Chapter Eighteen - Terms and Conditions
Clem, who was talking to a waiter in the warmly lit restaurant, looked up as they entered. CJ immediately bounded towards the table, but Crysta hung back with Hugo for a moment.
“He looks tired,” she observed softly.
Hugo nodded, “I imagine he expended a lot of energy, probably more than he’s ever had to before.” Crysta nodded her agreement, and they finally moved from the glass doorway to the round table Clem, and now CJ, were occupying.
Clem grinned at them as they sat down, “I just ordered for everyone so that we can get down to business. We’ve got a lot to discuss,” the musician pulled a disk in a jewel case from the pocket of his black jacket, offering it to Hugo.
He took the burned DVD, turning it over in his hands, “What is this?”
Clem’s grin was mischievous, “We will get to that, but first the boring stuff.” CJ huffed dejectedly, but Clem forged ahead, “The group that went after us call themselves, unimaginatively enough, The Agency.” CJ giggled at that and the jazz guitarist smiled encouragingly, “They’re made up of people who died in wars, on black ops missions, or simply vanished without a trace-”
“They’re zombies?” CJ cut in, her eyes large.
Clem chuckled, “I’m afraid not, just died on paper.” CJ went back to slouching and Clem took that as his cue to continue, “Their goal is to minimize the impact of powered people on the world.”
Hugo blinked, and then relaxed slightly, almost smiling. He thought he might like this Agency already; people with abilities were children with incredibly dangerous weapons no one told them how to use properly. “How come we’ve never heard of them before? Mr. Hansen hasn’t even said anything about them. Are they a new group?”
Clem’s grin widened as he shook his head, “No, that’s the thing, they’ve been in operation for a little over 30 years now. The reason no one has heard of them is because they work in small cells for the most part; one cell gets exposed, the others can’t even be connected to them…unless you get to know the higher ups in the Centralia branch like I did,” the musician finished suggestively. Hugo caught Crysta out of the corner of his eye nearly cringing at the man’s tone. He thought he might try and ask her about it later.
“Nearly 50 people is a small cell?” Hugo asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re not even counting the administrative and research staff. Thanks to Gideon, Centralia has the largest cell on the West Coast. They mobilized based on some lies Francis Deveron, the invisible man that’s still in our basement, told them.”
CJ laughed, “Aw man, that must have made them feel so stupid! What did the invisible man tell them?”
“That Mr. Gideon planned on using Sarah to get rid of the information on that disk,” Clem nodded towards the disk Hugo had set down on the table and was absentmindedly spinning in a slow circle.
“What’s on the disk?” Dr. McFadden asked, her eyes following the movement. Hugo stopped.
“Well-” Clem cut himself short as the waiter joined them at the table to place dinner in front of them. Clem had gotten him chicken pad Thai, exactly what he'd been hoping for. Clem had been reading their minds.
CJ kicked her heels against her chair as the waiter left, “What is this Clem, it looks awesome!”
“Duck with some plum sauce and dumplings to put it on. You can make little sandwiches.”
CJ looked suspicious for a moment, “I’ve never had duck before,” and then she picked up a piece of the meat and shoved it in her mouth. Her eyes lit up almost instantly, “Thanks Clem!”
“Yes, thank you Clem,” Crysta echoed quietly before staring back down at her elaborate salad.
“No worries my dear, it was my pleasure,” Clem said, bowing his head slightly. When he looked up again his expression was serious, but only for a moment, “Ok, back to work. The disk. The Agency is suspicious of Mr. Gideon and have been keeping tabs on him since he started his company. They’ve done a pretty damn good job, considering he can be anywhere at any time. That disk also has all the information I sent to Christian about what I’ve learned from the Agency.”
Crysta looked at the disk almost longingly, “What did they find out about Mr. Gideon?”
“Oh quite a few things,” Clem said almost dismissively, waving his hand in the air, “but to sum it up, he’s selling the Substance for information and money to organizations with people with abilities, so that they can try their own little experiments. Oh, he’s also got a genetic facility in Haiti where he’s trying to engineer children with abilities using blood samples from physicals at the company. That’s been largely unsuccessful so far.”
Hugo shifted, biting his lip at the thought that the drug that had created Charon was out there, uncontrolled, to be experimented with. It would have to be something they dealt with later.
