The Valkyrie Project

by Nels Wadycki

  The harried man appeared to be unaware of the attention he'd called to himself, clearly underestimating the observation skills possessed by the two women. He was the one who'd arranged the meeting, so Ana blamed nerves for his lack of attention. He barely noticed them even as he stopped short to avoid running straight into them.

  "Hey!" Etienne said. "We've been looking all over for you!"

  That lifted his eyes from the floor and they boggled trying to take in the two Amazons who stood before him. Clearly he'd expected something—someone—else.

  "Do I know you?"

  "I'm sorry." Ana held out her hand. "Julia Anderson. This is my friend Renee Cooper."

  It took the stunned little man a few seconds to parse the sentence and make the associations between the names she'd given and the ones given to him by the Continuum, stashed away in memory banks operating at sub-optimal speed due to his heightened state of inattention.

  The person who set up the mission had let Ana keep her fake real name, since, as her raven-haired interrogator had pointed out, it probably wasn't her real name anyway. The alternate name for Etienne kept her in line with the unacknowledged French heritage. To the short, balding man, they were just code names to indicate that the right people had found him.

  He finally took Ana's hand, giving it a decent shake for someone trying not to make too much contact because they knew their palms were sweaty.

  "Oh, yes," he stammered. "Nice to meet you."

  Ana was always amazed how little it took to send men into a state of mental disarray, but she tried to give this particular man a bit more credit since he was faced with not one but two women and clearly inexperienced in the sort of trade secret espionage in which they were engaged.

  Even granted that extra leeway, Ana helped the man along, prompting, "Is there somewhere more private where we can get to know each other better?"

  To anyone else it sounded like a proposition: two statuesque women for this shy, awkward, fumbling man. Not so young as to be inexperienced, old enough to know his particular proclivities, and soft around every edge that could be rounded off with laziness and carelessness. The observers' minds would boggle as they imagined the amount of cash flying from his bank account.

  Of course, in reality the cash was going the other way. Still, Ana couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the little man. She ended up with that feeling almost every time she encountered someone clearly out of their depth or in over their head. They looked at her with the eyes of a dog that had been inside all day and just wanted to go for a walk. Her tin heart melted inside the durosteel box that housed it and kept it separate from the world. She wished for a way to protect these innocent people, so they didn't have to engage in these risky, dangerous, lethal activities.

  A smattering of unintelligible words formed an answer to her disguised question. He turned to lead them to the elevator furthest from the party. The biometrically controlled elevator took them up into the heart of the building where they exited out into a small carpeted reception area surrounded by glass panels.

  Moving swiftly, their escort let Ana and Etienne in to the relative dark of the after-hours office space through glass doors. The interior smelled of warm mustiness, and Ana heard the heat still running, lukewarm air leaking from vents in the wall close to the floor. They walked past several banks of cubicles toward an office closed in by solid walls, one of which concealed a safe that contained research documents and samples of the latest experimentally processed Androkal. The list of contents had been in the briefing, but the details of the hiding place were known only to the target.

  Their informant had gotten over his case of stage fright, and let loose with all kinds of information on what he'd gathered, more than happy to spill his guts to them. Ana had seen it before: the tension bottled up inside, trying to keep an important secret from exploding out of their mouth as though they'd swallowed a grenade. There was a relief that came with knowing that there was someone to share the secret with, to not be stranded on that island in the middle of a dark ocean by one's self.

  The man stopped short a step inside the office, his monologue cut off by a sudden sharp intake of breath. Instinct took over and Ana jumped in front of him. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the darker office, but she saw what had stunned the informant: the dark shadow outline of a man, tall, broad, and menacing.

  Ana froze, just as the small man behind her had, but from the corner of her eye, she saw Etienne draw the Needler that had been strapped to the inside of her thigh and press herself against the wall outside the door. Ana had a Needler of her own fastened between her legs, just like the one she'd faced down, held by the man with the hook nose. The gun chafed her bare leg, but it was about the only place to hide a weapon in her dress.

  "I should have figured you wouldn't be alone."

  The voice was deep and strong, its sharp edge not yet worn away by age. Ana assumed the shadow was speaking to the informant, but she didn't move from in front of him. She stood there with what little armor the Continuum had woven into her dress, protecting a man whose only value to her was to provide intel to an organization she was supposed to be fighting against. But she didn't budge. She would decide who lived.

  "I should ask if you really thought you wouldn't get caught. If you really thought you'd get away with this. With all the obvious clues and signs. But what's really important is why? Why are you doing this?"

  He sounded more hurt than angry.

  Ana turned her head. "Who is this guy?"

  "I—I don't know!"

  Even in the dim light that found its way into the office, Ana could see the informant's face had drained of color. She hoped he wasn't going to vomit or lose control of any other bodily functions. She knew just how corkscrewed up his nerves were and wasn't sure they could handle any shock to the system.

  The shadowy figure stepped forward and Ana was no longer concerned about anyone else's nerves or stomach or bowels. She held it together, or at least gave a convincing impression, even while her body melted and she sank into a puddle on the floor.

  This time she recognized the man.

  She knew him.

  It was her brother.

