by Jay Falconer
Eventually, Lucas grew impatient with his boss’s futility. “How about if I give it try, Professor?” Kleezebee held out the device, but Lucas didn’t take it from him. “No, thanks, I have a better idea. I need you to step back.” He took a running leap with his feet aimed at the door just to the left of its handle. His feet made contact, bending the metal frame inward about an inch, but the door remained shut. When he hit the floor, he landed on his right hip, sending shooting pains from his waistline down to his ankles. “Fuck, that hurt,” he said, squirming on the ground.
Billy Ray extended his hand to Lucas. “Need a hand, Dr. Ramsay?” he said in a thick, Southern drawl.
Lucas gripped the tech’s hand, allowing Billy Ray to pull him up off the floor.
“Maybe we should try it together?” Billy Ray asked.
”Fine,” Lucas replied with discomfort in his voice. He rubbed his hand over his sore hip before taking two steps back from the door. “Go on three?”
“Sure. You count it out.”
Lucas counted to three and they coordinated the assault on the door. A section of the metal doorframe broke loose and flew across the lab as the door flung open, smashing its handle into the wall on the far side.
“Sometimes, brute force is only way to fly,” Lucas said with pride, walking into the QED Lab with a noticeable limp.
Three free-standing grease boards were stacked along the right wall. Their clear surfaces were covered in mathematical equations written in both red and blue marker ink.
“Are those the equations you saw?” Kleezebee asked.
“Yes,” Drew said, pushing his wheelchair toward them.
“Looks like they’re out of sequence,” Lucas said, bringing the mobile boards together, end to end. He stood back to garner a better view of the mathematics.
“I think you should put the last one first and then swap the middle one to the end,” Drew said.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Lucas said, rearranging the boards as his brother suggested.
“Definitely some form of energy extraction from subspace,” Drew said.
“Looks to me like they’re incomplete,” Kleezebee said, looking around the room.
“Not only that, their cascade variants are all wrong,” Drew said, shaking his head. “I’m surprised this worked at all."
“Just more of our hard-earned tax dollars being flushed down the sinkhole,” Kleezebee said.
“They should have hired us to do it. We’re probably a shitload cheaper than these guys,” Lucas said.
“And you would have gotten it done right,” Kleezebee said, smiling at Drew. The professor placed his hand on Drew’s shoulder, and said, “What do you think? Between the two of us, we should be able to finish these equations.”
“Yeah, it might take a while, but it’s doable,” Drew said, pulling out a yellow pad and pencil from his backpack.
Kleezebee told Lucas and Billy Ray, “Why don’t you two look around to see if there’s any paperwork or notes, something that may shed some light on the missing calculations.”
Lucas and Billy Ray began searching the lab, starting with the tallest storage cabinets built into the wall to the right of the entrance door. Lucas opened the double doors and found five shelves crammed full of manila file folders. Each folder had a date written on its index tab and the files were sorted in chronological order, starting five years ago. He peeked inside a few of them, but only found hand-scribbled notes on legal-sized sheets of paper. He didn’t see any calculations. He tried to read the notes, but the penmanship was horrible. “This guy must have been an ER doc in a former life. And I thought my writing was bad.” He checked a dozen more folders, but still didn’t find any calculations. He moved on to the next cabinet.
He was sifting through the disorganized stack of equipment stored in the next cabinet when he heard footsteps coming from outside the lab’s open door. “Shhhh,” he told Billy Ray, who was humming an old country tune. Lucas pointed at his right ear, then at the open door. Billy Ray nodded.
Lucas was a good twenty feet from Kleezebee and Drew, who were working together in front of the grease boards. Kleezebee was closest to him standing to Drew’s left, sucking on one of his unlit cigars. Lucas used a short, low-pitched whistle to get their attention. Kleezebee turned first, then Drew. Lucas pointed at the door then held up a finger to his lips. Both men nodded.
