Audio Assault

by Jeff Adams

  She spoke as if she was stating a fact to an old friend. Strangely it didn’t even sound like a threat.

  I didn’t see a way to end this. There was no good option available to disarm her. I hoped Mom, Dad, and John had a plan. I stepped farther out from the desk and moved toward her slowly, hands still up.

  “Your husband?” I quickly cataloged the people I knew and couldn’t imagine who she referred to.

  “You would know him as Westside.”

  No way!

  He’d said in Denver this wasn’t over. Does all of this connect to that? Westside should be locked—

  “Drop your weapon! Get your hands up. There’s nowhere for you to go.” It was Dad, both in my ear and in the hallway.

  Melissa shrugged and shook her head with a disappointed look. “Guess we’re not doing this the easy way. Believe me when I say this isn’t over, Theo. Or would you prefer to be called Winger?”

  My eyes darted around trying to find options.

  She slowly raised her hands as if she was going to surrender. The gun was aimed at the ceiling. It was only then that I noticed her left hand was fisted. What did she have?

  “Something’s in her left hand!”

  I charged her. Her hand flexed without opening.

  Music blared out of speakers. It was loud. They must be all over the floor.

  No!

  I put my hands over my ears but couldn’t block the sound. The sensation was more intense—not just an itch but more like an ice pick chipping away inside my head.

  “Winger?” Mom asked.

  “N-no.” I struggled to speak.

  I looked at Melissa as rage took over.

  “What did you do?” I yelled.

  Is this what it felt like for Bruce Banner when he Hulked out?

  I charged after her.

  “Winger? I’m trying to block with my code,” said Split Screen.

  Melissa underestimated my speed as I tackled her to the floor. She hit the ground with an “oof.” She fought back and that just fueled my rage.

  I punched at her. Some she deflected but others connected on her face and chest. She landed a couple of blows with the gun, but they weren’t enough to knock me off her.

  The comm channel was chaos. Gunfire sounded somewhere on the floor.

  Someone pulled me violently to my feet and threw me into the hallway. I smashed into a cubicle wall that gave way with the impact. I slid to the floor as the wall panel ended up at an angle against a desk.

  I bounced to my feet. Supercharged, I looked around. Mom, Dad, and John were in hand-to-hand combat with others. Melissa’s allies or people affected by the music?

  I didn’t care.

  “Take him!” Melissa yelled as she was pulled to her feet.

  The man who’d helped her made a move, and we closed on each other fast. Punches flew as soon as we were close enough.

  I wanted her, though. She made this happen.

  I bounced back and lashed out with a sweeping kick. While he blocked it, he went off balance leaving him open to a second kick. My foot connected with the side of his head, and he crumpled to the floor.

  I turned toward Melissa.

  She looked horrified.

  “Winger, stop.” Voices in the comm and shouts from around me mixed together. The music continued to be the loudest thing, though.

  Melissa backed up as I moved toward her.

  “I can put a stop to this.” The cocky confidence was gone from her voice, but she tried to own the situation. She held up the small remote control. “All you have to do is come with me.”

  I punched at the cubicle walls to my right. If I didn’t I’d go crazy. Each time I lashed out, the fire in me eased for a moment.

  Only a dozen paces or so separated me from Melissa.

  I wanted to hurt her.

  She was responsible for what Eddie had done.

  I charged.

  Her eyes went wide.

  She pulled down one of the cubicle walls, showing her strength again. It leaned against the wall as she backed up and pulled another down.

  Viscously, I picked the wall up and shoved it aside, so I could get through.

  She turned to run, and I took off after her. She made a right at the end of cubicles, but my way was blocked by another man who’d come from the left.

  His gun was drawn, but he couldn’t react before I plowed into him, crashing him into tall filing cabinets. He was dazed as breath rushed out of him. I slammed his gun hand into the steel drawers until he released the weapon. He cried out as I kicked his left knee, which caused him to drop to the floor.

  The door to the stairs clicked shut as I looked down the hall after Melissa. I sprinted, and in the stairwell, she was already a floor below me.

  “You should just stop where you are,” I called out. “You can’t outrun me.”

  The music stopped.

  I fell as I tripped over my feet.

  The impact of the concrete hurt bad.

  I slammed into the wall on the landing between floors.

  My energy was gone.

  “Winger here.” My voice barely came out as I struggled to breathe. “I’m in the stairwell. Incapacitated.”

  “Now you have no choice but to come with me.” Melissa had crept back up the stairs.

  A gunshot rang out and Melissa recoiled, grabbing her shoulder. She turned to run but was stopped by three people behind her.

  A stampede sounded as several people came downstairs. John went by me, gun drawn. He stopped in front of Melissa. Dad stopped midway between John and me. Mom, meanwhile, kneeled at my side.

  “I’m with Winger,” she said. “We’ve apprehended Melissa. The music has stopped, but there are several injuries and possibly fatalities here.”

  “Yoshi here.” I didn’t know he was on the mission. He’d led the Denver tracker mission. “I was patched in to let you know that we’ve taken the base of operation in Philly. We recovered personnel and equipment. Everything is offline. We don’t know if they destroyed anything.”

