Stasis: A Will Vullerman Anthology

by J. Tobias Buller

  "You're sending me on a mission, aren't you?" There. It was out. A challenge for Brownbarr to say yes or no.

  "Sort of."

  Will tried not to make a face. "Then why did you have me come in here?"

  "If you would stop arguing, I'd tell you. No interruptions, all right?" Brownbarr gave Will the notorious I-dare-you-to-contradict-me-and-then-I'll-fire-you look.

  "Yes, sir."

  Brownbarr sat back in his chair. "I've never told you, Vullerman, but I had relatives in America when the war happened. I had thought they were all gone, but when the American catacombs were emptied of their stasis patients, I discovered that my adopted sister and her family had survived.” Brownbarr rubbed his chin and stared past Will's head. “I was ten years younger than her when the war happened, barely out of my teens. Now look at me. Late fifties and my sister doesn't have a single grey hair.” He sighed. “I'm still getting used to being the older brother, after all these years of thinking that my sister was dead.”

  Will raised an eyebrow. Brownbarr had family? Interesting. And Will had, indirectly, helped Brownbarr's family return to him. Maybe that's why Brownbarr had always looked out for Will. If it wasn't for the Director's intervention when Will had been kidnapped by the AAA, Will might be six feet under by now.

  "My sister called me this morning and asked for a favor," Brownbarr continued. "Someone's been harassing them with phone calls."

  Will tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. Phone calls? That was what this "private meeting" was about?

  "Every evening, at seven o'clock, someone calls them.” Brownbarr leaned forward on his desk. “It's happened for six nights in a row."

  Brownbarr stopped, giving Will a dirty look. "What is it this time, Vullerman?"

  Will grimaced. "Sir, if you need to get a guy to stop someone from bothering your sister's family, why are you talking to me?" Was it too much to ask to let him go and enjoy his paycheck for once? He respected Brownbarr, but surely someone else could handle this problem.

  Brownbarr sighed. "Vullerman, you know as well as I that my personal life is not to interfere with my work. I'm not allowed to order an ASP operative to protect my family. So I'm asking you to do me a favor while you're on vacation. If you could stay at my sister's house, just for a little while, I'd be thankful. They're worried about this call."

  "Why would they be worried about a phone call? It's probably some bored teenager pulling pranks on the new Americans."

  "It's not just a simple call, Vullerman. The caller is making threats. Death threats. Most of the time I'd just chalk it up to empty hate-speech, but there's something deeper here. There's a connection to similar threats that have been happening further east."

  "Sir—"

  “Listen to me, Vullerman.” Brownbarr narrowed his eyes, his jaw tight. “This is my family we're talking about, my own sister. I lost her decades ago, and I'm not about to lose her again, do you understand? And you're the only one I trust to keep them safe. Like you, the local police think that it's a prank. But my gut tells me that there's something wrong here. I heard the call. There's something about that voice..."

  Will sighed. There wasn't much he could do but accept. "I'll do it. Give me their address and I'll be there by this time tomorrow."

  Brownbarr stood and extended his hand. Though Will knew that Brownbarr wouldn't let it show in his face, he heard the relief in the director's voice. "Thank you, Vullerman. I've arranged to have a private jet transport you. Even if you're not on official ASP business, I can get you certain comforts. Let me know how it goes."

  Will shook Brownbarr's hand. "I will."

  ************

  "Where ya from?" The taxi driver somehow managed to puff on his long cigar and talk at the same time. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and one on his cigar.

  Will tried not to breathe through his nose. "Where I live now, or where I was from originally?"

  "Don't matter. Whichever ya want."

  "I have a house in northern EC."

  The taxi driver gave a choked cough and spat out a stream of smoke. The taxi's steering wobbled, and the tire edged into the opposite lane. Houses whisked by, an amalgam of colors and shapes.

  The man regained his breathing capacity and straightened the car, muttering to himself. "Sorry, fella. Them blarsted cheap cigars'll be the death of me, they will. Can't gimme a decent smoke. Ah, but here we are. Twenny-two thirty-one is the house number?" The taxi slowed down and parked on the curb, and the driver left the engine idling.

