“Yes.” Rhys glanced at his brother; both were embarrassed, perhaps surprised that she knew that information. Tadhg remained very serious. Rhys sighed, and added, “We still do not know how to get into the opening party. From what we understand, the party will be so exclusive that you can only access it with an invitation, which we do not have.” She raised her eyebrows at her brother. “Also, we do not have credentials, not from this Time —and they will also be necessary.”
Tadhg crossed his arms before his chest and arched his eyebrows smugly. He wore the dark agent uniform, and not a tight training suit, as Eve had expected. She imagined what Tadhg would look like, all muscles, sporting a training apparel, and he could barely contain the laugh that came from the image in her mind.
“We never needed credentials, Rhys,” Tadhg said. His answer was directed at his sister, but that suspicious look was for Evelyn, she was sure. “We will not need it —A bit of ettalim to the gorilla face of the entrance, and that's it.”
“I can get credentials and a couple of invitations,” Eve informed them.
“How?” Rhys asked, very interested.
“I know someone.”
“Well... call him!”
“I will do it.” She paused, and thought her next words very well. “But I have a condition.”
Tadhg squared his shoulders and snorted.
“I do not like this.”
“Which?” Rhys asked.
Evelyn looked at her hands; she could hardly believe what she was going to say, much less who she was going to tell. She knew, in advance, that her condition would be strongly disputed by the agents of the future, by Tadhg and Rhys; but she would stand firm. Otherwise, she could not escape from that place to meet her father who returned tomorrow, the night fell. Evelyn had already made a decision.
“I'll go with you,” she said.
CHAPTER SIX
“No way!” Tadhg interjected.
He started walking from one side to the other, grumbling and waving his hands.
Rhys, looking more conciliatory, approached Eve.
“Evelyn,” she said. “This time, I think Tadhg is right enough to sustain his childhood outburst. You are our mission; we’re supposed to take care of you...”
“But I'll be an agent, right?” Eve interrupted.
“Yes. We're supposed to take care of you until you're ready to embark on your own missions, not before.” She put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her sweetly; Eve took a deep breath; her gaze almost changed her mind. “You will not give up, right?” She asked quietly.
She shook her head.
“I thought so.”
Did he want to go? She wondered as Rhys turned, did she really want to go? For what? A part of her knew that she would put her life in danger, of course. But it was necessary, a necessary evil. Her father was coming back tomorrow and he was going to find the house throwing a mess and, if that were not enough, she would not be there to give him an explanation, or at least, with her simple presence, to assure her that she was healthy and safe.
Tadhg was sitting on one of the long wooden benches, hunched forward with his head resting in his hands. He was angry. Rhys sat next to him, and very close to him, began to say something underneath him, so low that Eve could not hear the slightest whisper. That was another aspect of the brotherhood that Evelyn envied. Tadhg, sitting there, crestfallen, and angry, reminded her of her father when she was infuriated by her uncontrolled behavior during her first years in high school.
While the brothers were talking —well, they were deliberating about Evelyn's participation in the management of tomorrow— she began to walk around the training room with her eyes and walking slowly from one boxing bag to another. She remembered her days of self-defense lessons, which had ended just two months ago, and coach Heinz, whom she had put a foot on his neck in defeat.
“You're exceptional, Evelyn,” he had said when she had pushed her foot away and he was sitting up, exhausted. “You have beaten me sooner than I thought. Your father will be proud and, certainly, quieter... Have you thought about practicing martial arts?”
Eve blinked.
“Evelyn,” Rhys called. “Come. Come closer.”
She approached with haste. Going to the club, tomorrow night, was the only opportunity she had to escape from the Agency and go with her father. Like it or not, she, at least, had made a decision. As she approached, she noticed that Tadhg avoided looking at her —he was tense and angry. His condition broke her heart and also composed it; if he was so angry, it was because he really cared about her well-being, right?
Rhys glanced at Tadhg before speaking.
