House of Midas

by Chloe Garner

  She gave him a slight smile, bemused. It was like watching a toddler try to catch a bird.

  “Leonard,” she said, using her frank voice. “I’m not here to negotiate. I’m not here to discuss options. I’m not here to listen to you at all, though I’ll admit it has been amusing to hear you, now, when you have no more power. I’m here to tell you what your option is.”

  It couldn’t have been more satisfying if she’d slapped him. His shoulders nearly found the back of his chair before he caught himself and leaned out over his desk again. He opened his mouth to speak, but she stood and the words, whatever they would have been, choked.

  She let her smile grow a fraction.

  “These are my terms. You can contact Troy when you are ready to sign to them.”

  She put the stack of pages on his desk and turned, letting herself back out into the front hallway without another word.

  The two assistants watched her with their very individual reactions. The woman, very used to being in control of who had access to the general and who did not, the gatekeeper and a person of some considerable power unto herself, was seething at being bypassed by so important a guest, but she had a straight face on, turning from Cassie back to whatever work she had been doing.

  The other assistant, a young man with a giant frizz of hair and a predatory look to him, watched her openly, not bothering to disguise the evaluating sweeps he made of her body. Before, she had bored him, but now he seemed aroused.

  The woman was normal, a standard pathology around power and control. The young man was complex, well beyond what she would have guessed from her limited human perceptions. The only thing that kept her from knowing quite factually what he was capable of was the shallow pool of data she had to draw from. She went to lean against his desk, putting her knuckles down to support her.

  “What do you see?” she asked, watching his eyes, the tiny muscles between his mouth and his cheekbones the way he swallowed.

  “You’re different,” he said. “I remember you.”

  She nodded.

  “I remember you.”

  This pleased him.

  There was violence in him. Terrible violence.

  “How long have you worked for Donovan?” she asked.

  The eyes barely shifted, the mouth spoke of deep, layered deception.

  “Forever,” he said.

  “What do you think of her?” Cassie asked, moving her body to one side to let him see the other assistant behind her. There was a dismissive smirk, but he didn’t say anything. She wanted to intervene directly, but Cassie recognized the fragility of the situation she would be leaving Jesse in. She turned to look at the other woman.

  “Do you carry a gun?” Cassie asked. The loathing there didn’t change.

  “Firearms aren’t permitted on base,” the woman answered. Cassie shrugged, continuing to speak loud enough for the young man to hear her.

  “Get one. I’d carry it full time, rules or no rules, but at least leave it at home. If he ever shows up at your door after eleven o’clock at night, shoot him in the face through the peep hole. You got it?”

  The woman’s gaze shot across the hallway to the young man and Cassie left. Plant the seed. Let it grow.

  It might be enough to stop it from happening.

  She’d done what she could do. She left and went to wait to see what happened.

  *********

  Troy went home late that night, well after everyone else. It was kind of like old times, trying to out-wait Cassie, but the stakes were so different, now.

  In the old days, after Cassie had been dropped from the jumper program but before Jesse had turned up, they would both work late, later, later, trying to be the last ones to head out, an informal competition to see which of them gave in first. He would have gone out drinking and dancing many nights, in those days, and she would call and his phone would go to voice mail, but some nights, many nights, they would both go home to his apartment together and spend the night lying in bed and talking until they fell asleep.

  It had been so different.

  Here he was, now, trying to out-wait her again, but mostly just hoping that she would go away and leave him alone, and terrified that she would do just that. She was out of control. He’d never felt that way about her before, and he didn’t know what to expect.

  Palta.

  His best friend wasn’t human anymore; he had no idea what she was.

  Olivia had called at eight and asked if he was getting dinner. He could tell from her voice that the rumor had reached her that something very important was happening, and that he was involved, but no one knew precisely what it was. They were just feeling the serious power currents roaming around base, and they knew that it had started when Troy had met with OSI.

  No one had seen Cassie.

  He hadn’t even needed to try to figure that one out, asking around without asking the real question. She’d have made too big a splash for anyone to keep it from him.

  He had no idea how she’d done it, and it was frustrating and mystifying and disorienting, because he knew it was something Jesse could do. Cassie had learned to do something Jesse could do.

  She was Palta.

  He spent a long time in the elevator after the doors closed without pushing the button for his floor, feeling dumb.

  It was his apartment. And at this point, if she decided to leave, she was going to summon the elevator with him in it. He wasn’t changing anything.

  He was just postponing.

  He didn’t know what he was going to find, but he knew he wasn’t ready to find it.

  He wasn’t ready for Cassie, and he wasn’t ready for an empty apartment.

  He wasn’t sure which of them would emphasize the newly-formed hole in his life more.

  He pushed the button.

  The elevator, new when the building had first been built at the very start of base construction, sighed into motion, reliable as an old friend, but no longer shiny and new with the promise of what the program represented, the innocent resources pouring into the base in the interest of scientific exploration.

