Chapter 25
THING ONE
My phone buzzes while I’m in a meeting. “Excuse me, sirs.” One glance at the text is enough. “Keep going without me.”
CANNON: Bodycam found. Returning to base to have contents analyzed. No signs of the two we are seeking.
Base means here at the institute and the best place to look at any images will be somewhere I can limit the spread. If anything is incriminating. Not the IT lab, that’s for certain.
CLAY: Return the bodycam to my office ASAP. Keep your men searching. Widen the area.
Which is why I’m relaxing in my office when Cannon is ushered in.
“Sir. I don’t know if this will be easily accessed. The images could be impossible to retrieve.” The casing looks scratched and cracked. “It was found in water. We should wait for the IT boys to check for water damage and dry it out.”
“Bring it here.” I switch off the RPG I had open, make sure the computer is isolated, then roll away on my chair as Cannon rounds the desk. “Have at it. Port is there.”
“Of course, sir.” He leans in and plugs one end of a cord into the laptop, checks the other end where it goes into the bodycam. The man almost clicks his heels when he’s obeying. I need more of him.
“It’s…” The laptop registers the connection, takes a moment, then it appears in the external inputs partition. “It’s there.”
A click brings up the CAM folders. Another click and the last video is showing as present in the files. The timestamp is from last night. This is only a bit more than five minutes long.
Click.
The video starts rolling. It’s night-time but the quality is good until static arrives, fuzzes things out.
“Her car, there.” Cannon points out. “No sound at all?”
“Doesn’t seem to be.”
She’s driving in and stops. Whoever wore this is running in, crouching. Door gets hauled open. Static takes over. “Fuck.”
Waiting a few seconds allows it to clear. She’s down, face down in the car, struggling under him. Then he’s spinning, something pulls him off her and the surroundings are spinning past in a blur. The ground is before him, dark and grainy. It cuts out.
“Fuck!” I tap the desk, rewind the vid. “Let’s slow it down. Freeze-frame a few to see if we can find whatever happened to them. She’s free and at home, so what the fuck happened?”
“Someone intervened.” He’s stating the obvious. “Or more likely, someones. Those two men were pros. You couldn’t take them out easily.”
“They might’ve been shot. We can’t be sure without sound.”
Cannon grunts. Both of us watch avidly as I spool through, halting frequently in that small section where everything goes wrong.
“There! Sir.” He leans in, hands on the desk.
“You saw?” I rewind.
“That!” He taps the screen itself. “A man… Or something?”
We both stare at what is captured. A few frames is all we have.
He’s hooded. The silhouette is brighter than his front, except for that one frame when a distant light bathes him.
Scars and suture lines run over what we can see of his lower face and neck, and one arm is bared to halfway up as he drags at the bodycam wearer’s body. Old stitches circle his forearm.
I lean back, bouncing against the chair, throat tightening in disbelief. “How? How the fuck is that possible? That’s… That’s a fucking frankenstruct!” One that has come to life and stayed alive. Unlike ours.
“Yes, it is.” Cannon straightens. “What do you want done?”
That he’s lost the sirs tells me he, too, is shocked.
I inhale hard through my nose, thinking.
“It’s incriminating, the assault on her.
Wipe that, delete it carefully while you’re in here.
That small part where he shows, take it to the IT lab.
I want every bit of data extracted from that.
Who he is, is what I need. Get fucking…” I wave at the battered device.
“DNA off it if you can. And send someone to discreetly check for tracks etcetera where the struggle happened.”
“All good ideas, sir. I’ll get them to look for anything else that might have his DNA on it, too. Like her car. A pink Chevy will be easy to find if she’s driving it in town. I’ll look for him on the CCTV elsewhere also. Do I have permission to ask the sheriff to expedite the DNA tests?”
“Sure. Do all that.” I swipe my hand through my hair and spring up, head for the drinks cabinet. “Want a whiskey?”
“No, sir. Maybe later.”
“Good choice.” Me, I need a slug of something.
A frankenstruct means someone else, some other country, maybe, is ahead of our research.
Do we kill it if we find it? Grab him and study him? Both?
Shit. I need a couple of drinks. If Gregory and the backers find out we are lagging behind someone else, their money may be withdrawn. I start unscrewing the lid on the bottle, pause, thinking.
“Cannon. Assemble a team to capture it. It has to be done quietly.”
“Of course. That will require the best of my men. Can we use lethal force?”
I suck air through my teeth. “Not yet. Injured is okay.” The thing is valuable, alive. “Absolutely nothing must be seeable by the public or law enforcement. Nothing.”
“And Hailey Tarrant? What about her seeing this, or do we take her also?”
“Good question. It seems to be helping her. I would rather you grab him alone, for now. Whatever part she is playing seems muddier than it was. Why is it associating with her?”
“I’ll instruct the men, sir. Just the frankenstruct. No witnesses. It will take twenty-four hours to assemble a team, since I need good men who can be trusted.”
“We need as much intel on him…it, and anyone it or her associate with. Do we call this thing an it?”
For once Cannon looks amused. “Maybe if it has a cock we can say he and him. Sir.”
“I fuck therefore I am a male frankenstruct? Perhaps. And if we cut it off? Figure that out when you get it. Monitor her house, too.” This is getting murky. Someone, or some other country, has run ahead of us in this research field and I need to know who, what, when, how.