The Cardinal Rule

by C. E. Murphy

  "I heard something." Wheels squeaked as Brandon stood, pushing his chair back. Alisha winced, casting a sharp look over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of the blond man striding down the rows of desks toward the door, the opposite direction she faced. She took one quick breath and sprang forward as noiselessly as she could, landing on the steel stairs with a soft thump that fell in time with Brandon's footsteps. She scampered upward, casting one more glance over her shoulder.

  The screen on the second computer, where she'd uploaded the virus, was still awake, leaving her activities visible for anyone to see.

  Right down Santa Claus Lane, Alisha sang to herself, and ran up the stairs in silence.

  #

  She could hear with astounding precision. It always happened when things went badly. Her own heartbeat was too loud, but somehow only served as a backdrop for every other minute sound in the bunker. Pipes behind concrete walls creaked, air circulation thrummed with a deep, bone-shaking rattle normally reserved for film scenes set in deep space, and above all of that, Brandon's voice cut through: "I don't know. This isn't exactly the easiest place in the world to compromise."

  The room she'd come into was dominated by an oval table and windows overlooking the hub. One of the windows was open; Alisha darted through it without taking time to think, vivid image from the blueprint giving her faith. Faith well rewarded: immediately to the window's left were fire rungs, grooves cut into the wall. She scrambled up, rubber pads on fingers and toes giving her extra security, and within seconds was among the open pipes and florescent lights of the hub room's ceiling. Preternaturally aware hearing picked out Brandon's footsteps on the steel stairs below the lights' hum, and a few seconds later he looked out the open window, frowning.

  Looked out, but not up. Alisha stopped breathing, making herself a shadow behind the lights. A prey species' flight instinct: run for the higher ground. That was still hard-wired into humanity, even though they'd become a predatory species themselves. The funny thing was that as predators, human apes didn't tend to look up. Except Brandon did, chin tilted up and eyebrows drawn down into a deeper scowl as he squinted against the brightness of the lights. Alisha felt a flash of exasperated humor. Greg Parker's son hadn't forgotten his CIA training—always look to the high ground—which would be excellent hunter behavior if it wasn't Alisha he was looking for. She would have much preferred he looked for things like most people did: at eye level or lower.

  But he turned his gaze away from the shadowy ceiling after only a cursory glance. Alisha pressed her eyes shut briefly in relief so faint she could barely feel it. The window whooshed shut with a quiet puff of air, Brandon's departing footsteps muffled by the seal. Alisha let go of the breath she'd been holding and opened her eyes again, looking down twenty feet to the hub room's floor.

  Domes and spheres bounced silver light back at her from a dozen different areas, scattered across the floor. Corners of matte black swallowed light in the peculiarly distinct way that deadly weapons often did, barrels and ratcheting legs making a tangled mess. Alisha stared at the machines littering the floor for what felt like a very long time, not breathing, not blinking. She knew, on one level, what she was looking at; on another she waited, breath held, to accept what she saw and make sense of it. Then all at once, with painful clarity, it all came together so she could understand.

  Her third objective, obtaining the prototype drone, had always been going to be the hardest of the tasks to perform. Physically, at least; the emotional difficulty of her potential fourth task, terminating Brandon Parker, was far worse than the logistical difficulty of stealing a hobbit-sized drone programmed to protect itself at almost all costs. But that aside, the stealing the drone was always going to be risky, something she would have to do in the very last minutes before leaving the base, and even then, managing it without getting caught would be chancy. Out of the objectives, it was the one most likely to go unfinished, although as a matter of pride Alisha had always intended to come out with the drone.

  A growing discomfort in her chest turned to a burn and she inhaled sharply, not knowing when she'd last taken a breath. Her eyes were hot from not blinking. She did so, hard, then forced them open, as if she might somehow change what she'd seen below with the fierceness of the blink.

  It didn't work. The drone she'd watched that afternoon—the Prototype Alpha-10-Gamma—sat in a corner, scuffs from use very slightly marring its gleaming surface.

