Project Northwoods (32 page)

Tim slapped the table, “I have pictures, dude.”

James scoffed. “I’m sure you do. Doesn’t mean they’re real.”

Ariana nodded. “Oh, they’re real.” There was no pride in her tone.

“Crap.” James shook his head. “Total crap.”

“Okay,” Ariana said, a distinct laugh in her voice.

Talia got up from her seat and went to the neighboring booth. Arthur didn’t seem to notice that she sat down across from him as he typed. After a few moments of watching his eyes dart back and forth across the screen, she cleared her throat. “What’s so important that you’re ignoring your friends?”

Arthur looked up at her, then back at the screen. “Mollie thought I could help with something.” He stopped typing for a moment, then rubbed his eyes. “I’m used to being a third wheel with Ari and Tim, so I figured I’d be nice and opt out of the double date.”

“Date?” Talia shook her head, smiling slightly as she did so. “James is my assistant. Not my date.”

“Still,” he breathed before going back to typing. He stopped, realizing something. “I’m being rude, aren’t I?”

“No,” she answered. “Focused.”

He nodded. Arthur leaned back in his seat and pointed at the screen. “You know how Mollie is presently trying to recover data, right?”

“Right,” Talia agreed as she slid off her side and moved to his.

Arthur looked at her like he was unsure on how to react to this, but quickly turned his attention back to the screen. “Well, she’s devoted a lot of her run time to it, and it’s harder than it looks on television.” He pointed to the screen with its reams of text information splashed over it. “That’s code. And that’s what needs to be fixed to make any of the files readable.”

Talia nodded along with him. “Sounds…” She cracked a smile, the biggest she had given in a while, but she couldn’t fake it. “Boring. For villains’ sake, it sounds so boring.”

Arthur smiled a little and nodded. “I won’t lie to you, it’s not something I’d do voluntarily.”

“Honesty,” Talia said with an arched eyebrow. “How rare.”

“Come on,” Arthur said, scanning the code. He made a few keystrokes before turning to her. “Maybe you don’t see it in the bigwigs you interview, but what about others?”

“Like who?”

“James. Tim and Ari.” He went back to the code. “Plenty of people are honest.”

She blinked at him. “You really think so?”

“Yeah.” He clicked a few keys, then stopped. He looked at her. “Why?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.” The pause was uncomfortable for Arthur, she was sure, as he shifted in his seat and looked back at the screen. His hands didn’t move over the keyboard, but rested without a twitch. Talia couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty, if only because he didn’t really deserve the interview treatment. “So, what does Mollie have you working on?” He looked at her. “Specifically.”

He nodded, more comfortable with this conversation. “She identified a file which uses a schematics program I use.” He put his hands on his head. “I’m familiar enough with the code to be able to fix some superficial damage. Maybe make it usable.”

“How long will it take?”

“Not too much longer. Mollie was working on this and a video file at the same time. She got most of it cleaned up.” He scrolled down the code, highlighted a patch of text, and wiped it out. “I have a question, if you don’t mind entertaining me while I work.”

“Shoot.”

“That morning… at the Heroes’ Guild…” She knew exactly what he meant, and the memory of it sent chills down her spine. “What happened?”

Talia swallowed, hard, then realized she had stopped breathing. She exhaled a forced laugh, then shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Arthur looked at her, cocking an eyebrow. “The cameras went to static and people started screaming. But when the picture came back… everything looked normal.”

Talia squinted at him.
Is he serious?
“You saw nothing unusual?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” He returned to the computer.

“It’s hard to describe. There was a moment of pain, right here.” She tapped the back of her head. “Then, everything was hazy. Warm… humid…” She trailed off for a moment. “Then, there was a sudden cold snap. And fog, indoors. People started screaming.” She blinked, trying to focus. The sight of it had seemed like it would forever be burned into her memory when it happened, but grew hazier the more she tried to focus on it. “Zombress was off the floor…”

“Did Arbiter have her?” Arthur asked, still scanning pages of data.

She shook her head. “It was like she was… standing on air… floating… everything about her was just… wrong.” Arthur looked at her, and she realized she had stopped breathing again. Talia nervously laughed. “I was up the next two nights, because every time I closed my eyes…” She felt the prickle of goose bumps flow up her arms.

“You have no idea what was happening other than that?” Arthur asked.

“I was scared senseless, Arthur,” she snapped. “I didn’t have time to take notes.” He clearly wasn’t too offended by her tone, focused as he was on work. She was thankful for that. Her overreaction was primal, something connected to the fight or flight reflex. “It all seemed so vivid when it happened, and now I can’t remember the details.”

Arthur shook his head as he worked. “No wonder Arbiter did what he did.” He highlighted something on the screen. “If it had you worried, imagine what it would do to a nutjob like him.” Talia smiled, but couldn’t bring herself to laugh. He hit a button, then smiled. “I think that should make it readable.”

It was like someone turned on a switch inside of her. Her smile grew slightly more genuine, and she appreciated the change of conversation. For Arthur’s sake, she hoped she looked as interested as she actually was. Someone had died for the information… whether to protect it, deliver it, or destroy it was uncertain. But maybe another clue was about to be uncovered.

The splash page for the program appeared, reported the surprisingly quick loading speed, then vanished. A familiar blank default window appeared, along with a tiny window that looked more at home in a photo editor than architectural design. Arthur clicked a dialogue box that popped up. “It wants to run a quick debug. Some code was unreadable.” He smiled proudly. “No criticals, though.” Another box appeared and quickly ran through some text.

