Valerie ran down the length of the gym, vaulting effortlessly, but over-rotated and failed to stick the landing.
Leonard barely noticed. His mind was far from here. It was on the work he had done earlier that day, at the university. He'd been taking care of some last-minute details in his plans that day. Everything was right on schedule, he thought. Of course, it was less a schedule and more an agenda—each step on the way required the completion of some other. It seemed unbelievable, but he was fairly certain everything was ready. And it had been very good timing that it had. He'd been biding his time over the last couple of years, and very soon, he could make his move. He could get Allison's disc. There were a few opportunities upcoming, and he could choose any one of them.
"Leonard," said Valerie.
He blinked away his distraction and looked at her. She didn't call him by his name all the time—only when he wasn't paying attention and she couldn't get his attention otherwise. It had started long ago, when he'd first been grieving, and he had never done much to discourage it. "Yes?" he said.
She settled in next to him as many of the other parents and students rose and started milling about. "Mahala wants to know if I can stay the night."
"Not tonight," he said. "It's a school night, Valerie."
"You've let me before," she said. "Come on."
"Those were special circumstances," he said. "Let's go now. You can stay on the weekend."
And so they headed home. Valerie talked a bit about how she had done at practice that night, which she often did, but he was hard-pressed to pay attention and she soon stopped talking. When they arrived at the apartment, he told Caitlin to order dinner and went to the office to shut himself in there. There were just a few more details he had to coordinate here at home and it would be easy to put Caitlin off if he needed to by telling her he was journaling—a little white lie he had come up with as a cover-up for the extra work he did without her. A man had to have his private life, after all.
"Dinner's here," Caitlin reported after a while, poking her head into the office after a quick rap on the door.
Valerie was sitting at the table with her bowl of curry. "Hey," she said when he sat down across from her. "Glad you could join us."
"I wasn't called until now," he said. "Glad to see you didn't let missing me get in the way of your appetite."
She poked her fork in his direction. "Hey, I didn't know when you'd be getting back from Eastern Europe."
He smiled at her wryly. "I…don't think you set that one up the way you wanted to," he said.
"Sure I did. You say, 'I wasn't in Eastern Europe,' and I say, 'I thought you were Hungary,' and you say 'I'm not Hungary,' and I ask for your food."
He was laughing. "You're a Turkey," he said. "How do you like that one?"
"Too easy," she said dismissively. "Even Caitlin would tell you that."
"Val," he said, clucking his tongue.
Caitlin set his bowl in front of him, then sat on the third side of the table with hers. "It was too easy," she said.
"Ha," Valerie said. "Told ya."
He laughed again. "All right, fine then. If you're going to get Caitlin involved I guess I know I'm outnumbered."
Valerie was grinning. "I didn't get Caitlin involved. She came from Kingston."
He raised his eyebrow, puzzled at that one. "Jamaica?"
"No, I told you, she did it on her own." Valerie laughed. "I can't believe you didn't catch that one."
He chuckled ruefully. "I thought of it when I was saying it. Just a nanosecond too late."
"A likely story," Caitlin said, poking her fork into her food.
"It's the story I'm telling," Leonard said.
Valerie smiled, apparently pleased with herself. "I'd go to Alaska next but, Juneau."
"That's enough," Caitlin said.
Valerie frowned at her, then looked at her father.
"Eat your food, Val," Leonard said.
"Oh whatever," she muttered.
They lapsed into silence as they ate, not picking up any avenue of conversation after that rather abrupt end. In times past Leonard might have done his best to smooth things over between the others, but this just gave him an excuse to get back into his own head. He had a few possibilities of when he could carry his plans out, but really, there was no reason to put it off. Tomorrow was the first best opportunity. Yes, he thought. It was time.
"Leonard," Caitlin said rather insistently.
He looked at her.
"That was not a yes-or-no question," she said.
He became dimly aware that she had been talking, and that he'd been grunting out little 'mm-hmm' answers whenever she paused. He'd been doing it unconsciously, wrapped up in his own thoughts.
"I asked what you want to do about the new tables we need to draw for the presentation," she said.
"I don't know. I don't want to think about it right now," he said. He wanted to think about the timetable, about what time he should arrive at the university the next day. Too early and it would look unusual. Too late, and—
Caitlin frowned. "You just said we should talk it out now," she said.
"I wasn't paying attention," he grumbled. "We'll think about it later."
