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Euphoria

Chapter 5: Optimism

Thursday

2:12 pm

.

It was several hours later when the partners found themselves in Norman's car once again, driving purposefully towards the docks at the heart of Washington D.C. Thankfully Agent Jayden's mood had improved somewhat in that span of time and his restlessness was beginning to clear. Still, some Tripto would be nice about now... But there were always thoughts which needed to be blocked before they could intensify, always a deeper section of himself he had to enchain.

Passing them by as they neared the river was a series of abandoned buildings. The traffic thinned quickly: few people had reason to visit these more industrial areas of the city.

In the skies the clouds continued to gather keenly. Every so often a tiny bead of water would strike the windshield and crawl its trembling way across, but it wasn't yet raining in earnest. To Norman this halfway house between the calm and the storm, a hovering dream-state, was almost worse than the downpour itself. Just get it over with, why don't you?

A presence to his right, however, relaxed him. Melissa was seated opposite, and the thought of her company caused him to slacken his grip on the steering wheel. He had seen so much of the agent in the past few days that he thought it would feel strange, wrong somehow, if she were no longer there. Already she had become a familiar sight to him; comforting, constant, with those unyieldingly yellow eyes. Something he wanted to hold onto.

Jeez, Norman. You sound like a kid with a security blanket.

"Really hate this weather," Jayden said suddenly, to scatter his internal musings if nothing else.

Donahue was pursuing a raindrop along the window with her gaze. "How can you not love the rain? It's beautiful, cleansing. I'd take it over summer droughts any day."

"Goddamn rain is only good for one thing, and that's ruining suits without mercy," he countered. Beside him, the woman chuckled. Norman could drink up her breezy laughter. It's easy for you, Melissa. I doubt you could hate anything even if you tried.

As the minutes passed and they drew closer to their destination, the gentle thrumming sound of the Taurus' engine soothed both of its inhabitants. Norman glanced at his partner several times from the corner of his eye. She appeared at ease now, despite her neurotic departure from the conference room earlier that morning. Melissa hadn't taken Forrester's typical hard-hearted criticism so well. And whilst she was being a little overly sensitive, he was being a little overly callous, so Norman supposed it all levelled out in the end.

It had taken some convincing to get her to accompany him to the docks in the hopes of discovering hidden drugs, as David Kellen had advised. At first Donahue had flat out refused - if Forrester had told them not to go, then they wouldn't go. She really did take what he said to heart. Jayden hadn't expected that sort of behaviour from her, but about this she was firm in her decision to adhere strictly to orders.

He persevered, for whatever reason. She had bitten fretfully at her fingernails: but his assurance that nobody need know of their trip unless they actually did find anything, coupled with their utter lack of evidence and the fact that they were both effectively sitting around twiddling their thumbs until they found some, eventually wore her down.

"Besides," he had said, "Forrester doesn't know what he's talking about. We're FBI agents, not his lackeys. It doesn't matter what we do so long as we catch criminals, and at the end of the day even he doesn't give a damn about anything but results."

She'd given in; Norman had never really considered himself a good speaker, but it seemed to work for her. Whether he was influential or she was indecisive, he supposed he'd never know. Either way they both found themselves inside his Ford Taurus on a dreary December's day, heading at 35 miles per hour towards the D.C. Docks.

Her voice broke his chain of thought. "Jayden."

He was eager to pull his vision away from the monotone road and onto her, raising his eyebrows in query.

"I think this is it."

Norman chastised himself for not paying attention and swerved the car round a tight bend. Emerging into their view came factories, and various buildings involved in manufacture and storage, signalling the start of the docklands area. Quickly finding his bearings, the young man directed them towards the empty warehouse closest to the dock where the heroin had been found. As he eased the Ford to a halt, the world fell into silence.

Donahue opened her door after a moment's delay. Agent Jayden followed suit, stepping out onto the cracked tarmac and stealthily checking his pockets before locking the vehicle.

The warehouse lay directly ahead, looming, a black pillar of steel and glass. Melissa remained close to the side of the car, her arms folded uneasily. The young man stepped forwards and gave his partner an encouraging smile. "Let's take a look around, shall we?" He was busying himself with retrieving his sunglasses from the inside of his jacket.

Donahue nodded by way of response. Advancing towards the large metal doors that served as an entrance to the lofty structure, she peered through a fractured windowpane into a vast expanse of gloom and dust. She rattled the door handle and saw that it was still secured half-heartedly by a rusted old padlock. The lock was not actually clamped shut, however, and the agent easily removed the offending hunk of metal, throwing it to the ground.

Norman came and heaved against the doors: they swung open and met the walls of the building with a resounding clash. As he straightened, Melissa could see that he was now fully equipped with ARI and the futuristic-looking glove on his right hand. An unsettling expression set on his features, she had begun to notice, every time he wore those glasses. Without his ice-blue eyes, his face seemed false. It was vacant and cold, as though his mind was somewhere else altogether. It frightened her a little.

