Omega tgitb-5

by Robert J. Crane

  I shrugged. “Going to Ariadne’s office?”

  “I am. I have news,” he said, nodding his head, but keeping an even keel, detached under those damned hipster glasses.

  “Of the life-shaking and earth-quaking variety or just run-of-the-mill?”

  “Maybe somewhere in between?” He held up his hands, either unknowing or uncaring, as we reached Ariadne’s office and he rapped his knuckles against the doorframe, causing Ariadne to jump in surprise and knock Eve’s hands off her shoulders.

  “What can I do for you two?” Ariadne said, trying to casually shuffle papers on her desk, as though she needed some sort of cover for Eve giving her a shoulder rub. J.J. and I exchanged a look, mostly amused, while Eve seemed to glow with a sort of annoying superiority.

  “He’s here with news of some variety,” I said. “I’m just here because I’m wandering aimlessly, not really sure what to do with myself while everyone else is battening down the hatches.”

  “Oh?” She looked at me over her reading glasses. “You seem much more relaxed than yesterday. Different, somehow.”

  I stiffened. “Um. No. Same me.”

  “You sure?” She cocked her head at me, peering at me, squinting her eyes. “You seem different.”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. Gulp.

  She shook her head as though trying to clear it. “Okay. J.J.?”

  “Got some minor discrepancies I found here,” he said, holding up his tablet computer.

  “With the passports?” I asked, before Ariadne could.

  “Yeah,” he said with a downer tone and looking at the tablet. “We tracked the three coming in, but there’s not really been any movement on the others in that batch from the UK. A few of them look like they’ve been used in the last six months, but not anywhere local. One in Mombasa two weeks ago, one in Kolkata three months ago, another in Shenzen about nine months ago…” He shrugged. “No pattern I can detect.”

  “Shenzen is in China, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” J.J. said, looking up from the tablet. “Just across the harbor from Hong Kong, I think.”

  “So it’s in China, nine months ago,” I said. “Wasn’t that when…?”

  “When the compound, the meta compound—” Ariadne spoke up, “the one that was run by their government, got destroyed.”

  “Right,” I said. “And Kolkata—err…sorry, the books I’ve read call it Calcutta—”

  “And what fine ethnocentric volumes they must be,” J.J. said.

  “Wasn’t India, three months ago, the site of another massacre?” I watched Eve turn to stone as Ariadne looked thoughtful. “Another few hundred metas killed?”

  “Yeah,” J.J. murmured. “Hm. Weird pattern, then, huh? You think Omega had anything to do with…?”

  “The Director says that extermination is not their game,” Ariadne said, a pen in her mouth.

  “So why else would they be there at those times?” I asked. “Coincidence?”

  “Weird coincidence,” J.J. said. “Timing is kinda off, since they don’t have anyone there any other times, just during the approximate time when the massacres occurred.”

  “It could have been an investigator,” I said, wondering why I was defending Omega. “They could have been checking things out.”

  “And I could have been born in Louisville, Kentucky, but strangely enough, I was born in Stuttgart.” Eve was all sarcasm. “If it seems unlikely, it probably is.”

  “Let me see the passport photos,” I said to J.J. and he held up his tablet, revealing a face of an older man, in his sixties, grey-haired and with steel-rimmed glasses. He wore the look of a caring grandfather like an old blanket over the shoulders of a bum. “Janos Dichtmann.” I looked up at Ariadne and Eve. “Janos sounds awfully close to Janus.”

  “You think someone decided to get cute with the passport office?” Ariadne looked at me. “Kind of an on-the-nose thing to do, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it any less likely to be accurate.”

  “If true,” Eve said, “and this is the Janus we’ve been told about, then he’s either not in the country or traveling under a different passport batch—since you said this passport hasn’t been cleared through U.S. customs?”

  “No,” J.J. said, flipping back to the data. “This one went to Shenzen, and that’s it. I don’t even see a return trip, so theoretically he’s still in China.”

