John Gone (43 page)

The van accelerated. Felix held his breath
and dropped his body from its side. His long toes narrowly avoided
the back left tire as it noisily rolled past his feet. Jennifer and
Dean were already moving toward the farmhouse, their backs turned
flatly at Felix and the road. They hadn’t noticed him. The plan
could continue, for now.

Felix took a careful step forward and began
to walk quietly behind the pair as they moved, matching his
footsteps to theirs and listening to their conversation
unnoticed.

“So, Dean, I read in your file that you
specialize in hyper-efficient fuel and propulsion,” Jennifer said.
“How exciting! I’m glad my friend noticed your work at the state
science fair before you made the mistake of wasting your talents at
some silly college.”

“I’m still not sure what you think is worth
the kind of money you guys want to pay me,” Dean said. “And was all
this spy stuff really necessary to get me here?”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to
spend your paycheck on yet, Dean?” Jennifer asked happily.

Felix struggled to keep himself quiet.
Oh,
this is just sickening.

“I think I’m going to fund my own research,”
Dean answered. “I want to be able to work without grant money.
Public, private, it doesn’t matter; it all comes with a price.
That’s what my dad says, anyway. I also want to make sure my work
gets to people, to change the way we travel and power our homes
without someone telling me where or how to use it, you know?”

“Oh, I think that’s wonderful!” Jennifer
said. “Maybe you’ll let us help you with that dream after your time
at the facility is up. Don’t be afraid to tell us about new
projects and ideas you have, okay? We’d really like to know all
about them.”

I imagine you would
, Felix
thought.

Jennifer stepped onto the house’s front porch
and pulled a small key from her pocket. After sliding it into the
deadbolt lock above the front door, she edged it open.

“Is this the facility?” Dean asked.

“Oh, no, dear,” she answered. “Where we’re
going is much nicer. I promise.”

Just a little further, Felix thought. He kept
his eyes locked to the back of Jennifer’s head as he approached
her.
Don’t turn around. Let me get just a little bit closer
...

As Felix stepped through the doorway, he
gaped at the large metal cylinder at the farmhouse’s center. He’d
forgotten how impressive Company elevators were.

Jennifer stepped toward it and held her hands
up to the metal. A sweeping line of green light ran over her eyes
and palms. The cylinder split apart to a spacious room inside,
decorated modernly with a set of angular furniture colored starkly
in black or white.

Welcome
, a soothing, prerecorded voice
played from an inside speaker.
Please take your seat. Descent
will begin shortly.

Jennifer smiled and gestured the awestruck
teen in her care to enter. As Dean stepped forward, Felix made his
move. Throwing open the front of his chameleon suit, he pulled a
plastic pistol grip with a disposable camera mounted to its top
from the breast pocket.

“Excuse me,” Felix asked loudly. “Can you
look here for just a moment, please?”

As Jennifer turned to see who’d spoken, Felix
squeezed the plastic grip. Two thin darts connected to red and
black wires shot at her chest from beneath the camera, piercing her
coat and skin. The disposable camera on top of Felix’s device
flashed and fifty milliamps of electricity passed into her chest
through the wires.

“Thank you,” Felix said nicely. Jennifer
collapsed to the floor.

Dean ran into the elevator and yelled at it
frantically, “Close! Please, close!”

Felix hooked his hands beneath the arms of
Jennifer’s body and dragged it between the elevator doors. He
dropped her there and stood straight, eyeballing Dean before
continuing. “You. Kid. Out,” he said.

“What ... what are you?” Dean asked in a
quivering voice, backing his body against the far wall of the small
room.

“Just a man,” Felix sighed, remembering the
bizarre appearance his chameleon suit must had given him. He lifted
the trim flap down his sides, unzipped the suit, and stepped out
from it. Beneath, he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn on his
first trip to the labs over thirty years ago, a white, short
sleeve, button down shirt and gray dress slacks. A thin, black
backpack strapped around his shoulders was the only new
addition.

“What did you do to her?” Dean yelled. “What
do you want?”

The elevator’s speakers played loudly.
Please step fully inside of the elevator so descent can begin.
Thank you.

