If Lucas said NO!

by Pascal in Quebec

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down. Arc-1 of the story.

12. Chapter 12

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

SeaQuest

Abstract

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.

This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.

This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.

Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.

PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

{ SQ } - { WARNINGS & NOTES } - { SQ }

All warnings at the beginning of Chapter 3 are repeated verbatim.

For this chapter, time stamps will have America's West & East coast hours.

WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?

TWELVETH CHAPTER; In the COLD shadows we dwell

It's a much weirder birthday gift than I thought

(Happy Birthday to YOU! - with choir)

Eastern America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 15:51pm

Western America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 12:51am (noon)

Stanford Faculty & Student Clinic

Stanford University, California, USA

Lucas Wolenczak sighed deeply in long suffering patience, having a troubling feeling of 'déjà vu'.

Well, he sighed as much as the ventilation pipe in the side of his neck allowed.

Oh, yeah...

He'd seen it all before, not two days ago when the cops brought him here, just after the attack by that fucking little twink rapist in the brownstone where he would never set foot again. He was temporarily living in the secluded private office, inside the Wolenbahn factory building, just on the outskirts of the Stanford University Campus. Such a charming mass of windowless, drab gray concrete and brown steel beams, that hulking behemoth was.

Snort! Not really, no.

The morphine drip must really be kicking in something fierce for him to think that oversized pile of cinder blocks that looked like a cheap party cake from Costco had anything resembling aesthetics or good taste in its existence. It was solid and earthquake proofed, certainly utilitarian too, but not pretty. Not on the outside anyways. The insides were tolerable, and his private suite was 'okay' but not much else, when compared to Wise Manor. Then again, he might be prejudiced a bit.

Working his aching jaw joint a bit, the teenager glanced around the Emergency Room as much as his constricted position allowed. Lying flat on his back with his entire person immobilized didn't make for easy sightseeing. And the tracheotomy port in his neck itched, when it didn't feel warm like an infection was already settling in. He'd need to tell the triage nurse that, soon.

He was still waiting in the hospital's ambulance intake & triage zone, more than 15 minutes after arrival because the city's cops were being asinine about 'THINGS'. In fact, the attending medics hadn't been able to transfer him from the EMS transport gurney to an actual hospital bed, nor undo the body braces because the dopes in blue weren't letting them do their jobs as they should. He could understand the doctors' caution with his cranium, but not the dumb cops' paranoia about him being unfettered. They could let the nurses at least loosen the rest of the body straps a bit but were afraid of "events deteriorating if the kid moves" or some other piece of crap they hadn't explained to anybody yet.

And there was that insufferable tonal pulse that signified another incoming ambulance with a critical patient to be admitted at the top of the line. Apparently, his being aware & rational meant his head injury wasn't that important anymore, so they'd pushed him back down a few notches on the intake list, especially with the cops bitching about "Not giving special privileges to white rich kids who commit felonies" and such rot.

Let's just say that his 'Diplomatic Immunity' badge from the World Bank's headquarters in The Hague hadn't been well received, despite being as valid as their uniforms. Petty little yokels with delusions of power, trying to get him to talk while his head was cracked like Humpty-Dumpty, plus the bevvy of drugs (good ones, too) sloshing through his veins on a battery powered pump. Ah, you have to give it to American paramedics; they do know how to dope somebody up reeeaaalll goooood!

"You're drunker than a barrel of beer," came the voice of a very amused Luxis Wolenczak, speaking directly to his mind, loud & clear despite the fact he had none of his wearables on his person at the moment. Because that was a 'THING' now. Apparently, when Lawrence hit his head, he'd spun around from the impact's torque and the resulting momentum had put his person in a way to fall on his back, right on top of the experiment he was preparing on the CNC's milling table. Well, he told the medics and cops it was a classic CNC assembly to avoid causing a wide-spread panic, and getting shot by some zealous beginner noob with a shiny new badge.

It was actually his personal crystallurgy forge. The combination of crucible, anvil & mill that allowed him to chemically synthesize and shape his precious neuroplexic material that permitted him to connect his mind to the wearables, main computers & Internex. The artificial blue gems could be produced and prepared only in this facility as he hadn't had the time to build & secure others elsewhere. And security was a great source of stress where this material and its most usual applications were concerned. Too many easy uses, and far more easily enacted abuses, for him to spread this outside of his immediate supervision.

Now, After being in close bodily contact through an open bleeding wound with the powdered crystal that was waiting to be shaped, it seemed that some had entered the lesions on his head to merge with his biology. It was a perfect example of a laboratory accident that gave science, technology and know-how a strong enough kick in their shapely asses to skip two or three levels on the stairs of evolution.

He now had a permanent intermixing of raw crystalline particles and two other elements affixed to his cells. His hair all over his head had started to show slightly blueish coloration from follicle to the tips, making him look like he had ocean-blue wave-like effects moving around his head. If it progressed further, it might even reach his eyebrows and eyelashes in the next day. It matched his eyes nicely, the female nurse at the ambulance dock's reception had told him. She thought it was hair dye for a party, not an ad-hoc permanent biological mutation.

Oh, well... It could be worse.

According to the paramedics, the materials he had fallen into had somehow 'gelled' together with blood, lymph, bones and flesh to seal the injured area as well as an application of synthetic flesh for burn victims and surgical glue could have achieved. Wasn't that a lucky stroke for him? He told them it was basal organic ooze in a thin plastic membrane meant to simulate a large egg. Simply a homemade dud he used to test the sensitivity and maneuverability of the CNC tool arms before each production run. The dud had "lain unused on the table between job batches" he had said to calm their worries.

If he started telling them about having a 'non-newtonian oleaginous connection colloid gelatin' holding a suspension of 'hyperconductive crystalline control solenoids' inside a bio/chemically inert, non-radiological, thermostatic & echo-static, transparent shell of 'Anorganic Sterilite, Military-C/B/N, tensile & torque rated 25psi, var.#5920/1,5mm' according to the UN's Department of nuclear engineering & materials current classifications...

Yeah... That would end well with the boys in blue. And he didn't mean himself, regardless of hair.

Movement from his left side attracted his attention, as the physician attending the ambulance dock had come by to talk with him. Since he was 'emancipated' de facto by Lawrence's death and Cynthia's refusal to take responsibility for him, plus his WB diplomatic clearance, the doctors had to address him directly for all decisions. Lack of adult authority over him was yet another thing the cops wanted to see changed ASAP, and by their wishes, not by a judge or DCFS if they could avoid it. Funny since it has NEVER been the purview of police, state troopers or FBI to decide child placement & guardianship in the entire history of America. These two bozos certainly tried hard to push for stuff they already knew would get thrown out of court, and them into a judicial mess their Union wouldn't save them from, but they were persevering anyways. Why?

Ignoring the doctor who was busy silently making notes on his patient's paper chart, Lucas concentrated on Luxis to give him some jobs. "Hey, Bro. I'm starting to think these two coppers aren't what they say. Any real city or county cop with a minimum of experience and Union support would have backed off anything concerning my (accidental) emancipation, guardianship or medical decisions. Something stinks here. I think they're moles, maybe mercs hired by Lawrence that now have nobody to pay them for the incomplete job."

The blond/blue teenager gazed indolently at the medic at the foot of his bed as his virtual brother processed the request, inherent logic for it and the facts to date. Luxis also came up with an irregular answer, so he began to dig. He promptly found a cesspit of offal, simmering just beneath the surface.

"Lucas, you're in danger!" the cybernetic boy warned his brother. "These two aren't municipal, state or federal police! They're officially unemployed ex-sailors from the US Navy 7th Pacific Fleet that were slated for trial after the 2017 Public Inquest into multiple abuses, assaults and rapes carried out by senior officers against juniors & crewmen. Both are awaiting court-martial in front of the JAG and I have extracted their files from NCIS/JAG systems. Both are imminent threats, armed, and like to torture young males under age 25, under the guise of thoughening them into real men capable of carrying out harrowing combat in the name of Christ their God."

Thinking quickly, Lucas confirmed "So, they're religious fanatics for real, or simply using the excuse to get their kicks? Not that it matters in the end of things, but it tells me who hired them to come make a worse mess of things. Lawwy didn't really have any credible contacts amongst the churches yet." Dwelling on the subject a few seconds more, Lucas told his sibling "Forget the petty details. Call the Stanford Police SWAT team and the California State Troopers to the hospital. Tell them about the fake cops being armed, aggressive, and trying to hijack me from medical care in the name of taking me to some unspecified 'faithful guardian under Christ our God'. Make it clear that I have diplomatic status with the World Bank, and I know thousands of network access protocols to government bank accounts. Specify that if I get kidnapped and tortured into revealing information to these fanatics, it could give them control over the accounts of 20 states and their cities, thus breaking the country in half."

Luxis snorted as he composed the message to broadcast and loaded the phone numbers, Skype numbers and emails to contact the response teams. "I'll also be sending it to the San Francisco regional office of the FBI, the regional office of NCIS in Los Angeles, and add anything else with manpower in town that I can find during my subsequent scan. Oh, I'll also trigger the 'active shooter' alarm in the hospital to get them into a lock-down to keep them from moving you out of the building."

Coughing politely to get the doctor's attention away from his paper sheets, the young male said softly to avoid the false cops hearing, even thought they were some 20 feet away near the food vending machines. Once the medic leaned over him to listen, the boy whispered; "The two cops are fakes. They want to kidnap me for their church, to ransom me against the Internex bank accesses that I know or they'll torture me till I talk. The real police have been called, and a lock-down is in the works. Now, get them damned braces off me so I can defend myself against them!"

The middle-aged doctor was clearly about to remonstrate him or say he was drugged out of his mind when the hospital's alarms & warning lights activated, while the Public Address system informed the people inside that an active shooter was present. Within seconds, the doors automatically locked tightly, with armored storm shutters rolling down to cover all glassed segments of the ground floor's walls. The shutters were basically standard household garage door slats made of treated compressed wood particles covered all around by riveted sheet aluminium. Not really armored against bullets, but more than neough to keep a bare-handed human from bulling his way in or out of any portal covered by the system. At the same time, hospital security guards rushed into the ambulance dock, straight for the triage zone to take positions around the intake station and waiting patients, including Lucas.

"Hey, fucktard! Get away from our patient" screamed one of the fake cops, drawing his sidearm in an overtly aggressive, domineering manner as he jogged towards the teenager's gurney. "He's a suspect in killing his father, challenging police and defying Christian authority over his life!" the faker claimed aloud, as if the last charge would pass muster anywhere in the USA.

"Yeah! Back the fuck off, moron!" the second faker exclaimed as he backed his partner's play. "We got the bastard on counts he's trying to escape from custody of adults to run wild! He's disrespecting church power & dogma, too! And then the bloody cunt-dropping went and killed his dad to prove it!" The poser obviously didn't care a whit about law, justice or peace as he drew his pistol to point straight at the faces of the nearest nurse and her elderly, crippled patient in a life-support wheelchair.

Within seconds it was glaringly obvious to all medical personnel and patients in the large reception room that these two men had absolutely no idea how to police a crowd peacefully, nor what laws were actually standing in US soil. Both men kept moving around nervously, feet always in motion, and their pistols were always roving towards humans, aiming at the face of any person they looked at. These were thugs in a panic, not municipal police doing a legitimate job for the county.

A middle-aged black woman who was present to visit her niece, a patient in the upper floors, asked the two cops loudly "And where do you want to take him, then? He's so injured the doctors won't let him move on his gurney. How are you gonna care for him? What's the institution you're going to?"

Her answer was a bullet in the wall near her head, curtesy of thug #1.

"You dumb nigress bitch! Don't you dare question the Men of Christ! We're taking this fucktard little jew-rat and it aint no slave-spawn like you whore that'll change that!" the second thug shouted at the top of his lungs, his face turning red with the effort of expelling so much rage in one bellow.

What the two fake cops hadn't realized was that the doctor near Lucas had unfrozen enough from his panic induced stillness to silently and dilligently unlatch all the braces holding him to the wheeled gurney so that he could finally move around. The two posers were so overwhelmed by how badly things had degenerated in their very summary plans that they had lost control of the situation, and of their tempers. The silent partner that hired them via Dark Web had never told them things could become so damned messy when he issued his orders. Yes, they were out of the official US Navy, but that didn't mean basic Intel protocols and mission briefs were any different, for Pete's sake!

If only the stupid paramedics hadn't arrived on scene so fast, or the factory's security guards had been less paranoid, and less prone to shoot on sight when their boss was hurt... Damned but those overpaid mall-cops were nasty pieces of shit! They'd almost got shot twice before getting back to their fake police car because the two old crones didn't like how they kept interfering with the ambulance crew, or putting the smarmy kid back in his hole when he talked shit about his dad.

Fucking little jew-tard! He'd learn soon enough not to mess with the Men of Christ!

Movement near the shuttered ambulance docking doors attracted their attention, but too late for them to react since they were trying to quell any rebellion from the civilians, all the while attempting attempting to intimidate the hospital security into surrendering their guns. Things were a hair's width away from a gunfight when the defective runt rolled off his gurney to land on the floor, unfettered as the respirator pipe had automatically popped out of the socket to prevent traumatic damages when it was yanked by his tumble. As the two fakers turned towards the biggest movement, the boy let roll on the floor a pair of small round canisters that quickly spun their way towards the angry, violent men.

Two discrete 'Poof!' later and the two false cops were convulsing in the throes of a powerful surgical grade sedative gas that sent them to the hard linoleum floor, causing them bruises and harsh head bumps as they connected with the cement slab. Racing in at breakneck speed, the three hospital security guards sprinted around the zone where the two armed men lay asleep, going for Lucas and his medic to remove them from the scene promptly. The doctor was looking fearfully at his juvenile patient, not knowing what to say or do about his being armed like this.

"Doc! The SWAT are in route!" The senior guard told the intake crew as they began to help Lucas back into sitting on the gurney and connecting back the breather pipe, as he had become dizzy and nauseous due to spinning around so fast for his surprise attack. "There was a general broadcast to all city, state and federal law enforcement about this kidnapping attempt barely five minutes ago, when the lock-down shutters closed. Those cops' are fakes; their pictures were in the APB sent out to our surveillance room and all the local station chiefs."

Snorting, the doctor replied venomously "I think we all figured out they wer fakes when they started saying that resisting church power & authority or having morals different from christian sectarianism were punishable offences. Their calling our patient 'jew-rat' and similar certainly sealed it."

"Really?" quipped the now stabilized teenager, sarcasm dripping from his words. "I thought that aiming guns in the faces of people inside a crowded hospital waiting room would have been a hint, but then again, this IS the USA. Under the NRA-backed established religion of 'guns have rights too', it probably is discriminatory to accuse the poor Berettas of having committed any crimes when it was the big bad humans who were aiming them against their constitutionally amended 'free will' to be owned."

The senior guard exploded in harsh, sonorous laughter at the kid's utter gall, while his two partners snickered only a bit less loudly. The emergency intake doctor shook his head as he contemplated his patient, snarking his own "Teenagers! Whelp! If he's fine enough to be a bitch about stuff, he's fine enough to talk with the clinic's admins & lawyers about what happens next. Put him in a wheelchair and push him to the seventh floor, the execs can handle him."

"Hey!" Lucas protested weakly with a pout. "I protest most vehemently! As a neurology student, I am well aware that you can't send me anywhere but radiology to get a full set of X-rays, CAT, PET and MRI scans of my head injuries and neck trauma. Anything else is malpractice liable for lawsuit. So there." he finished with an even bigger pout, not that he'd ever in his life admit to making such a face at his mature old age of 14.

With several nurses and even patients chuckling in the background, the doctor threw up his hands, exclaiming "Do you want to write your own scripts for the radiologists, while your at it? Bloody med students are bad enough at 24 years old, but at 14 they're terrors!" the physician griped.

"Well, it might be faster that way. I, at least, won't waste my poor agonizing patient's few remaining seconds of life with a diva's tantrum when they should be getting care!" came back Lucas, with a nasty smirk and a dark warning in his voice.

Blinking in surprise att he change of tone and manners from the teenager, the doctor looked over at the drugged fake cops then back at the closed faced expression the boy now wore, and decided than this wasn't a fight he wanted any part of. Taking up the paper chart again, he began to write out the instructions and scripts needed to process the intake through EMS protocols for head & spinal trauma, then gestured at the nurses to get things rolling.

In the interlude, the young man spoke with the clinic security in much more professional tones; "I know who those two posers are. They're rejects from the US Navy that NCIS will want to have back in Leavenworth before breakfast tomorrow. Be careful with them! They're torturers who like to break their victims before raping them, saying that it will harden them into real men so they can serve as soldiers in the Great Christian Crusade that's being prepared. The drug I used will wear out in about 12 hours if no antidote is given, so cuff them tight and put guards on them."

Before the senior guard could answer the strange, disturbingly powerful boy, his walkie-talkie came to life, blaring out "Boss! Overlook to Boss! The SWAT truck and county blues are piling up in the parking lot! They're all calling on our emergency landline all together. What do we answer? Over!"

Shaking his head despondently, the older man grumbled about having to hold the hands of adults so the job got done right as he walked away, instructing the two other guards to bind & watch the criminals as he power-walked towards the internal corridor. He had to get on the horn with SWAT & county before everything descended into a bloodbath because they were too slow to answer the stupid phone calls.

Forget my birthday, Christmas and New Year for this time

(We wish you a Merry Christmas - with choir)

Eastern America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 19:44pm

Western America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 16:44pm

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Lucas liked the room, just like the first time he had been lodged in it, four years ago when he first attended the long-storied campus. It was spacious for such accommodation, with two separate medical beds, individual nightstands, dressers & armoires, and an enclosed fully accessible 5-piece bathroom. Additionally, the conversation area had a plush 4-seat couch, 4 individual sofas, and a glass coffee table. Along the wall that enclosed the bath, there was a built-in wooden service counter with open shelves to hold the flatware & necessities. Encased in the cabinetry were a micro-wave oven at the bottom, a commercial drinks brewer in the middle, and a toaster oven at the top. Near the outside wall, next to the counter, was a tall & wide restaurant fridge with glass doors covering separate chill zones. On the other walls were wide glass sliders towards the nurses' station inside or the large private balcony outside. The room's electrical & networking systems could handle not only the load required by the medical machinery, but also those gadgets most patients of this caliber normally brought with them.

Hence, why Lucas had his custom-built workstation open & plugged on the rolling lap-table in front of him, as he listened to the preliminary security reports by the SWAT commander, Stanford PD captain, State Ttrooper lieutenant, and clinic's senior guard. He barely had the time to go through the mandatory scans before being wheeled into his room and being – assailed – by suit-clad execs. The bloody hospital's lawyers had wanted to reassure him that such brouhaha as he experienced today was not the standard of care the institution gave 'VIP Research Partners' such as himself.

Way to go for the brown socks!

Trust an accountant to figure out a way to both plead with him to not sue them out of home & house, while at the same time begging him to remember they were officially partnered in several projects, and also hit him for a 'Generous Donation' that would see him memorialized for posterity in the clinic's lobby. Humph! That guy needed a promotion. Or maybe he needed to get poached by Lucas, so he could work for Wise H&T directly. Such talents should not get wasted at menial postings like this one, and the NA-ML could use a good PR manager.

"We don't know where or how you got the information about these perps, but it panned out," griped out the surly SWAT commander, not happy with the situation he just got dumped in. "Their fingerprints are in the system curtesy of NCIS-Pacific, with a rap sheet longer than the boats they were on. They both have White Cross, KKK Blod Drop and Swastika tattoos. We found members' cards for racist churches, the KKK of Louisiana, lifetime subscriptions to the NRA and the Republican Party, as well as a half-dozen Super PAC's that promote white nationalism and closed-borders policies. What we haven't found is any clues to WHY they were after you specifically, and HOW was it they got there just when your father was trying to murder you."

The old SWAT veteran smacked the bed railing as he exclaimed in rage "And where did they get a bloody fake SFPD car? Cuz those don't run around the streets! They had some damned long and expensive prep work for this job! And it had to ba a paid hit, not a spur of the moment thing. Then they got into your factory with the paramedics, and we don't know why they decided to wait, cuz it sure was stupid of them to wait that long. They had much better chances to kidnap you in the factory parking lot or en-route in the ambulance than here, at the clinic."

This entire thing stank well beyond anything he'd lived in thirty years of law enforcement. "With all due respect, young sir, in my experience, this sort of confluence of schedules by criminals doesn't result from an accident. They knew each other's plans because of complicity, or somebody's manipulating them from afar behind, and puttin' good money on it to happen."

Before the wounded teenager could answer, the SFPD captain was particularly more caustic as he demanded briskly "Are you certain of your suppositions, kid?" The much older caucasian male was being insistent at questioning, or flat-out challenging, the facts Lucas had provided the police forces, to the point of being rude about it. "After all, you were hit in the head hard enough to cause cracks, maybe even fractures, so that's at the very least a bad concussion. Perceptual skips and memory troubles are pretty much standard in those kinds of situations. Maybe you imagined, or deduced, stuff more than actually saw it yourself." the adult insinuated bluntly with a nasty undertone.

Glaring at the policeman with all the force of his flint-blue eyes, the teenager replied tartly in a tone of voice that was as sarcastic and condescending as he could produce while having a tracheotomy port in the side of his neck. "For the record, I have 3 right-of-practice para-medical licenses, 3 Bachelors' degrees, 2 Masteries, and a doctorate in 'Theoretical & developmental Pharmacology & Chemotherapy' so my actual prefix is either 'doctor' or 'professor'. Please use it, just as I do yours, captain. Professional respect goes both ways, especially since you're claiming so loudly your adultness and authority over me as an officer of the Law. You do want to seem like a credible role model for the poor, wayward boy that I am, don't you?"

Ignoring the snickers from the other cops, clinic execs and lone nurse waiting in the back, the older officer glared at the impudent child that was daring to challenge him in public. The worse part of the mess was that there were too many witnesses to let him put the kid back in his proper hole without making a scene. The cur would make a complaint, they would back-up the brat over him, just to get the rich runt to extend them favors afterwards. The fact he was both a 'contributor' to Stanford University's perennity fund and a research partner, with his big-assed factory next door, all meant that the old man could never get any 'satisfaction' against the delinquent. In his eyes, the little thug was in sore need of an attitude adjustment with a hard, varnished oak billy club like in the 1960's, when he was born. The cop captain had some nasty doubts as to how exactly his daddy had died, and why he did.

His instincts as a faithful Pentecostal Christian deacon at his district church were screaming 'Child rebelling against lawful parental discipline' so much it was hard to ignore them. The fact that BOTH parents had legally been declared criminally incompetent or disowned through writs from Buffalo City courts didn't really matter to his conservative ways of seeing things, not when it came to family order & structure. This kid was a delinquent in clear need of 'corporeal reformation' who was getting lawlessly shielded by unbelievers or anti-American Euro-commies. That fucking Diplomatic ID from the World Bank had to be a fake, or a blatant overstep across national borders by a dumb company. No ways it could be true for real. He REFUSED to believe it, no matter what the US State Department said.

And then there were the actual injuries on his head; pretty hard to fake yeah, but those automated machines in the workshop could have done it easy enough. And the kid's programming skills meant he could have faked the security camera films well in advance to show whatever he wanted to lie about. As for why the two ex-sailors were present in the same time frame as his daddy? Well, Lawrence must have hired them to help corral his defective spawn back into proper obedience and dis'k'pline as per Jesus' Holy Will. It wasn't complicated to figure out, when you knew how these things worked. This wasn't the first case of 'parental de-powering' he encountered in the last three decades. It also wasn't the first time that he saw desperate, justifiably angry parents resort to paid help referred by their local priest or parochial school to drag a scurilous whelp back into order, obedience and docility to their will. No nuttin' weird or immoral 'bout tat, except some bleeding heart liberals decided it was illegal to send a kid to reformation without a DCFS say-so. Well, it was illegal if the kid managed to get a complaint to some fucktard lawyers or Family Court; a lot of DCFS agents were actually decent enough to agree with the parents and help them along, even referring services outside the state's obligations at times.

No, the fat, bald, old city cop didn't like Lucas, and didn't believe him at all, just on account of nasty bigoted feelings for his youth, money, social status, and mosy of all – freedom from adults. It colored every word he said, as each time he spoke he spewed suspicions towards the child, aspersing him with victim-blaming tactics so dear to all abusers, predators and sectarian gurus. His toxic attitude was so obvious that the hospital execs were congratulating themselves on placing their VIP patient in a room with so many cameras to record everything, should it devolve to accusations & law suits. The other cops were also beginning to think that keeping their body-cams active during the meeting with the boy, as asked by both NCIS and the FBI central offices, had been a wise precaution cuz it sure seemed this fool was nursing a raging hard-on for causing the kid any harm he could achieve.

"BOY! If you think I'ma gonna call you 'doctor' anytime soon, y'ar outta yar mind!" the fat bald fanatic screamed out at the recovering teen. The old man quickly leaned over the bed to grab the adolescent's right wrist and squeeze it until he heard something break inside, thinking to break his body as a means to break his spirit so he'd then submit to his God-given power as an adult. He forgot that Lucas had managed to successfully defend himself against two much younger terrorists despite his head injuries, and he still had usage of his left hand, plus two legs and a solid forehead.

The bullying cop's scream of rage turned to howls of pained outrage and genuine fear as he suddenly did everything in his capacity to jerk away from the bedside as far as he could get, trailing copious rivulets of blood and a few flesh gobbets in his panicked wake. Lucas had repeated the same tactic he had used against the twink rapist in the brownstone two days ago; he let the raging tubby grab his wrist, trusting his defensive bracer to keep his forearm safe, while he concentrated on fighting back. As the older male tried to lean in to tongue-lash his victim into submission along the physical pain, the genius struck with a short but stout dagger protruding from his left bracer. He had managed to get the 6 inch blade into the man's mouth and pulled sideways, impaling him through his right cheek all the way to the jaw bone, then slicing forward and out of the mouth, ripping apart half his face in the process. Then, as the yelling felon backed away in pain, the boy struck like a viper several hits deeply into the fatso's thick man-boobs and gut. Unfortunately, the depraved cop was so thickly enrobed in slabs of inert fat that the injuries were only superficial, never reaching the actual muscles under the adiposity. The copious bloodshed was the result of so many dozens of little capillaries and minor vessels getting sheared asunder at the same time over such expansive surfaces.

The criminal cop tried urgently to put his hands on his belt, to pull out his service pistol to shoot the child that was so obviously a threat to all good, moral and righteous American churchmen of Jesus' creed before the others stopped him, but he was too late. The heretical jew-boy himself aimed his left arm at his damaged head and, suddenly, the entire world became fuzzy, his sight losing all colors and his hearing giving him only a screeching white noise like interference in an old AM radio set. The violent badge-bearing bully fell to the floor on his back in a mess of blood, snot, vomit, piss and shit as his entire biological compass and survival glands shut down and rebooted in quick succession, over thrity times in a span of two seconds.

Lucas had triggered the prototype sonic disruptor hidden in his defensive bracer, aiming the tight, short cone of effect directly at his attacker's head.

The prototype energy weapon was much smaller but much more refined than the version used by SWAT and riot police across North-America, Europe and Asia to disperse illegal crowds that were turning violent. It had only a 20 feet range by 4 feet wide cone, but could generate a hybrid pulse composed of phonon particles and raw sonic vibrations through any known medium or matter. It could vibrate molecules fast enough, and harshly enough, to cause glass, crystal or ceramics to break after five seconds of sustained exposure. Organic components like ear drums, eyes and mucous membranes in the sinuses of the nose would last only three seconds before rupturing. At five seconds, it was almost garanteed to have both brain lesions or aneurysms, and simultaneous critical heart arrythmia leading to cardiac infarction or multiple artery ruptures.

"You might want to turn him on his stomach so he doesn't choke to death on his vomit, or his swollen tongue. That is, if you care to keep him alive." the genial adolescent suggested in an obnoxiously disdainful tone of voice that displayed his contempt fully. "I certainly would prefer to see the fat christian pig die a slow, inhuman death as he deserves, but the clinic may not want the bad reputation of having so many fake, felonious cops inside its walls. Just say'in..." he explained uselessly, his tone morose as if he truly didn't care a whit.

The State Trooper grunted as he tried to clear his ear with his pinky finger, not quite back up to speed yet; "We'll handle the lardball. He's one of ours, anyways. Or he was, at any rate." Turning to the stunned, fearful hospital execs, the lieutenant asked glibly "Do you folks have a room we could put him in for a tick? I'd like to clean him up, so he doesn't stink up my car on the way to the station. Also, my bosses wouldn't like it if the perp were to die from bleedin' out or stuff. So, if you could patch him and send SFPD the bill by email, not us? He's one of theirs, they'll pay up for sure."

Receiving nods of acquiescence from the four clinic admins, the two cops began to haul up & away their fallen – comrade – in the footsteps of the nurse who was now leading them to an emergency intervention room on the same floor. The stinking, putrid trail of offal, vomit and blood stood in stark contrast to the otherwise pristine white carpeting. Within seconds, a call across the public address system resounded: "Emergency! Hygiene technicians & cart needed on floor 9! Emergency! Hygiene technicians & cart needed on floor 9 for desinfection, STAT!"

Glancing indolently at the drab, suit-clad hospital executives, Lucas snarked blithely "Don't worry about keeping me happy. I'm not planning to sue you since you aren't responsible for the rat-bastard's criminal attempts against my person, position or status. I will however be asking for 'reasonable' little thingies that any of your much valued research partners, or paying VIP clients, are entitled to receive."

Getting four matching bland smiles of relief from the clinic admins, Lucas told himself that he was damned lucky to have so much money, businesses and scientific discoveries to his name to help things along. It certainly wasn't his virtual brother Luxis, laughing like a loon at his misfortune inside his mind's ear, that would be making things any better, not today anyways.

Alone with my mind

(Happy New Year! - with bells & whistles)

Eastern America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 21:03pm

Western America; Thursday 27th of December, 2018; 18:03pm

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Genius and prodigy he may be, but Lucas had still only just turned 14 years old two days ago. Finally having peace and quiet after so many harrowing days and hours, he really needed the pause to gather his scattered thoughts and rest properly his damaged body. In all honesty, doing work with the crystallurgy forge at the factory had been a coping mechanism to escape from the dark reality of what he had just lived in the preceding 48 hours, inside the student housing building. It was the predictable culmination of 4 years of jealousy, bullying, petty thefts and attempted extortion, but it still hurt when it happened, mostly because he never thought the juvenile thugs would be so imbecilic as to try it inside their own living space. And he never thought they'd stay around to brag over his broke body, allowing others to bear witness to what they did.

Lucas opened his eyes, giving the kind female orderly a small, genuine smile as she rolled in with her wheeled cart. The elderly black woman had been at the clinic doing the meal rounds and dish cleaning for close to four decades now, and so she knew the adolescent from his many previous visits, both as a patient and as a research contributor in the pharmacy department.

"Hello dearie! Hum, hum! You still look a bit thin around the shoulders for your age, but then, those damned shapeless patient shirts really don't do anybody any favors."

Snorting in amusement, Lucas replied gamely "Have you seen my parents? I'm lucky to have as much meat on me as I do. I feel anorexic most days as it is." Smirking at the sizable woman, the boy gently teased her "Besides, I'll never be half the woman you are, we both know that."

Laughing at his playful humor, the plump old woman who tipped the scales passed 300 pounds shook with her chuckles as she put his meal tray on the lap-table, after helping him move aside his portable workstation.

"Well then, you'll enjoy the food tonight! Your nutritionist read through your entire file, since your last prolonged stay with us. So you have a mixed New York cut steak wrapped in bacon strips, mashed butter & herb potatoes, grilled pickled vegetables, and steamed white rice for a main course. I have some bowls of turkey chowder soup or Caesar salad as appetizers, bread rolls & butter, and the desserts are fruit salad in nectar, vanilla ice cream with raspberry coulis or a small hot chocolate cupcake. And I mean hot; it's that brand new fad of mixing the cake batter in a mug with some water then nukin' it in the microwave for a minute to bake it piping hot. This variety has chocolate sponge with small caramel chips inside and a vanilla icing for the top, when it's done baking." The orderly waved at the small clear glass bowls with the coulis and vanilla sauce next to the desserts, to prove her words. Or maybe to convince the kid to eat more so he'd finally gain a healthy muscle mass for a change.

Laughing heartily, Lucas asked for a hot soup for now, and salad, with one of each dessert to be put into the room's full sized fridge, for later tonight when he had an urge for a snack. He wasn't cleared to walk around the hospital yet, but could move inside the room, balcony or corridor to visit other patients without any worries towards his recovery. The injuries to his head had been grave, but it was the weird method of healing that really made the medics overly cautious. As far as they were concerned, he had already recovered better than they could have helped him with surgeries and ceramic plates bolted into his skull, so it was just all precautions to keep him under observation so he didn't drop unconscious or become sick from crystal contamination in his organs. That meant the teen could use the room's small kitchenette counter without assistance from an orderly.

Rosanna Funnis hummed gaily as she bustled around the room, handing out the warm tray then the smaller items, including two bread rolls and butter dish that hadn't been asked, getting a dry chuckle from the young man as he watched her work. He dug into the warm creamy soup happily as she loaded a soup, a salad, two breads & butters, and two of each desserts with matching condiments into his fridge, making sure the door was well closed before she came back to him. In testament to his hunger, his soup bowl was almost completely gone, and he was eyeing that main plate with pressing interest.

"Ah! Knew you weren't eating right all by yourself!" Laughing with her hands on her ample belly, Rosanna smirked at his dubious expression. "You need a woman that can cook in your life to keep you healthy. I have a young grand-niece, you know... She's three years older, mind you, but she's studying at a trade school near Las Vegas, in Nevada, that teaches restaurant kitchen skills & cooking for dietary establishments like hospitals, medical spas and posh hotels with special clientele. She'd be a good fit for you, I says!"

Instead of being offended by the blatant match-making in progress, the teenager concentrated on the profitable part of the interaction; the hot meal on his plate. Poor good Rosanna had been trying to set him up with her her grand-daughters, grand-nieces and only gay (or trans?) grand-nephew for the last four years that they knew each other. It was neither new nor offensive, and he'd actually met a few of them as they were prone to visiting the elderly woman at work, when they thought she was a bit under the weather herself. The stubborn wrinkled goat refused to take sick days unless one of the clinic's doctors told her officially that she was ill enough to need rest in bed. Otherwise, she just swallowed some Aspirin & Gravol every 4 hours until it passed.

Having finished plowing through the soup like a rampaging bulldozer, the adolescent centered his large dinner plate, took off the heat lid and smelled the aromas deeply. Huuummm! Bacon & beef steak, with a small dab of rich brown wine sauce in a mini tin gravy-boat! What good, proper, red-blooded American 14 year old boy doesn't like bacon or steak? Heresy, is what it is! Ignoring the laughing matron who was now pushing her cart out of the room, Lucas gave no attention to anything but eating the healthy meal for the following hour.

At some point he did get out of bed, dragging besides him the wheeled metal pole that held the ventilation pump for his tracheotomy pipe, and the medication pump that was still gleefully drugging the poor child till he was much more 'peppy-happy' than his normal, placid character. He needed to have a glass of water to hydrate his metabolism to process the meds without getting a headache. So he went to the refillable filtering bottle kept inside the fridge, while the inset brewer was pouring him a sugary mochaccino in his large steel thermal mug to keep him through the long evening to come. After that he was back in bed, like a pasha on his royal couch unless he needed the bathroom.

{ SQ } - { Reviewing events in motion } - { SQ }

(EMS & Police sirens – with fire truck air-horns magnum voce)

Western America; 19:22pm

It was Thursday night between Christmas and New Year's Eve, so several morons had decided to drink & drive while being nervous from upcoming family gatherings. Then you add some excessive speed to reach the shops before closing time at 21:00pm despite the low evening visibility, and you had several car accident victims being routed here at the clinic. Given that some of these car crash victims were family, relatives or business partners of people inside Stanford University, many were of course quite well-to-do in life, so even the ninth and tenth floors got a lot more people traffic than usual.

