Displacement: The Long Sleep
25 years in the future, Danielle lives in a world torn asunder by social upheaval and civil war sparked by the Regime, a multinational conglomerate controlling the world’s super powers from the shadows. Her world is made worse by painful memories of her husband, James, who disappeared over two decades earlier with nothing but a “Dear Jane” letter to mark his departure.
Danielle takes an FBI assignment posing as a member of the paramilitary force for defense contractor Winger International Technologies (WIT). While investigating WIT’s suspected illegal activities, she learns the Regime is real and WIT is secretly working against them. She turns on her employers to join WIT in their fight.
On a WIT mission to retrieve information that could cripple the Regime, they find it protected by dated yet sophisticated encryption. The only person they know of who might be able to beat it is James, but no one knows where he is. Unbeknownst to the FBI, WIT has time travel technology. Danielle is asked to go back in time to find James in his last known location and bring him to their dismal future.
James is their best chance of bringing down the Regime... but only if Danielle can keep herself from killing him on sight.
Quota
Frank looked over his shoulder and saw Danielle running behind him. She was actually gaining on him even with a nearly two-hundred-pound man over her shoulder. His amazement quickly turned into shock when he saw armored guards literally flying around the corners of the State Building. They were twenty feet above the ground and moving in fast.
“Turtles!” he yelled.
Danielle glanced up and over her shoulder and saw four guards dressed from head to toe in sleek battle armor adorned with jet-powered flight-packs on their backs. They flew directly at the fleeing Cutters. The armor looked like thick, polished leather, close fitting and segmented, and stitched tightly at the major joints of the body. But Danielle knew better. That material was nothing like leather.
Tram shot each one of them several times but the projectiles bounced harmlessly off of their armor. The airborne guards spotted him in the branches and opened fire. Armed MGU drones followed their lead.
Tram leapt from the tree just as bullets and laser fire shredded its limbs. He hit the ground, rolled, and got to his feet a few yards away from the hovering chopper, just clear of its deadly rotating blades. The chopper dropped low enough for him to jump up and reach the bottom of the open door. Estrella pivoted the chopper and shot at the turtles and drones.
The drones exploded, but not even the chopper’s guns had enough firepower to pierce the turtles’ body armor. It did, however, have enough force to slow their progress. She bought just enough time for Frank and Danielle to reach the chopper. MGUs, ground units and airborne guards fired at the chopper but their sidearms and mounted guns could not penetrate the fortified hull. And it was pure luck that the propellers did not take any hits. Estrella piloted the chopper away at a speed that the jetpacks of the flying turtles and drones could not match.
Danielle carried Key’s limp form to a cot in the rear of the helicopter. “Frank,” she commanded, “hook Key up to the EKG and check his vitals.”
“Dee Dee,” Frank pleaded. “I don’t think he –”
“I’ve repeated myself to you two times tonight already,” Danielle warned softly. “You don’t want to go for a third.”
Chicago Underground
Junior dropped into the main duct with a splash. He checked the digital blueprints on his WM. The plans showed that there was a hidden door fifty yards east of where they descended from the vertical tunnel. Once all the rebels who descended into the ankle-deep water were accounted for, Junior spoke.
“One of the computers in the main control room sends commands to the twists,” he reminded. “We find the control room and slag all the systems in there to disable those things.”
“I can’t believe this place still has power,” Deb said.
“It’s all solar,” Junior informed. “They built hidden solar panels somewhere around in the ‘Park to power the facility.”
Deb nodded her understanding. “As long as the sun shines, this place will have power. Too bad Doc Stewart couldn’t find the location of the solar panels, though.”
“That info wasn’t in the archives he hacked,” Junior said. He surprised himself with his somewhat defensive tone. “It would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if it was. We could’ve just taken out the power to the controlling computer instead of having to do this the hard way.” He turned his attention to the team and said: “Let’s keep it tight and move out.”
