by Ballan, Greg
A few minutes later, the bus stopped to pick up more passengers. Nancy got off and hailed a cab. She climbed in the back and paused to gather her thoughts.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver asked.
“The Greyhound Bus Depot outside the beltway,” she replied, noticing several maps scattered haphazardly across the front seat of the cab.
“Do you have a map of Massachusetts up there by any chance?”
The driver fumbled in the clutter for a few seconds and then slipped a folded map through the partition. “Here ya go,” he replied as he merged into traffic.
Nancy opened the map and scanned the index. She spotted Hopedale in the map index and followed the key coordinates. Now she could plan her escape.
* * * *
Shanda Knight slowly opened her eyes; the mind-numbing pain she had endured was gone. She noted that she was lying on a hospital bed hooked up to several pieces of equipment and intravenous drips. She tried to move but felt an unusual tightness in her abdomen. She carefully lifted the covers and looked down at her naked form. Her stomach seemed to be swollen, and the skin stretched taut. She gently rubbed her abdomen seeking assurance that her child was still inside her.
Long ago, she had realized that something was abnormal about her pregnancy; she hadn’t been showing. Since the bout of intense pain she looked swollen with child. She didn’t feel the weakness and disorientation she had experienced when she awoke from her long five-week sleep, so she ruled out that she had been unconscious for any great length of time. She recalled several doctors rushing to her aid, and the panic they shared tending to her. She also remembered the blood, endless amounts of blood that had seemed to be pouring out of her body.
“Don’t exert yourself too much, Mrs. Knight,” the woman doctor who had examined her earlier instructed. “You’ve been through hell the last several hours. I don’t think your body could survive another trauma.”
“I feel better, thank you.” Shanda was afraid to ask, but did so anyway. “May I ask what happened to me, and what the hell is going on?”
The doctor stood up from the corner sofa and approached Shanda’s bedside. She pulled up a visitor’s chair and sat next to the bed. Shanda noticed the woman’s white medical garb was covered in blood, and another greenish type of fluid that she couldn’t identify.
“May I call you Shanda?” the lady doctor asked.
“Of course,” Shanda said, but she was nervous as hell.
The doctor smiled warmly. “Excellent, please call me Allison.” She reached inside her lab coat and pulled out a brown, large envelope. “Shanda, your child is not developing at a normal rate. He is unlike any other baby we’ve ever encountered. I can only assume this is due to his unique lineage. After forty plus days of seemingly normal gestation, your son decided to skip the rest of that trimester and move into the second trimester.” She paused. “Your body reacted in the only way it could, a miscarriage. That’s where all the blood came from.”
Shanda felt ill. “I miscarried?” she asked in stunned disbelief.
“No, your baby is still safe inside your womb, it’s just that your womb has undergone some extensive changes,” Allison continued. “The membrane encasing your baby is not a normal human membrane nor is the amniotic fluid completely human in origin. We were able to extract a small sample of the fluid and ran some tests on it. We still can’t fully comprehend the composition of the stuff and it dissipated shortly after we finished the tests.”
The doctor opened the envelope and handed several pictures to Shanda.
“These are ultrasound images we took of your child, a male child. We were unable to penetrate the epidermal layer so we only have an outline of the child’s form. It looks human enough with the exception of its eyes. They seem to be developing in a manner unknown to us.” Allison flipped through the pictures for her patient.
Shanda felt nauseous, not from her pregnancy, but from what the doctor had just revealed to her. Tears ran down her cheeks despite her efforts to keep calm. Her child wasn’t going to be human. She was carrying an Esper, right down to the inhuman glowing eyes. He would be an Esper hybrid, just like her husband.
“My baby,” she whispered. “My poor little boy.”
“Shanda, you have to be strong,” Allison urged. “I’ve read the reports about your husband; the transformation capability could be inherent in your child also. You must have faith.”
“How can I have faith when I know my husband will never see our son. That bastard Ross will claim my child as soon as he’s born! He’ll use him like a guinea pig or a lab rat.”
* * * *
Allison had no reply; Shanda was accurate in her assumption, and they both knew it. Anything Allison said to the contrary would be an outright lie. Shanda Knight was much too smart to buy into any lie.
“All I can tell you is that we need to get you through this pregnancy in one piece. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. We’re walking through uncharted territory. But I promise you that you won’t be going through it alone. I’ll be at your side. Your son deserves a chance at life; we owe him that at least.”
Shanda nodded as she visibly struggled to control her whimpering. “Why would you help me?”
“Because I’m not like them.” Allison gave her patient an encouraging glance. “I don’t approve of what’s going on here. I took an oath to cause no harm. I’m a doctor first and will do all that I can to see that your child isn’t harmed by Ross’s studies.”
“Thank you,” Shanda whispered.
Allison smiled. “You need to eat. I’ll fix you something if you like.”
Shanda realized that she was famished. “I’d like that a lot,” she answered.
“Good, because I’m starving myself,” Allison replied. “Let’s see how much of a mess I can make in this kitchen.”
* * * *
“Major Carter,” Ross began, “we may as well start with you. What the hell happened to our patient?”
