“No shit,” I replied, “you really need to work on your rules when it comes to security. I just followed two people from the viewing platform all the way here. Angelica Hunt and her assistant Tara are in here somewhere. I don’t know what they’re doing but I think you’ve got a big problem.”
She stared at me silently, busy people passing around us on both sides. Their curious gazes felt weighty. I shifted uncomfortably under the force of Cecelia’s glowering scrutiny. Cecelia was one intimidating woman.
“Listen,” I finally said, “why would I lie to you? I don’t even like you. But I’m afraid for Nathan. I could have obviously avoided you if I was trying to do something sketchy. Instead I found you.”
She exhaled heavily and then marched over to grab my arm and pull me into one of the rooms lining the hallway. As soon as we were away from prying eyes she turned to face me.
“Explain right now,” she ordered.
I sighed in irritation that I’d have to repeat myself.
“I was on the viewing platform like I was supposed to be,” I snapped, “when I saw Angelica Hunt and her assistant sneaking off. I just did a piece on Angelica Hunt, so I know a bit about her, and she might be up to something bad. She’s an opportunist and a narcissist. Angelica’s probably just trying to get a good selfie from the control room, but I don’t trust her. So, I followed her all the way here.”
“I read your piece on Angelica Hunt,” Cecelia admitted, and I couldn’t be more shocked if she’d just revealed that she was a closet fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. “It was good.”
We smirked at each other, briefly putting aside our mutual distrust over what was clearly a shared dislike of Angelica Hunt.
“Hunt and her assistant shouldn’t be back here,” Cecelia agreed, looking around the room suspiciously like Angelica might be in here with us, “Her badge shouldn’t even be opening the doors. The fact that it’s been reprogrammed is a very bad sign.”
She grabbed my badge off my lapel and pressed it to the card reader on the door to demonstrate. The little device flashed but stayed red.
“What do we do?” I asked, beginning to feel a new level of nervousness. “What if she’s been in league with Oleg? Or messes something up by accident.”
“First,” Cecelia said, beckoning me to follow her, “we have to find her.”
Cecelia led me down several faceless corridors to another faceless room. She badged us in and we were confronted with dozens and dozens of closed circuit security feeds playing on a wall of monitors. The man watching them, a huge, heavy-set guy with a baby face, looked up from his bag of Bugles in surprise when we entered.
“Victor,” Cecelia barked, “this is Zoey. We’ve got two unauthorized visitors in the controlled area. Zoey’s going to find them on the monitors. You can tell us where all of these cameras are, right?”
He nodded and frowned.
“Of course, I can,” he said defensively, “why do you think I’d be doing this myself if I wasn’t capable?”
“Great,” Cecelia said disinterestedly with a wave of her hand. Then to me, “Ok go. Find them.”
I stared into the wall of pictures, watching what had to be a thousand pictures of people swirling in low-resolution images over acres of identical hallways, offices, and other types of rooms. There were just way too many people.
At first, I couldn’t make sense of the images at all. It was like trying to drink from a firehose. Unless I focused in on one single feed at a time, I couldn’t even pick out the facial features of a single person well enough to eliminate them.
But there was no time for any of that. At my side, Cecelia watched me expectantly when she wasn’t urgently mumbling into her little handheld radio. There was a small, vertical line between her eyebrows that probably indicated her stress level—it hadn’t been there in our other interactions. She looked extremely worried. I knew the feeling. If anything happened to Nathan because of Angelica, I would never forgive myself. I had to find her.
Clearing my mind as best I could, I gave up on trying to focus on the pictures in front of me. I let the images wash over me all at once, just jumping from monitor to monitor and hoping that my brain was sufficiently good at pattern-matching to make Angelica or Tara’s face stand out enough from the crowd.
“There!” I nearly shouted, pointing at one of the feeds on the massive monitors, “There’s Angelica.”
“Where is that?” Cecelia asked Victor sharply.
