“I’m starting to think the tattoos aren’t camouflage at all. More like the bright colors of tree frogs to warn their adversaries of just how poisonous they are. Not so easy to get colors to show so brightly against mocha skin, either. They’d make a fortune on those inks if they ever betrayed the source. And the fluorescing gel they rub over themselves at night… more proof they’re not looking to hide the kind of danger they represent.”
As he picked up the pace, she went invisible.
“As to her going invisible right before my eyes… that’s something else altogether.”
There was the satisfying and familiar sound of one of his traps springing. The net took her into the air. He knew it had her because even though she was still invisible, the net had clearly caught on to something. The net itself was barely visible thanks to the bioluminescence given off by the fungus consuming the leaf litter on the forest floor in this region. It had illuminated his path for him as well for those times when she’d ducked out of sight.
He lowered the net, jumped on her, using his bodyweight to settle her down. He had a gorilla’s build, so he didn’t think her limbs would be free to move around all that much. Apparently they were free enough to wedge a knife in his side up to the handle. What an unappreciative bitch! And after he’d gone to all this trouble for some foreplay. Most of his ladies never got that much.
The blade inside him would have to wait.
He secured her limbs, using his own body mass to keep her pinned while he traced their whereabouts. Eventually got her wrists and her ankles tied together and her mouth gagged.
She decided it wasn’t worth staying invisible any longer and materialized. All her writhing about hadn’t smeared any of her florescent gel over him; he found that curious. Maybe her fluorescence was on account of something else; her skin certainly didn’t feel oily. He stood, put his gorilla foot on her that spanned most of her belly, while he tended the knife in his side.
With a strong pull, he sent the knife flying into a tree. From there, he puttied the nanopaste into the wound using his triage kit. The nano would migrate to any organs that needed sealing, and patch up the smaller blood vessels not even a surgeon could do much about. It was times like this that Natty seemed less like a cross to bear.
Crumley bit down on the leather of his belt to keep from giving away his position with the roar that was coming out of his mouth. Time to speak to Natty about making the next generation of nano repair a bit warmer and fuzzier than this version that felt like it was gnawing away at his insides instead of fixing him.
Crumley bound her mouth to keep her from being tempted to severe his jugulars with a good bite. Stripped the net off her. Stepped between her tethered feet. Slipped her legs up him and draped her tied arms over his chest. He hooked his arms under her legs and pulled down on her arms at the same time to take up any slack. Luckily, his girth hadn’t left too much play to begin with. And he was on his way.
“Love the squirming, darling. Glad to see you’re getting with the foreplay.”
He felt her pull back her head from its draped position over his shoulder. “Don’t,” he said, anticipating what was coming next. She drove her head against his in a game of nutcracker. She just succeeded in knocking herself out. Crumley sighed. “There goes all the invigorating squirming and writhing. Now I’m going to have to jog instead of hike the rest of the way back. Just so I can feel your boobs rubbing me from behind. See what you’re making me do?” He picked up the pace. And smiled.
***
Leon rotated his bowie knife in his hand from a crouched position, ready to spring, like one of those tennis players fiddling with his racket nervously, waiting for the incoming service ball from the other side of the net. He continued to change the orientation of his body to the shifting noise coming from the tree line, though he’d yet to see the bastard.
“Get ready,” he whispered to Natty and Laney.
“Get ready for what?!” Natty exclaimed.
“Get ready to look innocent and defenseless. You’re the bait,” Leon said, his eyes still on his migrating mark on the other side of the trees.
Natty and Laney regarded one another. “Yeah, we can do that,” Natty said. “First assignments the casting director has gotten right yet. Now if the rest of you can just learn to act your parts.”
The charge from the forest came like a flash of lightning.
The only thing that was faster was gravity.
The Nowhere Man who just was never where you were looking for him, succumbed to the trap Leon had set for him. Falling into the pit covered not by leaves and twigs, but by a hologram. Leon didn’t need any debris following his mark into the hole. Any more than was unavoidable, anyway. The Nowhere Man fell into the open casket of liquid nitrogen. Flash Frozen.