  The program had never been innocent. He knew that. But it had felt like it.

  He didn’t know when it had stopped feeling like it.

  The doors opened at his floor and he stepped into the hallway. The door to his apartment was open.

  His hand went to his hip where his gun should have been, but of course it wasn’t there. Regulations.

  “It’s just me, Troy,” Cassie called. This didn’t make him any more relaxed, but at least he wasn’t missing his gun anymore.

  The hallway suddenly felt very long, and he was on the very edge of actually counting his steps as he made it to his door.

  And into his apartment.

  Cassie was sitting on the kitchen island, her face a mask.

  “They’re going to come for you,” she said.

  “We need to talk,” he answered. She shrugged.

  “And yet,” she said, hopping off the counter. “Get your affairs in order. Anything you’ve got going on, anything important. Get it squared away.”

  “What about Olivia?” he asked. She looked at him with a raptor-like intensity and he almost took a step back.

  “We’ll talk about that when it matters.”

  He wanted to argue, to tell her that it mattered now, that he wanted to talk about it now, but something kept him from it.

  She watched him with a benign curiosity, then started to walk toward the door, passing within inches of him.

  It felt so foreign. So sterile.

  “I’m still me,” she whispered, her mouth just a breath away from his ear, then she was gone, as if a silent gust of air had taken her. The hallway was empty, the elevator silent.

  He closed his eyes, steeling himself against all of it.

  He needed to think.

  Her warning was real, he understood that. And there were important things he was doing.

  Things he needed to get done.
<
br />   Things he needed to do.

  He went to bed.

  *********

  His phone woke him up at 4am.

  Someone knocked on his door seconds later.

  The phone rang again.

  He found a shirt and put it on, going for the door first.

  “Captain Rutger?” the young man asked.

  “Yes,” Troy answered.

  “I’m here to escort you to base,” the young man said. Troy sighed. His phone rang again.

  “Let me get into uniform,” he said with a sigh. “You have your credentials?”

  “Yes, Sir,” the young man said, stepping into the apartment. Troy sighed at him again, then went back to his room to change. He answered his phone as he was finishing the buttons on his jacket.

  “This is Captain Troy Rutger,” he answered the strange number.

  “I assume Airman Travis has come to collect you?” the woman answered.

  “If that’s the name of the kid you sent,” Troy said.

  “He will escort you to the General’s office,” the woman said. “Please come prepared for an audience.”

  An audience, he thought. General Thompson would have never called it that.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he answered.

  The line went dead. He frowned at himself in the mirror.

  That had been pointless.

  He would have gone along with the Airman regardless, so long as the kid remembered to bring his ID.

  This was a power play. Too early in the morning for anyone to have been up, naturally, and that was a small window of time. Any time after five, the base would start filling up with soldiers on early duty, officers who had things they hadn’t gotten done the night before. One or two in the morning and they would be dealing with the last stragglers of the office and lab staff wrapping things up.

  Four am.

  They were trying to disrupt him.

  He should have taken the opportunity that Cassie had given him. Something unexpected reminded him that he hadn’t done anything about Conrad yet.

  There was a stab of guilt over that, but he didn’t have time to deal with it now.

  Amazing that one of his staff being hired as a spy didn’t hit the top of his to-do list, but there it was. He had to keep moving.

  He put on his hat and went back into the front room where the young Airman was standing at ease.

  “Let’s see it,” Troy said. The young man held out a badge and Troy took it, remembering those days, right out of jump school. He’d joined the base as an officer, as a graduate of a collegiate-level service academy, but he’d been twenty-two, green as grass, and nervous with a perfectionist bent. He tried to see himself, now, through those eyes, at four in the morning, in his service dress uniform, probably bleary-eyed and maybe angry-looking.

  The badge was what he expected. No special distinction, nothing about him that Troy would remember even the next day, driving past a group of Airmen on base.

  “All right,” he said, handing back the badge. “Let’s go.”

  Airman Travis gave him a sharp nod and went to get the door for him, standing rigidly again as he waited for Troy to go through it. Troy would have rolled his eyes, except for how it would have made him feel, all those years ago.

  *********

  A long hallway with half-glassed offices on either side, dark, empty.

  A pair of secretaries, one man, one woman.

  Only the woman looked up as he approached.

  “Captain Rutger?” she asked. His internal response was sarcastic.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he answered.

  She gave him a sharp little nod and stood.

  “One moment,” she said. He put his hands behind his back and waited as she got up and walked around her desk to go into the General’s office. Troy wondered, again, just how many appointments General Donovan had at four in the morning.

  A full minute went by, and then there was a raised voice. The woman slid out of the office and closed the door behind her, giving him a sharp, angry look.

  “The General will see you now,” she said. Troy nodded and walked past her, pausing for her to step far enough out of the way of the door for him not to hit her with it.

  Donovan was sitting at his desk. In front of him were a series of stacks of papers, increasing in size as they went across his desk.

