Chapter 9

Monday August 22 2086

The Manor, Massachusetts

9:00 PM

"Alright, I've got the supplies." Charlie wheeled in a cart with six Global Police uniforms hanging from it. "I've got fake IDs and travel passes, too."

She began passing out holocards. Nadia snorted as she inspected hers. "Madeline Blair, 22 years old, from New Beijing. Where did you get these?"

Anya stifled a laugh. "Eloise Blanc, New Providence? I have not ever been to New Providence…"

Doug rubbed his temples. "I can't do this, I have a meeting in an hour and several years worth of loose ends to tie up. You'll have to go without me."

Charlie punched him playfully in the shoulder. "C'mon, Doug, live a little! You can miss a meeting or two."

Nadia groaned. "Terrorizing a middle-aged man sounds fun, but I have to check on Tanni. I need to be helping with her cubs…" her voice trailed off as she realised that she had quit her job. "I'm not allowed to see them anymore, am I?"

Courtney began to shake her head, then threw up her hands instead. "Oh, what the hell. I'll allow it, Nadia. But we have to leave soon, so you'll only get thirty minutes with the cubs today." She brandished a key card. "Charlie, do you think you can clear everyone out of the lab that would make trouble?"

"On it," Charlie replied. "Cam, give me a hand, yeah?"

Nadia beamed. The thought of being able to see Tanni's cubs was almost as invigorating as a good night's rest. "How long should it take?"

Cam was already deeply submerged in the Datastream. "Give me ten minutes and then we can take a hover to BASE," he replied. Content, Nadia slipped away to read the briefs Peter Carlson had kindly emailed her.

The cubs, one male named Ambrosia and one female named Nectar, were growing nicely. In the six days since their births, they had been sleeping all day, the exception being feeding time, when they voraciously devoured their mother's milk. It was fascinating, Nadia noted, that Tanni knew exactly what to do; the tigress had fed from bottles held by lab coat-clad scientists, and yet she licked her cubs tenderly and purred when they suckled.

When the hover arrived at the side doors of BASE, Nadia practically sprinted towards the lab. Doug trotted behind her, grimacing.

"Could you not go so fast? It's hard to keep up with you twenty-year-olds all the time," he complained.

"Sorry," Nadia replied, not slowing down at all. Doug huffed, clutching his side.

As she swept through the halls, Nadia's heart pounded furiously. She fully understood the risk she was taking, coming back to BASE. But she needed to perform tests on both Tanni and her cubs; and, more importantly, she felt a powerful emotional tie with the tigers. She had read somewhere that humans, if taking stimulants, were much more likely to bond under extreme stress. Maybe it was true.

Inside the lab where Tanni was nursing her cubs peacefully, Nadia noted that the new mother seemed too lethargic. But then again, she had undergone a major operation less than a week before, and by an inexperienced operator, no less. Some change was to be expected.

Nadia crouched down and gazed at the cubs, a soft smile gracing her face. Then one of the cubs opened its eyes halfway and squealed in surprise. Tanni let out a rumble of warning and stood up. Ears back, tail swaying, the tigress approached the gate. Nadia followed her instincts and slumped so she was sitting near the gate, one hand trailing near the bars. She heard a sharp gasp from Doug, who, it seemed, had finally caught up to her.

"Nadia!" he hissed frantically. "Don't!"

She ignored him, holding a gentle hand out to Tanni. Wordlessly, she gazed at the tiger's large paws as they approached. There was a more curious chirp from the tiger as she inspected Nadia's hand. Cautiously, Nadia moved her outstretched hand until it was resting against the bars. The tiger hesitated, then pressed her velvet nose into the gate. She snorted into Nadia's palm, then returned to her cubs, laying down with a heavy sigh.

"We need to leave, now," Doug urged just as a security alarm began to blare. "Next stop, Mount Hood, Oregon!"

Monday August 22 2086

Mount Hood, Oregon

11 PM

The team was jerked out of a state of torpor by Charlie's excited shout. "Welcome to Oregon!" she exclaimed.

Anya de Ralez stumbled out of the hover on numb legs, groaning in French. "Ah, j'oubliais, c'est bon de marcher."

Nadia laughed. "It was less than two hours! Anya, you've never gone across the country before?"

"C'est horrible," Anya muttered.

"No, what's 'horrible' is that Rick Maynard is gone." Cam said, shaking his head in disgust.

Courtney frowned. "Sorry, I must be hearing things. You said what?"

"Rick is gone. I can't detect a heat signature anywhere in his house," Cam replied.

Doug signed loudly. "Luck is really not on our side tonight. Did he have an alarm that we could have triggered?"

Cam typed frantically. "He had a hijacked satellite frozen in orbit above his house that set off an alert if something passed near his house. We must have landed too close."

Courtney pointed an accusing finger at Charlie. "You set the flight course. Didn't you check for satellites when you decided to land on his runway?"

"It's better than hiking three miles up a mountain," Charlie shot back, angrily scraping her fingers through her hair. "And it's so incredibly hard to land on an incline, even with the AI helping out. I don't want to trash my Vortex. Besides, why weren't you looking for traps, Cam?"

The three glared at each other. The hostile atmosphere was broken by Nadia, who tentatively asked, "What if he's still hiding? He only got the alarm a few minutes ago, chances are. That's not a lot of time to get away. And if he left in a hover, we would have seen him. So we should go in and see if Mr. Maynard is still home."

The tension diffused as everyone agreed that this was the correct course of action. "Nice thinking," Anya muttered in Nadia's ear. "Distract them from the true culprit- yourself."

"What do you mean?" Nadia asked.

"You wanted to check on the cubs. Five minutes before we landed. So you opened the livestream from your MindBubble. What you didn't know is that Charlie has equipped an illegal satellite-stealing AI to the Vortex. It triggered the satellite alarm when it logged in and hacked the security. You are the most likely person to have activated the alarm."

Mind reeling, Nadia slipped into the Global Police uniform and secured her face mask. "We don't know what other biohazards could be hiding in this place," she reasoned to her teammates. "Someone capable of creating viruses could easily turn to biowarfare to protect himself." Everyone agreed with her rationale.

Cam approached the hulking door, entered a virtual key, and they were in.