Chapter 10

A soft knock snapped Chad out of the mental block out he had been in.

"Martha, I thought I said I didn't want to be bothered" Chad said keeping his anger in check.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cooper" said a male voice. "It's Alfredo Leon. I'm here about the inheritance papers. We had an appointment, remember?"

Damn! He'd forgotten.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Leon. I thought it was my maid. Of course, come in" Chad said.

The door opened and a dark skinned man made his way in holding an expensive suitcase.

He looked Hispanic but Chad had figured that one out just by the name.

He looked about forty with a few very scattered white hairs.

He had to be at least six feet, I mean, the man was like really tall and muscular.

Chad wondered he had time for working out being a lawyer and all.

He'd imagined he'd be fat.

Chad took a moment to look at himself.

He hadn't worked out in forever.

What if this time it worked?

He didn't wanna look all weak and skinny.

He better spend some time working out from now on.

He wanted to look his best for when Sonny saw him.

The thought warmed his heart.

By now they were sitting at Chad's desk and Leon was taking out what seemed like a whole lot of papers.

Damn!

Chad hoped he didn't have to sign everyone of them.

He shivered at the thought.

"So, we got some stuff to discuss" said the Leon.

"Well, let's get started" said Chad wanting it to be over with.

"First of all, I would like to tell you something, not as Mr. Alsthom's lawyer, but as someone who is worried about what will become of us all if you pursue Mr Alsthom's crazy idea of time traveling" Leon said.

Chad's eyes opened as wide as they could.

"You know?!?!?!" he asked.

"Yes" he nodded. "In fact, I was the one to convince Ivan not to follow with his research"

Chad swallowed hard.

Well, he sure as hell hadn't been expecting that bomb.

"Alright" Chad said slowly as if motioning him to go on.

"Don't do this. It can lead to no good" he advised.

"I know. I know the consequences of something like that. It'd be total chaos" Chad said trying to sound as reassuring as he could.

Leon nodded again.

"You are a wise young man"

"Thank you, sir" Chad said with a smile.

And you are some stupid man Chad thought laughing to himself.

"The government knows, too" he said as if for a last threat.

Well, that complicates things. I'll have to be extra careful.

"They don't have to worry about anything. I've already disposed of all the research to make sure there no future mistakes" Chad lied.

Why, they were standing only a few feet away.

Locked away, of course.

Damn, Chad thought, I am either a very good liar or he's real stupid. I can't believe he's buying all this crap. Right, like I'd just burn away something like that.

Leon exhaled deeply.

"Good, then. Let's get down to business"

. . .

Well, that took long enough.

The sun was setting behind the skyline.

Chad had learned from the lawyer that according to the doctors the heart attack had been due to a careless diet.

Apparently, Ivan wasn't much for healthy stuff and pretty much all he'd swallowed in the past couple of decades had been overcharged with either sugar or fat.

He hadn't turned into a cow thanks to his fat metabolism but even that hadn't saved him from the diabetes he'd acquired five years ago but hadn't known about thanks to his trust in, what he thought, had been a superhuman body and hadn't even been to the doctor for almost a decade.

They were even surprised he'd survived a such an imprudent amount of sugar and fat during five years of diabetes.

He also learned from the lawyer that there was a house, not too big, in the middle of no where, up some mountain in Washington State.

He hadn't visited in years and no one knew in what conditions exactly it was.

He'd spent couple of years up there which seemed weird to Leon that he would have lived there what with so many other mansions to live in.

But I van was no fool.

And Chad knew exactly what had gone on in there.

Ivan knew the government wouldn't have been happy about a certain project he had in mind.

And so he planned to keep it secret.

And not five minutes after Leon had left Chad was on the phone planning for a private jet to pick Sonny and him up the next day early in the morning.

A jet to Washington State.

. . .

Chad looked out the window after a long sleep.

Outside stood the most beautiful landscape he'd ever seen.

Miles and miles of green forest ran for as far as his eyes could see.

It was breathtaking.

The plane left them at a little airport where a taxi waited for them.

He'd had to pay the taxi A LOT for it to agree to come all this way.

It took him up hills through a little

"highway" (more like a dirt road) as an ambulance behind them carried Sonny with all the required equipment she needed for survival.

Yeah, that had cost a fortune, too.

Halfway up it started raining.

According to the taxi driver it rained most days around there.

The house was just a couple miles off the highway through a little road that (OK, this one was literally a dirt road) led to it only.

"At least you can't complain about the neighbors" the driver laughed sarcastically.

"Um, where is the nearest civilization around here?" asked Chad.

