One by one, the other members of Jared’s team trickled in. There were ten of them all together, including himself. He’d chosen Cecilia, Lucas, and another two-man team of E-2 operatives to take on the bulk of the mission. They all sat together at the front of the room, talking and joking amongst themselves with a sense of camaraderie the other members of the task force didn’t seem to share. Two unit A researchers sat in a corner near the back, stealing glances at the group of black armbands with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. In front of them, a pair of E-1s whispered to each other.
Revolver came in last and took an open seat in the back next to the girl from unit A. She moved her chair a few inches away. Revolver glanced at her for an instant but didn’t seem bothered by her apparent aversion to sitting near him.
Once they had all arrived, Jared turned to them. He stood tall and stiff with a neutral expression, trying to command authority with his presence the same way Chairman Ryku did. He didn’t know if it was working, but everyone seemed to be paying attention.
“Let’s get right to the point,” he said. “You’re all here today because you’ve been chosen to carry out an important assignment as part of a joint task force.” He raised his arm and connected his CL to the hologram projector beside him. A three-dimensional image of Judah’s face appeared, revolving slowly so they could see him from all angles. Jared had already looked at it several times, but he studied it again anyway. He wanted to be able to recognize Judah instantly if he ever saw him.
Once they’d all had a chance to look at the projection, he continued. “This is Judah. He was recruited by unit A in the Project’s early days for his abilities in computer science and technology. Sixteen years ago, he deserted. Since then, units E-1 and E-2 have been trying to find him and bring him into custody, but he’s managed to evade us so far.”
The woman from unit A, Rochelle, raised her hand. Jared nodded to her. “You said he deserted?” she asked. “He just left?”
“Yes,” Jared said.
“Why?”
“Our best guess is that his ideas and values began to conflict with those of the Project. He may have gotten scared or just decided he didn’t want to be a part of this anymore. Rather than discussing other options with his chairman, he abandoned the Project.” He pulled up another projection listing all of Judah’s known aliases from the past decade. “As you can see, he’s used several different names over the years. Most recently, he was using the identity of a deceased man named Anthony Trippaldi.”
“He doesn’t use the identity anymore,” said a middle-aged man named Ray with a green armband. “We almost caught him because of it, so he scrapped it. Still goes by Tripp, though. Or he did when we were looking for him about five years ago.”
Jared nodded. He’d selected Ray for the team specifically because of his past experience with Judah. He was also one of the few people still stationed in the compound who would have remembered him. “You were part of the investigation that tried to track him down back then.”
Ray crossed his arms and shrugged. “It was a dead end. Multiple dead ends. When he was using heroin, we might have had him. Almost did after he overdosed and wound up in some hospital in Calgary, but we didn’t figure out where he was until he was being discharged. Poor planning, bad luck, and too much red tape—he kept slipping away. He’s been off the grid since then, though. What makes the chairman think we’ll find him this time?”
“We have to find him,” Jared said. “Ryku was very clear about that. And we already have a promising lead.”
He pulled up Trinity’s picture. “Trinity Jones—a former small-time reporter from the Mid Pacific Region. She writes a lot of interesting pieces for a niche audience on the Net—conspiracy theories, aliens, that sort of thing. Six weeks ago, she anonymously published this.”
He brought up the piece Trinity had written that accused Ryku of murdering his fellow chairmen. No one said anything. A few of them shifted uncomfortably in their seats and looked at the floor. Apparently, they didn’t need to look at it because they’d read it already. That in and of itself could have been used as proof of disloyalty under certain circumstances, but Jared didn’t care about any of that. “If you haven’t read it yet, you may want to, just to understand the seriousness of the issue.”
He switched the projection to video footage from Trinity’s street. It was blurry and dark, but they could just make out the vague shapes of three figures getting into a car. “Because of Trinity’s accusations, the chairman issued a warrant for her arrest. Someone else got to her before the local police could carry out those orders. A few shots were fired and police followed the car, but they lost them on the highway. Investigators managed to collect some evidence from the house, including a trace amount of DNA belonging to one of Trinity’s accomplices. It was analyzed by unit A and has been matched to Judah.”
He looked around the room as his team pieced together the facts he had presented to them. They were starting to understand why catching Judah was so important. Not only had he deserted the Project, he’d helped a criminal escape. The story Trinity had published undermined Ryku’s authority and accused him of seizing power that was not his to take. To be fair to Trinity, that was exactly what had happened, but true or not, the Project couldn’t risk the destabilizing impact such a story would have if enough people started to believe it. Judah wasn’t just a traitor. He was a threat to everything they all worked so hard to create and protect.
“I chose you all because you’re some of the best this Project has to offer,” said Jared. “It’s going to take a lot of work to get this done. I know it’s unusual for different units to work together on something like this, but we need that kind of teamwork in order to catch Judah. I don’t want to see any stupid rivalries between units in here. Until this mission is over, we are all in the same unit, and I will be acting as your chairman. You will share any information or ideas you have with me. You will run everything past me before you act. I’m happy to listen to your suggestions, but when I tell you to do something, I expect you to listen. Understood?”
