“It looked like you two could use a fresh one,” he said.
“Was it really just a random break-in?” Aubrey asked the two of them.
The details of the case were strange— death by a single stab wound. No toxins had been found in Grant’s system and other than a few bumps and bruises, the stab wound was the only injury. Aubrey’s natural paranoia led him to theorize on all the possibilities, all the connections.
Lewis scoffed. “Doubt it. We all have enemies out there. You know that as well as I do.”
Aubrey sipped from the bottle; not his brand, but it would do. “Who has the case?”
“Yentley, Homicide. She’s damn good. She’ll figure it out.” Lewis cleared his throat. “How about you? How’s your thing going?”
At this, Liz raised an eyebrow.
Aubrey had to be careful with his words amongst all the other cops.
“Our mutual friend and I are working on it. I should hear something from her very soon.”
* * *
Four weeks had passed since Martin Aubrey had left Malina Maddox’s storage-unit-turned-domicile. She promised to get started on her part of the investigation right away and would call him if she found anything worth talking about.
He’d reached out to her several times to check on her progress only to be greeted the same way each time.
“Leave me alone,” she’d tell him. “I’ll contact you when I have something.”
Aubrey felt confident she was working in earnest. She was like him; bad guys were going around doing bad things and she just couldn’t stand it.
Their first meeting had not gone quite like he’d planned. After she had calmed down and realized he was not there to harm her, they talked for a while. He explained everything—the mercenaries, the lack of substantial connection between them and OFP, BSS, or the pill plus the timing of the attacks and the mysterious caller on the lead mercenary’s phone.
She admitted the connections were compelling and could possibly lead to something. She wasn’t keen on getting involved in another case that could lead to threats on her life. The tipping point for her decision came when she asked him a follow up question.
“Why don’t you just go talk to the scientists? Or their cellmates or something.” She sat in the aged black chair at her computer desk.
“Good question. I actually did,” he said.
“And?”
“And they didn’t tell me anything and within a day, they were dead.”
He’d paused to let the words sink in. If his assumptions were correct, she’d loathe murderers and corruption equally. Combining the two were intolerable.
“I’m pretty sure they were killed because I went out there. Because I was getting close to some answers.” Aubrey recalled watching Malina from her couch, waiting for any sign of that do-gooder gene rearing its head. It only took a few seconds to see it; her eyebrows pinched together and her lips tightened.
“How were they killed?” she asked, her eyes staring into space.
“Executed, Tapped, selected. Whatever you want to call it. A Tapper or multiple Tappers killed them.”
“Hmmm,” she groaned and spun in her chair, round and around for a moment, apparently lost in thought.
He’d guessed it wasn’t the fact that they were dead that bothered her so much, they were key suspects behind a great deal of violence after all. More so the idea that someone had them killed. The fact that there was a “someone” was the clincher. That “someone” was capable of great evil and, as Aubrey suggested, capable of much more. Murder plus corruption.
She looked at her computer as if she were wondering if it was worth calling it into service. She could have been a gunslinger sizing up her old steed. Could it take another ride?
“But you got the bombers.” She’d rubbed the desk with one hand while she spoke, her legs curled up under her.
“Yes, we did. We got the guys actually making and deploying the bombs, but not the person telling them what to do. And it won’t be the last of the violence. And I can all but guarantee kids are going to keep getting sick.” He stood on instinct. His passion for the case boiled. “Despite what the police say, we found zero evidence that the bombers had anything to do with BSS.”
“And where would you suggest I start?”
“Where do you usually start?”
“Usually there is a crime or some nefarious activity. An event or a victim.” She spun toward him and stood also. “I start there and work my way back to the perpetrator.”
“Start with the scientists stealing from Ventana.” Aubrey began pacing as he spoke. Game-planning required pacing. “Any messages that went between them that references Ventana, Sarazin, money, anything. They all had cloud drives and the normal digital footprint. Anything that links the four of them, where the four of them interact as a group. I’d start there.”
As he left her home that day, she had already started typing and clicking away on her computer. She’d become so engrossed she hardly noticed when he left.
Later that day, he sent her a link to a shared cloud drive containing everything he had managed to take with him from his recent, and brief, stint with the police. She agreed to dig into whatever rabbit holes she could find on the four Ventana scientists. He wanted to know everything he could about them. Were there any details the police may have missed regarding their embezzlement from Ventana? Did the scientists leave any communication trails online alluding to their plans to act out against Sarazin or Ventana? What links, if any, were there between them and One Front for the People and, as a correlation, the bombings and BSS?
Since he’d last seen her, Aubrey had resumed working his actual job. His boss at OWG Insurance had sent him several fraud cases. They were all straightforward and unexciting for Aubrey, whose mind was occupied with the job no one had asked him to do.
While Malina was busy dissecting the scientists’ lives they’d left behind online, Aubrey hit the streets to interview as many former colleagues of Alkorn and his team as he could. He avoided anyone still working at Ventana, Inc. Unsanctioned by the authorities, he preferred to keep attention away from his work as long as he could.
