Light and Shadows VI: A Darklight Shines
by J. Darksong
Ch. 2) Until the Day Was Gone...
“Okay. Start from the beginning. How did this happen?”
Trooper Regina Baker, much calmer now after her little meltdown, proceeded to explain how she’d come to be in her current predicament. “In case it’s not obvious now at the point,” she began, “I’m a single mother. My daughter, Chloe, is seven years old. She’s the apple of my eye, and the one bright and shining spot in my life. Her father, the miserable lying, cheating bastard that he is, ran off with another woman a few weeks after I told him I was pregnant. Not that I much care. Good riddance, I say. He wasn’t much of a lover, and I doubt he would have been much better as a father.
“It hasn’t always been easy raising her alone. I was only twenty when I had her, really still just a child myself. But I did the best I could with what I had. I started off waiting tables to get by, and then worked my way up through the police academy to become a State Trooper.” She smiled slightly in remembrance. “I’d always wanted to go into law enforcement, and even though it was hard, I made it happen. Working nights was the hardest part—I hated being away from Chloe, but I had a good support team. I lived with my grandmother at the time, since my own parents had died back when I was twelve. Grandma helped me look after her until about two years ago when she passed away.” Her smiled faded. “After that, I depended on Cindy, one of the neighborhood teenagers, to watch Chloe while I was at work, but three months ago she went off to college. Three months ago... that was the start of all of this.
“I was a little bit frantic when Cindy announced she would be going away to college. We’d grown up together, and her grandmother and mine were old friends, so I trusted her. With her gone, however, there was no one in the nearby vicinity that I knew well enough to trust my daughter to. I’d asked her for help, if any of her young friends who weren’t going to college that might want to earn a few bucks babysitting. ‘Well, most of my friends are leaving town in the fall with me,’ she’d said. ‘But there is this one guy I know named Jack. He lives just down the road, over on Sycamore. Jack’s a young guy, only twenty-three/twenty-four, graduated a year or two ahead of my class, but my sister knew him. He works as a software consultant for NEST, the nuclear emergency response team, but mainly out of the home, so he’s always there, and a few times when I was sick or unable to babysit, he handled some of the other neighbors’ kids. You might wanna give him a call.’. And so I did. He seemed a nice enough guy. I talked to all the neighbors, the ones he babysat for, and they all had nice things to say about him. And to be sure, I even ran a background check on him. It came up clean.
She sighed deeply. “So I went to Mr. Bower’s house to meet him in person, and—”
“Wait!” I interrupted holding up a hand. “His last name is Bower? As in ‘Jack Bauer’? And your daughter’s name is Chloe?” I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “And now you’re being blackmailed into committing a crime so Mr. Bower can highjack an armed convey. Is it just me, or does this sound like a bad episode of ‘24’?” She gaped silently at me for a long moment, and I finally sighed, shaking my head. “Sorry. Sorry about that. I haven’t been... sleeping well lately. I’m just... cranky. Go on with your story.”
The rest of the story was fairly short, but definitely NOT sweet. Mr. Bower seemed every bit as nice in person as everyone has said, but there was just something about him that made her anxious. Nothing major, just a feeling, she’d thought at the time, but in hindsight, she realized it was her ‘danger sense’ trying to warn her he was trouble. Not against her, exactly, but still a source of danger. Nevertheless, she folded, and went with him. And everything was fine, for three months, until today, when she opened her locker at work and found an envelope detailing the situation she now found herself in, several pictures of her daughter tied and bound, and the rules about contacting anyone or asking for help.
“All right, I can understand you being afraid for your daughter,” I said after a moment, “but, well, knowing you as well as I do so far, rules or no rules, I can’t believe you didn’t go to any of your friends on the force for help.”
“That... is part of the problem,” she said dismally. “I actually did. I was concerned about the ‘penalty’ for telling anyone about the abduction, but I figured I could at least go to Ted Whitman. He’s my former partner, and we used to ride together when I first joined.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “He has a wife and a son, about the same age as Chloe. Our kids used to play together. So, I figured if anyone would be sympathetic, it would be him, you know?” She turned away. “After I told him what was going on, he nodded, and said he knew just what to do. He took me into the back, and called in the Captain, and explained it to him as well. Then, saying he had a friend who could help, dialed a number on the switchboard, and put the call on speakerphone.”
