Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  “No, no …” Her insult didn’t faze him. “You’re probably wondering right now why you aren’t able to completely influence me.”

  He was right. He should be eating out of her hand with all the emotion she was throwing at him. Before she could reply, the door opened, Cherry with a tray of porcelain tea kettle and cups coming through. Kasumi bit her tongue while the woman placed the tray down and poured two dainty cups of slightly steaming tea before standing of the side, gathering up Connor as she did.

  “Sit,” Jeffery said, displaying his palms to her as he indicated her to kneel before her side of the table.

  She did so, and the man followed suit.

  “We both want answers,” he handed her a steaming cup and then took his in both his hands, “so we might as well be civilized about it.”

  He took a small sip.

  After blowing on her cup, she, too, took a sip. It was unsweetened and bitter, but at least it didn’t burn her tongue too much. She took another sip and raised a brow at him.

  He accepted her invitation to begin the peace talks. “You have questions, no doubt. You may go first”

  She did, and she did. “Are you like me?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  He held up a finger. “My turn. Why are you here?”

  “Curiosity.”

  He gave a conceding nod. They both took a stalling sip of tea.

  “My turn,” she said. “Why are you here? What is this place?”

  “Call it a test.”

  “Of what?”

  “Ah, that’s two questions in a row,” he chided her. “But I don’t really have to answer anyway since I’m sure you know the answer already. And now that you are here, the parameters can be changed. In fact, they have to.”

  “What parameters? And changed why?”

  “Because now I have you,” he said, flashing his false smile. “If I had known you’d come willingly, I wouldn’t have sent those idiots to grab you. Would have kept things much simpler.”

  “You sent them? Why?”

  “To teach Dent a lesson. But if I had known … You are so much more than what I’ve been working with.” He waved a hand in Connor’s direction off behind him to his left.

  Two things, Kasumi thought. First, did he just wave at Connor? Did the boy have more to do with all this than she thought? And second, what did he mean by … what did he say … he had her … what …?

  Something was wrong.

  Her vision started to match her thoughts, everything blending together in a smooth jumble. Even her hearing went all weird on her.

  Were there bees in the room? Where was that humming-buzzing coming from?

  She turned her head from side to side … at least she told it to move. Stupid head wasn’t listening. Great, now her left leg was all warm and wet. Oh. She dropped the tea cup. Stupid fingers thought it would be cool to act like her head. And now her eyelids joined the party and started to close.

  Jeffery watched her the whole time.

  Before her vision faded and she slumped to the wood floor, she saw the man smile at her.

  This time his smile was genuine.

  Genuinely evil.

  Son of a ….

  And then she was out.

  XXXV

  Dent was putting the Escalade’s suspension through the tests as he ignored the suggested speed limit of the back roads leading north to The Ranch. A projected HUD on the windshield from his EB showed a map of the immediate area, directing him to the compound where Fifth was being held.

  Bobseyn, strapped into the passenger seat, was alternating between speaking through his two-way and his cellphone. So far, Dent had heard the man call in all three of his deputies as well as alerting hospitals and emergency vehicles. It seemed the sheriff expected people to get hurt.

  That was one thing with which Dent agreed.

  Taking a turn a touch too fast, Dent had to ease up off the gas and maneuver the tires back onto the packed dirt in the center of the road.

  “Easy, Dent,” Bobseyn said as he bent down to retrieve his fallen EB from the floorboard. “Won’t do any good if we don’t make it there in one piece.”

  “I’ll take it easy when Fifth is out of that place and the whole operation is shut down. Permanently.”

  Sitting back up, EB secure in his lap, Bobseyn turned to Dent. “I’m still not excited about you not using nonlethal rounds in your firearms.”

  “If nobody gets in my way then they will be nonlethal.”

  “You can’t open fire on the people up there.”

  “Why? It’s a matter of aiming and—”

  “Dammit, Dent, you know damned well what I mean.”

  Dent shrugged. He did know what the man had meant, but saw no point in saying so.

  Movement in his rearview resolved itself into a green-and-white coming up on them. Red-and-blue flashed quickly and Bobseyn turned in his seat, craning his head around.

  “That’s Timson,” Bobseyn noted, quite unnecessarily. “Got here quick.”

  His two-way squawked.

  “I got you, Timson,” she sheriff said into the two-way.

  “Ramirez and Chin?”

  “Should be ahead of us.”

  “Got it.” Silence. “Boss, you sure about this?”

  Dent didn’t look over but he could tell the sheriff looked over at him. “No.” He sighed. “But something has to be done.”

  More silence, then, “Right. I’m radioing Ramirez. Checking in.”

  “Thanks, Timson.” Then, to Dent, “We’ve got back-up now.”

  Dent thought of his survival pack under the back seat. Three flash grenades, another Glock, military-issued Taser, eBlocker vest — which was a redundancy for him — and an aluminum case with a Remington 308 for long range.

  “I have my own back-up,” Dent said.

  “This will not be a bloodbath, Dent.”

  Shrug.

  “You need to think of Kasumi.”

  That, Dent thought, was the most inane thing he had heard in the last week. He told the sheriff as much.

