Save Him Page 5

  John Adams took three steps closer to Rydel, grabbed him, and pushed Rydel out the door.

  "We're leaving, Rydel!"

  Deathbed

  After a flight lasting half a day, John and Rydel entered a desert-tan military tent to find Ray waiting, seated at the end of a cot. The tent housed four Marines in the comfortable space. Three cots with mattresses before Ray were empty and neatly made, sheets of gray tucked in tightly at the sides. The only cot disturbed was the one Ray sat on, with the visible shape of someone under the sheets.

  John and Rydel reached the cot and waited for Ray to say something. Ray spoke to the two without looking up. "He disappeared right in front of us, and this is where we found him. Had the docs here confirm DOA. After that, I made sure he was not touched. I didn't want him moved. Wanted both of you to see just how we found him."

  After letting Ray’s words sink in, John and Rydel turned their attention toward the shape in the bed. Ray pulled the sheet back on the cot. John and Rydel stared down at a deceased Martinez.

  Ray finally looked up at Rydel.

  "What the hell did that chip do?"

  "I'm sorry, Ray. I have no idea how this happened. I…"

  Members of a medical team made their way inside the tent behind the three and looked at Ray. Ray held up a hand for them to stop.

  "Can they take him, Rydel? Is there anything you need to do here?"

  Rydel nodded that it would be all right to move Martinez. "An autopsy, a thorough one, will have to be done, lasting days, weeks maybe, depending on what they find…but you can move him now. His family will be upset. They will not be able to bury him for some time—"

  "Martinez has no family to speak of," Ray abruptly said, cutting off Rydel. "Only a girlfriend he broke up with. She can wait for now. His real family were the members of the Unit. He spent most of his off time with them back home."

  Ray looked back down at the body of Martinez. "Let's just get him home then, Rydel."

  "Okay, Ray."

  Both John and Rydel could see the pain of loss on Ray's face. With his shoulders hunched over, Ray looked like he had just lost a family member and seemed to be guarding Martinez's body. John met Rydel's eyes and nodded toward the tent's entrance for Rydel to leave. Rydel exited the tent, followed by the medical team, leaving John and Ray alone with Martinez's body.

  "You okay, Ray?"

  "No, not really."

  "I know. I'm sorry. The first one you've lost in your Unit after three years. I understand, Ray."

  "No. You do not understand."

  Ray stood and walked away. He stopped, shook his head, and then walked back to John. "I'm sorry I said that, John. You've lost people under your command close to you—"

  "But not as close as you were to Martinez…and how close you are with the members of your Unit. I know how you feel about them. You're right. I don't understand what you're going through right now."

  "There were no survivors of the air strike, as I'm sure you know by now. We salvaged three working laptops from a mountain hideout. One laptop details how they intended to infiltrate and detonate the missiles. Their plan was good…disturbingly ingenious. You'll see when you take a look."

  "Okay."

  With nothing else to say, the two turned to leave, with Ray out in front. John made sure he was the last to exit the tent and gave a look back at Martinez's body, then slipped outside.

  __

  Hours later inside the same tent, three men from the base's medical team prepared Martinez's body to be sent back home. Once finished, the three-man team looked behind them, and there was Ray again, standing alongside the next bunk.

  "Just give me a minute here alone, and then you can take him," Ray said, glancing at each man after he spoke.

  The three left the tent.

  Ray took a knee by the side of Martinez's bunk and placed a hand on the fallen operator's forehead. "I'm sorry I failed you, Paul."

  Ray stood and turned to walk away. At the tent's entrance, Rydel waited silently for him.

  "I'm the one that failed him, Ray."

  Ray joined Rydel where he stood and could tell that the man was remorseful, shaken. He grasped Rydel's shoulder and drew him closer. "Hey…Shutdown worked on Ben. He would've died from his wounds if he wasn't put on ice."

  Both men glanced back to Martinez's body.

  "What happened? What did this to him, Rydel?"

