The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  He felt a sense of pride and elation over how well the evening had gone. After all that had gone wrong, and the years of cleaning up the messes left behind by that girl, everything was again according to plan. And not a minute too soon. The WE-1 Summit was set to begin in less than a week. She was on her way to the Summit, where the full power of the Contionum would be unleashed. Chaos would follow shortly after, but then again, that was the point. Harrison swilled the snifter and inhaled the smoky aroma of the cognac. He took the tiniest sip, savoring the notes of cinnamon and apricots on his tongue before swallowing.

  Harrison's phone began ringing, and a number appeared on the screen without a contact name. He recognized the number as the command center for the Contionum--the hub where all intelligence was gathered, and from which all orders and missions disseminated. Most of the time, it was Harrison who gave the orders and organized missions, but every so often, an order would come from higher on the food chain, from individuals whose identity even Harrison didn't know.

  He answered the phone, and the voice on the other end immediately recited a series of letters and numbers, which Harrison checked against the same code he'd written in the margin of his legal pad. When he saw that the code was identical, he recited his own identification code. The caller from command center verified his identity and then patched him through to an operational leader, who also remained nameless.

  They didn't use names, despite the legions of digital scrubbers working the networks specifically to remove any record or trace of their names. For every scrubber, there were a thousand hackers who scoured data for fun.

  For fun.

  And when they found something they deemed unworthy of confidentiality, these hackers—these criminals—would expose whatever secrets were being kept, even at the detriment of the greater good. A bunch of criminals with a moral compass. Harrison shook his head at the absurdity of how the times had changed.

  Even now, he was dealing with a couple of those hackers who'd sniffed too closely to the Contionum. He'd organized two missions to remove the two primary sources of online hacks, and he assumed this call from the command center was regarding the status of those missions.

  "Reports have come in on Black Hat One, which has been completed."

  The term "Black Hat," in general, referred to hackers who violated secure networks for their own malicious purposes and personal gain, sometimes with criminal intent. Harrison had seen a rise in black hat groups across the globe, usually under the guise of exposing truth for the common good, but never before had Il Contionum been the target of such violations. Until very recently, Il Contionum had enjoyed its online anonymity, taking full advantage of the web and its endless source of data, but suffering no ill effects. Then the black hat hackers had come along, picking up bread crumbs that were stupidly left behind after the debacle in Chicago, and digging deeper. The hackers, of course, had used a wide variety of techniques to remain undetected, but Il Contionum's digital scrubbers picked up on their research almost as soon as it had begun, and had since been tracking the hackers’ progress.

  At first, Harrison predicted that the hackers would grow tired of finding nothing online in the deep web, and would give up their project for sexier pursuits, but they never stopped digging. Harrison was sure that if they weren't terminated, they never would stop. It seemed that they were making progress and getting closer to uncovering material information about the organization.

  Unnervingly close. Once they found something concrete, he feared that they would gain access to the many servers used by Il Contionum, and have full access to the archives, which would be detrimental not only to the current operation, but to the entire organization. The hackers had to be terminated.

  Harrison couldn't remember the name of the hacker who was the target of Black Hat One, but he did remember that the name the Hacker had used online had been ridiculous. The Dark Duke, or something along those lines. Harrison was glad that he'd been terminated first. He was a master in his field, a black hat in the truest sense, and with him gone, the second ring leader—a woman who used the name ANONX^17 while online—would have nowhere to turn.

  "And Black Hat Two?" he asked, referring to the second operation in which ANONX^17 would be terminated.

  "No word yet, sir."

  "Keep me posted." He sipped his cognac and thought he sensed the distant hint of roasted vanilla. He held the liquor in his mouth and inhaled the aroma before swallowing and savoring the smooth burn.

  "Anything else?"

  "Yes sir. Cleaning crews have also finished in Chicago." The voice on the other end hesitated. After several seconds, he said, "Sir, there were two bodies recovered from the scene. Both have been disposed of according to the procedure of this operation."

  "Two?" Harrison cocked an eyebrow and shifted in his chair.

  "Yes sir. The original target was recovered as planned. His body will be found in an alley no sooner than a week from today, and the story fed to the media will be a mugging that got out of control. There was significant damage to the face, and the story will reveal that once he was beaten and left for dead, rodents ate away most of the face and eyes.”

  "The reporter?" Harrison asked, wondering how Morales could have failed to mention these details.

  "Yes sir, the reporter," Command Center said, referring to the man who had been closest to revealing their secrets by way of publishing an article after the Miami debacle. Il Contionum's scrubbers had also identified a connection between the hackers and the reporter, Paul Freemont, a connection which ultimately led to the viability of the Black Hat operations, and the termination of the hackers.

