by Zooey Smith
“Um, bad?”
“That’s what the voice said. On the Blu-Ray.” She shook her head. “It’s like he was taunting us. The thing played when we walked in—that’s when Grayson got shot, we still don’t know exactly how. The video was playing on this huge screen, you could see everything. I could literally read the care tag on the guy’s Under Armor balaclava.”
“And he said Ecks had to do something?”
She nodded. “They showed your friend getting injected with something. It was weird, it looked green screened. The guy in the mask was talking, and behind him was your friend, but the proportions were wrong. As they inject him, the guy says it’s some kind of disease, and that if he doesn’t get the antidote within a few days, he’ll die.”
“Couldn’t you just pick him up and figure out what it is?”
“Of course. The guy even said as much. But he said that if we did, bad things would happen to other people.” She got a distant look, no longer focusing on Abby. “The names, man. I mean, I don’t know how he knew them.” She gestured around. “We’re not spies or anything, but still, he knew our names, the names of our families. That’s not exactly public knowledge.”
Abby was silent. What could she say to that? “What is this thing they want him to do?”
“We don’t know. Trying to figure it out. They said he would be on a particular street at particular time.” She looked at her watch. It was a man’s, and though her arms were long, it still looked comically large on her wrist. “That was about twenty minutes ago. Sure enough he was there, coming up from the subway. We’re trying to find out where he came from, if he took a train or was dropped there.” A shrug. “Could lead us to them. We obviously can’t just ask him though.”
“So now what?”
“Now?” Emily looked around. Most of the vehicles were unloaded, and agents were exiting this main room. “We wait.”
“That’s it. We just wait?”
Emily glared at her. “What would you have us do? I’m open to suggestions.”
“What about my apartment, Ecks’s?”
“The locals gave us what they have, it’s probably at Quantico by now. Maybe they find something, maybe they don’t.”
“When?”
“A day or two.”
“So until then, we just wait?”
“Unless they call you again.”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t have my phone.”
“They’ll patch it through to here if they call your number.” She put an arm around Abby’s shoulder, and began walking toward the glass office, which was now lit up. “Come on, you can sit in on this one.”
“Thanks,” Abby said flatly.
Abby had a difficult time following the meeting. Despite the coffee that had been set in front of her and which she’d gratefully drank, she was still tired.
The debriefing continued for an hour, but Abby didn’t get much from it. The operation to get Ecks, which, from the way it was talked about, wasn’t really for Ecks, but more of an excuse to infiltrate the building, had failed. They talked and argued about what went wrong, what could have been different, whose fault it was (no one in the room, that everyone could agree on), but Abby thought it was mostly the fact that the place had been empty.
Someone, whoever had been in there, had gotten out unnoticed. The cameras had been knocked out with rocks, “Slingshots is my guess,” one agent put in, but other than that, there had been no obvious attacks, or any indications that the spied upon knew they were being watched.
The meeting wrapped up, or, more accurately, dwindled out, and a few agents left entirely.
Abby watched them go with a frown on her face.
“What?” Emily said, taking a seat next to her. She had been up front, verbally joisting with an elderly agent for most of the meeting.
Abby saw now the woman had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She nodded toward the exiting agents. “Where they going?
“Skeleton crew. So to speak. Now we wait.” She sighed. “You should get some sleep.”
“Are you kidding? All I’ve been doing is sleeping.”
The agent she’d talked to earlier—Scott? Abby thought, Agent Scotts?—fell into a chair across from Emily and Abby. “No one ever died from too much of that. I could use some myself.” His earlier jovialness seemed diminished.
“You said you were watching Ecks. Can I see him?”
The man laughed.
Abby glared at him.
“We’re not filming him, we have people following.”
“Oh.” She hit the table.
“Whoa,” the man said.
“This is bullshit. I’m just sitting here, I should be doing something.”
“There’s nothing you can do. Not right now.”
They sat in silence until eventually the man got up. “I’m gonna checkout.”
“You’ll be missed,” Emily said.
“There’s room for you, if you need some, you know, relaxation.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got this,” she held up her hand.
The man laughed and exited the room.
“Can I get a computer or something?”
“Why?”
“So I can write.”
“Ah, shit, you’re a reporter. I forgot.”
“That doesn’t sound like a yes.”
Emily sighed and got up. “Come on, you can use mine.”
Abby sat in her cell—sorry, her room—and typed up as much as she could remember. She already had a lot of it saved to her work’s Dropbox, when she’d written in the hotel room with Fe, but that was before the really interesting stuff happened, before she ended up on YouTube, before the explosion. Pretty much, she could just think of it as before, as backstory to the real thing. The current laptop she was using was connected to the internet in some weird way, something about a proxy, and a device with a large antenna was plugged into one of the USB ports. It made typing unwieldy, getting in the way of her left hand as it moved across the keyboard. The internet was also slow. Just googling something took ten to twenty seconds for the page to load, and when it finally did, it looked weird, like it was glitched. And there were no images.