“As I said just moments ago, if you’ll
recall, I want you to get out,” Felix answered. “Leave and forget
this place. Go back to school and take employ as an underpaid
university research assistant like a normal kid.”

“No,” Dean replied nervously. “You have no
idea what’s at stake here. I have to--I have a job to do here. You
have no idea how much they’re paying me for my work!”

“Let me guess,” Felix said, rolling his eyes,
“six million dollars.”

“No, they offered me thirteen.”

“Of course they account for inflation,” Felix
mumbled.

“What?”

Please step fully inside of the elevator
so descent can begin. Thank you.
The doors began to close and
open against Jennifer’s left ankle.

Felix kicked at Jennifer’s leg and her errant
foot flopped past the doors to the inside of the elevator.

“Here’s a free math lesson for you,” Felix
said quickly. “Six million is equivalent to thirteen million when
the dollars don’t exist. Now get out!” He grabbed the teenaged boy
by his shirt and circled him toward the door. Raising his foot
high, Felix kicked Dean’s back, launching the boy from the elevator
onto his face.

“You’ll thank me for that kick some day,”
Felix said as the elevator doors closed with a thud. He backed from
them and sat on the white leather couch behind him. His head
dropped immediately into his hands. For the next few minutes he sat
in still silence, looking into the darkness his hands held cupped
around his eyes.

He’d tried to avoid being rash in coming
here; he’d taken the required time to think his actions out
properly, extrapolating possibilities and charting contingencies.
But preparation, he knew, could only take one so far. The
hypothetical would always be radically different from the reality,
and one thing he’d not accounted for was the dread that had taken
hold of him as soon as he’d walked into the elevator. It had been
the moment he’d realized he was once more delivering himself into
the predator’s lair, and once more by his own volition.

Even Dante wasn’t stupid enough to go
back
, Felix thought.

Ten minutes later, Felix shook or, at the
very least, suppressed the last of his reservations. There wasn’t
much time left. He stood from the couch and leaned over Jennifer’s
motionless body. With gentle precision, he removed the darts from
her chest. Their tips slid easily from the shallow wounds they’d
made in her skin. He placed two fingers against the side of her
neck and pressed firmly to check for pulse.

Good
, he thought.
She’s alive. Time
for phase two.

Felix packed his chameleon suit into his
backpack, and removed a small vial from the bag’s side. The
container was made of a thin but sturdy plastic, an imitation glass
more resistant to stress than Pyrex. He held it up to one of the
bright LEDs on the elevator wall and peered through its translucent
blue contents.

“I’m glad you didn’t break like the ratchet
straps,” he told it. “Otherwise, this would’ve been quite the brief
adventure.”

Removing its foam cork with care, Felix stuck
his finger inside the vial and scooped out a large dollop of the
gel within. Slowly lowering his hand beneath the couch, he rubbed
the substance into a thin layer along its bottom fabric.

“You just wait there until I’m ready for
you,” he told it.

Prepare for arrival,
the elevator
played.

Felix stood and wiped the remaining residue
from his finger between the couch’s two leather cushions. Satisfied
that he’d cleaned his finger as best he could, he corked the vial
and pushed it down inside his pocket. Jennifer’s body twitched as
the elevator stopped. Felix moved himself above her as the doors
slid open.

The room they revealed was nearly identical
to the hub he remembered from his old lab, and the familiarity
almost broke his composure. Employees with differently colored
badges shuffled through the space in front of him, walking
hurriedly past the same bare furniture, holding the same
clipboards, wearing the same lab coats, and ignoring the same oddly
spaced, anonymous doors lining the outer wall. Only the faces were
new.

Felix moved his right hand behind him and
wrapped his fingers around the cool handle of the homemade gun he’d
placed in the waist of his trousers.

“Oh my God!” Felix suddenly yelled as loudly
as he could. “I think she’s had a heart attack!”

###

Still reading? You can find Missing Signals
(book two) and Company Men (book three) at the same place you found
John Gone. You can find the author on Twitter @mikekayatta or check
out www.johngone.com.