Powerless: In a world of superpowers, what happens when you have none?

by Niall McCreanor

  Lee’s face crumpled; his brother would always fail-safe anything of importance. Choosing to re-examine the device; carefully, he opened it and discovered a circuit board missing. Lee exhaled a breath of relief, certain that if plugged in the device would then most likely have corrupted any information on it and his brother would have been lost. Searching every part of the cabin to find the missing circuit board, he could not find it or any clue as to its location. Lee knew only one person knew his brother’s thinking as well as he did. With that in mind he left the cabin.

  Lee took the device and drove to his father’s house to show him what he had found. Met by his father who had been tidying up the back yard, Philip’s first words to Lee were, “Any news on Tom?” His voice held concern that his casual words could not conceal. Lee turned to his father.

  “Come into the house and I will tell you the whole story.” After hearing the whole story, Philip maintained his usual calm, but insisted they he take a look at the cabin himself, determined to not miss anything. Together they drove to the cabin in silence, neither wishing to speculate about what might have happened. They entered and at first Philip could not see anything missing or out of place.

  “They took Tom, and he let them take him. Look, there is nothing here out of place, not a thing. You and I know what Tom would have done if he had put up a fight.” This was chilling for Philip to hear, as he knew Tom only went because he didn’t have a choice and this was scarier to him than if he had entered a room that Tom turned over with anger. It was unturned by fear.

  Lee reaffirmed what his father was thinking.

  “Tom went willingly, this panics me! Knowing him as we do I know that he would have left a clue for us to find him.”

  He went on to explain about the clock not working and the device hidden at the bottom and how only at the last second did he remember that Tom would have protected the information held on the device and how upon further examination he opened it to see a circuit board missing.

  “…but there was no clue as to where the circuit board was.” Lee concluded, dragging his hands through his hair as the weight of this felt heavy on his shoulders. Philip was equally stuck in finding an answer to where his son could have hidden the circuit.

  Recalling the time on the clock, he queried the meaning of it. “Does the time 1.48 have any significance to us? I know it does, I just can't remember why...”

  Philip took a moment to think over the scenario his son described to him and the numbers he had quoted to him. With sorrowful understanding, his father sighed.

  “Yes, but it’s not what you think. It’s not 1.48. It’s 13.48 on the 24hr clock.” Philip paused and took another breath, looking his son in the eye, he instructed him. “Get your coat and come with me.”

  He did as his father asked, taking his coat and following him outside.

  They got into Philip’s car and drove south out of the town. About 4 kilometres out his father turned left up a small country road. Driving for another few minutes they then pulled in.

  “I haven’t taken you here since you were a child. It was too difficult for me, in fact I am surprised your brother remembered.”

  Lee peered out the window at something that resonated like a memory he had lost and couldn't place. Philip gestured to him, “Follow me.” Lee did as his father asked, despite this being very strange to him. They strolled up along a wall, gazing in across the top Lee saw that on the other side was a small graveyard. With this a memory of this place began to come back to Lee.

  Reliving the last time he was here, that day had sat in perfect silence much like today. He could see birds and a small stream that ran down the centre of the graveyard. Despite knowing they were making noise, the day remained perfectly silent. Lee walked two steps behind his father as a nervous child would; he trusted his father’s direction completely.

  Stopping, closing his eyes he began to speak.

  “Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails...”

  With that he took a step to the right allowing his son to see what was in front of him. It was his mother’s grave. Philip looked at his son in contemplation.

  “Corinthians 13, verses 4- 8, 13.48; this is what your mother read to me on the day we were married.”

  Lee's eye went back to the grave where the words of scripture his father had quoted were engraved on a headstone accompanied by his mother’s name, date of birth and along with this, he read his own birthday.

  The two men stood in silence for a moment as they both paid their respects. Philip, to the woman he loved and wanted to spend his life with, but was unable to save, and Lee to the woman that saved him by giving up her life.

  Moments passed and the two men slowly began to reconcile the emotions that had been stirring from within them. There was a bunch of plastic flowers in a small brass vase sitting in front of the headstone.

  “Your brother left you something. Look in the pot.”

  Lee removed the flowers from the vase and inspecting inside saw it was full of water.

  “A bit unnecessary for plastic flowers, I think...” Philip uttered from behind him, so he removed the vase from his mother’s grave and completely tipped the water out and stuck his hand inside to see if there was anything within. There was a small watertight container stuck to the bottom. He removed it, already aware of what the contents were. He presented it to his father to make the discovery. Philip slowly opened the box as Lee was keeping a careful eye to make sure his father didn’t damage anything inside. As they both peered into the open box they saw it was in fact the circuit board they were seeking to make the hard drive work. Philip handed it back to Lee and he put it in his inside pocket. The two men paid their final respects to Josephine and left her graveside.

  Returning to his apartment that night with the hard drive and the circuit board, Lee carefully opened the drive and reattached the circuit board; then closed it, sealing it once again.

