Mutation (18 page)

Chapter 28

The modeling software Li wanted was apparently kept on an isolated computer system that the CDC team had brought over with them.  It was not connected to the infirmary’s mainframe, so he hadn’t been able to hack in and retrieve it.  Basically, someone had to physically go in and get it.

After Gossamer and Kane had returned with some food (presumably from the cafeteria), we’d had a short meal before resuming with our plans.  Now the rest of us stood huddled around Li, who sat at the computer workstation.

“There,” Li said, pointing to the screen.  “That is the area we need to get into.”

He had just hacked into the infirmary’s system again – this time the live video feed from various cameras.  What he was indicating was an obviously-locked door that was also manned by two armed guards.

“It is essentially a dual security system,” Li went on.  “There is a scanner on each side of the door, and both have to give a green light before the door will unlock.  In addition, each guard is authorized to visually observe the scan to ensure that no one is trying to bypass the protocol.”

I was surprised at what I was seeing.  “Dual security, cameras…since when do we need all that in the medical wing?”

“They were not in place before,” said Li.  “However, the wing was already pre-wired for them, as is much of the school.  All Aldiss had to do was install the necessary equipment and activate it.”

Li went back to typing, and the scene on the screen changed.  We were now looking at a room with large glass walls that allowed us to see clearly inside.  Against the far wall of the room was a large bank of computers.  The rest of the interior contained a lab table and a few workstations.

“I take it that’s the room we have to get in,” said Kane.  Li nodded.

“Well, if that’s the room, why don’t we just let Jim here teleport in and get what we need?” asked Gavin.  It was one of the few occasions on which I’d heard him speak since joining their little group.  However, he clearly wasn’t comfortable with me yet, as he seemed to be trying to keep as much distance between himself and me as possible.

“For starters,” I said, “I haven’t been in that area before.  I’ve never laid actual eyeballs on it.”

“Yes, but I’ve heard you can teleport to places you haven’t been based on an image,” Gavin said.

“True, I’ve done it before,” I admitted.  “But I basically walked into a trap.” I spent a brief moment reflecting on the one time I’d done what Gavin was suggesting, and had teleported myself into a nullifier cell.  As far as I was concerned, that option was off the table.

“Teleporting in is probably not a viable plan,” Li said.  “We have to assume someone is watching via the cameras at all times.  For that same reason, the magic Gossamer utilizes to occasionally move from place to place would not be helpful.  Moreover, Dr. Aldiss is generally the only person who goes in this room, so the presence of anyone else in there would raise suspicion.”

“So, if we can’t go in the room, how do we get the program?” Gossamer asked.

“With this,” Li responded, producing a small, black box made of hardened plastic with a glowing red LED on it.  “If we can get this device within twenty feet of the room’s main computer bank, it will automatically download the modeling software.”

“In other words, we don’t need to go in the room,” Kane observed.

“Exactly,” Li replied.  “But the device has to stay in range until the LED turns green, or the entire download will be aborted.”

*****

Since we needed two people to get past the dual-security checkpoint, I initially volunteered, thinking that my shapeshifting ability would be useful.  Li told me that it wouldn’t help.

“I am aware that you can duplicate the appearance of someone else,” he said, “but can you replicate them down to the cellular level?”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently you weren’t paying close enough attention,” Gossamer said.  “That checkpoint is a retinal scanner.  Unless you can duplicate someone’s retinal print, shapeshifting won’t help us here.”

Actually I
could
duplicate a retinal pattern - if I had a model to work off of, like a close-up, detailed photo.  But since we didn’t have anything like that it didn’t seem to be worth mentioning.

“Then how do we get past the checkpoint?” I asked.

“Magic,” Kane said with a smile and a flourish of his arm that made Gossamer roll her eyes.

It turned out that the plan was to have Kane cast a glamour over two of us.  Using hair from two members of the CDC staff, his magic would not only replicate the appearance of the CDC personnel in question, but also their genetic structure.

“How’d you get hair from these people?” I asked.

“My magic gave us access to the rooms,” Gossamer replied.  I nodded, remembering how we’d traveled from my room to our current digs.

“That’s about the only thing that elfin mumbo jumbo is good for,” Kane snidely remarked.

Gossamer ignored him.  “Once inside, we simply raided their combs and brushes.  Shortly after that, we went to your room to wait for you.”

Silently, I applauded their efforts, impressed by what they had accomplished.  While I was wrapped in my own thoughts, the others began discussing who should go on the mission with me.  Ultimately, they drew straws, with Gossamer getting the shortest.

Thereafter, it was a bit of a waiting game.  The guards currently on duty at the dual checkpoint would have an idea of who was already inside, so we couldn’t put our plan into action until there was a shift change.

According to Li, the changing of the guard took place every four hours.  About five minutes before it was to occur, Kane worked his magic on us.

