Dante Valderez held tightly onto his face mask with his black gloved hands, tightening the connecting ends of the tubes to the respirator over the lower portion of his face. Seated on the back bench of the airborne helicopter’s passenger cabin, he released the straps that held the gas cylinders on his back that fed the tubes that stretched over this shoulders. Dante carefully pulled the head of the cylinder under his arm so that he could check its gauge and tapped its face with his free hand, noting the position of the needle. He shifted the gas cylinders around behind him, and clipped together the harness that held them to his back again. He rested his hands on his knees, the darkness of his black uniform reflecting none of the bright orange-yellow morning sun beaming through the cabin windows. His black eyes glinted in the sunshine, as he looked forward through the cabin into the cockpit and saw Lucky seated next to the pilot, and the twinkling lights of the awakening city ahead of them through the windshield.

Dante turned his head to look out each side of the aircraft, seeing the shimmering expanse of the ocean to the left and the dark mountain ranges to the right, still extending their shadows over the roads and buildings sprawling away from them. He looked back to the ocean, and then at Lucky in the cockpit, wearing a headset with his head bent over in concentration, writing messages furiously down on his notepad. Dante got up from the bench and decisively moved forward into the cockpit, making the pilot glance back anxiously at the dark figure.

Lucky didn’t notice that Dante had come up behind him, and so didn’t resist as Dante reached around the young man’s neck with one hand to grab his lower jaw and with the thumb of his other hand press down at the back of Lucky’s jaw below his ear. Lucky’s eyes instantly opened wide into a blank terrified stare, and his body went limp in the co-pilot seat, leaning forward in the seat straps and releasing his pen and notepad from his lifeless arms, letting them slide off his lap onto the floor. Dante’s hand that held Lucky’s chin pulled the jaw down firmly, so that the young man’s mouth was gaping open. The pilot shifted in his seat uncomfortably, looking at the inert man beside him from the corner of his eye, frozen in a silent scream. Dante adjusted the seat straps so as to pull Lucky back into the seat and point his silently screaming face forward.

“Captain, I have decided in a change in plan to return to the QuadriStar instead of heading to Ojai this morning. Follow the same route back that we took when we departed for the Morongo valley,” Dante directed the helicopter pilot, “I wish to locate that life raft we picked up Lucretius here from overnight.”

The pilot nodded, now ignoring the immobile communications officer, who was staring blankly, mouth wide open, at the cityscape before him. The pilot put the helicopter into a sharp turn towards the ocean, and Dante leaned down to pick up the notepad that Lucky had dropped just before he was incapacitated.

“Sir, is he going to be all right?” the pilot asked Dante, noting a glistening line of drool escaping from Lucky’s lower jaw and dripping on the pant leg of his light grey uniform.

“He’ll be fine… if this isn’t his first experience of activating the neural-splice radio implant,” Dante said without a trace of concern in his voice and turning to leave the cockpit.

“And if this is actually his first experience? I’ve heard that some officers have lost their mind afterwards,” the pilot asked, looking back out the windshield to the beach and palm trees pass underneath them.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Dante answered, “when I de-activate his implant to find out if any other NSRIs are transmitting in the area. Let me know when we are close to the last known location of that life raft.” Dante pulled a curtain across the entrance to the cockpit, returned to sit down on the bench at the back of the passenger cabin in privacy.

He started reading through the messages scrawled down by Lucky as he monitored the PAB broadcasts in the region:
“Huge fireball and explosion in Joshua Tree Park, seen all over the Morongo Valley”
“Suspected meteorite strike or jet crash. Do not approach!”
“Only known resident in the area a volunteer park ranger. Whereabouts unknown.”
“Fugitives heading sou” (writing stops abruptly)

Dante set aside the notepad on the bench beside him and closed his eyes for a few moments, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. “No one was hurt in the attack… but the suffering always comes later,” he whispered to himself angrily. He started to cough, but was able to calm his breathing by resting his clenched fists on his knees and relaxing them slowly so that he was left with his hands open, palms facing upwards. He opened his eyes again, momentarily serene and then cold and unreadable again.

Checking that the curtain was covering the cockpit entrance fully and the pilot unable to see him, he got off the bench and knelt down on the cabin floor to pull out the tool box underneath it. He lifted open the lid of the tool box, and his cold eyes then filled with the glitter of the morning sunshine reflecting off the hoard of gold coins and bars it contained. He picked up a handful of the treasure, and inspected it with awe, breathing softly, “At least I saved the only thing of value from Kenji Nobu’s silly little garden. I will find the rest of the fortune owed to me by the Cooperative, and then no one can stop me!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***