Hero Born: Project Solaris (10 page)

He followed up the blow with a trio of rounds from his pistol, each aimed at the remaining eyes. The first two bounced off, each shot snapping the beast's head back. The third pierced an eye, drawing a howl of rage from the creature.

It bounded forward, tackling Yuri to the ground. He managed to get an arm up, which the beast gleefully seized between massive jaws.

Jillian hustled me up the hallway as fast as we could run. I glanced back to see Summers helping Marcus in the same direction. We made it into the dimly-lit stairwell where the beast had come from, belting up the stairs at a full run.

I stumbled around like a drunken frat kid, because my hands were still wrapped in duct tape and non-conductive rubber. I tripped more than once, and would have gone down, if not for Jillian.

We pounded up two flights of stairs. I slipped, my knee cracking on the concrete step. Jillian grabbed my arm and shoved me forward, which I guessed was a kind of assistance.
I wanted to tell her that we needed to go through the door, but she was already opening it. It took entirely too long for me to figure out that she'd come in this way, so of course she knew how to get out.

"Move your ass, Marcus," Summers yelled from a few steps below me. I risked a glance back. Marcus was in bad shape, but still moving alongside her. Raw pink skin covered the left side of his face, and one eye had been seared shut. The other was unfocused.

We plowed into the hallway, and I skidded into a wall. Fifteen feet ahead lay the glass door I passed through every morning on the way in to work. Fifteen feet past that lay the steel door that led to the street. If we could make it thirty feet, we'd be safe.

I lurched forward, hobbling most of the distance to the glass door. Jillian had it halfway open, but she froze with her hand on the handle. Marcus and Summers had frozen as well. My own traitorous body refused to move, no matter how I railed at it.

Like a quartet of puppets, the four of us turned as one, against our will. We faced back the way we'd come, and when I realized why we'd stopped I started to tremble. Violently. A grey man stood in the hallway, just outside the doorway to the stairwell.

The halogen lights bathed its skin in an even more corpse-like pallor, and its razored teeth glinted. Those flat black eyes focused on me, and the thing began to chitter. Memories of the strange language brought me back to age fourteen, scared and alone inside their ship.

If I could have chosen to stop my own heart in that instant I would have, but even that was denied me. The grey man had complete control, and it raised a golden boomerang, gesturing at the stairwell. We began marching as one, the implant in my neck flaring painfully as it made demands on my nervous system. It was the first time I'd been conscious of the device, but I could
feel
the signal coming from it. I wanted to rip it out, even if that paralyzed me for life.

Then Yuri stepped into the hallway and shot the grey man in the face. He fired again and again, each shot sending a shell casing spinning into the air as the gun's roar stole what remained of my hearing.

The scent of hot gunpowder mixed with a terrible, musky scent--the grey man's blood, maybe. The thing collapsed to the floor, and Yuri sagged to his knees next to it.

I started in his direction, but Jillian seized my shoulder and tugged me the other way. We turned and ran, and the cool energy passed over me again. We passed through the glass door, then the metal one, rippling through both without pausing to open them,

A white van was parked just outside, the side door open ahead of us. I caught a glimpse of Kali's red hair in the front seat, and I heaved a sigh of relief as I dove face-first into the van's backseat.

Jillian landed a moment later, turning to haul the door closed. I blinked once at her. "What about the others?"

"They'll have to fend for themselves," Jillian said, turning to Kali. "Get us the hell out of here, now!"

Kali floored it, and we sped off into the night, even as Summers and Marcus stumbled through the steel door and onto the street.

Chapter 16- Going Rogue

"Where am I taking us?" Kali yelled over her shoulder. She sped down Howard Street, turning right on 2
^nd
. There were very few cars on the road, so it had to be after midnight.
 

"The Golden Gate Bridge," Jillian called back. She pulled out a pocket knife, slicing with expert precision through the duct tape wrapping my hands. "We need to get out of the city."

