“I’ll deal with it.”
Gray shuffled into position behind Shane’s laptop, rolling his eyes when he saw the South Park wallpaper on the home screen. He spent the next two minutes running through applications, trying to access any local information.
“Useless at the moment.” He sighed. “We could do with a lookout at the end of the corridor.”
“What next?” Michael said.
“The first thing is to kill Jacob Miller. After that, I want the rest of the compound secured.”
“Do you want me to send the instructions?”
Gray pulled Michael’s laptop across the table. “I’ll do it from here. Is the chopper in range?”
“It’s ten minutes away. Do you want me to call it in?”
“Not yet, we need to time this right.”
Gray bit his bottom lip and typed out instructions on the XNA network application. He tapped his feet in rhythm with the keystrokes, gaining speed as he went along. Finally, he raised his index finger, then slowly lowered it onto the enter button.
“Done. Now we wait,” Gray said. He twisted the laptop around, allowing Michael to see.
The application split into six boxes, all of them black with a white timer in the bottom corner displaying the date and local time. The top right box flickered for a couple of seconds, interference lines fizzing across the screen. The box smoothed to moving images in black and white. The picture was focused on five steel cases.
One by one the lids flipped open and a synthetic stood up. The camera then surveyed the surrounding area of the Montana compound warehouse as the other five boxes came online, showing similar views.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
4:00 a.m., Day 4, Montana
Zoe paced along the corridor away from the interrogation room, waiting for the director to pick up. After a minute, the line connected.
“Status, Vega.”
“It’s worse than I realized. Murphy managed to get a GPS location on the missing synthetics. They’re closing on a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania.”
“Get them to deactivate the units.”
“He’s saying he can’t. Says that Jacob Miller, the supposed hacker, has secured them on a subnetwork.”
“What does your IT guy say?”
“He said it’s legit with the network and security side of things, but no proof it’s Miller. It could just as easily be Gray or Murphy. What is your relationship with them, Director?”
“I beg your pardon?”
A defensive tone came into the director’s voice then, but she hadn’t meant to accuse him of anything.
“I just meant can you trust these guys?”
“What’s the evidence telling you? Do you believe they’re in on this? Cooley told me about the files found at Miller’s trailer, and that there was no body found. Their story doesn’t work out.”
“I know, but… two of their friends were killed and no one has heard from Tucker, the security guard who helped Miller to break into XNA’s facility. And then there’s the Devereaux situation. It doesn’t look good for them.”
“It doesn’t look good for anyone—especially us, and, by extension, me. I need you to put a lid on this once and for all. I’ve got to escalate the situation with the White House. We’re looking at a nuclear threat now.”
Zoe took a deep breath and moved further down the corridor toward the voices coming from the mess hall. From her position she could see the small room sectioned off from the central warehouse of the compound. The rest of the squad were checking their gear and enjoying some downtime. Three played cards, a few watched TV. She wished she were among them, oblivious to the real situation.
“What exactly do you mean by put a lid on it, Director?” Zoe asked, knowing she wasn’t going to like the answer. She’d been uneasy about this operation from day one, but the idea of redemption and a way back up the career ladder had kept her going. Though there was a limit to her self-delusion.
This wasn’t about career progression anymore; it was about survival.
“Have anything and anyone there destroyed. Anything that links us to XNA Industries.”
“And Miller?”
“Anything and anyone that links us to XNA, Agent Vega. Do I make myself clear?”
Another deep breath. She closed her eyes, the cell phone hot against her ear. Her shoulders tensed. The director might as well have been standing right there in the flesh, staring daggers at her.
Someone in the mess hall cracked a joke and others laughed simultaneously. One of them, Lisa Gallant, caught Zoe’s eye. She smiled and nodded towards Zoe. Zoe returned a nod and a pained, false smile in response.
“What of the rest of the squad? Gray, Murphy?” Zoe asked.
There was a pause.
