He’d just settled in for breakfast when his phone rang. He glanced at the caller identification, though he had little doubt who it was. “Good morning. Mister Sil—”
“Light, get your ass in here. Immediately! We’ll be gone for several days.”
And Oswald Silver hung up.
Roddy sighed. That was Mr. Silver at his most cheerful and verbose.
He went back to his bedroom and pulled his traveling bag from the closet. He tossed the bag on the bed and flipped it open. One change of clothing. Not enough. He rummaged through his closet and pulled a half dozen changes of clothes out and carried them to the bed. He’d learned long ago that “several days” could mean anywhere from two days to two weeks. He packed the extra outfits and carried the bag to the kitchen, cleaned his dishes, and did one final patrol of the apartment.
He stopped in his office and spun the combination dials on a pair of locks to a closet in the room. He opened the doors and selected three firearms, two knives, and several cartons of ammunition from his private armory. He locked the closet doors once more, added the weapons to his frame, and masked their presence by rearranging his clothing. As he exited his office, he glanced toward his bedroom, where the hidden cameras and microphones would remain behind.
Would he learn what he feared to be the truth during his trip?
Moments later, he strolled through the lobby toward the primary doors of the apartment building. Red, the elderly doorman, looked nearly asleep, but perked up as Roddy approached, as if awakened by an internal radar.
The man tipped his hat at Roddy. “Have a pleasant day, Mr. Light. I trust you’ll be better rested than your wife.”
Roddy nodded. “Thanks.” He looked up from his shoes, which he’d stared at, wondering if his footfall had awakened the doorman from his partial slumber. “I’m sure I…” He paused. “Wait. Why would you think I’m better rested than Deirdre?”
“Well, she left for that middle of the night jog right when I started my shift. I can’t imagine she got much sleep after that.”
“Oh, that,” Roddy said, struggling to keep his tone controlled, as if Red had merely reminded him of something he’d already known. “She’s a bit of an insomniac.”
The older man’s face twisted into a leer. “I imagine you don’t get much sleep when she’s in your bed, do you?” He winked at Roddy.
Roddy stared at the man with such ferocity that Red backed away, holding up his hands. “Sorry. Not appropriate. Forget I said anything.”
Roddy walked out the door without saying a word.
What the hell was Deirdre doing going for a jog in the middle of the night?
His eyes narrowed as he walked down the street, and he spent the remainder of the trip to Diasteel Headquarters imagining just how he’d kill the man she’d gone to visit.
—————
SHEILA CLARKE
—————
…of the many advanced technologies described by the Time Capsule, perhaps the most ubiquitous is the personal mobile communication device, providing both verbal and written messages transmitted via electrical signals and towers… some experts believe the lack of context and non-verbal cues in so-called “texting” may cause significant miscommunication of even the simplest messages…
The History of the Western Alliance, page 5600
THE DREAM HAD BEEN PLEASANT, an idealized memory of one her first dates with Stephen. It had been a rare day off work for both of them, a day when the weather cooperated, and they’d headed to the sandy beach near the massive freshwater lake forming the eastern border of the cityplex. They’d splashed in the water, listened to the sounds of the birds singing nearby, and even sculpted buildings from the sand. They’d set towels on the soft sand and reclined, relaxing as the rays of the sun warmed their skin, their fingers intertwined. She remembered looking at him then, thinking about how lucky she’d been to find him, and how she wanted every day and every dream to remind her of this perfect time. It was her own private version of the Golden Age. And it was real.
“Sheila.”
The voice called to her from the waking world, but she had no interest in leaving. In her mind, she took a deep breath, imagining a hint of lavender in the fragrant air filling her lungs.
“Sheila.” His voice conveyed a sense of urgency. And… was he angry about something?
“Sheila!”
She snapped her eyes open, then squinted into the bright light filling the room. Stephen’s face filled her vision. But it wasn’t the Stephen in her dream, the happy, content Stephen. This Stephen’s face was contorted, his mouth curled into a snarl, his eyes narrowed in anger.
“Stephen?” Her voice croaked. She needed some water. “What… what’s wrong?”
He pulled back from her and began pacing the bedroom floor. “I’d like to think I’ve been a patient man, Sheila.” His footsteps were heavy, adding to the ominous tone of his voice. “You got assigned to that new project, and I was happy for you. You worked long hours and pushed curfew every night. You worked a lot of weekends. All of it was geared toward trying to root out the rumored fraud by this top secret client, and if you found it, you’d be in line for a huge promotion. It was tough. But I supported you.” He shook his head. “You played me for a fool, Sheila.”
She shook her head to force herself awake as she processed his words, trying to understand what had set him off.
Stephen, like their friends, thought her to be an auditor with a mid-sized accounting firm. He’d been to the office on a few occasions so the two of them could enjoy a private lunch, asking her to be paged by the office receptionist, Jocelyn Whitfield. What he hadn’t known—and for that matter, what Jocelyn hadn’t known—was that she’d been paged at the secret office where she actually worked, and that she’d used a hidden entrance to the primary office to enter the lobby in a manner all would suspect.
