Ozark Mountains

The Cabin

Elizabeth was in the kitchen with Alice, going over a few notes on the new intelligence network they were trying to build. It was both easier than she thought and more difficult in some ways. It was all about applying enough pressure on people to do what was needed of them. Mainly providing information since not everything was on the Internet where Max could dig it out. The AI was a master when it came to unearthing people's dirty little secrets. She went through the FBI databases Max provided and marked people who they could use. Alice was doing the same on the military side. She might have had some misgivings at first, but when she saw the secrets those people were hiding, her doubts disappeared... some of them were vile. They wouldn't be able to do anything without Max, he was processing information and going through the databases at the speed she would have thought impossible a while ago. The young FBI analyst she was before would have been afraid of his abilities, but Elizabeth felt safe. The AI was using his gifts to further their plan, to make a new future available to them all.

They were taking a break, waiting for Michael to return so they could talk to him about some aspects of the intelligence-gathering network, when she noticed something unusual. Through the cabin’s window, she saw Tyron, Pete, and Al, running at full speed towards the place where the camouflaged transporter was parked. They practically jumped inside and the aircraft launched into the air at breakneck speed. The sonic boom of it breaking the sound barrier was heard like a colossal thunder all across the valley.

“Max, what is going on?”

For the first time since she was introduced to Max, his answer wasn't instantaneous. For several seconds she was faced with terrifying silence, which caused her stomach muscles to clench. Alice must have seen something on her face because she rose from the chair with a questioning look in her eyes.

“Max?”

“Don't worry, the danger has passed and Michael is alive, but Dave and he had been shot a few seconds ago.” The AI responded hurriedly, his voice conveying more emotions than usual.

“Shot! … Shot by whom? Where is he? Why— “

“The guys are closing on his location; I will have more information in a minute, please be patient.”

She could feel her heart beating in her ears and inside, she was fighting between two strong impulses. One was to be at Michael’s side as soon as possible, and the other, to find those that shot him and choke the life out of them with her bare hands.

Despite Alice and Anna’s words to keep calm, she could not keep still, pacing around the room and every so often asking Max for any new information. Finally, they were coming back and Max informed her that the transporter would go directly to the spaceship, so Elizabeth rushed outside the cabin and started running in that direction.

Never in her life did she run this fast, using the maximum speed her upgrades allowed; her field of view contracted until the trees blurred in her peripheral vision. This was far better than waiting and going through all possible scenarios in her head.

By the time she reached the entrance shaft, Tyron, Pete, and Al had already transferred Michael and Dave to the AutoDoc.

She would not remember later how she got down the ladder and entered the ship, but the image of Michael lying on the bed, his face and shirt covered in blood, would stay with her forever.

The sterile field covered him so she couldn’t even touch him. Elizabeth could only stand there and watch as nanites repaired all the damage done to him.

“He will be fine,” Max said, his hologram standing beside her.

Elizabeth silently nodded, but those words did little to calm the storm of emotions raging inside her.

***

Ozark Mountains

The Spaceship

He really should stop waking up like this, the same old ceiling, boring AutoDoc walls and he in a prone position. Maybe he could get Max to throw a splash of color in this place, something more interesting than this all-white decor.

“The sleeping beauty finally awakes,” Max said cheerfully, sitting in a chair beside his bed.

“Do I look like a sleeping beauty to you?”

“I was referring to the fact that Elizabeth was trying to wake you up with a kiss a while ago, you totally ruined the moment by sleeping like a log.”

“Where is she? Michael asked.

“She had to go back to the cabin, they are having a meeting about what to do. Before you ask, you have been here for a whole day, and you need to stay in that bed for another hour.”

“Dave?”

“Look to your left.”

There, beside him was a familiar opaque energy cocoon and inside it, Dave was lying asleep.

“How is he?”

“He will live, thanks to you. It was touch and go for a while; he was losing massive amounts of blood. You providing the pressure on his wounds helped the nanites to stabilize him. There were many internal injuries to repair and he should awake in six hours.”

“And the man that shot at us?”

“He escaped, I… it was a miscalculation on my part. I had one satellite in a stationary orbit above the cabin, but it didn’t follow your movements when you went to see Dave. A mistake I do not plan to repeat again. From now on you will have one dedicated bird above you at all times, following your every movement,” Max stated.

