Xenofreak Nation

by Melissa Conway

  Scott rescued her. “I’ll be sure to ask him when I take it back.”

  Lupus straightened up slowly. After a moment, he said, “Mouse told me how the two of you managed to hook up. Very Romeo and Juliet, complete with tragic ending. Cougar, you will accompany me to recover the panda. Porky, you have a date with your father, and Padme will escort you.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Before Scott could even shoot Bryn a warning look, she exclaimed, “What? No!”

  Padme merely gestured to the door.

  Bryn stood her ground and glared at her. “You’re wanted for kidnapping and escape. I’d like to see you try to collect that ten-thousand dollar reward.”

  Padme shook her head slightly, rolling her eyes. “I’m not interested in the reward. Who do think offered it in the first place?”

  “Who? You?” Bryn scoffed.

  “Enough!” Lupus said again. “Get her out of here.”

  Bryn finally glanced at Scott. He expected to see fear and anger in her eyes, but why did he have the feeling it was directed at him? Perhaps because he led her here, and was passively allowing Lupus to deliver her to her father? Yet he couldn’t help but feel that despite the gravity of Bryn’s situation at home, she was safer there. Her father may be a humongous jerk, but he wouldn’t kill her, something that was more and more likely to happen while she pretended to belong among the outcasts of the Xenofreak Nation.

  Padme took Bryn’s arm, but Bryn shrugged the smaller girl’s hand off. Scott suppressed a pang of something, concern maybe, as she walked out the door, but was too relieved that she’d quit protesting to give it much thought. Padme tossed him a look over her shoulder that wasn’t hard to read; satisfaction.

  Lupus got right down to business, as if he’d already forgotten the two young women. “Where’s the farm?”

  Scott had memorized the coordinates Shasta sent him, and Lupus entered them into his holophone. “Two hour drive if we don’t hit traffic. How many ARA soldiers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was always hard to tell what Lupus was thinking by looking at his face, but he made up for it in the timbre of his voice and choice use of words. “You’re not worth a god-damn, you know that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t sir me. We’re not in the military anymore, boy. Get on the phone and find me a truck and some god-damned backup. And you better come up with a decent plan, with minimal carnage because we don’t need the press on this one, or I’ll hang you out by your furry thumbs.”

  Scott accepted a whack on the side of the head as he walked past Lupus on his way to Phaco’s desk. Lupus muttered something about getting some lunch. Scott pretended not to notice that he used his sleeve to open the doorknob. It was a frustrating fact that Lupus never left prints on anything, or left any cups lying around with his DNA on it. Scott did catch what he’d said, “We’re not in the military anymore,” but it could have simply been his way of saying “you’re,” since Lupus knew Scott had been a Marine for a day.

  ‘Minimal carnage’ was not the XBestia way, but it made sense as far as this job was concerned. Under normal circumstances, the ARA would boast publicly about the panda rescue, but they hadn’t because they knew the authorities would confiscate the animal and quite possibly put it in a zoo. The ARA vegan animal extremists would hate zoos almost as much as they hated human consumption of meat. Their goal would be to somehow get the panda back to its native habitat in China, a lofty objective that would take time and resources. This silence on their part worked in the XBestia’s favor. As long as Lupus and company didn’t leave a bunch of corpses for the cops to investigate, they should be able to retrieve the cargo with no one but the hapless ARA soldiers the wiser.

  It took four hours to get to the outskirts of the rundown, thirteen-acre farm just outside of Poughkeepsie. They drove in a ten-foot long decommissioned U-Haul rental truck with Arizona plates. The truck looked unassuming, but it was armored, had honeycomb bullet-proof tires, and the cab had been opened up to connect to the back. The driver was an ex-NASCAR mechanic, a Native American xeno who called himself Chief Joe. He had a bulbous red nose that suggested alcoholism and wore a Mohawk, but instead of a strip of hair down his head, it was a rather raggedy band of feathers. In the passenger seat was his partner, a female xeno named Liz. She, too, had a partially shaved head, similar to the cut Scott was growing out. Her graft, some kind of reptile skin in the shape of an arrow pointing down, was situated at the base of her brain. The first time he looked at it, it appeared to be green, but the second time it looked brown. He wondered if it was chameleon skin.

