The Empowered, page 35
She was stubborn, I’ll give her that.
I went over to her, nodded at Keisha, who went to Frank’s other side. We each grabbed an arm and pulled. Frank groaned, struggled, but we managed to get her arms free. “Simon, let her feel it,” I said.
He brought the panel up and I levered her arm around so that her palm faced the panel. She yelled, tried to fight it but her palm touched the panel.
Her eyes widened. “What the hell!”
“What do you see?”
Her eyes widened further. “Shit, what is this?”
Frank’s eyes took on a faraway look.
“This is alive but not like anything I’ve touched before.” She blinked. “There’s ocean, and a cave filled with these things, being grown and built at the same time.” She shuddered, pulled her hand back and collapsed on the couch.
“Where? Where was this?”
She shook her head. “Give me a moment, won’t you?” The anger was gone, she just sounded exhausted.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Coughed. Looked at me, like she was seeing me for the first time. “That thing is something new. When I read an object, I can see where it’s been, pick up impressions. When I touch a person, I can do likewise. I can see their past, in little flashes.
“With this thing it’s both. It was born, made, created, whatever, in a cave on the Oregon Coast. I’ve been to that stretch of coast before, I recognized it. I have a clear picture of what the place looks like. I also felt the panel being moved.”
“But how can you see with something that doesn’t have eyes?” Connor interrupted. “That’s crazy. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Kid, I have no idea. It’s my power. I didn’t make it, it made me. Our powers make us who we are.”
Bullshit, but I’d let her talk anyway.
Connor clearly didn’t get it either, but he shut up. Keisha and Simon just let her talk, too. None of us could explain our powers, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t use them.
Frank went on to tell us about the place, there was a sunken building beneath the waves, connected to the cave on one end and another building atop the cliff. The place was neat, organized, controlled. A factory or a lab. Or both.
She finished. Went to a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of whisky and poured herself a shot. She knocked it back, then poured another.
She looked at me. “You’d be smart to head the other way from that place.”
“I’m not going to. We’re going to check it out.” I put my hands on my hips.
“And you are going to come with us.”
14
Frank surprised me by not arguing, but instead getting really drunk. She kept knocking back drinks until we realized she was hell bent on getting way drunker than shit faced.
“Stop her,” I told Keisha, who watched her reach for another bottle. Frank wobbled. Keisha didn’t have to do much, Frank practically fell over. Keisha caught her before she did, eased her onto the floor.
“Why is she getting so drunk?” Connor asked me.
“Probably thinks it will keep us from taking her.”
Keisha looked up from the floor, her face hard. “Why the hell do we care? She already said she wasn’t going to help us.”
“I’m volunteering her.”
“Why do we need her?” Keisha asked.
“I want her to read on what we find there.”
Keisha gave me a blank look.
“Think about it,” I said. “She’ll be able to read items we find there, and help us connect the dots.” Which was true, as far as it went. But I also didn’t want someone else from the Scourge dropping by Frank’s after we left and finding out where we’d went.
Keisha looked over at Frank, who was passed out on the floor. “Maybe she’s trying to kill herself then.”
“I bet it would take a lot more booze than that to kill her.” Frank had all the signs of a hardcore drinker.
Simon stood by the door, watching us the whole time, no emotion on his face, not saying a word, until then.
“Why even do this?” We all looked at him. “Is this what the Scourge ordered us to do after we finished the job? We have seized armor and a biotech capsule. Shouldn’t we deliver them to your contact?” He said it coolly, without pulling any macho bull, just matter-of-fact.
Didn’t matter. I was in charge. Mat, not Simon.
“Because they’ll want to know about where this was produced. We might get info on how it was made. Hell, we might even get our hands on the chemistry and production how-tos.” I was reaching here, trying to come up with reasons that he’d buy.
He listened, didn’t react, just listened, which made me more amped up. “They’re looking for something to use against the Hero Council,” I said. There, I’d put that out in the air.
Simon raised an eyebrow.
“Fuck-what?” Keisha said, while Connor just looked confused.
Frank mumbled something in her alcohol-fueled slumber.
Keisha looked incredulous. “This is the first I’ve heard that they are looking for an angle against the Hero Council. I thought they wanted money.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed. “It was my understanding they were interested in learning more about where our powers came from.”
“They are. They want to know about that, want to know how it all works.”
“That, and money,” Keisha broke in.
“Yeah, money, too.” This was stupid. “But you all know the Inner Circle wants the Scourge to have the means to change things, right?”
Keisha shrugged. “Sure, but this is long-term, right?”
“Not necessarily. This might be the big chance they’ve been looking for.”
Keisha frowned. “Now who is the mushroom being kept in the dark?”
That felt like a punch to my gut. I didn’t have a comeback.
“We gotta do this,” I said.
Connor looked worried. “What are you talking about?”
“The job before this one, we were sent down to Colombia.”
“Found some nasty shit there,” Keisha said.
“Like what?”
Keisha scowled. “Tree-things that moved.”
