by Alex Howell
Well, it would make do. It would just have to make do.
Raina, in fact, smirked then, as if she had found some other devious suggestion. Mason tried his best not to react too strongly.
“You want to shoot some pool?”
Of all the things Mason had expected, that was not one of them. It was something of a relief to hear, and it made him relax visibly. He even laughed at the idea.
“I’m not very good though.”
“That’s not what Luke told me.”
Damn, well…
This, I can still string out a bit.
“Really?”
“Yeah—he said you were the biggest pool shark in the SEALs.”
Mason chuckled, his ability to lie and deceive suddenly eluding him. It was true—he was an absolute monster at pool games, especially in his early-20s, and had won hundreds of dollars doing so. It was a way that he had made more than a few enemies outside of the teams.
But that ability to hide that fact somehow eluded him in front of a beautiful woman his age.
“I may have jumped the shark—but I don’t know that I was a pool shark.”
“Oh whatever Mason—come on let’s play!”
Well, she’s asking for it.
“All right Raina, if you insist.”
Stepping in front of the pool table, Mason grabbed the rack, and prepared to set up the game. Just as he was getting ready to place it down on the table however, Raina playfully snatched it right out of his hands.
“What’s that for?” Mason said with a smirk.
“Because I don’t trust you! I know you cheat!”
Whether it was true or not, Mason had a ready made answer for her insinuation.
“Well Raina, whether you call it cheating or strategy—either way you look at it, it’s all just part of playing the game.”
Raina smirked back at him while rolling her eyes.
Perhaps, in the end, it wasn’t going to be so bad that he had left that door open.
9
September 15th, 2028
2:49 p.m. PST
Palo Alto, California
Ten days had passed since Clara had started Stanford, and it was everything she had hoped it would be.
In fact, if she was being honest, it was a little too much of what she had hoped it would be.
Her biggest problem was that she had just tried to take on everything in the first few weeks of college, and it was coming back to bite her right now. It was a trait that she knew she’d picked up from her father—do everything, kick butt at everything, and figure out the consequences of it later. The problem was that the consequences of it were living right now, and she wasn’t a fan of it right now. Classes, extracurriculars, the occasional party, calling her father, intramural sports… it felt like if Clara could just put a couple of them in the rearview mirror, life would be much easier. But which ones?
It also wasn’t helping matters that her suspicions of grade hacking were still ongoing. While her grade in the history class had risen, it still did not align with what she felt she had done on the test. Her attempts to meet with the professor were met with the stonewalling of how he didn’t discuss grades, only course material, and her attempts to reach the class teaching assistants were more of the same. It was frustrating as hell, but she was determined not to raise hell until the end of the semester. If it was just a computer glitch, then what was there to be worried about?
It’s rarely “just” anything, though. Dad taught me that, and I know it.
Let’s just get to class right now, though.
Which… is also seeming to be harder than it should be.
Clara was winding her way through crowds of students to get to her constitutional history class. Even though it was a class she loved, she seemed to be habitually late in getting there. Part of that was because her previous class ended very close to this one, but part of it was just she always felt like she was a step behind in everything that she did. This was a habit that she had hoped to break as she was huffing and puffing her heart out to the lecture hall in time.
Looking at her watch as she passed by the student center, she thought that she might actually get to class with a couple minutes to spare. Campus was bustling as it always was, but a clear path to her building was evident, and aside from a minor protest going on near her, she had a clear path to her class.
But then her quest for punctuality was interrupted when she heard a familiar voice shout, revealing that her so-called minor protest was seeming to be anything but.
“Get the hell off my campus!”
She turned to her right to see her roommate, Serena, boldly standing in the face of a group of protesters. Clara could immediately tell that these people weren’t students, most of them were older than college age. One look at the lead protester’s sign seemed to say it all.
“HEY STANFORD! Teach your kids the evil of Socialism! Get rid of Pierce Richards!”
The guy next to him had a sign that was even less flattering.
“Pierce Richards is nothing more than a puppet of the Kremlin!”
The fact that Serena had roared at them and that the crowd of protesters were roaring right back did not suggest the kind of civic town debate that Clara had read about Lincoln and other American luminaries engaging in. It seemed more akin to a sort of vitriolic protest that could break out at any second, and the last thing she needed was to see her roommate sent to the hospital within just a few short weeks of class starting. However, it was nice to see Serena be so politically active, even if it was in a rather rough circumstance.
On the other hand, though, Clara just wanted to go to class and know that drama wasn’t going to further infect her life. Flashes of possibilities that included a brawl with protesters, being spat upon, or worse filled her hair. Serena didn’t seem like the kind of person who knew how to back down or recognize the perils of a situation; her hitch-hiking from Seattle had proved as much. If Clara didn’t do anything, it was going to get ugly.
We’re also not going to win anything by doing this. We’re not going to change anything doing this. This kind of protest is just going to make things ten times worse.
