Table of Contents

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HYBRIDS

By Amanda Flieder

www.amandaflieder.ca

Copyright © 2020 Amanda Flieder

Cover graphic created using photos by David Clarke, Omer Salom, and Samuel Zeller from www.unsplash.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

1

The private jet touched down and the two passengers already on board sat on the floor as ordered. They hid out of sight below the windows and watched three men in suits take up positions around the interior side of the door with guns drawn. Outside, stairs were wheeled up to the side of the jet as soon as the door cracked opened. The next passenger was shoved up and tumbled onto the plane amidst shouted orders and scuffling activity for the latest batch of suited men to get on board before the stairs were gone.

One new man in a suit came on board and went directly to the cockpit. He unlocked the door with a key from his pocket and relocked it the moment he was inside. The new passenger glanced at the other two as he was lifted from the floor and shoved into a seat, his hands secured behind him with plastic ties. A gun held by one of the three who’d covered the door aimed in the general direction of the newcomer’s head; both passengers on the floor could see the safety was still on, but the posture would look intimidating through the windows.

The new guy obviously wasn’t intimidated by the posturing, or remotely interested in being on the plane. He head butted the person trying to click his seatbelt and charged the one with the gun drawn on him. The man with the gun sidestepped and struck with the butt of the pistol, retreating as the new guy – blinking fast and shaking his suddenly aching head – was lifted and dropped back into the seat.

“Ow!” the new guy exclaimed. He could focus again by the time the seatbelt clicked and glared up at the guy who’d hit him. “Fuck you!” he yelled when he realized his leg wouldn’t reach for a kick.

Gunshots sounded outside, near the plane, as the flight crew raced through their take-off requirements around the still-open door. From spying out the nearest window, it looked like the guys in body armor who were retreating into matching SUVs were firing toward a hodge-podge charge of quickly approaching vehicles. The plane started powering down the runway before the door was sealed.

As soon as they were told they could, the two passengers climbed back into their seats. They were just buckling in as the plane lifted off, sitting by side and both facing forward, across the aisle from the newcomer. All three passengers looked like they were in their mid or late fifties, and each had been plucked from their lives to board this plane without yet knowing why. In the window seat was Jerry Karloft, a security guard with a history of military service (of which most of that history was blacked out and filed in places most people didn’t even know existed). Beside him and separated from the newcomer by the aisle was Ray Defuuga, a retired five-star General and one of Jerry’s oldest friends. That left only the new passenger, who neither Jerry nor Ray recognized, and who was now quietly sitting there and sullenly looking around at everyone.

“Detective Nathan Alexander, welcome aboard,” one of the men who had brought him onto the plane said from behind him. The new guy looked startled, then – if possible – even more wary. He tried to look over his shoulder to where the voice was coming from, but was blocked by the large headrest on his seat.

“I go by Nate,” the Detective replied.

“Our instructions stated you could be safely extracted from this airport as long as it looked like an arrest,” the man who’d hit him said while dialing a number into a disposable cell phone. He spoke into the phone, telling whoever he was talking to that Nate was on the plane, and then he pressed the cell to the Detective’s ear.

“Hello?” Nate said, and then listened for nearly a whole minute. “What?” he yelled. “No! You have got to be kidding me! I’ve been on this case for the past two fucking years, you can’t just…!” More noise from the phone interrupted him. “Fuck you!” Nathan yelled and then kicked the arm of man holding the phone, effectively signaling the end of the conversation. He scowled, glaring at everyone he could see except Ray and Jerry.

“So I guess you two got pulled off your cases, too, huh?” Nate asked.

“Let’s call it removed from our most recent circumstances,” Jerry answered.

“Shit,” Nathan said. He tried to use one of his arms and scoffed that he was still restrained. “Hey, you dipshits can untie me now.”

Jerry had been called by his boss at two in the morning because of late-night visitors at the little, non-secret research facility he was head of security for. Turned out the visitors were some of the suited people on the plane with him, bringing a military order he’d hoped to never hear again to immediately go where he was sent; he’d find out later where and maybe why. Now it was later and he still didn’t know where or why. Ray had come from an early-morning breakfast with his wife and kids after a knock on the door of his house and the same order Jerry had gotten. Seeing Jerry, Ray’s old Commanding Officer from his days before climbing into political ranks, had creased his forehead. However, the years of dealing with politicians meant a few wrinkles were Ray’s only physical reaction of surprise to finding Jerry already on the plane.

The man closest to Nate flipped open a knife and the Detective leaned forward to give access to the ties binding his hands. Ray and Jerry both noticed a small trickle of blood behind Nathan’s ear and exchanged a quick frown. Nathan reached up to the spot on his head where he had been hit and pulled his fingers away bloody.

“Stupid, green, junior fucks…” he muttered while looking at his fingers. Ray offered him a napkin that had been handed out with a small packet of cookies an hour ago. Nathan looked at Ray carefully, a spark of recognition burning behind his gaze on seeing the retired General. “Thanks,” Nate said, taking the napkin.

“Don’t mention it,” Ray replied easily.

“I’m Nate,” the Detective said, introducing himself as he held out his right hand.

“Jerry,” Jerry said with a wave.

“I’m Ray.” Ray shook Nate’s hand warmly and the Detective’s shoulders dropped from the tensed position they’d been in since coming on board.

“So, either of you guys know what we’re doing here?” Nate asked, looking around again. His eyes paused on emergency exits and where every person was sitting, flicking quickly to note where emergency equipment was, before returning to gaze at Jerry and Ray with a moderate level of curious assessment.

“Not yet,” Jerry replied. He offered Nate a small smile before glaring at the nearest man who had come on board during the last stop. The younger man shifted uncomfortably and glanced at the closed cockpit door.

“Our only instructions were to collect you three, Mr. Karloft,” said Ronnie, the man who had welcomed Nate and was now the center of Jerry’s attention.

“So where are we being taken to?” Jerry asked. Ronnie opened his mouth, ready to shrug that he didn’t know, and then shrank back from Jerry’s stare, deciding in the moment to change his response and tell the truth when all three passengers were looking at him the same way.

“Arizona,” Ronnnie admitted.

“Ray?” Jerry asked, turning his head to speak to his friend. Ray was already thinking on it.

“The base would’ve called us in directly,” Ray said. His eyebrows drew together in the old familiar way. “There are a few places in the desert that could have us collected like this, but only one in Arizona. It’s a research facility I don’t know much about, only that they could make movies about it. Not the happy kind.”

Ray and Jerry thought on this information for a few moments.

“Excuse me, uh, sirs?” Nate interrupted their thinking, looking uneasy. “I haven’t been military for twenty-two years. I did four years and then I went police force. I’ve been in PDs ever since.”

Ray and Jerry exchanged a glance and a shrug. “I guess we’ll find out more in Arizona,” Ray offered. He shook his head slightly as a warning, glancing meaningfully at the people who’d collected them, when Nate inhaled to ask another question. The three veterans remained silent for the rest of the flight.

2

The plane landed smoothly at an unmarked airstrip in the early-afternoon heat. Jerry, Ray, and Nate were directed out and climbed down the rusted stairs slowly, getting a view of the desert around the lone runway and the single road to and from it while they were elevated. Only a dusty, older model pick-up truck and newer military SUV were nearby. The two guys who’d pushed the stairs up to the door waited until everyone getting off the plane was on the ground and then pulled the steps to the side of the runway and left them there. They climbed into the pick-up truck without saying anything and drove off as the plane door thumped closed. Only Jerry, Ray, and Nate had gotten off the plane. They glanced back and saw the wing flaps raise and lower as pre-flight checks were gone through again.

“Welcome to Arizona,” the visibly nervous driver of the SUV called, gesturing to the vehicle doors he’d just opened. “Please, get in.”

Nate started moving forward, saw he was the only one who did, and stepped back to wait beside Ray. The three older men stood in a row to face off with the driver from three meters away.

“Where are we going?” Jerry asked, raising his voice to be heard over the plane’s engine.

The driver smiled tightly between pretty blond hair and a rumpled, tweed jacket. “Please, just get in?” he asked, yelling so he could be heard, and gesturing with both arms. He spoke with the tone of someone at the end of a usually relaxed temper. “I can’t brief you in the open.”

