Robert Crane - Family

“J.J.,” Ariadne said, “I don’t care about that. What did you find on the computer?”

“Wait,” I said. “Is this about the laptop I recovered from the Omega safehouse?”

“Right,” the hipster geek said with a nod. “I’ve made sure it was clear of spyware, tied it into the network, and backed the contents of the hard drive up onto our servers so you can access it from your computer.” He waved to the laptop on the work hutch behind her. “But here’s the gist: a list of U.S. Assets for Omega – though they don’t quite call themselves that on their internal docs,” he said. “It’s kinda vague, but I got some analysts sifting through it now. Looks like street addresses for safehouses, facilities, the works. Some names of employees.”

“Anything in the immediate area?” She looked at him and his gaze popped up from the tablet computer.

“A guy here in Minneapolis,” J.J. replied. “James Fries? Looks like they’re paying for him to live the high life; he’s got a condo in downtown.”

“And I would love to visit and throw him out of a window to show my gratitude,” I said.

“And wouldn’t defenestration be a simplistic approach?” Ariadne said with a raised eyebrow. “One incubus dead on the Omega side isn’t going to win us this war. I’ll put surveillance on him, see if he leads us anywhere interesting.”

“And then, after you’ve done that, I can…?” I mimicked throwing something over my head. I didn’t mean it, not really – I don’t think.

“We’ve got bigger concerns than revenge,” Ariadne said, but her look was muted sympathy. “We’ve got a final tally of over a hundred and eighty dead nationwide – that’s agents, retrievers, metas and all else.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” J.J. said with a shrug. I didn’t like him.

“That’s about three-quarters of our agent assets,” Ariadne said. “And every one of them had people they left behind – mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, kids in some cases…”

“Oh,” J.J. said in muted surprise. “Well, when you put it like that it sounds bad.”

“Could be worse,” Reed grunted from the corner, drawing my attention back to him. A pall hung over him, a blackness of mood I couldn’t quite place, it was so at odds with the flippant guy I’d known since he offered me a ride after knowing him for ten seconds.

“How?” Ariadne asked, slight amusement causing the corners of her mouth to curl in a faint smile.

“You could be a meta in India,” he said without pause. “Their government has been running a training facility like what you’ve got here, where they’ve been sheltering metas – about four hundred of them. They’ve even been taking them in from other neighboring countries with offers of good money and a high standard of living.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” J.J. said with a shrug. “Working for the government would have some benefits, I’m sure. Like maybe some past indiscretions could be evaporated without having to do a hack job—”

“They’re all dead as of this morning,” Reed said darkly. “Every last one of them.”

“What?” Ariadne’s eyebrows arched up and she sat back in her chair, stunned.

Reed seemed to seethe with pent up energy in the corner, every word coming out as though he were about to explode. “They’re dead. The whole compound was destroyed.”

J.J. seemed to maintain a detached, ironic tone. “Did their government wipe them out? Because that’s not cool.”

“No,” Reed said, staring at J.J. in disbelief. “That would not be ‘cool’,” he said, mocking the techie. “But indicators do not point to the Indian government.”

“Omega?” I asked, and traded a look with Ariadne.

“Don’t know,” Reed said, “but it doesn’t sound like their game. I don’t know if you knew this, but about six months ago in China—”

“Right.” Ariadne seemed to awaken, leaning forward. “That Chinese government facility that was destroyed.”

“Taking three hundred plus metas along with it,” Reed agreed. “This hasn’t been a good year for the meta population. We’re down by nearly eight hundred in the last few months, and there were only about three thousand of us to begin with.”

“Why would you put all your metas in one place?” J.J. mused aloud. “I mean, it just seems like an invitation to get them wiped out.”

“No one thought we were in any danger of extermination until now,” Reed said with a little acrimony. “Our reports out of China were vague; there was even a hint it could have been the Chinese government behind the whole thing.” He blinked and turned his head toward the wall. “Doesn’t look like it now, though. Looks pretty much like an outside job.”

“So someone’s wiping out metas?” Ariadne asked, sitting back again. “I mean, if China was an isolated incident, you might be able to write it off as an isolated occurrence, but…” She looked at Reed. “How did you get this information?”

“I just talked with my superiors in Italy,” Reed said. “They were…hesitant to give me much over an open communication source like a cell phone, but…anyway, I got the basics and gave them an update.” He shook his head. “The good guys seem to be in a spiral here. Feels like we’re fighting blind. I sense they know something about the troubles you’re experiencing, but I’ll need to call from the secure line at my apartment to get the full updates.”

Ariadne stared at Reed. “Why don’t you go do that?”

Reed smiled. “Because my apartment is in Milwaukee.”

“Damn,” I said. “How the hell do you keep up with your HQ when you’re on the road?”

“Well,” he began, “we had cell phones that we thought were unbreakable – until about six months ago, when we caught an Omega spy in Florence who had a copy of our encryption protocol on him.”

“They’re starting to seem rather adept at this sort of penetration,” Ariadne said. “They’ve compromised us as well; Andromeda claims we have a traitor in our midst.”

Reed nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me. Omega is very slick, and they’ve got more than a few teeps on their side to deploy for these purposes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, confused. “What’s a teep?”

“TP,” Ariadne said, drumming her fingernails on the desk. “Telepath. Mind readers. How many do they have?”

“No idea,” Reed said with a shrug. “No names, no certainty; just whispers, rumors that they use them for spying.”

“Oh wow,” J.J. said. “So we’ve got people walking around reading our minds?” He twitched. “Ah…can I have some time off until we get this resolved? I mean…I’ve got information that they really shouldn’t have, after all. I could work from home.”

I looked at him seriously. “Is it about your unhealthy relationship with your cat?”

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open, making him look even more ridiculous than his glasses and haircut already did. “How did you know about my cat?” He blinked. “Are you the mind reader?” He whimpered. “It was only the once, I swear.”

I let out an exhalation. “You’re covered in cat hair…” I looked at him in pity. “…and ew. Ew. A thousand times, ewww.”

Ariadne stared at J.J. as he wilted in his chair, then turned back to Reed. “Why don’t you let us fly you to Milwaukee? We could use your organization’s assistance and whatever information they have, if they’re willing to provide it.”

Reed considered her offer for about a second. “I’ll take you up on that. Flight time is a hell of a lot better than a six-hour drive each way. I’m sure they’ll be willing to render some help because I’ve been told to cooperate with you; it’s just a question of how much. I mean, it’s pretty obvious we’ve got some common enemies here.”