Predestiny

by Phipps, C. T.

I stopped pacing and turned to face our recruits completely. “I know, that’s why we’re going to one.”

  Fred let out another deep chuckle. “And people say that I’m crazy.”

  But I was surprised to see Anna nodding her head while staring at me with wide, promising eyes. “The field trip.”

  Fred stopped laughing and looked over to her, confused. “What?”

  But Anna ignored him to continue looking at me in a way I hadn’t seen since we first started dating. “You’re going to sneak away during our field trip to the local Butterfly office, aren’t you?”

  “Tada!” I exclaimed, dramatically spreading my arms out wide.

  “This is insane.” Our Hispanic hacker wasn’t thrilled at the idea. “I’m not going inside any Butterfly building.”

  I responded by barely looking over at him. “Don’t worry, Carlyle. You’ll be safe working your techno magic from whatever hole you want to hide in.”

  The prospect of being far away from the action changed his tune real quick. “Never mind then. I think this is a great idea.”

  I then turned my focus back to the rest of the group. “Jane and I have it all planned out. We can do this. I know it. But it’ll take all of us.”

  “I can’t take part in any morally objectionable behavior,” said Reverend Tully.

  The reverend’s reluctance was hardly surprising. He was a religious man, after all. Luckily, I anticipated him bowing out and worked the plan around it. “I know, Reverend. Providing your basement is help enough, though. Thank you.”

  Getting the conversation back on track, Fred punched a fist into his hand. “You know I’m in. I’ve been itching to hit these Butterfly bastards for months now.”

  “Me, too,” said Clarissa in her thick British accent. “As long as nobody gets hurt.”

  I turned my focus to the last member of our group: my girlfriend. “Anna? What about you?”

  She stared up at me with nothing but determination in her eyes. “Let’s do it.”

  A joyous excitement rushed through the room as everyone began to chatter amongst themselves. The upbeat atmosphere made me feel hopeful of our prospects, but Jane distracted that optimism by calling out to me. “Robbie, can I talk to you for a second?”

  I glanced back at her over my shoulder. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”

  But Jane didn’t respond. At least not with words. She simply stared at me with that demanding look only a trained killer could give, leaving me no choice but to oblige.

  I gave the enthused H.O.P.E. members a wave while retreating to the back of the room. “Give me a minute, guys.”

  Jane stood up from the chair as I approached her, which meant she was serious about something. “Why does that woman look so familiar?”

  I followed her line of sight across the room. “Clarissa?”

  “It’s almost like I’ve met her somewhere befo—” Jane’s face suddenly widened as she came to a curious realization. “Sabrina?”

  “It’s her mother,” I acknowledged, nodding my head.

  Jane snapped in my direction. “You knew!?”

  I innocently shrugged my shoulders, although I was aware my expression was of nothing but pure guilt. “I kind of forgot.”

  Annoyed by my response, Jane rolled her eyes while shaking her head. “I’m not even going to address that comment, but you have to get her out of here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” asked Jane, as if the answer were obvious.

  I knew it might’ve been weird having Clarissa here, considering what Sabrina did, but I didn’t think it should disqualify her from helping, especially since we needed her. “We’re already short on people. She has to be there for the plan to work.”

  Baring her teeth, Jane got right up in my face, which would’ve been intimidating if she wasn’t also my bodyguard. “And you didn’t consider the fact that she’s the mother of your father’s killer?”

  Technically, Jane wasn’t wrong. But technically, she wasn’t right either. Or maybe technically she was both. This time-travel stuff wasn’t easy to follow. Either way, I saw where Jane was going with this as she went on to explain. “Look, Sabrina does not grow up to be a nice person. I know this from experience. I’m not sure how she became the killer she did, but I’m sure her mother’s deep involvement in H.O.P.E. had something to do with it. Maybe it even starts right here in this moment. So if there’s a chance we can avoid that by giving young Sabrina a somewhat normal childhood, then I think we should take it, don’t you?”

  I stared at Jane and sighed. It probably looked like I was considering a decision, but I’d already made up my mind and was just stalling at this point.

  After several seconds of taking in all of Jane’s glare, I turned back to the others with my shoulders slouched. “Clarissa, I’m sorry, but you have to go home.”

  She looked up at me utterly confused. “What?”

  I could only shake my head at her with a remorseful grimace. “I thought I needed you for the plan but now I realize we’ll just have to pull it off without you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said with the same perplexed expression. “Why do I have to leave?”

  “It’s because she’s British, isn’t it?” Carlyle chimed in from the corner.

  Ignoring the hacker’s unhelpful outburst, I kept my eyes on Clarissa and delivered the news bluntly. “It’s Sabrina.”

  The vague explanation did nothing to assuage her confusion. “What about her?”

  “If this thing goes sideways then we’ll be in some serious trouble. Like, lock us up and throw away the key kind of trouble. And I couldn’t live with myself if you weren’t there to take care of your daughter.”

  The zest in Clarissa’s face faded as she sat back in her seat. She wasn’t defeated, as there wasn’t anything for her to lose, but the disappointment was there.