  Lupus sat with Scott in the back, slumped and dozing almost the entire way, while Scott familiarized himself with the arsenal on board: four long-range CO2 dart-gun rifles with thermal night vision scope capability, and a box of darts pre-filled with tranquillizer sufficient to knock out a 200-pound man, pressurized and ready for use. Two separate darts with a different anesthetic were designated for the panda in case they needed them.

  Once they reached the farm’s coordinates, Chief Joe slowed down as Scott leaned into the cab to look out the window and study the perimeter visible from the main road. A stand of old sugar maples completely concealed the farm. The main gate appeared to be reinforced, but the fencing on either side looked like standard agricultural barbed wire, and the land was level. Scott pointed to a section of fence to the right of the gate, an area thinly populated with saplings. Chief Joe nodded.

  They drove a quarter mile further before Chief Joe pulled over at a place where the shoulder of the road widened into a lookout point. It was almost dark and there was no other traffic. The terrain was woodsy with green meadows, and the air coming in through the windows felt humid and warm, laden with the chirping of crickets and frogs.

  Lupus sat up and stretched. “We here?”

  Scott said, “Yep.”

  Lupus grunted and pulled out his holophone, switching it to conference. After one ring, Padme’s face appeared. She began to talk without waiting for a prompt from Lupus. “These guys are dedicated, but small potatoes. Kareem’s mother LaShonda Williams won a lottery jackpot in 2013 and managed to hang onto most of it until she died last year of lung cancer. Kareem, who graduated from NYU with a Bachelors in Liberal Studies, inherited several million and has been essentially building his army ever since.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Lupus said, sounding profoundly bored, “but would you mind please getting to the part about how many of these stooges we are up against?”

  “I hacked into the ARA’s email through their website. They have over one hundred active members, only a handful of whom reside in the area and are overtly involved in the day-to-day operations. Two hours ago, Kareem sent an email to a Miss Karen Lee inviting her over and telling her, in essence, that they would have the place to themselves tonight.”

  Scott tucked away the information that Padme had the ability to hack into someone’s email. She’d never revealed that she was anything more than tech-savvy.

  “So we brought all this firepower to take down a guy on a booty-call?” Liz asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Padme replied. “I sent a map of the farm—main house, barn, chicken coop and two outbuildings. It was originally an organic dairy and egg farm, but the livestock was sold off and the grazing fields are fallow. The structures were built a century ago. Barn is constructed of local stone a third of the way up and finished with timber. Fencing is not electrified. There is, however, a video surveillance alarm system with infrared capability.”

  “Can you shut it down?” Lupus asked.

  “Not from here. The alarm company has an adequate firewall, though I was able to extract information from correspondence between Kareem and the company. An email dated two years ago had an attachment with the original schematic proposal for installation of the cameras. I sent it to you. The cameras use software analysis that will alert Kareem via holocall if it detects intruders, or if one or more of the came
ras go offline. If he does not contact the company to give the all-clear within ten minutes, the system will alert police. As to how many people you may encounter, I can tell you that the previous owner converted one of the outbuildings to a housing unit in 1987. As we speak, the occupants are streaming a holo entitled, ‘Mask of the Undertaker.’

  “That’s a good movie,” Chief Joe said, earning a sidelong look from Lupus.

  Padme continued, “In addition, there are three people using the postal address assigned to that unit. All male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. None of them have military service records, but their arrest records suggest they are familiar with firearms.”

  Scott was dumbstruck that Padme had obtained all that information in the four hours they’d been driving. Although in point of fact, she would have had significantly less time to do so, since she’d had to take Bryn home. He hoped Lupus would ask her how that went.

  But Lupus only said, “That it?”

  “The local police provide live scanner audio feed on the Internet. I will monitor it and call you if they are notified and responding to a security breach in your area. That’s all.”

