The Cain Conspiracy (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 8), page 22
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “But it’s the missing piece. We figure that out, we —”
His voice was interrupted by the high-pitched whine, a gentle tone at first, then growing harsher in her ears as it rose in volume.
“Shit!” Reggie said. “They’re waking up!”
Julie spun around to face the machine monsters on the demonstration floor. She couldn’t help but notice the crate she was hiding behind at the moment had a few holes in it. All the way through it. Her hiding spot was no more than that — it wouldn’t offer her any protection whatsoever.
She swallowed a lump in her throat and felt her body beginning to melt into an automatic mode of adrenaline and dopamine. She reached for her weapon, pulled it up and around, and aimed at…
The suits in the first row were empty. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the people who she’d seen inside the Exos from upstairs were not in these suits. There was a whole row of them that stood on the floor, empty, waiting.
“They’re… empty,” she said.
“And they’re not moving,” Reggie added. “That means they’re coming from behind us! Everyone get your weapons up on the doors — get ready!”
A voice interrupted their preparations.
“Hello again, CSO team.”
The high-pitched whine rose to a higher volume level.
Julie felt her mind seized, her thoughts halted, her throat constricting. It was as if she had been bolted to place on the demonstration floor, suddenly shocked into a stunned inability to move.
She tried forcing her foot forward. It worked, but not well. Her foot came up a few inches, halted, then slammed itself back down. It landed only a few millimeters in front of where it had been before. The exertion needed to pull it off was incredible, and she felt herself involuntarily taking a deep breath.
The rest of her team stood stock-still as well, locked in place by the invisible force. It gripped them, had taken them all at precisely the same time. None were moving, and even Ben’s eyes — the only of them facing her — were staring straight back at her unflinchingly.
What the hell is happening?
Her ability to think came back. Her body was still affixed in place, but her brain began churning into overdrive, calculating where she was and what had happened and how it could help get her out and —
Memories.
Her brain had also drudged up memories, as if it were a supercomputer riffing through millions of files all at once to find the one that might serve as a reminder as to what was happening here.
Specifically it found one memory, one she hadn’t realized she still had. She knew exactly where she was, what she was doing.
Holding a pistol.
Aiming the pistol.
Her mind recalled the events leading up that from the perspective of an unreliable narrator. She couldn’t be entirely sure the events were correct, but there was one — right at the beginning of the memory — that she understood.
Her body was fixed in place, unmoving. Couldn’t move it, and she tried.
She remembered how she’d gotten to the point of holding the gun. Aiming it at her friend’s head.
The injection. The thing he stuck you with. The thing Garza stuck you with.
The chemical.
She was paralyzed, just as she’d been in Philadelphia, in Ravenshadow’s gym. Couldn’t move, couldn’t react, couldn’t do anything but stare straight ahead. Her mind was racing, but it was unable to come up with a solution.
The good news was that it was also unable to panic. She stared straight ahead, thinking quickly but moving slower than she ever had. She tried again, this time moving a hand, but a thousand pinpricks of paralysis stifled her. It felt like her arm had fallen asleep, but over her entire body. A painful situation when she tried to move, a more bearable one if she stayed as still as possible.
He did it again was her next thought. He somehow injected us with —
No.
Not an injection.
Julie thought hard, tried to understand what had happened. She would have known it if they’d been injected with something. It had to be enough of the chemical compound that it would render their entire bodies useless, but one of them would have noticed long before.
“If you’re wondering,” the voice said again, the voice of Garza, piped in from high above through invisible speakers. “It was in the air. It’s like a gas chamber. Easy enough to maintain, and we can focus the vapor toward the bottom of the room, preserving the strength of the chemical.”
Of course, she thought. As soon as they’d entered the demonstration room — been led into the demonstration room — she’d felt a slight change in the air. More humid, a little cooler, as if they were walking through a light cloud.
She hadn’t thought much about it, but the others had noticed it, too. Ben’s brow had been covered with droplets of moisture, and Mrs. E had been constantly rubbing her palms against her pant legs.
It was humidity, she realized. It wasn’t water vapor. Garza had injected her in Philadelphia with some chemical compound, one based on the drug scopolamine, and he’d figured out how to release it through an airborne vehicle.
A much cleaner, more efficient method, to be sure.
And a way to get the chemical into a lot of people at the same time.
Her mind wandered to the people inside the Exos. They weren’t Ravenshadow men.
The village.
There had been a mysterious disappearance of the inhabitants of a nearby village. Every man, woman, and child had simply vanished.
She knew what had happened. As if a lightbulb had flicked on, she had the answers they’d been wondering about.
Garza hadn’t needed to put his own soldiers in the suits. He hadn’t needed to train them to control the Exos at all.
He had found an entirely different workforce, and it was one he no longer had to train.
