Sleeper Seven (15 page)

"Where are we now?" she inquired.

"Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russian Federation."

She felt like a real spy now, flying low over Russian airspace in the dead of night. A few minutes later and she was back over water, the 'Sea of Okhotsk', her craft informed her.

Jess continued to mull over the plan: all the permutations, the probabilities, and how she would handle each contingency. While she was deciding whether she might be over-thinking it, the craft conveniently interrupted her with the news they were only fifteen minutes from their destination. Not even realizing they were over land again, she looked down to find a smattering of faint lights speeding by below.

After a few minutes, she noticed a cluster of lights ahead — a city — and what looked like a large Christmas tree in the midst of it. The craft began to decelerate, pulling her body forward as the cloudiness around the nose dissipated. On the approach to the city, she realized how massive the building was — it utterly dominated the skyline, and though the other structures around it stood twenty or thirty stories, this one must have been a hundred at least. Other than this giant, there weren't many other lights on in this, the largest city in North Korea, and though four A.M. local time, it still appeared more like a sleepy American suburb than a vast urban metropolis.

Closing in, the craft remained scarily low, a few tens of feet above the concrete, as it violently weaved its way between the buildings instead of rising over them. Her adrenaline flowing, she clutched the armrests tightly, even though she knew intellectually that she could trust this craft to get her the final few miles on this six-thousand mile journey.

Tall apartment buildings flew past, devoid of any lights, the roads below similarly empty. It felt dead here; almost post-apocalyptic. After banking around one large apartment complex, she found herself on a direct approach to the target. Composed of three massive wings that rose from the ground and converged to a single sharp point, the building looked to Jess like a gigantic dagger stabbing upwards towards the sky.

The craft decelerated further as it climbed towards the mid-point of the structure, just as planned. Pushing her hands flat against the forward viewing panels, Jess gritted her teeth as the craft silently glided to a dead stop inches from the mirrored glass that covered the building.

Although the large decorative lights running up each wing of the building were lit, there were no individual lights on in any of the rooms — like many of the other buildings in the city. Looking straight ahead, Jess noticed a faint glow emanating from the hotel window a few feet in front of her. It took her a moment to realize it was only the reflection of her own phone's screen, which she quickly pocketed.

"OK, here we go," she announced to the empty cabin.
That was a pretty lame pep talk,
she thought to herself, as she lay back and closed her eyes. Dropping out, she slipped below the craft. The height was dizzying, and forgetting herself momentarily, she instinctively clawed her way towards the wall of the building, until she regained her composure and drifted steadily down to ground level.

Entering the main doors to the building, Jess found the lobby could only be described as
garishly depressing:
a long white marble front desk to the left, attended by a dozing female clerk, opposite a plaid-upholstered lounge area to the right. Straight ahead stood the centerpiece of the lobby, a tremendous cylindrical waterfall. Descending from three stories above, the murky water streamed past long strands of green algae tenaciously clinging to the faux rock face, before collecting in a bubbly yellowish froth at the bottom. The water feature, adorned with colorfully large flora and fauna, was surrounded by a bright green carpet of grass. Everything, except for the water itself, was made of plastic. Even in her subtle body, Jess could somehow smell the decay permeating the place.

Noting nothing else of interest, she ascended to the fourth floor to find herself in a circular hall, with corridors that branched off into each of the three wings. Choosing one at random, she proceeded down it, poking her head through the doors into each individual room. All of them were empty — no furnishings, fixtures, or even carpeting; nothing but cold empty spaces defined by the concrete walls, floors, and ceilings — more akin to jail cells than luxury hotel rooms. She had inspected almost twenty of these rooms when she realized the futility of her search, considering the hundreds of rooms that remained. She was on a race against the sunrise, after all, that she had already escaped once just a few short hours ago.

