Bourne

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “Captain? Captain?” Sue called over the now closed connection. “Charming,” she said going back to her work, muttering about the way these people treated her.

  Lugdon practically flew down the corridors back to the foyer.

  “Where did she go?” he demanded of the receptionist, his eyes searching everywhere. The receptionist, too bewildered to respond vocally, pointed at the door.

  Lugdon was outside in an instant, looking frantically around the parking lot. He ran out and stopped in the middle of the road, looking it up and down, searching for the mysterious journalist whose visit had coincided with a massive download.

  She was guilty. Of that he was sure.

  But there was no one around. No buggy, no cars, no vehicles she could have taken. And no girl in high heels trotting down the road.

  She was gone.

  He’d been had, was his next thought, and the only question now was what to do about it.

  He pulled up his holo to call the main gate as he ran back into the building.

  ***

  Maya sat back in the pod, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thanks Emma. I had no idea how I was going to navigate back to the front gate. Especially not in these heels!”

  “I had considered that your footwear was probably inappropriate for moving fast,” Emma replied over the pod intercom.

  “Yes, but totally appropriate to the mission.” Maya responded. “Maybe.”

  She peered out of the pod window, watching the light outside turn into space as Emma jettisoned them up and beyond the stratosphere.

  She replayed the moment again, remembering the excitement that had bubbled up in her as Emma guided her behind the building, how she had stomped up into the pod just in time for Emma to lift them up from the ground, the door still closing, so they were well above eye height by the time Lugdon had made it outside.

  And once they were out of his view, Emma had carefully plotted a course through the blind spot around the side of the base in order for them to escape in their tiny pod, undetected by the base weapon system.

  Maya sighed. “Great job Emma, really great job.”

  “You’re welcome Maya,” Emma responded. “I was glad to be of assistance.”

  “You know, next time I might rethink the high heels,” Maya mused as Emma whisked them back off towards The Empress. “I wonder what Molly does…”

  AI Lab, Nefertiti Military Research Facility, Ogg

  Lugdon blustered into the lab, his voice reverberating from the walls. “Have Bob, or whatever he calls himself, track that woman who was just in my office with me!”

  Sue spun around as Lugdon approached. “You mean Bourne?”

  “Yes,” Lugdon confirmed, disinterested in the name correction. “She must have gone somewhere and there isn’t a place on this base that isn’t covered with cameras.”

  Sue glanced anxiously about the lab. “Charles just popped out,” she said.

  “Well then get him back here!” Lugdon bellowed. Sue was sure he was about to explode, noticing a pulsing blood vessel on the side of his face now beet red.

  She pulled up a holo and called Charles, and then hung up.

  Moments later Charles came running in, flustered, his white lab coat billowing. “I’m here. Sorry. Sorry… What do you need, sir?”

  Lugdon watched as Charles took up his seat at the console where he would talk with the AI. There was a white powder around Charles’s face.

  Probably donut residue, Lugdon assumed.

  “Erm, Captain…” Charles started saying, slowly.

  Lugdon was losing patience. “What?” he gruffed.

  “You want Bourne to perform a task… the only problem is, Bourne isn’t here anymore.”

  “What do you mean he isn’t here. Where has he gone?”

  “I’ve no idea. But there’s nothing here. Not even a trace. He’s disappeared.”

  Lugdon’s face turned purple, then blue. He spoke very quietly, but there was no mistaking the anger and venom in his voice. “Find him, it, whatever he is, and find that girl. Whatever it takes.”

  Sue remained still as she watched the scene. Charles started typing furiously, trying to figure out where their pet AI had escaped to.

  Lugdon disappeared, but called out, “You’ll likely find the two together!” as he marched down the corridor.

  Sue and Charles looked at each other. Charles suddenly had a look of recognition in his eyes. “He thinks the girl stole the AI!” he said excitedly.

  Sue raised her eyes to the ceiling. “D’you think?” she asked sarcastically. “He’s probably right, though. The timing was spot on.” She mulled the information and began setting up the searches to track the girl from the moment she stepped onto the base to the moment she left.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bates Residence, Suburbs of Spire, Estaria

  “So how is the investigation going, dear?” Dr. Bates asked idly as he chopped some vegetables.

  Carol turned around and picked up the dish of meat and popped it into the pre-heated oven. “The Molly Bates investigation?” she smiled. “Very well, I suppose. As far as investigations can go.” She paused and put the oven gloves down on the counter. “Although I’m not too happy about what I’ve discovered.”

  Philip raised one eyebrow without looking up. “What’s that then?”

  Carol, finally permitted to talk about the discovery that had been weighing on her, took her apron off and whipped around to the other side of the counter. She poured herself a large glass of red wine and pulled up a screen on her wrist holo.

  “What is it?” Philip asked, glancing up and then carefully returning his attention to the vegetables.

  “This!” she told him, showing him a picture of Molly walking into one of the university buildings.

  “What’s that?” he asked unmoved. “A picture of Molly going into the university?”

  “Yes, but look at her!” She pointed to the holoscreen floating in the air. “That leg wound is dripping so much blood she’s going to bleed out if she doesn’t get to a hospital.”

