"Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt
find it after many days." Ecclesiastes 11:1
Carrie lay in her empty bed, praying that the phone would ring and it would be Spider. She rolled over and looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. She couldn't sleep and everything sucked. They still hadn't found Spider's car or any trace of her. To make matters worse, the SWTF had seen fit to visit her that afternoon.
"What the hell do you want?" she'd asked him.
"Oh we've got what we want, DA Long. Now we just want to make sure that it stays in good health. I think that's in both of our interests."
"What is that supposed to mean, Mr . . . "
"Deacon, the name is Deacon, and I thought that was really pretty plain."
"You're saying you have Spider," Carrie said. "This is insane! I don't know what you lunatics are up to, but I can by God guarantee . . . "
He was clicking his tongue then. "Oh, come now, all this name calling doesn't suit you. As for threats . . . Well, we both know how hollow those are since I hold all the cards."
Carrie sighed. The bastard was right. He had everything. He knew what the hell was going on, and she didn't have any idea, and he had Spider.
"That's better. Now, if you ever want to see the object in question . . . "
"Is there any chance of that?" Carrie asked with a lump in her throat. Mad at herself for showing the weakness that she knew he was counting on. "Because if there isn't, why am I even talking to you?"
"There's a very real chance if you play your cards right."
"And how do I do that? After all, as you just pointed out I have no cards."
"You quit looking for Spider Webb. If anyone asks, she's gone to visit some old army buddies."
Carrie nodded silently then looked up at him. "Why are you ruining our lives?"
The man's manner changed then, and he looked almost sorry. "Because a handful of stupid people think they have the right to make decisions for the whole world, and the rest of us are powerless to stop them. It's easier if you learn not to give a damn, Sir." With that he got up and left.
No guarantees, but she called off the search. That didn't mean she was going to quit looking, it just meant she wasn't going to be so obvious about it.
She rolled over again. She could still smell Spider on the blankets and pillows. She hit the bed with her fist.
"Spider! Where the hell are you!" She buried her face in Spider's pillow and cried till she fell asleep.
She woke with a start before the alarm had gone off. The light was just creeping into the room, and she didn't have to piss. She knew some noise had woke her up. She rolled over, sat up, opened the drawer on the bedside table, and took her gun out. She heard a car backing out of the driveway, pulled the gun from its holster and cocked it before running to the window. She could just make out the car as it left the driveway, but in the dim light couldn't have made out the make or the model. She did know it wasn't Spider's rental, it had been white, and this car was a dark color maybe even black.
She grabbed her comlink and strapped it on her wrist then slowly and carefully left her room, checking all the upstairs rooms first before going downstairs to do the same thing. She found a Metallica CD sitting on the rug just inside the front door. Someone had no doubt pushed it through the mail slot. She walked over and cautiously picked it up. She removed the tape and slowly lifted the lid, half expecting to find a smashed flat body part. Inside was a CD marked with the words, "Dammit Tommy I told you not to open this," in Spider's handwriting.
Carrie was pretty sure that Spider wouldn't want her to see it, either.
The road was worse than he remembered it. Of course it had twenty years to deteriorate, too. Still, it was a rental car he never planned to return, and he didn't really care what happened to it. He finally reached a part of the road bad enough that he had to stop. He pulled off the road and into the brush as far as he dared and parked. Laura must have been really wiped out from her injury. They had put her seat back and even the rough ride hadn't woke her up.
He found the sleeping bags and covered himself and Laura, letting her keep both pillows. It would get cold tonight. He looked out the window at the stars. It was clear; it was beautiful.
Whatever else, he and Laura would be safe now.
He wished he could be sure where Spider was.
He hoped he'd done the right thing having Bud take the disk to Carrie instead of having him put the information on the web as Spider had instructed. He was working under the assumption that Spider was still alive, and that she could make it through whatever-the-hell was happening. If she did, and everything she had told him was true, she'd be condemned anyway if what was on that CD got out. He hoped that Carrie would know what to do with the information on that disk.
He wished he had any idea at all of what was going on back in Shea city, what if anything had happened to Spider.
That was when he realized just how cut off he was. No phone, no comlink. They had radio, but that wouldn't tell him what was happening with Spider. He'd have to get out, go in somewhere and find out. But that would have to wait till he had hidden Laura safely away, until after things had cooled down a little.
He crunched down into the sleeping bag and sighed. It was warm and he was tired. He could worry about the rest of the world tomorrow; tonight he needed to sleep.
