The New Plan
Sheppard and Keel got the body bag out of the car, Liz’s condor head protruding from it. She was still breathing but so deeply asleep that her head lolled from side to side. He noticed how Keel stared at her, undoubtedly fascinated by this biological aberration.
“Shep, when she’s human do you think she still retains the senses of a condor? Is her consciousness split in two? Is her awareness as a human connected to the condor consciousness?”
“Beats me, Frank. That’s more your area than mine. But it seems to me there would have to be some connection between the two.”
Gutierrez hurried along in front of them, unlocked the rear door, locked it behind them, flicked on the lights and unlocked the cell block door. The lights in the block were dim and Gutierrez left them that way. Hull and Eden heard them—but couldn’t see them yet—and Hull shouted, “We demand to call our attorneys!”
“Got something better than that for you, Rudy,” Keel called out.
“And it’s going in a cell close to yours,” Gutierrez added.
Sheppard and Keel stopped between Hull and Eden’s cells. Hull took one look at Liz in the body bag and drew back. “Jesus,” he hissed. “What…”
“The shape shifter didn’t quite complete her shift,” Sheppard said.
Eden looked like she might puke. “She’s… grotesque.”
“Hardly an AI,” Keel remarked.
Gutierrez unlocked the cell two down from Hull’s. “Unless AIs can shape-shift.”
They carried Liz into the cell and set her on the cot, still in the body bag. Sheppard felt almost sorry for her. “Let’s leave her in the body bag. It’ll keep her busy when she comes to.”
Keel nodded. “Good idea.”
“What’d you give her?” Hull asked.
“Morphine,” Sheppard replied.
“If you could bring me my bag, my equipment’s inside,” Eden said. “I’d like to see if…”
Keel laughed. “Yeah, yeah. The EMF. Nope.”
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Gutierrez said. “You two can interview her when she comes to.”
“Can she… do you think she can break through the bars?” Eden asked.
“In that state, she’ll be lucky if she gets out of the body bag,” Sheppard replied.
The three of them hurried out of the cell, Gutierrez locked it and they started back up the cell block.
“Hey,” Eden shouted. “Hold on, just hold on. What the fuck are we supposed to do when she comes to?”
Sheppard and Keel paused between Liz’s cell and Eden’s. She and Hull both looked near panic and Sheppard felt a smug satisfaction. Hull was the man, after all, who had talked about annihilating Tango Key before Mira and Rincon had been found. Before he could say anything, Keel jumped in with a remark. “If she comes to, my recommendation is that you hide. Anywhere you can.”
As they left the cell block, Hull’s shouts echoed behind them.
2
“Hal, c’mon, wake up.”
Red’s voice, Red shaking him.
Hal knew he’d lost consciousness, but had no idea for how long. Even as he lay there on the floor, wiping at the soup smeared all over his face, a breeze touched him. It meant the apartment door was open, the hostages had escaped.
He rolled onto his side, stumbled to the sink. He slammed his hand against the faucet and splashed water on his face, clearing his eyes of the goddamn soup, gulping from the stream of cool water that gushed from the faucet. When he finally felt almost normal again, he turned.
Red and Trixie stood there, both of them breathing hard, staring at him. The hallway door had been ripped off its hinges and lay in the other room. Nico paced and held a wad of paper towels to his bleeding temple. Squirt, sprawled on the floor in a pool of soup, whined, “My neck aches, Cam did something to my neck, maybe it’s broken, maybe…”
“You’re fine, Squirt,” snapped Red. “Stop your whining. What’s not fine is that our hostages got away—again—and Cam went with them—again. That lying traitor. You believed what he claimed, Hal, that Mira and the doctor drugged him, forced him to leave with them. And Liz hasn’t returned. So we need to find Liz and get the hell off this island.”
“And we need to go now.” Nico sounded shaken. “I’ll shroud the car. Can you walk, Squirt?”
