be beaten around the head with a bag of doorknobs, not to be given compliments.” She frowned. “But for all of my supposed charisma, I can’t even get you to tell me where we are or how long I was out.”

  “You were out for seven hours. And we’re at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.”

  Kira digested this information. Given Icarus was headquartered in nearby Denver, she knew Peterson well. It housed NORAD, as well as the air force and army space commands. And it was within a hundred miles of where she had been captured. “Isn’t Peterson a bit obvious?”

  “Maybe. But your colleagues won’t expect someone as careful as I am to do the obvious. And since you could be anywhere, they’d have to be absolutely positive you were here to risk a raid to extract you. And even if they did they wouldn’t succeed. Not from a base this secure.”

  “Impressive reasoning,” said Kira. She leaned forward. “By the way, is this conversation private, or do you have those video cameras you spoke of sending it out to a bunch of your friends?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Maybe I’m not the exhibitionist type,” she replied dryly. “If I’m going to bare my soul, I prefer to know who I’m baring it to.”

  “We’re being videotaped, but just for my own use. No one else knows about that. For this session only, our discussion will be private. But just so you don’t get any ideas,” he added, “there are three guards outside of this room. While you’re here, they’re checking in every ten minutes with my second in command. If they fail to check in, special forces teams will descend on this area like locusts.”

  Kira lifted her
hands and nodded toward the plastic cuffs locked around her wrists. “Are you sure three guards and handcuffs are enough? I mean, if you think it’d be safer to use leg irons attached to a cannonball, I’ll wait while you get them.”

  “Don’t test me,” he warned. “My instincts tell me you’re still dangerous. Maybe I should restrain you further.”

  Kira realized she had miscalculated and decided it was time to change the subject. “So tell me, Colonel,” she said, as if the prior exchange had never taken place. “How did you figure out I was alive? And learn about my ability to boost IQs? And most importantly, where did you get your misinformation as to my intentions?”

  “Not misinformation. Unimpeachable evidence.”

  “So you’ve said. How about showing me some of it then?”

  Jake nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Why not?” His eyes narrowed in thought. “We’ll start with your, um . . . good friend, David Desh.”

  He worked the touchscreen on a thin laptop on his desk connected wirelessly to a monitor on the table behind him. A video appeared on the screen.

  Kira saw herself and David Desh sitting on the floor, their backs against a concrete wall in a gray, dimly lit basement. Heavy steel rungs had been bolted into the wall, and both prisoners had their wrists bound together behind their backs and through one of the rungs with plastic strips.

  The scene came rushing back to her with a dizzying intensity. Her brother’s puppet—who they had first known as Smith, but who had later turned out to be a man named Sam Putnam—had captured them and moved them to the basement of a safe house.

  The events of that night were seared into her mind. Putnam had taunted her, and had convinced her he had implanted an explosive in her skull that could liquefy her brain.

  She hadn’t thought about this for a long time. Watching this footage brought back too many bad memories, but she couldn’t look away. Desh had managed to take a gellcap, and had faked illness. On the screen, sweat began pouring out of him in the cool basement, forced through his pores by the conscious application of his amplified intellect, which gave him exquisite control over his every cell and bodily system, autonomic or not.

  Kira watched the video in horror and fascination. There was no doubt in her mind that this footage was real.

  Three armed men now entered the frame. Desh had convinced them the contents of his stomach were about to erupt onto the floor, and that they needed to let this happen in the bathroom rather than suffer the mess and smell for an entire night.

  One of the men freed him from the steel rung and began to lead him to the bathroom. A few steps later Desh doubled over and pretended to vomit. In the instant the guards looked away in disgust, he snatched a knife from the man beside him and buried it in the chest of one of the other guards. The moment Desh released the knife, he spun the man who had freed him to his left, just in time for him to take a tranquilizer dart meant for Desh.

  The third guard was highly trained in several forms of martial arts, but Desh dismantled him as if the guard were moving in slow motion.

  Desh had taken out the three men like an over-the-top hero in a martial arts film, with timing and fighting skills impossible in the real world. His actions were effortless. And just like in a highly choreographed stunt fight, Desh had known every move the men would make, almost before they did.

  After having disabled the three armed men, he ducked behind the wooden staircase. A fourth man came rushing down to check on his comrades, and Desh calmly buried a dart in his leg through the opening between stairs. The man rolled down the last few stairs, unconscious.

  Desh then freed Kira, and they both rushed up the stairs.

  The footage continued, but the basement was now still.

  “Okay,” said Kira. “This did happen. I’ll admit it. But so what? We were obviously justified in escaping. And David used non-lethal force when he could. Hardly evidence that he’s an enemy of the state.”

  Jake shook his head grimly. “Nice try. But you can’t really think we don’t have the rest of the footage.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  Jake touched his laptop and the video jumped ahead. David Desh was now bounding down the stairs. Kira had forgotten he had returned to the basement briefly, while she had waited upstairs, to see if any of the guards had carried wallets or ID.