  “I don’t take that as a positive sign, since he would have been there for about nine months now,” Ariadne said. “I think we can assume that he’s probably using multiple identities and has at least made it back to the UK by now, if that is in fact where their home base is.”

  “Which means that your theory of tracking passports is not going to give us a complete picture,” I said.

  J.J. froze, as though he were running the calculation in his head. “Okay, wait, I got it. We have facial recognition software, right? I’ll run it like this—everyone who’s gone through customs in the last twenty-four hours, then work backward to a week, then a month, looking for a match to this face.” He held up Janos Dichtmann’s passport photo. “If I can establish a match, then I’ve got his current passport, and can trace that; they may have gotten sloppy and done another batch, in which case we’ve got him, you know?”

  “You think they’ll have done batches like this more than once?” Ariadne asked, skeptical.

  “This isn’t the sort of thing most people are going to pick up on,” J.J. said. “The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t even have the resources to come up with this unless they knew specifically what they were looking for, and this is…it’s too good. These are legit passports, and they’ve probably got legit I.D. to go along with them. They’ve got people in the UK government getting them into the system the same way we have access to the U.S. systems, and because of it, they’re invisible to anyone who’s not looking specifically for them.”

  “Which is pretty much us and no one else,” I said, feeling glum again.

  “To work, J.J.,” Ariadne said with about as much enthusiasm as I had for it. “How long will this take?”

  “Depends on how long he’s been in the country,” J.J. said. “If he’s entered in the last twenty-four hours, it’ll be fast. If he’s been in the country a week or less, I can have this done in a couple hours. Two weeks will take the rest of the day. Longer than a month…” He cringed. “Could be a while.”

  Ariadne waved her hand. “Get to it.” She hesitated. “Can you set it to run and do your work from off-site?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, nodding. “Our servers are pretty much set up for me to do just that, so I can push data wherever it needs to be. I usually use it to work late from the computer in my apartment. Why?”

  “Because I want you to do this from the computer in your apartment,” Ariadne said, taking off her reading glasses. “Can you do that?”

  “Yessum,” he said, mostly serious. “And you want me back here when?”

  “I’ll let you know,” she said.

  “Shore leave approved,” he whispered to me, then turned and vanished out the door. I watched him go and I didn’t feel bad about it at all. The campus was no place for humans right now. I felt the tension in my stomach pick up as I pondered that.

  Ariadne leaned back in her chair, studiously ignoring Eve, and then looked back to me. “I’m glad you’re here. I had something to tell you, anyway.”

  “Oh?” I said with exaggerated brightness. “You’re approving my vacation to Bora Bora, all expenses paid?”

  “Hah,” she said with no mirth, head resting on the back of her chair as she tossed her glasses onto her desk. “I’d pay for your trip myself right now if I thought you’d go to Bora Bora. No, I wanted you to know I had Scott Byerly sent home.”

  I felt a tingle of loss I couldn’t define. “Yeah, I know. I caught him on his way out.”

  “Wait, you let the waterboy leave?” Eve looked down at her. “Why
?”

  “Dr. Perugini said he couldn’t form enough water pressure to wet an envelope,” Ariadne said. “He’s emotionally distressed and completely wrecked at present. Per her recommendation, he is to take two weeks of emotional leave.”

  “For a breakup?” Eve said with obvious disdain. “If only my employers had been so generous with paid time off every time I had a difficult relationship.”

  “If only,” Ariadne said. “He’ll be out until further notice. He’s back to his parents’ house in Minnetonka. And you,” she said, looking to Eve, “could show a little sensitivity to his plight.”

  Eve snorted. “Teenage romance and heartbreak. He has the emotions of a baby. He doesn’t know heartbreak, and even if he did, a real man would continue to work, ignoring the pain. This is courting weakness, inviting it into your sitting room and giving it tea—”

  “Noted,” Ariadne said, cutting Eve off. “But he still has the time off.”

  “He’s useless to us right now,” I said. “Better to get him out of the way.”

  Ariadne smiled weakly. “That was the idea.”