“I hope you are excited about the next demonstration,” Garza continued. “I, for one, cannot wait. This technology has taken me countless hours of experimentation, and a lot of money. But I have to tell you — without you all, this never would have been possible. Juliette, your help in Philadelphia directly led to this demonstration. This final demonstration.”
Julie wanted to scream, to cry, to run, to do anything at all. Instead, she stood riveted to the floor, forced to do nothing but listen to Garza’s words and the oddly soothing sound of the high-pitched whining noise.
“Now, let’s begin. CSO team, please turn and face the center of the room.”
Julie felt her legs moving, her feet shifting. In a few seconds, she was facing the middle of the room, the rows of Exos staring blankly and lifelessly back at her.
“Very good. Now, CSO team, please walk toward the first row of Exos.”
Julie did as she was told.
“Please step around to the back of the nearest Exo you find and pull the large blue handle. The battery hatch will swing open, revealing a small ladder.”
Julie’s arms began working, her hands immediately finding the hatch lever and pulling it up. The interior of the Exo was larger than she’d expected, and she saw a few buttons and display screens at chest-level on the front-end of the suit.
“Finally, CSO team, will you please climb the ladder and enter the suit. The hatch will close behind you automatically.
“Oh, and get comfortable — this will be the last place you’ll ever see.”
IV
Act 4
55
Edmund
I do hope this all ends soon, Edmund thought. He was in the backseat of a car heading out of town. An “Uber,” the concierge had called it. A strange name for a taxicab service, but Father Canisius was not about to complain when the concierge had offered to set it all up. She’d even offered to pay for it and put the amount on his hotel tab.
He had gotten into the Uber and given the location to the driver, and then settled into the backseat, a weight lifted off his shoulders. I am here because God wills it, he told himself. Have a little faith, Edmund. You are the right man for this job.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what that job was — it didn’t matter that he was confused, frustrated, tired. It didn’t matter that this newcomer, Archibald Quinones, seemed to know more about the whole thing than he. None of that mattered. What little trial to go through compared to that of Job.
This was nothing. He could handle it.
Best of all, he had a feeling he was about to get answers. St. Clair had sounded a bit surprised as well when he’d spoken with her on the phone. He assumed that receiving the email from the broker, whoever they were, had been as unexpected to her as it had been to him. She, being the utmost professional, had barely shown whatever surprise she had experienced.
Archie’s call had been more troubling. Here was a third group — or fourth, or fifth, he wasn’t even able to keep track — interested in the deal he was currently in the middle of. Archie had known it was Orland Group, and he had known that the assets being transferred were some sort of defense technology.
It was strange, the Catholic Church involved in the brokering of a deal for arms and munitions, if that’s what it was. But Canisius didn’t know — for all he knew of technology, it could be a simple computer system.
That’s it, he thought. It must be. Archie and his CSO team had been involved in the break-in at the Vatican, which had led to a complete overhaul of personnel and systems training for the security staff. Orland Group must be selling us a new computer system, one that will help with this sort of thing in the future.
It was a harmless purchase, but having the key players’ identities public knowledge would be off-putting at best, and harmful to his organization at worst. The Pope would be under massive scrutiny — purchasing defense systems from a defense conglomerate? The questions would be never-ending, and the cost to hold the press at bay would be mountainous.
Still, there would be talk. Rumors would abound, and they would be especially difficult to deny considering they would be based in truth.
That must be it. They needed Canisius because he was about as removed from anything related to organizational computer systems and defense security as anyone, yet he was high enough in the organization that his seal of approval would be taken at value.
He had figured it out. Satisfied, he allowed his thoughts to drift a bit, even allowed himself to relax in the car.
He leaned back in the seat, feeling exhaustion and surprise and excitement all at once, hoping again that this would be over soon. He dreamt of his own bed in the Vatican, in his home. He closed his eyes. How far he’d come, touring the countries of South America as a young priest, working his way up the ladder of the Catholic Church, until God had called him to Rome.
This place, once much closer to his home, no longer felt familiar. He had grown accustomed to the crowds of Rome, the streets and avenues of Italy, the bustling life of Rome. He had grown apart from this place, and he was surprised he didn’t miss it much.
He had fallen asleep apparently, as a bit later the driver slowed to a stop and turned around in the seat, speaking to him in soothing tones in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Sir,” he said. “We are here. We have arrived.”
Edmund looked around. Where are we? He hadn’t bothered to check the location on a map program when he was at the computer, and he didn’t have a phone to double-check now.
Turning around fully, he saw through the windows that they were in a thick forest, dark shades of greens and browns all around. It looked like the Amazon — a far cry from where they had been in the city. Stones and boulders had been scattered to the sides to clear the unpaved road, and up in front of the driver that road had widened into a parking lot-sized open area.
Just beyond that, behind a massive concrete wall that had to be nearly fifty feet tall, stretched an even more massive structure, this one not manmade.
They were at the base of a mountain, one that seemed to rise straight up on all sides, a spire guarding the surrounding area. A watchtower, overlooking the entire country.
