by James Hunt
When Heath arrived at the top of the stairs, a short, portly man ran up and handed him a stack of clothes. “Here you are, sir. Cleaned and pressed.”
Heath wiped his hands and gently took the stack of fresh clothes. His shoes squished against the soggy carpet, pushing up water and air bubbles from the soaked foam underneath. He found his way to a locker room, where he showered.
Once he’d rid himself of the filth that came with the field assignment, he carefully picked up his clothes, putting on his pants, socks, shoes, shirt, belt, and tie in that order. He reached for his jacket, and when he put his arms through the sleeves, the cuffs of the jacket ended up being three inches short of making it to his wrists. He ripped it off in a fit of anger and threw it on the ground. His nostrils flared from the annoyance, and he closed his eyes, breathed in slowly through his nose and out slowly through his mouth.
When Heath opened his eyes, he saw a name printed on a small strip of paper over the locker. He looked to his right, where another name was also printed on another locker door. He followed the trail of names, his eyes flitting back and forth quickly until they landed on the one name he was looking for: Sarah Hill.
It took him less than thirty seconds to pick the lock. Inside were a few stained and sweaty T-shirts, a half-eaten box of Snickers candy bars, a fully loaded revolver, and crumpled-up chewing gum wrappers. Two pictures were taped on the inside of the door. He grabbed hold of one, the adhesive peeling off slowly from the metal in stringy lines until it finally gave way.
The picture was faded, the original color no longer decipherable. A young man and woman were in the mountains on a trail somewhere. In the picture with them were two children—a small baby and a toddler. All of them were smiling, even the baby, no doubt giggling about some nonsense the mother had whispered to her earlier.
Heath sat down on the bench behind him and neatly peeled off the remaining bits of tape, carefully, ensuring that the rest of the picture wasn’t damaged. Once all the tape had been removed, he was placing it gently in his pocket when his phone rang. He looked at the number and answered immediately.
“We’re almost finished up here, Mr. Demps.”
“Good. What have you found on their hard drives?”
“Nothing yet, sir, but I’m having our technicians take them back to the lab. They’ll have a better opportunity to reconstruct the data there.”
“We need them gone, Heath. They know a lot about us, and I want to make sure we know as much about them as we can. Understand?”
“Yes, sir, but I was wondering about our contact. Perhaps he—”
“No. We’ll be handling this ourselves.”
“Yes, sir.”
The phone call ended, and Heath pocketed his cell. He grabbed the edge of Sarah’s locker door and pinched it between his fingers then ran his fingertip over the faces of the people in the second picture: Ben, Becca, Matt, Ella, and finally Sarah. When he made it to her face, he dug his nail into her forehead and scraped out her head. Heath slammed the locker door shut and went back out onto the floor to ensure the men they were using didn’t miss any important details in the office.
***
The outline of the Chicago skyline was firmly behind them as Bryce pulled the car into a small suburban community south of the city. Traffic was bad until they made it out of the downtown area. Once that happened, there wasn’t anyone on the road, mostly due to no fuel shipments arriving for the past few days.
They’d seen a few wrecks on the way out here, but it seemed the chaos and crime had been restricted to the streets of Chicago. Out past the city limits, there wasn’t anything but a few candles in the windows of the houses they passed. Everyone was as quiet as church mice.
“Right up here, Bryce,” Mack said, gesturing to the house at the end of the street. Bryce pulled into the driveway, and Sarah checked the magazines around her belt—only two left. But the two C-4 explosives made her feel a little better about the situation.
“What’s the weapons detail like inside?” Sarah asked.
“Assault rifles, rocket launchers, pistols, grenades, heavy ordnance,” Mack said.
“Nothing but the best,” Sarah replied. “How long till we’re back up and running with the sat link?”
“Depends,” Bryce answered.
“On what?”
“On how fast we can get Global Power offline.”
“Great.” Sarah shoved the back door open, making an effort to conceal the pistols underneath her jacket. She did a quick perimeter check and then followed Mack inside, where each of them was scanned before entering.
The front door opened up to the living room, and Bryce flicked a light on. Sarah checked the rooms, clearing each one until she found the armory. Rows and rows of rifles, shotguns, pistols, grenades, explosives, and ammo lined the walls. It was like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet, but instead of food there were guns, and instead of silverware there were bullets. “Come to momma.”
Bryce had his laptop out and was busy on his keyboard while Mack checked the blinds out front. When Sarah stepped out, she was loaded down with every piece of hardware she could carry. Both Bryce and Mack gave her a look up and down. “What?” she asked.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mack asked.
“To get our HQ back,” Sarah answered. “I’m not letting those bastards steal my chair. Do you know how long it took me to get one with the right butt grooves? That thing was just starting to feel comfortable.”
“HQ is compromised, the satellite link is down, and all our operatives are in blackout mode until they receive orders from their support agents,” Mack said.
“So let’s boot up the backup servers and go kick some ass!” Sarah said, gesturing to the two of them with thumbs up but not receiving the same level of enthusiasm back. “C’mon, guys, work with me here.”
