Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (5 page)

FOUR

SAVAGE’S KNUCKLES BEGAN to swell. The beating he was delivering to the punching bag this time surprised even him. He’d never gone this long before. It was those two imbeciles. They frustrated him to no end!

Finally winded, he ceased his hostility toward the black leather bag, pulled off the sparring gloves and examined his wounds. A few lacerations. A little blood. Nothing compared to what he wanted to do to those two men. He took a deep breath from his diaphragm and grabbed the towel off a rack of sterling silver dumbbells. Dabbing his forehead, he sauntered across the floor.

“Let me get this straight,” he streaked his hand along a touchscreen, collapsing the data. “Because if you did what this report says, then you two have to be the STUPIDEST IDIOTS IN THE HISTORY OF IDIOTS!”

He swept a bottle of purified water off the bar, sending a geyser into the air. The men flinched to avoid the flying plastic. Savage breathed deep again, dropped his towel and mopped the spill with his foot.

“Apologies, gentlemen. Occasionally my anger gets the better of me. Doctor says exercise is supposed to help alleviate my stress, but…”

He searched for something in their body language.

“Tell me in your own words what happened.”

He expected an anxious pause and an awkward volley of innocence, each man attempting to stall the other into talking first. Instead, Scudder, the more obtuse-looking of the two, cleared his throat and presented their defense.

“Sir, we were preparing specimen number T1 for a full…”

Savage cut in. “Specimen T1? Tell me, what security protocol was specimen T1?”

Finally, the pause he’d anticipated. The men shifted in their seats, glancing at each other. Savage saw wheels of deception spinning in their heads. Along with something else. It wouldn’t be long until they started to turn on one another. That’s when the real fun would begin. That’s when he’d get to the bottom of this.

And Savage
would
get to the bottom of this.

“Gentlemen?” he grew weary.

“Protocol level five, sir,” answered the other man, Diaz.

“Level five,” he paced across the granite tiles. “Level five.”

The men once more adjusted their seating postures. They coughed, fidgeted, stared at their laps—anything to avoid eye contact.

“And what protocol level were you using at the time of the escape?”

“Sir,” Scudder again came to their defense. “We were preparing the specimen for brain surgery. We were employing the highest protocol suited for that work.”

Savage clapped his hands and two large men in dark suits entered, each taking a place behind one of the scientists. Scudder attempted to get up. Instead, a thug palmed his head and forced him into his seat again.

Diaz employed a little more subtle, reasoned approach by trying to talk his way out of it. “Listen, this is totally unnecessary.”

“On the contrary,” Savage offered a bit of his own reasoning. “I think it’s totally necessary. You see, I’m in quite a little dilemma here. This is highly sensitive and highly profitable material.”

He stopped at a series of wall mounted flatscreens and touched an icon on the uppermost one, triggering a sequence of flickering on each monitor until the grainy images from a security camera appeared. Footage from the lab. Scudder was alone with the creature. He moved his lips as if talking to it. Then he pressed his thumb on the locking mechanism, opening the small, hardened acrylic and steel enclosure. He walked out of the room. The cage door opened and the creature hopped onto the floor. The footage went to static.

Savage strode toward the two scientists with a hasty purpose.

“Who do you work for? Greenpeace? Animal Liberation Front? Or maybe one of my rivals? Answer me!”

“No, I work for you!” Scudder didn’t blink.

Savage gave a subtle nod and one of the suited men threw a swift uppercut in the middle of Scudder’s gut. He doubled over in his chair, moaning. Then he made another escape attempt, only to have it squelched by the other gorilla in a three-piece, who grabbed his collar and held him like a puppet, his feet brushing the stone floor.

“Please let me go!” he squeaked. “I swear I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember doing anything like it! I didn’t do it, I…”

A slap to the face by the guard forced him into quiet submission.

Savage wanted to slap him, too. Actually he wanted to pounce on Scudder’s throat. Of course he knew that would have been wrong. Not for any moral or legal reasons. Savage laughed at morals, and he could buy the law. Nothing was out of bounds and everything had its price. However, he knew his own temper, and he knew the scientists had to stay alive in order to tell him what had happened to the Tanakee. That was the priority, to recover that invaluable creature. And right now, the scientists were his only lead. It killed him to not kill them, though he knew it would have gotten him nowhere. Worse than nowhere. That’s why he hired the guards, so he let them do their job. They seemed to love their job.

“The time for excuses and alibis is over,” Savage tried with all his inner strength to put aside the idea of snuffing them out right then and there. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this…oh, what am I saying? Of course I was hoping it would come to this.”

Again he gave the two goons a quick, inconspicuous nod. They obeyed by slugging the scientists, tossing them over a shoulder, and hauling them, fighting and kicking, out of the office.

Savage slumped and sighed. Then he spoke to the video monitors, fully aware he was being watched.

“I assume you’ll want to see the next phase of our interrogation?”

“Of course,” Davos was nothing more than a shadowy shape on every screen. He sounded almost amused. Almost. “But those two bumbling fools better not be your solitary lead.”

