WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos)

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  Chapter Forty-One

  Walter whistled his way into the office, Bayard trotting beside him like a well-behaved dog. The phone rang as they came in and Walter picked it up even as Trask rushed towards it, her eyes still on her computer. She barely controlled a scream when he handed it to her. She took the receiver as far from Bayard as the cord would allow.

  “I don’t want another lecture on electrochemical processing. I want clear images. These are not.” Trask hung up the phone and went back to her desk. She stared at the blurry images on the screen, clicking from one to the next with small grunts of frustration. Open files spilled onto Walter’s side of the desk with pictures of various CF subjects punctuating a mosaic of medical charts, maps, and timetables. Most telling, her suit coat hung on the back of the chair and her perfect hair had pencils sticking out of it. Multiple pencils.

  The dog waited until Walter took a step past the privacy screen then he trotted over and stuck his nose in the trash. It held three plastic supersipper cups with chewed up straws and several protein bar wrappers. Walter ignored the dog’s yip as he snapped the choke chain. Bayard followed as Walter spun into his chair.

  “I had a productive day in the field yesterday.”

  Trask did not respond.

  “It felt like an extended weekend, being out of the office on a Monday.”

  No acknowledgement. He fiddled with the buffalo.

  “Did anything interesting happen here yesterday?”

  His officemate pulled a picture blindly from the desk and held it up to the screen for comparison.

  Spinning in reverse, Walter took Bayard with him to stand behind Trask. The images onscreen appeared to be primarily landscapes as seen through a bacon fat covered lens. Trask focused on the images that had figures in them. She grunted and closed the program leaving an audio-to-text file partially hidden by what looked like a music mixing program.

  START OF RELEVANT BURST

  397a: I am taking pictures of an encampment. There appear to be maybe a dozen or so people, half of them children. They have set up a cooking area and seven tents. I will try to get inside the farthest tents from the fire.

  //

  397a: There isn’t much in this teepee. Found a wooden box that I’ve been unable to open. It was hidden deep in a pack of clothes. I’ll break it open. Yes. I’ve acquired two IDs. The subjects are eating with the others in the main…

  Sounds of a dog barking and then heavy breathing and crashing through trees.

  //

  Male 1: Look up here. Look up here. Look up here.

  //

  A yell of surprise. Sounds of snapping branches, grunts.

  //

  Male 2: Look out.

  //

  Struggling.

  //

  Male 2: I’ve got him. I’ve got him. Elgey Clark. Little Girl isn’t moving.

  Male 1: Laylea. Come on, wake up little girl.

  //

  Muffled voices

  //

  Male 1: What are you doing? I deliver this shit for money. If you want it, I’ll deliver it to you for

  “You haven’t figured out who the two other gentlemen are?”

  Trask sat up in a jerk. She rubbed her eyes and then her scars. “We do not have access to a usefully complete voice recognition database.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Walter, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Did your fellow take pictures?”

  Trask sighed and pushed back from her desk. She brought her current supersipper to her lips only to discover it was empty.

  “Good morning, Walter. Would you like to know how my day is going?”

  He perched on her desk, his legs dangling, leash across his lap. “Talk to me, Luv.”

  “397a has not returned. This is the transcript of his auto-recorder, received late Friday. Yes, I’m sure he did take pictures but he has to manually upload them. And he did not.” She tapped on the screen with a pencil. “I believe one of these men is Gamma Subject. This is the closest I’ve gotten to him. And I wouldn’t have heard this for another week.” She stabbed the pencil into her bouffant.

  “Why such a time lag on your transcriptions?”

  Trask explained as to a child, “The team reviews the uploaded files in order as they download to our system from the satellite. They are naturally always several days behind.”

  “The auto-recorder only records when there is significant sound?”

  “Such as voices, yes.”

  “And the subject is searching the wilderness for your rescuers?” Walter plucked a map from her desk.

  “For the escapees, yes.”

