Winning Choice: Head down to the rail yard and see who was sending me the message, whether it was a friend or a trap.
Recap: Brandon visited his home to retrieve a picture of Nicole and some other personal documents. While he’s there he receives a strange message via a digital picture frame in his living room that shows a picture of a train and warns him to run…
For a half mile, I hop from rooftop to rooftop, approaching the rail yard as stealthily as I can. Nothing happens. There’s no military, no helicopters, and no attacks. The less that happens the more nervous I get.
Around the edge of the yard is a high security wall topped with barbed wire. I assume it’s to keep non-flying troublemakers out of the place. And maybe hoboes. Are there still hoboes who ride the trains around? Maybe I’ve been summoned here by their king.
My random thoughts like that used to drive Nicole nuts. I remember one time we were listening to some DJ on the radio as she was driving. I wondered if people in radio worked there because they were too ugly to get a job in TV.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe you’re a Librarian because you’re too much of an idiot to be on the radio.”
“No, listen,” I explained. “These radio people still get married and have kids, right?”
“I think that’s legal, yes,” she said, humoring me.
“But then they pass on their radio-face genes to their babies, with radio-face getting stronger every generation. There could be thousands of them. Maybe millions,” I said.
“Millions? Radio DJs like to make babies apparently,” was her reply.
“Well sure, they don’t get out in public much so what else can they do? But then you know what happens?” I ask.
“Please don’t tell me.”
“They’ll rise up. This whole society of people with radio-face will take over and blind us all so we can’t judge them. They we’ll be forced to work in radio while they rule over us as smooth, silky-voiced tyrants,” I said.
She tried to hold it in, but let out a big snort followed by that wonderful, silly laugh of hers. I need to hear that laugh again, and the thought brings me back to reality.
Perching on the edge of one of the rail yard buildings, I peek over the edge.
The train yard is a sprawling landscape of clanking machinery and metal. Dozens of tracks enter the yard from every direction, then curve and split and snake across acres of industrial chaos.
It’s like watching a giant machine grind away, but having no idea what the machine is actually doing. It’s mesmerizing. It’s also loud, with constant clacking, clanging, crunching, grinding and noise I don’t even have words for. Mixed in with all the metal is an occasional shout as the workmen and engineers belt out instructions to each other.
And it stinks. I don’t need to open my visor to get a whiff of the grease and oil.
Bottom line if there’s something going on here, trap or friend, I can’t spot it. Maybe I could see something better if I flew around but that’s going to leave me very exposed and I’d rather not draw attention to myself yet again.
Across the yard workmen in hard hats and bright vests guide the trains around to manage their cargo. Other workmen stand around in groups chatting or waiting for a train to move. A few individuals run back and forth on mysterious errands. It’s like an ant farm I used to have as a kid.
Then I notice one lone workman standing near the back of a boxcar. He’s facing my general direction and looking around the yard. Something about him is a bit off but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
His face is hidden by his hard hat, so I can’t tell exactly where he is looking, but then I realize what caught my eye. Everyone else is wearing big workboots. This guy, he’s wearing shoes. Bright green running shoes.
Flying is too conspicuous so I drop quietly over the roof into the yard below. I move around the cars quickly, but avoid using my super speed so I don’t bump into something, or someone, I shouldn’t. By the time I get to where the man was standing, he’s gone.
I spot him again him further across the yard, standing between two big train cars, facing me. I tense up but nobody jumps out at me, nobody attacks me, and nothing seems out of place. The man in the green shoes ducks around another car. Even through the helmet I catch his scent from when he was standing here. I know this smell, and I grin.
I sprint to the figure again and arrive in time to see the green shoes disappear up into a boxcar from underneath. I peek under the car’s carriage and sure enough there’s a small, hidden panel. Not scared this is a trap anymore I pop up through the panel into the boxcar.
“Hooray!” yells Tyler, leaping from a swivel chair and pumping his fist in the air.
Grinning, Susan walks over to me wearing the biggest smile I think I’ve ever seen on her face. She bops me on the faceplate of my helmet with one, long finger. “Took you long enough,” she says.
Ryan removes his construction hard hat and tosses it on a table. “I wasn’t really sure that would work,” he says. He looks a bit haggard but happy. He runs a hand through his short, blonde hair, which was matted down from the hard hat. “How’ve ya been, Brandon?”
