It seemed like an eternity before Eric spoke. He gazed over him with distaste, taking note of his lack of attire, only serving to further his sense of humiliation.
"Steven, is it? Do you have any idea what you've done?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "No, I suppose you don't… You've single-handedly facilitated the escape of the most dangerous person in the world."
Eric paused to let the complete effect of his statement sink in. Steven swallowed hard and stared dumbly ahead.
"You knew, of course, when you signed your contract and accepted this position that there was no 'exit clause.' I cannot allow you to continue working in this position when you are obviously incompetent. Until further notice, you are stripped of all duties and privileges until something suitable can be found for you to do. And, I don't need to remind you of the consequences of breaking your contract."
There goes my future.
It was a dismissal. He numbly allowed himself to be led from the room. Steven knew exactly what the "contract" entailed. When he accepted the job, he basically signed over his life. He knew at the time that it was unreasonable, but somehow the idea of working in a top-secret, underground complex overruled everything else. He was much younger then, and it seemed like the best thing to do at the time.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Even now, he couldn't say that he regretted his decision. It was an amazing job, right up to the point where his career was ruined. He didn't know what they would do to him now, but he knew there weren't many options.
Part of working for one of the most powerful companies in the world was accepting the obvious fact that they had the power to do whatever they wanted. If he was on their bad side now, he didn't want to imagine what they would do to him if he stepped further out of line.
He waited a few days under what was essentially house arrest. Most of the guards were housed on Level Two of the Underground and Steven was no exception. No one told him he was a prisoner, but there was a guard posted outside of his room twenty-four hours a day. He would have been a fool to think otherwise. When Steven began to wonder if he would stay there indefinitely, Grant paid him another visit.
His door was thrown open quite unceremoniously and Steven stood back dumbly. Grant briskly entered and watched him with a steady gaze.
"It appears you've been given a second chance. You've been reassigned to be a part of a new team with a simple assignment. You will be responsible for keeping surveillance on a man named Garrett Wiggins."
Steven looked at him quizzically, not sure what he was supposed to do.
"This man is to have twenty-four hour surveillance and you will follow him wherever he goes. The details are in this file. You can read them on your way. You will be leaving immediately."
He thrust a packet toward Steven and left the room, leaving the door wide open. Steven gave a deep sigh, turning around to gather his belongings and begin his new assignment.
He was glad they were giving him another chance, but he felt strangely apprehensive. Something about the way Grant looked at him made him think this was not the redemption he was looking for.
Steven shook off the memories. It seemed like ages since all of that happened. Now, he was seated in the cramped and uncomfortable surveillance van outside of Garrett's house. In reality, it had only been a few days.
The file that Grant had given him hardly provided any useful information. It only specified that the subject needed surveillance for the foreseeable future, and any deviations from normal activity were to be reported immediately. The subject was aware of the surveillance, but he did not know how extensive it was.
It seemed that this man was given the same kind of "freedom" that Steven now had. Whatever Garrett had done, he was now on the bad side of the wrong people.
At least my privacy is still intact. I can't say the same for this man… But my sympathy stops there. I have a job to do, and I'm not going to give EngineerCorp any further cause to be angry with me.
As far as the surveillance went, there was only one camera in the house, and it was in the office. There were cameras surrounding the perimeter of the house and a wiretap on his phone. They were also monitoring all network activity and financial information for any suspicious activity. If Garrett left the house, they followed him.
Their main concern, as outlined in the file, was to make sure that he made no attempt to violate his agreement with EngineerCorp. The moment he did that, he would be seized, and EngineerCorp would take over from there.
Whatever happens, it will not be favorable for him.
At his work, they monitored the basic activities. Phone, internet, and outgoing correspondence. They weren't required to use surveillance inside the building, although they did have a remote listening device pointed at his office. They could essentially hear everything he said or did there.
It was not a hardcore stakeout, but they had to be logical. If this was going to be a lifelong surveillance, as he had every reason to believe, then he knew that to keep track of every detail for that length of time would be impractical. So, they settled for a middle-of-the-road approach. They kept track of his movements and any contact he had with the outside world. That, by itself, seemed to be enough of a challenge.
For one, Garrett was fully aware that he was being watched. He took every opportunity to walk around his home in the nude, pausing in front of the front windows where the van was in full view. It was his small, twisted revenge on the otherwise uncontrollable situation. Steven understood his motivation, but it didn't make it any easier to watch.
Aside from that, he was just plain boring. If he was not walking naked around his house, he was usually watching television. From the office camera, they could see into the living room where Garrett would turn on the TV and spend his evenings lying on the sofa. They couldn't technically see his body since the back of the sofa faced the camera, but they were able to see him get up hours later. The rest of his time he was either sleeping, or at work.
