Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III (28 page)

It was time to move on. Canines rarely stayed around for
post-coital chit chat. Rose tried the door several times, but evidently Michael
Segev had locked them inside, had not told anyone they were there, and the
place was not bot-com-able, due to the layers of epon, that heavy-duty
impermeable plastic now used to line all Hong Kong plasmon tunnels.

Well, wasn’t this just peachy
?

At the same moment, Roxanne was crawling through what smelled
like a sewer. She’d gotten herself lost in the shredder chutes, exiting into a
large tunnel which led to another, and another, until now things were starting
to smell like shit, really.

“What is that smell? Yuck, it smells like fermenting
bacteria. Maybe I’m in one of the cell cloning labs,” Roxanne whispered to
herself as she continued crawling down a large passageway. She finally did get
to an open port leading into a vat of percolating
Stem-wads
®, which
smelled even worse, and had to be avoided by flipping backwards over the rim,
and landing on her butt onto the hard, black epoxy-coated floor of the lab.
Luckily the room was empty.

“This looks like one of Leo’s regen labs. I hope there’s an
exit. The labs are probably more heavily guarded than that legal building,”
Roxanne spoke to herself as she reached for the bot-com in her boot.

“Dorian, are you there? Can you hear me now?”

“Roxanne, thank goodness you remain unharmed. I lost contact
with you when you entered the legal building. I am most apologetic. I had
forgotten their enhanced security systems and could not get back to you
regarding an exit strategy. I have been trying to hack their security for the
last hour. Where are you? Are you unharmed?” Dorian sounded afraid. He was
seldom stymied by security networks, and had been going crazy trying to reach
Roxanne.

“I’m fine; it looks like I’m in a lab. Did you get the
formula from Rose yet? Did Rose get away?” Roxanne whispered into her bot-com
while she checked around the lab for intruders. After several seconds she
noticed a door leading into another lab, filled with busy bee scientists who
were bent over microscopes.

“We have delivered the package to its endpoint, and Rose is
safe. Your mission was successful. Now allow me to arrange your exit strategy,
Roxanne. Would you prefer a hoverjet, the tram, or a boat?” Dorian was busy calling
up all the options.

“Whichever is the quickest; just get me out of here. When
are you going to tell the CEO?” Roxanne avoided using names, in case someone
had hacked their com signal. She grabbed one of the white lab coats from a hook
on the door to a cold room, picked up a note pad, and began to examine a
nothing
under one of the microscopes, just in case someone walked in.

“The CEO will be informed tomorrow, once everyone is safe. A
submersible would be the quickest exit strategy for you, but I must arrange
transport to Aberdeen Harbor. There is a small submersible there, one we use
for those missions that never happen. Can you get out of the building? I can’t
get a vid on you while you are in the lab building. It’s shielded.” Dorian
spoke as he manipulated the locking system on the rear door to the lab, from
his remote control room at Donner Pass. He continued to call up the options,
sent a code to have the submersible ready, and hacked a robo-driven limo to
pick her up outside the loading dock of the lab building, next to a large blue
delivery truck marked,
Biohazards
. To be on the safe side, he hacked the
van and locked the individuals inside for the duration. By a strange twist of
fate, the van contained Max’s hired thugs; they were his Triad hit squad.

“I think so, yes. How much time do I have?” Roxanne asked,
grabbing a falcon flask of stem cells from one of the incubators. “You have
three minutes before the van will move. I hacked their systems, locked the
individuals inside, and gave them some thruster problems for the next three
minutes. After that, I assume the driver will signal a remote fix-it service,
and will be able to move the van or have it moved to a service center. Once the
van is moved the limo will be seen on the security vids; it is currently shielding
the limo from the camera. Rose will meet you at the harbor. She should arrive
before you,” Dorian replied.

 “Okay, here goes. I’m out of here.” Roxanne walked from one
lab to the next, holding the flask, pretending to head directly to one of the
vacant microscopes. No one even looked up. Scientists are like that. She turned
left, exiting out the side door just as Dorian managed to shut off its alarm,
and walked past the next two labs to the actual building exit, near the loading
dock. Roxanne Smoot had left the building.

