If Lucas said NO!

by Pascal in Quebec

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down. Arc-1 of the story.

13. Chapter 13

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

SeaQuest

Abstract

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.

This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.

This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.

Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.

PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

{ SQ } - { WARNINGS & NOTES } - { SQ }

All warnings at the beginning of Chapter 3 are repeated verbatim.

For this chapter, time stamps will have America's West & East coast hours.

WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?

Thirteenth CHAPTER; THE ROAD TO HELL IS A RAILWAY

Behold what comes to pass

(The US National Anthem – with choir)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 9:40am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 6:40am

Wolenbahn Factory

Stanford, California, USA

After much noise and belching of white, scalding steam, the armored railway convoy of 'The Briary' finalized its stopping protocols, wrapped around the Wolenbahn factory's parking lot like a monstrous God-Snake of legend. Colored a shining clean tone of brick red-brown with brass details and decorations, the massive machine bristled with guns, sponsons and covered portals that hid much malice. This wasn't just a motorized palace for a rich boy to play with; no, it was the rolling citadel of a Lord at war, defending his borders from incursions.

The great Crest of the Constable – Governor of the North-American Mid-Line Treaty painted in bold brass at regular intervals along the convoy reminded everybody who saw it of why this train system existed, in this day an age. Because the job had been botched, never finished, and now somebody would be finishing it with harsher methods, seeking permanent results.

Smirking nastily from where he stood, Lucas was aware that many thought he looked like an oversized grape with a small white spot where his face was. The stiffly cut suit's overall dark purple and black scheme was classic and clean, but in a very formal, retro way. It was also the very way that men of power, wealth and taste had dressed for nigh on two centuries now, an appropriate choice for his station in life, as well as his many jobs. The menials would just have to get used to being shown what real, true culture looked like from now on.

Turning to Henrietta Lange, and thus snubbing Shay Mosley like the back-alley slut she was, the teenager baited her brattily "Mine is so big it takes an entire airfield to park, and we have to circle around to fit inside the fences properly. What's yours like?"

Smiling happily at the pursed lips and menacing glare Lange sent his way in response to his quip, Lucas turned back to admire the train, and the three dozen men who were now opening the wide lateral doors for embarkation, or lifting up the side panels on the garage wagons to bring in the Benz and loads of materials from the factory's underground warehouses. Which meant that all the truck docking bay doors rolled up together, letting out several forklifts holding heavy thermoplastic crates filled with precious blue crystal parts. The ballet of small machines going back & forth to fill up the larger machine was impressive, giving the WAC's militiamen the time to show-off their training and efficiency. This display was necessary to impress on the minds of all the military or police planners that would see the film that these were not mere amateurs doing an 'epoch' reconstruction. This was not a film scene or a museum demonstration of how things were, back in the day. No; these were strong, agile, well trained soldiers who knew their jobs and carried them out proudly with good results.

By the looks on the intelligent people's faces in the crowd, the message was passing just fine.

Gesturing with his cane at a squad of militiamen come out of the convoy, Lucas indicated for the prisoners to be marched to the carceral wagon. The first to be seized was Cynthia Holt, who was now so completely mentally eroded by the reality she was living that she hung limply, silently, between the armored men that carried her bodily.

Another quad of men approached Parsons to grab him, causing the foul pervert to start screaming "Jesus! I serve Jesus the God our Christ! His will has no borders! He's God! I'm his ambassador! You can't arrest an ambassador of the Holy Realms of Jesus! This is an act of war, I tell you! Are ya'll willing to go to war over the lies of a child? Of a damned jew-boy? Jesus curses ya'll!" The priest's sole answer came in the form of a solid wooden club to the back of both knees to make him fall to the ground, followed by a tube-gag to silence him while still letting him breathe by the mouth.

As the third quad of soldiers approached Rand, the defunct DCFS agent glared at Lucas with a level of malevolence that his drab appearance and self-effacing personality had hid for years. He wisely stayed silent as the armed men drug him to his feet, roughly guiding him to the wagon by which they would enter the convoy. As he passed by the teenager, the older male glared at him, his impotent gaze reflected back at him by the colored surface of the meta-glasses without the younger male doing anything visible in reaction.

A full squad took over the two mobile fake-cops who were heavily shackled and gagged already, to keep them from fighting against their jailers or spewing verbal poison all the time. Neither was particularly intelligent nor disposed towards controlling their impulses correctly, so they were kept under lock all the time.

Another quad of soldiers took charge of the fat, bald, heavily scarred SFPD captain sitting in a medical wheelchair. The man wasn't anywhere near recovered from his ordeal so he needed respiratory and cardiac assistance from external machines to stay awake, plus three different pain management drugs perfused into his blood by mechanical pumps. The old fanatic wanted dearly to scowl, threaten and dominate Lucas, as was the creed of his faith. However, the close-in view of the child's many armaments gave him such a scare that he collapsed into himself, trying to become smaller inside the wheelchair as he was rolled by. What the four escort soldiers hadn't managed to do to scare the geriatric fool into submissiveness, Lucas had done by simply being himself, without effort.

Now that all six suspects were in their armored can for the trip, Lucas idly gazed over at the garage wagons where the Benz had been rolled up into its box and the forklifts were finishing their supply runs, to be completed inside another ten minutes or so.

A single soldier with officer badges on his uniform trenchcoat came to stand besides Lucas, saluting smartly before assuming parade rest as he waited for instructions. He was soon joined by a pair of regular militiamen who made no salutes but stood behind him, side by side. As his gaze traveled along the length of the train, Lucas spotted Raphael and Lenny walking through the cars, heading to the CG suite where their cabins were located. A discrete signal from Luxis told him it was time for the following phase of the plan to be enacted, since the convoy was almost loaded.

Turning rightwards to face the NCIS delegation, he smiled a completely fake smile, just for protocol, and declared loudly "Executive Assistant Director Mosley of the NCIS has agreed to join us on our trip up north. We'll be dropping her at Seattle before we pass by our holdings at Clough Island. Ours is a rather scenic itinerary, this time around, so we offered the good lady a lift up the coast. And since we have to talk about several adjustments to how our organizations will be interacting in the following twenty-two years, it seemed like a good idea to have a day to hash it out."

That was the cue the three soldiers were waiting for, as the two crewmen moved forward to take her luggage to drag it to her assigned cabin, while the officer made a sweeping gesture, inviting the tall, athletic black woman to follow him into the belly of the metallic beast. Giving everyone in sight a fake political smile, Mosley moved to follow the officer, with the two baggage haulers behind her. In the entire crowd, only Lucas knew that she was not at all voluntary for this trip. If she knew what he had in store for her, she would probably think that having a shoot-out against The Briary's howitzers and flame throwers was a better option. In reality, it would only set back the teenager's foul plans by a matter of minutes, if at all. He would simply find another vector for his weapon to ride, nothing more.

When Shay Mosley was out of view inside the armored wagons, Lucas made a great show of meeting and shaking hands with each team leader, agent or officer that was present. He even made certain to take off his gloves to press skin-to-skin, in a show of trust and equality with the lawmen, a gesture that was noted and appreciated by many who reciprocated in kind. Moving right behind his master was a lone militiaman who had a satchel full of glossy paper pamphlets that he was distributing to each law enforcement officer, just like one of his colleagues was passing amongst the reporters and civilians. The plan to make sure the population got the true view of the Treaty and its convoluted dispositions was in full swing, and not a moment too soon.

It was finally near 7:00am that Luxis signaled the supply run was done, the train having taken on all the blue crystal parts it could store, along with fresh provisions, potable water, and draining the septic tanks through the pipe system built into the parking lot's concrete foundation plate. The locomotives were topped-off on water and the fuel tenders got a look over so they could hold until Clough Island for a refill on bio-diesel recycled fuel. The train's master conductor sounded the brass bell to warn people of imminent departure in ten minutes, giving the soldiers the impetus to fold all loading ramps on the garages or cargo box-cars and inspect the convoy for troubles before they left.

Having finished his limited crowd bath to his satisfaction, Lucas pulled on his gloves as he trotted towards the nearest open door in the flank of the slumbering beast. The guard at the foot of the retractable stairs held out an arm to give the kid a hand if he needed it but the young man just patted the soldier's forearm kindly as he passed, marching himself up the stairs without trouble. Once inside the dimly lit interior, he oriented leftwards, toward the CG suite to reach his comms wagon so he could call to SSM and Buffalo with news that the convoy was en route. Then he'd get to deal with that corrupted bitch-whore Mosley once and for all.

{ SQ } - { Through the looking glass } - { SQ }

(NCIS – opening theme)

Eastern America; 10:00am

Western America; 07:00am

Sitting in the plushly cushioned sofa of MTAC's amphitheater, director Leon Vance sipped on the dregs of the lukewarm coffee in his ceramic mug while watching the main screen. He was seated with Gibbs, McGee and Bishop as they watched ZNN, the US Military owned planet-wide news network, and one of the best sources of information on North-America or NATO next to CNN, Canada's CBC or Mexico's Azteca-7 channels. The extra wide plasma screen was showing the scene outside of the Wolenbahn factory in Stanford, the first publicly seen images and films of the ever illusive Briary convoy.

Leon wished he was brave enough to filch Gibbs' coffee from his hands, cuz his own wan'nt enough anymore to help steady his hands. Making an effort to grip the armrest on the left side of the chair, he drained the last of his mug, setting it into the cup-holder at the end of the right armrest which he then gripped as well. Trying to keep his face schooled into something that didn't show the stress, anxiety and raw fear he was feeling was taxing his reserves already. Damn, but he was getting too old for this job!

"McGee! Why didn't we see that damned thing moving around the continent?" Gibbs growled out, anger and stress visible over every inch of him. "How the Hells did they move that thing without a single living eye ever seeing them, or blabbing about them on social media? Or bloody HAM radios?"

Shaking his head despondently, Timothy McGee replied "Boss, even Homeland Security haven't gotten any images or film of that train, and they've been following that kid for longer than we did."

Vance asked tartly "And how is that possible, in this day, to avoid being filmed? Ever since the age of the Polaroid camera getting away unfilmed has been practically impossible, but the advent of phones with cameras built-in pretty much rang the death knell of secrecy, even for Agencies and spies."

Elleanor Bishop replied cautiously "I have asked my former colleagues at the NSA for answers to just that, since we arrested Admiral Noyce five days ago. The conventional wisdom inside the Agency is that Lucas Wolenczak is using I/ECW methods deployed by professional teams out of several large land holdings. His people are basically hacking into all the communications feeds in the zones where the train rolls to find and black-out all inputs right at the sources. This would in fact imply that they are lodging viruses in the devices or flash drives of the citizens that film the convoy so that the files won't upload or play unless certain conditions are met, or get erased totally at the point of recording."

Tim McGee added "This is the sort of totalitarian media control that China tried to have Google develop for them, last year, when the project was killed by employees refusing to work on it. We know for a fact that many countries have asked, or ordered, private media companies like Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Linux to create origin-targeted censorship programs to police online activities without relying on human eyes. It would seem that Wolenczak, who is a proven cybernetic prodigy, has managed to produce the software before anybody else."

Gibbs asked for clarification "You mean that if I take my phone to snap a picture of that train, the machines onboard will scan my phone's signal then hack into my device, to tag or remove any images, films or data that they were set to hunt? Just like that? Are there any limits to this thing?"

McGee and Bishop exchanged a look then Ellie replied for them "We don't know. This is speculative, but a reasonable assumption based on already known facts from multiple sources. It wouldn't take much for doctor Wolenczak to have access to the base drafts Google's engineers made, just by saying it was to be used to secure The World Bank's client apps or transaction servers from hacker bots. And that's if he bothered being nice about it. He's good enough to have simply punched his way into Google's research lab servers without triggering any alarms. From that point..." The blond woman shrugged helplessly as she let her unfinished phrase hang toxically in the air between them.

Director Vance kept his eyes on the scene shown on screen as he asked McGee "Hasn't the SCOTUS just handed down a judgment, in 2018, that we can't 'PING' people's phones or devices without a court order anymore? This system can't be legal, can it?"

Making a face as if he'd bit a lemon, Timothy answered "The real in-house expert on those points of contention would be detective Deeks in Los Angeles. He's the only person I know about who's aware of the Treaty and its bounds." Seeing the older black male squint his eyes in anger as he gripped the armrests a bit tighter, Tim pressed on "But, I think I can affirm safely that the Constable – Governor would be regulated by wartime comms secrecy protocols, not peacetime civilian laws. As such, in the name of operational security & covertness, there may be an exemption from SCOTUS interference that was built into the Treaty in 1940. Especially if either side didn't want the Supreme Court of the other to butcher the powers & duties demanded by the agreement. This is bi-national, after all."

"Damn." was all Vance answered, as he watched the short purple & black shape of their biggest, most problematic situation climb aboard the brown serpent, disappearing from view altogether. If the kid was so well shielded from the usual regulations and court edicts that NCIS, FBI and even the NSA had to play by in their daily operations, then the playing field was never going to get even, let alone favor them at some point. Already his having diplomatic privilege AND extradition authority were a damned bitch to work with, but this on top...

Leroy turned to fully glare at his two underlings, ordering "You two had better get on your contacts' backs like they're mules an' ride 'm till they find something! We want answers or we'll be playing second fiddle to this runt for the next two decades! Unless you both plan to retire while the country's under martial law?"

Exchanging a look, the two field agents gestured at each other before agreeing on whom would answer that particular declaration. It averred that Ellie lost the glare fight.

"Look, Gibbs... I don't know how to say this, but here goes." Taking a deep breath, the young woman affirmed clearly "This is not your problem. And its not the problem of NCIS. We don't have to do anything about it, even if by some miracle we could. This is an international treaty at work. It's the jobs of POTUS, Congress, and SCOTUS, to arbitrate, negotiate or change the text and effects of it, but not ours at the levels we are. This is for the diplomats and legislators, not simple LEO's like us. And that's just for the US side of things. Nobody asked the Canadians what they think yet, and from what we've seen of the Trudeau administration in the last four years... Well, I don't know what he'll do. I do know they have a mandatory federal election coming up in October 2019, so anything goes on that side."

Glaring worse than ever, Gibbs asked in a deathly, harsh whisper "Are you two geniuses telling us to just shut up and go with the flow? Is that it?"

Timothy shrugged in sympathy with his boss as he quipped "We couldn't stop Trump and his bunch of cronies from getting elected, corrupting their offices, or eroding public trust in the institutions. We can't stop the gubernatorial elections, even when the candidates are morons or already corrupt. And even municipal politics are a damned minefield, as Dwayne Pride can tell you. Just look at what it took to get rid of mayor Hamilton, then his accomplice Eric Barstow in the State Attorney's office. We're low level, low pay field agents, not elected legislators or nominated ambassadors to the UN. As much as I want to help or do something, this just isn't our jobs, or in our capacity to affect it."

Leon Vance mumbled thoughtfully "Plus we'll have our hands full, right along JAG, as we dismantle admiral Noyce's criminally seditious Unseen Crusade. That'll be thousands of victimized sailors to interview, followed by hundreds of arrests, dozens of manhunts... No... McGee and Bishop are right; this isn't our bailiwick. Let's shove it upstairs and concentrate on what's ours, so we don't botch our own part of the system."

Getting up from his seat, the director of the Agency gave the example by walking out of MTAC, mug in hand for a refill before he set himself against the mound of paperwork that Will Noyce's fall from power had generated in just five days. And boy, was that pile aching to get bigger in a hurry, too!

Gibbs glared one last, long time at the screen where the massive red-brown train was beginning to move, exiting the triage yard from the side of the factory opposite the side it had arrived. His tired blue eyes followed one of the flak wagons, gazing thoughtfully at the twin turrets on top, their multiple cannons telling him exactly how bad the country's situation had become.

{ SQ } - { Through a mirror darkly } - { SQ }

(MacGyver – 1985 opening theme)

Eastern America; 10:25am

Western America; 07:25am

The DXS main overwatch hall was filled with the anxious clacking of keys and clicking of mice as the twenty console operators were doing small miracles of digital magic to get answers that the average tech didn't even realize existed. On the other hand, having awareness of a problem and its possible solutions didn't mean that anybody had any feasible way to reach and seize those answers. And doctor Wolenczak's private network was so damned hermetical that hacking the Pentagon's black ops registries was deemed an easier job to accomplish.

Things were not going well for Angus MacGyver, as he sat silently in his thinly padded swivel chair, hands folded on his lap, with only his green eyes moving around, following the quick, nervous gestures of Riley Davis and Wilt Bozer as they worked feverishly on their assigned consoles. Their newly installed supervisor, Mathilda Webber, was on the warpath. Any fidgeting on Mac's part would trigger her worse than the bombs he used to defuse for the US Army's EOD division. He was even forbidden from having any paper clips to occupy himself with, just in case he decided to 'fix' problems that either could wait, or "didn't exist outside his limited perception of reality".

The boss' words, not his.

Wilt Bozer had gotten saddled with what Matty had called the "easy job" of serving as DJ for the live stream film coming from their agent, on the rooftop just next to the Wolenbahn factory, so that the rest of the operators had something with a clear perspective to look at. Since Wilt was in fact very good at audiovisual montage & editing, and had some supplemental computer skills to the side, he didn't even need any help to get the feed on the conference screen, centered and fine-tuned perfectly. The rest was up to the agent handling the camera, and whatever I/ECW jammers The Briary was carrying, so he was now off the hook. Until later, when film analysis would be done.

Director Webber had delegated to Riley Davis the much worse job of finding out how the bloody big train full of weapons had gotten around the continent without ever being filmed & posted online by anybody in the last week. Now, Riley had explained to her employer pretty much the same thing that Tim McGee and Ellie Bishop had said to Leon Vance in the same time period. The difference being that she wasn't called 'Matty The Hun' just for fun & giggles. Her reply to Riley had made the younger woman pale in fear at what her future could become if she failed. The idea of spending the rest of the jail time she had been sentenced to in maximum security, some 22 more years, isolated in an Alaska monitoring station in charge of tracking US Coast Guard ships without any other humans around was weighing down on her mind heavily.

Then Matty had pounded in the nail by pointing out that Jack Dalton wasn't in the preliminary briefing, overwatch hall, or on the roof with the camera gear. When she explained what she had decided in relation to his employment with the agency, the three young adults in front of her had understood clearly that their days of treating this job like a kid's summer camp had ended. This was serious now, and nobody was laughing anymore, least of all the boss.

"Alright, people! Get me some info on that damned train!" Matty shouted as she walked around the hall, prowling behind the operators like a predator searching for food to pounce on. "Hasn't anybody found anything about this damned machine yet? It's bigger than the Phoenix Building, so somebody should have seen something at some point!"

Jill Morgan rose a shaking finger in the air, immediately getting her superior's attention. "Ma'am, I think I got some film from the train, but it's from Detroit city, dated four years ago. I got it from trawling a few Dark Web servers that almost nobody visits cuz the finds are pretty sketchy, and never guaranteed."

The woman hesitated for a few seconds in her explanation as the director marched towards her station to look at her screen. Now that the older woman was besides her monitor, Jill continued, not aware that she had garnered the attention of everybody in the hall.

"As you can see ma'am, this site specializes in obtaining and posting the contents of old hard drives that were recovered from ultra-cheap companies that get contracts to renovate the servers of much bigger organizations. Since these small-time techs don't make a lot on each project, they send the drives to recycling only after extracting the data to sell online, to exactly this kind of brokerage site. In this case, a warehouse in Detroit caught fire then was demolished because it was irreparable. Before it was brought down, the building was actually looted by illegal pickers. They took the cheap security system that had been in place for close to twenty years, and sold its recordings to the Dark Web brokers."

"What am I looking at?" director Webber asked as she frowned, "Besides the dirty alley, dumpsters and what looks like an open-air sewer?"

Jill tittered a mite before she caught herself in check, wilting under the powerful side-eyed glare Webber sent at her. "Well, ah, you see, here in the top quarter of the screen? This is actually an old canal where cargo barges from the Erie Canal used to pass to reach their clients. The warehouse was located on the side of the waterway opposite to Wise Apothecary's Detroit manufacturing plant. What you see up top – there! – is the edge of the WAC's private railway spur-line, and that thing passing slowly is the train. By the colors and wagon shapes, it actually is The Briary convoy, but without any of the military cars attached, just the motor groups, cargo boxes and garage wagons."

Snarling in anger, Mathilda yelled out "This is all you've got, any of you?" Her glare sent shivers of dread down the spines of every operator in the hall, affecting even Angus though it was clearly not his dedicated area of expertise. "It's been 55 fucking minutes since the bloody train arrived, and 25 damned life-sucking minutes since they left! They did their prisoner intake and dry supply load inside of a half hour, people! These are pros, not amateurs on a lark! And they were a COMPLETE army! Where the ever loving fucks did they find all the material to equip and move that many people?"

Slapping her hand down hard on the tabletop besides Jill's station, the angry director shouted "Work harder, people! All we have are four year old images that show less than half of the machinery that came in this morning! Davis! What the fuck, girl? Did Thornton pull you out of jail because you're useful, or because Blondie needed a baby-sitter to help him focus on reality instead of dismantling everything in sight when he's on stand-by?"

Riley and Angus felt their faces redden, humiliated as the director lambasted them so publicly and unjustly, for things completely outside of their ability to affect. However, neither wanted to risk what little remained of their careers in the Agency, not in light of what happened to Jack, and the fact that the aggressive woman would no doubt sack Bozer alongside of them to clean the house. Angus, Wilt and Riley all had good situations as scientists & techies in the public side of the Phoenix Foundation, but would clearly lose that if they no longer did spy missions. Mathilda Webber had been exceedingly clear about that; they had been hired for black ops in priority, R&D to fill the schedule's empty slots.

Right now though, the idea of quitting for jobs elsewhere was getting more appealing.

There was a sudden tone through the air as Matty's phone rang. She took it out of her suit pocket to unlock and look at the screen, wondering why that particular noise happened. The answer was perplexing, to say the least. The SMS she got was completely out of the left field, and not at all what she expected today.

"Alright! I have an emergency coming in for noon, so you'll all have to muddle along on your own capacities till I come back later around 15:00pm." Turning to MacGyver she griped lowly "You can go back to your toys in the mechanics lab. This cyber stuff isn't your expertise. I thought we'd see or hear something that would be needed to determine what your next mission is, but no such luck. The smarmy little brat is armor plated and surrounded by an army of heavily entrenched men. You can't fight against this. Against Italian mafia, Mexican cartels, German street gangs, Somali warlords, yes to all. But not against what is essentially the fully combined might of both the USA and Canada on a hot trigger with only one finger on the button." Making a vague, dismissive wave of her hand, she ordered sharply "Go back to puttering with your Meccano set upstairs. I'll call if you're needed in the field."

Trying desperately to grasp just how bad his employment situation had become almost overnight since December, Angus offered carefully: "We know the kid's going to Buffalo to heal his injuries. I could go install a listening post near that sector of town. Find a house or condo, set up shop, connect the cameras and we'd have a quick foot on the ground in spitting distance of him." It really did feel like a good idea to him as he was saying it.

Matty Webber however had a different take on things. Shaking her head in dismay, the woman asked out loud, specifically so that everyone in the hall would hear. "Tell me again, Blondie, how long did it take this little warmonger to identify you and Bozer? And how fast did he put Riley in the conversation, at the time? How fast would he recognize your face, or Bozer's? How fast will him, or his massive horde of employees at WAC Security, find and recognize foreign signals in their vicinity?"

Straightening to the full height of her short stature, the angry director ended with: "If The Briary's limited mobile equipments were enough to jam all foreign & hostile signals around it to stay hidden from all cameras & sensors in real time, imagine what their full-sized installations in Buffalo can do. Sending you, Davis or Bozer is a waste because you're so easy to spot, especially if Wolenczak installed face rec in the traffic cams anywhere around his terrain. But sending anybody else is as bad an idea because none of our gear or software can crack his I/ECW systems, either in defense or offense."

Swallowing slowly a bad taste at the back of his throat that felt like bile surging up, the young man tried to counter with his brand of sideways logic, which served him so many times in the past. "Okay, we work with that. He knows us, and his systems can find us. We work with that. We set up shop right in his face, across the street from his house and watch him in the open. That way, we get the info but don't waste any efforts or time on staying secret. At the worse, he stays away and silent. At best, we could maybe manage to convince him to start up a conversation, and obtain some soft influence on him that way."

Instead of rebuffing him straight off, Webber squinted her eyes at him, as if trying to divine the truth of his intentions. Making a short 'gimme' sign with her hand, the older woman encouraged him to detail further his idea.

Angus did not feel encouraged at all. In the contrary, he felt as if she was letting him braid the rope that he would hang from, after she used it to beat some common sense into his thick skull. Having been in the army & spy business for close to five years now, the young man knew the value of never letting the adversary see you afraid or hesitant, so he forged ahead. And yes, he was starting to perceive her as an enemy rather than an ally of any sorts. She obviously thought he'd been hired by Patricia Thornton for reasons other than field competency or his high-value scientific input. And that meant that if she didn't push him out, he'd have to leave soon anyways.

"My view of the situation is this. Lucas Wolenczak has become paranoid because of all the injuries and betrayals he suffered during his life to date, mostly from the hands of his family and those hired to care for his welfare. He's badly deficient in positive human relationships since almost everybody around him is either an employee or a client, and now bloody bureaucrats too. But he doesn't have a single person that he can just talk to, no strings attached. Here's where we come in; we're known, and he doesn't have any fear of us. He talked to me like I was the neighboring kid in the Uni's dorm house. He talked about Riley like he knew her from high school. He egged on that nurse that was trying to set up Bozer with her grand-niece. He doesn't see us three as threats, therefore, we could have an open door where all others would be received by a squad of armed militia."

Matty blinked slowly as she considered the agent sitting in front of her, not saying anything for several seconds. Whether that was because she needed time to think, wanted to see if anybody dared to dive into what wasn't their conversation to begin with, or was just flabbergasted by Mac's idiocy wasn't readily apparent. Then she put a hand over her face, shaking her head in disappointment.

Sarcastically, she asked "Angus, the honey-pot trick only works if the other person can possibly become interested. Not only is he not gay, he was almost raped not two weeks ago! By a guy almost your age! How do you think this could work at all?"

Practically choking on air, MacGyver replied angrily "Hey! I ain't no he-slut! I wasn't talking about offering myself to the guy like a damned toy! I said SPECIFICALLY that I could just be the person that he talks to for advice, or for friendship that nobody around wants to have with him because he's their boss, client, supplier or potential judge over a trial they're implicated in!" Now Angus was well and truly pissed at his employer. He might be feeling uncertain about his future at DXS, but he'd never simply whore himself out, not unless the life & health of a friend was at stake. And certainly never for simple information that could probably be had in other ways, if the woman had some damned patience.

Pursing her lips in annoyance, Webber replied tartly "In that case we might as well send Riley or Bozer for the job. You have R&D in progress that can actually bring in subsidies or profits if it pans out. Riley has pretty much been outclassed in a fatal way against this guy, so maybe we could send her in under pretense that she wants to learn from the person who bested her. And Wilt can act like a brother figure easily, without the detriment of depriving Phoenix of a senior researcher, or DXS of a field agent. But if neither of them is getting any closer than 'buddy-buddy' with the kid, then I still don't see what the profit of going through all this would be. As you so adroitly said, he's become paranoid from being abused and betrayed all his life, so I don't see him trusting some strangers just cuz he saw their faces in an intel brief or hacked signal, sometime in the last two years. Your idea just doesn't compute."

Looking at her blithely, Angus replied coldly "Well then, since I'm no use to the overwatch and my ideas for a field insertion are all crap-tastic, I'll just do as you ordered. I'll go piddle around with my Meccano set upstairs, until you think this yellow-topped mushroom's had enough shite to grow on that you can harvest it for a buck. Excuse me director, I hear my workbench corroding. Must be the acid I forgot to cold-store last night. I better get to it before it eats down through the floors."

Without further ado, MacGyver didn't even wait for an affirmative signal to leave the room, thoroughly disgusted with the way him and his two best friends had been treated, not to mention Jack too. As he walked up the stairs to the appropriate floor, the young man realized that his time in this job had run its course, just like it had in the army EOD. He was too much of a free radical and fuzzy thinker to be held long by chains of protocols, hierarchy, bureaucracy and pedantic little power-mongers like Thornton and Webber. The only thing keeping him here right now was the uncertainty of what would happen to Riley if he quit. The female hacker had been busted out of jail on Thornton's orders, not Webber, and the older woman was definitely not a fan of any of them. As for Wilt, he could go back to cooking in restaurants, or find another robotics R&D job like he was doing for Phoenix's public facade.

No, there wasn't much left in this building for Angus, and he knew it now.

Paradigm change

(Oh Canada - instrumental)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 10:15am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 7:15am

Multiple locations

Canada, Mexico & USA

In Ottawa, the cabinet of the Prime Minister was all aflutter with stress, anxiety and uncertainty as they were processing the images they had seen on TV. They had gotten an emergency call from the official Canadian commercial delegation based at the Stanford University Campus for the purpose of helping along all the shared research projects that the corporations from both countries had going on. The Prime Minister had been surprised because bureaucrats this low in the hierarchy never called directly at his office unless it involved the safety of the nation in a proven way.

For all their common despair, it actually did threaten the safety of Canada.

Not in the way that an enemy invasion or an explosion of street gang violence would be threatening, but the level of disturbance this would inflict on their political, social and legal systems would be just as bad as a full on attack by Russia.

The Constable – Governor of the North-American Mid-Line Treaty had been activated.

Justin Trudeau knew about the antiquated treaty because his father had seen to educating him about the secrets and forbidden details of the Second World War. He remembered reading through portions of the original text and work notes from the ambassadors of the day, when he was barely 14 years old himself. The intrinsic racism and religious fanaticism of the American government matched that of the Nazis in every point, except it was from an anglo-saxonic, protestant christian perspective. The Canadian delegation of the period had been just as bad, composed solely of white christian men, but with a few catholics mixed amongst the evangelicals, not that it made things any better.

A crusader king.

That was the point of the Treaty of 1940. The creation against all laws and customs of a throne upon which they would enshrine a christian inquisitor that would rule as anointed monarch over their large, unified armies of young, manly, white crusaders to burn out heathenism, disbelief and heresy. Key in the decisional process were the supposed 'privileged informations' contained inside the completely idiotic and useless piles of shite from the early 1900's that formed the basis of white supremacy creed.

* The utter quackery that was the Eugenics movement.

* The fictitious writings of the fraudulent russian mystic, Madam Blavatsky, who invented the entire mythology of Under-Earth, with its magical energy and winged humanoids, the Aryan People.

* The complete fabrication of lies & frauds called 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' that had poisoned humanity on all continents for over a century.

Trudeau closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead as he contemplated just how similar the governing elites of Canada, America, France and England had been with those in Germany, Austria and Poland. They had already been followers of white supremacy and exterminative evangelism before Hitler's movement had even gone public with their creed. It really was surprising just how similar the societies and governments of the period had been. And it was stupefying to realize that the planet hadn't turned into a Nazi kaiserate by a dumb accident rather than willful choice. If the Nazis had tried to talk with the other white-controlled nations instead of attacking blindly like wild beasts, they could actually have succeeded into convincing several 'race cousins' to join them under one flag, instead of having WW-II.

And the proof of that dark, hidden part of Canadian history was the Constable – Governor.

The number of immoralities, illegitimacies and illegalities committed in the writing of that blasted Treaty were almost paltry when compared to the anti-constitutional title-bearing posting it created. There we so precious few limits or constraints on that job, or the person holding it, that it was like dealing with an emperor, a pope, and an alien ambassador from outer space all inside one being. The way the descriptions of the title, posts, functions and tasks were written could only be interpreted one way by anybody with two working brain cells to rub together:

DONT FUCK WITH POWER PENULTIMATE AS ORDAINED BY JESUS OUR GOD

If you don't understand that, then nothing can be done to save you anymore. The entirety of the legal and political construction of the CG's post was as transparent and patently false as wrapping a ball of poisonous rat bait inside a lollipop foil and calling it good for your health. Nobody sane should believe that in this life or the next.

The second problem with the blasted Treaty of 1940 was that it couldn't really be disbanded without truly horrifying penalties being levied against both countries and the Wise Apothecary Co, regardless of which side started the procedure. It was essentially a guaranteed three-way suicide pact. Let the two countries be ruled for a century in the name of the White Jesus, lord god of the entire White Christian Americas, or be destroyed by the results of your own folly. The only way to survive the bloody pact was to let it expire peacefully at its end, in 2040. Anything else would cause so many political, legal, social and economical damages that both nations would implode, descending to anarchy for a hundred years or more.

Not to mention that all the obviously explicit racism and fanatical religious dogmatism could make the two sovereign states explode in civil wars with too many underlying reasons to be resolved quickly or humanely. Not when the side that's been pining for a race-cleansing war since 1900 would finally get its dream coming true.

Trudeau opened his eyes, glancing at the ministers around him, telling them "Get the World War II secluded archives located in the old bunker opened up. Have the military custodian on site to guide and explain things to the parliamentary pages and secretaries that will be running errands for us. We'll be needing a full team of researchers, archivists, and the Ministry of Defense's warfare archaeologists ASAP. I also want the PM Cabinet's reserved collections of the Parliamentary Library fully opened for the duration of the Treaty of 1940, or until we master the situation enough to no longer need them."

A series of nods and verbal assents came back to him, but he wasn't really paying attention. Instead, his focus was on The Briary, as it was shown moving through the southern sectors of Silicon Valley, so it could turn eastward around the Bay of San Francisco and back up northward to its preferred route along the border between Canada and the USA. No doubt the CG would want to stop by his ancestral holdings in Edmonds near Seattle, then Clough Island in Wisconsin, possibly Copper Harbor in Michigan but that one would be a long detour. He would probably hug Lake Superior to reach Sault-Sainte-Marie because that citadel was of primordial importance in the Mid-Line Treaty's organization, just like the one at Sarnia, where he would no doubt pass as well. After that, the train could pass through Michigan and Ohio or straight through southern Ontario to reach Buffalo city. That part of the voyage wasn't that important to know about. Well, in reality, the entire voyage was unimportant since he would always end at the same location, back at its main home-base, in Buffalo at Wise Manor.

And that was where he would need to make a stand.

For Canada, for America, for NATO, and for the rest of the world as well.

Everything that CSIS had in hand indicated that Lucas Wolenczak was not innately violent or perverted as his parents had been. He learned those comportment's from them. And Justin Trudeau knew that the information was fresh since he had asked the spy agency to watch over the child since he became the prime minister of Canada in 2015, because he remembered his father's warnings about the Heir of Wise being a possibility that needed to be prepared for, right until 2040. The spies had been able to have a pretty good overview of the child's entire life, over the last three and some years.

Under Trudeau's orders, they had never interfered against his parents nor in his favor, no matter what cruelties they witnessed. Justin was ashamed of that fact, but he had secretly hoped that the boy would simply run away from his family to have a safe, healthy life out of the public eye. Unlike 99% of runaways, he actually had the intelligence, skills and contacts to make such an endeavor work properly instead of dying in a back alley. In such a case, Canada's prime minister would have seen to it that he receive several long-term contracts with iron-clad duration guarantees and generous payments from the Canadian federal government, to compensate him silently for his loss of name, reputation and heritage.

Alas, none of it came to pass according to anticipations or schemes. The only way this could have been avoided was to have the innocent child assassinated by CSIS or a team of soldiers given a black-op to complete, as their last act in service before retirement. Justin Trudeau was many things, including a weakling, a coward, a waffler who changed opinion along public surveys because he wanted to get elected again, but he was not to this day a murderer of children. He dearly hoped he wouldn't have to become one to insure the peace and serenity of his home country, but was pragmatic enough to realize that such things may no longer be in his hands alone.

Looking forlornly at his secretary, he ordered "Get our ambassador to Washington DC and theirs here on a conference call. We need to know what Trump knows, and what he'll do about it. Thanks."

Glancing back absently at the Internex monitor that was still showing a live broadcast of the massive train convoy circulating in Southern California, he admitted softly "And so democracy dies, in rhythm to the march of rolling wagons and tanks, crushing civility beneath their armored hordes."

{ SQ } - { Why does he get a parade? } - { SQ }

(The Star-Spangled Banner – instrumental)

Eastern America; 10:15am

Western America; 07:15am

Ensconced in his private apartment of the White House in Washington DC, the president of the United-States of America was having what most would have no choice but to admit was a bloody childish tantrum. Pointing at the massive conference-sized Internex monitor suspended on the wall opposite the large sliding glass doors that led to the terrace outside, the old man was all aflutter with bile, jealousy, envy, and not a small amount of trepidation. That train was massive, armed like several battleships floating in formation, and the entire military decorum, pomp and formal pageantry of the event made him truly afraid he was being short-changed in the public image department by his own people.

The way things were going, this little kid who was barely 14 years old, he was told by the FBI, would probably think that Donald J. Trump was a weakling because he couldn't even get his own damned parade off the ground. Bloody Hell! The French, Brits, Germans, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and everybody in NATO except them and Canada had military parades. So did the Russians, Chinese, North Korea, and even those primitive heathens in Iran had them! If the blasted infidels could manage a parade in honor of their nation & leadership, why in bloody blue blazes couldn't they do it?

"We're the leaders of The Free World, as endowed by Jesus, the Lord Christ our God and Savior! So, we should be showing it openly, to all and sundry! Not hiding our strength in shame!"