She managed to secure a USB drive, which is where what she was currently writing was being saved to. She tried to remember everything that had happened so far, and just wrote.
When she’d exhausted all the details she could recall, she scrolled back through her words. Reading it over, she thought it could be a pretty good story, if Becky let her run with it.
She set the laptop aside and lay back. She would not be sleeping anytime soon.
Though she didn’t fall asleep, she was still startled when Emily burst into the room, followed by four other agents.
Abby began to say something, but Emily was holding up a phone. She was gesturing frantically for Abby to take it.
It rang.
Abby did, then answered before it could ring again.
“Well, that took a while. I wonder why?” a voice said. It was a women.
“Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?”
“You called me.”
“Next you are going to say you asked first. Abby, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Take off your clothes.”
“What?” A surge of wakefulness jolted through Abby. She looked around the room. There was absolutely no way they could see her here. Was this a joke? Fucking not funny.
“We need you to do something for us, and we have to make sure you’re not bugged.”
Did they know where she was? “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. If you aren’t covered, it will be hard to cover a wire.”
“A wire.”
“I don’t have time for your games.” A pause. “We know you’re with the FBI. They will take you to a location we designate, and drop you off. If they try to interfere, well, another building will need repairs.”
Abby tried to think of something t
o say, but couldn’t.
“Put Mills on.”
“I—”
“Now. If you ever want to see Ecks again. While he is alive, that is.”
“Mills?” Abby asked, both into the phone and to the room.
An agent briefly raised his hand. Emily was shaking her head.
“Give the phone to him.”
Abby numbly handed the phone over.
“Hello.
“What?” the agent said after listening for a moment. He was staring at Abby. “That is not something—” His expression changed, fear, anger, both.
“Yes, but she’s not—
“I understand.” He handed the phone back to Abby.
“Now what?”
“Don’t be so childish. You are about to be arrested, charged under Title 18, Section 2331.” There was a pause. “No, I didn’t expect you’d know that offhand, you cover computer stories. Terrorism, Ms Melcer. I hope you weren’t too attached to your constitutional rights.”
“What!”
“Go along with it, and everything will be fine. This is the last thing we will require from you.”
“And I should believe you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Agent Mills will instruct you further. You can choose to listen to him or not. What happens to Ecks is now up to you.” She disconnected before Abby could respond.
Abby took the phone away from her ear, held it out toward Emily.
“What the fuck?” Emily said, taking the phone and looking at Mills.
“We have to arrest her.”
“No shit,” Emily said. “But what did she say?”
The agent shook his head, pointed at Abby. “Her.”
“Oh fuck you.”
The agent stared at Emily, said only one word: “Hughes.”
Emily frowned, looked at Abby, back to Mills. “I’m not seeing the connection.”
Mills glanced at Abby. To Emily, “I think we should discuss this in private.”
“Do let me fucking stop you,” Abby said. “It’s just my life.”
They left Abby in the room with two other agents while Emily, Mills, and an agent Abby didn’t know left the room and shut the door behind them.
Several minutes passed before the three of them came back in, Emily pausing in the opened door.
“Ms Melcer— Abby, this is your choice, we won’t force you to do anything. Technically we can’t—”
“Vasquez!” one of the other agents shouted. It wasn’t Mills, but the other one that had left with them. He was older, and the streak of gray in his hair reminded Abby of a male gorilla, a silverback.
“No,” Emily said glaring at him. “This is her choice, and she has to know that.” She looked at Abby again, and Abby didn’t like the kindness she saw there, the remorse; a look asking for forgiveness. “We can’t force you because you haven’t confess to anything—”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“We can’t force you,” Emily said again, giving Abby that pitiful look, “but just know that Ecks’s life isn’t the only one on the line here. I can’t say anything else, but I want you to know you’d be saving two people, not just one.”
“Screw you,” Abby said. “Trying to guilt me in to doing it. I don’t need your shit-story, I was already going to do it.” She laughed, and the two agents who had remained in the room with her cast worried glances at each other. She noted their hands hovering near their guns, and laughed again. She couldn’t help it. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Laugh. “Maybe they’ll waterboard me, wouldn’t that be a relief!” Laugh. “At least my clothes won’t get wet!”
“Abby…”
Abby shook her head, fell onto the bed. “I thought you had eyes on Ecks. Why can’t you just grab him?”
“It’s not that simple,” Silverback said. “We can’t just pick him up, there are logistical difficulties.”
She stared at him. “Logistical difficulties? That sounds awfully politic.” She frowned, tilted her head. “You’re getting something out of this, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re implying—”
“The FBI”—she gestured around—“is getting something out of this.” She squinted at Emily. “Saving more than Ecks, you said.”
“Ms Melcer—” Silverback began.
“Just do what you have to do. I confess. I did it! Whatever ‘it’ is.”
He stared at her like he wanted to say something, but remained silent.
