“To whom?” Winston asked.
He called back over his shoulder. “To the people who called me yesterday. Smith gave me a number to call, just in case. What did he call them?”
“Management,” said Alyssa.
2
Wrecking Rota
Bledsoe cursed and fought the urge to throw the artifacts into the Pacific. He let that second view of reality — the mask, as he thought of it — disappear, leaving only the surf and distant whitecaps spreading out under a tropical sky of cirrus clouds blazing with the burnt orange and purple of sunset. The rolling lull of crashing waves did nothing to soothe his temper. Bledsoe kicked at a patch of sand nestled among the volcanic rocks, sending damp debris exploding into the retreating water.
Management, the girl had said, just as Bledsoe had feared. Of course. It was too much to hope that Claude, Amanda, their brat, and his friends wouldn’t have a connection to Management somehow.
He’d been so close. All the pieces had literally been at his fingertips. If he’d knocked the kid out cold instead of stunning him… If he’d shot him… If he’d had Lynch put a bullet in the other boy’s leg so that he’d be ready for Smith… Anything.
But no. He’d been so fixated on wanting to make the boy surrender, maybe because Claude had resisted him until the very end.
And he almost had. He’d stood there, frozen in fear, that stupid deer-in-headlights look on his face. Bledsoe practically could have walked up and pulled the thing out of his hand.
Until Amanda turned on him.
Yes, that had been his worst oversight. He’d expected her QVs to be dormant, like most of the chimps they’d tested in Area X and then here on Rota. Fewer than one in ten showed any change from QVs, and of that ten percent, the degree of change varied from moderate to barely nudging the needle. Bledsoe knew of only five humans with QVs, and apparently he’d underestimated the number and degree of positive results.
He absently rubbed at his right wrist, which still glowed faintly beneath his white dress shirt.
Now they were flying straight into Management’s arms, which meant that Bledsoe had truly become expendable if not a marked target. Management had been picking up the pieces of Area X research, and they’d tasked Bledsoe with working on QV development, as he was the obvious choice for the job. If they had Winston and Amanda in hand, though, they didn’t need Bledsoe — especially if he went around shocking and shooting their agents.
Fools. If only they’d let him pick and choose from the villagers on the island like he’d wanted, they would have seen some real results.
Well, too late now.
He forced himself to take a deep breath of the warm, salty air and let it go slowly. Weariness tugged at him, suggesting he take a seat under a palm tree, have a rest in the sand, admire the purple sky. He had at least a few minutes, right?
His wrath flared again. No! That was exactly the sort of thinking that had lost him the full Alpha Machine. He should be sipping tea with Stalin on the banks of the Volga right now. There was never time for hesitation or inaction. Weariness could wait.
Clearly, jumping from place to place was draining on him, as if it scraped away at the insides of his bones, leaving him a bit lighter and more fragile each time. After Council Crest, he had jumped back to Tillamook for practice and to check on the smoldering air hangar, which remained under supervision by one fire department truck. Otherwise, the place had been abandoned by Management and other authorities, save for a sprawl of crime scene tape and tags. From there, he’d taken a chance and aimed for the one place he knew best in the world, even though he hated it in many ways.
Today, he would give his official resignation and then some. He turned his back to the ocean and walked up the beach slope. The southern end of his lab complex — well, Management’s lab complex — squatted just above the tsunami water line, all concrete and green-tinted windows. He supposed that the evening staff would be finishing their dinners about now.
The thought of Winston joining up with that freak alien, just as his father had, made Bledsoe’s temples throb. Of course, the odds of him finding Area X were slim, and somehow making it to the alien was even more improbable, but if it did happen…what then? What did the alien know that Bledsoe did not? Could Winston do exactly what Bledsoe had been planning and somehow erase Bledsoe from existence?
Improbable never meant impossible. Time to act.