Eliminating Alkorn’s Ventana associates limited the number of people that could have solid intel. Of those people, the number was cut even further by those that were willing to talk to him. As Alkorn was a well-known miserable curmudgeon, albeit a brilliant one, the people willing to talk with Aubrey did so only to further tarnish the scientist’s memory.
Aubrey spoke to a dozen people who had known Alkorn. No one had anything useful to say. They all agreed on one thing however—Alkorn was a bastard but not capable of killing. That was to be determined, Aubrey thought.
Poring over the case files from the Ventana theft again and again turned up nothing as well. As days passed, Aubrey kept hoping that the next interview might uncover some kernel of evidence. It never did.
He hoped Malina was having better luck.
He watched the news obsessively waiting for the next BSS case or another bombing. Nothing happened. That didn’t surprise him. If he were the puppet master behind all the violence, he would lay low too. He’d wait until everyone felt safe again, then strike.
Or the villain made his point already. Maybe the danger was over. Doubtful, he thought. The bombs, BSS, the scientists, it was all related. All connected. If there was another attack, he’d at least have new clues to analyze.
While scanning the news channels from his sofa, his phone buzzed. He looked at it; it was Malina calling.
When he answered, he could hear typing and loud rock music in the background. “I found something,” she said, close to shouting. “Come by as soon as you can.” She hung up.
* * *
An hour later, Malina surprised Aubrey by waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the storage facility.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble of breaking in again.”
She wore a dark green sweatshirt with the hood drawn halfway over her head. In the bright
afternoon light, her pale, pallid face bore the marks of many days and nights in front of a computer monitor—sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, skin tinted gray. She squinted against the sunlight, looking down.
“Plus, I needed to see the sun at least once this week.” With closed eyes she angled her face at the sun and pulled back her hood. Five seconds passed. “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go.”
Inside her unit, Aubrey seated himself on the couch while Malina sat on the swivel chair in front of the large stack of books. They’d been neatly piled in the pyramid shape once more.
She settled into her chair and took a deep audible breath. Rock music played low from an invisible speaker. Overall, her disposition toward him was in stark contrast to their first encounter. She seemed excited about the work, downright cheerful. Aubrey knew it was the do-gooder in her, pumping her full of a serotonin.
“So, against my better judgment, I took your advice,” Malina said. “I searched for anything online that the four scientists—Leo Alkorn, Rajesh Imanpor, Natalie Shoeman, and Stanley Winthorpe—were mixed-up in together.”
Aubrey nodded.
“Naturally, several things came up—research projects, science and medical journal articles, speaking engagements, et cetera, et cetera. You get the idea.”
He nodded again. “No surprises there.”
“Right. I looked everywhere for communications between them—social media, email, even darkweb forums. I couldn’t find anything.” She held up a finger. “I should clarify. I couldn’t find anything useful.”
“Aren’t some of those places, like the darkweb forums, anonymous? How would you know they were there?”
Malina looked at him like he’d just asked her the color of the sky.
“There are ways.” She gestured to her monitors and laptop. “If they were there, especially the four of them all visiting the same site, I would have found them. These aren’t black hat hackers we’re talking about, Martin.”
Aubrey nodded and held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. So, you couldn’t find anything useful there. Go on.”
“Anyway,” she said, looking away as if collecting her thoughts, “there was nothing out there that raised any suspicions. For three weeks, I used every trick, every tool, every algo I have and came up empty.” She shrugged, looking defeated. After a pregnant pause, she continued. “Then, I started poking around Ventana’s intranet.” A faint smile crossed her face.
“Jesus. You broke into Ventana’s system?”
“Yes. Please don’t interrupt, I’m getting to the good part.”
She spun in her chair, pulled a tablet off her workstation, and held it out for Aubrey to see. The screen showed a game board with lettered tiles arranged to form words crisscrossing the board. At the bottom of the screen was a bank of unused letters. Aubrey felt like he was missing something. Malina didn’t notice or didn’t care for his confusion.
She continued. “I used all my tricks on Ventana’s servers only to come up with the same results as before—bupkis. There was plenty there—emails, internal memos, announcements, departmental meetings—but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing criminal anyway.”
“What am I looking at here?” Aubrey asked, gesturing to the game.
She pointed an emphatic finger at the tablet. “That is what I found.” She paused. “It’s a game developed for employees at Ventana. There’s a bunch of them actually. They all live on the Ventana intranet.” She counted on her fingers. “There’s a treasure hunt, an action adventure and then your simpler ones like sudoku and our little word game here. They’re meant to encourage friendly competition, employee engagement, intellectual stimulation. What some people refer to as fun.”
“Fun. Right.”