Abby thought he looked even more like a gorilla now, his nose subtly flaring, and laughed.
Oddly, this seemed to calm him rather than enrage. Maybe it made it easier for him to think she was crazy, and there’s no arguing with crazy, so who cared what they thought!
Abby looked away, at the curtains covering the non-window and hoped Silverback wouldn’t be here when she did what she had to.
After some discussion—mostly letting Abby know what was expected of her—followed by protests and threats from Silverback—mostly pertaining to how he needed to monitor the operation—the instructions Agent Mills had been given were followed exactly: A camera was brought in, then everyone left the room save for Agent Mills, Emily, and Abby herself. The door was shut, and Agent Mills filmed her while she confessed, then Emily placed her under arrest, reading her her rights in a loud, clear voice. She was then strip-searched, and handcuffed.
They then left the room, Mills following and still recording as Abby was led out. Almost everyone else was already gone, since the building was now considered compromised, even though ‘They’ gave no hint they knew where it was. Besides, once they had the video that was currently being made, it wouldn’t take much to figure it out.
Abby was placed into the back of an SUV, at which point Emily took the camera and got in the backseat while Mills drove.
They passed the car with Silverback and the two other agents as they left. Emily had somehow gotten him to listen to her and wait outside, which Abby appreciated.
She tried to ignore the camera pointed at her face as they headed to their destination, which she hadn’t been told.
They drove for a few miles, to a small bridge. On the bridge, as, it turned out, had been promised, was a man, hooded, but otherwise naked. His arms and legs had been strip-cuffed together, and when Abby approached him, he did not move.
Emily removed the cuffs from Abby, and handed her the small camera, which was still filming.
“Unconscious,” Mills said, kneeling by the hooded man.
The other cars were waiting several hundred yards away, their headlights dimly lighting the scene. Abby guessed that had been part of the instructions, but didn’t know for sure.
Emily nodded at Mills, then looked at Abby. “I’m—”
“Don’t.” Abby said.
“You’ll be safe, we won’t let anything happen to you.”
Abby gestured to herself. “Really?”
Emily looked away.
“I’ll probably die from hypothermia first anyway.”
“Actually it’s not cold enough for—” Emily stopped herself. “Thirty minutes.”
Abby didn’t respond, just held the camera out in front of her, turned, and walked away.
After walking for roughly eleven minutes, according to the camera’s recording time display, Abby saw the cluster of lights.
A few more minutes and she was there. She looked up at the surveillance cameras covering the area. They were little comfort; a promise of safety she could no longer believe in.
She was hesitant to go into the store that had once upon a time been a Kinko’s, but the bite of the cold was enough to give her the resolve to enter.
The clerk looked up briefly, then returned her gaze to her phone as Abby pushed through the doors.
Abby approached the counter. She ended the recording and placed the video camera on the counter. “I need to use a computer.”
The women was typing something on her phone. It looked long, and she seemed to have been crying.
She looked up at Abby. “Sure, sorry. Just—” She frowned at Abby. “You’re topless.”
“Computer,” Abby said. “This is important. I need to upload something. You’re expecting it?”
“Oh,” the woman grabbed a piece of paper from the counter. “Yes.” She put down her phone and came out from behind the counter. She stared at Abby. “You…”
“Computer?”
After a moment, the woman said, “Okay. Follow me.”
As the woman logged on to a computer and attached the camera, Abby wondered if she’d be asked to pay, and laughed.
The woman notably did not look at her.
She gave Abby the scrap of paper with the internet address on it, then hovered.
“Thanks,” Abby said. “I can take it from here.”
The woman nodded and went back behind the counter, glancing at Abby every few seconds.
She better not call the cops, Abby thought. She went to MediaFire, logged in with the account information on the paper, removed the SD card from the camera, slotted into the computer and selected the file from it. The upload would take several minutes.
Abby sat, hoping no one else would come in this late. She slouched down as low as she could without actually hiding under the desk.
It finished, and Abby looked at the clock. Wait three minutes, and she was supposed to go back to the counter. She wondered how much of the video they would watch.
A few seconds before it was time, she stood, leaving the camera behind. She was supposed to leave it and the memory card there. This somehow seemed nefarious, but it was among the least of her worries.
The woman looked up from her phone and stared at Abby as she approached. “So, are you, like, protesting something?”
“I wish. You’re going to get a call—”
The phone rang, and the woman’s mouth dropped open. She looked from phone to Abby several times.
“Answer!”
She fumbled with the phone, got it to her ear. “Hello? Uh, FedEx Office, can I—
“Yes.” A pause. “Uh, sure.” She held out the phone to Abby.
“Hello Abby.” It was the man again.
“I did what you said.”
“That you did, to a tee this time. I must say, I’m proud. Now, next steps—” There was some kind of noise. It was muted by the caller’s noise suppression, turned into a tinny wash of white noise. That meant he was probably calling from a cellphone, Abby thought. “Oh, my, look at the time. Have to go.” The line went dead.