Marette picked herself up from the floor. It was time for a break.
The walk back to her quarters was brief. She slipped off the wrist and ankle weights, removed a silver necklace that was the one piece of jewelry she allowed herself, and was about to strip for a shower when the comms-channel sounded.
ESA Command.
She keyed up voice only. "This is Clarion."
"Chief, something's happened. Have the hackers left yet?"
The Earth waited outside, large and quiet. Elsa kept watch on it as her heels struck harshly on Sunrise Station's concourse floor and took her toward the gate where her shuttle waited. She was returning to Earth, on the last leg of the journey planetside, and hardly too soon.
Though they had not yet managed a second hack on Alpha Station, and though they had zero answers, she'd snatched the chance to leave the moment it was offered. The ESA witch didn't want them anymore once they refused to be used, and Elsa had no wish to stay.
Elsa was certain they thought to be rid of her and the rest by sending them off with that bonus of hush money that they tried to call "hazard pay." If ESA thought it was over, they were wrong. She would make certain of that. ESA was cowardly—cowardly in lying to lure her and the others to their deaths, cowardly about sending them away without an explanation. She would see them pay.
She'd not known Suzanne Namura before a few days ago, and in that time they hadn't spoken in a non-professional capacity. But the ease with which ESA had used her life was offensive. It was infuriating! And had it gone differently, it might have been Elsa lying dead on the table. Bastards! Lying bastards. No one used her. No one.
They would pay.
No one would talk of a plan on the shuttle to Earth orbit. Their reluctance had finally disgusted her. She'd spent the two-hour layover on Sunrise Station apart from them all. In that time, she came to realize that perhaps they were prudent not to discuss things in such an open place. She would speak to them again of plans to make plans on the shuttle to Earth.
Except for Marc and Nick, she amended. The shuttle to the United States had left shortly after they arrived, and the two men with it. Nick she would find a way to contact later. Marc was useless to her.
And good riddance to him, anyway! He refused to help when they needed him. Maria and Nigel refused, too, but their reluctance was born of wariness. Marc was simply against them. She'd seen it in his eyes when Clarion had shown up the night before. In his voice. If he wasn't fucking her, he wanted to. Spineless. He was as bad as Clarion. Worse. He'd betrayed them.
The boarding light was off above the gateway. She was early, and none of the others had arrived yet. She was scowling out the window at the crescent of the Moon, planning, when the man spoke up from behind her.
"Ms. Litzenburg? There's been a problem. Will you please come with me?"
She turned.
CHAPTER 11
A banshee wind tears through darkness and hurls rain against the stone fort like a consciousness striving to tear it from its vigil atop the cliffs. The crash of waves rolls up from the sea far below, heard yet unseen but for momentary lightning flashes that shine across its depths and then vanish in the dark.
Shielded by the battlements, Michael Flynn weathers the storm. He stands watch for the enemy that approaches and takes solace in the strength of the fort about him: a stronghold of the Agents of Aeneas. He is one of them now, lending his strength to their whole. That whole will support him. Together they stand as secret sentry, defending those who need it, those who live in the shelter of their guardianship, those who cannot defend themselves.
Michael walks the length of the ramparts, thankful for the shelter the stone gives from the elements that rage only feet away. He helped build this fort. Or had it been there before he came? He suddenly cannot recall. Perhaps both? But it is there, strong beneath his feet. Without a doubt, he belongs.
There comes a rumble. He feels it on the air and in his mind. A sickening creak of rock cuts through the wind outside. The fort begins to tremble. Michael presses back against the inner wall, his hands bracing against the stone as the wind whips inward to sling bullets of rain across his face. Lightning flashes in an assault of power. Thunder rolls in on its heels.
