Climatic Climacteric Omnibus

by L. B. Carter

  Then again, what was progress if they didn't strive for the better? Sirena wouldn't exist ...to be hunted down. Henley wouldn't have designed those drones ...to search out whoever was hunting Rena down. Val wouldn't have transformed into a hot piece of—

  "Four o'clock," Nor said in a soft voice. Reed assumed he had Rena safely within reach in case they had to book it. He spun silently in that direction, keeping a clutch on Val's upper arm. Good thing since she twisted the wrong way. He re-situated her in front of him and kept his arms on her shoulders. Just in case. He knew she could run, but her sense of direction was awful for someone who worked with map-makers.

  He squinted over her head, trying to make out what alerted Nor. He heard a faint clink amid the blaring of the alarm, and his eyes shot to the dark outline of a grate. The ventilation shaft. They were coming in that way. If they were lucky, their room would be bypassed.

  "Get back," Reed whispered in Val's ear, maneuvering her behind him and stepping forward. "If I say run, you grab Rena and you go. Stop at nothing. You know a way out, right?"

  He discerned a nod and spun back to keep his eyes on whomever was infiltrating. They were stealthy to have made it this far onto campus, penetrating the fortress that was BSTU. But like Val said, she did it without detection. These shits-for-brains had triggered some kind of tripwire.

  Nor padded up beside Reed on one side, and Ace joined him on the other, pressing the women back behind them. It wasn't so much a patriarchal display of testosterone as protocol from his and Nor's training and Ace's sheer bulk that helped build a wall of protection. The women were all precious commodities anyway: Rena was a superhuman miracle, Val was a government official, Henley was the genius behind all the tech that Reed wanted, and of course, the professor was valuable for her mind, Reed was raised to believe.

  Also if they died, BSTU would probably find some way to sic it on Green Solutions, and Reed would be back to that whole "you must face the consequences" ultimatum that Katheryn offered when he first woke up on BSTU premises.

  "Got anything?" Reed muttered out of the corner of his mouth to his brother. He'd prefer to use hand signals and sign-language in such a situation, but the lighting really hampered their ability to communicate that way.

  "Pen," Nor replied. Reed could hear the shrug in his voice.

  "Go for the neck." It was an unnecessary comment; he'd trained Nor for years. Nor knew all the weak spots and the most debilitating. But, even though they were long past their original mission to find Rena in a podunk town, this was still Nor's first mission. Technically, Reed was his lead. And he might argue this was the biggest threat yet. They were inside the enemy's holding with several vulnerable people under their protection, facing a potential secondary and unknown enemy with an unknown purpose.

  In fact...

  "Katheryn, I swear to high hell, if this is your set-up..." he murmured.

  "It's not!" Her girlish squeak quavered, and Reed squared his shoulders.

  Not BSTU then. It would be fairly elaborate to send their own drones and set off their own alarm anyway—a waste of resources, which was too impractical for BSTU. Reed had just wanted to cover all bases. Who else did they know were after them? Stew? He'd blown himself up on the bridge. Right? If not, he'd definitely drowned in the flood. Unless he'd been one of those refugees, too covered in ash for any of them to recognize him... He'd have had to get to BSTU fast, and Reed suspected that, unlike them, he wouldn't have access to a helicopter to cart him to distant locations within a few hours.

  Something plinked onto the floor, and Reed and the men on either side of him tensed. There came a faint grinding of metal on metal. Reed sunk into a ready stance, knees bent, arms in front of him, loose and amenable. The screeching paused.

  Boom.

  An explosion shook the building and rattled the doors. Unbidden, Reed spun toward it as did his companions. An orange fireball mushroomed past the door. A few seconds later, drones sped in the other direction toward the source.

  Reed realized what had happened a split second too late, whipping around to find a dagger tip pointing in his face.

  "Don't move."

  "None of you move," added another male voice off to the side.

  They'd been surrounded by a semi-circle of dark shadows while they'd all been jolted by the explosion. Reed let loose a wealth of internal curses. A distraction.

  "We just want the girl," a third confirmed Reed's analysis, trying to sound peaceable.

