Charles finished. “He is listed in good condition at the TDF hospital at Elysium. He will be released tomorrow after a period of observation.”
“This is certainly a terrible tragedy. Have Roark’s relatives been notified?”
“There is a notification team on the way to Perth, Western Australia, to notify Roark’s wife, Berkeley. Roark had no other living relatives. We’ll get confirmation of the spouse’s notification within the hour.”
Neige tilted her chin toward the ceiling and smiled widely. Crawley and the TDF would cower before her if they knew the breadth and scope of her network. Her agents now had Dr. Gwendolyn Bennett’s location, too. The TDF never failed to release all data on a service member within hours of death for official communiqués from their general officers or, when deemed necessary, by the Terran Council. Their diligence would ensure success. Her team would eliminate Bennett as planned and set about erasing the whole damned sleeper program. “Please see to it that I am informed when she is notified.”
“Of course, Madame Chairman.” Charles cleared his throat. “However, the Terran Defense Force will soon report this to you personally. Their medical research facility in Sydney was destroyed this evening. Local authorities have confirmed a natural-gas explosion from a ruptured pipe in the basement levels. The entire facility collapsed.”
Neige held her breath. “Casualties?”
“Two hundred personnel confirmed dead. Only twelve wounded, but most are in critical condition.” Charles paused. “Madame Chairman, I am sorry to inform you that your friend, Major General Crawley, is confirmed among the dead.”
Neige closed her eyes for a brief moment of relief and the slightest twinge of regret. Her friend and sometime foe, Adam Crawley, had been a good man who simply lost his way by trying to bring back the past. Some things were better left buried.
“Charles, order the council flags at half-staff for three days because of this tragedy. Contact Générale Étoile and relay my sincere condolences.”
“Certainly, Madame.” Hushed voices, talking fast, came through the speaker, as did the ruffling of papers.
“Is there something else, Charles?”
“An update, Madame Chairman. The notification team in Perth says that Dr. Roark, who is a professor of cybernetics at Western Australia University, is on sabbatical. The home in Perth is unoccupied at the present time. However, the provost there relayed that the couple spends a lot of time in Esperance, on the coast to the southeast. Our intelligence team found a home there rented under the name of General Crawley.”
Neige sat up a little straighter. Adam’s final defense. She made a mental note to fire the staff members who’d failed to uncover Bennett’s marriage and change of name. “I see. Send the notification team there to find Dr. Roark immediately.”
Charles did not immediately respond. She heard him clearly snap his fingers. “The team reports they can be there in forty-three minutes.”
“Get them moving,” Neige said. “I want her notified before any of this hits the media wires.”
“It will be done, Madame Chairman.”
Neige punched the button to terminate the call and left her hand on the device. In a way, her own notification to Crawley to play fair when Roark was supposedly killed the first time should have been enough of a warning to Adam. Except he never listened to anything she said. Now he was dead amidst the rubble of his greatest achievement. But he’d discovered what could be the answer to raising an army willing to die for Earth, should the Greys really return. Humans with augmented protocols were still human and could be controlled. Control was all that mattered. Without elected leaders, Earth’s citizens had no choice but to listen to those in power. The last thing she and the other politicians needed were simple citizens—or worse, soldiers—poisoning the populace with notions of free will and freedom of choice. Soldiers, through the eyes of history, had limited freedom of choice. For them to be harbingers of civil uprising was ironic. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as the missing subject would be found and exterminated just like the rest of the program.
Neige chuckled. The point had never been to win the next war by leading their allies. Humans could bolster the combat forces of the Vemeh, Styrahi, Tueg, and whoever else wanted to fight against the Greys or any other cosmic antagonist. The quaint notion of everyone fighting the war on equal footing died before it ever reached the council chambers. The perennial question of what could they do to maximize earnings and minimize risk led to the conclusion that they should train recruits to handle the support-and-service missions while others fought on the front lines.
The phone rang again. “This is Agent Sams in Sydney, Madame Chairman. We believe the missing subject to have been nearby but not accounted for in the rubble. A four-man team on the western perimeter engaged a young Asian female at approximately 0012 hours. There was no word from them after that. The team was found dead at 0023. There are no further clues to the subject’s disappearance.”
Neige bit her lip. Something had to go wrong with the operation. Such was the law of averages, especially when Adam Crawley was involved. “Theories?”
“Madame Chairman, on the line from Perth is Agent Aoki. Stand by for Perth.”
The line clicked, and a soft voice said, “Madame Chairman, the Perth house is currently unoccupied. According to the university—”
“Yes, I know that. Do you have something new for me or not?”
“I have a team arriving in Esperance in fourteen minutes. Surveillance video of the house from traffic cameras suggests that someone is there. It is unknown who it is or what they are doing.”
“Take them out,” Neige said. Orders were orders, and she had been clear. Indecisiveness was not tolerated.
The man stuttered a response. “M-Madame Chairman, perhaps it is a friend or a neighbor?”
