Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse (29 page)

“He has made no advances because you have refused to let him know of your interest,” Lux said.

“He seems too busy with his cooking, art shows, dancing, and exercises to notice me,” Reich said. She felt a little pang as she said her thoughts out loud.

“Oh, giant one! He was on my home world for years. Constant vibration, recycled air, closed-in spaces, artificial light. He is just embracing all of your world’s attributes,” she replied.

There was silence. Reich had to admit that Lux was right. There was little time left to enjoy the planet, and Perez had already experienced the shape of things to come.

“And by the way, my towering friend, he always drags you everywhere. He always includes you in everything.”

“He takes everyone—” Reich started.

“He does not take
me
to the museum. He has left us out of the plays and musicals.”

“Well, those are public places…”

“And the midnight strolls he wakes you up for and takes you on? The early morning breakfasts? The ocean kayaking? Hmm. Sounds pretty private and inclusive to me,” Lux said. There was no envy or jealousy. If anything, Reich was touched by Lux’s and Pax’s persistent encouragement. They were like the girlfriends she used to have, back in Wyoming.

Reich caught sight of an all-too-familiar man crossing the street to see her. By his disheveled look and mismatched clothes, she immediately identified Chief Inspector Bradley heading over. She waited. It felt odd to her to actually be waiting for him without a well-executed escape plan.

“Bradley is here. Back to work,” Reich muttered.

“Yes. We will talk later. The Keeper is zeroing in on some unusual frequencies—high-tech, military-level encrypted. She will be online in a moment. Good luck,” Lux said.

Reich’s earpiece went silent as Bradley waved at her. His pleasant demeanor, jovial face, and sparkling eyes made up for his poor choice in suits and his overall frumpy appearance.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Batgirl! You’re looking a bit casual, almost civilian-like. My wife wants to get a picture of you, since last time you flew away like a hawk in the midday sun. And the time before, you were Catwoman, scaling down castles and taking out security teams at your whim. She would not believe me if she saw you right now,” Bradley said, but his humor was cut short by the sound of shattering glass below.

Reich whipped her head around to see two men already halfway down a ten-foot drop. They hit the wood pier and a shower of shattered plate glass rained down on them. The din of screams made it difficult for her to hear her earpiece come to life. As both hands clutched the railing, she saw that one of the men, who had landed on top of a much larger man, was Anthony Perez.

“Immunes Reich. The meeting area is compromised. Based on intercepted private communication, there is an operation in progress. The objective appears to be to capture General David Joseph Farrell…”

“Damn it!” Reich looked down in frustration at her short skirt and impractical shoes. “Damn it! Computer! Tell me something I don’t know! What’s in this area for backup?” Reich asked. She turned to look at what Bradley was doing.

She only caught a snippet of what he said: “Mission compromised…Middleton and Spenser are not responding…Move in! Move in now!”

Reich took off running as fast as she could down to the pier while digging in her purse. No gun, knife, or any other weapon to speak of—except for a collapsible baton that she had been practicing with while waiting for Perez to get ready. She held on to the metal weapon and cast aside her purse so she could grip the railing while increasing her pace. She regretted every step she took in her red pumps. As she closed in on Perez, she saw two large men carrying another in the distance. There was one smaller man directing them to a waiting—expensive—motor boat. It was easy to see that the unconscious man was in uniform and the boat was casting off for immediate launch. She focused on Perez, who looked as if he was shaking off the fall and getting up. He was twenty feet ahead of her and the men were thirty feet ahead of him—halfway across the gangplank to the boat.

When she reached the pier herself, she found a woman whom she had not seen in years waiting for her.

“Well, Ms. Reich! We meet again!”

Reich recognized the dark features and husky female voice of Sir Pierce’s personal bodyguard from years before. The woman pointed a Taser gun at her and fired. While her high heels hindered her movement somewhat, Reich was still able to move rapidly out of the way of the electrode coils that were aimed at her chest. Barely ducking the shot, Reich crouched low and swung her arm back to expand her baton—then she swiftly swung it with great force at the woman’s outer thigh. She heard her adversary howl in pain as it made contact. Not wanting to spend time dealing with her, Reich pushed by her to get to Perez.
Not bad in heels,
she thought.