Gathering her energy into a pinpoint of light, she zipped through the walls from one room to the next, finishing the entire floor in under a minute. Moving up a floor, she found herself outside due to the incline of the hotel. This gave her an idea, and she began traveling in a wide arc around — and through — the arms of the hotel. Once the outermost rooms were cleared, she tightened her radius until she arrived back at the central core. Then she went up a level and repeated the spiraling maneuver outwards, a pattern of inside-outside-inside as empty rooms and open air flew past her at intervals. It was thrilling, and more important, fast and effortless.

Only when she reached a third of the way up the building did she see any sign of finish work, and even then it was randomly distributed in certain rooms instead of across the entire floor. She passed her craft, still hovering patiently outside the fiftieth floor, forgetting entirely that her body lay within it. Finally, at the seventieth floor, she found entire floors that had been almost completely finished, yet all were still unoccupied. A few floors later she at last came upon a smattering of rooms containing actual sleeping guests, and though they were all male, none matched the description of the man she was looking for.

Only at the highest floors were the rooms fully finished and occupied, and at this point she was spiraling in a tight circle only a few hundred feet across. One room caught her attention only because its lone resident was asleep on the floor. She backed up to investigate further and discovered a bloody gash on the man's head. He was breathing, but possibly unconscious instead of asleep. Most importantly, he was a good seven feet tall, which was a key feature of her target.

Approaching him, she expanded into her subtle body, and leaning down, moved her fist quickly through the floor next to his head. The soft thuds produced didn't even stir him, but after making several louder raps she noticed one eyelid flutter briefly.

Suddenly, the door to the room flew open and a man dressed in crisp military garb, bayonet rifle slung across his back, entered and charged towards them. She flew backwards, trying ineffectively to hide herself, but he completely ignored her presence. Speaking angrily in Korean, he found no response from the man on the floor, and for a moment he stood silently, eyeing his captive with suspicion. Stepping forward, he kicked the man in the stomach, and after receiving nothing but a grunt in return, stormed out and slammed the door.

Jess chastised herself for not clearing the area before trying to wake him, and proceeding down a few rooms, peeked into the center hallway from a safe distance. The same guard, along with another, were stationed on each side of her target's door, standing at full attention — even though it was half-past three in the morning.
Crap,
she thought to herself. They had simulated this scenario in Nevada, but assumed the guards would be asleep, or at the very least seated and drowsy.

She moved further down the curving hallway, bringing her out of sight of the guards. On this side of the building, she found a few remaining unfinished rooms. Two didn't even have windows in place yet, just sheets of heavy plastic covering roughed-in holes in the concrete, which alternately stretched taut and rippled from the wind outside.

Focusing her energy, Jess sped down at an angle towards her waiting craft. After bringing herself back into her physical body, she instructed the craft where to go.

"Rise to just below the top of the building then corner around...um, actually, is there a manual control mode?"

"Manual controls active," the craft replied. Grabbing her phone, she watched the map view slide down to reveal a plain gray screen.

"What the hell?" she despaired, thinking the app had crashed on her. She poked at the gray screen three times, each tap resulting in a pronounced jiggle of the craft. Freezing her hand in mid-air, she lowered it and gently touched the screen. Sliding her finger slowly forward, the craft accelerated forward. Sliding back brought it to a halt. Twisting two fingers turned the craft in place, and two finger slides moved the craft vertically as well as horizontally.
Nice,
she thought, getting the hang of it.

After silently piloting the craft to the higher floor where her target lay, she maneuvered it around to the other side, just outside the unfinished room, and after aligning it as close to the window as possible, took a moment to prepare herself.

"Return to autopilot, hold position, and open, please." The screen slid back to the map view, and as she pocketed the phone, the canopy separated, sliding apart with the familiar hiss.

The cold wind plastered her hair to her face as she eyed the rippling plastic opening a few feet away. Taking a deep breath, she leaned out over the edge of the craft, and reaching forward, struggled to tear the hard plastic sheeting with one hand, while firmly grasping the lip of the open cockpit with the other. After muttering some choice curse words, she was finally able to poke a hole and tear a two foot gash in it. Lifting one leg outside of the cockpit, she placed her foot against the hull of the craft and leaned further, reaching her forearm into the opening. Grabbing hold of the interior window sill, she let go of the craft and pulled herself in.