Lucas initially thought the footsteps might belong to Kleezebee’s security guard on the surface, but dismissed that idea when he heard the distant sound of a gun being cocked. When he heard a couple of door handles being jiggled, he realized the person in the hall was still a few doors away. He figured he had enough time to close and lock the lab door before the stranger arrived.
Lucas inched the entrance door closed, trying not to make a sound. Before it closed, he turned the handle to retract the latch, hoping it would quietly slide back into place when he released pressure on the mechanism. He was able to silently close the door and let go of the handle, but the door latch wouldn’t engage because of the damage caused during the break-in.
Lucas backed away from the door and crouched down with his back against the storage cabinet. He opened the left cabinet door for additional cover and leaned in, using one eye to peer through the gap in the doorjamb. Next to the lab door was a fire extinguisher, which he intended to use as a blunt-force weapon once the stranger entered the room and had moved past him. He just needed to time his attack properly.
Billy Ray wrapped his callused fingers around Lucas’ left bicep, and then suddenly, the two of them were inside a pitch-black space.
“Damn it, take me back!” Lucas yelled into the darkness.
“Sorry, can’t do that until it’s safe to return,” Billy Ray said.
“When the hell will that be?”
“When my proximity sensor tells us the coast is clear,” Billy Ray answered, holding his glowing watch face out in front of Lucas where he could see it. The watch face contained a wire frame floor plan of the QED Lab with a pair of red blips in the top left corner and two more blips in the middle. A slow-moving single dot was approaching from the right.
“Look, there’s only one. I can still take him,” Lucas said, pointing to the moving blip.
“Sorry, we’re not going back until its safe.”
“Fuck that,” Lucas said, trying to tear the watch from Billy Ray’s wrist. He failed.
“I’m the only one who can operate it,” Billy Ray said, keeping the watch out of Lucas’ reach. “If you remove it from my wrist, the subspace rift will collapse, killing us both.”
* * *
Kleezebee looked around for his yellow bag, and saw it sitting on the floor next to the wall, too far away to be of any use. When the lab door opened, Randol Larson from the Advisory Committee walked in with a revolver pointed at him. Kleezebee, still leaning on crutches, raised his hands partway above his head—any higher and he would fall over.
Drew quickly followed suit.
“You really should have stationed more than one guard by your winch,” Larson said, pointing the gun initially at Kleezebee’s chest, then at Drew. “I was told you were dead.”
Drew shrugged, pushing his hands even higher over his head.
“What do you want, Larson?” Kleezebee asked.
“Where’s the other one?”
“Who?”
“Don’t try to play me. Unlike my idiot brother-in-law, I didn’t buy that whole campus escape to Green Valley, not for one goddamn second. I’m sure you switched cars in the tunnel.” Larson pointed the gun back at Kleezebee. “Tell me where he is, or so help me God, I’ll put a bullet in you.”
“He’s not here,” Drew replied before Kleezebee could stop him from answering.
“Bullshit.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“I doubt that. You two never go anywhere alone.”
“Go ahead and search if you like, you’ll never find him,” Drew said.
“We’ll see a
bout that,” Larson said, pulling out his cell phone.
“You won’t get a signal down here,” Kleezebee said.
“Then I’ll just call Rafael from the surface. I’m sure it won’t take his men long to find Lucas,” Larson said, jerking the gun toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Kleezebee followed Drew out the door with Larson trailing behind.
* * *
“Okay, it’s safe to return,” Billy Ray said, pressing a series of orange buttons on his watch.
A split second later the two of them were back in the QED lab, standing beside the open cabinet door. Lucas motioned to Billy Ray to follow him to the lab door, where he leaned around the corner to spy down the hallway; Drew and Kleezebee were about thirty feet away, walking and rolling with their backs to him, followed by a man with blond hair; Lucas assumed he had a gun. When they turned the corner at the end of the hall, Lucas recognized the gunman.
“Larson?!” he whispered. “How the hell—?” He turned to Billy Ray and said, “We have to rescue them.”
“How?”
“We’ll have to improvise,” Lucas replied, unhooking the three-foot-long fire extinguisher from the wall.
