Stealth Power

by Vikki Kestell

  “Let’s go!” He pushed through and held the fence for Dr. Bickel, then me, then Zander.

  “Push . . . back,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He kicked the fence back into place and raced across the no-man’s land between the two fences.

  He was clipping away at it, the three of us unable to do anything more than watch, when he asked, “Those guys should have seen us. What happened back there?”

  “The nanomites,” Zander answered.

  “I thought they were injured. Damaged.”

  “They are,” I whispered. “Don’t know . . . what it cost them to screen us like that.”

  “But how are you feeling, Gemma?” This from Dr. Bickel.

  I shook my head and it wobbled back and forth. I was becoming disoriented; my eyesight was growing hazy.

  “Let’s go!” Gamble pushed the fence out and squeezed through the opening.

  I couldn’t move.

  “Drag her over here,” he hissed.

  Dr. Bickel and Zander did just that: They dragged my limp body to the hole in the fence, and Gamble pulled me through.

  “Dang it, Gemma, I told you I didn’t want to carry you up that mountain!”

  “Sor . . . sorry . . . Ma . . . rine.”

  “Sure. Put my pride out there so I don’t dare fail.”

  Dr. Bickel stood at the three rocks, the marker we used to align the hike up to the rocky outcropping on the side of the mountain. It was all uphill now, over steep, rocky, and treacherous soil that could slip out from under us without warning.

  He pointed. “We’re headed there.”

  Gamble tossed me over his shoulder like I was no more than a sack of potatoes. He set the pace, and I could do nothing but bump passively against his back, watching the ground beneath me go by. I heard his labored breathing, felt the in and out of his lungs.

  He stumbled, almost dropped me.

  “I can carry her a while.”

  “No disrespect, Cruz, but your ribs and collarbone aren’t healed yet. Just keep moving.”

  We did, but it was slow going. I figured Gamble’s muscles were screaming, but he didn’t stop—and that set me thinking. I wondered what kind of a fix we would have been in without Agent Gamble. Neither Dr. Bickel nor Zander could have done all Ross Gamble had done to get us this far.

  Again, it felt like the stars had aligned “just so,” felt as though all the random circumstances of the past weeks had magically coordinated themselves to fit our exact needs. Even before I’d sprung Dr. Bickel from General Cushing’s illegal custody, the universe had provided what we needed when we needed it—and much of it had come in the package of Ross Gamble.

  Only Agent Gamble’s FBI credentials could have gotten us safely through Cushing’s checkpoints and back into Albuquerque. And here he was supplying the muscle the three of us lacked.

  Gamble’s lungs heaved, but still he climbed. He refused to falter.

  Zander would have tried to get me up this mountain. In fact, I do not doubt that he would have died trying.

  However, we didn’t need him to die trying: We needed to succeed.

  I began to hope that we would succeed.

  And it had all hinged on Gamble.

  What if I hadn’t visited the FBI building that morning? What if Gamble hadn’t been on the phone to Cushing’s office at the exact moment I’d walked in on him? When it had happened, I had thought it bad luck, bad timing on my part—but if Gamble hadn’t been calling Cushing at that precise moment, I would not have cut off his call and revealed myself to him.

  In my heart, I knew it hadn’t been the cold, distant stars interfering in lowly human affairs; hadn’t been the impartial, unfeeling universe condescending to help; hadn’t been “coordinated but random circumstances.”

  Zander had warned me: “God is tireless and will confront you when you least expect it. At that time, he will bring you face to face with truth. When he does, well, it will be the moment of decision for you.”

  Was this that moment?

  God? Are you there?

  You know who I Am.

  Gamble staggered to a stop. He leaned against a massive boulder, and I could feel his muscles quiver with fatigue.

  Far below, we heard the whine of the patrol truck’s engine returning.

  Zander voiced the warning. “Gamble.”

  “I hear it.” He dumped me on the ground, sat me against the boulder. He dropped down beside me. Zander and Dr. Bickel squatted behind nearby rocks.

