Sons of Abraham: Terminate (5 page)

              The screen lit up once more with the sphere and fibers, another file he’d longed for since he could remember.  He was denied access to the schematic at first, but his knowledge of security allowed him to patch through the directory after several minutes.  The file started to transfer, though far slower than the others had taken.  He looked to the door, expecting the annoying Vanessa to return and demand access to the Cyber network.  His eyes remained fixed, but the door continued to remain closed. 

              The tablet vibrated, leading him to whirl in his seat.  A smile forced itself to his cheeks as he continued to load every file on the directory.  His entire life had been spent in search of the information, now pouring onto his personal datapad.  A red light blinked in the upper right corner, reminding him to pull the next thick tablet from his pocket.  He continued the file transfer with the glee of a child at Christmas, taking out four more pads from his pockets and returning the full ones to their assigned pouches. 

              One last file remained, which he opened without hesitation.  The file was enormous compared to the others, but he happily began to transfer it to its own pad, the last in his possession.  He watched the remaining time tick away at the bottom of the screen, the minutes eventually turning to seconds.  Finally, the word ‘Gabriel’ vanished from the desktop.  He pulled up the core directory and returned the desk to its slumbering state.

              With renewed vigor, the tall man sprang from the seat, allowing the swing arm to slam back to its home position.  He skipped to the door and waited for it to open, his thoughts filled with endless possibilities.  Three tunnels presented themselves, but only one had the lights glowing above it.  He followed the left tunnel, content to return to the group, unaware of his removal of data from the lab’s directories. 

              The walk was long, but he found himself reunited with the group after passing through two more doorways.  The room in which the group had stopped was enormous, reaching out to Jones’ left for hundreds of feet.  Beams held the ceiling in place, with various stations surrounding each one.  Many of the stations held patient tables, with a clasp around the hands, chest, and thighs of the subject.  They were empty now, but Jones could imagine the first Cybers receiving their cybernetic implants, reaching the next evolution of mankind. 

              “Find anything?” Sanchez asked, leaning against the right wall of the room.

              “Nothing of use,” Jones replied.  “A few schematics for the layout, some schedules, and a bunch of emails.  Without the passwords, I couldn’t access much else.”

              “Figures.  Maybe you should go help your friends.”

              Jones leaned into the short man, his chiseled features casting shadows upon his face as his narrow eyes closed in on Sanchez.

              “Let’s get one thing straight,” he whispered.  “I resemble you much more than them.  Personally, I think this whole trip is a waste of resources.”

              “Agreed,” Sanchez said, his jaw muscles locking firm.  “But the sooner you find what you’re looking for, the sooner my men and I can return to base.  So get moving.”

              Jones smiled as he walked away from the man.  He always appreciated the spine that came along with commanding a military group.  Even a tiny man like Sanchez could display his authority by remaining strong in the face of adversity.  Normally, smaller men would cower as to Jones when he laid into them.  Sanchez, however, was strong, someone to be respected.

              “I don’t see how that helps us,” Kohl replied to Vanessa’s finding.  “We’re not attempting to discover the surgical methods for creating new Cybers.  We are here for one purpose, to find Gabriel and his knowledge.  Do you see anything on there that can help us, or not?”

              Vanessa sat at a terminal, much like the black desks in the first room.  Jones watched as her expert hands flipped through the files, searching for anything that mentioned Gabriel. 

              “Not much, though his name comes up often in the archives,” she muttered.  “It seems he had a knack for saying things that people wanted to write down.”

              “Alright,” Jones injected.  “So bring those up and let’s go through them.  Maybe you can piece a timeline together based on what Kohl already knows.”

              Vanessa turned in her chair, a look of dismay forming on her dark face.  Her eyes looked up at him, boring a hole through his face.

              “There are three thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two files that mention his name,” she snapped.  “How long do you think this will take?”

              “As long as we need it to,” Jones muttered, looking over her shoulder at the screen.

              Sargent Roland Bearden’s fist clenched as he and Corporal James were escorted from their meeting with Mr. Lache, the CEO of Divinity Corporation.  The two had spoken for hours, relentlessly informing the man of the attack on the Parasus moon facility.  When they had completed their debriefing, the man had the nerve to appear unmoved, showing no signs of concern for the countless loss of life that the team had endured.

              Three men in suits were waiting for them outside of Lache’s office, dressed in similar pants and jackets, none of which seemed to fit the men very well.  The pair had just been reassigned to another Divinity facility, resting on the outskirts of Taurus.  Somehow, Bearden had thought that they would go to Earth and meet with the government to discuss the Cyber’s latest attack, but Lache waved off the notion, stating that he would talk directly with the President himself tomorrow. 

              “Have a nice day,” Hannah Beam spurted from her desk.

              “Thanks,” Janys muttered though the Corporal lacked any enthusiasm in her words. 

              They trekked the long hallway, the Parasus horizon in full view from the top of the Divinity building.  Bearden watched the various transport vehicles scurry across the roads below, wondering if an attack on Parasus itself was likely.  The planet was known more for its tourism, offering boat trips to exotic locations of the planet’s islands, as well as galactic tours of nebulas and stars, assuming one had enough credits in their account.  Somehow, he couldn’t see a tourist planet having the military presence to handle a terrorist attack.

              The elevator opened as the three men waited for Bearden and Janys to reach the back of the lift before entering.  The man on the right pressed the button on the panel as the group watched the doors close before them.