They all nodded or voiced their assent. “Good,” said Jared. “Then let’s get to work.”
By the time the sun went down that evening, they’d transformed the neglected room into a sophisticated hub of operations. The two members of unit A, Rochelle and Devin, had done most of the technical setup. Every member of the team had their own workstation with computers and hologram displays. From his sleek metallic desk at the back of the room, Jared could easily observe what everyone else was working on.
As soon as they had a functioning workplace, Jared sent each person a digital copy of all the files Ryku had given him about Judah. “Let’s get to work. Review those files and follow whatever leads seem promising. If you find something useful, no matter how silly or useless it seems, I want it forwarded to my station immediately. We need to know as much as we can about Judah and what he’s been doing since he left the Project.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Revolver walked out of the unit A research facility and looked up to find storm clouds hanging low in the sky. He zipped up his jacket and began walking towards the apartments on the other side of the compound. The task force Jared had assembled to find and capture Judah had been working together for almost two weeks now, but so far, they didn’t have much to show for their efforts. The man was more elusive than a ghost.
Over the past decade and a half, Judah had appeared in one place just to vanish in another. Previous investigators had tried to trace him through his heroin dealers, which might have worked now if he was still using. As far as they could tell, though, he wasn’t. One of the first things Jared had had them do was contact every dealer they had on record for ever selling to him. Two were dead. The ones who weren’t deceased had been reluctant to talk at first, even though many of them were already doing time in prisons or labor camps. They reconsidered when threatened with criminal charges or bribed with shortened sentences, but none of the inform
ation they’d provided had panned out. The only shred of up-to-date intel the team had on Judah was the incident with Trinity, and so far that had been a dead end, too. They had the DNA evidence and some surveillance footage from street cameras, but once the car the trio had been driving made it out of the city, there was no way of knowing where they had gone.
Revolver helped with the investigation however he could. He read faster and made certain connections easier than the others, but even he couldn’t see anything that was likely to lead them to Judah. If they knew a little more about the third, unidentified individual who had worked with him and Trinity, they might have had another lead to follow. All the police had reported was that this person was small, probably female, and the only one of the three who’d fired a weapon. The bullets and casings they’d recovered from the scene hadn’t told them anything useful, and if they didn’t find a new lead soon, Revolver calculated their odds of ever finding Judah to be very low.
He was passing by the unit A resource management center when he spotted Aubreigh talking to another girl with a red armband. She met Revolver’s gaze, said goodbye to her colleague, and walked quickly towards him. Her smile was as big and bright as ever, and her long hair streamed out behind her shoulders in the breeze. He waited for her to catch up. “Where are you headed?” she asked.
“I was going to my apartment.”
“Me too. Mind if I walk with you?” He shook his head and they set off together. “It’s really good to see you,” she said. “You haven’t been around much lately. I haven’t even seen you with the chairman. Aren’t you supposed to be his bodyguard?”
“He has other bodyguards.”
“Not the same ones he had a couple weeks ago. You, Jared, Cecilia—none of you are ever with him anymore.”
“We’re working on another assignment.”
“All together? That’s not typical, is it?”
“No, not that I’m aware of.”
“What is it?”
Revolver didn’t see the harm in telling her, but he opted for a safe response, just in case. “I don’t think the chairman would want me to talk about it.”
“Oh, right. Of course. Sorry.” She inhaled deeply and changed the subject. “It’s beautiful today. I love the smell of rain.”
Revolver sniffed the air. Chilly and wet. He couldn’t understand why Aubreigh thought either of those things made the day particularly nice, but he nodded anyway.
They passed a trio of unit C recruits. One of them whispered to his companions, nodding in Revolver’s direction. “Look—here comes the freak.” The others snickered. Revolver paid them no mind, but Aubreigh shot them a withering glare as they crossed paths. Their laughter stopped immediately.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked.
“What?”
“The way people talk about you. The way they always stare and try to avoid you, like you’re….” She stopped and looked at her feet.
“Like I’m not human.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Revolver shook his head. After all the time they’d spent together, she still didn’t seem to fully understand. “Those kinds of feelings mean nothing to me. I’m never bothered or frustrated or annoyed by anything.”
She would drop the subject now, or start talking about something else, maybe a story from her childhood or some joke she’d heard the day before. She always did that when the conversation got too serious. But not today. Today, she took his hand and stopped walking, then turned to face him. “You keep saying that,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s true. Deep down I think you do feel something. It’s human nature, and you are human, no matter what anyone else thinks.”
Revolver stared at her. The expression she now wore wasn’t her usual one. It was less vibrant, less happy. Serious, but beyond that, he couldn’t read her. “Why do you think that I’m human?” he asked.