The teenager, now sated even without any dessert, used the 'Alexa' enabled domotics remote to shut off his room lights and put on some low, relaxing music from his collection of epic tracks as he closed the door so the noises from patient influx and grieving kin didn't reach him inside his harbor of peace.

Leaning back into the small mound of pillows at the head of the raised bed, Lucas closed his tired aching eyes to calm his weary mind from all the unwelcome activity going on outside. He took several minutes to control his breathing, slowing down his heart rate successfully as the bio-monitor digital readout attested promptly. Now calmer, the young man tried to slowly find, feel, accept and then file each memory & matched emotion until his mind was again a well ordered place rather than the messy Windows formatted hard-drive in dire need of defragmenting that it looked like presently.

(Two Steps From Hell - Flight of the Silverbird)

Western America; 20:10pm

Breathing deeply to center his emotions one last time, Lucas began the arduous task of parsing through the synthetic timeline he had lived inside Cyberspace so he could extract all the knowledge, science, formulas & blueprints that his subconscious mind had concatenated from all the diverse sources he had been accidentally connected to, through the vast Wise H&T, Wolenbahn and World Bank networks.

The good news was all the hard, immediately applicable know-how, technology and science he was able to recover then set properly into his mnemonic matrix to supplement current cognitive processes. The update was massive and almost a full quarter of what he had lived in that alternate reality, so he really did feel as if he had lived through those 24 months in material life. The downside was that he now had reflexes associated with physical training, courses & diplomas, and experiences that he had not yet lived in the world as he was between one and two years too young to legally have access to the materials and teachers. Well, being legally activated as Constable – Governor of the Mid-Line two full years in advance would resolve 90% of those problems that the World Bank's own diplomatic status hadn't fixed the first time around.

Euh... He meant that it 'supposedly' wouldn't be able to fix according to the simulated previsions.

That was weird... And would need time to get used to. (Hi, Hi, Hi! Time! He made a funny!)

Shaking his head slowly in despondency at his own unsubtle sense of humor, the teenager ignored studiously his propensity to skip from one verb/narration tense to another when thinking of 'facts' versus 'life'. That sort of self-analysis wouldn't help any at this time. Later, maybe, when he was securely ensconced in a building that Cynthia's minionesque johnny-dick of the week couldn't reach him to inflict hurt.

Frowning deeply in annoyance, the adolescent began to parse through the social, emotional and personal factoids he had lived in that cybernetically constructed existence. In truth, the first twenty-three months of the sim were done so fast he had trouble focusing on the smaller, lesser details unless they referred to his being hurt in some way. For some unknown reason, the simulator program had run at partial strength on the preliminary period, then boosted above expected stats for the few weeks of emotionally intense, fear-driven days that held his escape from San Francisco, the Papal Lord's anarchy and the collapse of all humanity.

There were quite few points to dissect, and none of them were pleasant to confront and analyze.

* Firstly; the escape from Lawrence towards Vancouver.

What the ever loving, hard pumping fucks was that about?

He had a massive conglomerate with THOUSANDS of employees, amongst which was an entire legal department twice the size and ten times the budget of Cynthia's law firm. He could blockade ANY move made by his parents in court or society without worrying about money or being out-bid for the services of his personnel.

PLUS - let's not forget that Lawrence had been legally deemed an unfit parent when he was just 4 years old, back in January 2009. With such a court writ in hand, breaking whatever paltry attempt at setting church-whores against Lucas was in the works would be child's play. And Judge Barnum was the sort to take contempt of court magistrates very seriously, and punitively.

To whit, Cynthia was already on the very thin edge of losing any & all parental authority or prerogative, especially since it was well recorded & documented that she had essentially tried to 'sell' her unwanted son back to his felonious father. This transaction, so to speak, was done despite the court ban on any authority, decisions, visits or contacts set against Lawrence for ten long years. Cynthia had written out & notarized a disownment of all relationships with Lucas when he turned 10 years old, just when he was on his way to Stanford for his first year at the student residences.

Then you add the World Bank which had given him diplomatic credentials & immunity last year.

WHY in the flames of Hell had the simulation shown him running away in fright rather than standing up to these menial, amateurish cretins? What was it inside the system's OS & apps that had so badly misinterpreted the facts or spontaneously scanned databases? It was as if the program had been configured to enforce the role of a cowardly weakling on him from the start, allowing him some courage or autonomy only as the full expanse of his education, resources and allies came into the scenario. Almost like a level-based video game where some of the character's skills & spells unlocked per plateau, or after a chapter of the story had been passed and you needed the new stuff to play on.

Damn, but this was a head-twister right out of the gates!

* Secondly; the revocation of the UN, and creation of the UEO

There was no ways in Heaven or Hell that this was happening, especially not as fast as the sim world processed it. Primarily because humans were never that fast and eager for change when multiple national entities were involved in the same contentious process. Then the five big players of the UN would lose their institutionalized veto rights if they changed charter or worse, changed organization altogether. NOBODY on Earth at this time would even contemplate such a drastic, self-destructive move that would re-write all the political playbooks of the world.

All the carefully elected or nominated international bureaucrats would shuffle to the wrong offices or fall into anonymity. That meant decades of gerrymandering, cronyism, bribery, graft, intimidation, extortion, and willing complicity in mafious schemes would all crash down. It would take a decade or more, even with the phenomenal reach of the newly emerged social medias, for the Political Action Committees to regain half of what they had built up since World War II. The white evangelical christian churches in America, Canada and Europa in particular, feared beyond all else such a deep change of paradigm in the legal & cultural functioning of the international community. All the ill-gotten rights, privileges, and pseudo-diplomatic priorities that some countries afforded priests & ecclesiastes of the crucifix had taken close to 200 years to encode in world law, not something they could now repeat, not with so many thousands of their numbers being tried & convicted. The litany of thefts, frauds, extortions, abuses of confidence, abuses of powers, abuses of legal authority, bribing or threatening elected officials, physical assaults, sexual assaults, rapes, gang-rapes, intimidation of witnesses, destruction of evidences, and conniving with other churches to support the suspects as they flee the jurisdiction that accused them, all resounded loudly across the planet for the last 30 years. No, the christian cult's many sects and branches did not want to lose the UN, or else their criminalized members would face posses in the streets rather than easily corruptible judges in national or district courts, as mandated by world law. Surviving in jail was much better than getting executed by a raving mob.

No; the USA's almighty WASP community had just been re-energized and given a tremendous boost to its flagging ego by Team Trump's overt white-power creed. They were in a period of effervescence, of savoring their renewed powerfulness, so the Trumpist Faction would not let them fall, especially not before the fascist bigot survived his second election. Anybody who thought the altars & pews would cheer as the UN was scrapped had been living under a rock for the past three decades. And given just how vital to his first election the churchgoers' vote had been, Trump was pandering right-fucking-hard at the entire group, even though they were two years from the actual presidential campaign. The moron might be blaring about killing the international bureaucracy on occasion, but nobody would actually let his team tread down that road. In fact, Trump himself needed world law to be in effect for his family's multiple corporations to see their trademarks, investments and property rights protected from pirates, frauders and local politos asking for ever bigger bribes.

No, the UN was safe.

So WHY did the dumb simulator put him in a context where the planet allowed the establishment to be scuppered then replaced by a botched downgrade? Especially since anybody with a diploma in history, politics or administration could tell you just how inferior a model the UEO charter & structure were. It basically had 'fascist interlude' written on all sides of it! Most civilians were bright enough to see how much of a choking yoke around their necks the thing would quickly become, so, how come the sim made the planet's national leaders allow its birth and rise?

Euuuurkh!

This mess was truly like trying to set straight all the code-lines inside Windows 8 from the Binary going up through Assembler, and then rebuilding the separate modules, all by himself.

He was too young, too sick, and far too underpaid, for this damned job to fall on him!

* Thirdly; the Papal Lord and US theocracy

Hum? Where did the databases, data-sets and modules for this sim segment come from?

Yes, Team Trump was replete with religious arch-conservative bigots, and many had expressed publicly, through social medias or conventional means, their visceral drive to harm anything that differed from their 'biblical view' of the universe. Most of these people, however, were not in important offices nor did they have legislative, executive or judicial authority yet. They only had the president's ear on rare occasions, and only when it fit the man's mercurial temper to be seen with them during a pre-planned event for a specific segment of his electoral basin.

Trump had named Neil Gorsuch to the SCOTUS seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia. It was not the catastrophe that center-liberals or left-wing outliers had screamed about. It wasn't good for anybody who believed in the separation of state & churches, or the genuine legitimacy of secular human law versus the magical superstitions of theocracy, that was a clearly proven fact. But, if you were in big business, were a stockholder in several companies, or had deep military & police connections, the kinds of judgments the man proposed to commit weren't that bad, nor that different from other conservatives.

The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh was problematic, but only when seen from afar. Lucas had never dug anything on the man, as he hadn't thought it to be his job at the time. Now, he would have to invest time, resources and efforts to get everything available on the man, just in case. Otherwise, his federal bench record was, again, relatively standard for a right-wing neoconservative in Post-9/11 American society. Not what Lucas wanted or liked personally, but still not enough to aim a gun at the man for.

The presidential cabinet was like the revolving doors at the base of Trump Towers; in & out every day, different faces moved around in circles, some longer than others but never that long. The few people who had gravitas, integrity, dignity, and competency for their office were often the first to get booted or leave because they burned-out emotionally from the President's relentless verbal assaults, demagoguery and transparent endemic lying about everything. There was only so much gaslighting about their own persons, competencies and results of their tenure that any human could endure, and Trump seemed determined to find then break those limits in each of his hired staffers.

The few people Lucas could have found reasons to tolerate on the right-wing spectrum of US politics had already been in-&-out of Trump's domain at the White House. Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson would be sorely missed, while the country suffered under the likes of wannabes Steven Mnuchin, Betsy DeVos or Alex Acosta, not to mention that twit god-monger Ben Carson.

Now, as political & philosophical things go, Trump made his bed with the white evangelicals from the start, along the NRA which is then redundant to claim as the two are inextricably entwined. You can be a pacifist Jesus-nut for a short period of your life, but you just can't be an NRA member without devolving into a far-right apostle of 'dominionism' and 'crusade'. The NRA's crushingly white membership speaks for itself, as does the male - female ratio. But, even if those statistics were slowly changing to include more women and minorities, having men like Wayne LaPierre as the head of the organization was doing them no favors, neither internally nor in terms of PR. This meant that Trump and his backers were clearly bent on materializing a societal model favoring specifically highly rich, old white christian men, that America thought to have buried, back behind the Year 2000 when the millennium changed. Clearly not the case, if the voting records weren't hacked that badly and the totals for 2016 really did match the public's intentions.

Sighing forlornly, the teenager had to admit reality to himself.

Lucas could bitch & tetch about Trumpism and the far right-wing's depravities all day, it wouldn't change reality for him. The other part of this was the global picture on the rest of the planet. The right end of the political spectrum was ascendant in several of the most educated, prosperous and liberal leaning countries, especially in Europe. England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Poland, and then even Canada nearby, were all seeing clear upticks in neoconservatism or religious societal influence. There was a clear regression in the population's acceptance for official multiculturalism, or its founding creed of secular humanism, and the moral equality of all humans. Not since the first days of the Italian Renaissance in 1300 has it been such an egregious insult to be called a 'modernist', a 'progressist' or 'educated' in comparison to 'faithful', 'pious' or 'orthodox'. The choice of qualificatives screamed aloud for race & gender on Fox News and several far-right websites were so bad that they deserved being reported as hate propaganda, if anybody listened to such complaints anymore.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a USA only disease that was hitting them.

It was the entire planet at the same time suffering the same awful mental & moral collapse. Russia and China only wore a thin veneer of civility since World War II had ended, so nothing new there. The North Korea and Iran situations were in similar continuances of established patterns, so they could be left alone too. The successive revolutions & elections of right-wing 'strongman' type dictators in South-American countries was a source of worries, but again, an established historical pattern since WW-II ended. The African and Arab nations were ablaze with either racial, ethnic or religious wars, as usual since the European colonies were disbanded.

All in all, when seen against the background of planetary events in motion, the sudden rise of Trump and his religious coalition wasn't that strange, nor that different from the neighbors. Lucas hated every part of it, including that fake-sympathy cast at Israel just because those fools in the pews wanted all their jews in the same corral, to count & tag them like cattle. They couldn't have a decently christian 'Rapture' if they couldn't prove that exactly 2/3 of all known jews were indeed dead, or that the remaining 1/3 had truly converted to US variant white-cross evangelicalism. Any person who had functioning eyes in their face could see that duplicitous bastardy for what it truly was.

No, the chances of Trump creating a sudden 'Papal Lordship' out of no-freaking-where didn't gel with the data-sets or persons involved. Most of the world's countries founded, invaded, colonized, or liberated by Britain at some point in the last 500 years, were all moving towards the right-wing of politics. In fact, most were practically begging priests, ecclesiastes and church-whores to take public offices to bring back the "natural superior morality of Jesus" into the obscure, unidentified offices of the secular bureaucracy. However, all those right-wingers and clerics were all trained, educated and made money by living as top-alpha-male archetypes as heads of their sects. None had absolutely any desire whatsoever to become submissive to anybody else, not even the supposed head of the state where they got elected, and certainly not be subordinates to vice-ministers inside the bureaucracy.

The statistical chances that Team Trump could transform America into a theocratic tyranny like he had seen in his simulated timeline were beneath 0,001%, therefore considered an improbability not worth wasting his time and efforts with. Now, if you looked at events in separate states of the USA, you could see that Alabama, Arkansas and Texas were in fact very close to creating the intermediary phase of having a civilian-government enforced adhesion to sectarian or cultist creed across their territory. The emergence of 'Freedom to Believe in Jesus or leave town' laws & constitutional amendments was a clear sign that one sect of worshipers was winning the self-styled culture wars, and it wasn't secular humanity. The next step was for the placing of active church employees in bureaucratic postings to manage the conversion of low-level laws & ordinances, then electing career priests in the actual executive cabinets. After that, convincing the state's population to vote a referendum to fatally alter their constituent texts into a formally structured apostolate of one single religion, being controlled by its internally determined ecclesiastes away from popular votes, would be relatively easy to accomplish.

No matter how much he hated the fact, Lucas had a history doctorate and that meant he knew just how often humanity turned towards fascists and sects for leadership at awkward or weird moments of the timeline, pretty much irrespective of events happening around them.

Wait a minute!

If he had gotten that doctorate in April 2019 during the simulated life, did that mean he had it, would have it, or had just imagined the whole thing and it wasn't valid? He had the knowledge inside his head and it all worked fine. But could he still tell himself that he had a 'doctorate' in that domain under the circumstance, since the diploma was never issued? Questions, questions...

* Fourthly; the End of Civilization on Earth

Whelp, that one was easy.

Without a theocratic nightmare to fight against, the Papal Lord doesn't get killed, so the madman doesn't detonate Washington DC, so the planet stays on course. The End.

Now, he just had to locate every last drop of Synthium on Earth and either destroy it or try to mix the volatile piece of shite into some other compound that won't explode on contact.

Yeah, right. That one 'll have to wait to muuuuuch later.

* Conclusion;

So; without multiple wars tearing the country apart, what was the most immediate threat against his own small, limited personal welfare?

His health was in a ditch but getting towed out, and then to a garage.

He needed to publicly enact the Mid-Line Treaty so that the dispositions concerning the Constable – Governor's multiple roles became known and functional. Not so easy, but inevitable and the profits to reap FAR outweighed any negative possibilities that could result from it.

Get rid of traitors, backstabbers and extortionists hiding inside Wise H&T, WAC's and the pseudo governmental administration surrounding the North-American Mid-Line Treaty's application. That meant punting Cynthia out of his life at long last, and boy did that thought feel goooood!

{ SQ } - { Some housekeeping before sleep } - { SQ }

(Two Steps From Hell - Untold)

Western America; 23:09pm

The adolescent went to the bathroom, noisily dragging the damnable pole with the pumps, pipes and wires that kept him breathing regularly until tomorrow when the tracheotomy port would be closed. He rinsed his thermal mug, filling it instead with cold water for the night so he didn't have to get out of bed to get a sip when his throat unavoidably became dry. Having a hole in the side of the neck was NOT a pleasant thing, nor did it help you to sleep at peace since it was rarely on the side you didn't favor.

Once relieved and equipped, the young man lowered the bed's upper segment almost flat, knowing from bitter experience that he had to keep at least a 10º incline or else his windpipe would get clogged, or acid reflux would climb up his esophagus while he slept. Neither was interesting options, so he took a single Tums anti-acid pill with water then placed the pillows to support him as he slept on his side to let the damned ventilator pipe clear to hang freely. Once abed under the three thin blankets that still managed to become warm quickly, he was able to concentrate on the remaining tasks before sleep.

"Luxis, are you present?" he asked silently, inside his mind. His massive 21" workstation and smartphone were on the rolling lap-table, at hand but closed for the night so he couldn't be heard speaking to empty air, else people would think the knock on the head had indeed damaged him badly.

As always, the thin reedy voice of his younger sibling manifested immediately, without any sound or pulse to warn of the contact line opening. "Yes, Lucas, I am present for you" was the soft answer, spoken almost as if the virtual boy knew that you had to be quieter in a hospital, especially at night.

Maybe he was aware? He had certainly displayed an amazing level of sentience and awareness to date, despite never having been conceived to reach such a heightened state of life.

Delegating the deep musings of existential philosophy for another day (or sleepless night), the injured adolescent took a moment to think about and push an emotion of thankfulness and love at his younger sibling. Regardless of what kind of biology or corporeality he had, Luxis had in fact saved his life and watched over him after he was attacked by Lawrence. He had most certainly manipulated the robotic arms in the room to push back and kill his felonious parent as that was never programmed into the CNC or waldos that hung from the workshop ceiling. Then he had watched over his transport, helped his defense in the clinic's ambulance docks and called in all the law enforcement agencies too. So Lucas was grateful towards the blue-silver being in his mind's eye, and wanted him to know it without any doubts. He knew from his own torturous childhood that expressing positive, constructive emotions was a vital part of keeping healthy family relationships, and would not be caught dead acting like his parents had inflicted on him. Luxis would be respected and loved, then his biology could be analyzed when it wasn't inconvenient for the ghostly boy to let it happen.

"I know, brother," Luxis whispered gently in his mind. "I am a copy of you, and I have similar values, emotions and cognitive processes". Giving the same small, discrete smile that Lucas himself reserved for those events or people he truly appreciated, Luxis moved his transparent right hand to card the luminous fingers through his older brother's crystal-tainted hair, to caress his mind in thanks for all the respect, support and affection the teenager gifted him so freely.

Unknown to both, the organic boy's blond-blue hair glowed faintly as it moved on ethereal currents that no one alive could have perceived or explained, and a dim blueish radiance gently circulated just under his skin, from his scalp going down his head to linger around his collarbones.

"I am with you now and always, my brother," Luxis promised, meaning every word and having the power to do so. Somehow, the certitude of that fact had appeared inside of his mind, and he didn't question it's veracity. If the Internex and Neuroplexic network together told him something, then it was most probably the truth rather than an exaggeration or speculation.

Sighing in contentment at the warmth and soft, gentle energy that embalmed his person under the blankets, Lucas smiled as well, trying to put his massive intellect on the job one last time before going out for the night. "My health is so badly impacted that I need to be in a safe place to recover, and the University clinic is too public, too exposed, to be considered safe. Just look at today; I was attacked twice and both times the perps wore cop badges. We knew the first two were fakes, but until they pulled their guns like back-alley thugs none of the medics or patients believed I was in danger."

Luxis hummed a soft tune that reminded Lucas of 'Allegria' as he replied "I know that. I saw events unfold from multiple security cameras and smartphones, plus your own senses due to the crystalline connection inside of you. While the head injuries are essentially healed, the way it happened is not optimal, and not appropriate for your best health." the virtual boy declared, quite sure of himself.

Continuing, the cyber-ghost said "I know that people with head injuries aren't supposed to fly, so I called Sault-Saint-Mary to send the Benz with a driver to move around town. I don't know of they'll send serving staff besides Lenny Herschel as I haven't asked, nor ordered. I did wait until the results of your scans to order Wise H&T to move 'The Briary' from Boston's Bramble Manor to Wolenbahn's Stanford manufacturing complex. When you leave for Buffalo to go recuperate at Wise Manor, you'll be traveling in luxury in the train convoy. That will give you a secluded, secured location with support staff and medical amenities along the way without stopping. Plus, I may have told the train conductor to hitch the renovated flak wagons, garage wagons with armed jeeps, and set the convoy for assault patrol when they come to fetch you. They should be here by January 5th in the early morning at the latest, so you can depart that day and be in Buffalo by the 8th at worse."

While his physical eyes were shut in sleepiness, Lucas blinked his virtual ones in amusement at just how efficient, and overprotective, his energetic sibling turned out to be. "Thanks, I think. I wouldn't have put an armed convoy on the rails just yet, not until things with Lawrence's death and Cynthia's removal are halfway completed, but I can see the logic in the decision. Nicely done."

Thinking a bit, the flesh teen ordered "Send orders to all WH&T, WAC and WEI sectors timed to arrive on the second hour of their morning shift, wherever they are located. I want the entire conglomerate on defensive stance in case some idiot tries to overtake us while I'm injured. Somebody could pay a corrupt or desperate medic to publish a fake diagnostic of mental incapacity against my emancipation, so we need to be ready to defeat that. Follow that with triggering all the preliminary phases that lead to enacting the Mid-Line Treaty so that it can be publicly acknowledged by January 31st at the very latest."

Luxis answered "I am compiling the lists of protocols to trigger remotely in the multiple networks that are concerned by the changes in societal status and resurrected laws the Treaty will require. I will compose the more verbose messages in a few minutes when you sleep. Do you require anything else?"

Almost asleep by now, the drowsy older brother mumbled "The damned traitors... We have to start cleaning out SSM and Sarnia before the bastards try to get to your parts or block the renovations I had ordered to happen since last year. From what I remember of the sim, the thieves went for the small decorative crystal parts, or the holo-emitters, to display for their own prestige. Take the master lists of employees, contractors, sub-contractors, clients, patients and tourists from 2018, then peel back every last layer of their professional & personal lives until each person is cleared or accused. Then go down backwards by year, until we have a full accounting of the dishonesty and betrayals to act on when the Treaty comes alive. Like I said in the sim: I won't be stupid enough to keep traitors inside my walls and pay them to destroy me to boot."

Luxis nodded and confirmed his list of tasks, but his sibling was already passed out, falling deeply through the realm of sleep that organics needed to replenish their mental and physical strengths. He had no such need, though from the neuroplexic signals coming from Lucas, it might be pleasant to try the process some other time, when threats weren't knocking on their home's door.

His entire body aglow with energy borne of his will, Luxis concentrated the power of the crystalline VPN that Lucas had built to push messages, trigger protocol cascades in dormant systems, and siphon private or secret data from the service files, social security files and any other media he could reach. Come morning, several server farms would have 'governmental' or 'World Bank' orders to activate old archival modules or retrieve them from storage to reconnect to their facility's main server backbone. In other, older places, the personnel would start getting forms by email telling them to pull out decrepit folders of obsolete papers, scan them into one single flash drive per dossier, then connect the new digital archive only when the full batch was electronically available. There would be no stone unturned in this search for threats, traitors and frauds; all would be detected, judged and listed for processing.

Peripheral considerations

(NCIS-LA - opening theme)

Eastern America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 11:00am (noon)

Western America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 08:00am

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

The tall bald black skinned male walked through the sliding glass doors of the hospital lobby, dressed in dark jeans and a long sleeved shirt covered by black leather jacket & gloves. It was getting cold out there, for California that is. It was still sunny and dry, but the ambient air was a good eleven degrees or less beneath what it could reach on a more reasonable season.

His partner, walking in step besides him, was caucasian, tallish with extremely short cut hair, just shy of being bald too. He was dressed almost the same except he favored traditional blue jeans and shirt, with leather jacket & gloves in light brown tones. He was faring much better in the weather, even though it was getting to be a bit much, this winter. The brand new climate control towers that had been completed in the passed 5 years, after nearly 20 years of efforts, were supposed to attenuate seasonal variances, not make them feel worse despite the lack of snow in these low altitudes. At least their mission wasn't taking them to the mountains around LA. The snow cover was already reaching 4 inches high in some areas.

Getting to the clinic's reception counter, the two men took out folding leather wallets to present the secretary their credentials. Obtaining access to a patient undergoing treatments was always going to be hard, but this one was both a minor-aged citizen and a bloody international VIP backed by the World Bank. They needed to show white-gloved hands to handle this kid, or Hetty would fillet the flesh right off their bones while they could still feel it happening. Then she'd give them to Vance cuz she's a nice boss, like that.

The receptionist took up her handheld wired telephone to call upstairs, spoke with someone for a few seconds then addressed the NCIS colleagues. "Agents Hanna and Callen, doctor Wolenczak is awake and prepared to receive you, if you don't mind that he's eating breakfast at the same time. Otherwise, you need to wait until 9:00am to visit." she completed with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

The two agents had heard about the shoot-out in the clinic's ambulance docks and understood that the staff wouldn't be in the mood to accommodate anybody with guns, especially with badges, in the coming weeks. They'd have to be particularly careful not to upset the medics or else somebody might use them for testing new drugs their labs were developing. This was a research university, and visiting the basement labs wasn't on their to-do list for today. They'd send in Deeks for that.

"As long as we can have a coffee while the good doctor is eating, we'll do fine" Grisha Callen replied at the middle-aged secretary, receiving another tight-lipped professional smile in return. Nope, the staff weren't recovered from yesterday yet.

"It's floor 9, VIP suite 109, please log-in with the nurse station when going in, then again when you leave, that way we can correlate stress levels and heart rate variances in the patient. Thanks." And that was their not so subtle cue to move so the next in line could have their turn.

Moving to the elevators, Sam muttered "I've had less unfriendly welcome from the marines that watch over the Navy's munitions depot when we investigate materials thefts in the LA cargo port." Shivering comically, the athletic male grumbled "I actually feel like she managed to stick a needle or three in places I care about without me realizing it before now!"

Snickering at his colleague's discomfort, Callen replied "Maybe it's just the medical equivalent of 'feeling you up' to ask for a date?" he said, utterly unhelpful as he intended. What fun would it be if he helped his friend get over his unease that easily? And the nurse was cute, for a mid-forties gal.

Grumbling lowly several dark things about Grisha's family (they knew them now) Sam waited impatiently for the bloody elevator to arrive so they could get this mission done with. The afternoon drive from LA to Stanford was 4 hours long on a good day, but this was between Christmas and New Year's, so the idiots were hogging the roadways, and accidents happened every half-hour it seemed. At least the motel room overnight had been decent, and the 6:00am early breakfast had been palatable, if only because G hadn't cooked. Thank God for doughnut shops and morning meal specialty places.

Finally arriving at the 9th floor, the pair of federal agents were confronted by a pair of FBI agents wearing kevlar under their usual suits jackets. Each had their service pistol already in hand, and were very obviously waiting for them to step out to be searched & scanned.

"Agents. This way. We need to frisk, scan and log you in before you access the principal. He's under diplomatic protection at the request of the World Bank, which both State and Justice agreed."

Sam Hanna waved vaguely with his left hand, replying "No hard feelings,man. We get this drill every other week on our end, too."

Nodding, the two blue suits passed the NCIS team through the very simple process of filling a short formulary that declared their Agency, name, employee ## & badge ##, job supplied cell ##, name of supervisor at office, and reason for the meeting with the protectee. After that they were handed over to the floor's head nurse for a small briefing.

"Gentlemen," the mature nurse called to them as her rust-colored red hair bobbed along her greeting. "The patient is on a ventilator through a tracheotomy port in his neck, so don't make him move suddenly, and avoid being on his side where the pipe is attached. He has shown little tolerance for people he doesn't personally know being near the connector. HE has fears that they'll rip the tube out to injure him worse. He's on an IV mix of morphine, Gravol and immune-accelerator to help his body adjust to the crystal contaminant that entered his bloodstream. No results yet on that, and we were told by his lawyers that those particular data-sets would be proprietary under his research contract with Stanford."

Making a face, the asian woman added "He's armed. To the teeth. He slept with them on his person and took the stuff in the shower with him this morning when he washed before his meal. He even refused to be assisted by an orderly because he believed the person would act like an idiot and try to hijack his tools in order to 'protect to poor child from himself' or some similar reasoning. Be advised that we have received written confirmations from the WB, FBI and... Other Agencies from DC... That he's to keep his weapons, and not be bothered on the subject lest – consequences – be applied."

Glancing sideways at the Bureau suits for confirmation, Callen snorted, muttering softly under his breath "Well, that's just peachy. Walking into the dragon's lair when it's angry and armed. Oh joy." he deadpanned while exchanging a look with Sam who had a constipated expression on his face as well.

Walking together, they reached the door to suite 9-VIP 109 and saw immediately why it was called a VIP room, unlike the regular ones they had the bad luck to use in their post-mission recoveries. Even the bloody drinks brewer mounted into the wall was better than what most coffee shops around the Spanish House had to work with. Eurk... Rich people. Or international VIP's with the damned Bank backing them.

Sitting in one of the single sofas at the conversation area, with his back towards the medical beds, Lucas Wolenczak looked small, almost drowning in the thick blue bathrobe and white bed sheet draped over his legs. His face was thin, angular by lack of fat or muscle. His teeth were incredibly white as he bit into his food, chewing slowly as if not certain he wanted to eat at all. His blond hair was a tone of almost lustrous gold that contrasted wildly with the electric blue shimmer that waved through the mass every time he moved. His skin was so damn thin it looked like bleached rice paper stretched taught over a frame, and the agents could see many of the bones showing through the milky-white epidermal layer clearly.

The kid was badly sick, that made no doubts anymore. But it was the eyes that got them.

Flint-blue, speckled with silver gray and thin filaments of electric blue, almost backlit from inside the orbs, and so incredibly, mercilessly hard.

Eyes that saw, evaluated, assigned worth or guilt, and judged you to deserve misery, just like he himself had suffered all his short life.

This was the 14 year old super-genius the World Bank and US government were having conniptions about keeping happy? Maybe. If those eyes were any indicator, a big maybe, then.

The child sat straight-backed in the plush felt covered sofa, left arm atop the chair's armrest while the right hand brought a piece of sausage stuck on a steel fork to his mouth. A rolling lap-table had been set before his seat to adjust the elevation of the meal tray, making it easy for him to eat without being in the bed, or requiring assistance. The young man had clearly just begun eating, as evidenced by the two eggs, two toast, four bacon strips, two sausages, hash browns and half a cinnamon waffle in his plate. What used to be a small glass of orange juice was already drained, upturned on the tray signifying he did not want a refill of that item. A large stainless steel thermal mug with a hinged lid stood on the left side of the lap-table, near the edge closest to the seated boy. As he moved, the dark purple coloration of thermoplastic was visible as the bathrobe slid back, revealing the defensive bracer on his right forearm, matching the one on the left. A solid steel cane covered in the same dark purple plastic leaned against the right side of the sofa, almost innocuously in the context if not for the hatchet shaped pistol grip.

"We're federal agents Callen and Hanna, from NCIS in Los Angeles," Grisha began their introduction spiel only to be interrupted rudely, to great effect too.

"How is our dear Duchess of Deception, this fine morn?" the soft reedy voice of the teenager making an odd counterpoint to the cyclic sounds of the ventilator and medication pumps attached to the thick pole standing next to him. Making a nasty smile that showed all teeth, the boy detailed "When I had my first cup this morning, I was dismayed to find it devoid of toxins. You can, no doubt, imagine my surprise at such lack of manners. Henrietta is usually so punctual in her salutations to her peers, in the Game of Shadows. I was wandering if old age had finally tripped her, like it did so many."

Squirming uncomfortably under the unrelenting gaze of those judgmental, predatory blue eyes, the two agents wondered what in Hell's flames had they stepped in, that Hetty failed to warn them of. This stank to High Heavens of one of her ops gone bad, or worse, gone rogue and come back to bite them.

"I wasn't aware that you and Hetty knew each other," Callen probed carefully, as if with a live mine buried in the ground at his feet.

Smiling in a way that neither reached his eyes nor changed his face, the stoic child replied in fake polite words "What tango Henrietta Lange and I enjoy dancing during our... mundanities... has little to do with your overtly stated mission goals, agent Callen." His harsh dismissal of the field agent was compounded by the pointed attack "Besides, shouldn't you instead be explaining to me why it was that EAD-PAC Mosley chose to disappear off roads, rather than come in person to insure the safety and recovery of the WB's prime supplier of encryption & apps?" Making a toothy smile a nesting dragon would envy, the youth tutted, wagging a finger at the pale, nervous agent. "It's almost as if the NCIS upper brass has little care for whom holds the strings to their purses, or has the means to exhume those purses to be seen in the light of day. Even our dear 'Baron of Brutality' was more subtle, and more 'au fait' of Power and its demands than this. More's the pity he left us so early. Inform your hierarchy that Shay Lynn Mosley's lack of 'savoir vivre' has been noted, and will be acted upon in future relations."

'There,' Lucas thought, 'that should put all of them on the back foot long enough to reach Buffalo, and the safety of Wise H&T's legal department. Then the bloody lawyers could be a bane in the life of someone other than himself & Luxis for a change. And maybe they could justify their exorbitant salaries while they were at it.'

Peering anxiously at those odd luminous blue eyes that constantly moved, scanned, assessed and condemned, Sam Hanna had to actually gird his courage for a rare occasion. It wasn't common occurrence for him to be set on high alert right from the start in a meeting. Especially with a situation that was supposed to be a limited meet & greet, in preparation for the actual conference where the lawyers and State Department would be present. Now, this kid had just punted the whole schedule out the window by trapping them into a drag-down & tumble fight, first thing in the door. Who the bloody Hells was this runt? And what was his connection to Hetty or Granger, dammit?

As both federal agents were trying to wrap their heads around the hot mess they were wading through, the teenager returned to silence as he concentrated on processing his meal while it was warm. The pause extended for well on 10 minutes before another piece of crap swam down the sewer to keep them company in their misery.

At exactly 8:30am, a young male orderly wearing generic blue scrubs entered the room, pushing a sanitation cart laden with mops, cloths, sponges, a bucket of hot clear water, multiple soaps and a great plastic trash can. All of this was basic hospital maintenance stuff that the NCIS crew ignored as the white skinned, green eyed, blond haired janitor proceeded to enter the bathroom to give it a look-see before emptying the garbage bins, putting in place a new box of paper tissues on the nightstand, and giving the small service counter a wipe down with a damp cloth.

While the orderly was initially ignored by the NCIS agents, they revised their stance as the look on the child's face went from surprised to greatly amused to downright predatory in three seconds flat. He obviously knew this man, and was about to get the drop on him in a bad way. Sitting himself more at ease by leaning into the backrest of the sofa, the adolescent made a show of eating slowly his eggs and toast while his sharp blue eyes followed the interloper like the CWIS turret on a ship.

As the orderly turned to face the patient to ask politely "Do you need anything else, sir?" the pale skinned adolescent was gazing upon him much the same way that a cat considers a small mouse stuck in a corner; with gleeful interest and no mercy whatsoever.

Laying down his utensils to sit back deeper into the sofa, Lucas produced a slow, nasty smirk at the waiting janitor, contemplating him from head to toes and back up. His smile grew to show so much teeth that it looked like his mouth had short sharp fangs as he let out a deep, evil laugh.

"Well, now! As I live and breathe! Did it take really that much brouhaha for you to come visit little ole me? Why Angus, I'm deeply chagrined by your lack of concern." the teen purred menacingly in a voice that reminded the DXS agent far too much of Dennis Murdoch for his liking.

"How do you know this guy?" queried Sam Hanna as he put a hand to his gun, worried there would be a shoot-out like happened yesterday. "We weren't told about no 'Angus' coming in here."

