Zage went back to the back of the room where he sorted through the wire back there. When he started back toward the stairs, Steve said, “I think you should wait a while before you set your trap. They’ll probably bring you dinner this evening. When they bring it, they won’t be on guard like they might if Amy screams and yells to get them to come downstairs. Besides, if you do manage to get outside, it’d be a lot better if the sun was down and the light was dim. We’ll be coming as soon as we get your GPS info, but if they can’t find you, they won’t be able to move you to another location.”
“Okay,” Zage said. “If there’s no rush, I’ll look around some more down here. Maybe we’ll get some more ideas.”
***
Vanessa looked around the lab, feeling a little surprised. Zage came in almost every day, but he hadn’t been here the past two days because of the weekend. He was always here on Mondays, so Vanessa had really been expecting him. She wondered how his rats were doing, so she called up their weights. Her AI had already been set up to plot their weights as either gains or losses. The plot appeared as a bar graph with gains in green and losses in red, the losses going down instead of upward on the Y axis.
A small grin wafted across her face as she saw that about half of the animals had a down going red bar. Since rats normally gained weight almost their entire life—unless they got sick—any rats that lost weight likely had something going on. Without breaking the randomization code, she couldn’t know whether the ones that lost weight were the ones getting Zage’s peptide, but she suspected she had a pretty good idea. I should be pissed about the way all his ideas turn out to be golden!
But I like the little bugger too much to hate him for it.
For a moment she wondered whether she should send him a message with the results, Nah, he can check those results on his AI from home. Maybe that’s why he didn’t feel the need to come in?
***
At 5 o’clock, Zage crawled back through the hole and out into the storage room. Amy held the bent piece of coat hanger wire, ready to push it into a wall outlet and drop some circuit breakers if they needed a distraction.
Though neither Steve nor Amy had noticed, Zage managed to take the closet rod with him. His first step was to quietly scoot a big box closer to the side of the stairs. He put a stool next to the big box so he could climb up on it more quickly. Standing on the box, he scrambled between the widely spaced 2x2 balusters and tied a piece of heavy gauge wire to a baluster on the far side, attaching it about eight inches above the riser. Backing up, he tied the wire at the same height on the near side, stretching it as tightly as he could above the stair. As he climbed down, he paused on top of the box and pictured in his mind the mad scramble he’d be making from the box onto the stairs after the man had gone by. Hopefully had gone by, tripped, fallen down the stairs and… wouldn’t be getting right back up. Zage had found that mental rehearsal had helped him with physical tasks in the past.
At the bottom of the stairs, Zage put an overturned stepstool, legs up and rubber feet removed. Next to that, he placed an old fan that no longer had the protective cage around its metal blades. Zage stood looking at their positions for a minute; then he adjusted them so they sat where Zage thought the man’s feet might land if he managed to keep his legs underneath him.
He decided the man would be falling forward, even if he did land on his feet. He looked around for something that would make it hard for the guy to catch himself with his hands. He didn’t see any other small, sharp, difficult to land on, objects. Then his eyes caught on the metal shopping cart. The top piece of heavy gauge steel wire had come loose from its welds on the right side. This left the row of vertical metal wires sticking up unprotected. If the man tried to catch himself on those, it would definitely hurt his hands. Zage rolled the cart over to where he thought the man might grab it.
In his ear, Zage heard Steve. “Good set up, Zage. If he comes stumbling down the stairs and grabs that, the wires could cause him some real trouble.”
Zage’s eyes were still sweeping around the storage room. “Do you have any other ideas?”
