Rick paused to see if Zzyk was going to answer, and then, in his place, stated as calmly as he could. "We didn't capture or kill the other Wilizy because Izzy had time to abort. An unexpected advance warning allowed the nurse to rescue the babies. But what we do have is Will and Izzy's voices on tape screaming in agony and Izzy telling us that Will was on fire. Only the three of us know how they were going to die. Not even Ivan knew. How could Izzy fake the sounds of Will burning up if they didn't know that was going to happen?"
Zzyk stepped in. "Rick, I want voice analyses on the tapes to confirm that the voices belonged to Will and Izzy. Bring me that nurse's pinky ring. Bring me the phone that the nurse used. It's possible that it has a video feed on it. Find out how the nurse got them out of the house."
Rick nodded and hustled away.
"It was all a fake, you stupid, stupid people."
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Chapter 24
Rick slid the window open and poked his head into Zzyk's office. "The entry team is on the way back to Edmonton with the nurse's pinky ring computer and the phone. The ring's battery was dead so the sergeant couldn't access the phone's contents. The other phone did have a video feed. The sergeant said that he saw two people screaming and some flames giving off a light purple smoke. There was a back door to the house and it's a short run into the woods. The sergeant didn't have time to search the woods for the missing babies as per his previous orders to leave the area quickly."
"Analyze the voices on that phone as soon as it comes in. Confirm what the sergeant saw." Zzyk waited for Rick to leave and turned to Ingrid. "Light purple smoke is an indicator of potassium. Exactly what your hairs contained, so surely . . ."
Rick knocked on the window again, "Ivan is trying to reach you. He said it was important."
"Private feed," Zzyk instructed. "No listening in by command center staff. Close the window and come in." Rick was seated in Zzyk's office in time to hear Zzyk responding to Ivan's question about the status of Will and Izzy.
"Yes, we believe that both of them are dead. Do you have any idea where they were at the time they died?"
"Staging area #1, wherever that was. I never did find out which childcare center they had targeted. Didn't they attack?"
"Izzy managed to send an abort message. You didn't hear that?"
"I wasn't on their communication network. Izzy never trusted me, but the woman in charge of my security was sweet on me. She loved seeing me play with the babies. After a while, she let me play with them by myself."
"Foolish."
"Compared to the IOF and to The Citadel, they were naive and foolish. But that is now all behind us now, right? I'm going to place my phone on a stand in front of me so that so that you can see me."
There was a moment of silence while the Zzyk and the others digested the view.
"What is this, Ivan? Where are you?" Rick asked.
"I was remembering how our agreement was that if I killed Will and Izzy, I would be reunited with my daughter. Do you remember that?"
"Yes, of course." Zzyk replied.
"I have followed my orders. But it strikes me that there's a certain hair still embedded in my scalp that might explode accidentally. I thought we should eliminate that possibility."
"What's in your right hand, Ivan?"
"It's called a dead man's switch. As long as I keep my thumb on this button, nasty things aren't going to happen to one of your buildings. If I became too tired to continue holding it, or if I heard people coming down the hallway, or if I were somehow incapacitated by a hair falling out of my scalp, I might release the switch. The Wilizy had a lot of explosive materials in their storerooms. I stole as much as I could put in a copter and I have those explosives right here in this tiny little room with all this expensive computer equipment. I had enough explosives to scatter around other important rooms in this building too. This whole building will come down if I want it to."
"Ivan, I don't recognize the room," Zzyk said. "Would you like to tell me where you are?"
"Ask Ingrid. I can wait."
"Turning off the feed to you now, Ivan," Rick announced. "I think this is just a big misunderstanding."
"Yah, I think so too."
# # # # # # # #
"Ingrid?" Zzyk asked.
"He's in the main computer room in my genetic research building. The computer room contains all the genetic computer programs that we've been running for decades. The computers control absolutely everything in the baby creation process. Next to this room are the thousands of test tubes that we use to start the creation process. Further down the hallway are the rooms with the incubators where embryos in the test tubes are placed so that they can receive nine months of nutrition. On another floor are all the labs where we are planning creation of the new types of babies that we are going to produce for you. All of the results from our experiments are stored on computers on that floor. Throughout the building, we have equipment that has been especially created for this process. The computer files have off site back-ups, of course, but the specialized equipment in that building cannot be found anywhere else in the world."
"And if we lose this building?"
"It will set us back years. Perhaps a decade."
"How did Ivan get in?" Rick interjected. "How did he know this building even existed? Isn't it buried underground?"
"The building has an exterior alarm that cannot be turned off once it's been activated without entering codes that I control personally; every room has a motion detector attached to an alarm that cannot be turned off in the same way. Zzyk, we can't lose this building. I've spent my whole career creating what's in it."
"Rick, handle this. Disarm Ivan first. We can worry about how he got in later."
# # # # # # # #
"Ivan. First, congratulations on a wonderful operation. We're thrilled that Will and Izzy are dead and it's all because of you. Of course we're going to remove that hair. Hang on just a sec while Ingrid gives me the disarming code." Rick slid a paper over to her and waited.
