He would probably kill me now.
I shook the pity from my thoughts. I wasn't dead yet. I glanced through the open plane door. Another man sat in the passenger seat. Careful to avoid the seeping black entrails, I crept closer to the nose of the plane. Despite rising on my toes, I couldn't get a clear view of the back seat. "Can you see Mrs. Torunn?"
Tobias stood up, stepped over Levi's body and leaned into the plane. "She's not here."
I exhaled in relief.
"That's a good thing, right?" Maybe if I could find Mrs. Torunn, he'd let me live.
"Without the WitSec file, we have no idea if she was even on the flight." Tobias bent over, grabbed Levi's lapels and hauled him up. Black goo slurped and bubbled over the corpse's boots. With a grunt, Tobias braced the body against the side of the plane before levering it into the seat and folding the bones inside.
I quickly shut the plane's door and leaned against it for good measure.
"Torunn might have escaped alone. SpecForces sent me here to debrief him, not her. He was the one that wanted asylum and he was bringing some very important information to trade for the good life here on Earth. Maybe he also wanted to ditch his wife in the process."
Gathering the frayed edges of my courage, I followed Tobias around to the other side of the plane. Right. We still had to positively identify the other guy.
Then he'd kill me.
Tobias stopped by the plane's passenger door and hooked his thumb on the handle. "Get me the pliers from the truck's dash compartment."
Pliers? Every muscle in my body tensed and my fingers curled into fists. Pliers could remove nails and do other unspeakable things. Get a grip, Rae. The pliers might not be pliers at all but something else—possibly more insidious and painful. I straightened. If I had to die, I would do so with grace and dignity. After all, I couldn't run from his Rae-tracking device, if I made it to the RV Park more innocent people might die and there wasn't any place to hide on the tarmac. "On one condition."
Tobias cocked his head. In the dim light, his brow furrowed.
"I want you to kill me quickly and painlessly."
His hand fell to his side and brushed his jeans. "You want me to kill you."
"Quick and painlessly." I reiterated for good measure. Since I had to die, I should have some say in the matter. "I don't want to suffer. I know I failed and—"
"I'm not going to kill you, Rae and we haven't failed. Yet."
"But you said…"
Tobias ran his fingers through his short blond hair. "You thought I was going to rape you." His lips curled and he shook his head. "I'm an officer in Special Forces. I protect human life, not degrade it."
Son of a monkey's butt! I opened my mouth but no words came out. Irritation twitched out my fingers. Clearing my throat, I tried again. "You threatened to kill me because I hurt your pride?"
If true, he was worse than a douche bag.
"Not pride, my reputation as a Spec Force Colonel. Even the whisper of rape would land me in the brig." He crossed his arms. His green eyes glittered in the low light. "And control did want me to kill you. It's less paperwork than bringing you on board the mission."
Control, not Tobias, wanted me dead? That was good news of a sort. Still, my life could be negated because of an administrative snafu? What kind of world did Tobias come from? "God forbid someone gets a paper cut filing my W-4s."
"Exactly. Those things hurt like hell! I'll be glad when your world eliminates paper altogether." Tobias winked at me and turned his attention back to the door. "Now that we've established I'm not going to rape or kill you, do you think you could get me the pliers?"
"One pair of pliers coming right up." Anything to avoid watching another body slide out of the plane and splat on the ground. I practically skipped to the truck and eased open the door. He wasn't going to kill me. I was going to live. Yay me!
My elbow sank into the seat cushion as I leaned inside. Where had he said the pliers would be? Right, the dash compartment. I glanced at the dashboard. The fancy scanners in the center console were now all dark. I pushed on one. It didn't budge. Aw snap. Maybe they only opened if Tobias touched them. So why would he have sent me? My attention drifted toward the open door. Then again, I could be seriously over-thinking things. I twisted the knob on the glove box. The door popped open; tools gleamed in the low light.
"Dash compartment. Glove box. Same thing." Reaching inside, I grabbed a handful of cold metal and pulled it out. I sorted the screwdrivers and pressure gauge from the pliers and returned the extra tools. After opening the pliers once for good measure, I shut the compartment then truck door and skipped back to the plane.