“We've decided...” she began to say.
“No, you have decided!” Snapped Tadhg.
Rhys gestured with her hand, as if throwing something, and turned her smile and carefree look at Eve.
“You will go tomorrow,” she reported. “Tadhg and you will infiltrate the party, and I will be your assistant. It has not been an easy decision, given the conditions, but we know that you already have some preparation in self-defense, and we trust that you will be able to take care of yourself, at least long enough for one of us to reach you if you find yourself in danger, You understand?”
Eve nodded.
“All right.” She sighed and stood up —she was almost the size of Evelyn, and her body was as slender as her; of course, Rhys was much more beautiful, like a Barbie doll, and with more curves. “Now, to try to calm my brother's discomfort a bit, tell us how you will get the false credentials and the invitations.”
Evelyn sighed and assumed a rigid posture.
“I already told you: I know someone.”
“A foolish sucker, of course,” Tadhg said, and suddenly he was looking at Evelyn, piercing her with his extraordinary blue gaze. She shuddered, not because she feared the anger that overflowed Tadhg's eyes, but because she had never before seen a pair of blue irises as beautiful as those. He swallowed hard. “Surely he is also a drug dealer and, in addition, a serial killer.”
Evelyn gave a dry laugh.
“Of course I do,” she retorted; Suddenly Tadhg's tone of voice and stupid insinuation called Eve's anger. Angry, she glared at him and continued: "My friends are all of the same ilk. Killers and drug dealer.” She approached Tadhg decisively and raised a finger in warning. “Who do you think I am? Look at me when I talk to you! If you cannot keep your mouth shut in front of me, then I'll have to hit you in... in...
What was she saying? Was she really so angry? The answer was yes.
She fell silent.
Tadhg was stunned, pale and stunned, staring at her from milestone. Rhys looked at her in the same way. Eve could imagine what they were thinking. That has gone crazy, surely. Despite this, her hot gaze and irascible gesture remained intact. She sighed deeply.
She heard Tadhg swallowing; the soul returned him to the body.
“Whatever you say, yes,” he barked, evidently confused. He hesitated a moment before looking back at Rhys. “I think he'll be fine.”
Rhys was sketching a smile when Eve noticed her.
“I think so,” she said. “Fury.”
Fury, Evelyn thought, and frowned.
“What do you mean?” She said, more flexible. “Why do they call me that? I…?”
Tadhg clenched his mouth.
“Rhys...” she said, and paused to give his sister a warning look. “I do not think you should know it yet.”
“What could be wrong?”
“What?” Eve glared at them. “What are you talking about?”
“Fury,” Rhys said, and almost immediately after Eve remembered the words of Professor Kerr: “Each one has a nickname inspired by his personality or derived from his real name. Tadhg is not the real name of Tadhg; just as Juno, Dawit and Rhys were not born with those names”. —“That is your agent nickname. You still have not earned it, of course.”
“Do not?”
“No,” Rhys repeated, laughing, and brushed a blond strand of hair from her face. “Look, it's not that easy. The nickname in general are placed by affection; but, in our agency, each nickname means our respect to one another —respect is earned, and nicknames, as such, must also be earned.”
Evelyn looked down, bundled. She died in silence for a moment, pretending to configure his rational thinking with the irrational, because it was the only way to maintain sanity, to stay upright, in the middle of that whirlwind.
“Why Fury?” Eve finally asked.
Rhys looked at Tadhg.
“You'll have to win it too,” he said. “And better start from now.”
Evelyn frowned.
“How?” She asked.
* * *
After a long day of exhausting training, a cold shower and a good dinner, Evelyn met with Professor Kerr in the laboratory, on the Upper floor.
