Ava… she thinks it was me that made the improvements to my jet pack.
“Oh, I think she knows you had some help. She knows I’m in here, and I felt her eyes on me when she was looking at you. She just might not be sure, or might not want to say she knows. Either way, it’s okay as long as we get those jalopies to go hurrieder, right?”
Hurrieder? What the…
“Oh, come on, I thought your sense of humor was improving, but maybe not. Just tell her you’ll do whatever you can to help.”
Oh, boy.
“Sure, Dr. Bhat, I mean Darsha. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
As she spoke to her techs, Mr. Kane, I mean Bill, chatted with Cheri, which gave me a chance to talk to Ava a little longer. Do you think… things seem to be going too smooth, you know what I mean?
“I know exactly what you mean. Suddenly, we’re getting help from every side. Let’s assume it’s the calm before the storm, sonny boy. And keep an eye on Kane. I’ll continue to monitor his vitals and we’ll see if he’s for real.”
I don’t know… he seems pretty real to me, but he’s tricky… and he talked about treatments he’s been getting, and about being more advanced than Ernie or even Hassim. Any way to see if it’s true?
“Hmmm… I have an idea. When we’re done here, tell Kane you have an urge to visit Ernie in the Bright Hand jail. Then, when we get there, just say what I tell you. We’ll see what Kane can do.”
Oh, I get it. I wanted to go see Ernie, anyway.
“That’s my boy. Pay attention now, Dr. Bhat’s talking to you.”
You mean Darsha.
“Yes, that’s what I said. Aren’t you listening?”
Oh, boy.
Darsha, looking puzzled, said, “Are you okay, Lucas?”
“Oh, oh yeah, I was just… sorry, what were you saying?”
She glanced at Cheri, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I was saying, let’s get these units strapped onto you, and you do whatever you did to the other engine to improve it.”
“Oh, sure, no problem, Dr., ah, Darsha.”
She stared at me again, her eyes narrow and lower lip sticking out. “Does he do this often?” she asked to no one in particular.
“Oh, yeah, all the time,” said Cheri, patting me on the back with her new arm. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Darsha, you have two of these amazing suits ready, and they look to be sized properly for Ms. Kim and me.”
“Indeed, they are. I had an inkling you might go along with them this time. Call it intuition, if you like.”
“Or clairvoyance, or perhaps a little birdie sat on your shoulder and told you. Who might that little birdie be?”
Darsha snorted, which sounded funny coming out of this tiny, serious woman. “We’re in a cavern, Billy. The only birdies in here are bats.”
Bill bent over laughing, his brilliant white teeth glinting in the overhead lights. “I said you could call me Bill, but perhaps I should reconsider. Billy is going too far.”
As we chuckled, the techs removed the engines from the carbon suits. “Ready, Lucas? Let’s try Billy’s first,” said Darsha, doing her best not to smile, but being only partly successful.
I pulled on the jet pack, and almost immediately felt the three long, slender ‘fingers’ extend out of my back into the nooks and crannies of the jet pack engine and control module. “Hm. It looks like Mr. Harutyunyan and Ms. Houng did an excellent job of maximizing this engine. There’s a little more I can get out of it before we exceed its’ physical limits, though. Hang on.”
The fingers wormed their way through the engine, stopping to click this or that, turn a control knob a bit, and do some other things that I couldn’t identify, then came sliding back out of the module. “Okay, I was able to achieve about fifteen percent improvement with this one. They won’t go anywhere near as fast as our jet pack, but they’ll move pretty good. Probably a little over three hundred fifty KPH, while running smoother. Increased battery life by about the same amount, so it has roughly seven hundred kilometers of range. Benji made some enormous improvements, but we squeezed a little more out of it. Now on to the next one, sonny boy.”
We repeated the process and got similar improvements out of Cheri’s engine and control module. I told them about the upgrades, and Bill said, “Lucas, how did you do that? We saw nothing.”