  "I don’t know. But I promise you, Ray, I will find out."

  The Discovery

  Two weeks. That's how long it had been since Rydel had last left his private room at the lab. Rydel himself wasn't quite sure how long it had been. As he woke up, eyes fixed on his computer's screen saver, Rydel realized he was hungry.

  Rydel stood and stumble-walked over to a mini refrigerator, grabbed a Dannon yogurt without checking the expiration date, and wandered back to his computer. It was 3:33 p.m. on Sunday. He had been at his desk since almost everyone at the lab left for the weekend—the weekend before Thanksgiving, Rydel remembered. A few of the scientists he worked with had stopped by, wishing him Happy Thanksgiving before leaving the lab. John Adams was the last to say good-bye on Saturday, a concerned look on his face. Even you are permitted to take time, if you want, John had told him. But there was no way Rydel was leaving Genesis. He had to find out what happened to Martinez.

  Thoughts of what he had been working on began to crawl back inside Rydel's mind. Fumbling with the yogurt lid, he walked back to get a damn spoon for the thing and stopped, looking like he’d run into an invisible wall.

  I wrote a note to myself. The note!

  He had been unable to keep his eyes open for more than twenty seconds as he worked, head bobbing up and down. Although dead tired, he was aware enough to be worried about slipping and hitting a wrong key on the keypad and losing everything he'd been working on. He'd known that he needed to stop and rest. And that was when the thought had come to him. As he'd lowered his head and reclined in his chair to close his weary eyes and mind, a flash of insight came to him on what he was overlooking. Rydel wrote down his last thought on what had happened to Martinez on a piece of paper to look at when he woke up. He now remembered writing down a revealing theory but had no clue what that theory was; his mind was still rebooting from waking up.

  A piece of paper was tucked under his desk lamp, along with a pen, supporting the lamp haphazardly. Rydel shook his head as to why he would do such a thing. This all-important epiphany note appeared to be hidden from anyone who might see it. He knew he had the lab all to himself. Why be so covertly cautious? Rydel realized his better judgment was taking a beating from lack of sleep as he stared at the note under the lamp. He was now probably doing more damage than good in his attempts to find out what happened to Martinez.

  However, he could not shake the feeling of importance regarding the note. Rydel slipped the paper out from its lame hideaway under the lamp and read the seven words he had left for himself. He read them once more and fell to his knees. "My God…"

  Back to Genesis

  John had the itch to get back to the lab during drinks before Thanksgiving dinner. He hated feeling eager to get back, especially during a holiday when he was able to be with Kate and Ray. The days they had each year with one another were everything to him. This night was different, though. Rydel was at Genesis, working alone since John had left him Saturday, still trying to figure out what happened to Martinez. He couldn't leave Rydel by himself any longer.

  So John kissed his sister good-bye and whispered to Ray where he was going. Outside in his SUV, with a slice of pie and a turkey sandwich Ray had whipped up for Rydel (a turkey sandwich with stuffing, mayonnaise, and cranberry sauce), John started to pull away from the curb outside his sister's home. He tapped on the break, bringing the SUV to a slow stop. Through the home's bay window, John watched as Ray waved his sister away from the table so that he could clean up. Kate kissed Ray on the forehead and took a seat by the fire in the living room.

  Havi
ng a brother-in-law you get along with so well is pure luck. Knowing that the man married to your sister could disarm, subdue, or kill any intruder (or multiple intruders) entering her household, and at the same time clean up after Thanksgiving dinner, was a pretty awesome and comforting feeling.

  He fucking loved the guy.

  John grinned at the bay-window scene before him for a few more seconds, eased off the brake, and drove away.

  He drove his SUV down a side street off his sister's block, then headed toward the parkway, which he could see through a line of trees outside the passenger's window, the sound of only a few cars whooshing by. The roads were clear; John estimated he would be back at the lab in less than three hours.

  And, making great time, he was right. He pulled into the lab's near-empty parking lot in less than two-and-a-half hours. John parked and caught sight of snow starting to fall in the glow of the yellow-lit lamppost above.

