Prisoner of Glass Read online

  Contents

  PRISONER OF GLASS

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One: Departure

  Two: Arrival

  Three: First Iteration

  Four: The Arboretum

  Five: The Order of the Black Dove

  Six: The Vizier

  Seven: Second Iteration

  Eight: Into The Panopticon

  Nine: Sanctuary

  Ten: Third Iteration

  Eleven: On The Road

  About The Author

  PRISONER OF GLASS

  By Mark Jeffrey

  @markjeffrey

  http://markjeffrey.net

  © 2014 Mark Jeffrey. All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Mark Jeffrey

  All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Mark Jeffrey

  Follow Mark Jeffrey on Twitter: @markjeffrey

  More information: http://markjeffrey.net

  First Edition

  Also by Mark Jeffrey:

  Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant (Harper Collins, 2011)

  Max Quick: The Two Travelers (2012)

  Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (2013)

  Armand Ptolemy and the Golden Aleph (2011)

  Age of Aether (2012)

  Bitcoin Explained Simply: An Easy Guide To The Basics That Anyone Can Understand (2014)

  This book is dedicated to Theo, our Persian cat.

  Theo likes to watch as I write. Sometimes, he crawls up on my arm.

  He sits there, purring, demanding that I pay attention to him. Oh, he’s doing it now.

  Pretty soon I won’t be able to alklkjh;[]fdsaiuw;;slkhlkjlkha;ih a;lkh kujlgkjakjfh1515151515151

  ONE: DEPARATURE

  “OOOH, that one,” said LAX TSA Agent Fenton Samuels, eying the line of travelers. “Let’s do it to her.”

  “Wow, yeah. Will you look at those things? Wherever she goes, they arrive like a half hour before she does.” Fenton’s co-worker, Agent Danny Trenton snickered like an adolescent, mesmerized by the woman’s not-insignificant assets.

  They were deciding who they were going to pull out of the line for extra screening. They had a quota to meet, after all. Might as well make the best of it.

  “No, wait,” Samuels whispered excitedly, tugging Danny’s sleeve. “Not her. That one. Check out the tall one.”

  Danny turned his gaze, not expecting to see much that interested him. But then his eyes landed on an almost freakishly slender and tall woman. She was easily six foot five, possibly even more. She looked Nordic: with high, sharp cheekbones, and moon-blue eyes, big as saucers, glancing this way and that from beneath a bob of straight, black hair. It framed her face with Betty Page bangs, and curled around the sides of her head.

  She swept into line, her unbuttoned long coat twirling behind her like a cape, everything about her just so.

  “Oh, wait. That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “I think she’s missing a pinky.”

  Danny squinted. As if on cue, the woman raised her hand to brush an errant strand from her eyes. It was true. “Oooh. Yeah. That is weird. A nine-fingered Nina.”

  “Still puts the B in Boom for me,” Samuels judged. “And she’s rich.”

  “Yeah. You can tell,” Danny agreed. The woman was non-plussed; she was not troubled by anything. “She has bitchy resting face. Richy-bitchy face.” Danny squished his face into a snarl. She pissed off the diminutive Danny by simply existing. This woman was the kind of person who just slide-glided through life: some arrogant, elegant, overly-tall faery without a worry in the world.

  Well. He was going to fix that.

  DOCTOR ELSPETH LUNE was worried, however. Very worried. She just didn’t let it show. Her clinical and practiced exterior was a mask. She projected serenity in the emergency room — as well as the real world.

  Her husband, Oscar Cyrus, had been missing for a week now. He had gone to the Arizona desert for business — and had never returned. Elspeth was on her way there now to meet with the Nogales police — who seemed to be exactly zero help and know exactly nothing. In fact, they were rather nonchalant about the whole thing, actually, which really pissed her off. They had their hands full, they said, what with the Mexican gangs infesting many of the border towns. It was a war there, a real war with bullets and bodies: a missing person was small potatoes. Here, fill out these forms, we’ll email you when we have something. There’s also an app you can download that will —

  Bullshit! She was going there in person to raise the noise level, to intimidate them. She was good at that. Oh, she didn’t have to scream. Should could just loom. Everyone noticed her immediately. By virtue of her height, her simple presence was always turned up to eleven.

  She couldn’t help that. So she might as well use it.

  The TSA line at LAX was intolerable as usual. Bored and twitching, she was about to call her mother for the third time that evening when she noticed something very odd.

  A man in a suit was browsing the newspaper rack. There was nothing odd about that, of course. But this man was bald, and his entire head was covered in white paint. Written over the top of this paint were hieroglyphics, as if his body were the inside of an Egyptian tomb. The writing covered even his eyelids, such that when he blinked, a complete text was formed.

  His hands were the same way.

  When Elspeth looked at him, startled by his incongruous appearance, he seemed to feel it. He glanced up, and his eyes sizzled her soul.

  Then he smiled ever so slightly — and made a beeline right for her.

  What the hell?

