Legacy of a Mad Scientist Read online

  Before they got much further, the brother and sister came upon Bobby Dunkirk. He was standing on the path with his hand in his pocket. Ash slowed to a walk, Geoff beside her.

  Bobby looked stunned stupid, much as his father had.

  Suddenly, Ashley knew. She knew what it was.

  She pulled out the rectangle. She watched Bobby's eyes fixate on the dark metal obscured by her thin fingers.

  "Bobby, Bobby? Are you all right?" Ash whispered.

  His eyes were glued to her fist. She put the prototype back in her pocket. Once it vanished, Bobby seemed to come to his senses. His gaze snapped up to her face, as if he hadn't recognized them until that moment.

  Ash ignored the fact that they had just come upon Bobby’s father, covered in blood, and treated him as she would any of the neighboring children, in an emergency situation.

  "Bobby, There are soldiers coming. We have to run right now. You should come with us.”

  Ashley grabbed Bobby's free hand and moved down the trail. He didn't resist. Ash moved downhill as fast as she could pull Bobby and Geoff.

  After a few minutes, Bobby began to struggle against her. "No. No, it's okay. They're not coming for me. He's going to get them.”

  "What?" Ashley slowed, but kept moving.

  "We don't have to run. Once he gets them, we can sit. I want to sit on the rock.”

  Ashley looked at Bobby as if he'd lost his mind, but she kept moving, slowing to a walk.

  "He'll get them, watch." Bobby was getting loud, and pulling away from Ash.

  Ashley was afraid the approaching killers would hear him, and stopped. She let go of his hand.

  From the trails behind them, near where they'd run into Mr. Dunkirk, there came a heavy crash with a yelp. The cry was cut short.

  Then came the sounds of wild gunfire.

  Ashley took both Geoff and Bobby's hands and ran for all she was worth. The cries and gunfire continued until they were extinguished, one at a time. With the forest quiet behind them, Bobby began to drag his feet.

  Ashley had no choice but to stop and let him go.

  "He stopped them." Bobby looked out into the forest.

  Ashley wasn't sure Bobby was playing with a full deck, but then again, those soldiers should have caught them already. If someone did stop them, it made sense that it was Mr. Dunkirk; he’d been covered in blood.

  Ashley knew her father's work could put the family in danger.

  Seven years ago, during the Battle of San Diego, her Uncle Geoff had been killed. She knew her father had engineered a dangerous weapon that had won the war. She knew he was still involved in military projects.

  It wasn't too shocking that soldiers had come for them. This very predicament had long been a Fox family 'worst case scenario.'

  What had now happened to the soldiers seemed even more menacing.

  Bobby backed away from Ashley, as if she were dangerous to him. "Soldiers were chasing you,” he said. “They want what you have. You have the power.”

  "They want to take us," Ashley answered.

  "They want your power, but he got them. He got them all. They don't have the power. Not like you do.”

  Bobby turned away from Ash and Geoff and began to walk back uphill. He paused to look back over his shoulder. "He got them. He got them all." Then he was gone, vanished into the trees.

  Captain Analynn Snow hung above the earth, skimming the treetops of the little mountainside neighborhood. The phase-camouflage kept her invisible to the dog-walkers and their leashed companions. With the scanning suite provided by the Micronix, following people was easy enough. She registered the heat signatures of the children, as well as those in their immediate path.

  When curious about the details, she raised her long bore rifle to her shoulder and peered through the scope. It had been easy for her to double check Ashley’s Micronix and make sure its phase-cam was functioning, allowing the children to more though the canyon, invisible to prying eyes.

  There was an adult ahead, in their path. They wouldn’t know they were invisible to him, and Ana hoped they wouldn’t give themselves away.

  She watched as Ashley and Geoff found themselves face to face with Mr. Dunkirk. They only faced him for a moment, and then Ashley led Geoff down a separate trail, avoiding the adult.

  Captain Snow considered taking her revenge right there; she had Dunkirk in her sights, but the shot would alert the dozens of law enforcement officials to her location.

