Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Rafael stared at him, wide-eyed. “That’s what they used to get Jake?”

“A KAM,” Evan said. “Yeah.”

Rafael nodded. “Dragonfly?”

“That’s right.”

Evan started toward Rafael, who flinched, hands hovering tense above his thighs, ready to lift into a high guard. A reflex of the traumatized. After a moment he relaxed his arms again and looked away, tongue running inside his bottom lip, his eyes averted, embarrassed. Evan nodded reassuringly and moved past him to the fogged-up windowpane.

He drew the letter M on the glass, his fingertip cutting through the fog. Then he added wings to the sides. “This logo was stamped on the dragonfly,” he said. “Recognize it?”

“Mimeticom.” Rafael’s nod looked like a twitch. “That’s them all right.”

Using his sleeve, Evan wiped the logo from the pane. “Who’s them ?”

“The company providing the tech for this shit at Creech North. Serious top-secret, need-to-know shit buried in Area 6.” He blinked rapidly four times, his nose scrunching. “It’s the Area 6 of Area 6. When Jake was up there, they found out there were glitches in the ethical-adaptor software.”

“Glitches,” Joey said.

“They programmed five unarmed dragonflies to surveil an office with ‘maximum efficiency.’ A reality-based tactical scenario. Had a E-1 in there at his desk, you know, playing his role. Just a kid, three steps out of basic. So they set him up in the room and pulled back to the observation bay.” A spasm caught Rafael’s eye, twitching it once. He wet his lips again, staring off into the middle distance. “When the drill went live, the first drone flew itself through his eye into his brain.”

Joey let a breath out through her teeth.

“The other four took perches in the corners of the room,” Rafael said. “‘Maximum efficiency.’ Easier to provide comprehensive surveillance if no one’s moving, right? Problem solved. And hey, no worries. Like I said, the algorithm’ll get it right next time.”

Evan forced a swallow down his dry throat. “And Jake was going to blow the whistle on this?”

“Man, Jake came back from Creech North shaken . Was looking into options within Command, but you think the inspector general’s gonna give a shit? They’re not inclined to open up the kimono ’bout anything related to the drone program. They discharged him, threatened him legally, all that. Sent a signal loud and clear. You talk, we own your ass and you die in Leavenworth. But Mimeticom’s not content to leave it there. They’re staring at a five-hundred-million-dollar contract with the DoD, and I’m thinking those motherfuckers weren’t willing to risk it on one guy keeping his mouth shut. I’ll tell you something that’s not programmable. Jake Hargreave’s soul. You try rendering that outta ones and zeros.”

Evan felt Rafael’s outrage keenly. With the advent of drones, the Orphan Program had been downsized drastically. Why bother with the expense and uncertainty of deploying an expendable living, breathing weapon when you could merely push a button to disintegrate a target in another hemisphere? But Evan’s training, like Rafael’s, was about more than ease. It was about a willingness to shoulder the human consequences. To use pain and fear and grief and guilt as guardrails. To feel that which you were willing to inflict. Or at least risk that you might. And to carry the cost the rest of your waking days.

“What was Jake’s plan?” Evan asked.

“He was figuring shit out. Maybe a journalist. Or an ombudsman over at Defense. Thought about protest ads in the Air Force Times . Had to talk it through, ’cuz if you don’t talk about stuff like this, it eats you from the inside.” Rafael raised his arms, a gesture encompassing the base, the four walls of his room, himself.

Evan pictured that plastic parking permit hung over the rearview mirror of Jake’s Bronco, lost among the air fresheners. “He came to see you here,” he said.

Rafael gave a nod. “Once. His head wasn’t right. Talking ’bout he’s gonna break into Creech North and get evidence. No one breaks in there, man. And if they did, they’d never break back out.”

Evan thought about that shot-up Bronco. They’d tried to kill Jake on the 110 Freeway. He’d fled his vehicle and returned to the impound lot later to peel the security-hologrammed Creech North parking sticker off his windshield. The sticker now burning a hole through Evan’s cargo pocket. Hargreave had been planning to use it to gain access to Creech North again.

“Did he ever mention someone called ‘the doctor’?” Evan asked.

Rafael wrinkled his nose, shook his head. “I warned him you can’t go up against this kind of power and keep breathing.” He hesitated.

Joey sidled a half step closer. “What?”

“Since his visit I feel like I’ve been watched . I don’t know how to explain it. Just … eyes on me.” He scratched at his arm. “But of course who am I gonna tell that to?” His posture slumped, and his shoulders rolled forward, defeated. “Looking back, I wish he hadn’t told me any of it.”

“Do they know that you know anything?” Evan asked.

“Well, them getting my ass landed in here means they wanted to make sure no one would listen to my delusional schizophrenic ass. But Jake didn’t let up, and they killed him. So they’re moving, cleaning up. Who knows what kinda risk those motherfuckers consider me now ?”

Evan crossed to the tiny desk, where a pad of paper rested squared to its right side. He jotted down a phone number, handed it to Rafael. “If you need me.”

Rafael looked down at the paper: “1-855-2-NOWHERE.”

“Wait,” he said. “ No . I heard about you. You’re really out there? You’re really you?”

“Not anymore,” Evan said. “Just seeing through this one last thing.”

Rafael said, “For Jake?”

The question, obvious as it was, caught Evan off guard. Why was he doing this? Since that first phone call from Veronica, he hadn’t really stopped to consider.

I heard you help people .

Was that it? Was that why he was here? To do a favor for the woman who hadn’t wanted him? Why? To be close to her? There was something more, something in all this he needed to know.

He recalled her words once more: You barely cried. The doctor thought something was wrong with you. But I knew there wasn’t. I could see how sensitive you were, how much you were taking in, that you were overcome by it. And to survive you had to shut off parts of yourself, what you felt, what you reacted to .

He felt suddenly hyperaware of the bones of his feet and how imperfectly they balanced him. His breath moving through the channel of his throat. His heartbeat up from its resting rate, body temperature also on the rise.

Emotion.

And then it struck him.

Veronica was the only one who’d ever seen him purely, who’d held him in his first vulnerable minutes and looked into the wide-open slate of his face before trauma and loss had been written over it. Before he’d closed up and armored himself, scar tissue growing around a vulnerable core until nothing could pierce it.

He recalled the chill air of the Recoleta Cemetery, Veronica laying her hands on his shoulders, hazel eyes appraising him from beneath the brim of that hat like she was seeing more of him than he knew existed.

His mother’s gaze held the totality of him. It was the only place he’d ever seen it reflected. She was the mirror by which he might be able to know himself.

It sounded so pathetic and small, a childish hope as futile as Andre’s parental quest. That this final mission, set in motion by his long-lost mother, might prove to be the path to himself.