SWNOVELS Chapter HOW TO MAKE A TERRORIST
Daisy’s Box
Two weeks later…
Darcy visited for the Spring holidays. She was not a fan of religious celebrations, but Daisy loved them, often singing as Hilda had taught her. Sneaking into the all-denominations church in Jonstown, Darcy listened to Daisy’s voice soaring high in an aria. Something vibrated in her soul like joy as she scooted next to Dale’s Aunt Nora and picked up Danny from his carseat. Nora nodded in curt greeting. She did not trust Daisy’s strange, bald companion, but the botanist was Daisy’s only childhood friend, so she tolerated the quarterly visits because Darcy was listed in Daisy’s dossier as vetted and safe for association.
Darcy ignored the woman giving her the side-eye. She discovered Aunt Nora was not Dale’s aunt at all but a retired spy. Several in the town were retired military special operations or government agents who were friends of the late General Tim Taylor. Daisy was one of the most protected people in the world and she didn’t even know it. As the service went on, Darcy obediently rose to take communion with everyone else. While Daisy sang, she gave Darcy a joyful smile. Darcy stood behind Aunt Nora who held Benny after taking her bread wafer and sip of wine, while the priest drew a cross in ash on the older toddler’s forehead.
The priest smiled at Darcy, placing the wafer on her tongue and giving her a small swallow of wine from a disposable cup. “Welcome back, Darcy.”He drew in ashes on her forehead.
“Father Paulo, it’s good to be home for the holiday,” she responded respectfully, shifting her godson so the retired assassin turned clergyman could draw on Danny’s forehead. Paulo Creed and his brother Ezio were both friends of General Ty Taylor. As she sat through the end of the service, Darcy puzzled over her response. She had never called any place home.
Darcy expected Daisy to go to work but she didn’t. As they shared breakfast beverages, cocoa for Darcy and cocoa mixed with espresso for Daisy, Darcy asked, “Are you going to work today?”
Daisy grinned, “Not all day. I took the rest of the week off. Nora said I needed a vacation and so I am only going in from nine to noon today, then the whole firm is taking a week.”
“Really?” Darcy couldn’t remember if Daisy had ever taken a vacation.
“We are going to have so much fun for our long weekend.” She opened the refrigerator. There were six dozen eggs.
A laugh burst from Darcy’s chest. “Please tell me we are decorating all of those for the twinners.”
“We are!” Daisy’s happy squeal peeled through the house and the boys both screeched in their highchairs. “But Aunt Nora says I am not allowed to be home while she boils the eggs after the last time I tried. I have to take the boys with me. Do you mind coming with us to watch them?”
“Never. I’d love to see what you are working on.”
“It’s 8:30, Daisy,” Nora warned.
With Danny on one hip while Daisy held Benny, Darcy was greeted by the staff of Daisy’s little research company. She copied Daisy’s research then hid the micro data card in her locket before she sat on the floor and played blocks with the toddlers.
“I’m done. Let’s go! We have Easter Eggs to decorate.” Daisy’s giddy enthusiasm made Darcy chuckle.
The next day, as Darcy gave the twins giant dinosaur-shaped teething cookies, she joked, “Nom, nom, nom, bite the dinos. Chomp, chomp, chomp, just like the dinosaurs are going to chew up Daddy. Grrrrr, nom, nom.”
Daisy sputtered a laugh. “Really, Darcy?”
“What? A girl can hope her bestie’s ex ends up a dino snack… It happened in a movie.” Darcy made exaggerated gestures as Daisy snickered, but Aunt Nora gave her a look, so Darcy pretended to be chastised. “Sorry, Aunt Nora.”
Fifteen months later…
Darcy arrived at her building near midnight after another successful assignment and check the mail. There was a red envelope with a yellow flower painted on it. Darcy opened the birthday card from Daisy. The card was filled with typical birthday salutations but then the card made a beep and played a recording.
Daisy’s voice played, “Benny say Happy Birthday to Auntie Darcy.”
Benny’s child voice enunciated perfectly, “Happy Birthday to Auntie Darcy.”
Daisy’s voice again. “Danny say Happy Birthday to Auntie Darcy.”
Danny’s small voice asked timidly with a slight lisp, “Can I sing for Aunnie Darcy?”
Daisy’s voice encouraged, “Of course, you can sing, you practiced very hard.”
