by Reilly, Jim
“Interesting, it was all over the news this morning.”
“That’s not the only one planned, Cassondra has others lined up that will make Babylon a formidable and stable company for years to come.”
“She’s extremely aggressive in the world of business. I imagine the regeneration business is very cutthroat. Does she have to do things on the edge to stay ahead of the competition?”
“Is that Cameron asking or is that the inspector part of you inquiring?”
“My apologies, Lily, the inspector part of me comes out when I am about to have something drastic done to me. Maybe because I get nervous, I become very inquisitive.”
“No apologies necessary. As for Cassondra her business dealings are above board. Just recently she was nominated Business Person of the Year by the UN Business council. You have nothing to be worried about.”
“You’ve made me feel better, Lily.”
“Now, Cameron, we have arrived at the pre-procedure waiting room. It is here where we administer the enhancement cocktail of medications used to make the changes when you are in the chamber. In the adjacent room is our blue liquid chamber. As you can see, we don’t do our enhancements in a large bay with multiple chambers where privacy is limited. No, we offer you an experience free of worry and awkwardness. When you come to Babylon, we make the experience as easy as we can for you. Now please take a moment to look around and familiarize yourself with the surroundings and our world-renowned comfort. For a moment, please excuse me; I need to take care of something for Cassondra, and it will only take a minute.”
She left the room, and Cameron checked his communications. He peered around at the room decorated in soft hues of blues and creams with easygoing music playing in the background. There was a message he was expecting and he replied, “Johnny, what have you found?”
“I can’t believe you even walked into that place. You are totally against enhancement,” expressed his colleague.
“Johnny??”
“Your mysterious friends were right, there’s evidence of misuse of money coming out of the executive suite of Babylon Corporation. It’s more like money has disappeared. Unfortunately, I have found no trail to Will Davis or any of the suspected bombers.”
“Damn! I was hoping we could find something. So far I’ve got nothing here to go on.”
“There’s something I dug up. Remember the Ancient Visitor substance found in the guy from Edward Tanner you had checked by Jennifer La Mont-Cho?”
“What about it?”
“The ingredients that can be synthetically man-made were manufactured by a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Babylon Corporation. I’m not talking in small quantities here. It’s being made in large quantities by the truckload. What the hell is the connection, Cameron?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see what we’ve got: An enhanced with Ancient Visitor weaponry, someone who is looking to take out non-Babylon regeneration centers, a substance that may or may not put people under a hypnotic state, and a connection to the UN.”
“Again, what the hell is going on here?”
After a few moments of silence while Cameron thought deeply, he concluded, “This is bigger than I thought. My God, what have we stumbled into?”
“Cameron, if this is what I think it is, this is a much bigger conspiracy than I imagined,”
“Johnny, I need you to--,” before he could finish his sentence he felt a blow to the back of his head. Before he blacked out, he deleted the communication as he recognized Will Davis standing over him.
Johnny yelled, “Cameron, are you still there?” However, the communication was disconnected and deleted.
Johnny’s mind was frantically moving in every direction as he tried to figure out his next step sitting at his desk on the thirtieth floor of the United Nations building. All he knew was that he had to get to Cameron and make sure he was okay. Unfortunately, he didn’t know whom to trust in the United Nations Security Group. He already knew Will Davis was compromised, and Will was mentored by the Inspector General. So with no one to trust, he quickly jumped out of his desk and headed for the high speed elevator to the ground. On the way, he summoned his car to be waiting for him outside of the lobby. “Babylon Corporation,” he ordered his car as he entered it.
On the way, he checked his stunner to make sure it was fully powered. He also set his bio scanner in his Visor to detect Cameron’s presence when he was within the vicinity. Then, he made a verbal note detailing what he was going to do in the event he didn’t make it out of the building so investigators would have leads.
The car then pulled up to the front of the Babylon Corporation’s headquarters. Johnny took a deep breath and proceeded to make his way into the building. About halfway between the street, where the car dropped him off, and the glass doors of the building, a man of Italian heritage turned around and blocked his path.
“Move away,” Johnny ordered him.
“Mr. Ryan, if you go in those doors, your colleague Will Davis will use his disintegrator to put a hole in you the size of a bowling ball at best. At worst? Leaving you in a pile of ashes for your family to position over the virtual fireplace.”
“Who are you, and what do you have to do with this?”
“My name is Leonardo. My friends and I have been assisting Inspector Cameron Richards. Please don’t ask who we are; you already know.”
“Your face doesn’t come up on my facial scan.”
“In our line of work, being anonymous is an advantage.”
“Unless you want to go in there with me, get out of my way.”
“That would be fruitless. Please let us help you.”
“How can you possibly help?”
Leonardo put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder and told him, “We want what you want and that’s for Cameron to be safe. At the moment, we’re monitoring the building’s computer.”
“That’s illegal,” the law enforcement agent in Johnny stated.