Canisius frowned and asked in Spanish where they were.
“The mountain,” the driver said, shrugging. He lifted a piece of paper — the same one Edmund had given him upon entering the vehicle. “You have given me this location, and the concierge at the hotel has as well.”
Edmund saw two men jogging toward the car, both carrying rifles in their hands.
Edmund looked back at the driver. “No,” he said, swallowing, “it seems that this is the correct location. Thank you.”
He reached into a pocket for his wallet, but saw that the driver was clicking and swiping at something on his phone’s screen, and then he saw the total amount, and a “paid” sticker digitally superimposed.
Technology, he thought. How far we’ve come. He smiled inwardly. How far everyone else has come. He knew he hadn’t advanced beyond being able to check email, as long as it was on a computer that had a large, obvious icon on the desktop he couldn’t double-click.
The two men, wearing black body armor over black pants and boots, reached the car. One on each side, immediately stepping to the back doors. Both were opened simultaneously, and Edmund pulled himself out.
The man on his side of the vehicle reached a hand out and held onto Edmund’s arm. His grip was tight, unmoving, and Edmund saw that the man was very young — possibly in his early twenties.
“My name is Quinones,” the kid said. “Welcome to Ravenshadow. Please, this way. Our director is waiting.”
56
Ben
Ben couldn’t believe what had happened. How they had been led into the demonstration room, given a minute to allow the chemical to enter their systems and completely envelope them, then activated.
Coming here, they had planned for a fight — a traditional exchange of gunfire — and had prepared for a tough slog, an uphill battle. They hadn’t expected an army of Ravenshadow men and an army of mech suit walking tanks.
But they really hadn’t expected to go down without a fight altogether. To be simply “activated” and told what to do by a distant operator. To be funneled into the very suits they had been so mystified by upon seeing them.
Unfortunately it had all become clear to Ben after he’d been locked into place on the demonstration room floor. It had all come crashing down on him as Garza spoke. The missing villagers. The empty row of Exos. The battle in the hallway, where the Exos and the Ravenshadow men had been purposefully missing them, instead forcing them into this room.
And the chemical. Sturdivant hadn’t wanted the suits. It was very likely he didn’t even know about them. The military leader had wanted to check in on Garza’s progress with the chemical. The scopolamine-like compound that Garza had first used in Philadelphia. The compound that was based on a plant native to Peru.
He’d fled the United States to flee men like Sturdivant, men who wanted to profit from Garza’s tech. In the United States Garza would have had a tough legal battle wresting control of his invention from the hands of the government suits, but not here. In Peru he had nearly unlimited access to both the resources — unassuming villagers, the borrachero plant, cheap unused land — and a government that could be easily bought.
Sturdivant had known enough about the chemical and Garza’s goals that he had gotten jealous, had wanted to keep Garza under his thumb. Ben knew men like him, and he also knew that men like Sturdivant were likely the reason men like Garza weren’t allowed to roam free.
It was a battle between the greater of two evils, and so far Garza had won.
Ben half-stood, half-sat in the center of his Exo suit, analyzing and thinking and trying in vain to get his limbs to move. The sound of the high-pitched note seemed less harsh now, likely an effect of the chemical’s dulling of Ben’s senses. But he felt sharp, as if he thought he could react as quickly as normal, but couldn’t when actually trying.
It was similar to having had too much alcohol. He felt as though his thoughts and expressions weren’t inhibited, yet his voice and movements simply didn’t work. It was like being drunk without the headache and without any of the outward signals.
In a word, it was incredible. Ben wasn’t pleased to be on this side of the testing wall, but he had to admit that Garza was sitting on a goldmine. Selling this tech would ensure Garza an unlimited supply of Ravenshadow troops, likely a lifetime cashflow as well. There wasn’t a government on the planet that wouldn’t give their entire GDP forever to get their hands on it.
Why convince citizens to keep in line when you can simply drug them into obedience?
So that was the endgame, but who, realistically, would be the buyer? Ben wanted to know everything, but first he needed to figure out how to live through whatever was about to happen.
And, of course, he needed to figure it out in less than forty-five minutes.
Garza’s voice tore through the air. “CSO team, please activate your Exo by pressing the red button near your right hand.”
Ben did, and the Exo hummed to life. The legs of the machine stiffened, Ben’s own legs pressed a bit tighter by the kevlar padding in the interior of the suit. The arms, where they connected to the torso of the suit, rotated and came to a ready position slightly bent at the elbows, the “hands” resting just a bit in front of the shoulder.
Ben also noticed that the high-pitched sound wasn’t the sound of the Exo after all. The machine had been completely lifeless, dead to the world save for the locking mechanism that had automatically activated after he’d entered.
That meant the sound was coming from somewhere else.
Then Ben heard it. There were small speakers inside the suit to his right and left, and when he’d activated it they had turned on as well, and the sound — the whine that he’d been hearing — emanated even more loudly through those speakers.