  "Yeah." Will glanced out the window at the house. It was small, but looked to be well-maintained. The exterior had been coated with bright blue paint sometime in the distant past, but now the color had faded to a light, creamy blue. Two tall windows stood on either side of the red door, with thin brown curtains pulled halfway across them. Will glimpsed a living room beyond the one to the right, and the one to the left appeared to be a bedroom. By the right corner of the house was a thick oak tree, gnarly and wide-branched. It gave shade to most of the house and lawn, making the yard dark in the late-afternoon sunlight.

  "Thanks for the ride," Will said. But not really. Will hoped he would never see this taxi again. Getting out of the car, Will dug out some cash and handed it to the taxi driver, who winked and gave a yellow-toothed grin.

  "Good day," the man said, and then moved the car out of park and sputtered off.

  "That car barely fits international regulation," Will muttered. He ought to have the man reported or something. The car probably guzzled gas so fast that the taxi driver lost money instead of earning it. And the fumes smelled like burning trash—it made the urban air smell like flowers in comparison.

  Will turned his attention back to the house. He stepped up to the front door and knocked. The sketchy red paint on the door left a little residue on his knuckles, and to his surprise, his knock sounded hollow. The door was made out of wood? Evidently the house was older than Will had thought—wooden doors hadn't been used in decades. All the newer houses had synthetic Paper-Plast.

  Will reviewed what he was going to say. Brownbarr sent him, so on and so forth. He mentally labeled them Mr. and Mrs. Torrey. Right. To keep things professional and detached.

  The door swung open and a man peered out. He looked to be in his early thirties, with brown hair and a tanned face that spoke of days in the sun. He had brown eyes, too, and a clean-shaven face, with glasses perching on a short nose. All in all, a fairly handsome chap.

  "Yes?" he said, a suspicious look in his eye.

  "Hello. Are you Mr. Alexander Torrey?"

  "Yes.” Another suspicious glance. "Who are you?" His thick American accent was evident now.

  "My name's Will. Will Vullerman. Direc—uh, Danton Brownbarr sent me."

  "Oh." Mr. Torrey smiled, relief evident in his face. "Danton called earlier to tell us that you were coming. We didn't expect you so soon, though, so the house is a bit of a mess. Come in, come in." He opened the door wider.

  Will stepped inside. The paint on the walls was considerably newer than the paint outside, and consisted of creams and browns. The floor was tile. Framed pictures hung on the walls in neat rows down the hallway. To Will's left was a living room. The smell of hamburger drifted by him.

  "Mary?" Mr. Torrey called. "Mr. Vullerman is here."

  He turned back to Will. "You can have a seat on the couch." He gestured toward the couch in the living room. The living room was square, with a couch in front of the windows that faced the front yard, and two chairs in the corner opposite to the couch. There were dolls and other toys littering the wall by the hallway, but the area by the couch was clear. A table with a lamp stood beside the couch, with an old-fashioned home phone on a charger.

  Will had barely sat down when he heard rapid footsteps in the hallway, and a little girl of six or seven peeked in, her long brown hair in disarray. Her eyes gleamed.

  "Hello!" she said, and waved at him before vanishing back down the hallway.

  "T
hat's our little girl." Mr. Torrey sat down opposite to Will on one of the chairs. "Name's May, and she's a handful and a half.”

  A woman's voice echoed down the hallway. "May Torrey, at least comb your hair before going out to meet our guest!"

  Will couldn't help smiling, but he felt vaguely uneasy. Brownbarr hadn't told him that his sister and her husband had a child. A girl, at that. He wondered if Brownbarr knew about Will's record with families. The last time he had tried to protect a little girl and her family...

  He forced the thought away.

  The woman—Mary Brownbarr Torrey, as Will recalled—came down the hall and into the living room. She smiled pleasantly. "Hello! Sorry about the mess.” Mrs. Torrey bent down and tossed several plastic toys into a tub in the corner. “I was planning to pick up—you know how it is. You just sort of forget things.”

  She wiped her pale forehead, and for a brief moment Will was confused. Wasn't Brownbarr dark-skinned?