“Hello, Regina,” Jack Bower’s voice had answered cheerfully over the phone. “I see you have trouble following instructions. I told you NOT to go to anyone for help, and certainly not to involve the police in these matters. I’m afraid that constitutes a violation of the rules on your part. And the penalty for that is... well... hmm. You know what? I’ll leave it up to you. Should I cut off one of your daughter’s fingers, and send it to you? Or maybe her tongue? Perhaps I should cut out one of her eyes and send it to you? She has such pretty brown eyes, you know... it would be such a shame to lose them, but I need to make you understand how SERIOUS this IS!”
“By that time, I was sobbing, crying, and begging him, begging him not to hurt her. I’d learned my lesson, but to drive the point home even more, he put Chloe on the phone and did... something to her... slapped her, smacked her, I don’t know... just something to make her scream. And I... I just... gave in. I told him I would do whatever he wanted, anything at all, as long as he didn’t hurt my baby girl.” She turned to face me again. Her eyes were red, but dry, having cried herself out earlier, but the haunted look remained. “After he hung up, I just sat there for a moment, stunned. The captain nodded to Ted, telling him to ‘clean up this mess’ and left. Captain Burton... I never really liked him. I never felt close to him, so finding out that he was in on whatever was going on wasn’t that big a deal. Ted, though... I’d known Ted for five years. We’d sort of grown apart a bit after we stopped sharing a squad car, but I still counted him as a friend. His betrayal, and the way he’d just sat there calmly, listening as that bastard made my daughter scream over the phone... it was like someone had cut out my heart. As he was leaving, I’d asked him how he could do this to me. I asked him why.”
“Money,” he’d answered back with a shrug. “Lots and lots of money, plain and simple. The shipment being transported is worth a fortune to our employer’s buyers, and my take on this venture is two million. Two fucking million dollars! You ask me how could I betray you and your daughter? Fuck that. I have a family too, a family that I’ve been scratching and scraping to support on my meager civil servant’s salary. And yes, I considered bringing you into this as well, making you an offer as well... but you’re just too damn honest, Baker. I told them that the only way you’d go along with something like this is if you had no choice at all... if your life, or the life of someone you cared about hung in the balance.”
“Jesus,” I breathed softly in disbelief. “What an unbelievable asshole. So... I think I’ve got a pretty clear picture of the situation now, and it’s not pretty. Your so-called babysitter, Jack Bower... he was a plant. Not sure if your friend Cindy was part of it, or if he fooled her as well, but he was obviously picked specifically to get close to you and gain your trust. Then, he simply picked up your daughter from school and never came back with her. The school let him take her, after all, he’s her babysitter, and you’d given prior consent.” I shook my head. “What really bothers me, though, is the level of planning and resources spent on just the kidnapping part. Your Captain, and friend Ted, being in on the heist? Having two career law enforcement officers involved in this would be tricky and expensive enough to get. Getting Bower in place three months prior to this just to be in position hold your daughter hostage? Even moreso. And then the fact that Ted mentioned a pay off, that his own share being worth two mil... all that begs the question: what the hell is being transported that they are willing to go to such lengths to obtain?”
Megan moaned softly in mindless pleasure, shuddering every few seconds. Her eyes were wide and glassy, and a line of drool ran down her chin, staining her peach colored blouse. In front of her face, Jessica’s computer monitor flashed it hypnotic display, emptying her mind of all thought, filling it with emptiness. After an eternity—that was, in reality, only seven minutes—a soft sweet irresistible voice whispered into her ear, filling the emptiness with WORDS, thoughts and ideas that would slide seamlessly into the hollowed out parts of her mind, and embed themselves securely, until the time when they were needed.
“Such a good girl, Megan,” Jessica praised, staring at the slack jawed girl, careful to avoid staring at the screen herself. “You’re so empty right now... so empty that you’re soaking up every word I say to you like a sponge. That’s good... very good. You’ve given me a great tool here, sweetie... something I desperately needed in order to make all my dreams come true. Ah, but that’s not enough. A tool isn’t very useful unless you know exactly how to properly use it. And so, my dear sweet Megan-slave, I need you to instruct me on exactly how this little program works, and to advise me on the best way to use it to ensnare my beloved Katie.”
