Death Becomes Her

by Michael Anderle

  The symbiont wasn’t speaking. Probably figured he had pissed me off enough, she thought.

  Getting her head around the situation, she figured she needed to get a little more information and then start a plan on what the hell she should do.

  Michael had given her some information before she went under. Some concerns he had on the attack on Bill. Attacking his family in America really pissed him off.

  He was ‘quite peeved’ he exclaimed. His face, however, was as annoyed as if he had just had a bad cup of tea.

  Talk about understated emotional empathy. Look it up on Wikipedia and she was sure Michael’s face would be the picture for it.

  Nothing for it, she thought, it is time to get started.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Nathan just got out of the pool a few minutes before and had taken a quick shower to wash away the chlorine. The chlorine just totally messed up his sense of smell. Not to mention that he really didn’t feel like reeking of eau de YMCA pool all day.

  He was in town to discuss the latest cyber attack that his Boston branch thwarted this past week. All of the Boston team, and three up from New York, spent most of the last eight days eating, sleeping and breathing cybernetic warfare with a group out of China against one of their financial clients. He was here to understand if they had done anything new that could be shared with his other three teams and to personally thank each of the team. He was giving them all a $5k bonus, which he would share after he got the after-action review. Then, it was a few hours out of town to go camping and if there weren’t any fools doing it far enough up the trail, he could enjoy getting furry.

  His phone rang. Grabbing the phone used for pack business, he didn’t recognize the number. He opened a special program that would simultaneously answer the phone, and track the number and location back to the unknown caller.

  “Nathan here.” His voice, a little deeper and gravelly, well, maybe some ‘growly’ since he hated picking up pack business came across the line.

  Nonplussed, Frank replied, “Yeah, good to talk with you too, fur-ball.”

  Nathan took a second to overcome his immediate reaction to reach through the phone and personally shove a chair up the other person’s ass. Giving it a second, when his mind cleared enough to think it through, he replied “Hello, Frank. I can’t say it’s been too long. I could go another thirty years and it wouldn’t be long enough.” Nathan got dressed, put on his shoes, grabbed his bag, stuck his headphones with a mic in his ears and headed out to the underground parking lot.

  “Trust me,” Frank replied. “I feel you on this one. I wouldn’t call except after six months you are the only one I think I can trust on this.”

  Feeling a little sigh coming on, Nathan wasn’t making it to the campsite this weekend, it seemed. He pushed the alarm on his MB GLE, confirmed that it was both unlocked and nothing had been done to the car in his absence, he got in and closed the door locking out sound from the outside.

  “By the way, I’m feeling your love. Your tracking program is pretty good but I think it is going to get lost up on SatCom3. I figured you might be anxious if a new number came across but damn, Nathan.”

  “Yeah, well, if your business was being attacked by China’s Digital Black Ops group for trillions of dollars, I think you might be a little concerned as well.” Nathan turned out on the street and headed to the office.

  “Hmm, I seem to have heard about that attack. However, while starting in China I think you might need to see about ‘super special’ connections on this effort. It is one of the reasons I felt I could come to you, I figured you would try to stay neutral but the other team isn’t giving you an option.”

  “Really? Hmmmm.. One sec.” Nathan paused the line, grabbed his other phone and hit the speed dial for the Boston office. “Tim? Nathan. I want your guys to look at all of our other clients, even those that don’t ever get attacked. I have a hunch that our clients aren’t being attacked, we are. Yeah. Start the Guardian install on all clients immediately. Get with the other three offices and everyone take someone. Make all financial clients first priority, then everyone else in descending order of PR nightmare. My gut says they are trying to cause us problems.” Nathan listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, good thought. They might be trying to get us to focus on one area and then hit us in another. Take every team up to the same level and I’ll call-in a few favors to get additional help. Be there in ten minutes.” Nathan clicked the call off.

  He picked up the original phone call, “Sorry, Frank. I had to take your comment under advisement and give out orders.”

  “No problem, however, now you are open to help me. I scratched your furry back.” Frank grumped on the phone.

  Nathan thought about how stupid it would be for a normal human to knowingly irritate a Were. Then figured how stupid it would be for a Were to cross the main government contact. Kinda hard to dodge all of the bullets, all of the time. Sometimes, enough bullets really becomes a quantity has a quality all of its own situation. “Yeah, OK, tell me what you got.”

  “You’ve heard that Michael has gone missing?” Frank asked, no beating around the bush on this one. Nathan was probably the best informed Were in the world. Just because he wasn’t the alpha, didn’t mean, in his case, he wasn’t the best.

  Nathan turned down the final street to his Boston offices, then stopped at the guard shack before going down into the underground parking lot. Pulling into the prime parking position, he stopped the car but didn’t get out.

