Power Surge
It was, as was becoming customary, an involuntary nap. Whatever they dumped through Bennett’s vent sure worked quickly. When he woke up this time, Bennett knew he was no longer in his cell--the hum was different. The light buzz of the fluorescent lights wasn’t there. Instead, he listened to the constant whirr of computers and monitors.
They surrounded him, lined every wall, with thousands of switches and buttons and readouts. He was still too groggy to try and make sense out of them. Besides, he was too focused on what he considered to be his highest priority--the fact that his hands and feet were tied to the chair he has sitting in.
It was uncomfortable, made of more stainless steel as it was, and Bennett found it was bolted to the floor. If this is where he was to be tortured, it was as appropriate a place as any. He immediately closed his eyes, hoping to buy himself a little time of clear thought before his captors discovered he was awake. It didn’t work.
Another man in a biohazard suit entered the room. Bennett didn’t recognize his face and he seemed unarmed. Bennett followed him with his eyes as he stepped next to him, then craned his neck as the man walked directly behind him. Out of his sight, Bennett heard a zipping sound and a rush of air.
"Sorry to gas you again, but I wanted to make sure you got in the chair."
It was him. The voice. The man who kidnapped and tormented he and Kimberly was standing behind him. And there was nothing Bennett could do.
"What? You couldn’t just work me over with a bat or something? I had to be sitting?
"Come on, Doctor. It’s the age of technology. What kind of scientist would I be if I didn’t work with the state of the art?"
He stepped around the chair, and suddenly he was there. Caucasian, six feet tall and with thinning hair, but with eyes set far back into his skull. It was as though he was staring at Bennett from another room. Bennett had no memory of him from any conference or convention, so if he was in the same field as Kimberly and Bennett, he was working underground.
It was time to start a dialogue.
"What happened to the suit?"
"You’re clean. We gave you a pretty thorough scan and a rather brutal physical exam and I don’t feel like I have anything to worry about. You might want to work on your cholesterol, though."
"Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. So, do you have a name or what?"
"No."
"You a government spook? I never liked working for you guys."
"The question is, which government? As soon as we figure out what turned your girlfriend clear, we’ve got the world to choose from. Of course, I’ve got a security tape from her lab, I’ve got fragments of data, but something tells me you have a little more knowledge in this area than I do. So I’ve arranged this time for us to chat."
There was a videotape. Kimberly thought that it had been fried by the power surge. Evidently not. Ditto for the computer data. Bennett kept thinking about the tape, more specifically who might have had access to it. That’s who the "we" was, he thought. The grant Kimberly had gotten for her laser was from a defense contractor called Andrews-Osgood. When their investment got fried, surely they came and got the first look at everything. And if you were a defense contractor holding a videotape worth, potentially, a trillion dollars, would you just hand it over the proper authorities?
"How did you assholes at Andrews-Osgood track Kimberly to my place?"
The man looked a little impressed.
"I’ve said too much, I guess, but it wouldn’t hurt to tell you that she was easy to find. We showed a picture of her around at local hotels, and one of the managers recognized a scarf she was wearing. After that, we did a small break-in and found a lap-top with account information for a new identity. There was also a web browser with a history file. It indicated multiple searches for Dr. Peter Bennett. We wasted a lot of time before we went around to the hotels, but trust me, she was as good as found the second she left."
"Way to go."
"Now, we’ve taken blood and tissue samples from Dr. Harlow, and with the tape, we have some of he information we need to reproduce her experience. I imagine you’ve been doing the same thing. My question is, have you succeeded in making any other organisms invisible?"
"You know, I don’t quite feel like sharing with my local defense contractor. Maybe if you become Greenpeace, we can talk."
"Too bad you feel that way."
He stepped over to one of the machines and pushed a yellow button the instant before the worst pain Bennett had ever felt shot through his body. He screamed so loud, his throat felt raw within a half-second. It wasn’t an electric shock, but his legs felt slightly numb after it subsided.
He fought through the sweat which was now dripping into his eyes.
"What...what the hell did you just do to me?"
"It’s another one of our projects. Don’t worry, it’s probably not lethal."