Steve said, “Let’s go look at those shelves with all the cans and bottles. A lot of the stuff found in spray cans is flammable. If you could find a way to light them, they might give you a torch. Although,” he mused thoughtfully, “I’m not sure a torch would be really useful in this situation…”
Zage had reached the shelves and started turning the various cans and bottles around so that their labels could be seen. The increased light gathering capability and light amplification provided by his AI contacts let him read them easily, even in the dimly lit storage basement. Steve said, “Oh! Wasp spray! Some of those can be pretty irritating if you spray somebody in the eye… although a lot of people advise against it. Let’s see what else there is.” Zage kept going through boxes, cans and bottles. There was paint, paint thinner, detergent, window cleaner, ammonia, oil, brake fluid, and Drano. Steve said, “Wow! A lot of that stuff is really noxious. You can attack him with almost any of them, the question is, which would be easiest to deliver? Let’s look at where you’re going to hide.”
Zage went back over to the stairs. He moved the big box next to the stairs a little, then climbed up on it. Now he could stand on it where he wouldn’t easily be seen when the door first opened. Taking up that position, he said, “How about if I stood here?” He swung around the corner and looked up toward the door in order to show Steve what he meant. “I could throw a cup full of stuff at him, using that cup that’s in the box of detergent.”
“You’ll be throwing with your left hand.” Steve said, doubtfully, “If you missed, you wouldn’t get another chance. I think we should go with that can of spray window cleaner. It’s mostly ammonia and you can just keep shooting until you do hit the guy in the eyes.”
Zage said, “I can hit him with whatever’s in the cup. That’d deliver a bigger dose.” While he said that he’d been climbing down off the box. He went back to the shelves and pulled the measuring cup out of the box of Tide. He got down the ammonia.
Resignedly, Steve said, “I still think you ought to take the spray window cleaner, but if you’re going to use the straight ammonia, take a whiff of it first. If it’s been down here for years, it might not be any good anymore.”
Zage unscrewed the cap from the bottle of ammonia and, gave it a gentle sniff. After a fit of coughing, he said, “I think it’s still good.” He poured the cup nearly full. Then he took the spray window cleaner and squirted some into the air, taking a nearby sniff. “This stuff smells pretty noxious too, I’ll take it along for backup.” He went over and set the cup full of ammonia and the spray window cleaner on a high shelf near the box he’d be standing on.
Zage looked around at the set up for a minute, pondering. I’ll probably only get one chance at this. I should do everything I can think of. Stepping back over, he picked up another wire. This one had a plug on one end and bare wires on the other as if someone had pulled it out of an appliance they were discarding. He pulled the two wires a little bit apart, then, holding them separated, he plugged it in. He touched one wire, then the other, to the concrete floor. The second wire sparked, telling him it was the “hot” wire. Unplugging it, he peeled the neutral wire back and tied a knot in it to make sure he could keep them straight.
Back over at the shopping cart, he twisted the hot wire onto the bare stainless frame of the basket. He dropped the neutral wire onto the floor and set a heavy can of paint on it. He plugged the wire into an extension cord and carried the plug end of the cord back over and tied it to the high shelf beside the stairs. Getting another extension cord he plugged it in then tied the socket to the same high shelf next to the stairs so the two extension cord ends were close to one another. Watching the cart, Zage plugged the cord together briefly. As he’d hoped, the rubber wheels on the cart kept it isolated from ground so a short didn’t drop the circuit breaker.
Zage unplugged the cords, then looked up toward the doo
r, wondering how much longer it’d be before the man brought them some food.
Steve had been watching Zage’s electrification of the shopping cart with a mixture of fascination and disbelief. That’s just… evil, he thought, and… just what a kidnapper deserves!
***
Ell stretched. Despite the tension, she still felt bored. She’d been sitting under the trees beside this small rural road for hours now.
Jamieson had had her leave her own house and take her own car under AI control to a GPS location he’d provided. Ell had endured a gradually progressive tongue lashing from FBI agent Calder during the trip. Calder wanted Ell out of the communication loop with Jamieson and desperately wanted Ell to stay the hell away from wherever Jamieson told her to go. Ell had repeatedly, yet always politely, reminded Calder that she could listen in and advise, but not interfere. Ell would handle the situation her way.
