“I don’t know. All I can determine is that she was up to something. I doubt we’ll ever have the truth of it from Magnum. They’ll spin this story in whatever way is most advantageous to them, whether that’s by telling the truth or by outright lying to all of us.”
“I’ll be able to find out. I need to know anyway. After what I did…”
Joshua put his hand over his daughter’s. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry you were in a position to be forced to do something like that.”
“I chose this.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? What you’re doing is important, I’m not going to deny that, but it’s also taking a toll on you. When you told me about your decision, the danger certainly worried me, but I was also worried about the cost. I know you want to see this through, and I don’t blame you for it. Just promise me you’ll make sure the price isn’t too high.”
“I’ll try.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be here today. I feel awful leaving. I’d much rather stay with you, help you through this, but the surest way I can protect you is by doing my part to make sure you don’t stand out in any way.”
“I know, Dad. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of the shopping, and I’m going to spend some time at the gym. Maybe I’ll go see the film too. I’m going to make myself very visible, be out in public as much as possible today, so don’t worry about me being alone.”
“That’s what does worry me, sweetheart.” Fixing a concerned gaze on her, he came around to her side of the table to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “No matter how many people are around you, you are alone in this, and I hate it.”
Chapter 36
The Authorities remained camped out in the accounting department for the next week, which meant another missed training session. Headquarters swarmed with rumors about Shah and Javier, most of which Dara discounted as pure fantasy, but the fervor was disturbing. Some Contributors were horrified by what had happened, while others clearly relished the scandal. The second type were the worst, slavering as they passed around the latest morsel of gossip, reveling in being the center of attention, thriving on eviscerating someone who had once been one of their own.
Letizia still hadn’t spoken a word to Dara, and it made her uneasy. At first she’d thought the Free Thinkers being unable to find Shah was an annoyance, but it was now obvious that her well-intentioned warning had caused them a serious problem. She tried not to think about how Mal was taking it. Was Raj angry with her too? Somehow, that thought was worse than the thought of anyone else being mad at her. She had experience weathering Letizia’s anger, and Mal always seemed disdainful at best, but Raj cared about Dara, considered her his friend. She couldn’t bear the idea of disappointing him, of violating his trust in her.
It struck her as strange that Magnum wasn’t trying to do damage control until she realized that Shah’s disappearance had provided them with the perfect cover. Everyone was so busy speculating about what had happened with her that the gossip about Andersen’s project had died down. Something must be on the horizon, and it reignited Dara’s sense of desperation.
Unable to take it any longer, she finally went to see Letizia, who couldn’t risk making a scene by refusing to let Dara in.
“Do you have any idea how stupid your actions were?” Letizia asked, trembling with barely contained anger. She squared off against Dara, staring at her with a gaze so searing it made Dara cringe, but then her own anger rose.
“Do you have any idea what Andersen asked me to do?” she demanded, letting her voice rise more than was wise.
Grabbing Dara’s upper arm, Letizia pulled her away from the door. “Quiet down. The tipoff to the Authorities, was that you?”
“No.” Yanking her arm free, Dara thrust her face into Letizia’s. “He called in the tipoff. The Authorities weren’t yet suspicious of Shah, so he had me plant evidence to motivate them to go digging.”
Her eyes widening, Letizia took a half step back from Dara before hardening her expression. “I told you I would contact Mal. You should have trusted me.”
“Where is Shah?”
“She’s safe. We got her out, but no thanks to you.”
“I knew the Authorities were coming for her. What did you expect me to do, go home and relax and pretend nothing was happening? If they’d caught her, they would have made her disappear.”
“Your warning set off a chain of events that resulted in the cover of one of our best extractors being blown. The Authorities almost caught her, and she had to flee to a bunker. They followed her and destroyed it.”
“Oh, Creators,” Dara gasped, all the fury draining from her, leaving her light-headed. Her hands flew to her face, covering her mouth, and it was all she could do not to collapse. “Is she… Did they…”
“She got out through an escape hatch and made it to another hideout. Authorities from every Creator have been combing the wasteland trying to find other hideouts ever since. So far no one has been captured, and it looks like the Authorities are about to back off, but do you have any idea what this has cost us? Extractions were risky as it was, and this whole mess has made them infinitely riskier. We were careful to ensure that the Creators didn’t see us as a serious threat, so that they would leave us alone, but now they’re aware of the threat we pose. You have officially put us on their radar.”
“I—I didn’t mean…” Pain tore through her as she thought about Mal, Tasha, Raj, her mother. By trying to save one person, she had put untold numbers of others at risk. Her knees buckled, but Letizia caught her before she went down and guided her to a chair.
“I know you thought you were doing the right thing, but we warned you, Dara.” Every trace of anger had faded from Letizia’s voice, leaving her sounding exhausted. She sat across from Dara, propped her elbows on her knees, and dropped her head into her hands, burying them in the hair at the nape of her neck.
