“Damn that hurts!” David mumbled. He raised his voice to make sure he was heard, “You’ll wake up one morning on a bed of hot coals. Nothing personal!”
Ed cackled. He could feel himself getting closer along the labyrinth of blinds. Unlike actual walls, these could be climbed over, if you could manage to do it without making an even bigger target of yourself.
There! Ed stretched a smile tight enough to tempt the beads of sweat rolling down his face to migrate across the tightrope of his unparted lips. He aimed his rifle, savoring the satisfaction of the kill before taking the bank shot off the mirror, when he heard his own laser tag vest going off. He’d taken a hit from behind!
Ed swiveled to take in his attacker. “No way!”
David was standing on the back of one of the giant spiders taken from the barn where Rory Bateman had staged Randy Reardon’s killing. He was continuing to fire away from his mobile platform as the spider continued to lower itself on a strand of silk. The only thing deadlier right now than David’s pulse rifle was the expression on Ed’s face.
Ed lowered the rifle and with his one free hand gestured, holding up his index finger. “One! One weapon, that’s all!”
“Says the guy who sneaked in early to situate all the mirrors for his trick, bank shots.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Ed got off another bank shot off another mirror, knocking David on his ass and clear off the spider.
“Ow!”
“That’ll teach you.”
“Sic!” David said pointing at Ed.
The spider rushed up to Ed, pounced, knocking him over, and started cocooning him from the feet up, so rapidly that Ed barely had time to scream out a few complaints of the “What the hell?” variety and “No way! You trained this thing! Impossible!” He’d already been mummified up to his neck in silk, when he screeched out, “I’ll pulverize you! I’ll clobber you! I’ll mash you! And then I’ll drive over you for good meas—”
David had to pull the silk out of his mouth so he could speak now that the webbing was over his head as well. “What do you know, the mummy lives.”
“Very funny.” Ed took stock of his mummified form. “You know, this spider might come in handy for my kinky sex life.”
“Ugh. Keep it to yourself.”
“Does that mean I get to keep the spider too?”
“We can share him. I’m more interested in getting him to fetch the paper, prepare my bath, and adjust the lights and stereo settings for me.”
“You know, come to think of it,” Ed said, “he could probably help in the lab too, fetching stuff off those high shelves. I’m rather prone to Vertigo.”
“Best part of all,” David said, picking him up by the arm and peeling the mummy wrap off him, wadding it up in his hands, and then tearing it apart, “I altered the silk mix so it’s basically cotton candy.” He chewed on a wad. “Only way better. It’s high in protein.”
Ed took a nibble. Nodded. “Nice.”
He threw his hand over David’s shoulder, hugging him from the side, and said, “All right, I suppose I’ve beat up on you enough for one day.”
“Yeah, right. You can rewrite history like that, maybe the next video game we play will be Total Recall.”
“Oh, I love that game! I tweaked the neurochemical mix it ships with so you can’t tell which version of reality is right even hours after the game is ended. Way better than the off-the-shelf version.”
David snorted. “You are the best brother ever, I swear.”
The doors opened out from the maze into the bright lights of the FBI Firing Range suit-up room. Ed and David stripped off the vests, arm and leg guards, and helmets that went along with the Shoot-Em-Up game with their eyes closed until they could get used to the bright lights again.
Once clear of everything but their street clothes, they pushed their way into one of the FBI-FD work areas.
Who should be coming at them but Klepsky and Biyu. Ed and David were still sharing war stories and laughing when Klepsky said, “Glad to see you two getting along. I want you to make Biyu feel welcome. She’s going to be living with us for a while too, both here and at home.”
“Cool!” David said.
“Can I speak to you in private, please?” Ed said, his tone entirely humorless, two octaves lower than usual, and strained, as if he might be getting a cold.
“Yeah, sure,” Klepsky said after hesitating, not sure what to make of Ed’s sudden mood change.