  I wanted to say more but her silence kept me from following up. Instead, Jane unexpectedly passed me by and placed a surprisingly sympathetic hand on the mother’s shoulder. “I know you want to make a better world for her. But right now that means a world with you in it.”

  Clarissa looked up at the silver-haired girl and nodded with an understanding smile. She then stood from her seat and gave everyone one last look. “Good luck, guys.”

  “I’ll walk her out,” said Reverend Tully as the two of them approached the basement’s exit together.

  That actually worked out well, as I figured the less Reverend Tully heard of this the better.

  Fred must’ve had that same idea, too, because once the two of them were out of sight he turned to me with a hungry grin. “So let’s hear it, Mr. Stone. What’s this plan of yours?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A couple nights later and we were back in Reverend Tully’s basement to go over the finer details of the plan. There were seven metal folding chairs gathered in front of the podium where I was standing and five people sitting in them. Each of them had been picked by Jane and me from the rather limited prospects of our local H.O.P.E. chapter and I took a deep breath while looking them over.

  The core of the heist team was, of course, me, Anna, and Jane, the only ones present who would be part of the actual field trip into the Butterfly building. Anna and Jane were sitting to the left side of the chairs, together, looking at me expectantly. I didn’t have any doubts Jane could pull off the kind of craziness necessary to break into Butterfly’s headquarters but I was worried about Anna. No force on Earth was going to keep her sitting this out, though.

  The other three people I’d chosen for the mission were Carlyle Hernandez, who wouldn’t be able to do any kind of physical help, but would be our main computer guy, Fred Otto, and a third fellow I’d found on the Internet with Otto’s help.

  Spencer Jenkins was a pleasant-looking black man in his twenties wearing a ball cap and suit. He was a Butterfly employee who had somehow managed to avoid being purged despite the fact his onli
ne persona hated them and everything they stood for. I’d talked with him for a few days while running his background. He wasn’t a member of H.O.P.E., but we’d decided to take a chance on him and believed he would be the key to all of this succeeding.

  “You all know why we’re here,” I said, taking another deep breath. “This is probably our only chance to actually make a serious difference in fighting Butterfly. Peaceful protests and activism can only go so far when the enemy is doing its very best to destroy the legal system which would keep it in check.”

  I didn’t like admitting that but the framing of innocent protestors as rioters was beyond the pale. Dozens of people had been injured in the Chicago march with quite a few still in jail. Butterfly was doing its best to play the victim and, worse, wanted the book thrown at H.O.P.E. There was even talk of making restrictions to the Internet and free speech as long as it could be “proved” there was criminal intent. It would be easy to end liberty if you made speaking against the corporations a criminal act in the first place.

  “Thanks to the efforts of Carlyle and Spencer, we have a map of the Butterfly building and know where their central server room is. During the field trip, we’re going to cause a distraction by making a fake fire, then insert our agents—Jane, Anna, and me—from the field trip to the room. The room has electronic locks as well as security cameras which Otto will have to disable by cutting the power to the entire building down in the storm sewers. The Butterfly building has its own emergency power system which is controlled by, thankfully, Spencer as well his partner. From there, Jane and I will upload a piece of spyware designed by Carlyle that will copy and send the information we need to a small server farm in Idaho. From there, we can sort through it for the goods.”

  “How do we know we’ll get anything good?” Otto asked. “You could end up downloading everyone’s lunch orders.”

  Carlyle ate a Snickers bar as he talked. “I’ve been trying to get into Butterfly’s servers for years and I have a bunch of backdoors but nothing which takes me to the stuff which would really get them. Those are all preserved in the Special Projects Division. It has all of Monarch’s records, Caterpillar Armaments, and some drug trial stuff, too. If there’s something hinky, then I suspect it’s there.”

  I shook my head, impressed with the old hacker. “That isn’t how they do it in the movies.”

  “Yeah, well, the movies are stupid,” Carlyle said. “Real hackers know you hack people, not computers.”

  “There will be Monarch troopers guarding the facility,” Jane said. “Even in the event of a fire. We’ll have to figure out a way to disable them.”

  “The fire is fake, right?” Anna asked.

  Jane paused. “Maybe?”

  I felt my face. “We’re going to have to work out every possible detail to this mission as we can. We’re going to have to practice every detail over and over again until we have it perfect. That’s also going to include preparing for every eventuality we might run into from being found out by Monarch to losing data.”

  “Like what happens when the field trip notices three of its students are missing?” Anna asked.

  I pointed at her. “Exactly.”

  “We need more people,” Otto said, shaking his head. “This is too small of a circle.”

  “We can’t,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Unfortunately, there’s a serious problem with adding more people to the heist and that’s the fact every new individual means there’s a bigger chance of things going spectacularly wrong. If one of us gets caught, for example, he could tell Butterfly about everyone else and then we’re screwed.”

  “Should we expect to be tortured?” Spencer asked, raising his hand halfway up.

  “Uh, maybe?” I asked.

  “Right,” Spencer said. “Thanks for this. I should probably get going. It was nice to meet you—”

  He passed by Jane, only for her to grab his arm. “Sit back down.”

