X PROOF – CHAPTER ONE
Emerald City
Gym 2 Office No. 3
Saturday afternoon
Tom Exton, fencing instructor, warp program specialist, had been tipped off by the very alarm that announced the return of Terry Thorne’s retrieval team from their foray into “Gladiator.” They had arrived in loud protest and chaotic anger, so he began the final phase of his download with a speed that would have astounded his coworkers had he displayed it in less frantic moments, taking advantage of the confusion to pull other data that otherwise would have alarmed the control commander. He watched with detachment as the warp techs scrambled to assist Sid, who merely barreled his way through into the hallway, the newly-acquired gladiator and an unexpected addition, a tall blonde lady, in either arm; raised an eyebrow as Terry bellowed after him and Deidre tried to drag a keening Rachel to her feet. Med-techs were rushing into the room and the control commander screamed something about a computer virus spreading rapidly through the system, with subsequent yelling in return from the warp techs that they couldn’t keep track of it. In the midst of that, he held firm to his own station, with an air that might have shown great control of self in dire circumstances, a demeanor that the control commander accepted without question.
Such as it was, the little drama confirmed that Mikol’s mission had been a success and Tom knew he had but hours to fulfill his own assignment: take what he had gleaned from NanoCorp about their nanotechnology research and transmit back to Mikol. Now that Terry and the others knew that Mikol had achieved his goal, they’d be bearing down hard on the trail to find the culprit of their betrayal within Emerald City. That what the virus had been implanted for, but for the time being, it kept the techs scrambling through warp drive files, rather than the computer station he used. They’d figure it out soon enough, and he’d be long gone by then.
The newly returned team was missing a member, of course: Cort, the one Mikol had marked as his target, and Rachel was obviously not taking it well. Tom was rather disappointed in her, but not surprised. Her training had fallen to the wayside since she retrieved Cort, a training he come to look forward to, but had also viewed as opportunity to gain more information about expected retrievals, the gladiator’s retrieval, than the lab could provide. The warp techs knew only procedure. Rachel talked freely of her mission into “The Quick and the Dead” – had seen no reason to hold back, and Mikol had been pleased with Tom’s ability to gain her trust. But Dimetri had bungled badly, and Tom’s training had been too good, it seemed, for Dimetri chose self-preservation over defeat, and Rachel arrived with Cort. Mikol had not been pleased with that.
And since NanoCorp now had Cort…since Rachel now had Cort, the focus had to be changed. They knew about Dimetri and were alerted to the presence of a mole. Tom had not been pleased with that.
He took out the practice katana while he waited for the transmission, stretching out muscles as best he could in the limited space, his mind processing several things at once. Such as, how quickly he was going to have to depart once the download was through. And how quickly he could reach a member of the Syndicate he answered to. They would want to know the progress of information going to Mikol. He wanted to know if they would protect him….
He heard the door to his office click shut and he turned around, katana still in hand.
“Rachel!”
She stood in front of him, gazing at him with a rather mysterious expression on her face, like she had been reading his thoughts and was contemplating a response of her own.
“How did you get in here?”
“You gave me a key,” the girl said, disturbingly calm.
“Did I?” Tom was quite certain he had not, but having seen her breakdown in the warp room, decided it was best not to argue. “Well. How did the mission go? You guys ran a bit later than usual. I was expecting you back last week.” Rachel had not moved a muscle since she came in and Tom wondered why he had not heard the door open. “Don’t tell me my training was all for naught?”
“It was for naught,” she replied, still mysterious. She had one hand in a pocket, the other at her side, fisted, as though hiding something.
“What a pity…” he answered and panic clicked on as he realized he wasn’t dealing with the real Rachel. “You should tell me what you’re here for, then.”
“I think you know,” she replied, and in that moment, Rachel melted upwards in height, her face changing to a raw-boned lantern-jaw man. A long glittering pick flashed in the tepid fluorescent light as his hand came up from its hiding place.
Their struggle was violent and brief, with Tom managing to slash at the attacker once with the katana; and the last thing he saw was the blinking jump-drive sticking out from the side of the laptop, turned blue to indicate the download was still going through.
&&&&&&&
“Where, Sid? Where is he?” Terry felt like a broken record, but he knew Sid would ramble interminably if he didn’t break in. Whatever resolve Rachel had garnered in the last few hours was fast melting away, he could see that. Sid cast him a knowing look but spoke the piece de resistance to Rachel’s face with no sign of halting. “Your attempts to locate him in Kamen will all be for naught, you know. You do realize you have lost him forever?" He leveled a sharp look down at her. "Do you not?"
Deidre’s head was turning this way and that between Sid and Terry.
“Kamen? Where is that? That doesn’t tell us anything, Sid! Where the hell is a place called ‘Kamen’?”
