Hey, everybody! "Big Sister" is still coming, but I decided to spin off some stuff into a seperate little thing so you have something to tide you over while I get my planning in order. Shouldn't be too long until the "proper" story launches, but I have been massively, massively wrong before. Also, fruityone, thank you very much for alleviating one of my neuroses. My first review on , yay! Also, short commentary today on some timing issues.
---
When Nathan came in to work at Wolf Creek from his extended weekend, he felt pretty good because he had gotten things done. He had printed adhesive labels for the little glass bottles on his spice rack. He had bought a staggering half dozen new polo shirts. He had written his mother - an actual, hand-written letter. And he'd gone on a well-received date with Miranda, his newest girlfriend. He parked his car - a beater Volvo - in the hangar, flashed his badge at Calavera and jumped onto the elevator down to the underground research facility. Truth be told, Nathan was itching to get back into the fray. Well, not so much a fray as one long code review interrupted by the occasional lunch breaks and meetings.
The elevator shuddered to a halt and opened its doors. Nathan stepped out only to be met halfway by a fresh face squeezing past him. There was a soft din of voices further down the hallways, reverberating through the entire shaft as if it was a cathedral. One thing Nathan absolutely wasn't looking forward to were all the new people. He looked back at the man who'd gotten into the elevator; his eyes briefly met with Nathan's before the door closed. Come to think of it, the hangar had been rather cramped today.
Nathan made a mental note to bring up reserved parking spots in the next meeting. Clearly, he deserved a pretty good location. No, strike that: the best location. He kept this whole place running, after all, didn't he?
The second elevator and few sublevels later, he was on one of the walkways passing his favorite smoking spot when he caught up with Truewell, as always dressed in a power suit with pumps, her Berkut ID badge prominently hanging from her belt and a light stack of manila-colored file folders in her arms.
"Hey there, good morning," Nathan said, nodding to her.
"Good morning," she replied, speeding her steps a bit; Nathan increased his pace to keep up.
"How was your weekend?" he asked. "Because I'm not gonna lie, mine was pret-ty awesome."
"Just fine, Nathan," she said. "My weekend was just fine."
"Did I tell you about Miranda? Because I'm not Don Juan though I've had my share, but this lady and me, we just vibe something fierce. It's a little scary actually, it's like she's my bizarro - well, really more like my evil twin. Wait. Did I say 'evil'?" Truewell suppressed a smirk. "Forget that I said that. She's my good twin, I guess - except I'm not really evil and we're not related, because ew. Also? No goatees."
"You didn't mention her," Truewell said. "So, you consider goatees to be a dealbreaker?"
"Yeah, I kinda do!" Nathan said. "What with the evil and shaving it off and pretending to be good only they grew up in an evil universe so they suck at being good and, you know - where was I going with this? - ah, I do have another objection. Beards are our thing. Even goatees. You girls have taken our metaphorical pants, can't you at least leave us our poor grooming? Then again, I try to be open-minded, so maybe I just haven't met the right girl with one. Maybe Miranda's willing to experiment. Not that she's hairy!" He looked at Truewell. "Not that being hairy is wrong! Just saying."
"Well," Truewell said, "that sounds like you hit it off with her, glad to hear that. But if you don't mind, I'd like to focus on the meeting ahead."
"Oh," he said. "Right, sorry, didn't mean to distract you. This is the big one and I bet the old man's not happy today, I mean, damn, I would just freaking explode, or something, if I had to explain the whole Sommers thing to someone, because, wow, just - just try to explain that. Now I do actually want to meet the SecDef sometime, for coffee or something, you know, not a business thing. We could run into each other all random-like, just - hey, Sir, how are you doing, I love your procurement strategy for Afghanistan! How awesome is the MQ-9 - isn't it so awesome - you know? Just shoot the shit, geek out a little."
"I'm sure you'll have the opportunity if we can turn the situation around," Truewell said. "But you'll need to survive Mr. Bledsoe first."
"Ah, don't worry about me," Nathan said, "I can deal with Papa Smurf."
---
The conference room had always been too big. The many seats only encouraged the few people joining the meetings to stake out their private turf and spread out along the whole tablefront. Nathan saw Jae Kim sitting at the very end of the table, as always, Bledsoe standing in the center of the room, and Antoine Ginsburg sitting in the middle; as an irregular guest, Ginsburg hadn't figured out the unspoken spreading rule and instead motioned for Nathan and Truewell to join him.