"Ivan. I have Ingrid's code and it's a little complicated. We want to be sure that you take your time speaking it into the hair's little computer's brain. It operates just like the brain-band explosive that you disarmed. Read it twice. I'm going to hold up the paper now."
Ivan read the code as instructed and Rick lowered the paper. "Time to see if Ingrid was telling the truth,” Ivan said. He held up his right hand with the dead-man's switch so that it was directly in front of the camera, reached with his left hand to the left side of his head, felt around a little, and yanked. Ivan waited for a second, and let the hair fall to the ground behind him without examining it.
"Rick, let's talk now about my daughter. She's here in Edmonton, right? Ready to be delivered to me?"
"Of course." On that count, Rick was telling the truth. As Zzyk's executive director, he had to plan for all possibilities in an operation. It was possible that Zzyk would keep his word about reuniting Ivan and his daughter. It was possible that he'd murder both of them. It was also possible that Zzyk would want to appear that he was keeping his word, at least for a while. So Rick had had the girl brought from Alaska to Edmonton where she had been stashed in one of their infant care centers until he knew what Zzyk was going to do. Ingrid had a team watching her.
"Name the time and place and we'll have her there. But Ivan, she's too young to be waiting for you all alone in the dark, so how about we put a nurse with her?"
"Not a chance. Here's what we're going to do instead, Rick. I'm going to change this dead man's switch to a voice activated switch set to go off in two hours. When I leave this building, I will reactivate its alarm system but with a new password that only I will know. I'm going to get in my copter with my daughter and fly northwest. If I arrive safely in the Arctic Circle, I will send a message to this phone that will deactivate the switch. I will also inform you of the new password to what is now my building. You don't know the number of this phone or the messa
ge that I'm going to send, so you can't deactivate this switch. Any intrusions by DPS forces into my building will set off the explosives. If I am somehow delayed or killed before I reach safety, this building is going to be rubble."
"We have to believe that you won't disappear?"
"Rick, listen to me. I'm telling you exactly where I'm going. I'm returning to Prudhoe with my daughter. I'm going to beg my people to forgive me. I am going to explain that I have killed one of the biggest threats that they will ever face. I am also going to tell them that I know what Will has been using for energy/power. I think they'll take me back."
"You and your daughter could stay in Edmonton, Ivan."
"Not with Ingrid here, Rick. You know that wouldn't work."
"Back to where and when, Ivan." Zzyk intervened.
"I'll be outside this building, standing next to my copter in 10 minutes. When I appear, you are to land, drop her off, and leave. Remember Zzyk. You can kill me, but if you do, you won't be manufacturing babies again for a long time."
# # # # # # # #
It was well over 2 hours into Ivan's flight home and Zzyk was sitting alone with Ingrid. Ivan had phoned in the disarm signal and DPS security was now sweeping the building under Rick's supervision, removing the explosives and trying to determine how Ivan had entered the building. Ivan's helicopter was now flying over the Beaufort Sea.
"The video analysis definitely showed a lilac cloud in the flames of both people who were burning," Zzyk said. "The voices are definitely theirs. Are you convinced now that Will and Izzy are dead?"
"They couldn't have removed those hairs from their bodies beforehand without setting themselves on fire," Ingrid replied. "It has to be them in the video. I do wish we could find their bodies though."
They lapsed into personal contemplation. Like two married spouses, they didn't need to talk to know what the other was thinking.
"About Ivan learning about the building . . ." Zzyk opened.
"Yes. I confess. I showed it to him. I thought it would make him think better of me and what I was doing for our people."
"He wasn't impressed that you've accomplished something that the world has never seen before?"
"No. He can't forget that I had his wife killed. She didn't deserve him. Her children would tarnish our race. The child was tested. She had only average intelligence. How could I allow his child and wife to live when I had discarded others like them? Maintaining my authority is more important than the lives of a few stupid people."
"One must always keep control with an iron fist." Zzyk trotted out his own mantra.
"Precisely. People are inherently stupid. They must not be allowed to ruin it for those who are not." Ingrid just couldn't stand stupid people.
"The tracker that the child was carrying. Something she ate?"
"A cookie. The bug gives no trace of being active, at least not that any normal instruments can pick up."
"Your people are now awaiting instructions."
Ingrid nodded.
"Give me a live feed to the Prudhoe command center," Zzyk ordered. A few seconds later, "Prudhoe, where's the copter now?"
"Hovering at 300 meters above the ocean, 40 kilometers out, waiting for our permission to proceed, Sir."
"Stupid, stupid man. Wouldn't he know that I couldn't let him go back?"
"Your orders, Ingrid?"
Ingrid looked at Zzyk and shook her head once again in disbelief. She ran a finger across her throat.
"Prudhoe, destroy the copter."
"Sir, copter sees the missile launch. It's trying to jink up and down to avoid."
Five seconds later. "Target has been destroyed."
"That's all, Prudhoe."
"I don't know how I could have given birth to such a stupid, stupid boy."
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Chapter 25
It was noon on Tuesday, August 30, the day after the deaths of Will, Izzy, TG, and his daughter. Rick was giving Zzyk a progress report. Ingrid was in her lab checking for damage.
