“Is it going to work?” a female voice asked.
“It has to. Everything is a go. We don’t have much time. He’s going to tell our contacts the details tomorrow.” Terrance rested his hands on her shoulders in an intimate gesture.
“Did you…” She paused, looking down at the ground. “Get the outpost location?”
In the green light of the night vision, I could see his posture straighten, and I swore he was smiling. “No, but I know where to get it now. The plan stays the same, just a small detour. This is an all or nothing play.”
“I’m for the cause the whole way,” Leslie said with conviction. “The Bhlat…” The rest was indiscernible.
They spoke for a few more minutes in hushed tones so we couldn’t make out what they said, and then quickly went their separate ways.
The video feed went dead.
“And you didn’t think to instantly contain them?” Mae yelled at the dean, who shrank back at the sudden outburst.
“That’s enough, hybrid! You don’t think I’d thought of that? We have more at stake here than the dreams of two aliens. They are stuck here! Do you understand that? They have no way to communicate with the outside world. We’ve been tracking them and keeping an eye on anyone they talk with.” He was inches away from Mae’s face, and I jumped between them, setting my hands on Skip’s chest.
“You’re done, Skip,” I said, holding him back as he pushed at me. “Listen, where are they now? People are dying out there, and we have every reason to believe those two, maybe more, are behind it. There must be a reason for it. It’s almost as if…” I stopped, my mind reeling for a second. “I think they’re trying to distract us from something.”
“Distract us from what? They’re stuck here behind gates and guards,” Skip said, stepping back away from me and Mae.
“Louise, can you show us where they are now?” Mary asked, in a calmer voice than the rest of us had been speaking in.
“Sure thing,” she said, moving her mouse around and clicking some keys. The top left screen showed us a video of the two of them working in a garden. “See, they’re right where they’re supposed to be, on garden duty. Did you see the size of those tomatoes they have out there? Best I’ve ever tasted.”
Skip rushed over and tapped the screen. “Garden duty doesn’t start for another hour. Zoom out!”
She hit a bunch of keys, but nothing happened.
“Goddamn it.” Skip ran his hands through his hair. “Switch to the next camera. We have one from the other end of the garden, don’t we?”
She did so and turned the camera to the end where we’d just seen the two hybrids working. There was no one there.
“Switch back,” he said.
The camera showed the two of them watering the plants.
“They’ve hacked in. We need to find them now.” This from Mary.
The second screen had started playing that same video from before, with the night vision. I looked at it and saw something move I hadn’t seen the first time. There was a third person there with them.
“Louise, can you zoom in on that second screen?” I asked.
Skip looked at me with annoyance. “Look here, Dean. We have more important things to do…”
“Just zoom in,” I cut him off. “There’s someone there with them.”
The screen zoomed. The picture, while in high definition, was in night vision, and they were some distance away. By the time she zoomed in enough to see them up close, the image was slightly pixelated. The third person was in the dark between and beyond them, but just as they went their own ways, the body turned. “Pause it!” I called. There was writing on the jacket.
“Security,” Skip muttered under his breath. “One of ours is in on it.”
Louise went forward frame by frame and stopped on one where we could see him closer.
“Boss, I know who that is,” she said. “It’s Clendening.”
That was the name of the guard the woman out front had said hadn’t shown up this morning.
“That bastard. Any sign of either Leslie or Terrance yet? You two get on the cameras and find me Clendening too!” he called to the other surveillance officers.
“Nothing on any of them, sir. It’s like they vanished,” Louise said.
Skip grabbed a landline from Louise’s desk. After a moment of rushed conversation, he had jotted down some notes on a pad of paper. “Send guards to Clendening’s room in the barracks. If he’s there, hold him until I get there.”
“Can we get this show on the road?” Mary asked, obviously anxious to track down the hybrids we were there to get before they could do any more harm.
It appeared they were getting messages out by the guard we’d just spotted meeting with them in the middle of the night. A couple of them with a network out there and a guard on their side, and they could make things happen, even from behind a fence with no phones or web access.
“Are any of you armed?” Skip asked matter-of-factly.
I shook my head. “Nope, we haven’t been given any firearms yet. I’m guessing the president thought you would be generous enough to set us up if we needed them, at least until we get to the base after this trip.”
He waved us forward. Soon we were through the foyer and into an adjacent room, which Skip had to use two keys to open. It was lined with locked gun racks. In moments, all of us were armed, Mary and I with Glocks, and Mae with a Beretta.
“I’d been holding on the hope they were just all talk, and thought if they were trying something, we could maybe identify any other hybrids in on it. With Clendening in on it, we have no choice. We’re going to take them down. If they had anything to do with those shootings out in the real world, they’ll quickly learn to regret their decision to act as hostile terrorists on our world.” The dean was working himself up, and I just hoped he would keep a level head once we found where they were hiding.
We left the building, and a group of four armed guards crossed the university grounds with us as we headed to the residence where the hybrids slept.
SEVEN
Dozens of the hybrids watched us as we made our way through the halls.
Skip told a couple of the guards to go to room thirty-seven and sent Mae alongside them to Leslie’s listed residence. We continued to Terrance’s room. When we arrived, a hybrid that looked just like Ray’s girlfriend Kate walked up to us, arms held up, letting us know she came in peace.
“There’s no one in there. He didn’t come back last night.” She kept her hands up as she spoke.
Skip turned the handle, finding it locked. He stepped back, and in a moment, he had kicked the area just under the handle, sending shards of wooden frame away as the latch broke and slid through the thin recessed hole. That suit had some fire in his veins.
A guard entered with her gun pointed forward, and we followed into the cramped space when she said it was clear. I’d somehow expected the random mess of a madman, but what we found was an extremely clean, organized space. Their rooms were small, much like the one Mary and I had slept in the night before, and inside the bed was made as if by a hotel chambermaid. Some papers were set in straight lines on the small desk to the left of the door. Inside the closet everything hung nicely, but I noticed half of the clothes hangers on the bar hung empty. The drawers had few items in them, telling me this guy had packed what few belongings he could possibly have, and was gone.