by A. J Tata
The footsteps made a slight rhythmic crunching far on the other side of the building. She guessed that it was a guard checking out what had made the lights turn on. She put her glasses back on and secured the strap tight to the back of her head. She fumbled for a second with the band but got it secure again. While she could still see, hear, feel, taste, and touch, the glasses suppressed some of that and helped her stay within her own comfortable environment.
A short distance off the path she saw a stand of tall grass, like at the beach. She walked over, pulled a bunch of it out, and made a broom of sorts by holding the stalks in her hand and using the seed portion at the top to wipe over her footprints. She crawled on all fours and did this all the way back to where she had started. It seemed like lost time, but better safe than sorry, as Ms. Promise sometimes said.
She was satisfied that she had covered her tracks and learned a good lesson at the same time. Avoiding the path, she walked to the corner of the building at about the time the lights went out. She couldn’t see as well, so she stopped and waited until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She heard an owl at the top of one of the trees on the other side of the fence. She had read every book she could about different types of owls, and she was betting it was a great horned owl, which was the most common in North Carolina. It would have a wingspan almost as tall as she was, over four feet, which meant it could probably swoop down and grab her with its sharp claws. She kept her head down.
She turned the corner and walked until she saw a door on the side of the building. She still had her grass-stalk broom in her hand, so she walked across the dirt path and looked in the mesh window. It was dark inside, and she couldn’t see much. She did notice there was a keypad next to the door so she entered the Cefiro number sequence that she had memorized.
It worked.
She heard a snick, like a dead bolt sliding, and reached up and turned the doorknob. She pushed the door inward and stepped onto a concrete stairwell. She left her grass broom inside, by the door, for when she finished exploring the building.
Misha was safe from the owl now, and she felt her breathing slow for a moment, but it began to race again at the thought that she had gained access to the building. She climbed the stairwell and opened another door. There she stepped onto a metal grate that was elevated above a giant factory floor down below. There were a few lights on, so she could see some cars and small airplanes. She recognized the cars as Cefiro’s and guessed that this was where they tested models, like she had seen in those crash test dummy commercials.
Holding the round metal railing, she looked through the top and bottom rails, leaning as far forward as possible. She saw some office doors and heard one of them open and then close.
Misha froze as she saw a man in a black jumpsuit walk into the middle of the warehouse, which was about the size of a football field and at least five stories up. He walked to the far side of the building, opened a container like the ones she had seen on big ships when her father would take her to the port. The man disappeared for a minute, so Misha walked around to the other side to get a better angle. It might have been stupid to do so, but she was curious.
The metal catwalk went all the way around the inside of the building. As long as no one came up here, she was fine. Glad that she was not wearing shoes and that her feet were tough—the metal had edges on it—she got to a position where she could see inside the container. The man was opening wooden crates that looked big enough to hold about fifty apples. Her father had taken her to the mountains one time, and they had picked apples and had put them in a wooden crate about the same size as these. She remembered they had picked fifty and she had helped her father carry the crate back to where he paid for them, though she thought he had done most of the lifting.
Misha couldn’t determine what was in the crates. The doctor had said she had excellent eyesight, and what she saw was little brown things about the size of the bats that were flying around outside. These items might have been shaped like them, too, but she couldn’t tell. Maybe they were car or airplane parts.
Though she didn’t think that Cefiro was in the airplane business.
She took a minute to study her surroundings and saw a door just like the one she had come through on the opposite side of the building. It had a toolbox next to it, like someone had been working and then had just stopped. Its lid was open.
That was when she noticed a man step through the door she had come through on the other side of the building. She didn’t think he noticed her, but she waited until he started walking, and then moved quietly to the opposite door—the one near the tool box—on her hands and knees. The metal cut into her, since her hands and knees weren’t as tough as her feet. She wasn’t bleeding yet, but it hurt.
She reached the door, squatted, looked in the toolbox, grabbed a screwdriver, and turned the doorknob. She made herself skinny and slid through the small crack she had created. As the door clicked shut, she heard two men shouting.
After racing down a concrete stairwell, she opened the door to the outside and realized she was on the complete opposite side of the building from her pod. Misha also remembered she had left her grass broom in the building. They would just have to wonder about that. She jumped from the concrete stoop to the field, avoiding the dirt path around the building. Figuring it would be quicker for her to run making right turns, she bolted to her right.
In her periphery she noticed the moon shining off a river and wondered if it was the Cape Fear River, which was not far from her house, exactly twenty-two miles. Her parents had taken her canoeing down the Cape Fear one time. They had seen all different kinds of wildlife, birds and fish especially.
The sand burrs dug into her feet and hurt with every step. Her heart was thumping and racing, and the wind whirled around her glasses, making her eyes water, as she heard the door slam about the time she turned the corner. She had about three forty-yard dashes to do before she turned the next corner. Then she would have to find her pod, knowing that she had counted from the other direction. She held the metal part of the screwdriver in her fist, because her mother had taught her how to carry scissors, and she figured she was best off doing the same thing here.
