“We don’t even know if getting close to these landmarks is going to work.” Jonah rubbed his tired eyes.
“You’ve still got the letter, right?” said Cole.
“Yeah, it’s here in my bag.” I patted my backpack.
“Then, let’s go for a walk,” said Ilya, clapping his hands.
We followed Ilya in a line. Nobody spoke. The tension eased as the blaring sun took center stage in my mind. I hadn’t expected heat and high UV in Vancouver. Without the cover of downtown towers, we baked slowly under the early summer sky.
In a few minutes, Ilya led us off the road onto a grass-lined dirt path with a view of the open space under the north end of the Lion’s Gate Bridge. “Well, I think this is as good as it gets.”
The dirt path opened up to a concrete landing. We stopped as soon as we reached the bridge’s shadow, facing the ocean inlet. Under the near mid-day sun, we stood almost underneath the grid of green steel. Trees flanked us on the right, rising high enough to block out the ocean-side, industrial, and real estate to the west.
“Should we go right?” Jonah gestured in the direction where the giant sulfur pile should be located.
“Yeah, we’ve already got a ballpark idea here. Let’s start walking,” said Cole.
“Feel free to do your vision-quest thing.” Faith lifted her purple dreads in a medusa-like pose, mocking my authenticity.
I frowned back at her. Then, I fished the letter out of my backpack and looked around as the others walked ahead. Apart from recognizing the bridge, probably because of its iconic status, the area was totally unfamiliar. I took the letter out of its envelope and ran my hands across the typed surface. Nothing happened. Voices carried from the group ahead, but I had fallen behind them. I wanted to take in everything around me. This is why I picked up a black piece of rubber that looked exactly like a bottle stopper.
The road dissolved in front of me, but I didn’t go far. I found myself back in front of the rundown building. This time the bay door was closed, but daylight added detail to the neighborhood. The cream-colored stucco building didn’t have any signage to suggest ownership or occupancy. The sulfur pile seemed farther away. I scanned the face of the building for a street number, but saw nothing. I turned around and around until I caught sight of a street sign. Aspen Lane! I concentrated on the ground beneath my feet and forced the vision to end.
“Stop!” I shouted. “We’re looking for Aspen Lane!”
Everyone came to a halt and turned. I looked down at my hand and unclenched my fist, the rubber stopper dewy with sweat. My hand picked up dirt and debris from whatever mystery muck the stopper had rolled through on the ground.
“I see it. It’s the next road up here,” called out Ilya, farthest ahead of the pack.
Anticipation flooded my body and I started running toward them. Finally, we’d have some answers, wouldn’t we?
Chapter 2
At the intersection of Bridge Road and Aspen Lane, I immediately saw my precious cream building half a block away. The yellow sulfur pile peeked out behind the structures in the distance, barely visible as the coastline curved out into the inlet.
I suppressed the urge to run. In broad daylight–and in real life now–we had to be discreet. “It’s the plain cream building ahead, the one with the brown trim.”
“You’re sure?” said Ilya.
“I am. I had another vision.” I presented the grubby piece of rubber on my palm. Ilya walked over to the building while the rest of us hung back.
“Where did you get that?” Cole frowned in disgust.
Faith’s nose wrinkled and light glinted off the metal stud she always wore. “It looks like garbage.”
“No, it looks like the kind of stopper we used in the lab.” Jonah leaned in for a closer look and I caught a whiff of the musky aftershave I’d come to crave.
“I found it on the road back there,” I said with a nod towards the spot.
Ilya returned from evaluating the entrance. “The lot is fenced around the sides and the back. If we want in, we’ll have to either hop the fence or pick the lock on the front door. There’s nobody in there. Nobody I can hear, anyway.”
“What about those loading bays? I could try lifting the door if they’re not alarmed,” Cole said. “Anyone watching will think we’re authorized to enter.”
“Good idea.” Jonah rubbed his whole face.
“But there’s no way to know if there is an alarm.” Faith crossed her arms. “I can check to see if electric current is near the frame, but doors like this are probably rigged with motorized openers.”
“If an alarm starts, will you be able to short it, Faith?” I asked.
“I’d have to find the right circuit and melt it.”
“We’re expecting this place to be abandoned, right? I say we go for it,” said Jonah.
Cole nodded and walked towards the nearest bay door while we followed. He gripped the large metal handle at the bottom of the door and pulled it up as though it were made of paper. Cole stopped the door about three feet off the ground. We all froze, waiting for a wail or a siren. Nothing came.
“Good to go!” Ilya smiled.
“I’ll go in first. We still don’t know for sure this place is empty,” said Cole.
Nobody argued. Cole ducked under the door into the dark open space. We waited in silence. Faith and Jonah peeked in after Cole. I looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching. I scanned windows of the few parked cars around us. I squinted at building windows in the distance in both directions.
“Nobody noticed us. There are a few bookkeepers in that building.” Ilya gestured to the nearest structure. “And that one,” he said pointing at the warehouse across the intersection, “has one forklift driver and a handful of packers, all of them concentrating on what they’re doing.”
