Eleven Graves

by Aman Gupta

  “Doesn’t really say much about them, does it? Even less about you,” smiled Vik.

  “Hot and funny. Maybe I’ll take you out to dinner tonight and show you much more,” said the woman.

  Jim came out of the bathroom, and saw Vanessa standing a breath away from Vik’s face.

  “Not him too, Vanessa,” said Jim.

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s just jealous,” said Vanessa, feeling up Vik’s arms.

  Jim opened the door to go inside. Vanessa was standing between Vik and the door. Before he could dodge her, the door closed.

  “Turn around,” Vik whispered in her ears.

  “Ooh,” said Vanessa as she slowly turned around.

  “Give me your hands,” whispered Vik as he put out his hands in front of her. He breathed slowly at the back of Vanessa’s neck. Luckily for Vik, she couldn’t see his face while he was looking around to plan his next action.

  Vanessa grabbed his hands. Vik pushed her forward, placing her hand on the scanner. The door opened and both of them went in the room together.

  He let go of her hands. The surveillance room looked like an Amphitheatre, with them standing in the top balcony. It went down 5 rows. The rows were deep and seats were random, preventing anyone from the row below or above to see the other. In the middle was a giant screen showing hundreds of camera angles, changing every minute. The room could seat around 100 people.

  “I wish there was some place private we could go here,” said Vik.

  “We could go to my seat. No one’s there,” said Vanessa.

  “Perfect,” said Vik.

  She clutched his right hand, and took him to her seat, in the row below.

  The row was completely empty. She asked Vik to sit on her seat and began kissing him on his neck from behind. Her system was already logged in to the server. Not knowing how to get rid of her, he claimed that he would rather wait for tonight.

  “Why wait? Let’s go crazy now,” said Vanessa.

  “Why few minutes now when we have all night?” said Vik.

  “Okay. I think that’s better. I don’t want anyone to report me. Again,” said Vanessa.

  “Yeah,” said Vik.

  “My shift’s over too. Let me log out and get out of here,” said Vanessa.

  Vik grabbed her hand when she went for the keyboard.

  “I’ll do it,” said Vik, feeling up her hands.

  “Yeah? I’ll do stuff for you tonight,” said Vanessa. “Leave after a few minutes. Don’t want others to get the wrong impression about their supervisor, right?”

  “Absolutely, see you at that restaurant across the street tonight,” said Vik.

  She walked backwards, blew a kiss and left.

  “Blondes before, redheads yesterday, now brunettes. Either everyone is blind or horny or both, or I’m awesome. Thought she’d never leave,” uttered Vik. “Hello Atlantis. Let’s see what you are up to.”

  He looked for Joey near the research facilities. Joey had went towards the North side. There were around 100 camera angles near each of the facility. Cameras inside the buildings and access to old footages required S3 clearance, but Vanessa’s was S2. He tried upgrading S1 to S2 of everyone he could find on the server, to distribute his access to the network but was informed by the system that only S3 could do it. It took Vik more than twenty minutes to familiarize himself with the complex system and its commands, some of which were marked on the keyboard.

  After searching for ten minutes looking at all the live camera angles starting from the farthest buildings, he found Joey sitting inside a park near one of the facilities. Unsure about his unwillingness to enter the building, he started searching for Kate, Emma and Eric. The software was quite comprehensive and allowed targeted searches based on iris, gender, skin, and hair color as well as a dedicated image search. He started searching for red haired women. The console showed 650 potential results, which he was able to narrow down to 57 based on their vicinity to research facilities. To avoid a red flag in the system, he searched the live footage of those camera locations directly instead of opening the image results of those 57 women.

  “That can’t be,” said Vik, as he saw a familiar face talking on a phone in the background, while viewing those 57 camera angles. They were standing with an enemy from the past Vik knew all too well.