I turned around to show him the three little holes where the fingers went through my shirt to get to the jet packs. “Ahh, I see. That really is an incredible system your father devised. Well, thank you, Darsha, and Lucas. Oh, heck, thank you all. Well, are we ready to head to the Bright Hand air strip?”
“Umm, before we go, we need to see Zoey Perez one more time, and I… I wanted to stop by the Bright Hand jail and talk to Ernie. We were making friends before he went crazy and tried to kill me, and I… I just wanted to talk to him. It won’t take too long.”
Bill crossed his arms and put his hand on his chin. “Are you sure, Lucas? You might not get what you are looking for out of a meeting with him.”
“That’s okay. I just… I wanted to make sure he knows I don’t have any hard feelings.”
Cheri raised her new arm like a student in school wanting to ask a question. “Umm, hello, remember you were going to see about getting me one of those ‘treatments’ you were talking about?”
“Ahh, yes, of course. It seems we have much to do and not much time to do it, so we should get moving. We don’t want to be late to the Area 51 party, eh?”
“That’s it, sonny boy. Now let’s see what this sucker Billy can do…”
16
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC
121952 11:12
-Whoa, that was kind of rough, right, (SVC)? I thought those guys were on solidly on board, but they put us through the ringer. We have too much time and capital invested for members to go south on us now.
-For once I totally agree. You must play this quite carefully… to spin it so that the rest of the LFP see things in the proper perspective.
-Yeah, we’re… wait a minute, what do you mean, ‘you must play this quite carefully’? Am I on my own here? Are you trying to wash your hands, put me on an island?
-Really, Director, I think you should know better than that by now. It was simply a figure of speech. Of course we are in this together.
-I think you have the impression that this is easy, that I became the director because no one else wanted to do it. Is that what you think?
-Oh, no, quite the opposite. I think no one else wanted to do it because it is too difficult.
-Look, (SVC). All of us in the LFP, all of us, are self-important, self-starter individualists. We wouldn’t have gotten to this position if we weren’t. Add on top of that inveterate techno-nerd whizzes and you have quite an idiosyncratic bunch. The truth is, none of us could have done this on our own, including me. I need you with me, but it has to be one hundred percent. If it isn’t… well, you need to let me know, okay?
-I don’t think I have ever heard you utter so many words for which one would need a dictionary app.
-Very funny. Come on, (SVC). Let me know which way the wind blows.
-If I say a number less than one hundred percent, will you shoot me with your laser pistol?
-You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Seeing me in a moment of personal weakness and need must be fun for you. We have important things to get to, you know.
-Then why spend time on this trivial insecurity? Sorry, that sounded terribly insensitive. It’s just that we’ve been through enough together that I shouldn’t have to answer that question, that’s all.
-Say it, (SVC). I need to hear it so we can move on and get to some constructive work. Come on.
-We are equally obstinate, aren’t we? All right, yes, I’m with you one hundred percent. Because we both know math intimately, I won’t go with any imaginary number past one hundred percent.
-There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, let’s go o
ver the plan for the post-rescue sequence. This will be tricky. Well, it’s all tricky, but this is the part I’m worried about the most. We can’t let the dad slip through our fingers. We have to nail down every detail. But first, since I feel like we had our first fight, how about a little make-up lunch?
****
“ Ernie’s one tough dude. I know you can handle him, Lucas, but in the meantime he could make things a bit of a mess. Are you sure about letting him out of his cell?” asked Cheri, as we zipped along in Bernie’s electric cart toward the entrance to the North Hall and the Bright Hand jail.
“Tell her yes, you need for him to see you up close so he will know you’re sincere, and then wink at her so she’ll know there’s an ulterior motive. She’ll get it.”
