Holy shit! Somehow my unauthorized logging on to Agora had set off a chain of security measures that would blow up the Basilisk Group building, along with all seventy-two of the prisoners and the four guards. These guys took their security seriously. They’d rather blow up all the evidence than get caught. This was an unintended consequence of my vicious taking down of Serpentine. Maybe they’d have been willing to go to jail, but hearing about the Serpentine personnel being beaten to death and brutally maimed had made them realize that it is better to cut their losses than get caught.
Edward was dressed in record time, but he paused before heading downstairs. I almost saw the gears turning in his head. If the building blew up, he couldn’t ever come back here again. He swiftly came to a decision and ran to his office and emptied the contents of his safe into a bag from the bottom of the closet. Mostly it was more cash, but some paperwork and computer drives were in there as well. He grabbed his laptop on the way out and ran for all he was worth.
The ‘go-bag joined the contents of the safe into the trunk of the Viper, along with the tube from the garage duct. Of the ten minutes that he’d had, Edward had blown through four of them already. He called Phil and put him on speaker.
“Did you get me a delay?”
“No. I couldn’t reach anyone with enough access. The one guy I did manage to speak with said that there’s a way to add a five-minute delay, but it’s on-site at the building.”
“Shit! There’s no traffic, but I can’t risk the police catching me. I’m not going to make it in time. Keep trying.” He kept Phil on the line.
Edward kept driving and we weren’t that far when we reached the train tracks and found the barriers down and the train lumbering across our field of view. Edward put his head on the steering wheel and repeated the same word again and again, “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
For my part, Edward had done enough. He’d gotten us close enough for my field to reach the building. I started scanning it from bottom to top, verifying the locations of twenty-six strategically placed bombs and studying how they were connected to each other. Most of them were on the building support columns and when they went off they were guaranteed to take down the building. Four of the bombs were on the seventh floor, ready to make sure that even DNA evidence would be difficult to find. My field had picked up on the bombs during my initial scan of the building, but I hadn’t been paying attention. I was searching for people and it never occurred to me that anyone would think about blowing up the building. However, the information had all been in my head when I’d looked for it in my memories of the scan. Like my scan-reading, I could recall everything I scanned. I just had to think to look for it.
The train finally passed and Edward took off. “How long do I have, Phil? I’m three minutes away.”
“Eighty-seven seconds. You’d better stop soon. You don’t want to be anywhere near the building when it goes off. I’m packing now. I’ll meet you at safehouse number three. We should be able to rejoin the network in a month or two.”
“Yeah. Safehouse three. I’ll be there.” Edward sounded dejected as he hung up. I didn’t feel bad for him at all and as we rolled to a stop at the next light, I shifted the Viper and Edward into L2. I only stayed there long enough to turn off the car and put it in park. It, and Edward, were both in stasis now, but I didn’t want to forget that the car was on when I eventually brought it back to reality.
Shifting back to reality, I could see the top five floors of the Basilisk building over the treetops. I estimated that I had about a minute left until the bombs went off and I started to run. I counted off the seconds in my head and was in full view of the building when my internal clock reached ten seconds.
I stopped running and sent out my field to encompass the entire building. I made sure to include every part of it, including the underground parking and the water, sewage and electrical pipes leading into the building. I sent the whole lot of it in L3, where it was the only thing in the landscape for as far as the eye could see and much farther.
Now I had to hurry again. People would take notice of a building disappearing, so I needed to have it back as soon as possible. In reality, I noticed how the bombs were connected to each other and I’d worried that if I removed one bomb at a time, then I might set off the others. I’d shifted multiple objects before, but never twenty-six at once. Instead, I shifted the building, which in essence was one object, into L3 and once there I shifted each of the bombs to L2. The process took less than a minute and the building was back in reality the second the last bomb was disposed of.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I took special attention to see what happened to the connections where I’d removed and brought back the pipes. I hadn’t wanted to the building to lose power and on the ride over I’d thought of a possible solution. The key was to wrap the remaining pipes, those sections that would stay in reality, in their own fields and then bridge the parts together with a field. This was similar to the technique that I that I used when I’d be in R1 and pickup an object in reality; by connected the two fields. With the building not having moved at all in the intervening minute, everything lined up perfectly. As I watched the connections, the water and sewage started flowing again, both having stopped during the intervening minute. I’d need to think about that some more later, but I already thought of some great uses for this phenomenon.
