Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller)

by M. C. Soutter

  In any case, it would be safer to have career agents on this detail.

  Guy would have fucked something up, he thought.

  Not All Weapons And Explosives

  Kevin took an extra minute to let himself calm down after his call with Dr. Petak. He felt no less angry now, but at least what the doctor had said made sense.

  Everything he says makes sense. It all fits. It’s too perfect, it’s –

  But Kevin shook off these thoughts. It was just the paranoia still eating at him. Simple as that. Because Petak was right. It had been the weirdest week of his life; of course people would be interested in what he was going through. Of course they’d want to keep track of him. Not that having someone tailing you was an ordinary thing, but nothing about Kevin’s life had been ordinary lately. And the crazy thing, the really weird thing was that he knew he’d want to talk to them. To the doorman, to whoever else was behind all this stuff, to anyone. If that doorman guy were to show up two weeks from now with a survey in his hand, Kevin would probably want to punch him in the face… but five minutes later he’d also want to sit down and talk about everything that had happened. Everything he’d been experiencing.

  All that was for later, though. First he had to get through the next five days, and he was glad Petak had reminded him to focus on his own health; Kevin wanted nothing more than to get back to pretending he was normal.

  A regular routine. Keep the clock moving. Rest, eat, work, exercise, socialize.

  Right, and maybe keep the socializing to the daytime hours from now on. No more 4 AM visits to the Deli.

  He was confident he could do it. All of it. He would have Andrew to help him, not to mention the support of Danny and Principal Stewart and his students and even Alexi if it came to that. They supported him without realizing it (except for Andrew, whose support was paid for), simply because they assumed he was normal. They assumed his days were the same as theirs. All he had to do was rise to meet their unspoken expectations.

  Lie down at night.

  Get up in the morning.

  Easy.

  “Andrew,” he called as he walked into the living room.

  “Sir.”

  “We have enough for one more night?”

  Andrew peered up at the book case. “Based on your habits so far, yes.”

  “We can switch to the bookcase in my bedroom starting tomorrow.”

  “Very good.”

  They gathered books and made stacks, and when they were finished Kevin felt a definite sense of relief. It was an odd habit he had established here, but it was still a habit. Still a routine.

  “6 AM?” Andrew asked.

  “Please. And Andrew?”

  “Sir?”

  “Wouldn’t you think I could provide a good lunch conversation?”

  Andrew stopped in the middle of straightening one of Kevin’s book piles. He twisted his head to one side, as though hoping somehow to imbue the question with context. “I’m sorry?” he said at last.

  Kevin almost told his assistant to never mind, but instead he pressed on. This was what normal people thought about, after all.

  Wasn’t it?

  Because of a woman.

  “I mean if I were sitting at lunch with someone,” Kevin said, “with all these books in my head, don’t you think I could say something interesting? Something she’d want to listen to?”

  “Who – ?” Andrew began, and stopped himself. Specifics didn’t matter. Names didn’t matter. He understood what his employer was driving at, and the required response was clear.

  “Absolutely,” Andrew said.

  “Something in these books is interesting,” Kevin said, as though trying to convince himself. “It’s not all weapons and explosives. There’s architecture and engineering and all kinds of other things.”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, more forcefully now.

  Kevin nodded once, though he didn’t seem to have convinced himself. “All right,” he said at last. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Sir.”

  I’m Going To Kill It

  It was Monday morning, and Jacob Savian was aware of a pleasant feeling in his stomach, a nervous tightening.

  It would happen this week. On Friday. He would save everyone.

  His inventions had helped so many people already: the auto-defibrillator; the improved algorithm for predicting the spread of infectious diseases; the water purifier that ran on nothing but a three-hour solar charge. Each one of those projects had made him feel useful, made him feel needed. And of course they had made him rich.

  Nothing was as important as this one, though. Because life was not simply a matter of survival. It was about the struggle to survive, the constant searching for ways to flourish, to learn and build and organize despite a planet that was always tending toward chaos. He wondered how many people realized that the natural life expectancy for humans – before germ theory, before antibiotics and modern medicine – was somewhere around 35 to 40 years. And then, suddenly, public health: vaccinations, disinfectants, and penicillin, and all at once the world was living nearly twice as long. But none of that would matter if the freedom to think for yourself, to create and invent and strive for yourself, was taken away. Which was exactly what would happen if Pascal Billaud ever managed to get a computer to solve an NP problem. It would be hailed as a revolution, as a miracle, but the terrible thing was that people would still think they were in control. Even after the computers began coming up with things all on their own, people would still tell themselves that they were coming up with the answers. They had invented the computers themselves, hadn’t they? Anything the computers achieved was attributable, transitively, to humans.

