by Jay Posey
She gave Gregor a few seconds to answer. When he didn’t, she left the room.
“‘It takes the knowledge of but one shark to fear the entire ocean’,” Gregor said, as the man was about to leave.
“Say what now?” the man asked.
“A wise woman once told me that.”
“Sounds fancy,” the man said. “What’s it supposed to mean?” He didn’t strike Gregor as being particularly bright.
“You’ll see,” Gregor said, smiling.
“Maybe,” said the man. “Too bad you won’t.”
Gregor stopped smiling. The man flicked the light off and left Gregor sitting in total darkness, the scent of combustible fuel suddenly heavy in his nostrils, and on his mind.
“You’re not really going to burn him alive down there,” Elliot said, lying on the sagging couch. His voice was rough-edged and thin, but it’d lost the concerning wet wheeze from an hour or so before.
“Nah,” Wright said, shaking her head. “Probably not. But he doesn’t need to know that. We’ll give him a little while to think about it, see if maybe he decides he’s got something to tell us after all.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Elliot said.
“I’m not,” Thumper answered. She sat down at the makeshift workstation they’d set up for her in the dingy space, and ran what looked like a needle along the blade of her knife. This she inserted into a receptacle attached to Veronica. “He thinks you’re dead.”
“He might be right,” Elliot replied.
“Don’t be a baby,” Wright said.
“What’s with the knife?” Elliot asked.
“Took a little bit of Gregor’s DNA,” Thumper said. “We’ll sequence it real quick, and then with that and a vocal imprint, I can spoof his credentials to give us access to Internal Security’s systems. See what he knows, and what they know.”
“Stay on target, Thump,” Wright said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Thumper said. “I won’t waste time. It’s just… while we’re in there, we might as well grab what we can, right?”
Thumper held her hands up in front of her like she was climbing the face of an imaginary cliff, looked up at the ceiling, and then started moving her hands around like she was manipulating oversized pieces on an invisible chess board.
“OK, so, Veronica’s still crunching C&C encryption data,” she said. “We have the device from the Ava Leyla – that’s busted but has some pieces we might be able to use – and a bunch of design schematics from Guo Components. With our friend Gregor’s creds, we can get into the Republic’s Internal Security Service and see where the ridealong I injected back at the research facility ended up. There’s got to be something in there, with all those pieces… We’ve got everything we need except a way to connect with…”
She trailed off, her hands still hovering in the air in front of her. Then her gaze dropped from the ceiling and fell like a hawk on Elliot.
“Wait a minute…” Thumper said. “Elliot.”
“Yeah?”
“How were you getting intel off SUNGRAZER?”
“Through a bounce, with my rig,” he said. “Secure comm set up. But it doesn’t work anymore. My creds aren’t valid.”
“But you can still submit requests for access?”
“Yes…” Elliot said.
Wright could see Thumper’s mind working; she was putting pieces together faster than anyone else and, Wright guessed, had pieces the rest of them were missing.
“How does that help us, Thump?” she asked.
“Because with his credentials,” Thumper said, pointing vaguely towards the downstairs room where they were storing Gregor, “and his rig,” she said, pointing now to Elliot, “we just might be able to locate SUNGRAZER.”
“How?”
“Ehh neh neh neh,” Thumper said, waving her hands and leaning forward so far that her face was almost touching Veronica’s interface. That wasn’t the first time Wright had seen that reaction; it meant Thumper had an idea and no time to explain. Thumper not having time to explain was a rare thing indeed.
“I don’t know what’s going on right now but–” Elliot said.
“Shut up,” Wright interrupted. “She’s thinking. And she’s probably about to crack this whole thing wide open.”
For nearly half an hour, they all waited around trying not to break Thumper’s concentration while she worked furiously with Veronica. Wright wasn’t actually sure she could have broken Thumper’s concentration; Thumper seemed to have lost all contact with the physical world. But there was no reason to risk it.
Finally, without warning, Thumper let out a little cry and said, “We gotta go! Guys, we gotta go, we gotta go!”
Everyone immediately went into action prepping to bug out, except Elliot, who just laid there on the couch, looking confused.
“What does that mean?” Elliot asked.
“It means,” Wright answered, “we better get a call into Papa Charlie Bravo and see about getting ourselves off this planet.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Two days. It’d been almost two days that they’d left him in the room since his last conversation. This most recent stretch seemed longer than the first session, though Lincoln couldn’t know that with any certainty, since he genuinely had no idea how long he’d endured before. He was pretty sure about the two days, though, because of Mars down there. Mars, spinning on its axis. He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him before, but they’d given him a clock of sorts. All it took was an eye for detail, and the patience to stare at a planet long enough to recognize features when they reappeared. Of course, maybe none of them had thought about that either.