“What do you mean Roxanne Smoot has left the building? How
could she get past the security guards? Find her now.”

Leo was very indeed perplexed. He had no idea why Roxanne
would leave him. That -85 level assistant was no help either. She woke up after
being given the garble-juice antidote, but all she could talk about was a shoe
sale. Had Roxanne gone shopping; and if so, why would she knock the assistant out?

“Check all the department stores, check the vids to see
which door she used, are any limos missing? Don’t just stand there, find her!”
Leo stalked back to his office, shut the door, sat down on the original throne
of King Henry XIII, and cried. He’d had her, and lost her. If she was not
recovered, or worse, if she was in any danger, he’d never forgive himself.
Finally, after several hours of checking vids, security was sure she was still someplace
in the building. They began a floor by floor, room by room search.

Dorian was also in the process of doing just that, a room by
room search of the Aberdeen tunnel, to find Rose; he was checking Rose’s exit
strategy, but had not yet located her. He needed to find her quickly, so she
could meet up with Roxanne at the Aberdeen submersible. Dorian was sure Michael
had stowed her someplace in the Aberdeen tunnel. But thus far, Segev had not
contacted him.

He began by re-running the vids of Rose running out the
front door of the Opus lobby, and finished with her entering the park. He used
satellite recons to search every inch of the park, even using a DNA honing
device, until he found a tiny piece of Rose’s tail near the wall of dirt next
to the entry portal to the tunnel. She had gotten into the tunnel, but Dorian
had no idea which room she had gone to, and the tunnel was huge. He was getting
ready to contact the nearest rebel group to search the tunnel, when he finally got
an incoming contact from Michael Segev.

“Package delivered, I’m on my way to tie up some loose ends,”
Michael said. “Have you seen Rose? I can’t find her,” Dorian responded to
Michael. “That’s one of the loose ends. I’ve hidden her in a storage room inside
the Aberdeen tunnel. I’m heading there now. How would you like her exit to
proceed?” Michael seemed out of breath, like he was running while he spoke. In
fact, he was running across the park, trying to make it into the tunnel before
the sun rose and the temperature climbed to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, in several
minutes. He was not wearing an environmental suit because he’d left the hoverport
at Hong Kong in a hurry. Plus, he had another drab brown, unmarked hoverjet to
catch before the next morning.

“Could you drop her off near our submersible at Aberdeen
Harbor? I have made arrangements. Roxanne will be there also, if her escape is
successful,” Dorian responded. “Will do,” Michael responded as he entered the
tunnel just as the sun rose, ran down the pedestrian corridor to the small
room, and entered to find Rose and Darcy waiting and impatient on the other
side.

“Well, I thought you’d forgotten about us,” Rose tapped her
paw impatiently.

“No time, we’ve got to run. I’ll explain on the way. Put
these on.” Michael donned the enviro-protection suit he’d left in the room a
week ago, and helped Rose and Darcy into their suits. They left via the regular
pedestrian tunnel door and out the normal exit stairs used by all the other dog
walkers, looking much like an individual taking his two large canines out for a
poop.

Once up top, the suits automatically screened out
ultraviolet radiation and kept the encased individual at 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Michael and his canine companions reached the Ap Lei Chau Bridge Road then took
a dual hoverbike for about five minutes, perhaps even passing by Roxanne in the
robot-driven limo. A Buddhist procession was holding up traffic so they ditched
the dual hoverbike and walked the rest of the way, weaving in and out of the
procession, which was fine because dogs were sacred in Hong Kong, although not
at the meat market.

But hired killers were not, and luckily they were still
locked inside that Biohazard van. When they could not exit their van they contacted
headquarters to send another team, this time directly to the Aberdeen Harbor.
Because despite being stuck inside their van, they saw Roxanne Smoot get into
the robo-limo at the science lab loading dock, and tell the driver to take her
to Aberdeen Harbor dock # 23.

At Donner Pass rebel headquarters, Dorian watched everything
on his sat-hack vids. But he was in a hurry that day, and so he failed to
follow his usual commandment; never send crucial recon info via an open sat-hack;
always use the more secure music code.

