When I rounded the corner into the main area of the Weapons lab, relief buoyed my heart. Chow was standing at a counter working on some unidentifiable device, and his wheelchair was nowhere in sight.
“Nice legs!” I sang out, then winced as The Monks chanted the rest of the title in my memory.
Chow was obviously familiar with the song. “Yeah, shame about my face,” he growled, glowering at me from under his remaining eyebrow. “Bite me, Kelly.”
“I didn’t mean…” I began hurriedly, but his scowl dissolved into a wicked smirk.
“Forget it, I’m just yanking your crank. What can I do-you-for?”
“Well, you’d have to start with a really nice dinner…” I joked, grinning.
“You’d do me for a nice dinner? You’re such a cheap slut.”
“I said ‘start with a nice dinner’,” I reminded him. “There’s a list of requirements.”
He threw up his hands in mock disgust. “Women. Greedy beeyotches, all of you.”
I held up my thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together. “Look, it’s the world’s tiniest violin, and it’s playing just for you.”
“Bite me, Kelly.”
“Aaaaand we’re back where we started.” We grinned at each other before I sobered and added, “Can I ask you some dumb questions?”
“Well, that’s your first one down,” he deadpanned. “Next?”
“Have you got any handy-dandy secret weapons that will take a car off the road?”
His brow drew down. “Armoured car or standard production model?”
“Standard.”
“What range?” When I gave him a questioning look he clarified, “Visual range? A few miles away? Or do you need a satellite targeting system that’ll pick them off from the other side of the globe?”
“You can do that?”
He made an impatient ‘of course’ gesture, and I shook off my slightly queasy incredulity and focused on the issue at hand. “Just visual range. I’ve got somebody following me and I want to get them off my tail. If we were in Calgary I might be able to do it with some fancy driving, but it’s a little tricky when we’re out on the bald prairie and we can see each other for miles.”
“You want to use it on the fly, or set up a fixed weapon for an ambush?”
“On the fly. If I’m being followed inside visual range, I wouldn’t be able to set up an ambush.”
“Fatal or non-fatal?”
I considered that for a moment. “Non-fatal, I guess. I’d rather be subtle. So, sorry; but throwing a giant fireball from the rear of my car is out.”
Chow made a resigned gesture. “Damn. ‘Cause I’ve got this trunk-mounted flamethrower I’ve been just dying to test in the field.”
My jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“No, you dumb shit, I’m just fucking with you! What the hell use would we have for a flame-throwing car? We’re covert ops. Covert. As in ‘don’t attract attention’.”
I flipped him the finger. “That’s what I just said. So have you got anything?”
“Couple of things that might work. If they’re driving right behind you, I’ve got a laser that would temporarily blind them and make them drive off the road. But if they actually have a brain and they’re tailing you a few cars back, you wouldn’t be able to use it without taking out all the drivers in between. If you’ve got a passenger-”
“I don’t,” I interrupted.
“Hm. Too bad. If you’re driving you can’t aim at the same time, and if you trigger something generalized it’ll wipe out everybody in the vicinity including non-combatant drivers. Can you sneak up on them and disable their car?”
“Maybe… but I was hoping for an easier option. If they left the car I could easily disable it, but I can’t see them wandering off so I can do that.” I shrugged unhappily. “And if I was going to sneak up on them anyway, I might as well just shoot the driver and solve the whole problem. But that’s loud and messy and it attracts too much attention.” I gave him a hopeful look. “That ultrasound weapon would be perfect. Silent and unobtrusive.”
He snorted. “No way. It’s our only prototype. And we don’t know what might happen if there was a laminated glass barrier between it and the target. Somehow I can’t see you strolling over and asking them to roll their window down so you can liquefy their brains.”
“Huh. No.” I slumped against the counter. “Shit. So I’m out of luck.”
“I didn’t say that.” He crooked a finger, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “I’ve got a little toy you might like. Come on over here.” I trailed him eagerly to one of the lab doors, and he shook his head and leaned down for the retinal scan. “Christ, you’re easy. How many times have you fallen for that line? Come on over here and look at my toy, little girl.”
As the door swished open, I batted my eyes at him. “Oh, but I feel perfectly safe with you.”
He groaned. “Ballbuster.”
I followed him across the lab and watched with anticipation while he took a flashlight out of a drawer and laid it on the counter, then extracted what looked like an ordinary taper candle and pressed it into a holder. Just in case the lights were about to go out, I shot a glance around the small room to orient myself and rested my hand on the pocket of my waist pouch that held my tiny LED flashlight.
The lights didn’t go out.
Chow leaned an elbow on the counter, watching me with his one-sided smirk. “What do you think?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Where’s the weapon?”
I approached the counter cautiously, examining the flashlight and candle without touching them.
“I’m guessing it’s the flashlight,” I said, fully expecting him to guffaw and magically transform the candle into some kind of guided missile.
“Good guess,” he said instead, and picked up the flashlight, flicking the switch on. He let the beam track across the candle and the wall behind it while I held my breath, wondering what was about to happen.
Chow shot me a grin and shone the light on the candle, then thumbed the switch again. Less than two seconds later the middle of the candle disintegrated in a cascade of melted wax. The top flopped over to dangle by the merrily-burning wick for a moment before the wick burned through and dropped the top half of the candle to the counter.
“Oops,” Chow said, and blew out the flames before reaching over to rub at a one-inch round scorch mark on the wall behind it. “That burst was a little too long.”
“What the hell is that thing?” I demanded.
“A flashlight.” He shone the light across the wall again and I flinched involuntarily. He grinned. “And an infrared laser.”
“You mean… holy shit, you mean like they use in spy movies to cut through steel doors?”
“It’s not a cutting laser. That’d be too dangerous. Steel is reflective to infrared.” Chow snorted. “If they tried that in real life they’d probably cut their own damn hands off.”
