by J. M. Madden
Wulfe was thinking like a squad leader, though. They needed hard, physical proof of what had happened here. Otherwise everything they’d been through would be hearsay, unprovable.
Quietly, Aiden began gearing himself up, just like he did for hard assaults. Neither one of them was physically ready for hand to hand combat and they had no weapons other than their minds…but their fledgling abilities hadn’t been tried in stressful situations. There was a very real chance that the first time he tried to finesse anyone they’d laugh in his face, then shoot him in the head. He was convinced that the sniper in the med center had been a fluke. The man had already wanted to kill— Aiden had just removed the tiniest restriction in his mind.
Wulfe slammed his doubled fists into Aiden’s shoulders to psych him up and they turned toward the building.
They moved in the dark like wraiths, sliding from shadow to shadow. They would avoid all contact if possible and use all non-violent methods they could. If they alerted anyone, the gig would be up.
Pausing behind a clump of bushes about twenty-five feet away from the med center, Aiden looked at the soldiers guarding the door. He focused on the man on the right, pushing a feeling of tiredness. This was the farthest away he’d tried to do anything like this, so he didn’t know how successful he’d be. The man was already leaning back against the wall, so it was easy enough to coax him to set his weapon aside and close his eyes. He murmured something to the second man, who nodded and watched as his partner squatted down and tipped his head back against the wall. Apparently, this was something they did regularly, swapping off to grab some sleep.
The first soldier closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds. The second soldier watched him for a long minute before a yawn split his own face. He widened his eyes and shifted his weapon in his arm, but Aiden could tell Wulfe was pushing power at him. Eventually, looking around at the dark, silent night, the second man sat on the ground and propped his elbow on his leg to support his head. The weapon went to the side to lean against the wall, just like the first soldier’s.
The two of them gave the men ninety seconds to sleep before they started to creep forward.
The Silverstone Collaborative spent a lot of money on the camp, but even they couldn’t control the lack of infrastructure this deep in the jungle. Power was hit and miss, so they’d installed a pretty significant generator system. They’d tried to secure the med center with keycard magnetic locks, but after overloading the system so many times they’d nixed the plan. Now it was an ordinary door, secured by Army soldiers.
Pausing at the entrance, they tried to feel if anyone was inside, but they couldn’t feel anything. Everyone except Aiden’s ragtag squad seemed to be sleeping exactly where they were supposed to be. Aiden twisted the lever handle and eased the door open, then waved Wulfe inside. Most of the overhead lights in the hallway were off, but there were small marker lights at the bottom edge of the hallways. It was just enough to illuminate their path. The knot in Aiden’s stomach twisted tighter and tighter until he felt like he was about to throw up. Breathing through his nose he crouched low to move through the hallway. The muscles of his thighs were pumping with blood, and his body was pounding with health rather than sickness. If they’d been in any other situation he could have enjoyed the feeling. All of his old skills were coming back to him, but he knew his stamina was poor.
Aiden was sidetracked by a sign for the employee locker room. “Clothes,” he hissed.
Wulfe nodded and they pushed into the room. There was a bank of showers on one side of the room separated into male and female rooms, then two short walls of lockers. Aiden moved to these and started going through them, looking for anything they might be able to use in their escape. Within just a few minutes they had found more than enough of what they needed, plus several things he thought Fontana and Rector could use. They each found the white tech scrub pants to put on. Not the most tactical, of course, but anything was better than being naked with your dick swinging in the wind. Or being snake bait. Grabbing a duffel from the bottom of one of the lockers he threw in the clothes they’d gathered for Fontana and Rector. They also found a few pairs of white hospital shoes with Velcro. They must have belonged to the male orderlies. Aiden slipped a pair on, refusing to think about how ridiculous they would look tromping through the jungle. It would save their feet. Period.
Wulfe pulled him to a stop. “I’ll go to the lab, and you go find Shu’s office. Meet back here in a quarter hour.”
Aiden gave him a mock salute and turned toward the only hallway he’d never been down. From what he’d seen, the med complex was built in a Y, with the research rooms on the right, and the offices on the left. As he maneuvered his way down the hallway, Aiden peered into the glass door of each office until he found one that had awards all over the wall. It had to be Shu’s.
The door was locked. Fuck. He jiggled the handle and tried to feel with his mind how to work the tumblers of the lock. Fontana had opened the one on his cage earlier, and it seemed like it had been the thought of a moment. This one was just a door lock, nothing electronic, and as he felt out the pieces, he pushed on one that seemed to be in the way. Nothing happened. Turning, he stared at the piece of equipment blocking his way, focused, and imagined a finger pushing the tumbler back.
Something clicked inside the mechanism. Turning the handle, he pushed the door open. No fucking way… it had worked. There was no time to celebrate though. He had more to do.
There was a small lamp on a credenza to the left, but there were no exterior windows. Aiden flicked it on and looked around the room.
