Countermeasures

by Janie Crouch

  Megan noticed Jonathan’s pinched features. Great, now she had hurt her assistant’s pride. “Jon, you know how I am. Sometimes I just need to be away from everything to break through a problem.” Megan turned to include Trish in the conversation. “If you two can get the coding finished, then tomorrow we can meet back here and really make some progress.”

  Jonathan finally nodded. “Okay, I guess you’re right. Is Agent Branson going with you?”

  Megan looked up and saw Sawyer walking toward them from the break room. “No, Agent Branson will definitely be staying here. Otherwise it will defeat the entire purpose.”

  Trish nodded as if she totally understood what Megan was saying. Megan just grimaced. Another woman under Sawyer’s spell did not make Megan feel any better.

  Jonathan gestured down to Megan’s briefcase. “Do you have everything you need? Do you want anything we were working on this morning? I can get it for you.”

  “No, I think I’m okay. I’ve got the printouts and hard drive. That should be all I need. We’re close, you guys, I can feel it.”

  Trish nodded. “I know. It feels good, doesn’t it? To actually make forward progress? It seemed like the fates have conspired against us the last few days.”

  “Well, let’s hope that’s all behind us now.”

  Sawyer stopped outside her office and tapped on the door. “Can I speak to you for a minute, Megan?”

  “Yes.” Megan turned to Jonathan. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Trish, Jon. Okay? Thanks for your help.”

  Both computer scientists nodded and left, already discussing the coding problem. Megan was thankful to have team members who were so dedicated to what they did.

  “You’re really going to work somewhere else today?”

  Megan began unbuttoning her lab coat. “Yes. Believe it or not, it happens. Sometimes I need to be in a different element in order to break through a problem. It’s just how my brain works.” She turned her back to him to slip off the coat.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No!” Megan took a deep breath and then spun back slowly to face Sawyer. “I mean, that’s not necessary. Thanks.” Megan could tell Sawyer was about to argue, so she continued, “Sawyer, thank you for the offer, but I really just need to be alone. Otherwise I won’t be able to get the work done.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to be off on your own.”

  “I’m just going to my house, Sawyer. It’s a chance for me to get in multiple uninterrupted hours of work. If I’m here, there’s always someone who needs me for something or other distractions.” Megan couldn’t look at Sawyer’s face as she finished the sentence, so she turned to her desk and began grabbing her bags.

  “Fine.” Megan was a little surprised to hear Sawyer say it. She thought she was going to have to present further arguments for why he couldn’t come with her. And to be honest she wasn’t sure what those arguments would be.

  Sorry, Sawyer, you can’t come with me because whenever you’re around I can’t seem to focus on anything but how...yummy you look.

  Sawyer had been nothing but polite and friendly to Megan over the past few days—just like he had been to everyone. This craziness was all in Megan’s head, not in his actions.

  “Give me your phone,” Sawyer told her. “So I can put my number in it.”

  Megan gave it to him and he continued, “If you have any issues, call me. Or if you decide to go anywhere but your house, let me know.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to stay here because there are a couple of concerns I want to look into.”

  “About Ghost Shell?”

  “Yes. But I’m not certain about anything yet, so don’t worry about it now. We’ll talk tomorrow when you get back. Right now the most important thing is that you get some real progress made with the countermeasure.”

  Megan agreed. “I know. I work best alone.”

  “That’s the main reason I’m letting you go alone. I know you don’t really like me around when you’re working, Megan. I annoy you. That’s fine.” Sawyer smiled and winked. “My manly ego can take it, I think.”

  He thought she didn’t want him around because she didn’t like him? Obviously he couldn’t see how her pulse started racing when he smiled at her. Better to keep it that way.

  “Well, I’m sure you never lack for female company of those you don’t annoy.”

  “I am highly suspicious of any woman who isn’t annoyed by me.” Sawyer winked at Megan.

