The End of the Beginning

by Eichholz, Zachary

  “Stop,” ordered the guardsman abruptly. William felt his eyes squeeze in tension and his body wrench in an instant cold sweat. “Captain Emerson, you are - ”

  The white overhead lighting suddenly turned red and an alarm started sounding. It let out a shrieking high pitch whistle.

  “Fire alarm!” cried the guardsman, somewhat surprised.

  “Go see what’s up!” shouted Jake. “I’ll get him outta here!”

  The guardsman agreed and sprinted down the hallway and around the corner. Jake grabbed William by his back and pushed him through the double glass doors. William almost fell on his face from the shove. Jake jogged over to the freezer unit that held Samir.

  “Did you know the fire alarm was going to go off?” screamed William.

  “Yep!” yelled Jake as he entered a code into the freezer unit’s electronic door lock. He turned the handle to the metal door, threw it open, and grabbed the tray holding Samir’s body.

  “There, you happy?! You got your five minutes! Start searching!”

  “How did you know it was going to go off?”

  Jake did not answer. He unzipped the clear plastic body bag encasing Samir. William pulled out his UV flashlight. Samir’s body was white and freezing cold. Ice crystals dotted his skin. William saw the cleaned fatal wound that had ultimately killed him on his head. William looked the body over quickly and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  “Hurry up!” shouted Jake.

  William began waving the flashlight up and down Samir’s body, first across his legs. Nothing. He looked over his torso and groin. Nothing. He looked around his head and neck. Nothing. He looked over Samir’s left arm. Nothing.

  “Damnit Emerson, I told you there is nothing,” noticed Jake angrily. “There is nothing weird about…”

  Jake stopped out of shock. On Samir’s right forearm William’s UV light had found something; four fluorescing symbols, all very similar, yet each slightly different.

  “Holy shit,” mumbled William.

  “What… What is that,” Jake sputtered. “Why weren’t those noted in the autopsy report?”

  “I don’t know,” William said, shaking his head. He took out his glass tablet. He took three pictures of the glowing symbols. Running down Samir’s arm from just below his wrist were four linear triangles alternating in their orientation, either pointing up or down. The first one pointed up towards his elbow, the second pointed down with a line through its peak. The third one was a reverse of the second one. The final one, plain like the first one, pointed down.

  “What do they mean?” asked Jake, still slightly astonished by the find. “I’ve never seen symbols like that before.”

  “I’ve never seen them either,” said William.

  “You finished with your pictures?” asked Jake, still looking dumbfounded.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Jake zipped Samir back up and slid him back into his freezer unit. William put away his glass tablet and UV flashlight and made for the doors. Just as they left the morgue the alarm stopped and the lights returned to normal. Jake escorted William to the front lobby of the building. Neither of them said a word to each other.

  As William grabbed for the lobby doors handle he heard someone say his name from far behind him. He looked back. It was Hernandez. William swore his heart stopped for a split second. His stomach fell into his legs and his fingers shivered. Jake wasn’t doing much better. Hernandez was scowling at him and Jake from about thirty feet down the hallway leading out of the front lobby. He was surrounded by a group of ISAF guardsmen.

  Hernandez touched his ear, no doubt calling for the front door to be locked so that they could not leave.

  “Stop those men!” cried one the guardsman around the chief, beginning a full on sprint down the hallway towards them.

  Guardsmen behind the lobby’s front reception desk abruptly stared at William and Jake. As they got up from their chairs to apprehend them the fire alarm inexplicitly turned on again. High-pressure fire sprinklers in the ceiling did as well. Within seconds the hallway and lobby were filled with dozens of streams of pounding water, disorienting and soaking everyone caught in them. The guardsmen behind the desk yelled in shock as they were knocked to the ground from the ferocity of the sprinklers release.

  William and Jake lost sight of Hernandez behind the many water streams between them. Together they darted out of the chaotic building and just kept running.

  CHAPTER 60: Anomalies

  Nancy swung open her door. William and Jake were standing there, soaking wet.

  “Oh my God. What happened to you two?”

  “Like you don’t know,” William smirked sarcastically. “Thanks for the shower. Jake told me you were looking out for us. You said you were good with computers. I didn’t think that meant you could do crazy things like that. You belong in… in Anonymous or something.”

  Nancy took a little ballerina style bow and smiled. “Who says I’m not.”

  “Okay. Get inside,” said Jake, pushing both her and William into the room.

  “What happened?” Nancy asked again.

  William closed the blinds to the room. “Hernandez saw me. I think he was going to arrest me.”

  Jake locked the door and dimmed the lights. “When is your roommate coming back?”

  “Not for a while. She’s doing homework at the training center.”

  “Good. Captain Emerson was right, Nancy,” admitted Jake, taking a seat on her bed. “Someone is hiding something.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nancy, sitting beside him.

  “We found a fluorescent tattoo on Samir’s right forearm. It had four symbols. I’ve never seen them before. We don’t know what they mean. They should have been noted in the autopsy report but they weren’t. The body is always swept with UV light to kill bacteria before an autopsy.”

  “Well, even if they were it wouldn’t matter now,” shrugged Nancy.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked William.

