by Aman Gupta
Vik quickly got in the car, and they drove away.
“What happened?” asked Emily. “Did you find her?”
“I lost her,” said Vik.
This was the first time that he had thought entirely about Katie ever since he lost her couple of days ago. He was overwhelmed. Emily could see tears in his eyes when he was looking down, staring at the floor.
“But did you see her?” asked Emily.
“No. I heard her voice. It sounded like her. It was her,” said Vik.
“What happened? Tell me everything,” said Emily.
“It was supposed to be a trade. Something they want that I have, in exchange for Katie. But things happened. I lost,” said Vik.
“Lost? Maybe I am missing something. What else?” asked Emily.
“She had run away. Now thanks to me, they got her again,” said Vik.
“Who’s they?” asked Emily.
“Anton and whoever he’s working for,” said Vik.
“Anton? You mean that nut job who attacked Morrow?” asked Emily.
“Yeah,” said Vik.
“What’s that guy’s issue with you? First, he wanted the safe. Now, he got your daughter,” said Emily.
“He is working for someone who knows a lot about me,” said Vik. “I thought it was Anthony, but a friend told me that Anthony had a partner.”
“Do you think you’ll see her again?” asked Emily.
“Yes,” said Vik. “I still have something they need.”
“I thought only the safe was worth protecting,” said Emily.
“No, its contents are worth protecting,” said Vik.
Emily smiled for a second. “Wait, so that day, they didn’t get the right safe?”
“No, they did. Anthony had seen it coming. He switches safes. I didn’t know until later,” said Vik.
“Phew! That’s a huge load of my mind,” said Emily.
“Wish I could say the same,” said Vik.
“You had once told me that the contents of the safe could recreate another 1/1. What was in that safe?” asked Emily.
“It’s better you don’t know, but yes, it is potentially that dangerous. And hence valuable to the right person,” said Vik. “Drop me at my home, and then go to your restaurant like nothing happened.”
“They have been asking me your whereabouts, and Emma’s. Why?” asked Emily.
“She followed me,” said Vik.
“Ah, so that’s why you lost,” said Emily.
“What do you mean?” asked Vik.
“You had two people to care about instead of 1. It changed the odds,” said Emily.
Vik shook his head.
“Tell me, I’m wrong,” said Emily.
Vik shrugged a couple of seconds later.
“Thought so,” said Emily.
She dropped him at his home. She kissed him on the cheek.
“Next time, take me with you,” said Emily.
“And here I thought you said changing the odds was a bad decision,” said Vik, and got out of the car.
She waved goodbye as she smiled on hearing him say that, and drove away.
Vik bent down on the porch to get his phone hidden under a plant and unlocked his house using this palm. He was glad he had switched to a biometric lock after Atlantis. His fingers and arms were hurting like hot lead. The surroundings were quiet. He could hear every footstep he took. He went to his bedroom.
After taking a quick shower, he accessed the secret tunnels through his study and went to the central hub. He put the chip back in the safe and returned to his house. Laying on the bed, he wanted to fall asleep but couldn’t. He was in grueling pain, both mentally and physically.
He turned on his phone. He was ready for it to ring. His eyes were wide open while his determination was stronger than before. He might have lost the round, but at the end of it all, he was now against an enemy he had outsmarted before.
Chapter 19: Second Chance
Emma had been back for two days now. In the evening, on the second day, she was discharged from the hospital. Being a universal recipient, both Joey’s and Kate’s blood was now flowing in Emma’s veins. Eric tried to question Emma about her impromptu trip but was shut down every time by everyone else. He visited Vik at his home multiple times only to find it locked. Vik wasn’t answering his phone either. As they were heading out of the hospital, Kate noticed Vik’s car parked on the roadside. She pointed it to Eric.
“I called his phone, but he’s not answering,” said Eric.
“Who, Vik? Maybe he wants to be left alone with all that’s happened,” said Emma.
“What all has happened?” said Joey.
Emma looked petrified. She fumbled for her next word.
“I...I...I meant with no news about Katie,” said Emma.
“Yeah, I really thought we’d find her by now,” said Kate.
“It’s not like he’s doing anything to find her. He can’t just sit around and expect to find her,” said Joey.
“Whoa! What’s gotten into you?” said Emma.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Joey.
“I know,” said Emma as she put her hand on his shoulder.
“That car wasn’t around earlier,” said Kate.
“You drive Emma home. I’ll catch up with you guys,” said Eric as he headed back towards the hospital’s entrance.
“I’ll come with you,” said Kate.
“I want to meet him, too,” said Joey. Emma came along as well.
“Guess we’re all going back inside,” said Eric.
As they were heading back into the hospital, they saw Vik coming towards them, exiting the building. They scrambled to hide for a millisecond before standing their ground. Vik approached them with a straight face, seemingly lost. Almost as if he was looking through them.
“Hey,” said Emma, stopping him at the front entrance staircase.
He stopped and looked at her. He glanced at her arm and then her face. She looked good from the last time he had seen her. He didn’t reply.
“Where have you been? I called you multiple times,” said Eric.
“Been a little busy,” said Vik, with a stern look.