  “This is all ridiculous,” Eve said, and Ariadne gave her the look again. Exhausted, mixed with exasperated. “I’m due to meet with Bastian and Parks anyway,” she said, and with a subtle bend she tried to kiss Ariadne on the lips. Ariadne turned her face to the side and gave her the cheek. Eve shot me a wicked smile and leaned into her neck, causing Ariadne to squirm and curse under her breath, and giggle unintentionally from the tickle of it. I averted my eyes, trying not to pass judgment on what Eve was obviously doing to get a rise out of me. She slid past me a moment later, same cool smile, and pulled the door all the way open before she left.

  I waited a moment for Ariadne’s embarrassment to fade before I spoke. “Is it my imagination or is she getting more provocative by the day?”

  Ariadne averted her eyes from me, focusing instead on her computer monitor. “It’s probably not your imagination.”

  I let that hang for a beat. “She got a buzzsaw in her g-string or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Ariadne said. “And it’s not really a conversation I want to have with…well, anyone, actually.”

  “I’m glad you added that little caveat because otherwise I might feel like I was being excluded or something.”

  “Have you checked on Kat recently?” Ariadne said, back to business, her eyes on the stacks of papers around her desk, organizing as she went, trying to avoid looking at me.

  I grimaced. “No. Kind of um…embarrassing, I guess.”

  “You’re the team lead,” she said. “You could at least try and show some concern for her, even if you don’t like her.”

  “I like her fine,” I said, folding my arms and leaning against the door. “Why does everyone always say that? I like Kat, she’s always been nice to me. I’m just not always sweet in return; it’s who I am. It’s not like I’d throw her into a pack of wolves if I got the chance. We hang out outside of work, you know. And I would go visit her, but it feels…awkward.”

  “Awkward?” Ariadne paused what she was doing, and the sun shining through the windows behind her glinting on her red hair. “It’s awkward for you…to visit her in the medical unit?”

  “It’s awkward for me,” I said, drawing out my words, “because when Kat woke up, she remembered me, but not her boyfriend. Which is fairly weird, as far as such things go. And a little creepy, you know, forgetting the person you supposedly love and remembering a co-worker? Kind of made me wonder if she might have been harboring a little crush or—” I paused, stricken, watching Ariadne’s eyebrow raise, her expression implacable. “It was just an expression. I didn’t actually wonder—I mean, I haven’t wondered, you know, about anyone else—”

  “Whatever,” Ariadne said, and turned back to the folder in front of her, opening it.

  “‘Whatever’?” I stared at her, getting no reaction. “You been cribbing notes from me on how to talk?”

  “Just trying to express my disinterest in your mind’s wanderings in a way you’ll intuitively get,” she said, not looking up from what she was studying.

  “I take it this conversation is over?” I pushed myself off the doorframe where I was leaning, felt the line of the wood against my back as I did it, felt the weight go back to the balls of my feet, light, agile, ready to move. When she didn’t say anything, I turned to go out the door, letting my hand brush the frame. I paused, let myself do a half turn, a question eating at me. “You could have left, you know.” She didn’t look up, fixated on the folder. “I know it feels like you’re essential, but when it’s all hands on deck for defense, I don’t see you picking up a gun and wading into all hell—”

  “I have nowhere else to go,” she said, looking up, her tone crisp and impatient, her glasses balanced between her thumb and forefinger. She put them on her face, then broke eye contact with me.

  “Bora Bora,” I suggested. “Your complexion could use it as much as mine could, and we are heading into another Minnesota winter—”

  She didn’t interrupt me with words, just a half-snorted laugh of mirth. “I’ve got work to do,” she said, but more gently this time. “Take care of yourself, Sienna. Don’t be a hero. You’re important. Remember that.”

  “So when it all comes down, you’ll be taking shelter like the assistant director should be, right?” I asked, watching for her reaction.

