“Why?”
“It’s … I can’t tell you … it’s confidential.”
“Not have … remember put last?”
Harrison frowns at the response, looks down and checks his jeans pocket. He fumbles the little coin section of his jeans and finds a bump. With a verbal ‘oh’ emanating as he does so, he pulls a USB device from his pants and holds it up to inspect.
Holding it up for them both to see, he can’t help but let out a nervous smile, as he finds it where he last left it. “Sorry,” he says to the other man sheepishly.
“Do you know what’s on this?”
“Yes.”
“See! You did look at it then, you said you didn’t know what it was.”
“Not look.”
“What? How did you crack my encryption?”
The man looks confused, “see as seen.”
“Well if you see everything then you’ll know how dangerous this information is, what it could mean?”
The man doesn’t reply but for a moment a look appears on his face that Harrison takes as some sort of recognition, that maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He feels strange sitting with the man, he knew he should probably be more scared of him, but the emotion just doesn’t occur to him.
“Why did you speed up, in the car? I saw you and you saw me, then you sped up … did you mean to hit me?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you why?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Destiny.”
A strange look creeps onto Harrison’s face this time, not many people knew about Destiny, let alone knew what it was they were capable of.
And this guy knew something.
Harrison has, for some years, been in the digital espionage game, more from the point of view of a social informant.
He took great pride in being someone who informed the world of what governments and large multi-national corporations really got up to behind closed doors. How only a few people controlled the rest of the populace, enslaving them with a thing called money. He had successfully cracked numerous organisations and released their private information online, free for the public to access.
The truth should be shared.
It was along this path he came across a few whisperings of a secret organisation known only as Destiny, and now it seems this stranger knew something about them too.
And it seems that fate has brought them together.
- -
- -
catlin
A young woman sat on the edge of her seat in an aeroplane, her feet bobbing up and down nervously. She waited anxiously for that moment when the doors to the plane open and people start exiting, typically in haste.
Despite herself, she can’t help but feel a little awkward as she waits, people all just standing in a plane, waiting to exit and staring about the small canister they are trapped inside. They wait for that moment when the door opens and they can escape, to collect their luggage and move on to wherever it is they go next.
She wondered why people always did that, stood up and tried to exit before the plane doors opened. She found it almost as annoying as when boarding the plane and people would line up and jostle to get to their seat, which was usually allocated anyway.
Bunch of sheep.
She had the appearance of a rugged and dusty traveller, despite a first-class seat. Her long brown hair was wispy, tangled and probably hadn’t been washed in weeks. Her freckled face was darkly tanned after spending months in the African sun and her clothes looked dirty and tattered, despite being recently washed.
Her name was Catlin Conley, she was a photographer by trade but had held so many different positions over the years since school that she didn’t quite know what to answer when people asked. She thought herself more of an adrenaline seeker, searching the world for her next thrill, her next adventure.
She supposed herself a change to the norm, not the slave to the nine to five work week and certainly not interested in staying in one spot for too long. She explored the world and experienced what it was like to be a human on Earth, roaming free, chasing something new at every turn.
The year just gone she had spent in Africa volunteering at a children’s mission, the year before was in India and Asia teaching English. She’d also worked for Greenpeace and had once spent nearly a year on board the Steve Irwin vessel chasing Japanese whaling ships, almost losing her life on more than a few occasions.
More than anything she liked the danger, liked to get in moments that sent her adrenaline levels spiking. It was in those moments that she lost herself, lost all sense of who she was and just accepted things as they came. A person for the moment, living in the now.
She came from a family of money and had a wealth of it to spare, which more than financed her worldwide adventures. Rather than follow in her family’s footsteps, she had decided to venture off around the world, to chase some of the more wilder and raw experiences in life that few others experienced.
Catlin believed life wasn’t meant to be spent in one place, one place is the same as a cage.
Despite her ruggedness, she was in fact a very attractive woman. But self-indulgence for the sake of appearance had never been her thing, so she’d spent little to no effort grooming herself. If she had, the chestnut colour of her eyes would have stood out beautifully against her lovely brown hair and many a man would have come running to her side.
She stepped tiredly off the QANTAS plane and ventured out, down the hallway, through duty free and towards customs. She rubbed her arms instinctively as she walked the airport hallways, feeling the cold for the first time in nearly a year. A year in the toughest of African climates had made her resistant to the heat, but the cold was another thing and she found herself shivering.
She’d left Africa in a hurry, a very big hurry. She was never far away from danger but this was the worst she had seen. She needed serious help to get out, thankfully her brother Mark had come to her aid.
He made all the arrangements like fake passports and documents needed for her to get out of the dark continent and back home without anyone knowing. If not for her brother she didn’t know how she would’ve fled the country.
