The Unseen

by Hines

  The young man takes his secret visitor’s hand, shakes it. He’s been let out of the metal room many times now, seen the world outside this steel trap. And yet, oddly enough, he’s always felt most comfortable here inside a place other people would call a prison cell. It’s the only thing that’s comfortable and familiar for him, and he needs to hold on to something comfortable and familiar.

  Especially on the missions he’s been performing for his secret visitor these last few years. Raven still has no idea. He thinks the young man is his experiment, his property. He thinks the daily tests, the prodding questions, the learning sessions, are the young man’s only contacts with the outside world.

  But the young man knows better.

  The young man has been outside the steel room. He’s learned all about Raven’s pheromone research, and he thinks he knows why Raven has failed.He’s shared these ideas with his secret visitor, as well as some new ideas in genetic research spurred by the new materials, new lessons.

  And now, he’s agreed to become part of another . . . experiment. To carry on with Raven’s research, as well as to partner with some other researchers on new opportunities. He’s ready, because his secret visitor has given him the ultimate training these last few years. Combat, strategy, physics, theoretics, and more, all of it implanted with the help of new cocktails brought to him only by the secret visitor.

  And now, the secret visitor has offered him a promotion.

  He stands, hearing the chair he was sitting in scrape against the bare floor. “I’m just wondering . . .” he says.

  “Yes,” the visitor prompts. “A good quality, to wonder. Something Raven hasn’t been able to kill, despite his best efforts.”

  The young man returns the smile, only now becoming aware of the constant buzz in his ears. For several years now, the wasps have been his constant companions, fluttering about his head—drawn, he knows, by the experiments Raven has performed with wasp pheromones. Raven wanted to create a Drone Soldier, someone who would follow orders unquestioningly, much as the drone wasps sacrificed themselves to protect their hives.

  He is a failed experiment, he knows. Raven hasn’t given up yet, of course, but it’s too late to go much further down that path alone. With the help of newer technologies such as gene splicing, coupled with the pheromones, there are possibilities—possibilities the young man has expressed to his secret visitor—but Raven is the proverbial dinosaur. He has no interest in using these new techniques.

  “Your question,” the secret visitor asks, drawing him from his reverie.

  The young man looks the secret visitor in the face. “Where did I comefrom? My family—my mother, my father?”

  The secret visitor takes his hand, pats it comfortingly. “I am your family. Your father, your mother.”

  “But . . . who am I?”

  “Does it matter?” The secret visitor holds out a semi-automatic pistol; the young man recognizes it instantly as a Taurus 24/7 .45 caliber. He takes the gun, slides the action to make sure there’s a round in the chamber.

  “When?” he asks the secret visitor.

  “Raven will be here in about ten minutes. You know that as well as I do. It’s time for his project to end. Think what he’s done to you, how he’s failed you. And yet, here you are, the youngest agent we’ve ever promoted—more than that, the first one actually in our program. We have several teams of researchers ready to help you; you just need to lead the field team. And the first thing you need to do is take command. From Raven.”

  The young man sits in the chair again, the pistol relaxed and comfortable in his grip. He’s shot several thousand rounds on firing ranges outside these walls.

  The secret visitor moves to the steel door, knocks on it. It opens, and the secret visitor begins to leave.

  “I’ll need a name,” the young man says.

  The secret visitor stops, turns back toward him again. “What?”

  “I’ve never had a name,” he says. “I’ve always been . . .” he searches, realizing no one has ever called him anything. “I’ve always been here.” He motions at the room with the pistol in his hand.

  The secret visitor smiles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. And what wouldyou like your name to be?”

  The young man concentrates, listening to the buzz of the wasps floatingaround his face. Yes, they will give him his name.

  He smiles at the secret visitor. “Call me Swarm.”