“Yeah.” He pushed up on his elbows and swiped at the noodles and bits of chicken stuck on his clothes. “Yeah, I think so. But shit, I smell like chicken soup.” He snapped his fingers and half of a ragged Frisbee appeared in his hand. “Almost back to normal.”
“We need the hostages,” Hal said. “Once we get off the island, they can help orient us, show us around…”
“For fuck’s sake, Hal,” Trixie burst out. “You’re talking like we’re morons. You want to look for them, fine, go ahead. But we’re going to fetch Liz and get outta here. We’ll be gone when you get back.”
“Wait, hold on, just hold on.” Nico patted the air with his skinny white hands and still clutched the bloody paper towel he’d been holding to his head. “Hal, I think it’s more important to look for one of our own. Maybe Liz got into trouble. Maybe she’s injured, maybe…”
The thought of Liz injured, incapable of getting to them, filled Hal with unimagined horror. What had possessed him to put her second? “Liz first. And from there, we go to the dock and seize the goddamn ferry.”
“Can you shroud an entire ferry, Nico?” Squirt asked.
“A car I can do, but I don’t know about something as large as that ferry.”
“So if you can’t shroud a ferry and it leaves before its scheduled time, they’ll know it’s us and may bomb it or something,” Squirt said.
Hal hadn’t thought of that, but now that Squirt had brought it up, he admitted it was a distinct possibility. “Then we have a couple of other options. There are speedboats in the Tango marina. A speedboat is about as large as that SUV you shrouded, Nico, so we steal one, get to Key West, take the first car we see.”
Nico nodded enthusiastically, poked his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose. “I like this idea much better. I can definitely do a speedboat and all of us.”
“There weren’t any boat simulators in the dome,” Squirt said. “So who’s going to drive this boat?
“I am,” Hal replied. “I’m going to drive, I’ve done it before. We used to vacation at this place in the south of the dome for government employees. There was a lake, boats…” I sort of learned to swim there. Or, more accurately, he sort of learned to float.
“Then let’s do it,” Red said.
He looked around the kitchen at the mess they’d made, the door torn from its hinges, soup splattered everywhere, their packs in a heap against the wall on either side of the pantry. “Grab your packs, bottles of water, snacks, then we’re outta here.”
His cell dinged, Hal glanced at the screen. A message appeared that the Gazette had published an emergency update. Hal clicked it:
Update: Captured Crow
There have been several important developments:
The last ferry for evacuation has been cancelled due to mechanical problems. If you’re still on the island, stay sheltered.
One of the Crows has been captured by police and is being held in a secure location. The police are open to negotiating for the Crow’s release. If interested, please contact me at my email address: jonoh@gmail.com
Stay tuned for further developments.
At the end of the update was a horrifying photo of Liz, most of her wrapped up in a body bag, her condor head visible. Hal stared at the picture, his heart breaking. Captured. He blurted, “Jon’s latest post went up. They’ve got Liz.”
The stunned silence broke with the soft tapping at their phones. “Fuckers,” Trixie spat.
Red gasped. “My God, they got her as she was shifting.”
“Now we know why she didn’t come back,” Nico said.
Squirt looked deeply shaken. “What location would these twenty-firsters consider safe?”
“Probably a locked room,” Hal replied.
Nico glanced up from his phone. “How’re you going to negotiate, Hal? We don’t have anything to negotiate with. No hostages.”
“They don’t know that,” Hal said.
Trixie brightened up. “Good point.”
Hal didn’t doubt they had Liz. The photo proved it. But even if there hadn’t been a photo, it was the only thing that explained why she hadn’t returned. However, since they believed he had both Mira and the doc, he might be in the stronger position to set the terms for the exchange. In addition to getting Liz back, he intended to ask for guaranteed safe passage off the island—on the ferry. He didn’t buy the bullshit that the last ferry out had developed mechanical problems.
But if they got safe passage out of Florida, where would they go?