Well, at least that was the "Party Line" that Trump was spouting off for the assembly of ceremonious ass-kissers and church-whores that filled the private salon in the residential wing. It was Saturday morning, damn it all! Couldn't this whole processional shebang have waited until Monday? You know, when the ordinaries and menials go back to their doldrum 9-to-5 lives? Week-ends were for golf, or poker, or anything a casino could offer, and Sunday was for mass in church, with the family of course, if he had to be seen out in public at all that day.

"But why?" the elderly, rotund blond male whined aloud babyishly to his 'advisers', mostly just to keep in character for them. "Why does this boy get a parade and I don't? Can't we do something, before the whole world starts to think it's him that runs the country? What will NATO or the UEO say? You tell me, when they see how weak we've become, what will they say about it?"

In reality, D. J. Trump didn't care a whit about the blasted train, militia or child himself, but appearances & public facades needed to be kept, if he wanted to have decent chances to make the electorate keep him in place another four years. The first salvos of the 2020 pre-campaign movements had been shot just as the New Year 2019 was ushered in by the populace. The bloody Democrats never gave any slack on the pressure they inflicted on the Republicans at large, and the Trumpists in particular. The fact that those idiotic white supremacists were crawling out of the woodworks faster than he was losing traditional conservatives was a pitiful compensation for what he had to endure in the media, but he only needed to tolerate that for another cycle; then, they could go hang as they deserved.

His own grand-parents had been immigrants, and so were two of the women he had married, making most of his children 'first-generation Americans' in the eyes of many. He was not stupid enough to ignore that fact, nor dishonorable enough, to just turn his back to their feelings on the subject. But it was - The Game - as it was played. It was all about numbers, statistics, and a little bit of structural randomness built into the electoral system due to the weather and geography of the voting offices. In order to get elected, he had to amass at least 25% of the registered voting list, because a bit less than 48,7% of the population bothered to vote. Beyond the raw percentage of the electorate, he also had to collect the infamous 'grand electors' who were nominated per state, then sent to Washington DC to carry out the actual presidential vote. Given just how many tiers, strata, branches and segments the entire bloody machinery had, it was no wonder that almost nobody ever managed to predict the outcome until the day the 'Electoral College' met.

That entire three-ring-circus setup meant that any candidate for the office of president had to be extremely discerning when choosing where, when and how to address the crowds. Any candidate or party had to be ruthless in their economy of time, movement & presence, when choosing exactly that specific block of persons who would actually make the effort to move and go vote. If the ethnic basin targeted was small but turned out more than 40% votes on the people who attended meetings, it was worth it, even with the clear, obvious drawbacks some groups carried.

The Democrats were good at getting large numbers of citizens to be present to scream slogans during village rallies, but their base was never motivated enough to actually mobilize on voting day to make a difference. Because a lot of the Donkeys were in fact illegal immigrants, permanent residents or just loosely affiliated sympathizers, they could never obtain vote tallies anywhere near the turnout they had for popular rallies. In order to vote, you had to be a full citizen over age 18; most of the energy in the Democrats came from the very old who couldn't move easily, or the very young who didn't have the right to vote yet. That created a false perception in the media and popular view that they were powerful, when in fact they had a clear lack of pulling power to bring real voters to the polls.

In comparison, Donald Trump had chosen to bank his odds on the Republicans because they were better organized at all levels, with built-in segments that reached into each locality of every state, town or village in the USA. Those politically active segments were mostly church-groups, large Faith industry investors, religious activists, the NRA, and the dozens of PAC's and SPAC's that promoted any candidate who favored business freedoms or less taxes. Because they are so well equipped, the Elephant Party had been the sure bet to reach the top seat. Trump had been right. Due to their well managed forces on the ground, all the Republicans had needed to secure the election in 2016 was his presence at key rallies in chosen spots, and the dice rolled as they were expected to.

He was repeating the same trick this time around for 2020 too. Focusing on garnering those who were disenchanted with the current politics and society, giving them a clear reason to get out in the streets and then the polling stations, to secure the changes he was promising them. But D. J. Trump was an expert at branding. He promised the volatile racist or cultist groups only is presence at meetings, bombastic speeches and verbal nod/winks at their talking points, asking only for one vote at the end. No money, no volunteering to go door-to-door, no phone calls, just a single vote in 2020. And it was that simplistic 'deal' that guaranteed that he would have a large turnout at the end of the process.

Did he have to swallow his bilious contempt for the white supremacists and their ilk?

Yes.

It made him see red in rage, but yes, he did bite his tongue and play nice with them.

These small groups & cliques, seemingly useless at anything but sparking riots and intimidating their neighbors, were actually highly motivated, well structured internally & between them, and highly efficient at getting their supporters to the voting stations. Also, because there was a high correlation between christian religiosity, socially conservative philosophy, NRA membership, masculinity and white nationalistic activism, it meant that every meeting Trump attended hit 5 core groups of his base at the same time, thusly giving a very high ratio of true voters from each participation.

It did make his blood boil to hear these low-born, superstitious morons deride emigrants and others, because he did remember his roots and his wives, but electoral necessity was such. Once he was elected for the second term, things would be VERY different.

In the meanwhile, he still had to act like a fat, retarded, spoiled child who attacked everything in sight, so that nobody expected anything from him but slapstick entertainment and vitriolic Tweets. Which didn't bother him because he was good at it; that sort of thing came naturally to him.

Speaking of which...

"Barr, dammit!" the President addressed the newly posted attorney general of the USA, "What the bloody Hell is going on in California? What is that thing, and why weren't we aware of it? And why wasn't its revelation an inaugural visit to me, here in DC?"

Running a hand through his thin, short, silver-gray hair, the large older male sighed despondently, shaking his head sideways as he replied weakly "I don't know. Nobody in my department was aware this was coming down the pipes. We got a message yesterday to be on point this morning for critical events happening around the country, but we all thought this was about that fool Will Noyce getting arrested for trying to pervert the Navy into a floating cult. Honestly, Mr President, this was never in our plans because it wasn't on the radars of anyone at Justice."

Turning his head to face the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff and Secretary of Defense, the irate William Barr asked tartly "Well, people? This kind of mess happens to be military through & through. Do any of you have anything to say about it?"

It was the Chairman of the J-C-S that coughed politely to attract attention, then saying "We were warned by Leon Vance, the director of NCIS, that this was in the process of becoming our new reality, when he called up the command chain to warn us about Noyce's arrest. As such, we have been digging through our archives to find the Mid-Line Treaty of 1940 to bring our troops up to speed on its tenets and application. We have secured the original documents in the Library of Congress, as well as the Pentagon Archives, the DoD Archives, and the Cheyenne Mountain Base."

Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who had been named recently, shook his head negatively, explaining aloud "I just took the post. I was never made aware of this situation, and the J-C-S memo reached my desk sometime two days ago, because we were closed for the Holidays. I haven't been able to speak with Vance, or anybody else, about this because of the messes going on with North Korea, Iran and China all at once. Plus, we received on January 2nd some credible threats against two of the climatic recycling towers near Washington DC that were absolute priority. As the case was, there were six thermite bombs found, and the five suspects, all of Iranian ancestry, are in custody as we speak."

Trump queried aggressively "Iranians? Were they sponsored by the Revolutionary Guard?"

The other man replied "All points to it as things stand. These people came to America three years ago on foreign worker visas, as representatives for a whole-seller of fruits from the Arabic countries. They had no signs they were trained in either military or spycraft. We think the Iranian RG wanted to make it seem as if these young men came over, self-radicalized, then enacted a dumb plan of their own making. If it worked, the US looked weak and inept, but if it failed nobody can link them to anybody."

The president swore lowly under his breath as he grabbed his cup of coffee from the low table, draining it in one go before slamming it back on the saucer. He sat silently, waiting for another of the 'advisers' to say something. It was Gina Haspel, the new head of the CIA that entered the fray.

"Mister President, the CIA was warned by its sister agency, the Department of External Services, that these events were in progress, and it was confirmed by Henrietta Lange who now leads the NCIS office in Los Angeles. Both Lange and director Webber are ex-agents of the CIA who have a strong leftover foundation of loyalty to us. Their informations are reliable and, as far as we can see, fully valid. Further, the young man involved, doctor Lucas Wolenczak, has already established formal contact with both of them. However, it was made clear to the CIA that he doesn't see us as the agency he will work with the most. That honor seems to be reserved for the DXS, with NCIS and the other military police agencies sharing the second tier of importance."

Frowning mightily, Trump asked "Oh? Is that so? And why, pray tell, is this child orienting himself that way? Does he have any training in military or intelligence affairs? How does a 14 year old, all genius that he is, make that determination?"

Ignoring the toxic sarcasm from her employer, the mature woman answered "Apparently, the new Constable – Governor has asserted that his priority was sustaining the support & efforts for all the wars the USA was involved in, while doing his primary task of ferreting out and punishing traitors, along with those who help our publicly declared enemies. According to Madam Lange, he wants to focus on deterring criminals, especially inside the military and police services, or at least capturing and processing them. He has already ordered the 'extradition' of several suspects who fit the definition of either sedition or treason to his citadel in Sault-Saint-Mary to be investigated, tried and processed. He supports public capital executions, and is rumored to be preparing the first such event for soon. Of importance is that former admiral William Noyce is already residing in the cells of SSM, awaiting the outcome of the investigation into his sectarian hijack of the US Navy's Pacific 7th Fleet."

Fiddling with his ubiquitous red tie, Trump ordered "We need more information on that boy, on the position he's gotten, and the damned Mid-Line Treaty of 1940." Pursing his lips in thought, the old man turned towards his chief of staff, telling him "Get the leaders of Canada and Mexico on the line for later today. Around 4:00pm would be good. In the meanwhile, I'm gonna be looking through that blasted piece of crap called 'The Book of Secrets' that my predecessors all wrote in, to see what the idiots did during the 1939-45 War. Maybe they'll have left something to enlighten us."

The meeting quickly dissolved since nobody could contribute more, and they all had much to do.

{ SQ } - { Americanos estan locos en la cabeza! } - { SQ }

(Mexicans, at the Cry of War – instrumental)

Eastern America; 10:15am

Western America; 07:15am

In the United Mexican States, known colloquially as 'Mexico' by the planet, the central federal government was astir with grumblings, imprecations and ill wishes towards everybody up north.

The president of the country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was presently trying to get his ministers in a row so he could have some answers before everything went off the rails. For real; he was trying to get the men to shut up and sit in their chairs in a line in front of his desk so he could see them all during the emergency conference that had been triggered by the events in Stanford. It took several minutes more for the venerable ministers to stop strutting around like chickens fluffing their feathers and sit in orderly fashion so the unscheduled meeting could proceed.

Aiming a blazing glare at his secretary of defense, Luis Crescencio Sandoval Gonzalez, the president asked tartly "Why is it that we never heard of this boy? And what the bloody Hells is that Treaty they keep referring to? Everybody in Canada and America seem to have gone daft over its activation but I don't see what is so bad about it all."

The Secretary of Security & Civilian Protection, Alfonso Durazo Montaño, answered firmly "Our men placed in the important cities of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have been concentrating on the drug cartels, especially human trafficking and gun running which are Trump's pressing issues. Honestly, nobody in our hum-int networks had any orders to look for relics from World War II becoming active again. The way the US federales and Canada's RCMP are reacting makes my analyst think that nobody in their countries was expecting it either. This is good for us as it means we all have the same readiness and stance versus this development. Whatever happens, we all face it at the same speed and on the same schedule."

President Obrador made a face as he questioned "Yes, I can see your point on that. But what does it MEAN in the larger picture?" Rubbing his forehead as he tried to order his words, the man aimed the query a different way. "What I want to know is what social, political and military position does this kid have? Is he like a governor, or a general, or some boosted anti-terrorism magistrate? What is he, what is the job he does that it requires an armored train, and why does he have soldiers with uniforms and badges different than the rest of US or Canadian military units? These are what we need to know."

Secretary of defense Gonzalez declared "We have several treaties in effect with the USA to manage the border crossings and mutual defense against communist aggression. We also have several new treaties for the War on Drugs since Trump was elected, that have data-sharing clauses to make certain that the armies and polices of both countries are aware of what the enemies are. It shouldn't be that long before the NSA, CIA and FBI have briefings ready for their allies. Similarly for Canada's CSIS, who will actually hide less of the small details from us, since they usually commit less underhanded shite around the planet than Trump's people do."

President Obrador scowled as he demanded "Are you telling me that the best tactic we have right now is to just be patient? That we should wait until the Americanos give us what little information they see fit to share because it doesn't make them look bad?"

Secretary Montaño shrugged helplessly, replying "We have no choice for now. Even most american agencies that should be involved in the process don't have the informations needed to actually participate correctly in what's happening. We have to give them time to open their archives, find out what they're dealing with, then share it with allied powers. Which, by the way, also means every member of the UEO treaty. Everybody is stuck on the hand-brakes until the people in DC figure out what they've let loose."

President Obrador snorted in contempt as he exclaimed "They let loose a monster! What we need to know is what kind of monster, and what its job is! The rest of their bureaucratic mess can be kept up north, we have our own to deal with already."

A very black deed, indeed

(Frederic Chopin – funeral march)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 11:01am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 8:01am

The Briary

Southern California, USA

Lucas Wolenczak walked slowly through the corridors of his armored convoy, nodding politely at soldiers, servers and administrators as he crossed paths with them. He took the time to visit his own office in the CG cabinet, then the Combat Information Center followed by the Executive Office wagon to make certain everything was working as planned, then continued his way forward to the first Field Clinic wagon of the train. He had to cross the Prison wagon to reach his goal, the two soldiers on escort duty getting nervous as he crossed the heavily fortified car, even though the teenager never stopped or paid attention to any of the cells, or their five prisoners.

Reaching the infirmary after nearly fifteen minutes of walking made the young man appreciate just how tedious life was for the permanent crews who worked these massive vehicles all year long. It wasn't the worse thing in the world, but it certainly was annoying to only have two directions to go when you're looking for a particular service or device. On the other hand, the old idea the builders had of creating clusters of three or four cars to group the tasks in near-proximity hubs was working well.

Entering the dedicated medical wagon, Lucas immediately saw his prey through the glass partitions, made clear for the current situation. Glass panels lined with electro-chromatic film were so practical, it was a wonder they weren't more commonly used. Glancing idly through the window at the sleeping form lying on the bed, sedated and bound by thick metal chains, Lucas had to finally admit to himself that he had indeed chosen to walk down the Path of Power Penultimate, with all the cruelties implied.

A young asian woman, short and wiry with rounded features, walked out of the pharmacy compartment, approaching the newly enacted warlord with great care. While she didn't think the young male himself would react badly, the two soldiers besides him could get startled and shoot before realizing she was not a threat.

"Constable – Governor Wolenczak; my respects." the female doctor spoke softly, used to hospitals and clinics rather than serving aboard a moving war-machine. "The patient you have..."

Lucas interrupted her, willingly rude about it. "She's not a patient, nor even a person. She's a traitor to America and humanity that will shortly be getting her dues." Looking the woman right in the eyes, he queried "You have in the pharmacy's cold storage an armored briefcase that was transferred from the research labs of Wise Manor, in Buffalo. Bring it here and set it into the locking clamps fixed to the surgical cot. Execute."

Ignoring the woman's movements, or emotions, Lucas used his magnetic key-card to unlock the surgery room, to go sit on the small round stool next to the inert form of Shay Lynn Mosley. He gave each steel chain and padlock a test giggle as he marched around the medical bed, letting his ears inform him as he kept his eyes on the diagnostic panel above the head of the cot so he could confirm that her vital signs were stable enough for the coming procedure. The genial adolescent took off his frock coat, cap and gloves so he could sit at ease while working on the black woman's final disposition.

The youth had barely sat on the stool that the door was opening to let in the female doctor, her arms loaded with a small but heavy aluminum briefcase similar to those used by couriers carrying valuables between banks or government offices. Except that this case had a digital screen and physical keypad on its top-side that showed the state of the battery, internal temperature and pressure of the safety vessels inside. The woman carefully placed her burden in the clamps located just beneath the display, making certain the case locked in place before withdrawing to stand near the door. The clamps held the case tightly against the train's movements but also served to connect power and network wires as well as keeping it from getting stolen.

Lucas took out a small steel key embedded with blue crystal circuits from his waistcoat to unlock the case, putting the key in the slot in the handle's base, with his left thumb on the screen to be scanned. The 'click' that indicated the case was opened resounded obnoxiously loud in the almost silent surgery room, as all the sonic indicators in the bio-bed had been muted until they were actually needed.

"Doctor Huang, please take the second stool by the prisoner's other side, so we can begin." Lucas instructed his subordinate without meaningless formalities slowing his work. He opened the armored case to reveal the items it contained. Held tightly in an electronic vice was a small vial crafted of transparent synthetic crystal, filled with an opaque bilious fluid. The vial had a small blue crystal circuit on each end that maintained the fluid at ideal viscosity, temperature and pressure by EM fields. The second item was a vial made of regular clear glass containing a pale milky liquid. Finally, a small capsule made of transparent plastic, held seven orange pills the size of Tylenol caplets.

The teenaged prodigy used a long but thin screwdriver to unlock the briefcase's underside by triggering three locks that could be accessed only from the inside. In other words, that flap could never be seen or forced from the outside when the case was closed. Now that the security cover was opened, the adolescent used that access port to unscrew four small plastic safety caps from pipe connectors set into the case's internal machinery that had been revealed. He dropped the caps into the medical waste bin, so they could be destroyed after the procedure.

Gesturing to the asian woman, he ordered "Doctor Huang, the perfuser is ready for connection to the rest of the apparatus. Please remove the hematic substitute and saline from refrigeration while I assemble the gantry."

The young woman pursed her lips tightly in anxiety as she rolled her stool to the left, passed the prisoner's head, using her own key-card to open the stainless steel door of the medical fridge. She took out one liter of saline solution and one liter of artificial blood fluid, both having been prepared specifically for this case. They were obtained in Buffalo when the train passed by, on its way here, to Stanford. She held the two clear plastic bags by putting a finger into the suspension holes at the top, waiting for Lucas to ask for them.

The teenaged male had stood from his stool, reaching up towards the ceiling where hung a multi-joint surgical illumination fixture and four complex systems made of metal bars with holes, hooks, wires and tubes. These bars could be adjusted in height or angle as necessary to hold the pipes from dialysis machines or ventilation masks, the wires for power tools & sensors, or just hang bags of saline, blood, and anything the medics needed during surgery. The four gantry systems were placed in a square shape around the light fixture which was fully centered above the bio-bed. Lucas brought down the gantry that was right at the head of the cot, above the vitals panel, locking it about a foot above the display.

He took the two bags of medication, hanging them separately at each end of the gantry bar, then lowered and pulled back the assembly until both bags hung loosely just an inch above the open briefcase's high security contents. Opening a cabinet behind his stool, the boy pulled out two clear glass 1 liter ampules that were shaped like a teardrop with a circular metal brace & handle around the bottom. He set both glass jars to hang from the gantry, one near each plastic bag of fluid.

Looking at his assistant, he asked "I need two laboratory glass stoppers that have asymmetrical tubes on the internal side. Caliber 1,5" please. And also, the inorganic silica putty to weld the ampules completely hermetic before activating the system."

As the female physician searched through the armoires and cupboards for the parts required, the adolescent pulled out a roll of bulk standard 2mm gauge tubes from the storage drawer, removing the paper wrapping from the 10 foot coil. Using a small sterile scalpel taken from the First Aid drawer, he cut the plastic ties that kept the coil tightly wound so he could unspool it as needed. When the doctor placed his parts on the mobile surgery tray besides him, he used the small metal blade to tear off the individual paper wraps that certified they had been washed & sterilized before storage. He also checked the quality of the inorganic glassware putty before setting the open tub on the tray next to his devices.

Now came the 'fun' part; human plumbing on live patient.

Lucas measured some bulk tube from the nozzle on the saline bag to the #1 plug on the machine hidden inside his briefcase. He added an inch just in case, and cut the pipe with the scalpel. Using a small wooden tool like a large toothpick, he put a small line of silica putty around the outside of the pipe at both ends before fitting them to the bag and machine. He repeated the same maneuver to link the machine's plug #2 to the first empty ampule. Then he linked the synthetic blood bag to the machine's plug #4. Taking the second glass ampule, he linked it to the machine's plug #3.

The way it worked was: saline came into the machine at regulated speed, perfused one biochemical agent before going up to its adjoining ampule to wait the next step. The hematic replacement fluid was then pumped slowly directly into the first ampule, until its liquid changed color enough to start transferring to the second ampule via the machinery to absorb the second biochemical agent. Once the second ampule was full, the gravity-fed IV line was opened, sending the liquefied death into the patient's nape, where she wouldn't see the marks from the needles. Not until it was far too late to do anything about it. A return tube linked the inert woman back to the bag of artificial blood that then served as an overflow buffer to avoid rupturing the veins and organs by filling them too much,

Having finished cementing, piping and hanging all his parts, Lucas took out his personal phone to hard-wire a secure connection to the briefcase's machinery. The sterilization cradle accepted the codes, releasing the mechanism for its inhuman task. Saline went into the miniaturized alembic – dialysis device, receiving an almost critical mixture of (SoCS 1, 2 & 3) Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling to knock-out the antiviral immunity, plus Vancomycin antibiotic to boost bacterial defenses, from the small glass vial locked inside the carrying case. Once the first ampule was half-full of cloudy liquid, the machinery began to pump the simile-blood in it to dilute and balance the mixture, in preparation for the second perfusion.

When ampule #1 was full of pinkish liquid, the machine sucked that fluid through the dialysis device, adding the highly toxic biological agent from the crystal vial, then up to the second glass ampule to rest for a few minutes, to make certain the chemistry balanced properly. They would know if anything was wrong because the liquid would separate into multiple colored strata instead of producing a single pale pink coloration. Since everything appeared to proceed as Lucas had planned, he opened at three-quarter the manual intravenous line, set into Mosley's neck by the woman physician, to let the monstrous poison flow in.

All in all, it took the machinery a measly twenty-five minutes to send the first drops of liquid Death through Shay Mosley's veins, where it would lay dormant for 72 hours due to the Cytokine suppressors before becoming active. And the felonious woman wouldn't suspect a thing because of the combined liquid Vancomycin by IV & pills of beta-lactam (Penicillin fungal strains) that would be pushed down her throat after all the plumbing was removed. The full set of suppressors & antibiotics would make certain she never felt a thing, and didn't experience symptoms from any sickness for 3 days.

Then she would be the (mostly) immunized vector for a disease that had caused panic for a century.

The Spanish Influenza of 1918, more recently called 'H1N1'.

Not that Shay Mosley would know, or care at the time it happened.

The H1N1 variant being used was a genetic recreation of the true thing based on dead samples kept in the solid archives of F. H. Wise under his personal manor in Buffalo. That old World War II bunker dug out besides the main house had served as a hidden research center for several classified, or flat-out illegal, projects that the US Armed services or CIA didn't want members of Congress, the presidential cabinet or press to become aware of. Lucas had found the way to enter the hidden bunker written in Wise's diary when he was 9 years old, just before going to Stanford. Finding discrete contractors to silently repair and update the edifice was mostly a question of money aided by his interpersonal skills at making good deals with people. Then, finding enough competent medics, biologists and chemists was mostly a chore of patience and creating good contacts through 'honest' students at Stanford.

It was a team of these highly paid, severely vetted scientists that had recreated the virus, working from the cadaver of some unfortunate homeless woman that had died in the streets of Boston in 1919, then been frozen and preserved for study by the US Army labs. Since the Army needed every edge it could against the Nazis in 1939-45, they moved their 'icicle of malice' down to Buffalo as soon as doctor Wise had finished building his first underground lair. However, Wise had other, more pressing necessities, and didn't think that humanity of the period could handle another epidemic of this disease, so the research project the Army wanted was silently shelved. He forcibly shifted all focus towards the Mid-Line Treaty instead, then the war ended abruptly and the politos did their best to forget every dirty thing they had done to win, including naming a pseudo-monarch inside their borders. A set of bribes, gifts and allowing Wise to run rampant with his businesses had convinced the man to stop exercising his functions as CG in public, allowing the posting to become just another war-era legend.

The dead homeless woman had slept silently, isolated inside an individual freezer powered by a small portable nuclear fission reactor, something which was actually 'normal' to have, back in those first years of atomic science in America. The crew of builders Lucas employed had certainly lived some pretty harrowing surprises as they opened and refurbished the old structure up to Year 2015 standards. The storage lockers filled with radioactive isotopes and the four mobile atomic reactors were outdone only by the cold vaults that held the organic specimens of several deadly reagents. The Black Plague was only a 'medium' problem in that closet of malevolence, compared to some of the first attempts at genetically editing viruses and bacterium as airborne weapons. And the bigger, more complex organisms that Wise and his private team had tried to create looked like what inspired the programmers of the first 'DOOM' video game. That, or his great-grand-father had been a closeted apostle of Cthulhu who was trying to birth his own shoggoth as an offering to his slumbering deity.

The mutant war-hounds could be useful, though, if they could be tamed conveniently.

Well, once the entirety of all the 2,15 liters of fluid were processed into the prisoner and circulated twice, the whole system was shut down and withdrawn from the sleeping woman's body. As Lucas removed all the hardware, he carefully packed everything in thick, single-use, transparent plastic bags bearing the red signs for "bio-hazard waste", including the aluminum briefcase that was put into the largest bag with every other smaller bag packed in with it. In order to pack the fluid bags and glass ampules for disposal, Lucas used a miniature laser cutter to melt shut the tube plugs on the portable machine and right at the sockets on the containers. While doctor Huang was pushing several pills of diverse penicillin strains into the prisoner's stomach with a feeding rod, the adolescent used special medical wet-wipes that were saturated with 100% pure alcohol to clean and shroud the IV needles as they came out, insuring that no body fluids or viral solution dropped anywhere, or became airborne to infect others. As the young man was entombing all the trash in a steel can by cementing its lid in place with silica putty, the asian medic used the miniature laser on its softest setting to cauterize the needle holes and skin surface where they had placed their equipment, again to insure no contaminants could leak out, nor would it require a bandage or cream to heal. A thick layer of hydrocortisone unguent made certain the black skinned woman would not feel anything in her nape until a good 6 hours after waking up from the sedative.

At which time, she would have far worse problems to deal with than her neck itching.

Taking up the wired telephone handset from the console by the inside windows, Lucas called to the Combat Information Center with orders. "Hello, dispatch? This is CG Wolenczak, from Medical 1. You can send the information brief about Shay Mosley to Leon Vance, then contact her dear beloved ex, mister Williamson in Mexico. Tell him that the arranged pick-up point & time just south of Seattle are confirmed. Over."

Hanging up the old phone set, the teen moved his cold flint-blue eyes up and down the sleeping woman's form, sighing forlornly at the loss of such intellect to the hands of adversity. If only she had stayed loyal to America and the law, he could perhaps have found ways to accommodate her, even help her get her misplaced son again. Instead, she would be insuring his slow, agonizing death alongside thousands more when she contaminated the compound of illegal arms dealer & terrorist Richard Williamson, and his traitorous accomplices in the Mexican army. Besides the boy-child, all information pointed that no adult in the place was ignorant or non-participant in some way, so they were all sentenced equally.

For treason, sedition, terrorism and helping or comforting the enemies of America; death.

The protocols of the 1940 Treaty were clear and exacting, no negotiations allowed in war.

And when foreign armies facilitated the smuggling of drugs, guns and slaves through the US borders, it counted as formal acts of war by a declared enemy of the Nation. Or Nations plural, since Canada was involved in this too. The Treaty was bi-national, after all.

"Doctor Huang, take the refuse can to the plasma autoclave in the technical wagons. Make certain everything burns to atoms." Lucas waved his right hand vaguely towards the central corridor, adding "And take the rest of the day off. We've had a short but demanding task, I would prefer that you rest unless we have an emergency. We will call you if such arises. Dismissed."

Bowing her head to her employer, the asian physician took the heavy steel can full of trash with both arms, ferrying it slowly to conserve energy. She had a long walk to the tech carriages, then back to her cabin after that. Damn, but working on a train wasn't that much fun. Not like on TV at all.

After the young doctor had left, Lucas gestured through the window to both of his escort soldiers to come in for a talk. As the two uniformed militiamen stood at loose attention before him, the genius explained what he needed. "This traitor will be waking up in about twenty to thirty minutes. She should be in the prison wagon getting secured in a cell before that happens. Use one of the folding medical wheelchairs to get her there, then bring the chair back to storage. Execute."

The younger of the two men asked uneasily, "What about you, sir? Aren't you supposed to have some sort of bodyguard at all times, now that you're active and all?"

Nodding amiably, the teenager replied politely "Yes, soldier, but the train as a whole counts as an armed escort. I would need physical escorts if I were to disembark for a stroll, or a shopping trip in town and such. As long as I'm inside The Briary, I am safe enough to move and work alone."

Nodding, both men acknowledged their orders by beginning the laborious process of unchaining Mosley from her cot, only to chain her to the wheelchair for transport. Once alone in the surgery room, Lucas again took the wired handset, calling to the technical wagon where the trash incineration machinery was located. "Autoclave? This is CG Wolenczak. I have finished with my first problem, the second one is en route towards you. Yes, I still want her dead and cremated as is, no autopsy or formalities. She's a Chinese spy that infiltrated Canada on a student visa eleven years ago. As a foreign operative committing espionage on military installations, machines and matters, she is sentenced to die without any recourse to civilian law or diplomatic contacts. Such is it in war. Over."

The teenager hung the phone on its wall mounted cradle, gazing absentmindedly at the keypad and screen as he was lost in thought. Was this what his life was reduced to, now? To be like a butcher walking around a corral of cattle, cleaver in hand, idly deciding which cow dies because there was disease in the herd to eradicate, and if not, then the daily quota of meat had to be cut anyways. Putting his frock coat back on, he slowly closed the buttons and belt, donning the cap and gloves, then taking his cane in the right hand as always. He left the room, avoiding to look in the reflective surfaces as he walked away, afraid of what he would now see gazing back at him.

It was not a good day after all.

Your secrets have fomented schemes, O' milord!

(FBI – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 11:40am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 8:40am

The Library of Congress, Presidential alcove (hidden)

Washington DC, USA

Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, climbed up the wooden rolling ladder that was attached to the twelve feet tall bookshelves to pull away a pivoting cover made up of fake book spines to hide an old cast iron safe. Personally, he thought it was a good idea to use facsimiles of some budget reports from the early 1800's to make it look like ancient, no longer valuable archives to turn attention away towards truly useless things, like the classified CIA briefs on Russian assets in Turkey that were taking up valuable space for no reason in the other shelving unit. Nobody would guess that the USA's much speculated 'Book of Secrets' was sleeping away in an old box with less protections than a civilian's house, just like it had for more than two centuries, if they were puttering around in worthless scads of papers on nonexistent Russian spies.

Trump was not in any ways convinced the damned 'Book' was all that useful, nor that important to keep out of the public eye. Many of his close associates and supporters in Fox News and Brietbart News had pushed for him to release the book to the open media, or at least let trustworthy 'Men of Faith' read it to insure that the cabal of communistic liberal lefties that ruled under Obama had not stashed the proofs of their crimes and betrayals in the thing, away from public scrutiny and justice. Trump had almost given in to their demands, after two long years of lobbying, but then things got murky in legal terms because some people didn't like the way he was running the government. Plus, he had to fire several of the men he had hired for the cabinet or as agency leaders due to unrevealed problems surfacing in public. With how many people had come and gone from the White House and Capitol in the two years since he was elected, it was a true miracle of His Lord that the state was still functioning. In fact, it had come to the point that he was -almost- glad for the careerism and longevity of the 'Deep State' cronies and peons, because they were pretty much the only ones that lasted long enough in their jobs to keep the lights on and the internal parliamentary services in DC going.

Exhaling a long suffering sigh of anger and despondency at having to, once again, be doing the job that some hireling in the lower rungs of the totem pole should have inherited, Trump manipulated the small brass rollers bearing occult symbols that his predecessors had told him were a combination of astrological and theological icons not linked to any alphabet or mathematics. This was a purely visual combination, you either knew which symbols to put in place or you didn't; there was no way for anybody to hack or discover the series unless they were told or read it somewhere. As a precaution for future inhabitants of the Oval Office, a small memo with the combination written on it was in the Resolute Desk in the White House, and another was hidden in the base of the old brass oil lamp that was the sole source of emergency light and heat for the secret alcove in case, of power outage.

Finally opening the blasted antique, the president was able to pull out the famous but misnamed 'Book' out of its armored cubby. The thing was in fact a large expanding folder which held other similar folders inside, one for each of those subjects that a POTUS a judged to be a 'National Secret' so heavy and grave that even the PSS, FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, and much less the regular military hierarchy, shouldn't have any knowledge or say about. It was supposed to be one of the footings of America's more obscure, but more potent, capacity for influence and warfare. Trump had never read the thing at all, convinced it was just some abbreviated war memos or chosen abstracts from the semi-personal diaries kept in the Family Wing of the White House. He truly never thought that anything of genuine value could be kept in these yellowed sheets of paper, allowed to lay entombed inside one of the most open and popular government buildings in DC.

It's not like the Library of Congress was designed as an armored fort, or even a bank!

Huffing in annoyance more than exertion, the old man sat on one of the antique but plush wheeled, pivoting chairs so he could spread the folios on the flat work table, under the reading lights. Luckily, as he searched the expanding folders he saw that each had a tab with the date of creation and subject concerned, and sometimes a date of resolution or closure. Snorting in approval that this would save him time and efforts, he quickly located the folder for the North American Defensive Mid-Line Treaty of 1940. It happened to be one of the thickest in the 'Book', but even then it was barely three dozen sheets.

Frowning interrogatively as he began to read, president Trump realized that his initial impression of what the dreaded 'Book of Secrets' was hadn't been far from the truth. The file in his hands was about the Treaty alright, but not the charter, Congressional votes, records, committee hearings or anything that was of that sort. It wasn't even internal memos from the military Joint Chiefs or intelligence agency briefings.

The notes had been written manually by Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, in early 1938 when the first negotiations had begun, without any secretary or assistance of any sort. The file had a handful of pages of personal thoughts per year until early 1945, when the man died of illness in his fourth term.

Now that was an idea! Trump for life! Or at least until his health got bad. Damned amendments! Why couldn't they have waited after he was done to change the country's constitution?

Anyways, there were fourteen sheets containing the seven years of work that Roosevelt had been involved with the Mid-line affairs, then the rest were technical notes on how the presidency and congress should allow the Treaty to be applied. Meaning, the old man had planned to curtail the powers and rights given by the Mid-Line Alliance through adjusting internal military regs and manipulating state or municipal laws. As the Treaty only concerned 'war time rules for sedition, treason, espionage and helping foreign enemies' then it would be easy to restrict the influence and entitlements of Doctor Wise and his companies outside of those limited purview's. Several pages of neat manuscript text gave clear ideas of what political and judicial maneuvers Roosevelt wanted passed through congress, the JAG and then SCOTUS to cement them into place.

Now that was a political operator after Trump's own heart! Make a good deal, then twist reality to make it better for yourself without ever letting the other guy see or feel how much you got because he still had his own portion, just as negotiated. If the bloke didn't feel or see he'd gotten the smaller, lesser part of the pot, then he'd never feel cheated, so he'd never gripe and ask for a new round of talks.

More abstract, and obscure, factoids about Doctor Franklin Henry Wise, owner and operator of the massive conglomerate Wise Apothecary and Chemists, and the secretive goings-on of its division of military supplies and engineering, the 'Forceful Wisedom' company, occupied three whole sheets. The man had some doozies in his past, especially the fact that the two first women he married had been second degree cousins, and the third had been third degree in-law on his mother's side. The family tree drawing put at the beginning of the man's bio showed clearly the almost incestuous relationships he had throughout his married years, which he forcibly replicated through his daughters whom were arranged to be married-off to second degree nephews. Apparently, it was F. H. Wise himself that had plotted for his daughters' children to get married so as to produce an heir capable of inheriting the Mid-Line Treaty's many powers and responsibilities, if he himself were to die ahead of schedule. His plan was quite obviously the start of a Dynasty-style familial structure to rule over his ancestral holdings so that they could never be reduced, divided or sold off to strangers. It would also become a juggernaut of a corporate beast that could resist any attempts at takeover since none of the controlling stocks that bore votes on the board of directors were ever put on public sale; the company was 'closely held' since its inception in 1800 and that never changed.

And here was the reason Roosevelt had even accepted to talk with Wise about creating the Mid-Line:

F. H. Wise had been working on a serum that was supposed to extend the life-cycle of organisms by 30 to 35%. It had been tested on brown garden rats, who normally lived three years max, and had managed to make several individuals live up to four full years - in full health. Given the magnitude of the discovery (which nobody today knew about!) the governments of America and Canada had accepted to give Doctor Wise his desired Mid-Line Treaty with all the entitled lands, authorities and powers in exchange for making the serum only for those humans the two national leaders would indicate as being worthy of such phenomenal honor. Doctor Wise was, by the secret 2-page contract joined to the file, obligated to continue his R&D on this serum to further extend the potency until it reached a 100% increase in longevity and curative virtues. Apparently, the last iteration of the unction that Roosevelt had seen in 1945, just before his ailment killed him, had reached a 115% increase in life-cycle along some rather wondrous healing properties. It wasn't a miraculous panacea like the legendary Mana from Heaven, or the Greek Ambrosia that fed the gods, but it was described as the closest thing humans had to such occult sources of health and succor.

Why had nobody ever heard of this formula?

Where was it sold?

If the government truly was the only seller, then who was chosen for it, and how?

