The first streaks of colors started appearing at 11:17 as predicted by the NASA correspondent. They were a color green that reminded Levi of the concoction inside a witch’s cauldron from the fairytale books he grew up on. They became brighter and brighter until they pulsed and sent out icicles of color reaching down towards the ground. Twenty minutes later he could see reds, pinks, blues, and purples. It was better than a fireworks show, and Levi was completely fixated and grateful to bear witness to the rare cosmic dance.
“Could you imagine seeing these in ancient times and not knowing what caused them?” Levi pondered out loud.
“The Finnish used to believe they were made from a magical fox that swept his tail…across the…snow —” Sherman stopped talking and grabbed his chest. “Argh!”
“Sherman! Are you okay?” Levi crawled over to him. He was in so much pain he couldn’t answer. Other nearby guests began to crowd around in concern.
“Is anyone a doctor here?” Levi shouted.
“I am!” two men and a woman came rushing over.
They kneeled and began checking pulses and asking questions. Then a beeping sound started. “Do you have a pacemaker?”
Sherman’s eyes shot open and he nodded.
“He needs to get to a doctor now. He’s got bad arrhythmia.”
“If it develops into ventricular fibrillation it could cause an infarction,” another one confirmed.
There was no calling 911. “We need to get him to the street and find someone who will help drive us to the hospital,” Levi found himself saying.
The task of getting Sherman to a hospital during a government lockdown seemed daunting.
“But how are we going to…,”
Peanut squatted down and picked Sherman up, who growled in pain. “Let’s go.”
“If he passes out, you will need to do CPR,” the female doctor counseled them.
People muttered well wishes and prayers as they left. It took over ten minutes to get Sherman down the stairs. At one point he asked to be put down and walked on his own. Towards the end he sucked up his pride and hung to the shoulders of his comrades.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Levi explained to a protesting lobby woman.
“Oh,” her attitude changed abruptly when she saw the sheer pain in Sherman’s face, “I have to unlock the doors for you.”
Before there was enough time to track down a military or law enforcement personnel, they were spotted and approached. Instead of having a gun pointed at them or remotely questioned as to why they were outdoors, the woman yelled over her shoulder, “I’ve got another one!”
She was in the National Guard and quite young. “Is he experiencing palpitations?” After they nodded she said, “Come with me.”
They followed her around the street corner and a marine opened a car door for them. “I will drive you to the hospital.”
“Is this happening a lot?” Fletch asked curiously.
“More than it should be,” he disclosed, scrunching into the unloading circle. “Do you need me to help you?” the marine asked.
“No, we got him, thanks.”
Sweat wasn’t beading from Sherman’s brow any longer and his breathing seemed less labored, but still his skin had a clammy look to it.
“We are out of wheelchairs,” the nurse confessed. “Carry him inside and we’ll take care of him.”
They led Sherman into a hospital that, to Levi’s surprise, had electricity running. He supposed if any building deserved a juiced-up generator, it was a hospital. Twenty minutes later Sherman shuffled towards them with the color returned to his face.
“Hey! You okay man?” Peanut asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good. They gave me beta blockers and reset my pacemaker. Sorry about that.”
“No need to be sorry, man. We’re are just happy to know you’re alright. Shouldn’t you be in a hospital bed or something?” Levi thought it was a little early for him to be discharged.
“They said they need the beds available for other patients.”
POW! POW POW! The sound of gunshots rang out in the night.
The auroras had faded enough that Levi could not see beyond what the light of the moon could provide. For hours guns continued to go off sporadically, until finally, the men were so immune to the sound they didn’t bother looking up from their playing cards. It was a big city, after all, and not everyone would play by the rules. There wasn’t anywhere safer to be than the cafeteria of a hospital.
At five the cafeteria lights came back on, flashing and blinking a little normalcy back into the tense-filled air. It took an hour to hail a taxi back to the Stellar Grand. It appeared the fear that had gripped the city throughout the night had turned people into either recluses or maniacs. The latter were now out and about, still high on adrenaline with fanciful thoughts of an apocalyptic future. Luckily the police and military seemed to be snuffing these instigators out fairly quickly. Most businesses had not given their employees the day off per the government’s urge to reestablish routine – it had already cost trillions to shut down an entire country for as long as they had. Even though some people still took the day off, it was New York, and the city wasn’t very forgiving to idlers. Most trickled out of their apartments with an understandable weariness.
“Where are the taxis?” Peanut asked.
“Where are any cars?” Sherman asked when a lone truck zoomed by.
It was true that there were only a few cars running on the roads.
“My dad’s a mechanic. It just needed to be restarted,” the taxi man smacked his gum. “I hope it takes a while for people to figure out.”
“The storm shorted the computers in people’s cars. Between Sherman’s pacemaker and that fact, I’m glad we took the precautions with our phones.”
“I wonder if our van is working.” It was an outmoded piece of junk after all.
“If it is we better get to it fast before someone steals it,” Sherman urged. “Can you please step on it, sir?”
