by Kate Sander
“Hello there, young man!” the accented man yelled again. “I need your help!” Isaac stopped and let the limo catch up to him. He knew not to get into the limo, but helping a man out in need was in his nature. Isaac made sure he kept a few feet between the curb and himself.
“Yes?” He asked. “What do you need?”
“I’m sorry young man, my name is Dr. Freudman and I am visiting your fine country from Germany for a conference. Unfortunately I am not familiar with your customs.”
Isaac was still hesitant but the man had a very trusting face and was a doctor. He knew he should be able to trust him.
“I was wondering if you would, by chance, come with me and visit at a coffee shop? I have to give a big presentation and I would like to know more of your language. It won’t take long, and I can pay you handsomely for your trouble.”
Isaac knew he shouldn’t, but he was cold and hungry. This man was promising money just to spend some time. Isaac thought that sounded like good work for him. Who knows, maybe this German man needed an assistant. He started thinking about it more. The promise of easy money was tempting, but Isaac was still uncomfortable. He decided he wanted to make his money the hard way and earn it.
“I’m sorry,” Isaac said, “but my mother is waiting for me. I need to get home.”
Freudman smiled broadly, “Of course, of course. Thank you for your trouble young man.” He held out his hand through the open window. Isaac took it and shook it, smiling back at the German doctor. He barely felt the needle prick his palm.
His vision suddenly blurred. Isaac tried to shake his head to clear it. The man in the limo was still smiling, but his face was swimming. It looked warped. Isaac tried to step away but he felt himself being lifted off his feet and pushed into the dark limo. He wanted to yell but his tongue was thick. The last thing he felt was the German man taking his phone out of his jacket and throwing it out the window. The limo lurched ahead and everything went black.
3
Senka
October 19, 2023, 05:34
Location: Somewhere near Vanavara, Russia.
“I’m just saying that you don’t have to kill everyone. He gave you the information that you asked for.”
“Carter, that’s why you’re over there in the cushy office and I’m over here, pulling the trigger. He would have given me up, and right now I would be fighting a shit-ton of mercenaries instead of running by myself down a dark hallway.” Senka was, in fact, jogging down a dark hallway by herself, somewhere in the bowels of the Siberian fortress. She kept her stride light so she wouldn’t give her position away. Floyd had said there might be a few other mercenaries guarding the basement, but if she listened she should be able to avoid them.
“Knock him out!” Carter yelled so loud that Senka was sure it could be heard in the hallway around her.
Senka sighed as she came up to a corner in the hallway. Floyd had said two lefts and then a right. So it was on to a right.
“Carter, they would have killed him. And not a quick death, like a knife to the temple he didn’t see coming. A shitty, prolonged, torturous death. Even if I would have knocked him out.”
She heard Carter start to argue. She also heard someone coming down the hallway. “Shhh,” she said quietly and pressed herself into the darkness of a doorway. Carter immediately shut up. He may not always agree with her, but he would never put her in danger. They were a team. They lived together. They were partners.
Senka waited patiently and quietly in the doorway until the guard had passed and was long gone before continuing on her journey.
“Carter, I know you don’t agree, but I’ve been given permission to do this job by the Prime Minister of Canada, the Queen and the whole of the United Nations. It’s messy, it sucks. There’s a reason why I do it and you sit over there. And we both know that I’ve never killed anyone that we needed alive or didn’t deserve it.”
Carter stayed silent on the other end. She knew he was still there. Carter was always there. But sometimes she pissed him off.
Finally, after a torturous silence, “Tom didn’t kill everyone.”
Senka sighed and rubbed her eyes, “Yah, Tom did. I was the one who didn’t want to kill everyone. Don’t try to twist that shit just ‘cause Tom’s dead now. I talked Tom into keeping them alive.”
Carter stayed silent.
“If we would have killed everyone that day, Tom would have lived.”
With that, Senka continued down the hall and left Carter to his brooding. I don’t have time for this shit, she thought to herself. If Carter doesn’t shut up, I’m going to be distracted enough that he will be burying me too. Senka immediately regretted the thought. It wasn’t Carter’s fault that Tom had died, it was hers. They were a trio and she was supposed to get Tom out of there with her. Instead, they had placed a tombstone.
Senka didn’t meet anyone for the rest of the jog, which was good. She couldn’t cause a ruckus until she had filled the hard drive in her shoe. And right now she was so pissed off that she wouldn’t kill anyone quietly. There would be a ruckus.
She jogged the rest of the way to an unmarked door on the left, exactly as Floyd had said. Senka didn’t regret killing him, he was selling human beings for a living, but she was glad she gave him a quick death. He was greedy and stupid but at least he was honest. The door was locked by a keypad with a red glowing LED light above. Senka punched the six digit code Floyd had given her, 0-6-1-9-2-8. She heard the click as the mechanised lock opened and the keypad light flicked to green.
Senka stood beside the door and pushed it inward. It opened without a sound. She waited for a full thirty seconds, muscles tense, finger on the trigger. Carter knew to stay silent as well. Nothing stirred. Senka walked into the dark room, heart pounding in her chest. She found the light switch and flicked it on, the buzz of the florescent bulbs breaking the deafening silence. She made sure to close the door behind her.
