Tunnel Rat

Chapter 279: Making sure Sleeping Beauty gets her rest.

"We have her trapped. With teams cutting off her routes, she's boxed in and had to move into a dead end. A large factory area is on the map, and only this corridor leads to it. She'll try to hide if she can get in, but that will be tough to do in a wheelchair. We go slow, leave two men at the door, and then systematically search the factory space. And let's be very clear about what you do when you find her: You will not tackle her or overturn her wheelchair! You will not use a Taser or pull a gun. You will not curse at her or make any threats. Box her in and grab hold of her wheelchair. If she hits your arm or your face, deal with it. We don't hit back, don't leave bruises, and keep your tone gentle and firm. We are here to help her get to her family safely and avoid the people her doctors sent to kidnap her. Am I understood? This is an operation to keep someone safe, a family member of the person paying the bills."

"And if she screams?"

"Oh, don't worry about that. We are sedating her as soon as we grab her. I'm not dragging a screaming invalid through areas with security cameras, and I don't feel like arguing with her at this point. We drug her until she's unconscious. Let Mark handle that. He has the med kit and the training. We have to start with a low dosage."

The men nodded. They had become worried by the first part of the speech.

The factory doors were in poor repair. At some point they had been closed and the hinges spot welded. From the looks of the door on the left, a forklift had been driven into it, breaking some of the welds and bending the metal, creating a four-foot gap. Beyond was a dark hole with no working lights. Most of the machinery had been removed, but piles of refuse and junk were everywhere, as usual in the habitat. Spotlights flashed, and four of the men began moving through stacks of empty crates and rusted machinery while one stayed at the doors on the inside and the other outside. While there were only so many places the girl could hide, they didn't find her in the first twenty minutes. They knew she'd entered, but she wasn't here. They began tearing the larger crates apart, one by one, making sure she wasn't inside one of them. One man knelt down, looking at the recent wheel tracks that went through an oily patch of floor, leaving marks on the other side. "Look at these tracks, and tell me what you see?"

"I see not enough tracks to follow to find her."

"And I see that the vehicle that made these was narrower than the wheelchair that we have been told she is using, and seen in footage from other teams that spotted her. Something doesn't add up." He would have said more, but there were shouts from the two door guards and noise from the corridor.

"THIS IS HABITAT SECURITY! YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON PROPERTY OWNED BY ALCHEMARX CORPORATION. THROW OUT YOUR WEAPONS, LEAVE ALCHEMARX'S PROPERTY, LIE DOWN ON THE FLOOR, AND WAIT TO BE RESTRAINED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING."

"What the hell, did they fire on you already?"

"Yeah, but just warning shots, and not with projectile weapons. They have lasers. When the hell did they start arming Habitat security? And I thought we'd paid them to look the other way?" That had been an easy deal to make. A notorious criminal had tried to kidnap a girl. So had a group of terrorists. She was hiding in the habitat and had to be found. Her father was screaming at Habitat Security to find her. Why should they worry that more men had been brought in to search? Especially when they were generous men who understood how little a security salary paid. Philadelphia police had enquired three times about what was going on, and each time given the same explanation of a missing girl and search teams looking for her. Without something more serious, the local police wouldn't enter another jurisdiction. Nor did they want to become involved in the resource sink that was a habitat.

One man peaked around the corner. "This is all a misunderstanding. We are searching for a lost child. She isn't here, and we will leave; sorry to bother you." There was a brief view of two figures and bright flashes that burned into the metal of the doors. From the inside, they could see red-hot spots where the lasers hit.

"They upped the power! That intensity will burn through body armor!"

"THIS IS HABITAT SECURITY! YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON PROPERTY OWNED BY ALCHEMARX CORPORATION. THROW OUT YOUR WEAPONS, LEAVE ALCHEMARX'S PROPERTY, LIE DOWN, AND WAIT TO BE RESTRAINED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ANY OTHER ACTION WILL FORCE US TO DEFEND OURSELVES."

"Shit, what now?"

"I'm not giving up. Who knows where we wind up? Call in another squad. Or get Bloggy to contact Alchemarx and get them off our ass. Why does anyone care about an old factory?"

Bloggy answered after a minute. "Stay put and out of sight. Someone is playing silly games, but they don't have a lot of players. We have people trapped in three rooms and chasing their tails all over the section. They are using the tracking against us and sophisticated decoys. I'm sick of it. I have a plan to put pressure on them."

The six men shrugged and sat down. Bloggy's plans were generally simple and involved brute force.

Belinda was feeling worse and worse as the effects of drugs, fatigue, withdrawal, and her underlying medical condition took their toll. She knew she could barely have twitched a finger without Milo's miraculous suit and desperately wanted to lie down and sleep. But not so desperately that she could ignore what she was seeing.

"You had a secret underground base with trees, houses, and...and bunnies! All this time, right below the habitat! Your own secret Rat Cave! And you kept it secret and didn't tell me about it? Some sidekick you're turning out to be!"

"If by 'all this time,' you mean for the last couple of weeks, then yes. I found it recently and was exploring it from the other end. Which, I will add, had no breathable air and was totally shut down. I've been fixing things and getting more power to run the essential operations, that takes time. I found this part last!"

"Wait, if you found it last, how did you get down here."

"I was boring tunnels looking for a natural cave to build a secret underground base so no one could find me. Then I found this place. Very convenient."

"And Rusty was helping you? How does he fit into this."

"I live here! Since forever, but no one else was here and I wasn't thinking good until Milo started the diesel generators and sent more power to my cores. I promoted him to Head Engineer." Rusty's voice floated down from somewhere, and Belinda frowned and then froze. Then she gave up. She'd find out sooner or later if her guess was right, but for now, she needed to lie down.

"OK, I accept your apology for not keeping me in the loop about building our secret base. Well done, sidekick. Now, where are you taking me?"

Milo opened the door to the medical lab. Belinda saw a dozen pods in the room. They all had a Manpower logo on the side. Eleven of them were lined up against a wall; the twelfth was hooked to power and two advanced diagnostics machines. Milo helped her into the pod and hooked the lines to her suit.

"I think you'll be more stable this way, but when I get Mama and Big Butch down here, we can take the suit off of you if needed, or it makes you feel better."

She shook her head. "Leave it on. I'm feeling less sick already. What does the pod say?"

Milo checked the pod and then the analyzers hooked up to it that he had found here. Both suggested the same treatment to stabilize the patient and recommended a full scan before further treatment. He was sure he could have gotten better answers if Wally could see the readings, but setting up communication with Wally would expose Rusty. Milo had no idea what that would trigger in Wally's kernel.

"You're stable and need rest. The pod wants to do a full scan."

She closed her eyes. "Fine by me. I'm taking a nap. Go do what you have to do and bring the rest of the family down here. I'll feel better if they're safe, and Min will love the bunnies. Good thinking on building a hospital for me. Can we paint the walls? I spend a lot of time in hospitals and like bright colors. I love the bunnies, too. I can't believe you have bunnies." Her breathing slowed as she fell into a deep sleep.

Milo forced himself to leave. She wasn't alone. She had a caretaker who could keep a constant watch on her. "I'm going back to the habitat, Rusty. If Belinda has a problem, open up a line of communication to my system and yell for me."

"I'm on the job. Go play hero, but if you do anything fun, I want to watch the video of it later. I'll take good care of our friend Belinda."