Jerry looked at the two men beside him, both of whom were surveying the wide open and essentially empty space around where they’d been dropped off while Jerry did the talking. Ray’s quick scan finished with watching the plane taxi away, and Nate’s ended when he started profiling the driver. Jerry waited the two seconds for both men to finish their assessments. They shrugged to him because they didn’t see anything worse than the situation they’d been in on the plane, except now they’d be traveling on the ground. In silent agreement for being in this together, Jerry climbed into the front passenger seat of the SUV, Nate sat behind Jerry, and Ray sat behind the driver.

“My name is Richard Leech. I’m an English professor,” the driver said, once all the doors were closed. He turned up the air conditioning and put the SUV into gear, pausing to lean forward slightly and watch the plane take off. “I really have no idea where to even start. Right now, I’m hoping you have questions. I think I’ll be better at giving answers than at explanations.”

“An English professor?” Nate blurted. Jerry agreed with the surprise in Nate’s voice. Based on today’s events, Richard saying he taught English was one of the weirdest things he could have started with.

“Yes. Ivy league education and tenure,” Richard said. “Teaching at those schools wasn’t very interesting, though. It was also very stressful. I moved to smaller schools and then into military academies.”

“You left ivy league for military academies?” Ray asked, bewildered by the choice.

“Fulfillment is important, too,” Richard said, catching Ray’s eye in the rear view mirror.

“Nice to have the choice,” Nate muttered.

“The Arizona facility isn’t an academy. Who are you teaching?” Ray asked

“Until three days ago…” Richard paused and blew out a long breath. He gripped the steering wheel harder. “Your clones. And the twenty-three other clones made at the same time.”

The three passengers in the car stared at the English professor in stunned silence.

“Can… can you repeat that?” Nate asked when he could speak again. “But add in enough back story so it makes sense this time,” he added. Richard sighed and then shrugged and nodded. The gesture looked more like a response to what Richard was thinking than to Nate’s question.

“Twenty-four years ago, thirty soldiers were selected to take part in a cloning program. You three were among them. When asked to provide samples without knowing why, you each agreed. You then signed a non-disclosure agreement about providing samples and – I’m guessing – completely forgot about it until right now.” Richard glanced at everyone else in the SUV, getting nods of agreement from all of them. “The collected samples were used in tests for viability in creating interspecies Hybrids. The program –”

“Wait, ‘interspecies’? So, you mean our DNA got tested for being mixed up with other species? Like… animals or…?” Nate interrupted.

“Not ‘like’ animals, with animals,” Richard corrected. “The program wasn’t successful during the first six years, but the results showed improving promise with each pairing. Nearly eighteen years ago, twenty-nine Hybrids lived through gestation. Twenty-eight of those lived through infancy, and then twenty-six survived through toddlerhood.”

Richard stopped talking as he signaled right and turned off the narrow highway. He drove the SUV toward a security shack. There was a black chain link fence running along beside the highway, and the heavy gate in it was on the road beside the security shack. The fence looked like it kept in a lot more of the same desert as was outside of it. The security shack was the only building around, and it was just an armored, windowed box with one inside corner walled off (probably for a toilet). Richard held up his security pass card against the scanner pad on the side of the shack and the gate started opening automatically. The soldier in the shack waved in a friendly way, not even opening the window, and they continued driving.

Jerry and Ray glanced at each other. Normally visitors were required to show identification and sign in when coming onto any base. Richard noted the glance and smiled at them.

“It’s well known you were coming and we don’t have time for redundant protocol rules. Your security passes are waiting inside,” Richard explained. “Now where was I? Oh, yes, there were twenty-six Hybrids who lived into childhood. All of them are now seventeen years old.”

“You said you were teaching English to these Hybrids up until three days ago. So what happened three days ago?” Jerry asked.

“The facility was attacked,” Richard said. His fingers clenched and loosened on the steering wheel.

“Why?” Nate asked.

“Because these kids are a squad,” Jerry said before Richard could answer. “Bred, born, and raised to be used tactically.”

“Our kids are super soldiers?” Nate blurted the question. He leaned forward between the front seats to stare at Richard.

“Technically they’re not your offspring, so not your kids. They’re your clones. But yes, however, these Hybrids are what someone like you would call super soldiers,” Richard replied.

“Fuck me,” Nate said as he sat back. He shook his head in disbelief.

“So why are we here?” Jerry asked. “We’re not active military. There are squads for this kind of rescue and recovery.”

“Rescue and recovery aren’t needed. The attack failed. None of the Hybrids were taken,” Richard explained. He turned off the road to drive on a dirt track toward a small hill. “You’re here because half the facility’s staff members were killed, and the dead half includes almost everyone on the security teams. Most of the systems are still down, which is why we’re using a back door rather than the main entrance. All of the attackers were, as our General says, neutralized in the first twenty-four hours after the attack. Unfortunately the Hybrids were released from their secure areas, and for the past three days we’ve been finding them throughout the facility and bringing them back to safety.”

“Who’s safety?” Ray asked. The frown he’d gotten when Richard said ‘secure areas’ for seventeen year old kids was still creasing his face.

“Theirs,” Richard replied. His expression was shocked that anyone might think differently. “They’ve been raised in controlled environments, completely underground. Exposure to this violent situation was –”

“Exactly what they were made for,” Jerry interrupted, finishing Richard’s sentence. “Everyone must be itching to get the security footage so they can see how well the project did in its first real combat scenario.”

3

“Our General is, as you say, itchy about it,” Richard said. His tone sounded like he disapproved of the General’s feelings, but the words came out of a blank face.

Richard stopped the SUV facing a hill and climbed out to walk toward a broken-down building foundation. Rusted steel piles stood in short rows like jagged teeth punching out of the sand behind a half-buried speaker box from some old timey drive-thru restaurant. Jerry watched Richard crouch down and push one of the buttons on the speaker box.

“Identification,” a crackling voice demanded.

“Eight-seven-four-alpha-tango-three-two-zero-whisky-charlie-zero. Professor Richard Leech, English,” Richard said.

After a burst of static the speaker silenced. A small, green light flashed twice beside the button he’d pressed. He was back in the SUV and closing the door when a deep rumbling shook the jeep and started loose sand and rocks tumbling down the hill. A ramp hidden at the bottom of the hill dropped inward to reveal an underground tunnel. Richard turned on the SUV’s headlights and put the vehicle in gear.

“I see they still don’t have these lights working,” Richard muttered. His fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel, waiting as the tapered top of the door settled as a smooth ramp against the tunnel floor. Jerry could only see far enough in to where a boxy control panel squatted in the center of two lanes.

Richard set the headlights to high-beam and then drove into the darkness. Daylight faded behind them quicker than the speed they were driving accounted for and Nate looked back to see the ramp already lifting. Richard carefully steered around the turns taking them deeper and deeper underground. He wasn’t driving at a pace which could be considered fast – unless snails or tortoises were provided as comparisons – and that made the stretched silence of the trip begin to feel uncomfortably longer than it needed to.

The tunnel road was as wide as a two lane street and high enough for any type of truck to drive through without hitting the ceiling. A utility access sidewalk was sectioned off by a steel railing beside the road, and occasional personnel doors were set into the wall. As they drove deeper, they passed a couple groups where workers who looked like they were fixing wiring behind wall panels near personnel doors were protected by at least one armed soldier. Each worker was safely on the sidewalk, completing their tasks in the glow of lanterns and flashlights. Each soldier nodded at the SUV driving past.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie, and the cop died first,” Nate said as the passed the third worker and soldier pair. He squinted out the windshield, trying to see further than what the headlights were showing.

Ray chuckled quietly. “I think only the beautiful, young, smart girl and the handsome, young, tough guy live to the end of those movies. Us old guys sacrifice ourselves or fall behind and get eaten. Jerry might make it out on account of being white, but you and I are basically wearing red shirts with neon targets on them,” Ray said, grinning at Nate.

“I promise you that this tunnel is much brighter when the electricity is working properly,” Richard said, his tone defensive.

“So Richard, seems how we just keep driving really slow, that means you have time to explain why we’re here, right?” Nate asked. “Because you haven’t done that part yet,” he added.

