X

by J. D. Glass

  *

  Ben had been left and set to stand a rear-guard action in the lab that preceded this hallway, and John knew, after countless hours of memorizing paths, halls, and schematic layouts, exactly where he was going. His contact, a working relationship developed over several decades and through multiple operations, was his key resource to setting off the cascade-chain of events he planned on unleashing.

  To contain information, minimize both leakage and mistakes, John had spent several days working to create the strike that would reduce the number of security personnel on hand. He’d used one of his contacts who was a part of the crew to put that into motion, citing safety concerns for personnel over the adequacy of the bio level strictures that had been stretched to quite probably unsafe limits.

  He didn’t tell Chul-Moo how the strike started—it kept him clean, provided a layer of plausible deniability should the need arise, and also protected his man on the inside. But John did point out that it presented an excellent opportunity.

  Dr. Seung, who waited for them in the next lab, quickly saw the benefit of the unique opportunity, and had used the strike as justification to reduce the on-hand research team and workers, citing safety and privacy concerns for his team. Ultimately, he was the director, so his word was law in his sterile-field world. Of course, there were very few who would protest the opportunity to have an unexpected, but paid, free day, a day relieved of the wait for the ferry, the security precautions, and the decontamination process some of them had to endure.

  And if Dr. Seung had suspicions about the fortuitous timing, he kept them very much to himself. As far as John could see, his operation had so far gone so very well.

  The schematic rose in his mind’s eye as their feet made oddly muffled smacks along the waxed tiles of the corridor. He could see it—see the lab and its structure, the original lab that had been upgraded over the years and the floating room within a room. What was it Chul-Moo had said they’d nicknamed it? Ah yes, the tool shed. Not because it held tools per se but because it housed the weapon he needed, and he knew exactly how and on whom to use it. “Your contribution,” Chul-Moo told him, “will bring this to the next level, and the tool shed will be more than a holding area—it’ll become your private arsenal.”

  That was exactly what he needed: a custom arsenal. He hadn’t told Ben or Charli his complete plans—not really, because there was no need, because it could endanger his entire operation. He had others in place, waiting for him, all waiting for the word to perform their parts and soon, oh so very, very soon, all the pieces would be in place.

  “You know, Charli, jokes aside, the average person is a monkey, an unthinking idiot. UFOs—hah!” he said forcefully, then stopped and faced her. “They’re not covering up UFOs, Charli, they are the cover. It’s a nested lie—and the monkeys are too busy oohing and ahhing over the bright lights and shiny things to notice.” He shook his head with the disgust he couldn’t help but feel rise through him whenever he thought about it, the hordes of the dumb, who would soon become the damned and the dead.

  “So…you’re saying there really are men from Mars?”

  “They’re not from Mars,” he said, shaking his head as he reached into his coat. “It’s further and closer than that. They’re from tomorrow, what we will become, if we’re lucky, if we do things right, if the damn monkeys don’t get us all killed first.” Just as his fingers found the plastic key card they’d searched for, his cell phone began to vibrate again. “Well,” he said softly, “that doesn’t matter anymore, not really.” The words comforted him, reassured and reminded him of his purpose as he removed both the key card and the phone, then once more flipped the case open.

  * * *

  PENDLETON—AKA AGENT ELAINE HARPER—HAS ORDERED AN EXTRACTION. ETA NOT PRECISE (WEATHER VAGARIES). YOU’VE APPROXIMATELY TEN MINUTES.

  * * *

  He nodded once as he read that, knowing he had everything he needed, including the necessary time, to make it happen.

  “Tonight, in just a few moments”—he snapped the case closed and returned it to the same pocket from which he pulled the plastic key card. He pressed it to the reader—“we start to fix that—all of that.”

  He was close, so close his fingers itched the way they always did when he was on the cusp of gaining his objective. The indicator light on the reader flashed from red to green.

  “By the way,” he said, the words casual, the gesture an afterthought when he realized she would more than probably want to know. He opened the door, then waved Charli in before him. “Her real name was Harper—Elaine Harper.”

  Charli acknowledged his words with a quick glance and a lift to her brow, then walked in before him, and as John quickly slung the case with its laptop from his shoulder and followed, a growing sense of triumph crowded in his throat.

  *

  Dr. Chul-Moo Seung was not a man who practiced patience as a natural virtue, nor was he gifted with genius. Certainly he was intelligent, capable of grasping and manipulating the abstract, but his true talent lay in engineering—but not in the more traditional ways, the building of physical structures, of bridges and balance, the defiance of gravity and conquering of elements. His skills lay in areas more modern and more arcane. He understood the science of the small, of the minuscule, from molecules to moments.

  In the same way that one charged particle could change an entire equation, or an entire set of reactions, so too could statements, people, one small event.

  Dr. Seung certainly wasn’t a genius, not in the way that many would define it. What he had instead was a full measure of ambition combined with a very complete grasp of the politics of bureaucracy, and the conviction that his personal and preferred research would not only make him famous, but would also have the very welcome side effect of making him quite wealthy. And that wealth would be key to continuing even further developments, by both creating the requisite environment—since so few ever said no to cash in whatever their preferred denomination—and obtaining the materials and the workers he needed.