“It does not matter. Engage whoever it is, and turn that house upside down. Find and eliminate Bennett! Get this done before the sun rises. Is that clear?”
There was silence from the other side of the connection. Neige pressed her tongue against the back of her front teeth for a moment. Roark, Bennett—whatever she went by—was a promising scientist and a somewhat public figure. Elimination could be a risk, but the vast majority of Earth’s citizens didn’t care for science anymore. She would be another pretty face lost in a terrible random act of violence.
“You have your orders, Mr. Aoki.” She pressed the termination button before the man could respond.
Neige regarded the ornate handmade clock on her desk given to her on a state visit to Austria years before. The little wooden men and women danced around a predetermined path. They did their act every hour on the hour and never strayed from their programming. How easy it would be if everyone simply listened to those of us in leadership positions.
Contemplating free will while drinking her coffee, she sat back in her desk chair to watch fourteen minutes tick away. If successful, going back to sleep, and sleeping in, would be something she could do without a twinge of regret. Slaying one’s biggest enemies always allowed one to enjoy the sleep of the just. It had been far too long.
Far too long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The critical things Berkeley and Kieran wanted with them fit into a backpack that Kieran referred to as the “go right now bag.” He’d taken to actually printing photographs on paper and collecting some older rare books. Some of the photos came along, but the books stayed behind. A few seashells, a necklace, and his favorite Tooheys shirt found their way into the bag, along with her mother’s old wedding band and the bracelet her father made for her when she’d turned seventeen. Kieran being who he was, a loaded XRM1911 .45 caliber pistol lay rolled into his favorite shirt. The bag was light and padded enough that wearing it while going for a run seemed like a natural thing to do. Her exercise routine was the key to a safe extraction. Crawley’s men would already be in posi
tion near Sunset Beach three kilometers away. Her neural clock said she’d need to leave in six minutes to make the arranged pick-up location when there was a knock at the door.
Standing in the kitchen, Berkeley froze. She looked at an indicator on the refrigerator—a red light for the ice tray meant that the plan had changed. The small icon was green, unchanged. Her wall clock read 3:38.
The knock came again, a little louder and more insistent. Leaving the kitchen, she walked through a small hallway and stopped at the thermostat for the central air system. Adjusting the controls to off, she triggered an emergency-data-collection program and fed the data to her neurals. Four men stood outside her door, and she could see that two of them were carrying weapons in plain sight. Their nickel-plated pistols glinted in the porch light.
A network intrusion alarm flashed in her vision, and she blinked the warning away. Her main security program for the house had been hacked and was being dismantled before her eyes. She knew precisely where the tiny camera on the thermostat unit was, and she cued the small, remote server to On and stared into the lens. “Livermore Six Two Seven, priority override Sigma Two. Find Downy. Keep the faith.”
Fists pounded on her door. She keyed the front-room lights and heard the men quiet and shift positions on the wooden deck outside. One of them bumped Kieran’s favorite chair, and she recognized the squeak of its bad leg. The “go right now” bag was on the couch. She opened it and positioned Kieran’s shirt near the top so she could reach in, if necessary. She thought it best not to provoke them by opening the door with a gun in her hands. If she ran, they’d kill her. If she opened the door, there was a chance the men would merely arrest her. Maybe they would even take her to see Penelope Neige herself. Berkeley made sure the pistol was ready, and with a deep breath, she tried to prepare herself. Kieran would have told her to stay in the present.
Stay in the present.
As she walked to the door, a picture of the two of them at Ayers Rock caught her eye. A whirlwind of emotions tore at her. Hope that the situation had changed and the visitors were from Crawley filled her, but just as quickly, she was flooded with doubt and frightened that she was going to jail or worse. Remorse for failing Crawley and Kieran brought tears to her eyes. But what hurt the worst was the loneliness, brought on by the knowledge that she was about to face her fate without Kieran or any of them at her side. Slowly, all of it turned to anger. Penelope Neige had gone after Crawley and the entire program. Without confirmation of his death or any others, Neige simply branched out and played the cards dealt. Berkeley wanted nothing more than to give that woman a piece of her mind but couldn’t shake the feeling all of this was her own damned fault.
I’m sorry. She thought about Kieran’s clear blue eyes and lazy smile. I love you, Sleepy.
“Dr. Bennett? We know you’re in there. Open the door immediately.”
The hope of a revised extraction plan left her hollow. The men weren’t there to take her to safety. Everyone in the program knew her as Berkeley Roark. Dr. Bennett was far behind her. On the screen, the men fanned out to cover the windows and side exits. She was trapped.
“What’s the code?”
Silence.
As she prepared to raise her voice, the door exploded inward, and four men burst into the front room. The first man shoved her toward the couch. His friends followed and fanned out, covering the corners of the room and looking for cameras. They quickly tore pictures from the walls and slung furniture hither and yon. The lead agent, wearing dark vidglasses for some reason, raised his pistol to her chest. She recoiled and rested her hips against the sofa, her right hand on the top of the open bag.
“Dr. Bennett.”
Her mouth was dry. “W-What do you want?”