They arrived just in time to see a man shoving a crowbar between the window and the door frame of their trusty steed.
“Hey! Get away from that car!” they yelled, running towards him.
Instead of obliging, the man wiggled the crowbar desperately back and forth. The thief gave it a hard yank to the left and the door snapped open. He hurried inside and shut the door, betting everything on his hot wiring skills. Levi thought they were screwed when the engine revved on. The hijacker looked at them as he pressed the accelerator and then stopped with a screech. His eyes went wide with surprise and he threw his hands up. Confused, Levi looked to see what had made him change his mind so abruptly.
Sherman stood holding a gun at the kid’s face. “We said, get the fuck out or get your brains blown all over my dashboard.”
“Whoa!” Fletch said with wide-eyed astonishment. “I had no idea you had a gun.”
“Can’t remember a time I didn’t have one.” His hands, steady and experienced, followed the boy as he got out of the car and started running down the street. “He’s just some punk kid. We all were at some point.”
“You were?” Peanut asked.
“Where do you think I learned how to use one of these things? Don’t worry,” he quickly added, “this one is legal. I’ll stay here and watch the car while you grab our stuff. Just shove everything of mine into the green suitcase.”
Levi was glad to see Sherman was totally recovered from the night’s heath scare. They all agreed that the man with the gun should protect their vehicle, which somehow went from lame to desired literally overnight. The elevator was functional again and on the way to their floor, Levi pulled the room key from his wallet.
“You won’t be needing that.”
“Wh—”
The door to their room was hanging open. That wasn’t a good sign. Levi stepped through the threshold and then over a pillow that had been thrown. Clothes, toiletries, and bedding littered the floor in a haphazard mess. All the important t
hings were gone.
“Well, we’ve been robbed.”
They sorted through anything that was left, which wasn’t much. The burglars had completely cleaned out any valuables and taken their suitcases to carry it all. The aluminum foil that had been wrapped around all their electronics was laying empty on the dresser.
“Our passports!”
“Stolen,” Fletch confirmed.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Levi repeated like a child unwilling to accept the truth. “How are we going to get back? Thank God I had my wallet with me.”
“That makes one of us,” Fletch frowned. “They took Peanut’s too. We had them here on the dresser.”
Peanut wasn’t talking much and Levi couldn’t tell if he was trying to hold in a raging temper tantrum, or if he really did just calmly accept the reality of being completely screwed over. All the Hamzas he had run into over the years seemed to have a smaller bell-curve of emotions. In fact, all the sects did now that he came to think of it.
“The question is, what are we going to do now?” Levi said, rolling up a ball of aluminum foil and chucking it across the room. “They even took my shaver. I really liked that shaver.”
A few minutes later they were in the lobby, fuming to the front desk manager.
“I don’t understand how anyone was able to enter our room. I have the key.” Levi held up the plastic from his wallet.
“There was no electricity last night. We have fail-safe electromagnetic locks.”
Levi blinked at the manager, waiting for him to continue his excuse.
“It means your door was unlocked while the armature plate was demagnetized,” Fletch offered the explanation instead.
“What! That is ridiculous! What kind of system is that?” Levi raised his voice.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you were told not to leave your room and to use the manual locks from the inside so we are not liable for any of your stolen items.”
Levi wanted to jump across the desk. “None of us have our passports now. He’s a Ryley and he’s a Hamza….”
“Yes, sir, I see that.”
“Well, how are we supposed to get back to Ohmani without our passports?”
“Don’t we just need to go to the embassy in D.C?” Fletch asked.
“There’s a consulate in D.C, but,” the manager squished his face in a way that foretold more bad news, “you can’t go there. Because you all are midaki, you must go to the main Ohmani embassy in New Mexico.”
“New Mexico!”
“Yes, sir, where the spaceport is. You could fly there.”
“No, we can’t. They had their wallets stolen so they have no form of ID. We’ll have to drive.”
Sherman could see, mostly from Levi’s stormy gait, that something was wrong when they came walking towards the precious van. “What’s up? Where’s all the stuff?”
11 BACK TO THE MOTHERLAND
Talon found herself extremely excited to be going to her people’s planet for the first time. A large boom interrupted her thoughts. Before the flight started, the information hologram explained the creation of the wormhole would produce such a sound. People around her began turning on the 2D monitors in front of their seats. She did the same and an image appeared at arms-reach.
There must have been a camera somewhere in the front of the fuselage because the image she saw was the wormhole they would be traveling through. It looked like a fishbowl, with the planets and stars around its edges being stretched from dots of light into streaks and eventually halos that encircled the interior. These rings became closer and closer together before finally spacing apart, becoming streaks again, and finally dots on the other side.
They entered the conduit that was being held open by a spherical shell of harnessed exotic matter. Like a worm digging its way through an apple, they dug through the fabric of space, shortcutting thousands of light years between two far reaching planetary systems. The ship was at the complete whim of the wormhole’s creators – a division of the DSO – and if their construction failed and collapsed, who knew where they would end up in the universe. Certainly lost forever. She almost laughed to think how nervous she was to fly in an airplane for the first time when compared to the high stakes of traversing space-time.
