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  Unfortunately, an unanticipated problem had almost brought a disastrous end to his efforts. After cutting away the umbilical connections to his lower spinal cord, Raul had experienced several minutes of self-doubt, accompanied by a feeling of great loss. Thoughts of Heather had bombarded his mind, leaving him nearly suicidal and almost robbing him of the will to reconnect. Only a sudden flash of hope had renewed his strength of will, a hope that had transformed into a new goal as the neural network connection had been restored.

  It had been a close thing, but the danger had been worth the risk. The connections directly into his brain were so far superior to the previous ones that there was no comparison.

  Dr. Stephenson's response upon seeing him the following day had been enlightening. The physicist had eyed him with interest, but there had been no hint of surprise in the man’s mannerisms. If anything, he seemed pleased.

  Well, what Stephenson thought hardly mattered. Raul hadn't even seen the man in two days and, with his improved mental augmentation, that had been plenty of time to do what had to be done.

  Raul let his thoughts drift to the machinery that powered the stasis field, the one that Dr. Stephenson had used to hold him immobilized during the operations that had removed his eye and both legs. With a slight shift of his thoughts, Raul brought the machine online, manipulating the stasis field's lines of force as easily as he could wiggle his own finger.

  A small scalpel rose from its resting place, steadied in midair, and then shot across the room, coming to a stop a half inch in front of Raul's face. It hung there, quivering as if it had just sunk its blade into a tree trunk. Once again Raul changed his visualization, the field compressing the metal scalpel with such force that it collapsed in upon itself, running like liquid mercury to form a shiny metal ball.

  Raul let the ball fall to the floor as his torso floated into the air and began moving across the room, the umbilical cable attached to his skull trailing along behind him.

  No. Stephenson wouldn't be bothering him—ever again.

  66

  Most people found the inside of the Henderson House mansion more bizarre than the exterior, its freestanding, spiral staircase occupying the center of the huge open foyer. The staircase went well beyond eccentric. It somehow managed to be simultaneously beautiful and hideous.

  Built entirely of mahogany, it wound its way upward to a spot twenty feet above the marble floor, where it terminated at a platform supported by three archways. Narrow wooden walkways led outward along the tops of the arches to the inward facing balconies that provided access to the hallways on the upper floor. Where the wood of the staircase connected to the metal arches, the faces of one man and two women were carved into the wood. The wooden faces contorted in expressions of agony, giving the clear impression that the touch of the metal arch was torture.

  Even long-time staff often paused at the sight. Dr. Stephenson passed it by without a second glance, making his way directly toward the library.

  A white-clad Henderson House staff member opened the heavy wooden door as he approached the room. As odd as most of the mansion was, the library could have been one of hundreds of similar rooms, a relatively small reading area, walls lined with bookshelves accessible via a sliding ladder. Seated at the circular table in the room’s center, three men awaited him.

  Dr. Anthony Frell, the chairman of the Henderson House Foundation, was on the right, rising from his chair and extending his hand in greeting. It was a gesture Stephenson ignored, turning his hawkish gaze on the man seated in the center.

  He was Hispanic, his dark hair worn shoulder length, his mouth outlined with a Fu Manchu style mustache and beard. The man's expression was one of thinly masked aggression, a look that was matched by the large man standing to the left. Jorge Esteban Espeñosa, the leader of the largest Colombian drug cartel, never went anywhere without his personal bodyguard.

  Dr. Stephenson did not bother to sit down. "This meeting does not please me."

  Espeñosa leaned back in his chair, bringing his booted feet up to rest on the table. "And I don't give a shit."

  The drug lord extracted a cigar from his jacket pocket, snipping the end with a small cigar cutter. Striking a match on the side of his embroidered cowboy boot, Espeñosa drew in several puffs, blowing the smoke out in Dr. Stephenson's direction.

  "It seems to me that you need a little lesson in who you are dealing with." Espeñosa smiled. "Don't get me wrong. The doses of the nanite formula you provided for me are most acceptable. But somehow, you seem to have gotten the notion that you can command me. Nobody commands Jorge Espeñosa. Comprende?”

  Espeñosa exhaled another large puff of smoke, bringing his feet off the table and leaning forward. "And I don't like the inflated price you’re charging for the formula. It cuts into my profits."

  At a nod from the cartel boss, the bodyguard moved around the table, taking up a position just behind and to the left of Dr. Stephenson.

  "It's bad for business. I'm sure you understand that." Espeñosa rolled the end of the cigar over his tongue, savoring the rich taste of the Cuban leaf. "So, from now on, I’m going to set the price. All I have to do is let word of our arrangement leak out and your government would kill you for me. Don't forget whose cajones are in the vice."

  Dr. Stephenson's face showed no sign of emotion.

  Suddenly, the bodyguard screamed, a sound that brought Espeñosa to his feet and sent Dr. Frell scrambling back into the far corner.

  The bodyguard staggered forward, falling to his knees as his fingers clawed at his face, his fingernails ripping out large chunks of flesh. As the man looked up at his boss, his brown eyes exploded like grapes squeezed in a press, squirting out of their sockets in twin jets that splattered the front of the drug lord's shirt.

