by David Berko
Seth chided himself for not taking the opportunity before to reverse his gray top to its black side. Like back in the maintenance cove. A mistake, no doubt.
“I rotated the cameras on your block to look the other way,” Tyrone proudly stated.
Seth brightened at hearing these words.
A faraway siren reminded him he had his work cut out though. The agent got in and out of an employee’s bathroom unnoticed in the back of a restaurant.
“Now to get to Mr. E’s only half an hour late,” he lamented to the two men listening from their static post miles away.
Alfonso suddenly shared his wisdom. “Sometimes it’s a game of inches, Markov.”
--
Mosada
At thirteen hundred hours the Junior Cadet Wing’s Sim Room 1 had activity. The first arrival wasn’t Esther though, but rather the newest recruit to the program—Azriel.
She said to be on time. So he got there early. He knew she wouldn’t wait for him. However he would be more gracious and give her a small window of time before initiating the program.
This would be the first time he had ever taken the jump. No one told him what it’d be like. Azriel had a good imagination though. Furthermore, common sense dictated that what he was about to go through would be as close to the real thing as one could get. The calendar said they were in the year 2036 after all.
Azriel noticed there were two control panels in the room. One very close to the only way in and out of the simulator and the other located on the total opposite side.
The fourteen-year-old took several curious steps further towards the center. He slowly spun to get a panorama of the space he’d be doing a mission in. The cadet felt truly small in comparison to his surroundings.
The walls were silver with rows of horizontal and vertical columns forming a dense grid. This matrix had many optical devices with shiny lenses all pointed at Azriel.
This could get interesting, he surmised.
But that was nothing.
She had arrived at last.
Esther had on a purple and white wave-patterned jump suit. Her silky blonde hair was pulled back into a scrunchy.
Azriel stared.
Even though his cerebrum memory transfiguration surgery had altered some realities, there were things that didn’t realign.
Before the surgery he had attended one day of high school. Esther had been there. She stole his heart right from the get-go. Now to be on a brother-sister basis confused his system. His hormones didn’t forget, post-surgery. Something in him made him want to go back.
Easter leaned into the panel to examine something. “Is it ready?” she sharply asked the boy about the program.
Azriel stood his ground. “Well, don’t you know already?”
He grew tired of her challenges. Esther’s tautness in her interaction with him didn’t help.
To his surprise Esther mustered a partial smile, saying, “You’re not bad Kemper.”
She was careful to use his new surname. It would be difficult though. The chance of making a mistake and calling him by his real last name made her extra cautious in her communication.
Azriel still hadn’t shifted much.
Esther decided to ask a question when she saw he hadn’t reacted to what she said before. “Have you gone over any strats or plans for what we’re about to do?”
“Strats?”
She sighed. Esther determined to meet him in the middle and just start the mission already.
“Strategies,” the junior cadet spelled it out to the recruit when she got closer. It was a big room. “You have a lot to learn.”
Now that the girl came into view her finer details weren’t distorted by distance or less than ideal lighting. Her dimpled cheeks, slender jaw and petite chin gave her the appearance of an angel in her attractive uniform.
Azriel might have been transfixed…again.
He quickly came out of it though. The young man had a couple fail safes in place to guard against impairment of the female kind. He was ready now.
“Let’s go,” he urged her.
She put up a hand because she had more to say. “First, there’s a few things you should know.”
Azriel tilted his head back sharply before he exhaled. “What?”
“The bad guys can hit you. You won’t die, but you’ll get zapped with seriously high voltage.”
“Has it ever happened to you?”
Esther slowly nodded. She rolled up her sleeve to show him a scar.
“That’s awful!”
She waved it off like it was nothing. “I receive epidermal skin cell therapy later today. It’ll look good as new.”
“Cool,” he quickly said.
“Cool?” Esther gave him a gentle push. “Weirdo.”
Azriel frowned. He really struggled with the inner battle of being around this girl.
“Computer?” she called out to the artificial intelligence listening for commands like the one she’d give. “Link us up with program two hundred and thirty-four.”
Azriel watched in amazement as the walls around him transformed into an environment that looked so real he couldn’t believe they were still technically in Sim Room 1.
The surface below his feet slowly compiled into a grayscale catwalk of a floating space facility in orbit.
Azriel gasped.
The installation had artificial gravity. It appeared to be a transit hub of sorts. Many spaceships were docked outside. Right as he looked out one of the many enormous viewports on the station he got a front seat perspective to one vessel slowly pulling away with its blue thrusters flaring behind it.
“Where…?”
Esther hushed him. “Follow me,” she whispered.
Mr. E’s
Baruch completed his identity change. He emerged from the changing room like a pooched German Interior Ministry secretary.
Hans shook his head disapprovingly. “We’re gonna have to make alterations. You’re midsection, um--” He didn’t want to finish his thought when he saw the other guy’s eyes narrow.
Baruch turned his voice synthesizer on which made him sound like the woman he impersonated. “Finish it. My midsection is, what exactly?”
