There was a palpable tension in the air and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was fear. I saw it on the nurses’ faces when they came in to check my vitals. I saw it in the faces of the dietary aides who brought my first meals. In the respiratory therapist who gave me my BIRD treatments. I even saw it in the doctor’s and agents’ faces as they changed shifts.
I put down my plastic spoon and poked the jello with my finger. We were still waiting for the radiologist to read my films.
I’d been served a high protein meal of beef, veggies and dessert, had managed to finish most of it. My guards today were an agent and the Master Sergeant Adams.
“What’s got everyone’s panties in a wad?” I asked. I was grumpy as hell, sick of being stuck in bed and worried about my friends. As of yet, I hadn’t given my answer to Houston but I really had no other choice unless my legs and spine came back.
“There are crowds building outside,” Adams said grimly. “More than we can handle if they decided to storm the lobby.”
“Am I being moved?” I asked.
“The doctors are discussing it with Director Devereaux. Right now, Dr. Pentelli is afraid to move you. He feels that it would do more harm than to just hide you under another name,” the Sergeant shrugged.
I turned on the TV and we watched the local news which was being reported from outside the hospital proper. He wasn’t kidding, there were thousands of people out there demonstrating, some with banners and placards demanding my appearance. Demanding that I heal the sick and raise the dead. They were nuts.
I saw journalists from the big affiliate stations, and men who were clearly government agents as well as the gamut of America’s ethnic groups.
I was truly frightened and Adams took the remote from me, turning off the TV.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” he said. “They’re not stupid enough to stand up to men armed with automatic weapons and the USAF.”
I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I smashed my cast on the railing and plaster flew off in chunks, cracks appeared down the length of the cast. Adams grabbed my arm and stopped me.
“What are you doing?” he yelled. I tried to pull away but he was still stronger than I was.
“My arm isn’t broken anymore,” I panted and peeled the cast away. We stared at the pale colored flesh. In a normal kid, the muscles would have atrophied before the plaster cast was removed in six weeks. Mine had been immobilized for only a few days but it looked no different than the other arm. I’d had a compound fracture of the ulna with a large bone piercing the skin yet there was no scar, no lump under the skin or on the bone. It was nearly healed with only a slight residual soreness. Still, I wouldn’t want to stress it too hard or risk re-breaking it.
I wasn’t quite sure of my legs but I was damn sure that my pelvis hadn’t knit together enough to bear weight. Any movement on my lower half felt as if I was moving on broken glass. I feared it would be another week before I was healed enough to carry my own weight and I was afraid to risk asking anyone else for their heartlight.
“If you think I’m letting you get up and try to walk out of here, you’re crazy,” Adams said. “You’re paralyzed, remember?”
“Put me in a wheelchair but get me out of here and down the walkway over the drive through,” I ordered, naming the pedestrian walkway that connected one hospital building with the other. From there, I could study the crowds without them seeing me.
“No,” both agents denied and the doctors.
“I need to see the stuff I came in with. My backpack.” I tried next.
“Most of it was destroyed when the logs rolled over it and especially the weapons,” the agent reported. “The rest of your stuff like clothes and books are in the closet.”
“Did the police or agents go through it?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Was there a cell phone?”
“It was probably taken by the police or the FBI looking for contacts like your friends or family. Or it was probably squashed too.”
“Look, you’ve read my file, right? You know that I’m a genius, that I can create things your guys can’t even dream of? In my pants or pack is a device that looks like a cell phone without its cover. It isn’t a cell phone. I need it.”
Adams went to the corner where the closet was and dug through what remained of my gear. The frame of the pack was shaped like a pretzel and anything rigid had been flattened to the width of a card.
Some of the food packages had split open and leaked all over my clothes, my pans were crunched but the slim profile cell phone had survived with only a shattered glass front.
“I need a monitor and a USB cable,” I looked up. “Easiest just to bring me out to the nurses’ station.”
“You won’t bend right for a wheelchair,” Adams pointed out.
“So, wheel my bed out.”
Before he’d made it out of the doors, we had nurses screeching at us, asking what the hell were we doing?
I nudged Adams with my hand, the newly freed one and that caused another heated discussion just as Drs. Pentelli and Stevenson arrived with the radiologist. Great. Two more and we’d have a baseball team.
“Your arm shows a healed fracture, Lakan,” Dr. Pentelli reported seriously. “Where are you going?”
“I need the computer at the desk.” I reached out and pulled myself closer until I could grab the USB cable from the back of the tower and checked the port. I stuck one end into my quipp and the other into the monitor as I manipulated the text screen on the old cell.
Hacking into the hospital cameras was child’s play and my quipp scanned every available face running through NSA files, FBI, CODIS, Interpol, and CIA. It brought up twenty mug shots, leaving them on the right side of the screen and when I touched each face separately, it gave me a shortened version of their rap sheets.