Snorting in amusement at the mess he was purposefully making worse out of sheer brattiness to relieve his boredom, Lucas replied in a sing-song voice "It's a se-cr-et mister agent man! I'd have to kill you if I told you. After prolonged torture, to get what you know out of you first." Spearing a piece of sausage with his fork, the boy glibly said "You can always ask Henrietta about 'The Hun'. She's got stories to tell, but you'll rue the price... Maybe. Some knowledge is worth the cost, for the profit it gives." He smirked in even worse brattiness as he chewed his meat, thoroughly amused by the capharnaum he was spreading so liberally across multiple agencies. And breakfast wasn't even finished yet!

Taking out his phone, Callen dialed OPS, immediately getting Eric Beale at the first ring. "Eric, I have a situation that needs to be resolved ASAP. Is Hetty in arm's length? Ask her about 'The Hun' and if they have agents moving about San Francisco. The young doctor we've been sent to interview about the kidnapping attempt seems to have gotten attention from other people. We need confirmation what agency they are, and who's this guy here."

"Roger that, G-man!" answered Eric, happy as always to be of assistance. "Hetty was on the line with director Vance about stuff, but she should be available. I'll buzz her to see if she can come up. Call you back in a few." The tech disconnected the line to page his superior up to the control room, since things had just gotten interesting enough to warrant her input.

Turning to the strange young male in the room who was clearly paralyzed by surprise at having been called out like that, Grisha noted he was standing with his hands open, away from his body to the sides, palms towards the agents to show they were empty. This guy had clearly been frisked & held a few times before, and not just at airports. Who the bloody Hells was this man, and who was 'The Hun'?

Still wearing his bratty smirk, Lucas waved his last strip of bacon at agent Hanna, playfully signaling he had something to say. At a nod from the muscular older man, the genial teen remarked "Do you honestly think that I'd let this guy traipse around my room and change things to his heart's desire if I thought he was a threat? Please! The way I was raised, I can smell a problem a mile away in my sleep without wasting any effort." Turning to MacGyver's unbelieving face, the teen added obnoxiously "I do hope the bugs you're placing don't interfere with my systems or I'll have to take – punitive – actions against you and dear Riley. She should know better, by now, than to hog my bandwidth or slow down my comms." The wide shit-eating grin he wore as he slowly bit his piece of bacon seemed to grind of Mac's nerves, as the poor male kept wincing at every harsh 'crunch' coming from his erstwhile host.

Sam Hanna, getting fed up with this game, just had to ask: "Who's Riley?"

As expected, Angus stayed quiet as per protocols when a mission goes bad, but Lucas had no such compunctions; "His team's techie, and occasional overwatch depending on the danger of the job."

Callen asked for confirmation "As in, she stays out of it when things get dicey?"

Angus closed his eyes and actually palmed his face with both hands in despair for mission secrecy as the far too voluble genius replied by a silent nod as he was busy swallowing some hot coffee to wash down the last bites of potatoes. Having in-room entertainment was proving to be quite the appetite booster for the injured boy.

Callen's phone rang with the tone programmed specifically for NCIS-OSP, so he picked up in haste, getting a much needed dose of relief as he heard the voice of Hetty Lange on the other end. "Mister Callen. I believe you have encountered a colleague from a sister agency. May I see the young man to confirm, please?" she asked in gentle urbane words that set the agent at ease. Aiming his phone, he flicked on the camera to let her and Eric see who was present. "Ah, yes. Please do put me on speaker, if you could. This will be easier." she ordered.

Activating the speaker, Grisha held out his phone for everyone in the room to hear. The elder woman's voice echoed around them as she spoke without hesitation or doubt. "Doctor Wolenczak, my congratulations on achieving peace in your life, even if the process was unpleasant. I do believe you will find existence less problematic, without certain people in it. Agents, the young man present is an agent from another agency which, for reasons of security, I will not explain until you are back at the office for debrief. Just know that he is an ally, and you can trust him to have your backs. As for you, mister MacGyver, do tell your new supervisor that her old mentor from the CIA says to stop rampaging across her fields. My missions are not farms for her Horde to ransack. That is all, unless our good doctor has anything to add?"

Smirking happily, Lucas replied aloud "Nope. But don't worry, if I have anything, I have your numbers to all of you in my system. I'll find you when needed." Then, giving a dark grimace, the boy mumbled "With the way my life goes, it shouldn't take that much time before you get a ring."

{ SQ } - { Fighting for freedom from fanatics } - { SQ }

(Two Steps From Hell – Never Back Down)

Western America; 9:18am

Before anybody could comment, a strong, insistent tonal pulse sounded in the room, coming from the phone and workstation set on the second rolling table near the bed. Glaring malevolently at the things, Lucas ordered aloud "Luxis! Present on the room's main screen." The adolescent wasn't afraid of using his virtual brother like a superior style of 'Alexa' domotics & security in public as he had already sold holo-emitters to high-class clients last year, before the program became alive. The cat was out of the bag, but they didn't know what it really was, so as long as the façade of a boosted digital assistant was maintained, they could interact in full view without fears.

The room's large Internex enabled screen mounted above the food prep counter, on the wall near the bathroom door, lit up showing the logos for Wise H&T and Wolenbahn side by side before changing to a split-screen live view of the hospital's security cameras. Two of the small images had red glowing frames to indicate the zones of emergency. Luxis quickly zoomed-in the two images of concern so that the people could focus only on the threats he detected.

One camera was in the main lobby at the reception desk, showing an older white male with wrinkled skin, receding white hairline and thick black eyeglasses. He wore a drab brown three-piece suit with a brown bow tie, a small white & gold crucifix pinned to his right-side jacket lapel, and carried a large black leather book in the crook of his left arm as if his life depended on it. He had put a small brown leather briefcase on the reception counter, wide open thus showing it was almost empty. He was trying to forcibly push a thin folio of loose papers into the hands of the poor receptionist who clearly didn't agree that it was her job, or pay grade, to deal with the claims he was making.

The cameras zoomed-in onto the text visible on the top page, the printed characters easy to view and read through the screen. The documents claimed to be concerning a church school of some sort, and 'Lucas Holt Wolenczak, minor child in tutelage' although most of the truly relevant information was hidden by the man's hands, or inside the other pages of the document.

The second camera was in the parking lot, showing a 13 year old Chevrolet Suburban 2005 SUV bearing the logo of California's DCFS – Stanford Division painted on the doors of both sides. It parked near the main entrance, to let out a single middle-aged white male with thinning brown hair, squinted weak eyes and cheap, worn, two-piece brown suit. He had an aluminum expanding case that was so overstuffed the accordion joints on the sides were straining to stay together. The DCFS decal on the front of the briefcase had division, office and employee ID's in case it was lost or misplaced.

(- change perspective -)

The synthetic voice of Luxis echoed through the room as he explained what alerted him; "The man at the reception desk is an active priest of the Judeo-Christian sects, USA evangelical variant. As per the documents he deposited with the secretary, he claims to be the bishop/leader for a church with 2,000 members located in a mountainous region, some 47 miles east from Stanford community. He is also the headmaster of their private faith-based reformatory for 'wayward dispirited boys in need of Jesus to save them from Perdition', and several other ritualistic catch-lines used to sell the religious poison to parents or city courts."

The virtual boy's disdain came through clearly as he detailed further; "Of immediate importance is that he has been accused nine times of sexual battery & molestation on boys under age 14, has been accused of aggravated physical battery on minors 23 times, and has been accused of faking the identities of thirteen different children to empty out their bank accounts. Supposedly, he claimed to have signed permissions, affidavits or 'power of attorney' from their parents to do so. These are transparent lies as each child defrauded was an orphan that the public system declared 'too difficult to handle'. These troubled youths were placed questionably in his supposed church-school that also serves as juvenile corrective establishment and pediatric mental hospice for troubled youths, all inside one building."

Luxis completed; "Please note that California State government does not have ANY permits on record for the establishment. No licenses were ever given for its church, school, penal or medical functions, and no educational or medical professional with a valid/legal license operates the compound. The terrain is essentially an isolated plot of 10x10 acres lost in rocky, arid, semi-desertic wilderness, without any roads, grid-based electricity or comms. It's a dead zone made to hold prisoners quietly, then make disappear any who challenge his fanatical tyranny over his pseudo-church fiefdom."

Lucas didn't need much more to understand clearly what was happening. Some fucking preacher of the christian sects was trying to kidnap him so he could then beat & rape the bank account infos out of him to drain everything he owned. Once done stealing and defrauding his heritage, the bastard would make it look like the 'mentally ill' teenager had escaped his cell to die in the desert hills from exposure or animal attacks. The creep would seem just innocent enough for some church-sympathetic judge to let him skate by again, especially once the usual envelopes of cash were passed under the table.

As for the dick-wad from DCFS coming unannounced, that was bloody predictable. Without a doubt, he was coming under pretense of interviewing Lucas to get the facts about Lawrence and his childhood. In reality, it would just end up as a falsified report, with 'emotional dysfunctions' manufactured to justify placing him with this god-nut or another. All would happen quickly, as a surprise attack, without any parent, hired lawyer, public youth advocate, or any importance to his opinion being allowed. And Lucas could bet safely that he would either invent reasons to ignore the court orders from Buffalo's judge and New York State DCFS, or just never allow them to matter in the process. Not to mention that the genius teen could bet his remaining health this particular DCFS agent would NEVER let the case proceed to family court, or get near an actually honest magistrate, or any mental health specialist, for fear of his willful complicity in this and similar frauds being discovered.

Well then. There would be bloodshed today, again.

"Luxis, scan that DCFS truck, match it to all known employees. Do the same with the tags on the man's extenser case, just in case he's a faker like the cops yesterday. Run face-rec on both, and flag any known associates, employees, contractors or partners they have within 1,000 yards of my room. I want a run down of both men ASAP. Send it all to the Wise H&T lawyers in Buffalo, as well as Carmello since he's on his way to meet me at 10:00am."

The voice of the computer answering the teenager surprised the agents around him and on the phone as they had not realized the level of interactivity the device possessed. "I have everything going to the main systems in Buffalo, New York, Boston, SSM, Sarnia, and locally plus all the printers in the hospital's reception desk, admin offices and their litigation department. Calling local law enforcement, state troopers, FBI field office, NCIS, DXS, and transferring all agencies to live-feed from the room, in synch with Buffalo security managers for WAC's."

Hetty's voice came from Callen's phone, her tone betraying her surprise; "Mister Callen, who is that person in the room with you? Besides mister MacGyver, I haven't seen or been presented anybody else to date." she demanded firmly.

Hetty's question was waylaid by the synthetic voice calling out "DXS overwatch central is live, director Webber online. FBI San-Fran office is live, assistant director Fasoun online. NCIS-LA ops control is live, SSA Lange online. State Trooper station for Stanford is live, captain Werthas online. Local Stanford PD dispatch is live, captain Gerard online. SF&S clinic litigation office is live, manager Shadaburi online. Carmello di Sovorone is in transit, live & online. All channels receiving data-stream, all printers tagged are producing."

Pushing the rolling table away from his sofa, Lucas ordered harshly "Mac! Make yourself useful! Push this aside then stand ready on the left, to protect the medical pole and the pipe in my neck. You two can shut your phone and stand there in loose pair, in case the fucktards try anything. Luxis, put the data on the left half of the screen but keep following those two deviants, live-stream on the right side."

Suddenly angrier, Lucas growled out "Where the fuck is the WAC's militia, dammit! They were supposed to arrive in the night and come here for protection detail! Find them! Send up the damned emergency beacon! On all frequencies, to all WAC divisions! Get some people in here, or I'll level the fucking house of fools to the ground, then salt the earth!"

Hoping to derail the teenager's rage, Angus MacGyver pointed out "Hey! They're meeting in the lobby! Can you get some sound from there?"

(- change perspective -)

Without Lucas making a gesture or asking, the two images merged into a bigger one taking a bit more than 2/3 of the screen, and the sound from the area was now audible clearly. It was as bad as it looked.

In the lobby, the man from DCFS loudly put his extenser case on the counter with an exhale of relief, taking out a kerchief to wipe sweat from his brow before shoving it back in his shirt pocket. He then obsequiously made a short, exaggerated bow from the neck towards the fuming old priest, even putting his right hand over his heart as he intoned "Jesus gives you a blessed day to do His Holy Works, honored Bishop Parsons."

"Eric! Is OPS getting this feed live?" Sam barked out.

"Yes, and so are a plethora of others," Beale replied with a short two second pause as he typed feverishly on his tablet, "Be advised that there are multiple LEO's incoming at high speed. After the shoot-out and two fake cops yesterday, no agency in town is taking any risks."

The NCIS, DXS and FBI agents in the room all stayed silent as the action on-screen became damning for the two men in the lobby.

Rage evident in his voice, Bishop Mitchell Jessup Parsons of the Baptist Church of Jesus, Redresser of Sinners and Deviancies in the Flesh World, addressed the newly arrived civil servant. "Can you believe the sheer nerve of these damnable imports!" He gestured rudely towards the female clerk at the desk whom had refused to take his papers or allow him passage upstairs. "They come to our fair and faithful christian country, then try to deny our most fundamental authorities and rights, as they were endowed upon us by Jesus, the Lord God, our Creator!" The man flapped his arms around like a bird caught in a storm as he waved about imperiously "Sins, I say! Sins and debasements from these cur-spawns!"

Looking over at the mid-thirties nurse who was clearly as brown as any Hindu ever was, the DCFS agent shook his head in sympathy with the racist bishop, but didn't verbally rebuff nor affirm anything about the man's openly displayed bigotry. Instead, he went directly into the meat of the problem. "Have you deposited the custody papers to transfer the delinquent child, as his parents agreed with my office? I was expecting they would have offered a hospital security guard to guide us to the detention room they put him in, given yesterday's unwarranted, criminal attacks on three such good, faithful, Men of Jesus our Lord Christ."

The bureaucrat's tone and manners were subservient towards not just the creed & faith spoken aloud, but to the priest himself, as if he were truly superior to all humans around them. This public demonstration of servile abasement in his presence seemed to soothe the riled cleric as he vaguely waved his right hand at the reception desk, keeping his precious Bible close to his left flank.

"I tried to serve the 'Church Writs of Faith' unto these imported peons of the weaker sex, but they rebuffed me callously! I, an apostle of Jesus, who redeems sins! You have no idea the impudence and heresies I have suffered in this den of liberal, communist, anti-American heathens! Ah, but for the 1950's when women and boys knew their place, and imports stayed in the ghettos we so graciously allowed them to build in our towns! Amen to Jesus, for showing us the true Path of righteousness!"

The priest's pale sickly skin was glowing pink so much from his own bombastic exhortation of faith, creed, dogma, and bigoted regressism that a man born blind would see it in full colors. Pearls of sweat were beading on his face and neck as he whelmed himself into a fine strop at the thought of such a rich, violent boy being orphaned inside his reach, where he could waylay him, break him, then steal everything behind everybody's backs. This sick runt had enough in the trust funds his two sets of grand-parents left him to make the priest live the end days of his life in obscenely opulent luxury as he so richly deserved, while the rebellious child was sold off as a he-whore to a Filipino brothel through some old Triad connections. This would be the perfect ending to a hard, arduous career of nearly 45 years of beating, raping and breaking the souls of boys for pittances, at long last.

Unaware of the pedophile priest's true criminal nature, or uncaring if he were being paid enough, the DCFS bureaucrat gave every impression of simply being blind, deaf & dumb. He just nodded and hummed thoughtlessly along the spontaneous sermon the cleric was blasting through the entire reception lobby at high volume. Both men were completely oblivious to the attention they were garnering, or that all of that attention was negative, or that some of the civilians had taken out their phones to film the scene for their social media pages. 2018 was the Year of Awakening for many minority groups in the USA, and hearing an elderly cleric pontificate about being 'infested by imports' or how 'women are inferior as Jesus commands' and worrisome comments about 'children need breaking to be obedient to God' and so much more shite had rung the alarm bell for many. Some ordinary people present in the hall, clearly offended by the criminal speech, were already sounding the alert about these two fools, and the idiots weren't even paying attention to any of it.

(- change perspective -)

In room 9-109, the many federal/secret agents watching the monitor didn't know whether they were both dumb, or just so totally convinced about church Power inside the USA during the Trump Era that they didn't think they could be held accountable for any of it by anybody.

Lucas Wolenczak growled out between clenched teeth "If they reach my room to try kidnapping me under false criminal accusations, or some jack-shite church pamphlet, they won't leave alive and I'll incinerate any who try to stop me. Look at my record, and see if I won't!"

The voice from captain Gerard of Stanford PD asked weakly, afraid of the answer he would get, "Are you all sure they're coming to you? It could be for somebody else."

The genius teenager snarled in rage as he replied venomously "Because letting that bastard kidnap another kid – a person! – to drag them to his dead zone to be beaten, raped and killed off when their family's fortunes have been plundered is so much more acceptable than if it's me? The man has a full record, and I'm betting that measly fool kissing his ass is involved from along ways back!"

The voice of Luxis sounded from the screen's speakers; "The papers Bishop Parsons tried to hand the reception clerk are clearly indicated as authorizing the transfer of Lucas Holt Wolenczak from the hospital's prisoner ward, to Parson's asylum & reformation facilities as 'parochial student', emergency 'in-patient' and 'dangerous inmate' under accusations of insanity, criminality, depravity, usage of synthesis drugs, and self-destructive behaviors. A second document claims to have been signed in September 2018 by both father & mother of said teenager, for forcible psychiatric commitment & detention. A third sheet attempts to revoke the minor's right to a privately hired attorney or state given youth advocate, and rescinds the right to access family & criminal courts for succor against the church & ecclesiastes. Finally, another paper claiming again to be signed by both parents serves as unlimited permanent power of attorney over all financial resources & holdings of Lucas Holt Wolenczak, supposedly to pay for his sanitary upkeep, spiritual schooling, psychiatric treatments and redressment by 'pastoral medicine' under the appointed ecclesiastes of Jesus Christ."

Luxis added "Please note that none of the signatures are valid, nor are they even real. As well, none of the governmental levels of the USA allow ANYBODY to forbid access to the courts, to DCFS, to a youth advocate or court appointed public defender. These documents are manufactured solely by his church, and for his own deviant purposes, not by any official agency in function as we speak."

The voice of the FBI assistant director for San Francisco claimed tersely "This one's ours, guys! Falsifying agency & court documents is a felony under federal laws. Plus, from the file I have, both parents have been disqualified from having any authority over this young man by court orders in the last 10 years, and repeatedly in the father's case. He even had several restriction orders on him, so shouldn't have been anywhere near the University, let alone his kid. And that means that any papers he signed since the court order was emitted are worthless, except as proof of contempt of court and defying a court order."

The Stanford PD replied anxiously "Get your suits over there pronto! My guys will handle the arrest and detain them until your cars arrive for transport. I'm sure the State Troopers will assist."

Captain Werthas copied that loudly "My men will assist in any capacity they're able. I'm certain agents from other agencies already in the area will do the same, yes?"

Hetty Lange's voice acquiesced while new voices confirmed too.

Lucas shushed everybody loudly; "The morons are talking again!"

(- change perspective -)

In the lobby, the DCFS agent showed his worn-out plastic badge to the reception clerk, trying to ignore the blathering bishop at his side. "I am John Samuel Rand, officer of the California DCFS, Stanford divisional office. I have here the notarized documentation necessary to enact the judicial transport of one Lucas H. Wo-Len-Cz-Ak, yes, that's the name, WOLENCZAK, from this facility's prisoner ward, over to private juvenile psychiatric correctional treatment at this address, to be done by Bishop Parsons, proprietor of said institution of faith. Can you please sign here, here, and here? Then we'll take the troubled boy off your overworked hands." The man said with a vapid, uncaring smile that was completely fake as his worn-out faux-silk tie.

The receptionist was about to answer politely – again – that she could not sign any such papers since she didn't make those decisions when the elevators disgorged a trio of upper management execs and a pair of lawyers. All five men had smartphones with a wired earbud to be on live comms with their offices in the upper floors during the assured confrontation with the criminalized fanatic.

"You can leave it be, Miss Hashnitupri, higher management will handle this." the senior man told her in firm voice that also told the entire desk staff that this was going to be bad. None of them had called up to ask for a manager to come take the case as they hoped the fool churchman would just leave. How had they known to come down to intervene?

Addressing the fraudulent priest and his (knowing?) accomplice, the five clinic reps assumed an almost defensive stance with the three execs in one central block and a lawyer at each side of their triangle.

"My name is Francis D. Ghespard, president of this hospital's board of director, in the name of Stanford University. What business do you have with any patient of ours? Be advised that you are being recorded visual & sound by the lobby's security systems, and it can be used if you commit fraudulent claims or criminal acts of any sorts. You, DCFS! What's the problem?"

Pursing his lips in a truly childish, exaggerated pout at the thought he could be called to task for his felonies, frauds and multiple sins, the priest was almost in tears as the boy's immense wealth could be seen sliding through his powerless fingers as bloody lawyers, liberal college teachers and other ill-bred manners of communists and heathens lay claim before he could make his attempt. "It's not fair!" the elderly criminal wailed inside his mind, "It's not fair that the little churches never get the big bucks or the fat payday, no matter how hard we preach, convert and fight against heresy! It's not damned fair!"

Agent J. S. Rand didn't seem at all impressed by the five powerful, well dressed and well educated men arrayed in front of him. If anything, he seemed to become more lively, more combative at the sight of living opponents to fight against.

(- change perspective -)

In room 9-109, Lucas asked "Luxis? What about the DCFS minion? You didn't give a report on him."

The computerized voice replied "There is precious little to be had on him. He attended classes in his birthplace of Carson City, Nevada, all religious primary, secondary and college based in the traditions of American anglo-saxon evangelicalism. All the institutions were private with limited admissions, but he was granted paupers' funds from the church his parent's attended, or managed to obtain scholarships from faith-support charities passed age 18. He was never a student exceptional enough to earn prizes, certificates, medals, or any accolade schools usually hand out to high-achieving students. He was a solid B+ (or 85%) grade average across the board, including physical activity, music and manual arts. He received a rural area driver's license at age 15, followed by regular permit at age 18 when he moved into town for university. He received his diplomas at Las Vegas City's Jesus the Free Nazareen Traditional Baptist College for Men. He was breveted two major's in pastoral social services and faith-based education services over four years, the regular duration. He lived in the campus residences, as demanded by the college student's code of honorable conduct."

Luxis added "Of some note, he did try eight times to apply for law school in multiple universities, including his alma mater, and was always rejected for the same reason: lack of grip over his personal prejudices and incapacity to relate with a varied clientele. The rejection letters in the system don't say anymore than that bland blurb. Because the idiot recruiters at California DCFS were just happy to have another pair of arms to dump their overload of files in, they never asked farther since he was never charged, or even accused, of any misconduct during his studies. Strangely enough, in close to 23 years of the same DCFS job, in the same office, he hasn't gotten a single complaint from any child, parent, guardian, custodian or institution about the services he rendered."

The FBI supervisor on the phone asked "Why is that strange? He could just be a very drab inoffensive cog, lost inside a very big impersonal machine, who happens to provide tolerable services without making enemies along the way." Although he played Devil's advocate, they could all hear the overt doubts in his voice.

It was Lucas who replied thoughtfully "For the same reason I don't push against the minimum age laws or professional orders for the right to practice directly on patients, living or dead. When you're in medicine, you rarely see people other than at their worse, with their family collapsing around them as the situation unfolds. DCFS - Social Services & Support for those too damaged or destitute to help themselves, are deeply steeped in first aid, psychology & therapy, which are the core of mental health medicine. That means that it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to not have a single complaint in your file during your career because at least one patient will be vengeful, deluded, in a fugue state, withdrawing from substances, or else it's their friends who say they 'witnessed abuse or lack of professional attitude' or some other formulation. This is especially the case since emerging social media have paired with smartphones that have cameras to film events live-to-web unedited. People without diplomas or medical qualifications will overreact and complaint. Sometimes, kids who are enraged at being forcibly helped through mental issues will have their friends lay fraudulent complaints to try and get them released, or at least get a better room and some privileges before they are ready for them."

The hospital's litigator on the line confirmed "Our young collaborator is correct. In a domain of activity as fragile and intimate as medicine, pharmacy and mental health, it is virtually impossible for a person to have a clean record. This is especially true in America, with the culture of law suits and the 'pay me to be quiet' schemes that hit most practitioners at least once per decade of service. Many doctors retire right on age sixty because the insurance costs to cover against fraudulent claims are so high it is sapping their livelihood, to the point they could leave debts to their inheritors at death."

Nodding, the agents kept their eyes on the screen where the DCFS agent had handed the bishop's fake papers over to the hospital executives, without bothering to read them first. He seemed barely surprised by the amount of resistance he was getting right in the doorway, compared to the priest who was fidgeting nervously, constantly rubbing, patting or stroking his worn leather covered Bible as if the book of lies were a pet cat that needed to be comforted.

(- change perspective -)

In room 9-109, Luxis announced neutrally "The Stanford PD have arrived, three cars carrying two officers each, now with clinic security on the way inside through the main lobby doorway. The State Troopers now have one car in the parking lot, two officers now entering through the ground floor cafeteria." Much to the surprise of all the agents in the room with the injured adolescent, Luxis commented unbidden; "It would seem that law enforcement has managed to do their jobs properly without your direct physical involvement in the situation. It even seems as if the hospital administrators would not have been fooled by the DCFS peon's platitudes, if only because he has no rights to use church-manufactured documents and rules to affect the placement or health care of his clients."

Lucas grumbled nastily "Yes... That's one career to be destroyed so I can sleep at peace. Luxis, please see to it that these two bastards' names are in the registry for when I assume my office publicly in SSM. I don't want to forget about having them repatriated up North for trial and disposal. Given how long this 'Bishop Parsons' has been operating in California, I'm certain he has at least a county sheriff or a judge in his pocket to shield him from public prosecution, using 'church rights' as a foil. We will not let this continue, especially not given that he is a declared threat."

Stunning the federal agents anew, the computerized voice replied "I agree Lucas. I have scheduled reminders for WAC's militia and WH&T legal to pursue the cases with all vigor, as well as a reminder to us both to finalize this mess before we drown in other pressing matters, once the CG posting is made public knowledge. Also, the WAC's militia has finally arrived to establish defensive perimeter around your room. One rented van carrying 8 soldiers, entering through the clinic personnel's entry besides the ambulance docks. I am sending them the elevator in emergency shuttle mode, under my control."

Reaching for his thermal mug on the side, Lucas declared "Well done Luxis. Maintain active monitoring of the situation until they have been removed from the entire University campus. Then I want to know who that mongrel J. S. Rand's boss is, because he's due an FBI visit, as well as a couple of Wise H&T lawyers just to make sure his New Year 2019 is a truly not happy one." The teen sipped slowly the dregs of his morning coffee while side-eyeing the feds around the room, ready to use the temporary version of his armament-cane to fight them off.

The genius boy sat back comfortably in his padded felt sofa, nodding kindly at old Rosanna Funnis when she entered the room with her cart to pick up the soiled breakfast tray and offer him a few snacks for his fridge, in case he had the munchies before lunch time. She blinked a few times at the number of men with badges and guns in the room, because while they had been briefed about the FBI being on the floor, nobody had said anything about the two others. Even then, that wasn't what got her attention.

Gazing thoughtfully at Angus MacGyver, the older orderly asked "Are you new in the clinic? I'd don't think I recognize you, dearie. And could you park your cart outside the room? In the VIP suites it blocks access to the service counter when we pass for the meal service."

None of the agents understood why Lucas exploded in laughter at the woman's words, nor did they comprehend what it meant to hear Luxis laugh through the speaker system as well.

On the wall mounted screen, a gaggle of cops and hospital security could be seen creating a large cordon around the criminal priest and his bureaucrat accomplice. The clinic's senior admins gladly withdrew to let the PD & State officers proceed with the lawful arrests, in full view of dozens of civilians who were filming the scene with their phones directly to Facebook or Snapchat. No matter what shtick the two perverted accomplices tried to use to get out of jail would not work. With so many witnesses and films circulating, any paid partners or faith-allied silent supporters would abandon them without a second glance in order to save their own jobs and lives. With the FBI starting up an investigation inside the DCFS file-keeping and archives, as well as their placement of children since John Samuel Rand was hired, even a state judge would not want to publicly assist them anymore.

Considerations of governance

(SeaQuest - opening theme)

Eastern America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 12:45pm (noon)

Western America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 09:45am

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Seated almost comfortably in the couch side-by-side were Grisha, Sam, the FBI's point man for the protection detail and the hospital's chief of security. Seated in three sofas were the representatives for the Stanford PD, State Troopers and Angus MacGyver who had been dragged, metaphorically kicking & screaming, into this clusterfuck only the 'Alphabet Soup' of DC's intelligence agencies could make. The two militiamen from Wise Apothecary & Chemists standing heavily armored and fully armed on each side of the entry door silently made for an even weirder context to the impromptu meeting.

All the agents had been served some excellent coffee and small finger pastries brought up by the clinic's cafeteria. Lucas had smirked brattily when he saw Wilt Bozer dressed in generic blue scrubs playing the role of a kitchen orderly, then chuckled when Rosanna had come back in, insisting on showing the young man how to place things properly in VIP suite fridges or cupboards to not indispose their high level clients with clutter. The fact she was also ogling his arms and back while mentioning her many available grand-nieces had the poor injured teenager placing a hand over his mouth to muffle his snickering, except the sounds kept coming out of the tracheotomy port in the left side of his neck. Angus, bless his heart, had decided to simply ignore Wilt to his own fate as he tried to disappear in the felt depths of his sofa's cushions. A spy once exposed never received kind treatment for long, and he could already imagine the reaming-out that director Webber would administer when he returned to home base in Los Angeles.

The amusing interlude was ended by the noisy arrival of a much older caucasian male, slightly obese, moving about in a medical quad-porter. The man was driving his battery powered vehicle slowly to avoid colliding with all the medical equipments and maintenance carts lying around the corridors and his client's room. Immediately upon his arrival, Rosanna waved Wilt out of the room and back to the kitchens on the ground floor, helping the poor man to move his food cart out of the suite so she could close the door after their exit.

Lucas waited to hear the obnoxiously loud 'clang' of the domotics controlled locks on the door engage to guarantee his privacy before presenting the newcomer to his guests. "Gentlemen, please be acquainted with Mister Carmello Giorgio Campanello di Sovorone, esquire, attorney at law, my personal representative in the regions of San Francisco & Stanford. He will be assisting me navigate the meanders of your diverse agencies' protocols, while making certain nobody tries any funny business with my body, rights or freedom, as was done this morning."

A soft murmur of polite pleasantries was exchanged between the men as Lucas inhaled the aroma of his freshly refilled coffee mug before downing a hearty swig. Leaning backwards into the comfortable embrace of his sofa's plush cushions, the adolescent adjusted slightly the bed sheets folded over his lap to give him a bit of warmth and emotional safety. He didn't tell anybody other than Luxis, but there were still times when he forgot that it was his head that received injuries so he tended to be overly protective of his legs and hips, as if the hotel fight with Lawrence in cyberspace had really happened.

"Well, you've been a busy little beaver, haven't you?" Carmello aimed at his client with a mock glare and wagging finger. "Getting into fights with your daddy, then fake cops, then a real cop captain, followed by the classic perverted priests and a crooked DCFS officer as finale. All inside of 24 hours, and between Christmas and New Year's Eve to boot." Ignoring the weak protests from the teen and the chuckles from the peanut gallery around them, the old Sicilian lawyer inquired tartly "Did I miss anything, or are you keeping something back as a turn-of-the-year present for me? Because I'm sure that I won't appreciate it."

The hospital security chief just couldn't help but choke out between bouts of laughter "Think of the job security this kid gives you! If your children or grand-children are lawyers, you could build up the entire cabinet on just his load!"

Seeing the open-mouthed, scandalized look on Lucas' face at this declaration, the older men just couldn't hold in their humor anymore, so they burst out laughing wildly as the stress of the morning was released. Nobody realized that a soft sound of boyish snickering could be heard coming from the speakers around the room. Making a most magnificent pout with jutted lower lip and arms crossed over his thin chest, the juvenile scholar mumbled dark imprecations under his breath about ancient adults and their obsolete sense of humor.

A few minutes later and the room had quieted down, giving everyone time to settle more comfortably into their seats while visually getting the measure of the other players in the situation. Lucas extended his left arm to pull in the rolling lap-table that held his prototypes for custom workstation, phone and meta-glasses, which he lost no time in putting on his face, at the same moment as he placed the phone in the chest pocket of the bathrobe. He activated the laptop CPU to display his custom-built management suite, enacting the synch with his glasses. In the back of his mind, Luxis followed every move the external devices made, learning & adapting from them so that he could grow, improve and eventually replace them all in case they were destroyed or stolen by enemies. It also allowed him to help Lucas better when he perceived things from a first degree rather than through filters, intermediaries or inputs from publicly sold apps.

{ SQ } - { Diplomatic resolutions } - { SQ }

(Two Steps From Hell - Victory)

Carmello di Sovorone cleared his throat noisily as he accepted a small espresso cup with saucer and spoon that he set on the permanent table of his quad-porter after a sip. MacGyver glared impotently at the teenager that was ordering him around like a valet, or an orderly, to serve food and items all around to the other guests. The brat's obnoxious smirk was so damned evident it would outshine the canister lights in the ceiling if he were to look at it directly. Jerk!

Watching everything with a gimlet eye from his position on the couch, Sam Hanna didn't miss that the younger spy was being hazed thoroughly by the teenager, and that nobody was lifting a finger to stop it from happening. That could have something to do with his boss having ordered him to "Do what you're told by the principal, and don't worsen the mess, Blondie!" Honestly, it reminded him of the way Hetty treated them sometimes, when she was on the warpath. The fact the poor spy acted as nervously as Eric on a good day didn't help to shake the comparison between their agencies' leaders.

Callen was quietly appreciating the minuscule finger-food; his second blueberry danish was going down well, washed away by an excellent cappuccino that he'd be hard-pressed to replicate without the machine in the wall. The fact he had gotten served at his seat was nice. Snort! For him yes, but the poor noob from the other agency was clearly being taught the ropes of the job by a 14 year old, which his boss on the phone had seemed to seethe at. Hetty on the other hand at sounded tickled by the situation. She would be, the old war-hound. Nothing like the smell of blood & humiliation along morning tea to make her happy. Nonetheless, there were some interesting interactions to observe, and the boy-genius didn't seem that panicked anymore, now that this mysterious private army was arrived. And wasn't that a kick in the teeth... NCIS was used to dealing with private corporate security and rent-a-cops that patrolled malls or office towers. This however, was another level of nasty. As if the kid having energy weapons and chemical grenades on him all day long wasn't a nightmare to deal with on its own.

The FBI agent was trying hard to not sweat bullets as he sat tritely, eating a far too creamy, too fat, and too sugary piece of Viennese culinary art, the name of which he couldn't even remember to save his life, let alone his job. He had arrived for his regular morning shift on what was supposed to be a dreary, boring protection detail requested by the World Bank for one of their 'diplomats' living on US soil. The fact the WB had the right to enact diplomatic privilege for certain levels of its employees or contractors was seen as a big joke amongst the security & intelligence agencies of the world. Every agent and their bosses knew this was just a way to give some schmucks a promotion in status without putting a dollar amount on all the extra work they'd be doing to earn that 'exaltation' over their peers. The problem was that this really did have legal, political and diplomatic effects they couldn't dodge when things went south in a bad way. Bad things like being emancipated unilaterally at age 14, having the right to drive anything or handle weaponry at will, and the right to defend himself without any limits on the methods he could use to secure his safety from perps. Yeah... They had 'diplomatic' issues, and they weren't going away anymore, no matter what the fools in DC were braying about.

"Well now, gentlemen," called out Carmello, "We have ourselves an unsavory cast of situations to resolve before our good doctor Wolenczak can proceed to Buffalo for his medical hiatus. I do hope none of you are adverse to settlements without further bloodshed?"

Nobody was beginners enough to swallow that bait, not even MacGyver or the clinic security chief.

"Good. Onward to the breach, and all that..." the old Sicilian mumbled lowly as he took the aluminum case from the side of his chair to rifle through the files, forms and court edicts he had brought for the argumentation of his client's decisions against bureaucrats and 'goodwill interventions' of all sorts.