  “Ghostlight here. From our monitoring, there’s no sign they moved the data again. We believe we captured all of it before the equipment went offline. We’ll analyze the tech recovered as well as the data to make sure we’ve got everything.”

  At least the immediate threat was over. I struggled to adjust because I was not in a comfortable position. It was difficult. Thankfully Mom helped me.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Several people are down on twelve. We don’t know yet how many people were affected inside the building. We also don’t know yet what happened outside.”

  I nodded and it took almost all my energy to do that.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  SOME FORTY people at Glenwood Music were hurt as a result of the music blast. Luckily there were no casualties—at least not yet. The guy I kicked in the head was in a coma, and the doctors weren’t sure if he’d pull through. I’d hurt people during missions before but never that badly.

  The kick and its impact replayed in my head. While I trained to defend myself and to go on the offensive if I had to—I’d never done it before. I had a pretty good idea how Amp felt when he thought he’d shot me. I couldn’t shake the queasiness that loomed in my gut.

  Melissa was in custody as were others who’d worked with her. There were more than twenty apprehended in Philly as part of the joint operation TOS coordinated with Homeland and the FBI. TOS took the lead on interrogation since its operatives had the most intel on Blackbird.

  Once I was able to function and reasonably sure I wouldn’t be sick, I accompanied John to a building TOS operates out of in Manhattan. We watched Mom and Dad question Melissa on a closed-circuit video feed. It seemed more like a discussion than an interrogation even though the conversation was pointedly around Blackbird’s objectives.

  “Why the attempted kidnappings?” Mom asked.

  Melissa chuckled. “You know us. We like decep
tion to confuse people.”

  “But you were already embedded at Glenwood.”

  She looked incredulous.

  “If you don’t tell us,” Dad leaned in, “we have people who’ll stop at nothing to get the answers.” I’d never seen Dad in this scary mode before. The edge in his voice made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  More laughter. How did she act like this? Dad seemed to have no impact on her at all. “You guys don’t torture. The worst you’ll do is keep me locked up, just like you’ve done with my husband. He told you this wasn’t over when you hauled him away in Denver, and he was right about that.”

  “Torture?” I looked to John.

  “If we don’t get answers, it’ll be difficult to prepare and defend against whatever comes next. Sometimes our hand is forced.”

  Torture wasn’t something I thought the good guys did. I’d thought about this after the tracker case. I’d asked Mom and Dad after Denver if we were good. They’d said yes. But, of course, they would. I imagined if I asked Melissa the same question, she’d be able to justify that Blackbird was good.

  How did my parents live this life? Was there always some kind of threat? Do they have to balance—or even cross back and forth—the fine line between good and bad?

  The door opened off-screen and someone I didn’t recognize came in. She carried a messenger bag that she set down on the table as she took a seat next to Mom.

  “This is Javelin. She’ll take the interrogation from here.”

  Without another word Mom and Dad left. Javelin opened the bag she’d brought and pulled out a smaller case.

  “I’ll give you one chance to tell us why Blackbird undertook this operation.”

  “I’m sure you can do better than just asking the same question again.” Melissa’s smugness continued.

  Mom and Dad came into the conference room. Dad went directly to the monitor and turned it off.

  I looked between them wanting answers—if there were any to get.

  “You don’t need to watch this.” Dad said sat down next to me. “There are certain parts of the agency you’ve never been exposed to. And while you’ll see the interrogation report, you don’t need to see how it’s obtained.”

  Was this above my security clearance? Or was Dad protecting his son from an ugly side of TOS?

  I’d seen enough movies to know what was possible. Hell, it even cropped up in real life news how governments sometimes got information. I appreciated that I wouldn’t have to watch, especially since I wasn’t sure how I felt about someone being harmed in the quest for details. It seemed wrong. What Melissa had done, though, could justify getting tough—people were hurt, data was stolen, and a business took a major hit.

  I honestly didn’t know what to think. They’d come after me. They’d taken Eddie from me. Or maybe he’d been part of it all along and was never really mine. Maybe….

  I stopped before I went too far down the rabbit hole of trying to sort out my feelings. There were too many. Life was much easier when I stayed behind a computer in my room.

  I looked at Dad and nodded. It was simpler to leave it at that.

  “I suppose I should get back to work,” I said. “Ghostlight and I are coding a way to clean all the files that are compromised just in case people don’t know they have them. We want people to know their music is safe.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I recognized the pattern as Mitch. We hadn’t talked outside of a few texts since I’d been in New York. He was used to me not surfacing when I was deep in work. The phone buzzed twice more in rapid succession. He texted at a fast rate.

  “It’s been a long, crazy day,” Mom said. “Are you sure you don’t need more recovery time after that last blast of music and the fights?”

  Usually I liked being treated as a colleague by them, but there was a lot of me that really wanted to be a kid. I appreciated she offered the out. I needed to finish the mission, though, so I could focus on the rest of the mess.

  Now Mitch was calling. Maybe something was wrong.

  “I should take this.” I pulled the phone from my pocket. “It’s Mitch and he’s shifted from texting to calling.”

  “Of course,” Dad said. “Should we go?”