"Why not Tuolumne?" Kali asked, pausing at a red light. It turned green almost immediately, and we turned left onto Market.

"Because they'll expect that," I supplied, flexing stiff fingers now that my hands were finally free. I looked Jillian in the eye. "Thank you. I owe you more than my life. I can't believe you pulled that off."

Jillian seized me in a fierce hug. "I was terrified we wouldn't find you. Thank
you
for sending that message. We'd never have gotten you out otherwise."

"How did you get Mohn to help you?" I asked, glancing around the van. It wasn't the state-of-the-art vehicle I'd have expected from Mohn, just a plain van you might find at any Enterprise Car Rental.

"We met with Usir. He gave us that team to get you out," Jillian said, releasing me. I missed her touch immediately.

"So this van belongs to them, right?" I said, a sudden thought occurring to me.

"Yeah." Jillian eyed me curiously.
 

"They'll almost certainly be tracking it." I looked around me, trying to use the new senses I'd experimented with during my captivity. It look me several moments to find it, but there was a subsonic tone at the edge of my hearing.

I leaned down to peer under the passenger seat. "Aha!"

It took several attempts to remove a small black box about the size of a cell phone. I held it up for Jillian to inspect.

She seized the device, then pushed her hand through the van's side door. It rippled around her, just like the doors back at Initech had. When she pulled her hand back in, it was empty.

"Let's see them track us now," she said, giving me the first smile since the rescue.

"I could kiss you," I said, laughing. Damn, it felt good to be alive.

"Uh, I'm still here," Kali called from the front seat. "How about you guys make out later? We need a plan. David just got kidnapped by super-powered alien G-men, and we just double-crossed one of the most powerful corporations in the world, one led by a guy we know is centuries old."

We'd covered a lot of ground very quickly, and were passing the Palace of Fine Arts as we began to the gradual ascent toward the Golden Gate Bridge. It loomed in front of us, the hills on the other side promising at least temporary reprieve from the nightmare we'd just escaped.

"So what are we going to do?" Kali asked, glancing at me as she accelerated. I was impressed by how well she was keeping it together, though maybe that was because she hadn't seen the grey man, or the beast that Yuri had presumably killed.

"I have a rough plan," I said, shifting so I could see both Jillian in the back and Kali in the front. "We need answers. Jillian do you still have the memory crystal?"

"Yeah," Jillian replied, fishing it out her inner jacket pocket. She tried to hand it to me, but I shook my head.

"Not right now. We can examine it when we get somewhere safe." I turned back to the bridge, considering. "I went to college in Santa Rosa, about forty miles north. There's a motel across from the school that will take cash, which gives us a place to hide while we figure things out. My anthropology professor is a pretty smart guy. I trust him, and he might be able to help us make sense of all this."

We sped onto the Golden Gate Bridge, heading north. I took the opportunity to slide back into the back seat, next to Jillian. Her eyes were wide and inviting as she watched me. I leaned in closer, giving her a smile that I hoped left no doubt about my intentions.

Jillian blushed, averting her eyes. I cupped her chin, and went in for the kiss I'd never finished when we were fourteen. The world melted away, and in that instant there was only one thing-- Jillian. Her scent, clean and heady, just like it had been all those years ago. Her soft lips, something I'd imagined in dreams many times over the years. We lingered there for an eternity, lost in each other.

Chapter 17- Investigating

I awoke to the heavenly smell of greasy fast food and coffee. The bed creaked as I sat up, blinking away sleep as I looked around the room. We were on the 2
^nd
floor of a small hotel on Mendocino Boulevard, across from Santa Rosa Junior College. Late morning sun streamed through the thin curtains.

The room had two queen beds, and Jillian was blinking awake in the other one, where she and Kali had slept the night before. Her long dark hair was mussed, which somehow made her even more attractive than usual. I wished we'd had enough privacy for more than a kiss.