She frowned slightly at the idea, a surge of guilt overcoming her momentary happiness. Damn. Do I really want to do this? Am I so fucking past gone that I’m actually considering using subliminal programming to brainwash the woman I love just so she’ll accept adding another woman into our bedroom? Fuck... I can’t do this. It never turns out well. Sylvie told us about her own experiences, and how it had backfired on her sister in a bad way. I can’t do this to Katie. And yet.... and yet... it’s the only way it will work! She closed her eyes, growling slightly, her will power battling against her ever growing obsessive need. Goddess! I HAVE to have Katie’s mom! If I don’t... I think I might go crazy! I mean, literally, go crazy! It’s like there’s this soft voice whispering constantly in the back of my head, telling me to do it, do it, do ANYTHING at all to make it happen! And I can’t resist it... I can’t... even if it means turning Katie into my mindless slave to do it!
A brief flash, another fantasy, an image of her, sandwiched between Katie and her mom, all nude, their bodies pressed tightly against her own, taking turns licking her out, bringing Jess to the pinnacle, to climax...
“Megan!” she said breathlessly, her hands already sliding down the zipper of her own jeans, and sliding them down her legs. “Listen closely, and obey. In just a moment, I am going to turn off the monitor. The image will fade, but you will stay in this deeply relaxed hypnotized state... and you will continue to listen to and obey my every instruction. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Megan replied in a flat monotone. “I understand.”
“Good girl,” Jessica husked, reaching over to switch off the monitor. She caught a quick glimpse of the screen as she turned, and her eyes widened. Her entire world jarred, and she found herself trapped, caught like a fly in a web. Her thoughts fading rapidly, she realized the danger she was in, and managed to focus on the one thought she needed, the thing she absolutely needed to do. Fingers trembling, pulse pounding loudly in her ears, her hand continued forward, pressing the monitor button, switching off the display.
“Gaaaahhh,” Jess gasped, shuddering, as her world jarred again, her scattered thoughts coming back to her, still shifted and confused, but there. Multicolored sparkles danced in the center of her vision, and her brain felt fuzzy. Her momentary carelessness has nearly ensnared her mind, but she remembered enough of what was happening to continue. “Megan,” she rasped, her voice thick with arousal, “I’m so fucking horny. Make me cum... so I can clear my head a bit.”
Megan turned, standing up, her glazed eyes focusing on her Mistress. “You’re so... fucking horny,” she replied, in her flat monotone. Make you cum... clear your head...”
Jessica, still wavering under the effects of the program, gasped, her eyes glazing slightly, her stunned mind inadvertently taking her slave’s parroted words as commands to obey. Her horniness skyrocketed, and she moaned, ripping off her shirt, finding her breasts and squeezing the painfully. Megan, meanwhile, having reached her location, gently but forcefully pushed Jessica down, pulling her pants completely off, forcing her thighs wide and delving into her pussy with a vengeance. “Ahhhh.. feels good... so good,” Jessica mumbled softly, eyelids fluttering, as Megan sucked and licked her clit, quickly bringing her to the edge. “Ooh... ooh fuck.. gonna cum... gonna cum...”
“Aaaaahhhhhmmmmmnnn,” Megan moaned deeply into her pussy, her somnolent mind likewise responding to Jessica’s muttered ramblings, as her own arousal skyrocketed, and she too, quickly reached the precipice. Her free hand wormed its way into her pants and began pleasuring her own throbbing little button, even as her lips and tongue continued their goddess inspired work, bringing them both closer and closer, until...
“YYYESSSSSSS!” both girls screamed, almost in unison, cumming in grand, hip jerking, eye rolling, toe curling fashion, before collapsing, spent, back onto the floor. Jessica groaned, then sat up, her mind clear of its previous fog. Her scattered thoughts had crystallized into a clear and unmistakable picture. She had a goal now, firmly in place. And she knew what she needed to do to accomplish it. Chuckling softly, she leant back down, caressing her lover’s face.
“Thank you, sweet Megan-slave,” she said with a grin. “I needed that. Nothing pushes away the guilt like a good hard cum. Now then... I want you to tell me exactly how this little program of yours works, and the best way to use it to ensnare someone...”
“Dispatch, calling six. Dispatch calling six. Where are you, Baker?” a male voice called out over the radio. Regina cursed loudly, walking back to her cruiser.
“That’s Ted. He’s working dispatch tonight,” she murmured softly to me, “no doubt just to keep tabs on my whereabouts. I better answer this.” Grabbing the radio, she clicked the mic. “It’s me, Dispatch. What can I do for you?”
