The Breaking, page 18
part #2 of The Reckoning of Anecor Series
“Look. If we look at the beginning of these tests, you can see these diagrams for the virus structure and the data for the victim. They all show that the victim died.”
“Okaaay.”
“But, if we look further along in the notes, at later dates, we see that there are some who have survived. And the further along we go…” Bendi was now swiping quickly and pointing at the diagrams and the notes on the victims.
“More and more people are being listed as surviving…” Bryn finished Bendi’s sentence.
“Yes!”
“But why?” Bryn said, shaking her head.
“I don’t know. I have been trying to imagine the reason for it myself, but nothing makes sense. And another thing—who are these survivors? I know of no one who has gotten sick and survived. Do you?”
“No. I don’t. But maybe…just maybe…”
“The bodies? The ones inside the BRO facility.”
“Exactly. Maybe there is a connection. Are these the survivors? And, if so, then what are they doing with them?”
“And do their families, friends still believe them to be dead?” This last voiced thought was horrifying to Bendi, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew them to be true. “There were a lot of bodies in there. If they all survived, then that is a lot of people who are believed to be dead that aren’t,” she added.
“If those are all the survivors. Judging from the numbers in that notebook, that wouldn’t seem to be the case. Even if there are more scientists working on the same thing. So, perhaps not all of them survive after they are delivered to the facility,” Bryn said.
“That’s a good point. I’m not sure what to do with all this information. How do we find out what they are doing? Should we go to Melody?”
“No. At least not yet. We might need to, but I want to wait until we find out what has happened today. Until we know what we’re dealing with there. And—” Bryn stopped short, the troubled look coming to her again.
“What is it, Bryn? What have you not told me?”
Bryn sat quietly, contemplating whether or not to divulge the information she had received from one of the contacts Melody had wanted her and Remy to talk to. Remy didn’t know yet, and she hadn’t told Melody either. She stared hard at Bendi, thinking about how young she was, and how sad it was that she and her friends had become caught up in such a dangerous game. Bryn wasn’t too far away from being 15, but far enough to realize that once you lost your youth, you didn’t get to just get it back. At least not now. Not the way their world worked now. So, she wished for Bendi that she could just be 15, even though Bendi had probably always seemed wiser than her years.
“Well,” Bryn said, making the decision to tell Bendi, “it does have to do with what the group is out there doing right now. These two might have been part of the Resistance. We know that they have become two of the Disappeared. But it seems that the Disappeared are actually being kept in facilities in the Borderlands. In horrible conditions. The contact today had been there. He was very afraid to talk to me. He had been threatened, as you can imagine, with his life if he told anyone what he saw.”
“Those poor people. Just for disagreeing with Council. There has to be something we can do, doesn’t there?”
“I don’t know. This just adds another layer to what we’re already dealing with. The contact also said that during his visit, there had been a conversation that he was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear. In this conversation, there was talk of new facilities being constructed in the Borderlands and that some of the Disappeared would eventually be joining the others in the new facilities.”
“What others?”
“He didn’t know. The person talking had said just that: ‘the others.’ But it seemed to this contact that they were military facilities. Manglebee seems to be building an army again, and it appears that he wants to force the Disappeared into being part of it.”
“He’s attacking his own country again. Just like in The Reckoning! Only this time he’s also using a virus. And an army.”
“It would seem so. Really, a lot of this is speculation until we have more information. This contact was only there the one time, on BRO business. What he saw, and heard, terrified him. He doesn’t want to join Colossus, but he wanted us to know. In case we could do something with the information,” Bryn said.
“How did he know about Colossus?”
“He knew Manuel. They had been close. But he’d only learned about Manuel’s involvement in Colossus just before he died. After what happened to Manuel, he didn’t want to be a part of it, though he had been considering it before.”
“Manuel is the man who Remy came to replace, right?” Bendi asked.
“Right. Karl caught on to his work with Colossus, except that he was never able to figure out exactly who it was Manuel was working for. Manuel never betrayed his loyalty to us, even though it cost him his life. I’m sure he knew it wouldn’t have mattered. It’s highly unlikely he would have been allowed to live even if he had divulged everything. Still. He was a brave man.” Bryn’s eyes glistened with unshed tears before she blinked them back and returned to the present.
“What do we do now?” asked Bendi.
“Now? Well, right now, we wait. We can’t do anything else until Remy and the others have returned.”
“Shouldn’t we send them a message? To find out how it’s going?”
“I’ve done that. I still haven’t heard. Depending on where they are, my message might not get through to them. They should return by sundown. If not—”
“Do we go out and find them?” Bendi asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, let’s have a look at those notes again.”
CHAPTER 28
T
roy and Destin were exhilarated by their secret workings in the BRO system. They felt empowered and grew more confident by the moment.
“Now this is taking action. You know, we’re doing more right now to help Colossus than anyone else,” Troy mused.