The group formed four columns that went five soldiers deep and followed Junior and Deb down the tunnel to the specified location. Junior motioned to the south wall of the tunnel on his right. A smaller adjacent conduit branched off from the main duct and ran south. A slightly rusted, but sturdy-looking iron gate blocked the conduit. Twenty yards down that closed-off tunnel somewhere was a hidden door leading to a stairway that descended to the receiving area of the infamous Hyde Park Body Farm.
According to the details of the plans James liberated from the Nagachi-Tech archives, the gate could retract into the wall if pulled with enough force. Junior motioned for three of his men to take hold of the bars on the grate and pull them to the left. Three men came forward.
Junior turned to the rebels closest to him. “Let’s cover them. Form on Deb and me. Diamond formation.” He and Deb turned to the opening, dropped to one knee, and raised their firearms. Three men, with their weapons raised and cocked as well, moved to stand just behind them in a staggered formation. Two more men took up positions just behind them to fill in the two gaps so they could aim a few feet over the heads of the kneeling squad leaders. The remaining eleven men watched the crew at the gate as well as the shadows of the tunnel.
A rough, high-pitched whine of metal on dense stone resonated through the tunnel as the three men pulled with all their might. The grate, however, moved less than two inches before slamming closed. Junior motioned for a fourth man to step forward and help. Just as he did so, they heard a male voice cry out somewhere at the end of the formation. The cry was followed by the sound of rapid, splashing footfalls and the stuttering explosions of machine guns.
“Twist!!” came a frantic shout. “It got McSweeny!”
The sounds grew gradually fainter as the sources of the noise moved down the tunnel and away from them.
“Let’s get him back!” Junior said needlessly. The soldiers were already following. Deb ran at his side and the four men who had been struggling with the grate were at their heels. As they rounded a sharp right curve in the underground duct, Junior heard yet another cry from around the turn behind him.
He and Deb skidded to a halt, turned, and ran back in the direction from which they came. When they rounded the curve, they saw three of the four soldiers running away from the main group that pursued McSweeny.
Further down the tunnel, they saw one of their rebels slung over the shoulder of a long, gaunt caricature of a man. The spindly legs were way too long for its average-sized torso and those legs propelled it down the tunnel at an impossible speed.
New Chicago
James saw nothing behind him but pothole-riddled streets, fractured sidewalks being reclaimed by grass and weeds, abandoned buildings and flickering streetlights. All he heard was the sound of his own breathing.
And then he caught a glimpse of movement above and to his right. A fearful look in that direction revealed the silhouette of something vaguely resembling a man bounding across the rooftops of the two- and three-story buildings that populated the deserted neighborhood. James veered sharply to his left and increased his speed as he dashed towards the other side of the street. But before he could make it to the faded yellow dividing line, something slammed into his back and lifted him roughly off his feet.
The next thing James knew, someone – or something – with a vise-like grip around his arms and torso was carrying him down the street. His elbows were pinned painfully against his ribs by an arm that was thin but felt like corded rope wrapped tautly around iron rods.
Dangling three feet above the ground, face down and moving forward, he could look to his left and see long legs covered by a pair of tattered blue jeans propelling them down the street. The bare feet that emerged from the ripped hems of the pants legs were long and misshapen with protrusions that resembled superfluous digits sprouting from random spots on the tops and sides of otherwise human feet. Each bounding stride carried them an impossible distance. The ground below him whizzed by in a dark blur.
It took James a moment to regain the breath that was knocked from him when he was snatched up, but his heart still pounded so quickly that it was almost a hum in his chest. He felt them jerk to an immediate stop as his captor gathered itself and then jumped into the air.
James’ breath caught in his throat. He watched the ground fall away beneath him as they sailed what must have been twenty feet high at the apex of the leap. Their descent brought the pavement rushing back up at him and he braced himself for a violent impact.
They hit the ground with a sharp jolt over a half a block away and sprung back into the air, this time traveling a little further. A third gargantuan leap brought them to a stop at an intersection two blocks south from where James was captured.
There was a viaduct that accommodated the elevated Metra rail less than fifty yards east of the intersection. The tunnel was dark with inky shadows. They paused long enough for James to crane his neck to look up at his captor. The face looking down at him was frightening.