Further in the fragile, yellowed pages were the notes from Harry S. Truman, 33rd president and successor of Roosevelt. Truman abhorred Doctor Wise with all his heart, and made no secrets about it right at the churlish man's face. He considered him to be a cruel, heavy-handed lout who cherished the tools, methods and goals of the Nazi regime more than he loved America and her people. In fact, Truman had made the Secret Service, the FBI, and the newly assembled CIA, investigate the entirety of Wise Apothecary & Chemists, plus each of its incorporated divisions of medications, foodstuffs, industrial chemistry, engineering & architecture, and the 'Forceful Wisedom' armaments manufacturing based out of Sault-Saint-Mary and Sarnia citadels. There was a coded notification that the full reports had been severely classified and kept in the White House archives, in the deep basements where only the president's Secret Service agents had access. That in itself was important, but the rest of the note was written plainly enough to scare Donald Trump witless; the serum contained elements and organic materials that were not originated from Earth.

Doctor Wise had found genuine ALIEN artifacts or entities and used parts to make his serum!

And that was why the bloody liquid was never sold open or gifted secretly to the friends of those who sat in the Oval Office. Truman said his spies had found that the serum, even when diluted, happened to be highly addictive and caused severe bouts of distemperment resembling alcoholic inebriation plus the rage of an athlete that overdosed on artificial steroids. Also, the spies found that the tests on rats, cats, dogs and pigs had demonstrated that once treatment with the fluid began, it could not stop or else the weaning symptoms would kill the patient, with a 97%+ fatality ratio. Yes, the liquid was almost like a miracle in a syringe, but at what cost? The entity that took the medication became unstable, unreliable and couldn't tolerate other people around them for more than a few minutes without lashing out physically. A gentle man could become a brutish cur inside of six months, and never recover his native personality regardless of drugs, therapy or stopping the serum. And that was another nail in that coffin; even once discontinued, the mental effects inflicted by the organic serum were permanent. The brain was altered in a physical sense as well as in its biochemistry, by creating new neural pathways that would not undo when the serum intake was stopped.

Despite all its promise, the serum happened to be a catastrophe in the making.

If it got out to the public, it would lead to the rise of a societal crust of ultra-rich elderly geezers who were so violent and unstable, yet so wealthy and powerful, that nobody would be able to remove these defectives from their positions of authority. Driven by rage, and depressive from the isolation that resulted from their constant violence towards others, these rich men would no longer have any moral impetus to hold back from harming others, or society at large. They would use their positions at the top to foment ever larger wars, with more cruel weapons at each fight. The USA would crumble from the inside as the lower rungs of the societal pyramid realized just how crazy the top was and fled for their lives to foreign nations. The migratory movements would match those that followed World War II, and the emptied homeland would quickly become prey to roving bands of bandits and mafiosi thugs.

There was no profit to be had from this medication. It was a dud.

And so, despite being bound by the secret contract and the Mid-Line Treaty of 1940, Truman decided in 1947 to make a deal with William Lyon Mackenzie King, 10th prime minister of Canada, to kill-off any knowledge of the serum, its effects or creation. Therefore, in exchange for keeping quiet about the off-world origins of his materials and research data, F. H. Wise was allowed to stay as Constable - Governor of the mid-Line, with all the entitlements and heredity agreed upon as written.

The reasons for this were simple in the extreme;

ONE: Truman and King wanted to prevent a panic across the planet as they both thought that would be the only possible outcome of any public awareness of this medication and its base components.

TWO: both men were christians, both of the Presbyterian sect, and both held a measure of belief in the inherent superiority of white men over all other races, but never to the point of annihilation in the manner of Hitler and Stalin, or enslavement like the defunct Catholic Inquisition of yore. Both men were enamored of 'social gospel' and used religion as a tool, method and justification for being elected or those laws they supported. While Harry Truman was charismatic and outgoing, King was an introverted cold academician. Despite their differences, they had more than enough similarities to have one goal in common; protect white christianity and church authority in society, something that would be degraded and eventually fail altogether, if ever the public were proven that aliens from outer space do in fact exist and visit Earth as rumors and legends have stated for millenia.

Thus united by a basal desire to avoid planetary anarchy and the erosion of white christian authority over the planet's powers and institutions, the two politicians made a pact to never allow anybody but those who were elected as leaders of their nations to become aware of the danger lurking in the shadows. As such, they also agreed to bury the Mid-Line Treaty at Doctor Wise's death (disappearance in the 1970's) and make sure nobody in either government remembered what was owed to that family. Because the US presidents were firm capitalists, none ever tried to disassemble and destroy WAC's the way that Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 15th prime minister of Canada, had attempted. A conspiracy of betrayal and abuse of executive privileges such as Trump loved to see in action. The plot had been put on the slow-gear by the PM's that followed, until Pierre's son Justin Trudeau was elected as 23rd PM in 2015. The young politician was viscerally hateful of all things related to Doctor Wise, and Lucas Wolenczak by accident of birth, so he had put the conspiracy back on track, going so far as to use fake laws and decrees to try to brake apart and disintegrate many divisions or landholdings of WAC's.

Quite obviously, none of those attempts worked out.

In fact, because Canada's private property, commerce, contract and military laws resemble those of America so much, both Trudeau men hit a brick wall of capitalism protections and company lawyers that were paid in perpetuity to defend the family, even if the legal heir was not aware of his status nor immediately available to ascend to his posting.

Well! That was some good blackmail material right there! A bit old, but still good.

The rest of the notes until his own accession to office in January 2017 were pretty generic bitching about the size, power and inbred secrecy of WAC and the Wise family tree. Apparently, from 1953 and on, the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue all thought the doctor was just a 18th century cook who struck it rich, but otherwise utterly useless and harmless. Then, in October of 2016, just before the vote that bagged Trump his current presidency, his predecessor Barrack Obama, the 44th president, wrote a small but potent addendum to the file.

"Franklin Henry Wise is alive and healthy as an ox at 216 years old. He came to visit me right here, in the Oval Office, bearing the original copies of the Mid-Line Treaty that were signed by Roosevelt and King. He reminded me that his heir had been ready to ascend to the title since 2014, at age ten as stipulated in the Treaty, but it had been blocked by his felonious parents and more, by the governments of both nations. He warned me of dire things to come, if his great-grand-son was blocked further."

In the file, the last piece of paper was a modern color photograph taken by a digital camera with writing on the back of the image, in the handwriting of F. H. Wise:

"My heir at work in his rented laboratory at the Stanford faculty of pharmacology, working on the small gift I have sent him anonymously for his tenth birthday, December 2014. The formulation for the four primaries, two bases, and intermixed activated 'Blue Moon' variant of the organic super-compound Synthium. My heir is now a living nuclear power, as am I. The clock ticks, Herr Fuhrer Amerikus, do not disappoint us much longer, for the consequences would be dire."

Donald J. Trump looked at the thin black ink lines left by the fountain pen on the high quality photo paper, five years ago, trying to concentrate on the text so he could ignore the sudden tremors in his hands as the full, terrifying truth of the message sank into his mind. Doctor Wise had continued to live, and potentially to do R&D, for 116 years at that time period. He had prospered and gotten enough power to come into the White House to lecture, chastise and threaten the president of America inside his own seat of power, without any fears or doubts of his own. And he had created Synthium, the only organic product that has ever had a proto-nuclear capacity for either reactors or explosives.

Fucking shite! What were they in for?

The president locked up the 'Book of Secrets' back in its antique safe then quick-walked back through the many corridors of the Library of Congress, to his armored limousine and back to the White House so he could start issuing requests for investigations and military intel reports about WAC's and Lucas Wolenczak. Whomever or whatever had triggered this kid to step up to the plate had to be found and dealt with before even thinking of engaging the kid himself. Then, he could work on building a mental portrait of what the boy was like, and how to handle him. He was a scientist, but also a business man who had created his first company at age 9. They had a lot in common, that way. It was therefore a simple matter of finding what they could do for each other, and making a deal. A good deal, at that.

Like a stain of black mold

(NCIS – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 12:08pm (noon)

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 9:08am

The Navy Yard

Washington DC, USA

Leon Vance was barely back from the washroom and a miniature breakfast on the go courtesy of the vending machines it the agents' break nook, after that debacle in MTAC earlier the very same morning, when things got even worse. Firstly, he had several emails and voice messages from the White House, Pentagon and diverse 'Presidential Advisers' who wanted to know WTF was happening in Stanford, and what in Hell was the Constable – Governor so they could prepare a public statement for the press and population by 5:00pm at the latest.

And now he had just received a bloody big priority message from the same-said CG's train about some things that he should be made aware of ASAP, pertaining to a certain rabid bitch called Mosley.

No, this wasn't gonna be a good day, not by any means.

After taking ten minutes to get the gist of things, Vance picked up his wired handset to call Gibbs and his team up to his office for a priority briefing. It took them another ten minutes to all be present before him, so he kept reading through the thick dossier as he waited for the agents. Now that they were all here, he assigned their next job.

"Alright, people, I know that this morning in MTAC rattled some, but the ride isn't over yet. In fact, it's just begun. About a half hour ago, The Briary sent directly to my personal computer a very dense file, right through our servers and firewalls as if they didn't exist. That particular detail will be addressed later on by the IT division, McGee, not you. No, the Major Response Team will be deploying to the Hawaii island of Lanai to investigate a nasty development. The dossier I received concerns Shay Lynn Mosley, who used to be EAD – Pacific zone for our organization."

Gibbs interrupted with a silvery eyebrow raised "Used to be, Leon? Did she get killed on the job?"

Making a face of disdain, Vance replied "I wish she had, but the end result will be the same. She was arrested by the CG on grounds of religious fanaticism, plotting terrorism, seditiously using personnel, devices, money and lands belonging to NCIS, or the US government, in a conspiracy to create a sectarian doomsday cult. She has been using NCIS as a recruitment pool -cum- management platform since the very first day she set foot in the door. We got a list of people to arrest, question and then decide what we do with them, and what future they could possibly still have inside NCIS."

Nick Torres asked "Are we looking at another Noyce situation, here?"

The director nodded angrily, "Yes Torres, we are. The dossier the CG sent shows that Mosley bought large sets of buildings in four areas that were in the Pacific zone; firstly in Lanai city, then San Diego, then Los Angeles, and finally San Francisco. She was about one or two years away from enacting her great plan when she had the worse encounter of her life. She attracted the attention of CG Wolenczak, for reasons unknown, and he invited her to travel aboard The Briary with him. She was promptly arrested and detained upon setting foot inside. She is being held in the dedicated prison wagon, until they reach the citadel at Sault-St-Mary, where she will be transferred to the new military tribunal being assembled to hear such cases as hers and Noyce's."

Elleanor Bishop asked "If the CG already has her in hand, where does that leave us? I mean, we'll need a new EAD for the Pacific zone, obviously, but what else? How does NCIS react to this now?"

Vance passed a weary hand over his deep blue neck tie, a small nervous gesture of anxiety, as he replied firmly "It leaves us with multiple changes across the northern, western and southern zones of our organization. Some were in the works already, but necessity dictates that further, greater changes be effected in order for us to survive this scandal. As you all know, NCIS has not been targeted publicly by the White House or POTUS in his vitriolic tweets in all the three years he has been in post. That could change in a blink, when this mess hits his desk, later today."

Getting up from his chair, Leon went to the small side-bar to pour himself some chilled water to whet his parched throat, and as a way to stop his hands from fidgeting as he spoke. After swallowing a mouthful of soothing liquid, the mature male pointed a finger at the teammates, ordering; "MRT will be packing up for a prolonged stay in Lanai city, in the Hawaii zone. Your departure will be scheduled for tomorrow night, out of Andrews Joint AF Base. You'll go to Hawaii proper and pick up some extra men, SeaBees army engineers from Pearl Harbor naval base. They'll be your transporters and muscle on this job."

McGee filled in the blanks "You want us to go take over Mosley's sectarian compound, taking anything we find in the servers for analysis. Since that was the first emplacement she bought and built up, it must also be the one where she has the most old paper archives and storage in case the project blew up in her face. As the most secluded and hard to reach, it must also have been the fall-back shelter for her group, if not the 'cathedral' of the cult. Lots of sects and weirdos go to Hawaii because some sectors are so remote and unexplored that nobody ever bothers with investigating anything there."

Vance nodded at Timothy's analysis, clarifying "According to the dossier, that compound was supposed to be the center of her newly enacted sect, some sort of abbey built in the hilltop forest, about an hour away from Lanai city if you hike in a straight line through the jungle terrain. In a car, it should take about twenty minutes, maybe. The maps show only a partially cleared path. The service roadway was never fully stripped of vegetation, so it doesn't even class as a dirt road, and it's only wide enough for one vehicle, so no drive-by possibility except in a few parking spots that were clearly man-made."

Gibbs waved a hand as if to shove those petty details to the side, saying "We'll have plenty of time in the plane and in Pearl to read the maps to learn the terrain. What I want to know is what do we do with this building when we get there? And how many men will be escorting us?"

Vance walked to stand by the large window behind his desk, looking idly outside at the Navy Yard. Turning towards the MRT members, he explained "You are only tasked with a regular investigation of the terrain and the sect that built it. Taking copies of all digital data, and scanning to the network all solid archives regardless of subject or intent, plus filming all objects found to be relevant. The cabinet of the Constable – Governor has already emitted a Writ of Seizure over all the personal, corporate, religious and criminally obtained assets of Shay Mosley, across all of Canada and the USA. They are working in concert with the State Department to expedite this Writ to all our nation-partners so that we don't leave a cache of guns or a hoard of cash in a dark nook, overseas. It also means that everything found will be held in trust by the Mid-Line Treaty organization until it is reassigned or disposed of."

Gibbs growled out angrily "Are you telling me that we're gonna get punted to a damned patch of wild, bug infested, tropical jungle just to do the ground-pounding work for this kid? If he's so high and mighty already, why doesn't he deploy his own men? Doesn't he have a militia? Or are they just used to move his toys around, like that oversized train set?"

Leon smirked nastily as he shared many of Jethro's opinions on the matter, but in this case the reasoning was actually sound. "It's a bit more complex than that, Gibbs. The CG can do many things, but it doesn't mean that he can, or even should, do any of them. He sits in the food chain a lot higher than me or Webber at DXS. He's the equivalent of a state governor, a federal bench chief-judge, or even the chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff. While he does have the right, duty and authority to ferret out any crime he becomes suspicious of, it doesn't mean that he should do it himself, or through his men."

Sitting back in his chair, Vance clasped his hands over his abdomen loosely, as he gazed upon his agents, making eye contact with each. "The president and Joint-Chiefs rely on Agencies like ours to do the protection, inspection and investigation for several reasons, principal amongst them being that there needs to be a separation between the policemen, the prosecutors, the bailiffs, the judges and the jurors. If Wolenczak always does everything by himself, it challenges the fundamental basis of our legal system, our society, and the US Constitution itself. In his introduction letter, the CG was quite clear that he wishes to avoid even the most ethereous wisp of suspicion that he may want to set himself parallel to, or above, the separation of powers and judicial order written in the Constitution. Thus, we do the leg work on the ground, then JAG will do their usual part, but the CG will be the one appointing the judges and jurors for the court panel. He has written that he has no intent to sit on this case himself; he's delegating it to the lower magistrates that will be set in post in a few weeks, after his official public inauguration, in Wise Manor in Buffalo."

Bishop asked gently "So our part of things doesn't really change? I mean, other than adding a few more email addresses in the 'send to' line when we file our reports or put out a BOLO?"

Snorting in amusement, Leon nodded at her comment, confirming it "Yeah, for now it is. Later on, you might get some field orders or investigation requests directly from the CG's cabinet, if it's truly urgent and you're the only agents available in place. But, it was declared strongly that he would prefer passing by the directorate of the agencies, to not usurp control or executive functions inside each organization."

Torres glibly commented "So, his team of secretaries sends emails to yours, just so it looks like you're still the head honcho in charge of NCIS. In reality, he'll be taking over everything in the Alphabet Soup until he's like a fat spider in the middle of a web. Even the Direction of National Intelligence will under him soon. History shows real well just how much gets done, or covered, under the call of 'war effort' and collective defense."

Assorted smirks and snorts of agreement responded to Nick's words, all the persons in the office being of the same opinion. The way the blasted Treaty of 1940 had been written, the only way to restrict the Constable – Governor's powers or activities was to verbally convince the young man to limit himself to as few domains or events as feasible. Unfortunately, this kid didn't seem to be amenable to bribes and grift the way his great-grand-father had been, just after the war. In the contrary, he gave every indication of being motivated by a strong desire for community involvement, which could turn out good or disastrous, depending on where his philosophical and emotional limits were placed.

"In any ways," Vance terminated the short conference, "All four of you have a lot of work ahead of yourselves in the coming weeks. Depending on how much archiving and dry storage the compound has, it should take around 12 to 15 days at least. The SeaBees from Pearl Harbor won't be useless; they'll patrol, clean, cook, and run errands to town for you, so you can concentrate on the case. When you have finished, new orders will be given according to what's happening. As for the compounds in the other three cities, the local NCIS offices are staffed with enough competent personnel that they can run those investigations with just a detachment of Army CID and marines to round off their efforts."

Ellie gave her colleagues a small smirk as they left the director's office, joking "Well, at least we'll be leaving the winter snow storms behind us for a while. And in Hawaii, it's their late summer at this time of year, so a nice climate all around. It should be better than England, at any rate."

"Yeah, you're right, Bishop," replied Torres in pure sarcasm. "Cuz who would ever want to trade off clean white snow and negative temperatures for scorching hot sun, humidity, monsoon rains that cause flash floods... Not to mention all the damned venomous critters that the USA has, all cooped up into a cluster of tiny islands?"

It was Gibbs who put, full of optimism like they had never seen from him; "I'm glad to go. Sunny, humid and wet wilderness is easier to survive than cold, icy winter. And think about it: at least we'll all be far away from Vance when Congress, the politos, lobbyists and media try to crawl up his ass to dig for information about the newly 'appointed' CG, and the bloody Treaty that spawned him. I sure want to be away from DC when that shitstorm hits the fan."

Strangely enough, the entire MRT group was all smiles as they went about their preparations to go spend almost a month overseas. If the beautiful Hawaiian climate hadn't convinced them it was better, the certitude of dodging most of the political, judicial and social turmoil coming to fruition sure did.

Round and round the bowl we spin and swirl

(Awesome God – Rich Mullins, 1988)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 12:50pm (noon)

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 9:50am

The Founding Fathers pub, backroom

Washington DC, USA

Nathan Hale Bridger, retired ship captain from the US Navy since five years ago, sat alone at his isolated rear table in the noisy common room of the establishment. He held a crystal tumbler of fine scotch whiskey in hand as he contemplated the dregs of his lunch plate while ignoring the lunch crowd who were finishing their noon meal. The place had been well packed for a Saturday morning, which was a bit surprising for that district of northern Washington. Luckily, the day's special of rib eye steak with trimmings, salad and dessert had been just as excellent as promised by the venerable older gentlemen who had asked him to meet them. They had a pressing case to submit and needed his input urgently.

The 62 year old retiree was deeply tanned from the superb climate that surrounded his tropical island all year long, except for the occasional storm. He had finally shaved off his scruffy beard, and gotten a decent haircut in New Cape Quest, the first in almost two years by now. He was wearing his last good formal suit that still fit him properly as he had lost a lot of weight and corpulence since his son Robert had died five years ago, followed by his poor wife Carol who died just a year later. While he seemed healthy for his age from the outside, he was anything but. The old mariner had given in to his alcoholism since he was widowed. Well, since he lost his son in truth, but after Carol he really let himself drift on a current of cheap whiskey, gin or beer, depending on what was left in the house at the moment the depressive mood swing struck him. He managed to clean up and groom himself back to a standard fit for polite society, but it had been a close call. That still didn't heal his liver or kidneys.

Just getting on a plane from New Cape Quest to reach DC had almost not happened, because of how sick and depressive he was at present.

Nathan could honestly admit he had been taken by surprise, five days ago, when William Noyce had been arrested in the wee hours of the morning by a joint task force of FBI and NCIS. Even his much vaunted status in the US Navy Intelligence and four decades of contacts hadn't been enough to save him from being carted off to slaughter like one of his prize hogs, under the glare of the TV cameras, no less. And now, a cabal of old men wanted to speak with Nathan about the admiral's fall from grace.

Why, exactly?

It wasn't like Nathan had any power or contacts anywhere anymore. Everybody he had known with influence or authority had retired from their military or governmental postings many years ago, leaving him without so much as an email to contact them. Will Noyce had been pretty much the last friend of his that had stayed in active service, military or governance, in the last decade. In fact, since his only genuine creation, the deep submergence ship SeaQuest, had finished her sea trials almost 15 years ago, nobody had really bothered to ask for his help or opinion with anything important. Nathan had completed his time in the navy with honor, leaving ahead of his planned retirement when he got hit by Robbie's death. He never took on another job after that, not even short-term contracts, despite Bill pushing him to do so The combination deaths of his son and wife compounded by depression and alcohol, which lead to ill health, had all been too much to endure and still have the energy for work.

And now this idiotic mess.

Who were these people who found him on his island, and why did they want him?

One of the pub's burly waiters, dressed in the traditional black trousers and vest with white shirt and white barman's apron tied around his waist, came to his table with a message. "Captain Bridger, sir, the party who requested the honor of your attention has arrived. You can now make your way to the backroom of the pub for the conference. As convened, your meal was offered with the compliments of your hosts, as will any dinner or cocktail if things take that much time. Have a good day, sir."

Nodding his thanks, Nathan got up after draining the last of his drink, appreciating the high quality spirits in contrast to the usual low class bilge juice that fueled his downward spirals of despair. It took barely two minutes to reach the closed door of the backroom, where he had to show his old navy ID card and current driver's license to the guard who blocked the door. The mid-thirties caucasian male was dressed in the ubiquitous dark blue 3-piece suit that was the staple of all US federal agencies that related to internal security or intelligence operations, as was confirmed by the earwig, Sig Sauer pistol under his arm and badge dangling from his jacket pocket. To Nathan, the caliber of the security declared clearly what kind of influential people he was going to meet inside.

Passed the door, the old sailor was ushered into a quaintly appointed meeting room that had been furnished in the old pub style, with lots of dark stained hard wood paneling, colored glass lamp sconces on each wall, thickly upholstered wooden furniture, and a large decorative wet bar along the outer wall.

The middle of the room was occupied by a thick, solid oak table surrounded by 12 heavy sofas mounted on a rolling swivel base to insure maximal comfort. Given the average, health and social status of the men who normally used this room for their private meetings, it was pretty much expected that the pub's management would try to make their stay as easy and pleasant as possible. Nathan's poor back and bum knee certainly appreciated the incredibly luxurious amenities as he sat in the last free chair at the table.

As he positioned himself for the long haul, Nathan immediately saw several key details that made him suspicious of his hosts, and the reasons why this meeting was happening in the back of a bar in the north part of town, instead of a high luxury hotel, in the shadow of the Capitol. All of his hosts were white males well passed sixty years of age. Not a single woman or member of the racial minorities that composed such a high percentage of America's population. Even the four guards that stood silently in their separate corners of the room and the waiter affected to the conference were all white men no younger than thirty years of age. All of the men seated also had a set of small golden tokens pinned to the jacket lapel of their elegant 3-piece suits; a crucifix, a fish, a US flag, and an odd sigil composed of a rectangle containing a circle with a winged crown of laurels inside. One of the men had a tie pin that was clearly an icon of the Freemasons as was the large gaudy ring on his right hand.

At this point, Nathan had a good idea what was happening.

"Good day, captain Bridger," spoke an immensely fat old man with a bald head marked by diseases and advanced age, who needed a portable oxygen machine to breathe. "I am Ghaspard Lemmelien, High Marshall of the Royal Crusading Legions of Jesus, Rex Christu Celesticum, our God and Savior. These goodly men of faith around us are all related to the Heavenly works of our true and pure America, as worthy servant of Christ upon this lowly Earth. Their actual names and affiliations will be revealed it time, if it becomes necessary."

Snorting in contempt, Nathan replied immediately "I was told this meeting would be serious, held by people who were also serious and credible. Being told from the start that your names are secret without seeing a court warrant or certificate of security from the Pentagon or White House does not fill me with confidence. I'm no traitor; I won't sell privileged informations I had access to when I worked on the design of my boat. So cut the childish games and get to the point. None of us are getting any younger or healthier anymore. I could be happily drinking myself into an early grave on my island, instead of wasting my time on your B-series movie pseudo-secrecy act."

Amused snorts and guffaws from the old men answered him, as Lemmelien smirked in his own glass of fine imported Scottish spirits. Gesturing at the men starting at Bridger's left side, he began identifying the ten other participants.

* Honorable Harkady Kunicz; lawyer specializing in jewish immigration to the USA, cardinal of the Messianic Jews of America, and president of the super PAC 'Redeem Jewry now!'.

* Reverend Father George K. Sunderland; cardinal of the 'Nazareen Pilgrims' evangelical congregation, chairman of the US conference of Evangelical & Protestant denominations, senior chair of the 'Israel & America Friendship' super PAC.

* Reverend Father Joseph-Maria Nadian; bishop of the 'Godly Seeds of Jesus Savior' congregation, director of the US Association of Christian homeschooling parents & tutors.

* Reverend Father Leland A. Charles; abbot of the 'Jesus is Divine Providence' prosperity gospel congregation, chairman for the conference of American Christian Faith educational institutions, and spiritual adviser to the association of American private schooling institutions.

* Martin B. Werther; High Grand Master of the Order of Freemasons of America, current Imperial Potentate of the Shriners charitable group.

Then, High Marshall Lemmelien switched to Bridger's right side, indicating each man in turn.

* Major-General (ret.) Jeremy S. Simard; ordained catholic bishop, former Principal Christian Ecclesiast of the US military chaplaincy, official legal & spiritual adviser to his successor in said posting, archbishop of the 'Christian Families Afloat' congregation, and president of the super PAC 'Uniformly Faithful Servicemen, International'.

* Colonel (ret.) Anthony J. Foss, gunnery specialist, military historian, High Grand Master of the Britannic-American Templar Knights, and president of the super PAC 'Homeland Crusaders, USA'.

* Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Valery Duschku, mechanized infantry, US special forces, military historian, High Grand Master of the Order of Teutonic Knights for America, and president of the super PAC 'European Heritage in Action, USA'.

* Brigadier-General (ret.) Alexander H. Fredericks; US Army infantry survival training expert, founder & chairman of the veterans' group 'Christian Survivalists and Homesteaders', co-chair of the populist movement 'Interior Pilgrimage, USA', and associate adviser for training programs at the 'Pure and True Young Pioneers of America' sectarian group.

* Captain (ret.) Lionel F. Macy; US Navy maritime engineering division, abbot of the 'Noah's New Genesians' evangelical congregation, founder and president of the far-right movement 'New-Age Arches for the Preservation of the Chosen of Christ', and senior spiritual adviser to the super PAC 'Mobile living in Christendom's Light, USA'.

Waving both arms expansively, Ghaspar Lemmelien encompassed the ten old men sitting between himself and captain Bridger, declaring in pompous, self-important tones "And so you see assembled the might of the Unseen Crusade, my good man! William Noyce used to occupy your chair, as guest speaker for the 'Church of Jesus, Shield of our Souls', being our chief recruiter and trainer amongst the active ranks of the US Naval services. He was also associate co-chair of the super PAC 'Freedom to Serve in Sacred Spirit and Given Body, USA' that committed legal fights in military and federal courts against all attempts to enforce the separation of church & state, or repeal the importance of religion in the making of ethical, judicial or strategic plans for our nation's military branches of service."

Tapping the left armrest of his sofa indolently, Nathan cut-in softly "You do realize that I have none of Bill's religious knowledge or faith oriented mindset? And that I specifically don't have any of the contacts or leverage he had because I retired five years ago, never bothering to establish or maintain any such network of power, influence and persuasion? I'm no longer a member of either the NRA or the Republican Party, and I never actually belonged to any PAC or super PAC in my life, not even just for the moment of signing a donation. The closest I ever was to active participation in a church was my teenaged years as a Boy Scout, during high school. I never participated in any ecclesiastic capacity to anything, and I'm not interested in joining a church or being ordained."

Nodding sagely, Lemmelien agreed pleasantly with his guest; "We are well aware of this, captain, but we also believe that you could still be interested in participating with our alliance. You would not need to be baptized, let alone be ordained in any clergy, to be useful or effective in service to many members of our Divine cause."

Lt-col Duschku interjected "What we need your specific skills for is not a matter of faith, but in fact a problem of laws, military traditions and constitutional order. We need a professional soldier who has reached command-level rank, with honor and credibility, to act as our public façade to bring our case to the President of the United States. For this part, you have a lot of experience at fighting the Congress and the Capitol's bureaucracy to get financing or rule changes, as evidenced by everything you lived through when you lobbied the Feds to build SeaQuest. You have the mixed Navy/government/business work history that we need for a project manager. Our goal is to have admiral Noyce released, followed by all of his immediate subordinates, then eventually all of the faithful converts he had managed to educate. We would also want to publicly defend the 'Junior Sailor Sunday Schooling' program that William had put in place and fostered, over the last fifteen years, since he was high ranking enough to carry out the plan."

Cardinal Sunderland added "We would supply all the lawyers for research and court actions, as well as office space with administrative and executive personnel as needed, to base your operations in a solid way that could endure the time and efforts required to produce results. Unfortunately, by our best guess, it would take between four and eight months to get a federal appeals court to overturn the JAG process and obtain the liberation of our comrade. Even then, he would still have between three and six years of court battles to void all pending charges and accusations levied against his activities. We really have no way to estimate how things would go for the rest of our faithful recruiters or converts who were swept away in the beginnings of this ungodly purge, in 2017."

Waving his right hand at the waiter, Nathan asked for a strong espresso with double cream & sugar to help clear out the alcohol from his system. He needed a stable mind to cogitate through this mess, and what he already knew of it wouldn't be pleasant for the men to hear when he said it.

Colonel Foss explained in a rheumy voice that showed he had severe breathing problems "We have tried in the last five days to petition the JAG headquarters for a bail hearing or a remand to house arrest, but we didn't even get in the door of the sitting Judge-Avocate-General. The stinking cunt returned a bland letter stating she had no jurisdiction so she couldn't affect the prisoner's status. When we tried to complain to the DoD about it, they punted us to the DoJ without so much as looking at our court petitions. Then the spineless fools at Justice told us to address POTUS directly, because it was a question of NA-ML Treaty Law and simple DoJ bureaucrats couldn't affect that system. We sent our briefs to the President yesterday in late afternoon, but it was a Friday right in the winter vacations, so we aren't surprised to not have heard from him, or his cabinet, yet."

General Fredericks snorted nastily in his tumbler of single malt scotch as he quipped venomously "The cretinous retard spends more time on bloody Twitter, Facebook and bitching about Fox News polls being wrong than doing his job of protecting our men of faith or the Holy Mother Church. Then there's all the time he wastes on the green, swinging that stupid little stick at a useless little ball. He must be compensating for something he's missing! Ah! I honestly wonder why our groups spent so much money, time and effort on him, back in 2016. The work product and results aren't worth it."

Bishop Nadian answered the nasty comment with a halfhearted "He got us nearly 200 conservative judges on the state and federal benches, plus two in SCOTUS. True, the 9th circuit is pretty much a lost cause, like all of California and Washington states, but given a second mandate, he could chip away at those godless liberal communists."

Nathan Bridger sipped his coffee carefully to avoid burning his tongue, then commented "Tying the fate of your groups, faith and religion to such a dubious, toxic character will have a cost that I don't think any of you alone can pay. In fact, I doubt that you can pay that price even if you pool all your congregations and PAC's together. The loss of credibility hasn't just pushed honest, decent people out of the Republican Party, but out of the overall Christian community and faith altogether. I personally know more than two dozen people who were born and raised in good, traditional, conservative families that emphasized faith and service to God who, after decades of active participation in groups like yours, have given up and walked away. The common opinion was that the loss of personal dignity and decency imposed on them by the current version of militant worship and armed congregations was not the sort of peaceful, well ordered community they had worked and prayed for all their lives. You all have a large disadvantage, right in the starting blocks, before your project is even made public."

Lemmelien asked "What are you saying, captain? Contrary to what you may think, we undertook the effort to find and recruit a manager who was an outsider to both the government and church systems because we have become aware of the 'echo chamber' effect we suffer from, of late. Yes, we targeted a specific profile of education, capacity, work history, and military service record, but not to the point of just receiving a mirror image of what we believe true or hope for a result. We want a serviceman with an impeccable record, but not necessarily perfect, and not obligatorily aligned with us. Hell! You could have turned to Anglicanism or Unitarianism, or converted to Judaism even, and you would still fit in our requirements. It's your potent brain and long experience we need, to help guide us out of the blasted fog-of-war we stupidly manufactured for ourselves."

Leaning back into his chair, Nathan frowned as he thought about the few items he knew of the mess his old academy buddy had confected for himself and his followers. Sighing, the veteran sailor addressed the group at large. "Firstly, by petitioning POTUS with the case, you're all going down the wrong track, and I'm sure you've begun to realize it by now. The person who signed the arrest warrants doesn't sit in the White House, but in Buffalo. Even the public media have managed to find out that much about the Wise Apothecary & Chemists conglomerate, and Wise Manor. Yes, Bill is probably jailed at Sault-St-Mary's citadel, but the decision-maker is Lucas Wolenczak, and he's on track for Buffalo. He's the one you need to speak with. As for why? Well, he's the man. No other reasons needed, although there are some, if you want to hear them."

Abbot Leland spoke out "Several of us aren't military men, captain. Could you elaborate your answers with less shorthand codes and more details, please? It would insure comprehension all around."

Snorting, general Simard quipped "Spoken like a real school teacher, old bean!"

After a few laughs had passed, Nathan expanded his thoughts; "We start with the obvious; the person bearing the title of Constable – Governor has been set up as the 'penultimate authority' over the armed services of BOTH America and Canada by an international treaty, in times of active war. That means that in all global terms and domains, the militaries of both nations are now beholden to him for all aspects of their existences and functions. Secondly, the 1940 Treaty specifies that he has the primary job of border integrity & surveillance, with a focus on controlling the flow of information, materials and people, to prevent smuggling or spies. Appended to this is the overall responsibility for detecting, finding and 'PROCESSING' all sedition, treason and spying in both countries. The way it was reported since the treaty reactivated, that's an entire, autonomous level of hierarchy above where the military systems of our two nations used to top off. So, the JAG and DoJ were correct; they can't affect the outcome, nor even the process, of what's happening. You were speaking to the wrong department of the wrong agency. Talk to the CG's cabinet in Buffalo, but also contact SSM to start figuring out what kinds of legal support you can send Bill, don't wait after the bureaucrats to make decisions or act."

Lemmelien rubbed his chin pensively as he asked in low tones "Do you see any profit or results in challenging the existence of the CG and the Mid-Line Treaty of 1940, captain? At first glance, the thing is obviously neither legal nor constitutional, and the arrogant presumption of making a job posting into a hereditary title jut smacks of anti-Americanism and monarchism. It has been suggested that we could lead a judicial fight in SCOTUS against the very legitimacy of the treaty, derailing it's workings. Do you think this a plan worth investing in?"

Nathan didn't even look around the table before he replied blithely "No, Absolutely, and categorically, no, you don't want to go down that road. In the early 2000's that bloated buffoon Newt Gingrich was spouting about 'defunding' those circuits of the federal or supreme court that weren't leaning towards the right-side spectrum of politics and christian religiosity that have made him rich, politically influential, and a talk radio star. The very moment he started spewing that imbecilic word-vomit across the airwaves, all high-level members of the conservative movement who had jobs in government or law turned their backs on him and his barking followers, with accountants, teachers and doctors and thousands of business owners in the weeks and months after. The entire upper establishment of the Republican Party was forced to make a public sortie against his position, calling it nonsense, religious fanaticism, and an attempt at destroying the legal, and constitutional, order of the USA."

Bridger shook an imperative finger at the old men around him, leaning heavily into his arguments as he detailed them. "Remember! The way that the US and Canadian courts are set-up is written in the two countries' constitutions. That includes the OBLIGATION of means, methods and support from the elected officials in post and their career staffers, not just the low-rank bureaucrats beneath the decision makers. Nobody can 'defund' a court circuit anywhere! You could perhaps reduce the yearly budget, but how big a reduction before it affects even your own group, followers and supporters in a negative way? And let us not forget that you all proclaim to be members of the Party of Law & Order, the only ones to guarantee peace, stability and honesty in society. How much credibility will you lose, if you start cutting in the DoJ, JAG or other legal branches? How many of those followers would leave you for other, more reliably honest leaders? As for the Mid-Line system, it has the same basic protections as the rest of the DoJ and JAG, but also the added layer that it was enacted by international treaty. I don't have the actual written texts, but, under normal circumstances, you can't change a treaty's functioning parts without having negotiated an accord with all signatory participants. Therefore, you have to factor the internal civilian, religious and military politics of Canada into your planning."

Master Werther asked "Neither government will revoke funding or legal powers from the system as it stands, mostly because of the way constitutional law and the treaty itself are written. That is the gist of your thoughts, captain?"