  “How many people can there be out there for him to be having conversations with?”

  “You would be amazed, Walter.”

  “Still, several days behind time?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “My team work eight hour shifts. 397a works twenty-four hour shifts, consecutively.”

  “Ah.” Walter selected a pencil from the collection in her hair. “If only you had the budget to schedule round the clock staff. At least they have finally caught up to an interesting bit.”

  “The last bit.” Trask grabbed the pencil from him and punched it at the days on her desk calendar. “They skipped to the most recently acquired audio when it was discovered yesterday that the tracking device had stopped transmitting on Saturday.”

  “And have you sent a team to his last known location?”

  “Yes, Walter.” Trask tapped the report. “But the escapees had two days head start. Nothing was found. Nothing will be found. Even footprints were wiped out.”

  Walter nodded approvingly. “Proof of how well you’ve trained your forces.”

  She inclined her head gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “Or how much they learned from the military before they came to you.”

  Trask shoved past the man. She stood glaring out the dreadful window. “They weren’t all military. We had a history professor who had become a problem for the academy. I’ve gotten several easily manipulated candidates from a particular women’s shelter outside Atlanta. Of course, more extreme programs assisted in relieving our prison crowding problem.”

  Walter looked up from the map. “I shudder to think what you would deem more extreme.”

  “Many survive,” Trask retorted. “And two of them actually passed our final testing.”

  “Why do you continue to use the same testing grounds if you know Gamma is hunting there?”

  “If our subjects can’t avoid Gamma, they aren’t good enough.” She smiled. “He’s still a part of my programming. I have integrated him as a part of the testing.”

  “And only your failures increase his forces.” Walter rifled through the files.

  “Not. Anymore.”

  “Your kid has been caught.”

  “We were hoping he would be. You see, I considered your suggestion of two-way communications. We initially ran into a power problem. Every time 397a blinked, his implant recorded the image from his retinas. As a single burst system it is designed to get us as much data as possible in the event of capture and removal.” She turned and glanced at her screen, hoping for a new message. “The images my lab is clarifying are these. Of course, transmission of this information means we have lost the subject.”

  Walter bowed his head in sympathy. “Another gone to the Gamma side.”

  “No. To power the data burst, the implant uses the body’s electrical impulses.”

  “You were unable to find a survivable solution?”

  “Uninterested.” Trask turned back to the window. She twitched the curtain to hang straight. “The data burst was acquired by satellite early Saturday shortly before the tracker went dead. I presume our friends were delayed from destroying the implant as they tried to keep 397a alive. I feel there is some element in that delay that I should be able to use to my advantage in the next version.”

  Walter tapped her screen. “You’ve got mail.”

&
nbsp; Trask crossed back to her desk and opened the new images. They were better. “We’re creating ground-breaking technology here, plugging into the brain-retina interface. I foresee some serious consumer grade applications if we can improve the translation software.”

  The first picture was still blurry, as if taken underwater, but it clearly featured three men. The man in the foreground had the clearest features. He walked towards the camera, or 397a as it were. A compact man, tall, bald, with muscles well defined enough that they could be seen stretching his dark t-shirt even with the poor resolution, his ink-black skin made him easy to identify.

  “Gamma.” Trask caressed the face on her screen with one perfect nail.

  “Gamma is pretty.” Walter observed as Trask clicked through some more shots until the other men’s faces turned toward the subject. He stopped her with a hand outstretched. “Who’s that?”

  Trask tapped the older man’s form on the monitor, a short, but solidly built figure with white hair and beard. “That is my professor, Subject 284.”

  “Not him.” Walter snatched another pencil from Trask’s hair. “This one.” He tapped the third figure and then darted around Trask to sift through the pictures on the desk.

  “At first glance, that could be my second deserter.” Trask clicked through a few more pictures as the third man walked closer. “Yes. Theta subject.” She brushed Walter aside and pulled a file from underneath most of the others. “He looks younger now except for that growing forehead.”