  Oh, yeah. Brownbarr had mentioned that his sister was adopted. Will was glad that he had remembered before he put his foot in his mouth.

  "That's okay, ma'am. I've been in worse." As soon as he said it, Will winced. Never mind, he had put his foot in his mouth anyway.

  Mrs. Torrey sat down beside her husband and didn't seem to notice. "So," she said, "Danton said you're an—employee of his?”

  Time for small talk. "Yes, ma'am. He's the Director of the ASP now, so he's my boss."

  The little girl, May, slipped back into the room with a hairbrush tangled in her hair. "Mommy," she whispered, "I can't get this knot out."

  Mrs. Torrey took the hairbrush and started to brush May's hair. "No need to call me ma'am. It makes me sound old, like my kid brother. He's gone grey, but he's the same as always—bossy and OCD. Anyway, call me Mary. So what's this—ASP, you said?”

  Will nodded politely and hid a half-smile. Obviously Brownbarr's adopted sister wasn't as OCD as her brother, judging from the state of her living room. “African Secret Police. We work to maintain international peace and make sure the laws are followed."

  May piped up again. "If it's all over the world, Mister Vullerman, then why are they called the African police?"

  "Hush," Mrs. Torrey said. "Let Mr. Vullerman talk."

  "I don't mind.” Will propped his elbow on the arm of the couch. “They're called the African Secret Police because they started out in the United Republic. But we work internationally now."

  Mrs. Torrey started working on the knot in May's hair while May continued to talk. "So you're a secret agen—ow! That hurt!"

  "The knot's out, honey. Now sit quiet and listen, okay?"

  May scrambled off her mother's lap and sat on the floor.

  "Technically, I'm a kind of policeman," Will said. "But I'm sort of a secret agent."

  "Well, I'm glad Uncle Danton sent you," May said, turning her doll upside down and frowning at it. "Because you're going to need to be like—Sherlock Holmes. Mommy read me some of Sherlock Holmes last night." May wrinkled her nose. "I don't like that Holmes smokes, though. Daddy says that smoking is bad."

  "Hopefully I can solve your mystery." Will smiled. It wouldn't be too hard. Even with his mediocre knowledge of electronics, he already had a few ideas about figuring out who was calling, and why.

  "You'll have the opportunity to look for clues soon enough.” Mr. Torrey's voice, however, contained no trace of amusement. He glanced at the round Roman numeral clock mounted on the wall. "It's almost seven."

  "Then let's get to business.” Will pulled out his tablet and selected Notepad. "So the same person calls at the same time every day?"

  "Yes." Mr. Torrey gestured to the phone, which sat on the lamp table. “As soon as the clock strikes seven, he calls."

  All right. Maybe the call was automatic. He tapped the information into the file. "Is it a human voice?"

  "Yes. Male. And the messages are always the same, but the man says them differently sometimes."

  Will grunted. "So that means it's probably a real-time call."

  "He calls, but he always leaves a message."

  Will frowned. “What do you—”

  Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.

  The phone? Will shivered. They could stand changing the ringtone—it sounded like a pulse going flat in a hospital room.

  Will picked up the phone. "Unknown caller" scrolled across the screen. "May I answer?"

  Mr. Torrey nodded, his face pale and his lips pressed firmly together.

  Will raised it to his ear, pressing the green call button, but as soon as he did the line went dead.

  "Why—" he started, but then the phone beeped.

  He pulled the phone away from his ear. “New voice message” blinked on the screen. Will had answered the phone, so how had the caller managed to end the call and still leave a message?

  “Like I said...he always leaves a message.” Mr. Torrey ran a hand through his hair. “I don't know how he does it.”

  Will frowned. "May I listen to it? I mean, if it's all right with May in here."

  "It's nothing she hasn't heard before. Play it." Will could hear fear in his voice, but as he glanced back at Mr. Torrey, he caught something else, too, in his severe eyebrows and set jaw.

  Fortitude. Good for them.

  Will pressed the call button.

  The voice that vibrated from the speaker was low, scratchy, and unmistakably male. A slightly hysterical note rang in the words, as if the man was high-strung and emotional.

