by L. B. Carter
Stew had no reply.
“I believe it’s both of you,” Henley couldn’t help correcting the implication, gaining everyone’s attention.
The hand at her throat tightened reflexively—not enough to prevent her from breathing or speaking.
“Yes, well, I have you to thank for that, don’t I? But here we are—you are found at least, which means my baby will soon be found and returned to me.”
“What makes you think I’m willing to do that?”
The woman walked closer, ignoring the honking and yelling at their traffic hold-up.
Cars were still being inspected by a few of the remaining BSTU—what, staff? Students? Security guards? It was hard to tell. Either way, they were doing Professor Tate’s bidding, unconcerned about the boy and girl in their her clutches.
In fact, the passing cars were also quick to turn away. Likely they simply wanted to be free from the bridge though they caved to their rubber-necking urges to glance over, which doubly spurred them on to leave fast and avoid becoming involved in the mess. It didn’t disturb Henley; she expected no less. It didn’t change her ultimate fate anyway.
The woman blinked in confusion, her lashes catching on her thick bangs. “I’ll have to talk to your mentor about his standards, too—it appears you aren’t intelligent enough to be in the university if you haven’t yet noticed your ultimatum.”
Henley was insulted. Her mentor had been very proud of her, enjoying spurring her on with harder and tougher challenges when she returned victorious with the solution to his previous task to his surprise. “And you are? Jen took Sirena out from under you, too.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “With help if we’re arguing capabilities here.”
“Well, if you’re implicating low intelligence on her part, I can see where she gets it from. What kind of ultimatum is death versus death?”
“What?” Professor Tate’s brows snapped low enough to dip below her bangs. “I’m offering you lenience.”
Henley wasn’t deceived. She knew the truth. “So, I’ll reveal Sirena’s location to you, and you’ll simply let me go?” Henley shook her head, the man’s palm sliding over the skin of her neck, justifying her words.
“Of course not. You’ll be returned to BSTU where they shall decide disciplinary action for your theft and break-out. But recall that I have sway. I can improve or worsen your sentence.”
Even if she lessened the sentence for escaping, which Henley doubted would do much given the severity of her crimes, she knew what they would do with her at the end. “Termination,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll be terminated either way.” She was never going to get to her sister. It was over.
Jen’s mom shrugged, looking across the water as if Henley’s life—and her sister’s life by extension—was inconsequential. Well, she was BSTU faculty. “They might kick you out. But not if you tell me where Sirena is.” Her eyes bore into Henley’s as she came closer, enticing and encouraging the words from her hostage.
Henley scoffed. “You think I’ll believe they would simply eject me from the university? I know what you really do there. I know how you get rid of those you don’t want leaving and entering the world with the knowledge of BSTU’s secrets. There are some smart enough,” Henley emphasized, “to know that the contract you get us students—your minions without benefits—to sign means the literal form of termination—to the signer. Death,” she spat, her desolation and anger both so intense that tears blurred her vision at the same time she actually flung spittle on the face opposite her.
Stew sucked in a noisy inhalation.
Professor Tate used a corner of her shirt to wipe the offending liquid from her cheek. “That’s why you ran? You think—”
“I know.”
“You’re an idiot if you believe—”
“Not me, B—”
Like he was summoned, Buster’s voice slithered from behind Henley. “Let her go.”
A trembling smile graced Henley’s lips as she stared down Professor Tate in the hands of an unrelenting BSTU… guard or something. Hope slithered into Henley’s heart again at his arrival, offering another option besides death.
“I’m tempted to, honestly.” Professor Tate didn’t seem the least disturbed by the appearance of more BSTU rebels. “She’s no use to me if she’s so idiotic as to believe—”
“Not me, him. He figured out your careful wording,” Henley announced with satisfaction. And he was here to prevent it from happening—again.