  Few searches later, he found Emma, standing near the building. He figured the security arrangements at the research facilities were stronger than they believed, as she looked restless. He tried hacking into the server to obtain S3 clearance, but wasn’t successful. Vanessa’s S2 clearance came with L1 clearance of the central server, which was useless for his needs. He was able to access personnel files of every person working in Atlantis in some capacity, which was pretty much everyone in the town. Only 4 people had S3 clearance in surveillance, whose files could be opened by someone with L2 clearance or higher. He went through the files of everyone who had higher clearance than L1. He tried to brute force their login credentials with commonly used passwords as well as their family member name combinations, but wasn’t successful. There was nothing much he could do, being in the first level of security.

  While browsing the central server, he saw an incoming notification. Vanessa’s name had been flagged for unusually large traffic, by the monitoring system. Fearing he might be locked down of the system soon, he accessed his own private server and downloaded three Security & Access programs he had uploaded days before. After splitting them into multiple files to avoid detection by standard Trojan scanners and modifying few lines of code, he spoofed his details as Olivia’s and sent the files to all L2 executives over the private network, telling them to ‘run the patch immediately to secure the server’. While the message was being sent, he wrote a program preventing the surveillance server to do an image search on Vanessa. The program made sure that whenever any form of search was done on Vanessa based on her personnel file, it wouldn’t show any results.

  Shortly after, his access was revoked, just as his message was sent. Unaware if the plan would work, he got out of there before being caught. He grabbed a laptop on his way out. Fortunately for him, exiting the room and accessing the elevators didn’t require one’s biometrics. Just as the elevator reached the ground floor, an alarm went off. All the employees stood against the walls, allowing the guards to overrun the building. They started looking at all female employees, while the male ones were being asked to evacuate the building. Vik made it out safely in the queue.

  All female employees were detained and taken to the ‘disciplinary room’ or so said the voice in the room. The alarm stopped in a few minutes. Vik was visibly upset for not being able to make the most of the opportunity. His only hope was a careless L2 employee. Noticing a perimeter being formed outside the building, he rushed to the exit and managed to escape the perimeter in the nick of time.

  He found a car whose door was open while the owner was taking out boxes of stuff. He stole the car just as the owner went inside his shop.

  Vik drove to Joey’s last location, hoping to find him in the park. The roads were closed for the parade that started from the North to the South. He circled back towards the West Side for an alternate route but all the roads towards the North were temporarily closed. As he travelled down towards the south, he saw Emma walking down the street, and pulled the car next to her.

  “Get in,” said Vik.

  She quickly got in and Vik raced away.

  “Where’s Kate and Eric?” asked Vik.

  “We split up just like we agreed. Where’s Joey?” asked Emma.

  “Went towards the North. All roads are closed for the parade that’s heading here soon. We need to get to Eric and Kate,” said Vik.

  “Why? Anything wrong?” asked Emma.

  “I couldn’t get in the server. My face is probably on a dozen cameras. If Olivia picks it up, it won’t take her long to figure about everyone else,” said Vik.

  Vik navigated to all the research facilities while Emma looked aro
und to spot Kate and Eric. They found Eric and Kate shortly after making their way through the drunk mob.

  He drove on the east road towards the exit.

  “I’m not leaving till we get Joey,” said Emma.

  “Neither am I,” said Kate.

  “We are going that way,” said Vik.

  He drove to the roundabout at the end of the east road, R3. Left would’ve taken them towards Locus. Going straight would have taken them on R1 which connected north to the exit on the east. He saw the vehicles, exiting from the right, were being given a free pass.

  “Keep left. Or you’ll miss the turn towards R1,” said Eric.

  Vik pretended to miss it.

  “Sorry,” he said, before taking the turn towards the exit.

  “What are you doing?” said Emma.

  Automated Red lights started flashing at the exit gate. Vik accelerated through the empty road and drove out of Atlantis. He looked in the rear view mirror. A barricade had come up and the gate had been closed.

  Emma, Kate and Eric shouted and cursed together at Vik. He told them to shut up and kept driving. He stopped the car on the first shoulder he saw and told them to get out.

