The Gambit

by Allen Longstreet

  I wouldn’t open them. I couldn’t watch that same goddamn video another time.

  The convertible BMW slamming into the guardrail and Owen and Rachel flying out into the inlet. I’d seen it thousands of times today. It was making me fucking nauseous.

  If only they would have crashed in the middle of the bridge, they would have died from the impact in the water. Owen would be dead, like he was supposed to have been at the debate. He was never supposed to live. His survival had been haunting me, nagging me. It felt like an ice pick digging into my brain. My migraine had yet to cease…but how would I sleep? How could I rest, knowing he was still out there?

  It was nine hours past the twenty-four-hour mark. Now, there was a fifty-fifty chance that he would end up like that elusive vermin—Viktor Ivankov.

  His name gave me chills…it always had.

  Although Viktor had successfully disappeared off of our radar, we knew he was still around. He lurked in the shadows, trapped from living freely because of his infamy. I wasn’t worried about Viktor. We had won that battle a long time ago. I was worried sick over Owen.

  Owen had a following. Everybody loved him. That was until we framed him to destroy his reputation. With the election so close, it was our only hope to finish something that began years ago. Something that was imperative to keep ourselves in power. The polls were slipping. The Convergence Party had a lower percentage of support every day. The media was fulfilling its duty masterfully. Although, the longer he and Rachel were missing, the greater likelihood there would be of them lashing out in retaliation. Would they be hostile? Or, would they be passive-aggressive, like when Viktor left the note in the cabin. It didn’t do any real damage, but it only added to the complete distrust the country had for their government, and that was the antithesis of what we wanted. We wanted them to believe everything we told them. Luckily for us, we had the news. Paid lies were the best kind. They ensured compliance.

  I burped. The acidy bile burned the back of my throat. The taste entered my mouth—it was disgusting. A migraine, heartburn…what else could go wrong? Fuck this menial bullshit I had to deal with.

  “Somebody get me some Tums!” I groaned.

  A moment later the roll of antacids was in front of me. I blinked, gradually opening my eyes. They were so sensitive to the light on the screens my vision was blurry.

  “Can we turn off these screens for God’s sake?”

  They shut off. Thankfully, the room was dim. Just the soft glow from computer screens. It hardly helped ease my stress, though. I shouldn’t have fucking been here. This was supposed to end the night of the debate. It was supposed to set our plan back in action. Now, the perfect execution had failed, and I was put in charge to fix it quickly.

  “Ma’am, I think you’ll want to hear this,” a man said from behind me.

  I craned my pounding head around.

  “Is it him? Did you find Owen?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say we haven’t…but this is equally important.”

  His idiocy made me cringe.

  “Although I highly doubt that, go ahead. Give it to me.”

  “We just received a tip from someone who works for the EPA. They said they have knowledge of two grad students at MIT who have been conducting experiments with live animals from the Danger Zone. She said they both know.”

  I tilted my head and my lower eyelid began to twitch.

  “Did you just say, live animals?”

  “I did, ma’am,” he nodded nervously.

  My jaw dropped, and I could feel myself begin to breathe heavy. Another loose end we would have to tie. I was livid.

  “How the hell is this happening!? I thought they were all dead! Goddamn it!” I balled up my fists and pounded on the metal desk.

  I could barely see their faces with the migraine affecting my vision. I could tell they were scared of my anger.

  “Do y—you want me to call Boston PD?” the man stuttered as he asked.

  “Oh no,” my voice trembled. “I want our guys up there.”

  “But ma’am, it might take hours.”

  “I don’t care!” I shouted. “Police officers won’t do the trick, we need the FBI to shake them up a bit! Scare the shit out of them.”

  I panted. My breath was uneven, my heart in my throat.

  “I’m on it,” he said.

  “Shut it down! Shut the whole damn thing down!”

  “How we lookin’, Em?” I asked, delicately positioning the sample on the slide.

