Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (115 page)

The church spires were massive pieces of concrete and steel that looked as though they were trying to pierce the sky above them. Bodies dressed in black dresses and suits walked up the steps of the stone cathedral to pay their respects to Ben Hill, and Sarah felt herself frozen at the bottom of the staircase.

“We have to go in sooner or later,” Bryce said, staying close to her side.

Sarah nodded and forced her foot forward, then the other, and the other, until she passed through the old cathedral’s doors. The pews were filled at the very front, and Sarah could see a picture of her brother alongside the casket, which was circled with clusters of flowers. She slid into one of the seats toward the back, and Bryce filed in beside her. She kept her head down, but her eyes scanned the front until she found Becca and the kids in the first pew. Becca was giving something to the children, and Sarah could see the very tops of their heads sway back and forth in a slow cadence. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them until that moment. She found herself gripping the back of the pew in front of her, knuckles turning white, as she half stood, but she forced herself back down, avoiding drawing any more attention to herself.

“You should go talk to them,” Bryce said, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

“They don’t want to see me,” Sarah said, keeping her voice low.

“They do,” Bryce answered, his voice still quiet but firm. “They just don’t know it yet.”

“Did you learn that in one of your romantic comedy movies?”

“Hey, just because you don’t like the genre doesn’t mean other people don’t get something out of it.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t get something out of it, I just said I think they’re stupid.”

A woman in front of her turned around and gave the two of them a harsh look along with a very terse “shush.” They apologized, and the woman turned around, keeping the offended glare Sarah figured she probably wore during ninety percent of every day of her life.

The sermon was quick, and a few of Ben’s friends spoke, along with Becca’s younger brother. Sarah remembered him from the wedding. The two of them had been paired for the walk down the aisle due to their similar height. He had been soft spoken then, and even now with a microphone in front of his mouth, his words left him like whisper.

Everything anyone said about Ben was words of love. He was kind, smart, funny (in his reserved, straight-man sort of way), and a loving father, son, and husband. And brother. Nobody said that in their speeches, but she finished it for them in her head. She wondered if Becca would speak, but the procession came and went, and she never walked up front.

When the funeral was over, Sarah and Bryce followed the caravan of vehicles to the graveyard, the same one in which her and Ben’s parents were buried. Just like at the church, Sarah watched from a distance as the casket was lowered into the ground. Once the casket disappeared into the earth, a silent exhalation of what was left of the breath in her lungs escaped, and she found herself walking toward the excavated piece of dirt, her feet with a mind of their own. She pushed through the crowds of people, oblivious to whatever curses came out of their mouths from her forceful entrance. She collapsed on the edge of the grave, causing some of the dirt from the side wall to sprinkle on top of the gleaming brown surface of the casket.

“Goodbye, Ben.” The words left her involuntarily. She wondered if the pain she felt was the same Ben had experienced when he watched their parents being lowered into the ground. He’d had to do that alone, without her, without the one person who knew what it felt like to lose their parents. And now she was here watching her brother being buried, just as alone.

A shadow towered over Sarah and blocked out the sun above. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was; she could feel the disdain and disgust rain over her. Sarah wiped her eyes, smearing some of the dirt that lingered on her palms onto her cheek. She pushed herself off the ground, and Becca was nose to nose with her. Her eyes were dry but red, and her face looked like a cold piece of stone.

“What are you doing here?” Becca asked. The words came out less as a question and more as a threat.

“I came to bury my brother,” Sarah said, trying to keep her emotions in check. Her sister-in-law had every right to be upset, but she wasn’t the only one grieving. She wasn’t the only one hurting. Sarah looked past Becca and saw Becca’s mother carrying Ella and Matt toward the car. “How are the kids?”

Becca shoved her finger into Sarah’s chest, and the tense crowd around them started to back off as her words grew louder. “I don’t want to see you again, do you understand that? I don’t want you to call. I don’t want you to come by the house. I don’t want you to ever contact my family again.” Her jaw clenched together with every syllable, and Sarah had to make a conscious effort to bite her tongue and take the lashing. Becca gave Sarah a shove that pushed her back only a step then turned and marched toward the car.