The underground base operating beneath the offices of Jamison & Associates had received word of heightened troop and naval activity in the East over recent months, and the workload had accordingly multiplied. They didn’t know why the activity levels had amplified, but it was their job to make the connection. In many ways, she’d told him the truth. The new client was the analysis of the heightened troop movements; locating the cause of the anomaly meant they’d been working to understand what the East had planned. She’d stated that she’d get a promotion if she found the “error,” though she’d not cleared that with Jamison. She doubted he’d have a huge issue with the claim for purposes of hiding her actual work, and would likely come through with a public promotion in recognition of her private accomplishment.
Stephen didn’t know, and couldn’t know, that her efforts were made to protect him—and their countrymen—from whatever evil the East had planned. He knew only that his wife was overworked. “I know I’ve been working too much lately, Stephen, and it’s been hard on you. I can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve provided. I want this project to end as badly as anyone, because it means I’ll have more time to spend with you again.” She offered a smile. “We have some work to do ourselves, don’t we?”
They’d been together just over a year, and societal pressure meant they ought to start having children soon. She wanted that. But with the fate of the world in her hands, she wanted to wait until her focus could more naturally fall back upon her husband and future children, rather than analysis meant to decipher plans to kill all of them.
He stared at her. “You think that’s why I’m upset? Because you’re not pregnant yet?” He laughed without humor. “Oh, the irony. You really do think I’m a fool, don’t you?”
She held up her hands, exasperated. “I don’t think you’re a fool, Stephen. Why do you keep saying that?”
His face turned stony. “Your boyfriend texted you while you were sleeping.” He threw the phone at her.
She whipped her hand up just before the phone hit her in the face, staring at him.
He stared back, jaw open. Oop
s. She wasn’t active duty, but they’d required quite of a bit of physical activity and weapons training, including various fighting methods. At some point she’d developed solid reflexes.
She glanced down at the phone. Who had texted her and left her husband the impression that she had a boyfriend?
Someone knows what we did, and is making an effort to destroy us. Make any excuse necessary, but get to me as soon as you are able. Micah.
They’d emptied the contents of the coffin inside the giant underground tank. The General hadn’t seemed surprised at all when an oozing black substance that resembled mold poured out. She’d asked him how mold could destroy a massive building, but he wouldn’t answer her question. His text could only refer to the fact that they’d moved the material to hidden storage. Someone had found out, and was trying to destroy them. He needed to see her, to provide her with more information, to get a second opinion on what the new information meant.
She looked up at Stephen’s face, contorted in anger, and then reread the message.
Oh, shit.
To Stephen, who knew only that his wife hadn’t made it home before curfew, who knew only that his wife had been working on a secret project for several months, the text message meant only one thing. She’d been having an affair with someone named Micah, who’d texted her to report they’d been discovered and that he needed to see her, likely to coordinate stories to offset the claims.
And she couldn’t fault his interpretation at all.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to correct his understanding, at least to a point.
“Stephen, this message was badly written. There’s nothing going on.”
He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Sheila. I’m not stupid.”
“You’re acting pretty stupid!” she snapped, a response she instantly regretted. “Look, I know that message looks bad. But it’s solely related to work. Actual work.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said, his voice menacing. “And what is it that someone knows that you did and wants to destroy you?”
“It means we found the problem, Stephen, but it wasn’t just a mistake or a procedural error.” Why did the lie come so easily? “It was purposeful, done to hide a greater fraud. Several of the principle owners of the firm have been bilking credits and hiding it with fictional accounting entries. Micah—my boss—was concerned once we realized what was happening. It’s a lot of money, Stephen. Enough that he feared personal repercussions. We started working on a stack of documentation to take to the authorities, but we ran out of time last night. His text message suggests that those men have learned we cracked the code.” She turned the phone so the screen faced him and pointed at the text. “They’ll try to destroy us, Stephen. That’s why he needs me to get to the office quickly. We need to get the information to the authorities before those men get to us.”
It occurred to her that she’d never denied having an affair in her entire speech.
He studied her face for several moments before finally shaking his head. “You used to look me in the eye when you talked to me, Sheila, before you decided to start living a lie. I don’t know who this Micah character is, but I promise you this: if I ever find the man who’s sleeping with my wife, this Micah? I’ll break his neck with my bare hands.”
He turned and headed out of the room, leaving her slack jawed. “And don’t think this is over, Sheila. I’d stay and talk. But some of us have to go to do work that requires us to remain vertical.”
“You bastard,” she whispered. She threw the phone after him without thinking.
But he was already out of the room when the phone hit the door frame and shattered. Moments later, she heard the door to their apartment open and close, and she knew he’d left.
Well, that was a brilliant start to the day.
