EXOSKELETON - A Novel

by Shane Stadler

  EXOSKELETON

  A Novel

  by

  Shane Stadler

  2012

  Dark Hall Press

  A Division of New Street Communications, LLC

  Wickford, RI

  darkhallpress.com

  Copyright 2012 by Shane Stadler.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except for brief quotations for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of

  Dark Hall Press.

  Published 2012

  Dark Hall Press

  A Division of New Street Communications, LLC

  Wickford, Rhode Island

  darkhallpress.com

  newstreetcommunications.com

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Day Minus-One

  Day Zero

  Day One

  Numbers and Voices

  Genesis

  Revelation

  Apocalypse

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to express my thanks to the many editors and agents who have given me useful feedback on this novel in its early stages, and for their general encouragement.

  I'd like to thank William Greenleaf for a very helpful critique of the early manuscript.

  Finally, I am grateful and indebted to William Renehan, Editorial Director at Dark Hall Press, for taking a chance on Exoskeleton, and its first-time author.

  I

  Day Minus-One

  Innocence or guilt is irrelevant.

  To William Thompson this was no epiphany, but an unwilling metamorphosis to acceptance. He reminded himself that he'd be free in a year, but it did little to temper his anger.

  The frigid air in the dark helicopter cabin continuously drained the heat from his body, and he clenched his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering. But a deeper coldness, a weave of anger, fear, and sadness, encroached upon him as they neared their destination. It was this edgy foreboding—and the intuition that time was running short on something—that had disturbed him ever since the sentencing.

  Far below, streetlights twinkled like stars as tree branches and other obstacles flickered through his line of view, and frozen lakes appeared as voids of black in an otherwise glittering landscape of life. The cars on the streets seemed to crawl from that altitude, and Will found himself wishing he was in one of them—any of them—and that he was another person ...

  From five thousand feet, the building that was their destination resembled a colossal computer chip embedded in a matrix of illuminated streets, and it loomed more and more menacing as they approached the landing pad on its roof. Will wrung his numbed hands, relieved that the four-hour journey was finally coming to an end. He then scraped frost from the window, and looked closely as they circled to come in from the north. The color of the building was a deep red—a blood red.

  Will rested his forehead against the cold, vibrating window, and wondered if he could get himself to jump from the roof of the building if the opportunity arose. Never in his forty years of life had he considered suicide, but he now understood how humiliation and shame could drive a man to such an extreme. His leg suddenly twitched, causing his foot to kick the seat in front of him. He knew it wasn't the cold that triggered the spasm, but rather the anxiety that bound him like a coiled spring. Even though he knew no specific details, he was convinced that the "treatment" would be unpleasant.

  Will's head jerked sharply as the chopper bounced down on the roof of the thirty-story building. Once the aircraft settled, the pilot shut down the engines and tapped the copilot on the shoulder. The man responded by pushing a button on the control panel, and cupping the helmet-mounted microphone in front of his mouth. "Marion Prison, this is MP-101," he said. "We have arrived at the Detroit facility; the package will be delivered shortly. We'll fuel up at Detroit Metro for the return trip. Our ETA is 04:20."

  "Roger that, MP-101, keep us informed," a man's voice replied over a background of scratchy static.

  Will heard the chopper's rotors slow down to what was probably a safe speed. The four men who comprised his escort detail opened the sliding doors on the starboard side of the passenger cabin, and climbed down to the roof. The largest of the prison guards reached back into the cabin, unlocked one side of Will's handcuffs from a steel eyelet on the seat, and clamped it on his own wrist.

  "Let's go, asshole," the guard ordered over the decaying whine of the engine.

  Will said nothing. The anxiety for what was coming, that which had caused his muscles to tremor like high-tension cables, was stronger than any anger those men could summon in him. Besides, he was so cold he wasn't sure whether he could get his mouth to form words—his jaws seemed to be locked in the closed position.

  Will stood up slowly, ducked his head and shoulders under the doorframe, and jumped to the ground three feet below, where he landed heavily. The rest of the men immediately surrounded him—acting with extreme caution, as they always had when handling him. They were larger, both individually and in number, but Will sensed they still felt threatened. He didn't blame them; he'd nearly killed a giant-of-a-man while in prison. Until a little more than a year ago, he reflected, he'd never assaulted anyone.

  Will realized that being handcuffed to the oversized guard, whose badge read Hank Tritt, MP#: 2119, extinguished any hope of running for the edge of the roof. Although he could probably drag the Neanderthal over the edge, he hadn't reached the point where he'd be willing to take an innocent man down with him.

  The guards led him out from the shelter of the helicopter, and Will's feet were so numb he couldn't sense the ground beneath him. The only indication of his own movement was the squeaking sound his shoes made on the hard-packed snow—a noise that made him feel even colder—like that made by rubbing together two pieces of Styrofoam. After just a few steps, they were fully exposed to the weather, and Will thought the December wind might blow right through him. The guards shielded their faces with thick coat sleeves to protect against the whirring ice crystals. It was a luxury Will wished he had; he still wore his short-sleeved, prison-issued jumpsuit.