  Opposite it, cargo crates with their tops ripped off revealed five more drones hunkered down like silver-headed dwarves. They were identical to the A-10-G, the same size and shape, and even half-wrapped in packing hay and foam, they seemed to give off a sense of malevolence. Goose bumps crawled over Alisha's skin, leaving her shivering against the pipes.

  She was looking at the beginnings of an army.

  And there was no way she could steal it all.

  Chapter 8

  The return to her quarters was a blur. She could pick the details out if she focused, but it wasn't the trip back that had kept her awake all night. Alisha lay on her back, eyes closed, racing fruitlessly through the same thoughts that had haunted her for the past several hours.

  Brandon had created an army of prototypes. His work was much further along than the CIA's intelligence had suggested. He had an outside contact, but not his employers, or he wouldn't be making clandestine midnight calls. Someone else, then. Someone who considered him one of the Americans.

  Alisha clenched her jaw, trying to keep a curse locked behind her teeth. If Brandon Parker was working for the Americans—for the CIA—then his cover was so deep that Greg didn't know about it. Which meant a hundred different things. It meant Alisha's presence at the base was potentially dangerous to Brandon, an inexcusable chance that his cover might be blown. It could mean Brandon Parker was not at all the threat that his work presented him as.

  And if that was the case, someone very high in government had placed him. So high that not even Director Boyer had known that Alisha's presence in Kazakhstan might expose an operative there. It meant, as too often happened, the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. Secrets upon secrets: they were the lifeblood of the CIA, but functioning without full disclosure in a situation like this was disastrous.

  There were too many unknown variables, questions that couldn't be answered until she'd left the security of the Kazakhstani base. Impatient nerves made Alisha's stomach ache, not from fear, but from anger and distress at her path being unclear. She'd lain in bed, sleepless, for nearly five hours. It was enough. More than enough.

  She shoved the covers off and reached for her bag as she sat up. The red glow of a digital clock told her it was minutes before 6:00 a.m., a veritable lie-in for someone on a military base. Brandon had pointed out a utilitarian gym as he'd shown her to her room the night before, and it was late enough to go make use of it. It had to be: her body was trembling with the need to move. She pulled on a sports bra and running tights, put bare feet into tennies, slid her earphones into her ears. Her phone—obviously not her phone, but an Agency-provided phone belonging to Elisa Moon, and filled with all the apps and calendars Elisa used—went into a bulky casing that she could strap to her arm with soft-sided Velcro. The big ugly case helped disguise the fact that it hid thin USB sticks: one with the virus she'd brought in , and one now laden with the Alpha-10-Gamma's specs. Those specs had been prizes only a few hours earlier. Now they seemed to taunt her, like the visible ten percent of an iceberg.

  Alisha curled her lip in frustration as she jogged through the base to the exercise room. There was nothing she could do at the moment. Yoga, at least, would help her think more clearly.

  #

  "Ms. Moon." Brandon's voice cut through the music, a greeting that interrupted Alisha's bakasana, the crane pose that put her weight on her hands, body curled in a ball and supported by the strength of her arms. She lifted a fingertip, uncertain if he'd see it, but it was the only action she could take without disrupting her pose. A
moment later she heard the grate of weights being moved as she brought her knees out of their tuck and placed them even with her feet, remaining doubled for the space of a long exhalation. Then she reversed herself into a slow standing pose, opening her eyes to study Brandon as he loaded weights onto a chest press. He wore sweats and a T-shirt and looked like he'd had enough sleep, though she knew perfectly well that he hadn't retired any earlier than she had.

  So, she asked silently, who's Sicarii? Are you really still working for the CIA? Who's your contact outside of this base? She at least got a moment's satisfaction out of imagining his expression if she asked the questions, but aloud, she said, "Good morning. I wasn't ignoring you."

  "Yeah, I saw." Brandon waggled a finger, repeating her gesture of a moment earlier as he slid the last weight on the bar. "Glad the weight room's useful to you."

  Alisha nodded, lifting a shoulder. "Need a spotter?"

  She could see him about to refuse and then reconsidering the offer. "Sure, thanks. If I've got a spotter…" He pulled another set of twenty pound weights off the rack and slid them onto the bar. "You always so helpful in the morning?"

