Stasis: A Will Vullerman Anthology

by J. Tobias Buller

  "I saw it. The locals are predicting an earthquake soon. We shan't be around to see it, though, so it doesn't mattah."

  Will thrust his comm back into his pocket, keeping the earpiece in his ear.

  Rolvo, after glancing down the street, examined his comm's keypad and cursed. "What is taking them so long? Now that you've alerted the blackguards to our presence, we ah running on borrowed time."

  Will refrained from shooting back. Rolvo made it sound like their loss of cover was all Will's fault...which it sort of was. Still, he didn't need the barbed comments.

  Will's comm crackled. "This is intelligence. The escape exit is opposite to the warehouse, five buildings down the street. We've broken the code for the trapdoor, so it should open up with no problem. If you encounter a traditional lock, it should open up with any standard electro-utility knife.”

  "Finally!" Will glanced back into the warehouse, pressing a button on his comm. "Relay message to all operatives on mission no. 5535.”

  "Recording," his comm's electronic voice replied.

  "I need Anderson, Mareth, and Wilson covering the warehouse," Will ordered. "Make sure no one gets out. Use the knock-out setting on your stun rod if you have to. All the rest of you, follow me. There's an unguarded escape route opposite to the main warehouse, five buildings down."

  Dark-clothed ASP operatives began to emerge from the buildings where they had been hidden. All of them had the ASP badge pinned to their shirt. Three of the men headed towards Will and Rolvo, while the rest congregated at a building down the road.

  Will jogged over, reaching the building in a few moments with Rolvo in tow. A dozen ASP agents, stun rods in hand, stood outside the doorway.

  "Follow me.” Will gripped the corroded handle and glanced back at his men. “Keep it quiet."

  Will turned the handle and the door swung open with a creak. Will glanced inside. Dust, twisted metal, and crumbling concrete had settled everywhere. The sheet-metal roof, rusting away, had caved in on one corner, but otherwise the building looked safe.

  Will stepped inside. He heard his men following behind him, their boots crunching in the dirt and bits of concrete.

  He examined the building again. There didn't seem to be any sort of entrance, just an abandoned building.

  There! Underneath the collapsed roofing, Will glimpsed a doorway. He jogged over to it and ducked under a ceiling beam. The door frame had been braced with rusty steel rods and strips of sheet metal, and a rotting door lay buried in dust to Will's left. Inside the open doorway, Will could just barely see the dirty floor. A handle, which at first looked like another steel rod, stuck up out of the floor in the enclave.

  Right. The secret entrance. Will crouched and turned the handle. With a whir, the door opened by itself, revealing worn concrete steps.

  He smiled. Time to get to work.

  Will stepped cautiously down into the darkness. He pulled out a slim flashlight from his utility belt and clicked it on. The passage was concrete, but it was unstained and unmarked by years of age. Behind him, his ASP men filed down the stairs.

  Will followed the tunnel for several minutes until he reached another door. Turning off his flashlight, he pulled out a stun rod and felt the gun strapped to his right leg. If things got hairy, he could get to it quickly.

  He opened the door, revealing a spacious room lit with several bare fluorescent bulbs. There was a card table in one corner with a cooler, and plastic chairs littered the room. Several men, talking amongst themselves, stood beneath the light. At the sound of the creaking hinges, they turned. Shock flitted across their faces, and one of them backed up to the wall.

  A dramatic entrance. He suppressed a grin. It never failed to give Will a rush.

  The man closest to Will took a step back. "Who—?"

  "Everyone in this facility is under arrest for illegal genetic experimentation, a direct violation of international law." Will raised his stun rod to his stomach, making sure that the men saw it. "We have men at both entrances. You'll be doing yourselves a favor if you don't put up a fight."

  ************

  Will stood by and watched as the last man was handcuffed and led out the door to the warehouse. Two ASP men stood on either side of the man, each holding an arm. Outside that door waited a police car and a jail cell; that much was certain. There was enough evidence in this place to convict the entire lot easily. Bottles and solutions and all of that weird scientific stuff.

  "Mr. Vullahman?"