Bridger nodded as he sipped his coffee. "Yes. In gross outline, it is. Don't get me wrong, I abhor that piece of crap as much as you do! A damned pseudo-king sitting in a mountain castle while oppressing the people under the guns of a private army is exactly the sort of thing our ancestors fought against, to the point of founding America and waging war against England to be free. I have neither sympathy for the fools who created this aberration, nor any desire to support its unnatural existence further. But! The talks to craft the treaty were held in secret under the war protocols valid in 1940, which would never be permissible, or even allowed, nowadays in 2019. Add to this that the procedure for enacting the treaty in war time is far shorter than the regular civilian commercial deals where Congress can almost rewrite everything. And no, it wouldn't pass again, not in peace time as we are. However, historians will argue the very valid point that it was legal – at that time – to function as the governments of the day did. The US and Canadian courts will no doubt agree with that, as it is the fundamental concept of jurisprudence and 'In Starre Diem' followed by the supreme tribunals in both countries. You can prepare arguments to fight and block a renewal of the treaty easily enough, but you won't make either government or court system revoke it. Besides, you keep focusing on the US side of the problem, forgetting that Canada's population are far more on the middle or left of the philosophical spectrum than America. Their implication means that any calculations or plans you craft have almost triple the margin of error, and all plans depending purely on emotional, political or religious string-pulling will not go the way you want because they have far different sensibilities. Starting with the fact that the Canadian electorate is almost allergic to attack ads that target a specific individual unless there is an open judicial case against him. If you try to use the sorts of destructive, scorched-earth strength ads targeted onto a person the way it's done in the US, the Canadian population will move away from your cause out of sheer disgust at the methods used by the proponents of said cause."

Lemmelien declared "Then, we now have some holy light shining through this damned fog. We need to find and retain at least one legal & public relations firm in Canada, or all our valiant efforts will not give half of what we hope. At the same time, we need to prepare a delegation to visit the idiotic child in Buffalo. While I am loathe to admit it, I can see the wisdom of captain Bridger's reasoning."

General Simard declared softly "I don't think any of us truly expected to have a chance at repealing this treaty before it expires in 2040. We all have enough experience with the inertia and laziness of the lower bureaucracy, plus the cowardice of the elected pawns, to realize this fight would be a money pit that only the lawyers would profit from. My own legal advisers have foreseen that the courts of either country would take so much time to chew through the case that they wouldn't hand out a decision before the bloody thing expires. And, most probably that they would synchronize their work speed to insure that particular result, too."

Master Werther nodded blithely, growling out "Yes, that fits with my groups' experience with the courts in America and Canada. When a case hits both systems at the same time to obtain a joint decision, they tend to synchronize towards the slowest speed, then render thin, watered-down decisions that will pass the lowest common political denominator in both nations."

Captain Macy replied to Werther quickly "But let's not forget that it sometimes gives completely different views, as captain Bridger warned us. Remember the 'Citizens United' decision of SCOTUS that authorized the creation of PAC's and Super PAC's in the USA! In the same week, the Canadian supreme court ruled the exact opposite, forbidding ANY corporate political donations or involvement in the electoral processes of their country. You would be hard pressed to find more opposite decisions, but there are a few handfuls like that. Be careful, when approaching the Canadian courts, and even more when addressing their open population! They truly don't see the world we do."

Bishop Nadian made a grimace of disdain as he dropped the venomous, racially charged diatribe "And don't forget their primitive attachment to French language in multiple areas of the country, and a far closer emotional tie to France than England. If at least they valued a country like Germany or Poland, but no! They conspire with those libertine, communist french whores! Not only will we have to pay efforts and resources to manage the government of a foreign country, but we'll also have to pander basely to their tribal squabbles because they were never strong enough to impose English across the nation as the only tongue worth speaking. And then, we'll still have to deal with all the disparities between those France-inspired sectors versus those that speak and think like godly white people."

Cardinal Sunderland exclaimed crassly "America is truly the only true and pure child of God's creation on this Earth! Even the other countries colonized by white Europeans have scoffed at our hallowed civilization, preferring to devolve back into primitives. Worse yet, some openly adore The Beast in fell ceremonies none of us should be able to explain. There was a time, 200 years ago, whence all this crapulent beastliness would have been resolved at the point of a bayonet, trampled under the boots of good, faithful men of Jesus, as they crusaded through the hordes of savages and heathens. What a waste, we witness! What an utter Fall from the Grace of Heaven we live in this age of fools!"

Nathan cut in before the conclave of geriatric cruds could start in on their wallowing in self-pity and superiorist speeches to extoll their own virtuous proclivities. "You should all remember that reality doesn't care for what your philosophies and religious systems are. A gun is still a gun, no matter whose hands holds it. Think whatever you will of the morality and politics of your adversaries, but when you start believing that God on his invisible cloud will give you victory because you are holier than the other guy, or change reality to suit current needs, then you are treading a suicidal path. Victory comes from working for it, and paying the price in resources, man-hours, and sometimes in men's lives. But nobody has ever won a fight by sitting on his hands like a useless fool, waiting for the things above to decide some changes would be good. Either get in gear to work hard for your result, or get ready to order even more booze to drown your self-inflicted disappointment, when you realize nothing happened while you were too busy whining about the universe conspiring against your God, faith, creed and particular groupings. And I should know this, considering what the last five years of my life look like to most outsiders."

Standing up from his chair, Bridger adjusted his suit to remove the rumples a bit before speaking one last time. "If you truly are serious about hiring me as a project manager for this - Paper Crusade - you plan to wage against the USA and Canada, please don't. I have no interest in this. As I stated, I have never been religious, never racially motivated, and never minded towards entering elected politics. What you people want, in honest truth, isn't to repeal the treaty or have it disbanded. You all operate under the childish notion that some deity on a cloud will wiggle his fingers and all of humanity will see you as blessed above others so that -YOU- will become the Constable – Governor with all the nifty toys, hordes of armed men and obscenely unfettered powers to arrest and execute anyone at will. Not a single one of you wants a legal or political solution. All you have is a juvenile knee-jerk reflex of 'Why him and not me?' to go on. All your arguments can be resumed to babyish crying and tantrums because you aren't old enough to play with the toys the other kid has, no matter that his entire family worked for him to have those things in hand. Your entire thought process, if it can be called that much, is solely about your selfish, egotistic, prideful, religion-deluded pipe dream that you have a sky-daddy that put you above all others in the world. But, now that REALITY shows openly in public that that's not true, you can't accept it, and so, here we are. At a pity party for drunken old baby-boomer babies still booming in the throes of a collective tantrum."

Sneering at them all most magnificently, Nathan asked in a toxic voice "And do any of you truly think that anybody is stupid enough, or brain-dead enough, to not know that the first argument you would give any court of either country would be to keep the treaty in effect, but put some 'CHOSEN' man of holy mind and godly disposition on the throne? And whom amongst you doesn't already have plans in place to lobby for the job, or pay out bribes and push silent threats to get ahead in the race? I wasn't born yesterday, people, and neither were the judges and officials in either nation. All you're about is shite of the most lurid, stinking kind. And it shows. Good day. Don't call me again."

Nathan left the back room and pub silently, never looking back. HE went to his hotel to spend the rest of the day peacefully napping, watching TV or eating at the in-house restaurant. He took his small private Cessna plane back to Florida in the Sunday afternoon when the weather was clear enough to fly safely. He stayed in New Cape Quest for a day to run errands and meet his lawyer to adjust his affairs, then on Monday morning returned to his island. No one heard from him after that.

Lighting the powder train

(SeaQuest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 13:45pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 10:45am

The Briary

Northern California, USA

Lucas sat in the comfortable sofa near the decorative cast iron stove that lit and warmed the CG's cabinet car when electricity was out. Or, like today, when the main boss wanted something that calmed his nerves, aiding him into a meditative peace as he read through a mountain of reports on a tablet.

The reactivation of a treaty that had been inactive for nigh on 70 years was not a painless process by any stretch of the imagination. Even a copious morning tea snack only took some of the edge off the stress and misery of so much paperwork. Despite that it was mostly digitized and he could use the neural interface to process most of the admin, the sheer drabness and mind crushing weigh of the job couldn't be changed or avoided.

Raphael Chadderton walked up to his employer to refresh his coffee then take away the soiled dishes back to the small butler's pantry to be washed. Lenny Herschel had accompanied Lucas through his tea for a conversation about Wise H&T lands, properties and activities in Sault-Sainte-Marie citadel which the teenager had never fully toured to date. They would be having that tour much later in the year, once things calmed down around Washington DC and Ottawa's governments. The old driver had been a good conversationalist but he had to leave so Lucas could concentrate on his admin again.

That was the worse problem of this position; the isolation and loneliness.

No matter how many people worked around him, he was so occupied, and had so many hats to wear, that he couldn't afford to grant any activity or person more than a handful of minutes at a time. This was shaping up to be a glass tank; a cushy space surrounded by invisible walls that would always keep him from having any truly meaningful relationship since nobody would ever get close again.

The price of POWER.

Why did so many fools rush to war for power, again? Upon just a few measly days of having it, Lucas could tell that it was the worst, most useless job he'd ever had in his life, especially given what was left of his personal life at this point. He couldn't even see himself married with kids anymore. Which was a bad thing since he still could envision having a family, despite having been assaulted in the Stanford brownstone a week ago.

Rubbing his temples with both indexes, the teenager took a deep inhale to steady his mind. He was in a maudlin mood due to the bloodshed from this morning, nothing else. The damage to his skull and cortex were healing just fine. He even had the blue crystal inlays in his bones to prove it.

A militiaman wearing an officer's badge on his chest walked into the Constable – General's cabinet car to address Lucas directly so that no electronic traces of the message would remain to be used in court as evidence. The CG's posting had many exceptions & prerogatives attached to it, but many would try to bypass them, or else keep the files in reserve until the 2040 deadline after which they would sue the life out of their boss for political profit. And the man thought his boss was too important, too honest to get short-changed like that by a pack of cowardly Washington vultures who would never have the courage to do one tenth of what he did, or would soon do.

"Sir. We have finished positioning Shay Mosley in the carceral wagon. She's in her cell. She already watched the recording you made for her. She'll be dismounting at the appointed time, even if she doesn't know it was scheduled for her by our good services."

Nodding absently, the genial adolescent confirmed his will; "Let her run away. Put up a fight, but just enough to make her earn it. Make certain that none of our people get killed or injured by this rabid bitch. She can die, I'll just replace her with another mule. Our men, they aren't that easily changed."

Giving a nasty smirk in return, the officer replied "Don't worry about it, sir. We made certain that the guys on guard duty in the prison wagon were all from the 'disposal' list of people who should never have been hired by WAC's in the first place. Not a single one of them would be missed if they died."

Smiling in satisfaction, Lucas wrapped his knuckles on the side of the tablet he was reading from, giving the older male a nod of acceptance. They had a couple of hundred criminals and traitors inside their ranks that needed culling. Sacrificing a few in a set-up to make Mosley's escape look genuine was a good expenditure of cheap resources that really should be classified as trash rather than people.

Looking towards a brighter future

(MacGyver – 1985 opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 15:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 12:00am (noon)

DXS Headquarters

Los Angeles, California, USA

Angus sat at his workstation, plumbing the depths of an equation that had been stumping him for several weeks now, relating to an unstable biological compound that was being used as street drug by gangs of juveniles in the greater LA zone. To this date, nobody in LAPD, CST, FBI or NCIS, had been able to identify the compound, its origins or its actual regular usage.

The first problem was that the short-lived but highly addictive psychoactive effects systematically pushed users towards willing over-dose to reach the best and longest high possible. It was almost as if this produce had been designed specifically to make people crash down back into reality extra-hard so as to motivate them to take a bigger dose to make the high last longer, even if they knew that they were killing themselves.

The second problem was that the very nature of the molecule made it toxic for liver & kidneys from the first dose. Lab mice exposed to a single 'normal fix' of the compound showed immediate lessening of organic functions between 4% and 6% of their standard baselines. Mice given 10 doses showed signs of irreversible damages to liver & kidneys, usually dying off inside 28 days after the tenth application.

MacGyver roughly ran a hand through his blond hair in frustration. The more he looked at the thing, the more he was convinced it was in fact a slow-speed, non-epidemic bio-weapon willingly designed to target any organic creature more mobile and aware than plant-life. The goal was to make the beings eat enough of the stuff to poison them to death, and making it addictive was simply a cheap way to insure the victims did all the legwork of finding & eating their doom by themselves, without any pushing.

Somebody was attacking the the population of Los Angeles, right under their noses, but he knew in advance that nobody in the state's capital nor in DC would do anything to stop it. After all, the only people being targeted were poor, less educated, most weren't white, and a lot were actually criminals being sought by the Law or illegal immigrants living invisibly. Not at all the categories of people the government usually cared about keeping alive and happy. As he sat silently in brooding depression yet again, the lab door opened to let in Wilt and Riley who were now on their lunch break.

Accosting him quickly, Bozer asked worriedly "Hey, man! You OK?" Putting a concerned hand on his friend's arm to give him a squeeze of emotional support, the black man became even more worried when the techie stayed firmly entrenched inside his cloud of despair.

Spotting her friend's glass of water sitting unattended on the table, Riley decided to be a bit more direct. She dipped her fingertips in the tepid water then flicked a few droplets at his face, causing an immediate reaction.

Mac startled, blinking his green eyes several times in surprise when he felt rain drops hit his face. Since he was still inside the laboratory and no rain was forecast for the day, that double nonsense forcibly ejected him from his bubble of depression to address whatever weirdness was happening around him.

'Hey, Mac? Are you with us now?" Wilt asked, holding his friend loosely with both hands to make certain he didn't fall off his stool, as occasionally happened when he was 'woken' from deep thought like just now.

Luckily, the 27 year old didn't jolt too much; just a mild 'eh?' while looking to the ceiling for the source of the sudden precipitation that shouldn't be falling on him. The relieved laughter from his two friends redirected his attention horizontally, making him give them a sheepish look when he realized what had happened to drag him out of his funk.

"Sorry, but it was just too tempting to resist." Riley apologized not-so-much to her friend, making him glower mildly in response of her amusement at his expense. Not that he had a whole lot to complain about, since he had pulled similar jokes on her in the two years they knew each other.

Shrugging off the laughing Bozer who was now trying to side-hug him to death just for the fun of it, Angus got up from his perch to remove the lab coat, latex gloves and plastic goggles that dangled around his neck by their lanyard so he could have his lunch at ease. The trio of friends walked out of the labs and down the stairs two floors to the general employee cafeteria. While all three had normally used the more posh executive cafeteria in the past, under Patricia Thornton's permission, neither thought that Mathilda Webber would be disposed to such largess towards them.

After getting their meal trays from the service counter, the colleagues chose a secluded table near the door to the public washrooms, at the back of the dining hall. While there was an occasional user, most employees preferred to use the more private washrooms located on their normal work floors as they had less traffic, thusly stayed cleaner than the fully public toilets here, so that made for much less possible interruptions to the friends' conversation. After they had eaten about half of their food, the young people got into the dark, heavy subject they needed to air out before anything else got decided.

"It's over for me at DXS," Angus spoke softly, worried that he would be overheard by employees seated at the other tables around them. "After what Webber did to me this morning, to all three of us, I know that I can't work in this organization anymore. She left me no dignity in front of the whole crew, let alone any credibility. A few words more and she would have people thinking that Thornton hired me as a damned he-whore instead of the high-caliber scientist I really am."

Riley delicately speared some veggies with her fork for a bite before commenting "Not to mention that she's got the manners of a rampaging stampede of wild horses, and her mind's always in the gutter. When Thornton was boss, she clearly had people skills and manners fit for the director of an Agency like the DXS. Webber really does deserve to be called 'Matty the Hun' considering she acts like a savage at the best of times." The young hacker still remembered full well the threats made right at her face by the violent, domineering new boss, and in public to boot.

Wilt was finishing the rest of his coleslaw with vigor, needing the tangy taste of vinegar to balance out the stress-induced acid roiling in his gut. A gulp of cold water later and he added his piece in the conversation. "I didn't have a really steady situation before Phoenix hired me, but I'm bloody well aware it was because of Mac that I got in. Thornton wanted to have all the loose ends together for when she let Murdoch clean up the lot. On my own, I would never have triggered her senses, and the Foundation wouldn't have given me a second look. So Mac, if you leave, I can't really stay behind. Not to mention that bros are supposed to stick together. It wouldn't be decent of me to hang on here when you're out in the unemployment line." Making a vague gesture with his left hand, the young man added as an afterthought "And Webber has it in for my guts. She thinks I'm pretty much useless for any job other than lugging baggage or kissing ass. Not much for me to look forward to, if I stay."

Snorting in her tea, Riley nodded in agreement with his evaluation while Mac made a face of disgust as he was reminded just how badly the director had treated a man that was essentially his brother in everything but blood. No, there wasn't anything left for either of them in this building, or the organization at large to be honest.

Angus declared coldly "Besides, we should all be realistic enough to know that the moment I walk out, Webber would pass her anger on both of you. She would then send you to a suicide mission that only my special set of skills could save you from, then she'd offer to let me back in to help. If I agree to serve strictly as overly agile muscle-man for the rest of my career, or until she gets 'moved', like to another posting or dead. I don't want to let you be used as bait or leverage against anybody, especially not me."

Bozer chewed his last wedge of spiced potatoes before agreeing aloud; "Yeah, she'd do that alright. So we'd better give our resignations together in block, or keep quiet until the whole mess settles down."

Davis countered tartly "Things will settle down when the Constable – Governor and the treaty that enact him are over with, in another twenty years. Until then, all the bigwigs will be stressing. Nothing any of us can do about it."

Suddenly, Angus dropped his cup of coffee back on the table with a dull 'thud' as he turned large, oddly luminous eyes towards the hacker of the team. "Ri, you're a genius! The best way to get out from Webber's hands, be safe from any retaliation or blackmail, and have decent jobs is exactly that! We use my plan but without the part about passing info back to DXS or anybody else." The young man went back to eating his cold meal with renewed vigor as the plan took shape in his mind, driving him on with excitement at the prospect of a clear way out of their shared misery.

Wilt dropped his utensils on his tray, waving both hands in front of him as he exclaimed in low voice to avoid attracting attention from the rest of the employees. "Wait a minute! Is the plan we're talking about the one I think we are? Cuz I'd like some confirmation, if you don't mind. Cuz if it is the same plan, then I want it known just how crazy it is, and that I have reservations about the whole thing." He finished by crossing his arms over his chest, glaring as best he could at his best friend, disapproval evident in every part of his being.

MacGyver waved his worries away silently as he chewed his food, but quite enthusiastically. Way too happily in fact, for such a dangerous plan. The green-eyed genius swallowed before countering his friend's apprehensions; "Wolenczak is dangerous, I give you that. He made no qualms about driving that train around the USA like he owned the entire continent, and he fought off people with chemical weapons better left out of any hands, including ours. BUT! Unlike some people we could mention from recent acquaintance, he isn't a bloody savage that rampages all over the lives of everybody he touches."

Riley glared at the blond male, wondering where in tarnation he took his notion from. "Eh, Hello? Earth to MacGyver!" she put in unhappily. "What do you say about how he outed your cover to those town cops and feds, back at the Stanford hospital? He pretty much burned out your job! If that isn't rampaging around your life, then what is?"

Mac chewed on the remains of his sandwich thoughtfully before answering "A courtesy warning to an agent in a sister agency, working for the same goals of law-keeping and societal peace. We three all know that any director other than Webber would have seen it as such, and never taken it out on their agent's career, personality or health like the rabid bitch did to me this morning. Do you see Leon Vance or Henrietta Lange treating their agents this way, inside NCIS? Or the FBI? Or any police force you ever visited or worked with?"

The scientist shook his head firmly, confirming his plan as he did. "No. I think that the best option either of us have for a clean break from DXS is to go over at the Mid-Line organization, for as long as we can manage it. Given we've met the boss already, getting an interview should be easy enough. Getting hired for a good situation, that'll take some doing, I'll grant you that."

Now it was Bozer who had a comeback on that; "Maybe not. We all have some pretty mean skills to offer, and experience in a pretty wide field to boot. My real worry is that he knows us, he knows who we worked for, what we did, and that our last big job was spying on him for unstated reasons. And I do mean unstated cuz we were never told -why- exactly we had to spy on this kid to begin with. But, my reservation is that any normal person would be unhappy with being spied on, and a guy that just found out he has a private army to do what he orders could use that to make us understand just how much he was unhappy about our spying on him. So if we go knock on his door, offering our services, well, we might be doing like the fly that asks the spider if it can come in for dinner. And like the story, we'd be the main course in his web."

MacGyver made a face as he analyzed what his friend had said, because he really couldn't fault his reasoning. Unfortunately, their common situation wouldn't change anytime soon. Chewing the last few chips off his plate, Mac replied carefully to Bozer's fears. "What you say is true. However, it will be true of almost any person or company we try to get hired by because Webber will no doubt use her connections to blacklist us in the intel community, and the military contractors too. Getting jobs in the army vehicle builders or some Think Tank around Washington's orbit is no longer possible. Wolenczak has hundreds of different jobs inside his CG posting, but also hundreds more inside Wise Apothecary, that we can look at to see where we match best. Plus, he won't bend to Webber's temper since she's his nominal subordinate. She would bend to his will, not the usual free rampage for Matty The Hun."

Riley smirked nastily in her cup of tea as she contemplated that little nugget of good news while Bozer rubbed his goatee pensively, as his left hand toyed idly with his empty styrofoam cup. Both young adults remained silent for several minutes as they thought through what such a move as suggested by Angus could mean for their lives.

The clock was nearing 13:00pm when they needed to go back to their posts when their phones rang at the same time, blaring Matty's ringtone together. The woman had insisted that everybody use the same tone to indicate it was their boss calling for the spy side of the business, so that nobody try to let voicemail filter her at the back of the list. All three had received an urgent SMS that said to get to the ground floor at the closed oversight salon for an emergency update. All other jobs were set on the back-burner for the near future.

{ SQ } - { Prodigal father } - { SQ }

Eastern America; 16:06pm

Western America; 13:06pm

The three agents entered the private command lounge, closing & locking the door behind them as they were indicated to do by Mathilda who was busy at yanking a bottle of hard, cheap bourbon out of some drawer nobody ever saw opened until now. She used a small combat knife pulled from her right sleeve to strip off the aluminum foil wrapper on the bottle's neck, then used her teeth to pull out the rubber stopper that plugged the container. After spitting the plug on the serving counter and dumping the torn wrap next to it, she poured the smelly liquid in five porcelain mugs normally used for coffee. Clanging the bottle down on the hard wood serving counter, she grabbed her own mug while angrily pointing her employees at theirs.

Without further ado, Matty retreated to safety at the back of the room where a folding desk was built into the wall units for when the manager on shift needed to complete physical paperwork during overwatch on a field mission. She took a second mug to hand over to somebody as passed by him on the way. It was when the woman moved in that direction that the younger people noticed that somebody was already in the salon with Webber, seated silently with their back turned to the door.

As the spies took their non-optional drinks the boss had so -generously- offered them, the seated figure took a small sip of his own libation before setting it on the low wooden table next to the swiveling sofa he occupied. The older man pivoted the chair to face the younger crowd, making Angus let out a gasp of mixed astonishment and denial as the untouched mug slipped from his nerveless hand to shatter on the rug-clad cement floor, spilling the odorous booze all over his shoes and pants legs.

The stranger was his long disappeared father, James MacGyver.

A man he hadn't seen or heard from in just over fifteen years at this point.

A man who had gone off the maps when his son was barely thirteen years old.

And here he was, drinking hard liquor with Mathilda Webber like they were old friends, from way back when, who'd stayed in contact while the wretched bastard ignored his wife and father, even when they both died one after the other.

Riley was clueless about who the man was, but Wilt had recognized his face after a few seconds of observation, so he moved to grab hold of Angus by his shoulders to help him center his emotions before he reacted badly. For his part, Angus could not process this information intellectually nor emotionally. His dad, who was thought dead, was standing right in front of him with a shiny white badge from the DXS that proclaimed clearly he had a security clearance that Angus himself didn't have. In fact, it looked like it was higher than what Thornton had, and what Webber currently had.

Taking in his son's constipated reaction to seeing him alive, James realized this reunion would turn out a lot worse than he had ever managed to plan for. He had been realistic enough to expect frustration and anger, lots of disappointment, and probably some disbelief at his reason for cutting the lines between them so thoroughly. The older man had however never realized the depth of emotional resentment his son would feel upon seeing his father alive inside the walls of his workplace. Plus, there seemed to be some sort of discomfort or friction between him and Matty. What was that about?

James got a part of his answer the bad way when Webber declared coldly "Sit down people! We'll go through this like professionals then plan what comes after." She took her own sofa near the unfolded desk, the gesture clearly indicating she expected her employees to follow suit. She was obviously shocked when all three barely spared her a glance before focusing everything on James, never moving from their places.

Features cold and closed off as he was trying to repress all his turbulent emotions inside himself, Angus asked harshly "Is there a particular reason that I'm learning you're alive today? Some anniversary or deadline that I forgot to put in my calendar? And why the fuck am I living this situation inside the DXS HQ? You couldn't have chosen a diner, or come ring the doorbell at home? I still live in grandpa's old house, at the same address as I did for the last thirteen years!" Biting his words angrily, the young scientist added "Why now? Why here? Why with her, of all the blasted people you could choose?"

James blinked slowly as he took in the entire body language of his adult son; face pale, eyes squinted in anger and fists clenched tight, shaking with barely restrained rage. Looking at Wilt Bozer and Riley Davis, he saw that his son's friends were not in any better shape, and would offer him no support in making Angus see his side of events as the reasonable one.

Sighing deeply, James spoke in clipped words, trying an emotional manipulation to obtain control over the situation so he could guide Angus to the desired outcome, just as he had done silently from behind the scenes for the last 15 years. "I wasn't aware that your mother and grand-father had raised you this way, with such laxism. The deplorable display of lacking self-control when you saw me can be excused as a one-off due to the improbability of events, but not the rest. Your superiors have told you to sit and listen to your new orders, not lead a posse to rebel against the DXS."

The moment the last words were out of his mouth, James realized how badly he had overreached. Riley gazed at him as if he were a hobo panhandling on the sidewalk besides her bus stop, while Wilt suddenly seemed to loom over Angus' shoulder, going from stunned bystander to protective sibling in a blink. But that was just the best part of the mess. Angus himself seemed to become colder, more detached from the persons around him, as he straightened his stance opening his hands loosely in preparation for violence and close combat. James' rather basic attempt at pulling heart strings had just backfired right in his face. His son was 27, near 28 years old, not barely 18 and just signed into the army. The young man had seen through the pedantic manners and petty verbal thrashing just as easily as when he dealt with mercs and menial tyrants in Africa.

The green-eyed genius never looked elsewhere than his father's eyes while he asked aloud "Director Webber, who is this man? What rank does he have inside the DXS? He claims to be my superior but hasn't shown any credentials or passed any validation process that I know of."

The short woman made a face in her turn as she tried to digest the problems happening all at once around her. The small family was falling apart before it was even together, her agents were on the brink of all-out war against her, and the bloody Constable – Governor wanted answers to his multiple requests before supper hour on LA's clock. Gathering her wits, Mathilda declared crisply "This is James MacGyver, and he is in fact Angus' father. He was never lost, nor disappeared, nor kidnapped; he simply went dark as demanded by his position in the Agency. He had several long-term undercover assignments lined up in a row that allowed no return home for several years, so it was judged better to make him 'vanish' from circulation to avoid questions. This also had the benefit of allowing his relatives and friends to grieve and move on with their lives. No, it wasn't my choice, and I didn't agree with it, but I was a low-level subordinate at the time, so my opinion didn't really matter."

The moment she spoke the sentence, Matty knew she'd lit a fuse that would lead nowhere good. The change of face and stance on Angus and Wilt were clear indicators nothing positive would happen from what she revealed next, and Riley simply mirrored them out of habit.

"The DXS works like all other US agencies in the Intel apparatus, through classified levels and lateral compartments to keep leaks or betrayals to a minimum. What you never had the right to know, but now have an obvious necessity to know, is that James has been in the employ of DXS for over 23 years, and nearly 11 years at the CIA before that. He actually helped to found the Department of External Services, and as such bears the rank of 'Oversight' as leader of the entire DXS. He is the 'deep dark' boss of the spies and black ops, while I am the 'chief director' or publicly presentable façade who handles most of the human resources, legitimate tech research & financing done through The Phoenix Foundation. Most of the time that I assign a mission to an agent or team, I'm simply passing along the choices and decisions that were made by James in the pursuit of the USA's greater interests. It was the same way with Patricia Thornton, though she never met him in person, and never knew who Oversight actually was besides being her boss."

Riley took the mug of bourbon from Bozer's unresponsive hand to go put it with hers on the counter so they could have free movement when – not if – things went bad between Mac and James. Angus glared at the seated woman with pure contempt etched on his features for a second before he schooled his expression back into the style of coldly detached 'game face' needed when dealing with enemy combatants during an interrogation. Her and James were not friendlies, not anymore, not by a long shot.

Swallowing passed a hard lump in his throat, Angus focused the full force of his green gaze on his supposed boss to ask her in deceptively calm tones: "Are you telling me that you knew who he was and what job he had, even when Thornton didn't? Since when do you two know each other? How long have you been working together behind the scenes?"

"Quiet James!" Matty ordered firmly with a raised hand, interrupting whatever ill-thought intervention the older male was about to do. She always had much better social skills and interpersonal talents than him, so she could see much better than him how much pain, betrayal and anger Angus was trying to contain. Unfortunately for all of them, she could tell that his tolerance limit was already passed well beyond any recovery. "These questions are legitimate," the female director told her superior, "and no amount of protocols, compartments or classification rules can change the necessity to give answers."

Focusing on the viridian glare that was subconsciously trying to browbeat her into submission, Matty explained "James is older than me by about a decade. He was in the CIA when I joined the Company straight out of college. HE was my recruiter and mentor during my formation in the trade. Later, when he was chosen to be the leader of the newly founded DXS, I was selected to be the contact point for both agencies, as well as liaising with NSA and, passed 2002, the DHS. When James needed to recruit somebody, he had DXS perform a preliminary audit then asked me to perform a validation audit to make certain nothing passed through the cracks. I have known him, and worked with him, for nearly 28 years. I met him the year you were born, and was the sixth person you saw in this life, after the doctor and nurse, your mother, James, and his father. I have silently watched over your childhood home, audited your teachers in primary and secondary school, ordered audits on your university teachers and roommates, ordered background checks on the EOD members you worked with, and commanded the then director of DXS Patricia Thornton to recruit you for the public side, the Foundation. She bypassed my orders to bring you into the dark compartments of DXS, despite knowing full well that your psych profile of the time indicated it would be a bad decision.

Matty interrupted her speech to take a long swig of her bourbon, draining the mug in one pull. She placed the empty vessel on the wooden desk, then joining her hands on her lap. She continued her answer in subdued but firm, convinced tones. "At each step of the way, I kept James informed then followed his decisions for your welfare, education and improvement as a person. I visited the hospital when you had your tonsils removed at age 9. I went again when you had that scooter accident at age 14, and made certain that idiot pothead who drove his car into you was put in jail for it. I helped your grand-father arrange your mother's funeral by presenting myself as a social worker sent by the county to watch over her underage son's welfare. I then helped to arrange his own funeral and the transfer of the house when he passed in his turn. The small heritage of money, new tools and city permits to make renovations on the old place to your heart's content were my own choice, without any input from James. Your granddad wanted to do something similar, but never had the money loose for it. I assigned a few newbie agents to modify the testament, create a fake trust fund out of some slush funds stolen from a drug cartel that had just been bombed by James during his current mission, and made it all look like a story back-stopping exercise for the noobs. They got training, the agencies got peace of mind that Oversight's son was safe, and you got a house clear of debts, tools, and permits from the city to renovate the place any way you wanted to make it modern, homey and safe.

Making a face of genuine worry and emotional distress, Matty finished softly "I have, and always will, make every effort that I am able to insure you are safe. I never had much of a life. I tried, but he was taken away from me too early. I never tried again. I have no children of my own, so all my best efforts, my deepest feelings, all went into making the safest, best life I could for you."

With a coldness that could freeze the arctic anew, Angus swept her tender feelings aside. "Really? You stalked me from the depths of darkness and call that concern? Friendly care? Mothering, even? What then would you call what you did to me down in the overwatch hall, this morning? Because between saying I was an immature fool, a bumbling child, an uncontrolled blond bimbo, a loose cannon, Thornton's plaything because that's the only reason she'd really hire me, an amateur nerd rather than an actually capable scientist, Thornton's disposable messenger-boy for suicide jobs, a dumb he-whore and an incompetent, unaware, self-pimping slut who doesn't really know how to do it right..."

Angus closed his mouth shut as hard and audibly as a bear trap clamping onto an animal's leg, leaving no illusions that there was plenty more vitriol where that came from. Taking a deep inhale through the nose, the young man focused his deathly green glare on the older woman, not knowing her, and not sure he wanted to make any effort to get acquainted at all. "Well then, shadow-walker, you can see that I have problems taking your sudden revelations of pseudo-parental emoting at face value. Or with any value at all, to be honest. You claim to have spent 28 years behind my back, pulling strings on me as if I were a damned puppet, and all in the name of love and care? Who the fuck do you think would ever be daft enough to believe that word vomit? You say stuff like the sect gurus we're sent out to neutralize every other month! What next? Are you going to say that having me beaten and drugged into a stupor is to 'remove my physical blinders to bring me closer to God' like the depraved bastards from last year? What kind of a fucking nut-house are you people running, here, anyways?"

Matty clenched her hands in her lap, trying hard to control the surge of painful, depressive emotions that were coursing through her veins as she heard Angus decry her invisible presence in his life, now that he was made aware of it. Without thinking about it, she answered his complaints by reflex. "When you spend enough time in the shadows as we have, you get to understand what 'undercover' and 'silent watch' really mean. Unlike what is portrayed in the movies, real agents NEVER talk about black ops, or silent details. When you're assigned to watch a family from a distance, you do it quietly, invisibly, or you move on to another assignment where you aren't emotionally compromised. Even so, there were plenty of moments in your life that I crossed that line, because I could see that your father's choices were costing your mother and you when it shouldn't have touched you at all."

Making a face of pure self-loathing, Matty then addressed what happened this morning. "I have to apologize for the way I behaved towards all three of you today. I have been in charge of the DXS for only a few weeks, because I was moved from the CIA in a rush to fill the vacuum left by the treason and sacking of Patricia Thornton. Now, I haven't had the time to really know each of you professionally for me to cast negative judgments on you like that, but..."

Snort! "Who do you think you're lying to here, bitch?" Angus cut in angrily, injecting as much of his rancor as he could in the poisonous words. "You don't know us enough to judge? Since you kept skulking away in the night from miles away, you mean? Or was it that those pretty little moments of motherliness you spewed about a minute ago were all fake? You just finished buttering me up about spending nearly three decades hidden in my shadow because I was so important to you, and vetting absolutely everybody that I studied, worked or lived with, and NOW, after all that, you say you can't judge me? That you don't know us enough to have an opinion? Just how stupid, deaf and dumb do you think I am? Either you were OR you weren't watching that closely! You can't expect me to simply swallow that load of demented crack with a smile just cuz you're the one that said it!"

Mathilda Webber sat in mind-numbing stupor as she saw nearly a quarter of all her work, efforts and personal emotions for the last 28 years of her life collapse into flaming wreckage before her eyes. The young man she had invested so many thousand hours of feelings, intent, willpower and genuine affection was practically on the verge of pulling a gun to her face and calling her an enemy agent inside her own command salon. Not seeing any alternatives anymore, she went against every last instinct she had learned as a CIA operative in the last three decades and spilled out the raw truth. All of it.

"What happened this morning is not in any way contrary to what I have felt, or done, for you since the first day I laid eyes on you those 28 years ago." The woman's face took on a melancholic mien as she gazed at his face, her eyes glazing over as she saw the past more than the present. "I have always cared for your life, health and welfare, even when I could never show it openly. Since I could never meet you face-to-face until a few weeks ago, I am still not fully adjusted to dealing with you directly, without the distance, intermediaries and obscure minutiae of agencies between us. I really needed more time to get accustomed to you before we had this out."

Shaking her head despondently, the older woman focused her black eyes on the younger agent again, wondering if there would ever be a way to rebuild what was broken today. Sighing sadly, she tried to explain what happened this morning; "The first thing I should do is apologize to you properly. You didn't do anything wrong that warranted the kind of public tongue-lashing I made you endure. In fact, the analysis of Lucas Wolenczak's psych profile and social isolation you instinctively latched on to took several days for the professional profilers back at the Company to conclude. Your gut feelings about people always were better than James, even from a young age. And that's the worse of the situation, you see. The CIA team's recommendation is an exact mirror to what you said; find a younger person who could be in a long-term friendship situation with the CG without any expectations of sex coming into it at any time to avoid causing problems in the roles the relation establishes."

Angus stood gape-mouthed for a few seconds before he crossed his arms over his chest, studiously not looking closely at James who seemed to be straining under his own angry outrage at the way his son was treating his old friend. Matty kept gesturing at the older male to stay seated and quiet until she had hashed out her part of the mess, because if she didn't do it now, it would explode later at the worse possible moment. The young adult peered deeply into the worn out female agent's eyes, seeing that there was a founding of honesty, but too many things weren't adding up.

Speaking through gritting teeth, Angus asked slowly so as to not fly off on a rant, "If you cared that much, and were aware that my take on the mission's next phase was good, why did you deny it? Why did you say it was the dumbest idea you ever heard? That without the honey-pot trick included, it would amount to nothing? Why did you insult me out like that? And in front of everybody? In a room full of cameras, to boot?"