  They all got out of the car but he didn’t. He drove the car for another five miles, before dumping it in the forest. He grabbed the laptop he had hidden under his seat and went back eight miles to their camp, deep into the forest.

  He couldn’t find anyone there. He looked inside the tent, but all the stuff was missing. He went looking for his car and Eric’s, but both were gone. So were the phones buried in the ground. He had buried his at a secret spot, so he found his device. He ran to the plateau looking for his bag. They had found his decoy bag but not the real one. He put the laptop in his bag and took out his binoculars. He feared they had gone back to Atlantis. He looked at Atlantis through his binoculars for any signs of restricted movements. It looked calm inside.

  As he turned around, Emma hit him with a rod, across the face, knocking him unconscious.

  It was 8 PM. The full moon was lighting up the place better than a sun ever could. Vik woke up writhing in pain, sitting against a tree on the plateau. He saw Eric, Kate and Emma standing in front of him.

  “Where the hell have you been?” rumbled Vik, hoping to assimilate the pain of the impending acrimonious exchange.

  Emma picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it at Vik. He didn’t have any strength to move, it hit him on his forehead. He went down in pain, bleeding, but didn’t utter a syllable. Emma came charging at him but Eric grabbed her from behind and took her away.

  He calmed her down, while Kate went through Vik’s phone.

  Vik started laughing hysterically which confused Eric and Kate. Emma fumed.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Kate.

  “You three,” said Vik. “I miss working with smart people.”

  “Yeah? We miss working with people with a conscience,” said Kate.

  Vik looked at Kate and laughed again. Kate got furious this time.

  Eric came over and asked, “What’s the plan, buddy? Talk to me.”

  “What is this, good cop, bad cop?” said Vik, still lying on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him.

  “Give me a reason why we shouldn’t leave you for dead?” said Eric.

  “He doesn’t have any,” shouted Emma.

  “Do you trust me, Eric?” asked Vik.

  “At this moment, no,” said Eric.

  “There’s nothing else to say,” said Vik, as he turned his face looking away from them.

  “Good bye, Jay,” said Eric.

  He got up and asked Emma and Kate to come with him.

  Kate asked, “Answer me this, though. Did you leave him because you had no choice or did you intend to?”

  “Both,” said Vik. “He wasn’t helping anyone here, anyway.”

  Kate kicked him on the back of his head. They tied him to the tree, while he sat there looking at the moon on top of Atlantis.

  “The moon looks wildly unrealistic, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah, keep looking at it, while you die,” said Kate.

  “Leave the phone,” he said to Kate.

  “Why?” asked Kate.

  “It has pictures of Sarah and Katie. The least you could do, Jenna, is leave me with their memories,” said Vik.

  Kate put the phone near him, yet far away that his legs wouldn’t be able to reach it.

  “She would’ve died seeing the person you’ve become,” said Kate.

  “Thanks to you and your overlords, we would never know,” said Vik, staring at the moon.

  He saw Emma in tears, furious and puzzled. She was reticent about the whole thing, before leaving.

  The next day, they again hijacked a truck and went towards Atlantis. They saw, through the air holes on the side of the truck, that the exits were now operated by security forces and some vehicles were being checked by rerouting them to go through a closed loop drive-through tunnel.

  The queue to the entry was long. There were another 5 trucks and 3 cars ahead of theirs. Kate heard the driver talking to his partner. She pointed to Emma and Eric to eavesdrop.

  “Ever since that guy got caught yesterday trying to break in, the security in this place is nuts,” said the guy.

  “How did they find him anyway?” asked the other guy.

  “I got a friend who knows a guy who works in security. They say his photo popped up on their screens automatically,” said the first guy. “They caught him, yet it’s crazy here.”

  “Yeah, they are checking each vehicle like its carrying bombs,” said the other guy.

  “I don’t want any trouble. Check in the back, would you? Get ready of anything that could land us in a mess,” said the first guy.

