Project Solaris 2: Hero Rising (12 page)

"Thats, uh, a great idea," I said, smiling weakly. The deception was killing me.

"I'll take you guys right now," Jillian offered. Marcus, Kali, and Janaki had already approached. Each carried a large pack and a sleeping bag. Jillian took a step closer, and everyone but me disappeared.

I headed for the shuttle, mentally commanding the engines to fire up just as I reached it. A deep thrum came from the miniature pyramid. I turned to wait, and a moment later Jillian reappeared. I gestured at the ship, then slipped through the stone wall and into the main compartment. Jillian joined me a moment later, moving to one of several stone chairs I'd created.

That was a facet of the grey men technology I really loved. I could mold the interior of their ships into any form I wished, and had removed a lot of the obelisk forest that had originally been there. So far as I could tell, there was no reason it had to exist. Maybe the grey men just liked it. Perhaps it reminded them of their home world.

"Okay, let's do this," Jillian said as she shifted in her chair. "I don't like lying to the others. We need to sort this out when we get back."

"Hopefully we'll have answers by then," I murmured, mentally guiding the shuttle. The side of the mothership opened, allowing us to pass into the blackness of space. 

It was eerie staring down at the Earth, but the view changed quickly as we descended. I waited until we'd begun re-entry to engage the cloak. It drained power, and I knew the ships had a finite amount of it. In theory, they gradually recharged from our sun, but what little I understood of the technology suggested they were getting next to nothing. The little trickle of power might increase when the sun went through whatever change Ka had mentioned, but until then I needed to be damned careful.

We descended lower, and the familiar view of North America gave way to individual mountains and valleys. They were covered in thick swathes of redwood and pine. It was beautiful country, the sort of place I'd originally wanted to live before being recruited by Initech. I still remember a summer camping trip during my freshman year. We'd gone up to Mendocino County, somewhere very close to Garberville. It was sparsely populated, with the occasional town all but buried between massive chunks of forest.

"This place is gorgeous," Jillian said. She was staring through the floor of the ship, which had become transparent after we'd completed re-entry. 

"If life ever calms down, we'll go camping sometime," I said, mentally guiding the ship toward the four-lane freeway below. Highway 101 stretched across the state of California, and I knew it well. This bit passed right through Garberville, and Dick's new facility was just a few blocks from the freeway.

It was an ingenious little spot. He'd placed it close enough to the Bay Area to easily import talent, but far enough away that people wouldn't stumble across it. Without the aid of the Black Knight, I'd never have found it. 

"There," I said, pointing at a cluster of buildings below. A narrow street branched off the freeway, passing through redwoods, and into a little cul-de-sac. "If the address is right, it's under that building."

"So how do you want to do this?" Jillian asked, glancing at me. "It's broad daylight, and while that won't stop us, it does mean the place is occupied."

"That's a good point," I thought, considering. "I say we go for it. Your abilities should keep us from being detected, and I doubt this will take long. I just need access to their network to wipe the data, and we can take the prototype with us. Dick might be able to rebuild from offsite backups, but it will be both expensive and time-consuming."

"Yeah, I'm sure it will totally be that easy," Jillian said, rising from her chair as the ship slowed. She glanced down at the building below, which had a gravel parking lot in front of it. There were three cars and a truck, but no sign of any employees. "Shall I take us to the front of the building, near that window? We can look inside and then decide on a course of action."

"Okay," I said, letting out a deep breath. Doing things like this was still nerve-wracking, despite all we'd been through thus far. Cool energy washed over us as Jillian activated her power.

There was a brief feeling of weightlessness, then vertigo as my perspective shifted. I was suddenly standing in front of the building, right next to a wide bay window that looked into the office. I glanced up instinctively, still linked to the shuttle directly above us. It was cloaked, of course, and all I saw was empty sky.

"Looks like any other tiny office," Jillian whispered. I looked through the window.

There were three people inside, two women and a man. Each sat at a desk, all focused on their individual computers. There was nothing to suggest this place was out of the ordinary, and nothing resembling experimental technology. 

"There must be more inside. Can you get us through the wall?" I asked.

Jillian's hand found mine, and she tugged me gently through the wall. The office was silent except for the hum of the computers, and none of the employees looked up as we entered. I scanned our immediate surroundings, spotting a door deeper in the office.

There
, I thought, projecting it into Jillian's mind.
I can feel someone on the other side, maybe fifty feet down. I'm betting there's a stairway just on the other side of that door.

Jillian tugged me gently forward, and we passed through the door like ghosts. The other side was more well-lit than I'd have expected, and led down a stairway to a concrete floor. A narrow hallway wound into the distance, and we followed it until reaching a large basement. The room was unfurnished, just concrete walls and exposed bundles of cable. In the center of the room was a table, and on that table sat a larger version of the FTL laser chamber I'd worked with back at Initech.

We were about to approach when footsteps sounded from the far side of the room. I saw another door, which opened to reveal a pair of very familiar people. Dick entered the basement, talking casually to Suresh, my mentor from Initech. Her dark hair had gotten a little longer, but was still in a familiar ponytail. She wore the same crooked set of glasses, and was wearing a comfortable sweater and jeans. Dick wore his usual black suit, with a sharp, blue tie. He'd added a little grey to his hair, but otherwise looked just as he had the last time I'd seen him.

A torrent of different emotions rushed through me. I had a lot of respect for Suresh, and I knew she was a good person. If she had any idea who Dick worked for, she'd never go along with this, which meant she probably had no idea. That meant she was innocent. At the same time, all of Dick's research hinged on her work. She was brilliant, and I doubted he'd ever be able to complete the project without her. Destroying the prototype was important, but removing her from the equation was the real solution. Dick could build another prototype. He could reload data from backups, no matter what I wiped out. He couldn't replace Suresh.