  Lupus flipped his holophone closed over her image without so much as a goodbye.

  He looked at Scott. “What we got?”

  Scott handed each of them an earbug and waited while they were inserted. “Frequency confirm.”

  Lupus, Chief Joe and Liz all said, “Check” in turn, and Scott heard each of their voices in his right ear.

  He held up one of the dart cases. “This holds your ammo. It’s like a straw dispenser. Push this lever and a dart will drop into the tray. In the syringe is the fastest-acting tranquilizer on the market, but it will still take about 30 seconds for full effect. We got one shot at a time, so make ‘em count. I can’t emphasize enough: if you have a shot, say so. We want verbal confirmation on each target so we don’t dart anyone twice, else we’ll have to take ‘em with us to monitor their heart rate and respiration.”

  He distributed body armor vests, saying, “From what I saw yesterday at the beach, these guys like rifles, but there were a lot of bullets flying with only one hit, and it was non-lethal. Doesn’t mean they got no aim—could be they were trying not to kill anyone. Tonight we can assume they will do their best to stop us, and they won’t be using darts. Try not to get shot in the head.”

  Liz snorted and nudged Chief Joe. “That means you, featherhead.”

  Scott held up one of the rifles and demonstrated how to load a dart. “This switch on the scope turns night vision on and off. Accuracy depends on distance. Distance depends on CO2 pressure, so before you take your shot, adjust this dial accordingly, one notch per five meters. Don’t even bother to shoot if you’re further than 100 meters from the target. The guns are quiet, but not silent. Be sure to police your darts. And for God’s sake, don’t poke yourself.”

  “Meters?” Chief Joe said. “How about giving us that in English?”

  Scott handed him a slip of paper that had been included in the gun case. “This breaks it down for you.”

  Lupus opened his holophone and increased the projection to maximum. After studying the documents Padme sent and coming up with a plan of action, each of them put on a vest and strapped on a reinforced nylon belt that held a dart case and a powerful miniature flashlight.

  Lupus nodded to Chief Joe. “Shall we?”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The chair in Dr. Finnegan’s office would have been comfortable if the anesthetic wasn’t wearing off Bryn’s left buttock, which had been poked and prodded for glass fragments before being closed with four stitches. She’d arrived at the Milton P. Osborne Psychiatric Center four hours ago. There’d been no point attempting to get away from Padme. Even if she managed to escape, Lupus would probably hunt her down. Scott hadn’t even blinked when the horrible wolf-faced man separated them. Bryn felt sick to the bottom of her soul, but wasn’t about to fall apart. Something told her the less emotional she got, the better her chances of survival in her new environment.

  Padme had been planning to drop her off at her father’s house, but Bryn begged her not to.

  “How would you like it if someone sent you back to Pakistan—gave you to your uncle?” she asked.

  Padme appeared unmoved, but she said, “I’ll take you to the mental hospital, then. What’s your psychiatrist’s name?”

  She’d gone so far as to call Dr. Finnegan and put Bryn on the holo to tell her she was voluntarily coming in. Bryn’s shrink, accompanied by an orderly, was waiting out front when Padme drove up. Bryn got out and Padme drove off without a word. Bryn had turned to Dr. Finnegan and feigned remorse, staying calm and collected through the last humiliating hours.

  Now sitting in the chair in a hospital gown, she said, “I’m not suicidal. I never was.”

  “Bryn, I saw the note you left your father.” Dr. Finnegan opened the file on her lap and handed Bryn a sheet of paper. On it was one typewritten, run-on sentence.

  In heaven I will get my hair back, I will be me again and I’ll be with Mom, so don’t cry for me, Daddy, I love you more than words can say.

  “Wow, that’s touching.” Bryn handed the sheet back. “I didn’t write it.”

  “Sure looks like your signature.”

  “Yes, it does. I wonder how long it took him to get it right.”

  “Are you suggesting your father wrote it? Look,” Dr. Finnegan sounded like she was losing patience. “Your father said you’d had what he considered a psychotic break. You told me yourself you felt there was no way out. That no one would ever love you. That you felt helpless and hopeless.”

