The Loop

by Wesley Cross

  A few kids gave out a startled cry when he jumped down to the entrance of the tunnel.

  “You’re back,” Sarah said and rushed to him, giving Connelly a fierce hug.

  “Of course I’m back,” he said. “But we have to be quiet. I had to borrow some stuff to get you out, and I don’t feel like spending the rest of the night in jail. Let’s keep it down for a few moments, and then we’ll climb out of this hole. Hold this.”

  He gave her one end of the seat belt and tied the other side to the second belt. Then he looped it around to make a harness and tied it again.

  “Here’s how it’ll have to work,” he said. “I’ll climb out first and will lower the harness. Then you’ll put it on, and I’ll pull you out one by one. Deal?”

  They waited for a few minutes to make sure that the cops didn’t come to check the street next to the pickup truck that he’d broken into. Then he ran up the wall again, grinding his teeth as pain radiated from cuts and bruises he’d received during the fight. Once outside, he lowered the harness down until Sarah picked it up.

  “Let’s put Benny in first, all right?”

  He pulled the kids out of the cavern, one by one. Sarah volunteered to go last, and by the time he put her down on the sidewalk next to the brick wall, the sky in the east was light gray, and his back and arms felt as if molten lead was running through his veins instead of blood.

  “I’ll bring you to the police station, and from there, officers will help you get home. Does everybody know where you live?” he asked the group. “Benny? Do you know your home address?”

  To his relief, all the kids recited their home addresses by heart. All but Sarah.

  “Do you know where your family’s home is?”

  The girl looked up at him with an expression he wasn’t used to seeing in kids of her age. Her lively brown eyes seemed to glaze over as he watched her.

  “Sarah?”

  “I don’t have a family,” she finally said, lowering her head. “I ran away from my foster parents.”

  “What happened?” He squatted next to the girl, trying to make eye contact, but Sarah looked down at her feet. “You can tell me. Are they bad people?”

  “No,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “They are okay, I guess. But I miss my mom.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged and finally met his eyes. “She left some time ago.”

  “I’m sorry, kiddo. But I’ll have to return you to your foster folks, okay?” He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled a few numbers. “This is what you can do. If you’re ever in trouble and need my help, call this number and leave me a message of how I can find you. Deal?”

  He led the group on West Fortieth until they hit Ninth Avenue and then turned south. At the corner of West Thirty-Fifth, he sat them at a bus stop and told them to wait for the cops as he dialed the precinct located a block away from a payphone. Then, leaving the kids, he walked across the street and squatted behind a tree. Two minutes later, a cruiser and a police van pulled up to the bus stop, and he watched with relief as the kids were loaded into the van.

  He could see Sarah climb in and before disappearing inside of the vehicle, she turned and waved in his direction. Then, she stepped inside the van and left along with the rest of the group.

  After the cops left, Connelly tried to catch a cab, but his disheveled state seemed like a turnoff for cab drivers, and after the fifth empty taxi drove past him without stopping, he finally gave up, tucked the holster deeper into his pants, and headed back to the subway. He took the Brooklyn-bound train at Times Square station. The cars were still mostly empty except a few tired faces heading home after the graveyard shift. He picked the seat in the corner of the car, away from prying eyes, and carefully leaned on the wall, trying not to put pressure on the wounds in his back.

  At the next station, an older woman wearing a nurse’s scrubs sat across from him, her eyes scanning him up and down a few times.

  “You look awful, son,” she finally offered. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay,” he said and closed his eyes. “Not by a long shot.”

  13

  Hong Kong

  Minerva failed the test. Despite predicting as much before Tillerson had come to the podium, Helen couldn’t help but feel disappointed. It started off great, as the machine disguised as a human player helped a team of three other gamers unlock a series of progressively more challenging puzzles based on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

  But things started to go haywire when the players got separated before the final test, and that’s when a slew of slightly off-beat answers tipped off the gamers to Minerva’s true nature.

  “Holy crap, I think she’s an NPC. I’ve never seen one to be a part of a team,” the wizard said after another gaffe, and that’s when Tillerson pulled the plug on the experiment and disconnected Minerva from the game. Despite the near-miss, the party after the event felt celebratory.

  “The players must’ve been pissed,” Mandy said to her as the two sipped on champagne. “So much work spent on getting inside of the tomb and then we bailed on them right before they were going to kick demon ass.”

  “I’ve never been a player,” Helen said. “It’s always felt like a waste of time to me, so I can’t relate. Do you play?”

  “Not really,” the woman said, catching a bite-sized hors d’oeuvres from a passing waiter. “I used to when I was younger, but kinda lost interest at some point. Plus, there’s not that much time for gaming when you work for TLR.”

  “Touché.”

  “Ladies.” Tillerson appeared by their side and lifted his glass to them. “To progress.”

  “To progress,” Helen replied. “I must admit, I was anticipating more of a moping mood after we failed.”

  “Why, not at all.” The man smiled and took a generous sip of his champagne. “This was a massive success. In science, things rarely happen overnight. Usually it’s a long, arduous process, that, if the stars align, eventually leads us to discovery.”

