The Final Call

by Craig A. Falconer

  There were two things Dan didn’t want to mention: the first was his knowledge of the GeoSov plot against President Slater, knowledge which had been provided directly by the Messengers via a dream-time vision. Secondly, there was the shocking fact he picked up from John Cole using the interrogative gift the Messengers had recently bestowed upon him: the fact that Cole and Jack Neal were back in cahoots. As much as he wanted to gauge Poppy’s reaction to these two pieces of knowledge, at this juncture he simply couldn’t let her know that he knew.

  Kyle Young’s line of questioning, as well as his mannerisms, grew increasingly hostile to Poppy as the minutes ticked by, presenting Dan with an opportunity to try to compose himself. For the viewers at home, it looked simply as though Dan was keen to hear Poppy out and hope she would expose her group for what they really were; in a sense, like he was giving her enough rope to hang herself.

  Dan felt the pain build every time he consciously tried to listen in, so ultimately he gulped and shook his head in defeat. He instead paid close attention to the subtle changes in Poppy’s expression and body language while she answered Kyle’s firm questions, particularly one regarding the presence of many former Welcomers among the GeoSovs’ followers.

  Kyle went so far as to accuse the group’s leaders of being “agents of pure evil” for some of the attacks that had been carried out in their name, to which Poppy only rolled her eyes.

  Dan’s ears perked up at one particular question, though; one regarding the GeoSovs’ funding and what Kyle termed “conspicuous associations with certain other groups and individuals.”

  On nothing more than a hunch, Dan decided to go all in and focused his pained mind as intently as possible for a few seconds. If Poppy was going to let something slip, this was it.

  Fortune favoured the bold, as the intense pain Dan experienced coincided with his reception of a perfectly clear and utterly game-changing thought from inside Poppy’s mind; one almost identical to the equally stunning revelation he’d heard in John Cole’s:

  “Stay cool, he can’t know we’ve been working with Jack. The PR company is hidden, our companies are hidden… He can’t know. He just can’t…”

  As the thought ended, Dan shrieked in pain like a cat with its tail trapped in a door. He pressed his hand into the aching area above the bridge of his nose as the sensation ran deep.

  “Dan!” Kyle yelled in concern. “Are you okay?”

  As quickly as it had come, the pain faded away. Dan didn’t spend a second thinking about how his agonised outburst might have come across on TV; all that mattered was what he had just found out.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Emma, and he only had to hold out for a few more minutes. He muttered something about migraines and dived into a largely off-topic monologue about his hopes for a meaningful closing of the gap between the GCC and ELF. He didn’t even hide the fact that he was leaning heavily on the bullet-point notes in front of him, having decided that all that mattered was getting through the rest of the interview without slipping up.

  To everyone else, Kyle included, this interview had been far more enthralling than the previous day’s with John Cole. Dan hadn’t participated all that fully, but his presence alone added great weight to what had primarily been a showdown between Kyle and Poppy. Dan imagined it would be great for Kyle’s career and was glad of this; he definitely deserved it.

  But for Dan, one thing alone had made the interview more than worthwhile: the discovery that Jack Neal, as well as working with the ELF’s John Cole, was apparently working with the GeoSovs’ Poppy Bradshaw.

  Inevitably, a new question quickly arose in Dan’s mind: Does Cole know about Jack and Poppy?

  Another followed: And if Cole knows, does Ding?

  The ramifications could hardly have been greater. For days, Dan had been wrestling with three possibilities: that the triangles were part of a genuinely extraterrestrial message, that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the ELF, or that it was a hoax perpetrated on the ELF by the GeoSovs.

  And just when he thought he was getting a handle on things… this.

  The GeoSovs’ official raison d’être was opposing contact between humanity and other extraterrestrial races. But while the events of recent days had raised the loose-knit group’s profile to all new heights, meaningful information on its structure and underlying motives were as thin on the ground as ever. Details on this front may have been within reach had Dan not experienced so much pain during his attempts to fully question Poppy on everything; but given the explosive nature of what he had learned, he didn’t regret having prioritised his focus.