His stomach was turning over and a wave of nausea washed over Bennett. He started to gag.
"Calm down now, don’t lose your lunch yet."
Bennett turned his head and vomited onto the concrete floor. He came up coughing violently. His captor cleared the puke out of his mouth with a gloved hand. Bennett didn’t have the energy to clamp down on it.
"Oh, too bad. We still have some talking to do. You want to tell me what kind of progress you’re making? Have you been able to reverse Dr. Harlow’s condition yet?"
"Go...fuck yourself."
The man reached toward the button, then hesitated.
"You know what? I think you need a little more motivation."
He went to another console and pushed a small blue button. Bennett braced himself, but no shock came. Instead, the man leaned into a microphone.
"Bring her in."
The door in front of Bennett opened up and a gurney was wheeled in by two more goons in biohazard suits. Kimberly’s empty gown was stretched out on it, and there were restraints floating at the ends of the sleeves that were shaking loudly. Bennett weakly held his head up.
"Peter!"
"Kimberly..."
"Peter! What have they done to you?"
The man stepped in between them.
"He’s trying to protect you. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s only a matter of time. With the samples I’ve taken already, it’s only a matter of time before I can reproduce your accident, a matter of time before I find a way to create a process, a matter of time before I can make somebody invisible and bring them back. That is fact, so he should not...be...stupid."
He put his finger on the pain button. Kimberly yelled at Bennett.
"Peter, tell him what he wants to know! Tell him!"
He raised his head and saw a faintly double image of Kimberly’s gown. He looked into the bottom of the fabric tube, right through her body and out the neck to the door behind. There was nobody in it, but in that negative space was a body he knew intimately. In the dark, he had memorized every inch of her curves, traced her transparent flesh with his fingers. That sense map was the only "picture" of her that he had. He tried to remember what she looked like for that day she was visible--what she would look like now. Beautiful. He couldn’t let her die--or, at least, die alone.
"The surge used all of the radioactive fuel in the laser, it was in a diffuse focus pattern there were a few seconds of exposure. That’s all I know."
"Somehow, I don’t think that’s all."
"I’ve been trying to recreate it in a computer simulation, but the computer keeps telling me the amount of power to make Kimberly invisible doesn’t exist. It would have had to been a limited fusion reaction, but you and I both know that isn’t possible. If there’s a tape, I’m sure that’s obvious."
"It is. I think some fusion did take place. I’m close to knowing how. What about her? Any physical changes? Sickness?"
Kimberly ghostly voice echoed throughout the room.
"I’m fine. Now get him out of that chair. He’s told you everything."
"I admit, he’s certainly been more helpful since you came in, but I don’t think we’re through yet. Dr. Bennett, I’m sure you took blood samples..."
"No. I don’t know medicine."
"You didn’t think to take a little blood to a lab?"
"Of course I did, I just didn’t know anyone I could trust with some anomalous results. I still don’t."
"Too bad. We just got our tests back and we did find some anomalous results. Dr. Harlow, your hormone levels are truly outstanding. You must be experiencing some strange, uncomfortable feelings."
"I feel like killing you."
"There you go. Dr. Bennett, tell me about the power readings..."
He kept pressing Peter for answers while Kimberly continued to struggle against the restraints. They were the kind used in hospitals for uncooperative patients, so they weren’t meant to hurt, but Kimberly felt her muscles aching from her effort. The restraints danced angrily on the side of her gurney--at first, their tormentor looked over to see what she was doing. Then, confident in the strength of her bonds, he turned his attention back to Peter.
He shouldn’t have. Her right wrist had a small amount of room to move within the strap. She wriggled it back and forth until her skin was raw, each time sliding it another fraction of an inch out of the restraint. Further...further...
Kimberly was really making some noise now. The metal buckle banged repeatedly against the metal frame of the gurney. The stern inquisitor stopped his work with Bennett, casting a furious glance in her direction.
"Dr. Harlow, unless you have something to add, I would stop this instant."
The clanging stopped, but her efforts did not. She quietly wormed her hand through, up then down, until finally it was through. The restraint fell to the edge of the bed, the chain suddenly slack. Kimberly desperately grabbed it, holding it a few inches in the air just as their tormentor turned toward her. She held it as steady as she could--praying he did not notice the difference between the strap with her arm in it and how she held it in her invisible hand.