Danny sang, “Happy Birdie Aunnie Darcy, Happy Birdie Aunnie Darcy, Happy Birdie, Happy Birdie, Happy Birdie Aunnie Darcy...”
Each verse was louder than the last until the thirty-second chip ran out. Danny’s harelip took two surgeries to correct; however, he still spoke with a lisp. It made him shy about talking to people, but Daisy insisted Darcy was his favorite person in the world, so it made her happy to hear him sing for her.
Her eyes suddenly felt wet, as Darcy listened again. She thought about her next assignment. Her lord wanted her to visit Daisy and see how her research was going. He was angry she turned down the offer of one-hundred million dollars. Darcy promised to get the new data and was glad he wanted Daisy’s invention more than he wanted her dead. The twins’ birthday was this weekend, so the assignment was perfect timing.
Since her second Finn, Daisy’s youngest son Danny, was waiting for her to visit, she would. She liked having a friend and sharing her friend’s children. She already had a bag packed and presents purchased. Her motorcycle got her all the way north and across the border by the next afternoon. She didn’t stop to sleep; she was going to the only place which felt like home. Daisy was just walking home from work when Darcy pulled up next to her.
“Hey, I’m looking for Team Red Door,” Darcy called out.
Daisy looked up from her tablet and squealed, “You’re here!” Hug-mauling her oldest friend.
“I wouldn’t miss my boys’ birthday,” Darcy declared as Daisy got on the motorcycle behind her. “But I have to leave the day after to get back to work.”
Daisy squeezed her, “Then we will just have to make this the best three-day weekend we can. How’s the Neimad Global internship going?”
“Honestly, I think they just wanted someone to water the plants, and exotics for their fancy conference rooms,” Darcy complained. “My botany degree made me a glorified plant lady.”
The next day after Darcy covertly copied all the recent research because there was no access to the systems outside the building, she played blocks with the twins again. She was fascinated by Daisy’s idea of harvesting the background energy of the universe as a power source. She just needed to figure out how to convert it to electricity. It wasn’t Planck’s zero-point energy, it was something else. It was an exciting discovery which she presented to her fellow alternative energy researchers two years ago, only to be dismissed as a flight of fantasy until she showed them the math. Now, Daisy’s think tank was the most wanted research firm in the world, especially by Lord D. Adam Neimad and that worried Darcy.
Danny held a yellow cube out to her and pointed, “Boxy there.”
Darcy was confused. “What’s Boxy?”
Danny started down the hall with the cube, so Darcy followed. Benny ignored them, still stacking blocks. She could hear Daisy the other way. In a room, was a golden plate and yellow glass box covered in ancient writing.Danny was standing next to it and patting the side.
“Hello, fren Boxy.”
“Oh, wow,” Darcy breathed out in amazement.
She had never seen anything like it. The seven-pointed star on the top turned from the toddler toward her. It freaked her out, so she snatched Danny away from it. There was a blinding flash of white light and for a moment the sensation of being on an express elevator surrounded by stars, then she was standing in the same spot holding Danny, but everything was different. The lab was a scarred slab of concrete.
“Dar Dar.” Danny waved.
Jonstown was gone, destroyed completely, and in the distance, Darcy saw herself falling to her knees in what was left of Daisy’s yard. Pain like the worst migraine combined with a full body muscle cramp hit and she gasped as the light flashed again. Back in the lab, she managed to not drop Danny as she collapsed and began to have a seizure.
Danny cried out in alarm. “Dar Dar… Dar Dar… Mama, mama!”
“Darcy! Omigawd, hold on.” Daisy’s voice was the last thing Darcy heard.
Darcy woke up slowly, she was in a hospital bed. Daisy was sitting in a chair with both her sons on her lap. Darcy thought she was asleep, but Daisy’s eyes popped open as soon as Darcy inhaled deeply.
“You had a seizure.”
“I’m fine,” Darcy muttered, uncertain of what happened.
“The doctor says your cancer is back. You’re not fine, you had a seizure of some kind.” Repeating herself, Daisy’s lavender eyes held Darcy’s garnet red-brown ones.
“It wasn’t a seizure exactly.” Darcy shook her head sharply, but Daisy’s eyes held a fierce love and loyalty only for her.
“Whatever you need, Darcy. Anything… I am here for you.”
