House of Midas

by Chloe Garner

  And then Conrad called.

  The friendly man had been cold, clipped. Troy drove out to Cassie’s house with no small dread, worried that Conrad had discovered that he was in over his head and that things had somehow gone very, very wrong.

  Conrad was leaning against his car when Troy arrived, looking just as grim as he’d sounded.

  “What’s up, man?” Troy asked. Conrad shook his head.

  “Let’s get inside.”

  Troy looked at him, but Conrad only shook his head again. Hesitantly, Troy took the keys out of his pocket and went to the front door, putting the key into the dead bolt.

  “There isn’t a team of assassins or something in here waiting for me, is there?” he asked. He’d intended it to be a lighthearted joke, but it hadn’t come out that way.

  “They don’t know I’m here,” Conrad said. “They don’t know I’ve been talking to you like I have. Come on.”

  Troy turned the key and let them in, closing the door behind them. Conrad collapsed onto the couch.

  “Troy, if I’d known…” he said.

  “What’s going on?” Troy asked. Conrad shook his head.

  “I should have taken the job as the surf instructor,” Conrad said. “This just isn’t fun, anymore.”

  Troy waited, and Conrad scratched his head.

  “Okay. So we talked about you for a while. And then Cassie and Jesse, and how no one has seen Cassie for a while, now.”

  “Don’t know where she is,” Troy said. Conrad shrugged.

  “You shouldn’t tell me, if you did.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They don’t like having Jalnians around,” Conrad said. “Jesse’s work in the labs is just about nil, at this point. He won’t work with anyone, and no one in leadership is even trying to fix it. They keep putting him with the people who annoy him most, like they’re trying to keep him from doing anything.”

  “That isn’t how it used to work,” Troy said. Conrad shook his head.

  “No. I’ve heard that. It used to be that he helped make the biggest breakthroughs. But… Man, we don’t do anything, anymore. Even in the last few weeks, it’s slowed down again. Celeste is ready to go on strike, and I swear Benji is getting his resume put together. We don’t get anything from jumps, any more. I know they’re bringing it back, like they always have, but they’re just locking it away somewhere. When I ask when it’s going to come down to the labs, they just tell me that they’re still processing it, and it will get to us when it gets to us.”

  “Okay,” Troy said. Conrad shook his head.

  “Anyway. This morning. He wanted to talk about how to find Cassie. Pushed hard. I’ve never seen him so direct with exactly what he wanted from me. Mostly, he’s asking all of these roundabout questions and I’m guessing at what it is he wants, but this morning…” Conrad shook his head. “Where could she be? How would she be contacting you? If they wanted to find her through you, what’s the best way to do that? Is she particularly protective of you? Do I think that she would show up if you were in trouble?”

  He stopped there.

  Troy got it.

  “You think they’re going to make some kind of threat to me, to try to get her to show up.”

  “They were asking about when Jesse gets to the base and whether he spends his evenings in his apartment.”

  “I know that,” Troy said. “Don’t know why they’d think you do.”

  “Where he eats his lunch and where he parks his car.”

  “You do know that,” Troy said. Conrad nodded.

  “If I were going to try to ambush him, where would I do it?”

  Oh.

  “Wow,” Troy said. Conrad nodded. Troy shook his head. “No. They can’t hold him. Everyone knows that.”

  “What if they’re going to try to kill him?” Conrad asked. Troy shook his head.

  “Jalnians are an asset,” he said. “Don’t care how difficult they look from the outside, they’re an asset and everyone knows it.”

  “They’re an asset right up until they aren’t any more,” Conrad told him. “Right up until some bastard with a too-big ego decides they’re too hard to control and decides to wash his hands.”

  Troy shook his head.

  “You can even tell them I told you this. I’m not worried about Jesse’s or Cassie’s physical safety. You can’t hurt them, and you can’t hold them. I watched Jesse walk into a courtroom wearing arm and leg shackles and walk out on his own without anyone noticing he was gone.”

  Conrad was prepared to argue, but checked himself.

  “Really?”

  Troy nodded.

  “And it’s not even a little bit a secret. He comes and goes from interrogation cells as he pleases. He broke Cassie out of the hospital, where she was under guard. They don’t play by the same rules we do.”

  “How?” Conrad asked. Troy shrugged.

  “If I knew…”

  Conrad shook his head.

  “They seem really confident,” he said. “They’ve got a play planned, and it’s a set play. They think it’s good, but it clinches around them being able to get Cassie to turn up where they want her to be.”

  Secrets. Palta were people who hated to let secrets be. Cassie had ruined an entire civilization because she didn’t like the secret at the middle of it. Troy wondered if it were possible that the base leadership - and the ones above them - had realized this and were trying to do something to keep the two Palta from figuring out what was going on, on base.

  And Jesse knew. Sitting there, Troy realized that Jesse knew exactly, but in his absurd Palta way, he refused to tell Troy because it was a secret, and as much as they hated other people to have secrets, they treasured their own.

  And because he couldn’t show an interest.

  That part, at least, made sense.