The moment Ed got them both into a soundproofed interrogation room—after flicking off the surveillance gear with the app on his cell phone, he stowed the phone and hit him with the crossed arms routine. “So, now, I’m not only sharing you with the kid, I’m sharing you with Biyu as well? Well, I won’t stand for it is all. Won’t! Won’t! Won’t!”
Klepsky put a calming hand on his shoulder and squeezed. At least, he meant to be placating. Ed was soon wincing, “Ease up on the de-stressor, please.”
“Oh, sorry.” Klepsky eased up. “It’s pretty clear to me who’s going to be holding this family together, Ed. With that kind of power comes influence. You understand what I’m saying?”
Ed straightened himself up, his tight-lipped smile slowly stretching across his face as Hercules and his twin pulled from opposite ends. “I believe I do.” He flitted a couple more quick teasing smiles across his face. Then he stole a quick kiss before Klepsky could even react and sauntered out of the room.
Klepsky exited once he got over the shock to find Ed’s arm around Biyu’s shoulder and Ed saying, “Permit me to show you around, Miss. You’re going to love it here. Any equipment needs you have, let me know, and I’ll have it here in under twenty-four hours.”
Ed leaned into Biyu, taking a surreptitious tone, “Did I hear you correctly when you said you can only afford one night a week for romancing Carl?” He was cashing in on the fact that he monitored Klepsky from a distance wherever he went.
“Yes, that right.” She eyed him strangely.
“Excellent. I could probably use that day to lick my wounds.” He leaned in again to say allegedly clandestinely, though meaning for Klepsky to overhear so he knew Ed was getting the ground rules clear from the get go, “We have this kind of kinky thing going on, Carl and I. I agree to let him pound me to mush in the boxing ring to vent life’s many frustrations in exchange for his plowing my ass in a semi-conscious state. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I keep dead guys in freezer.”
Ed gave her one of his signature toothless smiles. “God, he was right; this family dynamic is going to take no effort at all.”
Once they got to the vacant office behind one of the glass walls, Ed helped get her situated in her new work area.
David decided Ed had pulled focus long enough and thwacked Klepsky in the ear. “What you been up to, Stone Face?”
Klepsky sighed. He had one of those unbreakable, made-of-granite faces that had once earned him the nickname, Mt. Rushmore, during his boxing days. He’d hoped he’d heard the last of those kinds of remarks, quite honestly. “Triggering End Times single-handedly. What’s your claim to fame?”
David held up the rifles he and Ed had been field testing. “Strictly junior league compared to your exploits, but we think Adrian can use the weapons Ed and I perfected to go after The Unkillable Man with.”
Klepsky grimaced staring at each rifle in his hands before handing them back one after the other. “Hate to break it to you, young man, but by now, Veronica will have outfitted him with weaponry that will make these look like the toys that they are.”
“Great. You ever heard of interdepartmental cooperation? A heads-up next time would be nice. We could have spent the time creating a cholera pandemic, something to truly go down in history with.”
“Must suck being twenty-one and a former child prodigy and still not world famous for any of your inventions yet.” Klepsky glanced tellingly at the rifles in David’s hands.
“You have no idea. No scientist discovers anything worth discovering past
the age of twenty-four. It’s a known fact. By then we know too much, all the ways a project can fail, so we don’t even bother to start; the naïveté needed for discovery is gone. Three years and counting down to my psycho-spiritual death, and the end of all that matters.”
Klepsky smiled, mostly to help David appreciate how silly he was being. The medicine didn’t exactly take. “Don’t worry, all good things come to those who wait.” Klepsky didn’t linger for a response, turning his back on him and walking off. He had a killer to catch and if this family idea he was toying with involving Ed, Biyu, David and him was going to work, they’d better get really good at furthering his cases for him. He shouted without turning around, “I don’t have to tell you what getting quality time with me involves, do I?” just in case the point wasn’t already implicitly understood.