Bledsoe walked around the boulder and located a squarish bulge. To an unsuspecting eye, the bulge appeared to be an unremarkable part of the rock, but Bledsoe knew to press on it twice. He heard a click, and the bulge swung out on a hinge to reveal a black keypad under which glowed a single red LED. Bledsoe entered six digits, and the red light switched to green.
A few feet away, some clumps of crabgrass rose up from the surrounding dirt and sand, revealing a wide strip of stainless steel with a recessed handle. A strong tug on this showed the metal strip to be the top edge of one of the lab’s two “bail boxes,” a waterproof weapons cache to be used in the event of a laboratory take-over or similar hostile intrusion. The irony of this was not lost on Bledsoe as he attempted to pocket two black M67 fragmentation grenades and could only fit one, and he’d left his torn and scorched jacket by the water.
He studied the bail box’s contents pensively, then tossed aside his current 9mm for a Beretta M9 with two loaded fifteen-round magazines. So many toys to choose from! Ultimately, Bledsoe decided against the attack rifles, Claymore mines, and two RPG options. Too much hassle. Instead, he grabbed a Nammo HGO 115 scalable grenade and screwed two add-on modules to its base.
Had to love those Nammos. Three times the destruction with only one pin. Elegant.
He tucked the stack in the crook of his left arm and carried it like a football.
With the two Alpha Machine pieces spinning above his right hand, Bledsoe concentrated on connecting them with his mind. He saw what he thought of as the in-head display, and nudged the view so that his second perspective jumped to inside the lab. Rather than seeing the middle, though, Bledsoe saw the cluster of desks nearly at the building’s north wall. Strange. Why had he hit that spot on the beach so easily but overshot inside the lab?
The answer occurred to him: because he’d imagined the exact destination while navigating. That had been his favorite spot to visit on breaks and watch the sea when needing to clear his mind. While navigating to the lab just now, he’d only aimed for the ambiguous target of “lab,” not a specific point. Noted.
Bledsoe pictured the main walkway down the lab’s clean room, with the animal cages lined up along the left and long workbenches loaded with tools and refrigeration units down the right. Some of his experiments should still be running, but there was no way Bledsoe was letting a single bit of additional data flow into Management’s hands. If they wanted him fired, he’d go out in flames. It seemed appropriate.
Bledsoe clenched his fingers under the hovering, intertwined artifacts and mentally bore down on the device. In his next heartbeat, he burst into the lab in a spray of energy and sparks. The two technicians who stood chatting at one workbench reeled away from him in surprise. Bledsoe saw the recognition dawn in their eyes, although he couldn’t see the rest of their faces.
He waved the modular grenade at them.
“Don’t think. Just leave quickly.”
The men bolted for the exit as fast as their bootied feet would take them.
Bledsoe set the grenade inside an open cage that rested at his eye level. How he loathed this place. The yellow lighting and scrubbed air were particularly nauseating after the fresh, humid embrace of the shoreline.
So many years in this building. So much wasted time. Perhaps he would make a target out of Rota in the 1950s. As a strategically placed American territory and fledgling research center, he could sell whatever horror story he liked to the Soviets. An engineered plague? Next-gen missiles aimed at North Korea? Whatever. Assuming he allowed Stalin to stay in power, he could persuade the dicta
tor to nuke the island. The U.S. public would be whipped into a fear frenzy, but not enough to launch an invasion, because, after all, who cared about a tiny island in the Pacific that didn’t even have a single decent hotel?
And if Bledsoe could do that, what about other targets? Why not? Maybe he would nuke Portland when the time was right, just for sentimental reasons.
With the Alpha Machine pieces active, Bledsoe repeated the process he had tried before. He imagined Winston and those other artifacts. They were, Bledsoe suspected, somehow linked to one another, and as long as he concentrated on seeing those silver pieces, he could adjust the navigation cross-hairs directly to that point and then pull back slightly to reveal the scene. So long as he concentrated, the Alpha Machine did the hard work of moving his perspective through space along with the artifacts. Whoever had designed this system deserved an award.