The storm rips the ceiling away in an instant. Buttresses crumble, fall, and with them tear away pieces of the cliff. Michael yells an alarm, barely able to hear his own voice, barely able to do more than hunker against what wall remains as the fort breaks apart around him. The deluge strikes with all its strength, drenching him, chilling him. It tears at the foundations of his fortress, ruining the cliff side until it buckles under its own weight and stone after stone falls. Streams of mud carry them down into darkness before they crash and splinter far below. Michael scrambles for footing as his perch begins to slide, broken beneath him, and then is gone.
Somehow he remains. Michael struggles against the torrent of rain, mud, and wind that twists about him like a thing alive. The fort is no more. He is alone, exposed. Water and darkness blind him as he fights to gain another handhold and keep from being dragged down with the rest.
Lightning flashes.
Diomedes is there.
The older man stands atop the cliff, cold, hard, and seemingly immune to the storm that assaults Michael's senses. He regards Michael like a priest on a pulpit. Mud washes over Michael's face, spills into his clothes, yet Diomedes makes no move toward him, gives no sign of acknowledgement beyond a cold gaze that grows harder with every thunderclap.
Rain continues to pour: rain like daggers, rain like fear, rain like the night Michael pointed a gun at the man he'd once called mentor and told him to get out of his life—at the man who stands there now.
A chunk of earth gives way beneath Michael's feet and only a blind, lucky grip on an exposed root saves him from falling after it. Diomedes rushes forward and reaches for Michael's free hand. Diomedes now struggles against the river of mud himself, trying to pull Michael up the cliff to safety, but even as Michael's grip on the root weakens, he beats away his mentor's hand with all the strength he has remaining. Diomedes stumbles back, off balance, until the mud sweeps his feet out from under him and takes him into open air.
Michael watches him fall.
Then the cliff gives way. Michael loses his grip. Rain bears him down into darkness.
The dream's end jolted Michael up in his bed. A crash a moment afterwards jerked his attention to the side where the aloe plant had fallen to the floor from the far edge of his nightstand. He must have knocked it down with his waking movements, though it seemed strange that it should have toppled so easily from so far away.
He swung his feet out of bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, and tried to shake the nightmare's residue from his thoughts. Fading adrenaline still thrummed through his body as he stared down at the plant. The soil was spilled out across his tan carpet, but at least the pot remained intact. Michael moved to the floor, righted the pot, and then set to returning the dirt to its place. He tried not to think of the dream, or the man.
The small chore was little distraction. He set the pot back in its place. What did the dream mean? Even as the details faded, Diomedes's falling look was still fresh in his mind. Betrayal. Pain. Loss? It was the same the night Michael turned from him. He'd done his best to forget that night, to move on. Michael had been blind to what the man was, blinded by fear and his own need of support. It still shamed him.
His palm was vibrating.
The hum from the paper-thin chip implanted under the skin of his right palm buzzed against the side of the pot where his hand rested. Michael caught his breath. It was the first time it had activated for him since the Agents of Aeneas had installed it upon his recruitment. It was an identifier, a means of access to any AoA facilities, and a method of recognizing another agent via handshake. And, in emergencies, it would vibrate.
Something was happening.
Check your email first, he told himself, recalling procedure. He went for his smartphone, prope
lled by the purpose of being needed. He opened his email, activated the encryption, and scanned what awaited him.
The message, broken into two parts, was relatively brief. The first part was a protection order for Marc Triton, one of their own. Marc had returned from the lunar crater site within the past week, one of six survivors of a seven-member team. According to the email, the AoA just discovered that the other five were now either missing or dead. Michael was the closest qualified and available agent. Michael would be the one to protect him. Additional details were promised for when he rendezvoused with Marc. For now, time was of the essence.
He hurried through his apartment to gather up his gear, anxious to prove himself, to help, and to learn those additional details. He was trained to protect. His desire for such things was one of the reasons the Agents of Aeneas had recruited him. Serving as a bodyguard didn't worry him. What did was the second part of the message, the part that listed his additional assignment.
The part that contained the name Diomedes.