  “Emily,” she corrected. I thought I saw her smile in the corner of my eye. “You aren’t my grandmother. The hallway is clear. No traffic—for now.”

  “Good.”

  The sound of her footsteps grew louder until we were shoulder to shoulder.

  “So, it looks like you lucked out again in Manhattan?”

  “We will find out here in a moment. I walked circles for hours.”

  “Searching for your beloved cat-lady?” she teased.

  “Indeed,” I chuckled.

  “What did you give her this time? Your father’s trust fund?”

  “Not quite. She was a little more resistant. I gave her two-hundred.”

  “She probably would have demanded more if she knew you were killing her cats.”

  “Probably,” I smirked.

  She walked back over to the lab door to peer out of the glass, then returned. I began to prepare the microscope to fire the electron beam.

  “So, Emily. Why can’t I call you Em?”

  Her brow furrowed. She tucked her hair behind one of her ears. Its jet-black color was always such a drastic contrast against her white lab coat.

  “Well, I—that’s what I was called as a child. I am about to become a doctor in a field primarily dominated by men, and I want to be taken seriously. So I guess when I hear Em it reminds me of a time when I was forced to play with Barbie dolls when I would have rather been reading.”

  “Makes sense,” I shrugged. “Don’t let yourself feel so slighted. Your intellect is unmatched, and you will be a superb Nuclear Engineer. Why do you think you’re here right now?”

  Her lips tugged into a smile and she shook her head, letting out the tiniest exhale of a laugh.

  “Actually, I was under the impression you enjoy my company.”

  I snorted. “Now as a scientist, what evidence do you have to support your hypothesis?”

  She pursed her lips and restrained a smile.

  “I’m a woman,” she began. “And, although you compliment my intellect as an engineer, our intuition is also unrivaled. It tells me you’d much rather it be me with you in the lab, than one of our colleagues. Remember? Our field is made up of almost eighty percent men. I’m a rare bird.”

  I fired the beam. The electrical buzz was momentary.

  “Bravo,” I exaggerated. “So, what does your intuition envision for the results of this second specimen?”

  “If it really was in the Danger Zone like the first…then logically speaking, the damage wouldn’t be the kind seen with Strontium. It would be distributed in tissue rather than bone.”

  My stomach knotted as the image on the screen was ready. Emily jumped to my side.

  “Take a look for yourself…” I mumbled.

  Her warm breath hit my neck as she gasped.

  “It’s the same—stuck in a pre-cancerous mitosis.”

  A comforting warmth settled in my chest. I was finally ready to approach my dad. With two sets of the same, irrevocable evidence, he would have to use my research as fact. Someone besides Emily and me had to know the truth. Since the discovery, I had lain awake late at night…tossing and turning…pondering at the why. Why did they lie? What motive did they have? We were told the radioactive material was Strontium almost two years ago. Now, with the bombings at Georgetown just a month before the election and the false information they had given the public regarding Black Monday, it only added to my suspicions. Behind the marble-clad walls of our Capitol, corruption was rearing its ugly hea
d in the form of a lie. A lie that I now knew. That knowledge gave me a feeling in my gut. It was strong, and kept my stomach in knots at all hours of the day. It told me that it was dire to get the truth out. No exceptions.

  “Stefan!” A hard whack to my shoulder jarred me from my thoughts.

  Emily stood facing me with large, cylindrical Pyrex vials and a jug of formaldehyde. Judging by the sloshing in the jug, she had hit me with that.

  “Can you move, please?” she huffed, wide-eyed and chuckling at my phasing out.

  I stood up and let her preserve our specimen.

  While she did that, I walked over to the glass and peered out into the hallway. Nothing. Just the clean white tile and chrome railings I had seen for years. The life of a scientist.

  “So,” Emily called from behind. “Have you heard from ‘Ms. Walling’ since we spoke last?”

  “No.” I turned back to her. “I texted her to see if she was all right.”

  “And?” her eyebrows quirked at my sudden pause.

