Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two] Read Online Free PDF Page A

worse.
    "Check,” I said, closing the cylinder of my gun. “I'll call ahead saying that we're sending in a problem child and have them prep an Omega Cell. Technical Services can puzzle over how to kill this boojum in their copious spare time."
    "What do we do about the folks outside,” George asked, jerking a thumb towards the hallway.
    At a nod from me, Jessica touched her forehead and scrunched her face in concentration. Soon the shouting and bewildered cries from the other side of the portal slowed, then stopped and we heard people casually chatting and walking away.
    Going pale, Jessica wobbled on her feet, so I helped my wife into an easy chair missing its cushions. “Wiping ten minutes of memory from fourteen people is something of a strain,” she admitted. “Luckily nobody was a natural immune."
    Affectionately, I gave her a pat on the arm and a kiss. In her prime, my bride could have Brain Blasted the entire state of Illinois. But she was still recuperating from our battle with the Brotherhood of Darkness last week. Those yahoos had even less intelligence than Lumpy here.
    Sprinkling powders while chanting, Raul Horta formed a huge, meter wide, rune on a smooth section of the floor. I busied myself feeding the appropriate code phrases into my watch to relay a priority signal to the big radio in our van and on to the headquarters of our organization. Wherever that was. We had once found what I thought was Bureau HQ, but by the next week the office building had been converted into a parking garage. I guess the chief didn't trust anybody, even us, and not without cause. On rare occasions, Bureau 13 agents did sometimes go bad.
    In less than a minute I got an answering bleep on my wristwatch, just as the mystic letter of power began to glow and a shimmering oval portal formed in the air. Lumpy snarled and spit, but we paid the prisoner no attention. He was going nowhere inside that deudonic forcefield.
    Tugging on my sleeve, George pulled me aside.
    "Something wrong?” I asked puzzled.
    He tried to appear casual. “I may be mistaken,” George whispered around his beef stick. “But when you said we were going to send Felix over there to the Holding Facility, I could have sworn I saw it smile."
    Contemptuously, I arched an eyebrow. “Eh? You're nuts."
    "Could be. Yet I saw, what I saw."
    "And why would anything be pleased that it was going to be incarcerated in the most escape-proof jail in the history of the world?"
    The soldier shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe it's trying to pull a Briar Rabbit routine. But I don't like the very concept."
    Me neither. George may be paranoid, most Bureau agents were, but that was only because we did have so many enemies, and they were everywhere.
    "Raul,” I said. “Cancel the portal spell, we're hauling Lumpy in personally."
    And damn me if the beast didn't maintain the most amazingly neutral expression that I have ever seen this side of a poker table.
    Hmm.
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CHAPTER TWO
    "Brace yourselves!” I cried, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Everybody grabbed whatever handhold was convenient and scrunched low in their seats.
    As I maneuvered past a red sports coupe with vanity plates, our lumbering RV and trailer hitch went by the designated signpost on the Iowa Turnpike and in a wild burst of pyrotechnics, we shunted out of this universe. Momentarily blinded by a violent explosion of colors. I drove by sheer instinct as the van was buffeted from side to side by swirling constellations of stars. There came a curse, a metallic crunch, a shattering of glass, and we were through!
    When vision cleared, I gently tapped on the brakes, easing the RV to a squealing halt on the dirt road. The van stopped only a scant meter before a simple wooden crossbar that was blocking the road. The rigidly motionless bar wasn't supported by anything visible on either end. A square black-n-white sign hanging from the middle of the oak bar bore the brutally plain