“Oh, nothing, Baker,” Ted replied drily,” just checking back in with you. You called in a license plate half an hour ago, but never checked back in. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Whitman,” she said with barely restrained venom. “Nothing at all. The driver had a busted tail light. I gave him a verbal warning to get it fixed and let him go. End of story. Why? Do you have something else for me?”
“Not at all, Baker,” he replied back smoothly. “Just check in, that’s all. Making sure you’re safe and sound. And no, we have nothing for you at the moment. Of course, there IS that other ‘thing’ you have scheduled in a few hours... so you might want to keep your calendar clear. Dispatch out.”
“Six, out.” Regina snarled, tossing the mic back into her car. “Goddamn him! I just want to get my hands around his scrawny little neck and squeeze until his eyeballs pop out of their sockets!”
“Okay, yeah, I can sympathize,” I said, placing a calming hand on her shoulder, “but we have to focus on what’s most important here. If I go to Bower’s house and interrogate him, I can possibly rescue your daughter and find out what it is exactly that he’s trying to obtain from this shipment.” I held up a hand before she could voice her protest. “Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure I can take him without putting your daughter in danger.” Willing my powers to emerge, I conjured a plume of inky black darkness info my outstretched hand, causing her to jerk back in alarm. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. It was just a reminder that I’m not some ‘Johnny-Come-Lately’, yanno. I wear a costume for a reason, and even though it’s only been a few months now, I’m pretty good at what I do. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” she snorted derisively. She laughed, a sound with no humor whatsoever. “Trust you... the man I actively hated for humiliating me, for making me look like a damned fool in court at your arraignment... for screwing with my head and making me think I’d narrowly escaped death at your hands in a blazing firefight only to eventually learn that all the damage and injures I’d suffered were my own damned fault.” She laughed bitterly again. “And despite all that, I already trust you more than the people I’ve worked alongside with every day for the past five years. What a sad strange world we live in.“
And with that sterling vote of confidence in me saving the day, we departed, her back to the station, and me into town. She’d given me the address of the mysterious Jack Bower, and I’d given her my cell phone number, to keep in contact. She still had two and a half hours before the transport she was supposed to stop was scheduled to arrive. With any luck, I’d have her daughter back to her, safe and sound, within the hour, and we could bring down the whole scheme before it even occurred.
Which, of course, was my FIRST big mistake. Believing that with any ‘luck’ things would go smoothly. Luck and I do not belong in the same sentence... hell, in the same hemisphere. Unless it’s bad luck... and then, luck and I are bosom buddies.
It was coming up on seven o’ clock when I entered the cul de sac where Mr. Bower lived. Or, supposedly lived, I noted, as I peered through the window, finding the entire house vacant. I checked the address on the slip of paper against the number on the house. Damn. This is the place, alright. Looks like Bower packed up and split as soon as he had the girl. A super fast moving job, by the look of things, yet Regina had stated nothing amiss when she’d picked Chloe up from his house two days ago.
Walking back to my mom’s car, I glanced around the cul de sac, noting all the eyes watching me carefully from the nearby houses. Hmm. Not good. I seriously doubt Bower could have packed up and moved his entire house out in two days without anyone seeing anything. And as these are the same neighbors that vouched for him with Regina... I’m getting a seriously bad feeling here. Guess I’ll have to play this out carefully. Putting on a smile, I walked over to the nearest house, where a mother and father sat on a porch swing, eyeing me suspiciously as I approached.
“Good evening, folks!” I said, doing my best to put on a ‘friendly’ vibe. “I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for my cousin, Patty Simpson. I was told she lived around here, but I can’t seem to find her house. I thought it was that one over there,” I said pointing, “but that house seems to be vacant. I don’t suppose you know if she lives around here?”
The man and woman glanced at one another, briefly, and the man jumped up. “Well, she doesn’t sound familiar to me, but I think my daughter Clara might know.” He opened the door, and gestured inside. “If you come in for a second, we can ask her if she knows your friend Sandy—”
“Er, it’s Patty, actually,” I said, pleasantly, drawing up my shadows, building up my energy. This situation stank, and I’d been in enough traps over the past couple of weeks to know a set up when I saw one. I carefully noted the slight bulge in the man’s pocket as he slid behind me, holding open the door, and though I knew sure enough it was for me, I also knew it wasn’t because he was glad to see me. As soon as I stepped across the threshold, he made his move, pulling out some kind of weapon. I swerved, twisting to the side as I’d been taught, raising and locking my arm with his as I moved, pulling him further into the house with my momentum. He grunted, discharging his gun twice more in the struggle to free his arm, but by then my stance was already set. With a simple twist, I sent him flat on his back, stunned, the air knocked out of him.