I bet he sits next to strangers at the movies, too, Nathan thought.
"Good morning, everyone," Bledsoe said. "I hope the weekend has given you all a chance to recuperate."
"Um, Sir?" Nathan said before sitting down; Truewell didn't look at him when she sat down. "Is, uh, Doctor Anthros on his way?"
"No, he is not," Bledsoe said. "Anthros will not be joining us now as I have granted him and Miss Sommers extended leave. That won't be a problem, will it?"
"No," Nathan said, and sat down."No, that's not so much a problem as - I'm just, you know, surprised."
"Noted. Any other points of order?"
There were none. Bledsoe cleared his throat.
"I spent four hours this Saturday telling the Secretary that we need every cent we're getting and, in fact, deserve more. You can imagine how that went over. Still, our success in the Paradise incident has given us some leeway to renegotiate our position. We've been granted more personnel and will receive more cooperation from other agencies in the future, but that is on an evaluatory basis. By the 2010 budget, we'll either have to be hitting targets with our new funding level or we'll have to pack it up. So here's our objective: the next time I talk to the Secretary, I want him to beg me to take his cash. I want to make Berkut and Project Tin Man the best damn money Uncle Sam ever spent on anything. So, let's make that happen."
Bledsoe looked around.
"First item on the agenda, Tin Man status. Mr. Kim, where are we on the physical components?"
"We're ahead of schedule," Kim said. "The intense...workout...Sommers's body received in the last week has kicked the self-repair function of the anthrocytes into high gear. The stress fractures and injuries to her natural skeleton from the events of Monday and Tuesday have completely healed, as well as the few fractures and strains that the bionics sustained. She was in a considerable amount of pain following the deactivation of the endorphin control loop. Are there any actions we can take on that?"
"Her choice, Mr. Kim. What else do we have?"
"Her organ systems seem to be adapting well to the Ichor. All endocrine hormone levels are normal. There is no decrease in liver or kidney function and no signs of oxidative stress. It looks like the implantation procedure was a complete success."
"Good, at least she's not just gonna drop dead," Nathan said from his reclined position, staring at the ceiling, then sat upright again. "I mean, for real, this time."
Kim's jaw tensed, but he ignored the interruption. "All things considered, Sir, she is in excellent condition. All the bionics check out, her original parts are in good shape, and she is completely healed up. I have no reservations to putting her back in the field. The Secretary of Defense passed along a list of missions that might use our attention -"
"She's on vacation, Mr. Kim," Bledsoe said. "Surely the SecDef knows what that means, I've seen his schedule. But the physical looks good, that's something. So, software. Ambrose?"
"I've put some thought into it over the weekend," Nathan said, "but yeah, we need to do a complete teardown. Only way we'll ever be sure. So, did I get all the analysts I asked for? Because I really need a couple of code monkeys for this crap."
"Five of the brightest from the NSA's cybersecurity staff," Bledsoe replied. "I don't have to tell you that this needs to be done as quickly as possible. I want a general assurance that the code is secure and more detailed rolling audits as we go along."
"Uh, okay," Nathan said. "Sure, we'll get right on that, Mr. Bledsoe."
"See that you do. Next up, Ginsburg. Tactical considerations?"
"Sommers can pull her weight in a firefight," Ginsburg said, "but if it were up to me..."
"Pretend it is," Bledsoe said. "Let's travel to a magical place where the only thing that matters is what you want. What would you do with her?"
"Send her to Ranger School. She can hack the prereqs, the skills are handy and it builds confidence."
"Go on," Bledsoe said.
"After that, she needs more training in small-unit tactics and urban warfare. I'd run her through the killhouse for at least a month. Qualify her on all of our issue weapons. After that, I don't know. Physically, she's pretty much there. Add skills and mentality, you could make her into a hell of a soldier."
"What could you do if you had her for four hours a day, weekdays only, with the occasional weekend outing?" Bledsoe asked.
"And if she was dead-set against guns, killing people, or being a soldier in general?" Truewell added.
