Desmoterion, page 22
Trent got up from the bed. “Yeah, but we have one thing that they don’t.”
“What’s that?”
Trent moved over to the doorway. “We’re still alive. We’re still going.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Girish dressed and headed downstairs. He found Trent in the kitchen, rummaging around in the cupboards and fridge. “There’s food here?”
Trent pulled out some tinned vegetables and some packets of dried food. “A few days’ worth, but we can’t stay that long. The next set of forces will be here in hours. We should eat something now, so we’ll be ready for them.”
“That means more killing.”
Trent set to work with a tin opener. “That’s sadly part of the deal from here on out. I don’t enjoy taking out our forces since some of them I’ve done missions with and even trained at some point. I’m hoping I can figure out a way to distract them enough to lose our trail.”
“Jamming their signal?”
Trent shook his wet hair. “I’m already doing that with your tag. Any more under it will alert them to where you are.”
“My tag?”
“All recruits have it implanted in them, put on their skin or under it. It depends on who put it there. I’ve already removed mine, but you still have a tag. They can’t find you because I’m jamming it. If they were to break through it, they’d know exactly where we are.”
Girish snorted. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Can I remove it?”
“No idea, because I don’t know where yours is. I only found mine by chance when someone hit me with a knife. I patched the wound myself and found the implant in the process. Since you’re a newer recruit, they might have put it on your body instead of inside you.”
Girish leaned against the counter. “It’s not on me; I’ve washed my body enough to feel anything weird on my skin.”
Trent turned with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve checked everywhere?”
“I know my body, Trent. I’ve felt every inch of it and haven’t found anything weird.”
Trent chuckled and went back to making his sandwich. “If you think it’s obvious, you’re fooling yourself. It’s the thickness of an eyelash under your skin. You wouldn’t even notice it unless you were looking right at it. Once we get out of here and somewhere they can’t find, I’ll check you out to see where it is.”
Girish’s body stiffened.
Trent laughed, even though he didn’t see it. “Trust me, Kannan, you’re not the first naked man I’ve seen and won’t be the last if I have anything to say about it.” He said while emptying several tins of vegetables into a pan and then turned to a tin of something brown.
Girish was going to ask more questions, but decided against it. The last thing he needed was to push Trent enough to kill him.
* * *
Burkis called Kipper to come over to his station.
Kipper held his breath, assuming Burkis found the virus Emyr planted in the system. How he was going to explain such a thing without having the others overhear would be a challenge, especially since he knew what it was and how it got there.
“There’s something strange going on with the database.” Burkis pointed at his monitor. “I mean, no one is hacking into it, but it feels like a piece of code is going haywire in the background.
Kipper typed a few keys on Burkis’ keyboard. “There, it should be fine now.”
Burkis glanced up. He was intent on saying something further, that much Kipper gleaned from his questioning look, but he didn’t once he caught Kipper glaring at him. He swallowed hard. “Right, that did work, sir.”
“Good; let me know if anything else comes up.” Kipper smiled and patted Burkis’ chair.
Burkis went back to staring at his monitor with a frown on his face.
The leader noticed it and asked Kipper, “What was that all about?”
“Some random codes were trying to become sentient by multiplying. I took care of it for now. It might creep up later, but it’s an isolated incident so far.”
Stevenson glanced over. “They can do that?”
Kipper laughed. “They can if you give them enough resources. The trick is to keep them in check so they’ll do their thing instead of what you don’t want them to do.”
Ward bit his lip to stop from laughing while Delgado grinned to himself.
* * *
Girish blinked his sore eyes, trying to stay awake.
Trent shifted on the other side of the couch. “Take a nap. I’ll wake you when the fun starts.”
“No, you should sleep,” Girish folded his arms across his chest to stay upright on the couch. “I doubt you’ve gotten much sleep lately.”
“I don’t get much sleep, period. Haven’t for years, so it’s not like I need it now.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me,” Girish yawned. “That’ll make you sloppy if you don’t get enough sleep.”
“Have you ever beaten me? If the answer is no, then I’m getting plenty of sleep. Now, go to bed already.”
“I don’t want to. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I have my reasons.”
Trent leaned back on the couch. “Nightmares?”
Girish ducked his head.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have them too. Repeating over and over again. That’s the reason I don’t sleep much. Mike was always on me to sleep more, but he never had dreams like mine.”
“Does it explain you dropping to your knees and crying out? You’re having waking dreams now?”
Trent’s jaw clenched. “You weren’t meant to see such things.”
“Maybe not, but I saw how they paralyzed you for several minutes. I have to wonder if that will affect you later when we’re trying to get away?”
Trent shook his head. “I won’t let them. It’s only when I’m relaxed and not concentrating on other things. When you’re hunted down like an animal, your senses are always heightened, and your guard is always up. It’s the same as it was after that night. I ran after it happened and tried to avoid getting caught. It was a shitty time.”
“You were still in high school, I assume?”
