“Hold on there, miss”. His mouth made a thin smile.
She tried to say something but her voice did not obey her. Fear tore inside her like a hurricane. Sweat poured down her back and spread cold chills through her body. The guard studied her thoroughly and stretched out his hand to indicate that she should remain.
“One moment.” she heard steps running behind her and instinctively she tensed her back muscles and pulled up her shoulders and expected to be tackled. But the impact never came. Instead, the other guard jogged up to her and while he smiled he pulled out a scarf. She looked in suprisement around to the place where the other guard had come from.
“Here miss, you dropped your scarf.” the smiling guard nodded short at her while Elisabeth mumbled a thank you.
She damned herself for being so reckless and tried her best to behave normally and smiled to the guards while she turned around and walked away. She glanced discreetly at the guards to see if they were following her but they had turned around and now walked back to the elevators. A stone fell from her chest when she saw that. She took a couple of deep breaths, tried to get her heart under control and sat down on a bench to get her thoughts together.
It was not her father that had convinced her but he had spoken very highly of Tabula Rasa to her for a long time. He had searched for something new and he had found it here at Tabula Rasa. Elisabeth lived during that time with her husband in Madrid but her husband had died in a car accident when he was on his way home from work and she had become a widow.
She looked up and the artificial sun warmed her face. A couple of service carriages further down along one side of the park cleaned the streets and a couple of sanitation workers walked with small, mobile cleaning units. A faint smell of cleaning detergents reached her. Elisabeth looked at them but everything was different, what was normal yesterday was now the opposite. A violent, dark shadow had taken over inside of her and at once the world had become hostile. Some service technicians were walking together and talked about a reparation assignment they were doing. An elderly lady was out walking with her cat in a leash.
She hoped intensely that her father had managed to get out of the apartment and brought the holocube with him. Her brain was racing. She arrived at one of the elevators that would take her to her apartment and stepped in. She touched her pocket, the holocube was still there. Safe. As something steady to hold on to when her surroundings had started to crumble. She stepped out of the elevator. Looked up and down the long aisle. Nobody there. Slowly she walked up to her door, entered the code on the code lock when a voice whispered behind her.
“Elisabeth!”
She jumped and spun around.
It was her father and she exhaled explosively.
“Daddy! What are you doing here!” she threw herself forward and gave him a big hug.
Richard held his daughter hard and tears ran down his face.
“Marina is dead. You can’t go home, they know. They know everything.”
Elisabeth gasped.
“What are you saying? How?”
Richard shook his head while he told what had happened in the apartment. He told about the men that had come for the holocube and how the red-haired had picked up Marina as if she was a doll and how he had broken her neck. Elisabeth saw the terror in her father’s face and tears started to run down her cheeks.
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that they would come so fast.”
Her voice choked and when he saw how she suffered he took her in his arms and held her tight.
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t possibly have known that those men would come.” he calmed his voice while he tried to find strength inside, “it’s not your fault.”
They stood a couple of minutes and tried to digest the terrible thing that had happened to Marina. Richards’s voice was low.
“They will be coming after us too you know. Those men won’t quit. I saw that in them. They will keep on coming until they get want they want. We must escape, immediately. You can’t go up and pick up something. We have to leave right away.”
Elisabeth nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes, they will probably do that. They want what is on the holocube. It is information that we have to get out from here.”
Richard looked at her.
“What does the holocube contain? What is it that is so important on it?”
Elisabeth looked at her father.
“Do you have it? Did you bring it when you fled?”
Richard dug his hand into the pocket and pulled it out. She took it and turned it over in her hand. She nodded solemnly.
“It contains information’s that will change the world. Forever.”
Richard stared blankly at his daughter.
“What do you mean change the world?”
Elisabeth took up her own holocube and kept both together in her open hand while a sweat drop ran down against her eye. She wiped it off.
“We are not alone. We are not alone in universe and here is the proof.”
*
Outside Tabula Rasa, Madagascar.
2048-12-29
Jonathan were slowly closing in to his destination. The boat bobbed forward while he stretched out on the hard bed below deck and the rhythm of the waves lapped softly against the hull.
He tried to enjoy the salty smell of the sea that surrounded him. The metallic taste of blood had come and gone in the recent hours and he took a couple of deep breaths to clear the taste and focused on feeling the air flowing in and out of his body. It had been a long trip but it had gone well. He had gotten to Africa’s east coast with the private jet that the Amber group had access to and there he had gone onboard Teis, an eight-meter-long boat that would take him further toward his destination.
He rolled over to his side and pulled out his phone. It was a high-tech model that contained some extra features that the Amber group’s technology department had added. He looked at the screen and read the message from Marie for the tenth time.
“I love you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given up on us.”