  As his laptop booted up, once again he connected the drive to the computer, this time turning it on. As the system loaded, Jennifer came into the room and appealed to him. “What’s going on?”

  She sat patiently and listened as he told her about the events that had been surrounding Tom and what they had uncovered.

  When he finished telling her everything, Jennifer was extremely nervous and uncomfortable with the news.

  “I think we should call the police!”

  “The people involved were above the police and no one can know what’s going on if there is to be any chance of finding my brother.”

  Lee took Jennifer’s hand and looked her in the eyes, reassuring her. “Jenny I need you to trust me on this. It’s my brother. He's not only my brother, but he's my best friend and my hero and I need to be the one to find him.”

  Jennifer conceded to Lee's judgment, knowing him only to ever speak like this when his mind was made up. She wanted to stay to comfort him in his time of need, but appreciated he would not be able to offer up any information. She conceded, “I truly love and trust you. I'll go to bed… Don't be too late.” she stood up kissed him on the lips and left the room.

  Turning his attention back to the computer that was fully booted at this stage, he began opening the drive on his computer and found all the files that his brother had previously told him about. He spent the whole night reading about Project K and all the related missions. Reading dossiers and reports on everything associated with Project K. He even found all his brother's reconnaissance reports. Buried deep in the files he noticed a folder called Corinthians. He opened it and seeing inside there was a video file, he hit play.

  What was to happen next both frightened Lee and gave him hope that his brother was safe. It was a video Tom had recorded before he went missing
.

  The video started with Tom having a sullen look on his face and he began to speak, “Lee if you found this then we both know that I have been taken in. I am still alive for if you are the one to find this it means I haven’t given up the location of the device yet, but know this; the people that have me will stop at nothing to get the information on it back. You cannot let this happen, Lee. If they come for me I will go freely because I know what they are capable of and if they send Project K my strength will count for nothing.

  So I am relying on you, little brother. You need to blow the lid on what has been going on. Just know that if you do before I can escape they will certainly kill me. And always remember, trust your gut, it won't lie to you, if something doesn’t feel right it's wrong.” The video ended.

  Sitting for a few moments and processing what just happened and feeling a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion he looked out the window, seeing the sun had begun to rise. Lee pulled himself upstairs and lay on the bed beside Jennifer for a few moments before his alarm started ringing out. Sleepy eyed and drained, he dragged himself to the shower and freshened up for work. Stashing the device under the floor in the spare room in the apartment, he slid over a chest of drawers to cover it for safekeeping.

  When Lee got to work he went to speak to his boss, knowing him to be a good man. But he was unsure as to whether he could trust him fully with the information that his brother had acquired. Bashfully approaching the subject of all the pulled stories and the process that was behind it, Lee's boss Pete Laurie explained. “I am required to e-mail all stories for approval to a particular address,” he showed Lee the email address.

  It was a government assigned email.

  “Only on one occasion did I run a story without prior approval. It was a late breaking story but I was unable to get approval in time so I just ran it…”

  He explained. “The story was about a pension scheme in one of the regional airlines and was of no major interest or consequence to anything that would affect the government, but the fact that it was run without approval meant I was severely reprimanded.”

  Pete turned to Lee, “It wasn’t always like this and if I had my choice it would never be like this again.”

  Lee approached the topic of publishing another unapproved story, but this one was big and would be a game changer for everything to come after. Pete got up and closed the door to his office, turned to him and demanded, “What kind of game changer?”

  Lee replied, “corruption and cover ups to the highest levels of The United New World government…”

  Pete stated, “I categorically will have nothing to do with anything of the sort; I can’t risk it. There are too many people and jobs depending on me!”

  Lee realised his mistake, apologised and tried to make an excuse to leave.

  Pete followed up with, “I think you misunderstand me Lee, I will have nothing to do with it as it's too risky for me to get involved again, but I won't stop you from sneaking into my office and adding the story to the final edit…”

  Lee was relieved to now have a channel to get the story out, but also needed time to try to find his brother.

  Thanking Pete and playing for time, Lee said, “I need time to work on the story.” What he really meant was he needed time to find Tom.

  “Go home and work on the story, as there are too many prying eyes in the office and all activity is logged. A story like this would be flagged long before it was completed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lee went home to try to develop a plan to find out where his brother was. Re-reading the files about Project K, and having further studied them and the additional information left to him by Tom, he judged that the most likely place Tom was being held was in the base where he had found the files in the secret bunker.

  Fortunately for Lee, within the files Tom provided there were detailed schematics of the bunker. Unfortunately the bunker appeared to be a lot bigger than anticipated. The bunker was the same size as the whole base with only one visible entry point. Therein lay another problem; he had found schematics for the bunker, but not for the base itself, so he would have to find another way to locate the entry point within the base.

  The bunker included a full underground training area, medical area and unnamed rooms that appeared to be either cells or an interrogation area. These cells were located at the furthermost point from the entrance to the bunker making them the most likely place to hold a prisoner; as escape would be near impossible.

