Prodigal Son Read online

  Molleken opened his eyes, his forehead furrowing with focus. The bee buzzed and buzzed overhead. “Would you like to guess the accuracy of bombs during World War II?”

  Evan said, “Not good.”

  “An understatement. They had a fifty-percent chance of landing within two kilometers of the target.”

  A band of perspiration appeared at Molleken’s forehead just below the rim of the cap. The bee zipped off into the darkness behind them, banked, and flew back around toward the posed party scene. It sliced between the peripheral mannequins, cut right, and struck the target painted on the plastic skull with a bang.

  A sharp sizzling sound matched by a puff of black powder.

  Molleken peeled off the cap and beckoned Evan forward. They reached the target mannequin. It had a quarter-size entry hole directly over the bull’s-eye and a cone blown straight through the solid plastic skull.

  “My precision munitions are accurate to within two inches,” Molleken said. “A tiny bang sufficient to breach the skull and incinerate the contents. Think about the reduction in collateral damage. Life, property, infrastructure.”

  Evan circled the mannequin, peered back through the exit hole.

  Impressive.

  The force of the explosion hadn’t even been sufficient to knock the mannequin off its feet.

  When he came back around, Molleken was holding another robotic bee between his thumb and forefinger. “Now watch this.” He aimed it at Evan, compressing its wings once, and it made a click like a camera taking a picture.

  He threw the bee into the air, and it took flight, buzzing away.

  “I’ve locked in your facial features as the target,” he said. “Now it doesn’t need brain waves. It doesn’t need a database or an Internet connection. It does the thinking on its own.”

  A bead of sweat tracked down the back of Evan’s neck. He heard the bee in the darkness somewhere, circling.

  “Think how tiny it is,” Molleken said. “And how helpless you are.”

  The buzzing changed pitch, Evan doing his best to track the noise in the darkness beyond their throw of light, but the echoes of the vast lab made it impossible.

  “Call that thing off.” Evan’s voice was firm as he’d intended but a bit strangled, too.

  “It’s too late,” Molleken said. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

  A flash of movement to Evan’s left. The bee zipping into view.

  Evan lunged behind two of the mannequins, the bee whipping past overhead. It circled tightly and headed back. Evan dove and rolled over his shoulder blades, came up in time for the bee to smack him in the forehead and fall harmlessly to the floor.

  No explosive charge.

  His heart was hammering, his shirt doused in sweat. The metal bee hadn’t broken the skin, but his forehead smarted from the impact.

  Already Molleken was walking away.

  “Hey.” Evan hurried to catch up to him. “Hey. Doctor.”

  Molleken paused. Turned around. “Doctor? The Doctor? From what I hear, that’s someone whose attention you don’t want.”

  His eyes glittered flatly. He looked unshaken. They could have been talking about the weather.

  Evan tasted the bitter residue of adrenaline at the back of his throat. The air felt suddenly humid. He didn’t dare push the topic further and make the connection overt. He was too vulnerable here, at Molleken’s mercy.

  “What the hell was that?” he said. “That stunt with the bee?”

  The lights clanked off behind Evan, dousing the posed cocktail party in darkness. Evan spun around, and when he turned back, Molleken was walking away again. Evan pursued him across the battle lab, segments of the space illuminating around them, blackness all around. It felt claustrophobic, a virtual sally port encasing them as they strolled. Molleken ignored him. They both walked swiftly, shy of a jog.

  Molleken took a different route back, passing workstations littered with parts and blueprints and hardware. Evan held his stare as long as he could on the passing technology, memorializing as much as he could with his contact lenses.

  Molleken sped up until he was a half dozen strides ahead of Evan. He opened up more space yet. It took a moment for Evan to realize that Molleken was trying to leave him behind. He sensed an uptick in his body temperature, felt the heft of the gloves on his hands swinging at his sides. Weighted-knuckle gloves seemed absurdly low-tech for the threats he was facing here.

  “Molleken. Molleken.”

