Legacy of a Mad Scientist (33 page)

Captain Snow considered taking her revenge right
there; she had Dunkirk in her sights, but the shot would alert the
dozens of law enforcement officials to her location.

Even though it appeared that Dunkirk and the children
had seen each other, Von Kalt’s pursuing alpha team was closing the
gap. The four soldiers were heavily armed and moving downhill as
fast as their feet would carry them. He would serve as an obstacle
for the soldiers.

Ana looked back to the children and discovered they
had stopped. A boy stood ahead of Ashley and Geoff. They were
talking to him. She considered that perhaps Ashley had somehow
overridden the phase-cam effects. Then she realized the boy
clutched something in his hand. He’d been exposed; this boy was
carrying around charged terillium.

Uphill, then the soldiers ran into Dunkirk. For a
brief moment, no one moved. Ana watched, as the neighbor to her
children and ex-military surgeon, attacked the soldiers. Bare
handed, he used their weapons against them. In moments, the four
soldiers were dead.

Two groups of suited feds proceeded past the
branching trail that would have led to Dunkirk and the murdered
soldiers. Ana didn’t mind that fact that Dunkirk had survived. That
ensured her another chance for revenge.

She stayed with Ash and Geoff as they continued in
their flight, running down the mountainside with their new friend
in tow. Ana recognized him from her other self’s memories of the
neighborhood: Bobby, Dunkirk’s younger son. Before long, he’d
pulled away and was making his way back up the hillside.

That night, far from their home turf, Ash and Geoff
found a playground near one of the parking areas. They smoothed out
the sand under a large playset and curled up against the chill
mountain night.

"What do you think happened to Mom and Dad?" Geoff
asked.

"I don't know," Ashley answered. "We'll find out in
the morning.”

Ashley stared hard at the tree line.

Soon, it was warm and cozy under the jungle gym. She
was tired, but she watched the woods for an hour before her eyelids
fell shut.

Stanwood called off the search long before Von Kalt
was satisfied. He’d forbid Von Kalt from going into the forest
himself. Otherwise, the deputy was certain he’d have caught Ashley
and Geoff. He couldn’t believe they had escaped. The feds had
searched until the early morning hours but found nothing.

Thankfully, his men had been killed, the punishment
for their failure appropriately embraced. There was one troubling
fact. Their weapons and communicators had been found, but their
bodies had not. The volume of blood and tissue suggested that no
one survived, but they found no drag marks, no discernible tracks
at all.

Clearly, the bodies were carried off in a transport,
to conceal their murder, and the communicators had been left behind
to prevent them being tracked and subsequently found.

Stanwood suggested that Dr. Fox had conspirators
hidden in the forest; who had most likely rescued the children and
killed his agents. The only thing they agreed on was that the
children certainly hadn’t done it.

When the transport carrying the bodies of Dr. Fox and
his wife was ambushed in traffic, there was little Von Kalt could
do; as Stanwood had assigned a volume of tasks to his Deputy
Director. He was bent on the acquisition of Dr. Fox’s technology
and laboratories.

The corpses never arrived at their scheduled
destination. Instead, First Sergeant King delivered an illegally
acquired pair of overdosed junkies to an overcrowded mortuary. By
the time Von Kalt looked into it, the corpses identified as Mr. and
Mrs. Fox had long since been cremated.

First Sergeant King had been reassigned.

Saturday, July 25, 2308

The next morning brother and sister woke early. They
crawled out from under the jungle gym, stretched and wiped the dew
from their clothes. Ashley looked at her brother and thought he
looked as if he'd been through a war. She realized she must look
the same and took a deep breath.

"Can we go home now?" Geoff asked.

Ashley stared at the tree line for a long time,
debating whether they should head home or out to forage in the
city. She pointed to the nearby park bathroom, "I gotta go.”

"Me too," Geoff agreed.

A few minutes later, standing in the morning
sunlight, face and hands washed, Ash felt better than she thought
possible, having spent the night beneath a slide.