"The warehouses in this section of the docklands were constructed in the sixties," Jayden was saying to himself. "Almost all of them are abandoned, but nobody's got round to demolishing them yet. An ideal place for illegal cargo to be hidden."

This particular building looked like a typical deserted storage area, no doubt a carbon copy of the numerous other warehouses along the waterfront. It was shady labyrinth composed of silhouettes and dusk, although the opened doorway spilled illumination onto a small portion of it. Ancient wooden boxes and slender steel constructs, reminders of its busy heyday, divided the space into a manmade network which would be nightmarish to explore thoroughly. Cobwebs which had remained untouched for years hung in its corners and a thick coating of dust was just waiting to be stirred up. Donahue had difficulty making out the back of the expansive structure many feet away, apart from here and there where windows on the ceiling, high above, would puncture the dreariness with a beam of faded winter light.

"So how does this work?" the agent asked as she watched Jayden step across the threshold and into the shadows. "Are those special glasses of yours going to help us navigate this mess and find these drugs? Assuming there are any to be found."

"Something like that," was his hushed reply.

"By the lack of dismay on your face, I take it you have complete confidence in your gadgets."

But Norman did not supply an answer. He was already engrossed in the information highway, the steady flashes of turquoise burning onto his retina. As he flexed his palm and an electromagnetic pulse was sent radiating about him in a neat concentric pattern, multitudes of electronic tags sprung up displaying various points of interest. Looks like this is going to take some time. From the lenses' artificial glow, Jayden could distinguish the far-reaching areas on the opposite side of the warehouse, which appeared to be just as cluttered: there was a lot of ground to cover.

The agent - now in his element - immediately set about examining each one of the spots ARI had flagged up. As was to be expected, the majority of these were irrelevant to the case. Fingerprints from dockland employees, traces of chemicals once stored in the building, the odd remaining piece of material, fingerprints, fingerprints, and more fingerprints.

For a minute or so Melissa looked on with curiosity as Norman proceeded in his own methodical way. He would stoop down or lean over a possible piece of evidence and stare at it intensely, all the while saying things quietly to no one in particular.

"ARI comment: another set of prints from Jeffrey Stevens, worker at the docks for fifteen years."

"ARI comment: sample of no interest."

From what the female agent had gathered so far through snatches of gossip combined with careful first-hand scrutiny of her partner, ARI was a very powerful tool. Records and archives which should by all means take days to track down could be found by Jayden within a matter of moments. The glasses seemed to contain communication devices and data-storing facilities and a miniature forensics lab, amongst other things.

As Norman continued with the task at hand, Melissa began to conduct her own search around the warehouse. She wasn't sure she was contributing anything major to the endeavour, poking around crates and in corners, but she had to do something.

Unfortunately neither of them appeared to be unearthing anything of great significance. As the minutes slipped away, Agent Jayden moved swiftly but efficiently about the abandoned building, barely stopping in one place for any length of time: he saw that Donahue remained closer to the doors, half-hidden as she rummaged in long forgotten recesses. Through the entrance light was poured into the interior and was dazzlingly bright against the shade.

Once he was certain he had looked over the entirety of the area, Norman removed his sunglasses with the usual tinge of regret and paced back through the intricate maze to where Melissa was investigating. As he caught sight of his partner, he was unable to hide a trace of frivolity from his voice. "Found anything?" he asked.

Melissa removed herself clumsily from the small gap between a number of boxes that she was currently exploring, her cheeks reddening somewhat. Ah, so she's not immune to a little mockery. But her voice remained doggedly confident. "No. And neither have you, I see."

"Well, we've only just got started. Don't worry, Donahue, there's plenty of other places for us to search." He wasn't sure why, but all of a sudden he felt in higher spirits than he had done for some time. Perhaps it was the dimness of the warehouse causing everything to look several hues lighter in contrast, or simply the refreshing pleasure of being somewhere quite different with somebody new - or maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with his choice of companionship. He watched Melissa wipe her hands free of dust on her trench coat.

Filled as he was with hopeful energy and an unanticipated impulse to prove his worth, the agent made a beeline towards the entrance, where the daylight greeted him like a long lost friend.

Donahue placed her hands on her hips, glancing around her as she remained resolutely cloaked by darkness. "We're leaving?"

"Sure. There's nothing here."

"Really?" Incredulity blemished herface. "You're telling me you've searched the entire building in less than half an hour?"

Norman was squinting as his eyes adjusted to being outside once more. "Hey, I told you ARI was an agent's best friend." She still wasn't budging, so Jayden tried his best to laugh a convincingly natural laugh. "If we can put a man on the moon I think the FBI can produce glasses able to scan a warehouse for drugs."

