Day 225 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 9 - (1131 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 9

Ivan was worried getting out of the car, and all of a sudden he knew how exposed he was, cover was not an option when he was being watched so closely by this many police officers. Each step he took felt like it was weighted by lead, dragging a chain that didn't exist but slowed him down to a target's pace. His eyes darted everywhere, searching and searching for a hint, a reflection or maybe the red dotted mark of a sniper's fate.


The wait for the team to check the alleyway behind the warehouse back entrance was painfully long, Ivan could feel his pulse racing and his chest thumping along with his own fear and panic. He kept an eye on the cop that had given him a 'warning' but he was off checking the perimeter and relaying the south side wall status to the team captain.


There was no dot on his chest, and from the skewed reflection he could see in the van's window there was no red on his head or anywhere else, his back to the building with no room for a rifle shot there. What felt like an hour was probably only a minute but he was given the go ahead to open the door, holding his hands up to be uncuffed, being refused and shown the fingerprint lock on the door anyway.


“You can reach.” Came the gruff explanation and so Ivan pressed his thumb to the reader and waited for the three beeps to signify that the door was unlocked. No one moved and then a single long beep relocked the door again, Ivan rolling his eyes and then smirking at the cops.


No one was in the mood and so they manhandled the suspect onto the lock reader, forcing his thumb there again, all the while his lawyer objecting to the 'brutality' of their actions and threatened cases of legal action hung in the air, until the lock beeped thrice again, this time the door being opened by a body armoured officer, slowly covering his entry with a torch, peering through the darkened doorway.


“There's no traps, just get in there!” Ivan wanted to get out of the alley way and into the relative safety of the warehouse. He was not one hundred percent sure what he could do when inside and what they would make of the machinery they would find there. It would all be an evidence of the nature of his shared delusion, add some credence to his insanity defence. No one would believe for a second that his tale of time travel was real, it was impossible to prove, likely impossible to disprove as well yet wholly unbelievable. However the trick was not to make them believe, it was to make them think that he believed it. That was the insane part, that someone could think it were not only true but possible in Ivan's mind.


The more complete the delusion appeared, the science fiction looking apparatus, the copious notes and charts that Brian layered the walls with all added to the depth of the story. It all added up to Ivan being completely taken by the fantastic element of time travel, painted as a patsy for the real criminals whose disappearance proves that someone smarter than Ivan was at work.


The lights were found and switched on, revealing the lab space, the machine and the beginnings of doubt in the mind of the cops. Even Ivan's lawyer stood back in silence not really expecting to see anything to back up the wild stories and insane ideas that Ivan had been throwing around. Here in this warehouse space was reasonable doubt though, it was more than enough to get a wedge in on the prosecution to change the sentence, plead diminished capacity, maybe get him committed and out of the prison system at least. The case was an odd one and it was obvious that the cops were targeting the only person they had despite all the evidence that pointed to Ivan being duped, falling for an elaborate and well thought our ruse.


“What does it do?” Ivan's lawyer was asking him, staying near, trying to watch everything going on as the officers milled around, photographers from the unit filming the equipment, taking snapshots of various items, scanning the papers, getting digital copies of everything before moving, displacing or dislodging a thing.


“I don't know. Not really. It makes you, it made me and the others anomalous.”


“Anomalous? What do you mean? Do we need to have this conversation in private?” the lawyer held him by the elbow, wanting to draw him away, getting an evil stare from the cop assigned to watch his every move. The lawyer stared him down, this was not his first time at this game and no hard look was every going to be anything other than a signal to try harder to push the cops back.


“No, it's fine. I mean I want people to hear this, to know what they have here!” Ivan raised his voice and then pointed at the machine. “It's a way of marking people using quantum, something with a half life of three ...”


“Body!” A shout came from the next room, a locked door that Ivan had never seen behind, one he had no interest in, it appeared to be a locked storage closet from a glance at the door when it was shut, but now it was open, it lead to an actual room.


“Half life?” The lawyer ignored the shout and pressed Ivan for more detail. “You mean like radioactive half life? Are we exposed? Should we even be...” The leader of the team came over and half dragged Ivan to the room, and took him through the door.


“Hey!” The lawyer shouted. “Hey, we could be in real...” he stopped what he was saying as the contents of the room became apparent, following the men inside and seeing the giant glass coffin up against the wall.


“Jesus, Brian?” Ivan was staring at the techno-sarcophagus against the far wall, connected to a computer and a bank of instruments, and the icy crust formed around the edges. “What the fuck?” He was now as stunned and sutrprised to see this as the cops and his lawyer were, this was wholly unexplainable.


“I saw him go back, I mean how the hell can he be here now? None of this ever happened. I don't understand!” Ivan was struggling with the concept, nothing added up and nothing made sense the way that Brian had made sense of things.



What was Brian doing in the glass coffin?