The agent’s handler, Malach Kemper, angrily hissed in Baruch’s ear at this intersection in the conversation. “What the hell are you doing wasting time there?!”
Hans interjected with humor, “Maybe the officials there will just think you’re a few months along.”
The agent enjoyed the joke. “I always wanted to have a kid,” he said, his eyes smiling.
Hans laughed. He looked preoccupied though. His other appointment hadn’t showed. The shopkeeper knew Seth should have been his first of the day.
Later on when Baruch had left for the government offices Hans decided he would call his boss. He got a hold of Tyrone directly.
He didn’t waste any time getting right to it.
“It’s me.”
“What is it?”
“Where’s the other associate?”
“He got made in the subways. Could’ve been just bad luck,” Tyrone explained.
Hans understood spy craft just as much as the man he spoke to. “We have to assume the worst,” he said.
“What are you saying?”
“There could be a double.”
Tyrone openly scoffed. “That’s impossible!”
“Is it?”
“Well detective…take your pick. It’s either me, Baruch, or Seth.”
“I don’t like Baruch.”
“What’d he do?”
Hans put his elbows on his workstation. For a moment he recalled his interaction with the Mossad agent. Nothing seemed sideways.
“It’s—more or less me following my instincts.”
“Mr. E., I respect you. Your service record is above reproach,” Tyrone said, “but you’re going off a bad feeling. I’m afraid that’s not good enough. I have a job to do.”
Hans had already pulled up Baruch’s profil
e on Mossad’s secure database of agency operators.
Between clicks he said dismissively, “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Please don’t call me about nothing then,” Tyrone rebuked him. “I’m slave to the clock today. I don’t need interruptions like this. That is all.”
Hans was prepared to be hung up on, and that’s precisely what happened. Afterwards the growing sense of concern and anxiety about the day’s events didn’t lessen any. If Seth showed up he would warn the agent to at least keep his head up for any funny business. To stay vigilant. Trust no one.
--
Chapter 6
New Babylon, S3
The thrills were just beginning. Josh followed the signs. His car drifted around the circuit that funneled towards the inner core of the structure.
“Why are we going towards the center?” Esmeralda asked.
“You’ve never seen this before?”
“No.”
The pilot came to the solid white line and waited. A whooshing noise entered into the cockpit from another flying car going up. The arrow on one of the structural pillars turned green twenty seconds later: his invitation to enter into the stream that went against gravity.
The female passenger didn’t look so comfortable with the science. “You’re just gonna drive off the edge?”
“Fly off the edge,” he corrected, flirting with a smirk.
Josh’s vehicle was about to cross the imaginary line and be launched out of the chute when at the last possible second his sensors warned him of an incoming object. Someone below had disobeyed traffic patterns.
A green car rocketed past their level at an unexplainably fast speed. Josh and Esmerelda braced themselves. The emergency brake came on by itself. Josh’s car shuddered at the close call.
Both occupants were disposed to silence at first.
Josh’s first reaction was to take up pursuit, but he now had to think of the woman who sat next to him. This time when he eased the craft into the zone he didn’t have to worry about someone else running a light.
They went up with such ease that it provoked a question from Esmerelda: “Is something helping us up?”
“We’re on an anti gravity lift,” the pilot answered her. “Most parking garages have these.”
“Oh! I never knew.”
“Have you flown on the Orbital Flyer all these years?”
“It’s the fastest way I know of to get around,” the model admitted.
Josh nodded. “Yes it is.”
Eventually they escaped the building and were flying low over the mysteriously dark skies of New Babylon.
Esther gazed out the window and remarked, “You would think we are having a solar eclipse.”
That got Josh going. “Isn’t it something?”
She reached across the short distance and touched his shoulder. Esmeralda tried to ascertain a million and one things all at once about the individual she just touched. He didn’t withdraw…nor did he advance. What did he want with her? There had to be something in it for him.
“Why were you in my apartment building this morning?”
He remained busy at the controls and pretended like he hadn’t heard the question.
“You said you didn’t live in New Babylon.”
Josh didn’t act surprised to be hearing these words. It still surprised him it had been this easy to get a woman like Esmeralda Westover this far. How quickly she had been taken in by his heroics. The personal questions he could handle.
Josh tilted his chin and leaned back to contemplate. “I came here for someone, actually.”
Esmeralda didn’t go to any length to hide her unbridled inquisitiveness towards the man who flew her away from the place she called home. She in fact repositioned herself more into his side of the compartment than her own.
Esmeralda cushioned herself against Josh’s broad shoulders.
“You don’t mind?” she wondered.
Josh attempted not to move a muscle. “Why would I?” Momentarily he issued a peek at the woman content to rest on his shoulder.
It was as if the model knew when he would look too. For precisely during the moment he did her eyes rose up to catch his. Josh blinked away and perhaps blushed. Esmeralda wanted to hear him talk now more than ever.
“Who were you coming to see?
“A very successful model.”
