Author: Douglas A. Taylor
Category: Suspense
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Chapter 12
Bill and I entered the common room together to discover everyone excitedly staring at the map on the vid screen. "Trevor, grab your things!" Nicolai told me. "Shelley has been moved to another room. This is our chance!"
When we had hatched our plans regarding Shelley, it had been decided that Nicolai and I would be the ones to install the microsensor package in Shelley's cell -- Nicolai, because he knew how the damned things worked; and me, in case we got caught and had to fight our way out. I dashed to my room and grabbed my battle vest, along with the little bag of microsensor dots that Nicolai had given me. I decided against bringing a weapon. We weren't expecting trouble, and even if trouble found us, it wasn't likely to be of the Enclave variety, so our weapons wouldn't do us much good anyway. Back in the common room, Nicolai and I had to endure the envious stares of our teammates as we activated, turned on camouflage mode, and 'ported out.
By now, you probably have the idea that camouflage mode is some sort of invisibility cloak for us Primes, and you wouldn't be that far off. Normally when I'm shielded, my force shield projects the image of a swirling indigo mist -- sorry, make that a swirling blue mist -- around me which disguises who I am. In camouflage mode, the swirling mist is replaced by an image of whatever is on the other side of me, so that I become more-or-less see-through. It works reasonably well, especially if you're standing perfectly still against a single-colored background.
We had no idea what to expect from Shelley's captors, naturally. They could have decided to keep her in a cage, a jail cell with bars, a dungeon -- we didn't know what Nicolai and I were headed into. As it turned out, luck was with us. When the teleportation haze cleared from my vision, Nicolai and I were standing in a white, rectangular, windowless room with a single, steel-reinforced door. There was a toilet in one corner, but nothing else, not even a washstand or anything to sleep on.
"Remain absolutely still," Wizzit told us, Prime-to-Prime. "Scanning the area for cameras . . ." About ninety seconds later, he said, "I detect one low-resolution camera in the room, with an attached microphone. Blue, it's pointed right at you, so stay where you are. Yellow, it is directly behind you, just above your left shoulder. Take two steps back and look up."
I performed the monumentally-difficult task of not moving a muscle while I waited for Nicolai to perform his magic. Of course, since the camera was low-res and I was using camouflage mode, it would probably have been okay if I had moved a little bit, but there was no sense in taking chances, especially so soon after we had teleported in with the accompanying flash of light. After a couple of minutes, I heard Nicolai say, "Film is in place."
"Got it," Wizzit answered. "Making a quick recording . . ."
I knew what they were doing, but that didn't make it easier to stand still. Nicolai had just slipped a piece of clear plastic film -- something like the plastic wrap you'd find in your kitchen -- over the camera lens. The specially-made plastic film was transparent at the moment, but once Wizzit activated it, it would serve two purposes. First, it would act as a video monitor for us, sending Wizzit a constant feed of what was going on in Shelley's cell. Second, it would become a projector, feeding the camera only what Wizzit wanted it to see. At the moment, Wizzit was making a vid of a completely empty room, which he would loop continuously into the camera display the entire time we were working.
"Recording is done," Wizzit announced presently. "Feeding it into the camera now. Blue, you can move, but you both still need to remain quiet."
I turned around with a (silent) sigh of relief. Nicolai was still working on the camera, cutting down the plastic film and pressing it onto the camera's lens; when he was done, Wizzit's little addition would be well-nigh undetectable. I, in the meantime, would be fitting a similar bit of plastic film over the camera's microphone for a similar purpose. It would be more obvious than the film over the lens, but really, who ever looks at a surveillance camera's microphone anyway?
Two minutes later, we completely owned the video and audio links going out of Shelley's cell and could begin our work in earnest. I pulled out my bag of microsensor dots and began planting them about the room.
The dots were a marvel of electronic engineering. Each one was about as big as the head of a pin, and they were malleable like putty. A single one was capable of transmitting a usable, if somewhat fuzzy, view of the area immediately surrounding it. The real genius, though, lay in the way they worked together. If you scattered a bunch of these gizmos around, then they would quickly find each other, elect one of their number to be the master, and automatically begin channeling their output to that master, which would then build a composite 3-D sound and video image of the area that was startlingly detailed and accurate. The more dots you scattered, the better the image would be.