Leon yanked at the pulleys which had allowed him to lower the makeshift coffin into the pit in the first place. “Hey, look at that,” Natty said peering over the ridge into the deep hole, “Mr. Freeze.”
“Actually,” Leon said, with another yank of the pulley, “I’d decided to go with The Nowhere Man on account of he was never where I was looking for him.”
Natty nodded. “Oh, yeah, yeah, like the Beatles song. I like it.” As Leon got the casket over to the side of the open grave, they all looked at The Nowhere Man wide-eyed. “F-me,” Natty said. “He’s still conscious and staring wild-eyed at us.”
“That surprises you?” Leon panted from the exertion of lifting the several hundred pounds out of the hole, sheave or no sheave. Maybe if he’d gone with four wheels instead of two. He kicked the lid on the stainless steel case of the makeshift coffin closed, fastened the snaps around it. Just so he didn’t have to deal with staring at the wild eyes of The Nowhere Man. Stood up. “After all the earlier reports?”
Natty didn’t get a chance to answer with a face-saving comeback.
There was another rustling of leaves.
Everyone reached for a weapon, including Natty and Laney, who didn’t exactly know what to do with them. Leon noted that Laney looked a lot more natural with her implement in hand and her fighting stance, in any event. Not that either of them could do much with a stick and a stone against these guys.
Cronos appeared from the woods a few tense moments later, dropping The Flaming Man on the ground, still burning alive, and still squirming from inside his ropes. Natty stepped in to take a closer look, nodding. “The rope is fireproof to a higher temperature than The Flaming Man can burn at. Nice.”
“Nice, he says.” Cronos spat on the ground, stripped off his clothes. He was smoldering worse than a charcoal broiler.
“Please, not in front of the wife,” Natty said. “Especially if you’re going to be hung like that.”
Glancing at Cronos’s dick, Leon nodded and smiled. “Glad you could find a piece of that bastard worth holding on to.”
Cronos ignored them both, applying burn cream to himself while seated on the stump of a log, his dick hanging over the side and swinging like the pendulum of some clock ticking out the time to apply his lotion. “Thanks for this, by the way,” Cronos said, looking up at Natty, gesturing with the can of nano-cream, as the burns healed as rapidly as he could apply the ointment.
“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Natty said, accepting the compliment but not feeling any better for it, judging by his tone.
Leon, interpreting the sound of his voice just fine, interceded with, “I think it’s time you started talking, Natty.”
“Not yet. We have work to do first,” he said glancing at Laney. Then he looked up at the latest indication of disturbance in the woods about them.
Sliding rocks. Breaking branches. Muffled screams.
And an orchid-like scent climbing over the one of burning flesh. Mixed with monkey breath.
Seconds later, Crumley emerged with a woman wrapped around him, doing her best to kill him despite having all her limbs and her mouth restrained.
“We have a lot of work to do first,” Natty said, regarding the
latest guinea pig.
“I see your taste in girlfriends hasn’t improved any,” Leon remarked to Crumley.
“Actually, she’s an upgrade over the last one,” Crumley replied with a raspy voice as he cut her off him and threw her to the ground like a sack of potatoes. “She only tries to kill me when she’s awake. The other one tried to kill me in her sleep.”
***
“Well, doctor. Here’s your scalpel,” Leon said, handing Laney his bowie knife. “Start swinging it. I need to know what prizes are inside these piñatas.”
The knife felt like a baseball bat in her hands. “I’m going to need some finer instruments to work with,” she said, “no offense.”
Crumley pushed Leon out of the way with one hand. Probably the only one in the unit physically big enough to accomplish the feat. “Please accept my humble offerings,” Crumley said to Laney.
She regarded the item he’d placed in her hand. “A DNA sequencer!” She looked up with a surprised smile on her face as he was handing her the next item. “A CRISPR unit! How…?”
Leon chuckled. “Meet Crumley, our quartermaster. He could procure you an ice cold glass of lemon-juice in the middle of a sandstorm in a hundred and twenty degree heat in the Iraqi desert while taking enemy fire and running from an advancing line of tanks.”