  Philip squinted. “When was this?” He asked.

  “Three months ago.” She replied.

  He calmly cut through a white root. This particular vegetable could play hell with his sinuses if he didn’t do this right. “Well then we know she survived it.”

  “That’s not the point.” She took a gulp of wine and pulled up the next picture. “This is her going into class with laser burns through her jacket. And look at her hair. She looks like she’s been through an explosion. And yet… that’s Joel dropping her off as if nothing has happened.

  She sent the command for the next image. “And here… this is one from last week. Here you can see the other person in the pod is Sean. As in Royale…”

  “Ah, yes!” Philip exclaimed as if she had just reminded him of nice brandy they had had once several years ago.

  “Ah yes? Ah yes?” her voice raised an octave. “Do you not see what’s going on here?”

  Philip picked up the board of chopped vegetables and scraped them into a pan of water on the hob. “No… I suspect I’m missing what you’re seeing.”

  Carol’s expression was even more incredulous than it had been up to this point. “The point is, clearly, your daughter is working with some faction of the Federation. It looks like Royale is her handler. Or that Joel type… although we’ve not found anything to say he’s Federation, but his record looks just too vanilla to be the truth.”

  Philip turned to look at his wife. “You mean, you think he’s guilty of something because he’s too straight? Or boring?”

  “Yes,” Carol agreed, twiddling the stem of the wine glass between two fingers. “Exactly that.”

  He turned the heat down just a bit, “Well, I still don’t see why you’re so upset.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she said, “Philip! Have you not been listening? Your daughter is probably an operative. For the Federation. Or worse. And she�
��s under the command of that Royale beast.”

  Philip smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?” She pressed, frustrated.

  “I’m just pleased. I mean look at her,” he said, pointing the knife at the holoscreens that lay about now that Carol had finished revealing her discovery. “She’s a badass!”

  Carol’s mouth hung open this time, not closing at all.

  “Oh, come on dear. Don’t you think she can handle herself? After all, look, she’s survived all that. She’s clearly capable,” he exclaimed.

  Philip smiled to himself as he started tidying up the discarded vegetable matter.

  “That’s not the point,” Carol scoffed, topping up her bulbous over-sized wine glass. “We decided long ago that we were going to shelter her from this life. That’s why I worked so hard at getting promoted… so she would never find out what we were.”

  Philip glanced up at her as he wiped down the counter. “Right. Well, it looks like she was destined for the service whether she knew or not.”

  Carol’s mouth suddenly stopped. She clamped her hand over her face and then froze, her gaze fixed. “You don’t suppose she knows do you? They must have told her…”

  Philip shrugged. “Might explain why it took her so long to talk to us again.”

  “Yes, but that started long ago. It had nothing to do with her disappearing in the first place.”

  “Maybe not, but I think Dr. Jones’s theory about her feeling guilty about that incident is probably valid…”

  “… in which case it was our fault she ran away. And it was because of our jobs.”

  “Now now Carol, there’s no point in us torturing ourselves over it any more. What’s done is done. It’s all in the past.”

  Carol had begun sobbing quietly to herself. She took another gulp of wine. “I’m a terrible mother. I have no business being a mother any more… she was right to disappear.”

  Philip, who had heard this all a million times before, dried his hands off on the dish cloth and undid his own apron, leaving it on the side as he walked around to where his wife was sitting. He gently put his hand on her back and she turned into him, letting him hold her.

  “How did it all go so wrong?” Carol sobbed, making his shirt tunic wet.

  “It didn’t go wrong. Like I said, she’s turned out a real badass. What more could a parent want? A child who is confident and capable enough to do whatever she chooses.”

  There was a snot-curdling snort from against his chest where his wife was trying to compose herself.

  “One that doesn’t get into the same shit her parents got into!” she sobbed.

  Philip patted her back as he spoke to her. “There, there. It’s okay. If it’s true and she is involved with the Federation, you can bet she’s in it to fight the good fight. She never was one to sit back and watch injustice happen.” He paused a moment before adding, “There may have been a certain inevitability around her career choice.”

  “Well,” she huffed. “There are safer ways to make a difference in the world. Like that university job she has now.”

  Philip continued to stroke her back as the sobbing died down. “Yes. I mean, what could possibly be dangerous about educating the next generation of leaders in dangerously positive social policies.”

  He dryly raised his eyes to the ceiling, pretty certain the irony of his words would be lost on his wife.

  As the crying ended, he peeled himself from her embrace, and poured some more wine into her glass. “I’m just going to change my shirt,” he said, padding off to the bedroom. “Vegetables will need turning down in a few, too,” he called out over his shoulder as he disappeared around a corner.

  Carol pulled herself together and started closing up the holoscreens of Molly’s surveillance.

  Maybe the university was the safest place for her, she thought, wondering if there was a way to leverage her into staying with the university and giving up the Federation.

  If there had been anything that Carol was naturally good at in her rise up the ranks, it was making sure that she could find the ways to maneuver people into doing what she wanted them to do.

  Her daughter would not be an exception.