Professor Tate’s eyes drifted past Henley, likely resting on the unstoppable force that was the Bus. “I recognize you. You? You’re the idiot who cannot tell the definition of a word based on sentence syntax, taking a quite literal meaning from something where there is none? I must admit, I’m surprised. I’d heard talk of you from other faculty. Such a shame.”
There was no response. Henley blinked the tears from her vision, waiting for Bus to make his move. He could take Professor Tate easily with his bulk. Henley hoped Sirena, who boxed, and Nor, who did some kind of training and had obvious muscles, were backing him up.
“Ah, I see.” A grin slowly spread on Professor Tate’s face as she looked back at Henley then past her, then back again. “You lied to her. To get her to leave BSTU. But why, I wonder?”
What? He’d lied…? The reality jolted through Henley sharper than she’d been tossed around in the car collisions. He had lied. Buster had lied. The contract wasn’t referring to death; it was as it seemed.
…Was she an idiot? Unless Professor Tate was attempting reverse psychology. She had to be intelligent, no matter what Henley had said before, to be a professor at BSTU, to have built Sirena. Unless that was Professor Hutchins. Was she using reverse psychology on Stew too?
Henley felt lost, swimming in a sea of the unknown. What was real? She didn’t like this feeling of being so baffled. It was a far worse hole her mind was in than the usual small opening left by curiosity.
“Bus?” Her voice was weak, withering, helpless. The sound of it in her ears worsened the slimy feeling inside her.
“Yes.”
Yes, to what?
“Yes, I lied to her. I need her. Let her go, and I’ll trade you for Sirena.”
◆◆◆
Henley sagged, almost choking herself in her holder’s grip as everything looped around and uncomfortable hot waves flushed through her, radiating off her skin. The man adjusted his hold, hitching her up by her upper arms to keep her on her limp, unsupportive feet.
It couldn’t be true. Technically, it could. It was logistically, rationally plausible. But for the first time in her life, Henley wanted to ignore fact, disavow evidence, upend probability. It was also arguably implausible.
He’d said he’d needed her. Had he said he needed Sirena? But… he’d plotted the escape with Jen… to get Sirena to safety. Right? Why would he just hand Sirena over?
It didn’t matter. He had lied. He was just using Henley.
Professor Tate was laughing, Henley heard vaguely through her haze. “Now, you—you aren’t an idiot. It’s a shame you didn’t apply to be in my lab. As such, I’ll assume you’re smart enough to know that I can’t do that.”
“You don’t want her.” Unfathomably, he was still arguing on Henley’s behalf for her freedom. Why had he brought her?
“No, that’s true. However, I cannot permit her to leave. She was right about that much; you two didn’t leave BSTU benignly. You must face the repercussions of breaking the NDA and leaving without permission.”
Buster must have done something aggressive because Professor Tate took a quick step forward. “Ah, ah, ah. Don’t make me downgrade my opinion of your intelligence by doing anything rash. And don’t insult mine by presuming I didn’t come with back up.” She lifted her wrist and tapped a few times on her watch with the pad of a finger—a watch similar to the one Bus wore.
Oh, God. Everything Henley knew was jumbled up in a tangle of wires, her brain essentially short-circuited and fried.
/> Unfortunately, she was still aware enough to hear the tell-tale sound of drones closing in. The buzz that used to give her pride, proof that her device was working, now instilled a coating of lead in her stomach that pulled it down. They came from behind—the same direction as Buster—flying overhead with increasing volume that elevated her despair as if her adrenaline were also experiencing a Doppler effect, ramping from faded to flaring.
They took their place behind Professor Tate, hovering perfectly in place, menacingly. The arrival of the tech was another layer on Henley’s re-found horror—an added assurance of the loss of her chance at freedom.
Or was it? These were Henley’s babies where Sirena was Professor Tate’s. Henley had spent a significant amount of the past four years and eleven months tinkering with them, building them, improving them, giving them capabilities far beyond any human’s. The tech was beneficial to Professor Tate. But her other baby was also an advantage Henley had at hand. Literally.
