Chapter 21:

Several hours later, after watching a couple of movies and just relaxing, Cierra told Will she was going to bed, and was too tired for company. Will chuckled, and made his exit.

It was the middle of the night now, so Will figured it might be convenient timing to get a quick look around branch HQ without worrying about prying eyes.

Heading that direction, he found a convenient place to park once he was within five miles of the property. Getting out, he shrugged on a dark colored hoodie, and hiked the rest of the way at a steady pace.

Once he got to the property line, he started by looking for any signs of life. Not seeing anything from the front of the main building, he slowly started circling the property. As he went, he kept an eye out for any cameras or motion sensors, but didn’t see any.

As he got to the back of the property, he suddenly heard a door slam shut. Freezing his forward movement, he slowly crouched next to a clump of sagebrush.

Looking around, he saw that a light had come on in an outbuilding that looked like a garage. Luckily, he was still a fair distance away, because a floodlight suddenly flared up outside of the door he must have heard closing. There was also a well restored, old model, step-side pickup truck parked in front of the closed roll-up door.

Seeing movement inside the building, he decided to continue his circuit and get a closer look at the truck. He was also hoping to get a look at the driver when they left, so he quickly moved into position across from the door, and found a good spot to wait and hide under the edge of another large clump of sagebrush.

After about 15 minutes of watching, during which only adrenaline had kept him focused, he started hearing definite movement inside. Then he heard the sound of something heavy and metallic being shoved across concrete, followed by the outline of someone walking past the window in the door.

A few seconds later, the light in the building went out, and Will assumed the person was leaving. At the last minute, he decided to suppress his energy tap to the lowest level he could. He was glad he trusted his instinct when the man stepped into the light outside of the garage door after locking up.

That step had brought the man into range of his own energy sense, and Will was almost positive the man was an Operator. He was dressed in a white lab coat, hanging open over a pair of overalls, with a comically large cowboy hat to round out the look. It might have been funny, if not for the large number of suspicious reddish brown stains that covered large chunks of the lab coat.

Those definitely countered the humor. He didn’t have any proof, of course, but he was almost positive they were blood stains, and he didn’t think the blood belonged to the absurd looking man.

Just before stepping into his truck, the man paused and swept a look out over the property. Will was worried he might’ve been sensed even while suppressing his energy, but the man’s dead eyes never so much as paused in their sweep.

He couldn’t explain it until later, but when the man’s eyes had passed over him, Will had felt a mix of instinctual urges and emotion trying to loosen his hold on the suppression of his energy tap, but he kept himself under control. It was like the man was utterly revolting, and Will felt the simultaneous urge to bolt, as well as flare his energy like a spotlight to attack the man with every ounce of power he could muster.

Soon, the man got into his truck and pulled out of the driveway.

Making a snap decision, Will waited for the truck to be far enough away he wouldn’t have to worry about being sensed. He was glad he’d worn the thick hoodie to cover the glow from his crest, as he ramped up his energy tap and started running after the truck while keeping to the shadows.

Luckily, he didn’t have to tap into his stored electricity, as the glowing eyes would have been a serious problem with this strategy. He didn’t think two random glowing orbs would go ignored in the extremely dark surroundings.

He’d never actually gotten around to testing how fast he could run in a flat out sprint now, but he did know it was seriously fast. So, counting on his endurance and recovery to keep him at full speed, he sprinted to match pace with the truck.

The truck kept to small back streets, and Will was guessing they kept under about forty miles an hour for their short trip, but he was momentarily confused when the truck followed a road marked as a dead end. He spotted a small dirt road that jutted away from the road just before the truck pulled onto it and kept going.

He was glad the streetlights had stopped before they even turned onto the dead end road, as he now had to run on the road itself, but the dust kicked up by the truck was seriously annoying. He managed to continue his pace, keeping the tail lights of the truck at a steady distance from himself for several more minutes.

Finally, the truck pulled up to a house that had a similar setup for power and water as Cierra’s family compound. Guessing he would want to get closer, Will once again suppressed his energy and drastically slowed his pace.

Keeping a watch for any cameras or motion sensors, he slowly continued to close the distance to the house. He was glad he’d been paying attention when he spotted a couple of boulders that bordered the road where it turned suddenly. Apparently, a right angle counted as the entrance to a driveway in bum fuck nowhere.

Getting closer, he spotted a pair of boxes, one mounted to each large rock, and slowed his pace even more. He crept close enough to one of them to realize what he was looking at. It was a setup identical to the sensor used to prevent garage doors from crushing people and things. He didn’t know what, if anything, it was hooked up to, but it was a simple thing to bypass.

He walked behind the boulder.

“Look at me, being all ninja,” Will thought, careful to keep the sarcastic comment inside.

