"That's okay, at least someone is looking," I volunteer. We take our leave and I'm not disappointed to feel several of them take a crack at breaking into my mind as we exit the room. Bunch of jerks.
Chapter 51
It's been nearly two weeks and we haven't heard anything from Spencer or any other telepath. Carly speaks with Imelda about what happened and is happy to know Spencer kept his promise and is spreading the word about who we are looking for. She also finds out the telepath network is actually nationwide, which she didn't know before, and which raises our hopes of them finding something.
With all the one-on-one class work I'm getting, my studies are advancing rapidly and I'm able to spend a huge amount of time in the student labs. They're empty, so I have multiple projects going at once and use the private lab any time I want. The same goes for the campus nuclear reactor. I'm the only one using it, so I do a major upgrade to my power source design and more than quintuple the power output as well as crank out a couple extra units. The Academy has a Budget Expenditures Board to show how much money for each field is available for student projects and I'm proud to say I'm putting a pretty good dent in the budget all by myself.
"Hey, these are for you." I tell Carly. We're hanging out in one of the private labs as they have become our own private hangout over the past two weeks.
Carly accepts the two long sticks I hand her and starts feeling them for weight and balance. The sticks are a little shorter than the standard length as Carly is a little shorter and they'll work better for her if they're matched to her size. They are made of rattan escrima, with an added 1/16th inch outer shell made of the same composite as my shield. The 7/8" thick sticks are heavy and pack a hell of an impact when used by an expert. Carly takes the sticks and steps into an open area of the lab and starts doing a routine that tells me she has worked with fighting sticks before, a lot. She's incredibly fast, even with the heavier sticks, and knows how to use them. I've got a big stupid grin on my face as I am relieved from my concern they wouldn't be right for her.
"They're awesome," Carly calls out without breaking her routine.
"When you're running your repeller field generator, they'll power up the sticks, too, so keep that in mind." There is a contact surface in either end of the sticks that will complete the circuit through the new gloves I've also made for her. When she hits someone while the sticks are powered with the repeller field, it should amplify her impact power by a couple orders of magnitude.
I go back to working on my other two projects I have going, one is an advanced scout/attack drone that will use one of the nuke power supplies so it has indefinite endurance. It is powerful enough that I have added a harness so I can be a passenger, if I want. The other is going to be the ranged attack weapon I'm making for Carly, which I'm also going to make for myself, since I figured out how powerful it will be.
Finishing her routine, Carly comes over, "What are you working on?"
“Well, that's going to be the drone I was telling you about,” I tell her as I point to the drone, then, “If we get something from your community, it may not be specific, so I want to be able to put it out on a search if we need to. And these," I say pointing at the four heavy forearm gauntlets laying on the table in front of me, "These are going to be force blasters."
"You made force blasters? Isn't that tech pretty common?"
"Hey! Don't knock a good knockoff. And yes, the tech is pretty common. However! These are not. Not when they operate off the repeller field generator." I'm bragging a bit at this point as I love these things, "These will absorb a portion of the field generated in the suit's repeller field and align all the energy in a pulse through the gloves. It'll hit whatever you're pointing your lower arm and hand at when you trigger the discharge. If you point your hand, it'll discharge a narrow pulse, or you can point with your fist and it'll discharge in a cone."
"Wow, how powerful is it?"
"Up to a full discharge of the field. You can control the amount of force you put into it through the suit's neural network."
“Okay, but how powerful is that?
"Oh, with our current power supply, a hundred percent, focused pulse, will hit about as hard as I hit that Class 4 with my hammer, maybe more." I'm really guessing as they've never been tested, but it's probably a pretty good guess, "At ten percent, I'm not sure, but I expect it'll take someone off their feet and throw them back. With the new power supplies and increase in the strength of the repeller field generator, I still need to test it, but it's going to be epic." I'm smiling from ear to ear, and happy as a new daddy holding his first born son.
"Holy," Carly's mouth falls open, “you could kill somebody with that."
Losing my smile, "Well, yeah, that's kind of the point. We can't be playing bush league with these guys, or we'll be the ones who get killed." She is looking at me like she's just been told something completely new and profound. "Carly, they're real super villains when they kidnap a couple hundred students. Don't think for a moment they won't kill us if given the chance."
Setting her jaw, Carly is not happy to hear what I'm saying. I'm sure she already knows it, deep down, anyway. My saying it makes it real and I’m a little concerned, "Carly, can you do this? If you can't, it's okay."
"No, I'm fine," Shaking her head, "I mean, yes! Yes! I can do this. It's exactly what I signed up for. To compete with the best. Good or bad, I want to play hardball, not soft pitch." Setting her shoulders she looks at me and I know she's committed. Just like me.
Carly and I haven't spoken much about whether we want to be superheroes or super villains. Right now it's clear we're the good guys, but that's not because I'm all gung ho to stamp out evil in the world. It's more that something I consider mine has been messed with and I don't like it.
Wrapping Carly in my arms, I say, "Good, because we're a great team and we can do a lot together."