She swung her still cuffed hands up, connecting with the man behind her with a nearly-iron fist, a grunt forced from him like Buster’s at the post office. In that moment of lax muscle tension, Henley slipped to the floor and ran.
The seatbelt pulled her up short, and she was wrenched around.
She watched as Buster vaulted over the car hood and snagged a knife from the guard who’d held her, swiping it through the belt. Her gaze met his dark impenetrable one, and she swung back around and ran.
Henely pulled up slightly as she neared the professor who merely raised a brow and crossed her arms.
An engine that sounded several times as powerful as the drones sounded overhead, drawing closer. Henley didn’t cave to the curiosity demanding she look at their new arrival, but Professor Tate, being a scientist, couldn’t help herself. As she tipped her chin up, eyes slipping off her captive, Henley zipped past, darting quickly around the professor before she could react.
Henley jumped up onto the bridge railing to pass the SUV, teetering for a moment and using elbows wide like a tight-rope walker, hands still locked, then dropped down and sprinted again.
The new visitor must be one of BSTU’s helicopters, late to the scene, because the drones ignored it to make chase as she expected. Henley beelined for the trees, zig-zagging and circumventing the massive trunks, the rough forest debris slicing the soles of her feet. She stepped on a particularly sharp stick and her leg buckled. She limped behind a robust redwood.
The drones, of course, were smarter than to zoom past—she had designed them to be both precise and accurate. They pulled around, forming a semi-circle, another layer forming behind that one, and a third just above the second, all twenty of them sightlessly watching her in several ways at once with their myriad of sensors as they slowly encroached, enveloping her in an unwanted hug from an insistent relative.
However, she knew their weaknesses. And she had eliminated her own weakness, turning it into a weapon, just like them.
She waited until the first row inched within proximity, the nearest one lowering to eye-level to perform the programmed retina and infrared scans to confirm her identity as the correct target.
Her hands flashed up, handcuffs jangling, and she touched a fingertip to the drone, right on its largest sensor like a boop to Marlowe’s nose. Electricity sparked, a blue arc connecting her and the drone, tensing every muscle in her body painfully, her teeth grinding and eyes rolling skyward, her feet grounding the surge, sending the pulse zipping through her toward the earth.
The energy of the electrical shock sent her slamming backward into the tree, her sight going dark for a terrifying second, her breath whooshing from her lungs.
A wave of heat washed over her face, and sound exploded so deafening it seemed to come from within her.
When she’d regained her ability to see, and her breath came heaving back in making her cough as fine debris and soot singed down her windpipe, she was confronted with a blazing pile of several drones’ remains. Her ears were ringing.
The more distant ones had managed to remain airborne but many were aflame, and as she watched, a few joined the fallen in a heap of glowing metallic embers. Another piece that was losing altitude in sharp judders couldn’t stand the temperature and combusted, dropping into the makeshift bonfire in a clump and sending the heat higher and wider.
Henley threw her hands up to shield her face. The high-pitched whine that had clogged her hearing was abating, allowing the dull roar and crackle of the fire to replace it. In between her blistering fingers, she observed the remaining pieces of her babies, trapped in the fire’s embrace.
A gear stuck out, a disk on which she could easily picture the smiling faces of Mickey and Minnie, still dancing as the edges of the clock smoked and curled in, Mickey’s hands pointing at Henley as if she were to blame and Minnie staring desperately at Mickey as though to ensure he be the last image Minnie would see.
Henley’s mind flashed back, back, back—back seventeen years.
The reminder held her immobile more strongly than the electric shock, her hands dropping slowly, the remains of the drones flickering in and out of sight behind the dancing and lapping orange tongues. Her arms lifted again, and she stared at the black color, remembering, feeling, burning up from within, overwhelmed.
Chapter Twelve
“Henley!” Sirena was screaming at the woods where Henley had led the drones.
Ace stared mutely, too shocked to chime in. His lie had just been revealed, and still Henley was helping them.