I backed away. “Is, um… does glass reflect it, too, or would it go through and burn something on the other side of the glass?”
“Depends on the glass, but usually it’d go straight through.”
“Usually?” I eased a little farther away. “So exactly how and why would I use that thing?”
“Don’t be such a pussy.” He hefted the flashlight cheerfully and I managed to dampen my flinch down to a small twitch. He shook his head reprovingly. “I told you, it’s not a cutting laser. If it was, that single burst would have wrecked several lab walls, a bunch of very expensive equipment, and probably a couple of people. Watch and learn.”
He shone the flashlight’s beam on the candle again, then thumbed the control. As the candle melted into a flaming puddle and the wall behind it discoloured with an unpleasant smell of singed paint, he passed his pincer-hand in front of the laser.
I gasped and lunged toward him, but he had already clicked the switch off.
“Fuck! Jesus…” I seized his wrist to examine his hand, bracing myself for the blackened skin and nauseating stench of burned flesh…
“Oh… Christ…” I sagged against the counter, his wrist still clenched in my trembling hand while I gasped out my adrenaline overdose. “Christ almighty. I’m going to kill you! As soon as I can walk again, I’m going to fucking kill you, you son of a bitch!”
“Sorry.” He tugged gently against my deathgrip on his wrist. “Hey. Kelly. You can let go now.”
“Asshole,” I growled, and managed to persuade my fingers to loosen.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” There was no taunt in his voice and the undamaged side of his face showed concern. “I didn’t mean to trigger you. What happened there?”
“Nothing.” I swallowed and drew a deep breath, trying to calm my hammering heart.
“Bullshit. You had a flashback. Believe me, I know what they look like. So let’s try this again. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I repeated. “I just thought you were going to get burned.”
Burned. Again. My stomach clenched at the thought of his scarred flesh bubbling and melting.
“So you’ve got some trauma with burns?” Chow inquired gently.
The sympathy in his fire-ravaged face shamed me.
“It’s nothing,” I muttered. “Like you said, I’m a fucking pussy. So you were just proving that it won’t burn a hole in you if you get in the way, right?”
“Right. If you held your hand in front of it for more than a fraction of a second you’d be in trouble, but it’s not going to reflect off something and instantly burn a hole in you. You’d feel it and have time to turn off the beam before you got a serious burn.”
“Good to know. So what would I use it for? If it’ll reflect off glass and steel, it’s not much good for disabling a car, is it? And…” My throat closed and I fought my voice back to normal. “I’d never use it on a person. Never. That’s just fucking sick.”
“Tires, Kelly. It’ll blow out a tire in less than five seconds. And you could still safely burn through a steel body panel. With this large a beam diameter, just about any surface has enough imperfections to harmlessly disperse the reflection. And remember, you’ll have time to turn it off if anything goes wrong.”
“Okay.” I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thanks. So what’s its range?”
He shrugged. “Line of sight. Heat distortions and particulate in the air will disperse the beam over distance, but on a clear day it’d easily work over a mile. So was that a flashback from your plane crash? Or something else?”
Dammit, he wasn’t going to let it go.
Okay. Just spit it out.
I straightened my spine. “Both. The young guy who was killed with the ultrasonic weapon… he… burned. During the crash. He was already dead but I thought…” I swallowed. “It doesn’t matter. And one time a guy held a butane torch on me a little too long, but it was just a tiny burn. You can hardly see the scar anymore.”
“If somebody’s holding a butane torch on you, any amount of time is too fucking long,” Chow said quietly.
I couldn’t look him in the eye so I studied my toes. “It wasn’t that big a deal. I just freaked out because…”
I almost said ‘I couldn’t bear to think of your poor hand getting burned again’, but stopped myself in time. He’d be enraged if he thought I was pitying him.
“Anyway, I’m over it,” I said determinedly. “I hadn’t even thought of it in months.”
“Yeah, that’s the bitch about flashbacks.” He grimaced. “They hit when you least expect them. So if I hand you this flashlight are you going to be okay?”
I squared my shoulders. “Of course. Just tell me how it works first.”
“Here’s the regular button that controls the visible light beam.” He indicated the ordinary-looking flashlight switch and pushed it forward. “You can use this light as your targeting system, or if you want a laser targeting system with longer range…”
He toggled the switch backward and a small red dot appeared on the wall. “It’s just a laser sight. No burning or cutting.”
“Okay.”
“If you want to activate the laser, you have to simultaneously press and hold the main switch down and back while you depress this panel.” He turned the flashlight over and showed me a long narrow panel on the underside. “It’s designed to fit your fingertips so it’s pretty well impossible to activate the beam accidentally. If you just use the main switch without depressing the panel, nothing will happen. Oh, and this…”
He flipped down a cap on the back end of the flashlight and indicated a button. “This is the self-destruct. This isn’t highly-classified technology but if somebody’s about to take it away from you, press this button to fry everything inside. Don’t try to hang onto it after you hit the self-destruct or it’ll burn you.”
“Okay.” I held out my hand gingerly. “I’ll give it a try. Where do you want your next scorch mark?”
He grinned and flipped the self-destruct cap closed before placing the flashlight in my palm. “How about right next to that other one?”
“Sounds good to me.” I toggled the switch forward to test the flashlight beam, then backward to get the laser dot. Then I sucked in a long slow breath and activated the laser. As the paint darkened, I clenched my teeth and whisked my hand through the beam.
Chow made a sudden move beside me, but I had already released the switch and lowered the flashlight, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Okay?” he asked cautiously.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my tingling palm against my jeans. “No worse than running your finger through a candle flame. We used to do that all the time when we were kids. We thought we were such hot shit.”
Chow laughed. “You’re still hot shit. Go toast some tires.”