Amanda had her arms around Winston — who now wore a parachute. What on earth?
Then Bledsoe figured it out. Sure. The others were going to Management, but the boy was going to try to get inside Area X. Amanda would remember the location, no doubt.
The side door of the cabin had been rolled up. Wind whipped through the cabin. The old pilot made his way from the cockpit through the cabin, where he stood before Winston and began pointing at various items on the parachute harness.
Bledsoe had the passing thought that it might be easier to jump to a stationary place on the ground than to a point in the air traveling at well over three hundred miles per hour. What if there was a second-long delay in his travel? He would materialize just in time to wave at the plane’s back end before plummeting to his death. But if he waited for Winston to land, something else might interfere.
This had gone on long enough. The element of surprise was clearly on his side, and it was time to use it. All or nothing.
Bledsoe gave the grenade’s safety pin pull ring a hard yank. The modular grenade’s lever sprung free. In the two safe seconds Bledsoe had left, he took a deep breath, shoved the grenade against the back of the animal cage, fixed the scene of the plane’s interior firmly before him, and mentally pushed the three crosshairs.
3
Hearts and a Hand Grenade
Alyssa’s grandfather tugged hard enough at the straps to nearly pull Winston off his feet. The chute harness was not flattering on his thin frame, and those yellow goggles made him look like a bug caught in the freeze-frame of being swatted.
“Now, if you’re belly-down,” he yelled over the noise of rushing air, props, and engines, “you’ll only be dropping at about 120 miles an hour! Go down head first and you’ll probably top two hundred! I don’t recommend that!”
Shade bounced on the balls of his feet as he looked Winston up and down. His friend’s face was alight with excitement. “Dude, you are so lucky! I have always wanted to do this!”
Winston grunted as the colonel pulled on his straps again. “I have never wanted to do this! I hate heights!”
Alyssa grinned. Her boyfriend — just call it like it is, right? — was about to time travel his way to an alien and save the world, but he was all clenched up about skydiving with a parachute. Alyssa had jumped with her grandfather half a dozen times. She hadn’t made it to a solo jump before things fell apart, but she knew she could do it if required. Winston would be fine.
At least, she kept telling herself that.
“Your chute needs up to eight hundred feet to fully deploy!” continued her grandfather. “You don’t want to open too close to the ground if you plan on living!”
He waited to see if Winston was following and continued when Winston nodded.
“Keep in mind that when your chute fully opens, you’re going to drop to a speed of about 20 miles per hour in only a few seconds! It might hurt! That’s a really fast deceleration, so be ready for it!”
They heard a set of three long beeps over the speaker system. Two minutes until the drop zone.
Alyssa saw Winston’s hands shaking even as he gripped the fabric of his backpack, which now hung across his belly. She stood behind her grandfather, with Shade and Amanda on her left. Side by side, they looked like those drama masks, one smiling broadly and the other frowning with tragic worry. Winston only looked like he was about to vomit.
“Winston!” called Alyssa. “We can think of something else! You don’t have to do this!”
“I wish I believed that!” he replied, voice quavering.
Shade stepped around Colonel Bauman and clapped Winston on the shoulder. “At least it’s not diving into a toxic waste pool, right? Although it might be cool if you came out like the Joker or something!”
Winston blinked at his friend for a moment, slack-jawed, and then broke into a broad grin. He gripped Shade’s forearm in a sign of bro-affection, but Shade took it as an invitation and threw his arms around Winston, packs and all. With everything pinned but his hands and wrists, Winston did his best to offer a flapping T. rex hug in return.
“You’re gonna be fine!” said Shade. “Reinforced bones, right?”
“I’m not sure that applies to organs!” said Winston. “I can probably still be crushed by the impact and bleed out in some horribly painful way.”
“Don’t worry!” offered Alyssa. “The buzzards will keep you company in your agony!”
