His heart had been pounding, but now it felt to him like it was slowing down. He’d felt this way when Amy’s car had been forced off the road and the man came in the door after him. But this seemed to be… much more powerful. The world seemed to be moving slower. The bolts were turning in slow motion.
Ell had been lying in the back of the van as it bumped along. In her ears, she heard Allan say, “Zage is about to spring his trap. Do you want the audio and/or video feed?”
“Put it in my left eye and ear,” Ell said, “I’ve got to start moving myself. She rolled a little and reached her right index finger to cut the “single-strand” section of her left handcuff. Then she sat up to cut her ankle cuffs…
Holding the pizza box with his right hand, Roger turned the doorknob with his left and pushed open the stair door down into the dim basement.
As he stepped forward, something splashed in his eyes. At first he felt puzzled…
Then it started to burn…
He dropped the pizza box and reached out to steady himself with the handrails. But something caught his foot—he started to fall. For a second he thought he’d be able to catch himself, but then lancing agony shot through his left hand…
When the stairway door had opened, bright light poured through the opening. Zage leaned around the corner to see the man and pizza box silhouetted in the light.
It seemed as if he had all day, as he swung the cup up, adjusting the trajectory a tiny bit so it sent the ammonia right into the man’s eyes.
The Windex won’t add much, he thought, dropping the spray bottle and pulling out his closet rod. The man’s left foot caught on the wire above the second riser and the guy started to fall forward. Zage saw him drop the pizza box and reach out for the handrails.
It looked as if the guy might catch himself, so Zage swung the closet rod at his left hand.
Hard!
Zage hadn’t been sure how hard he’d have to hit the man’s hand to keep him from grabbing the rail, so he swung as hard as he could. Maybe that was a little too hard, he thought when the back of the man’s knuckles burst open under the whistling impact of the one inch wooden dowel. The fingers flailed back uselessly and the hand slipped off the rail.
The man continued to fall.
As Zage scrambled off the box and onto the stairs, he focused on the man’s other hand which had a desperate grip on the right stair rail. It looked like it might keep him from falling
Zage swung the closet rod again.
Now the man’s broken right hand also slithered loose and he plunged down the stairs.
Zage’s last glance as he was about to exit the stairwell showed the man twitching, one arm on the shopping cart. Worried that the man might die if the current continued to go through him, Zage paused, reached unerringly back around the door and jerked the extension cords apart.
Out on the landing, Zage saw a door ahead and to the left that looked like it probably went outside. As he ran for it, he looked back and to his left, into the house, to see if any other kidnappers were coming after him.
No one yet.
He turned the knob on the door and pulled—the door didn’t open!
Then he heard his mother’s voice in his ear, “Zage, you’re in an old house and that’s a simple mechanical door lock. There’s no AI. Turn that flat thing above the doorknob to your right.”
Feeling greatly relieved to have help, Zage said, “Thanks Mom!” as he reached up and twisted the thumb knob. Though he’d expected it, the door still didn’t come open.
His mother’s voice said, “Now turn the knob.”
Zage did, and the door came open. He shot out the door and ran toward the trees.
Steve’s voice said, “We’ve got a GPS signal! Zage, keep going into the trees! We’ll be there in… ten minutes!”
Zage’s mother said, “Zage, Steve’s people are going to take care of you for a few minutes. I’ve got to deal with a different problem, then I’ll be there too.”
Jamieson was negotiating as he drove. “Wang, you need to be at that location with the rest of my money. I’ll contact you there and tell you…” Something flickered in the corner of his eye. He spared a glance from the road and turned toward it. To his surprise the foil was lifting up. At first he thought it was some kind of wind lifting it, but as he kept speaking, “where to meet me…” Donsaii’s head appeared.
She was smiling, but the smile didn’t look friendly.