“Sometimes the boundary of legal and illegal is blurred. In any case, this is our specialty. At this moment, Cameron is scheduled to have the enhancement procedure he didn’t want later this afternoon. We believe we have time to get him out.”
“How do you even know to be here?”
“We’ve been monitoring Cameron’s communications.”
“I’d say that’s illegal, but I guess that is your specialty as well.”
“Mr. Ryan, I believe we understand each other. Now let’s get Cameron back.”
In a nearby hotel room within sight of the Babylon building, Johnny was sitting on a chair in the corner when Leonardo brought in his sister, Angelis and an enhanced woman. After Leonardo introduced his sister, Johnny looked at the enhanced woman, and asked. “Is that you Taylor?”
“Hello Agent Ryan, it’s good to see you again. You’ve noticed I have changed. Our friends Cameron left me with thought it would be a good way to hide me in plain sight.”
“It makes sense,” Johnny thought out loud. “If you didn’t register the new DNA after the procedure then you’d be unrecognized by every scanner on every street corner. I suppose our friends here even supplied you with a new DNA identifier with a new identity, which is illegal but I won’t get into that.”
“You’re very astute Agent Ryan,” Angelis said with a sinister smile.
After taking in a large breath and exhaling slowly, Johnny thought, “Okay then, what’s your plan Leonardo? By the way, you all can call me Johnny.”
Leonardo laughed and replied, “It’s not our plan Johnny; it’s Taylor’s plan.”
Taylor tried to explain, “You and Cameron saved my life, so I want to help. I think the best way to do it is to get on the inside. Since I am a regeneration technician it makes sense for me to do it.”
“Hold on a second. You’re a material witness in our investigation whose life is in danger. No way. And I have to tell you, Cameron wouldn’t want you to do it.”
“Johnny, I’m the only one who can do this. You sa
id it yourself, I have a new identity with no link to my own. Plus, I am the only one here with the experience to function in a regeneration center. I know how the equipment works and how to manipulate it if need be. None of you can do that.”
Angelis added, “We have two men monitoring a fairly new Babylon technician and gathering information about her. She will peacefully sleep the day away, and Taylor will assume her identity to get her into the regeneration rooms. Once in there, at an opportune time she’ll wheel him out of there. We’ll steer them through the building to a back loading bay and then to a waiting car. If all goes well, it shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t worry; this is something we have some experience in.”
“Sure, I bet,” said a skeptical Johnny as he pondered the situation. “However, before we do this, I need to go to a factory in the Amazon Rainforest. They are manufacturing an ingredient that is not supposed to be in the regeneration process. It was something the Ancient Visitors added to the mixture. Since our scientists didn’t know at the time some thirty years ago what it did, it was left out. We found traces of it in the terrorists who attacked the regeneration centers not run by Babylon.”
“You’re talking about the fabled Unknown Material or UM ingredient,” Taylor figured. “In regeneration studies it was never mentioned, but students heard rumors of its existence. People said it did anything from cure the common cold to giving superhuman strength to even turning people into monsters.”
“Well we had this UM analyzed by some scientists,” Johnny told them. “Judging from its results with the terrorists, we assume it is some sort of substance that puts you in a hypnotic state and more agreeable to suggestion than you might be. The thing is, through channels Babylon is financing the manufacture of boat loads of this material.”
“Interesting,” thought Leonardo. “If Babylon added this to its product then it could, with the power of suggestion, get the patient to do whatever Babylon pleases from what products to buy to whom to vote for, or worse.”
“We believe worse,” stated Johnny.
“Oh,” Leonardo said after he thought about it for a second. “Well then, I’ll accompany you along with a few of our people to check out this facility.”
“Taylor, have Angelis and their people get you inside but don’t do anything until we get back. Just blend in. We’ll be back before noon.”
Johnny, with Leonardo and his team, raced to the Amazon rainforest, in the remote northwest corner of Brazil using Leonardo’s high speed transport. Johnny noticed that the vehicle flew past the floating checkpoints without any detection whatsoever. “Leonardo, if you don’t mind my knowing your secret, how do you get by all the checkpoints? Is there special plating or radar resistant material on the hull?”
“Since you are an accomplice in our illegal travels this morning, I’ll clue you in. It’s quite simple, and I don’t know all the details but the gist is our computer tells the checkpoint computer there is empty space where the transport is. It’s less about sophisticated technology and more about a smart computer program. And by the way, call me Leo.”
“Okay Leo, what’s your story? What’s your stake in this jaunt?”
“Well I guess for me it’s all about restoring my family name. A relative of mine unknowingly, or perhaps conveniently closing his eyes, did something that brought great shame on the family. He paid a price when the law caught up to him, but the ultimate price was the loss of his family ties. We, my sister and I, kept our distance and even denied association with him. When our mother passed away, the pain intensified, and I hated him with a passion to the point that if he had been standing in front of me at that time, I would’ve killed him. I can honestly say that. Back then, I worked in a law firm doing real estate law and enjoyed a simple life. Then one day a short stumpy priest came for a visit and told me he wanted to rehabilitate this man, my father. I thought he was crazy, but the man was relentless in saving this soul as if it were his life work. A work he loved.”