  About ten yards ahead, Molleken halted, his back still turned. “You’re not who you say you are.”

  Evan paused as well. “Why do you say that?” It felt bizarre talking to the back of Molleken’s head.

  “That clip on your shirt. It’s a miniaturized Laser Warning Receiver.”

  “You recognized it.”

  “I considered acquiring the company.” Still facing away, Molleken reached over, cuffed his sleeve up once, twice. And then the other. “Who are you really?”

  “I told you who I am.”

  Molleken was lit from above, a perfect silhouette, not an inch of him shadowed. A cardboard cutout of a man. Not being able to see his face felt creepy, discomfort crawling up Evan’s spine, bringing to mind the legion of tiny footsteps that had presaged the arrival of the robotic ants in the study.

  Molleken reached into his pocket and removed what appeared to be transparent gloves. He pulled one on, snapping the cuff. Then the other. A surgeon readying to enter the operating theater. Still he kept his back turned.

  He lifted one finger and pressed it to the inside of the opposite forearm, which Evan now saw had a shiny clear patch overlaid onto it. Molleken seemed to scroll along the patch as one would on an iPhone. It took Evan a moment to register what it was.

  Tommy had told him about electronic skin under development at Langley. Biocompatible silicone rubber embedded with touch-sensitive sensors.

  Molleken tapped the wearable screen on his forearm, and then a recording boomed from hidden speakers: “You see this shit?”

  It took Evan a moment to recognize his own voice.

  “That fucking bitch just keyed my car.”

  “So I used a ruse to get in,” Evan said. “So what?”

  “That’s a fucking McLaren 570s Spider.”

  Molleken’s finger swiped to the side, and the recording cut off abruptly. “Pretty impressive ruse,” he said. “For a tech journalist. Plus, the Medium articles under your name, Archive.org shows different bylines just a few hours before you showed up.” He lifted his gloved hands and held them out, a magician laying on a spell. “Someone’s been giving me trouble lately,” he said. “Working against my interests.”

  Even from this distance, even from behind, Evan could see him wiggle his fingers.

  A noise pitter-pattered in the darkness ahead. Thousands of tiny parts coaxed to life by the movements of Molleken’s digits. It sounded like countless insect legs drumming the earth in eager anticipation.

  Evan felt a tightness in his chest, a constriction in his throat. This whole time he’d been out of signal range, which meant that none of the images he’d recorded had been sent to Joey yet. No one knew where he was.

  He was underground in an unknown location at the mercy of a mad scientist.

  “You’ve seen what a bee can do.…” Molleken intensified the movement of his fingers, and all at once Evan heard the terrible humming of a multitude of wings. “But you haven’t met my prize pets yet.”

  Now at last Molleken turned. He clenched his hands into fists, the clear gloves turning his flesh shiny, and a thousand tiny yellow-green lights illuminated in the darkness beyond him. The pinpricks were arranged in tight groupings of two, which—Evan realized with an irrational spike of fear—mimicked the compound eyes of an actual dragonfly. And they rose in neat rows from floor to ceiling, a wall of unseen microdrones.

  The tiny eyes rose and fell a few centimeters, mirroring the undulation of Molleken’s fingers. The humming waxed and waned with th
eir movement, the unseen metallic legs scratching horribly each time they found their perch.

  A noise broke above the thrum of white noise—a bugle giving a three-note salute. It sounded once more, and Evan noticed the vibration of the Laser Warning Receiver on his shirt. The sound was coming from him.

  He was lit up.

  Molleken said, “Should we try this again?”

  Evan stared at the robotic eyes staring back at him from the darkness, ready to launch. All those laser target designators locked on him. He wouldn’t get two steps before they’d fill the air around him. For now they stayed in place, hovering in the darkness.

  He held up his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  Molleken lowered his hands. Taps stopped emanating from Evan’s clip. The dragonflies settled back down. An instant later the lights of their eyes clicked off, and now it was just Evan and Molleken staring at each other in a cube of light.

