Binding Foxgirls II

by Simon Archer

  “Okay,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides in defeat. “I can’t say I like it, and I can’t say that I still don’t want to tell the rest of the board all about all this at this point, but I can’t argue with your reasoning, Joch. That is, so long as you actually got some info out of him.”

  “Just because we told one person doesn’t mean that it would be wise to throw caution to the wind and tell even more,” Kira said gently. “I still think we should keep this between our group.”

  “Alright, alright, point taken,” Clem said, waving a hand dismissively in her direction.

  “Look, I know this all sucks,” I said, giving him a small smile. “And I want to tell the others just as much as you do. But Kira’s right, we have to keep exercising caution.”

  “I said okay,” Clem said, staring down at the table and blinking several times. But I wasn’t concerned. I knew my friend, and given that he wasn’t arguing anymore, he knew we were right. But that didn’t mean he was happy about it. Neither was I, for that matter.

  “Okay, boss, what d'you find out?” Malthe asked eagerly.

  “Right,” I said. “So basically, the burner phone was already in his office when he got there. Or someone put it there when he wasn’t looking, at least. Yesterday morning… Jesus, was it really just yesterday?... anyway, yesterday morning, he got a call.”

  “The phone was there the whole time, and he didn’t notice?” Malthe asked. “Geesh, if he’s that unobservant, maybe we shouldn’t have made him Prime Minister after all.”

  “You’re one to talk about being observant, Leitz,” Clem said sardonically. “How many times have you fallen out of your chair today, again?”

  “Hardy har har,” Malthe shot back, sticking out his tongue at Clem. We all laughed but nervously.

  “Well, it was hidden in a secret compartment under the desk,” I explained. “The phone, I mean, so I don’t really blame him for not noticing. I don’t think I would’ve found it, even.”

  “Fair enough,” Malthe shrugged. “Wait, if that’s where they keep the phones, do you think there’s one in your office?”

  “Huh?” I asked, confused. “Why would I have one? I don’t talk to these people.”

  “But Elias Berg did,” Kira said, her eyes widening with understanding. “And he died, and we’ve been in charge of TelCorp ever since. I doubt these people were able to clear out the office without us noticing.”

  “Yeah, Parliament, maybe, but not us,” Malthe said, shaking his head. “I would’ve caught that.”

  “Oh right,” I said, realizing they were both right. “I didn’t even think of that. Elias’s tenure seems like a whole world away at this point… we should go check.”

  “How?” Clem asked, throwing his arms up in the air, and I remembered the crowd.

  “Oh right,” I said. “Well, someone needs to whip them into shape, anyway.”

  “Fair enough,” Malthe said. “But finish telling us what Halit said first.”

  “Right, so basically the phone started ringing, and he found it since it wouldn’t let up, just kept ringing and ringing until he figured out where it was,” I continued. “And then he answered it, and there was this guy on the other line. He said it was a man with a low, silky voice.”

  “Silky?” Clem repeated, raising his eyebrows. I held up my hands in the air.

  “Hey, I’m not the one who said it, I’m just the messenger,” I said. “Anyway, yeah, so this guy’s on the other line, he tells Halit that he’s the head of this secret organization under the city that’s been controlling Termina for decades.”

  “He told him about the tunnels?” Kira asked, surprised.

  “I guess so,” I shrugged. “Gives them more of an aura of mystery and control, I guess. We can’t see them, but they can see us. That kind of thing. Anyway, so then he tells Halit to strike down our bills and support new ones, the ones they’ve passed already. And of course, Halit’s like, what the fuck dude, no, thinking it was some kind of prank. Then he gets ready to call us and tell us all about it. But then… whoever this guy is threatens him.”

  “Threatens him how?” Malthe asked. “What could these guys possibly say or do to threaten anyone? That’s what I don’t get. They hate tech, so how are they supposed to control anything in a tech-driven world?”