  A hundred feet in front of them, a red hutch protruded from the flat roof of the building like the conning tower of a submarine. They waited on the landing pad, and just as the gusting wind, engine exhaust, and a stench that Will thought must have been coming from the city sewer system were becoming intolerable, a door on the protrusion opened.

  Light spilled out and into the night, producing a dim, red hue on the roof. A stocky figure emerged, looked in their direction for a moment, and walked towards them with some difficulty. The man obviously had problems with his legs or hips, his hobbling amplified in his silhouette. The guards remained still as he closed the distance, and his rough face finally came into view. He was at least in his mid-sixties, Will estimated, and reminded him of some of the civil service employees who worked at his former university: old, weathered, and angry.

  The old man stopped just a few steps away and yelled to the security guards through the cold wind. His words emanated as white puffs of breath blown through jagged, black-yellow teeth. "I'm Ruggins. Welcome to the Red Box ... This must be Thompson." He nodded towards Will.

  "Yeah, here's the paperwork," Tritt said as he handed Ruggins a clipboard, its papers crackling in the wind. "We can finally detach ourselves from this piece of shit." He looked around the roof. "You've got a nice color scheme here."

  Ruggins ignored the comment, flipped through the papers he'd been handed, and signed one of the documents with a gloved hand.

  Tritt turned to the other men in his detail as he pulled some
keys out of his jacket pocket. "All right, let's get outta he-"

  "-What are you doing?" Ruggins cut in. "You never un-cuff a patient on the roof. And you're not done: an admissions officer has to sign off on some of these forms. You can't leave until this guy is behind the door." He pointed to the entrance of the hutch, and led Will and two of the guards to it. Tritt ordered the third guard to inform the pilots of their delayed departure.

  Will burped silently and winced as bile stung the back of his throat. He felt his stomach worsen as he got closer and closer to the punishment he had chosen.

  *

  Richard Greene shifted in his seat and tried to remain calm as an itchy sweat broke out on his back. It seemed to him that all government buildings had climate control problems; in this case it was too hot even though the weather outside was frigid—a nasty December night in Washington, DC. He knew, however, that his discomfort was not driven by temperature alone. Although he wasn't overtly sweating, like the man sitting in the center of the stuffy room, he was sure he was just as nervous—and wondered if he might be sitting in the same chair someday soon.

  His colleague, Heinrich Bergman, seemed to ponder as he paced back and forth and rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. He stopped in front of the man in the chair, dropping his hands to his sides. "Come on, Frank," he said. "You've already admitted to selling the technical designs. Why not fess up to the missing project files, and we can put all this behind us?"

  "I already told you," Frank replied, rubbing beads of sweat from his balding head with a thick hand. "I sent the files to Langley to be digitized as I was ordered, and they were sent back. But I never saw any backup copies-"

  "You're responsible for everything that's shipped to and from this site," Bergman said. "The originals and the backup copies made it back here. The backup copies have disappeared. For God's sake, Frank, it was a crate of files. Where is it?"

  Frank only shook his head and looked down to the floor.

  "Lenny," Bergman said as he turned to the man sitting to Richard's right. "I think we need to enhance this man's desire to cooperate."

  The wooden chair under Lenny creaked as the large man stood. He put on a pair of thin, black gloves, and produced four pairs of plastic, zip-tie handcuffs out of a leather satchel. The man's mere presence in a room made Richard nervous. Lenny wasn't very tall—maybe five-foot-nine-but he was as wide as a Volkswagen Bug, and his giant, catcher's-mitt-hands hung from unusually long arms.

  Lenny walked over to Frank and cuffed his wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of the chair, despite the man's resistance.

  "What are you doing?" Frank asked nervously.

  Richard heard a hollow cupping sound as Lenny hit Frank's head with an open hand.

  "Shut up," Lenny ordered.

  Richard always heard a subtle accent in Lenny's voice, on the rare occasions that the man spoke, but could never place it.

  "Why are you doing this?" Frank cried. His eyes darted back and forth, still reeling from the strike. "I told you, I don't know anything about missing files."

  "I want to believe you, Frank, I do," Bergman replied. "But you lied to me about the technical plans already." Bergman shook his head in disgust and then asked, "You have a kid in college, don't you Frank?"

  After some hesitation, Frank nodded.

  "I'd hate it if our problems here had to spill into your private life," Bergman said.

  Richard shuddered as his prickly sweat suddenly turned cold. What about his own kids? He thought of his two girls. They were a year apart—first grade and kindergarten—but practically identical. But Bergman wouldn't hurt little kids, would he? Richard already knew the answer: Bergman might even eat little kids, if that was what the project required.

  "Are you threatening my family?" Frank asked.

