by Kyle Andrews
Sim's eyes locked with Marti's and she didn't even need to ask who the injured man was.
“Justin,” she barely whispered.
She left the man that she'd been walking with, without even thinking about it, and hurried toward Justin. He was being assessed by another nurse as his gurney was being pushed along by a paramedic and two orderlies.
Sim moved to Marti's side just as she reached Justin and she looked down at him. His face was bloody. She couldn't tell how badly he was injured, but it looked bad enough to make her heart pound in her chest. He was unconscious, whether due to injury or medication. Marti wanted to see the full list of injuries, but she'd missed the rundown while dealing with the other patient.
“He's going to be okay,” Sim assured her.
“What happened?”
“There was an attack or something. I don't know what started it, but Justin got hit pretty hard on the head.”
Ignoring Marti and Sim, the nurse who was assessing Justin told the orderlies, “Put him against the wall. We'll have one of the doctors look at him when they get a chance.”
Marti's eyes shot to the nurse, whose name was Mar. She was older, and outranked Marti, but that didn't stop Marti from saying, “We'll get a doctor to look at him now.”
“We have more urgent patients that we need to take care of, Marti,” Mar replied.
“He's sustained a head injury. There could be bleeding or swelling. We need to get him checked out.”
“Look around you. We have an emergency room filled with people who need our help.”
Marti would have loved to explain the concept of triage to this woman. Assessing the patients and treating them in order of urgency, rather than social standing. But she held her tongue.
“We need to help Justin now,” she pushed. “He's my boyfriend.”
11
Dor had read at least a dozen different spy books, written back in the days before such books were banned. She had written comic books about heroes who went undercover in order to infiltrate an enemy's base. She'd never second guessed the motivation of those characters or thought that they were silly. However, as she walked up the sidewalk, holding onto a brown paper bag that was full of sandwiches from the deli down the street, she couldn't help but feel like an idiot for even attempting this plan of hers.
On the bright side, a plan which would seem ridiculous to anyone who had read one of those spy novels would probably be completely new and unexpected to most of the people in the country. Hopefully, that would include the security guards at the KCTY building.
Dor looked around the street as she approached the building, spotting a few familiar faces amongst the sea of strangers. Everyone that Mig had sent to watch over her were big, hulking soldier types, trained by Mek. Dor had been to some of those classes and watched those men beat the crap out of each other, or rip dummies to shreds. She felt safer having them there, even if she would be going into the building alone.
Over the past several months, since Dor had been meeting with Molly on Collin's behalf, she had observed this building a number of times. She'd watched the people going in and coming out. Several of them were delivery people, bringing food to just about the only people within three miles who could afford to have food delivered. Many of those delivery people were young. They hadn't worked their way up the ranks of whichever restaurant they worked at. They hadn't yet reached a point where they could wait on tables or work in the kitchen, which were apparently the cushy jobs, according to several members of Freedom who worked in those places.
There was no obvious reason why this plan would fail, but that didn't stop her from feeling as though it would.
As she neared the door, Dor put all doubt aside. She wasn't going to let this plan fail just because she looked like a spy.
Resisting the urge to look around at her backup one last time, Dor went inside the building and walked directly to the security desk in the lobby.
With a smile that she would describe as polite-yet-tired, Dor put the bag of food down on the desk and said, “I have a delivery for the archive room.”
Her original plan had called for Dor to walk straight into the newsroom, which would be filled with all sorts of reporters and office workers, and probably a ton of other people that she wouldn't even expect to be in the building. It was the most obvious place to go. But Simon had suggested the archive room, which was where all of the raw video would be stored, and there would probably be fewer people to contend with. Dor was willing to admit that it was a good thing that she ran into Mig before leaving.
“Who for?” the security guard asked.
Dor shrugged and said, “There are about six sandwiches here, so I'm guessing that it's for more than one person.”
Aaron was the one who told her not to weave too many lies. Less detail would serve her better in this situation.
“You didn't get a name?” the guard asked.
“I didn't take the call. I just make the deliveries,” Dor replied. “I could take the food back, but I wouldn't suggest you guys order from us for a while if I do that.”
The security guard looked over a list on his computer, frowning the entire time. Dor tried to look as calm and polite as possible as she waited, rocking back and forth on her feet.
The guard then picked up his telephone and dialed a number. He waited for a moment before hanging up. With a sigh, he redialed the number. After another moment of waiting for someone to pick up, he hung up once again.
Dor hadn't expected the guy to call ahead of her. She'd never been inside the building when the delivery people brought food. She just assumed that they were allowed right up.
The guard dialed the phone one more time, but again he hung up without speaking to anyone.
With a groan, he looked up at Dor and asked, “Civvie?”
Dor nodded and reached into her pocket. She pulled out her forged Civvie and handed it over to the guard, who scanned it into his computer. There must have been a glitch of some sort, because the guard had to scan the card a second time. Then, as he waited for her information to come up on the computer screen, he handed the card back to Dor.
