Chapter 6 - The Blue-White Flash
The electrical current hit Caleb with the force of a freight train. His muscles locked instantly, his spine arching backward as a blinding white light exploded behind his eyes. He didn't scream; the shock stole the air right out of his lungs. He crashed hard onto the floor, his fingers twitching uncontrollably against the shattered ceramic mug and spilled coffee.
"Caleb!" Maggie screamed, dropping to her knees beside him, her hands hovering helplessly over his chest as the blue current faded with a dying hum.
Arthur stood frozen against the table, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. His orange quilted jacket was pulled crookedly across his shoulder where the operative had grabbed him. He looked down at Caleb’s trembling hand, which was still loosely clutching the faded veteran baseball cap Arthur had tried to give him.
"You didn't have to do that," Arthur rasped, his voice trembling with a fury that was far more terrifying than any weapon. "He’s a civilian."
"He’s a security risk, just like you," the lead operative snapped, cuffing Arthur’s wrists behind his back with a sharp click of metal. "Move it, Vance. The black sedan is out back. The Director’s patience just ran out."
The man in the black overcoat stepped over Caleb’s twitching body, walking toward the exit with a self-satisfied smirk. He paused at the door, turning back to look at Maggie, who was sobbing softly as she tried to comfort Caleb.
"Don't bother calling the cops, honey," the man in the overcoat said smoothly. "By tomorrow morning, this whole diner, this street, and every digital copy of that video will have never existed."
The back door of the diner swung open, letting in another howling gust of wind and snow. The operatives hauled Arthur toward the exit, his boots dragging slightly against the linoleum. As they pushed him out into the blinding white blizzard, Arthur managed to wrench his right hand free for a fraction of a second, dropping something heavy and metallic onto the floor right beside Caleb’s outstretched fingers.
Maggie watched them vanish into the swirling white void outside. The heavy metal door slammed shut, the automatic lock clicking into place with a definitive, chilling sound.
Maggie gasped, scrambling across the sticky floor to Caleb, who was slowly rolling onto his side, coughing violently as the paralyzing voltage cleared his nervous system.
"Caleb! Caleb, can you hear me?" she cried, shaking his shoulder.
Caleb groaned, his eyes blinking open in a dazed haze. He spat a mouthful of metallic-tasting saliva onto the floor and looked around the empty, freezing diner. The fluorescent lights flickered violently, then went pitch black, leaving only the amber glow of the highway sign bleeding through the frost-covered windows.
"My... my chest," Caleb whispered, his voice like gravel. He tried to sit up, but his muscles felt like lead.
"They took him, Caleb. They took Arthur," Maggie sobbed, wiping her wet cheeks with her apron.
Caleb looked down at his right hand. Clutched tightly in his fist was not the baseball cap, but a heavy, tarnished brass dog tag on a frayed ball chain, stained dark with age. He brought it close to his face, squinting in the dim amber light to read the stamped lettering.
*VANCE, A.
US ARMY 1968
O-NEG*
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And right beneath his thumb, stamped into the back of the metal plate, was a five-digit number and a set of coordinates that matched the exact location of an abandoned underground missile silo three miles outside of town.
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