The Eyes of Little Birds: The First Nick Wolfe Sci Fi Adventure (Nick Wolfe Adventure Series Book 1)

by Ross H Henderson

  “Do send her my best.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Evans. I definitely will.”

  “Well, Mr. Vincent, it was nice finally to have met you, and Nick, I hope to see more of you in the future.”

  Just then, a large man who could only be Evans’ bodyguard appeared. A large man with blond, slicked back hair and a very intense look on his boyish face. It was Karl, the young man whom Tom had saved from the oil rig. He looked better than Tom remembered, even before the accident.

  “I believe you’ve met Karl.”

  “Yes, it’s great to see you again!”

  Karl was seemingly indifferent, and gave only a cursory nod to the man who saved his life. He spoke only to Evans.

  “Sir, your flight leaves in 30 minutes.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Karl. Gentlemen, until next time…”

  All three men were surprised by the disregard Karl had shown Tom Vincent, and at the fact Evans didn’t address it or apologize. Those closest to Evans knew him as eccentric, and at times, volatile. The rest of the company knew to keep their distance from him.

  Dr. Curtis seemed to have a weight lifted off his shoulders after Evans and Karl left the building. He led the group back to his office. “Dr. Davies asked me to see how you’re holding up, and said he’ll join us in about 30 minutes. Mr. Wolfe, you are welcome to join us.” Wolfe had much better knowledge of the building than he shared with anyone, and he had no need to do much reconnaissance. Each department had its own floor or set of floors. Once these sections were in place they were there to stay due to the logistics and expense of swapping so much embedded equipment. They hadn’t changed since Wolfe started working for them, and it was unlikely they had changed since.

  So Wolfe said, “Thank you, Doctor. I’d like that.”

  Chapter 8

  After Dr. Curtis finished his tests, he left Tom alone with Dr. Davies; Wolfe excused himself beforehand to go to the restroom, but explored the rest of the floor to see what he could find.

  Dr. Davies examined Tom for about fifteen minutes, and could not find anything wrong with his implants. He was stoic and clinical, and was very matter-of-fact as he asked, “Why are you keeping your eyes shut for hours and sometimes days at a time? Does this have to do with the deaths you said you think you caused?”

  The doctor, in his effort to show how much he knew, had said too much. He gave Tom the answer he needed to parrot back at him to allay his suspicions. In doing so, he saved his own life, even if only for the moment.

  “Yes, Doctor. You got me. I can’t help it. I know we’ve talked about this, and I know BioMek has spent millions on me and my eyes. I don’t want to waste this amazing gift, but I can’t get past it. I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t help how you feel, of course.” Dr. Davies replied, spitting out the word feel with a thinly disguised note of disgust. Who was this blue-collar nobody to tell him his invention, his genius, was flawed?

  “Doctor, how did you know I’ve been closing my eyes?”

  “It was a guess, really. I couldn’t think of anything else it could be. You see, the technology is otherwise infallible.”

  Wolfe walked in and closed the door behind him.

  Tom heard him and closed his eyes.

  “Do you have business in here, sir?”

  “Yes, I do. Sit down, please.”

  “I will not. Leave my office now or I shall call security!”

  “No, you won’t. I’ve disabled the cameras on this floor and your IT department is in Mumbai. They may figure out there is a problem, but won’t even think of acting on it until someone calls to complain. That’s the contract: do what you’re asked to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Besides, with all the BioMek Horizons surveillance technology flying around, it’s considered a waste of money to pay a group of techies half a world away to monitor your own systems. Maybe even a security hazard. As usual, human greed and ego ruin the opportunity for a perfect system.”

  Dr. Davies smiled wryly, “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Wolfe continued, “Now, we have a few more questions to ask you and then we can all get on with our evening. I walked in late when you were explaining to my friend how you knew he was closing his eyes. Can we pick it up there?”

  “Well, as I explained to Mr. Vincent. I simply gueeeaaAAAH!”

  Without a word, Wolfe snatched Dr. Davies by the arm and pinned it behind his back, while jamming his face into his own desk. He then reached down and pulled the doctor’s pinky just above the first joint, and jerked it at a sideways angle, away from the rest of the hand, breaking it. Dr. Davies screamed until Wolfe gripped his ring finger tightly, and silenced the doctor. “The next time you scream or lie to me, we’ll see what I can do to you with some of your surgical equipment. You don’t want to find out. I can be a pretty creative guy.”

  By now the normally stone-faced doctor was visibly shaken, and was past any pretense of ignorance or toughness. Wolfe had chosen against the weapons BioMek had available in favor of his wits and own bare hands; this fact was not lost on Tom or the doctor.

  “Now, Doctor, for the last time. How did you know Mr. Vincent had been closing his eyes?”

