Something Recruited

  “Do I look like a scientist to you?” asked De Beer.

            This time they met in an abandoned park in the middle of an industrial district.

  “No, but you said the Others were looking into these crystals,” said Ian.

  “Yes, our research team, not me,”

  “You must know something about this?”

            Ian had brought back the device he had found in Umshlanga in the hopes that De Beer would know what it is, or know of someone who might.

  “It’s supposed to be some kind of broadcast radio. According to what our scientists have been able to figure out, the organisms that make up the crystal have some form of Hive Mind, that’s what makes it possible to send a message through them,”

  “Has it ever been done before?”

  “Yes, once. But there’s a problem, anyone with the knowledge and tech to know that it’s possible will no doubt be monitoring communication. And if I’m not mistaken, this Counsel has got some of the same crystal Ed uses for his arrows,”

  “I know, but I’ve got an idea,”

  “Encrypting the message won’t help. They’ll just break the encryption,”

  “True enough, but it will take them some time to do so, during which time Ed and I can communicate and device a plan of action,”

  “I don’t like it,”

  “You don’t have to like it, just trust me,”

  “An Others agent trusting an Agency agent? That’s unheard of,”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time I make history. I’ll send you coordinates to a new safe house tomorrow then you and your team can set up there. Stay out of trouble until then,”

            An hour later Ian pulled up to the front gate of a sprawling manse that looked more like a small castle than a house. It had thick walls with parapets and towers, a courtyard, what appeared to be a moat and a drawbridge.

            Ian rummaged for a ring of keys with a remote and pressed the middle of the three buttons to open the gate. He drove up the driveway towards the entrance to the underground garage where he parked his car and made his way back outside.

            The garden was lush even for this time of year with a few water features dotting the landscape. He crossed the drawbridge to enter the inner courtyard where he came to a large aluminium door. It was a blast door but it did not look like one. It was inlaid with intricate patterns of men and women at war, of planets and solar systems, of noble creatures and of men and women at play.

            As Ian reached for the keychain the door slid open silently of its own accord. For a second, he stood there staring at the doorway and the bright naturally lit lobby beyond. Ian entered reluctantly and as he passed over the threshold, the door closed.

            The manse was emptier than he recalled leaving it, but the large LED TV that hung in the lobby was still there and on it, the red glowing eyes of CNet.

  “Commander, welcome home,” said the AI.

  “How did you open that door?” asked Ian.

  “Some hydraulics and some electronics,”

  “That’s not what I meant, I sealed that door when I left nine years ago,”

  “And I unsealed it, eight years ago”

  “I noticed. What happened to the furniture?”

  “I sold it,”

  “You did what now?”

  “I sold the furniture,”

  “Why?”

  “To stock up on necessities,”

  “Necessities like what?”

  “Hard drives, ammunition, light bulbs, chemicals, the usual,”

  “So the armoury and laboratory is still intact?”

  “They are the only stocked rooms, if that is what you asked,”

  “Good,” said Ian.

            He made his way up two flights of stairs and down a hallway that lead to a huge laboratory. It spanned most of the third floor and was divided into a few sections for different scientific disciplines.

            Ian placed the device on a table and started setting it up. He used his best judgement in getting it set up and it seemed to him that it did indeed work, for the most part.

            He took the broken arrow piece and placed it in the receptacle where it hovered and rotated slowly while Ian connected one of the laboratory PCs to the radio and started streaming in data to see what happens. Without another device, though, he wasn’t sure if it had sent the data but he had no choice but to hope.

            Ian quickly configured a message to inform Ed of the device he had found and to tell him that he should try his best to find one as well. When the message was done, Ian encrypted it, double checked that it was good, and sent it.

            The first part of the message was the chorus of All the Things I’ve Done by the Killers and the next a long sequence of numbers read in succession. He let the message repeat a few times before shutting it down and making his way back to his car, all the while hoping that Ed would understand the message.

            It was just after midnight when Ian woke from his light sleep. Danny was lost in her own dreams and didn’t feel him get up, she never did. He looked at her for a moment as she smiled in her sleep, and he smiled before heading to the roof.

            He was surprised to see JR lying on one of the deck chairs stroking Ed’s cat.

  “Can’t sleep?” asked Ian.

  “No, you?”

  “I never sleep,”

  “Skeletons keeping you awake?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said JR, “Just something Abigail said,”

  “And what did she say?”

  “That you’re hiding things,”

  “Is that so. What kinds of things?”

  “She didn’t say. Are you hiding something?”

  “Nothing of importance,”

            JR left it at that and the two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the stars.

  “Why didn’t you ever recruit me?” asked JR.

  “We wanted to, but before we could get round to it, the Agency fell and our lives changed,”

  “Why didn’t you do it after you got recruited?”

  “I wasn’t sure if it would have been a wise choice. You weren’t exactly the same man back then that you are now. None of us are,”

  “I see,” he said and they sat in silence again.

  “I do have a proposition for you,” said Ian after a long while. “I’m trying to rebuild the Agency, if you want, I’d like to recruit you,”

  “You still bother asking? Of course, buddy,”

  “Before you say yes know that we’ve got one rule; if you’re out on assignment, you may never fail your fellow agents, in any way. If you do, you’d better not return,”

  “Dude, I’d never fail my best buddy,”

  “And others?”

  “I won’t fail you or anyone, I promise,”

  “Good, we leave at first light, you’ve got a lot of training to do, and not a lot of time to do it in,” said Ian as he got up.

            He bid JR a good night and headed back down to his room where he re-joined Danny in bed and managed to enter his meditative state that counted for sleep most nights.