MJ-12: Inception

12

Barbecue night was starting to become a regular thing around Area 51.

Frank watched with bemusement as Cal Hooks manned the makeshift pit, where brisket and beef ribs smoked under his watchful eye. The first time they had had beef, a few days before, the cooks had simply chopped it into hamburger. Now, to Frank and most everyone else, hamburgers were practically luxurious in the middle of the desert, even stuck between slices of white bread.

But Cal wasn’t having any of that. And to Frank and Maggie’s surprise, Ellis backed him up. Apparently, if there’s one thing a black man and a white man from the South can agree on, it’s barbecue, even though they were more accustomed to spare ribs and pulled pork than beef ribs and brisket. No matter — they lobbied Wallace to have one of the guys in the shop cut a steel drum in half and fix a firebox to it — an old jerry can, in fact. Someone then managed to fly in a couple cords of oak from God knows where. Shortly after that, they hauled another dead steer from the lab where they were evaluating Cal’s new ability, and barbecue night was born.

Cal ended up doing the cooking after repeated arguments with Smitty, the Air Force cook, over proper barbecuing technique. As a result, the whole damn base fell in love with Cal. Even General Montague, on a rare visit from Albuquerque, went back for seconds — and thirds.

Frank nodded at Danny as he sat across from the Navy man. “You know, Commander, you’re a smart guy,” Frank said.

Danny had a face stuffed with beef rib, so could only reply with a quizzical look. Frank took pity on him.

“Everyone saw what Cal did to Ellis — not that Ellis didn’t have it coming — and I know some of the guys on base were really nervous around him after that. Anderson went positively pale. But you went and let Cal be the barbecue guy. That’s a good move. Just saying.”

Danny shrugged as he finally swallowed and wiped his face with a napkin. “Well, I’m just glad experimenting on the cattle worked. And we can’t let all that beef go to waste. I’m a little surprised Ellis backed up Cal’s request. They getting along better?”

Frank frowned. “Ellis is smart. He’s a car salesman, right? He knows when he has to step up. But other than the barbecue thing, Ellis hasn’t said one word to the man. Mostly just stays clear of him. And the rest of us, too, for that matter.”

“I think he joined a poker game with the enlisted men. I suppose that’s good to see,” Danny said. “You think he’s… well, you think he’s a problem?”

Frank sat still for a few moments, thinking. “Well, he’s doing everything we ask him to here, but he’s a cagey son of a bitch. Out in the field? I think he’ll be OK. It’s one thing to mess around in a training exercise; you put us out there in some godforsaken place with only ourselves to lean on, I think he’ll fall in line. Again, he’s not dumb.”

Danny looked over at the mess line again, where Cal was busy serving ribs with a big smile, then turned back to Frank. “You know, we still don’t know what we’re going to do with you all, not really.”

Frank eyed Danny steadily. “Not until you figure out what you got on your hands over at the main base.”

Danny’s eyes met Frank’s for just a split second, and Frank thought Ellis would very much enjoy taking the man’s money over cards. “Come again?”

“Doesn’t take a genius, Commander,” Frank said. “We’ve been here weeks now. We know you got something big at the main base, and there’s a smaller one further to the north and west, around the northwestern side of the lakebed. Given that you aren’t spending one hundred percent of your time here, what’s happening at those other sites has to be at least tangentially related.”

“Not bad, Frank,” Danny allowed. “And that’s all I can say about it.”

Frank nodded. “It’s all right. Just passing the time while we train up. Obviously, we’ll be busy when the time comes. All this secrecy, our paramilitary training, that fun sleight of hand stuff with Mulholland we did last week. This Cold War is replacing actual war, and I’m sure we’ll be off fighting it at some point.”

“You think?” Danny said neutrally.

“I don’t think it’s an accident that I now know every language spoken between Berlin and Moscow. When are you going to clue us in on the rest of all this?”

Danny slowly put his rib down and wiped his hands carefully with his napkin before responding. “I don’t like keeping you in the dark, Frank. I really don’t. But that’s not my call. I can ask, but it’ll have to go all the way to the top. It’ll take a while.”

“Who’s at the top?”

The two stared each other down for several moments before Maggie interrupted them, plopping down next to Danny. “Either of you seen Ellis? This whole thing was half his idea. Can’t find him anywhere.”

Frank waved it off. “Probably moping in his bunk, or on the phone with his family. Something where he doesn’t have to deal with the rest of us.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?” Danny asked.

Maggie had to think about that one for a moment. “Just after morning exercises, I think. He said he was going to the machine shop to work on a few things.”