“Ha!” CJ exclaimed, almost jumping out of her chair, “I knew letting you take my blood was a bad idea!”
Dr. McFadden sighed, but didn’t even make a cursory attempt to argue, “I don’t understand why they listened to Francis. Didn’t they know he’d been using his own daughter to counterfeit money?”
Clem shrugged, “The Agency knew, however Francis paid them a fair bit of money, and with his lie, it seemed like the lesser of two evils; if they were even going to return the girl. There seemed to have been some debate on that point. Also, they surprisingly didn’t know we had him already.”
“That seems…peculiar, considering how much you say they know about Mr. Gideon,” Hugo said quietly, taking a moment to sample his noodles. The wheels in his head ground out the taste, “I think we want these people on our side. We should talk to them.”
Clem raised his eyebrows at Hugo, “They have a few powered people on their team, but they keep them doped up to prevent the expansion of their abilities. They’re not even allowed to use them. They won’t want to talk to us, let alone work with us.”
Hugo scratched the back of his head, “I’m not saying I want to work with them, I…uh…we just did a lot of damage to them, they’re probably pissed, I kinda want to explain myself."
Clem chuckled, “Oh yes, you talking to them sounds like a great idea. They think you’re very dangerous, they want to go after you, but don’t know how. You should stay as far away from them as possible.”
“No, that’s exactly why I should talk to them.”
CJ was watching them both like it was a tennis match, for once interested in the conversation.
“I’m going to have to agree with Clem, I think this is a terrible idea,” Crysta said, quickly glancing around the restaurant they were gathered at, “If you really want to reach out to them, send a neutral party instead, like me.”
Hugo shook his head, “Absolutely not! What if something goes wrong, you’d have to…you," he chewed on his lip for a moment, trying to figure out a way to cover his tracks, "…can’t defend yourself like we can.”
The doctor opened her mouth, and then closed it, staring at the floor for several seconds, “Well, send Clem then. He’s met them, he’d be a better choice to speak to them.”
“I’m not going to hide from them, I’m going to apologize to them. If Clem wants to come along, he can, but I’m going.”
“Hugo…” Crysta tried softly.
“Ok,” Clem shrugged, that same smile on his face, “They might like that actually, or they may just try and kill you. But if you’ve got your heart set on it, I’ll come with. But they’re not going to see me.”
Hugo nodded, “Alright. It’ll be good to know what they’re thinking.”
“So we’re going to go talk to people that pretty much hate us?” CJ tilted her head slightly, “I don’t understand why we’re trying to talk to them, but it sounds dumb. Let’s do it!” She was bouncing in her seat a little.
Crysta was staring at the table, her hands curled tightly around her glass of water. She looked up at him, her lips turned down. He seemed to make her frown a lot, “Hugo, ple
ase don’t do this,” it was hard to describe her tone, not desperate, but a little hopeless.
“I think I have to.”
She nodded slightly, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. She took a sip from her drink.
Hugo diverted his attention to Clem, “So, I take it you know how to get in contact with the right person to set up a meeting?”
“Indeed I do. I wrote it down cause I figured you’d want to do this,” Clem pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and slipped it to Hugo, "The man's name is Charles, his one of their lead coordinators, which is a big deal, I guess."
He stared down at it. This was another one of those bad ideas. Hugo carefully pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the number, taking several deep breaths. He glanced around the room. He’d really prefer to do it in private, then if he said anything stupid no one else would know, but he wanted to get it over with before he chickened out.
“Who is this?” The voice on the other line was terse and defensive. A fantastic start.
“Um…hi, Charles. My name is Hugo, I think you know of me,” Hugo paused, the line was dead silent, “Well, I wanted to talk about what happened in New Zealand,” the line remained silent, “Can we meet?”
After a very long pause, “To talk?”
“Yes. I want to explain what happened.”
“I know what happened,” Charles replied flatly.
“But not exactly why it happened. The way it did, anyway,” Hugo looked nervously at Clem, the man just shrugged.
“How did you get this number?”
Hugo glanced at Clem again, “Research.”
Another long pause, and finally, cautiously, “When and where?”
Hugo shrugged reflexively, “I’ll let you decide that.”
Strangely it didn't taken the man more than a couple seconds to consider it, “Fort Borst Park, 4 am tomorrow.”
Hugo cringed. So early? Geez, “Alright, I’ll see you then.” The line disconnected.