“You can tell all of that from listening briefly?” I said.
“It’s easier to block out thoughts from people standing next to you if you cast a broader mental net, so to speak.” Ilya grinned at me. “But you were practically yelling your panic about someone watching us.”
I looked away. Even after practicing with Rubin, I’d never get the hang of someone listening to my private thoughts.
Cole emerged from the open bay door, brushing his hands on his thighs. “The place has been stripped. Looks like it might have been a grow op of some kind, but it’s hard to be sure. I don’t think we’re going to get much here, but we can poke around in there.”
“Irina got a vision from a piece of rubber trash. Anything is a potential lead now.” I heard desperation in Jonah’s voice. His passionate blue eyes revealed how intensely personal our mission was for him. Jonah’s increasingly unstable variation would claim his life if we couldn’t help him.
“Let’s get on with it then. Out here we’re waiting for an audience,” said Faith.
I slipped under the truck door with ease, being the shortest of our group. The others followed and Cole slid the door shut behind them.
Row upon row of long rectangular basins stretched from one end of the warehouse to the other. Only a few desks in the corner nearest the entrance suggested any kind of office presence.
I reached into one of the basins and dusted dry dirt off the side. Cole was probably right. This was a growing facility of some sort, but what could Innoviro want with plants? Had Ivan planned to change our world so much he’d need new plant life? Or would his group of variants need new food sources?
The terrifying part of Innoviro’s transformative projects was the veritable sea of inadvertent problems they could create. Ivan wanted a legacy of chaos and he seemed accustomed to achieving his goals. Could plant extracts spark or enhance variations? I never did learn the ingredients of the lavender liquid Tatiana and then Brad both shot into my arm.
One desk held a few papers. A brochure for sushi and a real estate notepad. Another had a pen. A personal possession! I smiled and picked it up.
The room around me transformed and the basins were full of plants again, under hanging fluorescent lights. Slender aluminum tubes reached up over the basin edges like large insect arms. A bell jingled off to my left and a fine mist burst out of the arms in unison.
I walked up to one of the basins full of tiny lush bluish ferns. A small plastic label protruded from the dirt that read, RESISTANT STRAND 122B. Farther down the line, I could see a kind of evergreen seedling.
As I got closer to the evergreens, I saw glints of red in the spiky leaves and tiny spindly pods on the branches. Flies buzzed around the plants and I saw one of the pods open like a glistening green mouth. A fly landed inside and the mouth snapped shut. I shuddered as I contemplated the size those little mouths could be if they grew proportionate to the rest of the seedling.
I turned around to the desks in the corner. No longer bare, one was occupied. A balding man sat in front of a computer with his back to me. I walked as quickly as my vision self could manage.
The man typed furiously as I came around the desk to face him. He was older and slightly overweight with a ring of straw blond hair on an otherwise bald head. He looked up at the door behind me and frowned. I turned around to see Tatiana and two men enter. I recognized one of the men from Innoviro, but the other was a stranger. Both wore plain slacks and golf shirts. Tatiana wore her typical pencil skirt, buttoned blouse, and stilettos combination.
The bald man stood to greet Tatiana and his height struck me. The man was tall, even while slouching. In spite of his height, he looked defeated, dominated by the displeased look on Tatiana’s face. She opened her mouth and the scene evaporated. I was back in the dim empty version of the warehouse. I regained my focus to find everyone staring at me intently.
“It was a greenhouse. They were crafting weird plants. And Tatiana showed up. She looked grouchier than usual.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples to better concentrate. “The guy sitting at this desk was responsible for the place. I think Tatiana was about to give him hell when my vision ended.”
“Did you learn anything else? See anything else?” asked Ilya, leaning towards me.
“So all we know now is that this was some kind of variant grow show.” Faith swooped her arm at the empty basins.
“Did you see any printed material? Anything with a name or an address?” asked Jonah.
“The guy at the desk had an ID badge clipped to his breast pocket, but I couldn’t make out anything on it,” I said.
“So, have we made any progress at all?” said Cole. He rested his hands firmly on his hips.
As my friends started to argue about the chances of successfully tracking down any Innoviro activity, I opened and closed each of the drawers in the bald man’s desk. I reached the top center drawer and a plastic-sheathed card slid forward. The bald man’s face looked up at me next to bold print, Dr. Kingston, George T.
I picked up the card and the angry voices beside me were silenced. I stood in a lush meadow watching Dr. Kingston survey a small field of bizarre plants. The carnivorous evergreens and their giant mouths loomed over teal blue ferns with pearl flowers. A glass and screen enclosure held large colorful bees that shimmered as though bathed in a slick sheen of gasoline. It looked like an alien planet, surrounded by BC’s steep coastal mountains.
A portable plastic table behind Kingston held specimen jars with plant fragments and a stack of pizza boxes with RIVERSIDE PIZZA HOUSE printed in bright red letters. I moved to step towards Kingston and a hand grabbed my arm, pulling me back to the North Vancouver warehouse.
