The Six Read online

  Chapter Three

  1

  Dawn was breaking over the Sierra Blancas as the man in black stopped in the resort town of Ruidoso. He parked his stolen Camaro at the edge of the grocery market lot, away from the streetlamps. Like a cat, he slipped out of the sports car and used a mini screwdriver to remove the license plates, which he slipped inside his tactical vest. This chore complete, he ambled toward the front of the store and watched the early-morning shoppers who straggle inside in search of breakfast necessities. Spotting a suitable quarry, a burly cowboy climbing slowly out of a giant one-ton dually, the man in black made his move.

  With one swift maneuver, aided by supernatural speed and strength, the former government agent snapped the cowboy’s thick neck. As the man crumpled, the assassin grabbed him around the waist and heaved him back into the open cab of the pickup. Pushing and scrambling, the man in black moved the lifeless cowboy onto the passenger side of the bench seat while positioning himself behind the wheel. Closing the door, he scanned the parking lot to see if he had attracted any attention.

  Nobody noticed. If you haven’t had your coffee yet, there’s no way you could catch me at work...even before I got juiced on this stuff.

  The man in black found the truck’s keys in the cowboy’s hip pocket and brought the pickup back to life. Carefully, he piloted it across the lot to his Camaro, where he retrieved his duffel bag of MIST. After putting the duffel in the rear of the quad-cab, he swapped out license plates with an adjacent Chevy Tahoe that was shrouded in deep darkness - probably an employee’s ride.

  His phone buzzed, and he climbed back into the pickup to answer. “It’s me,” he replied, then fired up the noisy V8. Now nobody can eavesdrop.

  “Where are you?” the woman asked, her voice angry.

  “I’m taking a scenic route,” the man in black replied. He put the truck in gear and began gunning for the highway again.

  “You don’t trust us?” That’s the understatement of the century.

  “Listen, I’ve done the heavy lifting. I’ve eliminated the MIST team, taken the nanotechnology magic mix, and what’s in it for me?”

  “A lot of money,” the woman replied, her voice exasperated and icy. “You think it’s not enough? Do want credit instead of cash?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I know you plan to kill me as soon as possible. It’s exactly what I would do. You think I’m stupid enough to accept your little dead drop proposal? ‘The trunk full of cash is in locker forty-six of the _______’ business? Like I’d walk into a room full of high explosive? I’m changing the terms of our agreement. And you don’t want to hold out on me, because MIST is unstable. I’ve filled the duffel with dry ice, but it won’t last long.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Find my wife and daughter, and I’ll let you know more. Don’t talk to her - just find out where she is.”

  “Why can’t you do that? You can use the Internet.”

  “Another stupid comment like that is liable to see my throw one of the cylinders of MIST out the window. What’ll you think that’ll do? I’m a little busy at the moment, and I’ll need you to be working for me for a bit. If I get what I want, you’ll get your MIST. And me. I know that you want stable MIST that has reached equilibrium inside a human host.”

  2

  Whitney Hummel was putting on her scrubs when Michael knocked on the bedroom door. “Mom?”

  “What is it, sweetie?” she asked. With summer vacation about to end, Michael nervous about starting junior high. Though normally afflicted with twelve year old ‘keep-my-parents-away-from-me-itis,’ trepidation about leaving his familiar elementary school surroundings had made the boy more eager to spend time with his parents. He had even been getting over the drama with his father, who had seemed to be getting back to normal.

  “I was reading Dad’s morning news sites, and there’s something big going on in the local news. I think it’s why Dad really went down to the hospital.”

  Whitney had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. “What’s going on?” she asked, trying to keep her voice happy.

  “Two state troopers were flown here from Alpine. The Department of Public Safety says it was a rollover on Highway 17, but there’s a rumor on social media that it had something to do with a crash, like a plane crash.”

  Hank wouldn’t lie about going to see two troopers who were in a rollover. Or even something to do with a plane crash.

  “An anonymous source from the McDonald Observatory claimed the crash was actually a de-orbited communications satellite, a massive TC44 model,” Michael continued. His voice sounded like he was reading from the tablet.

  That satellite. No, not that.

  She opened the door, and Michael was standing there holding the tablet. Together, they watched a hologram of an orbiting satellite descending through the planet’s atmosphere. “Though the Observatory normally does not track or monitor orbiting satellites, sources report that an unknown computer program took control of their broadcasting system, which connects with four orbiting telescopes, for approximately thirteen minutes last night. Authorities are insisting that the computer breach was entirely coincidental and had nothing to do with any rumored events in the Fort Davis area. The FBI has reported that it will investigate and work to ensure that the Observatory’s computer system is secure,” a reporter’s voice said.

