In a crisp voice, Adrian folded her hands on her desk and
observed, “Nothing; it’s been two weeks since your Agent escaped, and you have...nothing.”
“Not true. I have sightings; she was seen in Westminster
today—”
“I told you to capture her, not follow her at leisure,” Adrian
interrupted, her eyes flashing.
“Is this why you called me here?” Damian asked, his voice matching hers for shortness. “You could have requested a
progress report and saved us both the trouble.”
Adrian ignored his sarcasm as she stood and walked around the desk, her heels tapping against the marble floor. “I called you here to explain ‘why’, Damian. Why are you so determined to fail, to be such a disappointment to me?”
“Please accept my sincerest apologies, Prime Minister,” Damian said with exaggerated deference. “It’s just been so delightful being deprived of my Agent I thought I’d drag my heels—”
Adrian slapped him across the face, her manicured nails
leaving angry welts on the pale skin of his cheek. Damian went still as she said with soft menace, “You’ll mind your tone when you speak to me.”
Damian burned with rage, though his voice was muted as he warned, “And if you strike me again, you’ll live to regret it.”
Adrian sighed, green eyes softening. Her face had a deceptive motherliness to it, the gift of being equally suited to fury or
tenderness. She reached out a hand, smoothing it once over the cheek she’d marked. In a gentle tone, she said, “I don’t want us to fight. But I need you to help, not hinder. You’ve given me proof that the time to act is now, then tied my hands against doing anything. How am I supposed to work with the mess you’ve given me?”
He looked down at her, emotionless as she let her hand fall and backed up to lean on her desk.
“I listened to the recording from your source,” she went on, arms crossing over her chest. “The Director is growing too
suspicious of me and my involvement with the Agency. Sooner or later he’s going to break, and then who knows what will
happen...”
“Then get rid of him and give me what you promised,” Damian said icily. “What you swore I’d have years ago when you were still my Handler. The price I named for helping you.”
“How am I supposed to appoint you as Director of the Agency now?” Adrian demanded with an impatient wave of her hand. “If I were to hand you the Agency, do you know what the entire organization would think? ‘How can a Handler let his Agent go rogue and then be appointed to the highest position imaginable?’ The few who know of our past together would use that, spread rumors that the only reason you received the appointment is because you were my Agent. They wouldn’t trust you, and they might even go into open revolt against me.”
Damian let out a growl of frustration. “I’ve supplied you with everything you need to supplant the Director. Transmissions showing corruption, mission logs showing careless errors—enough to justify getting rid of him.”
“But not to justify replacing him with you,” Adrian pointed out. “It took me a long time to get where I am today, and I was able to do so largely thanks to having the Agency at my back. I won’t do anything to ruin that now.” She waited, unbothered by his silence, then added, “I want you as Director, Damian, and it will happen. But only after you’ve recovered your Agent; either as a prisoner or a corpse. Once you do, then we can move forward.”
Damian raised his head, baited by the challenge. “I will find her—alive.”
“Then hurry it up,” Adrian snapped, “Because if you don’t, then my soldiers will step in to do the job for you. And they won’t hesitate to shoot on sight.”
“I’ll send you news when I have it,” Damian said, turning to leave. “Until then, request a progress report rather than
summoning me here. Seeing as how you’re so concerned with wasting time.”
Adrian straightened, her voice going sharp as she said, “I’m not finished, Damian.” When he kept walking, she followed, eyes
blazing as she shouted, “Don’t you dare leave this room without a dismissal!”
He stopped just in front of the door, struggling with
disobeying a direct order. He didn’t turn at the sound of her footsteps and remained rigid as she walked in front of him. Even though her eyes burned with rage, her voice was soft as she warned, “If you’re trying to convince me you deserve to have the Agency, you’re doing a poor job of it.”
“I want what I was promised,” Damian returned through gritted teeth. “What I’ve earned.”
Adrian brought up her hands up, fingertips sliding around his neck in a gentle caress. She was so tall that they were nearly eye-to-eye as she said softly, her nails stroking over his skin, “Soon; you must be patient, now more than ever. One mistake now could ruin years of work. You understand that, don’t you?”
Damian’s mouth tightened, but he nodded. Adrian smiled, “Good. Don’t be so quick to leave. Stay. We can have dinner
together, distract ourselves with reminiscences about the old days. I miss seeing you.”
He shook his head, admitting, “I have work to finish.”
Adrian leaned in, letting the line of her chest press against his as her green eyes drifted up to meet his. “It’s a pity you can’t put it off.”
“You were the one who ended things between us, Adrian,” he said. “Rightfully so. We work far better as colleagues than we ever did as lovers.”
Adrian stepped back, a knowing smile on her face as she did so. “True. And you have a new fixation now, don’t you?”
“Liane is my Agent,” Damian returned. “I’m supposed to fixate on her. You were a Handler yourself once; you know that’s how we operate.”
She smiled, tilting her head. “If you were only acting as a
Handler, you wouldn’t be so concerned about a live capture. Don’t let sentiment ruin you, Damian.”