  She grabbed her stuff and headed toward the door without another word before she hyperventilated. She heard Sawyer chuckle as she brushed past him.

  “See you tomorrow, Dr. Fuller,” he called as she walked down the hall. Megan didn’t respond. What could she say anyway?

  Megan made her way down the hallway, reporting to Mark, the main security guard, that she was leaving for the day to work at home and would be back tomorrow.

  When Mark smiled at her it didn’t do anything to her stomach. She smiled back as he helped her with the front door.

  The crisp winter air felt good against Megan’s overheated skin. She walked slowly to her car enjoying—as always—the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains surrounding her. Here, outside and away from all the craziness inside Cyberdyne and her reaction to Sawyer, Megan realized she had made the right decision.

  She already felt clearer, steadier. Ready to work. What she was doing was important and she was racing against a very real clock, but she was up for the challenge. Working at home would be just what she needed.

  Megan opened her car door and threw her briefcase and lunch bag in the passenger seat beside her. Her house was only ten minutes away from Cyberdyne. She’d chosen it specifically for that reason. She cleared through the security gate and began her drive home.

  As she stopped at an intersection about halfway between her house and Cyberdyne, an idea for solving one of the problems with the countermeasure became clear to Megan. She reached into her purse to grab her phone so she could make a voice recording, to remember it later.

  A car behind her honked as Megan was getting her phone ready to record. The light had turned green. Megan waved to the car behind her and began to pull through the intersection.

  Just as an SUV flew through the intersection in the other direction and T-boned into the passenger side of Megan’s car.

  Chapter Six

  The jar of the impact threw Megan’s entire body into the driver’s side door. Her head cracked against the window and she struggled to hold on to consciousness. Her car seemed to spin around in slow motion from the force of the SUV that hit it.

  Megan sat dazed as the car stopped moving, trying to figure out what exactly had happened. Thinking was hard. Had the other car run the red light? Megan tried to test different parts of her body to make sure they were functional, thankful that everything seemed to move when her brain commanded it to.

  Was everyone all right in the other car? Megan reached up to wipe the sweat trickling from her scalp, but when she brought her fingers down they were red. Blood, not sweat.

  Megan tried to unfasten her seat belt, but it didn’t seem to want to come loose. She glanced out the window and saw someone from the SUV that had hit her get out of the passenger side of their vehicle and begin walking toward her car. Thank goodness he seemed to be okay. Megan hoped the driver was, too.

  And that they had insurance.

  The man hurried up to Megan’s car and leaned into the passenger-side window that had completely shattered.

  “Oh my gosh.” Megan’s words came out in a rush. “Are you guys okay? My seat belt seems to be stuck. And I think I’m bleeding. I might need an ambulance, but I think overall I’m okay.”

  The man didn’t say anything, and Megan couldn’t tell if he was injured or not. He was wearing a gray jersey jacket with a hood tied tightly around his face. And with the large, dark sunglasses he had on, Megan couldn’t tell anything about him at all.

  The hooded man reache
d down and grabbed Megan’s briefcase that had slid to the floor during the impact. He stretched toward her and, in her dazed state, Megan thought he might try to help her with her seat belt. But then she realized he was trying to find her purse.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Was this man robbing her? The man didn’t say anything, instead reached down to the floor where her purse had fallen. Megan pulled more frantically at the seat belt that wouldn’t unlatch.

  “Stop! Somebody help me!” Megan tried to grab her purse strap, to stop the man in any way she could, but he was too strong. And still Megan couldn’t make out any of his features.

  Once he had what he had come for, the man wasted no more time. He turned and jogged quickly back to the SUV. As soon as the man reached his vehicle, it began to pull away, the damage to it minimal because of the metal bars on the front grille.

  Megan watched the vehicle go, trying to get the license plate as blood continued to drip down in her face.

  A witness to the accident—some girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen years old—ran up to her side of the car and knocked on the window. When Megan couldn’t get it to lower, the girl opened the door.

