The Nexus

by J. Kraft Mitchell

  “Something like that,” said Corey.

  “We did hear them talking to each other before the shot,” put in Bradley.

  “We couldn’t hear what they said,” insisted Amber.

  “Dizzie,” asked Corey, “could you hear what they were saying?”

  Slowly, Dizzie shook her head. “I...didn’t even know they talked to each other.”

  “You see the problem, don’t you?” Corey asked them. “Dizzie was running com on the mission. The only way she wouldn’t hear them is if Jill purposely disconnected her microphone.”

  “Unless her microphone just malfunctioned, or something,” said Amber.

  “Why do you keep defending her?” said Bradley. “Corey’s right. These are suspicious circumstances. It’s all good that you like Jill, but you can’t let personal feelings get in the way of something like this.”

  “Personal feelings!” burst Amber, jumping to her feet.

  The other clientele of the coffee shop glanced awkwardly in her direction.

  She took a deep breath and sat back down, but she was obviously still steamed. “Don’t lecture me about emotions getting in the way of clear thinking,” she whispered fiercely at Bradley. “We know all too well how you feel about half-bloods like Jill! You’ve wanted her out of the department the moment you set eyes on her, regardless of whether she’s guilty of anything.”

  Bradley looked sourly away.

  “She’s right,” said Corey.

  Bradley shot an accusing look at Corey. “Hey, I’m on your side, here!”

  “My side,” Corey said firmly, “is not just to get rid of Jill. My side is to find the truth. Keep your prejudices out of this.”

  “Speaking of prejudices,” retorted Bradley, “we all know you’ve had it in for Jill yourself! Don’t act like we don’t know the history between you two.”

  “It’s true,” said Amber. “Not to bring up bad memories, Corey, but you may have some emotional bias here, too. We need evidence, not speculation.”

  “You’re right. And I have evidence.”

  “What evidence?” asked Dizzie nervously.

  Corey took a small black box out of his coat pocket. “This is an old audiocassette recorder,” he said. “I borrowed it from Dino’s lab. Sherlock can’t hear what’s recorded on it. Since I was suspicious, I followed Jill when she went out this morning. She went to a public phone booth. Listen for yourselves.”

  He pressed play, and the scratchy audio began to emerge from the speaker.

  “It’s me...It’s not easy to get away, okay? I basically had to get shot to come here, as you probably heard...You could say that. But I’m not telling you over the phone...Still...Hotel Harvest on the west rim, tonight, 11 p.m., Suite 607...Not this one. Believe me...See you tonight.”

  Corey stopped the tape.

  No one said anything for a long moment.

  “But...but if she was talking at a public phone booth,” Amber said after a minute, “Sherlock should have heard.”

  “I checked Sherlock’s records,” said Corey. “He wasn’t aware of this conversation. The phone booth Jill used had a sign on it that said it was out of order. Apparently it’s part of a phone network used by the criminal underground.”

  Now even Amber looked convinced. “This phone conversation...it may not be what it seems,” she said, but she seemed doubtful even of herself. “We don’t know what Jill was talking about, or who she was talking to.”

  “You’re right, technically,” said Corey. “But it’s enough evidence to have me worried.”

  “So...what do we do?” asked Dizzie, who still looked very uncomfortable.

  “We have the advantage,” said Bradley. “We know where this meeting is taking place. We go there ahead of time, set up surveillance.”

  Corey shook his head. “I scoped out this hotel this morning. It’s in an abandoned neighborhood. No one’s been in those upper story suites for ages. The dust is so thick it’s like snow. If we work on the scene ahead of time, they’ll know for sure we’ve been there.”

  “So we follow her,” said Dizzie, “and catch them red-handed.”

  “Right,” said Corey.

  “Shouldn’t we tell the director about this?” Amber said through a frown.

  “We can’t,” said Corey, “or Sherlock will know. And if Sherlock knows what we’re up to, Jill will know too. Whoever she’s working for has access to Sherlock just like the rest of us.”

  “We could find a way to tell him without Sherlock overhearing, couldn’t we?” said Bradley.

  “We can’t take that chance. This is up to us.”

  “So that’s why she joined the department in the first place,” Amber said quietly. “She’s selling secrets.”

  “Apparently,” said Corey. “Think about it: If the Anterran criminal underground has access to Sherlock, the department is crippled. And who knows how they could use him!”

  “Then tonight can’t get here soon enough,” said Bradley.

  IN fact, tonight took quite a while to get there.

  The waiting seemed almost unbearable. Amber avoided Jill for the rest of the day. So did Corey. Bradley always avoided Jill, so that was nothing new.

  Only Dizzie seemed not to shun Jill’s company. She still went next door to visit her and ask her about her shoulder, and sat with her in the caf for dinner.

  And then it was time. Finally.

  They met in the garage at 10 p.m. They were in full uniform. Amber’s mask was newly enameled with the figure of the mythical bird which matched her last name.