He knew that Marie had real doubts regarding their relationship but they had something good going on. That was what he thought anyway. And he thought she felt the same thing. But it had been her who had broken up their relationship. He stared at the phone and sighed. It was not the best moment to have love troubles when you were going out on a mission. But maybe that how it was. To try to balance a professional career as an agent with a love life was doomed to become complicated. What should he answer? He was not sure, he gazed at the message a long time before he moaned, shrugged and closed the phone.
He pulled the Oxycodone jar out of his baggage, opened it, took two pills and put it back. The small pink colored pills looked innocent in his hand. A couple more days. Yes, just a couple more days and he would quit. With that thought in his head, he took a sip from a water bottle and swallowed the pills. He calmed down for a couple of minutes and pulled a thick sweater over his head and went up through the floor board.
“Good morning, Jonathan, sleep well?” a warm voice said.
He turned around. A short, slender man were standing ahead by the edge of the boat and smiled widely at him. It was Jann Edel, the captain of the boat. Jann and Jonathan had met once before but this was their first mission together. Jann was a few years past fifty and had a face and a head that was covered with white hair and a beard. Jonathan thought that he looked like Santa Claus with his extravagant hairy coat. He chuckled.
“Good morning, Jann. How’s it going up here?”
Jann bent down and pulled up a rope.
“It’s going great. We have kept good speed during the night and I estimate that we haven’t more than a couple of hours left.”
Jonathan had counted on that Tabula Rasa would not discover their small vessel. Tabula Rasa had without a doubt access to a huge arsenal of weapons to keep both curious guest and more determined intruders away. But there was also a limit on how much control they
could have on their surroundings, they could not control all small ports along the coast of Madagascar. They were too many. That was what Jonathan counted on. They had planned to dock at a small fishing port on the western side, five kilometers south of Tabula Rasa. Backmann had arranged that one of their men would be waiting in the village that was next to the fishing port.
The boat was designed that the radar would deflect off it and not back to the transmitter as much as possible. It would help them not to be detected. Besides that, would also the fact that the boat was made out of carbon nanotubes that absorbed radar waves help them further to avoid being detected. The nanotubes were built in a honey comb shape structure that had the property that when a radar wave hit it so absorbed the radar waves energy inside the complex structure that the material was made out of. And besides the stealth features it also had a mini submarine attached under the keel.
Jann nodded at Jonathan.
“Not much left now. I think you should get ready.”
Their plan was as simple as easy. Jonathan had never liked complicated plans with many complicated moves. The more moves there were, the bigger the risk it would fail. Keep it simple had been his motto as far as he could remember.
He nodded.
“Good, I think this is close enough. Give me two minutes to prepare and get ready. When you give the green light I go.”
Jann glanced toward Tabula Rasa that silhouetted against the horizon. Its structures reached up against the sky as a modern artwork that had grown into gigantic proportions. He pointed.
“Have you been there before?”
Jonathan stared at the pyramids far away on the horizon while he shook his head.
“No, never. Have you?”
Jann laughed.
“Yes, of course I have. I have been there many times. Many of those who live at Tabula Rasa usually goes out around Madagascar to explore the surroundings here. You know, it’s a pretty dramatic landscape here.”
Jonathan’s cheeks blushed.
“I apologize; I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No worries,” Jann said and padded Jonathan on the shoulder and pointed at the gear that Jonathan was busy with, “What you got there?”
Jonathan opened two big baggage’s made of cloth that were in front of him and lifted something that looked like a heavy tube with a small propeller attached on the side of it. Jann frowned while he helped Jonathan with taking out the heavy equipment. When they were done unpacking Jonathan smiled contently and pointed down at what they had unpacked.
“That will get me close to Tabula Rasa without detection.”
Jann scratched his chin.
“And what exactly is that thing that will do that then?”
“This is an underwater scooter.” Jonathan replied smilingly, “A compact unit that can produce a cruising speed of almost fifteen knots and have a range of almost an hour.”
The underwater scooter in front of them was a powerful, compact model and could basically soundlessly tow a person over twenty kilometers under water. Jonathan pointed at his wetsuit and air tubes.
“And with those I can also keep warm without a problem. It will be great, I will arrive at the shore dry and rested.” He laughed, “Any contaminations in the water that I should worry about?”
Jann shook his head and gave him a thumbs up.
“No, the levels are not harmful and your wetsuit will give you enough protection. Just make sure you don’t swallow too much water.”
* * *
Jonathan held the handles hard and tried to relax while the water closed in around him. The current was relatively strong and Jonathan had to struggle to keep his balance while he slid forward under the water. His arms were stretched out and his body slid behind the underwater scooter. The strong engine rushed forward through the water and the equipage reached fast its cruising speed of about fifteen knots. The range was little more than twenty kilometers but it would be enough. The speed increased slowly in the beginning but after not more than thirty seconds it was going at full speed. Jonathan used his body to steer and he slid through the water. The relatively warm water did that his wetsuit had not any problems to keep him warm. He was basically completely covered in the rubber suit that went down to his ankles.
