Masked (8 page)

M
y body felt too chilled
. Too numb to comprehend what seeing Augustine Tengku actually meant to me. Aches and pains vanished, as though my mind couldn’t possibly handle anymore stimulation - physical or otherwise. I sat on a chair in the corner of the tech-room and let the sights and sounds surround me. Wash over me. Trickles of water that neither soothed nor heated. Consoled or revived.

“Who is he?” a Cardinal asked, stepping forward from his position against the wall. I was vaguely aware he was the senior officer, the coiled gold braid at his shoulder picking up glints of light.

It was Tan who answered. “A Wiped.”

“How is that possible?” the Cardinal said almost to himself. His show of emotion making him seem more real for it. More human than he’d previously been.

“If the concierge lives and has returned,” Alan announced, “then who else?”

“A more pertinent question,” Tan replied, “would be why?”

And just like that the hopes and promises that had appeared in the Cardinal’s eyes disappeared. Replaced with militant aggression.

“We can check the boat again, sir,” he suggested, his stance at the ready.

Tan shook his head. “They won’t return to it. Not now. But where they’d be is anyone’s guess.”

“We have one identity,” Simon announced. “I can run an iRec programme and attempt to identify the rest.”

“iRec-ing with masks on,” Alan advised, “will prove tricky.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Si replied, ever the optimist.

It was a long shot, and we all knew it. But Simon Richards was not without some skills. He was already tweaking the Identity Recognition programme, screeds of binary code scrolling across the vid-screens.

“Have we got street-cams up again?” Alan asked, reaching into a cabinet at the side of Simon’s desk and pulling out earpieces.

“I’m running a system check,” Si advised, typing code while he answered. “Once that’s finished, I should have a better understanding of how they all failed. Of course, if I had…” His voice trailed off at the end, but he managed to cover his error by appearing to be flustered at the programme he was rewriting.

Tan and the Cardinal were too deep in conversation to have picked up on the mistake, thankfully. Their heads bent as they discussed military strategy. It occurred to me that Tan didn’t surround himself with sycophant politicians. He was running this nation very much like an army. Thoughts of General Chew-wen and where he rose from sprang to mind. But I could hardly fault my old friend for his tactics.

We
were
at war and maybe this Cardinal, whom he seemed to trust above all others, was just the right man to have at his side.

Alan suddenly appeared before me; I hadn’t seen him move closer. My tired mind was fracturing; the need to bathe and grieve and refortify myself growing stronger. But there wasn’t time for that. Trent was missing and the only lead we had was a wiped concierge. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, and suddenly panic consumed me.

With a scowl marring his tanned features, Alan reached down and hauled me to my feet, his grip of my upper arm surprisingly gentle.

“Lena needs a break,” he advised, receiving a nod and shared look of understanding from Simon, nothing from the Cardinal, and a concerned but agreeable glance from Tan.

With less effort than it took to walk in here, we were off down the penthouse floor corridor and entering Trent’s and my apartment.

It smelled of him, I realised. My hand shaking as I raised it to my lips. A book lay open on the coffee table; something in Mahiah that he’d been last reading. A mug sat on the kitchen bench, rinsed out and upside down on the draining tray. Not stacked in the dishwasher as I would have done; always too much in a hurry to complete the mundane tasks.

I crossed to the spiral staircase, knowing climbing them would require more courage than I currently had. I stopped at its base and turned to look at Alan, aware at last that he hadn’t left, the door shut at his back, his dark eyes assessing me quietly.

He saw a lot, did Alan Ng. He saw more than I’d ever given him credit.

“We’ll find him,” he swore. “And let’s not forget who we’re talking about. Trent’s not without abilities of his own.”

“Then how did they take him?”

“By surprise,” he guessed reasonably. “Or trickery. But he’ll be on to them now, you can bet.”

So many questions vied for attention inside my mind, but sorting them out and picking just one seemed impossible right then. I sank down onto the bottom tread of the stairs and stared at my soot stained hands.

