by Nick Thacker
The girls all laughed, and Gloria picked up her first stick.
They played for a few minutes, back-and-forth, until there were only ten sticks left. All of the remaining sticks had fallen on the floor in a similar fashion, their ends overlapping closer to one side of each stick than the other, forming a point at which all of the sticks converged.
Juan tilted his head to one side as he looked at them.
“Papa, it’s your turn,” Gloria said.
He responded in character. “Yes, yes, I am concentrating.”
But as he looked at the remaining sticks, all crossing each other at a single point, he had a realization.
I have to get to the office…
He had to test the theory.
He stood up, apologizing to Gloria. Walking into the kitchen, he grabbed his wife’s hand. “I need to go to the office.”
“The office?” she asked, surprised. “You just came from there.”
“Yes, I apologize. It’s — it’s something urgent.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It is, yes. But I need to get something to Dr. Meron before this evening. Something I forgot at the office.”
She nodded, still confused, but said nothing more. He hated hiding the truth from her, but all of this could still be a ridiculous coincidence. He didn’t want to overhype something and get everyone worked up.
But if I’m right…
He needed to get the data points from the NARATech offices and plot them on a map, then send whatever he found — if he found anything — to Amanda Meron. She hadn’t been herself lately, and he knew it had something to do with this project. He wasn’t sure what sort of pressure she and Dr. Wu were under, and it wasn’t his business to know. But he cared about them; they were his team, his family. If they were feeling any sort of pressure to figure out what this project meant, and the possible ramifications of it, he was going to help in whatever way he could.
It was probably nothing. Probably just another strange recognition that wouldn’t lead anywhere in particular. He would analyze the data — his specialty — and find nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that would bring them closer to finding out why there was an anomaly in their system.
But as he turned onto the main highway that would take him north to the office complex, he had an odd feeling.
What if I’m right? What then?
10
BEN’S HEAD HADN’T EVEN HIT the pillow before Julie came to his side of the bed and started tapping him on the shoulder.
“Ben. Wake up,” she said, her ‘whisper’ louder than her normal speaking voice.
He rubbed his eyes, then sat up, pushing the hotel pillow up against the headboard to support his back. They’d checked in only an hour ago, Julie insistent that they drive around and ‘see the city’ before settling down for the night. They’d done a loop around the small downtown district, then she’d made him pull over at a local soccer stadium to take pictures. She told him she’d always been a fan of the sport, and even though she’d never heard of the small club team she was ecstatic to see a ‘real’ stadium. It was getting dark when they’d left the stadium’s parking lot, and Ben knew he’d only get grouchier as the long day wore on, so he made the executive decision — with her permission, of course — to head to the hotel Amanda had told them to stay in.
Julie’s and Ben’s approaches to staying in a hotel could not have been more different. Ben was practical, utilitarian, about it — he wanted nothing more than a clean bed, a dark room, and solid, lockable interior-facing door. Bonus points if the hotel had a bar, and even better if it had a decent happy hour. He didn’t travel a lot, but when he did he enjoyed a quick glass of whiskey in whatever flavor the locals preferred.
Julie, on the other hand, could not care less about the room itself, as long as it was clean. She wanted a hot tub, workout center, and grandiose continental breakfast. Ben loved to remind her that she always forgot her swimsuit, she never used the hotel facilities, and she didn’t eat breakfast, but the few times they’d stayed in a hotel somewhere together, Julie always made sure it had her “preferred” amenities.
When they’d entered the room, Julie immediately tossed her suitcase onto the second bed — another “feature” she preferred in rooms — and let her clothes spill out everywhere. She hadn’t even finished desecrating the second bed before she decided to start in on the bathroom. By the time Ben got in there, a mere two minutes into their stay, the countertop was covered with hygiene products, makeup, and other accoutrements foreign to Ben.
“What is it?” he said. “I wasn’t asleep. Not sure how I was supposed to fall asleep with you pacing around like that. You’re stressing me out.”
“There’s a lot of reason to be stressed out, Ben,” she said. “I was on my phone, texting Paulinho.”
Ben harrumphed quietly, but loud enough for her to hear.
“Cool it — you’re not the jealous type,” she responded.
“Yeah, but I’m not the bronzed, soccer-playing Brazilian type, either,” he said. “What’s up?”
Julie slid her phone in front of Ben’s face. “He sent a video. Something Amanda got on her phone. He said it’s an update from one of her employees. Then it says, ‘URGENT’ in all caps.”
Ben saw the word, and the video below it. “You haven’t watched it?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s… overwhelming, I think. I wanted to watch it with you.”
As she spoke, Ben saw another text message coming in. He read it aloud. “‘Just watched video. Please meet in lobby — on our way to you now.’”
“He didn’t even watch it before he sent it? How well did you know him?”
Julie gave him a look that said, forget about it, then shoved her finger down on the “play” button on the phone’s screen.
She pulled her head in close to Ben’s, and he turned the phone slightly so they could both see.
Onscreen, a man wearing a white Oxford shirt, the top two buttons undone, glasses, and the beginning of a line of stubble on his chin, spoke into a computer-mounted camera.
