Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives

by Kieran Strange

  Cabe had returned to the flatbed trolley in the doorway and was removing the protective blanket from the second screen. “Well, if the celebrity encounter’s all you want, why don’t you just wear a short skirt around the office and then I bet you’ll get to see his condo.”

  “Wait there. Don’t pick that up.”

  “What? Why?”

  Ronnie stepped over a box on the floor and punched him not-so-hard in the bicep. “That’s for being a jackass.” She reached in and lifted the screen out of his way, carrying it to the table where the other one was temporarily set up. “So, you guys told him all about what we’ve been doing?” she asked. Obviously, there would be things they couldn’t discuss here, in the WrightTech building, but they were both aware that any conversation in this room might have to be casually limited.

  “Pretty much,” Cabe said, rubbing his arm absent-mindedly. In all fairness, he’d deserved the punch. “We told him about my involvement, that I was placed here through Patriot by W.A.R.D. to assess the situation and protect him if anything were to happen to him, like yesterday. We told him that you, Hak’ and Flint will be stationed here running surveillance, and that you will be as transparent with him as you’re legally able to be. And, ah...”

  Cabe leaned over and gently pushed the boardroom door closed with his fingertips.

  “We told him that we know about the technology he’s been developing,” he continued at a slightly lower volume, “and that someone who works here and has access to this building is acquainted with a buyer on the black market who wants it.”

  “It’s the hijacked C.T. scanner, isn’t it? I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “I already told you no. You’ve still got two guesses left.”

  “I give up. Seriously, my head’s been effing pounding all night, no guessing games.” Ronnie emptied the box she was working on and tossed it into the corner of the room. “Did he at least play nice and share with you guys too?”

  “Surprisingly, yeah.” There were several more of the larger, heavier boxes on this flatbed load and a couple of light ones, and Cabe was making fast work of shifting them into the space between the door and the beverage bar to his right. The sooner he finished, he sooner he got lunch. “Even brought out a bunch of his data and research to show us. He didn’t hold back at all.”

  “So, come on then!” she gushed, grinning at him mischievously. “What’s the big secret? What is it he’s been working on?”

  Cabe closed his mouth and looked at her very seriously. “I can’t tell you,” he said, and as her face fell, he added, “because I figured you’d rather hear it all from someone who actually knows what the hell they’re talking about. So when I needed someone from W.A.R.D. to act as a documentarian tonight when he gives me an official tour of the facility, I kinda just threw your name in there. He’s stoked to meet you.”

  Ronnie didn’t say anything. Wordless, soundless, she simply stumbled toward him and wrapped both arms as tightly as she could around his midsection.

  It was all Cabe could do not to grin like an idiot right then. Evidently, he could come back from this.

  ◉

  Elliot was waiting for the pair of agents in his thirty-third floor office, beyond the impressive doors and unimpressed P.A. – who had spent the entire day watching Cabe as if she didn’t fully trust him whenever he was around her or her boss. The young C.E.O. definitely didn’t look as if he had nearly died the day before, but then again, neither did Cabe. While the blond agent took every opportunity he could to switch out business-wear for jeans and a tee, Elliot was clad in a stark white shirt and a tie which seemed to shimmer silver one way and purple the next, and which would no doubt drive the Internet bananas if they were ever to catch a glimpse of it.

  Cabe wondered how many outfits Ronnie actually happened to have with her. She had agonized over her wardrobe before Dasilva had just offered to lend her a pair of black leather-look leggings that she’d paired with her favorite T-shirt, a baggy old Astro Zombies logo Raglan which was several sizes too big for her (a smudge of nostalgia that really touched Cabe, since it’d been his and he had let her keep after she had spent most of their second mission together inside of it). The fabric was heathered and thinning, showing off the striped camisole she’d chosen to wear underneath, but to her it was familiar and smelled like home.

