by S. S. Segran
Currently taking a snooze behind a bush in his Iron Man boxers, Marshall thought. The words that actually left his mouth were, “He had a family emergency. Called in at the last minute.”
The guard was suspicious. As he began to ask another question, his partner yelled something inaudible to Marshall’s ears. The guard turned his head and barked crudely in response before waving Marshall through and continuing the squabble.
The Sentry wasted no time putting distance between him and the guard post. As he drove to the back of the complex, he glanced at his bag that lay on the floor by the passenger’s seat. Proceeding past the main shipping bay and the submersion test pool, he quickly parked the truck at the smaller bay. Grabbing his bag, he sprang out, unloaded a dolly from the back and wheeled it to a door. The keypad was just as Tegan had described it.
He punched in the required four digits. The door buzzed, accepting the code. Marshall straightened the dolly, opened the door, and walked through.
Near the main entrance to the complex, a man in a black uniform strode toward the security post. A wide scar crossed the bridge of his crooked nose and his jaw jutted out slightly, giving him the appearance of being constantly displeased. He waited for the last few cars to file out of the facility, then walked to the door of the enclosure. The guards inside let him in.
“Who was driving that delivery truck?” he asked, calculating eyes boring into the pair.
“Charlie called in sick,” one of the guards answered. “That was his replacement.”
“Did you get his I.D.?”
“Jeez! The guy’s from ZappEx. They wouldn’t send in just anyone, you know. Pretty sure he’s qualified for the job.”
“So you did not verify,” the man in black said frostily as he exited the post. “I’ll call the company to confirm this. If anything is amiss, you’ll be sorry.”
The drive to Vernon, Texas, was mostly silent as Jag seemed preoccupied during the entire ride. Kody sat quietly for once; Mariah figured he must have been too nervous to chatter away. She stretched out her legs, then glanced at Jag. “You’ve been awfully silent. What’s got your gears spinning?”
Jag looked as if he’d been startled out of a reverie. “What? Oh, umm . . . nothing. Just feel bad for leaving my grandparents without telling them what’s going on.”
Mariah faltered, then said encouragingly, “We’ll be there and back before you know it, Jag.”
He nodded, though they shared no other words.
After a few hours of travel they arrived at Vernon. It wasn’t a big town but it was certainly more populous than Ransom. Most of the houses in town were single-story properties built on large plots of land. At its outskirts, the town rapidly gave way to farmland. Mariah thought the place seemed relatively lifeless considering its size. “Where is everyone?” she wondered. “It’s too early on a summer vacation night for it to be this quiet.”
The answer manifested before them a few minutes later when the truck turned down a street and came upon a scene of colorful bright lights, blaring music and a large crowd of people enjoying themselves.
Mariah gasped. “A fair!”
“This place is far from dead,” Kody noted. “Man, look at all the rides! Look at how huge that Ferris wheel is back there! I didn’t know they could have all this stuff for a county fair—I want in!”
“Sure looks inviting,” Jag said, driving past the festivities. “Duty calls, though. We’re here for a reason.”
“Ugh, I know.” Kody tapped the windshield; it was new, since the nanomite-pockmarked one had to be removed. “Good thing we got this replaced, huh?”
“Good thing the replacement was quick.”
They found the house they’d been assigned to. Marshall’s friend, one of the Welsh twins, had taken over Aari’s role in locating nanomite pod sites and had provided them with specific directions. The house lay at the edge of town and nearly every aspect of it mirrored the appearance of the one in Ransom. As the friends got out of the truck, Mariah asked, “Are all the locations like this? Tall gates and fences . . . Look! Even the garage looks exactly like the other one, with the chimney and everything.”
“Maybe they were looking for a certain type of design that met their requirements,” Jag supposed. “Would make it easier to modify it to their means.”
Mariah took a step forward but Jag held her and Kody back, then gathered them in a small huddle. As they rested their heads against each other’s, Mariah saw a gleam in Jag’s eyes.