He did not, and quickly went back to his questioning. Bennett was wearily shaking his head back and forth, begging for the questions to stop.
"I’ve told you everything. There’s nothing more."
"Not true. You said your efforts to make Dr. Harlow visible again failed."
"They did. I couldn’t do a thing."
"Then why was a young woman with your credit card buying clothing at Silverton Mall last week?"
"I don’t know."
Kimberly quietly set down the loose restraint at her side and reached over her chest to undo her left wrist. The strap slid out of the buckle silently. Check that--maybe there was a sound, but Kimberly could not hear it above the shouting now being directed at Bennett.
"I don’t like being lied to, Doctor, and I don’t like that you’re holding out on me!"
He walked to the other side of the room to adjust the machine that directed the painful impulses into Bennett’s chair, and Kimberly leapt into action, quickly undoing her leg restraints. The man turned back around and his eyes opened wide at the sight of Kimberly’s gown, standing full and upright in front of her gurney.
"THOMPSON! GET IN HERE!"
Kimberly tore the robe off--it seemed to wrestle itself in the air before falling lifeless to the floor--and she felt relief as the cool air enveloped her naked body. She ran next to the door just as it burst open, spilling Thompson into the room. Thompson was an immense man, at least six foot four, with no biohazard suit to slow him down. He was wearing the infrared goggles, but still couldn’t react as she threw her left hand right into them. The goggles flew off his head and shattered on the floor behind him. He swung his head around wildly, looking for any sign of Kimberly, immediately drawing his gun.
The arm with the gun flew upward and grazed Kimberly’s left thigh. Thompson pulled the trigger and the gun discharged, the explosion reverberating many times over in the small room. Kimberly looked down and felt the heat coming off the gun radiate onto the bare skin of her hip--he had shot directly under her arm. Bennett was screaming.
"Kimberly!"
A half-second later, the gun flew out of Thompson’s hand onto the floor. He threw a haymaker punch at nothing, which is exactly what he hit. Suddenly, a deep impression appeared in Thompson’s crotch and he doubled over in pain, howling. The gun jumped off the floor and soared toward his squirming mass, where the butt slammed into the back of his head. Thompson, not surprisingly, went limp.
The gun then floated into the air and pointed at The Man, who had been watching almost indifferently by the pain machine. Kimberly’s disembodied voice called to him.
"Get him out that chair. Now!"
"I guess it would be trite to tell you that you’ll never get out of here alive."
The gun danced for an instant and fired without warning--the machine next The Man exploded in sparks. He shuddered, then began undoing Bennett’s restraints.
"That’s two bullets gone. You don’t know your way out and the whole installation is wired for infrared. We’ll have you again in minutes."
Bennett got off the chair, in obvious pain, but mobile. He ran over to where the gun hung in space and quickly plucked it out of the air.
"I feel like splurging."
Bennett fired and hit The Man in his right leg. He went down quickly. Bennett sapped him with the butt of the gun, knocking him out and opening a cut on the top of his head. Blood slowly trickled down his face as Bennett rifled through his pockets.
In mid-search, Kimberly tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around and reflexively looked for the person who did it. It took an embarrassed second before he realized the mistake.
"Sorry."
"It’s OK. Why aren’t we running?"
"We need to find out who this guy is. I want a name. And here it is."
He pulled an ID card out of The Man’s pocket and examined it.
"His name is Lester Maines. I was tortured by a man named Lester."
"Come on, let’s get out of here."
"One second."
He pulled clothing off of Thompson’s unconscious body and put it on. It was way too big, but it was far better than running around with a hospital gown. Thompson had ID, too, and a set of keys. Bennett hoped one of them was for the big door marked "OUT". He called out to Kimberly.
"Where are you?"
The reply came from inches away.
"Right here, what is it?"
"Thanks."
He felt her arms wrap around his chest, and suddenly he felt her warmth all down his body--her breasts pushed against him, her skin smooth under his hands. Then she released and it was like she had never been there.
"Sorry. Can we go home now?"
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