BAD WINE CRAPPY CHOCOLATE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN-2

Brandon ran over and held her head in his hands. He watched helplessly as the light faded from her pretty eyes. 

Jesse Grable had ceased to exist.

"No! No!" Brandon wailed.  Then he went into a rage, using his taser against the five other officers.

One of their incredulous associates on the porch, who could only hear a chilling, disembodied voice and who saw a strange weapon apparently attacking the officers of its own accord, fired his wand.  He guessed at the invisible assailant's location by using his falling comrades as a guide. His weapon's deadly blue beam barely missed Brandon, just before his mind finally acknowledged the voice of Max Bardy.

"Cane! Cane! Get us the hell out of here before we're all dead!"

Brandon took one more moment to look at the body of the woman he loved. Then he threw the last functioning officer out of the aircraft, after removing the electronic key from his belt that opened the prisoners' restraints.

"Where's my mother?" Brandon asked in a dark tone.

"We're going to meet her outside the city!" Bardy exclaimed.  "Let's move!"

Brandon climbed the steps leading to the pilot's nest. After removing the suit, he operated the craft while trying to control his sobbing.  Quickly reaching maximum speed, it flew over the city that now sparkled in the early morning sunlight. The other security officers emerged from the house, taking a moment to survey the scene before hurrying to their own air craft. They took off after Brandon and the others.

"Can we outrun them?" Bardy yelled up to him.

Brandon was still too devastated to carry on a conversation. He said nothing, while setting a course that brought the aircraft over Lake Michigan. The silent pilot then pointed the nose downward and plunged the vehicle under the waves. As the others observed their new surroundings, he gave the computer his instructions. Brandon then walked down the stairs and joined the others. 

"I disabled the tracking device," he told them in a barely audible voice. "They won't be able to find us now, as long as we don't use a Mibil. They can detect the signal it sends."

"And according to the senator here, they can also listen in on Mibil conversations," Bardy told him. "That's our problem."

"I know!"  Brandon looked at Chris with disdain. "You've turned this into a police state!"

"It can only be done with a warrant," he responded.

"Some people don't believe in waiting for warrants!" Brandon yelled back at him. "It was never supposed to be allowed under any circumstances, remember? You sold out everyone in this territory! You did it because Foster wanted to keep tabs on the people who realized Vitala is a fraud!"

"It was done to catch criminals," Chris retorted. "You know, the type of person who steals credits instead of earning them."

"I never stole any credits!" Brandon cried.  "I just took the devices that your friend was going to use to kill our mother! Our real mother!"

"Cori knows who she is," Cybil said in an attempt to end their confrontation. "We told her."

"I wish you hadn't done that," Brandon replied ominously.

"There was no choice," Max said. "It was the only way to make her understand the situation. And speaking of which, as I said before, we could have a real problem. I used the communication center at the senator's house to contact my friend Greg.  I asked him to take Cori to Lander's Creek. I also used it to tell Hoochie to meet them there. Both of those conversations were on a regular Mibil channel. If Claven was listening in..."