"What do you want to do?" Jillian whispered, barely more than a breath. I was paralyzed. What
did
I want to do? I knew what Osiris would say. Kill her, and kill Dick. 

Chaoter 21- Kidnapping

Part of me agreed with Osiris, especially with the killing Dick part. It was the logical, intelligent reaction. Even if I didn't kill Suresh, Dick certainly needed to die. But killing him here would be murder. I'd be ending a life, and doing it in cold blood. Now that I was faced with the actual decision, I wasn't sure I could go through with it. Not because I was a 'good guy'. Because I'd never had to take a human life, and seeing those dead guards when we'd invaded Mohn Corp still haunted me.

We're going to kidnap them,
I thought to Jillian.
I'll order the ship to prepare a stasis field, like the one they used on us when the grey men captured us. Once its ready, you can teleport them into the field. I'll show you mentally where it is, so you can picture it for the teleport
.

"Kidnap? David they need to die," she whispered fiercely. 

Dick kept talking, but Suresh glanced in our direction, like she'd heard something.

We don't have time to argue,
I said, splitting my concentration. I willed the shuttle to create a stasis field, complete with stone bars. When I was finished, I sent to Jillian again.
Here's the prison. Do it.

So she did. Jillian disappeared, and so did Dick and Suresh. That left me alone with the prototype, and more importantly, the laptop on the table next to it. I rushed over and laid a hand on it, instantly bypassing the password. The code Suresh had been working on was stored offsite at a Github repository. I looped through every file in the project, replacing it with gibberish. Then I did a force push, overwriting all the source files in the master branch. It would still be possible to recover the original files if someone else had a backup, but it would take someone with the right know-how to do it. So far as I knew, Suresh was the only person on Dick's payroll with that expertise.

I opened my eyes and looked at the prototype. The most expensive part was the laser inside the vacuum tube. If I cracked the tube and shattered the laser, they'd lose a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of hardware. Hopefully that would set them back a few months. I leaned into the blocky device, shoving with all my strength. It toppled from the table, shattering on the concrete with a huge crash. I winced, realizing there was no way the people upstairs hadn't heard that.

Sure enough, a door opened above and voices started coming closer. Damn it. I knelt to snatch the laser from the wreckage. It weighed about ten pounds, and was bulky enough that I had to hold it with both hands. I could try smashing it, but the smart thing to do was take it with me. 

I was about to run deeper into the facility when Jillian reappeared a few feet away.

"You ready?" she asked, glancing up the stairway as a pair of legs appeared.

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said. Jillian put a hand on my arm, and a familiar feeling of vertigo washed over me.

When it faded, I was standing inside the shuttle again. I set the laser on the ground, then dropped heavily into one of the stone chairs as I waited for my balance to return. Jillian dropped into the chair next to me, her chest heaving like she'd run a marathon. I checked my phone. The entire raid, from the moment we'd left the others until we'd arrived back in the shuttle, had taken eight minutes.

"David?" came a quavering voice to my right. I glanced in that direction to find Suresh staring back at me from behind the black stone bars where Jillian had deposited her. "What the hell is going on? The things I just saw...it's beyond impossible. You're breaking laws of physics."

"Why don't you tell her, Dick?" I asked, rising to my feet and walking over to the pair of cells. Dick was glaring hatefully from behind the bars of his cell. I felt a momentary stab of fear, but remembered that the cells had been designed by the grey men. They prevented the use of abilities, so I was safe from Dick's more advanced telepathy.

"Dick, what is he talking about?" Suresh asked, glancing at Dick. He didn't answer, so she looked back at me. "David, don't torture me like this. Just give me some answers. You owe me that much, at least. After disappearing like you did."

"All right," I said, shifting my gaze back to Suresh. Dick could stew in his own juices while I decided what to do with him. "You're still working on your FTL transmission technology, right?"

"Yes," she said, pursing her lips while she eyed me. "What has that got to do with anything?"

"Everything," I said. I raised a foot over her prototype, then stomped it  into the ground.

"No!" she said, thrashing against the bars. "Do you have any idea what you've done? We'll never be able to afford to build another one. We were so close."

"So you hadn't completed it yet?" Jillian asked, speaking for the first time since we'd arrived.

"No," Suresh snarled. "I might of, if David hadn't bailed without a word. We were days away from a large-scale test, and I am positive we could have beaten our previous metrics by a factor of five."

"Then we showed up at the right time," I said, approaching Suresh's cell. "I apologize that you got caught in the middle of this, and I agree that you deserve answers. They're going to be tough to hear, and you may not believe all of them. If you have doubts, I'd encourage you to look around."

I gestured at the wall next to me, willing the ship to make it transparent. Then I ordered the ship to climb to orbit. Redwoods dropped away, becoming valleys, and then the North American continent as we accelerated. The ship stopped once we reached full orbit.

"Wh-where are we?" Suresh asked, her voice small. Her large, brown eyes were fastened to the clear wall.

"This vessel was constructed by beings we call the grey men," I explained, moving back to my chair. It was going to be a long conversation, so I might as well get comfortable. "Dick works for them, and his orders are very simple. He needs to create faster-than-light communication so the grey men can send a message back to their planet. A message telling their people that Earth is ready for colonization, so the final war can begin."

Suresh's gaze snapped back to me, and she adopted the same skeptical look I'd grown familiar with during my internship. "Aliens? Let's assume, for the moment, that I'm willing to believe that. Where do you fit in with all this?"

"People like Jillian and I," I gestured at Jillian, "have been experimented on. The grey men have been modifying our DNA. This has resulted in many of us developing extraordinary abilities. The grey men did it trying to breed a specific power. My power. I have the ability to control their technology, as well as ours. Do you remember when I passed out?"