  "I'll find you. Oh, I'll find you, and I'll dance in your blood. I'll get you. You'll get it, and you can't escape, not ever, because I'll always find you. I'll finish what I started. You can't hide. Because I'm coming."

  The phone beeped. Then, silence.

  Will glared at the receiver. If this was a joke, then the person on the other line was a good actor and had a morbid sense of humor. And something about that voice bothered him. He couldn't place it, but something felt wrong about it, almost maniacal. And yet...vaguely familiar.

  "What do you think?"

  Will met Mr. Torrey's brown eyes. There was fear there, still, but anger as well, anger that reflected Will's.

  "I'm going to find whatever sick person made this call and make sure they can't do anything to you.” Will tossed the phone onto the side table. "Be sure of it, you and your family are safe with me."

  Protect the weak, uphold justice. The vow he had taken the day he had become an ASP operative. Now it was time to fulfill his vow...and make up for the times he had failed. But he couldn't think about that failure. Shouldn't.

  "Thank you.” Mr. Torrey let out a long breath. "Thank you."

  There was a moment of silence, and then Mrs. Torrey changed the subject. "Do you need anything, Mr. Vullerman? I have food ready, if you're hungry. There's extra, since May decided she didn't like meatballs and voted on leftovers instead. If not, I made up the bed in the guest room."

  Will shook his head. "I need some time to think, if that's all right. I ate supper on my way here."

  Mrs. Torrey nodded. "Of course. Follow me."

  ************

  Will left his room several hours later, his mind clear and refreshed. He had taken a short nap, and now he had a plan worked out.

  The house's lamps cast a warm, yellowish light as Will walked down the hallway. Much better than the energy-saving fluorescent that Will had gotten used to.

  Will found Mr. Torrey sitting in the living room, working on a touchpad. He glanced up. "You need something?"

  "I'd like to work on your phone, if that's okay." Will gestured toward the phone. "I might have to tear it apart, but I've got some stuff I'd like to try on it."

  “It's all yours. I thought about tearing it apart myself—not to look at it, just to disable calls altogether—but we got a new number several days ago, and...” His voice trailed off. “It called the new number, too.” He glanced up at the clock and changed the subject. “It's a bit late. I figured you went to bed.”

  Will sat
on the tile and crossed his legs. "I took a short nap to clear my head. It shouldn't keep me from sleeping, though, since I'm still getting over jet lag."

  Will reached up and grabbed the phone off the table. He balanced it on his knee and took off the back panel. He then removed the battery and took off another panel, revealing wires and hardware. He set his comm on the table as he worked, saving it for later. Now, if he could find a way to connect the computing power of his comm to the phone itself...

  He heard soft steps behind him. "What you doing, Mister Vullerman?"

  Will looked up to see May dressed in pink pajamas, her hair still wet from her shower. "I'm working on your phone, Miss May." Will showed her the phone.

  She stared down at it with a frown. "It looks like you're destroying it."

  Will laughed. "No, I'm just trying to find a way to connect it to my comm."

  "Daddy wanted a comm, but they're too much money." May sat down beside him and peered at the phone. "Why do you need to connect it to your comm?"

  Will showed her his comm. "You see, when this guy calls, it shows no number and leaves nothing but a message, which means you can't call him back. But in order to call you at all, his comm has to have a signal. If I can find a way to reverse the signal, I can call him back. Then I can tell him to stop." Actually, Will planned on saying a lot more than that.

  “Sounds smart,” Mr. Torrey said, setting aside his touchpad. “But how do you reverse the signal?”

  “That's the tricky part.” Will held up a wire. “Once I connect the comm to the phone's hardware, I have to program a command that allows me to use both systems to essentially 'grab' a signal and follow it back to the source.”

  Mr. Torrey shrugged. “It's all Greek to me. My degree's in Agriculture. But do you think it'll work?”

  “It works in theory. We'll see if I can get it to work in practice.”

  May frowned. "Are you a hacker, Mister Vullerman?"

  "Well..." Will stopped for a moment. How could he answer this question discreetly? "My job requires me to be good with technical stuff. I'm not one of those people who can hack into everything, though."