“That’s the upload link-up room,” he replied, and Cecelia went pale. Victor started typing something into his laptop urgently.
“Stay here,” Cecelia barked at me, pulling a second handheld radio from the large bag she had over her shoulder. “Get on channel five.”
She took off running down the hall.
39
Nathan
“Ground control to major Tom,” I sang to myself alone in the command module, “Ground control to major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on…”
The countdown clock continued its slow descent. The nerves were beginning to get to me, and I was going slightly batty. Ten minutes and counting.
Now that the pre-flight checklist had been completed, there was absolutely nothing for me to do but sit here and wait for the final countdown. I’m notoriously bad at doing nothing. Doing nothing was the whole reason I got into trouble with Ysenia a few years ago. Pilots don’t have much to do up in orbit, although we’re assigned a lot of busy work and low-level research. We’re there for the trip down, to keep everyone on track, and in case something went wrong. Ysenia, who’s research on plants had been put on hold by the Russians in favor of other projects, had been similarly frustrated. Two bored, horny, scared, frustrated, attractive people in an enclosed space? It was pretty much inevitable.
I’d thought about that day up on the ISS a lot over the years and still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that drew me to make such a disastrous decision. Ysenia was an exceptionally attractive woman, but I should have been able to “keep it in my spacesuit”. She was a stranger to me and I think that had been half the appeal. I’d needed to connect with someone. In total, we’d probably only spoken to each other two or three times before and after the sex. Our connection had been shallow and ultimately disastrous for us both. In spite of my weakness for sex that had made me consider Ysenia a good idea, I’d repaired my life and built something much better. I could only hope that I’d survive long enough to enjoy it.
As the moments to launch slowly dwindled, I considered calling Zoey. I knew she was waiting on the viewing platform, watching, and probably anxious. It had only been six days since I laid eyes on her, but I’d already sketched out our entire lives together in my mind. Somehow, I knew we were meant to be together. I didn’t call her. I wanted to preserve my surprise.
Killing ten minutes shouldn’t be such a challenge. I ended up staring at my phone as a pacifier, rereading Zoey’s piece on Angelica for the fifth or sixth time. Regretfully, I hadn’t had a chance to tell her how much I enjoyed it. I would tell her as soon as I got back, I promised myself. She was a talented essayist in addition to an excellent journalist, something that didn’t surprise me given how witty she was, but it was very fun to read. She’d be famous one day.
“CAPCOM to Breyer,” my headset beeped a moment later, and I jumped on the opportunity to talk with someone, “how are you doing in there?”
“Doing well CAPCOM,” I replied, “what can I do for you?”
“Just checking in. Feeling alright?”
“Did the Flight Surgeon see my pulse jump?”
Thinking about Zoey would surely do that. In truth, I’d just been considering the way her long, smooth legs had looked in her tight, short dress today. She was wearing stockings again. I liked her stockings. Most women didn’t wear them, but they made her legs look extra smooth. It had taken every ounce of my self-control to resist pinning her to my desk and giving my staff something new to gossip about. Unfortunately, my
flight suit recorded practically every piece of data my body exhibited, so my daydreams weren’t exactly private.
“I’m afraid so Nathan,” said Grant Friedman, a friend and fellow former NASA astronaut serving as the Capsule Command (code CAPCOM) for this mission, “telemetry indicates you’re feeling stressed? Blood pressure and pulse both increased.”
“I’m doing fine, CAPCOM,” I replied with a bemused sigh, “I was just thinking about my girlfriend’s legs.”
The total silence on the other end of the line indicated to me that Grant was laughing at me but had turned down his microphone. He was a very polite guy. The tight sound of his voice as he next said, “Affirmative Starflier 1” proved that I’d been correct.
Radio use was meant to be restricted to necessary communications, especially during the crucial pre-launch period, so he didn’t reply. I’d made these rules, however, so I felt entitled to break them.
“Don’t laugh at me, CAPCOM,” I groused. It wasn’t my fault Zoey was ungodly sexy. I was only human.