  “That’s what I thought, but they hate tech, it doesn’t mean they don’t use it,” I clarified. “Or at least, their above-ground operatives like Beaufort do.”

  “I did see him using the tech to talk to people,” Kira said, wincing and visibly uncomfortable at the mention of the mysterious client who kidnapped her.

  “Right, so they have people above ground who use it,” I continued. “And man, do they use it. I guess they had personal info for Halit, and everyone he knows, and then they gave him the bank account info for one of the other binding corp CEOs just for good measure, to show that they knew about more than just Halit.”

  “Wait, hold up,” Clem said, holding up his hands to stop me. “They had another CEO’s financial info? And they just handed access to his accounts over to Halit?”

  “To make a point, yeah,” I confirmed.

  “That’s a very… flippant use of personal information,” Kira said wearily.

  “I know,” I agreed. “Which I think just goes to show how much they have, that they’re fine with throwing it away like that. They already have leverage over the other binding corps, Halit and the rest of Parliament was who they needed to sway.”

  “Wait, do they have any info on us?” Malthe asked, his eyes wide with concern.

  “No, that’s the thing,” I said, shaking my head. “They had stuff on us from when Elias was in charge, which makes sense because he was just one of their lackeys, after all. Just like the conglomerate. But nothing on us now. Though they led Halit to believe they did, and he got overwhelmed and believed them, when he thought about it, they only gave proof for everyone but us.”

  “So the boy genius here’s still the top hacker in the city,” Clem said, jerking his thumb in Malthe’s direction.

  “Hey, I’m thirty!” Malthe cried indignantly. Clem balked at him.

  “You’re thirty?” he asked. “No way.”

  “I have a baby face,” Malthe said defensively.

  “You could say that again,” Clem chuckled.

  “Right, so yeah, Malthe’s golden as far as we know,” I said, rolling my eyes at them.

  “So Halit got all freaked out and joined them just like that?” Clem said. “Wimp.”

  “Well, they threatened his parents,” I explained. “That’s what got him, I think.”

  “They directly threatened them?” Kira asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “No, that was my reaction to,” I said, pointing at her. “I guess it was more subtle than that, which only freaked him out even more, honestly. Anyway, the guy just kind of laid out everything the organization knew and heavily implied that they were gonna use the intel against him if he didn’t go along with it.”

  “Well, I guess that makes a little bit more sense,” Clem relented begrudgingly. “I’ll give him that, at least.”

  “I’d bet you anything they pulled the same stunt with the rest of the Parliament members,” I said.

  “He couldn’t confirm that for you?” Kira asked, raising her eyebrows again.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head again. “I guess the guy also heavily implied that talking about it was a big no-no. Hence why everyone cleared out so fast after the session this morning, I guess.”

  “That’s… terrifying,” Malthe said. “And he just believed you and told you all this despite being so scared?”

  “Well, it did take some convincing,” I said. “But it pulled more weight than I thought it would that we know about these people, and that we figured out about the tunnels and attacked them.”

  “Even though they attacked us first and drove us out of there?” Clem asked.

  “Well, I conveniently left out that part,” I sa
id, flashing a grin. “I made it seem like we just kind of attacked them, and it went well for us.”

  “Well, I guess that’s true from a certain point of view,” Clem shrugged.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I agreed. “Anyway, that’s all I know. Should we go look for that burner phone and whip these employees of ours into shape?” They all nodded and followed me back out into the cylindrical corridor.

  20

  I led the group down the cylindrical hallway toward the main section of the top floor, which we all knew to be packed to the brim with nervous and panicking TelCorp employees. I took a deep breath to gather myself before opening the door.

  “We should look for the phone first,” I said, deciding as I said it. “Once we talk to the crowd, they’re not going to want us to leave. They’re going to want us to lead some kind of action. Right now, no one can even get out of the building, even if they wanted to.”