Zoe waited.
She was about to prompt him when his voice, cold and detached, said, “Eliminate Gray and Murphy along with Miller and the girl. I’ll deal with the squad.”
Zoe turned her back on her joking colleagues, feeling her limbs shake and become cold. Did he really understand what he was asking of her? How was any of this even in the NSA’s jurisdiction? Who was the director, really?
“Agent Vega, are you still there?”
“Yes, Director. I’m just making sure I understand your request correctly.”
“Order, Vega, order. This is not a request. It’s time to lock this down and cover our tracks. If any of this gets out, our lives are over. Do you understand what’s at stake here? It won’t just be our jobs on the line. This is treason, Vega, that’s what I’m talking about here. Death sentence.”
She wanted to be sick. She walked around the corner of the corridor so the squad couldn’t see her. Leaning against the wall, she took the phone from her ear and leaned on her thighs, trying to stop her head from spinning.
Focus, she thought. Think about this logically.
The phone was at her ear again; the director was there, somewhere, waiting. She knew it was all about self-preservation at this point, both from her point of view and his. Regardless of the situation she found herself in, she had to find the right way out. The correct way.
“Director?”
“Yes, Vega?”
“I understand what needs to be done. And it will be done.”
“Good, good.”
He sounded relieved, Zoe thought, but the relief was mistaken, misplaced.
“What will you tell the White House about the missing synthetics?”
“Don’t concern yourself with that. I’ll deal with it. You just concentrate on your task. I want to know when the situation has been contained. Do it quickly. I’m sending a cleanup crew to deal with the bodies. It’ll be an accident.”
“Like the other safe houses?” Zoe asked.
“What other safe houses?” the director said, a clear message in his words. “It stops here. Do your job properly, and I’ll ensure you’re appropriately rewarded. Fail me, and it’s the injection for all of us. I hope that helps bring some clarity to the situation.”
“It does, Director. Thank you. I won’t fail you.”
It was her turn to hang up on him.
Pocketing her cell, Zoe pulled her gun from her shoulder holster, checked the magazine, and chambered a round. She headed off down the corridor towards Jacob and Emma’s interrogation room.
One way or another, she had to control this situation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
4:04 a.m., Day 4, Montana
Jacob tried once more to free his wrists from the cuffs.
He strained against the central bar. The chains between each cuff remained securely looped.
“Fuck this,” Jacob said, dropping his wrists to the tabletop with a clank. “I’m so sorry you got mixed up in all this, Em. I really am.”
“Cut the pity, we’ll figure something out. Once the agents realize we got the biochip from Gray’s creation, they’ll know we’re not guilty.”
Jacob yawned, putting his head down on the table. “I know
you’re right, but how long can it take to dig up the body in my yard? They should have found it by now.”
“Maybe they didn’t have anyone local?”
Jacob turned to look Emma. She wore an expression of pained hope, but deep down she knew that wasn’t the case. Something had gone wrong. They were being set up, framed.
“They must be in on it too,” he said. “I mean, since when did the NSA start acting like a police force? And why bring us here, wherever it is, for interrogation and then not actually interrogate us? They wanted to know our situation so they could cover up their involvement with XNA Industries and blame us.”
The door burst open and a female agent came in, pistol in hand. Jacob lurched back in his chair and yelped with pain as the cuffs bit into his wrists, bringing him quickly forward again.
“You found the body, right?” Emma said with a hint of hope in her voice.
“What? No, there was no body, but we don’t have time to do this. I’ll explain more later.”
She took a key from her pocket and slid it across the table.
“You’ve got to get out of here. Take the nearest fire exit, hide. When the dust settles, call me on this number.” She slid a piece of paper to Jacob, with her name and number hastily written on its surface.
Before Jacob could ask her a question, she ran to the door, poking her head out and looking both ways. She looked back to Jacob and Emma and waved her gun, encouraging them to leave the room.