  Alisha pursed her lips, considering, and came down on the side of what the hell. She dropped her voice into a purr, her smile growing into a wholehearted, flirtatious grin. At the worst he wouldn't respond. At the best, he might open up, maybe let something slip. "Sometimes I'm much more helpful. On your back, Jack." She pointed at the bench, smiling playfully. Brandon lifted his hands in acquiescence and laughed, rolling onto the bench as Alisha came over to stand behind the bar. "How many?"

  "Three sets of fifteen."

  "You're stronger than you look." Alisha cupped her hands beneath the bar and braced her legs.

  "So're you, if you can catch this thing." He began his reps, gaze focused hard on the ceiling.

  "I can't," Alisha said with perfect honesty. "Three hundred's too much for me. But I can keep it from crushing you."

  "Two-eighty," Brandon said through his teeth.

  Alisha's eyebrows rose.

  "How pedantic of you."

  Brandon's gaze flickered from the ceiling to her. He split a tiny grin, almost a grimace as he concentrated on the press, and finished his set before speaking again. "I'd rather be admired for what I can actually do."

  Alisha squinted. "Are you sure you're male?"

  He barked laughter, half-crunching up toward her. "Pretty sure."

  "Lie down," she said, mock-severely. "Fortunately for you, you've got some pretty impressive…" Her gaze trailed over his chest before she brought it back to his face and grinned again. "Accomplishments."

  Brandon laughed out loud. "Are you supposed to flirt with your business associates, Ms. Moon?"

  "Of course not." But then, her business associates weren't usually young blonds with broad shoulders and teen-idol smiles. "Do you always do what you're told?"

  Darkness glittered in Brandon's eyes. "Not always."

  Alisha cocked an eyebrow, a jolt of interest making her stomach jump. "Fill me in." For example, tell me about the army of prototypes you've got downstairs, when my intelligence suggested a single drone.

  "Ms. Moon—"

  "Elisa," she reminded him. "I told you that yesterday."

  "And then you started calling me Dr. Parker again," he pointed out. "You weren't exactly happy when the prototype was misprogrammed. I couldn't tell if you'd thawed out over dinner."

  Alisha spread her hands in a touché motion. "I thawed. I think being pissed off about being the prototype's target was reasonable." She tapped the bar again. "Back to work."

  Brandon settled back down and curled his hands around the bar. "It was. So anyway, Elisa," he said with faint strain on her name, "I doubt my history is a secret to a woman like you."

  "Intelligent, attractive and highly paid for illicit work, you mean?"

  Brandon grunted an acknowledgment, making Alisha grin again. "Not much of it," she agreed. "So why'd you do it?" She left the question deliberately vague, curious to see what he'd choose to answer.

  Nothing, for the space of his sets, and then he let his arms fall to either side of the bench and sighed tremendously. "Oversight committees."

  Alisha's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

  Brandon chuckled. "Government organizations have accountability for everything. It takes forever to get anything done." He shook his arms, then folded his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. "My prototypes would have gotten caught up in committee and debated for years. I didn't want to wait."

  "Come on." Alisha infused her voice with disbelief. "With the Attengee's military potential? I thought enormous amounts of money were funneled into research and development."

  "Attengee." Brandon breathed laughter. "That's got kind of a ring to it. Easier than A-10-G." He shrugged. "Sure, and with it you get almost no autonomy. This project has been my life. I wanted to do it my way."

  "Last set. You and Frankie, huh? So you opted for the highest bidder?"

  Brandon flashed her a glance beyond the weight bar. "The most idealistic bidder."

  "Idealistic. You're telling me that whoever is paying for this research site really believes your drones will be used for nothing more aggressive than peacekeeping?" Alisha's eyebrows rose in genuine curiosity. "Who is this fount of decency?" Your Sicarii? she wondered, without voicing the question aloud.

  Brandon stretched his forearms, then reached for the bar again. "I'm hardly at liberty to tell you that."

  "Eh, it was worth a shot."