David mumbled, “Yeah, you go ahead and try and out-manipulate a twenty-one-year-old perpetual teenager, pal. A prodigy at that. I dare you. I have that many more years of experience at it.” He whistled for his pet spider who shot out of the firing range dress-up room, parting the doors with two of its forelegs readily, to parade at his heels.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Ed, David, and Klepsky were huddled side by side taking in the show. On the other side of the glass wall they were facing was Biyu’s private lab Ed had spent the day setting up for her.
Seeing Biyu carry on you would think she was the sound effects artist for Paramount, making wild noises to cover every possible scenario one could encounter in a horror film. Punctuating the crashing noises were things like: “You think you can treat me like this?!” “You think I made of rubber? I can just rebound after every tragedy! One. After. The. Other!” “I’m Chinese royalty—and you treat me like peasant!” “All I ask for was smallest of considerations!”
The latest smashing, tearing, rending asunder had abated only so she could climb the ladder.
Biyu was currently standing on top of the ladder, threatening to hang herself from the makeshift noose dangling from the ceiling. It had been hanging there all along as a teaser of things to come. She already had the noose cinched around her neck. “I tell you from now, you miss me when I’m gone.” Without further ado—Who would have guessed there wouldn’t have been further ado?—she jumped. Her feet kicked over the ladder and her legs flailed and she made choking noises to ham up the actual strangling. Like, who hams up an actual strangling? One would think reality setting in would be enough.
“Don’t look now, but I think mommy has some issues,” David said.
His remark was followed by reverential silence over the vigil under way.
“You sure can pick ’em,” Ed said after a respectable amount of time had elapsed.
Klepsky turned to glare at him briefly. Then sighed. “I sure can.” He returned his eyes to his charming future wife. Maybe he’d gotten a little ahead of himself up in his head. “Dare I ask what you failed to provide her?”
“I was coming back with the box of Kleenex, I swear. I just needed a quick piss after five hours straight of her needling insistence that the every adjustment to the lab she was demanding was for a precise, predetermined reason.”
“Ah-ha. So she’s demanding. Demanding can work for us,” Klepsky said, trying to look on the bright side. “What’s it going to take to get you to go back in there?”
Ed just shook his head and refused to stop shaking it. “Oh no. There are limits to even my stamina.”
“Of all of us, she’s the closest to our killer. She knows him better than any of us. We can’t do this without her,” Klepsky said, refusing to waver in his certainty now that he’d put his chips down on the table.
Biyu was showing distinct signs of possibly being dead now that the kicking had come to a complete stop some moments ago.
“I’m putting my money on the one man who can make an entire department of futurists look disposable,” Ed said.
“I’ll give it a shot,” David replied. Ed glared at him for taking his remark, directed at Adrian, to heart, and assuming he was talking about David. “She can’t be worse than two parents who couldn’t be bothered to give me the time of day.”
Ed snorted. “Says the kid who had the sense to emancipate himself from that kind of abuse. The fact that you’re willing to go back on that now suggests you’re well past your intellectual prime.”
“Ignore him. That’s the spirit, kid,” Klepsky said, slapping David on the back. “You might want to get in there before this entire argument becomes academic.”
David rushed into Biyu’s lab, climbed the ladder, and managed to get her down to the floor. He stretched her across the stainless steel table she had already cleared of equipment with her earlier temper tantrums. And he gave her mouth to mouth.
Her hand rose with the finger pointing before her mouth moved, or she showed any other signs of resuscitation. Finally, she said, “The overhead lights not nearly bright enough. Am I talking to myself?!”
David clamped his hand over her mouth, got her into a chair, duct-taped her there, starting with her mouth. And then he started cleaning up the room, starting with her first request to adjust the lighting. That took no more than installing a dimmer switch and jacking the wattage of the bulbs. Somehow she remained strangely communicative through it all without being able to get out a word and with having her arms and legs tied to the chair. Strange how much gyrating, head tossing, moaning and dancing a chair around in a complete tantrum every few seconds got the point across.