  He’d known John for many years, first during the secret wars with Laos and then with the development and deployment of various experimental weapons during further Pacific Theater involvements. He would help John because John had helped him in Laos—first when Chul-Moo had been a very young man who helped the men and women of Air America smuggle food and medicines to the struggling Laotians, then by once again helping the Americans several years later during their next conflict.

  He neither really knew nor really cared what John would do with his purchases, for ultimately they enabled Chul-Moo to pursue his own ends. The importance of politics as far as he saw it had nothing to do either with philosophical ideations or any sort of “good for the masses” rhetoric that all politicians sold. The most important thing to accomplish was to be on the winning side—that was all that mattered, was the only thing that guaranteed the potential for survival—and Chul-Moo had absorbed that lesson well as a child, first at the hands of his family as they fled the North Koreans, then again during their diaspora through Asia.

  It was John who had first respected his mind and not just his street connections, who had enabled him to become so much more than the street leader he might otherwise have been, another street leader and then another dead thug. These issues of loyalty, of debt, these were the things that had meaning.

  If John wanted to support or subvert a government, it mattered not. He had asked Chul-Moo for help and help he would receive, in return for which John would do what he had always done: enable him to continue pursuing his interests.

  Dysentery, malaria, cholera, random nameless flus and fevers, maladies named after local rivers and animals and gods—Chul-Moo had witnessed the devastation they caused, and the part of his heart that had still believed in some sort of goodness had once yearned to be able to do something, something good, and helpful, and healing.

  Those dreams had faded as his studies and later his research took him in related, but then-une
xpected, directions. He shook his head and smiled with self-derision, mind swirling with the new discoveries he’d made, his most recent success, and the new possibilities that John brought to him.

  Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, he thought, not realizing he whispered the words into the stillness of the lab, the words of a holy book from a religion he had long ago abandoned, the message of a god he had replaced with his own self-image. He did not know he echoed another man, another scientist, who had also discovered and unleashed a grand panorama of Death in minutiae.

  Chul-Moo did not need to hear John’s reasons, nor his plans. John was as clever as the fox he’d named himself for, and perhaps whatever he had in mind might work—for a little while, at least. No idea, good or bad, no matter how powerfully implemented, ever lasted for long when governments were involved, he thought. He did wish John luck, though, and in any case, if the winds of change were once again blowing, then at least he, Chul-Moo, knew in what direction they swirled.

  And truly, Dr. Seung mused as he reviewed all the materials, the settings, double-checked one last time that all that had been requested was there, what place did politics or governments have in the relationships between men, in the ties and obligations forged of blood and debt and honor? None, he decided as he checked the tool shed one final time, then his watch. He ran his hands through his hair, straightened his lab coat. Any moment now, and he would begin to repay the debt he owed the man who helped him get his family to Hong Kong, who financed his education, and who, he was certain, had a hand in gaining him the “Plum,” as so many in his field called this position.

  The revamped ventilation system and the insulating layer built over the original wall prevented him from hearing steps in the hallway, but nothing short of total blindness would have stopped him from seeing the indicator lights over the door change from red to green. The time had come.

  Starting program: /hacking/$ ./HIJACKHACK

  Hex

  If she’d had a moment to think about it, Charli would have considered it interesting the way she was able to function on so many different levels: the multiple inner ones—an emotional one that flayed icily through her, threatening to bury her in its frozen depths, the analytical one that took those same cold blocks and used them to build the final, outer one, protecting, or so she hoped, the rapid working within.

  That wall gave her a freedom she would otherwise have not had, permitted her to fully examine the options available for her to work with in the framework she was currently limited to.

  Her analysis told her this much: Cooper was useless—he practically drooled over every word John said and that, combined with his earlier behavior…he was dangerous, but he was on John’s leash.

  Alternately, however, Cooper was used to following directives from her, and Charli knew, because she’d worked with him, that the less and less direct attention he got from her as her captivity progressed would eat at him. He’d jumped through quite a set of hoops, she thought, to impress John. He’d broken the strictures of his bonding—the fingerprinted promise they’d all made when Whitestone had taken them on—not to use or modify proprietary technology, and while she still didn’t know exactly what his program had done, she could guess, which meant he’d broken the law.

  Despite his misanthropic behavior and dropout attitude, Coop followed the rules; even his new home, the one he was building to take off the grid, he’d spent weeks agonizing over finding the right engineers to make certain it not only fit his standards, but the county’s—he’d had it built to code.

  Once he’d understood what was considered proper and improper conduct when it came to interpersonal relationships on the job, he’d followed to the letter, even taking the time on occasion to ask her if what he’d said or done “was okay.”

  Ben Cooper, her employee, had a rebellious streak but ultimately, he obeyed the law—grudgingly sometimes, willingly others, but no matter that; the fact was, he complied, even down to trimming his beard and tying his hair back.

