“You think we’re in the clear now?”
“Oh we’ve been in the clear for some time. I just wanted to see how much longer you could keep it up. It turns out staying alive is a good motivator. You should recall this when doing your cardio on Phoenix and up the intensity.”
“Lee!”
Lee allowed himself to chuckle, despite the devastation he’d witnessed, and ran through.
“Come, we’re going to take that emergency worker’s personnel device. He will have the frequency to penetrate the dampening field. The field won’t drop until they’re certain no more devices are present which someone could trigger remotely. We’ve got to find the Commander. I have a feeling whoever tried to nab us is surely after them. Someone knew we were coming, and they were watching us from the time we got here.”
Flaps straightened and nodded.
Together they approached the emergency worker who was standing around bewildered like the hundred other injured persons mulling about. Lee grabbed the man’s wrist with his new arm and squeezed. The worker yelped and released the personnel device.
“What—”
A stern look from Lee and a tighter grip warned the man to end his protest. He closed his mouth and wondered off in some random direction.
Lee configured the device.
“What are you doing, Lee?”
“The Commander’s device can’t operate within the dampening field. He can’t communicate and cannot receive signals, but its location can still be tracked by another device which has the frequency to bypass the field. Here we go.”
He pumped his fist and showed the device to Flaps. “For once, something’s going our way, Flaps. We’ve been running in the direction of the Commander all this time. His device is moving, and fast. He’s definitely in a ground car. Come, we must commandeer one for ourselves.”
“I’d rather not. Can’t we steal an air-car?”
Lee grinned, the hotshot pilot didn’t like driving?
Remarkable.
****
They didn’t have far to go before “leasing” the property of another emergency worker.
“You know how to operate one of these things?” Flaps had turned a pale shade. “I can’t understand why anyone ever wanted to live so close to the surface. The sky is where all the fun is!”
Lee grinned. “That’s because you’ve never been in a ground race, Flaps,” he said, as they entered the locomotive.
“Buckle up!”
That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be catching the Commander. The operator of the ground car they pursued was really pushing it. It became easier to navigate the further away from the destruction they moved. Ground cars weren’t popular or numerous anyway. Especially since the majority of the population preferred to live in the upper city, while the dare devils enjoyed the thrill of operating exceedingly dangerous locomotives at speeds beyond sane.
It soon became apparent Lee would have to settle for following the movements of the other car, rather than intercepting it. Two minutes after the target stopped, he stopped their own ground car about half a kilometer away.
“Lee, couldn’t you get us a little closer? My feet hurt from all that running before.”
“When we get back, Dr. Tanner will give you a pair of bionic legs, so you never have to complain that your feet hurt again.”
“No thanks, my feet just hurt, at least they won’t rust.”
Lee laughed. The boy was learning. He grabbed a grappling device from the rescue car and a pair of thermal laser optics. The optic device was the twenty-fifth century version of a twenty-first century invention. The original device used radar pulses to ascertain presence and movement within a building but had to be placed against the target structure. This version utilized advanced laser pulses to achieve the same result from a distance. The device then displayed the results to the wearer via thermal imaging.
“Let’s go, Flaps.”
They both broke into a steady run and headed for the location of the Commander’s personnel device. Overhead, air rescue cars streamed towards the way they’d come. A constant sonic boom filled the air as atmospheric fighters patrolled the sky. About a hundred meters from the signal, Lee called for Miroslav to stop.
“What is it?”
“The signal is coming from inside that building just ahead.”
The building was largely rectangular—perhaps a sort of storage site. This definitely wasn’t a residential or research zone. Several security devices were in place outside of the building, but Lee was certain these unscrupulous individuals didn’t have the dampening field frequency to bypass it. Those devices, like any other electronics, should be useless.
If they did, this was going to be one short rescue attempt.
“Flaps, I need you to wait here. If I don’t come out within ten minutes, you need to make contact with Shepherd somehow. Inform him of everything that’s happened up to now. Where you last saw me and what we were doing. Can I count on you, kid?”
“Yeah, Lee.” Miroslav said. “You sure I can’t help you in there?”
“I wouldn’t say you couldn’t help me, Flaps. But I do feel there’s a great risk one or both of us might not make it out and it’s important Shepherd knows what’s happened up to this point.”
“I understand. You can count on me.”
They nodded to each other and Lee dashed towards his commander’s prison, and likely casket. On reaching near, he swung left and through a service alley for a building directly opposite. All the buildings in this district were similar in appearance. As with any other tech-5 world, uniformity was the norm. Each was two stories with a single front entrance, and windows on the upper floor. The Commander’s signal was coming from the second floor. If his captors modified the building on the exterior, then it would lose its camouflage among the others.
The principal factor, which afforded it the necessary security its occupants desired, was also the ideal exploit. It wasn’t hardened on the exterior—any security measures would be purely internal. Lee aimed the grappler above the building. The targeting computer did the calculations. He held it in place and squeezed the trigger. The gas operated device shot up and the shell around its spike broke off. The tip of the weighted spike penetrated the surface of the top of the building, and several more supporting spikes released and inserted.
A small readout on his recently “procured” personnel device told him the grappler was firmly in place. Following protocol, Atlas’s security would change the dampening frequencies every hour during an emergency. If some unscrupulous network of nefarious individuals had somehow managed to obtain the frequency prior to the emergency, it would be useless after that. The new frequency would be sent to emergency personnel devices prior to the dampening field frequency change. Even if these goons got the new frequency, they wouldn’t get it right away.
That meant he had fifteen minutes remaining until the change. He decided then to wait it out. If Aaron’s captors had the frequency after the change, it would reveal more about them and their capabilities.
It was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of his life.
****
Five minutes after being hustled inside the safe-house, any doubt about these vagabond’s intentions was long gone.
The illusion of this rescue was finally shattered as they got within the building and herded both he and Rachael to the second floor. They practically dropped the stretcher once inside as if his body didn’t ache enough. Then they yanked him up and grappled Rachael. The restraints went on next. Then he felt a sharp stick in the back of his neck.
The second floor was as barren as the first. An open space, with a single entry, two chairs in the center, a single light from the overhead and two barred windows on the far wall to the street.
His hosts roughly sat Rachael and him down. Aaron winced from a shooting pain in his back. He had to bite down hard to stop from yelping. “Who are you really? And what did you put in us?”