  “Nah. It’s not like he’s top-secret.” I gave a weak smile in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  “Hey, Mitch, what’s up?” I hoped my voice sounded as if everything was totally fine.

  “Hey, man. Sorry to bother you.” He spoke superfast. “I know you’re busy. I saw your parents on the TV today, which, was like… well that never happens. But, look. This may be nothing… I don’t know.”

  “Mitch? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  Mom, Dad, and John focused on me, and I shrugged. I hoped this wasn’t another problem, but it wasn’t like Mitch to stumble over words so much.

  “Like I said it may be nothing.” He paused again. “I was out doing some errands for Dad and ended up driving by Eddie’s. There’s a for sale sign in front. I… well… I looked through the front window. Man, their stuff’s gone. He’s still down there, right?”

  The news was like a gut punch. Mitch talked, but I only heard bits and pieces of it. The Cochranes packed up and left. Just like that.

  “Theo? Theo!”

  “Sorry. I’m here. You said the house was empty?” I looked at Mom, trying to keep my shit together. The nausea from earlier roared back.

  “Yeah. I rang the bell, and there was no answer. I texted Eddie to ask what was up. Maybe his parents moved somewhere else in the city. I mean people move, right? But the text message bounced as undeliverable. He’s not even on Facebook anymore. Unless he’s blocked me. He’s with you, right?”

  I’d managed to put off thinking about Eddie much over the past twelve hours, but this made it all too clear that there was something major going on.

  I dropped my head. I couldn’t look at my parents.

  Had Blackbird taken Eddie’s parents? Taken him? Maybe he was forced to protect them? If Mom and Dad were in trouble, I’d do whatever it took to save them.

  The shakes vibrated me, and I clutched the phone tight so I wouldn’t drop it.

  I had no idea what to say because it wouldn’t necessarily match whatever story we created.

  “He’s still here,” I managed to say with an even voice. “I’m just about wrapped up with the work and—”

  I hung up on Mitch. Hopefully he thought the call dropped. I turned it off so any call back would roll to voicemail. I released the phone. It bounced off the table and ended up on the floor. I held my head in my hands as a huge sob escaped.

  The agent part of me hated the outburst, but nothing would keep it in. Few things were worse than what Eddie’d done.

  My chest hurt—between the fights and the convulsions caused by the emotions.

  Mom and Dad both put their hands on my back. Mom’s smaller hand rubbed a circle while Dad offered a gentle squeeze on my shoulder. I wanted the comfort, but at the same time I didn’t because it threatened to make it worse.

  “What did Mitch say?” Dad asked.

  “Can we not talk about this right now?”

  “If this was just a breakup, then yes you’d have all the space you need. But you know it’s more than that.” Mom’s agent voice was in full force.

  “Of course, I know that.” I strained to keep my voice in check and abruptly stood up from the table.

  Yelling at them wouldn’t help. “They’re gone, okay? The Cochranes packed up. Mitch happened by the house today, and it was empty with a sign out front and everything.”

  A look went between them I’d never seen before.

  “We know,” Mom said quietly.

  Like a hinge had broken, my mouth dropped open as my mind reeled.

  “For how long?” I shouted through increasing sobs. “How could you keep—” A coughing fit made everything worse.

  Mom reached out, but I dodged her.

  I’d never done that before.
<
br />   “How long?” I finally asked through ragged breaths.

  “A few hours. Agents went to the house right after we reported this incident. It’s unclear if the family’s gone into hiding or if they were taken. It’s been made to look like they never existed. Many—”

  For hours? Did they think I couldn’t handle the news? I’d rather hear it from them instead of being blindsided by Mitch.

  He’d said Eddie’s Facebook was gone. That meant much of our history was too. He posted far more than me. All those pictures….

  Like that was the most important thing. My priorities were messed up.

  “I need some air.” I grabbed the phone from the floor and my backpack off the table. “I’ll get back to the brownstone.”

  Before I got to the door, Dad gently grabbed my arm.

  “Theo—”

  “Please,” I looked at the floor. This wasn’t the right thing to do but I needed out. “I really have to go. I’ll let Lorenzo know I’ll be back online later.”

  Mom came to me, and I caught the look of sadness on John’s face as he stood by the table.

  “Don’t.” I stopped Mom before she said anything. “If I stay here, I’m going to explode. I need to be on my own, okay?” The struggle not to scream took a lot of energy. “Then I’ll refocus and finish the job.”

  I didn’t give them an opportunity to say anything else as I shrugged off Dad’s hand and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  BEFORE I left the security of the building, I called Lorenzo. He didn’t ask any questions about the delay. Either my parents had texted him, or he knew I must’ve finally hit a wall.

  Mitch had left a flurry of text messages and two voicemails. I’d owe him a huge apology later.

  Outside the sun shone brightly in the western part of the sky, but it’d still be some time before it got dark.

  I stood on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Twenty-Fourth Street. I knew from my basic Manhattan geography that I was pretty close the Hudson River. Eddie and I wanted to rent bikes and ride along the waterfront since it stretched more than one hundred blocks. Down the street I saw bikes racked up outside a storefront. Maybe I could rent one. A ride would be perfect despite how tired I felt.