  "You want the cliché response, or you wanna just skip that part?" Reed asked in a growl.

  "I said, don't move."

  "Cliché it is. You'll have to go through us first."

  "Yeah." Nor followed script beautifully. Any theater director would applaud their efforts. No need for a retake.

  Except Reed was about to skip most of the over-the-top fight scene to the end of the battle where he flips the villain's own dagger onto himself.

  Crash.

  The door flung open.

  This time, Reed had sense not to remove his eyes from the weapon glinting in front of his nose—which was not a weak point; these guys could do with some Reed training.

  A buzzing preceded the blue lights zooming across the floor. For the first time, Reed was glad to see the BSTU automated warriors. They weren't here for him for once.

  The mini-drones formed another layer, a concentric circle, around the intruders. Now there was a strange combination of red and blue lighting that seemed to really fit a drug-bust in a cop show more than a university stand-off over a scientific advancement.

  "Don't move," came the robotic tinny words from one of the drones.

  Reed rolled his eyes. "Okay, if no one moves, we're going to be here forever. And frankly, I gotta pee, so that isn't going to be me." Giving Nor and Ace a nudge, he lunged.

  As if he could read his mind, the guy countered every move Reed tried. He blocked and parried and vice versa, and finally they were in a bind, literally. Reed had the guy in a headlock with one arm while the guy yanked his other, twisting it in a nearly-bone-breaking vice and holding the dagger dangerously close to Reed's thigh where a major artery ran. Both hesitated to make the next move, grunting to hold steady, trapped.

  There were still scuffles around them though Reed noted that the drones didn't join in.

  They remained outside, holding a perimeter. Strange.

  Then there was a muffled groan nearby, followed by, "Shit." And then a thump as something heavy dropped to the floor.

  "Nor," Reed roared, wiggling and breaking free. He darted away from his fight partner and fell to his knees, feeling around with his hands for where he'd heard his brother fall.

  "Norton? Reed?"

  That voice.

  Reed tumbled back onto his ass, understanding that he hadn't broken free. His wrestling partner had let him go. Because he'd vaulted over, too. "You have got to be fucking kidding me." Reed squinted trying to see in the red light. The man glanced up at Reed's sentence, abandoning his frantic search of Nor's limp form. "Father?"

  "Son. I thought so. You always make the same mistake with that right hook."

  Reed snorted. "I made no mistake. We were evenly matched, and you know it."

  The figure nodded. "I trained you well."

  Reed's jaw clenched then he noticed all clamor around them had stopped. "You wanna call your men off my friends?"

  Father paused, and for a tense moment, Reed's muscles bunched. Father hadn't been in a great state last time Reed saw him. Perhaps he blamed Reed for his wife's death. "Stand down."

  Immediately, there were several more thumps and sighs of relief, a few coughs that indicated a person or two had been in a tighter choke-hold than the headlock in which Reed had snared his father.

  "Everyone okay?" Reed polled.

  "Define okay," Val snapped. So she was fine.

  "Ace? Henley?"

  "Yes," the bass reported.

  "I'm just trying to follow. This is your father?" Henley was stil
l gasping—so she had been one of the ones strangled. Reed was not pleased. He would have words with his father about the force his new men used on a capture mission—yet she couldn't stop her usual flood of questions.

  "Pleased to meet you. I'm—"

  "Mr. Stanley," Reed interceded pleasantly. Why not keep it up at this point? It was kinda fun. They'd skipped a response though. "Rena?" Silence. "Rena! I know you can talk—you haven't shut up since we left your old town." Reed pushed to his feet and spun around.

  "Wait. Where's Nor?" Henley asked, the strength returning to her vocal chords.

  "He's fine. Well, he will be. I assume he and the guy he was fighting decided to take each other down the same way—pinched nerve. He'll be fine in a few minutes. But Rena... Where the fuck are you?"

  "Where's Katheryn?" Ace's timbre was thunderous, impossibly shifting to a lower sub-woofer register.

  The alarm shut off abruptly, and the bright overhead lights snapped on, which was incriminating after Ace's observation.

  "Fuck," Reed spat and sprinted to the door.