  “I have heard all the rumors, and nothing my personal computer search filters return have provided anything but rumors. Do you have anything concrete?”

  “No, but his plane went down over the ocean, and we don’t have bodies for anyone in the plane. No pilot, no Carl, no Michael.”

  “How do you know they were on the plane?”

  “How does anyone know anything about Michael? We know that the pilot and Carl were on the plane, because they were on airport security cam video going into the plane. We have audio that includes Carl and Michael talking a few minutes before the disappearance of the plane.”

  “How did you get audio of them talking?” Nathan wanted to know if Frank was in a bad enough situation to divulge any government secrets.

  “They were heard over the conversation between the pilot and the last tower before they left the tower’s airspace. How did you think we heard?” Frank, always good with saying everything and nothing, replied.

  “Well, I had hopes you did a laser wisk against the plane’s windows from a satellite and listened to the vibrations.” It was incredibly weak, but a plausible concept if you believed in black helicopters (which, he realized, were actually real).

  “Um hmm. Yeah, I got nothing on that, Nathan.”

  “OK, what do you want in payment for the heads up?”

  “I need you to go to old Europe. The last verifiable confirmation of Michael was in a small town out there a little over six months ago, I think. See if you can backtrack anything outside of there.”

  Nathan stared out of the window for a few seconds. This just wasn’t a good idea. Although he recognized the titanic power shift which would happen if Michael was actually gone, he needed to be here with his businesses if he was targeted by anyone in the UnknownWorld right now. “Frank, I think I need to ask for another favor. Right now, as you know, I’m a little bit on the defensive. I have over 200 clients that are bait to these, whatever ‘these’ are.”

  A sigh came over the line from Frank. “Nathan, I know you do. Over 250 high-paying, high-value clients I know about. I’ve got resources I can tap that can help a national security company overcome attacks by Chinese hackers. What I don’t have is a clandestine operative I trust to figure this out. If you trust me to get you good people, with maximum security clearances, to help your teams out, we can get your issues done in a quarter of the time. Hand it off to your top guys to pass out the responsibility. My guys can handle it inside Cheyenn
e, or they can be placed at your offices. Tonight if you need them.”

  Shit, he thought, Frank is in a serious bind. In all four offices, he had about forty highly technical people working for him. How many was Frank willing to give him for one person? “How many, Frank? I’ve got an attack happening as we talk and I’m sitting under one of my offices on the phone with you. Not to mention that Europe isn’t totally healthy for an American of my persuasion.”

  “Nathan, you want 400? I’ll find you 400 in three hours.”

  Nathan sighed, “Well, fuckity-fuck. Looks like I’m going to Europe.”

  Brasov, Romania

  A little jet-lagged, Nathan arrived in Brasov, Romania. An important town, the history going back to the Neolithic age, Nathan hadn’t visited it before in his travels.

  Taking the local public transport, he grabbed a bus heading up to Poiana Brasov, a nearby winter resort area one of the most popular for tourists. It was in this small town that Frank was last able to confirm Michael’s existence.

  Freaking spooky, Nathan thought, maybe there was more to the rumor that Dracula come from Transylvania than he had considered?

  Winter had come too early in September in Nathan's opinion. It wasn’t supposed to get all white and cold until mid-November, he thought.

  Either way, he needed to get moving. He had called the local alpha for permission to be in his area. These packs went way, way back and could be very persnickety about other pack members in their areas without permission. Since it was a tourist area he was coming to, the discussion ended up being more of a formality than he had imagined it might with his position in the American Council.

  Frank had provided him with the hotel that had the security footage that had included Michael. He figured he would start with that hotel and enlarge the circle. As he got off of the bus, he felt something touch his senses. He stepped off the bus as if nothing had caught his attention and took a couple of steps forward so he didn’t block the other passengers. He looked in the opposite direction away from his hotel and then back to the other side as if he was trying to find it – even though he already knew which way to go.

  Seeing nobody, which did not mean no one was there, just meant that they weren’t amateurs. He walked towards the hotel putting his whole body on alert, dropping into the complete relaxing of his muscles so that they wouldn’t twitch uncharacteristically and give away that he was on alert.

  The hotel was typical old school. Smaller buildings with a lot of the refinements of the last 100 years retrofitted. Not even a personal bath for each room.

  Looks like it would be an expensive couple of days. He would pay the minimum necessary to have a personal bath, even if he went all the way to the penthouse. If there was anything he liked less, it was sharing a bathroom. He had spent a minor fortune retrofitting a brownstone in the New York area just a few years ago to make sure that every bedroom had a personal bathroom. He knew it wasn’t as big an issue for others. However, he never wanted to put another visitor through the same feelings he had on the subject.

  Finished with the front desk, and lucky since others hadn’t realized the weather was going to change so early this year, he was able change his reserved room and get a room for only an arm. His left his leg would be available for the next expensive charge.