Crumley snorted. Shook all over with a violent shiver running up the entire length of his spine. “You had to go and remind me. I’d nearly forgotten about that sleep ender.”
Laney give him a peck on the cheek and made off with her plunder.
Leon turned to Crumley, addressing him in an entirely different tone. “I told you to pack light!”
“I told her if I didn’t listen to you, you’d skin me alive.”
“What did she say?”
“That she’d kiss me.”
Leon chuckled. “Glad to see your instinct for self-preservation is alive and well.”
Natty plucked the specimen jar hanging from Crumley’s shirt pocket, brought it up to his eyes for closer inspection. “You got some of the fluorescing gel off one of them. Good thinking, but we might not need it now that we have The Painted Lady.”
“Actually, she’s The Invisible Woman to distinguish her from the other painted ladies,” Crumley said, “on account of the fact that she can make herself invisible at will.” He turned from his prize possession still squirming and emitting muffled, frustrated screams on the ground, back to Natty. “She also doesn’t need the gel to fluoresce.”
Natty nodded. “I’ll look into both of those abilities. Thanks, Crumley.”
He lifted his eyes from the specimen jar. “Is that how you got your name, never leaving the smallest speck of evidence behind?”
Crumley smiled. “More or less.”
“Crumley pulled a Christ the savior one time, using a few crumbs of bread and fish, and his DNA sequencer and CRISPR unit,” Leon boasted. “Multiplied the loaves of bread and fish to feed an entire battalion.”
Natty nodded and smiled. “Nice.”
“Wait until you’ve heard the story for a hundredth time,” DeWitt said, coming out of the forest and tossing Laney his tee shirt, which he’d sealed up in a plastic bag. “It’s got some of the blood on it from The Rewinders.”
“Ordinarily, I’d say for a man who comes bearing gifts, yours leave something to be desired,” she said. “But in this case…”
“The Rewinders?” Leon asked.
“Yeah, the people who can rewind the film after the explosion, and pull themselves back together.”
“I see Crumley is rubbing off on you guys,” Leon said, nodding. “Good.”
Ajax made his presence felt next, parting the dense foliage to the edge of camp. He threw a hemp sack at Laney’s feet. “It’s the head from Swiss Cheese. The one who kept coming at me, no matter how many holes I put in him.” They all regarded the bag. Chanting sounds were coming from it. “Yeah,” Ajax explained, “the head is still alive, or at least un-dead, and yammering away. Probably some satanic ritual to summon the rest of his body. And it looks less holey than I remember. I’d love to know how it produces sound without the assistance of a pair of lungs, but I supposed that’s the smaller mystery in all this.”
“Thanks, guys!” Natty said. “This bonanza is a huge help.”
“Just so we’re clear, young man,” Leon said. “This isn’t your Christmas, it’s ours. We’re expecting plenty of gifts to come out of this in the form of weapons that will actually work against these bastards.”
“Yeah, well, not to rain on your parade, but we’re also going to need access to microscopes, a quarantine lab, specialized equipment I can’t begin to list—all of which I packed, by the way,” he said throwing a dirty look at Laney. “The woman who dares to mock my Boy Scout ‘be prepared’ approach to life.”
“You expected to come up against all this?” Laney said accusingly.
“No, of course not. I was expecting to find and classify some new lifeforms. It is the middle of uncharted Amazon jungle!”
She turned her accusing look at Leon. “I believe it was you who told us to pack light.”
“Relax, little lady,” Crumley said. “No one listens to him.” He whistled loudly by putting his fingers between his lips. A convoy of ALPHA UNIT cadets dragged in the same stainless steel suitcases as the one that currently housed The Nowhere Man, a.k.a. Mr. Freeze.
“No one listens to me, huh?” Leon said with mock protest. Fists on his waist. Then nodded at the Sherpas. “Damn good thing.”
Laney and Natty regarded one another. “We better get to it,” she said.