“FLIGHT requests you keep radio use to a minimum,” Grant replied, and I could practically see the man’s smirk. The Flight Control Director (code FLIGHT), Gary Smalls, was a stickler for protocol. As much as I wanted distraction, the fact that everyone else besides me was doing their jobs properly—even if they were laughing at me—reminded me that I needed to shut up and take everything more seriously.
Unfortunately, taking things seriously just made me more stressed. Now that my hands were thoroughly swaddled in the gloves of my suit, I couldn’t even tweet at Elon Musk and tell him to suck it. There was nothing to do now but wait.
40
Zoey
“What’s she doing?” I asked Victor, pointing at the computer that Angelica was tapping on. I couldn’t think of any good reason Angelica would need to slip into a secured area at Nathan’s company to use a computer. The effort of trying to figure out what was going on was starting to give me a headache. I swallowed nervously.
“I can’t tell,” Victor replied, squinting at the monitor and shaking his head in obvious frustration, “I’m concerned she might be reprogramming something. Those are the terminals that control the launch software. They’re the brains of the module.”
We continued to watch Angelica slowly tap at the computer, frequently checking her phone as if for instructions. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t going quickly. She seemed to be struggling with it. It didn’t appear that Angelica actually knew how to type on a keyboard. She was picking out the keys with both index fingers like my grandfather did.
“How long will it take for Cecelia to get there?” I asked again. We couldn’t have much time.
“Cecelia? Less than two minutes,” Victor answered, looking at the countdown clock for the launch livestream he now had showing on a laptop on his desk. It displayed seven minutes remaining until the launch. “It would take me at least ten, but as you can see, I’m not exactly built for speed.”
I didn’t have time for Victor’s self-deprecating fat jokes. I fiddled with the little radio I’d been handed, tuning it to the channel that Cecelia had given me.
“Cecelia?” I asked, pressing the green button labeled ‘talk’, “Victor says she might be reprogramming the module. Are you almost there?”
“Copy,” the radio crackled and popped back at me when she opened the channel. Cecelia sounded out of breath, “Almost there. Ten seconds. Over.”
I should have gone with Cecelia, I thought. My legs are longer, so I’m probably faster, even in heels. Cecelia couldn’t be more than five-seven, a relative dwarf, although still tall for a woman. I was regretting my decision to follow her instructions and stay with Victor until the video stream in front of me abruptly changed.
A blur that I recognized a second later as being Tara slid across the floor of the room Angelica was in. It was impossible to see if she’d been kicked or punched, but she looked surprised and hurt. Cecelia stalked across the room toward Angelica who had leaned back in her chair away from the monitor with wide, frightened eyes. When Tara tried to raise herself onto her hands and knees, Cecelia leaned over and slammed an elbow casually into the small of her back. Tara stayed facedown after that. I revised my previous assessment that Cecelia needed my help.
In silence, an angry conversation played out on the monitor in front of Victor and me. Cecelia punctuated what appeared to be very terse words with violent hand movements and gestures toward the computer. In contrast, Angelica’s seemingly monosyllabic replies were accompanied only with her narrowed eyes and ramrod straight posture. She finally shook her head. I wished I were a lip reader.
Their conversation took only a few tense moments, but it seemed to stretch on forever. Cecelia pushed Angelica’s chair away from the computer, leaning over her menacingly, only inches from her face. Having to observe on the drama playing out on the closed-circuit feed was excruciating. Cecelia’s face contorted in anger, or fear. Finally, she raised the radio to her mouth,
“Zoey and Victor, come in, over.”
“We’re here,” I answered. Was I supposed to say ‘over’? I had no idea what the radio protocol was.
“Angelica has accessed the launch code and done…something bad. She won’t say what. Victor, call the police right now and get them down here. What’s the countdown clock at? Over.” Cecelia sounded absolutely livid.
Victor pulled out his own phone and started following Cecelia’s instructions.
