a serial by Joseph Benedict
Dustin Schaefer fidgeted quietly in the office chair. He liked the way the leather squished against his back and under his butt when he rolled himself across it, but the black material was cold and he had to tuck his arms into his shirt to keep from feeling it.
The whole room was cold. All around him, cool-looking machines blinked or beeped or showed images of lots of colored balls connected by little white tubes and twisted up in swirling patterns. The balls reminded him of summer camp, when they had glued bits of cotton to bright construction paper to make pictures of rabbits. He wondered if he would go back this year. He hadn’t liked his rabbit—the shape was too thin, more like a snake than a bunny—but the nice lady had told him how much she liked it and put it up on the cabin wall with the other kids’.
a serial by Joseph Benedict
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7 – Part 8 – Part 9 – Part 10
Dustin Schaefer fidgeted quietly in the office chair. He liked the way the leather squished against his back and under his butt when he rolled himself across it, but the black material was cold and he had to tuck his arms into his shirt to keep from feeling it.
The whole room was cold. All around him, cool-looking machines blinked or beeped or showed images of lots of colored balls connected by little white tubes and twisted up in swirling patterns. The balls reminded him of summer camp, when they had glued bits of cotton to bright construction paper to make pictures of rabbits. He wondered if he would go back this year. He hadn’t liked his rabbit—the shape was too thin, more like a snake than a bunny—but the nice lady had told him how much she liked it and put it up on the cabin wall with the other kids’.
Maybe not then, he thought, thinking of his ugly rabbit.
His father swore then, making him flinch. Thoughts of summer camp disappeared. Dustin grabbed the edge of the chair and peer over the desk to see if his dad was coming for him, but his dad was still lying on the table and his angry sounds still sounded muffled from where he’d hurt his mouth.
The frowning woman in the long white coat who had led him into the room, pointed at the chair, and told him not to touch anything, was still standing over his father, pushing another needle into his arm.
Dustin jerked away. He rubbed his elbow, thinking that he didn’t like shots and remembering how mad his dad had been last time when he cried.
Another monitor flickered on near him as the young man across the room stood up from his desk and pressed several buttons on his keyboard. Dustin rolled around in his chair to watch the new screen on the desk behind him. At first there were only numbers and he sagged against the leather, ready to turn away, but then the monitor flashed white and showed a picture of several mice scampering around in a glass tank. Some kind of sidebar slid over the edge of the screen and showed big words. Dustin could read the word “Test” on a few of the small pictures to the side and the different numbers on each one, but he liked watching the mice more.
There were six of them. Each was white and fuzzy, with little pink eyes. They ran around the edge of the cage and crawled over each other, nibbling at pellets in a little dish. Dustin forgot about the cold leather and lay flat across the back of the chair, watching, scratching at the stubble on his chin.
Shaving always made him itch. Still, it was better than making his dad get red and scream at him.
Across the room, the thick metal door clicked and slid open. It took Dustin a few seconds to pull himself away from the screen. When he looked over, his dad’s boss was in the room. Mr. Heart was smiling, like he always was. He had a big, square chin that made his smile seem wider and short hair he kept brushed back like men Dustin had seen on TV. The suit he had on was so smooth and black it reminded Dustin of bats from the zoo. Hart smoothed the blood-red tie tucked into his jacket as the young man in the lab coat came over.
“How is he?” Hart asked. He sounded a little smaller than he looked, though he was taller than Dustin’s father by at least a hand.
The lab tech flicked his hand toward the other tech and her needles.
“Fine,” the tech said. “Fractured jaw. Couple of months out of work. Very inconvenient. Painful. But obviously he doesn’t have to go through all of that. Yolanda is already prepping him for a soft cast injection and trauma shot. His men on the other—”
Dustin grabbed the edge of the chair and peer over the desk to see if his dad was coming for him, but his dad was still lying on the table and his angry sounds still sounded muffled from where he’d hurt his mouth.
“Have you started the procedure?” Hart stopped smiling for just a moment and looked over at Dustin’s father.
“Just anesthetics and some preliminary sanitation,” the tech answer, turning to lead Mr. Hart to the table. “The material is still gelling.”
“Good.” Hart walked past Dustin without ever glancing down at him. He stopped next to the woman and Dustin’s father. “I need to talk to him and it will be less tempting for him to try to interrupt me if he can’t use his mouth.”
The nurse nodded and put her needle down on a long silver tray. Hart smiled at her as she stepped away and busied herself at another station. Then he turned to Dustin’s father.
“Russel.”
Dustin’s dad grunted in response.
“Relax.” Hart folded his arms over his belt and looked down. “That’s your second encounter with the Agents in two days. You’re lucky to be alive.” He paused. “My question is, is that lucky for me?”
Russel put one arm on the side of the table and started to push himself up, but Hart held out a hand and motioned for him to lie back.
“I don’t expect you to answer me. Just listen. Yesterday, when the three of them infiltrated—smashed into really—this building, your first thought was to gun them down in the parking lot. Within earshot of the lot outside and in plain view of any civilian vehicles that might have attempted to enter our building at that time.”
Russel grated some answer in reply, but the sounds were impossible to make out.
