Hidden Impact

by Piper J. Drake

  They both fell silent then. He continued his research online, catching up on response emails to his queries and running a few specific searches. At the edge of his peripheral, Maylin went about dropping her uncooked rice in a blender complete with the water she’d used to soak it overnight. While it was blending, she took out a deep Dutch oven from the back of the cabinet and put a bunch of large spoons in the bottom. Gabe couldn’t figure out how the hell she’d be cooking with that setup. Next she took out a cake pan and greased it lightly with vegetable oil. Then he was really confused.

  She set the Dutch oven on the stove over fire set to the highest setting and poured some water in it. As she turned away, he craned his neck to see inside. The water didn’t quite cover the rounded backs of the spoons on the bottom.

  What the hell?

  Next, the cake pan was set on top of the spoons with what looked like a thin layer of the rice batter she’d made. Then she covered the whole thing.

  No idea what was going on there. But Maylin turned to other ingredients, browning ground pork and fresh minced garlic in a medium pot and filling the kitchen with savory scents to make his mouth water.

  Gabe jerked when she turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow, and gave her a guilty grin. Caught staring. But hell, the magic she worked in a kitchen was beyond him.

  “Do you mostly cook Asian foods?” Was that a safe question? Might not be.

  But Maylin didn’t seem to mind. “I cook dishes from a lot of different cultures. I love Italian and Greek. But when I’m worried or anxious, I tend to fall back on the dishes I learned to make growing up. Less likely to mess those up when my mind is working through other things.”

  Made sense. “Like any Brazilian dishes? Or Portuguese?”

  “Love eating the food, not so good at cooking it...yet.” Maylin continued to work as she spoke, pouring water into the pot of browned meat and garlic. “I’d love to learn.”

  “I’ve got a couple of dishes I remember.” Maybe. Sort of. “Really simple dishes.”

  Maylin laughed. It was short and quiet, but it was still a laugh and he’d take it. “Simple is usually the best place to start with any new cuisine. I like to learn the basic foundation dishes and then build from there.”

  Smart. Practical. Methodical in the way she approached things. And so very talented. He could see why her parents had thought she’d do well as a doctor. And he was very glad she’d followed her heart instead. People tended to lose some of their spark when they were forced into a profession they didn’t have a passion for, and he wanted to see Maylin happy.

  “I take it you didn’t do much cooking as a kid.” Her statement was a hesitant invitation, and he was not going to pass it up. Not this time.

  He owed her a few more pieces of himself.

  “No. Not much. My dad worked and my mom was home until I hit high school. She wanted us to be the perfect white-bread family from the television show reruns she watched every day. Mostly she made sure we sat down to meals on a regular basis, even if we didn’t talk to each other any other time of the day.” His dad hadn’t been the “toss the ball around in the yard” type. He worked too hard.

  “Did you ever help her in the kitchen?” Maylin lifted the cover on the Dutch oven, releasing a big cloud of steam. Reaching in with mitt-covered hands, she pulled out the cake pan and immediately flipped it onto a clean cutting board. A smooth, white circle fell flat on the board. She re-oiled the cake pan, poured more rice batter into it, and back it went into the Dutch oven. Then she returned to the stuff on the cutting board and rolled it with nimble fingers. Using a sharp knife, she cut it into half-inch-wide segments and dropped them into a bowl of water next to the sink.

  He still had no idea what they were. “No. I was kind of a prick as a kid. Never occurred to me to do anything but my chores. And them only because I had to.” He’d been ungrateful.

  “You were young.” The kindness she gave him was more than he deserved.

  “I’ve had plenty of time to wish I’d been a better kid.”

  A pause. “They’re gone now?”

  “Yeah. Car accident when I was a freshman in high school.” And hitting the foster care system at that age had been a bitch.

  “I’m sorry.” How was she still so sincere? So empathetic without smothering him with pity.

  God, he didn’t want her pity.