Her little "escapade" as they called it had gotten her sedated again. When she woke up this time the thing was back on her head, she was chained by the ankles to something she couldn't see, and her hands were cuffed behind her back. Her shoulders were starting to hurt from being in the same position for so long, so she sat up with no small effort and pretended not to notice the thing on her head.
"I'm hungry! Do you have it in your heads to starve me?" she asked.
Nothing. Not a murmur. She knew what they were doing now. Sensory deprivation.
She had no idea how many hours passed without contact. No one spoke to her. No matter how many times she told them she knew what they were doing they didn't stop doing it.
Finally the creep asked. "Would you like the helmet off?"
"No. Don't care," Spider said and rocked back and forth humming a tune.
"Wouldn't you like to see, too eat, to be a part of the world around you?"
She laughed then. "Ah! But I've never really been part of the world around me, have I? If you're asking me If I want to come out and play, the answer is no."
"Goddamn it!" he screamed. "Why are you making this so hard?"
"Why are you being such a weenie? The fucking Iraqis tortured me for five weeks and you're getting tired after a couple of days. At this rate it looks like you'll crack before I do."
She heard him walking away. The silent treatment again. She lay down and went to sleep.
When she woke up again someone was taking the helmet off her head. She tried to head butt the person taking the helmet off and got tazed for her troubles.
"Ouch! That smarted."
With the helmet off her head she looked around. Everyone was way out of reach. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, although it was hard to say if it was because of the sleep, the deprivation helmet, the tazing, or all the fucking drugs. Everyone was leaving the room. It made her wonder if she was free. She jumped up, started to run after them, came to the end of her tether, and fell with a clatter of chains to the floor. She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling.
"Now that was fucking stupid."
She heard someone crying. She turned and saw the back of what she assumed from the size and the haircut was a small boy.
"Ah, come on . . . What are you twisted fucks up to now!" Spider swore, getting to her feet.
"Turn around, Mark, she won't hurt you," the man said from the control booth.
"Don't turn around; it's a trick," Spider said. "They aren't your friends."
"I know that!" the boy screamed back. "Don't you think I know that?"
"Do what we tell you, boy," the man ordered.
"This shit isn't going to work," Spider started. "You twisted bastards aren't . . . " The boy turned around to face her, and she jumped back and screamed at the men behind the mirror. "That isn't Scott! Do you think I'm an idiot? My brother was a grown man when he died. You should know that—you killed him."
The man laughed. "You're right, this boy isn't your brother, Spider. The boy is your son."
Spider walked as close to the boy as the eight-foot chains on her ankles would let her. She looked at him, and as she did the dreams and the memories flooded back in on her.
The doctors and the lab coats, all that poking and prodding. It all made sense now. She fell to her knees and stared at the boy. She had no doubt that what they said was true; she could almost feel her blood coursing through him.
"All these years, the nightmares . . . You bastards were harvesting the eggs from my body," she hissed.
The head scientist walked in then. "So, you believe me, then."
"Whether what you are saying is true or not, I have no bond to this boy. I don't know him, and he doesn't know me. If you mean to torture him to death to get me to talk, then kill the boy and have it over with."
The boy cried loudly and made a run for the open door, where one of the SWTF guys grabbed him.
"The boy means nothing to me." Spider stared past the fat fuck into the hallway behind the door. She could feel the other guy standing in the doorway. He was scared, scared to be so close to the experiment, and he hated the fat guy. A gentle push—just add to the hatred that was already there. She'd never tried it without speaking except up close, but when the guy turned an expressionless face to her she knew she'd broken through. She wasn't going to try anything big just now, but maybe she could play this card later.
"That's why we're going to allow you some time alone together. To get to know each other," he said.
"It won't work," Spider said. "I'm not too overly sentimental when it comes to kids—mine or anyone else's. Besides, if you've made this one, you've made a dozen just like him."
"The children of the program are so funny." The scientist picked the boy's chin up and looked into his face as the security guard tried to hold the squirming boy still. The boy jerked his head away. "They are transplanted into a suitable candidate in the embryo state. No one—not the children—not the surrogate mother and father—nor anyone else should be able to figure out that they are not with their proper parents. Yet all of the children of the program know that they are not with their true parents. Isn't that right, Mark?"
"You go to hell!" the boy cursed.
"When you look at this woman, you can tell that she's your real mother, can't you?"
"Leave me alone!" Mark screamed.
"Why don't you leave the boy alone?" Spider said.
"Do you want to tell us who the Fry Guy is?"
"I've told you a million times. I don't know who the Fry Guy is."
"Why do you insult my intelligence!" he yelled.
Spider screamed back. "Because it would be wrong to insult your face!"
