by Katy Jordan
“Okay, we think we’ve finished the floor plan,” Tide announced, getting up from her seat and stretching.
“Let me have a look,” Jack requested, taking the sheet of paper that Flare handed over to him.
He scanned it over.
“Yeah, that seems about right.”
“Now that that’s one thing done, I was hoping it would be okay for me to stop? I’m getting quite stiff and tired,” Flare asked delicately.
“Of course, honey. Go,” Bullet approved, “have a good sleep.”
“Wake me if you need me for anything,” Flare smiled at Bullet, walking out looking visibly exhausted.
Jack squinted at the floor plan, looking confused.
“Jack, I swear to God, go to bed,” Bullet snapped.
“No, no, I’m fine but… this doesn’t make sense.”
“How?” Tide asked defensively. “We looked at the video from your camera and worked out the dimensions in respect to the bunker entrance and drew it on. It’s as exact as it can be.”
“No, I’m not disputing you and Flare’s efforts, it’s smashing how you did that so quick without going in with a measuring tape but… his bunker is right over electrical lines that connect to the warehouse.”
“Yeah, so?” Sparrow asked.
“Well, then, why was he asking me to wire up his bunker with electricity? Why didn’t he have it done at the time? They had direct access to a source.”
“Maybe it was like you said: maybe it was all too old. I mean, you said it yourself that the generator panel looked as though it hadn’t been touched in years,” Rocket offered, “Youth gave you the warehouse history. It was abandoned for years before Neon got his hands on it.”
“But, if it was me, or anyone else, they would have wired it while they had access to the source,” Jack said, “so, why didn’t he?”
“Because there was a reason he wanted you to do it?” Youth suggested.
“Or, because something was going on at the time that he couldn’t?” Bullet offered.
Silence followed.
Fear started to live in a very dense nature for everyone when it came to Neon.
What was he up to?
“Okay, so I’ve been digging around as much as I can regarding the C4 packaging scandal that he seems to have gotten himself into,” Youth began, typing frantically on the keyboard, “now, I haven’t got much, but this is something that keeps popping up.”
He hit a couple of keys with gusto and an article appeared on the plasma screen at the other side of the room. It contained a picture of a heavyset man in his late thirties with a bald head.
“His name is David Watt,” Youth continued, “he’s been associated with a gang called The Lion’s Den in Glasgow. His street name is… Ditch. A little odd.”
“Where can we find him?” Gecko asked.
“In a graveyard.”
“So, he’s dead?”
“Well, if he’s not, he’s going to wake up pretty angry,” Youth joked.
“Gang warfare?” Jack asked.
“Well, no one really knows. His death was quite elaborate and the police are stumped,” Youth explained as he loaded up another article.
It showed the Wallace Monument in Stirling with Watt’s body impaled on the topmost spike of its structure.
“What the hell?” Jack breathed, looking at the article in horror.
“I see what they mean about it being elaborate,” Tide scoffed, “what a way to go.”
“What’s this guy got to do with Neon?” asked Sparrow, who had suddenly gone stiff and defensive.
“The Lion’s Den are suspected of a lot of criminal activity, but their main line of duty is drug trafficking. David ‘Ditch’ Watt was the only one from the entire gang that had ever been arrested,” Youth said.
“So, he got caught during a deal?” asked Tide.
“No,” said Youth, “he was accused of raping a young girl; Jenna Harvey, twenty-three, studying History at Stirling University. Orphaned at age twelve. She took her life during the trial. There are no pictures of her.”
“Good,” Bullet said suddenly.
So suddenly that it caused heads to turn with curiosity.
“I hate it when they show pictures of rape survivors. They’ve been through enough, they should be left alone,” she defended.
“So, what’s significant about The Lion’s Den?” Sparrow asked, getting more impatient. More defensive.
“Well, it might be something… but, it might be nothing,” Youth said, smacking hard on more keys and loading another report up on the plasma screen, “but, Prismatic, which contained Bullet, Flare, Rocket and yourself, Sparrow, was created in 2012. So was The Lion’s Den.”
Everyone looked at all the articles that Youth had loaded up on to the screen.
“You think this was his funding project? This was how he got his money to finance everything?” Tide asked.
“It’s possible,” Youth suggested, “but, that’s all I’ve got so far.”
Bullet looked at the article about Watt being accused of rape.
About him going through a trial and being found not guilty. She read about how there was plenty of evidence to convict him, but the jury cleared him. How the public and Jenna’s foster family were up in arms about it, and rightfully so.
Her stomach churned chaotically, suddenly turning into a whirlpool.
She read and reread the article, but there was no mention of anything else important. Looking away from the screen, she noticed Jack eyeing her suspiciously.
She didn’t know what to do.
If she should say something or not.
She was trying to muster something up, but thankfully, was interrupted.
“Guys, speaking of when Prismatic was founded, I’ve just thought of something,” Gecko interjected, staring frantically from one photo to another, to another, and then back again, a look of horror flooding his face, “and it’s not good.”