"We can't go home, Geoff," Ashley said. "We need to
find out what happened. We need a library. There's got to be
something in the news.”

Ashley thought Geoff seemed to be handling everything
rather well. "You okay?” she asked.

Geoff nodded. "I miss Mom and Dad. I want to go
home.”

Ashley said nothing.

She held his hand as they made their way down the
canyon to find a public library.

Finding a local library branch wasn't difficult.
Shortly after opening, Ash and Geoff settled into a wired carol
where they scanned the latest news reports. There was nothing about
her father being shot or their home being raided.

The most recent stories involving their father were
about the Epsilon explosion out in the desert. He was mentioned in
a piece about Pierce's suicide, but nothing recent, nothing from
yesterday.

Twenty minutes later, Ash had some idea of what her
father's latest projects had been. Anything compelling she read
aloud for Geoff. She was amazed that he hadn't complained about
being hungry, tired or bored.

Ash had assigned him the task of lookout, and he
dutifully nudged her whenever someone wandered too close. They
remained undisturbed, free to peruse the public terminal to their
heart's content.

Ashley’s Journal, Saturday, July 25, 2308

We’re at the library. I don’t know what to do. Dad
said we should go to Mexico. That’s insane. I’m not doing that.

First, I want to know what happened. I want to know
who killed him and why. I know I should be sad, but I’m not. I’m
just angry.

There’s nothing in the news about him, nothing
recent, anyhow.

I’m reading about how his first invention, the blue
goo - now mass-produced for less than seventeen cents a liter,
revolutionized medicine. He shot to the top ranks of several fields
overnight. He didn’t seem to have much trouble staying there,
either.

There’s lots of online controversy about the Centaur
war tanks too. I was alive when that happened, and I remember it,
even though I was only four. That was when Uncle Geoffrey was
killed.

Ash tried to piece together the news reports she was
reading now, with snippets of conversation she’d overheard back
then. Names came back to her, Tasha Vangen and Major General
Cruthers.

She remembered that the people who’d taken over the
project had gone crazy, not following the proper procedures. She
remembered the controversy, the threat her father could have been
held accountable for the massacre and imprisoned. Almost a million
people had been killed.

In the end, he wasn’t even arrested, but it had been
a tense time.

The war was over, and everyone agreed that her father
was responsible for that. He hadn’t been charged with treason, but
the inevitability of betrayal at the highest levels hung over him
like a black cloud.

Ashley could tell, even then, losing his brother had
changed her father in a profound way. She looked over at Geoffrey.
He’d abandoned up his post as team lookout and had activated the
terminal but was now snoozing.

It didn’t matter, even with both of them looking,
there was still nothing about the murder of their parents.

Something drew Ashley’s attention from the screen.
Several adults were looking in her direction.

A Chinese man across the room caught and held her
gaze. He was wearing traditional silk clothes, a hat and small
round sunglasses. His long white hair was pulled into a loose braid
behind him. He looked as though he was trying to communicate
something to her, but a movement to her right distracted her.

Four men approached the carol. Ash shook Geoffrey,
rousing him, but in his drowsy condition, he was in no shape to
run.

The four men were dressed in street clothes, but it
was obvious they were law enforcement agents of some sort. Ash
noticed they were wearing their sunglasses inside. She wanted to
roll her eyes, but she didn’t dare look away from them.

"Ashley and Geoffrey Fox, I need to ask you to come
with me.”

"We're not going anywhere with you,” Ashley said.

"You don't have a choice about it,” he replied.

"I can scream. I can call the police.”

"Knock yourself out," he said, stepping into arm's
reach.

As the agent grabbed her shoulder, Ashley leapt from
the booth, kicking him in the crotch. He went down with a grunt,
obstructing the other men's path to the children.

Ashley pulled Geoff from the carol, and they slipped
into the rows of books. The library wasn't huge, but it was large
enough. Ash and Geoff sprinted down the narrow aisles, moving
faster than adults could in such confined spaces. They zigged and
zagged, slipped around assistants and stayed quiet in their
flight.

