* * * *
“One of our men will be at the site in about an hour. How long will it take you to get access?”
Cole looked at him incredulously. “What do you think I am? The Yellow Pages? Mr. Internet Explorer?” Then, he remembered his intention to act like a seasoned agent. He cleared his throat. “Not a problem. Can do.”
He looked intently at the screen, and missed the other man's grin. Finlay had warned Wallace about their newest recruit. “The biggest problem,” said Wallace, “is the retinal scan.” His expression sobered. “If you don't get this replacement file in by the time they check his ID, things could get serious.”
Cole gulped. “How serious?”
Wallace's eyes met his. “Maybe dead serious.”
“Just for the record, is this someone I know? Jamaal, Finlay—somebody like that?”
“That's not your business.”
“So, it wouldn't help if I worried about him a little? Might help me pour on the speed.”
“Or it might make your nimble fingers fumble. In the end, it doesn't matter anyway. Whether you know him or not, his life's gonna be in your hands.”
* * * *
Sheryl Matthews stomped into the makeshift office Steven Hylton had set up on the seventh floor. “Dr. Stratton's condition has deteriorated. Why wasn't I called?”
Steven's voice was cool. “Because we'd already had one emotional outbreak over some video footage. We didn't need another.”
She didn't react the way he'd expected. Instead of being shocked or upset, her voice became as chilly as his. She bent over the desk and shoved her face in his. “I want to know what the hell is going on. You were planning on moving him, weren't you? That's why you sent me away.” She tossed the disk down on the desk. “You decided I wouldn't go along with you so readily now, so you ‘re-directed’ me.” Sheryl grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked it forward. It didn't budge him an inch, but it gave her some satisfaction to here the panging sound as one of his buttons hit the desktop. “Is that what you've done with Lockmann? Moved him?”
“You haven't heard?” Steven sounded genuinely surprised. He'd taken to spending most of his time in this office to avoid all the well-meaning assaults from Lockmann's fan club.
She frowned, and glared at him impatiently. “Heard what, you egotistical bastard?!”
He stood up. “Come with me,” he ordered tersely.
He led her down the hall to a room several doors away from Stratton's. “He's in here,” he said.
Sheryl nodded to the men posted inside the door. That was the first thing she'd noticed when she'd arrived on the floor—how heavily it was guarded. The first thing she noticed about the room was the dim lighting.
“He's been shot. In the chest,” Steven told her in a whisper.
Sheryl's eyes flicked rapidly to his, then over to the bed. Hylton noticed how—almost automatically—she scanned the digital readings on the machines, as she made her own assessment. Phillip Rutgers didn't say anything; he merely handed her the chart. She sank down into the chair next to the bed and read through it.
When she looked up at Hylton again, her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. She could have kicked herself for the sign of weakness, but she couldn't help it. She was surprised when Steven gave her an understanding smile. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I feel the same way myself.”
“Does Jason know?” she asked.
Steven shook his head. “None of them do.”
“Don't you think Calloway—”
“Not now,” he told her firmly. “Besides,” he said, a little bitterly, “what good would it do?”
“It might do something for him,” she said, nodding toward Rick. “Give him a little positive feedback.” She checked the chart again. “He's been unconscious for nine hours?” she asked incredulously.
Phillip Rutgers nodded. “I know. It makes me want to turn on a light just to see him come around.”
“Why don't you?”
“Look at this—” He thumbed through to the third page, and pointed to some figures. “His blood sugar's already over the top. Any more and we'll lose him.” He handed her back the chart. “I sat here most of last night in the dark. For all I knew, even a night light could have been enough to set him off.”
She took another look at Rick, then beckoned Phillip Rutgers away from the bed. Steven, curious, followed. “I don't get this,” Sheryl said.
Phillip looked blank. “What?” he asked.
“I've monitored him for the past six weeks. He's had several comatose episodes during that time, but his recovery time's been excellent. According to these figures—” she waved the chart in his face, “—he's deteriorated rapidly in the last four hours. Why?”