Mark started to laugh. So did Spider. The scientist's face got redder, and he stomped out of the room. The SWTF man threw the boy back in and stomped out after the scientist.
Spider jumped to her feet and managed to catch the boy with her body before he could make contact with the floor. Now Spider would have sworn she didn't have a maternal bone in her body, but as the boy's flesh met hers, there was a knowing and a one-ness that she had never felt with anyone before. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the boy was, in fact, her son.
She waited for him to steady himself, and then moved quickly away from him.
Mark turned around and looked at her.
She looked away. The last thing she wanted them to know was that she had any feelings at all for him.
"Are you . . . Are they telling the truth?" he asked.
"About me being your biological mother?" Spider asked sitting down. Her head was spinning, and she felt like she was going to vomit.
"Are you?" he asked.
"I think so. Yes," Spider said. "We're an experiment." She looked up at the window. "You, me, and a whole lot of other poor fucks out there. They believe they own us; that we belong to them, and that therefore they can do whatever they like to us."
Spider looked up at the window and then down at the floor. She concentrated, and then slowly and carefully she started to move her cuffed hands up her back.
Mark sat down, close to her. "Why?"
"Quiet, boy, you'll break my concentration," Spider said quietly.
"What the hell is she doing?" Don asked Fritz.
Fritz couldn't be bothered to answer; he was too busy watching.
Spider Webb walked her hands up her back and then over her head till her hands were in front of her. Then she slowly manipulated one hand out of the cuffs and started on the other.
"We have to stop her!" Don said. "She'll be loose!"
"I don't think she can get her feet loose," Fritz said. "She is amazing. Is she not amazing?"
Spider pulled the other hand free, then slung the cuffs into the window, and answered the boy's question by screaming at the two-way glass.
"Because they got nothing better to do with the taxpayers' money! Trying to make some kind of absolute soldier. Who knows how they did it or why? I only know that the stupid fucks seem to think it's perfectly OK to screw with people's bodies and their lives." She jumped to her feet and glared hard at the glass. "You kill people, and I'll kill you! Do you hear me? I'LL KILL YOU!"
"My God!" Don said, stunned. "Look at this reading!"
Fritz looked over his shoulder at the dials. The level of psychic activity that had just erupted in that room was . . . "None of our test subjects to date have been able to break a three. She just broke a six, and her nose isn't bleeding."
"I'm not sure the room can contain her, Fritz," Don said. "The room is only made to contain up to an eight. If she can do a six without trying, who's to say she couldn't do eight or more? The barrier won't hold."
"We can't afford to lose her as a breeder," Francis said. "The children of her first batch test higher than all the others from that same year."
"Mark is from her . . . ?"
"He's from the third batch, Fritz. His Father was William Brackstone. Mark has great potential; I would hate to lose him . . . "
"We won't lose him, Francis, and we won't lose her. If we get the Fry Guy . . . Imagine the boon to the project if we crossed him with her!" Fritz said.
"We'd be able to cut our projected outcome time in half. In one generation we could be looking at the future," Don said excitedly.
"I want us to start testing the boy tomorrow," Fritz said. "If he has no potential for the program, then he's expendable."
He watched through the window as the woman moved purposely away from the boy. When the boy tried to follow her she yelled at him to stay away from her. That she wanted nothing to do with him.
"Will she ever give us the Fry Guy?" Don asked Fritz.
"She'll crack. Sooner or later they all do."
A mother and father woke up in Shea City to every parent's worst nightmare. Their son was missing.
Cops and FBI swarmed their house and asked questions. The neighbors fanned out, putting up flyers. The police put up roadblocks. Rivers were checked and psychics by the dozens poured in to offer their services, He was . . . "by a river," "in a dark box," "afraid," "not afraid."
So many questions from so many people. Had they seen anyone hanging around? Had Mark been unhappy? Do they think he ran away from home? Then came the lie detector tests.
"What is your name, Sir?"
"Jared Parker."
"Mr. Parker, did you ever hit your son?"
"I spanked him a couple of times, but hit him?"
"Yes or no, Sir."
"No." He tried to fight his anger. All he cared about was finding his son, and if this was what he needed to do to get the cops up off their asses, this was what he was going to do. But it was hard.
"Did your wife ever hit your son?"
"No."
"Did you take your son anywhere and leave him?"
That question because of all the parents who had run scams over the years. Collecting huge amounts of money to look for children that they had hidden someplace.
"No."
"Did you kill your son, Mr. Parker?"
"Oh my God!" Jared cried out. "Is my son dead? Did you find his body? Is that what this is all about?"