First, he retrieved several plastic bags from one of the filing cabinets in the room.  I could see that they all seemed to contain hair.  Kane then pulled a few strands from one of the bags with his right hand and then repeated the process with another bag using his left hand.  He closed his eyes and began chanting rhythmically in an unknown tongue, holding his clenched palms in front of him.

As his voice continued its sing-song melody, his hands began to glow with a soft, azure light and the air around him seemed to vibrate.

Continuing to chant, he opened his eyes and stepped forward, placing the hairs in his right hand on my head.  Then he did the same to Gossamer with the hairs in his left.

There was an odd numbing sensation that started at my head and spread its way down.  At the same time, a small cascade of warm sparks seemed to fall about me, like a glittery flurry of snowflakes that vanished when they hit the floor.  I looked myself over, but couldn’t see any change.

“It didn’t work,” I said.  Gavin and Kane looked at me and laughed.  So did Gossamer – or at least, I thought it was Gossamer.  Where the elf had stood a moment before there was now a demure redhead in a white lab coat.  Obviously the spell had worked on her but not me.  But what was so funny?

“It worked,” said Li, the only one of my colleagues who didn’t have a grin on his face.  “Your self-image – the way you see yourself – may not have changed, but to everyone else you are now a portly research assistant with an unevenly-shaven goatee.”

“And how do I look?” asked Gossamer.

Kane said something that I didn’t quite catch, but which made Gossamer give him an evil look while Gavin burst out laughing.  As Gossamer began to reply, Li pulled me aside.

“I would like to ask that you take particular care in looking out for Gossamer on this mission,” he said.

I was a little surprised.  Thus far I had garnered the impression that Gossamer was some kind of elfin warrior and that she could take care of herself.  I said as much to Li.

“I have no reason to disagree with you for the most part,” he said, “but do you recall our discussion regarding someone using the Academy and the student population as a lab?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

“Then you must recognize that immune test subjects are quite likely beyond anything they expected to encounter.”

“So what are you thinking?  That whoever’s behind this will try to capture her?”

“Capture…or eliminate her.  Everyone in this room, in fact.  It’s part of the reason we’ve been hiding out down here.”

“But how would they even know anyone’s immune?”

“If it is an experiment, it would be an exercise in futility for those in charge if they could not glean any information from it.  Presumably then, they have access to the data – perhaps from hacking, as I did.”

“Do you think they may also have access to the cameras?”

“I’m torn between saying ‘possibly’ and ‘probably.’ I will venture to say probably.”

“I guess that’s just an extra incentive to get this done fast.”

Chapter 29

As plans go, this one started off about as well as you could hope for.  I teleported Gossamer and myself to one of the seldom-used stairwells, and then we walked over to the infirmary.  Along the way, we passed several two-man patrol units, but no one ever stopped us, so apparently we looked the part.

Once at the infirmary, we breezed past the initial checkpoint.  I had to admit that I was a little nervous during the retinal scan and ready to teleport us out of there, but we got a green light and entered the secure section.

Once inside, we hit our first speed bump.  We were in a bit of an open foyer, with hallways branching off in three directions.

I groaned audibly.  Despite all our planning, we had failed to look at a single, solitary map, floor plan, or blueprint.  I guess we’d been under the assumption that we would walk in and see the right room immediately.  No such luck!

“Let’s go,” I muttered softly, and we began walking down one of the hallways.

It took ten minutes of random walking, but we finally located the right room.  It was actually one of a suite of similarly designed rooms off the center hallway we had observed earlier.  Fortunately, we’d had little trouble en route to finding it.  On a couple of occasions, someone had waved at us saying, “Hey, Chris,” or “Hi, Terry,” but no one tried to engage us in conversation.  (Which would have been bad, since we didn’t know who was who.  What were the odds of being glamoured into a man and woman who both had androgynous names?)

Outside the room, I pulled out the download device.  It wasn’t making any noise, but the red LED light was flashing and it was vibrating softly.  Inside the room, I didn’t notice much different than what we’d seen on camera, except now there was an open laptop on the lab table.

I looked around and located the camera we had used to view the room earlier.  I was tempted to get in its line of sight and wave, but quickly remembered that our group wasn’t the only one using the cameras.  The thought made me nervous in more ways than one, and when I casually surveyed the area we were in I saw other cameras in place.

“Stay here,” I whispered to Gossamer, handing her Li’s downloader.  I stepped into one of the nearby rooms and looked around.  On a table I saw a clipboard with some type of printout attached.  It was just what we needed.  I grabbed it and headed back towards Gossamer.

“As I was saying,” I uttered in what I hoped was a natural-sounding voice and tapping the clipboard for emphasis, “these electrolytes are way too high
–
-”

“What are you doing??!!” Gossamer hissed, cutting me off.

“Trying to act natural,” I replied in a hushed tone.  “Us standing here next to each other, not doing anything and not talking, is far from natural.  And our public is watching.”

Gossamer followed my glance to one of the other cameras.  Her demeanor changed almost instantaneously.

“Please, go on,” she said, looking at me in rapt attention.

