Activated Read online

  Joel nodded. “Yes, I see their point.” He looked over at Pieter, shaking his head. “Okay, so we’ll be done over here in a few minutes. We’ll come straight to the lab, and see if we can’t figure out our next move. Expect us in about forty minutes.”

  “Okay,” said Eugene. “Stay safe.” The line clicked off.

  Pieter handed Joel the first miniature camera to place as they approached their site. “No joy?” Pieter asked.

  Joel turned the camera and fixture in his hands, examining the mechanism. “Not on the security front. They’re good to go on replicating the antidote, though. That’s something, at least.”

  Pieter nodded. “So we’re back to you and I guarding the most likely sites, then?”

  Joel drew a deep breath. “Yeah, it’s looking like that.” He stopped in his tracks and looked around. “Although… you know what?”

  Pieter looked around, trying to see what Joel was seeing.

  Joel continued. “Of the three places we’ve been, which is the easiest to access?”

  Pieter blinked. “Well. This one, I guess.”

  Joel raised a finger in the air, the camera grasped in his hand. “Exactly!”

  Pieter spun around, looking for signs of the facility monitoring the area. He looked down at his holo to search for any signals that might be being broadcasting. A moment later, he said, “Looks clean. I think we’ve found our target.”

  Joel found a floodlight post that was pointing back towards the facility. Taking the mini camera, he reached up to fix it to the post.

  Before his hand could touch the post though, something moved behind the structure and knocked him backwards. Unable to move with a dead weight on top of him, and the wind knocked out of his lungs, Joel kicked into attack mode.

  Camera now forgotten, rolling off the dust and hard grass, he clenched his fists and forced the weight off him. Realizing it was a man - a very heavy, muscular man - he felt he had lucked out. Pulling his right arm back to swing a punch, he pushed the man off his chest just enough to be able to swing at him.

  His fist connected with his attacker’s jaw so hard, he felt like he had punched a metal bar. The man’s head turned, but his weight still pinned Joel.

  For a moment, Joel was vaguely aware of Pieter shouting his name in the background. He pulled his left leg over the right leg of the man on top of him, and pulled it inwards while pushing off with his right hip. A second later, he had flipped the dense mass onto his side, and was able to scramble out from under him.

  Joel was in full attack mode now. “Who the fuck are you? Who do you work for?” he demanded. He clamped his left hand around the man’s throat, half his body weight behind him.

  The man was tattooed. Military. Joel subconsciously recognized one of the tattoos. He pulled his right hand back to punch him again, and thwacked down on the guy.

  The man, though built like a tank, took the punch, and his head lolled. Joel reached back into his utility belt and pulled out his weapon.

  “Wait!” the man shouted, as loudly as he could from his half concussed state. His pupils weren’t even. “Wait…” he said again, but with less force and more surrender.

  Joel stopped.

  “What?” he shouted down at him.

  “Joel? You’re Joel, right?” the man choked. “Molly’s Joel?”

  “What about it?” Joel scowled.

  “I’m Sean.”

  Joel slowed, and released his hand from his throat a little. “Is that supposed to mean something?” he asked, still not understanding how this man knew him.

  Sean gasped. “Molly didn’t tell you?”

  Joel felt a pang of pain in his heart. His brain was confused. What was happening?

  “Sean,” the guy said. “I came to see Molly the other day. I was on your ship. I gave her intel; we’re working together.”

  “Son of a fucking bitch.” Joel shook his head, his heart feeling like it’d been crushed inside his chest.

  “Sorry, man,” Sean said, realizing that Joel didn’t know about him. “She didn’t tell you? I’m working undercover for Garet’s office.”

  Joel started to climb off the guy. “No. She must have forgotten to mention it.” Though he was mad about not being in on the loop, in the same moment, he felt his depth of feeling for her. This was a work thing. It had boundaries. But, he wondered, what about when it’s a personal thing? He couldn’t think straight. Focus on the task at hand, he told himself.

  Pieter helped Sean to his feet as Joel straightened himself out after the mini-brawl. “Okay, so you’re also trying to stop this toxin from being deployed,” Joel asked him, still eyeing him a little suspiciously.

  Sean dusted himself off. “Yes. I couldn’t figure out what you were doing, but since you were pointing that device at the pipe that would be the sensible target, I assumed you were up to no good.” He rearranged his atmosjacket, looking sheepish. “Sorry for tackling you like that.”