Miami might be okay, but farther north would be preferable. How far north? Inland mountains would be safest. He remembered reading about the Blue Ridge mountains, more than 6,000 feet in altitude, high enough to keep out the rising seas. But the Rockies were even better. They stretched for 3,000 miles, protecting parts of the states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Their highest point was 12,183 feet above sea level. He seemed to remember most of what he’d read. Facts, figures, science. It was possible to drive there and if Nico couldn’t hold the shroud indefinitely throughout the trip, they could stop frequently. Pull into campsites. Sleep in the car.
Drawbacks?
The distance. And if he remembered the history correctly, at some point in the near future, a series of quakes would destroy the Rockies. Also, what they all needed now was a place to call home, at least for several months. A closer refuge would be best.
Adirondacks? Appalachians? Maybe the latter. The southern end of the Appalachians ran into Alabama, much closer to Florida than the Rockies. But was Alabama one of the places that would flood when the Mississippi River overflowed its banks? He couldn’t remember. He had read so much over the years, studied so many different sources, that it was all jumbled and mixed up now.
The holes in his memories aside, events had to be set in motion before they reached the point of finding a place to live.
“What’re you going to say?” Nico asked.
Red flicked her hair off her shoulders and leaned back against the sink, arms folded at her waist. “And where should the exchange take place?”
“Do they bring Liz to the exchange place?” Trixie asked. “How’s this going to work exactly?”
“I don’t know yet. I need to think things through.”
“Fuck thinking it through,” Nico said. “The plan will change. Just tell them you’re open to negotiating and see what they say.”
Hal thought about Liz, held captive somewhere, probably restrained and drugged, separated from him and the other Crows, and knew she was terrified. She was his responsibility in ways the others were not. He loved her like a daughter and she always had been loyal to him.
When he had first proposed fleeing the dome and seizing an idyllic island in the twenty-first century, she had been the first Crow to embrace the idea. When he’d asked for volunteers to lay the groundwork for their invasion—to find Mira and O’Hara, to destroy the bridge—Liz had been the first to volunteer. He’d told her she didn’t qualify because she wasn’t a Lethal, so she’d offered to have explosives strapped to her body and sacrifice herself.
His email to O’Hara consisted of one word: yes.
“We’ll see what they say. In the meantime, I don’t want to put any of you at more risk than you already are. I think you should leave, take the shrouded speedboat like we talked about, and once I’ve got Liz, we’ll meet you in Key West. You’ve got your phones, we can keep in touch that way. You’ll have to steal a car in Key West, but that shouldn’t be difficult for you to pull off.”
“You want us to leave?” Nico exclaimed.
“It’ll be safer for you.”
“But it may not be safer for you,” Squirt argued. “You and Liz won’t be shrouded.”
“We’ll take our chances. It’ll be dark.” He looked at Trixie, at Red. “Ladies?”
“Suits me,” said Trixie.
“Me, too,” echoed Red. “But how’re you and Liz going to get to Key West, Hal?”
“Probably steal a boat. Start gathering up your packs and whatever else you want to take with you and we’ll head to the marina in the shrouded SUV. I’ll make sure you get off the island.”
3
By the time Mira, Rincon and Cam reached the edge of the woods at the rear of the bureau office, the air was so still it felt as if the island itself waited to exhale. The lights back here were on, a Mini-Cooper was parked in the lot. Mira wondered whose car it was.
They darted across the dark lot and paused at the rear door. Mira keyed in the code in the security box, the door swung open. She didn’t hear anything and decided the car had been left here by someone in Sheppard’s group. They hurried inside, she shut the door. Locked it behind them. Rincon and Cam continued to the front of the building and she made a beeline for Sheppard’s office.
The door stood open, she flicked on the light, and went over to the top left desk drawer and opened it. No spare cell, no weapon, too bad. No landline. It had been removed a few years back. Sheppard no longer had a desktop computer in here, either. These days, he carried his iPad Pro everywhere.
