Tick. Tock.
Where am I? What happened?
Tick. Tock. Tick.
What the hell? Where's Aramov?
Tock.
What is that goddamn noise?
The bright light blinding her eyes focused into a small room while the distinct ticking sound faded into the background noise of a clock on the wall. The room had been stripped of all furniture, so Teresa could not guess its original purpose. For now it was a prison. A room with white concrete walls that contained nothing but a clock, and a bound and dazed Teresa.
Well, if whatever Aramov does to me doesn't kill me, sheer boredom will. What does the bitch have in store for me anyway? Oh, shit, that's right, she's gonna use me to manufacture more of the virus!
"Damn." Teresa swore aloud as she attempted to stand up and assess her physical situation. A little wobbly, but that was more likely the result of whatever they were doping her up with to keep her asleep. She brought her bound hands up to her forehead. No fever. Well, that was a good sign. You could've cooked breakfast on Lian's head when she was sick.
So I'm either not infected yet or was infected recently. This is just great. I've so gotta get out of here.
Teresa looked down at her hands. Her wrists had been bound together with a generous amount of duct tape. She shrugged, sat back down on the floor, and tore at the tape experimentally with her teeth.
God, this stuff tastes like crap. Well, it's not like I have anything better to do. Brushing her hair behind her ear, Teresa started chewing in earnest.
A loud thump caused Gabe to look up from the intelligence reports he was scanning over. Picking a single private aircraft out of the hundreds of planes that flew over Europe was by no means easy, but he was getting close. He was able to narrow the number of planes that could've been Aramov's down to 263. Only 262 more to go, and they'd have something concrete to find a location.
Gabe realized that the noise had come from Lian banging her head up against the wall she was resting her back up against. "No luck?" he asked.
"Not yet," she replied with a sigh of frustration. Lian was trying to reconstruct the data that was in a wiped hard drive. "Whoever deleted this stuff, did a half-assed job, because the drive hasn't been completely reformatted. All the ones and zeroes are there, but it's getting them organized so that they make sense…"
"Why don't you take a break. You've been at it for hours. Let Dylan or someone do it."
"I would, but Dylan went home hours ago and I don't trust any of our other decrypt people with this. It's not your typical hack and it requires special training. Training that none of our younger people have."
"Then get Dylan's ass over here. Come on, Lian, you working on it as tired as you are can do as much damage as letting one of the kids downstairs work on it."
"I'm fine, Gabe. I've done harder stuff when I was a lot more tired than this."
"Lian…"
"Okay, okay," she caved, "Lemme try one last thing, then I'll go get some coffee."
"No, you'll try one last thing, then you'll go take a nap."
She glared at him, then conceded. He knew she was more tired than she was letting on. Turning back to her work, she entered some commands into her laptop, which was connected to one of the big decrypt computers downstairs. Lian set down the laptop while the computers processed her request and walked over to where Gabe was sitting.
"How's your end coming?" she asked.
"Slowly, but I'm making progress," he replied, trying to sound optimistic. "I hope I can find her in the USAF radar records, or we're pretty much SOL."
"I'm sure you'll find it. The Air Force is pretty thorough with its air traffic scans and you're pretty thorough with your record scans." She smiled at him, and Gabe felt that he could face the records for a few more hours.
Lian's computer beeped, and she went over to it. "Hey, I think I may have something."
"What is it?" he asked, joining her in front of the screen.
"It looks like a deleted email. It's pretty badly scrambled, and it looks like it was encrypted on top of that, so it's going to take some time to crack. But it's a file, and most of it's there," she looked up at him, "I guess this means I have to postpone my nap."
"Not a chance. Make a copy of it and send it to the guys downstairs. I know that they can handle this part."
"But…"
"That's an order, Lian. Nap, now."
Lian sent him a glare as her protest, but she knew that Gabe wasn't going to let her continue working. "Yes, sir," she replied sarcastically. "But you wake me up as soon as they get done, ya hear?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, matching her tone.
Lian went to the closet and pulled a blanket off the shelf, then returned to the couch and laid down.
"Um, Lian, what are you doing?"
"I'm taking a nap, smart one."
"I see that, but in here?"
"Well this is my office, isn't it?
"Oh, yeah. Sorry," he replied, and got up to leave.
"I didn't say you had to go."
"I don't want to bother you."
"You're not bothering me. I'll be out cold in about thirty seconds anyway."
"Okay, if you're sure."
"Positive. Now shut up, I'm trying to sleep," and then she was out. Gabe sat back down at the other end of the couch with his files, and set about once more eliminating planes from his list, trying not to think about how cute Lian was when she was asleep.
"I hope you all see now that I will not tolerate any more mistakes. Any questions?" Silence. "Good. Now, you," Mara ordered to a terrorist standing to her left, "dispose of those." She indicated the three dead bodies on the floor. "Wan, come with me." At that, Mara set off at a brisk pace towards the makeshift holding cells. It was time to check on Lipan.