“Three minutes,” I answered her, and then corrected, “well, four minutes and ten seconds.”
Cecelia didn’t immediately reply, so I just kept talking.
“How do we stop the launch? If Angelica messed with the launch code, Nathan’s in danger.” My voice had taken on a hysterical, shrill edge. I hated how crazy I sounded in comparison to Cecelia’s cool professionalism, but the man I loved was in that stupid rocket ship. Calm wasn’t really an option at this juncture.
“Listen to me, Zoey,” Cecelia’s voice came through the radio firmly, “we can’t stop the launch. It’s too late.”
“What do you mean it’s too late?” I all but screeched. “It can’t be too late. He’s still on the ground. Scrap the damn launch.” I ordered.
“One of the things Angelica did was override the emergency protocols completely. That rocket is going to launch in three minutes no matter what. The engines started several minutes ago. They’re just throttling up now.” Her voice had a terrifying finality to it.
A sense of terrifying focus was beginning to descend on me.
“Well then what do we do?” I said, “We have to do something. She’s obviously sabotaged it. He could explode.”
Victor had finished his conversation with the police and motioned for me to give him the radio. I handed it over reluctantly.
“Zoey, Cecelia, I have an idea,” Victor said seriously, “We need to reboot the system. Whatever this woman did can be undone if we do a hard restart in the server room. All the code is backed up twice over, so I know this is going to sound cliché from an IT standpoint, but all we need to do is turn everything off and turn it back on again. The launch will then restore with the original programming. If we have time to stop it, we can. If we don’t, at least the programming will be right.”
“Ok,” I said, stoic and wide-eyed. “Great. How do we do that? We’re almost out of time.”
Victor seemed to take ages to reply, and the entire time the clock continued to tick down.
“Someone has to go to the server room and press a few buttons in a certain order,” he finally said, frowning deeply.
Cecelia sigh into the radio came out as a static-y huff, “I can’t get to the server room in two minutes, even if I sprinted. I’m on the entire other side of the complex,” she said, “Victor, no offense, but you aren’t exactly quick on your feet. Zoey, it has to be you. Over.”
Victor looked at me expectantly.
“She’s right,” he said, “I’d never get down there in time.”
; “Fine,” I barked frantically, “I’ll go. I’ll do whatever you want. Which way do I go? What do I do?”
Victor was already pulling a third radio out of a desk drawer and tuning it to our channel. He handed me his ID badge.
“This will get you through any door in the building,” he explained, “go down the stairs directly across the hall as far as you can go. Then I’ll give you more instructions. Go as fast as you can, Zoey. If the module has been rigged to explode, we could all die. That thing is basically a giant bomb.”
I kicked off my high heels and started running barefoot out the door. People were still rushing around in the hallway, busy and determined on their own personal missions. I dodged them, gathering stares that I ignored. I was making for the staircase and then descending the many, many flights without thought. My body was moving on adrenaline-filled autopilot. I’d never moved as quickly as I did in those seconds. I had no idea there was as much of the Durant Astronautics building below the ground as there was above it.
My body didn’t even register the exertion of my movement, all I felt was overwhelming panic for Nathan. My stocking-clad feet pounded on the cement stairs, making no noise at all as I descended deep into the ground. Eventually the stairs ran out and the stairwell emptied onto a deserted, white hallway. It was brutally clean down here. Like a hospital.
“I’m at the bottom of the staircase. Over,” I said into the radio. My breath came out in a breathy wheeze.
“Good,” came Victor’s voice from the radio, “go straight down the hallway ahead of you until you reach the first junction, then turn right. You can also use the cables on the ceiling to guide you. Follow them. When you get to a big black door, go through the door using the badge. Over.”
I ran down the hallway, whipped to the right, and then came face to face with a heavy, black metal door. I badged in as I was speaking to Victor,
“Through the door, ready for more instructions. Over.”
Kiss and Tell (Scions of Sin Book 2) Page 17