  Before Dan knew it he was shaking Kyle’s hand and even extending the same politeness to Poppy. She didn’t deserve it, by any means, but she had made him one happy man.

  Immediately upon the interview’s conclusion, Dan ran to Emma and whispered the news in her ear. His words interrupted her own angry questions about why Dan had so totally ignored her live advice — naturally, she didn’t know he’d had to lower the volume — and she reacted with exactly the kind of stunned silence he’d expected.

  After several ponderous seconds, and taking care to ensure that no one else heard her words, she finally replied: “We should tell Timo. His people found out about Cole and Poppy, so maybe this piece of the puzzle will complete a picture we’re not quite seeing yet. Because, Jesus… Dan, if the GeoSovs and the ELF are on the same page… I don’t even know how this sentence ends. We need to tell Slater, too. And how does this fit in with Cole hating Poppy?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s wait until we get home to tell Slater,” Dan said. “She might tell Godfrey and he might do something stupid. Same with Timo... he could tell Clark. And according to those social media posts you were talking about, Jack’s been working in Colorado pretty recently, right? Because if Clark finds out he’s involved with the GeoSovs, he could do something stupid. He hates Jack already, but if he knew he was in with those guys…”

  Emma nodded. “Right. I don’t think Clark would, but even if there’s a small chance, we can’t take it. Jack is the key to everything, so God knows we need him alive.”

  V minus 29

  Moore Residence

  Archway, Colorado

  Clark stood reeling in the childhood bedroom of former TV star Jayson Moore, stunned into both silence and stillness by the revelation that not only had Tara been abducted, she had been abducted by Jack Neal.

  Mulling over how this might fit in with everything else could wait — for now, Clark had one focus.

  “Is that piece of shit still in town?” he growled.

  Jayson shrugged weakly. “He was around here last night, in the woods. He stayed in a car but I definitely saw him. The other guys were armed. I didn’t want any of this to hap—”

  “Spare me the bullshit,” Clark snapped. “Just call that piece of shit and tell him to meet you somewhere right now. Emergency. You’re the fucking actor, make something up and make it good. You’re in trouble with these guys, fine. If you lead me to Jack and he leads me to Tara, we can deal with that. We can deal with them. But if you can’t or won’t help me? That’s not somewhere you want to be. Make the call. One chance.”

  Jayson lifted his phone from his pocket and psyched himself up in front of a full-length mirror. He then showed Clark — unprompted — that the contact he was about to call really was Jack Neal. By no means did Jayson look like someone who could convincingly pull off an un-coerced voice in the present situation, but within ten or fifteen seconds a radio-quality tone filled the room with an effortless resonance.

  Clark watched intently as Jayson stared at his own reflection while asking Jack to meet him as soon as possible at the parking spot nearest the same wooded area where they’d met the previous night.

  Jayson’s perfectly vague excuse, that he had read something online that he feared might expose himself and Jack but really didn’t want to discuss it over a phone he couldn’t be sure wasn’t bugged, also struck Clark as good enou
gh.

  More importantly, as he found out seconds later, it was good enough for Jack.

  Jayson put his phone down after setting up a meeting in just ten minutes’ time. “Now what?” he asked Clark. “Am I done?”

  Clark tipped his head towards the door. “Good work, but not by a long shot.”

  Clark came up with the next excuse; this one for why he and Jayson were leaving together.

  The Moores bought it without any suspicion, thinking it reasonable and sadly characteristic enough that their son should have to identify a drug dealer from a line-up at the precinct. Jayson’s visible distress was also understandable within this context, but Clark made a point of telling his parents that he wasn’t going to be in any kind of legal trouble so long as he helped out. It wasn’t easy to force a relaxed tone, but Clark more or less pulled it off.

