Hobbes glanced over at Fawkes, who muttered something intelligible in his sleep as the jet Monroe had managed to borrow shuddered, hitting some clear-air turbulence. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, Monroe and her innumerable relationships were worth the price of admission. He could just imagine the transport the Official would have wangled at the last moment. Military chopper at the best, ground transport -- probably Golda -- at the worst, and while never one to eschew a free ride, Hobbes'd much rather travel in corporate luxury than the hard seats and open doors of a Marine helicopter.
Still, they hadn't exactly had a whole lot of time to prepare for this little jaunt. They'd hung around the office all day and well into the evening before word came down just before midnight that they'd gotten permission to go to the Chameleon Lab. They'd been in the air within an hour with no more than the clothes on their backs and what gear they had on hand, which was little or nothing. Hobbes had his weapons, Fawkes his lockpicks and Monroe... Well, he wasn't entirely sure whatall Monroe had with her, aside from her usual collection of weaponry. He'd been damn surprised when, once at cruising altitude, she'd pulled out a Blackberry and begun furiously typing on it. If you could call pressing those tiny buttons with your thumbs typing, that is.
Bobby wished he'd been able to sleep as easily as his partner. Oh, he'd dozed for a bit, but woke feeling no more rested than before he'd forced his eyes closed. He was just too wired; part of him wanting to climb outside the jet and push it if it would get them to their destination faster. Deep in his gut, he knew they were too late already. That the monster under the bed had crawled out into the night-darkened room and crouched down beside the bed, ready to pounce upon its intended victim.
Yet part of him remained just as certain that this would turn out to be nothing more than just paranoia-induced drama caused by one missing prisoner. Smoke and mirrors. It didn't matter that every bit of evidence pointed to this being a real threat. It didn't matter that the Official himself had taken this whole thing very seriously. None of it mattered simply because of the ultimate source of the intel was someone he could not... would not trust -- Fallon O'Neill.
She had warned Fawkes that Huiclov looked to be going AWOL. She had passed on the tidbit about the Chameleon Project. She had provided the money trail on Da Freak's whereabouts -- Eberts' verification notwithstanding.
She was the source and she couldn't be trusted. Not with intel and certainly not with his partner.
Shit. He knew he couldn't be rational when it came to O'Neill, but he couldn't seem to help himself, even with an international list of government agencies that considered her the golden go-to girl on intrigue. Granted, not her specifically, but her company; her little band of mercenaries, who were just as likely to provide information to Al Qaeda as on them.
Okay, maybe not to Bin Laden, but the IRA, ETA, Combat 18, or the Free Quebec Militia and a dozen more that she had worked for in the past. Who really knew how many deaths she had been the cause of over the years. Hundreds... thousands maybe. And yet she went blithely on about her business as if it were no more than that -- just business.
Bobby pinched the bridge of his nose. Yeah, it was business, and it was his to stop her.
He glanced at Monroe, who had the project file open on the flip-down table, her face lit up by the Blackberry's tiny LCD screen. He'd asked her opinion of O'Neill and gotten a shrug. Monroe had never met O'Neill personally, though she'd hired the fourth monkey on a couple of occasions -- one personal and one work-related. She felt much like the Official did: reliable, good intel that had been more than worth the price. In fact, she had trouble comprehending why Bobby didn't like them.
Ultimately, that had been an easy one to answer though he hadn't aloud -- Fawkes was hanging out there, maybe working for them, and definitely sleeping with O'Neill. But he wasn't gonna tell Monroe that, she'd call him an idiot for allowing personal feelings to interfere with business (which was true), and anyway why shouldn't Fakwes be allowed a life outside the Agency, especially with a woman as beautiful as O'Neill reportedly was.
Bobby knew Monroe was right, knew that whatever Fawkes did on his own time was his business and none of Bobby Hobbes', yet...
God fucking damn it. He'd become fixated on O'Neill, and not in a good way -- if there could be a good way for an obsession to manifest.