“It goes down tonight,” he said. “All the nanomite pods across the country, and the manufacturing sites, will be taken out by the League, with the Elders at the helm. Tonight, we take a stand against an enemy bent on destroying life as we know it.” He breathed out slowly. “Tonight, we take the first step in fulfilling our roles in the prophecy . . . fulfilling our roles in this world.”
The little impromptu speech reverberated through Mariah’s ears and fused into her blood, sending an invigorating rush through her entire being. She beamed and couldn’t help but press a quick peck to each of the boy’s foreheads. “Let’s get started, then.”
It didn’t take long before the friends reached the back of the garage. After Kody assured them that he could hear no movement inside, Jag used the cordless saw to cut a hole in the wall. Once that was done, he said, “Assume the layout and security setup inside is the same as Ransom’s. ’Riah, you know the drill. Kode-man, you too.”
Mariah effortlessly covered the cameras and the motion detector inside the garage, then she and Jag made their way through the hole. She pointed her flashlight around, taking note of the setup. “Built exactly like the one in Ransom.”
Jag jogged to the steel pipe protruding up through the garage floor. “I ain’t complaining. Makes it easier for us.”
She tossed him the wire cutters. As Jag went to work with the tool, she carefully took one of the anti-nanomite footballs out of her bag and cradled it. Jag cut through the wire easily and pried the cap on the pipe open. “Drop it.”
Mariah activated the device and slid it in; the teenagers heard it whistle down the chute, then a thud as it landed. Jag made to close the cap, but it wouldn’t budge. “Uh . . . ”
“Use your strength, Jag! Hurry!”
“I can’t use too much or I’ll—”
There was a loud scrape and a clank. The cap had been torn off and fell onto the floor.
Jag looked on in abject horror. “—break it.”
An all too familiar sound echoed up the pipe. The football didn’t detonate, Mariah realized, aghast. She fumbled getting the second device out. The metallic buzzing grew louder as it approached the mouth of the pipe.
Jag grabbed her arms and swung her toward the hole in the wall. “Get out! Get Kody and get to the truck!”
“But you—”
“Now, Mariah!”
Mariah spun around and dove through to the other side. Kody, who’d heard everything, pulled her up the moment she was out and the two took off. “We can’t leave Jag!” Mariah screamed.
“He said to get to the truck!” Kody yelled back as they raced out of the property. Just then, a muffled boom sounded.
“Oh, so now it goes off?” Mariah cried.
They scrambled into the vehicle, keeping the back door open and waiting for Jag to emerge from the house and jump in.
Mariah shook Kody’s arm hysterically. “Where is he?”
The electrified door next to the main garage entrance burst off its hinges and landed on the ground, emitting a corona of sparks. Jag rocketed from the exit and somersaulted over the ten-foot gate. Hot on his trail, the nanomite swarm glowed a threatening red. Jag stopped for a brief moment to look directly at the truck, then turned and bolted away from them toward an empty plot of land adjacent to the house. The nanomites pursued him, ignoring Mariah and Kody.
Kody, already in the driver’s seat, engaged the gears, stepped on the gas pedal and took off after Jag. “What is he doing? Trying to get himself killed?�
�
“No,” Mariah choked. “He’s leading them away from us.”
67
Aari looked up warily when he heard the door to the room open. To his astonishment, he saw Marshall come through the door backward, dragging an unconscious guard. The teenagers scrambled to their feet so quickly that both their chairs toppled over. “Marshall!”
Marshall winked at them before stepping back out the door. “Hey, kiddos.”
“About time you showed up,” Tegan said with mock gruffness.
The Sentry entered again, dragging a second unconscious guard. “Nice to see you too, sheesh.” He placed the guards in a corner of the room and brought out his switchblade to cut the friends loose from their bindings. Aari and Tegan gave him a quick hug. Though Marshall seemed surprised, he hugged them back and smiled. “You two alright?”
