When Max asked Alec if he had access to Cale's file, her intent had been for him to arrange for her to read the approved documents back on base like was standard protocol, so she was surprised when he returned to her cabin twenty minutes later and passed his unlocked tablet over to her without hesitation. It was kind of a big deal, since his rank afforded him a higher security clearance and he could potentially get in trouble for her actions under his login credentials. There would be access to other sensitive files not meant for her eyes. The trust was implicit.
However, that feeling was undercut by the worried, grave stare he sported. "I have an update, and it's not good news."
She leaned forward unconsciously and waited. Did something happen to Biggs? Or Brandy? Did something happen with Cale? Was the real Manticore location compromised?
"We've been sort of wrapped up in our own ops, focused on them, so we didn't really have the time to contact base and find out about the container." He avoided her eye contact, which made her anxious. He continued, "the container our strike team apprehended - Eilers' imports - we have confirmation that it was filled with hybrid soldiers like we thought. About 100 of them."
"Holy shit." Max's brows crinkled. "Wait, we were at the same dock, wouldn't we have been able to hear them? Or are they a different kind of hybrid that needs to be activated somehow?"
His hand came down in a stop motion. She had jumped ahead. "Unfortunately, they were all dead when Lydecker opened the doors. They'd been in there for weeks with no food or water. The manifest showed they'd been held up out at sea."
She almost stood up in shock, the urge to move and do something making her skin feel tight. "They starved to death?"
He nodded. He didn't understand how someone - anyone - in whatever company was implanting or manipulating genes, wouldn't automatically make sure their soldiers were provided adequate nutrition. These hundred deaths could have been avoided so easily. From a business standpoint, the cost for feeding these soldiers would be just a drop in the ocean in comparison to how much money they could make. "Sandoval said the coats in the lab are busy performing autopsies, trying to map their DNA, extract any tech, and confirm cause of death."
"How does this asshole keep getting away with fucking murder? We should have taken him out when we had the chance." Max gritted her teeth and tears sprang to her eyes.
"It makes me furious, too," he said. "We are not even human to him. We're property, a blunt instrument. But we can't just cut off the arm of this monster. We need to find out who Eilers' supplier is first." He placed a reassuring hand on her arm.
She had questions. Tons of them. Whose hybrids were these, since they were not Manticore's? Were they Reds? Was there another kind of designer soldier out there? Sleeper agents? Why were they out at sea for so long? Couldn't they have worked together to find a way out of the container?
Having just confirmed what she really didn't want to confirm, she wondered what happened with Pete and Tinga at the auction. Did they buy the weapons? Get them out of circulation? Were those hybrids still alive?
She blew out an exasperated breath. "What're our orders?"
"I'm waiting on the Director to call us back. For now, we head back and prepare for the Cale mission." His jaw ticked as he held back his own anger.
Max agreed.
"We still have about nine more hours on this flight. Take your time. Read anything you want; I think it's going to help the more you know."
As Max navigated to their internal server and found the mission and alias folders, she couldn't hide her curiosity at the two dozen operations currently under his purview. The man in question had sat down with an actual book he was partway through already about psychological conditioning. Is that homework or is he reading it for fun?
Returning to the file list, she read each of the operation names, which meant she'd inadvertently memorized them. They were a mixture of their marks' names, their own aliases, and more than half were named after movies and TV shows. But the one she was most interested in reading for now was Operation: Cale. There was just something she felt she had missed, and she wanted a review of the facts and as much of the file as possible before she went back undercover with her handler in tow.
She was also interested in Operation: True Lies. True Lies was the movie he'd referenced while speaking of Rachel, and though he'd already told her the story of how Rachel died, she had trouble holding her curiosity at bay.
"Go ahead," he said softly.
She was unaware that he'd been watching her. "Sorry."
"No, really. I want you to read them," he insisted. "Actually, can I ask - how long has it been since you've retested the MASVAB?"
"I've never retested."
He took that in, a glint of disbelief in his eyes. "Once medical clears you, I'd like you to retest."
It felt like the air changed somehow, got a little heavier and more serious. "May I ask why?" It felt so formal asking, especially that way, like it could border insubordination, but her curiosity was unbridled.
"I think you might be in the wrong classification," he answered. He appeared to be ready to continue, but his phone rang with an instrumental version of "Drop it Like it's Hot" and he took the call out in the hallway.
Wrong classification? I frickin' aced the Romeo section. How could those results be wrong? For now, she put away her uncertainty about the test and instead did an exhaustive deep dive of Cale's history.
Old money, generations-of-Cales-old, which she would have known by his penthouse even if she'd never read his file; he prided himself in rare collectibles and ostentatious art and statues. His penthouse featured hardwood floors, veined-marble and granite surrounds, Crystal chandeliers, silks in all the cream colors possible, high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets in each of the bedrooms (plus a few extra sets just in case), closets full of suits and tuxedos, jewelry she'd never seen him wear... the list went on. It was as if he grew up seeing all of this and had determined that's what all houses were supposed to have.
How stark of a difference their places looked, she realized. His opulent wealth put her spartan Manticore barracks to shame, not to mention the apartment she shared with Kendra and its cobbled-together contents.
His mother, Marianne, had passed away from cancer when he was just a child. His father, Vernon, was shady as hell and constantly gallivanting around the globe, trying to get his fingers in as many pies as he could - financial, technological, whatever deep pockets he could charm his way into. His goal was to maintain and expand the Cale fortune. When his wife passed away, he sent his only son to boarding school in Vermont. It was cheaper than the nannies they'd used when Marianne was still alive.
