by Bob Mayer
Simmons felt as if she wasn’t breathing, there was no more air to take in.
“How much did he pay you?” Frasier asked.
Gun Guy flipped shut his notepad and slid it into his inside pocket, once more revealing the big gun.
“A hundred thousand dollars,” Simmons managed to get out. She looked out the window and saw a bluebird flitting among the branches of the tree. She envied that bird.
“I think I’m going to be sick again,” she said, but she didn’t get out of the chair. She felt that if she could stay exactly where she was, this would all pass.
Gun Guy put on his sunglasses, a not so subtle way of saying we’re done here. Frasier looked concerned, but not overly.
He stared at her a long time, then turned to Gun Guy as he put on his sunglasses. “Let’s go. Nothing more here.” Frasier paused at the door. “Sorry to have disturbed your morning.”
Then they were gone.
Ivar looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, which was odd because he rarely shaved. He was one of those guys, the ones who got a little scraggly here or there, but a full beard would be an impossibility. Today, though, the look was deeper than unshaven: disheveled, slightly crazed, perhaps even manic. He’d been giggling to himself at times, which he found disturbing at first but no longer noticed. Then there was the whistling. He’d never been a whistler, but it seemed that had changed along with a lot of other things.
There was no tune to the whistle, just noise. It would have sent anyone around him climbing the walls, except the only person around was Burns and he didn’t seem to care. He just sat in a chair looking at the monitor with his golden eyes, occasionally telling Ivar what to do.
Ivar sometimes stopped the whistling to look at what he was building. He wasn’t sure what it was. He’d been through every lab in the building pilfering what was needed. The place was empty at night, and during the day he stayed in this basement lair.
He liked that word: lair. Much better than lab.
He’d even taken apart other people’s projects to take what he needed. Probably ruined a few PhDs along the way, but this was big. Very big. Not big in a physical sense, although it did fill the center of the room, but he knew, on a very base level, that this was something very, very different, and that excited him.
Despite Burns, who’d put an explosive collar around his neck.
Despite the gun and the collar and the eyes, Burns was a lot easier to work for than Doctor Winslow. Which should have made Ivar wonder about the career path he’d chosen.
Ivar had felt this same drive as a kid when he’d decided to build the greatest fort ever in the dining room. He snuck into his sister’s room and pulled the comforter off her bed without waking her. He’d pulled down his mother’s new brocade drapes in the living room, something she still reminded him of in the mandatory weekly phone calls to maintain the illusion he had a family. If he talked to her now, he knew he could convince her that they had served a much better function being part of his fort than as curtains.
So the drive was familiar, even comforting because of that, but he wasn’t building a fort. He stopped whistling for a moment and fingered an angry pimple on his neck, a thing growing as fast as the contraption in the center of the room. He saw the beauty in the mass of wiring and tubes and vacuum cases and batteries.
Fortunately someone had left their Prius parked behind the building overnight so he’d been able to pilfer the batteries protected by an orange cover that warned against touching or trying to do maintenance on them, as if they were some magical thing. High voltage, indeed. Of course the voltage was recharged by the brakes, so he’d had to improvise. He had appropriated the bike of Professor Whatever the Hell His Name Was, Ivar couldn’t remember. The professor was known all over UNC for pedaling to and from campus every morning and evening in his spandex, his warning light flashing on the back of his helmet, and taking up his allotted three feet of space in the two-lane roads, causing massive backups behind him, lots of middle fingers and screams, and smiling all the way to and fro.
He’d miss the bike, and that made Ivar happy.
Of course the expensive bike had required some adjustments as suggested by Burns, who seemed to know exactly what Ivar was building, but wasn’t sharing. In that, he was like Doctor Winslow. Ivar had rigged it to pedal backward as he was ordered. He wasn’t quite sure why it needed to be that way, but he knew that there was no going forward anymore. The bike was cabled to the batteries, which were cabled to the mainframe, which was cabled to a huge glass incubator used for newly born rats that he’d had to go over to the psych labs to appropriate. They did some bad stuff in there to those rats, so taking the rats away from them made Ivar feel somewhat better. They used the pretty white ones that were sacrificed for science, not the ugly brown ones that were sacrificed by the exterminator.
