by Adam Steel
He shook her off angrily.
‘I must Ellie. You don’t understand. I’ll be back tomorrow and then we’ll decide what to do.’
He could not help but wonder if that was the truth.
Max glared at him and threatened, ‘Don’t do anything stupid Li. Go find out for yourself. But tomorrow night were out of here. Whether you’re back or not.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ remarked Jon sarcastically, as he turned to leave the apartment.
It was hard for him to walk away from Ellie’s tears. He closed the door on the madness, and headed back to Fin-Sen headquarters.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Max said angrily. ‘He’s in on it. Just how high up the chain is he?’ he said, glaring at Ellie.
Ellie sniffed a response.
‘I love him. He’ll be back.’
Max grunted and paced up and down the room.
‘Maybe - but with who?’ he mumbled.
Max collapsed back into a chair. He was sweating heavily and looked on the point of passing out. The exhaustion from his recent surgery and the confrontation with Jon Li had drained him of every last drop of his energy. He sank back in the chair with his head back and muttered something that sounded like a string of obscenities. Aya went to his side and used a cold compress to mop the sweat from his forehead, while Ellie went into her bedroom and threw herself on the bed in frustration.
Jon Li reluctantly made his way back to the Fin-Sen building. He did not want to go back – not yet – but things back at home (with the mad people that had invaded his life) were worse. He couldn’t believe that Ellie had taken in a ‘wanted criminal,’ and had smuggled the pair of them out of the hospital and back to their home. He thought of informing TALOS immediately, but then he was reminded of how terrified he had felt at the prospect of being a hit, and the trouble that Ellie had now got herself into. It was enough to stop him from making the call.
Jon Li’s Office: Fin-Sen Headquarters: Sector Zero
Evening: Thursday 27th July
The security guards on the main doors of the Fin-Sen building had given him an odd look as her passed them for the second time that night. One of them had made a remark about him “being very keen.” He had ignored it and made his way quickly to his executive suite on the 99th floor.
The building was in darkness. During the night time hours, the lights in the building only responded to movement, and occupation. He did not like the eerie effect. As he walked along the passage to his executive suite, the lights turned on in front of him, and off behind him. It made him think of a bad dream. He was relieved to get inside his personal suite on the 99th floor. His head was spinning with the whirlwind of events that had happened to him.
He headed for the bathroom and threw off his clothes. He got in the shower and leaned against the wall with both hands. He put his head down and let the hot soapy water run over his hair and face, as though the hot liquid would somehow dissolve the horror of what was happening to him. He looked down at his feet. A few flecks of orange Synth-Skin floated off and swirled around the plug-hole. He recalled how they had got there and felt instantly aroused. The feeling was quickly dispelled when he remembered Ellie and what was going on back at his own penthouse. He shook his head hard and started to scrub his hair vigorously. Getting the oil residue from the gun barrel out of his hair seemed to take forever, and he was sure that it had left a permanent ruffle at the back.
He went into the bedroom of his personal executive suite and sat on the bed with his head in his hands: thinking. After a while he had decided how he was going to tackle the situation. He selected an outfit to wear that was clean and comfortable and headed next door to his office.
The hologram of the mountain range had been turned off to save power.
Darkness surrounded the building.
He looked at the computer terminal that was blinking helpfully at him.
His life seemed to be spiralling hopelessly out of control. He thought that nothing about the last few days had been normal and that Ellie had most likely gone totally off the rails. He couldn’t believe how absurd it had all become. There were two wanted criminals hiding out in his penthouse and he was not reporting it. He couldn’t accept that the masons were involved in any of the things that Max, Aya and Ellie had told him earlier. He couldn’t accept that Royale, who he had betrayed Ellie for, had anything to do with any of the things that they had told him. He was sure that Ellie had been so vulnerable, that she had been taken advantage of by a fringe, nut-group of conspiracy theorists. He believed that perhaps they were part of some kind of cult.
Disappearing people? Ridiculous, he thought. Irene had simply been the victim of some psycho, he reasoned. Like poor Cherry Hammond. It was unfortunate. Something that could, that would be prevented by the right leadership. Something that Mason Li could do something about, he theorised. What had the strange man told him? He remembered that the man had said something about there had been a jailbreak at one of the CURE Prisons. He puzzled over his recollection and thought, surely he would have known about it because the CURE Prison budget system would have been changed for a start? Aarif a murderer that TALOS had covered up? It was laughable.
He sat at his computer terminal for a long time, mulling over his thoughts. Despite all of his rationalising, he still had a gnawing little creature inside his head that begged to be fed on the truth. He hated to admit it to himself, but the more that he thought about it: there were some strange things happening recently. He recalled what he had witnessed the day before. Mason Henson had been into Fin-Sen to see Mason Royale. They had been arguing about Aarif who had obviously done something to upset Mason Henson. Then Mason Deckler had come into the building. He had wondered at the time, what Deckler had been doing there. He had guessed that it had had to be security related. He remembered that they had had a meeting in the vault and he wondered what they had been discussing.
The questions gnawed at him.
