A thick bead of sweat dripped from Seamus’s head – he flipped the monitor back to him.
Twenty seconds… okay, get your shit together Seamus…. there are three transistors seen, four relays, could be false wires and decoys… What you need to see is behind this sealed compartment – no time to get behind it. You are going to have to pick one. Classic Hollywood style.
Twelve seconds showed on the monitor.
There is no way to tell which wires route through the resistors and which connect to the primer and the power supply to the device. Red… White… or… Blue.
Eight seconds showed on the monitor.
Hurry up you pansy, cut one!
Seamus crossed himself and placed his wire cutters on the White wire.
Oh shit…
One last breath.
Snip.
Nothing.
Seamus opened his shut eyes, relieved to not hear the motor to the fan.
“Well, that’s a start.”
The monitor read four seconds. It stayed there. And then after a low, digital beep, it turned off. Seamus fell against the wall in relief, trying to catch his breath.
“Well… that was fun.”
Chapter 45
Chief of Staff’s Office
6:20 PM
Vice President Johnson sat at Jacobs’s desk, he had the room to himself as the others were locked down in the Oval Office. Johnson had sprawled into a deep, arduous thought. His temples had begun to sweat, his gut turned as the news showed him the turmoil of the city. His meditation was interrupted by the office phone ringing. As common calls from the outside were blocked, Johnson developed his suspicion of who it may be.
“Hello?” The Vice President brought the receiver to his ear.
“Vice President Johnson, I am sending you the NOC list over the executive server. This is not the standard protocol, but I have been instructed to get this to you as soon as possible. I cannot stress how important it is for you to delete the file once you are finished with it and to keep that list as discrete as possible. This has all of our deep cover agents on it. I don’t have to tell you how sensitive this intel is,” Director Hunterson explained.
“I understand, Peter… Thank you for getting this to me. We need all hands on deck,” the Vice President said.
“The encryption key is ‘J&d293A!n’” The Vice President jotted the random series of characters down on a nearby notepad.
“Got it…” The Vice spun in the office chair to the desktop computer stationed on the mahogany desk. He clicked the computer alive and logged into his White House personal access account.
He then accessed the shared server where he navigated to the Executive digital server. He typed in his access code and located a file recently posted to his folder. Johnson entered the encryption key from the scrap page to view the file. A series of top secret records populated his computer monitor. There were 483 NOC agents listed. The column headers were ‘Name’, ‘DOB’, ‘Height’, ‘Weight’, ‘Intelligence Branch’, ‘Alias’, ‘Last Check-In Location’, ‘Assignment’, among other descriptions of the operatives. It was a map to the darkest agents of the US Government.
The Vice President searched the file for a few minutes until he was able to isolate two names.
Henry Bosco & Caroline Keener
The Vice President gazed at their information as a wry smile came over his face.
“There you are… You two are going to save the day…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Down the hall in the Oval Office, the staff remained calm but concerned. The hours were beginning to build and with no word from the Secret Service and the endless speculation playing on the news, the alert level was beginning to rise. The three Joint Chiefs in the room sitting on the couches had run out of old war stories to distract the quarantined. The college intern was obviously deeply affected by the Twitter rumor mill she was currently enthralled with, while the First Lady forced a portrayal of composed elegance throughout the entire affair. Her assistant reviewed the upcoming week, while she entertained the small group around her, as if it were a State dinner.
“I’m sure everything is fine, knowing the security around here. It’s probably just a book bag outside the gate,” she explained.
“You don’t think it’s related to the Metro Station attack,” the quivering intern asked from her phone.
“Attack? Who called it an attack?” the First Lady knew something was gravely wrong, but hoped her assurance could quell the growing panic in the room.
“Well BNA did. It’s Breaking News…” the intern responded.
“Let me tell you something, everything is Breaking News for BNA – hurricanes, missing planes, everything. They are the station who cried Breaking News, they’re just desperate for ratings. They’ve also told one too many lies about my husband to have my trust in their reporting,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. General laughter responded to the First Lady’s charm. The laughter continued until the double doors opened to reveal an appalling sight.
Agent Jimmy Doughty, the First Lady’s lead Secret Service agent, stood at the doorway with a respirator mask clasped over his face.
“Mrs. Hooper?” he asked through the filters of the mask.
“Yes?” She leaned up off of her husband’s desk.
“Can you please follow us? Everyone else stay put, we are still in lockdown,” the Doughty instructed. The First Lady, taken off guard, slowly processed through the crowd toward the agents. She grabbed the extra respirator he had for her and pulled it over her head, matting down her pristine hair and breaking its hold. She followed her lead agent through the corridors of her home. The doors closed behind them, leaving the quarantined to their fears and speculations.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Screams and cries sounded out in the Navy Mess hall as Stacey Chapman’s seizures began. John Minick, now twitching himself, held her body as it convulsed over and over again. Stacey’s face was covered in blood as hundreds of blood vessels burst in her nasal cavity. The quarantined looked on in horror as they watched the once beautiful woman shake violently, possessed by a greater force. Her body had surrendered to the attack and her end was fast approaching.