The bike technically wasn’t powering the batteries, as it was somehow part of the entire device, in between the batteries and the rest of it, in some way Ivar didn’t comprehend.
At Burns’s order, Ivar had gone back and taken some of the rats, saving them from their fate on the end of needles from grad students studying the latest way to flatten out the brain, get rid of the sine curves, the lows, and the highs, too, because you can’t have one without the other.
He didn’t know why he’d been ordered to get the rats, but like his mother’s drapes, he knew they were essential and would fit in someplace because everything else Burns had told him to get was fitting someplace.
On his own initiative, Ivar had grabbed a large ziplock bag full of dog kibble from a grad student’s locker who thought that if kibble was good for dogs, it must be just as nutritious for humans. Ivar had thought that weird six months ago when he first saw the guy eating it, but now he chewed a handful and tossed a few to the rats, and they seemed to like it, too.
Burns didn’t seem to need food.
The rats, his nonhuman company, were watching him. He was sure that they turned their heads to the door as he left and seemed to wag their long pink tails whenever he returned, dragging a cart full of wires and circuits and whatever else he was told to scavenge.
He’d given a couple of them names although he didn’t know which were girls or boys. The cute one who wiggled her whiskers at his every return he’d named after a girl he’d pined for in high school but had never spoken to: Susan. The one who looked big and strong he thought of as Ivar.
The other two he just thought of as the other two.
Ivar picked up an old half gallon of milk he’d found in the fridge in his old lab and took a big swig, pleased that it was nonfat and not rancid. A bit sour, but nothing he couldn’t stomach.
He giggled again, realizing he was eating dog food and worrying about spoiled milk. Susan, the rat, stood and stared at him as he giggled, and he swore her little pink nose was wiggling and he felt happy. Tired, but happy. He was accomplishing something BIG here.
He had a feeling he was missing something important, between Burns from the government, the collar around his neck, and the thing he was building.
On order, Ivar got on the bike and started pedaling backward. It had been hard at first, but he’d finally gotten the rhythm of it down. He was able to go faster and faster. He heard a low hum. A golden haze filled the incubator.
Burns got up and grabbed one of the rats, one with no name, and tossed it into the gaping mouth of the incubator.
Ivar kept pedaling.
The rat scurried along the bottom of the incubator for a moment, claws scrambling for a hold, then the gold haze became more solid and coalesced around the rat’s head. Which disappeared from sight. The glow moved along the body, as if consuming it, until there was only the quivering tail wagging frantically. Then even that was gone.
“Whoa!” Ivar said. “That was cool.”
“Keep pedaling.” Burns went over to the control panel and made some adjustments.
Ivar kept backward pedaling, faster and faster. The golden haze pulsed. B
urns grabbed no-name number two and tossed it toward the incubator. This time the rat snapped out of existence as soon it hit the maw of the glass container.
Then he picked up Susan, her eyes full of trust.
“Not Susan,” Ivar protested.
“‘Not Susan,’” Burns mocked with a strange smile twisting his face, more blood seeping from wounds. “Then Ivar.”
“Oh no,” Ivar said, looking at the rat.
But Burns had his gun up, level, pointing right between Ivar’s eyes.
“Ivar,” Burns said. He paused as the gold pulsed larger than before and a rat came back out, a tiny one, a fifth of the size of the one that had just gone in. As they watched, it scrabbled up on the glass, and Burns, still keeping the gun pointed at Ivar, reached in and took it out of the incubator.
He placed it on a desktop and it expanded, filling out to normal size.
Burns smiled, drawing more blood from his wounds, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Ivar,” Burns said, wagging the gun.