  Cassie had an interest in Troy. Everyone knew that. And they were going to try to use that against her.

  “How would you do it?” Troy asked Conrad abruptly. “Talk it through. You know where I am. I’m making a nuisance of myself most of the time, anyway. You know that Cassie is going to show up if I’m in trouble, and more than anything, you want to make her materialize. That’s your mission. How would you do it?”

  “What’s out of bounds?” Conrad asked.

  Troy considered it.

  “Let’s start with nothing.”

  Conrad blew air silently through pursed lips.

  “The first question is whether I make it look like an accident or a threat,” he said. “If it’s an accident, she might not come, and if she does, she might not come with the right sense of urgency. I’d actually have to hurt you enough to threaten your life, or… well, at least tell everyone that that’s what happened, if I wanted to be sure she’d come. If I made a threat out of it, took you or something, made sure that she knew that she was the only one who was going to be able to get you back… She comes, and she comes fast, but she might come at me sideways. If I were convincing with an accident, I’d at least be able to guess that she’d come at me directly.”

  “Neither one of those ends well,” Troy said. Conrad shook his head.

  “Both bad for you.”

  “No,” Troy said. “Bad for everyone. Cassie’s got a temper. Always has. You add that to a new level of capability that you can’t even imagine? We’re talking some serious potential for a scorched-earth response. You, personally, might not actually be safe. And I’m serious about that.”

  Conrad blinked at him for a moment.

  “Didn’t see that coming.”

  Troy shook his head.

  “They won’t, either. They’re going to expect her to react like Jesse, because they’ve got some DNA in common, now. Jesse’s a scientist and a playful guy. Annoying as he is, it’s always a joke to him. Cassie is a soldier. One who just recently declared her independence from everything. She sets her own rules. I’ve seen this.”

  “So… What do you think she’d do, if they snatched you
?”

  Troy licked his lips.

  Considered his options.

  Thought, just for a moment, about what Jesse had said. They’d torn up his home. They wanted to control Jesse. And the third thing. They’d been a really good list of things, at the time. How could he forget the third thing?

  “We don’t find out,” Troy said. “Come on.”

  “What?” Conrad asked.

  “Call Minnie and tell her you’ve got a last-minute business trip. She have anything interesting she’s been wanting to do in Kansas City?”

  “Man, if I turn her loose there…”

  “Do it,” Troy said. “We don’t want anyone here that they can try to use to make us do anything.”

  “What?” Conrad asked again. Troy was on his way to the car.

  “We go scorched-earth, first,” he said.

  Conrad had his phone out.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days, I don’t think,” Troy said. Conrad nodded.

  “You’re the boss.”

  Troy thought about reminding the young man that he wasn’t, in fact, his boss. That he had absolutely no ties of loyalty making him follow Troy’s reckless lead. Conrad was already talking to his wife, though, and getting into the passenger seat of Troy’s car, leaving his own vehicle in Cassie’s driveway.

  Move fast. Move intentionally. Make decisions intending to win.

  Peterson had taught him that.

  If nothing else, he was going to make Peterson proud.

  *********

  They drove.

  As evening approached, they switched back and forth, trading who was napping for who was driving, stopping for gas and food as they needed to, paying with cash wherever they could. Troy felt like he was being paranoid, but Conrad encouraged him to be as careful as he wanted to be.

  “They were serious, man,” he said. “Gave me chills.”

  Troy shook his head, still having a hard time believing this was happening.

  Around dawn the next day, they reached Washington, DC.

  Troy was sitting in the passenger seat. He looked up the number for her DC office and called Senator Kate Greene. He didn’t have a direct number for her, obviously, and a staffer of some kind answered.

  “Senator Greene’s office, how may I direct your call?” she asked.

  “I need to speak with the Senator directly,” Troy said. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Troy Rutger, and I’m from Fort Greene.”

  “The Senator is always happy to interact with constituents when she can,” the woman said, “but I’m afraid she’s unavailable. Can I get you passes to tour the Congress building?”

  “It’s concerning the portal program and something that I consider to be a threat to the fundamental intention of that program,” Troy said. “If you can’t give her that message and take my phone number, is it possible for me to speak to someone who can?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid we aren’t able to pass messages to the Senator.”

  “The portal program is the most important thing on her agenda, is it not?” Troy asked.

  “She has lots of important initiatives, but the portal program is very important to her,” the woman said.

  “How would she react if she were to find out that someone were trying to sabotage it, and she failed to find out in time to prevent that because I don’t have the right phone number?” Troy asked.

  The woman hesitated. Troy waited.

  “Is this a whistleblower event?” she asked. “I have a place to route whistleblowers.”

  “Within the Senator’s office?”

  He heard her put her hand over the phone and speak to someone else for a moment. That was a good sign.

  “One moment, sir.”

  The line buzzed for a moment, the sound of not being connected to anything, then a man picked up.