Tumbling onto the bare concrete floor with a thud, she lay still for a moment, but heard only the wind flapping through the gaping hole in the sheeting. As her eyes adjusted to the dark room, she could see the faint light of the hallway under the door. After army-crawling into the nearest corner, she curled up in a fetal position to keep warm, and began to exit again.

Once out, she left the room and traveled down the circular hallway, towards the brightly lit finished area. Rounding a curve, she observed the two guards, again standing stock still and with eyes wide open. Her improvised plan now was to make a commotion, drawing them away from the door and giving her enough time to get back into her body, physically enter the room, and drag her charge — if necessary — back to the idling craft.

Beyond the guards stood a bank of three elevators in the core support cylinder of the building, and further down she spied an open stairwell. Gathering herself to a point, she flew unnoticed above the guard's heads and dove into the stairwell, spinning downwards a few flights. She circled a moment, listening to see if she was spotted, but heard nothing. As she spun around, she imagined herself heavier and denser, and after having gained some momentum, plowed directly into one of the iron railings.

The intensity of the metallic clang that ensued surprised even her, and upon hearing a shout from above, she flew back up to observe the result. Instead of both guards leaving their post to investigate, however, one remained in an attack pose, gun drawn and ready, while the other was nowhere to be seen.

Speeding down the hall in the opposite direction, she came upon the second guard circling around from the other side, who was quickly checking each room with a flashlight. An ice-cold chill ran through her as she discovered he was only one door from the room where her body lay.

Before she had any time to think about contingencies, he was in the room, shining his flashlight on her body huddled motionless in the corner. Drawing his gun, he shouted again, and she heard the footsteps of the first guard running down the hallway towards them. Appearing in the doorway, the second guard entered the room and trained his gun on her body as well. Frozen with fear, she could only watch, helpless, as this scene from a horror film came to life in front of her.

~ 33 ~

R
eceiving no response from the body in the corner, the two guards seemed befuddled as to how to handle this strange situation. The second guard, noticing the flapping of the open window, sidestepped over to it and carefully peered through the hole. Jerking his body back like a cat escaping a paper bag, he shouted to the other guard while fumbling with the radio on his belt. Speaking haltingly into his handset, she could tell he was having difficulty explaining the situation to whoever was on the other end.

The first guard, realizing the prone form on the floor was an intruder — and a strange looking one at that — lifted his gun to his shoulder, stepped forward, and kicked her body in the stomach. She heard herself emit a muffled
'oof'
as her body writhed in pain, but in her current state she felt nothing, except for a rising anger, stirring her from the shock of being discovered.

Spinning in a tight circle, she imagined herself as dense as a billiard ball, and flew into the back of the guard who had kicked her. She felt the impact to his rib cage, at which point her mass must have depleted, as she propelled through his torso without any further resistance. Disgusting as it was to feel the hot bone, marrow, lungs and heart, each of which she could clearly distinguish, it had the intended effect of knocking him to the ground where he lay groaning and writhing in pain.

The remaining guard swung around wildly, searching for whoever had attacked his partner. If he had turned off his flashlight, he might have noticed a dim light gaining speed in a wide arc around the room. Instead, he flailed about ineffectively until receiving an unexpected punch to the solar plexus that sent him reeling. Crumpling to the ground, he projectile vomited — to Jess' dismay — directly onto her shoes.

She quickly returned to her body, and waking up, was assaulted a second time with the stench of her handiwork. "Agggh!" she exclaimed, and holding her shirt sleeve over her nose, stood and wiped her pukey shoe on the guard's pant leg. Confiscating their weapons, she slid them out the window opening to the ground, then dragged the guards one by one to the elevator bank down the hall. After pressing the call button, she shoved them into the first car that arrived, and sent them, groaning, down to the lobby.