“
God, Adrian.”
Esteban pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes you’re even
stupider than Junior.” Esteban had never looked more exasperated.
“Don’t you understand what’s going on here?” He lowered his voice
until it was barely above a growling whisper. “You kidnapped a
bounty hunter’s girlfriend and he bloody well wants her back.” He
grudgingly agreed that Dan was good at what he did. “And he’s not
one of those weekend-troopers either, this guy’s for real. Now get
your arse back to the Guild and stay there until it’s all over.
I’ll be back with Sutherland in tow as soon as I can,
okay?”
Adrian nodded meekly and
stepped further into Esteban’s opulent office. “I’ll just grab a
couple of buds and be on my way. You want one?”
Thirst licked Esteban’s
mind but he overcame the weakness. “No, I’ll celebrate
later.”
“
Suit
yourself.” Adrian strode to Esteban’s bar fridge and yanked the
door roughly open. He squatted, using his body to block Esteban’s
view while a fire rippled from his adrenaline glands. It tingled in
every fibre of muscle and boiled the acid in his stomach. He knew
about Esteban’s secret compartment and hoped that was where he’d
stashed Jen’s chip selector.
But first,
the beer.
He had to work as inconspicuously
as he could and lined seven beer cans along the bench before
tampering with the compartment. Veins of ice and frost had
crystallised over the false plastic wall in the freezer, making it
difficult to open. “You got any ice?” Adrian asked to cover his
dash for the concealed latch. It wasn’t a safe. Esteban didn’t
believe in safes. He kept repeating how easy they were to crack and
how thieves could find them with a simple metal detector. But he
did believe in keeping things hidden and used his refrigerator as
an effective office tool as well as the perfect vessel for chilling
his beer.
A stalactite
of ice splintered with a crackle when he tugged on the plastic
door. He’d only seen Esteban use the compartment once and had no
idea whether he had more hidden caches.
Maybe he retired this one. Maybe he uses them on a rotating
roster. Should there be this much ice if he used it
recently?
Still, it was worth a try. He
yanked harder, veiling the sound of grating ice behind a rough
thump of the next beer can on the bench. More adrenaline gushed
through his arteries when he saw what Esteban had hidden inside:
phials of something clear, liquid despite the temperature, and
Jen’s chip selector. White frost covered the hard black plastic and
Adrian wondered whether microchips were sensitive to cold.
What if it doesn’t work anymore? What if the
inside wires have snapped?
They were
disturbing thoughts. All his efforts could be for naught. Engineers
had designed microchips to survive in a moist 37 degrees Celsius,
not in a freezer.
He discreetly slipped it
into his pocket and took a beer in each hand before closing the
fridge with his feet. He’d reduced Esteban’s stock to five. But
Esteban, who was busy guarding the door, hadn’t paid a scintilla of
attention to Adrian or to his beer.
“
Now, how am I
going to carry these?” Adrian asked, genuinely seeking
input.
“
Ten?” Esteban
exclaimed when he finally turned around.
“
Yeah, five
for me, five for Junior. It’s Saturday, what’d you expect?” In
times past they’d consumed up to twelve, and once Adrian drank
twenty, though he had no recollection of the event.
“
All right.”
Esteban snivelled. “Just get back to the Guild and stay there. If I
haven’t bagged Sutherland before midday tomorrow I’ll come back
anyway.”
“
Fair enough,”
Adrian agreed, slotting a can of beer into every pocket large
enough to carry one. That still left him with four beers too many.
“Don’t you have a bag or something?”
“
No,” Esteban
said, thinking of a more elegant solution. “Take off your jumper
and carry them in that.”
Adrian shook his head.
“I’m not taking off my jumper.” It was fine, hand-knitted wool and
four beer cans coupled with a rough knot would stretch it out of
shape. Adrian was too compulsive to allow that to
happen.
“
Then don’t
take the beers.”
He sighed. “Okay, fine.”
He carried an extra beer in each hand and tucked one under each
arm, feeling like a hunched-over monkey. “I’ll see you back in the
Guild, hopefully with Sutherland.”
Esteban set his teeth
into a mean grimace. “Count on it.”
A bead of
sweat was streaking down Adrian’s temple by the time he left
Esteban’s office. It’d been a tense five minutes, every second a
small miracle that Esteban hadn’t noticed what he was doing. The
chip selector was digging into his thigh, wedged uncomfortably on
the other side of a beer can. His fingers were numb and he was
agitating the cans; he hated to imagine what would happen if he
tried to open one.
A sticky froth
shower.
The image sent shivers down his
spine and he felt compelled to adjust his glasses. He tried to
ignore it but the intensity only grew until he had to set two cans
on the ground to push his spectacles back onto the bridge of his
nose.
He couldn’t
believe he’d finally plucked enough courage to cross
Esteban.
Man, he’s going to be pissed when
he finds out.
It was an intimidating
thought. Adrian had a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder but he
definitely wasn’t stupid.
I’ll have to
disappear.
He knew Jen would scream to
whoever would listen as soon as she was free, and that type of
publicity could spell the end of the Guild. Or, at the very least,
it would mean doom for several members, himself included. The
possibilities of where to go seemed boundless.
Asia? South America?
He’d scratched
Africa from his list. He had to draw the line somewhere and refused
to live in a place that didn’t have adequate portal
facilities.
So much to
do, so little time.
He wanted to pack a few
personal things.
Which means I’ll have to
visit Cincinnati, briefly.
He was jotting a
mental list of the arrangements he still had to make as he returned
to the portals. The more he thought, the more extensive his list
became.
And I only have an hour
left…
*
Dan shook his head.
“No.”
“
Afraid so,”
Cookie confirmed for the fourth time.
