The Warning

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Are you sure you’re not connected with WikiLeaks?”

  Marko snorted. “Hardly.”

  He pushed opened the double doors and walked out of the kitchen. “We’re an Organization without a name in order to help protect us from being discovered.”

  They entered the main room of the strip club. The building’s décor led Nikolai to believe he’d entered an abandoned palace.

  The first thing to catch his attention was the Islamic art painted over every inch of the walls. His wandering eyes were drawn to the worn carpet. It appeared to be one large Persian rug over the entire floor. Battery-powered forty-watt bay lights were strung up on cords like festive accents, tied around gold columns, giving the room a cool white glow. The floor of the main stage was made of glass, with a large mirror covering the wall behind it. Strapped to each golden column were sticks of dynamite equipped with detonators. When he noticed the explosives, he made a mental note to stay clear of them.

  Parked on either side of the room, facing the wall, were two brand-new jet-black Jeep Grand Cherokees with solid black windows. They were the fastest, most powerful jeeps ever made. Nikolai had researched those exact models when shopping around for a vehicle, though the jeeps were well out of his price range. They were equipped with Street Racing Technology and four-wheel drive. Unlike most cars of the Going Green era, these monsters were fueled by diesel for extra power. They could go from zero to sixty in five seconds, and the front suspension brakes made perfect emergency stops. With 3,500 pounds of towing capacity, they could accommodate several passengers and still make a fast getaway. Powered by a 6.1-liter HEM V8 engine grinding out 420 horsepower and 16-foot torque, they were hardly built for carrying groceries.

  Triangular-shaped iron grills were welded to their front ends. They reminded Nikolai of cowcatchers on old steam trains. He wondered how Marko was able to get the jeeps inside, until noticing the size of the entrance doors. The wide, arched double doors provided just enough room to drive the vehicles through. But why inside?

  “For years,” Marko went on, heading toward a Tibetan table with a laptop on it, “the Organization has uncovered injustice done by our governments.”

  “Our governments?” he inquired.

  They passed by a beefy man and an older woman, surveying security monitors at a nearby table. Another woman jumped off the edge of the main stage to join the crowd trailing them.

  “Americans aren’t the only ones keeping watch on their leaders,” Marko explained, approaching the computer. “No one knows exactly where or when the Organization started, but it’s worldwide, and you’d be amazed at how many of us exist.”

  Nikolai stopped next to a large ottoman behind the table. “With so many people involved, aren’t you concerned someone might get caught and expose the whole thing?”

  Marko shook his head. “We’re a family, but we don’t know each other. We know the Organization exists, but like God, it’s invisible. The people in this room are merely a portion of it. If any of us get caught—and it has happened—and they talk, they’d only rat out the few people known to them, if that. I’m only associated with a handful of people in this room.”

  Nikolai glanced back at Kip.

  “Most of us live in different states, living different lives. No group is linked to another and no one knows the real name of the person working next to them.”

  “So,” he said, “you changed your name to a wholesale store?”

  Marko showed off his best feature when he smiled. “It’s just a temporary name. I don’t have a real one anymore. Like the rest of us, we’ve erased our records, birth certificates, medical histories, passports, social security numbers, and driver’s licenses and replaced them with fakes. To the rest of the world, we don’t exist.”

  “What does this have to do with Jade?”

  Marko opened the plastic bag and slid the MIR card into his hand. He held it up as if Nikolai had never seen it before. “This. Jade was a very special person to us. She wasn’t part of the Organization, but she was our friend. I first met her in San Francisco years ago, after she left home. She worked as a—”

  “A tattoo artist,” he cut in. “She told me that when we were together. She lived in California until she was twenty-four, then moved back to New York. She never mentioned you.”

  “No,” Marko said. “I wouldn’t think she would’ve. She was quite the carefree kind of chick, the opposite of what I’d expect from the daughter of a politician.”