  A drone dropped in front of him before he could push through. "Don't move," the emotionless voice reminded him.

  Reed seethed through his teeth. "Oh, so we can fight each other to death without you doing anything, but we can't leave the room? That's what you mean by don't move?"

  The drone didn't respond.

  "Sorry," Henley bemoaned. "I tried to reprogram, but I can only do so much."

  Reed stalked to the middle of the circle by the table head. "Reprogram? How?"

  Henley lifted Ace's wrist into Reed's face, the bright digital face glaring. "With Ace's watch. I was able to alter their sensing radius to a wider swath so we could deal with an ambush without simultaneously having to deal with BSTU, but I couldn't get access to turn it off. That's outside my access level."

  "How did you know you weren't handicapping us?" Val groused snidely. "Those drones were here to detain those guys. We wouldn't have had to fight at all."

  Henley's head shook. "They don't differentiate."

  "What do you mean?" Father decided to enter the conversation, and Reed found his back straightening. He wasn't sure how he felt about his Father being there yet. This was Reed's team to question.

  "BSTU is not picky who it disciplines. BSTU students or not. The drones would not have treated us separately from the others. I presume this is why Katheryn ran."

  Val stepped into their powwow. "Then how the freak did Tate get out? Or did she reprogram her own radius bigger?"

  Father joined. Thankfully, the rest of his guys stayed back. Reed wasn't sure if he even knew them or if they were new, replacements hired after the accident. Their over-excitement to manhandle Henley suggested that might be true. "Tate?" His eyes sought out Reed's. "Your last communication—actually Nor's—stated something about a Jennifer Tate."

  "Yeah, well, who Jennifer Tate is seems to be complicated in itself. Katheryn is mother dearest. And also not."

  "Explain." Father's square jaw, which Reed inherited, was grim.

  "Hi!" Val waved, leaning forward. "I'm Valerie Acton, Director of the Department of Disaster Management at the United States Geological and Climatic Society. But this—" She spread her arms wide. "—is Jennifer Tate."

  Father's face displayed a single wrinkle between his brows of confusion, and he didn't like to be confused.

  "She used some kind of DNA alteration to turn her appearance into that of Jennifer Tate and switch places with her," Reed elaborated, glaring at Val.

  Father's frown deepened, sharpening the creases on either side of his mouth. The dimple in his chin popped. "Where's the real Jennifer Tate? Did she take your appearance?"

  The sludge stirred in Reed's abdomen.

  "Reed?" Nor groaned from the floor.

  Reed held his stare-down with Val another few seconds, his face belying nothing of the tornado beneath.

  Hurrying over to his brother's side, he helped Nor sit up. "Next time, put the guy down before he puts you down, not at the same time, yeah?"

  Nor gave a fleeting smile, rubbing his head that likely smacked the floor when he went down. Then his eyes lifted, and he blinked. "Father? What are you doing here?"

  "Fulfilling the contract. We're here to collect the girl. And find you."

  Reed's mouth twisted, and he looked away to hide it from Nor. Always that way around. Reed put work first too, but never before Nor. Nor deserved better than that from his Father, especially now that Mother was gone. Their family was no different than the Tates. That needed to change.

  "Wait." Nor's eyes widened, and he stared around at all the newcomers and their group. "Where's Rena? And Professor Tate?"

  "Yeah, about that..."

  "Can we get back to how-the-freak Katheryn got out of here without the drones murdering her?" Val interrupted, hands on her hips and annoyance on her face. "Because I'd like to do the same and find Sirena."

  Blue eyes met Reed's, desperate and pained. "She took Rena." It wasn't a question.

  "Yeah." Reed averted his gaze, meeting Val's instead, and her eyebrow rose on one side.

  Henley raised a hand. "I'm also curious how Mr. Stanley found us."

  "A poignant question as always," Ace praised, and Henley grinned.

  Val snorted. "Probably the news."

  Reed wrapped a hand around Nor's shoulders and hoisted him to his feet.

  "Actually, Tom called me. He informed me Barb went after you. She didn't report in."