It wasn't fair to Fawkes, who to all appearances had handled the transition of co-workers to lovers between Bobby and Claire just fine. Yeah, there'd been some changes, some bumps along the way, but everything had been smoothed over... except for Fawkes' fascination with O'Neill.
Bobby sighed and looked at the bonehead in question who had managed to contort himself into an ungainly sprawl; his long legs seeming to stretch three times further than usual. His hands were loosely entwined on his stomach, which rose and fell with every breath. His lips were slightly parted, a soft snore escaping with every exhale.
He hadn't a care in the world.
The plane did a sudden stomach-rising drop then leveled out again. Fawkes snorted, the snoring cutting off abruptly, but he never woke. Instead, he shifted position slightly in unconscious acknowledgement of the unusual movement of the plane then returned to his slumber.
Bobby shook his head in amusement, unsurprised that his cat-like partner could sleep through the turbulence. Knowing he would not be able to do the same, he picked up the Chameleon Project file to go over it again.
The real file.
Not the PR crap Eberts had gotten his hands on. Not that that info had been... wrong. It just hadn't been complete, and the truth about some things had been fudged more than a bit. Like those tiny LCDs Eberts claimed the suit was covered with. Not even close. Instead, the suit had been covered with tiny slices of a man-made crystal called Chromatazite. A crystal that had to be grown, not only in weightless conditions, but in vacuum. Which explained, to Hobbes anyway, why there were so many space-walks on the ISS. Really, how many times did you have to fix the same converter?
The crystal itself was nothing to write home about, just a dull gray six-sided rock that grew to about an eighth inch in diameter and half a foot long. Tests had revealed it was stronger than diamond yet flexible, and could take one hell of a beating without any noticeable damage, but it wasn't until they applied an electrical current to it that they discovered its true value. To all intents and purposes, the sample of crystal vanished, matching the color or colors of whatever was near -- just like a chameleon. More tests showed that the crystal responded to electrical stimuli in a manner similar to chromatophores found in the cells of squids and octopods. And while they didn't work like the melanophores of chameleons and similar creatures, the name had been chosen mostly because it sounded a hell of a lot better than "Squid Project."
And the suit was covered with thousands of them. With the flip of a switch, the wearer would vanish into the background. The effect worked best when still; a delay in color change appeared when moving, though nothing dramatic, mere microseconds, minimal enough that the human eye could just barely see it. Fawkes called it the Predator effect after the force-field-like cloaking device used by the aliens in the Schwarzenegger movie and its sequels.
The info on the suit had been accurate, with the sole of exception of the material it had been made out of, which remained undisclosed. Apparently, it was way more top secret than the Chromatazite, which said something, Hobbes just wasn't sure what. The only new data had been about the how of the suit. It and the human wired into it became the equivalent of a huge computer system, the wires, drugs, silicon, etc., all working together as a single unit. Had to, or the whole shebang would fall to pieces. Just the control system had taken months to learn for the final four chosen to test the suits.
And it worked. That amazed him most of all. The whole complex melding of man and machine worked, turning ordinary humans into the stuff of dreams... or comic books. Superheroes for the 21st century. Manmade, ones, but heroes nonetheless.
Which explained why Da Freak was so interested in it.
Shit, Hobbes was interested. Who wouldn't be? The tech was amazing, no doubt about that, but he couldn't help but wonder about the long term effects. Even with drugs to make everything work flawlessly, the wearers systems might burn out, the energy used unequal to the fuel coming in, their bodies unable to handle the extreme overcharging of their systems. No one could run at one hundred percent forever and these guys were running at a thousand. That there could be the risk of addiction, the wearers unable to adjust back to normal body function, returning to being a snail after so much time spent as a shooting star streaking across the heavens. And that was just physiological problems. There was also that entire computer system running the show. Hobbes could think of a dozen ways it could be abused, just one bad signal, intentional or not, and the suit goes haywire destroying the wearer, while leaving the equipment intact. Driving the wearer mad with false input, simple glitches, or bugs that could take over control of the man behind the invisible mask, turning him from the controller to the slave.