  Sean offered out his hand. “No hard feelings?”

  Joel took the hand, making an effort to hide his suspicion. “Yeah… Yeah. No hard feelings.”

  Pieter recovered the camera from the ground, and held it in his open palm to show Sean. “Camera,” he said simply, and shrugged, before moving back towards the post where Joel was going to fit it.

  Sean shook his head, with a small smile. “Guess I was just hyper sensitive.” He straightened his atmosuit jacket again, and dusted off the lower half of his legs. The ground was sandy and grassy, just like most of the wild parts of the planet. “I’m Sean Royale, by the way.”

  “Joel Dunham,” Joel said, a little more grudgingly than he would have hoped to sound. He tried to brighten his voice a little. “This is Pieter Alexander, our new computer specialist. He was going to link up these cameras to give us an alert if anyone showed up here.”

  Pieter and Sean shook hands.

  “Tech. Good thinking!” said Sean. “I was going the old-fashioned route, and guarding the most likely target,” he confessed.

  Pieter and Joel looked at each other. “Great minds!” said Pieter, smiling.

  Joel decided to move proceedings on. “Okay, let’s get this camera up, and then we need to get to the lab. Might have an antidote ready soon.”

  Pieter turned back and continued fitting it to the post.

  Joel opened his holo and nodded to Sean. “Gimme a sec. Just need to check in with the boss.”

  Joel wandered away off back in the direction of the car. He started recording a message. “Molly, Joel. I’m at the Hlidargata site, and a Sean Royale has just shown up, claiming to know you. Can you just give me a quick message to let me know that this is one of your contacts? It looks like he’s going to be guarding the post, but I’m wary about leaving him alone unless you have intel that would suggest otherwise.”

  He clicked off, marking the message urgent, and sent it to their server.

  Hopefully she’ll pick it up right away and respond.

  He wandered back over to Sean and Pieter. Sean was chatting with Pieter, as he watched him fit the camera.

  Sean looked impressed. “Antidote. That’s fantastic.”

  He thought for a second. “So Molly is creating it?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” confirmed Joel, joining the conversation. “She doesn’t mess around.” He smiled, proud of his teammate. “Hey, is there a way we can reach you, as we’re working on this?”

  Sean explained about his secure server and shared the coordinates. Meanwhile, Pieter finished installing the camera and powered up the interface with the camera.

  “All working,” he announced.

  Joel nodded at a job well done. “Right. That’s us then,” he said, and shook Sean’s hand again. “Good luck with the guarding. We’ll be in touch when we have the antidote and kit for deploying, in case the toxin is released.”

  Sean, shaking Joel’s hand with genuine respect, bid them both farewell, and disappeared off out of sight again. Joel and Pieter turned and headed back across
the grassy plain to the car.

  “Nice guy,” said Pieter. “You really didn’t know anything about him?”

  Joel shook his head. “Nope. But you’ll learn this about Molly: A to B. And Sean wasn’t in the A to B we talked about, so she probably didn’t even think to mention it.”

  Pieter wasn’t sure, but even though Joel was matter-of-fact about how things were with Molly, Pieter sensed a hint of hurt in his voice.

  They got back in the car and drove off. Just around the corner, though, Joel pulled over.

  Pieter looked over at him. “We’re stopping?”

  Joel made a face. “Of course. You think I’m going to leave some random commando guarding our target without checking it out?”

  Pieter shook his head, realizing what had just happened. “Ah, right. You put in a call to the boss?”

  Joel smiled. “Hellz yeah.”

  Just then, a message came through on his holo.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said, winking at Pieter. Joel opened the message. It was text only.

  SEAN OK. LET HIM HELP.

  Pieter peered over at Joel’s screen. “Lady of few words,” he commented.

  “I’ll say,” agreed Joel. “Okay, we’re good. Let’s leave him to it, but be aware.”

  Joel started the car again, and headed off to the main road out of the area.

  Newstainment Offices, downtown Spire

  Maya sat at her desk, isolated by her cubicle walls. Her workstation was dimly lit as she wracked her brain, trying to figure out the missing pieces.

  Since Detective Rogers’ visit, there was something bugging her.

  Even apart from realizing that he knew more than he was sharing, there was something else. He didn’t seem to have jumped on the conspiracy thing about Ventus… which meant one of several things: he didn’t think it was a possibility; he was working for Ventus himself, and wanted to keep the heat off them; or he knew something about why Bates would have been there.