"That's what I call tricky questions, Sir, Miss Truewell," Ginsburg said, slightly squirming from being put on the spot like that. "To answer your question, Sir, we can integrate her into my team's training schedule. We'll rotate one of my guys out as evaluator and put her into the different jobs of a fireteam, that'll build skills and mentality. Not as quickly as the direct approach, but it'll help. I don't know if that'll cure a gun phobia, though I don't think she's really got one - she shoots just fine. The killing part, that's all in the head. That'll come, or not. Not much we can do about it, but the better we prepare her, the better the chances are that it'll minimize the 'Oh shit' factor. Maybe it'll even keep her from puking on my boots again. I'll keep an eye on her for that. Any real counseling, I suspect she'll want you to walk her through that, Miss Truewell, not me and the boys."
"Thank you, Ginsburg," Bledsoe said. "And that brings us to Miss Sommer's psyche. Where are we, Truewell? Have your bathtime talks paid off?"
"I suppose you could call it that," Truewell said, brushing her hand against a file without opening it or looking at it. "I've made some headway, but it's not easy going. Her sister remains a big topic on her mind. Sommers is very concerned about her safety. Mostly though, she's angry at us."
"I didn't expect her to fall in love with us at first sight," Bledsoe said. "So, angry. Why specifically?"
"With your permission," Truewell said, and pointed at the phone on the conference table. "I think she should tell you that."
Jonas Bledsoe squinted. "Go ahead," he said. Truewell nodded in confirmation and pressed a few buttons on the phone.
"We're ready for you, Jaime," she said.
"Good morning, everyone," Jaime said.
"Good morning, Miss Sommers," Bledsoe replied, staring at Truewell.
The speakerphone rendered Jaime's voice surprisingly well, including the decidedly frigid tone it took. "Hello, Jonas."
Nathan suppressed a giggle. Bledsoe threw him a less than friendly look. "I'm listening, Miss Sommers," he said.
"Just tell Mr. Bledsoe what you told me," Truewell said.
"I don't like being kept in the dark, Mister Bledsoe," Jaime said, the same icy note in her voice. "But since I've was recruited, or rather, since I was kidnapped and operated on without my permission, I have been all but told to shut up and not ask questions. Nobody tells me anything about what's going to happen with me, what the plan is...I don't even know who the Hell you people are or what you're doing here, and you want me to work with you? As far as I know, you just want to fuck with my mind and turn me into an assassin or a soldier, and I will not be running around killing people for you. Nothing that has happened to me since you kidnapped me has let me know that I can trust you, and if you want me to work with you, it will be on my terms, because frankly, I think Berkut is only slightly better than the people I stopped last week."
Bledsoe stepped close to the phone and pressed the 'mute' button.
"Progress, Truewell?" he asked.
"I'm doing what I can, Sir," Truewell said. "At least she's not shouting anymore." Bledsoe smirked and pressed the 'mute' button again.
"Our actions saved an entire city last week," Bledsoe said. "In my book, that's worth something."
"And in my book, it doesn't work that way," Jaime said. "We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come, Mister Bledsoe."
"Choice is a package deal with responsibility," Bledsoe said, ignoring the tangent. "But if that's what you want, Sommers, you got it." The 'Miss' was conspicuously - well, missing. Truewell thought she heard Jaime cough while Bledsoe went on. "Trust goes both ways. You prove to me that you can operate without flaking out and we'll work on that. On the information front, there's only so much an interim Secret clearance can get you. I know that we've run up against problems with that in the last week, but you're already a walking security breach. Giving you any more classified information before your proper clearance comes through amounts to a federal crime."
"I think we're past that particular moral horizon," Jaime said. "And you've got your superiors bent over a barrel on the clearance issues. You told me that yourself."
"Sommers, if I just did everything I could get away with, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Bledsoe cleared his throat. "What kind of information are you asking for, anyway?"
"For a start, I want to know more about Berkut, where the organization comes from," Jaime said. "And about Sara Corvus."
"I think her pre-Berkut military file is classified Secret, Sir," Truewell said.
"Why do you want to know about Corvus, Sommers?" Bledsoe asked.
"She seems to be rather important, or at least she's mentioned a lot, and I want to know about her. And she's obviously interested in me. If we meet again, I want to know who I'm dealing with," Jaime said. "And other reasons."