Then, with a stutter, several wireframe images appeared in four different windows. Talia wasn’t an expert on such things, but she knew it was huge. The main body of the building was a massive X, with a tower spiking out of each limb and a final one jutting from the center. Parts were blurred out, probably a consequence of the damage to the file, but others were crystal clear and labeled: cafeteria, reactor, kitchen, daycare, library, Panopticon, security room A - D.

“There’s a mistake,” Arthur said, shaking his head and weakly reaching for the microphone and earpiece. It was the first noise Talia registered in what felt like an eternity. Her eyes flitted over it, over two windows showing different subsections of the same room, one labeled ‘draft’ and the other ‘repurposed’. The draft contained a wing of barracks, whereas the ‘repurposed’ wing was designated as a cluster of cells and something damaged by data corruption. “Mollie, you must have made a mistake.” Arthur was speaking into the microphone, and it was at that moment Talia realized his voice wavered with an unmistakable hint of panic.

“What is it Arthur?” she asked.

Arthur held up his hand to silence her, something which she normally would have taken offense to but opted instead to heed. “I’m not blaming you, I’m saying there’s a mix-up…” There was a pause. “Boot it up, then. But don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.” He shook his head, and Talia realized he had gone white. “She fixed most of a video file.”

“What’s going on Arthur?” she asked again.

His eyes flitted to her, then back to the screen. “Nothing.”

A video file opened up, choppy and full of unmistakable artifacting due to data corruption. The image coalesced into a night-vision shot from the back of an SUV. The details were out of focus, but it was clear the person was trying to remain hidden. The car jerked, then stopped. After a moment, the camera poked sneakily over the edge of the seat and the owner, determining the coast was clear, rolled over the back and into the rear seat. The video streamed together messily at this point, but the camera was outside now and switching between different visual modes, finally ending on a standard setting. A dark, dusty field stretched before the lens into the night, but it was still surprisingly well-lit. Carefully, the operator shuffled along the car, then brought the camera up around the side of the vehicle. Towering into the night was the structure from the plans, illuminated by searchlights and constant streams of sparks from welding torches. The video’s degradation picked up now, as the mix of light and darkness played havoc with the file. A man moved toward something on the other side of the SUV, presumably the driver. As the file pixilated in greater and greater chunks, a brief frame flickered in exquisite detail, too perfect to deny but all at once too horrible to accept. The video clicked off with an error message.

Talia turned to Arthur, the man ghost-white and looking horribly sick. “There’s no way that’s who I think it is.” The words rolling off her tongue had no meaning, but she couldn’t find any other rationale for what she saw. She turned to Arthur, who could not seem to focus on anything other than the computer.

“Mollie, take me back to those last frames. You know the ones.” The order was punctuated by a cracked voice. Mollie must have said something in protest. “Loop them,” Arthur demanded insistently.

Tim and Ariana sat down in the seat across from them. “What up, Art? Your girlfriend nagging you again?” He pointed at the computer and winked at Talia, who did not see the gesture.

James was now kneeling at the end of the table, head resting on his folded arms. “What did I miss?”

After he didn’t respond, Ariana grew visibly worried. “Arthur? What’s wrong?” Her hand twitched in his direction, but otherwise she didn’t move. She turned to Talia. “Talia? What happened?”

Arthur looked up at all of them, eyes red. He had apparently fought a battle against tearing up and won, but barely. He looked back at the computer, then swiveled it around to face the assembled. Tim and Ariana exchanged glances, betraying their prior knowledge of the schematics. Their eyes returned to the screen, drawn now to the looping image in the corner, drawn to the picture of the man in dark robes, staggering in a compressed video file.

“He stole my design,” Arthur said, voice cracking again. “That son of a bitch Dark Saint stole my Fortress of Darkness.”

CORROSION

THEY TRIED TO TALK TO ARTHUR,
but nothing sank in. The journey back to their apartment seemed a soundless blur. At least once, one of his companions yanked him away from traffic, an act which he couldn’t even bring himself to thank them for. Too many thoughts were fighting for dominance to focus on the path home:
why did my father want the Fortress of Darkness? Was it merely him or all of the heroes? Why had they repurposed so much of it into cell blocks?

He supposed that, on some level, it made sense. Neutral supermax prisons couldn’t contain some of the more dangerous villains out there, not to mention that anyone willing to go rogue clearly had little regard for the safety of others, Arthur’s own foray into stupidity notwithstanding. It would be the perfect way to keep people like Arbiter silent by showing that heroes had the means to incapacitate rogue elements while society rolled along without them. Maintain order and reason while having the perfect symbol of what can happen when… when…

When someone like Zombress kills Desert Ranger.

Damn it all.

The hallway to his apartment seemed more ominous than normal, but he attributed that to his mood. He knew that all of his proposals and designs, with the exception of AMALIA, had been submitted to the Heroes’ Guild before making their way to the government. But to take the design, re-engineer it, then use it… he had never before heard of it being done by heroes, only the army and other branches of the armed forces. And then, only in exceptional cases.

His brain wasn’t the least bit tired and insisted on reexamining the details over and over again. His body, however, was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to stretch on the bed and shut down forever. That urge was immediately canceled when he unlocked the door and entered the living room, only to find a woman in a black trench coat rifling through their refrigerator. The others filed in behind him and stared, dumbfounded.

The interloper poked her head out from behind the door. Her strawberry blond hair was tied back, her eyes hidden behind a pair of red-tinted shades. “I was starting to get worried,” she said, her voice so professional Arthur immediately felt like he was being interrogated. She pulled out the empty milk jug and hip-checked the door closed. “You’re out of milk.” Underneath the trench coat, she wore a button-up white shirt and skinny black tie. Simple black pants completed the ensemble.