The name Kressler is familiar, too, but I still have to put things together through context. “If that’s the case, you both could be at risk around me.” If they’re concerned, they don’t show it. We reach the top of the stairwell, and a whiff of cow manure and dried hay almost overpowers me. “Sorry, I need to stop for a second. My eyes are watering…”
“Both of you stay here. I’ll get the car,” Roebuck says. Once I can see again, I notice both the stairwell and elevator shaft are covered by an emptied barn. “Be right back.”
Fynn waits until after he leaves before she hands me her phone, showing me a photo of a gray-haired woman with deep burn scars on the left side of her face. “Your name is Anna Kressler. Your brother nearly killed you over forty years ago.”
The memory isn’t as strong as the flashes, but I remember leaving as my brother asked—then doubling-back to the warehouse once he believed I had gone home. I remember the pain and heat of the blast and cringe. “It was an accident…”
“He just accidently blew up a warehouse with you inside of it?” Fynn’s tone turns angry when I hand her back the phone. “You were paralyzed from the neck-down, blinded in one eye, burned on almost the entire left side of your body—”
“By a bomb I designed—not Ron,” I interrupt, and her eyes widen. “I was fifteen years old. Ron was barely seventeen. If I had never touched any of our father’s programs, maybe the EIP would have left us alone. Maybe we both would have turned out to be better people. I don’t know.”
Roebuck pulls a small black SUV into the barn. Once he realizes Fynn and I aren’t getting inside, he shuts off the headlights and opens his door. “Hey, I just got a message from Rossetti. The timer on the device activated without anyone touching it. They have about three hours.”
I look at Fynn for a reaction. She hasn’t told Roebuck who I am yet, but I’m not sure why.
“Do you have somewhere nearby where we can set up a live 3-D feed?” I ask. Fynn doesn’t immediately answer. “I just want to show them everything I tried—try some other ideas if you’ll let me. It will save them some time.”
“There’s the Des Moines office,” Roebuck suggests, but he’s starting to sound concerned. “Beth?”
“Let’s just go.” She opens the back passenger door, and I get inside—testing my door handle to see if I could get out if needed. It doesn’t work.
“We sometimes have suspects in the back,” Roebuck explains, and he pushes a lock control as Fynn gets inside. “Try it again.” My door opens this time, and I know it’s my last chance to run before things get any worse. The thought of watching someone else die using my instructions feels worse than if I could be there in person. “It’s not exactly against IBI protocol, but we don’t recommend riding with the door open.”
I hesitate. “Could a Hannarian ship get me to Atlanta in time if you contacted them?”
“Maybe,” Roebuck replies. “The problem is reaching them right now, but I think they would help us if we asked. I could try.”
“We don’t know if Rossetti’s team actually has three hours.” Fynn’s tone is harder, and she seems worried that I’m trying to gain access to a Hannarian ship for some other purpose. “Des Moines isn’t far, but we’re wasting time.”
“All right.” I shut my door and try to think. “What about borrowing one of your phones? Can I at least speak with the agent in charge there?”
“Yeah.” Fynn brings up a number on her phone but sends the call to the car’s speaker. The contact is only under the agent’s first name—Jenna.
“Rossetti,” the agent answers and then switches to a live video feed we can see on the car’s console display. She doesn’t appear to be much older than Roebuck. “I was worried I couldn’t reach all of you. Let me see if I can zoom in on this thing.”
It takes her a moment to steady her phone, but the device and casing are similar to the one at the hospital—enough to be from the same person or group.
“Who removed the front cover panel?” I ask. “We were told no one had touched it yet.”
“It looked like this when we arrived, but the timer wasn’t running. It just started up on its own maybe ten minutes ago.”
I recap everything I remember trying at the hospital as Roebuck drives. Agent Rossetti seems to understand even without us having access to 3-D feed.
“I’ll go ahead and remove the receiver and reset the timer. The building has been cleared, so we hopefully won’t have the issue of a gunman shooting the bomb this time. If the countdown resumes again, we can jam a secondary signal—only problem being we’ll also lose contact with you and everyone else.”
By the time we reach the IBI field office in Des Moines, the agents there have cleared us a path from the parking garage to their conference room. We pass a uniformed security guard, but he seems focused on something else ahead of him and ignores us. Once we’re inside, we pass a second guard seated at a desk. He looks almost identical to the first—to the point I’m internally questioning if it’s the same man. Roebuck notices my confusion but gives me an odd look.
“Twins?” I ask.
“Security androids.” He shudders as we pass a third guard but keeps walking. “They’re not allowed to carry anything beyond rubber bullets and pepper spray, but the whole uncanny valley with this latest generation bugs me. I’d rather they just looked like robots, but idiots kept attacking them—scratching up the metal and stealing their parts to resell. Apparently these human-looking ones last about 15% longer—which translates into being more cost-effective than both the originals and the humans that those replaced. Somehow that doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about my own species.”
“Hey—it’s my species, too.”
Fynn walks beside us but stays focused on her phone until we reach the conference room doors.
