Something Stolen

  “Hey beautiful,” Ian said as he entered Danny’s office.

            She jumped up from her chair and rushed over to him, hugging him tightly and kissing him.

  “I take it you’ve missed me,”

  “More than you’d know,” she said smiling. “Are you coming home soon?”

  “Not sure, we’ve heard nothing of an assignment yet,”

  “It’s not fair, they should just let you guys do whatever they want you to do, give you Aaliyah back and let you come home,”

  “You know it’s never that simple,”

  “I know,”

  “How’s Abigail doing?”

  “Better, she’s awake at least,”

  “That’s good, that means I might be able to find out what happened,”

  “Yeah, and maybe afterwards you could, come back,” she said and ran a finger across his chest, “I may not have a bed in my office, but the sofa isn’t too bad and I need a few hours’ worth of good sleep,”

  “Whatever my lady wants,” he said, kissed her and headed to the ICU room where Abigail was.

            She was still very pale, but she was awake though it did not appear that the orderlies enjoyed it. They were trying to adjust the drip and she kept stabbing at them with a plastic knife, and by the looks of it, she had caught one of them on the hand at least once.

  “I’ll do it,” said Ian as he approached. “Just tell me how far I need to turn it,”

  “Just one milligram,” said one of the orderlies and Ian just stared at him blankly. “Hold her down, then I’ll do it myself,” he said and Ian did just that, though Abigail protested wildly.

  “How do I know they’re not poisoning me,” she said when they had left.

  “You are alive,”

  “Yes, well, it could be very slow poison,”

  “And I thought I could be paranoid,”

  “What do you want, Agent,”

  “Just want to know what you remember from the night you were attacked,”

  “You want to know if it was that friend of yours, the civilian, you mean?”

  “No, but it would help if you told me it wasn’t him,”

  “It wasn’t him,”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I don’t remember,”

  “But you know it wasn’t him?”

  “Yes, ‘coz he was with me, and he was attacked first,”

  “Impossible, JR didn’t have a scratch on him,”

  “He isn’t what he appears to be, I’d be very careful around him if I were you,”

  “I don’t think it’s me you should be worried about, it’s your friend Connor that’s keeping an eye on him,” At the mention of the name, Abigail became paler than before and for a split second, there was fear in her eyes. “You remember nothing else?”

  “No, sorry,”

  “Well, get better soon, we could always use your help, and I’m sure Connor misses you,” said Ian and he walked to the door where he paused and said, “and don’t worry, I’ll make sure no harm comes to Connor,”

            From there he made his way back to Danny’s office where he joined her on the sofa. They talked for a bit as she lay in his arms and he stroked her hair and after a while she fell asleep. It was still early in the day but she was on call and would rather sleep in her office than the on-call room.

            It was three hours before Danny’s pager went off and she had to attend to patients. Ian kissed her goodbye and made his way back to the Cage where he spent the rest of the day hacking and investigating.

            That night he noticed Elizabeth enter Ed’s room and hand him an envelope. He also saw Elizabeth’s brother enter the room and talk to the two of them before leaving and doing a round of the mansion as he was wont to do.

            He saw Elizabeth leave a little while after her brother and then saw Ed open the envelope, find a SD Card, plug it in his laptop and start rearranging files. An hour later he read the same message Ed saw on his screen.

  “Ed, have you learnt nothing,” Ian said, shaking his head.

            The next morning, Ian and Dev each received an envelope. Ian read through it quickly; it mentioned a facility codenamed Hawk, situated somewhere in Benoni hidden in a mine dump, and it belonged to the Others.

            After breakfast, Dev left to go to the Project 8 offices and check that everything was still standing there, while Ian and Ed headed to the library where they looked through more books that where older than the two of them combined.

  “I’m in the mood for a drink, how about you?” asked Ian.

  “Yeah, I know a place,” said Ed.

            They drove to Ed’s favourite watering hole where Ed parked in Connor’s pot once more and Ian parked next to him.

  “The usual,” said Ed as they reached the bar.

  “And for your handsome friend?” the young girl asked with a sweet smile.

  “The same,” Ian said.

  “It’s whiskey,” Ed informed him.

  “Ah, the same with a Play,” Ian corrected his order.

  “So, what did you want to talk about?” asked Ed as they received their drinks.

  “Two things, actually,” said Ian and slid his phone towards Ed.

            Ed took the phone and skimmed through the photos in the active album. They were photos of Ed, some of them with Elizabeth, others with him and an envelope and the last few was of clear shots of his laptop’s screen and the message he deciphered.