It took Michael nearly twenty minutes to reach Marc's building. The apartment in which the Agents of Aeneas had placed Michael was across the city, and the late morning rush hour only lengthened the trip. When feasible, multiple agents in a city were geographically dispersed to cover a wider area. In this instance, Michael noted painfully, it worked against them.
A quick phone call to Marc from the cab had alleviated Michael's worry that his comrade was in any immediate danger. Marc was calm enough, if a bit on edge, and for the moment, safe. The cab's lack of privacy kept the conversation too short to learn more.
Make contact with the freelancer Diomedes. That single line of text beginning the description of his second objective returned to the focus of Michael's thoughts as the cab forced its way through traffic. He knew Joseph Curwen, the ESA mole, had been shot a week and a half ago, but until now Michael was uninvolved with what the AoA called the Exodus Project, and other duties had kept him from following the details closely. It wasn't until reading the email that Michael learned that Diomedes had pulled the trigger. Yet the brief message offered no evidence. Michael trusted his AoA fellows enough to guess it was more than a hasty assumption, yet he found himself hoping they'd made a mistake.
Soon after he arrived at Marc's, it was clear there was no mistake.
"I just—I just don't know that it's a good idea."
Michael sat beside Marc, talking to a screen they both were watching. A minute earlier it had shown a video of Diomedes firing the shots that brought down the mole. Now it held the live image of Abigail Brittan, a captain on the Northgate police force and the current AoA area coordinator.
"He knows you, Michael," Abigail said. "We had our eye on you when you were still under his wing, and we know that he's violently untrusting of others. The video's release will only exacerbate that given the anonymity of its source. It wasn't from a district security camera. It was privately placed, likely by someone who knew he'd be there, and we need someone he knows to make contact. I gather you have a different take?"
Michael had been with the AoA long enough to know that they rarely issued an assignment that wasn't open for debate. Though it was still taking some getting used to for him to comprehend, the AoA philosophy was a communal one that valued input from its members. Leaders and coordinators were, in most cases, an organizational necessity rather than generals leading mindless troops. Michael had no idea how to find his old mentor and even less of an idea how he'd handle the man's sure negative reaction if he did. If he could persuade them that this was a bad idea, maybe they'd reconsider.
"He knows me," Michael started. "That might make it worse. The last time he saw me I stuck a gun in his face. I don't guess he'd react well to seeing me again."
"Unfortunately, the only other agent he's ever had direct contact with is Marc—and you'll be his shadow for a while now."
"Well, I helped him before," Marc offered. "Maybe the two of us can get him to talk."
"If we can find him. You said he's gone into hiding?"
"As far as we can tell, yes." Abigail regarded him a moment. "Michael, we need to learn what, if anything, Curwen told anyone. To find that, we need to know who ordered the hit and why. Diomedes can tell us."
Michael took a deep breath. "There's no other leads?"
"Not many. The fact that the corporate security grid was disabled indicates some tampering, but thus far they covered their tracks. What's more, the video footage records Diomedes firing two shots only. The body arrived at the morgue with three wounds. One in the head, two in the chest."
"So there might have been a second shooter," Marc said, echoing Michael's thoughts.
"One of a few possibilities. None of the district cameras were focused on the mole at the time, and we're having trouble reconciling eye-witness accounts. I'll report your concerns. Possibly there's another option. I don't see it, but we'll look. Expect to hear from me within the hour."
The transmission ended. Michael let out another long breath. Nearly any other assignment would have been welcome. Was contacting Diomedes doomed to failure, or did he just not like the idea?
"So," Marc asked suddenly, "how've you been?"
Michael laughed. "I don't guess I can really complain."
What news did he have to tell? Marc was the first AoA member he'd met. He already knew about the three months of training Michael got after joining, and about the apartment and security job they'd placed him in. The position was only with a small security company—almost like additional training before he could be moved to Aegis, the industry leader. Few freelancers had the values and psych profile that the AoA was looking for, he'd been told. Most were too violent, too selfish. Too much like Diomedes. The Agents of Aeneas needed more people in Aegis, and Michael was to be one of them.