“Hold on there, you two,” Crumley said. “Most of us who graduated up to OMEGA FORCE from ALPHA UNIT have a background in tech. In my case, biotech, so I could guess at a lot of your needs. But not all. You’ll need to prepare the rest of that list for me.” He handed her the PDA.
NINETEEN
“What’s the hold up with getting this equipment to the front lines, people? The nano war isn’t going to wait for us to tool up.” Patent was mortified that everything Natty asked to be funneled over to him by Sherpa-like caravans hadn’t moved an inch. Instead every item was being overhauled.
Proteus popped his head up from the device he was working on. Evidently the group had elected him in advance to run interference, as no one else could be bothered to look up from their work. “Well, the good news, sir, is we have pretty much what we need on hand. Natty figured out a workaround for the clean room environment we need to do nanotech, kind of the way photographers can make do with a darkroom bag in lieu of an actual darkroom. Each piece of equipment is isolated in its own virtual vacuum. We have atomic-force microscopes, highly sophisticated spectrometers...
“Additionally, the extensive numerical techniques required, such as molecular dynamics simulations and time-dependent ab initio calculations to optimize physical properties will be assisted by the suitcase-size supercomputers. We can problem solve with the aid of HD VR simulations using the same suitcase supercomputers. Honestly, I think only the Chinese have anything better, and theirs don’t exactly fit into a suitcase. Try a skyscraper.”
Patent fought to keep the mask of impatience from hardening on his face; he was in no mood for a lecture. But it looked like a lecture was exactly what he was going to get. He was well aware of how intimidating he was to the young cadets and didn’t want to come off as bullying.
“As you know,” Proteus continued, “nanoscience and nanotechnology require a consolidated and cooperative effort for successful implementation on a good day, far less for real-time tweaks in the field. This owes to the many disparate fields involved from physics and chemistry to electrical engineering and many more.
“ALPHA UNIT members involved with this project are hence just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got a web-enhanced intelligent virtual knowledge space connecting many hundreds of minds currently. Though I’m afraid we’ll just have them for a few hours; these people are highly in demand and we only have so m
uch pull with them. Breakthroughs regarding any of the needed puzzle pieces taking place anywhere in the world can be teleported here in a sense by way of our 3D printers.”
The 3D printers were indeed hemorrhaging output.
Patent frowned and crossed his arms. “With this much wind up I’m almost afraid to hear the punch line.”
Proteus sighed and lowered his eyes at once. “This Natty character… God, he’s brilliant, but it’s like nothing entirely works. These are rough drafts of working equipment you’re looking at. Sort of like a puzzle where you can see the big picture taking shape, but there are so many holes in the picture, it’s as if a Picasso was painted across a lace curtain.”
“We need to advance the field twenty years in twenty minutes, soldier.”
Proteus groaned. “Give me thirty, sir.”
Patent smiled. “Twenty-five it is. Good job throwing me off the scent though with that whiny wanker routine of yours. You should consider standup.”
He took just one step away before it occurred to him. “And once you’ve prepped Natty and Laney to take the lead on this?”
“We’ll be zooming, sir.”
“And the rest of the virtual team working around the world just knows what they need to know?”
“Goes without saying, sir.”
Patent nodded and took his leave, hiking across the field of C-5s. The planes acted as artistic plaza sculptures amid his urban village in the jungle of sci-tech open-air project teams. The individual players would look up from their work stations from time to time to take inspiration in the sublime aerodynamics of the C-5 “plaza square sculptures.” Truth be known, the damn things looked like fat cows with wings, but one took what inspiration one could from what was at hand.
***
Natty was using his VR headgear to modify the nanites he’d discovered floating about the bodies of Truman’s nano-enhanced Ubuku natives. He only had to visualize what he wanted for the mind-reading headgear to throw his latest blueprints up on the virtual chalkboard. The small-scale robots with onboard 3-D printers, busy with the manufacturing of the new nano prototypes within vacuum sealed chambers, took their cues from the VR goggles, which passed on Natty’s latest designs via their Bluetooth transmissions.
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 16