“Yeah, I was in what you’d call high school. Nothing like they have here. More of a military regime. I thought everything was going right for me, and it turns out I was very wrong, so much so that my life hasn’t been the same since.”
Girish stared at his hands. “I was too, in my last year of high school. They gave me a shortened sentence when they found out about my abuse, viewing my actions as self-defense.”
“You should’ve gone free for self-defense. Everything’s stacked against us, Girish. I had nothing to look forward to outside, anyway. And then Desmoterion got me out of there and gave me a new fucking life sentence so I would never get to experience freedom again.”
“So, they recruited you young?”
“We usually are. Young, impressionable. Easy to manipulate and ready to learn. I recruited the rest of them except for Kipper, who was already there. They got him when he was a teenager too. He hacked into a government database to get out of doing his upcoming military duty.”
Girish laid his head down on the fluffy pillow. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Kipper seems to be a genius when it comes to computers.”
“He is, and I’m pretty sure he’s hacked in to deflect their attack to a later time for us, just like he promised he would do.”
* * *
Kipper kept eyeing the clock, wondering when they would figure out it should be lighter with sunlight in the feed instead of darkness. He knew they’d figure it out and braced himself for that.
However, it helped that they were still trying to get the secondary field team to Trent’s location. It had been plagued with problems from the start.
Traffic construction and then having to re-route midway due to even more late-night construction. It was all distracting them from the fact that the sky should get lighter. None of his team had noticed it yet, or had said nothing if they had. And he was praying that they would keep doing just that.
The fewer questions about the subterfuge, the better.
Ward glanced up at Kipper. “Sir, shouldn’t they be out yet? I can’t imagine they’d be strolling along in the dead of the night through a forest.”
Kipper silenced the swear words from forming on his lips. “They might have been injured in the shootout. Just because they eliminated our guys, it doesn’t mean they didn’t receive injuries as well. They might even be motionless or dead. It’s too bad Trent is jamming us, or we’d know for sure, and the other operatives are still too far away to find out. Eventually, they’ll have to come out to get food and shelter.”
“Fuck,” Stevenson swore. “He must know we had people near the house.”
“Very likely, since this is Trent we’re talking about. He plans for all variables, and maybe that’s why they’re still hiding in the woods. Maybe this is a distraction, and they’re headed in a different direction.”
“Or maybe you’re not even watching a live feed.”
All the men turned to find Samson standing behind them.
“I know my system. I would know if someone was putting up bogus footage.” Kipper’s jaw clenched.
“Yeah, like my cameras?” Samson shuffled over to Kipper’s position to stand in front of him. “Some of them have been showing footage from months ago. I don’t know when it started or how, but I figured it out by digging a little.”
“Well, that’s your problem, not mine.” Kipper held his ground. Losing his cool to an asshole like Samson wouldn’t help. “You’re the head of video surveillance. If you can’t figure out if it’s up to date, then maybe you should have installed the cameras yourself.”
Samson inched closer to Kipper. “Or maybe you fucked up and fed them a bogus signal all along? Your team is the one who provided the signals coming in.”
Kipper turned around to look at the monitors again. “I don’t have time for this bullshit. We must find Trent and not waste time with your precious cameras.”
Samson pointed at Ward’s monitor. “Have you ever wondered why Dupont hasn’t exited yet? That’s because you’re looking at old footage, and I can prove it.”
The leader turned to look at Samson. “How?”
Samson opened a laptop he was carrying and showed it to the leader. “What do you see?”
“The house is surrounded by forest and nothing. What does this have to do with anything?”
Stevenson looked from the new image to the one on his video feed and pointed. “It’s the dawn. The sky is lighter, and it’s not the same footage. We’ve been looking at one where it’s the dark of night.”
The leader glared at Kipper. “I expect an explanation for this, Renard.”
Kipper sighed, knowing he was now fucked. Nothing that he could lie about would mean anything to them other than admitting he was helping Trent. He opened his mouth, intent on telling them about it, when one of his team members spoke up.
“It’s a virus.”
They all turned to the blond kid sitting next to Burkis.
The kid swallowed hard under their gaze. “The thing is, it originated from the first field team’s feed. That’s when Burkis noticed it, and Kipper dismissed it as gibberish. That’s the normal reaction because it was gibberish, but it’s been growing and feeding us bogus footage. If you want, I can remove it, and the feed will be up to date.”
Kipper frowned at the statement. “Yes, please do. I could have sworn it was just a random bug bouncing off our servers.”
“It’s not a problem, sir. Plus, you’re busy at the moment.”
Kipper let out the trapped breath inside and wondered just how Emyr had mirrored the file to one of the field team’s feeds. He didn’t remember teaching Emyr that years ago.
The man spoke up again. “Sir, can you help me over here?”
“What is it, Benjamin?” Kipper shuffled over to stand behind him.
“I just want to verify if I have the right code.” Benjamin pointed to his monitor.