  “I’m talking about how your callous actions will hurt the girl.”

  Again, Dent didn’t see the sheriff’s logic.

  “That girl no doubt went to The Ranch hoping to keep you from doing what you’re planning on doing.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Do you not see how her tough girl act is just that — an act? I can’t wrap my mind around how you don’t see the pain she feels when someone gets hurt because of her.”

  “She’s … stronger than you think.”

  “No, Dent. You want to believe she is. She’s not. She’s a young girl who knows that if she doesn’t control herself she could hurt people. Unlike you, she wasn’t trained to do harm.”

  “I keep her from harm.”

  The two-way squawked. It was Chin reporting in. Bobseyn gave a short reply before turning back to Dent.

  He said, “You risk doing more harm than you know.”

  Dent opened his mouth, shut it. He had to force his foot to ease off the gas, as the SUV was getting harder to control at the current speed.

  Bobseyn’s voice took on a softer tone as he asked, “You know I’m right, don’t you?”

  Did he? It wasn’t exactly something Dent thought about. Trying to gauge how other people were feeling was completely beyond his capabilities. And trying to gauge how Fifth felt at any given moment was near impossible.

  “At least that gave you pause,” Bobseyn said, regarding Dent’s silence. “You know she’s special.”

  “We’ve gone through that.”

  “No. Not that. Special in that she actually puts up with you.”

  “I protect her.”

  “She sees something in you,” Bobseyn continued, ignoring Dent’s remark. “What it is, hell, I’m hard-pressed to say, but she does see something.”

  The man went quiet. Dent checked his rearview mirror, let his eyes stray briefly to th
e passenger seat. Bobseyn was looking ahead, but for some reason Dent thought that the man was waiting for Dent to reply.

  Dent remained silent.

  A heavy breath and then the sheriff spoke, softly. “You’ve got no clue what it’s like for someone to look up to you, do you, Dent?” His voice hardly carried over the hum of the engine and the thrum of the tires over dirt. Dent wondered if Bobseyn were even speaking to him.

  Dent took a forty-five-degree turn, the road straightening out to the last length before hitting the front gate of The Ranch. His goal was minutes away. He began running scenarios in his mind, various plans of getting in, getting Fifth out. It took a moment for him to realize that he had to readjust his plans, because for some odd reason, he was forgetting about the eTech he was sent here to neutralize. The girl’s safety kept coming up as a priority, the mission to stop the eTech put on the back burner. And to add to that bit of frustration, Bobseyn decided to talk some more.

  “When this is all said and done, we have to have a talk,” Bobseyn said.

  What is it with people and talking?

  “You need to realize that your actions have consequences. Those people up ahead, they’re mixed up, not themselves. You may act without remorse, but the rest of us, we have to live with what we do. And by extension, live with what other people do on our behalf. That’s what makes us human. You remember that when we get through those gates.”

  Dent turned so he had one eye on the road, one on the sheriff. “They have Fifth. And I don’t give a damn about being human. You remember that when we get through those gates.”

  There must have been something in his voice, something Dent himself didn’t realize, because where he had expected an argument from the stubborn sheriff, all he got was a single and very deliberate nod of the man’s head.

  The gate was a few hundred feet up ahead.

  XXXVI

  Low voices … Indistinct noises ….

  They floated by, just outside her consciousness.

  And Kasumi opened her eyes. It took her mind a long moment to come back to reality and she had to rub her face to keep it firmly planted there. She moved, rolled to the side, and winced as her cheek unstuck to whatever she was lying on.

  It was leather. A leather sofa. She’d been drugged, knocked out. The princess fell for the oldest trick in the book — a sleeping potion. She shot up to a sitting position.

  She’d been drugged!

  It all slowly came back to her. Her head felt like it was a ship at sea. She should have sat up slower. She’d have to remember that next time some a-hole slipped her something in her tea.

  She looked around the room, slowly. Everything was in black and white and grey. For a second she feared that whatever Jeffery had dosed her with had made her go colorblind, but she came to recognize the bland wash of colors in the small room came from a wall of black-and-white television screens along the wall to her right.

  Sitting there, head in hands, elbows on knees, she waited for her head to stop churning. She had no clue how long she’d been passed out. A quick check told her that her phone and EB were gone. Oh yeah, the gorilla downstairs took them. She looked at the screens and noticed they were security camera feeds. They each had a time stamp on the bottom corner.

  4:24 PM.

  Great. She’d been out of it for over four hours. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. Number one rule: Never take candy from strangers. Make that: Never have tea with a cult leader. Seemed more appropriate, considering where she was.

  Getting up, she tried the door to her left. Locked. Of course. She tried it again, just to make sure.

  Still locked.

  This was her fault. What had she been thinking? That she could somehow convince Jeffery to give up? Well, actually she did. She figured with her talent she would have been able to force him to tell her everything she needed to know. What she didn’t plan on was that the man had eTech strong enough to counter her.

  Then there was the whole part where the man had actually drugged her.

  She kicked the door. It didn’t give.