  “Don’t you think Sherlock is wondering what we’re up to?” asked Bradley. “He’s got to notice that we’re heading out on a mission even though there’s no mission scheduled.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Corey, his voice tinny and electronic behind his mask. “Jill has already left HQ. She has no way to see what we’re doing now, whether Sherlock is suspicious or not. You there, Dizzie?”

  “Here,” Dizzie’s voice came in their earpieces. “The map to the Harvest Hotel should be on your screen in a second.”

  It was a long, silent drive.

  THE Harvest Hotel was in one of the abandoned neighborhoods near the west rim. The only lights for several blocks in any direction were the street lamps. Corey parked in an alley behind a trash bin two blocks away.

  The streets were eerily silent like a ghost town. The sounds and lights of the inhabited regions of the city seemed strangely distant.

  They went through the grimy glass doors of the hotel and switched on low flashlight beams when they got into the empty lobby. Graffiti, dirt, and broken glass were everywhere. The furniture was torn and dusty.

  They ducked behind a half-wall across the lobby. From here they had a full view of the room and the front doors. It was 10:26 p.m.

  They waited.

  AT seven minutes before 11 p.m., Jill parked her skybike in an alley a half mile from the Harvest Hotel. Near one end of the alley was the rear entrance to the Ace of Hearts Pawn Shop, which closed daily at 5 p.m.

  She couldn’t remember the last time a lock had been easier to pick.

  Jill waded through the shop’s claustrophobic displays until she came to a storage room. Behind rows of metal shelves, a corner of the cement floor had been cleared of clutter. In the corner stood an old cabinet. On the cabinet sat an old television—really old, with a bubbling-out gray screen and round dials protruding from wooden panels on one side. On top of the old television sat an old video camera. Its lens stared at Jill like a Cyclops’ eye.

  The gray screen flickered to life. She saw the silhouette of a man. Behind him were the shelves and cabinet doors of what was apparently a small office.

  “Finally,” the man’s voice grated through the old television speakers, “we meet face to face, Jillian Branch.”

  IT was 11:03. No sign of Jill yet. No sign of anyone or anything at all in the littered lobby of the Harvest Hotel.

  Amber squirmed impatiently. “I thi
nk we’re in the wrong place. Could we be in the wrong place?”

  “We’re not in the wrong place,” said Corey. “Just wait.”

  “You’re in the wrong place,” Dizzie’s voice came suddenly in their earpieces.

  “What?” said Bradley.

  Dizzie heaved a sigh. “I wanted to tell you before. Believe me! Director Holiday wouldn’t let me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Corey demanded.

  “Get to your car. I’m uploading new directions onto your screen. And hurry, will you?”

  “THIS does not count as meeting face to face,” Jill said to the camera and television. “Number one, I can’t even see your face. Number two, even if I could, you’re still just on TV.”

  “You don’t sound pleased to finally meet me,” the silhouette on the screen said with mock sorrow. “Nevertheless, for my part I am pleased to finally meet you.”

  “Oh, and number three, I doubt I’m even hearing your actual undistorted voice. I still don’t think we can say we’ve officially met.”

  “Well, perhaps not, then. We will save that for another occasion.”

  “That occasion was supposed to be right now. You were supposed to be here in person. What’s the deal?”

  “The ‘deal’ is simply that I could not risk allowing you to really see and hear me at this point. In fact, I cannot allow you to even give me a report of your findings. You have been compromised, you see.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your friends in the department have been following you, Jillian. We dare not speak of anything important at all.”

  “If you think I’ve been tailed here, you should have cancelled our meeting altogether. Why go to the trouble to set up this TV and camera?”

  “To warn you, Jillian. To help you understand that you are not being careful enough. And by the way, I do not think you have been tailed. I know it.”

  “Look, I’m aware that department employees have been spying on me.”

  “Oh? You don’t sound bothered in the least.”

  “Someone overheard our first phone conversation this morning. Why do you think I changed the meeting place? They still think we’re meeting at the Harvest Hotel.”

  “I suppose you are referring to your young teammates,” said the man on the television. “I, actually, am not.”

  Jill paused. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, Jillian, that there are far more hounds on your tail than you ever knew.”

  “What?”

  “Hello, Jillian,” a familiar voice came from behind her.

  “Goodbye, Jillian,” the distorted voice came from the TV. The screen went blank.

  Jill turned and faced Director Holiday. His smirk was more triumphant than she’d ever seen.

  21

  “HOW did you know?” asked Jill.

  “A moment,” said Holiday. “Let’s wait until the others arrive.”

  “The others?”

  As if on cue, Corey, Amber, and Bradley walked into the storage room. Corey’s helmet was off. If looks could kill, it would have been an instantaneous and painless death for Jill.

  “I don’t think,” said the director, “that we are the ones who owe an explanation.”

  Jill looked at the cement floor between her feet.

  “Tell us about it,” said Amber. Her expression couldn’t decide whether to be hurt or enraged.

  “Spare no details,” said Bradley, who looked more pleased than anything else. But Jill wouldn’t know that. She was still looking down.

  During the long explanation that followed, she didn’t glance up even once.

  HAD it only been two weeks ago? It seemed more like a lifetime...