Her fingers tightened into a fist that continued to writhe in anguish. She could control nothing. She could feel the blood pooling in the back of her throat as she began to drown.
What is happening to me? I can’t move, I can’t breathe… I’m dying, aren’t I? God help me… I’m sorry… I’m sorry for everything. Please let me in God, please let me in—
The pressure built heavier in her head as she finished her final contrition. The pain expanded to all sides of her brain, fully consuming her. She had a rush of thought, as if her brain was in overdrive. An intensified pain accompanied every passing thought. Like a balloon reaching its limit of inflation, it grew and grew until – pop.
The seizure stopped.
Her eyes steadied to the corner.
The color in her face drained instantly.
And then nothing but stillness.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Stacey Chapman’s body did not release its grip as John Minick gazed down into her petrified eyes. He noticed that torture was no longer present within them, rather a clearness etched in the stone stillness of her face, almost euphoria – ready for what awaited her on the other side.
“Is she okay? She needs a doctor!” One man yelled from the other end of the dining room.
“How are we supposed to get her one, we are trapped in here!” a voice answered.
“She’s dead…” Minick announced with great difficulty. “We have to stay calm... if we are sick, we have a chance of infecting others if we leave this room…” he explained, looking up from Stacey’s corpse.
“I’m not sick! I feel fine! And I sure as hell am not waiting around until someone infects me!” A defiant voice started the mutiny. An overweight man, balding at the hairline climbed to his feet and waddled toward the door.
“Let
’s get out of here!” he shouted, leading the charge as if laying siege to a castle.
Minick weak and drained of all energy, reached for his hip and drew his handgun. He aimed it with a twitching hand at the man.
“You have to stay in here. I am sorry, but you could risk outbreak!” The man stopped in his tracks at Minick’s threat. He gazed into Minick’s eyes, recognizing the seriousness behind them. After focusing on the other side of the barrel, the man nodded and slowly stepped back to his place against the opposite wall.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Janet Powers lowered her eyes to a file on the conference table as the storm of activity circulated. Hearing bits of conversation at all lengths of the table, she knew that the task force had turned from analyzing the clues, locations and bacteria to an all-out manhunt for Xander and Seamus. Hardy was the only man still focused on Ezra and his plague.
Marty Jacobs headed to the conference table, barking orders and allowing his disdain for Project Sparta to fuel his efforts as if this manhunt was somehow personal. The FBI Director spoke over the room – his ear still to the phone.
“There has been a situation reported at American University. Reports indicate that two armed men came on campus and entered Hurst Hall, shots were fired,” Fangold updated. Jacobs’s eyebrows arched, considering the implications.
“I bet that’s our men. Send the hounds on them,” Jacobs ordered.
The PEOC broke into action, but Powers turned to see Agent Callahan standing against the far wall receive another message over his comm. He then proceeded to the bunker door and pressed his thumb print and a code to open its red doors. The doors slid open and there by herself was the First Lady. She proceeded cautiously as a stranger in her house through the bunker, following the agents to the office which held her dying husband.
She was offered a Hazmat suit and accepted despondently – her mind already focused on what awaited her behind the door. She began to shake as the room froze, turning its attention to her. She was zipped up by the Secret Service agent and her gloves were taped to the sleeves of the suit, sealing off any potential entry. Fully suited, she nodded, and the door was opened. At the sight behind the door, her knees buckled and she had to turn away. After gathering herself, she turned back to her husband and proceeded into the office, shoulders back and chin up. The door was closed behind her.
Chapter 46
Safe House #29
6:45 PM
Darkness descended on the city. The sky still held the blue of twilight, despite the storm clouds that gathered overhead. Nationals Stadium turned off their park lights as the night’s game was canceled. Isolated yells and intermittent crashes echoed down the streets as more rioting began. Mac remained focused on the computer monitor as he passed through PNC Bank’s firewalls.
“Can you transfer some funds into my account while you’re at it?” Cusick cracked. The screens flashed like a strobe light as he dug further into the bank’s network. Digits scrolled the screen as script after script ran through the command window. Mac’s fingers swept over the keys like the brushstrokes of an artist. Cusick peered in closer over Mac’s shoulder as a new network of files opened on the screen.
“There it is…” Cusick marveled as if a treasure chest had just been opened.
And then, Mac’s fingers stopped.
He selected a record, one marked with the named: Connecticut_Avenue. After highlighting it, he confirmed the selection by entering a ‘1’. Immediately, upon hitting ‘Enter’ a surveillance feed spawned, showing a high vantage point of Connecticut Avenue. A line of cars passed in front of the camera and down the street.
“Good! The vantage point of the camera is high enough to peer down into the underpass,” Cusick observed.