  "You can take the stuff, man!" The informant's voice was a distant warbling. "I've never done anything like this before. I don't know what I'm doing. They coerced me. Blackmailed me!"

  The engine of Ana's brain sputtered out, the cylinders locked up from trying to believe that Memo was there, standing right in front of her.

  His skin glowed much paler in the moonlight than she'd expected, given their shared DNA. A hovercar passed the window of the office and the headlights seemed to shine right through him.

  He spoke again, his voice dramatic, brilliant, and chilling, a stark contrast to his almost ethereal form.

  "I don't care if this was the first time. It will be the last."

  Ana sensed the small man moving behind her but remained in a stasis of shock. Etienne sprang through the doorway, a blur of motion at the edge of Ana's vision. Ana's instincts didn’t bother telling her of the danger behind her. They simply flung her forward onto the ground. She rolled to her back and found her gun in her hands, ready to take out the threat her partner had already neutralized.

  Before Etienne slammed him to the floor the informant fired several shots from his concealed weapon. Ana watched as her brother crumpled. She leapt forward, plunging into the darkness that had swallowed him. On her hands and knees Ana combed the floor of the office, but came across no body, no blood, and it was only when Etienne got the light on that it was clear there was no trace of him.

  "Where did he go?" Ana demanded of no one in particular. "Where did he go?"

  "It must have been a projection. A security measure to scare people away."

  "Projected from where? We need to find it!"

  "We need to get what we came for and get out of here."

  Etienne gripped their informant by the arm. Blood dripped down his forehead and he tried to mas
sage the elbow of his other arm, but Etienne kept jerking him back toward her.

  "I won't even ask what you were doing. I thought you could talk him out of that conflict. I won't tell anyone what happened. You're lucky it was only a projection. Next time you might have bullets flying at you both ways."

  She shoved the man who was now more captive than confidant forward.

  "Get the docs and the samples. And hurry! That shooting was bound to have been picked up somewhere, and even with his security clearance, I don't think they're going to just wait around to see if something comes of it."

  Etienne pushed her captive forward. He stumbled toward a wall with a single poster hanging on it.

  "I—I shot him," he whined.

  "You fired a gun," Etienne said, attempting to reassure him. "You didn't shoot anybody."

  Had it come from a training instructor, it would have been an insult, but the man was unaware, just kept moving forward.

  Ana sat for a second, wondering how her brother had ended up as the model for a security projection in this corporate research facility, but then realized it didn't matter. At least not right then. She snapped back to reality and hopped to her feet. If they got caught, the odds of her finding out about the projection of Memo dropped at a rate she didn't want to think about.

  But he had been in the Agency's files on the Continuum. Had she misinterpreted the information the other agents brought up on the screen? It didn't matter. She had to focus on the mission at hand before she got herself killed.

  She jumped to the door and looked out. No security guards, no flashing lights, no alarms, no surprises. Safe for now. And she couldn't help but think: better safe than dead.

  Etienne removed the poster from the far wall. The man reached in, entered a code, and pressed his finger against a scanner. That was it. The safe popped open, he withdrew the contents and handed them to Etienne, relieved to be rid of the burden.

  The soft still of the empty office hung outside the door like someone waiting for another agent's debrief to end. Etienne joined Ana at the door.

  "Anyone coming?"

  "Not that I can tell."

  "How long you think that'll last?"

  "Hopefully long enough for us to duck out the back."

  "Let's not wait around then."

  --

  Two unknown but familiar pairs of eyes observed as the hovercar descended and slowed to a stop in front of the building they had been watching for the past thirty-six hours. Intel rarely turned out to be as accurate as one would like, but information gathered by the dubious contacts that formed the network of an unsanctioned, self-funded group usually proved even less reliable. As such, the pair of gentleman in the black hovercar were forced to wait for the package—as they referred to it—through two sets of daylight hours and into a second coming of night. The shadow of a building much smaller than the Chicago Spire across the street kept their hovercar cool during the sunny portion of the stakeout, and during each of the two consecutive sunsets they marveled at the shower of glittering light that fell from the enormous building across the street as the Earth turned away from the sun for another night.

  The two men didn't know that this particular hovercar was the one bringing the package, but since it arrived late at night and stopped in front of the entrance rather than using the residential entrance where most hovercars went as the night wore on, their attention was piqued.

  An old familiar foe stepped from the hovercard, validating their reasons for suspicion. She wore a heavy chain bracelet trailing to a durosteel briefcase. An old-school method of retention, but a surprisingly effective one.

  "Ah, Etienne. A clever and charming young lady," said the man in the passenger seat. His words were soft, as though classified top secret, only to be heard within the cabin of the vehicle.

  Both of them startled to see another woman rise from within the sleek silver, no doubt heavily armored, car. The man in the driver's seat worried he was seeing an apparition until his partner spoke, urgency infusing his measured tone.

  "Is that—?"

  She turned, giving a cursory glance at her surroundings, as though she intended to scan for anyone tailing them, but took in nothing. She faced them just long enough for a small embedded scanner to feed her image back to a network built on connections and equipment much more reliable than that of their human contacts.

  "Jordan, pull up the information on her as soon as it's ready," he said, knowing full well what the result of the query would be.