“What have you got?” Bullet asked, pulling away from Youth’s briefing and Jack’s stare.
“The boxes… Jack noticed that some of them had initials on them, like ‘FF’, ‘SS’, and so on. We counted four that we got screen grabs of; the other two are ‘BB’ and ‘RR’.”
“And?” asked Sparrow impatiently, “we already knew that.”
At this point, Jack, Tide and Youth were looking at Sparrow and Bullet with a very calculating manner. They were acting extremely weird.
Rocket, too, was a lot quieter than he had ever been before. Almost mute.
“Yeah, we did, but I think I might know what they stand for,” Gecko said, turning to look at Bullet. “When you worked for Neon at Prismatic, who were the first people there?”
“It was Sparrow, Flare, Rocket and… me…” Bullet answered as she trailed off with the realisation hitting her hard in the gut.
“‘BB’… the Black Bullet. ‘FF’… the Fuschia Flare. ‘SS’… the Silver Sparrow. And ‘RR’… the Red Rocket,” Gecko thought out loud as he wrote on the whiteboard, sticking up a photo of each box with the relevant initials on it.
“There isn’t one box with two different letters on it?” Youth asked.
“Nope, not that I can see in the photos or the footage,” Gecko confirmed.
Jack sat in silence, his brain going wild, trying to take everything in. Trying not to think about the look that Bullet had on her face when Youth found the article about David Watt. Like she recognised it.
Like she knew about it already; and all too well.
That was a thought for later.
He focused with all his might on everything Gecko just said.
And then it hit him.
“Youth, can you pull up the footage from my jacket cam when I approached Neon after Gecko arrived?”
Youth turned back to the computer, and after hitting a few keys, the footage played on one of the four monitors. Jack struggled to his feet and hobbled over to him, leaning over his shoulder.
“What’r
e you looking for?” he asked Jack.
“Get ready to screen grab, I’ll tell you when.”
The deliveryman that was loaded with tattoos was taking back his clipboard after Neon signed it for something. He was walking towards the camera, getting closer and closer.
“NOW.”
Youth slammed on the keyboard and a picture loaded on another one of the four monitors. At this point, everyone was crowded around the computers, keen to see where Jack’s head had taken him.
“There, zoom in there,” Jack instructed, pointing to the clipboard in the gangster’s hand. Youth zoomed in, focusing on where Neon had signed the form.
“His signature. You said you thought it was different?” Sparrow clarified, looking between Jack and the monitor.
“Yeah, and it is. Can you flip this so that it’s vertical?” Jack asked Youth.
“Can I fli… can I flip… yes, I can flip it,” he chortled, as though amused by the insinuation that it would be a tough job.
A couple of clicks and Youth had flipped the photo ninety degrees to the right. Jack cocked his head a little to the side to get a more level view of Neon’s handwriting.
Jack didn’t like what he was about to say to everyone one little bit, but he was pretty sure he was seeing what he was seeing.
“Is it just me, or does that look like it says ‘The Spectrum’?”
At his words, everyone joined in with the imitation of puppies being teased with a bone.
“Yeah,” Tide agreed, “it really does.”
Rocket threw his pen down on the table, annoyed at all the possibilities of what Neon could be up to, none of them being good.
“What the hell is he doing?” Gecko asked the room.
“It looks like he’s setting everyone up,” Bullet said, “the boxes with our initials on it, signing paperwork as The Spectrum, swapping out cocaine for salt, dealings with drug dealers… He might be trying to make us a target.”
“To who?” Tide asked. “The Lion’s Den?”
“Or another gang,” Rocket offered for the first time in quite a while.
Everyone’s head was spinning. They were wracking their brains for a solution or even a reason to Neon’s weird activities. Youth started typing frantically on his keyboard.
“Youth, what’re you doing?” Bullet asked him.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t even acknowledge that she had spoken.
Bullet leaned towards him, carefully.
“Youth? Where’s your head at?” she probed again, getting concerned.
She tried to look at his screen, but it was all coding and binary. That was his thing, that’s what he did, what he was best at. Bullet could never understand it no matter how much she tried. The concentration on his face was immense. Strained.
He was typing in a frenzy, and now, Bullet wasn’t the only one who was a little worried.
“Youth, buddy… what’re you doing?” Rocket asked him, gently smacking his shoulder.
Suddenly, he smacked a key with extreme force, like it was his grand finale to a masterpiece he had played.
“Done,” he announced.
“What’s done?” Bullet demanded.
“I just hacked into Police Scotland’s database; I have everything on The Lion’s Den.”
“Youth, The Spectrum specifically said you were never to hack into anything unless…”
“It was absolutely necessary,” Youth said, cutting Tide off in her tracks, “I know. But, I have a hunch, and it’s gnawing away at me.”
He loaded up a zip folder and opened it.
He clicked through some more folders and found surveillance photos of men that nobody recognised. Youth flicked through them. No one said anything more about his severely illegal hacking adventure he just went on.
Youth stopped on a photo.
“Recognise him, Jack?”