“Sorry, but I’m not trained for this,” Billy Ray said, touching the buttons on his watch. The tech slipped back into the subspace rift.
“Yeah, thanks for the help,” Lucas whispered to the heavens, as if Billy Ray could somehow hear him.
Lucas lugged the fire extinguisher on his right hip as he jogged down the hallway. Once he caught up to his brother, he slowed his pace and crept along the walls to keep out of sight until he was ready to strike.
He wondered what Larson’s plan was once they reached the stairwell. There was no way Drew was going to be able to climb the stairs by himself. Did Larson expect Kleezebee to carry him? Or was Larson going to? It didn’t make much sense, but then maybe Larson hadn’t thought that far ahead.
He was only ten feet behind Larson as they neared the seating lounge next to the mangled elevator, when he saw his opportunity. Just to the right of Larson was a four-foot-wide cement column, where he could get the drop on Larson.
While Larson focused on his captives, Lucas sneaked around to the right and hid behind the column. He waited three seconds, then stepped out and swung the fire extinguisher with all his might. The canister caught the right side of Larson’s head, sending the attorney flying across the hallway. The gun jettisoned out of Larson’s hand, landing several feet away from him. It didn’t fire.
“Take that, you asshole,” Lucas yelled, standing over Larson’s motionless body.
“Damn it, Lucas, I didn’t want anyone hurt,” Kleezebee yelled.
“Sorry, Professor, but I couldn’t just let him haul you away to God-knows-where.” Lucas put the dented fire extinguisher on the ground. “I had to do something.”
“But not this. Especially since I had the situation under control.”
“It didn’t look that way to me,” Lucas replied, wondering what his boss meant.
Just then, Bruno and two other men came running out of the stairwell door.
“What did we miss?” Bruno asked.
“You’re late,” Kleezebee said. “I needed you here thirty seconds ago.”
“Sorry, boss. We came as quickly as we could.”
“How the hell did Larson get past your guy on the surface?” Lucas asked.
“He used to be a Marine, remember? I’m sure it wasn’t difficult for him to take our man out,” Kleezebee said, kneeling down next to Larson. He rubbed his hand through his frazzled gray hair. “This is all my fault. I should have had more men guarding the elevator shaft.”
Lucas looked at Bruno and the other two security guards and suddenly understood what Kleezebee meant. “You knew Bruno would be watching the video feed and would send reinforcements the minute Larson took your guy out.”
Kleezebee nodded, touching the tips of his fingers to Larson’s neck. “He’s still alive. Barely. We need to get him to medical right away. Where’s Billy Ray?”
“The chicken-shit’s hiding in a rift,” Lucas answered.
“Bruno, see if can you raise him.”
Bruno pressed a few buttons on his watch, “Billy Ray, come in. Do you read me?” Bruno motioned to his two guards to fan out and check the area.
Lucas walked over and picked up Larson’s gun.
Bruno spoke into his watch again. “DL needs you down here on the double. We’re by the elevator.” Bruno told Kleezebee, “He’s on his way, boss.”
“When he gets here, you two take Larson back to the silo and get him to sick bay. Leave the other two down here to guard the stairwell.” Kleezebee pulled out a slightly used handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to Bruno. “And triple the guard up top. I don’t want any more surprises.”
“Already done, Chief.”
“Do you think that’s wise? Larson knows we’re alive,” Lucas said, wondering why Kleezebee felt compelled to help a man who, if given another chance, would sell them out in a heartbeat. “I say we let the prick bleed to death. Serves him right.”
“Hey, I can’t stand him, either, but we can’t leave him here to die.”
Billy Ray arrived in a full sprint from down the hall. He and Bruno each grabbed an end of Larson and carried him into the stairway on their way to the surface.
“So what’s the plan, Professor?” Drew asked.
“First, you and I need to finish those equations. Then we should find the equipment NASA used that caused the power surge.”
“I have an idea where their equipment might be,” Drew said.
“Okay, explain.”