  It was Harrison himself who'd made the call to not kill Paul Freemont before the article was published. At the time, he'd been worried about the repercussions of such a killing in light of the reporter's work. He didn't want any headlines to suggest that the guy had been hit for the story he'd been about to publish. So instead, he let the story come to light and hoped it wouldn't stick. What happened was more than he could have ever hoped for, as the reporter's career tumbled when his scoop was ridiculed as nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

  Nonetheless, it was now a decision he'd regretted. The man would not stop with his questioning and posturing of theories about the true source of destruction in Miami. Many times during the intervening years, Harrison considered having the reporter terminated, but it seemed that there were simply no opportunities for a clean kill. He was so public with his conspiracy theories that his death would surely have drawn some attention.

  It was pure happenstance that the reporter become involved yet again, and he had come much closer to discovering the truth than Harrison would have thought possible. There came a point when Harrison made the decision that, despite the consequences and the potential fallout, the reporter needed to be taken care of. He would deal with the fall-out after the fact.

  The fact that he was now dead and would no longer be asking any questions made Harrison feel more at ease, but a second body meant that the killing did not happen as cleanly as he'd instructed.

  "And the second body?" Harrison asked.

  "Someone on the premises, a homeless woman who lived here in the warehouse, possibly. She was shot several times, but there was no sign of a robbery or any motivation. Shell casings were removed from the scene."

  "Morales?" Harrison didn't have to ask, knowing that Morales had either left the scene after reporting the precise location of Paul Freemont's body, or if he’d stayed, would not have answered any questions posed by the cleaning crew.

  "He was here when we arrived, sir, but has since left."

  "Did he mention anything about the second body?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  Harrison made a mental note to discuss this further with Morales. Extra bodies meant more questions, and more questions were never good.

  "Any updates on Dr. Whaler's convoy?" Harrison asked while staring at the screen that showed the location of the mobile laboratory to be in Pennsy
lvania, just across the border from New York.

  "Traveling on schedule, sir."

  He swirled the snifter and smiled. "Good."

  "Anything else sir?" Command Center asked.

  "Not at the moment, but please keep me apprised of Black Hat Two. Let me know when it's finished."

  "Yes, sir."

  Harrison ended the call and savored the last few drops of the cognac. He held the drops on his tongue and felt the burn before swallowing, all the while staring at a picture of Mae Edwards on his desk. In the picture, she'd been smiling, and Harrison smiled at the picture. She was his prize. The reporter had pegged Mae perfectly, although without knowing how close to the truth he actually was.

  A bomb without a bomb.

  And now, the reporter was dead, and Mae was back where she belonged. Under his control. Things were falling back into place.

  His phone buzzed again and he noticed that it was the Command Center calling him again.

  Strange, he thought, that this call was coming so soon after the first.

  Harrison remained calm as he answered the call.

  "Hello?"

  "We have a problem," the voice said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Reed stepped through the broken door and into the hallway, which was cast in a greenish hue due to her night vision goggles. The hallway was empty, as far as she could see, but the front doors to each apartment were in alcoves a few feet deep, causing shadows and potential hiding places. The door to the staircase that led to different floors of the building was halfway down the hall. The door had been propped open when the three soldiers had come up the stairs, but it was now closed. Reed glanced over her shoulder at Bloom and pointed toward the closed door.

  "Target likely went down the stairs toward the exit," she said into her radio. "Exterior team will need to be on the lookout for the target exiting the building. We will clear the building."

  She and Bloom moved quickly down the hallway, searching each doorway and shadowy nook in case the girl was hiding. When they saw that the had not hidden in the hallway, they retreated to the staircase.

  One of the doors suddenly opened with a burst of yapping and barking. A small dog with short hair came darting out into the hallway, growling and yapping at their feet. An old woman with curly white hair going in all directions stepped into the hallway, scowling at the two soldiers.

  The sudden noise and movement startled Reed. She swung the rifle in the old woman's direction, leveling the barrel at her forehead, and would have shot but for their orders to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

  "Ma'am," Reed said, "please return to your home and keep the door closed tightly."

  "I will do no such thing until you state your business. Y'all been making one heck of a racket tonight, and I want to know what's going on." The old woman's voice was scratchy but firm. She jutted her chin and puffed out her chest as much as possible. She wasn't going anywhere.

  The dog was gnawing on Reed’s boot, and she gently pushed the little body toward the old woman, who made no move to retrieve the dog.

  "There is a violent fugitive in the building. A woman who lives here, down the hall. Have you seen her?"

  "That girl at the end? Don't see much of her, but I doubt she'd be much problem for you and your guns. She's a nice girl, and we don't want any trouble here in the building."

  "Ma'am, we don't want any trouble either." Reed said, her voice gruff and anything but ladylike. "Pick up your dog and get inside. Lock the doors, and don't let anyone in."

  The old woman stared right back at the lenses on Reed's night vision goggles for several seconds, then grunted as she returned through her front door.

  "Come, Puffles," she said, and the dog immediately stopped gnawing on Reed's boots and followed the old woman inside, its long nails clicking on the tile. Reed kept her gun trained on the woman until the door was shut. They heard a rattle as the chain was slid into place.

  "Crazy broad," Bloom said.