  Jill had nabbed the info from the Tanaka Brothers’ Gallery. She parked on the street a block away from the tall, round building, and walked toward it. Behind one of those glowing windows on the twenty-third floor, the one called Sketch was waiting for her.

  She paused half a block away from the high rise.

  The thought had been pushing its way further and further to the front of her mind.

  Maybe she should have accepted Holiday’s offer.

  In the notepad in her backpack was the list. She’d stolen it from people she didn’t know. She was bringing it to a man she didn’t know, who wanted it for reasons she didn’t know.

  She’d called Holiday’s offer ridiculous. And it was.

  More ridiculous than being a pawn for criminals who couldn’t care less whether you live or die once they’ve done with you?

  It was a long time before Jill started walking again. And when she did, it was away from the high rise. She got back on her skybike and headed for home.

  Someone was waiting for her in her living room. Beneath his hood she could make out handsome Korean features. He didn’t greet her, didn’t even get up from her couch. He just said, “Don’t be alarmed.”

  It was about two seconds two late for that. But suppressing emotions was something Jill was good at. She set her backpack on the table and went to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. “Drink?” she asked. “Or did you help yourself, as long as you’d broken into my place?”

  “I think you know why I’m here.”

  “Sketch sent you.”

  “You bailed out on the job.”

  “I got spooked,” she lied. “Someone was watching me. I didn’t want to blow our cover.”

  “We were watching you.”

  “And you came back here when you saw I was leaving? You must have put the pedal to the metal. You beat me here, and I’m not exactly a slow driver.”

  “I’m here to make you another offer.”

  “I already have another offer, thanks.”

  “We know. That’s why I’m here.”

  Jill regarded him thoughtfully. “Go on.”

  The young Korean pulled back his hood. “You’ve been in contact with a government department—a department no one is supposed to know exists.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You have your connections.”

  “We do. But we could use another.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Our source inside the department has not been as helpful as we had hoped. We would like another inside man.”

  “Or...inside woman,” Jill guessed.

  He nodded. “Accept the department’s offer. Join them. Learn all you can about them. Report back to us.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “Simple. We’re taking down the department.”

  “So I’d be a double agent. Sounds dangerous!” she whispered in phony amusement, flopping down on the other end of the couch. “I suppose you’d be offering me quite a bit for the job.”

  “That’s correct. The more you tell us, the greater your compensation will be.”

  “Okay. I’m in.”

  The guy looked at her skeptically. “Just like that, you agree?”

  “I agree to give it a shot.”

  “A shot?”

  “Right. I mean, yeah, the department recruited me. But I doubt their offer still stands. I don’t know if you heard, but I kind of snubbed them by breaking out of jail and everything.”

  “But you will try to convince them that you will join them?”

  “Sure. It probably won’t work. If it does, I’ll get back to you. By the way, how do I get back to you?”

  That’s when the guy told her about the “out-of-order” public phone at the mall. She memorized the number to call to reach Sketch. Jill told the guy she figured that was all they needed to talk about at the moment...in other words, time for him to leave. He did.

  Later that night, Jill headed out to a classy hotel near the west rim—not far from the Harvest, in fact. Off the lobby was a row of empty payphone cubicles. She took out a screwdriver, opened the inner workings of one of the phones, and made some personal modifications including the addition of a device she’d brought along. Then she dialed.

  A few seconds of canned m
usic played on the other end of the line. Then:

  “Anterran Governmental Complex. How may I direct your call?”

  By the end of the conversation, Holiday had told her: “Take it or leave it, Jillian. If you’d like us to extend our offer one last time, demonstrate your worth one last time. It’s only reasonable.”

  It was. And she did.

  AMBER took off her helmet, shook out her blond hair, and sighed. “That’s why you joined. You’re Sketch’s spy.”

  Corey still had that same cold look. “Mr. Love’s client,” he said. “It was the same guy who recruited you for Sketch, wasn’t it?”

  Jill smiled wryly. “I figured you might have caught on to that.”

  THAT had only been a day ago.

  Jill had waited on her skybike, as instructed, behind a building fifty yards from the office park’s parking garage. She was the safety net of the mission.

  It didn’t take long for her presence to be required.

  She’d gunned into the air along one side of the garage, seeing the hooded guy running across the empty parking spaces of the third level. She angled her bike over the barrier at the edge of the garage and went after him. Concrete columns whipped by her on both sides.

  She was closing in.

  He knew she was closing in. He got to the end of the level and heaved himself over the edge...

  He caught the barrier at the rim of level two and swung himself back into the garage.

  It was only a temporary escape. A moment later Jill had swooped down to level two, right in front of the hooded guy. She parked, leaped off her bike, leveled her gun at him.

  That’s when things got interesting.

  She switched off the microphone in her helmet. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

  The same Korean face she’d seen at her apartment two weeks earlier was smiling out at her from beneath the hood. “The mask will do you no good,” he said. “I know who you are...Jillian Branch. I bring greetings from Sketch.”

  She lowered her weapon and tugged off her helmet. “What are you doing here?” she repeated.

  “Meeting Mr. Love—or so I planned.”