Chapter 23
Before joining Liz in the training area, Paul went to the balcony for some privacy and tried calling Stephanie. It rang through to voice mail before he realized it was nine a.m. on a school day and she was almost certainly sitting in her second-period class.
“Hey Steph,” he said softly. “Guess I forgot that you’d be in class right now. I’m going to try and call you tonight before it gets dark.” He paused, not hanging up right away and said, “I miss you.”
Down in the training area, he was paired with Liz for training in ethics. They talked for the better part of the morning about all of the do’s and don’ts associated with the kind of decision-making Walkers often faced. Violating people’s privacy and using one’s skills for personal gain were the two main topics. Covering such a broad spectrum of situations, they still hadn’t finished that part of the discussion by noon.
Throughout lunch, he fielded questions about the way the previous night had gone. The majority of them were centered around the way he’d had to improvise when he realized no one was going to be home for the call. He was thankful no one asked about Mr. Glynhall. Steven ate in silence, not contributing to the conversation. Hodge looked on from his table with an icy stare, and glowered when the table erupted in laughter over the image of Paul lying stretched out on the floor with his ear desperately pressed up against the handset.
“You alright?” Paul asked Steven as they were leaving, each to return to their respective training areas.
“Fine,” Steven said flatly. “I’m fine,” and continued on in silence.
Back in the training room, Liz said, “There is a whole lot more that I’m supposed to cover, but honestly it is all just common decency stuff that I can’t see being an issue with you. But we do have the rest of the day and unfortunately we can’t go take a stroll or anything, so—what about you? Any questions?”
“Hmmm,” Paul said. “No ethical questions really spring to mind for me.”
Liz looked intently into his eyes, “What about questions that don’t relate to ethics?”
Was she talking about last night? Did she know? Was she part of the ‘bad guys’?
“Here’s somewhat of an ethical question,” Paul replied carefully. “Do you think we should be paid for what we do?”
Sitting back in her chair, Liz replied, “You’ve been talking to Dittrich, haven’t you?”
Surprised, Paul said, “No, why would you think that?”
Dismissively, she said, “Because that’s his thing. Since as far back as I can remember, he’s always said we should be rich because we offer such a one-of-a-kind service. Don’t tell me he hasn’t gotten up on his soap box yet and tried to preach to you about it.”
“No,” Paul was able to reply honestly, “he really hasn’t. A couple of the other guys mentioned it, but I didn’t take it seriously.”
“It’s not like we don’t have all we need right here,” Liz said. “As far as I’m concerned, we have more than we need; a nice, clean, safe place to live, food, and a purpose for our lives. Not to mention some pretty darn good company. I’m referring to me, of course, when I say good company.”
Smiling, and relieved he could be fairly certain she wasn’t a part of the conspiracy, Paul asked, “So do you think there is a chance this place would ever change the way it operates? Like, become more of a business than an institution?”
“No way,” Liz answered. “Dr. Abrams would never let something like that happen. There’s too many perks being part of a U.N.-funded organization. Not to mention he’d lose his relationship with the CIA. With his brother still out there somewhere, there is no way he would risk that.”
“So you know about his brother?”
“Most of us do. You know how it goes… Dr. Abrams told Dittrich, Dittrich told Lisa, Lisa told Hodge, and on down the line.”
“The best way to make a secret known is tell someone it’s a secret,” quoted Paul.
“You got that right.”
“So what about you, then, Liz? Don’t you have any dreams or ambitions?”
“You mean past being a super secret spy for the United Nations?” she joked. “Sure. Plenty. But before I try working toward any of that, I have to be sure I can handle it.”
Puzzled, Paul said, “But you seem so… together. It’s hard for me to believe there’d be much you couldn’t handle.”
“You’d be surprised. I’m not much older than you and believe me, I wasn’t always the picture of grace that you see here before you today. Before Astralis found me, I was as close to a basket case as I ever hope to be—depressed, isolated, and angry, feeling like there was no place for me; not even with my own family.”
“Sounds familiar,” Paul said understandingly.
“I’m not surprised. Ask around, Paul. Ask just about anyone here and they’ll repeat your own story back to you. We’ve all gone through it and if it wasn’t for this place we’d all still be in the same place with no end in sight.”
They spent the rest of afternoon talking and didn’t worry about any more training. They decided to call it quits a little early since they weren’t really working anyway, so Paul took the extra time to try and find Steven and explain to him what was going on.
It took over an hour of wandering back and forth between the commons room and the Sanctum before Steven finally ambled in to find Paul pacing in front of the snack bar, nervously popping peanuts into his mouth.
“Hey,” Steven said evenly. “What’s up?”
“Plenty,” Paul said. “I need to explain to you what’s going on, because now I think I finally get it.”
