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22 – Combinations

In hindsight it made complete sense.  A smoke detector with a low battery.  It was exactly the kind of thing some mad genius in Logi would come up with, someone who made their living solving problems under austere conditions.  It was so elegant it annoyed him that he hadn’t thought of it himself.

He took it out of the bag and looked it over until he was certain there wasn’t any more to it, then he took the battery out.  It was a cheap battery, the kind that comes in cheap electronics.  He imagined someone rigging something up to discharge it just enough, watching the voltage drop to some calculated value.

The bag was full, but not stuffed.  He first noticed a small and sturdy case, the heavy plastic kind with reinforcing metal bands and corners.  It had two four-digit combination locks built into the latches—what the combinations were, he had no idea.  He set it aside.

Under that was a large shrink-wrapped package of assorted batteries, mostly common ones but a few specialized lithium packs too, for various pieces of equipment.  He’d have to sort out what they went to later.

He methodically inventoried the rest of the bag’s contents.  A medical-looking package, unmarked and sheathed in a thick heat-sealed plastic bag.  A shrink-wrapped bundle of pill bottles.  Assorted sundries: wet-wipes, toothpaste, deodorant, fifty identical small adhesive bandages.  All were the generic store-brand kind; he didn’t remember what store, but he knew it was one of the nationwide chains.

Amongst the hygiene supplies was a small assortment of candy bars, all slightly squished.  There were three of his favorites among them, and all three were mangled seemingly worse than the others he didn’t care for as much.  He debated eating one immediately, but decided against it and set them all on the coffee table.

He searched the now-empty bag carefully, sticking his hand in every corner and feeling for anything out of place.  That done, he finally flipped it over to see what was banging into the floor every time he set it down.

A thick black web strap linked the two side handles to another metal device on the bottom, a collar or fitting similar to the one on the top, but flatter and smaller.  He guessed, like the one on top, it was some sort of rigging device.  He’d seen fittings somewhat like this before, but those had been larger and with more obvious purposes.  He had no idea how they were supposed to work or what attached to them.

He examined the small plastic case.  It was familiar to him, the kind of thing fragile equipment is often stored in.  He stared at the two combination locks, wondering if he was supposed to already know what the combination was.  Nothing came to mind.

After a few minutes, his attention drifted back to the medical-looking package, and then the pills.

The shrink-wrapped assortment of pill bottles contained a few mundane items—ibuprofen, broad-spectrum antibiotics, potassium iodide, Prussian blue.  They were all in plain white bottles with simple labeling, like institutional packaging.  All of those were familiar, though he’d never had to take Prussian blue before.  Ibuprofen was like a daily supplement for him, and he was happy to see they were 800mg tablets.

He furrowed his brow at the other bottles: propranolol, triazolam, memantine, and haloperidol.  They were the same institutional-style bottles as the other pills, but each one had a number written on it in permanent marker, 1 through 4.  There were no directions, no dosing information, nothing beyond the hand-written numbers.  Some of the names sounded vaguely familiar, he thought, but he couldn’t recall from where or what any of them were used for.

He decided not to take any of them until he was told—if he was told.  The ibuprofen was a safe choice though, and he put it in the bathroom with the rest of his medicines.  After a moment’s thought he put the potassium iodide in there too, with his other bottle of iodine supplement.

Then, finally, he went to the kitchen with the unmarked medical-looking bag, cutting it open with a small knife and carefully emptying it out onto the kitchen counter.

The bag contained what was obviously an IV blood draw kit, a half-dozen blood sample tubes with different-colored caps, and two sealed urine sample cups.

He recognized everything arrayed before him on the counter, but the context was lost on him.

Folded up inside the bag was a narrow strip of paper with instructions; it specified what to collect, how much of it, and the order in which it mattered.  Everything ended with the same requirement: refrigerate immediately.  The instructions weren’t anything official; they looked like they were printed on a laser printer and cut to size to fit into the bag.

He’d had blood drawn before of course, probably more often than most people.  He’d given himself IVs a few times, but he’d never drawn his own blood like this.  The only time he’d ever done it, it required him to poke his finger with a tiny, short needle.  He stared down at the kit and tried to visualize how he was going to attach and remove the little vials with one hand.

That consumed a minute or two of his time before he suddenly noticed how exhausted he was.  He seemed to visibly slump as the realization hit.

He left the kit where it was on the kitchen counter and went to the spare bedroom to strip off his gear and put it away.  He showered, the water stinging his shoulders and back where the plate carrier had irritated his skin.  His socks had been damp, too, but he was pleased to note he didn’t have any blisters.  Although, he realized after a moment, he probably hadn’t walked more than a few hundred feet.

His bed was calling to him with an insistence that was hard to ignore, but before that, he needed to notify Steven he’d retrieved the package.

He sat down at the laptop, first typing a long reply as if thoroughly reporting his trip topside.  He deleted that, then wrote a briefer summary: the break-in, the noises in the house, the accuracy of the drop into the front yard.  He re-read it a few times and then deleted that, too.

Finally, he wrote:

 

---------------------------------
TO: lapotter@cls.windsor.edu
FROM: c.glossen@bayshorebank.com
SUBJECT: RE: Xmas eve
 
Got it. No issues. Thanks for the candy, I don’t stock any down here.
 
-M
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He didn’t wait to see if he’d get a quick reply, he just brought the laptop with him into the bedroom, laid down in the dark, and immediately fell asleep.