He seems a bit shocked when I pick him up in a giant hug and spin him around the room. The other two laugh.
“I think he missed us,” says Susan as I put Ryan back on his feet.
Pulling off my helmet, I drop it on the table next to a pile of electronics. I take my first look around the room, and it sure as hell doesn’t look like the inside of any boxcar I’ve ever seen. Or heard of.
The walls are paneled in white and none of it looks like the corrugated metal of a train car. It could easily pass for an office or maybe a lab of some kind. Tables and workbenches line one wall, while racks of computers and systems line the other. TV screens and monitors fill every available piece of wall real estate, and a giant screen occupies the center of the long wall. Information and images slide across every one of the screens, and I’d wager none of it is legally obtained.
It looks like the normal side door of the boxcar still works, judging from a small outline on one wall, but the most used doors seem to be the trap door I came in through and an odd looking door at the far end of the car. Overall the place is clean, high-tech, and pretty comfortable. There’s a small refrigerator, a microwave, radio monitoring gear, satellite imagery processors, and loads of gadgets I don’t have the foggiest clue about.
I don’t know how the hell he did it, but it looks like Tyler managed to get his secret base after all.
“What the hell happened to you guys?” I ask.
“That’s a fun story,” says Susan, gesturing to one of the comfy office chairs. Her dark eyes betray her amusement at my confusion.
I take a seat and Ryan opens up the fridge. “Care for a beer?” he asks.
“You know what, I think I do,” I tell him. He slides a bottle of Stone IPA over to me, and I nod appreciatively. “Now tell me what’s been going on and where, exactly, you got this… this…” I gesture around the room.
They launch into their story. It turns out that when I went out the apartment window they were able to grab the bulk of their gear and hustle down the elevator before things got too crazy. By the time their apartment exploded they were nearly down to the ground floor on their way out and didn’t even find out what happened until later. Their best guess is that two different groups stumbled over each other that night - one trying to kill them, the other trying to capture them. The guys outside seemed surprised by the explosion and weren’t prepared to deal with me, so that part fits.
As they talk I realize several things. First, that I really missed these guys. They are so animated and excited about everything, interrupting each other to tell the tale. I need their expertise to unravel some of the technical puzzles, but I need their energy just as much. Not only are they the only people I can really confide in, but they are in the fight with me. They’re more than spectators, they’re allies. They are odd friends, but good ones.
Second, I realize how much they’ve changed. They’re more focused and down to business. Tyler still makes his jokes and talks in big, sweeping terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys, but he’s more calculating. It also looks like he’s put on a few more pounds, but actually seems healthier. Living in a train yard seems to have been good for him.
Ryan’s face is even thinner than before, and lines of all his worrying are deeper cut on his face, but he doesn’t seem to waver as much. He’s committed to this… whatever “this” is.
Oddly, while Susan was always very matter-of-fact about things, she seems to have relaxed. No, that’s not the right word. She’s part of the team, now, and has finally really started working with other two in. Her tight shirt has some colorful anime character on it that I don’t recognize, but by her standards her outfit is downright modest. I know Ryan used to have a bit of a thing for her, so I wonder how he feels about this renewed closeness.
They also look more haggard than they did the last time I saw them. Maybe even a bit older. They’ve had a rough time, and while I feel bad for them I’m also selfishly glad they stuck around.
I finish my beer and Susan slides me another across the table like an experienced bartender.
“So that covers how you got away, but why didn’t you contact me earlier?” I ask.
“You were-“ starts Ryan.
“And how did you do that with the picture frame?”
“There wasn’t any-“ starts Tyler.
“And why a train car? And how did you get this all in here? And why…” I trail off as I realize they’re all staring at me, smirking. “Okay, go ahead,” I tell Ryan, tipping my beer at him authoritatively.
“Thanks so much,” he starts. “You are really good at laying low it turns out. We couldn’t find you until you hit one of their buildings, and by then it was too late. You were gone.”
“On the plus side I have a whole pile of hard drives and computer I stole from them for you to search through,” I tell Ryan. Tyler rubs his hands together in anticipation and gives an evil chuckle.
“We also needed some time to regroup,” continues Susan. “We couldn’t help you with everything in pieces so we wanted to get back on our feet.”
“We knew the one place you would go back to sooner or later was your house,” says Tyler.
