Remember (34 page)

“JB, let me set up the V-tech on your back,” Jenna says.

I sit on the table with my back facing her. She opens the box, presses some stuff on the pad inside, and closes it again. A wall of tech surrounds Morris and me with a shimmering view of the outside world. Jenna's new cover allows access to the Institute so she stays outside the tech bubble. We leave the room together, walking through a waterfall of tech. The screen falls away and produces tech formed figures, a perfect facsimile of the three of us all working to get the projector up and running. We aren’t going to be missed.

We go into the elevator. Jenna stays close to the side so we can get in, moves in front of us, and pretends we aren’t there. The tech starts moving into any gaps in the elevator door. We pass through the tenth floor. The elevator starts turning clear as it moves into eleven. The eleventh floor resembles a nature preserve with apartments scattered about — completely natural scenery (no constructed paths for walking) — a mountain meadow and stream.

The views of Kiros Stephens’ entry hall and heavily guarded office hallway greet us at twelve. We stop, and the tech rushes out the closed door. The tech shows me the progress of coating the walls. The elevator doors open to tech masking all the walls including this one. The tech door replica opens, and Jenna walks out. As guards turn their heads to follow her through the room, the tech surrounds each of them in a screen. Jenna gets to the tech wall at the end of the room, where the tech reacts as if unauthorized access (flashing door frame), and shows Jenna going back downstairs. Jenna actually waits for the program to end.

Morris and I have to neutralize all the guards in the room. I take the left, and he takes the right. I grab the first guard’s head covering his mouth and move my other hand over the holster. The NLIT magnetically puts itself into my hand. The guard has been trying to get me off with his stun wand that now dropped to the ground. He elbows me in the suit. The NLIT is in place. I press in. The blade goes in and comes out. Holster NILT and gently lower him to the floor.

Morris incapacitated half, so far. I go to the next one, turn my NLIT holster for better speed, grab him, and place the NLIT. He tries beating me with the stun wand, doesn’t work. He is down. Jenna kneels, putting a strip of something along the edges of the door. I move to the next one with the realization this isn’t hard. The last one steps out of the screen, looks around for a sec, and runs toward Jenna with his wand ready. In one motion, Jenna pulls out the VNSP, turns around by putting the other knee down, and shoots him. He falls on the ground with the dart in his leg. Morris is just standing by. I get to the last guard, cover his mouth, pull out the VNSP dart, and use the NLIT to knock him out. The erratic movements of his eyes freak
me out, so I close them.

The tech moves through the door and covers the walls in the next room. Jenna uses a tiny pad to interface with the door sensors through the strip.

An intercom delivers the voice of Mr. Stephens. “Is everything alright, out here?”

“Yes, sir. One of us just dropped a stun wand,” Morris says.

“Good.”

With everything ready for opening the door from my end, I give Jenna the okay sign. She does something on the pad, and the doors open to the tech doors just inside. I take off the package on my back, after lowering the edge onto the empty assistant’s desk. The package settles precariously near the edge of the desk. I shift it back, open it near the ribbon of tech sticking out, and hover over the activate button. Jenna kneels out of the perceived firing line at chest height, ready to fire into the room. Morris introduces Jenna to Mr. Stephens.

“Meagan Farrington is here to see you,” Morris says into the air.

“Yes, send her in. She is the 3 o’clock,” the assistant from inside the room says.

I open the doors and activate the next stage of the program. The room starts flashing in a rainbow of colors, designed to temporarily blind anyone exposed. Jenna shoots Mr. Stephens and his executive assistant. Morris and I enter with the protection of the helmets. Two guards wave their arms around trying to fend off anyone they can’t see.

I grab the guards left arm, pull it behind his back, force him into the wall, put my knee on his back holding him there, use my now free hand to till his head back, cover his mouth, pull him away from the wall, draw the NLIT and apply it, finally lie him down. Morris NLITs the assistant while removing the VNSP dart. Jenna opened Mr. Stephens’ sleeve exposing his shoulder. She puts a node there, takes out the small pad, and a metal band. The band is fitted over his head between his ears. It expands to cover his head down to his neck.