  “Point taken,” she said. “Just don’t do anything stupid to put your life at risk.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and started toward the elevator, leaving the open door behind me. “After all,” I said, wending my way across the sunlit rows of cubicles, “odds are real good that with what Omega’s gonna throw at us, even if I just stuck to doing smart things, it’ll be plenty dangerous enough to kill me.”

  21.

  Interlude

  Eden Prairie, Minnesota

  The day goes slow, agonizingly so , Janus thought, even with the unexpected pleasure of company . “This is how it always was before the big moves, the big operations,” he said. “Time slows to a ticking of the second hand, when you want it to speed up. Waiting is interminable, acting is preferable, but patience is all there is at this point. This waiting will be the death of me. Thousands of years of life, and I’ll die waiting.” The old man’s smile crested on his face, then receded. “I suppose that’s what we all do, though, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” came the soft voice of the female who had slept in his bed last night. “I haven’t died yet.”

  “I’ve seen enough of it, you know?” He let the words tick out, spill out. “Seen it from humans, seen it from our kind. No one really faces death any differently. No one is ready when it comes, not really. You can go in your sleep, I suppose, and it won’t distress you like the other kind does—in your face, obvious, looming. But if you’re awake?” He held up his hands. “I’ve never seen anyone go gracefully awake. Not if they know it’s coming, anyway.” He turned his head to look at her, the blond curls, her smooth curves and unblemished skin. “How did your brother take it, when he went?”

  A shrug. Tanned skin hiding up to the waist under the blanket. “Gracefully. I don’t know if he knew what he was in for, at least not at first. Maybe at the end, though.”

  “He wanted it to be over, didn’t he?” Janus stared out the gap in the curtains. “I spoke to him, you know, before he went to the Andes. He was a man slipping, obsessed, trying to get hold of whatever was left for him, focused on one thing and that only.” He looked back at her again. He’d seen a million like her in his life, perhaps more, yet had never lost his appetite for them. Blonds. Brunettes. Redheads. Yes, please. The younger the better, though at a century, this one is older than my usual taste…and yet delicious nonetheless .

  “I’m not all that worried about him now.” She shook loose the sheets that gently entangled her, exposing herself to him totally, as she made her way across the dim, cheap, thin carpeting of the motel, away from the comforter an
d bedspread. “I wasn’t then, either.”

  “That is because you could not remember him before.” Janus felt in his pocket for the cigarettes he hadn’t carried in over forty years, the things he had quit. “You watched him die and you had no memory of who he was.”

  “Still don’t,” the voice came, empty. “I mean, I see it, now, like I see so many other things-like a movie on a screen, but there’s no texture, no emotion, no caring.” She shrugged her bared shoulders and made a mischievous smile. “I doubt he knew that you had been keeping me as your woman while you were trying to bring back my memory.”

  Janus shrugged, and felt her hand run across his shoulder, felt the touch of youth and energy in it. “I doubt he would have cared, so long as he got you back. But, oddly, I didn’t hear you complain. In fact, I believe it was you who initiated…”

  “It was,” she said, and kissed him. What a bawdy old man am I , Janus thought. Anyone who saw the two of us in here would know instantly what to think, a thousand judgmental thoughts—and every one would be right. Old man, young girl . A laugh sounded in his head.

  “Careful,” he said, and tugged away from her, feeling her touch against the cloth of his suit.

  “Still worried about me?” she asked, with a twinkle in her eye that warmed his…well, not his heart, that was for certain.

  “Not you,” he said. “I believe you, I see the truth and heart of you. Still skeptical, though, if you’ll forgive me. Erich Winter is no fool, and although it delights me to see you, dear girl, and overjoys me to have you in my bed once more, I must ask…do you know why you are here?”

  “Because you found me,” she said, and he saw the coyness. “Because I remember now.”

  “Oh?” He seated himself in the chair by the window, an old, red one with gold tones in the threads, worn by time and age and people sitting in it. “What do you remember?”

  “I remember why,” she said, kneeling down and resting her chin on his knee. “Why Omega. Why I was with you. Why I lost my memory. For a good cause , of course,” she added.