The whole thing had taken less than five seconds, and, adapting a defensive stance, I was more than ready when his wife ran into the house a moment later, her own gun at the ready. Shit. She’s packing heat as well? So much for it being safer in the suburbs! A simple leg sweep knocked her to the floor as well, and a light tap to the forehead sent her off to dreamland.
“Mom! Dad!” a young girl yelled out from across the room. I paused, resuming a fighting stance as a young blonde girl, maybe twelve years old, ran and knelt next to her parents. She stared up at me with frightened but determined eyes, her lip trembling. “They did what you said!” she yelled, trying not to cry. “They did everything they were supposed to do! What more do you want from us?”
Okay... what? “Hey, hey, easy! Calm down. I’m not sure who you think I am, but I have nothing to do with this. I was just asking about the house next door and they attacked me!”
That seemed to jar her out of her mood. “You mean... you’re not with Mr. Bower?” she said hesitantly. “Oh my god... I thought you were one of his people... yanno, coming back here to ‘tie up loose ends’? I’ve seen those movies. I know how those things work. The bad guys never leave eyewitnesses. Even if you cooperate, it’s just a matter of time before they come back to get rid of you!”
“Um, yeah, well. I’m not ‘them’, whoever they are. I am, actually, looking for Mr. Bower. Maybe you know what I could find him?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t know anything. I swear.” She glanced down at her parents again. “Are my folks all right? What you did just now... those fighting moves. Are you some kinda ninja assassin or something?”
I laughed at that. No, I’m not a ninja assassin, kid, but my teacher used to be. “Nope, Sorry. Just a guy trying to help out a friend. Your parents are just out cold. They’ll both be fine in a while, maybe a bit sore, but no worse the wear.” Standing up, I sighed and stretched, walking back to the front door. “Sorry about all this. I’d hoped I would find some answers here, but it looks like all I found was trouble instead.” As I reached for the doorknob, I heard the telltale sound of a handheld particle blaster being powered up.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” Clara said in an eerily calm voice, aiming the gun at my back, “but you’re right about that last part. You’ve definitely run into trouble here.”
Damn, Eugene Frasier cursed silently, scanning the large reinforced compound below him. Looks like they are on high alert. I doubt Chang tipped them off that I was coming, but with the news of him ‘voluntarily’ turning himself back in to the police, it probably didn’t take Duncan long to put two and two together. That building has more personnel and more armament that some military bases I’ve visited. Probably not a good idea to just barge right in, especially if there’s no real guarantee that Duncan is even in there.
Hovering a few dozen feet above in stealth mode, he paused to consider his options. I’m fairly certain the reinforced X-O armor I brought with me can stand up to anything they’re packing, but I’d rather save my trump card for the final hand, not the opening salvo. The smart move would be to slip inside quitely, gather Intel, try and determine if my brother is even at this facility, and if so, determine precisely where he is hiding. Circumventing their security measures will be difficult, though... especially considering the fact that I designed them all. As long as the power holds up... wait a second. That’s it! That can be my point of entry! Pulling up the visual schematic of the compound’s power grid in his helmet’s visual display, he spotted the area he was looking for, and, taking briefly to the air, he dropped down lightly a few feet away from a small concrete bunker.
“Ah. Transformer relay node seven-dash-two,” he said aloud, deactivating his armor, stepping behind the building in his regular clothes. Taking a small round metallic globe from his pocket, checking around to make sure no one was in sight, he pressed the button and tossed it into the small open window slats along its side. Sprinting a few feet away, he closed his eyes and turned away as a bright blinding flash of light silently lit up the night sky. Perfect. That null-energy grenade I used should render that transformer completely non-functional without doing any actual damage to the mechanism. If my calculations are correct, it should be down for the next twenty minutes. And as that particular node controls the entire security grid, it’s a bet they’ll be sending a maintenance team out to check the transformer any minute. And when they do, I’ll make my move.
