Sparks of Chaos (14 page)

“It may be best if I handle the girl for now, while you deal with Rex,” said Tedford.

Coincidently Armstrong’s wristband notified him of Rex wishing to speak with him immediately. “Why haven’t I heard from you yet?  I’ve been waiting to be briefed on Professor Hauptmann’s arrival.”

“There have been some important developments that we need to discuss in person. I will come to see you now,” he said ending the conversation before he could ask for further clarification.

Chapter 25

Three weeks, her whole life had been turned upside down in that time. She had spent the last few days in a complete fog. Amanda Riley hadn’t even left the house for days now. Getting out of bed was a chore that was much too hard to accomplish. She couldn’t snap out of it and no one had been able to help her with it either.

Ever since she had been told that her son Chase had gone missing, everything had changed. She and her husband Bill had been awakened by a telephone call alerting them to the fact that they had lost contact with Chase’s boat and they were concerned. The team that had been monitoring the progress in his around the world sailing quest had noticed a major storm that seemingly came out of nowhere in the co-ordinates where Chase’s boat was.

Since then, there had been no radio contact or any visual sighting of his boat or even, heaven forbid debris. They had sent planes to fly over the area looking for some sign of their lost son but there was nothing.  She had never completely given up hope but it was getting harder and harder to believe there was going to be a happy ending to this sad drama. As a mother, she still believed in her heart that if something terrible had happened to Chase, she would have felt it herself.

Amanda had to admit that she had gone into a downward spiral personally and was looking for someone to blame for her pain. She had been disgusted with herself for lashing out at her husband and blaming him for everything. In her mind it was his fault for getting him involved in sailing in the first place, of course conveniently forgetting that she too had enjoyed it and encouraged his love of the sport. She had screamed at Bill that he was to blame for not putting his foot down firmer in stopping Chase from going on this trip. She knew she was wrong but she just couldn’t help it.

They had several fights and screaming matches since they heard the news. Bill had tried to get her to accept the unfortunate news that Chase wasn’t ever coming home but it had just triggered more bickering. Lately they had settled into a situation of just existing and not really speaking much to each other. She had even largely ignored pretty much everything else in her life.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she was frightened to see what had become of her. Normally she was impeccably dressed with her hair and make-up perfect, nothing could be farther from that image now. Her hair was unkempt, dirty and uncombed. She hadn’t even bothered to bathe for two days and wore a stained old bathrobe and slippers because to do more was too much effort. There were dark circles under her eyes and her face looked sunken and pale.

She couldn’t even remember when she had eaten last but she was getting hungry now. Walking down the stairs that led to the front door, she remembered she hadn’t even bothered to get the mail for two days. Opening the door, she knew her appearance was embarrassing and would cause concern to any of her neighbors that would see her outside. The sunlight was bright and hurt her eyes but she paid it no attention.

Removing several days’ worth of mail from the box, she quickly rifled through the envelopes while shuffling back to the front door. There were a few bills, some standard junk mail, advertising circulars and at the bottom of the pile a plain white envelope. It instantly caught her attention. The letter was addressed to her in unfamiliar block letters but what drew her gaze was the number of foreign stamps affixed to it. Surprisingly, there was a postmark of Heidelberg, Germany clearly stamped upon it.

Who could have sent this? She certainly didn’t know anyone in Heidelberg; she had never been to Germany or even Europe. As a matter of fact, except for the time they went to Canada, she had never been out of the country. Waiting until entering back in the house, she tore open the letter. Inside was a plain white piece of letter sized paper, hand written in black ink in the same block lettering as the envelope.

The rest of the mail slipped unnoticed from her fingers onto the floor as she began to read the mysterious letter. She was intrigued now, her stupor had instantly dissipated and her adrenaline was flowing. It was the most eerie feeling ever, as if someone had walked over her grave, as her grandmother had been fond of saying. Anxious to read it but at the same time deeply afraid, she began to read.

She knew it, she knew it, she just knew it. He was alive, Chase was alive. The note was cryptic to be sure but she thought she understood it. Somehow he had survived but for some unknown reason he couldn’t come home and tell her or anyone why. Maybe he was in danger or afraid to put her in danger. Maybe he was involved in some spy affair or government conspiracy. She didn’t really care as long as she knew he was alive. What was he doing in Germany?

The one reason she knew with absolute certainty that Chase had written the letter was the signature. When he was a little boy she would read him a story and call him her little Scooter Pie. It stopped once he had started school and was too old for stories, it had been years since she had called him that but neither of them had forgotten. She also knew that no one but the two of them would know what it meant, not even her husband, it had been their little secret.

Catching a glimpse of herself in the antique hall mirror her mother–in-law had given her, she shuddered and said aloud, “Well, enough of that.” She had always hated that mirror and had never been very fond of her mother-in-law either. She vowed to finally get rid of it, her mother-in law was not so easily dealt with. She marched herself up the steps to get on with her life.

With a steely determination she got herself cleaned up, dressed and even put on the requisite make-up that made her feel back to her old self. Quickly straightening up the mess she had allowed to accumulate in the house, she cleaned on auto-pilot and didn’t allow herself to think too deeply yet about all the implications in the letter. Regardless of the instruction in the letter, she could not bring herself to destroy it; instead she carefully folded the letter and the envelope and placed it under the velvet backing in her jewelry drawer.

She put on something rather dark and conservative; she was after all supposed to be in mourning for her son. She contemplated cooking something to eat, as her appetite had come roaring back when her body awoke with her mind. Instead she picked up her phone and called Bill. Once it connected and heard him say a tentative hello, she said, “Hi Bill, it’s me, I need to ask you something.”

