Amid the Shadows

by Michael C. Grumley

  A startled Zahn looked around, trying to understand what Christine was screaming about. She was staring at his computer screen. The video feed of Sarah was gone, replaced by nothing but static.

  “What happened?” Zahn yelled with bulging eyes. He pushed Christine out of the way and sent her stumbling to the side. Zahn smashed the table with his fist. “Dammit! Who did this?” he screamed. “I’ll kill them! WHO DID IT?!”

  “I did.”

  Zahn and Christine spun around to find Rand standing in the doorway, his face white and his body covered in blood. He gave Christine a weak smile and tried to step forward but he collapsed and fell onto his knees, catching himself with his hands on the floor. After a few moments, he leaned his head back, gasping for air. His jacket had over a dozen holes where the bullets had torn into his body and blood now oozed out.

  “Rand!” Christine cried. She tried to run to him, but Zahn grabbed Christine and pulled her back.

  He looked at Rand curiously. “This is him?” he finally said. His pursed lips turned into a broad smile. “This is him?” Zahn burst out laughing. He peered down at Rand who barely managed to keep his knees under him. “This is who he sent to protect you?” Zahn laughed again, harder. “The big man must really be in trouble.”

  Rand swallowed hard. “Sarah?” he said in a weak voice.

  Christine opened her mouth to answer when Rand spoke again, louder.

  “Sarah?”

  The ruck sack on Rand’s back began to move. Christine and Zahn watched in stunned silence as his pack shifted again, and Sarah’s tiny head popped up over Rand’s shoulder.

  “You okay?” Rand whispered.

  “Yes,” Sarah said and climbed off his back. Christine couldn’t believe her eyes. Sarah was wrapped from head to toe in Rand’s bullet proof vest.

  Christine pulled hard, breaking Zahn’s hold and running to Sarah who wrapped her arms around Christine. She looked at Rand. “What did you just do?”

  Sarah answered for him. “We came to get you.”

  Zahn’s laugh was now almost hysterical. “Christ, how much more perfect could this be?” He looked at all three of them as he stepped forward, barely able to contain himself. “A woman who can barely stand up, her great warrior who is about to lose consciousness, and,” he tilted his head, “God’s newest miracle, right here before me and as pretty as a little flower.” He shook his head and continued laughing. “This truly could not be any sweeter!”

  With the last of his strength, Rand grabbed Sarah and Christine and pushed them both behind him. He fumbled over his pants and jacket looking for his gun, but it was nowhere to be found.

  “This is the icing on my cake,” Zahn said as he stood in front of them. “To send all three of you right back to him and at the same time, no less.” He looked at Rand who was leaning over and fighting to breathe. “And I’m going to start with you. For as you know, when you die without a soul, you don’t go home, ever.”

  Zahn withdrew his gun from the holster and made sure it was loaded. Satisfied, he let the slide spring forward. “And then our little girl here. Because I want you, Christine, to watch it.” Zahn held the gun up and pointed it at Rand.

  Rand looked up at the barrel of Zahn’s gun as darkness closed in around him. His vision was failing, and he could barely move. After all of this, after everything he’d fought for, this was the way it was going to end.

  Quietly, behind Rand and Christine, Sarah slowly stood up. She looked down at them and stepped forward, putting her little body between Zahn’s gun and Rand.

  Zahn looked at her curiously. He smirked at the thought of Rand having to be protected by a six-year-old in his final seconds.

  “He didn’t forget you,” she said softly.

  Zahn froze. He looked as though he didn’t quite hear her. “What?”

  She stared up at Zahn who towered over her. “He didn’t forget you,” she repeated.

  The look in Zahn’s eyes changed from delight to confusion, and he took a small step back. Without saying a word, Sarah matched him by taking her own step forward.

  Zahn nervously looked at the others and then back down at Sarah. “What is she doing?!” he said and took another step backward.

  “He never forgot,” Sarah said in a hushed voice. She closed the gap again.

  Zahn yelled at Rand and Christine. “Did you tell her to say this? Tell her to stop!” He nervously grabbed a small metal table and slid it between them. It wasn’t possible! What she was saying wasn’t possible! He was left here; he was abandoned! He backed up even further away from the table when he saw it, something in Sarah’s eyes. He had seen those eyes before, a long time ago, in the young boy Ryan Kelly. His voice began to tremble. “Stay away from me.”

  He watched in fear as the tiny girl walked around the table and came closer. “He loves you,” she said. “He’s always loved you.”

  “No, he doesn’t!” yelled Zahn. “He left me!”

  Sarah looked at him and shook her head. “He never left you.”

  Zahn backed into the wall and, in a panic, he pointed his gun at her and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  His finger would not move. Zahn pulled again harder, but his finger remained frozen. He tried to switch to his left, but his entire hand became frozen, both unable to let go of the gun and unable to fire it. As Sarah came closer, Zahn kept moving away. He looked back at Christine, who was watching and moved next to her, away from Sarah. “Stop her! Tell her to stop!”