  Even though it appeared that Dunkirk and the children had seen each other, Von Kalt’s pursuing alpha team was closing the gap. The four soldiers were heavily armed and moving downhill as fast as their feet would carry them. He would serve as an obstacle for the soldiers.

  Ana looked back to the children and discovered they had stopped. A boy stood ahead of Ashley and Geoff. They were talking to him. She considered that perhaps Ashley had somehow overridden the phase-cam effects. Then she realized the boy clutched something in his hand. He’d been exposed; this boy was carrying around charged terillium.

  Uphill, then the soldiers ran into Dunkirk. For a brief moment, no one moved. Ana watched, as the neighbor to her children and ex-military surgeon, attacked the soldiers. Bare handed, he used their weapons against them. In moments, the four soldiers were dead.

  Two groups of suited feds proceeded past the branching trail that would have led to Dunkirk and the murdered soldiers. Ana didn’t mind that fact that Dunkirk had survived. That ensured her another chance for revenge.

  She stayed with Ash and Geoff as they continued in their flight, running down the mountainside with their new friend in tow. Ana recognized him from her other self’s memories of the neighborhood: Bobby, Dunkirk’s younger son. Before long, he’d pulled away and was making his way back up the hillside.

  That night, far from their home turf, Ash and Geoff found a playground near one of the parking areas. They smoothed out the sand under a large playset and curled up against the chill mountain night.

  "What do you think happened to Mom and Dad?" Geoff asked.

  "I don't know," Ashley answered. "We'll find out in the morning.”

  Ashley stared hard at the tree line.

  Soon, it was warm and cozy under the jungle gym. She was tired, but she watched the woods for an hour before her eyelids fell shut.

  Stanwood called off the search long before Von Kalt was satisfied. He’d forbid Von Kalt from going into the forest himself. Otherwise, the deputy was certain he’d have caught Ashley and Geoff. He couldn’t believe they had escaped. The feds had searched until the early morning hours but found nothing.

  Thankfully, his men had been killed, the punishment for their failure appropriately embraced. There was one troubling fact. Their weapons and communicators had been found, but their bodies had not. The volume of blood and tissue suggested that no one survived, but they found no drag marks, no discernible tracks at all.

  Clearly, the bodies were carried off in a transport, to conceal their murder, and the communicators had been left behind to prevent them being tracked and subsequently found.

  Stanwood suggested that Dr. Fox had conspirators hidden in the forest; who had most likely rescued the children and killed his agents. The only thing they agreed on was that the children certainly hadn’t done it.

  When the transport carrying the bodies of Dr. Fox and his wife was ambushed in traffic, there was little Von Kalt could do; as Stanwood had assigned a volume of tasks to his Deputy Director. He was bent on the acquisition of Dr. Fox’s technology and laboratories.

  The corpses never arrived at their scheduled destination. Instead, First Sergeant King delivered an illegally acquired pair of overdosed junkies to an overcrowded mortuary. By the time Von Kalt looked into it, the corpses identified as Mr. and Mrs. Fox had long since been cremated.

  First Sergeant King had been reassigned.

  Chapter 44 – Guardian Angels

  Saturday, July 25, 2308

  The next morning brother and sister woke earl
y. They crawled out from under the jungle gym, stretched and wiped the dew from their clothes. Ashley looked at her brother and thought he looked as if he'd been through a war. She realized she must look the same and took a deep breath.

  "Can we go home now?" Geoff asked.

  Ashley stared at the tree line for a long time, debating whether they should head home or out to forage in the city. She pointed to the nearby park bathroom, "I gotta go.”

  "Me too," Geoff agreed.

  A few minutes later, standing in the morning sunlight, face and hands washed, Ash felt better than she thought possible, having spent the night beneath a slide.

  "We can't go home, Geoff," Ashley said. "We need to find out what happened. We need a library. There's got to be something in the news.”