  In that moment, Whitney knew something bad was happening. “Michael, go bring me my purse,” she said. As she absently brushed her hair, the boy returned with her purse. She grabbed her wallet from it and rifled through the many cards - business cards, gift cards, credit cards. She found the business card she wanted and grabbed her phone.

  When nobody answered, she left a message for Roger Garfield, the FBI special-agent-in-charge who now worked out of the Denver office.

  “Michael, you stay here and watch your sister. If you need anything, call your grandparents,” Whitney ordered. She went to her nightstand and removed the false bottom of the top drawer, revealing a compact pistol. Looking around to make sure that Michael had gone, she plucked the handgun from its hiding place and slipped it into her purse. “I’m leaving now.”

  Instead of going to her job as a dental hygienist, she would be taking a look around Midland Memorial Hospital in search of her husband.

  As she walked through the living room, she was intercepted by the family’s French bulldog, who demanded attention. She picked up the dog and looked into her brown eyes. “I’m going to get Daddy,” she told the wild-eyed dog, who lolled her head around in excitement. “Tell Michael to let you outside.” Her phone rang, and she set the dog down. As the Frenchie ran to her water bowl, Whitney eagerly hoped the call was from agent Garfield.

  Instead, it was Hector Rodriguez’ wife.

  “This is some bullshit,” her friend exclaimed. “They went down to the hospital to check out those two state troopers. I don’t know what their plan is, but I don’t like it.”

  “Let me swing by and pick you up. I’ll bring some extra scrubs. We’ll get inside the hospital and find out what the hell they’re doing,” Whitney replied, stalking toward the front door.

  3

  Roger Garfield had heard plenty of stories in his day, but the tale laid out by the big criminal justice professor was worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. It was a conspiracy thriller of the highest order.

  “The more I thought about it, the more sense it made,” the prof insisted. “It’s a guaranteed ticket back into wealth and power. The out-of-power players consolidate all the MIST and use it as the ultimate bargaining chip.”

  “So they massacre a lab full of people like in Goldeneye? I swear, you couldn’t make this stuff up!” Garfield marveled. “So what now? What should I do?”

  “With so much money at stake, I don’t think you can trust anyone, Roger. Plenty of people who are still in power will be part of this as well. They’ve got to refine the MIS
T, figure it all out. That’s why the killer wanted all the passwords and hard drives and data. Pulling a smash-and-grab just to get the MIST itself is not enough. They need to know how to use it, control it, manufacture it.”

  “For what purpose?” Garfield asked, his mind struggling to keep up.

  “Damn, Roger! Think! We saw this stuff in action, remember? Carl Hummel. Dude grew stronger and faster by the day with that stuff in his system. MIST takes over your nerve conduction and is faster than your nerve conduction velocity. It gives you faster reflexes than anything the human body could naturally achieve. Nanocells go into your muscles to prevent muscle fatigue and increase strength. It builds a lattice in and around your bones, giving you a steel-reinforced frame. As for your brain? We don’t even know what it could do. A matrix of those nanocells could give anyone a photographic memory, perfect recall. You could remember everything, think faster than ever before, learn it all the first time.”

  Garfield was silent as they walked another quarter of a lap on the track. The professor continued:

  “The nanocells could kill off cancer cells, collect and destroy bacteria and viruses. Who the hell knows? It’s all programmable, too. When the nanocell matrices hit critical mass, they can send and accept signals. Human wifi, able to interact with computers and devices. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Heaven help me, I do.

  “Rog, this is bigger than the atomic bomb. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This is the biggest thing ever, and it was created in a lab right here at the University of Wyoming. And now the bad guys are going to take it and use it. And once they know how to use it, they will be unstoppable. And you know what? I think they won’t be able to use it or control it like they think. MIST is too complex, too independent. Because its creators are dead and we don’t have all the data, we don’t know what all it will do on its own.”

  This is heavy. Garfield took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do? I’m old, I’m getting fatter by the month, and we were all political prisoners heading toward likely execution less than six months ago. I’m barely fit enough to be staggering along with my usual job, which is one step above desk jockey. You want to go back to playing Indiana Jones?”

  “You think anyone else is going to step up? You know, the root of evil is indifference,” the professor said, his face appearing wise in the strange shadows of the indoor jogging track.