“Ah.” Esmeralda sat sideways now. “And she just happened to live on floor seventy-nine?”
“You wouldn’t know who I’m talking about, would you?” Josh facetiously queried.
The CoverGirl sobered up. The games were over. “Where are you from?”
“Look in my wallet,” he handed her something dark. Josh watched her flip it open to find an ID that altogether surprised her.
“What’s a…Viper agent?”
It finally dawned on her. “No. No, you’re not.”
Josh nodded.
“FRN?”
“My employer, yes.”
Esmeralda retracted her hands and folded them in her lap. She looked straight ahead. The city was behind them now.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Okay, I’ll be brief—”
Esmeralda sharply clipped his language short. “You said you would help me find my son.”
Josh unbuckled and took his hands off the controllers that were on both chair arms. “That’s why I came to get you. I need your help to find Damion.”
That was the first time she had heard her son’s name in a while. It aroused strong emotions. She longed to become a mother to him again. Esmeralda regretted putting her career over family once more. This would end.
“My help?” she said scornfully. “Why do you need me?” Her emotional marathon left her breathless and bent over. “What did Damion do to you?” she challenged.
Josh took his badge back. “It’s nothing like that.” He indulged in a transition from playing defense into a deserving explanation for a moment. “Your son is a person of interest to the FRN, Scorpion detainee, and someone I am charged with rescuing.”
Esmeralda drank in the information. The various pieces in Josh’s message percolated through her filter like a slow-brew coffee. The word detainee gave the blend a generally bitter aftertaste.
She finally formulated the dramatic question Josh expected she would: “My baby is being held by Scorpion?!”
“Yes Mrs. Westover.”
“Please, call me Esmeralda,” the model said as her left hand went on a mission to pet the Viper agent’s knee.
“You really don’t have to do that.”
Josh’s radar sensed the incoming flesh in time to have a prepared interceptor shooting up to meet the unwanted advance. His quicker hand made contact with the slower stealthier CoverGirl mitt on a mission.
She got the hint and returned what belonged to her. Esmeralda held the formations of a smile in place. “What’s my role?”
Josh acted like he had the next line in the play he didn’t look forward to saying. “You and I must go in as a couple.”
The middle-aged woman started to laugh. “What was that all about a minute ago then…when I—”
“You weren’t pretending,” Josh replied.
--
Masada,
Azriel pursued Esther through the portal shaped like a diamond. It was one of several doors leading deeper into the mysteries of the space station.
“Is this place even real?” Azriel doubted. He dared breathe the oxygen of the video game world.
“Wait, you’ve played this level before, haven’t you?” the boy put it to her.
“Azriel, this is your destiny in less than five years. This place is real. Or will be real, more accurately.”
“Who’s my target again?” he called out after her.
Esther tore a panel off the wall and shined a blue beam at the circuitry. Her gloved hand reached in for the tangle of wires to extract the one she searched for. The junior cadet then used a tool to open a socket to get into the net
work. A weak hologram projected from her wristband onto the wall a ghastly green shell of the platform they were on.
“What?” she finally said. She had been too preoccupied to listen to him talk. Seemed like that was all he was good for so far.
A tremendously violent shake rattled all the bulkheads, upending a few floor tiles and starting mild fires all around.
Esther’s hologram began to slant obliquely on its surface because the person who threw the projection had left the floor to drift in a zero gravity situation. Azriel bonked off of her side and careened into a much less forgiving object.
“He’s here,” Esther uttered.
Azriel knew. “My target.”
“In the real world, you’ll only get one shot,” she reminded him as she reached out to stabilize herself and stop the out-of-control nauseous spinning.
“I know how that works, now can we move on to our objective here?”
“A minute ago you didn’t even know who our target was. Is that still true?”
“All I remember is his last name sounded familiar.” Azriel scratched his head. “Markov?”
Esther offered a hand which the boy received. She winched him in like a docking arm ferrying its cargo.
“Yeah, that’s him. You have his profile memorized? Like, if he were to be here would you know to shoot him?”
The question altered Azriel’s face. “I haven’t shot anyone before,” he admitted. His tacit vacillation over his new occupation though absent before now found a voice.
“Oh my god,” Esther frowned. “You sure you didn’t lose your way kid?”
Azriel’s voice deepened. “I’m in the right place,” he insisted, pounding his chest to reinforce his belief.
Esther tugged at his arm she still held on to. “Come on! We have to move.”
“What do we do if we see anybody?”
“Shoot on sight.”
When the young man didn’t say anything after that his female complement to the mission said, “This will test your mettle. Let’s see what you got, Kemper.”
She was proud for once again not stumbling by mistakenly calling him by his real last name.
The two junior cadets synchronously travelled for a length of time. The crawlway they moved through had the intrinsic claustrophobic compartments of a submarine with the elements of modular space structures connected by bottleneck hatches. Aztec markings furnished the walls in a straight line like chair rail in a stately dining room. A fluorescent glow brought the art to life.
