The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2)

by Matthew William

  She brought up the blueprints on the screen. “You’ll have to ‘get lost’ here.” She pinged a corridor on the second floor right below ground level. “There’s a key pad here. They change the code every day, so I’ll get you the current one on the day of the heist. From there you’ll have 1 minute to get down to the security elevator. Once you make it to the central computer room you’ll be able to download the program onto the USB.”

  “What about the security?” Devon asked.

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “How, exactly?” he wasn’t going to leave a single thing to chance.

  “I’ll distract them with fake security cam footage, a CG rendering of a breach at the rear entrance. Do you have the earpiece?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be in this part of the building,” she said, pinging the eastern wing. “I’ll be giving you orders as you go.”

  This couldn’t be over soon enough.

  As far as he could see, once he had the program there was little she could do to get it from him. He’d slip her the empty drive and he would cover his tracks. He’d go underground and report her for corporate espionage. She would take the fall and he would be invisible. And the power would be his alone.

  “Good luck Devon,” she said.

  “Good luck Josephine.”

  When she hung up he spent the next 3 hours studying the plan and the map. He installed a homing device on the empty USB he was going to give her, so that he could keep tabs on her location if the need arose. He wondered if he should do the same with his own. He decided yes. It couldn’t hurt to be too safe.

  Early the next morning he drove out the Unicorp Pharmaceutical Complex, it was a large white office building that sat half a mile outside of the old reservoir. He parked amidst a hundred other cars and waited for eight AM. He put in his earpiece.

  “Nice day?” he asked.

  “Very nice day,” Josephine answered.

  He ran a diagnostic on the frequency they were using. It was unmonitored. So far so good, he thought. She can still be trusted.

  “What’s the code for the door?” he asked.

  “4973.”

  He entered the building and went up to the busy front desk to show his security credentials.

  “Are you new here?” the woman behind the desk asked with suspicion as she scanned his ID.

  “Just a subcontractor,” he answered.

  She stared at him for a second, then went to talk to her manager.

  “They didn’t take it?” Josephine asked in his earpiece.

  “You sound worried,” Devon said through clenched teeth. “Any reason why they wouldn’t.”

  The woman came back and gave Devon his ID. “You’re all good.”

  Devon nodded and entered.

  “Should I get used to this BS?”

  “You made it through didn’t you?” Josephine asked. “Now just get to the elevator.”

  “No, I think I’ll take a detour,” Devon announced.

  “What are you talking about?” He could feel the breath hitch in her chest.

  “I studied the maps. I’m making my own way there.”

  “No, no, no. Not that way. What are you doing?

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “This way’s much more scenic.”

  He went down the stairs two levels and entered the security code to get to the restricted section of the facility.

  “I’m not a fan of this you know,” Josephine said.

  “You’ll survive.”

  He strolled down to a security elevator and entered his credentials. The door dinged open.

  “Your tag wasn’t supposed to work for that door,” Josephine said.

  “I called and got higher clearance. I told them I needed it for the project I was working on. Haley gave it to me. Really nice girl.”

  He left the security elevator and was now in a part of the building he had no business being in. The terminal was large, white, and wide open. Hundreds of busy lab technicians scurried to and fro over the glassy marble floor. Devon crossed the hall to the express elevators he could take to any of the 15 subterranean floors. One opened as he approached.

  “I highly recommend you don’t take this elevator Devon.”

  Her words made him think. She was playing mind games with him, he knew it. Telling him not to do something would surely make him want to do it. Reverse psychology was so childish. He decided he wasn’t going to play along.

  “I think you’re right. I’ll take the next one then,” he said and took a step back.

  “You’re going completely off the rails,” Josephine said, losing her cool for the first time today. “Trust me, you don’t want to take this next elevator otherwise the whole mission will be compromised.”

  She was flipping the script now, reverse-reverse psychology. She really didn’t want him on this elevator.

  “Well this one sounds great,” he said.

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Devon stepped in and came face to face with Josephine Yanloo. Her face was completely blank, she looked up coolly at him with an earpiece in her ear, then back down to her phone. Not even a nervous twitch. She was ice cold. An Indian man stood next to her. He squinted at the visitor’s badge on Devon’s suit.

  “Do you have clearance to be down here?” the man asked.

  Devon looked to Josephine who nonchalantly scrolled down her phone’s newsfeed.

  “I got off on the wrong floor,” Devon said.

  “I would say so,” the man said and hit the next floor on the elevator’s descent and let Devon out there.

  Devon stood there in the hallway, wondering if Josephine was ever going to speak to him again.

  A minute later she was back.

  “Sorry for leaving you in the lurch like that,” she said. “I can’t have anyone else know you’re here. I told my cautious Indian friend that I have an accomplice spying on a competing company.”

  “I see,” Devon said.

  “Do you see the need to trust me now?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Then don’t be stupid again. You’re taking orders from me, remember?”

  Devon nodded and made his way down the hallway. He’d stick to the script for the time being. He took the stairs back to the appropriate floor. In the entrance of the computing center was a long line of mailbox slots where residents could receive mail. That was the agreed-upon drop spot.