She narrowed her eyes, before shrugging her shoulders in defeat. "Right, of course. I guess it's just difficult to get my head around the technology," she said as she walked over to his side.

Emerging back into the world, removing their mantle of obscurity, they found that the sky appeared to have lightened somewhat during their time indoors: either genuinely, or as an illusion brought about by their sense of sight growing more receptive. Agent Jayden shut the doors behind them, hooking the padlock once more into the tarnished ring of metal. I wonder how long that dust will be left to settle until it is disturbed again.

"So where to now?" Melissa was studying the structures adjacent to them.

The sound of crowing water birds split the afternoon air. Norman motioned towards the closest warehouse, whose exterior looked virtually identical to the one they had just finished inspecting, save for a few more broken windows. In this area of Washington it was hard to tell any of the buildings apart: an unfortunate affliction caused by the purpose-driven, speedy construction of urban industry.

Approaching their second destination in a mass of duplicates, the partners found that the entrance was not locked - in fact, the doors were ajar. This interior was just as chaotic and murky as the previous one, with aged pieces of furniture strewn sporadically for good measure. Jayden templed his hands in anticipation. Ah, the life of an FBI profiler. Search for evidence, find evidence, rinse and repeat. It was beautiful in its way.

A curious, miraculous thing occurred as they were entering through the wrought iron doors. Upon the very verge between light and dark, Melissa caught the edge of a container or mistimed her steps slightly: she stumbled and tripped, made a short, startled noise, and might have fallen headfirst had it not been for Norman, who was there in an instant, positioned between herself and the floor.

It took several beats of a thudding heart to pass before Norman realised that they were both keeping incredibly still; and she was somehow wrapped in his arms; and he had never been this close before and he could pick out flecks of caramel in her eyes and three faint freckles on the bridge of her nose. Oh God, I'm touching her. His skin was aflame. Could she feel the runaway hammering of his pulse? How long had passed and how long had he been astray in the sultry summer fields of her gaze? Fuck, Norman, you have to let go. He cleared his throat and it was a roaring in his ears.

Melissa inhaled awkwardly. She scrambled to gain a footing, pressed her hands against a nearby piece of metal and prised herself from his grasp. He had to wrench his eyes away.

A gentle and wavering chuckle arrived unexpectedly at his ears. Against all odds she was laughing. "I'm sorry. That was stupid, wasn't it?" came her rich voice.

He couldn't contain his lopsided smile.

She shook her head, grinning, and caught her hands in her pockets. "Come on, let's get going." She had to move away quickly, as though she might get embarrassed if she stood in once spot for too long. A peculiar smug expression settled on Jayden's face and refused to budge. As they set about investigating again the partners were sure to keep a precise, unspoken, but not unkind distance between them.

If he had been working well before, it seemed like now he was progressing with Herculean speed and fortitude. Some sort of sweet, wholesome air was filling him up and he floated along as if suspended by a blessed zephyr. So many forgotten things were slowly being remembered, as though a part of him he thought dead had become reawakened. In the back of his mind he knew that once upon a time he had been a great agent; he had been full of drive, full of honour… so why is everything so difficult now? Like wading through a thick ocean of insecurity and vice. God, but just for this moment she made it seem so effortless that he recalled an age when he was young and life was clean and pure, not tainted, not a perennial twilight, not heavy rain nor the weight of remorse pressing down so hard that his bones cracked. The memories tasted like honey on his tongue.

Within barely fifteen minutes he had completed his circuit of the structure, and returned to where she was. This time, when Norman took off ARI, he almost forgot to notice the sting of disappointment. And as for Tripto, it had been over thirty minutes since he'd given it even a passing thought.

Melissa appeared to be waiting for him. "Nothing over here. And let me guess, you didn't find any drugs."

"No rest for the wicked." He beckoned her outside, again to be enveloped by the sun's rays, and towards their next objective. And so they moved onto the third building.

Donahue called out in cheerful mock-exasperation as they were met again with the tedious sight of dirty crates, of disregarded debris. "Oh good! Another warehouse filled to the brim with junk. This looks thrilling, Jayden. Are you excited? I'm excited."

Norman probably would have tried to think of a witty retort, only he had just placed his glasses across his face and he instantly knew something was different here. What looked like dozens of data points had emerged on ARI's interface, all glowing in eagerness, forming a vague trail from the back entrance to an area along the left wall where they clustered furtively. The agent hurried towards them.

Bending down on his knees, he detected a minuscule and almost imperceptible deposit of fine white powder. "ARI comment: traces of heroin present. Sample too small for analysis." His features kept an impassive mask, but his voice was noticeably rushed. Hastily, he was onto the next spinning virtual mark, where he discovered more of the drug. Jayden straightened and saw the heroin was littered densely around a carefully-positioned barrier of corrugated iron sheets. What do we have here?