He took a step closer to her, eyes narrowed as he warned, “Wait until you see what I have planned for that officer who corrupted my Agent; then we’ll see if you call me sentimental. Now, may I be dismissed?”
Adrian’s smile deepened as she turned away from him, waving a hand. “Go. And the next time we meet, you’d better be offering me solutions, not more problems.”
Damian wasted no time, walking from the room without
another look back.
Mindful of the eyes of Adrian’s guards, Damian kept his
composure until he was inside the elevator. It was only when the doors closed behind him that he allowed his control to waver. His shoulders began to shake, and he wiped sweating palms on his suit pants before turning to lean against the metal railing that ran along the elevator at waist-height. Hatred was welling within him; hatred of his own weakness. All it took was one smile and cutting comment from his former Handler and he was a child again. Unable to argue, unable to do anything but stand there quietly answering her questions and hating himself for it…
The metal under his fingers crinkled and crumpled; he released the railing to find it was dented in ten places, one for each finger. His hands ached from the effort, and he flexed them at his sides, fighting the rising tide of fury within.
Just a little bit longer, he thought, trying to regulate his
breathing. Just a little bit longer, and then I’ll finally have what I’ve been working for.
It was that thought, and that thought alone, that helped Damian regain control of himself. When the elevator doors opened, he was able to walk out with at least a semblance of his usual calm.
CHAPTER 8
Seth darted through the streets of Chinatown, weaving his way through and around groups of teenagers. He didn’t stand out too terribly, other than looking excessively clean-cut in a sea of pierced, neon-haired cyberpunks. A white bag was tucked under his arm, and he held it aloft to keep it from being crushed as he squeezed past a g
roup haggling over mod serum to reach the doors to the computer café.
Calling it a café was stretching it, however; it was just a single dark room with a stained coffee machine in one corner and a surly attendant behind bulletproof glass in the other. Much of the room was filled with desks crowded with computer monitors and keyboards, and their users crouched close to the screens to hide their faces within the cardboard partitions. Whatever they were doing, Seth would wager it wasn’t legal.
He spotted Liane in a back corner, her posture still perfect as she frowned at the screen. Her fingers flew over the grimy keyboard, but they stilled when he pulled over a chair and sat down beside her. Sitting back, she let out an irritated sigh. “It’s no good. The connection in this place is too slow.”
Seth reached into the bag, bringing out a large, paper-wrapped cha siu bao. He handed one to her, setting a bottle of water on the desk before reaching for his own dinner. He bit into the steamed bun, burning his tongue on the piping-hot filling of barbeque pork and talking around the mouthful as he said, “I thought you were making progress.”
Liane glared out at the room. “I was until the evening crowd showed up and the speed ground to a halt.”
“So where are we now?”
“I gave up with the Agency system,” she said, tearing open the bread of her bun and blowing to cool the filling. “Right now, I’m just checking the news and message boards. No mention of the Minister’s difficulties with damage control on the official sites, but there’s plenty of speculation on the dark web.”
“Any mention of me anywhere?”
“Your reward amount has gone up,” she said,
unconcerned. “Other than that, just a lot of police bluster about getting closer to finding you.”
Seth glanced at her as he asked, “You sure it’s only
bluster?”
“Positive,” she said. “I can tell the difference between those who want to intimidate versus those who are closing in on a target. I used to watch Handlers do it all the time.”
“Including Damian?”
She paused in eating, taking her time swallowing before she admitted, “He didn’t need to intimidate; he successfully hunted down every single target given to him. No exceptions.”
They both lapsed into silence for a minute, then Seth asked, “Well, what now? You wanted to hack the Agency’s system
tonight, or has the plan been altered?”
“Not a bit,” she shook her head, crumpling the paper and
tossing it into a bin nearby. “If we can’t do it here, then we need to go where we can. There’s a good computer café in Soho, the speed never lags much. Let’s head there.”
They left the squalid chaos of Chinatown soon after, passing under the Dragon Gate and walking for a pace until the streets became wide and clean. Pulling up wide hoods, they moved through the increasingly fashionable professionals heading to pubs and restaurants after work. As they neared Soho, Liane turned them towards the Memorial to the Fallen. Comprised of a wide, open stretch of concrete, the pressure-sensitive ground was inlaid with hundreds of thousands of red LED lights that
illuminated when pedestrians walked across it. Seth kept his eyes down to watch as the lights fanned out underfoot, knowing that each tiny light represented a citizen who had lost their life during the Third World War. It was a sobering sight, and he turned towards Liane, asking, “How many did you lose in the war?”
“Mother and father,” she shrugged. “According to the
orphanage. I don’t remember them.”
Seth nodded. “Lost my dad, too. Three uncles and two aunts. My two brothers were killed in the blitz, the night before we were due to be shipped out to the countryside.”
Liane slowed to a stop, looked across the glowing concrete and murmuring, “In the Program, they told us that this was what we were preventing. That we were all that stood between the country and its enemies as it recovered.” She lifted her head, her silhouette just visible against the edge of her hood. “That’s what I always wanted to be; a hero, not another villain.”