"Neviditelny Kamen," Sid replied, rather enjoying the pronunciation of the castle's name. "You should be able to figure it out from there…some eastern European country, some God-forsaken former Soviet block country. Probably Czechoslovakia. Ha! Mikol obviously thought I would never find him there. Hidden stone, can you imagine?” He scoffed. “It actually means 'hidden stone.’ But he's no cleverer than the rest."
Sid paused and then bared his teeth at Rachel. "He just...thinks...he is.”
“I need a drink,” Deidre declared. Terry looked up from the open side drawer of his desk to find that Deidre had not moved from her stance in the middle of his office. Her back turned to him because she had watched Rachel practically bounce out of the office to get packed for her flight to the Czech Republic. Not even her dark copper hair, loose and flowing down to the middle of her back, could hide the tension radiating from her.
She turned abruptly.
“You want a drink?” She asked him, not really looking at him, then announced again, “I’m getting a drink,” and stomped through the doorway to the adjoining room that made up his home away from home, an economy-sized apartment attached to his office suite.
Sid had hovered in the office several moments afterward Rachel fled, giving Deidre a final lascivious sneer and laughing as Terry stepped forward with an implied threat to continue the retribution he was exacting when the girls showed up. Once the nanotech was out of sight, however, Terry’s thoughts had leapt to all the details of preparing Rachel’s ticket and papers; a last minute booking, an urgent call to a hotel in Hromada. He had not noticed that Deidre had remained in the center of the room, squelching her own impulses. Terry now let the list of phone numbers and contacts fall to a spot on his desk, wishing he had been more attentive.
He heard her open the little refrigerator, clink ice in a glass and open the bureau to get one of the bottles of whisky he had stored. By the time he followed her into the room, she had poured herself a rather stiff shot, which she threw back into her throat and swallowed. Her slim form shuddered slightly from the punch of the alcohol.
“What’s wrong, Nolia?” he asked quietly, leaning in the door-frame…just in case. He’d only known her a short while, so he had no idea how worked up she could get.
Deidre held the glass to her forehead, riding the wave of whisky-induced fire for a few moments before answering. When it looked as if she was just concentrating on pouring herself back into the shot-glass, Terry stepped closer and took the glass gently from her hand.
As if that was the jumpstart she needed, Deidre drew in a couple of deep breaths before speaking.
“I called Wilder while I was waiting for Rachel to finish dressing…you know, to let him know I was back home, that I could be reached…” a barely suppressed sob escaped her. “He told me he’d been trying to reach me like crazy because of something that happened to Harkin.” She turned slightly to meet his eyes. “He’s been injured…badly…and they’re not real sure what they’re going to do with him.”
Terry closed his eyes. More bad news.
“And Wilder is furious with me because he hasn’t been able to reach me,” Deidre continued. “But I TOLD him! I told him I wouldn’t be around for a bit…its not like he’s not used to that!” She shook her head to clear her thoughts of all the defenses she wanted to hurl at the absent Wilder. “He’s with Aunt Ginny now…at least, she seems to be taking it in stride. Swears up and down everything will be all right, but Wilder isn’t sure if that’s senility talking or she just refuses…doesn’t want to…”
Terry made his way to the edge of the flattened futon and sat down, his own thoughts swirling. Well. The destruction was complete, then. Cort abducted, Rachel leaving for the Czech Republic, Maximus locked away God knew where, Brianna along with him, Sid as vicious as ever and the only one to have come out on top; and now, Deidre in trouble because she had chosen to go with them…with him…into something she couldn’t readily justify to the rest of her family. When they needed her the most, she wasn’t there. Because of him.
“How long ago did this happen?” he asked.
“Last week.”
Terry stared at the floor, wanting a drink himself now, but was too fixed on the edge of the futon to move.
“Don’t!” he heard Deidre bark and the churning in his mind cleared to see her kneel before him, hands gripping his shoulders painfully as she tried to shake him. “Don’t you DARE, Terrence Thorne. Don’t you go blaming yourself for any of this. I’ll never forgive you if you blame yourself, especially when I need you right now.”
He didn’t answer.
“I know you feel responsible for all of this, but you’re not! Stay with me, Terry. Don’t go shutting down just because you think it’ll protect me…or Rachel…or anyone else.” Tears welled up in her eyes, pleading as she did, so his automatic response was to encircle her with his arms and legs. He began rocking her slightly.
“You’re right, you’re right. I’m being selfish. What can I do?” he finally asked, burying his nose in her hair, smelling fragrance he couldn’t identify.
“I don’t know. He hit me with the news so fast and with so little thought as to what I might have been through, I could hardly come up with a decent reply. So I said I’d call him back and hung up on him.” She pulled away slightly and tried to clear away the wetness from her cheeks. “That was when I called you to let you know what Rachel and I were doing.”