Drew sat up slightly in his chair. “We felt the ground shake in our E-121 lab every now and then, which we assumed was NASA running one of their experiments. It’s not much of a leap to figure they were testing a massive power source. I’d bet it’s somewhere close to our corner of the building, possibly directly under our lab.”
“There’re twenty floors. Where do you suggest we start looking?” Lucas asked.
“Since their equations are on this floor, we should start here.”
“Agreed,” Kleezebee said.
“If I remember correctly, our lab should be directly above the far end of this hallway, down by the conference room,” Drew said.
“Lucas, you search that section of the floor and report back anything you find. Drew and I will return to the QED lab to complete the equations.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Lucas slid Larson’s gun inside the waistline of his pants. Ten feet down the hallway, he turned around. “Uh, what exactly am I looking for?”
“A Quantum Foam Generator,” Drew said. “It’s probably huge, like a power plant or reactor. There should also be high-tech equipment connected to it, like in our lab.”
“Got it,” Lucas said, jogging down the hallway, sidestepping the debris littering the corridors.
Lucas decided to check the lab closest to NASA’s high-tech conference room first, but its door was locked. As before, he used a flying, double-leg kick to try to force open the door. It flew open on the very first attempt, but again, he fell to the floor, hurting his already bruised hip. He winced in pain.
When he sat up, he found that Larson’s gun had fallen out of his pants and landed on the floor with its barrel pointing directly at his crotch. Lucas picked up the gun with two fingers, being careful to avoid the trigger. He apologized to his genitals. “Sorry, boys. You two almost became extinct.”
He stood up, rubbed his sore hip, and walked off the soreness. “Damn it. There’s got to be a better way than this.”
The first lab contained very little equipment. It looked more like a chemistry lab with several rows of tables, gas burners, beakers, and measuring instruments. Certainly, nothing in the room could generate any significant level of power. He wasn’t sure what a Quantum Foam Generator looked like, but it clearly wasn’t in this room.
On his way out to the hallway, he saw a wad of keys hang
ing next to a white, melamine cabinet by the door. He inspected the ring and found that most of the keys looked the same, except one. The odd key was red with shallow-cut ridges. Written on it were the letters MAST in indelible ink.
“A master key?” Lucas mumbled. The lab doors were protected by keycards and digital codes, meaning a master key would be useless for them. Then he remembered passing a utility room a few doors back. “Worth a try,” he said, thinking his chances of finding something to help him, like a crowbar, were slim. Nevertheless, it was worth a look. If nothing else, it would give his sore hip a chance to recover.
He ran back down the hallway to the utility room, and inserted the red master key into the deadbolt lock. The key was bent slightly, probably from extensive use, but he managed to jiggle it all the way into the keyway. He turned the cylinder and walked inside.
Directly in front of him were two stacks of blue paper towels, a roll of gray duct tape, a wooden-handled push broom with bristles bent sharply to one side, a black Shop-Vac covered in drywall dust, and a wall shelf neatly stocked with chemical bottles and a plethora of cleaning supplies. A Chippendales male revue calendar from two years ago was hanging on the back of the door behind him. Lucas tore off three connected sheets of paper towel and draped it over the calendar to cover up the muscle-bound beefcake staring at him. He used the duct tape to secure the sheets to the door.
To his left was a six-foot-tall aluminum storage cabinet with a pair of side-by-side doors, which he unlatched and opened. Hiding on the bottom shelf was a faded-red steel toolbox, covered in scratches, about the size of a four-slice toaster oven. He slid it out, nearly injuring his back when gravity pulled it hard to the floor. It almost crushed the toes on his left foot.
“A gorilla must have used this damn thing.” Then he looked up at the blue paper towels hanging on the back of the door and said, “And the gorilla’s gay, or this belongs to one freakishly strong female.”
Lucas assumed the solid metal toolbox was full of hand tools: wrenches, screwdrivers, sockets, pliers, and the like, which would account for its heaviness. Maybe there was a pry bar inside. He spun the toolbox around, finding a heavy padlock protecting its center latch.
