Strangers and Shadows (42 page)

Mikhail liked to start out his day with some stretching.  It helped to wake him up as well as keep everything in working order.

The day wore on with most of the focus on eating instead of cooking.  It was a good thing that this assignment was almost over, or else he would need a new wardrobe soon.  Finally, quarter to eight rolled around, and it was time to move.

Mikhail and Lady White stepped out on to the parking terrace where their transport was waiting.  The evening air was cool outside, a slight breeze was blowing.

Flashes of red light lit up the sky from the roof of the adjacent building.  Blaster fire rained down on the transport and the security team stationed just outside.  Some men shouted orders as others returned fire, and some just ran around, blindly seeking shelter.

Mikhail’s first instinct was to grab Lady White and hold her close, ushering her back inside the building, despite having orders not to make contact with her.  Civilians were scurrying all around them, some trying to re-enter the building, and some just trying to get out of the way.  

Off to the right was a stairwell that would offer much better protection.  Mikhail led the prime minister there.  By the time the door closed, Lady White was already on the comm with someone, shouting to be heard over the screams and cries of the mass hysteria surrounding them.  “No, we’re pinned down inside the building!  We never made it to the transport!”  She was silent as the reply came back from the other end.  “I know it’s not what we wanted, but it’s the less risky of the two.”  She shook her head no, in a gesture that would not be seen by the intended recipient.  “I don’t think we can take the chance, we’ll just have to tie up the loose ends later, I’m sorry…  I’ll see you soon.”

She ended the call and turned to Mikhail.  “Listen closely, agent.  Under no circumstances is anyone to take this body I’m in.  Do you hear me?”

Mikhail nodded his understanding.

“When I uplink, the girl, whose body this is, will return in control of it.  She’s not to be trusted.  She’s a traitor and is harboring a deadly threat to our entire way of life.  You are to bring her to the lab as originally planned, is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mikhail answered.

The prime minister groaned, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she collapsed into Mikhail’s arms, unconscious.  Again, wondering how the man on the phone had gotten his information, Mikhail pulled out a syringe and inserted it into the woman’s neck.  When the syringe was as full as possible, he removed it and transferred the blood into a sealed vial.  He pocketed the vial and threw the syringe into a waste bin as the woman started to come to.

Her eyes fluttered as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.  She was on her back, staring up at the ceiling, which resembled stairs.  No, she was staring down at stairs… but why was she laying down?  Her vision finally stabilized.  The ceiling was made of stairs, but stairs that were a level above them.

Mikhail helped her sit up.  “It’s okay, I got you.”

The woman shrieked and jerked free of his control backing into the corner of the stairwell.  She looked frightened and nervous, like a drug addict who was beginning withdrawal.

Mikhail moved toward her and she jumped.  “No, stay back!  Leave me alone!”

He raised his hands showing her his palms, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.  “Relax, take it easy.  I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I heard what she told you to do, I heard everything she said!  You’re going to bring me to Mesham’s lab and they’re going to kill me!”  The woman was near hysterical.

Trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, Mikhail said, “Your name’s Ava, right?  Ava, if you heard everything, then you must also have heard what they plan to do with me?”

Ava’s expression changed as she realized that it was true.

“I take it from that look that they had nothing pleasant planned for me?”

She shook her head no.

“I figured as much.  Somethings just didn’t add up right.  Like my last mission for starters, it’s not like the Shadows to try to kill an agent over some outdated gate technology.”  He glanced up, realizing that his audience was not understanding any of this.  “Never mind it now, but we need to get out of here before they discover there was no real threat out there.”

An evil grin came across Ava’s face as she pulled her hand out from her vest pocket.  “How about this?” she asked, holding up a jump-watch.  “She kept it on her just in case she needed to save her sorry ass.”

Mikhail thought it over for a moment.  The girl wasn’t part of the original plan, but then again, he never liked the original plan.

He was supposed to send the sample to a dead drop in the Third, and leave the girl to whatever end awaited her, but now that she was in front of him, threatening tears, he found that he couldn’t do it.  Besides, not having nanites might make it easier for him to avoid capture in the Seventh, but it would certainly make it harder to leave also.  That settled it for him.  “Alright, we run.  If I can get you to my people in the Third, you might be safe there.”

“Might be?” Ava asked, eyebrows raised high.

Mikhail shrugged.  “It’s the best I can do… Or, you could stay here and take your chances.”

“But I have the jump-watch!” she cried, holding it up.  “You’ll do as I say or—”

Mikhail’s hand flashed out, faster than the eye could follow, and snatched the jump-watch from her grasp.  “That will be just about enough of that!”  He was not in the mood to deal with a little brat who clearly couldn’t recognize a good deal when she saw one.

“Hey!  Give it back!”

“I don’t think so.  I think I’ll hold on to this until you learn some gratitude.”

She licked her lips and batted her eyes seductively as she took a step forward.

“Don’t,” Mikhail said.  “The only thing sadder than a whore is a rejected whore.”  

She tried to look offended, but couldn’t manage to pull it off.  Mikhail began putting their destination on the jump-watch.  As he did, Ava made another grab for it.  Mikhail side stepped and Ava’s hand went sailing through the air, finding nothing.  “We can do this two ways:  you can be awake, or asleep.  Your choice, but choose now, we’re leaving.”

Her shoulders hunched over and she began to sob
as she realized that the last bargaining chip she had was now gone.

Mikhail groaned as the sobbing intensified.  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said.  He put a reluctant arm around her shoulders and activated the jump-watch, wondering what he had gotten himself into as he was transported from one verse to another.

