Brainrush 05 - Everlast 02: Ephemeral (12 page)

J
AKE
WAS IN THE CLUTCHES
of a fierce bear hug—from a sprite of a woman. When
BlackFlag’s mother finally pulled away, she gave him a fierce gaze and said, “You
call me Ma.” Her English was heavily accented. She turned to the others. “Same
for all,” she said, her voice stern. “Ma, yes?” Everyone nodded. She turned
back to Jake, studied his altered features, and smacked his shoulder. “You
ugly. Fit well here.”

Jake loved her right away, even though she wouldn’t let him
get a word in as she explained the lay of the land. She spoke in rapid-fire
Chinese. Dolphin translated.

“She says Jiaolong and a large contingent arrived yesterday.
There’d been much activity through the night, and she was awakened early in the
morning by the rumble of vehicles departing the valley, including Jiaolong’s
SUV. She thinks only a scattered few remain behind, including a detachment of
guards at the barracks.”

That was good news, Jake thought. Part of him had expected
an army.

Ma continued, and Dolphin asked her a question about
something. He nodded, then said, “She says a woman and three men are being
guarded at a home in town. It’s not far. But the children are not with them.”

Jake prayed that the woman was Francesca, but he sagged at
the news his children weren’t there.

“However,” Dolphin said, his expression brightening as Ma
continued. “She says that there was also a flurry of unusual activity
two
days ago, before Jiaolong arrived. Like yesterday, it revolved around what they
call the Center. That’s the main building. Afterwards, access to one of the
wings became restricted. The research labs are located there and the space
includes a large residence wing. She’s heard rumors about three foreign
children. If they’re here, she suspects that’s where they are being held.”

“Then that’s where I’m headed,” Jake said, grabbing his MP5.
He turned to Pete. “You and Sky plant your stuff, recon the guarded house, and
meet me back here. We’ve got to get this done before Jiaolong and the rest of
his goons return from wherever they went.”

“Watch yer arse, Jake.”

“You, too.”

Ma stepped between them, words spilling forth. Jake looked
to Dolphin.

“She says you must take great care to remain in the shadows.
People in the village are wary of strangers. They will raise an alarm if you’re
spotted. The guards in the barracks are well armed.”

Ma spoke again and Dolphin added, “Most people here are
fiercely loyal to Jiaolong’s grandfather, Frederik de Vries, and by extension
to Jiaolong.”

The news rocked Jake. He’d known there was a connection
between the founder of Everlast and the man in Hong Kong who’d coordinated the
kidnapping of Jake’s family and friends—the same man who’d attempted to murder
a hundred teens just to cover his tracks. But Jake hadn’t known the two men
were related. The pieces fell into place when he recalled the family portrait
he’d seen in de Vries’s office in Amsterdam, which had included the founder’s
young grandson.

Shamer had called him DarkMatter.

Dolphin continued to translate. “Grandfather de Vries
married a woman from the village many years ago. But even though they’d lived a
busy life in Hong Kong, the couple always found the time to visit her childhood
home. Her wealthy husband was happy to provide for the villagers whenever they
were in need. Food, medical supplies, even college tuition for the children—he
took care of it all. The villagers were eternally grateful to him, and proud
that he had chosen to build the Everlast headquarters here.”

“Those buildings are Everlast’s headquarters?” Jake asked. “What
about Jiaolong?”

Dolphin relayed the question to Ma, then translated while
she spoke. “He also has offices in the Center. But it was first the Everlast
headquarters, before de Vries found it necessary to open offices in Amsterdam.
She says it was the only way to attract serious interest from the international
community. But de Vries still visits on a regular basis. It was him who
returned two days ago.”

“The founder of Everlast is here?” Jake said, his mind
sorting through the possibilities. He’d linked with the man’s mind. He knew de
Vries was innocent in all this. He could be an ally.

Ma nodded, and explained to Dolphin.

“She says his entourage arrived unexpectedly two nights ago.
There is speculation that he is ill.”

“I need to see him. He’ll help me locate the children. Can
you get me into the Center?”

Dolphin smiled when he heard her reply. “She said of course.
She works there.”