That little game of focus was his lifeline, and it was single-thread thin. Exhaustion had finally enabled him to doze off briefly, but the effect had not been welcome. The first time it had happened, he awoke in a cold panic, screaming and flailing, convinced he had fallen out of a ship. When his brain caught up with the reality, it did little to calm him. Somehow, in his deteriorating mental condition, the idea that he had lost track of the Martian revolutions was more than he could handle. It hadn’t been until he had managed to find a recognizable landmark below that he had been able to regain some measure of control. And when he did the rough math, he realized he’d only been out for maybe half an hour at most.
After that, realizing how critical timekeeping apparently was to his sanity, he found that, if he set his mind to it, he could sleep and then force himself awake after a short interval. Twenty minutes seemed to be the magic number. In that manner, Lincoln had been able to combat the fatigue without losing his now critical watch on Mars. He wondered for a time if that was the actual view from his cell, or just a projection they found useful for their psychological torment. He had been assuming it was the latter, but once the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t shake it. Mei had made reference to having moved him outside of the MPCR. Would they have gone so far as to have taken him off-planet? It seemed like that would be overkill. But Lincoln knew all too well that the National Intelligence Directorate had black sites on a number of space stations between Venus and the Belt. He had in fact broken a captive out of one not all that long ago, in order to keep a promise.
The recognition that his cell might in fact be ten thousand kilometers from Mars sent Lincoln spiraling down a dark path. He’d been fighting to keep it together, holding on as long as he could, knowing that his team would be doing everything in their power to find him. But if he was in an off-world black site, what hope did he have? And how much of their short time would they be wasting, looking for him? Or, the thought sprang suddenly to mind, would they be focused on the mission first, focused on recovering SUNGRAZER?
Wright would be making the call. If they were trying to find him, the time lost could have catastrophic consequences. If they weren’t… well, the idea that his teammates weren’t coming for him was almost more than he could bear. But he knew Wright. He knew what she would do. And he knew it was the right call. Mission
first. He was on his own.
It was then that a thought he had never before had in his life first presented itself to him. Lincoln had known others who had entertained such thoughts, and when he had heard them speak of it in their hushed confessions, he had imagined it as a demonic voice dripping sickness. But when he heard it for himself, it came cool, calm, rational.
Would not the easiest escape be simply to take his own life?
It would deprive the enemy of a valuable source of intelligence. There was no doubt; they would break him eventually. Possibly soon. And what harm might come to his team then? His family? His nation?
And the Process. Wouldn’t that make it OK? There was a risk that it wouldn’t work, of course. It wasn’t a guarantee. But if he died here, and woke up back on Earth, at least then he could contact his team, and support them from there. At least he could guarantee they weren’t trying to find him. And if it didn’t work… well, they’d have to find a new team leader, obviously. But the Outriders had gotten along fine without him before. Surely the colonel could find a replacement.
There weren’t many options, but Lincoln started working the problem. The shirt they’d given him to wear. It was thin, but had long sleeves. If he twisted it up sufficiently, he thought, he might be able to tie it around his neck tightly enough to choke off the blood supply to his brain. A blackout would soon follow and, if he was lucky, death not long after. It might work. In his shattered state, he actually went so far as to remove his shirt and start the process of twisting it into an improvised rope.
But when he put it around his neck, that was as far as he could get. Even while the coldly rational voice in his head told him it was the best choice, the noble sacrifice, a heroic death, Lincoln knew it was contrary to everything he’d been taught and everything he’d been trained to do. Through all his evolutions, every test, every trial they’d ever put him through in the military, his instructors had forged in him a spirit that was supposed to find a way to fight on as long as he drew breath. Blind, crippled, deaf, as long as his heart continued to beat, he was to carry the fight to the enemy.
What would they say if they could see him now? What would his teammates say? Or Colonel Almeida? The rational voice wasn’t his ally. It was his enemy. He’d never surrendered before. This seemed like the worst of all times to start.
Lincoln removed the shirt from around his neck, unrolled it, and put it back on, feeling suddenly foolish as the clouds cleared from his mind. What would Wright say, if she ever found out what he’d been about to do? Nothing probably. But he knew the look she would have given him, and he knew he would never have borne it.
Thinking about his senior enlisted teammate, he realized he was wrong. She would have had something to say; she would have told him, right there, in that moment, sitting in that cell that he was thinking about this all wrong. Trying to endure. Counting on others to rescue him. Buying time until someone else did something. Wasting time.
He was sitting in the middle of a secret facility operated by a foreign intelligence service who may or may not have been responsible for an assault on his nation’s interests. And here he was, focused only on himself, on his own discomfort. The mission. Wright would have told him to focus on the mission. And she would have been right.
Whatever fire he had just passed through, Lincoln emerged from it changed. Another evolution. Whoever Mei was, she had no special power over him. And Lincoln hadn’t just been trained to resist interrogations; he’d been on the other side of that table as well. Enough planet watching, he decided. He needed a new perspective. A new approach.
A new plan of attack.
Lincoln accepted the coffee again, but not from a place of weakness. He’d already established the precedent; refusing it now might signal renewed resistance, and he needed his interrogator to believe he was continuing to deteriorate. He blew the steam from the top, and took a tentative sip, but didn’t allow himself the same instinctive pleasure of the heat that he had so greedily consumed before. This time, he thought of it in purely tactical terms and noted with some small satisfaction that the coffee wasn’t as good as his anyway.