Holding the tears back was impossible, and Dara sobbed as the dam broke. Neither of them said anything for a good, long while. Cried out at last, Dara mopped her face with her sleeve.
“Look, I know you didn’t mean to cause this,” Letizia said, breaking the silence. “Had you known what would happen, you would never have done what you did. It doesn’t change the fact that you were cautioned, though, that you chose not to follow procedure. When you throw additional variables into the mix, you compromise us all.”
“There’s nothing I can say.” Dara’s tears had roughened her voice. “I can’t go back and change what I did, and I wouldn’t, not with the information I had then. I asked you all to tell me more and you wouldn’t. You said it was for my own protection, and maybe it was, but it also meant I was operating in the dark. This is the end result. I’m responsible for it, and it’s tearing me up inside, but you should have told me what I needed to know.”
“Yes, we should have.” Squeezing her eyes shut, Letizia let out a deep, shuddering sigh.
“What do we do?”
“It probably goes without saying, but your training is suspended for the time being. While everyone’s attention is focused on this scandal, I need you to pay closer attention than ever to Andersen. It’s the perfect time for him to act.”
“I thought so too.”
“Good. Stay alert. I can get messages to Mal in an emergency, but I’ve had to curtail communications. Most normal operations have been suspended, and the Free Thinkers are scouring the wasteland for new hideouts. The data miners are working, but they’re always on the move in case the Creators pick up on their trail and follow it, so it’s hindering their progress.”
“What about Shah? Was she plotting against Magnum?”
“She wasn’t planning on selling the plans to anyone else, if that’s what you mean. She was trying to shut Andersen down, but it’s unclear why. Shah refuses to talk, so the data miners are working double time. Mal will keep questioning her, and hopefully she’ll give something up, but for now all we know is that there’s a whole lot more
to this than we thought.”
“Why are the Authorities digging around in Accounting, then?”
“Shah had black market connections.” Letizia lifted her head, clasping her hands between her knees and meeting Dara’s gaze. “That’s why Javier wanted to work with her. He told us. His sister is seriously ill, and he needed Shah’s connections to get unauthorized medical treatments for her, help keep her condition under wraps so that Magnum wouldn’t send her to a facility.”
Dara blanched. “The facilities, they—”
“I know,” Letizia interrupted. “Raj told me years ago. It’s why I was so concerned when I thought your mom might be sent to one. Anyway, the Authorities are busy figuring out who was involved. Heads are going to roll. Lots of them.”
“Which means everyone will be focused on that.”
“Exactly.”
“Then we have to figure out what Andersen is up to.” Dara rose on unsteady legs. Her steps were shaky as she headed for Letizia’s door. Just before she opened it, she turned to look back at her former master. “I know this is worth less than nothing, but I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring the Creators down on the Free Thinkers.”
“I know that, but you did. Now we have to figure out how to deal with the aftermath.”
Chapter 37
The aftermath of Shah’s downfall was more extreme than Dara could have imagined. Each day Contributors disappeared without a word, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups. The wild speculation that had been tossed about engineering quieted down, everyone stunned by the magnitude of what had been uncovered. Fear fogged the air, and most kept their heads down and their attention fixed on their work, Dara included.
Andersen walked as if his feet weren’t touching the ground. Not only had his project garnered Magnum’s special attention, his informing on Shah had led them to uncover a massive, thriving black market. Losing their control over the supply of goods cost Magnum a great deal of leverage against the Cores and Ballasts, so Andersen’s coup was larger than perhaps even he had anticipated.
Dara and her father existed in a state of heightened awareness, every day expecting the blow on the door that would signal the arrival of the Authorities. Neither of them had ever used the black market, but Joshua feared he would be found guilty by association, and she was terrified that Andersen would turn on her, despite his assurances to the contrary. She had a feeling he took pleasure in her fear; she sometimes caught him watching her with avid enjoyment as she scurried to heed his commands.
Worse than all this, though, was being cut off from the Free Thinkers. Letizia had cautioned Dara that they had better avoid one another until things died down, and it was agonizing for Dara to have no contact with Raj. She was desperate for his insight as she tried to untangle the twisted threads of the Andersen intrigue, and she was anxious for an update on her mother’s condition. It chafed her that the Free Thinkers hadn’t trusted her enough to provide her a means of direct communication, but she also had to acknowledge that it had been wise of them. More than a trust issue, their decision not to allow her to contact them provided them with an added layer of protection, should Andersen come after her next. Letizia had promised Dara that she would make sure she and Joshua were extracted if it came to that, but Dara couldn’t stop thinking about the night she’d planted the evidence. What if she was next, and she had no one to warn her?
Guilt was her constant companion, showing up whenever she had such thoughts. It killed her not to know if the Creators were still going after the Free Thinkers. As far as she knew, no one had been hurt, but that didn’t make it any less difficult to deal with the self-recrimination she felt whenever she questioned her actions. Examining them from every angle, she always arrived at the same conclusion: no matter what, she would still have chosen to warn Javier and Shah.