  "Just in time," John said aloud, grateful to not be driving in an early-season snowstorm that the radio was building up to be a blizzard within the next hour. Out of his SUV, he jogged to the Genesis lab, a seven-story white structure with black windows circling the building like streams of satin ribbon. There were no partitions or spaces in the black glass.

  The residents of Masonville all had their ghost stories about the place located in the hills of their small town—a lot of activity with unmarked trucks coming and going during the late hours of the night. It would be the security of the place, however, that was outright scary to most people in town. Arrests had been made for trespassing as far as a mile away from the establishment. That's why, for the most part, people stayed away—far away.

  Setup of the research lab in the sleepy little town in upstate New York had been well planned by the military. In the first year after construction, local politicians, inquiring minds, and a few drunks tried to wander onto the property. But not anymore. It was understood by everyone, even the animals, to stay away; it just wasn't worth it.

  John approached the lab's tinted black glass entrance door. No key, no voice command, the thick door just parted in the middle, and he walked inside. It closed immediately behind him. There was no chance of anyone or anything being able to slip inside without an entrance chip like the one John had under his skin, authorizing admittance. A mosquito couldn't get in without an implanted chip.

  John made his way down a long white hallway with artless walls. He reached a Coke machine at the end of the hallway and tapped the Dasani bar. With his water in hand, he stepped inside an elevator that opened without him having to push a button. He was linked into everything inside the lab. One of Rydel's access-body chips gave John free rein to every room and anything inside the lab.

  Out of the elevator, Colonel Adams walked down another long hallway toward Rydel's private room and knocked. Concerned, getting no response, he turned the doorknob and slowly entered.

  "Rydel!"

  In front of his computer, Rydel lay facedown on the floor, something deep-red trailing from his head and staining the floor.

  Blood—he's bleeding.

  John ran over to Rydel, fell to his knees, and quickly—but gently—turned Rydel over. Rydel was bleeding, but not much. He had a little cut under his right ear with a piece of metal sticking out of it. His nose was also bleeding. The color of blood on the floor mostly mixed in with the contents of a now-empty energy-drink container beside Rydel. John removed the aluminum tab behind Rydel's ear, which had been causing most of the bleeding, and carefully eased him up against his desk.

  "Rydel…hey, hey. Come on, wake up."

  John held up his hand and was about to give Rydel a gentle smack to wake him up but then thought better.

  How hard did he hit his head on the floor?

  After lifting himself to his haunches, John checked Rydel's pulse and listened to his breathing for a good thirty seconds. He stood and looked around for the Dasani water bottle he had been holding just seconds before, spotting it by the door. After retrieving the bottle, John took off his jacket, ripped the sleeve off his white dress shirt, and doused it with water. He knelt back down next to Rydel and gently patted the wet sleeve on Rydel's forehead.

  Rydel's eyes popped open with a look of amazement and shock. He reached out for John, grabbing onto his shoulders.

  "John—John, you're here!"

  "Yeah, easy, Rydel, easy! Shit, you had me fucking worried. What the hell happened?"

  "We need to talk, John."

  "We are talking, Rydel."

  "No. We need to talk about what happened to Martinez."

  "All right. Just calm down, and let me help you up."

  John carefully led Rydel to his office and, once inside, sat Rydel down on a couch across from his desk. Rydel pinched the bridge of his nose to stop the bleeding as John searched for tissues inside his desk. Finding them, he grabbed a handful and rushed back to Rydel. Twisting a few, he inserted the tissues gently inside Rydel's nose.

  "It looks like it's slowing. I'm gonna get some ice, and that should do it." As John started to walk away, Rydel's hand clamped down hard on the colonel's arm, bringing him to a stop. Surprised by Rydel's strength, a stunned smile spread across Adams's face. He was about to speak—but Rydel brazenly put up a hand for Colonel Adams to be quiet.