"We only have two weeks before we're presenting," she said. "I want to sit down and—"
"Not now," he said.
"When, then?" she said. "You know we have plans in the evenings for the next few—"
"I said not now, Caitlin," he said.
"I need something more concrete than that," Caitlin said.
He felt a twinge of annoyance. Okay, he'd throw her a bone. "Saturday," he said. "We'll sit down and spend a chunk of time on it."
"You said we'd go shopping Saturday," Valerie complained.
"We're not going to spend the whole day shopping, Valerie," he said impatiently. Damn it, it…it wasn't their fault, but he just wanted to concentrate on this. He had less than twenty-four hours if he went through with it and since he'd just made the decision to go through with it that meant he had a lot to sort out in his head. He stood and pushed his half-finished container of curry back. "Valerie, clear the table."
"But I'm not done eating," she complained.
"Don't talk back," he snapped. He turned to go back to the office. "I'm going to be busy. Don't bother me."
He left the room and went back into the office. He ran his hands over his hair. He hadn't meant to have an outburst but the pressure of this was getting to him. It wasn't true that he was on time. He'd been trying to convince himself of that earlier but no, no. He'd waited so long, letting his affection for Caitlin get in the way, and now he'd squeezed himself. After two years of working on their paper they were going to be presenting at the ONI conference, and they were expecting to receive invitations to interview not long after. So he could be just a few months away from a job change, a job he was determined to get, and here he'd continued to put this off.
This wasn't just his first chance to get Allison's brain scan. This was his last chance to get Allison's brain scan. This had to work or it would all be a waste.
Now he felt restless, but what could he do? He'd waited out the last three years and now it came down to the last twelve or so hours. And all he could do was wait and let the cogs he'd already put into place turn.
Caitlin came to join him in the office later on, sitting down at her desk to work on something, and he stayed in his own office chair and did his best to look like he was working as well. He was listless, though, and when it finally came time for bed he slept fitfully. He kept waking up, looking at the time. It was dark. So dark.
Eventually he pushed himself back, propping his head up on the pillow. Caitlin was still asleep beside him, as she should be. It was an hour before they usually got up. At first he considered remaining here, but he didn't want to fall back asleep. So he pulled the blanket back and arose, smoothing the covers back down and quietly making his way to the bathroom.
The first year had been the worst. That's what he told his reflection as he stared into it, into his own eyes. Remember that first year? How impossible it seemed to live without her, how difficult it seemed to be just to draw breath? Left without his greatest love, his very reason for living?
Yes, he remembered.
He grabbed his razor, barely paying attention as he shaved. From the moment he'd realized he could come this close to regaining something of Allison, he'd fought tooth and nail for it. The presence of Caitlin in his life had changed a lot of things, but it didn't change this one. He still grieved; he would never not grieve. Sometimes it felt like it was completely soaked into his bones. He was in love with another woman now, which in a measure meant life had moved on, but sometimes it felt like a betrayal, too.
He had finished shaving by rote; once he realized he was done he rinsed. He felt his heart in his throat; his loyalty to Allison struggled against his devotion to Caitlin. But they weren't mutually exclusive, they weren't. If they had been, Caitlin would have been out of his life a long time ago. He couldn't be of two minds about this. He needed to get things together here. After all, he had a goal for the day and being distracted—feeling guilty—wasn't going to help.
He lowered the angle of his brow—now he was glaring at himself in the mirror, daring himself to wimp out on this. God, he just…fucking needed to stop letting himself lose sight of what he had planned here.
But Caitlin was just on the other side of the apartment, lying in his bed. And as he continued to prepare to leave the apartment, brushing his hair and his teeth, the thought kept returning: He still had the chance to turn back. He could slip back into bed with Caitlin, and she would roll over and caress him, and he would kiss her and tell her he would never leave. He could completely give himself over to this new life with her.
He set his toothbrush down and scrubbed his hands against the back of his neck. He had waited so long, manipulated so many details, long years of steering everything toward this one goal. How could he give it up now? Besides, he simply could not stand the idea of the contents of her mind sitting in an archive room on a disc, untouched and unutilized for years on end. If anything, she was his property; certainly she did not belong to the government, the faceless entity that had sent her off to her death.
All right. The final decision had been made. He calmed himself, and moved out of the bathroom. He got dressed. Now all that was left was to wait for Caitlin to awaken and get ready. They would arrive at the usual time. He had decided last night it would be too strange to tell her he wanted to go in early—she would want to know why.
