Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3) (26 page)

“You’re right,” said Carl, almost in awe. “That
would be
genius. Then we bomb Nathaniel out of existence.” A frown came over his face and he shook his head in disgust. “Which we would have already done if not for you,” he added, gesturing toward Ryan. He paused for a moment, his jaw tightening, as he reflected on just how close he had come to killing an innocent man and playing right into Michelle Cooper’s hands.
“When we searched the wreckage afterwards,” he continued, “we’d be unable to find the Enigma Cube. We’d assume, incorrectly, that it was caught in the blast. After that we would think the crisis was over. No more villain. No more weapon.” He shook his head in wonder. “And
she
ends up being the hero.”

“And then she can return to the team,” said Ryan. “Take her time. Make her plans. Continue building her mercenary army. And catch us completely off guard.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right,” said Carl. “I’ll bet this is exactly what she had planned.”

They entered the Prometheus elevator and began the long ascent to the surface. “So what are you going to do now?” asked Ryan.

“With respect to Nathaniel, I have to call off the dogs. And I have to get a massive manhunt started for Michelle Cooper.” He sighed. “But before I do I want to speak with her daughters. I think it’s only right that I tell them before I tell anyone else.”

“Tell them what? That their mother isn’t a hostage. That she’s really behind the whole thing?”

Carl nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“But why even bother? Aren’t you just going to give them the amnesia compound anyway?”

Carl sighed. “It turns out the amnesia inhalant isn’t fully perfected,” he said. “A few of the mercenaries we used it on after the Tezoc incident ended up eventually
losing several years of memory. We aren’t sure why. I refuse to take that risk with these two innocent girls.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. Did that mean Carl might let them join the team. More importantly, might let
Alyssa
join the team.

Carl was frowning deeply as they stepped off the elevator and it closed behind them. “I’m afraid once we find Michelle we’ll have to mount the same attack we had planned for Nathaniel. Which is a tragedy. Because even though she’s responsible, it isn’t her fault. It’s the fault of Isis. She’ll be every bit as much the innocent victim as she would have been had she really been Nathaniel’s hostage.”

They opened the door to the decoy building and stepped through. Chris Malcolm was sitting in a chair while the two Cooper sisters were pacing anxiously. Carl walked briskly toward the two girls while Ryan followed close behind.

Ryan buckled and collapsed to the floor!

He struggled to breathe, barely able to expand his lungs. He flattened himself spread-eagle on the ground. The pressure on every square inch of his body was enormous; as though an entire herd of elephants had decided to sit on him all at once.

He had been hit by a gravity wave!

Ryan used every ounce of his strength to pull his cheek off the ground and glance ahead for just a moment.
He saw that Carl was pinned to the ground as well, along with Chris and the two sisters. Alyssa’s pained face, flattened like a pancake on the floor, was the last thing Ryan saw as he lost the battle to keep his head upright and his eyelids open.

Ryan tried crawling toward the door to the Prometheus bunker, but moving even an inch was a mighty struggle, and after traveling only a yard or two he was too exhausted to continue.

His only chance was to find another seam to the fourth dimension. A dimension that wouldn’t be affected the same by gravity’s distortion of space. The crystal in his pocket had failed to protect him by itself. He concentrated for all he was worth and tried to recreate the feelings he had when the Hauler was about to hit him, and when he had passed through the Isis shield.

Nothing.

He continued to concentrate, straining to his absolute limit.

Still nothing. His gravity hadn’t changed at all.

After five minutes of trying he was forced to give up.

This time his theory had been wrong. He was just as susceptible to the gravity effect as was everyone else.

Which meant there was nothing he could do but stay where he was, totally helpless, and await whatever might happened next.

C
HAPTER
31
Deadly Encounter

R
yan wasn’t sure how long he was pinned there. He had to use every ounce of his energy just to continue breathing. His heart was straining but somehow managed to pump blood through his body.

He felt duct tap being applied to his mouth, but he was unable to find the strength to open his eyes. If he had to guess, he would say that twenty minutes had passed since the wave had hit.

