Tripple Chronicles 1: Eternity Rising (25 page)

“How are we
gonna fix this mess?” Luke asked.

“Let’s just
hope our amplifiers and upgrades are enough. I really don’t know what else we
can do.”

“Unless we
can somehow program them to self destruct,” Luke said.

“That sounds
like a good idea, but if they are ignoring the programming, they will likely be
unresponsive to that, too.”

“It’s worth
a shot,” Luke said.

“Yes. It is.
Why don’t you start a small team on that while I do the same with the Phase One
amplifier? Pick only people you can trust. I think we should withhold what we
are doing from the military team, don’t you?”

“Good call,”
Luke said, “Major Magner would never allow it.”

After being
pulled into General Pike’s office by Mace Magner, Luke understood where these
biomachines ranked in the government’s list of priorities. For the rest of the
day, Luke and Charisa worked on their projects behind locked office doors and
curtained windows.

By 4:00,
Maeve was again sitting in the ventilation system of the unit, this time over
Camden’s small apartment. She was counting on Ganesh coming here to speak with
him, but the place was empty. She knew that at 5:00 Ganesh would be back in his
office to pass a message to Sergeant Leitner, but it was possible that Ganesh
and Camden had already exchanged their information while going about their daily
work. Maeve was tired from the commotion she’d inserted herself into earlier,
in the weaponry unit, and of being cramped up in small spaces today. At 5:15
she was still staring at an empty room. She left the building and went to a
nearby hotel where she had made her temporary residence. At least she had one
note to analyze. She pulled the black wig off of her head, then blew up the
photo she had taken that morning of the note that passed from Sergeant Leitner
to Colonel Ganesh.

I think I’m onto something. Should find a weakness soon.

Decided to use the boy and have crossed his notes with Cam’s. Has been
helpful.

His personality is uneven sometimes. Can he be trusted?

Find a weakness in what?
Maeve thought.
She looked up Camden Riles past research and searched until everything made
sense.
He worked with the material in the
lab first. They must be looking for a way to disable the weapons they created
with it.
A smile spread across her face as she realized that Ganesh had
gone rogue. He was a traitor, which meant they were on the same side. Then her
smile retreated. She thought about Agent Quinn. If Ganesh is suspected, Quinn
is probably on a kill mission. “Ganesh can handle himself,” she said aloud. But
deep down she knew that wouldn’t be the case. Ganesh wasn’t a young man
anymore. He had a desk job, for crying out loud, and was not in physical
condition to take on a Special Unit spy in his prime.

She got up,
pulled her hair back in a braid and headed down to the hotel bar for a drink
and to plan her next move. Maeve had really hoped that Ganesh would have called
for her help, but now she knew why he hadn’t. It would be difficult to trust
anyone with anti-government secrets, especially someone from Special Unit. She
would have to reveal herself first.

Maeve sipped
on her second martini trying to avoid eye contact with the three other bar
patrons, who were all men. Staying at the hotel on business, no doubt and they
all looked like they were working up the confidence to come over to try and woo
her. She considered finishing her drink in her room, when on the screens behind
the
bar,
reporters were filming the aftermath of what
looked like an explosion.

“
Nooo
,” she said, recognizing the burning city as Chama, a
border town of Daxia. Her Tyrinian intelligence had not indicated an attack so
soon. Something must have happened. She tapped her fingernails impatiently on
the bar and was compelled to leave then and cross border to find out what was
going on.
 
However, it was more
important to stay here for the time being.
 
Her reaction to the news report must have made her look
vulnerable because she felt heat coming off of the almost drooling man that had
come to sit next to her.

“Damn shame
what’s going on down in Tyrine,” he said, “I wish the government would hurry up
and just take them over. Shut ‘
em
up before they do
anymore damage.”

Maeve slowly
rolled her eyes at him, looking obviously annoyed. The man, who was wearing a
wrinkled shirt with a stain on it, also looking like he hadn’t shaved in three
days, smiled at her, revealing yellow teeth that had started to brown.

“The name’s
Paul. Can I buy you a drink, beautiful?”

Maeve held a
flat expression on her face. She was used to dealing with this sort of thing.

“Paul, is
it? You don’t need my permission to buy whatever your heart desires with your
money. If you put a drink in front of me, I may or may not drink it, but don’t
think for a second that even a polite conversation with me is for sale,” she
said and looked away.

“I’ll take
my chances,” he said grinning and motioned to the bartender to bring Maeve a
drink.

