Time and Chance

by Jeff Mariotte

  He tapped the temple piece of his glasses. "They ain't great," he said. "But they're yours for the duration. What've we got?"

  She indicated the comm unit still held tightly by the vise. Perrine looked it over.

  "This was in one of those helmets?" he asked.

  "That's right."

  "Makes sense. Remember I told you the guys I met with were in audio and visual contact with someone else? I couldn't see the whole structure, but I'm sure this is the same thing from the bits I could see."

  "I had a feeling it was," Caitlin said. She indicated the monitor. "Here's the part I'm most interested in."

  "The transmitter," Perrine said.

  "I'm thinking maybe there's a way to determine the frequency and trail it back to its source. The guy we took this from isn't talking, and we still need to find out who's running this show."

  "Where is he?"

  "Our prisoner? We turned him over to Mr. Lynch. He's still trying to persuade him to share a little."

  Perrine laughed. "Jack can be pretty persuasive."

  Caitlin put a hand over her mouth. "Not in a torturing kind of way."

  "That, too," Perrine said. "But that wasn't what I was talking about. The Lynch I knew had a whole range of ways to persuade."

  "Good."

  "Let's take a look at this thing," Perrine said. He scanned the monitor. "Very nice work. Sophisticated. See that?" He indicated the microscopic conducting blade that carried electricity from the long-life, equally miniature battery.

  "What about it?"

  "It's one of mine."

  "That's yours? You mean—?"

  "I invented it. I didn't necessarily build this particular one. But it's my design."

  "So what does that tell us?" Caitlin asked.

  "Whoever made these comm units has some I.O. background."

  "Can you tell who it was? Do you recognize the craftsmanship?"

  "There were too many people in and out, over the years I was there," Perrine replied. "No way to narrow it down from just this."

  "Then we're back to square one," Caitlin sighed.

  "I think your first impulse was the best one," Perrine said. "We get this thing receiving and we find out where the signal is coming from. They wouldn't use a common frequency for it—whoever this belongs to doesn't want cell phones or radio signals interfering with his transmissions."

  "Good point."

  "So let's see what's what." He rubbed his hands together, eager to get to work.

  They spent the next hour like that, working closely together, hunched over the 'scope, watching their progress on the monitor. Caitlin found that she enjoyed working with Sam. He was smart, he was occasionally witty, and he was willing to stand back and let her take over when she was on a roll.

  There was no romantic attraction, but, she realized, she definitely enjoyed spending some time with an intellectual peer.

  Only one thing bothered her. After a little more than an hour, she felt comfortable enough to bring it up.

  "How can you do that?" she asked. "Sell guns, I mean. Stolen weaponry."

  Sam put down his tools, looked at her for a long moment. "It wasn't an easy decision," he said finally. "There was nothing automatic about it. I was an armorer for a long time, for International Operations. I mean, I did other things, too, I've always been a scientist and a tinkerer and an inventor. But for I.O., mostly what they had me doing was using my expertise to make weapons.

  "Eventually, you start to forget what they're used for. They're machines, they're ideas that you come up with in the night hours and implement when you get to work the next morning. They're tools. They're hunks of metal and wire and chips.

  "Do you suppose the manufacturers of cigarettes, or the growers of tobacco, or the people who print the cardboard cartons, think when they get to work in the morning about the people who are going to die of lung cancer that day, Caitlin?" he asked. She shook her head.

  "Right," he went on. "They're thinking about their own lives, bills they have to pay, debts, the mortgage, the kids who need shoes and school supplies and college tuitions. They're wondering how they're going to retire.

  "Same with me. I went to work and I invented weapons. What they were used for didn't even enter into it, except when my bosses came to me and said they needed something that would accomplish a specific task. Then it became a challenge. 'Make a gun that'll shoot around corners. Make a weapon that'll annihilate everyone in a room but not mark the walls.' That kind of thing."