  That he now followed John…and Charli was certain that, earlier in the evening, even as John had done whatever he’d done to ensure she was out of it, it was his voice she’d heard say, quite clearly, “Take the agent.”

  It was as apparent to her as Cooper’s ill-hidden feelings toward her that this man’s opinion meant very much, quite possibly everything, to Cooper.

  But even with all of that, she suspected that it was that crush Coop had on her that was the reason she was there in the first place, and she had easily read the joy in his eyes as he’d watched her appear to go along with both him and his…keeper. This meant her opinion of him still carried weight, and she was gambling that just as he’d danced to John’s tune to please him, he might very well do the same for her if he believed he’d lost her regard.

  At the very least, the lack of attention should more than likely unsettle Cooper, and that uncertainty might break some of the hold John had over him; it could slow or perhaps even change his reactions. She knew she was taking a risk with someone who’d proven himself to be dangerous, but there were really no other options.

  The man she knew only as John, however, operated under a completely different set of rules, and those rules were quite obviously his. It was equally evident that the power lay in John’s hands—crack him, and Charli thought she might have a fighting chance. She didn’t think personal escape was a true possibility on her horizon—John’s casual disregard of Anna’s probable fate had spelled that out to her quite clearly very early on, while the other, equally nonchalant discussion of deaths on a massive scale put the spelling in large, bold letters.

  But if she couldn’t get completely away, then she could hopefully partially sabotage, perhaps even completely stymie, the plans John so openly stated he had.

  What she did immediately exploit was a weakness he didn’t know he had, one it certainly appeared that most men who prided themselves on intellect thought they were immune to: a woman’s smile and attention.

  It wasn’t a game she usually played, and in fact she had a scathing contempt that immediately dismissed those who relied solely on behavior of that sort to make their way through the world, but a dose of it was not only seemingly required here, but apparently quite effective. John didn’t question what he saw, and more importantly, it appeared he truly believed what she wanted him to: she agreed with and even admired his theories.

  And logical they were, in a way that twisted cynicism, paranoia, and theory to heights Charli had known were possible but had never really considered to be probable, nor had she ever thought that anyone would take action on them.

  “I know all about you, Charli,” he told her back in the nondescript “no-tell motel” when she’d returned from the bathroom with the matchbook and the brochure tucked deeply in her pocket, and Cooper still gone on his quest for coffee. His voice was deep and rich, the tones measured and precise, and with that exact same precision, he told her exactly what he knew about her, and why.

  “I know who your parents are—Aaron and Helen. I know your brother Cole is in Angola and I can tell you what he’s really doing there.” He recited her own history—from grammar school through college to her jobs.

  Charli managed to maintain a neutral expression—interested, but neutral. “You do seem to know quite a bit of my background—but most of that’s a matter of public record.” She said that merely to test him, to see his reaction to it. The fact was that Charli had been as thorough as the rest of her cohorts in expunging electronic traces of herself from the Web. To gather the knowledge John had—that required special access, a sign of actual investigation into records that were off-limits to most civilians. There were advantages, Charli mused, to having a brother who worked for the military and who had the clearances he did. For a moment, she wondered if her brother Cole knew or had ever heard of this man.

  “Of course, there are those missing two years from high school,” John continued through Charli’s musing. “That’s not on any reco
rd.”

  “I guess not,” she commented blandly. If he didn’t know, she wasn’t going to tell him. Let him attempt to deduce it like so many had tried—and failed. It had come up too often recently, and as far as she was concerned, too many people already knew.

  He accepted her silence before he continued. “I’ve been searching for you, Charli, for you and others like you. You don’t know how special you really are. You, your brother more than likely, and others like you…”

  John spoke of genetic manipulations performed on a mass scale on an unsuspecting populace. His logic was frighteningly compelling, and he backed the possibility and high probability of his argument by repeating the well-documented tale of the Tuskeegee sharecroppers—men infected with syphilis and experimented upon in the name of “science”—as well as the now-famous experiments on airborne disease carried out in the New York City subway system.

  “It’s more than a mere conspiracy,” he said, waving a hand for emphasis. “It’s a global program, run by a combined military-industrial complex,” he insisted.

  At some point during his lecture? didacticism? diatribe?—she was no longer certain of when, exactly—the door to the room had opened, announcing Cooper’s return, and a cardboard tray with three lidded Styrofoam cups preceded him as a cool gust followed.

  “It’s no accident they’re called captains of industry, Charli.” The quick smile he gave her did nothing to soften the frost that filled his eyes, nor the anger that smoldered, evident and palpable, in his tone. “And I know the names—the faces and the names—of every single one of them.”

  Silence, broken only by the scuff of Ben’s boots along the industrial carpet, filled the room.

  “Coffee—best I could find at this hour,” Ben said as he carefully passed first one, then the other along.

  “Thanks, son. Good job,” John said with a smile as he accepted it with a small flourish, then saluted Ben with it before taking a sip. He made a small contented sound after he swallowed, then focused once more on Charli.