“You can be whatever you want now,” Seth said quietly, his eyes on her.
She let out a sigh, then gave herself a small shake and said, “Let’s get to the café.”
The computer café was on a corner, the walls almost completely glass and the interior spotless white and chrome. Here the attendants were young, pretty women in spotless teal uniforms, and they smiled Liane and Seth to an identification scanner. Seth held his arm out without worry, allowing them to scan the white-ink tattoo on the underside of his forearm. On the screen, an image of a man who resembled Seth popped up alongside some meaningless name. Liane’s tattoo had also been modified, and she too had a false photo and name. It wouldn’t have worked in a high-security facility with facial-recognition software, but here in the café, it was enough to gain them entrance.
An attendant ushered the pair to half-moon cubicle and took their drink orders before leaving. Liane sat down in front of the keyboard, leaving Seth to crowd close and lean over her shoulder. She browsed innocuous news feed until the attendants returned with their coffees. After they walked away, Seth muttered into his cup, “They’re gone; I’ll distract them if they come back.”
Liane nodded, closing the news page and entering the dark web address that pulled up the entrance to the Agency’s system. For several minutes she worked, typing in lines of code on one of the programs. She held her breath slightly as she typed in a username and password; Seth did the same, knowing she would only have one chance to get it right. After that, the system would shut her out, and her work would be for nothing.
She hit a key, and the access page vanished to reveal a line of files and programs. Liane sighed, “I’m in. It worked.”
Seth leaned around her, admitting, “I thought it would be more dramatic, somehow.”
Liane smiled, her eyes on the screen. “Hacking rarely is.”
“What do you have access to?”
“Everything,” she answered, her fingers coming up to hover above the keys. “Now let’s see what they’ve been up to...”
|| | || | | || |
Deep under the Agency’s headquarters, Maddox stood in the break room blinking at the coffee pot as it brewed. It had been a long day for the tech Supporter; it had been a long month, in fact. Hunting a single person through the city wasn’t easy, even in a place like London where everything was designed with
surveillance in mind. The common identification scans, the
cameras on most streets...that was enough to hunt down
civilians. But Agents were well-aware of the obvious traps, and this rogue one was being careful. It didn’t help to have the Chief Handler breathing down his neck at every turn.
Yawning, Maddox poured himself a mugful of coffee and headed back into the darkened control room. The night shift had arrived, already at work behind their desks. A few of them spared a questioning glance at Maddox, confused as to why he hadn’t yet clocked off for the day. Maddox wondered as he made his way to his own desk in the center of the room if he shouldn’t just call it a day; his brain was foggy, unfocused, and he knew sleep would help. But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind when he stopped short, frozen by the sight of a tall, suited figure by his workstation. Maddox swallowed hard at the sight of the Chief Handler, wondering what sort of mood he’d be in today.
Ever attuned to being watched, Damian turned to the tech, asking, “What progress have you made today?”
Maddox shook his head. “Nothing’s changed; their IDs haven’t turned up anywhere, their faces haven’t been scanned by any of our cameras... I’ve had all of my techs on this, believe me, and—”
“And all I’m hearing right now are excuses,” Damian said, his voice dangerously quiet.
Maddox felt a tremor of fear, but he managed to protest, “Maybe if I had something more to go on. She hasn’t been to any of the locations you mentioned to us.”
“I gave you
a complete profile of her,” Damian said, his eyes glinting in the lights from the surrounding monitors. “I hope you’re not implying that I’m not doing my job.”
“No, sir, I would never suggest…” Maddox trailed off, his gaze shifting to the monitor visible behind Damian. The fear in him morphed into alarm, and he pushed past the Chief Handler to sit and swivel his chair towards the screen.
Damian followed, watching as Maddox read the green lines of code scrolling up on the monitor. Leaning down, Damian asked, “What is it?”
“Someone’s in our system,” the tech answered, voice hard and certain now he was back on familiar ground. “They’re looking through personnel files…” Maddox looked up at Damian, adding, “At yours, sir.”
Damian looked down at the lines of code, their green glow
reflecting within his black eyes. The smile that curved his lips was blood chilling as he murmured, “I see you, Liane…” Without glancing away from the monitor, he asked, “Where is her signal coming from?”
Maddox swiveled to a different computer, pulling up a locator program and typing into it. After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder and answered, “Computer café in Soho. Portland Mews.”
“Block her access to the system enough to slow her down, but not so much that she knows we’re watching her.” Damian drew out his phone and dialed a number, saying into it, “This is the Chief Handler. I need a containment unit dispatched…”
|| | || | | || |
In the café, Seth leaned forward in his chair, gnawing on his nail beds in distraction as he asked, “Anything?”
Liane gave a small shake of her head as if his voice was bothering her, but answered, “Damian knows we were at the mod pub; the cameras caught us. But there have been no reported sightings since then. They’ve just got the highest possible alert on us…”
“What does that mean?”
Liane chuckled, “It means if they spot us, we are in for a world of trouble.”
The Osiris Contingency Page 6