“Yes, of course. My apologies,” Richard said. He shook his head, as if clearing out thoughts about horror movies that start in dark tunnels, and squeezed the steering wheel until the pleather creaked. “Of the twenty-six Hybrids, twenty-three are safe in their secure areas. They are still undergoing physical and psychological checks after the attack. We are very lucky that only two of them were wounded, especially since all of them became involved in defending this facility. In spite of being raised the way you each seem to think they were, I can assure you that we care about these Hybrids very much.”

“I can see you do,” Jerry said. He frowned at the steel and concrete walls of the tunnel.

“Please remember that this is the back-door entrance,” Richard said, his tone trying to sound calm.

“Of course,” Jerry said with a smile. “The three Hybrids that are still missing would be…?” He left the question hanging and gestured at the ex-military personnel in the SUV.

“Hybrids who are still missing, Mister Karloft,” Richard corrected him. “I can see you guessed correctly that the three Hybrids who are still missing are the clones made from each of your samples. We haven’t been able to locate them while the security systems are down. Our General brought you here to run through a simulation. He wants to see how you react to the situation your clones are in.”

“But we’re not going to think or act like they do,” Ray said. “We’re a different age. We have different training and life experiences. Having us pretend to be them is useless.”

“Our technicians estimate four more days before we have full use of the security systems. We’ve already tried everything our staff could think by using the simulation. I’ve gone through it five times myself. We’re likely already out of time, but we need to try and –”

“We’re ‘out of time’ for what?” Nate asked, interrupting. Richard sighed, his face dropping into a look of defeat.

“The animals chosen were picked for how well they work together in a unit and… well… for strengths the military wanted so…”

“These Hybrids are Humans crossed with carnivores, aren’t they?” Jerry asked pointedly.

“Yes. Lions were used.”

“Bred and raised so their human sides are dominant, but three days without feeding is a long time. The current worry is that your rescue teams look like dinner because there isn’t enough security to protect search teams and repair teams, so you’re hoping to use us to narrow the radius. Sound about right?” Jerry asked.

“Fuck me. The cop always dies first in these movies,” Nate muttered.

“You look younger than both of us,” Ray said, falling back on his usual habit of trying to add some humor to the wild situation they were in.

“But I’m Latino, and I’m not pretty or smart enough to be a movie hero,” Nate said. He smirked as he pointed at his face.

“How long does the simulation take and how many times are we expected to run through it?” Jerry asked, ignoring the half-hearted jokes from the back seat.

“It should only take a few hours at most,” Richard replied. “We’re simply hopeful you’ll provide ideas we haven’t thought of. You may need to only go through it two or three times.”

The tunnel ended at a large, steel, blast door. Jerry squinted at a small, faded sign outside the glow of the headlights as they slowed to a stop, but couldn’t make out any details so turned back to watch the occupants of the SUV once they were past it. Richard parked beside a control terminal set up in the middle of the road. Oddly, the terminal looked like a parking ticket printer except that it had a large keypad, a small keypad, and no little slot for the ticket to come out of. Jerry watched as Richard typed in a different code than the one he’d used outside. The terminal beeped once and then Richard typed in a third code on the second keypad.

Diesel machinery grumbled to life somewhere inside the wall of the tunnel and the blast door started to slowly grind sideways. The tunnel continued on the other side, but was brightly lit for the short distance before opening into a large, pristinely maintained parking bay. Jerry glanced back at the small sign and noted the familiar color, but they were too far away to make out if there were any markings or writing. Richard turned off the headlights and drove forward, aiming for the parking spot with the same number painted on the floor as on the tag hanging from the rear view mirror. Everyone in the SUV squinted after so long in the dark.

4

The parking bay was what Ray expected from his times touring other underground facilities. Each one he’d visited before had been clean, brightly lit, nicely painted, and well ventilated. The tunnel and blast door they’d driven through now looked old and much too ‘Hollywood military’ in comparison. The rumble of diesel machinery stopped when the blast door was fully open. A soldier walked to a control terminal inside the parking bay, near the door, and Jerry glanced back to see he was punching in the same two codes Richard had used.

“We might not die after all,” Ray said, nodding at the now familiar setting. Nate was still looking around at the parking bay, his eyes absorbing the layout first and the collection of vehicles second.

“Maybe. I’m still Latino and you’re still black, though. And we haven’t done the simulation yet. I don’t want to get my hopes up,” Nate said with a shrug.

After parking the SUV, Richard led them on foot to the security desk where their pass cards were waiting, and then to the wall of pristine elevator doors. The ones that smoothly opened dropped them down fifteen more floors. The elevator stopped and this time the doors scraped open, jamming with a gap only wide enough for one person at a time to pass through, to reveal the mess Jerry, Ray, and Nate had been waiting to see. A warning alarm droned to life inside the elevator, adding a mosquito pitch buzzing into the white noise of banging, beeping, and cleaning up.

Bullet holes and scorch marks covered the walls. The wall panels meant to cover electrical systems were hanging half open or had been blown off, and the exterior doors of the elevator were buckled backwards (which is why the interior doors had jammed). Ceiling tiles were in pieces or missing, and the overhead lights were destroyed. Strings of caged light bulbs had been hung from one wall to brighten the hallway for safe walking. The floor tiles were chipped and broken, but the floor had been swept so nothing shifted loosely underfoot. Dust, debris, and shrapnel were shoved against the walls in piles, and the piles only had six meters between them at most. Workers were at some of the electrical system panels, their work spaces brightened by free-standing lights and watched over by armed soldiers. The tired workers didn’t look up as the newcomers passed them, but Jerry noticed the soldier’s postures each straightened.

Richard led the small group to a hallway where floor to ceiling windows had once lined an entire side. Kevlar nets had been secured across the openings and the shattered glass swept to the other side of the hall.

Jerry stopped to look through the net and found a high-ceilinged, indoor jungle on the other side. It was dark in there; the only light was from the wire-caged bulbs in the hallway, but he could hear trickling water. Some kind of medium-sized, yellow parrot was hanging on the other side of the net and cleaning its feathers with its beak. Jerry wrapped his fingers around one strand of the net, his hand close to the bird. The yellow parrot barely glanced at his fingers before going back to preening its wing. It ruffled its feathers, chirped calmly as it looked around, and then flew away to land on a low branch of the nearest tree, its bright colors fading to disappear into the shadows. The flapping triggered more birds to fly to different perches, all of them silent or quietly chirping during their short bursts of flight. Regular reflections aligned with the splashing sounds and Jerry could just make out the silhouette of a low fountain.

“Is it night in there right now? Down here is on a different cycle?” Nate asked. He stopped beside Jerry to look in.

“No. Down here runs on the same time as above,” Richard answered. “The damage from the attack affected the power grid so we’re leaving the lights off in all unnecessary areas. We need the electricity elsewhere,” he added.

“Are there only birds in this garden?” Jerry asked.

“Yes,” Richard said. “Well, except for a few fish in the pond. And this is an aviary – a large bird cage – not a garden, Mr. Karloft,” Richard corrected. “Why do you ask?” Richard stepped closer to the net and squinted toward the same shadowy direction Jerry was looking.

“That bench beside the fountain,” he said, tilting his head to point in the direction he was looking. Richard nodded, peering closer. “I was just thinking it looks like a nice spot to drink a beer and pat a dog,” Jerry continued. “But” –he smiled at Richard– “no dogs in there.”

“Ah, yes. I guess it would be a nice spot.” Richard spoke the agreement through a barely contained scoff that twisted his mouth into a frown. He hooked his fingers into the net and forced a smile at Jerry in return. A big, green parrot with a red face and blue on its wings burst out from hanging on the net nearby Richard’s hand, its screeching action scaring the professor into jumping back. The squawked warnings for its entire flight from the net to the trees was deafening among the muted noises of cleaning up and repairs. Other birds startled up into an ear splitting flock that crashed through leaves to circle the garden before settling again into quiet.

“Well, that was loud. Is this were you want us to start that simulation to guess where were our clones might be?” Jerry asked, turning from watching the reflections around the fountain to watch Richard quickly smoothing his jacket.

“No, not here. We’ll start you at the initial point of contact with the enemy forces. Follow me, please.”