“No light?” Steven offered.
She shook her head. “His dark times are resting periods. He respires, but I've never seen him deteriorate. How long has he been in the dark?”
“Since he came out of surgery.” He glanced at his watch. “Twelve hours.”
Sheryl frowned. “It could be the length of time,” she said slowly, “but he should have processed more of the surplus sugar by now. How did the figures get so high, anyway? Blood loss?”
Steven was surprised at how quickly she figured things out: everything from his manoeuvring to Lockmann's concentrated sugar counts.
“Part of it,” Phillip replied. “Rick told Denis he thought they'd given him sugar. There was a needle mark on his arm.”
“Bastards,” Sheryl muttered. “Why'd they bother, if they were going to turn around and shoot him?”
“I don't think that was ever their plan, Dr. Matthews,” Steven told her. “That only happened when he decided to disarm them.”
She glanced at the bed, and shook her head. “Foolish man,” she said quietly. She sighed and turned back to the chart. “There's something else going on here,” she said.
Phillip listened intently. She'd been working with Lockmann for weeks. If anyone could spot something the tests had missed, she should be able to.
She looked through the pages of data. “What's this?” she asked incredulously. “The bullet's still in his chest?”
“He was too far gone. It's in one of his lungs. Since they're so close to being non-functional anyway, we decided to wait until he stabilises.”
“Which he hasn't done. According to this, anyway.”
Phillip agreed. “His system is only tolerably stable at the best of times. He just gives off this great illusion of being eternally energetic.”
“Damned good for an illusion,” Finlay remarked wryly, from his post by the door.
“That's what happens when you don't include self-regulatory genes in your genetic mixes,” Sheryl commented. “He always overruns himself.” She thought for a moment longer. “But he should still be doing better than this—bullet or not. Could he still be bleeding somewhere?”
“Not that we could find.”
“One thing I've found out—if there's a problem we don't understand, it's almost always related to his plant side. If he can't explain it to us, then we have to find someone who can.”
Chapter Eight
“We think they've moved him.”
“Why?” Chesner started thinking about the night Lockmann took off by himself. “It doesn't make sense. If they were going to react to his little outing, they'd have done it two days ago. Why now?”
“He hasn't been home in nearly twenty-four hours.”
“Anybody on guard?”
“Only in a rudimentary capacity. Surveillance showed they stepped up security about twelve hours ago. The place is as tight as a bank after hours now.”
“I don't like it. It sounds like he plans on being away for a while.”
“Maybe they've found another buyer.”
“This is the DSO we're talking about. Hylton's about as tight-assed as they come. He'd kill the guy before he'd let anybody else have him.”
Samuelson raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that's
what's happened?”
Chesner considered it. “Not after the investment he's made to keep Lockmann alive.” He glanced at his watch. “Locate either Calloway or Stratton. Forget Kerrington—word is he's DSO. Stratton should be the easiest—he works at the hospital.”
“Do you want me to have them picked up?”
“No. Get someone to pose as DSO and ask them some questions. Nothing that will make them nervous.” He played with a pen on his desk as he thought it through. “The buyers are lining up at the gate. Let's make sure we have something to sell.”
* * * *
“You haven't found anybody?" she asked angrily. “There are lots of plant physiologists out there.”
“And none of them willing to stick out their necks to predict what would happen—'hypothetically’, of course—in this kind of genetic anomaly. ‘Since it's unlikely to occur’, they couldn't see what I was in such a goddamned hurry about.”
She still looked like she didn't believe him. “Didn't you tell them how important it was?”
“They weren't too impressed. Especially since I work for the government, who's cut their funding dramatically in the last few years. They were a lot more willing to talk about that.” He sighed. “Short of admitting to them that someone had already done a little genetic manoeuvring, I wasn't left with too many options—and they didn't have too much to offer.”