Talon watched in complete fascination at the display in front of her. Although it was only a two-dimensional representation of what was going on outside the ship, it was still incredibly beautiful and wildly unimaginable. They were actually in what looked to be a tunnel. The midaki kept their methods of wormhole conjuring top secret, and after the Great Rescue Treaty, the DSO would still not grant the people of Earth access to the technology. Mantys had been firm that exotic matter access and manipulation were still an unnegotiable part of the treaty. Anytime an earthbound country wished to travel large distances in space, they had to work with the midaki to create the wormhole for them.
An hour later the ship emerged from the conduit. Talon downed three granola bars, popped two Luminestal and shoved a pair of head phones into her ears. Their flight would be another seven hours and so she figured she might as well take advantage of a good night’s sleep. Luckily, her future grandparents lived in the heart of the Sydces capital, Felon, where the spaceport was, so she would not have to catch a connecting flight.
“Puria?” A sweet voice accompanied a gentle rocking.
Talon opened her eyes and saw the blurry image of her neighbor, a sweet-looking Ryley woman, smiling down at her.
“Puria, ilean nava.”
Talon shook her head to let the woman know she didn’t understand.
“Nu frei, Katawil?”
“Je lun.” Very little, Talon answered. She had to admit it wasn’t ideal. Even Levi knew that language better than she did.
The woman reached into her bag and pulled out a small device and a miniature microphone. She gave it to Talon and pointed to her ear. Talon shoved the device in the inner curves of her ear.
“Not many people speak English here,” the microphone was saying into her ear. It was a translator. “I had to visit Ohmani because my son married a human. I am never again going to that horrible place. It was full of criminals and word unknown. You can take this.”
Talon presented her palms and shook her head, but the woman insisted. She had to admit the device would come in handy. She reached into her pocket and tried to offer the woman money.
“Please, I insist. You need that much more than I do. It comes with another microphone if you want to have a two-way conversation. I was worried about you. You didn’t move for hours.”
“I’m a deep sleeper,” she lied.
The woman looked at her in confusion and Talon then remembered she was the only one with a translator in her ear. She put her palms together and stuck them on the side of her face in a sleeping gesture.
“Be careful. You won’t notice you have a problem until you have one,” she warned and walked away.
Great. The woman thought she was a drug addict. As soon as Talon entered the spaceport from the terminal, a shiny fuchsia-colored dress adorned with single shoulder spikes caught her eye. The woman who was sporting it was none other than Bockie. As Talon walked closer, she read the sign Bockie was holding – “The DOLO is Full of Rodent Sphincters”
“Bockie!” Talon ran to her and swiped the sign. She regretted admitting her frustrations in her email.
“When I get through with them they are going to wish they never made you a…cop,” she smooshed her face like the word was not only offensive, but repulsive.
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad…until they threw me behind a desk,” Talon sighed. “Anyways, I just had to say I was taking personal leave because I was upset in case they hacked my email. I’m actually here on business.”
“Business? There are no desks around here.”
“Personal business.”
“Hmm, you’re breaking the rules and taking matter into your own hands. That’s my girl. Can I help in any way?”
“I may need your w
its…perhaps your connections.” She still hadn’t figured out how she would be able to see Heath Nervista if his visitation was restricted for authorized personnel. There wasn’t anyone more convincing than the woman standing in front of her…especially with that dress on. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Working at the casino”
“You work at a casino?”
“I own it. You don’t think I would be wearing this dress just because, do you?”
It honestly wouldn’t have surprised Talon at all, but still, even this villain-esque outfit was pretty dramatic for mid-afternoon work attire. “The reason I’m here is because I need to see someone who is being kept in Inslaki but I’m not sure how to see him exactly.”
“I’ve got a purse full of cash, baby.”
Bockie grabbed her cell phone and began speaking Katawil. The translator began talking in Talon’s ear.
“Zi, it’s me. I need to go see a man about a horse…It’s a big friendly animal that people ride around on while it craps in the streets. No…never mind. Thanks, I’ll be in by busy hour.” She hung up the phone. “We will take the pleik there.”
The pleik was essentially a high-speed transportation system where small pods raced through clear tubes. It reminded Talon of her childhood pet hamsters that crawled through the plastic tunnels she screwed together for them.
It gained speed and gained speed until Talon gripped the arm rests in a white-knuckled gasp. When Bockie started whoohooing like she was on a roller coaster, she finally asked, “How fast are we going?” They flew like an air-hockey puck that had been shot from a gun towards the outskirts of the city.
“Fast. Now, tell me more about this prisoner. Have you ever met him?”
“Not exactly. I can’t tell you everything…but this man was arrested by the DOLO for aiding and abetting terrorists, which pretty much makes him one. He knows something, Bock…something that no one has dug out of him.”
An Eagle's Revenge (Across the Infinite Void Book 2) Page 13