He remained withdrawn at breakfast and during the ride to the university. Caitlin, meek as she was, didn't question him. Everything he'd been planning for the last four years was about to come to fruition, he told himself. He was going to take it—he was going to take her, take that disc that was truly his in a way no one else could possibly appreciate.
Driving there? It took forever. His mind was filled with everything he had done to prepare. He had known it was important to cover his tracks and he couldn't rush the creation—or execution—of his plan.
There were several factors he had needed to account for. First was the fact that every one of the archive discs was inventoried in the computer system and any changes were documented by a keystroke logging system. Second, the disc casings all contained tracking chips. Third, there were military security guards and surveillance cameras working around the clock to ensure the proper care of the government property stored there.
With the use of Steve's credentials he had been able to, over time, insert crucial lines in the system code. He had created two object files—files that contained chunks of executable code that the system would insert on command. One of the objects could completely delete an archival record, and the other could replace the last several entries in the keylogging system.
Today, October 7th, was the anniversary of the attack on Harvest. As was the case the previous two years, he knew Steve was unlikely to come in today. It made Leonard feel kind of sick every time, using the distraction of a day of grief, but he did not dwell on his guilt for long. His own days of grief had been many…far too many.
When they arrived, Caitlin went to her office. Leonard was pleased to find that his office was dark and locked. That confirmed that the professor meant not to come in that day, and none of the graduate students had yet arrived to do any work in the lab.
Leonard puttered around inside the office until the security guard passed by on his rounds and then sat down at the professor's terminal in the office and logged in. He wasted no time, striking in the command to activate the object that could delete one archival record. He punched in the correct record number in the query line and turned off the screen.
This was the most sensitive part of his plan. He had to hope no one would step into his office to use the computer for any reason, or the whole thing would be over. He stepped up to the door of the lab with his briefcase, his heart beating wildly. He entered the storage room in the back of the lab and pulled out the archive. He had held a thousand of these archives in the past, but this one he touched reverently before setting it in the bottom of his briefcase. Then he pulled out another and set it on top.
Next he did what appeared to be what usually happened when someone pulled archive discs, sitting down at a terminal in the lab. The surveillance camera swept from one end of the room to the other on an automatic rotation. He set the treasured archive in his lap when the camera had swept away from him and sat at just the right angle to keep it from being seen there. He pushed the case of the other into the drive.
He had carefully timed this. Each time the camera swept away from him he worked on prying open the case in his lap to remove the tracking chip. He needed to break it before he left the lab; even though the record that pointed to the chip had been deleted, the chip would still set off the alarm if he left the lab with it. When the camera began to sweep back he worked on the files that were on the screen. Finally he had broken the chip out of the case and he snapped it back together. He had to work fast now; the guard was likely to come pacing back through at any moment. He put the archives back in his briefcase and carried it to the storage room again. He replaced the archive he had used as his ruse and walked back into the lab.
This was the last step in putting on a show for the cameras. As it swept toward him he fumbled with various papers inside as though he were looking for something. When it swept away he grasped the small tracking chip that he had concealed in his palm with a pair of nylon pliers that was hidden in the briefcase and crushed it. The splinters fell into the briefcase and he strode confidently back to his office.
He fussed with paperwork that was lying on the desk until the next round made by the guard was through. Then he turned the computer screen back on and executed the second object. This deleted both of the lines of code that pointed to the incriminating object files and then overwrote the last 2 lines of keylogging with mundane queries. He hard deleted the object files and logged out.
He was amazed how calm he felt. He had expected to be shaking from nerves by the time he got to this stage, but he was experiencing a rush of euphoria. All that he had to do was leave. He picked up his briefcase with unruffled calm and waved to the guard who was stationed outside the department door as he walked by.
Everything had gone according to plan. It had all gone off without a hitch, and as he drove back to the apartment he couldn't help but laugh, throwing his head back in complete elation.
When he arrived at home he went into his office and shut the door. He pulled out the disc case inside the archive file and with trembling hands looked at the label. On the label was written:
UNSC MCSF Holographic Scan
Archive #2525-13-09/96743C
CHURCH, Allison Elizabeth
End Part I
Music for this chapter:
Terra Aria - Giovanni Sollima
Leonard grieves for Allison's loss, keeping his attempt to resurrect her from Caitlin