Knowing this was one thing, learning to live with it another. She had been certain the difference between right and wrong was clear, but how was a person supposed to make the right decision in such an impossible situation? She hadn’t known what would happen, but what if she had? Could she really choose to sacrifice someone, even if meant saving others? Obvious as the answer might seem, in that moment, when she’d known that someone’s life hung in the balance, she hadn’t been able to walk away. She doubted she would ever feel prepared to do so.
Maybe working with the Free Thinkers isn’t right for me, then. Maybe I need to get out of the domes and settle somewhere outside, forget about all of it, Creators, Free Thinkers, and everything. Maybe it’s time to focus on myself and my family.
She tried to tell herself such thoughts were selfish, but it didn’t do much to sway her. It was unbearable to live with the knowledge that one wrong move could screw things up on such a massive scale. Mistakes were inevitable, and if this one seemingly small mistake of hers had led to such disastrous consequences, would she be able to deal with her next mistake?
Anger lurked in the back corners of her mind too, anger that the Free Thinkers had put her in the position they had. Why hadn’t they been more open with her, why hadn’t Raj spelled out for her what might happen if she chose to stay where she was and maintain her charade?
But hadn’t he? She thought of his face when he’d told her about his decision to leave, and her anger at him drained away. He hadn’t wanted her in the Free Thinkers in the first place. She had thought this was because he didn’t trust her, or because he thought she was incompetent, but now she understood. He had been trying to protect her because he understood the cost.
Yet somehow he had found the courage to continue with the Free Thinkers, and he had done a world of good since he had joined them. How could she not want to live up to his example? Erasing the slate was impossible, as he had insisted, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t do good in the future. She had to cling to that belief because it was the only thing that provided her with even an ounce of solace.
Distressed as she was, Dara had been keeping a careful eye on Andersen. Headquarters was so chaotic that his movements seemed to have gone unnoticed by most, but not by her. He spent more time than ever with the Creators, sometimes even during his shift, and not because they were questioning him about Shah. Several times he had ordered her to clear his schedule, spending hours in his office slaving away over something, and she was willing to bet she knew what it was.
Hacking hadn’t been part of her core skill set, but she had become more adept at it as of late, and she spent whatever free time she could spare on her unsecured tablet, trying to get deeper into Andersen’s files. She had to be meticulous. The Creators were on the highest alert imaginable, and if she left any sort of trail she was doomed. Discovery would earn her the top slot on Andersen’s list of suspects.
It frustrated her to have to make such timid stabs at getting information. Bit by bit, she chipped away at the firewalls and collected fragments of data, assembling them as best she could, but she couldn’t make sense of what she gathered. Andersen’s original project had been a motor, but what she found had something to do with dome design. Had he and the Creators shifted their focus to devising ways to apply the new technology in a manner that would benefit Magnum’s dome? But there was something off about this too, something that didn’t match up with her knowledge of the dome designs.
Deciding she’d risked as much as she could, she devoted her attention to studying Magnum’s dome design. It had been state-of-the-art back when it was built several generations ago, but it was showing signs of wear. The ideal solution would have been to dedicate Contributors to the renovation of the dome, but Magnum didn’t have the staff to spare and couldn’t increase staffing because the domes were already at capacity. Andersen’s new technology would make the domes more efficient, allowing Contributors to be reassigned to focus on the structural issues, and she thought at first this was what was detailed in the new information she’d uncovered.
Still, the harder she studied the dome design, the less this added up, until she was struck by a
sudden moment of clarity. The designs weren’t meant to detail the repair of the Magnum dome, they were designs for an entirely new dome. The question was, why were Andersen and Magnum so determined to keep that under wraps?
Chapter 38
“Head of Accounting Adams would like to know if you’ve had a chance to review the reports he sent, sir,” Dara said, standing at the threshold of Andersen’s office. For the first time in days, he’d left the door open, and she had pounced on the opportunity to speak to him.
“I have not,” he said icily. “I told him I would get to them when I have the time.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll pass that information along to him.”
“Dara, come inside and close the door.”
Breaking out in a cold sweat, she did as he instructed but didn’t move any closer to him. His smile was predatory as he beckoned her to him and gestured that she should sit.
“I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve observed as of late. You provided an important service to Magnum. The Creators may not be aware of the role you played, but I am. You helped bring to their attention the betrayals of numerous criminals,” he said, his eyes fixed on her face.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I’m very satisfied, sir.” The words cost her more than she could have imagined. With each deception she felt like she was tearing away another piece of herself.
“I’ve heard whispers that perhaps you or your father availed yourselves of one of the services this black market provided. After all, it is strange that your mother disappeared as suddenly as she did.”
Her blood froze in her veins, and she could barely stop herself from going rigid. If she betrayed herself, he would notice. Those eyes would miss nothing. “I would never do such a thing.” She spoke the truth with just the right mixture of indignation, disbelief, and grief in her voice.
[Contributor 02] - Infiltrator (2013) Page 15