Kipper stared at the type of message on the screen that read, “I know you’re trying to help Trent escape, but I have a better way to mask the video field. I will have that portion of the forest obscured on the screen so everything around it will lighten up and still feed them useless footage.”
“Is that ok sir?” Benjamin glanced up.
“That looks great, and great work putting extra measures in place so that doesn’t happen again.” Kipper patted him on the back.
Kipper wished he could take them all when the time came, but that wasn’t possible. His team was a well-oiled machine with them sticking up for others so they could all succeed.
* * *
Trent looked down at his location device as it linked up to satellites and scanned all around the house. Nothing had appeared yet, and he half wondered if Kipper had been so good at hiding Trent that they forgot to send the second wave.
Whatever the case, he busied himself to stop watching Girish sleep beside him.
He couldn’t help but watch him, as he had with his first love; relaxed by the soft rise and fall of his chest and breathy noises coming from his mouth. It took him back to his youthful years when he thought everything was going right in his life.
He could deal with no father. He could deal with being unpopular because of his weird mixed heritage as a kid growing up.
Besides what his mother did to him, the thing that hurt the most was that his boyfriend fled in terror instead of fighting for Trent. He left like the coward he was, ashamed to be with some poor kid on the wrong side of town.
The last time Trent saw him was on the first day of his trial. He’d told Trent that he didn’t believe that he killed his mother, that it was some kind of mistake. Trent remembered turning around, looking into the boy’s glassy eyes, and saying he was a fool.
Those were the last words Trent ever uttered to him, and sometimes he wondered if he was still alive. Did he ever think back to that episode or wonder what became of Trent? Officially Trent was dead, thanks to the organization, but he doubted his boyfriend even shed a tear for his death.
No one had.
Something beeped, and Trent glanced down at the display. Small dots were on the edge of the forest, probably still searching for them and if he listened carefully he’d probably hear them stomping around and talking to each other, but he didn’t care to listen.
Trent took a deep breath and readied himself for battle.
* * *
One of the field operatives radioed in. “We’re on the southern edge of the forest. I’m sending some men inside to retrieve Dupont and Kannan. The rest of the men are headed for the house.”
Stevenson pressed the switch on the console. “Proceed with caution around the house. It’s already killed ten men with what appear to be booby traps.”
“Will do. I’ll report back when we’ve got Dupont and Kannan.”
The leader followed the men on the screen, heading for the forest. “Somehow, I doubt Dupont is in there anymore,” the leader commented. “Just because we haven’t seen him doesn’t mean he isn’t inside that house.”
Stevenson nodded. “That was my thinking too, sir, after that problem was discovered with the live feed. How the hell did he booby-trap the house from the forest? That doesn’t make any sense.”
The leader thought momentarily and then asked Delgado, “Find out who owns that house?”
“On it.” Delgado typed something into his keyboard for several minutes before looking up. “Find it, sir. Looks like a man named Caleb Alexander. He obtained it after someone named Morris Lynn died. It appears he paid cash for it, but there is a record of the house changing hands online.”
“Morris Lynn? As in the notorious terrorist, we took down three years ago?”
Delgado looked further into the records. “Yes, one and the same. They put the house up for a private sale to Mr. Alexander after Morris Lynn died.”
“Does this Caleb Alexander have any other properties?”
“I’ll find out,” Delgado went back to his research.
“And anything else about Caleb Alexander in the system? His date of birth, military or prison records, that sort of thing.”
“All I can find is a birth record. He was born in July 1964 in Croy. Beyond that, nothing comes up other than the house sale.”
Stevenson glanced over at the leader. “Do you think the record was faked? That Dupont has an outside collaboration with some on the outside?”
“It seems like a long stretch. Every interaction outside and every mission is closely monitored. Either way, checking out the house will be the top priority if they don’t find them in the forest.”
* * *
With the men drawing near, Trent and Girish headed upstairs to get some socks and shoes on before they broke down the doors.
Each went into their respective bedrooms to rummage around in the closets.
“I believe these might fit you!” Trent called out. “And mine is in yours.”
Girish looked at the boots in his closet. “Yeah, these are way too big for me. Why not use the same ones we’ve been using?”
“They could be tagged, and I don’t want to take that chance.”
Girish padded across the way to bring Trent a pair of boots. “Here you go.”
“One of them is bound to fit.” Trent motioned at the three pairs of boots on the ground. “I bought several because I wasn’t sure who would be with me during this.”
Girish snagged the ones on the end and sat beside Trent on the bed. He put them on and nodded. “Yep, these fit fine.”
“Good, get a coat out of the closet. We’re not coming back here.”
“Do you think they’ll send even more forces our way?”
“Definitely. Just because we’ll kill them this round, our former leader will send more at us. That’s why there’s only enough food for a few days. We’ll pack up some to take with us when we’re done with this round.”
“But what about more guns and bullets? We’ll not last that long with what we have.”