  It wasn’t normal for Agent Moss to wear something quite so casual when conducting official W.A.R.D. business with a well-respected and esteemed client, regardless of how Agent Sparrow had chosen to present himself (Flint’s words, not his). It made him wonder for a moment if she had specifically dressed down to avoid giving the appearance that she might be gunning for a certain type of attention from a renowned womanizing business man

  Ronnie could probably sense Cabe’s eyes burning into the two of them as she and Elliot got acquainted on the walk back to the private elevator. They hit it off immediately, she complimented some upgrade he’d included in the last model of the WrightBox, and all of a sudden they were both talking the same language the Geek Squad did whenever they were working together to con-flag-ulate some techno-doohickey, and Cabe was left re-examining the structural integrity of the glass window to his left.

  “And now,” came the moment when Elliot announced he was ready for the peanut gallery to rejoin the conversation. He was brandishing his keycard, which was similar to the ones Cabe and Ronnie were both wearing visibly. “I’m going to show Agent Sparrow how we legally access the recurring floor.”

  Like the highly-trained, adaptable professional he was, Cabe responded by pulling a face.

  “Agent Sparrow’s keycard has been updated to allow access to this level,” Elliot was explaining as he led his guests into the private elevator, sliding his card into the panel on the wall. The touchscreen displayed a rotating purple hexagon for just a second or two before the floor numbers appeared like buttons on the screen. Elliot placed two fingers in the top right-hand corner of the screen and dragged them all the way to the bottom, then all the way left, and tapped twice, causing the familiar number display to change slightly.

  As Cabe had suspected, there was 33.3 – right between floors 33 and 34.

  “This is how you access the call button for the recurring floor. It’s a simple safety protocol should your card ever be stolen. Please don’t make me show you again.” He pressed the screen over the silver disc containing the number 33.3 and withdrew his card again, pocketing it.

  “The laboratory is rigged with pressure-sensitive flooring and trip-switches on the doors and windows – that would be how we knew someone was snooping around up here last night,” he was saying as the elevator hopped up a floor and the doors reopened. The laboratory looked even more stunning in the daytime, even if that was impossible due to the fact that no natural lighting entered the room whatsoever, the hexagonal windows blocked by thick white walls. Ronnie’s mouth was agape as she flitted out of the elevator and up to the first window, her WrightPad Mini clutched to her chest as she stared ahead in awe.

  “There are hidden C.C.T.V. cameras on a separate circuit from the company ones, which are only accessible by my personal laptop, Emiko’s, and my office computer,” he explained, leading Cabe to meet Ronnie at the door. “All done internally, no outside contractors. All of the floor’s main outer walls walls are eighteen-inch-thick steel-reinforced concrete, hidden behind the one-way outside glass of the top levels. There’s an emergency back entrance which leads to a staircase between my office and the penthouse; it’s protected on all three levels by a reinforced fireproof steel vault door with twenty-two locking bolts. Only myself and Emiko know the code to each of the doors.”

  “Ever locked anyone in there?” probed Ronnie, though she recognized immediately that she was probably asking another one of those questions that made people look at her like she was one of those Wednesday Addams type girls who wore black lipstick and had a collection of human skulls. “Sorry, I mean – for, for our records, uh, we –”

 
“Agent Moss has a criminal mind, Mr. Wright,” Cabe quipped from behind her, and when she jumped and whirled around, her cheeks were both bright pink.

  “Really now?” Elliot raised an eyebrow. “Well, then I say keep an eye on her, or at least keep an eye on me. Otherwise she might find herself under my employment and earning twice as much as she does at W.A.R.D. helping me run this place.”

  “Please don’t joke about that, sir,” breathed Ronnie, and while it was offered humorously to deflect any awkwardness left in the air, Cabe had a feeling there was a sense of truth behind it. He grit his teeth together and resisted the urge to comment.

  Elliot laughed and slid aside part of the chrome door handle to reveal a hidden keycard slot. “This way up, like a credit card. Once you’ve unlocked this door, the silent alarms on all the others will be deactivated.”