“What happened? Why did you–,” I stopped.
Jonah lay unconscious on the ground.
Chapter 3
Ilya released my arm and I dove to the ground next to Jonah. Faith and Cole were already kneeling beside him. I repeated my question. “What happened?”
“He collapsed,” said Cole, checking Jonah’s pulse.
“It’s not that hot out. We weren’t running. We’re even near the ocean for fuck’s sake!” Faith yelled as she pushed her hair back from her forehead, sending her eyebrow ring out to prominence.
“We can’t take him to the hospital,” said Ilya.
“Let’s get him back to the hotel,” I said.
“How are we supposed to get him there? Carry him on the bus?” Faith shrieked.
“Faith, put a lid on it unless you want cops over here!” hissed Cole.
“Cole will carry him over his shoulder and Ilya will make Jonah look like a duffle bag,” I said.
“We’ll get him in a cab. Cole and I will keep the ‘bag’ on our laps,” Ilya said as he tapped on his phone.
Our hotel room was an inadequate clinic and we were feeble medical aids, but we all agreed not to resort to a hospital unless Jonah took a turn for the worse. Faith took the first shift with him, holding his hand firmly and stroking his hair gently. I bit my lip and said nothing. Nails bit into my palms when I gripped my fists so I wouldn’t slap her. I reminded myself that I needed to debrief Ilya and Cole about the garden in the field, so I turned my back on Jonah’s sick bed.
“I was about to tell you before Jonah passed out. They’ve transplanted the seedlings from that warehouse into an outdoor field. Kingston supervised the whole thing. I still don’t know what they’re doing with the plants, but they had a mutated strain of honeybee there as well–shimmering like a metallic rainbow. They were beautiful.” The image of the bees drifted back into focus. How could something so magical be malicious?
Cole flicked the thought away with his hand. “We still don’t know what he wants with those plants. It could be some benign little side project.”
“I don’t think so. In the warehouse vision, Tatiana looked pretty intense. I don’t think she bothers with silly little nothing projects.”
Ilya gently removed the ID badge from my backpack. “Is this the same guy?”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t working alone, although he seemed to be in charge. I still haven’t seen a glimpse of the other researchers.”
“Did you see or hear anything to help us find the place, Irina?” said Ilya.
“Not really. The mountains were pretty steep, and close to the site, compared to the mountains north of the city. But we might be able to find Riverside Pizza. Kingston had a stack of pizza boxes, like he’d been living off those pies.”
Cole took the badge from Ilya’s hand and examined it closely while Ilya turned on my laptop.
“I’ve never seen him. I don’t think he ever came to the Victoria office. Not while I worked there. I’d remember a dude like this,” said Cole as he peered into Kingston’s face.
Ilya quickly found a website for Riverside Pizza House in a mountain town called Hope. Google Maps told us we could get there in an hour and a half with no traffic.
“We should take my car this time. The Greyhound might take us to this pizza place, but if we’re lucky and Irina has another vision, we’ll need wheels to get out to a secluded grow site,” said Cole.
“We should take the car.” Ilya gestured with his thumb between me and him. “You should stay here with Jonah and Faith. She’ll need your help if Jonah takes a turn for the worse.”
My stomach sank as I looked over at Jonah’s sleeping form. Faith heard us, but she didn’t look up.
“Are you comfortable loaning us your car?” I asked.
“After every
thing that’s happened in the last couple of weeks, sharing my car seems like the smallest risk.” Cole rubbed his chin.
“Depending on where this leads, we may have to leave it behind at some point,” said Ilya.
“Let’s worry about that later.” I still felt like I dragged all my friends into a zero sum game. Stopping the work Ivan had started would force each of us to sacrifice far more than we could afford.
“We’re all in this because we want to be. We know there will be sacrifices–we’ve made quite a few already. And remember, I can literally speak for everyone,” said Ilya. Cole nodded his approval.
“Will you get the hell out of my head already?” Heat filled my face.
Cole tossed his car keys to Ilya and I stole one more glance at Jonah. Faith’s focus on him didn’t waver, while I felt Cole’s dark brown eyes on me. And Ilya could hear every angst-ridden thought. We had to focus on Ivan’s legacy and Innoviro. I also knew this was all going to get worse before it got better.
Vancouver’s mid-day traffic slowed our progress to a crawl, but I refused to make small talk with Ilya. In spite of my power to see through time and space, I would never have his gift for reading minds. It probably wasn’t the best gift to have. Some thoughts nobody wants to hear.
I still wanted to know where I stood with my friends, and with the man I’d started to love. I stared out the window as Ilya drove. We cruised in silence until the roller coasters of the Pacific National Exhibition popped out of the cityscape on our left.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you something embarrassing and personal about myself?” Ilya kept his eyes on the road ahead.
My head snapped in his direction. I could feel the glare on my face.
The Compendium Page 2