She looked up and saw Middleton, disheveled and bloody, come up at full speed from above deck. With the boat already making speed and about to clear the end of the pier, she cursed at the thought of losing the general. She focused back on Perez, who was way in front of her and running faster than she had ever seen a person run before. His arms and legs were pumping and he showed no sign of slowing down, even when he was approaching the pier’s end. She involuntarily slowed down to watch the boat pass several feet in front of the end of the pier. Perez leaped at full speed. His arms and legs were still kicking and pumping in midair, as if he were competing in the Olympic long jump. Not only did he clear the pier and water, he managed to land—not so gracefully and somewhat violently—on the boat’s stern.

“Holy shit! Did you see that?” she heard Middleton say, out of breath.

Reich found herself speechless as she watched the boat speed away. Even at a distance, she could see Perez get to his feet, throw something in a cabin box on deck, and then disappear. Two men came up, obviously looking for the source of a large bang.

“Computer—status report,” Reich said. She bent over to catch her breath.

Sirens wailed above, on the bridge, and beside her. Police started coming out of the restaurant, moving witnesses aside, and establishing order. She turned to see Middleton moving back to ostensibly handcuff the large man Perez had landed on while Bradley pulled a limping woman toward him. She watched Middleton look up and move to aide Officer Spenser, who had a large knife protruding out of her shoulder. Reich winced.

She looked back at the boat as it tore off across the water and wondered what was going to happen next. Finally, her master computer came on line.

“Sir Robert Pierce has successfully kidnapped General David Farrell. All intercepted communications indicate that his goal is to use Farrell as a hostage to lure you to him so he can kill you. As you can see, his plan was compromised by Immunes Perez recognizing him and then engaging one of Sir Pierce’s security team.”

“He crashed through a window to get my attention? Why didn’t he just call or wave?” She was exasperated at the idea of Anthony taking such a dangerous risk.

“Based on internal security surveillance he, too, recognized his limited options for getting immediate reinforcements,” her computer said calmly. Reich nodded and looked back down the pier to see Officer Jack Middleton walking toward her. “Officer Spenser attempted to intercede but was stabbed in the shoulder. Immunes Perez took that opportunity to use his speed and body mass to neutralize the threat and to alert all authorities for support at the same time. It was successful. His ability to revive quickly from a four-meter drop, even on top of another hominid, is impressive. However, exterior surveillance from several angles show that his long jump cleared six-point-two meters to land on the escaping sea vessel. Fortunately, Immunes Perez has locked on one of his assailant’s transceivers, which can act as a homing device. Immunes Pax has already launched an unmanned aerial vehicle to follow the beacon and establish visual surveillance. Immunes Lux and Milites Vespere and Bella are already putting together an extraction plan. I will have specific timelines in three-point-four minutes.”

“I’m going to have company. Move quickly and make sure they’re ready to go. Update me in ten. Reich out,” she said.

“Confirmed,” her computer said.

Officer Middleton, a handsome man in his early thirties, a Scotland Yard veteran of several years, and a literature major from the University of Cambridge, adjusted his perfectly matched tie and his impeccably tailored suit. The blood and bruising did little to detract from his classic English-gentleman presentation.

“The boss took Spenser to the hospital and will debrief the local police. He suggests that whatever resources you have, you mobilize them to get Farrell—and now Perez—back while he sees if he can do the same. I am to go with you to assist.”

Reich chuckled and smiled. She moved past him to get back up to the bridge and avoid the local law enforcement.

“‘Assist?’ Don’t you mean to watch me and gather intelligence?” she asked coyly.

“Maybe both,” he added. She looked at him and kept walking. His British accent and articulate speech revealed his excellent education and good manners. It was obvious that he was letting her lead the way. She found her discarded purse not far from the exterior stairwell she had raced down. After she checked its contents and put her now-collapsed baton back in, she began ascending the steps to the main road. That’s when Middleton asked an unusual question.