  “I’m an airman.” Evan tried to exhale some of the tension that had knotted his shoulders into rock. “A friend of Jake Hargreave’s.”

  “Who’s Jake Hargreave?” Molleken asked.

  Evan stared into his four pupils. No tell. “A drone pilot who was killed a few weeks ago.”

  “And he is relevant to me how?”

  “He tested some of your technology. At Creech North. And then was killed.”

  Molleken mused on this for a moment. “I recall something about this. Unspecified training accident in Area 6. That’s what I was told. I know nothing more about this Hargreaves incident—”

  “Hargreave.”

  “—though I was informed that people die in training all the time.”

  “Not like this.”

  “Maybe not. But that’s the official record. What are you going to do?” Molleken’s lips twitched with amusement. “Take down the military-industrial complex?”

  “I’d be happy just taking down the people who killed Hargreave.”

  Molleken stared at him for a long time, his face devoid of human emotion.

  “Okay.” He peeled off his gloves, stuffed them into his pockets. “Good luck.” He started off at a different trajectory, piercing the waiting darkness to their side. “I have a party to get back to.”

  46

  And They Laughed

  The elevator rose to the ground floor and opened. Molleken pressed his hand to the bumper. “You get out here.”

  Evan stepped out.

  He turned around, but the doors were already closing, wiping Molleken from view.

  Behind him he could hear the party in full swing, awed voices at the periphery.

  “Was that him in the elevator?”

  “I just saw him. Dude, that was him.”

  A blinking green light in Evan’s visual field indicated that the video he’d recorded in the battle lab had been sent to Joey. He exhaled. Time to split.

  As he cut through the crowd, various gazes adhered to him: the man who had ridden a private elevator with Molleken. Beneath the hoodie his shirt constricted his ribs, stuck to him with dried sweat. He was eager to get outside into the fresh air, to get back to Joey at the hotel and see if she could make any sense from the live stream he’d initiated in the battle lab.

  He shoved into the foyer, the scent of poinsettias riding the thin breeze from the porch, and then he spotted her.

  Cammy, the girl in the ripped jeans.

  Standing alone on the second-to-lowest step of the stairs, gripping an elbow with her opposite hand, a dazed look in her eyes. One cheek splotched red, maybe from being slapped. Her blouse ripped at the side seam, showing a bulge of tanned flesh. She was chewing her lip, looking at nothing.

  After losing at hide-and-seek with a robotic bee, confronting a swarm of glowing eyes in the darkness, and standing down a genius who’d batted him through a subterranean lab like a cat toying with a mouse, this was not a complication Evan welcomed right now. The Seventh Commandment: One mission at a time.

  He turned his back to the girl and started out. He neared the threshold, the December air cool and welcoming across his face, freedom just a few steps away.

  Then he paused.

  He thought about the bearded man—Rishi—tugging Cammy’s breast. Ordering her to kiss the other girl. They know what they’re looking for.

  He gritted his teeth.

  This wasn’t really another mission.

  More like a sub-mission.

  He turned back around. A pair of drunken revelers stumbled down the stairs, knocking Cammy in the shoulder, shuddering her frame. She barely seemed to register them.

  Evan walked back to her. She clung to the newel post. Her blouse hung low in the front as if it had been yanked and stretched out, her ribs visible above her breasts. She shifted, and the neckline tugged over, exposing a nipple.

  Evan paused five feet from her, a safe distance back. “Excuse me?”

  It took a moment for her eyes to settle on him.

  “May I walk closer to you?”

  Her hands gripped the newel post, thin arms trembling. She jerked her head up, down.

  He walked near her. “Your shirt is out of place.”

  She looked down. She moved to reach for her collar but seemed to collapse forward; she needed the post to hold herself upright.

  Evan said, “May I adjust your shirt back into place?”

  She nodded.

  He reached out slowly and tugged the fabric up to cover her. He pulled his hoodie off and held it out. She nodded.