  “Edmund?”

  A short, chubby man in his late thirties squeezed through the crowd and placed a hand on Tillerson’s arm. He wore a lab coat like Tillerson and his dark, almond-shaped eyes behind a pair of designer glasses darted around the room, as if being in a party setting had made him uneasy.

  “Yes?” Tillerson visibly tensed seeing the other man. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry, Edmund, I didn’t want to intrude, but I need you to look at something, if you don’t mind.”

  “Right now?”

  “Please.” The man shifted his weight from one foot to another.

  “Okay.” Tillerson waved him off. “I’ll join you in a few moments.”

  The man nervously nodded and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Who is he?” Helen asked. “I’ve never seen him around here.”

  “Oh, nobody.” Tillerson gave her a tight smile. “He’s a technician who runs my computers. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to screw things up, and it sounds like one of those times. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go and check what that problem is. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Helen watched as Tillerson hurried after the man and turned to face Mandy. “That was weird,” she said. “It almost sounded as if he was lying to us.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy said and took a sip of her drink, not meeting Helen’s eyes.

  “Mandy?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Don’t ‘what’s up’ me, girl.” Helen moved closer to her friend and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I don’t think that was supposed to have happened.”

  “What wasn’t supposed to happen?”

  “This.” Mandy pointed with her chin in the direction where the two men had disappeared. “I don’t know his full name. It’s Li something or other, and he’s most definitely not just some kind of technician. But I shouldn’t be telling you this.”<
br />
  “Listen.” Helen put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. You owe me an explanation.”

  She could feel the woman’s muscles tense under her fingers. It didn’t make any sense. “Mandy?”

  “Fine,” her friend said. “Follow me. Play it cool. The last thing you want to do is to cause a scene.”

  As Helen hurried after Mandy, her mood started to turn from celebratory to dark. When she had first moved to Hong Kong, for the longest time she was like a feral cat, jumping at every noise and always watching her back. It took years before she stopped waking up in cold sweat, ready to flee. Now, when her life was hitting new highs, this conversation made her feel like she was on borrowed time again. After installing the virus into Tillerson’s computer, she’d done a good job of convincing herself that breaking into his office was a foolish idea and she was better off forgetting about it and moving on. Perhaps she wasn’t crazy after all.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my car, and then back to the campus. This is not a conversation I want to have here.”

  They slipped out of the building unnoticed and walked across the yard to the parking lot. Then they climbed inside Mandy’s SUV, and the woman maneuvered it off the company’s grounds and onto the road. It was pitch-black and as they left the lights of the TLR building behind, the world seemed to have shrunk to the few yards around their moving car illuminated by the powerful headlights.

  “So.” Helen broke the silence. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry for ruining the party for you,” Mandy said, her eyes on the road. “Before I tell you anything, though, you have to understand—you can’t tell a soul, because if you do, you’ll put our lives in danger.”

  “What kind of danger?” Helen said as her pulse quickened.

  “I’m not being dramatic here. The kind of danger that can get us both killed.”

  “Okay.”

  “It started like I told you it did—I got excited about seeing Tillerson at one of the TED talks and then did my darnedest to get a job here. For some time, I was like you—happily coding away, working on some of the boring stuff that pays the bills for the company. I was hoping that at some point, Edmund would recognize my talents and move me to something more exciting. Boy, they’re right when they say be careful what you wish for.”

  The woman fell silent for a few moments, her eyes scanning the road ahead of them.

  “What happened?”

  “I got promoted.” Mandy laughed softly. “He showed me the quantum computer downstairs and told me about the Minerva project, and I was so excited. I thought I would be a part of history. And then Andy died.”

  “Andy? Who’s Andy?”

  “A Russian kid who used to work here. His real name was Andrey. Andrey Volkov, but everyone called him Andy. A nice guy, smart as a whip, but a little shy. Never talked to anyone.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was working for Tillerson. Was pretty much like a fixture in this building—he spent so much time here some people suspected he occasionally slept in his cubicle. And one day he didn’t show up. No call, no email, nothing—a total no-show.”

  They pulled off the highway and turned onto the gravel road leading to the campus. Mandy let the car slow to a roll as she pulled into the parking lot and then stopped in her designated space. She killed the engine and turned to face Helen.

  “Everybody was surprised, and Tillerson looked more stressed out than usual.”

  “I take it he didn’t live on the campus?”

  “No, he was a private guy.” Mandy shrugged. “Living here isn’t for everybody, you know? It surely is cheap, but not everybody cares to spend every waking moment on the company’s grounds, whether it’s the office or campus. Long story short—Tillerson got a call after two days. Turns out Andy committed suicide. Hung himself on a doorknob in the kitchen.”

  “Jesus.”

  The two women sat in silence for a few moments. It started to rain outside, light drizzle drumming on the hood of the car and covering the windshield with mist. The lights of the campus diffused through the wet glass seemed to be floating in the air like a flock of UFOs.

