Extreme Exigency Executive Headquarters, Year 38
Sophia pulled her braids free of her lanyard as she pressed it against the security gate, the first and by far the simplest of several checks she would have to go through over the next ten minutes or so to be granted access to her workplace.
On the other side of the barrier, she found John already being patted down by Hank, one of the two guards on duty this morning. His counterpart, Dolores, rose from her chair to approach Sophia and begin doing the same, their sniffer dog remaining idle in the corner.
“Morning, Agent Smith,” she said to John blearily.
“Agent Owusu,” he returned cordially. “I notice you didn’t say ‘good’.”
Half an hour ago she had been asleep with no alarm set, having gone to bed last night with every intention of enjoying the luxury of a Sunday lie-in. Then her pager had gone off.
“You didn’t even say ‘morning’,” she pointed out.
“You got me. I don’t know what time of day it is, my body clock is completely shot to pieces.” He tilted his head slightly. “So I’m guessing you haven’t the faintest idea why the chief has called us in.”
“You two know the rules,” Dolores said, sharply but with an undercurrent of affection. “No discussion of classified information until you’ve passed all phases of the security process.”
Sophia sighed and they fell into silence as Hank and Dolores finished their checks. Then they ushered the agents through the double doors into the next screening area, the doors through which the guards never passed themselves.
The White Room always freaked John out, but Sophia could tell that he was trying his best to hide it for her benefit. They had to stay in there completely still for as long as it took the agents hidden behind the walls to tune into their formulaic fingerprint. Although Sophia’s abilities didn’t lie in that direction, she could still feel it as it happened, and even distinguish who it was on the other side of the barrier by the way it felt — today was a tickle, which meant it was probably Brad — but as far as John was concerned it was just a disconcerting period of being probed by senses he couldn’t understand. He was far from alone amongst the operatives without special abilities in finding the experience unsettling.
Eventually, a recorded voice said, “Clear.”
John instantly relaxed and cheerfully held the exit door open for Sophia.
The final room always reminded Sophia of something between an examination hall and the time clock area of a busy office. She and John took their individual clipboards from the racks arranged on the nearest wall, then chose seats amongst the neat rows of individual desks to complete their Consistency Questionnaires.
The questions were always a random selection of apparent trivia, from the name of their first pet to what they’d eaten for breakfast three days earlier. Sophia dutifully filled it in, despite the banality of most of the questions. It had been impressed on them again and again that they must always be completely honest, or the system would fall apart.
As luck would have it, the final question at the bottom of the fourth page was the one where the only consistency Sophia could offer was that she was never going to tell the truth in her answer.
What was the name of your first crush?
As always, her pen hesitated over the paper for a moment, the urge to write “Allie” overwhelming. And, as always, she rewrote the question slightly in her head and substituted the name of the boy in ninth grade who was the first person she’d known had a crush on her.
When she put her clipboard in the slot for it on the further wall, where it would eventually be taken away for analysis, John was already waiting for her. “You see who else is in?”
It was usually more trouble than it was worth to see which slots on the wall were already occupied, but this early on a Sunday morning they stood out like sore thumbs. There were a few people from Public Operations who would be manning the phones to take down incoming reports from law enforcement bodies and the public tips line that worked as a modern-day witch-hunting exercise. There was Georg who was always down in his lab with his arachnids and didn’t count. Apart from them and the usual rotation of security staff who’d drawn the short straw on the shift rota, it was just their team, and Deputy Director Hill.
“Oh shit,” Sophia said quietly.
“That’s right, get it out of your system now. Best behaviour once we’re in there.”
“Come on, we’ll be late.”
Once they were inside the elevator, Sophia said, “Why did it have to be Hill? He hates me.”
“Yeah, but Hill hates everybody.” Behind his back, the agents entertained themselves with the notion that one of Hill’s Consistency Questions was “how many bastards do you have?” and the difficulty he had in answering was whether to count himself, more than keeping track of exactly how many love children he had fathered.
“True,” Sophia admitted. “But he hates me the most.”
John made a show of thinking hard for a moment then said, “True.”
“You’re so encouraging, that’s what I enjoy about working with you.”
“You know it.”
As the elevator doors opened, they both instinctively went quiet and walked the short distance to the major incident briefing room in silence.
“Agents, good of you to join us,” Chief Francis said sarcastically as they arrived. She nodded in the direction of two empty chairs and they sat down somewhat sheepishly.
Hill stepped forward from where he had been lurking in the half shadows at the side of the room. “This is everyone, right?” Francis nodded. “Well, then. I really hope this is good.”
Francis cleared her throat and nodded to Daniels to click the projector onto the first slide.
Sophia leaned forward to try to make out what was shown on the blurry photographs Daniels was clicking through. A mixture of CCTV footage and crime scene photos. “This is Chicago last week.”