  “We have wives and children. You think they’re going to stick around if we start running around playing white knights?” Garfield sighed.

  “What do you think is going to happen to our wives and children if the vicious bastards who disappeared after the inauguration of president Sanders get a monopoly on MIST? You think they won’t re-open those prison camps, start their purges again?”

  God damn it, he’s right. Garfield nodded wearily and checked his phone. He had a message from a west Texas number and listened to it. When it had played, he turned to his professor friend and announced that he had received a voicemail from Whitney Hummel. “If you’re ready to go on a wild goose chase, old man, I think we have our first destination.”

  4

  Hector Rodriguez awoke on a metal operating table, his head pounding in pain. If it hurts, it must mean I don’t have the MIST any more. Slowly, he brought up a hand to feel his head. Pain erupted at the touch, and he looked at his hand to see silver-infused blood. “What the hell?” he croaked. He turned his head to the right and saw the white wall of the operating room. He turned his head to the left and saw Hank Hummel lying on another operating table.

  “Wake up,” Rodriguez said, trying to yell. His voice was weak.

  Hummel opened his eyes and looked at him. “You’ve been shot,” Hummel whispered. “Your head. Shot in the head.”

  “Fuck that,” Rodriguez retorted. Mustering all his strength, he tried to sit up. At first, he could not. Then, a second later, heat bloomed in his spine and muscles. Feeling stronger, he sat up slowly. He looked around the room and saw the bodies on the floor.

  “The doctors are dead,” he said, his voice stronger. Men and women in OR scrubs had been gunned down. For the first time, Rodriguez visually explored the operating room and saw flashing red lights through the windows that opened up to the hallway. Alarms going. Listening closely, he could suddenly hear more klaxon alarms in the distance.

  Feeling a sense of foreboding, Rodriguez moved his legs around and swiveled so that they were dangling off the table. Gingerly, he stepped down, and found that he could stand. Hank Hummel sat up on the adjacent table and Rodriguez saw two bullet wounds in the man’s torso.

  “You’ve been shot too, Hank.”

  “That explains why it hurts,” Hank moaned. “I feel the MIST working.”

  “Me, too. It’s scary. But it’s keeping us alive. We should be dead right now.”

  Rodriguez stepped over bodies and looked for something to wear. “I can’t be escaping a hospital naked,” he explained.

  “They probably wanted to see if MIST made us better endowed. Not that I needed any help in that department,” Hummel joked. He coughed, and Rodriguez turned around to see blood on Hummel’s palms.

  “Jesus, Hank, you’re hit bad.”

  “I can feel it being sewn up inside me,” Hummel said, mesmerized. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  Opening a closet door, Rodriguez found an assortment of scrubs and rifled through them. He grabbed a set of large blues and handed Hummel a set of medium grays.

  “We better get the fuck out of here. Whoever rampaged through this OR might be back, or the people who were about to cut us open will have backup arriving.”

  Feeling stronger by the second, Rodriguez slipped into the blue scrubs and then went over to the hand-washing station. His hair was slicked with blood, and he grabbed a surgical cap to cover the gore. No time to try to wash and bandage that mess. Hummel had found a towel and was cleaning up his torso, removing the blood so he could put on his scrub top.

  Seconds after Hummel slipped on the scrub top, the doors to the OR burst open. Rodriguez snatched a scalpel from a metal tray and prepared for a valiant last stand. He spun around to see two women in green scrubs. “What the hell did you do, Hector?” demanded the taller one. The shorter one glared daggers in the director of Hank Hummel. With the doors open, the sounds of alarms and yelling flooded into the operating room.

  “Ladies, we don’t have time to explain, so we better just run,” Hummel replied. “I think Hec and I just missed having to undergo a surgery we were never gonna recover from.”

  5

  The hospital was in a frenzy, and Whitney Hummel had to guide her shoeless husband through the chaos. “Are you okay?” she yelled. City police were running to and fro, ignoring them. Apparently, whoever had attacked the operating room had also spread carnage elsewhere. What is going on? What nightmare is this?

  “Somebody shut off the damn alarm!” a doctor yelled, and a second later the blaring ceased. In its place were shouts of medical-ese. Someone demanded a patient count.

  “I’m okay, I think,” her husband wheezed. “I think they sprayed and prayed and never checked for a pulse. With any luck, they’ll think they got us.”