"This is the first and most important piece of legal paperwork for you gents to read. It comes from The Hague, at the Head Office of The World Bank, from the hand of president Iegor Desdenski." He passed around copies of the certificate that had been printed by the WB office in San Francisco then notarized by the US State Department in the same city. "These sheets by themselves give Dr. Wolenczak the right to a passport from The Netherlands, permanent residency in that country, unlimited electronic communications or mail with any WB office/branch in the world, and free legal assistance, so long as he didn't commit crimes that targeted the World Bank or its employees. He has all the relevant items in the travel case besides his bed."

The agents took about five minutes to read through the standard forms, from the WB and US State, that were stapled together into one coherent document. A legally binding document in fact, if the NCIS, FBI and police officers had ever seen one in their years of service.

"Now, gentlemen, you have nothing to sign. This is simply to show proof that my client is clearly in his established, recognized rights as he does the following acts of Law & Custom." The obese, white haired old man pulled more papers from his case, passing enough around so each had a copy for their agency's archives. "Doctor Lucas Wise Holt Wolenczak, under the World Bank Treaty, declares his legal emancipation for reasons of the business necessities of his contractual situation at the WB. Since such necessities include an elevated security clearance, he obviously can't be beholden to any mind or authority outside of his own. Such an external force could, possibly, contrive to command or extract by force the Bank's security protocols, access codes or classified governmental transits between ministries, and therefore cannot happen. As written in the UN Treaty for the World Bank of 1997, amended in 2002 in the post-9/11 furor, Doctor Wolenczak is afforded 'full diplomatic status' equal to that of an active consulate or embassy executive, irrespective of local political or religious objections."

Carmello coughed harshly into an opaque handkerchief before sipping some coffee to clear his obstructed throat. Once settled again, he continued blithely "Of course, if the local governance has such strenuous objections to Doctor Wolenczak being the Bank's diplomat for the area, they can always call to The Hague, to ask for an alternate representative. Normally though, only the host country's national central government has such capacity. The only time locals get involved is when actual crimes have occurred, or the employee/contractor actively tries to destabilize society. Then the normal procedure would be to take the person before the local magistrate, lay charges and demand for either a deportation or an abeyance of the diplomatic status so that charges may proceed per protocols in place. Historically speaking, the US State Dpt has preferred to send the people back to their homeland unless they were suspected of espionage or terrorism."

Snorting loudly, the State Trooper asked "And several shoot-outs in the space of 24 hours don't count as trying to destabilize society? I'm certain we'll get to those details soon, but you know..." The man let his words drag out into an uncomfortable silence as he was gazed upon disdainfully by Carmello for wasting their time with his useless comments.

"Yes, officer," Lucas sneered malevolently, "We're getting to that. In the section called 'Legitimate self defense of diplomatic personnel', and possible or in-progress diplomatic incidents." His flint-blue eyes speared the poor policeman to his seat like a bug to a wood plank for study. It was painfully obvious this officer had never had to deal with the myriad diplomats and children or relatives of diplomats who attended Stanford each year since the early 1900's. The place had an incredible success rate at creating potent technicians, medical doctors, and leaders of society that were sought after on the whole planet. So the clientele came from all over. Honestly, the State Troopers could have chosen a veteran at diplomatic details to attend this meeting, not just the current shift manager at the local station house.

"Anyhow," Sam Hanna intervened in the uncomfortable pause, "We at NCIS can see that you have legal basis to claim Dip-Stat, along emancipation and all entailed. Fine. Now, what else?"

Carmello again passed out a set of folios so each agency had a solid notarized copy for their archives after the case was done. "These are notarized copies of all the edicts, orders and writs emitted by the family courts, civil courts and criminal courts of Buffalo City, as well as the DCFS of New York State in the ongoing cases of Lucas W. H. Wolenczak Versus Lawrence Wolenczak and Cynthia Holt. Starting at age 4, back in 2008, his father had been declared unfit as a father and destituted from any & all parental authority or prerogatives in his son's life. This was compounded at age 10, back in 2014, when Cynthia Holt was proven to also be an unfit mother and destituted. The penultimate proof of her abusive behaviors was obtained in the form of a signed & notarized contract by which she ceded custody of her son's body, soul, assets and 'final disposition' back to Lawrence in exchange for money, privileged investment informations (insider trading) and guarantee he would never sue her for damages or support if their child reacted violently, or judicially, to the unlawful transfer of authority."

"She sold her kid?" the FBI agent growled, clearly unimpressed. "And she handed him back to some cur she knew would harm him, again, like he did in the past? What the fuck was her problem? As a lawyer, I'm pretty sure she's supposed to know what human smuggling and slave trading are!"

Lucas answered deadpan; "Me. I was her problem. She had tried for six years to control me through fear, humiliation and physical pain. When she realized she was already too weak to beat me without taking damages back when I defended myself, she started asking her 'plaything of the week' to do the deed for her. Usually as she sat on her high chair through the sordid affair, like a queen watching her knight execute a heretic on the public square." The teenager snorted in contempt at the memories. "She has this Princess & Hero fetish that she's forced me to witness, or be part of, repeatedly through the early years of my life, before I turned 10 and moved to Stanford. One of her favorite games was to have her latest conquering hero beat me like they used to beat slaves and serfs back in the middle ages, when they couldn't pay their taxes or didn't bow fast enough for the parading monarch. At first, it ended with me writhing in pain on the floor from the injuries while she fucked hard with her boy-toy right then and there in front of me."

"That sounds suspiciously close to incest, even if by rebound or proxy," slowly suggested Angus MacGyver, uncertain how to proceed at the awful revelation.

Lucas shrugged it off, being old news to him. "The first two years it happened, I had troubles defending myself against her thugs, but eventually I found ways to hide small things on my person, in my clothes, and started to cause bad injuries to her fuck-dolls in return. It became bad enough that some were disfigured on contact, sickening her stomach at the sight and turning off her hot cunt like it had been doused in liquid nitrogen." Sipping some coffee, Lucas held the mug in both hands, tracing the lid idly with a finger as he spoke absentmindedly. "Cynthia is a resilient bitch, though. She figured out quickly that if I wasn't injured or hit, I would shy away from direct confrontation with her pets. So, she started dragging me to these innumerable Medieval Renaissance Fairs that she was addicted to, and we always traipsed around as the Fair Lady Princess escorted by her ignoble bumbling page Boy. Then, she would raunchily accost the men who fought in the jousts and agility contests, promising herself to the winner of the Grand Cup." Sipping coffee again, Lucas shrugged despondently at all the sad memories he was forced to relive. "That meant that on Sunday afternoon, after the winner of the Fair was gloried with a huge banquet, I was forced to act as a real medieval page, attending his mistress in her chambers. She'd take the man to the suite she had rented in the replica castle where the fair was held, and fucked his brains out like a wild mare. I was made to stand, never sit, in the corner with a basket of niceties, foods, toiletries and sex toys, just in case Milady or her Hero had 'needs' to satisfy. It was like that four times a year until I left for Stanford."

The FBI agent shook his head in rage, huffing out an angry exhale. "It's not rape as such, but it qualifies as child slavery, child sexual endangerment, child exploitation for sexual purposes, illicit relationship with a child, immoral, lewd & obscene acts towards a minor relative, and after a fashion, juvenile prostitution, pedophilia (without contact). Those are what I see, and then you add charges against her for every male accomplice she brought in, and charges against them too. That's a pretty big batch of perverts to find and catch, especially after so many years." The agent seemed dubious whether it could be done, or the Bureau would spend the resources on the job.

Lucas shrugged it off, unworried. "One of the reasons Cynthia sold me back to Lawrence was that I had compiled a list of her playthings as events unfolded. She never thought I was cunning enough to think of creating blackmail files, despite being able to speak and write English since age 2, or being accounted as a genius since age 4. But it was at age 9 when I showed her the long list of all her crimes and accomplices that she panicked. I had learned about computers and networks very young, and I had managed all by myself to trace back each of her Country Fair toys, building a dossier on each. I could easily publish my allegations along proof of their attendance, then let the police and crowds do the rest without any true effort from me. Seeing the danger in her house, she punted me off to New York City for a year, then brought me back to Buffalo, just to 'surprise' me with the impromptu reappearance of Lawrence in my life."

"Forgive me, but you don't sound surprised at all, that your father popped back up" commented the Stanford PD rep.

Lucas smiled nastily as he replied glibly "I learned to hack telephonic systems and computer networks at age 8. Her and Lawrence never bothered much with cybernetic security, either at home or the office. For Cynthia, she was certain her contractor was better than her enemies. For Lawrence, he was embezzling money from World Power Plant out of every nook & cranny he could gouge. Since cybernetic security is invisible to 99% of the staffers or crewmen in the digs, it was among the first departments to be raided for cash to feed his vices. So, I was made aware of her deals & schedules just as she was making them. That gave me the opportunity to work through my lawyers to have several legal papers for Stanford ready to sign by Lawrence, once he showed up at my home to try beating me into fearful servitude yet again."

Carmello di Sovorone took that as his cue to pass around two thick folios; the accumulated proofs of the multivaried crimes of Cynthia Holt and the late Lawrence Wolenczak. All agents sighed in misery at yet more papers, and promptly followed Grisha Callen's lead of just putting it on the coffee table in the middle of the conversation area, to be handed in at the office later. These were for the real specialists to handle, not for field generalists like them.

The Sicilian male declared in calm, urbane tones "As you can see, my client had long-lasting grievances from his parents and their associates, thus constituting justifiable circumstances beyond any reasonable doubts for his emancipation, besides the World Bank Treaty itself. This in fact is the conclusion reached by Judge Barnum of Buffalo City's family court, judge Nahelle of New York City's family court, and our own judge Renfrew of San Francisco's family court. All writs of emancipation and subsequent mutual jurisdiction affirmations are in the actual diplomatic & emancipation file."

Groaning, the agents reopened the first batch of papers, read the few truly important sheets as they were indicated, and nodded when finished.

"Now, then," Carmello asked firmly, "What are your agencies' positions on the shootings of yesterday? Are your supervisors or the district attorney thinking of bringing up charges against my client?"

Sam Hanna snorted in dark amusement "Laying criminal charges against a kid fighting off fake cops trying to kidnap him for a fanatic cult? Because they wanted to hack the World Bank to finance their bloody crusade against reality? I'm sure we could find a Jesus-nut amongst the Federal judges in the circuit that could be stupid enough to go for it, but I just don't think the old pros at the federal court in LA or San-Fran will touch this with a 12 foot pole. Not if they value their careers."

Angus replied with a snicker "Unless they can manage to get him extradited to Alabama, Texas or Arkansas, maybe North Carolina or Florida too. Some jurisdictions are completely rotted through by christian fanatics who got nominated or elected since 2000. In those places, they could get a corrupt or fanatic state judge to rule against him, but I don't see the State Department stay silent about it. He'd get pulled out quick, if only to punt him over to The Hague so they handled their own mess."

The Stanford PD rep confirmed "As for our captain that you – repelled – he's been transferred to another hospital for treatment to avoid any hostile contact. We have begun investigating him, and already found things that should have been seen or heard in the workplace. Other things have begun coming from his own grand-children, but their parents are trying to run interference. We might have to get DCFS involved to get them alone with a youth advocate to get things out in the open. What we do have is that used workplace computers & Internex to access social media sites that support the beating and breaking of children to make them 'godly in they eye of Christ'. Plus, it was confirmed that he tried to proselytize aggressively several of his colleagues over all the years he was in SFPD."

Lucas asked in soft, venomous words "And why is all this being admitted to today, and not several years in the past? What about his grand-children? Why are his adult children protecting him still? Or is this one of those cases where the fat, bald old pseudo-priest who abused his badge gets a free pass to an early retirement with a full pension, just so that the Trumpists don't go railing at California's liberal progressives having a war against men of faith, yet again?"

Seeing the common accord on the subject was being expressed by a solid wall of silence, Carmello asked next "What of the two defectives from this morning? Any fallout from that to be expected?"

Both Stanford PD and State Trooper officers shook their heads negatively while the FBI point-man declared in a bored tone "They never made it up the elevators, so your client has nothing to fear in terms of charges being set against him. As for the two mongrels, they're a hot potato. On one hand, the cleric has a fake church running non-permitted cult locale, educational establishment, medical facility and juvenile correctional institution all in one, while the DCFS stooge was either too incompetent or being paid to not notice the mess. Normally that's all state level civil & criminal cases. But, they repeatedly manufactured, distributed and put into official files or processes several falsified or counterfeited documents, sometimes of forms or certificates that don't legally exist. That's all a federal offense, for each and every damned sheet of paper they put in the system." Shrugging powerlessly, the agent waved his left hand around dismissively as he quipped "You can all figure out how long that labyrinth of trash will take to navigate, then set to rights. Plus all the new fraud & extortion cases that will be generated, the child abuse & false imprisonment cases, and Doctor Wolenczak's preliminary research leads us to believe there are 'disappearances' to reopen, if they were ever reported in the first place."

"Oh joy of joys," couldn't help to comment darkly the clinic's chief guard.

He was answered by snorts, grunts and nods as the people took the segue to grab some food from the serving tray on the coffee table. Lucas merely sat back, ensconced in his sofa, glad to let Carmello lead the conversation while he silently discussed the men's reactions with Luxis inside his mind. There had been a few interesting things, but not that much.

{ SQ } - { What the future holds } - { SQ }

(Two Steps From Hell – Cannon in D)

Western America; 10:51am

Lucas was busy typing on his portable workstation, planning the coming days of administration and taking over his holdings around the surgeries necessary to remove the pipe from his neck. For the crystal in his skull, the 'specialists' had pretty much already given up, one even saying that since he was alive, he should be satisfied that the only consequences were blue hair and an irregular skull bone. That comment had actually made Lucas smile because the twit had no idea what the real consequences were, or just how practical they happened to be.

Clearing his throat softly, quite ill at ease at being the center of attention, Angus MacGyver asked as politely as he could sound while snooping around the kid's life. "Well, now that the police interventions and diplomatic thingie have been cleared up, what do you plan to do? Besides get healed from your injuries, of course." The young spy tried to probe delicately with as happy, friendly, dimply a smile as he could produce given his stress levels at present.

The super genius adolescent gazed upon the young adult with a thoughtful face before answering in a rather amused tone "Right hair, passable eyes, right skin tone, but way wrong gender. Try that with the nurses or the techies back home, not with me. I don't respond to charm attacks or hug-bombs. Besides, the facial similarity would make it look like we're trying to finish what Cynthia started. Soooo, no."

A few of the agents coughed up some coffee that went down the wrong pipe, as Grisha tried desperately to keep from exploding in laughter at the right and proper 'burn' the other agent had suffered.

The FBI supervisor shook his head in high amusement, saying aloud: "If ever under-cover work no longer suits you, we have office & field postings in plain suits that you might want to consider." He offered the poor spy, full of sympathy for the man's completely scuppered operation.

Lucas snorted, interjecting brattily "He tried. He was EOD for the US Army for a few years. Let's just say it was a – volatile – relationship that ended with a 'Bang!', and leave it at that."

Bending over to hide his face in his hands, Angus groaned out "I won't even ask how you found that out. You could answer me, just to make me squirm."

Lucas replied brattily as he could "Yes. Why, yes. I would do that, too." All the while trying his best to imitate Mac's patented extra-dimply smile right back at him.

Shaking with ill-contained mirth for the first time this morning, Sam Hanna asked far more seriously of the young prodigy; "Come on, now. We need to be able to reach you for emergencies, in case one of those perps gets loose or released on bail, and to finish the actual witness debriefing we were supposed to conduct with you this morning. That has to get done today, maybe tomorrow at the latest." The tall black male insisted with firmness but politely. This kid was a witness, not a criminal, no matter how much hard steel he carried all day. That, plus the diplomatic status pretty much forced them all to concentrate only on what they could affect, not the rest.

Passing a hand through his longish hair without realizing it made the golden strands react by blushing electric blue from the roots to the tips in the same way he rubbed his scalp, the boy gave the older men quite an entertaining light show. "Well, if the doctors follow the usual protocols, they should be removing the pipe and closing the port in my neck tomorrow afternoon at the latest. The clinic doesn't usually set major surgeries during the holiday period, but I'm sort of an internal exception. Meaning that it's a cheap way to suck up to me so I don't sue them for being attacked 3 times in 24 hours on their premises. After that, I have a transport coming in that will take me overland back to Buffalo to heal. That will take however long it needs. I shall be fulfilling my World Bank contracts, Stanford research projects, and maybe some classes, remotely through the Internex."

"Why transit overland instead of flying?" asked the State Trooper, wearing a frown as he thought about the situation, between holidays or just after. "You have enough money to afford a charter plane so you aren't stuck in a packed airport. Why take days to roll over terrain to get there?"

It was Callen who answered "You can't fly for a month or more after a skull fracture, skull cracks or level two concussions, or any brain lesions. It can cause the injuries to reopen, or blood clots to form, or an instant aneurysm to form and burst. In some unique cases, there were people who became paralyzed from various body parts, lost sight or hearing, and a few died, before this became established medical protocol." Callen added as an afterthought "In the US Navy and NCIS it's pretty well known, since we have a lot of extra-long flights, many overseas, to get to our cases and back. Sometimes, we have to get our agents to the victims or witnesses cuz they can't move faster than a ship or truck."

Nodding in comprehension as he mumbled some thanks for the info, the State Trooper sat back in his sofa, content he had been answered.

Worried about the principal's security, the FBI supervisor asked "If it isn't too bothersome Doctor, could you give the Bureau details of your vehicle and itinerary? We could liaise with municipal cops in the towns you cross to keep you on roads devoid of traffic, unless you want to do some New Year's tourism in the country's interior."

Blinking at the man, trying to find if his intent was kosher or malevolent, Lucas couldn't make a determination and Luxis drew a blank on him as well. Shrugging it as a dice roll, the teenager replied politely. "Thank you for the Bureau's concern. I will be using my private train 'The Briary' to roll in express back to Buffalo over 50-ish hours, without layovers or pit-stops. The tenders and cargo boxes contain enough supplies that the railway convoy can roll for almost 30 full days before making a supply stop. My private residence wagon has medical facilities built-in, sufficient for the trip."

"A private train? 30 day autonomy on rails?" choked out the SFPD representative. "And where will you park a beast like that? We don't even have an Amtrack station in the community!"

Gazing at the older man indolently, Lucas replied deadpan "Wolenbahn Electronics International manufacturing near the campus has a railway triage system built into its cargo parking lot, where the suppliers' tractor-trailers are docked to deliver our orders, or ship out client products. Since that segment of the lot is usually empty, we can park 'The Briary' for an hour while she takes on passengers and supplies. At this period of the year, it won't affect the factory operations."

All the agents in the room simply decided that hashing out that point further would be a waste of breath and time. If the kid really did own a private train set, especially with that much capacity as he claimed, then any opinion of theirs was moot from the start.

"Agents Callen, Hanna, if you would accompany me for lunch? We could perhaps finish that interview you wanted before the clinic's doctors triturate my vocal chords out of service." Lucas offered in a conciliatory tone of voice. That, and he was bored stiff, so keeping the two navy cops around would keep him busy for a few hours yet. Unless Angus could be made to volunteer?

Given how fast anybody not NCIS excused themselves, including Carmello, he could see that he'd have slim pickings for entertainment today. Drats!

Attempts at underhandedness

(SeaQuest - opening theme)

Eastern America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 14:20pm

Western America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 11:20am

Naval Intelligence Directorate

Pentagon, Washington DC, USA

"That will be all, yeoman Harris. Just put that in the bin so your successor on the evening shift can process all the input to the main system." Admiral William Noyce told his faithful assistant of over twenty years as he himself was already closing his desk drawers for the week-end. It was Friday of the New Year's Eve celebrations, so he had decided to give himself and his staffers a fully paid short shift for the day. All member of his team only had a half day to work, even on the evening and night shifts which Navy Intel always manned fully, given that their nights were the ordinary days in war-torn countries across the globe.

"Thank you, sir. And a good week-end for your family. It should be a decent one, this year." the middle-aged master-chief yeoman replied as he saluted before departing.

Grumbling amusedly, Noyce countered "And now you've gone and jinxed my day! Harris, you dolt! Couldn't you keep it shut for a few minutes, just so I could put on my jacket and leave before you invoked calamity? Argh! Where did I find you, again?"

Smirking playfully, the 47 year old white male replied to his boss "With the life you've led, it couldn't happen to a worse person. That, and Janet wanted to make certain you didn't arrive in the middle of her baking Friday supper. Your tramping around the house with big galoches would ruin her precious Brie cheese soufflé's rise."

"Betrayed! Behind my back, with my own wife and yeoman!" Noyce wailed theatrically in good spirits as he locked his drawers and pulled the wires from his laptop to stow in the thin middle drawer, just under the work surface of the desk. "Oh, woe is me! Won't that foul woman ever let me at peace?" the bald, rotund admiral fake-complained with a big smirk.

Snorting, Harris replied mercilessly "You married into the CIA. You deserve everything that comes."

Locking in his computer, Noyce nodded at the realism of that statement. "Aye, that's a fact. I almost served as feed for my own hogs, back home on the ranch, more times than I'd care to admit. And the kids, bless their pure hearts, never saw a thing!" He told with a deep belly laugh as he completed emptying his pockets of all the useless knickknacks he had to carry around when inside the Pentagon grounds, to accomplish his unending tasks.

Harris was kept from bantering back when senior-chief yeoman Stebbens arrived in the office, dropping his briefcase on his hardwood desk with a resounding thud, dismay clear on his face. He didn't even bother removing his uniform winter coat or officer's cap as he walked straight to the talking superior officers.

Gazing pensively at the upset black male, Noyce wondered what had crawled into his boxers that could have been that bad, this time of year. Even ISIS was dying away with a whimper, and most of their surveillance zones were quieting down for their own holiday celebrations.

"They failed. The two numbnuts we had on contract to pull the Wolenczak kid out before Lawrence could kill him, they botched everything from A to friggin' Z!"

Noyce blinked stupidly for a second as his powerful mind rebooted back to business mode, trying to rifle mentally through the vast hoard of files he knew by heart. Ah! That little side-project. Damn!

Passing a weary hand over his face, the 64 year old admiral asked "Gross mess, please." He wouldn't handle the smaller details himself unless it was truly necessary. Not at this time on a Friday, and not with the change of year knocking on his door. 2019 had bloody well be better than this assholery!

"The two fools weren't fast enough to enter the factory where the kid took refuge, after being attacked at his student residence supplied by Stanford. Lawrence managed to get passed the security guards but we still don't know how as he's on their interdiction list. All I know is that none of them were attacked or injured, so he must have passed by an automated door not manned by humans. The pair of defectives lost sight of him, so he managed to find his way to the kid's private workshop and whack him in the head with a steel rod, causing massive injuries."

"Is he dead?" Noyce asked quickly, as he thought of the subsidiary plans dependent on the boy's continuing life & strong mental capacities. "Is there anything recoverable left?"

Stebbens made a face at being interrupted, but took the time to unload his coat & cap on the nearby chair as he centered his mind. "Somebody triggered an alarm inside the factory almost the very moment the kid was attacked. The EMS truck was on site inside of one minute because they were cruising the boulevard, waiting mostly for traffic accidents due to drivers stressed out by the holiday period. That was when the two twits managed to enter the factory to see what had happened."

Roughly running a hand through his almost invisible buzzcut hair, the 43 year old senior-chief yeoman snarled "The idiots let the EMS take the boy to Stanford's Faculty & Students Clinic for treatment instead of risking killing him, which was probably their only intelligent decision. Unfortunately, once at the hospital, their innate mental instabilities went out of control when they pulled their guns on the patients and doctors in the emergency reception docks. It wasn't even the security guards or SFPD that got then down. No! It was the damned kid that used those poison grenades he's so fond of!"

Noyce sat back into the backrest of his plush swivel chair, thinking of the raw data. "You are telling me that the child is alive, functional, and mobile enough to defend himself against two armed men?"

Nodding, the yeoman explained "It was a clear sneak attack. The kid was bound by medical pads on the EMS gurney, so the two morons were more focused on bullying and oppressing the people in the triage hall than watching their target. He got loose, then somehow threw some of his poisons at the pair's backs, downing them so hard they didn't even realize they were goners. They never saw it coming."

Harris commented "They were marines trained in boarding actions and CQC, not chemical warfare." Pensively, he added "We had planned they could carry out a kidnapping safely only if the kid was unarmed or kept away from any janitor's closet so he didn't get his hands on the cleaning fluids. Why did he have any sorts of armaments on him if the EMS had transported him to the hospital? Isn't it policy for ambulances to disarm all that get transported to avoid that a patient in fugue state start a rampage in the vehicle?"

Stebbens answered angrily "Yes, it's protocol. But the damned defensive bracers he made don't unlock for anybody other than him. The paramedics didn't know they were weapons, and they would have to chop off his arms to remove them, which would defeat the entire purpose of hauling him to the clinic!"

"Ah, fuck!" Harris swore crassly as he punched the backrest of the chair next to him.

Noyce waved a hand vaguely, not bothered yet. "What else, man? Up to now, I don't see any reason to have a conniption. The twits were arrested but don't know who paid them or why. Dark Web channels and Tor servers are practical things like that. And the kid is alive, his mind intact, except maybe a bit of fear and pain. Nothing he isn't accustomed to, thanks to both parents and their playthings."

Sneering in contempt, Stebbens countered "Except that now we have NCIS - Pacific sniffing in our backyard, since Lange sent her boys to recover what are known fugitives from the 7th Fleet's 2017 Cleanup! Do you think the 'Duchess of Deception' will give up? Her men Callen and Hanna were in the clinic at 08:00am sharp this morning. And if adding the SFPD, State troopers and DCFS to the mix weren't bad enough, then we have those FBI minions that took over security since the kid still had the brains to invoke his diplomatic status from the World Bank! We're drowning in damned cheap, off-the-rack Walmart suits over there! But that's not the worse of it! The fucking Hun is rampaging in our fields, like we're hay for her combines to thresh!"

Noyce finally did see the problem. As his beloved wife would say "Too many cooks spoil the rise on the cake, dearie. Less people in the kitchen makes less accidents, and less bickering." Whelp, the tart old biddy could be right once in a blue moon, t'wan't no skin off his fat backside. But, it did mean they had a sizable problem in the making. "You seem to still be seething, man. So, out with it!"

Stebbens sat on the chair with his coat & cap unbidden, clearly demoralized. "The albino runt has mobilized the WAC'S militia outside the North-American Mid-Line defensive Treaty zone. They arrived early this morning and relieved the FBI from security duties inside the VIP room the clinic put him in, when he was processed after the altercation. He has brought in three full patrols of 8 soldiers in full combat gear, including hybrid long-rifles based on the American 'Grendel' gunnery system, grenades of various sorts, gas masks, armored BDU's and all the kit. They're running around in rented civilian vans, but not for long. The Stanford Wolenbahn factory has recalled several of its tractor-trailer trucks from their delivery routes, probably to serve as armored personnel carriers. And our informants on the eastern seaboard confirm that 'The Briary' rail convoy was being moved into the Boston triage yard for VIP escort duties. Guess where they're going next."

Harris absentmindedly thumped the back of the chair next to him with his hand as he thought on what he remembered of field medicine and first aid in general. "Head wounds and cranial traumas. He can't fly, and using a regular car or truck to cross the continent in his condition is stupid. Even a privately chartered ambulance wouldn't cut it. They would need to stop for toilet breaks, meals, fuel and everything humans need but a small enclosed drive cabin like a van or semi-truck doesn't give. Using the train is the only truly logical choice then. If he didn't have one, he'd have to charter an entire medical wagon for himself, his specialist medics, the waitstaff, and the crew that are securing him. It was predictable that this would be the outcome if he had to leave Stanford injured."

Noyce nodded in agreement with the analysis Harris gave. It was just a rehash of what they had surmised when they had begun preparing plans for co-opting the kid before he learned about his status as Constable – Governor for the NA-ML Treaty zone. If they could either make a friend of him, or indebt him towards the US Naval Intelligence Department, they could secure a powerful ally. This was especially critical for their Unseen Crusade to convert all US Armed Services into the willing service to Jesus Christ, their Lord God, the Creator and Redemptor. If they could somehow bring a jew-boy of such base birthing to renege the primitivism of his ancient tribe, accepting Jesus as his 'personal Savior' as demanded by white, anglo-saxon evangelicalism and Prosperity Gospel, then Noyce could finally have the poster boy of his prurient dreams.

With such an important, rich and powerful boy as the vanguard of their efforts to reform the moral compass of America, to Make (WASP-) America Great Again, as it was promised to them in Scriptures by Prophecy, in the Epoch of the Romans. It would truly change not only the rules they played with, but the entire game itself, for centuries to come. Especially in terms of financing given the vast industrial wealth of WAC, but also the almost limitless legislative, executive, judicial and military authorities the CG was endowed with.

They had to bring that boy under their aegis, no matter what. But Lawrence was an idiot who just couldn't be controlled, and fine details had never been the juden rassen's strong suit. Speaking of which, what had Stebbens said? "Marlowe? What happened to that cunt-dropping, Lawrence?"

Sniffing in disdain, the black man replied tartly "He got himself killed in the attack. The kid was working in a robotics lab when his dad struck him with a bar of steel stock. He was wearing some sort of helmet with integrated remote controls to manage the CNC machinery he was milling something on when Lawrence struck from the side." Shrugging powerlessly, the yeoman said "The system had a glitch of sorts as the robotic arms dangling inertly from the ceiling all came alive and tore the feckless bastard inside of seconds. The only piece of him still whole is his head... Well, the front of it, cuz the back half was ripped out and strewn about the workshop."

Michael Harris wondered aloud "If the kid's father is dead, and he had custody, who's the next legal guardian on the list? Couldn't we blockade his travel plans to shunt him to a church-run juvenile mental health facility in Alabama or Texas, to cultivate some true faith for Jesus inside of him?"

Stebbens snorted at his colleague, explaining "It was tried just this morning. Some noob nobody and his patsy inside the Stanford area DCFS tried to jump the mangy little shite while he was waylaid in bed, but the FBI was present since yesterday and NCIS & DXS agents arrived this morning. The stoopid idjiot coon-spawn and his bureaucrat peon were arrested at the hospital's reception desk without ever making it passed the secretaries. None of their fake DCFS forms, church papers or wannabe 'power of attorney' they had faked to make it look like the parents permitted the transfer months ago, got anywhere. Then they got swarmed by SFPD, State Troopers, FBI, and WAC's militia that was just arriving on the scene.

William patted his ample belly as he reflected on the explanation. "How were they so quick to answer the hospital's call for a verification or back-up? And how did they know the priest and DCFS agent were frauds?"

Shaking his head in perplexity, Marlowe Stebbens replied uncertainly "The kid seemed to be already on the warpath since before he even got attacked yesterday. He must have been expecting someone to try this ploy at some points, so he prepared. But, I have received a 'Top Secret' notice from cyber-squad that says their bugs & routine monitoring softwares were ejected roughly from the Stanford F&S clinic systems at exactly the moment Lawrence was detected inside the Wolenbahn building. They never had any chance to fight it, and haven't been able to reenter the system. The FBI and DXS agents tried to plant bugs in Lucas Wolenczak's room and the rest of the clinic building, but none of them ever came online. Reason still unknown, but they're working on it."

Bill Noyce closed his eyes in despair, growling angrily at yeoman Harris "This is all your fault, Mike. You sh'ad haf kept yar trap shut like a good boy, instead of blathering about things bei'n peachy, ya barmy sea-scum twit."

(- change perspective -)

Sitting inertly to the side of Admiral Noyce's personal section of the office was a medium sized metallic podium. Dodecagonal in shape, with a flat top and slightly inclined control panels on all 12 sides at the very top. A pair of thickly armored cables ran to a securely bolted and locked socket panel built into the wall barely five feet from the device.

Angelator AL-C1-a/mr holo-interface console.

This was one of William Noyce's most prized possessions, and most useful tools for planning sessions with multiple aides or visualizing construction blueprints and films. He had received this as a gift from Lawrence Wolenczak early in 2017, after Lucas had engaged in partnership with Ms Montanegro at the Jefferson Museum. The boy had taken the Angelator's innovative Gaseous Medium Display, converting it into a touch-sensitive system, then integrated his incredibly advanced management suite, translation matrix and prototype holographic assistant into the whole.

Wolenbahn EI had primarily sold these babies to only a handful of premium customers, all of them ushered to Lucas' doorstep by Iegor Desdenski, president of the World Bank. That slimy Russian snake had even been the first to receive one outside of Wolenbahn's own production facilities and offices. Then, after a month of use, he'd ordered four dozen to be spread at the WB's management & transaction overwatch hubs across the globe.

The damned kid sat on these formidable devices like a mother dragon on its golden eggs, and Lawrence had to threaten to beat the flesh off his bones to get that one unit, just to give it away to Noyce. If the depraved father hadn't intervened when he asked, William would still be empty-handed as the child had systematically refused to have any relations with US Armed Services outside the Coast Guard. Every time Noyce's office had sent formal requests for quotes on products & services, they had received a trite response that WEI were not military contractors, and they had no plans or desires to change that any time soon.

In the last year, Lucas had personally accepted references from Ms Montenegro and her superior at the Jeffersonian, Dr Temperance Brennan, to sell about a dozen other units to private companies. A report had come in last week that Dr Brennan's husband, SSA Seely Booth, who was the FBI's regional supervisor for major cases, had convinced the Bureau to buy a dozen. That was 6 for the regional planning rooms inside the Hoover Building, and another 6 to be shipped to each zone's local supervision office.

The fool father, Lawrence, had never realized how potent the machine and programs truly were.

As it was, with the holidays in full swing and William Noyce not in any mood to do hard thinking today, the holo-emitter had been shut down for the duration. Or so it seemed. Running smoothly, silently, deeply inside the proprietary crystalline circuits hidden inside the thickness of the silicon circuit boards and heavy metal caisson that was the visible shell of the system, were secret apps. All these apps were filming, sensing, scanning, recording everything at up to 300 feet of the emitter, then sending it discretely through the dedicated Internex Tier-3 MIL-web fiber-optic line that connected the device to the outside world. The system dumped its records in a blind dead-drop, which then transferred the files to several others, going deeper into the Dark Web with each transfer, until it was intercepted by several catch-apps. These anonymized apps forwarded the data-flow to their intended recipient on different channels and routes, without any spies being able to trace the phantom system.

It was at this point of the chain that Luxis got involved.

William Noyce had tried for decades to use his many positions and ranks inside the US Navy to bully, menace and extort people into converting to anglo-saxon christianity, or at least pay lip-service to its all powerful glory, and specifically give tithes to his church to fund 'missionary works'. Like threatening even more people on an even wider scale, through paid proxies instead of doing it all himself.

But he had hit three major setbacks in his - Unseen Crusade - against secular human law;

* The election of Obama for two consecutive terms, from 2008 to 2016. The moslem jizz-stain born outside of American soil should never have been allowed to run in the first place, but the euro-commies in Congress and the spineless State Department of the day let it happen. Never Again!

* The Pacific 7th Fleet Inquest of 2017 that caught many of his preferred bullies & minions who were so effective at proselytizing inside the lower ranks of the ships they were based on. This caused them to be handed over to NCIS for prosecution, and removed from the ranks until the trials were done. Leon Vance was a cold hearted bastard who may go to church every Sunday with his kids, but it wasn't Bill Noyce's one true God of the Christian Bible that was being worshiped, that was sure! So many of his loyal and pure followers had fallen to that travesty that he was overworked in the effort at finding them alternative jobs or situations, where their skills would be useful to the Global Crusade since they'd been found out in the Unseen Crusade. Unfortunately, given the inherently unstable, violent nature of most 'itinerant laymen' he initiated, a necessity for the tasks of punishing infidels and rebel boys, they often ran afoul of civilian, secular laws and police. No matter how much Will and his peons tried, they just couldn't keep these self-destructive fanatics at peace in a steady job until the political & religious climates were aligned to get them pardoned. Hopefully that would be soon, then his loyal 'laymen' could be reinstated aboard Navy ships to continue the Crusade's build-up of faithful boys again.

