Hybrid Zone Revelation, page 29
Remembering the threat on her life, I called out to her. “Hey Julia, someone’s planning on killing you.”
She stopped abruptly and pivoted, fixing her stern gaze on me. “I’m curious to know, if you would be for or against that particular objective.”
Returning her stare was easy. Answering the question was not. I shrugged my shoulders indifferently. “Haven’t been convinced one way or the other.”
She smiled sadly. “There’s hope then.” Turning on her heel, she resumed walking away from us.
“I do not understand that woman,” I hissed after she’d turned the corner. “Why didn’t she just tell me where Adam was?” Opening my clenched fist, I stared at the device she’d given me. “And what the heck is this thing?”
“Looks like a transmitter,” Kenny said. Frowning in concentration, his eyes became unfocused. “It’s not transmitting anything.”
“What? You’ve got some kind of sonar going on? High def ultraviolet imaging? Ultra red—”
“Ultra red is not a thing,” he said flatly. “Maybe it’s a remote. On and off.”
That would correlate with the one button it had. “She gave me the key to something?”
“Maybe you need it to rescue Adam.”
“She said sooner or later. Recuing Adam is now.”
“She wants you to see something for yourself, with your own eyes?” he guessed.
“Is that good or bad?”
“It could just mean you wouldn’t believe it otherwise.”
“That’s what I thought, bad.” I tucked the remote away in my pocket.
“Have you tried contacting Adam?” Kenny asked.
I hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t even thought of it since we’d been here. The disappointment linked to our non linkage was too great, so I’d stopped trying days ago. Maybe it would be different now that I was so close to him.
Closing my eyes, I reached out to Adam. At first there was nothing, and then the roar started. Growling and snapping filled my mind, blinding me with the sound until I was sinking to the ground with my head grasped between my hands. This was not the Adam I knew.
Stinging suddenly erupted across my right cheek, and I blinked into Kenny’s face. “You hit me!” I yelled at him while cradling my cheek in my hand.
“You were screaming,” he shrugged.
Staggering to my feet, I pulled Kenny up with me. “Something’s wrong,” I choked out. “We have to find him now.”
Kenny being better at tracking, I made him take the lead. I couldn’t believe the number of doors this place had, most of which were locked. I moved us through the ones I could see on the other side of, but solid doors we had to wait for someone else to open. The last door we went through opened into a room with no other exits, except into the focal point which was a viewing area sort of like a baby nursery. Only, babies were not the displayed subject.
“That’s a lot of leopards,” Kenny whistled. “Can you tell which one is Adam?”
There had to be at least fifteen cats in there, all of them big and angry. I’d only seen Adam as a leopard in my dreams and once during my brief appearance in his prior cell. But these cats all looked alike to me.
“I have no clue which one is Adam,” I admitted.
We stepped back out of reflex when one of the cats lunged at the window. It left a trail of saliva where its jaws had connected with the glass.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go in there,” Kenny said.
Adam, I tried. You have to let me know which one you are.
“You’re bruising my arm,” Kenny said.
“Sorry,” I whispered and loosened my grip. “I was trying to contact Adam. I guess I was bracing myself.”
“Here’s an idea. Let me hold you while you try.” He repositioned us, standing behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Watch for any sign, okay?”
“I think they’re the ones watching us.”
“I noticed,” I said, looking warily at the leopards. “And then there’s the drool,” I added, grimacing at the long streak still sliding down the glass.
“Let’s hope no one else notices them watching,” he said under his breath.
Right. Closing my eyes, I reached out to Adam again. Adam? The weight of the sound crashed against my mind. I felt Kenny’s arms tighten around my waist as it overpowered me again. Adam! I yelled, determined to press through the noise. I opened my eyes just in time to watch the cat nearest the window fly at the glass.
“Is that him?” Kenny squeaked, dragging me backwards as the cat continued its assault.
“Let me go,” I complained as I struggled to reach the glass.
He loosened his hold enough to let me approach the window. Placing both hands on the glass, I stared directly into the eyes of the aggressive leopard. Adam?
The cat stilled and returned my stare. Go away.
The anger and loathing behind his words sent a jolt through me. “It’s him,” I gasped as the connection broke.
“He does not seem in favor of us being here,” Kenny said. “I know you’re quick with the teleporting, but I don’t think we are going to be able to do this without someone losing some blood.”
I dug through my pocket for the tranquilizer gun Miranda had given me. Looking at it now, it didn’t look big enough. Hopefully it packed a strong enough wallop to subdue Adam.
Holding the gun up for Kenny to see, I said, “I’ll use this.”
“This seems familiar,” he replied coldly.
“I know,” I sighed, freely acknowledging the scorn in his voice. He had a right to feel this way. He’d been on the receiving end more times than I could recall. “I didn’t like it then either.” One day, I was going to not have to shoot the people I cared about with tranquilizer guns.