  “Uh—” Spencer started to say.

  “I really advise you to do that,” I said, letting Jane do the intimidating necessary to make sure the group stayed together.

  “Ah,” Spencer said, looking into her eyes then at his arm. “Right, I’ll just get back in my seat.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I said, nodding toward him.

  “I’m not exactly in shape to do much running or fighting,” Carlyle said, shrugging. “If this gets down to fisticuffs or parkour, then we’re screwed.”

  There was no chance Carlyle could lose the weight even if we were able to devote ourselves to it rather than planning for our mission. Carlyle’s use for the mission wasn’t in his physical prowess. “We’ll need you in electronic contact with the rest of the team—a van outside of the main building where we’ll rendezvous when everything else is done.”

  I could tell Carlyle wasn’t happy about that, but I wasn’t going to change my mind. The more everyone had to depend on everyone else getting out, the more likely no one was going to chicken out or betray us.

  “I’ve got another question,” Anna said.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we sabotage the entire computer network while we’re there,” Anna said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Excuse me?” I said, feeling like I’d lost control over the conversation.

  “Is exposing Butterfly enough?” Anna asked. “I mean, yes, it’s possible there’s going to be enough stuff to bring them down, but what if it’s not? They control the government and media so they’re going to try to spin whatever we reveal. If we take time to sabotage their information while we’re there, then we can do an immense amount of damage to them which will make the reveal even more powerful.”

  I found myself hesitating before responding, even though I shouldn’t have. A part of me agreed with Anna. We knew Butterfly had the potential to destroy the world and was only going to get more powerful from this point on—so powerful that the United States would be unable to dismantle it once things got to the point of it becoming a threat. Why not destroy Butterfly’s computer records and hopefully do enough damage to actually kill the company rather than just wound it?

  The immediate answer was it would cause widespread havoc and destroy millions of lives. People who depended on Butterfly for basic infrastructure would be left without homes, finances, or services. That was assuming, of course, all their information wasn’t backed up in several different places. The likelihood of that made me decide Anna’s plan was impractical more than the immorality aspect—which bothered me to no end.

  “We can’t vilify ourselves,” I said, simply. “If we did destroy their records, then it would become our word against theirs. They would also be able to shift the blame to us rather than themselves. People would be so upset about losing the food from Butterfly’s subsidiaries and their banks, even if we could wipe it out permanently, that they’d ignore whatever they’ve been up to. We want the government and people to move against Colin Riley. That way we can break them up and weaken them as a force in politics rather than just try to wipe them out—which wouldn’t work anyway since if they do have backups, they can use them to rebuild what was lost in only a few days.”

  “Besides, I don’t want to be a terrorist,” Carlyle said, snorting.

  Anna didn’t respond, but her reaction was less than sympathetic. “What happens if it doesn’t work, though? If it does go down like I said?”

  “Then we cross that bridge when we get there,” I said, simply. “Any questions?”

  There were a lot of questions and I couldn’t blame anyone for having serious doubts about the plans. We were running on a lot of assumptions and it was my job to pretend we had an answer for everything which might come up. I assumed that was leadership, although I didn’t particularly want to be anywhere near the role given the specter of the Scorpion still hanging over our heads.

  No, I refused to let the idea I was going to become a monster influence me. I couldn’t be tricked into becoming the Scor
pion. This wasn’t a situation where I could accidentally become a monster. I had to make a choice to become a monster and as long as I had that choice and didn’t make it, I was going to be fine.

  We spoke for the better part of an hour before I decided to bring the meeting to an end. We would need to set up a practice area to get our drills down as well as get the equipment necessary for the job. That would require money we didn’t have, but that was a small problem compared to all the other issues we faced trying to break into the world’s largest megacorporation’s headquarters.

  Before we could actually break up, there was a knocking at the door to the basement.

  “It’s Monarch!” Anna shouted, jumping to her feet and pulling out a gun hidden in the back of her pants underneath her sweatshirt.

  My eyes widened at the weapon. “Where did you get that?”

  “This is America!” Anna said, as if it was something to be proud of.

  “Put that away!” Jane growled, offended at Anna’s lack of gun safety. “It is tactically useless and dangerous for you to use without training.”

  Anna looked embarrassed but, reluctantly, handed it to her.

  Jane took it without a word.

  “Hello?” I heard a voice beyond the door speak. It was feminine and familiar, immediately calming the situation.

  “Christine?” I asked, walking to the door and opening it. To my relief and surprise, she was on the other side and alone. She was wearing a yellow raincoat, soaked to the bone, and I could tell it had to be storming outside badly. Jane said that was because the world’s environment was beyond repair now thanks to the corporations having removed all evidence of climate change. I found that a bit much and noted even in my father’s time things had been getting bad.

  Refocusing my attention on Christine, I tried to hold my temper at how badly things were already with our supposedly secret plans. Who had told her about this meeting? I’d deliberately left her out of the loop in hopes of keeping H.O.P.E.’s leader out of danger.

  “Hi, Robbie,” Christine said, frowning. “We need to talk.”

  I turned back to the rest of the group. “Jane, take over for a bit.”