  “I thought breaking in here seemed a little too easy,” grumbled Cabe. Elliot just grinned at him.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Peaches.”

  The internal mechanisms of the slot were casting a faint red glow against the reflective surface of the card, and as soon as it changed to green, Elliot removed it and pocketed it again. “Why don’t we let Agent Sparrow show us where he left off, and we’ll go from there.”

  Cabe snorted as Elliot held the door open for him, rolling his warm brown eyes at the billionaire. “Yeah, yeah, gimme a sec here to find the dent where she lobbed me into the wall...” he muttered, steering them down the centre corridor and taking the turn at the end. Ronnie tagged along after him, her eyes like saucers and her Doc Martins barely leaving the floor, squeaking with each dragging step in a way she obviously wasn’t able to hear just then. She was in an entirely different world. Behind her, Elliot strolled with his hands slung in the pockets of his slacks, watching the young woman’s reactions with amusement written all across his face.

  “In here,” he said, holding open the door so that they could enter. Ronnie nodded.

  “Hmm, very Gray’s Anatomy. Color me impressed.”

  Elliot’s smirk was self-satisfied and smug. “Gray’s Anatomy? I was expecting perhaps Lex Luthor from you.”

  Ronnie grinned, furrowing her brow a little dangerously. “Are you calling me a geek?”

  “I just watched you cream yourself over every inch of my play space, I know you’re a geek,” Elliot chuckled, and Cabe had to mentally restrain himself from verbalizing the way every one of his muscles coiled in reaction to his sexual tone. The Field Agent was fairly convinced that viciously snapping at his client wouldn’t be taken too well. By Elliot, or S.S.A. Flint if he found out.

  “Don’t try to hide it behind that feminine sass, I’m not one of your regular fly-by-night fuck-boys.” Elliot continued, crossing his arms over his shirt and nodding toward the display of C.T. brain scans pinned to the far left wall.

  “These are just a handful of the samples I have on hand at this facility. I don’t dare keep them anywhere else, because the people I trust to keep them safe are all here.” His thumb tapped a rhythm against his bicep. “The top-right is mine from two months ago. The one next to it is three months prior, then the one next to it is six months prior to that.”

  “What’s the... red clouding area?” Ronnie asked, walking closer to inspect each of them as best she could on her tip-toes. “Why is it getting darker?”

  Elliot huffed out a heavy breath. “These scans were taken while my body was retaining a small amount of a serum I developed myself, here, in this lab, with the help of some... friends. It’s injected into the bloodstream, and seeks out even more concentrated amounts of a specific elemental compound in the brain and bonds to them, causing them to show up clearly on a C.T. scan.”

  “Which compound?”

  “Helium and... something. I think.”

  Cabe quirked his brow. “You think?”

  “Well,” shrugged Elliot, “maybe we can run a scan on you, and if we find a mass, we can go digging around inside your skull? There are some things I haven’t gotten to yet, Peaches. You need to learn some patience.”

  “People keep telling me that,” the Field Agent replied, scratching behind his ear.

  “All I know right now is that it works, as a predictor.”

  “A predictor for what?”

  Elliot unfolded his arms and took the two or three steps to bring him closer to Ronnie’s side, craning his neck up at the display. “Science Girl, looking at those scans, which parts of my brain have been affected by this red cloud?”

  Ronnie screwed her nose up in concentration. “I’d say... frontal lobe, temporal lobe, brain stem... and that really, really dark spot at the back, is that the occipital lobe?”

  “You got it. The parietal lobe?”

  “A little perhaps?”

  Elliot grinned, impressed. “Now say it in a way our layman here will understand.”

  Ronnie seemed to be enjoying the chemistry (no pun intended) she had with one of the men she may have once dared to call a personal hero, but she was trying her absolute best not to rub it in. “Whatever this helium compound is, it’s affecting parts of Mr. Wright’s brain which control things like his memory, perception, attention, consciousness, hearing, language centers, movement, high-level visual processing, problem-solving skills...” she paused counting on the fingers of one hand over and over again to take a quick breath.

