The Missing Piece

by Sala, Sharon

  “I miss you, baby. Nothing is the same without you,” he said as he gave her a drink. “I am so damn sorry this happened to you that it makes me ache. I’m a private investigator. I solve crimes, and find the lost for anyone who hires me, and yet I can’t find you, the person I love most. I’ve registered a complaint with God, but it didn’t change a thing.”

  And then, right in the middle of feeding her dessert, she quit. She wouldn’t open her mouth again, and she wouldn’t take a drink. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “Okay, I get the message. I just want you to know how special this was for me. I love you, Annie...so much.”

  Then he pressed the call button and stood behind her chair with his hand on her shoulder, waiting. He felt something brush his skin and looked down. She’d tilted her head so that her cheek was against his hand.

  He quickly knelt in front of her, searching her eyes for even a flash of recognition, but her expression was blank and her eyes were closed.

  “Oh, Annie...sweetheart... I know you’re still in there. I love you, too.”

  And then staff was in the room and the moment was gone.

  One woman wheeled Annie away, while another began cleaning the table.

  “Mr. Dodge, what about your flowers?”

  “She can’t have them in her room, can she?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Spilled water causes falls. Broken glass is dangerous, too.”

  Charlie nodded. “I thought not. Do whatever you want with them,” he said, “and thank you for making this happen.”

  “Of course. Are you ready to leave?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” she said.

  “I’ve never been here when it was this quiet,” Charlie told her as they walked back up a hall.

  “Sundowning is hard for most of them. A lot of them are on meds for the agitation,” she said and swiped an ID card through the lock to let him back into the lobby. Then she walked him to the front door, swiped another lock and let him out.

  “Have a safe trip home,” she said.

  Charlie thanked her and walked back to his car.

  It was dusk and night was quickly encroaching. Security lights in the parking lot were coming on, and he could already hear traffic and sirens and cars honking, and loud music from a passing car—the sounds of the city.

  It was time to go home, but tonight he was taking a small piece of joy with him. In one brief flash of cognizance, he’d seen Annie again.

  His Annie.

  The one who remembered him.

  It was enough, and now it was time to rest.

  * * *

  Wyrick had an agenda of her own as she headed back into Dallas, still watching the rearview mirror for tails. When she finally pulled into the drive at Merlin’s, she breathed a sigh of relief. Merlin was sitting on the front porch with a cold drink and a set of headphones on. He liked to listen to audiobooks. She slowed down and honked to let him know she was home. He waved as she drove around to the back.

  It took two trips to get all her things inside, then she locked herself in.

  As always, the first item on her agenda was to secure the apartment, making sure there were no cameras or listening devices. Then she unpacked her clothes, laid one pile aside for the cleaners and started a load of laundry.

  She thought of Charlie as she began sorting through the food basket and felt a measure of guilt. She’d been hateful to him from the moment they’d left the Dunleavy residence, but it was the only way she knew how to keep distance between them.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been a bitch, and it wouldn’t be the last, and Charlie had Annie. He didn’t really care how she behaved as long as she did her job.

  Once everything was in order, she went into her office and opened the first of twenty-five files. Each had a multitude of folders, all with different programs she’d written, all pertaining to Universal Theorem. She’d known for years that there’d come a time when she’d have to draw the line. The incident with Mack Doolin had been the last straw. She’d just had to wait until she was home to act.

  She checked the time. It was an hour later at Universal Theorem. They’d be coming back from lunch, or were in meetings, or in labs trying to re-create versions of her.

  She knew who they were. She’d sat in on those meetings. She’d seen their faces. She understood what they were really about. What they hadn’t known at the time was the depth of what she knew and what she could do. Keeping her abilities a secret was the only way she had of protecting herself. While she worked at UT, she’d purposely slowed down her own projects, and time and time again, let them fail, completing only the assignments that were harmless to humanity.

  But when UT failed her, she took it as her chance to escape. Either she would die from the cancer or she would survive it, and then she would run. And run she did,

  But she wasn’t running anymore.

  They’d tracked and attacked her for the last time.

  She opened the first program and without hesitation, clicked Send. Then the next, and then the next. And for the following three hours, opened files and clicked Send.

