INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1 (10 page)

The more he thinks it over, the worse he
feels. He cannot even begin to fathom the kind of thoughts that
might presently be running rampant through the mind of an already
grieving Jessica. In between sharp gasps for air, Will manages to
sigh deeply. He comes to a full stop at Twelfth and Second. Leaning
against a metal gate, he relaxes himself and catches his breath. He
examines the phone in his hands, lingering on the serial number
engraved on the back just under the Union Square flagship store
emblem. The number reads: 143-022897-13.

Overhead, clouds gather, darkening an already
gloomy sky. An ominous fog accompanies the darkness above, likening
the air below to the heavens above. Drizzle begins to fall. A small
drop of rain barely misses Will’s nose, landing on the fabric of
his shirt. This is followed by another drop, then another, until
the drizzle becomes a full-on thunderstorm. Almost instantly, the
volume of the rain increases, intensifying the downpour, forcing
Will to seek refuge, for himself and Jessica’s phone, under his
blazer by pulling and holding the jacket over his head.

Will continues his journey toward nowhere in
particular, reaching Eleventh Street in seconds that seems to
stretch for minutes. Gusts of wind blow rain forcefully into his
face making it nearly impossible for him to see anything further
than a few feet in front of him. He barely notices the curb’s end,
stopping millimeters short of stepping into the street.

Cars whiz past him, shiny blurs of colors and
ovular shapes, each with similar but distinct sounds. Squinting so
as to focus his eyes on the world behind the curtains of rainfall,
he manages to see, for a brief second and a half, the other side of
the street. A man in a mostly red Leatherman jacket stands there,
seemingly unaffected by the rain. A look of determination manifests
itself in the man’s face. His uneasy, unflinching focus,
unperturbed by the harsh environment, seems out of place to Will,
who notices it at once. Will, however, has never seen the man
before, although he had passed right by him just a short while
ago.

Him!

The voice speaks one word. Will hears it, but
does not understand. The message is cryptic.

“Him what?” He asks, hoping the voice will
respond.

Stop him!

Will figured it would happen sooner or later,
not the request exactly, but the request in general which would be
too over the top to go through with. How can he stop a man who
isn’t doing anything but walking in the rain? It’s preposterous.
That exact act, and similar acts, are the very definition of
psychotic. Despite the voice not once leading him astray, as of yet
at least, he will not obey its directions, not this
time.

Coming from one block east, an unmarked police
vehicle speeds up the street, sirens blazing. A gut feeling tells
Will that the car would have been coming up from behind him had
First Avenue not been a one way street heading north. At first
glance, he can swear that he’s seen the vehicle before and very
recently too.

A weird sensation then befalls upon Will.
Tenseness seizes his chest, different and worse than when he had
been running.

Veniero’s. Quick.

Will sprints across the street, making a sharp
right and heading a third of the way up the avenue and into the
famed bakery. The car approaches, stopping near the corner as the
passenger dismount. Will slows down as he enters, nodding at the
workers as he speed-walks to the back of the restaurant, unclear as
to why the voice directed him there. Then, as luck would have it,
or so it seemed at the moment, Will lays eyes upon Heather and the
girl from the caller ID picture on Heather’s phone; the picture he
had stolen a glimpse of before Heather moved her phone.

“Heather?” He questions.

“Will?” She repeats, equally confounded. The
situation is new to her as she’s yet to read this particular
episode. Nonetheless, the new path Will has taken scares her, as
she knows that, always around this point in Will’s stories, death
occurs.

The fat man turns around, noisy and curious to
see who the lady’s unexpected guess is.

“You!” The man yells as his large body springs
to its feet and he points his finger at Will.

“Aw, come on. For real, voice? For real?
That’s bullshit,” Will says looking up, appearing to be talking to
the ceiling of the bakery. He waves his arms in a gesture of
exasperation. Milton catches a glimpse of the phone in Will’s
hand.

“What, did you steal that, you degenerate?”
Milton outright accuses, redirecting his finger to point at the
stolen phone.

“No!” Will lies, with the conviction of being
almost offended at the accusation.

“Those are exclusive to my location,” he says
of the phone bearing the Union Square insignia. “And I don’t
remember selling you one, ever.”

“Fine, I stole it,” Will admits. Heather
shakes her head.

“This is your friend, Heather?” Ruth asks with
a smile, amused at the situation.

“This is the little shit that threw coffee on
me today,” Milton interjects.

“What?” Ruth questions with a chuckle, unsure
if she had heard correctly. “That’s a strange
coincidence.”

Get Milton to unlock phone and
show picture gallery to Heather and the girl with her.

“How the fuck do I do that?” He asks the
voice.

“You know damn well how you did it,” Milton
responds, believing that Will was addressing him.

Just then, as Milton bickers with Will, a loud
thunderous bang rings throughout the air. There’s an accompanying
flash, but it is much weaker than a lightning bolt. The subsequent
series of similar sounds confirm that the sounds are not that of
thunder, but of gunshots.

Stay inside.

When the shots subside, Ruth curiously heads
to the entrance.

Keep her inside.

“Hey you, I don’t think you should go out
there yet,” Will says, as he reaches out and grabs her
arm.

“Sure,” she says with a smile. Will believes
her, smiles back, and turns away. When he’s no longer looking, Ruth
power walks to the entrance and peers outside.

Fuck!

CHAPTER 10:

Hector Santiago pulls into a spot just outside
of Beth Israel, illegally double parking his unmarked vehicle. He
steps out of the passenger seat and surveys the front entrance of
the hospital building.

“Here?” He directs his question to Laura. “You
sure?”