“Even with everything I’ve seen with this job, I still want to believe in the better part of people.” She shows me a text message thread between her and Agent Rossetti from the past few minutes. Despite Rossetti’s earlier confidence on the video feed, she’s scared—worried about her husband and son. “I really hope we’re right about you.”
• • •
The conference room has been emptied—no chairs or table. I start searching the floor for some form of goggles when a scene projects itself around me. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to make me feel surrounded by a group of five agents. Rossetti is the only one I recognize.
“Can you see me, too?” I ask. Two of the other agents give me personal space as if I’m actually in Atlanta with them. “This is new to me.”
“It’s new to us, too—borrowed Hannarian tech, but they’ll deny it if anyone asks,” Agent Rossetti gestures for me to follow her, and I’m able to crouch down and look at the device. My hand goes through their outer wall, similar to a hologram, and I can feel the wall of the conference room just past it. “Thank you for your earlier help. If it comes down to it, we can continue studying and resetting this one. I’m just concerned that there are others nearby.”
“Do you know what the original countdown would be right now?” I ask, looking at the current timer of over ninety-seven hours. “Probably closer to two hours, maybe?”
“That sounds about right. Why?”
“Assume that it hasn’t actually changed—or that it could return to the original at any point. That happened to me even after I removed the receiver.”
“I’ve been recording ever since we got here,” another agent replies. “Give me a minute, and I can get the exact time for you.” After he finds this, he shows us a timer program on his phone.
One hour and fifty-four minutes.
Another flash hits, and I can’t force myself to snap out of it.
The warehouse is clean and doesn’t look as if it needs to be demolished. There aren’t any people like Ron said, but there are hundreds of stacked crates—each containing six-figure robots ready to ship to customers. I wonder how many hundreds of millions the company’s ow
ners will receive once they’re destroyed. The majority of that would have to go back to the customers, though—refunds—unless this was some weird way to delay production…maybe to cover some other failure that would crash the company entirely. Either Ron didn’t question anything he was told, or he lied to me. I don’t like either possibility.
I have plenty of time—an hour and fifty-four minutes—and disarming it shouldn’t be an issue since I designed—
“Anna!” Agent Fynn is in the conference room with me, shaking my shoulders. “Please, we don’t have time for this.”
I look past her. One of the security androids walks by the window and looks in at us. His—its—expression is neutral, but this one has scars on its skin-like material. They’re similar to the gunman at the hospital.
“He wasn’t human—the man I drew before,” I whisper, unsure how well the androids can pick up sound. “There’s an EIP connection to all of this, but it’s not what you think. Look up everything about the warehouse attack where I nearly died—relay it to your other offices. You’re all in danger, but I don’t know how to stop them.”
She nods, but the skepticism hasn’t left her expression. “Focus on the bomb. We’ll handle it.”
She leaves, and I notice a portion of the agents in Atlanta have left. Only Rossetti and two others have stayed.
“Is any of the security there robotic?” I ask. Rossetti nods, and I can tell she overheard most of what I told Fynn. I hope that I haven’t said too much and made things worse. “Be careful.”
I hear gunfire, but it’s not coming from the Atlanta feed. It’s coming from the hallway.
• • •
My first instinct is to lock the conference room doors and move to a corner. Rossetti recalls her team, and I realize they’re all staying to guard the bomb in Atlanta. I step out where they can see me again.
“I’m going to try to help the agents here. If a security android shows up there, it probably has the countdown transmitter somewhere inside it. Don’t let it anywhere near the bomb. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
When I leave the conference room, the hallway is empty. I can hear Roebuck and Fynn yelling—other voices I don’t know—and the occasional shot and clang against metal. The androids are likely bullet-resistant, but they’re not invulnerable. Kind of like me. I make myself go toward all the noise instead of away from it.
A hand grabs my shoulder—padded metallic fingers clamping down on me. My body reacts, and I slam the android to the floor. It twitches like an injured insect—metal limbs flailing—and I bend down and crush its skull. It still continues to move, and I realize the main control and power source are in its abdomen. It takes me a minute to get to them, but then all the mechanics stop.
My other senses kick in, and I’m able to distinguish the human agents from the androids by body temperature. Nearly all the agents are heading to a middle floor of the building—the androids following after them—and the agents are slightly out-numbered. I need to put myself between them.
There’s a fire escape on the exterior of the building, and I open a window outside and begin to climb it. It’s rusted, but the scratches on my hands heal within seconds.
I’m almost to the top when I see a hand extended to help me inside. It’s Roebuck.
“How did you know I was—”
“We have a way of tracking Hannarians.” He doesn’t elaborate and leads the way down the hallway. “Nothing we’ve tried is shutting the androids down. Is the Atlanta team having the same issue?”
“If they’re not, they will soon. The androids and bombs are connected somehow—same designer, maybe. I disabled one, and I can see some similarities.”
We turn a corner, and three of the androids are trying to get inside the same room. They turn and rush toward us. Roebuck gets in one shot before the entire group knocks me to the floor. They’re pulling at my arms and legs—digging into my skin and nearly snapping bone—but my fear causes my body to lock up. They’re going to pull me apart if I can’t snap out of this. Come on!