The major, lead physician for Shanda Knight, cleared his throat and began nervously, “Sir, as near as we can tell, the fetus underwent an unexplained burst of rapid development. The sudden shift and growth was more than the host body was able to accommodate. The host went into distress and the host body reacted by attempting a miscarriage. The fetus, however has adopted its own life support systems inside the host womb that have augmented the human umbilical cord.
“We’re still studying the data we’ve gathered from the fluid sample and hope to have a spectrographic analysis of the chemical composition within the next fourteen hours. As stated in our medical logs, the fetus bears resemblance to a bipedal humanoid with some notable exceptions – the eyes and the epidermal covering. We cannot penetrate the epidermal layer with our medical instruments and the ultrasound readings were ineffective as well.”
“Give me the bottom line, major,” Ross’s voice prodded.
“Mrs. Knight is carrying an alien fetus that is developing contradictorily to any known species on this planet. The fetus may or may not kill her if it undergoes another growth spurt. The human body is not equipped to handle the abrupt biological changes she’s undergoing. The odds are very good that the developing child will kill the mother before coming to term.”
Ross was worried. “Estimate those odds please.”
“I’d say the odds are even money right now. If there’s another growth spurt, I’d go with the mother dying of shock and trauma at 80/20.”
Ross gave a curt nod. “Keep me apprised if there’s any change.”
“Yes, sir,” the major answered.
“Captain Stapp. Have you evaluated the process I gave to you based on our interrogation of Specimen 4?”
“Yes, sir. What you propose is feasible; we just don’t know enough about the ship’s technology to be sure of anything. We’re ready to implement upon your order.”
Ross wanted to wait a few days until the Pentagon brass arrived then put on a show for them, but that show implied risk. If
the process failed for some reason, that failure would occur in front of possibly the worst group of people, his superiors and those who were funding the efforts at Groom Lake.
“I want to implement this afternoon. The sooner we get in there the more time we have to find something of interest for our inspection.”
“Yes, sir,” the young captain snapped formally.
Ross took a sip from his bottled water and looked around the room. “Who’s responsible for keeping tabs on Agent Knight? I want a report on his activities. I think it’s safe to assume that he’s still in Paris since our facility is still in one piece.”
Anderson fielded Ross’s inquiry. “Knight tore up a suspected terrorist hangout in downtown Paris around 8:30 p.m., local time. He’s busy shaking down the local fanatics, trying to get some lead on the group responsible for the assassination attempts on Monique LaSalle. He has yet to make contact with the OSA or the CIA or anyone at his firm, although we don’t have an inside man there so our data from that source comes through satellite bugging, several deployed rifle microphones and outside field agents.”
Bill Anderson paused and looked down at his hands, an indication to Ross that he wasn’t done with his report.
“Okay, Bill, out with it. You have that ‘I’ve-got-bad-news face’ on. I’ve known you too long; you can’t hide anything from me.”
Anderson leaned over and whispered into Ross’s ear, “I think this could keep till after the meeting, sir.”
Ross wrinkled his face then looking at his second in command, addressed the group. “You’re all dismissed.” Ross and Anderson watched as the officers filed out and the last man closed the door.
“So?” Ross looked at his bottled water and grimaced. He stood up and poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on a side table.
“The ghost of Michael Sparks has come back to bite us in the ass,” Anderson began. “His secretary was the point person to keep tabs on him. I told our source to stonewall Sparks’ investigation based on the details we were getting from his secretary. Killing Sparks was not part of our overall plan.”
Ross interrupted, “Just get to the bad news without the sugarcoating, please.”
Anderson sighed heavily. “Nancy Bertoni stole documents that describe our operation in detail. According to the database tracker, she accessed several ‘EYES ONLY’ Top Secret files and downloaded them before her link could be severed. She logged in under Sparks’ old access code; that’s what triggered the tracker. We’ve been keeping tabs on everything going in and out of that office.”
Ross was silent for a moment then let it all out. “God Damn it, Bill. I knew that sadistic prick would overdo it. Killing Sparks was a mistake; using his secretary was another mistake. We’re handling this whole operation like amateurs.”
“It gets worse.” Anderson gave Ross a gloomy look. At the urging of Ross he went ahead. “We have reason to believe she knows about Operation Homegrown, Special Agent Knight and the links to Pendelcorp. We think Sparks may have enlightened her to the whole story.”
“What the fuck!” Ross slammed his mug on the table, splashing coffee everywhere. “What else?” the colonel demanded as he grabbed a handful of napkins to sponge up the mess.
Anderson swallowed, then went on, “The man upstairs hired some outside talent to eliminate her at home. The hired killer blew up the wrong car and nearly killed her two teenagers. She knows she’s marked and she’s running.”
Ross froze for a moment then threw the wad of wet napkins on the table. “This is just goddamned terrific, Bill. I’ve got a Washington administrator running around with enough information to torpedo two-plus years of carefully laid planning – and probably ruin our careers – plus cause a political scandal that would make Watergate and the Iran Contra Gate look like a damned nursery school.”
