Chapter 35

Three times that day, Frankie overheard something of enough interest to mark on the printouts. By the end of the third day, she started treating it like a soap opera. She even learned the names of some of her favorites. Burke thrived on pushing his luck with the rules, Anai always complained about the cafeteria food, Romero and Jules were having a private affair but were publicly dating other people, York was a stickler for the rules and regulations and had it out for Burke. By Friday, she had noted thirty-two distinct voices, had names for twenty-five of them, and had worked out the schedule for a dozen.

She was starting to enjoy the job and to make things even better, Rory was spending a lot of time away and coming to their suite late at night after she had already gone to bed. She wasn't even bothered when he announced that he would be gone all weekend.

Taking advantage of her free time, she sought out friendly faces in the cafeteria Saturday.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked Dean and his companions.

"Frankie!" Bill jumped up. "Good to see you. Here, take my seat." Without waiting for her to reply, he grabbed a chair from another table and pulled it over.

Sitting in the vacated seat, she smiled that the three men, "how are you guys doing?"

"Not too bad," Dean told her. "Been out on a couple of small ops. Keeping busy, you know."

"Small ops?" she asked. "Based on the intel we're getting from SHIELD?"

"You know we're not allowed to talk about it outside of the team, Frankie," Dean reminded her.

"Yeah, I forgot," she sighed. "I miss working with you."

"Same here," he told her, then grinned. "Bill doesn't look nearly as good in a dress as you do."

"Hey! I told you I wasn't shaving my legs for you!" Bill laughed back.

When the laughter and joking about Bill in a dress died down, Josh asked, "so what do they have you doing?"

"Besides playing hide the sausage with the commander," Bill added wiggling his eyebrows.

Frankie threw an ice cube at him that bounced off his forehead, "your just jealous."

"Yeah, I did see him checking out the commander's ass last week," Josh threw in.

Again, they laughed and joked at Bill's expense, which he took in good humor. Then Frankie told them about her job listening to the audio feed from the SHIELD servers.

"Wow," Josh whistled, "that sounds nose bleedingly boring."

"That's what I thought," Frankie agreed, "but it really isn't that bad. It's like listening to a soap opera."

"Oh, God," Bill clutched his chest, "I would die."

Josh swatted him on the shoulder, "don't. She's probably responsible for the missions we've been out on."

"Josh," Dean said in with a warning tone.

"I know, I know," Josh told him hurriedly. "I'm not saying anything else."

"Well, I am," Bill put in. "I think it's great that we are getting shit from it, but I'm about tired of these 'trial'," he made air quotes with his fingers, "ops. We need to stop dicking around and go for SHIELDS throat."

"Shush," Josh told him in a dramatic whisper. "Don't say shit like that too loud. Remember what happened to Jenkins?"

Frankie remembered Jenkins, "what happened to Jenkins?"

"He was griping a lot about some of the command decisions, if you know what I mean, and one day, poof! He disappeared!" Josh told her.

Dean shook his head, "don't listen to these idiots. He didn't disappear. He was transferred."

"Overnight? Without his team leader knowing?" Bill asked skeptically. "That's what they want you to believe."

"Then there was Tanisha," Josh leaned forward, keeping his voice low, "she walked in on something she shouldn't have and suddenly she was gone too."

"Guys, you are worse than two old gossips," Dean told them sternly. "Give it a rest."

When Bill looked like he was going to protest, Dean said firmly, "let it go. Now."

The two men gave up and the conversation turned to lighter topics, but Frankie didn't forget about what they had said.


Monday morning, when she walked into the office, she found Glenda inside talking to Martin. Since she had been back at the facility, she had carefully avoided the woman. Luckily Glenda hadn't sought her out either.

"I'm sorry," she said as she started to back out of the room, "I'll come back later."

"No," Glenda smiled, "come on in."

Frankie hesitated before stepping into the room and shutting the door.

"I was just telling Martin what a great job you were doing," Glenda nodded at him. "That equipment transfer you caught on Thursday paid off. We got our hands on some advanced technology. Our researchers are busy working on it right now."

"Good to hear," Frankie said cautiously.

"And I wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you."

"What?" Was that a veiled threat?

"I still need to debrief you on your time at the SHIELD headquarters. I have just been so busy lately; I haven't been able to make any time for you."

"Well, you know where to find me and I'm not going anywhere," Frankie told her with just a hint of sarcasm.

"That's true," Glenda's eyes narrowed at her tone. "I'm going to make some time this week. Who knows what interesting tidbits you've got stored away in that brain?"

"Oh, I bet you could take a good guess," Frankie shot back at her.