“Look at him,” Sheryl said when they stepped into the room.
Lockmann's face looked like wax. If Hylton hadn't known better, he would have thought the man was already dead.
“We need to put the lights on him,” Sheryl told them. She saw the argument in Rutgers’ expression, but Hylton—to her surprise—backed her up.
“It can't do any harm—at this point,” he said.
Rick's body didn't react with its usual wash of colour, and Sheryl frowned. “Rick!” She gripped his hand. “Can you hear me?”
His face still looked waxen, but she noticed that his eyelids flickered.
“Rick! Wake up!”
“Sheryl?” It was barely a whisper, but she heard it.
“Yes, Rick! It's me—” She held his hand more tightly. “We need to figure out what's wrong,” she said. “For some reason, your system isn't responding like it usually does.”
“Minerals?” he asked.
She glanced at Rutgers. He nodded. “Phil put them in your IV. Can you think of anything else?”
“The bullet?”
She wondered whether she should tell him. “It's still there, Rick. We-we're just waiting till you're stronger.
“What's it made of?” he whispered.
Sheryl turned to Hylton. “What's the bullet made of?” she asked.
He looked surprised. “Lead,” he replied.
“Poison,” Rick said.
“Poison?” she repeated.
“For plants. Can't tolerate—” His eyes focused briefly on hers. Then, they glazed over, and he drifted off again.
“The metal's poisoning him.”
“That's it,” Rutgers said. “We have to get him into surgery now.”
“You said yourself his condition's unstable,” Berhoeven argued.
“As long as the bullet's in there, he's never going to stabilise. Hylton,” Phillip ordered, “fly in the rest of the team. I want them here within the hour.”
* * * *
“I hate you,” Finlay told him. The cat looked at him indifferently, then walked over to his rucksack and backed up to squirt it. “Don't!” Finlay yelled. He blinked his eyes and the cat was gone.
He checked around Rick's living room, sure that the feline terrorist was preparing his next raid. So far he'd sprayed Finlay's jacket and magazine, and he'd raided the sandwich Finlay had sitting on the counter.
Not that he wanted to eat it. Gabe had found it later, stashed behind a chair.
Gabe didn't know what value Rick saw in the bedraggled feline. It was ugly, it smelled, and it had disgusting habits. Its purr was out of tune, and it had an odd, jerky roughness to the way it showed affection. Letting it rub against your leg was a totally unpleasant sensation—more in the way of bash, thud than rub and purr.
But, he was Rick's cat. Finlay didn't know what garbage heap Dr. Dung had dredged the feline out of, but because Rick held it in affection Gabe didn't have the heart to shoot it. Instead, he gave Stench a firm pat on the head. “Good Kitty. Good Stench,” he said. He sniffed his hand and grimaced in distaste. “Good Stench,” he repeated sarcastically. “I only wish that were true.”
* * * *
Simon Kerrington didn't look much like a Kerrington any more. As he walked into the Reinhardt Building, he had a sudden vision of how Cole Calloway would react to his disguise. He quickly suppressed the tremor of nervous humour that twitched his lips.
He knew it was one of the reasons Hylton found him so useful. This kind of situation triggered some weird bent of irreverent humour, that kept him relaxed. Whereas others might become sombre and stilted under pressure, Simon became humorously nonchalant. It had been the key to many of his successful infiltrations in the past. Surely, anyone who appeared so casually amused by his surroundings was hardly likely to be invading foreign—and dangerous—territory.
The only difficult part of his entry would be the retinal scan. The days were gone when a fake eye—or even a detached real one—could be held up for assessment without someone catching you at it. Everything in this building was tied into a central computer. The only way around it was to hope you had a damned good computer hacker on your side. Someone who could monitor, and insert new files where necessary.
Simon handed off his ID, and waited for his false name to come up on the computer. The guard waved him on, and he nodded. He put one eye against the scanner.