“The backup servers are connected to the main power grid,” Bryce said. “If we turn them on, then Global Power will see the influx of energy used on the grid, and we’ll be right back to where we started.”
Sarah looked over at Mack, who was still gazing out the window, oblivious to everything they were talking about. “Mack.” He quickly withdrew the blinds and looked over at the two of them sitting over the kitchen table. “What are we supposed to do?” Sarah asked. “Just sit here until Demps decides to turn the power back on?”
Mack shook his head, shaking out whatever thoughts had entered it. He took a few steps with his head down, rubbing his forehead, mumbling something to himself. Sarah elbowed Bryce in the shoulder, and he flinched. “He’s doing his ‘something big is about to happen’ walk.”
“I don’t think that’s an actual thing,” Bryce said, rubbing his shoulder.
“There is another satellite server location,” Mack said. “It’s completely off the grid. No one knows its location except for me.”
Sarah gave Bryce a playful shove, and Bryce raised his eyebrow. “Son of a bitch, that is a real thing,” he said.
“Where are the servers?” Sarah asked.
“Alaska.”
“You couldn’t have picked someplace a little closer?” Bryce asked.
“Road trip!” Sarah exclaimed, jumping between the two of them. “I call shotgun.”
***
The cuts and bruises along Ben’s face hadn’t healed. The lack of medical attention, food, and sleep made sure of that. Not that he could see or feel anything anymore anyway. He’d lost himself within the dark recesses of the room, where no light or hope could enter. He’d slipped into the icy-cold hands of despair. He’d accepted the fact that he’d never see his family again, never hear his kids’ voices, and never hold his wife in his arms. The only thing left for him here was pain.
The metal door to his cell squealed open as his face was greeted with the artificial light of the hallway outside. Ben was only able to make out the dark silhouette of a man towering over him. He curled further into himself as two pairs of hands grabbed him roughly a
nd picked him up then placed him on a stretcher.
Ben’s face glazed over at the ceiling above him as he was carried down a hallway. The cuts along his face had grown infected, oozing yellowish liquid. Pieces of decayed, dead flesh hung from the wounds, infecting the surrounding skin. His lips were cracked, dried, dehydrated. He moved his mouth fruitlessly, trying to form words that his voice wouldn’t let him utter and the guards carrying him wouldn’t care to hear anyway. Some type of new torture awaited him at the end of this journey. Some new form of disfigurement. His children’s faces flashed in his memory. What little water he had left leaked from the corners of his eyes and created a single stream down the side of his face, quickly soaking through his skin like water on a dry riverbed.
The ceiling finally stopped moving, and Ben felt himself being lifted from the cot and transferred to the cold steel of another surface. A shadow slowly encroached over him, blocking out the light above. He couldn’t see the features on the person’s face, but he could feel something on the side of his own, picking away at his skin. His head jerked slightly from the pressure on his cheek. He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, letting hands and whatever pieces of metal that were attached to them touch him, but after they were done, they flipped him over, addressing the wounds on his back, arms, and legs. They showered him and put him in a fresh set of clothes. All the while, he lay motionless, letting the foreign bodies and hands puppeteer him into whatever position they wanted. They moved him, and he obeyed without objection.
Finally, after they were finished, they put a mirror in front of him, and he was able to get a look at himself for the first time in he didn’t know how long. Stitches lined the left side of his cheek and his forehead. His arm was wrapped and bandaged, and his left eye was bruised but no longer swollen. For a moment, Ben didn’t recognize his face, recoiling from the image shown. Then, slowly, he leaned in closer, bringing his hand to the bandaged cuts on his face and neck. After he was done, he took a moment to examine his surroundings.
It was similar to the torture chamber in which he was beaten and not allowed to see his children. A chill ran up his spine, the Pavlovian response triggered in anticipation of the potential for pain. When the door opened, Ben turned his head away.
“Mr. Hill, I hope you’re feeling better.”
Ben slowly turned to face the voice, opening his eyes at the same time. His memory was blurred, but he knew the man standing in front of him at that moment wasn’t the same man from before. He was much shorter. He walked to Ben slowly and extended his hand, which Ben did not take.
“I can understand your hesitation, Mr. Hill.”
Ben attempted to move his lips, but no sound would come from them. The man reached for a bottle of water and extended it to Ben, who let it linger in midair between them, watching the condensation from the bottle drip onto the carpet below and the large ruby-studded ring around the man’s finger.
“It’s not a trick.”
Ben reached out his hand slowly, taking the water bottle. His weak fingers were barely able to squeeze the cap off. The water burned his lips when he brought the rim to his mouth, but the cool wetness awakened a thirst he didn’t realize he had. He greedily gulped the water, the plastic bottle crinkling and the water level lowering until Ben choked, spilling some of the precious liquid to the floor. He wiped his mouth and caught his breath.
“It’s all right,” the man said. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
With his throat newly hydrated, Ben found the words he had been unable to speak earlier. “M-my family. W-where’s my f-family?”
Ben could tell the man did his best to offer a sympathetic hand, but the forced lines of empathy only accentuated the farce across his face.