“So, what
are you in town for?” he continued. It seemed the other men were watching to
see how he fared. Maeve ignored him and when her drink arrived, she ignored it
too, then stood and left without so much as a glance at the disgusting animal
beside her. Once in her room, she showered and crawled into bed. Unable to fall
asleep, she stared at the ceiling for hours thinking of Ganesh, Tyrine, and
Naja. Finally, she made the decision to leave Ganesh for a couple of days and
make the trip to Tyrine to warn the leaders of the resistance to back off until
she learned more about the weapons in the unit. Any further attacks could
provoke the Daxian military to release weapons that neither side were prepared
to handle.

Back at the
TRU Building, General Pike was still in his office conversing with the two
heads of government and two other generals by videoconference. He was being
pressured to employ the weapons he had been bragging about for over a year now.
His program was eating up large portions of the government’s budget and he’d
promised undefeatable biomachines that would all but eliminate Daxian soldier
casualties. He was now past his delivery date and the only casualties so far
were
Daxian soldiers. The heads of
government were irate. General Pike described the delay as a minor glitch in
the compatibility between the biomer and the programming chip. The regent gave
him a month to work it out or his weapons program would be shut down. Pike
argued for the regent to give him at least three more months and help from
other departments to beef up security on the border in the mean time. They
compromised on two and extra security.

So, it was
settled. In two months time, the biomachines would be set loose to takeover Tyrine
and control it’s population. When the call was finished, Pike wiped the sweat
from his face and called his wife, Enira to let her know he wouldn’t be coming
home that night.

Then, he
called Mace Magner.

“Hello,”
Mace answered in a gruff voice when his phone rang.

“Mace…you
asleep?”

“I was,
sir,” Mace said recognizing the general’s voice.

“Well, get
up and get your ass in here! We’ve got work to do,” General Pike said and hung
up.

Mace Magner
arrived at General Pike’s office door toting two steaming cups of coffee. The
clock on the wall said 4:05 a.m. and Mace’s breath still reeked of the beer he
drank before he went to bed.

“Morning,
sir,” he said.

“Mace, we
have a problem,” General Pike said and explained to him the time crunch they
were facing with turning out functional, glitch-free weapons.

“And if we
can’t gain control of them through programming?” Mace asked.

“Then our
department will be shut down,” General Pike replied.

“We can’t
let that happen. Those machines are our key to controlling Tyrine.”

“Alternate
plans of attack are being drawn up by the heads of government as we speak, but
I didn’t call you in here to cry about it. I have worked too long and too hard
on this project to let it get snatched away from me over a glitch in the
system,” General Pike said.

Mace took a
long sip of his coffee as he listened to the general’s rant.

“Mace, it’s
time we made our own alternate plan.”

General Pike
pulled out plans of the TRU Building and spread them across his desk. “Here,”
he continued, pointing to a wing of the building that used to be used for
interrogation and prisoner holding before the upstairs rooms on the thirteenth
floor were built.

“We can fit
seventy-five biomachines in these rooms and no one will ever know. We will move
them at night. If we can get five a night, we will be at capacity in our
two-month time frame. I will get Agent Quinn to clear the route and alter
surveillance. You will secure the restraints and the two of us will work on
building the stalls ourselves.”

“That just
leaves one missing necessary person, a handler.”

“Yes, I
know. That is the problem. You have today to find someone from your team down
there who can keep their damn mouth shut.”

“They’re all
whiney little bastards as far as I can tell, sir. All of them would pose a
risk.”

“I was
afraid of that. Well, we’ll just have to pick the one who is the biggest threat
to the program already and keep him…well, let’s just say his coworkers will
think he was an unfortunate casualty of yesterday’s chaos with the weapons
yesterday.”

“You have
someone in mind already.”

“Yes. The
boy you brought in here after the first accident…Luke.”

“That could
be a problem, sir. His work may be vital to making the project successful. He’s
one of the two top programmers.”

“He still
can be. He just won’t work with the others. He’ll work from his new home
office…right here,” General Pike said and pointed to the building plans again,
this time to a small room adjacent to the old prisoner cells where the
seventy-five would be kept.

“People will
know he’s not dead. He was working yesterday.”

“I’ve
scrutinized the security footage of the facility from the outburst until the
end of the day and he is nowhere to be seen. How many people down there are
really
aware of his presence?”

“Well, one
that I can think of.” Charisa’s face popped into Mace’s mind as he said it.
“But aside from her, he stays mostly confined to his office…which is somehow
out of view of the security cameras,” Mace said, scanning the still pictures of
the security pictures. He wondered why that was. He was sure every inch of the
place was monitored.