“I wasn’t totally sure about that, to be honest, but it was our best bet,” says Ryan, rubbing his chin. “Unfortunately your place is wired to the rafters with microphones, cameras, and other stuff. Anything we put in there would have been noticed in a heartbeat.”
“Luckily you had that picture frame and we were able to hijack it. We couldn’t use any obvious pictures in case it was discovered, but we figured you would know which ones weren’t really yours,” says Susan.
“How did you take it over, though?” I ask.
Tyler looks very serious for a moment and puts his hand on my shoulder. “I hate to break it to you, Brandon, but… your wifi security really sucks.”
I burst out laughing. “I forgot it had wifi in it so I could upload pictures from our laptop.”
“We loaded the photos remotely. Once you went home then we could see all the activity on the scanners with the police and everybody else headed there. So we started wandering the train yard hoping you would spot us. This place is pretty much invisible otherwise,” says Tyler, patting the wall.
Susan nods. “Soundproof, heat shielded, super cooled, highly mobile, and more wired than just about any place on earth. Tyler even named it.”
Tyler grins. “She’s called the Wanderer.”
I raise my beer to him. “Excellent reference, my geeky friend, even if it’s long before your time. But where, exactly, did you guys get a massively wired super-secret train car?”
“Two cars,” corrects Ryan, thumbing towards the odd door I saw earlier. “The other one has more gear and the bunks. And bathroom.”
I sigh. “Quit messing with me. Out with it!”
“There are a lot of people out there who are working with us now,” says Susan. I must look a little nervous at this because she shakes her head. “Don’t worry, they don’t know about you. What they do know is how active the NSA and everyone else is that you’ve been pissing off. People are still buzzing online about the videos that people took of you doing super hero stuff, but the people helping us don’t know we’re connected. They only see that we’re fighting back and doing serious damage to the people in power and they’re mobilizing to help.”
“The cars were outfitted in different cities and moved around almost constantly at first,” continues Ryan. “Different people and groups added different parts, most of them anonymously. Once the cars were self sufficient they were routed here. We can move them by hacking into the train schedules and adding us to whatever itinerary we need. We change the meter readings to hide our power consumption. We hijack phone and cellular signals to hide our communications. We’ve got more capability here than we ever had at the apartment, and haven’t even finished setting it all up yet.”
I finish my beer and toss the bottle in the trash. “I think your beer is broken,” I tell them. “I feel more awake than before I started drinking.”
“I wondered if that might happen,” says Susan. “We have some new theories about your powers. I think your nanobots pull the alcohol out of your blood as fuel.”
“Which means you can live on beer!” says Ryan.
“I’m not sure not being able to get drunk again is a helpful ability,” I tell him. “But what else have you learned with all these new toys?”
“We finally have a name behind the government group that’s after you,” says Ryan. “They’re called the Evolutionary Defense Initiative or EDI. As near as we can tell, they are not part of the normal chain of command. They don’t report to anyone, not even the President.”
This stuns me a bit. Even the most insanely ridiculous departments our government has ever had the bad idea to create reported to someone. “How is that possible?” I ask.
Ryan taps into a keyboard a giant chart of government groups appears on the large screen. The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the Army, and tons more all show up in bright boxes, networked together with lines and arrows. Off to the side, all by itself, is one marked EDI. It has dashed lines touching almost everything else up there.
“We’re not sure,” says Ryan. “Our best guess from what we can see is they’re designed to exist outside the normal bureaucracy so they don’t get caught up in regular politics. Obviously the President and some members of Congress know they exist since they’re funded and allowed to operate, but near as we can tell they set their own agenda. Like stealing technology from the Dionysus Foundation that created you and doing their own experiments with it.”
“Like creating the two monsters I fought downtown,” I add.
“Exactly. EDI’s objective seem to be to use the latest in genetic, nano, and other cutting edge technology to defend and protect the United States. Being outside the normal approval loops they can play with stuff most people consider just science fiction.”
Ryan types a bit more as I digest all this. I like having a name for these government jerks who keep coming after me, but it’s somehow scarier knowing they’re an official group. The idea that there were a few loose cannons running around seemed easier to accept. EDI disappears from the screen and a brand new chart takes its place, this one with names of people and organizations I don’t recognize. They all feed into a box at the top with a big question mark in it.