  NINETEEN

  THE NEXT DAY, LUCAS CHECKED DILBERT’S MOVEMENTS AGAIN. SEVERAL trips back and forth between the two addresses he’d memorized, along with a few side trips along the way. More than ever, Lucas was sure he had the location of the next Creep Club meeting.

  Convinced, he moved toward the Metro and started making his way south. An hour later, he stepped off the train and began walking toward Fort Stanton Park. He passed the famous Our Lady of Perpetual Help church adjacent to the park and kept going south, pulling the image of the map into his memory as he moved. At the next intersection, he turned east and walked for two more blocks, then south for another block.

  Here was a neighborhood of buildings that stood largely empty; in contrast to the gleaming buildings of downtown DC, these structures held only ghosts and memories. Shattered panes of glass in the windows resembled the jagged teeth of animals, as if they were giant, beached sea monsters, fossilized by years of disuse.

  Lucas found himself slowing as he walked, pulling his shoulders in, keeping his head down, warding off the eerie feeling these buildings gave him. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, a sense of gloom infused the air.

  He found the address he was looking for, an old cinder-block building that looked like it had once been a hotel. Or maybe an apartment building. He circled around to the back of the building, careful to avoid stepping on the trash that littered the old lot: cans, molded paper boxes, a rotting mattress, a partially disassembled bicycle.

  He scanned the first-floor windows and found what he’d expected: the sideways CC symbol, scrawled on a concrete sill.

  Lucas continued walking, moving to the abandoned building next door. A large sheet of plywood had been affixed over the building’s back door, but the wood had been pried off and hung lazily by a few nails now, letting Lucas into the building easily.

  He stopped once he’d stepped into the anonymity and darkness of the building, listening. Vagrants were obviously using this building—okay, every building on this street—for crash pads, and he didn’t want to surprise anyone. People had an image of homeless people as pathetic figures looming in the shadows of the streets, wrapped in dirty blankets and old clothing, but quiet and docile.

  There were those people, of course. Mostly the drinkers: people who poured themselves into bottles of fortified wine or, as they became steadily more desperate, cold medications and rubbing alcohol. By and large, when these people weren’t drinking, they were in a stupor.

  But Lucas had spent enough time on the streets to know that the drinkers were only a small portion of the homeless. More often, you met people who were mentally unstable, kicked out of group homes because they had no insurance and no families. Or people who went from high to high searching for more crack or crystal meth. Often, the people in the throes of their highs became violent and aggressive.

  Inside office buildings, Lucas didn’t have to deal with the people who inhabited the lost shadow city every night. But he met them, often enough, when he was returning from one of his various odd jobs, or when he was out on the streets doing a bit of panhandling himself. Or when he was at the Salvation Army picking up new clothes.

  After a few moments, when he’d heard no screaming or thrashing inside the building, Lucas stepped farther into the darkness. He found the wall closest to the Creep Club building and lay down next to a cracked window smeared with pigeon guano. As if on cue, he heard the flutter of pigeons up above him somewhere.

  He lay quietly for several minutes, studying the Creep Club building with his spotting scope and
watching for any activity. Watching, especially, for signs of Dilbert. The guy had been here several times during the last few days.

  Lucas thumbed on his TracFone and checked the time. He was guessing the Creep Club meeting would start at the same time as the previous one: 7:00 p.m. If that were the case, he had only about forty-five minutes before showtime.

  Lucas moved back through the bowels of the derelict building he now occupied, then to the Creep Club building next door. Near the CC insignia scrawled on the basement window, he found an old wooden door with a padlock and a warning sign reading PREMISES CONDEMNED. The only problem was, the door’s padlock was broken, hanging uselessly on its hasp.

  Without hesitating, he grabbed the door handle and pulled. It opened a few inches before sticking on the chipped concrete surface below him; obviously the door had sagged in its frame and was no longer able to open fully.

  It opened more than enough, though, for Lucas to sneak inside. He squeezed through the opening, scanning the still hallway ahead of him. Somewhere deep inside the building, he heard a soft rumble. Something like an engine running.

