That was good news, Jake thought. Part of him had expected an army.
Ma continued, and Dolphin asked her a question about something. He nodded, then said, “She says a woman and three men are being guarded at a home in town. It’s not far. But the children are not with them.”
Jake prayed that the woman was Francesca, but he sagged at the news his children weren’t there.
“However,” Dolphin said, his expression brightening as Ma continued. “She says that there was also a flurry of unusual activity two days ago, before Jiaolong arrived. Like yesterday, it revolved around what they call the Center. That’s the main building. Afterwards, access to one of the wings became restricted. The research labs are located there and the space includes a large residence wing. She’s heard rumors about three foreign children. If they’re here, she suspects that’s where they are being held.”
“Then that’s where I’m headed,” Jake said, grabbing his MP5. He turned to Pete. “You and Sky plant your stuff, recon the guarded house, and meet me back here. We’ve got to get this done before Jiaolong and the rest of his goons return from wherever they went.”
“Watch yer arse, Jake.”
“You, too.”
Ma stepped between them, words spilling forth. Jake looked to Dolphin.
“She says you must take great care to remain in the shadows. People in the village are wary of strangers. They will raise an alarm if you’re spotted. The guards in the barracks are well armed.”
Ma spoke again and Dolphin added, “Most people here are fiercely loyal to Jiaolong’s grandfather, Frederik de Vries, and by extension to Jiaolong.”
The news rocked Jake. He’d known there was a connection between the founder of Everlast and the man in Hong Kong who’d coordinated the kidnapping of Jake’s family and friends—the same man who’d attempted to murder a hundred teens just to cover his tracks. But Jake hadn’t known the two men were related. The pieces fell into place when he recalled the family portrait he’d seen in de Vries’s office in Amsterdam, which had included the founder’s young grandson.
Shamer had called him DarkMatter.
Dolphin continued to translate. “Grandfather de Vries married a woman from the village many years ago. But even though they’d lived a busy life in Hong Kong, the couple always found the time to visit her childhood home. Her wealthy husband was happy to provide for the villagers whenever they were in need. Food, medical supplies, even college tuition for the children—he took care of it all. The villagers were eternally grateful to him, and proud that he had chosen to build the Everlast headquarters here.”
“Those buildings are Everlast’s headquarters?” Jake asked. “What about Jiaolong?”
Dolphin relayed the question to Ma, then translated while she spoke. “He also has offices in the Center. But it was first the Everlast headquarters, before de Vries found it necessary to open offices in Amsterdam. She says it was the only way to attract serious interest from the international community. But de Vries still visits on a regular basis. It was him who returned two days ago.”
“The founder of Everlast is here?” Jake said, his mind sorting through the possibilities. He’d linked with the man’s mind. He knew de Vries was innocent in all this. He could be an ally.
Ma nodded, and explained to Dolphin.
“She says his entourage arrived unexpectedly two nights ago. There is speculation that he is ill.”
“I need to see him. He’ll help me locate the children. Can you get me into the Center?”
Dolphin smiled when he heard her reply. “She said of course. She works there.”
Twenty minutes later, Jake was carrying a large wicker basket over his shoulder. His MP5 was inside, buried beneath a layer of fruit. He hunched his back and trudged down the cobbled path behind Ma. The nighttime scatter of clouds seemed to be thickening, but the moon still managed to illuminate the valley. They stuck to the shadows as they wound their way around the perimeter of the village. Ma hadn’t stopped speaking since they left her home. She sounded perturbed and he knew she was playing a role as well, her tone not inviting interruptions from passersby.
Up ahead, pole lamps spilled pools of light along the walkway leading into the campus area. As Ma and Jake approached the building, he tensed when he spotted a pair of younger men in Western clothing chatting at a bench along the walkway. Ma raised her voice as they passed by. From her tone, he suspected he was being scolded again. He averted his gaze and kept nodding, mumbling, “She de, she de,” whenever she took a breath. Dolphin had told him it meant yes, yes.
The men snickered as he trudged past.
