by Lee Driver
“So this is how a director lives,” Sara said.
Dagger felt a cold sweat prickle his skin. His eyes immediately riveted on a second floor window. Why that one? He had the image of a gun in his hand pressed to a man’s forehead. He shook the picture from his mind and trudged up the walk.
“What’s wrong?” Sara asked. “Your pulse has elevated.”
There wasn’t much he could keep from his partner. It was a curse and a blessing. “I don’t know.”
“Think you’ve been here before?”
They reached the front door but there wasn’t a doorknob. Dagger pressed his hand to the door but before he could give it a shove, the door hissed open.
“That was weird.” Sara stepped closer. “Wait.” She listened for sounds from inside. “Something is running, something electrical, maybe a refrigerator or air conditioning.”
They stepped into a marble foyer that was the size of a basketball court. Sunlight streamed in from windows on the roof. They were too large to be skylights. A curved staircase led to a second floor. There was something clinical about the house. Everything was white and chrome.
A whirring sound came from a hallway. Dagger pulled his Kimber and waited. A robot about four feet tall whizzed across the floor. “Hologram?”
“No.” Sara grabbed his arm. “Wait.” The metal machine had a round head and feet that were round disks. Flashing lights circled the round disks, blinking in rhythm to its movements. “It’s a vacuum cleaner.”
“A what?”
“I know that’s a peculiar word for you,” Sara said with little humor. Dagger wasn’t known to do much in the way of housecleaning. “The last person out of this town not only didn’t turn off the lights but also didn’t deactivate the toys.”
“I just need to know if it’s armed.” Dagger pointed the Kimber at the robot. It halted and slowly turned its head in Dagger’s direction.
“I would say to put your weapon away, Dagger,” Sara said, her voice strained. “As soon as it stopped moving, a red light appeared in that square of glass where its eyes should be. It thinks you pose a threat.”
Slowly, Dagger put his gun away and held his hands out. “This is stupid,” he whispered. “Having to show some piece of metal that my hands are empty.” The red light faded and the robot went about its business, disappearing through a doorway, the hum and swishing of the vacuum growing fainter, replaced by voices, whispers, coming from the upstairs.
Dagger took the stairs two at a time, again pulling his Kimber from its holster. He briefly wondered why he hadn’t found any high tech weapons in this town. Did they keep them locked up or take them with?
With her lightning speed, Sara reached the top stair before he did and placed her hand on his chest to slow him down.
The voices were louder now, but they sounded intimate, soft murmurs, something sounding like kisses.
Dagger and Sara hugged the wall as they made their way to opened French doors. From the hallway they could see a platform bed, drawers in the marble wall which probably served as a dresser. They reached the doorway and peered in. A woman was cuddling a baby and smiling up at a man who vaguely resembled Dagger. The man’s hair was military short. The woman had long, dark hair and a face that could grace just about any magazine cover.
Sara gasped when she saw the similarity. “You have a wife and baby?”
CHAPTER 31
“Not to my knowledge.” Before Dagger didn’t trust his memory. Now he had a hard time trusting his vision. Yes, the husband did resemble him somewhat, but married? The woman didn’t even look vaguely familiar. “Holograms?”
“Yes,” Sara replied.
They ignored the obvious family display of affection and searched the room. If there was a desk it was pretty well hidden as were any indications of a closet or nightstand.
“Wow.” Sara walked over to the shelf which was lined with individual fish containers. Their bright colors were striking— royal blue, scarlet, bright red, with long, flowing fins.
“Holograms?” Dagger barked out as he aimed his gun at the shelf.
“YES.” Sara stared at him in shock. “They are only fish. Chill.” She turned back to the shelf and read from a gold plate on the wall. “Betta splendens. Native of Thailand and very aggressive toward other male bettas.” As each fish maneuvered in its container, it would catch sight of the fish next to it and go into a frenzy. Its fins ballooned and the fish darted at the reflection in an attempt to get to the other betta. “Aren’t they beautiful?” Sara took a step back, her face reflecting realization. “I remember my research. Scientists have been studying these fish since the 1930s as it relates to the aggressive nature of man.” Sara repeated things verbatim as she recalled details from her memory. “They believe it is linked to an endocrine disrupting chemical and at one time the military thought of duplicating it in man to create a super sol…”
Soldier. Dagger didn’t have to finish her thought.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Is that what BettaTec is all about? Is this where it all started?”
“Let’s get out of here.” Dagger stalked out of the room and rushed down the staircase. A wife and baby? Why didn’t he remember? And why did seeing the fish bring back memories of small fingers, his fingers, tapping the glass? And was Sara right about someone creating super soldiers? Demko’s abilities were still fresh in his mind. Skizzy did mention genetically engineered soldiers as Doc Akins was removing the cover to the chip in his neck. And how Demko changed after looking at Dagger reminded him of the betta fish.