The two of them went into their safe room, Paul closing the door behind them.
“Super secret meeting?” Steven asked with a grin as he watched Paul secure the door lock.
“Steven, this is serious stuff I’m about to tell you. We might be in some deep trouble.”
Steven’s demeanor immediately changed, his attention completely focused on Paul.
“Four nights ago, I went on a run with James. He asked me to come because he said he just wanted some fresh air, but once we got far enough away, he started asking me a bunch of questions about how I like it here and whether I thought we were basically just prisoners of the place because we don’t get paid.”
Bouncing his head from side to side in consideration, Steven said, “I can see how some people might see it that way.”
“Yeah, well, that’s pretty much what I said, and at the time I didn’t think much of it. But the day after that, Dr. Abrams cuts my training time short and brings me down into his and Natasha’s living quarters.”
“Abrams and Natasha are shacked up?” Steven asked. “Never would have pegged that one, they seem more like co-workers than friends. Down? Down where?”
“Under us. He has a thing down underneath us. And they aren’t shacked up like that. They have separate bedrooms. It’s more complicated than that; she’s his family. But that’s beside the point, or I guess it’s part of the point, maybe. Anyway, I’m down in his office and he and Natasha basically tell me their life story as well as the story of how Astralis became what it is today.
“Someday I’ll tell it all to you, but for now the most important thing to know is that Lydia… you know, the lady who runs the front desk and does the announcements?”
“Sexy voice. I’d tap that just for the voice.”
“Yeah. Ew. Man, you got issues. Anyway, she’s CIA. And the other two ladies up there? They are too.”
“A sexy CIA agent. This just gets better and better.”
“Focus, Steven-san. Dr. Abrams explained that it was through Lydia that he met others in the CIA and through that relationship, he was eventually approached by the United Nations to create an agency that could use the talents of Walkers.”
“What does this have to do with James?” Steven asked.
“I’m getting to that. The deal with the United Nations is that they supply the budget for this building, our training, our missions, and a
ny costs for anything else we need. We basically have an unlimited budget, far as I can tell.”
“And James thinks all of us should get paid since we’re the ones that make it work,” Steven guessed.
“Right.”
“Big deal,” Steven said. “Let him think it, so what. If he wants to make money, why doesn’t he just go out and open his own spy shop? Once he actually thinks about it, he’ll realize he has a pretty good thing going here.”
“He actually said something along those lines and he knows that he couldn’t do it on his own. But let me get back to what Dr. Abrams told me; he said that there is a group of Walkers here who feel the same way that James does.” Steven’s face became very serious. “Not only that, but he thinks that group wants to take over Astralis and turn it into a business, and he said that the only reason they haven’t done it yet is because of me.”
“You?” Steven exclaimed. “What do you have to do with it?”
“Because I can move stuff while I’m in the dream. No one else can do that. Before they found me, they didn’t even think it was possible. Dr. Abrams said that they found me over six months ago and they knew I could move objects within the first month. Everyone here has known what I can do for all that time.”
“And they figure if they have you on their side basically nothing can stop them,” Steven surmised.
“Basically, yeah.”
“Man, we’re in a situation. Who do you think is part of this group?”
“Well, that’s what I’m getting at. James pretty much tipped his hand that night on the run. Two nights after that, which was like, two nights ago, I did the maze run with Allen and on the way there he started asking me about whether or not I was happy. It was practically the same conversation I had with James, but dumbed-down a little.”
“So there’s number two on the list.”
“Yup. And last night before we left on the training mission Lisa snuck into the bathroom with me and warned me about Hodge. She told me he was going to try and sabotage the mission.”
“Alone in the bathroom with Lisa, huh?” Steven raised an eyebrow in an unspoken but clearly implied question.
“No,” Paul said. “It was nothing like that. I swear to God, you’re such a gutter rat. She tells me Hodge is going to sabotage my mission, she says he hates that they think they need me so bad. So does that mean Hodge is one of them? Did she mean ‘they’ as in the people who want to take this place over, or did she mean ‘they’ as in Astralis in general? If anyone, I would have thought it would be Hodge that was the ring leader, but what she said makes me think he’s not—if they think that they need me so bad, who are they?”
“He still could be the main guy,” Steven said. “Maybe it’s James and Allen that are the ones who think they need you and Hodge is frustrated that they think so.”
“Maybe… I don’t know,” answered Paul, thinking.
“You haven’t mentioned the other question,” Steven said.
“What question is that?”
“Lisa knows something. How much she knows, we don’t know, but she knows something or she wouldn’t have known to warn you and wouldn’t have said it the way she did. So the question is: is Lisa one of them?”
Watchers of the Night Page 52