"Yes or no, Sir."
"No! For God's sake, would someone tell me what's going on?"
A red-headed woman walked into the room. "What the hell's wrong with you?" she yelled at the woman who'd been running the test. She looked at the results of his test and then at Jared.
"Sir, no one has found a body. We have no reason to believe that your son isn't just fine. Get him off that thing! I want to talk to him in my office ASAP. And please don't do the same thing to the mother."
Carrie paced her office.
"Well?" Justin Denisten asked. He had been sitting in DA Long's office for almost ten minutes now watching her pace. While he didn't mind the view at all, he had things to do.
"He should be here shortly," Carrie said. "Please, I need you to be patient."
Jared Parker walked into the office.
"Good! You're here. Close the door and sit down please." She cleared her throat before she continued. She seemed to be looking for some sort of inspiration. When she finally spoke again, it was obvious that she hadn't found any. "Except for George, who I have asked to be here as a witness, we have all experienced the fall-out from a giant government conspiracy being fronted by a department called the Special Weapons Task Force, or the SWTF . . . "
"That's it! I'm out of here," Justin said, standing up.
"Agent Denisten, wouldn't you like to know why your partner Harry Sullivan was killed?"
"Harry got killed because he went snooping around those freaking So-what-if spooks. If we go snooping around we'll be just as dead."
"This room has been run over with every modern bug detection device known to mankind, on top of that I have had a sonic disruptor put in. So even if we happened to miss a bug—we found three and a phone tap—there is no way a clean signal can leave this room. All they'd get is static. So we can talk freely," Carrie assured him.
"You don't know these maggots, Sir. They have ways . . . they kill people."
"Excuse me," Jared was at the end of his tether. "I have a nine-year-old boy missing. I don't see what any of this could have to do with my problem."
"If Mr. Denisten will sit down, I'll tell you," Carrie said. She sat down and waited for him.
Denisten sat down reluctantly.
Carrie flipped on her monitor. "Now, if you can all just bear with me, I assure you that this concerns every one of us. My partner, Detective First Class Spider Webb came up missing the night before last. That same evening, her partner Tommy Chan and his wife Laura went into hiding. As you know, Denisten, Tommy and Spider had been working on the Fry Guy cases."
He nodded.
"Your late partner, Harry Sullivan, gave Spider Webb some information on the SWTF and a disk with a list on it. He knew more than he should have, and he gave it to the last person that they wanted to know, so they killed him." She punched a button on her keyboard, and the list appeared on the twenty-four inch monitor built into her wall.
"What the hell is it?" Denisten said looking away, as if not seeing might somehow protect him.
"It's a family tree of sorts. You see, the government has been secretly experimenting on people."
"Come on!" Denisten screamed. "Something like that . . . there would be a leak!"
"There is a leak, right here, right now. And the Fry guy, he's leak. I had my doubts, too. The notes Spider left on the end of this disk are kind of cryptic. Theories, lots of which contradict each other. Obviously she had been trying to figure this all out for quite some time . . . "
"What does any of this have to do with my son?" James nearly screamed.
"That's when all of the pieces came together," Carrie said. "When I saw a picture of your son on the TV today. See? This is a picture of my partner, Spider Webb." She punched a few buttons, and the view on the monitor changed. "Notice the size of her hands, Mr. Parker . . . Now here's a picture of your son . . . And here is a picture of Spider's dead brother, Scott, as a boy . . . ."
"Christ on a crutch!" Denisten said. "But why? Why make people?"
"These aren't normal people. Spider certainly isn't, you only have to look at her service record to know that. She's empathic, and she has this kind of mental manipulation where she can get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. Who knows what else she can do?"
"What does become clear as you read what Spider has written is that the Fry Guy doesn't have a weapon, he is a weapon."
"What are you saying about my son?" Jared asked. "My wife was pregnant; I saw him born. He is my son. I can't explain the uncanny resemblance, but Mark is my son."
"If you'll look at the list you'll see that all of the women "implanted" had a certain blood chemistry. A chemistry conducive to carrying one of these babies. With the global internet, any government agency with a high enough security clearance can get their hands on any personal information they want. I imagine they find the right women, wait for them to come in for a pap smear—actually, any gynecological exam would do, as long as they aren't on the pill. Hell, you don't ever know what they're doing down there. You don't want to know; you just want it to be over with. It would be almost too easy to implant a fetus in an unsuspecting woman. Since the doctor is obviously already in cahoots, he's not going to say anything when the child has an alien blood chemistry."
"Alien!" George screeched.