Since the walls were just painted cinderblock, Nicolai and I were able to plant about a hundred of the little guys all around the room, which would be enough to let Wizzit monitor the heartbeat of every person within a ten foot radius. Once Nicolai placed a somewhat larger ball of the putty behind the toilet tank to act as a relay, Wizzit could keep track of Shelley in this cell nearly as well as if she had been wearing her Prime belt.
Next came the tricky part -- or, to be accurate, the other tricky part. If we were going to visit Shelley in her cell, then we didn't want to be surprised by someone coming along and opening her door from the outside. We needed to monitor the area immediately outside her cell.
Simple, right? We just had to plant some dots out in the hallway. The question was, how? The door was closed and probably locked. Even if it weren't, we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves by opening it.
It was an interesting little problem. Luckily for us, there was a slot an inch or two high and maybe twelve inches wide in the center of the door at floor level, probably for sliding meal trays in and out. Nicolai simply slid the slot cover up and pushed out half a dozen dots. That gave Wizzit a clear enough image of the hallway that he could teleport Nicolai to the other side of the door without fear of discovery.
Nicolai was gone for something like ten minutes. I waited nervously in the cell, trying not to think of all the horrible things that must be happening to him. When he finally 'ported back in, I nearly jumped out of my force shield.
"That was a close call!" he said breathlessly. "I planted dots all up and down the hallway. Someone came out from one of the other rooms as I was finishing, but they went in the opposite direction from me. I was able to get inside their room, and I just had time to install a passthrough on their computer before they returned. That was when Wizzit teleported me back here."
I nodded. Planting a passthrough was something we had discussed as a nice-to-have, but it wasn't vital. Simply put, Nicolai had unplugged the person's mouse, plugged it into the passthrough, and then plugged the passthrough into the computer. The device was small enough to pass a casual inspection (again, who really examines the back of a computer?), but it contained a fiendish array of electronics that, with luck, would give us an undetectable backdoor into their computer network.
We spent another few minutes double-checking our handiwork, and then Wizzit said, "Someone is coming. Yellow, prepare to teleport out. Blue, I am switching to live camera feed, so move into a corner out of the way. No, not that one, the next one over. Yes, there. Switching . . . now!"
I held my breath. Seconds later, I heard footsteps approaching. The door opened, and two guards thrust Shelley inside. They didn't say anything, and neither did she. They quickly closed the door again.
Shelley looked a lot better than she had the last time I saw her -- a lot healthier. Disoriented, but her cuts and bruises were gone, and she appeared able to move about without pain. She was clad in a baggy orange jumpsuit that didn't flatter her at all, I must say.
She spent a moment looking around the room. It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that her
gaze lingered for just a second on the corner where I was standing. Then she sat down cross-legged with her back against one wall. After a couple of minutes, she said, "How long do you need me to sit here like this, Wizzit?"
"A few minutes more," he replied from my belt buckle. "Don't talk; it disrupts the recording. I will tell you when you can stop posing."
We stayed that way for what seemed like an eternity. I did my best to remain absolutely still and quiet; Shelley was apparently under no such restriction. She sighed, stretched, scratched her nose, ran her hands through her hair -- in short, she performed all manner of idle motions someone might go through if they were alone and bored.
We were about halfway to the heat-death of the universe when Wizzit said, "Recording is finished. Randomizing and looping your sounds and movements into the camera now. Blue, you can turn off camouflage mode."
She got to her feet as I, visible now, stepped out from my corner. Now, Shelley and I had known each other for nearly four years, and while there had never been anything romantic between us -- she was way out of my league -- I considered her to be one of my closest friends. Nevertheless, I don't think she had ever given me as enthusiastic a greeting as she did then. She grabbed onto me, held me so tight that I could scarcely breathe, and just didn't let go.
"It's good to see you, Blue," she murmured into my ear. "Really, really good to see you!"
I could feel her trembling, and when she finally released me, tears were welling up in her eyes. She was all smiles, though. "That was the longest day of my life," she said with some feeling. "I had no idea where I was or what time it was or whether you guys had gotten away or if you'd be able to contact me here or . . . or anything! Tell me, how is everyone? Okay, I hope? Everyone got healed up okay? You haven't had any more missions yet, have you? Did you see the vid I left? Have you made contact with Prime Black? You know who Prime Black is, right?"