  Getting to his room, using an old fashioned key, he pulled a small rectangle the size of a quarter and twice as thick from his grooming kit. The brown plastic device had a male audio jack on one side. Plugging it into a specially modified android phone, he clicked on a folder to bring up a special set of security programs. The selfie camera came on and he placed his right eye so it filled the screen, after it took a picture, he moved it to his lips, and then took his whole face.

  Although earlier iterations tried to use images as a passcode, they were quickly hacked with just plain pictures. The device he placed in the audio jack was using both technology through the camera as well as some inside the device to confirm this was Nathan whilst verifying respiration and other biometrics.

  The folder was opened so he now had access to other programs that let him search the room for anything nasty or just plain annoying. While the phone went to work to locate anything in the digital realm, he started giving the room a physical check.

  He found one really old spy bug under the bedside table where an old phone would have sat. He figured this old thing was from the Cold War and considered leaving it there. Thinking better of that idea, shaking his head that when younger he never would have been so careless, he pulled a small metallic box out of his suitcase and placed the bug in there. The box was a small faraday cage, not letting anything in or out. Besides, maybe there was history with the bug and he would find out it was used decades ago and he would have a piece of spy history.

  Leaving his bag on the chair next to the bed, he grabbed his phone and grooming kit and went into the bathroom. There was a knock on the door.

  Putting his head out of the bathroom, he called out, “Who’s there?”

  Voice a little muffled, not horribly since these old hotels really didn’t have great insulation, he heard a girl say, “Housekeeping, I’m here to turn down your bed, sir.” She had a great accent, he thought.

  He stepped over and unlocked the door, stepping back into the bathroom he yelled out for her to come in and shut the door.

  Hearing her come in, he took a peak through the crack in the door and caught the profile of an attractive blond. He made the appropriate noises and paid attention to his phone while turning on the water.

  After about forty-five seconds, she mentioned that she was finished and the door shut. Immediately, his phone got a ping on one of the wireless bands before going dark again. Nathan figured that they must have bugged his first room, but by changing rooms he had messed up their plans, whoever they were.

  He decided to finish up in the bathroom and go ahead and leave the existing bug or bugs alone. She probably bugged his bag somehow, he would have. He was going to need to set up a drop of clothes and other materials at another hotel and leave everything else here. He had everything he couldn’t leave behind in the grooming kit, which he always had with him.

  He exited the bathroom and could smell the perfume she was wearing. It was really strong. Strong enough to mess up his sense of smell, but not enough to completely cover the scent of a Were. He wouldn’t be able to recognize her personal scent in the future, but he hoped she liked the same fragrance.

  So, whether this was just a pack issue not trusting someone at his level in their territory, something to do with the attacks on his business, or something that was going on with this business of Michael’s he didn’t know. One thing was sure, it just got a lot more interesting.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Carpathian Mountains, Romania

  Bethany Anne had found her clothes outside what she now considered the ‘pod room’. Whilst they didn’t fit her wonderfully now, her unexpected traveling companions ministrations apparently affected her physically and she was now a little taller and leaner. Clothes too small beat not having any clothes at all.

  “Is there some sort of office on this craft?” Bethany Anne thought about how she must look talking out into the midair like this.

  Yes, go down this hallway and take your first left. The door on the right will open into what was previously the pilot’s cabin and office.

  “Um, where did they go?” Bethany Anne seriously didn’t want to run into a corpse a thousand years old.

  I believe you would call him a ‘ghost in the machine’ now.

  She paused to consider that comment. “Are you telling me that you were the pilot on this craft?”

  Yes.

  “And your body is where, exactly? I know your, something, is in my spinal cord but frankly I don’t need to see a body.” Bethany Anne wasn’t really squeamish, but she didn’t want to place a physical picture with the disembodied voice she heard in her head.

  I had the craft take it and broke it down into
its constituent parts before you woke up. While I intended to ‘hitch a ride’ as you called it a long time ago. However, Michael wasn’t a match for me and he left before I could really read the situation well. He didn’t react as I had expected and I was unable to have any sort of conversation. I wasn’t in this valley very long before he stumbled into this craft. There were no radio waves for me to listen to, allowing me to learn about your world or your language at that time. I’ve only been really learning my way around your world in the last few decades as I’ve been catching information here. I’ve tagged into a couple of satellites, but they are mostly generic news and entertainment related. I’ve understood for a while that your people find the most horrendous stories as fun.

  “Don’t knock it when you don’t know what else we go through.” She was a little perturbed at the alien for criticizing human television while she herself thought a lot of what passed for entertainment in the last decade was mostly trash TV. She figured people were able to secretly feel superior when watching the horrific train wrecks others were making of their own lives on national television.