Penny read the dialogue coming to her lap top and shivered. She ran and got Jessica who was the only other person awake. It was 4 am. When they hadn't heard from Rick by midnight when his plane was supposed to have landed in Kansas they had went to bed for a while. Jess read the paragraph and gasped.
"What happened?" She asked aloud. She typed into the send box furiously.
Penny watched intently. Her eyes were full of wonder and shock. The response came back quickly. Everything was fine he assured. Jess relaxed a little but she was still in shock.
"You're father gets into the worst trouble." She murmured.
"He says it's his destiny." Penny answered her.
"Destiny? Did he tell you that?" Jess asked looking at her.
"Yeah, he was telling me about all the disasters that happened before he met Aunt Alex." She explained.
"Just how much trouble as he gotten into?" Jess asked frowning.
"Oh lots." Penny admitted. "He calls himself a danger magnet." She giggled at this.
Jess sighed and looked at the words he'd written one more time. She typed something back. A single line in caps.
DON'T GET YOURSELF KILLED.
His response was simple:
YES MA'AM.
Jess checked the tracking signal, he was in Kansas.
YOU CONTACT US WITH ANYTHING UNUSUAL. She typed to him.
The response was the same as the first.
Rick put the device away and ran a hand through his hair. It had been a long night. He and Walter had spent two hours in Colorado talking with the authorities. They were upset that a knife had been snuck onto a plane and impressed with the FBI agent and the detective.
Walter was just glad that they had caught on before it even happened. Many people didn't believe in intuition or a sixth sense, but Walter was pretty sure they existed. Not everyone had them, but those who did were talented at reading things before they even happened.
"They all freaking out?" Walter asked. He came out of the coffee shop with two paper cups.
"Just Jessica. She said not to get killed." Rick replied. Walter offered him one of the cups and almost laughed.
They walked down the street sipping coffee and talking about the city.
"There's the hotel I was talking about." Rick pointed to a two story building the size of the Lawrence estate painted in a bright yellow and trimmed with green. "It may look corny from outside, but it's quiet, private, and we won't leave a paper trail."
"That's good." Walter replied. "But how?"
"They don't check credentials. We give them any name we want and they'll believe us. The owner doesn't use any modern tools for the job."
"In this sense it's advantageous." Walter replied. The two were trying to get along. So far it was working. It turned out that they weren't that different when it came to personality.
They checked in and hit their rooms. The rest of the trip had been sleepless for them both, and it was dawn. Rick dumped his things on a chair and crashed on the bed. He just wanted to sleep. Forget reactivating his weapons system right away. He'd do it first thing when he woke up.
That evening they met with another agent who gave them the lowdown. "Abernathy's here. We were told that you guys have a way to protect against the Neural Override Device."
"Yes. We have a talented scientist working with us." Walter replied.
"Well here's the location. We see men go in and come out and they always have an NOD in their necks. You'll be on your own in there for the most part. Try to get in and see what you can."
The two nodded. They took the paper and left. They didn't even know the name of the contact.
An hour later they were outside of a large warehouse building. Rick was in the lead, his radar was on and so far so good. He kept everything going, despite how quickly it could drain his energy. They needed to stay several moves ahead.
Walter pointed at a door and Rick nodded. That was the one. They hadn't spoken since they'd begun infiltration. There were signals and looks that worked just as well as spoken words.
The place was dark and frightening, but it was also filled with technology and machines. Weapons of destruction from the look of it.
It was obvious the Claw was an operation for taking over the world. The main cavity of the huge old building was a factory assembly line. Men and women with NODs in their necks worked at machines producing more NODs.
Rick grimaced at the sight. People had been pulled away from their lives and their families and forced to create those vile machines.
It made his blood run cold. He pulled out the link pad and typed a message to the girls back home. They should know what they were up against.
Walter pulled out an NOR. "Think we can free them all?" The agent asked.
"Not till we disable the security system." Rick replied.
Walter glanced at the machinery. There was obviously no way of rescuing the enslaved workers without harming them until they cut the room off from surveillance or electricity.
"Then we'd better move quickly. Any idea where the generators are?" Walter glanced at his partner.
"Give me a sec." Rick whispered back his eyes losing focus. He turned his head in a sweep of the room and then blinked. The far away look vanished. "It's down that hall." Rick pointed to an open door across the room.
Walter nodded. "I'll shut off the power, you start freeing them." He tossed Rick the NOR and then crawled for the opening.
Rick watched and listened. Any sign of trouble and he'd make a move to save Walter first.
Rick watched the people as they worked levers and put parts together. It was a startling image.
Walter snuck down the hall and hurried to the generators. He followed the sound of them and came upon a room with four large grey generators. They were working away and a man sat in a chair his back to the spy.
Walter pulled out a gun and a tazer. He silently came up behind the guard and tazered him in the neck. The man gasped for a brief moment and then passed out.
Walter turned back to the generators and began to work on shutting them down. He started the shut down on each one before shutting them off. He wanted to do this smoothly, suddenly. He didn't have a second chance or time to fight off enslaved victims if there was a chance to react.
One by one the machines went dead. Walter hurried back out. Rick had already started the NOR and people were slowly coming out of the trance. Walter pulled out a phone and punched 911. He gave the dispatcher a code. Then he gave her the address and orders. He was brief and then got off and started yelling.
"Folks, I'm with the FBI if you'll please stay calm everything will be explained n due time. For now sit down and remain quiet."
As people realized he was talking to them they did as he asked. Rick was busy taking a fist to the production machines and smashing them. He bent conveyors and tore the wires out of connections with ease.
An emergency light came on and a group of men burst into the room. Walter fired his gun directing their attention to him. He was in a corner away from the innocent. Rick looked up and stopped his demolition to pull out his gun ready for a fight.
The men dressed in grey suits pulled out automatic rifles. Walter dove behind a machine and Rick covered his face with an arm. The bullets didn't pierce his protective coat, but he felt their pressure. Walter took a few well aimed shots. A few men went down forever.
People fell on their faces screaming. They were scared out of their wits. First they woke up in a strange place, and now a firefight waged just feet away.
Rick rushed the men blindly and drew their fire. He barreled right into them. Walter and his hand gun flashed like a whirlwind. The two men were like a stick of dynamite.
Walter may not have had a modified body, but he moved fast and fluidly. His gun was an extension of his hand slamming into jaws and heads without warning. Rick struck fast and hard like a snake. He also didn't waste time dodging punches.
While the two fought sirens approached.
More terrorists had come, but the sound of approaching cops sent most of them running. One tried to threaten the victims, but Walter didn't care for a hostage situation. One bullet and the enemy was a body on the floor.
Rick took off down a hall looking for more people he could capture. Someone had to be pulling the strings and he wanted to find him. But the other rooms were already empty.
As officers gathered criminals and victims FBI agents stormed through gathering evidence and snapping photos.
Walter and Rick gave the agents every detail of the incident. It took hours to clean everything up, and the victims who had no clue what had happened were taken for medical attention. Most of their names turned up on lists of recent missing persons.
By the next morning there was an estimated one million NODs in FBI possession.
The machines were disassembled and carted off.
Rick and Walter were thanked for their quick thinking. Not only had they saved three dozen citizens, but had infiltrated a terrorist installation and retrieved new data and schematics. The information and evidence alone was a goldmine.