  "Madre de Dios!" Espeñosa gasped as he staggered away from the dying man.

  The bodyguard screamed again, a sound that degenerated into a gargle as his bones dissolved beneath his skin. Within seconds, the only thing that remained of what had once been a human being was a stinking, wet mess on the beautiful hardwood floor.

  Both Dr. Frell and Jorge Esteban Espeñosa remained frozen in place, unable to speak, their backs pressed firmly against the bookcase.

  Dr. Stephenson stepped forward, his eyes locking with Espeñosa’s.

  "I don't think I will be accepting your terms."

  As he turned and began to walk from the room, Dr. Stephenson stopped to look back.

  "By the way, if anything unfortunate happens to me or should I become displeased, then you have just seen a glimpse of your future. But your death will take considerably longer."

  Moving out into the grand foyer, Dr. Stephenson paused momentarily, his eyes studying the spiral staircase, as if for the first time.

  It really was a thing of beauty.

  67

  There were worse places than North Dakota. At least Darnell Freeman imagined that there must be. As much as he hated the FBI office to which he had been assigned after the Los Alamos debacle, the idea that somebody out there must have an even worse assignment gave him some sense of solace. Someday he'd have to check the directory to see just what those worse places were. The only reason he hadn't done it already was the lurking fear that he wouldn't find any.

  Freeman drove his car up his driveway and parked under the carport. He stepped out into the wave of summer heat. Shit. Who would have imagined that it could get so hot this far north? Even the sun sinking behind the western horizon, bathing the sky in red, had not yet yielded any relief. No doubt six months from now he would look back longingly on this heat wave, but right now it sucked.

  Freeman found the house key, wiggling it around in the old door lock until the dead bolt finally turned. Another thing he was going to have to fix. By the time he had closed the door and made his way into the living room, Freeman had already removed his sweat-dampened shirt, tossing it over the back of the La-Z-Boy as he flipped on the television. Walking into the kitchen, he opened the old
Maytag refrigerator, filled a glass with unsweetened iced tea, then turned back toward the living room and his beloved recliner.

  The knife slid into his stomach as he turned. The shock of pain curled him into a fetal ball as the glass fell from his fingers to shatter on the kitchen floor.

  A powerful hand arrested his fall, gripping Freeman by the throat and slamming him back against the wall. Too weak with shock to struggle, pinned by the knife twisting in his gut and by the hand at his throat, Freeman's vision narrowed. Into that straw's eye view a vaguely familiar face swam toward him. As the last of his consciousness faded, Darnell Freeman suddenly recognized it. The face of Satan, welcoming him into hell.

  Releasing his grip, the dark figure let the rapidly dying FBI man slip to the floor, then bent over him to draw something in magic marker on Freeman's forehead. Straightening up once again, the killer paused for just a moment. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, the shadowy figure was gone.

  Propped up against the kitchen wall, Darnell Freeman sat in a pool of iced tea and blood, his lifeless eyes locked in terror. Scrawled in red on his forehead were two words.

  Raymond Bronson.

  68

  Vice President Gordon’s eyes opened at the soft knock at his bedroom door. Slipping silently from bed to avoid waking his wife, the vice president donned his bathrobe and opened the door. Sam Tally, the chief of his personal secret service detail, awaited, his square jaw clenched tighter than normal.

  In a voice that carried only to the vice president’s ears, the secret service agent spoke. “Mr. Vice President. The director of the FBI has been found murdered in his home.”

  “I understand,” Vice President Gordon said, instantly assuming the commanding demeanor for which he was famous. Closing the bedroom door behind him, he nodded his head toward his personal office. “Let’s take this conversation down the hall.”

  “Is there any connection to the hit on the FBI agent in North Dakota last week?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet, Mr. Vice President, but the MO looks the same.” Tally’s voice held an unusual edge.

  “How so, Sam?”

  “You remember that there was a name written on Agent Freeman’s head out in North Dakota?”

  “Raymond Bronson.”

  “Right. It was the name of one of the dead members of Jack Gregory’s team. Tonight, when they found the FBI director’s body, there was another name written on his forehead in red. Bobby Daniels.”

  “Another of Gregory’s boys?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I just can’t believe Bill Hammond is dead.”

  “It gets worse. Both special agents assigned to ensure his protection were found dead outside the house. I’m afraid that Mrs. Hammond is dead too.”

  “Marjorie? Jesus Christ.”

  “She must have stumbled on the killer as he exited the house. He cut her throat so violently her head almost came off. The house was a god-awful mess. The president wants you at the White House ASAP. He’s gathering the whole cabinet for an emergency meeting.”

  “My driver?”

  “He and the rest of your security team are already waiting outside.”

  “Okay, Sam. Let the president’s people know, I’ll be on my way as soon as I throw on some clothes.”

  The secret service man nodded, then turned and exited the room. Vice President Gordon waited until he was gone, then turned and picked up the encrypted Secure Telephone Unit, more commonly called a STU.

  The STU secured call was answered by an odd-sounding voice, the slight delay and echo indicative of the heavy encryption on the line.