  He paused, adjusted the pack on his back, and moved forward. Down the first-floor hallway, he found the elevator, its doors closed and waiting. He didn’t even bother, knowing the building had no electricity. He could possibly pry open the elevator doors, use the shaft to make his way throughout the building. But he only had forty-five minutes—less than that now, he reminded himself—and he couldn’t chance being caught by a member of the Creep Club.

  He had to be quick and light. His guess was they would again meet on the second floor. Perhaps higher, but the second floor was most likely. People were creatures of habit, and even in the Creep Club, they would unconsciously try to recreate their meeting space in the familiar Stranahan Building.

  Near the elevator, Lucas found the stairs and began to climb. Most of the building’s interior was covered with a thick layer of dust, but he noted that the dust on the stairs had been kicked away by recent activity. Many people had been on the stairs.

  Or, more likely, one person had been up and down these stairs many times.

  He made his way up one flight of the concrete steps, stopping on the landing before doubling back on the second flight. The noise was a bit closer, a bit clearer now, and he was sure he knew what it was. Lucas put his foot on the next step and easily moved up the second flight; the door to the second floor was propped open by a crumbling cinder block.

  Staying on his toes to keep his steps light, Lucas moved down the hallway to the only spot on the second floor where he saw light. As he moved, he listened for movement, voices, any sound that might indicate other people on the floor with him. But all he could detect was the low rumble, closer and closer.

  Finally he arrived at the doorway, noticing how the light spilling from it illuminated several footsteps in the dust of the abandoned floor. The light, weak though it was, exposed flecks of dust still airborne.

  Lucas stepped into the light and looked at the room, knowing he was alone on the floor. For now.

  Inside the room, he saw a red diesel generator on the floor, humming away. A length of flexible tubing led away from the generator’s exhaust and to a circular hole cut in the glass of the room’s window. The rest of the window was covered in dark plastic—garbage bags, he guessed—to cover the lights.

  Next to the generator were a television on a small stand, hooked to a computer and cam, and a stand-alone lamp. In front of the TV, several chairs spread out in a haphazard pattern. The chairs looked like they were from somewhere else. Rentals, even.

  Lucas breathed in the dust and continued to scan the room. It was on the small side, but not tiny. Maybe it had been a meeting room or break room in better days. A few pieces of furniture and junk were pushed against the back wall, thrust into the shadows. One of those pieces, Lucas saw, was an old Steelcase desk. The desk’s back opening was against the far wall, with the modesty panel—complete with a small hole for cords—pointed toward the rest of the room. The hole was roughly the size of a coffee cup, more than large enough to give him a clear view of the entire room, provided he kept his face hidden in the shadows underneath the desk.

  Perfect.

  Lucas walked to the desk and pushed it away from the wall. Immediately, downstairs, he heard a woman’s voice: “Hello?”

  Okay, he’d have to move fast now. He squeezed behind the desk, then into the small space between the desk drawer and sides, finally lifting the desk slightly before pushing it back into place against the wall.

  It was a tight fit, to be sure, but Lucas had been in much tighter spaces. He turned toward the modesty panel, making sure he could peer out of the small hole as he folded his legs beneath him. Now he sat, hunched in an extreme yoga position, and waited. He willed his body to go still, to turn off its self-awareness, and felt his breath and heartbeat slowing. Within seconds, he was able to switch into his monitoring mode, his body in a deep trance while his mind—his senses—crackled with heightened awareness.

  Several seconds later, he heard footsteps in the hallway outside. A woman’s step, he could tell. Eventually she entered the room, carefully clutching a handgun ahead of her. This one was new, Lucas noted; he hadn’t seen her at the previous meeting.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice came from out in the hall, and the woman spun the gun toward the voice. In a moment, she lowered the gun as Dilbert walked into the room.

  “Oh. Hey, Dilbert,” she said. “Thought I heard something.”

