Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 Part 15
Finding Marcie wasn’t going to be easy, but I had a pretty good idea how to do it. The first man offered me all the resources I needed to make it happen. I asked him to send me one of his top programmers, an x-ray device, the chip in Betty, and a few weapons. I couldn’t go after her with a huge team. She would see us coming. Once I found her, I had to capture her on my own. There was no other alternative. She was too smart for them. She had evaded capture for a long time, and she was the reason the Organization couldn’t find Betty. More importantly, she was a threat to my parents. She was the only one out there who posed a danger to them now that I had a role in my new family. Bringing her in would let me sleep easier at night and I would be able to relax without worrying about them.
The programmer showed up with a van full of electronics. He didn’t know exactly what I wanted, so he came prepared. I suspected he had a general idea. I was astonished by his age and his respectful nature. He looked at me the way I looked at the first man. He introduced himself a William. He was no older than nineteen, but he went right to work setting things up in my living room like a professional. He addressed me as Sir when he spoke and looked genuinely afraid of me, like any mistake could be his last. I had never had seen anything like it before, especially when it came to my interaction with other human beings. I was used to being the one afraid one mistake could cost me my job or piss my boss off enough to demand I worked on Saturday.
“Okay, sir. I’m ready to begin.” William sat down in front of a laptop and turned it on. It booted up quickly, faster than my desktop at home which was designed to play video games and touted as a fairly powerful rig.
“You got the chip?” I figured it was somewhere in the mess of items.
“Yes sir, I do.” He pulled a clear box out of his bag. I had to maintain my composure. Not only was there dried blood on it, but there was a chunk that appeared to be flesh.
“This chip contains code that is able to mask our technology. It was reverse engineered from our programs, which means we should be able to decrypt it and figure out how it was created. Can you do that?” I knew he could. The first man had to know what I was planning when I asked for the chip and he wouldn’t have sent someone incapable of performing the task.
“Absolutely, sir.” He opened the case and pulled out an electronic scanner I didn’t recognize. “This chip is actually fashioned after the kind we make, so it should fit…” He popped the chip in. “Perfect!”
“Good.” I was already impressed, but I tried to remain stoic like an authority figure. I was pretty certain that I was the sixth man now. That had to mean something. I could not appear weak if I didn’t to end up like the former fourth man.
William immediately started tapping keys after plugged the device into a USB port. A program opened and he studied a few lines of code as it went by. He opened another program and started shuffling things around on the monitor. I had studied some Visual Basic in high school, but this was way above my skill level. I didn’t even understand what he was doing. I went to the kitchen and fetched a Coke Zero while he drove his keyboard through lines of code. That got a disapproving glare from Alfred who was supposed to bring them to me.
“Sorry, Alfred. I forgot.” I walked back into the living room while he muttered something under his breath about me not respecting protocol.
William was still busy when I returned. His fingers were flying across the keyboard. I took a seat and watched him work. Watching him reminded me why I didn’t go into the programming field. It was boring work, at least to someone so easily distracted. I considered turning on Destiny, but I didn’t think the sixth man would really play video games while one of his subordinates worked. I had to at least pretend to be interested, even if the only thing I really cared about right now was the finished product.
He sat back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the table as he contemplated what he was seeing, then immediately went back to work. Occasionally he would look at me out of the corner of the eye and when he saw my attention on him he would work even more furiously. This must be what my boss felt like staring at us all day while we worked. I kind of felt bad for him now. Strange, I always just resented him for pushing us for more productivity. This wasn’t work in the traditional sense of the word, but it was certainly boring.
“Okay, I think I got it.” He looked closer at the code and nodded.
“You’re done?” I was hopeful.
“Not yet.” He quickly started tapping keys again. A map came up next to the program and I saw it zooming all over the planet. That wasn’t a good sign. “It has some kind of coding in it to prevent decryption…” I watched as it sank down on Chicago. He sighed in frustration and slammed his fist on the table.
“What’s wrong?” I stood up and walked over.
“It’s pinging the facility in Chicago. It’s pinging Betty.” He shook his head and stared at the monitor.
“How is that possible?” I really didn’t know. That made no sense at all.