The lights went out…
Wang wondered what had happened. There’d been a meaty thud; then Jamieson stopped speaking. Before he essayed to say, “What did you say?” he heard a woman’s voice, apparently coming from Jamieson’s AI. She said calmly, “Hello Mr. Wang. Unfortunately, Mr. Jamieson was just injured while carrying out your operation. We’ll still be able to provide your goods though. Where would you like them delivered?”
Wang’s mind raced. What happened?! he wondered. He hadn’t liked Jamieson, but still felt shocked that the man had just been injured severely enough that his second-in-command was having to complete the mission. If he got hurt that badly, would his team really be able to deliver Donsaii and her son? Nonetheless, having already spent four million dollars with nothing to show for it so far, Wang felt very anxious to close the deal. His superiors would not be pleased if he’d spent the four million for nothing! “You have both of them?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“And they’re in your complete control? Bound and tranquilized?”
“Yup, well, not the kid. He’s not a problem.”
Wang thought about asking whether the terms were still the same, but thought that might just invite them to jack up the price. Instead he said, “Okay, I’ll continue to honor the agreement I had with Jamieson. Deliver them to slip fifteen at the Port City Marina in Wilmington North Carolina in three hours.” Wang’s men wouldn’t be at slip fifteen, they’d be at fourteen, just across from it, but they’d see Jamieson’s people coming. “No more than two people for the delivery.” He hoped that this woman didn’t start heaping restrictions on Wang for the meeting like Jamieson had been. Maybe we can get Donsaii and her kid without even paying the other four million, he thought.
“Okay. The delivery guy will be wearing a light shirt and dark pants. How will we recognize you?”
“Challenge and response. We’ll call, ‘Jerry,’ your response will be, ‘can.’”
“No problem, see you in three hours. Don’t forget our money.”
“Okay.”
Agent Calder was seething. Donsaii sounded like she was negotiating to take these people down herself! The woman was out of control! Calder’s team had tried to follow Donsaii when she’d gone out per the kidnapper’s demand, but had promptly lost her despite the video feed from Donsaii’s AI.
Calder had repeatedly asked Donsaii for a GPS location, but the woman hadn’t responded. While she was parked there waiting for this Jamieson guy to show up, they’d just about located Donsaii by carefully going over the video record of her drive. But then Jamieson had arrived, broken the window, Tased Donsaii, and shot her with the tranquilizer dart!
Cursing her team frantically, Calder had exhorted them to find Donsaii before they lost her for good. She’d been feeling sick to her stomach over what was going to happen when the people upstream from her found out she’d lost one of the most famous people in the world to kidnappers—right under her nose!
Then, despite being drugged, manacled, and then handcuffed to floor bolts in the back of that damned van, Donsaii had suddenly gotten loose. She climbed into the front of the van, punched Jamieson’s lights out, despite the fact that he was driving the van on manual. She, apparently effortlessly, brought the vehicle to a stop at the side of the road. She uncomfortably bound Jamieson’s ankles, up between his wrists, to the wheel of his own vehicle with plasticuffs. Strangely, she gripped Jamieson’s head for a second before she got out of the passenger door, sent Calder the GPS location of the van and disappeared.
Ca
lder suspected that Donsaii must already know where her son was or she’d have stayed there trying to get the information out of Jamieson. How the hell did I lose all control of this damned investigation?!
While Calder was on her way to the location of the van, Donsaii’s voice finally came in her ear, “Thank you for your patience Agent Calder. I’ve got my son and Ms. Reston and will be returning home now. I’m assuming that you and your team will be able to deal with Mr. Jamieson, as well as Mr. Wang and his associates down at the Marina?”
Calder wanted to explode, but restrained herself. If she got those guys she could come out of this smelling like a rose. No need to piss Donsaii off and have her point out that she’d essentially rescued herself… somehow. Heavily, she said, “Yes Ma’am. What about the other members of Jamieson’s team?”
“Only one of them appears to have been at the house where my son and Ms. Reston were being held, so I guess you’ll need to work on Jamieson to find the rest of them. The guy at the house has been injured in a fall down the stairs into the basement where they were holding their captives. You might want to bring an ambulance when you pick him up. My AI’s providing yours with the GPS address.”