  There was no doubt he thought that she was getting into something dangerous. Beyond the toxin, he said. That pointed to conspiracy. And him knowing more than he was letting on.

  Maybe this Bates girl was the dangerous person; but she didn’t look it. Not walking around in broad daylight, being helped by two scientists, with another, younger girl in tow.

  Then there was the Dewitt footage. She had knocked on the door. Assassins don't normally knock.

  Maya turned her attention back to the download of the thesis Johnny had managed to track down for her. Maybe there was something in the science she was missing.

  As she flipped open the 300-page report, she briefly recognized that most of her colleagues would have been put off even by the front page. Science was so core to their life here at Newstainment, and yet it always surprised her how reluctant folks were to get into the details that would often yield so much truth.

  She started reading, skimming over the abstract. Then she flipped to the graphs in the main method section. After about twenty minutes of reading, she felt she had an idea of the process Bates used. Not that she was a scientist. Heck, she could barely wire a circuit. But conceptually, she got it.

  Now to consider the motivation for such a piece. She flipped back to the introduction and scanned for narrative. Was it for industry, and therefore financially motivated? Was it a prestigious area to be researching? She didn’t think so. New genetics wasn’t cutting edge, and hadn’t been for over a hundred years… But there was something she was missing.

  She flipped back to Molly’s resume. It seemed she was only sixteen when she wrote this. Which meant she was gifted and talented. And doing bio chem. That stank of social isolation and over-achievement. But what would motivate a 16-year-old to create dangerous toxins? Her parents were still alive, so it was unlikely she had been trying to find a way to kill them…

  She flicked back a few pages, feeling she’d missed something. Her eyes fell on a passage that changed everything.

  “Complacency in the field of new genetics is rife. There is very little regulation or ethical consideration when it comes to genetic manipulation of living creatures. The purpose of this paper is to show that this process, with the wrong intentions, could bring great harm to humanity. This is a demonstration that greater care and consideration should be exercised in performing such manipulations. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should. To this end I will use the garden variety Yultok plant, and show that within two manipulations, the nectar can be rendered more toxic to life than any artificial poison on the commercial market.”

  Maya highlighted the passage on her screen, and sat back in her chair, considering the psychology behind the child who had written that.

  She was a fighter, Maya could see that much. Bates was trying to demonstrate, even as a child, that there is some science that needs to be operated with more conscience. In a field where pushing boundaries was the measure of a scientist, a measure that would bring fame and recognition, she was delivering a very clear warning.

  Maya was impressed.

  She reached for her mocha cup, only to find it lighter than she expected. She peered over the edge. Empty. Saving her notes on her holo, she got up and took her mug to the kitchenette for a fresh mug.

  Mulling what she had just read, this new information made it incredibly unlikely that Bates was a terrorist, or even being paid by one.

  Unless she’s taking the warning in her thesis one step further… To make a demonstration. But then, why all the experiments? And why hasn’t something been done on a larger scale yet? Or all those years ago… Unless there’s been a recent stressor.

  Maya shook her head. She didn’t get the sense that Molly was one of the bad guys. She took a sip of the fresh mocha, and wandered back to her desk, talking into her holo, sharing her suspicions and new findings.

  When she was done, she hit send.

  VOICE MSG SENT TO DETECTIVE ROGERS, the holo confirmed.

  He needed to know what she knew; even if he wasn’t being fully open with her. And if he was in on it, then at least he would know that the press was onto him…

  She sent the same message to Bob, and archived it in her notes, invoking the standard practices the company enforced to keep their investigators safe and silencers deterred.

  She sat back down at her desk to continue her investigation. This was all getting rather interesting.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Gaitune-67, Safe house, Basement workshop

  Molly strode into the workshop, closely followed by Paige. Brock and Crash were battling with boxes of equipment, sorting and organizing.

  Brock signaled to the boxes nearest Crash. “I think if we put those in storage, and just keep the storage accessible, we’ll be fine,” he said. “But these… I think these need organizing straight away. There are a bunch of photon cells I’ve been waiting for, and the tracking is saying they’ve been delivered.”

  He looked up at the door as Molly and Paige entered.

  Crash started hauling another box out of the way.

  “Hey!” Brock called. His smiled brightened upon seeing his teammates, until he saw their serious looks.

  His first thought was that Molly didn’t like his and Paige’s little nail varnish plan. “Everything okay?” he asked, wiping his hands on his overall legs nervously.