Connor’s eyes widened.
I nodded. “Some kind of artificial life form.”
“You really believe this facility on the Oregon Coast is important enough to break into?” Simon asked.
Maybe I was grasping at straws, but the truck job was the first break I’d had in trying to find out who was behind the horror show.
“Yeah, I do.”
I turned the TV on, flipped the channels. I-5 was closed due to an accident, but that’s all the announcers said. “Funny they aren’t saying anything more about what happened,” I pointed out. The woman anchor had blow-dried hair and perfect makeup, with a perky but empty-eyed look. Must be reading from something. I flipped to another station. Same thing.
“See,” I said. “You’d think the army would be there after what we did, and that it would be all over the news.”
Keisha shook her head. “This is supposed to convince us, Mat? Really?”
If you looked up hard-headed in the dictionary, I swore you’d find a picture of Keisha. “Look,” I said, “the Inner Circle gave me some discretion with this job, so I’m using it.” No one argued, they just listened to what I had to say. “This subsidiary of Ellis’s, Emerald Biologic, has to have some pull with the government, otherwise the TV news wouldn’t be hiding the truth about what we pulled off this afternoon. And you heard Frank’s reading.”
The Inner Circle might get royally pissed at me for taking the cell and Frank off on a little unauthorized job, but I figured it was better to ask forgiveness afterwards than permission before, and maybe seeing the chance slip away, or being told no. My turn to call a shot and I was taking it.
The group stood there, considering what I said. After a moment, Simon spoke up. “She’s right,” he told the others. “We should investigate.”
“Great, another shit job for the junior varsity,” Keisha grumbled.
“So, we’re going on another job?” Connor asked, looking confused.
“Sure as hell looks like it.” Keisha said.
Frank didn’t wake up until we got to the Oregon border the next morning. Simon drove, like always, with Keisha up front, staring at the window, and Connor sleeping next to Frank on a bench in the back of the truck.
I was restless. Support was probably having kittens about now because I hadn’t contacted them in a few days, but they were the ones who reminded me I needed to be patient.
My necklace hadn’t vibrated, so no Empowered contact from the Inner Circle.
Frank groaned and grabbed her head. “Where the hell am I?”
“In Oregon.”
“Damn it.” She sat up, rubbed her eyes. “Why aren’t we all in a detention center someplace, waiting for a one-way ticket to Special Corrections?”
“Because Support doesn’t know where we are.”
“Fool’s luck,” she said. Her eyes were so bloodshot they looked like tomatoes. I passed her a bottle of water. “I could use some hair of the dog,” she said.
“Don’t have any.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” She drank more water. “So, why the hell do you need me? I told you where the Complex was.”
“Because we will need you to read what we find there.”
She put her head in her hands. “Shit. I wanted to be done with all this.”
“This is the last time,” I said.
She gave me a sour look, but didn’t say anything.
We drove up Highway 101, along the coast, the ocean stretching blue-gray off to the horizon, but so what? I didn’t notice it beyond the color and that the ocean was wide. I sweated figuring out how we could get into this secret complex. We had no idea how heavily guarded it was. It had to be a secret, but what did that mean? Was it the “secret” place that everyone in town either worked at or knew someone who worked at it? How could you keep a place like that under wraps? If the town was a little hole in the wall, than maybe all the people who worked at the Emerald Biologic factory/lab/whatever it was lived in dorm housing. But then you'd need to truck in all sorts of supplies.
It made my head spin trying to figure out how they could.
I tapped Keisha on the shoulder. “Let’s switch."
She started to say something, probably fuck off, then sighed, unbuckled her seat belt and traded places with me. She didn't even slam the little window between the cab and the back of the truck shut, just slid it slowly closed, and didn't even glance at Frank, just laid down on the bunk. Must be tired.
We all were, but I wasn't about to let that slow me down. Didn't have much time. Sooner or later the Inner Circle was going to want an update. I didn't want to have to argue with them.
And then there was Support. By now they must know it was my cell that hit the shipment. Chances are they’d give me a little time, but I didn't really know, especially not with Zhukova in charge.
I buckled myself in. The ocean had disappeared behind a hillside covered in trees. One of the capes, I had no idea which.
"You have a question for me." Simon said, eyes still on the road as he drove.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you aren't prone to engage in casual chitchat."
"I do make small talk."
"Not around us."
Okay, this was veering into dangerous territory. I didn't because I was a spy, and apparently a sucky one, since a smart spy would have figured out she needed to make small talk to keep people from thinking she was acting weird.
"Well, I do have a question for you."
Simon actually laughed. Sure, it was silently, but he laughed.
Yeah, okay, so I'd made his point. Sue me.
"The lab complex we are headed to,” I said.
"Assuming it actually exists."
"Why wouldn't it? Frank read it."
"This is assuming she and we interpreted her reading correctly."
"She saw a lab. She saw it on the coast, here. Recognized the landscape."