She stood rooted to the spot for several minutes, wondering why the General had signed his text message with his given name. Most texts he wrote were coded and signed as MJ or GMJ, specifically to avoid incidents like what she’d just experienced should the texts be intercepted. She could only think of one explanation. Something had happened while she slept, and it wasn’t minor. If the General was so deeply unnerved by what he’d found that he’d made a mistake like that text…?
She shivered.
With Stephen gone—or possibly waiting outside the apartment building to see where she went—she decided to head to the office. She showered and donned her most conservative business suit before heading to the elevator and down to the parking garage.
Private motorcars had been a fixture in her cityplex her entire life, given the sheer size of the space inside the walls. She knew that other cityplexes used larger shared vehicles that ran between defined points in the city at specified times, and found that odd and lacking in travel flexibility. She slid behind the wheel of her car and maneuvered through the streets until she reached the entry to the Northwest Spur, the road carrying her beyond the official cityplex limits and into the Hinterlands. The spur was walled for several miles into the dangerous and uninhabited territory beyond the plex, and she drove until she reached the office building housing Jamison & Associates.
She pulled up to the parking garage barrier and fumbled in her bag for her badge. They used the same badge for true Jamison & Associates employees like Jocelyn Whitfield as they did for those who worked underground, which prevented awkward questions when the two groups mingled. She found the badge and swiped it, watched the light turn green, and listened as the barrier lifted. She drove through, wondering why they bothered barricading the entry to the parking garage when no one but employees and clients had reason to use the facility.
Or was the barrier there to keep them in?
She pondered that mystery as she drove to her parking spot on the lowest level of the garage, gathered her belongings into her bag—including the pieces of her broken phone—and headed for the door into the facility. She’d brought the phone with her on a whim, wondering if one of the more technical people might be able to repair the device. She thought a new screen might do it, though the other parts would certainly need testing.
She swiped her badge at the entry, waited for the green light, and pulled the heavy metal door open. The door slammed closed behind her. She strode across the landing to the door on the far side, the door which led up to the primary offices, and swiped her badge again, waiting for the badge reader to signal as she wondered what else could go wrong this day.
The locks on both doors engaged, the lights went out, and the floor dropped out from beneath her as she screamed.
—————
DEIRDRE SILVER-LIGHT
—————
…Diasteel announced the formation of a “Department of Research and Development” to be led by Silver’s only child, Deirdre, an aspiring model and fashion mogul… met with initial jeers and cries of nepotism, but most objective accounts show Ms. Silver as possessed of a business mind to rival that of her legendary father…
The History of the Western Alliance, page 4242
DEIRDRE SAT AT HER DESK, staring into space over fingers steepled before her face. She could feel the strain and fatigue around her eyes, and massaged her temples. She opened her eyes and took in the eclectic artwork hanging upon her office walls, finding expression of her swirl of emotions in the quirky colors and shapes marking the collection of framed canvases.
She’d activated one of the caches, privately hoping she’d botched the job. She tried to convince herself that if she’d improperly activated the weapon and it failed to detonate, she’d bear less guilt in the events to come.
The effort to assuage her guilt failed.
She instead turned her focus to her husband. Roddy had been a dream come true, a man who appreciated her mind as well as her body, and they’d been inseparable since they’d first met. He was a man heavily damaged by the horrors he’d suffered during his military stint, activity she could fathom solely because of her access to information even Roddy hadn’t seen. They were
two dominant, passionate personalities drawn to each other by a gravitational pull neither could resist.
Until this morning.
She’d all but thrown herself at him and he’d resisted. That had never happened before. She could sense the powerful desire she’d unleashed in him… and still he’d turned her down.
Something was wrong.
She lacked Roddy’s innate ability to read people. His initial perceptions of people proved incredibly accurate, and she’d never seen anyone get away with telling a lie to him. In even the cases she thought he’d been tricked, he’d later revealed that he’d allowed the lie to go unchallenged because he’d considered it to be to his advantage.
He’d offered no indication that he’d known she’d been hiding something major from him for the entirety of their relationship. It certainly wasn’t personal; she hid that part of her life from everyone. Except her father. She’d done her job well if Roddy hadn’t noticed until now. Was that the issue? He’d realized her stories of challenging projects were a cover for something deeper, something more sinister, and his conscience kept him from her as he tried to understand exactly what she’d been hiding.
She’d not tell her father her suspicions, that Roddy had deciphered their behaviors and understood there was something coming, something big, something… decidedly unpleasant. Where she would worry about Roddy derailing things in a way she never could, where she’d even feel a sense of pride that her husband had cracked the mystery… Oswald would see a threat.
Roddy, resourceful though he might be, wouldn’t survive Oswald’s mild discomfort.
She wondered if she ought to go to Roddy now, tell him everything, and see if he could stop events at this late hour. Oswald told her it was impossible. She’d accepted that assessment and had done the part she’d agreed to perform. Roddy wouldn’t, though. Roddy would find a way. In fact, she would call him—
The Ravagers Box Set: Episodes 1-3 Page 8
