The Valkyrie Project (25 page)

Of course, in reality the cash was going the other way. Still, Ana couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the little man. She ended up with that feeling almost every time she encountered someone clearly out of their depth or in over their head.
They looked at her with the eyes of a dog that had been inside all day and just wanted to go for a walk. Her tin heart melted inside the durosteel box that housed it and kept it separate from the world. She wished for a way to protect these innocent people, so they didn't have to engage in these risky, dangerous, lethal activities.

A
smattering of unintelligible words formed an answer to her disguised question. He turned to lead them to the elevator furthest from the party. The biometrically controlled elevator took them up into the heart of the building where they exited out into a small carpeted reception area surrounded by glass panels.

Moving swiftly, their escort let Ana and Etienne in
to the relative dark of the after-hours office space through glass doors. The interior smelled of warm mustiness, and Ana heard the heat still running, lukewarm air leaking from vents in the wall close to the floor. They walked past several banks of cubicles toward an office closed in by solid walls, one of which concealed a safe that contained research documents and samples of the latest experimentally processed Androkal. The list of contents had been in the briefing, but the details of the hiding place were known only to the target.

Their informant had gotten over his case of stage fright, and let loose with all kinds of information on what he'd gathered, more than happy to spill his guts t
o them. Ana had seen it before: the tension bottled up inside, trying to keep an important secret from exploding out of their mouth as though they'd swallowed a grenade. There was a relief that came with knowing that there was someone to share the secret with, to not be stranded on that island in the middle of a dark ocean by one's self.

The man stopped short a step inside the office, his monologue cut off by a sudden sharp intake of breath.
Instinct took over and Ana jumped in front of him. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the darker office, but she saw what had stunned the informant: the dark shadow outline of a man, tall, broad, and menacing.

Ana froze, just as the small man behind her had, but from the corner of her eye, she saw Etienne draw the Needler that had been strapped to the inside of her thigh and press herself against the wall outside the door. Ana had a Needler of her own
fastened between her legs, just like the one she'd faced down, held by the man with the hook nose. The gun chafed her bare leg, but it was about the only place to hide a weapon in her dress.

"I should have figured you wouldn't be alone."

The voice was deep and strong, its sharp edge not yet worn away by age. Ana assumed the shadow was speaking to the informant, but she didn't move from in front of him. She stood there with what little armor the Continuum had woven into her dress, protecting a man whose only value to her was to provide intel to an organization she was supposed to be fighting against. But she didn't budge. She would decide who lived.

"I should ask if you really thought you wouldn't get caught. If you really though
t you'd get away with this. With all the obvious clues and signs. But what's really important is why? Why are you doing this?"

He sounded more hurt than angry.

Ana turned her head. "Who is this guy?"

"I
—I don't know!"

Even in the dim light that found its way into the office, Ana could see the informant's face had drained of color. She
hoped he wasn't going to vomit or lose control of any other bodily functions. She knew just how corkscrewed up his nerves were and wasn't sure they could handle any shock to the system.

The shadowy figure stepped forward and Ana was no longer concerned about anyone else's nerves or stomach or bowels. She held it together, or at least gave a convincing impression, even while her body melted and she s
ank into a puddle on the floor.

This time she recognized the man.

She knew him.

It was her brother.

"You can take the stuff, man!" The informant's voice was a distant warbling. "I've never done anything like this before. I don't know what I'm doing. They coerced me. Blackmailed me!"

The engine of Ana's brain sputtered out, the cylinders locked up from trying to believe that Memo was there, standing right in front of her.

His skin glowed much paler in the moonlight than she'd expected, given their shared DNA. A hovercar passed the window of the office and the headlights seemed to shine right through him.

He spoke again, his voice dramatic, brilliant, and chilling
, a stark contrast to his almost ethereal form.

"I don't care if this was the first time. It will be the last."

Ana sensed the small man moving behind her but remained in a stasis of shock. Etienne sprang through the doorway, a blur of motion at the edge of Ana's vision. Ana's instincts didn’t bother telling her of the danger behind her. They simply flung her forward onto the ground. She rolled to her back and found her gun in her hands, ready to take out the threat her partner had already neutralized.

Before Etienne slammed him to the floor the informa
nt fired several shots from his concealed weapon. Ana watched as her brother crumpled. She leapt forward, plunging into the darkness that had swallowed him. On her hands and knees Ana combed the floor of the office, but came across no body, no blood, and it was only when Etienne got the light on that it was clear there was no trace of him.

"
Where did he go?" Ana demanded of no one in particular. "Where did he go?"

"It must have been a projection. A security measure to scare people away."

"Projected from where? We need to find it!"

"We need to get what we came for and get out of here."

Etienne gripped their informant by the arm. Blood dripped down his forehead and he tried to massage the elbow of his other arm, but Etienne kept jerking him back toward her.

"I won't even ask what you were doing. I thought you could talk him out of that conflict. I won't tell anyone what happened. You're lucky it was only a projection. Next time you might have bullets flying at you both ways."

She shoved the man who was now more captive than confidant forward.

"Get the docs and the samples. And hurry! That shooting was bound to have been picked up somewhere, and even with his security clearance, I don't think they're going to just wait around to see if something comes of it."

Etienne pushed her captive forward. He stumbled toward a wall with a single poster hanging on it.