Chapter 52
If I were the leader of a rescue mission, I would start today's entry with, "Two months and no word on the fate of the missing science students. Doubts are beginning to creep in, and the crew is getting restless." We've gone back to Carly’s roommate, Imelda, and Spencer and the only thing they can do is shrug and say, "Nothing yet. It takes time."
Keeping busy is the only way keep from thinking about it as I've kind of become a little obsessed. Fortunately, I have plenty to do. The new scout/attack drone is finished and it’s a two hundred pound beast that's capable of flying for months on the smaller nuclear power supply I installed in it. I've also completed and tested the blasters. Yesterday I installed them in both of our suits. Carly made me dial the default setting on her blaster’s power level back to ten percent to satisfy her she wasn't going to kill anyone, but she can adjust the power level with a twist dial on the wrist of the blasters any time. She doesn't want it connected to the neural net in her suit, which is odd for a telepath. She says it is because she does not trust herself to not accidentally max the power output if she gets in a tight situation. I think we're ready to take down some bad guys. If only we knew where to look.
We're sitting in the Oppenheimer Commons when Carly's phone rings, "Hello?"
Motioning me for a pen and paper, "Where were they seen?" Carly starts writing, "How long?"
Hanging up her phone, Carly looks to me, "Two men with the 'metal feel on their mind' have been seen off and on for the past three months in a little hole in the wall town called 'Van,' in West Virginia. Apparently, there's only one telepath in the town and he only heard about us looking because he took a trip up to a bigger small town called 'Danville.' I guess small town folk in West Virginia don't get around much."
Looking up the town on my smart phone, I ask, "Was there anything else?"
"Yes, they said he has no idea where they are staying, but said just before they showed up there was a construction gang in vehicles that went through town back in December and all of the people there had the metal feel to them."
"What could they be building?" I'm looking at
the map and there is not much in the way of civilization for fifty miles in any direction. I see a couple tiny communities that can't really be called towns. The rest is forest land and rolling hills. "What did they do, build their own compound?"
Looking over my shoulder at the map, Carly agrees, "Kind of looks like they would have to, doesn't it."
"Well, okay then. We have a starting point. I can work with that." I can feel my mind accelerate into action putting together a plan.
Waiting for me to expand on how I'm planning on "working with that,” Carly asks me to let her in on my plan, “So, what’s the plan?”
"I'm going to send 'Dragon Tracker II' to West Virginia and get it going on a search for some place big enough to hold all of the students that looks newly built in the area around Van." I look at Carly for some acknowledgement that it's a great idea, but get nothing back, "Until we hear something more, that's all we can do," I argue, mostly with myself. Carly finally gives me a head-tilt nod with a quick "eh, okay," look. I’ll take that as an endorsement.
Carly asks, "When do you want to make a trip out there? We're going to need to take the drone up."
"Oh, we're not going anywhere,” I tell her, “I'm going to launch the drone from here."
"Really? That's awfully far," I can hear the skepticism in her voice. Ye of little faith.
I check the map, "Uhh, it looks like it's about four hundred and…forty miles. As the crow flies, or Dragon in this case."
"Your drone can do that?"
Scoffing as if there isn’t a question in the world that it can, I reply, "Sure. I can control it on my laptop through the satellite data service I bought for it. Actually, I can control it anywhere in the world."
Carly leans over and give me a kiss, "You're amazing. I love it."
"Can you ask Spencer to ask the telepath community to do some searching around that area to see if they can find them?"
"Yeah, I'll ask him,” she replies.
Planning out the drone’s itinerary, I let Carly know, "The drone will be on its way by tonight and it should get there in around eleven hours." Then, looking online at the National Weather Service website, I add, "I may have to ground it once it gets there. There's a storm coming that looks like it's going to hit West Virginia some time tomorrow. Once it's past, we're in business."
Ten hours later I put the final touches on the search plan, and explain to Carly, "I put Dragon Tracker II on a custom search pattern. He's following every road mapped in a fifty mile radius, but it can only search during daylight hours. If it finds any structures, It'll take a series of pictures, then continue searching, so we will need to go through the aerial photographs it takes every day."
"No worries, we'll get it done." Carly replies while I wonder how long it will be until our brains turn to mush from looking at rundown buildings in rural West Virginia. Dragon Tracker isn’t able to distinguish old from new, so we are going to have to do it when we look at the photographs it sends.
Switching gears, I tell Carly, "Oh, hey! I found a combat range and training center up in Waukegan that we can use. I called them this morning and they'll allow us to use force blasters and just about anything on their advanced weapons range." Once we find the students, we are going to have to free them and I want to get some work in with our new equipment.
"Good job, because I need to spend some time with the blasters and field generator you put in my suit if I want to have any chance of using them in battle. I was going to ask you about getting some practice time in, but you're already ahead of me."
"For once!" I claim, knowing that’s not true.
"Ha!"