He began tugging on the metal in an effort to pull it free. Melissa came and joined the venture. They shifted boxes filled with grimy copper parts, working silently, until eventually the metal plates could be heaved out of the way.

"Oh my God," said Donahue.

They had revealed perhaps hundreds of plastic packets all filled with heroin; sachet upon sachet piled together, crammed into a discrete space between the wall and huge industrial containers which looked too heavy to move.

Norman grabbed the nearest packet and ripped it open with his hands. An ashen white substance spilled easily forth, trickling through his fingers, creating a mound on the floor.

"ARI comment: hidden in the warehouse are large quantities of white heroin stored in clear plastic packets, estimated 80 kilograms. According to the molecular analysis, there's a ninety-seven percent chance that this heroin is from the same supplier as the shipment discovered on the tanker." Jayden set the split package down beside the others. "Well, what do you know. Third time's the charm. Kellen was right after all."

Edging to the left, he selected a single electronic tag which had caught his eye. Amongst many other tiny spills of heroin which ARI had highlighted, it appeared to be a fingerprint left on one of the iron sheets. Now the profiler couldn't disguise the exhilaration in his tone. "Donahue, it just gets better. Also present is the print of one Christopher Abbot, aged 29, somewhat of a shady character who was fined for possession of cannabis in 2007." At last, a lead! He basked in the delightfully warming knowledge that he had made a good decision, had taken a single step closer to the agent he used to be.

Melissa was beaming. "Good work, Norman. I do believe we're finally going somewhere with this investigation."

Once the pair had called HQ to report the exact location of their find, and then gone over the entire area, not really expecting to find anything else but also not eager to miss any potential evidence, they were free to leave. It was just after 4 o'clock and Donahue joked that it had been at least two hours since her last cup of coffee.

Outside the sky was still clouded over deviously, but as the partners drove away from the docks Jayden felt that he was experiencing a bright and sunshiny day which couldn't possibly be dimmed.

Hindsight, however, is a powerful thing: and had Norman known what would await him back at Headquarters, he may not have been so quick to indulge in his optimism. The object in question was in his office, positioned neatly in the centre of his desk amidst various other files and folders, blissfully unaware of the mess around it and happy just to serve its humble purpose. It was an envelope.

Jayden noticed it as he was searching for a pen on his desk. He was saying something to Melissa as he picked it up, thinking at first it was nothing more than a loose scrap. Opening it, he discovered a piece of paper which was thin and flimsy, almost like tracing paper; a little crumpled and buttery in colour; printed upon it were words from a typewriter, arranged trimly across the page.

As he began to read the agent soon realised this was not a mere scrap. Consequently, he forgot what he had been going to say to his partner, he started to tremble and reach mechanically into his pocket, and just like that the skies had burst open and rained all over his parade.

Hello Norman.

I am Raine. You do not know me, but I know much about you.

As you read this, you are likely to feel a number of emotions, including disbelief, anger, and fear. I must stress beforehand that you should hide all of these: if anyone is present in the room with you, do not give them any indication of what you are about to learn. Most importantly, it is imperative that nobody sees the contents of this letter but you.

All that you know about ARI and Triptocaine is false. You think that they were created to aid agents such as yourself, but the truth is much darker. The FBI is not always working for the good of the American people.

I know that you have experienced the dangers of ARI firsthand, thinking they were simply side-effects of a brilliant tool. But its creators were always aware of its addictiveness and its hazards; it was manufactured with these factors in mind. Furthermore, Triptocaine was developed not afterwards as a response to unforeseen consequences of Added Reality, but simultaneously, to be the precise substance capable of diminishing ARI's negative effects. The drug, too, was created to be as addictive as possible rather than to genuinely help you. Do you see the genius? In a single strike the FBI was able to mould agents not only substantially more effective and time-efficient, but also completely dependant on Triptocaine to function: a rare drug produced exclusively by the Bureau. Thus, ARI and Triptocaine are nothing more than a complex leash, in essence tying you forever to a life of service as a Special Agent. In the process your body, your mind, and all of your rights as a human being are compromised.

There are several agents who are part of the ARI project, but I have chosen you alone to disclose this information to. From what I know of you, Norman Jayden, I think you are the one who is most likely to believe me - who has already had doubts of their own - who will take this knowledge and fight back against the evil that is threatening to destroy all we stand for. There is more evil in the FBI than you can ever know.

I pray that I have been wise to write to you. I hope you will come to realise that all I say is true. I will be in contact again soon, and I will send proof. The Bureau is better than any criminal at hiding its secrets, but if you search hard, you may find your own truths.

Lastly, I am sure I do not need to tell you that you must be infinitely careful. Those responsible for ARI are influential, and will not hesitate to eradicate anyone who may jeopardise their plans.

Burn this letter immediately.