After the first year, Vernon wasn't there when Cale returned for Christmas break; he'd been too busy with a new company right on the cutting edge of genetic mapping and manipulation, so from there on out, Logan summered and took his school breaks with his jackass Uncle Jonas. Jonas Cale had harnessed the market on hover drone technology and was sitting fat on top off those profits.
Add even more money to the family name since those hover drones are all over the fucking place in Seattle.
In school, Cale tried to get his father's attention first through academic excellence (his computer skills alone put him in the top five percent of his class, and his doggedness using social media journalism proved how manipulative he could be), and when that didn't work, he resorted to hacking financial institutions and his own school, purchasing expensive cars, jets and buildings with the stolen funds, and changing his friends' and enemies' grades in the system. To keep him from getting expelled, Vernon would donate funding to the school or build a new wing on campus.
But when Cale bought the boarding school anonymously through backchannels after graduation, and then had it blown up during break, he thought he and his father might finally share some meaningful communication. A stern conversation or a stinging lashing would surely be in order for his reckless actions. Instead, however, his father simply recruited him and began utilizing his son's skills for his own plots. It was as if he recognized how far Logan would be willing to go for Daddy's attention and had planned for Logan never to obtain his full attention so that he could keep using him for increasingly violent maneuvers. There was a part of Max that could understand how Cale must have felt, the idea of never being good enough, never doing the full extent of whatever it takes.
The younger Cale was competitive in business, so if it was a profitable company, he wanted to invest in it, which was how he'd discovered the genetics businesses his father had looked into that had been masquerading as a pharmaceuticals company. Their profits were built on promises of protection from a person whose DNA was constructed piece by piece by genius scientists, programmed to protect, even programmed to do whatever the owner wanted them to do. Vernon crossed that company, Noyau Diamont, by allegedly selling their secrets, and got himself killed. The company was presumed defunct just a few years later.
The young hacker had shallow, transactional relationships with women. Though he liked a smart partner, one with too much idealism threatened his, and he could not tolerate losing his own vision by even an inch. Nicolette, his first serious girlfriend, had dumped him to pursue her dreams of becoming a lobbyist, and he closed himself off after her, relegating his interactions with women to either ones that were paid for (safer that way) or quid pro quo.
Makes sense, thought Max, as this information sent a ripple back through their interactions over the past eight months. Quid pro quo was essentially the basis of their involvement, even though his initial ploy was blackmail. He wanted things from her - knowledge of Manticore, maybe some of the lesser-used or outdated algorithms, some of her enhanced skills, and eventually her body - and under the auspices of being a Manticore refugee on the run for her life, 'Max Guevara' wanted things from him, too. She sometimes needed protection, money, his political connections, his societal status, and his hacking abilities.
Years before Max entered the picture, Cale met Valerie Linden, a schoolteacher from California. In the short ten months before they married, she had a huge impact on Cale's outlook. She had solid ethics and high morals. By all accounts, she was a good person. Stellar DMV record, no criminal history, very little family. She had a nice smile and a positive outlook on life. For the better part of two years, Cale's criminal activity dwindled down to almost nothing. Where he once exposed his enemies under the Eyes Only banner as 'corrupt' or 'evil,' there was instead radio silence, regularly scheduled programming. Things were really starting to turn around for him. It was as if he was... happy.
And then Valerie was brutally murdered, gunned down during a bank robbery along with two other civilians. All three bodies were removed from the scene quickly and taken to the City Morgue, where they mysteriously disappeared.
Throughout all of his history, it was crystal clear that he enjoyed being the one with the vision, and even more, that he was addicted to being the one with the power. But still, his hatred for Manticore burned right through his hubris. The really shady shit hadn't started until after his wife's death.
So what am I missing? Max asked herself. She navigated out of Manticore's system and began searching the web and dark web, plugging in old algorithms to try to produce alternate results. And she was not disappointed. The first few links showed Cale's father, Vernon, had been murdered in the late 90s, and no one brought to justice. In fact, crime scene reports found no evidence of the party or parties responsible.
Not one shred of evidence?
She opened up another search for Valerie Linden, which was her maiden name before she married Logan. What was so interesting about this search was that it produced zero results before 1997. It was like she didn't exist before then.
Next, she discovered Valerie Cale's autopsy findings. The report showed two things that peaked her interest. One, an implant was removed from her neck - and it had a barcode on it. The coroner's voice recording posited that maybe she'd been part of a clinical trial or something, and that the coroner would do some research to see if she could identify the company to which the implant belonged. And two, she had hCG in her blood, which meant she was pregnant at the time of her death. That same voice recording had a saddened coroner explaining that there would be some additional testing performed on the fetus, but then the recording went static.
Max sat back in her seat, letting that information wash over her and knock back through her memories and interactions with Cale. Suddenly, their most violent fight made more sense; he was probably trying to tell her that his wife had been pregnant when she was killed. And he probably knew about the barcoded implant, since he'd (mistakenly) put two and two together to blast Manticore for killing countless, defenseless innocents, even expectant mothers.
Like his wife.
Alec tapped on her open door. "Director says we got one day on base to plan our reintroduction." He felt her urge to explode with information. "What did you find out?"
Max stood and met his concern with her one good eye. "Cale's wife... she was a Romeo."