  “Well, you could, if you wanted to,” Kira pointed out. “Just like you managed to get in. But most people aren’t comfortable climbing skyscrapers.”

  “Fair enough,” I chuckled.

  “How’re we gonna get through the crowd to make it to your office?” Malthe asked, eyeing the door with wariness. “We barely made it to the board room before.”

  “Yeah, same here,” I said, pursing my lips together as I thought this through. “Okay, we’ll do this. I’ll address the crowd, try to get their attention somehow, and tell them they need to make room for us. From there, we need to get to my office before we figure out what to do. How’s that sound?”

  “Better than anything I can come up with,” Clem said, shrugging. “Don’t know what else we can do, honestly.”

  “Fair enough,” I said again, taking another deep breath. “Okay, let’s go.”

  And so we went. I pushed open the door, and several people waiting outside nearly fell through in front of us. We helped them up and ushered them back out into the main corridor before I cupped my hands around my mouth and started to bellow out instructions to my employees, who were now spilling into the actual elevator to the extent that it seemed to have stopped running properly. Awesome.

  “Hey,” I screamed out so hard that I strained my vocal cords. “We need you to listen to us. Listen up, goddammit!”

  But it didn’t seem to have worked. While several people in our immediate vicinity turned and stood at the ready to listen to me, the crowd was too large and the noise pollution too great for it to have much of an effect. I looked over at my friends helplessly, and Clem shrugged.

  “Here, let me try something,” Malthe said, pulling out his E-pad with what little wiggle room the crowd had allotted him.

  “Be my guest,” I told him, dropping my hands to my sides in defeat. There was no reaching this crowd with my regular voice.

  Suddenly, a loud blaring siren sound came wailing out of Malthe’s E-pad. He probably could have chosen an equally loud, but less distressing sound, given the crowd’s reaction. They all heard it all right, but it sent them into an even greater panic as they looked around wildly, trying to see where it was coming from. But the crowd was so large that only those who had already noticed us could see us, so this didn’t do much to help.

  People started banging on the elevator now, trying to get out, and pushing en masse to get it working again through sheer force of will. But that only served to make matters worse, and the elevator’s doors clamped shut in protest.

  “Can you pick a different sound?” I asked Malthe, more than a hint of annoyance creeping into my tone. “They probably think the conglomerate’s attacking again or something.”

  “Oh right,” Malthe said, realizing a little late that he’d made a mistake. “Sorry.”

  He scrambled with his E-pad some more until he came up with a disturbing squawking sound that sounded to me like a chorus of ducks. Well, that did the trick, and everyone seemed to realize that the sound was coming from inside the room, and wasn’t from some kind of ominous attack. A few even laughed, and the room went silent but for the weird sound.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough,” Kira hissed at Malthe, and he shut it off. Before the crowd got a chance to start up again, I cupped my hands around my mouth again and gave it one more shot.

  “This is Nic Joch, your CEO,” I yelled for those who couldn’t see me. A few voices rose up around us.

  “Oh, thank god,” one person said.

  “About damn time,” another whispered.

  “I know you’re all upset and confused,” I hollered even louder over the whispers. “But we need you to shut up right now. We need you to make a pathway to my office so we can check on some things. We’re working on formulating a plan to get us out of here, but first, we need you to make a path.”

  Some more grumbling ensued.

  “He’s just gonna hide away in his office,” another voice hissed.

  “You can’t be serious… we’re all fucking doomed,” said yet another.

  “We’re not doomed,” I yelled, exasperated. “We’re working on a plan. We’ll get you all out of here, I promise. We just need to look for something in my office that we think Elias Berg left behind. That’s all.” I always found it was best to keep things as close to the truth as I could without revealing too much.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” Kira added, cupping her own small hands around her cute little mouth now to project her voice across the crowd. “We just need a few minutes, and we’ll talk to you again, get the elevator working so you can spread out a bit.”