"Further analysis confirms that Will and Izzy were on that tape and the fire was lilac in colour," Rick reported. "We haven't been able find any charred bodies in initial sweeps of the area surrounding the care centers."
"Any chance of finding them?"
"We have no idea how close their staging area was to a care center. So if there's an abandoned copter, then yes, we'll find them. If not, finding the remains of two burnt bodies somewhere in Alberta's woods is unlikely."
"WZBN?"
"Soldiers have been spreading your acidic liquid over all of our western security fences. Will's transmitting compound is not difficult to see so they're spraying your counter-compound directly on the affected surfaces and it eats through to the metal in minutes. We'll be finished spraying the length of the border in a couple of days, but WZBN has already gone off the air. At 10:46, if you're interested."
"My babies?"
"Hidden. Unlikely to be found soon."
"Estimated number of Wilizy remaining?"
"Two less than what they had yesterday. They could have had hundreds of followers by now. We have no idea of their numbers. But they have no leadership and no science now. They are doomed."
"Don't relax security."
"Re-activate plans to invade B.C. through the Aboriginal Nation? I toured the border areas last week as I mentioned to you. Security is very lax."
"No. I'll deal with them later. Ingrid's project takes first priority. Her building?"
"Some possible traces of tampering with the main electrical feed into the building, but that's just a suspicion. What we do know is that someone bored a hole through a side door – big enough for a hand to get through but not a body. We do not know the purpose of that hole. The door itself was cracked open with a crowbar that was left at the scene. There was no attempt to hide it or to remove fingerprints. We're processing the crowbar now and we expect to find Ivan's prints on it."
"And then he walked around the building wherever he wanted to go?"
"Appears that way. No sign of tampering with any of the security systems in each room. Each has its own turn-off password by the way, so he would have had to know 20 or 30 passwords to wander through the entire building."
"Was the master code changed?"
"No. We turned the system back on and it works as designed. Every room is secure. The security system should have worked. "
"But it didn't." Zzyk showed no emotion.
"It didn't. But it is working now."
"How do we fix it so that there can't be another entry?"
"We could try and find a technical genius, but the one we used to have is dead."
"Yes, I forget that he was a genius in his own right. Just stupid in his choice of women. He'd be able to find a way, but nobody else can?"
"Possibly. I've put Ivan's replacement on the problem."
"He's checking to see if there were any attempts to hack into the computers in the building?"
"Yes. He says that no computer access was logged by anyone that evening, either within the building or from outside the building. No files were opened; no files were removed; no files were created; no logs were changed; no passwords were created or altered."
"Your gut?"
"I don't think Ivan had time to do anything. We know the exact minute that he left the baby house. We know the speed that his copter was able to fly and how far he had to go. We know the exact minute that he was sitting in the computer room talking to us. We calculate that he had only 20 minutes inside the building. He would have needed a fork lift to move all that explosive material into the building quickly but we saw no signs of a fork lift. Just distributing those explosives by walking room by room throughout the building would have consumed that 20 minutes. He would have had no time to tamper with the computer systems."
Rick continued what he thought was a compelling argument. "Besides, he's dead and unable to benefit from any tampering. We saw him climb into an empty copte
r with his daughter. He was the only one who could have flown it to the Arctic Ocean. The bug inside the child showed him flying steadily northeast on a direct path. I saw Prudhoe's radar tapes from the point where they picked up the copter. Ivan was trying to avoid the missile seconds before the explosion. He didn't have enough time between the missile launch and the missile strike to grab his daughter and jump out of the copter. Prudhoe has confirmed that the copter was destroyed. They found floating debris right where it should have been. The conclusion has to be that Ivan and his daughter were inside that copter and they died when Prudhoe blasted it out of the air."
"But to be absolutely sure the building's computer system is secure . . ."
"We're going to restore every computer record in that building from offsite backups that were made less than 24 hours before."
"Was that the new man's recommendation?"
"Yes. He suggested it without prompting."
"Encouraging."
"Yes. Igor is going to be easier to work with than Ivan. Completely supports Ingrid's plans. Shares her beliefs, which is not surprising because he's one of our friends. He can't wait to start."
"So, he's an arrogant, full-of-himself, supreme-being egg head?"
"Pretty much."
"Little things now, Rick. Give me the bad news if there is any. Did you recover the hair?"
"No. But it could have fallen down a vent that was behind Ivan's chair. I didn't see the point in taking the building's heating system apart to find it. It's inert now."
"The explosives that the Wilizy had?"
"Stolen from one of our armories."
"Ah. And the armory records were doctored to hide the fact?"
"I'll be dealing with that this afternoon."
"Do you have time to set up for this evening?"
"Already done."
# # # # # # # #
"My fellow Albertans." Zzyk started his address at 7 p.m. Tuesday evening. People in Alberta's cities stopped to shake their heads – trying to dislodge a tinny little voice speaking in their brain.
"Do not be alarmed if you hear my voice inside your head. This is Zzyk, your elected leader of this wonderful province."
City people shook their heads again, wondering what was happening. A tinny voice was speaking inside their head about some elections that nobody had known about.