by T. C. Edge
He was flying to earth like a bird.
103
“So, there’s quite literally nothing we can do right now. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Chloe was in one of those moods; lit by purpose, fuelled by a need to help. She stared down the small assembly - Nadia, Tanner, Jason, and Colonel Slattery - with Remus standing proudly on her shoulder. The little drone probably imagined he looked heroic, striking that pose, mimicking the very one Chloe held - though with wings set to his avian hips, instead of arms.
The group had been discussing just what their next step would be for a little while now, though hadn’t really gotten anywhere. The addition of Colonel Slattery’s voice, and Jason’s too - though he spoke only occasionally - hadn’t helped matters much in coming to communal decisions. And whatever decision they came too would be communal. Slattery might have been the boss up in the mountains, but here with this band of rogues, he was just another outcast.
“Well, do you have something new to suggest?” asked Tanner, sighing, and fidgeting with is eyepatch. He’d taken to doing that - the thing must be taking some getting used to.
The others looked on expectantly. Chloe could only shrug, Remus doing the same.
“No…” she admitted. “It’s just…frustrating.”
She huffed again, and moved towards a seat, planting herself down. The falcon remained at its perch in the empty desert, a matter of some annoyance given they’d been there for several long days now. Only hours ago, they’d sent a communication to the CID, warning of an impending attack. Unfortunately, they had no real way of knowing whether or not it had been taken seriously, or if anyone of any proper influence had even seen it.
Thus the debate had begun - what to do next?
They’d turned this way and that, backwards, forwards, and all but upside down in their search for an answer. But really, they ended up with the most appalling one of all, to Chloe sensibilities at least - sit tight, wait for further info.
That was where they were at.
“We should at least move on elsewhere,” Nadia stated, maintaining her regular calm. She looked to Slattery and Jason, the former seated, the latter pacing. She waited for the younger man to stop before explaining. “Before you arrived, we were going to move off in order to get into contact with…” She trailed off, noting Chloe’s glare, a warning not to mention Dax’s name. “With…Chloe’s friend, in LA,” she finished.
Slattery looked at Chloe, a questioning look on his face.
“You really don’t have to hide his identity from us,” he said, frowning. “I know you probably don’t trust me, given…well, the recent past. But in this case there’s nothing that should concern you.”
Chloe looked at him, eyes still skeptical. Irrational though it was, she didn’t wish Dax’s name to get embroiled in this unless entirely necessary.
“Anyway,” Nadia went on, a note of impatience to her voice. “Chloe’s contact in LA had been helping us with intel, as we mentioned before. We were going to move off, contact him - seems the reception around here is, er, questionable. Then you two came along. We could still do that, at least.”
“And what do you hope to learn from him, exactly?” asked Slattery.
Nadia glanced at Chloe, as if for consent. Chloe actually felt rather embarrassed by that, if a little touched as well. I really am a part of this team now, aren’t I, she thought.
“Well, the…guy found us Martha Mitchell’s address,” chimed in Tanner, fingers now running down a particular nasty scar on his forehead, as if rubbing would help it disappear. “We had him searching for anything else that might be useful…specifically a location for this research facility that we think is over on Lake Michigan somewhere, or around about. Anyway, maybe he’s found something by now. It’s…unlikely, but possible.”
Slattery considered it, then nodded. His skin still remained pale from the morning’s exertions, his brow almost permanently furrowed and sweat ever beading in those ruts and cracks. Jason, ever attentive, hovered around him almost constantly, as if Slattery might suddenly keel over again, as he apparently had several days back.
“Well, if we can find somewhere else that’s safe to land, then there’s surely no harm in it,” Slattery said. “That’s if you completely trust this contact of yours not to track our position?”
Chloe frowned heavily.
“I’ll…take that as a ‘yes’,” offered Slattery, managing a weak smile.
The group continued to confer a moment longer, discussing where to head off to. Chloe, naturally, was quite keen to find a landing spot far closer to New York than where they currently were, which was most of the way across the country, and just east of the border to LA.