“This isn’t like before,” he admitted grudgingly. Nudging my shoulder as I continued to stare at the gun in my hands, he said, “Using it gives us the best chance.”
I knew the circumstances were different than before, just as much as I knew this was probably the only safe way to get Adam back to headquarters. But that didn’t mean I liked it any better.
“I’ll need you to be responsible for maintaining contact between us again.”
“You’ll only get one shot at this,” Kenny said. “Make it count.”
One shot? That’s all I had anyway. Strengthening my grip on the gun, I knelt in front of the glass, bringing us level with Adam. “Kenny, Adam’s not the same. He told me to go away.”
“Yeah, I got that,” he snorted. “Exhibit A.” He pointed at the multiple saliva trails on the glass. Gripping me around the waist again, he rested his chin on my shoulder. “Once we go, Doc, it’s all or nothing. You sure you want to do this?”
“Have you ever known me to be a quitter?” I scoffed at his remark.
“Can I get a, hell no,” Kenny said, heartily mimicking a preacher’s tone.
“That’s disrespectful,” I said, even as I laughed at him.
“You want respect?” he said. “Get us all back to headquarters safely. I’ll give you all the respect you can handle.”
I was so going to make him eat those words.
“Alrighty, let’s do it then.” Everything was going to be okay, I told myself. Funny how the meaning of okay kept migrating to ever looser definitions. Pretty soon, just alive would mean okay.
I relocated us directly behind Adam’s backside and immediately hit him with the tranquilizer. His body bent in half as he whipped his head around. Kenny’s sudden tug backwards was the only thing that allowed me to avoid Adam’s snapping jaws.
“How is he seeing us?” Kenny snapped while quickly rolling us out of the way as Adam lunged.
“It’s a bond thing, I guess.”
Adam’s front legs buckled, and he did a little dance in an effort to stay on his feet. The other cats, leery of his behavior, scattered to the corners of the room.
“The drugs are starting to work,” Kenny said, his voice strained by the effort of avoiding Adam’s attacks. “You ready?”
Blinking dazedly, I brought my hand up to wipe at the blood beginning to drip down my forehead. Kenny’s last maneuver had slammed my head against the glass. “I don’t know,” I stuttered.
The smell of my blood enraged Adam. Gathering his feet underneath him, he leapt at us. Our backs were already against the wall. We had nowhere to go and no time to get there. I stared in disbelief as Adam’s teeth filled my entire vision. Just when I thought it was over, that there would be no escape, Adam’s head listed to one side. The weight of Adam’s limp body crashing into me nearly knocked the wind out of me, but I had enough presence of mind to forcibly hold Adam’s jaws shut. The tranquilizer, though strong enough to knock him off his feet, wasn’t enough to stop him from trying to attack. Nor did it stop him from yelling, Get out! at me over and over again.
Hugging his head to me, I transported us all to the cell at headquarters. Reentry wasn’t smooth this time. I accidentally placed us about a foot off the floor. The impact from our drop left us rolling in three different directions, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing.
“Kenny,” I yelled and reached out to him. He took my hand, and I moved us outside the cell, but once again, we appeared about a foot off the floor. I heard Kenny yelp when he hit.
“You have got to stop doing that,” Kenny moaned, rubbing his newly bruised hip.
“Sorry,” I said absently as I watched Adam struggle inside the cell. “I think it has to do with not being upright when I moved us. Something off in my aspect ratio.”
“Something’s off in my aspect,” Kenny groaned, still rubbing his backside. “You okay?”
I wiped my sleeve across my forehead. The man I…loved?...just tried to kill me. Make this one more downgrade in the definition of okay. “Never better,” I grumbled.
“He’s not himself,” Kenny said softly. “You know he would never—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I cut him off. Adam was safe for the time being. That’s what mattered.
“Macy—”
“Kenny, don’t.” Right now was not the time to start focusing on how I felt. There were still things that needed doing. Thinking about how Adam wanted to take my face off wasn’t going to get any of them done. “You ready to go back?”
Kenny massaged the back of his neck with one hand as he stood. Slowly, he let that hand drop to his side. “I think you’d have a better chance of saving Crystal if Scout went with you. With all the handholding,” he shrugged. “I’m slowing you down.”
The difficulty of the decision he was making was evident in the stiffness of his shoulder and the pain in his voice. He was right, of course. But I wasn’t going to exclude him from searching for Crystal, not until he recognized the need for it.
“Scout knows her scent?”
“He does,” he nodded strongly. “He’s on his way.”
Gathering my legs underneath me, I pushed to a stand. “You have a bond?” I asked.
“It was a stupid blood brother type thing we did a couple of years ago.” He laughed dryly. “We didn’t realize what we were doing.”
Join the club. Closing the distance between us, I placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him into a hug. “If she’s there, we’ll bring her back,” I promised.
“You’d better,” he whispered as he hugged me tightly.
I pulled away as Scout rounded the corner. He clapped Kenny on the back in a show of support and then reached for me. “We gotta move. They’re suspicious.”