“Stop it, you two!” Amanda inserted herself in front of Winston, clearly unamused. Alyssa could barely hear her. “You can do this, Winston. Last week, you barely knew there was a world beyond Portland, and now — look at you.”
Alyssa wondered if her words were meant more for Winston or herself. She couldn’t help but feel slightly choked up as the two embraced.
“I got this, Mom,” said Winston. “Actually, I may not have this. I don’t know.”
“I know,” she said. “You’re my hero, son.”
That did it. Alyssa felt the first tear spill onto her cheek. She looked away, blinking furiously, and wiped at her eyes. When she turned back, she saw that Winston had lifted his goggles to do the same.
Amanda stepped back, and Colonel Bauman surveyed Winston from head to toe. He immediately put Winston’s goggles back into place.
“Make sure they’re tight!” he admonished. “You won’t be able to hear a thing except the wind, and if you lose your goggles, you’ll be half-blind, because you’ll have to squint like mad and your eyes will tear up like you’re crying your head off! This is a problem because you need to watch the trees!”
“To not crash into them?” asked Winston.
“No, because right around the time they stop looking like trees with branches and not little dark dots, that’s when you want to pull your chute!”
Shade raised his hand to be called on. The colonel rolled his eyes. “Is this the second grade?”
Shade seemed offended. “I was only trying to be polite!”
The colonel made a rolling motion with his hand, telling Shade to get on with it.
“We’re in the Nevada desert!” Shade pointed out. “Are there trees down there?”
Colonel Bauman stiffened slightly, and Alyssa worried that her grandfather was going to lose his temper at Shade for second-guessing him. Instead, the colonel pursed his lips as he thought for a bit, then he said, “Fair enough!” He looked at Winston. “So I have bad news and good news! Pick!”
Winston swallowed. “Bad!”
“For about five seconds after you let go, you’re going to be completely disoriented! Your brain will be pickled with adrenaline and the rest of your body will be in a state of panic! I’ve known people to throw up or pass out, which is one of the reasons you always do your first jumps in tandem with an instructor!”
Winston looked like he was about to puke just standing here. “And the good?”
“Assuming you don’t pass out, then you’ve got twenty-five to thirty seconds to enjoy the free fall! You need to count out loud: one one thousand, two one thousand — understand?”
Winston nodded.
“If you wait too
long, your chute may not have time to open! Open too early and you might wind up miles away from your target!”
“That would be bad!” Shade offered.
Winston responded with a sour glare.
“In the desert, you bet!” said the colonel. “So once again!” He set Winston’s right hand on a little fabric loop next to his butt that poked out from the bottom of the parachute pack. “This is the drogue! You deploy by giving it a strong tug, pulling it out of the pouch, then you let go! It’s a mini-chute that pulls out the closing pin! With the closing pin gone, the rest of the main chute deploys — first the bridge, then the D-bag!”
Shade snickered. He leaned around the colonel and mouthed to Winston, “D-bag.”
“Deployment bag,” emphasized the colonel without even needing to see Shade’s face. “Then your lines will come out, along with the risers, slider, and canopy! You need to look up at make sure that everything has deployed properly! Got it?”
Alyssa stared at Winston’s face and could see anxiety painted all over him. He bit his lips when he was nervous.
The colonel lifted Winston’s left hand and set it on a series of three metal rings near his right shoulder. Below these was a dangling rectangle of thick black nylon. “In about one out of every thousand dives, the main canopy — the big chute — fails to open! I’m telling you this because I didn’t pack your chute and you need to be safe! If something goes wrong, you pull this flap. It will release the three rings! Your whole canopy will pull away and deploy the reserve chute!”
Winston offered him two thumbs up and a big, very forced grin. The colonel grimaced and backed away.
Alyssa stepped into her grandfather’s place. The tears were still there, pulsing on the tides of her heartbeat. She leaned in close to him and said, “Don’t die.”
His smile looked fragile enough to collapse from the next air pocket jostle. “I’m really gonna try.”
“Just come back soon. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh Page 2
