Page 37 - Unlikely Stories 5

The Robert N. Hood Foundation

suggestion of subservience suddenly erased. He went swiftly to the
computer on Hood’s desk and attempted to access it.
“Damn!” He muttered. “Must have changed the password just
before he left. No matter: I’ll just put the Omniphage where the sun
doesn’t shine.”
He opened the false back of his tester’s phone. Inside was a small
black microchip. He shut down the computer and disconnected the
power, then began unscrewing the device’s cover. Suddenly the room
went dark. Sensing the occurrence was not a random power outage
he dropped behind the desk and groped for the panic button on the
hidden transmitter in his belt. As he pressed it he heard a door open
and close a few feet away. He froze and held his breath, training
taking over normal responses. But something was glowing: his right
palm. Too late he realized the executive’s doorknob had been coated
with a luminescent dye: a powerful blow to the head knocked him
sprawling, unconscious.
His disturbing dream was interrupted by a disagreeable dose of
ammonium carbonate, slamming his senses back to awareness. He
blinked. The lights were on. He was immobilized in a chair, hands
tied behind its back, still in Hood’s office. The executive was nodding
to a massive redheaded man in a security officer’s uniform; the latter
had been administering the smelling salts.
“That’s enough, Firetruck. Mr. Gisbourne is, for the moment,
sufficiently cognizant of his condition.”
The captive recoiled to the limits of his bonds. “You—you know
me?” Reverberations of the temporal judo chop continued,
aftershocks disarraying his mind. Or was something else buzzing in
his brain?
“Certainly,” replied his captor. “Guy Gisbourne: special
investigator employed for the past two years by the Argus
Corporation, primarily to build up enough evidence to bring down
the most successful gang of identity thieves in history. The rest of
your résumé is known to us, as well: a revolving door has transported
you between the shadowy worlds of unofficial espionage and its
barely-sanctioned counterpart, a series of dirty jobs not worthy of the
title ‘intelligence.’ A higher court would long ago have convicted you
of murder.”

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