“Yep. That we are. Wish we could tell them.”
“We can’t?”
“Not sure we should. Yet. I mean, you probably have seen enough of Melody by now to know she likes to have control. Sure, she trusts us to make the decisions we have to when we are fulfilling her orders. She has to let us do that. It’s all about safety for her. If we’re gonna stay safe, then we have to be able to make judgement calls sometimes. But. This right here? This wouldn’t qualify as ‘keeping safe’ exactly.”
“Ha! Quite the opposite, actually,” said Troy. “You’re right. Guessing she wouldn’t really be happy with us doing this without her knowing, huh?”
“Nope.”
“So. What else are we gonna do? Maybe we can smooth the way by discovering something that she would approve of before telling her what we actually did.”
“Good idea. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to know that we got through Level 3 Security. Overjoyed, actually. And we can tell her about these files. We just don’t have to tell her we altered them,” Destin said.
“We can’t stop now! I think we should at least see what else we can find out. There are more files than this in here.”
Destin looked sideways at him and shot him a quick grin, “You really are alright, nerd.”
Troy returned the grin. “Thanks. So?”
“So? What are we waiting for? Sun’s coming up and my dad will be home before too long, so if we’re gonna do this—”
“Like you said…what are we waiting for?”
The file system followed some sort of order that was not obvious to Troy and Destin, so working their way through took time and patience. They both had the patience, but time was short, so they found their patience wearing a little thinner than it would if they did not feel up against a clock. Most of the files were the same kinds of records that they had already been looking at. Without any more information than what was recorded on those files, they weren’t learning anything new.
Destin glanced at her watch, “Argh! My dad’s shift is done in 30 minutes, and this feels like we’re getting nowhere!”
“When do we need to stop working? We aren’t quitting today until we have to.”
“I’d say we safely have less than an hour. It takes just over an hour to get back here from the plant when our shifts end.”
“Then we’ve still got time.”
๛ ๛ ๛
Trevor made his way back to the lab, dragging his feet. He reached the door, put his hand on the handle, closed his eyes for a brief moment to regain his composure, and pushed on through. The team continued their work and did not even appear to notice he’d walked through the door. He wasn’t even sure that they’d noticed he was gone in the first place. Good. Fewer questions then. He walked to his computer station and logged back on, resuming his work comparing old files to the ones that were just changed.
“Any luck so far for any of you?” he asked his team.
The responses ranged from a frustrated “no” to a groan that sounded anything but positive.
“Just keep at it. Something’s bound to break at some point, right?” he said, trying what meager encouragement he could summons.
“Files aren’t changing anymore, so whoever it is has stopped their work for the day,” came a voice from one of the computers closest to the door.
“Well, that’s something, anyways. I’ll take any form of good news I can get right now.” With that, he saw a couple of heads raise and look at him with a touch of concern. When he didn’t say anything more, they bent back over their keyboards, eyes locked on the screens in front of them, and went back at it. Trevor did the same, working with one half of his brain on his task—comparing data from two different files did not require much attention—and the other half in musings over telling Manglebee exactly what he could do with this job and stomping out on him, never looking back, to return to his normal life with his wife and son.
After looking for a half hour, he was convinced that the individual who had somehow broken into their system today had not changed the files from earlier. The changes in the earlier files were far too random. Too few spaced too far apart. It just wasn’t logical to think that someone who had made such random changes previously would suddenly make numerous changes all in one sitting.
Well, on a positive note, at least I won’t have to report to Manglebee that someone’s been infiltrating the system for weeks now. He wondered again if he should even report today’s fiasco at all. He might never find out…but, then again, who has ever gotten anything past that man? If someone has, I’d like to know who they are so I can ask them for pointers.
Trevor decided to turn his attention to the task they’d originally set out to do. It would take more of his concentration to look at the previous targets—not targets, Trevor. These are people. Don’t ever forget that—who hadn’t succumbed to the virus and examine the programming for the robots who delivered the virus on the nightly “flights” from the “hives.” He really doubted he would find anything. It wasn’t like his team to be careless. They were good at what they did. The best really. Or Manglebee wouldn’t have them there.
“Whoa…whoa…whoa…YES!!” came a shout from one of the others.
Trevor bolted out of his chair and was at the side of the person who spoke the words in an instant.
“What? What? Did you find something?”
He glanced up at Trevor, a look of surprise on his face. “I can’t believe it, but, yes. I think I broke through. I have a location. Or, at least I think I do. Unless it’s another layer of security that’s landed me at a false location.”
“Okay. Well, that could be. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. So, show me what you’ve got.” The young man zoomed in on his screen so Trevor could see more easily what was up there. Sure enough, it looked like he nailed a signal from the computer being used.
“It does look like you might have found a location. Pull it up on a map. Let’s see where it lands us,” Trevor said.
“Sure thing, boss.”