He slid through a weightless universe where the sun rays glittering penetrated down through the water but instead of shoals of fish in all their colors that glided past him and corals below him, an underwater desert spread out in all its directions. A couple of stingrays slid in to his field of vision from the left and he changed the course until he softly slid by them and the animals majestically turned to the right and continued their soundless journey under the water. It was something magical but at the same time frightening to be under water. He had always been fascinated by the sea and the animals that lived there. In his youth he had often dived with his father and when he had been eighteen he and a friend had travelled to Thailand where they both had taken diving certificate and worked for a summer to receive tourists that came there to dive in the beautiful, lost underwater world. But the destruction of sea that had started a long time ago started to reach its way here too. A cold chill went through his spine when he saw the grey, lifeless bottom slide past him.
He adjusted a couple of relays on the scooter and noticed that the battery drained faster than he had expected. Before he had departed he had calculated on a downstream of a little more than two knots but now that he was in the water had the downstream not been as strong as he had expected. He made a couple of fast calculations in his head. It would do but he would have a smaller margin than he had counted on. He adjusted the course further to be sure he took the shortest route to the beach a couple of kilometers from Tabula Rasa that was his target.
After barely forty minutes a warning light started to blink on the main display on the scooter. It was the battery. Jonathan’s stomach clenched involuntarily. He pushed the scooter as much as he could and every meter he continued was a victory for him. After a further minute or so he could feel how the speed went down and he tried to make his body as stream-shaped as possible. He turned off the scooter, let go of I t and let it sink to the bottom and confirmed his position.
* * *
From the beach below the fishing port there was not more than fifty meters up to the village. The Amber group had quite reliable information about Tabula Rasa’s safety and Jonathan hoped that it would be enough. The contact that Backmann had spoken about seemed to be aware of the problem. The contact would have an access card that gave the holder and four guests in and out access to Tabula Rasa. Once inside he would locate Paco, Elisabeth and her father and girlfriend and smuggle them out safely. That was the plan roughly.
Jonathan moved fast. He got out of the water, pulled of the wetsuit and dug a hole in the soft, wet sand and pressed the wetsuit down and covered the hole. The moon was low and the warm wind breezed through the area and he ran crouching in the heavy sand, took cover behind a rock and was just about to move on when there was something in his consciousness that warned him. It was a clock inside of him that started ringing. The lonely sound from a cicada was heard and he smelled the weak smell of tobacco. Carefully he peeked from behind the stone and looked in to the darkness. He could not distinguish anything but after less than thirty seconds he saw a flame that quickly got lit and put out.
It must be a guard. The guard was about twenty meters away from him in open terrain. It was too far away for him to make it there and overpower the guard before he would pull out his weapon and he did not want to kill the man. If the guard disappeared and did not answer on normal calls it would soon to be discovered. He had to find a way around the guard without being detected. His thoughts raced, he had to do something that distracted the guard enough for him to pass unnoticed.
From his backpack he pulled out a black capsule, barely ten centimeters long. It was coded to his fingerprint and could only be opened by him. He placed his right thumb on the edge and the casing slid aside and a
buzzing sounded for a couple of seconds and then went silent again. His fingers pushed on the control screen that covered one side of it and then held it out straight in front of him.
After a few seconds a robot slipped out of one side of the casing. The robot was barely a centimeter long and resembled a larger mosquito, basically it was almost completely invisible. Slowly it moved up and forward. Jonathan put the capsule back in the backpack and got ready. He looked tensed into the darkness and waited.
Earlier he had programed the mosquito to act as a bait. It would go to a defined point and from there send out sounds that mimicked human voices. After a defined command, it would return to the casing.
The guard had put out his cigarette but had not moved. About ten seconds passed. Jonathan could faintly hear something that sounded like a conversation. The sound seemed to come from the edge of the forest that was just behind the shore. He carefully peeked up behind the rock again, saw the guard moving along the edge with his weapon pointing forward. Jonathan smiled to himself.
Jonathan took himself in a wide arch past the guard and continued inland towards the village. After a few minutes, he heard a weak click from his backpack telling him that the mosquito had returned to his nest. He took a couple of deep breaths, focused and ran.
*
Sydney, Australia
2048-12-29
The chain of events was inevitably moving forward. Below Dennis Topps apartment, a dark van stopped down the street where it been staying every night for the past week. The rain poured down and everything it came in contact was made wet and shiny. The street lights threw long shadows over the wealthy street as the branches of the big trees swayed in the rising wind. A weak scent of jasmine slid through the air.
The van had no windows in the back and the windows in the front were toned so you could not see in. The driver of the car pushed a button on the dashboard and in the back of the van two men who sat on two metal chairs started to work. The smell of old coffee was strong inside the van and the inside echoed of the drumming sound of the rain on the roof. One of the men had a long scar that ran diagonally across his forehead.
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