  Wasn’t it?

  Jacob knew this illusion would last for only so long. Eventually a father had to admit that his son, running faster and jumping higher and working harder and making more money, was succeeding on his own. Was doing things that the father had never done, could never do. And then at last it would become clear that the computers were doing all the work. That the computers had learned to come up with every answer, solve every problem.

  Do everything.

  Some would object. Some would call for a return to simpler times, to times that required independent industry, independent thought. But Jacob knew that such calls would be useless. They would go unheard, or they would simply be ignored. Because you could never go back. It would be like demanding that people stop using cars. Once the utility of a tool had been demonstrated, once it became part of everyday life, you could never make that tool go away.

  Which is why no one will ever get to see this tool, Jacob thought. I’m going to kill it before it has a chance to be born.

  His terminal made a soft humming sound, and Jacob pressed the spacebar on his keyboard. The Organizer’s face popped up on the screen. He looked tired.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Everything’s set,” the Organizer said. “The main plan is good to go, and we’ve got the secondary lined up, too. Just in case – ” He stopped, then shook his head with resignation. “ – in case of I don’t know what. In case you suddenly tell us to go before the subject is out in the open. I still don’t understand what purpose that would serve, but we’re ready all the same.”

  “Excellent, thank you. That’s exactly what I needed to hear. Anything else?”

  “Yes. We received some information from our guy on the inside. At their training center.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Remember how I said there might be a scrubbed agent?”

  Jacob sat forward. “Did you find out who it is?”

  “No, that’s impossible. There are too many layers of secrecy built into that program. But we did get a tip. It’s not confirmed, because our man doesn’t have direct access to official reports. Plus, as I said, they’re incredibly careful about scrubbed agents, so – ”

  “Stop making excuses. Give me the tip.”

  “He might be injured.”

  “The agent?
How badly?”

  “No way to know. And he might be fine by Friday, so it probably won’t matter anyway. But it’s information, so I wanted to pass it along.”

  Jacob sat silently for a moment, processing.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Good. I’ll be waiting for your update tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have anything to report. We’re standing ready. Four days to go.”

  “Then I’ll expect a call tomorrow telling me exactly the same thing. And then you’ll tell me there are three days to go.”

  “Will do.”

  He hit the spacebar to end the call, and the Organizer’s face disappeared from view.

  Jacob sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and glanced over at George, who was still working on his winter scene. The picture was shaping up well, coming together nicely. George had figured out the shadows on his snow-covered hill. He was an accomplished painter.

  “Now what?” Jacob whispered.

  Confusion And Fear

  Jacob was not the only one grappling with anticipation. Kevin Brooks had an expectant feeling that Monday morning, too. He had rested well – had read well, if the pile of spent books by the couch was any indication – and he felt almost normal. If it hadn’t been for the lingering aches in his legs and midsection, he might even have said he felt good.

  He walked to school filled with a sense of possibility. His head was absolutely packed with information now, and everything around him seemed brighter than usual, more interesting than usual.

  Of course I’m a teacher, he thought to himself as he walked through the school’s front door. Jean was on door duty that morning instead of Danny, and Kevin gave him a friendly wave. I’m made for this. I have the information, and I can explain it, and I swear I can make it interesting. I could make a brick wall interesting with all this stuff in my head.

  He bounded up the stairs to his classroom, feeling positively impatient waiting for the students to arrive and get themselves settled. It was going to be a good day.

  It was an awful first class. He was awful. All the information was there, he knew it all cold, backward and forward, and yet it got away from him somehow.

  He was moving too fast.

  He could feel the problem almost from the beginning. The concepts and examples for the day’s lesson (solving systems of equations) were so clear and obvious in his head, so beautifully simple and self-evident, that several times he caught himself wondering whether such things needed to be taught at all. Isolating variables with linear combination seemed no more complicated than distinguishing a circle from a square. Matters such as these could barely be called worthy of explanation. Or even of discussion. He put one example on the board, but even as he was writing he wondered if he might be wasting the students’ time. So he directed their attention immediately to a practice problem in the book, and a moment later he asked for the solution.

  The boys looked up at him with a combination of confusion and fear. They were three minutes into the lesson – three minutes into the first period of a Monday morning, no less – and yet Mr. Brooks was acting as if they were nearing the end of the class. Was it a trick of some kind? Was he trying to be funny, pretending that the mess of figures he had written on the board was supposed to make sense that quickly? Mr. Brooks was not someone to mess with, and so they held their tongues. But to a boy, they assumed he was messing with them.

