Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3) (11 page)

“I think I know just the man for the job,” Larson said, thinking of his scientist friend, Griffith. He took one of the stretchy swatches in hand. Its smooth surface tingled the tips of his fingers. “Is this from the attack?”

“I can’t reveal any more details. Like I said, it’s classified. Let’s just say the threat isn’t over.”

“Well, I might be able to pull a few strings,” he said using a coy voice, knowing the general was desperate. “But it won’t be easy.”

The man leaned in close, grabbing Larson by the shirt collar. The power of his grip cinched the material tight, restricting the flow of air into Larson’s lungs.

Alvarez stuck his jaw out. “Look, you arrogant prick. Don’t think for a second I don’t know when someone’s shaking me down. What the hell do you want? Money?”

“No. Just a favor,” Larson said in a weak voice, feeling his legs starting to go numb.

“What kind of favor?”

“I need someone to disappear.”

“Disappear?” Alvarez said, letting go of Larson’s clothes with a shove.

Larson gasped a full breath. “Just for a while.”

Alvarez glanced back at his men for a moment.

Larson did, too. The guards were still a good two hundred feet away.

The general’s lips grew stiff and his tone intensified. “Just because you’re married to my sister doesn’t mean I’m willing to conduct an unsanctioned rendition for you.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t test me, Randol.”

“Look, I wasn’t born yesterday. Analyzing this material is obviously very important to you, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking me to do it off-book. Besides, who else do you know that has the means and the resources to do what you ask? And keep it quiet?”

“You are one manipulating asshole,” Alvarez snapped.

“Hey, you came to me, remember? Quid pro quo, Rafael.”

“It’s
General
to you.”

“My mistake,” Larson said, hoping he could salvage the conversation. “So? What’s it going to be, General? Do you want my help or not?”

“Fine. Who’s the target?”

“His name is Lucas Ramsay. I need him out of the way for a couple weeks.”

“For what purpose?”

“Does it matter?”

Alvarez didn’t respond.

“Look, I’m not asking you to take him out. Just remove him from the equation for a bit. That’s all I need. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Do you have a photo and last known location?”

“Here’s a photo of him from his security badge,” Larson said, showing the man a portrait of Lucas on his cell phone. “This is from his freshman year, so he’s several years older now. He works in the science lab. He’s one of Dr. Kleezebee’s crew.”

Alvarez took Larson’s phone and studied the image on its display. A look of surprise dominated his face. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“What do you mean?”

“This man’s your target?”

Larson nodded, taking the phone back. He slipped it into his pocket, hoping Alvarez didn’t notice the tiny icon at the top that indicated the voice recorder was active. “He’s always with his disabled brother. Just look for the geek in a wheelchair. Lucas will be at his side. They’re inseparable.”

The general put a hand inside his uniform and pulled out three photos. “You might want to take a look at these. You tell me, anything look familiar?”

Larson took the photos and studied them. Each snapshot showed a young, red-haired man lying on the ground wearing a black suit with gold lines. Parts of each man’s lifeless body had been blown apart and were covered in blood. Larson compared their faces—they all looked like Lucas Ramsay—a man he knew was still alive and working on campus.

“What the hell? How can this be?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Larson couldn’t reconcile what his eyes were reporting. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Did you notice what each man is wearing?”

“The same gold-laced material. Some kind of uniform?”

“Or advanced tech. Now you understand why I need to have it analyzed.”

Larson nodded, trying to put the facts together. “These are the terrorists?”

Alvarez didn’t answer.

Larson was getting tired of the cryptic nature of this meeting. “I think at this point, General, showing me the photos puts us well past classified. You need to trust me if you want my help. I need to know what the hell is going on.”

Alvarez paused before answering. “We received a tip about an imminent threat to the university. The target was your underground NASA lab.”

Larson’s throat ran dry, making it hard to swallow. “You know about that?”

“The governor just laid it all out for me. I had no idea.”