  “Troy,” he said. Donovan might have looked pale, Troy couldn’t tell. Donovan cleared his throat and straightened.

  “Captain Rutger,” he said.

  “Sir,” Troy answered.

  “You have some decisions to make,” Donovan said. “You don’t have much time, and the idea that you have options here should be considered an illusion. Is that clear?”

  Troy swallowed.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said.

  “Sit,” Donovan said.

  Troy took one of the two chairs in front of Donovan’s desk, noticing how cold it was in the room. He wondered if the heater was on a timer and it hadn’t turned on yet.

  “Your promotion to Lieutenant Colonel,” Donovan said, sliding the first page toward him. Troy looked at it suspiciously.

  His promotion to Major had been rushed, partially because of the age of the eligible scientists to lead up the larger labs and largely because it was important that he out-rank the jumpers. He was supposed to be at least five more years out from his next promotion, and he’d known that when he’d accepted Major.

  “Sign it,” Donovan said. Troy picked up the pen off the desk and read through the brief document, already signed by the relevant officers on base and the people in Washington, then took a breath, mentally shrugged, and signed.

  “Acknowledgment of risks,” Donovan said, sliding the next set over. It was six pages, and it was pretty explicit.

  “What is this?” Troy asked. Donovan raised an eyebrow at him, and Troy took a long look at the stack at the end of the desk. It was at least a ream of paper.

  “Fine, if I die, I die,” Troy muttered and signed.

  “Appointment of a temporary replacement at the lab,” Donovan said, passing him the next stack. Troy felt his eyebrows edge even higher.

  “You’re taking my lab?” he asked. Donovan shrugged, looking tired again. Troy shook his head.

  “I’m going to fight this,” he said. “I didn’t know where she was going to be. Not with certainty.”

  They couldn’t take his lab. That was the thing he’d spent the last six years of his life building. His accomplishment.

  His people.

  Donovan closed his eyes and sighed, letting his head drop.

  “You think if we were going to prosecute that, that it would be temporary?” he asked. “You need to understand. I don’t care. I don’t care about you or your ego or your career. I’m not here to negotiate or explain. I am not your buddy. I’m here to get your signature on all of these pieces of paper.”

  Troy gritted his teeth. They had Xi taking over the lab for him, which wasn’t a bad pick. He didn’t know who he would have chosen, but he didn’t hate the idea of Xi taking over, if someone was going to do it.

  He looked up at Donovan. Donovan looked back at him with cold eyes.

  Troy signed.

  “Standard non-disclosure,” he said, sliding it across to Troy. Troy read it.

  Looked up at Donovan.

  Gritted his teeth harder.

  He had a choice.

  He could decline to sign it.

  It would end his career. At this point, he knew it. It was already over, of course, but there was some suggestion that he could get it back. He just had to get through the rest of these.

  There had to be hope. He refused to believe otherwise.

  He signed. He ran the most confidential lab in the country, arguably the world, and this was a non-disclosure for people with access well over his head.

  No wonder he’d needed the promotion, too.

  Donovan sighed. Ran his hands over his slick hair, then shook his head and pushed the final sta
ck across to Troy.

  “I’ve had three lawyers going through it since she turned up here this afternoon. Jesse was brutal, and he’d only been here six months. She’s a predator,” he said with what might have been a shudder. “Just like we taught her.”

  Troy watched him hard, trying to get more out of it than that, then licked his lips and turned the first page on the last stack.

  Words hit him like bricks, words that didn’t make sense. Even for legal language, it was thick. He found his eyes crossing.

  “It’s all like this?” he asked. Donovan grunted. Troy shook his head, trying again. He needed his own lawyer to read this. He wasn’t going to have any idea what he was signing.

  “Full of contingencies and triggered clauses,” Donovan muttered.

  “Who wrote this?” Troy asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  Donovan gave him a sarcastic look, standing and walking toward one of the windows.

  “Who do you think?” he asked. Troy glowered down at the contract.

  “She’s different, isn’t she?” he asked the contract more than Donovan.

  Donovan said something, but Troy didn’t catch it.

  “She gave it to you?” he asked. Donovan didn’t answer. Troy looked at it again, flipping the page just to have something different to look at.

  His name was on it.

  She’d written this for him.

  “Can you control her?” Donovan asked.

  “No,” Troy answered, too quickly with too much truth. Four in the morning, he reminded himself, straightening slightly.

  “You’re going to have to learn,” Donovan muttered. “Quick.”

  Control Cassie.

  The thought had never crossed his mind. He didn’t have the first clue how to do it, or even why he’d want to.

  She wrote it. She put his name on it.

  He signed it.

  *********

  His first stop after the General’s office, via taxi, was his own apartment building, but Jesse’s apartment.

  The Palta had torched it at one point, managing to burn the entire interior of the apartment in just a few seconds without damaging any of the surrounding structure or apartments. The investigators from the base had been unable to recover all of the mysterious, wonderful things he might have been hiding there, and Jesse had disappeared.