I can't, for the life of me, see why this man is so threatening that he requires this level of surveillance. He probably isn't a danger at all. Just a punishment for me. "Watch some random guy for the rest of your life."
Better yet, maybe he had an affair with some board member's wife.
In any case, it seemed that Eric viewed Garrett as only a mild threat. Dangerous, but lacking ambition.
Steven knew he would never again have the kind of job he wanted so he was just glad to be on the outside. Swallowing his annoyance and resentment, he stared ahead at the figure of the nude man standing in front of the window.
He sadly shook his head.
It's going to take a long time to get used to that.
***
Garrett sat in front of a computer in his hidden lab, clothed in a bathrobe. He spent most of the evening trying to find all the information he could on the mysterious man. It seemed that everywhere he looked, it was a dead end. He even tried looking up the tax records on the house, but found that the owner was unlisted. It was clear that he would not get much further on his own.
He picked up a pencil lying on the desk and twirled it through his fingers, thinking of what to do next. One of his past clients had been a detective with a private investigation firm. He didn't like to call in favors, but he had done enough business with the man to feel comfortable asking him for help. Garrett gazed at his watch.
Great. Still early enough to call.
He pulled out his prepaid cell and called up the detective.
A short while later he hung up, satisfied with what was accomplished. His detective acquaintance, Nick, was only too happy to help. Garrett hadn't been completely honest with him about why he needed this mysterious man followed, but instead told Nick that he suspected the man of corrupt business dealings and wanted to get more information. He was just as much protecting Nick as he was himself. The fewer people that were involved, the better.
He stood and stretched, removing his bathrobe to snea
k back into the living room.
Garrett knew it was irrational, but he reveled in the small bit of pleasure it gave him to torment his watchers. He also knew that if he acted in such a manner, it would prevent them from watching him too closely, because they would be wary of what they would see next.
You do what you have to do.
Garrett also knew that the only camera in his house was in his office. He found that the first night during his analysis of the house. Making sure to turn off all the lights that evening before going to bed, he waited until the middle of the night and snuck out with a frequency scanner.
I never knew this thing would come in handy.
It was not a sophisticated piece of equipment, but it would certainly let him know if there was anything sending out a signal nearby.
Garrett plugged in a set of headphones and crept around his darkened house. On the off chance he was spotted, it would only appear that he was taking a midnight stroll around his house with a radio.
Strange…but I've done stranger things in front of them.
He hoped they weren't using any kind of thermal imaging, or he would be seen despite the darkness in his house.
He found signals transmitting near his phone lines, internet lines, and near a vent in the office. Garrett knew his phone and internet were tapped already, but the third signal he was unsure of. After searching the rest of his house, he was unable to find anything else.
He took his transmitter back to his office and analyzed the signal. It was only a matter of minutes before he successfully hacked into the video feed.
They make it too easy. I guess they think I don't really have the means to hack into anything anymore, or they'd be taking better precautions.
It wasn't until the next day when it was light again that he was able to see well enough what the camera was viewing. It was placed in such a way that the entire office could be seen, as well as the doorway into the living area. He could see the back of the couch, the television and other chairs. Beyond that, nothing else.
So, when I need to work, I can just go "watch television," but really slip off the couch and go to my lab. They'll never even know I left the room.
Garrett deftly slipped into his new routine. When he finished working for the night, he quietly crept back onto living room sofa. After a few moments, he made a big show of yawning and stretching, before standing up to go to bed.
Nothing else to do tonight, not until I get more information.
***
Alice woke up groggy with a pounding headache.
What is it with these people and their tranquilizers? I get it already.
She was vaguely aware of her ankle feeling strangely light.
They took off the bracelet?
Her elation was short-lived as she realized it had merely been switched to her other foot.
I guess they switched it when they refilled the tranquilizers.
Sweet of them…
She scratched the itchy spot on her now bare ankle with much relief.
Alice sat up slowly, swinging her feet around. She'd really messed things up now. If Eric had begun to trust her, all of that had probably been undone when she hit him, regardless of motive. She hoped he was not so angry that he stopped letting her work in the lab.
Her bleary eyes made out red letters of the clock next to her.
4:30am? Wow. Apparently, being tranquilized repeatedly makes one keep strange hours.
Alice laid awake, thinking. The scanner had been a success and all that remained was to make the transmitter… And remove her ankle bracelet, disable the hidden signal in her glasses, escape the facility, and somehow reveal the treachery of a global organization to the rest of the population, all without being caught.
No pressure.
She gave a small laugh.
Anything's possible, and it doesn't hurt to be optimistic… That's really all I can do right now.
By the time she showered and dressed, it was a little after 6:00am.
Still too early to expect visitors.