“Where’s Wilder now?
“Home…in Jackson. He said something about me flying home but…” Deidre trailed off miserably. “And then, some talk about going to Germany…”
Terry nodded, cast further into gloom at the thought they would be parted so quickly. Couldn’t the drama stop for just a little bit now? For a few moments, he almost wished they were back in the slums of Rome, huddled away in their cubicle. Almost.
As if reading his thoughts, Deidre sat down on the futon next to him and leaned against him.
“We just got back, Terry! I mean, he’s my brother and all, but I haven’t even caught my breath and there’s Wilder wanting me to fly off yonder. I can’t. I just can’t. Tell me its okay for me to take a break, just for a day? I can do that and still be a loving sister, can’t I?”
The only appropriate response he could come up with was to put his arms around her, hold her silently for a few moments and then gently fell backwards onto the futon, tugging her down to curl up next to him.
“We’ve a bit of breath, now, luv,” he said after they spent several minutes in silence. “Let’s get Rachel off, then you can call him back and tell him that it might take you a bit, but you’ll get there. Tell him I’ll make sure you get there personally.”
The next several hours did become hectic, but now that they had some idea of where to go and what to do, they flew by with little hitch. Rachel returned just as Terry ended a call with a hotel in Hromada, one he had some familiarity with, and Deidre had returned to her own apartment for some items of her own. Rachel’s father had shown up at her apartment, also more than a little baffled by the lack of communication, but as five o’clock approached, seemed less a concern than a necessity for the support Rachel needed on her quest.
“Looks like I’m sending you out on your own once more, Rache,” Terry told her as they walked down the hall to the elevator. Glen Keirs would meet them at the airport to say his goodbyes to his daughter, a concession that even Terry conceded was in everyone’s best interests for peace.
“Yeah, I know,” the young woman said, her cheeks flushed with determination. “It’s okay, though. This could take a while, to figure out how what happened, how to get to him…” She didn’t finish the sentence, because none of them wanted to dwell on Sid’s prophecy. “Besides, I know what the plans are. If things get bad, I know you’ll be there. It’ll work out.” She had been briefed of Harkin’s condition as well, had been upset for Deidre. “Everything will be just fine,” she added, almost fervent, as if needing to convince herself more than anyone.
“You keep that in mind, too, Jedi,” Dee admonished, seeing the doubt. “Cort has the advantage in knowing you’ll be along to help him. You might not even need us!”
Terry said nothing, thinking of the little he knew of Mikol, pursing his lips in thought as he wondered if he should say anything to Rachel. There had been reports that supported Sid’s earlier statements, the taint of monstrosity to go with the active pursuit of dubious projects that had nothing to do with Sid or NanoCorp or warping. Those had been rumors, something that belonged in one of those categories otherwise known as “the Unexplained.”
No, he kept that speculation to himself, even to the moment when Rachel’s plane pulled away from the terminal and Glen went his own way, not entirely satisfied and certainly still disgruntled, but mollified for now. And Deidre had enough to worry about without him adding to it.
There was much more that could be learned just by Rachel going to Hromada. But if he had anything to say about it, he’d make damn sure she wasn’t abandoned to her own fate…like she had been last time.
“Let’s go back to my flat,”
Terry said, taking her hand as they walked through the terminal causeway. “It
won’t be much time, but we can have a little before we have to return to
business in the morning…and I have a feeling we’ll need Sunday just to get our
bearings.”
&&&&&
Emerald City,
8:32 am, Sunday morning
A yawn threatened to split Bud White’s face in two, despite the fact all other senses were keen on observing and listening to the report the cleaning ladies and officer on the scene were reiterating for John Biebe. He glanced at his watch for the hundredth time: way past the time he should still be sprawled out in bed and snoring the day away.
He leaned on his shoulder against the wall of the long hallway adjoining the gym, waiting for the former sheriff of Mystery, Alaska, now security chief of the NanoCorp Subsidiaries campus, to complete the initial interviews with the cleaning lady that had alerted him of the scene. The janitorial crew often came in at the wee hours of Sunday mornings to administer the usual maintenance of trash, watering plants, refilling bath tissue, and other odd assortment of problems that may have cropped up in the week. For this reason, many employees left their office doors open. Tom, however, had a habit of locking his door, something that the woman responsible for the gymnasium wing had learned to take for granted…until she walked in this morning and found the door slightly ajar. Her account from that moment on had been hard to believe, at least until Bud saw the office himself.