I did as Ava directed and Cheri seemed to understand, because she winked back and said no more, while clutching her new arm as if she was afraid it would disappear. A minute later we pulled into the entrance to the North Hall, and about a hundred meters into the cave, came to a stop in front of the massive steel door to the Bright Hand jail. The same two guards in all-black military-style uniforms, their heads shaved completely bald, stood by the door. Bill flashed his brightest smile and said, “Hello, Luther, hello, Virgil. We’re going in to see Mr. Mesa, please.” He shook hands with both men and afterward patted them on the shoulders, and their movements and Luther’s stuttering reply told of their surprise with his physical display of… was it affection? It seemed like it…
“Well, ah, a-are you sure, Mr. Kane? We’ve had to dart him several times since he’s been here because he keeps tearing up his cell. He’s dangerous, that one. You hear that thumping? That’s him hitting his head against the cell door. The other couple of Americans are manageable, even a bit friendly, but he’s a nutter with the strength of a rhino, a bad combo I reckon.”
“I appreciate your concern, Luther, but we’ll be fine,” said Bill, patting him on the arm.
“We should go in with you, then. We’ve tried to keep a shock collar on him, but he keeps breaking them, so he doesn’t have one on at the moment.”
“I think we can manage,” he said, gazing at me.
“Okay, but we’ll be just outside. Here we go.”
Luther pressed his hand to the pad next to the door, there was a click, and the door swung open. Across the carved-out common area were a series of cells bored into the wall of the cavern, all with doors that appeared made of solid steel. Immediately, the pounding was five times as loud, but cut off as Ernie stood and peered out through the small pass-through hole in his cell door.
“Ha! I knew you’d come, I knew it! Round two, coming up!”
Ava spoke into my head, and I repeated her: “Ernie, I don’t want to fight, I just want to talk to you. If we let you out, will you maintain?” Maintain? That sounded weird…
There was a pause, and then Ernie, in a calmer, slower voice, said, “You just want to talk?”
“Well, yeah, I mean… I thought we were becoming friends, and then you did all the stuff you did, and… will you come out, just sit here and talk for a minute?”
“My… my head isn’t right. I never know if things are… real… I thought you wanted to fight me… really beat me down this time.”
Oh, no… poor Ernie, he’s totally messed up… Ava, I don’t think this will go the way we hoped it would, and to tell the truth I don’t really want it to… I feel bad for him, they’ve used him up and then threw him away… it’s not right.
“Let’s see what happens when he gets out of his cage. It may all be a ruse to get in close enough to attack. If not, then I agree, we don’t need to use him and toss him aside like the Americans have.”
Do you still want me to repeat whatever you were going to tell me to say?
“Let’s play it by ear for now. I’ll let you know if I need to take over.”
Play it by ear… hmm… I guess I’ll just say what I think and see what happens…
“I didn’t want to fight you the first time. You made me do it, remember? Come on out, let’s talk for a minute.”
“Okay, but I might do some crazy stuff. I can’t… I can’t stop myself sometimes. It’s like… they put something in my head and it’s mal… what’s that word?”
“Malfunctioning?”
“Yeah, that’s it… Okay, I’ll come out, if you’re sure.”
I glanced at Bill, and he grinned, but not as broad as usual. “Your door us unlocked, friend. Come on out,” he called.
“It is? Man, I’m so dumb sometimes,” Ernie muttered as he slowly swung the heavy door aside and stumbled out. Oh, boy… he looks terrible… look at those purple lumps on his head, and sizeable chunks of his hair are gone… and his hands are totally busted up… he looks a little less puffed up than before, too…
“He’s not getting any treatments in here. It’s only been a little over a week, but you’re right, it’s already noticeable. Just talk to him for now.”
Ernie crept toward us as if he was afraid to get too close. “Seriously, man, I might do something crazy. You can put me down if I do, right, Lucas?” he moaned, as he approached the row of benches across from us, the two rows separated by about three meters. “I mean, I’ll try to be cool, but I don’t have such good control anymore… you know what, I think this is a bad idea. I’ll just go back to my room.”
“Hey, come on, Ernie. Just have a seat. We go way back, right? I wanted you to check out my new arm,” said Cheri, giving him her sweetest smile. Sometimes I kind of forget that she’s a girl because of how tough she is, but that smile… she’s just about as cute as a girl could be…
“Oh, hi, Chi. Oh, yeah, look at that thing! That looks cool… hey, can I tell you something?”
