I shake her again. “Lydia! I love you,” I say.
Finally, she stirs. “Get me some dirt,” she moans.
I rub my fingers on the coarse floor and then on her fingers. They’re soft, but they’re responsive. My shoulder aches and my right arm is numb, but right now, I don’t care. “Pull out the knife in my right leg,” she says.
9 Apprehended
Bob
“Brit has a rare genetic variant that gives her immunity to the virus,” I say again, repeating what the lab technician told me. “They aren’t sure if it’s a de novo mutation, or if it’s common. Her Mom doesn’t have it, but it’s on the chromosome she inherited from her dad anyway. They can’t find him anywhere—he’s out of the country somewhere.”
My project manager swears like I had something to do with the mutation. “What does dumb navo mean?”
“De novo.” I hate it when people get technical terms wrong—especially when they do it on purpose. “Brand new. Mutations can be passed down over generations, or they can show up in people brand new.”
Silence and a little static come over the line. Finally, he speaks again. “It’s going to take a lot of work to figure this out, Bob. We need to know how many people have this gene. We need to terminate Brit another way. There’s a lot to do.”
I’m a physicist, not a biologist. I really don’t want to get pulled into doing any kind of population biology—way too much uncertainty and way too many assumptions. And, I’m not feeling great about taking out Brit, either.
“Of course. I still have my mission with Ler.”
“This is higher priority. We may just have to take him out and be done with it.”
“I still have two more months on my timeline.”
The man swears. “I don’t care about your timeline, agent. There are other things at play here. Prepare a termination plan for the Sorenson girl and have it in my inbox by noon Monday. I’ll talk to some of our population geneticists here and figure out what we’ll need so that we can do a case study on this mutation. Adolar knows we don’t have time for this.”
He swears again. Something crashes in the background.
“Yes sir.”
“May your eyes be blue.”
“Aye.”
The call terminates. I lean back in my chair and repeat all his curses myself. He wants me to murder Brit—and to have a plan on how to do it by Monday. He’s going to take out Ler before finding out who he is. Something about it doesn’t seem right. It seems careless—rash. This isn’t how Sapphiri operate.
Not that it matters. I have to do what he says, or it will be my neck that goes next. It’s going to be a long weekend. And I still don’t have a follow-up date with Pearl.
I pull out a paper and list the things I know about Brit. I know a lot about her. The task is tedious, but it’s standard protocol, and the Sapphiri will want all my work to be appropriately documented.
A few hours later, a knock on my door wakes me. My neck is sore from sleeping bent over the desk. Next time I should work in my bed when I decide to take a nap in the middle of the job. I push myself out of the chair and look out the peephole in the door.
Pearl.
What is she doing here? How does she know where I live? I never told her—I’m sure of that.
I leave the door and retreat to the bathroom to take a quick look at the mirror. I look awful. My hair is disheveled, and my beard is matted against my face with bits of my lunch in it. I swear and return to the front door. There’s too much to fix for me to put any effort on it.
“Hi Bob,” she says in her cool alto voice. She looks like she just got home from work. She still has her badge on, and her workbag is slumped over her shoulder.
“Pearl. This is a surprise. Do you want to come in?”
“I told you, I don’t go into strangers' houses.” She laughs and shakes her head.
I step out onto the walkway and close the door behind me. “What can I do for you?” Thoughts fly through my head like a whirlwind. I want to find out more about Ler, even though that mission may be cancelled. I need to spend more time with Pearl, but I have a full weekend ahead of me to plan a hit operation. My mission with Pearl may be superseded anyway, which is something I’d really be disappointed about.
“Well.” She doesn’t smile. Her gaze is a challenge. “My friend has a boat, and he said I could take it around the lake this weekend. The problem is that I’m not sure I can figure it all out by myself, and I was wondering if you would go with me?”
She just invited me on a date. So backwards. “Just me?” I ask stupidly. My mind flashes to the sheets of paper sitting on my desk. I have a lot of tedious work that needs to get done this weekend. Spending time on a lake with Pearl sounds a lot better.
“Just you. Like, you know, a date?”
She’s acting a little intense.
“Which lake?” I ask.
“Saguaro Lake. It’s about a fifty-minute drive from here.”
“Sure. Yeah. That sounds great.” Why did she have to pick this weekend?
She laughs, and then she smiles. “Thanks Bob. I really appreciate it. And I’m glad you finally figured out my first name. I’ll meet you in the parking lot at 5:00 tomorrow morning.”
I’m an idiot, and I’m not getting up earlier than that to get any work done. I’ll have to make up an excuse and see if I can’t get at least a little done on Sunday.
* * *
I turn the wheel and somehow manage to get the truck straight. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but the darkness has nothing to do with how crooked the truck is in this spot. I’ve never driven a truck before, and I certainly have never driven a truck with a trailer. But, today I drove a truck and a trailer with a boat on it from Phoenix to all the way out here.
Pearl was adamant that I drive. Fortunately, this early in the morning the roads are clear, and we didn’t run into any trouble on our way.