"Well, since you've cornered me so nicely," Bledsoe said. "Fine. You can have the clean file. Anything else while you're making demands?"
"One more thing," Jaime said. "Put me into the next meeting. I want to know what Berkut is doing before I start working with you."
"No," Bledsoe said. "That's definitely not happening before the clearance issues are dealt with."
"And I'm telling you that unless I get full disclosure about what's going on with my own Goddamn body and what you're planning on having me do, there is no way that I will be working with you," Jaime said.
"No," Bledsoe said.
"What?" Jaime asked.
"Sir, I don't think that -" Truewell tried, but Bledsoe cut her off.
"Look, Sommers, as much as you want it to be otherwise, this is a military organization, and we have to play by the rules," he said. "Everything about your new body is under an SAP - a Special Access Program - with a blanket Top Secret requirement, which is so far above your security clearance at this point that anyone who tells you about it will go to prison for treason." He looked around the table, making sure everyone there got the message. "So not only can't I tell you about it, but I wouldn't until I know that you're trustworthy, Sommers. There's a lot of secrets here, and I can't afford to make a security leak like you even worse. Clear?"
"That's not even close, Bledsoe," Jaime said. "After everything you've done to me, and what you say you want me to do next, you owe me a lot of answers, and hiding behind your little rulebook isn't going to change my mind one bit. I wanted to see if, maybe, you're willing to not be an ass about this, but apparently there's no room on the team for me. Just for your Goddamn weapon."
"I think you'll find that the only debt under discussion here is yours," Bledsoe said. "I've done my best to defend you and to meet you halfway, but it's just never enough, is it, Sommers? You can't deal with things not going your way, it seems."
Truewell quickly pressed the 'mute' button on the phone.
"I think that's enough of that, Sir," she said.
"I never thought I'd say this," Bledsoe said, "but I'm starting to miss Corvus."
"Can I put her back on the line?"
"I assume you want to talk to her," Bledsoe said. "Go ahead."
Truewell put Jaime back on. "Are you still here, Jaime?"
"Yes," Jaime said.
"Jaime, I'll be out in a minute and then we can talk, okay? Stay on the line."
"Alright," Jaime said.
Jonas Bledsoe pressed a button on the phone to mute it again. He looked at Truewell, who did her best to look like she was innocent of the content of Jaime's call.
"Cute idea," Bledsoe said. "That's all part of the process, I assume?"
"I thought it would be best if she could articulate her concerns, Sir," Truewell said.
"Well, by all means," Bledsoe said, "let's help Sommers feel better. Ambrose, I assume you'll be busy over the next few weeks?"
"Uh, yeah," Nathan said, wary of being roped into additional work. "Very busy, getting those code reviews you wanted, Sir."
"Figured. Truewell, you're taking over as Sommers's mission handler."
"With respect, Sir, placing me in command of her violates the spirit of my position as her psychologist."
"I'm sure it does," Bledsoe said, "but you've got a good rapport and you know her buttons better than anyone else here. I figure she'll at least listen to you long enough not to fuck up the next mission, and you'll be right there to reinforce the positive feedback or whatever when she does something feel-good. We'll rotate you back out once we've sold her on the job. Any problems with that?"
"I think that will work," Truewell said flatly.
"Great. We'll reevaluate next week."
Bledsoe grabbed a glass of water. He drank a sip, then cleared his throat and put the glass back down.
"Next up on the agenda, We're expecting Homeland Security to clear the mechanism we located in San Francisco for transport within the next few days. We already have people on site to oversee the dismantling and will be airlifting the mechanism here for analysis as soon as we're authorized to. Mr. Kim, in the absence of Dr. Anthros, the laboratory teams are your responsibility. Make sure that the new arrivals are oriented and prepared so that we can get results. We've had enough delays already..."
---
Sara Corvus stood in the long abandoned remains of a bathroom and leaned on the sink, rinsing out her mouth in the wide-open tap. It felt good. Better than spending her time looking in the mirror, anyway. The cool water slowly carried away the lingering metallic taste in her mouth. She kept her eyes closed, trying not to focus on what she was doing, what she had done.
She became lost enough that it actually startled her when the door opened and Nicholas walked in. The door seemed half a size too small for him, his shoulders nearly filling the doorway as he stood there. He wore a thermal shirt, as if to hide his build, and plain jeans.
