“Nothing personal, just doing my job.”
“Yeah, yeah, nothing personal. Anything for a little something extra in the paycheck.”
The vat man was lying in a pool of acidic compound. The yellow liquid was beginning to burn the folds in his flesh.
“Two questions,” said Stefan. “And you’d better answer me straightaway, because if you do not, the consequences will be dire.”
Vat man nodded so fast his chin was a blur. “Okay, ask away.”
“One, where’s our gear?”
“Gear? Gear? You mean equipment, rods, and computers?”
“Rods are the priority right now. Where are they?”
Vat man raised a finger. “Is that the second question?”
Stefan closed one eye, the other bulged dangerously. The scar stretching his lips twitched. “No, idiot. That is still the first question. Tell me where our stuff is. Now!”
“Okay, okay. Over there, in the blue bins. I was supposed to incinerate it after I had flushed your molecules down the drain. No offense.”
Stefan nodded at his teammates. They rifled through the blue bins, selecting rods, clips, holsters, and phones.
“Better take the fuzz plates too,” said Mona. “We don’t want to be caught by surveillance cameras.”
They hosed each other down, then strapped on their gear, feeling very much like foxes in a bolt-hole, surrounded by baying hounds. Well-armed foxes.
“Second question,” said Stefan, hoisting the vat man upright by the collar. “Where’s Faustino?”
The anguish in the vat man’s eyes showed that he didn’t really want to answer the question. “I wish I could tell you, I really do. But . . .”
“This had better be a really good
but
,” warned Stefan. “Your immediate future depends on it.”
Vat man’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a tiny alien trying to get out. “It’s a big facility. President Faustino could be in her office, or the conference room, or on her rounds. I don’t know.”
“At this time of night? Rubbish.”
The vat man checked the wall clock. “When President Faustino comes in this late, it’s usually for off-the-books work, a bit like my own. Usually, she concentrates on the Unspec project, whatever that is.”
“That’s the one. Where?”
The vat man sighed. This was going to cost him his job. “Lab one. At the end of the corridor, turn right. You’ll know it by the two guards on the door. They’re the only security on at night.”
Stefan dropped the man into a pool of acidic compound. “Good. Now look into my eyes and promise me you won’t sound the alarm the second we’re out the door.”
“Me,” said vat man. “Sound the alarm? Absolutely not. You have my word.”
“Hands up who believes him,” said Stefan.
No hands went up.
“That’s what I thought,” said Stefan, checking his lightning rod for cellophane slugs.
Ditto was being a real baby. He stumbled down the corridor, bawling his little eyes out. The two guards outside Lab one couldn’t help but notice.
“Hey, look,” said Guard A, a strapping female with muscle implants all over her upper body and night-vision eyeballs. “A kid. How did a kid get in here?”
“Search me,” said Guard B, an equally strapping male, with a thick beard that grew almost to his eyes. “But you know the rules. He’s gotta be wrapped.”
Guard A punched him on the shoulder. The punch would have shattered most people’s collarbones. “Hey, have a heart. You’re not afraid of a little kid are you?”
Ditto was beside them now, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Of course not,” said Guard B. “I’m not afraid of some kid.”
The kid grinned a grin, nasty beyond his apparent years. “You should be,” he said, pulling a lightning rod from inside his shirt.
Guards A and B were wrapped before they had a chance to say,
Where’s your mommy?
The Supernaturalists crouched outside the laboratory door, fuzz plates pulled over their faces. There were two frosted-glass panels in the door. The light emanating from the lab was blue.
“I hate being a kid,” sniffled Ditto.
“Focus,” said Stefan. “This is a dangerous situation.”
“A couple of midnight scientists? Very dangerous. The security people are already wrapped.”
“Don’t forget Ellie. I never met anyone who could hit harder or shoot straighter. She was one of the head combat coaches in the academy.”
“Point taken. The usual plan?”
Stefan put his hand on the door handle. “No. Cosmo and Mona stay at the door. There may be more security in the building. Ditto, you come with me into the lab. We take a quick look around, without wrapping anyone if possible, shoot a few seconds of video, then back to Abracadabra Street to plan our next move. We will have to take care of this situation, but not today. We’re not ready.”
“But, Stefan!” complained Mona.
