by Scott Powers
At the same moment, Max pushed Ian’s ordered box of chemicals off a storage shelf and then ran like hell. The bottles inside shattered and the chemicals mixed. The mix smoldered, then smoke billowed, and a cloud grew quickly.
The security office had dozens of monitors but only three pairs of eyes, all distracted by a woman seizing outside the front entrance. A buzzer went off and a notice went up about a Building M smoke alarm. Now responding to two crises, the guards did not notice a man outside Building F pry open a cabinet and punch in an override code.
The institute had its own EMS, fire, and haz-mat teams, drawing from security agents, who quickly mobilized to both sites. Distant sirens grew closer as medic and rescue units raced to help Val, and a full battalion rushed toward Building M.
Max had to get out of Building M quickly. The security haz-mat team would be there in seconds and the fire trucks in minutes.
As Meln said, the secured doors were released by the fire alarm system. Max opened the exit, entered a stairwell, and went down. The door at the bottom opened too, into a tunnel.
Meln could hear the haz-mat team somewhere behind him in the hallway and he ran. At fifty-five, he ran every morning. It felt great. Entering Building M, though, he burst into coughs. The whole building now was filling with carbon dioxide. He ran more. The exit with stairs to the tunnel was to his left. He made it and closed the door behind him, just as the institute's fire and haz-mat team entered.
At the bottom of the stairs, Max had left the door ajar. As Meln stepped through, Max pushed the door closed and barred it.
The security team got to Val just as her convulsions stopped. Her eyes rolled forward and she blinked. She took a moment to regain her bearings and tried to rise. One of the security attendants pressed her down.
“Stay still. You’ve had a seizure,”he said.“Just relax. Paramedics are coming.”
“No,”Val whispered, shaking her head.“No. I’ll be okay.”
She tried again to rise. The attendants held her down.
“Please,”one said.
“I have seizures,”Val said.“My friend’s coming for me. I’ve no insurance. If they take me, it’ll be $500 for the transport, and hundreds more for the emergency room visit. I can’t pay that, and I don’t want to go through the hassle of applying for waivers.
“Miss, this is serious.”
“No, no. It’s no big deal. Trust me. I’ve done this before. Please let me go. I just need to go home and sleep. I’ll be fine in the morning. Really. This happens all the time.”
The fire rescue and medic trucks arrived, while the main attendant called in to the security office.
“She’s refusing transport,”said the other attendant.
Val sat up, leaned over, and wiped hair from her face. One medic knelt beside her.
“Miss? You need to go to the ER.”
“Why?”she said, looking up.“So I can run up $1,200 in bills?”
“Then hold still while I check you out,”he said.
A green Acura entered the loop. She pulled away from him.
“There’s my ride now.”
“Miss, I’ve got to check your vitals. This will only take a few minutes.”
“I refuse,” she said.
Tony, one of the students Val and the others had encountered underneath Ohio State, got out of the car and walked to her side. He grabbed her elbow and helped her up. Val leaned into him as if she could barely stand.
“Sir, I’ve got to run some tests on her.”
“No,”Val said.“I’m sorry. I’ll be all right. Honest. This has happened many times before. I can go home and sleep or I can go to the ER and spend hours being subjected to expensive and tiresome tests before the doctor tells me to go home and sleep. I’m going home now.”
Another paramedic entered the fray with a metal clipboard.
“Then sign here, indicating you’re refusing treatment,”he said.
With Tony still holding her up, Val took the pen.
Not far from that scene, the fire trucks entered the King Institute compound through another gate, distracting the paramedics long enough for Tony to get Val into his car and climb in himself. He had it started and moving in seconds.
The fire trucks congregated at Building M. The institute’s security team already had the mess extinguished and the loading doors open. The firemen, in full gear, entered anyway.
Fifty yards away and twenty feet below, Meln and Max joined Eve and Jen at a tunnel door to Building F.
It wouldn’t budge until Meln used a master keycard.
“Where the hell did you get that?”Eve asked.