“Ha, that’s
easy. One person. Easily contained. It can be written off as rumor if she says
anything,” Pike argued.

“She’s gonna
be so busy she won’t have time to start a rumor, but I kind of have a way with
this girl,” Mace said. “I’ll see to it that she doesn’t talk.”

“Good. Now
go find this Luke at his home and bring him in so he doesn’t have a chance to
come into work and interact with anyone,” Pike ordered.

Mace clicked
his feet together and saluted the General, then left to locate an address for
Luke.

Later that
morning at Tripple Laboratories, Bearden arrived unexpectedly to help with Lee
and Dana with the biomer before he went into work. He walked into an empty main
lab. The embryos wriggled around in their tubes, looking distressed, but still
alive. He walked back toward Lab E, where the biomer was kept, and knocked on
the door. Four seconds later, the door cracked open and Dana’s big brown eyes
peered through.

“Oh, it’s
you,” She said and opened the door all the way.

“Who else
would it be?” Bearden said and walked past her. Dana shrugged. She and Lee
looked exhausted. He doubted if they had slept since he saw them the previous
morning. Lee was dropping cells of biomer from a tiny glass dropper onto a
sheet-like mold. He didn’t look up when Bearden came in and probably didn’t
even notice.

“We’re
making a womb,” Dana offered with excitement.

“Huh. I can
see how that would work. Just have a good buffer in there while the embryos are
still developing. You wouldn’t want to take a chance with untested bonding,”
Bearden said half joking and half wondering if it was possible. After what he
saw in the weapons unit yesterday, his mind was open to accept just about any
possibility, and it made him feel sick to his stomach. Dana rolled her eyes at
his comment.

“I’ve got a
couple hours before I have to be at work. How can I help?” he asked. Dana
smiled at him and looked happy, for once, that he was there.

“You can
help me stretch this biomer sample into quadruple cell layers for Lee to work
with,” she said and led him over to her workstation. Bearden smiled back at her
and put on a pair of gloves.

At the same
time, Mace Magner was standing out in the cold in front of a small residential
building not far from the TRU Building. The sun was just coming up behind the
cloud-covered sky, casting a purplish gold aura around him. His arms were
crossed and his breath made a white mist in the air. The effect of the morning
combined with his height and build made Mace, from a distance, look
otherworldly. He waited a half an hour for Luke to walk out of the building.
When he did, Luke saw Mace right away and dropped his coffee from shock. This
was satisfying to Mace who stomped over to the spindly programmer and grabbed
him by his arm.

“You have to
come with me this morning, Luke. The general and I have a job for you,” Mace
whispered to him.

“Oh, a job
for me? Are you sure? I mean I have so much to do already,” Luke said in a loud
nervous voice, stumbling while being half dragged through the street by Mace.

“Shut up,”
Mace whispered again.

“Okay,” he
whispered back. “But I just need to call Charisa. She’ll go nuts if I’m not
there to meet her. We planned to meet early today.”

“Where?”

“Coffee
shop. Two blocks from here,” Luke said as Mace shoved him into the back of an
unmarked government transport.

“Stay here.
I’ll take care of Charisa. Which direction is that coffee shop?”

Luke pointed
north and his face scrunched into a deep cringe when Mace slammed the door and
locked him in. Luke had no idea what was going on. He worried that he was in
trouble for the faulty biomachines and wondered what Charisa would do when
Major ‘Pain in the Ass’ walked in instead of him. He felt bad for her. Charisa
never wanted to be in a situation where she had to be alone with that man,
especially outside of the unit. Luke slouched down in the seat of the transport
and reached for his phone, only to realize that Major Magner must have lifted
it from his jacket while dragging him to the transport.

“Dammit!” he
shouted and reached for the door and tugged on the exit handle. It wouldn’t
budge. He beat on the window with his fists and yelled for help, but it was
early and the side street that Mace had parked on was deserted. It was useless.

Two blocks
north, Charisa was sitting at a small table in the back of the Morning Dew Drip
House. She was watching the door in between sips of her steaming coffee. Mace
stood outside and just watched her for a minute with a dirty smile on his face.
He ran his fingers through his spiky hair and walked in and straight over to
her table. Charisa gasped when she saw him. Her instinct was to run, but he
didn’t act like he was there coincidentally and Luke was nowhere in sight. Her
expression turned to worry as Mace sat himself across from her with a straight
face.