Twenty minutes later, Jake was carrying a large wicker
basket over his shoulder. His MP5 was inside, buried beneath a layer of fruit. He
hunched his back and trudged down the cobbled path behind Ma. The nighttime
scatter of clouds seemed to be thickening, but the moon still managed to
illuminate the valley. They stuck to the shadows as they wound their way around
the perimeter of the village. Ma hadn’t stopped speaking since they left her
home. She sounded perturbed and he knew she was playing a role as well, her
tone not inviting interruptions from passersby.

Up ahead, pole lamps spilled pools of light along the
walkway leading into the campus area. As Ma and Jake approached the building,
he tensed when he spotted a pair of younger men in Western clothing chatting at
a bench along the walkway. Ma raised her voice as they passed by. From her
tone, he suspected he was being scolded again. He averted his gaze and kept
nodding, mumbling,
“She de, she de,”
whenever she took a breath. Dolphin
had told him it meant
yes, yes
.

The men snickered as he trudged past.

Ma led him around the rear of the building and used her key
card to open the door. She peeked inside, looked both ways, and nodded.

“Thank you,” he whispered as he slipped past her, knowing
this was as far as she dared go. The lights were off at this end of the
building, though staggered emergency lighting provided some radiance. The
building felt more like a hospital than an office space, with polished linoleum
floors splitting a row of doors down the long hallway.

Ma pointed toward the left. “Good luck,” she said before
slipping back outside. The door closed behind her.

Jake slid the basket beside a watercooler and pulled out his
weapon. A quick glance at the blinking icons on his phone confirmed Pete was
setting things up along their diversion route, while Skylar covered Pete from
the shadows. Marshall and Lacey were on the ridge, and the teens’ icons revealed
they were still safely ensconced in Ma’s home.

So far so good.

He padded down the corridor, leading with the MP5. As he
neared the end, a shadow disturbed the light that spilled from the adjoining
corridor. He flattened himself against the wall, heard soft footsteps, the
creak of a door hinge. Then silence. He peeked around the corner to see a lone
chair in front of a set of double doors. According to Ma’s description, that
was the entrance to the Everlast wing. He heard movement from a room situated just
this side of the entry. He crept forward and glanced inside to see a guard
making a purchase at a vending machine. He skirted past, slid through the
double doors, and ran past a series of empty research labs toward the residence
area at the end of the corridor. He was halfway there when the Everlast
founder’s voice sounded from behind him.

“Dear God. Mr. Bronson? Is that really you?” 

Jake slid to a crouch and spun around, sighting down his
weapon. But there was no one there. He swiveled toward an open doorway to his
left, expecting the man to pop into view.

“The disguise is effective,” de Vries said. “But your green
eyes give you away. I can’t believe you’re here.” The familiar voice was coming
from the speaker above the door, next to a ceiling-mounted camera.

“De Vries?”

“Of course it is. Please, please come in,” de Vries said
through the speaker. He chuckled and added, “I’m dying to see you.” There was a
manic edge to his voice.

Jake checked either end of the hallway. There was no sign of
movement or pursuit but something didn’t feel right.

“It’s truly okay, Mr. Bronson,” de Vries said. “You have
nothing to fear from me.”

He reminded himself of his previous encounter with the old
man, and of the man’s innocence in regards to the abductions. Besides, Jake
thought, rising to his feet and moving toward the door, the man at the other
end of the speaker might be the only person alive who could help him find his
children.

He stepped into a small anteroom with a receptionist’s desk,
a couch, and an elevator door protected by a keypad. The camera over the door
swiveled in his direction. A series of tones emanated from the keypad and the
elevator doors swung open.

In for a penny...

With a deep exhale, he stepped inside. The doors closed
behind him and the elevator dropped one level. He moved to one side and
crouched, the stock of the MP5 seated squarely against his shoulder, his finger
on the trigger. A bell rang, the door opened, and he found himself looking at a
duplicate laboratory of the one he’d seen at de Vries’s office in Amsterdam.
Except this time, the old man was prone on a hospital bed, eyes closed, skin
pale, sensors attached to his head and body, a respirator doing his breathing
for him. A 3-D image of the man’s brain was displayed on a large monitor. The
multicolored image seemed to pulse as if it were alive. There was an electronic
skullcap beside the monitor.