  “Probably me,” he said, entering the room. “I’ve been getting this place ready all day.” His hand absently went to the lump on his temple, scratched at the red surface. He winced a bit, decided to stop scratching.

  The woman had put away her gun now. “What happened to you?”

  Dilbert moved to the TV, made a great show of checking connections from the camera and computer. “Yeah. Well,” he said, “guess we’ll talk a little bit about that tonight.”

  “About what?” A third person stood in the doorway, this one a man Lucas recognized from the previous meeting. He couldn’t immediately recall the man’s name until he called up images of the meeting and replayed them in his mind. In a few moments, he had it: Hondo.

  Within minutes, the room was filled with nineteen people; Lucas had counted each and every one as they entered. Almost all the people from his previous meeting, plus another five he hadn’t met.

  Obviously, attendance at this meeting had been highly encouraged.

  The only person missing, as far as Lucas could tell, was Donavan. This gave Lucas an immediate queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He pushed away the queasiness, focusing on the meeting happening in front of him as Snake brought it to order.

  “Okay,” Snake said. “Looks like we have a good turnout tonight. Thanks for coming.” He paused for a few moments, nodded at a few murmurs, and continued. “Obviously, we have some . . . issues to deal with. We’re only missing a couple of people, and one of those people is Donavan.” Another pause. “Anyone heard from Donavan?”

  “Not since the last meeting,” someone offered.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Snake said. “Now, those of you who were here last time know Donavan brought a . . . visitor. Someone he wanted to recruit into Creep Club. But that didn’t pan out so well. His friend, who called himself Humpty, didn’t have the stomach for what we’re doing here. Fair enough. No hard feelings. Except.”

  Snake held up a copy of the Metro section of Sunday’s paper, with Lucas’s face on it. “Except this. Anyone recognize this face?”

  More murmurs among some of the assembled Creep Clubbers.

  “Yeah,” Snake said, answering his own question. “That looks, to me, like our friend Humpty. And as you’ll notice when you read the article, Humpty’s got himself involved with one of Donavan’s projects.”

  “The ATM people,” someone said. Lucas couldn’t see who it was.

  “Bingo. So what does it
mean? Don’t know. Not for sure. But let’s just say I’m not surprised to find Donavan missing. And I think we should all hear what Dilbert has to say.”

  Dilbert stood and walked to the front of the room. He nodded at Snake, clicked the trackpad on the computer. Immediately, footage of the Delgado couple flooded the screen—Dilbert’s previous video, edited to the music.

  “I think most of you remember my Delgado project,” he said.

  “I’ve been working on it for quite a while. I showed a rough cut at the last meeting, for those of you who weren’t here. But I needed just a few more shots—something special to complete it.”

  Dilbert paused, licked his lips, and Lucas shivered. Even from this distance, even in this cramped space, he could see the feral hunger, the madness, in Dilbert’s eyes.

  Dilbert paused his video. “Saturday night I was back there, doing some work in the basement. Getting some footage. But someone tripped the alarm while I was there, and . . . and that’s all I really know about that. Someone hit me, that much I know.” He rubbed at the huge red spot on his head again, making sure everyone saw. “But when I woke up, I was in a car with . . . Humpty. The guy Donavan brought.”

  “This was last night?” asked Hondo.

  “Night before. Saturday night. Pretty late. But here’s the thing: no one’s seen Donavan since the last meeting.”

  “So?” said Hondo.

  “So,” said Snake, joining the conversation again. “We think we have a Benedict Arnold. Think about it: Donavan shows up with this Humpty guy out of the blue, who immediately tries to start a fight with us—comes in and insults who we are, what we do. Then they both disappear, and suddenly, Donavan’s project shows up in the paper—with Humpty’s face on it. Then, Saturday night, they show up at Dilbert’s project—”

  “Wait—you saw Donavan there?” said another. “I thought you said no one’s seen him since last meeting.”