“So,” Mei said, sitting across from him. She was shifted sideways in the chair, angled towards him, relaxed and casual. “You think you’re finally up for talking with me today?”
Lincoln nodded.
“Ready to stop pretending you’re not an agent for the NID?”
“I’m not an agent for NID,” Lincoln said, and he saw the shadow of disappointment fall across Mei’s face. “But… if I were… there might be a few questions I would be trying to answer.”
“Oh?” Mei said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to elaborate on them?”
Lincoln let his gaze fall to his coffee, as if finally coming to terms with his resignation to betraying his country. In reality, it was because he needed to catch her unguarded reaction to his words, and he knew his chances to do so were best if she didn’t already have her mask intact.
“If I were,” he said. “If I were… I think the first thing I’d be interested in finding out is why the Collective Republic would be openly pursuing a return to normalized, peaceful relations with Earth,” and now he sprung his tiny trap, flicking his eyes up to hers as he finished the sentence, “while simultaneously engaging in a shadow war with the UAF.”
And there it was. The microexpression, the fleeting narrowing of the eyes, the slight pursing of her lips. She hadn’t expected that. Either she hadn’t known, or she hadn’t known that he knew. If the MPCR were, as a matter of state, actively trying to push Mars and Earth towards war, then Internal Security was undoubtedly Lincoln’s enemy. And from what he knew of the Service, its agents would be perfectly equipped and positioned to pull off an operation like the SUNGRAZER takeover. But if actions were being taken by a group within the Republic, but not sanctioned by it, then that would make Internal Security a natural ally. The trick now was to determine which side Mei was on.
“Interesting,” she said, her tone neutral. “And why would you believe that was the case? If you were an agent for the NID.”
“If I had to guess, and obviously I do… I would start with the usual things. Loss of an asset, maybe.”
“Spying is inherently dangerous, Simon. People lose things all the time. That doesn’t mean a war is on.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
Mei dropped her eyes briefly and suppressed a smile, then after a moment reached up and tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. For a brief second, the gesture inspired an instinctual reaction in Lincoln; he realized he found her attractive, and the almost-girlish motion charming. And that reaction set off alarms that woke him, as if scales had fallen from his eyes. He’d missed it during the second meeting. But it seemed so obvious now.
Lincoln closed his eyes and recalled his first meeting with Mei, pictured her clearly, firmly in his mind. The sharp attire, the severity of her appearance. With that image fixed, he reopened his eyes and looked at her again, took the image in all at once; the unbuttoned collar, her hair down. Her posture was more open, more inviting. Even the color of her clothing was softer.
Such a simple, social trick. Now that he thought back, he remembered the loose ponytail from their second session. Midway between a bun and hair down. She’d been gradually adjusting her appearance, presenting herself on warmer, more familiar terms, as though they were growing closer. But now that he saw it, now that he recognized it, Lincoln saw also the opportunity it presented. He knew how much the body affected the mind; it was the reason the military drilled such strict rules into recruits in boot camp about things like polished boots, made beds, and grooming standards. Disciplined bodies led to disciplined minds.
“You seem like a good woman, Mei,” he said. “Honest. Trustworthy.”
It was true.
“Thank you,” she replied.
Over his career, Lincoln had seen all kinds. And though it was obvious that Mei was a skilled interrogator, Lincoln could te
ll that under the carefully controlled veneer she was the genuine article. She truly believed she was doing the right thing. And she had a distinctly different demeanor than the man who had captured and drugged him. He hadn’t contrasted one with the other in his mind before now, not as separate individuals. But once the comparison was made, he couldn’t believe they were part of the same agency.
And that thought triggered another; if this whole operation was the work of an independent group within the MPCR, that didn’t necessarily mean the Internal Security Service as a whole was clean.
“I thought Internal Security was about protecting your people,” he said.
“It is,” she answered, her brows furrowed slightly at the incongruity of the statements.
“Are you sure?”
“I should certainly hope so,” she answered. “I’ve devoted my life to it.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“You mentioned Elliot Goodkind earlier. That you believed he was a… what did you call it? Unapproved agent?”
“Undeclared,” Mei said, and she smiled again. “But I appreciate the effort you’re making.”
“What brought your attention to him?”
“I wish I could take the credit,” she said, sipping her coffee. “But that was my partner’s work.”
“Your partner? The man that brought me here, by chance?”
“You have met him, yes.”
“And this was a case you had been following together, for some time? Watching him, gathering evidence, that sort of thing?”
She didn’t answer.
“Or perhaps your partner just got a lucky break?” Lincoln asked.
Mei cocked her head; he’d touched on something there. A doubt she’d harbored, perhaps. Or she was starting to process the hints he was dropping on what NID’s interests might be within the MPCR, and realizing that maybe Lincoln wasn’t an enemy after all.
“I want to trust you, Mei,” he said.
“You can,” she answered.