“You have to understand, if the university hadn’t needed the money, President Lathrop never would have let them build the facility.”

“I figured as much. It’s always about the money.”

“So what happened with the terrorists?”

“We mobilized and stopped them cold. The intel was spot-on. There were almost two hundred of them. They were all versions of the same man. Your Lucas Ramsay.”

“When you say versions, you mean clones—”

“Some were older, and a few had slightly different physical characteristics, but my gut is telling me they were all the same man. Copies of him.”

“How is that possible?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

“What about a DNA analysis to confirm?”

“Already in the works, but I doubt I’ll hear anything back from CID. If this is some type of advanced Russian or Chinese cloning technology, they’re sure to swoop in and assume control, cutting me out of the loop entirely. I need to get ahead of this thing while I still can.”

“Do you think someone is trying to replace Ramsay with an enemy clone?”

“Anything is possible. But why send so many? It’s easier to slip one by the goalie undetected, not a couple hundred.”

“That’s true. Must be something else,” Larson said.

“Without a complete understanding of the material’s composition and purpose, I’m afraid we’re working in the dark.”

“I’m sure my man can help. He’s come through for me before. But I’ll have to give him some baseline information. He’s going to ask.”

“Keep it minimal. The less he knows, the better. For all of us. Understood?”

Larson nodded. “Were there any survivors?”

“A few. We’re in the process of tracking them down.”

“Then the university is still at risk.”

“I can post a squad if need be.”

Larson’s mind flashed through the ramifications of a strong military presence on campus. He shook his head. “Let me handle it. If your men show up and take over, all hell will break loose with the students, the faculty, and the media. Everyone would start asking questions and we’d lose containment.”

“Agreed,” Alvarez said, sliding the photos into his pocket. “I prefer to handle this quietly, at least until we know more. We don’t have enough information, yet. Your man better come through, and do so quickly. Once the feds get their hands on this—”

“How long do we have?”

“It’ll take them some time to get the analysis done and coordinate the various agencies. But when they come, they’ll come in force. I’d say, no more than seventy-two hours.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. But I need Ramsay out of the way tonight.”

“Not going to happen. A clean snatch and grab takes planning. Otherwise, there are too many loose ends.”

“Then I guess you can kiss the fabric analysis goodbye.”

“You really are a prick, aren’t you?” Alvarez said. “I don’t know what my sister sees in you.”

“Yes, I’m an asshole, but that doesn’t change the urgency of the situation. It’s simple as far as I see it. You handle your end, and I’ll handle mine. If we pull together, we can make this happen.”

“All right, fine. Now, get the hell out of my sight.”

Dr. Griffith Davies opened the flaps on the back of his white lab coat, sat on the leather stool, then slid his body to the right until he was in front of the brand-new Mach 2 Spectrometer—his favorite machine in the lab. He took a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses from his coat pocket and slipped them on, wondering how much time remained before the results would be ready. He looked at the machine’s LED display—ninety-four seconds remained—
damn, an eternity
. He wished the university had purchased the bigger, more expensive Mach 3, then the results would have been completed by now and in Dr. Kleezebee’s hands. He’d already kept his longtime friend waiting and didn’t want to disappoint the professor any further.

He studied his own reflection in the chrome-plated accent plate that decorated the upper section of the purring machine. He counted two more wrinkles and a new skin tag on his right eyelid. Father Time was not being kind, plus his toupee was uneven, again. He tugged at the side of his hairline, leveling the vanity rug. His wife, Stacy, had told him that very morning, as she had done countless times before, that he didn’t need to wear the replacement hair—she loved his wrinkly, bald head. Despite her repeated assurances, he felt compelled to wear it—he had to—for his sake and hers.

She was a young, stunning woman and a major catch for any man, let alone him. It was a stroke of pure luck that a twenty-five-year-old bombshell like her had fallen in love with him in the first place. She could have had any man on the planet, but she chose him. He still couldn’t believe it, even after years of blissful marriage.