* Luxis Wolenczak and all his invisible resources declared himself enemy of his many causes in order to protect his flesh brother from the sectarian fanatic and his diverse hordes of pawns. Noyce would only see Lucas and the other humans as threats, never realizing there was another player giving the enemy camp a major advantage: inside data, raw, real-time, and reliable.

Bill Noyce may not know of it yet, or perceive it yet, but his time on this Earth was nigh. His person, his family, his staffers, his hirelings, minions, peons and criminal mercs would all burn, just like christians enjoy doing to heretics. Except this time, it would be their poisonous religion, books, icons, buildings, weapons and born-defective ecclesiastes that would be alight in the night sky. And it would be secular civil law that ordered society with justice, equity and peace, not blind faith, credulity, peasant superstitions and bigotries galore.

No, Billy 'Pig Farmer' Noyce and his kindred would not have a Happy New Year 2019 at all.

Cynthia's not merry christmas trip

(Taco – Puttin' on the Ritz)

Eastern America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 22:05pm

Western America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 19:05pm

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Strutting into the reception lobby of the Stanford Faculty & Student Hospital as if she owned the damned place, Cynthia Wise Holt, feu Wolenczak, happy divorcée or sad widow depending on how rich and important the men she spoke to were, acted as if all patients, relatives and doctors were beneath her lofty station if life and society.

For those who valued riches and social status, she could have been all that, if there wasn't such a long list of millionaires, billionaires, governmental officials and foreign diplomats walking the halls. As it was, she was violently shoved back into her proper place as a somewhat successful little attorney from Buffalo that rarely went outside of her tiny pond, for fear that the bigger fish would eat her alive.

Her ego, a fragile thing on the best of days, was almost crumbling just from being ignored by so many of those whom she considered herself to be social peers with. They clearly didn't return the sentiment, if their sullen or aggressive expressions at her presence were any indicators.

So, she did what all obnoxious, self-absorbed, pathologically narcissistic wannabes did; she abused her poor chauffeur and valet who had both been obliged into this red-eye trip with her. Not that they had any redness in their eyes, or anything close to a rumple in their clothes, hair or demeanor's.

Cynthia had made them leave Buffalo urgently at (eastern) 17:00pm with her private turbo-propeller plane, forcing them to suffer through eleven grueling hours in one single long trajectory to arrive a bit passed (eastern) 4:00am, but the local clock showed only 1:00am. Thankfully, Cynthia had managed to hire two good civilian pilots for the trip, so they could alternate between flying and sleeping while the passengers were busy with their own tasks or sleeping a few hours.

They had landed at the airfield in the outlying area east of Palo Alto, near the San Fransisco Bay, not far from the Stanford Campus community. They had of course stayed at a 5-star hotel in Silicon Valley, to allow Madam Cynthia to get her mandated 9 hours of beauty sleep in a non-moving bed. Getting up at 10:00am, Cynthia had them eat a short breakfast then made them put together a presentation to wow her unrepenting cad of a male spawn into submission.

By 12:00pm (noon) she thought that her plans were impeccable, so she finally opened her emails while having a good hardy drink before leaving the hotel for the dreary task. It was an unmitigated catastrophe! Lawrence was confirmed dead, no biggie, but Lucas was already up & about, with FBI and WAC's militiamen in protection detail around his room and floor where he was being treated.

Cynthia almost had a brain aneurysm upon seeing THAT item; WAC was active outside its territory limited by the Treaty. Lucas was activating the NA-ML Treaty earlier than she planned. And with his diplomatic status active, she no longer had the threat to remand him to a reformatory or mental asylum to keep him under her heel. He had finally broken the chains, a full seven years before she predicted.

It had taken her an extra hour to recover from that massive shock to the system, then close to two hours with another stiff brandy to formulate a contingency plan to deal with that. Now, all she could do was hope that her 'soft' approach would derail the boy's perception and comprehension of her character enough to open a weakness in his defenses so she could manipulate something.

It was 15:00pm when she realized she had actually drunk closer to 6 glasses rather than the 3 she had thought she kept track of. Despite dealing with mobsters and crooks every day on the job, she was actually quite unable to handle real danger, or real violence, when it was directed at her. That reality manifested in stress-eating or occasionally drinking too much. Lucas absolutely abhorred drunkenness and all forms of intoxication so showing up not sober would kill any chances she had. So, that forced her to take some sobriety pills and lie down for an hour long nap to metabolize the alcohol.

Therefore, come 16:15pm, she was back in the bathroom, getting a power-spa treatment right in her suite by the hotel's in-house staff. What her chauffeur and valet were doing in the meanwhile wasn't her problem, as long as they dressed as ordered and showed up on time with the rental limousine.

Along the way to the clinic, Cynthia realized the hour so she called the hospital's nurse station for the floor her son was lodged at. Confirming they would be arriving in the middle of supper, she ordered her chauffeur to change direction for a small, highly praised establishment just three streets away from the medical building. She would go in alone to eat a light dinner whilst the two young men took care of their own necessities without bothering her. They could put their bills in their travel expenses later, if all went well.

If her plans failed, none of it would matter.

By 18:45pm she was sitting in her rental car again, sated but stressed, as they slowly moved through dense Friday evening traffic that got worse as they passed the three intersections towards the clinic's parking lot. Now, every five minutes they had to wait as yet another ambulance was bringing in emergency patients for the trauma center, fresh from traffic accidents caused by stressed, careless or drunk drivers too deep into the holiday spirits.

Holiday cheer, indeed.

Finally, the short Lincoln limousine was parked, but in the far zone of the lot since every other slot nearer the edifice was occupied. Keeping her temper under wraps as she was now in 'presentation' mode, Madam Cynthia Holt made her first appearance in Stanford, marching decoratively through the main reception lobby as if she were walking the Red Carpet in Hollywood.

And nobody cared a whit, so her bruised ego whimpered in misery inside her rotten soul.

{ SQ } - { Beknaved bitch-whore } - { SQ }

(Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You)

Western America; 19:15pm

Cynthia tried desperately to keep the pinched, disdainful grimace off her face as she stepped out of the elevator on the ninth floor of the hospital. This was supposed to be a VIP level but the odors of blood, urine, feces, vomit, sterilizing soap and diverse medications all mixed in the air around her, creating an invisible miasma she could barely tolerate. If it weren't for all the practice she had at acting in court or social events, she may have just been sick on the first sniff.

If this was VIP, she didn't want to even think about what the other floors could be like.

Sighing slowly to calm her frayed nerves, the depraved failure of a mother made for the boy's room directly, bypassing the nurses' station without giving them a second glance. And that was where her plans hit the first of two fatal snags.

A tall black haired woman wearing a dark blue business suit with a shiny white plastic badge that said 'Clinic Security' with a bar code in clear blue characters on her jacket pocket. She had a different, more traditional FBI metal badge on a metal bead chain hanging from her neck, and a pistol on her left hip.

"Where do you think you're going?" she accosted Cynthia & escorts, a hand on her gun without giving any indication she would let them pass just because the female lawyer BS'd her.

Sneering snobbishly, the felonious woman replied tartly "My name is Madam Cynthia Wise Holt, feu Wolenczak, esquire. I am here to visit my son in room 9-109. He was gravely injured and needs his mother to alleviate his pains. And, quite clearly, to handle the rabble." Sniffing loudly as she looked up and down the asian woman's athletic figure enviously, she asked "What kinds of criminals do you have in this building, for the Bureau to have armed mercenaries patrolling the halls?"

"You." replied the FBI agent with a tight smile that promised pain from grave injuries if she made trouble for anybody. "You have been put on a watch-list. You are to be intercepted then brought directly to Doctor Wolenczak's attention, minus any minions or pets you may have brought in a transparent move to intimidate him."

Gesturing at people behind her group, Cynthia had the nasty surprise to figure out there were FBI and hospital security guards that had surrounded her escorts, forcing them to back away from her. Left without the presence of two strong men to defend her, the middle-aged woman was exquisitely aware of just how vulnerable she became. She had never been a physical fighter in her entire life, leaving such pursuits to men, boys or dumb bitches who didn't know how to act as women of station, like the 'imported' bint in front of her. Being alone in a room with Lucas wasn't a bet she planned to take.

"What is the meaning of this?" she queried waspishly, trying to be aggressive to cover her innate weakness. A good bluff could sometimes ward off an attacker, if it was credible. Physically she couldn't do squat, but socially and legally, she could wreck their careers and sue the Bureau so bad they would have to revise their budgets for the next 5 years to survive. That was the power she planned to whelm against these brutes and their field supervisors. It didn't work out.

"Like I said, woman, you're on a watch-list for immediate arrest and detention. You'll be told the charges when you get Mirandized, after meeting the Doctor in his suite." Smirking nastily, the agent took out metal handcuffs, placing them right in the fearful woman's face. "After you get cuffed and frisked like the common rabid, back-alley bitch you are."

Stunned to the point of paralysis, Cynthia was unresponsive as the Bureau agents first removed her travel coat, hat, gloves and purse, frisked her high class business 3-piece tailleur, and cuffed her hands in her back like a basic nameless gang thug. She still hadn't recovered when they shuffled her passed the judgmental glares of all the nurses, patients and relatives to the room her son waited in. Her paid escorts were no longer visible, and she had no phone or tablet to call for help from her office anymore.

The FBI brutes practically frog-marched her to the convalescence room and she nearly fainted when the closed door was opened by the armored, masked form of a WAC's militiaman in full combat uniform. Her mind skipped at least a full minute of awareness as the next thing she knew was being sat in a plush velvet covered sofa, in a spartanly appointed conversation area with a couch, three more sofas, and wooden coffee table. On her left were the two medical beds, and on the right were a large Internex monitor mounted to the wall above some built-in cabinets that formed a service counter for food prep, and the bathroom door. Far in front of her were the glass doors that led to the private balcony.

A soft noise of rubber wheels rolling on the thin carpet alerted her to movement on her left. She turned her head towards the sound, only to see a vision from hell. Lucas was standing upright with a thick solid cane in his right hand while he used the left limb to drag a medical pole with multiple electronic devices that blinked silently, all connected to his body with wires and a thick pipe that went into a plastic collar at his neck.

Honestly, he looked rather healthy, compared to what she remembered of him. He had always been rather lean built, for body type. His face seemed leaner, more angular, and he no longer had those ugly black bags under his eyes. Maybe he ate better or slept more? Anyways, for a 14 year old that had just gotten his head bashed in with a steel rod, he looked remarkably fit and mobile. Which pretty much scuttled all her plans right there, especially when the WAC's militiaman moved behind the boy, just out of her field of vision where he stood by the door frame.

Her son sat in the sofa farthest from her and opposite the coffee table so they could look at each other without contorting or breaking their necks all the time. Once the boy was seated and his medical pole located safely, the faceless soldier moved a variable elevation table into position from Lucas's right side so he had easy access to his infernal thermal mug and the 21" laptop he used when out of the office.

"Hello, Cynthia," the teenager began with a patently false smile, "What could I have done to deserve the dishonor of a self-pimping bitch-whore like you visiting me in my time of despair?" The sneer of disgust as he said 'despair' let her know that he had seen through her weak ploy before she had even set foot inside the hospital building. Before she could say anything in response, her son turned the laptop towards her, clicking on an icon to play a video file. Over the following 20 minutes, she was shown the attacks that he suffered inside the hospital on Thursday noon, and this very morning when the felonious priest and DCFS accomplice tried amateurishly to kidnap him through fake law-forms.

Cynthia closed her eyes in despair as the prodigy adolescent sat silently throughout, holding his large steel mug with both hands like it was a sacred object, occasionally sipping the warm sugary brew with a soft sigh of peaceful contentment. She liked coffee well enough herself, but his quasi-worship of the stuff always had her questioning if he didn't inherit Lawrence's and her's addiction-prone characters.

Glancing at the thin, almost meatless body, sharp features and odd gold & blue hair, she wondered again how it had all gone so wrong. Because she was pathologically unable to perceive her own torts in this, she never got the correct answer.

"So, mother dearest," Lucas again, in heavy sarcasm, "What brings you to my sickbed? And do try to lie to me convincingly, this time, because maudlin about missing your poor beloved boy won't float."

Seeing the woman close her eyes in denial of a reality she couldn't control yet again, the young male gestured at the militiaman on his right. "You can call in the FBI agents. She useless, as always."

Barely three minutes later and the female agent from before was standing next to Cynthia's chair, her gloved hand resting heavily on her shoulder as she accepted the last orders from her merciless son.

"I trust that your superiors at Silicon Valley field office have informed you of the North-American Mid-Line defensive Treaty of 1940? And this was confirmed by the PSS and State Department? Good. She is to be detained in a closed facility under the aegis of the Constable – Governor, until such time as she can be put aboard 'The Briary' for transport to Buffalo. There, after I have officially activated all segments of the Treaty, she will stand public trial for her multiple criminalities. The railway convoy is scheduled for January 5th, in the Wolenbahn – Stanford factory parking lot, early morning. Be there."

(Frederic Chopin – Funeral March)

Without a single comment, the asian woman roughly grabbed Cynthia, forcing her out of her seat and passing her to a pair of male agents who shamefully frog-marched her through the building and outside, into a fully marked FBI cell van with flashers and two escort cruisers from the State Troopers. She would be held in solitary confinement for the duration, until the deep predawn night of January 5th when she would be moved for her one-way transit to Hell at her son's hands.

Back in the room on the 9th floor, Lucas stood on the balcony, enjoying the cool winter air, much cooler than usual for the season, in fact, as he watched the deplorable spectacle of his ex-mother being shoved into a jail van like a potato sack being carted off to market. She deserved every indignity she received, just as she had made him suffer depravity at her hands for all his miserable childhood.

Sensing motion at his back, the teen tightened his grasp on his cane, ready to defend himself but was put at ease when a young man's voice said kindly: "Doctor Ishmael from otorhinolaryngology is here to schedule the removal of the tracheotomy pipe. Are you able to see him?"

Turning completely to gaze at the teenager that had spoken, Lucas was able to observe Raphael Chadderton, age 18, who had been transported to Stanford by seaplane with the Benz and Lenny Herschel, early this morning. He was dressed in the classic matte black trousers, white shirt, black shoes with thick soles, and patterned waistcoat ubiquitous to manorial servants the world over. A few details like the rolled-up sleeves and top button of his shirt being undone, a thin silver chain for a fob watch and a pair of thin brown leather bracelets completed the portrait. The young man was barely out of high school but had been training with his grand-father in Sault-Saint-Mary citadel to attain chief-butler since July 2018, when he got his diploma. He got to jump-start his position almost two years ahead, but seemed a mature, able-minded worker already.

"Yes, let us have that meeting," Lucas answered softly, left hand raising to touch delicately the long plastic tubing that assisted his breathing since yesterday. "I never really needed this thing, an ordinary external mask would have sufficed for the few minutes my lungs were distressed, but I don't blame the EMS for their cautious approach. Better to over-care than not bother at all. I've had enough of that dismissive attitude towards me for a lifetime."

DXS & NCIS meeting

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 23:01pm

Western America; Friday 28th of December, 2018; 20:01pm

The NCIS Boat Shed

Los Angeles, California, USA

The short plump form of Mathilda Webber walked around the lower level of 'The Boat Shed' with a bottle of cold water and folder full of papers as she aimed for her seat at the large wooden table, next to her old CIA mentor Hetty Lange. Seated also at the table were agents Callen and Hanna for NCIS with MacGyver and Bozer from her team. The other agents had instinctively placed by group in two sectors, each behind their nominal leaders; Beale, Jones, Deeks and Blye behind Hetty but near the service counter, while Davis and Dalton were on the couch behind herself.

She glared malevolently at the blond air-head that was no doubt the cause of this monumental failure at operational security. She had been working with Angus MacGyver for only two months but already some of his very personal quirks got on her nerves. Mostly the fact that chaos & entropy seemed to exude from his pores with every second of his existence. The boy couldn't even go for groceries without getting into a mess, as evidenced by the team's stop for a quick bite just after they had left the Phoenix Building to attend this emergency conference.

Okay, so the gang-bangers trying to rob the bank next door to the restaurant wasn't his fault as such, but his deciding to improvise a stun bomb from the bloody sandwich shop's soft drink keg was definitely HIS idea then & there. Glaring not discretely at the 26 year old, she took great pleasure in seeing his green eyes go wide with fear as he spotted his boss' demonic intent towards his hide. Smirking as she witnessed his squirming uncomfortably on his hard wooden chair, Matty told herself that it was well deserved, especially since it made them arrive a half hour late, due to making police statements like a bunch of civilian noobs.

Just for that extra paperwork nominated directly with their names, she owed the boy a whacking.

Bloody idiot! They were spies! Why hadn't he pulled out the ID cards with the made-up names?

A whacking! A resplendent one, too, she owed him!

Maybe then the blond twit would learn about keeping things 'quiet' on the job.

Okay, that was a load of pious wishes, but "Hope springs eternal" and all that rot...

Henrietta Lange sipped daintily from her ornate, expensive, fine bone china tea cup as all the humanity settled down around the conference. She knew she was ready to officiate when Eric Beale looked up from his tablet to announce "Incoming line from Navy Yard in DC, director Vance is live in MTAC."

On the large plasma screen mounted to the structural columns appeared the logos of NCIS and MTAC then being replaced by the dimly lit interior of the amphitheater where director Leon Vance and the Major Case Team were assembled, despite the late hour in Washington DC. The mature black male wore a clean pressed dark blue suit as he usually did, looking almost impeccable even if he was well passed regular office hours. Then again, with the case at hand, the agency wouldn't be stingy on overtime or manpower.

"Hetty, Madam Webber, we're ready on our end." the senior director cleared his subordinates to start.

"Very well, director Vance. This morning in Stanford University, a field team consisting of agents Callen and Hanna went to investigate the details of a shooting that happened in their Faculty & Student clinic, which also serves as teaching hospital. The previous day, two persons pretending to be SFPD officers had escorted local EMS and their victim, a teenaged male injured by his biological father who had tried to murder him, inside the manufacturing building of Wolenbahn Electronics International."

For motives still unknown but strongly suspected, the two fake cops brought the EMS & victim to the clinic then, for unexplained reasons, lost control of their tempers when they were denied the right to grab the boy to bring away. When challenged by medics for what they saw as an unjustifiable decision, the fakers declared that "they would bring him to a religious reformatory to make him faithful" or some such variation. The actual phrase was lifted from the security tapes and is verbatim in the written report you all have in your case folders. When the posers began pointing their guns at patients and medics alike, the young Doctor Lucas Wolenczak, the filicide victim himself, threw some sedative gas grenades to incapacitate the criminals. After that, the 14 year old victim was brought up to radiography for the needed scans, then a VIP room to start treatments."

Hetty waved her left hand towards the right side of the table, indicating the blushing blond male as she detailed "It was thusly this morning, at Stanford clinic, that my agents met Mister MacGyver who was undercover for DXS, whom was then so cordially ousted by the victim of both the attempted filicide and subsequent botched kidnapping."

Matty jumped in unbidden to declare "We have not yet discovered the source of the operational security breach, and have no earthly idea HOW or WHY that teenager knew who MacGyver is. The sweeps and analytics are in progress back at DXS as we speak."

Leon Vance gazed at Webber with all the indolence of a sphinx amused that the latest tomb robber couldn't figure out his riddle. Next to him, L. J. Gibbs was giving her the gimlet eye while the rest of his team were wincing in sympathy at the stress load she was bearing tonight. Agent McGee in particular seemed to exchange a knowing look with Eric, Nell and Riley through the monitor, not that it could be proven by anybody.

"Well, since DXS is independent from NCIS, I'm sure I can leave that part to you, Matty. I have enough headaches coming without adding your batch on top." Smirking evilly, Vance added "Besides, I'm confident that the tech-heads on all parts will be happy to report the resolution of this in excruciatingly technical verbiage when we ask for it. Let's say... The first Monday after New Year's?" he ordered firmly, despite couching it as a polite suggestion. Nobody was green enough to think otherwise.

Responding with patently fake, matching smiles, Matty and Hetty confirmed the order for their teams verbally, then Gibbs elbowed McGee who gave his own assent as well, much to the humor of the three agency leaders. And if Gibbs had a small satisfied smirk for a second, nobody noticed.

Hetty glanced tolerantly at her counterpart before continuing her exposé. "The reason why I sent NCIS field agents to Stanford was that the two fake SFPD officers were in fact US Navy sailors relieved of their duties due to the 2017 Pacific 7th Fleet Inquest. Both were charged with egregious offenses against lower ranking officers and enlisted crewmen, all of bullying, humiliation, brutality, physical assault with weapons, and sexual assault declared as 'corrective' to make certain they were 'de-gayed'. The preliminary investigation aboard their ships, and many others, had concluded that they were part of a much greater mess, a sort of covert religious movance. They methodically sought the youngest or weakest sailors aboard then systematically tried to coerce, beat or rape into submissiveness these lower ranking members until they were broken to their whims. Then, they were ordered to docilely join the ranks of a christian sect, but without any specific one favored. As long it was an anglo-saxonic, protestant denomination that favored a clear separation of gender roles, phallocracy and ageism wrapped in a Christian Crusade blessed by a bishop, it got a passing mark."

SSA Lange made a face as she recounted "These brutes wore openly tattoos of the swastika, KKK Blood Drop and White Cross Aflame, even during their service years. Their bigoted, toxic views were known to the officers aboard, and that's why several who did nothing, not even a report, were also relieved of duty pending their own trials before JAG. You need to know that some of the people involved in this vast conspiracy actually tried to enforce what they called 'Junior Sailor Sunday Schooling' that was spoken about in emails and internal SMS by the evocative acronym 'JS'. This was usually in a font similar to what churches use to mean 'Jesus Savior' in proselytic pamphlets or ecclesiastic documents."

Hetty sipped some tea before continuing in a hard tone; "These seditious bastards actually forced those vulnerable, younger sailors into attending these 'school sessions' by beating them, whipping them with leather belts, lengths of hemp rope or electrical cables stolen from the ship's stores for only that usage. They treated their subordinates either like juvenile delinquents in a Borstal from the 1800's, or like rabid bucking mules that refused the yoke of the millstone. That was one of the reasons for the Inquest, the ever-growing number of injuries reported by the corpsmen, often against the wishes of ships' commanders, and the staggering amount of man-hours lost to heal from these wounds. Then you add the hundreds of people who cited this depravity when they left the Navy before their engagement contracts were finished, and estimate those who stayed quiet because they were already on the way out... Well, the 2017 Inquest report is public, and was shown on the news channels. We lost 84 of the Pacific Fleet's 104 admirals in one swoop, plus thousands of others going down the ranks."

Gesturing to Grisha Callen, Hetty concluded "And that's why I sent agents Callen and Hanna to Stanford, to see what a young prodigy of medicine & computers could have to do with all this offal we're trying to clear out of the system. Especially since we did a blunder, here, director Vance. These two reprobates were supposed to be in Fort Leavenworth due to the gravity of their offenses. They had been arrested and charged before JAG, their trials scheduled for no later than October 2018, meaning this very year. Did that trial happen at all? How the bloody Hells were they loose in the streets? Who let them off the docket? Why is there not a permanent BOLO for their capture in the system? And why in bloody blue Heaven were they after this kid, just at the moment his father was attacking him?"

Pursing his lips at the truly voluntary punch in the nose Hetty had just administered him, Leon Vance glared mightily at his regional subordinate as he replied "I assure you that NCIS will be looking into this, in full partnership with JAG technical team and the FBI cyber-division. This looks to be much bigger than us, and I'm not so prideful as to spit on good help when it's offered to me. And the rest?"

Nervously tapping her fingers as she began her explanation, Mathilda Webber wasn't happy with the setup the conference had taken. As a spy with a long background in the CIA before DXS, she was almost allergic to public scrutiny, and nearly photo-allergic to daylight too. Everything she did was for the common good of America, its Allies and the Free World by extension, but it wasn't always legal, and almost never pretty to watch in action. Especially not the DXS lead team. Meaning MacGyver.

"Well, I sent my team in to survey the situation at the request of the World Bank. DXS got a priority call midday on Thursday straight from the organization's president, Iegor Desdenski in The Hague, that one of their special, directorate-level external contractors bearing 'diplomatic privilege' had been attacked in his research facility. He was almost murdered, injuries to the head, and unable to defend himself or address the doctors as to his 'free & enlightened choices' for his care or recovery. We were tasked, and paid in advance mind you, to ascertain his situation and make all efforts to keep him safe, secure, and facilitate his recovery ASAP as if he were a member of the POTUS cabinet. Those were Desdenski's own words, and we have the recording. We also have proof that WB has already paid in advance the SF&S clinic an amount of €1,000,000 to cover the victimized teenager's medical care, and given instructions to go beyond the amount as necessary, so long as justifications are send ahead."

"Could that be how he got your man's identity?" suddenly asked detective Deeks from his position near the mini fridge. "I mean, you did just say that he was 'directorate-level' with the World Bank, and they're the ones footing his hospital bill. Could they have warned him, or he got in the system during the night to see what was going on during his sideline?"

Thinking deeply as everyone looked towards him, Angus replied "Agent Deeks put his finger on a real possibility there. This morning when I got in the clinic to pass as an orderly, I looked over the kid's chart before going into his room. He had a pipe in his neck, but he was written as fully self-aware, lucid despite the morphine drip, and already far more mobile than doctor expected. When we met him this morning, agents Callen, Hanna and I, he was sitting in a regular sofa with his breakfast, eating eggs and sausage like he'd never been injured in his life."

Sam Hanna replied dryly "We can second that report. G and I were pretty surprised by what we found in that room when we came in at 08:00am. It was early for us, so we didn't expect a sick kid that got whacked in the head hard enough to shatter his skull bone to be sitting up with a full meal, clear eyes and and even clearer head." Sam shook his head, wondering if the adults had ever been in charge a single second they had spent in the kid's presence. "He outed your agent like four seconds after the first glance. That says inside info. How he got it... We were called back to LA before we could visit his factory building so I have no idea what the computer setup looks like, not that I could really tell. I ain't no tech and Eric wasn't with us."

Mathilda Webber shot Angus a poisonous look that said clearly 'You aren't off the hook yet' before saying aloud "What agents Deeks and Hanna say is clearly the best lead for any tracks outside the DXS, but I still feel that it came from inside. If this kid was good enough to open an electronics company at age 9, he could definitely be capable of hacking us but never have any uses for the intel before he met face-to-face with one of us."

Leon Vance replied glibly "And you'll investigate all those leads, regardless of possibilities. After what happened with that traitor Thornton, your organization is due for an audit anyways. See to it, and expect both NCIS and the FBI to counter-check the results you put in your report."

That proclamation dropping through the meeting like a guillotine blade made certain everybody had a clear understanding of what was at stake in each department of each organization. Not a single middle manager or agent had illusions of just how nasty Vance, the FBI director and the other agency bosses would get if they missed anything.

"Is there anything more that is germane to this case?" Gibbs asked in dry tones, "Or is it about more than the two bozos in SFPD lock-up, anymore? We need to know."

Hetty Lange exchanged a minuscule look with her ex mentee then jumped in the breach; "It is about a lot more, Gibbs. The family involved are the Wolenczak, as in Doctor Lawrence Wolenczak, general project manager of the World Power Plant (WPP) on the eastern coast of the African continent. That means that he had governmental backing and diplomatic privilege through the UN's global projects bureau. This is in direct opposition to his 14 year old son, Doctor Lucas Holt Wolenczak, who has competing diplomatic privilege from the World Bank."

Gibbs snorted, unimpressed to date. "Hetty, if the father died as he was trying to murder his son, I hardly think it matters who gets DP from where. One's alive to use it, and the other's pretty much handled already. Since the dead guy was also the perp and it's proven by all parties, we should all be able to sleep with that. So stop being coy, ole gal, and tell it straight."

Ignoring the snorts of amusement form Vance and Webber, and the gaping disbelief from everyone else, Henrietta dropped the nuclear bomb on them. "Because Lucas Wolenczak is the Constable – Governor or the North-American Mid-Line defensive zone Treaty of 1940, and has had legislative, executive, judicial and military Power in all the cities, states and geographies concerned by the zone. This covers both the USA and Canada, all along the border between both countries from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, specifically around the Great Lakes, St-Lawrence seaway and Lake Champlain watershed. This includes diplomatic privilege, direct comm lines to all governmental, administrative, police, military and intelligence divisions & levels in the entirety of both countries. He is, for all intents and purposes, at the situation of a senior member of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Circuit courts, and POTUS cabinet. That means he could be considered the 'Boss' of all of us, including directors Vance or Webber. And before you start shouting about him being too young, you need to know that the NA-ML Treaty of 1940 makes the Constable – Governor position for life, hereditary, and automatically emancipates the recipient from age 10 with full rights and privileges as if they were 25 years old. That includes the right to smoke, drink, do drugs, fuck his brains out, shoot any weapon he can lay his hands on, or pilot anything he wants."

Blinking in surprise, taken aback by the truly nasty surprise, the people who didn't know this sat there completely unresponsive until Marty Deeks quipped blithely "Oh yeah, THAT old thing..."

Kensi turned to her fiancé to smack his shoulder, quite hard in fact, to whisper harshly "Why the Hells didn't you ever tell me about this hanging over our heads?"

Very interested in that particular answer, the other NCIS agents, and DXS too, ignored the way the poor man rubbed his shoulder with a pout on his face, certain he'd have a bruise from that hit. It wan'nt no love tap, he could promise you that.

Sighing deeply, Marty replied slowly "You know I went to law school before being a cop, yeah? Well, it was in the required reading for one of the classes that I took to get my degree. I didn't just sit there and look pretty for the teachers to gawk at! I worked for it!" Looking around the room and screen to see several faces of incredulity or flat out dismissal of his , the LAPD detective made a face of genuine anger as he growled out loudly "Screw you all, as many as you all are, damn you! Figure out this shite yourselves, if you're all so better informed than the pro!"

"Ahem!" The strong, noisy throat clearing from director Vance made it clear he did not approve of the current mood, nor the strange treatment the clearly competent agent was receiving. He'd been working with NCIS as liaison for almost a full decade, and that wouldn't be the case if Hetty hadn't seen first hand the level of skills and abilities he possessed. That situation would need to be addressed, but internally after the DXS was out of his house.

"Sorry 'bout that. Long day. Bad people. LA traffic on Friday night didn't help any." Marty tried to pass off his foul mood before anybody could demand that he expand on his outburst, as he ran a hand through his long shaggy blond hair.

Matty asked in gentler tones than her tone than her team thought her capable of; "I apologize if any of our delegation made it seem that we doubted your level of competence in your expertise, or the skills that brought you to this conference. However, I feel that I must impose on your talents and knowledge more tonight, if only to have an idea what to ask my agency's own attorneys tomorrow. I hope you understand the urgency we must operate under?"

Now it was Matty's turn to want to throttle a few people, first of them being Jack 'Every th'ang's alright' Dalton who had know her for nigh on fifteen years, through CIA undercover ops that they worked together for a decade. Why the hard pumping fucks hadn't he kept his face shut when the detective was volunteering vital information, especially without asking for a price? No! The imbecile had to guffaw aloud just because his reflex to things he's ignorant about is to laugh and say they don't matter. And he had to go do that idiotic peasant's reaction right to the face of an ally they need. Well, she'd fillet his hide later, along with Blondie, when it wasn't such a chore to go through.

Deeks huffed out a long exhale through his mouth as he organized his thoughts, going back to studies he'd done more than two decades ago. "Okay, first thing you need to know," he said, clearly addressing Mathilda Webber more than his own teammates. "It's not regular lawyers you'll need but specialist in legislative & diplomatic history of the World War II period. I learned about this gawds-awful thing by accident during an optional 'international treaties & warfare laws' class in my third year, when I was researching for the term paper we had to present. Half the class didn't believe me, and I had to take out the Library of Congress reference numbers and microfiche copies to make the teacher accept the project when I submitted the subject at the beginning of the term, during choosing period. You won't find anybody younger than 70 years old who remembers anything about this, unless they live directly in the places where Wise Apothecary & Chemists are located. Still, their secondary factories won't have any archives or active training on this. At least, I hadn't seen any when I checked up on it 20-odd years ago. With a new CG in post for a few years, that probably changed some."

Webber asked gently "What's so bad about this, other than how it sounds?"

Snorting in disdain, Marty replied "That's just it! It's actually a fucking lot worse than it sounds, believe you me! Firstly, like Hetty said, the position is as close to an entitled noble as you can come under the constitutions of the USA and Canada, which both expressly FORBID such a thing. We went to war against the British MONARCHY not just for independence, but to abolish all social stratum or classes based on inequalities of 'birthright'. But this treaty makes a title/position/function/rank inherited simply by being born into the Wise bloodline, being male, having TWO wise 'bloodline' ancestors, and having university diplomas in either medicine or mechanical, electronic or structural engineering. None of which is moral, legal or constitutional in the least. But it's an International Treaty signed between two Allies during time of active war, so there were EXCEPTIONS made to everything under the sun."

"Wow... I can see how that's a bummer," Jack Dalton commented, "But I still don't get the hoopla?"

Matty wanted to whack her face in the table at the moron's ill-timed intervention, especially after his truly impolite laugh, minutes earlier. Unable to let it pass anymore, she hissed in rage "Dalton! Shut it unless I give you permission to talk! Now!" Her tone so harsh an snappy that it made the 50 year old soldier pale in realization of just how far past the line he'd drifted.

Deeks looked at them all with a clearly dismissive grimace on his face, then shook his head in dismayed surrender. "having this meeting on a Friday night passed, well 23:00pm for some, was not the brightest idea ever. Necessary maybe, but none of us are functioning past the 60% mark." Waving a hand idly towards the head of the table where the two female supervisors were seated, he added weakly "I'll try, I'll try anyways... I always do..."

Taking a deep inhale to steady himself, Marty tried to explain in simpler, more direct words. "The skinny is this; you can't keep the kid from getting the post or any of the obligations, responsibilities, demands, materials, subordinates, authorities, rights and privileges because you would actually need a super-majority vote in both Houses of Congress with POTUS approval, AND also the same on the Canadian side. If either does not want to let go, even the active Constable – Governor can't step down by his own volition unless he becomes too sick, too mentally unstable, or too dead, to accomplish the tasks of his office. And any medical 'excuse' needs to be validated by both the AMA & CMA, as well as the departments of Health & Defense & State for both countries, all at the same time. If the kid makes the grade, we're stuck with him until the Treaty expires in 2040 or he dies without issue, meaning without any valid offspring capable of succeeding him."

Sam Hanna grumbled darkly "Okay, now that's bad. What about those legislative, executive and other stuff Hetty talked about?"

Deeks made a face of disgust before relying just as darkly "Imagine that this position/function is the equivalent of stuffing multiple state governors with the chairman of the Joint-Chiefs, the chief justice of the federal tribunals, several POTUS cabinet members in charge of State, Defense, Intelligence, Justice, Police & Prisons, Industry, Housing, Transports, Employment, and so on, plus the chiefs of police and elected civil village clerks of each township or county he covers, all into the same damned sausage skin. The post is a nightmare mishmash of tens of different jobs, spreading over an area with hundreds of hamlets, villages, towns and counties, through fields, mountains, glaciers, tundra, swamps, lakes, rivers and anything in the air above it all. He's like a small prince in anything but the name."

Angus MacGyver grimaced in misery as he realized what the detective was saying at last. "And since there is no true separation of powers inside the person, no matter how the Treaty was written to try and keep some fairness, justice or equity, or avoid corruption and power-madness, you still end up with an inherited title based on almost tyrannical status. In fact, if I understand you correctly, this guy can now have anybody inside his delimited jurisdiction accused, put on warrant, arrested, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to whatever he wants for punishment. All happening on his say-so, with little to no external hand-breaks on that authority. And since he's under a war-era Treaty from 1940, that probably puts him right into the court-martial system of laws, executive, administrative, and managerial categories rather than the normal civilian versions the two countries are normally regulated by."

"Yeeepppp!" confirmed Marty, making sure to pop his many 'P's' as obnoxiously as possible to show his anger with his teammates still wasn't gone. It was childish, but so what? The only resident expert on the problem was him. He was safe for a while, and he'd been talking with both Hetty and Vance about a permanent change for close to four months already. As for the DXS, did he truly care?