“We’ll need the audio-video records from your son and Ms. Reston ASAP!”
“Um, sure, we’ll get those to you.”
***
Zage ran pell-mell into the woods. He wanted to keep running, but just like in the past when he’d tried to run a long way, he soon found himself desperately tired. As he slowed against his will, Steve’s voice came in his ear, “Zage, I think you’ve gone far enough. At this point you should hide because, if they are following you, they’ll be able to run faster than you and they’ll follow the noise you’re making.”
“Okay,” Zage gasped. “Where?” He swiveled his head so that whoever was watching the video from his AI would be able to help him choose a location.
Steve said, “Over to your right there. Climb over that big fallen tree and huddle against the other side. We’ll be there in just another few minutes.”
Zage trotted over to the big tree and scrambled over it. He hid in a little recess on the other side and waited for his breathing to calm. His heartbeat, which had been thunderously slow, seemed to come up to a normal speed as the world appeared to slow down around him. As the world normalized, he started feeling really tired. He also felt guilty about Amy, “Steve, shouldn’t I go back and try to help Amy get away?”
“No! No, you’re the one they really want, so the best thing you can do for Amy is stay out of their hands so they have to chase you. We have other people who’ll help Amy about the same time I’m picking you up.”
Zage heard a loud snap overhead. Panicked, he looked up and saw a tree limb falling. Once he realized it wasn’t going to land on him, he glanced upward again and realized someone in dark clothing was slowly descending through the upper stories of the tree canopy. He must have broken that limb, but how come he’s falling so slowly?! Is this one of the kidnappers come for me?!
The man drifted down and landed about ten feet from Zage. He said, “Hi Zage, you ready to get out of here?”
Zage stared, the voice was Steve’s! “How are… How are you flying?!”
Steve said, “Oh, I’m not. I’m wearing a harness that suspends me. It feels a little bit like flying though. My plan is to put you in your own harness, clip you on, and then we’ll both fly out of here, is that okay?”
Zage had been a little bit worried that this person might just be another one of the kidnappers. The fact that the voice sounded like Steve had reassured him some, but the fact that he was asking, rather than demanding that Zage do something made him feel even safer. “Sure.” Zage stepped forward. As Zage approached, he realized Steve was a big man.
Steve knelt and shook out a small harness. He helped Zage get into it and clip it together, then he attached it to his own harness.
Zage had been looking up in the air, “What’s holding up your harness? I don’t see any ropes.”
Steve glanced up, “It’s a graphene cable. It’s small enough that you’d have a hard time seeing it even in better light… You ready? We’re about to go up.”
“Okay,” Zage said distractedly, wanting a better look at the graphene cable, something he’d read about but not seen. Steve lifted up behind him, then his own harness came tight and Zage lifted off just after Steve did. “Can we go back to the house they were keeping us in so we can get Amy?”
Steve said, “I don’t think we’d better do that. Amy isn’t there anymore, but the police are about to arrive and arrest the man who held you captive. Remember, he got hurt pretty bad falling down the stairs. I don’t think we want the police asking you questions.”
“Oh,” Zage said with trepidation. “Am I going to be in trouble because that guy got hurt?” And, because I’m the one that hurt him? Zage thought.
“No!” More calmly, Steve said, “Kidnapping — what those men did to you—is considered a really terrible crime. In the long run, you won’t be in trouble for doing whatever you could to escape. However, in the short run, they might ask you a lot of questions while they’re trying to figure it all out. Don’t worry about that… The only thing is…” In a non sequitur, Steve said, “Do you know that you can do things a lot faster than other people? That you’re really quick?”
“You mean… how I can catch balls better because I can move my hand faster than other kids?”
“Not just kids. You’re faster than any grown-up. Especially when you’re scared.”