  “Nothing. No answer.”

  I saw fear sweep over Emily’s expression. She was worried, and I knew that from her lengthy explanation at the café of why I couldn’t trust my ex to keep her mouth shut. The most frightening thing was, I thought she might have been right.

  “You better pray she doesn’t talk.”

  “I never thought of you as the religious type.”

  She pursed her lips and nervously arranged the vials on the counter.

  “You thought right, but that still doesn’t mean I don’t pray.”

  I snorted. “Did you, just? Am I the only one that heard you contradict yourself? You’re not religious, but you still pray. To whom, Albert Einstein in the sky?”

  She laughed and nodded her head in dismissal of my trivial statement.

  “Well, in light of all the science I’ve learned in my life. Some facts are just hard to fathom. Don’t you think?”

  My face scrunched up from her words.

  “Examples?”

  “My favorite, one I’m certain you know. Atoms. They never touch.” I nodded, rolling my eyes in response. I knew that from the eighth grade. “Don’t give me that look,” she scolded.

  “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, they never touch. Their electrons, although incredibly close, never touch. There is always space between the atoms. Also, the volume of an atom according to physics is 99.99 percent to the umpteenth-power repeating—empty space. The physical matter that makes up the visible world is but an infinitely small fraction of the whole. We are all quite literally empty space. We are the universe observing itself.”

  What a parallel. I was impressed.

  “So, perhaps my thoughts emit a frequency…a cosmic resonance, per se. Perhaps the rest of the known universe can pick up that frequency, and it returns another back to me. It could be measurable, one day. Who knows?”

  “Is your PhD in Metaphysics?

  “Funny.” Her face was deadpan.

  Beep. The electronic lock clicked open. I whipped around to see Professor Trantham in his pajamas with four stony-faced men in black suits behind him. I met eyes with Emily. Her hands were shaking as she held the vials. The sound of their dress shoes hitting the tile floor grew closer.

  “Professor Trantham!” Emily gasped shakily. “What are you doing here so early?”

  He didn’t respond, just lingered by the entrance. The four men approached our station. That’s when I knew it—we were screwed. My ex had squealed.

  “This laboratory is off limits to all students and professors alike. The CIA has full control over these premises’ by executive order. Effective immediately.” The tallest of the men announced those words emotionlessly. The other three went for the vials in Emily’s hands and the specimen that laid on the station. She drew back, holding on to the vials.

  “This is ours!” she struggled to keep a grasp, and they forcefully pulled them away. She staggered backward from their strength. My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “Ms. Stevens, it is in your best interest to cooperate with us.”

  “Is it?” she spat, and her nostrils flared.

  “I wouldn’t recommend attempting to find out the contrary.”

  Did he just threaten her?

  Emily’s mouth hung open in fear. The tallest one, who I assumed was the leader, mumbled something into his watch, and then turned back to us. His jawline was strong. His face was square, and he sported a buzz-cut. The others cleared our workstation before I could even take a second glance at what they were doing.

  “Everything in this lab is property of the federal government. If you do not comply with our requests, we will charge you with tampering of evidence from the Danger Zone. Which infringes H.R. 1649—a crime punishable of up to twenty-five years in prison or loss of citizenship and becoming a known traitor of the United States.”

  My breathing was shallow. A cold line of sweat formed along my hairline. I glanced back at Professor Trantham. His head was hung towards the floor.

  “This is ridiculous. We have rights!”

  A minuscule smile emerged on the man’s face. He was amused. He knew he had the power to do whatever the hell he wanted.

  “Sorry to be the first to inform you, but in matters of National Security, you have no rights.”

  My stomach clenched up. Pure, undiluted terror swept over my body. My blood felt hot and a vein pulsed in my forehead.

  “National Security my ass,” I coughed.

  The man didn’t react. His lips pressed together, and he held his composure.

  “Are we almost clear?” he asked.

  “Clear.” One of the other agents behind me answered.