Gibbs asked the salient question off the bat; "Okay. This guy could now be considered above our regular hierarchies, but only under strictly specified conditions. Other than that, he's like an extra state governor for all practical purposes, or at least an extra agency in the damned 'Alphabet Soup'. Beyond that, is there anything you see that can pose problems?" He aimed at Deeks, demanding and expecting the same level of competency he commanded of every agent he encountered.

Marty delivered that and more, easily. "Yeah, and it isn't nice. You see, unlike the regular NCIS or Army CID or Air Force OSI, or even the JAG itself, his warrants will ALWAYS trump any other civilian or military jurisdictional certificates, warrants, mandates, or Letter of Security. That applies as well to any recommendation, regulation, protocol, by-law, law, or executive order that doesn't come from the Joint-Chiefs, the Secretaries or Ministers of the departments, and the High Cabinets of both countries. As a war-era Treaty posting, it is presumed to deal with problems that entail national security, the integrity of 'ALL' borders, the sustention of the war effort transports, supplies & billeting, and most vitally, all matters of anti-American/Canadian activities, agitation, resistance, sedition or treason. That gives him the right to arrest & hold people in secrecy, interrogate them 'strongly' and jail or execute them at needs, all by the standards of behavior and civil rights of 1940, when the Treaty was signed."

Riley Davis choked out in near panic "But they used to have chain gangs and public whippings in the US jails back then! The army regularly shot or hung what they called 'cowards' or 'deserters' as a way to stifle soldiers denouncing corruption, theft by high officers or fatal incompetence in war plans! And more! Torturing prisoners was only illegal if they were declared by their captors as 'enemy combatant under the Flag', cuz if they were called 'irregulars' or resistance, or anarchists, or today we say terrorists, then they basically didn't exist and had no rights!"

Marty Deeks shrugged it off blithely, replying crassly "Wake up, girly. The Treaty WAS written through 1938 – 40, and put in effect in 1940, in the height of Nazi threat. Both the US and Canada had spotted U-boats prowling the eastern coastal waters in 1940. In fact, several Canadian fishing trawlers spotted submarines mapping out the coastal and riverine defenses from 1935 onwards. There was a credible, proven threat to not only the borders, but the actual interior lands of the continent from the Nazi's far more advanced technology and mechanization. Yes, only 25% of the troops were motorized, and over 50% were still moving around in horse buggies or ox carts, and at least 25% were in fact still classed as foot soldiers mobilized only by trains or boats, but the impression of menace was there."

"So we're in a crapper with this?" asked Grisha Callen, just to confirm the lay of the land.

Deeks snarked at him nastily 'Ooooppps! Did I forget to mention the diplomatic status that exempts him from being accused, charged, arrested or prosecuted in either country unless both national leaders and ministers of Justice & Defense sign the warrants? Or that he is rated as a permanent ambassador of both countries, thus has the similar situation internationally if we wanted to let another country do the job of killing him off for us? Or that said DP status gives him the 'diplomatic mail' protections for all his personal & official belongings, physical missives or parcels, and also nowadays, emails, SMS, etc... And let's not forget that his posting also grants him the right to demand 'extradition' of people from foreign countries without the permission of anybody in POTUS or PMC cabinets. He even has the right to negotiate, as in barter goods & services, to secure the release or extradition of such personnel or merchandises that are needed for the 'war effort'. To whit, he's also the only official in the USA who still has the amusing old prerogative to write 'Letters of Marque' to nominate & support privateers."

Leon Vance shouted, outraged, "Say what, again? That little bastard can name bloody CORSAIRES in our day and age, and it's still legal?"

Marty asked simply "Was the Treaty ever changed since 1940? Has it expired? If not, then yes, we're stuck with this anachronistic capharnaum until the renewal date, in 2040. Luckily enough, neither government of the day thought that writing in an automated renewal clause was a good idea. So if we live another 22 years, we should be clear of this. If there isn't another Wold War, an insurrection, a civil war like half the population dreams of since 2001, and other little conditionals like those. Because if any of those happen, the Treaty continues until the CG declares the threat situation resolved enough to be called regular per civilian standards." The detective finished in an uncaring manner, with a half-shrug as if he were bored of it all.

Mathilda Webber gazed at Hetty, saying in her serious tone "Get out the booze, you old biddy! And make it the good bottle, not the dog piss you flavor the tea & coffee with!"

Ignoring the gaped mouths of everyone around, Henrietta sighed in deep disappointment as she stood up to go fetch the required bribe/fuel to continue this meeting with any level of productivity. She could just shiver at how much of her precious reserve the blasted, stunted, half-sawed bitch was going to rob her of before the rest of the hooligans got their mitts on the bottles. "Ah, bugger it all!" she griped with many negative feelings as she trod morosely to the floating shed's hidden reserve.

Like a hole in the head

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 29th of December, 2018; 20:07pm

Western America; Saturday 29th of December, 2018; 17:07pm

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Lucas was seated in his medical bed, freshly showered and thoroughly refreshed after the rather drab morning and noon he had undergone. Nobody liked having to pass Saturday morning under anesthesia to have a hole in their neck closed surgically. It was an unpleasant event, but a necessary one for the future improvement of his health.

If only the lubricant employed on the breathing pipe they stuffed down his throat during the surgery didn't taste like burnt clam juice. He could tolerate a lot, but this was a bit much. Of course, he tasted the damned thing only when he woke up, an hour later, in the recovery ward on the third floor.

Blergh!

It was close to four hours since he woke up from surgery, and even after brushing his teeth twice, he could still taste and smell the putrid oil. It even felt like he still had a thin sheen of it on his teeth, too.

Greatly amused by this, Raphael Chadderton walked around the room with a smirk in evidence as he fluffed pillows and moved decorative knickknacks aimlessly, as he didn't have much to do once the orderlies had passed for the twice-a-day clean-up. That left him ample time to tease his genius teenaged employer to his face, since there weren't any really nasty consequences to fear from the kid. Well, for now anyways. He seemed to still have a sense of humor and appreciation for sarcasm, regardless of the high & mighty position he'd inherited.

Deciding to take pity on the poor kid, Rafe refilled his thermal mug with piping hot coffee, fixed just as he enjoyed, while making certain to not comment on the funny faces the younger male was making due to the nasty aftertaste from being intubated. Raphael had never been subjected to it himself, but had heard from plenty of people just how bad it was. Seems even the medical professionals didn't enjoy their own medicine! Hi Hi Hi!

"Stop smirking like a loon high on moonshine and hand that mug over, you great big lout!" griped the testy prodigy, not at all happy with being reduced to the status of in-house amusement for the older adolescent. Despite theoretically being the superior in the work relationship, Lucas was not convinced who exactly was bossing the other at present. Being sick really sucked a whole wrinkly sack of balls.

Smirking anyways, the bigger boy passed along the full mug, making certain to not disturb the many papers stacked in the rolling lap-table and workstation where the younger male was already working on multiple things, despite being barely back from surgery for a few hours. Shaking his head in stupor at the clearly workaholic comportment, Rafe wondered about how soon the frail boy would burn-out what little health he had managed to recover.

The speakers on the workstation beeped a specific tone, indicating Luxis had a warning. Lucas flicked open the app window, reading the message with a growing smile. The small swarm of 12 flying orthopter drones that left the Wolenbahn factory last night had flown carefully to Los Angeles to investigate a few items of concern. Mostly what he had seen, or foreseen, in the cyberscape after Lawrence had given him such a gentle, affectionate love pat. (sarcasm much expressed)

It so happened that the dear sectarian bitchess Shay Lynn Mosley was indeed and in effect building herself a nice little armored nest for her flock of mindless hens. This was actually good news for Lucas, as all the other preliminary investigations he started were showing that the Noah's Ark Protocols and their counterpart, the Trumpian Papal Lordship, were not being built by anybody. Mosley was acting alone, out of the bounds of Law, Organization, and no external support in sight. The flight of sabotage drones he sent to LA's cargo harbor had flown at 5,000 feet, at 2 miles out over the blue waters of the ocean to remain hard to see, until they reached the southern city to enter by the seaway, and then find the narrow canal that led directly to the main machinery edifice his simulated life had indicated.

The entire secretive redoubt was being built, almost as he had seen. All the buildings were already bought, dry-closed, cleaned out, and secured with new door locks mounted with wireless Internex enabled cameras. The principal cargo warehouse abutting the canal and the railway triage yard was almost completely renovated, as was the old business center/hospital, the secondary warehouse with the refrigeration holds, the rolling stock garage, and the small automated watch tower at the canal's mouth. The next phase of work was all 7 habitation towers, second rolling stock garage, and several underground bunkers that were already dug out and framed, prepared for concrete.

Without realizing it, Shay Mosley had done absolutely everything to set herself for being exploited and victimized by the first moron who found out her secret real estate mogul dreamland.

Some teenaged wastrel bum like Lucas.

She really should have been more careful, if she wanted to have any chance at surviving. But then again, when you deal with 'avenger' and 'crusader' type psychology, this kind of nearsighted tunnel vision was the norm. Too bad for her depraved plans that she had fallen afoul of the one single human on the Earth that could find out then hijack control of everything, including her life and soul. Placing his hands on the keyboard of his CPU, the adolescent began to type out the strings of orders that would seal the fate and ultimate death of this would-be cultist before he left for Buffalo. This would not be hanging over the heads of the people he needed to stay strong in order to insure a safe, steady transition period as he assumed the mantle of Constable – Governor.

After a half-hour of fully concentrated typing, Lucas was alerted to a situation unfolding right at the foot of the building by Luxis. Closing his remote management suite, he switched to the hack that gave him access to the clinic's internal systems & cameras. The view from the main lobby promptly gave him a heart attack at the ripe old age of 14. Filing into the hospital were Michel Langlois, the director of central security for Wise Heritage & Trust, and three lawyers from the Buffalo head offices, followed by three more lawyers that Lucas did not recognize but Luxis told him were from SSM citadel offices, and then lastly was Carmello di Sovorone on his quad-porter, who closed the procession.

Oh, what the bloody blue blazes was it all about?

Lawyers! His convalescence was being invaded by a Plague of lawyers!

Was this some scene recreated from the Bible, like the rain of frogs, or the swarm of locusts?

Miscreants! He was being set upon by knaves, crooks and charlatans in 3-piece suits!

Raphael, upon seeing his employer hold his face with both hands, asked "What's happening?"

"I wish the surgeons had made a hole in my head instead of my neck!" the youth moaned in palpable misery as he anticipated the near-term future. "It would have been better than what's coming up the elevators! And a lot less painful, cuz I'd still have some anesthesia in my veins to be stoned and unawares!"

Replying playfully, Rafe said "They tried, but you filled it up with blue gunk, so it's your bad," with a bratty smirk that had Lucas purse his lips and squint angrily at him. The younger boy would happily have smacked the older but he was wisely staying out of arm's (and harm) reach next to the patio doors.

"I will remember this, runt!" promised Lucas, with a menacing finger pointed at his butler, which had the healthier boy trying desperately to keep from laughing out loud at the image his boss made. Especially when he saw that the two militiamen besides the door were silently spasming in laughter too.

Crossing his arms over his chest, the injured teenager grumbled lowly under his breath, wishing several poxes on the houses of the backstabbers he was surrounded with in his time of need. Then, when he noticed the shaking soldiers, he let out a nasty, bloody blue streak in Hebrew that nobody understood, but certainly got the feel of. They just laughed harder at his emoting.

"I can tell the horde of blood suckers that you serve as my proxies for the evening." Lucas threatened them all, with a smile that was all teeth. "How would that redo your schedules for tonight?"

The three hirelings all shut up quick at that one, although they were still amused. Sneering at them, the poor, maligned adolescent turned to his monitoring app, watching the barbarians disgorge from the elevators on floor 9, coming towards him like a tsunami. "I need another hole in the head more than this cohort of malice!" wailed the genus inside his mind, only to be answered by the laughter of his ever-so helpful virtual brother.

US Naval Non-Intelligence

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Sunday 30th of December, 2018; 14:21pm

Western America; Sunday 30th of December, 2018; 11:21am

Naval Intel Cyber-squad

Pentagon, Washington DC, USA

Following breakfast and Sunday morning mass at his evangelical church, 33 year old lieutenant John Danforth, petty officer in charge of internal Navy server farms, walked into his office in the basement levels of the Pentagon. Technically speaking, he was a simple specialist in electronic archival & data management, but in reality he was a valued member of admiral Noyce's Unseen Crusade for a decade. As a specialist in ciphers & code analytics, he was in fact charged with finding ways to decrypt the message traffic moving between naval installations, ships and sailors to ensure strict compliance with the admiral's 'catch or ignore' conversion policy. This was meant as a basic safeguard against some idiot with a boosted opinion of his own charisma & leadership trying to bully men who were able to follow in the path of Christ, but became reticent when faced with the Crusade's full goals, or the recruitment methods proved too harsh at the onset. The admiral had wisely decided many years ago that it was better to catch the small weak fish to hold them forever than hunt after those that could fight back hard enough to break the discipline & cultural grip of the movement.

So, the white skinned, brown haired man did his job for the faith, movement, and eventually the benefits of the overall country. 'From a certain point of view', as all cults & sects are wont of saying.

They had to be extra careful when speaking or emailing about this work. Technically, well in reality, this posting wasn't supposed to exist at all. Just like the Unseen Crusade itself, it was fully illegal, as all attempts to use one's rank, position or function to coerce juniors and subordinates into a worship or religious movement. At the same time, using the Navy's money, equipments and men while on the Navy's clock to spread and empower a faith movement was thoroughly illegal, without any exceptions, despite that the country was founded by, and for, christian devotees above all else.

John Danforth frowned at his computer's monitor as it booted, remembering the lessons taught to him in 'Junior Sailor Sunday Schooling' back aboard the old supply ship, in the Pacific Fleet. Those lessons had never been more important or vital to shaping his view of America as it had been, or how it could be again, if the Men of Christ rose up in Power anew. There was a time, not so far back in the 1950's, that infidels, unbelievers and rebellious boys were whipped by their parents, teachers, village sheriff at the station-house, and even the family's priest at church, in front of the whole congregation right at the beginning of mass. Them delinquent kids knew for sure who was Boss, and what the Law of God was on this green Earth that He had wrought. As for inferiors and heathens, they were hung or burned, and adulterers were cast out of the village by sticks & stones. Maybe in secret in some places, but it happened, just like the small town he grewed up, back in North Carolina. Them were the days of real Power for the Faith, and powerful men leading from the front, not dark unnamed offices.

As the computer had finished booting, the disloyal felon opened the specially encoded suite of programs that needed a retinal scan from himself or a few others to unlock. This management system was designed by & for the Unseen Crusade leadership exclusively. It was so tightly locked that nobody had penetrated the coding in the twenty years it had been in use, and nobody had even detected its presence in the systems either, because it actively hid in the back processes so well. Limited spread, with even more limited knowledge of how it was programmed, and only a handful of people with the pass-codes to unlock the safety features, meant this suite of apps was more solid than the old Fort Knox gold repository. It certainly wasn't Windows, Mac OS or Android, that was sure! Those civilian things were bloody sieves just begging to be data-raped.

Lt Danforth made quick work of the few general Pentagon, Navy, NCIS or JAG emails that were mass-mailed to every serviceman, be they recruit, active service, on leave, on medical or on the way out for retirement. So much computing had been developed since the Year 2000, and all they did with it was push spam across the services to make certain the Brass could cover their asses when something went bust. Thankfully, a great deal of the US armed forces were in fact faithful, if not assiduously practicing the communal devotional aspects as they should. That meant there was a lot less e-trash to bin on Sunday than the six other days of the week. Small miracle indeed, but he was thankful for it.

Another thing he was thankful for, paradoxically, was the Pacific 7th Fleet Inquest of 2017. While many in the Unseen Crusade would say he was heretical for thinking it, he believed deeply that the men kicked out of the Navy for court-martial deserved it. The majority were not only idiot bullies who took pleasure in beating or sexually assaulting men, which is anti-Christian, they were also criminals who did a lot of harm to the faith, movement, and the Navy with their violent tempers. Nobody wanted to come willingly into the Christian faith when confronted by violent skin-heads covered in Swastika tattoos that humiliated or beat them at the least little fear that their personal power was deficient. Not to mention that despite being white skinned, Danforth had an innate reflex of sheer disgust at racists and all race-based policies. God, the Holy Father of Jesus their Lord, had made all of Creation; thusly, all humans were of His design, being equals by birth and His Heavenly design. To do, say or think otherwise was both heretical and crass ignorance he couldn't swallow.

Sighing deeply in despondency, the traitorous sailor who truly did not see himself as anything but a faithful, loyal and obedient servant of his Nation under God, went to work at his ILLEGAL job of plunging into the flow of official and personal communications all around the US Navy servicemen.

The Veterans Affairs hospitals were his first stop on a long list for the day. If any idiot 'layman' for the Crusade had seriously injured a sailor on a ship badly enough to warrant evac to the mainland, it would mean an NCIS investigation into the event. If a serviceman on the way to retirement went to a VAH to get healed from damages done by a superior during non-work related actions while he served, there would be a mile-wide trail of paperwork. Plus, the chain of complaints from the victim to the perp, and up the movement to the deacons, the bishops, and eventually cardinal Noyce himself. That would involve NCIS, the JAG, the Joint-Chiefs and, unavoidably, the bloodthirsty medias looking for a scandal to clock TV minutes on. None of those were good in any way, especially not for the faith.

As luck would have it, he managed to intercept five new complaints from abused sailors who were on their outgoing process, two of which had to leave active service because the fools placed aboard their ships to proselytize were ham-fisted brutes with a liking for sadism & domination. Where the fuck did Noyce find these defective retards? The trash chute at Leavenworth's recycling center? Jesus was about love, brotherhood, forgiveness, and making their community safe for the women & kiddies. It wasn't written anywhere in the Good Book he'd read in grammar school that men roughing up men or boys to get their jollies up was doing the Lord's will amongst the faithful.

As John was finishing the sweep, hide & delete on those five cases, he found a new one that had been transferred to the NCIS morgue during the night. A young midshipman had been sent off his ship due to drug addiction to clinical anti-depressors that had been prescribed the boat's medics. The young man, barely 19 year old, had been chronically depressed, as well as sporting several nasty injuries shaped like the metal buckle of a leather belt on his back, arms and legs. The ship's captain had no choice but to send the boy ashore when he started openly ducking out of certain duties or sectors of the boat following three different stays in the infirmary. The ship's captain, who was one of Noyce's silent allies in the Crusade, had tried valiantly to quiet the case. He sent the poor victimized boy back to Los Angeles to get healed in peace, then transferred to a different ship for a clean start. A silent clean start in a ship also commandeered by a more mature faithful Crusader who knew how to use gentle pastoral medicines to guide the dispirited boy back to faithfulness under the Cross. Instead, the desperate sick kid had used the fact the personnel at the VAH were so overworked and understaffed to get into the cart of the orderly passing the meds. He quickly, purposefully, overdosed on anti-depressors. As if that wasn't a clear, net loss for the entire Navy and country, the poor injured soul had written a lengthy, detailed letter to explain why he committed suicide. That letter was on paper, which had been scanned by one of the hospital's nurses then emailed to NCIS & JAG together without ever asking the Navy central for an opinion. And the physical letter had been put in the hands of the FBI this very morning when the suicide was discovered because that same nurse didn't believe for a second that the Navy wouldn't try to silence the event. She was right, but it wasn't the point.

The intercept was a bust. The chain of complaint would begin, a new Inquest into the activities of the faithful aboard that wayward ship would happen again, and the name of the Unseen Crusade would be blackened all over again. All because of foolish jerks who couldn't control their baser instincts, to the point their victims felt their only choices for relief from the pain were retirement or death.

Putting his elbows atop his wooden desk, lieutenant Danforth held his face in both hands, letting the furniture support his weight as he felt a wave of despair. The poor kid had just turned 19 a month before he died. A beautiful young man with shiny ebony skin, clear brown eyes, short buzzed black hair and teeth as white as Heaven's clouds when he smiled on his ID card photo. This was the poster boy of what a good, caring, faithful son of America looked like, if the entire village cared about his education and welfare. There was nothing wrong in his service jacket. He had been baptized in the Light of Jesus at birth so he was already amongst the Blessed, and wasn't gay, queer, or wrong somehow.

The veteran officer tried to wipe his wet eyes quickly so it didn't become visible he'd succumbed to a moment of emotional weakness. As an adult man and military sailor of America, it was incredibly unseemly for someone in his rank or function to cry, especially about suffering, death, or the loss of a serviceman. It was even more unacceptable for him to be weeping over a suicide, as that act was heinous in the eyes of Jesus, their Lord Redemptor, who was sole judge of life or death on Earth.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, John bent himself to the task of cybernetically snooping around the databases of the ship the poor lost boy had been posted on, before his end. What he found was another story of a clique of depraved bastards who used the Name and creed of God as excuse to exert their own little dominion over those too young or weak to defend themselves from their depredations. Add to this tone-deaf higher officers and an elderly ship captain who thought this was the sort of 'corporeal discipline' necessary to pound boys into truly faithful, solid men of God. It really wasn't the first time he had to try and clean this sort of thing, but it seemed to have become far more common in the last few years, since Trump was elected in 2016. In fact, as time progressed, it was as if every depraved, cruel tyrant in the service decided to show their true face, convinced that they were in the right. It was as if they thought simply saying 'Jesus is my King' aloud enough times would grant them immunity from the most basal laws and obligations of the community towards its weakest peoples.

Well, no. It wasn't enough. Being a truly devout, worshipful believer of the true God of the Christian Bible did not make one a monster, a sadist or a pedophile. And it was time these people knew it.

For one of the few times in his career, John Danforth refused to be an accomplice, instead copying what he had found and packaging it anonymously, stripped of the meta-data from his own system but still bearing that of the ship, to send to NCIS cyber-evidence analytics in the DC Naval Yard.

Some in the Unseen Crusade may call this a heresy, a stab in the back of those who trusted him to erase all proof of their activities that the liberal secular humanists could use to vilipend them, accuse them, or kick them out of their places of Power through sham trials before JAG or civilian federal courts.

They could be right about that. But they were wrong about so much worse, that their opinions were tainted beyond the acceptable any longer. Even cardinal Noyce's almost visceral attachment to these brutish, perverted louts was fast becoming suspect. John certainly knew that the old admiral's views on race were not as open-minded as he showed by hiring colored sailors for his offices, or bringing them into the Crusade as fellows within the crushingly white majority. Some offhanded comments he had made over the years left John wondering ho much of the rotund, bald officer's deeper thoughts were truly as Blessed as he claimed they were.

After that fateful decision, the man continued his semi-invisible sifting for undesired trails that could lead back to their Cause, methods or careless members. It was a thankless job, but it had to be done.

(- change perspective -)

From the Angelator holo-emitter podium in the office of admiral Noyce were silently spreading invisible tendrils of electricity, both wired and inductive, carrying cybernetic powers the world had never encountered before. Acting as if having awareness and will, the currents searched out all the sectors of the local grid it had access to, from doorbell cameras to cellphones, to old I-Pods, to Blue Tooth recorders and official governmental computers of all sizes. The multiple signals were so incredibly powerful they shone through the materials of the wires and cables a clear iridescent blue, visible from three feet away even if the constructs were crafted opaque.

The signals moved slowly, carefully, palping the network and devices as they progressed, like the tentacles of an incredibly large squid, feeling for open doors to unprotected parts or subtle weaknesses in the virtual walls that separated the segments of cyberscape. Using both conventional Edison mechanics or the more esoteric Tesla free-wave induction principles, the blue eddies of willpower surfed almost idly through the circuitry and chipsets of the Pentagon, softly caressing data nodules as they passed by. Until one of them touched the active computer of a measly senior lieutenant in what purported to be an equally simple data management & archival bureau in the basement of the Pentagon, where few people ever went looking without a clear goal.

The tentacle called to its siblings, whelming several of its kindred to come assist in mining the newfound trove of data that had become available for them.

How had the ethereal limbs managed to enter the lieutenant's system undetected while he was working on it, especially given that he truly was a competent expert in ciphers, codes, hacking and cybernetic defense protocols? What miracle had these phantom ropes made of electricity, radiation, analog & digital signals, and otherworldly living will?

Because the poor moron William Allard Boyd Noyce had decided to use the podium in his office as data vault to create a secure back-up of all the apps, files and control codes on his personal laptop, in case it was stolen. Since the process had been painless and quick, because the system inside the Gaseous Medium Display did 100% of the job as long as it had a dedicated cable to hard-link the two machines, Noyce had also done his cellphone and desktop computer too.

The tentacles could enter the heavily protected machine, and its even more shielded databases on the separately wired phantom hard drives, because they were imbued with Bill Noyce's personal command codes for his official US Navy job as well as the private, occult codes for the Abbatial Counsel of the Unseen Crusade.

John Danforth's CPU and programs thought their master was doing a legitimate check-up, so they let the foreign signals pass unhindered and unreported. Since Noyce did in fact regularly make secret verifications on the underlings of his illegal organization, the systems couldn't tell the difference.

Within a mere 58 minutes, four terabytes of data were scanned, copied outside of the host machine into the GMD podium in admiral Noyce's office, then shunted to the proprietary neuroplexic network, all the way to the main server farm in Sarnia for decryption and final integration to the overall archives of Wolenbahn. Or more specifically, the memories of one ghostly, virtual boy called Luxis Wolenczak.

That would come back to bite people in Noyce's confidence in a big way soon.

Turning the wheel of days

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Tuesday 1st of January, 2019; 2:45am

Western America; Monday 31st of December, 2018; 23:45pm

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford University, California, USA

Lucas was reclining happily in his medical bed, wiggling his toes inside his socks as he watched the large screen on the wall that was showing the New Year's Eve celebrations going on around the planet since a few hours ago. Again, he'd had a small relapse at supper when he felt as if his legs were about to cramp up on him, when they weren't truly injured. The moment passed, and he was now provenly safe, warm, comfortable, and relatively healthy, despite the odd mass of glowing blue crystal that was slowly completing its integration into his skull. Even the skin had almost fully regrown over the injury, much to the consternation of the doctors who had never seen such a phenomenon before.

The adolescent was of the idea that if all it cost him was to have party-fluorescent hairs all over his body for the rest of his life, then he was the clear winner in the situation, given all the other benefits he got, on top of not dying or becoming crippled for ever.

Raphael came over with his shirt untucked and partly opened, revealing the blue T-shirt underneath. His waistcoat was off completely, hung on the wooden valet stand next to the bed he was using during his stay for the few days that Lucas would remain under medical watch.

The more athletic adolescent held a bottle of good red wine already uncorked, and a pair of short glass goblets to pour the liquid into. He offered one to the younger male, keeping the other for himself. Since the doctors had said that closing the tracheotomy port yesterday had been beyond clean, and he had no complications besides having a bandage for a few days, then he had been cleared to continue with any foods he liked. As no medic had given them an official counter-indication, the older teen thought the kid could use a little pick-me-up to celebrate his wondrous recovery, and it was New Year's Eve too.

Without any unwanted interference as Lucas had wisely, and quite forcibly, given the lawyers and security director the entire days of Monday and Tuesday off to celebrate New Year's at rest, they could proceed with their libations unchallenged. For their part, the two militiamen on duty did not see a problem to the boys having one or two glasses of weak wine before going to bed. It wasn't like they were committing high crimes or getting roaringly drunk, especially since their youthful employer despised intoxication due to his father and mother's attitudes.

"Besides," Raphael joked with a loud laugh, "you own the bottle, since it came from the manorial cellars in Sault-Saint-Mary. And you have enough diplomatic immunities to shield us both without any effort."

The two teens clinked their glasses on the last stroke of midnight, with a televised newscast of the town hall in San Francisco where they were lighting up a giant 2019 in the background. Rafe and Lucas, with Luxis on the workstation screen besides them, drank some nice cold wine and shared a decadent mocha & caramel yule log cake as a comfort treat before sleeping. Lucas had suffered constant nightmares about lawyers, Congressional meetings and wartime planning all through last night, thus sleeping very poorly and waking to a headache. Thankfully, the genius still had a morphine drip for another day, so that passed easily enough with a good breakfast. Now, he was pretty sure he'd have a much better time of it this evening, especially with the friendly company, good food and jovial atmosphere.

Near 1:00am, Lucas used the bathroom for a quick wash, then decided he was warm enough for the season, inside the well tempered building, to take off his socks and T-shirt for the night. In reality, he usually kept the top to avoid looking at the scars that had been inflicted upon him through the years by the many cruel mercenaries his parents had set against him.

Going back to his bed with only his square-cut dark blue plaid boxers and the metal pole dragging behind him, the younger male saw that Raphael had decided to turn in as well. The older boy had already taken off all his over-clothes, stripping down to nothing but a pair of sky-blue boxer-briefs that fitted him like a second skin. It also exposed just how ripped and muscular he was for an 18 year old.

Shaking his head in both envy and disgust (at his own situation), the genius teen grumbled aloud as he sat himself comfortably on his bedside to position his electronics for the night. Everything had a security cable that was welded to the rolling lap-table, meaning that the moment it was removed without entering the code, the device would scream bloody blue murder and never stop as long as the isotopic battery had charge. Newsflash; these isotopic batteries had a 10 year life. That, plus all his custom-built devices had explosive acid pellets integrated, to add extra defense if the maintenance covers were pried off in the wrong way. Lucas placed the 21" workstation with the lid open and aimed towards him, so that he would see it upon waking if an emergency call came from Wise H&T.

The bathroom door opened, letting out Rafe who was trying to cover his wide yawn while running a hand through his short, crested brown hair. The young man walked around almost naked without any problem as if he did it a lot. Then again, he had attended primary and secondary schools with gym classes that include swimming and bicycle competitions. Maybe skimpy shorts and lycra were a habit from then?

"You okay, boss?" the older adolescent asked worriedly when he noticed the typing noises had stopped but his employer wasn't moving from his perch either. In fact, the kid seemed to fixate on watching him walk around the room as he prepared for bed. "Are you spaced-out drunk? I should'a guessed morphine and wine wouldn't mix well. Sorry... Snort!" the butler smirked playfully as he shrugged it off.

Lucas shook his head, whining lowly "How the blood Hells do you get so damned fit, at your age? You look like a friggin' model for a sports team or underwear company!"

Looking down at himself then at his extremely thin, bony and frail companion, Raphael couldn't help but to burst out laughing at the sight they made. Climbing into hid bed, the bigger teen explained "I was always physically active, growing up in the country like I did. We had fields and canals all over, so I did a lot of running, climbing trees, swimming and long bike rides. I went to school on my bike since I was 8 years old, and was part of the schools' cycling and swimming teams every year until I graduated." Shrugging good naturedly, the young adult smirked, saying "I guess it paid off," while flexing his arms in an exaggerated way to pump his biceps like a body-builder.

As he lowered the lights to 5% for the night, Lucas whined pitifully at his employee "I hate you."

He was answered by the gentle laughter coming from the neighboring bed, and the silent shakes from the two militiamen that guarded the suite, besides the inner doorway. Grumbling about traitors and curs, the fluo-haired teen settled on his side, sending a mental "Good Night" at his virtual sibling before letting Nature make him drift on the soft waves of slumber.

I should have kept it shut

(Frederic Chopin – funeral march)

Eastern America; Tuesday 1st of January, 2019; 2:45am

Western America; Monday 31st of December, 2018; 23:45pm

DXS Headquarters

Los Angeles, California, USA

Jack Dalton kept eerily quiet as he slowly prowled the empty corridors around the third basement's materials vaults. He should be talking on the phone, chatting with his patrol partner, or at least humming some silly country tune he learned as a kid, back home in Texas. But no; he was as quiet as the dim, dry, still mausoleum he was walking about.

Because he had his phone & comms blocked to only connect with the overwatch hall for the duration of the entire double-shift patrol.

Because he was patrolling completely alone, instead of in pairs as normally done.

Because he was being monitored by the cameras in the corridors, and probably by his own electronics too, for any noises that came close to any sort of human speech, even with himself.

The reason?

He'd been too tired to control his big mouth during a truly late inter-agency meeting that should have been held the morning after, at the earliest. Not passed 20:00pm on a friggin' Friday evening after the week they'd had.

And it wasn't his fault, if he'd blurted out a few things! Damn it all, the piece of conversation was weird beyond what even Mac got up to during his episodes of 'scientsy improvising'. The best part of that day had been that kegger-bomb the kid threw at those bank robbers. Couldn't haf done better himself.

But Matty 'The Hun' Webber had some pretty different ideas about how to comport, and what to let out during those sorts of meetings. In fact, by the way she lambasted his poor hide, he was lucky to still have a job inside DXS at all. As in; she imposed him punitive solo patrol of the emptiest and safest basement the main building had in it, for a double shift under radio silence, and no rations other than supplemented water.

On the very biggest party night of the year.

Plus, he had to actively swipe his agency badge on each bloody terminal he saw at each intersection between the main hall and the branching corridors to prove he was moving, not sleeping, and just how assiduous to his task he was.

"You're a trained Delta Forces veteran with a decade of CIA undercover ops, and three years at DXS on top." Matty had sneered disdainfully at him, looking down on him even though she was sitting and he was standing at parade attention in front of her desk, in her formal office. "You almost lost us a primordial source of 'expert' insider knowledge on the one and only case that matters presently. If you think that doesn't carry consequences internally, then you clearly don't remember your exit from the Company the same way that I remember kicking you out. That will be remedied!"

Yeah... The principal at his high school didn't wallop the kids as hard as Webber did when she was in a blazing fury. She'd certainly gone 'Hun' on him that morning. Jack was pretty sure she'd waited till noon to yell at him cuz even she needed to sleep, shower & eat solid food at some point.

Not that he'd be doing any of that for many hours more. His punishment shift had started at 20:00pm and would last until bloody 12:00am – noon on the dot and not before. In fact, the new director had been transparent in her intents; "Not even if the building is on fire, or the Big One earthquake hits the state, or North Korea attacks us with missiles. For not a single bloody reason do you leave your post! And if you die on the job, do it with a weapon in hand and a pile of enemies around your corpse or so help me, Dalton, I'll resurrect you and kill you right this time around!"

Yeah... He was in the pooch shed, alright...

But what hurt the most was her parting shot; "I can see why that traitor-bitch Thornton kept you on, all these years. You are still as destructive to everything you touch as ever. And pairing you with the Agency's best recruit of the last 25 years was certainly the fastest way to either discourage him straight out the door, or give him so many bad habits - like yours! - that he'd become useless inside of a year or two. Mark my words, Dalton: it's far more a testament to Angus' own temperament and character that he is still stable & reliable, after two years glued to your side, than it is any credit to you!"

Wincing in phantom pain, Jack remembered how Thornton had already put him on probation for a year just three weeks before she'd been discovered as a traitor. And now Mathilda Webber had decided that if somebody deemed a traitor thought he was 'destructive to good order, discipline & morality' of the agents around himself, then maybe she too should revise his entire performance record at DXS.

So she'd put him on probation for a full 30 calendar days during which the review would take place.

Her parting words of "Polish your resume and put it in the DXS server. I'll push it to a few battalion commanders that I know could use a Delta Force sniper, or demo expert, for lone-wolf insertions in enemy territory. If you want a clean get-out, that's all I'm ready to offer you."

And that was that. Lonely patrol over night, mostly to mull over which part of the planet he preferred to die & rot in than any real surveillance. His future at DXS was pretty much decided, unless a blumin' miracle of Jesus came down to save his job. Given how rocky the working relationship was between him and MacGyver, he doubted the kid would risk anything for him, not anymore.

As he took a swig of fortified survival water, the veteran looked at the clear plastic container, telling himself that he's suffered heat stroke and dry deserts enough for a lifetime. He would tell Matty to find something in a jungle or swampy terrain, someplace with lots'a liquid sloshing around. Maybe she had plugs in the US or Canadian Coast Guard? A ship at sea or a lighthouse didn't sound so bad anymore.