  “Yes?”

  The vice president spoke softly. “Is the cigar ready?”

  “The Columbian, just as you requested.”

  Vice President Gordon paused for just an instant, the code words that would change his life forever rising to his lips of their own accord.

  “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

  69

  Surrounded by the machinery that filled this part of the ship, Raul hung in the air, suspended by the stasis field, which now responded to his mental commands as easily as his missing legs once had. His connection to the Rho Ship was better now, evolving in a way that changed with each of his repairs to the damaged shipboard systems. With each of the micro-power cells he managed to bring online, his abilities increased. Not his mental abilities; those were tied solely to the neural network that formed the starship’s computerized brain.

  But each power increase allowed Raul to bring new systems online, giving him better control of the gravitational worm fiber technology with which he had been experimenting. Initially, the worm fibers had provided a tiny point of access to a distant location, so small that he could only tap into existing communication networks. The power required for even those tiny space-time singularities was monstrous, each attempt bringing him close to draining his shipboard reserves. If he totally drained the power, then the neural network would fail, leaving him without the knowledge to repair the system.

  That danger should have been enough to stop him from trying anything else until he had totally solved the power problem. But a stronger impulse consumed him: Heather.

  In his darkest moment of despair, while he had briefly been disconnected from his starship, one thought had saved him, giving him a reason to reconnect. A new purpose seized his mind, a purpose that drove him to restore much more of the ship’s former glory.

  At this point, Raul didn’t even have a good plan of how he was going to accomplish what he wanted. He wasn’t worried though. He would figure it out. Somehow, Raul would get Heather to come to him. Then he would introduce her to the power that came from a true connection. He would perform the operation himself so there would be no need to sacrifice those lovely legs.

  Raul glanced down at his own legless torso. It wasn’t so bad. He still had all the necessary equipment to slide between those legs. Then Heather would find out just how well he could manipulate the spectral fingers of the stasis field. It was a shame he hadn’t yet had any sexual experience to draw upon, but there would be plenty of time for practice when he had his soul mate. Once he hooked her into the ship, he would be able to monitor exactly what felt good and what didn’t. Raul took a deep breath. He’d have Heather begging for more before she knew what was happening.

  Noticing his rising heart rate, Raul turned his attention back to the task at hand. He could daydream later.

  With the new matter conversion cell operational, he’d been able to recharge the ship’s energy storage units. With that reserve power added to what was produced by the two operational matter conversion cells there should be enough to create a larger worm fiber, one that could serve as an optical pinhole. Maintaining the worm fiber viewer for several minutes should be possible.

  The problem was that Raul didn’t have enough power to do that and to completely mask the external effects such a worm fiber would produce. The best he could do was to reduce the gravitational signature to a minimum.

  Raul reached out with his mind, his neural network bringing the power cells up to maximum as he began the worm fiber generation sequence. A tiny gravitational wave pulsed outward as the singularity came into existence, its extraordinary potential well contained by the alien technology that brought it into being. It hung there in front of him, so tiny that no human eye could see it, no broader in diameter than a molecule, a place where here and there touched.

  No longer aware of his own body, Raul’s mind manipulated the massive computing power of his neural network, viewing and correcting for the changes in the singularity so that it stabilized despite nature’s best efforts to destroy the microscopic abomination.

  Raul shifted the controlling fields, drawing much more heavily on the power available to the system. Once again a gravitational pulse swept outward, this one larger than the last, possibly even detectable by Dr. Stephenson’s instruments. The worm fiber bulged, quickly expanding to the size of a visible pinpoint as Raul fough
t to reestablish control, something that required him to divert all available computational resources to the task. For several seconds the outcome of his efforts remained in doubt; then, as if it had just given up the fight, the new, larger worm fiber stabilized.

  Without hesitation, Raul focused on the pinhole, changing the visible zoom level until he could see through it to the far side. It was a perfect peephole, one side of which was here in the ship while the other side was wherever he chose. Raul recognized the outside of the building that housed Rho Division, but he did not have time to linger. Shifting the containment equations slightly, Raul experimented on moving the far end of the worm fiber. The first shift took him too far, the dense evergreen forest outside producing a momentary disorientation as he recalculated his position. British Colombia.

  Three more jumps provided the necessary calibration of his equipment. Raul shifted the fiber back to central Los Alamos, moving it along rapidly now. The view froze on a familiar house, the windows now broken out by vandals, the flowers that had once graced the window boxes long since dead.

  A momentary pang of remorse surged through Raul’s mind at the thought of his dead father. Where was his mother? As Raul lingered, a sudden awareness of his rapidly dwindling power supply caused him to reassert self-control, once more moving the viewer along the highway at a speed no car could match. Reaching White Rock, Raul positioned the worm fiber outside another familiar house. It passed through the front door as if it had no more substance than a dream.

  The living room was empty, as was the kitchen. A peek into the garage revealed that the family van was missing. So Heather must be out with her mom and dad. A wave of disappointment assaulted Raul, but he refused to allow it to slow him. Moving the viewer upstairs, he once again passed through a door, this time into Heather’s bedroom.