  “Get to the occipital lobes,” Elliot said distractedly, pulling down one of the other scans to look at it.

  “Oh, yes, sir –”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir’, you don’t work for me. He does, you don’t. You’re a guest here.”

  Ronnie tried without much apparent success to hide how hard she blushed at that. “The, the occipital lobes are basically the visual processing centre of the brain. It’s responsible for everything you see, and how you interpret what you see. It’s also the area of the brain that causes you to dream.”

  “Bingo.” Elliot grinned at her, but it wasn’t leering or lustful in any way whatsoever, which shocked Cabe more than the fact Ronnie knew way too much about which parts of the brain were which. Instead, the emotion in Elliot’s eyes was almost... fatherly.

  Weirdo.

  “I have,” Elliot was saying in a much more serious and sober tone of voice, “a totally insane and probably now outdated theory, that something to do with the gamma radiation that was propelled across the Earth during the Megaflare is responsible for these acute mutations of D.N.A. that has caused the rise of a new subspecies of human. It sounds... absolutely preposterous to anyone with even the simplest understanding of basic chemistry and biology... but...”

  Cabe shifted his weight to his other foot, and he was too distracted by his client to even catch the quick glance Ronnie chanced in his direction to gauge his assertion of the situation. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen Elliot struggle this much to get words out.

  “Okay.” Elliot clapped his hands together. “Let’s just sort of... suspend reality here for a moment. Shake it off. Now, how would you feel if I told you that I believe any one of us has the potential to develop these recently-acquired abilities or supernatural powers or whatever it is the government’s calling them this month... that I believe these abilities are the manifestation of a combination of massive D.N.A. regeneration made possible by these vast amounts of gamma radiation now stored in our world, and a natural inclination our species has to evolve rapidly when faced with a newly-perceived threat or conquest? What would you think about that?”

  “I... I think...” Cabe blinked several times, having forgotten how to make his mouth work while he was trying to follow what Elliot was saying. “I think I lost my grip right after you said ‘regeneration’ and everything started sounding like Doctor Who.”

  Elliot sighed in exasperation and instead turned his attention to the physically smaller of the two agents.

  “That... wow.” Ronnie was chewing on corner of one thumbnail in a way she only did when something had blown her mind or upset her so
much that it was suddenly more important than the time she’d spent painting her nails. “I... I’m not even really sure what to think, I mean... scientists have touched on the idea of the gamma radiation likely causing genetic mutations, which explains the restructured D.N.A., but rapid-fire evolution? What’s the trigger?”

  Elliot clicked his tongue neatly against the roof of his mouth. “That’s the part I’m still working on. All I know is that it may have something to do with these strange levels of helium and an unknown element I’ve found in the brain... they almost always correspond to areas of the brain one would expect control a person’s abilities. For example, my clairvoyance is mostly controlled by my occipital lobes, which is where the concentration of the helium compound in my brain is centered.”

  The young C.E.O. shot Cabe a side-line look. “You following now, Peaches?”

  “For the most part, sir,” the Field Agent responded in a dry undertone, hiking himself up somewhat gracefully to sit on the patient table of the C.T. scanner. “You two nerds have a field day, Ronnie can always tone it down for me later if my feeble brain can’t keep up.”

  “So then, this one...” Ronnie was musing aloud, reaching up to splay her fingers in the vicinity of a specific scan without actually touching the image. A faint cloud shrouded most of the front of the brain in these ones. “This would be someone whose abilities are something to do with maybe their memories, mood, behavior, cognition, and sensual awareness?”

  Cabe peered over her shoulder at the image. The name on the bottom read FLYNN, Q – 12/02.

  Elliot glanced across to identify the one in her hand, and chuckled, shaking his head. “Man, that one... that one’s been a real anomaly, no pun intended.” He motioned with his hand and she passed it over it him.