She had heard footsteps behind her after the door slammed, but now they stopped. She turned the next corner, nearly out of breath. Some of the grasses were almost as tall as she was, and Misha thought of herself as a ghost running through the field. She had always been fast, and she didn’t believe she had ever run faster. Her heart was racing like a motor revving.
Blessedly, she saw the mounds and recognized that she was in the vicinity of her pod. She slowed down so she didn’t make any mistakes. She was curious about the other mounds. Were other children being held here, too?
But she didn’t have time to look, because she heard the footsteps again. This time they were on both sides of the building. They weren’t walking, and they weren’t running, at least not as fast as her. That gave her some time.
She found her pod by recognizing the camouflage netting. The other mounds didn’t seem to have that and made her wonder if they had put her pod here so it would blend in with whatever the mounds were. Kneeling next to the pod, she entered the code, using the weak moonlight for visibility.
Nothing happened.
She quickly entered the code again. Once her father had made her the glasses, not only had her sensory overload dampened, but all the emotions and frustrations associated with not being able to control the overload had lessened also. So, of late, she didn’t get scared easily.
But she was now, because on the second try, nothing happened again. Her hands were shaking badly. Her head ached. She could smell the musty river. Despite her glasses, all of Misha’s senses were on fire. She knew she had to control them. She had to get back in the pod. She stood up and looked to make sure there wasn’t another pod. There wasn’t. Then she realized that she had been rushing and, with her shaky hands, might have entered the wrong number. The keypads usually had a minimum res
et time before she could try again.
She did her best to wait a full thirty seconds. She didn’t think she did, but whatever time she waited worked. She heard the snick, and the pod canopy opened. She made herself skinny again, slid in, punched the number on the inside pad, heard the canopy lock, disengaged her makeshift wiring, and put the display unit back where it belonged.
She could hear the footsteps outside of the pod now, which meant they were close.
Misha turned one of the screws using the screwdriver she had found on the metal catwalk. It would have to be good enough, because she saw a shadow moving toward her.
She rocked slowly and tried to stop, but she couldn’t. Her body was on fire, and the glasses weren’t doing what they needed to do. She shut her eyes, but that made everything worse. All the images from the building were flying through her mind like bats in a cave. She wanted to bang her head against the Plexiglas to make everything stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.
She opened her eyes, kept rocking, thought of her father. His gentle smile. “Settle down, baby girl,” he would say to her right now. “Settle down.” He used to tell Misha that all the time, and she would get frustrated because he couldn’t understand why she couldn’t settle down. Settle down. Settle down. Settle down.
She looked through her glasses and focused. She saw the shadow. It was just one shadow, instead of hundreds of images of the same shadow, so that was good. The eco-pod smelled of new stuff, like a new car. She remembered when her mother had bought a new car and she’d ridden in it. Everything had smelled like new plastic. The glasses had helped her there, too. The smell was not overpowering. She could hear every footstep as if it was super loud, but the glasses’ stem was filtering that sound. She fought her urge to flail and took comfort in her father’s invention. Her father. Her dead father.
She wondered what Katniss Everdeen would do.
Misha pulled the covers over herself and held the flat-head screwdriver in her balled-up fist. For the moment, it was her weapon.
If the man opened her pod and tried to come in, she would use it. She would take off her glasses and let loose on him.
CHAPTER 10
JAKE MAHEGAN
MAHEGAN TOOK COVER WHEN THE LIGHTS CAME ON. THE ENTRANCE from the tunnel was elevated, and he was able to lie in a prone position behind the mound, keeping it between the building and himself.
Remembering the snipers on the roof during the day, he wondered if they were up there now. Had his opening of the tunnel hatch, which was actually disguised as a manhole cover, triggered the lights? It was doubtful, but he couldn’t be certain. The lights poked into the black night like prison searchlights.
In addition to the random animals moving about—deer feeding on the tall grass, rabbits darting in search of food, owls communicating about which rabbits to pluck—he heard a metallic click and a hiss from the back side of the building, the northwest corner. It was a faint sound, but it was there, inconsistent with the natural rhythm of the environment. He heard the sounds of an animal, perhaps scraping in the dirt, but more like the sweeping of a horse’s tail. He was trying to place the noise when a moment later the lights went out. Then, a few seconds later, he heard a door open on the north side of the building.
Mahegan risked a peek around the manhole cover and caught the sound of the door as it clicked shut. He was surprised at himself for not having heard the heavy footfalls of a guard . . . if it was a guard.
Conducting reconnaissance usually required patience, which he could manage, but it had never had been his strong suit.
Then he heard the sound of another door opening, this one on the southeast corner of the building. He slid on his stomach around the elevated manhole cover and parted the tall grass enough to see a flash of blue, highlighted by an interior light, disappear around the corner of the building. Within seconds of the door slamming shut, two men came racing out with pistols drawn. After a brief discussion, they went their separate ways around the building. Both men moved at a slow jog, carrying their pistols at the ready, as if they were expecting confrontation.