“Well, sure, Ernie. Come on, have a seat. You don’t look so good, old buddy,” said Cheri, almost whispering.
Bill, his smile completely replaced with a grimace, said, “This is terrible. We need to get you some help, Ernesto. I should have come earlier.”
Ernie looked at his feet, making the lumps on his head even more obvious. “Aww, it’s not your fault. I did a lot of crazy stuff, and to tell the truth… I wouldn’t have let anyone get near me. Partly because I’m always angry, and part because… well, I’m scared to tell the truth. Para… para… what’s it called?”
“Paranoid?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, that’s it. I’m messed up, dude.”
By now Ernie was sitting on the bench across from us. “You need assistance, and the proper kinds of medication. We can help you, Ernesto. I will order it to be done immediately,” said Bill, his voice a bit shaky.
Are those genuine emotions?
“I’d say so. Kane’s vitals are off the charts for him. Maybe he’s human after all.”
Well, of course he’s… oh, an expression, right?
“Indubitably, sonny boy. Focus, now.”
Looking up and smiling crookedly, Ernie said, “Oh, sorry, Mr. Kane, I didn’t say hello. If you send in someone to help me out, make sure they put me under first. I don’t want to hurt any doctors or anything, but I might not be able to stop myself, okay?”
“Hey, Ernie. You said you wanted to tell me something? I know we don’t have much time, and I wanted you to get a chance to say what you wanted to. We’re… is it okay if we tell Ernie where we’re headed?” asked Cheri, leaning forward on the bench.
Ava, what do you think?
“I don’t see any reason not to. It’s not like he can get out of here and communicate with the Americans.”
I glanced down the row of cells on the opposite side of the common area and saw Dillon and the other two American agents peering out of the pass-through holes in their doors.
What about those guys?
“If they haven’t gotten out by now, they’re not going to. I think you’re good to drop some knowledge on him.”
Oh, boy. Maybe when we do our final reboot in a hundred years or so, I’ll understand you better.
“Good luck with th
at, sonny boy.”
I peered at Bill, and he said, “I don’t see any reason not to tell him, but this is your mission, Lucas. It’s up to you.”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, while looking across at Ernie, slumped on the bench opposite us.
“Yeah, well, we’re on our way to rescue Lucas’ dad. It’s gonna be tricky, but we have a plan, and we can’t wait any longer.”
“Whoa, that’s crazy, that’s… he’s in… where the, the UFOs are, right?” said Ernie, excitement creeping into his voice.
Cheri, leaning forward again, said, “Yeah, that’s right, Area 51. We’re heading out right after this, but Lucas really wanted to see you before we left, and so here we are. Now, you said you wanted to tell me something, and I’m intrigued.”
“Oh, that? Aww, it’s nothing, really. It’s just… I had, umm… I had a huge crush on you back when you were training me way back in San Diego. I, umm… I told Lucas about it, but I thought I should probably admit it to you.” When he was done, Ernie covered his face with one huge, bloody hand.
Cheri stood and walked over to Ernie, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s all right, don’t be embarrassed. I always knew, anyway.”
Half-standing, Bill said, “Ms. Ki…” and in my mind, Ava said, “Uh-oh, get ready for action…”
17
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC
121952 15:37
-Ahh, Director… one of our sources in the Bright Hand cavern is reporting that (WK) has been going around shaking hands with everyone, patting people on the back, and generally behaving affectionately. And he is together with the boy and the Asian girl, Chi Kim, while doing it. Almost as if they are on a campaign of some kind, or perhaps a farewell tour. Oh, one more thing… they have visited Dr. Bhat, and exited her lab with large bags of equipment, the same with the Bright Hand armory, and they are now… well, this is interesting. Apparently they are visiting with Ernesto ‘Ernie’ Mesa, the ‘enhanced’ American with which the boy fought before his trip to Brazil.
Reassemble (Singular Book 4) Page 10