  “This is Senator Greene’s aide, Malcolm Cunning. What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Troy Rutger, and I work at Fort Greene,” Troy said. “I need to talk to the Senator about a critical threat to the portal program.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Malcolm said. There might have been a suspended tone to it, like a space filler like he was writing something down. Troy could only hope.

  “Is this something that you can’t discuss with your normal supervisor?” Malcolm asked.

  “No,” Troy said, cutting that answer much shorter than it could have been.

  “And the military has no method for dealing with issues like the one you think you have?” Malcolm asked. Troy considered it.

  “No,” he said finally. “It has no protocol for base leadership deciding to make an entirely different program out of base resources, gutting all experienced or controversial staff, and making plans to kidnap officers to use as bait for other parties.”

  “Those are serious allegations,” Malcolm said, with that same note of pause, hopefully more writing.

  “They are,” Troy agreed. Conrad was grinning at the highway. Troy wanted to tell him to stop enjoying himself so much.

  “If I were able to get a note to Senator Greene, what, exactly, would you like her to know?” Malcolm asked.

  “That the portal program is at risk and that I need to meet with her as soon as possible to discuss it.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Troy Rutger,” Malcolm repeated.

  “That’s correct,” Troy said. “She might even know who I am.”

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Malcolm said, “if you can provide ID to prove it.”

  Troy paused.

  “Really?”

  Malcolm laughed, just a soft noise in the background.

  “Really,” he said. “Lieutenant Colonel Troy Rutger has had a bit of a skyrocketing career on the base, and it’s my job to know things like that.”

  “If I could prove that I’m Rutger, would that help get the message to Senator Greene?”

  “It would certainly make me less uncomfortable approaching her while she’s in session,” Malcolm said.

  Troy watched a road sign approaching.

  “Pull over,” he said to Conrad. “Pull over here.”

  He searched the car for a stack of paper and eventually found a pen.

  “Pick a number,” he said to Malcolm as Conrad got the car stopped and pulled onto the shoulder.

  “I don’t understand,” Malcolm said.

  “My name is Troy Rutger, and I just drove overnight from Kansas to be in DC this morning,” Troy said. “I’m going to take a picture next to the mile marker holding up the number you tell me. All you have to do is look up my service picture.”

  Malcolm laughed again.

  “All right. One million, six hundred thousand fifty-three.”

  “One six oh oh oh five three,” Troy said, writing it down on the report. He leaped out of the car and ran over to the road sign, where Conrad, bemused, took his picture.

  “Where should I e-mail it?” Troy asked. Malcolm gave him an address, and Troy echoed it to Conrad.

  “It’s on its way,” he said.

  “I have it,” Malcolm answered. “Damn.”

  “Look, it’s serious,” Troy said. “If I had had any other way to contact the Senator.”

  “No, it’s that we get a lot of weird calls. Never had any of them as weird as this one,” Malcolm said. “Given that it’s real.”

  Troy nodded, drawing a deep breath.

  “I need to talk to her. There’s something bad going on and I don’t know exactly what it is, but she needs to know about it.”

  “Like I said, she’s in session. All I can do is give her a note. If she decides to call, that’s up to her.”

  Troy nodded at his phone as he got back into the car, giving Malcolm his phone number.

  And then he hung up.

  Conrad was still grinning.

  “I take it back,” the hefty man said. “This is hella fun.”

  Troy shook his head.

  “I’ve never d
anced this fast in my life.”

  “Fun, though,” Conrad said again, pulling back into traffic.

  *********

  They sat in a little motel outside of the city and waited.

  It had been four hours, and they hadn’t gotten any sign at all whether the Senator was going to take them seriously or not.

  Conrad was sitting cross-legged on the bed eating gas station nachos and watching television. Troy sat on the other bed with his phone in his hands, wondering what had happened to his career.

  To his life.

  “She’ll call, man,” Conrad said. “You don’t go on an epic cross-country adventure to end up in a dingy motel and not have anything cool happen.”

  Troy glanced at the other man, feeling for perhaps the first time a sense that Conrad still had some maturing to do.

  His phone rang.

  “See?” Conrad said around a mouthful of corn chip.

  Troy answered.

  “This is Troy Rutger.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Rutger,” a woman said. “You’ve caused quite an uproar with my staff.”

  “Wasn’t my intention, ma’am,” Troy answered. She laughed.

  “You cause uproars most places you go, if what Malcolm tells me is true.”

  “He seems pretty sharp to me,” Troy answered, and she laughed again.

  “He says that you are concerned that my base is going to turn against me,” she said.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Troy said.

  “What we both know is that it already has,” she said. He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t. “Where are you staying?”

  He told her.

  “I don’t know it,” she said. “How soon can you be at my office? Malcolm will give you directions and get your put on all of the access sheets.”

  “Thirty minutes?” Troy guessed. Conrad wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sprung off of the bed. “And I’ve got one of the lab leaders with me. Conrad Leal.”

  “I’m going to put you on with Malcolm. Make sure he knows,” she said, and then the line clicked again. Troy found himself speaking with Malcolm again after a moment. He gave the man Conrad’s information, then took down the instructions on how to get to the Senator’s office.