Danny frowned and glanced down at his plate; it looked to Frank as if he was trying to remember something. Danny turned and motioned for one of the MPs, who came over immediately. “I need you to find Longstreet. Take a few men. If you can’t find him, I need to know ASAP.”

Fifteen minutes later, Area 51 went into full lockdown.

“We don’t get lots of Southerners out these parts, especially hitchhikers,” the truck driver said as the pickup bounced down the dirt road. “How’d you get out here, son?”

Ellis smiled at the man. “Took a wrong turn, probably a few more after that, then ran out of gas. Just lucky you were heading to Las Vegas, same as me.”

Ellis engaged the driver in conversation for the entire two hours it took to get to Las Vegas — he often found it better to be friendly than not, even if you didn’t mean it. In retrospect, he probably should’ve applied that lesson to Cal Hooks — even if it was only to get his hands on decent food — but frankly, he found the entire idea just too distasteful. Those folks in the North and Midwest and California just didn’t know the proper order of things. They hadn’t seen what the South had become. They didn’t know, and trying to correct them was pointless. Sometimes, you just had to draw a line in the sand and stand your ground on the right side of it.

Cal’s powers, though, were something else, having experienced it firsthand. To be able to heal or kill was something special, he’d give him that. But Ellis knew his own Enhancement was far more versatile in the right hands. His hands, specifically.

The driver dropped him on the very edge of town, ostensibly so he could use the can. Instead, Ellis walked toward town with an eye to the ground, looking for just the right-sized pieces of rock — small, but not too small. Maybe an inch per side, tops. He found six of them and stuffed them in his pockets as the road began to turn into a street, with buildings on either side.

It was dusk by the time Ellis made it to Fremont Street and Las Vegas’s burgeoning casino strip — Glitter Gulch, they called it. There were already folks out and about in short-sleeved shirts and linen pants. It reminded him of his summers in Mobile. He’d get there soon enough. First things first.

The sign said PAWN spelled out in garish lightbulbs. Inside, a middle-aged lady sat sweating behind a barred counter. Ellis had no doubt there was a shotgun somewhere behind there with her.

“What’cha got?” the woman said tiredly. Ellis couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the poor souls who’d been on the other end of that question through the years, a parade of losses trying for one more stake, or maybe just a bus ticket home.

“I have this, ma’am,” Ellis said, pulling a rock from his pocket and squeezing it tightly for a moment before setting it on the counter.

The woman’s eyes widened. “Where’d you get that?”

Ellis smiled. “Had some luck in a private game,” he said. “Care to get your scale so we can come to a price?”

Ten minutes later, Ellis walked out with a wad of bills in his pocket. He went to the other two pawnshops in town, repeating the trick, then checked himself into the suite at the Hotel Apache, ordering the most expensive items on the room service menu and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. He thought about calling home but decided it’d be better to show up unexpected, relishing the thought of the look on Sarah’s face as he walked in the door. Tomorrow, a plane ticket and home.

Tonight, bourbon and sleep in a real bed.

The pounding at the door woke him at 3 a.m.

“Do you have any idea what ungodly hour it is?” Ellis shouted as he staggered toward the door. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, but there’s a problem with your bill, sir,” the voice came from the other side of the door.

Ellis peeked through the peephole and saw a young man in a bellhop uniform looking nervous. And so he should be, waking a man in the middle of the night.

“How can there be a problem with my bill when I paid cash?” Ellis grumbled as he unlocked the door. “I even paid the room serv—”

A huge hand knocked Ellis backward into the room. It was attached to an even bigger man wearing a suit and shiny shoes, walking through the door as if he owned it. Two other men, only slightly smaller but just as well dressed, stood in the hallway. The bellhop was nowhere to be found.

“Who the hell are you?” Ellis said. “What the hell is this?”

The man turned on the light, revealing a squared-off face with a big chin and a bigger scowl, topped with slicked-back jet-black hair. “The problem with your bill, Mr. Ellis Longstreet, is the manner in which you paid it,” the man said with a distinctly odd accent, like a New Yorker crossed with… something else. Something foreign, like in a movie.

Ellis clambered to his feet and did his best to stand his ground, despite the indignity of being in his underwear. “And when is cash an issue?” he demanded. “Are you the owner?”

The man ignored the question. “The issue is how you got the cash. Those were three pretty nice nuggets of gold you had there, Mr. Longstreet. I saw them earlier tonight. Really impressive.”

Now Ellis was confused. “You own the pawnshops, then? I can assure you, they weren’t stolen. I won them, fair and proper, in a private game earlier today.”

