by A J Jameson
She typed a few commands and then nodded to Axel. “Log-in, bring up the application, and I’ll transfer the files after a sweep for embedded trackers.”
Axel entered his own command into the computer to lay a false cyber trail that touched five separate points across the nation. He finished with a mirror print that would lead back to C3U. After transferring the files, Baseball Cap could potentially run a traceback of his personal database and find Little Eye.
His overseer watched him plant the false locations, their coordinates set to jump every few seconds. She didn’t try to intervene. She watched. She learned, Axel thought, and that warm feeling of generating a (positive) reaction once again burned at Axel’s core.
That day was the most talkative for Baseball Cap. She asked questions of Axel’s process. He gave answers, then listened intensely as she shared her own methods. It lasted until Marek arrived to relieve her for lunch, a plate of food in his hand for Axel. Marek, like Baseball Cap, was curious to hear of Axel’s abilities. His eyes lit up when he heard that Axel had accessed his home files, then dimmed when learning of the false tracers.
“We’ll find your accomplices,” he said, and no further words were exchanged for the remainder of the day.
On day three, Axel got the break he’d been waiting for. Something happened in the other room. An emergency, by the sound of the high-pitched, stammering voices interlaced with screams of pain. Someone had been injured, ambushed, Axel heard as the command center’s door swung open, his overseer abandoning her post.
He didn’t waste any time. He accessed his home computer, dropped the link for Little Eye, left the message “Feed for Command Center,” and obliterated the network.
Baseball Cap returned a moment later, flustered and with a new regard toward whom she’d been working with for the past couple of days. It seemed her patience for Axel’s task had run its course. “You can consider the interview over.”
“Wait,” Axel protested. He maximized the window displaying a map of the synagogues. “I’ve narrowed it down to three.” He pointed to the different blips as he explained. “In the mornings, this location holds the highest number. After that, they’re split between these two for the afternoon, and then they branch off further for evening mass, gathering here, here, and here. Finally, after dusk, their numbers converge once again for the morning location. These three…” he highlighted them, his blood pressure rising at Baseball Cap’s lack of enthusiasm. “They’re our best bet.”
“Good job,” she said, but the response was automatic and empty. Something else was on her mind. The emergency.
Axel’s elation deflated and the two waited in silence. A few minutes later the ghost man arrived, but it wasn’t to relieve his colleague.
“How is she?” Baseball Cap asked.
“Not good,” Marek said. His complexion was somehow paler than normal. “There were days I wished worse on her.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Baseball Cap said.
Marek nodded, then met Axel’s eyes for the first time. They were hollow and saw through Axel as if he didn’t exist. “Did you locate your targets?” he asked.
“Yes, I narrowed it down to three,” Axel said, but before he could explain any further Marek cut him off.
“We’ll get the bombs ready,” he said to Baseball Cap, and gestured for her to follow.
“Bombs?” Axel asked.
“For the synagogues,” he said. “We’re blowing them up.”
“I thought we were installing surveillance.”
“You thought wrong.” He smirked at Axel, his hazel eyes bathed in destruction.
Without thinking, Axel began typing. He thought he was reaching out to Little Eye, but instead he found himself populating the various boxes of a federal website for reporting illegal activities.
Cold metal filled Axel’s ear.
“Straight to the authorities,” Marek said. He thumbed the hammer of his weapon. “I thought you would’ve reached out to your friend. MI, or Little Eye?”
“My mood interpreter is a device I designed to help me understand the intentions of people I interact with, and Little Eye…I uh, don’t know any Little Eye.”
“The blue tooth thing we confiscated from you, that’s your MI?”
Axel nodded.
“And Little Eye…I’ve heard you mention them before, and I can tell you’re lying now.” The tip of the barrel rotated, its iron sight scraping cartilage. “Tell us where Little Eye is.”
“I can’t,” Axel blurted. “I don’t know her location, and never have. She wouldn’t let me. She’d threaten to turn me in for stealing government property.”
