The Aegis Solution (28 page)

"They sent someone else in first."

"They did? You said about two or three months ago?"

Elias felt his back muscles tighten as he sensed the direction of the conversation. "Yes. That's about
right."

"But that was before my sign."

Elias only nodded.

Her eyes flashing, Tillie raised her voice in agitation. "You didn't come here because of my sign.
You came to look for this Eric!"

Trying to defuse her anger, Elias explained, "Both, actually. In fact, there were three reasons why
I decided to come out of retirement. The first was that we found out Kreitzmann was in Aegis. The
second was losing Eric. And the clincher was your sign."

"I don't believe you. And, besides, Kreitzmann's been in and out of here for years. Why would your
people suddenly worry about it now?"

"Honestly, I'm confused about that myself. I was told, hell, I was shown a video with Kreitzmann
entering three months ago. It wasn't until I talked with Wilson that I found out he's been here longer.
And no one knew, or at least no one told me, that he basically has keys to the door. If you were at
Wilson's, you heard me say the same thing when I was talking to him."

She paused for a moment, replaying the conversation upon which she had eavesdropped. "Okay,
that might be true. But I still think you came here just to get your friend out."

"I would have," Elias told her honestly. "Your message was the clincher, though."

She flopped back into the cushion behind her, blowing out a loud breath.

Sensing the tide was turning a bit in his favor, Elias pressed on. "I know that you don't believe me,
but I would have come here after I saw your sign, even if we hadn't lost Eric in Aegis."

Her eyes turned to look at his. He could almost feel them probing his thoughts, seeking the level
of sincerity she wanted or needed. He could feel some of the tension drain from her as she apparently
made up her mind. "You're right. You're here, whatever the original directive or motive might have
been."

Elias remained quiet, allowing her to make the rest of the journey on her own.

Standing suddenly, she suggested, "Let's go look at that picture of your friend. Maybe I do know
him."

He stood and snatched up his pistol and rifle. As they headed toward the door, they passed an
alcove, equipped with several decorative hooks on the walls, many of them holding jackets and colorful
scarves, her shoes lined up carefully against the back wall. Even that area sported some small shelves,
adorned with porcelain statuettes and feather roses. He looked at her quizzically, and she replied, as if
he should know, "Every home needs a mudroom." He chuckled at his quirky new acquaintance, and
followed her out into the maze of concrete passageways.

They communicated in whispers, as the grilles installed in the floor of the walkways were open to
the space below. After the ninth turn, she told him that there was no direct connection between her
mechanical maze and his electrical raceways, so they would need to briefly descend to the public
corridors until they reached an access point. Before taking one of the ladders down, she lay on the floor
and shimmied to a return air grille until her head was hovering directly above it. Turning her head to
the side, Tillie listened for the sounds of any residents below.

Quietly, she rose and whispered, "Sounds all clear. Let's go."

They proceeded to an access ladder and climbed down to a mechanical closet. Again, with great
care, Tillie cracked the door open and peered out. Seeing no one, she opened the door the rest of the
way and stepped into the corridor, immediately followed by Elias. The closest electrical room with
access to the raceway was only fifty feet away, and they reached it without incident, quietly closing that
door and swiftly climbing the ladder, a longer climb since the electrical raceways were positioned above
the mechanical plenum. As Elias was following Tillie through the trip, he had an opportunity to admire
her grace and fluidity as she moved, climbing and descending ladders as effortlessly as a gymnast.

Once within the raceway, Elias moved into the lead position, even though he was aware that she
knew the location of his base. Within less than ten minutes they arrived, and he did a quick inventory
and checked his discreet security measures. Everything appeared to be undisturbed.

Leaning over the laptop, he brought up the appropriate file and clicked on the jpeg of Stone. The
face of his old friend filled the screen.

"There he is."

Tillie leaned closer for a better look and almost instantly recognized him. "Yes. I did see him come
in. It was about that time, too."

"What happened?"

She turned to face Elias, her expression blank. "Not good."

"What, Tillie?"

"The Zippers got him. Right off the bat. Not too far from where the Zooks accosted you."

Elias felt an anger building inside and, with more of an accusatory tone in his voice than he
intended, asked, "You didn't help him?"

Tillie flinched back, hurt by his inflection. "I would have. Really. But I didn't have any of the
balloons with me. Normally, the only thing to worry about in that area would be the Zooks. Those guys
I can handle without a problem."

Her unhappiness at not assisting Elias' friend was blatantly obvious, and he immediately felt like
a bully for his comment. "It's okay, Tillie. I didn't mean it that way."

His attempt to reassure her did not have much of an effect. "Do you know where they took him?
Or…," he paused, not wanting to know if the alternative was the case. "Did they take him alive?"

Relieved at the prospect of delivering a positive bit of news, she blurted, "He's alive. At least he was
when they took him away. They took him to the lab."

"Do you have any idea where in Kreitzmann's lab they are keeping him?"

"I haven't seen him in there, but that doesn't mean much. There are several areas of that lab where
I haven't gone, in the overhead area. What I have seen bothers me too much, so it's a real
approach–avoidance deal."

With a hopeful tone in her voice, she added, "But I can start looking for him."

"That would be great," Elias said, smiling at her.

He closed the image file and began clicking through the video menu, checking first on his available
views of Walden. Seeing nothing unusual, he switched to the Madison views.

"What are you looking for?"

"Nothing, specifically. I've been away from here for a little while, so I thought I would do a quick
check to see if anything was happening."