  "Yeah." Reed started again toward the stairwell, motioning for Bloom to open the door while she covered him from behind. She didn't think the target was armed, but she had done a number on the Sergeant back in the apartment. She was ready in case the target tried to pull a similar stunt here.

  Bloom did a silent countdown from three, then flung the door open wide. Reed tensed, her finger on the trigger, as the door opened to the darkened stairwell.

  "Up or down?" Bloom asked.

  Reed considered this for a moment and then nodded toward the stairs leading down.

  "She's trying to get out of the building. We'll start at the bottom and clear it from the ground floor up. We've got front and back exits covered, and the fire escapes. She so much as breathes on the outside of this building and we'll know exactly where she is. The exterior team hasn't sent out an alert, so she hasn't tried to leave yet. She's hiding in here somewhere.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mae opened here eyes and the scene was instantly familiar. She was in the white room where she’d spent so much of her childhood, suspended above the stasis tank. She could hear the soft clinks and groans of the hydraulics as the machine recalibrated to lower her into the liquid, where all her sensations would be neutralized. As before, when she was a child, Mae experienced these last few seconds of physical sensation with exquisite clarity, relishing each feeling before entering the nothingness. Focusing on the sensations helped calm the panic that always came as she was lowered into the tank.

  She felt cold. The air on her skin was frigid, goosebumps on her arms and legs. In any other setting, the cold would be uncomfortable, but now she relished the ache in her muscles, knowing that in just a few moments, those sensations would fade away into nothing.

  Tubes dripping with clear liquid were taped to her forearms and connected to needles that entered her veins, just above the wrist. Sensory wires were connected to probes on her skin, taped together with the feeding tubes. An oxygen mask was affixed to her nose and mouth, and she could taste the sterile oxygen as she breathed slowly, in and out.

  She looked down at the liquid and it looked the same as it always had, clear with a tint of white and grey, so thick that even if disturbed, it would not ripple.

  She glanced around the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of another human being, even if it was Dr. Whaler. But as usual, the room was empty. She assumed that Dr. Whaler and others were standing behind the mirrored glass that ran along one wall of the room.

  Was her mom back there, watching Mae be lowered into the stasis chamber? Her dad?

  No. It was impossible. Mae had seen them both die. Her dad in Miami, when she’d destroyed the first stasis tank and escaped, and her mom in the cabin on that cold night in Chicago.

  But wait. She realized that she hadn’t actually seen either one of them actually die. She remembered the swirling energy in a room very similar (the same?) as this one, except people were watching her being lowered into the tank. She remembered her dad and mom standing with Dr. Whaler, watching her suspended in the air with only thin layers of guaze covering her body. Her mom’s eyes were red and wet, and tears streamed down her face. Her dad had looked away, unable to meet her pleading gaze, the muscles in his jaw tight and bulging as he gritted his teeth.

  Then she had pushed, or piqued, as Dr. Whaler called it, sending lab equipment and people flying through the air. Her dad’s body had ripped from the place he was standing and thudded into the wall at the far end of the room with a sickening thump. The last memory she had of her dad was seeing his limp body on the cold white floor of the observation room. He was dead, she was sure of it. When she and her mom had tried to verify his death during the years on the run, all traces of him and his life had disappeared. That was when they’d realized the full extent of the organization who’d taken Mae to study her and her powers, how secret and powerful they were.

  Mae’s mother had died in the cabin, and even now, just thinking about it made her want to cry. She remembered her hands and nose on th
e freezing glass of the window as she stared into the cabin at her mom, whose hands and feet were tied. Their eyes had locked for just a second before Mae turned to run, and in that second, she saw what her mom had always promised to do. She would give her life for Mae, allowing her time to escape.

  But she had not seen either of them die. Was it possible that Dr. Whaler was telling the truth? That the deaths of her mom and dad, and her escape, and the shadowy figures chasing her, were all just a fiction she’d made up in her mind to deal with the guilt she felt? To deal with the harsh reality of labs and experiments and indeterminable lengths of time in the stasis tank, deprived of all her senses?

  No, Dr. Whaler was lying. Her parents were dead, and all that had followed was real and true. She felt a pang of guilt for dragging both Ryan and Adam into this mess. She had no idea if they were alive or dead, but she knew that they were real, and the time that she’d shared with them was real.

  The machine that suspended her above the tank jerked gently and she began to be slowly lowered into the tank. Her toes broke the surface of the liquid first, slipping in with hardly any disturbance.

  Paper and Ink

  Her mind automatically returned to a conversation she’d had with her dad when she was little, during the experiments in Miami. She had always hated going into the tank, never knowing when she would come out, and experiencing consciousness without any discernable reality. Of course, as a young girl, she hadn’t thought of her experience in the tank in such terms. The time she’d spent in there was formless and empty, as if she were submitting herself to a nothingness. She hadn’t understood what was happening to her, only that it was terrifying.

  To help her with the panic and fear, her dad had come up with an idea.

  "So, let's try an experiment," her father had said. "I want you to imagine that the whiteness in your mind is actually a blank piece of paper. White, and free of everything and anything, ready to be filled."