“What are you talking about?” The barrel stopped rotating back and forth.
“I steal federal funding. Small amounts, a few dollars, but from several thousand different sources so no red flags go up.”
Marek snorted. “I don’t give a rats ass about you stealing from the government. I have three wounded operatives, two in critical condition, and I need to know where the fuck your friend is right now.”
“Let me confirm that no children are involved,” Axel said.
“What?” Marek said.
Baseball Cap stood and walked behind Axel, whispering something in Marek’s ear.
“Bombing the synagogues,” Axel prompted. “Let me find the best time to avoid child casualties.”
“Are you fu—” but his colleague intervened, speaking a little louder and using her hands to gently guide Marek to the door. Axel picked up the words mission, law, and covered.
Axel took advantage. He tapped away at the keyboard, his strokes landing wide to spell every other word incorrectly. His pinky went into overdrive poking the backspace key. Within one sixth of a minute he had the latest C3U mission files at the mercy of his fingertips. He accessed the ringworm from his home database and set it free.
“Please don’t shoot me in the head,” were the last words he spoke before petrified nerves prevented him from saying anything further.
Marek stared at him dumbfounded, but Baseball Cap knew exactly what had happened. She rushed over to Axel’s computer, red warning signs informing her of failing files. “What the hell did you do?” She scooted over to her own computer and began typing furiously. Marek had followed her gaze and was grinning like a maniac witnessing the apocalypse.
“You truly are something, Axel. The thorn that just won’t go away.”
“He accessed Dragon’s Throat and planted a virus. It’s corrupting the files,” Baseball Cap said.
“Don’t shoot you, you ask?” Marek lifted his gun and turned Axel’s head, poking his eye with the barrel.
“Fifty-percent of the files are gone, Marek, and I can’t…I can’t stop it.” Baseball Cap craned her neck to look at the ghost man, her distinctive features wrought with panic. “Those files are in conduit with our main database.”
Reality came crashing down on the ghost man, his maniacal grin and soulless eyes morphing into the concentrated focus of a scientist manipulating a delicate atom. He took the seat next to his colleague. “Has it jumped to the cloud yet?” he asked.
“No, will it?” She looked at Axel when saying this, as if expecting him to know any better.
“If it infects the main hard drives then automatic backups will lift it.” Marek lashed at his keys like Beethoven performing a symphony. “We might as well pack our bags if that happens.”
Baseball Cap regarded Axe with a mixture of expressions. Axel thought he recognized fear, awe, respect, and hatred.
“It’s in Laced Rain,” Marek said. Then his manic typing gave way to a small hiatus. “Screw it.” He typed one last command before leaning back in his chair, stunned.
“What’d you do?”
“I dumped them,” he said. “All of Laced Rain. The cloud, too, including backups of Dragon’s Throat.”
Baseball Cap sighed. Axel recoiled in his chair when Marek stood up and approached him.
“Should’ve give
n him the Night Shade,” he said, and then slammed the butt of his pistol across Axel’s temple.
Chapter 15
Zyta felt strange driving the medical van to Umar’s $2,000 loft located in the heart of the city, two blocks away from the hospital in which he worked. Although the van carried the same aesthetic as all the others on the road, it stood a good few feet higher, and Zyta wasn’t sure if it would make the parking garage’s maximum clearance.
But it did, of course. Stop being paranoid. And why wouldn’t it, considering the garage charged a hefty $500 per parking space quarterly? Each time Zyta criticized the price, Umar replied with a smile.
“It saves forty minutes each day looking for a parking spot. If you want, I can buy an additional spot for you. The second is half off.”
“But I would only use it twice a month. Maybe four, if I’m lucky,” Zyta said.
“And I’d pay double for half the time if I had to.”
