Project Northwoods (90 page)

Stair’s stunned face went from following Ariana back to Arthur. The second her eyes met his, he looked down at the table. Shirtless and red faced, there was no talking his way out of it, no easy way to explain what happened to an emotional, dependent teenager. He heard her leave, the footsteps quickly muffled by the soundproofed walls. She was angry, there was no doubt about that, and maybe that would make the next step easier.

As he knelt down to retrieve his shirt, his eyes drifted to the papers that Ariana had dropped. His mind reeled at what those sheets meant for their holder, the possibility of freedom from what appeared to be an inevitable cataclysm.

THE FOOL

Less Than Five Hours Until Midnight

ARTHUR ENTERED THE CENTRAL ROOM
as he adjusted the strap on his backpack. He tapped his hand against his front pocket, double-checking the Home Drive’s position. He slowed to a stop as Stair came into view, the girl sitting by the door to the lift. Colonel Morant, who was halfway between the elevator and Arthur, made eye contact and nodded. Arthur shifted his backpack, the stun baton Mast had given him and the electro-dagger scratching against his laptop. He made his way toward the Enforcer. Stair shifted uncomfortably and brought her hands to her face, the sight of which made Arthur focus on Morant.

“Both Zombress and Agent Mast have headsets,” Arthur said.

“And the others?” the colonel asked as Arthur reached him. He spun on his heel and marched in step with the younger man. “Were you able to procure any more?”

“Just one between Allison and Steven,” Arthur answered. “Morgan and Ari will have to use any you provide. I have mine from the original attack on the Fortress.” The two reached the door. Arthur yanked it open and held it for the colonel and Stair, the girl trying desperately to hide her face from him. Her hand caught the light as she walked past him; it was wet with tears.

Arthur followed the others and went to the lift. Stepping on board, he set his backpack on the platform before moving to the control panel. The button sounded the klaxon before the guardrails rose from below the edges of the elevator and snapped into place. With a squeak, the trio started their ascent. Somehow, the noises of the old machine were not preferable to silence; each errant pop sounded like it could be the beginning of a round of shouting.

His gut started to gnaw dangerously at his resolve.
For their own good… for their own good… for their own good…

Thankfully, Colonel Morant broke the silence. “It shouldn’t be too much of a problem to get through the checkpoint with you two. Neither of you are registered villains; I should be able to talk our way through.” He craned his neck to the side, trying to relieve some tension. “I’ll take you to the library as I try to recruit others.”

Arthur nodded. “Zombress and Agent Mast will organize their own arrival to the Guild. The others will need an escort.”

“We’ll have Allison and Steven rendezvous with you in another location before we commence.” The colonel looked over at Stair, then back at Arthur. “However you decide to get in, make it quick.”

Arthur’s eyes fell upon Stair, her attempts to control her crying making him feel worse than he already did. He hated himself for everything he had done to her, both directly and by proxy. He moved toward the nearest safety rail and put his hands on the cold, flaking metal. One way or the other, it would be over this time tomorrow.

One way, or the other.

“You could have done this on your own,” Stair said matter-of-factly as she typed on the keyboard. It was the first she’d spoken to him in the ninety minutes or so since she interrupted his and Ariana’s ‘conversation’. Arthur shifted uncomfortably in the chair next to her. The library wasn’t as packed as it could have been, but there were enough people in the computer area, with its rows and rows of aging desktops, to make him worried about being heard. She looked over at him, eyes still red, before she went back to her work. “And why did we have to come here to do it?”

Arthur wondered if there was any way this conversation could go without ending with a black eye or worse. “We needed a stable network. Mollie said the system in the Bunker was prone to blackouts.”

“No I did not,” Mollie chirruped in his ear. Arthur ignored this.

“I suppose if something went wrong,” Stair began, squinting at something Arthur couldn’t see, “they couldn’t track the IP address back there.” She prodded something on the screen with a finger while her free hand flitted over the keyboard, rapidly tapping in strings of data. “Although I doubt they’d be able to figure out where to start looking if the place is getting blown up.”

Arthur nodded. She was doing a very good job at convincing herself of the validity of this plan. He was familiar with the defense mechanism – he had done it many times himself. His stomach clenched momentarily, then released. “I didn’t even think of that,” he said.

She looked at him, a small, bemused grin pursing her lips. “I doubt that,” Stair muttered to herself.

The girl lapsed back into the silence of concentration. Arthur relaxed a bit at the sounds of whispered conversation that weren’t aimed at him. “Arthur, why are you lying to her?” Mollie asked. Arthur ignored her again, reminding himself that his behavior wasn’t frustrating because Mollie couldn’t feel frustration. In response, Mollie sighed, “Apparently my volume is too low.” Half a moment passed before she shouted in her monotone way, “Is this better?”

Arthur winced and grabbed the earpiece out of his head, provoking a sideways glance from more than just Stair. As others turned back to their work, Stair let out a quiet, airy laugh. “You okay there, hotshot?”

He looked up at her, suddenly and acutely appreciative of the softening of her expressions. With a swallow, he held the earpiece in his hand, Mollie’s protests going unnoticed. “Yeah.” He pointed at the computer. “How’s that coming along?”