“Go,” she said. “Avoid the squad, and especially Agent Cooley—the guy who came in earlier; he’s not to be trusted.”
Jacob rubbed his wrists as he read the paper.
Zoe Vega, 555 637 2313
“Zoe?” Jacob said. “What the hell’s going on here? Where are we?”
The agent sighed, paused to think and then closed the door. “We really don’t have time for this, but listen up; I won’t repeat myself. You’re in a compound in Montana. We’ve got Julian Gray and his COO here. This operation is being shut down and covered up. It’s my responsibility.”
Emma gripped Jacob’s arm. Jacob looked at the pistol in the agent’s hand and wondered what she meant by ‘shut down and covered up.’ He had a good guess.
“You aren’t supposed to set us free, are you?” Jacob said.
“No. You could be guilty of subnetworking the synthetics for all I know, but there’s something about all this that doesn’t add up, and I’m not going to do something I’d regret for the rest of my life… at least not that, anyway. Setting you two free might be something I come to regret, but my conscience will be free.”
“What subnetwork?” Emma said. “We haven’t set anything up. Since Jacob took the data we’ve been pursued by Gray’s monsters. He’s the crazy one here.”
“I know,” Zoe said.
Her cell buzzed in her pocket with an incoming message. She took it out and glanced at the screen. “Come on, you’ve got to go. If you stay here, you’ll die.”
Jacob and Emma followed her to the door. She opened it and, gripping her pistol in both hands, leaned out of the door, gun first, assessing both sides. With the door now open, Jacob could hear the voices of the squad escalate, shouting various orders.
“It’s clear,” Zoe said. “Go left out of here, you’ll come to a warehouse zone. That’s the only place you’ll find somewhere to hide. If you can, find a way out of the building and head north. There’s nothing around for ten miles, so you’ll have a trek on your hands. Sorry, but it’s the best I can do.”
Jacob nodded, memorized her instructions, and headed out into the corridor. His legs felt like jelly, as if controlled by someone else. His hands shook with a mix of fear and excitement. He turned to Emma; she gave him a thumbs-up.
Before he and Emma headed off, Zoe closed the door and made to turn away. “Wait,” Jacob said. “What’s happening with Gray and the synthetics?”
“The operation, all of it, is being terminated,” Zoe said with a grim expression on her face. Jacob knew what she meant and couldn’t find it in himself to have any sympathy for Gray’s impending fate. Everything Jacob had believed about him had been proven.
“Go,” Zoe said. “And good luck.”
***
Hand in hand, Jacob and Emma dashed down the corridor, following Agent Vega’s instructions. When they reached the end, the door led into the warehouse section as she had said. A narrow, dark passage cut between storage racks that rose at least forty feet up. It looked like a good place to start. In the ceiling of the building, a number of skylights provided a potential exit.
Beyond the racks were various large tables, rows of metal shipping crates—their doors open and lying flat on the ground—and a small forklift truck next to a large shutter door.
On the other side of the room, Jacob saw three of Agent Vega’s colleagues dressed in their black fatigues. They headed around a small interior room, entering the corridor that presumably led to the other side of the facility. They weren’t hanging around, and neither was Jacob.
As soon as it looked clear, he entered the warehouse section and pointed to the storage racks to their right, covering the entire back wall.
“Ready, Em? We go for the racks, we might be able to climb up and get out of one of those skylights up there.”
Running in a grid pattern, pipework, ducting and other industrial infrastructure created a lattice of potential climbing opportunities—if they could get up there.
“I don’t like this,” Emma said as they ducked in the shadows of the racking: wide, empty shelving units held together by strong, angled steel struts. It reminded Jacob of the construction set he’d had as a kid. For a brief moment he longed to return to that more innocent time, wishing he could be eight years old again with not a care in the world. A time before his best friend disappeared; a time before he got involved with XNA Industries; a time before Brian.