“Do we even need to land?” she asked, thinking ahead. “We can just stay airborne and cloak again, get in close to New York. If there’s going to be an attack, we might be needed. We might be able to help?”
So far, regular checks of the latest news updates had continued to draw a blank on that front. They had the briefing table set to scanning mode for all news outlets, with notifications ready to inform them of any drama that might unfold in the NDSA capital. So far, nothing. That was at least some comfort.
“We don’t necessarily want to drain too much power,” Slattery said, clearly rather less keen on heading too far eastwards. He probably imagined that there wasn’t much they could do there to help either way. Chloe’s mind was of a somewhat different shade, rather more optimistic. A gorgeous young man named Ragan Hunt had something to do with that.
“We’ve spent half the last week hovering in the air,” Chloe countered, glancing to Tanner for support. “Right? She can take it for a while. And anyway, there are plenty of open areas to land out that way. We’ve gotta get in closer. Cliff? Nadia? Don’t we?”
The two shared a glance, then turned back to Chloe, nodding.
“She’s right,” Nadia said. “Ragan might need us. We can’t just sit this one out.”
Chloe beamed, and rose suddenly to her feet. What was she going to do, run to New York?
“And…what about the sparrow?”
Several pairs of eyes turned to Jason, who looked on inexpressively. He voice was well balanced, almost always calm.
“We…leave it here?” suggested Chloe.
“It’s a valuable jet, Chloe,” said Slattery. “It’s not some old banger to leave in the desert sun.”
“Well, fly it too, then,” she said. “I mean, it cloaks, right? It’s not going to give us away.”
“It might,” murmured Tanner from near the cockpit. “Two jets are easier to spot than one.”
Chloe puffed out a breath of air.
“Details. Leave it, or bring it. There’s something more important to think about here, isn’t there? It’ll take hours to fly east, and every minute wasted chatting in this damned desert is another one closer to seeing the CID destroyed.”
She panted a few short breaths, sending glaring eyes around the room. Damn, where had she procured this fire? She kinda…liked it.
A hesitant moment followed, before Slattery finally said, “You win, Chloe. We’ll take both jets. Jason, shall we?”
He stood, an almost amused look on his face, and began moving for the door, Jason at his side. They headed right out into the desert, crunched across the burnt orange sand, and disappeared into the sparrow.
Five minutes later, both jets were streaming eastward.
Chloe spent the following hours primarily on her feet, feeling rather too energetic to stay seated for long. She hovered between the two ends of the jet, spending time at the briefing table, before heading to the cockpit, ever traversing the space between. Her mind was set to her purpose now which…well, wasn’t exactly defined.
What were they going to do, precisely, if they learned of an attack in New York?
Would they head in there and join the fight? Probably not a great idea, given their approach would most likely be picked up when they got too close - the falcon�
�s cloaking tech was only so effective, and much better at a distance - and they’d be subsequently shot from the skies. Perhaps Tanner could manoeuvre them out of trouble, as he had before, but Chloe didn’t much like the idea of another bout of aerial acrobatics.
In fact, just thinking about that caused her head to spin…
She gulped down the growing sensation of nausea, mind still rushing on. The idea of actually trying to fight these synthetics was another concern, of course. By Slattery and Jason’s account, they were far beyond their own capabilities. It would take a legion, an army, of nano-enhanced to take them down. Adding the likes of herself, Nadia, and a one-eyed Tanner to the mix probably wasn’t going to swing the fight in anyone’s favour.
So…what then?
Chloe didn’t have the answer. Really, she was just happy to be going somewhere, to be on the move. Sitting out in that desert, just waiting for things to happen, had made her feel useless, hollow. She couldn’t hang back and watch everything unfold from a distance. One way or another, she needed to help…in whatever form that would take.