“It is bound to her somehow. It doesn’t just suppress our technology, it tracks the host.” He wrinkled his brow and chewed his lip in frustration.
“Do we have anything like that in our arsenal?” I sat down again. This wasn’t going anywhere.
“No. This is even more advanced than us, but that isn’t possible. We have the brightest minds on the planet. Anyone smart enough to create something like this works for us.” William stood up and pushed the chair around. He started pacing. I assumed it helped him think.
What he didn’t know was that if what Betty told me was correct, Marcie was a genius. If she had some kind of modified intelligence in her genetic makeup, then it wasn’t impossible for her to create something like this. She also hacked our database and stole some of our technology. She must have found a way to advance our technology. That would be the only way someone could create something that would mask what we used to track them. It was even better than what we had. We were at a dead end.
I laid back on the couch while he continued to pace around the room, occasionally hitting a button on his keyboard and then slamming his hand on the table. This was programming as I remembered it, one simple thing you couldn’t figure out would delay you for hours. The first man told me William was the best we had, but even he couldn’t break what Marcie encoded in that chip. She was a step ahead of the Organization as she had been her whole life. There was a reason she had eluded capture. She was better than us.
“Wait.” I sat up. “Wait just a damn minute.”
William stopped pacing and looked at me. “Sir?”
“What if we don’t try to decrypt it, but copy it.” I thought I might be one to something.
“I don’t understand?” He stared at me with a dumb look on his face. For a genius, he wasn’t catching on very fast.
“We copy what it does. We copy it and we trace that signal. There should only be one other chip on the planet with this technology and it is emitting a very specific signal, right?” I moved to the computer.
“You’re right..sir. You’re right!” He quickly took his seat and started pounding away on the keyboard.
I was once again engrossed in the work. I felt like I needed another Coke Zero, and Alfred must have read my mind because he startled me when I turned to walk to the kitchen. He had a tray with two cold ones ready for us. I took one and tried to pop the top, but Alfred grabbed my arm and popped it himself. He popped the other one and placed it beside William. I didn’t know if William liked Coke Zero, but the house didn’t have much else besides alcohol and breakfast juices. He took a huge gulp without looking at it, but I could see on his face that he was hoping it was something with sugar. He continued working.
The work quickly became boring again. After a few programs flashed up, he was engrossed in the code. I sat back down on the sofa and waited. I really wanted this to work. I needed it to work. It was the only option I could think of and William didn’t seem to have any other suggestions. I could hear Alfred in the kitchen digging around in the refrigerator. Surely it wasn’t lunch time already. I looked at the clock and was amazed to see that it was already two in the afternoon. We had been at this for a while. I hadn’t asked for food, but Alfred must have figured out that we were going to need something if this was going to keep going as long as it appeared to be taking.
“I got it!” William clapped his hands together. “I fucking got it, sir.”
I moved back behind him and looked at the screen. I wasn’t sure what he had. All I saw was code flying across the screen, but he seemed especially pleased with himself, so there must be something important going on. After a few minutes, the code stopped. The cursor blinked and his device lit up. His face turned into a big broad smile and he looked back at me, nodding as if I should know he just accomplished something.
“There.” He hit a couple of buttons and a map popped up. “There she is.”
I looked at the map. It had to be successful, because it was pinging a red dot outlined with a black circle. I watched him zoom out until I recognized the area. Marcie was in Albuquerque. She didn’t run. I half expected it to ping in another country, but she wasn’t far from where it all went down. It was genius. We would be combing the globe, but she never left. Did she live in Albuquerque? Were her infrequent visits to Betty just a ruse to make it seem like she was coming from far away when she was right around the corner whole time? Maybe it was intentional. She had been keeping an eye on Betty for years, ready to pounce if something happened, or get them out of town quickly if the situation called for it.
“Are you sure?” I didn’t want to doubt what he had found, but I still wasn’t sure it made sense.
“I’m positive, sir. That’s the only other signal on the planet that matches what this chip is emitting.” He was pleased with himself. If his confidence was any indication, he felt like this was one of his greatest accomplishments.