Tobias knelt by the body, holding his MP4 player against its neck. "This is definitely Torunn."
He must have been a big man. Folds of his skin draped his skeleton and extended onto the black top. His nose, eyes and even ears had collapsed while he faced the dark sky.
I breathed though my mouth to mitigate the smell. Not bad but I swore I could taste the decay. I scraped my tongue against my front teeth and tightened my grip on the pliers. "I can't believe the bad guys won."
"This is a set back not defeat." Tobias rolled the body on its side and patted down the corpse's back. "Torunn may be dead, but that's only half the mission. We can still expose those responsible for leaking secrets from WitSec, provided we can find the information he was bringing."
I shuffled closer to the plane and peeked inside. "What does it look like?"
"Nothing obvious, like a data crystal, or the killer would have taken it." Tobias held his hand over his shoulder and glanced up at me.
Right. The pliers. I placed them against his palm.
He opened and closed them, clacking the tips together.
God, I hoped he wasn't planning on pulling out bones or teeth. "What are you going to do?"
"Find the information. This will locate any latent energy signal." He touched the tip of the pliers to the ear phone jack of his MP4 player and blue light arced between the handles. Balancing his MP4 player on his knee, he wanded the corpse's head.
Cool beans. I tossed my weight from foot to foot. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
I wrinkled my nose as more goop squelched out of the corpse's shirt. Anything but touch the body that is.
"Use your datapad and interface with the ship's memory core." Tobias wanded down the man's torso, moving slowly while the blue light between the pliers' handles continued to crackle. "Download everything—flight path, passenger list, and transmissions. Although I doubt we'll get the actual killer, we might get something useful."
"I can do that." Pulling my Smartphone from my short's pocket, I stared at the cockpit. Black stained the passenger seat and floorboards. I carefully stepped over the body and walked closer. Ugh. I covered my nose and mouth so quickly, my cheeks and fingertips tingled.
What had the man eaten that could smell that bad?
A recycle bin icon materialized on the Smartphone's screen, starting a new row. Oh yuck. Please tell me that isn't an analysis of his stomach contents. Okay, I didn't really expect the cell to answer but still...
"How is it going?" Tobias looked up from where he crouched by the legs.
"Fine. Just fine." Can you remove the recycle bin if it contains the answer to my question about the smell? As I watched the icon faded away. Excellent. Now I just needed to teach the thing what rhetorical question meant but first things first. I inched closer and aimed the cell at the instrument panel.
"Give me all activity recorded in the space shuttle since it left the mothership." The hair on my arms stood on end and a pins and needles sensation radiated from my fingers.
"Mothership?" Tobias snorted and scooted up the body toward the head.
"Well what do you call it then?" A cartoon figure of calendar materialized on the screen.
"Transport."
I managed not to roll my eyes. Douche. Like transport was ever so different than mothership. I tapped the latest icon on
my Smartphone and waited for the files to appear. "I think I've got it."
"Same here." The light between the handles of the pliers changed from blue to yellow. Tobias pushed the sleeves up what remained of the man's arm. A serpent tattoo wobbled on the extraneous flesh. "I've only heard of these things, I've never actually seen one before.
"You're not very observant." I backed away from the plane and moved to his side. "I think everyone in my complex has a tattoo."
"I know where yours is." He turned toward me and smiled. His gaze traveled up my legs to settle just above my left hip. "Why did you choose sink or swim and a seagull?"
I smoothed the hem of my shirt. The tat was covered so how the heck had he known about it? "Don't you think we should focus on the topic at hand?"
"Torunn doesn't have a tattoo made from ink." Tobias tapped the tips of the pliers on the asphalt and the arc between the handles disappeared. "His is made from light."
With loops and swirls, it looked like a tattoo of an ancient Gaelic symbol to me. "I don't understand."