He thought about Maxwell Blunt and the board-room meeting, the day before. Maxwell had admitted that he had been digging around and had found out about the Genie resource stockpiles. Royale’s response had been stony. Grudgingly, he had to agree that Maxwell’s suggestion of selling off the surplus Resource made some sense.
He got fired immediately afterwards. What was it that made the Masons strike him down so quickly? Yes, he was incompetent. But Royale’s face when he’d mentioned it - and Mason Katcher? What about him? Royale said she’d take care of him. Would he disappear too? Would he become another one of these ‘so-called’ invisible people? he thought.
He sighed and began to type: searching through the system files, to find the path of insanity that Ellie had fallen down. He had worked on the system all through the night and then gone to his suite to change into a suit, before going back to his desk and acting as though he had just arrived for work on Friday morning. He had pretended to work all through Friday, as though nothing unusual were taking place. All the while he had been working, he had been thinking about the strangers, and Ellie, back at his penthouse.
He had managed to find out much from the system when he had asked the right questions. The budget for CURE Prison North – Vigilance, had been reassigned. It sat on a level zero for the next coming months. The staff, and prisoners, had been relocated. He had been unable to find out where. ISIAH’S cancer ward budgets had been slashed. He had also been able to contact Lance Powers in Eden for a report on the Blair Ridge facility. Its patient care budget had also plummeted. He had begun to see where the extra budgetary commitments (that he had outlined to the expansion of the Genie grid) had come from. The Genie resource stockpiles had indeed sky-rocketed recently. Like Maxwell Blunt before him, he had been unable to determine anything else about it, including what it was, or where it was made. None of the updates to the budgets (that he had discovered) had been in any of the recent office memorandums. He (along with his workforce) had seemingly been kept completely in the dark.
As the workd
ay drew to a close, he had kept on working. He had checked and double checked his information. It just hadn’t made sense to him. When his work colleagues had filed out of the office at the close of business for the day he had sent the request upstairs that he had wanted to meet with Mason Royale. He had had his response within minutes. She would be waiting for him.
When Jon Li entered the Masonic Offices, Royale was standing in the main study area holding a glass of dark red wine. She was wearing a blue sequinned dress, and her hair was loose and falling in curls down her back. She looked stunning.
He swallowed hard.
She took a second glass of red wine and held it out to him.
‘Jon,’ she said in a sultry voice.
He took the glass and sipped the delicious wine. La Vie Sang, he thought, and then remembered the consequences for Katcher of squandering so much money on it and how the whole fiasco had unfolded in the board-room. He forgot about the chaos back at his penthouse temporarily and revelled in his own victory over Katcher and Maxwell Blunt.
‘Yes,’ she purred. ‘Exquisite isn’t it? One of the many perks of being in our elite position,’ she grinned slyly, and turned to look at a space on the wall where once a picture of Mason Katcher had hung.
It had left a slightly lighter shade of wood underneath.
The clouding, mental fog fell across his mind. He tried to recall if he could ever remember feeling that any woman he had known, was as intensely exciting as she was. He cradled her from behind and put his arms around her waist, leaning his head on her shoulder and looking at the empty space where once Katcher’s picture had been so proudly hung. He smiled to himself in satisfaction.
‘Doing some de-cluttering were you?’ he quipped, nodding at the empty space over her shoulder.
‘You could call it that,’ she said, in a slightly amused voice.
He breathed in deeply. The smell of her perfume intoxicated him. Her hair felt like cold, red silk on his face. She turned to look at him, expertly flicking her hair. One of her arms coiled around his shoulders, like a deadly viper.
‘So…have you considered my proposition, Jon?’ she purred.
He gave her his best winning smile.
‘Oh yes...I have given it a lot of thought.’
She purred back at him with approval. He retracted a little from her, trying to clear the cloud of fog from his mind.
‘Hester…just one question.’
She curled her eyelashes at him. The scent of her deadly hormones, were irresistible.
‘mmmmmm?’ she purred.
‘What IS the Resource?’ he asked inquisitively.
She pulled back from him a little and he saw her as a predator of a different sort. Her eyes seemed to pierce his mind in search of his motives. He swallowed hard. He had spent all night and day digging through the system files. The root of them all led back to something referred to as the ‘Resource’ that fuelled Genie. The entire system seemed to focus around how much of a stockpile of it they had against its consumption rate. He had always assumed that it was just a cover-all name for all the various materials needed to fuel the system. He had never had any reason to ask what it was. Until now.
‘Its materials Jon, you know that. The various things we need to run Genie. You know the formula is classified,’ she said, and relaxed back to sipping her wine. ‘In time, Jon, You’ll know everything you need to know. But regardless…we must turn to more interesting matters,’ she coaxed, slowly wrapping herself around him again.
He put his arms around her, without realising he had even done it. He felt like a mouse, in the grip of a python. Her words dulled his thoughts. Her smell intoxicated him and her sensual lips invited his.
‘Isn’t it time, Hester? The future does not wait and we can build it together. Shouldn’t we get started?’ he asked, gently kissing her ear lobe.