“Hell hath no fury.” Anderson shook his head at the hopelessness of this mess.
“If only he’d just left it alone,” Ross added angrily. “Those fat assed, political desk jockeys think they can play the game. Well they just can’t. You can’t just kill everyone who may be an obstacle. There are always ramifications.”
“Bottom line is this, sir: We tried to kill her, we nearly killed her son and daughter, and she’s on the run. Where would she go with the information, the media?” Anderson looked to his boss for his opinion.
“I don’t know.” Ross slumped in the nearest chair. “I’m not sure if she’d go right to the media.” Ross turned a hopeful eye at Anderson. “What would you do in her shoes, Bill?”
* * * *
Anderson considered the problem and weighed all of the information available to him. “If it were possible, I’d hide some of the evidence in a safe spot as insurance. If I could that is. I’d want to have every advantage over those who’d want me eliminated. That information would be my only life insurance policy. I’d definitely want it protected.”
“Agreed.” Ross leaned back in his chair. “Have we got any ideas where she was heading?”
Anderson chuckled at her ruse and shook his head. “We thought we were tracking her via her cell phone, but she must have planted the unit on a stranger. We tracked the phone to some yokel out in the Maryland suburbs. He nearly peed his pants when we raided his house. We found the cell in his overcoat; he swears he never saw it before.”
Ross looked livid. “We’re looking more and more like the Keystone Cops or Inspector Clouseau from those Pink Panther movies. We have the resources of the United States freaking government behind us yet some two-bit secretary can give us the slip.”
Anderson nodded his agreement. “She’ll surface eventually, and when she does we’ll have somebody pick her up. No one can hide forever.”
* * * *
Ross began poking though the reports from Paris. Knight had torn up the Oasis Club, and one man ended up shot to death and six others were beaten to hamburger. Knight was still as strong and as formidable as ever. Ross hoped that Knight’s offspring could provide them with the keys to that power. He smiled, pleased that it looked as if the Knight fetus was totally alien. Between that and the success with Specimen 4’s interrogation, all was not lost. They just had to silence Nancy Bertoni. In order to do that they had to find her and he knew that would get harder with each day she remained on the run.
“Where would she go?” he mused aloud. Then a thought occurred to him and he voiced it aloud for Anderson’s benefit. “She’d go running to the one man who could offer her protection, one man who would get the most out of the information.”
“Erik Knight,” they both said in unison.
“But Knight’s in Paris,” Anderson countered.
“Right,” Ross said. “But she wouldn’t be privy to that little tidbit of information.”
“She’s going to Hopedale!” Anderson blurted out. “Sir, she’s going to make a beeline to that place where Knight runs his operation!”
“Madame’s. Let’s get in touch with Richard Pendelton. This is out in his neck of the woods; we’ll let him clean up this mess,” the colonel said. “It’s time he bloodied his hands along with the rest of us.”
* * * *
Richard Pendelton was reviewing reams of financial data pertaining to several large real-estate portfolios his company had acquired, when his secretary buzzed him. “Yes?” he said doing his best to hide his irritability.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Pendelton. Colonel Ross is on line three and he would like to speak with you. He claims it’s an urgent matter.”
Pendelton sighed. “It’s always an urgent matter with the good colonel.” If not for the enormous profit he was making from this grand scheme, he would have severed the ties to the bungling buffoon months ago.
“Put the call through, but transfer it to my secure, private line please.”
Richard’s picked up the receiver and activated the plasma viewscreen. “Colonel Ross.” He did his best to sound pleasant. “What can I do for you?”
Ross smiled. “We need you
to do a little job for us, Mr. Pendelton. You claimed that we weren’t the only ones with access to,” he paused searching for the right words, “how shall I put this, contracted talent. Yes, that sounds appropriate for pleasant conversation.”
“I have several resources available in that particular profession,” Pendelton provided.
“Excellent,” the colonel replied. “Here’s what we need.”
Ross went into detail about Nancy Bertoni, the information she had obtained, and where they believed the scared secretary was headed.
“You want a hit at Madame’s Restaurant?” Pendelton shrieked into the phone. “You must be mad. A hit there would bring Erik Knight running back in order to protect his home turf. Knight lives, eats, sleeps and works out of that place – not to mention the fact that everyone dear to him either lives or works there.”
“Are you saying that you won’t do it?” Ross asked smugly.
Richard paused, weighing the equations in his mind. “I’m not saying no; I’m simply saying that you need to consider your bigger objective of keeping the hybrid out of the country. We do this, and Erik Knight comes back and comes back with a fury.”
“This problem needs to be eliminated, and it is headed into your territory. We can send our own people to kill her when she arrives, or you can use one of your hired hands. Our talent tends to be, shall we say, messier and less concerned about collateral damage. If you want subtlety, I strongly urge you come up with an alternative plan,” Ross implored.
Richard considered the problem. “If she took files, that’s theft of government property, is it not? Why not simply put out an APB on this bitch, and let the police handle it, or have some of your legitimate spooks haunt Madame’s for a few days. When she goes inside, she can then be apprehended and arrested as a spy,” he suggested.