“
You must be
kidding.” Dan closed his eyes in resignation.
“
I don’t know
how else to put it man.” Cookie paused. “What’re you going to
do?”
Dan looked up at the sun,
enjoying the scant rays that filtered through the atmosphere. When
he thought about the task ahead, he suspected it would be his last
opportunity to bask. “I’m going in to get him.”
“
But if he’s
there-”
“
I know,” Dan
snapped, cutting him off. “It means they’re both there, and
possibly all three of them – not to mention UniForce security and
anybody else Esteban has recruited to make my life
difficult.”
“
Maybe you
could…” Cookie didn’t know. He wished he could see another way
out.
“
I doubt it,”
Dan said to fill the silence. “If that’s where they want to play,
that’s where we’ll play.” He barred his teeth and summoned his
determination. “Into the lion’s den it is.”
“
Good luck
man.” It was the only thing left to say.
“
Thanks
Cookie.”
I’ll need it.
“I’ll” –
hopefully –
“be in touch later.” He hung up before Cookie
could dribble more doubt into the digital data stream.
Okay, so now I know.
He
had positive confirmation that Adrian Miller was in UniForce
headquarters.
Or his mobile phone is
anyway.
He didn’t want to waste time by
waiting them out. Either they’d stay where they were until Dan
agreed to a showdown, or they’d leave, in which case he’d lose them
again.
He was near a portal
station and jogged the final hundred metres, eager to proceed now
that he’d made up his mind on a course of action. Standing in the
portal tube, he punched in the familiar number and his vision
shifted into something he recognised: the UniForce
lobby.
He was playing an
extremely dangerous game, particularly since it was the weekend.
Fewer visitors meant UniForce security would watch new arrivals
like a hawk. His only consolation was that it’d be easier than his
incursion the previous night – this time he knew where he was
going.
What am I
doing?
Too many UniForce employees
recognised him to make anonymity an option. He calmly walked to the
toilets and bottled himself into the first stall, sitting on the
edge of the plastic seat to ponder his next move.
They’ll be in Esteban’s office if they’re
anywhere.
He chewed absently on his
lip.
And they’ll have a good idea that I’m
coming… though they don’t know I’m Tedman Kennedy so they won’t
know I’m in the building. Yet.
He knew it
was possible to slip around without people noticing, he’d done it
before – not in UniForce and not for over a decade, but it was
possible. Complete perforation of the building with portals helped,
nobody used the stairs anymore so they were likely
deserted.
Then a
piercing thought fuelled his lust for success:
What if Jen’s upstairs too?
It was
unlikely.
But wouldn’t that make it the
perfect place to hide her?
He couldn’t take
a portal upstairs; he’d been lucky to reach the lobby. UniForce
scanned for unauthorised microchips and barred access to restricted
areas for people that shouldn’t be there. The public couldn’t
access most of the building, so unless he added his details to the
authorised access list – an impossibility – trying to portal
upstairs would probably just trip an alarm. Fortunately, reception
was on the fiftieth floor so he didn’t have as many stairs to climb
as the previous night. His quadriceps and calves still felt like
lead.
With a loose
plan in mind, he left the stall and pressed his ear against the
disinfectant-smelling bathroom door. He heard a distant hum from
somewhere deep in the bowels of the building but nothing from the
other side. He circumspectly pushed it open, peering left and
right. Nothing looked amiss.
Good.
His plan relied heavily upon
stealth.
He walked
casually to the stairwell. It was difficult to look calm when he
was an inferno of raw nerves, but discipline paid off and he
reached the stairs without anybody asking questions. Seven flights
of stairs and an angry set of muscles later, he reached Esteban’s
floor.
Okay, now what?
He drew his Colt and held it up for final inspection.
Realising he hadn’t recently tested its accuracy, he cursed his
stupidity a dozen times.
How could I be so
careless?
He calmed down when he reasoned
that he wouldn’t be more than five metres from his targets when he
squeezed the trigger.
Besides,
he rationalised,
I have plenty of rounds to afford a miss or
two.
Still, it nettled him that he’d missed
something so obvious. There was a time when he couldn’t possibly
have forgotten something so important, even when
stressed.
The lighting was dim on
Esteban’s level. Deep shadows stretched across the walls, making
things slightly more complicated. He had to focus on every
potential hiding spot and reassure himself that nobody was there
before declaring each area clear. It was an arduous task, which
slowed his progress and frayed his nerves.
He was
rounding a corner near that floor’s cluster of portals when he
heard someone approach. With the aplomb and confidence of decades
of training, he slid into the shadows and vanished from sight,
listening to the approaching footsteps. The individual was
shuffling, scuffing the carpet as he or she walked. Then, from his
vantage in the gloom, Dan watched Adrian Miller approach from the
direction of Esteban’s office. He looked heavier than in his
photograph, but the facial structure was unmistakable.
Hell yes, he’s even wearing the same set of
glasses.
The timing couldn’t have
worked out better if he’d planned it. Dan checked that nobody else
was nearby and stepped from his shadow, Colt raised. “Don’t say a
word or you won’t get to drink that beer.”
Adrian froze in shock and
nearly dropped everything he was carrying. It hadn’t occurred to
him that Esteban was worried for good cause. “Sutherland,
listen…”
Dan took a menacing pace
forward, silencing him. “Go ahead, just give me an excuse and I’ll
end your miserable life. I don’t need all of you alive to get what
I want.”
Adrian wisely clamped his
jaw around the other words pestering for escape.
“
Turn around.”
Dan’s tone left no margin for negotiation. “Now walk slowly to the
toilets. Any sudden moves and you might start to leak.” They
marched to the toilets, Dan buzzing with adrenaline and Adrian pale
with eye-widening fear.