by Ryan Schow
“What do you think of President Kennicot so far?” Isaiah asked Marley, knowing her recent appointment to this position put her in direct communication with the POTUS.
Marley tried to keep with his pace as they weaved in and out of a rather busy hallway. “Personally, there’s something I don’t like about her. I can’t say what, though, because we’re not on a one-on-one basis. Professionally, I believe in what she’s trying to do.”
“I respect her immensely,” Isaiah whispered, “but I can’t stand her either. She’s the coldest woman I’ve ever met.”
Marley laughed, but it was strained. “I’m still a bit mesmerized by the office, the White House, my new career.”
“As am I,” Isaiah said with a rare, but confident grin.
Just before stepping into the Oval, Marley’s phone beeped. She saw she had an email from someone going by the handle “Enigma.” Both Secret Service agents were now looking right at her, one with a wicker basket in hand. She dropped her cell phone into the basket and was then ushered into the Oval where she and Isaiah sat in the two leather chairs farthest from the president’s desk.
The Ukrainians sat on the couches facing each other. President Kennicot remained at her desk, a soft power play that wasn’t subtle enough in the eyes of the foreign leader and his ambassador.
After a rather boring meeting, Marley and Isaiah collected their cell phones and returned to their respective offices.
Marley checked her email, scanning down the addresses and subject lines until she saw the one from Enigma. The subject line gave her pause: You’re going to want to read this message before your next meeting in the Oval.
She drew a sharp breath. Was someone playing games with her? She so didn’t need this, not when she had Killian and that awful phone conversation on her mind. Earlier, while sitting in the Oval Office listening to the president of Ukraine talk of treason and sedition within his cabinet, Marley decided she would need to talk to someone about Killian.
First, however, she needed to get caught up on a few things. Namely her email. Whoever this Enigma was apparently knew her schedule, or at the very least, the demands of her position. She opened the email.
Listen to this with your headphones.
She fished her headphones from the desk, put them on, then studied the video embedded in the body of the email itself. The placeholder image was of a gorgeous young Hispanic woman sitting in what looked like a sound-proofed room.
Marley’s first thought was, Am I opening the door to a hack here? She told herself to trust the White House firewall, and then she pressed the play button and the young woman began to speak.
“Hello, Marley, my name is Savannah Swann. Once you close this message and exit out of this email, your entire operating system will melt, so I suggest you listen until the very end.”
Marley’s blood went cold and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
The girl named Savannah continued.
“Don’t worry about getting into trouble, this kind of security protocol is standard operating procedure for white-hat hackers like Enigma and myself. Rest assured, this precaution is meant to protect you. You were right to wonder about a virus because one is now being implanted in your system. I don’t want you to worry, though. Please don’t worry, Marley.”
Don’t worry?! She was definitely worried!
“To put this into laymen’s terms, once you’re done with this email, active measures will cause your system to overheat internally. This spike in temperature will temporarily corrupt the hard drive and its contents. We only need to disable your system long enough to cover our tracks and to keep you out of harm’s way.”
I’m in harm’s way? She quickly glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, or if the Feds were coming for her.
“Before you begin to wonder about the NSA’s server farms, know that this communication will be in their system, just as all data communications are days. But it doesn’t matter. The server farm will be dead soon enough, and the world will have taken a turn for the worse.”
That cold wash of horror she felt this morning doubled the minute this young woman told her about a virus in her system. It just leveled up at the mention of a dead server farm. And then it leveled up again when she spoke about the world taking a turn for the worse.
Instead of collapsing under the weight of her fears, she tried to focus on Savannah’s words. There was something truly strange about the girl Marley couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not only was she the most beautiful creature Marley had ever seen, there was a boldness and an intelligence to her eyes that held Marley rapt.
“You are in grave danger, Marley,” Savannah said.
Marley sat up, tried to breathe.
“This entire world sits on the precipice of complete and utter darkness, which will bring about untold dangers. There are traitors in the White House. Men and women of standing who have conspired against America and her interests. They are about to betray all of us. You need to get out of D.C. and get back home to Nicholasville, but first I’m going to give you the names of four people. When you encounter these people, you’ll need to kill them. Grab the pen beside you and take their names down. Hurry.”
Kill them?!?!
Swallowing hard, her skin cold but feverish-feeling at the same time, Marley picked up the pen beside her. At first she wondered how this girl knew the things she did, but then she figured Savannah and her hacker friend—Enigma or whatever—must have breached the firewalls and gained access to her monitor’s camera.
Savannah read off the names. “Farol Walsh, Jerica Picklesmeyer, Killian O’Brien, and Rhett Jensen.”
Hearing Killian’s name curdled her insides. She had just slept with him; now she had to kill him? For real?
“If this world is to have a chance at survival, you need to dispose of these people. They are traitors to the nation, traitors to humanity, and a pestilence upon this earth.”
Marley knew there was something about Killian she needed to fear. Savannah confirmed her suspicions about Killian, but there was no way she was killing anyone!