“Positive,” she replies, waving her phone in
his face, displaying the tracking app to him. “It says that he’s
here.”

Hector had been following Laura’s directions
without giving thought to how the man was being traced. He slowly
begins to realize something is amiss. It takes a while for the
epiphany to drill into his thick skull.

What Laura doesn’t know is that the app, which
is in its infancy—unfinished and with many bugs in the
programming—is malfunctioning due to the speed in which Will fled.
The software currently retrieves data from an already established
GPS service, encrypting it so that only the person who owns the
tracker can view the data. Being that encryption generally takes
about 45-75 seconds, the current position of the target is delayed
by that amount of time at the very least, if no other technical
issues happen to arise.

In the meantime, Hector calls his
girlfriend.

“He babe, what’s up,” Hector says.

“Hey baby,” the voice over the line replies.
“I miss you so much. You have no idea what’s
happened—Hey!—

Click.

The phone dies on the other end.

“Crap reception,” Hector says, blaming the
dropped call on the network. He turns to Laura. “Heh? Funny thing:
Jess is here.”

About a minute passes with her face buried in
her cell phone trying to track his whereabouts. With the device
literally inches from her face, Laura completely misses Will as he
sprints past her and the undercover officials. Hector spots a man
running down the block but disregards it for two particular
reasons. First off, he has never seen Will before, so there was no
way possible for him to identity him. Secondly, he assumes that
Laura’s cell phone is tracking him without any problems.

“So, we arrest him, then what? You gonna
charge him with littering? It would never stick and you’re better
than that anyway, Laura. I mean, sheesh, littering. Not even the
rookies want to hand citations out for that.”

“I’m not going to charge him with littering,”
she begins. “I’m going to charge him with manslaughter. An old lady
slipped on the litter. And I mean, old. Like, game-over
old.”

“Wow. That’s a fucking stretch,” he replies
before giving in to a hearty chuckle. “That might not be the most
plausible outcome, even for you and your expertise,” he
says.

“Hector, darling, you should know better than
that.”

“Should I?” He questions again. “What I do
know is that you’re vehemently vested in apprehending this person
for a crime which we all know is not going to stick, not even
slightly. Then on top of that, you’re planning on hitting him with
another charge for something that isn’t one hundred percent
certain. What gives?”

“Hector, I accidently gave him the business
card,” she confesses. “Any charge that I hit him with is just a
technicality, just to scare him straight. I don’t want him—what’s
the word I’m looking for?—snitching on me, okay. I’ll scare him,
and then I’ll offer him the deal of a lifetime. He’ll think he’d be
walking away scot-free, meanwhile I would have never actually had
anything on him. Everything will blow over, we’ll be in the clear
with the card back where it belongs.”

“I follow. I do. I swear. Quick question
though: what card?” Hector asks with a sly smirk and a comically
raised eye-brow.

“You know which one?” She barks

“You mean, the one with the bug?” He
probes.

“What is this, a set-up?” She says looking at
the cops behind her. “Shut-up. And, yes the one with the
bug.”

“The one we were supposed to plant on Edwin
Cole?”

“That’s the one,” Laura confirms.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Hector says with a scoff.
“We’ll just try Edwin Cole again, some other day, huh? You could
have told me that when I picked you up. I thought you needed to
alter the Cole plan or something. What the hell, Laura? We were on
our way to meet you for the operation.”

“I was running early, Hector. I thought it’d
be a quick juggle. I didn’t mean to give him the bug.”

“Well, as long as you didn’t mean it.” Hectors
sarcasm hits home.

“Oh, stop crying. Let’s just fix this. It’s
all good.”

A cop in the backseat sucks his
teeth.

Suddenly, a red-haired girl bursts through the
hospital doors, running full speed, which—when in heels—is not
synonymous with top speed. There is a look of exasperation on her
face.

“Jessica?” Hector exclaims, as he hops out of
the driver’s seat upon catching sight of her. “What are you doing?
What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Hector bombards her with concerned
questions, one after another, without allotting her the brief
moments needed to answer him.

“My phone. That fucking sociopath stole my
phone,” she responds franticly.

“Who stole your phone?” Hector asks as he
consoles her by rubbing her shoulders.

“William. He said his name was William and he
was a concerned member of my grandmother’s church. He was visiting
her because he witnessed the accident,” she adds.

“What did he look like?” Hector
probes.

“He was fairly tall, light-skinned, and had
short hair,” she answers before adding, “and he was wearing a
suit.”

Hector looks back at Laura who is still
fidgeting with her cell phone. Suddenly a curious look grows across
Laura’s face.

“Did you say that he was wearing a suit?”
Laura asks Jessica in a tone close to the one she uses for a
cross-examination. When Jessica affirms her inquiry, an expression
of realization crosses Laura’s face. She terminates the application
on her phone from the task manager menu. She then launches the
application again and waits for it to load. When she sees where
Will’s tracker is located, she becomes irate, mostly with herself
for her own carelessness. “Fuck! Hector, he heading south on
First,” she cries out.

“How is that possible? You said that he was in
the hospital,” Hector speaks in a tone only a few decibels below
shouting. “Fuck, I just saw a guy in a suit run out of there. Fuck!
I knew something was off about him.”

“What didn’t you say something then?” Laura
retorts, in an attempt to save face. Deep down she knows that his
is her screw-up and hers alone.

“How do I know who the fuck you’re looking
for? I thought you were tracking the man,” Hector adds.

“The software still has bugs, Hector. It
froze, showing me the last location he had been at before changing
directions. It’s still a beta test version.”