As they walked down the next hallway, a soldier told Richard about two of the wall panels repaired the day before being – again – damaged. Richard glanced at the trio he was leading before thanking the soldier. She looked confused at his reply, but nodded and walked back to stand over a pair of workers. Nate glanced between Ray and Jerry before choosing to keep his observation about the strange behavior to himself. Neither of them appeared to notice the odd, short conversation between the Richard and the soldier.

“This is where we’ll start the simulation,” Richard announced. He stopped outside an open door into what used to be a workout gym. The damage in the gym was mainly in the form of tipped and scattered equipment. Only a few bullet holes pocked the walls and there were no scorch marks from small explosions.

Nate went in first, his eyebrows creasing into a frown as he looked around. “Why in here?” he asked.

“This is where the attempt to abduct the Hybrids happened,” Richard said.

“That explains the lack of explosion scorches,” Ray said, following Nate into the room. “Wouldn’t want to damage the merchandise,” he added under his breath.

“We think the attackers believed the Hybrids would be trapped in here,” Richard said, starting to explain. Jerry followed the English teacher into the gym. “Eight of the Hybrids were tranquilized. The other eighteen overpowered the attackers and escaped here” –he pointed at the door they’d all walked through– “and here,” he said, turning to point at a wall of shattered one-way mirrors. The room behind the broken mirrors looked like a high school computer lab. “Of the eighteen who escaped,” Richard continued, “eleven went through this study lab and seven went through the door we just came in. The group of eleven Hybrids acquired training weapons from a store room just in that hallway and then circled back through the adjacent hallways to this door. Security teams were dispatched, arriving from the elevator, and the attackers ended up between the group of eleven Hybrids and the security teams. And, well, you saw the damage between here and the elevator.”

“So if eleven Hybrids were fighting, and the security teams were fighting, where did the seven Hybrids go?” Ray asked.

“Into the nearest office,” Richard said with a heavy sigh. “My office,” he added. “I was lucky; I wasn’t there. They locked the door and forced off one of the office’s air vent covers.”

“So all seven went into the vents?” Jerry asked.

“Yes,” Richard said. “The injured two were among the seven, and they all returned within twenty-four hours of the all-clear. The missing three were part of the group of eleven. They checked in as safely returned, but then… poof,” he said. He held up his fist and popped his fingers open like a little grenade going off.

5

“Why would they report in and then disappear?” Nate asked.

“We don’t know,” Richard admitted. “This is the reason we’ve been trying to find them quickly. Our doctors believe one or each of them may be injured and they’ve reverted to an animal instinct of hiding and healing.”

“I think we need to be alone for this, like they were,” Jerry said, studying the gym. “Is that all right?” he asked Richard. The English Professor looked surprised at the question, and then as if he was struggling to find the right answer.

“I suppose that would be… acceptable,” Richard said slowly.

“Can you show us the hallways the eleven used to circle around, first?” Ray asked. “I agree with Jerry. We’ll have a better chance of getting into the right mindset if we’re left on our own. I just want to see the rest of the escape route before we get started,” he added.

“Yes, of course. Right this way,” Richard said with a tight smile, holding out a hand toward the computer lab.

The hallway was a short loop that had the gym and computer lab at its center, with classrooms, supply closets, the mentioned training weapons storage (now just empty racks), and a few offices that all looked dedicated to teaching staff. This part of the facility looked like a mash-up of an office building and a high school, complete with what had been a row of orange lockers outside the computer lab. It wasn’t a long distance to get back to the door where they’d first entered the gym. At least, it wasn’t long right now, walking without being shot at.

“I’ll be cleaning up my office, right where I showed you,” Richard said. “Let me know as soon as you have any ideas and I can tell you if we’ve already tried it or not. There’s no use in having you run the simulation using tested theories.”

“Thank you,” Ray said. He turned away to start looking closer at the steel wall opposite where the one-way mirrors had been. Free weights had been thrown hard enough to make dents. Jerry looked around the computer lab while Nate studied the damaged walls in the hallway by Richard’s office. Richard was fidgeting with his phone, stretching out his departure.

“If you need anything else, or any more information, then –”

“You’ll be in your office, and we can find you easily,” Ray interrupted Richard smoothly with a friendly smile.

“Exactly,” Richard said. He smiled as if he was trying to politely swallow food he knew would give him Ebola. Not able to think up any more excuses to stay, the professor nodded to himself – grinding his teeth as he walked out of the gym. He passed Nate just outside the door as the Detective was coming back into the gym.

“Hey, guys, I was looking at –”

“Come and tell me what you think of this,” Ray said, interrupting Nate and ignoring that Richard turned back to stand in the doorway. Ray picked up one of the free weights under the dents in the wall. “How hard do you think this was thrown?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know… my best guess without forensics, though? Pretty damn hard,” Nate said.

“Let’s loop through the computer lab and the hallway once more. I want to see if we missed anything the first time,” Jerry called. Ray and Nate walked over to where Jerry was waiting beside the row of computers, leaving Richard hovering in the door frame, alone and out of listening range. The English teacher clenched his hands into fists and stiffly walked away toward his office.

“What do you think we might have missed?” Nate asked, genuine confusion in his tone.

“First we talk about what we already know,” Jerry said quietly.

“Security protocols are dead wrong for a start,” Ray answered. He kept his voice at the same volume as Jerry’s. “And these pass cards might as well be hand-written for how real they are.”

Nate’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and he looked at the pass card clipped onto his shirt. “What about that conversation in the hallway? Where the soldier seemed like she was reporting to an English teacher,” Nate said.

“She was reporting to him,” Ray confirmed. “Also, there’s no reason for an English teacher to run through a military simulation. Especially for the five times he said he’d done. Did either of you notice that Richard kept calling the kids ‘Hybrids’ after making a fuss about how much everyone cared about them?”

“Oh yeah, that was about the tenth thing wrong about him, right after a rumpled jacket over pressed pants and shirt,” Jerry said. “Now that we’ve agreed Richard is part of the problem, possibly the leader of it if how everyone with rifles is treating him, we need to find those missing kids before he does. At least we can plan on them being trained past the usual army basics. First thing when you’re cut off in a hostile environment is to find safe cover. Second is to find supplies. Third is to find a viable escape.” Jerry ticked off the points on his fingers as he counted them.

“And when you can’t escape, you do whatever you have to for making sure you don’t get found. Like sabotaging the security systems that keep getting fixed,” Nate said. “You two notice nobody told us when or how we go home?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s part of anyone’s plan but ours,” Jerry said. “We’re only supposed to find those missing kids like the good soldiers we used to be. Then we’re disposable.”

“You know, after all these years, I still don’t miss black ops,” Ray said. “Don’t get me wrong, you were a good commanding officer, I just like that now I know I get to go home after work.”

“Guys, I never did black ops,” Nate admitted.

“Says the Detective who’s been undercover for two years,” Jerry said. A grin pulled at one side of his mouth.

“Point taken,” Nate agreed, and then sighed heavily as his eyes traced over the uneven line of bullet holes above the computer monitors, and two spotted trails in the carpet leading darkly back into the gym. “So, because this base is occupied by the enemy, we’re committing some major treason if we actually help them locate our missing kids. Also, they’re obviously some kind of mercenary force and will kill us if we don’t play along. What do we do?”

“We find those three kids and they show us where the other twenty-three are being held. I think their abilities plus our experience should be enough to get us all out of here,” Jerry said.

“Except every closed door between here and outside the fence is pass code protected,” Nate said, his shoulders slumping. Ray laughed quietly and Jerry grinned.

“Don’t worry about the codes. I’ve got a good memory for that kind of thing,” Jerry said, Ray nodding agreement.

“So, we have the codes to get in and out, and we can assume everyone but the teenagers are trying to kill us,” Ray said, his face cracking a grin. “Pretend the teenagers are the hostile force and that sounds like a normal spring break at my house.”

Nate laughed. “That sentence makes me glad I never had kids,” he said. “At least, ones I knew about,” he added, sweeping an arm to encompass the computer lab and gym. “Where do you think we should start looking?”

“Their dorms and any of the so-called secured areas will be under guard,” said Ray. “As will any common areas like the mess hall, training rooms, or mess storage and coolers. Anywhere those three could get food or weapons would be watched closely, but being teenagers I’d bet they looked for food first and a place to sleep second.”