Then, as they neared the front door, with one wrong
turn it was over. They came out into the central lobby. The
four-man squad stood right ahead of them. The agent she'd kicked
stepped up and backhanded her across the face, knocking Ashley from
her feet.

The other civilians in the lobby all stopped what
they were doing. There was one grey-haired man who looked as large
and as dangerous as the agents. He'd been sitting near Ash and
Geoff all morning.

Ashley recalled that he'd arrived at the same time as
she and Geoff. He'd even held the door open for them. Now he stood
with the other civilians, watching.

One of the soldiers grabbed Geoff's arm. Ashley
scrambled to her feet. The agent who'd hit her stepped in and
restrained her before she could reach her brother. He held her arms
back and leaned down to her ear.

"You're quite a brat, aren't you?" He looked up to
the other plainclothesmen, "Let's get this garbage out of
here.”

As the soldiers turned toward the main doors with
their charges in tow, the grey haired man stepped forward, in front
of the doors, obstructing their progress. He held up a badge and
asked, "Is there a problem here?”

One of the soldiers reached for his gun, but the man
with the badge stepped forward and struck him in the jaw. The agent
went down, unconscious. The men holding Ashley and Geoff couldn't
draw their weapons in a reasonable amount of time.

The grey haired man was already holding his, pointing
it at the only agent with free hands. "Anyone else wants to play; I
open fire. Now, let the children go while we wait here for the
police.”

The soldiers hesitated.

The grey haired man cocked his pistol and switched
his aim to the forehead of the man holding Ashley.

He released her and his partner released Geoff.

The grey haired man gestured for Ash and Geoff to get
behind him, and out of the building. "Get out of here.”

Ashley opened the door and pulled Geoff out with
her.

As she stepped out of the library, she realized she'd
seen that man before. He was more than familiar.

She'd seen him at her home, last summer for a
barbecue. He was a friend for their father's. She was sure of
it.

Ashley heard the lead agent threaten her father's
friend. "Look, the kids are gone, fine. But we're not sticking
around for the cops.”

"You see this badge," the grey haired man answered.
"That's the Defense Security Service. You're not cleared to know
anything about this project, not even those children's names. The
knowledge alone can put you in Leavenworth for twenty years. You're
waiting here, or you're getting shot. It's up to you.”

As they reached the sidewalk, Ashley and Geoff heard
the gunfire erupt behind them.

Then the grey-haired man, Ashley remembered his name,
Ross. He was a soldier, Major Ross. Now he was out of the building
and moving down the steps.

"Run!" Ross said. "Run!”

Ashley grabbed Geoff's hand and sprinted from down
the block. Behind her, the library doors burst open again. She
didn't look back, but heard Ross and the agents firing behind her.
Bullets whizzed by her head and then she and Geoff made a turn,
carrying them out of the line of fire.

Back at the library, Ross had ducked behind a car,
pinning the agents to the library doorway and preventing their
pursuit.

Saturday Morning, July 25, 2308

From his mobile command center, Von Kalt watched the
library surveillance feeds. He wanted to know who’d been
responsible for the soldiers who’d gone missing yesterday. Stanwood
had dismissed it as a rival department, but Von Kalt couldn’t let
it go.

Now, watching the shootout between Ross and his
agents, he couldn’t help but think about the soldier. Only a few
short weeks ago, Von Kalt had seen the man killed in an explosion.
He was later told that Ross survived, and clearly that information
had been correct.

Ross would have known enough to leave the radio
transmitters, but then why remove the bodies in the first
place?

This shootout hadn’t been anything special. It was
clear that Ross wasn’t shooting to kill. In fact, he was going out
of his way
not
to kill these men, just as he hadn’t killed
the agent at the taxi stand

Whatever had happened to his agents in the forest, it
hadn’t been Ross. It certainly hadn’t been the children. The issue
tugged at Von Kalt’s mind. Something, someone close to the device
had been responsible. The Metachron wanted to know who that was and
so did Von Kalt.