“I can see the shock in your eyes,” de Vries’s voice said
from another overhead speaker. “I’m afraid I’m not quite what I was when we met
a couple days ago.”

Jake hesitated, studying the room. There were lab tables,
computers, and the cloned body of a younger de Vries floating faceup in a
half-filled glass chamber of clear liquid.

“We’re quite alone, Mr. Bronson. It’s just you and me.” De
Vries hesitated. “Well, sort of.”

The clone twitched, rippling the viscous liquid. At the same
instant, the colors on the 3-D brain image shifted and sparkled. A shiver ran
down Jake’s spine. He lowered the weapon and stepped into the room.

“Jesus, what have you done?”

“I’m afraid neither Jesus nor his Father played a role in
this.”

“What happened?” Jake asked, walking to the man’s bedside. De
Vries’s features remained slack but the clone twitched again. “Or should I ask,
where are you?”

“Ah, you’ve hit the crux of it,” de Vries said, his voice once
again taking on an uneasy edge.  “Where am I, indeed? I’m here”—the clone
jerked—“there”—the brain image pulsed—“and... everywhere.” The lights
flickered, a table fan turned on, and the motorized hospital bed tilted upward
several inches.

“I had such grand visions,” de Vries continued, “secluded
within my selfish personal delusions, that man could—and
should
—transcend
his destiny. That there was societal value to a life without end. It seemed so
obvious to me...before.”

“Before what?”

“Before my consciousness fled into the computer when I
suffered a debilitating stroke two days ago. Being unable to transition from
there into my cloned body left me trapped in the ethers. I can’t go back, and I
can’t go forward.” He harrumphed, and Jake was surprised at how natural the
computerized voice sounded. “Time has a different meaning here. Even though
I’ve only been in this state for forty-two hours, seventeen minutes, and
forty-two seconds, it seems like an eternity. It’s given me a lot of time to
think.”

Despite the urgency of Jake’s circumstances, he found
himself entranced by de Vries’s plight. He knew he needed to press the issue of
his family’s location, but he sensed the question would be met with stiff
resistance if he didn’t allow the man to finish what he needed to say.

De Vries continued, “I’ve learned the hard way that a man’s consciousness
wasn’t intended to reside outside the confines of his own brain and body.
Because the instant the computer was hooked into the local network, mine spread
like a virus to the Center’s servers, and from there to the vast expanse of the
World Wide Web. How might a man’s perspective change when he has instant access
to every piece of recorded history available to mankind? How, indeed! At first
I was mercilessly overwhelmed, in the same instant gorging on poetry,
philosophy, math, and sciences, drowning in a miasma of factual and theoretical
information too immense for a hundred minds, a thousand minds...” His voice
trailed off.

“I was insane in minutes, screaming with no voice, clutching
with no arms or hands, yearning for a sense of warmth, or cold, or
anything
,
pleading for the emptiness of death. But it wouldn’t come. Instead, unbidden
data continued to bombard my mind. In the end, it was a stanza of poetry by
Robert Herrick that provided the anchor I needed.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye
may
,
Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today,
tomorrow will be dying.
Simple but to the point, wouldn’t you agree?
Carpe
diem
, Mr. Bronson. Seize the day!”

Jake knew the mantra. It had struck a chord with him ever
since he was diagnosed with terminal cancer so many years ago, even after the
disease had been wiped out by the freak accident that rewired his brain.

De Vries hesitated before continuing, and Jake wondered at
the enormity of what the man’s consciousness was facing. He felt a surge of
compassion for the man.

“
Carpe diem
,” de Vries repeated, his voice somber. “What’s
the point if one is immortal? What’s the rush? Why not simply relax today
because we can seize it tomorrow, or next week, or next year? Do you see where
I’m going with this? The inevitability of death is
not
a curse, it’s a
blessing that impassions us to achieve greatness in our lives.”