Something Searched

            After the Oracle had phoned, Ian finished breakfast with Danny and made his way over to the Project 8 offices. He had arranged with the Colonel for a loan car until he could buy a replacement for his own.

  “I need to talk to her,” he said as he entered the office.

  “What?”

  “Melisa, I need to speak to her,”

  “Why?”

  “Ed’s been taken,”

  “Taken, by who?”

  “Do you really think we’d be having this conversation if I knew?”

  “No, I guess not,” said Devon solemnly. “You think Melisa knows?”

  “It’s worth a shot,”

  “Fine, let’s go,” he said.

            They got in Dev’s car and twenty minutes later they were at his house. Dev unlocked the door, and they entered. The living room was directly ahead of them and past that the kitchen. The dining room was left of the kitchen and the study directly to their right.

            It was in the study that they found Melisa, dressed in a tank top and yoga pants reading some book on thermal dynamics.

  “Oh, hey guys,” she said casually.

  “Dev told you, I see,” said Ian.

  “Jip, I actually wanted him to let you in on it before they shot my twin, but he said you’d try and stop us,”

  “He was right,” he said looking over at Dev. “Where’s Ed?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Someone’s taken him, and you’d better have answers,”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, unless you want me to lie to you,”

  “I told you this was a waste of time,” said Dev.

  “I might not know the answers to your questions, but I might know of someone who will. You’ve met him before, Ian,”

  “The Others agent I rescued?”

  “Yes. He’s quite high up in the ranks. He’ll know the answers to your questions, or where to find them,”

            After a quick phone call to the Colonel, and a quick application of a rough disguise, the three of them left in Devon’s car. The Colonel was reluctant to give Ian the whereabouts of the man, but after he told her that he could just get the data from the secure servers, she gave in.

            It took them in hour to get there thanks to traffic, and some misdirection from the GPS. Almost before Devon had stopped the car, Ian had jumped out, ran to the door and entered the safe house. The old man was in the living room with his granddaughter, but that did not stop Ian from grabbing the man by the throat and pinning him to a wall.

  “Send her away,” said Ian.

  “Kelly, go play in your room, please,” said the old man. The girl obeyed without question. “I remember you, you saved my life,”

  “Yes, now you’ll help me save two. Where is Ed?”

  “Who?”

  “Edwards Swardt, where is he?”

  “I’m afraid I do not know who you’re talking about,”

            Ian unsheathed one of his longswords and held the blade to the man’s throat.

  “You recognised me that day, you knew who I was,”

  “Everyone knows who you are, Dragon,”

  “Then you also know who Superducky is,”

  “Oh,” the man said, realization clear on his face, “the archer, yes I know who he is,”

  “So where are you keeping him?”

  “We don’t have him, but you already knew that, didn’t you,”

            Ian clenched his teeth. This was irritating him beyond measure, it had been years since he had to play mind games with a captured Others agent, but he was determined to win.

  “What is the Source?” Ian asked, thrusting the man back against the wall

  “I don’t know,”

  “I would rather not kill you with your granddaughter in the house,”

  “I’m telling you the truth, I don’t know. Some things are kept even from me, but there is a way to find out,”

  “The Core?” Ian asked.

  “Yes, but getting to it won’t be easy,”

            The Core was the most powerful supercomputer on the planet and technically it didn’t exist. The Agency had built it and used it, until the Fall when the Others whipped them out and stole a lot of their tech, including the Core.

  “No,” said Ian, lowering his sword and releasing the man, “but that’s where you come in,”

 

  “Ian?”

  “Down here,” he called up to Danny.

  “Hey,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and leaned herself on his shoulder. “What’s that?”

            They were staring at a display case. Inside was a battle suit made from a number of exoskeletal plates and nanowebbign between. It was pitch black with faint glossy lines that ran in between the plates on the webbing. The lines looked much like the circuits on a printed circuit board.