  So, he already knew her fate and that she had attempted the rescue without Father's knowledge. She'd been trying to protect Reed and Nor, help them without Father knowing they'd needed it. Reed's wrath grew again, thinking about Barb, another person he loved that Val had inadvertently and unnecessarily murdered.

  "But that was hundreds of miles from here," Henley pointed out modestly.

  Father's forehead wrinkled. "You think I don't have trackers on my own sons?"

  "What?" Nor cried, alarmed. "You're tracking us?"

  Reed had a single question "Then why didn't you send help earlier?"

  "I wasn't aware you needed help. The tracker tells me where you are, not what you're doing. I was under the impression my sons were capable of such a simple mission. I had other matters to attend to." He lifted a hand and passed it around the circle of guards. His face said nothing. Father had shoved down anything he'd exposed when Mother went. "I was rebuilding Green Solutions."

  Reed breathed out heavily through his nose. He appreciated the confidence Father had in his and Nor's success, but Father had known it was Nor's first mission. He'd known his sons were hurting the way he was and might need mission support even if he wasn't able or willing to offer support emotionally. "You're not here to help us, you're here to take over. You're suspending us."

  Father stared at Reed, unabashed. "Yes. You have made too many errors, compromising our organization's safety and privacy, leading one of our own to her death." He didn't even flinch. Reed did. Too many deaths. "You two are dismissed from this case. I will hunt down the girl, and you will go home with Daniel."

  One of the men in the outer ring stepped forward. Reed bared his teeth. "Touch me, and you'll get a dagger in the dick."

  "Hey," Val protested. "That's my move." She transferred her frown from Reed to Daniel. "Touch him, and you'll get a dagger in the dick. If you're lucky."

  Reed grinned.

  Henley's hand shot up again, the habit of a student.

  "Yes?" Father called on her, the habit of a trainer.

  "I thought of a way Professor Tate might have evaded the drone's motion-triggered mechanism."

  "And?" Reed and Val spoke simultaneously, both lacking patience.

  Henley shared a look with Ace that made Reed's palms sweat. "Sirena is linked to BSTU's security."

  "What?" Nor stepped forward.

  "I believe the drones won't hurt her because she's BSTU property. So Professor Tate could have used her as a shield."

  "If
she's BSTU property, couldn't they have been tracking her since you first got her out?" His eyes flipped to Val.

  Val shrugged, crossing her arms under her breasts, pushing them up. "Maybe that is how we got her out—if their security is programmed not to harm her. And, I mean, Katheryn did track us. Just took her a while to catch up."

  "Wait." Reed blinked. "Did you just admit that a fluke might have helped you escape rather than your own genius?"

  Val snarled.

  Nor marched over to Henley. "Can you track her? Through BSTU's security system?"

  Henley twisted her hair, eyes on the ceiling as she mulled it over. "Maybe."

  Nor’s arms flopped helplessly. "Tell me what to do."

  "I'm happy to be a distraction," Reed offered.

  "No." Father's command was a whip, and Reed watched Nor flinch instinctively. "You two are going home. I will assist with the capture of the girl."

  "Uhh, no offense, old guy, but can you even wield a bat? 'Cause that's what it takes to handle these drones." Val tossed her hair. "And besides, you're an unwanted intruder. I'm an invited guest of BSTU. And—" She primped her lips and pulled her shoulders back, thrusting her chest forward and hip out to the side. Reed swallowed hard. "—I think I'm pretty good as a distraction." She winked and blew a kiss at Reed.

  Damn. He was pretty distracted.

  ◆◆◆

  They hovered for several uncomfortable minutes while Henley and Ace thought of a plan. Bored, Reed moved to one wall. The drones didn't take him out, so Henley's programming was holding. He grabbed a marker and started to draw. He drew two overlapping circles and began to add a longer line above to his doodle.

  "Seriously?" Val said.

  Reed shrugged, guileless. "It was too clean." They were the dirtiest things in there in their muddy, dusty clothing they'd worn for days.

  He erased it and instead wrote four big letters going down the board: B-S-T-U. Then he built off of them, producing an acrostic poem. It wasn't very deep or meaningful, but it spoke to all of their souls in their current plight.