“See ya soon,” I nodded at Kenny.
Chapter 17
Leaving Kenny behind was both hard and a relief. I hadn’t realized how much of a drain transporting him had been, not until I was doing it solo again. Unsure where to start, I brought Scout back to the room that had previously held Adam. It was now filled with naked and confused people rather than leopards. By the way the workers were searching through the crowd, the reason was obvious.
“They’re looking for someone,” Scout observed. “Adam?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“It didn’t take them long to miss him.”
“A leopard suddenly disappearing might have been a small clue,” I offered.
“Little one,” he agreed with a smile. “I don’t see Crystal.”
“I don’t see any teenagers at all.” That didn’t make them any less important, but I couldn’t randomly transport people back that I didn’t know. What if they were bad guys? “You know, as little as two weeks ago, me standing in front of a room watching people in their birthday suits would have seem farfetched.”
Scout barked out a sympathetic laugh. Placing his hands on his hips, he said, “Where would you keep a bunch of shifty, hating you teenagers, if you were a stodgy government worker?”
My eyebrows rose in surprise. “I’m a little shocked to hear you classify your buddies as shifty. I’m not disagreeing, mind you, but I didn’t expect to hear you say it.” Especially since I was pretty sure he had been in on the shiftiness.
“We had a lot of time on our hands to learn. Trust me, they’re shifty.”
No trust necessary. I had witnessed it first hand, and Miranda had the pictures to prove it.
“As to your other question, clearly, I would tuck them somewhere out of the way, buried so deep they couldn’t get on my stodgy nerves.”
The answer hit us both at the same time. “Basement,” we said in unison.
Scout turned and jogged to his end of the hallway. “Any idea what floor we’re on?” he called.
“No,” I answered as I left for the opposite end.
“I got more hallway and doors,” he called out.
“I got stairs,” I yelled after spotting the exit sign above the door. One nanosecond later, I gasped as Scout appeared at my elbow. One blink after that, and I was looking at him standing underneath the exit sign. “Show off,” I mumbled.
He pushed the door open and leaned over the stairwell. “There should be an elevator nearby.”
“No elevators,” I said firmly.
“Why no elevators?” Scout asked as I appeared next to him.
The memory of my last elevator ride inside the mountain made me cringe. “Not really a fan of elevators. I’m actually considering abstaining from all forms of shafts and tunnels.”
“There’s a story there. I just know it,” Scout said jokingly.
Boy was there ever. Mimicking Scout, I leaned over the rail and looked down. “That is a long way down.”
“Let’s ping pong it.”
Pulling back, I stared at him in confusion. “Ping pong it?”
“Just watch.” He leaned over the stairwell. Then he disappeared and reappeared about three floors down. “Very good, padawan,” he teased when I appeared next to him.
Scout’s method led us to the bottom of the stairs in a relatively short amount of time. The problem now was the blank cement walls facing us.
“Why is there no door?” Scout said as he turned in circles again. “There has to be a way out. Or in.”
“There haven’t been any doors for the last few floors,” I commented. “You can’t see through walls, can you?” I asked him.
“Nope. Well, I’ve never tried, but I’m assuming no.”
I tried. “It’s a no for me too.”
“I can’t see through them, but I can see them. Does this wall look funny to you?” Scout asked, his voice rising in alarm.
The wall he was pointing to had small ripples rolling across its surface. The movement became faster and faster until the whole wall was shimmering like the ocean at sunset. Backing up, I stepped onto the bottom stair.
“You do see that?” Scout asked again.
“I see it. Maybe you should come over here,” I suggested.
The wall was completely transparent now, like a glass window. On the other side of the wall, the room extended downward, revealing an auditorium with a raised dais in the center.
“Sounds good to me,” he agreed when another wall started rippling.
We watched silently as that wall went through the same process as the previous wall.
“Is that the president?” I asked.
“With secret service in tow,” Scout nodded.
President O’Conner stepped through the newly transparent wall flanked by several men in black suits. They walked right in front of us and through the other transformed wall into the auditorium. With a quick look at each other, we rushed to step through after the president’s men.
“So glad we didn’t try to flash through to this side,” I whispered while staring at the steel catwalk we were standing on. It had been completely invisible from the other side.
“That could have been really bad,” Scout agreed. “A few inches in either direction and we would have been kissing the seats below.”
There was a kiss I could do without. “Come on,” I said, tugging Scout forward.
The president and his men had made it to the central dais when we stepped onto the platform. It was clear the president was waiting for someone, and by how uncomfortable he looked, I guessed he wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Or maybe he hated waiting. Nothing wrong with that.
As the minutes stretched on, I found myself fidgeting uncomfortably. Wait a minute. What was I waiting for? I could talk to the president right now. Sticking one little finger out, I touched his arm. “Mr. President,” I said to his startled expression.
He looked quickly behind him, observing his men spinning wildly as they searched for him. Then he quirked an eyebrow at me. “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” he said without emotion.