“It’s not your fault, this was out of the blue, I still don’t understand who he was, or how the hell did he manage to find me.”

“We did find one clue at the scene; the shooter dropped his gun when you shot him. Tyron managed to lift the prints, and I checked them through every law enforcement database in the world.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No, that’s just it, this guy is a ghost. I have found more than 40 murder cases where the prints were a positive match. Those crimes were committed in every corner of the globe, spanning two decades. For all that, there is no name associated with the prints or any affiliation. He’s a professional killer, and considering our past actions it could mean only one thing.”

“The ‘High Council’… damn.”

“I came up with the same conclusion. Somehow, they were able to find us.”

“We need to move; this area is not secure anymore. Tell everyone to start packing,” Michael commanded, knowing that the longer they stayed here, the greater was the chance for another attack.

“You can tell them yourself, they started in this direction the moment I told them that you are awake.”

A few minutes later Elizabeth entered the room and threw herself at still lying Michael. “Never do that to me again!” She cried into his shoulder.

“It’s okay, I’m fine.”

“I could have lost you… you almost died.”

Michael held her tightly, not saying anything.

“She’s right, you’re lucky that that bullet just grazed you. If it had hit you directly in the head, things would not be fine. You got away with a nasty concussion and considerable bruising on your brain. It was an armor-penetrating round, even if it was a direct hit, it would not be able to penetrate your skull thanks to all the reinforcements, but the transfer of kinetic energy would have turned your brain matter into mush. The one in your chest was stopped by your subdermal armor. In the future, try to avoid getting shot in the head; it can be bad for your health.”

“Well then, you better make me a helmet, because it is obvious I still don’t know how to dodge bullets,” Michael replied.

At that moment, everybody else entered the AutoDoc, Tyron and the team, his father, Anna, and Alice.

“Mike, thanks for testing the subdermal armor for us, it was big of you,” Al said.

Tyron slapped the back of his head, and continued, not giving it a second thought, “you shouldn’t have gone alone, that was careless. From now on you need to always have a backup; like it or not you are a VIP now and need a constant protection detail.”

His father had jumped in a transporter the moment Max informed him what happened, and arrived here at top speed. “Son, he's right. From the stories they’ve told me, you are up against some very evil people, and you’ll always need to be on your guard,” Robert Freeman said.

“Okay, okay… I get it, I may not like it, but you’re all right. Furthermore, as I told Max earlier, this area is no longer secure for us. They may not know where the cabin is, but the fact that they found me is proof that we are not safe here. We need to move as soon as possible.”

“That’s what we were discussing before you woke up,” Elizabeth said.

“What are our options? Max, did you manage to acquire any secondary locations?”

Max nodded. “Since you gave the order, I managed to buy a few properties. One of them is a decommissioned military facility, smack in the center of the desert. It was quite cheap since there is nothing around it. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s livable.”

“That was fast, all right…. Tyron, take Elizabeth, Anna, and Alice, the rest of us will follow you soon as Dave wakes up.”

“Max, what security do we have around here?”

“I tasked two additional satellites to be on over-watch above us; anything in a 25-mile radius is being monitored. But as soon as you are all away from here, I would feel much more comfortable.”

“How long before you can extract yourself from the crystal matrix?”

“At least a month. It is hard to give a more precise date since the crystal was made of multiple laminated layers of different hardness. The nanites are eating through the material as fast as they can, but its resilience is out of this world… literally. Besides, the ship has been unobserved for thousands of years, and it is the safest place on the planet.”

“Michael turned to his father. “Dad, I need you to go and organize those think tanks as soon as you can, I’m sorry for the rush, but this attack showed that maybe we don’t have as much time as I thought.”

“It is fine son, I understand. Do not worry; I have already a few names lined up. Max and I agreed on a plan of action.”

“And if you see anyone suspicious, let us know immediately.”

“Hey, I even have my own personal transporter and a satellite to monitor me, I will be fine. Look after yourself, and this lady of yours, I still have an aspiration to become a grandfather,” he said with a hopeful smile which made Elizabeth blush.

Soon after that, his father and the others departed, while Pete and Al were finishing with packing all their stuff from the cabin.

“Max, intensify your search for the ‘High Council’, I have a feeling this attack was only their opening move. We need to find them and stop them.”