“Major, what
are you doing here?” she asked looking around to count the others in coffee
house, in case they were needed as witnesses.

“You look
frightened, Charisa. I hope not of me,” Mace said and reached across the table
and squeezed her hand.

“I am
frightened, sir. Where is Luke? Why are you here?” Charisa asked and jerked her
hand away from him.

“Fine, if
you don’t want consolation,” Mace said.

“Why would I
need consolation? Where is Luke?”

“Luke’s
dead, Charisa. Found in his flat early this morning. Gunshot, possible suicide,
we’re looking into it.”

“What!
No…that’s not possible,” Charisa said, her hands beginning to tremble and tears
falling out of her eyes. “I was with him until late last night. He was fine.
You are lying to me!”

“I wish I
was, but it is what it is. I just thought I’d be a gentleman and tell you in
person.” Mace said and smiled, enjoying her pain.

“You! You
did this!” she yelled and stood up. Everyone in the coffee house was staring at
them. She ran out and down the street in the direction of Luke’s flat.

“Where are
you going, Charisa?” Mace called after her, coming out of the coffee house too.

“I don’t
believe it! I have to see for myself.”

Mace ran and
caught her easily. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her tight into
his body.

“Don’t do
that, girlie,” he said softly in her ear.

“Let me go!”
She was kicking and fighting him. Mace put his hand over her mouth and pulled
her into an alley and pressed her up against a wall.

“Now, you
listen to me. You are going to have to deal with this and deal with it fast,
because you are needed at the unit in under an hour. Now, I suggest you pull
yourself together and forget you even saw me this morning.”

Charisa
squirmed and grunted while her tears soaked Mace’s hand, still over her mouth.
He was pressed so close to her, she could tell he was enjoying himself.
Finally, she stopped moving and Mace stepped away from her. She wiped her eyes
on her jacket and caught her breath.

“That’s
better. Now, I’m going to watch you walk away to work. I’ll come and check on
you when I get there. And if I find out you’ve gone anywhere else…well,
sweetheart, let’s just say, I know where you live…and I don’t always knock.”

Charisa
folded her arms across her chest protectively and hurried off to work, her hair
matted against her wet face, looking behind her every few paces to see that
Mace was still watching her walk away.

After she
was out of sight, Mace went into Luke’s building and into his flat. He found a
bag and packed as many of his things as he could fit, then left, padlocking the
door behind him. He returned to the transport to take Luke to his new
accommodation at the TRU Building. He was thinking how Charisa’s distress would
surely make plausible the story that Luke was killed in the chaos yesterday.
She would likely lock herself in her office for days, unable to talk about the
details, to anyone. She was a mess and Mace was having a fantastic morning.

As he drove
the short distance back to the unit, he decided to get a couple of things
straight with Luke.

“Where were
you yesterday during the
er
…incident?”

“In my
office, helping a nurse with a wounded soldier,” he answered.

“A nurse?”

“Yes, I
caught her as she was walking by to help the others. It was luck that I bumped
into her. I didn’t even know that any nurses had clearance down there.”

“They
don’t!” Mace yelled, filling with rage. This only meant one thing…the weaponry
unit had been breached.

“Then who
was that woman? I mean
,
she knew what she was doing
and all…I was...”

“Luke!” Mace
interrupted, “You talk too much.”

“Only when
I’m nervous, sir, like now. I mean, you haven’t told me anything. Am I in
trouble?”

“You will be
if you don’t shut up. Like I said, the general and I have a job for you. I’ll
explain when we get you inside,” Mace said and landed on top of the old
interrogation wing of the building. “Do you remember what that nurse looked
like?”

“Oh, yeah,”
Luke said, “She was so pretty.”

Mace got out
of the transport, unlocked Luke and rushed him inside to a small room with a
computer and a cot.

“Here ya go.
Your new flat.
I hope you like it,” Mace said and
hurled Luke’s bag into his gut.

“What?” Luke
asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.
General Pike and I will be by later to explain. In the mean time, keep working
on your programming. It looks like the general had your hard drive copied so
you should have everything you need,” Mace said, nodding toward the computer.

“What about
a coffee pot?” he asked timidly. “I always have a coffee pot near my desk. I’m
a coffee junkie.”

Mace laughed
at him.

“You’re
negotiating. Ok. I’ll get you a coffee pot. But you’ll have to earn the coffee
to put in it,” Mace said, still laughing. “See you later, Luke.”

Mace closed
the door and went directly to General Pike’s office to give him a report.