The next moment, there was a gun digging a new channel between his ribs. A voice behind him said, “On a scale of A through D, you just got an ‘F’".
* * * *
Cole Calloway was beginning to wish this was a test run: like one of those disaster simulations they made airline pilots do. Once, he glanced at Wallace, to see if he was taking all this seriously, but the other man's expression did nothing to set his mind at ease. Wallace was not only looking sombre now, but something else as well: tense. Cole went back to fingering the keys.
Finding their initial target had been easy, and getting into the Security system had been only slightly more difficult. What was giving him trouble now was downloading the ID file. Something was wrong with part of it, and their computer kept rejecting the entire folder. “When did you last update your information on the software they're using?” Cole asked nervously.
Wallace looked down at the folder. “Seven months ago.”
“Shit.” Cole looked distressed.
“What is it? What's wrong?”
“They've changed their fuckin’—” he decided it sounded unprofessional, “—pardon me—friggin’ software, and it's not compatible! That's what's wrong!”
Wallace looked alarmed. “What can you do?”
“This!” Cole typed in a command, and his screen suddenly went blank, then proceeded to re-boot. “This is the way all the Security monitors at Reinhardt look right now. Eventually, they'll bring in someone to look at it, but the first couple of times, anyway, they'll put it down to surges, or electrical failures.”
“Like lightning?” Wallace interrupted.
Cole grinned. “Like a bolt in the butt. It might not totally cover for your boy, but it'll give him a damned good excuse.” He sobered. “I hope he's smart enough to use it.”
Wallace gave a wry smile. “Oh, he's smart, all right.”
“By the time they straighten it out, I'll have this converted and downloaded. They'll never know what hit ‘em.”
* * * *
Stay in character. Simon wanted to react to the gun in his ribs by breaking the other man's leg. What the hell had happened? Hadn't they been able to break in? For a moment, Simon wished they'd hired Cole after all. Cole seeme
d able to hack in anywhere he wanted to.
For now, unless he wanted to blow things completely, Simon needed to act the part of a nervous, but also justifiably annoyed, technician. “I don't understand!” he exclaimed, letting a little fear-fed anger penetrate his voice. “What's wrong?”
“Your scan says you're not who you claim to be—”
“It's down again!” the man behind the terminal said with asperity.
The man with the gun withdrew it from Simon's ribs. “Was it re-booted all the way when we scanned him?”
“Not sure. You'd better check his papers.”
Simon fumbled in his briefcase and pulled out the documents. “You shouldn't point a weapon unless you're sure you're right,” he complained.
“These look in order. What d'you think?”
The man behind the computer shrugged. “That's all we used to do. I wish, if they were going to go to ‘advanced technology’, they'd at least make it work.”
“Do you want me to wait until you get it going again?” Simon asked, though he made it obvious that wasn't what he wanted.
“Hold it—we're nearly there.”
* * * *
At Shatterly, Cole typed in a command, then grinned when the screen on the left side of his monitor dissolved into fragments once again.
* * * *
“Forget it—it just did it again.” He looked up at Simon. “Stop in later—before you leave. I want to make sure we've got you filed right.” He glared at him, as though daring him to argue.
“Get outa here,” Simon's gun-happy adversary said, giving him a shove with the weapon's barrel.
Simon nodded, then asked, a little angrily, “Since I'm already late, could one of you show me where I'm supposed to be going?”
* * * *
Simon had the feeling that the computer crashes happening throughout Security had his name on it. Whoever his benefactor at Shatterly was, he hoped he could get through to him when it came time to transmit some information. That was the point of working things this way: rather than taking their own equipment in where it might be spotted, they used a gopher to tag in to some innocuous part of their objective's computer system. A part where entry wouldn't be restricted, but where their information would fit into the rest of the daily entries that needed to be made. In this case, Simon was scheduled to file his information within the maintenance parts folder. I'll sandwich it somewhere between software and toilet paper.
Light Plays: Book Two of The Light Play Trilogy Page 12