“I’m tapped in NSA servers, as they are already listening to any call or Internet communication, and I am monitoring any suspicious activity around this area. They need to make one single mistake, and I will have them.”

After Max gave him a clean bill of health, Michael got out of the ship and helped Pete and Al with the packing. This was his safe haven, his escape from the world and now the people who wanted to do them harm had destroyed the sanctuary it provided. This was one more thing he will hold them accountable for and which he will make them pay for.

As soon as Dave woke up, they locked the cabin down, entered the transporter, and went away from the peaceful valley.

***

The Missile Silo

Two Weeks Later

Michael stood at the top of the little hill, looking down at their new home base. He had just finished the last lap of extensive physical training schedule Max created and could see the others were quickly closing in on him. They were led by Tyron, who had made significant progress at increasing his speed in the last few days. The new home did not look like much really. When Max said that he bought a decommissioned military facility, he failed to mention that it was a Cold War-era missile silo.

When they first saw it, nobody thought that they could live here. There were a few rundown buildings and a big slab of concrete. Then Max showed them his little surprise… their home was not on the surface.

As he explained to them, the moment papers were signed, he sent one of the transporters with the batch of construction nanites and dropped them on the site. The missile was long gone, but there was an abundance of leftover materials for them to work with. And those construction nanites performed a small miracle. He said that he got an idea from some old documentary, which was about how to transform an obsolete missile silo into a livable space. It was amazing how much room there was underneath the ground. The actual silo, where once a missile resided, was a one hundred forty-seven feet deep hole, and fifty-five feet in diameter. Max separated that space into individual levels, with bathrooms, bedrooms, and living rooms. Each level had around 2300 square feet of living area, which was more space than they needed. The entire project was not done yet; only the top five levels were ready for residential occupation while the rest were still under construction. With outer walls made of four feet thick reinforced concrete, no water ever seeped inside and the entire structure was bone dry.

The cherry on the cake was launch control center, connected to the missile silo with a long new corridor that was once a cableway. The control center had three levels, stripped bare of old equipment, and transformed into an intelligence-gathering facility. The bottom level or the basement was filled with computer servers Max designed and built himself, using a combination of alien and human technology. The second level, intelligence-gathering one, had holographic walls displaying every piece of information they had. And the top, a small dome-shaped one, Michael claimed for himself, as his new office.

Between the silo and the control center was the silo’s access portal, with refurbished elevator and decontamination area now housing a small cold fusion reactor and deep-water well, making them quite self-sufficient.

Max even built a new AutoDoc, and with no restrictions of space, it was more of a hospital since it occupied an entire level.

It took them about ten days to settle down in this new location, as there was a mountain of additional stuff they needed to do; beds, linens, food… the list was a mile-long.

One night, under the cover of darkness, they went to Dave’s e-waste recycling plant and took the entire nano-factory with them. Max made sure that the entire area was secure, and that no one was monitoring the place. It took some work, but Max had made the entire thing with forethought of doing exactly that. With Gravity-drive of its own, and helped by thick cables attached under their transporter, the whole thing was moved close to their new base. They housed it in a big military warehouse that came with the property, after refurbishing the entire building. Dave chose to make that warehouse his home, well, after they bought him a big RV to live in. He had a big case of claustrophobia, and living underground was not really to his liking. There was already a big pile of electronic scrap they bought and had it transferred to the site, so he was back in business.

In the end, the apartments looked like five-star hotel rooms, including a level that was essentially a gym and a spa. Bringing down all that heavy exercise equipment, even with their enhanced strength was not an easy task.

Jack and his father were doing amazing on their own. Jack had already more than one hundred potential recruits, and if they were to include their families that accounted for more than three hundred people.

His father had formed a few think tanks, each tasked with solving specific problems. He had hired top experts in each field offering them more than generous salaries, and setting them on their tasks.

Elizabeth and Alice’s intelligence network was growing exponentially, and with Max’s hacking skills, they had tapped into every government agency in the world. Finding those that attacked him was essential.

Michael, Tyron, and Pete had to wait for Al to catch up to them; so far, he managed to arrive last every single time. It was not that he was the slowest, but for the all goofing around he did. After taking a drink of water from their canteens, the team slowly started walking toward the base entrance, there was still much work to be done.

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"Failure is not an option - it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do."

Schlock Mercenary maxim

:)