“Let’s roll it back to 13:13…” Mac spoke the instructions to himself. He started rolling back the feed at a rate of 32x, keeping an eye on the time stamp in the upper left corner of the feed. When the stamp wound down to 13:13, he played the recorded feed from that time of day. Mac and Cusick leaned forward to view the traffic traveling through the underpass. Waiting in anticipation of the Hyman Seafood Truck, they hung onto the moment. Expecting a large freezer truck to unearth itself from under the overpass, their breaths remained held. But nothing came.
“What time did it go under?” Cusick asked. Mac with a quick Alt+Tab shortcut, brought up the other feed from the traffic camera, showing the freezer truck descending beneath the overpass and out of sight. The time stamp read: 13:13:48
He flipped it back and found that time on the PNC Bank feed. They played it again – no freezer truck. As soon as the time read 13:14:15, Mac’s finger slowly raised to the keyboard where he hit Fast Forward. The time fast forwarded by 4x. Their eyes searched wildly for the truck, without a word spoken. The large truck finally crossed the screen. Mac’s finger tapped on the feed’s timestamp – it read 13:30:02.
“There you are…” Cusick marveled. The truck drove off the feed. Mac didn’t care at this point as he focused in on the overpass. He paused a moment on a thought and then turned to Cusick over his shoulder.
“Now what the hell were they doing under that overpass for sixteen minutes?”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Fiona sidled up to the glass cube that imprisoned Ezra. Deep in thought, she could feel her own defeat. She had been consumed by the files she had found in Hardy’s office of her and her fellow Spartans as children, long before they were recruited to the Project. Ezra stood from his seat and approached the center of the cell.
Fiona glanced at him and saw a compassionate man staring down at her. His expression furrowed into genuine concern.
He folded his arms across his chest and looked her over careful. She could feel his eyes inspecting everything about her, causing her to break her posture. He had a force on her that she could not shake.
“What did you find?” he asked calmly.
“I found files.” Fiona admitted. “… we were only children. Sparta had been observing us since we were eight years old.”
Ezra nodded in agreement.
“Fiona, have you ever asked yourself how they got ten fifteen year old kids to leave their family and their entire lives behind to train in an underground bunker?”
She remained steadied on a spot on the floor five feet ahead of her. “They manipulated us…” her voice trailed.
“Yes, they did and they still are…”
“There were only nine folders though. Xander’s was missing. What about him? What was his childhood like? How did he get here?”” She finally lifted her eyes up to him.
Ezra’s mouth split into a reassuring smile. “Fiona, the answers to those questions are exactly what I’m leading him too.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A unit of local police officers had arrived at Hurst Hall on American University’s campus and cordoned off the area. Students convened before the freshly spread yellow Caution tape to see what had happened. The news media truck had just pulled up and eager journalists began running ahead of cameramen toward the scene.
Standing on the front lawn of Hurst Hall, an overwhelmed Seamus McIlroy gnawed on the inside of his mouth. His sallow face looked more sunken than usual as he focused on calming his heart rate.
“Good job.” Xander came up but was focused elsewhere.
“All in a day’s work.” Seamus laughed. Then there was a resounding pang through Xander’s head. He huddled over, squinting in agony. He clenched so hard that large beads of sweat squeezed out of his temples. Seamus caught him before he fell to his knees. Feeling Xander’s full weight in his arms, Seamus’s concern grew for Xander’s unorthodox behavior that day.
“Are you okay?” By the time the question was asked, Xander’s head began to clear and he was already lifting up to his feet.
He exhaled with difficulty. Xander and Seamus’s eyes met. Xander attempted to nod away Seamus’s concern, but then his leg gave out under the weight of a second shock of pain. The fatigue overtook his body and his weak limbs gave way.
He collapsed to his knees, his head bobbing heavily. Seamus rushed to his side.
“What the hell is going on with you, Xander?” But before Xander could muster the breath to answer, shouts sounded in their direction from all angles.
“Put your hands where we can see them!”
Seamus watched Xander’s eyes roll into the back of his head as he succumbed to another blackout. As Seamus lifted his head, he met the ten agents closing in on them from every side – firearms trained on him and Xander. He knew that there was a nowhere to run and that they were now in the custody of the FBI.
PART 4: THE CURE
Chapter 47
FBI Field Office
Washington, DC
7:45 PM
Xander Whitt’s vision morphed together through a hazy fluorescent atmosphere as he gained consciousness. The room was silver with tiled floor and one aluminum table at its center. His hands attempted to catch himself, but they stopped behind him, cuffed to the gray chair in which he was seated.
Shit…
He thought his way through his surroundings.
Filtered air, fluorescent lights… this can’t be a black-site. Most likely at a FBI field office… closest one to American University is … off 4th Street.
He read a small analog clock hanging above a large one-way mirror that took up most of the far wall.
7:30… I have to get out of here. The clue to the cure will be coming soon.
His hands rattled against the chair behind him as he tested the slack of the cuffs.
The back rest extends from the seat of the chair, leaving an opening space in the chair’s frame. I’m cuffed to the supports of the back of the seat. My feet are not cuffed.
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