Stacy seemed genuine and committed, but the last thing he wanted to do was take the chance she’d get tired or embarrassed of him and move on to someone else; someone much closer to her own age and someone in far better shape.

His daily risk assessment told him what he must do: keep her happy at all costs, never take a moment off. Never take her affection for granted, either.

Those were the exact words he told himself every morning while standing alone in front of the bathroom mirror. Her grace and beauty were now part of every fiber of his being, committing his heart and soul to everything that was Stacy. He couldn’t imagine not having her in his life, and certainly didn’t want to start over. Not again. One divorce was enough.

The chime on the spectrometer sounded a playful, three-note tune that reminded him of his Maytag Washer’s chime when he turned it on. He stood to review the report on the flat-screen display, hoping the analysis provided the answers he was looking for. It did. He opened his flip-style cell phone and brought up the contact list. He skipped Stacy’s number and his mother’s, then pressed the third person on the list. Two electronic rings and a hello later, Dr. Kleezebee was on the other end and listening.

Griffith slowed his words, wanting to hide his excitement. “I have the results, DL. Hot off the press.”

“Is it what I thought?”

“Yes and no. The material’s made from layered sheets of one-dimensional graphene all right, but it’s not pure carbon, like you’d expect. There’s another substance bonded to its nanostructure.”

“What is it?”

“Some form of applied polymer built from a synthetic bio-substance I can’t identify. The closest analogy would be exogenous XNA.”

“Synthetic?”

“Yes. I’m calling it X-graphite, for lack of a better term.”

“Why would anyone fuse graphene with synthetic DNA?”

“Possibly to control the angular momentum of exotic particles, which would come in handy if one were to supercharge the graphite. But that’s just a guess. It’s definitely a new type of exotic meta-material.”

“There can’t be many uses for something like this.”

“No. Its use would be extremely specific and limited in scope, except for its elastic properties. It stands to reason that the hybrid XNA is responsible for the material’s elastic quality, not just its containment properties. But beyond that, anything else is pure conjecture at this point. I would need several months and a suite of new equipment to run a more detailed analysis. I assume that’s not an option.”

“Not without a massive injection of university funding. What about the gold lacing?”

“It’s pure twenty-four-karat gold, but it’s not topically applied to the fabric as you would expect. It’s fused with it, acting like a casing around selected X-graphite molecules, forming some type of advanced nano-circuitry. Its unlike anything I’ve seen or even read about, for that matter. Its construction and symmetry suggests this fabric was built to channel and control an enormous electromagnetic field.”

“How enormous?”

“Massive. Probably beyond anything we can generate.”

“In the USA?”

“No, on this planet. I question its origin.”

“Extraterrestrial?”

“That would be my first guess. But without more study, I can’t be sure.”

“What would something like this be used for?”

“Unclear. It’s obviously part of a larger apparatus, but this technology is well beyond our capabilities. Several hundred years ahead, minimum, if one were to chart the geometric progression of technology advancement on this planet. Of course, that’s assuming anyone on this planet could ever understand it,” Griffith said, taking a moment to reflect. Then he remembered something.

“However, I did attend a seminar last year hosted by a blonde physicist from one of the Midwest universities. Minnesota, I think. Or perhaps it was Michigan. Nice-looking gal. Her theories were loosely related to what we are seeing with this material. She believed that attaching a quadrillion strands of DNA onto a thin plate of gold would allow her to detect dark matter.”

“How?”

“When the gold plate was struck by a molecule of dark matter, a single atom of gold would be released, sending it hurling into the hanging strands of DNA. The angle and trajectory of the destruction trail would indicate the direction and speed of the dark matter, thereby allowing her to back-trace its origination point. Fascinating stuff. Granted, it’s not an exact replica of the composition and properties of the X-graphite material, but there are similarities worth investigating. X-graphite may be an offshoot of her research. I just wish I could recall her name. It was something like Karen Geese, but that’s not right. I’m sure I can look it up, if you want to bring her in on this discussion.”