The dam holding back Sarah’s emotions gave way. The fault line in her heart cracked wider, spraying the first few drops of rage out of her control. “You can’t keep me from the kids, Becca.”

Becca stopped. She spun around and stomped back. “Are you threatening me?” Sarah could see that her fists were clenched at her sides. Sarah immediately regretted speaking up. But before Sarah could take it back, she blocked a swing from Becca that was meant for the side of her face.

The surrounding crowds jumped in before it turned into something more, not that any of them could have stopped Sarah if she decided to retaliate, and she was glad there was a group of people there to stop her from having to try.

Becca ripped away from the arms restraining her and stomped away without another word. Sarah stood there until the crowd dispersed, and the gravediggers dumped piles of earth onto her brother’s casket. Sarah felt her veins swell with anger until she thought they would burst. She was angry at herself, Becca, her brother, the agency, anyone and anything that popped into her mind. But the largest culprit her rage fastened on was Rick Demps.

“Hey,” Bryce said. “You all right?”

“No,” Sarah answered. “But I will be.”

***

Agent Taylor Grimes sat at a long conference room table piled with boxes and papers and the sweat and fatigue of the past twelve hours as he and his team sifted through everything the chancellor’s group could provide them on the woman. He’d undone his tie and taken off his jacket, allowing himself a brief reprieve from the formalities of the day after his team had long since left and gone to bed. He rubbed his eyes and reached for the cup of cold coffee, draining the final gulp and giving himself one last burst of adrenaline.

When the CIA’s director had given Grimes the assignment, he hadn’t been sure how to approach it. The director was adamant that it be downplayed to the rest of the team but that it was very important to the president. He knew that this woman and whatever organization she worked for had been responsible for giving them the necessary coding to end Tuck Investments’ hold on Global Power and end the blackout. He’d always prided himself on the fact that he worked for the best. The CIA had no equal in regard to training, agents, and equipment. But everything he’d seen so far in regard to this mysterious agency made him question just how good he thought he was.

Grimes knew that in any scenario, to bring down the mountain, you had to remove the first piece of stone, and he was already on the right track. He had the flight reports the Germans had found that tracked the woman on her landing in Berlin, along with the only known (yet terribly pixelated and distorted) picture of the target. Another piece of information that had come from his own superiors was a report from a unit of soldiers that had been responsible for holding the Alaskan border when the Russians made their advancements. It wasn’t enough to give them any matches in their known databases, but these two stories along with a few other accounts during other timelines gave Grimes a connecting piece of data. Chicago. It was the only pattern he could find in all the stories and flight documents. Whether it was a layover or a departing or a returning flight, Chicago was always on the manifest.

With O’Hare International Airport just getting back up and running after the blackout, along with almost every other transportation hub around the globe, he used the pixelated photo of the woman and programmed it into the cameras of O’Hare. If she walked into that airport and the cameras caught her face, he’d be notified immediately.

Normally, the facial-recognition software used in tracking fugitives required a match of at least ninety percent before it alerted the authorities. However, with the low-quality picture, he lowered it to a thirty-five-percent match, which flooded his inbox with thousands of notifications. It was slow going, but it was a start. Grimes sifted through doctors, construction workers, lawyers, fast food employees, anyone and everyone the software spit out at him, but so far he only had five matches worth investigating and another three thousand he still needed examine.

A knock sounded at the door, and the chancellor’s chief of staff stepped inside. “You’re here late, Agent Grimes.”

“Just trying to make as much headway as possible before the long grind starts,” Grimes replied, smiling. Despite the chancellor’s warm welcome, Grimes knew he and his colleagues’ presence didn’t agree with everyone in the administration.

“Have you handled these types of cases before?” Alexander asked. “These ghosts?”

“In my experience, there are no such things as ghosts. Just individuals better trained with better equipment. I’m sure there are a few people out there who think we have ghosts in the CIA.”