  Will turned. Rolvo ducked through the low doorway of one of the chambers, a man in tow. The fellow was short, balding, and looked mildly Scandinavian with sharp features, greasy yellow hair, and a scruffy double chin.

  "This is ah mole, Mr. Vullahman." Rolvo gestured to the man. "Mr. Hafahd, this is agent Will Vullahman, the leadah of this mission."

  Aha, the traitor. Will had read the report; Mr. Hafard was the one who leaked the existence of the facility in the first place.

  Mr. Hafard nodded several times, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he spoke. His hands twitched at his side. "Yes—yes, I'm the one who turned them in. Knew it was wrong, I did, that's why I did it. It was wrong on many levels, mister, on an international one and a local one and a national one, completely wrong—"

  “Thank you, that's enough.” Will held up a hand. “Now, I understand that this facility was funded by an anonymous donor?”

  "Durn right.” Hafard wrung his hands. “Gave us money to work on DNA clones. I said we shouldn't stoop and take it, that's what I said, because he didn't feel like a good man to me. Honest, Mr. Vullerman. He didn't feel right."

  "All right, so he offered money for DNA clones." Will raised his voice a little to keep Hafard from running down another rabbit trail. "Who was he, and how did he communicate?"

  Looking this way and that, Hafard leaned up beside Will and whispered, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, mister."

  Will tried not to breathe—the geneticist had pretty bad morning breath. "I've worked through some pretty bizarre problems. Try me." And gargle some mouthwash while you're at it, Will added silently.

  Hafard shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn you, mister. See, every other night, I'd go into the back room, and every time there'd be a paper message sitting there for me. Genuine paper, not that synthetic stuff they sell in the office stories. That's the whole truth, mister. I don't lie. It had instructions on it, and sometimes it came with genetic materials or supplies. And every once in a while, it'd ask for a person to go in there at a certain time. When that person goes in, he never comes out."

  Will grimaced. Which was it: a story or the truth? Sometimes truth was stranger than fiction, but this seemed pretty far-fetched. "So you went along with this?"

  "Hey, it was good money!" Hafard crossed his arms. "Besides...I had a mate quit because of it, and my mate disappeared just a week later. Never heard from him since. We couldn't quit, see."

  "The plot thickens.” Will frowned. “Can we see this room?"

  "Sure thing, mister. I was gonna show it to you anyway. Follow me." Hafard shuffled through the low doorway and beckoned for Rolvo and Will to follow.

  ************

  "Can you open it?" Will stood back and examined the door in front of him doubtfully.

  The three of them stood in front of a tall steel door, which felt oddly out of place in the drab concrete conditions. Two dials and a row of buttons were built into the middle-left side of the door where the handle should have been. An odd sort of door to have in an otherwise cheap place. The lab supplies were the only relatively high-tech things in the otherwise anachronistic facility.

  Hafard squinted at Will. "I wouldn'ta brought you here if I couldn't, mister." Hafard strode forward and punched a few of the buttons. He twisted one knob, pressed another button, and then twisted the other, and the door opened with a click.

  Rolvo walked in first, ignoring the chain of command. Will swallowed back his sour thoughts. Sure, Rolvo was technically Will's superior,
but Will, the leader, should have gone in first. That's the way things worked. Will was running the mission as the leader and Rolvo was tagging along.

  He'd have to mention something to Director Brownbarr about Rolvo's blatant insubordination. He could hear Brownbarr's response already, though: "Rolvo's a good worker, Vullerman. He's not too polite to those below him, but he knows his place and knows his job, and that's what's important."

  Whatever. It wasn't important, anyway. Will brushed it away and followed Rolvo inside.

  The room was small, little more than a storage room, with a solitary table standing in the middle. The only difference between this room and the others in this underground facility was the fact that the walls were whitewashed. Will wondered why that was, but he dismissed it with a shrug.

  As soon as Will was fully inside the room, however, there was a rush of air and a whir behind him. Blast it, the door! Will whirled around to see the door shut, invisible locks audibly clicking into place. No! Hafard was locking them in? But why?