Nodding, Darcy insisted, “I want out of here. I have doctors at home for this. I just want to spend the rest of the weekend with you and the boys before I start my next round of treatments.”
“I’ll tell them.” Daisy set the boys next to Darcy and went to get the doctor.
Less than a week later…
Daisy took the lunch box backpack Aunt Nora prepared for her. Inside was a 10 AM snack, 1 PM lunch, and 4 PM snack. Her metabolism tended to burn through the calories she ate and if she didn’t have an alarm on her watch to remind her when to eat, she would forget and begin losing weight again.
“Thanks, Auntie. You little minions be good for Auntie while Mommy’s at work making a better world for you.”
Daisy kissed her twin sons, Benny, and Danny, then headed to her lab as she did every weekday. The air was warm and dry as she walked. She waved at the security guard. Her team was waiting for her inside.
“Dr. Cane, that Neimad Global’s acquisitions department guy called again. They offered you two hundred million this time.” Sophia laughed at Daisy’s deadpan expression.
“Seriously, Daisy, take the money before they kill you to get the research.” Biff was her tech guy and looked 100% the old hippie surfer, but he was as paranoid as any conspiracy theorist after his sound-wave air pollution removal technology was weaponized and used to dispel rioters, killing dozens.
“Neimad Global already owns the world’s most advanced water purification methods, which they share with no one. They have transmission access to communication systems of half the planet, plus controlling interest in all the major big pharma and big Agra companies. They make money on potable water, communications, food, and medicine. They are not getting our clean energy research. You’re the one who keeps telling me to imagine a world with a zero-pollution power grid.” Daisy tipped her head at him, and the old man hugged her.
“Just making sure you aren’t tempted by all those zeros,” taunting, Biff laughed.
“I’m not. Mr. Neimad could offer me ten times that and I would say no. This will mean my boys and your grandkids will live in a world without acid rain and carbon emissions from production plants, power facilities, and transportation. They will have free, clean energy. Our Tech will change the world and our children are not paying a dime to that megalomaniac billionaire for it.” Daisy grinned as she proclaimed her noble aspirations. “We will give free energy to the world, and he will have no choice but to share his socially beneficial tech to get mine or not use it.”
Alexander stepped out of the testing lab. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s back and active again.” Daisy and the others rushed into the room.
“I hope we get a good charge on the big prototypes.”
They had managed to store the energy in small scale prototype batteries, and then discovered the energy was self-replicating in small increments as time passed. It was a battery which would recharge itself simply by sitting on the shelf. They also discovered the power cells could not be overcharged, no matter what they did.
Daisy walked up to the golden box and attached several cables to it. “Hello, old friend. Welcome back.”
The alien star floating above the box, turned to face her as if in greeting. Two lines rotated like the hands of a clock.
“I missed you too.” Daisy ran her hands over the strange carvings she was still trying to translate, feeling the comforting hum of the box.
Chapter 5
Darcy’s Grief
“Did you get the information, my pet?” Damien asked as he looked out from his office at the city.
“Yes, my lord. Daisy told me she is moving forward with her research on the universal energy storage units and will begin to upscale her prototypes,” Darcy reported.
Dr. Daisy Cullen-Cane was something of a problem for Damien. Her research exhibited amazing potential, but no amount of money or coercion could make her surrender it. A bigger problem was none of her fellow researchers could be bribed into betraying her work either, they all shared her hatred for D. Adam Neimad. He was glad Darcy made a connection with her years earlier. “And Dr. Cane has no idea you are the one leaking her research to me?”
Darcy made a derisive snort, before she answered, “Absolutely none… And General Taylor has not been in contact with her, although I believe some of the townspeople, or at least one, maybe there under his orders to protect her and her children.”
“Hmmm,” murmured Damien, but didn’t turn to look at her, “She says her research is almost complete?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then perhaps her usefulness is at an end.” His blunt statement surprised her.
“But my lord, wouldn’t it be better to wait until she is finished?” Darcy asked. “We have already seen how our best mathematicians struggle to understand her work.”
Damien frowned, worrying Darcy had become too close to the researcher. It was time to test her loyalty. “Did you enjoy your visit with her?” He turned to face her; his red eyes intense.