  “She didn’t get along with her father.” Nikolai was hurt that she’d kept him at arm’s length all this time, but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her. He only wished that she had trusted him enough to let him into this secret part of her life. “And she never spoke about her family to me.”

  “I know. And her stepmother wasn’t exactly on her BFF list, either.”

  “Why did she come back? What brought her back to live with people she couldn’t stand to be around?”

  “The answers are on this card,” Marko said. “That’s all I can say at the moment.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me; it’s best if you see it for yourself.”

  He huffed. “Okay, Mister Tight Lip, what can you tell me?”

  Marko smiled again. “She told me about you. You gaffed her heart.”

  He swallowed hard, sending his heart back into his chest. “Jade knew who you really were?”

  “I told her, yes. I tried bringing her into the Organization, but she declined. It wasn’t until last month that she texted me, telling me that she’d gotten the evidence we’d been waiting for. But first we needed the records to expose everyone involved.”

  “What evidence? What records? Expose who that’s involved in what?”

  “This,” Marko said, picking up a thick file from the table. “This is half of the puzzle, and this …” He held up the MIR card in his other hand. “… is the other half. We needed both to expose the truth. Without one or the other, we’d have nothing.”

  “Where did you get the file?”

  “Hear about the bank?” Kip said from behind.

  Nikolai turned to him, having forgotten he was there. “You’re the guys who robbed the bank today?”

  “Yep,” Kip returned. “And we’re damn lucky to have gotten away. Jade was friends with the daughter of a police captain.” He pointed to a young woman standing nearby. “Jeri was willing to help buy us the time we needed to find the file.”

  He turned back to Marko. “You’re seriously a bunch of crazy fuckers.”

  “You have no idea,” Marko said, inserting the card into the laptop’s optical MIR drive. “Jade got this evidence somehow. She explained to me yesterday that once we stole the file, she’d bring this card to us. But she …” He stopped himself.

  Pain flickered in Marko’s eyes. He cleared his throat and shifted them directly to Nikolai from the monitor screen. “She was murdered.”

  The agony of her death twisted his heart into a knot. Just hearing about her murder made his eyes well up. A deep quiet dropped like a bomb throughout the room.

  Marko put on his reading glasses again and leaned over the screen with a bewildered expression. “Shit.”

  “What?” Kip asked, walking around the table. He took one look at the screen and let out a hiss. “Goddamn. Now, that’s a mess.”

  “There’s something wrong with the card. It’s scrambled,” Marko said.

  “How are we gonna fix it?”

  “Let me see,” Nikolai said. Marko rotated the monitor towards him. Jumbled pixels of a still-frame picture dominated the screen. “I hate these shitty MIR cards.”

  Marko frowned.

  “Something must’ve happened to it while I was on my way here.”

  “What could you have done to it?” Kip inquired.

  “You don’t wanna know what I’ve been through in the past hour.”

  “Can you fix it?” Marko asked hopefully.

  “I can try. It’ll take time, but
I’ve dealt with broken MIR cards before.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I decode computer viruses.”

  “It was him,” the beefy man said from his computer. “I bet it was him who took out our viruses.”

  “You tried getting into the computers this entire week?” he said, stunned.

  “I’m afraid so,” Marko admitted. “We’ve been hacking into computers so we could e-mail footage recorded on the card to the public. But hacking became nearly impossible. The whole process turned into a big mess.”

  “I’ve been busting my ass cleaning it up,” he said, then grinned. “But you brought me a lot of business.” He rotated the monitor back as he went around to the keyboard, where he took a seat on a red velvet booth with two bronze camel sculptures behind him. “Give me some time,” he said, his fingers dancing over the keys.

  “I can see why Jade fell hard for him,” a woman murmured to Jeri.

  “I know,” she whispered back. “He’s totally Baldwin.”

  Not long into the job he realized it would be no easy task. He started to doubt that he’d be able to unscramble it as he promised.