I step out of the truck and stretch my legs. I roll my head around my neck. I’m sore from clutching the wheel for so long.
“Bob!” Pearl reaches in the back of the truck and pulls out one of the duffle bags she brought. “You’ll have to wear this swimsuit. My friend is really particular about what touches the seats in his boat.”
I look into the bag and see green swim trunks and a woven hat. Green isn’t in the color code for Sapphiri, but what Sapphiri is going to see me here and turn me in? Still, the request is bizarre. I’ve never met anyone who cared what clothes people used to sit in their boat.
Who cares? No one is going to find out that I’m here. I even left my tracking device back in my apartment so they would think I’m working all day.
“The changing rooms are over there.” Pearl points to a guesthouse at the other end of the parking lot. “It’s too bad you didn’t think to park next to it.” She laughs. I love her laugh. It makes me feel happy, even though there’s no reason to feel happy. I’m skipping work and potentially putting my life at risk to spend time with a Sapphiri target. But I don’t seem to care. I grab the duffle and go to change.
The swim trunks are weird. They’re a soft material, but they also have no pockets and are tighter than others I’ve worn. Even if I’d brought my tracking device, I wouldn’t be able to wear it. Even my smallest recording device would show. It doesn’t matter; Pearl’s not going to hurt me. I throw my other clothes into the bag and shove it into the back of the truck. I’m off the radar today. I’ll start planning to kill tomorrow, but for today I’m going to be a man on a date with a girl who is way too young for me. I’ll probably have to kill her someday, but that day is not today.
Besides, it’s about time I spent a day acting like this is my life. I intend to enjoy today and face tomorrow later.
And enjoy today I will. Pearl comes walking across the parking lot in a denim one-piece swimsuit. Pearl is totally hot. I feel guilty for betraying Cassi by looking at her. But, maybe not too guilty. Cassi and I broke up five years ago. Pearl is ten years too young for me
, but that doesn’t mean she’s not smokin’. Wow.
“What are you looking at?” She throws her bag in the cab and pulls out the keys to the boat. “You don’t like the suit?” She laughs.
“I like it.”
“Good, because you’ll be wearing it all day. Let’s go.” She winks at me, and I don’t take my eyes off of her.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We get into the boat and I watch Pearl as she maneuvers the boat out into the water. She does it naturally, and she laughs as the wind blows her hair behind her as we speed across the lake. The sun lights the rocks around us and our surroundings, and I’m sure it’s beautiful here, but I’m not looking at anything else except Pearl.
I should, though. If I’m going to have a chance again with Cassi someday, I really should be more careful how I spend my time with other women. Cassi got jealous of other women.
Pearl stops the boat and reaches into the glove box. Then she spins around and suddenly I’m no longer looking at her. I’m staring into the barrel of a pistol.
“Whoa!” I put my hands up. “What’s up, Pearl?”
She doesn’t laugh this time. “In that glove compartment next to you is a pair of handcuffs. Put your arms behind your back and put them on.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’ll be a dead man.”
Her hold on the gun is steady. She’s acting like she knows how to use it, and she’s positioned herself far enough away from me that I don’t think any of my moves will let me get near her before I get shot. Nor will I have success jumping over the side of the boat. She’s put us right in the middle of the lake. There’s no way I could swim anywhere without getting run over or shot.
“What is this about?” I say, stalling.
She motions with the gun to the glove box. The cold metal of the handcuffs fits against my wrists tightly, but I manage to snap them into place. Once I’m cuffed, she tells me to turn around, and I feel the cool of the pistol on my back as she gets a second set and cuffs me to the side of the boat. I slump down in the seat.
She sits across from me and crosses her legs, her tanned skin distracting me from my predicament. A little.
“Let’s get to the bottom of this,” she says. “This boat is brand new, so I’m sure it’s not bugged. You don’t have any bugs on you, do you?”
I shake my head, and it’s the honest truth. This suit she gave me didn’t leave any room for bugs.
“Before we move forward, I need to know if I can trust you,” she says. “One wrong move from you, and you’re dead at the bottom of the lake. Since you left your main tracking device back at your apartment, no one will find your body for a long time. If ever.”
I stare at her. “How do you know about my tracking device?”
“I broke into your account a few days ago. They switched to a new system, which was inconvenient, but not too hard to break. Actually, the new system was easier than the other one. It’s about time they made a mistake. I’ve been monitoring your activity for the past few days. I have your tracking device frequency on my equipment, though I didn’t bring it out here.” She sets the gun down on the seat next to her and stretches.
“You’re Sapphiri?”
“No, FBI. I was recruited in college and got a fake major—the whole nine yards. Anyway, I’ve been investigating the Sapphiri for a few months now. We know all about your little plot to wipe out the world’s population. My colleague and I discovered the virus two days ago. He died in a freak accident yesterday and now half of my case files have been deleted. Whoever is deleting the investigation will take me out next, and I don’t have a trail on them at all. And so, I’m going off the grid. But enough about me. Tell me, when are they releasing the virus?”
