Authors: Jason Austin
Seattle, Washington, August
31, 4:32 p.m. PDT
The
mighty Seattle clouds beat back the sun as Glenda and Xavier's rental
car braked atop the winding dirt road. So far, Seattle had been
nothing but one huge blur. Their plane had touched down at Sea-Tac
Airport just after 3:00 a.m. and despite their exhaustion, Xavier
wanted to get moving at the first crack of daylight. Glenda, however,
was instantly inebriated by the spell of a bed a thousand miles away
from the origins of their tribulation; Xavier let her sleep most of
the morning as he held vigil, entangled in the beauty of her
tranquility. Xavier wished
he
could have slept, but he was too
busy feeling shitty about his last conversation with his brother. He
had called Benny from the plane to borrow more cash to keep he and
Glenda afloat as their travel expenses dwindled. Benny was
uber-pissed. He'd learned of the shootings just minutes after Glenda
and Xavier had left the house. He'd felt like a fool and said he
wanted Xavier's head on a plate. Then he wired the money. Good ol'
Benny.
By
the end of the afternoon Glenda and Xavier were on the last three
miles of a jaunt to an isolated stretch of property around First
Hill. Dana Holliman's directions were precise, but the property's
actual acreage was enormous. They came to a stop on a small plateau
overlooking at least half of it. Xavier looked out his window over an
ocean of greenery. There were trees like skyscrapers as far as the
eye could see. Glenda tapped the navigation icon inlaid on the car's
dashboard display. The map jumped out at her once more and she
tracked their current path with a fingernail.
“Damn
place better be in there somewhere,”
Xavier
said. He wanted to be back at the motel before dark. Skulking around
a secluded house, cut off from the main roads and shrouded by a
nighttime forest was a movie everyone had seen. There was no need to
tempt fate.
“It
has to be
,” Glenda replied.
They
proceeded down the steep road and were quickly enveloped by a froth
of tall trees. About 500 yards in, they turned onto a graveled
driveway that sloped into a flattened out two-acre piece of land with
the most astonishing-looking house rooted in the center. It was
basically a broad stone villa with a second-story tier on the south
wing. The architecture was sleek and mechanical, more like a small
office building than a home. The most striking characteristic,
however, was the roof, which was constructed entirely of
next-generation, high capacity solar panels. They’d been laid
like expensive floor tile, sparkling in the intermediate sun like
sheets of crushed sapphires. The only windows were thick, opaque,
oblong panels that ran in twin rows across the upper part of each
wing. No big bays or skylights. An odd feature for a house that was
supposed to be completely reliant on solar energy. A few small shrubs
entailed the outside, but no tall growth appeared anywhere within
fifty yards of the structure in order to keep any light-depriving
shade from the roof. Xavier drove into the house's cement horseshoe
and parked. He and Glenda then exited the car and stood, gawking.
“
I
thought it would look more 'traditional' somehow,” Glenda
remarked. They walked up to the front door, pressed the bell and
waited.
Nothing.
No chimes or sounds of movement came from inside at all.
Glenda
sighed. “Please don't let this be a dead-end.”
“
He
might be too scared to answer,” Xavier said. He reached into
his pocket and extracted the reassembled powered auto-pick he’d
lifted from the dumpster so many days ago. He'd held onto it like a
good luck charm, never thinking he’d have to use it. He'd
broken it down and removed the battery before boarding the plane so
the parts resembled nothing more dangerous than spare computer parts
in Glenda's bag. He put it to the lock and set it into sequence.
Rotors turned and clicked, sounding off individually as the interior
pins and redundant tumblers aligned. It worked. The door clicked open
and he and Glenda apprehensively entered with Xavier leading.
Once
inside, Xavier conducted a visual sweep of the immediate area,
tapping into his tactics training in varying increments. The interior
was largely undecorated with a few scattered pieces of unused
furniture covered in drop cloths. The walls were a sanitary white and
the eggshell-colored, shag carpet was spotless.
“
Doesn't
look very lived-in,” Xavier said.
“
Do
you think he’s here?” Glenda asked.
“
If
he is, then he might already know he's got company.”
“
Why
do you say that?”
Xavier
jabbed his thumb in the air. Motion detectors were positioned
inconspicuously in several corners of the interior. “Stay close
to me and keep your eyes open.”
Glenda
nodded and they proceeded to creep through the house like cat
burglars. At one point Glenda spat out the word “lights”
which accomplished nothing except simultaneously startling and
annoying Xavier. “I can’t imagine a place like this not
having a voice interface,” she said.
“
Maybe
it’s been deactivated. They do tend to act kind of screwy. Once
I was at my girlfriend’s place and she got so pissed at me,
that she threatened to 'punch my lights out,' and the whole damn
place went black.”
Glenda
giggled. “What happened after that?”
“
Best
make-up sex we ever had.”
She
blushed. “Oh.”
“
Hey,
it was dark. Our passions were stirred. It couldn’t have been
more perfect.”
A
minute passed and Xavier eventually wandered into the big gourmet
kitchen, which also appeared unused. He finally relaxed his shoulders
as the house showed no obvious signs of trauma, human or otherwise.
Unfortunately, that didn't ease his regret at being unarmed.
He had to leave his MAG back in
Cleveland. There was no chance of getting a gun on the plane and
shopping around on the street demanded time and risk that just wasn't
feasible relative to everything else.
Glenda
followed him into the kitchen and stood in its passage. “Did
you have a lot of them?” she asked.
Xavier
look bewildered. “Huh?”
“
Girlfriends.
Your brother told me you used to have a lot of them.”
Xavier
squinted like a shooting pain had ripped between his eyes. He
continued to meander about the kitchen, looking suspiciously at thin
air. “What else did my brother tell you?”