  Sam looked away. "When they asked for something like that, we all just got together and pretended we were designing weapons for a video game. We had a bunch of code names that only us designers knew about. We made up stuff that made Doom look tame. It's what got us through. Our way of disassociating ourselves when reality got too close.

  "And I was good at it. I got used to a certain kind of lifestyle, because I was paid well for what I did. The home, the land, the staff, all that kind of shielded me from thinking about the end user of my work. Or the end user's victims.

  "Then I.O. shut down suddenly. No warning, no time for arrangements to be made for any of that technology. My babies were about to be orphaned."

  He shrugged, and picked up his tools again. He and Caitlin were almost finished with the device they were building. He bent over the table and started driving a tiny screw into place. "What better place for them to go than with their father? I loaded up a few trucks at the armory. There was no one there to stop me—the guards had all filled their cars and taken off already. It takes a certain income to maintain the lifestyle I was used to, and I had the means—my weapons—to provide that income. But only if I went into sales. So I did."

  "And you didn't think about the difference between your weapons being used by intelligence operatives, presumably working for our side, and the common criminals you were selling them to?" Caitlin asked.

  "I admit, I had some blind spots," Perrine said. "You helped me with that. You and the other kids, Grunge and Roxanne. My eyes were shut to what I was really doing, and you opened them. Thank you for that."

  "You're welcome."

  "In case you're wondering—of course you're wondering, but you might be too polite to say it—I'm getting out of that particular business."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know yet. I'm sure I'll be able to find something. I've got plenty of ideas left in me."

  "And what about the guns you already have stockpiled?"

  "Maybe Lynch can help them find a good home."

  "We'll ask him," Caitlin promised.

  Perrine tapped the surface of the small metal box they'd been working on. "Looks good to me," he said. "Let's try it out."

  Caitlin took the miniature receiver she'd removed from the thug's helmet and slid it into a tiny slot on top of the box. She flipped a switch, turned a dial, and the box started to hum.

  "It's connecting," she said, breathless excitement in her voice.

  "Sounds like it," Perrine agreed.

  Another moment passed, and then a low-pitched whine issued from the box. "Got it," Perrine said. "Frequency's in use, right now. Let's roll."

  "I'll get the others," Caitlin said."

  Ten minutes later, the team was assembled, in full battle uniform. They crowded into Perrine's sedan.

  'There's got to be a better way to get around this city," Bobby said.

  "We could take the subway, but we might attract some attention," Grunge offered.

  "I'm serious, man," Bobby countered. "This is lame. What if we needed to be someplace in a hurry?"

  "Dude. Umm, you'd fly?"

  "Right," Bobby said. "Forgot. Never mind."

  "Someone still has to carry you, Grunge," Roxy pointed out. "And Caitlin there is no featherweight."

  "Best way to get someplace fast is to get a cab, anyway," Grunge said. "Driver may not take you where you want to go, but he'll get you there in a hurry."

  "I think Sam's car will be fine," Caitlin
said. "It's a little squishy, but it's private."

  "How are we supposed to follow the signal, Kat?" Sarah asked.

  "The pitch will change," Perrine offered. He backed the car out of the VISITOR parking space underneath their hotel. "Higher means we're closer, lower means farther away."

  "So we just drive all over the city and listen to that box?" Grunge asked. "That could take freakin' forever."

  "No, Grunge," Caitlin said. "Listen to it. It's already at a high pitch. Wherever the signal is coming from, it's not far away at all."

  "And this will lead us, like, right to the bad guys?" Roxy asked.

  "Not necessarily," Caitlin replied. "They're broadcasting on a rarely-used frequency. The box is reading that frequency, and telling us that it's in use right now. That doesn't mean it'll take us to the source"

  "Although it might," Perrine interrupted. He pulled the car out of the parking garage and into the street, merging seamlessly with the flow of traffic.

  "Right," Caitlin agreed. "We won't know until we get there."

  "Wherever 'there' is," Grunge said.

  "There" was an office building a few miles away, on the edge of the city's financial district.