  “Oh my gosh, are you all right? I saw the whole thing. That car just plowed right into you, right? Ran a red light and everything. And then just left. That makes it a hit-and-run, right?”

  Megan’s head was beginning to throb. And still she couldn’t get the seat belt to unfasten. Answering the teenager’s questions seemed impossible, which was fine because she didn’t actually seem to want any answers.

  “I’ve already called the police. That was just so unbelievable. I’ve got to text my friends and tell them what happened. Oh man, you’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

  “I hit my head,” Megan told her. “And I can’t seem to get my seat belt to unfasten.”

  “Oh my gosh, let me try.” The teenager did her best, but couldn’t seem to get the belt to budge. “Oh, wait, I hear some sirens.”

  Moments later a barrage of first responders showed up. A fireman cut the seat belt so Megan could get out of the car and a paramedic helped her over to the ambulance. They offered her a stretcher, but Megan refused.

  “You’re going to need a few stitches on your scalp. We’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “Fine,” Megan told the paramedic. “But first I need to talk to the police. The people who hit me stole my purse and briefcase from my car.”

  The paramedic called the police officer over and Megan repeated her claim to him.

  “Are you saying that because the items just aren’t here? Are you sure you had your purse and briefcase in the car with you?”

  “Absolutely. Right after the accident, I was sitting right here, and someone walked up, leaned through the window and took my belongings.”

  The police officer looked skeptical. “You hit your head pretty hard. Are you sure it was someone from the car that hit you that took your stuff?”

  Megan’s head was really beginning to ache and dealing with a disbelieving police officer wasn’t what she wanted to do.

  “I’m telling you, I watched, trapped right here—” she gestured to the driver’s side of her car “—as a man got out of the passenger-side door of the SUV that had just hit me and walked to my car. I thought he was coming to see if I was okay, but instead he reached into my car through the broken window, grabbed my briefcase and my purse, and then left. He didn’t say a word.”

  The officer shook his head. “I’ll put it in my report, but it just seems like a great deal of risk—hitting you with their own vehicle like that—just for a simple robbery. Did you have anything of great value in your purse or briefcase?”

  “Less than a hundred dollars in my purse.” Then her stomach dropped as she remembered where she had been going and what she had been carrying with her. “Oh no. Ghost Shell and the countermeasure.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Stuff for work.” Megan shook her head. The countermeasure hard drive had been in her briefcase, as well as all the printouts she was going to use to work from home. The printouts weren’t a problem, but the countermeasure? Irreplaceable. This was going to set the Cyberdyne team back. Again. All the way to the beginning.

  “Can you provide a description of the man who took your belongings?”

  Megan rubbed the middle of her forehead with her fingers. It seemed as though everything in her body hurt. “No, I’m sorry. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that was wrapped tight around his face. And dark sunglasses. I can tell you that he’s Caucasian, but that’s about it.”

  “I’ll need to get a list of everything that was taken. You’ll want that filed for your insurance purposes.” Megan could tell the police officer was still skeptical about her story of being robbed.

  The medic helped Megan move up onto the gurney so she could be transported to the hospital. Megan felt nauseous and her head was throbbing. She knew she needed to call Sawyer and let him know about the robbery, in case he could possibly do something about it. But she dreaded telling him about losing the countermeasure.

  “My phone wasn’t in my purse,” she told the medic. “Can someone check to see if it’s in the car? I need to make some calls.”

  The medic nodded and went out to talk to the officers. Megan sat against the propped-up gurney. She chewed on her bottom lip, dreading the call to Sawyer. The medic rushed back, placing Megan’s phone and lunch bag on her lap.

  “Sorry, that’s all there was,” the woman told Megan.

  Megan was placing the lunch bag to the side and picking up the phone when she remembered. She’d been so discombobulated in the break room when Sawyer came in that she had put the countermeasure drive and many of the papers in her lunch bag rather than her briefcase. She double-checked to be sure.