And then the crushing pressure was removed. Mercifully, between one instant and the next, gravity returned to normal. Ryan was exhausted and felt as if his muscles had been put through a meat tenderizer, but after experiencing many times the force of gravity for so long his ordinary weight had never felt so light. He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.

Michelle Cooper towered above him, bathed in the
eerie, pulsing glow of the Enigma Cube, which she was holding lightly at her side. The smaller cube in its center was spinning less furiously than it had when Ryan had seen it before and the indentations spaced out along the edges of the outer cube now glowed in a rainbow of colors, each piercingly bright, with unearthly sharpness and clarity. The pulsing alien energy that they had somehow been able to sense before seemed tamer now, possibly because it was no longer powering the million-fold increase in gravity required to maintain the Cube at a weight of 200,000 pounds. Even so, the object still radiated what seemed like impossibly pure, concentrated light and was as hypnotic as ever.

Michelle Cooper was not alone. The five mercenary soldiers who had accompanied her ordered Ryan, Carl and the two girls to their feet. The mouths of all four of them had already been sealed with duct tape and they were now expertly bound as well. The mercs ignored Chris Malcolm who was still pinned to the floor by many times the normal force of gravity. Even though his eyes were shut tightly, Michelle was careful to stay out of his line of sight in case he managed to reopen them, and she remained silent so he wouldn’t recognize her voice.

Alyssa and Kelsey squirmed against their bonds and yelled outraged questions at their mother—questions that were turned into muffled gibberish by the duct tape—while their eyes practically bulged from their sockets, expressing a horror and an anguish that only
a profound betrayal could elicit. This was insane! Their mother was obviously no longer a hostage, so what was she doing? Why wasn’t she acknowledging her own daughters? Why was she allowing this to happen?

Michelle Cooper stared at them callously, without the slightest hint of compassion, and then turned away as if they were of no further concern. Ryan saw the intense hurt this caused in every line of their faces and would have given anything to at least explain to them why their mother was acting this way, but there was nothing he could do.

The four prisoners were marched to two white SUVs parked outside of the building, their doors still open. Ryan and Carl were pushed into the back seat of one of the two vehicles while Alyssa and Kelsey were pushed into the other.

They drove through the woods for ten minutes, the going slow, until they reached a two-story wooden cabin with a modern satellite dish on its roof, which looked decidedly out of place. The cabin faced a tiny lake on one side and was surrounded by numerous trees on the other. The structure was totally isolated, probably for dozens and dozens of acres in all directions.

Carl and Ryan were ushered up wooden steps into one room while Alyssa and Kelsey were locked in another.

The cabin may have been rustic on the outside, but inside it was well appointed with a modern kitchen, a
large plasma television and several laptop computers. Ryan’s hands were freed and he was shoved onto a high-backed wooden chair. His ankles were bound a foot apart and he was loosely tied to the chair with rope, his arms at his sides. Carl was pushed into a standing position next to him, still bound as before.

“Go back to base camp and await my instructions,” Michelle Cooper ordered the mercenaries now that the prisoners had been dealt with to her specifications.

All five mercs exited the cabin and drove off in one of the two SUVs. Only Michelle Cooper, her two daughters, Ryan and Carl remained.

“On your stomach, Colonel!” commanded Michelle icily, holding the Cube suggestively in front of her. Its brilliant luminosity made the brightly lighted room seem murky and drab by comparison.

Carl eyed Michelle and calculated his chances of mounting a successful attack. Even bound as he was he was skilled enough in combat to overpower her, but she was smart and was carefully maintaining a safe distance away. He had no other choice but to lower himself to the floor as instructed, knowing his risk of injury was far less if he was already pressed to the ground when the Enigma Cube was activated rather than collapsing there.

Michelle pointed the Cube at Carl and touched a small indentation on its edge that glowed a vivid blue. He was instantly pressed even further into the floor as if an invisible steamroller had parked on his back.