  "Interesting," Jordan said as the information glowed on the translucent panel he held in one hand. "There are two profiles coming up. There's the one you'd expect, but there's another for someone named Julia Anderson. A few arrests for blackmail and theft, convicted once, out on time served."

  "They must be trying to convince the Continuum that's who she is. I wonder how well that's going."

  "Well enough, I suppose, if she's grabbing a briefcase with info important enough that they sent Etienne for it. So, should we still grab the package now while we've got the chance?"

  Jordan wore his heart on his sleeve and liked when things were straightforward. It served him well when dishing out emotion on a platter of music, but didn't always make for the best spy work. The ability to mask emotions without anyone realizing you were doing it was an important skill when you were involved in espionage, infiltration, and leading a group of disillusioned, disenchanted young men and women on missions that none of them would ever fully understand. Probably better if Jordan never had to perfect it.

  "If it's coming in with Etienne, then it must be under Natalya's purview. We already know where the artifacts under her control are stored. It will be safer to continue with the plan than to try to grab it right now with those two providing protection."

  Was he hiding his emotions or hiding himself? Or was there really ever a difference?

  --

  Instead of waking up shackled to a chair in the belly of the beast, Ana walked straight in through the mouth after her mission. She looked at the teeth without worrying that they would snap shut on her. Julia Anderson was a legitimized grifter, now part of the big leagues of deceit and theft, putting her over the moon and on top of the world at the same time. Ana channeled her own feelings of accomplishment at having pulled off the mission into Julia's exuberance at having found a real-world use for her skills.

  The follow-up meeting with Julia's raven-haired handler was much less confrontational than their initial exchange. Etienne sat next to her and they were both praised as much as debriefed. Julia's position was secure, and if she was amenable, the Continuum would provide her with lodging in the silver spire with a thirty-sixth-floor view of the lake. She would consider that an upgrade even over the posh two-story condo that the Agency had rented in Julia's name. Another example of her taste for the finer things, which the Continuum couldn't help but pick up on. Ana hoped the setup wasn't over the top, but in some ways, the more ostentatious the presentation of Julia Anderson, the better. Boring truth was often harder to accept than an outrageous lie.

  "You'll be right down the hall from Etienne. Since you worked so well together, we're making you official partners. You'll train together and go on missions together whenever possible."

  Ana still didn't like the shadowy bird woman, but she supposed that was the point. Hard-earned trust lasted longer and always proved stronger than superficial agreeability. If the hard-ass woman gained their approval despite her implacable, unflinching exterior, it would be easier to ask them to do things that crossed moral or ethical boundaries. Perhaps not Psych 101, but it didn't take a doctorate in human psychology to see the mind games woven through the fabric of the Continuum. Julia could fall for it, but Ana would snip the thread without a second thought. She provided no safe harbor for any such illusions.

  Ana found her closet already filled with designer label outfits, a dressing table laden with impressive pieces of jewelry, a kitchenette stocked with high-quality health foods, and a bed f
rom which she feared she might never get up once she'd sunk into its luxurious sheets and pillows. She reminded herself not to get used to it. The material possessions were just another hook the Continuum wanted to pull through her skin.

  As she examined her new surroundings and belongings, Ana casually searched for the camera that had to be keeping an eye on her from somewhere. She wanted to find a blind spot not to take a break from being Julia, but simply because she wanted to change her clothes without thinking that someone was watching, if not recording, her. The sets of swimsuits in one of the drawers of her new dresser gave her an idea: the locker room was a public space in the building. The Continuum could not own all hundred and fifty floors of lakefront property, and while they probably had taps on the security cameras around the pool, the locker room would provide privacy. Or at least a better chance of it than the condo outfitted by the Continuum.

  So Ana went for a swim. She kicked and pulled through memories of floating in the Agency pool, which in turn reminded her of the Continuum agent who had turned her mind against her in creating his escape hatch. Maybe now she would find an opportunity to investigate those men now that she was on the inside. Ana wondered if her new best friend Etienne knew anything about the pale-skinned mind-controller. It wasn't as important as her brother, but it would probably be an easier topic to broach.

  The water in the pool churned around her, but it was perfectly balanced, and Ana glided through it feeling better than she’d thought she would. The new double agent tried to clear her mind, to free herself momentarily from the maze of thoughts that kept her twisting and turning. As she drifted, her mind and body thanked her for the break and Ana realized the rapid succession of missions, along with her personal investigative work and now turning double agent, had given her almost no time to unwind, relax, and recover. She kept up with the frantic pace, though, and left the pool still tired, but ready to face whatever came next.

  Holding back her fatigue, Ana felt strong standing in the warm spray of a shower. Then a wet hand struck her in the chest, driving her back against the tiled wall of the communal area. Ana's eyes flew open to see the dark eyes of the Raven. She was clad in a black one-piece swimsuit that matched her hair and eyes, her pale arms and legs extending like the skeletal limbs of the grim reaper. Ana wondered if that comparison might be too close to home. Her mind stretched in a hundred different directions, deciding if fighting back would blow her cover or save her life while also trying to figure out an explanation for the unprovoked attack.