CHAPTER 91
“WELL, THAT WAS FUN,” Jeff said as “It’s Not Over” by Daughtry came on my airwaves. “You get to explain what just went on to your mother.”
“No problem. Well, in the grand scheme of things, not compared to figuring out what the Close Encounter Doomsday Plan actually is.”
Looked around the lab. There had to be something, something here, that would be the trigger, or Cliff wouldn’t have thought this plan would still activate.
“I believe we can use the machine to, ah, clean up,” Wruck said as he joined us, once again looking as I was used to.
“We’ll need to plug it back in, but yeah, that’s a good idea. It’s not the same, killing a clone versus the real deal, is it?” Frankly, I felt great about it, but I hadn’t spent decades trying to find and neutralize my enemy.
He shook his head. “But it was satisfying. The brain was LaRue’s, albeit warped. She could no longer shift. She tried, I felt it, but she didn’t have the ability.”
“Glad you still do. Okay, um, gang, let’s get the remains into piles for scary dust creating services.”
“Only those with strong stomachs should clear out the other room,” Siler said. Rahmi shrugged and went in there with him.
While the others started dragging the bodies in this room toward the Killer Octopus, stared at the giant lizard. “Seriously, what planet is that from?”
“None I know of,” Wruck said.
“I don’t know it, either,” Mossy shared. “It was almost impossible to kill.”
And the Poofs, which had gone small and disappeared the moment Gadhavi had arrived, hadn’t eaten it. And they were carnivores and tended to eat their kills. If those kills were organic. Normally the Poofs would have done cleanup here, too, but they were avoiding the clones as well.
“It’s not a real thing, whatever it is. It’s created. And, based on it being a giant dino-type thing that could also shift into a pet lizard, I’m going to spitball that it was created and snuck in here by the Z’porrah.”
“Sounds like them,” Mossy said. “And it could also be a new uplift that’s changed the race so much we can’t recognize it.”
“It’s always something. Zap it last, I guess.”
“We could send it to Dulce for study,” Jeff suggested, sounding less than enthusiastic.
“I think that would be wise,” Wruck said. “It could help us prepare for attack.”
Jeff sighed and trotted over to James. They plugged the Killer Octopus back into the wall. I took the time to look around some more. The TV was still showing the Treeship. Spotted the Vatusan ships around it, helicarrier included. They were uncloaked and shining lights on the Treeship and on the water, and they’d probably been doing that for a while, since I’d been able to see the Treeship on TV even though it was night. Well, early morning now.
“We should search for clues while we have time. Along with anything else of value to us.” Some of the others nodded and wandered off, presumably to do just that.
Siler came out of the other room and went over to Jeff and Reader. “Let’s see if we can move that in here.”
Jeff didn’t argue—knew he was reading Siler’s emotions even if he was protected from them. Instead the two of them, helped by White and Christopher, all shoved the Killer Octopus toward the doorway between the two rooms. It had a long cord, so they were able to leave it plugged in.
Chuckie squared his shoulders and went into the room before the machine was in place. Heaved a sigh and went after him. You didn’t let your best friend see something like this alone.
There was nothing to see, though, because Rahmi and Siler had the bodies piled up and under a tarp. Well, there was still a lot of fluid that didn’t look quite like real blood around. Figured this would be similar to the blood Tito had taken from the Casey Clone and actively avoided stepping in it.
Otherwise, this was a combination cloning nursery, exercise area, and mess hall, all in one. Had to hand it to Cliff—he’d made do with limited space. No TV in here, no books, no radio, no art. To call it Spartan would have been overstating the décor.
“Trust me,” Rahmi said, putting her hand on Chuckie’s shoulder as he bent to lift the tarp. “You don’t need to see it.”
“Were any of them . . . me?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Siler said, as the Killer Octopus moved into place. “Leave it at that.”
Chuckie nodded and stood up.
“Chuck, let’s see if this thing is easy to handle or not,” Jeff said gently.
Told Chuckie what I’d seen Cliff doing when he’d fiddled with the knobs, and Chuckie examined the machine before he did anything. “You and Rahmi should get out of the way,” he said. “I have no idea how hard this is to control—Cliff being in a wheelchair gave him a different center of gravity.”