“There is also another name,” Savannah said. “Write this one down as well. Adelard Schmidt. When you see him, you need to do everything you can to protect him.”
Who the hell is this girl?
“You’re wondering who I am and why I’m talking to you. I get it. I would be curious as well. All I can say is that there are measures in play involving national security at the highest levels.”
Marley took a breath, then looked closer at the screen. Was this Savannah girl actually reading her mind?
“We are hackers, information brokers, people who make a habit of knowing things. We have infiltrated the personal accounts of these four people after encountering one or two of them in chat rooms and on dark web communications. We learned of their intended betrayal when we intercepted a dead drop. My colleagues and I bought ourselves enough time to copy a USB drive, then return it to the drop. The things on the USB drive are…terrifying to put it bluntly. Like I said, Marley, we know things. We study processes, read patterns, gather intel and then project them forward. This careful analysis has allowed us to see where the lives of these people will likely intersect. This is why we have reached out to you. You will likely encounter all four of these people at various times over the next few days. It is imperative that you end them, Marley. I cannot stress this enough. If you kill them, you save America from a far worse fate than is already planned for you. But if you fail, you will not live very long. No one will.”
“How can you even know that?” she muttered, like all of this was taking up what precious bandwidth she had left.
“Statistically, you are an impossibility, which is why it’s important that you do what you need to do. Not for me, or you, but for this world and all the people who will survive. You are a good person, Marley McDaniel, but if you don’t do what I say, you’ll be a dead person and that will be sad.”
Suspicious, Marley
snuck another glance around, hoping no one was watching her or coming after her. Seeing no one of concern, she returned her attention to Savannah.
“One last thing,” she said. “You will be faced with a difficult decision you know you must make. It will be a decision you cannot possibly fathom making. It will be with Jerica. Make that tough decision, Marley. Don’t hesitate. Just make it. Before I let you go, you need to sync your watch with mine.”
She looked down at her new Apple Watch. How the heck was she supposed to sync it?
“By following my instructions,” Savannah said, almost like she was in Marley’s head. This freaked her out. Everything was freaking her out!
Savannah gave her instructions; Marley followed them to a T.
“Thanks for the help,” Marley muttered under her breath.
“You’re welcome.”
What the hell? she thought, glancing up. Savannah smiled. Creepy. After Marley synced up their timers, Savannah gave her the timeline. “You have four hours before this kicks off. Good luck.”
The screen suddenly went black, almost like a power surge had collapsed the system. Inside the computer housing, she heard what sounded like the spooling-up of a motor followed by a sharp pop that hurt her ears. Seconds later, a puff of smoke wafted out of the computer’s vents.
“I guess you weren’t lying?” she mumbled.
Isaiah happened to walk in at that exact moment. “We meet back with the president in three and a half hours,” Isaiah said. He looked down at the computer and said, “Your system is smoking.”
“I know,” she said. “I think it just died.”
“I’ll call IT. You can work out of my office until then.”
“Where’s Killian?” she asked.
“Who cares?” Isaiah said too quickly. “We know what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“Who are we meeting with again?” Marley asked, distracted, overwhelmed, on the verge of either tears or screaming.
Isaiah rattled off a couple of names she didn’t know. “Basically, the president said she had a gap in her schedule if I wanted to fill it with the non-desirables. So I’ve filled this next meeting with non-desirables. It was either that or a Make-A-Wish foundation recipient and she vetoed me on that.”
“That’s ice cold,” she said.
“Yeah, well, no one ever accused Althea Kennicot of being a warm woman.”
Three-and-a-half hours later, she and Isaiah ended up in the same two chairs in the Oval Office listening to an all new meeting that was just as boring as the last one.
Marley studied Kennicot’s reactions to the men with whom she was meeting. There wasn’t an ounce of kindness in the president’s eyes. She smiled, paid attention to the conversation, even interjected several critical points of view, but her face was nothing more than a hollow mask. If she had truly wanted to be friendly, Kennicot would have joined the men on the couch where she could speak with them on an equal footing. As it were, they sat by themselves on the couches, their necks craned sideways to focus in on Kennicot. She never even stood up, let alone attempted to leave her desk.
Marley checked her watch, saw the timer counting down. Four minutes left. What kind of event was the timer counting down to? She watched the people in the room, including Isaiah, and realized none of them had a clue that something was about to happen.
Three minutes and ten seconds, nine seconds, eight...
She felt her heart rate begin to elevate. Shifting in her chair, her nerves were starting to dance. She suddenly felt warm in all the wrong places: neck, armpits, the small of her back.
She checked her watch: one minute and three seconds, two, one…
Marley felt Isaiah’s eyes on her. She turned and looked at him, now too scared to hide her emotions. She’d been so focused on Savannah and the kill list she’d been given that she’d forgotten about Killian and what he said this morning. Did he know about this? Was he somehow responsible for what was about to happen?