  “Good. Destroy all of it.”

  Emily shook her head in desperation. “No, no! You can’t!”

  Excellent. She remembered our emergency plan.

  I felt the cold metal handcuffs clamp around one of my wrists. My instincts caused me to jerk my arm, and my head was slammed against the workstation.

  “Don’t resist,” a voice behind me said.

  The clicking noise of another pair of handcuffs sliding shut caught my ear. Emily was now in the same position as me. From across the opposite side of the table, our eyes locked. She gritted her teeth and her forehead creased from strain. Her prediction came true. She had warned me for days, but I didn’t listen.

  “Did you do what I asked you?” I whispered across the table.

  Emily’s lips tugged into a smile, and with her cheek pressed into the metal workstation, she nodded yes.

  We were jerked upright violently and pushed towards the lab door. The tallest one stepped in front of me, blocking my path. The agent held my wrists and waited. Emily was led out ahead of me.

  “What did you just say to her?” His eyes turned to slits.

  “Nothing,” I muttered. He wasn’t the least bit pleased.

  “I heard something. She nodded back at you.”

  I exhaled heavily and puffed up my chest. I wouldn’t budge for this prick.

  “Fine. Take him away.”

  “You can’t arrest us,” I said as we began to walk away.

  “We aren’t—yet. You and the girl are being detained for questioning.”

  The ride across town was silent. The kind of silent that was unsettling, which caused my thoughts to race endlessly. It was a conscious effort to hear something other than the soft hum of tires on pavement. I was shoved into the back of a black Yukon Denali. Emily must have been in a separate vehicle. After the leader noticed me whisper something to her, there wasn’t a chance in Hell we would be taken together.

  There was a faint red glow emanating from the controls on the dash. The stick shift was a faux-mahogany, and the doors had a trim in the same material. An advanced navigation system was jutting out from the dash. I spotted the police lights hidden in the corners of the windshield. This SUV was loaded.

  I was glad our tax dollars were being spent so prudently…not. No, instead, our Post-Confine
ment tax dollars were going to the extortion of innocent citizens like myself. All for conducting research that violated the heinous law the government enacted to keep the lie hidden from the public. They were scared. Scared that our research might abate the trust people had in the EPA’s findings. I exhaled slowly and glanced between the two men in the front seats. They weren’t talking, just fulfilling their orders. I wondered how much their salaries were. Perhaps they were paid enough to keep quiet about the corruption taking place.

  My face flushed with heat. My breath shuddered from just thinking about what had just occurred in the lab. I owed over two-hundred thousand dollars in student loans to two of the most renowned universities in the US, and now I was being punished. I was being told by the feds that I could not conduct research. Research that was not harming anyone, nor a threat to National Security. To Hell with them. They fucked with the wrong scientist.

  I stared at my reflection in the two-way mirror across the room. I knew they were watching. The agents had led me in here a few minutes ago and left without saying a word. I sat at the end of a long, rectangular table. There was a box of doughnuts and a pot of coffee sitting in the middle with a few Styrofoam cups nearby. It was as if they were trying to say, ‘Hey, open up to us. Oh, and here’s a donut. Maybe that will make you feel a little more at home.’ I snorted, shaking my head at the thought. They had released me from the cuffs. I guess they saw a thin white guy in a lab coat and figured I wasn’t a real threat. If only they knew.

  The door swung open. It was the same tall agent who did all the talking back at the lab. The leader. Why wasn’t I shocked? I was certain he wanted to get to the bottom of what I whispered to Emily. He pulled out the plastic seat and sat down. His face was vacant, and his eyes were sullen. He poured himself a cup of coffee, all while acting like I wasn’t there. I didn’t care how long he took. He wouldn’t make much headway with me regardless.

  Finally, he glanced up and met my eyes. There was a manila folder he had brought in, and from it he removed papers and began sorting through them.

  “So, Stefan, is it?”

  Why did he ask such a dumb question? He knew exactly who I was.