  “On the third day, Tillerson pulled me into his office and told me he needed me for a sensitive project that Andy had been helping him with,” Mandy continued. “He gave me access to a few systems that Andy used to be in charge of and told me to run them. I don’t think he assigned the same credentials to me as Andy used to have, because I could only see the top-level blocks of some of the programs, but not what they did. And frankly, considering that might’ve been the reason Andy committed suicide, I didn’t want to know what they did.”

  “It sounds like you did figure it out.”

  “Not all of it, but some. Couldn’t help myself. I’m now convinced that the reason that we are so close to the privately funded prison isn’t a coincidence, Helen. I think Tillerson’s main research is much more sinister than a warrior princess running around solving puzzles based on classic literature.”

  “What do you think he does?”

  The two women looked at each other for a few moments. The drizzle now turned into a torrential downpour, and the world outside of Mandy’s car seemed to have disappeared.

  “I think Tillerson’s experimenting on people.”

  “All right.” Helen sighed. “I guess I have a confession to make.”

  14

  New York

  The warehouse that sat at the dead end of the road resembled a medieval castle. The building was strategically placed on top of a small hill above the lake and the only things missing that would qualify it as a proper castle were the drawbridge and a deep moat. As the black Lincoln Navigator pulled up to the thick red-bricked walls, Ulf Schneider looked up at the round bastions on either side, admiring the cross-shaped arrow slits punctuating the top of the towers.

  “Wow,” he heard Leonard say from the backseat. “The boss sure does have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “That he does.” He watched in the rearview mirror as the second SUV—a midnight-black Expedition with their bodyguards—parked a few hundred feet farther away, and four men in suits carrying automatic weapons spread out to keep watch of the road.

  Schneider opened the door, stepped out of the Navigator, and looked around. Despite the dramatic looks, he had to admit that the location and the shape of the building were perfect for defense. With a small lake lapping at the stones of an almost vertical twenty-feet drop in the back and only one road leading to the location, the two towers dominated the open space in front of it.

  “Turrets on top of the towers?” Leonard asked.

  “Yes.” Schneider craned his neck, checking out the top of the warehouse and taking mental notes. “Smart Gatling guns right over there and maybe a flamethrower above the gate.”

  “A flamethrower? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not at all.”

  He stopped himself from grimacing. Leonard was more loyal than a German Shepherd, and one of the best fighters Schneider had seen in his life, but the little man had a knack of annoying him with simplistic questions like that.

  “The guns are for the long range, and the flamethrower’s for a closer look. But we’ll have to rebuild the gates first.”

  “Rebuild how?”

  “Knock down the top part.” He pointed toward the arching wall above the wooden gate. “Then we can reinforce the walls on both sides and fit a proper steel gate in.”

  A clanking noise could be heard from inside the walls, and Schneider exchanged a look with his second-in-command.

  “We might have a squatter problem,” Leonard said.

  “Let’s go inside and take a look.”

  Schneider heaved at the old gate and pulled it open as the rusty joints of the hinges screeched in protest. A small patchy front yard in front of the main building was covered with litter and pieces of old furniture. A homeless man with a long beard was sitting next to a cold
fire pit, scraping at the bottom of a tuna can with a knife.

  “This is private property,” Schneider shouted. “You have to leave immediately.”

  The homeless man tipped the can into his mouth, getting the last of the juice out, threw the empty can in their direction, but otherwise did not move.

  “I don’t want to touch him,” Leonard said quietly. “I can smell him and his rotten tuna from here.”

  “Hey, Tuna. You want to make a quick twenty?” Schneider said, fishing out some cash from his pockets. “Come here. Take it and go.”

  “Fuck you.” The man spat on the ground in front of him. “I ain’t leaving. It’s good shelter here.”

  The door of the main building opened, and two more people stepped out. The man had a long beard and wild hair that made him look like a carbon copy of Tuna by the fire pit. The woman who came out after him was short and skinny, and as dirty as the two men. A pair of quick eyes betrayed her young age that was otherwise masked by the worn and leathery skin of her weather-beaten face.

  “What you all looking at?” Her voice matched the face, Schneider thought. It was gravelly and high-pitched at the same time, as if coming from a radio station not quite tuned into its frequency. “We claim this place. You gotta go now.”

  “Listen.” Schneider put his hand up and stepped closer to the pair by the building, hoping that his six-foot-two frame of pure muscle would look intimidating enough to make them see reason. “We don’t want to hurt you, but this property is owned by somebody, and you have to leave now, or we’ll have to remove you from the grounds by force.”

  “C’mon, guys,” Leonard pitched in. “There’s no need for drama. We’ll give you a few minutes to pack up, but you gotta go.”

  The woman squatted low and hissed like a feral cat. Her right hand moved with lightning speed, and a small dark object flew the short distance between them, hitting Leonard in the left shoulder, making him cry out in pain. He pulled his gun from a holster, ready to unload it, but the couple had already ducked behind the doors and disappeared into the warehouse. Tuna, with surprising speed, dashed around the corner of the building and vanished into the tall bushes.