As the jet cut across the skies, Chloe found herself moving to the privacy of the falcon’s rear - by the briefing table once more - with Tanner and Nadia staying up front. She passed a window, and noted the shape of the sparrow out there, cloaked and yet visible by its shimmering outline, the distorted flow of air around it.
She kinda hoped it would just fly off somewhere, or Tanner outrun it. Frankly, Slattery had passed on his update, and as far as she was concerned, had nothing else to contribute.
Reaching the briefing table, she drew an earpiece from her pocket and shoved it straight into her ear, activating the comms device. A tone sounded, making it clear enough that the devices had at least synched this time. She waited for Dax to pick up. It took at least a minute - a frustrating minute - but eventually he did.
“Ragan, is that you?” he asked, sounding cautious, his voice a whisper.
“No, it’s me, Dax.”
“Chloe?”
“Yeah. Are you all right? You sound…weird.”
“Just wary,” said Dax, breathing out, his voice relaxing a little. “Last time I spoke on this comms link, it was with Ragan. I thought he had the earpiece with him. What’s been going on, Chloe? I heard Ragan was back with the CID?”
“Well I’m hoping you can help me with that,” Chloe said, pacing around the briefing table. Remus fluttered alongside her, spinning around her head, occasionally landing on her shoulder if ever she stopped. “I’ve been trying to contact you for days but there’s been no connection.”
“Same on my end,” said Dax. “Where have you been?”
“Death Valley,” said Chloe. “Heart of the desert, waiting for news. We went there after Cincinnati. Ragan gave himself up to some Panthers. Tanner got injured. Mikel escaped. That’s more or less the short version. Since then we’ve been mostly out of the loop, until this morning…”
She went on to quickly recite what had happened over the course of the day, updating Dax on Slattery’s arrival, and the events from the base in Colorado. He murmured, concerned, as she spoke of the synthetics.
“Already,” he whispered down the line. “They’ve been unleashed already?”
“Seems like it,” huffed Chloe, stamping a little more forcefully around the back of the jet. “I’m guessing you’ve found nothing about the location of any secret research centre?”
She spoke the question with a naive hope, just a weak one really. She halted her step, waiting, praying for a positive response. She immediately came to realise she wasn’t going to get one.
“Well…” Dax said. The tone of his voice was all she needed. Nothing. He’d found nothing. “I’ve been scanning,” he continued. “But no luck so far. It’s an almost impossible task, like finding a needle in a haystack. I’ve been trying to hack into MSA databases but some are out of reach, even for me. I’ve been crawling others from my end here, and both the NDSA and SRA, but I can’t be too obvious. If I delve too deep, they’ll track me here and…”
“Don’t put yourself in danger, Dax,” Chloe said suddenly. “You’ve done enough already. I don’t want you getting caught for cyber-espionage or anything like that.”
“I’m careful, Chloe. You know me. But there’s only so big a footprint I can make before someone starts sniffing about. I’ve reached the limit of what I can do here, I’m afraid.”
Chloe’s disappointment, pronounced though it was, faded in the face of concern for her friend. She assured him again that he’d done enough, and not just over the last few days, but over the previous months and years too. To think she never fully trusted him until recently, always wondering if he had some ulterior motive when he helped her forge new identities. That seemed stupid now. He was as loyal as a pet hound.
“So, what have you heard about Ragan?” she asked him. “We know so little here. Just that he went to the CID to persuade his commander there to try to take the MSA threat seriously.”
“I don’t know much else beyond that,” Dax said.
Chloe’s frame deflated further. She stopped, hands down onto the briefing table, all but ready to slump.
“Nothing?”
“Sorry, Chloe,” Dax said. “The CID are pretty much out of reach for me. I suspect he’s there, now, helping them in their search.”
“Great,” Chloe sighed, shaking her head. “It’s the last place I want him to be right now.”
She’d informed Dax just now of the warning they’d passed onto the CID about an imminent attack. Dax had agreed that it seemed likely that the CID would indeed be their next target, given they were now the sole agency, by the sounds of it, aware of the possible threat.