"Sara?" he asked. "We're ready downstairs."
Corvus lifted her head from the sink and spat the rest of the water out. With a quick flick of her wrist, she closed the tap. "How many goddamn times have I told you to knock? Or just...not come in here at all?" she said. "What the fuck is wrong with your Siemens brain? Can I just get some damn privacy here?" She dried off her face with a nearby towel. "And stop looking like you don't understand what I'm saying."
"I'm sorry," Nicholas said. "I thought you were ready for the meeting."
"Well, I am now!" Corvus said.
"Are you okay?" Nicholas asked.
"Everything's fucking fantastic," Corvus said. "So? I thought we were in a hurry here. Let's get it over with."
"Sara, I'm -" Nicholas said, his face not quite settling on a single expression. "I'm concerned about you."
"I'm great. Fan-fucking-tastic." She threw the towel into the corner of the bathroom. "Let's go already."
"No," Nicholas said. "Let me finish. Sara, you're acting...without caution. You do not show up for meals. I do not know where you are every evening. And you showed off to Berkut that you're still alive. Why do you do all those things? Is he really worth it?"
"I already got this lecture from my friend, I don't need it again from you, Nicholas," Corvus said. "And the rest of it is none of your damn business."
"It became my business when we started working together," Nicholas said.
Corvus walked up to Nicholas. "Fine. You have an issue with it? Take it up with him when he calls, which he won't until we get downstairs." She motioned for him to move aside. "Well?"
"I will do that," Nicholas said, and retreated out of the doorframe to let Corvus pass through. She headed for the stairs with quick steps; he looked back at the sink for a moment before following her.
---
Downstairs, the dilapidated theme of the residence continued, with rippled wallpaper, cracked floorboards and dented drywall. The room was well-lit, but only to the extent to which it was necessary to convince the neighbors that the row house wasn't a crack den or meth lab. Heavy curtains blocked the light from barred windows, surrounded by the only fresh wall-coverings, a double-thick layer of RF shielding. The room's decor was clearly designed for function and privacy first, with form smothered under the layers of RF resistant window tinting laminate covering the windows and reinforced steel rebar on the walls.
The privacy precautions would have seemed overkill, if it weren't for the centerpiece of the floor: a nest of enough computers, lab equipment and surgical gear to support an entire floor at MIT. Cables snaked in and out of the carefully stacked array of computers, some breaking free and running into the medical equipment by a steel surgical table. An autoclave buzzed away on a table, next to a freezer not full of medical equipment, drugs or blood bags, but strips of electroactive polymer muscle, sterilized plastic tubing, replacement sensors and gallons of perfluorodecalin.
Despite the beyond-cutting-edge level of computer and medical science on display, much of the rest of the room was taken up with piles and piles of paper waste and disassembled electronics. Fortunately, there were no discarded food packages, but waist-high stacks of technical journals and loose piles of printouts dominated the area around the desk in the center of the computer cluster. Sara was used to this image; Nicholas took the time to grab a half-full garbage bag and throw some of the trash into it, clearing a space on the table and a nearby sofa. He considered expanding the radius of his efforts before giving up and throwing it aside again.
"So?" Corvus asked. "Where's the damn meeting?"
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" another male voice shouted, and Eric Mosely emerged from the adjacent kitchen. He had his laptop wedged under one arm, a portable projector under the other, and held a large bottle of store-brand soda in his right hand. Eric was small and gaunt, the edges of his cheeks sharp enough to cut paper, and he looked like he should have smelled strongly of tobacco. "Jesus, Sara, I was just fetching a fucking drink, okay?"
Corvus didn't pay much attention to Eric, though she did make a throaty sound that he mistook for acknowledgement. She sat down on the couch, and Nicholas followed suit. Eric put his stuff onto the table and turned around to pull up a chair, almost spilling the soda in the process. While he fiddled with the cables, Corvus pulled a burner cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number. After a few rings, a distorted voice answered.
"Listening," it said.
"We're having the meeting now," Corvus said. "Just a second, I'll put you on speaker." She plugged the phone into a second laptop and turned up the volume.
"Thank you," the voice replied.