              Bearden’s mind continued to work through the events.  Lache should have been pissed upon discovering the attack on his facility.  The man should have shown some indication that he wouldn’t rest until the dead were brought to justice.  He memorized the man’s taut face, replaying the conversation through his head as the elevator descended.  Something about the situation didn’t sit well in his stomach, leaving him to question the motives of the CEO.  He understood why they only met with him, rather than a committee.  Lache would need to use his own words to inform his people, and not the gruesome picture that Bearden would paint for them.  He would use political terms, like ‘unfortunate’ and ‘hostile.’  No matter how many times he played the conversation through his head, he still could not wrap his mind around why they were going to Taurus when logic dictated they go to Earth.

              “Well, at least, Taurus has its own gravity,” Janys whispered.  “No more floating tank adventures for you, Sargent.”

              The red-haired woman’s words were lost to him as his eye caught something on one of the man’s pants.  The man on the right, operating the lift, had a bright light coming from his pants pocket.  Bearden’s dark blue eyes focused on the outline, realizing that a data pad had just received a message.  The thin material of the man’s pants did little to obscure the view as two outlines were clearly visible through the fabric. 

              Bearden looked to the wall of the elevator, the glass-like surface reflecting the images of the man’s data pad.  He could make out two faces with a block of text in between them.  His curiosity was gaining the better of him, driving him insane with what was on the data pad. 

              “At least, he didn’t fire us,” Janys continued.  “I think they should promote us, but maybe CEO’s see things differently.  Maybe this transfer will be a good thing, you know?  At least, we can stretch our legs on Taurus and eat some decent food for a change.  What ya think?”

              Bearden ignored her, still focused on the data pad in the man’s pocket.  He didn’t know why there would be a message with two people’s pictures on it.  Maybe the company was placing a bulletin for the missing scientist.  He frowned, realizing that Dr. Green would be the only one Divinity cared about.  The rest were lab techs, easily replaced with new recruits or transfers.  The entire security force could be replaced as well as many ex-military sought Divinity for their next assignment.  Divinity paid well and had stronger benefits packages than the military of any planet, save Eden.  Somehow, Bearden doubted that the Overseers would welcome an aging ex-grunt.  Still, he couldn’t quite understand what Divinity would be doing by placing two people’s pictures on notice.  It suddenly dawned on him who the two people might be.

              His hand lashed out, shoving into the man’s pants pocket and retrieving the data pad.  The startled man twirled around, his eyes barely reaching the Sargent’s chin.  The Sargent shoved on meaty paw against the man’s chest, pinning him to the wall of the elevator, and preventing him from retrieving his property.

              “What the hell?” the middle man snapped.

              “Sarge?” Janys asked, her eyes becoming uneasy as the three men in suits looked to one another.

              Bearden didn’t care about their protests, his fingers darted across the screen of the pad, and brought the message back to life.  As he’d suspected, a picture of himself and Janys James filled the screen, the words ‘terminate’ resting in the red block between the profiles.  He didn’t think twice, his training kicking into a place of his mind as his hand clenched the man’s shirt, pulled him forward, and then smashed him against the wall of the elevator.

              The other two men started to merge on the towering Sargent.  Janys stepped back, then lunged forward, her fist crushing the jaw of the man on the left.  He stumbled to his knees, knocking the man in the middle off balance, bringing him to the ground as well.

              “What is this?!” Bearden snapped, holding the datapad to the man’s face.  “Why does it say ‘terminate’ next to our pictures?”

              A gun was drawn from under a jacket, quickly being pulled to face the aggressive Sargent.  Bearden dropped the man from his grasp, turning his attention to the pistol.  His hand clutched over the gun, wrenching from the smaller man’s grip before he could pull the safety lever.  Bearden’s hand swung back, then lashed forward, the handle of the pistol smashing into the nose of the suited man in the middle. 

              Janys had fallen back, the word ‘terminate’ kicking her in the brain.  She watched the scene unfold, her body unwilling to move on the men who attacked her friend.  The word began to turn, stabbing her throat, trying to plunge deep into her heart.  Her face became flush, her skin turning red as she lifted her right foot and stomped her boot on the face of the man on the left, still trying to get back to his feet.  The blood from the man’s nose splattered against the mirror surface of the elevator, distorting the reflection.  She knelt, her hands fumbling under the dazed man’s jacket, searching for her salvation.  She found it in a form of a pistol, pulling the strap and freeing it from the holster.  She continued her search, retrieving a datapad from the man’s left pants pocket.  She brought it to life, confirming the message that the other man had received.  Her profile picture stared back at her, the word ‘terminate’ written in capital, bold letters.  Her blood continued to boil as the man’s hands fumbled around the floor, trying to grasp onto her boot.  Like her Sargent, she reached back, then smashed the butt of the pistol into the man’s bloodied face.  The hands fell flat on the floor.

              “Answer me!” he snapped, pressing the ‘hold’ button on the elevator panel.  “Why were you ordered to kill us?”

              The man looked confused as his eyes looked to his co-workers, lying motionless on the elevator floor.  His eyes were wide in terror, his hands stretched above his shoulders, giving in to the rage of the larger man. 

              “I…..I….donot know,” he shrieked.  “I didn’t SEND the message, it just came in.  I can’t answer you, Sargent.”

              The Sargent knew the elevator was heading to the ground floor.  He anticipated that several men would be waiting, rifles in hand, to escort him and Janys somewhere secluded.  He needed time to think, time to strategize how to get Janys and himself to safety, away from the grasp of Divinity Corporation.  Reaching Earth was secondary at this point, the immediate threat having shown its hand too soon. 

              He pressed the next number on the screen.  The elevator came to life, its doors opening at the next floor.  There were twenty floors between them and the ground floor or the subfloor where the soldiers were waiting to take them in.  With his decision made, he smashed the pistol’s grip into the man’s face, rendering him unconscious, perhaps dead.  At this point, he really didn’t care which.