The man gave Ellis a smile and shook his head. “And there’s where you went wrong, Mr. Longstreet. I run all the private action in this town. And I got a piece of most of the legal action, too. Nobody’s ever seen you before you walked into that pawnshop. So, I’ll give you one more chance. Where’d you get the gold?”

“I… I found it,” Ellis said, his hands fluttering now. “Out in the desert. My car broke down, and I saw it along the side of the road as I hitchhiked. Seemed like Providence was looking out for me after all.”

The man in the suit considered this a moment. “All right. Seems like you need to get your car. I think we can help you there. We’ll take you to it, and you’ll show us where you found these nuggets. We’ll even be sure to get you a tow truck. How’s that sound?”

Ellis cleared his throat. “Well, it was a very old car. Given what I’ve found, I’m sure I can simply get a new one and head back home. If you like, I can draw you a map. Didn’t see anything else there, but you and your boys can certainly have a look-see.”

The man turned to his friends out in the hall and spoke in rapid-fire… something. Ellis was never one for languages, but they were slipping in some conversational German and Russian in his training at Area 51. And it sure didn’t sound like they were speaking German.

“It really doesn’t work that way,” the man said, turning back to Ellis and drawing a revolver from his suit jacket. “Get your clothes on. You’ll show us where you found it, and then we’ll see if we leave you out there dead or alive.”

His mind racing, Ellis reached for his pants. He tried to think like Frank or Captain Anderson — like a military man. One armed target in the room. Two targets in the hall, also probably armed. He was certain now that no amount of talking would help him — and had to admit that his alibi was poor indeed. His only asset was… his Enhancement.

That could work.

“Have you seen my shoes?” Ellis said. “Where did I put them?” Before the man could answer, Ellis fell to all fours and began looking under the bed.

He heard the large man snap his fingers, and from his new vantage point, saw two other sets of feet enter the room. Then a third. Four, then. God damn it all to hell.

“Help Mr. Longstreet here to the car. He can get his shoes later,” the man said.

Now or never.

Ellis cleared his mind and focused on the floor, placing his hands upon it. A moment later, the carpet turned to sand.

“What the hell?” the large man muttered. “What bullshit is this?”

That’s when Ellis realized the floor itself, his real target, was under the carpet. “Aw, hell,” he muttered.

The sound of multiple guns cocking echoed in the room, and Ellis heard one of them say something short and brutish. Quickly, Ellis brushed away a spot of sand in front of him, revealing the wooden floor of the room. Another touch, followed by a silent prayer to the Almighty or whoever was listening.

The men shouted. A shot went off, the bullet exploding into the sand just inches from Ellis’s right hand. Then they fell.

They all fell, in fact — including Ellis.

Too much! Too much! He tried to stop the Enhancement, but it was too late. He started sliding downward quickly, at the last moment catching his hand on a piece of plumbing once hidden by the wooden floor, now hanging in the empty space between floors.

The four other men landed with loud crashes in the room below, except for the one who had fallen softly on the bed. However, a moment later, Ellis’s own bed crashed down on top of the goon, abruptly turning his good luck bad. Ellis’s dresser followed, along with a chair and a rickety desk.

Ellis dropped down onto the floor below and immediately made for the door, but one of the men was laid out in front of him, gun raised. “What the fuck was that?” he said through gritted teeth, his leg at a very odd angle from his fall.

“Strangest thing, wasn’t it?” Ellis drawled as he used his bare feet to move the edge of the carpet away from the wooden floor. “Never seen that before.”

“How you do that?!” the man shouted; his accent was far less Brooklyn, far more Slavic. “You some kind of wizard? Fuck!”

Before Ellis could reply, a wave of concern came over him. Sure, they were trying to kidnap him, maybe even kill him, but he wasn’t like them, was he? He wasn’t a criminal. He was a citizen just trying to get home. So, maybe he should at least call someone.

But then that would alert the police, and they’d see the sand on the floor… Ellis’s heart started racing. He looked around and realized just what he’d done, what a massive security breach this was. They’d know to look for him now, the MAJESTIC people. They’d track him down, capture him, throw him in a cell. And what about his wife? His family? What would they do then?

Tears formed in Ellis’s eyes as he sank to the floor and sobbed, knowing with complete certainty that life as he knew it, all that he loved and cherished, his wife and family — it was all completely gone. Completely. All due to his selfish, stupid actions.

The other men still conscious and alive were also sobbing when Maggie Dubinsky walked in the room.

“Ellis, you’re a genuine idiot, you know that?”

Through his tears, Ellis saw Frank, Danny, and Cal behind her, all looking down at him. “I know… I know…” Ellis sobbed. “You… you’re doing this to me, Maggie? Please. Please make it stop. I can’t take it.”

