Note: Stephen Lang is one of the Sentinel-building bad guys in the comics. (He was pivotal to both the Phoenix and the Phalanx, funnily enough.) "Galindez" is another 'JAG' homage - Gunnery Sergeant Victor Galindez, now all but gone from the show, is still one of my fave characters.
He felt like a condemned criminal being led towards his execution. "Dead man walking," he muttered under his breath. Indeed, One and Two, stone-faced in their black suits, made good substitutes for prison guards. Or the Grim Reaper, for that matter.
Larry walked unwillingly behind the two huge men, Judge Chalmers at his side, as they left the car and entered his father's base of operations proper. It was a huge facility, as the scale of Bolivar Trask's projects demanded it be. The ceilings soared up to nearly forty feet in height at their lowest - plenty of room for one of the robots to wander about. None were at the moment of Larry's arrival, but several could be glimpsed in various stages and poses in adjoining rooms as Larry's escort tromped down the broad, gently sloping main corridor.
They'd scarcely gone fifty feet when One and Two abruptly stopped and parted like a brawny Red Sea. Revealed ahead of them were a handful of soldiers and a lab-coated technician; the soldiers were manning what looked to be a metal detector and fluoroscope melded together, and the technician was approaching with a sycophantic smile on his narrow face.
"Good evening and welcome, Judge Chalmers, Mr. Trask," the technician said, giving them a half- bow. He had glasses with frames thirty years out of style, but he looked hardly older than Larry. "I'm Stephen Lang, one of the, ah, production assistants here. Dr. Trask is engaged in business at the moment; I'm to bring you to him."
Larry bit back a derisive snort even as he was oddly comforted by the rudeness of their erstwhile host. His father. Still too busy.
"Before you can descend," Lang was saying, "I'm afraid we have to run a scan for security purposes."
"Of course," Judge Chalmers said immediately, nodding his gray-haired head. "These are dangerous times. Dr. Trask is a wise man to be cautious."
Lang smiled in nervous relief, as if he hadn't expected it to be so easy. "Yes, of course," he agreed, fairly bobbing, and gestured at the metal detector. "Judge, if you will step through here, please -?"
Judge Chalmers moved forward, and Larry hung back until it was his turn. He took the chance to study his surroundings. As much as he hated to admit it, he was intrigued by the technology and purpose of the place; he couldn't help it. He was an engineer and a scientist, and mammoth secret desert bases and twenty-foot-tall robots held an allure that called even to him. The corridor was metal, long panels of it, joined together in rivetless seams, with strips of fluorescent lights running down the center of the ceiling.
The machine gave a short, piercing tone, making Larry start, and one of the soldiers said crisply, "Clear."
"Excellent," Lang said. He beamed as if he had had something to do with Judge Chalmers' passing inspection. "Now, Mr. Trask, if you would do the same?"
Larry cast a glance at the two behemoths still framing the corridor, still hemming him in; One and Two did not appear to so much as breathe. "Sure," he said, refocusing on Lang. He closed the meter of distance between himself and the machine and allowed the soldiers to brusquely position him correctly. An amber light appeared above his head and split, running down both sides to the floor and sweeping back up. Instead of the short tone, the machine made a disgruntled squawk.
"Sir, I'm going to have to pat you down," one of the soldiers said. The nametag on his fatigues read "Galindez," and he sounded almost apologetic. Larry nodded, resigned to the humiliation, and Galindez quickly and impersonally frisked him.
When Galindez reached his chest, he tugged the medallion free of Larry's shirt and let it fall. The gold-colored metal caught the light and glittered. Larry had expected that, but not the curt, "Remove the necklace, sir."
Larry jerked backwards. "No."
"Please, Mr. Trask," Lang began, smiling his ingratiating smile again.
But Larry interrupted him with a loud and forceful, "No. I am not taking it off."
"Sir," Galindez said. He held out one hand for the necklace. The other soldiers were moving to surround Larry; some were reaching towards the holsters at their belts.
Larry looked to Chalmers, standing on the other side of the machine. The judge knew the story behind the medallion; wouldn't he intervene? With more than a touch of desperation, Larry said, "Judge, sir, you know I can't take it off!"
Chalmers made a placating gesture. "Just for a moment, son, please. You can put it on again right away. I know you don't want to, but it won't be the end of the world."
The soldiers looked at him impassively. Lang was twisting his hands, nervous and smiling through gritted teeth. One and Two had filled the only other way out. Larry was trapped.
His anger towards his father surged anew, threatening to wipe out his vision in a haze of murderous red. It was bad enough that he'd been dragged out of his house and across three states. It was bad enough that he'd made the journey with the living embodiments of pain and fear. Bad enough - but not impossible to bear. Now his father was making him break a vow to his mother. That was unforgivable.
"Fine," he snapped, plucking at the twisted gold chain that held the medallion. He pulled it over his head and handed it to one of the soldiers - not Galindez - then stood silently fuming as the machine scanned him again.
"We have to use a handheld scanner too," Galindez said, producing a wand-shaped device that was roughly a foot long and three inches thick. One end of the baton was a rubber grip; the other was an amber light.
"To confirm there are no other problems," Lang confided to Chalmers in a low tone he obviously thought Larry wouldn't hear. He wouldn't have, normally, but for some reason his senses were on high alert, accompanied by an abiding lightheadedness that made the corridor seem to stretch out meters further than it actually did.
The soldier ran the scanner over Larry's feet first, then worked towards his head in the same brisk, professional manner. The light passed in front of his face unexpectedly, before he had a chance to shut his eyes, and suddenly he was not looking at an amber lightbulb behind its corrugated plastic shell, but a bird. A bird with wings of fire, shining like a star at its center, bright enough to blind him. He felt a wave of raw power wash over him, and then he blinked and it was just the amber light again and a soldier giving him a faintly perplexed look underneath the edge of his helmet.
The tone sounded, the pronouncement of "Clear," rang out, and Larry accepted his mother's medallion back with a palpable sence of relief. It settled around his neck with the old familiar weight, and he tucked it into his shirt once more as Lang began leading them deeper into the complex. One and Two stayed behind, and Larry was glad for that small favor.
He wondered what he had seen. A hallucination? A daydream? Probably just a flight of imagination, he decided, brought on by his anger at his father and his overall helplessness to change the situation. That sounded logical enough. He tucked his concerns about it away as neatly as the medallion.
"Dr. Trask will be relieved to know you've made it safely," Lang was saying. He stopped on a platform flush with the floor but marked with yellow-and-black hazard stripes around the edges and bearing a control console in one corner. Lang moved to the console and pressed a quick sequence of buttons. "I hope there weren't any problems?"
Chalmers, putting on his congenial public-figure facade, shook his head. "Oh, no, not at all."
No. The problem was waiting for them downstairs. Larry looked over his shoulder as the lift shuddered into motion and, as they descended, saw one of the robots clomping across the corridor, followed by a trail of white lab coats bearing clipboards. The great metal head turned, pointing the glowing yellow eyes directly at him, and Larry felt an involuntary thrill of fear.
There was no reason, after all, for a Sentinel to pay attention to him.
Was there?