“So we just need to figure out where they could get three days’ worth of food and water without being seen,” Jerry noted. “Then we’ll look around for a safe place where they’d be able to sleep.”

6

“So we start in the rooms down here for people who died in the attack. The places they lived while they were working so they didn’t always have to go in and out of the base,” Nate said. “People usually cache food. Their favorite chocolate bars, better sandwiches or drinks than they can get from a cafeteria, or a pizza. That kind of stuff.”

Ray and Jerry looked at each other and then back to Nate.

“What? You guys think they put mini fridges and microwaves in hotel rooms as decorations?” Nate asked.

“Can you find the resident rooms?” Jerry asked Ray.

“This layout is a lot like –” Ray stopped, interrupting himself. “This facility is a lot like that other underground place I toured often but can’t tell you about without shooting you after.”

“We don’t need to find the rooms,” Nate said. He was staring toward the computer lab’s hallway door behind Ray and Jerry. Nate swallowed hard. Ray and Jerry spun in place to look the same way and froze.

The teen standing in the door to the hallway looked like Ray, but a few inches taller and his face had the defined cheekbones and wide eyes from the lion’s side of the genetics he’d been made from. His skin was a tawny brown, lighter than Ray’s, and the yellow of his irises was a ring of gold around his wide pupils under the string of temporary lighting in the hallway. He rubbed at the worst of the wrinkles in his tee shirt, showing hands that were blunter and thicker than an average person’s, and no fingernails on any of his fingers. The strangest things about him were his lion-like ears, which sat higher on his head than a Human’s and were twitching to different angles as he listened in all directions.

“I followed you since the aviary,” the teen whispered. “Kaff says we shouldn’t trust anyone, but I argued right now we need to trust somebody,” his added with a shrug. His stomach growled loudly and he pressed his palms against his belly, as if his hands could silence the sound. “And there’s that,” he said. He bit his bottom lip the same way Ray used to when he’d been young and uncertain.

Jerry grabbed the front of the teen’s tee shirt and jerked him into the computer lab. He ducked down behind the nearest desks, nearly throwing the kid, to block them from being seen by anyone from across the gym.

“What are you doing exposing yourself like this?” Jerry hissed in a chastising whisper. “Check the hall for the other two,” he ordered Ray.

“We already raided the abandoned rooms for food and water,” the teen said, relaxing once he was sitting. “We grabbed what we could on the first day but the rooms got cleaned out the next day. We ran out of food yesterday and water this morning. We don’t have any weapons, and it looks like Prof and his goons moved in to wait us out.”

Jerry looked up at Ray when the retired General stepped back into the computer lab. “There’s nobody else in the hallway,” Ray confirmed.

“Who’s Kaff?” Jerry asked. He released the teen’s shirt now he was certain the kid would stay sitting. The teen cocked a grin at him.

“Based on what I’m seeing, he’s obviously your clone,” he told Jerry.

“What’s your name?” Ray asked, crouching down nearby and pointing as if gesturing for Nate to join him to look at something from a different angle. Best to keep up appearances in case anyone was passing by. Thankfully nobody had been looking through the gym when the kid had showed up in the computer lab door.

“Fuggy,” the teen answered. “My full name is DeFuuga, but everyone calls me Fuggy.”

“That means Kaff is short for Karloft,” Nate guessed. Fuggy nodded agreement. “So the last missing kid is Alexander. Making him… Alex, I guess?” Nate asked.

“No, just Lex,” Fuggy said. “So, you guys have a plan, resources, and topside reinforcements to get all of us out of here? We really want to get out of here.”

“Well, we have a few ideas to start making a plan. So about a half out of three,” Nate admitted.

“It’s just us, no reinforcements or extra resources. We’ll come up with a plan once we know more,” Jerry said.

“A plan and getting out is enough,” Fuggy said. “I’m really tired of being stuck down here after this past week.”

“Week? We were told it had been three days since the attack?” Nate asked.

“Well yeah, but we were doing academic exams before that and I’m really done with every part of this whole week,” Fuggy admitted.

“That’s three ‘really’s in three sentences,” Nate pointed out.

“Wow. Lex really is your clone,” Fuggy said.

“Where are Lex and Kaff?” Jerry asked, re-centering the conversation. “And where are the other twenty-three kids being held?”

“Everybody’s in the aviary. We looped the holding cell security feeds to show the last forty-eight hours and got everyone to the aviary last night. Shan and Pinky both got shot, but they can still move okay,” Fuggy explained. “We just can’t get any further because Prof changed all the pass codes after his people took over the base. Plus there’s the new check point inside the parking bay that always has someone standing at it.”

“You know the parking bay?” Ray asked.

“Of course,” Fuggy said. “We do most of our training outside,” he explained.

“Richard said you’d never left the secured areas down here,” Nate said.

“And you believed him?” Fuggy asked, shaking his head at Nate.

“Can you get us back to the aviary unseen?” Jerry asked.

“Probably,” Fuggy answered, looking unsure as his stomach growled loudly again.

“We’ll need somewhere to leave the security pass cards, as well. They’re thick enough to have trackers in them,” Ray said.

“Really?” Jerry asked. He pinched the pass card he’d been given between his thumb and finger. Ray smiled at him.

“Technology kept advancing in spite of you retiring,” Ray joked.

“Why not leave the cards here?” Fuggy asked.

“Too easy to look in here and see we’re not with the cards,” Nate said.

“Okay. I think I know a good spot, but it’s opposite the way we have to go to get to the aviary,” Fuggy said.

“Sounds perfect.” Jerry gestured for Fuggy to lead the way.

7

Nate kept a lookout as Ray and Jerry hid the cards in one of the cleaned-out resident rooms. To any device tracking the cards, the three visitors would look like they were sitting in here. It was perfect.

Fuggy checked the fridge hopefully to see if maybe someone had started using it again. Just his luck as of late, it was still empty.

The teen led the retired soldiers through the hallways he knew didn’t have working security cameras and were free of anyone reporting to Richard, explaining as he went that Lex had overheard the pretending English professor doling out all the wrong orders after the attack. Putting together a couple of easy assumptions of the attack happening close enough to the sudden change a few months ago from the English teacher they’d had since they were eight was ample information to realize the attempted abduction hadn’t been stopped at all. Lex had gotten to Kaff and Fuggy, getting them to hide with him, but the rest of the kids had been locked up.

Since sneaking away, the three had focused on surveillance to gather as much intel on the mercenaries as they could – which wasn’t a lot, but it was more than what Ray, Jerry, and Nate had to work with – and then they’d started on a way to get the rest of the kids out of lockup. After freeing the other twenty-three teens and moving into the back of the aviary this morning, it had been half a day of trying to figure out where to go next as the time ticked down on being discovered that all the kids were now missing. Then the three veterans had walked past and Fuggy had won the argument to come to get them.

The walk around the facility to get back to the aviary was long and winding, looping through areas that hadn’t been used in what looked like years. They only came across one work crew, a tired pair in coveralls who were complaining loudly about the long working hours while being held at gun point. While Ray, Nate and Fuggy stayed hidden around the corner, Jerry hurried up to the mercenary and demanded a status update on the system being repaired. The mercenary only frowned.

“Look, it’s taken me over an hour to get away from the other two without making them suspicious. Status update, and be quick about it so they don’t catch up and see us talking,” Jerry said. His bluff worked.

“This panel is almost done. We’ll be moving to hallway seven in about half an hour if either of these two can be trusted,” the mercenary answered, glaring a frown toward the workers bowed heads.

“Hmm,” Jerry said. He rubbed a hand over his cheek and shook his head. “That’s not soon enough.”

“Tell me about it,” the mercenary grumbled. He turned to kick at the nearest worker. Jerry grabbed the rifle barrel and used one foot to sweep the mercenary’s feet out from under him. The surprised mercenary fell backwards hard and lost his grip on his gun. His training saved him from hitting the back of his head on the concrete floor, but not from Jerry slamming the butt of the rifle into the side of his head. Twice. The second hit had a full swing behind it and the mercenary’s skull bones cracked. Jerry knelt down and checked for a pulse, nodding to himself and standing up when he didn’t find one.