The guards outside Lipan's cell tensed when she and Li neared. Good. She like her men to be sufficiently scared of her. Without ceremony, she unlocked the door and walked inside.
The duct tape around Lipan's small wrists had been nearly chewed off, and there were pieces of it still stuck to the American girl's mouth. She looked so silly Mara had to laugh. "Well, well, you've been a busy girl," Aramov taunted.
"Well if you didn't want me gnawing at your precious duct tape, you should've given me a deck of cards or something."
"Find our accommodations lacking, princess? I'm so sorry. I'll make sure all of your needs are attended to as soon as possible." Mara replied sarcastically.
"Good, cuz I've really got to pee."
"Don't worry, the doctors will be ready for you soon, and I'm sure they'll want a urine sample."
"Okay, I'll just cross my legs until then. Are you going to give me any fresh duct tape to chew through?"
Mara laughed again. "No, I think it will be far more amusing to see you in here bouncing off the walls when you have nothing else to do. Well, if there's nothing else, we must be going. Always good to chat with you, girl."
"Yeah, whatever," Lipan mumbled and went back to her duct tape.
When they were out of earshot of the guards, Li turned to her. "Shouldn't we restrain her, ma'am? She's a trained agent; what if she finds a way out?"
"Learning caution, are we Li? Don't worry, by tomorrow she'll be too weak to even think about escaping. And until then, those bricks outside the door will keep her from finding her way out."
Li nodded in assent. "If you will give me leave, I have some things that require my attention." Mara nodded, and Li left. The girl was always working; she never took any time to enjoy her work. Well, as long as she remained useful.
Lian woke with a start, realizing immediately that she had slept a lot longer than she should have. She looked at her watch. 0600. Morning?
"Gabe, why the hell didn't you wake me up?" she asked, but received no answer. "Gabe?"
She sat up and looked around. Her office was empty. Suppressing a groan, Lian got up and grabbed some clean clothes and locked her door to get dressed.
When she was finished, she left her office in search of her partner and coffee, in no particular order. Though Gabe will no doubt prefer to run into me after I get a hold of some caffeine, she thought.
Lucky for him, she found one of those cold chocolate coffee things first. The chocolate actually went a long way to cover up the otherwise vile flavor, so she was approaching a somewhat agreeable mood by the time she found Gabe in the basement with the decrypt people.
The Agency's decrypt center, more commonly called the Dungeon, was in it's usual state: dark and filled with people who did not see the sun anywhere near as often as they should. Gabe stood out as the only one with muscles and a tan. As she walked over to him, she considered whether she should kick his ass right now or wait until they were alone.
She opted for a compromise. When no one was looking, she came up beside him and hit him across the back of the head.
"Oww. What the hell was that for?" he asked.
"For not waking me up," she replied, glaring at him.
"I was going to, I promise." Gabe held his hands up in his traditional defensive gesture.
She held the glare for a few more seconds, then decided to torment him more later. "What've ya got?" she asked, leaning closer to him to read what was on the computer screen in front of him.
"This is what we've been able to get from the email so far. It's to Aramov from, well, just read it."
Aramov, we're ready for her here, but we're going to need a blood sample before we can actually sta#%@(%)$#__+king on the new strain. If you don't *(&&#$^r here in 48 hours, we *#$&(*#&%*&#(^#)*$(#)ine.
One more thing. If you hu*&(*&^%%^$%^%&*()(*^%$#()(*lp me God I will kill you.
-Dr. Elsa Wei$%#nger
"Weissinger? I wonder what Aramov has that would force Elsa to work for her again. They didn't part on the best of terms."
"Well, it's pretty clear that whatever it is, it's really important to her."
"Do we have Weissinger's dossier on file? There's something I want to look up."
"Yeah, I had it pulled, but the archives guy hasn't gotten back to me yet."
"How long does it take to pull a damn file?"
"Apparently a long time when you're the only one on duty. Flu hit that department hard."
"Are we sure we shouldn't be quarantining the archives guy?" she asked, half serious. Lian had no intentions of getting sick. Not now.
Her comment earned a laugh from her partner. "We'll hose him down, before we let him down here, how's that?" Now it was her turn to laugh, picturing some wet intern handing them a equally wet folder.
At that moment, Dylan came up to them. "Ms. Xing," he began timidly, maneuvering himself between Gabe and Lian, "I went through that hard drive with everything I know. I don't think we're going to get anymore out of it."
"Thank you, Dylan. What about the email?"
"Well, we're still working on it, but the data's pretty scrambled. I don't know how much more we're going to be able to sort out."
"That's okay. We have most of it. You and your team are doing a good job."
Dylan smiled. "Thank you, Ms. Xing," he excused himself and went back to work.