  The building was new—built in the last few years, on a block where there had been a row of small businesses; shops, a couple of restaurants, a family-owned dry cleaners, all had given way to a towering construction of glass and steel and gleaming marble.

  Most of the building was still empty. The street level contained a bank and, around the corner, a couple of upscale chain clothing stores. They'd parked Sam's car on the street behind a delivery truck chugging noxious exhaust into the air and, carrying the whining device—practically screaming now—had found their way into the building's elegant lobby. Elevators lined the far wall, and glass doors on one side opened into a small gourmet coffee shop. There was a directory on a wall, but many of the spaces were blank. None of the names meant anything to them, or, it seemed, to Perrine.

  Caitlin turned to the guard station, behind a shining countertop. A guard, rail-thin, with heavy black glasses and greasy strands of hair hanging from underneath his uniform cap, regarded them through disapproving eyes.

  What do I ask him? she thought. Excuse me, but have you seen a bunch of criminals in fancy armor?

  "Help you find something?" he asked.

  "I don't know about this," Sam whispered. "We don't know for sure that the guys you're looking for are the only people in town using this frequency. We don't even know if our tracker really works. We could be closing in on someone with a particular brand of cordless phone."

  "Little late to think of that, man," Grunge said. "We're pretty much committed here."

  "It has to work," Caitlin said. "There's nothing about it that shouldn't work."

  "You're right," Sam agreed. "I think we need to go upstairs. Could be down—I can't quite tell yet. We won't know until we move, one way or the other."

  Caitlin cocked a head toward the bank of elevators. The building was sparsely populated—a few business types came and went from the elevators, but it wasn't nearly as crowded as the financial district tended to be on weekday afternoons.

  "No thanks," she said. "We're fine."

  "Okay," the guard drawled. "You let me know, you need any help. That's what I'm here for."

  "We'll do that." Caitlin threw a smile at him and crossed the lobby in four long strides. The others rushed to keep up. As they drew near, she pushed the down button on the elevator panel.

  "Might as well rule out down first," she explained.

  After a moment, the elevator doors opened. The team filed in, and Caitlin pushed the door for the first underground floor, a parking level. As soon as the doors shut and the elevator began its descent, the device changed pitch, dropping an octave.

  "Wrong call," Caitlin said.

  "No harm done," Perrine said. "When it stops, we just go up."

  The elevator reached the parking garage level and the doors opened. Everybody waited for them to close again, and when they did Roxy pressed the "2" button. The elevator started to rise.

  The box started to scream again.

  "Better," Perrine said.

  The elevator bypassed the street level and stopped on the second floor. The box's whine hurt their ears, it was so high.

  "Ow," Grunge complained. "Dude, can't we kill that thing now?"

  "I don't think we'll need it much longer, Grunge," Caitlin said. "When we've found these clowns, you can do anything you want to it."

  The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid back.

  Roxy, standing in front of the doors, spoke first.

  "Uhh, Kat? I think we found 'em."

  Caitlin turned in time to see Roxy using her powers to lift a half-dozen I.O. Stingers from the hands of armor-clad mercs. She took in the room beyond the elevator. It was a spacious, multi-tiered, state of the art communication center. Technicians in white lab coats looked up from clipboards or computer terminals. Men and women in finely tailored business suits pointed at them and ran toward a corridor directly opposite the elevator. A dozen more mercenaries, some only partially garbed in I.O. armament over their black and green shirts, slacks, and boots, flooded the room. A large television screen the size of Caitlin's old dorm room displayed an Ouroboros—the symbol of a snake eating its own tail.

  The place looked like something out of a Bond film. Caitlin couldn't believe there wasn't even a reception area, some kind of front. Could anyone just accidentally get off on this floor and witness this?

  "Full deployment," Caitlin shouted. "Go! Go!"

  The team moved out. Bobby and Sarah flew ahead, Grunge and Roxy flanking them on foot. Caitlin slammed the down button and shoved Sam against the wall, knocking the wind out of him before he could protest. As much as she appreciated all he had done, this was no place for him.