Uncomfortably, Zage said, “Oh… I guess I’ve kinda noticed… a little bit.” He swallowed, “You mean like when I hit that guy’s knuckles with the closet rod?”
“Yeah,” Steve snorted as if amused, “like that.” Though Zage couldn’t know it, Steve still felt astonished by the damage Zage had done to the man’s hand when he’d hit him. “Your mom would really like it if no one found out about how you can… do that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” Zage said, as if he understood, though he didn’t really. Zage had been so focused on the conversation that he’d kind of missed the fact that he was flying through the air—which was really cool. He let his mind drift away from the unnerving conversation he’d been having and focus on how breathtaking it was to sail along above the lights of the town. He glanced up, “How come I can’t see or hear the copter that’s lifting us?” he asked suspiciously.
Because he was gazing upward, Zage could see Steve look up as well. Steve said, “It’s way up at ten thousand feet. It isn’t very big and it’s not very noisy, so we just can’t see or hear it from down here.”
Suspicious, Zage said, “It wouldn’t be able to control where you were going from that far up.”
“Yeah, I control position with ported air jets on my harness.” To demonstrate, he fired a jet on his right side which swung them gently to the left.
Zage could tell they were descending. A little to the right of where they were heading he saw red and blue flashing lights, “Where are we going?”
“Back to your house. We’ll land in the backyard.”
“What are all those flashing lights?”
“The police are there at your house because of the kidnapping.” After a brief pause, Steve said, “Don’t worry, they’re there for your protection, not because they’re looking for you or anything.”
Zage had a lot more questions, but right then they came down over some trees and settled down in the back yard behind his house. Steve undid the straps and buckles, then, as the harness shot back up into the sky, Steve took Zage’s hand and said, “Shall we go in to your house? Your dad’s waiting for you.”
Suddenly, Zage really wanted to see his mom and dad. Surging ahead, though not letting go of Steve’s hand, he said, “Yes! Come on!”
Steve stayed with him until they were up the back steps and Zage’s dad opened the door. Finally letting go of Steve’s hand, Zage bolted forward into his father’s arms. “Dad!” he cried, looking aroun
d for his mother.
Shan said, “It’s so good to have you back! Mom’s on her way.”
Zage hugged his dad as hard as he could and got a warm squeeze in return.
His dad gave a little chuckle, “Aren’t you worried that you’re squeezing hard enough to pop my head right off my shoulders?”
Zage relaxed his grip; then as he turned to look back over his shoulder, he said, “Do you know Steve? He picked me up and we flew back!” To his dismay, there was nobody back there. Zage turned back to his dad, “He was right behind me!”
Shan said, “Yeah, I know Steve. He’s been… a friend of your mom’s for a really long time.”
Zage turned to look questioningly at his father, “Why’d he leave?!”
“Um, he’s probably got other things to do now that he got you back here safely, don’t you think?”
Zage frowned, “Does he work for the police?”
“No, um…” Shan trailed off.
“Who then?” Zage said, turning to look back over his shoulder and out into the backyard. His eyes arrested on another person dropping down out of the air to land back by the trees. A harness flew loose and shot back up into the air; then the person started jogging toward the house. After a few steps, he could tell it was his mother by the way she moved. Zage turned toward the door, yelling, “Mom!”
She loped out of the shadows as Zage threw the door open and yelled, “Mom!” again. He stopped, eyes goggling as she took the last few steps and knelt to throw her arms around him. Her hair was strawberry blond! Her skin was pale!
At the same moment that, in his mother’s voice, she said, “Zage!” he said, “Dr. Donsaii?!”
She winced and her hand came up to touch her hair. Then in a different voice—Ell Donsaii’s voice—she said, “Zage Kinrais?” In a tone implying that she wasn’t sure who he was.
Zage’s brain flip-flopped back and forth a couple of times as he came to grips with the evidence before his eyes. Then he said, “You’re my mom?!” He turned to look big-eyed at his dad over his shoulder, “Mom’s Ell Donsaii?!”
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