  “I could see it! We can see everything he can see. I had to rewind and watch in slow motion when we stopped getting reception and I could see his eyelids coming down.”

  “And what about the deaths?”

  “The eyes target the victim and a concentrated microwave signal comes down from a satellite. The satellite even has heat vision, but can’t see clearly enough to make out faces when the weather is bad or someone is indoors. We’re planning to create more like you to help our satellite do in the north what we couldn’t accomplish with drones. Now, please let me go.”

  “Is this what killed Dr. Reyes?”

  “Yes, we wanted a test, and Dr. Reyes expressed his disapproval of what we were doing. We couldn’t have him telling you or anyone else what we’d done.”

  “And Craig Galloway?”

  “Yes, same thing. We didn’t want him to publish a book with our plans or our technology, even in part. And yes, we fried the wolf too. As you know, your eyes are worth millions. It wouldn’t do to see them in the belly of some wolf.”

  “I’m guessing you have access to the control room.” Nick growled.

  “Yes.”

  “Take us there now.”

  Chapter 9

  The top ten floors of the BioMek Horizons Building were suites and conference rooms, some more elegantly appointed than others, depending on the nature of the meeting or negotiation taking place, and on the guests. The next five floors down were just for remote projects like drones and Tom’s eyes. There were servers and networks within networks, vast stores of hardware including drones of all sizes, and there were many control rooms. Tom and Wolfe escorted Dr. Davies. At this point Tom spent most of the time looking down so he could see where he was going without anyone seeing his friend.

  As the three walked in, Dr. Davies announced, “Here we are.” He proceeded to turn on two small screens and one long, screen that curled around the outside of the room, which showed exactly what Tom was looking at. This was definitely the place. None of the other control rooms had this kind of screen.

  “OK, this is what we’re here for. Are you ready?” Wolfe asked.

  “I’m ready. You get set the timer on the EMP and I’ll get the doctor downstairs.”

  As Tom left with Dr. Davies, he was blindsided by a hard, metallic left hand. The blow hit him so hard his eye seemed to vaporize into a thin cloud of dust. The nanobots making up his eye had been knocked out of the socket and dispersed. The tissue around Tom’s eye socket quickly swelled shut.

  When he regained his senses, Tom could see Karl strangling the doctor with a shocking display of strength, lifting him off the ground by his neck and squeezing. Dr. Davies’ face was blue and his body was twitching spastically.

  Tom couldn’t remember the extent of Karl’s injuries from the fire, but was sure it m
ust have been pretty bad since both his arms were weapons-grade BioMek Horizons robot-prosthetics. They looked human enough, but were harder and lighter than natural bone and muscle.

  Karl noticed Wolfe starting a fire just inside the control room. He threw the doctor’s corpse off to the side like he was made of rags, and walked toward the fire. Upon seeing this, Wolfe realized Tom was yelling that Karl’s arms were artificial. From the looks of it half of his upper body was probably mechanically enhanced too. Judging from his leg speed, Wolfe supposed Karl was probably more machine than man.

  Karl leapt suddenly from about 10 feet away as Wolf staggered in the doorway. The move was quick and impressive given the distance, but because of the distance Wolfe was able to time his moves: move in closer than where Karl was expecting to land his blow, bring his shoulder up under his calf, and lock his hands together on top of the knee, while pulling down. From there Karl went down on the back of his neck, and Wolfe would have broken Karl’s leg, but it was artificial and extremely strong.

  Wolfe’s strength was fading fast. He dropped to a sitting position and kicked with all his might into Karl’s manhood. No luck. He didn’t want to think what was down there. By now Karl’s other leg drew back with an unnatural flexibility straight up in the air, and came down in an axe-kick motion onto Wolfe’s right forearm. It was almost certainly broken, but there was no time to worry about it. As he feebly rolled under a table he caught a glimpse of Karl’s twisted smile, not unlike that of his master, Tristan Evans.

  Normally, Wolfe was up for a fight; he was well versed in several martial arts including karate, aikido, krav maga, and boxing. How would these skills match up against a cyborg, who feels no pain and whose bones can’t be broken by a simple leverage move? He thought about reaching for a pipe or some other improvised weapon, but realized there was a good chance Karl would overpower him, take the weapon, and use it against him.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to beat Karl so much as stall him. He knew he could do that for at least a few minutes as long as he stayed sharp. He also knew that after a few minutes, Karl’s superior speed, strength, and endurance would be more than he could handle. For the first time it occurred to Wolfe that he and Tom would not make it out of the building alive. He had to act fast, as Karl had already turned his attention toward Tom.