Dr. Edgar Shu had been a man of power. Over the years he’d accomplished many, many great things, and he’d gotten used to having money. It was obvious that the company had done everything it could to make his stay in this wild camp as comfortable as possible. It was bigger than any three of the other offices together he’d seen, and there was a comfortable looking couch along one wall, apparently for those nights that he didn’t want to head back to his hut. The couch looked worn, like it had been slept on many times. The desk was a huge piece of mahogany, with two computer monitors. There were beautiful watercolors on the walls, the credenza that matched the desk, as well as a bank of several tall file cabinets.
Aiden scanned the room, wondering where he would even start.
Moving around behind the desk, he started going through drawers. He had no idea what exactly he was looking for, but surely there was something here.
In the right hand lower drawer of the cabinet, he found file folders on all of the current subjects. Flipping through them he found his own and started paging through the papers. Standard medical charts were on the top because they were the most recent. He flipped through the rest, finding a hand written 4x6 post-it-note in a scratchy hand.
Subject is a former Navy SEAL, hence incredibly resilient. Seems more resistant to injury than illness, exactly as a superlative soldier should be. Mentally, he’s still fighting the restraints of captivity. I need to break him without killing him. Leverage brother?
Aiden’s blood chilled in his veins. What did he mean, leverage brother? Aiden didn’t have a brother, at least not that he knew of. Frustrated, he slapped the manila shut before he read further. He had no time.
Shaking his head, he set his folder, Wulfe’s, Fontana’s and Rector’s on the desk, as well as several other names he remembered, then started searching again. In the center drawer was a set of keys, but they didn’t appear to fit anything in the desk. He looked across at the file cabinets. Maybe those were locked. When he checked, the drawers slid open easily. Shu had apparently been a pretty trusting guy. No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t here to lock everything up any more.
Before he delved into the file cabinets he wanted to look in the obvious places and see if there was a safe or something. Moving across the room he peered behind the watercolor of Chinese architecture. Nothing. Moving to the credenza he opened door and drawers, but again, nothing secure. He scanned the
corners of the room, checked the tiles of the floor as well as the integrity of the walls, but there was no safe.
File cabinets, then.
There were three, so he started on the one on the right. Inside it was filled with folders. They were all neatly labelled with dates and the subject the experiment was taking place on. It looked like Shu had kept a file for every subject for every experiment. Damn, there were months of files in here. Leafing through, he looked for anything distinctive. There were a few red tabs. When he pulled those files, he realized that the experiment had resulted in death. Damn, there were so many red tabs.
Aiden continued to flip, looking for anything distinctive. He shuffled through the middle file cabinet, then moved to the one on the left. The top drawer was locked. Moving back to the center drawer of the desk he grabbed the keys in the tray. The lock on the drawer released as soon as he twisted the key. Inside, he found an expandable accordion file with the word Genesis across the front. Pulling it out Aiden released the elastic band from around the button.
Inside was a dark brown leather-bound journal. There was a rubber band looping around the cover and the pages within it. Aiden slipped off the band and started scanning the pages.
His gut bottomed out as he realized what he was looking at. This was the beginning. The genesis. On July 5th three years ago, Shu had written that an idea had come to him about a news article he’d read about the Amazonian jungle holy men and the plants they used. He wanted a retrieve a sample of the Ayahuasca root because he thought it might carry the same properties of another plant he was currently using in something called compound 6783. Aiden assumed that was one of his miracle drugs.
Paging through the book he stopped at an entry dated about thirteen months after the initial one. Derivative is stronger than expected for primate subjects. 93% mortality rate after expanded mental growth. The Federal Drug Administration will not approve human testing.
Aiden flipped through a few more pages. It was the entire history of Shu’s program. Fuck, this was gold.
Aiden secured the band around the journal, then looked into the accordion file. A few loose-leaf pages of notes, a few Polaroid pictures, and at the very bottom, four black memory stick drives. They were only about two inches long and had the distinctive Silverstone Collaborative SC logo on one end. He prayed that they were as important as they appeared to be.
Shoving the file folders into the accordion file, he gathered it up into his arms. If they made it away, this would be the proof they needed to exonerate themselves for leaving if it came to that.
Aiden let himself out of the office and was about to return to Wulfe when he spied another door further down the hallway. Security. Curious, he headed that way. There could be weapons stashed here. When he very carefully tested the door knob, it turned easily. Cracking it, he listened, just to make sure there was no one there. Empty. He let himself into the office and looked around. There were banks and banks of monitors. All of the screens were split into nines, and as he looked, Aiden realized these were camera views of all of their cells, all of the research rooms, as well as every employee bungalow. Shu had apparently kept everyone under surveillance, not just the research subjects.
Looking around he realized that there was a bank of digital recorders behind him. Glancing at the monitors he looked a little more closely. Yep, there was the front entrance to the med center with the sleeping guards, and the Y of the hallway. If anyone rewound these recordings, they would see exactly who had escaped.
Wulfe, I need to destroy some equipment. I think they’ve been recording everything going on and it looks like it recorded us entering. I don’t want any record of us being in this building tonight.
Agreed.
Any idea on how to do it without setting off alarms?
There was silence for a long moment. No.