  “Oh dear,” Ed said.

  “Yeah, and if I saw it, so did they. I managed to scrub some of it but no doubt it’s a RAID storage configuration, definitely mirroring. It’s what I would do,”

  “I didn’t even think of the cameras,” Ed admitted, downing his drink and ordering another.

  “Clearly, but I should have warned you about the coverage angles,”

  “What was the second thing?”

  “Your little Stockholm Syndrome developing with Elizabeth,” said Ian seriously.

  “What?”

  “You’re getting very close to her, I’d like to believe it’s to get Aaliyah back, you do remember Aaliyah don’t you?”

  “Of course, it’s why we are doing this,”

  “Is it?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing, just…we need to rush this assignment, if they find out about the message then there’s no point in any of it. So we do this tonight, I see Liz has already given you the co-ords,” said Ian gesturing to the napkin the bartender had given Ed with his second glass.

  “We haven’t even done recon yet,” protested Ed, hiding the napkin in his breast pocket. “We’d be going in blind,”

  “Let me worry about that, just let Dev know, we’ll meet at six to get everything ready and hit the site at nine. Don’t be late,” said Ian as he down the remainder of his drink and headed back to his car.

            Ian was playing a very dangerous game, and he knew it. Back in the day, before The Fall, Ian had been involved in a few of the bigger subterfuge strategies but he had given very little input. Now, he was the mastermind, or so he hoped.

  “De Beer,” Ian said as he entered the empty warehouse.

            The Others agent was standing in the centre of the building. He looked a little more weathered since the last time they met, no doubt due to stress.

  “Your friend is very good at worming his way into people’s homes,” said the agent.

  “He saved their lives,”

  “And now he lives in my house,”

  “He hasn’t had sex with your wife or your daughters,”

  “Yet,” said De Beer sourly.

  “He’s not that kind of man, although I think your eldest has taken a liking to him,”

            De Beer charged at Ian, grabbed him by the collar and drew his axe. Ian just stared at him, cool and collected. The Others agent wouldn’t harm him, he knew that much.

  “You’d best hope that bastard doesn’t lay a hand on her, let alone any other part of his anatomy,” said De Beer through gritted teeth.

  “Would it be that bad? They know more truths about him than they do about you. Where do they think you are?”

  “London,” he said and let go of Ian, taking a few steps back but not sheathing the axe.

  “Interesting choice,”

  “When do we move against the Cage?” asked the agent impatiently.

  “Soon, but I’ll let you know. For now, I need info and schematics,”

  “On what?”

  “A Hawk facility,”

  “What do you want from there? It’s a med lab for the most part,”

  “Access, that’s all you need to know. So, can you get me the schematics, patrol patterns and guard rotations?”

  “Yes, maybe if I had a week,”

  “You’ve got three hours, work a miracle,”

  “And how do I get it to you?”

  “Meet me here in three hours,” Ian said as if it should have been common sense.

  Okay, Ed’s running errands, De Beer is getting intel, and I’m getting to the bottom of this JR business, Ian thought as he parked in front of the ruined mansion.

            He drew his swords as he entered the yard, treading carefully. He wasn’t sure what he would find, but he wasn’t going to be caught off guard. Slowly he made his way to the front door, through the living room and to what remained of the kitchen.

            Ian felt something move behind him and spun on the spot only to find a piece of paper blowing past. He exhaled slowly and was about to head back to the living room when he heard heavy breathing from the second floor.

            He silently ran towards the closest staircase that would hold his weight and ascended. The breathing was coming from the master bedroom towards the far end of the mansion but there was no clear path to it. Ian had to jump a few large gaps where the floor had fallen away and other times he had to swing from the beams in the ceiling to cross even larger gaps.

            Finally he got to the master bedroom, but the doorway was blocked with some crystallite membrane. Ian thought of hacking at it with his swords, but decided against it and instead through the only piece of furniture he could find through it, a charred grandfather clock.

            The clock shattered the membrane with ease and smashed to pieces as it hit the floor on the other side of the threshold. Ian carefully stepped over the broken pieces of crystal and surveyed the room. It, like the rest of the mansion, was a mess and the only piece of furniture that seemed to be untouched by fire was the bed. And on the bed lay JR.

            Before Ian could think about taking a step closer towards him, a hand grabbed him and hoisted him into the air by the throat. The person looked like he could have been JR’s twin, only his skin was translucent and crystalline. He was more of a spectre than a person but his grip was real enough.