“You just are. I’ve seen it. And you’ve got hands and a brain and a heart just like anyone else.”
“I’m not just like anyone else, though. I’m genetically modified. I’m—” He tried to find the right word, something that would make her understand how alien he was from her and the rest of them. “I am nothing. On the outside I might look like the rest of you, talk like the rest of you, and try to act like the rest of you. But inside—whatever it is that makes you feel anything—I don’t have it. I am an empty shell. The others are correct in referring to me as a monster.”
She frowned and squeezed his hand a little tighter. “That’s not true. Just because you didn’t come into this world like everyone else doesn’t mean you’re a monster, and don’t you dare believe it for one second. You might be different in a lot of ways, but everyone is different from everybody else. That’s part of being human.”
She’d said something similar before. For some reason, she saw a normal young man where everyone else saw, as those recruits had put it, a freak. He hadn’t believed her the first time she said he was human, and he wasn’t sure he believed it now, but for some reason, she did. Perhaps she was right on some level. Maybe he wasn’t as different as everyone seemed to think he was, as he had always been led to believe.
Small drops of rain began to fall from the sky. One landed on Aubreigh’s hand, still wrapped around his. It sunk between the space where their palms met. “It’s raining,” she said.
“Yes. We should probably go inside.”
“Go in?” she said. “No! Haven’t you ever wanted to just stand outside and play in the rain?”
“We’ll get wet.”
Aubreigh laughed. “That’s kind of the point. Come on.” She tugged on his hand and Revolver followed her out into a more open area away from any buildings. Almost everyone else was headed indoors, but Aubreigh didn’t seem to care.
The rain picked up until it was a steady drizzle, then huge, pounding drops that drowned out the sound of everything else. Aubreigh tipped her head back and looked up at the sky, grinning as the water slid down her cheeks. She let go of Revolver’s hand and held her arms open wide, spinning around in a slow circle, then slipped off her shoes and kicked up a small puddle.
Revolver tried to imagine what she was feeling, tried to understand the inexplicable joy she seemed to find in the falling drops of water. For the briefest moment, there was a burst of warmth somewhere deep inside of him despite the cold. It spread through his entire being like tendrils of lightning flashing across the sky and was gone just as quickly, leaving him to wonder if he’d really felt anything at all.
They stood in the rain for a full ten minutes before Aubreigh started to shiver. Revolver was becoming uncomfortably chilly himself. “I think I’m ready to go inside now,” she said. He took off his coat and put it over her shoulders, a gesture he’d seen someone do in an old video once. Aubreigh laughed as she wrapped it around herself. “It’s soaked,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
He walked with her to her apartment as she rambled on about the rain and how refreshing it was. Her teeth were chattering by the time they got to her door. She shrugged off his jacket and handed it back to him. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry you got all wet, too.”
“I’ll be dry soon enough.”
“See you at dinner tomorrow?”
Revolver nodded. “Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye,” she said, then stepped into her apartment and closed the door.
Revolver started heading to his own apartment to change into some dry clothes. He sensed Jared following him almost immediately, but how long he’d been there, Revolver couldn’t say for sure. It could have been as long as fifteen minutes; Revolver hadn’t been paying attention to anything besides Aubreigh.
Jared caught up to him and took a quick step forward to cut him off. He wore the hood of his jacket pulled down low over his eyes. “Be careful with her,” he said.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” R
evolver replied. “And why are you suddenly interested in what I do and who I spend my time with?”
Jared ignored the question. “If you care about her at all—”
“I don’t care about her.”
“Then why spend so much time with her?”
Revolver had asked himself the same thing a hundred times before. He still didn’t have a real answer. “Why not?” he said.
Jared shook his head. “Fine. I understand if you don’t trust me, so maybe you just don’t want to talk about it, but I don’t trust you, either. Hell, I don’t even like you.”
“So why are you telling me any of this?”
“For her sake. Just look out for her, okay? Make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble. If something happens, my conscience is clear. I warned you.”
Jared broke into a jog and headed up the stairs of a nearby apartment building. Revolver called after him, “Warned me about what, exactly?” But if Jared heard him, he didn’t stop to answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY
People continued to disappear from the neighborhood in Austin where Tripp and Zira were staying. At first, there were only whispers. Zira caught snatches of secret conversations sometimes when she walked through the building.
“Did you hear about Mark from number twenty-three?”
“No. What happened?”
“Some E-1s hauled him off last night. Claimed he was spreading ‘anti-Project ideology’ in some of his CL messages to his sister.”
“Seriously? Just for that? I knew they could monitor all of our messages, but I didn’t think anyone actually bothered.”
“Apparently they do now. Gotta watch what you’re saying and who you’re saying it to.”
Renegades of PEACE (Secrets of PEACE Book 2) Page 14
