Brian O'Grady - Hybrid

“No one is going to listen. If they find Reisch, they’re going to go after him with tanks, and I can’t blame them. This guy wiped out an entire platoon. . with a single goddamn thought.” He was remembering the Greg Flynn’s words and Amanda.

“Nonlethal force,” Michael Weigel said slowly, as a CIA senior analyst. “Catch him any way you can, then sedate him. We’ll take it from there. I’ve got to let you go, Rodney. I’ll call you if anything changes here, and you can call me if anything changes at your end.”

“’Bye,” Patton said, but the line was already dead.

There was another way, one that didn’t put people at risk. Amanda was immune to the same virus that Reisch was spreading; she had the same unique abilities as the German; and she was a lot better to look at. Patton smiled, remembering how she had effortlessly disabled the FBI team sent to take her. He had listened along with Greg Flynn to Don Heller’s radio, and secretly applauded when she warned them off with a not-so-veiled threat. He had never met her, but had taken an instant liking to her. She had an indomitable spirit that reminded of his wife. Of late, it seemed that anyone with positive attributes reminded him of Connie.

The problem was that no one was looking for her; the FBI had specifically ordered him to leave her alone. He was told that at this time apprehending her posed too great a risk, and that they should concentrate their efforts on capturing Reisch, who at first seemed to be less of a threat. He wondered if that assessment had changed.

He pulled himself out of his chair and hurriedly put his coat on, hoping to get out before the damn phone rang again. He was anxious to see for himself what had happened, and hopefully, along the way, bump into Amanda.

It had been a long, sleepless night. Martin hadn’t made it home until three-thirty in the morning and was at his desk before seven with a dozen administrative tasks that demanded his attention. He slowly started working through them, their mindless repetition helping him to focus on the more important task. He had a spy in his midst.

“Where to start?” He had asked himself a hundred times this morning, but no one answered. He had personally hired the vast majority of these people, and it sickened him to think that one of them was secretly helping those bastards. No, it was probably worse than that. One of his people was actually one of those bastards.

He was forced into doing a terrible thing. It was almost a violation of trust, a violation of his heritage, but he had to do it. He had the confidential personnel file of every person who worked in his section, and he would have to review each file. His one and only screening criteria was religion. He opened the first folder.

An hour and a half later, he pushed back from his desk and sighed loudly. Eighty-six files on one side of his desk, and six files on the opposite side. Six people who admitted to being Muslim, and he had hired each one of them. He stacked the six files into a neat pile and wondered if some low-level government clerk had done the same thing for Nazi Germany in 1938. “Twenty-three thousand dead,” he said, loud enough for his secretary to hear him.

She appeared at his door a moment later, her usual banter restrained. “Do you need anything?” she asked. She had sensed that something was wrong the moment he had walked in. He hadn’t explained the appearance of the army officers the night before, or his sudden need for personnel records that he had no right to see.

He looked up. “What?” he said tersely.

“You mumbled something, and I asked if you needed anything.” Her personality could not be entirely suppressed.

He stared at her for a moment. “Actually, yes. Come in and close the door.”

She moved a little tentatively. Never before had Martin closed his door.

“We have a problem,” he began after she had taken a seat. If he couldn’t confide in her, there was no one he could trust. “Actually, two problems.” He rapidly told her what had happened after she had left. He told her everything, despite the warnings of General McDaniels. “So we have a spy among us.”

Martha accepted the news calmly. “I would guess we have several spies among us. Most of what we do leaks out long before anything is published, but this — this is a betrayal of everything we stand for.”

“I’ve gone through these,” he said, motioning towards the tall stack of personnel files. “And I found six people who might fit the profile.” The last word gnawed at him.

“Muslims. You’ve been looking for anyone who is a Muslim.” She said it as an accusation. “The ethics of what you’re doing aside, it has no chance of finding the mole.” She straightened up. “Do you remember what happened nine years ago when the FBI tore this department apart after the Ebola isolates were stolen? Do you remember the suspicion? The atmosphere was poisoned and the environment of cooperation was lost forever. In six months, we turned over almost the entire staff. It’s taken more than five years to reestablish a coherent and dedicated group of individuals with enough skill and experience to make a difference. Those ninety-two files sitting on your desk are the start of something that will tear us all apart again.”

“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears,” Martin said. He wasn’t trying to bandy words with her; he simply had no other ideas. McDaniels had told him to quietly review his staff, and this seemed the least intrusive way of doing it.

“You could have asked me. Nothing happens in this department that I don’t know about.” She abruptly stood and went to her desk.

For a moment, Martin thought that he had offended her greatly, but then she returned with a pile of computer readouts. She closed the door behind her.

“This came through yesterday afternoon,” she said, and pushed a pile of readouts towards him. Six lines were highlighted in yellow. “Someone tried to access your computer six times yesterday. On the sixth try, they got in.”

Martin stared at the page of seemingly random numbers and words. It may as well have been Martian for all he could make out. “I take it this is unusual?”

“You are supposed to have a secure connection. No one, anywhere, should have access to it.” She dropped another pile of readouts on to his desk. “Back in February they did the same thing.” Three more highlighted lines.

“Martha, I’m sure this would all be very interesting, if only I had a clue as to what you’re showing me.” He pushed the two piles of readouts back towards Martha.

“What it means is that we have found our spy, or at least the computer he’s using.” She gathered the readouts and unceremoniously dropped them to the floor, then sat back down. “Yesterday, when you were on the phone with the director, I heard your computer beep. It does that when it’s being accessed remotely.”

“I don’t remember any beep.” Martin managed to look both dubious and confused at once.

“You were shouting at the time. Besides, it’s a very small beep — a beep that shouldn’t have happened with you in the room, so I tracked it down. That was the first set of files I showed you. I found the computer’s address and looked for anything else out of the ordinary, and up popped the February readout; only that time they did more than just browse some files. I haven’t finished sorting out what they did exactly, but I’m willing to bet my paycheck against yours that someone tried to change the original Colorado Springs report. I think that they tried to wipe out the original file and replace it with one of their own.”

“Why wouldn’t they just delete the file, or at least the micrographs?”

“First, you can never delete a file. The programs won’t let you. You also can’t delete the micrographs, at least entirely. Every report will have links to the corresponding images. It’s that program we bought a few years ago that allows you to write a report, include a case number, and all the images are automatically retrieved from the main frame and included in the final draft.”