Next to her, Isaiah’s expression asked her the question his mouth couldn’t. What is wrong? What could she say to him? There was no answer she could give him in the next twenty-one seconds, twenty, nineteen…
He looked at her watch; she showed him the timer. He squinted, then frowned, and then he looked up at her and mouthed the words, “What is the timer for?”
She felt her body start to shake, her mouth too dry to speak. Should she warn President Kennicot? Tell everyone to get down? Get down herself?
Seven seconds, six, five…
“I don’t know,” she mouthed back to Isaiah, who frowned even deeper.
Three, two,
one…
She lowered her head into her hands and curled her spine to make herself smaller. She heard things power down at that exact moment—the lights, a computer, the manual latch system on the newly-installed security doors.
When nothing exploded and no shots were fired, she glanced up and wondered if this was the big event, or if some other hammer was going to drop. What she saw was rather anticlimactic. Did the Oval just blow a fuse? She glanced down at her watch and saw it was dead as well. Now that was truly strange.
One of the foreign dignitaries checked his watch and said, “What is going on?”
“I…I don’t know,” President Kennicot said looking at her computer with a frown.
Isaiah fixed Marley with a look.
The foreign dignitary asked, “Does anyone have a working cell phone?”
Two members of the secret service stepped into the room. The senior agent said, “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Madam President, but there’s been an incident.”
“What kind of incident?” President Kennicot asked, concern deepening the already-advancing lines in her face.
The agent started to speak, but his partner pulled out his gun and shot the man in the head. A viscous expulsion of red sprayed across the door and the agent dropped dead.
Instead of getting down, President Kennicot stood and said, “What is the meaning of this?”
The rogue agent pulled a balaclava out of his pocket, put it on, and said, “You’re a nobody now, Althea. Get ready for a reckoning.”
The traitorous agent then turned and ran down the hallway, leaving them with a dead body and about a hundred unasked questions.
One of the foreign dignitaries was looking out the Oval Office’s window. “Is that a plane?” he asked. His partner couldn’t take his eyes off the fallen agent or the red all over the door.
“This is secure airspace,” President Kennicot said, breaking from a brief trance. But then she turned and looked out the window at the plane in the distance.
“Are you sure this is secure airspace?” he asked. “Because this was supposed to be a secure facility as well, and now there’s a dead man on the floor.”
The man was a representative of Qatar, no stranger to political and military coups. He was strangely calm, though. Then again, his nation clearly understood what had happened the last time two planes violated America’s secure airspace. 9/11 happened. Hatred for radical Muslims happened.
Isaiah said, “Madam President, what do you need from me?”
“Get me a new secret service detail.”
Isaiah took off into the hallway. Was the existing detail compromised? Were they on their way to the Oval Office right now?
“I think that plane is heading right for us,” the Qatar man said again. His associate sat there, unmoving, his face looking perfectly sedated. Was he in shock?
Marley stood and moved toward the window. “It’s still far enough off.”
“But it’s losing altitude,” the man said, refusing to look at her. Then, to his colleague, he said, “We must go now.”
The men cleared out of the Oval Office without a formal good-bye, both of them quickly stepping around the agent on the floor.
Marley, however, turned to Kennicot and said, “What’s going on?”
“I…I don’t know. I need someone to tell me, but it seems we’ve been
hit with some sort of…I don’t know…”
Kennicot picked up the phone, heard no dial tone. She switched to the emergency line, waited, then slammed the phone down, took a breath, and looked up at Marley.
“What?” Marley asked.
“Do you have any answers for me, or just questions?” she hissed.
Marley narrowed her eyes, unaccustomed to being talked to this way. “You’re the president, Madam President. Surely you have a clue.”
“Why did you duck your head before all this started?” Kennicot asked, her voice sounding rather authoritative.
“I don’t know. I’m not feeling well.”
“Bullshit.”
Somewhere closer to the East Wing, the boisterous sounds of an explosion rattled the Oval Office. A fraction of a second later, the floor beneath them shook, bits of plaster falling off the walls and ceiling. Both women hit the deck. Marley scrambled to get under the front side of the desk.
Much closer, maybe as close as the Press Center—which was down the hall and around the corner from the Oval—the staccato sounds of gunfire erupted, startling both women.
“We need to get out of here now!” Marley said frantically.
“I need my secret service detachment!” Kennicot barked from the other side of the desk.
“They betrayed you,” Marley said. Looking at the dead guy on the floor, she said, “His freaking brains are on the door, ma’am!”
Another explosion—this one closer to the West Wing—shook the foundation again, more of the interior walls and ceiling cracking.
“Do you have an emergency change of clothes?” Marley asked, standing up. Kennicot was just getting out from underneath the desk as well. “Good, hurry up and get them!”
Kennicot scrambled to a nearby sideboard, jerked open the bottom drawer, then pulled out a wrapped package.
“I can’t change here,” Kennicot said. “We need to get to the powder room.”