"Oh, yes," Carrie punched up a picture of DNA. "This is normal DNA. Human DNA." She punched another set of DNA into the picture and over lapped it with the first one, showing clearly that they were not the same. This is the DNA coded for these children." She got rid of the human DNA. "Spider isn't afraid of very many things, but she's afraid to go to the doctor. Turns out that every doctor who ever treats her meets with some unfortunate accident. Three of them wound up dead, and the last one wound up with his leg broken. I talked to him. He was reluctant, but he gave me this. This is Spider Webb's DNA. As you can see, it is a perfect match. I don't know exactly how, but these people are all hybrids—half human, half some alien species not of this world."
"Where's my son?" Jared asked.
"Wherever Spider Webb is. See, for whatever reason, the Fry Guy is not part of their program. He's slipped away from them, and he's out of control. At least he's beyond their control. Spider is the only person who knows who he is, and she's not going to just give him up. That's the reason Tommy and Laura left. So that they couldn't be used to make her talk. Taking me would be too risky."
"So what are you saying?" Jared asked in a panic.
"I don't think it's a coincidence that your son is missing, Mr. Parker. They needed leverage. Tommy and Laura have disappeared, I'm off limits, and she's just not close to anyone else. I think they are going to use your son to make Spider talk."
"You're saying he's not my son—that he's some kind of alien," Jared said. "He's not an alien. He's a little boy. My little boy."
Carrie ignored his outburst. "The SWTF has got to be stopped . . . "
"Agreed. But how?" Denisten asked. "These assholes have a sixth level clearance. That means there's a good chance that the fucking President of the United States knows exactly what's going on and isn't putting a stop to it. Wherever we go we're going to hit a stone wall. They won't kidnap you and take you away to be tortured because a missing DA causes big problems, but if you think they absolutely positively will not kill you because you hold a public office, then you are dead wrong, sister. If you give them too much grief they are going to decide that you are a bigger headache alive than you would be dead. You've had a lot of death threats, and that opens a big window of opportunity if they decide to dive through it. After all, no one's close to finding out who shot your legal assistant, are they?"
"Because the SWTF leaned on me and I called off the hunt. Just like I didn't go to the authorities about Spider's abduction, just like Mr. and Mrs. Parker are going to miraculously find that their son ran away and is staying with his grandmother in south Florida . . . "
"You're crazy if you think I'm going to quit looking for my son . . . "
"I know where your son and my partner are. They are in the SWTF complex in Madrid, Tennessee."
"Then let's go get him!" Jared said.
"It ain't that easy," Denisten told him. "Place is a fortress. Hand imprint coding on all the doors. Dogs, six-foot electric fence, machine-gun armed guards at all the entrances. I don't think you realize, Mr. Parker, what DA Long has been saying. You can't just walk up to the door and say, 'Give me my son.' The way they see it, Detective Webb and your son are their property. They made 'em, so they own 'em. These people tortured my partner and killed him because he had part of the information that we have now all seen. What do you think they would do if you walked to their front door and told them you're on to them and you want your half-breed alien child back?"
"You're suggesting I do nothing? What do I tell my wife?"
"I'm suggesting that you do what I told you to do," Carrie said. "I'm sure the SWTF would be only too glad to make sure that your story holds water. As for your wife, I suggest you tell her that her son is safe as long as she keeps her mouth shut. Your boy is part of their program, and they're not going to hurt him unless you push their hand."
"Don't tell anyone what you just heard," Denisten said. "Knowing this shit could get you killed. Get us all killed."
Jared nodded. It was all so insane that it had to be true. "Can I go now?"
"Yeah," Carrie said. She looked drained. "Please. For all of our sakes. Don't tell anyone anything. They may have your whole house bugged, your phones tapped."
Jared nodded and stood up. "Am I ever going to see my son again? I don't care what he is. I've raised him, he's mine, and my family won't be whole till he's back with us."
"If we are successful, you should get your son back. But I can't make any promises, Mr. Parker. Just remember that my partner is with him . . . It's in my best interest to do everything in my power to get them back."
He nodded and left, head down.
Denisten looked at her. "OK. So what do you want from me?"
"For someone who didn't want anything to do with this, you certainly seem eager now."
"Yeah, well, I can't get much deader than I all ready am . . . So?"
"Harry found this information in one of the FBI computers, which means that the FBI knows exactly what the SWTF is doing. It also means that somewhere there is more data. I want you to see if you can't match these dates, this data, with births. Let's see if we can't find their 'people'."
"And do what exactly?"
"I don't know. Maybe activate their army against them."