Going Quicksilver Mad suddenly seemed like a tiny complication compared to all that could go wrong with the suits. Fawkes might not be able to bend steel with his bare hands, but he'd done a hell of a lot of good with the tools he'd been given.
Yeah, Hobbes was impressed, but he wasn't a fool. If offered the chance of wearing a NESTA suit (which he knew he would never happen), he'd turn the privilege down.
The plane's engines changed pitch, signaling the beginning of their descent into Boulder. There they were scheduled to be met by a contingent of Marines, who would then escort them to the "secret" location of the Chameleon Lab. Really, how secret could it be if Arnaud found it? They had not been told how they were getting to the lab. They might have to endure several hours in a vehicle to reach their final destination.
Monroe following protocol, turned off her Blackberry, set the file aside, and locked the tray back into the seat before her.
"Any news?" Hobbes asked.
"Only that Director Seiber is not very happy about our visit," she replied, relaxing back into the seat just as the plane slid sideways in the air.
Fawkes snorted and jerked upright. He gazed about blearily for a few seconds before yawning hugely; arms stretched high over his head. "How much longer," he mumbled, drawing his legs in and stuffing them in the tiny gap between the seats.
"We just started our descent," Monroe answered. "We should be on the ground in ten minutes or so."
"Cool. Think we're gonna pull this one off?" He turned to meet Hobbes' eyes.
"Of course we will. The intel is good." Hobbes couldn't deny that, the intel was good, excellent even. He just didn't care for the source all that much.
Fawkes chuckled softly. "You're still pissed Fallon got us the in we needed."
Hobbes shrugged, not about to argue the point.
"Why does it matter where the info came from if it's good?" Fawkes asked all serious now.
Hobbes took a deep breath, wanting to say this calmly and not turn it into another screaming match over the owner of the fourth monkey. Finally he said, "Because for all I know, she sold Arnie the intel that got him into the lab."
"She wouldn't..."
Hobbes cut off Fawkes' instant defense of O'Neill. "Yes, she would. She's played both sides of the fence from the get-go. She'll sell the intel to whoever will pay for it," he pointed an index finger directly at his partner, "and you know it."
"So you keep saying, but I ain't seen nothing to prove it," Fawkes argued, voice tight with barely restrained anger. "I went to her and asked her for info on Arnaud and she gave it; no questions asked."
"And what's it gonna cost ya?" Hobbes snapped right back.
"My soul," was the instant response without a trace of humor anywhere in his demeanor. "Least she's honest about what she does."
"You get what you pay for, huh?" Hobbes couldn't seem to stop himself, the words just coming out without him even having to pause to think. "Then I guess your soul ain't worth much these days."
Fawkes snorted in wry amusement. "You can thank the 'Fish for that. He's managed to suck it dry."
Hobbes readied another quick comeback when shrill whistle cut him off. Both men turned to stare at the source: Alex Monroe.
"The two of you, bickering like children." She turned an icy stare to Hobbes first. "Are you his mother?"
"Uh..." Hobbes just barely got out before she rolled over the top of him.
"You're not. You don't like his girl, friends, whatever, grow up and deal with it."
Hobbes felt his mouth snap shut.
Then she turned to Fawkes. "And you need to watch yourself. She may not be the evil mercenary many seem to think, but she's no innocent. If the 'Fish finds out you're... bartering for info, he might very well come down on you hard, no matter how good or useful the intel."
Fawkes shook his head ever so slightly. "And you're making the assumption that he doesn't know all about it."
Monroe pursed her lips, which made her look as if she'd just tasted something outrageously sour. "True enough. Still, there are limits to how much insubordination the Official will take, even from you."
Fawkes just shrugged. "S'not like I'm selling state secrets here."
"Yet," Hobbes grumbled.
Fawkes' head snapped about. "Wouldn't happen, and Fallon wouldn't ask."
Strangely enough, Hobbes believed his partner on that score, but there was little chance of him admitting it. Beneath their feet, the landing gear clanked its way into position.
"Think you two can focus on the job at hand and save the bickering for off-duty?" Monroe inquired, her tone only slightly tinged with irritation.
"Yes, ma'am," Fawkes said with a hastily snapped salute.