  “It is what it is. I was lucky to get foster care. Not gonna lie, though, it’s hard enough for young kids. No one wants you when you’re almost old enough to care for yourself. Especially when you’re angry at the world and not worth the trouble.”

  “But someone did, I hope?”

  He considered, sifting through old and bitter memories. The whole sharing thing was coming easier than he’d thought it would with her, but it still wasn’t what he’d call easy. “Somebody kept me because it was the right thing to do. And they gave me some good perspective on life. But I wouldn’t say there was more than that.”

  His foster family hadn’t kept in touch once he’d turned eighteen. Not even letters during basic training.

  “So this team is your family now. You watch out for them, make sure they all get out of danger before you do.” Maylin was still busy working with her batter, steaming those...things. Her other pot simmered and filled the kitchen with an incredibly delicious smell, some sort of soup. He wanted her to be a part of his life more than he’d ever wanted anything else. His team was family. She’d become more.

  “Don’t tell them.” None of them were the sort to say that kind of thing. Part of the reason each of them functioned in the team was because, while they’d lay their lives down for each other, they also understood not to waste those lives. To go on if they had to. “But yeah, I guess so. We’re there for each other. Most people with actual families don’t fall into this kind of work.”

  “Families by blood. You all are an actual family too, by choice.”

  He didn’t argue with her because it resonated with him. Truth. Even if there were some complications in there.

  “You’re all good people.” Maylin was setting out bowls and filling them with those white segments unraveled.

  Well, shit, she’d made noodles from scratch.

  * * *

  “Whatever is going on in the kitchen, it smells like heaven!” Marc called from the front door.

  Maylin met Gabe’s brooding gaze and smiled, hoping to lighten up the dark place he’d gone to. “Perfect timing.”

  His answering lopsided grin tugged at her. “Yeah.”

  She busied herself ladling clear broth from her pot into each bowl of noodles, making sure each of them had a good helping of the ground pork and vegetables she’d included. Ho fun soup was one of her favorite comforts, and considering the confused state she’d been in when she’d woken, comfort was definitely on the menu.

  One phone call last night and their fortune had changed. All they needed to do was actually find An-mei and they could get her back. Nothing should’ve dampened that hope.

  But she teetered back and forth between wanting to hug Gabe and to put as much distance between them as humanly possible.

  When he’d brought her inside and told her about Harte’s call, he hadn’t expected everything to have been repaired between them. If he had, they would’ve been finished. But it was because he’d understood it didn’t erase her feelings, the break of trust, that she was struggling to decide what they were now.

  He’d made his intent clear: he wanted to repair what was between them and explore even further once this nightmare was over.

  And most of her wanted it too. There was a tiny part of her warning of betrayal and whispering about keeping secrets. She didn’t want to turn to someone she was supposed to be able to trust and have them turn away from her. Wasn’t sure she could survive Gabe turning away from her.r />
  Coward.

  Yup. She was.

  “We have news and we are starving.” Marc came into the kitchen full of barely contained energy, giving Maylin a rakish grin. Victoria and Lizzy were barely a step behind.

  Gabe had already closed his laptop and moved it out of the way, so Maylin started putting their bowls up on the breakfast counter for them.

  “One of these days, perhaps we should use an actual table.” Victoria perched on a stool despite her words and leaned forward to take in the scent of the steam rising from her bowl.

  “Do you ever have time?” Maylin placed spoons and forks across each bowl. “Normally we’d go with chopsticks, but there aren’t any here besides the ones I use for cooking.”

  “With food this good, we should start making time.” Victoria sipped delicately and closed her eyes, uttering a hum of appreciation. After a moment she looked around again and nudged Marc. “We could stock chopsticks, couldn’t we?”