Matty leaned backwards into the backrest of her sofa, closing her eyes for a second before concentrating her gaze on the young man who meant so much to her. "Because I was cleaning up the traitor's counter-intelligence maneuvers. We still haven't managed to make her spill her plans or what the end-game is, but we do know it involved James and you directly. The easiest and fastest way to counteract the enemy's plans was to go back to our own schedule, which meant you should NEVER have been involved in the DXS, only the legitimate Phoenix Foundation R&D work. I had a choice to make this morning; keep you in the field as a spy with all the dangers, or put you in the lab where you should have been ensconced safely, concentrated on researching ways to ameliorate humanity. For me, after all those years of prioritizing your life, health and welfare, in that order, it was an instinctual choice. I never stopped or slowed enough to think of another outcome, because none of the options could produce what we desired as result; you safe & sound, away from imminent harm."

Angus actually took a step backwards, right into the upraised hands of Wilt and Riley who held him from behind to support him. The unconscious movement was a clear indicator the young man had finally reached the point where his mind could no longer process the emotional charge of the input. Closing his eyes, Angus took several deep, labored breaths, trying to recenter his mind before he said or did something that passed all the behavioral limits he had set for himself as an agent. He was a spy, he had to fight and sometimes kill or inflict pain to accomplish his missions, or just come out alive, but there were a few fixed lines he would not cross, like using children as bait/leverage, or raping the suspect to break their resistance. Right now, with the people in front of him, with the circumstances that had brought all of them together, he was getting too close to his limits to be safe anymore.

"I'm leaving the building. I don't care for your opinion of it." the young man declared through gritted teeth, his eyes still closed and his fists tightly clenched at his sides. "I have no idea when I'm coming back, or even if I ever will. At this point, all I can say is that my survival necessitates a radical change in the fundamental paradigms of my job and life."

Opening his green eyes to level a blistering glare at Webber while studiously ignoring James at all, the spy spoke in unyielding words; "I can't handle you, your management style or your existence right now, so I'm gonna leave before you trigger a reflex I probably won't regret. But let me give you fair warning, Webber: my personal life is private. It's not a sideshow, and it's not a pet project for people lacking a life of their own. Stay away from my life, my job, my house and my friends, or you'll get to see first hand WHY exactly Patricia Thornton decided to put me in the DXS roster of field agents, instead of parking me in Phoenix's brain trust. There are four European dictators presently trying to rebuild their government apparatus following my passage in their homeland, this year." Making a cruel leer he had learned from his brief interaction with Murdoch, MacGyver threatened baldly "Dropping you in the same club of misfortunate fools that became my enemies wouldn't be much of an effort to realize."

Reacting on some long ago misplaced paternal instinct mixed with the reflex of protecting his field-mate under enemy fire, James bolted out of his chair to get into his son's face, to yell him down from his aggressive stance then back into submission towards his superiors as he should be.

James's amateurish attempt at parental violence and emotional abuse failed spectacularly.

By instinct borne of the many times he had to defend himself from bullies in school who always attacked from behind while he did his homework in the library or cafeteria. By instincts acquired painfully during bootcamp for the US Army. By instincts acquired through blood and tears during his EOD service in Afghanistan for three years. By reflexes trained and beaten into him during his missions for DXS that forced him to fight at night, in lightless rooms or blinded by injuries and chemicals thrown at his eyes. By the rage roiling in the pit of his gut for the last three hours due to what Webber had done to him. By that same rage exponentialized when he recognized James and heard why he was here, and to help who.

James jumped from his chair to yell at and browbeat his son into submission. Angus reacted by ramming the palm of his left hand into Mathilda Webber's forehead hard enough to feel pain shooting up his arm while his right hand sped upwards at ramming speed, impacting James' throat like a war galley, his fingers wrapping around the Adam's apple and windpipe in one swift, automatic move he had practiced hundreds of times.

Matty was thrown backwards into her sofa, the strength of the landing making the swiveling seat roll hard into the wooden built-in unit where she almost careened sideways to the floor if she hadn't managed to grab on to the desk to stay upright. The bruise already forming on her face, just above her nose, would be visible for quite a few days to come.

James fared far worse than his old service buddy, as his encounter with a flailing limb was far more brutal and direct. The arm that grabbed him was powered by defensive instincts yes, but also an ungodly amount of humiliation, betrayal, self-doubts, and pent-up rage hot enough to incinerate the building they were in. Without really trying or consciously meaning to, Angus squeezed his father's throat halfway shut as he lifted him one-handed off the floor by 7 full inches, the older man's feet weakly beating the air as awareness was rapidly evading him from lack of air to the brain.

James very nearly died from a combination of broken trachea and dislocated vertebrae in the space of the first two seconds his son's hand held on to his neck. After a full decade of heavy manual labor and fighting, Angus had developed quite the strong grip, and killer moves to match. The older man would owe his survival to Riley and Wilt who knew just how much Angus despised having to kill or harm anybody, even spies, terrorists and enemy combatants during missions. Being responsible for his estranged father's death, handicap or injuries would haunt him for the rest of his life, so his friends jumped in to catch his arm right after the grabbing movement was completed, making certain to speak softly in his ears as they gently touched his wrist and shoulder to guide him out of 'fight or flight' mode.

It took four nerve-wracking seconds for the two friends to help Angus recover from the combat induced spike of adrenaline and come down enough from hard-triggered defensive instincts to let his father go free from his death grip. The two young adults were incredibly relieved to see their friend finally snap out of it sufficiently to recover his self-control.

James dropped back to the floor and kept his footing by a miracle of willpower, swaying dangerously on nerveless legs that threatened to let him drop at any moment. He instinctively backed away from his son in a panic, genuinely scared for his life, having never even considered that his son could have a negative reaction to his return. He also never computed how his son, who was now 27 years old, would react to getting yelled at and threatened by his father. This was a trained soldier, not a scared teenager, and the younger man's reactions matched the reality that James had never truly looked at since he left his family to concentrate on his undercover missions. Including the repressed emotions, acquired reflexes, and latent PTSD that was never fully diagnosed, despite the numerous times Angus was kidnapped, tortured, and had to watch friends killed in front of him because somebody wanted to reach him but they were in the murderer's way.

Yeah, James miscalculated his move by a pretty damn wide margin.

Which resulted in the older male eventually falling backwards to the carpeted floor, almost knocking himself out on the hard wood table and swivel sofa behind him as he went down unaided. And once he was laid out flat on his back, nobody made any moves to help him or even inquire to his health.

Angus glared malevolently at both older agents silently, taking his time at regulating his breathing since he needed to be in full control of his faculties for the rest of the meeting, short as it would be. Making very slow gestures, he unclipped the DXS badge from his belt to drop it on the low coffee table before saying anything. Without any form of communications between them, Wilt and Riley did the same thing, making Matty Webber's eyes go wide at the significance of the act.

Swallowing passed the lump in his throat, Angus declared "I am leaving. The DXS and Phoenix. I'm leaving both, effective immediately. You can forward the paperwork by courier to my house. You'll get it back the same way. Be advised that if you try to blackmail, blacklist, blackball or otherwise hamper any of us three in our search for jobs, lodging or adding to our families, I will in fact give you that demonstration of what I did to those tyrants in Europe. Inside your own house. Inside your own living space, so that you learn to leave ours alone. Understood?"

Matty could barely keep from crying at the overwhelming feeling of loss she was experiencing, let alone spend the energy to keep her hands from shaking visibly as the stress and combat reflexes were slowly abating. She didn't make any move to help James because she honestly thought he deserved some time on the floor to knock some of the stupidity out of his thick head. Being absent for 15 years meant he had precious little right to say anything about his son's job or life decisions, something he should clearly have realized -before- he opened his big mouth to try and force Angus into anything he didn't want to do. Plus, given the young man's well earned reputation for being hard-headed and allergic to being bossed around, including by his nominal superiors, you'd think a damned genius like James would have known better than to try threats and emotional manipulations on him.

Making an effort to sit herself straight in her sofa despite that the world was spinning in five different directions all at once from the blow she took to the head, Matty tried to answer in a reasonable voice so that the mess didn't devolve any worse than it had. "We understand your decision. At least, I do. Like I said, James never had the best social skills or interpersonal instincts in the team. He'll get it, at some point, when his man-pride doesn't hurt anymore."

Passing a weary hand over the painful bruise on her forehead, Matty asked softly "Could you all keep your credentials until Monday evening? There's something coming down the pipe that could potentially accommodate all of us without you needing to abandon your careers, or the service. I just need a few days to verify what is needed exactly, then I'll send a written proposal to your house. No obligations, and no threats, just an option that's not finished establishing itself yet. Please?" she asked with sad eyes and an aura of defeat surrounding her.

Silently, the three agents retook their badges as they filed out of the overwatch salon in deathly silence, never once looking back to see if either of the senior spies were okay.

Matty pushed a button on the conference phone to call for a paramedic to evaluate James and herself as she was feeling woozy, and the bloody room wouldn't stop spinning, even while sitting. Damn but the kid had a hard hand!

An agreement of knaves

(The Star-Spangled Banner – instrumental)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 16:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 13:00pm

The White House, SCIF

Washington DC, USA

President Trump sat alone in the SCIF chamber that was built deep beneath the publicly accessible levels of the White House, fiddling with his red neck tie as he was wont to do when he was immersed in deep thoughts. And the thoughts he was processing were deep and dark indeed.

Doctor Franklin Henry Wise was still alive, most probably still to this day despite being unseen, and most certainly because he was using a variant of his alien serum. Obama's short note hadn't specified that he saw aggressivity or instability when the man imposed himself upon the Oval Office, nor how he managed to pass through all the layers of security to do this.

Aliens from off world...

Humanity's biological and mental potential unlocking, paving the way to the stars...

At what risks?

At what costs?

Sighing in relief, Trump was happy to see the blinking green light on the ultra simplified console signify that his interlocutor at the other end was ready and able to link up for their call. He pushed the appropriate button to accept the incoming connection then typed in his POTUS code to authorize the outgoing part of the link. Onscreen appeared the face of Justin Trudeau, clean shaven and coiffed as usual, but looking haggard and worn out mentally, despite the vibrant colors of his blue 3-piece suit.

"Justin, we have ourselves a pickle" Trump started immediately, without any platitudes or beginning moves. He could see the other man was in a position of weakness, and probably wanted to keep everything silent far more than he did. His own voting base and financiers would probably pay him bonuses to expose the 'Book of Secrets' in public, thus motivating greater popular support for 2020, whereas Trudeau wanted this kept quiet so it could die an ignominious death in the dark night. The advantages were his, and he'd exploit them, as always. Or maybe not, if the changes in the younger man's features were an indication.

"Not today, Donald. This isn't a new condo tower project, it's the future of humanity at stake. I don't play by the same rules when those are the chips on the table."

Taking a second to drink some hot tea from a cheap porcelain mug, Trudeau began to try to impose his own views, methods and timing on the conversation in a way he had never done with Trump or his emissaries before. Then again, the man had managed to get elected as prime minister of a country with 55 million people in it; he probably did have a few negotiation skills and political acumen to justify it.

"I don't know what you found in your presidential archives in the brief time we had to prepare this meeting, but I have extensive paperwork from the classified PM's wartime & military files, plus several large boxes of other stuff from my father's time in office. I also have people in the Justice Ministry digging up all the court and bureaucratic proceedings, arbitration's, appeals and condemnations that WAC's has on record too. No matter what you think you know, no matter what your predecessors told you about F. H. Wise and his family, this tumor cannot be allowed to grow unto fruition. There's no money or profit to be had, there's no big shiny deal to be made with these people, Donald, only pain and disease and misery. So whatever thoughts you had about appeasing them with a renewed Treaty or tweaking some little regs and laws, forget it. You'll only be pouring poison in the drinking water of your nation's wells if you try that."

Leaning deeply into the plush backrest of the swiveling chair, Trump looked over the close-set features of his counterpart, seeing true steel and willpower for the first time since he met him in an official capacity. The younger male was clearly motivated to get his way on this, but also obviously not in the mood to let anybody have any opinion different from his try to sway his viewpoint. Just how much of this was from family loyalty or cold hard facts was yet to be determined.

"Okay, Justin. But I'll be just as blunt with you. I went to read the 'Book of Secrets' today. In it was a thick folder with a severely chosen abstract of what Doctor Wise offered, in payment for the Mid-Line Treaty to be enacted. It also says that the US government's own men determined the product's basal ingredients to be originated from off planet. But not just the minerals, the organic parts too. So it brings to the table the fact that we now have positive proof of living aliens outside of Earth that came to us at some point, and Wise found them. Whether they were alive, dead or just a ruined ship, nobody knows that because the old guy certainly never said. But that's the kicker, isn't? We have proof of alien life since the late 1930's, and everybody in the Great Alliance of WW-II sat on it, even once peace was established. I wonder how the world would react to this, and our voting basins specifically? You do know that a great deal of the tin-foil hatters and anti-government boffins are in my corner? I have a great personal interest in revealing this to the public! It might even create enough chaos to get the bloody democrats off my back long enough to let me breathe!"

Shaking his head in disapproval, Trudeau replied softly "I'll have my people hack through the control systems for the UN's anti-meteorite satellites and put a plasma beam through each and every place you and your relatives are known to have been in the last decade if you even try to haggle. And I'll make certain that several of the nuclear R&D sites in the US mainland and external territories have critical meltdowns to shutdown any attempts by you or your military to threaten me into submission. We helped you to built those reactors, we can take them apart if we want. So stop trying to bluff and bluster your way through this mess and be serious for a change!"

Trudeau took another calming sip of soothing warm tea to give Trump a chance at a comeback. The older man was known to go swinging all-out when threatened, but that was when he was sure of holding the winning hand. In this case, he did not, and had never seen Trudeau in this mood, ready for violence if it was necessary.

Pursing his lips in disapproval, Trump was thinking furiously fast, much faster and clearer in fact than any of his opponents would ever believe he was able to. Then again, that crass, loutish bombastic attitude that he affected in public was just for show, to rile up the base during rallies, it wasn't what he really was inside.

"Okay. But I have a problem here. Normally, people pull out the knives and guns after the cards are on the table and the accusations of cheating or trying to settle the wagers with fake cash are going around. In this case, you've staked your ground, but never actually said what you want. So why don't you tell me what it is we're actually fighting over, instead of emoting in empty air like a toddler's tantrum?"

Snorting softly in amusement, Trudeau sarcastically replied "You would know all about those, wouldn't you? But alright, I'll humor you. I want you to instruct your intelligence, military and police agencies to step back from the Mid-Line Treaty obligations they are supposed to follow. Your men will no longer supply, support and succor the WAC's militias or contractors, even if they are attacked in broad daylight in the middle of a bustling city. You will let them hang in the wind, and make a VERY public declaration about this. You will invoke the constitution's many articles and amendments that forbid the establishment of nobility titles, hereditary positions of government, non-elected legislative positions, or any job or function that regroups all powers and authorities into one single human. You will speak the most basal, most constructionist 'à la Scalia' view of the USA's constitutional law. The entire Mid-Line scheme will be denounced as a Euro-commie attempt to reinstate monarchic titles and positions in the New World, thus making the US into a feudal serf at the foot of a European master. From that point on, the population should follow your lead and do the rest naturally."

Donald passed a finger slowly over his upper lip as he thought about what the other politician wanted done. Explained in a vacuum, spoken in absolute terms without context, his plan was well built in just how simple and efficient it was. There was no actual shooting, no actual violence, no foreign army coming into US soil to engage the mess head-on then leave a worse mess when they left. No, his plan was truly Canadian in its outlook; make the Mil-Line Treaty anathema to the public's good and free will, then let the population act as judge-arbiter of whether the WAC's militias got any help or not, at which point any who didn't toe the line would be handled one by one. Since Lucas Wolenczak seemed to not want a massive confrontation, as long as his life and welfare were not directly targeted, Trudeau's plan could probably work. The teenager would have to choose between death by slow attrition, or a quick and public abdication of the entire Treaty of 1940, with an exit that would be negotiated in such a way as to negate the penalties and problems on all three sides. Which, given the initial psych profile made about the boy by the NSA, it was likely he'd choose the polite out, if his ancestral company could survive un-butchered, a feeling Trump could easily understand and sympathize with.

Unfortunately for them, there was a broader context, and there was at least four more groups to take into account while deciding; Doctor F. H. Wise and whatever backup he had, Mexico, NATO and the UN members. No, this decision couldn't be made in a closed vase, it had to take account of all the other moving parts that orbited the situation. And then there was the problem with the Synthium formula...

"Okay, I can see the way things look. And I have to admit, your plan is good. It takes the kid's basic mindset as primarily a doctor, a neurologist and psychiatrist who wants to heal and help others, who normally shies away from violence, and offers him a justification to publicly give up the entire mess without looking like a weakling or traitor himself. It also allows us to dismantle the military parts of the system without destroying the R&D, medication and food production parts, thus saving the jobs and taxes. Honestly, if for nothing else, I would say that would work and the kid would agree to sell out before he turns fifteen at the end of the year. Except that he won't. First of all, his ancestor F. H. Wise isn't dead, he paid Obama a visit in October 2016, at the Oval Office. I'm having my people look into getting the security tapes from that day to get a visual read on the guy, but I already know what I'm gonna see. In the 'Book', Obama put a photo of ten year old Lucas puttering in a chem lab at Stanford. At the rear of the picture was a caption by Wise that stated he had given the formula for active Synthium to his heir as a tenth birthday present. But! He gave it to him anonymously. Why? Not a clue, and I don't think you do either. But the man is alive, and maneuvering from the shadows. Further more, no matter what we want and agree on today, Mexico will a whole lot to say, even if I don't particularly care for their opinions or bitchings. But they'll say it, and be public about it. Then after that, all our allies in NATO will want a say, and since this is a World War II era treaty, you can bet that all those who were in the old British Alliance against the NAZI Pact will want to be heard, and in public as well. Then after that, you'll have some dithering fools at the UN that will try to say that they have the right to have the historical records of the negotiations and legal changes to adjust their own treaties with our two countries, etc... The truth is, Justin, that while your plan makes a beautiful use of the native popular forces and movements inside our nations to ouster the little runt, it's also rather shortsighted and blind about all the rest of reality. It won't work."

Well, it could work if Donald put enough elbow grease in it, and sacrificed some of his political capital to make certain news networks and church leaders follow his direction, but Trudeau didn't need to be aware of this. Not until he'd put on the table whatever it was he was ready to pay to get the result he craved in the name of his dead father's legacy. He'd made some good threats, and they were even credible, if the CIA's briefs were to be believed, but now it was time to take out the wallets and see who wanted to buy what and at what cost.

The younger politician was -quite- obviously desperate to make this happen as he began to unravel his payment offer to the older, more unstable and unreliable man. "I understand that nothing is free, and giving me usage of your political faction's voting basin carries a hefty price. Especially in light of the fact you can actually produce results that neither democrats nor other republicans since Reagan's first term can match. I am offering the following; a clear lowering of all customs tariffs by 3% at the border, be it for commercial bulk batches or individuals on vacation. This is followed by chopping off 10% on all sales taxes applied to foodstuffs, medications and car parts if they are destined to be sold directly in the USA market, not just transit towards a foreign country. Further more, I am willing to renegotiate the part of our standing Car Pact to make certain that fully built cars moving across the border are cheaper in both countries, thus giving our manufacturing jobs a much needed boost."

Trump smiled, opening his arms widely as he said "You see! It's not that hard, making a deal! Now, I have a few requests, but you'll probably like them too. The kid's company, Wise Apothecary and Chemists, does a lot of good food and drugs that we need to keep flowing or else there will be a sudden and drastic market shrinkage on the offer's side. This would create a large shortage that would justify the other sellers to up their prices, and that would hurt both countries. Whatever happens to the militia and weapons making divisions of WAC's, the fully civilian parts have to be kept alive. And don't even think of using some orphan law or a court case to force the kid to put his voting stocks on the open market! US laws and courts would never stand for such an intrusion in the capitalism and management of a corporation, especially a closely held family business! And I know that Canada's courts wouldn't allow it either, especially once the dangerous militarized segments of the system were defunct."

Trump waited silently for a few seconds until Trudeau nodded acceptance then continued "Secondly, the kid himself is a bloody genius! He's got the highest GPA on Stanford's record! And he's primarily a healer, a pharmacist, not a soldier or warmonger. I say we -gently- guide him back towards that part of his life, offer him some possibilities to be part of R&D projects in diverse universities or government labs that normal kids don't even know exist. Canada's got a pretty good bio-sciences system in place, and a lot of good pharmaceuticals are based in your country. Both of us could easily make a nice little package of candies to entice the kid towards a willing, peaceful surrender of his armaments along with all the legislative, judicial and military powers the Treaty gives him. We just have to decide how much are we willing to leave in place, and what absolutely needs to be shut down."

Trudeau gazed at his counterpart in long silence for several minutes before he replied 'If we can bind him by written contract to never again in his life seek out any legislative, judicial or military posting, I can see this doing what is needed to happen. We can even put in the acceptable fact that many professional medical orders will petition him to become part of statutory committees or management boards, as will many universities who may want to have him teach on their campus. If we block him from becoming part of the school's board, perennity foundation, or holding a tutelary job, it would create a social backlash against the boy's reputation bad enough to make him see the entire offer as a punishment rather than a polite, civilized way out of this mess. I don't need, or want, him to die or disappear, even though that would actually be the simplest, most permanent solution. No, as long as the military and pseudo-governmental parts of WAC's and the 1940 Treaty are dead and buried, I can sleep at peace."

Trump smiled happily as he asked "Okay, that's a done deal. Now, what do we do about the fact that a certain 119 year old geezer is still walking around, and freely spewing threats at us?"

Trudeau's blue gaze never wavered as he answered coldly "We finish the job that should have been done 8 decades ago; we find and kill the bastard, then make certain he can't return. I'm willing to let your CIA agents move around Canada freely, and give them supplies, support, locales and even more, including cash bonuses paid out to the directorate of the Agency to maintain the field operatives' anonymity. I am also willing to put CSIS agents in your teams across the globe to find and kill this damnable plague-bearing rat before he tries to show us how serious his threats are. And at the end of the hunt, I'll make certain to use discretionary funds to pay off half of your agency's expenses that were incurred for the project."

Donald J. Trump honestly thought he had gotten the better end of the deal, until the man on the other side of the line finished with something that sent shivers of dread down his spine; "If the kid doesn'T willingly surrender and dismantle the Mid-Line Treaty or the WAC's militia, I will declare him and his followers as traitors to Canada who are in the process of gearing up for a civil war, in the same way as the Proud Boys, Aryan Brotherhood and others dream of having. I will then demand of Parliament that they enact the War Measures Act and move the official military against him, including across our southern borders into US territory. If you help us defeat and dismantle this monster, we will remain up north of the 48th parallel, but if you fail to act or try to support and defend F. H. Wise's spawn of incest, then we'll declare your government as being penetrated by foreign agents and an enemy of Canada. Do you understand, Donald, that the threats I made are solid and will happen if you cross me?"

Not knowing how to handle a Justin Trudeau who acted more like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping than anybody else, the older male simply nodded in silence, feeling like he had suddenly lost control of both the wager and the entire game. He wasn't even sure the deal was good anymore, no matter how much cash he was gonna be raking in, or how many jobs could be saved. No, suddenly, this wasn't a good deal to be in anymore.

Sardine in a tin can

(Frederic Chopin - Funeral March)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 16:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 13:00pm

The Briary

Medford, Oregon, USA

Shay Mosley was in a bind, quite literally. She had been brought aboard 'The Briary' military train under false premises then promptly drugged senseless. She had woken up about two hours ago, lying on the cold, bare metal trellis cot with shackles linking her wrists to the large armored winch set into the ceiling's steel plated coffer. The system was so that the guard could force the prisoner to stand up with their hands immobilized above their head while they searched the cell, patched injuries or did anything in the small 4' x 6' metal box.

Besides the overhead hoist, the cell had what you could expect from a military cell built in the 1940's. The entire room was armored and bolted down, conceived so that the human guards didn't have any obligation to come in or interact with their prisoner. Everything was made of thick riveted steel plates or parts finished with a thin layer of stainless steel to make it easier to wash with the pressure hose nozzles built into the ceiling's joints, near the walls' tops. It also meant everything had a shiny finish that reflected every speck of light tenfold, making undrugged sleep incredibly hard to attain or maintain. It was like the inside of a disco-ball with the lights on.

The furnishings were the obvious winch, hidden away inside the technical space above the ceiling, with canister lights, intercom speakers/mikes, ventilation fans and the plumbing for the emergency washdown system to fight fires or chemical attacks. The inmate's necessities were insured via the fact the entire cell was built as a wet bath, with a visibly dedicated rainfall shower head right in front of the entry doorway, and a toilet/sink combo unit on the far left. The metal cot was actually a slab of 1" thick steel, 6 feet long by 2 feet wide, with 1" square holes punched through, spaced to leave an inch of material between the holes. This gave support while allowing the water from the shower or washdown to sluice down to the floor easily. Said floor was a metal trellis made the same way, covering the entire surface of the cell's area. There was no dedicated mirror above the sink as the captive could see their reflection everywhere from multiple angles already.

Built into the thickness of the sliding door was a clear innovation from the current owner; a standard Internex monitor, but desk-sized to fit the width available on the moving panel. There was a half-inch thick sheet of Lexan covering the entire front of the monitor, thus negating the touch-screen function, making the inmate reliant on being allowed voice command, if the guards were so inclined to permit.

Five minutes after waking up, Shay Mosley had been treated to the activation of the monitor with a recorded message from the newly elevated Constable – Governor. The smarmy little white shit-head had somehow found out about her plans to start her own cult in Hawaii and southern California. He had already neutralized most of her people, and seizure of her assets was progressing apace. In the moment of just a few days, the juvenile bastard had pulled on her the same thing he had with Noyce. She was now powerless, with every agency beholden to the DoJ baying after her hide, or what the CG would leave after he was done judging and sentencing her for treason, sedition, conspiracy for using the US Military & Policing forces as recruiting grounds, training and false fronts for her endeavors, etc...

Per the 1940 Treaty of the Mid-Line, he could have her hung to the battlements of Sault-St-Mary citadel, leaving her corpse there for the crows to feed on.

The situation was well beyond dire at this point, and Mosley honestly didn't know what would get her out of it. Until one of the WAC's militia guards actually did the stupid thing of opening the door to her cell without hoisting her up into stretched immobility. The young boy, not even 21 years old if she read his face correctly, had clear white skin, soft blue eyes and short earth-brown hair. He looked okay enough to be a kept pet or a toy, if she felt like having a white boy. He revealed his true ugliness the moment he opened his mouth. He was a racist of the KKK variety, but too young and cowardly to do anything about his gut-churning rage if he was alone.

Or, to be exact, if his desired victim was awake and able to defend herself. In the world outside of WAC's and the train, he would no doubt become a pedophile or find work as a nightwatchman in a hospice for the terminally & mentally ill, so he had a steady supply of defenseless victims at hand. In this case, he was trying his luck with a healthy, athletic adult woman who had combat training because he was under the impression that the drugs his colleagues used to knock her out would keep her woozy and weak until they had passed Portland, several hours in the future.

He was wrong. Dead wrong.

In seconds of the boy being inside the room, Shay had managed to kick him in the gonads, then upwards in the face as he reflexively bent over in pain from the first strike. She followed her combo kick with a joined-hand hammer-fall punch to the back of the head, then wrapping the loose length of steel chain around his neck to use as a garrote. She didn't know if he died from strangulation or a broken spine, and obviously didn't care for the details, only the resulting opportunity. With the cell door still opened, she had a way out without triggering whatever alarms could have been rigged to the panel.

A quick search of the barely adult guard saw Mosley equipped with a standard Colt Army 1911 copy chambered in 9mm, a private cell phone, an official comms & earwig set, a stun baton, folding combat knife, handcuffs, flashlight and a set of belts and straps to hold it all. She hadn't found the key to her shackles on the kid, but a cursory search just outside the cell's doorway showed a medium-sized steel cabinet, welded to the wall next to her entry. Inside the locker she found the built-in control console for her chain-hoist, monitor and plumbing, along with a full med-kit, small fire extinguisher, cheap disposable linen bedding like hospitals, ready-to-eat-cold meal trays, and the damned key.

Sighing in relief as she saw the key for her shackles was actually on a small hook right on the console that controlled events inside the cell, she made quick work of grabbing the brass-toned item to unlock the fetters at her wrists, making certain to drop the whole set on the cot, out of the way. She verified something that gnawed at her mind, and got her answer. The key for her chains could also be used to unlock the cell door if electricity or computer services were cut in the wagon, or just the cell. She had to close the door from the outside to find the keyhole, then go back inside to find its match, hidden under a fake rivet that was twice bigger than its mates. Now insured she could recuperate safely, Mosley sacked the contents of the small locker, bringing everything into the cell so she could evaluate her options before making a break for freedom.

She used the toilet after suffering a sudden bout of abdominal cramps that passed as quickly as the stools, but left a stinking miasma about the dingy, claustrophobic room for the duration. Washing her hands rapidly, she decided to chow through one of the cold ready-meals, seeing as it was a sort of flatbread sandwich with 'processed meatloaf slice' and mustard, cheese stick and gherkins. A truly miserable little snack, barely something a poor college student would eat, but it was a treasure in her present circumstances. Making quick, survival based decisions, she kept the thin sandwich in her mouth with her clenched teeth as she undressed the corpse to steal his armored militia uniform to put over the generic blue scrubs she wore. Without any underwear, she noted angrily. Several somebodies had clearly gotten frisky wit her person while she was unconscious, right from the get-go.

It took a few minutes to figure out the way the uniform's system of big buttons was set to keep the zippers from being pulled apart by force during combat or heavy manual labor. The damned belts had a similar two-step locking device that made them very safe to wear, but incredibly annoying to remove when you were in a hurry. Thankfully, the overly artful devices seemed to be only in the armored trenchcoat, gauntlets, boots and helmet, as the rest were ordinary unisex cargo trousers and a button-down shirt with two breast pockets. Of the guy's base garments, she took only the t-shirt as he wore a size large enough to accommodate her generous bosom. Admittedly, it was just pure disgust that kept her from taking his boxer briefs as well. If she were in the arctic, she would have, but in this condition, she preferred to B&E a house to steal something clean from the laundry pile, or even shoplift something decent if the chance arose.

After spending nearly 20 minutes on moving around clothing and learning where all the equipment went in the sheaths and pockets, she counted the loose money the youth had on his person, coming up with a great whopping 37,92$ in US dollars. At least he had debit and credit cards, plus a set up on his personal phone, so she wouldn't be high & dry when she jumped the train. The real find was the pay check he had been issued yesterday; the WAC's militia seemed to be paid monthly and the fucking little noob had a basic salary of 2,500$ per period, after taxes! For a wastrel loser of a bum like this!

Well, Wolenczak had some pretty obvious recruitment and training problems if he was paying close to 3,250$ a month for stupid amateurs like this piece of white trash. She knew sick, homeless veterans that haunted the streets of LA who could perform this job better than the shitty he-cunt ever had. Not that she would ever give the blond rat-bastard any referrals anyways. Making the defective child more powerful or better crewed was not in her best interest.

Putting on the helmet and pulling down the protective face-mask that integrated tinted goggles with a gas filter, she reflected on the intelligence of some modern upgrades the kit had gotten. The helmet was obviously layers of steel, kevlar, thermoplastic and ceramic that matched the US Marines' normal head gear, not the old all-steel bucket from WW-II. The goggles were tinted to prevent snow glare or flash blindness, as well as being built-in light amplification lenses for night maneuvers, in a much slimmer version than anything she knew existed. She had feared the boots wouldn't fit at all, or else hurt her feet badly if she did manage to get them on, but found out that they were all made extra-large so that the soldier used several soft foam inserts to adjust the fit, instead of having customized kits like the USMC. And the trenchcoat, helmet, gauntlets and boots all had small temperature modules that could bet set individually to optimize warmth or coolness in 7 different areas of the body.

Yeah, getting away in a kit like this, plus a knife, pistol, flashlight, comms, rations and money would make it a lot more likely that she got out alive to reach her son. She would get to Mexico, find that bastard Williams and forcibly extract her boy from his dead arms, just like she got herself out of the smarmy little fur-less rat's mitts.

Walking out of her cell a full half-hour after the door had first opened, Shay Mosley finally saw that the details about the carceral wagon that she had missed on her brief foray out, the first time. It was a standard length and width for a full-gauge American train. There were six cells, all packed against the left hand of the corridor, or away from the quay when it was in station for a fuel stop. The cells were stacked three rooms side-by-side, the mid-car foyer with a large sliding cargo door on each external side, and the other three rooms. There were no seats, even fold-outs, no fountain or sink, no toilet, nothing outside of the cells but the cabinets bolted next to each door.

The wagon was built with absolutely no amenities for the guards as it was the planned routine that once the people were in their solitary boxes, nobody would have any prolonged contact with them. The moment all cells were closed, the guards were to leave the wagon, going back to their assigned Militia cars. This was decided as preventive measure to avoid soldiers becoming corrupted by fraternizing with the suspects who would offer gifts, bribes, or sexual acts in exchange of favors, or being released. That also meant that traffic inside the carceral wagon was supposed to be tightly controlled, which clearly wasn't the case today.

As Shay tried to order her thoughts about what to do next, she saw the shadows outside the small armored windows that covered the gun-ports change from trees to buildings. Taking an extreme chance, she lifts up the nearest window to put her helmeted head outside to see what is happening. The train was slowing to quarter speed as it was now pulling through an old, visibly abandoned, railway station where she sees decrepit wooden docks and a weather-beaten wooden pole bearing the nameplate 'Medford, Ore.' with all its paint fallen off.

The train convoy slows even more as it needs to cross over an old concrete bridge of undetermined age, but clearly not maintained properly in the last 20 years. As The Briary is much heavier than regular Amtrak systems, the drivers and engineers have to both spread the weight over a longer distance and also reduce the number of structural shocks due to the vibrations as the wheels pass on the dilation joints of the antiquated traverse.

Mosley knows that she's already carrying as much weight as she can handle without tiring inside of an hour, and the uniform had nothing but pockets and straps, not bags. She can't carry more, even if she wanted to take the risk. Besides, the other metal lockers only contain the same things as the prisoners were never allowed privileges or 'special' items unless it was medically needed.

Making a decision based in despair for survival, the woman closed the window and moved to the cargo door facing away from the quays, on the left hand of the wagon. As she began to figure out the locking mechanism and latches on the sliding panel, the access door at the rear of the wagon opened, letting in a pair of soldiers for their scheduled rounds in the sector. Shay panicked as she remembered she hadn't closed the cell door and the body inside was clearly a white boy, not a black woman. Deciding to take matters by the horns, she took out the 9mm Colt pistol, cocked it ready, then jumped into the corridor to shoot at the militiamen who were nearing the open cell carefully.

Mosley's aim proved true; she downed the first man with a shot through the eye piece of his mask and clipped the other in the neck, the two bullets ripping through the collar of his trenchcoat and clothes to shred his throat. Both men were dead inside of four seconds, and lying in a bloody mess by the seventh second since Mosley had moved. Now though, she had to move faster. Even if the gun shots hadn't been heard outside the heavily armored wagon, the patrol wouldn't be calling-in at their appointed time so more soldiers would come.

She had no choice anymore; she had to jump.

Barely taking the time to seize the spare pistol magazines from the still-warm corpses and one rifle that she shouldered by the strap, Mosley finished her inspection of the cargo door's workings enough to understand how to unlock and slide the thing open. She was pretty sure there were alarm wires or small connection plates that would trigger a warning to the conductors, but couldn't take the time to remove them. Plus, often enough, such alarms were rigged so that any movement or tampering triggered them with a different signal to say sabotage was happening. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, the athletic woman prepared her body for the efforts to come then slammed down the lever to release the locking bolts then pivoted the other lever to engage the hydraulics that made the valve push outwards by two inches then slide leftwards, leaving a ten foot wide gap for the disgraced NCIS agent to pass.

Shay Mosley could see a few dilapidated buildings as the train rolled on, letting her understand how the blasted vehicle could move around the country invisibly. They were using the network of old, abandoned rails that were mostly private or completely derelict, and therefore devoid of surveillance. It was also obvious that maintenance crews had passed by in the last year, since several zones of the tracks would have needed major repairs, and all bridges had to be shored up. However, this played to her advantage; these forlorn sectors of the system had mostly been built before WW-II, during the coal boom of the late 1800's, and so they were completely empty of any cybernetics or electrical services.

That meant no cameras, sensors, or remote tracking for miles around until she reached the places of regular habitation. New data supporting her decision and the reality of what awaited her at the end of the journey not changing any time soon, Mosley timed her jump to the ground with a thin, shallow drainage ditch that passed through a cement culvert under the tracks. She dropped from the prison wagon just before the ditch, flexing her legs to absorb the impact safely, guiding her weight to finish falling to the snow-dusted ground so she landed sideways and let inertia roll her into the ditch, out of sight from the gunners in the turrets.

Her maneuver had taken less than half a minute to carry out, but the damned train was so long it took nearly three minutes at its current speed for the rest of the wagons to pass over her hidey-hole and disappear into the overgrown, forested parts of Oregon. Shay stayed immobile in the cold, snowy ditch for almost ten minutes before she gave herself a shake, checking her limbs and body for injuries but finding none, thanks to the thick protective uniform she had stolen. The drainage channel was only three feet wide by three feet deep, so she didn't need any help or real efforts to climb out, finally standing on land.

Looking around confirmed what Mosley had already sussed out before jumping. She was near the town of Medford in southern Oregon. She was on the inland side of the Rockies, which was good as that opened the entire continental USA for movement instead of having to find a way to cross the blasted mountains in the depth of winter whiteouts. Already, the quantity of snow accumulated on the ground was over four inches all over, everywhere she could look at. Thankfully, the boots had a built-in warming system because she was far more accustomed to tropical climates than polar conditions.