I finally roll and pitch one against a wall—nearly hitting Roebuck in the process—and start fighting off the other two. Roebuck recovers from being startled and finds a better angle, shooting the second one until it releases me and stops. I rip the chest plate from the third and pull out its power source, and it runs out its remaining energy. Roebuck approaches and offers to help me up, but I shake my head.
“I don’t want to accidentally hurt you. Give me a minute and keep watch. There are still eight left in the building.”
Seconds after I say this, I’m unable to sense the remaining androids. I worry that they’ve adapted until Fynn and another group of agents meet up with us.
“TWI customer service finally responded—claimed this was an isolated incident and that they’re working on the problem.” Her eyebrows furrow as she sees me. “What happened in Atlanta?”
“I thought all of you needed help.” I stand up and start toward the closest stairwell. “I warned Rossetti about the androids—told everyone I’d be right back.”
When I reach the conference room again, it’s empty. The hologram generator is flickering, but there’s no image.
Fynn tries calling Rossetti and then several other numbers. No one answers.
• • •
The next half-hour becomes a waiting game. There’s nothing major on the Atlanta news feeds—no detonation at the power station but no response from any of the IBI agents either. Fynn and I don’t leave the conference room, hoping we’ll reestablish contact.
“I’m not upset that you helped us,” she finally says. “You could have left while we were all distracted, but you didn’t. I’m just worried about Rossetti and her team.”
“Me, too.” I look at my wrist, and the blue light has returned to an occasional pulse. “Do you know what happened to my brother? All the time I spent in and out of hospitals is coming back, but it all blends together. Ron never visited me—even after the EIP got him out of prison. I always thought it was because he was angry I didn’t listen to him…that I got him caught.”
She brings up Ron’s criminal profile on her phone, and I read through it. It’s much worse than what I had imagined, and I realize why Fynn hasn’t told Roebuck or anyone else my identity. Telling anyone could put me in danger, even within the IBI.
“Why are you protecting me?” I ask.
“Because my uncle would have…” She looks at the door. “I wish he was here.”
Before I can say anything, the projection of the Atlanta power station returns. I can see the bomb—the countdown inactive again—and a few seconds later Agent Rossetti walks into view.
“We’re all right—had to use the jammer when we got cornered, and it took time to bring in new phones and cameras. All the security androids are shut down. TWI is calling it an isolated incident, but the other field offices are still taking precautions.” She looks at me. “You probably saved our lives with the heads-up. Thank you. I know things were a little rushed earlier. Did Jernard send you to help us? I don’t think I’ve met you before.”
“Not exactly,” I reply. Rossetti seems confused and looks at Fynn.
“Roebuck found her at the Chicago site,” Fynn explains, but she hesitates when more of Rossetti’s team comes into view. They seem more curious than anything else, but I’m not sure who I can trust. “She has amnesia, so she’s staying with us until she recovers or Jernard contacts us.”
“So when do we get our own alien superhero?” one of the other agents asks, grinning at me as Rossetti elbows him. “Welcome to the big team. I’m just glad you’re on our side.”
I look down at my arms. I’m covered in blood from the fight but have almost healed again. “Me, too.”
Epilogue
Even with being over a million miles apart, I’m still nervous. The projection of a Hannarian ship’s interior fills the conference room, and I’m face-to-face with Jernard. I know him as Hannaria’s Ambassador from news broad
casts, and he hasn’t aged since I was a child. His eyes flare bright blue when he sees me.
“Ronald Kressler did this to you?” He’s speaking English without an interpreter, and his tone seems more horrified than angry.
I take a deep breath. “My more recent memories are still a bit hazy, but he came into my hospital room one night and injected me with something…some form of the bioweapon, I guess. I didn’t know who he was at the time—just thought he was just one of the staff.”
An alert on one of the ship’s consoles distracts him for a second, and he turns his back to me to shut it off. “I had a friend send Agent Roebuck a dose of the cure. Did he give it to you?”
I take the syringe out of my jacket pocket and inject it, and the trails of light in my arms start to fade and then disappear. “I’m still going after TWI. They’re behind the bombings, and someone there connected Ron Kressler to the very worst of the EIP. I’m not making any excuses for his actions, but the people who influenced him are still out there—could be doing the same to other children. I want to help Roebuck and Fynn rescue as many as possible.”
He stares at me but then nods in agreement. “If you need anything else, tell Fynn and Roebuck to get word to us. We’re being pulled in several different directions right now, but we’ll help you any way we can.”
“Thank you.” I’m starting to feel nauseous, either from the cure or wanting the conversation to end before I slip up and say the wrong thing. “I hope this isn’t rude, but I really could use some sleep. I’ll probably be over sixty again by the time I wake up.”
I start for the door.
“Anna,” he says. I don’t know how, but he knows who I am. I stop but don’t turn around. “Your brother wanted me to kill him, but I saw what he was hiding beneath all the theatrics. It scared me.”
It's A Bird! It's A Plane! Page 5