  “There were way more kinds of chopsticks than I thought possible when I looked.” Marc set his fork and spoon aside in favor of picking up his bowl and sipping straight from the rim. Totally okay in Maylin’s opinion. She did the same when she was alone in her apartment. “Plastic ones, metal ones, wood ones. Some of them were pointed at the end. No clue which kind worked best and I wasn’t about to get the disposable ones we get from Chinese takeout places.”

  Maylin warmed at the thought he’d put behind it. “I’m all about whatever works.”

  Besides, she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be here. Or if she’d be a regular visitor...after.

  There would be time to think on it later, closer to when they’d gotten through it all. But now there were much more important things.

  “What did you find out?” Maylin couldn’t touch her bowl, even though she’d mostly decided to make this dish for herself.

  Marc glanced at Gabe before answering her. “Your sister isn’t in the California facility. We suspected as much the last time we checked in and this trip confirmed it.”

  “But Phoenix Biotech had quite a few interdepartmental communications going by actual physical mail to locations throughout the US.” Victoria tossed the information out there between noodles. “It’s very likely she’s being kept at one of three of those, judging by the lengths taken to secure the envelopes and then make them look like normal mail.”

  “Only three to search through? And we know the addresses of each of them?” Maylin almost bounced in excitement. Then she caught sight of Marc wielding his spoon. “Ah! Don’t cut the noodles!”

  Gabe paused midbite and slurped up the rest of his noodle instead, almost choking.

  Marc slowly put down his spoon. “Okay. Why?”

  Embarrassment burned Maylin’s cheeks but, well, they needed all the luck they could get. “To cut the noodles is to cut short longevity.”

  Silence.

  Marc’s eyebrows were raised, but after a minute he shrugged. “Okay. Good a reason as any. They’re pretty slippery anyway, so cutting ’em would be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s fine to slurp them, though, right?”

  In answer, Maylin handed him an extra paper towel.

  Lizzy chuckled next to him.

  Maylin’s loaner phone screen flashed, catching her attention from where it sat on the counter. It was a game notification. Hope flared and Maylin headed for her phone.

  Victoria managed to gather her noodle in her spoon and eat it all at once. After a moment to chew and swallow, she continued. “Montana, Oregon, North Dakota. All northern tier. We’ll analyze the three locations tonight to see which is most likely. It’s going to be time consuming if we need to do reconnaissance on each one.”

  “I’ll see if we can leverage trainees to do some of the analysis in parallel. Can you work some satellite magic?” Gabe had directed his question toward Marc, who was working on slurping.

  Maylin shoved her phone in the midst of them. “There’s a new message in my inbox. It’s from a new account. But it’s got to be An-mei. Got to be.”

  “Are you sure?” Victoria sounded suspicious.

  Excitement buoyed Maylin and she nodded vigorously. “My account is set to private. Only users who know my exact user ID can send me messages, and who is going to know an eleven-digit user ID off the top of their head?”

  Gabe stared straight at her. “You have your sister’s memorized.”

  “And she has mine,” Maylin finished with a grin. “Besides, look at the message!”

  There it was on the phone screen:

  aTaaaaGc aTTaaaaG aTTaGccG aaTaaacc aTaaGccc aTTTcGcG

  Marc hastily grabbed a napkin and scribbled out the code. “Short and sweet.” He started the conversion on the napkin, writing the binary under the letters.

  “So you say,” Victoria muttered.

  Marc continued to scribble without acknowledging his partner. “So the DNA translates to binary code. And the binary code translates to letters. I got that far. But this is what it says—”

  aTaaaaGc aTTaaaaG aTTaGccG aaTaaacc aTaaGccc aTTTcGcG

  01000010 01100001 01101001 00100000 01001000 01110101

  Bai Hu

  “Why? That’s how I translated it too, but I thought there had to be some change to the code.” There was something tickling the edge of Maylin’s mind. “Bai Hu isn’t even a monster or character in the game.”

  “What is it?” Lizzy asked.

