Thicker Than Blood (20 page)

He waited a few seconds for more questions. "It has truly been an honor being your teacher. You have taught me much as well. I may not be able to continue, so please know my thoughts are with you. Any debts owed to me are forgiven. Please see me in my office now for any debts owed to you." Kento bowed deeply. He turned and walked to his office. He watched his students reflections in the office window glass as he walked. Most of them stayed seated, clearly overwhelmed with what to do next. Mark was waiting for him by the door. "Kento what the hell were you doing telling them all that." Mark's accent was strong. He sounded angry and afraid. He turned in the doorway and watched his students file out of the Dojo as he spoke, "Mark, the police will not find you here without help. They will need someone to tell them where you are. My students, without understanding what they are doing would definitely reveal what they knew, although perhaps indirectly. You would expect an explanation in return for the burden of a secret like that, why shouldn't they?" Mark harrumphed. A petite Chinese girl walked past Kento and though the office door. "Sensei Robert, can we help you?" A second slightly taller Chinese girl walked into the office as well. "Anything you need master." "Mark this is Dong." He opened his palm to the first girl. He moved into the office as he spoke, glancing toward the office window as he walked. The girl smiled warmly and said, "I prefer Dragon." Mark nodded his head. His eyes were open wide. "And this is Lin." She smiled as well. Kento noticed the dipping man glance back at him. He hung his head, and turned to Mark. "They are my best two students." "Oh." Mark seemed surprised. He turned to Dong, "Does your name mean dragon?" "No, but it should." Dragon smiled with confidence. Lin scowled. He turned to his students. "We will be leaving the Dojo in a few minutes. Lin, Douglas trusts you. Go stall him." Dragon and Mark looked surprised. Lin was stone faced. He calmly elaborated to Lin, "He will betray us. He has no doubt." Lin turned and ran after Douglas. 188

"I thought you said we would be safe here." Mark looked worried. "I was wrong." Kento looked disappointed. "First, I thought Joe would be well. Second I believed that I would be able to pretend that we were not here, hiding you two in the back room. Joes announced arrival and new found fame made staying nearly impossible. I hoped that I had built up a report with my students in that they would trust me above the law on this." Everyone stood quietly in the office, engrossed in their own thoughts. Kento spoke up. "We can't stay here. We have to move Joe." "Where would you go?" Dragon inquired. "We can go to my apartment," Kento offered. "Uh, what will that buy us, a half an hour?" Mark asked sarcastically. "Nothing points to my apartment. All my mail and paperwork are sent here. Nobody knows where I live." Dragon looked very pleased. Mark's face relaxed a little. He looked at Dong. "Do you drive? Does Lin? We don't have a car." "I can borrow my parents' minivan," Dong offered. "No. Too out of the ordinary," Kento said. The group was silent again as they thought. Lin walked in the room and stood next to Kento. She looked glum. Mark suddenly spoke up. "We can call a cab!" Kento raised his eyebrows. Mark seemed to have no volume control. He looked though the glass. No one seems to have heard that, he thought. "That seems like a really bad idea." Dragon scowled. "You don't understand." Mark seemed proud of himself. "My uncle co-owns the Three Sixes Cab Company." Fate has been kind to us today, Kento thought. "Call him." Kento raised his eyebrows. Mark picked up his cell phone from the office desk and walked toward the back room. "Sensei, can we come with you?" Dragon's voice was more flat than usual. "Your purpose seems greater than anything I can imagine doing here." "You should finish school," he replied. "Coming with me at your age would be reckless. You can see that we may all die." "Not me," Dragon raised her eyebrows. Mark walked back in the room. "It's done. They will be here in twenty minutes. They are going to meet us around back." Kento looked at Dragon. "We will talk about this more later." 189

Kento grabbed a pad and wrote an address and a grocery list on the paper. He ripped it off and handed it to Dragon. "A case of baby food? Three glass bowls? Four bottles of Drano? This is very weird stuff." "You and Lin meet us at my place with all these items. Knock once hard and twice lightly." He opened his wallet and gave them money. He noticed Dragon's hesitation. She looked awestruck and dreamy. "Do not let anyone follow you. We have powerful enemies."