By this time, the other team members had made their way over to the computer and were all squeezing around the single chair to witness what they had all thought to be the impossible. When the map popped up, there was a collective sharp intake of air. And then exhales of disappointment.
“Looks like you were duped,” said one of the onlookers.
“Yeah. No way this came out of Quadrant 4. No one’s even allowed computers out that way. Not to mention the training in computers a person would have to have to do what this person did today,” another chimed in.
“Uh-uh. Not a chance,” said a third.
“You’re all probably right,” Trevor said cautiously. “However, I think, given the circumstances, we should not dismiss this offhand.” They all looked at him like he’d gone mad.
“Don’t you think that’s a waste of time when we should be looking for another layer of encryption?”
“I’m not saying we’ll stop digging deeper. I’m just saying that I think we need to also investigate this further. See who lives at this location. Find out anything we can about them…without alerting anyone of what we’re doing. This is to stay right here in this room for now. No one else is to know. I do not want to create chaos if we don’t have to.”
“Easy enough. We got access to anything we need right here anyway.”
The team member who had originally cracked the security encryption volunteered to continue digging. He sent one other person the information she would need in order to get where he was, so now there’d still be two of them working to get past whatever security wall the clever hacker had erected to fool them into thinking he was located in Quadrant 4.
Trevor knew he should be happy that someone had broken through at least some part of the security put in place by the individual who had breached their system. He wasn’t, of course. This new turn of events just directed his anxiety on another course. Now he really had to start considering what it was he would do if they did manage to pinpoint this person. Back at his computer, he found himself staring blankly at the screen, his mind entirely absorbed in how to handle this situation.
๛ ๛ ๛
Time was clicking down to the last ten minutes for Troy and Destin when a file caught Troy’s eye. MBD-v04.
“Hey. Hang on a sec,” Troy said to Destin as she swiped by the file, not noticing at first that it was different than the others they’d seen so far.
“What?”
“Go back one. There! That file. It’s different.”
“Good eye, nerd. I didn’t catch that.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere…can’t have though, right? Weird.”
“Yeah. Really weird. It doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen so far, so there’s no way you could have seen it before.”
“Right. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Troy responded, still perplexed.
“Sure thing.”
They opened the file and began sorting through its contents.
“Whoa. Would ya look at this? Now we’re talkin’!” Destin said as they began to uncover a goldmine of information.
“This is incredible.”
“And horrifying. Now we know for certain this was all Manglebee’s idea. The man is a monster.”
“That’s no surprise.”
They both fell silent for the time it took to read Manglebee’s scheme to use the people of Montrose to test an experimental virus. The goal was to perfect it and then to use it on the Disappeared. Not that the documents mentioned the Disappeared by name, but it was clear who they were talking about.
It was also clear that the goal wasn’t death, as they had all assumed.
“Whoa,” Troy said again. “They’re killing all these people with this virus, but they aren’t actually wanting to do that…why?”
“No idea. Doesn’t make sense. Keep reading, maybe it’ll say.”
Another minute passed.
“Look. They’re bringing everyone into BRO. So, it isn’t the Disappeared we saw. Those bodies. They’re from the virus.” Troy grew very somber. “That means that when Becs, Selby, and Cass were inside with the bodies, it was people from right here in Montrose they saw. They could’ve seen someone they knew…” This thought made it all seem even more real to Troy than it had at any other time.
“I’m glad they didn’t. I can’t imagine what that would have been like. At least with my Mom, I was expecting it.”
Troy stopped reading to look at Destin, “I can’t imagine how that was for you.”
“Yeah. Well. It was as hard as you can imagine.”
“And Becs. She had to watch her own brother die from this—” Troy broke off as a thought struck him. “Wait. Maybe the bodies they saw are the ones who survived, since the goal was for them to live…for who knows what reason…and maybe…maybe that means Jonathan—”
“Didn’t die,” Destin finished for him.
They both turned back to the computer and started scanning the documents again, quickly this time, looking for clues as to what they were doing with the survivors. Looking for clues that might give them hope that Rebecca’s brother might still be alive. And then, it was there, in front of them.
“This can’t be. How could they be doing this? Is it even possible?” Destin asked, stunned. When Troy didn’t answer, she glanced over at him to see where his eyes had landed, at the bottom of the screen on a list of the names of people on Manglebee’s team. The look on his face flashed between anger and disbelief. Tears sprang up in his eyes. His neck and face turned red, and then he started heaving. Without food for hours, nothing came out except the awful retching sound. Troy scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door, swinging it open and rushing out without closing it behind him.
Destin was baffled. She did not understand Troy’s reaction. She scanned the page again. The people identified seemed only to be Manglebee’s Councilors and one other name she didn’t recognize: Trevor Sullivan. Who was he? Why had Manglebee included him in his plans? This was something to bring to the attention of the rest of Colossus, but she still couldn’t understand why Troy was so upset.