  He nodded at the giant glass window of the airport. A plane was just leaving the gate, taxiing out to the runway. It was small against the expanse of sky filled with a setting sun and clouds: an orange flame on cotton candy. “That plane will not fly.”

  “Excuse me?” Elspeth said, taken aback. Little man. Little weird annoying man who painted himself for attention. Oooh look at me! I’m interesting! She didn’t have time for this.

  But the man continued: “Here’s a kiss from the Dolphin Queen: Heavier-than-air flying machines cannot fly. They never could. The plane will crash and people will die.”

  Ice sucked the warmth from her heart at that. Crash? Die? Saving lives was her thing. She didn’t want to hear about people dying, and she would do anything to prevent it.

  “What did you say?” Elspeth exhaled the sentence, not realizing she had been holding her breath.

  “The plane will not lift. It cannot.” She could see the hieroglyphs covering him more intimately now. The makeup and paint job were exquisite, exact, precise. He looked like he was made of marble, and little black glyphs of india ink were etched with molecule-thin precision upon him. “It never could,” he added to no one in particular.

  The man turned then and meandered off, whistling tunelessly.

  Feeling suddenly vulnerable, and realizing this man may have just threatened to blow up a plane, Elspeth made her way to the front of the TSA line. She pushed and excused-me’d. Whenever someone turned around with an annoyed face and found themselves staring into her chest, their surprised gaze immediately jerked up to her eyes — and their expression changed immediately to deference.

  She ignored them and reached the front.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Agent Danny Trenton. “Hi. Yes. Hello, sir. Listen. Something weird just happened. See that guy over there?” She pointed. He hadn’t gone far, and was now looking at more newspapers. “Th
e one painted all white with the writing all over his head? He just came up to me and said something about a flight exploding and killing people.”

  Agent Trenton stared wordlessly, confused. It was her! This wasn’t at all what he had expected. In fact, this sort of ruined his whole plan. She wasn’t supposed to approach him!

  Finally, he asked, “Did he say which plane, ma’am?”

  “Yes. The San Francisco flight right there, the one just leaving the gate.” She pointed a long, manicured yet bony finger at the runway. Dear God, the plane was already out there —! It would take off soon.

  Agent Trenton glanced around. “Which man, did you say ma’am?”

  “That guy, the one right there, there. In the suit, with all the weird stuff on his —” But now he wasn’t there. “He was right there. Did you see him?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not. Listen. Could you come with me?”

  “Yes — yes of course. Certainly.”

  Agent Trenton led Elspeth off to the side where the TSA extra screening booths were. Trenton whistled to Samuels, who joined them presently.

  “Now ma’am … you say this man threatened to blow up the plane. Is that correct? You know that’s a serious accusation, and that even joking about something like that is a crime punishable by —”

  “Yes! Yes, of course I know that,” Elspeth said. “Listen. I think this guy was serious.” She saw the painted man’s cold gaze in her mind’s eye. He was something more than crazy. No. He was sane, determined, sure of himself. He had a raw, primitive presence. He had reminded Elspeth of a shaman or something, and it wasn’t just the face paint. “I think he’s done something to that San Francisco flight. I think you ought to check it out.”

  “Okay, Ma’am. We will. Let us do our job. Can you wait right here?”

  “Well I’ve got my own flight to catch. I’m going to Arizona. I have some time but —”

  “This will only take a moment.” She nodded.

  Samuels and Trenton left the vicinity. She saw one of them get on a walkie while the other made a phone call.

  Nervously, she glanced at the tarmac. The San Francisco flight was just starting down the runway —!

  “WHAT DO you think?” Danny asked Samuels.

  Neither of them had really done anything about Elspeth’s warning. They had just pretended to talk into the phone and the walkie.

  “I think she’s a bit of a loon.”

  “Yeah. A bitchy-bitch-faced loon. She pointed out some guy, said he was painted up or something: the guy looked totally normal to me.”

  “So she’s an unreliable witness?”

  “I’d say so. Nobody’d believe her.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah.”

  Samuels smiled. “Well this one’s yours, Danny. You’ve earned it.”

  Danny grinned like a ghoul. “I’ll set it up.”

  THE PLANE bound for San Francisco sped along the runway. Elspeth gasped, her heart leaping in her chest. She hoped she was wrong about this.

  Nothing seemed unusual at first. But it was not lifting off, was not, was not, was not …

  It should be by now, shouldn’t it? Hadn’t the other planes at about the same spot?

  Maybe it was a heavier model, took longer, or something. Maybe it …

  But it didn’t. The end of the runway came and went and still it didn’t. It just kept going at a breakneck speed, engine screaming and howling along. The sound it made was unnatural, strained. The pilot evidently realized his only chance was to speed up. Speed would increase lift. He couldn’t understand why it didn’t — impossible that it didn’t —!

  The plane rampaged through the chain link fence and across the roads and storage tanks. Fire erupted from everything it touched. When the plane plowed through several homes and finally came to rest on the bike path on the beach near Scattergood Station, it erupted into a detonation of jet fuel, twisted and wracked aluminum, and plumes of acrid fire.

