"Tell me about what you want me to do," Sela demanded, consciously keeping her heart separate from her mind.
Desmond collected his thoughts and began slowly, "Sela… It's not just so… easy… I can't just come right ou—"
"Well, you have to, Desmond!" she snapped. She bit her bottom lip and blinked in the darkness. Maintain control. "Just tell me… what you want."
Desmond sighed and said, "Our plan is three parts, and we really only need you for the first one."
"Tell me about all three," Sela said.
"Alright," he replied. "Okay so, first we will ghost a brand new ghosting for you, top quality. And using that identity, you… " he slowed down, "you will send your cousin a message and convince him to meet you."
I would never do that, Sela thought, keeping it to herself. She let Desmond continue.
"And when you meet him, a special Vine team will… will… will take him into… custody." Desmond shrugged as he trailed off.
"You want to kidnap Leon?" Sela paused midstride, and turned to look at Desmond. An evening light glowed a vague shine over the area, just enough to see his face.
"Capture, Sela. We want to capture him." He looked into her eyes, but it was too dark to see what was behind his.
"Wh— Why? To what end?"
He nodded, "That's the second part. We will contact Steffen Wallis, and part three, he will give some of our best agents access to the Conference levels in the Tower of Hope."
As the realization of the plan flooded over Sela, she had a sudden vision of warfare raging in the Tower, dozens of people killed in the hallways, the parks, the stores. She could see a fire raging through the auditorium, with the doors barred and the people scrambling and—
"That's!" Sela gasped, "That's your grand plan? To execute the Council?"
"What?" Desmond leaned back stunned, straightening his shoulders suddenly, as though she had punched him. "What? No! No, they're agents, Sela. Not commandos!"
She closed her eyes and drew in a breath to clear the horrific images away from her mind. As bad as the Remaking was, she didn't think butchery of the Provisional Council was the right answer.
"Sela, we're going to play the factions in the Council off against each other." He waved his hands in a circle in front of his chest, "This whole one-world government thing was sham to begin with."
Now Desmond began to move, heading toward a bench, "Let's sit down and talk for a minute."
Sela was thankful for the bench, as her knees were shaking now. Why couldn't she hold it together?
Desmond continued, "See, in a lot of the nations, the Council has different prejudices and inclinations, and even nationalistic beliefs, regardless of what they say in public and to each other's faces.
"What we do, is bring some of those differences to the surface and get the factions to challenge each other, get them to butt heads."
Shaking her head, Sela asked, "What will that do?" She was dizzy. Finally, fatigue was hounding after her heels.
"It'll isolate each of the supercities if we're successful. If we break up the global organization, then the forces we'll have to deal with will all be local, and so will their resource base.
"It's much more manageable to free Megora, if they don't have a cavalry to call in. If all we have to fight is the local battle, and every supercity has its own local populace directly facing down their own Council, then the Remaking is all but finished!"
Both of them quieted down, listening to the hum of the city. At night, the distant buzz of vehicles and machines collected where the noise of people was absent. Soft noises, harsh in their origin, but muted by the distance, and melded together to generate a cohesive, living sound, organic almost.
Sela asked, "Why do you need me?"
Desmond looked at her, "How do you mean?"
She shrugged, "You could just send a fake e-mail to him." Still not comfortable around him, still not quite trusting Desmond, she shifted an inch away from him on the bench, "Why not just… snatch him when he's out of the Tower the next time?"
Desmond rubbed his palm across his chin, "That might work, if we weren't on a time-table. We've gotta bring your… your uncle in line," she saw that pain in his face again, "by time the Conference gets under way."
He shifted, "And as to a fake e-mail… you… Michelle doesn't want to… tip our hand, unless we can be sure the bluff won't be called." Desmond cleared his throat, "She, ah, she wants to send a video message from you."
Sela grimaced. But that won't work! Leon would never believe she was reaching out to him of all people for help.
"Please, Sela," Desmond pleaded. "Please come back with me and at least look at our plan. We'll share everything with you, any information you want."
She couldn't tell whether the pleading was honest or not.
Desmond leaned forward and reached for her hand, but she pulled away, not fast, but she didn't want to touch him. "Sela, we've put so much energy into designing this plan, and it's the chance of a lifetime. This opportunity will never come around again!"
She looked away and squeezed her eyes closed, feeling the hot dampness of tears. She didn't want to do this, couldn't see how she could do it.
"Sela, I've been training to be one of the agents going into the Tower. I'm going to do my level best, and I don't care if I get caught or killed, so long as we are successful."
He reached out and pressed his palm atop her hand on her purse. This time, she didn't pull away.
Desmond spoke with soft resolve, "I need you to do this for all of us, for everyone in Megora. This is the right thing to do."
She pressed her eyes closed harder, wishing she could close her ears the same way. His hand felt warm against hers, hard and calloused from labor, though also smoothed by the care he took with his skin.
In her closed eyes, the handwriting from her father seemed to dance before her vision, dark and blood-red against a backdrop of deep blue and purple, almost black.