“So, the WSA really don’t know anything yet?” Chloe asked. “Do they even know the data’s been stolen?”
“Rumours are beginning to trickle in about that, yeah,” Dax told her. “It’s possible - likely, even - that the WSA have spies in New York who have discovered the truth, or some of it at least. There’s nothing to suggest they’re looking into the MSA, though.”
“Well I wish they would,” Chloe grunted. “The more people we have looking into it, the better. Actually…” She had a thought, a bright one as far as she considered it. Remus halted, landing on her shoulder, looking at her expectantly.
“What?” queried Dax, his voice dulling a little with caution.
“I’m just thinking,” Chloe said. “That more eyeballs would help. Could you maybe leak information across WSA networks, given what you know, and what we’ve told you? Get some of the higher ups over there taking notice. Could you do that…without putting the spotlight on yourself, of course.”
The line went quiet for a moment. Then Dax spoke again.
“It’s possible,” he said. “I could at least turn some heads, and then keep an eye on things from there. It’s…a good idea, Chloe.”
“I try,” Chloe said, feeling a little lighter. Just a little, but enough for now. “People need to become aware of what’s happening,” she went on. “The MSA are a continental threat now. Maybe this will force the NDSA and WSA to work together.”
“That’s a positive way of looking at it,” Dax noted.
“Well, the world could use a little optimism, right?”
“Sure, I just thought you were more jaded than that.”
“Oh, I’m still jaded,” Chloe said, smiling at the back of the falcon. “Just trying to mix things up a bit.”
“Ragan got something to do with that?” Dax asked.
Chloe’s grin mellowed, and she didn’t answer. Ragan…in the midst of the CID, about to come under attack. She swallowed the horrible thoughts that suddenly spawned in her head. She wouldn’t give them space to breed, to grow. She had to assume he was OK right now, and that he’d get out of there alive. There was no other way for her to think.
“I…should probably go,” Chloe said. “I think we’re nearing the NDSA border.”
She stepped to the window and look
ed out. The lands below were darkening now, though she faintly recognised the landscape. They were passing through the neutral zones, heading straight eastwards for New York. Tanner and Nadia would know just how close they could get, and still remain hidden and out of sight.
“And what’s your plan exactly?” Dax asked. “I don’t think you should be attempting any rescue mission, Chloe. If that’s what you’re thinking?” His tone was rebuking, like a disgruntled father deterring a reckless child from acting too impulsively.
“I don’t know exactly,” Chloe admitted. “I just want to be close, just in case. I think we’re going to send another warning. Hopefully they’ll take it more seriously this time.”
“They may have already.”
“I guess. We don’t know either way, so no harm in trying.”
“Right, well be safe, Chloe Phantom. I’ll start leaking what I know to the WSA agencies over here. If they bite…”
“When they bite,” countered Chloe.
Dax sighed.
“Sure. When they bite,” he said, “then I’ll keep an eye on what they come up with.”
“Thanks, Dax,” Chloe said.
The line shut off, and she moved right down the jet and towards the cockpit, finding Nadia and Tanner engaged in soft conversation. Chloe noted the shape of Nadia’s eyes, the concern, her hand draped sympathetically across his back, rubbing lightly. She didn’t need to ask what this was about. It was a low moment, a private moment. The sort of moment Tanner would have to deal with now, and for some time, as he came to terms with his facial disfigurement.
They saw Chloe approach, and Tanner turned away, shielding his eyes. He looked back a second later, a false smile drawn onto his face.
“What’s up?” he asked breezily.
“Um…I just spoke with Dax,” Chloe said. She quickly updated them on the conversation, the skies outside darkening further as they stretched to the east, speeding the onset of night as the sun set over in the west.
The others nodded along. The news wasn’t good, particularly, but held a hint of hope sprinkled within it. Chloe, despite her natural inclination to blow hot and cold, was feeling optimistic about some of it, at least.