Ma led him around the rear of the building and used her key card to open the door. She peeked inside, looked both ways, and nodded.
“Thank you,” he whispered as he slipped past her, knowing this was as far as she dared go. The lights were off at this end of the building, though staggered emergency lighting provided some radiance. The building felt more like a hospital than an office space, with polished linoleum floors splitting a row of doors down the long hallway.
Ma pointed toward the left. “Good luck,” she said before slipping back outside. The door closed behind her.
Jake slid the basket beside a watercooler and pulled out his weapon. A quick glance at the blinking icons on his phone confirmed Pete was setting things up along their diversion route, while Skylar covered Pete from the shadows. Marshall and Lacey were on the ridge, and the teens’ icons revealed they were still safely ensconced in Ma’s home.
So far so good.
He padded down the corridor, leading with the MP5. As he neared the end, a shadow disturbed the light that spilled from the adjoining corridor. He flattened himself against the wall, heard soft footsteps, the creak of a door hinge. Then silence. He peeked around the corner to see a lone chair in front of a set of double doors. According to Ma’s description, that was the entrance to the Everlast wing. He heard movement from a room situated just this side of the entry. He crept forward and glanced inside to see a guard making a purchase at a vending machine. He skirted past, slid through the double doors, and ran past a series of empty research labs toward the residence area at the end of the corridor. He was halfway there when the Everlast founder’s voice sounded from behind him.
“Dear God. Mr. Bronson? Is that really you?”
Jake slid to a crouch and spun around, sighting down his weapon. But there was no one there. He swiveled toward an open doorway to his left, expecting the man to pop into view.
“The disguise is effective,” de Vries said. “But your green eyes give you away. I can’t believe you’re here.” The familiar voice was coming from the speaker above the door, next to a ceiling-mounted camera.
“De Vries?”
“Of course it is. Please, please come in,” de Vries said through the speaker. He chuckled and added, “I’m dying to see you.” There was a manic edge to his voice.
Jake checked either end of the hallway. There was no sign of movement or pursuit but something didn’t feel right.
“It’s truly okay, Mr. Bronson,” de Vries said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
He reminded himself of his previous encounter with the old man, and of the man’s innocence in regards to the abductions. Besides, Jake thought, rising to his feet and moving toward the door, the man at the other end of the speaker might be the only person alive who could help him find his children.
He stepped into a small anteroom with a receptionist’s desk, a couch, and an elevator door protected by a keypad. The camera over the door swiveled in his direction. A series of tones emanated from the keypad and the elevator doors swung open.
In for a penny...
With a deep exhale, he stepped inside. The doors closed behind him and the elevator dropped one level. He moved to one side and crouched, the stock of the MP5 seated squarely against his shoulder, his finger on the trigger. A bell rang, the door opened, and he found himself looking at a duplicate laboratory of the one he’d se
en at de Vries’s office in Amsterdam. Except this time, the old man was prone on a hospital bed, eyes closed, skin pale, sensors attached to his head and body, a respirator doing his breathing for him. A 3-D image of the man’s brain was displayed on a large monitor. The multicolored image seemed to pulse as if it were alive. There was an electronic skullcap beside the monitor.
“I can see the shock in your eyes,” de Vries’s voice said from another overhead speaker. “I’m afraid I’m not quite what I was when we met a couple days ago.”
Jake hesitated, studying the room. There were lab tables, computers, and the cloned body of a younger de Vries floating faceup in a half-filled glass chamber of clear liquid.
“We’re quite alone, Mr. Bronson. It’s just you and me.” De Vries hesitated. “Well, sort of.”
The clone twitched, rippling the viscous liquid. At the same instant, the colors on the 3-D brain image shifted and sparkled. A shiver ran down Jake’s spine. He lowered the weapon and stepped into the room.
“Jesus, what have you done?”
“I’m afraid neither Jesus nor his Father played a role in this.”
“What happened?” Jake asked, walking to the man’s bedside. De Vries’s features remained slack but the clone twitched again. “Or should I ask, where are you?”