"I'm gonna go harass the archives guy," she told Gabe, "Will you let me know if anything comes up?"
"Hey, wait, I'll come with you," he called after her.
When he caught up and they were out of earshot he whispered. "He has a crush on you."
"Who?"
"Who do you think? Hacker boy."
"Dylan?"
"Yeah. Did you see him? He was totally ignoring me."
"Dylan's just not comfortable around people he doesn't know. You know that."
"So you know Dylan now?" he asked with a grin.
"What? Are you jealous?" she replied, matching his tone.
"What would you do if I said yes?"
Lian tried to glare at him for that, but she knew she didn't succeed because Gabe started laughing. She also knew by the look in his eyes that he wasn't entirely joking.
Forty-five. Forty-six. Forty-seven. Teresa collapsed in exhaustion. Had she really resorted to doing calisthenics? Teresa had always hated doing pushups, yet here she was, on her third set today.
I am not giving that bitch the pleasure of seeing me crack, she thought fiercely. She was trying to decide between sit ups and jumping jacks for her next activity when she heard a strange sound through the wall.
She thought at first that it was a figment of her imagination, but then the sound was repeated. It sounded suspiciously like a whimper, or a cry.
"Hello?" she asked, as loudly as she dared. The crying stopped.
"Is someone there?" a faint, high-pitched voice called back through the wall. A young girl, Teresa decided.
"Yeah. I'm Teresa. What's your name?"
"Eva," the girl answered. She had an accent, but Teresa couldn't place it.
"Are you okay, Eva? Have they hurt you?"
"No," Eva sobbed, "I want my mommy."
"Do you remember how long you've been here?"
"I don't know. A long time."
Teresa, being the oldest of three children, knew that "a long time" to a child could be three hours or three days or three weeks. "What's your mommy's name, Eva?" she asked, hoping that the child would calm down if she were talked to.
"Elsa." Elsa? Elsa. That name sounded familiar.
"Eva and Elsa. Those are pretty names. My mother's name is Natalie."
"Do you miss her, too?"
Teresa had to smile. "Yeah, I do. Where are you from?"
"Germany." So that explained the accent.
"Really? Germany is a really nice country. I'm from the United States. Why don't you tell me about your home, Eva, and I'll tell you about mine, okay?"
Eva agreed and started describing her home and her family. The girl, Teresa noticed, sounded considerably more relaxed, and she was no longer sobbing. Teresa, too, felt calmed by another voice.
"That's it!" Lian exclaimed after examining Weissinger's dossier for a few moments.
"What?" Gabe asked. Sometimes Lian operated on a completely different planet.
"What drove Weissinger to work with Aramov. What Aramov has that Elsa would be willing to kill her for. Eva Weissinger. Elsa has a daughter."
"What?" Gabe asked again, this time out of shock. How could they have missed that?
"Aramov must've grabbed the kid, and used her to force Weissinger into making another strain of the virus. We've gotta find her, too, Gabe."
"Yeah," was his detached reply. Why would anyone, even a psycho like Mara, use a little girl like that? "Alright, let's go work on those radar things some more. I've got the list narrowed down to about 100, and it'll get done faster if we work together."
"Not so fast. I'll do it alone. You're taking a nap, and don't you even think about arguing with me," Lian shot him a look that made it impossible for him to even come up with a reply. He only nodded, and followed her back upstairs. Damn, he must be tired if he wasn't going to bother arguing with Lian over sleep.
"Teresa Lipan, I've heard so much about you." Dr. Elsa Weissinger addressed the smaller woman as if she was an ordinary patient in an ordinary clinic, not like she was going to extract blood so she could make a poison that was perfectly engineered to kill her.
"I can't say I can place your face with a name, Dr…"
"Weissinger. Elsa Weissinger."
Lipan's eyes widened in recognition, and she leaned closer to Elsa and dropped her voice to a whisper. "Elsa? Are you Eva's Elsa?"
"Eva! You've seen her?" Elsa had to struggle to keep her voice down.
"Haven't seen her, but I've talked to her," Lipan whispered. "She's okay, but she misses you."
"Damn that Russian woman. I am going to kill her if that's the last thing I do…"
"Let's worry about revenge later," Lipan dropped her voice even further, "Do you wanna get outta here?"
"Of course… but Aramov… the guards… my daughter…"
"Leave the details to me; I'll come up with something. Just don't kill me yet, okay?"
Elsa could only nod slightly, because their quiet conversation was starting to attract the guard's attention. They would question her later, but they were idiots; she could make them believe whatever excuse she gave easily enough. At that moment she would've told them to fuck off for all she cared. Her baby girl was alright, and that woman Lipan was going to get her back. Elsa had to take a deep breath to keep her hands from shaking in excitement as she drew blood from Lipan's arm.