Even Martin could feel the tension between the two women as he glanced back and forth between them and scooted his chair back until it couldn't go any further. Frankie was sure he would have bolted from the room if the door had been open and they hadn't been between him and it.

"Hum," Glenda hummed, "we'll see, won't we." Then the smile came back to her face, "but until then, I'll let you get back to your important work here."

Frankie moved out of the way, allowing Glenda to get to the door without coming into contact with her.

With her hand on the doorknob, Glenda turned back to Frankie, "by the way, how's the shoulder?" Without waiting for Frankie to answer, she opened the door and left, leaving it open behind her.

Matin turned frightened eyes to Frankie.

"Don't worry, Martin," she told him. "She only wants me dead. I think you're safe."


Tuesday afternoon, Frankie frowned down at her note pad.

"This can't be right," she muttered.

"What's that?" Martin asked over his shoulder.

Frankie took her headphones off, turning to him. "Between Tuesday and Friday last week, I documented 33 distinct voiced on these channels."

Martin looked at her in amazement, "you could pick out 32 different voices?"

"Yeah," she shrugged. "I'm pretty good at things like that, I guess. But anyway, between yesterday and today, I haven't heard any new voices."

"And?"

"Well, from what I could see, there were over 100 people at that compound. Then if you count the agents that are scattered all over the world, there should be a lot more people communicating than 33."

"Yeah, that would be odd, but there are more audio files coming in that what you are receiving. Those are just the ones originating and ending in the compound," Martin explained.

"Who is listening to the rest?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody?" She couldn't believe it. "Aren't you afraid you will miss something important?"

"There are analysts going through the transcripts every day, those included."

"How do I get access to those files?"

"You want to listen to them instead of the ones you currently have?" He frowned in confusion.

"No, I want to listen to them in addition to the ones I currently have."

"Why?"

"I feel like I'm missing something important here."

It was hard to explain, but something was bugging her about this, and she just couldn't quite put her finger on it. Not yet.

Martin shrugged, "I'll have to get permission, but I'll ask."

She flashed him a smile, "thanks!"


She went to the cafeteria to meet the guys for dinner, but Dean was the only one at the table.

"Where's Bill and Josh?" she asked, setting down her tray.

"Out on an op," he told her.

"Oh, then it's a good thing I'm here to keep you company," she smiled.

"And you're much better company than those two clowns," he smiled back. Then he lowered his voice, "I've got news."

She leaned forward, "what?"

"We're finally getting our big op."

"Really? That's great," she forced herself to smile. "Can you tell me what it is?"

"I really don't know any details, but from what I've been able to gather so far, we're going after the big guy."

"The Hulk?" she whispered.

"No," he shook his head and mouthed the name at her.

Her heart sank. They were going after Fury.


The next morning when she entered the office, her workstation held a new machine.

"What's this?"

"That's what you asked for," Martin answered.

He showed her how to operate the new device. Instead of switches that changed from channel to channel, this one had a keypad where you typed in the channel you wanted put through to the headphones. Altogether, there twelve different channels, or audio feeds to servers, to choose from. If she wanted, she could put in earbuds and have a different channel sent to each ear.

"Why don't I have 12 printers?"

"Because there isn't enough room in here and the others are already being recorded in another room."

"Oh."

Putting on her headphones, she went to work.


Frankie was slightly zoned out, slouched back in her chair listening to agents Chen and Walker make plans for the weekend.

CHEN: I've got to go. The boss is coming this way. See you at the Vibe tomorrow night.

WALKER: Okeydokey. Have fun.

She sat up in her chair, her full attention on the conversation.

"Hey, Martin?"

"What's up?"

"These files are recorded, aren't they? Not just printed?"

He snorted, "of course. Why?"

"How do I get to the recorded files?"

He stood and pulled a sleek laptop off the top of a filing cabinet, bringing it to her station. Fishing around behind the equipment, he pulled out a USB cable and connected it to the laptop. Opening it, he had her log into the system and directed her to the correct file. When Frankie clicked on it, multiple folders appeared, each with a date.

"Each of these contains all the files for a particular date," Martin said, leaning over her shoulder. "Is there a particular date you want to hear?"

"I'm not sure."

He looked at her in confusion.

"Something just caught my attention and I need to check it against other files, that's all," she explained.

"Okay," he said uncertainly. "Well, open one of the folders." When she did, he continued, "each of these subfolders are for a different audio feed."

"I see," she nodded her understanding. "Thanks. I got it from here."

After Martin returned to his station, Frankie typed in a search of all the folders to find a single word: okeydokey.


By the end of the day, she had a list of phrases and words written out on her notepad. Along with okeydokey, there was 'bite the bullet', 'piece of cake', 'dude', 'Bogart', and 'cool beans'. Dozens of printouts of snippets of conversations were sorted in sloppy piles covering every flat surface of the station.