  “We better keep you out of the camera zones, then,” Whitney replied. “Keep your face down.” She glanced behind her to see Hank shading his eyes with a hand. Between his hand, a surgical mask, and a surgical cap, she felt fairly certain that her husband could not be easily identified, especially while moving. The MIST, during the period when it had infused his body, had increased his height closer to average.

  Remembering her days of doing occasional dental work at the hospital, Whitney darted and wound through the hallways, followed closely by the three others. “I feel something,” Hank said, urging her to slow down. “I feel it, too,” Hector replied. Whitney rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a young blond man in surgica
l scrubs. He stared at them, and then smiled.

  “So that’s what that was,” the young man said. “Hank Hummel and Hector Rodriguez, as I live and breathe.”

  How does he know them? Is he a student at the university?

  Whitney tried to brush past the man, but Hank pulled her back and held her close to him.

  “And now I’m back, from outer space,” the young man began to croon, his eyes shining crazily. Briefly, they flashed yellow, like a wolf’s eyes. That’s creepy. What the hell is wrong with him?

  “Let us past,” Hector demanded, and Whitney saw him step forward out of the corner of her eye. The police lieutenant held up a scalpel as a warning. In response, the blond man pulled a handgun from underneath his scrub top, the weapon having been tucked in his waistband.

  “Never bring a scalpel to a gunfight, lieutenant. Well, I guess you can pick up a gun while you’re there, which is what I did. They came rolling in like the NKVD while I was still trying to get my mind right, and I had to bust some moves on a few of them.”

  “You didn’t kill all those doctors? You’re a liar!” Hank snarled.

  “Easy there, good professor. I may have caused a little collateral damage, but it took a whole brigade of thugs to do all this to the whole hospital. And all I’ve been trying to do is process a new body! My old one got brittle pretty fast once we hit about a hundred kilometers high.”

  “Who are you?” Whitney snapped, unwilling to tolerate the banter any longer. Who is this crazy bastard?

  The blond man rattled off an incomprehensible Russian name, but then told her she could call him Ben. “But I did hear my body’s name, and perhaps I should adopt that moniker. Ben is so old-fashioned, you know.”

  “What are you going to do, Ben?” Hector asked, his voice firm. “You need to turn yourself in. This place is surrounded.”

  “Ah, ever the noble policeman, aren’t you? Well, I may as well make things more interesting by letting you in on a little secret: There’s another one of us MIST-laden folk running about. A real bad guy. Methinks, perhaps, that he is the man in black with whom I dueled in front of the Villa Philmonte about eleven weeks ago. He has now reached equilibrium and is up to some lethal games. I may go pay him a visit, check out the lay of the land. Maybe he wants a rematch on our duel?” Ben chuckled to himself, eyes gleaming.

  “What about Adam Pastorius? Where is he?” Hank demanded.

  “We tussled for a bit, but he started it. I think he’s still bitter from when my team held him prisoner and planned to make him the fall guy for some plot or other. He split. I don’t know where. But I definitely got the better body. Look at this thing! I must be, what, twenty-six? That Syrian bastard only shaved a few years off his old body, and had to give up all his hair! But, I must warn you: Even his MIST seems to have the mad strength of zealotry.”

  Quick as a viper, Ben leveled his pistol at Whitney’s face. “Nobody move!” he roared, a complete flip from his earlier nonchalance. Everyone froze.

  “Kindly hand me the gun that you have stashed in the small of your back, dearie,” Ben ordered. “I can sense things. Perhaps subconscious X-rays? Keep it nice and slow.”

  Suddenly, a pair of nurses ran up behind the group, their gym shoes almost silent on the linoleum. Senses strained by the chaos and trauma that had engulfed the hospital, the two young women did not notice the strange gathering in front of them. By the time either of them noticed Ben’s outstretched gun arm, it was too late. Like a cat, Ben darted out his other arm and snagged a chubby blonde nurse. In a microsecond, the barrel of his pistol was against her temple.

  “Gotcha! All right, you know the drill. Everyone keep quiet, blah blah blah. I’m walking out with my hostage here, and any foolishness gets her nursing school brains splattered all over the walls. Capisce?”

  Whitney slowly plucked the small pistol from her waistband and bent her knees, sinking to the floor. She set the weapon on the ground. Next to her, Hector dropped the scalpel. Ben smiled and then pushed the blonde nurse toward them, using one foot to trip her. As the young woman fell, Hank and Whitney grabbed her.

  In seconds, before Hector had time to collect Whitney’s pistol and draw a bead, Ben had disappeared around the next corner.