Once they disappeared around the corners of the building, he waited another ten minutes, until he saw them reappear at the door from which they had originally appeared. Something had spooked them, but they seemed preoccupied, as if they had a timeline to meet.
He heard trucks in the distance. These were diesels, big Mack trucks carrying heavy loads. He heard the whine and the cough of the engines and the gears churning and shifting. He could hear the tires gripping the road as the trucks suddenly appeared at the back gate on the northwest side of the R & D compound, the same side where he had heard the first door close.
These trucks were now idling with lights out as they waited at the entrance for the two security guards to use their creds to open the heavy-gauge gate. It peeled back slowly in each direction, like the jaws of a mechanical animal allowing prey to enter. The trucks lurched as they started rolling again, like tanks in attack formation. They crawled forward as if wary of infantrymen like him. The empty headlights were like the half-lidded eyes of lurking beasts.
The men walked along the outer perimeter as the trucks followed. They made a sharp right-hand turn on the asphalt that led to the R & D building’s outer wall.
He got his first good full look at the five trucks. They were carrying sea-land containers. In maritime parlance, these were forty-foot equivalents. The two security guards walked toward the R & D building, where a giant door was sliding up. It was at least fifty feet wide and was reeling to the very top of the building, exactly the way a home garage door opened. He could hear chains rattling and pulleys turning.
Each of the trucks made a wide turn inside the building until they were facing out, side by side, like soldiers in formation. After some discussion among the guards and hydraulic hisses, the trucks lowered the containers and disengaged. One of the guards walked the five trucks out of the building. They lined up in single file, this time without their container loads, and exited the compound through the same gate they had entered.
He had multiple avenues he could pursue. Should he inspect the flash of blue that had run toward the mounds? Misha had been wearing blue when he had held her yesterday. Or should he follow the trucks, run along the fence line, and hitch a ride on the back of one of them? Or should he use the separation between the two guards as an opportunity to sneak into the building and conduct further reconnaissance?
The trucks’ drivers were most likely conducting a routine drop-off, which they wouldn’t remember a week from now with a hundred other drop-offs in between. He didn’t think they were players in this scheme, and based on the size of the warehouse, he figured that was a one-time deal.
The blue flash could have been anything, really. His night vision might have still been obscured with the lights having just gone off. While he usually kept one eye closed when in a lighted nighttime environment, he had erred on the side of taking in as much as possible with both eyes, overloading his photoreceptors as his eyes struggled to adjust from bright light to darkness. So he couldn’t be sure what he had seen. It had looked blue, but it might have been an entirely different color, if it was anything at all.
So he went with what he knew to be true. There were five sea-land containers inside the R & D facility. The security force was split up. This was an opportunity for him.
He seized it.
As the trucks were coughing and spitting black diesel into the air, he dashed straight toward the building, heading toward the northeast corner. Being almost six and a half feet tall and 220 pounds, he was not a natural sprinter, but he was reasonably fast. His gait was long, and he pumped his arms to generate momentum. He covered about 150 yards in good time.
The security guard with the trucks was still talking to the last trucker exiting. Mahegan hadn’t seen the other guard but assumed he was tending to the containers.
He reached the dirt path that circumvented the building. It was much the same as the one that followed the fence
line, only more narrow. He took a few deep breaths and steadied his heart rate. He figured he had about five seconds before the guard with the trucks turned around and started walking directly toward him. He was a hundred yards away, and he would be backlit by the dim lights inside the R & D facility.
He slid along the wall, concerned that he was leaving footprints, but he had no other option. At the edge of the mouth of the giant garage door, he looked at the open line of sight and saw the first two containers, but no guard. Mahegan peeked his head around the corner and saw the guard that had stayed inside the facility carrying a pair of industrial-sized bolt cutters. The man walked to the first container on the left.
Mahegan glanced back to the right and saw that the last truck was shifting from idle and climbing up the hill and out of the compound. The guard hit a button that began the closure of the gaping gate jaws.
This was his opportunity. Five seconds to get inside and hide.
He slipped around the corner as he heard the bolt cutters yawn open in preparation for snapping a lock.
A rapid scan of the interior of the R & D facility from the inside showed that it was big enough to house an entire football stadium, like the Superdome in New Orleans or the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. In fact, they could put two football fields in there and use them for practice if Cefiro ever went out of business. The ceiling was so high that football kickers and punters wouldn’t have to worry about any footballs hitting the ceiling.
There were test Cefiro cars and some smaller airplanes that looked like cargo planes. He was intrigued by the airplanes, no bigger than the cars, with fuselages that looked like boxy cargo compartments in the back, below the wings. They were sitting on the concrete floor on their three wheels—two in the front, one in the back—like World War II paratrooper aircraft.
He heard the snick of the bolt cutter and the loud clanging of what must have been a lock skittering across the concrete floor. He was using some gray metal wall lockers along the outer wall as cover, but it wouldn’t hold when the second guard returned and closed the garage door. He moved around to the far wall to his left and saw a stairwell that went down. Above him was a metal catwalk with corrugated, nonslip platforms pieced together to allow observation from 360 degrees around the building.