“Is he dead?” Ray asked, leading Nate and Fuggy to where the workers were ducking, heads protectively covered by arms and hands.

“If not, make sure of it,” Jerry ordered as he got familiar with the rifle. Nate took a knee and quickly questioned the workers, staying low so they were speaking on the same level. They didn’t know anything new to the small group, and on finding out only the three veterans had come – without backup or a plan – they both slouched into staring at the floor.

Ray crouched and did a quick pat-down search of the body. He found two pistols, giving one each to Nate and Fuggy, and three knives plus a handheld radio which he kept for himself. Once the weapons and spare ammo were handed out, Ray pulled the protective vest off the mercenary and gave it to Fuggy to put it on.

“Can they be trusted,” Jerry asked Fuggy. Jerry was pointing at the workers when Fuggy looked up from fastening on the vest.

“Yeah, of course,” Fuggy said as he smoothed the velcros closed. “Carl and Mica have worked here forever.” The two workers blinked, their heads snapping up to stare at Fuggy with disbelieving surprise when he said their names. They leapt to their feet, Mica bouncing on her toes as she hugged the teen.

“Wreck the panel in ways that can’t be fixed,” Jerry ordered the workers. They turned from the quick reunion and, grinning, ripped apart the work they’d delayed doing for as long as they could before sabotaging even more. “Nate, watch our six. Ray, stay in the middle with Carl and Mica. Fuggy, you’re up here on point with me.”

Ray slit the throat of the dead mercenary, ensuring he would stay dead and not surprise anyone later, and then everyone got in line. Fuggy led the group the rest of the way to the back door of the aviary.

Fuggy tapped twice on the door. After a moment in tense silence, he tapped once more. The door unlocked and cracked open to show one golden eye looking out. The small amount of face around the eye reminded Jerry strongly of looking in a mirror forty years ago. Fuggy shoved the door open wider and Kaff’s ears laid flat back against his head as he glared at the strangers in the hallway.

“Neah’s in charge and she agreed with me,” Fuggy whispered before Kaff could say anything. Kaff stepped away from blocking the door when Fuggy gave him the pistol as a peace offering.

The kids had taken over the back of the aviary. From inside the door, Jerry couldn’t see the nets or hallway through the thick trees and tall, flowering plants. A few dim lights, small and battery powered, lit a short path along the wall and showed groups of teens tucked into the foliage.

Ray and Nate stayed with Kaff by the door as Carl, Mica and Jerry followed Fuggy along the path. Carl and Mica sat down with the largest group of kids, exchanging hugs and silent greetings around the group before emptying their pockets of the meal bars and water bottles they’d hidden that morning in their coveralls. (They’d planned to eat it themselves, but the kids were hungrier.) Jerry’s skin prickled under the unblinking stares of the teenagers as they crept toward the small group of kids in charge.

Fuggy leaned close to Jerry, setting a hand on his shoulder. “This is our CO, Neah,” Fuggy whispered, pointing at the nearest girl. His hand stayed on Jerry’s shoulder and pressed down, so Jerry followed Fuggy into a squat and balanced on the balls of his feet. Fuggy saluted so Jerry followed that, too.

Neah’s hands flicked through a set of complicated patterns, her gaze never breaking contact with Jerry’s until she rolled her eyes and glared at Fuggy.

“Sign language?” Fuggy whispered. Each teen in the group looked surprised when Jerry shook his head to the negative. Neah sighed and – using one gesture of the silent language that Jerry did recognize – made the sign for ‘shit’.

Luckily Carl had a notepad and pen. Nate, Jerry, and Ray worked silently on paper with Neah to come up with an escape plan, which was a task made easier due to the planning the kids had already done. Once the tricky details of Neah’s plan were smoothed out by the veterans’ experience and Jerry’s knowledge of the new access codes, everyone agreed there might be a chance of success.

It was a small chance, but still, it was a chance.

8

They used maintenance access tunnels to quietly move through the rest of the base between the aviary and the parking bay, sneaking up fourteen floors without being seen thanks to Carl and Mica taking the lead. The way from Point A to Point B was the most confusing route Jerry had ever been subjected to, but they stopped one ladder and two access doors from the parking bay. The wounded kids, Shan and Pinky, sat down to rest against a wall. It had taken almost three hours to get here from the aviary.

The first tricky part of Neah’s plan had been thinking up a distraction. She’d been expecting to have to wait for their nightly feeding to cause the discovery that the kids were missing, but Jerry, Ray, and Nate had given her a faster-acting distraction by hiding the three pass cards. Now they just had to wait for whoever was monitoring to see the hidden cards weren’t moving and go check. The veterans disappearing and being on the loose, just like the three kids they’d been brought here to find, was something Neah expected to be enough of a threat that the alarm would draw most enemy soldiers deeper into the facility and away from the parking bay. The tension of waiting quietly was shattered when an alarm blared through the underground base.

“That was sooner than I expected,” Neah said.

“So now we take the small vehicles and scatter, like I said. It’ll be too hard to track all of them. We can meet again after dark,” Jerry answered.

“We’re stronger together. The two armored personnel carriers are the best option for getting through everything outside, like I said,” Neah argued. This was the one point in the plan they hadn’t been able to agree on.

“You’re stronger alive,” Jerry pointed out.

“So we stay alive by staying together, and we take the two personnel carriers,” she replied, raising her voice so the order was heard by everyone. “Any other arguments?” she asked, staring at Jerry pointedly.

He watched her for a moment before cracking into a grin. “I think I knew your mother.”

“And?”

“The woman I’m remembering, she liked to order around senior officers too.”

“And?” Neah asked again, holding her hands out with the palms up in a small, uncaring shrug.

“Aeslynn Nevaeh?” he asked. Neah only nodded in reply, impatiently waiting for him to get to whatever point he was making. “I’m alive because she’s bull headed and smarter with tactics than most other people,” he explained.

“And your senior officer?” Neah asked.

“He might have lived if he’d listened to her, too. However, can any of you drive the personnel carriers?” All the kids silently turned questioning eyes to stare at Neah, which was more than enough of a reply to let Jerry know none of them could.

“I can,” Ray and Nate answered in unison, breaking the tension by volunteering.

“Problem solved. We’re taking the carriers.” Neah beamed a smile at Jerry, ending the argument, as she swung the first of the two doors open.

Jerry had the rifle so he went first, ensuring the ladder space was clear. It was empty. He climbed up to the next floor and cracked open the door at the top of the ladder to peer out at the parking bay. The blare of the siren through the open door made him wince. It was designed to be heard inside any vehicle and, standing here without the protection of a closed vehicle, he started wondering if it might be heard outside the hill the facility was under.

The majority of the mercenaries ran for exits going deeper into the facility, slamming and locking doors closed behind them. Jerry watched as the few enemy soldiers left behind began to grudgingly patrol, spending more time staring at the closed doors and adjusting their ear plugs than watching the vehicles they were supposed to be protecting. That was perfect. And it was exactly what Neah had predicted.

The mercenaries in the parking bay drifted closer together; eventually all of them moving out of the line of sight Jerry had on them. Not trusting them to stay out of sight, Jerry signaled down to Neah and everyone came up the ladder in an organized rush. Ray and Nate each went with a group of ten teens to the two armored personnel carriers, using the loud siren to hide any noise they made while sneaking into the carriers. Neah and the rest of the teens went with Jerry toward the old entrance. Only one enemy soldier was unlucky enough to see Neah’s group running to the door’s controls, and she made sure he couldn’t tell anyone.

During the walk, Jerry had noticed all the kids had the same blunted hands and lack of fingernails that Fuggy had. He hadn’t realized it was because they had retractable claws.

Jerry entered the same codes Richard had used. The light on the control panel flashed green and the floor started vibrating from diesel machinery as the thick blast door began to grind open. In a glance over his shoulder, Jerry saw three enemy soldiers yelling into hand held radios as they ran toward the opening door. Then he saw a small cloud of black smoke belch from the exhaust stacks of both carriers behind them. The mercenaries ran into the open lane which became the tunnel road, each one totally focused on Jerry and the few teens with him, all of whom put up their hands up like they were surrendering. Nate severed the one-sided radio calls with the heavily armored front end of the carrier he was driving, and Ray swerved slightly to ensure the one Nate had missed joined the mess under the tires. The siren had been too loud for the mercenaries to hear the carriers until it was too late.