Taking her boiling temper and short patience in hand firmly, the mature woman put her intellect to work on finding a solution to her predicament. First, she needed to be out of sight in case a follow-up vehicle came down the tracks as rear-guard. That had been a common practice during WW-II, just as sending an advanced recon locomotive or complete trains with fake insignias to fool saboteurs into attacking the wrong convoy. She got the feel that Wolenczak was an amateur history buff who would have learned about things like that. You don't inherit the biggest toy train in history without learning how to play with it, and the kid was a proven polymath, as well as a business genius. Fighting rear troops in a second, probably armed, motor vehicle wasn't a risk she wanted to face. Fortunately for her, the solution was obvious, even for an amateur; the old abandoned railway station house. The brick building still stood, despite the broken windows having been boarded by plywood. A few worn out graffiti could still be seen, their odd fluo colors contrasting with the drab brown bricks and concrete pieces where the thin cover of snow had been stripped off by the winds.

Thanking her Black Moon Goddess for small favors, Mosley entered the station's ticket office and waiting room without issue as the door's lock had been broken off years ago by squatters, none of whom were present today. The inside was a throwback to the splendor of yesteryear, when dark stained wood and yellow brass were the symbols of a prosperous, well ordered society. There were even a few stubborn shards of stained glass, not yet fallen from the service counter's windows. Brackets mounted to the walls and ceilings had once borne gas or kerosene lamps, and the thickly painted heavy coils of hot water radiators could be seen under each window on both sides of the short, narrow building.

A strong, mechanized noise drew her attention outside, to the rail yard side of the building. She knelt on one knee, bracing herself against the wall with both hands, to look out through a small hole that had been broken off one of the sheets of plywood covering the empty window frame. It was a good thing she had hidden inside so fast. The rear guard she had feared was passing through the abandoned station, right besides her unseen form.

The follow-up convoy was extremely short and limited. The front vehicle looked like what Mosley had seen in old historical films about World War II, the Hanomag 251 half-track. Except this version had adapters that allowed it to roll on the train tracks without falling off. The lead truck had a 'V' shaped plow blade to clear obstacles and five fixed turrets of differing weapons, one being equal to what a tank would carry. The Hanomag was directly pulling an armored wagon whose contents was invisible through the shuttered windows, but it had 8 small turrets for machine guns on the roof, 4 to each long side of the wagon. The rear of the convoy was another Hanomag 251, linked backwards to provide a quick getaway if they had to reverse course out of danger.

Mosley stayed absolutely immobile and silent as the rear guard passed through the derelict yard at slow speed, matching the velocity the train itself had when it rolled across the desolate area. It took merely a minute for the security escorts to be lost from sight under the dense canopy of foliage that covered most of these old, disused rail lines. The felon agent unfolded from her crouch, leaning on the freezing wall for support as the adrenaline spike's withdrawal left her feeling woozy. She decided to sit on an old wooden bench to gather her wits, just like the passengers of old would have sat as they waited for their appointed transport to arrive.

Taking the heavy helmet off, Shay passed a sleeve across her forehead, wondering why she felt so off all of a sudden. Bah! It must be some leftover effects from the drugs they used to knock her out. She'd pass through it, just as she'd passed through everything else to date. Taking out the private cell phone she had stolen from the dead would-be-rapist, she activated it and found the web browser icon. Following a procedure exactly like the standards that Hetty Lange had instituted for her team, Shay accessed a private, unlisted phantom site in the Dark Web. From her own secret cache of malice she downloaded a suite of malware, spyware and management apps that would clean the phone of all other infections then turn the device into a clone of her personal master remote-controller.

After five minutes of patience as the machine did all of its jobs automatically, Mosley was finally able to start using the phone as more than just a pocket watch & calculator. Using the web browser, she went into Internex Mappe Mundia to find the most updated map of Medford – Oregon she could lay her hands on. Once she had that, she zoomed in on the rail lines and found her answer immediately. There were two main trunks of lines going through the town in a south – north axis and one in the east – west axis. She was presently on the old, abandoned mining company line, closer to the mountains than the regular Amtrak passenger service. The new railway, built in the late 1970's, was about 1,5 miles east of her position, going through the middle of the small town.

Good. Now that she had her bearings, Shay could start to plan her next moves, starting by getting somewhere warm, finding new clothes, getting some food, and finding a serviceable pharmacist who would sell her something to counteract the dregs of whatever they used to put her down. After that, the rest of her life would be centered on finding her son, killing Richard Williams, and getting vengeance on the albino jew-rat that orchestrated her fall from prominence.

Using the map app, she zoomed in enough to see the street names and the logos that represented companies or shops, and the types of services they offered. Barely a third of a mile away was a motel for businessmen traveling by road or rail who needed a cheap but clean and comfortable night. At least, that was the blurb written under the small photo when she put her index finger on it to see the details.

With her plan's first stage in mind, the fallen policewoman stood up, adjusted her stolen uniform, straps and gear, and marched out of the derelict station, aiming for the backyard of the nearest residential area she could find. She needed to steal some civilian clothes to walk around in public without attracting attention, and some sort of tote to carry her weapons without causing a panic. It wouldn't be long now; Shay Lynn Mosley would be back in the swing of things by supper, she promised it to herself.

Passing the bucket

(Bones – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 17:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 14:00pm

The Hoover Building

Washington DC, USA

SSA Seely Booth was having the nightmare of his life, just as the conference-sized Internex monitor came to life, displaying the gloriously purple & black uniform of the Constable – Governor of the North-American Mid-Line right on the end of his supplemental, emergency shift.

Ah, what now?

Seely knew the young man personally, if from a safe distance, through his wife's assistant and long range comms. They had met in person once, when the boy had sold the Bureau its dozen holo-consoles and came to supervise the installation himself. Even then, Booth had been buried, literally it happened, in a clay patch while trying to recover (what else?) corpse parts for Temperance to investigate. The kid had stayed nice and warm inside the Hoover Edifice, silently buried inside the walls and breaker boxes as the cables were set. They had met for an early brunch in a diner near the FBI's central offices, then again for a late supper at his & Tempe's home, before he left for his hotel, then a red-eye flight for Stanford at 5:00am. Back then, Lucas had rarely moved away from the university complex, and never for more than 48 hours unless he was going back to Buffalo for family reasons.

Seely looked at the boy on the screen, taking in the differences between last year and now. The kid's most glaring change was the fluorescent blond/blue hair that had been tainted by chemicals during his dad's attempt to kill him, barely a week ago. He was much paler, and his skin seemed thinner because the agent could swear all the veins and nerves underneath could be seen plainly. His eyes were bluer, as if lit from behind, but also darker, more opaque than before. His thin scarred fingers clamped tightly on the pommel of a metal cane that looked like a camping tool or semi-hidden weapon more than a walking stick. The poor teen's clothes were clearly custom-made for him since they fit perfectly as only bespoke articles could, but he still gave an impression of drowning in a colored mess of too-big garments and accessories.

Then there was his being. His entire posture screamed tiredness, pain, loneliness and isolation. Seely had trouble equating this injured, sickly, despondent young man with the healthy 13 year old child he met 10 months ago.

Being the superior in practically every conversation he attended from now on, Lucas began with little preamble. "Agent Booth, a pleasure to meet you again. I trust that my little creations have been serving your team faithfully?" At the agent's nod, the child continued, "Good. Now, we have an embarrassing problem to transfer over to your Agency. As you are no doubt aware, I have begun a rather badly needed cleansing of the US Navy and afferent services. In this process, the NCIS regional director for the Pacific & western seaboard, Shay Lynn Mosley, was arrested and brought to my train for transport to Sault-Saint-Mary citadel. She was to undergo interrogation, trial and disposal under the NA-ML Treaty of 1940, all legally and equitably as per the law."

Making a face of open disgust, the teenager declared blithely "Unfortunately, the rabid bitch escaped from her cell, killed three WAC's militiamen, then jumped the convoy. It happened in the last hour, so she's between the towns of Medford and Eugene, in Colorado. Given when the patrols aboard made their last check-in's and doorway card swipes, we estimate The Briary was passing through Medford's abandoned mine line railway station when the events happened, at around 13:00pm or just after."

Gesturing to the new dispatchers and analysts that had just arrived for the evening shift, Seely ordered "Get me a BOLO on Shay Lynn Mosley, formerly NCIS directorate for the Pacific! Find her resume from the navy cops and every place she went in her life! Get on the horn with The Briary's security crew to get their initial findings in written/picture files for analysis! Move! This woman has training and contacts, she can disappear before we even get her face in the news!"

With the basic work now engaged, Seely approached the monitor to speak less loudly with the person who was now effectively the 'boss of his boss' as things were. "Okay, what happened? You don't get loose, kill people and jump out of a military prison wagon on the roll like an amusement park ride."

Lucas put a finger on his desk, using a physical dial to lower the sound input in his microphone, thus lowering the sound coming out on Booth's end, before answering the valid question. Speaking plainly, the boy was visibly upset but also resigned to dealing with things as they were, instead of bitching about how it should be. "Our team fucked the bitch, Booth, or at least one guy tried to, and that was enough to tumble the line of dominoes. From our first glance findings, one of our youngest soldiers, barely out of boot-camp, had gotten into his head to get into the cell and -probably- sexually assault the prisoner. She was conscious and her chain line was elongated to allow her movement for the toilet and necessities, so she had the freedom of movement to jump the depraved fool and kill him when he opened the door. After that, she managed to find the key to the chain system, get loose, strip the fool of his entire uniform and put it on, before two guards doing their scheduled patrol route happened upon her escape attempt. She killed them so fast they didn't get to draw their weapons. Their uniforms have no powder residue to indicate retaliation, and no signs of contact injuries, only the bullet holes where Mosley shot them. After that, she got extra mags and a long rifle from the new kills, and jumped the train in motion, most probably in the old station yard, at Medford."

Thinking fast, Seely asked "Wouldn't she risk killing herself, jumping out of a moving train at that speed, and on unknown grounds to boot?"

The teenager made a helpless face as he replied "You have to understand how my convoy moves around the country to avoid detection and foreign spies, agent Booth. We use primarily those private segments that we can pay the operators to give us control over their signals & right-of-way equipment to scrub all visuals of our passage as it happens. In many cases, our operational safety protocols force us to pass on abandoned lines that have not been serviced or certified in decades, like the Medford trunk. In that case, we knew that we would be obliged to use that line, so we payed a local contractor that is used by Amtrak to service their own line, to do a quick oversight and repair any dangerous flaws in the rails. They barely had any time to do the most basic job before the convoy came to fetch me at Stanford, plus a handful of spare hours to complete everything before our return journey."

"What this means, is that when The Briary moves, she is often on uncertain grounds, with unknown rails and deckway beneath her. This situational constraint, plus her massive weight from all the armored caissons and weapons, means she has to go much slower than regular Amtrak or cargo trains in many areas. We had to slow down to under 15 Kph when we traversed the old Medford mining line station, because there was an old iron bridge to cross before entering the triage yard, and local police reports showed that the abandoned ticket office building was regularly occupied by squatters. Besides not wanting to shake the old bridge to bits under our wheels and avoiding to hit anybody who might be loitering on the rails, we also didn't want to risk mistaking a hobo or lost pet for an enemy fighter. We have 5" guns on this barge; shooting one of those always causes collateral damages, no matter how careful we are."

Seely Booth was listening closely to what the kid was telling him, and his gut was roiling. Don't get him wrong; the story was believable, and he knew enough about trains to know that certain types of carriages obliged the convoy to slow down or change routes because the structures were never meant to hold up the kinds of tonnage being moved. It wasn't just a case of ton per square inch, but also of total tonnage over the entire span of the railway segment or bridge arch. And yes, vibrations from the train's movement could twist the rails or loosen the ballast between the dormers enough to cause a break in the tracks that could derail the wagons. Plus, in any mountains, rainfall and snow accumulation had to be considered as they could block the rails with landslides and avalanches, or worse, liquefy the earthen foundations under the rail deck, making sections into death traps with voids and mud pools, despite looking normal to the untrained eye.

So, slowing the convoy in unrepaired zones was true. The story he was being told was credible, from a technical standpoint. But his instincts as an Army Ranger and almost two decades in the FBI were screaming that he was being played as the patsy for something a lot bigger. Why was the boss of the train not the person on the screen? Why was it the brand new Constable – Governor that made the call to give them the details? And why was the guy being so forthcoming with details any other Agency director would keep secret, to their grave and beyond, to save their organization's credibility?

Frowning at the pale-skinned boy on the screen, Booth asked in deliberately even tones "That must have been quite a shock to you, learning that you had a treasonous murderer loose aboard. Especially since you arrested her yourself, just as you were leaving Stanford. It can't be easy to call out for help to another Agency like this, having to report the mess then ask for them to capture the escapee, on top of everything else. And right on the first day officially on the job, too."

Seely almost reeled backed away from the screen as the young teen's reaction was anything but what he expected to see. Only years of harsh training and surviving both enemy fire and merciless natural conditions allowed the veteran agent to stand still and silent as the boy revealed far more than he thought to as he answered the loaded question.

Humming thoughtfully, his eyes looking above his desk monitor at something that was moving in the wagon near him, Lucas replied glibly "It wasn't my first day of work as CG. The day William Noyce was arrested was when I officially started serving the public good." Then lowering his flint-blue eyes back to the FBI agent on his screen, the adolescent completed in a peaceful, satisfied tone "The escape of Shay Mosley is tragic, and our household militia will be revised to avoid such events in the future, as each time such an event occurs. But, for a first working trip of the train under military protocols, I can't say that I'm disappointed in the results."

Looking directly at Seely's face through the camera, Lucas added amusedly "It's not like these sorts of things aren't predictable, aren't they? The first trip of a large, complex machine with hundreds of men aboard, most of them on their first trip away from their homes and regular jobs, getting adjusted to new rules and equipment. It's not like anybody couldn't see at least one fluke event happening. Anytime you start a new production line in a factory, you have to run through a test batch to see where the infrastructure flaws and process fail-points are. The Briary is no different. We lost one out of six prisoners, and three soldiers out of... Well, you don't need to know how many we have on a regular, non-war run. Unless you're looking for a pay-grade increase?"

Shaking his head negatively, agent Booth replied "No, I'm good where I'm at." while shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers to hide the fact they were shaking so hard. He had spotted it, the moment the kid had basically shouted aloud that Shay Mosley had been allowed to leave the train without getting shot in the process. There was a deeper, darker game being played, and now the FBI would be deployed in the field, diligently looking for a fugitive that the upper levels didn't want caught.

Because Seely wasn't a noob at counter-intel games; he could see and smell the kind of ploy when you let escape an enemy agent with fake or poisonous data so that their home country would scrap all their planning when they absorbed the defective information they retrieved. Mosley was a traitor, a religious nutcase and a murderer, the perfectly expendable piece of trash to carry fake intel back to wherever she was heading, and the Bureau's job was to make certain she got there on time, without ever knowing where or whom her destination was.

Nodding silently at the morose, silent child on the screen, Seely closed the comms and went to work at doing his part in the game of shadows, so that another enemy of the USA could get their undue loot, getting fatally disorganized in the process. He only prayed that the backlash from the maneuver the kid was playing didn't reach DC or his extended family around the Jeffersonian museum.

Tell me it ain't so!

(MacGyver – 1985 opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 17:30pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 14:30pm

DXS Headquarters

Los Angeles, California, USA

Mathilda Webber was trying real hard to not fall face first into her bottle of boose as she contemplated the full depths of the cesspit surrounding her. It was a good thing she hadn't drunk more than two glasses or she would be unable to process the events that had unfolded at noon. To call that catastrophe a simple 'mess' was trying to ignore the extensions and ramifications that would spread out from losing three of the agency's best people in one go. Add to that all the nasty gossip that the employees were no doubt already exchanging about what she said to Mac this morning, plus what would be imagined when all three departures were announced simultaneously. It was nobody's secret that Riley Davis had been chosen as a field hacker because her skill level matched Angus' hard engineering & chemistry. Likewise, Wilt Bozer's aptitudes with audio-video montage, data-mining and UC op disguises were pretty much vital for what they did, but he never would have joined DXS without MacGyver to reel him in for them. Aaaand, after all that crap, there were still the personal repercussions, far too painful for her to address yet, especially when all the professional and organizational consequences hadn't even begun to be felt.

Glaring at the half-empty bottle of bourbon as if it were a mortal enemy, she spoke firmly to her old friend, mentor and boss, as he was draining his fifth mug of the cheap swill. Thankfully, the DXS building had several small bedrooms for hosting its execs during overnight meetings or emergency overwatch periods, so James wouldn't have to go far to sleep off his bender. It was quite obvious that any plans he had imagined about his reunion with Angus were scuppered for good, not to mention they'd been pipe dreams from the start. The young man had not reacted well to the manufactured sob story he was told, which was understandable since even Matty thought it was a load of hogwash. James could have made an effort over the past 15 years to get untangled from the ceaseless series of undercover ops, letting younger agents handle them while he focused on his family. But no; he chose to remain in the deep side of darkness, despite having alternatives at hand. At this point of things, Matty was pretty much convinced that her friend was the artisan of his own pain, and all that remained was to determine if it was by social ineptitude or willful idiocy.

And, of course, life just couldn't let her mull her spiral of misery in peace.

The intercom on her desk beeped obnoxiously, alerting her to an incoming line from one of the priority channels that demanded an immediate answer, even if she were asleep or injured. The kind of call that only the directors of National Intelligence, the CIA, NSA or Leon Vance at NCIS plus a handful of others could push through the DXS telephony system without a live operator routing them to one of her seven voicemail boxes.

It was the brand new Constable – Governor.

Fuck!

As in; ah bloody good, hard pumping fucks!

What did that parentless, juvenile mongrel want, now?

Picking pivoting her chair towards the unfolded desk, she activated the small Internex monitor to receive the video call, knowing that if she opted for sound alone she would miss vital cues to how her new 'boss' intended to manage his portion of state affairs.

"Doctor Wolenczak, what a rare pleasure to see you in person," Matty lied through teeth unrepentantly, with a smile and dimples too, like the true undercover expert she was. In politics as in warfare, never let other agency directors see you sweat, be ignorant or out of the loop, else you become fodder for the meat grinder at the next budget assignment conference.

Matty saw right away the teenager was lying through his wan, urbane smile just like she did, never once uttering anything remotely close to the truth. Shay Mosley had been captured, psyched up then let go into the wild, never realizing she was now an unpaid employee of the Mid-Line Treaty. While director Webber would not at this point presume to understand what the adolescent genius had planned, because she didn't know much of anything about him, she could still identify a black op in progress when it was in front of her nose.

After the ten minute conversation was done and the monitor closed, Matty gazed absently into the horizon, not seeing James as he slowly moved from the couch where he was slouching over to the drinks brewer to make himself a 'DXS brain-smasher'; a highly purified synthetic chemical that would purge the alcohol from his biology by decomposing it to water and oxygen over the next hour. It wasn't an instant sobriety miracle, but it came close enough that you could allow yourself a short moment of emotional turmoil, letting go your reins a bit slacker for a while before getting back to work. It was not in any ways a healthy method for coping with personal disasters, getting pass-out drunk then sober inside of an hour, but humanity hadn't invented anything else better, or safer, yet.

Bringing his tepid liquid tether-to-reality back with himself, James settled into the same swivel sofa he had occupied initially, before his entire life collapsed around his ears. Taking a small sip of the nasty concoction, the elder spy made a face of absolute disgust in reaction, as if he had just tasted cold piss.

Snorting in amusement at her friend's self-imposed distress, Matty snarked aloud "Does that thing still taste like the water that accumulates in the subway tunnels, from the cracks in the concrete? Cuz last time I had to go dark in the tunnels under Prague with the Russians after my hide, that's all I had to drink for six days."

Scowling severely at his younger friend, James kept silent by the device of drinking his medicine in one single swallow. After almost chocking twice, he finally managed to take in all of the noxious elixir without vomiting it back. He was almost sad not to have gotten sick since it would have come out as a highly projectile eructation that would no doubt have splashed all over Matty, shutting up the stunted little bint until she'd gotten clean. This would have given him the much needed time to sober up and nap for an hour, before they were obliged to process what to do with Angus and his cohorts. No such luck today, it seemed. Life truly was painful for spies, especially in the higher ranks like them.

Thankfully, Matty had other plans for them. "Okay, James, let's table everything for the rest of the day and take it up tomorrow. We'll both be sober and psychologically rested enough to divine through the mess without being blinded by our own emotional limits concerning the people involved. Go sleep in one of the ready rooms, and we'll do brunch around 9:00am to get an early start. I know it will be Sunday, but needs must, and so we will."

Silently nodding his assent, James got up and slowly waddled his way to the lounge door where a junior agent waited to serve as his escort. It really wouldn't do for agency morale to see their top-most boss fall flat on his face on the job because he was drunk as a skunk.

Now alone, Matty opened an email she had received in one of her many phantom boxes that were lodged in a server overseas. It came from Lucas Wolenczak, via his central hub in Buffalo. The contents confirmed her suspicions about Shay Mosley's -very timely- escape. She had a son with a high powered weapons trafficker named William Richards who owned a fortified compound in Mexico. The man had hijacked her son just after his third birthday, ten years ago, when Mosley's UC mission had been ended. And there was no accident in Hell that the CG was now revealing that juicy detail to her, with a little side-line about using it as a 'darker-than-black' op to rid her agency of used-up trash.

A meat grinder.

A suicide job for traitors and have-been agents no longer safe to keep alive.

Pulling the keyboard nearer, she began to compile a list of throw-away agents she had too many doubts or problems with to keep them alive, let alone active inside any governmental agency. Because she had only taken over from Thornton a month ago, the list was much, much longer than she felt was normal for this sort of situation, but she hadn't had the chance to do a real clean-up since arriving. Now she had that chance in front of her and wouldn't let it go unused. All the spies in the list would get an email with the regular codes, protocols and warnings pertaining to special ops in hostile countries, with impetus on putting all their affairs in order and clearing out their current identity, in case of backlash. In reality, she was planning for not a single one of them to return, alive, dead or otherwise.

At the top of her emergency purge list was written 'Jack Dalton'.

A way forward

(NCIS; LA – opening theme)

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 21:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 18:00pm

Deeks House

Los Angeles, California, USA

Kensi Blye walked down the stairs from the upper floor, dressed in soft well-worn blue jeans and a white t-shirt, barefoot, feeling refreshed from the hot shower she had just enjoyed. It had been a much needed thing, given the cramped, heavy atmosphere inside the house over the last day. Sighing morosely, the woman tied her long hair in a loose pony tail just to keep it out of her face as she tracked her fiancé to the kitchen by nose, the smell of dinner cooking being a sure thing. The last time she cooked anything that was deemed edible was back in Afghanistan, on her last impromptu deployment for Hetty, and it had come out of an aluminum pocket. Side note; MRE's will be edible regardless of who cooks them, because they'll be tasteless all the same, too.

Entering the small cozy kitchen at the back of the house, she saw her man's shaggy blond head moving to the beat of some music he was humming from memory as he shifted skillets and oven pans in a mysterious dance that Kensi had no hopes in this world of ever understanding. Sitting silently at the island's breakfast bar, she appreciated the way his colored surf shorts fitted his legs and that thin white muscle shirt exposed his arms and shoulders for her.

Turning around with oven mitts and a pan full of baked herb & oil veggies, Marty almost jumped as he was surprised by the sight of his fiancée. She most certainly wasn't there a second ago when he was in the fridge, pulling out vinaigrette and tomato juice bottles. Carefully putting the Pyrex pan on the thick protective coaster atop the island, he asked playfully "Was that shower relaxing enough, without me in there to keep you entertained? You look sleepy more than refreshed."

Kensi snorted at the man's quip, because he had indeed offered to join her and she had refused politely, stating she needed time to blank her mind from the last few days. He understood, offering to make dinner instead of ordering in as they did several times a week. Given just how good his cooking was, they would both be winners in this arrangement. However, he was also correct that the lonely shower time had made her more pensive rather than relaxed. The events of the boat shed, during the multi-agency meeting, had knocked around her skull like a bearing inside a pinball table. The way her own team had treated her fiancé was atrocious, no matter how bad the preceding days had been. Deeks was trying to be useful and supportive for them, their response was clearly lacking both tact and class.

"Hetty sent me an email about the preliminary work for the new job," Marty began as he pulled the Pyrex pan holding the two hand-stuffed chicken breasts from the oven, setting it on the island next to the veggies. He dumped the oven mitts on the counter near the sink, taking up the skillet from the gas hob to pour piping hot peppercorn sauce over the breaded chicken, covering it nicely in unctuous brown fluid that liberated an aroma of red wine as it flowed from the cast iron vessel.

"She wants to have a meeting with me tomorrow at noon, over at Dovecote. Apparently, I'm invited for lunch, because it'll be a very 'involved' discussion." Here Marty made air quotes to show just how involved he thought the whole thing would get. "Also, she said she'd have Nell present to guide me through the first parts of the bureaucratic mess. It apparently hasn't gotten any better since her younger days."

Snorting again, Kensi agreed on that one; "Yeah, I don't think DC or bureaucrats in general have gotten any more efficient, or any less officious, in the last five decades. It's the one thing that always made me weary of going up too high in the hierarchy of any organization, governmental of private. The higher up, the worse the paperwork and politicking get, and you can't bypass them to do the job. Look at Vance in DC; no matter how straight-arrow the guy is, it doesn't show much anymore. The establishment took him in, rendering him as bland and drab as the bloody forms they pass around."

Pulling the plates and utensils out of the upper cabinets, Marty replied carefully "I wouldn't go that far, not about Leon Vance. The guys before him, they were co-opted into the deeper parts of the political machinery because they got too close to the elected portions of it. Well, except for Jenny Sheppard. She died on her feet with a smoking gun in her hand, and dead russian gangsters around her. She never sold out or mellowed out, no matter how polite and urbane she sounded.

Kenz Began to place the table for their meal as her fiancé portioned the food in their favored sizes. As she set the cloth napkins and glasses of water, the woman asked curiously "Did you know Sheppard well? You speak as if you had known her personally."

Shaking his head negatively, Marty answered "No, I never met her in person. However, I did take the time to read through her bio when she got nominated, and do some digging when I learned she had died, to see if there was anything we needed to worry about. When a big-wig like her dies the way she did, it doesn't take long for the shit to roll downhill and drown the little people, meaning us. I got to know about her from what I found, along with reassurance that OSP wouldn't be under fire. Well, not at the time, and not from what she'd done."

Agreeing with the realistic view of things, Kensi quipped "Yeah, we do kind of attract problems all on our own, without DC putting any effort into it. We should do something about that."

Shrugging off her comment, Deeks replied gamely "I did already. I got a new job in a different city. What happens after I'm out isn't my problem anymore, unless I'm ever dumb enough to accept the top chair currently occupied by Vance. Then, it would all be on my desk."

Snarking, Kenz came back at him with "I'll remind you of that in a few years, when Hetty retires and you're up to replace her as number 2 inside the organization, right after Leon. Given the job you've -already- accepted, you're so high up the ladder you can't possibly be passed over if two or three people change affectations."

Hearing clearly the change of tone and subject, Marty replied honestly "I always had the intention of asking for your opinion, and what you plan to respond. I never had in mind to decide this alone and impose it on you after the facts. However, you have to admit that the current situation is unfolding like dominoes toppling along pre-set patterns. My choices were to either follow the opportunity for a hell of a career boost, or vegetate on the spot while the rest of the team sneers at me like yesterday's trash."

Accepting her plate of chicken, potatoes and vegetables from her man, Kensi Blye had to admit, even if silently in her mind, that he was right about how the team had acted. She didn't know why, but lately, it seemed as if Sam and G were always finding ways to put him down or ignore him during meetings. Plus, they had begun converting Anna Kolchek to their bad manners, while poor Eric and Nell didn't know how to react since it was against their natures to seek confrontations of that sort.

Savoring her first bite in delight, the ex-marine simply patted her fiancé's hand in support, closing the subject by saying "I'm here if you need to talk through the paper storm. Hetty will probably speak to me about my transfer to the Great Lakes office or something similar on Monday, if your meeting goes well enough to move forward with everything. I don't mind following you for your new job, but not if I have to become an idle housewife. It's bad enough we're going to one of the worse snow zones of the continent, I won't be reduced to sipping wine in front of the TV all day like a ditz, not with all the training and years of service I put in."

Smirking amusedly, Marty quipped "You could always self-employ as a hunter that supplies meat to the local eco-friendly butchers. You can't cook to save a life, but you can sure shoot straight. As soon as you're used to all the greenery and wide open lakes, you're in business!"

Studiously ignoring the laughing male at her right, Kensi ate her meal while wondering why she loved him so much. She didn't think his sense of humor counted for much in the calculus. It must be the long blond hair, she decided, not the completely off-kilter humor. No, certainly not.

Some mother & son time

()

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 23:00pm

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 20:00pm

The Briary

Portland, Oregon, USA

Cynthia Holt sat in miserable loneliness on the hard, unforgiving metal cot of her solitary cell. Her hands were bound by thick steel shackles and chains that linked to a powered winch hidden inside the ceiling. Her cot took the entire rear-side of the cell, with the toilet/sink unit in the right-side wall while the doorway took the left-side quarter of the room. She was presently wondering what disgusted her the most; the cheap throw-away paper garments she wore, the fact the toilet had no cover to close when flushing to avoid the icky spray-around, or the fact she had been hungry enough to eat the cold, dry ready-to-serve meal the guards gave her. A white bread sandwich with butter, mustard, pseudo-meat slice and cheese slice, with a side of plat cardboard-like potato chips (think Pringles but flat & square).

She had also been handed a large corn resin goblet containing some condensed nutrient powder to which she could add water from her sink, cold or hot at her desire. The guard had explained that the powder was a basic staple of the WAC's militia diet, a family recipe for close to 200 years, and it was proven to help stave off close to 30 different diseases caused by the harsh living conditions in ships, trains, or besieged fortresses. The guard jokingly said it was in the same category of foods as the legendary, and dreaded, 'bunker soda crackers' that were also a basic survival item in shelters and civil support groups since World War II. Thinking back to those carton-like chips, Cynthia could imagine she had just eaten something pretty close and could probably stomach those drab crackers if she were given some. Her meal had been a lot smaller and lighter than what she was used to at home or during business meetings.

All of the woman's musings were interrupted by the aggressive sound of an old steel bell that rang in her cell, warning her to wake up and get ready to have her arms wrenched upwards by the winch. This was the standard process when an inspection, food delivery, trash removal and medical interventions were necessary. Closing her eyes, Cynthia stood to her feet and lifted her bound arms above her head as she heard the winch above engage, the chains clanking noisily as it retracted into the hidden machinery of the ceiling. Barely a minute later and the door opened, letting in the one person aboard that she dreaded to speak with.

Her son Lucas had come to pay her a visit of dis-courtesy.

Looking at him clearly for the first time since she had been arrested in the hospital, Cynthia could see many changes in the 14 year old. He seemed to stand straighter, more assured of himself, less broken under the weight of all the ill-health and injuries than before. His new fluorescent blue hair coloration was not something she would have expected from the otherwise tame child who had always given little attention to his appearance or fashion styles. His eyes were a paradox; darker and more opaque than before, but shining with an inner blue light that made her think of a frosted bulb to put in a Christmas tree. His skin was still milky-white pale, but now it seemed thinner as she could clearly see all the veins and nerves underneath, almost as if the lines were glowing with lambent energy. The mother almost snorted at the horrendous purple & black uniform, that was a clear throwback to the Nazi style of the 1940's, something that had been more or less adopted by dozens of nations around the world. She glanced over the weapons, not trained to understand them, nor interested in trying.

After giving the older woman a good five minutes to inspect him, Lucas gestured to the guard to bring him the small wooden folding chair so he could sit. Once positioned comfortably in the open doorway, the teenager ordered that the woman be winched down to sitting position for their conversation. Being a lawyer, Cynthia was well aware that this was an official interrogation, of sorts. There were no other attorneys, stenographer or bailiff, just Lucas and one guard who wasn't even an officer. All right then, just a preliminary audit to decide where her case went. She could handle that. She thought.

Blinking slowly at the adult as he gazed upon her for the first time in years, Lucas was at a loss for words, not knowing what he should feel, say or do. In reality, the moment the felonious parent had been arrested he had to recuse himself from her case and pull away from it officially. He would eventually be deposed and testify at her trial, but not have a direct implication in the decisional process involved behind the scenes of the judicial machinery. While he was the Constable – Governor and the bloody Treaty gave him excessive freedoms and powers, he personally preferred to stay inside the traditional limits and uses of the justice apparatus. The teen abhorred tyranny; he would try everything in his power to not become one, especially in the name of the 'Greater Good' of humanity. That slope was all too easy to slide down, as his recent actions had proven.

Sighing in annoyance, Cynthia asked tartly "Why are you here? You don't speak, you don't gloat, you aren't even parading your newfound power in my face other than by your clothes. Why are you wasting your time here, boy?"

Blinking slowly at his mother's vitriolic temper, a reliable constant in his life, Lucas frowned as he formed an answer that could make sense. "I wanted to look at you in person before the investigation and trial. We won't have any time together when the process is fully engaged. Not that either of us is all that keen on socializing with the other. But, still, it has been four years since we last saw each other in the flesh. I thought it was worth... something... to meet. Now though, I'm not so certain."

Shaking her head sideways, Cynthia snapped "Idiot boy! We never even tolerated each other! Why the Hells did you think that we needed to meet? I could have done my entire life without ever being cursed with your presence, or knowing about your existence! I surely wish I'd never met Lawrence or gotten besotted by the great big fool! The only reason you're the second biggest mistake of my life is because willingly going to bed with that bastard happened first! You certainly deserve each other as kin, and make a damned matched pair, the both of you!"

Gazing indolently upon the wreckage of the woman who had been his mother in his early childhood, Lucas schooled his facial features to their most neutral, blandest appearance, thus robbing Cynthia of the pleasure of getting a reaction out of him. Getting up from his camp chair, the adolescent declared "You are correct, mother. There never was anything between us, and that won't change now. Be advised that from now on, it's the military tribunal that is in charge of the process. I have already recused myself from any decisional aspects of the case. And, just to make things clear, Trying to despoil the lawful Heir of Wise out of his heritage may be a civilian crime, but keeping the new CG from accessing his posting and carrying out his many duties, that counts as treason against both nations of the treaty."

Leaving the carceral wagon without looking back, Lucas ignored the sounds and movements behind him as the guard closed the door and folded the chair, putting it back in its locker for use another day. This had been a waste of time, yes, but it had been a necessary thing. At least, he now had confirmation that Cynthia's nastiness was natural and personal, not something she learned from Lawrence or kept up in fear that the violent man would attack her if she sympathized with her victimized son. No, she was guilty of her crimes all on her own, and would face the JAG alone.

Rat race in the snow

()

Eastern America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 24:00pm (midnight)

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 21:00pm

Del Norte County Regional Airport

Crescent City, California, USA

Shay Lynn Mosley gave her most placid, urbane smile at the kiosk attendant as the woman handed her the ticket for a seat in a small regional jet plane that would ferry her to San Diego, from where she would find a seat on another airplane that did the border crossing. A privately chartered, off-books plane that would not bother with tickets, customs, or border guards' questions.

Her trip from Medford's abandoned train line had been simple for someone as trained and athletic as her, but annoying and fraught with wasted time. She hated the snow, especially when it was falling, as she was a tropical kind of personality. She liked the sun, warmth and sandy beaches, not mountains, rocky façades and frozen water spikes. Finding an empty house to steal some civilian clothes had been a piece of cake. Most people in the area still didn't operate under the paranoid mentality of big cities like LA or San Fran, so private cameras existed but not in every nook and cornice. Choosing the house and breaking in had been pretty much a chore rather than a challenge.

Once inside, she had taken the time to 'shop' for her new vestments, make herself a hot meal and use the residential Internex monitor to browse transports for her trip. Choosing her target by size and Christmas decorations still in place, she had been lucky that the home was owned by a pair of wealthy retirees who had gone to LA by car to celebrate the Holidays with their relatives. Given that the size of the house where they went was showed in the pictures from previous vacations, Mosley didn't expect them to return soon. They were being housed better than in most mid-range hotels, and at their ages, not in any hurry to endure the six hours of roadway trip needed to return to Medford through the late winter blizzards.

Using the home's Internex monitor, she activated the Internex Mappe Mundiae app, enlarging the view of the area. She quickly spotted the small town of Crescent City on the western shoreline. Finding that it had an airport was all that she needed to decide her next move. Fully dressed in good civvies, she took the time to eat a short meal then stole the elderly couple's spare SUV to drive two hours westward, to the airport and small shopping district near it. Before leaving the burglarized home she had contacted the airport terminal and reserved a seat on a small jet that did a transit line along the seaboard of California, from San Diego all the way up to Seattle and back, like the airborne version of a Greyhound bus.

Now finally arrived at the airport in mid-evening, she allowed herself the time to procure her physical ticket, check her bags at the kiosk, and get a real solid meal. Sneering in anger, Mosley realized she hadn't had a decent repast in more than 24 hours, since Friday morning, and even that had been somewhat rushed so she wouldn't miss what was supposed to be a diplomatic train ride. Taking a deep breath to relax, Shay accepted a glass of red wine from the waiter of the passenger salon as she gave her order. Since it would take two hours for the plane to arrive, disembark passengers and cargo before taking on the new load, she decided to have a full three course meal. She could sleep on the plane, as she was going to get off only at the last stop of the line, sometime near breakfast in the morning.