“Yeah,” Tegan said. “I guess you got in without a hitch?”
“You guessed right. There’s a camera just outside the elevator pointed along the passageway. I took it out, so that hallway is safe.”
“How’d you take it out?” Aari asked.
“I climbed through the ceiling panel, found the cable and cut it. But that’s only one camera down; there are others that are still functioning. It won’t be long before the guards come to investigate, so we don’t have much time.” He opened his bag. “I trust that you’re familiar with these?”
Snug inside the bag were several green cubes and pyramid-shaped gels. With wide eyes, Aari stuttered, “Aren’t these the explosives from Dema-Ki?”
“The pyramid ones, they’re incendiary, right?” Tegan asked. “I remember Mariah telling me about them.”
“Yes,” Marshall said. “The cubes contain high explosives but the pyramid ones will erupt in an intense flame and incinerate any object they’re placed on, even the toughest metals.”
“How did you get your hands on these?”
“All Sentries receive knowledge and skills from Dema-Ki that are essential for us to carry out our duties. That includes producing things we need from available materials.” He zipped up the bag. “There’s a room right across from the elevator where they’ve stored the pods and the unactivated nanomites ready to be shipped out. I’ll load them into the truck. That’ll probably take a few trips. In the meantime, could I task you guys to rig this place up?” He held out the bag.
Aari took it and passed it to Tegan. “Leave it to us. I can cover Tegan so the cameras don’t spot her.”
Tegan slung the bag over her shoulders. “Oh, okay, so I’ll be the one walking around with the explosives, then.”
“You know the place better than I do and where the cameras are. You’ll know the best places to plant these.”
“True.”
“Thanks,” Marshall said as he smoothed his shirt. “Before you go . . . you’ll see three indents on one side of the explosives.”
“Those are timers,” Aari recalled. “Longest one is set for two hours, that’s all I know.”
“Yes, that would be the third one. Avoid the first one, it will leave you with mere seconds. Use the middle setting. That will set the explosives to go off in half an hour. That should give us enough time to rig the whole place up and get out.”
“Got it,” Tegan said, then dragged Aari out of the room. “Come on, Brainiac, we’ve got work to do.”
Marshall followed and shut the door behind him, then tossed Tegan a multi-tool wrench. “Good luck, you two. Try not to take out any more cameras unless it’s absolutely necessary. We don’t want to alert the guards more than I already have.”
The friends nodded at him as the Sentry directed his dolly into the room opposite the elevator. Tegan twirled the tool around her fingers. “Cover me.”
Aari fixed his attention on her. After a few seconds of shimmering, she disappeared. “You’re good to go,” he said. “If you take a few steps down the hallway, you’ll see a corridor to your right. There may be a camera there.”
Tegan’s disembodied voice sighed. “I’m invisible, Aari, not blind.”
“I forgot. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. You’re right, by the way. There is a camera. There’s no way you’ll get through without being seen. I’ll have to take it out but I think I can make it look like a routine malfunction.”
Aari lay on the ground and peered around the corner so he could continue bending the light around Tegan while minimizing the risk of detection. It didn’t take long before the camera was hanging loosely from its mount with the lens pointing downward.
“I don’t think that looks like a routine malfunction,” Aari hissed.
“From their end, it will,” she responded haughtily.
Once she’d returned, they continued down the main hallway. They passed a room to their left, which Tegan didn’t bother to check.
Probably sensing Aari’s impending question, she said, “That was the room where they held me. Nothing to blow up in there.” She opened a door on the right. “What do we have here? Ah, nice. It’s where the nanomites are tested before being packed and transferred to the storage area.”
We’re in the belly of the beast. The notion sent a cold and unpleasant tingle through Aari’s body. The world is being brought to its knees and this is where the scourge begins.
Clearly not impeded by such thoughts, Tegan continued, focused as she was on the task at hand. “Right, so . . . ”
“What do you see?” he asked.