The professor limped up to her, leaning on his crutches as soon as he saw her enter the room for inventions. That place was all cold metal and shiny glass. Kerr explained that, basically, he would become her professor about what he himself called essential and elementary knowledge for the agents of the future, and in that, Evelyn's first formal lesson, he only taught her the machine that someday it would do everything possible —Or as he preferred to call Professor Kerr:
Sally
“Although it's really called Kerr Machine St-029,” he said. The machine was enormous, square and metallic, stainless steel and etolith, a new material of the invention of the father of professor, Marcus Kerr, who in the Seventies had been a very well-known inventor; it had black buttons, like the keyboard of an old computer; a tactile template and an opening that looked like, technically, the protruding plate of a printer. “According to the agents of the future, sixty models will be made after this to bring them to our time.” He composed a funny pout. “Until now, I have not considered starting the 30 model.”
His gesture made Eve smile. And yet, she could not contain her inquisitive nature.
“And how it works?” She had asked immediately.
Kerr turned his eyes away from her, watched Sally as if it were indeed a person and sighed. For a moment, Eve thought she would not speak until she did.
“I have not yet found a way to devise a signal that transcends time lines ascending,” he explained. “I mean, towards the future. Thanks to a series of algorithms and fingerings, which the agents brought to me from the future, I managed to do the impossible: to cross the timelines in a descending manner.”
"Towards the past," she said.
“That's right,” the professor said. With a gesture, to which she came almost immediately, he urged her to help him sit on the metal chair next to the machine. Kerr sighed in exhaustion, and Evelyn pushed the crutches aside as he settled. “Do you see that iron?” He indicated which one with his finger; the plate, made with the etolith, was flat, bright, and the color of oxidized bronze. She nodded. “All right. It is what it looks like: a plasma processor.”
“How good are the messages that the machine receives, professor?” She said. “I mean...”
Kerr looked at her with real surprise as if no one had ever asked that question; he was impressed.
It was that, or was beginning to irritate him with so much scolding.
“I know what you mean,” he spoke patiently and looked back at Sally. “What is here, Evelyn, is the greatest advance of science in any branch of humanity: we are talking about crossing the lines of time and space. To send messages from another time, the future men have used a series of subtle, short and precise language. Braille...”
The explanation lasted two hours, and at no time did Evelyn's fragile attention wane. She kept up with the elucidation, attending to every detail and demand that the professor asked for; in one of them he asked her to get a sheet, a message from the future, and explained how subtle, short and precise that language was.
He also asked her to close her eyes and bring her fingers close to the surface of the message. Evelyn obeyed. Kerr, with only his voice, was indicating the patterns she should attend to deduct Braille, but only the most basic part. Eve barely understood three words of the message: Night, Save, and Attack —and the date of tomorrow and a very exact hour. Thanks to that she conjectured that that message was the mission that they would carry out in the edom.
Of course, her inquisitive nature did not stop herself from asking the professor all the questions that came to her head, no matter how insignificant or clumsy they were. Kerr responded to each without the minimum abstention. All that information troubled Eve a little when she left the lab, just after the professor's promise to teach her what he called chemical potions, in the next lesson.
* * *
She entered her room, small and cozy, and collapsed like a concrete wall on the lean bed. Tadhg was a ruthless trainer, much more than Heinz, and had not stopped to consider the state of extreme fatigue once Eve fainted at his feet after the intense series of exercises and defense techniques that she had not tried before.
She had previously had to demonstrate to Tadhg about his acquired knowledge of self-defense, and for that she had to face Rhys. At first, Eve had felt confident and once beat the girl in the first contest, she thought it was indestructible and celebrated, too soon. She remembered the smile that Tadhg had given her then, and then Rhys rushed at her again. That time she was not so lucky; she ended up in a bad position on the mattress and Rhys holding her arms back, making a key.
Tadhg had laughed out loud; even being in that position, Eve thought that it was the most sublime and hurtful that she had heard coming out of Tadhg's mouth: his laughter. Sublime, because he did not laugh in a shocking way or with much effort; his laughter came out as natural as a nine-year-old boy's, which was attractive in a man of his frame and imposing manner. And hurtful, because, obviously, he did not laugh with Evelyn but do about her.