Will was pretty sure this man had to be Frankston, based on the combination of anger, revulsion, and desire to go rage monster he had felt when the man's eyes had passed over him earlier. He suddenly understood what both Sil and Cierra had been talking about when telling him about their own instinctive responses to people.

By now, Frankston had gone inside, and Will was glad to still be able to pick up on the man’s energy signature. It was handy to know Frankston was somewhere in the back of the house and not moving much, though Will assumed he would have to be extra careful with his own energy levels to avoid detection.

Creeping up to the front of the house, Will looked into one of the front windows. All he could see was light coming from the back of the house, through the end of whatever room he was looking into.

Deciding to continue his basic idea from earlier, He slowly circled the house, careful to watch for things to avoid.

Around the side of the house he came to a gate in a fence that bordered a decent sized area behind the house, and looked for the latch release. Thinking twice before actually pulling it open, he peeked over the fence, and was just tall enough to look down and spot another garage door sensor setup that would trip if the gate was opened.

Avoiding the sensor, he pulled himself up, and got his right foot to the upper support on the rear side of the fence. From there, he positioned himself carefully and lowered himself on the other side. Careful not to cross the beam, he easily stepped over it and continued his circuit.

When he got to the rear side of the house, he saw that there was a back porch area with a floodlight facing the entrance to an outbuilding. This building was similar in construction to the one on branch HQ’s property.

Without being able to see inside the house from where he stood, he couldn’t tell if Frankston was looking out through the door or a window somewhere, so he hunkered down to consider his options.

After about ten minutes, the floodlight powered off, so Will decided to slowly cross to the side of the outbuilding and see if he could see anything inside of it.

Frankston’s energy signature still hadn’t moved more than a few feet, so he thought the light might have been on a timer. Seeing the distance between the house and outbuilding, Will was fairly confident he would be out of the range of their senses, and considered it a lucky break.

Coming around the rear of the outbuilding, he found it had a back door. He tried the knob, and found it unlocked, but also didn’t trust it after the improvised motion sensors, so instead he moved to the window next to the door. Its lock was a simple spring clamp, so he was able to slip his pocket knife between the panes to disengage it and slide the window open.

Peeking in, he realized it was pitch dark inside, so he decided to try a trick he’d only theorized about and focused on the energy in his body. He pictured isolating the electricity in his system, and snaking a small arc into a tiny reservoir in his eyes, then another small arc flowing back out to diffuse into the main system again.

Opening his eyes, he was excited to see it had worked. His eyes were dimly glowing, and his vision had sharpened and brightened enough that he could make out the interior of the outbuilding clearly.

Checking the inside of the door, he found another improvised motion sensor, so jumped through the window and landed lightly inside the main room of the outbuilding. It was a fairly clean space, especially for a garage in the middle of nowhere.

He spotted a desk with a laptop on it against the side wall, and lining the rest of that wall were filing cabinets. On the opposite wall was a built in workbench, with what looked like an amateur chemistry lab set up on it. Walking across to get a closer look, he didn’t like what he was seeing even a little bit.

Handwritten labels on various test tube racks read ‘Oligonucleotides w/ gRNA,’ ‘Restriction Enzyme,’ and ‘Cloning Enzyme.’ There were several other components, but Will didn’t really know what he was looking at. He knew only enough that he could tell this guy was messing with an amateur genetic mutation kit using CRISPR gene editing. The implications of that were bad enough, but the computer and filing cabinets made it considerably worse.

Pulling his eyes away from the mad scientist lab, he looked at the rest of the room.

In the corner next to the lab, there was some kind of electronic equipment, so he went to look at it. It basically looked like an old Tesla coil, but the cable that should have been the power supply was cut and the end stripped and fed into a tank with some kind of clear fluid in it.

The tank was a basic box, but had a handle on the side that doubled as another copper lead into the interior of the tank.

Unable to understand the purpose of the device, he looked around and noticed the sun starting to grey the horizon through the window he had used to enter the building. He knew he was out of time and took one more look around.

The last wall had an interior door that should lead to another room, but he could see the padlock and latch holding it shut from where he stood. It was nothing a decent set of bolt cutters wouldn’t make short work of, but he knew he couldn’t leave any evidence he had been there.

He also didn’t have a handy pair of bolt cutters, but that was unimportant at the moment.

Deciding he’d been productive enough for his first night, he jumped back through the window and latched it closed. He then retraced his steps to carefully and quietly leave the property.

When he was positive he was out of sight of the house, he pulled out his phone and used the gps and mapping app to figure out exactly where he was. He then took a screenshot of the small map, and drew an x on the spot he was in.

Putting his phone away, he once again ramped his energy up and sprinted as quickly as possible back to his car. He needed to get home and talk to Sil and Artie. They needed to hear about what he’d found, and he would need to bring some of their drones out so they could actually see what they were dealing with.

He had a feeling this was bad. Really bad.

He absolutely KNEW, however, that his job was nowhere near done.