“Oh, no,” Savage tried to be reassuring. “We’ve got multiple teams in the field right now. We’ll retrieve this thing, you can count on that.”

“You’d better. I’d hate to have to take my business elsewhere. Maybe one of your competitors might…”

“Sir, I assure you. We’re as committed today as we were when you first became our client, which was and still is one thousand percent. I’m
not
going to let this get out of hand, and I’m not going to disappoint you. Just don’t bring up my competitors ever again, deal?”

“Savage, you get that creature back and we’ll talk. Until then, I can’t make any promises.”

The shadowy likenesses vanished from the plasma screens.

Swearing up a storm, he hurried to the polished steel weight rack, lifted a 45 pound plate, and was about to let it loose on a monitor when a buzzer sounded.

“Mr. Savage. We’ve got that data on the toy deliveries. Do you want it now?”

Chest heaving, forehead trickling with sweat, he hugged the rounded weight to his heart. He smiled again.

“Hmm, gee. Let’s see. Do I want to see it now? Hmm. How about…YES!”

The data flashed on each screen. He dropped the weight.
Clank!
it scraped against his shin, but he didn’t notice. He engrossed himself in the file, holding one of the monitors and studying each word single-mindedly.

FIVE

JACK SAT AT his little desk, in his little room, in the little apartment where he, his mom, and his kid sister lived. Releasing a long, melancholy sigh, his attention drifted out the window to a rain-soaked parking lot crowded with dented, rusting vehicles. He wondered how he came to find himself in such a place. The neighbors were loud, the apartment smelled musty, and the high-speed internet went out on a regular basis. It would have been intolerable if it weren’t for one redeeming quality—Amelia lived there. Even that, though, had become tainted. The incident after school changed the way he saw her, possibly for good. Now there seemed to be nothing left for him to do but busy his mind with the things he enjoyed truly.

Intent on initiating an analysis of a new galaxy he might have discovered, he brushed the mouse aside to wipe away his computer’s Nicola Tesla screensaver. Butterflies raged in his stomach when he saw the message on the screen.

You have a video chat request from: Amelia.

He didn’t want to accept. The message flashed once more, revealing Amelia’s custom-made avatar, a gorgeous portrait of her inside a triangle of feathers and surrounded by ancient zodiac symbols.

He clicked the icon and Amelia’s webcam opened. She wore a mournful expression.

“You hate me, don’t you?” she eyed the camera.

“Yep,” he turned away.

“What! You do? Really?”

He smiled. “No. I don’t hate you. I just wish…”

“Listen, Jack. Don’t say another word. Don’t you think I’m ashamed of how I behaved today? Just let me say I’m sorry,” she leaned in closer. “I know this isn’t an excuse, but you’ve got to try to understand. My family, we’ve moved around a lot. I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to make any friends, and the ones I did get to know ended up turning on me. I’ve been teased and made fun of and cast out, just like you. But when Wendy and the girls started treating me like one of them, I…I can’t describe the feeling.”

“Believe me, I know what it’s like,” he told her. “When you go along with the crowd, you feel safe.”

The guilt on her face was clear. “You’re gonna torture me with this forever, aren’t you?”

He realized he might have been too harsh. “I guess not.”

“Jack, I can tell something’s wrong, and it’s more than those kids teasing you, isn’t it?”

She waited for him to say something. He avoided the camera.

“Listen, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I just don’t feel like talking about this over the internet. It’s a little too sensitive. You never know who might be hacking in.”

“Silly,” she had a hint of pixie playfulness. “I knew that. That’s why…”

He sat straight, startled by three rapid knocks outside his bedroom. On his computer, Amelia barely seemed able to contain an ear to ear grin. He got up and opened the door. Sure enough, she stood in the hall, showing him her smartphone and curling her fingers, ‘hello.’ She seemed out of place for the weather in her flowing, vividly-colored dress.

“That’s why I came over.”

Jack’s mom peeked from the top of the stairs and flashed a concerned frown.

“Mom!” Jack felt his cheeks heat up.

“Just keep the door open, all right?” she tiptoed down the stairs.

Amelia sat on the only uncluttered chair in the room, crossed her arms and stared at him. Then she raised her head, smiling. “Hey, what’s that thing?”

“Huh? What thing?”

“Behind you.”

“Oh that,” he shrugged. “That’s nothing.”

“Come on, tell me. It looks like something to me.”

“Really, it’s nothing. Just one of my projects,” he picked up the black cylinder. “I call it my Holoversarium.”

“Your holo-what?”

He giggled. “Holoversarium.”

“Never heard of one.”

“That’s because there aren’t any others. I invented it.”

She ran her fingers along the outside edge of its domed, crystalline top. “What does it do?”

“It uses the latest high-definition space imagery to create a deep-field holograph of the universe. Then it projects it at any scale I want.”

“Space imagery? You mean satellites? Like Hubble?”

He chuckled again. “Yeah, that’s one of them. The most famous one. There are others, too. And not just satellites. I use all kinds of observational spacecraft, some the public have heard of, some are classified.”