She was an Australian citizen, but she believed that the Australian government may have had something to do with what’d happened to her in Africa. So her brother had suggested re-entering the country under a false identity.
She was tired, jet lagged and in dire need of a shower, so it was very relieving that her brother had booked her first-class seats for the flight. The luxury aside, it also meant a swift exit from the crowds in the airport and virtually straight through customs without a hitch. The benefits of money, whilst she claimed to detest, often got her out of situations she would rather avoid.
She headed for the visitors waiting area, looking in anticipation for her brother Mark as she exited into the arrivals hall of Sydney airport.
She sighted him in amongst the crowd, he smiled awkwardly when he recognised her and came running over, the two embraced lovingly as close siblings do.
“So good to see you home, sis.” Mark said with closed eyes.
Catlin exhaled deeply as the two embraced, it’d been a rough few days back on the African continent and the feeling of being home safe allowed her to let it all out, finally she could let down her guard.
She’d been attacked in the village she was volunteering in, for reasons unknown to her. A small group of soldiers had come into her tent at night and accosted her, asking about photographs. Catlin was fairly cool under pressure and hadn’t given them anything, refusing to co-operate with the soldiers.
During the surprise interrogation one of the children in the village had heard the disturbance and came to her aide inside the tent. Catlin spied the young kid as he entered the tent, but couldn’t prevent the
young boy from attacking one of the soldiers in her defence.
As the soldiers rounded on the boy, Catlin too sprung into action, retrieving a machete she kept by her bed.
Catlin hadn’t baulked, she was a woman of action. During the moment of distraction, once the soldier’s backs were turned from her, she grabbed the machete and quickly slung it overarm, slashing it downwards into the back of the first soldier in front of her.
The soldier had stopped in his tracks as the machete was slammed into him, she tried to pull the machete from his back but it was so deeply wedged she couldn’t retrieve it. The soldier did a little pirouette, looking back at Catlin with a surprised look on his face. He tried to reach out to her, but before he could Catlin saw the soldier take a bullet wound to his forehead.
She didn’t know where the bullet had been fired from, but she knew the soldier had been killed the instant the bullet hit. Then, almost as swiftly, another series of shots peppered around her, hitting the other soldiers in her hut. Before she could even blink only she and the boy remained standing in the room.
A mystery assailant had killed the intruders, sniping them from outside.
Catlin didn’t wait for any invitations, she told the kid to run back to his mother just as she fled in the opposite direction.
She had got away thanks to that little boy, thanks to his bravery in helping her ... she hoped that he was ok. As she ran from the village, she wondered who the mystery person was that’d come to her rescue. The one who had fired those shots, killing the soldiers and saving her and the boy.
Suddenly she was jerked back into the present as her brother hugged her tightly again, “Are you ok?” he asked.
“Mark … I’m so tired.”
“Its ok Cat, you’re home now.”
Her eyes were closed during the embrace, so she didn’t see what happened next. She felt a short and heavy tap to her chest and a feeling as if something was trying to push its way into her flesh. It felt like something was between her and Mark and it had tried to force its way into her, like a finger poking at her chest.
The pain was immense, and reaching down into her blouse to see what’d caused it, she removed a warm object. Holding it in her hand to see, she realised it was a bullet and quickly tossed it to the side in shock.
Before she could fathom any further though, her brother’s tight embrace suddenly became limp and his body began to sag in her arms. Her grip tightened on him just as she started to feel something warm and wet seeping into her clothes.
She realised the warmth she was feeling was a liquid and the liquid was coming from Mark. Her eyes flashed rapidly as she held him back, looking to see what’d caused it. Shock overwhelmed her as she saw blood emanating from the shirt of her brother’s chest, the crimson splotch growing larger every second.
She shut her eyes tightly, trying desperately to change in her mind what was happening, she didn’t want to believe it. It was as if she was dreaming, and by thinking about what’d just happened, she could change the course of events.
Back in the tent it had also happened silently, she hadn’t heard anything when the soldiers dropped either.
What the hell was going on?
He’d been shot.
She remembered the thud to her chest and even though she didn’t understand why she was unhurt, she knew her brother was in grave danger. The bullet must have passed through his chest and stopped at hers.
She looked up quickly and searched around her for the attacker, but to no avail. She hadn’t even heard the gunshot, so had no idea where to look in the vast arrivals hall of the airport. Whoever had fired at them was out of sight, just like that night in her tent.
She clung desperately to her brother as his body went limp and tried to hold him upright as they stood there clumsily. His weight became too much for her to bear though and the two of them sagged to the floor together. They hit the floor, almost in slow motion, with Catlin rolling on top of him at the last second.