Alice paced around the small area that was now her home. With nothing better to do, she decided to inspect the keypad to see if she could have any sort of breakthrough. It wouldn't do her any good to find a way to dispose of the ankle bracelet, only to be unable to open the cell door.
The keypad was the same as before. It still required a palm scan, combined with the correct entry of a keycode for the door to open. Looking at the small keypad, she knew she could only enter three wrong combinations before it would set off an alarm. She also knew that any attempt to open the door would most likely be logged, but she didn't care. Alice placed her palm on the scanner anyway, just to see what would happen.
A small beam of greenish light scrolled up and down the pad as it scanned her palm. A few seconds later, the small display flashed "Access Denied," before going dark again. She half expected it to say, "Nice try, Alice," but there was no such message.
As she lifted her hand off the scanner, she experienced a strange sensation. There was a strong buzzing in her head, and she could almost feel the air around her hand vibrate. She quickly pulled her hand back and it abruptly stopped.
That's strange…
She tentatively lowered her hand to the scanner again, this time moving much slower. Once she was a few inches away, the strange buzzing began again, but not as intense. She experimentally moved it around the area where the terminal was, and found that it increased when it was near the scanner and the terminal.
Alice knew from the blueprints of the building where the data lines were positioned inside the walls, and ran her hand along the wall, tracing the wires. The strange buzzing sensation increased each time her hand hovered over them, and subsided whenever she moved her hand away.
She pulled her hand away again, stepping back. Alice stared at the wall as if the answers would simply spell themselves out in front of her.
What does this mean? Is this yet another new "feature" I have to get used to? It's almost like I can sense data transmissions, but that's impossible.
Even if it wasn't impossible, what would I do with such an ability?
Looking down, she noticed she was exclusively using her right hand, the hand that had been burned. She stepped forward again and tried moving her left hand along the wires. She waited as long as she could manage, but nothing happened.
Okay… It's probably just my body's strange way of protecting itself from being electrocuted again. It's just sensing electrical fields so it can tell me what to avoid... Self defense. Yeah, that's it.
That reason sounded as good as any, and she was not prepared to accept any of the more unbelievable explanations.
As she was standing there next to the door, she made out the faint noises of someone passing by in the hall. She jumped back fast when the door in front of her opened.
It was the entourage of guards that brought her breakfast. The man in front seemed as shocked as Alice was to see her standing there so closely. He gathered his composure and cleared his throat.
"Please stand back, ma'am."
She obediently went to the other side of the room and the man brought in her food. He gave her a curt nod before departing.
She ate her breakfast in silence, pondering her new skill. Alice wondered if she would ever truly know herself again. She was aware that certain changes had occurred, but it seemed that she was constantly being reminded that she was not the same person she once was.
Three hundred and twenty-nine seconds after she finished her breakfast, the door to her room opened again. It was the normal set of guards, ready to bring her to the lab for the day.
I guess Eric is in a forgiving mood...
She was sure that he didn't trust her, but apparently he valued her work more than he desired to punish her.
Everything was getting so complicated. She was consumed by worries and was running out of time. Either her secret would be discovered, or she would soon lose her perspective. Alice had to break free before
she did something she would regret, like start to believe that Eric wasn't really a monster after all.
***
Once Alice entered her lab, she redoubled her efforts. She made an acceptable amount of progress on the hovercraft, then poured herself into completing the transmitter. It was becoming a habit now, working on one thing while pretending to work on another; skillfully hiding her progress behind computers and other equipment, out of the watchful eyes of the cameras.
When she had done all she could with the equipment she currently had, she passed her work through the wall and began composing a list of materials she would need to finish the next phase. It took extra time to integrate the items into something that could be justified, but it was no considerable task for Alice.
She finished writing down the last item and set the paper down. She reread the list, idly tapping the pen on the table, when it clumsily flew out of her hand and rolled into the dark recesses under the desk.
You have to be kidding!
Alice sighed, pushed her chair back, and crawled under the desk to retrieve the lost pen. She finally spotted it in a cluster of wires near the back wall. She thrust her hand forward into the wires without thinking, and her brain was suddenly jarred with an intense buzzing that permeated her skull. She reflexively jerked back, catching her forehead on some sharp area beneath the desk in the process.
She backed gingerly out from under the desk and sat on the floor rubbing her head. When she pulled her hand back, she saw blood.
This day just keeps getting better.
Alice was deeply disturbed by this new development in her abilities. Was she going to react like that every time she came into contact with data streams? That was going to make her job a lot more difficult. She did her best to staunch the flow of blood from the cut on her head while she sat there, imagining her possible future.
Alice didn't get very far when the main door flew open, and several guards entered.
Mind Trace Page 23