  Nancy shot up off the bed and slammed herself down in her desk chair. She opened her glass tablet to a segment of coding.

  “I reviewed the medical records like you told me to Captain, to check for any anomalies. I was finally able to get into ISAF’s secure database a few hours ago and, well, I found an anomaly.”

  “What is it, Lewis?”

  “Well, sir, there is no autopsy report. In fact, there aren’t even any investigation files. They’re all gone. Deleted.”

  “What?!” hollered both men simultaneously.

  “There is no autopsy report on file for Samir Mamedov.”

  “Who deleted the files?” Jake demanded.

  “Username and password confirms it. The report was deleted by Base Commander Hammond yesterday.”

  “That son of a bitch,” William said furiously. “That’s when she left for the dam.”

  “But… why?” asked Nancy. “What is there to hide?”

  “She’s the architect of all this, of everything that has happened,” fumed William. “India. Toronto. She must have agents in UNIRO helping her. Samir must have been one of those agents. He killed himself to get out though, and warn me. He told me ‘thou art amongst traitors’ the day he died.”

  “What the hell are you talking about Emerson?” Jake asked impatiently. “What are you saying?”

  “Before Terra Nova’s attack in Toronto,” William explained, “I saw Hammond speaking to someone on a landline in the middle of one of the warehouses.”

  “A landline,” quirked Nancy. “No one uses those.”

  “Exactly,” said William. “On it she said the name Toronto. I heard it as clear as day! She asked whoever she was talking to for more information so that she could finish something. She knew of that attack and now she is plotting a new one and my rescue officer is dead because of it to warn us!”

  Jake cocked his head. “You heard her say that?”

  “Yes,” William gritted. “It’s her. It was always her. I’m sur
e of it now. She knows an investigation could uncover her though. She’s manipulating it, rushing it and now deleting files to cover up evidence. It explains the tattoos going unnoticed. She must have someone in ISAF helping her as well in order to do all this. A medical examiner or something or maybe one of your forensic people.”

  “But, if she could change the files why delete them? I mean, someone was bound to notice like you did Nancy,” questioned Jake. “The deletion of an entire investigation is much more obvious than a simple change within it.”

  “Lewis, was it obvious the deletions were made by her?” asked William.

  “No sir, she was careful,” said Nancy, pounding away at her glass tablets keyboard. “She used some clever coding to make it look like someone else had done it actually, some random ISAF guard.”

  “Who?” Jake demanded.

  “He doesn’t exist,” said Nancy. “I looked him up in the registry where an entire file did existed on him. There was even a glass tag popping up.”

  “Then what gave him away as not existing?” asked William.

  “His weapons.” Nancy looked over at Jake. “All ISAF guardsmen are issued two weapons, are they not?”

  “They are,” confirmed Jake. “A P320 and a P90.”

  “Right, so there should be a record in the ISAF weapons inventory that two weapons have been given to this guard but the stock doesn’t match up. In the registry there are 2,102 active guardsmen on base, which means there should be 4,204 weapons checked out of ISAF’s weapons store. Currently, there are 4,202…”

  “I’ll be damned,” murmured Jake.

  “That’s why she deleted the files yesterday,” said William. “Should the file deletions be noticed it would be pinned on her imaginary guard. By the time someone noticed he was fake, it would already be to late. She’d be over 4,000 miles away comfortably set in amongst her targets. She is going to attack the dam. That’s her big finish.”

  “Jesus,” Jake gulped. “Almost every world leader and UNIRO head is at the dam with her. Director-General Ferrer is there.”

  “She’s going to takedown the international system as we know it if she manages to takeout everyone at that dam. The few will fall…”

  “Why not do it sooner than yesterday?” asked Nancy.

  “Because of me, the never ending pain in her ass,” said William, pointing to himself cheekily. “She is afraid of what I know and what I’ll do with it with my slightly obsessive persistence about all this. She’s racing me to her finish…”

  “And winning,” mumbled Jake.

  “With the deletion of those files she permanently removes any suspicions or affiliations away from Samir, her last lose end that I can grab from her and show to world.”

  “With that level of identification forgery it could take hours, maybe even a few days to realize that guardsman doesn’t exist,” said Jake, rubbing his forehead. “We’d be on a man hunt looking for a ghost. No one would expect her to be able to hack our systems like that.” Jake turned to William. “I’m sorry, Captain. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. Regardless of how Hernandez feels about you right now we need to show him this immediately. I’ll vouch for you. He will listen.”

  “Thank you Jake,” said William, nodding his head. “We’ll go back now. Lewis, I will send you those tattoo photos. Figure out what they mean.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “First, I need to call Colonel Morrison and warn him. He could be in danger if an attack on the dam is imminent.”

  William instructed his earpiece to call John. It tried but failed once again. “Damnit. That’s the third time I’ve tried with nothing. It doesn’t even go through.”

  “That’s strange,” said Nancy. “Give me your earpiece, Captain. I’ll look into it.”

  “Thank you,” said William, handing her his earpiece. “Get to work on those symbols.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jake, you ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. He started moving towards the door but abruptly stopped. He turned around and kissed Nancy on the lips. “Bye,” he said to her. Nancy blushed.