Sure enough, within just a few minutes, a small jeep filled with blue suited maintenance workers appeared over the rise. Ducking back behind a tree, Eugene waited silently for the group to enter the bunker, then stepped out, making his way to the front entrance. Pulling another small device from his pocket, he moved to stand just beside the entrance, and waited, weapon at the ready.
“...shit, don’t know what’s going on,” one of the technicians said, emerging from the building. “Everything looks fine, nothing burned or corroded... it’s just not getting any power.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” a second technician replied, stepping out. “Not that we could tell a whole hell of a lot anyway, with our flashlights dead. I thought you said you changed the batteries before you came out, Dave?”
“I did,” a third technician insisted, stepping out as well. “I switched them out myself and tested them earlier today. I guess the new batteries I put in them must have been bad.”
“Actually, gentlemen,” Gene said, stepping out of the shadows, “I suppose I must claim responsibility for that.” The three men, surprised, raised their weapons at him, but Eugene merely shrugged. “Go ahead and shoot if you like. You carried your guns into the bunker and entered the null energy field I created, so those pulse guns are as empty as your flashlights.” Apparently not believing him, all three men fire, squeezing their triggers, to no avail. “Well, lads, you had your turn,” he stated, holding up his own weapon. “Now it’s my turn.”
A bright silver flash enveloped all three men, stunning them motionless. Satisfied, Eugene pocketed the weapon again, and began swiftly disrobing. Luckily for me, all three of these men are just my size, he thought with a grin. The neural disruption my little stun gun caused should keep them from noticing any time has passed once they wake up. Better still, anything that happens to them while they are in this state they will accept as reality once they awaken. Dressed only in his underwear, he walked in front of the guard known as Dave.
“Alright, laddie. I need your uniform. Take off your clothes and give them to me. Then, you’re going to go back to the bunker and stay inside ’til morning. Everything is fine, and it’s completely normal for you to do so.” Nodding simply, Dave began to undress. Satisfied, he glanced at the other two men. “As for ye two, when you see me dressed in these work clothes you will know me as Dave. To your eyes, and ears... in every way I will be the Dave that you know and work with. Anything I say or do will not seem the slightest bit out of the ordinary. Likewise, any unusual questions I might ask you will answer as if it is completely normal for me to ask them. Do you both understand?” Both men nodded. “Good. Verra good.”
Several minutes later, the jeep pulled up to the compound’s main gate, stopping at the guard post. “Hey, guys, how’d it go?” the guard asked idly, as he checked everyone’s ID badge. “Did you figure out what the problem was? My security panel has been going up and down like crazy.”
“Yeah, we figured it out,” the first technician, Joe, replied. “Faulty cable line. Thing was corroded clear through just abouts. It would take a few hours to replace it and attach a new one, so we came up with a work around.”
“Yeah, we bypassed the damaged line on the L2,” the second technician, Paul explained, “and rerouted it through the J7 instead. We ran it through diagnostics mode before we left, and everything looked okay. It should be finishing up any second, and everything should come back online.”
Just then, the lights flickered then came back to life throughout the compound. “Yep. Right on schedule,” the third man stated with a nod. The guard, frowning, peered down at him.
“Eh? Sorry, and who are you?”
“Oh come on, Pete,” Joe said rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten Dave already! I know he hasn’t been around as long as we have, but you saw him just a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah, Pete,” ‘Dave’ stated with a frown, crossing his arms. “You feeling all right pal? I think maybe they’ve kept you out here in the guard house too long. Anyway, hurry up and buzz us through. I need to go to the can.”
Pete blinked, frowning.... then shook his head. “Y... yeah. Okay. No problem. Sorry. It’s just... I coulda sworn...” He shook his head. “Never mind. Come on through,” he said, raising the gate.
Eugene sighed in relief once they went through. It was a bit of a gamble, hoping the gate guard would be too bored or distracted to truly pay attention to who was coming and going, but it had paid off. ’Twas a near thing at that, though. Even with the same clothes, and the same build, and the helmet hiding the grey in my hair, he noticed my face. Luckily, Joe and Paul’s steadfast assurance of who I was, and the way I casually played off his suspicions, convinced him. At any rate, mission accomplished. I’m inside, and under the radar. Now I just need to keep my eyes and ears open, and wait for my chance to strike. Stepping out of the jeep, he followed the other two maintenance men into the compound...