“With what? Katie? Did you find a lead?” asked Joey.
Vik looked at Emma, who was a little nervous. She shook her head silently.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” said Vik. “Had gone to get my car back.”
“We’re here to help in case you do hear about her,” said Joey.
“Don’t I know it?!” said Vik. “Listen, I need to go. I’ll see you all later.”
“Okay,” said Eric.
As he reached his car, Kate went up to him, alone.
“What are you hiding?” asked Kate.
“Nothing,” said Vik.
“You don’t get to cast me out when you’re finding her. I want to find her too. Probably more than you,” said Kate.
“Good to know,” said Vik.
“Something happened, didn’t it? Emma’s story has a lot of red flags,” said Kate.
“If you’re asking me to tell you why your friend is lying to you, sorry, I’m not interested,” said Vik, unlocking his car.
“There’s only one person in this town she would lie for. I’m looking at him,” said Kate.
“Well, if something did happen, and you don’t see me ecstatic or my daughter with me, I would be careful on how to go about it if I were you,” said Vik.
“What happened? Tell me honestly,” said Kate. “I’ll do anything to get her back. You know that.”
Vik looked at Eric, Joey, and Emma, who were looking at them, standing thirty feet away.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Kate. “I won’t tell them anything.”
“Drop by later,” said Vik.
“Your place?” asked Kate.
“Emily’s,” said Vik. “After hours. Alone.”
“Okay,” said Kate.
Vik sat inside the car and drove away. Kate returned to
the group, walking nonchalantly. Eric and Joey asked about the conversation, but Kate shrugged, telling them that she was engaging in a casual conversation and couldn’t find anything to ascertain his behavior.
“I’ll drop Emma,” said Kate.
“Okay,” said Joey.
Joey and Eric left for the police station, while Kate drove Emma to her home. Emma realized Kate wanted some time with her alone to know more about what had happened over the weekend. Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to know anything from Emma, as she already had made plans with Vik.
“Go ahead. Ask,” said Emma.
“No, it’s okay,” said Kate.
“Please ask, as I want to talk to someone about it,” said Emma as she had a hint of tears in her eyes.
“Okay. What happened?” asked Kate.
“He lost her daughter because of me. We had gone to TS – 17. He told me to go back, but I didn’t. I got caught, and he couldn’t save his daughter because he was too busy saving my life,” said Emma, sniffling.
Kate was shocked for a minute. A thousand questions were knocking on the door in her head, but one of them was more important than the rest.
“Did you see her? Katie?” asked Kate.
“No,” said Emma. “Anton got her.”
“Anton?” yelled Kate.
“Yeah, I was shocked too. He has her. There was something else. Vik was supposed to trade something for her daughter. In the end, Anton got away with both,” said Emma.
“Trade what?” asked Kate.
“I couldn’t see,” said Emma. “It all happened so fast.”
“That explains the gunshot wound,” said Kate.
Emma looked surprised.
“Don’t worry; the doctor didn’t betray your trust. I have seen many gunshot wounds in my life,” said Kate.
“Don’t tell anyone, okay? As far as they know, I got into an accident, and a rod went through my arm,” said Emma. “He doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“I won’t,” said Kate.
“I just hope whenever he sees me, I don’t remind him of the time he lost his daughter,” said Emma.
“Hey, if he and I can get on neutral terms considering, you know, then surely, you can, too,” said Kate.
“Stop trying to make me feel better. You suck at it,” said Emma.
Kate chuckled. Emma laughed too.
Kate dropped Emma at her home and went to Emily’s restaurant. There were still three hours left till closing time. After sitting idle for ten minutes, she ordered her dinner to scare away Emily’s stare.
The restaurant was unusually busy, which stretched the closing time by another thirty minutes. As the clock struck 11 PM, Emily officially locked the gate.
“Vik is coming, isn’t he?” asked Kate.
Her voice echoed in the room.
“He’s already here,” said Emily.
Vik made his way out of Emily’s office, with his laptop in his hand. He went to Kate and sat opposite to her.
“When did you get here?” asked Kate.
“Couple of hours ago,” said Vik.
“Then why did I wait here for the last 3 hours?” asked Kate.
“I wanted to see if you’re serious about offering your assistance,” said Vik.
“Well, then?” asked Kate.
“You showed up three hours early, so yes, you’re as serious as I want you to be,” said Vik.
“Are you going to fill me in?” asked Kate.
“I thought Emma already did that,” said Vik.
He opened his laptop and played an audio recording of Emma and Kate’s conversation in the car.
“You planted a bug in my car?” said Kate.
“Oh, you’re the one to talk!!” said Vik. “I just reciprocated what you did to me.”
“Fine. Now you know I know about Anton,” said Kate. “But why? Did he tell you who he’s working for?”
“Yeah, and after that, we had a nice dinner. He told me he loved me,” said Vik.
“You got weird fantasies, but okay,” said Kate.
Emily smiled, standing a couple of booths away. Vik turned around and gave her a look.
“What? I don’t like her, but she did get you there,” said Emily.
“I...I...Never mind,” said Vik.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Kate. “You called me here; you must have a plan.”