  Jake looked at William, fixed his uniform and said, “Now I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER 61: No Questions

  John stopped just outside Hammond’s hotel room door. She was shouting at someone inside. He couldn’t hear another person so he deduced she was on the phone. John would say to other people they were staying in a hotel for the opening ceremony but it really wasn’t a hotel, it was better described as temporary housing. It had been built just to house the massive influx of dignitaries and UNIRO officials that would be in attendance. When the dam started normal operations in two weeks the housing would be torn down and recycled.

  It was nearly five o’clock, nearly nine back home. John had attempted to call William for the fifth straight time but he could never get through. That’s why John had come to Hammond’s room, to inform her about a possible communications breakdown with base. He knew she would be up. She always was.

  “You’ve waited till now to tell me this? Are you fucking kidding me?!” she screamed.

  There was a quick silence.

  “How much time do I have?”

  John raised his fist to knock but lowered it.

  “Twenty-two hours! That can’t bloody be.”

  Who the heck was she talking to, thought John.

  “Nome. I’ll be on a plane in less than an hour… No! No one can know. This is my own battle to finish. UNIRO will be mine. Nothing will stand in my way, do you understand me, least of all Hernandez!”

  John looked down the hallway to see if the shouting match had attracted anyone else. He saw no one, thankfully.

  “What about Emerson? What does he know?”

  John slapped his ear directly up against the door.

  “He broke into… Samir… Shit. He knows.”

  Was William in danger?

  “Let’s hope he can keep his mouth shut till I arrive back at base. I’ll be in Nome ready for the pickup in three and half hours. After that I will take the drive home to stop all this. I will not fail again!”

  Something was smashed against a wall.

  “It doesn’t matter what happens to me upon my return. You already know, I don’t have much time anyways. All that will matter is that I will have won…”

  For a few seconds of silence, John waited. He had developed a pit in his stomach and a knot in his brain. Maybe William hadn’t been imagining what he saw and heard in the warehouse that day. After a minute, John guessed the apparent phone call was over. He knocked. It took another thirty seconds for Hammond to open the door. When she did, she was sweating.

  “John!” she gasped. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Is everything okay ma’am? I thought I heard shouting.” John looked past her in the doorway. He saw a landline phone on one of the beds. A few pieces of a shattered vase were also strewn about.

  “Yes,” she said obviously lying. The mighty Hammond was definitely rattled. This alone disturbed John. “I am leaving early, within the hour. Something unexpected has come up in Nome. Something personal. I want you to meet me in Anchorage by o-three hundred hours with the rest of our staff. From there we will go home no later than o-three thirty hours.”

  “But, ma’am, we aren’t scheduled to go home for another two days. Has something happened? I haven’t been able to get in contact with Captain Emerson ever since we got here. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No idea Colonel but you will be able to talk to him in person soon enough. Now, listen to me very carefully and do not ask questions. Should I not be in Anchorage by o-three fifteen hours leave without me and get home. Take this.”

  Hammond grabbed a small sealed envelope and handed it to John. It was unmarked.

  “Take this. Only open it if I am not there. Only open it on the plane and when you are alone. Only act upon what it says when you have landed and destroy it before you land. All of that is a direct order. Is that u
nderstood, Colonel?”

  “Yes ma’am but - ”

  “No questions, remember,” said Hammond, slowly closing her door. “Now, get what little sleep you can Colonel for both of us on your way to Anchorage. You need to be wheels up in one hour, no matter what.”

  CHAPTER 62: Learn To Learn

  “Emerson knows everything.”

  “Yes. I am aware.”

  “Do you not consider this matter to be a problem, so close to our rise? He knows - ”

  “He knows what?! Persistence may have granted him knowledge and fact but his conclusions are still his own. His mind, like that of the few, is twisting fact to meet what he wants to be truth. He may think he has found the rock he has always wanted to see but his rock is still nothing more than malleable clay, ready and waiting to be molded.”

  “Yes, but - ”

  “This is not a setback, this is an opportunity, an opportunity to feed the scapegoat one last time. Adapt. Learn to learn.”

  “Of course.”

  “Captain Emerson wants to see, so show him what he wants for by this time tomorrow none of it will matter. The tanker attack will only reinforce his beliefs. I am leaving Alaska, after the final rally in Nome, after the inception of the virus, to watch a beautiful sunrise over our new world. Be ready. Everything begins at fifteen hundred hours Alaska standard time.”

  “All preparations will be complete. We will be ready.”

  “I expect nothing less. Tomorrow the past will die, the present will burn, and the future will rise from the ashes, finally with a chance to live…”

  CHAPTER 63: I Know

  A detachment of five guardsmen were standing watch outside the exterior lobby doors to ISAF Headquarters when Jake and William arrived. Immediately upon seeing them the guardsmen stopped them. One of them stepped forward as the detachments leader.

  “Come with me, now,” she said strictly.

  The female guardsman led the group inside with William and Jake set in between the remaining four. Cleaning crews were still drying out the lobby and hallway the two had escaped from earlier in the night. Every ISAF guardsmen they passed took a double look on them.