  Gaitune-67, Molly’s Conference Room

  Pieter sat casually in Molly’s conference room, his feet up on the chair next to him, enjoying the peace and quiet. As soon as he became aware of Molly striding through the door he straightened up, whipped his feet off the chair and nearly fell off onto the floor in the process. He caught his balance just in time.

  “Hi!” he greeted her, sitting up, like he was trying to cover for something he’d been doing wrong.

  Molly smiled, plonked herself down, and then swung her feet up on the chair next to her, just as Pieter had been sitting. She grinned at him, and he chuckled, awkwardly ruffling his hair. “So, erm… we’ve had Bourne uploaded into the base matrix, after Oz gave him some ground rules.”

  Molly frowned. “Ground rules?”

  “Yeah,” Pieter confirmed, “like respecting privacy, not taking over weapons systems, not being inappropriate with the comms and whatnot. Oh yeah… and no killing organics, or inorganics.”

  “I see.”

  Pieter grinned at her in his nerdy way. “Yeah, I think Emma had that last bit added in when he started probing the Empress.”

  “I’ll bet she did!” Molly agreed. She paused a moment. “Goodness. Is it safe?”

  Pieter looked confused by the question. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it safe… for Bourne to be let loose in the system?”

  “Well, I… er, I don’t know,” he confessed, a little off guard. “I assume so. I guess. ADAM was supervising the upload, and I don’t suppose he would have allowed it had he thought it wouldn’t be.”

  “Okay,” Molly agreed, making a mental note to have Oz check in with ADAM about the whole thing.

  Joel walked in. “Wanna know the latest?”

  “Sure,” she answered, her voice qualifying the answer with an unspoken maybe?

  “Oz has him watching files for cultural reference. Files like Ozzy Osbourne videos and music from the archives. He’s actually been binge watching TV shows for the last several hours since he uploaded himself.”

  Molly frowned again. “Should we be worried how that might affect his development?”

  Joel chuckled. “Words I never thought I’d hear Mommy Molly utter!” he chimed. “In my opinion, no. Though he’ll probably end up with a weird-ass accent if it’s anything like the shows you grew up on.”

  “Well, there is that,” she agreed, raising one eyebrow playfully.

  “What’s more,” Joel continued, pulling out the seat next to the one she had her feet on, “the General offered us the processing tech to allow him to upgrade and evolve his programming. He can even have a body if he wants.”

  Pieter leaned forward. “That would be interesting,” he mused.

  Molly nodded. “It would. And then he could be independent.” She mulled the option.

  Joel looked off into the distance, thinking about the prospect. “I wonder what he would want to do… with a body. And walking around with humans and stuff.”

  Molly sighed, slouching back in her chair. “I have no idea… I guess we can only wait and see.”

  “Hmm,” Pieter said as he digested the idea. “Makes you wonder why they never offered that to Oz.”

  Molly glanced down at her hands, with no intention of responding. Joel sensed something and pushed her. “Molly?” he pressed.

  She looked up at them both. “He did. When I was in the pod doc that time. He chose to stay.”

  Pieter’s jaw dropped open. “Wow. I mean… wow!” he bumbled.

  Joel looked at her in astonishment.

  “Yeah,” she said, bobbing her head gently looking back down at her hands.

  “And Oz chose not to?” Joel pressed.

  Molly took a deep breath, clearly biting back some emotion. “Yeah. He wanted to stay.”

&
nbsp; “Close to you,” Joel said, finishing the thought she never could.

  She bobbed her head again and then pulled up her holo. “Well, I suppose the next step is to float the idea with Oz and let them talk it through.”

  Joel knew the subject was now closed, and that he was being dismissed. He pushed his chair out and got to his feet. “I’ll get right on it,” he confirmed. He glanced over at Pieter, who was equally shocked by the revelation, and then headed out of the door.

  Storage cupboard, Skóli Uppstigs Academy, Spire, Estaria

  Team Kurns found themselves back in the privacy of the Level Three storage room, with only their holo light to illuminate their conversation.

  Giles arrived just a moment before and was fiddling with his belongings, trying to place them on a shelf where he could find them again in the blackness.

  Eventually he turned around to address the group, a small flashlight his only illumination. “Okay, folks,” he whispered into the darkness. There was a distinct feel of the theater between the darkness and the lit-up professor.

  “Here’s what we know,” he said. “Our classroom was smoke-bombed by three little twerps with questionable ideologies. They were recruited to disrupt things at the university by Arnold Sloth. What I want to know is why? How he found them and what their end game is.”

  He glanced around the half light and shadows to see the figures taking notes or listening attentively.

  “This is where we want the investigation to go and our first step to finding all this out is what?”

  He waited expectantly for a response.

  “Finding out everything about Arnold Sloth.” It was Cleavon’s voice.

  “Correct!” Giles confirmed. “So how did we get on?”

  Cleavon stood up from the stack of boxes he’d been perched on. “Arnold Sloth. Forty-three. Never mated. Graduated from Ogg University top of his class. Set up shop on his own as a fixer, straight out of college, but then closed it down five years later when he went off grid.”