“That alone is enough to make me question your judgment, but not enough to decide your termination. Pulling back the staff and deploying our non-lethal catch equipment was an excellent second try, more fitting with your purpose here: securing the facility and detaining all persons specific to our research here. I’m sure you would have personally taken on the removal of those bodies, should the initial shock-and-awe tactic succeeded against the Agents, but I’d like to remind you that the disappearance of citizens within this building is an unnecessary obstacle to the obfuscation of our true presence here. I’ll assume that this reprimand is enough to curtail any future mismanagement of security breaches.”
Hart sighed and stepped around to lift the needle the nurse had left in the tray.
“Your failure today is another matter.” He rolled the needle back and forth in his fingers.
Dustin shivered and looked away. The mice were out of the cage now, bounding up a set of foam stairs on the screen, avoiding little metal discs set in the steps. One of them slipped, and another climbed over it, pushing it back down onto the flat metal surface. The fallen mouse jerked, rolling back and forth against a glass wall. Hart kept talking.
“I don’t have any intention of instructing you on the mechanics of your job, Russel. I hired you so that I could free my mind for more pressing concerns. But three Agents broke into my building yesterday and would have gotten out with my most prized recent acquisition if it hadn’t been for my own foresight in the matter of his cooperation. I selected you because of your exemplary record, qualifications, and demeanor. You have been warned specifically of the nature of the hostile entities you are to protect against and have been given the very latest of our developments, many designed specifically to deal with this threat. It is only fair for me to tell you now that I am disappointed with your performance.”
Hart waved the nurse over again and dropped the needle back into its tray. He stepped back as she leaned back over her patient. Dustin jerked back to look as he heard a loud sucking sound.
“You personally oversaw the surveillance of one the Agents’ hosts this morning,” Hart continued. “According to the report Jameson gave before they put him under, this girl actually remembers being under the Agent’s control. She passed information along to another young man?”
“Hold still,” the nurse told Russel, twisting the man’s head far to one side and pinning it against the table as she held a device up to his jaw.
Dustin thought the sleek plastic tool looked just like a squirt gun he remembered loosing years ago. The nurse pushed the tip up under his dad’s jaw like she was pretending to mug him. A little clear slit in the gun showed blue liquid that was slowly draining away. Dustin wondered suddenly if he had left the toy here, at his dad’s office.
But no, he was never allowed in here, and his dad was more likely to get mad and throw the toy away than to give it to some lady.
“So your response, it seems, was to legitimize her tale by allowing the secondary information hazard to leave the premises, and then attempting to seize her.” Hart was still smiling. “Emphasis on ‘attempting’.”
The toy gun made a dull crunching noise and Dustin’s father jerked slightly on the table. Dustin jumped too, but the nurse pulled the gun away and quickly shoved a gauze pad under Russel’s chin, and after that Dustin saw that his father was relaxed lying on the table.
At first there were only numbers and he sagged against the leather, ready to turn away, but then the monitor flashed white and showed a picture of several mice scampering around in a glass tank.
Except for his hands. He was slowly reaching his thumb across to the lowest knuckle of each finger. Then he pulled each down toward his palms slowly, cracking the knuckle like he did whenever someone he couldn’t hit was making him mad. Dustin shuddered and wondered if maybe the nurse would make his dad stay overnight so that they didn’t have to go home.
But then the nurse came back with a slender screen, like a cellphone that was all the glass part, and held it up to Russel’s face. Dustin strained to see past his father’s boss.
“How is he?” asked Hart.
“He’ll live.” The nurse pulled the screen away and set it on the counter. She began pulling off her gloves. “The bonding agent sets pretty much immediately. His jaw’s going to be swollen for a couple of weeks, but he should be able to walk and talk just fine now.” She gave a single hiss of a laugh. “You can even punch him right in the mouth now, if you want. Should hold up better than bone.” Tightening her lips into a suddenly serious frown, she dropped the gloves onto a tray and turned to Dustin’s father. “No going to the dentist though. Not now, or ever again. You’ll have to get all your work done here.”
“I know.”
Dustin shrank away from the sound of his father’s voice. He wasn’t even pretending to be polite to the lady. He almost always pretended.
“I read my contract,” Russel growled, continuing as he sat up. He raised his head to stare at Hart.
Dustin didn’t see any of the anger drain away from his dad’s face, but Russel popped his fingers one last time in the sudden quiet, then stopped. When he spoke again, his voice sounded calm.
“I don’t intend to make any excuses. If you think you can handle this group on your own after this,” Russel pointed to the patch of gauze covering the left half of his jaw, “then I’ll collect my early termination fee and move on. Otherwise, I need to get on the road and get to this girl before the whole world knows and every wealthy R&D and security firm is after what you want.”
He watched Hart for long moments. The tall man said nothing. Russel reached over and grabbed his shirt where it hung at the side of the table and moved to stand up.
“I’ll need a new team—four this time, out of the new unit.”
“You won’t.” Hart turned with Russel toward the exit and paused when Russel did.
The man in the white coat came up to them, speaking quietly at Hart’s side. Russel glared at him. Hart nodded and made gestured back to the lab equipment. The man went back to his station.
To be continued.