While waiting for her food, the black skinned woman concentrated on reading the news on a cheap Kindle tablet she had stolen from the empty house. She never perceived the pair of middle-aged men who took seats at a table near the salon's entry door. The two were fifty years of age or just over, with short buzzed hair and hard faces that showed they were not the kindest of people. The man facing towards where Mosley sat took out his phone to click a picture of her and compare it to the photos supplied by their Agency in DC. The pic matched, so that was their target. The two CIA agents were to follow her from a distance, even if she left the USA, to get a read on her final destination. At that point, the rest of the strike team would join them to process the entire group of supporters or paid mercs she was using.

Mosley asked the waiter for another glass of red wine when she received her plate of veal cutlet parmigiana with garlic bread, meat sauce rigatoni and grilled vegetables. Completely ignorant of the tail she had picked up, she savored her meal while occasionally rubbing her throat as she felt as if a few crumbs of dry toasted bread had gotten stuck in her trachea. An hour later, she asked for a small pot of herbal tea and a slice of Holiday apple, caramel & brandy cake. Frowning at the stupid Kindle that was all she had to work with, besides a pair of stolen phones, the felon tried to download more tools from her cache of cyberwares to make the blasted thing work better and safer. Growling in disdain, she shut off the useless thing and stashed it in her handbag when her control app declared the tablet was too old and limited to run several of her more illegal software. Now focused solely on her food, she didn't pay attention to the increased crowd in the salon. It was a fatal mistake that she was trained and experienced enough to never make, but something inside her was just not feeling right and it was affecting her mental processes badly.

Unbeknownst to either the felon or her tail, the H1N1 virus had begun to overtake the small immune boost she had been given earlier, and full activation was less than 12 hours away. She would be healthy just long enough to leave the USA and reach the area of her first equipment cache on Mexican soil, then the malady would become airborne through her lungs. Everything would go worse from there.

Near 23:00pm Shay paid her bill in cash then moved to the boarding gate specific to internal US flights so she could be among the first people to get aboard the small jet. It took almost another half hour to clear out the disembarking passengers before the departing group was allowed to move forward towards their seats. Due to some heavy snow and strong winds, the cargo exchange maneuvers were going slower than usual, delaying departure by almost twenty more minutes. Finally, just on the cusp of midnight, the control tower gave the permission to use the taxiway to position on the runway for takeoff. Mosley thanked her lucky star that the bloody snow and winds had abated for a few minutes, just long enough for the TSA agents to confirm it was safe to fly off the airfield. If they had grounded flights in the area, it could have forced the plane to wait an ungodly amount of hours, maybe up to three days, before the climate cleared enough to let the machine fly.

From a spot near the airport terminal, inside a banal blue Honda SUV that would register as belonging to a soccer mom, a young asian woman was looking at a laptop screen, attentively following three colored dots that were moving over a geographic map of the North American western seaboard. Opening an email program, she typed a short coded brief for her Agency in DC. As the NSA field agent was sending her report about Shay Mosley and the two tails following her, she never realized that her system had been compromised from the inside. Luxis Wolenczak was following every move she made, reading her words live as she typed them, thus confirming what he already knew of Mosley's movements and actions, due to having penetrated both her stolen devices and her cache of cybernetic weapons through the weak, undefended, stolen items she used to travel the Dark Web sites.

As the virtual teenager reported to his flesh brother, several pieces of the larger problem were unwittingly moving across the continent towards their common solution. Three more days at the most and everything would self regulate as desired, with little direct involvement from Lucas or his brother to make it happen.

Advancing towards the unknown

(Atrium Carceri – Forgotten Temples)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 01:00am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 22:00pm

The Briary

Olympia, Washington, USA

Deep in the late evening blizzard that was whipping the upper part of the western seaboard, courtesy of another polar vortex hitting the continent, the military train 'The Briary' was slowly snaking its way into the small town of Olympia, a few miles south of Seattle. The convoy was traveling on a private logging line that was still in service but did not work at night so they had clear passage all the way. The rhythmic motions of the wagons along the tracks had easily lulled the crewmen to sleep in their bunks or plush sofas, leaving only a few sentries awake in the gunnery turrets or walking hourly patrols.

In his private cabin, Lucas Wolenczak sipped some spiced mulled wine as he read through some of the ever growing mound of administrative work attached to his new job. The small treat he had allowed himself to celebrate the holidays couldn't make him tipsy as the wine was too weak and he had a full stomach anyways. Sighing in contentment, he snuggled a bit more into the plush comforter that was wrapped around his thin frame, letting the sofa's thick cushions support and relax him as he plowed through the reams of bureaucratic data scrolling on the tablet he held with a single hand. As soon as his sip of wine was done, he put the crystal stemware back on the small wooden side-table that was affixed to the wall next to the cast iron wood stove to keep the liquid warm. Retracting his arm back into the self-made cocoon of blankets, the teenager let show for a second the small, shy smile that he reserved for those few moments of his life that went truly well.

Signing a form with the blue crystal tipped stylus, Lucas switched to a different sector of the CG's many jobs and jurisdictions, bemoaning that his great-grand-father had obviously been old and devoid of social life when he negotiated the blasted treaty with the two nations. Only someone near retirement or unable to sleep more than two hours a night would ever be able to manage the horde of bureaucrats and matching ceaseless torrent of paperwork that assailed the holder of the posting.

Snorting in amusement, the adolescent asked Luxis inside his mind "I wonder if I can abuse the laws and job definitions of my posting enough to declare all manners of paperwork as seditious against the Treaty members? Maybe that would help stifle the unholy flows to something more reasonable, like less than a dozen sheets per day?"

The gentle laughter of his virtual brother sounded in the back of his mind, the younger teen being much amused by his older sibling's griping. "As long as you make a difference between the work you do and the data-streams that compose my essence, we'll be fine. I don't want to suddenly be declared seditious just because of my existential parameters. On the other hand, I too can admit that there's far too much scrap floating around this web. Do I really need to have the stats for public bathroom supplies or fuel consumption for the motorpool bouncing around my soul? I know I'm made up of alphanumeric strings and some energy, but there's gotta be a limit somewhere!"

Scrunching his face in a weird grimace as he thought, Lucas replied glibly "I guess you could flush all the hygiene data, as long as you don't clog your own pipes in the process. For the rest, you could try to reset your firewalls and routing routines at the intakes? I mean, it's not me who told you to spread that far and absorb so much. I know it's the holidays and people overindulge a bit, but you don't have to pick up humanity's bad habits. Didn't I raise you better than this?" he mentally quipped with a smirk of amusement at the indignant "I'm not fat! I'm not Windows, dammit!" that came back from the cyber ghost who was now pouting at being poked by his sibling.

The old wired telephone mounted to the wall near the cheery warm wood stove rung, a small colored metal indicator popping up to show it was the train's conductor in the locomotive group calling. Picking up the handset, Lucas greeted the old man kindly, then waited for the information. A minute later, he hung up the receiver and began to extricate himself from the tightly packed hillock of blankets that had sheltered him in his short moment of quiet solitude. He closed the tablet and set it on the charging block, to be used later. With a loud sigh of resignation, he unrolled his shirt sleeves back to his wrists, thus covering the defensive bracers again. He slowly put on the vest and re-wired all the cables to the electronics then put on the long coat, carefully buttoning the garment then buckling and adjusting the belts that carried all the heavier equipment. He finished by putting on his gloves and cap, took his cane and gave the cabin a cursory look to make sure everything was stowed or fixed to avoid accidents in his absence.

Leaving the CG's private cabin was easy, but walking anywhere around this over-long tin can was a chore because you could only go lengthwise. And the damned train was loooong! It was in fact the one great big problem with trains; they had no width or height so you had to put things in a thin line that stretched out, sometimes far longer than was practical, especially in emergencies. Sighing softly as he girded his patience, the adolescent genius walked slowly to his destination, trying to get used to the gentle rocking and swaying motion of the deck beneath his feet.

Passing from his reserved living wagon to the one next to it, he entered the mobile office, comms room and planning war-room dedicated to overall control of everything the CG had authority over. The WAC's security director Michel Langlois was standing near the large wooden table that had the maps laid out flat on it, with a new holographic GDC hanging from the ceiling, showing a zoomed view of the immediate area they were traveling. On the glowing blue, silver and white holo-map could be seen a yellow line that indicated their planned route along the rails, and a solid yellow form showed their goal for the day; the WAC's manor at Edmonds, about 20 miles north of Seattle. They would be crossing through several small towns and many suburbs of the larger metropolis in a half-moon curve towards the east before going back westward to the Pacific ocean to reach the isolated manor.

Besides the fact the locality was in the high north of the USA's main continental mass, and near the Canada border too by default, Lucas had never been able to find a reason for F. H. Wise to build such a large, elaborate land-holding in the uninteresting spot. Sure, direct access to the ocean without having to pay dock fees or wait your turn to use the boat ramp or drydock could be of some interest, but could it have been so important that the old man chose to build completely out of Seattle or any other town? Back then in the 1930's, Edmonds had been barely an ink blotch on the maps, just a layover on the way to the Klondike and Yukon for the men who wanted jobs in the mines as more and more minerals were discovered. Gold had been good, but deposits of iron and copper demanded thousands of workers to keep the industrial age going strong, plus the rumors of another war wafting around Europe.

Glaring at the offending yellow image composed of a rectangular base with three small triangles on top to look like the skyline of a castle of citadel, Lucas wondered silently what other depraved miseries he would find in the basements and attics of that forsaken place. It had been closed since the late 1960's, abandoned without even a yearly cleaning crew to maintain the property's functionality and value, despite the fact the medicines and foodstuffs produced inside the walls had been profitable and sold well across north-America. The US Army and Navy were in fact buying large quantities of medication to protect their soldiers from the insect-borne diseases of the tropical climates in Asia Minor, and along the Yellow Sea coastlines, where they were entrenched in the global fight against communist expansion.

Why had F. H. Wise shut down production of money-makers that were that profitable, and had such a strong demand spanning so many geographic zones and multiple decades? From a standpoint of pure economics and business, it didn't compute at all. If it made money, you produced and sold it, regardless of what the regulatory environment or competitors did. That was capitalism in its essence. Why would a man who was, by all accounts, a multi-genius equal to Lucas make such a counter-intuitive decision to shutter a fully functioning, profitable manufacture that boasted an overflowing order book?

Addressing his employer, director Langlois said in low tone "The Edmonds cleaning crew have sent their second report of the day. The manor grounds and industrial complex are -far- different than what was declared in the public archives stored in the local town hall, or even our own WAC files."

Humming lightly, Lucas nodded, having already anticipated that. He could guess that about the estate, having been built well outside where the city limits of Seattle had been at the time, in a period before anybody knew what a suburb was, or what daily commute and suburban living would become in the 1960's and 70's. It had turned out tin jars of mosquito bite ointment, quinine elixir against marsh fevers, and pills against the STD's the soldiers got in the cheap brothels that cropped up all along the places where the US/Europe advance had stalled because the Russia/China compact was pushing back hard. The adolescent could imagine that the manorial grounds had served a second, much more secretive, purpose than what had been publicly admitted. No, the size and shape of the terrain were telling him something, whispering softly to his subconscious that he already knew what Edmonds had been used for, and why it had been a tactical decision to let the place rot, empty and alone, once its purpose had been accomplished.

"Was the cleaning crew able to access the foundations and estate mechanics to activate life support and defensive systems?" the adolescent asked softly, his words almost unheard against the background noises of the comms and secretaries that were keeping the entire WAC's, CG and NA-ML militia in working order.

Giving a single firm nod, Langlois replied "The first team managed to unlock the boat dock, ground garage, railway garage and floatplane hangar. The second team concentrated on the main manor and its dependencies, managing to open the principal entrance, great hall and almost all of the public rooms on the ground floor, first floor and the servants' quarters in the second floor. The third cleaning crew team, arrived about two hours ago, has been trying to penetrate the basement levels under the mansion proper, but so far have not managed it. The doors have been welded to their frames, then were bricked over. The team leader says it's like trying to open a royal Egyptian tomb. They will produce the result, but it will demand significant time, equipment and manpower to achieve. The other two teams have a ten hour shift in them, so they're on rest cycle for the night."

Lips pursed, Lucas mumbled "So, the old lady still clings to her secrets, covering them under stone skirts and glass baubles until we prove worthy of her grand reveal. So be it. Tell the third team to work through the night until their allotted shift runs out. I will be joining them upon arrival, in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours, given the circuitous nature of our route. Call me when the convoy is arriving, I want to see the manor's surroundings from outside the walls as we roll in. Thank you."

The adolescent walked back to his private cabin, taking off his heavy jacket, vest and boots to lie down for a short, one hour nap. He would need a small bit of rest to clear his mind and have the faculties to decide whether all this brouhaha was actually worth it. All of north-America was reeling from the emergence of the CG and reactivation of the Treaty, so he wasn't sure if it was appropriate to waste time on a familial archaeological dig during such civil unrest. On the other hand, that damned instinct kept on niggling at the back of his mind that something dangerous, and critical, to the conduct of his life and operations was waiting, sleeping under the stone, steel and glass of Edmonds Manor.

It would not be a quiet respite.

{ SQ } - { Family history } - { SQ }

(Real Adventures of Jonny Quest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 02:30am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 23:30pm

Fully dressed in his uniform with the thick winter trenchcoat on top, Lucas stood in the forward drive cabin of the first locomotive, at the head of the train. He could see over the top of the ram-tank wagon's massive main turret, all the way to the high perimeter walls of the Wise – Edmonds estate, the cold gray limestone blocks and brown baked tile roofs arrogantly overshadowing everything around, even after so many decades spent abandoned. The teenager took up a pair of traditional binoculars devoid of electronics to get a closer look at the defensive structures. The battlements, machicolations, gunnery slits and steel-sheet shutters that covered the true windows all seemed to have withstood the passage of time and Nature. There were still gas and electrical lamps hung at the end of steel poles protruding horizontally from the outer façade of the walls, giving a means to illuminate the moats and shorelines around the citadel, even in heavy rains or white-out blizzards. As the lamps were hanging two stories above ground and positioned over the middle-point of the moats, it was nigh on impossible for enemy infiltrators to extinguish them discretely. Also, those lamps were set in clusters, near where a manned watchpost was located in the guard towers, gate-keeps or postern doors, so the human sentries would quickly see that their lamps were being sabotaged and thus ring the alarms.

As the train slowed down to a crawl to complete its approach, Lucas could now see the details of the industrial gate-keep that was reserved for the passage of trucks and trains. The wide draw-bridge had been lowered, the barbican doors were opened and the portcullis had been raised about four feet, just enough to allow the soldiers to pass through hunched, yet forbid vehicles or an infantry bullrush. The train came to a complete stop just before the lip of the bridge, great belches of white steam released from several places on the frontal and rear motor groups as the cruising speed pressure was purged from the cylinders in preparation for a few hours parked on idle for maintenance. It had been the first true voyage of The Briary in its combat configuration in close to six decades so the engineers had a lot to do before they could confirm the vehicle was fit to continue passed Edmonds.

Lucas turned towards Raphael Chadderton, ordering "Call the garage wagon to have the Benz ready to unload once the convoy is parked inside the walls. I want to survey the grounds and buildings before I get lost inside the manor's problems."

Nodding, the young butler took up a wired handset from the command telephony console, calling back into the train's rear sections for the car to be let out as soon as the cargo teams were unloading the supplies and men needed to crew the castle with a skeleton staff. More men would come from Sault-St-Mary and Sarnia in the next week, and more after that as the WAC and NA-ML recruiting offices would go into overdrive to satisfy the organization's need for additional, capable manpower.

The gate-keep sentries marched up to the locomotive, getting a series of verbal codes along with paper proof that the convoy was exactly what it claimed to be. After a few minutes to read and do a check-in with their controller by radio, the train was waved into the citadel. The massive steel grate was lifted all the way into its housing, clearing the way for a two-story vehicle to pass underneath the stonework arch without rubbing on the structure. While back in the 1930's two-level trains had not been common, the concept had been around for a while already, with two-floor horse drawn tram coaches in London during the 1600's and 1700's, then steam-powered streetcars in use across the colonies. F. H. Wise had foreseen that someday his company would have those kinds of systems rolling around, so all the roads and doors that accessed his properties had been designed for it, sometimes modifying old estates to make sure his vision could happen in a timely manner.

The Briary advanced again, at a crawl of barely 5 kilometer per hour, the conductors keeping their eyes on the traffic guide-men that were waving small fluorescent flags to signal if they were switching tracks or changing speed. Lucas stood at the cabin's middle window because it was the one place that was almost never used by the convoy's drivers, since it had such a limited field of sight with the ram-tank attached in front. The two conductors stood at the side windows, each station having levers to control the speed, fuel and brakes of the massive machine if something was happening on their side of the rails that the other couldn't see. Because of the two-man crew needed to pilot the train, the middle window and the rear of the cabin were mostly for engineers, foremen, trainees, or even the occasional curious VIP like today.

The senior conductor flipped a switch that started the old bronze bell to ring then he pulled the chain that triggered the steam whistle, calling out to the entire citadel that the train was finally inside the walls. Well, the important part of it anyways. It would take several minutes to bring in and coil the mechanical beast completely inside the outer bailey walls so they could close the gate-keep again. More lights were being lit on the buildings' exterior façades in response to the calls coming from the train, some militiamen or maintenance techs opening the windows of the rooms where they were to look at the impressive sight, and sometimes playfully waved at the long metal snake as it rolled around the triage yard to fold itself into the secured space. The two foremen of the teams on downtime walked out onto the large parade balcony above the main entrance doors to welcome their employer, having waited for him in the foyer's upper mezzanine as they hashed out the reports for the day's work.

The Briary slowly entered the switch system of the triage yard in front of the rolling stock garage where a pair of Unimog rail mules were waiting to separate the convoy into several segments for the maintenance and security checkup that was due. It shouldn't take more than three hours to process with all the militiamen that were now awake to work through a deep-night shift for the second leg of the trip. As the mule #2 connected with the frontal ram-tank, the train crew disconnected the first of eight parts that would be set side-by-side on the four triage tracks for inspection and resupplying. Lucas climbed down from the locomotive with Raphael at his side so they could wait for the car to arrive, without suffering through all the jarring move & stop the entire train felt as each segment was detached and pulled away.

A few minutes later, the old heavily modified Benz arrived, driven by Lenny Herschel as usual, to pick up the two teenagers for a short ride around the manor's interior before ending at the main doors. Lucas was gazing pensively through the windows, admiring the antique buildings and machines along the way, wondering why such a grand place had been allowed to lay fallow and rot for so long. F. H. Wise must have had a reason to build up the ancient homestead to the size it reached under his leadership, and the internal reports of WAC's showed no financial losses or sudden reduction of income that explained the closing and shuttering of installations, especially not in the savage way it was all done. Nobody got any warning, the jobs got slashed, production was stopped, edifices and dependencies were locked out, utilities canceled...

What could his great-grand-father have been so intent on hiding, or running away from?

The luxury automobile stopped in front of the decorative staircase that led to the elevated main doors just long enough to drop the boys, then Lenny drove to the ground vehicle garage where the car would get inspected and serviced while the train was resupplying. Lucas took off his cap, trenchcoat and gloves as he entered the venerable grand house, letting the feeling of home and family flow over him as his eyes roved over the exquisitely carved stone, wrought iron and sculpted wood details. Even the old rugs and hanging tapestries still held colors, silently attesting to the skills of their crafters and quality of the materials used for the noble works.

One of the militiamen took the boys' coats and hats to set aside in the old vestibule, both preferring to keep their gloves with them in case they had to do some heavy manutentions in the areas where the house still wasn't clean. Also, Lucas knew himself well enough to know that he would probably open a few of the secret passages to bypass the official doors that were still locked, and he preferred to not expose his skin directly to such activities. After nearly six decades untouched, nobody knew what sorts of fungi, molds or bacterium could be growing on the old handles and locks in the passageways, so it was a good policy to avoid touching things without a protective layer. A basic gas mask would probably be a good idea too, come to think of it.

The two teenagers climbed the decorative masonry staircase up to the mezzanine to meet the two foremen that were available, as the third was busy trying to open up the basement level for inspection and the cleaning crew. Lucas was not an ego-driven person therefore preferred it when people kept doing their assigned tasks for the desired result instead of stopping everything to fawn over him. He may have a good idea of his current power and societal status, but that didn't mean that his patience or tolerance of butt-kissers and hangers-on had loosened in any ways.

"Constable – Governor Wolenczak!" called out the first foreman to see them, "Welcome to Edmonds, the house that doesn't want to let people through the doors!"

Scoffing in dark humor, the second man growled "It's like the place is haunted by the paranoid ghost of a doomsday prepper. Every damned door, window and chimney in the entire compound was sealed tighter than a miser's grip on his purse when they closed her down."

Snorting in dark amusement of his own, Lucas replied gamely "That's my ancestor, all right! The old doctor was a bit weary of letting people become aware of what he was doing, and why. Plus, the Treaty for the Mid-Line isn't the most legal or moral affair the two countries ever did. WAC's could have suffered a lot of blow-back over the years, if the general population had become aware of it."

"You mean like nowadays?" quipped the second man, not at all impressed with the political climate or the backroom whispers going on because the treaty finally reactivated, after almost 80 years of latency.

"Nah, the boss doesn't waste his time on current stuff," replied foreman #1 with a smirk, "he only worries about stuff that's at least five decades old or more. He says otherwise it has no class."

"Hi-la-ri-ous the both of you's," Lucas replied while affecting a thick New-Jersey accent to mock them, and studiously ignoring the laughing butler at his side. He really got no respect from his workforce.

"Well, here's the report to date." foreman #1 declared as he held out a tablet for the owner of the house to read through. "As you can see, we've managed to open up most of the above-ground facilities except the damned tower at the back of the manor's main edifice. She seems built like the ones at SSM, Sarnia, Thunder Bay and Clough Island. That's eleven storeys plus a number of basements where the bunkers and machinery are located. Then, of course, are the basements all over the estate. They were all closed off like I've never seen before in my career."

The second foreman explained "Several door panels were covered with a sheet of steel that was welded to the frame with lead solder then covered with cement and a 1" thick layer of cut stone to make a fake façade. To make it look like there was never any actual passageway going lower than that point of the floor, and no door to force open. Even in the blasted elevator shafts they laid down steel sheets covered with cut stone to fool people into thinking the access column didn't go any lower than the ground floor anywhere in the manor."

Pursing his lips in thought, Lucas asked "What about the bunkers? Have you managed to access the secret passages that lead to the crew shelters and escape routes?"

Shaking their heads in tandem, the two men signaled that no, the population bunkers were still closed off as tightly as the overall underground systems.

Turning towards the interior of the manor, Lucas put his left hand on the mezzanine banister, gazing in silent repose at the high, empty foyer and joined vestibule from his lofty vantage. His eyes seeing things of the past, present and future that the three males around him never would, the adolescent bent his powerful mind to perceiving the Noosphere of the building, trying to see or feel the electrical, cybernetic and neuronal emanations that would tell him just how much activity was going on, outside from mundane human sight.

The old manor was alight with energies flowing through the plumbing and wiring, even through the leaded joinery in the artisanal stained glass windows and the metal of the victorian light fixtures that could use oil, gas or electricity. That was the confirmation he needed; the prototype neural computers that his ancestor had developed in Buffalo were built and installed here, in Edmonds. This was his 'head' of the network, the point from which he had connected his proprietary bio-electrical grid with the USA's regular national electrical grid. But why? What was so bloody special about Edmonds?

Frowning as he thought through the mysteries of his dead relative, Lucas ordered softly "Finish the details in your reports then log them in the portable server so that Buffalo and SSM have complete trace of everything happening in here. I don't want a situation where we have events ghosting through the system because the field work reports and films weren't logged properly. Nobody will start saying this old place is haunted without us having proof in hand that it's just air moving through nooks and crannies that just haven't been cleaned out yet. I will not tolerate superstitious or religious nonsense in my operations, not from anybody."

Looking over at the other young man, the heavily armed CG declared "Well, let's have at it. We don't have much time here before the train is back in service. I'll open up the tower and go look at those doors, to see if I can't figure out a way to undo the lock-down protocols without destroying half the manor in the process."

Nodding politely to the older men, the two teens made their way to the third level of the main manor, to find the armored doors that would lead into the familial tower at the rear face of the edifice. The access portico looked to be the same design and mechanics as what Lucas remembered from his experiences in the virtual version of SSM. Which was strange as he had never visited that part of the other manor in real life.

As the two boys were inspecting the door frame and exposed steel plates that barred access to the wooden door panels themselves, they heard the third foreman and a pair of militiamen coming towards their position, carrying bags of tools and chemicals to force the passage open.

"Good night, Constable – Governor Wolenczak," spoke the woman supervisor as she set down her heavy duffel bag full of gear. "As you can see, your family built 'em good and strong, back in the old days. We still haven't managed more than stripping off the layer of cut stone and cleaning off the mortar. The steel plates are about a full inch thick, it looks like, so we don't rightly know if cutting through with a plasma torch won't set off a reaction. You know, ignite whatever was packed between the steel and actual doors to buffer hard impacts and the heat of cutting torches. We even thought it could be booby-trapped with an inflammable or explosive mixture to destroy at least the first batch of intruders that tried the strong method to get in."

Nodding slowly, Lucas replied "You thought well. I'm certain that most of the pathways from the main ground floor areas will, in fact, be trapped like that. My ancestor would have made certain the only safe way under was to first penetrate the family tower, then reach the crew bunker, and from there access the network of escape tunnels and shelters unchallenged. An idiot tomb robber or urban archaeologist would try the directest route, from the ground level, because it's the way that anybody can see. Plus, most would think that any large machines like the water boilers or ventilation turbines would have been delivered via the ground floor's public doorways, or else by cargo valves outside the edifice. In either manner, the logical assumption is that the entries from the ground are in fact passable. I can bet you they aren't, not unless they are de-trapped and unlocked from the inside first."

Shrugging, the woman replied uncertainly "Okay... I'll take your word for it. But how do we open this portal safely to get in then? Or do we have to go to the tower's roof to unlock everything on the way down?"

Shaking his head sideways slowly in the negative, Lucas replied absently "No, not that way. If the safe manner was through the tower's observation roof, the external walkways and battlements would connect all the way up. To give easy access to a miserly old crone with the only key, and his escort of workmen laden with tools and parts for the job. No, the way in is here. And I know how to do this."

Turning fully to the supervisor, the genial teen explained "The solution is in the lead solder and the small channels that were carved into the masonry around the doors. If you look carefully, you can see that these gouges start narrow and thin, then become wide and deep before stopping here, at this raised lintel set a full foot before the actual doorstep itself. Now, I'm betting that this stone lintel is actually a flat plate that is covering a set of drainage holes or retention bowls, so that when the lead solder is molten, it flows down the door, then along the channels into the drains/bowls for recycling. The trick to this lock is that lead melts at a far lower temperature than steel alloys, but much higher than the varnishes and paints they used to finish the woodworks of the epoch. This means that we will need to open windows and place fans around to evacuate the toxic fumes from the materials that will react to the heating process."

Nodding, the foreman commented "The windows are already in order and their frames cleaned out. The field fans aren't a problem, we have some, including some hot-air blowers because we're in winter in a mountainous region that's known for harsh winter climate. We also have flexible water tanks and portable pumps to feed a stand-by plumbing system or serve as supplemental fire-fighting gear. The only thing we're limited on is the metal melting part. Most of those tools are bound to the workshops in the boxes of our trucks, since they were never meant to be taken out of the vehicles. The more recent versions of WAC's tool trucks have movable benches, forge, generator and such, but we only have a pair of old 1980 versions at present."

Lips pursed in concentration on his task, the teen genius replied easily "We'll only need to bring in a portable generator and a converter to have direct current. If you look here, you'll see that this power socket built into the wall has no tactical value, and wouldn't be useful in everyday life. It is also younger than the rest of the electrical systems in the house by at least twenty years. It was not installed as part of F. H. Wise's first major overhaul of the estate, in the late 1940's, but instead put in when they worked on closing down the building."

Taking out the multi-tool from his belt, Lucas knelt on both knees next to the wall, then unscrewed the decorative brass faceplate of the antique electrical outlet. The system inside the box were not similar in any ways to a regular domestic power socket, looking instead like the intake on an industrial breaker, with a pair of dusty copper connectors and a small flip-switch that had a wood covered handle.

Pointing at the device, Lucas explained "When the workmen sealed the doorway, they installed a permanent electrical wire all around the frame, keeping it exposed all the way. This wire is connected to this junction box, and that largish screw with the single flat slot in it's head is a hidden dial to control how much current passes through the circuit. You have to manually adjust the power to get enough voltage to melt the lead, but not enough to react with the steel structures in the frame and panels. However, as an added safety, the mechanism isn't linked to the house's electrical grid, so we'll need a generator or some pretty long extension cords to link-up to one of the tool trucks outside. Then we melt the solder and pull off the armored slabs. The genuine door should be much easier to open, as I have a skeleton key that bypasses the locks that F. H. Wise was prone to installing everywhere to insure his own access to all parts of all properties and vehicles he controlled."

Roughly rubbing a hand through her hair, the foreman shrugged off the eccentricities of her employer and his family as just more rich folk weirdness. "All right boys! You heard the boss! Get us some fans and generators to light up this roman candle!"

"Oh god, I hope not!" Lucas stage-whispered to Raphael as he thought about his ancestral manor going up in multi-colored flames fed by a century of chemicals, paints, wood, cloth and fuels.

Snickering softly, the young valet did his best to help his master get up from the floor and find a chair nearby for him to sit as he contemplated the rest of the puzzle left by his forebear. When he took this job, Rafe had never thought being a butler would be this much fun and excitement. He was like the famous 'Alfred Pennyworth' from the Batman series of comics and cartoons, but with more traveling and direct implication that the fictitious character usually got. Plus, he had the run of a full staff to help do everything. He wouldn't see himself taking care of a large manor this size all alone; that would be both unfeasible and madness, regardless of the secrets to be kept safe.

{ SQ } - { Into the maw of the Beast } - { SQ }

(Martin Mystery – opening theme)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 03:00am

Western America; Saturday 5th of January, 2019; 24:00pm (midnight)

Lucas, Raphael and the WAC's militiamen were all wearing modern gas masks composed of synthetic resin helmet, energetically ionized carbon fiber filters, and thick crystal lenses that served as meta-glasses for the duration. The headgear was necessary to supply the humans with enough clean oxygen to live while the lead solder melting process was active. As Lucas had rightly predicted, the heating filament reached a temperature that made the surrounding wood, mortar, varnish and paint bake from the inside, letting out toxic fumes and sometimes even turning to ash. The process was hard on their nerves, despite that it only took a mere ten minutes to liquefy the joint filler enough to make it flow down the drainage channels out of the door plug.

Now that the joints and hinges were clear of the metallic gunk, the armored steel plates could be taken out of the stone archway to reveal the actual wooden doors. The workmen wore heavy gloves and used long handled screwdrivers to unlatch the thick steel slabs, starting with the top and going down, in the reverse order that they had been installed. For all the efforts of mind and materials the portal demanded, it was a pretty easy job to accomplish once the solder had been removed. Each steel plate segment weighed about 50 pounds so that a single man could maneuver it into or out of place without help from others or machines. A rather medieval technique, but it clearly showed its worth tonight.

After ten minutes of backbreaking labor, the original decorative access doors were finally visible and showed now damages from the lead melting device, other than some residual ash where the surface varnish seemed to have boiled inside the wooden panels. Lucas gestured the female foreman to move in to scan the air with a portable sensor device, as he had doubts about how safe the entry truly was.

A loud, nasty burble was heard as the sensor's LED's went red or purple, along with a strong vibration that made it impossible for the user to ignore the danger warning. "Doctor! We have aerial toxins! The scan shows fatal levels of arsenic, cyanide and an unknown acid compound. All are poisonous to humans when breathed directly. I don't know about skin exposure."

Nodding slowly, the teenager replied rather blithely "Those aren't an anti-intruder trap, just the expected residues from the wood's over-heating. Back then, to protect structural lumber like those doors and most of the posts, beams and trusses that support the manor, the standard method was to cook them in a closed iron pipe filled with poison vapors. The arsenic kept molds and fungi from forming on the surface if the wood got wet. The cyanide was to kill off worms, ants and beetles that could be tempted to dig into the fibers to make burrows. The acid is the one variable I haven't a clue, but it's probably a complementary anti-plant and anti-vermin treatment as my ancestor would have wanted the wood supports to last. Given how hard to access and repair the structural components are, especially in the basements and middle floors like this one, you really need to have the best quality wood products available on the market. Also, being apothecaries and chemists, I'm pretty sure my ancestors bought the timber from the mill only cut to shape, then did the chemical treatments on the spot of construction, with custom brews to insure the results they wanted."

Shaking her head sideways in annoyance, the foreman growled "I really hate working in century-old houses like this! Besides asbestos and lead which are bad enough on their own, you always have some asshole who thought putting in raw poison was a good idea! And these people were pharmacists and healers in their day?"

Shrugging it off in amusement, Lucas replied lightly "They also used to prescribe smoking four cigarettes of tobacco per day to relieve the stresses of working in high-pressure jobs like banking, coca leaf tea for melancholy or depression, and electroshock therapy for 'female hysteria' which then turned into 'just buy a vibrator' in the mid 1900's." Waving a dismissive hand at the subject matter, the boy gave them a 'so what?' kinda gesture then pointed at the exposed doors.

Nodding, the two soldiers used hand sponges and cold, clear water to wash down the surfaces, thus cutting down the emanations of fumes immediately. A few moments more and the teenager was able to approach the panels to inspect them up close. Breathing noisily through his mask, Lucas gazed at the way the highly decorated oak planks were framed, with steel slats all around and crossing in the middle of each panel. There were two handles in the middle, were the two panels met when the valve was closed, as was conventional. What was missing was the lock. Normally, standard door techniques had the lock in the middle, if only because that was the easiest and cheapest way to keep a pair of moving panels shut tightly. However, when you were a paranoid rich bastard with delusions of godhood among mankind, you employed the other technique. Namely, you placed the locking mechanism in the frame of the doorway, completely protected from assault by the thick stone and metal structure of the edifice, and almost invisible to the unaware.

Lucas walked backwards a bit, looking above normal eye level at the decorative elements that were set into the walls on either side of the defended portal. Smiling invisibly inside his mask, the teenager moved to the left side and pressed a hand softly to the wall, using his ungloved hand to see and feel what his eyes and meta-glasses couldn't. Hidden under the old, worn out wallpaper were bas-reliefs carved into the masonry wall. The reliefs were on both sides, but only those on the left had heated so much during the lead-melting that the paper over them had begun to lose its coloration from the change in temperature. Taking out his multi-tool again, the genial adolescent cut a small rectangle of the painted wallpaper that he then peeled off carefully, letting hang from the left side as he had cut only on the top, right and bottom. Now exposed was the segment of bas-reliefs that had warmed, and Lucas was not in anyway surprised by the artwork that he discovered.

A series of germanic runes with a cartouche representing the Black Sun of paganism. Set over the sun icon's twelve black branches was a swastika inlaid in mother-of-pearl.

Silently sharing a few crass imprecations with Luxis inside his mind, the teenager flipped the blades on his multi-tool to have a chisel to pop-out the unholy icon, as he knew it to be only a stone plug to protect the keyhole that would trigger the hidden locking system. A short minute of effort was rewarded by the two inch wide, one inch deep roundel popping out with a loud noise and a belch of toxic gas that was the color of week-old diarrhea left to rot in the sun. "Whelp, that anti-theft device had clearly passed its expiration date last century. Remember to clean that up tomorrow, will you?" he quipped at the work crew airily.

Ignoring the muttered ill wishes against his health and parents since they were half-right, Lucas flipped open the hateful heirloom ring his great-grand-father had left at his disappearance, exposing the hidden white swastika on a black background. He fitted the secret key to the special lock and turned right until he heard the loud snapping sound that indicated something had finally triggered and moved inside the wall around the mechanism. While well hidden from the usual thief or spy, the locking system wasn't actually all that complicated because non-electronic, indirect machinery based on clockwork did tend to rust or jam, so the creator had to keep things simple to be reliable through time and disuse. As such, Lucas was not really surprised when all it took to persuade the antique device to work was some elbow grease and willpower.

Walking to the doors, the adolescent put his tool back in place, followed by his gloves. The doors may have been washed minutes ago, but he didn't trust the builder to have kept it simple and harmless for any who came to open the sanctum. Flexing his armored fingers, the boy grabbed both handles and swung them downwards firmly, making the secondary latches release from the top, bottom and middle of the panels to let the valve panels pivot outwards as expected from the defensive construction.

As the two panels moved, they liberated a pair of mechanical spring-loaded pins that were triggers for other devices located deeper into the tower's foyer level. Electric lights, wood burning fireplaces and local ceiling fans activated all together. At the same time, an old electric phonograph began to play an old military parade song, the recording having both instrumentals and a choir.

Horst-Wessel-Lied

"Raise the Flag"

The Nazi anthem

Lucas stood stock still, eyes closed behind the thick lenses of the gas mask, hoping nobody would ask any questions about the automated welcoming protocol his ancestor had put in place. Besides having to give them an hour long lecture on World War II, he'd then have to waste a second hour to explain all the backroom deals and moral contortions committed by F. H. Wise to satisfy his own greed and thirst for power and authority over all he beheld.