The illumination showed rows and rows of servers. Humming blue lights glowed in each tower. She quickly counted ten rows in total, the door directly in the middle of the rectangular room. She scanned the room, and seeing no hint of movement, made her way to the left, scanning each row as she passed.
“Looks like servers,” she mumbled to Carter. She moved slowly through the middle row of towers, gun outstretched in front of her. The safety was off.
“You know that hard drive in your shoe?” Carter asked.
“You bet,” she said quietly. She slowly made her way down the last row and made her way along the back wall, clearing the room. She lowered her gun, but kept the safety off. “It’s like a backup drive so I can put data from these servers on it and bring it to you,” she said confidently. Senka was beyond technologically inept. She could hunt with a bow and skin a deer no problem, but she had no idea how to use the smart phone Carter bought her for Christmas last year. It had taken Carter a week to teach her.
“See I told you I was listening at the mission brief.”
“Yah, I lied, it’s not a hard drive,” Carter said.
The blue lights of the rows of servers highlighted Senka’s unimpressed face. “This is why I don’t listen to you.”
“Ok, so it’s a remote access device that will allow me to, from my cushy office, access all the information on these servers, track who uses them and hack into any other servers the person uses as well. These guys are probably global so it will allow me to access all the worldwide servers on the network. It also implants a malware that blocks anyone from knowing I have accessed the information…” Carter trailed off. “See? You’re not listening.”
“Hard drive,” Senka said blankly.
“Exactly. But you need to leave this hard drive plugged in for three minutes, until the little light glows green. Then, if you’d rather the ZTF wasn’t discovered, you need to unplug it and take it with you.”
“Let me guess,” Senka said as she took off her tennis shoe and removed a small black device from beneath the sole that looked like a
USB drive. “This will most likely trigger an alarm. They will know where I am and you want me to defend this little black thing? Really? From multiple mercenaries in a room with one door.” She hopped on one foot as she put her shoe back on. “Oh, with a gun that’s not mine and…” She checked the magazine, “Ten bullets.”
“Look, Sen, we can bail. I told you this was crazy in the brief–”
“Sounds like my favorite way to spend a Friday,” she interrupted as she slammed the magazine back into the gun.
“It’s Wednesday.”
“Thursday in Russia,” she chirped, “close enough.”
Senka heard worry in Carter’s voice and was doing her best to lighten the situation. She never wanted to die. She’d done that in The Other Place. It wasn’t fun. But she did feel an extra push to stay alive since Tom had died. Carter wouldn’t handle it if she died on a mission too. “Ok, where am I supposed to plug this bitch in?”
“There’s going to be a place on the front of the servers. Any one of the servers will work.”
Senka looked and found it. A small, rectangular slot that would fit the USB.
“Ready?” she asked, hand hovering.
“Yes. I’ll be able to start accessing the information almost immediately. I’ll let you know the building schematic and your route to evac when I find it. Evac is eleven minutes out.”
Senka cracked her neck to the side, “Let’s do this.” She plugged the device in and a small red LED lit up. She started her watch. If Carter said three minutes, he meant it. She took a few steps to the door and slammed the butt of the gun into the key pad. It shattered and she heard the lock engage.
“Alarm’s been triggered,” Carter said in her ear. She could hear him typing away at the computer. “Already accessing tons of information and saving it over here.”
Senka switched the lights off. It killed all the lights in the room except for the small red light emanating from the “hard drive”. She ran to the back corner. She didn’t need to see, she had memorised the layout and number of steps when she had done her sweep.
“Elite team has been dispatched,” Carter said. “I have the security system and floor schematic. I didn’t get to the alarm in time, sorry.”
Senka didn’t say anything. She knelt and closed her eyes, meditating. Air in through her nose, out through her mouth. Just as Master Apollyon had taught her in The Other Place. Two minutes and thirty-five seconds until she could unplug the device.
She heard the heavy tread of five sets of boots running down the hallway. Something else was with them.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“What’s up?”
“They have a dog with them.”
Carter stayed silent. Dogs were a complicated issue with Senka. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill a human who had done wrong or to complete a mission, but she’d never killed a dog.
“Sen, you’re willing to die so you don’t have to kill a dog?”
“Not the dog’s fault its been trained to be an asshole. That’s the asshole owner’s fault. Can’t kill a dog for doing its job.”
“Seriously, this could jeopardize the mission and your life.”
“Not killing it. End of statement. I will just have to choke it out,” she heard Carter sigh in her earpiece. She ignored him. The men and the dog arrived at the door. She heard it growling and lunging at its leash. Sounded big.
Two minutes five seconds.
She heard them yelling in Russian from the hallway, “They’re blowing the door. Going to send the dog in after to flush me out or kill me.” They were planting the explosives on the other side of the door. She could hear the one man riling his dog up into a growling, snarling frenzy.
One minute forty-five seconds.
She heard the boots run away. She braced herself, staying on her knees, and covered her ears with her hands.
