Locked and Loaded

by Nenia Campbell

  “I think that deception does not come easily or naturally to you, no.”

  “But that's a good thing.” I stared at his blank face. “Isn't it?”

  “Good and bad are so subjective, Ms. Parker. I do think it would be useful in this organization to know how to lie effectively, yes. That's why I'm going to give you an additional assignment, Ms. Parker. One you will not find on any itinerary. From now on, make a point to tell one good fib per day.”

  “E-excuse me?”

  I couldn't have heard him right.

  “A lie. An untruth. A falsehood. Whatever you'd like to call it. Tell one of them per day. Until you get comfortable. Until people start to believe you.”

  “You want me to lie to people?” I made a broad sweep of my arm. “Here?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “I can't do that.”

  He clapped his hands slowly. “Good start, Ms. Parker, albeit not particularly convincing.”

  “That wasn't the lie. I can't lie. I'm a horrible liar.”

  “Yes you can, you will, practice makes perfect.” Hawk pretended to straighten up his desk; it was spotless. “Paradox of the Liar, Ms. Parker. I suggest you look it up.”

  Like I'd fritter my precious internet time away on a stupid riddle. But I bobbed my head. “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh. And there was one more thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I understand there was an incident at the shooting range today.”

  “Oh, that. Yes…. Didn't you hear about it?”

  “Yes. Sergeant Smith filed the incidence report, but we were hoping to get additional perspectives to supplement the file. Incidents of this nature are highly unusual, and as a result extremely circumspect.”

  “I'm afraid I didn't see much,” I said.

  “I'll ask you a few questions then, if you don't mind.”

  “I don't mind.”

  He hit the button on a recorder I hadn't noticed earlier. If I had, I might not have been so quick to agree to this interrogation. Because that's what this was.

  But I've done nothing wrong.

  I was getting paranoid again.

  “Were you hurt?” Hawk asked.

  “Me? No, the bullet hit another girl. I don't know her name, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a lethal shot.”

  “All bullets are lethal shots, if they connect with their targets, Ms. Parker,” Hawk said quietly. Before I could consider what a weird thing this was to say, he went on. “Did you happen to see who did it?”

  “Um — no, sir. I was running. The bullet whizzed by me. I thought it was a wasp.”

  Thank God my father had taught me never to swat at wasps. What would have happened if my hand had come into contact with that bullet?

  I shuddered at the thought.

  “A wasp,” he repeated, watching me with that same intense expression. “Yes, I see.”

  “I did wonder if it was a sniper rifle.”

  Hawk leaned forward. “Why do you say that?”

  “The long distance, the fact that nobody saw the shooter. It was just a guess. I don't actually know much about guns.” My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my slacks. “Will the girl be all right? The one who was shot?”

  He looked at me strangely. “She has been given a week's leave from PT to recuperate. In the meantime, Ms. Parker, I urge you to exercise vigilance and caution.”

  The note appeared in my mind's eye in a flash.

  TRUST NO ONE.

  I bit my lip. I'd been doing that a lot lately. They were chapped and felt scabby. Sometimes, I even tasted blood. I could taste it now.

  “Why?” I said, after a moment. “I mean, obviously I know why. But — it was an accident. Wasn't it?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “and then again, perhaps not. There are many here who would like to see Michael Boutilier dead, and with good reason.”

  “You think the bullet…was meant for me?”

  “As I said, Ms. Parker. Caution and vigilance.”

  That's not an answer, I wanted to say.

  But it was answer enough.

  Michael

  It had to be an inside job.

  The only question that remained was, which side?

  Mine? Or hers?

  Or both?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Speculation

  Christina

  The library, with its sweet powdery smell of old books, was the one spot of familiarity in this strange and alien world.

  Here, I could work diligently, and in mild comfort. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend, for a few precious seconds, that I was in the library back home.

  Sometimes I half-assed my work just so I could finish whatever I was working on early and peruse the stacks. I didn't have much time to myself, and reclining among the books was a nice way to pass the hours before dinner and Language Lab.

  I was painfully lonely.

  Everyone was so distant and impersonal. I longed for intimate, meaningful conversation. It was getting to the point where all I looked forward to each day were my two-hour Language Lab sessions and the biweekly phone calls to my father. Even Hawk's evaluations were a welcome change from the monotony, intimidating as they were.

  Given all that, it may seem strange that I enjoyed my solitude in the library. But there are many ways to be alone, and if I were to be condemned to loneliness I figured it might as well be in the mode of my choosing, and books make the best ersatz friendships.

  I did want to make real friends. Colleagues.

  I knew it was unrealistic, but all these days without so much as a single kind word were taking their toll on my heart. It was like taking a flower and expecting it to thrive without sunlight.

  And now, Hawk was implying that not only were these people completely uninterested in getting to know me, they might want me dead, as well.

  How could people live like this?

  Michael did, and look what it had done to him. It had rendered him remote, scarcely able to connect or relate to others. I didn't want that to happen to me.