He was out the front door and down the walk before Sara caught up with him. Five years ago he had succeeded in destroying BettaTec’s one satellite. Then a year ago he found out they not only had one but two satellites in orbit, more sophisticated and capable of destruction. But what happened before those five years? The military training, Special Ops, police academy— was all of that fabricated?
Sara was surprisingly silent as they stalked back to the courtyard. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. The possibility of having a family somewhere was enough to silence him let alone Sara. But more importantly…where were they now?
Dagger stopped in the center of the courtyard. “Map,” he called out. The map materialized in front of them. “Lab.” A bright yellow light pulsated on the map. The lab was the next building over from the maze of cubicles. “Can you find your way back to the elevator you used?”
“I think so. Why?”
He turned to face her. So young, so innocent. So fragile. “I want you on the elevator and out of here.”
“No way.”
“It’s not open for discussion.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’ll drag you there if I have to, now get out of here.”
She stepped in front of him, hands on her hips. “You and how many Demkos?”
Dagger almost barked out a laugh but it caught in his throat as he remembered the two men Sara had flung fifty feet and over a truck cab. It pained him to do it but the only way to get her out of harm’s way was to knock her out and put her in the elevator. His fist came out with lightning speed but was met by her opened palm. Before he could blink, she had his arm behind his back and twisted up.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Dagger. You won’t be any good with a broken arm.”
Dagger struggled to pull his arm free, tried grabbing her with his left hand but she pinned that one, too. He winced as she pressed his arm further up.
“Promise me you’ll behave.”
Dagger heaved a sigh. Maybe to get her out of here he would just have to shoot her. “I promise.”
She released her hold but played it safe by stepping several feet away.
Dagger shook the blood flow back into his arms. “Let me put it another way,” he said. “When and if I get out of here, I won’t go home, unless you leave now. Your choice.” He turned his back on her, expecting her to plead, shed some tears. But all he heard were footsteps. Dagger turned to se
e Sara stomping off. He hated being a bastard. He was so good at it when he directed it toward Sheila but with Sara it hurt. She didn’t understand that he was trying to protect her and she sometimes overestimated her ability to protect him.
Sara stormed down the stairs, through a passageway and pounded her way into the building. She took angry swipes at the tears blinding her. “That arrogant S.O.B. If it hadn’t been for me Mitch Arnosky would have stabbed or shot him. Dagger would still be hanging by his thumbs from the catwalk when those jewelry thieves robbed us. But no.” She stalked down a wide hallway, glass walls on her right. The rooms beyond the glass appeared to be surgical rooms. What looked like robotic arms hung from the ceiling. The walls and tiles were constructed of the same white marble in the hallway.
Her pace slowed as she realized no matter what Dagger threatened, she couldn’t leave him. Not here. Not like this. Not without knowing that he ever made it out of this place. She stopped and took in her surroundings, not sure if anything looked familiar. She didn’t remember passing the surgical rooms when she first arrived. The elevator had emptied into an office, not a hospital wing, and she had turned and immediately found an exit door. She didn’t see any exit doors in this wing. Her gaze was drawn to a metal catwalk at the end of the hallway behind her. Metal stairs descended from the catwalk. Above the surgical rooms was a glass bubble. Did people witness the surgeries?
A knocking sound came from up ahead. Sara cautiously continued down the hallway, stopping every few seconds to listen. Beyond the surgical rooms was a door. A closet? Storage room? Several other taps came from behind the door, then a hiss which sounded like a snake.
“Oh God, I hope it’s a hologram.” She patted her pocket. The sub-compact was still there. Slowly she pulled it out and hoped she still had bullets left. She didn’t remember how many she had used up on the tanks. Her steps faltered as she reached the corridor. She stood for several seconds and listened. She didn’t detect a heartbeat. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alive. More tanks? The tapping was clearer now, quick tap-tapping. It was coming from around the corridor. She stole a glance over her shoulder wondering if she should go back outside, maybe try another entrance.
When Sara turned back around a spider with a body the size of a motorcycle helmet was fifteen feet in front of her. Another crept along the wall and paused. Sara heard a loud shriek and realized it was coming from her. She fired two shots but her hand shook so much the shots hit the wall. “I HATE SPIDERS!” she screamed.
A bullet whizzed by her head and struck the spider in front of her, blasting it into pieces. A second shot knocked the other spider off the wall. It broke into several pieces.
“Are you okay?” Dagger asked as a smile spread across his face.
“What are you laughing at?” Sara demanded.
Dagger used his foot to kick the metal pieces of the body away. “It’s a robot.” He bent down and flipped the body over. Sara crept closer. The underside had a power pack similar to the one the tank had. Two round black eyes shifted left and right as though the spider had some type of intellect and was searching for its attacker. “Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Dagger was in full blown laughter now.
A sudden realization hit Sara. There was something all too familiar about these. Skizzy had helped Dagger create robot spiders last year, far more advanced than these. They were closer to the size of a normal spider and Dagger had used them for audio and visual surveillance.
“That’s how you knew how to create those other robot spiders.” Sara jammed her fists at her waist and waited.