She pulled into her designated spot. The van was wider than the average. But then again so were the parking spaces. It would fit fine. But it’s so big and noticeable. What if somebody reports the plates? Or someone at C3U activates the tracking chip? She shook the thought away. No thinking about work or C3U, that was the deal she made with herself before leaving. And to be honest, she enjoyed the medical van. It had all the instruments she handled day in and day out. In a way it felt like she was bringing her world closer to Umar’s. And maybe even one day she could tell him…no, don’t even entertain the idea.
She left the driver’s cab and entered the rear operating area. Next to her medical station was a small three-drawer metallic dresser. In the lowest drawer were surgical masks, socks, and below the scrubs, a handful of dresses. Another reason she appreciated the van; she could stow unorthodox items without having to worry about operatives outside of Bravo squad finding them. Not that she’d be in the clear if Bravo did find them, but still…it afforded her a little more freedom.
She switched into a tight-fitting red dress and applied a minimalistic amount of makeup. Next came a pair of double-strapped glittery heels.
A soft breeze tickled the back of her neck as she walked to the garage elevator. The sound of a car door closing echoed from the level above. Outside, a horn yelped from the street below. A person eager to arrive at their own isolated paradise? Zyta wondered.
The elevator smelled of freshly squeezed lemons and Jasmine oils. Shit, I forgot perfume. A prospect of the “real world” Zyta wasn’t sure she could adapt to; their fabricated outward appearances.
No judgements, she thought, and rang his phone. Umar stood in the hallway, his hands behind his back. Heat invaded Zyta’s cheeks as he smiled. A peck on the lips (perhaps her favorite pleasantry), and then he revealed his gift. A bouquet of edible strawberry flowers. She feigned smelling them, then ate the strawberry closest to her lips.
Umar chuckled. “No impulse control.”
“What can I say, you drive me to eat my flowers.”
He chuckled again, and this time it was genuine. “You may be one of the strangest creatures I’ve ever met.”
“You have no idea,” she said, her cheeks reddening. Drive me to eat my flowers…really?
“Please, come in and make yourself at home.”
She did, eating another strawberry and regretting it as the effect didn’t exactly come off as playing it cool. Umar, on the other hand, offered to take her coat and the bouquet (for safe keeping). His movements were stolid yet flexible, like worn leather.
A minute later she found herself in front of a candle-lit dinner on the balcony. The view offered an elevational advantage over most of the buildings surrounding them. Only the skyscrapers of major corporations towered above. Those, plus a nearly ripe moon.
“I got a new telescope,” Umar said, gesturing behind him. “It’s of the reflecting design, the eyepiece located at the end pointing up, so you don’t have to bend over that much. Do you want to…I was going to wait until after dinner, but…” he was already out of his chair, “…there’s something special waiting in the lens.”
As Zyta got up she noticed that something was missing from the balcony. A wicker basket and a bench, she recalled. And when she asked, Umar confirmed. “I put them inside for the night.” Outward appearances, Zyta thought, amused at both of their efforts.
“It’s your constellation,” Umar said as Zyta peered through the telescope. “The Taurus.”
“It’s beautiful,” Zyta said. In the future, if she was ever offered the opportunity to reflect upon this night, she’d be abashed at her child-like smile.
After an extremely condensed tour of the Milky Way’s constellations (they didn’t want the food getting cold), the two shared a baked salmon with a side of asparagus, cauliflower, and roasted carrots. Zyta didn’t blink an eyelash as Umar poured her a glass of champagne. It was all becoming too familiar, her faulty logic. She was already breaking the cardinal rule of no visitations outside of weekend passes, so what did it matter if she took a few sips of liquor?
“Your pinky,” Umar said between chews. “I notice by the way you hold your glass, it’s been broken before.”
“Astute observation,” Zyta said, but quickly sealed her lips as the painful memory came rushing back to her. “It uh…it wasn’t that bad.” No, I can weave this. “It happened when I was a kid, playing with my brother.”
“Ah, your reckless brother, Jim. And when do I get to meet this elusive brother of yours?”
“Hey.” Zyta pointed at her crooked pinky. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
Umar held his hands up in submission. “Please.”