Melnshrugged.“Let’s just say I know people.”
Meln pushed the door open.
By sunset, security wrapped two incidents: the seizing girl who had refused transport and the hazardous materials spill that was contained to about a square yard of concrete on the warehouse floor. Once the building was fully aired out, it tested safe. The firefighters repacked all their equipment, and the security team went back to the office to fill out the paperwork.
Another team, an unofficial, not-on-the-books team, readied at the King Institute to move on a third incident.
CHAPTER 21
WHITE ROOM
Building F looked like no warehouse Eve had ever seen. The stairwell opened to a narrow hall that took them to a long, dark, corridor illuminated only by occasional safety lights. Not a corridor, exactly, but an open area running between dozens of various-sized steel pods, much like those dropped in driveways, but some were much larger—doublewides or bigger.
Meln led, followed by Eve, Max, and then Jen. Both Eve and Jen were armed, but neither had their guns out. Using a flashlight, Meln checked door numbers as they passed each pod.
He had finally acknowledged having worked in the lab with a piece of fabric like the one Eve had received from her grandpa, Joe.
“Years ago,”he said.“It was brought to my lab for a single day. I worked under a sentry. At the end of the day, the sentry collected it and left.”
“So you knew what you were looking at already in Ted’s lab and in your lab.”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how excited I was. I never expected I’d see that again. Never. It was like seeing something from a dream, then never having that dream again. When I did, when I saw your sample, I can’t begin to describe how it affected me. As a researcher, you always fight against unrealistic hopes. The day you see something like nothing else. And when it’s taken away, you pray it’ll reappear, but you know better. It did.”
He seemed to know where they were going. While slowing to check numbers on doors, he showed intuitive progress toward door F-117. The pod was as long as a railroad car, wedged in tightly between others.
“This is it,”Meln said.
Eve’s hands were sweating.
Meln swiped his card against a wall pad and typed in a code. The door clicked, and as Meln pulled on the handle, a cold whoosh escaped and lights came on. The inside appeared to be a cross between a walk-in freezer and a bank vault, all white and blindingly bright. Scores of drawers covered the walls. Jen and Eve placed cameras outside, facing the hallway, and then followed Max into the vault. Meln entered last and closed the door.
“There’s no surveillance inside these pods,”Melnsaid.“Security has no business knowing what’s in these drawers.”
Eve wished someone had told her it would be so cold. She’d have dressed warmer.
“Well, Doctor, where do we start?”she asked.
“I only have one clue, the inventory code on the foil that I tested,”Meln said.
He walked the wall, checking numbers, and found it. He slid his card into a slot on the drawer and a green LED lit up. Meln looked at Max and Eve, then at Jen, for effect, and opened it. Jen moved in close with a video camera.
Meanwhile, outside the King Institute, a mile away, Val had joined Ted in the safe house. They watched Jen’s feed on monitors as the drawer slid open.
T
he drawer, the size of a dresser shirt drawer, was full of sealed paper envelopes. Meln’s hand moved in and lifted one out. With a box cutter, he slit it open.
He withdrew a metallic cloth much like Eve’s.
“There gottabe hundreds in there,”Max said.
Jen kept a tight video feed shot—no faces this time—as Meln handed the swatch and envelope to Eve.
It was smaller than Eve’s. This swatch was about the size of a greeting card. Max aimed his flashlight at it, and the sparkle seemed to include all colors. It had the heft of a single-ply Kleenex. She crumpled it and then let it go. It opened flat and un-rumpled in her hand. She tugged at it.
All it brought her was anger. As she held it, she thought of the men and her grandmother who had died because of these fabrics. She thought of her own fabric, her grandfather’s legacy to her, and the fire in the lab. The shootout in the other lab. She hated this particular swatch, because it was not hers. It was theirs. She shoved it into Max’s hand, though she kept the envelope.
Max took it with a different attitude. He took this with reverence. It felt like cellophane, only slicker.