  With this in mind, Wolfe sprang back into the open as the fire slowly grew inside the control center. He called for Karl to come and fight, and waited for Karl to catch up to him by stepping over debris and Dr. Davies. When Karl got to him, he wasted no time in reaching for Wolfe, who pulled away at the last second and yelled, “Hit the EMP!”

  Karl’s eyes opened wide at the realization of what was about to happen. He screamed, “No!” but it was too late; Tom set off the device. Everything shut down, including Tom’s eyes, and most of Karl’s body. He collapsed like a giant puppet whose strings had just been cut.

  Tom’s remaining eye drained out of the empty socket like fine sand. He was now completely blind, but free from being BioMek’s unwilling spy and assassin. As Nick was leading him out of the room, Karl said, “Tom, wait. Please.”

  “Yes, Karl.”

  “I’m sorry I was rude to you earlier. I didn’t want to be, but I didn’t know if Mr. Evans would approve. They made me come after you. They can shut me down whenever they want. For a while I was jealous that they only took your eyes.”

  “Not just my eyes. They took away my privacy and wanted to make me a weapon. They took my life and my friend.”

  “I guess that’s true, but if you could see me now you would know that without the hardware, there’s hardly anything left of me, just my head and some internal organs. Anyway, I have just enough of a body to keep me alive, and to feel pain and fear. I suspected they replaced much more of me than I needed, but what could I do about it?

  “They need my head since they still haven’t created artificial intelligence that can feel fear like a human. AI is intelligent, but primal. It always fights for its own life.”

  Mr. Evans carries a remote to shock me or shut my body down when he is unhappy with me. My heart is fake too and it’s about done. I’ll be dead soon, but I wanted you to know I admire you and thank you for saving my life. It’s not your fault those bastards took it from me, anyway. Now, I thank you for taking my life. I’m glad it was you and not Evans. He would have tortured me for a lifetime before doing it.”

  “They take everything they can from you, and want you to sell your soul to get a little of it back, don’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “On his way to Dubai to meet a geneticist. He wanted me to double back to make sure Davies fixed your eyes while keeping you in the dark, and report back. He’s not going to like this…” At that, Karl smiled and passed away.

  Wolfe led Tom down the stairs, though both men were blind in the darkness. Once they got down to about the 50th floor, Wolfe saw the emergency lights that had kicked in. The fire was spreading quickly with no automatic sprinkler system to put it out. He slipped into the role of leader and security, barking orders to “Help me get this man to safety!” Once out of the building, the two disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 10

  Tom had Nick send Maggie a message by disposable phone informing that all was well, and after a few days travel, Wolfe made sure Tom and Maggie were reunited in a remote part of Newfoundland. By the time they reached their destination, Tom’s eyes were rebuilt yet again and functioning well, but without the dread of BioMek looking over his shoulder. By the time they could re-establish control over the satellite it would be too far out of its orbit, falling back to earth.

  Nick and Tom shared a drink and parted ways, knowing they would probably never see each other again. Tom was ready to start his new life in a new but familiar part of the world with the woman he loved.

  Wolfe was also ready for the next phase in his life. He had new purpose and new discipline. He knew he had plenty left to give, and was disgusted at hearing how his old company used and discarded people in the interests of money and power. Someone had to fight back, and he was still good at fighting.

  Epilogue

  NEW SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER - October 4, 2038

  NEW SEATTLE: In what is being described as a freak accident, a fire engulfed the top 20 floors of the BioMek Horizons Building, destroying billions of dollars worth of experimental and functioning technology. Investigators are still sifting through the rubble, but fear the worst. They’ve identified Dr. Wyatt Davies, a prominent surgeon and engineer on the BioMek team. Also found was a cyborg burned past recognition; identification will be difficult since very little human tissue remains for DNA testing or even a fingerprint. Dental records are being referenced on the BioMek payroll, but nothing has been found so far.

  More on this story as it develops.

  Tristan Evans was a man who was not used to losing anything, and while he felt some anger at what he lost the previous night, he also gained the intoxicating senses of danger and challenge that had been missing in his life for a very long time.

  He turned off his newsfeed and inhaled deeply. As Evans sipped his green tea from the balcony of his suite in Dubai’s finest 7-star hotel, he smirked and whispered, “See you soon, Mr. Wolfe.”

  THE END

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  About the Author

  Ross H. Henderson is the author of Science Fiction/Adventure stories, including The Eyes of Little Birds and Slaves of Pangaea. He draws inspiration from classic writers of the genre Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard, placing his readers in strange and dangerous situations while asking questions about humanity, technology, and reality itself.

  Before taking up writing, Ross was active in the Atlanta music scene, playing in various bands and producing albums. He has also booked and promoted events, including charity shows for Wounded Warrior Project.

&n
bsp; Ross also enjoys art, history, and spending time with his family.