  Around the corner he came to the computer engineering bay where programs were born. A large CPU sat in the middle, enclosed in glass. In a sphere surrounding it were smaller stations. And one of those stations held the program he was looking for.

  “I’m shutting off all security cameras on the floor in 5,4,3,2,1…”

  Devon watched as the cameras drooped down like wilted flowers.

  “Hide in the next room,” she commanded. “We have someone coming down the hall... And he’s gone.”

  “We’re a pretty good team,” Devon said.

  “When you aren’t trying to sabotage us,” Josephine said. “Now enter computing station C. You’ll be able to extract the program there.”

  Devon entered and examined the huge display before him. “Geez where do I even plug in?”

  “Bottom left corner,” Josephine said.

  He took out a cross shaped USB from his backpack.

  “Seriously?” Josephine asked. “You couldn’t have gotten anything better than that?”

  “It was the only one I had on hand,” Devon said, plugging it in.

  As he was about to extract the file he had a funny feeling he was being observed. He sat up and glanced around the room to find a security camera to his left aimed right at him.

  “You’re gonna watch?” he asked.

  “This is the most important part of the process Devon, of course I’m going to watch.”

  “Whatever you say,” Devon said.

  He located the crow control program and sent it to the USB. It quickly load
ed to the drive and that was that. He had stolen the most powerful program in the world.

  “Almost too easy,” he said.

  “It was,” Josephine answered.

  Devon ejected the USB and slipped it into his backpack, right next it’s empty identical twin brother.

  “Where should I make the drop?” he asked.

  Josephine was silent. “I know you’re not planning on making the drop Devon. I know about the blank USB.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I know you,” she said. “And it’s a good try, really, but there’s no getting out of here with that program.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Devon said.

  “You said yourself you studied the plans. I know you’ve been planning this. But I won’t hesitate to set off the alarm and send security straight to you. You’d be looking at a life sentence at least. What were you thinking, Devon? Did you really think you could outsmart me? You don’t even know how to use the program.”

  “I know how to use it and I could just as easily report you, you know.”

  “Who would they believe? The upstanding scientist? Or the hacker known as Morrigan?”

  “Who has more to lose?” he asked. “You have further to fall.”

  “No, Devon, you do. There’s no proof of what we’ve been discussing. And plus, I’m where I’m supposed to be. You’re the hacker who’s in a corporate computer terminal. Make the drop or I’m calling security and the FBI.”

  Devon was on the servant side of the relationship once again. The homing mechanism on the USB wasn’t such a stupid idea after all. He wouldn’t get it today, but he would at least know where it would be.

  He went to the mail room and placed the real USB in Josephine’s box.

  “That’s a good boy Devon. Now you can see yourself out,” she said and hung up.

  Devon left the building unharmed. His ego, however, had taken a heavy hit. And for that he could not let her go unpunished.

  15

  “Will we have enough charge to make it?” Leo asked.

  They were driving up farther and farther away from the house, farther and farther up the one and only road out of the valley and the car was beginning to lose power.

  Josephine lifted her arm to look at the gauge and grimaced.

  “We’ll go as far as we can,” Josephine said. “Then we’ll have to walk, I guess. How’s your ankle?”

  “Sore,” Leo said, looking out the window.

  Kizzy sat in the backseat. God, she hoped Diego had made it out of the valley safely. “Do you think those things could have caught up with the car?”

  “I don’t think so,” Leo said.

  Kizzy could tell he was lying. He knew how fast those mutants were. It was well within the realms of possibility that they could have overtaken him.

  “I mean, he had a head start on them,” he added. “And they can’t outrun a car right?”

  No one said a word.

  “Well, I don’t think they can,” Leo announced.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Josephine said.

  Kizzy looked down into her lap as her stomach churned with anxiety.

  “Do either of you know of any driving games?” Leo asked.

  “Whenever I would drive with my mother...” Kizzy said, suddenly realizing she had just mentioned the one humungous sore spot for the couple in the front seat. She could tell Josephine was instantly uncomfortable. Or was that just Kizzy’s own nerves? She decided to barrel through anyway. “Me and my mother sometimes would play this game where you had to guess who the other person was pretending to be. You had to interview them, but you only had three minutes to ask questions. I used to play it with Diego while we were hiding out. He really loved it...” Her voice trailed off at the end, melting into sadness.

  “Okay, let’s play it then,” said Leo, obviously ignoring the melted sadness.

  All three of them sat in silence for a while, staring out the window.

  “Well, who’s being the person?” Kizzy asked.

  “I thought you were,” Leo said.

  “Why didn’t you ask any questions then?” Kizzy asked.

  “I was thinking of something else.”

  “Like your ex-wife?” Josephine asked.

  “No. I was thinking of how much it was going to suck to walk on my ankle.”

  “Thinking about yourself, I see,” Josephine said.

  “I’m getting pretty tired of defending myself for every stupid thing...”