  Walter examined the picture of a man of average height with blue eyes, short brown hair, a crooked nose, thin lips and a slightly cleft chin and then crossed the room to his file cabinets, dropping Bayard’s leash in his rush. He opened a drawer and flipped through the folders. Then he slammed that drawer and opened the one beneath. He found a collection three ratty sheets of legal paper stapled together and brought it back over to Trask’s side of the desk. The paper had little yellow left to it. It had been scratched and erased so much that it was now as thin as tissue.

  “That,” Walter slammed the papers down on the desk next to Theta’s picture, “is Clark Hillen.”

  Trask was on her feet. “You’ve seen this man?”

  “It was that vet we visited, when Nicole started acting oddly. I went back, the receptionist told me the doctor had a little fawn dog that would visit the office,” he searched at the illegible notes. “Laylea. I know nothing about them.” Walter trailed off as he looked more closely at the image on the screen.

  Trask turned to see what had caught his attention. “284 is carrying a little fawn colored dog. . . that looks an awful lot like Bayard.”

  The scarred dog had slipped away from the desk in the excitement. He looked up from the alcove between Trask’s file cabinets and the window wall. Both scientists looked from him to the screen and back.

  A corner of the mixing board program stuck out behind the images. It caught Walter’s attention. “Play the recording.”

  Trask sat down and started the auto-recorded burst from the beginning. “Theta is a veterinarian?”

  “No.” Walter picked up the tissue paper, scanning down the invisible notes. “His wife is. I know nothing about—” He trailed off, glazed eyes boring through the paper. He grabbed Trask’s pencil cup and sent it flying at the window. Pencils scattered. Bayard ducked. “I went to their home. It says right here I went to their home.” His gaze flashed to the screen again. “I saw him when I went to her home.” He flipped through the pages as the recording played and found what he’d been looking for. He turned the paper to Trask, showing her the address. “They have a son. Replay that. Go back ten seconds.”

  Trask clicked on the drag bar. They heard snapping branches and a thud. A rumbling bass coughed out I’ve got him. I’ve got him. Elgey, Clark. Little Girl isn’t moving. There was a break in the recording.

  “397a is a boy, yes?” Walter asked.

  “He was,” Trask confirmed.

  “Are they speaking in code?”

  A tenor voice spoke as if giving directions to the other man, Come on, wake up. And then that same voice raised in pitch, clearly talking to a dog, Who’s my good girl?

  “Stop.”

  Trask hit the space bar. Walter looked a million miles away. She turned back and pulled up her maps program. “Is that a two?” She pointed at the formerly yellow sheets.

  “A seven.”

  She entered the address.

  “Why’s he tell the other fellow to wake up?” Walter thought out loud.

  Trask copied the address and map and sent out a message to the hangar. She formulated a text and calculated who to bring.

  “He’s talking to her.” Walter looked over at Bayard. “She’s not a dud like you. She’s smart and he knows it.” He turned back to Trask. “Theta has my daughter.”

  “Let’s go get them.” Trask pulled on her jacket and stacked the relevant folders into her briefcase. “We’re bringing support. Dr. Jones?”

  “Yes.” Walter scooped his notes from the desk. “Subjects Felix and King.”

  Trask raised her eyebrows. “Felix?”

  “He’s familiar with smart dogs.”

  She chuckled. “Not anymore, he isn’t. I’ll bring three CF operatives for muscle.” She added the relevant names and sent out the text.

  It was Walter’s turn to chuckle. “What do you think I’m bringing King for?”

  “Entertainment.” Trask pulled a travel bag from the lower drawer of her desk, grabbed her suit coat, and strode out the door.

  Walter slung his backpack over his shoulder and moseyed over to Bayard’s corner with his usual good cheer pasted on his face. “Let’s go get your sister. She has a debt to pay me.”

