Page 74 of Anarchy Missing

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - LULU

I feel like I’ve been dropped head-first into a really bad Jax Justice episode, mid-second season, and everyone around me has been following along since the pilot.

I worked hard on that analogy during my first hour in the cave as I tried to come to grips with the gaping hole that opened up like jaws in the snow-covered mountain meadow to allow the helicopter to swoop in—and right now I’m tired enough, confused enough, and frightened enough to let a small chuckle seep up from my lips and burst out.

The light-woman named Sheila, who’s babysitting me so I don’t touch anything I’m not supposed to in the technology-laden lair of Lincoln Wade—AKA Bike Boy—and oh yeah, he’s looking more and more like the guilty guy I imagined him to be earlier this morning—scowls at me from across the cave, her holographic image more pure and perfect than any digitized form has a right to be.

I stifle the giggle.

Case is in another room but I can see him through a large plate-glass window from the desk I’m sitting at.

Sheila is also in that room. Which is freaky. Two of them? Or are they just one and she makes copies of herself?

That Sheila is busy flitting around Case, who’s lying on some kind of… operating table that reminds me of a dentist’s chair.

This Sheila is glowing faintly from the cast-off light of a massive institutional-sized aquarium that holds luminescent jellyfish, and looks really worried.

Like I said, really bad Jax Justice episode.

Suddenly Steve is looking more like an ally than I first thought.

An alarm goes off in the… operating room and I get to my feet.

“Stay where you are, Miss Lightly,” this Sheila says. “No one needs you interfering in there.”

“Is he OK?” I ask.

This Sheila glares at me. “Does he look OK?”

I slump back down into the desk chair and watch the expressions on both Lincoln Wade’s and Thomas Brooks’ faces as that Sheila barks off a status report that makes no sense to me at all.

Detective Molly Masters is in there too, one hand over her mouth like she’s in shock and can’t believe what she’s hearing, the other gripping a stainless-steel counter to steady herself.

I sigh, becoming irritable at my lack of information.

“You’re the one who insisted on coming,” this Sheila says. “You should’ve stayed behind.”

Since I got here an hour ago, I have learned to ignore her. She’s highly argumentative and persistent in her rancor at my presence. Or maybe it’s just the situation as a whole. But mostly I think it’s me setting her off. She keeps looking at me from the corner of her digitized eye, like this is all my fault.

I haven’t even had time to take everything in or even wonder what all this shit is or why this reclusive billionaire has a need for such a… laboratory.

Because that’s what this is. It’s a lab. Oh, there are cars and motorcycles. Lots of those giant red toolboxes and the whole place smells like a cross between engine oil and salt water. But I know what this is.

Another alarm sounds in the… operating room.

This time Lincoln has a huge syringe filled with milky-white liquid and a needle that has to be as long as my whole hand, and he sticks it right into Case’s…

“What the fuck?” I ask, getting to my feet again. “What the fuck is he—”

“Sit. Down,” this Sheila says, appearing directly in front of me.

I know she’s made of light. I know I could walk right through her. And maybe I would do that… in other circumstances. But in this circumstance, she has a small army of servo robots milling about the floor of the cave and those things aren’t made of light and some of them have pincer claws.

I shiver as one comes right up to my feet, then look at this Sheila with an angry glare.

“We know what we’re doing,” this Sheila says, her tone slightly—not much—but slightly softer.

Molly Masters sticks her head out the door of the operating room and barks, “Where’s that nanite thing?”