But Marc knew all of this.
"The job's been fine," Michael said. "I've had a couple AoA protection assignments, watching over one or two people for a few days without them knowing it. You've had a more exciting time from what I've heard?"
"I guess I've got my own briefing to give, huh?" Michael listened as Marc recounted his journey to the Moon. He filled him in on what details of the project's progress Michael didn't know, and then told him of the cryptologist's death and the effect it had on the rest of the team.
"They sent us home quickly after. Before Elsa and the others had a chance to do more. But ESA found out about their first attempt to hack Alpha Station. They didn't get anything useful, but they still left traces. Everyone from Europe—there were four—disappeared. Records show they left Earth orbit, but no one saw them after that. It's like they just hit the planet and vanished. No one noticed until Nick—the one I told you was from Denver, he was barely twenty-one—he was killed yesterday in an execution made to look like a carjacking."
"And now it's just you left. If it's ESA, shouldn't we have seen it coming? I thought there were agents in there?"
"There are. But ESA's keeping this quiet. All Marette knew was they'd found evidence of the first hack, and she's one of the highest placed of us there. They kept her out of the loop for more."
"So she's in danger, too?"
Marc sighed briefly. "Maybe. But she thinks it's more a case of plausible deniability. She doesn't need to know, so they don't tell her. Chances are, if her cover was blown, she'd be gone already." He frowned and then added, as if to comfort himself, "But she's able to take care of herself."
Michael nodded and wondered if there was more between Marc and Marette Clarion than he was saying. Though they were friends, Michael didn't feel comfortable posing the question.
Besides, there were more immediate things to worry about. "If ESA's looking for you, do you really think it's wise to stay here?" He glanced around again. The shades were drawn. The door remained locked.
"ESA doesn't know where I live. The records are falsified. They think I'm from Portland. That'll buy me at least a little time. And I need to stay here where I can work on Holes and maybe do
some good for the cause. From the intelligence we have, the ESA'll try to make it look random like with Nick. Poor kid."
Michael bristled. Despite the training and responsibility he was entrusted with, he still felt young. Marc was near thirty, and at twenty-two, Michael wasn't much older than the "kid" to whom Marc was referring.
"I've also got Holes tied in to the building security and cameras," Marc continued. "He knows what the tenants look like and can alert us if something unusual's going on."
"So you're most vulnerable when you're not here."
"Yeah."
"Another reason not to go looking for Diomedes."
Marc heaved a sigh as he stood up. "I can't say I wouldn't feel safer holed up here. But. . ." He trailed off and headed for the kitchen. "You want something to eat?"
A crashing smack of metal sounded outside and Marc cursed, throwing himself to the carpet in an instant. Michael's hand was on the auto-pistol in his shoulder holster without thinking about it. It sounded like a car had hit something, but he dashed to the blinds to check.
"Shit, what was that?" Marc asked, flat on the carpet. "Holes?"
"A white sedan has impacted the side of a sports car, Mr. Triton," the A.I. answered.
Michael looked out between the blinds to find the scene that Holes described. "It's right. Doesn't look too bad, but we'd better call 911 just in case."
Visibly sweating, Marc crawled to a sitting position against the wall beside the kitchen doorway. "Take care of it please, Holes," he murmured.
"Please specify your reference to 'it,' Mr. Triton."
"Call 911!" Marc swallowed and calmed. "For the accident, I mean. Make it anonymous. Please."
The A.I. acknowledged, and Michael walked over to his comrade and crouched down. "You okay?"
"Yeah." Marc nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little tense. First time an international organization's tried to kill me." He gave a weak smile.
Michael returned a smile of his own, unsure of what to say to comfort someone older than he was. He sat there as Marc got up and continued to the kitchen. Marc had done his job and his duty for the AoA. He went to the Moon, risked his life multiple times, and now his life was in danger again because of it. And it was his own duty to protect him, Michael reminded himself—to protect Marc, not to protect himself.
A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) Page 7