  Ashley thought Geoff seemed to be handling everything rather well. "You okay?” she asked.

  Geoff nodded. "I miss Mom and Dad. I want to go home.”

  Ashley said nothing.

  She held his hand as they made their way down the canyon to find a public library.

  Finding a local library branch wasn't difficult. Shortly after opening, Ash and Geoff settled into a wired carol where they scanned the latest news reports. There was nothing about her father being shot or their home being raided.

  The most recent stories involving their father were about the Epsilon explosion out in the desert. He was mentioned in a piece about Pierce's suicide, but nothing recent, nothing from yesterday.

  Twenty minutes later, Ash had some idea of what her father's latest projects had been. Anything compelling she read aloud for Geoff. She was amazed that he hadn't complained about being hungry, tired or bored.

  Ash had assigned him the task of lookout, and he dutifully nudged her whenever someone wandered too close. They remained undisturbed, free to peruse the public terminal to their heart's content.

  Ashley’s Journal, Saturday, July 25, 2308

  We’re at the library. I don’t know what to do. Dad said we should go to Mexico. That’s insane. I’m not doing that.

  First, I want to know what happened. I want to know who killed him and why. I know I should be sad, but I’m not. I’m just angry.

  There’s nothing in the news about him, nothing recent, anyhow.

  I’m reading about how his first invention, the blue goo - now mass-produced for less than seventeen cents a liter, revolutionized medicine. He shot to the top ranks of several fields overnight. He didn’t seem to have much trouble staying there, either.

  There’s lots of online controversy about the Centaur war tanks too. I was alive when that happened, and I remember it, even though I was only four. That was when Uncle Geoffrey was killed.

  Ash tried to piece together the news reports she was reading now, with snippets of conversation she’d overheard back then. Names came back to her, Tasha Vangen and Major General Cruthers.

  She remembered that the people who’d taken over the project had gone crazy, not following the proper procedures. She remembered the controversy, the threat her father could have been held accountable for the massacre and imprisoned. Almost a million people had been killed.

  In the end, he wasn’t even arrested, but it had been a tense time.

  The war was over, and everyone agreed that her father was responsible for that. He hadn’t been charged with treason, but the inevitability of betrayal at the highest levels hung over him like a black cloud.

  Ashley could tell, even then, losing his brother had changed her father in a profound way. She looked over at Geoffrey. He’d abandoned up his post as team lookout and had activated the terminal but was now snoozing.

  It didn’t matter, even with both of them looking, there was still nothing about the murder of their parents.

  Something drew Ashley’s attention from the screen. Several adults were looking in her direction.

  A Chinese man across the room caught and held her gaze. He was wearing traditional silk clothes, a hat and small round sunglasses. His long white hair was pulled into a loose braid behind him. He looked as though he was trying to communicate something to her, but a movement to her right distracted her.

  Four men approached the carol. Ash shook Geoffrey, rousing him, but in his drowsy condition, he was in no shape to run.

  The four men were dressed in street clothes, but it was obvious they were law enforcement agents of some sort. Ash noticed they were wearing their sunglasses inside. She wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn’t dare look away from them.

  "Ashley and Geoffrey Fox, I need to ask you to come with me.”

  "We're not going anywhere with you,” Ashley said.

  "You don't have a choice about it,” he replied.

  "I can scream. I can call the police.”

  "Knock yourself out," he said, stepping into arm's reach.

  As the agent grabbed her shoulder, Ashley leapt from the booth, kicking him in the crotch. He went down with a grunt, obstructing the other men's path to the children.

  Ashley pulled Geoff from the carol, and they slipped into the rows of books. The library wasn't huge, but it was large enough. Ash and Geoff sprinted down the narrow aisles, moving faster than adults could in such confined spaces. They zigged and zagged, slipped around assistants and stayed quiet in their flight.

  Then, as they neared the front door, with one wrong turn it was over. They came out into the central lobby. The four-man squad stood right ahead of them. The agent she'd kicked stepped up and backhanded her across the face, knocking Ashley from her feet.