We spend the next three weeks looking at thousands of photographs every night and going to the combat range every chance we can get. Along with doing all the work from our classes. It's a great time as nothing else seems to matter except us being together and working to be heroes who battle the evil villain and rescue the student hostages. Yeah, okay. Why not. It's pretty clear we've romanticized the whole thing. I just hope we don't get a rude awakening when it comes time to save the day.
Carly is sitting on one of the big chairs in the lounge of the student labs; one leg kicked over the arm, swinging up and down, while she browses the images downloaded onto my laptop from the Dragon Tracker earlier this evening. I'm sitting across from her, using a second laptop, doing the same thing, except tonight Carly is distracting me as I find myself just staring at her while she searches. She's making pops and smacking sounds with chewing gum, and I'm just mesmerized watching her mouth move. With the exception of classes, we've spent all of our time together, and I would have thought we would start annoying each other by now. But, we haven't. It's actually as good a period of time as I've ever had in my life; so much so that I'm starting to wonder if Carly could be "The One." It's actually scary even thinking about that kind of commitment. I'm not even through my first year of college, and I have a huge distance to go to get where I want to be in five years. I have it all planned out and having a committed relationship is not in any part of the plan.
Thinking about it, though, the adventures Carly and I are caught up in have actually helped me to move my plan forward and are responsible for at least two major advancements in my super suit: the blasters that operate with my field generator; the defense field that blocks telepathic (and telekinetic) powers; and, now that I'm thinking about it, the nuclear power supply I'm powering it all with. Although, I've been kicking that idea around for years and just did not pursue it because I didn't have access to a facility where I could make it. I've been toying with the Dragon concepts in the back of my mind for a long time, so I won't count them, other than what we have been doing that took them off the drawing board and into the air.
Carly has also exposed me to an entire underground society of telepaths. Their potential power is more dangerous than any group of super villains I've ever heard of in history. Just knowing about it completely changes my understanding of the world in a way that will have a huge impact on how I make decisions on just about everything. Without Carly, I would still be just another clueless Neanderthal walking around oblivious as to the ways of the world. I won't even go into how amazing she looks. I mean, that's another topic altogether. Really. Her looks are not going to be what captures my heart, as I can have looks any time. Maria and Tess are both beautiful. And, they're great, each in their own way. But, neither of them is able to match up with me like Carly.
"What?" She catches me staring and I did not even realize it until she says something.
"Nothing. Thinking," is my startled response.
"About what?"
"You," I say, coming around.
Smiling, "What about me?"
My face begins to flush red, but it's not an embarrassment I'm ashamed of, it's a feeling of warmth, "How good you are for me. How good you've been for me."
Still making popping sounds with her gum, Carly sets aside the laptop and comes over to me, and climbs in my lap, "Tell me all about it," she says and starts kissing me in a long, warm, kiss.
It's two hours later, one hour later than when we started searching pictures again, and an eternity after the first time we ever did it in a public place. Except, now I'm the one chewing Carly's gum and making popping noises and I don't care that the gum has gone stale.
"Hey, check this out." Flipping her laptop around, Carly shows me an aerial photograph of a group of wooden buildings and next to one of them are three big yellow busses.
I'm getting excited already, "Are there more pictures?" I move over to sit on the arm of her chair.
Bringing up the folder on her laptop showing the thumbnail image files, Carly says, "Yeah, there are a bunch of them. Look, here's one of some people standing outside."
"I don't recognize them."
"Me either." Flipping through several more pictures of the buildings, Carly stops at another photo with people in it, "How about this one?"
"Him, I know. He's in, or was in, my algorithms class. I thi
nk we found them." Looking at the location and time stamp on the photo, I see the picture was taken yesterday afternoon. "Can you plug the coordinates into the mapping program?"
"Hold on," she replies and tabs out of the images. "Look here, they're forty miles southeast of Van, West Virginia. Where's the road?"
Looking at the map, I see there isn't a road leading to their location and tell Carly to switch the map to satellite view. "Zoom in all the way," I say.
Carly zooms in and we can finally see a dirt road leading to the buildings. "No wonder. Draw back some." After drawing back it becomes clear they are located down a barely there dirt road that connects to another dirt road, that connects to a little two lane road that is an unstriped road well off the main road running through the area. "We were lucky. The Dragon Tracker wouldn't have followed this dirt road; at least I don't think it would. It looks like it was transiting over to this other state highway and overflew the property. It's no wonder it’s taken so long to find them. They don't want to be found." Satisfied with knowing where they are, I tell her, "Okay, let's go back to the pictures. I want confirmation and to get the layout of the place. See if we can spot any security."
We spend the next three hours going over the images, zooming in and finding there are a number of people patrolling the perimeter of the compound. None of them look to be carrying guns, so I'm betting they're all supers. I've seen a number of kids I recognize from school moving in and out of the buildings. All of them are wearing hats of one sort or another. It's pretty clear we are going to need help.
"Let's talk to Spencer,” I ask Carly, “and, can you have Imelda there as well?" A group of telepaths and telekinetecs could waltz through that place with no trouble, so that's where I think we should start.
"I'll set it up,” she confirms, then asks, “We're going to need help, aren't we?”
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