“Ah, you’ve hit the crux of it,” de Vries said, his voice once again taking on an uneasy edge. “Where am I, indeed? I’m here”—the clone jerked—“there”—the brain image pulsed—“and... everywhere.” The lights flickered, a table fan turned on, and the motorized hospital bed tilted upward several inches.
“I had such grand visions,” de Vries continued, “secluded within my selfish personal delusions, that man could—and should—transcend his destiny. That there was societal value to a life without end. It seemed so obvious to me...before.”
“Before what?”
“Before my consciousness fled into the computer when I suffered a debilitating stroke two days ago. Being unable to transition from there into my cloned body left me trapped in the ethers. I can’t go back, and I can’t go forward.” He harrumphed, and Jake was surprised at how natural the computerized voice sounded. “Time has a different meaning here. Even though I’ve only been in this state for forty-two hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds, it seems like an eternity. It’s given me a lot of time to think.”
Despite the urgency of Jake’s circumstances, he found himself entranced by de Vries’s plight. He knew he needed to press the issue of his family’s location, but he sensed the question would be met with stiff resistance if he didn’t allow the man to finish what he needed to say.
De Vries continued, “I’ve learned the hard way that a man’s consciousness wasn’t intended to reside outside the confines of his own brain and body. Because the instant the computer was hooked into the local network, mine spread like a virus to the Center’s servers, and from there to the vast expanse of the World Wide Web. How might a man’s perspective change when he has instant access to every piece of recorded history available to mankind? How, indeed! At first I was mercilessly overwhelmed, in the same instant gorging on poetry, philosophy, math, and sciences, drowning in a miasma of factual and theoretical information too immense for a hundred minds, a thousand minds...” His voice trailed off.
“I was insane in minutes, screaming with no voice, clutching with no arms or hands, yearning for a sense of warmth, or cold, or anything, pleading for the emptiness of death. But it wouldn’t come. Instead, unbidden data continued to bombard my mind. In the end, it was a stanza of poetry by Robert Herrick that provided the anchor I needed. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying. Simple but to the point, wouldn’t you agree? Carpe diem, Mr. Bronson. Seize the day!”
Jake knew the mantra. It had struck a chord with him ever since he was diagnosed with terminal cancer so many years ago, even after the disease had been wiped out by the freak accident that rewired his brain.
De Vries hesitated before continuing, and Jake wondered at the enormity of what the man’s consciousness was facing. He felt a surge of compassion for the man.
“Carpe diem,” de Vries repeated, his voice somber. “What’s the point if one is immortal? What’s the rush? Why not simply relax today because we can seize it tomorrow, or next week, or next year? Do you see where I’m going with this? The inevitability of death is not a curse, it’s a blessing that impassions us to achieve greatness in our lives.”
Jake thought about it. Death is also a blessing when a person’s continued existence might otherwise bring harm to those he loves. He shook his head at the irony. Here they were, unusual allies, both ready to die for their own reasons.
He felt de Vries’s anguish and decided to help him.
But he needed to work fast.
Chapter 22
Yóulóng Village
FRANCESCA WAS RELIEVED that the question-and-answer period had finally come to an end. Jonesy had been pacing while he and the others were babbling earlier, but at one point he’d stilled, and when Lin’s gaze had been averted, Jonesy had given a subtle hand signal of some sort to Becker. Tony had seen it, too. After that, the guys had quieted. Jonesy had continued to saunter around the room, at one point disappearing down the hall. When he’d returned, Becker and Tony had each visited the bathroom. That had been fifteen minutes ago.
She shifted uneasily on the couch. Becker sat across from her, seemingly lost in thought, and she suspected that the effects of the drugged soup were starting to wear off. Lin had gone silent as well. She huddled on the couch, her gaze distant. Jonesy was in the kitchen downing his third bottle of water.
The stillness was shattered when the two guards pushed through the front door with their assault rifles leveled. Francesca leaped to her feet. Becker and Jonesy moved to shield her and Lin cowered into the couch. Tony rushed in from the bedroom hallway, stopping in his tracks when the guard with the gouged cheek aimed the pistol at him.