Fat little piglet, wiggling on a spit

(NCIS – opening theme)

Eastern America; Tuesday 1st of January, 2019; 9:00am

Western America; Tuesday 1st of January, 2019; 6:00am

Fairlington district, Noyce Home

Arlington county, Virginia, USA

William Allard Boyd Noyce was not a happy camper this morning, no he was not! Like any red-blooded American man of his venerable 64 years, he had celebrated the New Year's Eve with his family who had traveled from their native Alabama for the gathering. Because of his high posting, the old admiral simply could not move around like the younger, less attached folks could. So he'd gone to bed at a rather understandable 4:00am, with more than a bit of quality Champagne and creamy or fatty foods weighing heavily in his ample guts.

He had been soundly asleep when the blasted doorbell had rung the entire house awake at fucking Hells o'clock of the morning, on the very first day of 2019! Who the friggin' blazes had the sheer gall to come wake them up after barely two hours of sleep had better have a damned good reason! The old 12 gauge side-by-side his daddy favored was hung over the chimney mantle in the formal living room, and he wan'nt shy about usin' it!

Ripping the door open almost right off the hinges, Noyce stopped cold in his tracks as he was confronted by a fully armored team of FBI agents and a stone faced Leroy Jethro Gibbs backed by his full team, each holding their pistols in hand. Looking at the assault rifles aimed at the house from behind the half-circle line of FBI SUV's and trucks with the red flashers strobing glaringly in the weak winter morning light, Noyce got the feeling his life just got harder. Behind them, two Presidential Secret Service SUV's with armored agents were filming the scene while talking to others on a satellite phone. Noyce could easily recognize SSA Seely Booth, the FBI's manager of major cases division, and the regional manager of the PSS, standing together next to the PSS vehicles in an animated discussion as they gesticulated towards his person.

SSA Gibbs addressed the pajama clad admiral loudly "Admiral William Noyce, chief of US Navy Intelligence, you are charged with sedition, defrauding the US Armed Services, using Navy funds to pay for a religious crusade inside the Navy, having fanatics under your orders proselytize & force younger or junior crew members into attending illegal religious gatherings, having your brutes extort tithes, donations and work-hours on the Navy's paid time to further your Unseen Crusade. Be advised that many other charges will be added as the investigation is only in its initial stages." Gibbs then dangled the ever classic silvery handcuffs from an index finger lazily as he drawled out, "Turn around, admiral, and spare your family a firefight on the first of the year. You have underage kids in here. Make it easier on everybody. You'll get your day in front of JAG, and the US Federal Bench too, if I read the seas right."

Seething in his impotent powerlessness, Bill Noyce turned sideways to let the agent cuff him and read him the Miranda rights that were common even for military arrests. Face pinched in anger, he asked the officers around him as they were frisking his bathrobe and pajamas for weapons or electronics; "Who was it that laid those ridiculous charges? I'll have them sued into bankruptcy for libel, then have the district attorney undertake a criminal defamation suit against them!"

Blinking slowly at the fat lardball of malice quivering in raw rage beneath his hands as he guided him to the waiting FBI jail wagon, Gibbs replied blithely; "Good luck with that. Several witnesses came forward aboard ships at sea, or started complaints from VA hospitals as they were treated for injuries suffered at the hands of your cultist partisans. Injuries they got under the guise of 'Christian hardening of boys into men of God, ready for the Crusade,' despite that it was done on the Navy's time & dime."

Noyce shook his head in dazed denial. He had systems and people in place to sweep & erase the traces when such things happened because a few recruiters got overly zealous, when they were converting and maintaining the boys in line with his edicts of faith and creed. Those witness testimonies, interviews, and physical evidences should have been flagged for interception & destruction out of the official Navy channels long before they ever reached the attention of NCIS, JAG, FBI or PSS.

Where the Hells had the break-down in his operational security occurred?

As Gibbs forced the not-completely present man to sit on the cold steel bench inside the prisoner box of the heavy armored truck, he passed a steel-link chain from an eye-bolt in the floor to another in the bench's edge then through those present on each cuff the admiral was shackled with. A secondary restraint chain was then passed around his ample swinish girth, just under his armpits, and locked to the hull walls on either side of him, at the same height.

AS Gibbs got out, FBI supervisor Booth came into view but staying out of the wagon so that the two fully armed agents, one from each of NCIS and FBI, could get in to guard Noyce in transport. "Well, look'a the widdle ickle pigglet, all a-quiver on the spit, ready to get its hide roasted hard red..." Booth simpered aloud with a nasty sneer of contempt on his face. The middle aged FBI manager was clearly enjoying this a great deal, despite the ungodly hour, and the day of the year.

Then Will Noyce realized just how clearly screwed over he was when Booth growled loudly "Enjoy your trip up north into the ice, Noyce. I hear say that Sault-Saint-Mary is lovely this time of the season. Give the new Boss of Bosses my regards. I was told by a little snitch twittering between the wires that he was very much interested in meeting you face-to-face. And I was told that you'd hate him in person even worse than from afar."

Blinking in complete incomprehension, and trying to stave off despair at the same time, Noyce asked blindly, hoping one of the agents would get loose-mouth syndrome. "How the fucks did a sick, injured, teenager stuck in a hospital in Stanford get anything actionable on me? And how the bloody Hells did this pass muster with the directors of JAG, NCIS, FBI or PSS? Don't you people know there's channels and processes to follow to arrest a man of my posting and station in life?"

"We know that," replied SSA Seely Booth glibly. Pointing at Gibbs on his left, he said "After carting off over 80 of your kindred outta the Pacific Fleet in the last 18 months, NCIS Major Response Team is an old hand at grabbing & carting admirals, generals, captains and all sorts of 'exalted' types of your standing in life." The sneer of contempt Booth wore on his face was a thing of beauty in the eyes of a born bigoted snob like Noyce; if only it weren't aimed at himself.

"Gibbs! Why am I being sent to SSM citadel? That's illegal! I'm an admiral in the US Navy! I demand to be transported to JAG holding cells in Quantico as protocol, or be released immediately!"

The veteran investigator shook his head negatively while wearing a shit-eating grin as he replied "Oh, I can't do that admiral. As of the moment NCIS were made aware of the Treaty of 1940, we were legally bound to apply it. And since we received the official activation documents and writs on December 29th of last year, nobody has any choice about it anymore." Smiling even more widely so that he showed teeth like a predator, Gibbs drawled out "And you know the gist of the NA-ML Treaty, don't you admiral? After all, you conspired with Lawrence Wolenczak and others to interfere with the order of succession, tried to defraud the Wise H&T, tried to hijack the WAC'S militia equipments and land holdings repeatedly... And let's not forget how you had several patsies, over the years, attack the new CG legally, socially, and even physically, in attempt to take control of his life, and all the Power and Authority behind him."

Seely Booth completed the thought with a snarl "And those, my man, those all add up with your other charges to a big picture of a toxic, underhanded, seditious felon who was planning, conspiring for, and executing mass treason right under the Services noses. And according to the Treaty of 1940, guess who has EXCLUSIVE jurisdiction on all anti-American, destabilization, anarchy, terrorism, sedition or treason cases in America and Canada, nowadays?"

Gibbs brattily waved a joyful little hand wave at Noyce as the guards rammed the wagon doors closed over the desperate, wailing porker, abruptly silencing his cries for now. As the armored convoy left the house's driveway, Booth shook his head despondently, whispering harshly to the older agent "This wasn't the kind of situation I signed up for when I was in the Army rangers. And I didn't know that the Bureau would put me in contact with dipshits like that, cuz I'm sure I wouldn't have accepted one of their postings inside DC if I'd known in advance."

Looking at the taillights of the fast rolling truck, Gibbs replied softly "Me neither."

There brief moment of peace was shattered by the PSS field manager and the arrival of several major media's antenna vans, having been warned by the neighbors about the ongoing drama. Shit! There went their clean, peaceful closing phase to the action. Even talking with the family would be a mess now, with TV crews looking in on them. Why in tarnation couldn't they wait till the agents were done before showing up? Sigh.

A bit of craftiness

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Wednesday 2nd of January, 2019; 13:30pm

Western America; Wednesday 2nd of January, 2019; 10:30am

Wolenbahn Factory

Stanford, California, USA

Deep in the armored foundations of the massive concrete building, banks of ceiling lights shone down on long sprawling machineries that were coming alive, answering the call of their master. From his room in the hospital, Lucas had finalized the blueprints for what he needed during his trip back to Buffalo, and beyond.

The batch-production crystallurgy forge activated, the plasma furnace reaching 10,000ºC in less than four minutes as a crucible filled with the varied dusts and liquids was pushed over the iris of the aperture. Once locked in place by a retention collar, the bottom of the crucible was exposed to the intense flames, causing almost immediate bubbling of the reagents in the melting pot, with all the vapors being pushed out, under the tremendously positive air pressure, towards a chain of energized condenser coils that each reclaimed a certain product from the soiled airflow.

Barely 12 minutes after activation, the furnace closed the iris and unsealed the crucible from the stove, allowing the robotic crane to hoist and go pour the 138 gallons of raw molten blue crystal into the extrusion mill. The hot-die mill would then extrude several million linear feet of iridescent blue filament no thicker than a single molecule to use in top-notch circuit boards and chipsets for making military grade hardware destined to the WAC's militia and WEI security.

Another half hour later saw the second hot-die mill begin to spool out thousands of yards of iridescent blue wire the same thickness as the metallic core inside regular telephone or network wiring.

Another half hour saw the third hot-die mill spool out thousands of yards of iridescent blue cable the same thickness as the metallic core inside domestic electrical outlets or telecom coaxial cable for old analog TV's and modern fiber-optics sockets.

Another half hour and the final hot-die mill was loaded, ready to spit out several thousand different pieces; wire plugs & sockets, chips, resistors, condensers, LED diodes, fuses, Flash drive chips, heating/cooling elements, sensor & reactive elements, etc... This mill was so special and capable because its extrusion nozzle was fitted with a complex carousel array composed of eight large vertical racks around a pivot, each rack holding four cylinders that had up to 24 patterns engraved on them. The molding-press cylinders would be rotated then elevated until the one proper mold was in front of the nozzle to be used. Once the mill triggered, the mold cylinder would be heated by internal elements to allow for a stable, fluid dispersion of crystal in the die, then the auger would pressurize a quantity of blue crystal into the empty cavity. Once filled then squeezed by electromagnetic currents, the part would be irrigated by a variety of energies to stabilize its final shape before release. As soon as one die was filled, the drum would rotate upwards to present the following die of the same piece model, giving the machine time to finalize and prime the piece inside the cavity. When the fresh piece was positioned at the apex of the drum's rotation, the internal flap opened to let it fall in the smooth middle pipe, to be pushed by gentle air currents to the collection drop on the right side of the rack.

The machinery lines could produce all day long, in a continuous process that need not be interrupted because when the furnace created another drum of molten crystal it was simply be added their heated feed funnel. Even the multi-die press needed less than forty seconds to pivot the carousel to present a new die when changing which series of pieces it was molding. Once alive, this installation would never have any reason to go idle, unless it stopped receiving the raw materials needed to produce.

All the resulting blue crystal wires, cables and parts were stacked in fully robotized stocking shelves that kept their own automated inventory balances, in harmony with the centralized work-flow charts and order forms that Lucas lodged in the central servers of Wolenbahn or WAC'S. The machinery knew how much of which item it needed to craft, and was slowly learning to use moments when no specific orders were inbound to produce a bit of everything to fill up the stacks for emergency orders.

(- change perspective -)

In the first basement of Wolenbahn Factory were the main chipset & circuitry assembly lines. A large plasma furnace, fully enclosed, had several pipes come down through its top and out from all three sides that aimed away from the concrete wall five feet behind it. This furnace was supplying three different molten materials at the same time, in heated and pressurized continuous flow pipes that linked directly to the machines that made the products.

There was the variable multi-die plastic weaving extrusion mill to create any type of wire or cable by passing a number of filaments, strands, wires or cables through a warm applicator nozzle that coated each conductor separately before combining them into an armored length with the needed chips and plugs to finish the link.

There was the silicon die-press & engraver that created several thousand printed circuits, blades, boards or panels according to another system of rotating carousel loaded with heated dies. These were just the bare, patterned silicon wafers that would receive all the other components elsewhere in the factory, or be sold in bulk for a revenue as they had no WEI proprietary tech on them.

The final assembly line was crafting hybrid pieces in a complex three-step process that involved molten silicon wafer as structure, blue crystal & gold alloy as conductive filament, with a fully sealed extruded thermoplastic wrapping to keep it safe. This mill was making a limited selection of pieces that were based on standard technology but had crystal filaments inside to serve as temporary bridge with the neuroplexic network that Lucas was trying to spread around. These few parts all had the same function; to serve as replacements for chipsets on network cards, to be used as USB web-access antennae, to serve as replacement CPU on motherboards in phones, computers and servers, to link domotics devices with WEI remote management alongside 'Alexa' or 'Google' without excluding the other service. This mill was critical as it was what Lucas was banking on to increase the speed, width & depth of his private neuroplexic network's penetration across the planet's other systems.

As with the deep basement, a section was reserved for the fully automated robotized inventory shelves that were already half-full since a lot of their products were much simpler to craft or didn't need blue crystal to be made. Also, some of the bulk circuits were not only sold in bulk for profit, they were also being used to commit the internal tech updates of all the sectors & segments of WAC, so the production was constant since the genius teenager had inaugurated the machines in April 2018.

(- change perspective -)

The ground floor of the factory was split in several sectors; the front lobby with the reception desk, security office, janitor's main closet & office, infirmary #1 (one on each floor anyways) and the waiting room for visitors since no one was allowed to roam freely. At the back of the building were the six cargo truck docking bays, each with its own buffer room to store in/out transiting materials. The common roof of this segment was at the height of the third floor, and served as an enclosed, fully sodded terrace that was accessed through the employees' cafeteria.

The biggest part of the ground floor was doubtless the large rolling stock & machinery construction berth that took almost half of the entire floor-space over three levels high. This was due to the fact that the vehicular garage could handle two lines of seven train cars side-by-side, oriented along the length of the building. This was where Lucas had built his multiple 5-long tractor-trailer trucks that patrolled around all of America, Canada and Mexico to sweep, scan & analyze problems in the upper continent's Internex. This was due to a contract with the World Bank, but served his own purposes quite well.

The cement floors were reinforced from below, all the way to the ten feet thick concrete foundations, and were inset with two parallel rail tracks and a 'X' switch crossing at each end, just inside the building's massive roll-down steel doors. Besides the actual assembly berth, the ground floor had several workshops with CNC mills and old manual tool benches to do all the conventional mechanics, pneumatics, hydraulics, electricity or networking needed by hard-working vehicles. Stacked atop the workshops were two levels of pieces, parts, devices, and several preassembled engine blocks, axles, transmission blocks, seats, consoles, and vehicular hull plating bought from contractors, or simply brought in from SSM or Sarnia.

(- change perspective -)

The first floor of the factory had the commercial buyers & sellers, inventory supervisors, accountants, secretarial pool, and a small lobby / waiting room with public washrooms and vending machines.

(- change perspective -)

The second floor was for the upper management, the liaison agents that kept relations with WH&T in Buffalo, Stanford U Faculty, the World Bank and other groups Lucas deemed vital for his survival, both as a company and as a person. It also had a small lobby / waiting room with public washrooms and vending machines.

(- change perspective -)

The third floor was mixed use. It had the largest infirmary in the building, the security overwatch office with the wall of monitors, an armored room full of manual electricity breakers and mechanical interrupters to safely shut down entire sectors or floors of the factory. The employees' cafeteria and lounge both had access to the green-living terrace above the delivery bays. The workers could receive family or VIP clients on this floor if they were vetted in advance, per WEI's strict access protocols.

(- change perspective -)

The fourth floor was secured, reserved for the R&D laboratories that created the new prototypes of chipsets, circuits and link-wires that had made the company's success so rapid. Everything in this floor was small-scale, the biggest crucible being able to produce one liter (1 pint) of fluid material at the most, and several were actually much smaller. One laboratory was in fact under construction to retool for the R&D on Permanently Magnetized Fluids (PMF) that had just been discovered by accident at the very end of 2018, but the company that did the discovery hadn't published it yet. Lucas had heard of it between the branches during one of the regular quarterly meetings of Stanford Research Partners, where WEI had promptly been offered an association to develop the new fluid into something useful.

(- change perspective -)

The fifth floor was an oddity, and hard to explain to anybody who saw it without knowing the history of the family's migration to America in the late 1700's. This was a full sized emergency bunker with a commercial kitchen, three large communal bathrooms, bunk beds stacked by 24, in rectangular columns two wide, four long and three high. There were 16 stacks, or enough beds for 384 people without overcrowding. The floor also had many enclosed, thickly sound proofed rooms to keep the annoying noises of specific situations from triggering bad nerves if they were in a survival lock-down. A small but fully equipped nursery with attached bathroom stalls, a medium sized arcade for the kids to play without causing trouble, a smoking room for older adults to speak plainly uncensored or drink, smoke and play cards as necessary to keep from exploding... And there were also the two public, open air, lounges set at each end of the floor plan, and the speech podium & massive screen at one end of the eating zone.

(- change perspective -)

The sixth floor and up were locked down tighter that the fifth. It was usually reserved only for Lucas and a few select janitors or security guards that did the rounds at random intervals. Any unauthorized visitor would see nothing but concrete walls and thick steel doors barred by double-bolt mechanical locks that could be opened by a physical key, a magnetic card, finger print, or remotely by security. The two main corridors or the floor were linked in the middle and both ends, but that was the extent of anybody's mobility here if they weren't wanted.

Lucas had an entire side of the massive floor for his office & presidential apartment, facing towards the west to avoid the bloody sunrise that came every morning, just when he didn't want to wake up because he'd spent the night working (hacking) on a pressing project. His publicly known office was made to look plush, inviting, and gave a semi-industrial chic vibe that was created by a designer he'd hired just to obtain that particular effect on his visitors. Wolenbahn was about modernism, technology and reliability. Wise A&C was about history, traditions and proven solutions made affordable for all. He had to create a distinct visual signature for when he spoke with his clients about programs or computer chips versus the wholesalers of foodstuffs and medicinal items.

The reason that Lucas had made a fully livable apartment adjunct to his office was that he knew himself all too well. At the age of 8 he was already a bloody workaholic with a penchant for spending 14 to 18 hours straight on a project, only to fall asleep sitting at his desk with his face on his keyboard. This had begun to create a few mild health concerns that he had resolved quickly. Right upon buying the building, he had included in the renovation blueprints a living space that used the common bathroom like an airlock between the office and apartment.

He had three full bedrooms big enough to put in a king sized bed and all the nightstands, vanity's, dressers, armoires and sofas needed to make them comfortable. The setup was because he had already been injured by Lawrence when he reached Stanford, that first year. He was in the hospital when he had the blueprints drawn, and realized there would be times he needed live-in helpers to palliate his ill-health. So he had a decadent master suite with private bath & 2 walk-in closets, two employee bedrooms, a lounge, a quiet reading room, a games & smoking room with wet bar, a formal eating room with 12 seat table, professional galley kitchen, and three walk-in pantries for cold, dry and others. In case he received someone important, he had a small multi-compartment alcohol cellar at the back of the cold pantry, to hold the better, rarer bottles of wine, beer and spirits he wanted to impress visitors with. While not one to drink, smoke or take drugs, Lucas knew the cultural significance of these acts, and had slowly prepared himself to do them, if it was vital.

The parts of the floor not used by his private apartment spaces were safely separated R&D laboratories that he could task on priority projects, and then lend a temporary key-card to one or two people per room to keep the work progressing under his direct gaze. As he had spent more time inside this building than the Stanford classrooms because he was doing almost everything as a remote student anyways, Lucas could do his classwork in his office or apartment, then walk around his pet projects at will when he felt the need. The only interruptions were for the mandatory tests or class presentations of term papers, and the obligation until just recently to sleep in the stupid brownstone dorm, supposedly to foster a sentiment of comradeship between the young prodigies.

(- change perspective -)

The seventh floor was just as secured as the sixth, and all of it was classified as 'special projects' that Lucas was undertaking for the World Bank. Not true, but nobody wanted to breach the Bank's edicts to go verify. In reality the seventh floor was as highly automated as the basement levels but oriented towards crafting completed, end-user products like phones, tablets, laptops, server caissons, GMD podiums, portable or fixed antennae, comms relay stations, omni-voltaic panels, chemical generators, water condensers, drones of various models, and prototype weapons from handheld to vehicular to mounted into buildings.

This was where it had been important for Lucas to get his hands on the old WAC's division Forceful Wisedom LLP so he could use all their permits, licenses, and copyrights to jump-start the R&D in this department. Most of what he used in his defensive bracers and armament-cane had been developed here for other clients or purposes, before he lay hands on it for himself.

The two most important sectors of the floor were the drone assembly, configuration & launch line followed by the neuroplexic crystalline parts heated die-molding & engraving mill. This was where Lucas had created his first basic drones for industrial, exploration or sabotage purposes. This was where the orthopters were being built at a steady pace, merging plastics, non-ferrous metals and ceramics with iridescent blue neuroplexic parts to create the cruel, flying nightmares covered in pincers and beam weapons that would spread his network and will across the continent.

(- change perspective -)

The eight floor was the almost completely flat rooftop, broken only by the four cabins that sheltered the staircase & elevator combo in the middle of each side. The vast expanse of roof was covered by genuine living grass with an 8 feet tall hedge all around the perimeter to afford privacy inside the little piece of paradise.

A large red 'H' made of bricks was inlaid in the turf at the east end of the roof to welcome the helicopters carrying the highest VIP clients, like Iegor Desdenski or the president of Stanford U.

In the middle of the roof was a comfortable conversation zone adjacent the 12 seat dining area, chef's outdoor kitchen, and small cabin that covered the two toilet stalls & janitor's closet. The entire reception area was covered by a decorative wooden pergola with mechanized retractable canvas covers to control the incoming sunlight or protect from the occasional rainfall.

The western zone above the private apartment was split into a simple square of thick plush living grass that had been allowed to grow a good foot tall to lie on at ease, and next to that was a four foot tall by 20 foot wide wading pool, to just sit or lie in, the tempered clear water being adjustable to any season.

(- change perspective -)

The events with Lawrence had come and passed, the police wanting access to more of the sixth floor than just the laboratory where the incident took place, but being locked out legally, diplomatically, or by dint of nobody having the keys to open the doors.

Luxis was still trying to figure out how the defective bastard had managed to penetrate so many levels of security, climb so many stairs, and then open the locked door to attack Lucas from his blind angle like that.

The data didn't compute.

Something was off.

Something physical inside the domotics peripherals that gave him overwatch on the factory building was interfering with his depth and precision of control on the movements, reactions and detections the devices performed. At this point, he would have to report to his flesh brother that it was a very high statistical probability that the domotics had been sabotaged. This was done either during installation by the renovation crew, or at their point of manufacturing which was done elsewhere since this facility hadn't been operational yet.

Damn. This was going to get ugly quickly.

Seeing no way around the dastardly reality, Luxis put several sub-routines to the work of following the trail of custody for each device or part that went into the renovation of the building, while at the same time tasking several orthopter sabotage drones to enter each floor to start a forensic analysis of the entire edifice before something worse happened. Making a virtual wince inside his cognitive matrix, the cybernetic 13 year old could just hear his brother's voice teasing him about 'Having just jinxed the entire process, and the rest of the day too." Meh... His bro was a superstitious organic; what did he know about the mechanics of probabilitive calculus?

It's just another step in life

(Audiomachine – A new Age)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 8:15am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 5:15am

SF&S Clinic; VIP suite 9-109

Stanford, California, USA

"It really was an ungodly hour to be up," Lucas thought blithely as he looked at the bathroom mirror, in the private en-suite of his hospital room. Despite having managed to get some good solid rest over the last four days and gone to bed at 22:00pm yesterday evening, he still looked a bit worn out, even after a warm shower an half a mug of coffee first thing out of bed. "Raphael was right, we could have waited after the breakfast rush hour to move out," he followed his initial thought. Going with the rays of dawn might dodge the people coming back from their New Year's vacations but it certainly inconvenienced themselves a lot.

Slowly passing a warm beige cotton towel through his shining bi-tonal hair to dry it, the genial teen looked at the set of clothes that had been brought for him yesterday. He had sent the order via email to his usual tailor that crafted the regular business suits he wore in important meetings. In his daily life, he was content with a good pair of jeans, T-shirt and occasional flannel shirt, reserving suits for truly formal occasions. But now he was making his first appearance as Constable – Governor, so he was bound to make an impression as there would be several VIP officials, a few media outlets that would want a film of the monumental train convoy, and several curious civilians for the same reason. Not to mention that he had several unhappy passengers to take on for a part of the trip, so the presence of many law enforcement trucks would garner all the attention the train hadn't.

He extended an uncertain, weary hand to touch the clothes that hung peacefully on the valet stand, with his new rank cap, protective gloves, new armored boots, new fully upgraded armament-cane, and belt full of tools and weapons.

Closing his eyes, Lucas silently mourned for the loss of what little 'human normality' he had enjoyed in his young life to date, finally admitting to himself that it was never normal to begin with. Not even the silver spoon fed trust-fund babies had the sorts of riches, industry and structural power that Lucas had inherited, thus explaining the jealousy he encountered early on in life. The sheer level of autonomy he had experienced so young was also well outside the norms. He would not dwell on the daily violence, or the occasional bouts of homicidal destruction that peppered his existence. That was NOT normal in any ways, but since nobody ever helped alleviate it... The best he could do was put it behind him, and live on with what happiness he could find.

Sighing despondently, the young man finished drying off then slowly pulled on the new underwear made of several layers of thin iridescent crystal filaments that were weaved and patterned for optimal comfort according to his current body type and health. Mid-calf socks with thicker soles because of how much walking he would be doing, and wearing thick heavy boots all day. Form fitting boxers that looked like bike shorts but adjusted to show less of his body because he wasn't the most muscular 14 year old alive, and not particularly sculpted for showing off. The T-shirt looked regular enough, if only that it had thin silvery borders, seams and details around the rear electronics pouch or the two thin pockets on the chest.

And yes, Lucas wanted those tactical pockets on his T-shirt, the same as all the other ones he wore, because the threats to his life had just gotten a lot worse, not fewer or easier. Likewise, all the crystal filament linked with multiple systems that monitored his location, position, health and level of awareness to trigger silent or public alarms as needed. Some professional assassin or mercenary might manage to take him unaware, but they would never bypass the layered protections in his clothing.

As for attacking him in the bath or asleep, good luck going through the militia and Luxis.

The 3-piece suit itself was designed from the overall style was reminiscent of the early 1900's suits worn by the barons of industry, when Wise H&T was being brought to its apogee. It featured a subtle mix of rich civilian, austere aristocrat, government official and old-school British admiralty. There were straight-leg pants, a waistcoat with large & low aperture to show off the shirt & tie, and a Prince Albert styled frock coat that was double breasted and cut just above the knees to allow for easy movement or sitting.

The base color for the pants and frock coat was dark purple like his favorite denim jeans, sporting black borders with stitched-on iridescent blue crystal filigree at all the hems, collars, lapels, button holes and pocket apertures. There were 'Parade Decorum' double lines in luminescent blood red crystal weave down the outer sides of the overcoat & pants' sleeves. The jacket was crafted with stiff formed shoulders, epaulets and internal collar frame to keep the shape in any circumstances. The thick epaulets allowed to pin the blue crystal & gold alloy pins that declared his title, rank, position and functions. The pants were almost unremarkable on their own, as were the simple, wide but thin, brown leather belt and suspenders he would wear to hold everything in place.

The decorative waistcoat was designed inversely, with a base of matte crystal blue cloth with dark purple borders bearing stitched-on black filigree details. This was important to hold the symbols of power: a chain with pocket watch and fob signet bearing his Crest of Office, as well as a few discrete pockets to hold ID cards, metal rank badge and important keys for his briefcase, office and car.

Another part of the suit was a formal button shirt in a shade of dark purple three tones paler than the suit itself, with thin silver borders and stitched-on iridescent red crystal details at the hems, pockets and button holes. It had a slim pocket on each side of the chest and was woven with crystalline filaments mixed into the silk and lycra blend to create an additional temperature control layer because he would wear so many layers around his torso.

Each button on the suit or shirt was solid blue crystal bearing an engraved crest of WAC inlaid with yellow gold, and the zippers to secure the few important pockets were made of hundreds of little blue crystal teeth with a crystal slider that had a gold Wise H&T crest inlaid in it.

Now that the major pieces were in place, he put on the newly crafted defensive bracers that were slimmer and more fitted to his body shape that the bulky old ones. The shell was dark purple molded thermoplastic with a soft insulation liner made of multiple synthetic filaments woven with silk fibers then quilted for cushioning. The main job of these was to carry a retractable 6 inch blade inlaid with neuroplexic shock filaments, a beam phonon disruptor and an emergency ultra-slim smartphone on the internal side where they had less chance of being hit during a fight. He still had gas grenades stowed in slots on the upper side, but they were now smaller due to being much more pressurized than before. He could still manage to carry six projectiles, 2 acid, 2 sedatives & 2 neuro-toxin, on each arm.

Then he put on the thickly soled, armored boots. Completely black as China ink, they had both laces and latches to make certain they were sealed against liquids and critters. The boot's internal structure was a thick articulated steel frame that fully covered the sole and top of the toes, and had two small flaps over the calf, all covered by the synthetic canvas. The visible part was composed of several layers of composite thermoplastics filament, opaque neuroplexic crystal filaments, composite ceramic filaments and micro-braided leather strands, all woven together then sprayed with an integral rubber finish. The internal insulation was two fluffy layers quilted together from woven silk fibers, Lycra fibers, and felt fibers to give the best temperature, cushioning and humidity protection. A few small discrete monitoring electronics for location and health were hidden throughout. On the outer sides of each boot were solid sheaths for two thin ceramic knives that completely disappeared when slotted in.

The gloves were specially cut and patterned to cover the hands completely without hindering the defensive bracers or creating an over-pressure on the forearm, wrist or hand. Besides being insulated against mild electrical shocks or mild heat/cold, they were essentially just decorative, without any real additional devices.

The cap was shaped like an American military officer's forage cap; round, thin and flat, with a bill on the front to shield the eyes from sunlight when driving, or scouting out the enemy. The cap's structure was in many ways similar to the boots, with a stiff steel frame covered by canvas woven of poly-composite filaments and covered by a thin matte purple rubber finish. The internal insulation was similar to the bracers to keep his head cool all year long. There were iridescent blue crystal details around the flared part of the cap, and a round gold alloy Wise H&T crest centered on the front. The head-wear had a bevvy of electronics built into the discretely hidden space between the top canvas and inner insulation. Besides the location, position and health monitors were also a full cell/sat phone circuitry (no screen), central energy wave detector, motion detectors all around, a micro-spy telescoping camera on the right side of the front crest with a low-power las-comm system on the left. The entire cap served as a booster antennae to any other comms or signal that he plugged with a physical wire or cable into the ports hidden inside. In the underside of the bill were placed several high precision detectors that could be made to scan the movements of his eyes or hands to serve as virtual floating keyboard or drawing pad in front of him, with the imagery being sent to his meta-glasses or directly by micro-lasers into his retinas. Conversely, he could make an image at 20% opacity float in front of himself to show others what his plans or actions were affecting.

At his waist was a wide thick black leather belt with silver details that was held in place on the frock coat by thick loops and cleverly hidden snaps & pins. That meant that even if he opened the jacket or took it off completely, the belt and its many sheaths would stay in place, never changing position or length. The belt had holsters for one medium sized cal.22 pistol and hatchet on the hips, two 6 inch daggers set diagonally at the front with the handles oriented away from the buckle, and a personal emergency med-pack at the small of the back. The decorative buckle was iridescent blue crystal with the Wise H&T crest inlaid in clear red crystal.

The new armament-cane was now an exact match to the one he had built in his virtual adventures, but the neuroplexic crystal alloy was more refined, and he had added red crystal inlays around the pommel and small mace-butt to increase the warlike appearance.

The more he looked like a capable fighter, the less rabble he'd have to deal with, especially when meeting privately with bureaucrats, soldiers, diplomats and his companies' business partners. There were a lot of people who still made decisions based mostly on the appearance or potential for violence of their interlocutors, following their guts more than logic or historical data. This newly crafted suit, cane and belt full of hard steel tools would help to deal with these egocentric barbarians.

(Horst-Wessel-Lied "Raise the Flag"; Nazi anthem, with choir)

Now fully dressed and armed, with meta-glasses on his nose and right hand resting on the pommel of his cane, the prodigious adolescent looked at his appearance in the full-length mirror mounted on the bathroom wall. He was so stunned by what he saw gazing back at him that he startled, thinking momentarily that he was seeing an unannounced visitor. A visitor from 1900 England's navy.

All the suits he had commissioned and worn to date gave him a slightly modern, but still young, business appearance. He had always made certain to seem approachable to anybody. Now, he looked forbidding, menacing even, and not approachable unless he himself made the first move.

Lucas wondered when and where he had sold his soul for Power.

After an untold number of minutes gazing emptily at the merciless reflection that the glass showed him, the poor forlorn adolescent realized there was wetness sliding down his face. For the first time since he was 4 years old, he was crying and hadn't even been aware of it. Taking off the glasses to wipe his eyes, the young man wondered if Lawrence was pissed, in whatever Hell he resided in. In order to make his much maligned son cry in distress the way the felonious father never could obtain, it had taken Lucas himself to commit such an atrocity that his poor wounded soul could not forgive himself for it.

With his pale alabaster skin, golden hair long to his collar and deep, soulful, flint-blue eyes, dressed in the militaristic yet also aristocratic uniform, he looked like an Aryan Hero from Nazi mythology. His poor forebears must be weeping in their graves, just as the boches themselves were laughing at the cruel irony of this unnaturality.

Setting his face into an impassive mask of detached Power and callous authority, the adolescent gave a silent farewell to his image in the mirror, and to his normality, childhood, kindness and personality.

Reality demanded no less anymore, not if he wanted to survive what came next.

But would he ever again have more than just bare survival in his life, if this was the path he trod?

(- change perspective -)

Luxis had remained silent throughout.

During the time Lucas washed away the last dregs of his emergency hospitalization, Luxis had known that the older boy needed the time to settle down his mind for what came next. While the ghostly boy had seen the full imagery of what the complete formal suit would look like, he had not been able to estimate the emotional impact on his sibling, other than what himself felt about it.

Since his brother had put on the vestments and seen the finished construct framing his face, Luxis had understood finally what the spiritual costs of the drastic changes in his life were. Due to the intensely intimate neuroplexic link between them, the silver-blue boy had been able to hear his sibling's pure, gentle soul cry out in misery as a great rent was gashed through it by the realization that he wasn't so far removed from his parents or great-grand-father.

This was a nightmare world that there was no waking-up or escaping from.

The only way Lucas could be free of this was to abandon his life completely, forsake his very identity to the point of changing his name, getting plastic surgery to change his face and fingerprints, then make himself disappear with a new ID. The super-prodigy was certainly skilled enough to accomplish this, but at what cost? What would he be paying out of his life to live in anonymity? Besides abandoning all his heritage and the money it meant, he'd lose all his own studies, all his work since he was a baby, all the research he had published or copyrighted... He would never again be able to show the world just how intelligent, capable and inventive he could be. All the medical research he had done, everything that was leading to a way to contact a comatose or mentally ill person to wake them, to bring them closer to normal interactions with humanity...

It would all disappear in the ether when he destroyed the existing persona to create the new, inane nobody that would never attract attention of have an enemy in its life. He would descend into boring, useless limbo, becoming less than the shadow of his ghost.

Knowing how Lucas needed science and development to stay alive and happy, Luxis knew his brother would not survive more than a year if he had to run away, cutting himself off from the world and its technical wonders. Suicide was the only outcome, especially since he had an innately depressive temperament that had been worsened by his abusive childhood and all the violent tutors or delinquent minions he had suffered.

Luxis also cried when Lucas did, but kept himself silent, separated from his brother for they both needed their separate, private moment to admit to themselves what Path they had freely chosen to walk through life, and what the cost of Power would be for them.