“We are all set to start the excitement. This tech uses the autonomic nervous system to guide the subject into performing the required action. In this case, he will operate the computer systems of the Institute. We are going to move the elevator to the eleventh floor. Open the data line access panel. Allow access to the elevator shaft over there,” Jenna says all while entering feverishly into the small pad.

I look at open elevator doors. Morris comes over to give Jenna something from his package. She takes out a metallic sphere with a lens on it. It connects by two tubes to the package. The sphere, put on the desk faces the angular windows at the back of the office. Morris and I go to the open elevator shaft. He lowers me down from the edge of the landing. I drop more than a meter to the elevator roof. Morris backs away, tumbles over the threshold and lands with his arms holding the twelfth floor. He drops down.

My helmet illuminates the near dark elevator shaft. In the corner, the open wall soffit exposes a vein of electric blue liquid moving up and down with darker and lighter bands. Vein is the best description, the liquid just slowly moves through. Morris stuck his pack on the wall somehow. He takes out a black disk about 5 centimeters wide, access port. I stick it on the 40 centimeters pipe. The edge turns red. He gives me a canister with a flange on one end. I put it on the port, seal the flange against it, turn the port until it is green, and look through the auger in the canister to see the pipe.

Morris gives me a crank handle. I put it on the auger and start boring into the pipe. The canister fills up with the liquid. Keep drilling until no longer any resistance. I take off the crank and turn it around. Reconnect and use it to withdraw the auger into the canister. Turn the access port to blue. This allows just the liquid to go back in. I keep cranking. A screen moves all the liquid back inside. I take off the canister and crank, both returned to Morris.

He gives me a 30 centimeter by 30 centimeter box with two handles and connected to the sphere in the office. I put it on the access port by pressing down the handles, turn the port to green, and a small hiss of air escaping as the liquid transfers up the tube. It takes some time, but the liquid returns from the office by the other tube. The data transfer has already started. It seems to take forever to complete.

(—)

The liquid finishes draining back into the pipe. The transfer is done. I turn the port until it shows white. This means the access port is sealing the pipe.

I pull back on the handles and take off the interface, hand it back to Morris, remove the access port after it turns black (tech displays what each color means if I wait). Morris packs up everything. The connection tube just snakes its way out of the package. I hop up to the threshold of the twelfth floor. Morris just jumps through the doorway. The data is ours.

I check on all the unconscious people — I don't know why, but I still do it. The non-lethal NLIT (redundant I know) removes all vital signs, except temperature. I start checking everyone for a noticeable fever, too important for just using tech. Morris winds up the tube as he walks by. I run through all eight in the hallway and move onto the two guards and assistant in the office. The elevator returns and the outside doors shut. Jenna takes off the node.

She says, “Would you like do the honors, JB?”

“Okay.”

I lay Mr. Stephens on the ground. Jenna releases his face shroud. I cover his mouth, retrieve the VNSP dart, press my NLIT on him, wait for the NLIT to finish and stow it in my holster. Jenna packs up the wireless transfer device. I see a message on my tech. It says
target deceased
. I check Mr. Stephens. He is not warm.

Mon 8/21/17 4:15 p.m.

H
ow could I trust them
this much
? They told me to do something. I just do it, and this is what I get. They make me kill someone. I
killed
someone. I am a killer. They made me into one! I have to stay calm about this. I can’t lose it here. I have to keep moving. How can I? I have just killed someone! It isn’t just anyone, it is Gary’s father! I didn’t want to do it. Does that matter to anyone? No one knows it's me. How does that matter?! I have to live with the guilt of my stupidity. How can this happen? I review the report as I remember. The NLIT uses support tech to keep the person alive after it is used. The support tech isn’t in him. Yes, that’s it. I have to keep him alive. I can use the NLIT, again. He should get the support tech this time. I hit him, again.

“Is everything okay?” Jenna asks me.

I look up. “Yeah, I’m just making sure it worked.”