They lay there, still, neither making a move or a sound. Mark’s hand flopped out to the side and convulsed a little. Catlin held him and looked deeply into his eyes, hoping there was still life in him. But there was no spark, his eyes were now dull and she knew that he was no longer there.
She lay, staring into her brother’s motionless eyes, trying to grasp what was happening, what was going on. But she had no idea, she only knows he’s dead. She felt the sting of the bullet too, but she is not dead, only paralysed with the shock.
A tear streaks from her eye as she realised her brother was gone.
Nearby, a hooded man, dressed in black fatigues, stares down the lens of his XM2010 sniper rifle, surveying his target. His right eye is of a particular nature as it glares through the lens of his rifle, he has an odd shaped pupil. It was flecked in a straight manner, more like that of a snake.
The man waits only a few seconds, no longer to avoid detection, to confirm the hit on his target. The .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge has hit the target, he’d seen the blood gush out on impact, now he had to get out. He quickly rolled from his position, retrieved a few items and began disassembling the rifle as he made his way to his exit.
- -
harrison
“Ok, first things first, we need to leave. Because if they don’t know where we are right now, they soon will. Have you got a car?” Harrison asks of the tall dark man by his bedside.
“Who ‘they’?”
“They are Destiny, and they are after me. And it’s not just them either, the government have been after me for ages as well. I don’t have time to explain why, but I can later if you want. We need to leave now because they’re, let’s say, very good at finding people.”
“That?” the man points at the USB Harrison still holds.
“Yes,” Harrison replies, tucking it back into his jeans. “I thought you said you knew Destiny?”
“See as seen.”
“Well, then why …” the black man has Harrison completely confused. “Well that means that we need to get away from them, do you understand?”
“Well … good luck.” the black man turns to leave the room.
“Hey wait a minute!”
“What?”
“Can you help me?”
“How?”
“By getting me out of here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t even know where I am,” he looks up at the man with puppy eyes. “Where am I?”
“Under city.”
“Under where?”
“City,” he looks upwards. “Here, under.”
Harrison eyes the man for a second until it clicks in his head. “Oh no way!”
Harrison’s amazed, realising what it means. They were in Sydney, there’s only one thing it can mean if they’re under the city. He gets out of bed quickly, attempting to explore his surrounds but the man follows and stops him. Harrison’s a little unsure of what he’s doing until he realises the man has only stopped him so he can remove the I.V line from his wrist.
“So by underneath the city do you mean to tell me that we’re in the famous tunnels under St James?” he looks the other way as the needle is removed from his skin. “The Sydney Underground tunnels?”
The man nods in response. “Tunnel, yes.”
“Whoa, this is awesome. I’ve always wanted to come down here.” Harrison’s I.V line is removed, a plaster is applied and he rapidly exits into the hallway section of the tunnel.
“Whereabouts are we exactly?”
Harrison marvels as he enters the outer room, even though it’s poorly lit he is completely enthused by the idea that he’s exploring the infamous Sydney underground tunnels.
“This place is amazing, there are so many stories about it, so much that is unknown.”
Harrison wants to explore more but cannot see clearly, as everything
is murky and poorly lit. He walks down the hallway further into the darkness, but fear overtakes him and he returns to the main hall, “How did you find this place?” he asks.
“Crawl from ocean.”
“Huh?”
“Crawl from sea, find place hidden.”
Harrison rolls his eyes at the response, the man’s responses were cryptic at times and just plain simple at others. If what he said was true it meant the tunnels were connected to the ocean somehow.
He wants to ask the man if he can show him around, maybe do some exploring but he knows he doesn’t have time to play tourist. Regardless of how cool it was the man had found this place, they should leave first, questions second.
Harrison has people worrying about him, especially where he is right now. He’s part of a team of people, a small group who worked together to unravel conspiracies. Harrison left to go out and meet an A.S.I.O informant he’d met online, his friends were close by in case anything went wrong.
“There were two guys following me.” he remembers being chased in the street.
No response from the dark man.
“Hey, did you happen to see anyone around when we had our little crash?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Well.”
“No, I mean, well, did you see anyone?”
“Yes.”
“Arghh!” Harrison sputters, “Who were they man? Do you know them or something?” Harrison is struggling to find the right way to ask about his friends. “I had two friends that were following me, did you see them?” he asks again.
“Not see friend.”
“Ok, did you see the two men in black clothing coming after me?”
“Yes.”
“They were from Destiny. Do you understand?”
“From Destiny.” he repeats back.
“Right then,” Harrison frowns, scratching his head. “Look, can you just help me get out of here?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a but?”
Recalling Destiny Page 4