“Sure, go ahead, is everything okay?” he was concerned; she hadn’t called him at work since they got the news about Chase. As a matter of fact they had barely even spoken in the past few days, he had been staying later at work each day just so they could avoid each other just a little longer.

“Everything is fine; I only wanted to ask if you could be home by six, I would like the two of us to go out to dinner tonight, I am feeling much better now. How about going to Ciconelli’s down at the boat club?”

She did sound better, even more like her normal self. He wondered what happened today, she had been almost catatonic when he’d left this morning, he wasn’t sure that she’d even noticed he had gone. Maybe it would be best not to pry too much just yet; after all he was grateful she was seemingly functioning again. Something had to have happened for her to want to even go near the boat club again. It was possible that she just snapped out of it by herself. It made him hopeful, if she could do it, maybe he could too. His wife had been in so much pain that she never seemed to notice how much he was hurting as well. “Of course I can, that sounds great, are you certain you’re up for that?”

“Yes, everything is going to be alright now Bill, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. Make sure you get home in time. I am starving; I’ll see you in a little while.” She ended the call and thought about whether to tell him about the letter or not. Bill wasn’t the kind of man to just let things go, if she showed it to him, he would start investigating. Her gut said it was best to just play things cool at this stage and see how it all played out. For now she would just have to keep her husband and everyone else in the dark about what she had learned. She was happy, for the first time in weeks she was genuinely happy.

Chapter 26

Rex paced impatiently waiting for Armstrong’s arrival. He knew something was wrong when he had to contact him for an update. He had a bad feeling about this and the entrance of Armstrong confirmed it. Motioning him to the couch Rex said, “I am not pleased to be kept in the dark on what is happening with this mission when I specifically ordered you to inform me as soon as you had some news.”

“There have been some serious complications with this mission and I did not wish to alarm you until I fully understood the implications of everything that has transpired. It makes no sense to alarm you without having all the facts.”

“So what is the status of Professor Hauptmann?”

“That is where the serious complications are involved. The Professor is not here and will not be able to join us after all.”

“What?” he screamed. “I told you it was crazy to send that boy but you insisted. I am holding both of you personally responsible for this failure. You knew how important this was to my overall plans.” He was on a roll now, with his anger building as his fear became reality.

“I understand your disappointment but some things just can’t be avoided, I believe he did the best he was capable of.”

“Oh believe me I blame him for this but I also blame the two of you for insisting he would succeed.”

Sensing that he could not completely dump all of this on Chase, Armstrong backpedaled and said “The failure was not completely the boy’s fault. Sadly it was mostly due to problems with Professor Hauptmann.”

“What problem was that?”

“His senility had progressed much farther than we had anticipated and he caused a scene which almost led to an unfortunate discovery of our intentions. As you are well aware, even if he had succeeded in bringing him here we would not have the capacity to revive his mental state or personality. We would have had all of the risk and none of the benefit.”

Not to be deterred from his well-earned anger, Rex lashed out and accused Armstrong of failure. “He should have brought him here anyway. We could have kept the body in stasis until we had the technology to repair him. If I hadn’t listened to you and wasted our time on the boy we might have been able to get to him earlier.”

Knowing that no amount of logical arguments were going to convince or mollify him in this state, Armstrong chose to divert his attention and turn his anger back on Chase, “I’m afraid there’s more.”

“What else could be worse than this?”

“While Chase was attempting to gather Professor Hauptmann, he was seen and then accidently killed a girl.”

“That’s a pity but at least he didn’t leave any witnesses. We will have to start immediately on damage control so this doesn’t lead back to us here.” Rex’s mind was already beginning to calculate how he would handle this twist to the problem, when Armstrong interrupted yet again.

“Not quite, he decided to bring her back here.”

“Smart thinking, this way there will be no body for evidence, maybe this is still manageable after all.”

“You still don’t understand sir, she wasn’t quite dead and he revived her with the biobots to save her life.”

Rex screamed with anger, “No, no, no. You know my feelings about having females on the island. How could you let this happen? This is much worse than I could ever have imagined. You have destroyed all of my plans and my entire life’s work. This is chaos.” Rex was so blind with fury that he grabbed Armstrong and shook him violently. He was so used to getting his way and having everything exactly as he liked for so many years, he was simply unprepared for a disappointment of this magnitude.

Armstrong stood stoically as Rex shook him, he tried to adopt the most surprised and hurt look that he could place upon his face. He had been quite ready for a reaction like this and was almost surprised and somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t more extreme than this. Disappointed, where did that thought come from? He didn’t have time for that now, it was quite crucial that he play this next part expertly to ensure he achieved the goal he desired. Looking like what he hoped was sufficiently chastened, he said “What were we to do; you know we could not allow her to die when we could save her. You programmed us this way.”

His anger now beginning to dissipate, Rex let go of Armstrong and avoiding his gaze, he sat down defeated. “What are we going to do now? Where do we go from here?”

“I know that you’re angry but I think that for now we need to prioritize. The first two things that we need to focus on are what we are going to do with this girl we have possession of and to deal with the blowback from her disappearance from Germany. Only after we have dealt with these two immediate problems will we face how to adjust our long term plans. There is too much at stake to make panicked decisions in an emotional state such as this. You have shown us the way to make rational well thought out plans.”

“I suppose you are right.”

Looking down on Rex, Armstrong saw one of the world’s richest smartest and most successful men, slumped down in defeat. He took no pleasure in it. In actuality he hated seeing him like this but he knew he had to break him to save him. At least some of the news could wait for some time, not everything needed to be shared at this point. Quietly, under his breath so Rex would not hear him he said, “Everything I do is for you.” Then he told him, “You should go and focus on your other projects for now and let me deal with this mess. It is my mess and I will handle it. When we are ready we will have you formally meet your two teenage charges.”