chapter 31
TEAM 2, YEAR: 2016
Time Remaining: 139 Days
At the lab, Riley stared at the three guns in the testing tank, a cloudy expression shadowing her face. She had to admit she was getting nervous. They had yet to solve their biggest obstacle—decreasing the amount of time it took to neutralize the Elevanium from an average of eleven minutes and fifty-three seconds to a fraction of a second.
Owen stood at Riley’s side and bit into an apple. “Let’s think about this logically. The process takes too long, so we need to speed it up. To do that, we need either more power or an accelerant. How many cartridges did you say you brought, Rile?”
“Tons. A hundred, 150 maybe. I’d say we’ve only gone through maybe twenty.”
Owen thought for a moment, desperate for any idea. “Do you have any schematics on those ray guns?”
“Yeah, actually, we do.” Riley turned to look at her CI screen and it sprung to life at the back of the lab. She flipped through some files and, in seconds, a three-dimensional illustration of the gun rotated before him.
“Is tampering with the cartridges dangerous? Can we make them more concentrated? What if we increased the size of the cartridge clip to accommodate two or even three cartridges instead of just one?”
Finn thought about the suggestion. “The gun would just last longer between cartridge changes. It wouldn’t make it any more powerful. The power draw is the limiting factor.”
Owen looked at the picture of the gun again and switched to a cross-section view. “So, then we need to increase the power draw. We need the gun to release more rays, faster.”
Finn shook his head. “They’re already set to max, and they’re smoking after the tests we do. What we’re doing already exceeds their standard use. These guns aren’t designed to run for minutes at a time.”
“Well, in theory, the bigger the blast, the shorter they need to run. What if the guns were cooled?” asked Owen.
“Okay, let’s solve one problem at a time,” said Riley. “Finn, do you think it’s possible to override the gun to increase its output capacity?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never modified a gun this complex. Repair, yes. Recalibrate, yes,” he said carefully, looking at the imposing image of the gun on the screen. He cracked his knuckles. “Let me look into this. Go for lunch and leave it with me.”
Riley and Owen returned from lunch to find Finn wired. He stood at Owen’s whiteboard, madly writing notes, stopping every couple of seconds only to look over his shoulder at the CI screen. Two energy drink cans and two bottles of Gatorade lay empty on the lab desk behind him. On the CI screen, Owen saw a wall of what he could only assume was programming code of some kind, with symbols he had never seen before.
“You’ve been busy,” said Riley. “Any news?”
Finn’s words were fast and caffeine-charged. “Yes. Well, no. Yes and no. Yes, I’ve been busy. No, I don’t have any definitive answers. I analyzed the schematics of the gun. I think we can probably increase the output of zeno rays by physically boring out the ray focusing chamber and increasing the capacity of the primary and secondary booster chargers. That part, I think, would be easy. We’ll need to increase the sensitivity of the cooling sensors and that will be tricky. I also think that we should be able to modify and extend the cartridge clip to add two more cartridges. That’s a little more dangerous as it involves fabrication and tampering with the cartridges and whatnot. What I’m not sure of right now is if we can reprogram the gun to compensate for the enlarged booster chargers and force the draw of additional energy from the modified cartridge system.” Finn turned to the CI screen and scrolled through page after page of code. “I’ve never seen code like this before. I need more time. Give me a day or two, I should have some better answers for you. I’ll need to cross-reference the programming of some other high-output guns to compare programming methods.”
Finn spent the next several days experimenting with the guns. Until he could determine whether the guns would be able to handle shooting a higher density beam, there was nothing more that Riley and Owen could do. Riley abhorred doing nothing so she puttered around the lab, organizing and preparing equipment and boxes for their departure.
Although he still had plenty of vacation days before having to return to work full time, Owen split this free time between Riley and finishing up his Key Eleven project report for the International Space Coalition. He called his ISC contact to report his completion of the project and learned a representative would be on the next plane to personally collect and deliver the results back to the ISC. It felt like months had passed since he had last worked on the project. Most of the documentation regarding his discoveries of the Elevanium had been completed prior to his house being blown up and for this he was grateful. After spending so much time working with the super-element, he feared he would inadvertently add information to his report that he had learned as a result of his work with Riley and Finn.
Time Remaining: 136 Days
Owen and Riley stopped at the lab to check on Finn. He declined dinner with them for the third night in a row, which was very unlike him. They found him, disheveled and pale, sitting on one of the lab stools staring at the CI screen, deep in thought. His eyes were slits of pink, like he had forgotten how to blink and his hair was askew. Absently, he rolled one of the gun’s crystal light deflectors around in his hand, the rest of the gun’s parts lay in organized rows on the lab table.
“How’s it going, Finn?” Riley spoke softly as if he were a bomb that may explode if she talked too loud.
Finn nearly toppled out of his seat when he realized people were in the room. “Oh! Hey, Rile. Good, good, it’s going great. I’m almost done here. I have lots of stuff to tell you, but I can’t talk now, I’m near a breakthrough. I’m going to stay here a little while longer if that’s okay.”
“Finn, when was the last time you slept?”
Finn thought for a moment and looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. “I’m not sure. I think I had a nap not too long ago.”