“Dr. Meron, if you’re listening to this, it’s too —“ the screen flickered as a blinding flash of light covered the view momentarily. “…We can’t keep them… the facility. Dr. —“ He turned to look over his shoulder, then he ducked. Another flash of light, and it looked like the man was struggling to stay seated on the chair. “Dr. Meron, please find their secret.”
The video jumped again, and smoke filled the tiny screen. A loud popping noise emanated from the device, and even in the relative quietness of it, it was clear the noise would have been loud in the actual room. Julie jumped, and then the smoke cleared enough to show the employee’s face. He frantically reached up for the camera, pulled it toward his face, and leaned down toward the computer. A shadow loomed behind him, shifting and turning as the man started to speak.
“…No time — please — pega-palito…” he repeated the words again, slower, then quickly tried repeating them a last time. “Pega… —“ the last word was cut off just as another pop pushed the level of the phone’s speakers, and the man on screen went wide-eyed, then started to slump.
Julie screamed, covering her mouth, and the man fell onto the table. The camera stayed gripped in his hand, filming nothing but the dark, cold look of the dying man right next to it. It attempted to focus on the close-up image, but couldn’t. The man’s face went blurry, came into focus slightly, then went blurry again.
Even Ben found himself repulsed. The shot continued for a few more seconds, then he saw the screen change. The man was pushed violently to the side, and a larger, black-clad figure silhouetted against the light from the doorway behind them came into view. He turned his head, trying to decipher what was on the screen. Ben leaned in, trying to capture every moment of the action. He focused intently on the man’s eyes.
Eyes can tell you everything, his father once told him on a hunting trip.
The man’s eyes widened, ever
so slightly, then narrowed. He found something. Something that surprised him. Ben felt a chill run down his spine and he sat up straighter. And he wants to keep the information to himself.
He tried to burn the image of the man’s eyes into his mind. The face was masked with black cloth, but the eyes were clear: brownish-green, almost gold-hued in the light from the computer, and sharp.
Deadly sharp.
Ben knew he’d remember them, and he vowed to himself he’d find the man that owned them.
He didn’t know the employee — the scientist — that had just been murdered in front of him, but he knew he’d do what he could to figure out what had just happened.
11
“OKAY, OKAY, SLOW DOWN,” BEN said. “Just explain to us what happened first.”
Dr. Amanda Meron had tears streaking down her face, causing the small amount of makeup she was wearing to run and stain lines down her cheeks. She clenched her teeth, then looked up at the three of them. “You saw what happened, Harvey. Dr. Ortega is dead because of… of whoever that was, and you don’t want me to call the police?”
Paulinho grabbed her arm. “We will call the police, once we have had a bit more time to understand what exactly is going on. But I have also asked an old friend for help, and he should be here soon. We —“
“Every minute we wait it gets worse! We have to call the police now!” she said. She sat down in the large, plush lobby chair just inside the doors of the hotel Juliette and Ben were staying in. After Julie called Paulinho, they made plans to meet up in the hotel, then decide from there what they would do. Julie, at the request of Ben, told both of them to keep the police out of it, at least for now.
Ben shook his head. “No, Dr. Meron, that’s just not true. If we call them, we might be detained for questioning, or worse. Drache Global — if that’s who is behind this, after all — won’t be waiting around. They’re going to keep moving.” Ben looked over at Paulinho. “Who’s this ‘old friend’ of yours?”
“He runs a survival camp and shooting range here. Ex-Army, a sniper, I believe. Good guy to have next to you in a fight,” Paulinho said.
“Well, let’s hope we don’t need him, then,” Ben replied. But, considering NARATech’s headquarters right now… he knew having someone with some military experience they could at least have nearby was a good move. He gave Paulinho a quick nod.
Amanda Meron sniffed. “So what do you think they’re after?”
“We can’t be sure, but the little we’ve been able to dig up about them suggests that they’re interested in knowledge.”
Julie’s face flushed with anger. “Knowledge? Ben, these guys —“
“I know what they did, Jules,” he said. “But remember, they didn’t really care about the damage they did, and they certainly weren’t afraid to kill anyone who got in their way. But, regardless of our feeling towards them, we have to admit they had an extremely scientific process, and they were absolutely bent on finding out just how far they go with this weapon they built.”
Julie shook her head.
“Trust me,” Ben continued, “I want them wiped off the face of the planet every bit as much as you do. But we know they’re still around, and we know they’re working on something. They’re smart, they’re quick, and they know what they’re doing.” He turned back to Amanda and Paulinho. “I think they’re trying to steal your company’s research. They’re interested in what you’re doing here — we know that because they invested. But they’re interested in it for something bigger — something larger than just knowledge for the sake of it.”
“What are you suggesting?” Paulinho asked.
“I don’t know yet, but that’s part of the reason we came here. To find out. If I had to guess, they’re working on something, and they need what NARATech can provide. More importantly, judging by that video, they don’t want any of us getting in their way.”
Amanda stood up and started pacing around the sitting area. Her shoes, casual brown flats sequined with sparkling gold circles that could also function as comfortable office-appropriate footwear, clacked against the tiled floor. Ben was tired, and the repetitive clicking sound seemed only to make him want to sleep more. He watched the shoes, zoning out, and then let his eyes travel up the woman’s legs, poking out from the bottom of the business skirt she was wearing. Long, skinny, perfect physique —
“Ben.”