How does one explain ‘green gloppy goo spread and splattered like paint’ in a police report? He wondered, yawning again. If the woman had simply called John Biebe, this would all have been an internal matter, but no; she called the nearby police department, who in turn, called him to the scene, since they knew he was an employee. He didn’t envy John’s situation at the moment; wished mightily there weren’t so many local police officers there. Sid would have kittens, for sure.
A soft drawl, “hey, mate,” sounded behind him and Bud turned to find a somewhat bleary-eyed Terrence Thorne, wearing crinkled khakis and muscle shirt underneath an unbuttoned oxford, standing and peering at the huddled team John had assembled for investigation. “What’s going on?”
“Good to see you back in the real world!” Bud exclaimed in return, grinning widely. Word had reached him of the retrievers’ return, but Terry had not returned his phone calls. It was on his lips to give him hell for that, but the Aussie had an air about him that said he’d better not.
“In a word or less, yeah,” Terry replied. “And its been a bloody fucking horror since,” he added with a huff.
“Since when?” Bud asked.
“Early yesterday morning. You wouldn’t have seen Sid, would you?”
“Believe it or not, this is one circumstance where I would love to have him here,” the former LA cop rumbled. “If for no other reason than to see the meltdown he’ll have when the public hears about this,” he added with a smirk. “What’d you do with Dee?”
“Back in my office. She’s not having a good go of it, either.”
Bud didn’t like the way the conversation was going.
“And Rachel? Cort? Where are they?” he asked. He’d worked with Terry long enough to recognize a certain set in the man’s shoulders, a demeanor that betrayed worry and tension.
“That’s the bloody fucking horror,” Terry replied with a sigh. “Cort’s been abducted and I sent Rachel off last night to go after him. We’re supposed to follow tomorrow, but…” he nodded toward the taped off door of Tom’s office. “Looks like there are some issues here to be dealt with,” he finished.
“You first,” John said, having caught Terry’s words about Rachel and Cort as he approached. He looked a bit sleep-ridden around the edges himself and none too happy about leaving his own girlfriend so early in the morning either. “Its taken me all of an hour to make sure I understand what took place here and Im still not sure Im just having a bad dream.”
“Can I brief you in a bit?” Terry replied. “Much of it’s not for public consumption, and I have a feeling this is going to be damn near as upsetting. What do you know so far?
“Well, right now, CTU’s collecting evidence, but it looks like there was a murder, and not a neatly done murder, either.” John replied. “Before I forget, have you seen Sid?”
Terry gave a short laugh.
“That seems to be the question of the weekend, mate. Actually, I know where he went. I was hoping his need to control would bring him out of the hidey-hole he’s made for himself. But you’ll understand why I say that in a moment.”
“Well, if Rachel’s not here, then, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be the one to break the news to her,” John said. “The body in there is Tom Exton. Her fencing instructor.”
Stunned, Terry leaned against the wall, blinking as if that were the only way he could absorb the news.
“How could you tell?” Bud asked with no small amount of sarcasm. John just gave him a grimace.
“Tom?” Terry asked, looking stunned.
“That’s who the murder victim is,” John replied.
“A slimy job, too. Literally,” Bud informed. “Like nothing I’d ever seen come out of the nanotech labs. Green goo. Not the blue stuff that Sid’s always shoving in our faces. Will be real interesting finding out where it came from.”
“Tom, you say? Out of all the people in this company…”
Bud pursed his lips, wondering if he should start theorizing out loud, became distracted by one crime scene tech who wandered back out into the hallway. Something in the way the person ducked their head down and made a beeline for an empty room down the hall made the muscles in his back tighten. But then, it was probably to contact someone off campus for backup. That was going to be one hell of a mess to clean up.
“That’s why I called you specifically to come down as soon as possible,” he opted to say, watching as other members of the security team went through their procedures. “Sid’s going to want a report, and I know you’ll want as much control over this as possible,” he continued, as John returned to the CTU team. “We’ve already had to chase off two reporters that somehow got wind of this and were caught lurking in janitor closets so they could find their way to the crime scene. The sooner you know what’s happening, the better,” Bud replied and Terry nodded in agreement.
“I guess there’s not much I can do here, then,” Terry muttered, half to himself. “And I guess you’ll be working with the locals about the investigation?”
“Yeah, but its also likely they’ll ask me to back off. I just don’t know at this point. Still, there’s something to this that goes beyond your ‘normal’ murder. There was a laptop on his desk,” Bud said, leaning closer to make sure his voice didn’t carry, “and it was broken in half. It’ll have to be examined, and Im thinking whoever did that could just as easily have wiped out the memory, but my suspicion is that laptop held something significant.”
Terry’s face went white for several seconds as he processed that information.
“You and John join me in my office later, right?” He said, voice grim, and turned to walk away. “You’ll understand,” he added, seeing Bud open his mouth to ask why. “Trust me. It gets worse.”