“I know you must be worried about them. Would you like to see them?”
Ben nodded. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. He played around on the screen for a bit and then handed the device to Ben. A live video feed of both his children playing popped up on the monitor, and a slow sob escaped him. He traced the outlines of their faces with his fingertip, smiling.
“They’re totally healthy and completely safe,” the man said. “Although they do miss their father.”
“My w-wife,” Ben said. “Where’s B-Becca?”
“We’ll get to her in a minute.” The man snatched his phone back and stuffed it into his pocket. “I’m going to make you a deal, Ben. I’m going to ask you some questions, and if I like what I hear, then I will let you go back to your children right now. They’re only a couple rooms down, still playing with those toys you saw.”
“What do you want?”
The man scooted his chair closer to Ben, who recoiled slightly from the new, more intimate distance between them. The man leaned forward, his voice soft when he spoke. “I need to know everything about your sister. What she does in her spare time, what type of foods she likes to eat, her pet peeves, her interests, her fears, what she was like as a child—anything and everything you know about her.”
“Why? Why are you doing this? What did Sarah do? What did we do?”
The man smiled. “You really don’t know, do you?” Ben shook his head. The man stood up and walked around the room a bit as if he was trying to find the right words before he spoke. “Your sister doesn’t work at a packaging company, Ben. She’s a covert agent in what I’ve discovered to be the most secret intelligence agency in the world. They don’t appear to operate within the confines of any government or laws, and they basically do whatever the hell they want to do when they want to do it. I actually kind of admire them for it.”
Ben knew he was hearing the words, but none of it seemed real. He was trapped in some nightmare, his mind and body begging him to wake up but his consciousness refusing him. “You’re lying.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but think about it. Your sister probably makes up excuses for missing events, telling you something came up. She most likely always comes to your place, and you never go to hers. She has a convenient job where there’s no real office, where you would never think to go and visit her. Ben, your sister is not the person you think she is.”
All of it was too much. Ben’s mind went back to every conversation, every dinner, every call, text, email, trying to piece together some evidence that the man was lying, but the harder he thought about it, the angrier he became. It wasn’t an anger born of not being able to assimilate the information but a rage grown from the knowledge that this man he’d never met before was right.
“I need to find her, Ben,” the man said, crouching down in front of him. “It’s important for both me and your family that I find her.”
“If I answer your questions, I get to see my kids?”
The man smiled, and Ben could feel the sour wave of disgust wash over his body. Disgust that he was so easily bought, disgust that he believed what the man said about his sister, disgust from the fact that he was betraying his own blood. But in the hierarchy of his mind, Ben’s children took precedence.
The man took a seat in front of Ben and twirled the ring around his finger. “Tell me what she was like when she was a girl.”
Chapter 6
There wasn’t an ear in the entire room that didn’t have a phone glued to it. The chatter from the number of conversations was a constant background noise to everyone’s personal conversation, and everyone did their best to focus on their specific tasks at hand.
Chancellor Jollenbeck stood at the head of the conference table, where a rotating coterie of advisors provided news from each of their own subordinates, channeling information up the chain of command in order for their leader to determine the next best course of action.
“Chancellor, the riots in downtown Berlin are still going on, and the police force there is having trouble with containment.”
“Send in the reserves from the north, and make sure they bring fresh supplies of water and food rations with them,” the chancellor answered. “God knows when they’ll get to g
o back to their homes.”
“Chancellor, the utilities in the southwest still haven’t made any progress. They’re saying all the equipment needs to be replaced, from the circuit boards in the facility to the power lines that feed the rest of the area.”
“They’re going to have to make do with what they’ve got,” the chancellor replied. “Get them in touch with the American engineers—they say that they may have a work-around.”
It’d been like this for the past six hours. There were too many fires for her staff to put out. She was pulling resources from everywhere in the country. The sagging shoulders and tired eyes that surrounded her weren’t going to last much longer. She grabbed her chief of staff, Alexander, and whispered in his ear, “I want mandatory rest cycles for everyone in this room. If they’ve worked more than ten hours, they go home.”
“I tried that already, Chancellor. And besides, with the roads the way they are right now, if they went home, they might not be able to make it back.”
“Then clear out the dining room and set up some cots. We don’t know when all of this is going to end, and the longer our people go without sleep, the sloppier their work will become. That’s something we can’t afford right now.”
“Yes, Chancellor.”
While she admired the resiliency of her staff, she knew that adrenaline had a shelf life, and for most of them, it had expired days ago. With one of the staffers telling her about the water shortages in Bavaria, Alexander pushed him out of the way and whispered in her ear.
A chain reaction of mind-numbing pain rippled through her entire body. “Excuse me, I need to step out for a moment.” The staffer bowed his head, and Andrea quickly followed Alexander out the door and down the hallway. The two stepped in the same hurried stride. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes, it just came in a few moments ago. I thought it was a hoax at first. With all the dummy threats that have been coming through over the past week, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but per our protocol, it still went through the screening process. It’s legitimate.”