  She walked over to the screens, trying to find some clue on how to get out of here. There were nine screens total. Some were stationary pictures while a few were from cameras that pivoted from side to side. She saw a wide angle of the lobby, recognized one camera as being in the room with the elevator. Others were of hallways, rooms with computers and metal filing cabinets, and large dining halls. Then there were three from outside.

  One was clearly of the back entrance to the building, showing trees, people, colorless flowers, and a big pond or a small lake. The other was the front entrance, angled down to clearly see every visitor that came through the doors. Bottom right screen was a scene from what looked like the main front gate. That one in particular caught her attention.

  She saw people milling about on this side of the gate, more joining them by the minute. Scanning the other screens, she almost smacked herself for not noticing something was off. With all these cameras, she should have seen more people going about their business. What she did see were people purposefully walking and gathering at either the lobby or the front gate. It was like the entire building was throwing up devotees, close to a hundred of them.

  What was going on? Did her coming here cause Jeffery to decide to pack up and leave? Was he giving up?

  The screen showing the front gate drew her attention again. Something was going on there. Scooting the small chair in front of the screens aside, she put her face closer to the screen, trying to pick out details.

  A good thirty people pushed toward the closed gate as a big SUV rolled onto the bottom corner of the screen. Another car, a smaller, four-door thing, pulled up behind the SUV. Two more of the smaller cars were already parked and waiting for the new arrivals.

  Crap!

  Dent stepped out of the SUV, the sheriff got out of the passenger side. Three others got out of the smaller cars to join Dent and the sheriff. Two women and a man. All of them were armed.

  The devotees on this side of the gate pushed forward in a wave of bodies. Innocent bodies.

  No, no, no!

  Dent had come to rescue her, and he wouldn’t leave without her. He’d kill anyone in his way, she knew.

  She needed to get out of this room, now. It was her fault Dent was here and if she knew Dent — the man who claimed to feel no emotions — he would be determined to do whatever it took to see her safely out of here. She couldn’t have him kill innocent people because of her. This crazy compound was full of innocents, and she led the one man who could care less about innocent bystanders into their midst.

  She would not have Dent hurt himself that way.

  It was up to her to save him.

  But how?

  XXXVII

  Dent pulled the trunk release and then he and Bobseyn hopped out of the Escalade and walked around to the trunk. Timson was already there, Chin and Ramirez walking over from where they’d parked their green-and-whites.

  Bobseyn began handing nonlethal rounds for the shotguns that Timson brought from the station. All three deputies loaded up, silent as they alternated between looking at weapons and Dent.

  Dent did not grab any of the rounds Bobseyn handed out.

  “I told you I would prefer it if you didn’t use lethal rounds, Dent,” Bobseyn said, loud enough that his deputies heard his statement.

  Dent countered with, “We have no clue if there are armed personnel inside.”

  Ramirez coughed.

  “What?” Bobseyn asked her.

  “He’s right, boss,” she said. “You should take a live clip or two with you.”

  Bobseyn shook his head.

  Dent rummaged through the bag Timson had brought and pulled out a lethal magazine. “Here.”

  “Take it, boss,” Ramirez said. “Just in case.” The other deputies nodded their agreement. Dent thought that out of the bunch, Ramirez was clearly the smartest.

  Bobseyn finally gave in, tucking the clip in
to his back pocket.

  Loaded and ready to go, Bobseyn grabbed all of their attentions. “We do this, we do this right. Okay?”

  Three nods, one shrug.

  “Incapacitate only,” Bobseyn said. “I don’t want to be on the evening news posing in front of dozens of body bags. These are people from our city.”

  “Not all of them, boss.”

  Dent’s opinion of Ramirez went a notch higher.

  “Even so,” Bobseyn said, “we minimize the injuries.”

  They walked around the Escalade and stood before The Ranch’s entrance. A good two dozen people stood on the other side. Dent scanned the crowd, saw a few faces he recognized from his first excursion out here. He didn’t see Jeffery in the crowd.

  One man he had recognized, the tanned man, who stood just behind where the gates came together, spoke up. “Why the weapons?” he asked through the gate.

  Bobseyn answered. “We’re shutting this place down. The weapons are strictly for our protection.”

  “We’ve done nothing wrong,” a female voice came from further back.

  “You’re keeping a young girl here against her wishes.”

  “If she’s here, it’s by choice,” the tanned man said.

  “And then there’s the fact that you’re harboring fugitives.”

  The tanned man spat. “Ain’t no fugitives here.”

  “That right?” The sheriff pointed to a dark-haired man off to the side. “I’ve been looking for you, Eric. Need to ask you some questions about your brother’s murder.”

  “Ain’t no one comin’ out,” the tanned man said, ignoring Bobseyn’s comment.

  “Then I’ll have to ask that—”

  The gate crashed open, the flimsy lock no match for Dent’s boot heel. Those devotees closest to the gate were knocked back, allowing Dent to step through, and away from Bobseyn’s shouts.

  There was a moment of confusion as the devotees tripped over each other. Then, as if some unseen force pushed them forward, they rushed Dent. He broke the tanned man’s nose first with the butt of his gun and then delivered an elbow into the face of a middle-aged woman to his left. When the man Bobseyn accused of fratricide came at Dent, Dent fired twice. Once into the man’s shoulder, once into his neck.