“Okay, so thanks to a tracker I planted on Anton, I think I know where they were earlier,” said Vik.
“What?!” said Emily.
She told Vik to scooch over and sat next to him. Kate and Emily were happy.
“It’s not that easy,” said Vik.
“I thought you said you know where they are,” said Kate.
“No, I said, I know where they were,” said Vik. “They might have gone somewhere else after ditching the tracker. I don’t know.”
“But you know their last location, down to a meter?” asked Emily.
Vik made a grave face and shook his head, which wiped the smiles off Kate’s face. Emily stopped smiling too. He could only hold his excitement for ten seconds.
“Yes!” said Vik.
“I’m going to kill you,” said Emily as she began choking Vik. Kate assisted, too, as he struggled to get them off.
After a couple of minutes of fun, Vik loaded his tracking program on his laptop.
“I placed a bio-transmitter inside the chip. Anthony had a stockpile of it,” said Vik.
“Won’t they find it?” asked Emily.
“Not unless they are specifically looking for it,” said Vik. “They would be interested in the chip. However, the bio-transmitter consumes itself within 72 hours once removed from its packet. It stopped transmitting yesterday. Roughly after 70 hours.”
“One more question, what’s this chip you keep referring to?” asked Kate.
“Some valuable thing that Anton had his eye on, and he knew I had it,” said Vik. “I stole it from Atlantis. Created a fake one identical to that.”
“What’s stopping them from coming here and getting the chip by beating the hell out of you?” asked Kate. “You know, hypothetically.”
“Couple of things. One of them is they don’t know if I switched the chip or never had it with me,” said Vik.
“That’s not much,” said Kate.
“On the contrary,” said Vik, looking away, as he knew much more than he was letting on.
“So, what was the last location?” asked Emily.
He showed them the program.
“That blue dot is us. The red dot is them,” said Vik.
“How do we get there?” asked Kate.
“I finally managed to hack into the National Road and Survey Management Association’s server and downloaded all the archives. They were dated four years ago,” said Vik.
“And?” asked Emily.
“See for yourself,” said Vik.
He zoomed in on that spot in the archives. Emily and Kate looked at them but couldn’t see anything.
“I don’t know how to read these. What should I be looking for?” asked Kate.
“There’s nothing. It’s supposed to be a barren land,” said Vik.
“What?!” said Emily.
“Yeah. Almost 400-450 miles away,” said Vik. “At least. Don’t know if the roads will even get us there.”
“I don’t get it,” said Emily. “Maybe they knew you were tracking them.”
“The real chip has a fail-safe mechanism. Any attempt to reverse engineer it would destroy its nano-circuits. It means the first attempt would always be an innocent one. Since they think it’s the original chip, they would’ve plugged it in at their headquarters or a secure location, at least,” said Vik. “I did something similar to the fake chip. They can’t tear it apart without destroying it completely. Now, if they destroyed the chip because they found the transmitter, that means they have access to sophisticated technology as well as top talent.”
“So they were there for sure,” said Kate.
&
nbsp; “There’s something else, though,” said Vik.
“What?” asked Emily.
“42 hours. That’s how long it took for the bug to stop transmitting from the first time it was accessed, roughly 36 hours after I activated the tracker,” said Vik. “Why wait that long?”
“You mean to say they waited intentionally?” asked Kate. “Why? Especially if it leads to their secret hideout.”
“Exactly. I mean, why would you keep a thing around when you know its fake?” asked Vik.
“So we don’t know if we would be a step ahead or walking into a trap in the middle of nowhere,” said Emily.
“Precisely. 72 hours isn’t that precise. It could well be 75 hours, which matches with our timeline. The timing is touch and go,” said Vik.
“The tracker? Was it hard to spot?” asked Kate.
“Not really,” said Vik. “It’s easy to locate when you’re looking at the circuits under a scanner.”
“But not anyone can do it?” asked Kate.
“No,” said Vik. “It took me three hours to create the chip. You need a sophisticated scanner to look at the circuits.”
“Let’s say they didn’t find it,” said Kate. “How does that change things?”
“It dramatically increases the probability of Katie still being there,” said Vik.
“Where exactly?” asked Emily. “In the middle of nowhere?”
“A location that’s supposed to be abandoned yet has sophisticated technology and abundance of talent. Does it remind of someplace else?” remarked Vik.
“Atlantis,” said Kate.
“Yes,” said Vik.
“Did Olivia ever mention any other Atlantis site?” asked Kate.
“She said she wasn’t aware of any. That doesn’t rule out its possibility. Anton and whoever he serves, clearly have a certain M.O. Setting up their base of operations in places that were believed to be abandoned. And with Josh..” said Vik, before stopping.
“With what?” asked Kate.
“Nothing,” said Vik.
Vik didn’t want to tell Kate anymore that he already had. He still had trust issues. He knew he was close to figuring out Anthony’s masterplan, which only he knew about. He remembered Olivia mentioned Anthony’s ambition to create a new world order. He still had so many questions about it, with no credible answers. Josh and Emulations were just the pieces of a precarious puzzle he needed to solve. Alone.