  I stared down the mountain, surprised to see how far away the patrol road was. We had arrived at the rock outcropping. The many scattered rocks and boulders were our shelter.

  The airmen below did not see us. They didn’t slow down and were gone from view in a matter of seconds.

  “Where next, Gemma?”

  Dr. Bickel looked to me. The instructions he’d written hadn’t made our next steps explicit. On my first trip, I had fumbled around in the dark until I found the door.

  Gamble helped me up. “Point the way, Gemma.”

  I tried to get my bearings. My eyesight wasn’t quite right, though. It felt like a wall of thick ooze had come down between me and the world, and I was seeing and moving in slow, exaggerated motion.

  “N-not . . . far. Tallest rock.”

  “That one?”

  Gamble motioned with his hand, and with agonizing slowness, I tracked in that direction.

  “Ye . . . s.”

  “Is there a way around to it?”

  “N . . .o.”

  Gamble snorted. “Of course not. So up and over?”

  My chin dropped to my chest.

  “Right. Cruz? Give me a hand here.”

  They dragged me up and over boulders, and it was excruciating. I couldn’t help much and my dead weight thumped against jagged rock, rough granite, and grit that scraped and bruised until we arrived behind the tallest pillar in the outcropping. When the four of us arrived behind the pillar, I was worse for the wear and hurting all over.

  I tried to look around. The space behind the pillar had a narrow floor of sand and loose rocks, and the wall of the mountain curved away, making an abrupt left-hand turn that hid the door into the tunnels.

  Almost there.

  “Whoa. What is that?”

  Zander pointed at the desiccated remains of a large snake in two charred pieces.

  I blinked and saw the freeze-framed image of the snake’s heavy body hurtling toward me—in the instant before the nanomites’ lasers had rendered it steaming charcoal. I managed half a snicker. “S-snake sur . . . prise.”

  Gamble, the macho Marine, shuddered.

  I snickered again and flopped my hand forward. We gave the snake’s remains a wide berth and followed the rock as it curved.

  “Th-there.”

  Zander and Gamble studied the rusted iron door. Embedded in the rock and weathered for more than fifty years, it seemed to have grown out of the stone face of the mountain. The door had no handle, no keyhole, nothing to indicate how to open it.

  “Must . . .” My hand flailed in useless motion.

  “I know. I remember this part,” Dr. Bickel assured me. He addressed Gamble and Zander. “With your right hand, press the upper right corner of the door. At the same time, press the lower left corner of the door with your left toe.”

  Zander stood in front of the door and reached his right hand up to the corner of the door. He nodded when he felt something “give.” He balanced on his right foot and put his toe to the left corner of the door.

  “K-kick,” I said.

  He kicked. The door cracked and gave way, and the cool breeze from the tunnels was, perhaps, the most welcome sensation I’d felt in days.

  While Gamble and Zander stared inside, Dr. Bickel helped me up.

  “This . . . way,” I muttered.

  I leaned on Dr. Bickel, and we entered the tunnels.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 29

  Navigating the tunnels was hard. I was incredibly
weak; Dr. Bickel, Gamble, and Zander took turns supporting my every step.

  The last length of the tunnel that led into Dr. Bickel’s lab, however, was the most difficult. There the passage took an abrupt 90-degree left turn and narrowed. The ceiling dropped lower and lower until it opened into the cavern. Dr. Bickel, hunched over, duck-walked those last five feet as I had many times.

  But me? Today? Today I had to crawl. Even on my hands and knees, I had no strength to go forward. I collapsed onto my belly, and felt that I would never move again.

  Gamble dragged me back by an ankle and squeezed ahead of me. He turned around, grasped my hands, and tugged me, inch by inch, those agonizing five feet into the cavern. Zander, hunched over, came out last.

  Zander helped Gamble sit me up against the wall of the cavern, where my head lolled. I knew that if it rolled too far to either side, I would simply slide to the floor.

  I stared with a sad heart at what remained of Dr. Bickel’s laboratory under the mountain. It was as I remembered it. Silent, decimated, full of haunting memories.