  "Stop, I'm fine. Forget the ice. You need to listen to me now. I found something, John. Something that could change everything we do here."

  Rydel coughed, and some of the air pushed through his nose, causing the tissues to fall to the ground and the bleeding to start up again. John used what tissues he had left in his hand to clean Rydel up.

  "Easy, Rydel. Just take it easy. Whatever you need to tell me can wait. We're not going anywhere tonight. A damn blizzard is moving in, and we're the only two people here in the lab besides security. So relax, man. I'm going to get you some—"

  "John—I believe I found a way to go back from what was recovered on Martinez's Shutdown chip."

  "A way to go back? Back where, Rydel?"

  "I'm not sure yet."

  __

  Half an hour later, Rydel's nose finally stopped bleeding, and John had replaced his ripped shirt. The two sat side by side on the couch in the colonel's office while Rydel began explaining to John what had happened to Martinez.

  Taking a moment to let the colonel process everything he had told him so far, Rydel stood up and threw the bloody tissues into a trash can by the side of the desk. Rydel sat back down and continued his conversation with the colonel about what he had found on the Martinez chip.

  "The Shutdown chip that sent Martinez away had a small fragment inside it from the grenade, too small to be seen with the naked eye, causing the chip to malfunction the way it did,” Rydel said. “The chip began to search for another way to save Martinez because it was unable to put his body on ice."

  Shaking his head, John asked, "Save him how?"

  "The Shutdown chip, for some reason I don't understand yet, started to probe into all areas of Martinez's brain and tapped into this ability—an incredible ability we might all have as humans. One that we obviously cannot access at will. A way to…I'm not sure how to say this…the chip found a way to somehow teleport Martinez's body organically—an act of self-defense, I believe. Well, in the case of Martinez it was. The chip used this ability to try to save Martinez."

  "The Shutdown chip did what?" John said, barely voicing the words.

  Rydel took a moment, his eyes alive with fascination as he stared at John. Leaning in closer, Rydel continued to explain to the colonel what he’d discovered.

  "The areas of the brain the chip had time to gain access to were too severely damaged. Therefore, it was only able to recall one image from Martinez. And that was of the camp. The chip sent his deceased body there in present time, unable to do anymore."

  "You are so losing me here, Rydel."

  Rydel stood up from the couch and got himself a bottled water from a small refrigerator behind the colonel's desk. He became fixat
ed on the bottle of water in his hand, lost in his thoughts, eyes focused on a few tiny air bubbles rising to the top. Rydel returned his attention to where he was now, inside the colonel's office, and smiled at John.

  "I believe what the Shutdown chip tried to do was recall any sort of stored long-term memory it could from Martinez and use it to send him back to a time in his past so that Martinez would not be on that mountain where he died. And that way…he would be saved. It was the only solution the altered Shutdown chip could come up with to save an unsavable life. Tapping into Martinez's somewhat still-functioning brain with all its power and complexity, an organ of the body we are still mystified by. The altered chip kept referring to it as Rebegin. I had no idea what to make of it until Sunday. I don't think it would have saved Martinez; his lifeless body would have just traveled back to a time from his past. But maybe…someday…we might be able to save him. Because what we have now is something incredibly different from what I first designed. All because of that grenade fragment causing the malfunction…or maybe a better way of putting it is that it caused the Shutdown chip's incredible progression. Now it could be a way to go back."

  John was beginning to understand what Rydel was talking about—and the good it could do for the people he protected. The colonel stood up and stepped closer to Rydel, placing both hands on the scientist's slight shoulders.

  "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Rydel? Are you sure?"

  "I'm saying I should drop everything else I'm working on here at the lab and work only on the Martinez chip. I think we might have a way to go back to a time of our choosing and potentially correct mistakes we've made in the past."

  "Time travel?"

  "The beginning of it, I believe. Yes."

  "You're right. You now have only one job here at Genesis—working on that chip."

  "Oh, shit yes I only have one job here now! It's absolutely amazing, John! Amazing!"