  Brandon chuckled, quick sound beneath his labored breathing as he began his set. "I guess. Anyway, even if he's naive, I don't have a lot of illusions about how my work will be used."

  "Then why do it at all?"

  "Because someone would." Brandon spoke through his teeth again, huffing out the count for his repetitions at the end of the comment.

  "And it might as well be you?"

  He shot her another look. "Why do you do it?"

  "Money." It was Elisa Moon's motivation, at least. Moon had grown up poor, her only commodity her pretty face. It hadn't been enough to get her through college, but drug couriering had. Elisa's allegiance was to whomever could pay her, plain and simple.

  Just like Reichart.

  "Someday," Brandon grunted, "I'm going to ask you that question again."

  Alisha's forehead wrinkled as she looked down at him. He gave her a thin smile, then turned all his concentration to the weight bar. "Eleven," Alisha murmured, picking up the count for him. "Why? Twelve. Three more." She curled her fingers around the bar more solidly, watching Brandon's biceps tremble with strain.

  "Because." Cords stood out in his neck as he spoke through his teeth, focusing on lifting the bar. "I don't—" he thrust the bar up, Alisha's fingers clenching around it, then relaxing "—believe money. Is a legitimate answer. There's always—" He broke off again with another grunt.

  "Fourteen. One more. C'mon, Parker."

  "—another—reason!" He shoved the weight bar up with one last burst of energy. Alisha caught it, guiding it back to the braces, and stepped back from the bench.

  "Nice job," she said quietly. "I'm going to grab a shower. I'll see you in the mess hall." She took another step backward, then turned away, keeping the length of her strides steady as she headed for the door. It felt too much like a retreat, as if Brandon had gained an upper hand she hadn't known they'd been playing for. She paused at the door, looking back. "Maybe if you ask another time I'll have another answer."

  But not until she knew more about Brandon Parker and his associates.

  #

  Unfortunately, with no way to contact Greg or anyone outside the base until she'd left Kazakhstan, finding out more would have to wait. Alisha showered, grabbed a bowl of slightly stale cereal in the mess hall, and approached the demonstration location a few minutes early. Rafe Denison paced the hall nervously, but pulled himself together to give her a tense smile. "Good morning. Ms. Moon. Dr. Parker will be with us in a
few minutes. There'll be another potential buyer joining us for the live demonstration. Please, come this way."

  Alisha arched an eyebrow, giving the lab assistant a sideways look as he guided her down a concrete hall. His nostrils were pinched with consternation, though he gave her another brief smile in an obvious attempt to belie the distress his body language admitted to. "An unexpected addition," he said apologetically. "Brandon insisted."

  "Really." Alisha kept her voice neutral, just a hint of curiosity in it. "Who's he representing?"

  Rafe gave her another pained smile. "I'm sure you understand I can't answer that, any more than I'd discuss whom you're affiliated with."

  "Of course not." Alisha gave the fidgeting Englishman a quick smile. "But it was worth trying."

  "It must be exhausting, living a life where you're always wondering which side everyone's on. How do you do it?"

  By scribbling down all the things that drive me crazy about it. By keeping a record purely for myself, that allows me to be as honest as I can be before facing the blacks and whites of my reality. Answers she couldn't really—wouldn't really—give. Aloud, easily, she replied, "Practice. "I imagine it can't be so different for you, Dr. Denison. Rafe," she corrected herself, before he had a chance. "You probably don't tell much of your family that you're working on secret weapons research, after all, do you?"

  "No," Rafe said. Alisha could all but hear him adding, but I don't buy and sell weapons on a black market, either. He opened a door for her and she stepped past him into a control room very like the one she'd infiltrated the night before: enormous windows overlooked an open hub area, thick concrete walls rising up into a tangle of pipes and lights at the ceiling. Alisha glanced up, studying it briefly, before looking down into the belly of the room.

  The Attengee drone squatted there, half-hidden amongst a maze of wood and concrete walls. Four men in stiff-looking fatigues stood together, another three scattered in the maze. "Those aren't standard issue," Alisha said, nodding at the closest group of men. Rafe shook his head, expression approving.