I wasn’t sure if a thank you was in order. Should I thank someone for doing their job? Was that the way of the Organization? I decided that I didn’t care. I was unbelievably happy. I wanted to hug him, so a simple thank you would have to do. “Thank you, William. Well done.”
His face turned into a huge grin, showing a line of pearly white teeth. He pumped his fist like he just scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl and took a big drink of his Coke Zero. I decided something stronger was in order. Alfred appeared with ham and cheese sandwiches. Like a good host, he only prepared mine with the low carb bread. He placed one on the table in front of me and another beside William. We quickly devoured them. William seemed to have an affinity for ham and cheese sandwiches as well, or at least he was pretended he did because I did.
“Alfred!” I said with a grin. “I think a round of beers are in order.”
“As you wish, sir.” He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard bottles being opened and poured.
All I had was a local brewery’s fall lager. I hoped William liked beer. I didn’t ask. He took it without question and took a gulp. His face was a lot kinder to it than the aspartame laced diet cola, so he must have approved. I raised my glass to him. I wasn’t sure the real protocol. I knew my boss wasn’t allowed to drink with his employees, but the Organization seemed to be a little bit more relaxed in that aspect. Still, I didn’t expect to see the first man offering me a brewed bunch of hops or a glass of something brown and expensive.
“So what now, sir? Do we go after her? I’d love to be on the ground with you.” He was eager. Maybe it was the quick buzz from the fairly strong 8.2% beer or he didn’t really want to spend his life behind a keyboard.
“I’m sorry, William. I have to do this alone. I hope you understand. You’ve played a vital role here and I’ll make sure the first man knows exactly how critical you were to her capture, but I can’t risk her making me before I get close enough…” I left that unfinished. Close enough for what? The first man said I didn’t have to take her alive. I assumed that meant he only wanted proof that she was dead.
“I understand, sir.” If he was disappointed, he hid it extremely well.
We continued to drink our beers in silence for a little bit and when when the first ones were done, Alfred was right there with another fresh one, this time poured in a glass that had spent some time in the freezer. He really was the best damn butler on the planet. I was certain my love of comic books had something to do with his name. There was a good chance it wasn’t even his real name and it was just more of the Organization’s facade. I actually didn’t care. I had what I needed now and soon I would have the first girl.
After the second round of beers were done, Alfred brought a single one and handed it to me. He read my mind yet again. I was ready for William to leave and Alfred must have sensed that. I had planning to do and I needed to do it alone. William packed up his gear and left the laptop with the tracking software loaded. He spent a few minutes showing me how to use it. I was confident that I could take it from here. Once the gear was packed, he came back and stood in the doorway.
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity, sir. I hope you are pleased with my work.” He beamed again.
“I am, William. Thank you.” I gave him another round of thanks and even shook his hand. After that he was gone.
I set everything up for my trip. I would be driving to Albuquerque alone. As much as I appreciated having a driver, I couldn’t even risk that for this mission. I organized my gear. I had chosen conventional weapons. I was afraid to take anything with me to confront her that wasn’t free of electronics. I didn’t know exactly how the weapons they fashioned worked, but I was scared they used the same sort of technology. I mapped out the area on Google Maps and figured out which building she was in. I even went a step further and found a location I could park and walk to where she was hiding. It was an apartment building, which presented even more of a problem. There would be other people in there, so a quick extraction or execution wouldn’t be possible. It was slightly favorable for me as well, because it meant she couldn’t easily run without attracting a lot of attention.
I didn’t sleep well that night. My dreams were filled with images of Betty being operated on within the glass dome. After a few hours of tossing and turning with those images haunting me, they changed. It wasn’t Betty being worked on anymore. It was Marcie. It was almost like I was in the glass dome with them. I looked down at my hand and I was holding a bloody scalpel. My hands were covered in blood, but Marcie was untouched. I looked around in a panic and I saw Betty tied to a steel chair much like the one I was tied to in Nevada. Her eyes, fingers and toes were all removed. She was dead. I knew it was my fault.
I didn’t just serve her up for them, I killed her with my own hands.
Submitted October 31, 2014 at 07:02AM by SadStoodUpBoy http://ift.tt/1wLGN5T nosleep
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