  Bryn thought about the choices she’d faced; staying with the man who’d ruined her life or going rogue and becoming a criminal. “You have no idea.”

  Dr. Forrester leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  Bryn leaned forward too. “My father is the one who arranged for me to be kidnapped in the first place. If I told you why, I guarantee you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “That’s a serious accusation. Do you feel like everyone is out to get you?”

  “What? Oh, you mean, am I paranoid? Um, no. Dr. Finnegan, you were there when my dad said he had my car towed. Would I have taken all my stuff with me if I was planning to kill myself?”

  Dr. Finnegan’s chin came up and her eyes narrowed slightly. “Your father says you-”

  “I’m sorry,” Bryn interrupted, “I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re starting an awful lot of sentences with ‘your father said.’ He’s a very persuasive person. He needed you to think I was suicidal.”

  “Alright, let’s step back and take your father out of the picture. Where have you been the last 48 hours?”

  “Surviving.”

  “Why did…okay, I said I wouldn’t repeat what your father told me, but for the sake of accuracy let’s clarify a few more things. He said you went out and found your kidnapper, and have been with him this whole time. Is that true?”

  Bryn stared at her, unblinking, desperately trying to think how her father knew. Then the obvious struck her: Stan Berry. The smug insurance salesman had probably gotten a good look at Scott’s hands when they were playing tug-o-war with Bryn’s arms. It would have been easy for her dad to figure out who she’d been with, and then he must have contacted Nurse Vonda. Bryn and Scott hadn’t just run into Lupus at Bluto’s—he’d been waiting for them. If her father could be believed, Fournier had a stake in getting Bryn to cooperate. Then something else occurred to her. She remembered that overheard holo call where her father told the person on the other end, ‘You’ll get your money after the check clears.’ Was that about paying Fournier for his handiwork? Despite her father’s deflecting statements about embezzling donations, it was much more likely the check in question had been her mother’s life insurance.

  Bryn was so intent upon putting the puzzle pieces in the right places she almost forgot Dr. Finnegan’s question. The doctor was patiently waiting for a response, so Bryn sai
d simply, “Yes.”

  “I hope you realize you’ve been engaged in extremely reckless behavior. There’s a phrase for someone who begins to relate to her kidnappers-”

  Bryn rolled her eyes briefly up at the ceiling tiles. “Yeah, Stockholm syndrome, I know.”

  “The XBestia are dangerous,” Dr. Finnegan said. “Xenofreaks are unpredictable. You know this.”

  “That’s prejudice talking. People with xenoalterations are just expressing themselves.”

  “In a way that’s very offensive to many people.”

  “It’s impossible not to offend someone. Your preconceived notions of how everyone should behave offend me.”

  “We’re not talking about me, Bryn. This is about you.”

  “No,” Bryn said, struggling to maintain her composure. “This? Right here, right now, me talking and you not listening? This is about my father wanting to commit me so he can take my mother’s life insurance money.”

  “Your father warned me that you’d fixated on that delusion, so I contacted the insurance company you attempted to rob and your mother never had a policy there.”

  “What?” Bryn burst out in disbelieving laughter. “I didn’t try to rob them. This is insane. I assume you talked to Stan the man Berry? Dad knew I’d try to get that money, so he called Mr. Berry and offered the ten-thousand dollar reward if I showed up. The only deluded one in this room is you.”

  Dr. Finnegan reached for her holophone. “I can call the corporate office, go over Mr. Berry’s head and verify it.”

  “Please,” Bryn said as all traces of belligerence vanished. “Please do that for me.”

  Dr. Finnegan hesitated, searching Bryn’s face. She finally shrugged and turned her attention to the holophone. After a few minutes, she said, “Here’s the number.” She tapped and put it on conference. The torso of a pretty female automaton appeared. “Thank you for calling Provincial Mutual. Please enter your account number or stay on the line and an operator will be with you shortly.”