“Si needs SMII,” Alan said softly, his tone perhaps for the subject matter, or simply because he felt sorry for me. “He says he can isolate it, make sure Tan doesn’t know we’ve flicked the switch. But without the power of your father’s programme, Si doesn’t think reactivating the street-cams can be done.”

How they’d managed to communicate that, while Tan and the Cardinal had been in the room, was beyond me. But then much was beyond me right now.

I ran a hand over my face, uncaring if I transferred soot and grime from my palm onto my cheeks. I was covered in filth and much less pleasant things. None of it mattered, though. Because inside I was broken.

I let a small sound out, too similar to a sob.

Alan’s scowl deepened, his mouth parting as though to speak, and then shutting again. It would have been comical; if his distress wasn’t because of Trent.

“I can’t switch the Shiloh unit on,” I admitted at last.

“You what?” he said, uncharacteristically.

“I’m locked out. Or rather, it’s on voice activated lock-down.”

Alan stared at me for a long, drawn out moment, and then said, “Trent.”

I nodded, my chest cleaving in two.

I expected Alan to ask me why. But he didn’t. Perhaps he’d understood intrinsically why Trent would have done such a thing. Maybe more than Trent had seen what conversing with that unit had done to my moods.

I stared back down at the floorboards, frustration and embarrassment warring with fatigue and deep, deep loss.

For a second I couldn’t tell who I was mourning. If that ache was for Trent alone or a machine. But then I shook my head, pushed up from the step, and walked across the room into the kitchen.

My father’s Shiloh unit blinked away merrily at me. One green flashing light in the upper right corner, indicating we had a message. It must have been left prior to Trent locking the unit, but I didn’t rush to clear it, just tapped the Shiloh’s vid-screen and brought up the diagnostics.

Alan watched silently from over my shoulder, but it was obvious the device was only allowing me rudimentary access. I cleared my throat, felt a lump forming, and said, “Shiloh, activate.”

The device flashed red once, and then my father’s voice announced, “Voice activation denied.”

I turned to look up at Alan, his scowl said it all really.

“Shiloh override,” he attempted.

“Voice activation denied.”

“Fuck!” Alan snapped, running dirt stained hands through his hair. “How the fuck can we find him now?”

He closed his eyes slowly, regretting his outburst before the words had even left the room. I straightened my back, lifted my chin, and announced I was going to take a shower.

Trent was out there, somewhere, needing help or a rescue or God alone knew what. Staring at a machine my dead father had created that was out of our reach wasn’t going to aid him. If I had to, I’d walk the streets.

“They took him for a reason,” I said at the edge of the kitchen itself. “Why do you think?”

Alan shook his head. “Too many possible answers to that one, Elite.”

I nodded my head, strangely reluctant to leave him. Alan could be bristly, abrasive and abrupt, but he was the closest thing to Trent that I had.

“Take a shower,” he urged. “Get cleaned up.” He reached forward and placed an earpiece on the kitchen bench. “Then wear this at all times. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen fast. I want us ready for anything.”

“Armed?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he returned and then walked out of the room.

The shower was hot and hard. I felt nothing. The water sluicing off me was every colour but clear. I looked dead on my feet when I stared at the woman in the mirror.

Dressed in black fitted pants and a black singlet, I tied my hair back into a formerly inappropriate braid, staring at myself without emotion. Too much energy had been given over to emotions already. I sheathed a knife in a holster at the curve of my back, and another into my boot, out of sight. Then added a laser pointer, taser, and decoder to my lightweight jacket, missing the heaviness of a laser gun on my hip.

Lastly, my cellphone slipped into a pocket and the earpiece was placed inside my ear. I stood there for a few more seconds and then began the descent back into the real world at last.

I couldn’t grieve Trent. Grieving him would admit that he was gone. That getting him back would be impossible. I refused to believe that.

I couldn’t grieve him. But I could fight for him.

I crossed the apartment, ignoring all of the little things that made this our home. At the door, I turned back and looked towards the kitchen. Knowing the Shiloh unit would be monitoring security and household chores, aware I was about to leave.