  Three days till zero hour. Six of the fourteen screens in his vacation home had fizzled out. They wouldn’t go dark, even when he rebooted the entire system. They consistently broadcast snow across all signal inputs; audio, video, and data stream. The remaining seven were unwilling to display the feed from any but two of the cameras in the neighborhood.

  The Director was beginning to regret this little adventure. It would get his doctor off his back. And he didn’t want either Trask or Walter’s divisions getting their hands on his target. This had to be his operation, his success. But everything that could go wrong was going wrong. And he had less than three days left.

  Thank goodness Trask had recovered her suit jacket from the back of her chair. The embedded fiber optics had provided consistent feeds for fifteen years. The Director felt confident he could count on it today. He shunted the audio to the closet’s left rear speaker.

  Less than three days until the Consortium board’s decennial summit and he had no world-changing accomplishment to present. He had not been able to get into the house. Only Theta and the stupid dog had come to his barbecue. What kind of teenage boy didn’t run to the smell of grilled meats? The substitute band director’s fiber optic feed worked perfectly. But the kid hadn’t shown up at school the past two days. His friend had insisted he would show up for band practice even if he was too sick for classes. He’d been incorrect.

  The only reason he hadn’t sabotaged Trask and Walter’s field trip was his hope they would smoke his gopher out. Or there was always a chance news of his only friend’s accident would get the kid out of the house. Whatever happened, he had to grab Bailey Hillen in the next three days.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Good news, Laylea.” Bailey detoured by the front door. “Sorry, Woodford, I’m on Laylea watch.” He unlocked the dog door and Woodford rushed outside. “Be safe.” He returned to the couch with a bowl of cheese and cold roasted zucchini bits. “Thomas aced the test. He just skipped out after fifth period to bring it over.” He whispered the last bit. “Guess I’ll just have to miraculously lose the blue sometime in the next half hour.”

  Laylea crawled into his lap when he sat. She circled once and curled up in a tight ball with her tail tucked far under her chin. He set the bowl beside her note.
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  Again

  “I don’t think I should. I don’t think I’m helping.”

  Laylea tagged his leg and shoved his pants up to lick his ankle. The only time she’d gotten any rest in the past two days was after Bailey worked on her. She sang out and bit at his hand.

  “Okay.”

  She stretched out to her full length in his lap.

  “Don’t forget to pack layers. It’s colder up there.” Clark leaned in the archway. “You sure you guys’ll be okay if we go?”

  “Dad,” Laylea growled at Bailey but he barreled on. “Laylea’s getting worse.”

  The dad came into the room. He perched on the arm of the couch, a map dangling from one hand. “It’s gonna hurt for a while. Sher said it could take a few weeks for the nerve endings to relax.”

  Laylea barked once.

  “Dad, she’s in a lot of pain. Shouldn’t mom at least do some X-rays or something to be sure she didn’t break any bones?”

  Sher set her tinkering case in the hallway outside the doorway. “I’d treat a broken bone with just what we’re doing. Pain meds and rest.”

  The phone rang.

  “Can we increase the pain meds?” Bailey held a warm hand on her ribs.

  Clark got up to answer the phone. “You’re doing a great job with her. Good training for a doctor.”

  “Dad.”

  “Hello?” Clark plugged one ear. “Thomas? Hello?”

  He lay the receiver in the cradle.

  “What did he want, Dad?”

  Laylea shoved her nose at his hand to make Bailey keep massaging her.

  Clark came back to the couch arm. He set the phone on the coffee table. “I don’t know. It was hard to hear him. He just said your name and then hung up. He was breathing pretty hard.”

  “Maybe he just took your math test.” Sher shoved the coffee table out of her way. She knelt in front of Laylea to palpate her hips. “I don’t want to increase the pain medication because she’s already nauseous and you can see how small her pupils are.” She stopped and stared up at her son as Bailey ran a hand over Laylea’s ears. “We can’t leave, Clark.”