Danny turned and nodded, prompting Frank to enter the room around Maggie and pull the shattered bed frame off the man on the bed. “He’s bleeding out,” Frank said. “I can already feel him slipping. No saving him.” Grimacing, Cal walked over and held out his hand, then hesitated. Frank put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I’m starting to access his memories. Believe me, he’s not worth saving,” Frank said. “Might as well go the other way.”

Cal sighed and nodded. “I’ll want to know later,” he said. “I want to know that this did some good.”

“I’ll tell you. Go ahead, Cal.”

Cal placed his hand on the dying man’s head. A moment later, Cal’s salt-and-pepper hair grew darker, his arms more sinewy and strong, his eyes brighter. And the shattered man… withered. Aged. His hair grew white, his skin sallow.

He stopped breathing less than ten seconds later.

Danny joined them at the dead man’s side. “Frank?”

“Got him,” Frank said simply. “Doesn’t seem like Cal’s Enhancement did anything to affect mine.” He turned to look at the dead man. “God, he was awful. I don’t want him in my head.”

Danny nodded. “Try sorting him out. Pushing him away, just like we planned.”

Frank closed his eyes, his brow wrinkling. A few moments later, he opened them. “Huh. Might have something there. I didn’t get much, just one or two tidbits that stuck. Some thoughts about his wife, and his girlfriend of course, and some stash in the basement of an abandoned building a few blocks down. And… something about Russian. A Russian, or the language. Something.”

Danny went wide-eyed at this. “Someone in here?”

Frank shrugged. “Don’t know. I was pushing him away, not sifting through. Sorry.”

“All right, then,” Danny said finally. “Maggie, how we doing?”

She’d been busy collecting weaponry from the rest of the crying men on the floor. “All clear. We keeping these guys?”

Ellis saw Danny fixing him with a hard stare, which caused him to sob once more — and he wasn’t sure if Maggie was still on him with her damn powers or not. “We have to,” Danny frowned. “They might know something. And it’s all because Mr. Longstreet here decided to get clever. We’ll have to torch the hotel. Maggie, pull the fire alarm and make sure the floors are clear as you head down. Frank and I will start the fire up here and get these guys out. Cal, get Ellis down into the car. No need to be gentle.”

Cal reached down and yanked Ellis’s arm with surprising strength, easily pulling him to his feet. “Trying to get yourself killed,” Cal muttered. “Lord, give me patience with fools and children.”

“Well? What the hell, Ellis?” Frank growled, his voice hushed.

They were back at Area 51 at breakfast the following morning. Ellis had spent the night under strict guard, which meant this was the first opportunity the other Variants had had to speak with him face to face. Maggie and Cal were joking it up with some of the MPs a couple tables down, distracting them.

As planned. Nobody was paying much attention now.

Ellis gave a rueful smile. “I went and looked at the perimeter like you said, Frank, just before dawn, making like I was gonna do some extra laps. But turns out that if you turn the sand to water, it sinks right down in the ground. So, I did it at that spot we found — the blind spot the guards can’t see behind the latrines — and rolled out. From there, it was a quick run to the foothills before the sun came up.”

Frank looked as though he was ready to haul up and punch Ellis. “Our one goddamn spot to get out, Ellis! You jeopardized that!” he hissed.

“I filled it back up, I swear!” Ellis protested. “I took an extra pillow and blanket from the supply closet, stuffed it in behind me, then changed it to dirt, just like the dirt around it. Tamped it down good and everything. I ain’t a fool, Frank. I covered my tracks. I even did a quick lap around the outside of the fence so they couldn’t figure out my footprints.”

Frank relaxed slightly, but to Ellis’s eye, he still looked like a man itching to hit something. “So, it worked. It’s a good exit.”

“Appears so.”

“So, why’d you leave, then?” Frank said, narrowing his eyes. “Of all the goddamn things, you could’ve thrown a wrench into everything we’re trying to do here!”

“Everything you’re trying to do, compadre,” Ellis retorted. “Look, as long as I’m here, I’ll help you play spy and figure out what’s going on. But I had a chance and I took it. They’re keeping us prisoner here, Frank. Ain’t no paycheck big enough to hide the fact that I ain’t seen my family in months, I tell you. Months. Those phone calls are wearing thin. I worry that my wife’s gonna miss me just a little too much and go do something rash. I worry my kid ain’t gonna know his daddy. Whatever they got in mind for us, we better start doing it soon.”

Ellis stared into the Yankee’s eyes until Frank relented with a nod. “All right. We’ll move soon. We need to see what’s up at the main base. Are you with us?”

Ellis grinned. “Like I say, Frank, while I’m here, I’m with you.”