  Rolvo, turning, cursed and pounded on the door. "Let us out of here, you spineless scoundrel!"

  Hafard's voice, little more than a murmur, leaked through the door. "Sorry, mister. I had to. I always read about double agents—never thought I'd become one. But being the informer kept me from being the experiment.” He paused. “Have fun, mister.” Then his voice faded away.

  "Leave it." Will studied the door. There was nothing on the inside. No way to escape. Now why would they build a door like that? "We can't get out from the inside. We'll have to wait for help."

  Will took a deep breath and examined the situation. They were locked inside a room where people had reputedly disappeared and where these geneticists received instructions from a higher authority. There was no time to be nervous or angry. They had to get out.

  Rolvo's initial rage seemed to have subsided. "I'll use my comm to call ah men," he said. "There is no point in locking us in here. We'll get out eventually." Rolvo dug out his comm, but as he did so, a scraping sound tickled Will's ears.

  Will turned to face the wall. The concrete moved, and the white paint cracked to reveal the outline of a door. A door? Will's hand went to his gun. He drew it out of the holster.

  The thought hit him: if Hafard's tales were true, they were in big trouble.

  Rolvo cursed again. "You'd bettah have a stun rod, because I don't."

  "Better yet, a gun." Will reached into his pocket and tossed Rolvo a small pocket-sized stun rod. "Here.”

  Then the door ground open, revealing a man. He wore a long navy coat that reached the ground. It was open in the front, unbuttoned, revealing a nondescript tan shirt and dark jeans. The hood of the coat was voluminous and drawn up around the man's face, concealing it from sight.

  As soon as Will saw the man, Rolvo jumped forward, wielding his borrowed stun rod. Will tensed, readying himself to join Rolvo.

  The man, with dizzying speed, reached into his coat and sidestepped Rolvo, giving him a blow across the back with a long stun rod. Will could feel the heavy jolt it gave Rolvo crackling in the air. Rolvo collapsed to the ground, senseless.

  Will reached down and drew the gun from its holster, pointing it straight at the man.

  "I wouldn't resist." The man's words were quiet. "It didn't go well for your friend. Chances are, it won't go well for you.”

  "My friend is headstrong and you had the advantage of surprise." Will kept the gun trained at the hooded man and examined his adversary for a moment. The coat was the oddest part—almost like a trenchcoat, but it wasn't double-breasted and it had a hood. Whatever. Trenchcoat's skill with a stun rod was more worrying than his clothing choices. Will would have to keep himself tense, ready for any sudden movements.

  "Your gun won't work here."

  Will tried easing his finger on the trigger. No pressure. It wouldn't work. He let it drop to the ground, reaching into his pocket and grabbing a second stun rod.

  Trenchcoat's hood turned slightly. “Did you come ready to fight a legion?”

  "Doesn't hurt to have an extra rod in case I lose one.” Will activated the rod. “Did you create a setting on your rod to disable electric guns? Clever piece of work." Will stepped back. He'd have to bide his time. If he could just catch Trenchcoat off guard, maybe he could stun him and then find a way out. Still, the man's stun rod was significantly longer than Will's miniature. He'd have to be fast.

  Trenchcoat shrugged. "I have a lot of time on my hands. It was a choice between fiddling with my stun rod and watching an old Doctor Who rerun.”

  "I see." Will circled the hooded man. Trenchcoat moved further into the room, keeping the table between Will and himself.

  "You're smarter than most that come in here.”

  "Thanks." Will eyed the man's stun rod. "You're quick."

  "Maybe that's not as flattering. You can't exchange a compliment with a compliment?"

  "I haven't had an opportunity to find a redeeming trait."

  A hoarse laugh erupted from Trenchcoat.

  Will tensed. This fellow obviously wouldn't be caught off guard, so Will would have to go for it and see who would come out on top.

  Will edged around the table.

  Trenchcoat moved fluidly, mirroring Will's movements. "I see you have experience. But I've had a long time to hone my skill. Time's always on my side.”

  "Who are you?" Will tightened his grip on his stun rod. It buzzed in his hand, ready as soon as Will jumped.