  * * *

  It was a warm, sunny day in Richmond, but then most days were beautiful this time of year in Virginia. Cyrus Parks had just returned to the office from a business lunch, and was about to put a new tail on Jade. The last two men he’d sent after Doolin’s disappearance had quit, which made Cyrus wonder what she’d done. Jade, being Jade, there was no telling, but he figured she was harmless enough, and he would have his way.

  Before he could act, his computer went dark, and then the lights in the office went out. He picked up the phone to call maintenance, only to discover the phone lines were also dead.

  He felt all over his desk until he found his cell, and sighed with relief. He could use it as a flashlight. But when it didn’t work, either, he suddenly realized this wasn’t a power outage. It was an attack. They’d been in conflict with a company in China over some patents, and he immediately laid the blame at their feet.

  Because of security issues, there were few windows in the building, so the darkness was complete as he stumbled out of his office. The building was in an uproar. He could hear people shouting, a few screams and a lot of cursing, as they began trying to find their way about.

  His secretary was shouting, “Mr. Parks! Mr. Parks!”

  “Here! I’m here!” he said. “Find a wall and move toward the elevators.”

  “They don’t work, sir. I just got off one when the power went out.”

  “Does your cell phone work?” he asked.

  “No. I’m scared. Is this the attack where the world goes dark? My preacher talks about this in church all the time.”

  “I don’t know what it is, but we need to find a stairwell and start feeling our way down.”

  “Oh, my Lord! We’re on the fourteenth floor,” she wailed.

  “Well, we can’t stay up here waiting, because this is obviously an attack on Universal Theorem. I need to get home. I can work from there.”

  They started feeling their way along the wall and ran into others, all moving carefully to a stairwell. But the building was huge, and the employees numbered in the thousands in this building alone. The stairwells were packed, the masses moving slowly as they felt their way down.

  It took over an hour just to get down the stairs. People were leaving the parking lots by the dozens. When Cyrus finally walked into the fresh air, he was drenched with sweat and his legs were trembling. He staggered to his car, half fearing it wouldn’t start, but it did. However, the phone in his car was also inoperable, and he was beginning to worry about what he’d find when he got home.

  A short while later, he drove into his driveway, but when he tried to open the garage door with the remote, it didn’t work, either. “What the hell?” he gro
aned. “Who’s behind this?”

  He used his door key to get inside his house, only to realize his computers here were as dead as the ones at UT. He turned on a television and was so relieved it was working that he dropped into the nearest chair and turned up the volume just to experience technology at work.

  Within minutes, breaking news bulletins began to interrupt the programming, and they were all regarding the home office of Universal Theorem, where he worked, talking about a mass shutdown of the facility that was, as yet, unexplained. And then another bulletin popped up about a UT site in the Netherlands, and then a site in Osaka, Japan. They’d all gone dark like it just had here. He sat in stunned silence, learning that their labs in Alaska and a technology center in San Francisco were down, then more... One after another, every aspect of their purpose and accompanying research had been shut down.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine the scope and organization it had taken to make all this happen. He was seriously scared. Were there other countries beside China? Was there a consortium that had bonded to take them down?

  The first day ended without a solution. The next day was a nightmare of trying to contact all their locations. The night of the second day passed, and Cyrus was on the third day of personal hell learning how many millions of dollars in experiments and resources they were losing by the hour, when his cell phone signaled a text message. He was so excited it was working again that he didn’t even bother to see who it was from. He immediately opened it.

  The last three days were just a warning. Leave me the fuck alone, or I will destroy you and everything you own.

  Before he could react, the message disappeared, but his phone was still working. He ran into his office. The computers were on. He knew the message was from Jade—but she couldn’t have done anything of this scope. She’d never shown herself capable of anything like this. It was impossible! She didn’t have the—

  And then it hit him. What if she’d been hiding what she could do? She’d been angry when she discovered some details about her life that they’d kept hidden. When she developed breast cancer and went from stage two to stage four within six weeks, she should have died. But she didn’t. And there were all those drug cocktails and the chemo the doctors had given her. They already suspected it was the DNA they’d manipulated within her that helped her heal.

  But what the hell else had it changed?

  * * *

  ISBN-13: 9781488035081

  The Missing Piece

  Copyright © 2019 by Sharon Sala

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