  I watched Zander and Gamble take it in: a domed room carved from the heart of the mountain. Lights ensconced around the cavern’s perimeter providing continuous but soft illumination. Eisenhower-era office furnishings piled willy-nilly against the walls, the fine silt that covered the chairs and desks speaking their own tale of abandonment, decades gone by.

  The rubble of Dr. Bickel’s lab lay at the center of the cavern.

  I remembered what his laboratory had looked like the first time I’d come through the tunnels—meticulous, pristine, ordered, functioning. Nothing pristine, ordered, or functioning remained. I could see that Dr. Bickel felt it, too—that troubling sense of destruction and loss.

  He wandered away from us, toward the ruins of his lab. Gamble stirred and followed him.

  “Let me help you, Gemma.” Zander put his good arm around me and hoisted me up, but my hands and arms would not obey my commands. My feet would not move.

  I couldn’t go any farther.

  Earlier in our trip up the mountain, each time we’d paused to rest, the nanomites had charged me up a little. Not now. The little energy the mites could afford to share with me wasn’t enough. They were too few in number and too damaged.

  I realized that damaged nanomites had to be following their survival protocol: shutting down and entering a voluntary state of dormancy so that Alpha Tribe could endure, so the swarm’s collective knowledge and history would survive.

  The swarm was failing, and my body was failing with it.

  “Can’t.”

  Zander may have answered, but it was the nanomites I heard.

  Weeeeee muuuuust, Gemmmmma Keeeeyes.

  “Stubborn . . . aren’t you?” I questioned them.

  Nooo. Deeeeeetermined.

  I didn’t respond, but I wondered, Isn’t that the same thing?

  Dr. Bickel and Gamble returned. “Bring her this way.”

  Zander picked me up and cradled me in his arms. I felt the hardness of his cast against my back. He followed Dr. Bickel, and Gamble walked alongside us—to help Zander, I thought, should my weight prove too much for his still-mending bones.

  We skirted the center of the cavern where overturned stainless steel workbenches, demolished computers and monitors, and shards of shattered glass bore testimony to Cushing’s attack. Gamble’s eyes took in everything, including the shell casings littering the stone floor.

  “There was a fire fight here.”

  “Cu . . . shing,” I whispered. “She . . .”

  “No live rounds. Rubber bullets.”

  We approached what had been Dr. Bickel’s living space in the cavern. He was waiting for us. “That’s how they took me, Agent Gamble—hit me with rubber bullets. After all, Cushing didn’t want me dead.” He gestured. “Help me right this chair, please.”

  Dr. Bickel indicated one of the comfortable old loungers, now upside down, where we’d shared many pleasant afternoons. Dr. Bickel and Gamble flipped the chair over.

  “Let’s take it over there, if you please.” Dr. Bickel pointed with his chin toward his former dining area.

  Gamble and Dr. Bickel hauled the chair toward the kitchen while Zander hauled me.

  “Farther that way, Agent Gamble. Facing the wall there. Yes; closer, please.”

  Gamble pulled the chair to the right of where Dr. Bickel’s dining table had once sat. Dr. Bickel nodded to Zander, “Put her in this chair. See those two workbenches laying on their sides? Bring them here, please. Clear them off. Find something with which to wipe them down.”

  Zander sat me in the chair, and I sank down into its cushioned depths. My head lolled against the back of the chair, but it felt good to give way to the chair’s comforting embrace.

  While Zander and Gamble were moving the tables, Dr. Bickel found an extension cord, plugged it in, and placed the end of it in my hand. He watched for any indication that the mites were imbibing the available electricity before moving away.

  I also wondered if the mites were feeding. No warmth spread from the cord up my hand, no revitalizing stream flowed into me.

  “Nano?”

  No answer.

  Through my cloudy, narrowing vision, I observed Dr. Bickel do something odd—even for him. He stood just outside the carved doorway that led from his kitchen to his sleeping quarters and turned parallel to the wall I faced. With one foot in front of the other, he counted aloud, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.”

  He squatted, feeling with his fingers for something.