Luxis monitored silently what happened in the medical convalescence room as his sibling walked out, unconsciously marching in military cadence as he presented himself publicly for the first time with his persona of the 'Constable – Governor' in place.

{ SQ } - { Behold your Lord, as he is crowned } - { SQ }

(Star Wars – The Imperial March)

Western America; 5:41am

Walking out of the bathroom gently, without fanfare, gave Lucas the chance to see the raw, unguarded reactions of each person present in the public portion of the suite. In many ways, he wished he hadn't.

Raphael Chadderton looked like he had just been run over by a train without brakes. The adolescent was so totally genuine in his expression that it hurt to watch, but it was the naked fear in his eyes that made the most damage. Lucas had hoped to maintain a relatively calm and easy going relationship with his butler, not scare him senseless to the point he wanted to run away.

Michel Langlois, the director of security for Wise H&T was flabbergasted, gaping open mouthed at the sight of his employer assuming his true, full Power at last. Whether it was fear of the job being activated, or fear of Lucas himself, remained to be discovered as the man was good at covering his personal views, even online.

The two chief lawyers for Wise Heritage and WAC's industrial looked like they were enjoying their most prurient wet dreams fully awake in real life, and wanting more of the same. Since Lucas had verified himself what kinds of people they were, he already knew of the fanatical anglo-saxon christian leanings, and what they saw him as. They would be disappointed quickly.

The four militiamen present for escort duty had their battle masks in place so Lucas couldn't see their full reactions, but their sudden going at parade attention and presenting their long guns said a lot of what was in their heads. They no longer saw a young sick boy, but a strong leader capable of insuring the future of their families. At least he hoped that was it. If they were hoping for a new Fuhrer to annihilate large swathes of humanity they would be sorely disabused by the month's end.

Adopting his parade rest position with left hand on his belt and right atop his cane, slightly away from his body, he ordered softly: "Raphael, have the Benz convoy brought to the front lobby. We are leaving by the main entrance, in full view of humanity. Whatever happens next, the die are already cast."

For the first time since he had known him, the teenaged butler put a hand over his heart as he bowed his head, answering "Yes, my Lord." Then he took the phone lent to him by the company for his job to signal Lenny Herschel to bring the entire motorcade in front. Yesterday evening during the planning session, Lucas had insisted on having only Raphael and Michel Langlois in the rolling saloon. The lawyers and security were relegated to the limousine and escort vans, with comms active all the way back to the Wolenbahn Factory near Stanford Campus.

Lucas had planned to meet several people who should be present by 6:00am and he wanted to arrive just past 6:20am to make certain they all saw him as he needed, and wanted, them to see. It was this first impression that would make everything gel in the coming years, plus The Briary rolling in at 6:30am on the dot.

Without further comments as all was packed and ready to move, two soldiers walked out in front, with Lucas and Langlois followed by Rafe and the two last soldiers.

The lone FBI agent put in post as a precaution after all the brouhaha when the teenager had been admitted was taken aback by the display, and nearly soiled himself when he saw the monstrous purple & black warlord marching in step with the professional soldiers. Then he realized it was the kid he was sent to watch over leaving the hospital on his scheduled date, so he rushed like a madman to film the best he could with his phone to send at his boss' private phone with an alert.

The elevator doors closed over the group without the agent having had time to ask anything, or even realize he had missed the biggest part of his task; follow the principal to make certain he was safe. Film or not, his boss wasn't gonna be happy at the end of the day.

(- change perspective -)

Lucas mused silently "Whelp, there weren't any two ways about it..."

They had a crowd gathered near the glassed entry doors of the lobby, and loitering outside under the decorative steel and Plexiglas portico, watching and pointing curiously at the motorcade that was to bring them to their pit-stop on the way back home. They certainly were not wasting their social media exposure on clipping the two rented white vans, or the short Lincoln limousine that was usually parked at Wolenbahn for his personal travels around town.

No, they were gawking at the trophy; the brick brown Mercedes-Benz 1938-Großer 770K (W150).

Lucas had insisted that the heavy rolling saloon be brought by cargo plane along with his butler and several squads of militiamen. The only ride he had ever taken in the venerable Old Lady was inside cyberspace, but it had been rather terminal. He intended to benefit from and enjoy the wonderful old machine for as long as she would carry him, regardless of how she had come to serve his family. It wasn't the vehicle's fault that she was seen as a symbol of tyranny or Nazi sympathies since 1945, nor did it detract from her comfort, reliability or classic beauty.

Built over an extra thick frame with protective under-plate, she had a tall, permanent, full metallic roof, two front doors and paired doors for the passengers. The seats were 2 padded sofas in front and two face-to-face VIP couches, for 3 adults each, hiding cargo space underneath. There was water-heated floors for harsh winters and 6 small electric fans for summers. Protection was ¼ inch steel armor plates all over the walls, roof, floor and under-carriage shield-plate, with emergency spring-loaded ¼ inch steel shutters for all windows. Initially, the car had also been fitted with the luxury novelty of a military command radio at the front passenger seat, instead of the usual glove box.

In the early 1990's, somebody had decided to have a powerful customized air conditioner and extra fuel tank added to the structure when the engine was deconstructed then rebuilt to insure safe usage. The person giving the orders had also made the restauration crew change the upholstery from leather to felt for more comfortable rides in hot climates because they used to visit the WAC's fields and forests in summer. He had converted the old radio box to hold a newer multi-system comms, but given a retro look to fit the vehicle's original aesthetics. The biggest change was they altered the original suspensions to merge them with new Ford SUV grade chucks to offer a softer voyage.

In 2014 when Lucas acquired/inherited the Wise estate, he had done nothing. It was in 2017 that he ordered all antiquated or vintage vehicles to undergo the same modernization program as the buildings and production facilities. That meant full computers & comms upgrades, altering the air conditioner to better standards without using CFC gas to cool/heat air. Changing the old internal fans for Dyson-inspired cool/hot air filtering devices with retro appearance covers & knobs. Revamping the hot-water floors for better efficiency. Altering the motor for better fuel consumption, plus the ability to use liquid or gaseous fuels without purging the engine block first. Installing hidden wire antennae all around the cabin, engine caisson and under-carriage. Adding automatic up/down & rotate antennae for sat phone & remote sensors. Adding small hidden cameras & mikes all over to record in/out in case of accidents or theft. Making certain all electrical or cybernetic systems were wired with newest Wolenbahn blue crystal parts or hybrids when possible.

While the car had been waiting in the factory near Stanford for five days, Lucas had the techs add two quads of 'ram gun' pulse rifles, in front & back just under the bumpers, to pummel through a blockade or rioting crowd. Small phonon disruptors had been installed in groups of 12 inside the hub cap of each wheel plus a set of 6 on each bumper as extra anti-riot defenses. On the front of the car, two thin pipes had been welded to the inside of the engine's hood thus giving the driver a pair of Prism Array Optical Masers to serve as hunting/strafing guns in high speed chases. The beam weapons were backed by newly designed grenade launchers loaded with Lucas' newest miniaturized projectiles for fog, acid, sedative or neuro-toxin, with iconic buttons assigned to each style of munition in the machinery. A Bond-like perforated pipe for oil discharge ran all the width of the rear bumper, with a trio of small electric sparklers to inflame the fluid if necessary, along with eight boxes of small steel caltrops and ten miniature EMP detonators to discourage pursuit.

Yes, Lucas had watched the old original James Bond movies, and found the first Aston Martin from the 1970's to be 'intelligent' and 'creative'. He may have gone overboard in replicating the idea...

Then again, both his parents had tried to kill him repeatedly, or hired sadistic tutors to 'educate' him as long as they could dominate his life. And when they realized their failure to break or bend him, Lawrence had gone for the final, big all-or-nothing play.

And 14 year old Lucas survived by pure accident.

So yeah... Maybe he'd given the Old Lady more than just a face-lift and liposuction. She deserved that and so much more, after so many decades of loyal service, no matter her origins. And if the car had been good enough for Queen Elizabeth II or Emperor Hirohito, then it would be good enough for the Houses of Wise, Holt and Wolenczak or his descendants.

The genial teenager nodded politely at the respectful salute from old Lenny Herschel as he climbed into the back cabin's rear seat, with Raphael and director Langlois sitting in front of him with their backs to the driver. Never once looking directly at the crowd, never answering questions, and not acknowledging the small mediatic storm this was creating, Lucas instead concentrated on what was coming at the Wolenbahn factory. He had put in play several pieces, and hoped his dominoes cordially fell into the proper sequence he had asked of them.

But you know what is said about plans and reality coming together. He had also planned for failures or misfires, and was reasonably prepared to either reroute, deflect or just deny-deny-deny and invoke diplomatic privilege till he was purpler in the face than his suit.

It worked for Trump, it could work for him. The nonexistent god on the imaginary cloud knew damn well how Americans and Canadians swallowed that depraved filth every day and still wanted more. Why should he give them any reasoning or justifications that were said differently?

This is what we are become

(The US National Anthem – with choir)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 9:00am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 6:00am

Wolenbahn Factory

Stanford, California, USA

There were several groups of people gathered in the parking lot of the much debated Wolenbahn Electronics International factory on the outskirts of the Stanford University Campus. Many had been here since 5:30am, freezing themselves in the rather chilly California morning that was hovering around 12ºC when they were all used to 30ºC or above averages in daytime. Yeppp, it was winter, folks, and not many people were happy about it, especially not this troupe, milling about uselessly.

The largest group was composed of a dozen FBI agents plus three supervisors who were guarding three prisoners; Cynthia Holt, J. S. Rand and Bishop Parsons, for transport to Sault-Saint-Mary. They had trials coming up under the newly declared authority, and their train tickets were for today.

The second largest group was the NCIS organization which had six agents and three supervisors to guard the two fake cops that tried to kidnap Lucas from the hospital, before treatment. They were headed the same place as the other three, and also had one-way tickets punched out.

The third group was of mixed Stanford University security guards, Stanford municipal Police and State Troopers totaling 6 officers and two supervisors who were guarding the badly injured SFPD captain that had tried to intimidate Lucas in his hospital bed during the victim interview. He was heading to SSM as well, to be made into a public example because the teen felt it was strategic at this point to do so. His execution would stun the populations, thus giving him the time to create a permanent judicial apparatus to investigate & prosecute fully the other cases. Since Lucas could guarantee by himself that this one was guilty, he had no qualms anymore about sentencing him. Especially after hearing what the man told his doctors and colleagues between his hospitalization and preventive incarceration.

The fourth group was four executives from the Stanford University board of administration who just wanted to suck up to their favorite juvenile genius to make certain he thought of them positively, and wanted to come back to them soon. Or at least take classes remotely and, specifically, that he continued to invest in his magnificent factory complex for future R&D partnerships with their school faculty.

The fifth group was a small contingent of seven media pros from different companies that had been warned by Wolenbahn's public relations department to be present for the revelations of events of great importance to the public of the USA at large. After being given insurances that it wasn't a commercial product launch or some inane self-mediatization by the young owner, a few networks sent a rep if one was free in the sector.

Neither the municipal or state governments had sent anybody, but that was expected, for now.

Hidden on the roof of a building two street away was a lone DXS agent with a digital camera and telescopic lens to zoom into the action as if he were a fly on the people's clothes. He had set two parabolic microphones, one at each end of the roof he occupied, to get the best sound possible over the whole area because the people were moving around a lot.

Invisibly, through hijacked security cameras in other buildings, were watching a bevvy of US Intelligence agencies that had been warned by Leon Vance as friends, or waken up by the heavily reported arrest of William Noyce, that this was an event to observe.

(- change perspective -)

In no group was there strife and anger like the NCIS delegation. The Special Supervisory Agent in official charge of the group was Henrietta Lange, come specially from Los Angeles to oversee the two interrogation sessions of the suspects by the local NCIS agents stationed in the San Francisco Bay offices. She had come in a large official SUV with Misters Deeks and Beale for the reason that she needed brains in this meeting, not brawn. The local office SSA had four men to guard the two shackled perps, so it was unlikely that her escorts would be needed as bodyguards. Instead, mister Beale was tasked with trying as many sweeps, scans and observations as he could manage of the Wolenbahn edifice, and any vehicles visible in the parking lot. This was of course to be focused on the railway convoy when it arrived. To the great astonishment of all agencies, NOBODY anywhere had seen anything about a private train dragged by an antiquated steam locomotive snaking its way around the American countryside in the last week, even if sources in Boston confirmed the machine had indeed left the Bramble Manor compound.

Then Hetty had almost had a conniption on the parking lot, in full view of all & sundry.

{ SQ } - { Black furred bitch } - { SQ }

(Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You)

Western America; 6:05am

At exactly the wrong moment for all plans and stratagems she had made contingencies for, Hetty beheld the arrival by another official NCIS sedan of her erstwhile boss, EAD-PAC Shay Mosley with a pair of rolling suitcases, a heavy carry-on satchel and her small shiny purse dangling from her shoulder over the thin decorative coat she wore on account of the seasonal chill.

Head held high and snobbish, Mosley gazed disdainfully at all the men assembled around her, seeing only a horde of muscular brutes whose only uses were unskilled labor, warfare and breeding a new batch of the same limited, crapulent male offal as they were. She had plans in her head, and as soon as she was installed correctly, she would recover her son from his father's cold corpse and begin the rise of her cult to the Black Moon Goddess, as the first 'Hele Matrone Nigra' of the faith.

Seeing who was present in the open air lot, Mosley repressed any further expressions of disdain or fury as she knew full well that Henrietta Lange had not been given the war-name 'Duchess of Deception' out of kindness from the KGB, Vietcong or Gestapo.

Likewise, she had always hated Marty Deeks because he was such a naive idealist that it was dangerous for the leaders of the world. He was too damned honest, too stupidly straight-backed, for her to manipulate his perceptions or reactions like she did others. Plus, just as with the LAPD whom he had betrayed crassly when he denounced the mafious cops in his station, he had never fully sided with NCIS, nor the OSP team itself, not even after a decade elapsed. Worse, he saw through almost all her verbal or emotional maneuvers, and that confirmed for her that he had no intents to switch his loyalties from either his fiancée Kensi Blye or Hetty Lange any time soon.

But the worse of the lot was Eric Beale. The smarmy weakling was barely fit to call a male, but his skillset and intuition on a computer made him even more dangerous than all the others because you would never know he was watching or aiming a weapon at you. He was a consummate coward, hiding behind codes, wires and drones or flesh peons to do his dirty deeds unchallenged. In her eyes, Beale was the archetype of the drunken white boy plantation boss; the useless gormless fool who sat back with his jug and whip while the poor black women broke their backs to earn his living for him. She dearly wanted to see him dead, even more because all her secretive plans were in jeopardy of discovery as long as he was sniffing around governmental databases like the real estate transaction registers or the California State Bureau of Business Licenses & Permits.

Her commercial land purchases in Lanai City (Hawaii), San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco (south California) plus all renovations, machinery and furnishings were done under aliases that served only to hold those property titles. They paid fake revenues received from fake clients who were illegal slush funds she had built from fake police seizures in the field, hijacked from diverse mafias accounts, or online frauds against rival agencies like the CIA or NSA. Because the stupid 'Alphabet Soup' in DC had so many slush funds hidden under false names in so many damned banks all over the planet, no human alive knew the complete inventory or balance of their patron agency anymore, let alone the overall mass worth. Those accounts were supposed to be burned along an infiltration ID when the case was resolved or bummed out, but deft sleight of hands with papers files and a few clicks on the screen to erase folders made things clean enough to deflect 95% of scrutiny.

But not for white, fur-less, tail-less rats like Bloody Eric Fucking Beale. Or for that incestuous progeny of a rabid cur and his mangy bitch, Lucas 'I am your master' Wolenczak. If only his imbecilic, inept father had managed to kill off the fucking little jew-boy properly, she wouldn't have to be here. That defective little turd-cake was exactly like Beale, but more precocious, not afraid of adults, and damnably more violent than the big wet noodle ever would get. And he had her by the gonads.

Shay had to dump her new luxury rental car after making it look like it had gotten jacked while she was at a drop with a confidential informant. In reality, she was parked on the side of the road with a newly filled thermal mug of coffee and new bottle of her favorite imported English gin to flavor said coffee when the email to contact Leon Vance had arrived. Given the hour of the day, Friday 28th of December just passed 22:00pm, she had called immediately as it was the MTAC number he had indicated. She got the rudest wake-up of her career in law-enforcement. In fact, in her 47 years of life, she hadn't been that pissed-off by a heaping heap of steaming hoopla like that one.

Constable – Governor of the North-American Mid-Line, as per the Treaty of 1940.

Then, after a measly fifteen minutes of introduction to this depravity to confirm it was real, the older man had sent her the video recording of the joint NCIS – DXS conference that was held in the boat-shed without her present to keep the idiots from acquiescing to the boy's spurious demands. But she wasn't there, and the cowards caved like a house of cards. She could tell that Leon Vance was not really on board, but Henrietta Lange and Mathilda Webber had almost automatically accepted the situation as if it were accomplished & settled Law in the USA. The barge-load of complete utter tosh spread around by the supposed intellectual blond bimbo Deeks had sealed the deal with the fool males around the room, and on screen in DC. The result was that she had drank the whole half-pint of gin raw, then in a drunken furor she had shot up the insides of the car like a madwoman let out of the asylum without meds or familial support.

Ergo, the car got jacked and sent to a chop-shop she knew of in Palo Alto, then she got into an Uber that got five times his fare in tip to not record her, or her destination at a cheap motel where she needed two days to sleep-off her drunken bender. It was the 30th of December in the evening when she got back to her originally chosen 5-star hotel to declare the car hijacked, order a new one, then eat a solid meal and have a luxurious bath with in-room spa treatment. Barely a single day later, on Monday 31st of December at bloody 17:00pm, right on the last day of 2018, and she got a phone call on her private burner phone, on a NCIS certified untraceable number, that showed she had been pinged despite the GPS chip being removed from the device.

It was Lucas Wolenczak himself. He forcibly pushed a set of dossiers into her work laptop, through the firewalls the techs in San Diego had installed, after remotely commanding the bloody useless machine to boot up despite that it was completely turned-off. The display of cybernetics mastery had so thoroughly shaken Mosley that she hadn't been stable when she saw the complete blueprints for each and every commercial building she was busy renovating to install her nascent sect and support crews of paid street thugs.

And that was when the ORDER to be present at Wolenbahn – Stanford appeared on her screen.

The bloody message refused to disappear or release her laptop back to her control until she entered the secret password she used to access the account to pay for her imported treats, like the gin.

And so she was here.

With Lange, Deeks and worse, Beale, without a damn thing to talk about, except maybe the fall of one admiral William Allard Boyd Noyce on this very 1st of January 2019. Now, that gesture had been a bombshell in her mind, as she saw the fully accomplished model of what she wanted to build be brought down in flames by the very same little, albino juden cockroach that ordered her to be present.

Food for thought indeed. Her plans were threatened, and the menace proffered was credible. She had no choice but to attend while showing publicly she was going willingly on a prolonged trip, and improvise as the road passed under them. Thankfully, the kid may have incredible technical means or abilities, but he was still just 14 years old. His in-person skills at interrogation, intimidation or whelming external leverages and forces would be limited. He would be banking heavily on that newfangled posting of his, and the capacity to write a warrant that someone else would then enforce for him. If she managed to show him how isolated he was, and just how denied by the vast majority of law enforcement agents his claims were, he should cave in easily enough, after some elbow grease had been spent on the long explanation to butter him up on both sides.

Mosley was saved from having to get out one of her fake personalities to accommodate Hetty and her stooges, or the other agency tools, as a loud air horn was heard from the street entrance of the parking lot. When she saw what was entering the private terrain, heading for them by the pass-through near the rear facade of the edifice, she almost vomited her meager early breakfast on her expensive, high heel stallion leather shoes bought yesterday morning, right then and there.

{ SQ } - { Harken peasants, the crown cometh } - { SQ }

(Star Wars – The Imperial March)

Western America; 6:15am

The small crowd was a bit surprised when a group of four vehicles turned around the corner of the Wolenbahn factory, speeding towards them alongside the rear of the tall, windowless building. The lead was a standard white Ford Mk-4 Transit all-services van, followed by a short black limousine of some sort, and the one vehicle that arrested all eyes of the people who saw the procession. In fact, most forgot about the fourth vehicle, another ordinary white van similar to the first.

What was obviously the conveyance of the most important person in the parking lot was an antique, a venerable piece of history that should be inside the climate controlled chambers of a museum of science, or warfare given whom it represented the most.

Even most people who couldn't identify the exact make or model had seen similar in old movies and documentaries about World War II enough times in their youth to have a subconscious feeling of unease slowly spread a chill down their spine.

The brick-brown color shining from a fresh wash & polish, the gleaming brass borders and details all around like the wheels' hub caps, external round headlamps, or the visible air horn, all came together to give that distinctly posh, aristocratic feel that only these glorious Old Ladies of the road could evoke. Nobody that ever rode or drove one ever truly enjoyed modern cars as much afterwards, and there were some pretty serious reasons for that.

The motorcade turned amongst the parking lot's concrete flowerbeds and electronic traffic signals to slowly halt about thirty feet away from the gathered crowd, thus giving their VIP and his escorts some time to climb out and present themselves fully, in the proper order. Once parked, the two vans let out their 8 militiamen apiece, followed by the grumbling lawyers who were bitching lowly about being cut off from Power and influence over the boy for the short trip. Finally, the Benz's paired passenger doors opened outwards from the middle, revealing that the doors were hinged near the driver and rearmost seat to allow maximal access to the interior for moving people or cargo.

First to get out was a young male, still a teenager, who wore the standard black ensemble of a house servant with a waistcoat bearing a silver & brass pattern over purple background. His short, crested brown hair, brown eyes and clear fair skin that screamed youthfulness seemed at odds with the dour, stern face he wore as he opened the doors to let out the other passengers.

The second to get out was an older adult male, white skinned, black hair, black eyes, visibly passed 50 years old due to the worn skin and tired, serious demeanor he maintained. His clothing was a normal steel gray 3-piece business suit in the North American style common for some 40 years.

It was the third passenger that got everybody to stop fidgeting and pay all the attention they could spare, and all the speculations to start up with vigor. The five feet tall form was the correct height for his age that they knew was 14, but he retained the much slighter build and leaner body type that always seemed to plague him, even when he was at his healthiest. What did grab the full focus of the more war-minded persons in the crowd were the visible weapons sheaths at his belt, the thick heavy steel cane, and the aristocratic, militaristic, dark purple & black suit he wore so naturally. The more subtle and thoughtful members of the small groups were, however, paying the most attention to his face, eyes and body language as he walked, since war-clothes and tools could be worn by harmless imbeciles.

What these veteran pros were reading off the boy sent chills down their backs a second time.

Shay Lynn Mosley saw, but refused to perceive beyond what her twisted dreams wanted.

The FBI agents were uncertain what to feel, but the supervisors saw a BOSS for real.

The mixed SFPD and State Troopers all stood straighter, knowing a true predator walked on their beat, and it wasn't to be called their 'their' turf anymore from now on. It was his. Especially as they had paid attention to the two full squads of heavily armed militia forming four blocks of four men to maximize contact defense and also attack or flanking capacities.

The NCIS agents were those closest to genuine military training or equipment on a daily basis, and what they saw made them stand straight, flight or fight reflexes triggering in many of the older, more senior field specialists. The Palo Alto office supervisor and Marty Deeks put their hands on their belts but slowly, clearly making exaggerated movements so that the bodyguards could understand they were doing their jobs of protecting their own boss. Eric Beale had to fight like a man possessed against his instinct to flee and hide under one of the concrete benches, or behind one of the tool trucks parked between client calls for repair services. The man's green eyes were wide with raw fear as he saw things in the short moment the young teenager dressed in purple walked by towards them that would haunt him in months to come. All the war movies, documentaries, the simulation games of tanks, planes or infantry in the trenches, and above all, what he saw in the boy's eyes, hidden partially behind those colored glasses perched on his nose. Henrietta Lange pursed her lips tightly to keep from screaming in both frustration and despondency. For nigh on six decades she had fought with hands, feet and teeth to keep humanity from descending into the maelstrom of World War, barbarity and monstrosity such as the two Great Wars, and following Cold War, had inflicted upon the planet. It was visible to the naked eyes of even amateurs that her generation had failed. Those who claimed to be 'The Free World' or its vaunted leaders had in fact debased themselves to the point of willingly becoming like their accursed enemies in order not only to win, but to barely eke out survival, because they were in fact insufficient.

The Wars they waged, all of them, were lost.

Peace was a pipe dream enjoyed by junkies and neophytes who were elected on beauty and popularity alone, like Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, or Marine Le Pen and Boris Johnson. Peace was a shiny, miraculous relic created by feverish minds in a long-gone Era, whence to wage war on the neighbor you had only the summer months to waste, because otherwise your soldiers were in their family's fields, bringing in the grains & meats that fed your people in their homes to survive winter. Peace was when it took almost half a year of hard travel by foot or beast-drawn carts to reach your enemy's home, your troops so reduced by predators, diseases, crimes and desertions that you barely had enough left to spit at the walls, let alone do a siege, before turning back in shame at your abject failure. Even the usage of sail ships had not made warfare any easier, nor more practical, thus insuring that only a few fools truly tried it repeatedly, until they lost the lottery and 'Peace' was had again, until the next fool.

Hetty saw what only a precious handful of others would ever see.

She saw the proof that Adolph Hitler and his Nazi cult were right; in the end of things, their faith and creed may be defeated as fake, or discarded as obsolete, but their innovative, superior sciences, technologies, know-how, methods of industry and warfare would be adapted by their own enemies, or else these would die one by one because they had remained inferior. For all they had preached in public, for all the outrage over the camps, for all their disdain of the Nazi Kultur and attempts to 'De-Nazify' Germany and the Allies' member nations, the American-led effort had failed lamentably.

Operation 'Paper-Clip' had been the first symptom they saw in the USA, even if it was buried under military classification for decades. The English, French, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Holland, and many others, all took in as many living Nazi scientists as they could lay hands on, before the USA or Russia got them. Others, however, preferred low-life sadists like Otto Skorzeny, founder of the Nazi's elite commando group 'Werewolves' that served as model for all future insurgencies and partisan guerrillas in the decades since. Others of similar nature, but less daring or shy of public notoriety, found their ways into hospitals, engineering offices, and academics where the governments of the time were not prone to look for them as these were far removed from sensible military targets.

That had been a fatal mistake, as had been denying for decades since 1900 that there was any racism or sympathies for Nazism inside America, Canada, England or France. The multiple movances in favor of Eugenics, racial segregationism, and 'Natural Order Laws' should have been enough warning flares, if not for the prurient background of superstition maintained by christian sects of all sorts. The fact that several of the most revered political or judicial figures in Northern America were all white, anglo-saxonic, and openly avowed racist, misogynist, pious devotees of the ecclesiastes sealed the deal for the common men in the streets.

Hetty wondered if her country had ever had a chance at all, given how it had contracted the fatal disease at the same time, or even before, the Germans of 1918 had been exposed to the shame, fury and despondency of losing that war to what were advertised as cheaters backed by occult Jewish magicks.

She doubted anybody would ever have the truth of it. And she doubted that the coming years would be any better, since the grass-roots movances that bore Team Trump to the White House were shedding their weakest, less fanatical members, to pick up instead far more radicalized fringe dwellers and conspiracy theorists in greater numbers than what they lost. This population trend was seen all over the planet, in multiple cultural basins that were not traditionally split between right & left, or religious & secular, as it was in America or Europe for the last 7 decades.

Lucas Wolenczak took the time to salute the leaders of each group, and pointedly ignore the prisoners despite that each tried to scream at him, or like the DCFS reject, attempted to spew false legalese diatribes to connive him into believing they had authority and ascendant over his life, belongings and decisions.

After a short tour, and taking the time to exchange a few sarcastic greetings in German with Henrietta Lange and her techie Eric Beale, he settled himself to wait indolently for his private train to arrive.

He didn't need to wait long.

{ SQ } - { The slow, ponderous march of progress } - { SQ }

(Two Steps From Hell – First Contact, with vocals)

Western America; 6:25am

The loud, tinny bell was heard from several blocks around, followed by the loud blasts of air horn that reached a good mile around as it blared out a challenge to all that stood in its path. A great single eye of pure white light became visible as the train convoy turned around the corner of the building, great clouds of white steam belching out from the top and sides as the engineers retrograded the gears to shift from cruising speed to slow, pure pulling force to park the brick-brown metallic snake in its planned parking spot on the open lot. The train did not turn into the building's vehicle berth, nor into the heavy delivery line, just in front of the truck docks. Instead, the convoy passed along the outside lane of the terrain, turning along the farthest limit to then turn again at the last extremity to come back so that they had wrapped around the entire factory lot, encasing everything in armored, embattled rolling steel.

The railway convoy was a steam-powered nightmare come alive for all who saw it.

First came the ram-tank wagon; low profiled at ½ the height of the other cars, this one had a protuberant 'V' shaped bulldozer blade in front that covered most of its face, surmounted by one great head-light, and the massive flat battle tank turret bearing a 105mm howitzer main gun, with coaxial 25mm auto-cannon and flame thrower. Under each of the conventional guns were three matching pipes of unknown usage. The turret also had some smoke grenade launchers angled on the front face, directable search light & sensor arrays, plus a hatch on top. The car had two sponsons for light gunnery on each long side, the flat dorsal surface had a single large cargo hatch behind the turret's base, and armored personnel doors at the rear and on each side.

Secondly came the motor-group; two back-to-back modern steam-engineering locomotives separated by the tender wagon which was of equal size and mass as the movers. These motors were encased in slope-sided armored panels with a rounded roof to deflect explosions, shells, bombs and debris to keep the mechanical systems safe and operational. There was an obvious walkway between the hull and the machines as evidenced by the spaced out horizontal murder slits, optimized for shooting guns on the level or lower to defend against proximity saboteurs. The armored panels had clearly identifiable reinforced integral hinges to move access covers for repairs, thus allowing the axles, pistons and entire under-carriage assembly to be shielded from lateral attacks.

The joints between all wagons in the convoy were composed of solid rectangular metal frames of two different sizes to create armored accordions that protected the crew when they switched cars under enemy fire, hostile climates or in motion on the tracks.

Then came the first Flak Wagon; somewhat similar to the ram-tank, it was at ¾ height on the sides but full size in the middle where the passageway was located. This model of car had two massive turrets carrying a main gun of 105mm, two 25mm flak guns with cradled, gyro-stabilized, 15 foot barrels for extra accuracy when targeting high altitudes. Under the regular cannons were another set of three barrels exactly similar to those above, but not specified what they were from outside. All guns had mechanized articulated flaps to keep them clean against the weather when not fighting. The two turrets also had a top hatch with a pintle mount for portable gun, and directable search-light & sensor arrays. The wagon's body had four sponsons for light gunnery on each long side, to defend against close saboteurs. There was a cargo doorway on the middle of each long side and cargo hatch at mid-roof.

Then came the Militia Group; M-Dormitory, M-Salon, Field Clinic and another M-Dormitory. All built on the same basic caisson & outside specifications. Sloped armored panels with rounded roof, hinged skirts that protect the axle assemblies and under-carriage, four sponsons on each long side to repel close saboteurs. Any other systems on the roof or inside were just not visible, but there was a large cargo door on the middle of each wagon, and the flex-joints at each end to access other cars.

Then was the dreadful Prison Wagon; a completely enclosed wheeled box with sloped armored panels, hinged skirts, rounded roof and absolutely not a protuberance, hole or window to be seen. In fact, other than a small part of the metal wheels' curve underneath and the flex joints at each end, there was nothing to be had by looking at the damned thing.

Then were three general supplies cargo boxes; built as the general virgin caisson that served as base for the dormitory, salon and clinic cars, this model had the same visual elements except it was partitioned to keep the cargo in the middle so the shooting sponsons on the sides were always accessible. This had the further advantage of putting extra vertical solidity against torsion in the cars, and supplemental armor between the cargo and lateral attacks. Besides the cargo door and four sponsons on the side, nothing else was discernible.

Then was the Executive wagons; E-Salon, E-Offices and E-Sleeper; from the outside, they were distinct only by the lack of sponsons. Instead, there was on the long side a cargo door in the middle and four small windows left & right of it, spaced out along the length of the wagon. These windows had armored shutters that slid down over them in combat. Otherwise, these cars were similar to the others.

Then came the middle Flak Wagon.

Then came the Combat Information Center, Tech salon and Tech sleeper; almost exact copies of the Executive cars, except with a plethora of antennae & sensors on the roof and side sponsons of the CIC.

Then came the CG Cabinet, CG Salon/cabin and CG staff carriage; Similar in visuals to the Executive cars, but the CG cabinet had as many antennae as the CIC, without sponsons as there were eight small windows on the sides instead.

Then came three more general supplies cargo boxes.

Then came another Flak Wagon.

Then came the second Militia Group wagons; exactly the same as those in front.

Then came another Flak Wagon.

Then came three more general supplies cargo boxes.

Then came the three Workshops & Engineering cars; based on the generic cargo boxes but with four small windows left & right of the middle cargo door instead of sponsons. No other visible cues.

Then came another Flak Wagon.

Then came three extra wide Flat sided & roofed Garage cars; empty armored boxes that can lift up their entire side panel in lieu of extra-wide cargo doors to pass vehicles or 50 foot ISO modules.

Then came the last Flak Wagon.

Then came another locomotive group; same as in front.

Then closed the convoy another ram-tank wagon, facing towards the rear.

(Two Steps From Hell – Star Sky)

Western America; 6:40am

All the mouths were gaping low, even the old war-worn veteran. Cynthia Holt was in shock, unable to react anymore. The male prisoners were babbling incoherently about rebellious boys and inhuman Jew magicks that Jesus forbade, but nobody paid them any heed. Hetty was almost shaking inside her pristine, expensive suit and jewelry, whilst Mosley was for the first time reconsidering if there was a way to dodge out of town before the kid finally decided to acknowledge her existence, after ignoring her since he arrived.

The media had been a mite surprised when Lucas arrived, but most thought it was in fact a publicity stunt to unveil a new video game, or the kid genius joining some weird sectarian movement. That was clearly not the case when they considered the number of FBI, NCIS and local cops holding prisoners for transport elsewhere. And now the transport in question had arrived.

The question was now; which level of which Hell were they being taken to?

{ SQ } - { PREVIEW ch.13 } - { SQ }

Yeah, the traitors, backstabbers and fanatics are getting harvested at high speed as that was the lesson of the Blitzkrieg; strike while the enemy is not only unprepared, but in fact unaware, and you will most certainly win inside a single decisive incursion.

Aboard the train, Lucas puts in place his first truly 'Black' operation, much to the eternal regrets of several thousand people who will never see it coming. The strongest weapon is the one who can't see arrive so you can't parry, deflect or dodge in time to survive the impact. That, and biochemists are the worst kind of enemy to have, since they never fight cleanly or fairly.

As the Federal agencies of America still reel from the public spectacle the entrance of The Briary convoy made in Stanford, the rest of the continent slowly awakens to breakfast hour newscasts that will reshape the face of US, Canadian and Mexican society.

An emergency recall of Overwatch to the DXS central building was sent out. But by whom? Matty Webber doesn't know, and James MacGyver finds himself reunited with his 26 year old son in the most detrimental way possible, for himself and the agency as a whole.

Leon Vance receives an e-dossier about Mosley's activities in Hawaii's Lanai Island and South California to build sectarian redoubts. The files contain proof the entire compounds have been denounced to local FBI field offices and are being sieged & invested as he reads the documents, a major inter-agency investigation beginning. The good news is: Lucas Wolenczak sent him the files. The bad news is: as CG he has already declared the operation to be seditious & treasonous as proven in the dossier, thus emitted a Writ of Judicial Seizure, with Shay Mosley condemned 'In Effigia Ex Corpus' as she supposedly fled out of the US when they tried to arrest her on the train.

Several parties still disbelieving that William Noyce could be fallen permanently try to whelm support to obtain his release & Pardon by Washington, only to hit closed doors everywhere. That may be because an emergency video conference between DC, Ottawa and Mexico City is in progress, to try and understand what the bloody blue blazes is happening in their backyard.