He, too, felt anger somewhere deep, a sense of accomplishment, of victory, overwhelming it. Never had he been so close to the source of all ofthe anguish he’d felt since Di’s death. Never before had he felt so close to vengeance.
Before he closed the drawer and moved on, Meln lifted a handful of envelopes and stuffed them in his inside jacket pocket.
“What the hell are you doing?”Jen said.“Put those back. We’re here to observe, not steal.”
Meln smiled at her.
“This is whyI came,”he said.
“Put those backor I’ll kick your ass," she said. "You know, we’ve got video of you taking them. We can’t have this screwed up with evidence of a theft. Now put them back!”
Meln closed the drawer emphatically.
“You’re here to get evidence on a video feed. You want proof,”he said.“That’s not my objective. I want to find out how this is made. I’ve got to have samples.”
“You fuck,”Eve said.“You’re in this to make money from it.”
“Why the hell not? Do you have any idea what a patent on this stuff could be worth?”
Eve reached for Meln’s pocket, but Max grabbed her arms and pulled her away. Eve was small but strong. Max struggled.
“Let go of me, damn it! Are you going to let him do this?”Eve scowled.
Max let go.“We’ve got enough to worry about,”he said.“He got us here. Let him go.”
But she pulled away from Max and gave Meln a look that suggested this was not over. Far from it.
Meln was a foot taller than Eve, but he looked afraid of her. He rolled his neck.
“Well then,”he said,“let’s get on with it.”
He opened a bigger drawer. It held a dull-ivory-colored board shaped like an ironing board but the size of a cafeteria tray. The surface of one side had a glassy, spectral quality that looked like a touch screen. It seemed to be all of one material, but one side was polished. Eve touched it and it seemed to glow. It could have been an optical illusion. As she looked closer, she didn’t see any difference. Meln lifted the board and handed it to Max.
“Light as cardboard,”Max said.“It has some sort of gel screen.”
Jen made sure to get a good shot as Max touched the screen again. To his disappointment, nothing happened. He moved his finger around on it. Nothing. But when he looked closer, he saw something through the glaze.
“Shit,”Max said,“I can see symbols beneath the gel. What are they?”
Beneath the sheen, there appeared what looked like dark, half-moon scratches. They definitely were patterned, in rows. Max looked closely. The glyphs bent at different angles.
From the apartment, Ted spoke in their ears:“I know those symbols. Hold it still. Give me a good frame.”
Jen focused closely and held the camera still for a moment until Ted said he had it. Meln returned the board to the drawer. He closed it and opened another. It was full of pencil-thin, ivory-colored piping. He opened two more drawers, finding assortments of smooth items that looked organic, like sticks of different lengths, but clearly defined shapes, and, presumably, uses.
While Meln, Max, and Eve handled some of the items and held them up for Jen’s camera, back in the apartment, Val took over monitoring the video feeds.
Ted turned to another computer, typed in commands, and found what he was looking for. He compared the gel pad symbols with hieroglyphics from the Internet.
“Ha!”he bellowed pounding the table.“I knew it!”
Val turned her attention from her monitors to look over Ted’s shoulder. He had a split screen: the gel pad and a webpage. The webpage was entitled,“Roswell hieroglyphs.”Beneath it was a second-hand account of someone’s observations in Roswell. Below that were crude, hand-drawn reproductions from someone’s second-hand memory. Only Val saw no similarities with the gel pad.
“I don’t see it,”she said.
Ted tapped the Roswell side.
“Because it’s not there,”he said.“This is a famous report, but it’s a hoax.”
“Okay, so…?”Val prodded.
Ted traced the Roswell glyphs.