“Okay.” She took a long drink. Why the hell did I say that? There was no way she could tell the story. Not the real story, not the one of her running through the hallways of C3U as a child, playing tag with Marek, and then tripping over a canister of 5.56 mm rounds in the armory. It’s not that exciting of a story, anyway. But it did have meaning. Without the incident she may never have gotten so close to Victoria, who sparked her passion for the medical world. And I wouldn’t have met you, she thought, staring into Umar’s deep brown eyes.
“What happened was, Jim and I were racing across a set of monkey bars.” She took a sip of champagne. “And, heee—I, was winning. So he decided to slow me down by wrapping his legs around me.”
Umar’s perfectly plucked eyebrows arched in anticipation.
“But I wasn’t havin’ it.” Did I just slur? Zyta set down her champagne. “So I stiffen my hand,” she demonstrated, aligning four fingers and thumb, “and whack him right above the ankle.” Umar grimaced. “He unwinds his legs and kicks me right in the stomach.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, so then I take my chopping hand and cleave him right in his jugular. He falls, and I climb the rest of the monkey bars to win the race.”
“So, you broke your pinky by karate chopping your brother’s neck?” Umar asked.
“No,” Zyta said, seeing the doubt in his eyes. “It happened after I let go of the monkey bars. My brother kicked my legs out from underneath me and snap, pinky folded the wrong way under my weight.”
Umar bared his teeth in sympathetic pain. “Jim was not a nice big brother to you growing up.”
Zyta watched the bubbles in her champagne glass float to the top. Why had she painted her brother in such a negative light? It was Marek who took the blame for the actual accident. “I started running first. I instigated her to run after me. It was my fault.” He was restricted to bed quarters, no visitations, for a full week.
“Hey, I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Umar said. He pushed his chair in and offered Zyta his hand. “We can eat the rest of those strawberry roses if you like.”
She accepted his hand and fell into his warming embrace. “I had something else in mind for dessert,” she said, and kissed his lips.
They didn’t bother cleaning up the dishes. Nor did they close the balcony’s sliding door as they bumbled along in each other’s arms
to Umar’s king-size bed. Another cardinal rule disobeyed. Protocol stated that breaking just one would lead to permanent exile from C3U, and since she had already broken one, what was an additional two? In any case, if lying here in Umar’s arms, their bodies tangled in a scent of sweat and cologne, was any indication of what exile felt like, Zyta wasn’t sure she’d ever stop breaking the rules.
Zyta made it back to C3U an hour after sunrise. Nobody occupied the loading bay located at the rear of the electronics repair building. On either side of the bay were walls with stacked bins full of used or new computer parts, delivered each Monday by a member of Delta squad. Like the business, the room was a cover, and the people working rarely ventured into the bay. Not that that’s going to help me get away with last night.
Zyta parked the van on the loading pad and levelled her eye to the retina scanner. A few moments later the entire floor sunk slowly into the underground compound. She drove the van into the garage. An obvious gap in the lineup of medium-to-large sized vehicles called her name. Pablo came sauntering around the back of the van as she parked it.
“How’d she do?” he asked.
Zyta squinted her eyes. Are you talking about me?
“The van,” he clarified, reading her thoughts. “Any issues on the road?”
“Oh, no,” Zyta said, and climbed out. “She ran just fine, thanks.” She handed him the keys.
“And what about over night?”
Zyta’s heart skipped a beat. If Pablo knew, surely everybody else knew, too. Hell, she could be walking into an ambush. Or a hearing. I hereby find you guilty of being an idiot. Go to whence you came. No, you cannot keep the van. “So, they know?” she asked, turning around.
Pablo itched his chin. “I’m not sure if they know which park you stayed at…” his eyebrows knitted, his mind tug-o-warring over recalled and forgotten knowledge. “I’m not even sure if they know you took the van overnight, you know, to test its mobile-home capabilities. What was the name of the park you rented?”