  “Oh, come on,” Kevin said impatiently. “David, just tell me.”

  The boy Kevin had called on bent his head dutifully down to the book on his desk. He made sounds of concentration and effort. But after another minute he looked back up at Kevin, his expression hopeless. “Sorry, Mr. Brooks,” the boy said, sounding truly, deeply sorry. He seemed to be anticipating the first wall-throwing of the day. “Could you explain it from the beginning one more time?”

  Kevin stared back at him, deeply concerned. David was his go-to guy. David understood everything, and he understood it well.

  “What’s wrong with you people today?” he said, raising his voice and addressing the entire class.

  They continued to regard him silently. Fearfully. No one raised his hand. No one wanted to risk saying what they were all thinking: the problem is that you’ve gone crazy, Mr. Brooks. Who do you think we are, math prodigies? This is Algebra I, for crying out loud. Slow the fuck down.

  It was like that the whole period long. Everything seemed harder than Kevin expected. Much harder. He felt as though every student had been subjected to some sort of brain-melting process over the weekend. Maybe they had just been playing too many video games at home.

  “This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, when he was safely out of earshot of that first class.

  But the second class was no better. By the time Kevin made it to his first break of the day, he was feeling frustrated and upset. When he walked into the teacher’s lounge, however, his mood immediately changed. Here was a chance for something good to happen. Finally.

  Because here was Emily Beck. Sitting and reading a magazine by herself.

  Incredible.

  It was the first time they had ever been in the break room alone together. Actually, it was the first time Kevin had ever seen her sitting in here at all. In any case, he was not going to waste any time. He had volumes, volumes of fascinating things he wanted to talk to Emily about, and surely they had known each other for long enough by now to cut through the usual small talk.

  “So,” Kevin said, plopping down in the easy chair next to hers, “do you think I could take you out some night this week? Or on the weekend?”

  He smiled confidently at her.

  Look, I don’t smell anymore. I’m in shape, and I’m interesting. My personal assistant says I should be able to make engaging conversation. Which I suppose is on par with my mom telling me that I’m cool, but you see what I mean. For what it’s worth.

  He kept smiling. Time seemed to slow down; Kevin wasn’t sure whether the clocks were actually pausing, or if he was simply holding his breath.

  Emily did not return the smile. She did look kindly at him, but Kevin’s heart sank into his stomach at the expression on her face. It was a look of sympathetic kindness. Of pitying kindness. It was the look she would have given a student who had asked her to be his mommy for the weekend.

  “No, Kevin,” she said sweetly. She looked straight at him, and even in this moment of sickening defeat he found himself transfixed by her eyes. They were so bright, so knowing somehow, and they lifted him up and crushed him at the same time. “We work together,” she added, an excuse so flimsy and transparent that Kevin wanted to tell her to take it back, to replace it with something harder. Something he could sink his teeth into.

  Tell me you’ve got a fetish for history teachers, he thought. Tell me you find me repulsive, that I remind you of your drug-dealing brother, that you only date Italian guys. Anything else.

  But she only looked at him, kept staring back at him with that horribly kind expression of sympathy and pity and unequivocal no-ness. After another minute she looked away, turning back to the magazine she was reading. Kevin found himself suddenly very uncomfortable, so he got up and left the room. He didn’t know where he was going, but he wasn’t going to sit here alone, stewing, taking furtive glances at the woman he pined for and wanted to impress and had learned to dance for – and had therefore gotten beaten up for – while she sat there reading her magazine, rejecting him over and over and over again with her silence.

  He headed downstairs to the lab. He would wait there for his next class on his own.

  When his Java Programming students came in he was ready. He would make this class a good class. He would not go too fast, and he would not assume anything. If an explanation was needed, an explanation would be provided. And who needed Emily Beck anyway?

  It might have been a better period. His resolve was genuine, even if he was still distracted by Emily’s rejection in the lounge. But as the bell was ringing he saw A
nselm Billaud come staggering in with his head bent low again, bent low in just the same way it had been the last time, except now Anselm was also limping.

  Now Anselm was really hurt.

  All at once it was too much for Kevin. He wasn’t willing to wait, wasn’t willing to let Anselm handle things on his own this time. Something had to be done here, and he cursed himself for having let it come this far.

  It’s my own damned fault. Shouldn’t have let it go when it happened the first time.