Meanwhile, Eric had gotten his projector and laptop set up. Nicholas helpfully got the lights for him, and Sara's eyes focused on the slideshow playing across the heavy curtains. Eric took his wireless mouse off the table to use as a clicker and cleared his throat.
"Lady, gentleman, mystery caller - your attention, please, so I can get back to work," he said. "Let me tell you about Rebecca Sommers."
He clicked, and the slideshow advanced to its second slide with a cheesy mosaic effect. It showed a picture of Becca, apparently taken for a yearbook.
"Rebecca Louise Sommers, born on the 6th of April, 1992. Younger sister of Jaime Sommers and only living relative of the same. Shares an apartment with her. Goes to Madison High, apparently a good student. Rendered deaf through accident in 1998."
"Do you know her?" Corvus asked.
"Only that she's Sommers's little sister," the voice said.
"Great," Eric said, and advanced the slideshow. He clicked through several pictures taken by Corvus's bionic eye of Jaime and Becca on a shopping trip. "And she seems to be into robotics as a hobby. I've found several of her email addresses - her current one seems to be gmhfeynman AT calsci edu."
"CalSci?" Corvus asked. "That's a high-powered research university down in LA. How did she get an address there?"
"No idea," Eric says. "My guess is she knows an IT guy there. Anyway, she has used this account to post in several computer- and robotics-related forums over the last three years. Her name is on a newsgroup FAQ about autonomous pathfinding. No Facebook or MySpace page that I could find, good for her. Anyway, the other email address I found was rebel92 AT hotmail com. So, you know, she's a teenager. It's 'cool' and 'clever' and what not. She seems to use that one for private stuff. Hacked in, didn't find anything juicy there. Unless you want to divine something from essay drafts for English Lit."
"I didn't know she had such a strong technical interest," the voice said. "That's very unusual."
"Everybody needs a hobby," Eric said. "Especially when you can't get a boyfriend. So what? She's smart, I guess, for a teenager. Anyway, the real kicker is this."
The next slide showed a photo of Jonas Bledsoe. Corvus couldn't quite suppress a gasp, and Eric gave it a few seconds to sink in.
"What is it?" the voice asked.
"Jonas fucking Bledsoe," Eric said. "I found a Google search request for him coming from her computer. Begs the question of how that happened."
"Maybe Sommers used her sister's computer," Nicholas said. "Or she has told her sister a cover story involving Bledsoe. He does have a public identity."
"Those would be reasonable assumptions," Eric said. "If she had stopped there. But no, it goes beyond that."
"How far beyond that?" the voice asked, suddenly very interested in the conversation.
"After the initial search request, the next three hours are filled with page requests for interviews, articles, anything to be found about Bledsoe. If it was published on Jonas Bledsoe in the last decade, she found it."
"And?" Corvus asked. "Get to the point."
"Over the last few days, gmhfeynman has ventured into new net territory. I got hits on that address from various forums all over the net - all about government coverups and conspiracy theories. She's even posted in AltConspiracyGovernment and some of the deep, deep darknet forums. She's been posting that something big isn't adding up about Bledsoe's public identity, and is asking around for information."
"What has she found?" the voice asked.
"I couldn't tell you," Eric said. "She got few replies, all of them useless. If anyone knew anything and told her, they sent a private message to her. I couldn't get into her CalSci account, so I don't know what's happening there."
"I'll see what I can do about that," the voice said.
"Yes, you're gonna hack CalSci, for sure," Eric replied. "And tell us all about it, if you do."
"No need," the voice said. "I know a robotics and computer science professor there. She can get me in, and might know about her CalSci connection. Call back in an hour or so."
"We'll do that," Corvus said. "Thank you."
"Goodbye," the voice said, and hung up.
Nicholas got up from the couch; Eric looked at him flabbergasted.
"Hey, what the hell?" Eric said. "I'm in the middle of my fucking presentation here. Sit your ass back down."
"Okay, Eric," Corvus said. "What's left? What else do we need to hear?"
Eric pursed his lips and exhaled sharply in frustration. "Nothing." He clicked over to the next slide, displaying a big question mark next to Corvus' bionic eye image of Becca. "But I couldn't find a reason for any of this. She looks just like a teenager to me. A clever one, but just a kid. I don't know why we're wasting our time looking into her."