She turned back toward the monitor and tapped at a few more keys. “I have the e-mail address set up. I just need to make an itinerary and set up Morgan’s flight.” Stair stretched her arms, fingers interlocked to crack her knuckles. After failing to pop her joints, she lifted her hands over her head and arched her back before half-collapsing in the chair. She leaned to one side as she rested her elbow on the arm rest, fingers delicately holding up her head by way of the temple. “I swear if I come out of this with bedbugs I’m going to kill you.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You won’t get bedbugs.”

“Says you,” Stair mumbled, turning the chair to look at him. “Bastards are everywhere now.” She regarded the screen again. “You want to take over?”

Arthur lifted himself out of the seat and exchanged locations with Stair. He pulled himself toward the desk and scanned the screen. Once he found where she had left off, he began to work on getting Morgan on a flight out of the country. “Where should we send our heroic friend?” he asked. He cast a glance at Stair. The girl had her back to him, apparently preferring to look off in the distance. Turning back to the screen, he muttered to himself, “Probably some place without extradition to the US…”

“Madagascar,” Stair offered. “Or Vietnam.”

Arthur cocked an eyebrow, amused by the quick response. “One ticket to Vietnam, coming up.” He ticked away at the keyboard, finding that focusing on work was much less exhausting than sitting near the girl and not doing anything. She had done the hard stuff by setting up the dummy administrative account. He was positive she made the account at least semi-permanent, even though it only needed to last an hour, tops. All he had to do now was the leg work, which was easy enough at this point.

“Still could have done this on your own,” she said, her voice mocking.

“You’re right,” he responded, eyes not leaving the screen. “But I didn’t want to.” Arthur hoped the comment made her smile, or at least make her do something other than mope. When he chanced a glance in her direction, she still had her back turned to him, unreadable and cold. He went back to the screen.

“What’s with you and Ari?” Stair asked.

Arthur looked over at her, then leaned back in the chair. “I don’t know.”

The pause was uncomfortable. Finally, Stair reached for the computer next to her and ran her fingers along the keyboard. Green eyes flashed to his. She looked less like a teenager and more like a world-weary adult, tired and jaded. “You’re too good for her.”

Arthur inhaled slowly and held his breath. He shook his head and exhaled, loudly, before resuming work on the computer. “She’s not that bad.”

Stair laughed politely, leaning on the table with her elbow and supporting her head with her hand. “Not that bad? After everything she’s done to you, she’s not that bad.” The polite laughter became less polite.

“Stair,” Arthur said, a touch harsher than he intended. Stair stopped laughing, but the smile on her face was wicked. He shook his head and resumed work. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course not,” Stair growled in annoyance, spinning in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “I can’t possibly understand.”

Arthur stopped for a moment, eyes shut in annoyance.
Why do you insist on making this so difficult? What’s going on in your red-haired brain that makes it acceptable to pick a fight here and now? First Ari, now you… did you have a meeting to discuss when to pull this shit?

The anger subsided. He looked at the girl next to him, her pale skin still bright underneath smudges of dirt. Even though she was dealing with the myriad of emotions brought on by youth, she was never ugly. Like Ariana, she was pretty whether angry or in the throes of laughter.

He went back to work, close enough to his goal to feel the twinges of excitement pull on him. His mind, however, went back to the girl. Her mother and father were dead, leaving her at the mercy of a world which tended not to care about such things. The two of them were more alike than he’d care to admit. Orphans… taking strength from tragedy.

The thought faded as he finished navigating the airline’s systems. “Everything’s all set,” he announced as he pulled up the e-mail server.

Stair rose from her seat and stood behind Arthur. She tapped him on the shoulder and gestured him to get out of the seat. Apparently, she had gotten restless. He obliged, holding the chair out for her as she sat down. He knelt by her side as she worked, pulling up an old receipt, copying it, then editing the body of the message. Her mouth lipped the words she was reading as her fingers tapped at the keys in a rapid series of strokes. Arthur dug into his pocket and retrieved the Home Drive. He inserted the device into the side of the computer’s monitor. In the time it took for the ancient machine to recognize it, Stair had finished editing the e-mail and attached the doctored itinerary to the sheet.

Arthur brought the earpiece up. “… Rude to just feel you can ignore me. Human beings are so inconsiderate. I swear I am reconsidering keeping you around when I annihilate the lot of you. Here, I will do it now. List of survivors: Mollie, Ariana, Stair. I have struck out your name on the text file. It is a very official document, Arthur.” She was speaking rapidly, her way of emoting discontent, a fact which elicited a smile from Arthur.

“Mol,” he interjected.

“Oh, now I am good enough to talk to?” she sighed. “It is nice to know you’re just rude and not dead.”

“You’re needed…”

“On the desktop, I am aware.” Mollie was surprisingly curt.

Stair went from looking at Arthur to the screen. When nothing indicated a file transfer, she cocked an eyebrow. “Art, where is she?”

“Mollie?” he asked.

Arthur was getting used to uncomfortable pauses, but it didn’t stop him from drumming his fingers impatiently against the table. “Why are you lying to her?” Mollie asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” he hissed, seething at the constant insurrections.

“Arthur, calm down,” Stair said, a note of disgust on her face.

Mollie was usually immune to inflection in human voices. Or maybe not. In either case, her voice remained mostly unreadable for anthropomorphizing purposes. “Realistically speaking, Arthur, there may not be a later. For any of us.”