A well of grief bubbled up, threatened to paralyze him, but the shape of someone coming into the warehouse from the far corridor made him move quicker into the shadows, taking Emma further into the depths of the room.
A squad member came in, gun in his right hand and a radio attached to his hip with a mic clipped to his shoulder. He surveyed the area and said something that Jacob couldn’t quite hear. He walked further into the room, investigating the opened crates. Again he spoke on the radio. This time, Jacob heard the words, “They’re out.”
The squad member looked up and surveyed the warehouse, inspecting all corners. Emma gripped her fingertips hard into Jacob’s arm as the man looked their way.
Jacob’s breath became shallow as he tried not to make any noise, but his pulse pounded so loudly he thought it might be heard halfway across the warehouse. He looked to his side; Emma’s gaze was fixed on the man, watching him through the shelves. If they could see him, even with the shadows, it was likely they could be seen too. Jacob wanted to shift them over a few feet so they could gain cover from some larger boxes stored on the shelving, but any movement was likely to give them away.
He leaned his body back, hoping the shadows would provide enough cover.
The soldier seemed to notice, perhaps a shift in the light, and raised his gun, all the while stalking closer from his central position to the shelving units.
Emma’s breathing came fast and ragged, and Jacob’s matched her staggered rhythms. He tried to control himself and regulate his breathing pattern. The armed man was no more than twenty feet away. So close, he must see them soon, surely. But then he suddenly spun to his left. A woman in a basic gray robe sprinted into the warehouse, her blonde hair flying behind her.
Was that…? Jacob squinted. It looked like the synthetic Gray had sent to his home. Yes, that was her. Or her clone.
His body temperature dropped a few degrees as the dread spread through his arms and legs.
“Hey,” the soldier said, bringing the pistol up.
Two shots. The first bullet grazed her right shoulder, making her twist and briefly grimace. The second
shot buried into the concrete wall behind her.
Righting her course, the synthetic sprinted forward, her arms outstretched.
Before the soldier could get another shot off, the synthetic pounced forward like a wild animal, sending him falling backwards. She clawed at his face, making him scream and thrash. With a single punch she knocked him clean out.
Emma stared at Jacob with wide eyes, mirroring his own question: What do we do now?
He clasped a hand over his mouth as the synthetic got up from the prone soldier and looked around the warehouse, scanning it as though she were recording her surroundings, which, given the biochip, Jacob didn’t find so crazy to believe. His entire belief structure had changed over the last few days, why balk at anything anymore?
Seemingly satisfied, the synthetic spun on her heel to face the body of the unconscious soldier. She searched his jacket until she found a combat knife. Putting one hand over his mouth, the synthetic located the point of the knife over his heart and eased her weight on the hilt, driving the point into the soldier’s chest.
Jacob flinched.
The soldier struggled for a brief moment, but the strength of the synthetic held him down until he finally stopped kicking and struggling. Pulling the knife out, the synthetic left the warehouse room and headed down the same corridor from whence she’d come.
Jacob and Emma stood there like statues, frozen in place by the efficiency and cold detachment of the murder. Jacob realized then how lucky they had been when the synthetic attacked them at his trailer. If she had gained the upper hand, it wouldn’t be just Phillip and Brian who had suffered at their hands.
“Em, you’re going to snap my arm,” Jacob whispered.
Emma let go of her death grip on his bicep with a deep sigh. “Sorry. What are we going to do?”
The racks were certainly climbable, Jacob thought. He’d climbed more difficult structures in the past during his days as a journalist. He wasn’t unfamiliar with scaling drainpipes, balconies, or the fire escapes of buildings. Whatever he had to do to get a photo or a story, he’d found a way.
The main problem, as far as he could see, was reaching the skylights. Although the ducting and pipework looked like it would make an easy platform to get on to, he couldn’t tell exactly how high above it the skylight was, or whether it was even possible to open it from the inside. But without going back down, he had little choice.
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