The man sneered at Tony, barked an order in Chinese, and one of the guards moved toward Lin.
“Stay away!” Lin shouted, jumping up and moving deeper into the room. The guard pressed forward. Becker took a step to intercept him, and the man with the pistol fired a round into the floor in front of him. The Aussie jerked to a stop, palms spread at his side.
The shooter panned the weapon toward Lin. He spoke to her in Chinese and the words seemed to shatter her spirit. She drooped, and the guard grabbed her arm and pulled her out the door. The other men followed and then locked the door behind them.
“Bastards,” Jonesy said.
Lin’s fearful expressions had looked real enough, but Francesca knew better. It was all an act, and she was angry with herself for not having figured it out sooner. The murder of Lin’s supposed husband Bohai had thrown her off, and it spoke to the extremes their captors would go to.
“Something’s wrong,” she blurted out. “I think—”
“Frannie, Frannie,” Tony said. He’d never called her that, and the tension she felt from him told her something was up. He pulled her into a gentle hug and patted her back. “Everything’s going to be alright,” he said. Then he whispered, “Go to the bathroom.” He pulled away. “You gonna be okay...Frannie?”
She took the hint and nodded. “I’m just upset. I need to splash some water on my face.”
When she closed the bathroom door behind her, she saw the note immediately. One of the documents from the file was taped facedown on the back of the door, and the blank side was covered with handwritten notes from each of the guys. She scanned through them and learned that Jonesy had discovered hidden cameras in every room except this one. Worried about hidden microphones, he’d chosen to communicate with the others in writing, and the men had taken turns escaping into the bathroom to jot down their notes. They had figured out they’d been drugged with the soup and were boiling about it.
But it was the detailed escape plan outlined
in Tony’s notes that got her heart racing. Tony had discovered a paring knife buried in the back of one of the kitchen drawers. She spun around and peeked beneath the privacy curtains covering the window. Sure enough, there was a gouge in the lower corner of the wooden frame, where Tony had used the knife to dig out the rotting wood around the bolt supporting the exterior iron bars. He’d stopped digging when a part of the hole had penetrated into the dark alley outside. A second hole in the other bottom corner was already halfway through the wall.
The bars are brand new but the wood is ancient, Tony had written. It’s all for show.
Which means they’ll move us to a real cell, she thought, as soon as they’re finished squeezing information out of us the easy way. A part of her had hoped that help was on the way, but she knew in her heart that wasn’t going to happen. They were buried in the jungle somewhere in China, and if they didn’t get out of here soon, they may never leave.
She lowered the curtain and reread the final line of Tony’s instructions. We go in forty-five minutes. Keep to the script.
She clenched her fist and nodded. Lin and her friends had set the stage, but she and the guys were going to give them a show of their own.
***
Little Star slowed the truck just before we crested the hill, his eyes scanning the wall of foliage along the right side of the road. “It’s been a while,” he mumbled as the truck crept forward. After a moment he pulled to a stop and killed the engine. The motor coughed twice before stilling, its rumble replaced by the clacks and buzzes of a zillion insects. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and stepped outside. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the greenery, and all I could see was the flicker of his flashlight.
“It looks creepy in there,” Sarafina whispered through the slider window behind me. She didn’t like dark spaces.
Thirty seconds later Little Star popped back into view with a smile. He got in the truck and started it up. “We’re going to cut through the jungle. Roll up your window.” Looking over his shoulder, he said, “Best keep your heads down and stay clear of the slats.” Sarafina and Ahmed huddled closer, and Little Star edged the truck through a stand of leafy fronds. I rolled up my window. We moved slowly and the jungle seemed to swallow us up, leaves and branches scraping the sides of the truck, then snapping back into place behind us. Sarafina was right—it was creepy. But Little Star was still smiling and that made me feel better. He angled the truck in a gradual turn, and that’s when I spotted the peak of a small structure up ahead.
Brainrush 05 - Everlast 02: Ephemeral Page 12