Taking a-hold of his negative emotions and shoving them back violently at the rear of his mind so he could remain functional, the genial teenager entered the family tower's foyer to inspect what structures and furnishings had been in place when the edifice was sealed. What he saw had a very strange correspondence to what he had seen in SSM, during his weird coma-inspired dream sequence. The dark mahogany telephony console, armchairs, drinks tables, couches, and tall phonograph cabinet were all sculpted and adorned with brassware in the appropriate style for the early and mid 1900's. The rich wall hangings and tapestries that served as mobile separations around the open floor had faded away in the stale air of the sealed room, but still showed all their colors so that the subject of each could easily be divined. Most of the woven artworks were about life on the estate since its first construction, in the late 1800's, including a scene depicting the arrival of the first steam tractor capable of pulling a plow through a field to prepare the ground for sowing crop seeds. Several beautifully carved wood panels had vegetal motifs or idealized scenes of spear hunting, including from horseback with hounds.

Lucas made a slow circuit towards the blasted phonograph so he could silence the damnable song, lest somebody recognize the military hymnal for what it was, and what it meant about his ancestor. It was a good thing he did so, as that allowed him to spot the brass key laying innocently next to the slowly spinning tube of the instrument. His great-grand-father had chosen the most obvious place to leave the key to access the rest of the estate, thus making certain he couldn't forget it as he too would be obliged to come stop the musical device in order to converse undisturbed with his workers. The boy stopped the song then lifted up the key, peering at it malevolently through the lenses of his gas mask, wanting nothing more than to see the bloody relic combust in his fingers right now.

Taking the time to analyze the innocuous item, he realized something; it was much too small to be a door-lock key, especially when you considered the size of the doors that separated the manor's sections to keep fire or intruders from moving about. No, this was for either a drawer-lock in a desk or dresser, or some kind of cassette or safe box. Pulling out a short length of string from his overcoat pocket, he threaded it through the key's eye-hole then tied it off to one of the buttons on his front. It would keep there until he found the item it opened. However, that meant that their search now lead upwards into the rooms and offices, not down into the basements. He took a few minutes to explain his find to his colleagues, then assigned them to attempt the passage below anyways, just in case. Raphael and himself would go up to ferret out the mystery of this key. They had to move fast though, as they had a tight schedule to follow.

A cry of outrage nobody hears

(Hymnals – Adeste Fideles)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 05:00am

Western America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 02:00am

HQ of the American Association of Evangelical Leaders

Washington DC, USA

Sitting at his usual position at the head of the conference table was the exalted Reverend Father Mitch E. Deforest, cardinal of the Godly Men of Jesus sacerdotal union, and chief predicator for the Alliance of Providential Christian Congregations of America. The seventy-nine year old had served as head of the Evangelical Leadership group for the passed six years and gave no signs of letting go, despite serious health issues and five different court cases for sexual assault pending against him for nearly three decades. As long as his foolish parishioners and their sluts-of-the-pews would keep putting cash in the tithing basket, he would keep on paying bribes to the judges and district attorneys to put off any serious inquiry or trials until he no longer cared for the outcome.

Sitting at the table around him were like-minded social peers and colleagues, all hallowed amongst the apostolates, priesthood and ecclesiastes of the biblical Faith. Each of his partners were old white men of anglo-saxonic, germanic, french or slavic descent. All of them were older than age 65, mostly bald, portly or clearly overweight, and had several health problems due to their lives of vice and luxury without ever making any real efforts at living better or healthier. These men were the apotheosis of exaltation, authority and divinely imbued right-to-rule in the christian evangelical churches and sects of the USA, and vocal proponents of 'Dominionism' and 'Christian Nationalism' which lead them to try and usurp the diverse levels of governance in the country at each chance they got.

Or, at the least, they thought themselves to be all that, and much more.

Reality had other opinions, as their being thwarted or stifled in each plot they fomented showed.

The thirteen men, so assembled because it was the same number as Jesus and his apostles, had convened in this dreadful hour, five in the morning, after passing a night of fruitless labors because the emerging situation was now proven untenable. One of their most powerful and connected associates, Ghaspard Lemmelien, High Marshall of the Royal Crusading Legions of Jesus, had reported to them the failure of his own exalted group of faithful men. The attempt at securing a project manager of solid credentials and distinguished reputation to save admiral William A. B. Noyce from the hands of the miserable juden rasse child had flunked out pitifully. The man they had agreed to contact with their petition had come to Washington DC to hear them out, then flatly refused to be involved with anything Lemmelien's group was doing. His arguments to reject the task were all based in the precepts of Human Law and USA Constitutional Law, not the hallowed texts of the Bible of Jesus, thusly betraying the weak-mindedness of the drunken wastrel. Honestly, it wasn't unexpected. Nathan Hale Bridger had been a habitual drunkard for the past five years, following the death of his son, and his wife a year later. Between his constant intoxication and permanent social isolation on his tropical island, it was no surprise the retired mariner had refused to undertake such a demanding job. Especially when one considered the lengthy periods of exposure to society, crowds and media reps that their point-man would have to endure, atop of the court sessions and paperwork.

A few of the men around the table held the opinion that Bridger had seen the truth of the mess, but that wasn't something to be said aloud in earshot of RF Deforest, not if they wanted to keep their own seats of power within the evangelical association of America. The fat old pig couldn't defrock them from their churches or usurp their chairs in committees or other groups, but he could make life difficult, to the point of making somebody prefer retirement or quitting DC altogether. And there were no guarantees that the fanatical crud would let them leave peacefully for a position in a less public zone, or more discrete function. Several past acquaintances of the AAEL board of directors had known rather deplorable ends, because this bastard had pursued them all the way into foreign countries to insure the destruction of their religious and commercial enterprises. Not that he had moved himself physically, but he did control the AAEL's funds and used them shamelessly to pay lobbyists and mercenaries to make real his depraved fantasies.

One of the men around the table who was an obsequiously devoted follower of Deforest's plots and machinations asked carefully "What are our options now? If one of Noyce's own academy buddies won't make the effort to even just try one, single public presentation of his case, then what are the man's chances at escaping confinement?"

A second man, far less beholden to Deforest since his health would force him to retire in the coming 24 months, replied tartly "You misconstrue the situation, my friend. Noyce should be more focused on escaping the gallows than the cell he occupies. Condemned to jail for decades, he would have that much time to orchestrate a defense, or even just wait-out the accursed Constable – Governor's existence when the Treaty expires in 2040. No. He's in for a military tribunal under war time protocols and rules, so that means the death penalty if they ever demonstrate he channeled even just a little bit of foreign or outside influence through his postings in the US Navy, NATO and UN fleets. Sedition and Treason have only one answer, under Martial Law, and we all know this."

Cardinal Deforest growled angrily "How in Christ's name is it that we, men of power and faith under Jesus' creed, are so lowered in society that we are now kneeling at the feet of a child!? How is it that a mere slip of a boy - and a jew-boy at that! - could achieve such status as to command one of our own Men of Christ to answer him from a position of inferiority, let alone legal subservience! Who in the flames of Hell came up with this unnatural depravity?"

One of his favorite lick-spittle's answered slavishly "It was the fault of those idiots in the 1940's, my lord cardinal. And most probably those spineless Canadians who wrought this abomination unto us."

The same man who had reminded them of Noyce's impending fate snarled a vicious retort to that pile of steaming dung; "Are you daft or just illiterate? The newspapers copied the texts verbatim, just as the news channels on TV and the Mid-Line Defensive Treaty website. It was us, the Americans, who came up with this offal. Or did you think that Buffalo was a Canadian town? Use Mappe Mundiae to update your views of the homeland, my friend, before you say something like this in public, to prove just how limited your education and worldview are."

"Enough!" barked Deforest, barely keeping a lid on his monstrous temper. Few people ever saw his true nature from point-blank and survived. "We have to find a way to save Noyce from this travesty that offends everything that is godly, hallowed and blessed in our Land of America, or else the little turd might very well start thinking that -WE- can be next on the chopping block! Noyce himself, as a functioning part of the Great Crusade, has served his part and could be allowed to disappear into the void without causing us any hardships or damages. But! If we let him be removed forcibly by any hand that is not our own, then we open the door to countless hordes of scurrilous knaves who will race to be the first at our walls, demanding monies and privileges to let us live, let alone exert our divinely granted powers and moral authority. That is the exalted station in life we must protect, and the turpitude we must defend against at all costs."

Snorting in disdain, another man who was not enamored of Deforest's personal habits or methods spoke aloud the dreary truth they already knew full well; "The Treaty is Law of the Land in Canada and the United States, unless you can suddenly convince both governments to abrogate it, regardless of the hefty financial, fiscal and commercial penalties that Wise Apothecary would then be entitled to claim against both national entities. Something that the current international commerce rules would enforce, regardless of how antiquated the Treaty is, or how damaging to both countries. The important fact the courts would look at is that all three parties signed in full cognizance of cause, and so they are bound to the texts written. You, as either a church ecclesiaste or a civilian, can't challenge that; only a national leader could, and the international courts wouldn't let anybody outside of NATO put their nose in it."

Fuming violently at the rebuttal he'd suffered, Deforest exploded loudly "Are you siding with the drunken coward Bridger? Are you now siding with the enemies of our God and faith? What kind of weakling, cowering fool have you become? Answer me, I command it most christianly!"

Snorting in open disdain, another old man declared in a bilious tone "And that, right there, that vitriolic spiel of self-aggrandizing shite is why no tribunal in the world will ever waste its time on anybody who isn't a legitimately empowered national leader and member of NATO when this Treaty is concerned. You're just one amongst a horde of fools who seethe at the sight of all this power, authority and money going to the hands of a child, and a jew-boy at that, so most judges, committees and countries will simply ignore you, the same way all the others will be ignored. Your innate bigotries and religion fueled wishes for power are not receivable by a tribunal of laws as valid bases for charging anybody with crimes or illegal behaviors. It certainly isn't enough to forcibly hijack a company from it's lawful owner and drop it into your hands, or those of your church. Get real, man!"

Throwing his coffee mug against the far wall so hard it exploded in porcelain fragments and a slosh of tepid fluid, Deforest screamed like a banshee "Get out! Get ye all out, all you useless cowards and scurrilous knaves that suckle at the teats of Satan's demon whores! I cast you out, fallen! And don't come back until you've done penances and rituals to cleanse your fallen souls! Depraved bastards!"

Now alone in the harsh light of the fluorescent tubes, Cardinal Deforest could only absorb the hard, solid facts of that most heinous of all forces in the known universe: Reality. No matter how much faith and creed he opposed to the unwanted, depraved bastardy before his eyes, nothing changed and nothing would change by belief alone. He was faithful and strong in his worship of the Almighty, but even with a thronging horde of believers and paid hirelings it wouldn't be enough to dislodge this little jew-turd from where he'd ensconced himself. Faith alone certainly wouldn't stop those cannons and rifles from killing off his parishioners and mercenaries, no matter how many prayers the people who knelt in the pews would send up to their Lord in Heaven.

They were defeated. After two millenia of power and authority acquired by the armored might of crusaders wielding steel, torch and the Christian Bible in their hearts, a Jewish King had finally arisen to take over their lands and populations, just as had been prophesied in the Book of Apocalypse, when God warned his faithful to be watchful for signs of the enemy growing in strength. God ha been right, as he was in all things of this world, but it wasn't in the Middle East or Africa that the threat had emerged, it was right in their backyard, right in the heart of white christendom, and it would be their own towns and churches that burned as they exorcised this menace from their society.

Well, if it must be so, then God's will be done! For the Great Crusade, Amen!

Running out of time and everything else

(Jonny Quest – opening theme)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 06:00am

Western America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 03:00am

Edmonds Citadel

Edmonds, Washington, USA

'Whelp, their schedule had been irrevocably compromised, that was sure!' Lucas smirked silently under his gas mask as he trotted towards the great staircase that accessed all the levels of the family tower with Raphael in tow. He had finally found the mysterious key that he wanted in the large desk on the master's office floor. If he hadn't been paranoid about checking everywhere along the way, they could have finished a lot sooner, but then again, they would also have missed out on the four other keys he had found, and those old skeleton thingies seemed important for some reason.

"Guys!" the teenager called out as he approached the team of workers waiting near the stairs and elevator shaft on the ground floor, "I have the much sought after items. Now we just need to go down to the basement and open the doors from this side so we can start accessing the rest of the property's tunnels."

Foreman #3 grunted in assent, jerking a thumb over her shoulder as she said "Yeah, well, that means you go in first. We're stuck here cuz the stairs and elevator can't go any lower than ground-level, even in this confounded heap of rocks. Your old man was sure paranoid in his old age!"

Snorting in amusement, Lucas nodded his head as he passed by the work crew to get his hands on the offending doors. With the master keys in hand, it shouldn't be too much of a job to pry open the blasted things and finally see what his beknaved ancestor had hidden in this abandoned pile of bricks.

Humming softly under his breath one of those epic tunes he enjoyed as work ambiance music, the young man approached the forbiddingly thick and stout valves that barred access to the estate's lower workes and utilities. The shape of the doorway's stone masonry was typical of what F. H. Wise normally commissioned in his homes and businesses, but the actual panels were thick steel plates with steel bar reinforcements crossing over the surface of the pivoting armored plates. No simple oak wood and veneer for this particular passage. Looking around the obstructed entry, Lucas spotted what he wanted to see; a decorative motif carved into the stone reliefs at about eye level for an adult human male. The offending 'Black Sun Wheel' motif was one that his great-grand-father had reserved for those doorways he trapped with poison gas or acid showers because the contents of the room was that dangerous to let loose.

Taking a deep breath through the constricted space of his gas mask, the teenager adjusted his gloves to fit tighter on his hands as he shouted back "Gas! The door is trapped! Stand back until I call you forward." Taking the key he thought was the good one, he rubbed it clean of dust before flipping open the damnable Nazi ring his ancestor had left him. With his items ready, the boy used his multi-tool to pry off the carved stone plug to access the first lock for the ring, as it was supposedly the controller for the trap mechanisms. It took some straining for almost a minute to fight the old, paralyzed machinery but he managed to make it trigger back to 'safe' mode. That gave him the chance to scan the heavily embattled door panels to find where the regular key went, and he found it. Luckily, he had insisted on searching the entire portion of the tower that was open or they'd be swimming in toxic gases. The main lock was hidden behind the point where the reinforcing steel bars joined, in the middle of the panels' separation seam. He had to undo the four locks that attached the bars to the stone walls around the doorway to remove the containment harness and reveal the main lock.

It took just a minute to unlatch the perimeter catches and let the reinforcement grid stand on its own, ready to be taken apart and removed from the passage. Lucas stepped back to let his workers dismantle the steel harness that forbade access to the doors, giving them at long last access to the last barrier that had kept them out of the basements.

After the crew had removed the heavy steel beams and joints, Lucas moved to the door panels, using his multi-tool to unseal the protective steel plug that shielded the locking mechanism from harm if somebody tried to brute-force their way through the door's deflection harness. Slotting the master key, he gave it a counter-clockwise turn as was necessary when the door was trapped with toxins. His ancestor used clockwise-turn locks only when the traps were mechanical blades or to reveal a puzzle-lock that would actually open the valve. As it was, the door's last defense proved somewhat stuck by old age and disuse, but it gave in anyways, finally triggering with a harsh 'THUNK!' that resonated down the landing and up the staircase.

Moving back anew, Lucas let his workers pry open the door panels, only to find out they were stuck to the frame with some sort of rubbery sealant. Muttering nasty imprecations about his employers' origins, which the teenager wholeheartedly approved aloud, the foreman ordered her men to bring in some acid and an electrical pressure washer to rinse off the crud so they could finish this mess before sunrise.

It took almost another half hour of work before the accursed doors finally gave up resisting and let themselves be forcibly opened for the first time in over six decades. The moist, musty air stank to high heavens, but thankfully their gas masks kept them from the worse of it, although it was quickly decided they would need to get a look over by medics to make sure they didn't get rashes or infections through skin osmosis. Given that his ancestor had a habit of putting laboratories in weird places, Lucas wanted to make certain none of his people got killed by poisons or diseases that had been left to macerate and ferment in unsecured conditions.

"Get every window in this tower sealed with plastic sheeting! Set up the HAZMAT zone airlock at the entry on the third floor! We need to get this miasma contained, fast! Raphael! Sound the bio alarm and get everybody awake, now! We need to contain whatever this stench is before it gets out of the building and propagates to the entire countryside!"

{ SQ } - { Descent into madness } - { SQ }

(Martin Mystery – opening theme)

Eastern America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 08:00am

Western America; Sunday 6th of January, 2019; 5:00am

The second foreman approached Lucas, holding his gas mask in his hands as he removed his gloves and hard hat to be less burdened during the conference. The teenager had decided to establish the temporary command post in the third floor lobby of the familial tower so as to be near the choke-point where everybody passed, and it would also allow the militiaman on duty to protect the portable plastic sheeting HAZMAT airlock & shower system they had used to seal the entry. It had taken a little over an hour to seal and secure the tower's windows and doors, a job that was thankfully made easier by the symmetry of the building and the elevator that could lift heavy & large loads.

Lucas gestured at Raphael to serve tea to the attendees, along with some sandwiches made of warm buttered bread, Dijon mustard, scrambled eggs and Swiss cheese. It was a meager breakfast indeed, but most welcome by everybody at this juncture.

"So, what are we looking at, now?" the teen asked after a bite of sandwich.

The first foreman sipped his tea before answering the primordial question; "Mostly mold spores, some fungi, and a few rather nasty bacterial lung infections. The automated field analyzers and the portable labs in the train wagons have confirmed the presence of some pretty bad strains of Influenza, nut luckily they aren't Spanish or Swine or Avian flu's, just really nasty human bugs. Except there's like six varieties of the stuff floating around. There's also at least a pair of fungi that could potentially take root on mammalian skin and grow into florescent plants. Although, the botanists say that it would only be an external, cosmetic thing, not an actual parasitism or sharing of organic systems. The bloody 'shrooms just like to grab on to anything warm and wet, so human skin would do that for them."

Lucas snorted in amusement, declaring "I'm all for my company going green to save the environment, but I don't think the tradesmen unions would appreciate if I asked their members to let mushrooms grow on them as part of that movement. Unless the fungi in question have pharmaceutical usages. If that's the case, I'll gladly pay the guys to rent their epidermis by the square inch to cultivate a new revenue stream in-house, so to speak."

The four foremen and two militia officers gave their adolescent master the gimlet eye while he replied silently with a shit-eating grin as he sipped his own tea between bites of egg sandwich.

"What?" asked the boy innocently, "It isn't any different from scottish sheep that have aromatic grasses growing on their wool to spice up the farmer's cooking. I don't see why you're all that way..."

A few obscene gestures and grumbles later and the people assembled to discuss the ongoing mess were at peace again. Although they were certainly glaring at their young boss every now and then.

The militia commander cleared his throat after a mouthful of warm tea, saying "Our preliminary checks on the airborne odors are as my colleague indicated. Some nasty but well known diseases and a few lesser contaminants that we can easily prevent. At the worse, we can cure them inside of a week, and the employees affected wouldn't need to be hospitalized, just put on light duty or desk jobs at home if they get it worse than normal. We also found the poison gas canisters exactly where you thought they'd be hidden, both types of chemicals, and have removed them from the mechanism. They are in The Briary for analysis and disposal in the plasma autoclave."

Foreman #2 took up the discussion, explaining "Our militia managed to go down the stairs to the first basement's doorway which they found locked conventionally. The skeleton keys that worked in the above-ground floors were good for that door and then the second and third basements as well. We haven't begun to explore the actual floors, the soldiers are just going around unlocking the connection points between the building and outer tunnels as well as the level access points. We're gonna need you to do the initial survey of the deeper basements, especially from what I've heard about what the guys found under the train triage yard."

At the teenager's raised eyebrow, the militia commander detailed "When they managed to reach the third basement level and open it, the soldiers also found a second door that was on the wrong axis to enter the building or its immediate annexes. It was going towards the middle of the work yard. So they called it in and were given permission to walk the unexpected tunnel to see where it goes. Well, the man-sized passage connects to a massive two hundred feet (200') wide by sixty feet (60') deep industrial floor, and the tunnel they were walking actually arrives in the top quarter of the construction bay, near the ceiling. The bloody assembly floor is over two thousand feet (2,000') long! They sent back a film of the rows upon rows of machine tools, stacks of parts and bunkers filled with blank stocks of metals, woods, glass, plastics, rubbers and others that look like ceramics or stoneware of sorts."

Lucas leaned backwards into his chair, passing a weary hand down his face as he feverishly thought through all the depravities that his ancestor could have built in a factory this big. However, there was still something missing. "Was the space cavernous or monumental?" he asked of the soldiers.

Seeing their interrogative, and somewhat incredulous, gazes upon him, Lucas explained "It's in terms of architecture, not volume perception. Yes, such a wide man-made thing will give off a feeling of being what most would say is 'cavernous', while others will say 'monumental' because it's artificially built, and neither is wrong, but only on an emotional standpoint. In true architecture terms, a space is deemed cavernous if it doesn't have any supports in the middle to support the roof and structures over it, whereas if there are columns or pillars spread around the space to uphold the ceiling then it is monumental. Small, very academic difference you will say, but it is critical."

Nodding in understanding, the commander replied "Then it would be said 'monumental' since the films from their helmet cams show several floor-to-ceiling columns and several small sheds or casemates spread around the work floor. There are also gantry cranes and rails in the floor to move heavy loads on dollies or mine carts."

Making a -gimme- gesture, the teenager set his food aside to handle the digital tablet to run the film himself. He connected the tablet to the portable neuroplexic server and small gaseous display console that had been put in place to help command the estate's re-commissioning. Transferring the films took only mere seconds on that kind of system, and the projector lit up, showing in full colors what the two soldiers had found, deep underground.

The vast manufacturing hall was in fact deeper than than the exploring soldiers had thought as shown by the GPS data coming from their kits. The computers declared that the roof of the monumental space was around 150 feet beneath the frozen surface of the ground, and the floor was actually 75 feet (75') lower, not sixty as initially believed. The width was in fact two hundred and twenty feet (220') because there were two rows of ten foot thick (10') columns upholding the vaulted ceiling. The pillars were spaced 75-50-75 so as to have a central fifty feet wide transit route flanked by seventy-five foot wide working and assembly berths. The placement and width of the ground rails and matching overhead gantries with their associated catwalks showed that small parts were crafted in the sides then mounted into a larger object mounted to large train wagons in the middle, in the manner of an assembly line.

The question was what could they have been making? Ground vehicles like tanks or trains similar to The Briary, or maybe aircraft such as Spitfire or Mustang fighter planes? What could they...

"Show me the view towards the waterfront, to the west. I have a supposition I want confirmed." Lucas ordered the computer, surprising the men around as they had never been made aware of just how advanced the system was.

As the film's camera angle changed perspective to show the west side of the manufacturing line, the workers could see the far wall, made of solid concrete in the Brutalist style so prized by the Nazi regime's top leadership. And there, in the very middle, centered on the middle transit way of the factory was a massive doorframe, fifty feet wide by sixty feet tall, completely rectangular and heavily reinforced by visible steel beams and girders. The valves themselves were thick plates of armored steel, completely smooth with the visible bolts sunk deeply into their surface, the tops ground-down to make certain the metal was as reflective and smooth as glass or ceramic. In fact, by the refraction of light that was far less bright than expected, Lucas posited that those doors had been glazed with an enamel or ceramic layer to protect them from humidity and the salt waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Gazing upon the three gut-churning badges engraved into the concrete above the titanesque portico, Lucas spoke so softly that his employees had trouble hearing him, despite the silence of the room they were using for the conference. "In the middle is the Nazi imperial eagle atop a Swastika inside a reef of laurels, to demonstrate the right-to-rule of the Fuhrer and Reich. On the left is the Kriegsmarine, the Nazi war navy. On the right is the same emblem as on your uniforms; the Forceful Wisedom, division of security and weapons building of Wise Apothecary & Chemists. And those doors at the end lead to a drydock. From the orientation and depth, a massive underground drydock built secretly under the foundations of the industrial hangar where boats and floatplanes are parked and repaired, to have easy yet hidden access to the private artificial harbor without ever being seen."

The third foreman whispered in awe of the incredible realization of human ingenuity, "They could build and sent out submarines from that dock without anybody ever knowing about it. Between the depth under water, the waves from the Pacific coming all the way into the estuary, the traffic and activity in the publicly seen garages above, nobody in 1950 or 60 would have ever seen anything wrong about any of it. They could have built an entire fleet of submarines, torpedoes and landing crafts then shipped them out across the Pacific in complete anonymity. Even once in combat, how would anybody trace them back to here if the paperwork or inventory tags in the machines didn't say it? In fact, it's not even sure the soldiers who got the kits would have been told where it was made to keep the factory safe for as long as it could be."

Lucas could feel the world closing in on him, could now see blueish lines across his field of vision and hear an odd noise in his ears that sounded like interference in an old Radio or TV set. As he began feeling lightheaded, he told his conclusion aloud, hoping to be done before whatever disease or infection he caught during the opening of the under-levels made him loose consciousness.

"Abalon. The drydock built Abalon." the adolescent whispered in harsh, chocking words, pushed by a desperate need to say it before the encroaching darkness claimed him. "My great-grand-father wanted to create a new outpost for scientific research, but away from the civilized nations, away from governments that insisted on maintaining societal norms that he judged primitive, obsolete. So he imagined an underwater ship, bigger than ever, bigger than anything built to date, even to this day. Big enough to call it a colony rather than a ship."

No longer certain if the words were coming out right, Lucas persevered anyways. This discovery had to be spoken of, people had to know the danger that lurked out there, hidden in the darkness of the deeper trenches of the ocean. "The layout of the manufacturing floor shows it was built in sections the size of Nazi U-boats, then sent out of the drydock to be assembled as one gigantic structure that would move together. A submarine fortress to glorify the folly of another Hitler wannabee. Abalon. The bastion of last refuge where Franklin Henry Wise could be free to experiment and be cruel unto others to his blck, twisted heart's content."

Looking at his workers, Lucas could see that they were trying to speak to him, but he couldn't hear the sounds anymore, the noise from the interference having grown too loud in the last few seconds. He tried to concentrate on reading their lips, but his vision was going off-kilter, letting him see only in tones of white, black, silver and fluorescent blue. Desperate to figure out what was affecting his health so suddenly, and badly, the genius teen asked his virtual brother to help. "Luxis! I'm sick! My senses are shutting down, I can't hear anymore and my eyes are all wonky! Can you diagnostic me? And call the train for the med-evac ASAP! I need help, brother!"

Lucas never received any answer as his senses and the perceptual centers of his brain shut down in sequence, slowly but surely. He felt as if he were going to sleep forcibly by medical sedation rather than a black-out from sickness or poison, which he'd experienced plenty during his short life. It certainly wasn't natural tiredness, despite the fact he'd just run around the clock on cat naps and adrenaline since 5:00am yesterday morning, when he left the hospital. Then he lost all awareness and connection with reality, floating silently in the cluttered vastness of his mind, waiting for something to rouse him back to consciousness anew.

Not a world for children to live in

(The Star Spangled Banner - instrumental)

Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 14:00pm

Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 11:00am

Fort Dempsey - US Navy, classified R&D facility

Pensacola, Florida, USA

General McGrath looked through the panoramic glass window at the human child specimen that was floating inside a tank filled with silver and blue liquid, a solution of neuroplexic crystal suspended in connection colloid gelatin. The child was thirteen year old Lucas Wolenczak, multi-genius super-prodigy, genuine polymath, polyglot, and champion of many fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and cybernetics.

Not a mutant.

Not an artificial creation, unlike the Daggers the UN navy was keeping secret.

Not an android, despite all rumors the base's science team had going on.

Just a simple, naturally born, unmodified child.

How the bloody Hell had he been created with that many mental and spiritual capacities?

At least he wasn't some physical brute as well. If he were endowed with superior athletic prowess or strength out of proportion to his body, then they could have been witness to the birth of a real threat, the famed 'Ubermensch' the Nazis had dreamed of producing.

The airlock cycled open, letting out one of McGrath's most trusted allies, doctor Euphemia Lisbeth Durand, biochemist, geneticist and evolutionist specializing in the growth of clones and replicants, who had made he teeth on building the Dagger Project, not far down south, on a remote island some fifty miles away from New Cape Quest's building site. The woman shook her HAZMAT suit that was still wet from the combined liquid & cold air pressurized wash-down the airlock inflicted on all who passed either in or out. Once relatively dry, she undid the transparent helmet and gloves then served herself a cup of steaming coffee to settle her nerves before making her report.

"So?" asked McGrath, as impatient as ever.

The man was originally from the US Army's mobile artillery division, then transferred to mobile rocketry control division, until he landed himself in charge of the US Air Force nuclear missile fixed emplacements command. From that post he had occupied for only three years, he transferred laterally out of his comfort zone into one of the dirtiest, murkiest and most covert branches of service the USA never openly wrote in its books. Nominally under JSOC, the Future Warfare Commandment was, on its few existing papers, just an overly large, more funded than necessary, think thank about how future wars would be fought, and what soldiers' kits, weapons, vehicles and defensive bases would look like.

If you heard the techies talk in one of the fort's semi-open commissaries or cafeterias, you'd think they were gamers talking about their last Starcraft competition. Or maybe you'd think about Trekkies bitching about the last Comiccon that happened in town because they kept saying that "Star Wars tech really doesn't work that well compared to other stuff that's out there".

If only the poor fools that made up the population really knew...

The Future Warfare Commandment wasn't just about fantasizing new modules for 'America's Army' virtual simulator. It wasn't just imagining new uniforms or logos for existing units because the elections put a fool at the top of the country who had no understanding of military reality and costs. No, the FWC was all about delving with open senses into the -very- far future of humanity's evolution to peer at what they may become, individually and collectively, but also biologically and mentally. Which is why the GUELF project to create a synthetic humanoid was established, in early 2001, and why this seemingly innocent child was floating in a vat of new elements that he had created just at the beginning of the year.

General McGrath had no ill will towards the Wolenczak child, just not any patience to deal with his barely pubescent temper, especially given what kind of an egghead he was. Normal scientists were a pain to manage, geniuses made him swear aloud in misery, so he didn't want to contemplate what kinds of reaction this little bastard could elicit from him. Thankfully, an alternative was available; let somebody else deal with it all, and just read the report at the end of the shift.

Doctor Durand swallowed her mouthful of coffee, looking into the mug with a forlorn gaze as she mourned the disappearance of the few seconds of peace she could steal before her boss started having yet another nervous breakdown at her face because he didn't like the answers she obtained. If only he stopped asking damnable questions, he'd stop getting cursed answers!

"Well, general," the middle-aged woman began slowly, unsure of what to say, "The child's own research was phenomenal, to say the least. His hypotheses about the naturally feasible connection of biological life with crystal, metal and colloid gelatin were spot on. The neuroplexic interface is processing at full capacity already, and yet it seems to have only achieved around 8% of the boy's own natural brain capacity, both in bandwidth and energy transit. Our best biologist and neurologists have no plausible explanation for this event."

Frowning mightily, McGrath growled out "Shouldn't he be exploding from the inside out like a wiener that got nuked in a microwave oven without punching fork holes in it, to let the steam out? I wasn't aware that a natural human brain could tolerate that kind of electrical current without frying."

Shaking her head in dismay, the female replied "If we use conventional Edison physics and conceptions of electricity, no it shouldn't. But, if we refer to the Tesla Valises... Which you were kind enough to have the presidential Secret Service open and copy for use in this project... Well then, when you start applying Tesla physics and technologies for the aerial induction of electrical currents, you can actually reach far higher wattage and voltage, all the while staying in the safety limits of biological entities. This explains how the boy was able to create living bio-ware processors, neural interfaces, and create the truly genial neuroplexic servers that were seized from his private laboratory in Stanford."

"Yes, seized..." general McGrath grumbled nastily. "I went out on a bloody limb for your team, doctor Durand, so I expect so damned results soon!" Poking the woman in her modest bosom, he threatened aloud "Don't forget that despite this being a block op like none you've ever seen before, it still has several constraints on it! What we did to this kid is called kidnapping, keeping hostage, illegal medical procedures, inhuman experimentations, and then add to that theft of R&D materials, violation of intellectual property, grand theft of medical equipments, etc...! We are in those levels of activity far darker than black, madam doctor, and if Congress, the Oval Office, or worse, the bloody UEO, were ever to become aware of what's happening here, we'd all be deader than rail spikes!"

Nodding manically, the woman doctor agreed with her superior, not because he was actually right or she thought it was in truth a shame they couldn't just make a deal with the kid as a valuable partner in his own legitimate right, but because she was afraid of what the general would do to her if she dithered.

The man had a dirty reputation, even in the black ops community.

"Well then," she spoke in hurried tones, "you'll want to know that the last simulation we ran was almost a total success. We are still losing control of the child's mind because he has far too strong a will to be bent by anything, including a neural simulation, but... We got the information you were looking for. We managed to make his mind process enough data in both foreground and background to achieve resolutions the questions you had."

Glaring menacingly into the woman's fearful eyes, McGrath ordered her "Tell me! Now! We're on a clock, damn it all! If any of the weaklings in DC or the UEO's fake city were ever to be told we have this kid here, they'd be busting down..."

- ALARM -

- ALARM -

"Security breach! Security breach! Warning!" The public address speakers blared out, scaring the bejeezus out of everyone in the underground bunker.

McGrath's personal tablet vibrated, a priority SMS appearing on-screen; the US Marines REACT team was invading the perimeter of Fort Dempsey with APC's and Chinook helicopters! And in the back was the menacing shape of an enormous beast bristling with weapons moving ponderously above the waves instead of under them, as its nature demanded.

The SeaQuest! Bloody fucking William Noyce and the US naval intel were upon them!

Of all the damned, bleeding heart, lefty liberals to ever stain the US navy with his presence!

Ashe glared at the small screen in his hands, he saw the biggest submarine in the world open fire against the armored gates that blocked access to the protected artificial harbor with the planet's only functional plasma lasers. The heavily ionized, scorching hot streams of light, electricity, radiation and concentrated heat melting the titanesque steel waterway doors as much as they blasted them. That short task done, a series of small, ultra fast MR-2 subsurface shuttles appeared from behind the behemoth ship to race through the new opening while their carrier used smaller beam weapons to incinerate the torpedo launchers and underwater gunnery turrets that protected the harbor. Topside, two Arleigh-Burke cruisers began to pound Fort Dempsey's breakwater defenses and the few hidden turrets at the inner shoreline of the basin, near the docks and warehouses.

Grabbing the woman doctor by the front of her HAZMAT suit, McGrath bellowed in her face "Tell Me! Tell me now, bitch! What are the answers!"

Shaking in fright at the thought of the innumerable inhumanities this madman was capable of, she gave him his answers freely, believing he'd never get any profits from them anyways. "There could be a link, in the familial and biological senses, between the child and Franklin H. Wise, despite that it was never made public or put into any birth or health records anywhere. It's possible his parents and grand-parents didn't know about it either, but you'll have to verify with them directly."

Swallowing past a lump in her throat, Euphemia said "The other situation is underwater, if it still exists and is still functional. The simulation in the child's mind interpreted the raw data from all the disparate technical drawings and chemical formulas as resulting in a massive underground drydock in the area of Edmonds, in Washington state, directly on the Pacific ocean's shoreline. It that facility, doctor Wise built and launched a vehicle so much bigger than SeaQuest or any aircraft carrier than he dubbed it a 'colony' rather than a proper ship. He named it Abalon, and planned to move it well away from any civilized nation so as to do what you are doing here; R&D without laws to limit his delvings into the biology, genetics and psychology of living beings, including humans, possibly cloning them too."

Pushing her away harshly as he took up his jacket and go-bag to make his escape via secret tunnels towards the town of Pensacola's sewer systems that weren't on any maps, not even those of the people working in this bunker, McGrath asked tartly "What about the Synthium? Or that blasted serum we read about in those scribbles Wise left behind?"

Nodding fearfully fast like a demented bobble-head doll, doctor Durand confirmed their common suspicions about those two items; "The last simulation run has made the boy's brain concatenate the information into two distinct hypotheses. Firstly that Synthium is in fact an organic super-compound that cannot exist naturally due to its three-step assembly. Secondly, if Synthium is indeed feasible, then it is crafted from elements, isotopes and organic parts that are in fact -ALIEN- to this Earth as we know it to be. All the capacities and material specs for both the Synthium and curative cannot be achieved by any combination of raw parts presently in the known inventories or encyclopedias of humanity. If Franklin Henry Wise did indeed manage to create a serum as was described in those antique CIA records, then he did it with help from outside the reckoning of human civilization."

Pulling away a file cabinet that had hidden casters, general McGrath was about to ask a final question then order the woman to kill the kid and burn the bunker's R&D files with the servers and all when his secret doors exploded outwards, right in his face, due to some SEAL demo charges going off.

He knew nothing else for a great length of time.

{ SQ } - { PREVIEW ch.14 } - { SQ }

The conclusion of "What if Lucas said NO!"

The cleanup of the bunker raid at Fort Dempsey.

Lucas awakens to genuine reality, for good this time.

Lucas tries to heal his body from the injuries and traumas caused by the harsh kidnapping process, while at the same time trying to reestablish his sanity and emotional balance that were damaged by the ill-run neural simulations.

A serious conversation between admiral Noyce and Lucas lets us glean an inkling of things to come in the near future, as the USA and the planet are made aware of Lucas Wolenczak' true potential, despite that the boy himself doesn't really know what that potential is, or how far it can reach.