Eve stretched her arms and lay on her back on the bed, pushing away those memories.
After the exhaustive training, a cold shower and a good dinner, her meeting with professor Kerr had taken place in the laboratory.
Exhausted, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But the memory of her meeting with Rebecca, after her lesson with Kerr, in the corridors, as she made her way to her room, flashed on Eve's head, painfully and heavily.
And there she was, disturbed and tired, near her room, when Rebecca appeared in front of her. Eve greeted her for education. After the first meeting they had had in the dining room that afternoon and the surly attitude that Becca had wielded as a shield of fire against Eve, she had decided to keep a little distance from her.
“Becca has been with us for a year. She insists that she wants to be an agent, but Tadhg has flatly refused,” Dawit had told her in the dining room. For her part, Becca had dealt with Evelyn's greeting with a withering look and an indifference as icy as an iceberg. Eve stopped short, turned and watched as the girl continued her way, impassive, and that was all —it was that easy to do with an enemy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was a magnificent day. Evelyn was standing in front of Tabita's house. Across the street was the black ban of the Agency, where Tadhg was. Back in Brooklyn, Evelyn welcomed a strange feeling in her chest; of course, she was not far from home, and the feeling of affliction was almost suffocating. She leaned forward and played the bell once more. The door opened suddenly.
“Evelyn!” Said Tabita. Her face was a grimace of sharp surprise; she pounced on Evelyn and gave her a passionate hug. Tabita and she were best friends who both had six, so that was a more than natural reaction. They parted and Tabita studied her from up and down. “Where the hell have you been, girl?”
Eve frowned.
“I just missed a day at the institute,” she said.
Tabita shook her head several times.
“No, no,” she said in an accelerated tone. “Mr. White came yesterday...”
“What?” Eve snappe
d. He has returned, she thought absorbed, sooner than she thought.
Before she could say anything else, Tabita took Eve by the hand and rushed her inside the house. Eve barely had time to glance at the black van before the door closed.
The little room in Tabita's house was very compact, like a dollhouse; all light yellow, pink and lavender. Nothing to do with Eve's home. Tabita urged her to sit on one of the floral print furniture. Seated in front of her, Evelyn noticed the urgency and the calm that seized Tabita at that moment. Tabita must have noticed that she was a little accelerated, because she inhaled and exhaled deeply before speaking.
“Your father was here,” she said more calmly. “Oh, poor Mr. White. He was devastated. You had to see it.” She frowned. “Does he know you're here?” Evelyn shook her head, and Tabita brought the back of her hand to her forehead with a dramatic gesture. “You must call him, Evelyn.”
“Not now,” she cut it. “Tabita, he cannot know that I'm here.”
“Why?”
“It's more complicated than it seems.”
Tabita scrutinized her with her eyes.
“I think so,” she said. “Mr. White said that his house was a mess. That someone had broken in the middle of the night, had destroyed almost everything and had taken you. Apparently Ed saw when you got on...” She broke off, absorbed.
Evelyn watched Tabita attentively standing up and approaching the nearest window. After a quick glance, Tabita gradually turned to her. The expression on her face was one of genuine impassivity.
“They brought you here,” she muttered.
Eve remained silent. She did not know what to say, she had not prepared for that situation.
Tabita opened her eyes wide, she seemed blind with fear. She threw herself at the telephone on the table next to the cabinet, and Evelyn blocked her way.
“What do you do?” Said Tabita. “We must call the police.”
“Do not.”
“Do not?” She repeated.
“No.” Evelyn sighed, calmly took Tabita's hand and urged her to sit once more on the cabinet. Then she spoke with such serenity that even she was surprised. “Look. I'm fine. Later I will talk to my father, I assure you.”
Days of Fury (Future Men Series Book 1) Page 6