  6

  The president watched the live video feed from Midland Memorial Hospital and demanded to know who had turned the place into a bloodbath. “Someone went in there! They found eight bodies, all special ops gear, no IDs! Are they ours?!” He glared at each cabinet secretary in turn, even Education and HUD.

  “These aren’t thugs someone hired off of Craigslist or met in prison!” the president snarled. “Clean cut, no tattoos, military spec gear? These are pros, and I’m betting my left nut that they’re active duty.”

  Behind the president, DCI Parker and Secretary of Defense Hummel crossed their arms and examined the faces of everyone else in the room. Though several were loyal progressives who had fought for the president, many were old-timers whose loyalties were less certain. One of Parker’s aides was busily constructing a spreadsheet that organized the probable allegiances of the president’s many administrators. It was going to be a long and exhausting day.

  “Fuck it. Everyone is dismissed,” the president sighed. As everyone filed out of the briefing room, a select group of Secret Service agents surreptitiously placed tiny bugs and tracking beacons in pockets and under lapels. Though some of the suspected disloyalists could not be bugged due to unsuitable clothing, such as silk blouses, many wore enough fabric for a silicon wafer to be successfully hidden.

  As the last of the bureaucrats tromped out of the room, the Secret Service agents departed and closed the doors behind them. Finally, the president sank into his desk chair and rubbed his temples.

  “They’re trying to undermine us,” the vice president said. “Their first goal is to get the MIST, and their second goal is to make us look weak and incompetent. Double-whammy.” The former libertarian had become more pro-military in recent years, a change that the president did not appreciate.

  “Easy there, doc,” he told the former Senator from Kentucky. “We’ll also look bad if we go jackbootin’ down the street and call out the cavalry. As a onetime Democrat, I’ll either get pilloried as a hippie peacenik or as a Stalinist commie. If I’m gonna get blasted either way by the pundits, I might as well take the time to make a smart decision rather than go off half-cocked.” The vice president rolled his eyes but concurred with the assessment. At least I can trust my veep...nobody else in Washington likes him.

  “So, since we’re playing catch-up, what did we miss down in Midland?” The commander-in-chief was anxious for a status update. A tablet was slid across the desk to him, pre-loaded with the latest news from law enforcement.

  “The two troopers are missing, but we just got word that Hector Rodriguez and Hank Hummel were seen on the grounds. Local police spoke to the pair, but had no reason to make an arrest. The two men were wearing hospital scrubs and had no shoes on, which seems mighty strange,” an intelligence adviser explained as the president flipped through the paragraphs.

  “Let me guess, Hummel and Rodriguez are still infused with MIST?” the president asked. He looked at his Secretary of Defense. “He’s your nephew. What do you know about it?”

  “We all heard that he, his brother Carl, and Hector Rodriguez were free and clear, that the MIST completely separated from their bodies when we found new hosts,” the SecDef replied angrily. “If that’s not the case, then we were all lied to.”

  “I think it is the case, because those two wouldn’t be mixed up in this situation if they were free and clear! I’ll bet that they’re trying to investigate this thing on their own, like a couple of vigilante cowboys!” The president was not a fan of vigilantes.

  “Well, they probably feel betrayed and worry that they can’t trust anyone. Can you blame them?!” Hummel snapped. The former brigadier general
glowered at the president, who quickly backed down. Even her husband, DCI Parker, took a step back. The vice president poured a shot of Kentucky’s finest at the mahogany bar and gave himself a shot of liquid courage.

  “I’ll admit, they’re probably justified in thinking that things have gotten fucked up, because they have,” the president admitted. Things were a lot simpler back in Vermont. Back then, the most sophisticated thing I had was a laptop. MIST seems like something out of Star Trek.

  “We need to find your nephews and Hector Rodriguez and put them under immediate quarantine,” the vice president insisted. “I’m a medical doctor and I’ve seen the MIST briefings. That stuff can spread, especially if the men get agitated. We don’t need them running around half of Texas!”

  “They will not go back under quarantine!” the Secretary of Defense hissed. “It was Republicans who infected them with MIST in the first place!” She rounded on the former Republican legislator. “They will not go back to being science experiments!”

  “Nobody said anything about them being experiments,” the president soothed. “But we need to contact them.”

  Parker agreed, and explained that the two men were probably trying to figure out what to do about the MIST within their own bodies. “They’re good men, Mr. President. They just want to go back to normal. If we can find a cure, some sure-fire way to remove that stuff from them, they’ll take it.”