  He drew it across her shoulders. She smelled clean and sweet, deodorant and perfume. He imagined her getting ready earlier—preparing for a fun night ahead, checking her lipstick in the mirror, maybe a bit of music on—and had to tamp down the simmering in his chest.

  She said, “Will you get me out of here?”

  Evan shouldered her weight and helped her off the stairs. He pushed through the people in the foyer with purpose, and they seemed to sense his mood and move aside.

  On the porch one of the bouncers said, “Hope you had a good evening.”

  Evan caught his eye. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that I’ll be coming back.”

  As Evan moved Cammy toward the gates, someone crooned after them from the photo area. “Yeaaah, boy. Go get some!”

  They walked in silence, Evan bearing her weight. Cammy kept her eyes down to check her footing and make sure she didn’t stumble on her wedge heels. The air smelled of eucalyptus, the sidewalks littered with shed peels of bark. Slowly the noise of the party faded behind them, and then it was just the sound of her shoes ticktocking the concrete and her hoarse breathing.

  They reached Evan’s truck. He paused by the passenger door. “Are you comfortable getting in?”

  She nodded.

  He unlocked the door and helped her up and then circled around. As he pulled himself into the driver’s seat, he noticed she was sobbing. Face tilted into her hands, shoulders trembling, deep, wrenching sobs. He let her cry.

  Five minutes passed and then another five. He wondered if she wanted some physical reassurance, a rub of her back, but wasn’t sure if that would be invasive. He wondered if men raised with mothers actually knew better what to do in circumstances like this. Veronica came into his mind, her cool, mysterious demeanor holding no answers.

  At last Cammy lifted her head. “How do I stop crying?”

  “You don’t,” Evan said. “You don’t right now.”

  “What do I do?”

  “How old are you?”

  “I turned eighteen on Tuesday. They checked my ID before they let me on the list. Took a picture, even. For, like, evidence.” A smile found her face, though it held no happiness. A resting grin, the kind that young women wore to cover whatever darkness was moving beneath the surface.

  “Are you in school?”

  “I’m a freshman. At Foothill.”

  A first-year at community college. Evan gripped the steering wheel, the steel shot rolling in the leather pouches at his knuckles. “Can yo
u talk to your parents?”

  She gave an ugly laugh. It hung there, an echo imprint on the air.

  “I went to a biker bar in Los Gatos with some friends last week.” She shoved fists across her red cheeks. “All these fat, bearded rednecks, and we were treated with respect, but these MIT assholes…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I can take you to the ER,” he said. “File a rape kit.”

  “No.” She shook her head roughly, like a little girl. “No. They used condoms. Rishi threw them at his friends. Said, ‘We don’t wanna get cock rot.’ And they laughed.”

  She hoisted the hood over her head and withdrew her hands into the sleeves, bunched the fabric to close it off, a sea anemone retreating into itself. Evan thought about all the creatures Molleken studied but how he only appropriated their strengths instead of learning from their vulnerabilities.

  He pictured Joey’s date offering her that vape pen on the patio and suddenly felt tired. How much courage it took to care for someone. He thought of Mia figuring it out alone. What had she said? I’ll let you in on a secret. No one’s enough as a parent. And yet she was doing everything for Peter that she could—the way Cammy’s parents likely had for her. Evan’s training had taught him to cover every operational contingency, but the feat of laying bare one’s heart seemed rife with greater dangers yet. There was nothing more wild and unpredictable than a human being.

  “I knew what I was doing,” Cammy said. “I did. At the front part at least.” She sipped in a few breaths. “They slapped me. Rishi grabbed my mouth hard from behind, cut up the insides of my cheeks. These guys watch so much porn they think they know what turns girls on. Or maybe they don’t care.” She looked over at him, her eyes huge and unguarded. Her voice little more than a whisper: “I never said no.”

  “The crying should have been enough.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But it wasn’t.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that.

  “There’s nothing to do,” she said, her words hushed and cracked.