“Serena!” Clara shouted, trying to pull her roommate away from the madness. “What’s going on?”
Serena turned and nodded to her in acknowledgment before pointing across the street to the protesters. Clara had hoped that by shouting at her, it would break her from her daze, as if snapping her back to reality away from the chaos of the streets, but all it had seemed to do was invigorate Serena to make her believe she had more support. Clara muttered under her breath as Serena turned back and gave a crude gesture to the crowd before turning to her.
“Clara! These clowns are causing trouble!”
“That’s right!” a man in the crowd roared with a microphone. “Listen up, all you little brats in your Stanford Ivy Tower! We’ve got news for you! As much as you think Richards is hip and cool, you just helped vote into office a man dedicated to tearing this country apart!”
Clara watched with horror as Serena, remaining on the campus lawn, got right up in the man’s face and all but spit on him with the venom of her words. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before—and it represented just how far away from her old world, the one she was comfortable in, she was.
In the world in Baltimore, there was order and comfort, and it had nothing to do with who voted for whom. It was just that people respected each other and had a certain way of life.
But here in Stanford, whether because of the elevated intellect, the money around the place, or just the general atmosphere, everything felt supercharged. It wasn’t enough to support Pierce Richards or anyone else; one had to make picket signs in support of him or stand behind a podium and give a passionate defense. It wasn’t enough to believe that America had been a great country; one had to suddenly defend it against charges Clara had never heard before. She hoped that it would be the kind of four years that would make her an iron-strong wom
an, but, right now, she just felt like a weak pillow getting punched from different directions.
I miss Baltimore. I miss dad. I miss home.
“Serena,” Clara finally said, physically dragging her away. “Let them be.”
“The hell, Clara?!?”
But Clara wasn’t having any of it.
“I get what you’re doing, and I think your support of Richards is great,” she said, trying to speak the same language as Serena. “But you engaging these guys is just an emotional play. If you want to make a difference, write a column. Get on the campaign grassroots trail. But don’t fight people who just want to record you and post it on YouTube to mock you.”
Serena let out a long sigh, removed her wrist, and stared at Clara.
“I hate that you’re right,” she said.
But then, just when things were starting to look good, one of the protesters shoved Serena from behind, knocking her to the ground. Clara, without thinking about it, relying on total instinct, delivered a strong punch to the man’s gut, bending him over and knocking the wind out of him. The protesters were so stunned that they went silent, staring at Clara.
Clara herself stared at what she had done. She’d never acted with violence before. She was well-trained, but she had never done anything like this in such a public setting. And now…
Serena gasped at her. Clara helped her up, maintaining a fierce glare at the protesters. In reality, she was trying to hide tears that were threatening to form at any second; she had lost control of herself, and she knew it. She should have grabbed Serena, pulled her away, and told campus police. Instead, she’d foolishly taken matters into her own hands.
What if one of the protesters had struck her back? What if more of them had? Did she really think she could handle the entire onslaught of forces like that?
There was no way. Clara knew she’d gotten lucky. She may not have next time.
She pulled Serena away, saying “Don’t engage next time,” before storming ahead, trying to hide her forming tears. She added nothing more as she walked away.
Clara, with her head down, trudged on to her constitution class. She was going to be late again.
But more than that, she had a lot more to figure out in her head than just some statistics and facts about the document that made the United States the United States.
She had to figure out what the hell was wrong with her.
10
September 15th, 2028
5:49 p.m. EST
Washington, D.C.
The days that had followed that bar meeting to discuss strategy had surprised Mason with how much they stressed him out.
He had become something of a manager for the team on this specific mission, given that he was the one who had suggested the idea of creating a “perimeter” around the city, and he felt responsible for the entire team. His worst fear was that the team would fail, not because of the ineptitude of anyone—he had complete faith in everyone, from Kyle going through local IP addresses to Case using his ingenuity to Chris asking around—but because of his own shortcomings as a leader.
If anything happened over the next two months leading up to election day that involved Ebola, Mason knew all fault lay with him. And there was something horrifying and intense to say to that. At least with General Jones and Warrior, it was clear where the fault was, but here…
He had visions of Washington D.C. turning into a giant field of dead bodies, many of them prominent politicians and activists. He feared members of Onyx lying in the streets, their bodies falling apart and crumbling under the gory effects of Ebola. He saw himself suffering but unable to die, a punishment worse than death himself. They were visions that felt distressingly real in their possibilities.
Fortunately, nothing had happened.
That didn’t mean Mason’s heart didn’t skip a beat when he saw stories of people going to the hospital with symptoms similar to Ebola, but they were one-off, isolated cases of other things. For perhaps the only time in his life, they were more coincidences than they were actual troubling things.