"Visible light is shot through a Gruseation tube and stopped. Data is coded on the sine wave; the light is returned to normal speed, and then etched onto the surface of the user's choosing." Tobias ran his index finger over the tattoo. "Most just make a dot, a freckle or a mole on their skin, clothing or pet and take it to the next place to have the light stopped again and the data removed."
"He must have a lot of information for his tattoo to be that big." At least, I thought the silver-dollar sized tat was big. Maybe it had just stretched out from the bloating and deflating action caused by the Scrambler. I eyed the three files open on my cell phone—contacts, addresses, and daily planner. Maybe I hadn't gotten the information I'd requested after all.
"It's not the size but the color." Tobias flipped open his cell phone and held it over the tattoo. "The data bends the wavelength—the more data on the sine wave, the more the light gets bent."
I nodded as if I understood what he was talking about. This steward job better not have a pop quizzes, at least none that weren't open book. I'd need all the help I could get to remember the mumbo-jumbo he kept spewing. I touched the contact icon. "So blue means what exactly?"
"Lots of information—Terabytes by terabytes of it."
At least, I knew a terabyte was bigger than a gigabyte. Nodding, I stared at the blank screen on my phone. Either my CeeBees weren't all they were cracked up to be or the file was empty. I backed out of the screen. "And you have one of these Crustacean tubes disguised as a screwdriver in the glove box, right?"
Or it could be the pressure gauge.
"No." Tobias snapped his phone shut and sighed. "That kind of tech isn't carried in the field. Only our most advanced laboratories have them."
No? I wasn't expecting that. I lowered my hand to stare at him. Didn't he say the mission wasn't lost if we could get the information. Well, we found it, now we just need a way to access it. "So how do we get the information out of his tattoo?"
He scratched the day's worth of stubble growing on his chin. "I might have to cut off the patch of skin, until we can get it someplace secure and work on it more."
Cut it off? Ewww! I shuddered. I hoped that was one of the jobs he planned on doing. "Will that work?"
"I don't know." Tobias tucked his cell into his shirt pocket and pulled a silver knife from his work boot.
"Do you want some help?" Please say no. Please say no. I was more than willing to do my share. After all, my life was on the line. Still, I should probably start smaller than carving up someone.
My cell rang just as he opened his mouth. I raised the Smartphone to eye level. The muffin icon filled the screen.
Tobias leapt to his feet. "Who is it?"
"The muffin man." Embarrassment heated my cheeks. How unprofessional of me. "I mean control."
"Don't answer it."
My thumb hovered over the icon. "What? Why not? I mean everyone can understand one missed call, but two... That's a little hard for even me to swallow."
The cell rang again. Besides I needed to make a good impression. After all, the woman on the other end of the line held my life in her hands. Of course, having a dead protectee and pilot might not be the best way to go about convincing her to keep me alive. I sucked on my bottom lip while the phone rang for the third time.
He knocked the phone from my hand and crushed it under his heel. Bits of plastic flew in every direction and light fizzled across the cracked screen. Tobias scooped the mass, ran the edge over the black Torunn goo then chucked the whole thing in the cockpit.
Outrage and relief flipped through me. "What did you do that for?"
Tobias used his knife and opened a small gash on his palm, before smearing his blood on his phone. "I didn't want to get the order to kill you again."
Idiot! I smacked my forehead. I had failed, naturally, control would demand Tobias kill me. They thought I was in league with Victor.
With his bloody hand, Tobias snapped his cell phone in half and tossed the pieces inside. "This way, our tech is destroyed and whoever killed Torunn and Kim will think they're safe and we are injured."
He smashed his MP4 player on the ground then the key fob before adding them to the mess inside the plane.
I rubbed my temples hoping to deaden the ache building inside my head. Without his James Bond gadgets, how were we to get at the information and unmask the bad guy? "But what about the data from the ship? I only opened one file and it was empty. How are we supposed to know whom they've contacted, and their flight path and…"
Using his knife, Tobias cut off his sleeve. "You have duplicate data in your CeeBees."