            Ian aimed a cut upwards at the spectre’s arm and severed it. He fell to the floor on his knees and the arm next to him, shattering to pieces as it hit the wooden floor. The spectre made no sound of pain but aimed a kick at Ian, which sent him flying across the room.

            He hit the wall hard and fell flat on his face. Gingerly he raised himself up, and just in time as the spectre came at him with a chair. Ian rolled out of the way as the chair smashed through the floor causing the whole house to creek. The arm Ian had cut off had grown back, which boded ill for him. He rose to his feet and started cutting at the spectre, who managed to dodge every blow. Finally the spectre was forced against the hole where the window had been. He roared at Ian, it sounded like glass scrapping against glass and cut through Ian like a knife. The spectre tried to kick him again, and missed, before jumping out the window and disappearing into nothingness.

  “What the hell,” Ian asked aloud before heading over to the bed where JR was.

            He was pale and his breathing was unsteady. His skin was veined in green crystal and a fine layer of crystal cocooned his body to the bed. Ian felt for his pulse, which was slow but strong.

  “If you’re here, who’s at home?” Ian asked. He looked at his watch and swore under his breath. “No time to find out, stay,” Ian said sarcastically and head back to his car.

  “Okay, so Ed’s going to meet up with the Oracle while we enter this facility and steal some important medical files?”

  “Yeah,” said Ian.

            It was already almost eight o’clock and they had gone over the plan a few times.

  “Why are we trusting the message?” asked Melisa. “Elizabeth gave Ed the envelope, for all we know she’s leading him into a trap,”

  “No, I tailed her two days ago. She met with the Oracle so it makes sense that he’d use her to send the message,”

  “After the theft, we meet back here?” asked Ed.

  “Yeah, and you leave the site as soon as you’re done with Oracle, even if we’re still inside. Now, the note said nothing about killing anyone, but I’d prefer to be in and out before they know we are there. Green?”

  “Green,” the other three said in turn.

  “Good, let’s run,”

  “Just wait a minute,” said Dev. “Where did you get these?” he gestured to the schematics and patrol patterns.

  “I know a guy, come, we don’t have time to worry about where this came from, just know we can trust the source,”

            They managed to get inside the facility without any trouble. The documents De Beer had supplied were accurate to the letter so the three of them could sneak past every guard and patrol inside the medical facility and reach their target within minutes.

            Ian wondered about that as he started downloading the files they were sent to retrieve. He also added a few of his own worm programs so that he had some back doors to work with later and sent the files that they were stealing to a million different cloud servers in a million different pieces before deleting them.

  “Okay, that’s the last of them,” said Ian as he deleted the final file once the download was completed.

  “Good, let’s go, this place is giving me a bad feeling,” said Dev.

            Again, they managed to move past the guards and patrols without incident.

  Something is wrong, Ian though.

            They were back outside, running through the scant forest of trees when his fears were realised. The shot rang through the cool night like thunder. Ian spun around and saw Melisa fall to the ground. Devon rushed towards her as a second shot sounded and splintered a branch off one of the trees.

            Thinking quickly, Ian grabbed a flare from his belt, lit it and threw it to the side before diving out of the way as a third shot resounded. The flare would cause sufficient interference with night vision to aid there escape.

            Ian rushed over to help Devon with Melisa and they made a B-line for the face of the mine dump.

  “This is your fault,” said Devon, poking Ian in the chest.

            They had rushed to the hospital after escaping the mine dump, luckily Danny was still on call so Melisa was in good hands.

  “My fault?”

  “Yes, if you weren’t is such a fucking hurry this would never have happened,”

  A small price to pay, Ian thought but he didn’t voice this.

            Half an hour later, Danny came to them straight out of surgery.

  “The bullet punctured her left lung, but we’ve stopped the bleeding and she’ll be fine,”

  “Thank you, can I see her?”

  “Sure, but she’s sleeping so don’t try to wake her,”

            Ian let out a long sigh as Dev left. He rubbed at his eyes then held his hand in front of his mouth as if prying.

  “How are you doing?” Danny asked. She looked tired and there were bags under her eyes but Ian still thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “I’m always good when you’re involved,” he said with a smile and kissed her. “Excuse me, I need to phone Ed quickly,”

            He walked down the hallway while selecting Ed form his contacts list and phoning him. He let the phone ring until he got to the voicemail. He ended the call without leaving a message and tried once more.

  “Come on, Ed, pick up!”