Ivar blinked, finally getting it. “No way, man!”
“Just put your hand in,” Burns said. “It will do the rest. You’ll be fine.” He pointed at the rat. “It’s fine.”
Ivar swallowed.
Burns lowered the gun and Ivar felt a moment of relief, thinking he’d reconsidered. But Burns pulled a small device out of a pocket and flipped up the lid covering a toggle switch. “I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you,” Burns said. “I’ll just pop your head off.” He rested a finger on the toggle.
Ivar couldn’t get his hand into the opening of the incubator fast enough.
The hand started shimmering and Ivar’s eyes got wide as the golden haze climbed up his arm and then rapidly covered him.
With a flash, Ivar was gone and the golden glow went back to its original size.
Ten minutes later, a tiny human hand came groping out of the golden ball. Followed by an arm, and then a tiny Ivar, a foot and a half tall, stood in the incubator, clearly dazed and confused.
Burns reached in and lifted Ivar out, setting him on the floor.
Ivar’s mouth was moving but no sound was coming out.
Ivar began expanding. He reached normal size in less than twenty seconds. And now he could speak.
“Fracking unbelievable!” Ivar exclaimed, blinking hard and shaking his head.
“Get on the bike,” Burns ordered.
Ivar staggered, still dazed, but did as ordered. He got on the bike and began pedaling.
“What—” Ivar started to say something, but realized he had nothing cogent to say. He kept pedaling.
Thirty seconds later, another tiny human hand appeared out of the gold ball, scrabbling at the glass. An arm followed, then a head and torso.
“Oh frack!” Ivar exclaimed, stopping pedaling in his shock as he stared at a miniature version of himself. Burns helped it get out of the incubator, as he had done with the rat.
As he watched, it grew larger and larger, expanding until it equaled his size.
“Good job,” Burns said. He went to the landline and dialed a number. Ivar only got to hear this end of the brief conversation:
“My friend,” Burns said. “Your investment is working. But it will be threatened.”
Burns listened, then replied. “I will tell you where it is this evening. Be prepared to defend it. There is still a lot of work to be done before it’s truly ready.”
Another pause. “I cannot tell you what it is. But you will be quite amazed.” Burns looked at Ivar, the original, and smiled, more blood flowing, as if the two of them were in on something. Which they were.
“You will see tonight,” Burns said and hung up the phone.
Ms. Jones had Pitr read the report to her one more time about the interview with Simmons.
“What do you think?” she asked when he was done.
“Burns could have made her give him the drive for the money, but he didn’t.”
“He wanted to take down the Courier,” Ms. Jones said, “which means he wanted us to know about it.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Pitr said.
“We have to make sense of it,” Ms. Jones said. “Remember Mister Eagle’s Sherlock Holmes quote. Something is right in front of us and we’re not seeing it.”
“He’s taunting us for firing him,” Pitr said.
“If it were only that.” Her eyes were closed. They often were, as if simply keeping them open drained her energy.
“Why didn’t you make her wet?”
Ms. Jones eyes flickered open. “The girl? That was Mister Frasier’s call. That is Mister Frasier’s unique talent. That girl will never again stray.”
“People are dead because of her.”
“Ah,” Ms. Jones said. “She was only one of seven things in Doc’s Rule of Seven. She did not kill anyone. Burns killed them. For the innocents, they cannot imagine what a man like Burns is capable of. Nor can they imagine what we are capable of. The difference between us and Burns is Ms. Simmons is still breathing. What we must figure out is why is Burns acting this way?” She closed her eyes. “Has Support hacked into Doctor Winslow’s phone yet? Made sense of those papers?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me know the results as soon as they do.”
“I will,” Pitr promised. “Now you must rest.”
Ms. Jones gave the ghost of a smile. “Another line from the team’s favorite singer, Mister Zevon: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“How do you guys feel about swimming?” Scout asked as she came in the door, Nada having pushed the piano out of the way as soon as over-watch reported her approach.