By some strange twist of fate, that day out in the desert
near Lone Pine, a member of the World Monetary Enterprise, the WME Mutant
Culling Patrol, was outside. He was hungry, tired of regulation rations, and
decided to shoot a coyote for dinner. Because the place was isolated, and because
a recon satellite happened to be passing by, he picked up the signal and sent
it to de-coding headquarters in Ft. Riley, Kansas.

There was a serious delay because the decoder was playing a
pornographic video game and failed to see the red flashing signal for incoming.
But eventually he got the bot signal, read and decoded it, and sent it on to
the Hong Kong Homeland Security Station, where it was subsequently rated as a
level yellow, and thus relayed to the local Aberdeen Harbor patrol.

By the time Dorian realized his mistake it was too late.
Roxanne walked into an ambush, but not by the Homeland Security or Harbor
patrol. Michael, Darcy, and Rose arrived too late. It went down bad. Here’s
what happened.

Roxanne crept out of the lab building, crab walked around
the back of the Biohazard truck, and climbed into the robo-limo, which said,
“Good
day, esteemed customer. Where is your destination today? How would you like to
purchase your ride? I take credits, chits, or vouchers. Please state your
destination, and deposit the required funds.”

“Aberdeen Harbor, please. And I’ll be paying in vouchers.” Roxanne
handed the required three hundred vouchers to the robot, some of the vouchers
she’d grabbed from Leo’s vault, and sat back on the plush brown leather seat.
The robot thanked her, and took off on level five, careful to maintain proper
speed.

“Would you care for chit chat, information on the daily
news, a run-down of the current stock markets, or music?”
the robot
continued.

“Give me the daily news for Tokyo,” Roxanne answered. Three
minutes later, when the engine thruster came back on and the doors unlocked,
the
Biohazard
van followed her, but it was not necessary. The second van
was already waiting at the harbor.

While Roxanne listened to the rundown on Tokyo, the usual
swelling of wage inequality percentages, the continued attempt to save parts of
Tokyo from the rest of the ocean’s rise, and the squelching of a small
rebellion in Mibu, she checked her stash of weapons. She still had her two
knives, a small handgun loaded with six bullets, and those diamonds, although
those would be weapons of a different sort. She’d remained silent during the
ride, careful not to use her bot-com because audio nano-drones were apparent
everywhere, even in the limo back cab. The ride took fifteen minutes, too long,
due to the same Buddhist funeral procession, running mid-street down Ap Lei
Chau Bridge Road for three blocks. The
Biohazard
van caught up with her
taxi, remaining just three limos behind, and one level down.

She arrived before Rose, Darcy, and Michael, which was
unfortunate.

At about the same time that Roxanne arrived at Aberdeen
Harbor, Leo had just sent a long series of messages to every authority in Hong
Kong. He had considered the Hong Kong mafia, the Triad, but nixed that option
for now because they usually did not get involved in competing industrial
espionage wars; it was not an economically sound strategy for them.

“Now I understand; my competitor over at Regen-stem snatched
Roxanne in exchange for ransom. Oh god, I’d even give up my
Stem-wads
® formula
to get her back. They’ve discovered my weakness. What will I do?” Leo was
speaking to no one in particular, but the only other human in the room was
Bitbuns, who appeared at a loss for how to respond. Finally she said,

“You should wait for their bot-com, and then negotiate if
she’s been kidnapped. Start low, maybe they only want some chits, or, you could
exchange a fake or maybe even a slightly altered formula for Roxanne. They
don’t know the actual formula anyway; no one knows it except you. Wait for the
kidnappers to contact you. If nothing else works, contact the Triad; they deal
in kidnaps all the time. For a fee, they may be able to negotiate her release
for you.” Leo turned and looked Bitbuns directly in the boobs, because he came
to that level on this new Max toy.

“You are a genius, whatever your name is. You’re hired.
Report to Human Resources as my newest assistant, as a level 3. Tell them to contact
me if they have any questions. Oh, and check with costuming for something more
appropriate.” Bitbuns was currently attired in one of Max’s signature red and
white polka dot robes. She left the room with a smile, not because she wanted
the job, but because she had succeeded at her mission assignment. The Master
would be pleased.