“You know, even if you’re just going to talk, Christian still has several of their people, I don’t think they’re going to take that as a non-hostile action,” Crysta said, her voice still soft and resigned.
Hugo nodded, “Yeah, good point. I’ll convince Christian to let them go…somehow.” Crysta’s shoulders slumped. Hugo chewed on his lip for a moment, “We should do something about Francis too.”
Crysta pressed a finger against the table, staring down at it, “I met with Francis. All he wants is to see his daughter again. Do you think visiting rights would be possible?”
Clem chuckled, “Do you think he’d be satisfied with that? Probably wants to exploit her again.”
Crysta frowned, looking offended by the suggestion, “No,” she responded firmly, “he just wants to see her again.”
Hugo glanced between them, “Ok, I’ll add that to the list.” Crysta smiled slightly.
“Well that’s settled,” Clem announced, “Now let’s not let our food get too cold.”
After dinner when they headed back to Gideon Enterprises, Hugo went straight to the security office, CJ trailing behind him. Christian was there, alone for the moment.
Well, there was no point beating around the bush, “I think you should let the people from the Agency go.”
Christian raised an eyebrow at him, arms folding across his chest. Hugo shoved his hands in his pockets, “And why is that?”
“Have you gotten any more information out of them than what Clem sent you?”
The head of security made a small grunting noise, “Not exactly.”
CJ giggled a little at that, but otherwise remained silent. Hugo watched the man's body language, trying to figure out the best approach. He wasn't good at talking, but he'd have to be to get the meeting to work, “And you heard what their goals are. We can use them, they want to keep people with abilities hidden too. Their methods are different from ours, but that doesn’t make them useless to us. And if we keep their men, they’ll be hostile and they’ll waste their time going after us.”
Christian shrugged, “We can take them.”
"I bet we could!" CJ added enthusiastically.
But Hugo barely heard her, he was starting to get irritated at the Head of Security's blind bravado, and tried to stamp it down quickly, before he said something stupid, “This cell. But Clem said there were others, we don’t know what they’re capable of…yet.”
“Yet?” The Head of Security raised an eyebrow.
Hugo took a deep breath; he could make it work, “If we work with them, Clem can probably find the other cells.”
Christian's chair turned some as he considered the point carefully, “After what happened, aren’t they hostile towards us anyway? They attacked us first.”
“They were after Sarah because Francis hired them. Once they know he’s no longer in a position to get his daughter back, they’ll stop trying.” Well, he wasn’t certain about that, but it seemed pretty logical. “Speaking of, I’d like to discuss that situation with you, in a moment.”
Christian shrugged, “Ok. Still, what is keeping them from going after us exactly?”
“I’m going to talk to them.”
The eyebrow went up again, but Christian didn’t say what was on his mind, even though it was clearly written on his face; Hugo was insane and dumb. “And you think that will work?”
Hugo shrugged, smiling a little, “It might. And if not, they’ll have the person they hate anyway, and they might leave it at that.”
“But it is going to work,” CJ piped in, bouncing, “because I’m going to be there.”
Hugo gave a short nod in response, “Right.”
Christian shook his head, and then leaned back in his chair. He was irritated by what he was about to say, “Ok, we’ll let them go. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with them anyway.”
“Great." Hugo let out a relieved breath before diving into the next difficult topic of negotiation, "Let’s get back to Sarah and her father then. Is there any way we can let him see his daughter with… supervision? Conrad?”
Christian shrugged, “You’d have to talk to Mr. Gideon and Conrad about that. It’s not my decision.”
Unfortunately it was too late in the day to talk to Mr. Gideon. He’d have to wait until after the meeting, “Ok, thank you Christian.”
CJ followed Hugo out of the office, “Now what?”
“I’m going to go write up a report for Mr. Hansen and then we’ll meet back here when it’s time to go.”
“Alright, I’m going to go blast things down in the labs. See ya!”
Hugo waved after the shaped electricity and then walked to the database to type up his report. He decided to be thorough, Mr. Hansen needed to know Mr. Gideon was poisoning people and using their DNA to try and create clones. Mr. Gideon may not have been crazy when he started Gideon Enterprises, but something had happened and he certainly was now. Had he been taking the Substance himself? Hugo shook the speculation away to work on his report, it seemed kinda pointless to go to sleep before the meeting.
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