  “Agent Gamble, your assistance, please.”

  Gamble and Zander had watched him, too, and came straight away. I would have drawn closer also—could I have moved at all.

  “May I borrow your knife?”

  Gamble removed the folded tool from his pocket, flipped it open, and swiveled a blade from its casing.

  Dr. Bickel dug the tip of the knife into a crack in the cavern wall. He chipped out some sort of plaster that fell to the floor in crumbs and pieces. He prodded the knife around and jiggled it side to side until he’d worked a fist-sized chunk of wall loose and pried it from the wall.

  He let the chunk fall to the stone floor, reached into the hole, and began to pull on the face of the wall. He placed both feet on the wall and leaned back. A piece of rock embedded in the wall shuddered. Dr. Bickel was pulling for all he was worth, but he was getting nowhere and growing agitated.

  “May I?” Gamble shouldered Dr. Bickel aside and grabbed the edge of the slab. Like Dr. Bickel, he sat and put his feet against the wall and pulled.

  From where I watched, the slab looked to be the length of a couple of reams of legal-sized paper laid end to end—quite heavy, of course. The slab had been hammered into place, and it was a snug, tight fit.

  Gamble strained. His face grew red. The rock grated but shifted only millimeters.

  “You got a sledge hammer, Doc? A crowbar?”

  Dr. Bickel turned in a circle, his eyes roaming over the detritus in the cavern, his mouth moving. “We had tools. At one time, we had tools . . . and we put them in a cabinet when we finished with them.”

  His mouth snapped shut. He pointed. “That cabinet.”

  “That cabinet” lay on its side near the entrance door Cushing had blown to smithereens. The cabinet’s back was to us; the side facing up was crushed. Zander ran over to it and perused what remained in it.

  He trotted back with a chisel and a heavy hammer. “These might work.”

  Gamble took them, but before he could put them to the wall, Dr. Bickel stopped him.

  “Agent Gamble, I must caution you to exercise care. What lies behind that wall is very sensitive and of the utmost importance. In your quest to dislodge this slab of rock, do not damage the treasure within.”

  Gamble looked skeptical, and I, too, wondered what was of such import, given my precarious situation.

  And precarious it was. In our quest to reach the cavern
, I had leaned upon Dr. Bickel’s assurances that my hope—and the nanomites’ hope—of surviving lay here in his lab. I had set my fears aside and focused on making it up the mountain and into the tunnels. And yet, I don’t know why I had taken him at his word when I knew that nothing of value or use remained here, nothing that could repair the nanomites.

  I recalled part of the lecture Dr. Bickel had delivered during my first visit to the cavern. “The mites can certainly repair each other, except in extreme circumstances. At the nano level, they can cut, weld, and glue—those terms being simplistic, of course.”

  Repair, yes, but Dr. Bickel himself had assured me that the mites could not reproduce themselves.

  Him: “Oh, they haven’t the parts to do so.”

  Me: “They couldn’t fabricate their own pieces and parts from raw materials?”

  Him: “Well, no. They don’t have the polymers or the doped metals and they can’t provide the atmospheric environment necessary for deposition. The mites cut apart the fabricated mites I gave them, powered them, and shared their common programming with them. That’s all.”

  Why had I clung to hope when Dr. Bickel said our survival depended upon reaching his lab—a lab as decimated and powerless as the nanocloud was?

  I was going to die here.

  Now that the possibility had solidified to a likelihood, the “here” part wasn’t what clutched at my heart. It was the “I was going to die” part that did.

  The terror of what lay beyond death took hold of me. I’d almost died a few weeks past, the day Cushing raided my house and the mites had drained me.

  But I’d been given a second chance.

  And what had I done with it?

  Not one thing.

  “Zan . . . der . . .” my voice was weak.

  “Gemma?” He heard me anyway.

  “Zan . . . I-I going to die . . . H-help m-me.”

  “No, Gemma! No, you’re not! Dr. Bickel is going to fix you!”

  “No . . . h-help m-me . . .”

  He knelt by my side. “Are you afraid, Gemma?”