Nada was puzzled. “As a sport?”
“Hate it,” Roland said.
“He sinks,” Moms said with a smile. “The water isn’t friendly to big muscles.”
Roland blushed.
“Want to go swimming?” Scout asked.
“No,” Moms, Nada, and Roland all said together.
“I wouldn’t mind a dip,” Doc said.
“You might in this pool,” Scout said.
“Eagle, come down,” Moms ordered over the net, then turned her radio off. She looked at Scout. “Pray tell, why is that?”
Scout did two cartwheels, ending up next to Roland and his stack of guns, magazines, and bullets. “Can I get one?”
“No,” Roland said.
“Do I get paid?” she asked Moms.
Nada reached into his pocket and pulled out a money clip. “How much do you get paid for babysitting?”
“What do they pay or how much do I clear?” Scout asked.
Nada blinked. “What’s the difference?”
“They pay me ten dollars an hour. But there are benefits.”
“You steal?” Roland said.
“Dude! How direct. I use stuff. And know things. Like the Lindsays are in the middle of a month-long vacation. I like their pool best because it has a slide. Ours just has a pool.” She looked at Nada’s money clip. “So let’s say twenty an hour, because this job is, like, dangerous, right, with Mac and Kirk and who knows who else getting hurt battling big Transformer-like things?”
“Where is the Lindsays’ pool?” Moms asked. “And what did you see?”
Scout held out her hand. Nada peeled off five twenties and passed them to her. She stuffed them in her pocket, then held the hand out again.
“That’s blackmail,” Nada said. “We can find out where the Lindsays’ pool is from Support.”
“But you won’t find out what I saw from your Support.”
Nada peeled off two more bills and gave them to her. Scout frowned, then put them in her pocket. “Can I get one of those ear radio things you guys use? It would have been so fab to listen in last night.”
“No,” Moms said, shuddering at the thought of Ms. Jones eavesdropping with Scout on the net.
Scout did a backflip and dropped onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “You guys don’t share well. What happened to the team? One for all and w
hatever?”
Eagle spoke up. “We’re not the Three Amigos.”
Scout laughed. “Love, love, love that movie. A plethora.” She looked at Roland. “You have a plethora of guns. Seems you’d share.”
Roland was frowning, which seemed to be his constant state around Scout. “A what?”
Eagle quoted: “I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else and are looking to take it out on me?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Scout was literally bouncing up and down on the couch. Then she did three cartwheels, ending up in front of Eagle and holding her hand up, but restrained, not quite ready to high five. “Do you know what Nada means?”
“Isn’t that a light chicken gravy?”
“Love it!” she squealed as she and Eagle slapped palms.
“I’ve been waiting to say that forever,” Eagle said, with a worried glance at Nada.
The rest of the team was lost.
“So,” Scout said. “Who wants to go swimming?”
Moms gripped the arms of the chair tightly and grimaced a smile. “Why would we want to go swimming in the Lindsays’ pool?”
“Welllll,” Scout said. “Earlier I went over there and noticed that the pool water kind of just slid over the edge into the grass and snatched a squirrel and, wellllll, seemed to, like, just absorb it. Kind of gross. Seems like something up your alley. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe golf is more your game?”
Roland had grabbed the iPad. “The Lindsays’ house is three blocks over.”
Moms got out of her chair. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
“Wellll, you’re all so faaaabulous and on your super-secret mission, which you really haven’t told me about, and were blowing up the golf course all night, so I thought you were kind of busy and when I saw you come back early this morning, everyone looked pretty beat, and it’s not like the pool is gonna go anywhere. And you guys aren’t really sharing,” she added, looking longingly at the pile of guns. “Sometimes it seems like you just got dropped in here like a nanny with a green card, ’cause you are so greeeen! I figured you knew about the carnivorous water.”