Julia opened her eyes as if waking from sleep.  She had not been sleeping, however, she had been within the Mother.  It was only a matter of minutes that she had spent without a body, but it felt much longer.  The phantom limbs that still follow your consciousness shouldn’t be possible without a physical link to the body, or so all the experts said, but nonetheless, there she had been, floating in darkness, feeling a body that wasn’t there.  What made it worse was that she couldn’t tell whose body it was.  Was it hers or Ava’s?  

When the Mother was fully operational, there would be fully developed environments that consciousnesses could experience with a virtual body that had all the feelings of a real body, or none of them, or any combination of the two.  The choice was part of the experience.  Time would move differently for different environments and people, and without the worry of death, or the need for more resources, humanity could evolve at their own pace.  Without an environment and a sense of space and dimension, the experience was quite disturbing, she found.  No doubt, given enough time, one could learn to be comfortable, but she preferred to never experience the empty construct state again.

Julia blinked her eyes and became aware of the lights and sounds of the room she was in, slowly rising up to awareness through layers of mental fog.

“Julia… can you hear me?” she heard someone say.  She nodded.

“Good, good.  Give yourself a moment to settle into your new skin.  You may feel some tingling for a while, it’s perfectly natural, I assure you.”  Julia finally placed the voice.  It was Dr. Mesham.  Looking over she could see him now and Dorian behind him.  He looked relieved.

Julia sat up slowly, groaning as she did.  She went to brush her hair back and nearly poked herself in the eye.  

“It may also take your mind a few moments to adjust to the new length of limbs from your previous body.”

“Yes, I can see that,” she spoke.  Hearing her own voice again, and not Ava’s, was disconcerting.  She wasn’t entirely sure that it
was
her own voice.  Had she always sounded like this?  How come she had never noticed it before?

“Do I sound alright to you?” 
T
he question took the two men by surprise.

“How do you mean?” Dorian asked.

“My voice… Does it sound right to you?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Julia sighed.  “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure it’s just my imagination.”  She slowly and carefully hopped down off the table she was sitting on.  “I trust you’ve run all the tests you need?”

Dr. Mesham cleared his throat nervously and replied, “I’ve run the preliminary reports and they’ve all come back negative.  No signs of the infected nanites thus far, but I will still need to run some more tests and closely monitor how your new skin is integrating.”

“So
,
I’m not going anywhere…
”

“No
where
very far, anyway,” Dr. Mesham replied.

Dorian’s hand flicked out to answer his comm even before it started chiming.  “Go ahead,” he said, listening to the reply.  He nodded several times over the course of a minute or so before ending the call.

“About the attack?” Julia asked.

“It was a decoy.  There was an automatic turret set up on one of the adjacent roofs and the bolts it was firing had so little power behind them, they would have barely stunned a child.  They were almost flash light beams.”  

“But the bolts were red, I saw them myself,” Julia said.

“It was a clever trick, I have to admit, but they were quite harmless my agents assure me.”  Dorian was impressed, the color of the bolts was indicative of the power in each blast.  With red being the strongest and most deadly.  Red bolts were barely used anymore, with the backlash from the general population, crying that they were an excessive use of force.

“And Mikhail?  Ava?”

“No sign of either of them, I’m afraid.  The agent’s family is missing as well.  Best guess is that they’ve fled to the Third,” Dorian said.

“I take it you’re planning on tracking them down?” Julia asked, already knowing what his response would be.

Dorian nodded. “Within the hour.  I have a team assembling now.”

“Good.  I don’t need to tell you how important it is that Ava be found and her body destroyed along with the nano-virus.  If the virus should fall into capable hands, the outcome of our invasion and all of our plans would be in danger.”

“I’m well aware of the consequences.”

“See that it’s taken care of then.”

Working Vacation

Wizard landed with a thud.  Dust kicked up from underneath him. At least his pack had cushioned the fall. He looked around, trying to gain his bearings.
Where in the Verse am I?
he wondered.

As he stood up and brushed himself off, more dust kicked up with the wind, denying his efforts to wipe the dirt off his clothing. Behind him was a convenience store—the back of one anyway. Wizard could see the gas pumps out front.

The sky was blue, dotted with clouds. The air was dry and hot. A sign in front of the gas station said the temperature was ninety-three degrees. Wizard deduced that it was measured in the Fahrenheit scale, as ninety-three degrees on his thermometer back home would mean the water was almost boiling.

He approached the front entrance to the convenience store, hoping to gain some knowledge of his location. He hadn’t had time to load more specific jump coordinates before he’d jumped from the Seventh, best as he could remember, he should be somewhere in mid-west America.

Two teenagers were sitting on the curb in front of the door, both of them boys.  “Nice fanny pack, Grandpa,” the one on the left called out.

“Thank you, young man,” Wizard replied.  “Say, could you fellows tell me where I am?”

They exchanged bewildered glances, not sure what to make of the old man in front of them.  “What’s the matter?  Forget to take your medication?” the other boy chimed in.  They both began to laugh.

Wizard sighed, disappointed with his wasted effort.  Clearly what passed for intelligence around this town left something to be desired.  Before either of them could react, Wizard reached down and grabbed both of the boys by their collars, hauling them to their feet.  “Listen closely, you disrespectful little shits, where I come from, it’s considered the height of rudeness to poke fun at one’s elders.  So I’m going to ask you one more time, if you mentally incapable fetuses can tell me what town I’m in.”

“You’re outside of Lincoln…” the one on the left stammered.

“Ne- Neb- Nebraska…” the other finished.

Wizard released them from his grip and they wasted no time running off.  They yelled something as they ran away, but Wizard couldn’t make it out and doubted if he wanted to anyway.  He shook his head wondering if all the kids in this verse were like that.