He was happy that no one would bother to see if he did any government prohibited researches up there but he would need supplies all the time.

Bringing them up there would cost immensely.

"Nearest group of people you'll find is a neat town called Colville" he said. "Not to be nosy, sir, but why would you get yourself a house all the way up here? I mean, this is literally the middle of nowhere. Real jungle"

"I wonder the same thing" Chad said as he looked out the window taking in the surroundings.

"Excuse me?" asked the driver.

"Oh, I didn't buy it. I inherited it" Chad cleared up. "I guess I could've sold it but then who would buy it? I mean, this house was requested to be built specifically here, you know?"

"But why are you moving into it?"

"OK, now you're being nosy" Chad said.

"Sorry" the driver said as he tightened his grip on the wheeled and turned his eyes back to the "road".

They drove on silently for the rest of the way.

They turned up a turn in the road and Chad's eyes sighted a two-story house that surprisingly had a very sophisticated look on it although it was obvious no one had lived there for years.

He would need to have it cleaned up.

After Sonny was set up on the master bedroom and Chad's things were taken to the room closest to it all the people were dismissed.

Chad opened his phone and, to his great disappointment, he had no signal.

Well, of course. I'm in the middle of nowhere.

He ran down stairs looking for a house phone.

He found one in the dinning room.

He picked it up.

It worked.

He started walking around the house but somehow it had looked larger from the outside.

Odd.

He walked in a door to find a library that was both stories high without interruption making the roof extremely tall.

It was dusty.

He let his hand caress a big desk in the middle of it.

There were still books open over it.

He opened a drawer and found a key.

"Key?" he asked out loud.

He started looking around.

There was a curtain that unlike the rest wasn't covering a window.

He went over to it.

A door?

He looked at the key in his hand.

He tried it and it fit.

He walked in and found a huge lab.

So here is the rest of the house.

Chad chuckled.

He studied it cautiously.

There was a little box with the buttons you would find on a telephone.

Only it wasn't a telephone.

He ran to where his bags were.

He looked through them until he found the big blue binder.

It's gotta be somewhere in here.

He looked through pages but saw nothing that stood out as some secret password.

All of it was in black ink until there was a number three in red.

It was part of an equation and nothing else but it was odd.

As he looked through more pages he found seven more but in different colors.

He took the heavy material down stairs in seconds.

He typed in the number in the order he found it but there was a long beep that Chad took to be a sign that that was the wrong number.

There had to be some kind of hidden something in those numbers.

Different Colors.

A flash of the painting of Isaac Newton Ivan had in his study...

Why had he thought of it?

He felt like there was a connection but he was missing it.

The rainbow!

He quickly rearranged the numbers by the colors of the visible spectrum- the rainbow.

There was a short beep and he heard the sounds of several hidden from sight equipment come to life.

The bookcase to his left moved aside revealing a door that opened in half automatically like one of...

An elevator!

Chad waked in but didn't find the screen with the numbers to choose the floor you were going to.

Of course.

Typical.

He heard a voice overhead.

"Please say your password out loud"

"Damn it! More passwords?!?!?!" Chad asked looking up.

"Wrong password. Please try again"

"Ha ha. Funny" Chad said.

"That is incorrect. Please try again"

The first thing he would take care of was getting rid of the elevator password thingy.

As soon as he figured it out, of course.

OK, so there must be some connection between the first password and this one but it can't be the same thing or else they wouldn't ask it again.

"Visible Spectrum"

"Wrong password. Please try again"

3 hours later...

"Marcia" Chad said almost automatically.

That had been Ivan's date to prom.

"Wrong password. Please try again"

Apparently the first password hadn't been related to the second.

He'd tried everything.

Ivan loved cars.

"Car"

"Wrong password. Please try again"

"Porsche"

"Wrong password. Please try again"

"Ferrari"

"Wrong password. Please try again"

"Chad! Think!" he yelled at himself.

"Wrong password. Please try again"

"And you shut the hell up!"

"Wrong password. Please try again"

Sigh.

Why couldn't you have done this in your Venice house where there are no passwords??? Chad thought.

Venice is in Italy. Ferraris are Italian. Marcia was Italian.

"Italy!" Chad yelled.

"Access granted"

"Damn it, Ivan! Why didn't you pick something more random? Like maybe Strawberry Shortcake or something like that?" Chad asked sarcastically.

But the elevator went down, not up.

And the doors opened to show a larger lab and in the middle there was something that looked like a walk in closet.

"Time machine..." Chad said breathless.

"Yeah... 42% my butt!This freaking thing is almost done!" Chad yelled as he stared wide eyed.