“I was worried we’d be duped,”he said.“If so, we’d have found these. They’re pretty widelycirculated. See? They’re on the damned Internet. That’s where the IBTT has been most brilliant. They’ve placed phony evidence everywhere. Maybe half the sightings, maybe half the evidence brought forward, is fabricated by the IBTT. They love to set up forgeries that can be discredited. But sometimes, the discreditationdoesn’t come directly. It doesn’t get published. It doesn’t get publicized. It lays there in wait, like a time bomb. There probably aren’t ten people in the world that know for sure whether these are fake. I happen to be one of them. But this…”
Ted opened another computer screen from a thumb drive. A window opened on the screen showing hand-drawn glyphs, resembling fingernail clippings, at different angles.
“These are my sketches, based on my interview with Cal Dover, a confirmed Roswell witness,”he said.
Val looked. This time she saw.
None of what they’d found quite rose to the“Aha!”moment they were hoping for, though the glyphs on the gel pad helped.
Meln continued to open drawers, and Jen filmed what they saw, metal and beige pieces of tubes, films, and plates. Now, Eve was handling them first and making sure they did not wind up in Meln’s pockets. But Melnwas not to be denied. He clearly was becoming annoyed with Eve’s security. The next drawer he opened, he reached first, lifted out a metallic plate the size of a light switch cover, and slipped that, too, into his jacket breast pocket. He gave her a look of defiance. She let it pass.
Meln turned to the other side of the pod and opened a square-looking drawer. Files.
“Jackpot,”Max screamed, punching the air.
Max and Eve shoved Melnout of the way and began flipping through the files. In the back, they found a thin brown folder. It was labeled“509thBomb Group.”Max opened it on the floor. Jen took a video feed over his shoulder. The papers were onionskin, the type used to make copies on a manual typewriter. Clipped to the inside cover was a thin carbon copy of an invoice,“Items received by 8thArmy Air Force”and a list four pages long. Jen made sure the focus and light were good enough to transmit readable images.
“Got this, Ted?”Jen asked quietly.
From the apartment, Ted answered,“Yes. Hold still. Flip the page.”
Eve flipped the page.
“Now I…”Ted said.
And then silence.
“Ted?”Jen asked.“Ted!”
In the little apartment, a few blocks from the institute, all the camera feeds on Ted’s monitors went black at the same time. Ted screamed into his mike,“Jen! Jen? Max? Eve?”
He turned to Val, panic-stricken.
“We’ve been scrambled,”he said,“and probably tracked. Get out, now! Run!
”
She stood in terror and then grabbed his wheelchair handles.
“No! Not yet! I’ve got to download these videos and images,”Ted said.“Just go.”
He typed commands into one computer after another.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said.
Seconds ticked slowly as the computers stored. Ted grabbed thumb drives from each. Then he typed more commands, and the computers began scrolling code that would erase everything in them.
“Okay. Let’s go!”he shouted.
Val pulled him away.
They heard the front door splinter as Val pushed Ted out the back. She rolled him off the back porch with a bump.
Run!
Val pumped her legs and strained her arms and shoulders to gain speed pushing Ted’s chair down the back sidewalk, into the alley. They reached the van just as Ted supposed the intruders were checking on the computers and doing a quick search of the apartment.
Val got Ted’s chair raised into the driver’s position. As she rounded the van, running, the back door to the apartment burst open. Val dove into the passenger side and Ted roared the van’s big 5.4-liter V-8 engine. Ted screeched the van’s wheels just as three men raced into the backyard. Val saw them aim guns at the van, and she felt another powerful surge of adrenaline, but the van passed behind the next garage. When it reached the other side, she saw the men running back through the yard toward the street.
Val tried the radio. Nothing. She tried to call cell phones. Eve, Max, Jen, Meln. None connected.
“I can’t raise them on the radio or on the phones,”she said.
As Ted turned onto a major avenue, he saw a sedan rushing forward in his mirror.
“We got our own problems,”he said.“About a block back.”
He saw the sedan gaining. The van was built for power, not speed. The sedan no doubt was. His best chance was to get tangled in traffic. He headed for the freeway.
Back at the institute, Eve, Max, Jen, and Meln were not certain yet that trouble had begun. They still were flipping pages while Jen was shooting them, though she was worried there was no response from Ted.