  This is half of the puzzle, and this is the other half. We need both to expose the truth. Without one or the other, we have nothing.” He recalled Marko saying.

  If he couldn’t find a way to repair it, they would have nothing.

  Knox held his 9mm handgun at his side when he cracked the door and slipped through, entering a dimly lit room. Closing it gently behind him, he crept inside, hearing a low beep coming from a heart monitor. No one but a man sleeping on the bed occupied the room. After a quick scan, he holstered his weapon and approached him. There was a bandage wrapped over his nose, and his eyes were bruised from the trauma of surgery. Another bandage wrapped his chin. The man appeared to be heavily sedated.

  He leaned over to examine his face more closely. Even though his face was unrecognizable, he knew the man was Douglas Crawford.

  The door opened just before the lights went on. He pulled his gun and pointed it at the intruder. “Shut the door.”

  The man backed up and shut the door, nearly dropping the clipboard he held.

  “What’s your name?” Knox demanded.

  “D-Doctor Novak,” the man answered. “I’m a surgeon.”

  “Take a seat, Doc.” Novak complied, taking a seat in the only chair available. Knox lowered his gun. “Is this man your patient?”

  The surgeon glanced at the unconscious man beside him. “Y-yes. Who are you?”

  “I’m the guy with the gun,” he said coolly. “And because I’m that guy, you need to answer my questions.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “This is Douglas Crawford, correct?”

  Novak nodded.

  “When did he come here?”

  Novak clutched the clipboard so tightly his knuckles turned as white as his coat. “He checked in last month.”

  “What kind of surgery did you do on him?”

  “He wanted a full facial reconstruction. He … he wanted to look like someone else.”

  “Do you have a picture of who he wanted to look like?”

  The man nodded.

  “Show me. Now!”

  Novak jumped and brought up Crawford’s chart on his clipboard. After a few taps with his stylus, he turned the board around for Knox. The detective took a couple of steps toward it and saw what he suspected. It was an image of Nikolai Crowe.

  Chapter 18

  Under the subway bridge on 116th Street in East Harlem, Two, Nineteen, and Four of the Alpha models fought against four Betas. The Betas had found them living among the homeless in a nearby alley. A fight had ensued and escalated into the street. Traffic had stopped, accumulating a line of cars and spectators in both directions. A tourist captured the event on a handheld camcorder.

  With so many people around, the Betas couldn’t use weapons, ruining the opportunity to destroy the Alphas swiftly. Programmed not to discharge any guns in the off-chance of hitting a human, the Betas resorted to their bare hands. One sent an Alpha airborne after the earlier model charged him. Her heavy body hit the street, breaking the concrete before she rolled. Another Alpha crashed into a bridge column as two Betas surrounded a single Alpha and closed in. The pair didn’t notice Seven and Nine snatch handguns from their holsters until it was too late.

  Seven and Nine didn’t give the Betas a chance to react before shooting them repeatedly. Onlookers scattered, running down the street like frightened deer. The remaining Betas charged, but Ebenezer was quicker. He snatched a rocket rifle from one of the dead Betas and aimed it at the pair. The rocket plunged into the stomach of one and sent her into a parked car. She crashed through the passenger side and ended up in the driver’s seat. The rocket exploded, bellowing smoke and flames from every opening of the car. Stewart fired repeatedly at the last Beta, slowing the charging Replica as the rounds ripped through his body. He stood frozen, never releasing the trigger until the Replica collapsed at his feet when multiple bullets finally broke through his skull. He looked over at Ebenezer and shrugged.

  After the last Beta fell, the other Alphas approached. Ebenezer turned to them. “We have to act fast. Stewart.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You and Four put out that fire before the car explodes, and get whatever’s left of the body.”

  “On it,” Stewart said, rushing off.

  Ebenezer turned to the others. “It’s time. We need transportation.”

  “They came in a van, parked a block down,” Two replied.

  “Drive it under the bridge. We need to load the bodies into it. And hurry.”

