Watchers of the Night

by Matthew Keith

  * * *

  The following morning at breakfast, Dittrich came to Paul, Liz, Juliet, Kenneth, and Parker’s table to inform Paul that he wouldn’t be leaving for his mission until after sunset and that he was to report to the helipad at 9 p.m. His day training would be spent with Lisa, working on item recall, as well as attending a group lecture on isolationism and identity.

  Once Dittrich left the room, Kenneth leaned forward in his chair and said, “Something’s very wrong. We all know that the second mission is an overnighter that always leaves during the day.” He looked at Paul. “I don’t want to scare you, but whoever you get paired up with on this mission is almost definitely a part of the group that wants Abrams out.”

  “So what do I do?” Paul asked. “It’s not like I can just tell them I’m not going to go.”

  “No,” Parker chimed in, “we want you to go. We need to know what’s going on. Ask questions. Find out what they’re planning and when they’re planning it.”

  “Shouldn’t I go to Dr. Abrams?” Paul asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if we kept him in the loop?”

  “He’s in the loop,” Kenneth answered. “He’s always in the loop. I guarantee he knows more about what is going on with this than we do. That’s the issue for us lowly Watchers; I trust the man, but his operational style has always been to share information only when it needs to be shared.”

  “Did you notice the way all the Sentinels were called away immediately after day break?” asked Liz in a whisper. “What do you think that is all about?”

  “I thought it was just for Steven’s training,” Juliet replied.

  “No way,” said Parker. “Not all of them at the same time. They always work their training in shifts, half on and half off.”

  “Let’s all meet down in the Sanctum at lunch time,” Kenneth said. “With any luck, everyone else will be in this room and we’ll be able to discuss things with a little more privacy. Let’s all ask questions and see if we can find out where the Sentinels are as well as anything we can about Paul’s mission tonight.”

  Everyone nodded and as they stood up to leave, Kenneth added, “Keep your eyes open.”

  Paul found Lisa down in his usual training room waiting for him. She had flash cards as well as a computer program loaded for instruction on item recall. After discussing the techniques that she would be focusing on, she placed him in front of the computer. The program was essentially made up of a group of photo slides that would flash into view for a random amount of time between one and ten seconds. After a slide was shown, there would be a list of questions regarding the photo that, if answered correctly, would allow him to go on to the next level of difficulty in the program. For each level of difficulty, an additional slide was shown. At times, the questions would be about just one of the slides, other times they would be about a group of them, and sometimes the questions would include all slides. Even with Paul’s remarkable memory, it became extremely difficult once he reached the point where five slides would flash past and he would have to remember some of the smallest details regarding each and every one of them.

  At one point, Paul made an effort to engage Lisa in conversation that didn’t have anything to do with his training, hoping to talk about what might have happened after he and Hodge had returned from their mission, but she deflected every attempt. She would answer his question in a lighthearted tone, which at first he mistook for her not understanding what he was asking, but after a number of attempts he saw that even though her tone was light, there was a warning in her eyes, so he backed off.

  They stuck to her lesson plan until lunch time, at which point she simply said, “Great work today, as always. I’ll see you after lunch in the red room for the Isolationism and Identity lecture.”

  Giving him a thin-lipped smile that didn’t reach her eyes, she left the room without another word.

  Confused, he made his way to the Sanctum. Why hadn’t she talked to him? She had gone to such lengths and personal risk to warn him about Hodge the other night. Why would she not take the opportunity to speak with him when they’d had a whole morning together in the same room?

  That question was on his mind as he punched in his code and turned the cog wheel to open the door to the Sanctum, but was quickly forgotten when he saw not just the four Walkers he’d agreed to meet, but their Sentinels as well. They were all talking in low tones, their heads together. They stopped when they heard the door open, looking up in mild panic.

  “What’s up, buddy,” Steven greeted him.

  Paul closed the door. “Everything alright?” he asked of the room in general.

  “We don’t know,” Kenneth replied. “It may be nothing, or it may be the beginning.” Pausing to look Paul directly in the eyes, he said, “All our Sentinels were called to train Steven this morning, but none of theirs.”

  “Ok?” Paul replied. “That’s how it is has been every day for over a week.”

  “No it hasn’t,” Kenneth said. “Steven has been trained every morning by the same group of Sentinels and every afternoon he gets trained by a different group.’

  “And I take it that some of the Sentinels here are normally part of the afternoon group?” Paul guessed.

  Kenneth nodded and Liz chimed in, “And it wasn’t just our Sentinels that were called away this morning—it was all of them.”

  “So what were the rest of them doing if yours were training Steven?” Paul wondered out loud.

  “Exactly,” answered Kenneth.

  Just then the door to lounge beeped once and was opened by Rex. He paused in the doorway as they all turned to see who it was. He looked back at the group, narrowed his eyes, but left his earphones stuffed in his ears and didn’t say a word. He closed the door without taking his eyes off them and walked past, toward his safe room.

  No one spoke for a few moments until Juliet whispered, “Do you think he heard us?”

  Everyone jumped a little when Steven replied in a normal voice, “Does it matter? If he’s part of a group planning something, then he already knows who he has in his little club. And if he isn’t part of it, then we got nothing to worry about. Besides, he had those damn ear buds jammed in his ears anyway.”

  Still whispering, Juliet said, “What do you think he’s doing down here? People almost never come down here for lunch.”

  “I’m sure he’s wondering the same thing multiplied by ten right now,” Parker answered.

  They stood around, not saying anything for a little while longer, waiting for Rex to come back out. Paul got a soda and some trail mix in place of a real lunch. Steven went for the cupcakes.

  Finally, Rex came back through the room. He was wearing a different shirt than he’d had on and, again, didn’t say anything to anyone as he walked past. He gave them all a weird, questioning look and then made his exit, closing the door behind him.

  “Well?” Liz asked. “We don’t have that long before the lecture starts and we’re all supposed to be there. Did anyone find anything out today?”

  Everyone looked at Paul. “I …” he stammered, “no. I spent the morning in training with Lisa. She didn’t say a word about anything except stuff that pertained to what she was teaching me. I tried to get her to talk about other things, but she always switched the topic back to the training. She…”

  And then he realized what it was that he’d seen in her eyes when she left the room. “She looked scared.”