“Clear the area for landing,” a voice boomed robotically through a speaker on the helicopter that had appeared above them. From underneath, it was impossible to differentiate to whom it belonged. The list was short but the options dire: BSTU… or could it be that his letter was received?
An explosion lit up the forest, the sound rocketing through the noise of the chopper, stealing everyone’s attention, including the bystanders who had given up on remaining in their cars. Several loud bangs followed like aftershocks, a mushrooming tendril of smoke rising up above the canopy.
Nobody moved from the open space on the tarmac. The helicopter’s skids hovered just over their heads, sending Ace’s too-long hair whipping painfully across his face like Henley’s had in Lindy’s truck. But he couldn’t turn away from the forest.
“Clear the area,” the voice repeated sternly, “so we can get the girl.”
Ace didn’t have time to debate. Henley needed help. He only hoped it was his people. Professor Tate was backing away, which gave him confidence. “Move,” Ace roared, charging around to shove those still gaping out of the way. “Get back.”
He pushed himself in front of the man still clutching Stew like a teddy bear, perching near Sirena and Nor, arms wide like a fence as the ‘copter slowly descended, separating them from Professor Tate… and Henley.
The side door slid open before Ace could read the logo, and a woman jumped out, ducking low to avoid getting beheaded by the whipping blades.
Nor pushed past, evading Sirena’s reaching grip.
“Nor, don’t—”
“Barb?” Nor said, approaching the woman, who stood up straight, out of the reach of the blades.
“Nor!” They were shouting back and forth to be heard over the helicopter and the increasing roar of the fire beyond. The woman’s face lit up, and she embraced him. “I’m so glad I found you!” she said, pulling back to look at him with relief like a mother welcoming a child home.
Ace had no idea if he’d have anyone to welcome him home, if he ever made it.
The trouble with migrating in a herd like an animal was that everyone had their own personal obstacles that all added to the retardation of the mission, a weak one made the predator salivate and pounce. At least this wasn’t BSTU. But they’d left the locket with Jen on the other side. How had the Stanleys’ organization found them?
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping you bring in the specimen, of course.” She gave Nor a puzzled look
and then looked past to Sirena, who had been moving slowly toward the pair. “And apprehending your kidnapper,” she added, her face darkening. Ace followed her stare to Stew, who was already apprehended but by a different player.
The kid squirmed a bit, too thin to even budge the huge man holding him though the guy was looking more wary on his own, shifting to the side as though to edge around the helicopter where Professor Tate was last seen.
“What?” Sirena stepped back into Ace.
Mistake. He grabbed around her waist, holding her against him. She pulled free, taking a step toward Nor, still fixated on what was happening in front of her.
“Barb… we have it under control.” Nor was shaking his head.
The lady looked around. “We who? Where’s Reed?” Her eyes widened, and she stepped back up to the boy who was a little taller than her, grasping his triceps.
Nor shook his head again.
Her mouth dropped open, clearly the worst possibility threading through her mind, her expression extreme.
“Fine,” Nor shouted. “Back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Well, grab the specimen, and let’s go get him.” The woman turned to the chopper, climbing in to sit on the nearest seat and beckoning with her hand.
Nor turned back to Sirena then looked back at the woman, evidently torn between his choices. Then he held out a hand for Sirena. “We can keep you safe.”
Sirena turned her head to Ace and stepped further out of his reach, then both hands went to her neck as though to strangle herself. The locket wasn’t there, and she dropped her hands. She backed away, eyes wide.
Ace let her go. He had promised her safety as well, but their trust in him was under question after Professor Tate’s revelation. He didn’t know if he had anyone to turn to.
“Henley?” she said loudly.
He nodded.
Her weird eyes assessed him for a moment, her free hand clutching her uncontrolled green hair in the rotor’s turbulence, much like Henley had in the back of the truck before he’d reseated her. Then Sirena turned and jogged to Nor, who guided her in with a hand to her back.