“Don’t you?” Alexander rapped his knuckles on the door and gave him a wave. “Don’t stay too late. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Grimes gave a nod, still looking at his computer screen. “Will do.” He knew Alexander was right. He had to sleep at some point; it was something his superiors had to point out to him as well. Work was like a drug for him, worse than any cocaine, alcohol, or heroin addiction. The longer the wick burned, the stronger he felt. He’d always been like that, even when he was a boy. There was a satisfaction in the long workday that he couldn’t find anywhere else.

The only side effect from his addiction that he had found so far was time. He never had enough of it, and he was always struggling to find a way to maximize what little he had left. Friends and family were frequently pushed aside, making room for advancing his career. Everything he planned, everything he did revolved around his job.

Grimes rubbed his eyes and pushed himself out of his chair. He placed his hand on the laptop’s screen, and just before he was about to close it, a notification popped. He sat back down and opened the file.

Like the other five matches he’d deemed worthy of investigating, this one seemed like it would fit the bill. High school diploma, low-profile factory job that required skilled use of hands, Chicago resident, and around the same age and size as the woman they were tracking. He jotted down the name next to the list of others. Sarah Hill.

***

The satellite HQ had finally gone through its last run-through, and Mack gave the thumbs-up to resume operations. The slightly smaller, cramped space was still a little musty, but the fact that they had agents returning to what they did best helped soothe the aching sores in Mack’s mind. At least a little.

The doubts and anger resurfaced when Mack returned to his office, where the mole still beckoned his attention. He slumped into his chair and searched through the reams of paper on his desk that had told him little more than that his field agents enjoyed spending well beyond their allotted budgets on missions.

Mack’s eyes kept darting over to a particular box in the corner of the office that he’d been putting off going through. If he found something that hinted at the mole in that box, then he and every other member of the GSF was in for a very, very rude awakening.

Finally, summoning the strength to shove the rest of the piles of paper aside, Mack dropped the corner box on the center of his desk and flung the lid to the floor. He pulled out the first document, which read “GSF Internal Financial Review Board.” Mack jotted down his notes, referencing dates, locations, dollar amounts, and account numbers.

The GSF Internal Financial Review Board was the agency’s bank, and it comprised members of the sponsors of the agency that kept them funded and functional. If there were a member or multiple members using GSF as their own personal weapon and resource for financial or political gain in countries around the world, then, per protocol, every single member of the GSF would be shut down.

Mack knew about the safety triggers in all the board’s review processes, along with the transparency he himself was a part of, but regardless of how he presented it, once you put the idea of a mole in the mind of espionage employees, it never ends well. Everyone that worked in the GSF didn’t have much else, and if the seed were planted that their world was a lie, then no amount of transparency would be able to bring them back. Trust issues were common problems among agents, especially field agents.

Mack combed through the hundreds of pages in the box, each new sheet of paper bringing a heightened sense of dread at what he might find. Then, with nothing out of place or odd, Mack would place the paper back in the box and be glad the stack of sheets was shrinking. The process dragged, and after a solid three-hour stretch, with the rest of the agency turning in for the night and nothing left but the skeleton crew, he reached for his mug of coffee and found it unpleasantly empty. “Grace! I need a fresh cup!”

A few seconds later, his secretary walked in with a pot of coffee and sloshed the black, molten liquid into his cup. “You know you can’t live off this stuff, right?”

Mack grabbed the mug out of her hand and gave a grimace. “I’ve been living off of it for the past fifty-five years. It’s kept me alive so far.”

“You’re not as young as you used to be,” Grace said, leaving and taking the pot with her. But she stopped at the door when Mack didn’t respond. He stared at a piece of paper, running his forefinger over the same line repeatedly, studying it, rereading it, making sure he wasn’t misinterpreting something. “Sir?”

Mack jumped from his seat and walked over to her. “I need you to look up this country code for me.” Grace took the paper from his hand and shook her head.

“I don’t need to. It’s New Zealand.”

Grace caught the sheet of paper as it drifted from Mack’s fingertips. His mind spun, and he felt his chest grow tight. He found the wall for support, and he saw Grace mouthing something, but all he concentrated on was breathing; everything else was just noise. Finally he managed to find his voice, noting the look of shock still on Grace’s face. “Get Sarah and Bryce here immediately.”