  As the ambulance sped to the nearest hospital, Megan laughed out loud. She could tell the medic was concerned about head trauma, but she didn’t care.

  Megan laughed again. Whoever had just robbed her, hoping to get the Ghost Shell countermeasure, had actually stolen half of a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

  * * *

  SAWYER SCROLLED THROUGH the readout that Cyberdyne’s security chief, Ted Cory, had provided. Sawyer’s meeting with the man yesterday had been pretty tense. Sawyer pointed out potential security problems, Cory became defensive. Sawyer found that happened a lot when working with civilians. They took everything as a personal criticism.

  But Cory had provided all the information concerning the R & D doors and computer usage without complaint. The problem was that the info was massive. Every time someone accessed a door or a computer, it was logged into the security system. But given the number of R & D employees—even eliminating the ones who had nothing to do with Ghost Shell—the data was considerable.

  But what really caught Sawyer’s attention was a tiny bit of data that seemed to have been corrupted. It was barely noticeable—if Sawyer hadn’t been looking for it, he wouldn’t have noticed the discrepancy at all. But a small piece of manipulated data reinforced what Sawyer had been suspecting more and more each day he was at Cyberdyne.

  Someone was deliberately sabotaging Megan’s attempts to get the countermeasure built.

  Certainly bad luck and human error happened, and most of the problems that had belabored Megan and her team could easily be attributed to either. But it was Sawyer’s job to look past what could be considered accidental and see the pattern underneath. And now Sawyer was sure it was a pattern.

  Sawyer looked at the readout for the vault’s security door on the day he had arrived at Cyberdyne. The next morning Megan had discovered the original countermeasure had been damaged while in the vault. Sawyer, of course, had almost immediately accessed the data for who had been in the vault once Megan announced work would resume on the countermeasure. Unfortunately, almost every member of her team had accessed the vault that afternoon or early evening, providing nothing conclusive.

  But now, looking at that report for earlier that same day, Sawy
er found it: a manual override of the employee code for someone entering the vault the morning Sawyer arrived. Just the smallest of digital fingerprints that had been left behind by someone. No other manual overrides could be found anywhere in the system.

  Someone who didn’t want their employee ID number to be recognized had gone into the vault the morning Sawyer had arrived. And the very next day the countermeasure had been pronounced damaged beyond repair. It was too big a coincidence for Sawyer to ignore.

  Trying to hide their ID number had been a mistake. One someone probably made in a panic when they found out Sawyer was coming and work would resume on the countermeasure. If they had just left the security info alone, it would’ve never caught Sawyer’s attention and clued him in to the fact that someone in Cyberdyne was most likely on DS-13’s payroll.

  Sawyer pushed back from the computer screen, eyebrows drawing together. A traitor at Cyberdyne could explain many of the setbacks Megan and the team had faced over the past few days. And although Sawyer had no idea who the traitor was, knowing there was someone in their midst changed everything.

  Sawyer’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Megan. He hadn’t expected to hear from her so soon.

  Or at all, to be honest, the way she had admitted to not wanting to work around him.

  He answered his phone. “Hey, you.”

  “Hi, Sawyer.”

  Sawyer could hear people talking and various noises all around her. “Sounds busy. Everything okay?”

  “I need you to come pick me up, if you don’t mind.”

  “Uh-oh, car break down?” Sawyer chuckled to himself. Things must be pretty bad if she was calling him to come give her a ride.

  “Well, not exactly. I was in an accident.”

  “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  Megan’s voice dropped in volume a little. “Somebody ran into my car. I’m at the hospital, but—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Sawyer was already running down the hallway before she could begin her next sentence.

  Chapter Seven

  Sawyer couldn’t quite explain the tightness in his chest from the moment Megan had told him she’d been in an accident, but he couldn’t ignore it, either. He’d broken multiple traffic laws on his way to the hospital, pressed by the need to see for himself that Megan was all right.