"She is an anomaly, Eric," Nicholas says, looking quizzically at the projected image. "Anomalies like this should be investigated. She may be a method of contacting Sommers, when the time comes. She does not trust Bledsoe, and Sommers might listen to her more than she would to us."
"Sommers will listen to us," Corvus said. "If we have her sister, voluntarily or - otherwise."
"Otherwise?" Eric said.
"No, that is not a good idea," Nicholas said. "We should not draw the girl into this now. We need to know more about her and this situation."
"That's what we're waiting for," Corvus said. "I'm calling it. Meeting adjourned for now?"
"Until we call your friend back, yes," Nicholas replied.
"Sure," Eric said, snapping the laptop closed.
"Nice presentation," Nicholas said.
"Fucking waste of time," Eric said.
---
Corvus passed the time with a sparring session with Nicholas, but it taught her nothing new. She was faster, he was stronger, and they both knew each other too well to capitalize on those advantages, especially in a training environment. But it did fill the hour with something to do other than stare at a clock, and Corvus was pleasantly surprised to find she was actually overdue by six minutes when she checked her watch. She grabbed her phone again and dialed the number of her contact.
"I'm here," the scrambled voice said.
"Do you have something?" Corvus asked.
"I'm going through Rebecca's email at CalSci right now," the voice said. "There's a lot of her work here, proposed designs - it looks like she has more than a few friends on the robotics team. It looks...very technical."
"Anything about Bledsoe?"
"Yes," the voice said. "Somebody used a disposable email account to send her pictures. They show a group of Special Forces men in a small village. The source claims that those were taken in Cambodia in May of 1970. One of them looks a lot like Bledsoe, and the source identifies him that way."
"And Jonas Bledsoe the technology millionaire doesn't have any black ops on his official resume," Corvus said, smiling. "She's down the rabbit hole."
"I wouldn't go quite that far," the voice said. "But given what she has found over a few days, she is bound to dig deeper. I don't know how long she has until this comes to Berkut's attention."
"Okay, so, what's the plan? Do you think I should talk to her?" Corvus asked.
"Yes," the voice said. "You should."
"What should I tell her? Do you want me to bring her in?"
"I think she'd appreciate some truth, but you need to find out exactly what she knows first," the voice said. "If you take her with you, you will definitely set off alarm bells. I don't think that's wise at the moment."
"I see," Corvus said. "Thank you. For everything."
"No problem, Sara. Talk to you soon."
"Yes. Bye."
Corvus ended the call, flipped the phone shut and let her thoughts run wild for a moment. There was always the chance that this was an elaborate trap of some sort - she wouldn't put that past Berkut in general and Bledsoe in particular, and this seemed just a little too neat to her. Exposed as she was, trying to make contact with Becca was a big risk. On the other hand, if all of this was true - then this could be just the thing to change the game in her favor and get her payback.
Sara Corvus grinned.
Story Commentary: Timing and Setting
"Rebuilt" is set in the second half of 2008. So far, we've moved about a week away from that. But obviously, in the real world, it's now 2010. (Now being the time of posting, if you are a reader from the future and browsing the hallowed Interweb archives from your jetpack or something.) So, that poses the question of how I'm going to handle this. And my answer is that as much as possible, I'm going to try to keep the timeline consistent. Yes, that means that when I mention absolute dates, you'll run into 2008 as the year. It also means that I will write this story with this kind of setting in mind. So, as you read about Jaime's horrible first week on the job, Barack Obama is still campaigning and Eric Cartman has yet to sing a strangely popular cover version of "Poker Face". In fact, only a handful of people have heard "Poker Face". You may consider such a world alien and frightening, but such are the demands of consistency.
Why stick to this? Mostly because several characters are tied to fixed points in time, and this kind of thing never works well with a sliding "present day" - just look at The Simpsons or, say, the Marvel Universe, and tell me that their flexible chronologies there are not, in fact, gigantic messes. (Entertaining, sure, but gigantic.) So I'll be avoiding that. And I do hope that it doesn't take me ten years to advance the story past the first few months of Jaime's new life as an augment, so hopefully the cognitive dissonance will be minimal.
So, now that I've made sure that you will never unsee any timing flaw I manage to slip into my story...enjoy the show!