Aiden tried to reach Fontana or Rector, but they were apparently too far away on the other side of the camp.
Wulfe, are you done?
Yes, American.
Head back to the meet up point. I’ll give you ten minutes to find Fontana and Rector, then I’m torching this place. Anything less and it won’t be enough to destroy all this.
Scheisse. We were supposed to sneak, American, not show them where we are.
If they see who broke in, they’ll know exactly who to come after.
Aiden could almost hear him scowling on the other end of their connection. Fine. Do it. Leaving now to find others.
Then Aiden was alone in his mind.
Chapter Five
Aiden tore the security room apart looking for anything usable for their escape. The security guards that worked inside the building carried small batons and cattle prods when they were moving the subjects between rooms or out to the Army men who escorted them to the cages. In a small room off the monitoring room, Aiden found a box of batons, as well as several charged cattle prods. The batons were okay, but they weren’t ideal weapons. Neither were the cattle prods, but both might do in a pinch if they got into a scuffle.
There was a decent first aid kit, which he put onto his go pile, as well as a stack of black cargo pants with elastic waists. Stripping off the white scrubs he had on, he pulled on a pair of the cargos. Oh, fuck yeah. They felt like they were made for him. So much better than the scrubs they’d found. He went back into the room and found a stack of black t-shirts in plastic, as well. Ripping a couple out of the plastic, he pulled one on.
His normal size didn’t fit. It kind of hung off the points of his shoulders. Shrugging, he tucked it into the waistband of the cargos and moved on. Then he looked at the plastic bags he’d ripped off. It would be smart to wrap everything they were taking in plastic. The Amazon basin was a rainforest and they received pelting downpours every day. It would suck to go to the trouble of stealing all this important stuff only to lose it because they hadn’t taken care of it. Returning to the closet he looked for any other plastic, but the shirt wrappers seemed to be the only thing. He started ripping them open along the top seam and setting the t-shirts aside. Going to the duffel he’d found in the locker room, he removed all the white clothing, replacing it with black. Since there was still room in the duffel he rolled two white outfits together, then wrapped them in one of the plastic shirt wraps. That could be their backups.
Taking a moment, he also wrapped everything from the accordion file. The stick drives went into their own bag, and the journal went into its own bag, then the file folders. He twisted the tops into knots, hoping that it would be enough to keep them safe. And dry.
Time was slipping away. With a final mad scramble through the closet, he looked for anything they might possibly be able to use in the jungle. In one corner he found a white box full of six-inch twist flashlights. They weren’t very big but in the depths of the jungle, any light would be welcome. He shoved a handful of them into the bag.
Nothing else caught his eye. Returning to the security room, he began tucking the white scrubs he wasn’t taking between the equipment, then, using one of the cattle prods, he lit the fabric on fire. It almost seemed like there were too many electronics in here and nothing would burn, but it went up like a torch. Aiden watched for a long minute to make sure that it wasn’t going to go out before he wrapped a wad of the burning fabric around the end of another prod and left the room, duffle over his shoulder. Jogging down the hallway he turned left at the Y and went to the locker room. There was a cart of laundry in one corner and he threw the burning cattle prod in there, then pushed the cart against several of the open lockers. It would burn.
Making sure the duffel was zipped, he put his arms through the handles and jogged back to the entrance to the med center. The door was propped open slightly with a piece of gravel. Thank you, Wulfe.
Aiden pulled the door open and slipped out. The two Brazilian Army soldiers still sat on the ground, sound asleep. One of the rifles was gone. Obviously Wulfe had taken it and left the other one for him. Aiden very carefully took the weapon up into his ar
ms and headed back to the meet-up point.
Everyone was there waiting on him. Wulfe scraped mud onto the white fabric of the scrubs, but Aiden stopped him and shoved a bundle of clothes into his hands. Cargos and a black t-shirt. The other man began stripping immediately.
Fontana and Rector already had clothes on. They wore the rough linen clothing the locals preferred, as well as sandals. The shoes didn’t quite fit Fontana’s big feet, but they were close enough. Rector, on the other hand, had a more compact build and everything fit him perfectly. They were each carrying a large, bulging potato sack.
Aiden looked at Fontana but tried to include Rector. The med center is about to go up. We need to get the fuck out of here. He handed them each a cattle prod, a flashlight and a baton. There weren’t enough guns to go around.
Both men took the weapons and Fontana took off into a jog. They all followed as quickly as they could in the dark. It was too soon to turn on the flash lights. I cleared a path for us, Fontana said, and when they try to use their vehicles they may get a bit of a surprise.
It felt good to stretch their legs in a run, but Aiden could immediately feel how out of shape he was. It had been almost a year since he’d been able to run this way. He wasn’t the only one feeling the effects, though. They were all puffing by the time they reached the perimeter fence. If they faced any kind of serious pursuit, they would really have to work to get away. Plus, it was the middle of the night. There was no way they were going to cover as much ground as in the daytime.
As if in answer to his thoughts, the fire alarm went off in the camp. Aiden winced, wishing they’d had at least enough time to get through the fence.