“What?” Dagger straightened but the smile never left his face. He just gave a helpless shrug. “What else could they be? Everything else down here is either a hologram or a robot.”
“Now I know I’m not leaving you alone. You want to threaten not to come back to Cedar Point…fine. But I’m not leaving.”
Dagger’s smile faded. So far they hadn’t run into anything life threatening but it was the unknown that was dangerous. Will something trigger a deadly gas? Are there fault lines in the area? He again considered punching Sara out and dumping her into the elevator if he could ever find it. Climbing up one mile of stairs carrying Sara wasn’t something he looked forward to.
Dagger stared over her shoulder then moved slowly around her and toward a large metal door.
“What is it?”
The glass window on the door was frozen over. “Maybe all the inhabitants of this place have been frozen,” Dagger said. He swiped a hand across the glass but it didn’t do much to let him see what was inside. There wasn’t a door handle or a latch, only a panel to the right of the door with an image of a hand.
“Place your hand over the image,” Sara suggested.
“Why would my hand…” But Dagger never finished. Sara grabbed his hand and pressed it against the panel. There was a loud hissing and they both lurched back as though expecting something to emerge. A hallway led to another door which hissed open.
Frigid air blasted from the opening and as the frosty air cleared they could see a cave of ice with several pedestals jutting from the floor of the cave. Dagger waved her to follow but Sara shook her head. “The door might close on us. I’ll stand here and hold it open. You go.”
Dagger entered, wrapping his arms around him to ward off the chill. “It looks like a Doomstay Vault.” He brushed a hand across one of the labels on a pedestal. “It gives a list of all the seeds that are being preserved.”
“I thought the Doomsday Vault was in Norway,” Sara said from her sentry post.
“There are fourteen hundred seed banks around the globe. But why here and why is BettaTec in charge of one of them?”
Sara stepped closer to see the size of the cave. “How do they keep everything running in this place?”
Dagger studied a panel on the wall inside the cave. “Photovoltaic technology. It converts sunlight directly into electricity.”
Sara glared at him with one perfect eyebrow lifted. “You know about the tanks, the spiders, how the place is powered, your prints opened the vault yet somehow you aren’t sure if you have ever been here before.”
“Yeah, puzzling isn’t it?”
Sara held up her hand to silence him. “Listen,” she whispered.
Dagger stepped away from the vault and the two doors closed. He strained to listen but other than the faint hum of the ventilation system, he didn’t hear anything out of the usual. Then he heard it. “Violin music?”
They moved cautiously down the hall, Dagger on one side, Kimber in hand, and Sara on the opposite side. The music slowly increased as they crossed a corridor. They stood at the intersection and listened. The music was coming from up ahead, in a sector marked Central Control on a brass sign above the hallway.
Dagger wanted to tell Sara to hang back out of harm’s way but she was already several steps ahead of him. She was as stealthy as a cat with a curiosity to match. He hurried to catch up. They passed what looked like office doors to their left. Other than desks and chairs the rooms were bare.
Sara stopped abruptly. The marble wall was replaced with floor to ceiling glass panels. They stepped into an empty room with one high-backed chair facing a blank wall. The violin music was coming from this room. But from where?
“I don’t see any dials on the walls,” Sara said. “No radios, CDs.” She stared at the ceiling. “Do you think there are speakers up there?”
Dagger stepped forward, curious about the one square of black marble near the center of the room and to the right of the throne-type chair. Sara tugged on his arm.
“Don’t.” She scrutinized the walls, studied the ceiling again. “We’re being watched,” Sara whispered. “I can feel it.”
Dagger could feel it, too, but couldn’t find any monitors. He pulled Skizzy’s toy from his pocket. It was still operating. Two things happened simultaneously. A podium rose from the black marble and a large computer monitor appeared to hang from the ceiling. Dagger took a step back as a faint light started at t
he top of his head and flashed down his body.
“Oh my God,” Sara gasped. “It gave you a retina and full body scan.”
A message appeared on the monitor.
Welcome home 617
CHAPTER 32
Dagger took two more steps back but then a woman appeared on the screen. She had dark hair and brown eyes. It was the same woman they had seen with the baby but she appeared older. Fine lines etched the corners of her eyes. Her hair had hints of gray.
“I knew you’d come back, darling.”
“Darling?” Sara whispered. “I told you she was your wife.”
Mother
“Your mother?” Sara said. “Maybe she’s the Connie that was mentioned on Demko’s computer hard drive.”
On the lower right side of the screen the word KONRAD flashed.
“The computer is answering your questions,” Dagger said. “The computer is Connie.”
She created me
“You must have been the baby we saw her holding. What do they do here?”
The monitor displayed what looked like a sleep clinic. Boys had wires attached to their scalps as they slept.
Training and reprogramming
“Programming for what?” Dagger suspected the answer. The remote facility, the surgical room, the high tech equipment. He was starting to get a picture.
Pursue and exterminate
“Exterminate whom?” Sara almost shouted the question.