Scott stared at his trophy case from his desk. He took a sip of his coffee. This coffee is old, he thought. How dare Melinda, she mocks me. "Melinda, you idiot! This coffee is from this morning." "Yes sir." A Hispanic woman in a formal blazer and skirt walked in the room. "Fresh coffee. Now!" "Yes sir. Sorry sir." Melinda took the mug and carried it out with her. Scott pressed his fingers into his temple, hard. He rubbed his head until Melinda returned. She placed the mug on the desk without saying a word. The phone rang in the waiting room. "I'll get that." Melinda scampered out of the room. Of course you will, who else would you idiot. The phone on his desk rang, he felt a chill of frustration shoot up his spine. "Yes, Melinda." Scott spoke through his teeth. "Sir, it's the Secretary of Defense." Scott's anger was sucked out of him. Total fear overwhelmed him. In a tiny voice he said, "Give me twenty seconds, then put him through." That little twit was ruining everything. My plans, they were perfect. Scott's eyes were wide, he looked crazed. The phone rang. A wash of calm overtook Scott's features as he picked up the phone. "Hello, this is Scott Conner." "Hello Conner, this is Jackson." "Hi Lenny, long time no." Secretary Jackson cut him off. "Don't Lenny me." "Sir what's wrong?" He was immersed in his lie. 191

"I just heard from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You know what he told me? He told me that you gave the entire senior ranks of the military a sneak preview of the nanites MIR has been developing. Do you know whats wrong with that?" "No sir." Scott was in the army again. "That means that you have been developing nanites behind my back. As far as you are concerned I am the president. The leader of the free world. Do you get that? And you just pissed me off, big time." "Sorry sir." "You know what I heard? I heard that a public blood testing facility had a small problem with a routine test. It turns out they were unable to record the genetics of this, this, blood sample because of some contaminants," he stuttered, "Do you know what those contaminants where?" His heart sank to his stomach again. "No sir." "They were full blown nanites. We had to shut the whole town down." Vallone still had nanites. Graceland is dead. Scott scribbled "destroy Graceland" on a notepad on his desk. "We have two hundred lab techs in DOD facilities for interrogation. Do you have any idea what that costs? What are we going to do with techs that saw those nanites firsthand?" The phone was silent. "Conner you there? I'm not done with you yet." "Yes sir." Scott grit his teeth. "Your purpose, Datahold's purpose, is to grind nano research to a halt by any means necessary. Your own research is included in that. That is the will of the people. That is the will of the president." "We spend billions on anti-nano messages every year." "Conner, how do I spell this out for you? I should never have to call you first. That indicates surprise. If I thought that you were developing nanites, the secret service would be in on it. The CIA would be in on it. The NSA would be in on it. Not your shadowy pet project. How do I know you don't aim to take the president's job from him?" Scott twitched. That hit a little close to home. "Now. God help me if you lie to me. Is MIR developing nanites on its own?" Scott had lost control. "Sir all the pieces were right there. It was too easy. You need to understand." 192

"What you are charged with is insulating and protecting the intellectual property of the United States. You have failed that." He recalled his years of scraping and sucking up to unworthy sycophants. That's it, he thought, I own this from now on. I have nothing else to lose. "Sir, you have been deceived." "What?" "Intellectual property doesn't work any more than Keynesian economics. Who fed you that crap. Did you learn that in public school? I thought you were ivy league?" "What that hell are you talking about?" "Sir, do you think the Chinese give a crap who owns the patent? What scientist thought of it first? For a gentleman's game you need gentlemen. Who are you kidding? This is war just waiting to happen." The defense secretary was silent. "The bottom line is, the only way to force people to play this game is guns and lawyers. Consider us both. You may not have realized it at the time, but when you commissioned Datahold you were admitting our weakness, the weakness of the United States. You asked for a new three letter agency to deal with the threat and you got it, MIR. Now get out of the way and let us get it done." Scott's drawl was stronger now. "I don't like your tone." "And I don't like your convenient denial. I'm doing this for America, no amount of silly patent rules and silly secret databases will protect us from foreign nanite warfare. The only thing that will do that is other nanites, superior nanites. Now we are a step ahead, and this leak is only a bump in the road." "And who says you are the best man for the job?" "You did. And now you have to live with me, since it takes years just to learn how to operate these things." "I need to speak to the president about this." "You do that. You'll let me know. I'm ready to serve, if you'll let me." Scott hung up the phone. Scott grinned like he hadn't grinned in twenty years. It made his face hurt.