“Calvin,” I said. More to test Trent’s name for the device aloud, than anything else. A connection to him that I needed right then, when so much was left up in the air, right now.

I hadn’t expected an answer. The Shiloh unit was functioning on the barest of operational commands. And most of those were only accessible with the correct voice activation. Which I lacked. So the door to the apartment was partly open, preparing for my exit, when the device actually replied.

“Yes, Lena,” my father said. “I’m still here. You only need to ask.”

I
was
stunned immobile for a moment. And then Tan appeared in the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked, hands in his pockets as though coming here had made him uncomfortable. Perhaps an apology was not on the cards.

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, pushing him out of the apartment and closing the door.

He took a step back, grimacing. Then straightened his shoulders as though preparing to fight.

No, an apology wasn’t forthcoming. But something about being outside our apartment was setting him off.

“I’m sorry about Trent,” he said carefully, then cleared his throat as though he’d been the one inhaling smoke at the crash zone and not us.

And then it registered. Trent’s absence wasn’t the issue here. It never had been. His presence was more than enough. Even if his presence was just in a mug on a bench or a book left unfinished. The memory of him in our home. Tan had always insisted we meet at Parliament House. This was the first time he’d visited the apartment.

He was uncomfortable, all right. Uncomfortable being reminded of how entrenched in my life Trent had become.

I didn’t allay his fears. We all had fears, we each had to fight them on our own.

“Did you need me?” I asked.

“I always need you, Elite,” he jested, but the joke fell flat. The small space between us in the corridor feeling like a large chasm.

I waited silently.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. The apology not the one I was after.

I let a slow breath of air out. There wasn’t time for hurt feelings.

“What have you decided?” I asked. He was the President, after all.

“I’ve increased the Cardinals’ presence on the streets,” he announced, grasping the lifeline I’d offered. “The street-cams are still out, but with Cardinals on as many corners as we can manage, linked by radio, then perhaps we’ll get lucky.”

“Still no idea where they could be?”

He shook his head, his eyes laced with delicate red veins, the wrinkles at the corner of his mouth indicating fatigue.

“I had his last known address searched,” he advised.

“Augustine’s?”

“Yes. It seemed like a good place to start. But it’s abandoned now. No sign of anyone having lived there for quite a few months.”

“It was a good thought,” I offered.

“But not enough. They have to be somewhere, but where would you hide a dozen wiped?”

I thought about that for a moment. Old residential addresses were probably out, if Augustine’s home had proven a bust. But there were just too many alternatives to consider. Most of Geh Dowee could provide adequate cover; abandoned factories and the crumbling oil refinery. A rabbit warren that would take more Cardinals than we had to flush out.

No, we needed more. Something tangible. Something that meant something to them. Who were these Masked?

I shook my head.

“Maybe you weren’t so far off on your assumption,” I said slowly as a thought occurred.

Tan lifted his face to mine, from where he’d been staring blindly at the floor. “You’ve thought of something.”

I nodded. My hand already reaching for the apartment door. I stopped myself from opening it, and turned to look at Tan. He’d once been my confidant. Him and Aiko my only trusted friends. I’d had Elite and Honourable acquaintances, Overseers who’d known my father, who might have cared. Even a Cardinal who’d been more a brother than a guard. But none of them were trusted like Tan and his sister. None of them had my back, time and again. Knew my secrets, both deadly and illegal.

None of them.

“Tan,” I started.

“Yes, Lena?” It was there, in his eyes, the desire to be that confidant again.

A Cardinal shifted on his feet farther down the hall, drawing my eye, breaking the moment.

My gaze returned to the expectant one of Tan’s.

“Give me minute?” I said, watching the light dim in his eyes.

“Sure,” he replied, stepping away. “I’ll be in the tech-room, when you’re ready.”

When you’re ready.
I watched him walk away, the Cardinal down the hall watching me.

Always watching.

I opened the door and slipped back into our apartment, and then crossed to the kitchen.

“Calvin,” I said.