“The virus?” My swimsuit captor knows more than should be possible. Maybe this is what my supervisor was referring to last night when we talked about my mission. But the Sapphiri would never kill everyone. The virus is just for unique cases.
“The virus is just for small ops,” I say.
Pearl laughs and shakes her head. “I’m not talking about something like the murder of Brit Sorenson. I’m talking about the murder of every non-Sapphiri person on this planet. You’re telling me you don’t know about this? If they have the virus airborne, there will be no stopping it.”
The way she tosses out my current assignment so casually makes me cringe. She makes me sound like a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe she’s right. “Are you sure? You really think the Sapphiri would kill more than just a few meddlesome people?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know why. So, do you believe me or not?” She points the gun at my forehead, and I quickly decide she’s right. Brit was anything but meddlesome. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Still, the biggest thing the Sapphiri have done in the last three thousand years was to move to the US. Other than that, operations have been small as far as I know. Keep secrets, stay hidden, infiltrate the government, and follow every rumor about a portal to the Forgotten World. They wouldn’t change that, would they?
“Bob, it’s something worth killing five agents over. I searched the files. Every agent who started looking into the Sapphiri is dead. I’m actually not sure why I’m still breathing.”
“I guess I was thinking the same thing,” I say. “Having my hands tied up like this hurts a lot. Bodies aren’t made to sit like this.”
“Neither of us are in control of this situation.”
“No, but I’d rather be in your shoes right now.”
She laughs, and she kicks her sandals off so that she is barefoot. I like looking at her legs without shoes on. Stupid girl. She’s pretty and she took advantage of that to get me tied up. Stupid me.
Her eyes scan the horizon. It won’t be too much longer before other boats start to come out on the water, which means we’re running out of our private time together. That might mean the clock is ticking on my miserable life. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. “Can I trust you?” she finally asks again. “I think you can help me, and from the look on your face a few minutes ago, I believe you that you aren’t in on the plot to destroy the world.”
“Trust me?” If she knows so much about me, how can she ask that? I don’t have a life. My life belongs to people who are brutal and who are trying to get into a position of power.
“Yeah. I need a go at this before they kill me, and you know they will. I know too much. I almost called my boss about it, but I’m not sure where the infiltration of your people starts and stops. You don’t even know that. After seeing the case files for my colleague and several other agents, I’m sure I’m about as good as dead. You, on the other hand, are in a pretty precarious situation, too. They don’t trust you, not since you lost Karl. And you haven’t made any progress on Ler. And then Brit lived. Given all your rule breaking, you may be too high of a liability to keep around if they try and make a major move.”
“So what?” Besides the fact that she’s right.
“So, I’m proposing we work together, that’s what. We go undercover and figure out what the Sapphiri are planning. We find enough evidence and leak it out in a way where people will see it, and someone can do something about it. You don’t like your life. When I listen to you, I’m sure you don’t believe the propaganda you’ve been taught. They made a mistake training you to be a PhD. You’ve learned how to think, and you think that chasing after a two-thousand-year-old crown just might not be the best way to live.”
“But why risk your life on me? I could just tell you anything and then turn around and shoot you in the back.”
She smiles. “Well, if you did that, you’d have to explain to your superiors. And then you’d have to figure out why you were out here on the lake instead of back at the apartments like you were supposed to be. But that aside—you want this. You’ve wanted it for a long time. Think about the way you talk to the people on your system. Think about what you think about when your guard’s down. You’re up for this. You�
�re tired of people telling you where to be and when. And, you like people too much to kill all of them.”
She’s taking a big risk. Huge. But she is in a tough spot herself, whether or not she’s right about the Sapphiri wanting to kill everyone. I look into her eyes. They’re brown, like her dad’s. Soft eyes, calm. Even though her entire world is falling around her. She fooled me; I never in my wildest dreams imagined she was a secret agent. But, she isn’t joking around right now. She’s telling me the truth. I do want this. I do want to fight against the Sapphiri.
Pearl laughs. She really does trust me. Do I trust me?
“So, where to first?” I say, hoping it will be taking the handcuffs off.
“We need to save Brit’s life.”
Save Brit. Well, that certainly flips my weekend around.
“Then what?”
“Then we go to Pittsburgh.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you later.” Pearl spins the boat around to take it to shore. I’m going to be glad to get these handcuffs off, but I’m disappointed that she’ll be getting dressed already.
10 Able
Lydia
“You’re sure they will stay loyal to me?”
Guards, hundreds of them, leave the courtyard in careful lines, retreating back to their barracks.
“Yes, princess, they will.” Quint stands at attention, even though I’ve told him to relax three times. He believes all people should treat me with exaggerated respect all the time. I hate it, but if Quint thinks it’s important, it probably is. The guard standing next to the door also stands at attention, though at least Somrusee and Karl relaxed when I asked them.
I watch the guards go, wishing that I was as confident as Quint that they will stay loyal. A few hours ago they were organized against me, probably fighting for Arujan and control of the city. Now, just because we took the castle and executed the guard leadership, will they really follow orders from Quint? Well, from Quint through me?
The Sapphiri Page 9