Hill put his fingertips to his temple. “Everyone here knows about this grade A clusterfuck,” he said wearily. “Luckily, we’ve been able to pin the blame on the ineptitude of local law enforcement.” He caught Sophia right in the headlights of his piercing eyes, making her feel like a deer, transfixed and most likely doomed. “Though there are some in the White House muttering darkly about intelligence failures.”
“We all know about intelligence failures and the White House,” Daniels said. “They start from the Oval Office on down.”
Hill glowered in his direction, which at least took the heat off Sophia. Instead of addressing Daniels directly, he said to Francis, “Is this sort of insubordination common in your squad, Chief?”
“No, sir,” Francis said but Sophia had caught the momentary smirk on her face before she had suppressed it.
“There are many people out there in the country — and inside the new administration — who would like nothing more than see us shut down,” Hill said dangerously. “And let’s not kid ourselves that the ones who don’t feel that way see us as anything more than, at best, a necessary evil. We can’t be giving them any ammunition, let alone loading the chamber for them.”
“Understood,” Daniels said, waiting just long enough for it to be disrespectful when he added, “Sir.” He clicked through the next few slides in short order; Hill was right that they had all seen them before.
The final pair, Allie there one moment and gone the next, still acted as a lightning strike to Sophia, despite how much of the last few days she had devoted to poring over them for clues. A maelstrom of emotions inevitably followed: relief that Allie was undeniably safe and well, not just cryptic messages like the reconstituted book; anger that she wouldn’t just come in and talk; regret at the missed opportunities of the past; fear that things were escalating further and faster than anyone could calculate the consequences of, even Allie.
And then, Daniels pressed the button again. The projector clunked awkwardly and nothing showed on the screen. “Agent,” Chief Francis said, “please–” But Daniels had already crawled all the way onto the table and re-aligned the jammed slide. He grinned at them as he sat back down, went back a few slides then forward again until the mechanism was working smoothly, replaying Allie’s vanishing act over and over. Now you see me, now you don’t, now you see me, now you don’t.
Now you see me.
Now you don’t.
And then, the next slide. A zoomed in view of the taxicab, showing the other passenger.
And another slide. A mugshot, a kid who Sophia thought couldn’t be older than seventeen, looking straight at the camera with a sullen expression.
“Go back, please,” said Hill, his gruff demeanour gone now that his bloodhound instincts had kicked in. Daniels obliged; it was obvious that the two pictures showed the same person, however grainy the first was. “So you’ve tracked him? And surprise surprise, he already has a criminal record?”
“No sir,” Francis said. “This was taken by our northern friends after he turned himself in in Toronto three days ago.”
“I know they always get their man, but do they have to go stealing ours?” John said.
“None of that,” Hill said. “International co-operation is the new watchword. Nowhere is safe until everywhere is safe and all that.”
Sophia had a grimmer outlook on the new propaganda phraseology: the underlying message was clearly “co-operate … or else”. But she knew better than to argue that here, now, in front of Hill. “So, the Mounties are co-operating?”
“So much so that we’ve got a ticket on the next plane for one lucky winner,” Francis said. All eyes in the room turned to Sophia. “Wrap up warm,” she added.
“Oh, come on,” Sophia said, “just because he’s– I mean, we’re–“
“Agent Owusu, even I have to admit that you’re the natural choice,” said Hill. “You do have a lot in common with him, but more than that you’ll be able to win him over with all that bull about only being concerned for the fugitive’s safety.”
“You know damned well–” Sophia began.
“Agent,” Francis said, intervening before she could get herself into real trouble with the deputy director. “We tried it your way with that old dude in the WREC.” Standing in a darkened room, watching through the one-way mirror as Professor Courts swapped barbs with John had been one of her most difficult experiences since becoming an Agent, but far worse, from the team’s point of view, was that it had led to no actionable intelligence. “Now you do it our way, understand?”
“Fine,” Sophia said, defeated. “Fine.”
“I think we should send someone with her,” Hill said. He had never fully trusted her, always suspicious that she was susceptible to being swayed to Allie’s side. Who knew, maybe he was even right, despite all the water under the bridge.
“The Mounties are co-operating, not rolling over and playing dead,” Francis said. “They will allow one observer. We’re already stretching a point that they’ve agreed to let her speak to him directly.” Hill gave a grunt of frustrated assent.
“So what’s the play?” Sophia said. “Is he hooked into a local study group in Toronto?”
“He might be but that’s not our primary concern,” Francis said. “The ‘play’ is simple — gain his confidence, find out what the hell happened in Chicago. Any information you get along the way to pass on to our partners north of the border will grease the wheels of international co-operation, but the main objective is the same as always.”
Sophia and the rest of the team all nodded, but Hill apparently felt the need to spell it out in no uncertain terms. “Find Voss. Stop Voss from doing whatever the hell it is she’s planning. By any means necessary!”