“That’s right. It’s not for everyone, especially not our scientist friends. Most Ventana employees were regular players of at least a handful of the games, but not Alkorn and the gang. See, he ran a tough ship. Their schedules were insane. The pace and volume of their work was mind-blowing. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t rob the place blind sooner. Really, I’m surprised the crew didn’t mutiny on Alkorn and string the guy up.” Malina leaned back in her chair, rubbed her chin for a moment. “Anyway, our people didn’t play all the games. They only played one. And they only played with each other.”
“This word-game?” Aubrey looked down at the tablet again and saw the game’s title in large block letters stylized to appear carved into wood blocks. “A Word With You? That’s what they called it?”
“That’s right. Alkorn and team started playing that game regularly in January of this year. And that’s all they played, all four of them in a group match.”
“I get the feeling you’re getting to something,” Aubrey said.
“Most Ventana people who play this have games that last two, three days tops. They’re very competitive and some of their scores are pretty impressive, there’re some smart people working there.” Malina leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “But these four, arguably some of the smartest people at that company, totally sucked at this game. They were absolute shit. Their scores were abysmal and they didn’t even finish a match. They only played one, as a team, for eight days.”
Aubrey didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat back and waited for the bomb to drop.
“In fact,” she continued, “when I looked at the backend data for the game, their playing times were really strange. Again, most people at Ventana who played this game open the app and, within a minute or two, they make a move.” She became animated. She threw a hand out as if showcasing something invisible. “But these bozos would just open the game and do nothing, sometimes for hours. No moves made at all.”
“So, what? They open it and forget about it. Leave their phone sitting somewhere and walk away.”
“No, the phone would time out and the game would show them as idle. No, they were active in the game. They just weren’t playing.” She leaned far forward, on the edge of the seat and her heels tapping the floor.
“Please tell me you know what they were doing.”
“Oh yeah, I do.” A satisfied grin filled her face. “There was a messaging system in the game. Most people would trash talk and that sort of thing, couple of times a game. Maybe more sometimes but not by much. Our science pals weren’t playing the game, not really, but they were using the message system.”
Now, Aubrey leaned forward, perched on the edge of the sofa. His heart thumped. A flutter shot across his stomach.
“What were they saying to each other, Malina?”
She smiled even wider and shook her head. “I have no idea.”
* * *
Jacira Barretto squinted at the news article on her tablet as if she needed to see it more clearly. The headline for Monday, June 8 read Metro Cop Found Dead from Knife Wound. The headline had caught her attention, but the first paragraph piqued her interest further.
An unidentified Metropolitan Police Officer was found murdered in his uptown apartment Friday morning. The officer appears to have engaged in a struggle with his assailant, but the death has been attributed to a knife wound.
“We’re not sure what happened exactly, but we can rule out excessive bleeding or trauma to the head or major organs,” the medical examiner on the scene stated.
What is certain is there was no signs of a break-in leading police to speculate that the attacker was someone the victim knew.
She recognized the handiwork. Her mind ticked through the possibilities when movement caught her eye. She pushed the tablet to the edge of her desk.
One of the three large screens on her desk showed Martin Aubrey and the woman entering the building. She watched them walk down the narrow hallway on a second monitor. On the third she watched a biologics readout, which showed red and green shapes enter a blue and violet rectangle then position themselves across from each other.
Aubrey, the larger one, was on the couch, while the smaller woman sat near the desk in the corner of the unit glowing red with heat on
the readout.
After weeks of trying, Jacira had been unable to identify the woman Aubrey was working with. Fingerprints, DNA, facial recognition turned up nothing. The woman was so completely off the grid, she didn’t exist. Jacira saw it as a testament to the woman’s skill that she was able to accomplish that feat. It was clear why Aubrey sought her out.
Having once made herself disappear, she recognized the work of a pro.
Jacira’s recording equipment and sensors were installed in the unit above the woman’s. She listened closely as the two of them talked.
When the conversation ended and Aubrey left, she sent her employer an encrypted, detailed report of what she heard.
After several minutes, her tablet pinged. The encrypted message showed Mr. V’s reply.
Take next steps, as discussed.
Understood, she replied. Question for you.
What is it?
Do you have others working for you?
Others?
Like me, she typed.
I have many people who work for me. Some are like you. I have to go. No more questions.
So, the answer was yes. He did have others like her working for him and judging by the story of the murdered cop, they were much like her.
Jacira looked back at the reply from Mr. V.
Take next steps, as discussed.
She would now get to use her other set of skills, the skills that everyone asked for in the end.
* * *
“No idea?” It took a moment for Aubrey to respond. She must be kidding, he thought. He dropped his face into his hand, questioning whether this partnership was a good idea after all.
“Nope. No idea.” Malina reached out and took the tablet away from Aubrey. “At least, not yet.” She tapped and swiped a few times, then handed the tablet back to Aubrey. “All their messages were sent in code.”
He pulled his hand away. What he saw were several screen-captures from the match the team had played against each other.
She was right, Aubrey thought, the messages were a jumble of numbers, a code. The first he read showed no pattern or discernible system:
04080151623402
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