It was an odd question and Darcy’s mind immediately processed it as a threat, so she turned the answer into as negative of a statement as she could and still answer honestly. “If you consider spending a long weekend listening to the manic ravings of an obsessive-compulsive genius and the crying of her two spawns in a town without an ice cream shop enjoyment, then yes, I guess I enjoyed my time with Daisy’s family.”
Reading her soul for truth, Damien smiled at her snide answer, “Very well then, we shall take care of Dr. Cane this afternoon. Send for my helicopter, I have something very special planned for her and her little renegade research group. I think it’s time I showed you how I make it storm, my pet.”
Darcy rose and bowed. Out at the receptionist station, she used the phone on the desk to summon her lord’s private helicopter. She felt strange, there was a tightness in her chest she experienced only once before.
She tried to shrug it off, thinking, It was nice to have a friend for a while, but I’ll get over it.
However, her heart screamed its denial as she muffled it under her logic. There was nothing she could do to save Daisy this time, or her children.
A few hours later…
On the ridge over a small hidden valley, Damien looked out over the community of Jonstown and smiled. In an hour, the whole town would be erased and everyone in it would be dead, including Dr. Daisy Cane. He thought it was a pity Dr. Cane refused to take his money, she was as beautiful as she was intelligent, even if she bordered on mentally ill. He remembered meeting her once, almost four years earlier when she tried to fix his Genosaur genetics problem. Her research proved to be the solution even if her fool of an ex-husband refused to use it on Isle of the Noble. It didn’t matter; Dr. Dale Cane was dead now and at a separate research facility, Damien and his geneticists proved Daisy’s theoretical genetics worked.
“Everything is ready, my lord,” Darcy’s voice stirred him from his thoughts. He turned to see the bodies of two of his security detail, lying dead next to a full blood altar configured as a storm altar.
He smiled, “If I ever had a true daughter, Darcy, you would be her. You are as merciless and deadly as I am.”
“Thank you, my lord. I am ready when you are,” Darcy bowed after the unexpected compliment.
“Very well, my pet. Let us begin,” and his ruby eyes glowed red with power as a dark shadow enveloped them and spread across the valley. A massive thunderstorm developed in moments, followed by a dark tornadic vortex.
Darcy watched, face impassive, as her only friend’s town was about to be destroyed. Her phone chimed and she glanced through the documents from Arachne Moffet. She called the media manipulator back.
“The grad students live until we verify their results, set up a way to communicate with them.”
Arachne revealed, “They believe it was corporate espionage.”
“Interesting… It is a useful ruse… We will let them reveal the disaster as such. I will handle the father and uncle. Storms are dangerous things, so many coming so frequently will keep other rescuers away while our lord’s empire makes valiant attempts to aid them.”
“Yes, Jaguar, the arrangements are already being made,” Arachne announced.
“I will fly out to Isle of the Noble between storms.” Darcy hung up.
Turning back to the violent tornado, Darcy watched Daisy’s lovely lavender house surrounded by daisies, yellow lilies, and colorful purple hollyhocks wiped away in the storm’s fury, leaving only the foundation. She had that strange sensation in her heart again, perhaps it was regret or grief, she didn’t know. As the winds howled around them, a single tear leaked from Darcy’s eye. Annoyed, she wiped it away, glad her teacher had not noticed her moment of weakness. She felt her lord was wrong to kill Daisy, but it was not her place to presume to correct him.
She decided she would miss having a friend, but would miss her children more, especially Danny. In the gusty, dusty wind, Darcy blinked away more tears and looked back at her lord. She felt something new for him, something akin to hatred, but she couldn’t kill Damien as she killed her parents to make the discomfort stop.
Waking slowly, sunlight beckoned. Crawling out from under the heavy door wedged between the twisted stumps of two trees and the debris piled over it, Daisy stared around in horror.
What happened? I crawled out into Armageddon.
Jonstown was gone. Twisted pipes formed fountains onto concrete slabs. The debris was haphazardly piled at the valley’s end.
“No. Ohgawd, no.”
Sobbing into the back of her hand, her mind convulsed trying to reject her reality. Suddenly her will slapped her shattering heart, and she stalked toward the mountains of shattered homes and buildings. She held no illusions about survivors, but she vowed she would find her sons in the maelstrom’s aftermath.