"I
—I shot him," he whined.

"You fired a gun," Etienne said, attempting to reassure him
. "You didn't shoot anybody."

Had it come from a training instructor, it would have been an insult, but
the man was unaware, just kept moving forward.

Ana sat for a second, wondering how her brother
had ended up as the model for a security projection in this corporate research facility, but then realized it didn't matter. At least not right then. She snapped back to reality and hopped to her feet. If they got caught, the odds of her finding out about the projection of Memo dropped at a rate she didn't want to think about.

But he had been in the Agency's files on the Continuum.
Had she misinterpreted the information the other agents brought up on the screen? It didn't matter. She had to focus on the mission at hand before she got herself killed.

She
jumped to the door and looked out. No security guards, no flashing lights, no alarms, no surprises. Safe for now. And she couldn't help but think: better safe than dead.

Etienne removed the poster
from the far wall. The man reached in, entered a code, and pressed his finger against a scanner. That was it. The safe popped open, he withdrew the contents and handed them to Etienne, relieved to be rid of the burden.

The soft still of the empty office hung outside the door like someone waiting for another agent's debrief to end. Etienne joined Ana at the door.

"Anyone coming?"

"Not that I can tell."

"How long you think that'll last?"

"Hopefully long enough for us to duck out the back."

"Let's not wait around then."

--

Two unknown but familiar pairs of eyes observed as the hovercar descended and slowed to a stop in front of the building they had been watching for the past thirty-six hours. Intel rarely turned out to be as accurate as one would like, but information gathered by the dubious contacts that formed the network of an unsanctioned, self-funded group usually proved even less reliable. As such, the pair of gentleman in the black hovercar were forced to wait for the package—as they referred to it—through two sets of daylight hours and into a second coming of night. The shadow of a building much smaller than the Chicago Spire across the street kept their hovercar cool during the sunny portion of the stakeout, and during each of the two consecutive sunsets they marveled at the shower of glittering light that fell from the enormous building across the street as the Earth turned away from the sun for another night.

The two men
didn't know that this particular hovercar was the one bringing the package, but since it arrived late at night and stopped in front of the entrance rather than using the residential entrance where most hovercars went as the night wore on, their attention was piqued.

An old
familiar foe stepped from the hovercard, validating their reasons for suspicion. She wore a heavy chain bracelet trailing to a durosteel briefcase.
An old
-school method of retention, but a surprisingly effective one.

"Ah
, Etienne. A clever and charming young lady," said the man in the passenger seat. His words were soft, as though classified top secret, only to be heard within the cabin of the vehicle.

Both of them startled to see another woman rise from within the sleek silver, no doubt heavily armored, car. The man in the driver's seat worried he was seeing an apparition until his partner spoke, urgency infusing his measured tone.

"Is that—?"

She turned, giving a cursory glance
at her surroundings, as though she intended to scan for anyone tailing them, but took in nothing. She faced them just long enough for a small embedded scanner to feed her image back to a network built on connections and equipment much more reliable than that of their human contacts.

"Jordan, pull up the information on her as soon as it's ready," he said, knowing full well what the result of the query would be.

"Interesting," Jordan said as the information glowed on the translucent panel he held in one hand. "There are two profiles coming up. There's the one you'd expect, but there's another for someone named Julia Anderson. A few arrests for blackmail and theft, convicted once, out on time served."

"They must be trying to convince the Continuum that's who she is. I wonder how well that's going."

"Well enough, I suppose, if she's grabbing a briefcase with info important enough that they sent Etienne for it. So, should we still grab the package now while we've got the chance?"

Jordan wore his heart on his sleeve and liked when things were straightforward. It served him well when dishing out emotion on a platter of music, but didn't always make for the best spy work. The ability to mask emotions without anyone realizing you were doing it was an important skill when you were involved in espionage, infiltration, and leading a group of disillusioned, disenchanted young men and women on missions that none of the
m would ever fully understand. Probably better if Jordan never had to perfect it.

"If it's coming in with Etienne, then it must be under Natalya's purview. We already know where the artifacts under her control are stored. It will be safe
r to continue with the plan than to try to grab it right now with those two providing protection."

Was he h
iding his emotions or hiding himself? Or was there really ever a difference?

--

Instead of waking up shackled to a chair in the belly of the beast, Ana walked straight in through the mouth after her mission. She looked at the teeth without worrying that they would snap shut on her. Julia Anderson was a legitimized grifter, now part of the big leagues of deceit and theft, putting her over the moon and on top of the world at the same time. Ana channeled her own feelings of accomplishment at having pulled off the mission into Julia's exuberance at having found a real-world use for her skills.

The follow-up meeting with Julia's
raven-haired handler was much less confrontational than their initial exchange. Etienne sat next to her and they were both praised as much as debriefed. Julia's position was secure, and if she was amenable, the Continuum would provide her with lodging in the silver spire with a thirty-sixth-floor view of the lake. She would consider that an upgrade even over the posh two-story condo that the Agency had rented in Julia's name. Another example of her taste for the finer things, which the Continuum couldn't help but pick up on. Ana hoped the setup wasn't over the top, but in some ways, the more ostentatious the presentation of Julia Anderson, the better. Boring truth was often harder to accept than an outrageous lie.