  The guard with the knife protruding from his chest was dead. The other three were unconscious, but in good health. Desh made no move to check their pockets. Instead, he calmly took a knife and surgically slit each man’s throat, one by one, using great care so he wouldn’t get blood on himself. Like a butcher slaughtering cattle.

  Kira’s eyes widened in horror and she choked back vomit.

  It was his total lack of expression, his clinical detachment, that was the most frightening of all.

  “Good acting, Miss Miller—or Mrs. Desh—whatever you’re calling yourself these days,” said Jake as the video stopped. “You do shocked and horrified about as well as I’ve ever seen.”

  “This footage was doctored,” croaked Kira weakly, still not recovered. “It had to have been.” But she looked even less sure than she sounded.

  Jake frowned and shook his head. “Sure it was,” he said sarcastically. “You do realize we’ve analyzed the hell out of this footage. Not a single frame has been altered in any way. It’s one continuous shot. If the first part you saw is accurate—and you admitted as much—than the last part is also.”

  Kira turned away with a look of revulsion. David Desh was the most compassionate man she knew. Yes, he had killed in battle, but never helpless men. Not like this. True, her therapy brought out the worst in human nature, and it could be brutally difficult to control this Mr. Hyde personality. But a loss of control this great was shocking. And worse, he had never told her about it after he had returned to normal.

  This would have been important information for her to have. At the time, they had little experience with the effects of enhancement. And she would have expected him to be horrified by the actions of his alter ego, to be beating himself up for not finding a way to prevent them. Yet he hadn’t said a single word, nor had he appeared the least bit remorseful.

  They had been through so much together. But what she had just seen made her question everything she thought she knew. Could she trust David Desh? She would never have believed this possible of him, even enhanced. How could she possibly have misjudged him so greatly? And if he could keep this from her, what other secrets might he be keeping?

  But as she turned her thoughts back to the video she had just seen, she had a startling realization, one just as disturbing as her husband’s betrayal of her trust.

  23

  The object continued to hurtle toward Earth, its speed now below a million miles per hour. Nearly every gravitational wave detector on Earth, and every space and ground-based telescope, tracked every inch of its arrival. It continued to decelerate with smooth and steady perfection, never deviating one iota from its direct course to the birthplace of humanity.

  The world kept revolving. People still needed to work and feed their families. Planes still flew and buses still ran.

  But alien visitation was the topic on everyone’s mind, spurring endless debate and endless speculation. It filled up all news and entertainment forums almost absolutely. And rightly so.

  It was a seminal moment in history. Perhaps the seminal moment in history. Humanity was no longer alone in the universe. A stunning development. Nothing would ever be the same.

  Everyone had an opinion on the subject. Religions took the news in a variety of ways. Some clergy embraced the idea of intelligent alien life. Others saw it all as a ruse, the work of the devil, to test the faith of true believers. God had made man in his image. If intelligent aliens existed, why hadn’t God, or Allah, or Christ, not made mention of this important fact?

  And of course the crazies came out in droves. The nutcases. The conspiracy theorists. The end-of-the-worlders. Only this tim
e they had almost as much chance of being right about events to come as were the most sober and rational scientists.

  Science fiction had speculated about aliens and first contact for decades, but with every last one of Earth’s billions now engaged in their own speculations, all ideas ever considered by this burgeoning genre were touched upon in a matter of hours by someone around the globe, along with scores of ideas that had never been previously contemplated.

  The object was small. Was it filled with aliens the size of ants? If so, was there a minimum brain size necessary to support intelligent thought? Was it simply a hotrodding robot? A computerized probe? Would it send out a signal to awaken huge colony ships buried under miles of ice in the arctic, or under the ocean floor? Was it coming to bring the final enlightenment? To welcome humanity into a vast intergalactic community? Or was it coming to destroy humanity? Was it a modern day flood sent by a vengeful God to punish the race for turning the entire planet into a den of iniquity that would make the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah sick to their stomachs and flush in embarrassment? Or was it just a scout? Would it simply fly by, record activity, and then never be seen again? Was it randomly sampling planets, or was it aware of the presence of humanity and actively seeking it out? Had it been sent by an alien army corps of engineers to puncture a hole in spacetime and create a stargate for the good people of Earth to use? Was it pure good? Pure evil? Pure indifference?

  The conjecture never ended. Peaceful prayer meetings sprang up across the globe, conducted by a number of different religions. Riots broke out. Con artists, crazies, and spotlight seekers arose who insisted they were in contact with the incoming craft, and who declared themselves prophets.

  But the majority of the world’s inhabitants continued going through the motions of living their lives. Billions upon billions adopted a wait-and-see fatalism.

  Oblivious to the commotion it was causing on its target world, the small craft effortlessly tapped into the near infinite amount of energy available in every square centimeter of vacuum, and hurtled onward.