She curled slightly, at the tickling sensation and laughed.
‘This time of night Jon. I had other plans for you,’ she said teasingly.
‘We can have every night Hester. Our destiny calls us. It must be answered.’
Royale shrank back: considering. Her lips parted into a venomous smile.
‘Yes, Jon. You are right. It is time for your great ascension. Wait here for a moment, won’t you?’
He waited while she disappeared into one of the side rooms to ready herself to leave the Masonic Offices. He stood, looking around the Masonic Offices and examining the line of pictures of the past and present masons. He marvelled at the numerous devices that had been engineered by the TAU which were on display amongst the books and files of the library room.
Royale re-appeared after a few minutes later. She was wearing a different coloured lipstick. It caused a stir in his groin when he thought about the previous night, and the effects that her black lipstick had had on him. He winced in pain as his wounded organ stirred.
‘Follow me,’ she said and made her way further into the Masonic Offices.
He followed hypnotically. They walked into an unusual shaped room. It was in the centre of the Masonic Offices. It was a large, octagonal shaped room which had the insignia of the mason’s key, embedded in every tile on the floor. The walls were covered with panels. He imagined that they might be either computer screens or holographic panels. The room was bare of any furniture. In the centre, was a smaller octagonal shape, which appeared to be made from silver. They were standing in what was a ‘panic room.’
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Wait and see,’ she said smugly.
Royale dipped her hand to her neck and took out the platinum key. She held it up to a camera that was mounted on the ceiling. She looked directly into the camera lens.
“CONFIRMED. MASON ROYALE”
An automated voice rang out.
‘You might want to step back a little, Jon,’ she said.
Immediately that they had both stepped back a few feet, every wall slammed down shut. She had activated the panic alarm. The noise of the walls slamming shut unnerved him.
What on Earth?…he thought. Trapped.
As soon as the walls were fully locked down the floor began to move. The silver octagon in the middle of the room began to open in a spiral, until it was fully open. A silver object, slid slowly up from the floor, until it was at their height. It stopped and then opened. It was a concealed lift.
He looked at her in disbelief.
‘It is time,’ she said.
He looked startled.
So that’s how they get down to the vault, he thought.
She took his hand and led him into the silver octagonal lift. The doors closed on them. She touched her key on the side of the lift and it responded by sliding, at speed, down the building. He could feel the speed at which they were travelling and it took all of his will not to show his fear in front of her. Within seconds they had stopped and the doors had opened. They were in the bowels of the Fin-Sen building and directly outside of the vault.
She took his hand and led him out of the lift. The huge metal doors of the vault lay in front of them. He could only watch, awestruck, as she stepped forward to face the doors of the vault. The flicker in her eyes was the only sign of activity.
The laser scanner retracted: satisfied.
Deep within the walls, noises emanated outwards, as the mechanics came to life. The heavy, awkward clunks of metal rang in unison, as the vaulted doors unlocked and then parted like the maw of some great beast. The room beyond was shrouded in darkness. She strode confidently into the blackness. He stepped in after her leaving the light behind. The vault doors closed behind them. It sounded to him as though they were being sealed shut by a hundred different locks.
For a moment there was total silence in the darkness. The situation was overwhelming. He had strange thoughts, perhaps this is what death is like: incomprehensible, but strangely powerful at the same time.
A flickering of blue light, interrupted his train of thought, and the room took on a blue hue. It bathe
d Royale in its eerie light. It reflected off her sequinned dress and he gazed at her in awe. She wasn’t moving: merely staring at the centre column in reverent silence. The light made her beautiful in way mortals could not be. She looked like a faithful priestess dancing in the immortal light of her deity and privileged above all others.
The blue light was accompanied by a low hum of machinery coming to life. It was deep and resonating and it came from far underground. He imagined that the system was massive, like a great slumbering giant that they had awoken, simply by coming into its presence. He could feel the energy flowing through the floor and filling him with a power that he could wield. He could not block the deity image from his mind. Worse now, because he could feel its power. His power.
When he had looked down at the generator at Genie he had known then that he had been looking at Utopia’s heart. He knew now, that he was about to see Utopia’s mind. The enormity of it, made him feel faint.
The blue light filled the room. The top of the centre column blazed and crackled with energy and then the light took on the shape of an elderly man. He caught his breath and watched in admiration as the shimmering image addressed Royale.
“Greetings fellow Mason. Welcome. Step up and pledge your allegiance to Utopia.”
Royale stepped forward to her station, in front of the shimmering figure. Its electric eyes followed her and completely ignored him. She recited the pledge of Utopia perfectly. She did not flinch, or look at him, once.
He had the awful feeling that in walking through the vault doors and entering the inner sanctum, had killed him after all.
Then the wavering figure spoke.
“Your pledge has been heard. Freedom and Equality exists in Utopia. Continue Mason Royale.”
The holographic man disappeared in a crackle of light and a low hum accompanied a series of silver blocks that rose up in front of one the computer panels. They formed a silver chair. Royale began to un-hook her key from around her neck. She turned to him. A sly grin, formed on her lovely lips.