The explosion blasted the door off its hinges, leaving a ruined mess of steel. It shook the towers of servers. Senka’s ears rang. Dust filled the small room and emergency lights flickered on with an eerie, yellow glow. She hoped none of the servers were damaged. That would ensure that all this work and time were useless.
The server towers rocked dangerously and settled. She didn’t think there was any damage to them, which was a relief. The door was mangled on the ground, leaving an open hole to the hallway. A man yelled from the hall, “Leo, kill!” in Russian. The dog rocketed into the room. He knew exactly where she was, following his keen nose.
She kept calm, breathing slowly to keep the dust out of her lungs. She heard the snarling as the dog turned the corner, smashing into the wall. He spotted her, legs pumping hard, and bared his teeth. Senka saw that it was a giant German Shepard with brown and black matted fur with a distinct white line of fur running diagonally across his face. He was foaming at the mouth, barking and growling, running full tilt at her.
Senka checked his aura, a trick she only ever needed to use on animals in this world. People were too predictable. She focused on his aura and her eyes opened wide. Her breath caught in her chest and her mouth hung open in shock.
The dog skidded to a stop mere inches in front of her.
She looked at him, he looked at her. He cocked his head to the side, panting. She held her hand out in front of her. Her distinctive purple and navy swirling aura drifted lazily around her hand. She looked at his aura. It was exactly the same. The same shade of purple and navy, the same swirling pattern, lazily making loops and curves.
She had seen hundreds of thousands of auras and no two had ever been the same.
The dog nuzzled into her hand. She relished the feel of his fur on her hand.
“Sen, what’s going on? Talk to me!” Carter’s worried voice in her ear, breaking the moment.
“Carter… This dog. He’s me.”
4
Senka
October 19, 2023, 05:41
Location: Somewhere near Vanavara, Russia.
“Did you hit your head or something? What are you talking about?”
The dog, who Senka heard was called Leo, nuzzled deeper into her hand and looked at her, wagging his tail. She scratched his ears. He was too skinny, but his dark chocolate eyes looked at her with trust. Senka looked at him and said, “Cover left. Stay low. Wait for my mark.”
Senka marvelled when Leo calmly padded away to the other side of the room and crouched low onto his stomach. He’s understood her commands. She knew as soon as she looked at him that he would. They were one. They were the same.
He had on a military vest that was old and ratty. His fur was matted and dirty. Senka felt bad for him. She would clean him up when she got him home.
Leo crouched forward on his haunches and stared straight ahead at the wall in front of him. The servers were blocking his view of the door.
“Leo, come!” a man yelled from the door in Russian. Leo didn’t move. He stayed, crouched, watching the wall from the other side of the room. Exactly what she told him to do.
“Senka what is going on?” Carter yelled.
She realized that she had been completely ignoring him. She checked her watch. She had forty-seven seconds left until she could unplug the device.
“Sorry, we’re adding one to that evac. Still able to upload after the blast?”
“Yes, I can still access the servers. Who is coming with you?”
“Dog named Leo. What if they destroy this room?” she asked as she raised her gun and made her way quickly toward the door.
“If it’s before the malware is uploaded it will have all been for nothing. If it’s after then I’m in the system and can access the backup information and any other server on the network,” Carter answered, and not to be deterred asked, “and why are you bringing a dog home? It probably won’t even listen to you! It’s someone else’s dog!” Carter was incensed.
“Don’t worry about it.” Senka said sharply. Carter knew that Senka could see auras after she had woken up from The Other Place. It was part of the Zoya Task Force tra
ining. Handlers had to know everything about their agents. That meant going through together every gruesome detail of her time in Langundo. He may know what she could see, but he could never understand. She trusted auras as he trusted her sense of touch or her sense of smell.
Senka and Leo had the same aura, a phenomenon she had yet to see. They were one. They were meant to be. The fact that she found him on a trip to Russia was, in her opinion, a lucky accident.
Senka made it to the corner by the mangled door. She whistled softly and Leo crept up still hiding behind the row of servers but closer to the door.
A man holding a leash stepped hesitantly over the fallen steel door, “Leo, come!” It was the last thing he said before Senka shot him between the eyes. The sound reverberated off the walls in the room, causing ringing in her ears. He slumped backward, eyes dead, small hole in the middle of his forehead, a single drop of blood running towards his nose. She was glad Leo had stayed where he was, she didn’t want him to see. Leo’s fur was matted and un-kept, he looked way too skinny for his size, but that was his old owner and she didn’t need him to be traumatized.
She heard the yelling and the rest of the men stormed the door. She shot them in the head one by one as they entered. Two died in the doorway. The other two wisely retreated from her line of fire. She heard them yelling at each other in Russian as they ducked for cover.
“How long do you need?” she asked Carter, realizing their plan.
“Twelve seconds.”
“Shit. Leo!” she yelled, hearing the men fumbling for something outside the door. “Leo, get him! Go for the arm!”
Leo, ever vigilant, jumped over the three dead men without even a second glance at his old owner. Senka followed him through the opening over the mangled door, hard and fast. She had been right. One man was going for a grenade. They would rather kill her and lose the servers then allow her to escape.
Eight seconds.
