GeneSix by Brad Dennison

breach , don’t you?” Scott gave April’s face a light tap. “Come on, April. Wake up. We’re getting out of here.”
    “Doctor Tempest,” Tompkins said. “I have to ask that you step away from her. She is a federal prisoner.”
    Scott, ignoring him, tapped April’s face again, and she turned her head back and forth and muttered something he could not quite make out.
    He said, “April, you have to wake up.”
    “Doctor Tempest?” she asked in a weak voice. “Is that you?”
    Tompkins said, “Kincaid, go out to the other room and get Phillips and Martin. They’ll be placing Doctor Tempest under arrest.”
    Kincaid rose to his feet and stepped out through the door Scott had used to enter the room.
    Scott produced a Swiss Army knife from his belt, and cut the zip ties binding her wrists to the chair.
    “I’m warning you,” Tompkins said. “Stop what you are doing, or there’ll be dire consequences.”
    “Did you really just say dire ?” 
    “You think this is funny? You think this is some sort of college prank?”
    Scott helped April to her feet, but her knees were wobbly, and without an arm across her back partially lifting her, she would have fallen to the floor.
    “I’m drunk,” she said. “Am I drunk?”
    “No, you’re drugged,” Scott said.
    “Cool.”
    Tompkins looked over his shoulder to the doorway. “Kincaid! Get in here! What’s keeping you?”
    “Oh,” Scott said. “It’s not his fault. He must have stepped into the nullifier field. He won’t be able to do anything but stand there and blink for a few minutes, until April and I leave.”
    Tompkins drew his pistol. “I’m not allowing either of you to leave.”
    April said, “I’ve gotta pee,” and started giggling.
    Scott said, “It will have to wait.” To Kincaid, he said, “Go ahead. Shoot.”
    Tompkins aimed his pistol, a forty-five automatic, directly at Scott. “Don’t make me have to, son.”
    “I’m not your son. If I were, I’d be a glorified neanderthal, like yourself. Now pull the trigger. I want you to see just how futile it is.”
    Tompkins aimed at a leg, not wanting to kill Tempest, but merely incapacitate him. He fired. There was a spark two feet in front of Scott, like a fly being caught in a bug zapper.
    “Force field,” Scott said. “Oh, I forgot to give you guys the schematics for that, didn’t I? In fact, I think I forgot to tell you about it at all. Same goes for the brain-wave nullifier field. Oh, well. Slipped my mind, I guess.”
    “You can’t get away with this.”
    “Actually, I think we can. Because, you see, I have actually thought this out to the nth degree. And don’t forget, I’m smarter than you. A lot, lot, lot smarter. Way smarter.”
    April looked to Tompkins. “He is, you know.”
    Tompkins said, “You might be able to get past me, but we’ll find you.”
    “I highly doubt that.” Scott raised his arm with the wristband and was about to speak into it, then redirected his attention back to Tompkins. “Oh, you know the schematics to the theoretical teleporter I gave you guys? The schematics are simply gibberish, but the teleporter is more than just theoretical. I have a working model.”
    “We’ll go to your lab and find it.”
    Scott smiled and shook his head with amazement. “You are really little more than a caveman, you know that? All of you. Cavemen, playing dress-up. The teleporter is not a device, you idiot, it’s an energy field, generated by something called a photonic computer, something you couldn’t even conceive of. And yes, I failed to give you guys the schematics for that, too.
    “Now,” he raised the wrist band again, “I get to say something I have always wanted to say.”
    “And what the hell is that?”
    “Beam us up.”
    And Scott and April simply faded from view, leaving Tompkins standing in the room alone.
     
    Jake walked over to Mandy. “You might want to call the cops to come and haul him away. Though, I’m not sure they’ll be able