“We’ll take what we want.” A sneer turned up one side of his mouth. His accent was French, and she loathed it. “We have your home server and all its files. And we know who this man is.” He gestured with his free hand to the picture of them at Ayers Rock.
“He’s not here.” She glanced at the other agents as they worked through the house, and tried to get the man to look away from her so she could grab the pistol. Her neural connection to the home and the outside world had disappeared. They’d disengaged everything and likely jammed the entire block to prevent attention.
“We know where he is. He’s being dealt with as we speak.”
Panic shot through her chest, and she sank back against the couch. Oh, no. The top of the bag was a few scant centimeters away. Kieran, what do I do now?
“What do you want with us?” she asked. Look away, damn you!
He chuckled. “Playing innocent doesn’t suit you, Dr. Bennett. We know about Kieran Roark and your role with the Terran Defense Force.” He stepped forward once and adjusted his hand around the grip of the large silenced pistol in his hand.
“Am I under arrest? Under what authority?”
The man looked up and past her. It was long enough. He nodded once and turned his face back to her. Pistol grip in her hand, she kept the weapon inside the bag and asked the question again.
“Are you arresting me?”
“By the order of Chairman Neige, you have been designated a threat to the Terran Council, and you are to be executed for treason.”
He said something else, but as the blood rushed to her ears and she gasped, his words were lost. They did not matter. Nothing mattered now. They were going to kill Kieran just as they’d killed Crawley and everyone else in the program. Hopefully, the bastards would stop with the people involved and not target friends or relatives.
The man stepped closer, and she met his eyes.
“I asked you if there was anything you wanted to say for the record before your sentence is carried out, Dr. Bennett.”
Tears came, and she let them fall for a moment. She nodded and worked her throat clear so she could talk. Determination fired in her gut.
Do not let them enjoy this! Stop sobbing and say it. She blinked but made no move to wipe her tears. Hands firmly on the sofa’s cushions and the open bag, she took a long, hitching breath and put as much steel as she could into her voice.
“My name is Berkeley Roark.” She swung the pistol up and squeezed the trigger.
The lead agent whirled away, blood spraying up from his left shoulder. In the same nearly frozen moment of time, his pistol flashed, and a muted chuffing sound came with it. Heat bloomed across her front as a terrific weight slammed her in the chest and pitched her backward over the sofa. The pistol flew from her hand. Rolling to the floor, she gazed up at their shattered home as the agents converged over her. There was no pain, only unearthly cold seeping into her chest as she lay on her side. Surrounded by the detritus of her home, which the men rummaged through with measured aggression, Berkeley saw the lead agent point his men out the door. When they were alone, he raised the pistol toward her face and pointed the silencer at her temple.
“Un bon essai, mais pas assez,” he said. Her neurals translated it as, “A good try, but not enough.”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember sitting on Kieran’s blanket, waiting for him to come out of the water. She’d only known him as Sleepy then, and it was good. Her panicked neural messages cleared as she turned the system off in an instant. An image formed in her silent mind, and fresh tears squeezed under her lids and ran toward the carpeted floor. Her breath rattled in her chest, and she knew it was time as the memory came back: the dreary rainy day she’d met him for the first time, wet sand under her legs and the feel of it working between her toes as she watched him surf. When he finished, his broad-shouldered frame ambled out of the surf, and his eyes glittered. She could have stayed forever in that moment. Her mission, the one Crawley had assured her would be easy, changed at that very moment. That silly little smile on his face as he approached sealed the deal in her heart before she’d even thought about it.
Her life didn’t fl
ash before her eyes, and that was fine. There were no visions of her parents or her friends or regrets of things not done. That moment captured what it was like to have her life changed, and if she could stay in it forever, her ending would be perfect. She’d known it was love and not emotional manipulation at that moment. Love, as one of Kieran’s old songs said, was the answer. Kieran needed love to integrate his memory. And she’d needed love to really feel alive.
The cold barrel of the agent’s pistol touched the hair above her temple like an unwanted caress.
Kieran. I love—
The first scheduled maglev of the day roared into Esperance at 3:38 in the morning, more than twenty minutes ahead of schedule. No one saw a lone passenger dart from the train and head southeast into the nearby neighborhoods. The terminal lay six kilometers from the address Ayumi had found for General Crawley. Away from the terminal’s lights, Ayumi settled into a quick stride impossible for nonengineered humans.
<
Right. Ayumi sprinted into the night. The dark, quiet streets of Esperance shot by in great blurs. Two minutes into her dash, Ayumi reached out with her communications suite and discovered significant jamming in the area of Crawley’s address. I’m too late.
Amy said nothing for a moment. <
The first flicker of lights in the distance caught her eye, and Ayumi skidded to a jog and turned east between several rows of houses before resuming her course.
<
What do I do?
In the yard of a home was a large steel bin. <
Ayumi scrambled over the side of the bin and dropped inside. Instantly overcome with the scent of rotting meat and shit, she pinched her nose shut and tried not to retch.
Vendetta Protocol Page 28