“Another day,” said Stefan firmly. “Today we look around only.”
Cosmo felt that it wouldn’t be that simple. Something unexpected would happen, and before he knew where he was, the Supernaturalists would be up to their necks in trouble once more.
* * *
The lab door was unlocked. Stefan and Ditto slipped through soundlessly. Mona stuck her foot in the frame, keeping it open a crack.
“You never know,” she whispered to Cosmo. “They might need us.”
The door opened to an elevated walkway, overlooking a huge laboratory. The walls were painted sterile white, and fifty-foot strip lights lined the ceiling. Lab technicians scurried across the white tiles like albino ants, and in the middle of it all was a giant sunken construction which resembled nothing more than an enormous spirit level. Solid machinery on both ends with a transparent blue section in the middle.
“So just to confirm, we’re going to take a few frames of video, then hightail it back to Abracadabra Street?” said Ditto.
“That was for the benefit of the other two,” said Stefan. “You and I both know we’ll never get a chance like this again. As soon as Ellie finds out we’ve escaped, this place will be sealed up tighter than a camel’s nostrils in a sandstorm. We have to find out what’s going on now.”
Ditto nodded. “That’s what I thought. What do you make of that thing down there?”
“A generator of some kind. Nuclear, I’d say.”
“But nuclear power is banned on every continent.”
Stefan nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe, but not in space.”
Ditto and Stefan drew their weapons and proceeded slowly down the stairs. Ditto opened his phone and shot some video of the lab. “In case Mona is watching,” he whispered.
A sudden crack splintered the air. A flat noise like bamboo striking wood. Ditto recognized it immediately. A gunshot. A real gunpowder slug being fired. Booshka gangs often modified lightning rods to accommodate actual projectiles. The bullets were subsonic, but coated with Teflon to make up for their slowness. Stefan clutched his chest, stumbling backward against the wall. Then he bounced forward again, toppling over the railing. His tall frame plummeted twenty feet, straight down.
“Stefan!” screamed Ditto, his juvenile voice rent with anguish. Bashkir lay face down on the tiling, a pool of blood spreading from beneath his torso. He wasn’t moving.
Below on the laboratory main level, Ellen Faustino looked up from the readout panel she had been inspecting. “Why am I not surprised?” she muttered, shaking her head.
Ditto pulled his lightning rod. “Faustino!” he shouted.
“Take a moment, Mr. Bonn, or should I say Ditto, to study your chest.”
Ditto looked down. There was a bright red dot jittering across the material of his shirt.
Faustino approached the steps. “My little voice told me to take precautions. You Supernaturalists have proved slippery in the past. So I left a just-in-case man covering the door. Seems like I made the right decision. He will shoot you too, Ditto. There are no cameras in this room. Nothing to incriminate us later. Now, drop your weapon.”
Ditto did so, watching it clatter through the bars onto the floor.
Faustino raised her voice. “Now, tell the other two to join us, or my man in the shadows will be forced to pull his trigger one more time.”
Ditto tensed. “Go ahead and give the order. At least two of us will live to talk.”
Cosmo and Mona tumbled through the access door. “No!” said Cosmo. “We’re here. Don’t shoot.”
“Morons,” hissed Ditto. “Now we’re all dead.”
Mona raised her hands. “Just trying to buy us some time.”
Ditto descended the stairwell slowly. The laser dot stayed on his chest. “What are you doing here, Faustino? What is this madness?”
Faustino pointed to Stefan. “Check your leader first. If I must explain this machine, I don’t want to have to go through it all twice. You two children, get down here where I can see you. Remember, at the teeniest sign of heroics, you inherit the laser dot from Mr. Ditto.”
Ditto hurried to Stefan’s aid. With considerable effort, he flipped the Russian and checked his heartbeat. It was faint, but there.
Stefan clasped Ditto’s hand, placing it on the chest wound.
“I see now,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “I see it all. Things are different here.”
Ditto supported his head. “No, Stefan. Not yet. We have things to do.”
“Take the pain away,” grunted Stefan through blood bubbles. “It’s holding me down.”
Ditto concentrated, seeking the pain out with his sixth sense, pulling the energy into himself. He felt the buzz of electricity pulse through his small frame. “Better?”