  “You’re driving,” he then boomed in a far less amiable manner once the two men stepped outside. “If we get there before him, you’ll be waiting on foot. But if he’s already there, you have to get out of the driver’s side door or he’ll be out of there in a flash.”

  Before making the final few steps towards Jayson’s unsurprisingly flashy car, Clark waved to get Phil Norris’s attention and beckoned him over from the safe distance he’d parked at.

  “Where is she?” Phil asked, automatically concerned by the expressions before him.

  “Jack Neal used this asshole to bait her into the woods and he’s got armed goons holding her somewhere,” Clark grunted. Saying it out loud made it seem even worse than it already did, but he tried to focus on what he could still control. “Now we’re using this asshole to bait Jack back to the same place. He wanted Tara as a way of getting to Dan and Emma and took the chance when he saw one. And Phil… if you don’t want to get any deeper into this, you don’t have to. But I’m doing this, and there’s no time for an ‘official’ police response. This is the hand we’ve been dealt. Are you in?”

  “Drive,” Phil answered affirmatively.

  Clark nodded curtly. “But hang way back. He can’t see two cars. I’ll keep you on a live call so we can communicate; if I need you to drive all the way up the dirt road, you’ll know. And Phil… thanks.”

  With no further ado, Clark stepped into the passenger seat of Jayson’s car and told him to hit the gas. He immediately silenced the radio host rabbiting on about the triangles and, as calmly as he could, asked Jayson to lay everything out during the short drive.

  “The first thing you have to know is that I didn’t plan this,” Jayson insisted, his voice still weak but no longer broken by deep sobs now that the adrenaline had really kicked in. “I’ve been working with Jack and when he found out I’d hooked up with Tara, he jumped all over it. It wasn’t the other way around, I swear! I didn’t seduce her for this. I would never do something like that.”

  It angered Clark no small amount that Jayson seemed so concerned with protecting his own honour when Tara was being held against her will, but he kept quiet and listened.

  “And because I’ve been working with Jack to repair my tarnished image and manage my comeback, he has every single ounce of dirt on me that exists. I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of when I was at the bottom, and some of it is on camera. But ask him yourself when we get there: I still said no.”

  Clark still said nothing.

  “You want to know? You want to know what he has? From my lowest low, there’s a video of me with two dealers. I don’t remember it, but they—”

  “I don’t need to know,” Clark interrupted, for both of their benefits. “Skip the details.”

  Jayson glanced at him in acknowledgement if not quite thanks, taking his eyes off the road for only a split second. “Well, he has that video and he told me to bring Tara to the woods or else he was going to release it and my career would be over. My life would be over. He said no one would look at me the same way, and he was right. But listen to me here: I told him to go fuck himself. I was ready to go to the police but within a couple of minutes I got a text from Jack… a photo of my cousins’ house with his two armed thugs standing at the door. Another text came through a few seconds later: ‘It’s her or them. And if it’s them, you’re next.’ And we’re getting seriously close, by the way, probably twenty seconds until the concealed turn-off.”

  “That scumbag is going to wish he’d never been born,” Clark uttered in the most ominous tone Jayson had ever heard. He was a long way from forgiving Jayson and didn’t think he ever could even once Tara was safe, but he could now at least see why he’d done what he’d done.

  “He said this is all about Dan and Emma,” Jayson went on. “I dunno what he meant, but that’s what he said. He said Tara is innocent and won’t get hurt.”

  Clark gritted his teeth. “The only person getting hurt is him.”

  Just as Jayson had announced in advance, the turn-off arrived in no time. He slowed the car and Clark ducked out of sight in case Jack was already there. In Clark’s mind it would be better if he was, and fortunately this was the way it went.

  “He’s there,” Jayson said. “One car — his car, and no one else I can see. There were only ever two other guys and I don’t think they’d leave Tara. Am I sticking to the plan? I go out and talk to him, get him to turn around, and you get out to grab him before he can run?”