On this particular afternoon, with no immediate dangers—but also no further leads— he met up with Raina and Kyle at a conference room in the Onyx HQ in an attempt to collaborate on what they had uncovered so far. Mason wasn’t particularly optimistic, and when Kyle began his findings, it wasn’t promising either.
“Looks like we’re in the clear—as far as outbreak goes,” Kyle said softly. “Hospitals have remained negative for suspected cases of Ebola. I went through their records online, and I don’t have anything. Unfortunately.”
Suddenly, his phone rang. Kyle excused himself, apologizing multiple times and stepped to a corner. He began speaking more and more animatedly, but Mason turned his attention to Raina.
“Yeah—prisons and jails are clear too. The commissioner just sent me a report, I’m replying back now.”
“Damn,” Mason said. “No one else on the team has anything. You’re sure about the intel we have?”
“A hundred percent,” Raina said. “I was told they’re in D.C., but it’s like trying to find two cockroaches in a city of a few million cockroaches. They’re good at laying low.”
“Damn. Well, at least nothing has happened yet.”
But we’re on a timer.
It was a slow timer, though, which made things very different. Mason was used to expressing his view in terms of hours, not days. If he had 60 days to the election—a little less in reality, but a decent rounding number nevertheless—then he had something in the neighborhood of nearly 15 hundred hours to go.
Suffice to say, no one in their right mind was going to count that down as someone would 24 hours.
“So what do you think we should do, Mason?” Raina asked.
Mason shook his head, frustrated at the lack of information.
“Well, let’s say where they won’t be. They won’t be in hospitals, because there’s no point in making the sick sicker. They probably aren’t in places where the rich live or socialize; if these guys are going to be stressed and foreign, they aren’t going to blend in with the snobbish crowd. So they’d probably be in some of the less populated, more run-down areas.”
“True,” Raina said. “But, unfortunately, there’s a bunch of those spots.”
“Yeah, I know,” Mason said. “But maybe we can see what spots are closest to the snobby areas, you know? Or maybe there are some places that are next to areas that have easy distribution, like water pipes or something… I don’t know, I’m just speaking out loud right now.”
Mason was getting a little frustrated that no one had anything. He wasn’t mad at any one individual other than himself, but it would have been nice if Kyle or Raina had managed to pull something. He was considering having Marshal request that Case return; no one was better at cracking unusual situations quite like Case.
“All right guys. I have something,” Kyle said.
Mason’s eyes brightened. I guess he really is going to do his job, huh.
Finally, a lead had come in—he just had to hope it was a lead worth something. Kyle wasn’t going to give them a dumb lead, but they’d had a good lead in Tehran, and all Mason had to do was ping General Thomson to remember how badly that had failed. Granted, that was less of an issue of lead sourcing than it was anything else, but Mason didn’t feel like taking any chances right now.
“Okay—what did you find out?”
“Yeah, I just got off the phone with one of my old tech buddies. He said that he’s seen some information online about a group of nut-jobs claiming to have a deadly virus in their possession.”
Wow.
That… that seems a little too transparent. Like someone’s trying to plant a red herring for us or something.
“And they are openly posting stuff online about this?” Mason said. “I don’t know about that.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said with an acknowledging half-shrug. “But it’s not quite that straight forward. These guys weren’t out in plain sight. The
y were on the dark web.”
Mason would never claim to be a technological genius, but he even knew about the dark web—and it was not going to be the kind of thing that he was easily going to unlock or figure out. If Kyle, the team tech guy, had only just gotten it from some of his friends, then it wasn’t like discovering a treasure chest in a dark room. It was more like finding a neighborhood of a thousand basements and having to guess which one was the right room—while realizing that the treasure chest could change rooms at any moment.
“So,” Raina said, more frustration in her voice than Mason had. “You have heard about some chatter from this supposed group, but you don’t know where they are located?”
“They’re somewhere in D.C., we know that for sure. But as for their exact IP address when they’re posting this crap—we don’t have a clue.”
“But we could trace phone calls?” Mason asked.
“IP addresses are a much different thing than, uh, phone calls,” Kyle said, sounding apologetic for the shortcoming. “There are so many ways to misdirect an IP address, mask it, prevent it from showing, it’s, uh, and it’s evolving every day, so even if I could know everything about uncovering the case today, I wouldn’t have all the tools by tonight. You see?”
Mason grunted. The world had certainly picked up speed, and there was a part of him that feared the day when men like him weren’t needed in war anymore.
But that day was not today.
“Okay—okay, so you can’t trace these terrorists’ exact location, I understand that. But we obviously know they are posting something. But what is it exactly that they are saying?”
“Well, they seem to be some, uh, some fringe Christian group. They appear to be some sort of underground offshoot of the Catholic Church—a cult group of end time fanatics shunned by the Vatican.”
Huh. So it’s definitely like Raina had said in Iran. That was the chalice… so if we know the group, then maybe we can pin things down a little further.