Michelle walked over to Ryan and yanked the tape from his mouth as hard as she could. Ryan thought his lips would come off in the process.

“Ryan Resnick,”
she said in disdain. “My least favorite kid in the world. I’m going to leave
your
gravity alone for now. Because you and I need to have a little talk.”

Michelle Cooper pulled up a chair and faced him from five feet away. She put the cube on the floor by her side and glared at him. Ryan’s eyes were drawn to the Cube but he forced himself to look away and into the blazing blue eyes of the woman in front of him. “I stranded you at the center of the galaxy,” she spat. “And even this didn’t get you out of my hair.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You have a lot of questions to answer.”

“I’ll answer them all,” said Ryan. “Honestly and completely. If you’ll answer a few of mine.”

Michelle laughed maliciously. “Oh, I know you’ll answer my questions, Ryan. But let’s be very clear: this is
not
a negotiation.” She lifted the Enigma Cube and pointed one of its twelve edges toward Ryan. “I touch this yellow indentation and your body collapses in on itself. Like a grape being hit with a sledgehammer.”

She put the Cube down but continued to glare at him. “My mercenary friends finally told me about finding a kid coming out of Proact. From their physical description and the way you managed to escape, I had no doubt that it was you they had discovered. Which is impossible!
The first thing I did after stranding you and the others on Isis was to incapacitate everyone inside Prometheus. So who rescued you?” she demanded.

Ryan told her the same story he had told Carl. That he had been helped by a safety feature of the Isis shield.

She considered him for a long moment, as if weighing his story. “I have no choice but to believe you. There’s no other way you could have gotten through the barrier.” She shook her head in disgust. “You truly are the luckiest person who ever lived.”

At that moment Ryan didn’t feel so lucky, but he remained silent.

“How did my daughters get involved?”

Ryan told her the truth, leaving nothing out.

“How were you able to see through my deception,” she asked next. “How did you realize Nathaniel was a decoy?”

Ryan’s eyes widened. So it wasn’t just a coincidence that she had captured them when she had. But how could she have known Ryan and Carl were on to her. Ryan had just figured it out and they had not told
anyone
.

Michelle read Ryan’s surprised expression. “You’re wondering how I knew that I’d been discovered,” she guessed. “Aren’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. After the city was mine, I planted bugs inside the headquarters of Prometheus and Proact security, inside the cavern, and inside the Prometheus elevator. To spy on all the idiots hunting Nathaniel.” She grinned icily. “I bought this cabin last
month. It appealed to me to hide right under your noses and keep Proact in range of the Cube. Close enough to take over again at a moment’s notice if I had to.” She smiled again, very pleased with herself. “Which turned out to be the case.”

Ryan searched his memory to determine just what she had overheard. He had been in Prometheus security headquarters but had only spoken when he was in Carl’s office. And she couldn’t have planted a bug
there
. It had been locked securely while Carl was away.

So she had only heard them talking in the cavern and the elevator. In the cavern they had discussed her probable strategy. In the elevator, Carl had said he wanted to tell Michelle’s daughters that she was behind everything before telling anyone else.

That was it! Of course Michelle had pounced when she had.

She must have been listening to her bugs from this very cabin. She had learned she had been discovered but also that she had a window of opportunity. So she had almost immediately sent a gravity pulse from the cabin outward—to Proact and beyond. Then all she had to do was drive calmly to Proact to capture them.

Michelle Cooper could see the understanding in Ryan’s eyes. “That’s right,” she said coldly. “However you figured things out, I got to you before you told anyone. So everything will continue to go forward exactly as I planned. The gravity effect will wear off on everyone
shortly. The rest of the Isis team will be rescued and tell everyone the tragic tale of the crazed physicist and his poor, helpless hostage. Then I’ll appear with a heroic tale of escape and lead security right to Nathaniel, just as you guessed.” She raised her eyebrows. “And they’ll bomb him into oblivion. After that, everything will return to normal.” A cruel smile came over her face. “At least they’ll
think
it has. Until I’m ready to make my
real
move.”