“The second group we found appears to be the investors that backed the Dionysus Project. The mega-rich people and companies who want to get their hands on the genetics to either profit from it or just use it for themselves, we’re not sure which. We’ve don’t know what they call themselves, but after following the money and resources it looks like like they’ve started their own lab and are working again. They’re drawing in resources at an incredible rate and have moved most of their efforts out of the United States so the EDI can’t shut them down.”
“So… they’re not working together?” I ask.
Susan shakes her head. “Nobody can ever work together when there is this much at stake. They get greedy. Near as we can tell they’re racing against each other to recreate what happened to you. Those two monsters are not the only ones out there with abilities like yours of some kind.”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” says Tyler. “An army of super-mutant soldiers controlled by the government or a private bunch of mega-rich elite handing out super powers to whomever they think deserves it.”
“Neither,” I reply, though we all knew that answer.
Tyler bites his lower lip and shoots a glance at Ryan. Ryan pulls a chair in close and looks me right in the eye. “There’s one more thing. We’ve tracked some communication about your wife, Nicole,” he says flatly.
I’m on my feet and I don’t recall standing up. My chair skids back across the floor behind me. I’m inches from Ryan’s face and he flinches from my expression.
“Where is she?” I hiss.
Ryan takes a breath. “Here’s the thing-“ he starts.
“Where?!” I yell.
Susan steps forward and puts her hand on my arm. “Brandon, take a breath. We have some good info, but it isn’t perfect.”
With considerable effort I pull my chair back and sit. I’m sick of this waffling. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I look Susan in the eyes.
“Where?” I repeat, very softly. She pulls her hand back like she touched a hot stove, the look on my face apparently saying more than my yelling.
“We’ve intercepted two different sites talking about her,” she says. “It’s pretty certain they mean Nicole, but it’s nothing as clear as her exact location or her condition. But they both are concerned with what to do with her.”
“Do?” I ask.
Ryan shrugs. “It’s vague. But if we went over that gear you stole and dug into it we might be able to learn more, at least from the EDI side of it.”
“The first location that had communication about Nicole is an EDI site in Nevada,” says Tyler. “It’s one of their main facilities, and seems to be where they do a lot of their experimental work. There’s one other name that came up from that facility, too. Mandeville.”
The name crawls into my ears and I fight to sit still. Mandeville, the man who turned me into a guinea pig in the first place. I’d hoped he’d killed himself rather than be taken. So much for his high ideals.
Ryan grabs the keyboard and the display shifts to a satellite map of Nevada. He zooms in over what looks like an Air Force base. Sure enough, “Edwards Air Force Base - Detached Site” appears over the map, and below it the words “Groom Lake.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?” I ask.
“It’s also known by another name: Area 51!” Tyler seems almost giddy. I shoot him a look and he drops the smile. “But there aren’t any UFOs there. Probably. It’s just a super-secret test facility.”
“It would be tough to get into, but we could do a lot to help you with the Wanderer,” offers Ryan. His tone makes it clear he’s not thrilled with this whole turn of events. He doesn’t like taking on the government head on. Susan, on the other hand, loves the idea.
“The second location that mentioned Nicole is an investor location,” says Tyler, jumping in. “It’s more of a research lab, but still has very good security. Nothing like at an Air Force base, though. There’s also another problem. Show him.”
Ryan hits a few keys and the image of the earth spins away from Nevada, up into the air, over the Pacific Ocean, and comes right down on Hong Kong.
“They’re not local, to put it mildly” points out Ryan. “If you go there we can’t help you as much. We can stay in touch remotely but obviously we can’t get the train there. You’d be a lot more on your own.”
I get up and pace down the middle of the car. Either way I pursue this things are going to escalate quickly. And if I choose wrong who knows how this could blow up in my face. Or Nicole’s.
Susan reaches out to me, but as I stop pacing she changes her mind and pulls her hand back. “Brandon, look… I know you’re past anxious to get her back, but if you get us that gear you stole we could analyze it while you help us gather more information. That might give us a better idea if EDI or the investors have her, or what exactly is going on. Then we would know for sure where to hit next rather than heading in blindly.”
“I appreciate all the details,” I tell them. “I think right now I need to…”
1) Pay a visit to the EDI at Area 51.
2) Pay a visit to these mysterious investors in Hong Kong.
3) Get you that gear so we can regroup and learn more.
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