  Eric looked at Emma and Kate. They decided to make a run for it, and immediately evacuated the cargo area. They had a hard time opening the door, which made the situation a bit edgier that either of them would have liked. There was only one car behind their truck, but the guy wasn’t looking. They took advantage of the road bend to escape into the forest, hidden from the view of the security guards on top of the east entrance gate.

  After running for almost a mile, they slowed down for a breather.

  “They were talking about Joey, weren’t they?” said Kate.

  “Yeah. But how did they know about him?” asked Emma.

  “I think we all know the answer to that,” said Eric.

  “I’ll kill him,” said Kate.

  “Easy, Kate. You don’t want to be responsible for that,” said Eric.

  “Responsible for what?”

  “Killing an entire family,” said Eric.

  “I can’t believe you’re still defending him,” said Emma.

  “I’m not. But I know the guy. Bad cop doesn’t work on him,” said Eric.

  “I’ll show him the real bad cop,” said Emma.

  They went to the plateau, stopping at the camp first to get their guns that they had hidden. When they reached, they saw Vik wasn’t around. The ropes were undone.

  “Damn it!” exclaimed Emma. “What now?”

  A minute later, Vik came from behind the bushes.

  “Where were you?” asked Eric.

  “Sorry, I don’t piss where I sleep,” said Vik.

  “They got Joey. Did you have anything to do with it?” asked Kate.

  “Yes,” said Vik.

  Kate pointed a gun at him. Eric tried to diffuse the situation.

  Emma pointed hers at Vik too.

  “Damn, this proves it. I’m not awesome,” murmured Vik.

  “What’s that?” asked Eric.

  “Nothing. Ladies, put down your guns and maybe you’ll get your Joey while he’s still alive,” said Vik.

  “We will. But we don’t need you,” said Emma.

  “Fine, then shoot me. Good luck getting into Atlantis,” said Vik.

  Kate fired a shot just above Vik’s left shoulder.

  “Great. Now, let’s get to
work,” said Vik.

  He took out a laptop from his back pack. Kate and Emma were compelled to lower their weapons.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Emma.

  “New rules. I tell you what to do, you do it. You don’t get to ask questions about anything I’m doing. If you still choose to, don’t hold your breath waiting for answers,” yelled Vik.

  “Why are you talking this way?” said Emma.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you left. Again. You talk a big game, but have undermined my efforts every time something happened that your stupid mind couldn’t fathom. All of you. I’m not letting any of you put my plan in jeopardy ever again. Just because you couldn’t do anything doesn’t mean everything I do, is immoral and despicable. Grow a brain cell or get out of here,” said Vik, visibly frustrated.

  “We have done plenty to help you in your drama,” said Kate.

  “What drama? You couldn’t even get into the buildings,” said Vik.

  “We tried. They were like a fortress,” said Eric.

  “What did you expect, a freaking garden? I got into Locus, the most imperative building in Atlantis, didn’t I?” said Vik.

  He continued, “You know what? That’s it. I’m not going to carry anyone here, anymore. Return to Morrow. Hopefully, you’ll see Joey in the next few days.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” said Kate.

  “Well, you, sure to hell, aren’t going with me. So good luck out there,” said Vik. “Had you managed to go inside and find Ginny and Sam, our work would have reduced by half.”

  “I saw Sam getting out of a building. Maybe Ginny’s there too,” said Eric.

  “How did she look?” asked Vik. “Sam.”

  “How is that relevant?” asked Emma.

  “She looked fine, like she belonged there,” said Eric.

  “Priority is Ginny and Joey. I don’t give a shit about Sam,” said Emma.

  “I decide what the priority is and what’s not,” said Vik.

  “No,” said Emma. “We do.”

  He grabbed his laptop and his bag, and began to leave. He walked a few paces.

  “Fine,” said Emma. “You make the rules. No more questions.”

  He looked at Eric and Kate. They nodded with displeasure.

  Vik sat down again and opened the laptop.