Just to be sure, though, she opened all the drawers and in the lowest on the right, found two cells, the latest model iPhones, and a set of car keys. She pocketed the keys and hoped they belonged to the Mini-Cooper in the lot. Mira didn’t recognize the screensavers on either cell phone. One was of a sailboat at sunset. The other featured a pretty blonde in her thirties with her arm slung around the shoulders of a handsome man in a business suit whose smile looked phony.
She pocketed the cell with the sailboat screen saver and touched her finger to the other image and dozens of notifications appeared on the screen. The one that seized her attention read: Gazette: Update, Captured Crow.
She clicked it, but the cell asked for either her retinal scan or the passcode.
Mira hurried into the front room where Cam and Rincon were. Cam suddenly hissed, “I hear something.”
He moved soundlessly toward the cell block, Mira and Rincon behind him.
They moved in close to the steel door and Mira clearly heard a woman shouting, “Hey, get us out of here!”
She tapped the code into the security box, the door clicked, swung open. The woman’s shouts were now interspersed with those of a man. “We have the right to call our attorneys, we have…”
“Just shut the fuck up, Rudy,” the woman snapped. “You…”
“Hey.” Mira trotted through the cell block with Cam and Rincon and stopped in front of the woman’s cell.
She was the blonde in the phone’s screen saver and came right up to the cell door, hands clutching the bars, her expression so furious, her face so flushed, it wouldn’t surprise Mira if she had a heart attack or a stroke before she uttered a word.
“Who the hell…wait, you’re Mira Morales.”
“And you are?” Mira asked.
“Eden. Eden Curry. AI specialist with the DOD.”
“Ian Rincon, county coroner,” Rincon said.
Cam moved closer to the cell. “And I’m Cam, White Crow.”
“What the…” Eden backed away, hands held in front of her as if to fend off an enemy. “A Crow. Really? You? Shit. Fucking shit, Rudy!”
She screamed his name, but he didn’t respond. He was backed up to the far wall two cells down, his face contorted with terror.
Mira moved in front of his cell. “Rudy. You’re Keel’s boss at the DOD, right?”
His hands dropped away for his face. “And you… are you Mira? Sheppard’s wife?”
She bristled at that. She didn’t want her identity connected to anyone else’s. “I own One World Books, Rudy. Hal ripped my store apart.”
He rushed to the door, hands gripping the bars over to the door. “Let me the fuck outta here.”
Before she could respond to Hull, Mira heard Eden stammer, “And you, uh, do what exactly, Cam? I don’t think I’ve seen any videos of your ability.”
“Too bad,” Cam replied.
“He camouflages,” Mira snapped, then looked back at Rudy Hull. “And what do you do, Mr. Hull, that’s so special I should let you outta here?”
“I’m… Director of the Department of Defense’s Bio Warfare Department in Florida and I… I demand that we be released immediately.”
“What’re you and Eden doing in the bureau’s jail?” Rincon asked.
“Agent Sheppard interfered with the chain of command,” Hull replied.
“Unlikely, Mr. Hull.” Mira held up Eden’s cell phone. “What’s the passcode, Ms. Curry?”
“You’re the psychic, you figure it out.”
“Cam?” Mira held out the phone. “Would you do the honor?”
He grinned, took the cell from her. “My pleasure.”
“We’re providing you with the up close and personal version of what Cam can do, Eden,” said Mira.
His appearance shifted rapidly until he looked like an exact duplicate of Eden, right down to the dimples in the corners of her mouth. The real Eden recoiled in shock.
“And why do you want the code to my phone, Mira?” His voice sounded exactly like Eden’s.
“So I can text Shep.”
“It’s my birthdate,” the camouflaged Eden said. “Eleven sixteen eighty-three.”
“Holy mother of God,” the real Eden muttered.
“A Scorpio.” Mira laughed. “Like me. You gotta love it.” Cam passed the cell to Mira and she tapped the numbers into the password area and the phone opened. “Perfect. That worked.”