“Good news, Finn,” said Riley. “We get to move back into Owen’s house tomorrow. It’s finished.”
Finn’s sliver of attention had already been absorbed back into the gun’s programming code on the screen. It took him several seconds to respond and when he did, his distraction was evident. “Houses are good…I lived in a house once…”
Riley waved her hand in front of Finn’s face, but it went unnoticed. She shrugged, turned away and walked into the kitchen.
Owen stared at Finn’s glassy eyes, convinced the kid had not blinked since they entered the room. “Is it okay to leave him like this?”
Riley seemed only mildly concerned. “Yeah, he’ll be fine. He gets like this sometimes. He’ll get on a project and he doesn’t like to quit if he’s making significant forward progress. There’s food and a bed here. He’ll be fine.” Riley grabbed four ham sandwiches from the fridge as well as several bottles of water and orange juice and placed them on the desk in front of Finn. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he unwrapped one of the sandwiches and shoved it into his mouth.
Time Remaining: 135 Days
Riley’s knock on Finn’s hotel room door the next morning went unanswered. She entered his room using the spare key he had given her their first night there. He insisted she take it knowing he would inevitably lose his. He told her she was welcome to enter at any time, but he would not be held responsible if she saw something she could not unsee.
“And, just to warn you, I sleep naked. And these rooms are freaking hot,” he had said.
Riley assumed that Finn slept at the lab—the sparse bus service at night made getting to and from the lab in the evenings tricky. Riley packed Finn’s bags so they could check out and return to Owen’s house.
By noon, Riley’s concern for Finn had grown, so she and Owen returned to the lab to check on him again. They found Finn sitting on his chair, slumped over the lab station atop a pile of tools
and gun parts. He held the gun’s long barrel in his right hand. Riley found two containers of pills and seven empty energy drink cans in the sink of the lab station.
“Oh shit,” said Owen. He grabbed Finn’s wrist to check for a pulse. After finding one, his panic subsided. “What are the pills he took?”
Riley recognized the little grey bottle instantly and held it up to show Owen. “Tunnel Vision. They’re pills that help you concentrate and stay focused.” The second bottle she had never seen before. She picked it up and read the label. “Shit.”
“What are they?” asked Owen. He took the sky blue bottle from Riley and read the label.
“Skyscrapers.” Riley scowled at Finn’s unconscious form. “They’re an energy pill, but whether they’re safe is still questionable. They were approved by the FDA last year amid some serious controversy. They’re supposed to be all-natural but who knows. It’s a bit of a hot topic right now.”
Riley grabbed Finn’s shoulders and shook him gently but got no response. She shook him more violently and his spaghetti limbs knocked several tools to the floor. The gun barrel slid out of his hand and clanked loudly as it hit the floor, taking several tools down with it. “I’ll kill him,” Riley muttered.
Finn murmured something incoherent as Riley pulled him into an upright sitting position. She pinned him against the back of his lab stool with her forearm across his broad chest then lifted one of his eyelids and peered into his eye. “Good. He’s still got his contacts in.” She removed her arm and he slumped forward again landing hard on the table. Finn pulled an armful of tools and gun pieces toward him and rested his head on them like a pillow.
Riley stared at her CI screen. The code and gun specs disappeared. A program appeared that Owen had never seen Riley or Finn use. A progress bar appeared on the screen for a few seconds showing the progress for something Owen could not make heads or tails of. It disappeared and a detailed report appeared.
Riley explained. “I’m doing a reverse physical analysis on Captain Brilliant here. He’s left his lenses in so I can run a diagnostic check of his bodily functions, just to make sure he’s not going to die on us.”
Owen sensed that Riley had done this before; the report generated an enormous amount of data, but she scrolled to very specific places in the diagnosis and read. Owen was only able to read snippets of information, and most of it seemed to be coded with numbers.
Satisfied with what she read, she closed the window and looked back down at Finn. “Well, he’s fine. He’s got a 342A, 8723UX, T367AB. Meaning, he’s physically over-exhausted, his immune efficiency is way down and, well, let’s just say that thanks to that particular cocktail of drugs, he’s likely to experience some intestinal fireworks for the next little while.”
Riley and Owen half-walked, half-carried Finn to Owen’s truck and buckled him into the back seat. He slumped over immediately and curled up into the fetal position. Back at the house, they hauled him into his room, his feet dragging behind him as they awkwardly heaved his hulking frame down the hallway. They laid him out on the bed and it creaked under his weight. Owen looked amused at the level of intimacy Riley shared with her partner as she stripped him down to his socks and boxers, then folded his jeans.
“Trust me, he’ll be grateful. I’ve seen far more of him on more occasions than I care to count. One time he called me to pick him up at a bar and when I got there, he wasn’t. I found him one block over, running down the street wearing nothing but one sock and a steering wheel duct-taped to his left hand.” She set his folded jeans on the chair next to the bed and looked down at him. “When you’re in Black Ops and you’re in the field, no one has any of the secrets that privacy affords you. The result is that your teammates become like family. He’s like my little brother.”
Riley pulled the blankets over Finn, folded his shirt and laid it atop his jeans.
“What an idiot.” Riley shook her head but admired his spirit. They left as he rolled over in his sleep and spooned a pillow.