  “Yeah but don’t park too close, okay? And just keep cool. All you’re doing is making him turn around for a few seconds so I can rush him before he can reach his car. Oh, and Phil, are you hearing this? We need you to park sideways at the bottom of the dirt road, just in case he gets spooked and tries to flee.”

  “Sure thing,” Phil’s voice rang tinnily through the phone. “And hey, kid… this is your one shot at redemption. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Jayson gulped and parked the car. “He’s seen me. Okay, I can’t hang around. But Clark, when this is done… are you gonna kill him?”

  Clark answered in a tone even more emotionless than the one Jayson had used to ask: “Depends how I feel when I’m finished with him.”

  V minus 28

  GCC Headquarters

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  “Well, it could have gone a lot worse,” President Slater mused. There was only so much she could say to Godfrey, who didn’t know that Dan had a way of getting far more from questions than the answers he received out loud. It wouldn’t be long until he and Emma called to share their findings, she imagined, and the nature of those findings would determine the next move — including whether to bring Godfrey in on the remarkable news about Dan’s new ability.

  Godfrey rubbed his chin in thought. “Poppy was just as scathing about Ding and Cole as she was about us, maybe even more scathing… so I have to agree, Valerie: that didn’t go too badly at all. In a sense, the GeoSovs positioning themselves so clearly in opposition to the missions of both the ELF and ourselves places both organisations on the same side in the public’s eyes. Before these damn triangles showed up that’s the last thing I would have wanted, because the fight for global supremacy was one we were never going to lose. Since Zanzibar, though? The ELF has had the upper hand and Ding was starting to twist the knife, what with Cole’s new placement in Cuba and then the planned public display of the triangles in Beijing. But McCarthy’s trip has changed everything… their tone has softened and they’re even holding off on parading the triangles. Ford was right: sending him to Cuba did look like an olive branch, and with how popular he is, it boxed them into a corner.” A grin crossed the GCC Chairman’s usually stern lips. “Let me tell you, Valerie, it’s a pleasant change to have that girl on my side!”

  Godfrey’s office, empty aside from the English-speaking world’s two most powerful figures, fell silent for a few moments.

  “McCarthy was our emergency stop,” Godfrey went on, breaking it with a whispered tone and essentially thinking out loud. “I thought two hoaxed triangles was their desperate attempt at an emergency stop when we had the upper hand, but if the triangles are real af
ter all then it’s Dan who has levelled the playing field just as they were racing ahead. Funny how things work out, isn’t it? There’s a chance Ding was bluffing about the reveal all along and that the triangles are fake, but everything we’re hearing from Chinese scientists hints against that. So the real question becomes this: just what the hell are the Messengers playing at? If there’s a message we need to hear in this convoluted way of three separate triangles fitting together to make a revelatory whole, surely at least one of them has to show up in our territory? And if that is the case, why didn’t one of the first two? That would have avoided these tensions, which seems like something the Messengers would want. Doesn’t it? Stop me if I’m wrong, Valerie, please…”

  She sighed. “William, let’s try to stay on one thing at a time. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like the GeoSovs had anything to do with the triangles, which does put us back squarely in the framework of them being real. Because if it’s not an ELF hoax and it’s not a GeoSov hoax, it’s not a hoax. I don’t know why the triangles were placed where they were, either, but ultimately the past few days have undermined both the ELF and the GCC in terms of public opinion. That’s what the GeoSovs want, but maybe it’s also what the Messengers want for a different reason? From their perspective, humanity having two competing points of contact probably just doesn’t make sense. Ding and Cole might be making the right kind of conciliatory noises right now, but they’re not going to cede any meaningful ground any more easily than you are. We have to play a diplomatic game until things get clearer, whether that comes with direct contact or the third triangle being found or whatever else might happen, but in the medium to long term we’re going to have to—”

  President Slater’s borderline rambling was cut off by the sudden opening of Godfrey’s office door. Only one other man in the building had a key card for getting in, and Godfrey knew he would never dream of entering unannounced like this unless something truly couldn’t wait.