“By the by, Ms. Reich, would you know Captain Perez’s age?”

Surprised that Middleton used Perez’s old military rank, she wondered why he was showing such an interest. She replayed the question in her mind, and then Perez’s death-defying plunge, quick sprint, and leap onto a speeding boat.
Not exactly a senior citizen’s maneuver.
Reich rolled her shoulders to try to relax. At fifty-three, her short dash, dodge, disarm, and crash was not exactly an ordinary sojourn, either, but then she assumed Middleton was too polite to ask about her age.
Hmm. I did it in high heels and a skirt. I bet I could have done the same as Perez in slacks and proper footwear…

“He’s retired. Why?”

She didn’t have to look back to see his surprised expression.

“Well, for starters, he engaged a man twice his size, pushed both himself and the man through a plate-glass window to plummet about fifteen feet to the deck, and then, just to demonstrate prowess I’m sure, Mr. Perez managed to recover in time to sprint down a twenty-foot pier and then clear a twenty-plus-foot breach to land on a moving boat. I ask because any one of those actions would have taken much out of a well-trained soldier in his prime. To do all of them is somewhat Herculean, wouldn’t you say?” His tone was nonchalant, but he phrased it in a way that left little room for avoiding the question. She decided to go with the truth.

“He’s sixty-one,” she said simply. By that point, she was two blocks away from the crime scene and one block away from her car. She knew that Perez’s strength, speed, and overall health was more than a byproduct of constant exercise, training, and diet—it was the effect of adapting to a larger planet’s more intense gravity and then moving back to a less strenuous environment. This transition—and his active lifestyle—made his bones, heart, and overall physiology not just impeccable, but superior to the average human’s.

“Sixty-one?
Sixty-one?
”

Reich continued with her quick pace. She wanted to be in her car and on the road by the time her master computer contacted her with that timeline and a plan.

“Yes,” she said. “He gives new meaning to ‘sixty is the new forty.’”

There was a silence. An unusual amount of time passed before she heard him speak again.

“Yes. Quite,” he said.

Okay…maybe I couldn’t have made the jump, even if I had proper shoes,
she thought.

Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.
—The Buddha

Cold, gray, and wet.

Hydra? Where are you? How could you die?
Andrea Perez said. She knew it was her own voice, but it was difficult to recognize.

I am sorry, Immunes. It was my time,
Hydra said through her typical toothy smile.

No…It’s not fair.

We all make this journey, Immunes. It is probably better I arrived first. You will need someone here to help figure things out. Just like last time,
Hydra said.

Just like last time…

You will name part of your conquest after me at least!
Hydra added in all seriousness.

Conquest? What?

Yes, Immunes. Your father discovered the old charts and you found the underground world. The glory falls to the House of Perez. It will be good to run free after the rattus norvegicus and that winged rattus that killed me. You did kill it, Immunes, for me?

I sure did. I killed them all. Clematis, Cloelius and Dea Data did as well,
Perez said.

Her heart was pounding as images of repeatedly stabbing the winged devil with her left hand came to mind. Then came more images of rows after rows of Terran hunters combing the underworld for food. Perez also had visions of campfires and running Terrans chasing packs of rattuses and firing arrows and javelins at monster bats in the great expanses of massive caverns. There were also clear images of skulls—of both bats and rattuses—hanging from her mantel and the coliseum walls, testaments to successful hunts.

The great hunt is on. And a new challenge—the winged rat. A bat! Yes, Hydra—is that what you mean? A new place, an underworld where we can finally hunt?
Perez felt her heart race and her muscles tighten with every passing word, as if she were preparing to fight again.

Yes, Immunes! The House of Perez will stand as the harbinger of future hunts. We will return to the great plains with fire, javelins, and lava. We can finally abandon our closed-in spaces for a spacious, free underworld
, Hydra said with her typical wild enthusiasm.