I laughingly held up a hand to stem her flow of questions. "Everyone is fine," I told her. "In fact, they're probably all watching you right now, including Prime Black. Yellow and I just finished installing a microsensor package."
"Yellow?" she repeated with a puzzled frown. "You mean Orange, don't you?"
I shook my head. "Yellow asked to remain Yellow. Green moved up to Orange, and everyone else progressed normally."
"Oh, I see. That's . . . that's pretty unusual, but if that's what Yellow wanted to do, then I guess it's probably for the best." She waved uncertainly at a wall. "Um, hi, everyone. I'm okay. Feeling a bit frazzled -- or a lot frazzled -- but basically okay. I'm pretty tired. No heavy interrogation yet; I think they mainly wanted to intimidate me and then leave me here alone to stew for a while."
"Well, they goofed, because you're not alone, Shelley." I reached up and squeezed her shoulder the way she always did with me. Toby had told us that physical contact -- actually touching her -- would be important, and I was starting to see that for myself. I could feel her muscles, which had been bunched up, start to relax under my hand. "Trust me, we're not going to let you go. We're in this with you, all the way. Someone's going to come visit you every day. Twice a day, if we can. Anything you want, you've got it. Just let us know."
She closed her eyes, and a tear spilled out of each eye. "Thanks, Blue. That means a lot. Tell me, when did Black show up?"
"Earlier today. Black debriefed us on our most recent mission, in fact."
"So you did have another mission? That's odd, another one so soon. How did it go?"
I started to sketch out what had happened to us in India, but Wizzit interrupted. "Sorry to break this up, kids, but the video I'm looping is starting to become repetitive. We're going to have to cut this visit short. I will take more stock footage, and tomorrow's visit can be longer, 'kay?"
Shelley took a deep breath and nodded. She hugged me one last time, then went back to the spot where she had been sitting against the wall as I 'ported out.
"She didn't look good," Padma commented as I teleported back to HQ. She and the others were clustered around the vid screen in the common room watching Shelley, who was curled up on the floor now, her head pillowed on her arms.
"She'll be fine," Mike averred, sounding as if he really wanted to believe that. "Shelley's plenty tough."
"She didn't know where she was, that's for sure," I said, "or what time it was. I got the impression she thought she had been gone just a single day. I don't know a whole lot about interrogation techniques, but I'd bet a penny they're going to try to keep her as disoriented and confused as possible."
"Then we need to help her fight against that," Trina said. "Whenever we visit her, the first thing we should do is to tell her what day it is, and what time, and how long she has been held."
Bill stepped forward. "I'm going to pull rank," he said, "and claim the next visit. Wizzit, how soon can I go, and how long can I stay?"
"Eight hours from now is the earliest I can recommend," Wizzit replied. "She needs to sleep, for one thing. Initial visit should be half an hour or less at that time. They can be longer as I gather more footage of her to feed into the camera and as we become more acquainted with their routines. Remember, you may have to teleport out with no more than a minute's notice, so don't get too involved." Then he added with a snicker, "Or engage in any activities which might get . . . messy."
There were sounds of disgust from all around the room. "Oh, come on, Wizzit!" Toby objected. "It's not like he's going to be banging Shelley right under their noses." Then, with a careful look at Bill, he added, "Well, at least not on the first visit, anyway."
Bill exhaled noisily. "I can see it's no longer a secret that Shelley and I have been seeing each other," he said, giving Trina a hard look.
"Of course it's not." Trina was unrepentant. "Don't you think it was something we all needed to know? I did, which is why I decided to tell them."
Bill thought for a moment, then shrugged. "You're right, maybe it was. At any rate, whatever Shelley and I may or may not decide to do during my visits is not going to be a matter for public debate. In fact, Wizzit, I'm going to ask that the time I'm with her not be broadcast back here at HQ. I'd, uh, like us to be able to spend some time together privately."
"I will mark those vids for viewing by no eyes but yours," Wizzit promised snarkily. "You know, just in case you wish to review your performance."