  With a nod, she ran up the vacant street to fetch the vehicle.

  “What do you want me to do?” Nineteen offered.

  The question made Ebenezer realize he’d taken on the role of leader. “Once the bodies are in the van, you’ll need to strip them of their uniforms.”

  With the bodies of the dead Replicas loaded into the van, Ebenezer sprayed a mist on one and used the special magnifying glass to read off its hidden number. He took the dead Replica’s communicator. “This is Forty-oh-Five, reporting.”

  He waited a beat before a voice came on. “What’s your progress?”

  “We’ve eliminated models Two, Four, and Nineteen.”

  “Standby for location.” Silence came. “We’ve located you at 116th Street, in East Harlem. Is that correct?”

  Just as Ebenezer surmised. The Betas were tracked through chemicals in their blood. Hiding the bodies under the subway bridge kept the lab’s satellite from finding them.

  “Yes,” he answered. “We’re in the process of loading the bodies into the van and leaving the area. I request that we bring the bodies back ourselves.”

  “Confirmed,” the voice agreed. “You may bring the bodies back for disposal.”

  He smiled. “Affirmative.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  * * * * *

  Knox stared at the picture of Nikolai Crowe before raising his eyes to Novak. “Wake him up.”

  Novak walked around to the other side of the bed and switched off the IV drip. “There. It won’t take long before he wakes.”

  Knox pointed to a chair with his gun, gesturing for him to return to his seat. “When did you become a plastic surgeon?”

  “Two years ago.”

  “Only two years? Still have a mountain of school loans to pay off, I bet,” he said.

  Novak took a seat and shook his head. “I don’t understand. Where are you going with this?”

  “You must be paying a lot, huh?” At his mystified expression, Knox changed the subject. “When did Crawford have the surgery?”

  “October second.”

  “Who else was involved with the operation?”

  “No one. I even acted as the anesthesiologist. He wanted only me involved. I knew the work wouldn’t be too much to handle on my own.”

  “Why is he here now?”

/>   Novak opened his mouth as though to speak, then snapped his jaws shut.

  “Don’t play stupid. I know this was no routine job. A man comes in wanting to look like someone else—and you ought to know by now who it is. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the news lately. You didn’t find it odd that this man gave you an actual photo of someone—no one famous, only some random kid—and said, ‘hey, make me look like this?’ It didn’t raise any red flags?”

  Novak lowered his eyes.

  “You’d best start talking. I’m not an idiot. I know you were paid under the table to do the operation. A young plastic surgeon like you, fresh out of med school, can be tempted by the lure of quick cash to pay off those never-ending loans. Wasn’t that the reason you were chosen, because you would do it without any questions?”

  “I know who you are, Detective Knox,” Novak said, insolently. “I have watched the news, and there was more than just my work on it. You’ve been suspended for shooting an officer.” He stood with bravado. “You’ve got no right to be here. I think you should leave before I call the cops.”

  Knox smiled. “Thanks for admitting your part in the murder of Jade Sho.”

  “You’re not authorized to be here,” Novak fired back. “You can’t hold anything I say against me without some hard proof and …” His voice trailed off when Knox produced a voice recorder from his coat pocket.

  He tossed the recorder on the sheet between Crawford’s feet. “You just said too much. Now listen up. You aided in the death of Mayor Sho’s daughter, and I don’t think he’ll care if I’m suspended or not. His interests lie with who killed her and anyone involved in making that happen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Novak’s knees buckled as he sank back in his seat.

  “I’m sure the mayor would want to hear the rest of the story, so finish it. Why is Crawford here now?”

  Novak looked at him and sighed. “He wanted to reverse the procedure. We made appointments for two operations. The second was done this evening.”

  Crawford must’ve come here right after the murder to reconstruct his face and have the scratches fixed, he thought. But why go to such an extreme to set Crowe up? Who’s he working for? “Tell me everything from the beginning. Was he with anyone else? How much did he pay you?”