Stefan’s eyes were clear. “Better. Much.”
The wound was bad. Very bad.
“You’re not cured, Stefan. I can’t cure you.”
“I know, Ditto,” said Stefan after a coughing fit. “I know.”
Several scientists scuttled off to other parts of the facility. They had no desire to witness whatever happened next. Faustino was left with a single bodyguard and, of course, a hidden sniper.
“Down here, you two,” she said to Cosmo and Mona. “I want you all together.”
Stefan lifted himself onto one elbow. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is, Faustino? Not even you could be this heartless.”
Faustino laughed her delighted little-girl laugh. “Oh, Stefan, still a spark of decency left in you. I remember you in the academy, always so naive. You actually joined the police to help people, and you’re still doing it.”
“But a nuclear reactor? After all the disasters the world has seen? There isn’t a government alive that would buy into nuclear power. How could Myishi do this?”
Speaking was not easy for Stefan now. Even staying conscious took concentration.
Faustino drummed her fingers on her chin. “My work here is officially unofficial. Oh, Ray Shine knows what I’m doing well enough, but he pretends not to. That way if anything goes wrong, I’ll be the only one taking the fall. That’s what business is all about; finding someone to take the blame. Except this time, there will be no blame, only profits.”
Stefan stumbled toward the generator. Both ends were traditional enough, but the center was a double-glazed plastiglass cuboid insulated with hydro-gel. The surface plate was the size of a football field. Inside the cuboid, at least a million Parasites jerked and bucked as radiation passed through their biological filters.
“We collected the Un-spec four, which you so kindly knocked out for us, with an electromagnet, and keep them imprisoned with hydro-gel. This entire lab has hydro-gel in the cavity walls. That’s why there’s not a Parasite on your chest right now.”
The reactor was a vision of torment. The creatures that should be fulfilling their natural role as painkillers were writhing in the bowels of a nuclear reactor.
Faustino was unaffected by her own cruelty. “It’s quite clever, really. The reactor itself is a water model, but we have replaced the water with living creatures, Un-spec four.”
Stefan locked his knees, to keep them from folding. “You’re deranged, Faustino. Completely insane.”
Ellen Faustino wiggled both eyebrows at her bodyguard, as if this was the daftest statement she had ever heard. “Insane? Do you have any idea what I have accomplished here?”
“No,” said Ditto, eager to buy time. “Do tell us.”
“Ah yes, Mr. Lucien Bonn, the Bartoli baby. People called Bartoli insane too, you know.” Faustino walked onto the floor level plasti-glass pane that sealed the reactor’s central section. Below her feet, hundreds of thousands of Parasites shuddered. “The problem with the boiling water reactor was that it contaminated the water, and eventually the turbine blades. Un-spec four take care of that problem. Not only that, but they are much more effective at slowing down neutrons and sending them back into the uranium core. They keep the reactor completely clean, and one-hundred-percent efficient, and use one tenth the amount of uranium. Un-spec four are a natural miracle.”
“But people are suffering without them,” gasped Stefan.
“Oh, grow up, Stefan,” snapped Faustino, her true savage nature flashing through the sophisticated image. “People suffer all the time. I don’t cause suffering. With the Faustino NuSun, I may actually help people. I might even initiate some of those fictitious welfare projects I told you about, though the helping thing would be incidental. I’m mainly doing this for the money.”
“The Faustino NuSun,” said Stefan bitterly. He staggered to the edge of the generator. Giant turbines whirred beneath Faustino’s feet, sparks of pure energy playing around their layered blades.
“Why, Professor? All those
accidents
? Risking all those lives. My mother is dead.”
The last vestiges of civility dropped from Faustino’s eyes like scales.
“The Satellite is falling, you idiot!” she yelled. “Falling out of the sky, because it is too heavy and too low. There are too many commercial units for the original structure to support. To keep it in its present orbit, its commercially viable orbit, Myishi need a new generator, a lighter and more efficient generator. If it doesn’t get one, Myishi loses all its advertising contracts. Billions of dinars. Billions. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Myishi is contracted for ten more satellites. Ten! It’s the biggest deal the world has ever seen. And the Faustino NuSun will power every one.”
Stefan waved his hands at Cosmo and Mona. They rushed to his aid, propping him up, one under each arm.