“Did he succeed?”
“More than I could’ve imagined. Yes, he brought out of my father a sense of purpose for redemption and a need to reclaim his family. That is something I owe that priest for the rest of my life. However, that was not the most incredible thing he did. It was rehabilitating me from a man lost in anger and hate, to an individual loving life again and giving me back the gift of family. So today, I do this for my family.”
“Can I ask what he did?”
“That will have to wait; it looks like we’ve arrived. We are coming in low so as not to be seen and will park ourselves on the east side of a mountain separating us from the facility. It’s only a fifteen minute walk to get there.”
In the tree line about two hundred meters outside the facility hidden deep in the rainforest hundreds of miles from civilization, Johnny couldn’t help but notice the facility. “It looks like a prison. As a matter of fact, it looks like maximum security prison. There are walls twenty feet tall with barbed wire at the top. Look, there are security personnel guarding it like Fort Knox. I bet there are motion sensors everywhere. I don’t get it, why such security precautions so far out here? It’s only a manufacturing plant. What are they making, gold?”
“Perhaps it’s the secret that is the value to them?”
“Whatever it is, it looks like we won’t find out today. They’re not going to let us walk in and check the place without the proper warrants. At this distance my scanner can’t penetrate the thick walls, so I doubt they’ll let us get close enough. It looks like we came here for nothing.”
“Johnny, if I’ve learned anything, it’s to have faith,” Leonardo confidently said as he looked over to his technician, “Alfred, please get us in there.”
Johnny thought out loud, “It’s the middle of the morning in broad daylight. How are we going to get in there?”
Just as he asked, Alfred pulled out a small vehicle the size of a four man bobsled from the side compartment of the transport and told Johnny, “It’s equipped with a high density screen covering the nose of the vehicle and a high definition camera in the back that projects the view of what we just left. That’s nothing new, although the bottom of this hovering craft is equipped with sensor blockers that temporarily turn off the sensor then turns them back on before they notice we’ve been through them. When we get to the wall, it can even elevate us over the partition.”
Johnny asked as he got into it, “Any drawback Alfred?”
“Sure, we’ll be going extremely fast.”
“I’m used to vehicles going--” Before Johnny could finish his sentence; the vehicle was in the middle of the facility’s compound with Johnny feeling as if his eyes were pushed to the back of his head. Alfred continued to explain, “To expand on what I said, we are going very fast without stabilizers, so hold on.”
As Johnny was pushing his face back into place, he asked, “What about the cameras Alfred?”
“I’ve talked to the facility computer and had images displayed in the control room of the last image before we arrived. So I imagine we have ten minutes tops before we’re detected.”
“We’ll be long gone before the ten minutes are up and hopefully with a facility analysis and a sample of the material they are manufacturing. By the way guys, if I want to rob a bank, you people are the ones I’d come to for help.”
Finding the entrance and the security coded doors unlocked, they made their way into the facility through a couple of short corridors until they came to a large open bay with machinery lining the floor. Manning the machines weren’t typical factory robots but non-enhanced humans. They were in the same hypnotic state as the terrorists. Along the walkways above the floor were several enhanced people armed with Ancient Visitor Stun Sticks which were highly illegal.
Not wasting time, Johnny did what he came to do. He scanned the facility and looked for the best place to get a sample of the product they were making. It was then an enhanced guard walked around a corner and was surprised to come across the four men. The startled guard w
ith cat-like reflexes moved to combat the intruders when the fourth man in the team got a lucky shot with his quiet dart gun similar to the one used to make Cameron unconscious in Afghanistan. He hit the guard in the back of the neck and the others held his mouth so as not to make a sound.
Alfred was able to access the guard’s security codes, and informed the others, “This saved me time, and I think I can get us down to the manufacturing floor.”
Swiftly and stealthily moving, the four made their way toward the manufacturing floor. Along the way, Alfred was manipulating the security scanners.
Johnny using his Visor took images of everything in his visual sight. His Visor, synchronized with his scanner, analyzed the tubs of material on the manufacturing floor until they came upon the finished goods inventory where he found what he was looking for. Using containers they brought, Johnny scooped up what he believed was the UM material while Leonardo kept a diligent watch.
When Johnny was done, he silently indicated they could head back when in the corner of his eye, Johnny saw someone he recognized and as the others started to make their way back he stopped in his tracks.
An anxious Leonardo signaled, let’s go!
Johnny, though, wasn’t moving as he stared at one of the hypnotized workers. He was, like the others, unkempt with long hair, a dirty face, and raggedy clothes. Even in that state, he knew who it was.
Leonardo came up to Johnny and told him in a whisper, “Not only do we sneak in; we also have to sneak back out. Unless, of course, you want to be caught.”