Jerry ran beside the lead carrier as the teens he was with jumped into the back of it. He saw two enemy soldiers running toward them from inside the dark stretch of tunnel beyond the parking bay and put the rifle to his shoulder. Both enemies fell before he could take a shot.

Behind the two mercenaries, in the soft glow of lanterns and dropped flashlights, the worker they’d been standing over was holding a smoking pistol. She’d been keeping it hidden in her toolbox, waiting for the right opportunity.

The blast door was half-way open when Jerry got to the control terminal and started typing in the first code for closing it. The worker dropped her gun into her tool box, slammed the lid, picked up the whole thing and ran over to skid to a stop beside him. She shoved the end of a small pry bar into a seam on the terminal and popped off both keypads before he could finish. After a second of studying the back of the keypads, she jammed a screwdriver between two wire connections. Another, louder siren started going off and she grinned at Jerry as the half-open blast door screamed to a stop. The whole tunnel shook, dust falling from the ceiling, as the heavy door reversed direction and started closing at twice the speed it had been opening.

The small sign Jerry had noticed on the way into the facility caught his attention again. In the beam of a dropped flashlight, he still couldn’t read the words from this distance, but he knew the faded symbol beside the words well enough that he didn’t have to. Slapping his pockets as he hurried back to the lead carrier, he cursed under his breath for remembering right now that he’d forgotten his phone when he’d rushed out of his apartment at two o’clock this morning.

“Karen!” Neah hollered happily. She pulled the worker into the back of the lead carrier as Jerry caught up with its front cab and climbed into the passenger seat.

Nate slammed the throttle into the floor and revved up to the speed he was capable of handling through the twists and turns of the tunnel. It was a speed that made Jerry drop the rifle so he could put on his seatbelt as quickly as possible and then grab firmly onto both of the nearest roll handles. The gap between the two carriers increased and then – surprisingly – held steady. I didn’t know Ray could drive like this, Jerry thought as Nate drifted the carrier around one of the tighter corners and ripped up the sidewalk railing before straightening out and accelerating toward the next turn.

The rest of the workers they’d passed coming into the facility had been killed. Speeding toward the surface, the carriers burst through the quick barriers and attempted blockades the mercenaries had erected in the way. Gunfire echoed in the tunnel and bullets bounced off the backs and sides of the carriers, unable to pierce through the thick armor.

They skidded to a stop at the end of the tunnel beside a control terminal. Jerry had never been so happy to park at a time when he was at risk for being shot at. He jumped out and ran around to the terminal that controlled the ramp door to outside, his hand shaking when he started typing in the code Richard had used. Nate’s driving was amazing, but those speeds were not meant for inside tunnels.

“I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever made the trip in this tunnel,” Karen said. She was grinning as she jogged to the terminal and stopped beside Jerry. “They might not have changed the codes yet,” she added hopefully.

“Let’s find out.” He pressed the final key stroke. The lights flashed red and nothing happened. “Well shit,” he said.

9

Karen’s code flashed red when she tried it. Mica jumped out of the back of the second carrier to try another code, and it also didn’t work. She and Carl took the carrier’s large toolbox to the nearest wall panel to see if there was anything they could do from there. Karen joined them as distant yells and revving engines echoed closer along the tunnel. The enemies they were running from were starting to catch up.

The three workers bypassed the keypads and ran back to the carriers, leaving the toolbox behind, as the ramp door started to drop open. Mercenaries waiting outside began shooting as soon as they could see inside. Nate revved the engine and accelerated forward before the door had dropped fully open. The front wheels slammed up, bouncing onto the ramp and tossing around everything and anyone not strapped in or belted down. Then the back wheels jarred up onto the ramp and the carrier was charging forward toward the troops shooting at them.

Nate aimed for the largest group of people. He remembered about the old building foundation near the speaker box and veered to the left at the last moment. The enemy soldiers had clustered around a steel pile, hoping to draw him into ramming it and damaging or high-centering the carrier. The steel pile scraped the passenger side armor as Nate swerved. Ray took a wider turn and passed the foundation piles on the driver’s side, coming back into line on the road behind Nate seconds later. Tire spikes popped out of the road ahead and Nate only accelerated toward them. The carriers bumped over the spikes as Nate and Ray steered toward the main road out of the base. Jerry jerked forward against his seatbelt and glared into the mirror to confirm both carriers were past the spikes without slowing. Nate chuckled at him from the driver’s seat.

“I checked when the kids were loading up. My department’s SWAT uses the same brand of solid tires,” Nate said.

“You said you were an undercover Detective?” Jerry asked.

“Only for the past five years,” Nate said with a grin. “But for all those years between military service and becoming a Detective, I was SWAT. I started in LA and then transferred to Vegas. You’re going to want to sit back and hold on again,” he added, nodding toward the changes in the middle of the road through the main gate beside security shack.

Jerry slammed back into his seat like he had a pull cord in his back. He grabbed the roll handles as Nate jerked the wheel. They skidded right, steering off the road and away from the main gate, as the steel barricades finished rising from the ground to block off the exit. Small, off-road vehicles from inside the underground base raced after them as both carriers bounced and bumped along, parallel with the fence. Nate used a moment of almost smooth driving to bang a fist on the half-door into the back of the carrier.

“Where’s the weak spot in the fence?” he asked as soon as the small door slid open and Neah’s face appeared.

“What?” Neah and Jerry asked together. Nate grabbed the steering wheel with both hands as things got bumpy again.

“You’re a bunch of seventeen year olds who’re trained in covert tactics. Where’s the spot you get through the fence? Is there another gate?” Nate demanded. He swerved around something that was either a rock or a smaller vehicle. It banged into the side of the carrier and bounced away as they sped off.

“There’s only the one gate, but the weak spot we use is half a mile ahead,” she admitted grudgingly. “You’ll see three posts where a repair was done badly. There’s a gap. These carriers might punch through.”

“Thank you,” Nate replied, his tone clipped as he concentrated on keeping the vehicle going straight as they hit a patch of loose sand.

“Isn’t the fence just chain link?” Jerry asked once they’d stopped sliding and Nate was in control again.

“No,” Nate and Neah answered together. In the mirror, Ray’s carrier swerved suddenly in the sand pit and punted a jeep sideways. The jeep went spinning out of control and crashed into another small vehicle.

“Does anyone back there have a phone?” Jerry asked. Neah held up a cell phone between Nate and Jerry a moment later. The case was bright pink with her name artfully scrawled across the back in black. Chipped corners and visible brush strokes proved the refinished look of the plain, military-issue case had been accomplished with nail polish.

The battery was low when he powered the phone on, but she’d kept it off so at least it worked after not being charged for three days. Jerry dialed the phone number from memory and started through the long list of transfers he knew he would get shuffled through.

“That’s the weak spot!” Neah called from the back. Nate cranked the wheel into hard left turn and aimed for the right side of where she’d told them to go. Lights flashed on the highway from the direction of the facility’s main gate behind them; the security vehicles from the base were already on their way.

Rather than shearing off like a chain link fence should, the wiring dug into the carrier’s armor and the two posts they’d run directly into only bent. The third post swayed from the hit, stretching toward them and pulling the wiring tight. Ray’s carrier slammed into the third post so close that his passenger side and Nate’s driver’s side mirrors were both ripped off. The third post twisted and then broke loose, accompanied by the fence wiring snapping and whipping like tension lines under the combined force of both carriers.

Nate whooped loudly as the two posts blocking their way folded over and scraped under carrier, freeing them from the facility perimeter to rumble and shake up onto the highway. Jerry cut off the sudden celebration with a slap to Nate’s arm. The person on the other end of the phone was asking Jerry to repeat the last thing he’d said before they would give him the next transfer.

10

Now that he could steer with only one hand, Nate used the radio to talk to Ray and directed the retired General to drive beside him and block both lanes of the narrow highway. The base security cars couldn’t drive in the rough scrub beside the road, and the off-road vehicles couldn’t keep up with the carriers driving on smooth asphalt.