  "Just thinking about why you might need the extra cash," Bergman replied. "I've got two in college right now—love'em to death, and always worrying about them—but not enough to sell out my country." He turned to Lenny. "Get what you can out of him—the usual treatment. I'll be back in a half hour."

  Lenny nodded.

  Bergman looked to Richard and gestured toward the door.

  Richard followed the long-gaited man into the hall and around a corner where Bergman turned to face him. Richard always thought Bergman looked hungry and desperate, but his voice didn't match his appearance; he always sounded confident.

  "Sorry to keep you here so late," Bergman said. "I needed you in there to estimate the damage of the leak. But I don't think he took the project files. What do you think?"

  Richard was taken aback by the question. He felt Bergman's dark, beady eyes staring at him, searching for any indication of deception. He knew if he could convince Bergman that Frank took the project files as well as the technical plans the poor bastard would probably end up as fish-food. The heat would be off for a while, but he didn't want to be responsible for harm coming to the man. "I don't know about the project files," Richard responded, "but the technical plans he sold were old—we don't even use that technology anymore. Minimal damage, if any."

  "Even if he leaked the most current technical plans, of the device, or the facilities themselves, it wouldn't matter anyway," Bergman said. "Only our contractors have the resources to produce any of that stuff. But the missing project files are damning—they reveal everything. If they were made public, the project would be done for—as would we." Bergman pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. "It's getting pretty late. I don't want to delay your work on the upcoming presentation. You'll need some time to put a positive spin on the report. All of the big players will be at this meeting." He put the phone back in his pocket and clapped Richard on the shoulder. "Good luck."

  Bergman walked down the hall and turned a corner. Richard went over to a large window and peered out, trying to collect his thoughts. He was sure Bergman would eventually figure it all out. He just hoped it wouldn't happen too soon—not before the files got into the right hands.

  He stepped closer to the window; the nighttime view of DC was always impressive. He saw it often as of late, and once again he wouldn't be home until well after midnight. His wife and girls had missed him many nights over the past year. They thought he was a hard-working engineer, and that's what he was at the beginning. But they had no idea of what he was currently doing, or more importantly: what he was going to do. And they didn't know how they were unknowingly involved. His heart ached with guilt: What was he risking?

  *

  As Will had suspected, the hutch was an entrance to an elevator. He and the other four men crammed in, and he felt the guards' shoulders press tightly against his as the doors slid closed. His face was so close to the back of the man in front of him that he could smell the residue of cigarette smoke embedded in the canvas of his jacket. On the verge of breaking into a claustrophobic fit, he concentrated on being sheltered from the wind, and on absorbing the warmth from the bodies around him. After a few seconds of deliberately obstructing his thoughts of panic, he had calmed himself enough to survive the elevator trip.

  About a hundred buttons of various colors arrayed the elevator control panel, which Will found strange as he estimated the building to be about thirty floors. Of the three buttons labeled with a 5, Ruggins pushed the red one. The elevator quickly descended, beeping its way down the levels, and Will felt it decelerate as they approached the fifth floor.

  "Hang on," Ruggins said as he grabbed a handle on the wall.

  Will felt the elevator stop its descent, and then accelerate horizontally.

  "What the hell is this?" a guard asked, pushing against a wall to maintain his balance.

  "Strange, isn't it?" Ruggins said, grinning.

  "I've heard rumors about this place ... don't know if I want to know much more," the guard replied, winking at Will. It wasn't a friendly wink.

  "I've been here since it was built—about two years now—and I still get lost," Ruggins grumbled.

  The elevator
decelerated, making everyone teeter again, then came to a full stop. The doors opened, and new air filled Will's nostrils with the smell of fresh paint. He peered around the shoulder of the bulky guard in front of him, surveying the layout of the room outside. It was reminiscent of the lobby of a medical clinic, complete with institutional-style furniture and a clerk window.

  The mass of men piled out of the elevator, and Ruggins approached the window. It was made of bulletproof glass, as indicated by a small sticker, and had a metal drawer beneath it to pass things back and forth. The only door in the room, other than that of the elevator, was located to the right of the clerk window. It looked massive—like a door to a vault—but devoid of any visible hinges or handles.

  Ruggins tapped his key ring on the glass, producing a sharp sound that made Will's muscles twitch. A moment later, a large woman with thick glasses appeared on the other side whose name tag read Darlene Jackson, Admissions Officer. She spoke into a microphone, the noise spilling out of a speaker in the ceiling with the sound quality of a drive-through intercom. It seemed only Ruggins understood what she said.

  "The patient is here to in-process," Ruggins yelled back into the window.

  The woman collected some items, put them in the drawer on her side of the glass, and pushed the contents out to Ruggins, who scooped them up and replaced them with the paperwork the guards had submitted to him. He handed some of the papers to one of the guards and said, "Fill these out. And give me your prison ID's, I'll need to make copies." He hobbled over to Will and Tritt, the guard to whom Will was cuffed. "Release him—he ain't going anywhere now." He handed a clipboard and a felt-tipped pen to Will. "Fill out these forms."