Mark was quite happy to help with my deception---he got to stay home from school while I played the role of him as Mr. J drove me out of town. We went right through several road blocks manned by state and local police. Pictures of me in both my female and male persona were posted everywhere and flashing on TV and billboards. They even had the highway signs up on me as an AMBER alert saying I was a possible kidnap victim or runaway. Nothing about why I was wanted or by what.
Some of the pictures of me had been photo-shopped with different colored hair and styles or wearing hats but all of them mentioned my ‘electric’ blue eyes.
No one at any of the roadblocks batted an eye when they checked Mr. Jacobi’s ID and stared at me. One or two asked where was he going with me and why I wasn’t in school. Mr. J said he was taking me to a specialist in Philly for my sister’s leukemia. I was being tested for a bone marrow donation.
“Brave kid,” the trooper commented and reminded me to wear my seatbelt.
“Whatever,” I drawled pretending as if I were bored instead of terrified. He waved us on and we drove for another two hours before we stopped to eat and take a bathroom break.
Mr. J chose a Cracker Barrel right off I-95 and once inside, we hit the men’s room and then I wandered the store amazed at all the old-fashioned and eclectic stuff laid out for sale.
The hostess seated us and after we ordered, a tall handsome younger man with that ineffable military air joined us at the corner table near the windows where we could look outside. I went to stand up but he told us to stay seated. Mike Faraday smiled and offered Mr. J his hand. They shook and he stared at me.
“Boy in the restroom?” he asked and told the approaching waitress that he wanted coffee and the special.
“No,” Mr. Jacobi returned and nodded to me.
“Lake? I thought you were his son. Great disguise.” He hugged me and I rolled my eyes at the unabashed show of emotion.
“Must be good if you don’t recognize me,” I mumbled around my chicken pot pie. The food was really good, the biscuits and corn muffins homemade.
“God. He eats like a teenager,” Mile sighed. “I remember those days. Always hungry.”
“What I do uses a lot of energy and fuel,” I grumbled. “You’re looking good. No problems?”
“Nope. I’m the new miracle poster child in the VA world,” he said soberly. “There are a few of my buddies you could help---” His voice trailed off. “Sorry. The last thing you want to do is bring down any more scrutiny on you.”
“It takes me a whole day to recover,” I said. “Sometimes longer depending on how badly they’re hurt. I wouldn’t be able to run or escape.”
“I know, Lake. Never mind.”
“I could make you the same.” I looked up from my plate and riveted his eyes. “Well, not exactly the same but you could heal other people like I did to you. But the NSA will be after you along with the rest of the world, all wanting what you can give them. You’ll never have a peaceful night again and if they catch you, you’ll never leave the cell where they stash you. Except when they bring you out to sell your services to millionaires.”
He flushed at that and was going to apologize but I held up my hand to stop him. “You didn’t do anything, Mike and I can’t fault your father for loving you enough to try anything to save you. I would have done the same thing for my father had I known him. Anyway, Albans did this and he has paid for his greed.”
“You killed him? How?” they asked.
“Not me. The NSA killed him. Dr. Cameron killed him with a drug that I had been testing for Alzheimer’s. It releases all your memories but it burns through the brain cells, stopping all autonomous systems. The NSA found his off-shore bank accounts and seized them---over $22 million. All made off of me. So I took it back.”
They gaped at me. “You stole $22 million from the government?”
“Actually, I stole $48 billion. I took the NSA’s Black Budget Fund, too.”
“They’ll trace it! You just can’t disappear billions of dollars!” Mike growled.
“Yes, I can,” I grinned. “It’s in Bitcoins, untraceable and untouchable. Except by me and the people who have helped me. Not only is the money untraceable but once you start spending it, it disappears. Poof. It no longer exists. Still, you can’t go out and buy a new Maserati or a mansion on the Riviera. I’ve also made new identities for all of you but you won’t get them until the government or any agency starts an inquiry into your names. When the knock, telephone call, e-mail or text comes, you drop everything and follow the directions. It will keep you safe.”
“How?” Mike asked. “How did you do this?”
“I hacked the NSA computers in their main building. Everything is laid out like dominoes or a game of chess. If you follow the moves I played, you’ll be safe. A new life in a new place with your families and lots of money.”
“What if we don’t want to leave?” Mr. J asked.
“You’re already under surveillance by them,” I shrugged. “In less than a week, they’ll be bringing all of you in for questioning. Especially Pickles. You know they’ll want her, Mr. J. They won’t give her back. Don’t let that happen because I won’t.” I paused before I could start yelling. “They took my mother, great-grandfather, and my Rachel. They created and enslaved me. I lost two years of my life and I won’t give them any more!” I could feel my heart racing, the tendons in my neck tightening as I tried to keep the rage from spilling out.
It was Mr. J’s hand on mine that brought me out of the redness. “It’s time to go, Lake,” he said and stood up. He hugged me so tightly that I nearly couldn’t breathe. He whispered in my ear and I nodded, following Mike out to the parking lot. I threw a fifty down on the counter as I passed through the store, the clerk already knew what table it was for.
The parking lot was full but then, I’d never seen a Cracker Barrel that wasn’t. I was also pretty sure that not many of them had a bike like his parked in the lot. It was a Can-Am Spyder tricked out in gleaming silver with hand-painted artwork in darker metallic silver. Up close it was just a swirling pattern of lines but from further back, you could see wolves under a moonlit night sky, eagles soaring above the forest and an Indian chief in full war regalia. The seats were real leather and off-gray.