  Elspeth heard the explosion and saw the bubbling, inky smoke gushing up from the horizon. She cried in alarm.

  The painted man appeared once more. He was before her, and this time, he was not smiling. He simply said, “I told you. Heavier than air flying machines cannot fly. They never could.”

  And then, he was gone.

  AGENTS DANNY TRENTON and Fenton Samuels grabbed Doctor Elspeth Lune gruffly and dragged her into the TSA’s back rooms. She was too shocked to think, to react, to resist. First, her husband goes missing and then this —!

  They put her in a chair, locked the room and left.

  “What do we do?” Danny asked in a panic. “That chick — Jesus! She knew!”

  “We escalate. Just like we were trained.”

  “But what about —”

  “What about what? We didn’t doing anything. She came to us, remember?”

  “But we were going to —”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t. We’re good, bro. Make the call.”

  Danny nodded, finally calming down. Samuels was right. They hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just about to make the call when the flickering fluorescent hallway was filled with a mob of police and Homeland Security people. They flipped their badges up at Danny. “Where is she?” one of them yelled at him.

  Danny pointed in panic to the room holding Elspeth. “There! She’s in there! Room 6-A.”

  They barely acknowledged Danny as they sped by.

  He didn’t have time to realize that these people shouldn’t be here: he hadn’t told anyone that he’d detained a suspect.

  THE DOOR BURST open, and Elspeth jumped in alarm, shattering her usual calm demeanor. In poured five men and two women, all dressed in dark business suits. All were fit and clean cut. Two more men posted guard outside the door as it was shut.

  “Elspeth Lune,” one of the men said without preamble. “Do you love your country, Miss Lune? You’re an American citizen, right?”

  She nodded. Of course she did. Of course she was.

  “And are you now, or have you ever been, associated with any terrorist organization?”

  She shook her head mutely, the impossible just now dawning on her. “N - no. Of course not. Do you think I had something to do with —”

  “What do you know about the bombing of Flight 1515 bound for San Francisco?”

  “Me? Nothing! I tried to warn these guys about it!”

  “But how did you know it was about to happen?”

  Elspeth looked at them mutely.

  “Miss Lune. How did you know that the plane was about to explode?”

  She snapped into focus. “There was this man. He told me. He said the plane was going to crash. I tried to report it — ask those guys, those TSA guys who brought me in! They’re just outside the door.”

  The Homeland Security people looked at each other doubtfully.

  But this gave Elspeth the fractional seconds she needed to fully recover her self-possession. She was used to emergencies: she was a Doctor. “Listen,” she snapped. “I had nothing to do with this. Ask those TSA guys, they’ll tell you I tried to help. Am I free to go?”

  The Homeland people didn’t answer.

  “Am I being detained? Am I free to go?” she repeated.

  “Miss Lune. We’re conducting an —”

  “I would like to leave. Am I free to go? I am not here voluntarily. Am I being detained?” She knew enough about the law to realize must most people don’t: that you are free to go unless you are specifically informed that you are under arrest.

  After a brief conference of murmurs, one of them finally said, “No. You are not free to go.”

  “In that case, I demand to speak with a lawyer,” Elspeth said forcefully. “This situation has changed, I am now being detained against my will, and as such, I refuse to answer any more questions without the presence of an attorney. I would like to call mine.” She produced her iPhone.

  But the iPhone was neatly plucked from her hand by one of the women, who slipped it into her pocket with a
tight smile.

  “You are under suspicion of being a terrorist,” one of the men said. “As such, the National Defense Authorization Act allows us to detain you indefinitely. Your previous rights as a United States citizen no longer apply. In plain English: you don’t get a lawyer. And you don’t leave here until we say so.”

  Elspeth fumed. How dare they! You couldn’t just vanish a person and their rights like that in America. That was impossible!

  “I’m not saying another word. I invoke my Fifth Am--”

  “It doesn’t apply to you. I already told you that.”

  “I am a free woman!” she bellowed. “I am a citizen of the United States of America! The Constitution protects my rights! You can’t just magically decide that it doesn’t apply!”

  There was another conference of hushed whispers. When it was finished, one of the men faced her squarely. “Miss Lune. Thank you for your cooperation. I think we have what we came for.” He smiled: this time, it was a generous smile, as though she has passed a test of some kind.

  Relief flooded through Elspeth. Whatever. She just wanted to get out of here, for this to be over, to get on with looking for her husband. All of this was a very unneeded annoyance.

  Her guard was down, which is why one of the women was able to sneak up behind her and cover her mouth with a wet cloth.

  She inhaled sharply in surprise — and fumes of some noxious variety flooded her lungs. She recognized the smell as her mind clanged in alarm: ether! Instantly, her mind became fog. Her limbs were heavy as if she were on Jupiter. The world tilted.

  “She’s a lanky one, isn’t she?” one of the women said. “We might have trouble finding clothes that fit.”

  And that was the last thing Doctor Elspeth Lune recalled before warm darkness took her completely.