Kali was shouldering open the door, wearing black yoga pants, a pair of UGG boots, and a fleece jacket. It was like the uniform of the college freshman, though Kali was about a year short of pulling it off. She still wore her glasses, but the new clothing transformed her from wallflower nerd into hot young hipster.

"Is the outfit too much? I saw a lot of the girls on the campus across the street wearing this stuff, and I figured I should blend in. I bought it with cash, so we won't be tracked," she said, looking down at herself self-consciously. She moved to the room's one chair, setting two big McDonald's bags on the table, then adding a tray of coffee cups. "I didn't know what you guys were into, so I got a bunch of stuff."

"You are an angel, and the clothing looks great. You'll fit in when we head over to the campus later today." I rolled out of the bed, still wearing my clothes from the night before. I felt disgusting, but a shower could wait. Even though we'd raided a gas station convenience store for snacks on the drive to Santa Rosa I was still ravenous.

Two Egg McMuffins and a hash brown later, I gave a contented sigh and settled back onto the bed with a cup of coffee. I propped the pillows against the wall, and relaxed for the first time in days.

Jillian had gone at her breakfast with similar gusto, though Kali was more reserved.

"I wonder," I said, considering. "I still feel like I could sleep for another day, and I don't remember ever being that hungry."

"Yup," Jillian said, popping half a hash brown into her mouth. She spoke around mouthfuls, covering her mouth with her hand. "Our powers take a lot out of us, mentally and physically. We eat more than we used to, and if you use your powers a lot you sleep like the dead. Sitting in the sun seems to help, too."

"Which explains why I'm the only one not eating like a wild bear. You guys didn't let me burn anything." Kali brushed a lock of hair from her face, moving to sit at the foot of my bed. It was the first time I'd seen her with her hair down, and it strengthened the resemblance to Jillian. "So what now, team?"

"Now we get some answers," I said, turning to Jillian. "Can I have the crystal?"

"Of course." She set her coffee on the nightstand, and retrieved the crystal from her jacket. She handed it across to me, then sat on her bed.

As before, the moment I touched the crystal it flared a brilliant green. A moment later the spectral image of my mother appeared in the corner of the room. Her expression was incredibly lifelike, all motherly concern.

"Thank god you're all right," she said, expression warming to a smile. "I feared the worst when you didn't reactivate me right away."

"Oh my god, what the hell is that?" Kali said, gawking at the hologram.

"I'm a memory crystal." Mom replied, mimicking Kali's tone of voice. She gave her a wink and a playful smile. "Think of me as a copy of David's mother."

"Dorothy, this is my cousin Kali." Jillian gestured at Kali. "She's also been taken, and the grey men have given her abilities. If you were, well, the real version of you, we'd be inducting her into our cell right now."

"Pleased to meet you, Kali," Mom said, then turned back to me. "So fill me in. Where are we and what have you learned?"

I looked at Jillian, and she nodded at me. I took a deep breath, focusing on Mom again. "We've got more questions than answers. Doctor Usir, and Mohn Corp, helped Jillian rescue me from agents of the grey men. The agent who captured me was the guy I worked for at Initech, and it turns out the project I was working on is designed to communicate with the grey men's home world."

"Come again?" Jillian said, blinking at me.
 

"That's right, I haven't had a chance to fill you in on everything, either," I said. "Dick, the agent who was interrogating me, wanted to recruit me to help finish the project. We were working on a way to project data faster than light. The idea was to create a faster internet that can be used anywhere in the world, or that's what I signed on for, anyway. Turns out the project is a smokescreen to create a way for the grey men to phone home."

"They can't call home?" Kali asked.

"That's what I said, too." I shrugged. "Dick doesn't know why they can't do it on their own either, but I suspect the answer will be important."

"What else have you learned?" Mom asked. She glanced at the McDonald's bags. "And, dear god, why are you eating that crap? It's terrible for you."