It was not just the Vines asking her to do this any longer. The only reason she had even considered meeting with Desmond was because her father had made his wishes so clear.
"Who met with my father?" Sela whispered, her eyes still closed.
Desmond's fingers tightened over hers. "I did," he whispered back.
"How is he?" The words came out in a hoarse whimper.
Desmond took a long slow breath and expelled it even slower. "I gather… I gathered that he… that things have been rough on him since you left. He's very thin, and…"
As Desmond trailed off quietly, Sela muttered, "He was always thin." Her breath came jauntily, "You… You can tell me."
"He… He looks like…"
Her hand ached, Desmond was squeezing so hard.
"Please tell me," she whispered, eyes still closed.
"He looks like an old man, much older than, than he is." Desmond stammered.
Hearing those words pierced Sela through her chest, and the dam burst. Tears fell openly as she couldn't hold back any longer.
Under Desmond's fingers, she turned her hand and squeezed his. And as she cried, he reached across with his free arm and pulled her into a cradling hug, and she hugged back, sobbing into his shoulder.
She didn't know if she could trust the Vines, but Desmond she could trust, even if he had lied to her before.
There was no way Sela could ever see her father again, unless he managed to free himself from the clutches of the Provisional Council. A liar would have told Sela that he was doing fine, that he was fit and strong.
Sela knew that wouldn't have matched the anguish between the lines of her father's scrawled note. The stress was killing him. The stress of fighting the Remaking from the inside, the stress of trying to tend to Sela's mother, the stress of worrying about his only child.
Why didn't I leave when he bought me the ticket out?
She hated herself for that. For the arrogant, childish, foolish notion that she could stay in Megora and things would get better. Sela blamed
herself for her father's anguish.
And there was only one way now to correct that mistake.
Chapter 17
"Do the Vines always push everything so fast?" Sela asked.
"Not always," Desmond answered, "but a lot of what we do is on time constraints."
They were riding on the magtrains, the only passengers in the car. It was late, right in the middle of third-shift. Sela hoped that Desmond had an explanation ready to go, in the event that a Guide decided to question them. She was just too tired to think right now.
He smiled at her, and she could see fatigue around the edges of his eyes. "You get used to the pace after a while… sort of."
"Ah," she acknowledged.
The boomerang between sequestering her emotions and then unleashing them had siphoned off so much energy from her, she could hardly think of anything but when she would sleep.
Which could be a while, since they were on the way back to Hannan Enterprises.
That there would be anyone in the office was a surprise to Sela. Desmond said the place never really closed down. Support agents were always available in case any Vine needed assistance or had important information to relay.
Sela yawned and felt the pressure in her ears. Her eyes felt thick, heavy with fatigue. She wanted to lay back and go to sleep. Soothing, soft, careless sleep. It was almost worth risking.
Before she decided to let go of awareness, the magtrain arrived at their district. Transferring over to the in-district car took enough effort to jostle back the weariness. Three minutes later, the car arrived at their preferred stop.
Only the occasional Guide patrol was out and about now. One Guide peered at them as they climbed into the open air on the surface level.
Desmond smoothly slid up next to Sela and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close into his side. At first, she resisted, but then relented when her tired mind processed that his intention was to turn away the Guide's eyes.
They moved on, Sela finding it difficult to walk with her sluggish focus and her leg occasionally brushing Desmond's. They walked for what seemed like ages to her, although it was only a few minutes.
Here, the lights were kept brighter. Every foot of street was lit with a shade different from the warm daily yellow. It was whiter, with a vague hint of blue.
Signs were mounted here and there, eternal reminders of the upcoming Conference. They now had a new meaning for Sela.
Even through her exhaustion, a new question presented itself: What will they do with Leon, once he's… no longer needed?
It was a question she wanted to ask of Desmond, or actually Michelle. The obvious answer would be less palatable coming from him. And did it really matter anyway? She had essentially decided to attempt the message to Leon anyway.
Her concern was not that she cared particularly for Leon. As her father had estranged himself from the Remaking, Leon and Uncle Steffen estranged themselves from Sela's family.
Truth be told, Sela did not care about her cousin and uncle any more than she cared about the rest of the Guides or the Council members. Yet, no matter how contemptible her cousin was, disposing of him would be murder, and they couldn't very well let him go free after the Conference, could they?
Sela would have to ask Michelle, but she could hardly walk, let alone think, the fuzz in her mind was so overpowering. She focused on moving forward, shaking her head and pulling out of Desmond's grip.
If she forced herself, she could maintain. She could will her body and mind to fight back the fatigue. Sela still was not quite comfortable with Desmond yet. She believed she could trust him, maybe. It was hard to think about it.
And there wasn't time to bother. Desmond moved through the front doors in the office building, Sela trudging along behind. The lobby was at half-lighting, and like the streets, it was empty of any life, but for the few plants scattered around the décor.
The elevator admitted them and swam upward. Instead of the woman whose name Sela just could not recall at the moment, a security officer sat at the reception desk.