  The files also contained detailed description of the protocols the security adhered to when within the bunker, Lee needed to get more information as to where exactly on the base the entrance to the bunker was. Knowing that if there was such a large sealed structure underground then there had to be another point of entry, somewhere such as air vents to pump fresh air around the facility.

  Packing up the car with all his hunting equipment and hiking gear he began the long drive north to the hills where the base was concealed, unknown to anyone who wasn’t privy to such information. Thoughts ran through his mind as he drove and he tried to focus on the task at hand and the road unfolding out before him, but he could not shift the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. His brother meant everything to him and he genuinely didn’t think that his father could take another loss in the family. He knew that he still felt the loss of his wife acutely, but put on a brave face for the sake of him and Tom. He had to find and rescue Tom for all their sakes.

  Driving up an old dirt road Lee met a dead end, where he parked the car and loaded the gear on his back. Strapping to his hip his trusty hunting knife that he had used on the bear many years before, he began his hike into the mountains on foot through the hills to his targeted destination. Armed with his full hunting gear and schematics of the base, he navigated the hills with ease, using the stars as his guide.

  The base itself was well hidden and high up in the hills. Lee needed to approach the area from an elevated position on the other side of the ridge overlooking the base. Continuing along the ridge he looked for a good vantage point from which he could gauge the base properly.

  Reaching the crest of the hill, he bedded down out of sight, combing the area to see if he could locate the entrance to the bunker underneath the base.

  Lee stayed awake the whole night, learning the shift patterns of the guards. They would change position every two hours and they would all take three different positions during a shift.

  When the shift ended they would go to the security guards’ quarters and sleep. This is how they rotated the shifts at night, with half the guards asleep and half on duty. Lee synchronised his watch to match the change of the guards, still not able to locate the entrance to the bunker.

  As the sun came up he tried to sleep a little as fatigue began to grip him. He awoke some hours later to resume monitoring the patterns of the guards. The pattern he noted on the night previous continued during the day, which made no sense to him. “Why would half the guards be sleeping during the day?” he thought to himself. With the arrival of the sun he was also able to see the faces of the guards and was struck by the fact that there were a lot more guards than he noted the night before when they appeared to be dark faceless figures.

  Originally evaluating inaccurately that while half were on guard the other half were asleep in the guard’s quarters, now it appeared that there were a lot more than half in the quarters at any one time, even more than the quarters could accommodate. Having a hunch that the most likely place for the entrance to the bunker to be hidden was in the guards’ quarters, the focus of his attention shifted to this building.

  He laid out the schematics of the base on the ground and tried to position it in a way so that it would reflect the layout of the bunker. As the bunker was directly under the base it was easy enough for him to map out the position. He also made careful note of the area above ground, highlighting all possible escape routes. Mapping in his mind where the vehicles were kept, where the highest d
ensity of guards were, he considered the most likely escape route should anything go wrong.

  With the light of day it was easy for him to see exactly where the guards were positioned. There were seven guarded posts in total and each position had two guards. One post was at the entrance to the base with another two occupying the two towers to the left and the right of the entrance at the corner of the base. There was another based at the entrance to the main building, another was located at the entrance to the supply room and there was a third tower to the rear of the base with two in the tower and two along the back fence to guard the rear of the building.

  It also became apparent that each tower had a spotlight, a sharpshooter and a spotter concealed behind a mesh of camouflage.

  It was hard to see the movement of these soldiers in day light, but their warm breath against cold air would make it easier to locate and track their movements at night.

  Lee carefully compared the bunker schematics against the base that lay in front of him. Deducting that if his brother was being held in the cells as previously considered, it was most likely to be located to the rear of the base near the bottom of the tower.

  But from where he was perched, his view of that part of the area was obstructed by the main building. It was extremely risky for him to enter through the guards’ quarters and go unnoticed. Waiting for nightfall, he began to manoeuvre both down and around the hill to position himself at the rear of the base, keeping his distance so he would not be spotted easily.

  Lee took up position about five hundred meters away from the fence and gauged the area. He could see at the bottom of the tower there was a large industrial air ventilation unit. Immediately he judged this to be the best potential point of access to the bunker below. To get to this unit he would have to pass through two perimeter fences undetected. It was between these fences that additional guards patrolled on foot.

  Lee was fully camouflaged in his hunting gear and as luck would have it, that night was particularly foggy and he was able to mask himself better in the darkness. The fog also helped him hide his warm breath in the cold air. He timed his advance to the back fence so that the tower spotlight was farthest away from him and the patrol guards were in the opposite direction. The point in which he approached the fence was directly beneath the tower so he needed to gain access to the base in total silence. By approaching the fence here, Lee was in a blind spot from the spotlight and could not be seen unless the guards had been alerted to his presence. It also left the shortest distance between him and the ventilation unit. However he was directly in the path of the two guards on foot patrol.