  Christine said nothing. She only watched in amazement as Sarah continued to approach Zahn completely unafraid. Zahn’s composure had suddenly changed. He was no longer a violent monster; he was now a monster who was afraid of a mouse. As Sarah closed in again, Zahn was now pushed into the corner of the room, paralyzed with fear.

  Sarah stopped in front of him and stood there quietly. Finally, she whispered, “He wants you to come home.”

  Christine watched Sarah reach down and take Rand’s limp hand in hers. With the other, she reached out and grabbed Zahn’s hand. Slowly Rand’s body began to glow and his black shadow became visible. The blackness spread from his torso and traveled up his arm to Sarah’s hand where it continued through her and into Zahn.

  Zahn’s body instantly and violently arched backwards, as the blackness slowly enveloped him and his eyes rolled into his head. His jaw tightened and his body began to shake after Sarah let go, letting Zahn fall to the floor still convulsing as if in a giant seizure. Soon, the shaking began to fade, taking Zahn’s strength with it. He opened his mouth, gasping for air, just as Rand had.

  Finally, his head slowly fell forward, and he stared at nothing. His vision was nearly gone. “I’m going home,” he mumbled and tears began to appear in his eyes. “I’m going home.”

  “Wait!” Christine cried. She scurried across the floor to where he was propped against the walls. “You have to stop the attack! You have to stop the missiles!”

  Zahn continued to stare straight ahead. He could no longer see nor hear anything. With the last of his energy, he suddenly gasped. “Oh god, what have I done?” His voice faded into a whisper, “He’ll never forgive me.”

  With that, Zahn’s head rolled to the side and he was gone.

  62

  “NO!” screamed Christine. She grabbed his jacket and shook him hard, but Zahn’s body simply slid the rest of the way down the wall to the floor. She looked up at the wall of monitors, some still showing the rioting in China. She moaned and desperately turned back to Rand who lay still behind her. “Rand!” she screamed and grabbed his shoulders. She pulled his head up to hers and brushed his hair out of the way when her left hand felt something: a pulse.

  Christine gasped and looked up at Sarah. “He’s still alive!”

  Sarah nodded, smiling. “He’s yellow again.”

  Two soldiers stumbled into the room with one hopping and leaning on the other. They both looked down at all four of them.

  Bazes spotted Rand on
the floor and then looked at Christine and Sarah, whom he noted was much smaller than he expected. He then looked at Zahn’s body sprawled out with his mouth open. “What happened?”

  “Who are you?” asked Christine through swollen eyes.

  “My name is Bazes,” he nodded at the other man, “and this is Clausen. We came with Rand.”

  “What the hell took you so long?”

  “Those bastards were wearing some kind of cold suits!” growled Clausen. He immediately realized what he had said and looked at Sarah with a guilty frown. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  Bazes turned and looked around the rest of the room, stopping at the monitors on the wall with the video feeds. “What is this?” he asked.

  “Listen to me!” Christine pleaded. “We have to do something. It’s a nuclear attack! The missiles in China are going to go off!”

  Bazes’ eyes opened wide. “What?!”

  “It’s a massive virus! The attack on China is some sort of decoy!”

  “Dear God.” He pushed away from Clausen and hopped on one leg, quickly searching his pants. Bazes found what he was looking for in the right leg pocket and ripped it open, extracting a small satellite phone. He flipped up the oversized antennae and pressed a button.

  “It’s Bazes. He’s dead.” He looked back at all the monitors. “And we have an emergency!”

  63

  Guo Cheng was the Minister of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, which was charged with the security and safety of the entire country. He slowly returned his phone to its receiver and pushed a red button on the base. Less than ten seconds later, his assistant came running into the room. Cheng looked at him urgently. “Get the Prime Minister and the President on the phone right now.” His assistant bowed and disappeared.

  With a deep sigh, Cheng leaned back in his chair and stared at his phone. The call had been from Benecke, head of Homeland Security in the United States.

  Before the call, he thought he had enough problems. The riots had escalated, and their only option for stopping the global cyber-attack was to kill all internet connectivity in and out of the country. But it would come at a price. That attack was on the Chinese government only, but to stop it meant stopping all electronic communication and commerce for over a billion people. The economic impact, especially in the current economy, was going to be horrific.

  That was before Benecke’s call. Now what they had to do was much worse, and it was going to be absolutely disastrous.

  Ron Tran exited his gate in the Bueno Aires airport along with several hundred other passengers, all arriving on the first wave of morning flights. His inability to sleep on planes left him exhausted, but the excitement of the last three days had kept him awake purely from the adrenaline. He spotted a group of people standing around a giant television and walked quickly to join them.

  Something was wrong. He pushed in closer from the back of the crowd and tried to understand what was happening. He couldn’t translate the words of the newscasters, but he could see words in Chinese inside a window in the upper left hand corner. China was dark.

  A wave of anxiety began to form inside him as he peered harder at the screen trying to understand what that meant, but the Chinese message just kept repeating the same words. China is dark.

  Suddenly he realized, China was not just offline; China was literally “dark”. China had turned off the power for its entire country, all at once. Every single one of its nuclear and coal power plants, over 70 in total, were all taken offline, plunging the entire country into total darkness.