“Hello, Lena,” he replied.

“Diagnostics.” The vid-screen flickered before my eyes, unhindered access to all of the Shiloh unit’s programmes.

“How is this possible?” I said, voicing the thought aloud.

“I am not Shiloh.”

“But you’re not my father either.”

“I am Calvin,” the machine replied.

I stared at it, uncomprehending. But aware the quirks of this particular unit could be the one thing that saved our lives.

“Go online,” I instructed. “Mask yourself.”

“Acquiring Net,” Calvin announced. “Sat-loc is operational. But local Net is acquired,” he confirmed.

I was concerned we couldn’t see what was happening beyond our borders, but allowing others to see inside them was more of a worry right now.

“What’s happening out there?” I asked.

“Without the street-cams,” Calvin said, “it is difficult to tell. But much can be garnered from social forums. I’m searching them now.”

I waited silently, if not patiently. Too much time had passed since Trent had disappeared. I cut off the thoughts that followed that, unable to face speculation rife with such hopeless imagery. My mind was too battered by what it had seen today to let me off that easily, though, so thoughts of Trent dead or bleeding crowded my head.

What did they want with him?

“The Masked is a current topic of interest,” Calvin advised.

“Any idea where they are?” I tried.

“‘Base’ is the phrase used with any repetition.”

“What?” I said, jerking forward. “You’ve located their communications?”

“Social media references only,” he qualified, bringing up several different websites popular for messaging and sharing daily updates of people’s vid-screen centric lives.

Sure enough, Calvin had highlighted half a dozen conversations where the term ‘base’ was used when issuing a command.

Return to base.

Rendezvous at base.

Base is clear.

Avoid base.

Message awaiting at base.

Base has gone dark.

But that was it. Nothing further to cross-reference it with. No mention of local sights or streets nearby. Nothing to narrow down a location.

“Several of the profiles mention ‘base’ more than once,” Calvin advised. “One in particular issues the command more often than any other.”

A media site profile appeared on the screen, the image one I didn’t recognise. It was undoubtedly a person, but they were covered in metal, from the pointed hood with hassled plume jutting skyward, to the mask with a grille where their eyes, mouth and nose would be. The segmented portions that covered their torso, arms and legs were also a shining silver colour. Even the boots were metal encased.

“Is that some type of drone?” I asked.

“No. It is a knight. A man who served his sovereign or lord in the middle ages as an armoured soldier.”

I glanced at the profile name.
Sir Galahad.

“Is Sir Galahad one of these knights?”

“I believe so, but without the Global Net I cannot confirm it at this time.”

“An armoured soldier,” I whispered.

“Yes,” Calvin agreed. “I read about them when sat-loc was down.” As if a computer programme had eyes to read. “Most interesting,” he added. “The phrase ‘Knight in shining armour’ was frequently used when referencing them in the past.”

“They did
good
things?” I queried, disbelieving that an armoured soldier would be anything other than like a drone.

“Many did, yes,” Calvin stated. “They were considered saviours.”

And that was it, I realised.
Saviours
. Exactly as the Masked would wish to be seen.

“Trace that profile,” I ordered abruptly.

“Tracing,” Calvin replied, unruffled by my harried tone.

I’d worn a path in the tiles by the time he spoke again.

“Located,” he advised, this time sounding smug while he did it. I blinked at the vid-screen, but wondered if I’d actually been hearing things. “You will never guess where their IP address is located,” the machine teased in a much too human fashion.

“Calvin,” I warned. The warning half-hearted. He sounded too much like my father.

“All right,” he quickly replied. “You always did dislike surprises as a child.”

I swallowed thickly, that ache that hadn’t quite subsided from the vicinity of my heart flaring back to life. There were just so many reasons to feel heartache.

“Where?” I said, my voice scratchy.

There was a pause, possibly for anticipation’s sake. Probably because the programme it was running was RAM heavy.

Then Calvin announced, “Parnell, Lena. Your old apartment block.”

Augustine, I thought. I’ve got you, my old friend.