  The IMA had gotten him in their clutches when he was still young, so maybe that wouldn't happen to me since I was older and had cemented some relationships, but when I recalled that look of aloof sadness he sometimes got when he was reflective, my heart twisted in sympathy.

  There but for the grace of God go I.

  This was a shell of a man who, until very recently, didn't appear to realize that sex and intimacy didn't have to be mutually exclusive. Who thought emotion was weakness, and love was a lie.

  That was another thing I had noticed about this place. The men here looked at me strangely, in a way I didn't like. Not with the open lewdness of the guards on Target Island, but more speculatively.

  As if they were wondering what I would look like without my clothes on.

  As if they were wondering what I would be like in bed.

  It made me uncomfortable, more so because I could find no specific way of addressing it. So I was forced to walk around with their eyes on me like a thin layer of grime I couldn't quite wipe clean.

  My relationship with Michael was an open secret. Apart from S.A. and the man who had been ejected from my language lab, nobody ever mentioned it to me. But they all knew. I could tell in the way that the volume of a conversation might take a nosedive whenever I walked in or out of a room. I could tell in the disdain that people showed me. Like they didn't think I belonged her. Like they thought I was trash.

  Sex and scandal. Our relationship had the two ingredients people just can't seem to deny themselves. Even if they were professionals. Maybe especially if they were professionals. The BN did not let their recruits have much fun. It was no surprise that they used their abilities for reconnaissance to gossip.

  If anyone had bothered to confront me outright I would have told them that it wasn't about the sex or even the power. Not that they would have believed me, or even wanted to, but it was the truth.

  Spending so much time around Michae
l had made me realize that I was attracted to much more than his body or face, although those things certainly didn't hurt. Okay, they helped a lot. And maybe that made me vain and stupid, too, but I didn't care. Because there was more to him than that.

  He was broken inside, wounded, and I wanted so badly to fix him. To heal him. It made me feel good, thinking that maybe I was good for him. It made me feel better about myself.

  His crooked smile and Cajun lilt—those things didn't even begin to scratch at the surface of who he really was. He could be quite funny in a dry, dark sort of way. Like tannin-heavy red wines, his off-brand of humor was an acquired taste.

  I loved his fierce sense of loyalty, those hidden reservoirs of kindness. I loved his fumbling awkwardness when he tried to be 'normal' and how it rendered him almost shy.

  I loved that out of all the tens of millions of people in this world he had opened up to me. That, more than anything else, had made him mine.

  But people couldn't—or wouldn't—understand that. No, they had to turn what we had into something clinical. Something filthy and depraved. Something incurable and to be avoided at all costs. Like it was not attraction, but a disease without cure.

  Something so sick, it needed to be put down like a rabid dog. Perhaps that was why I'd been shot at.

  I did not like having to rely on the BN as a filter to experience the outside world. I understood the rationale behind this jealous cloistering of information flow, but that had not made me warm to the idea any more. My training could take years. Years of isolation. Years of drudgery peppered with criticism and abuse.

  I wasn't sure I could last that long.

  Especially not if people were trying to kill me.

  I needed to get out of here. At least for a little while. I had to remind myself that there was another world outside these cold gray walls, verdant and full of life. My world. The real world.

  I closed the laptop.

  I could see now that this whole thing was a mistake. For as long as I worked here, I wouldn't be happy. I wasn't a killer, and I wasn't a criminal. The BN had turned something I loved into a dreary chore.

  I wasn't used to the idea of having built-in enemies, either. People I didn't know, who didn't know me, but who wanted me dead just because of the people I happened to know. Like a grudge match.

  To the death.

  I returned the laptop to the receptionist. She took it silently, her eyes narrowing. But she didn't speak. Not until I turned towards the doorway.

  “Your independent study is not slated to end for another hour.”

  I'd gone over this eventuality in my head. “Something I ate at lunch didn't agree with me.”

  “And you waited until now to say something?”

  “I'd hoped it would go away on its own.” I took a deep breath. “I just want to go to my room and lie down for a bit — if that's okay?”

  “Hawk will be informed.”

  “That's fine.”

  She looked suspicious as I left, cradling my middle. But she let me leave.

  Tell one good fib per day. Until you get comfortable. Until people start to believe you.

  When I was out of sight of the library, I lowered my hand to my side.

  How was that, Old Man?

  Instead of turning left, towards the dormitories, I went right, which led to the outside. Not outside-outside — the entire complex was fenced in with metal gates topped with rings of barbed wire — but at least I'd get to breathe air that hadn't been filtered through a musty old air-conditioner first.

  I uttered a silent prayer in the hopes that the doors wouldn't be locked. They weren't. Nor alarmed, either, unless it had been a silent one, in which case I might as well have just stuck a neon sign over my head in flashing letters that read, “Here I am!”

  As I stepped out beneath the stars that had been obfuscated all these weeks, I thought, Might as well enjoy myself before I get caught, in either case.

  I could smell the pine, so strong here as to be overwhelming, mixed with the dewy, earthy smell of petrichor. With the facility darkened, the stars stood out in stark relief like chips of diamond studding a display case made from purest midnight.