  Tran shook his head; he couldn’t believe it. He instantly thought of Stux2 and China’s Command and Control system. The systems, as well as the missile silos, all had back up power, but those were from other plants. With all of the plants offline, there was no redundant power. Even the plants that had backup generators wouldn’t have enough juice to power the systems and connections all the way back to the country’s central command system. They had stopped it.

  Tran backed up and tried to think. How did it all happen? What did it mean? Where was Zahn? After several minutes, Tran stood up and calmly walked down the giant hallway, blending in with the huge crowd of arriving passengers. As he walked, he calmly unzipped his backpack and slid his laptop computer out. He held it casually in his hand until they passed the next garbage can, where he quietly let it fall in. He then walked downstairs and circled back to the ticket counter.

  “I’d like to purchase a one way ticket, please,” he said, handing his ID to the agent.

  She peered at the card and placed it back onto the counter. “Of course, Mr. Chang. Where are we headed today?”

  “La Chinita, Venezuela.”

  64

  Christine sat on the cold floor, leaning her head against the wall. She had one hand on Sarah who lay asleep in her lap and her other on Rand, who was still out. Bazes sat in a chair nearby watching the video feeds on the wall.

  “Did they stop it?” she asked Bazes quietly.

  He turned and looked at her, considering the question. “Yes.”

  She nodded and looked down at Sarah. After a few minutes, she spoke again. “Are you with the government?”

  This time, Bazes smiled. “Actually, you can probably say the government is with me.”

  She wrinkled her brow, unsure of what that meant. “So does that mean you have some authority?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m wondering if you can help me with something.”

  Bazes raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  “There is someone I need the FBI to investigate.”

  “And who would that be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know his name, but he’s a ranger at Natirar Park in New York.”

  65

  Three years later…

  Kingston Estates was the largest youth house in Kansas City, situated on a sprawling ten acres along the Missouri River and less than fifteen miles from downtown. Lawrence Grayson, Kingston’s Director, walked down the large hallway leading out to the main yard. He was proud of the house, and it showed.

  “As you can see,” Grayson boasted, “this is one of the nicest facilities in the state and we pride ourselves on it. We also place more children than all of the others combined. As “houses” go, the children are fortunate to be at ours.”

  They turned left and walked down two sets of steps out into the sun. The lawn and surrounding bushes were well-kept and looked as clean on the outside as the two-story building did on the inside. After walking up a small hill, Grayson stopped at the top and gestured to the large field in front of them, where dozens of children were playing. They were all different ages with the smaller children running around together, while the older children clumped and played in smaller groups.

  “Mr. Grayson!” one of the smallest boys called, running up to him. He smiled and bent down as the boy approached. “Yes, what is it?”

  “I have to go potty.”

  Grayson turned and smiled with a mild look of embarrassment. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.” He grabbed the young boy’s hand and hurried off.

  Sarah, now nine, quietly stood on the grass scanning the yard. After a moment, she looked up at Christine and pointed to the far corner. “That’s him.”

  Christine’s gaze followed her hand and spotted a young boy just four or five years older than Sarah. With sandy brown hair, he was alone on the opposite side of the field, doing pull-ups on an old rusty bar. He didn’t notice them, and as she watched, Christine realized he was not interacting with any of the other kids.

  “Are you sure?”

  Sarah nodded.

  Christine smiled. They had been searching for a long time. She turned to her left. “Well?”

  Next to her, Rand watched the boy carefully. After several seconds, he nodded with a satisfied look. “He looks trainable.”

  Christine smiled again and slipped her hand back into Rand’s.

  EPILOGUE

  New York Cit
y – 1871

  Dozens of people leapt from their wagons and carriages, running through the puddles to help. A crowd was beginning to form, and several people darted away to find a doctor, but it was too late.

  Dean Kelly sat on the muddy ground cradling the body of his young son in his arms. “My Ryan! My perfect little Ryan!” he cried out over and over, tears streaming down his face. Kelly just stared at his son’s pale face, so peaceful and calm, and rocked his still body back and forth.

  The pain was overwhelming and unimaginable. His boy was gone. His perfect boy. His little Ryan was so smart and so gifted. Even his father, a man of high intelligence, was stunned at his own son’s abilities. Ryan never had to be told something twice. He remembered virtually everything from almost the day he could speak. At the age of ten, he was better at mathematics than any tutor Kelly could find. But what Ryan loved more than anything else was biology. Now, that was all gone, Kelly thought to himself. All of Ryan’s dreams were gone.

  What Kelly did not know was the greatness his son had been destined for, a destiny that would now never come: to become a prodigy like few the 19th century had ever seen. To be the youngest to finish Yale University at thirteen years old; and, to gain a doctorate in medicine by the time he was sixteen.

  In the late 1890s, he would have gone on to make numerous biological breakthroughs which would have radically advanced the understanding of the human body. In 1912, after joining the famed Institute for Cancer Research in London, he would have made the greatest contribution of his life: discovering unique cellular characteristics that could later identify and predict mutation behavior.