He acknowledged them as he stood, unlocking the door with a brass key. That struck Sela as archaic. Maybe it was safer in this day and age of incredible technological hacking.
The office was mostly empty, although two people sat at their respective stations in the sea of cubicles. Both were silhouetted against their computer screens in the darkness. Here the lights were just bright enough to show where you were.
Instead of going to Michelle's office, Desmond strode past, turning at the end of the hallway. They passed another bank of cubicles, another person working in secluded darkness, his face splashed with light from his screen.
In the next hallway, Desmond selected a door, and then held it open for Sela. She walked through, blinking in the bright lights.
Michelle Duncan was there, as was the man with glasses, Phil Calhoun, and a few other people she did not recognize. Whatever Sela might think of Desmond, her spine tingled with her negative reaction to seeing Michelle and Phil.
Michelle noticed their entry immediately. She stood up from the screen everyone huddled around, and came over. "Sela, I'm glad to see you back."
Sela suppressed another yawn, still squinted her eyes at Michelle. She didn't want to greet Michelle, so she just asked, "You guys live here or what?" The yawn emerged anyway.
"Until the Conference is over, some of us will, yeah." Michelle called over her shoulder, "Hey Phil, pour a few cups of coffee."
Phil looked up at them and then went over to the coffee maker in a corner. He didn't have any hint of weariness on his face.
Michelle on the other hand looked a little frazzled, worry-worn. Her hair needed to be washed, and her eyes were tired. Sela wondered if the strain of excess work was why she kept her personal office so dim.
She looked like Sela felt. Although, Sela would have bet her image was worse, given how much she had wept in Desmond's embrace. No doubt her skin was blotchy, and her eyes were bloodshot, and the dizziness was evident.
Michelle did not seem to notice. Passing Sela a cup of coffee, she said, "Someday, when America is free again, they'll build a monument to coffee."
Sela grunted, taking a sip. It was burned from having sat on the warmer too long. "The Council drinks coffee too."
Michelle ignored the comment, saying, "Welcome back, Sela."
Despite the burn, Sela swallowed back the rest of the liquid and then pointed at the group of people still hard at work, "What's going on here?"
"How much did Desmond tell you?" she asked.
He answered, "Some of it. I promised she would have every question answered though, Michelle."
The look Michelle gave to Desmond could have come from one of two places: either she disapproved of Desmond's willingness to be so forward with Sela, or she felt there was not enough time to settle Sela's disquiet.
Sela didn't care which it was. She was too tired to care and her questions would be answered.
"We're finalizing the details of how best to sow discord between the supercity Councils. If we're going to have any effect, every agent needs to know the plan down to the smallest degree."
“You want to cut the cities off from each other,” Sela said.
“That’s right,” Michelle responded. “And the differences between the cities, the relations between supercities around the world, are the weakest links.”
Some areas of the world were still embroiled in active wars of conquest by the Provisional Council. The Middle East, for instance, was proving impossible to subdue, because the political regimentation of Islam was impossible to reconcile with the Remaking.
Other areas, such as eastern-continental Asia, were tailor made for top-down authoritarianism. And yet, the powerful nationalism seeded resentment of any foreign influence. It also fomented resentment that their influence was not utterly heeded elsewhere in the world.
After all, a state like North Korea had been ruled with an iron fist for over seventy years before the Rema
king began. With so much experience and superior wisdom, why shouldn't they be running the whole show worldwide?
Dissension already existed on that score; it just needed to be fed and brought to the forefront. The agents would plant information. They would hint at rumors meant to massage the cynicisms already there, by nature.
And it was not a small plan. So vast was the Vines' information, a bare sampling of the plan took over an hour. Michelle showed dozens of different images on the screens, reports, statistics, and even some video clips.
The sheer scale of the database was astounding. Sela wondered whether the Vines were in contact with similar groups in other parts of the world. Could such contact be managed over the internet? It was hard to say. How would you even establish trustworthy contacts anonymously?
However they were putting this plan together, the plan itself was thorough. So many points of contention were proposed, one question stood out to Sela like a neon billboard in a cavern.
“How many agents will you have at the conference?”
“Nineteen, including myself,” Desmond answered, returning with a refill of his coffee.
“Not very many,” Sela mused, thinking about the stores of data she had only skimmed, blurry-eyed, unable to digest any of it fully.
Michelle nodded, “No, not many. It will have to do though.” She held up a hand for emphasis, “Besides, we’re not going to be blanketing the Convention anyhow. A well-timed nudge in the right direction can build a lot of its own momentum.”
“Yeah, we don’t need the agents to disclose this information,” Phil spoke up from the side. He still didn’t look tired. “All of our data here is about how Councils from different cities are feeling already.”
“They know what their concerns are,” Michelle said with a smile. “All we have to do is make those concerns more important than keeping cordial relations.”
Even the power of coffee was failing Sela, and she was only too happy when Michelle announced that the team would knock off for the night, which was almost gone already.
Though she still didn’t like the Vines, still hated how they pried into her life and decided to use her, she was still glad she would not have to make the journey back to her apartment.
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