He finished checking the video feeds from Madison and clicked on ZooCity. The first two views
were of empty rooms. As he was about to change to the next feed, Tillie pointed at the screen. "What's
that?"

"What?"

"I don't know. I think it looks like a foot and leg."

Elias blinked and stared harder at the screen in the spot where Tillie pointed, before remembering
that he had the capacity to zoom in on a region of the view. Doing so, the vague blob at the corner of
the screen resolved clearly into precisely what she had described.

"You're right. That's exactly what it is."

"It doesn't look like he's moving. Do you think he's asleep?"

Elias turned and looked at Tillie. "Do you?"

She did not answer.

Satisfied that there was nothing more to see in this view, Elias clicked on the next, and all of his
questions were graphically answered.

"Oh, my God," Tillie gasped. "Are they all dead?"

"I can't tell for certain, but it surely looks like it," Elias answered softly, his eyes taking in the
apparent mayhem in the room he now viewed. Strewn about the floor, arms, legs, and torsos were
twisted at all impossible angles; he could not imagine they were still alive. His finger moved on the
touchpad, and he clicked on the stored-video menu, leaving the live mode and beginning a slow rewind.
Other than the screen flicker, the fact that he was watching the past in reverse at 3X speed was not
apparent, as nothing moved. With another click, Elias increased the speed to 16X, intensifying the
flicker. As the clock counter in the corner of the monitor passed the previous hour, all of the inert
bodies suddenly flew into motion, almost comically.

He quickly paused the reverse mode and clicked on play. There were at least nine men and women
visible in the frame. They were eating a meal, talking, and laughing. Elias and Tillie stared at the video
silently, waiting in dread for the outcome that they knew was coming at any moment. Within a minute,
one of the men stopped in mid-stride as he was returning to the table with a glass in his hand. His right
arm suddenly jerked upward, the glass flying across the room, and a moment later his head twisted
violently. He fell limply to the floor. Before the others could even react, Elias saw that, one by one, each
of them met a similar fate. The attack, in total, took less than a minute, according to the clock counter.

At no point was Elias able to distinguish the attackers on the high-resolution monitor.

"My God!" Tillie echoed her sentiment from earlier. "The Zippers!"

"Let's try this," Elias said as he backed up the video to the moment the first man was walking across
the room, then clicked on the playback menu, and selected the mode which allowed playback at a
frame-by-frame speed. The man's gait instantly froze until Elias, clicking with the pointer, began to
advance the motion one frame per click. After approximately twenty frames, a figure suddenly appeared
in the picture, sheathed entirely in a beige body suit which extended to cover his head, except for the
eyes, nose, and mouth, his arms reaching toward the walking man. In the next frame, the figure's hands
were gripping the walker's head on both sides. The following frame showed the walker's head twisted
at an angle normally impossible. In the next, the beige figure had already released the walker and was
moving toward the next nearest victim.

"I can't watch any more of this," Tillie whispered, her voice raspy, and turned away.

Elias spent a few more minutes scanning rapidly through the remaining frames. He wanted a clear
understanding of their techniques. He found that there had been only two of the Zippers, as Tillie called
them. That was all it took to kill, by hand, an entire roomful of nine people.

Finishing his study of their actions, Elias quickly checked the live feeds from the balance of the
cameras he had placed around the ZooCity area. Everywhere else he looked, he found more bodies and,
apparently, no survivors.

"Elias, are you ready to go yet?"

"Thank you."

"Thank you? For what?"

"For calling me Elias and dropping that whole ‘Mr. Death' thing."

He was rewarded with a sardonic half smile. "That doesn't mean you get to learn the club
handshake yet, mister."

"I am just about ready. I need to do one thing."

Changing programs on the laptop, he typed a report to Faulk, filling him in on what he had learned
about Kreitzmann and the Zippers, the apparent status of Stone, and the demise of the Zooks. Without
consciously knowing why, he left out any reference to Tillie or Wilson.

"What are you doing, a paper on how you spent your summer vacation?"

"I'm preparing my daily report."

"How can you report? There's no way."

"Ah," he began, glad to be giving her a revelation, "but there is." He explained the comm system
to Tillie while he finished the report and instructed the program to encrypt and compress it for
transmission. That done, he transferred the compressed report to the phone with a USB cable, making
certain the phone had a full charge and was still set to automatically upload and download the day's
transmissions.

As he placed the phone back in its location, Tillie asked, "Aren't you bringing it with you? We
might need it."

"No reason to. It's no good as a regular cell phone since it only works for about one second a day.
It's only good with the laptop."

"Bring them both."

Elias turned around to face her, a slight grin playing across his face. "Both? Tillie, are you asking
me to move in with you?"

She punched him on the arm. It stung. "Creep. No, I'm not and you know it. But we might need
to get a message out, and why should we have to come back here to do it?"

"True, but if I bring the laptop to your place, I won't have my surveillance anymore. The video
feeds are through these conduits," he explained, pointing at the groups of pipes mounted to the walls,
"and they don't enter your mechanical area."

She stared at him, her gaze drifting to the pipes and the wires dangling from the pipes down to the
connections at the side of the laptop. "Okay. We'll leave it here. Can we go now? I want to get back to
my place."

"I'm ready to go, but I'd like to check out ZooCity."

"Why? They're all dead."

"Maybe not. One of them might need some help. Besides, there might be something we can learn.
Come on, it won't take long."