“Still think I’m an AI, Eden?” Cam asked.
“I… I don’t know what…the hell to think.”
Cam looked disgusted. “You’re a troublemaker and you’ve been sowing discord for a long time.” He resumed his own appearance. “I’m not an AI. I’m just one of the unfortunate fucks who got stranded in the wrong place at the wrong time. You want to make a difference in the world? Then declare climate change as the national emergency it is.”
Eden grabbed onto a bar to steady herself. “Is that thing two cells down the result of climate change, Cam? Huh? Is it?”
“My God, Eden, they’re all the result of climate change,” Mira said. “How can you not get that?” She moved two cells down and there was Liz, snug inside a body bag on a cot, just her condor head showing. “She’s proof of Frank’s theory about rapid evolutionary change. All the Crows are.”
“You’re not a scientist,” Eden snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve seen their evolutionary history in a way that you can’t.”
Cam moved in next to Mira and when he spoke, the authority in his voice was evident. “Liz is one of a kind among us. So is Hal. I think that’s part of the bond between them.”
“Sweet Christ, Rudy.” Eden rubbed her hands over her face. “Do something about this. About them.”
Hull, now perched at the edge of his cot, exploded with hysterical laughter. “What would you like me to do, Eden? Snap my fingers?” He snapped his fingers. “Wave my goddamn wand?” He waved his hand around. “What the hell can I do?”
Mira entered Liz’s cell with Rincon, who proceeded to check her out.
He took Liz’s pulse. “She’s still deeply under.” He unzipped the bag, exposing her in between shapes. “Is this an AI, Eden?” he asked.
She stood at the bars between her and Hull’s cell and stared at Liz.
“Huh? Is it?” Rincon persisted.
“I… I… can’t be sure without my…”
“Yeah, your equipment,” Rincon said. “Bullshit.”
“I need to contact Shep,” Mira said.
“I’m going to stay here for a few minutes and educate the Department of Defense on climate change,” Cam said.
Mira nodded. “Wonderful. They need to hear things from your perspective.”
“I do, too,” Rincon said.
As Mira hurried up the cell block to the front office, she used Eden’s cell phone, navigated to the Gazette site, read O’Hara’s latest update with the photo of Liz. Interesting, she thought, that Hal would try to bargain even though he didn’t have his hostages.
She texted Sheppard. They don’t have us, so don’t negotiate w/them yet. Am w/Ian and Cam, who’s on our side. Luv u
She pressed send. Sheppard responded immediately. WTF. You’re at the bureau office? Eden’s name came up.
Just met them.
U ok?
Am now. Cam, Ian, & I escaped from dolphin center where they were hiding out.
I’ll get a unit up there ASAP.
They’ve probably left. Fuckers killed one of the dolphins.
Christ.
Forward me Hal’s response about negotiation.
Not much to it. Just, Yes.
Have u replied yet?
No. Any insights?
I’ll see what I can pick up.
Mira disconnected and realized she was in the front office and that Ca, and Rincon were on either side of her. They’d read the text exchange. “Dios mio, I don’t get it,” Rincon burst out. “They’re four Lethals against two thousand troops on the island. These Crows don’t have a chance, Mira.”
“C’mon, Ian, you saw what happened at the bookstore. When Keel went up against them, he lost three men in about fifteen seconds. And that’s while gunfire was ongoing. At that rate, it would take about four minutes for them to decimate the National Guard troops. And if they’re fully charged, they can do it without breaking a sweat. We have to do better than that.”
She quickly texted Annie to let her know she was okay and what had happened, but didn’t mention the killing of the dolphin. Annie’s reply was a string of heart emojis and the recording she’d made of the haunting song of the dolphins.
luv you bigger than google.
What Mira wanted to try might be a long shot, but she couldn’t think of any other way to get a handle on Hal’s plan. She entered his cell number in Eden’s contacts, named him H, tapped in a message.