She eyed him. “So, what, you hacked into a top secret satellite?”

“I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” he smiled.

“Show me,” she gave him a look he couldn’t refuse.

He brought the shoebox-sized machine to the center of the room and placed it on a chair which had two large packages stacked already. It wobbled, yet he managed to sit it still.

“There,” he said. “That’s probably high enough. This room’s pretty small, so you won’t get the full effect, but here goes.”

He plugged it in and flipped the
on
switch, letting its tiny motor hum. Then he shut off the lights and punched a command on his computer. A white beam came out the top of the dome and hit the ceiling. He clicked then dragged his mouse, spreading the ray in all directions at once, making a three-dimensional map of the stars. Tiny speckles surrounded both Jack and Amelia, masses upon masses of glittery objects swirling in slow motion, churning in a vast interstellar sea.

He pointed to a pinwheel of light.

“This is the Milky Way Galaxy,” he pulled the mouse toward him. The small, bright dots slowed their movements and grew bigger and bigger, zeroing in on a ball of fiery gold encircled by lesser spheres. Amelia put her hand on her cheeks.

“Wow! That’s our solar system! Hey! There’s Earth!” she pointed at a blue and white globe.

“Yep,” he rolled the mouse the opposite direction until the planets and sun shrank and a stirring mass of glittering points came back into view. “I can zoom out twenty-eight gigaparsecs to show the entire known universe.”

The field of stars grew even larger. Comets and cloudy nebulas and supercluster upon supercluster sped past them while he brought it to the extreme setting, a full, virtual scope of the cosmos.

Amelia stood in astonishment, her hands drifting, trying to cup one of the minute, twisting constellations gliding next to her, illuminating her eyes with its celestial glow. “Uncanny!” was all she got out. She watched another mass of stars go by, this one elliptical, magenta and hazy. She seemed almost overwhelmed by the nearly endless arrays of different groupings and diverse colors. Canary, indigo and crimson. Violet, lime and auburn. Some were shining beacons, some dimmer and more subdued, all floating past, casting a bold radiance on her fair skin.

Finally she managed to speak. “So, can you, like, zoom in on another galaxy?”

“Sure,” he answered. “Pick one.”

She indicated a striking purple, cartwheel shape with a yellowish center. “Here, this one.”

“Okay. Watch this,” a few strokes on the keyboard and the ring grew larger until it became the dominating feature in the room. A picture of the system showed on the computer screen. He maneuvered his cursor over a random area and double-clicked. The hologram zoomed in even further, penetrating the lavender fog, speeding toward the interior of the galaxy, past star after star until it came upon one bright red giant with several smaller globes circling it.

“What’s this place called?” she asked.

“No idea,” he read the screen. “This is way outside our galactic group. It isn’t even in one of the named local superclusters. It’s uncharted space, so far.”

Amelia stopped with her mouth wide open “What’s this here?”

“What’s what where?”

“Right here,” she pointed. “It gets really dark right here. Halfway into this solar system, it just, like, fades into nothing. See?”

He examined the area she was pointing at, not knowing what she meant. Then he did see something strange.

“Hmm. You’re right. It
is
dark right there. The stars and planets just disappear.”

“What is it?”

He scratched his scalp. “I don’t know. It may be a blazar.”

“Blazar?”

“A supermassive black hole. Or maybe it’s a supervoid. I don’t think it’s either one, though” he clicked and pored over the source code, searching for anything out of the ordinary. “I can’t find a reason for it. Must be some kind of glitch, I guess,” he half grinned. “The Holoversarium isn’t one hundred percent perfected yet.”

“Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she watched a tiny planet with three tinier moons glide above her shoulders. “I gotta tell you, what you’ve made here is amazing.”

“It’s just a little project,” he pressed a key and the hologram collapsed, folding in until it was one solid, vivid line, which withdrew into the black dome.

“A little project, huh?” she laughed. “Jack, that was uncanny. I don’t think you realize just how brilliant you are.”

He flicked the lights back on, his cheeks warming up again. “I can’t take all the credit. My dad helped me.”

“You and your dad are close?” Amelia’s tone soothed him, making it easy for him to open up about a sore topic.

“Yeah, we’re close,” he sighed. “Lately, not so much.”

“I can’t stop thinking about what those boys said. It’s your dad, isn’t it? Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not? Jack, I think it might help to get it off your chest. Have you been able to talk to anyone about it yet?”

“No.”

“Well, then I think it’s time you did.”

He felt a little intimidated by her forwardness. Coming to his apartment, marching confidently past his mother—that took guts. It wasn’t her moxie that made him relent, though. Before then, he’d never told anyone the real story, the whole story about his dad and what had happened the day of, ‘the incident.’ Before then, it had been all conjecture and gossip, peppered by little bits of truth, and the tale became weirder by the day. In the end, a rumor was circulating that his dad blew up the high school, created a mini-black hole somewhere in the science lab, and he, along with several students plus half the varsity football team, fell into some other dimension. And the whole time the rumors spread, Jack did nothing to set the record straight.