Unlike the water and sewage, electricity moved too fast for me to see if it had stopped and then restarted and I didn’t know if the building had lost power or not. I’d need to go in to one of the kitchens and see if the clock on the microwave was blinking. For now, all that mattered is that the buildings lights were on, just as they had been before I’d shifted the building.
I scanned the building to make sure that everyone was alright. The prisoners were still asleep and the guards weren’t aware that anything had happened. The final things on my to do list were securing those guards and Edward. It only took a few seconds to send all four guards into L2 and then I ran back to where I’d left Edward and his car. I immediately saw that I had a slight problem. Edward was sitting in the driver’s seat and I’d left my exosuit in my car. I didn’t feel like picking him up and dragging him to the passenger side of the car. Instead, I shifted the car to R2 where Edward would be more pliable, opened the door, removed Edward’s seat belt and dragged him to the ground. I left him there as I got in the car and drove to my truck.
Over the next ten minutes I unloaded Edward’s go bag and the rest of Edward’s things into my truck, donned my exosuit and Roger outfit, and returned to pick up Edward. Back at the Basilisk building, I maneuvered Edward up the elevator and tied him up in his office chair. I’d bring him back to reality when the police entered the building. After I’d done the same thing with the guards, it was time for the police and the FBI to take over. I’d done all that I could and despite knowing that in a few hours seventy-two people would get their lives back, I felt like I’d failed again.
Mom wasn’t here and there was no record of her having been here. I was back to square none. I’d have Shauna and the team pore over all the data that I’d copied and the FBI would have the originals to work from. I didn’t hold out any hope though. Thirteen years was a long time.
Putting aside my despondency, for the moment, I called Shauna. She answered and told me that I was on speaker. I really appreciated her reminder.
“The building is secured. There’s one security guard on the main level and three more on the seventh. They’ve all been tied up. The president of the company is in his office on the eight floor in a similar condition. How far out are you?”
“We’re about ten minutes out of the city. Thanks to Kevin having given us a free pass on breaking the speed limit, we’re way ahead of schedule. Can you give us the address now and let us know how many ambulances we should call for?”
I gave her the address and added, “You’ll need medical personnel to handle the dehydration and malnutrition of the prisoners. Other than that, there are no injuries.”
It grew quiet on the other end of the line and I started to wonder if I’d lost connection. Kevin broke the silence. “I’m not complaining, but last time you…uhm…helped…in this type of situation, there were quite a few injuries and even more fatalities. What’s changed?”
“Two factors were different. In this instance, there is no visible evidence of the prisoners having been physically abused, nor was there a situation where they were in the midst of being abused and requiring intervention on my part. The second factor is that this building had been wired to blow up should the operation be exposed. Rather than being caught, the traffickers had decided to erase all evidence of their involvement and start again somewhere else. I suspect that the level of violence that I used last time may have convinced them that this was a better course of action than being apprehended by me. Although, it could simply be that they were hoping to blow me up along with any evidence. Either way, I’ve decided to try a change of tactics and see where that leads.”
More quiet from the other end of the line. This time Shauna spoke up.
“Do we need to call in the bomb squad to join us?”
“That’s up to you. There were twenty-two bombs wired to collapse the building and four bombs set on the seventh floor to make sure that there was nothing left of the prisoners to identify. I left the wires in place, but I’ve already disposed of the ordinance. The building is safe. Otherwise, I would not have left the prisoners sleeping in their cells.”
“How can you be sure? You’ve only been on site for a few hours. For that matter, how were you able to disarm twenty-six bombs and capture the guards in such a short amount of time?” Kevin sounded more awestruck than upset.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? You’re welcome to check the building if it’ll make you feel better. I need to go now and report to Abby about her mother.”
“Wait! What about her mother? Did you find her?” Shauna sounded so excited. I hated having to give her the bad news.
“No. She’s not one of the prisoners and there’s no record of her being held by this group. You’ll have a chance to go through their server databases and hopefully find something that I missed.”
As I lowered the phone from my ear and pressed the disconnect button, I heard Shauna swearing in frustration. I knew how she felt.