Rahmi pointed. “We’ll go search these other areas.” There were indeed a few small rooms off of this one, which we trotted over to.
One was a bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, though it wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen, seeing as I’d visited some bad ones in my time with Centaurion Division. Searched it as carefully as possible, including and especially for a gate, found nothing but gross, and finished just as the lights went out.
Waited out of range while Chuckie zapped the tarp and what it was hiding for a good long while. Finally, he stopped, the lights came back on, and we could see quite a large pile of dust on the floor in front of him.
There were two more small rooms, one of which was a walk-in closet with a lot of white suits along with other things, including clothes for kids. Chose not to think about it. Instead, we searched all the clothing, but found nothing of interest.
The last room contained cleaning supplies, which, considering the state of the bathroom, was a shock. Nothing relevant in here, either.
Moving the Killer Octopus back was harder than moving it to the doorway, because the four A-Cs were on the pull versus the push side. Rahmi and I helped Chuckie shove—after making sure the nozzle was in the off position—and we got the thing moved enough that Jeff and the others could get on our side and push it the rest of the way.
“Some genius,” I said to Chuckie as he, Rahmi, and I caught our breath. “Who doesn’t put wheels on a thing like that?”
He barked a laugh, then joined the other men to get ready to zap again. “I don’t think we want to do as many at a time from now on. Just in case.”
Rahmi and I went back in and searched the rest of the other room. “Not much here,” she said when we were done. “I don’t understand it. Based on what Adriana and her team found, I’d expected to find much more here.”
“I think he kept more at the Burj Khalifa because it was safer, in that sense.”
“Perhaps.” Rahmi didn’t sound convinced.
“Perhaps we’ll never know.”
She nodded. “Or perhaps we’ll discover that Cliff had a more secure area we just haven’t found yet.”
We went back out and checked on the Treeship’s progress. It was closer to the water.
Noted that we were missing most of the team, but they returned just as I was so noting. “Couldn’t find anything outside,” Buchanan said, sounding frustrated. “If he planned to launch something from this island, it’s hidden beyond what any of us can discover.”
Checked Mr. Watch. Somehow, despite feeling that we’d only been on this island for a few minutes, all of this had taken a hefty chunk of time—we were getting close to dawn. And we hadn’t found a single thing that would tell any of us what the Close Encounter Doomsday Plan was.
Turned away from the TV and looked behind me. There was a whole bank of extremely old-fashioned computers on the wall opposite the one Jeff and the others had been strapped against. Several chairs had gotten toppled during the fighting, but the computer system appeared to be running.
The next, lesser pile of bodies from the many we had in this room was tested, with Chuckie again at the controls. While the Killer Octopus zapped a bunch of Reid clones and the dismembered portions of LaRue, we again lost the lights and the TV while the backup lights came on again this time. But the computer system didn’t stop. Meaning it was on the main system and the backup generator both.
“Chuckie, let someone else have a turn with the new toy. I need you over here. And, seriously, dudes, we need to get the giant dead lizard over to Dulce before it starts to smell.”
Reader took over Nozzle Control, Jeff manned the plug just in case, while Tim called for Rexie transport and Chuckie came to me. “What are you thinking?”
“That whatever the Close Encounter Plan is, it’s tied to this ancient computer.”
Wruck, Mossy, Chuckie, and I all stepped closer. Chuckie examined everything. “There’s a timer. It shows seventeen minutes.” As we look at what he was pointing to, the timer flipped to sixteen minutes.
The power came back on. Looked over my shoulder to see how the team was planning to move the Long Armed Rexie corpse in order to send it through a floater gate, when the TV came back on at the same time as my music changed to “Blues Before And After” by The Smithereens. The Treeship looked close enough to the water that I had to figure it was going to land in the next few minutes.
“When is dawn here?” I shouted to the room at large, as the next pile of dead bodies got zapped and we lost all power to everything other than the creepy lights and this computer system. “As in, is it within fifteen minutes?”
“Yes,” Kozlow replied. “Almost exactly.”
“Crap.”