Four were from Russian Mafia, six were from China and the rest were rogue agents and mercenaries. Free agents who sold out to the highest bidders. Another hundred or so came up as undercover intelligence operatives for the NSA, CIA, FBI, NIA, and DHS. The only ones I didn’t see were the Mossad.
“Holy shit. They’re going to raid us and take me,” I gaped. I pointed to six that I knew were involved in the high-level kidnap and ransoms for the Organized Crime Families and Drug Cartels.
“How long do we have?” the Sergeant demanded, drawing out his weapon and checking his load. The Secret Service agent was more interested in the quipp. I could see the wheels turning in his head over what the device could do in his company’s possession.
“The President can have it when I’m done with it,” I snapped. “Right now, it’s more important to get me out of here before the people out there get in.”
Just about the time the last word exited my mouth, Agent Lindsey and two more MPs barged in. “Cameras picked up some men climbing the stairs from the basement armed with AKs,” Lindsey ground out. “Wearing body armor.”
I shifted to a schematic of the trauma center’s floor plan. There was no place safe where I could hide that the incoming agents wouldn’t find me.
“Is the Life Flight helicopter still on the roof?” I asked.
Dr. Pentelli answered. “Yes, but the pilot is off-duty and not available. The engines are shut down.”
“Not a problem. How many will it hold?”
“Two crew, the pilot and two patients,” said Pentelli.
I disconnected the quipp and sent a text to Lindsey, Maiara and Robin along with another set of instructions to Houston and Devereaux. Then, I hacked into the onboard electronics of the chopper and started the engines.
“Dr. Stevenson, I would ask for your help,” I said formally. “And yours,” I pointed to the nurses and other men in the room. Explained what I needed and what it would do to each of them. None turned me down and once more, the blue glow rippled through the room almost as if the aurora borealis had taken up residence within these four walls.
I felt my bones knit, my spine tingle with renewed function; my pelvis grow strong. Those who gave me their heartlight fell to the floor in a dazed languor, exhausted but unharmed. When they revived, they would find that no longer would they suffer from those common aches and pains nor would they experience sickness again.
Dr. Pentelli brought me the bone saw and on my urging, cut the now useless casts off my legs. I stood on my own and as my nerves protested the sudden shock of repair, I kept my face from showing any pain or I would be back in bed no matter how I argued. I was almost healed but still in a fragile state; I used what I had left to harden what bone I could before I got down to check the people lolling on the floor. No one was in extremis. The rest of them---Adams, Pentelli, Lindsey and the two MPs watched me walking with gaping mouths. Last they knew, I had both legs broken, an unstable pelvis and was crippled with a severed spinal cord.
“You read my files. This is why everyone wants me. I can heal the sick and raise the dead. Among other things. I’m a genetically modified organism, created to be the very best in human design that man and God could make. Now, we have to leave because if they catch me again, my life will be over and I will kill myself. So, are you coming?” I didn’t tell them I wasn’t sure if I could die.
I waited for a scant few seconds and then headed for the elevator to the roof. I heard the sounds of pounding feet behind me, stopping only when I saw Pentelli pause to snatch a bag of medical supplies.
Adams and his MPs kept their hands on their weapons as we heard the sound of shots fired. The other two air force men tried to outflank me but no matter how hard they tried to speed up, they couldn’t run fast enough to pass me.
We didn’t attract much attention from the staff or visitors, they were all riveted to the windows at the rioting mass below. Soldiers were pouring from vehicles parked down the street and climbing up the sides of the building.
Pentelli kept up with the agents and all of us squeezed into the elevator riding it up to the roof and the chopper. It was larger than I thought, more like one of the army’s medivac choppers.
Still late afternoon, the wind was blustery atop the building and blew our clothes against our bodies. Only then, did I realize that I was still in a bare-back hospital gown. I grabbed the folds and held them closed, my face reddening in the wind.
“Who’s gonna fly this thing?” Lindsey questioned.
I opened the pilot’s door and slid in keeping my bare cheeks from sticking to the seats. Grumbling, I worked the switches, my feet on the rudders and hand on the collective.
“Surprise.” I lifted the bird straight up and flew over the city but not without notice. Several news choppers followed. I pulled on the headphones and asked who held my quipp, noting that Lindsey had it last. Sheepishly, he pulled it out of his pocket and I explained how he could use it to take over the controls of the other birds. He must have played with remote controlled helicopters as a kid because he landed both of the news choppers without crashing either of them. Lucky reporters, I wouldn’t really have cared whether they’d bounced or not.
“Man, what else can this thing do?” he asked, admiring it. I took it back. As we left the city behind, I saw black SUVs following us on the ground.