He skimmed through her information. Her name was still Dor on this Civvie, but her last name was fake. Her school records were fake. Her assignment was to a restaurant, which was also fake. Dor had skipped her assignment meeting. It didn't seem very relevant to her life, since she lived and worked full-time in the Campus.
The guard looked back to her and she raised her eyebrows, as though she did this a hundred times a day, every day of her life.
“You guys make good sandwiches?” he asked her.
Dor shrugged and said, “I don't eat the food.”
“What's the most popular?”
“Ham and cheese on rye. Spicy mustard. Some people like the one that has sauerkraut on it, but it smells like butt to me.”
Was that too specific? Was that too much detail? Should she have just shrugged and said that she didn't take the orders? There was no way for Dor to know which answer would be the right answer and which one would get her killed on the spot.
Did security guards have the authority to kill her on the spot? She probably should have checked into that before she decided to do this.
“Fourth floor. Just in and out. No stopping for any reason,” the guard told her, nodding toward the elevators.
Dor picked up the bag of food and smiled one last time at the guard before she walked toward the elevators. She knew that she would be on camera while in the building, so she never let her expression drop suddenly. She never sighed in relief once she was in the elevator. She kept her game face on the whole time.
As she stood in the elevator, Dor ran through the plan in her head. All she needed to do was find a computer and plug one of Simon's USB drives into it. After that, she could just walk out, and that was that. Everything else was going to be done remotely, she just needed to give him access. How hard could it be to find a computer in the archive department of a t
elevision station?
The elevator doors opened, and Dor stepped out into a dark hallway which looked as though it would be better suited to an underground level than the fourth floor. The air was cold. The walls were lined with glass, revealing dozens of chest-high computers on either side of her. There were more blinking lights and fiber optic cables running through those rooms than she could make any sense of.
It wasn't what she had expected. Honestly, after having seen an entire library of information stored inside of a little bit of human DNA, she had thought that the days of computer rooms were long gone. Apparently, she was wrong. These computers weren't only large, they looked old.
Dor moved forward, down the hallway. She noted that there were no windows on this floor. It was something that she'd never noticed when she was watching the building from the outside, and even though Dor lived in a place that wasn't big on windows, this place made her feel a little bit claustrophobic.
There were no doors in the glass walls. The only way for her to move was forward, toward what looked like an open area with normal desks and lights. She could hear voices from up ahead, and every so often, she saw someone rush past the door.
Pausing for a moment, Dor assessed her situation. She studied what she could see of the room ahead of her. She tried to count the number of voices. She glanced toward the ceiling for security cameras and counted those that she could see. She made mental notes of it all, then took a deep breath and moved forward at the pace of someone who wanted to deliver her sandwiches and get out of there.
When she finally reached the doorway at the end of the hall, Dor gave a gentle knock and stepped into the room. She glanced around, counting maybe eight tables with computers on them, and four men who were scurrying to get their work done.
They looked busy, chattering back and forth with sleeves rolled up and sweat on their brow in spite of the cool air.
“Bring up all of the footage and transfer it to the hub, then shred the files. I need to get my hands on clips from last year's game, and any comments that the President has made on the subject,” said the one man in the room who wasn't sitting in front of a computer. He was managing everyone else. “Dobin wants to tap into the fluff pieces for tonight's news. We need to fill all the space that we were planning to fill with the game. See if we can get an update on the family that was displaced in the apartment fire last month. Gretchen also wanted us to pull some B-roll of the skyline. Something 'weather-y', whatever that means.”
Since they didn't seem to hear her knock, Dor cleared her throat. The man who was speaking turned toward her and narrowed his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Dor held up the bag and said, “I'm lunch. Did you guys order some sandwiches?”
“No.”
“Well, someone did.”
“I... We don't have time for this right now. Just take it away.”
“If I take it away, my boss thinks that I didn't deliver it. That gets me in trouble.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just... put it down. How much do we owe?”
Dor held up the bag and looked at the receipt that was stapled to it, “Sixty-two credits. But it looks like you're all square. I guess someone picked up the tab.”
Truth was, Dor didn't have any means of scanning a card and accepting payment. So as much as she'd love to be reimbursed for this meal, she would have to let it go.
The man didn't seem to know what Dor was talking about, but rather than linger, he just waved her away and said, “Fine. Just... go.”
He then turned back to the work that he was doing.
Dor smiled politely, though nobody was watching her. She turned toward the nearest desk, which also happened to have a computer sitting on it. At first, she was going to use this computer, but as she glanced toward the other side of the room, she spotted another desk, with another computer. This computer had one of the fiber optic cables that she'd seen earlier attached to it. None of the other available computers had that connection, as far as she could tell.