“
He
said that by the time you were fifteen you were driving your mother
nuts sneaking girls in and out of the house at all hours of the day
and night.”
“
That’s
it?”
Glenda
paused, wondering if she should go further. “He also told me
about what happened to you in the army...about that colonel’s
daughter?”
Xavier
was grateful he kept his back to Glenda while they talked. She would
not see his reaction.
Benny
and his big mouth.
“
It
was a long time ago; I try not to dwell on it,” he said and
shuddered under the mass of the lie.
“
So
exactly how many...”
“
Shh!”
Xavier raised his hand, cutting Glenda off. A steady weightless noise
had skimmed his ear during the uncomfortable silence. “Do you
hear that?”
As
she listened closer, Glenda could just barely make out a low-pitched
hum circulating in the air. “What is that?” she asked.
“
It
sounds like something’s running,” Xavier answered. He
stepped over to the large refrigerator set into the kitchen's wall
and opened it. It was empty and not turned on. “Where the hell
is that coming from?”
With
ghostly steps, Xavier began trailing the persistent sound through the
dining room and into the subsequent areas—two bathrooms and
three empty bedrooms. After the last bedroom, he encountered a long
hallway leading to the south wing. He and Glenda advanced through it
until a set of finished oak double doors confronted them at the end.
Xavier pulled Glenda aside and opened the right door. It opened
outward and he used it simultaneously as cover. Inside, was a
spacious walk-in closet, completely empty, save for a number of
shelves and the humming noise, which was even louder. Xavier
instinctively pressed his ear against the drywall. It vibrated ever
so slightly. Without hesitation, he began manual inspection of the
closet, dragging his fingers along corners and across each shelf, one
by one. Pausing a moment, he noticed something odd about the shelves.
The last three he checked were held in place by a set of metal
supports bracketed to the wall. But the one just above his head had
no supports at all. On further examination, Xavier saw the shelf was
actually set into a slot cut
into
the wall. He pushed the shelf into the slot and jumped quickly in
front of Glenda as a section of the wall to their right recessed
several inches and slid open.
Hidden
behind the wall was an empty 6’ x 6’ compartment. A
control panel marked with arrow keys was set into its rear.
“
It's
an elevator,” Xavier said. He looked back at Glenda with
eyebrows arched to the sky.
“
If
you say 'ladies first' I'm going to kick you in the balls,” she
joked.
Xavier
gently took Glenda's hand, pulling her to him and they carefully
stepped inside. He punched the button marked with a downward arrow
and the hidden door reset. As they dropped to the basement, Xavier
pressed his back against the right side and he stationed Glenda next
to him. Seconds later the door opened and the pair delicately exited.
What
Glenda and Xavier stepped into was hardly what they expected. The
entire level was brimming with electricity. A cross section of
equipment bombarded it from one end to the other—most of which,
they could only speculate as to its name or use. Cabinets, industrial
sinks and islands stacked with all manner of glass and plastic
containers were every few feet. Holographic interfaces were still
running at three of the, at least, one dozen computer terminals and
from what they could see, the lab extended
beyond
even
the house’s above-ground floor plan. They could also see the
main source of the odd, energized drone that initially drew them. It
emanated resonantly from a generator built into the basement’s
west wall. The generator was flanked on either side by two pairs of
large solar capacitors tied directly to the panels on the roof.
That's it?
Glenda
asked herself. Somehow, she expected more in the way of the actual
tech. The sum setup couldn't have been bigger than the service
elevator that brought them here. Glenda walked over to and studied
the capacitors’ displays. She didn’t know a lot about the
application of solar power, but the read-outs were surprisingly
self-explanatory, no more difficult than reading your average
breaker-box. It seemed the designer wanted it to be easily understood
and operated. In fact, if she was reading it right, the batteries
contained almost six months’ worth of electricity that it would
take to keep everything functioning without need for
sunlight-recharging. Miraculous. Glenda could see why the world had
never learned of it. A sustainable solar powered home in the middle
of one of the most cloud-covered states? The power companies must
have blackmailed every congressperson from here to Steubenville. Such
entities had long since given up on Arizona and New Mexico where
solar power was flourishing, but if they had to contend with that
type of technology being viable in a major American rainy city, it
would be their death knell.
“
Richard!”
Glenda suddenly called out, looking around. “Richard, it’s
me, Glenda Jameson! Are you here?” She waited.
“
Richard,
are you here?”
Xavier
rotated his head toward a dimly lit area of the lab that contained a
few equipment lockers. He eased forward, ready to break defensive at
the merest disturbance. At the southernmost end was a large, white,
hermetic door with a powered lock. On its face, written in bold black
letters, was the word, “CAUTION.”
“What's
in here?”
he muttered.
Without
warning, the door of the closest locker flew open and struck him in
the head. A man sprang from inside like a wild animal and knocked
Xavier to the ground.
“
Glenda,
look out!” Xavier screamed.
The
man vaulted over Xavier and made a beeline for one of the exam
tables.
“
Richard?”
Glenda shouted.
The
man ignored her, flying past like a whip of wind. On the very edge of
the table was a small black device about the size of a deck of cards.
The man dove for the edge and scooped it up. He tumbled onto the
floor and smashed his thumb into the pad. The man's eyes locked on
Glenda’s electrified face as if he was waiting for something to
happen.
Xavier
raced back to Glenda and positioned himself between her and the
crazed man.
“
Richard,
my god,” Glenda said exasperated.
Kelmer
looked absolutely awful. His bloodshot eyes pulsed above baggy
patches of gray, and his face had nearly two week’s growth of
grimy whiskers. His skin was pale and clammy-looking and his remains
of hair were badly unkempt. His clothes looked slept in and unchanged
in days.