“Who back there knows your project information?” Jerry asked Neah while he was waiting for another transfer to connect. She only stared at him blankly. “The codes and clearance identifications proving you exist so the project can get funding and oversight. All the info about base command you’re not supposed to know but I bet at least one of you has memorized,” he explained. She blushed, her jaw clenched closed, and then she disappeared from view. Kaff appeared at the half door a moment later.

“What do you need?” Kaff asked.

Jerry held up a finger to stop Kaff from talking, and then repeated his personal information into the cell for the fifth time. “Not me,” Jerry said as he handed Kaff the phone. “Tell her everything she asks for, even if you only know partial information.”

Kaff stared at the phone for a second and then took it. “Hello?” he said.

Jerry listened to the short, one-sided conversation as Kaff stated and repeated all the codes he was asked for (Jerry grinning to himself that the kid knew everything completely, no partial codes), and then as Kaff provided a quick report of the past week. The teen handed the phone back to Jerry when he was done. Jerry finished his part of the conversation and then disconnected the call. As was protocol for the first call he’d made, he called the second phone number he kept memorized and dropped the cell on the dash once the new call connected.

“What now?” Neah asked. Kaff had gone back to his seat and she’d returned to sit by the half door.

Jerry ignored the question and picked up the radio mic. “How far are we from the nearest air force base as birds fly?” he asked Ray.

“Depending on flight path… maybe twenty minutes?” Ray replied after a slight pause.

Jerry pushed the button to reply and the phone on the dash emitted a loud tone before he could say anything. Neah stared at the phone and Nate only glanced at it, both of them not knowing what the tone meant. Ray’s carrier swerved a bit and Ray mouthed what the fuck?! to Jerry through the windows as he reacted to the sound he was very familiar with.

“I saw an old sign in the tunnel and made a lucky guess about the base defenses,” Jerry said into the radio mic when the tone ended. “Can these carriers go faster?” he asked Nate and Ray.

“We’re already going top speed. You can get out and push if you think it’ll help?” Nate said.

“We’ll get enough push in about a minute,” Jerry answered.

“Don’t you mean in about twenty minutes? I mean, that was an air strike you called in and needed our project info for?” Neah asked.

“No. I called in a hostile military occupation having taken full control of the facility where you guys had been living,” Jerry corrected. “That old sign in the tunnel was for nuclear safety instructions. I guessed that a facility secret enough to make you would have some kind of remotely activated defenses.”

“What does that mean?” Nate asked as he cringed away from the bullets bouncing between the carriers and striking the door and window beside him.

Jerry was interrupted before he could reply by the same tone coming out of the phone. He clicked on the radio mic so that Ray would also hear the countdown. The tone ended and the standard beeping started counting away the seconds.

“Do these carriers have ballistic defense?” Jerry asked.

Nate scanned the dash. “Yes,” he said. “And it looks like the good stuff that can take a direct missile strike.”

“Stop and deploy,” Jerry ordered.

“How?” Ray asked with panic creeping into his voice.

The carriers skidded to a stop and quickly turned around to face back the way they’d come. Jerry kept the radio’s mic keyed for talking and Nate called out detailed instructions of every movement he made to deploy and lock down the protections. They turned off the carriers once all the shielding was in place, sitting in complete darkness behind the covered windows. Jerry’s fingers tapped on the dash between beeps from the phone, filling any silences left around the hail of bullets hitting the armored exteriors.

“Brace!” Jerry yelled over the final loud tone from the phone.

The rain of bullets stopped. Outside the carriers, people raced to their small vehicles and sped away in the direction the carriers had been going: away from the base. In the dark, inside the carriers, Jerry tucked his head between his knees and the voice of his first commander rolled through his thoughts adding: and kiss your ass goodbye.

The silence was perfect for a full second and then the blast hit. The carriers rocked and shuddered, but the ballistic protections held against the shock wave and debris.

“Drive! Now!” Jerry yelled once the worst was over.

Nate fired the engine and yelled every motion into the radio mic for getting the carriers drive-ready while keeping the passenger compartments’ shielding in place. Radar screens, like those of an aircraft, provided a view outside to show the road, surrounding desert for a few hundred meters, and the smaller vehicles which had been tossed like toys. Nate slammed through the few upended vehicles still on the road as the cloud from the base exploding towered higher and bloomed out into a mushroom shape.

11

Ray gave Fuggy one more hug and then got into the car waiting to drive the retired General to the airport he would leave by. Nate was still talking and laughing with Lex and a few of the other teens not far away, but that wasn’t a problem as Nate’s transportation hadn’t arrived yet. Jerry shook hands with Kaff and then Fuggy before Neah surprised him with a hug. Jerry returned the quick squeeze, grinning and shaking his head at how she was being sentimental. Neah stepped back and Jerry smiled at all three of the living experiments in front of him.

After blowing up the base, they’d been picked up by an air transport and taken to a military hospital to be treated for radiation sickness, thankfully without anyone getting ill from exposure. The carriers’ armor had shielded them from the worst of the fallout. Ray, Nate and Jerry had been brought with the teens into their new facility after treatments, and this base had much better security.

The debriefing took weeks of interviews and reports and paperwork… Jerry was sick of staring at the laptop he’d been given to work on by the time the Three Geezers (as the teens now called them) were cleared to leave.

The bombing was reported to the public as a military test. No civilians were killed accidentally so the incident barely made the news. Fuggy and Kaff were working with the team investigating where the mercenaries had come from and how they’d infiltrated the Arizona facility. Neah and Lex were on the team looking for the Professor. His blood had been found in one of the crashed vehicles furthest from the explosion’s epicenter, but his body hadn’t been recovered at the end of the trail away from the vehicle.

“You kids don’t forget to do your homework,” Jerry teased. All three of them rolled their eyes at the now familiar teasing. “It’s a ten o’clock bedtime, lights out by ten thirty. Eat your vegetables, and –”

“No dessert after nine o’clock,” they all said in unison. Their voices were as nasal and whiny as possible while they were laughing.

“We’ll see you around, Geezer,” Neah said. She was smiling as he got into the waiting car.

“I’d like that, but I doubt it,” Jerry replied. He closed the door and waved through the window. They all waved to him, watching as the car drove out of the parking bay. None of the Three Geezers were allowed to travel together.

The drive up to the surface was long and winding. The tunnel was brightly lit and the view of mountains once outside was beautiful. The driver handed Jerry an envelope holding his needed identification and the plane ticket for the flight home. Jerry had never heard of the town he was flying out of, but he’d been lots of places he’d never heard of before going to them.

“How long is the drive to the airport?” Jerry asked the driver.

“About an hour,” the man in a suit replied. Jerry sat back and settled in for the trip. The day was sunny and the view was beautiful. He stared out the window, not seeing anything. He was going home to his small apartment, where he lived alone. Being single his entire life hadn’t bothered him until right now. He’d already started missing the kids he’d lived with for the past two months.

The airport was tiny. Its control tower was so small it made the two eighteen-seat planes on the ground appear large. Jerry checked his single suitcase and went through security in less than half an hour. There was still over an hour until his flight boarded. He was debating a walk across the single gate’s sitting area to the coffee machine when Neah’s favorite song began playing beside him. Jerry was the only one sitting in this row of seats. His jacket pocket vibrated.

“What the hell…?” he said. He slapped at the pocket to confirm that it did, in fact, have a phone in it. But he hadn’t been issued a phone before leaving the base…? He took it out and stared at the bright pink case and black screen that only showed ‘answer’ and ‘decline’ options without showing a phone number. He tapped the answer button.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to get that in your pocket without the security cameras seeing me? And how much it personally hurt me to use the last of my nail polish so the case looked nice?” Neah whispered before he could say anything. “Kaff and I were planning this for more than a week, and I’m going to be sad for this entire whole week coming up,” she added.

Jerry chuckled, shaking his head, and didn’t say anything.

“Talk to you soon, Geezer. And don’t worry, we’ll see you again,” she whispered. The call disconnected with a click.

“Screwball kids,” Jerry said. He was still chuckling when he dropped the phone back into his jacket pocket.

He looked out the window, smiling, and watched the small town ground crew’s antics and activities around the planes. After a moment, he tapped the phone in his pocket and chuckled again. The view out these windows really was spectacular, and he decided it would be better enjoyed with a nice coffee.