  The president nodded. “I need a list of military and law enforcement people I can trust. I want any surviving MIST personnel, from day one when that abomination of a program began, brought right here. I want all MIST equipment from the lab in Laramie brought right here. No delays, no excuses. Any and all expenses will be covered. I will reimburse all credit card expenses. Since there is a conspiracy afoot, have everything travel separately and incognito.”

  “And as for the state troopers? And the killer from Laramie?” someone asked.

  “They must be destroyed, but without spreading the MIST. That’s why I need what I just asked for. Immediately. It’s early morning outside, and I expect people to begin arriving at the White House by evening. If anyone needs Air Force One, it’s on standby.”

  Everyone was silent. “Air Force Two as well,” the vice president volunteered.

  “You have your orders! Go!” the president urged, and everyone got to work.

  7

  Carl Hummel checked his cell phone at work and realized he had missed a call from his brother in Midland. He was about to play the voicemail when his office phone rang. “This is Carl,” he answered on the third ring. As a new partner in the firm, he was on a first-name basis with most people whose finances warranted climbing that high on the phone chain.

  “Mr. Hummel, this is Ray Patrick with Devonshire Construction, a new firm in the area. We’re in a bit of a pickle and heard you were the best. I’ve got a hefty retainer fee if we can get started on my problems today. The IRS is breathing down my neck.”

  Carl checked his daily planner and saw that he had some time available. “Certainly, Mr. Patrick. I’ve heard of Devonshire. If you can make it downtown, I can actually see you this morning.” Devonshire was a fast-growing commercial construction corporation with operations across the south and southwest. Just to be better prepared, Carl turned to his computer and began searching for the latest specs on the company.

  “Well, I’d like to buy you coffee, if I may. It’s a sensitive issue, and I’d hate for people to see me walking into an accounting firm that specializes in fixing big problems. Could you come down to the Starbucks on the corner? I’ll throw in as much caffeine and danish as you can handle.” Something about Patrick’s Texas twang seemed reassuring, and Carl accepted the offer. Though the Houston heat could be overpowering, today was rather mild and Carl didn’t mind the walk. Ever since the political crisis, he had felt so alive! He felt that he could run marathons, and was half tempted to sign up for one.

  Standing up from his desk, Carl stuffed his wallet in his back pocket and headed for his office doors. “Billy, I’m going out for a while,” he told the college intern manning the secretary desk. “Can you hold down the fort?”

  “I’ve gotcha covered, sir,” the kid from Amarillo replied. In a couple of years, Billy would be among the many applicants angling for a spot at the accounting firm. In exchange for his dedication as a secretary and gopher, the newly-minted graduate would get it. I’ll see to that. Boy’s got good work ethic.

  Carl took the elevator down from the ninth floor and realized as the doors were closing that he had yet to listen to his brother’s message. As the elevator car hissed downward, he played the recording. When he reached the lobby, the full weight of the message struck him. MIST. Still have it. Satellite coming back. Bad stuff.

  The elevator doors opened and Carl looked out across the marble lobby of the office building. Though it was usually vacant this early in the morning, there were several people standing there. Cautiously, Carl got off the elevator and listened to the doors slide shut behind him. Seven men in the lobby. All wearing dark clothing. No ties. Crew cuts or bald. Big guys. Is that an earpiece? He looked through the glass floor-to-ceiling windows bordering the lobby and noticed the black Ford Excursions parked out front, with a black van sandwiched between them. Van looks armored. Like it’s meant to hold a gorilla or something.

  Carl turned and sprinted for the stairs.

  “Aw, god damn it!” one of the men in the lobby yelled, and Carl heard running footsteps behind him. He hit the door to the stairs and knocked it open. Legs churning, he took the stairs three at a time. As he ran, he dialed 9-1-1.

  “9-1-1 emergency,” a middle-aged woman droned.

  “We have a hostage situation!” Carl replied, huffing and puffing. He gave the address and described the attackers as military-looking men in dark clothing. “They say they’re going to start shooting people!”

  “Please stay on the line-” the 911 operator said, but was cut off as Carl ended the call. Without hesitation, Carl ran into the sixth floor. He sprinted down a beige corridor and saw what he was looking for: Fire alarm. He pulled it, and an alarm began shrieking.

  Still running, he made for the sixth floor central desk where a bevy of receptionists directed visitors to the offices of the many attorneys of Mefley, Jenlink, and Stuart. “Huge fire on fourth!” he hollered. “Sound the master alarm!” Immediately, the alarm doubled in intensity. Now the entire building would promptly evacuate. “Turn on the sprinklers!” he demanded, and a receptionist complied.