"Martin?"

"Yeah?"

"What are these other machines for?" Frankie asked.

"I tried to explain that to you the first day, but you blew me off."

"I know, and I'm sorry," she told him. "But now I know more about what I'm doing, so I'm interested."

He came over to stand by her, "this is the U8903B Audio Analyzer. It can display and measure up to 8 analog signals. You can compare the signals, or you can change the signals and compare them to the new signal. You can connect it to this signal generator or to this VT-4 processor."

Martin not only showed her the basic operation of the equipment, he also handing her a handful of manuals that went into much deeper detail. When he left for the day, she stayed behind to play around with them, learning how to change a recording of her voice and how to measure the differences between different versions of it. She also learned how to look for patterns that occurred in people's speech. These patterns were something that she picked up on when listening to people, but to see it displayed as a signal was interesting.

What was bothering her was beginning to take a more solid shape in her head.


Frankie was at work the next morning before Martin arrived.

"Um, Frankie," he said looking around at the mess she had made, "what's going on?"

"I'm sorry," she spun around and grabbed up the papers she had scattered across his desk. "I got a little carried away."

When it became obvious that she wasn't going to tell him anything else, he tried again. "Are you going to let me in on what you're doing?"

"Absolutely," she told him, "but there are a couple more things I need to verify first. Can you give me a couple of hours?"

"Um, sure. Take your time."


"Gotcha!" Frankie announced loudly to the quiet office, making Martin jump.

"Jeez, scare me to death why don't you?" he complained.

"Sorry," she said, but she really wasn't. She was brimming with excitement. And worry. "Are you ready to hear this?" she asked.

"Is it bad?"

"Oh, yeah, you bet your sweet ass it is."

He put his equipment on standby and turned to face her, "I'm all ears."

They both cringed at his joke.

"So," she began, "remember when I told you I had documented only 32 distinct voices on the four channels I was listening to?"

"Yeah, but that was because you didn't have all the audio feeds, right?"

"Right," she agreed, "and wrong."

"I don't understand."

"I'm sure you will catch on quick, after all this is your groove, right?"

He nodded and indicated for her to continue.

"Once I had all the feeds, I was able to add more to the list. Right now, I have 96 different voices. I know there may be a few more that I missed because I was switching between more channels, but let's go with that for now, okay?"

Martin nodded again.

"That number still seems a little low, but not so low as to be alarming, so let's put that thought aside for now. Instead, let's focus on the 96 voices I have identified. The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that I interacted with at least a dozen agents while I was at the SHIELD compound, as well a Director Fury, Clint Barton, and Bucky Barnes." She paused a moment for effect, "none of those voices are on these audio feeds. None."

Martin frowned, "are you sure?"

"I know for certain that none of the people that I spoke with are one these files."

"So, what do you think that means?"

"By itself, not a lot. There could be any number of reasons for it. Again," she took a sheet of paper and slapped it down on the desk, "let's put that aside with the 96 voices."

Marvin's brow furrowed, "I'm not liking where you're going with this. You better have more than that."

"I knew you would catch on quickly!" Frankie held her hand up for a high-five, "come on, don't leave me hanging."

"What else do you have?"

She dropped her hand. "Well, the more I listened, the more I started picking up on little things, like repeating phrases or words. And I started having trouble distinguishing between some of the voices."

"That's not unusual," he pointed out, "there were a lot of voices."

"No," she shook her head, "I never forget a face or a voice. Ever."

He looked doubtful, but nodded, "if you say so. So, what was it if you weren't confusing them?"

"The voices had similar cadences and inflections. The way the sentences were structured. They used similar phrases. Even though the voices sounded different, they were remarkably similar. Like how siblings can sometimes sound like each other or like one of their parents."

Martin wasn't convinced, "there are a lot of things that can account for that. Plus, it's almost completely subjective."

She nodded, "I know. That's where your fancy machines here came in." She pulled a piece of paper off the top of the pile and handed it to him.

The expression on his face changed from curiosity to alarm. He looked up at her, his eyes wide, "how many?"

Frankie grabbed a small stack of papers and passed them over, "that's what I was doing for the last three hours. That's nearly thirty right there."

The papers she had handed him showed groups of voices compared to each other as they came from the SHIELD servers and after she had made slight adjustments to the amplitude, pitch, and tone of each. Instead of thirty distinct voices, there were only five that had been changed just enough to make them sound different than the original.

"Do you know what this means?" Martin asked as he flipped through the pages.

"It means SHIELD knows about the device and they're feeding us bogus intel."

It also meant her friends were walking into a trap.