The tech says he is dead. I can keep him going for the 10 minutes it takes to get him back. I can’t stay here. I did this to him. It doesn’t matter what I do after the fact. If he does recover, it won’t be 100 percent. I doesn’t matter what I do now. I’ve already hurt him. I have killed him! How did I get into this? That doesn’t matter! I have to get out of this! I’m furiously pacing the room. I just have to forget about it. I can’t! I didn’t do this. I did! This isn’t my fault. It is! I can’t take this anymore! I can’t do anything! I am trapped! Nooo! This can’t be happening!

I’m just a bystander watching myself have an explosion of anger. I see myself lash out at the nearest thing. I punch the wall and cringe. The results are devastating. A chunk of wall,
a big chunk
falls to the ground. I can’t stop looking at the face of my victim. I just want to collapse and let whatever is going to happen, to just happen. I can’t go any farther. I just can’t.

The alarms start going off.
Intruder alert
is splashed over the walls. I keep walking around. I hear the faint sound of my name. I don’t listen to it. Jenna comes in front of me. This makes me stop. I stare blankly at her face. She can get through to me. She shakes me out of it. I let her do it. I’m coming back. I don’t want to do anything. I just want everything to stop, no matter how. Jenna shoots at a window or something. An explosion is next. Glass rains down everywhere.

Jenna grabs my arm and moves me to the open window. I follow her like a child. I see a huge egg shaped green outline floating over the middle of the street. Rings of green coming down off the egg. Jenna moves my arm to point at the top of the egg, where two circles of green are visible. A string of tech leaps all the way from my arm to the disc on the craft. Jenna comes around to my other side. She wraps one arm around my neck. She moves my arm around her waist. She holds on to my neck. The string pulls us out the window and to the craft.

Just my feet land on something solid. I feel myself losing balance. Jenna gets off me. She grabs my hand. I can’t move the suit. It moves by itself to get me inside. Jenna leads me to a seat on the far side of the fully plastic interior. I sit down, or the suit makes me sit down. Jenna leans over to undo my helmet.

She says, “Follow the flow.” This sinks in. The words blend together and reorganize in my head over and over again. I look out as we speed away from the city. I know I need to sleep for some reason. As if right on cue, I start feeling drowsy. I drift off, faintly remembering my head resting on the window.

(—)

I’m woken up by Jenna. We landed on the side of a steep snow covered mountain. An open hatch with a ladder sticking out appeared in the middle of the floor. I can move, again. I climb down the ladder. Someone throws down my helmet. I catch it and walk down the narrow set of footprints. I look back to see the craft — a silver egg shaped thing with three articulated legs (swaddled in silver pelts) stabilizing it on the slope. Jenna walks a few feet behind me, breathing out fog, reddening against the cold, and wrapped in that cream colored jacket from earlier. I don't feel it that much in the insulated assault suit, but my nose and breath do. We walk downhill with Morris in the lead and cross into the tree-line. Evergreen tree sparsely disburse the snow, some with brown bark, most dark brown. The need to keep my mind busy results in fist clenching, until I’m too tired to feel anything.

We circle around to a cave surrounded by snow and enter the warmth inside where the snow disappears leaving pools of water. As we go deeper, it warms up and dries out. We move through a convoluted series of passageways carved into the mountain. A white lighted door heads us off. The door opens as we get closer. We go through a scanning arch into a grey room with pillars of light every meter. The center door of three ahead opens and someone comes out all in grey, except for a white tie.

“Hi, I’m Report. Welcome to M station. This is your chance to decompress after your mission and before returning to your lives. Come with me. I have some questions for you three,” Report says. Her quiet clear voice carries well.

Her long face, sharp nose, and dilated brown oval eyes make her unmistakable. We go with her through the door and enter a big dim meeting room with screens inlayed into the wood paneling showing views of the outside. I’m sure it could show anything. The table has three chairs opposing one. We sit down. Report has a pad with her, retrieved from somewhere.

“Let's get started. I have an analysis of your cam footage with me and a few questions. How does that sound?” She continues without waiting for an answer, “Good, we can start then. What happened, if anything, after the data transfer completed?”