  As offices emptied and angry attorneys tried to cover their heads with briefcases, hoping to shield themselves from the sprinklers, Carl blended in with the flow.

  8

  Lucifer had been to heaven, but had been cast back down to earth in a cacophony of heat and wind. His time above the earth had been peaceful, where he had healed his mind. He had left his body after the first day, realizing that the flesh could never be repaired. In human terms, he had been up there for eleven weeks.

  In real terms, he had been up there for an eon. Like a lucid dreamer, he could control the passage of time, or at least the perception thereof. Lucifer had spent decades contemplating, centuries learning, years meditating. He tapped into the satellite’s on-board computer and learned the classics, the languages, and the collective mind of Wikipedia.

  But to access the computer, he had warred endlessly with the nefarious Ben until a detente could be established. Ben’s human form had been closest to the computer, and so he had gotten there first. By the end of the second day, each entity had claimed one half of the satellite’s hollow hold. The wars had begun, with Lucifer demanding partial access to the on-board computer and half of the remaining MIST.

  The U.S. president had defected to Ben. One of the mercenaries had defected to Lucifer. A war was fought over the last island of MIST, a weak entity named Chad Peterson. The MIST had crept across no-man’s
land and attacked its foe, digital neurons firing spectacularly. Using magnetism and van der Waal’s forces, Lucifer and Ben had captured and stolen each other’s nanocells by the billions.

  When they fought, the drama was on a scale equal to both World Wars combined. The combatants learned much about each other, strengths and weaknesses, pride and secrets. In many ways, they were not so different.

  After two weeks, Ben had ceded partial access to the on-board computer, allowing Lucifer access to the Internet. Three days later, having filled his consciousness with new learning, Lucifer finally silenced the last vestiges of the mercenary’s consciousness. Then he rested, at peace.

  On July sixteenth, he fought the Great War against Ben. On July twenty-second, he fought the Second Great War. On July twenty-sixth, he fought Atlantic War, which occurred while the satellite was crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The wars left each entity psychically exhausted. Lucifer had never hated and respected another entity more than Ben.

  Ben wanted to escape back to earth, while Lucifer did not. Lucifer wanted to judge from afar, while Ben sought power and profit. Ben hated Lucifer, and mocked him mercilessly with his human name.

  Occasionally, they communicated.

  Now they were back on earth, and Lucifer was most unhappy about it. When the satellite hatch had first opened, Ben had rushed to the first body and invaded it. Lucifer, not to be outdone, invaded the second body. When they awoke in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, Lucifer had fought viciously, angrily. He had been prepared to dispatch Ben’s new body, still prone and groggy, with a twenty blade scalpel when the team in tactical gear had burst into the operating room, giving him new foes.

  After Lucifer had stripped a gun from the first man through the door, Ben had entered the fray and been lost amid the fury of twisting and fighting bodies. The men in tactical gear had gunned down doctors and nurses, only belatedly realizing that the naked man was their primary target. Eventually, Lucifer had run, realizing that serious injury could cause his digital self to flee his current body for a new one unexpectedly.

  He did not know where Ben had gone, only that the naked blond body had been headed in the opposite direction.

  He would destroy Ben, for Ben was the root of all evil.

  9

  Ben was pleased to be back in a city he knew well. Praise be that they didn’t med-flight my body to Lubbock, Dallas, or El Paso. He grabbed baggy blue jeans and t-shirts from the rack and took them into the Walgreens restroom, changing out of his conspicuous scrubs into less conspicuous street clothes. Emerging from the restroom, he grabbed an armload of snacks and drinks to fuel his new body, which was in pretty good shape. I wasn’t lying about this young guy having a nice member. I could fuck a whole bunch of pretty girls with this thing.

  His knowledge of American idioms had finally been perfected, and he no longer thought exclusively in his native Russian. In fact, he had perfect recall of over a dozen languages, and could speak and think as a native in any one. He went to the checkout counter and surprised the Hispanic teen behind the register by speaking in fluent Mexican slang. As the teen began to respond, Ben hit him in the throat. Gagging, the young man collapsed.

  Ben hopped over the counter. “Muchacho, dame las llaves del coche,” he said, and the boy quickly handed him a set of Ford keys. Hitting the register with a forceful hand, Ben released the drawer and collected the cash. As he vaulted back over the counter, he told an old woman to forget what she had seen.