  The other civilians in the lobby all stopped what they were doing. There was one grey-haired man who looked as large and as dangerous as the agents. He'd been sitting near Ash and Geoff all morning.

  Ashley recalled that he'd arrived at the same time as she and Geoff. He'd even held the door open for them. Now he stood with the other civilians, watching.

  One of the soldiers grabbed Geoff's arm. Ashley scrambled to her feet. The agent who'd hit her stepped in and restrained her before she could reach her brother. He held her arms back and leaned down to her ear.

  "You're quite a brat, aren't you?" He looked up to the other plainclothesmen, "Let's get this garbage out of here.”

  As the soldiers turned toward the main doors with their charges in tow, the grey haired man stepped forward, in front of the doors, obstructing their progress. He held up a badge and asked, "Is there a problem here?”

  One of the soldiers reached for his gun, but the man with the badge stepped forward and struck him in the jaw. The agent went down, unconscious. The men holding Ashley and Geoff couldn't draw their weapons in a reasonable amount of time.

  The grey haired man was already holding his, pointing it at the only agent with free hands. "Anyone else wants to play; I open fire. Now, let the children go while we wait here for the police.”

  The soldiers hesitated.

  The grey haired man cocked his pistol and switched his aim to the forehead of the man holding Ashley.

  He released her and his partner released Geoff.

  The grey haired man gestured for Ash and Geoff to get behind him, and out of the building. "Get out of here.”

  Ashley opened the door and pulled Geoff out with her.

  As she stepped out of the library, she realized she'd seen that man before. He was more than familiar.

  She'd seen him at her home, last summer for a barbecue. He was a friend for their father's. She was sure of it.

  Ashley heard the lead agent threaten her father's friend. "Look, the kids are gone, fine. But we're not sticking around for the cops.”

  "You see this badge," the grey haired man answered. "That's the Defense Security Service. You're not cleared to know anything about this project, not even those children's names. The knowledge alone can put you in Leavenworth for twenty years. You're waiting here, or you're getting shot. It's up to you.”

  As they reached the sidewalk, Ashley and Geoff heard the gunfire erupt behind them.

  Then the grey-haired man, Ash
ley remembered his name, Ross. He was a soldier, Major Ross. Now he was out of the building and moving down the steps.

  "Run!" Ross said. "Run!”

  Ashley grabbed Geoff's hand and sprinted from down the block. Behind her, the library doors burst open again. She didn't look back, but heard Ross and the agents firing behind her. Bullets whizzed by her head and then she and Geoff made a turn, carrying them out of the line of fire.

  Back at the library, Ross had ducked behind a car, pinning the agents to the library doorway and preventing their pursuit.

  Chapter 45 – Major Kelly Ross

  Saturday Morning, July 25, 2308

  From his mobile command center, Von Kalt watched the library surveillance feeds. He wanted to know who’d been responsible for the soldiers who’d gone missing yesterday. Stanwood had dismissed it as a rival department, but Von Kalt couldn’t let it go.

  Now, watching the shootout between Ross and his agents, he couldn’t help but think about the soldier. Only a few short weeks ago, Von Kalt had seen the man killed in an explosion. He was later told that Ross survived, and clearly that information had been correct.

  Ross would have known enough to leave the radio transmitters, but then why remove the bodies in the first place?

  This shootout hadn’t been anything special. It was clear that Ross wasn’t shooting to kill. In fact, he was going out of his way not to kill these men, just as he hadn’t killed the agent at the taxi stand

  Whatever had happened to his agents in the forest, it hadn’t been Ross. It certainly hadn’t been the children. The issue tugged at Von Kalt’s mind. Something, someone close to the device had been responsible. The Metachron wanted to know who that was and so did Von Kalt.

  “Dr. Angus MacPhail,” Stanwood said, interrupting Von Kalt’s cerebral locomotive.

  “You arrested him, didn’t you?” Von Kalt asked, smoothly shifting tracks.