  All the stars and constellations that my father had pointed out to me as a child were there. Orion and his belt studded with Betelgeuse, the brilliant red giant set to supernova either in this century or the next. Ursa minor and major. The Pleiades, or The Seven Sisters. The gaseous nebulae, like distant clouds.

  It was so beautiful, so poignantly, achingly sad, that I cried. I cried for what was lost and what would never be, and I cried for the fact that in spite of how much of a mess my life was now, it would one day cease to matter and still, the stars would shine.

  Moments like these always have to be ruined, though, and mine was no exception.

  As I popped a mint into my mouth to take the edge off the acrid tang of salt, I heard the powerful engine of a large truck revving up from somewhere close-by. Across the dirt field, a man was waving him onto one of the paved loading zones.

  The glare from the headlights was so bright I could only just make out the name of the company on the side of the truck. Union Corp.

  “Christina.”

  I shrieked when I felt the hand close down on my shoulder. For just a second—it hurt.

  “Mr. H-Hawk.” My nervousness turned into his game into a giggle, though that was the last thing I wanted to do. “You scared me half to death.”

  He didn't respond, at least not straightaway, and when self-preservation kicked in I wondered if maybe I still ought to be afraid.

  “What are you doing out here, sir?”

  “Any suspicious deviations in scheduling are immediately brought to my attention.”

  “Suspicious? But I was just—”

  “Not where you were supposed to be, yes. That much is evident. Which brings us to a more important question. What are you doing out here, Ms. Parker? You told Ms. Blake you were going to your dormitory and yet, your door registered no logged entries or exits since you left early this morning.”

  I thought quickly. “I was going to go but then I felt sick. I wasn't sure I could make it to my room. I saw the doors, and realized the doors were open. I mean, they weren't locked. I thought some fresh air might help make me feel better.”

  “You were sick?”

  “That's what I told the receptionist—err, Ms. Blake. I thought I was going to throw up. My stomach was cramping. But I was right, the fresh air did help.”

  “But you didn't go back inside.”

  “N-no, I was still feeling a little dizzy. So I sat down to look at the stars and have a mint.”

  “From where?”

  “The mint? From the vending down the hall from the cafeteria. I got it this morning with my card.”

  “We're very concerned about security breaches, Ms. Parker.”

  No, really? I couldn't tell.

  I pointed across the field. “Speaking of security breaches, what are those trucks doing out here so late? Are they supposed to be here?”

  “It is imperative that you go nowhere without informing us of your whereabouts. All operatives must be accounted for at all times. There are no exceptions.”

  I guess that was a “yes” for the trucks. I shook my head, annoyed. “Are you a father, sir? You sound like one.”

  He stepped away from me, back in the shadows.

  “Return to your dormitory at once. The nightly lock-down will be implemented in less than ten minutes.”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I left.

  Michael

  I went out on the pretense of a reconnaissance mission for my latest assignment.

  One upside to Callaghan's regime of terror was that he had everyone pissing in their pants with fear. They didn't like to question things just in case they asked the wrong one at the wrong time.

  That also meant they missed out on opportunities to ask the right one at the right time.<
br />
  I bought a disposable phone from a store halfway across town and called up Angelica. “Listen,” I said, keeping my voice low enough to blend in with the white noise of the city, “I don't have a lot of time to explain. Can you do me a favor?”

  “That depends on the favor, Mr. Boutilier.”

  Christ, I missed Kent's straight-forwardness.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Okay. I want you to look into any recent business acquisitions made by Adrian Callaghan. Say, within the last six months. These are the ones I know about.”

  I briefly listed them.

  “But if you find anything suspicious about those, any…anomalies, let me know.”

  I heard the scritch of a pen in the background. “Mm. Anything else?”

  “Are you writing this down?”

  “In code, yes. Do not worry, Mr. Boutilier. It will not fall into the right hands.”

  “You mean the wrong hands,” I said absently.

  “Wrong for us, but right for the person who might find them, perhaps.”

  Whatever. I wasn't going to argue about idioms and semantics with a second-language-speaker.

  I began to pace on the sidewalk. “Also find out anything you can about a hacker calling herself—or himself—Cassandra.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And see if you can get me any info on this girl.”

  I read her the name of the BN woman's daughter, and the address Callaghan had provided me.

  “Anything you can dig up. Especially if it isn't something readily available to the public domain.”

  “And here I thought you had a challenge for me.”

  “Don't be cute,” I snapped. “Just do it.”

  “Call back in twelve hours. I will have the information that you want then.”

  Twelve hours.

  That number again.

  “Thanks,” I said shortly.

  I hoped it would be enough time.

  Christina

  That morning I wrote on the memo pad: Can I meet you? I dithered about, wondering where I should place the note but ultimately I just left it on the desk.

  Whoever had left me that note hadn't exactly done much to hide it. It didn't seem like anyone went inside my room except the cleaners—and why would they?

  When Hawk called me in for another unscheduled meeting I assumed he was going to chew me out again for sneaking out last night.