  “It’s a white tiger.” Maylin stared into her ho fun. Thinking. An-mei sent her the answer. “It’s one of four celestial gods. Creatures. It depends on how you translate it. They’re also a part of the Chinese constellations.”

  Gabe had his laptop out again and Marc was scribbling notes as she spoke.

  “Keep talking. Something will catch,” Marc encouraged her.

  “None of the locations had a white tiger or even a stylized animal as a logo.” Victoria tapped her spoon against the side of her bowl.

  “There’s Xuan Wu, the black turtle in the north.” Maylin scraped at her memory for the mythology. It’d been a favorite back when they were children. There’d even been a Japanese anime based on the mythology, which An-mei had watched over and over. “Then there’s Qing Long in the east. He’s the azure dragon. Zhu Que is the vermillion bird in the south and Bai Hu is the white tiger in the west.”

  “Vermillion, red?” Victoria asked. “Like a Phoenix?”

  “Yes, Zhu Que represents the fire element.”

  “And it’s in the south.”

  “Basically.”

  Marc jumped up off his stool and leaned over Gabe’s shoulder. “Bring up a map of the United States.”

  While Gabe complied, Maylin rushed around the counter to look too. She had to crane her neck and get up on her tip toes to see over Gabe’s shoulder.

  “If Phoenix Biotech in California is the south—” Marc pointed “—we assign the other celestial god animal things to the other states: Oregon, Montana, North Dakota. Your turtle could be either Montana or North Dakota depending on whether north refers to the state or the actual facility location. But what we care about is your tiger in the west. Seems pretty simple to me.”

  Victoria piped up. “Each of these facilities are leftovers from the cold war, believe it or not. A satellite check showed the Oregon site is underground. Couldn’t get close because there’s high-level security restricting access to detailed imagery.”

  “More and more likely,” Gabe commented.

  “Oregon.” Maylin whispered, because stating the obvious seemed unnecessary, but she needed to say it for herself. “All this time and An-mei might be so close.”

  “Might be. We need to get a closer look at the facility and get more intel on it.” Lizzy reached around Marc to pat Maylin on the shoulder.

  “I’m bet
ting it is.” Marc slapped his notepad on the counter. “If we’re right, it’ll save us days of recon. It’ll make a huge difference now that Edict knows we’re looking.”

  Maylin froze. “Are we running out of time?”

  Gabe turned on his stool as she settled back hard on her heels. He took her hands in his. “You’ve just won us back more time than anyone is expecting. Even if they try to move her, we’ll be watching in the right place now. We’ll see.”

  “What do we do next?” Maylin meant the question for all of them, but she was looking at Gabe.

  “We confirm with preliminary reconnaissance that the location is active, receiving the sorts of supplies to indicate the research we’re looking for, and bulked up enough on security to indicate our target is there. Then we start planning. This is going to move fast and we might have random questions for you.” Gabe gave her hands a squeeze. “It’s a lot of hurry up and wait.”

  “Anything I can do.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Oh, Maylin.”

  She paused at the front door as Marc popped his head out of the surveillance room.

  “Thought you might want your smartphone back.” Marc strode toward her, hand outstretched. “I only used it once or twice while you were gone to make it look like you were checking your email. Didn’t check it at all once you two ran into Jewel in DC. Not much point since she and her team knew you weren’t here.”

  Jewel wasn’t someone she wanted to think about right about now. But Maylin took the phone with a smile anyway. “Thanks.”

  “It doesn’t hurt if you use it while you’re here. It’s pretty obvious you’re under our protection.” Marc flashed Gabe one of those male looks that wasn’t as indecipherable as they thought it was. “There’s probably a charger that fits it in the guest cabin.”

  “I’ll show her.” Gabe sounded grumbly. He probably wouldn’t appreciate the description but to her, it was perfect.

  The walk to the cabin was silent and awkward. When they reached the porch, Gabe came to a halt. “It’s going to be a busy afternoon for us, and probably a late night too.”