Fifty-five meters below the mining station, there was an underground hangar the size of a football pitch. Apparently, Atticus had them built wherever he established one of his weapons nests. There were parking spaces reserved especially for cargo planes so that their contents could be loaded and unloaded in a protected environment. Skyler soon figured out that one wall acted as a gate that separated the hangar from an off-site airstrip, even though he never got to see it.
The fourteen people conforming the crew had already descended in a wide cargo elevator. Skyler was last, following Nadim's steps up the rear ramp of the cargo plane he would fly on and which would tow the Sea Shadow. The inside of the aircraft was divided into two rooms: the cockpit, which would be occupied only by Seiber, and the cargo bay, constituting almost three-fourths of the aircraft. The rest of the crew, including Skyler, stayed in the latter. It was devoid of windows, and the seats were attached to the walls to leave space in the center, a place the prototype would occupy. As soon as they tied up their seat harnesses, Nadim gave each one a pill to swallow. Then he sat next to Skyler, swallowed his own pill, and gave Skyler another.
"Buckle up; it kicks like cyanide."
"Was it your idea?" asked Skyler as he took it and fastened his belts.
"It's just standard protocol. The point is to prevent anyone on the crew from working out where we're heading by checking how long it takes to get to the coast."
"I guess that's why we've spent the last 24 hours underground, stripped of our watches. So that we get disoriented."
"You guess right."
Skyler glanced around at the crew. They were all out.
"And you're the one giving us the coup de grâce here."
"Atticus appointed me to it. He said my quirks about routines are useful for keeping everyone in line."
"Well, if you can profit from them, I wouldn't call them quirks."
"Me neither. I mean, if you're a normal person, people say you have quirks. If you're famous, they say you have friendly eccentricities. I'm just a famous guy in waiting.
"Really? You wanna be famous?"
"You're damn right."
"What for?"
Suddenly, something flashed through the boy's eyes. Something unstoppable.
"I wanna meet Phil Collins."
"Yeah, I would wanna meet Jesus if he played the drums, too."
"That's one way to put it. I would've said Adam though. You know, for Genesis."
"Wait, no Asperger there? Didn't know it could be fragmentary."
"Well. It's not. 'Cause I made it up."
"What? You're kidding."
"It was just a filter."
"A filter?"
"To screen people out. I'm autistic though; that much is true."
"You're losing me. You're autistic, and then you go around saying you have Asperger's?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"To screen people out."
"How's that gonna screen anyone out?"
"I say that to newcomers, and then gauge their reaction."
"You say that to newcomers, and then gauge their reaction."
YOU ARE READING
King Acid
Ficción históricaA young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