The location Jamieson had chosen turned out to be on a relatively rural road overhung with trees, similar to where she was now. Presumably Jamieson hoped the trees would block overhead surveillance and perhaps even GPS signals. She’d arrived there at what probably amounted to the peak of rush-hour for people going home on that road. Cars were going by in both directions at a fairly high frequency.
When Ell had arrived there she’d found a red Ford Focus parked beside the road. Jamieson had told her to pull up behind it, leave her AI headband in her car and quickly get in the Focus. Once in the car, she’d seen a disposable AI headband lying on the dash with its cameras facing her. It had a handwritten note below it saying, “Put this on.”
Once she had it on, Jamieson had spoken to her through the headband, “Good to see you followed instructions and left your headband behind—presumably he knew this because he’d looked at her through the disposable headband before she put it on. I hope you can drive a car without an AI. Pull out into traffic.”
Ell pulled out into the dense traffic, per Jamieson’s instructions heading the opposite direction. She found it hard to believe that Jamieson hadn’t considered she might not be disconnected from her AI without a headband. Surely he should have considered that she might be using the latest technology to replace the headbands. True, not many people had converted over yet, but surely he should have expected the CEO of the company that had invented HUD contacts, earports, and tooth mics would be using them. She followed directions, turning this way and that according to Jamieson’s demands.
Of course, Allan, communicating through her contacts and earports, kept her up to date as to her location as he picked it up off the GPS antenna in her neck. Jamieson had her looping all around through nearby counties, getting in and out of traffic and reversing directions. Not wanting the FBI to do something rash, Ell did not have Allan share her location with agent Calder. As the hours wore on, Ell began to pity her security team members who were following on hoverbikes ten thousand feet up.
Finally, Jamieson had told Ell to park here under the trees where she’d been waiting for about thirty minutes. At first, she’d been on tenterhooks waiting for something to happen, but now she’d gotten bored. She desperately wanted to ask Allan what was going on, but couldn’t really speak without Jamieson hearing it through the disposable headband. She wondered whether she could sub vocalize quietly enough that the mic ports on her teeth would pick it up but the AI headband wouldn’t. Eventually she decided that it wasn’t worth the chance that it would tip Jamieson off.
She felt relief when she saw a car pull off the road and stop right behind the Focus. Thank God, she thought, maybe something’s about to happen and I can move up their timeline. She didn’t want Zage to have to try to execute his stairwell plan.
As soon as the car had stopped rolling, a man she immediately recognized as Jamieson burst out of the car and ran up to her window. He swung something at the window. Ell instantly turned her head away before the tempered glass came bursting in at her as hundreds of small fragments. She turned back in time to see his left hand snake in the window and shoot her nearly point-blank with a Taser.
Her graphene underclothing not only kept the darts from puncturing her, but the graphene’s highly conductive properties shorted out the current from the Taser dart. She only felt some mild tingling from the discharge. However, having had plenty of experience with being Tasered, she immediately imitated the quivering spasticity of a Taser victim. Jamieson’s hand went back out, holstered the Taser, and returned with another gun. This one fired a dart with some punch at her thigh. Tranquilizer dart she thought. She didn’t feel the pinch of the needle, confirming that the graphene fabric had blocked its entrance.
Jamieson ripped open the door of the car, so Ell obligingly fell out the opening.
Jamieson roughly dragged her back to the passenger door of his vehicle, jerking it open and shoving her inside. He crouched over her for a minute, putting steel handcuffs on her ankles and wrists, then shot her with the Taser again.
Apparently doesn’t trust that the tranquilizer dart’s working yet, Ell thought.
Jamieson covered her with a big sheet of foil and started back around to the driver’s side. Evidently he didn’t trust her not to have brought some kind of GPS device with her and didn’t want to search her for it here at the side of the road. Besides, the foil would keep eyes from seeing a body in the passenger seat.