Joe hurt all over. His head was pounding. He felt a cold sweat dripping down his forehead. His shoulder throbbed and ached. My Dad. Joe lay awake for an hour listening to strange voices and the sound of a keyboard typing. Kento and Mark's voices were familiar in the sea of subtle noise fading in and out. Joe couldn't face anyone yet. His eyes just kept playing the horror of watching his dad die in front of him. No not in front of him, because of him. In his place. What did he want to say to me? How long had Dad hidden his feelings for Aunt Teressa? What would I have said to him? To Aunt Teressa? What would he say about my nearly being cured? What would he say about stealing the nanites? About Aunt Teressa's sacrifice? Would this have pulled him out of his slump? "No Dad!" Joe closed eyes were tearing and his teeth were clenched. "Joe." Kento was kneeling over him. "I'm so sorry." It was him that bastard. That monster made me take those nanites. He knows it too. Kento knows he put that gun to Sergio's head. He felt the rage drain out of him. That's crazy. It wasn't Kento, he was trying to help me. My curiosity was to blame. I had to know how they worked. I had to feel healthy again, like that day in the hospital. Building robots on TV wasn't good enough for me. I had to be a part of something bigger. Dad had to die for my giant ego. His fingers felt numb to the knuckles from clutching the bedding. My pride, bigger than anything. Bigger than Aunt Teressa. Bigger than Robert. Bigger than my love for Lucy and Finny. Bigger than Mark. Bigger than Dad. Bigger than Nathan Jones. Bigger than the that scumbag in charge of MIR. 194

He remembered Nathan's mocking sneer at their meeting. He remembered Scott's condescending tone toward his Aunt. Their lack of regard for my life. No, not caring about the lives my aunt was working with, is as bad as it gets. If I'm evil, those guys are Satan. He felt a surge of adrenalin, his eyes opened wide. "Joe, you're back," Mark sounded relieved. He just stared at him blankly from the bed. Rage brewing under the surface. "Are you okay?" Kento asked. He turned his head to look around. They were in a simple studio apartment with as many milk crates and bean bags, as legitimate pieces of furniture. Muted daylight streamed in through uneven blinds. Two oriental women sat with a young boy with light brown hair at a simple kitchen table, and turned to watch Joe quietly. Ten blinking beige PCs lined up in a row were attached to a single monitor. Mark sat in front of them, with a wireless keyboard in his lap. An ancient TV adorned with rabbit ears sat in the middle of the room. Joe noticed three large glass bowls with familiar colored goo. He just looked at Kento. I'm still clutching the bedding, he realized. Kento spoke quietly, "It's not much, but it doesn't leak." He suspected he was trying to be sensitive. "We heard about your dad on TV," Mark looked sad. It must be bad, Joe thought, Mark is not exactly sensitive. Kento looked back at Mark, eyebrows raised. Good old Mark, never follows the plan. He let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. He heard rain hitting the window. He wondered if it just started or if he just noticed. The whole room was silent. Joe was enjoying the awkward silence, until he thought of his aunt. He looked up, he felt a jolt of pain in his shoulder. He scowled as he talked. "Aunt Teressa?" "We're pretty sure she's in jail. She doesn't answer any of her phones," Kento spoke slowly. Maybe she was protecting me by avoiding my calls, he kidded himself. Scott, that voice from the hospital, dragged her off to some secret prison. Joe was sure of it. "They're all gone," Joe grumbled, voice shaking. 195

"Well technically she's not dead like your Dad. We know where she is, well I mean, we don't know exactly where, but she's still alive." Mark sounded upset. "Mark that's enough." Kento stared at him now. "No, it's not." He was enjoying Mark's childish innocence for a change. Kento looked at Joe blankly. "Rob, you don't even sound upset." He tried to drag some kind of emotion out of Kento. "I am. We need to keep level heads." Kento didn't waver from his soft spoken, even tone. "You can't know what I feel," Joe said as coldly as he could. "No, but I lost my father too." Emboldened, Mark pursued Kento's confession. "What happened?" "He abandoned my mother, to honor her I abandoned him." He wondered if Kento's revelations were driven by guilt or his cause. The room was quiet, except for a faint noise of the rain. He turned his head to Kento, and then to the three quiet figures sitting around the table. His shoulder ached as he leaned up. "I'm sorry. My father just died." Kento spoke up, "Joe, this is Dragon" "Hi." "Lin" "Hello" "And John." "Hi" "They are my best students." Lin spoke up. "Sensei, we should go. We are intruding." She moved as if to get up. Kento began to respond, but Joe cut in. "No, it's okay. It's not your fault." He was more angry than ever, but not at them. His shoulder gave and he was forced to lay down. "They have been running errands for us. We'd already be out of food and supplies. That reminds me," Kento got up and walked to the kitchen area. He pulled a Tupperware container out of the cabinet. "Lucy gave this to us for you."