  “Defending yourself? Defending yourself? You shouldn’t have anything to….”

  “I have one!” announced Kizzy loudly. “I have a person.”

  The two in the front seat glared at each other through flaming eyes.

  “So you have to guess,” Kizzy added.

  “Is it a thing?” Leo asked, not even trying to hide the boredom from his voice.

  “No, I’m a person,” Kizzy answered

  “Do we know the person?” Josephine asked.

  “Some of us do,” Kizzy said with a nod. She smiled and looked out the window. This was going to be a good one.

  “What color hair?” Leo asked.

  “Black,” Kizzy said.

  “Is this person American?”

  “Are we American?” Kizzy asked, not really sure what the word meant.

  The two in front looked at each other in surprise.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Leo said.

  “Then yes.”

  “Is this person alive?” Leo asked.

  “No.”

  “Were they famous?” Josephine asked.

  “No.”

  “And some of us knew them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Banshee?” Leo asked.

  “No, they weren’t famous,” Kizzy said, shivering at the thought of the man who tried to take advantage of her.

  “Patty?” Josephine asked.

  “No,” Kizzy said, saddened at the thought of her slain aunt.

  “Father Morrigan?” Leo asked.

  “God, no,” Kizzy said, disturbed even by the mention of him.

  “I can’t think of anyone else that some of us knew,” Leo said, looking over at Josephine.

  “You knew her,” Kizzy said.

  “Oh god...” Leo said.

  “Because it’s my mother.”

  They was a dead silence in the car for a good ten seconds. Kizzy drank it all in with a smile.

  “Wow, you really went there,” Leo said.

  “Yeah, that was not the best choice,” Josephine said, trailing off into a giggle. She turned with a smirk on her face and shook her head at Kizzy. “Jackass.”

  Kizzy smiled. At least the two in front were united in their hate of her at the moment.

  They drove farther into the woods, the trees grew tall and dark like a prison all around them. The road lead into a little valley with two hills raising up on each side of the car.

  “Hey, I see him up there,” Josephine said.

  Kizzy looked out. Diego stood atop the hill to their left. The busted up cop car was nowhere to be seen. He waved with one hand in the air. Kizzy wondered whether he had become bored of waiting for them so long.

  “Look out,” said Leo as he braced himself against the dashboard.

  Josephine slammed on the breaks as a large rock came rolling down the hill to their right, crashing into a tree and blocking the road.

  She shifted the car into reverse and looked backwards. “This isn’t good.”

  “Is it the mutants?” Kizzy asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Josephine said, trying to drive back down the curvy road.

  Kizzy looked out to the right. A dozen women were coming through the forest towards them. Another large boulder came bouncing down the hill behind them, blocking them in.

  “It’s a trap!” Kizzy screamed.

  Josephine shifted back to drive and pressed on the gas. She tried to go up the hill to the left, but the underneat
h of the car caught on the ground and the wheels spun impotently.

  “Get out!” Leo yelled, as he left the car. “We need to make a run for it.”

  Outside the women were coming down the opposing hill, carrying torches and pitchforks in their hands. These were the women from the courthouse, coming after Kizzy once more. Among them Kizzy’s eyes met Paige Palmer’s. She had finally found her and now Kizzy was going to pay. How could they have tracked her all the way out here?

  A woman came at Leo with a pitchfork. He dodged the attack and decked her. With a grimace he waved Kizzy and Josephine after him and limped up the hill. The cool air stung Kizzy’s lungs as they ran. When they reached the crest they went down the other side a few paces.

  “Wait. Under here!” Leo commanded as he dove to the ground and took cover under a fallen tree. It was nearly black under there in the dim afternoon light and he couldn’t be seen. Josephine and Kizzy climbed down to join him. It was damp and smelled of fallen leaves and fungus.

  The gang of women came running past them and continued farther down the hill. They didn’t even stop.

  “I can’t believe that worked,” Leo whispered. He began to crawl out when he heard the rustling of leaves nearby.

  Diego came into the clearing, cautiously going down the hill after the women.

  Kizzy was about to yell out to him when Leo covered her mouth. A woman came from out of nowhere and knocked Diego out with a shovel.

  Kizzy tried to scramble out to him, but Leo held her back.

  A couple of women tied Diego’s limp body and Kizzy watched as they grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him away.

  Kizzy’s chest tightened. There were crows in the trees surrounding them, she could sense them. With a sneaky hand she reached into Josephine’s backpack and tried to grab the USB. She could feel its shape inside a cloth bag, not yet touching her skin. Leo tried to pull her back.

  “No, Kizzy,” Josephine hissed, trying to yank the backpack away from her. “It could kill you.”

  “I have to get him back,” Kizzy said, pulling the backpack.

  Suddenly there were no women to be seen. There was a gap in their pursuers that surely wouldn’t last long.

  “Come on we’ve got to run!” Leo said crawling out from the hole.

  Still Kizzy kept her hands clamped on the backpack.

  “You can’t get him back if you’re dead,” Josephine snapped.