"What he said," Hobbes added, hooking his thumb in the kid's direction.
Monroe rolled her eyes, clearly not believing either of them. Not that Hobbes would put any effort into convincing her. He could not stand that Fawkes hung out with those hoodlums, and worse, it now looked like he was working for them, some a'the time anyway. It didn't sit well with Bobby. Yeah, this time he'd done it for a good cause, getting the dirt on Arnaud and all, but who knew what kind of trouble the kid could get into working for her. Dead could happen, or arrested, or sold to some Middle Eastern terrorist group for an exorbitant amount of money... the possibilities were too numerous to count.
And that would never be a good thing. Trouble was, much as Monroe had been forced to point out (or would that be shove down his throat?), he was not the kid's mother, but that didn't make things any easier. Fawkes was making all the wrong choices for all the wrong reasons. He was supposed to go out and find a girl, a lady, not a borderline psychopath with her own personal hit squad at her beck and call.
Hobbes pulled himself up short. Yeah, he didn't trust O'Neill, but she wasn't that bad. Pretty honest for a merc and all, the Official considered her a useful resource and rumor had it the fourth monkey had been added to Eberts' speed dial. So there had to be something there. Right?
He would have to think about that. Clearly, he had become a bit irrational when it came to Fallon O'Neill. Or O'Neill and his partner. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Hobbes didn't know any more, and he had no time to deal with it now; the plane suddenly lurched in the air, the flaps coming up and slowing the plane as if the pilot had slammed on the brakes. He... they had a job to do and he needed to focus on it.
The next several minutes were taken up with the joys of landing a small plane with crosswinds, which overall went well, if stomach-lurching in a few spots. It wasn't quite a white-knuckle ride, but it tried really hard.
On the ground, they were met by a Sergeant Sims, who had been assigned the joyless task of escorting them back to the Chameleon Lab. The frown permanently burned into his features didn't help matters any, and convinced Hobbes they'd be taking the slow boat to the lab.
Introductions were made, if perfunctorily, and they were led to a Humvee and waved inside.
Monroe made the first attempt at ice-breaking.
"Sergeant, I understand that your Director feels all this is unnecessary, but we can assure you the threat is very real."
"Of course you can. Which is why you dragged me away from my security detail while in the midst of a four day test so you can take the grand tour." His tone just barely managed to not be snarky, but the sarcasm wouldn't have been missed by a deaf man.
"Wait. What do you mean 'in the midst of a four day test'?" Hobbes questioned, dread sinking deep into his gut. "According to the info we have the final testing is next week."
Sims snorted. "Right, like we'd announce the date of the real test." He made it quite clear he thought the lot of them were all idiots.
The three agents glanced at each other, the same looks of concern on all their faces.
"Sims, if there is the slightest chance we're right then we have a big problem," Monroe stated, keeping her voice calm.
"And just why is that?" Sims questioned, the belief that they were nothing more than tourists still written on his face.
" 'Cause the last time Arnaud pulled a stunt like this he did it right in the middle of final testing and slaughtered everyone at the facility," Fawkes answered in a tight voice.
Sims gave Fawkes a look fraught with meaning, then dismissed him as unimportant. "And how would you know that?"
"I was the only survivor," Fawkes answered frankly, sitting up a little straighter as he did so. "Look, you can think we're as nutty as you want, but your bosses didn't let us in the door because of our wit and charm. If there's even the slightest chance our intel is correct..." He intentionally trailed off, leaving it to Sims to fill in the blanks and come to decision.
After a couple minutes, Sims nodded sharply. "You're not as dumb as you look. Good."
Hobbes eyebrows headed north. Sims'd been testing them? What the hell did that mean?
"So?" Fawkes prompted when neither Hobbes nor Monroe came up with a response.
"Director Seiber agrees with you, which is why you're being delivered ASAP."
They pulled up beside a military helicopter, not a gunship, but damn close.
Looked like someone was taking them seriously for a change.