“It’s mostly long lab tables and shelves in here, but there are three steel barrels at the far end of the room.”
“What’s in them?”
“If I really had to guess, having seen them with the dragonfly, some chemical used in the final stages of producing the nanomites. Speaking of which, that critter’s still around here somewhere.”
“You just left it in here?”
“I forgot to guide it back out.”
“Okay, well, that’s not a big worry right now. I guess we should use the incendiary gels on the barrels?”
“My thoughts exactly.” As she ran over and positioned the gels, she asked, “I’ve been wondering, Aari. When you bend light away from something, you can’t see it, but somehow you never lose track of where it is. How?”
Aari mulled over the question; it wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before. “I’m not too sure, but you could say it’s just like having a sixth sense. Once I’ve covered an object—or person—I can feel where it’s located at any given moment.”
“Interesting. Alright, I’ve planted a couple of cubes around the room as well.”
“I can see them. We’re good here?”
“We’re good.”
They jogged down the main hallway, hearing the elevator open as Marshall returned from loading the truck. Ahead, they came upon a second corridor and continued until they noticed a long rectangular room with a half-glass wall to their right.
Tegan observed the inside. “I remember this room. I thought it looked awfully familiar when I first saw it.”
“That’s probably because it’s like one of the rooms at Josh’s facility in Goleta,” Aari said.
“That’s it! It’s where they cut these thin sheets from a circular block . . . ”
“Wafers,” he said instantly. “That’s the first process in creating the nanomites. We’ll definitely need to plant explosives here.”
“There are cameras in there. They’ll see the door open by itself.”
“You’ll make them believe in ghosts, then. Go on, Teegs.”
Tegan opened the door and ran in, quickly placing the green cubes out of the camera’s direct view, then ran back out. She hurried down the third corridor, leaving Aari to crawl in her wake to avoid detection by the cameras inside the wafer production room. They passed by a conference room but opted not to rig it.
Tegan came to a halt. “Everything here is set. Two more rooms to take care of and we can skedaddle.”
Aari ceased bending the light around her and she appeared ahead of
him, bouncing on her toes. At the end of the corridor they noticed a conveyor belt that ran between two rooms on either side of the passageway. Through the large glass windows of the room on their right, they observed a stainless steel sphere that took up most of the space in the chamber. The conveyor belt ran through the sphere and continued to an adjacent room.
Aari read the stenciled markings on the glass. “REAPR Fortifier . . . what in the—!” He pulled Tegan down so they were crouched under the window. “There’s a camera in that room pointed our way! I think we’ve been spotted!”
Tegan reached into the bag and pulled out a pyramid-shaped incendiary. “Then we need to make quick work of this.”
Aari stopped her before she could move. “Why has it been so quiet?”
“Huh?”
“I haven’t heard the elevator in a while. Marshall should be using it to make his trips to load up the truck.”
Just then, they heard the hum of the elevator’s descent followed by the clanking of its metal door opening. Tegan gave Aari a hard enough knock on the arm. “There, see? He’s here. Don’t scare me like that!”
A deep, thunderous growl rolled toward the friends like a wave intent on submerging them. It was an all too familiar and a very unwelcome sound.
“Cover me,” Tegan requested quietly. “I want to see what it is.”
Aari, bewildered, wavered, then complied and walked behind her as he silently screamed, I don’t think we need to confirm what kind of creature makes a noise like that!
He pressed against the corner of the wall before he felt Tegan grab his arm and heard her breathe, “There’s a Marauder sniffing around. A guard in a black uniform is controlling it—yikes, that’s a nasty scar on his nose—and they’re blocking our only exit out of here.”
Aari brought Tegan back to visibility. “We have to get around them somehow.”
A roar suddenly filled the entire lab, sending tremors through the floor and morphing into shivers up Aari’s spine. The guard spoke up. “I know you’re in here, kids. We’ve captured the man who helped you out. Turn yourselves in now and I won’t let this beast loose.”