He shrugged. "Certainly that's what she thought she saw. But what if the reading was based off a false impression? Then she'd have wrongly interpreted what she saw."
I shook my head. I was screwed if that was the case, but I didn't see how. My face was hot. "Listen, she's right."
"Very well." He sounded very unconvinced. Whatever. I was going with this.
"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. “
"What did you want to ask my opinion of?" His English accent made him sound even more skeptical.
Now my question sounded idiotic. "How would a secret lab like this operate? Assuming it does exist." And it sure as hell better exist or my ass was toast.
"You mean, assuming it was secret."
"If that armor came out of there, and so did that blob crap, then it had better be secret, otherwise people would be pissed off and want it shut down."
"Perhaps."
I rapped my hand on the dash board. "Come on, Simon! Of course they'd be upset."
He didn't argue with me, just listened. Didn’t even seem irritated. God, that was annoying.
I continued. ”They'd be at the gates, demanding the government do something."
"I'll grant that if the public knew, they'd want to have the government take action to deal with the situation."
"If they knew? If?"
"Assume that Emerald Biologic is acting in secret, for government contractors."
"You've thought about this."
He smiled a thin smile. "We have had some time on our hands, giving me time to consider this."
Simon was even smarter than he let on, which made him even more dangerous. He tended to see through things. That meant he could see through me. That was a nasty thought. I still had no idea what drove him, what made him stick with the Scourge. That meant I had no idea what he would do. How loyal he was to the Scourge, or how loyal, like that bastard Mutter, he might be to himself. Mutter had nearly killed me. Simon couldn't control the air like Mutter, but with his incredible reflexes he could knife me in the back and slit my throat a second later. The only friend I had in the Scourge was Keisha, and even she would probably try to kill me if she found out I was an infiltrator for Support. Simon would likely just kill me sooner if he learned.
"So, if the complex is secret, how do they keep it that way?” I asked him.
"Run a largely automated facility. Put it in the middle of nowhere, give it its own power supply."
"Automated?"
"Robotic production, computerized control, with minimal personnel."
A cold hand grasped my heart. Jesus. "That would cost a lot of bucks."
The thin smile again. "Ellis is a billionaire."
Stupid, of course he was. But still, having a robotic facility had to be spendy even for him.
"So how do they protect it?" I asked him.
The ocean reappeared as we came out of the hills. The shoreline was close to the bottom of the cliff the highway ran along. High tide.
"Maybe with onsite security. Probably by putting in a private beach area, closed off to the public."
Ruth had told me, once, that when she was young Oregon tried to make all the beaches open to everyone, but after the Three Days War, rich people were able to buy up beach access.
How hard would it be for a super rich guy to buy up someone else's private beach and the land around it? Wave enough money and people would jump at the chance.
I had another nasty thought. "What if they've got killer tree things?"
"Artificial plant forms like the ones in Colombia?" He looked skeptical.
"Why the hell not?"
"Because Oregon isn't a remote Colombia rain forest. Someone would probably find out."
"So, just security guards then?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps there are automated defenses. Certainly there will be hidden security cameras."
Yeah, that seemed likely.
"But what about the sea?"
He raised an eyebrow. Gotcha, Limey. You hadn't thought about that, and neither had they.
I smiled. That would work for me.
15
The boat pitched in the swell, and I gripped the railing. Yeah, this had been my idea.
"You are one crazy woman, you get that?" Keisha said, then leaned over the railing and vomited her breakfast.
Connor laughed. "This is fun.”
I shook my head. Crazy kid. Before he was confused, and worried. Now he was having the time of his life.
My plan only worked because Simon knew how to drive, I mean, "pilot," a boat. He was in the pilot house, steering the boat through these too-big-for-me waves.
We were a long way from the city. I wanted to get back as soon as I could.
The shore was a dark mountain in the pre-dawn gloom, lit green in my night-vision goggles. Sunlight was just starting to smear the black sky with gray light.
Simon had picked a boat docked with half a hundred others a few miles south. We didn't have much time.
I tugged at my wetsuit. The thing was tight. Connor's eyes had bulged when I came out of the cabin wearing it for the first time. Yeah, it showed off my chest. I told him to watch his eyes. He had swallowed hard. ”Yes, ma'am," he'd said.
Yes, ma'am. I was maybe four years older than him.
Frank refused to come out of the cabin, so I went back inside.
Her face was greener than moldy cheese.
"Why don't you just shoot me now," she groaned.
"We don't carry guns, remember?"
She dry heaved. A bucket held her vomit. Geez, for someone who had drank her dinner the day before, then only eaten crackers and chicken soup, she had had a lot in her.
"I need you to give us another read."
She didn't bother arguing. I handed her the panel we'd brought with us. She brushed her hands over it, closed her eyes. For a second, her face looked less green.
"In a cove. It's in a cove. Go in east. Now."
She was so sure of herself.
I took the panel from her, and she suddenly slumped back, looked green again and dry heaved.
I put the panel back in the duffel bag, zipped it up and went to tell Simon.