On the wall before them stood a collage of moving images, rooms and halls, people, and seemingly random doors all shifting and changing as if to some music unheard by those only able to view the displayed results. And those were just the security monitors, time stamps counting up the tenths of a second in the bottom right corner of every screen. To their left were more monitors, duplicates of the bio-monitors, GPS tracking data and other sundry information deemed necessary for a project of this grand a scale; pretty waveforms and lines of scrolling data designed to assure everyone that the field test was going as smoothly as they had planned.
And Darien so very much wanted to believe they were correct, but in his heart of hearts, he knew the opposite was true. That Arnaud had been here all along -- denial up to the project's head to the contrary -- and if he hadn't made his move yet, he soon would. And all these millions of dollars would have been wasted. Practically handed over to a known terrorist on a silver-plated platter. The sticking point involved a decided lack of proof. Money trails and gut feelings just weren't enough for these people, and it had been decided by the Official that no mention of the Perseus Project fiasco would be allowed. Not that it could truly be construed as 'proof' even though the whole scenario matched frighteningly close.
No. They would have to use logic. Follow the trail that had surely been left behind to the man himself, disguised or not.
Darien looked forward to having a bit of a chat with the Swiss Miss Mother once he'd been backed into a secure corner. A chat involving fists and torture devices quickly created with anything conveniently on hand at that moment. Chairs, scalpels, pens, whatever. Just so some much deserved pain could be inflicted on the bastard who had killed his brother.
A tiny voice of reason whispered in his mind; Fallon's voice warning him that the path he had chosen could be a dark and dangerous one. One that could very well do far more harm to himself than to his target.
But he shook it off.
This was what he wanted. Revenge, served icy cold and on a platter and, come hell or high water, he would have it.
He gazed over the monitors, wondering which of the dozens of people visible was Arnaud in disguise. The only limiting factors were size: Arnaud could go no shorter nor skinnier. He probably had a preference for someone close to his body type, but beyond that the choices were limitless. Position was another factor. Whomever he portrayed would need to be able to access the information he needed to pull this caper off, be it directly or indirectly. So, finding Arnaud disguised as a janitor was highly unlikely. Still, it didn't narrow the field by much.
Something tickled the back of his mind, something on the screens, but he could not seem to bring it into focus. His eyes continued to rove over the moving pictures in hopes of figuring it out. Somehow, he knew it was important.
Hobbes', "And I'm telling you he coulda," dragged Darien's attention at least partly away from his search and back to the building argument on whether or not the project could have been infiltrated at all.
"Hobbes, dial it down," Alex ordered, albeit gently.
"No one has been in or out -- except you, of course -- since we began final prep four weeks ago. No one," Sims assured them for the umpteenth time.
Hobbes still wasn't buying it, and shook his head. "He's here, somewhere."
Sims threw up his hands in frustration. "Then tell me how?"
"Right through your frickin' front door, how else?" Hobbes snarked, clearly tired of beating the three-days-dead horse this conversation had turned into.
"Who was last on leave rotation before the prep?" Alex asked, plainly hoping to get somewhere this time.
Sims consulted his computer. "Zigari. No, wait... Covington."
"Covington?" Hobbes repeated.
"Thomas Covington. Took emergency leave when his sister was in a car accident. He was gone ten days," Sims read from his notes. "Came back just in time for the final programming changes."
All three Agency members slipped behind Sims to get a look at the geek in question. He was unremarkable in appearance. Dark hair, dark eyes, roughly Arnaud's build, not that it mattered. Darien committed the face to memory and began searching the screens for him.
"He's lead programmer?" Alex queried, tone carefully neutral.
"Yes. Quite good too."
"Any behavioral changes since he returned?" Hobbes tossed out, making sure to lead Sims in the direction he needed to go.
Sims looked over the file before him for a few seconds before answering. "Not really... Uh, he had a bad thumb scan due to a minor injury sustained while on leave, but..."
"Bingo," Hobbes crowed. "That's our guy."
Sims laughed. "And you are basing this on one bad thumb scan?"
Hobbes nodded. "You betcha."
"You may be satisfied, but I am not. I'll need more than that to risk endangering this project," that came from Director Seiber herself. She'd been content to sit on the sidelines until now.