Ed and Klepsky continued to survey the situation from afar. “It’s brilliant,” Ed said, “what he’s doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“He’s teaching her he can interpret her slightest gesture without all the carrying on, and without need of a single word spoken. It’s like training a traumatized dog. Soon she’ll be convinced he’s so keyed to her, just a gentle glance will do the trick. Marvelous. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Klepsky groaned. “If you would please get me the Cliff Notes on all her little gestures and eye blinks and what each one means, once the language is mastered.”
“Yeah, sure,” Ed said absently, still unable to take his eyes off the show.
“I suppose I should have done my due diligence first,” Klepsky mumbled. “Should have known there was a reason she was buried so deep down in the basement levels of that building it took a yellow line on the floor to find her, like going to the zoo. She could do all the tantruming she wanted down there without bothering anybody.”
TWENTY-NINE
“I thought we agreed we’d overtake this guy in the jet and shoot him out of the air.” Adrian registered his complaint as they saw the private plane piloted by the unkillable man flying their way.
“That was the idea,” Veronica said, her heels digging into the beach sand as she shouldered the rocket propelled grenade launcher on her shoulder. She took aim. “But if the plane was lost and he survived, I didn’t relish dragging the entire Atlantic Ocean to find him. Knowing our guy, he could walk the ocean bottom or swim underwater the rest of the way, leaving us no chance of tracking him.”
“And how has this dynamic changed any?” Adrian asked, noticing that the plane was still over the water but nearing the coast of the Bahamas fast.
“The idea now is to take the plane out with a precision shot, calculating for the plane’s trajectory and momentum. So as the shrapnel goes every which way, the kinetic energy carries our guy right into our laps.”
“You’re mad. No one can calculate a shot that precisely. Oh, that’s right. Forgot for a second you have a mind chip. You two were made for one another. His entire mind is a DNA computer.”
She lowered the RPG launcher to give him the evil eye. “This is not the time for a revelation like that, Adrian.”
“I suppose you’re right. The shock probably isn’t going to help your aim any. You’ll forgive me for stacking the deck in my favor. There was a distinct possibility you wouldn’t take the case.”
She g
ave him another hard judgmental look. “Nonsense.” She recentered the RPG on her shoulder. “This guy is just going to be hell on my kill quota, that’s all. By the time I bag him I could have bagged a couple dozen others.”
“I’ll cry for you in Argentina. I’ll offer up alms in Morocco. But in the Bahamas I still have high hopes of not making it to any more distant shores.”
She fired the RPG.
Seconds later, following a nagging whine of ejected propellant that might just be worse than a woman next to him in bed calling for her morning coffee, the RPG and the fuselage of the plane met in a fleeting embrace.
The explosion put the whine to shame.
Thank God he’d gone with the Ray-Ban shades or the only thing his parboiled eyes would be good for was a protein shake.
Debris hurtled every which direction.
Including theirs.
Adrian’s jaw dropped about the time six of those pieces of shrapnel coalesced into one solid form. A human form. Best as Adrian could figure, he’d been lied to. The DNA brain inside the unkillable man was equally distributed throughout his entire body. It would take at least that to allow him to evolve the cells in his body to magnetically attract one another on the fly so he could reagglutinate so readily.
Landing on his feet just yards from them, he studied Veronica with curiosity, evidently figuring she was the only one of the two that could have pulled off such a precision shot. That, and well, there was the fact that she was still holding the rocket launcher.
She doubled over in pain as she yelled, “Christ!” and her hand went to her temple.
It was Adrian’s guess he was hacking her mind chip.
Satisfied she was no threat, he just grunted. He bent at his knees like an Olympian getting ready to jump off a high dive platform, and with the same arcing grace and added-for-points corkscrew twists and somersaults, launched himself back into the ocean.
“Looks like he agrees with you on the best way to reach Europe from here,” Adrian said, “from underwater. He had to have some reason for reading your mind.”
Unkillable (The Futurist Book 1) Page 26
