The Poseidon Initiative Read Online Free

leaned over him while he worked.
    “Yeah, it’s good to go, why?”
    “I need to put a new slide set in.” The projected images that were used as part of the show were carefully curated and approved beforehand.
    “Whoa, nobody told me about any new—”
    Pablo never finished his sentence.
    “Alec Schmidt” reached out and drew his blade across Pablo’s undefended neck. He made a weird gasping noise that Alec could swear came from the open neck wound itself and not his mouth, and then began to flail in blind panic, far too late.
    Alec held his victim’s left arm down with his own, and then used the crook of his right elbow to smother Pablo’s mouth, both to prevent his death cries from being heard and to hasten his demise by smothering the life from him. Once he was still, he released him and allowed his body to slump to the floor.
    “Thanks, Pablo, I’ll just swap the slides out myself.” Alec removed a USB drive from the projector and inserted his own in its place. That piece of business concluded, he turned his attention to other matters.
    In this same rear area of the truck was a tarp covered bundle he’d carefully hidden there the night before. He went to it and threw back the tarp.
    Yes!
Still there. He picked up a small metal container that looked a lot like a thermos, along with a respirator mask. He walked with them outside to the golf cart he’d been driving around the tunnels. On the back of the cart was a large plastic tank of water that was used to create mist for a special effect during the show that would allow for images to be projected onto a thin film of water droplets, so that they appeared to materialize from thin air.
    Alec scanned his surroundings. When he determined no one was coming, he unfastened the tank’s lid. Then he hurriedly donned the biohazard mask and carefully opened the container that looked like a thermos but was many times more sturdy, able to shield its contents from both great shocks as well as wide temperature swings. He poured the contents of the metal container in to the larger tank on the cart. He carefully screwed the thermos lid back in place and returned it to its place beneath the tarp in the truck. Then he refastened the lid on the water tank and got back behind the wheel of the cart.
    * * *
    “Alec! Hey Alec! Where are you going with that? That tank should be on the field already.” Stephanie Parrish trotted down a concrete tunnel beneath the stadium toward her employee. Her ponytail bobbed beneath a Miami Dolphins ball cap as she bounced along. Always full of energy, as the manager for the production company responsible for putting on the stadium’s halftime show, she kept in shape and it showed in her short but toned figure.
    The young man was driving an electric cart with a tank of liquid on the back. He greeted her with an enthusiastic wave. “Hi, boss. There was a problem with the tank for the mister — it had a crack in it after we set it up, so I told Antonio I’d be back quick with another one. This is it.”
    Stephanie looked at her sports watch.. These type of problems were par for the course for her in the five years she’d been doing this job. She even took a second to glance at her pedometer reading
(9,500 steps so far today — even more than usual — I’ll lose those five pounds in no time
!) before noting the time.
    “Okay, Alec. Step on it, though. We’re on air in less than five minutes!”
    “Yes ma’am.” Alec nodded and took off in the cart down the tunnel.
    High above in the broadcast booth inside the stadium, a sportscaster ushered out the first half of the game. “And it looks to be another disappointing first half for the Dolphins, Bret, as we head in to halftime here on
Monday Night Football
. We’ll be back after these words from our sponsor with first half highlights and the Sun Life halftime show.”
    On the field, a marching band and cheerleaders walked out in formation and started through a routine. A few minutes in