It was the farthest desk from where the men in the room were working. Dor walked to it and set the bag down, keeping her back to the men. She could feel eyes on her and she worried that if she went through with the mission, she would be spotted and arrested without getting so much as a frame of video from the computers. She wanted to turn around and see if anyone was actually watching her or if it was all in her head, but she couldn't risk looking too suspicious. This was her chance. If she didn't get the job done now, she wouldn't have another opportunity to do it.
There was a security camera only feet above her head. They could be watching her. The entire news room could know about her presence by now, and there was no way that she could know.
She took a deep breath and pushed aside the panic that was starting to creep into her head. She only had to plug one USB drive into the computer, and that was it. It would take seconds.
Another deep breath and she reached for the cuff of her jacket, where the USB drive had been stashed in a makeshift pocket. She pulled the device out. It was only about the size of her thumbnail. As she slipped it into the computer, it became nearly invisible. Just a glossy piece of black plastic that was no bigger than the USB port itself. She was sure that someone would notice the device eventually, but they wouldn't see it by glancing back at the machine.
That was it. Her job was done. Now, she needed to get out of the building without being stopped.
She turned and walked toward the elevator. As she crossed the threshold that led out of the office, she was sure that someone was going to stop her. Her heart was pounding even harder now than it had been going in. This was going too smoothly. It felt wrong.
When she reached the elevator, Dor pressed the call button and waited for the doors to open. In the stainless steel doors in front of her, she could see a fuzzy reflection of herself, and she stared at it, waiting to see another form take shape. She waited for arms to wrap around her. She waited to be trapped.
The doors opened, and Dor was face to face with a security guard. It wasn't the same one that she'd seen earlier. This guard was younger. He smiled at her as she stepped into the elevator and she smiled back, trying her best to keep her panic from reading on her face.
“Lobby?” he asked her.
She nodded and managed to say, “Please.”
Her voice was barely a whisper. Her throat was dry. The elevator doors closed and she was trapped with a security guard.
“Making a delivery?” he asked her, just trying to make conversation, but it felt like an interrogation to her.
“Mm-hmm,” she replied.
“It's too bad that they had to call off the game. Who were you rooting for?”
Dor tried to think of an answer, but in that moment she couldn't even remember who was playing. What kind of journalist was she?
Wincing, she replied, “Would it make me a horrible person if I said that I don't even know who was playing?”
The guard chuckled and said, “Not a horrible person. Just a horrible citizen.”
“I don't have much time for sports.”
“I hear that,” the guard nodded. He then asked, “What do you do in your spare time?”
Write hostile content. Infiltrate local television stations. Plot to overthrow the government...
“I like to walk,” Dor said, before she even thought about it. And what did it mean? She liked to walk? Where? It was a stupid answer.
The guard smiled and said, “I get that.”
That made one of them.
The elevator doors opened and the guard let Dor step out first. She still expected him to grab her arm before she could make her escape, but he didn't. Instead, he started to walk next to her.
“Well, if you ever want someone to walk with, let me know,” he said.
Dor had never been flirted with before. Was this flirting?
She turned and smiled at the guard, “Will do.”
And then she turned and walked toward the exit, w
ondering what the hell had just happened.
12
Collin was standing in the back of Aaron's tech room, watching Aaron pace back and forth, waiting for one of his people to give him some news on Dor's progress. Mig had other business to take care of, so she only stopped in every so often to see if there was any word.
There wasn't.
For all Collin knew, Dor could be in HAND custody at that very moment. She could have been shot. She could be bleeding on the street, like so many Freedom members who came before her. And was it worth it? Did they need that footage? Would it tell them anything that they wouldn't eventually find out when reports started coming in from Freedom members who had actually been at the stadium?
The more time that passed, the more convinced Collin became that the whole thing had been a bad idea. They should have consulted him before sending one of his journalists into the field on a mission like this. Especially Dor.
A familiar feeling started to creep back into his mind. The one that started years earlier, when he was being torn open by HAND. It was the feeling of Liz standing behind him, only this wasn't the image of Liz. He hadn't felt her for a long time. What he felt now, in situations like this, was the presence of one of those high-ranking HAND officials, or whoever it was that had overseen his questioning. The faceless figure of a man, pressing buttons and turning dials, controlling Collin's suffering.
Aaron turned toward Collin and stared at him in a way that made Collin wonder if Aaron could see the fear in his eyes. But Aaron wasn't looking at Collin's eyes. He was looking at Collin's arm, where he had unconsciously been scraping his thumbnail, causing a bright red spot to form over one of his many HAND-inflicted scars.
As soon as Collin realized what he was doing, he stopped. He looked back to Aaron and was just about to try to make an excuse or a joke to diffuse the situation when Simon walked back into the room.
“Any word?” Aaron asked him.
“Nothing. The HAND hospital is swarming with everyone from officers, right on up to the Governor himself,” Simon reported as he took a seat at his computer. “Anything here?”