Daisy pulled body after body from the debris that weren’t her family. She found Benny first near the man who owned the gas station, his name was Lester and he had just asked about dating Aunt Nora, who was only a few feet away. The late-in-life romance for two lonely people ended before it began. Daisy almost broke down at that point, but she knew she needed to find Danny.
One by one, she pulled the eighty-seven residents of Jonstown from the broken lumber, shattered bricks, and twisted metal as she searched for her sons. The bodies were all crushed and oddly bloodless. Even in her dazed state, she knew there was something unnatural about the storm. It was the next afternoon and the third large debris pile before she found her youngest child. Danny was holding on to his blanket and was completely crushed, but she knew it was him immediately. She screamed until she didn’t have a voice left. By evening, she found everyone from the town. She was the only survivor.
Strangely, no one came to help them, so in a daze, she began burying her neighbors in the yards of their former homes because she didn’t know what else to do. She started with Benny and Danny and Nora, then buried Lester with them because he lived over his mechanic’s garage and didn’t have a yard. It took almost three days to bury the eighty-seven residents of Jonstown in shallow graves. On the sixth morning, she sat in her front yard, staring at her children’s graves and ignoring her blistered and bleeding hands. A man in a state patrol uniform was trying to talk to her.
“Ma’am… Are you Dr. Cane? Are you Daisy?”
She couldn’t make herself answer, then she was arrested for causing the disaster.
Darcy hugged Danny to her as she stared across the ruins of Jonstown at herself kneeling in front of the place that once held Daisy’s house…
Fighting her way out of the memory turned dream, Darcy sat up in bed with her hand pressed over her heart and tears in her eyes. For an hour, Darcy paced restlessly. She never had trouble sleeping like she was suffering now. Daisy was in a hospital for the criminally insane and her sons were dead.
The grief was overwhelming, and Darcy had a mission coming, but she wouldn’t be able to do it in this state. She needed to make it stop. She went down into the underground room of her new apartment and stared at the paintings on the wall. Taking the only remnant of her childhood she had left, Finn’s goat plushy, off its shelf, she hugged it to her chest and screamed out her grief over Danny. Broken and desperate, she dressed, got on her bike and drove straight through to Jonstown. The sun was overhead when she stopped in front of Daisy’s house. She realized the authorities had not taken the bodies of Daisy’s family from where Daisy buried them.
There was a sound in the silent valley.
“Dar Dar!”
Turning, Darcy saw herself holding Danny. The instant pain dropped her to her knees, but Darcy tried to crawl toward her past self to warn her to warn Daisy, then they vanished. Rolling on her back, a gentle rain fell on her face from a strange swirl of cloud washing her tears away as the headache faded. Inhaling deeply, Darcy screamed until she was hoarse.
“I hate you, Damien! I hate you! You’ve killed everyone I love!” Darcy stood and shouted at the sky. “I won’t let you kill Daisy!”
She left and went to the closest town and rented an SUV and a motorcycle dolley before returning to Jonstown with a shovel, plastic bags, and a large, lidded tote. There was one sad yellow lily left in the yard. Daisy had planted dozens of them which matched the tattoo over Darcy’s left ear. Digging up Benny and Danny’s bodies, she gently packed the remains in the tote with the single lily.
Driving home, she cremated them in the incinerator in the basement of her new building. Going to a ceramic studio and shop, where she sometimes made vases and pots for her ‘special plants’, Darcy made an urn for the boys to share and a matching pot for the lily. It took almost three days to go get the twins, exhume, return, cremate, and inter them, but as Darcy stared at the blue, pink, green, and yellow stripes of the urn, the grief retreated, and she fell asleep.
In three hours, she was awake and getting on a plane to Isle of the Noble. Dropping a firebomb on the boat was easy. The uncle and father of the grad student Davin Jeong were dead, but she couldn’t find him or his friend. Searching the grounds, she knew they had been there from the incubating eggs, but where they went after she did not know. Even her raptors couldn’t track them down. There was a bag of bloody damp bandages in the rubbish, and juvenile therapod tracks and more blood in a pen. She shook her head wondering if they tried to catch a wild Genosaur and had gotten themselves eaten.
After she collected the notes and samples of Davin Jeong’s work, she left doubting they would survive another storm if they escaped being food. Flying away she considered her mission to Isle of the Noble a success. As Dr. Cane suspected, the grad student figured out how to fix the Genosaurs growth rate problem without making them overly aggressive.