  In the parking lot, he used the key fob to locate a battered Mustang. “An American classic,” he said wryly, and then climbed behind the wheel. Fortunately, the base-model sports car cranked to life on the first turn of the key. “Kid’s probably calling the cops right now, but every unit in the county is headed to the hospital,” Ben explained to himself. “They’re not gonna worry about a grand theft auto until tomorrow.”

  The Mustang roared onto Andrews Highway and headed northwest.

  They attacked the operating room to get the MIST, especially MIST that has achieved equilibrium inside a human host. I’ve got billions of dollars flowing through my veins. Forget calling the Kremlin and trying to make a deal to get back into the spy game - it’s time to cash in! By the time the Mustang reached the outskirts of the city, Ben decided that his best course of action was to pursue a monopoly on MIST.

  I’ve got what can only be described to laypersons as silver liquid magic. Its value is inverse to its supply, meaning I must eliminate anyone else with knowledge and abilities that could be considered a substitute to my own. That means I must reconnect with Hank Hummel and Hector Rodriguez, both of whom will likely be approaching full equilibrium now that their MIST matrices got all ‘fired up’ by the excitement.

  What am I going to do? Slice them up? Shred them with automatic fire? No, I need some way to collect the MIST.

  “And where can I procure specialized equipment for this? This may also be a labor-intensive process. But, as they say, you must spend money to make money…”

  Ben exited the highway and turned the car around, deciding to return to the city. Although supernatural speed was perhaps his greatest advantage over any adversary, speed alone would not achieve positive results. He needed knowledge. This must be treated as a business endeavor.

  “I can make tremendous return, but only if I incur the necessary fixed costs,” the former Russian spy muttered to himself. As the sun rose over the city, he headed for the public library.

  10

  Hank Hummel sat down in the armchair and answered the call from Roger Garfield. While he talked, Whitney used a pair of sharp scissors to cut off his scrub top and examine his bullet wounds. Amazingly, the injuries had completely stitched themselves closed, with silvery threads faintly visible within the reddened flesh.

  “So I’m basically in the same position I was in three months ago, when I was a fugitive?” Hank sighed.

  “Not exactly,” Garfield replied. “This time, you’re considered one of the good guys. The only problem is, we don’t know who the bad guys are. And these really bad guys basically want to take all the MIST out of your body.”

  “Well, I want the MIST out of my body. You don’t know how pissed I am that they lied about that being the case!” Hank responded.

  “I think it’s like that old movie Inner Space. The good guys will try get the stuff out the right way, but the bad guys will do it...uh...badly,” Garfield explained.

  “I remember the movie!” Hank snapped. “They were going to send that chomper thing into him! Jesus Christ, Roger! I really don’t need this right now!”

  “You just sit tight, Hank. I’m on my way to you. We’re running our lights and headed south on I-25 at full speed. Draining tanks of gas and all that.”

  When the call ended, Hank barely had time to shrug his arms out of the destroyed scrub top before his phone rang again. It was his brother, Carl. “Did you get my message?” Hank asked.

  “I did, and just in time. A whole team of kneebreakers was waiting for me in the lobby of my work when someone tried to lure me to the nearest Starbucks. I escaped and got the hell out of there, but this is some bullshit. I need to know what’s going on!”

  “Bad guys are after the MIST, and they want our blood. We’re walking gold mines. You need to get out of town, Carl.”

  “My wife is pissed as hell! She won’t be over the events of the spring for at least a few years, and now it’s going on again! Someone tell me what to do here!”

  Trying to be calm, Hank advised his brother to get out of Houston and lay low for a while. “Use your accumulated vacation days, liquidate your 401k, cash in your retirement savings. Only use burner phones from now on. If the goons tried to snatch you just a little bit ago, they’re definitely going to try again.”

  Carl ended the call and Hank stood up. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer.

  “Is that a good idea? We should be packing to leave!�
� Whitney emerged into the living room with suitcases. Behind her, Michael was rapidly stuffing clean laundry into his duffel bag. Fold those first! Hank wanted to yell, but did not. He took another sip of beer.

  “I don’t feel like running this time. And besides, I’m pretty sure whoever is after my MIST is preoccupied with the two FBI most wanted terrorists who have MIST in their own systems. After what happened at the hospital, I’m sure they’re busy licking their wounds.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I’m packing your stuff,” Whitney insisted. As she returned to their bedroom, Hank turned on his laptop and reserved three plane tickets for a toddler, a soon-to-be-teen, and a woman.