“Whoa. What a beauty.” I ran my hand over the silky finish.
“My Dad kept it for me, restored it after I came home. He put a hundred thousand into it, and then sold it for peanuts when he learned that I would never ride it again,” he said softly. “He bought it back four months ago.”
“It’s too noticeable,” I said unhappily.
“No. The dude who did the work used that new paint compound that came out of a company called Lake Enterprises.” He took his keys and tapped the console six times in a complicated pattern and the paint shimmered, turned blue as the leather became a shade of pale navy.
“It works!”
“Quite a few strange new inventions came out of that company before it was seized by the Department of Homeland Security. The NIA and (DARPA) are fighting over what’s left, Lake,” he grinned. “Mount up. We have over four hundred miles left to go.”
I climbed on behind him and he handed me a black helmet fitted with a dark visor. He pulled on his gloves, helmet and sat, turning the bike on with a muted, throaty roar that was no louder than a diesel truck.
It drove like a car with its two front wheels and one rear. He even had a radio that piped Wi-Fi into the helmet and allowed us to have a conversation without shouting. He asked me what kind of music I liked and we settled for Kansas and Queen, the Beatles and INXS as he merged onto the Anacostia for I-95 north.
I had to admit, it was exhilarating and slightly terrifying when the 18 wheelers blasted by sucking at us like voracious cyclones. Too many drivers didn’t watch out for motorcycles. Mike was cool, he didn’t curse or give them the finger like I would have, he just neatly weaved out of their way.
We rode for four hours before he asked me if I needed a bathroom break and I nodded forgetting that he couldn’t see me. He could feel my body move but not enough to translate that into an answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I need to stretch my legs.”
“Gotcha. Rest stop coming up in ten miles or less.”
“Where are we?”
“Almost to Philly.”
“I always wanted to see the Liberty Bell,” I said foolishly.
“Well, we have time if you don’t mind cutting your sleep time some. It just means more time on the road.”
“How long will it take us to get to your place?”
“Ten hours roughly without stopping for the night. I had planned to, anyway.”
The rest stop was less than fifty miles from Philly but already, I could see the glow from city lights on the horizon. We were on I-95 heading towards NYC and Providence.
I stood outside and watched the life of a city and its highway go by me. It was almost like watching an arterial view of a heart and its great veins as the vehicles brought in goods that made the city live and brought out the refuse it didn’t need or use.
Some scientist had actually plotted an algorithm that mimicked the growth of a city just like the circulatory system of the body. Anyway, it was a never ending scenario as 18 wheelers, buses, taxis and cars flew by while overhead, airliners came in and out of the metropolitan airport.
Mike came out; I heard him before I saw him, his leather chaps and jacket creaked like an old saddle. He smelled like one, too. “Want something to eat?”
I showed him my stash, I’d fed the highway robbery vending machines nearly ten bucks in change for Twix, Hershey’s with almonds, Hostess cupcakes and two large Mickey D coffees, one with cream and sugar, the other black for him.
“Thanks.” He took it and sipped cautiously, it was blisteringly hot.
We sat outside at one of the tables and I watched the night sky. It was too bright and overcast to see any stars. I opened the Twix bar and split it with him. I was a confessed sugar junkie.
“You remember anything from before, Lake?” he asked me. He knew my history because when I had healed him, he’d seen the inside of my head nearly as deeply as I’d seen his.
“No. I was basically born two years ago when Sarah Hamilton took me from Dr. Cameron and installed me in her home as her grandson. I worked for her in a lab at her house, producing things like the paint compound that can change color, portable Wi-Fi devices the size of a matchbox, drugs for Alzheimer’s and tissue rejection issues. Solar panel arrays that produce 300 times more power on one-quarter less battery use. A battery that lasts over a year without a recharge and can power a car going 100mph for over a thousand miles.”
“None of which are on the market, except for the paint,” he said. I rolled my eyes.
“You think Sarah Hamilton would let those things go out and take money away from the oil Kingpins? No, she sold the patents to them for millions and they locked them up where no one can get a peek at them. It would make the energy business obsolete and wreck the world economy. I would have given them away for free.”
“You still could,” he pointed out.
“I could but it would have to be done the right way to prevent an economic collapse of world proportions. Besides, the CIA, NIA, NSA and HS would kill me before they let me do it.” I was silent, thinking of a way to rework his bike and get more mileage out of the engine. I mean, it already got 60 mpg but I knew a way to tweak the carburetor and make it double as well as go significantly faster. Of course, there was a cap on the speed the bike could go and go safely, even on one as stable as the Spyder.
“You have a spider somewhere on her?” I asked and he pointed to a silver tree near the gas tank. In one corner hanging from a branch, I saw a web and in its center sat a spider with one foot raised as if waving. Or giving someone the proverbial finger. Spiders were almost as sacred as wolves in Indian lore.
I finished one chocolate cupcake and he snagged the other, commenting that he hadn’t eaten a Hostess in years. He ate it like I did, chewing off the chocolate icing, scooping out the cream center with his tongue and last, biting the cake part in three nips. Only then did we climb on the bike and drive on.