Jack looked hard at the photo. His eyes nearly stretched double their size in shock.
“That’s the delivery guy that Neon signed something for!” he announced, looking from the screen grab to the hacked surveillance photo.
“And according to these reports, that man’s name is Andrew Watt,” Youth stated.
“Watt… please tell me that that’s a coincidence,” Rocket pleaded.
“Nope,” Youth said, staring at the monitor, filled with disbelief, “this is Andrew. David Watt’s brother.”
Bullet’s heart sank.
Neon was coming after her.
After everything they did together, he really was seeking out revenge by putting the Black Bullet, along with the rest of Colour Coded, right into the line of fire of what was clearly one of the most dangerous gangs in Scotland.
Neon was boxing them in from all sides.
Chapter Twelve
Bullet stormed into her room and slammed the door shut. Her high heels almost cracked the black tiled floor as she paced her room, panicked, scared, and at a loss on how to tackle this problem that they had come across.
Neon was setting them up.
He was planning on having them killed, making sure he had nothing to do with it. Even if they all died, no one would miss them. They gave up their identities to do this job. To help people.
To keep people safe.
That was how Neon roped them in.
Well, her at least.
The one idea that everyone, to this day, agreed with: it would be too dangerous to have everyone’s identity mixed with their Colour Coded lives.
It had to be one or the other.
She paced to the bed and drove her hands frantically under her pillow and pulled out her photo.
Jenna was so happy. She didn’t deserve everything that happened to her.
Bullet remembered how proud of her friend she was when she decided to take Watt to trial five years ago.
Five years.
It felt like it was maybe a week ago.
But, if that was the case, she would just be meeting Neon right now.
It really was a while ago.
A knock at the door interjected her thoughts as Jack delicately creaked the door open.
“Hey.”
“I just need to be alone.”
“No, you don’t,” he replied, coming in and shutting the door, “I think you’ve been alone for long enough.”
He walked over to the bed and sat down on it, watching her walk the length of the room and then back again.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“That’s fine.”
Bullet continued to pace. She was nervous when he was sitting there.
She was nervous whenever he was near her.
She was even scared to think in case he heard her thoughts. Bullet kicked herself mentally for even thinking something so stupid.
She turned back to walk yet another length.
Jack caught her eye.
Bullet quickly looked away and kept pacing, running her fingers through her hair, rubbing her eyes, trying to be calm again. Trying to be who everyone thought she was.
The Black Bullet.
The woman that was made of steel; that was always so grounded.
That didn’t let emotions get the better of her.
She wasn’t that woman. She was weak. Bullet turned once more to pace the room. Jack was still looking at her.
“What?”
“What?” Jack retorted, holding his innocent hand in the air, “I didn’t say anything!”
“You didn’t have to, your eyes said it all for you.”
She started to pace again.
“Stop,” Jack insisted.
“Stop what?”
“Stop pacing, you’re driving me crazy!”
“Hey, you’re the one who invited yourself in here. I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Don’t do that,” Jack nipped at her.
“Do what?”
“Don’t push me away. I’ve already told you I’m not going anywhere.”
Bullet flapped her arms against he
r sides like an agitated penguin. She turned away from him and leaned against the window, still gripping her photograph.
“What’s going on with you? You’ve been acting really weird since Youth put that guy’s mug shot up on the plasma.”
Bullet didn’t say anything. Jack was getting too close.
Too involved.
It scared her.
She didn’t want him to judge her. She wanted it to be like it was in the upper foyer. He couldn’t know about her.
Could he?
“Bullet… you’ve seen him before, haven’t you?” he pushed, getting up off the bed and coming over to her.
He leaned on the other side of the window, trying to see her face.
“Just tell me the truth, there’s nothing to be scared of.”
Bullet scoffed at his comment.
He would be scared.
There were no two ways about it.
She had always wanted to confide in someone. Even The Spectrum didn’t know about her past. That’s how Colour Coded worked.
No pasts.
Just the present. What you see is what you get.
“It doesn’t matter,” she croaked.
“If it matters to you, then it does matter.”
She couldn’t take it anymore. It was becoming too much.
A tear escaped again. She stared at the luminous dream catcher hanging in the sky, complimented by stars of all sizes surrounding it.
It loomed over the earth like a person looms over a meal.
“Bullet,” Jack stepped in closer to her, “I don’t think you realise just how much seeing you like this is killing me. Please, just talk to me.”
His being so nice was making it really hard to lie to him.
This would have been so much easier if he was just a dick, pure and simple. Someone she didn’t like.
Someone she didn’t want to share her life with.
“Jenna Harvey…” she started, her tear ducts turning into Niagara Falls.
Jack noticed the picture in Bullet’s tight grasp. He reached out for it, and instantly she let go. Looking at the picture, he immediately recognised both the girls.
The one on the left was Bullet.
The one on the right was a clear resemblance to Jenna Harvey.
“She was your friend,” he said sympathetically.
Bullet nodded a verification.
“She was my best friend.”