  Trenchcoat paused. His voice sounded heavy, low, weighted with an emotion that Will couldn't place. "I am the immortal man."

  Now! Will lunged.

  And his senses crashed into darkness with the heart-stopping jolt of a stun rod.

  ************

  Will woke with his arms in the air, pressure tugging at his wrists. He was standing. Or was he? His head ached like someone had blown his brains out with a gun.

  Will forced his eyes open. It hurt, but the room he was in had little light to irritate his headache further, just a glow from a gap above the door. The room was tall, maybe ten meters to the ceiling, but small, no more than five meters in length. Chains hung from the walls on either side of him, and a rusty iron door stood directly in front of Will. And it smelled stuffy and sweaty, like a gym with an air-con failure.

  He shifted, and something cold pressed against his wrists and his ankles. Will bowed his head and examined his feet.

  Manacles. That's what was binding him. Will's feet were chained to the wall by two heavy iron manacles, and he hung a half a meter above the ground by his arms. His arms burned terribly, aching and throbbing like he had been doing weights till it hurt.

  How long had he been like this? The typical stun rod knocked someone out for a couple hours, but the man's modified rod may have had a stronger setting.

  More importantly, where was he? The Middle Ages? Manacles were a strange way to keep someone bound. And how could he get out?

  Will craned his neck and examined the irons clamped on his wrists. The manacles were rusty, rubbing off on his wrists. Or was the red color something else?

  With a hard swallow, Will pushed the thought aside. Examining the manacles wouldn't do any good, anyhow. They were tight enough that he couldn't maneuver his wrist out of their grip. At least he wasn't gagged.

  Then the door to the room swung open with a rusty squeal, and the light blinked on, an old-fashioned lightbulb, soaking the room in a dim yellow light. An old man hobbled in, supporting himself with a white cane. His hair was a spotty white, but tufts of pitch black hair grew out here and there, like they were pushing out of his skull. His face was twisted and wrinkled, as if he had undergone reconstructive surgery, with a long hooked nose, sagging cheeks, and deep-set eyes. One of his legs was twisted and shorter than the other, while the other appeared to be healthy.

  Will tried not to stare at him, but the old man was hideous. A mad scientist straight out of an old science-fiction story.

  “Rise and shine!” The old
man halted in front of Will and poked his stomach with the cane. “Well, look'ee there! Sleeping beauty's awake, boy. Surprised he's already conscious, considering the jolt you gave him with your stunner. Why'd you give it to him at maximum?”

  A familiar hooded figure slipped in the door and closed it behind him, carrying a box on his shoulder. Trenchcoat again. “This one's more dangerous than the other one.” He set the box down with a grunt.

  The old man hobbled back a couple steps and gestured to Will with his cane. “Well, let the fellow loose. I've got to get some samples from him.”

  Will swallowed. Samples? What sort of samples? So help him, if they tried to do any bizarre experiments...

  “Did you hear me the first time?” Trenchcoat crossed his arms. “This one's more dangerous than the other one. It was hard enough subduing the bald guy.”

  The bald guy? Will stiffened. What had they done with Rolvo?

  And if they had done something to Rolvo, might they do the same to him? He had to get out of here. He tugged on the manacles that clasped his wrists. No good. They were rusty, but they held firm.

  “Well, boy, we can't exactly use the paralysis generator on him, can we? I've got to test his nerves, and that can't be done with your little toy interfering with the signal.” The old man leaned over, supporting himself with the cane. He dug through the box with one hand and came out with an old, boxy medical scanner a little bigger than Will's palm. “Put some handcuffs on him or something. When I'm ready, mind you. Most of the tests I can do from here, but I'll need to work with his nerve endings, and he'll have to be off the chains for that.”

  The old man turned away from the box, and the medical scanner turned on with a beep. He squinted at Will. “Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Jamin. 'The incredible genius' also works well as a title.”

  Will looked him over again and tried to keep a neutral face. He nodded toward Trenchcoat. “And him? The...immortal man?”

  “Told you that, did he?” Jamin glanced back at the figure, who stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “Ty here is the only experiment of mine that lived.”