  “An experiment,”

  “It looks like a nanosuit to me,”

  “That it does,” Ian said, he was deep in thought.

  “It looks familiar,”

  “I’d hope so, they had a few clips of me wearing that on the news a few years back,”

  “I was in med school when I first saw this, I remember because every girl on campus was talking about the guy who wore the suit and what kinds of things they’d like to do to him. Or that they’d like him to do to them. Wait a minute, that was you?”

  “Yeah, but an old me,”

  “And you flipped out because you suspected Ed was the Black Arrow, what a hypocrite,”

  “I know. But I learnt the hard way that it isn’t what it was chalked up to be. Every night I put on that suit and saved four of five lives, and the next morning I’d read of one I didn’t save. It eats at you, slowly killing you. I just barely managed to survive that, and I’ve got no idea if Ed would be able to handle it any better,”

  “Did anyone know?”

  “No, it was before Ed had moved in, and JR was always kept out of the loop. That had made me feel worse,”

  “So why keep the suit if you stopped?”

  “Knew I might need it someday,” Ian said and they stood in silence for a while. “I’m leaving tonight. I’ve got an idea of where I can find information that could lead me to Ed and Aaliyah. I’m going to get the info and set out immediately afterwards,”

  “But you’re coming back?”

  “What kind of a question is that?” he asked and turned towards Danny, placing his hands on her shoulders, “Forever and a day, remember?”

  “You’re so putting that in your wedding vows,”

  “You know it,” he said and kissed her.

 

            With the help of the old Others agent, they managed to get well past the last checkpoint before the alarm was sounded. After that, things got difficult. They fought their way to the Core one floor at a time for three floors, killing any Others agents in their way.

            Ian had put on the suit, save for the helm, and once powered the circuits shone a faint green and pulsed every other half-minute. Dev was clad in a bulletproof vest, as was Melisa, but Dev also wore his combat hat, sunglasses similar to the ones Ian and Ed had used two weeks ago, and his balaclava.

  “In there, the old agent said pointing to a door opposite them.

  “Dev, cover,” ordered Ian as he sprinted to the door, forced it open and entered.

            The room was pure white with no windows, no office furniture and no screens. In fact, the walls, floor and ceiling were large projectors. As he reached the centre of the room, numerous holographic screens appeared as well as a holographic console that surrounded him.

            Frantically he began to enter commands into the console, drag items from the one screen to the next. He searched for anything that mentioned Ed, but realised that it was far too ambiguous, so he refined his search. Finally, after searching for references to the Source, Ed and Aaliyah, he had a location.

            He walked back to the door, stepping through the holograms. Ian stepped outside and saw the old Others agent drawing a gun on Devon, Ian drew his own pistol and shot the man twice in the chest.

  “You won’t save him,” the man said and chuckled, which turned into a gurgling as blood filled his lungs, “but maybe you’ll run into your brother over there, Devon,”

            Before they could question the man, reinforcements arrived. Ian had gotten what he needed so they three of them made their way back to the top of the facility, a much harder feet now that they were discovered.

            After fighting tooth and nail, they made it topside, got into their car and drove off.

  “Okay, I’ve got us a destination,” said Ian, inspecting some of the bullet impacts in his suit, “let’s drop Melisa off at your place and-”

  “I’m coming with you,” Melisa objected.

  “Like hell you are,”

  “He said we’d find Donovan there, so I’m going, end of story,”

  “He said we might run into him,”

  “There’s no point arguing, Ian, she’s coming with us,” said Devon who was driving again.

  “Fine,”

  “Where are we heading?” Dev asked.

  “Hong Kong, Japan,”

  “Well, we can’t drive there, and unless you can fly, Dragon,” said Melisa.

  “Dev, get us to the old HQ, there should still be a VTOL there,”

  “You remember how to fly those damn things?”

  “It’s like riding a bike,” Ian said, “a very big, flying brick of a bike,” he added under his breath.