He whipped around and saw Julie staring at him. He raised an eyebrow.
She repeated the question. “Paulinho thought we should get to the lab, to see what Dr. Ortega was working on when…” her voice trailed off.
“No.” Amanda and Ben said simultaneously. They looked at one another, and Amanda came back over to the chairs.
“No,” Ben said again. The police — and probably more than that — will already be there, so there’s no way we’re getting in.”
Amanda chimed in. “Dr. Ortega was using the Mac in the back conference room, which means he was probably trying to do more than just leave a message for us.”
“What do you mean?” Julie asked.
“That’s the computer we use to record our conference sessions. It’s encrypted, which they’ll no doubt be able to break into eventually, but it’s not the computer we use for lab work. All of that is on personal laptops, and —“
“He wanted us to find something on the computer, and that’s the only one that would work.”
She nodded. “It’s the easiest, anyway. There’s a screen capture feature, as well as a screen-sharing program. We use it to record and remotely stream our meetings in case any of us are off-site. There’s a special cloud-based storage drive we send everything to, as a redundant backup.”
“You think he was trying to tell us something else? Something besides pega-veretas?” Ben asked.
Again, she nodded. “If he was in the conference room, I’m positive of that. Even if the computer was damaged, whatever he was doing would have been uploaded and stored.”
Paulinho looked at Julie, and she stood up. “I’m going to get my laptop.”
Amanda smiled, the makeup still smeared on her cheeks. “Thank you — both of you, thank you. I would have brought mine, but I wasn’t thinking straight. This is all — I can’t…”
“Please,” Ben said. “Don’t apologize. I know how you’re feeling right now.”
He offered the two of them coffee as Julie left to retrieve her laptop from their room, three floors above them. There was a percolator machine across the lobby, at one end of the great room. He sauntered over, realizing again how exhausted he was. They’d left Alaska almost two days ago, and aside from a brief wink of sleep on the plane, he’d not seen the inside of his eyelids at all. They’d driven to Anchorage, flown to Seattle, Los Angeles, Panama City, Belo Horizonte, and finally to Marabá. The driving, layovers, and an in-air time of almost thirty hours, made the total trip about thirty-five hours long. He hated flying, and he’d now done more of it in two days than he had in his entire life.
But it was worth it. He had to tell himself that, if not for him than for Julie — he loved the girl, and he didn’t want her to be caught up in all of this. But he knew her well, too, and he knew she wouldn’t allow herself to be left behind. She’d want to be right in the action, right next to him.
It helped that with her previous full-time role and her current consultant status job at the CDC, she had a line to the higher-ups in DC. If things went belly-up in Brazil, Ben knew she could at least alert the authorities as to their location, and let them know what events had transpired. It was too early in the game to be causing anyone any trouble, and they certainly didn’t want to call undue attention to themselves, but Ben was satisfied to know the option was there.
He came up next to the first of the tall, silver machines and reached for a styrofoam cup. He pressed the lip of the cup to the spigot beneath the machine.
And the glass behind him exploded.
12
BEN FELT THE AIR RUSH around him, and th
en felt the weightlessness of being lifted completely off the ground. The sensation didn’t last long — he was thrown forward and over the coffee table, into the hard drywall of the lobby’s south wall.
The sound of it all caught up to him. A blast from the grenade nearly burst his eardrums, and glass shards rained down around him. He fell from the wall, his frontside nearly crushed flat as he crumpled onto the table and then down to the floor. The tall coffee warmers were rolling around the tile, mostly unharmed. He rolled to the side, forcing his exhausted, now-bruised body to cooperate.
Get to Julie.
The thought crossed his mind as if it was on autopilot. All he wanted to do was find a hole somewhere, a place to crawl into and go to sleep; to pretend this was all a sick nightmare.
But they were under attack. The gunfire started next, rattling the rest of the glass sheets that protected the hotel lobby from the outdoors. He heard the unmistakable sound of automatic rifles, seemingly spraying bullets from every possible direction, and he continued the roll. He finally sat up and began crawling, aiming for the doorway-sized gap between the wall and the information and check-in counter.
There had been no one else in the lobby before, just the four of them, and Ben was grateful for that. He reached the counter and pulled himself up to a crouching position, leaning back against the wall to catch his breath. He was out of sight to the front of the building, but he could see — and hear — the bullets landing on the wall over and around the location of the coffee table. The table itself was shredded, the three coffee containers all now leaking and spraying their hot contents into the air.
Smoke and dust from the grenade’s blast and crumpling drywall confused the air in front of him, but Ben forced himself to keep his eyes open, to try and see if Paulinho and Amanda were still in the lobby.
Paulinho looked athletic enough, and Ben hoped he fit the description. He couldn’t see anyone across the hall from him, and he chose to believe the pair had fled into the smaller hallway behind the lobby after the explosion. The gunfire stopped for a moment, and he saw a pair of soldiers creep into the lobby. They turned from one side to the other, both looking for targets.