  She stepped out and the elevator doors closed behind her.

  Showtime.

  Caitlin decked the first armored merc who raced at her, then delivered a high kick to another who tried to close on her from behind. Armor cracked and unconscious bodies fell.

  Ahead, Bobby torched a handful of control panels and computer screens as he sailed straight at another guard. Sarah lifted her arms and lightning blazed from her hands, striking several guards and terminals.

  "We need their records!" Caitlin yelled. "Don't fry everything!"

  "Relax, Kat," Roxy said as she levitated two more guards and smashed them together. "Enjoy the party!"

  Caitlin ducked a stream of energy from a stinger and flung a desk at her attacker. Enjoy this? Her half-sister had been in the superhero game too long. They were here to do a job. Clean-up. And that was it. Fun didn't enter into the equation.

  She turned and saw Grunge chasing after the people in the suits and the lab coats. Several guards moved into an intercept pattern. Grunge bowled through them, scattering the mercs with ease.

  Finishing off a somersaulting armored warrior brandishing a fiery energy sword, Caitlin ordered the others to follow Grunge's lead. There would be other ways off this floor. The thinkers and the planners, that's who they needed to take down. The muscle was only here to get in the way and slow them down.

  Caitlin charged after Grunge. She could see his square shoulders and long, dark hair as he chased his quarry down the long corridor. It splintered to the right and the suits and labs took it.

  In seconds, Roxy, Sarah, and Bobby were with her.

  A pounding and crashing came from just ahead. She covered the long corridor, turned, and nearly ran straight into Grunge's meaty back.

  "I don't get it," he said.

  There was nothing before him but a wall. Yet—she had seen those who ran the operation come this way.

  The wall had huge dents and craters in its surface. Grunge had apparently attempted to go through it, but had failed. A shiny reflective surface was exposed in one small spot.

  Caitlin didn't like the look of this. "Go back!"

>   She turned with the others—and found another wall.

  "How in the—" Roxy began.

  "Floors, ceilings!" Caitlin said. "Bobby! Sarah!"

  Searing flames whipped past Caitlin and burned into the ceiling while brilliant blasts of lightning hit the floor. Bits of plaster and steel shot up and rained down, exposing more of the shiny reflective surface Caitlin had seen in the wall ahead of her. Roxy used her power to keep the debris from striking anyone.

  Glass shattered and the lights above went out. Bobby's flames and Sarah's lightning provided the only illumination. Caitlin balled her hands into fists and launched herself at the wall, striking with all the force she could manage. Again, plaster and bits of metal came loose but the trap imprisoning them was not even scratched.

  Caitlin stepped back, surveying the trap. The box in which they found themselves was eight feet wide, twelve feet long, and eight feet high. There were no air vents, no electrical plugs. Kicking at the rubble at her feet, Caitlin saw a small generator that had fueled the lights Bobby had shattered, melted, and fused.

  "If we can't escape, we'll run out of air and die," Caitlin said. "Simple and clean."

  "Yeah, let's give the creeps who designed this thing extra credit on their homework assignment," Grunge said.

  Bobby reduced the fires in his hands to a dim ember. Just enough to see by, but not enough to substantially cut into their oxygen.

  "So what do we do?" Roxy asked.

  Before Caitlin could reply, a thin red beam of light shot out from the wall beside her. "Down!"

  The beam singed her hair as it ricocheted back and forth within the confined space, shooting holes in the remaining plaster on the walls and bouncing off the strange reflective surface underneath.

  Other beams fired. Some came from above, others below. They criss-crossed, shot up at diagonals, and began to form a deadly web of sustained, fatal power. Caitlin and every member of the team had to leap and dive to keep themselves from being burned. Sarah snarled in pain as one of the beams raked across her shoulder and back.

  "That's it." Grunge said. He reached down and placed his palm on a patch of the reflective metal below. His form shimmered and changed, taking on its exact molecular composition. "This ain't gonna be easy and it ain't gonna be fun, but here goes…"