"I do? You mean to tell me that I'm a back-up drive for my Smartphone?" My skin itched at the thought. How was this possible? Stepping forward, I took the severed sleeve from him and wrapped it around his bloody hand.
"Not a back-up drive, more like cyberspace. The datapad merely provides a means to access the information stored inside you." He slit the cuff so I could tie the make-shift bandage in place. "It's a failsafe. Without you actually being in contact with the phone, no one can access the information. Although a few ghost images remain."
After knotting the fabric, I stepped away from him. "So you have them too?"
"No." He rolled his shoulders and glanced down at Torunn's body. "I just have a genetic lock. The data is stored on the phone; it's just hidden until I touch it."
A soft whine filled the night and the lamps on the tips of the plane's wings flickered on. Red light bathed the tarmac with a bloody glow. A female voice spoke from the cockpit. "Prepare for liftoff in Tee minus one minute."
I backed away from the wing. "What did you do?"
"Nothing." Tobias spun the knife in his hand. "In case of emergency, the ship is designed to return to the transport within a set period of time."
Like not hearing from the people who were supposed to protect the cargo?
Tobias tilted his head to stare at me. "Rae, do you trust me?"
Trust him? As much as I could someone who was always thinking about killing me. Wrapping my arms around my waist, I tossed my weight from foot to foot. But this was hardly the time to be having a deep conversation about trust. We had a body to deal with, information to cut out of said body, a plane about to depart and a boatload of trouble coming our way.
"Rae?" He held out his hand toward me.
"I guess so." He hadn't killed me and let's face it; I needed him far more than he needed me. I nodded for good measure, dispelling any lingering doubts then placed my palm against his calloused one. "Yes. Absolutely."
"Good." He dropped to the ground dragging me with him.
I collapsed on my knees and winced at the pebbles digging into my unprotected flesh. I jerked forward when he pressed my palm against Torunn's tattoo. Gross. His skin felt warm and rubbery.
"Hey. What are you doing?" My hand started to tingle then the skin seemed to catch fire. I tried to pull back, but Tobias held me firmly. "What's
going on?"
Was this some kind of punishment?
"Your CeeBees are taking up the data." He smiled.
What a douche. The tingles raced up my arms to my neck and tightened my scalp until I thought it might split open. The pounding in my head increased.
"How is this possible?" I closed my eyes against a wave of nausea. "And please don't get technical."
My stomach couldn't take it.
"The CeeBees are Archa technology and the light storage capabilities are based on the ancient's designs." He stroked my back.
The pleasure of his touch momentarily kept the pain at bay. God, I hoped I didn't get a migraine every time I used my CeeBees.
"I wasn't sure it was going to work."
I glared at him from between my lashes. "I'm so happy your enjoying this."
I forced my jaw to relax. Gritting my teeth only made the throbbing in my skull louder.
"Thirty seconds to lift off." The female voice echoed around the cockpit.
His hand delved under my hair to massage my knots in my neck. "Don't worry I'll feed you later."
I bit back a groan. Ohhh that did help. I relaxed into his touch and the pounding ebbed. Naturally, he stopped. "Food seems your answer to everything."
"That and sex."
That didn't even deserve a response. I massaged my neck as the pounding faded away completely.
With a wink, he hefted the body over his shoulder and stuffed it into the ship. No sooner had he stepped back than the door closed.
I watched as it lifted straight up in the air, higher and higher until the lights blinked out. Now that was truly cool. "Will they think we're dead when they find our phones and stuff?"
"No." Tobias leaned over and wrapped his arm around my back. "But it will cause an investigation to be launched. Do you think you can stand?"
"Of course." Thank God the pounding stopped. Bracing my hand on the pavement, I pushed to my feet. No sooner had I straightened my legs than my knees buckled.
Tobias tightened his grip and held me against his hard body.
Perspiration beaded my upper lip. Crap on a cracker! My legs wobbled more than unset gelatin. Using my hands, I crawled up his chest until I stood straight. "Will I always feel so weak?"
Blue Maneuver-Urban SciFi/Fantasy (Extraterrestrial security program) Page 15