  “Yeah, the power’s back on downstairs now, so it’s safe for you to go down once you’re able,” Clem said, also hollering at the top of his voice.

  “Can we go home?” someone near us asked hopefully.

  “Not yet,” I said regretfully, shaking my head. “They’re still swarming the place outside. But we’re working on that. You just have to make a path so we can figure this out in my office, okay?”

  There was more murmuring across the crowd, but it slowly began to part, forging a path for Malthe, Clem, Kira, and myself toward my office, Elias’s former office.

  “Thanks,” I said, once a narrow path was visible, and I began to press through it with my friends following close behind. It was still difficult to get there, considering that there were so many people packed in tightly together, but we made it through okay.

  “Is there anyone from tech support out here?” Kira asked when we were standing in front of my office door.

  Several people raised their hands.

  “Well, get over there and start working,” Clem said, following Kira’s train of thought and pointing haphazardly at the broken elevator. The persons in question stood there blinking for a few moments, but eventually, they ran over before the path collapsed and started working on the elevator, the mass of people clustered around it abating slightly and filling up what used to be the path.

  “Well, that was short-lived,” Malthe remarked, gesturing at where the path had been just seconds before.

  “It doesn’t matter, we need to get working on this,” I said, opening the door with my key card and stepping inside, gesturing for the others to follow. I shut the door tight behind us to ensure no one else slipped through.

  “They probably just see us as hiding behind a wall,” Kira sighed, shaking her head at the door.

  “Well, we’ll fix that soon enough,” I said, crossing over to the other side of the room.

  “Don’t you have a different desk now than the one Elias used?” Clem asked, eyeing it skeptically. “I remember it being some kind of wood thing, wasn’t it? I didn’t spend much time in here. Honestly, you got all his attention, Joch.”

  “Yeah, it was a different desk, but I kept everything that was in it,” I said, pressing a button on the wall that opened a closet space, revealing Elias’s old desk inside. “I wanted to throw it all off the docks, to be honest, but I wanted to keep everything around just in case it came in useful. Some of the files did, in the transition,
and it was just easier to keep the whole desk instead of moving everything over to another system.”

  I pulled it out, and Clem crossed to the other side to help.

  “Good thinking,” he grunted as he helped me lift it. Once there was a fair amount of room between the other side of the desk and the interior of the closet, I hopped over it and began to rummage through it.

  “Where’s this thing supposed to be?” Clem asked, peering over my shoulder from the other side of the desk.

  “Bottom drawer, secret compartment,” I said, gritting my teeth as I pressed my arm up against the inside of the drawer at an awkward angle. “Though it could be different with this one. Hell, they might not have even put it in the desk, for all I know. That’s just what they did with Halit. Who knows?”

  With a quick, relieving motion, the top of the drawer slipped to reveal a false compartment. It made a loud clunking sound, and everyone stared apprehensively at me.

  “That’s it,” I said, grinning up at them. “A secret compartment.”

  “Everything about these guys is secret,” Malthe grumbled. “You’d think they’d mix it up a little every once in a while.”

  “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but I’m afraid that’s what they’re doing now,” I said, grimacing. “Putting one of their own in charge of the new conglomerate and all. It doesn’t get much more obvious than that.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kira said, pursing her lips. “It’s not like people won’t notice that this guy they’ve never seen or heard of before is suddenly in charge of the biggest part of the city’s economy.”

  “Second biggest,” I corrected her as I dug through the compartment. “We’re still on top, and we will be for the foreseeable future as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Well, haven’t they told the media not to report on that?” Clem asked. “We can see that they’ve talked to the news agencies and all that on the burner phone map, right?”

  “Yeah, but they’re talking to more people than they ever have before now, TelCorp excluded, of course,” Malthe said.

  “And with every new person they bring into their inner circle like that, the higher the chance that someone will blow their cover,” I added. “Halit’s proof enough of that, isn’t he? It’s not a secret anymore if nearly everyone knows about it.”