"Your precious project is already in danger," Alex snapped. "And every second we waste here is one closer to him making his move."
"And I need more." Sims didn't seem to be doing the stubborn thing on purpose. His words implying that if they gave him the right motivation he'd move like lightning to set things right.
"You said Covington does programming, right? For what?" Darien had an inkling of an idea, but blurting it out wouldn't work. No, he'd have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs and allow them to find where it led before they'd believe.
Seiber responded. "He oversees everything. Suit control, GPS uplinks, bio-monitors, you name it."
"So he has access to the mainframe," Hobbes added and got a nod. "Including security?"
"Yes, but that's under my purview. Covington wouldn't need to access those systems." Worry had crept into Sims' words, almost as if they were now pushing the right buttons... finally.
"But he could if he wanted," Alex stressed, shoving the point home.
"I suppose, but..."
Darien cut him off. "Any bugs or glitches since his last leave?"
"Of course. I told you he did the final upload after he returned. There's always bugs after a major upgrade," Sims explained, exasperated.
"Lemme guess: you had to shut down and reboot before the system came online correctly." Darien stated, dread curling tightly in his belly. He'd learned more than a few tricks from both Fallon and Eberts in the last few months.
"Yes, how did you know?" Sims actually looked surprised.
"He planted a virus with the new programming," Darien stated flatly, absently noting the utter astonishment on Hobbes' face. "One command and it'll activate. If it hasn't already."
"Call your team," Alex told him, almost -- but not quite -- making it an order.
Sims looked to Seiber, who nodded. "Do it."
"Call the team and check the code. If there's a backdoor I want it found and locked now," Sims barked at the others in the room, who immediately moved to obey. "And locate Covington," he glanced at Hobbes and shrugged, "just in case."
Several minutes of increasingly tense silence went by.
"Sir, the team is not responding."
"Damn it," Seiber hissed. "Covington?"
"We... we can't locate him," came the subdued response.
"Funny, since he's sitting right there in the control room." Hobbes tapped the monitor that showed the dark-haired countenance of Covington on it.
As one Darien and Hobbes said, "Time loop."
"You're too late. The program is running," Alex said in obvious dismay. "Fair bet these readings are nothing more than fluff and your team is dead."
"Shit," Seiber swore. "I hope to god you're wrong."
"Us too," Hobbes assured her.
Darien stared at the monitors. Now that he knew what he was looking for it was shamefully easy to spot. "Loop. Loop. Loop." He pointed to each of the screens as he spoke.
"Where does that route lead?" Alex asked, head snapping about to focus on Sims.
"Garage," he replied.
"You go," Hobbes said to her. "I'll hit the helipad just in case it's a ruse."
Sims nodded. "I'll have Marines meet you on the way."
The pair bolted from the room, while Darien kept an eye on the monitors. He could track them, and keep and watch for Arnaud just in case the douchebag had missed a camera or two. Darien watched Marines appear and then split up heading for the two different locations. One group vanished from the screen only to appear two hallways over.
"Where's this?" Darien requested, wondering why a camera on some random hallway was looped.
"C-14. It's just a hallway between the control room and the labs," Sims answered after a moment.
Darien tapped the odd-shaped door dead center of the screen and clearly the focal point of the camera. "What's that?"
Seiber glanced his way, but then returned to giving orders via the headset she now wore, leaving Sims to play tour guide. "Emergency access hatch."
"A back door?"
Sims noticeably paled even in the dim light of the room. "Yes. It opens out at the top of the mountain."
Darien sighed. "Let me guess, no cameras inside?"
Sims shook his head. "It's a left over from when this installation was military. A ladder in a three-foot wide cement tube. A five story climb from that level," he explained, fingers flying over his keyboard as he pulled up schematics of the complex.
A climb Darien knew Arnaud would make if it would fulfill his escape plan with little fuss or muss. "And up top?"
"Just an ancient logging road." Sims shook his head again. "You don't really think..."
No, Darien didn't think, he knew.
"Any short cuts to the top?"