I went back to uttering complete nonsense while waiting for the downloader to do its thing.  Unfortunately, Li hadn’t been able to give an estimate of how long it would take; it had to find the right software first and then the download would begin.  However, he’d said it shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes.

Personally, I felt that a quarter of an hour was a long time to stand in front of cameras doing next to nothing, and the clipboard act would only work for so long.  Still, I thought there was a chance that we could pull it off.  That’s when the whole thing came apart.

The first indication that things might not necessarily end neatly came about three minutes after we’d been in place, when we heard footsteps coming down the hall.  Heavy, booted footsteps.  Even more, I picked up on a set of strong emotions tied to a demeanor and attitude that I recognized.  At that moment, Estrella came through the doorway that led to the suite of rooms we were in, followed by a quartet of armed guards who held their weapons at the ready.  They clearly had not come to talk.

On my part, I was almost frozen in shock at seeing Estrella here at the Academy.  Gossamer, on the other hand, exploded into action.  In one fluid motion, she tossed me the downloader and drew her daggers, which were glowing with an eerie, eldritch light.  Her elfin magic was obviously incompatible with Kane’s sorcery, because the glamour dissolved around her like butter melting in a hot skillet.  A spark of blue light shot from one of her daggers, striking one of the guards and blowing him back out through the doorway.

Estrella fired a laser beam at her, which Gossamer deflected with one of her blades.  It went right back at Estrella, striking her in the face.  Estrella let out an ear-splitting scream of agony that brought me back to myself, putting her hands up to her eyes at the same time.  A second later she vanished, obviously teleporting herself to safety.

I wrapped Gossamer in my power, preparing to teleport us out of there when a gentle vibration in my hand reminded me of the downloader.  I couldn’t leave until it finished getting the modeling software.  In fact, I really couldn’t move very far without going beyond its twenty-foot limit.

By now the guards had started firing, bullets shattering the glass that made up the walls of most of the rooms.  Instinctively, I ducked down.  Still on her feet, Gossamer had her head down, holding her daggers crossed in front of her.  A transparent shield had formed around her, deflecting all the bullets that would otherwise have ripped her to shreds.  Unfortunately, it looked like her shield was about to fade.

I set the downloader on the floor and shifted into super speed.  I stood up, then zipped over to Gossamer, sidestepping bullets along the way.  I teleported the remaining three guards to the lake (actually dumping them
in
the lake), then shifted back down to normal speed, making Gossamer and myself insubstantial at the same time.  A few bullets whizzed harmlessly through us, and then there was silence.

Gossamer looked confused for a moment, but apparently accepted the fact that all of our adversaries were out of commission at the moment.

“Come on,” I said, as we went back to where I’d set the downloader on the floor, broken glass crackling under our feet.

The downloader was gone.

I glanced around, and then I saw it.  Or rather, the remains of it.

The plastic casing had shattered into a dozen tiny pieces.  Broken wires stuck out like wild blades of grass in an open field.

It was obvious what had happened.  One of the bullets had ricocheted and hit the downloader, effectively destroying it.

“Now what?” asked Gossamer, as I sat there holding the pieces of the device in my hand.  Before I could respond, a trio of guards came into the suite, firing.

We ducked into the room containing the computers with the modeling software.  The machines themselves didn’t seem to have been touched by the random gunfire.  Moreover, the laptop I’d seen earlier was still sitting on the lab table.  Taken with a sudden inspiration, I grabbed the laptop and tucked it under my arm.  Then I teleported us back to the sub-basement room.

When we arrived, I didn’t have to explain what had happened to the download device; they had seen on the camera.  I handed Li the laptop, while Kane checked on Gossamer.

“What is this?” Li asked.

“I don’t know, but it was in that room,” I said.  “I remember you saying that Aldiss was the only one who ever really went in there, so I figured it might be important.”

I suddenly felt exhausted; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept.  I’d been told that one of the side rooms contained some sleeping cots, so I announced that I was going to take a nap.  Before I could get to the proper door, however, Kane came over and grabbed me by the arm, almost in anger.

“Why didn’t you teleport Gossamer out of there?” he asked, trying to keep his voice low.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, shaking off his grip.

“When the bullets started flying, why didn’t you teleport her out of there?”

“I had to stay there until Li’s little device finished doing its job – it couldn’t be moved.  I figured more soldiers were on the way, and if I was going to be basically immobilized until that thing finished, I needed all the help I could get.  So I teleported the soldiers away instead of Gossamer.”

He seemed to accept that explanation, and turned to look at Gossamer, who was drinking a bottle of water.

“Look,” I said, “we don’t know what’s going to happen here – how things will shake out.  Why don’t you tell her how you feel?”

Kane looked at me as if I’d just suggested he take a pig to the prom.  “What?  You’re crazy!” He walked away, shaking his head.

For the first time in a while, as I went into the side room and stretched out on a cot, I thought about Electra and wondered how she was doing.  I had to assume she was fine – she had to be.  The thought of anything else was unbearable.