Clint skimmed across the water, his heavy craft slicing through the undulation of the waves. He guided the vehicle by his internal GPS, using the same code that alerted the whole world to his continued existence. Except now that he thought about it, even if Doctor Destructo’s men had managed to take him out, his GPS signal would be the last thing to die away. His body was worth as much dead as alive, and signal would help the army to locate his corpse should the worse happen. There was a small chance Doctor Destructo would believe him dead, carried back toward the Island by his men. It might give him a slight element of surprise.
He wished his link to Molly would come on. He feared it meant Doctor Destructo had forcibly removed it. But what would be the point of that?
“I’ve survived so far, Molly. You better to the same. No fair dying on me when I’m doing the rescuing.”
The sun drew close to the Horizon as leagues passed beneath him. The wind dried his clothes, leaving them stiff with salt. The reddening sky influenced him, adding a sense of grim determination to his thoughts.
He was almost there. He saw nothing, but the numbers didn’t lie. There—the telltale glimmer. The outer shield bending the light around the Island. It was most noticeable evenings and mornings. If you looked out of the corner of your eye, you caught a flash of something solid.
He slowed and approached cautiously, not wanting to tear through the fibrous shield. It drew in during storms, when invisibility was less needed, because while it was functional and resilient, it was far from unbreakable.
Passing through one of the honeycomb shells, he thought again how that boat had smashed against a painted wall in The Truman Show. He always felt that way here. He didn’t love the Island; it was a place to sleep, a place to work, but it hadn’t managed yet to be home.
The colors were oddly tinted beneath the shield, as if he had put on sunglasses. Before him hunkered the iron giant of the Island, gray and efficient, its head bristling with antennae, towers, observation decks, runways, and warehouses. The body slept soundly beneath the water. It was a marvel of engineering and technology. “I didn’t want you to turn out like this place,” Molly had told him once. “It’s powerful and amazing, but it’s still a machine. Sometimes I hate it, and other times I’m boggled by the wonder of it. It could run on autopilot if it had to. You can’t. I won’t let you.”
Clint was certain the defenses were up and running and waiting, men or no men behind the barrels.
How had the Doctor managed to evade the defenses?
Electricity seemed to shoot down his spinal column. He stiffened and waited for it to pass. The odd weight in the back of his mind returned. Molly was back. She heaved deep, wet breaths.
“An intriguing device,” Doctor Destructo mused. “Flawed, untested, but it has potential.”
“Why—did you—put it back?” Molly managed. Clint clenched his fist. What had they done to her?
“It would have killed you to remove completely. Flawed, as I said. It may give you a headache as it is, with no receiving thought patterns on the other end. Untested. See, I chose my words carefully. With some improvements, I think I could make use of a variation for coercive purposes.”
“Doctor.” It was a new voice, soft and meaningful. A close aide. “Clint is almost here.”
“Ensure it is his corpse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I—I can’t hear him,” Molly said.
“Of course not,” the Doctor explained. “When I examined the neuro-link, I made sure to disrupt the signaling mechanism. Even if Clint has somehow managed to survive, you can no longer communicate. Assume he is dead. He will be shortly if he is not. Now, back to work.”
Clint focused his attention on the Island. It had been captured in a perfectly timed, perfectly impossible raid. They knew he was coming. The Doctor’s men were well-trained and not easily tricked.
With a spark of an idea, Clint whipped the jet ski in a 180 and redlined the craft. He speared through the water, arcing sharply to the right, pressing close to the honeycomb network of the shield. Then, with a determined movement, he raised his left arm perpendicularly and let it smash through the frame of the shield.
The impact nearly knocked him out of his sheet. He stiffened his shoulder. ”Lock joints!” he commanded. He blasted through a second frame and felt the reverberations through his body. At his speed, he crashed through a third, a fourth, fifth and sixth before he had time to think.
Alarms would be going off in the base now. Seven, eight, nine, ten. The shield began to contract in self-preservation. His joints wanted to loosen, to soften the blow of the impact. “Lock joints!” he shouted, forcing his body to obey him.
Two dozen more, a whole panel of lower shield obliterated. His arm could take no more. He twisted in a tight circle, slowing. The shield was pulling in rapidly now. His gripped a rib of it in his shaking hand, tore it from its support so that a hexagonal section could be rotated about. He placed the jet ski between the retreating shield and this flexible section, stuck like a bug in a fold of origami. With any luck, it would retain some of its invisibility.
He saw movement all along the shore of the Island. Men running about, dressed in the suit and tie of the Doctor’s foot soldiers. The guns on the towers searched back and forth. Clint tore a shred of shirt off, tied a noose around the accelerator, and pulled it tight as he jumped off. The craft went rocketed wildly across the water. Clint dove beneath, aiming and firing his hand. It responded sluggishly. Something inside seemed broken, but it went flying through the water, reaching for anything.
Gun fire boiled the water in every direction as men opened up blindly. The boom accompanied the splattering of the jet ski against the pate of the Island.
Clint’s hand came back empty. He dove deeper, pushing downward with his thrusters, and shot it off again, starting up his micron blade. He gripped something. Quickly, he pulled the cable in, streaming like a penguin through the water. He smashed against the side of the Island. Near him was one of the lab windows, the room beyond dark. He pierced his knife in and began to cut. After three sides of his entry was managed, even the reinforced plexiglass could resist the pressure.
The water rushed through the opening, flinging Clint against the floor like a fish out of a bucket.
Finding his feet, he rushed to the door, slipping through as it closed to seal off the breach from the rest of the facility.
He was in.
Nick, I loved the reference to origami and the way he was wedged in. I’m loving this story.