From the surging and bumping, Ell thought he’d spun the car around to head back the other direction. As she’d anticipated, Allan’s voice in her ear said, “We’ve lost your GPS signal, but the hoverbikes are following a vehicle that just went under those trees and is now leaving in the opposite direction.”
Ell sagged toward the driver’s side, using the collapse of her position to cover the movement of her hands as she folded her right index finger back between her wrists and stroked it over the chain of her manacles. Deciding that the car noise would cover her vocalizations, she whispered to Allan. Allan turned on the one way port in her finger so she could use it to cut the handcuff chain.
As she’d hoped, when she slumped even further toward Jamieson, he cursed and shoved her toward the passenger door.
Jamieson felt pretty good so far. It looked like his preemptive strikes with the Taser and trank dart had kept Donsaii from using her vaunted athleticism to attack him. On the one hand, he’d really wanted her to give it a shot. He’d been wanting to knock her around since he’d first applied for a job with the bitch ten years ago. On the other hand, no matter how hard he worked to convince himself that she’d just gotten lucky back then, he still remembered how impotent he’d felt at the end of his encounter with her. All in all, it was much better that his careful planning and aggressive attack had left her helplessly manacled and tranquilized.
He turned into a parking deck and drove up a level. Stopping next to the van, he got out and jerked Donsaii out of the car, tossing her brutally into the back of the van. Two sets of handcuffs were already set up, one end attached to bolts on the flooring. One cuff went around an ankle, the other around her elbow.
He started to cut off her clothing, but it was made out of some kind of tough fiber that his shears wouldn’t go through. Kevlar or something, he thought, figures. Doesn’t matter though, she’s in the box of the back of this van so she still couldn’t pick up a GPS signal even if she did have an antenna hidden in her clothes.
He would’ve enjoyed seeing her naked, and seeing the look in her eye when she woke up that way, but for now he settled for patting her down for a GPS unit. He didn’t find one, but even the pat-down was pretty enjoyable. He climbed into the front of the van, carefully pulling the foil between the front and back into place.
Driving out of the parking deck, he thought smugly that even if they’d somehow followed him this far with aerial surveillance, they were going to lose him because of the change of vehicles. The departure through one of three possible exits would make it even harder for them.
He headed for the house where they were holding the kid. Roger should have already fed the ki
d and have some pizza ready for Jamieson. They’d off the babysitter and head for the rendezvous he’d planned with Wang.
He’d never noticed that the chain between Ell’s wrist cuffs had already been cut…
***
Zage was standing on the box beside the stairs in the basement, bored out of his mind. He felt pretty hungry and thought the kidnappers should deliver food soon.
He had his wooden closet rod stuffed in the waistband of his pants. The cup of ammonia and the spray can of window cleaner were on the shelf next to him.
He’d been ready for nearly an hour and was really tired of just standing there!
Zage decided to get down and sit on the stool beside the box. He should have enough time to scramble back up on the box when he heard the deadbolts starting to turn. Just as he moved, though, he heard a vehicle drive up. The stairs must come up near the front door! he thought with some excitement. That’ll give me a lot better shot of getting outside where I can get a GPS signal. His excitement diminished when he considered the possibility that the car might be bringing more members of the kidnapping team. Having more of them in the house could make an escape even more difficult.
Then he faintly heard a knock on the door. The tread of boots was followed by the creak of the door opening. Voices spoke. Zage had Osprey amplify his hearing and with great relief, decided he was hearing somebody delivering pizza!
A few minutes later, the door groaned shut and the sound of the boots moved away from the door, but not toward the stairs. Nonetheless, Zage decided that they’d probably deliver the pizza downstairs soon. He decided to stay up on the box.
A few minutes later, he heard the boots coming back his way.
The bolts in the door started turning.
Zage plugged the two extension cords together to electrify the shopping cart.
Ell Donsaii 13: DNA Page 22
