The Significant (74 page)

      
“What, exactly, are you after?” Isa
asked, ignoring the question. “You said you wanted to tear down the Alliance
and shut down Venus, but that would do no good for anyone in the system.”

      
“Did you ever learn what happened to
Earth?” Colonel Amori asked, turning back to his dinner.

      
“Yes.”

      
“The
truth
of what happened to Earth?”

      
“Yes.”

      
Colonel Amori took another bite of his
food.

      
“So why would humans allow themselves to
be governed by the same technology that almost killed them?”

      
“Venus is not built on the technology of
those weapons,” Isa disagreed. “She has access to some of the genetic
information, but the data was mostly destroyed when humans evacuated Earth.”

      
“I was talking about Elites.”

      
Isa sighed heavily.

      
“We are not weapons,” she said. “We are
just altered humans meant to obey Venus’ command.”

      
“Then Venus has become the weapon and is
hiding behind the Elites.”

      
“She’s not a weaponized system. She can
alert about disasters, but she cannot take action on her own. She is not
programmed that way,” Isa disagreed. “She is, however, a very powerful
monitoring system. She creates a network for all Altereye planets to use and be
monitored on.”

      
“And you think that is acceptable?” Isa
went silent, staring at Colonel Amori as he looked up from his plate, chewing
his food slowly. “No?”

      
“Everyone can agree that humans are
dangerous,” Isa said carefully. “Humans need guidance and supervision.”

      
“And you believe that your guidance is
better than, say, mine?”

      
“As I’ve stated before, Colonel Amori,”
Isa said, her voice cold, “I believe that humans have the basic right to food
and shelter, not forced to slave away until they are near death just to try and
ease the pain in their bellies.”

      
“And as
I
have stated before, the grunts are no different on Gihron than
the Trids are on Tiao,” Colonel Amori reiterated. He leaned back with a heavy
sigh, smiling. “You surprise me, Elite Isa.” He chuckled, tossing the fork onto
the half-eaten plate of food. “You had the opportunity to make good on your
promise tonight.”

      
“What promise was that?”

      
“That you would kill me,” Colonel Amori
chuckled, picking some food out of his teeth. “You didn’t poison the food.”

      
“I may have promised that I would kill
you, but I’m not stupid,” Isa growled. “A diplomat in my home, alone, and he’s
poisoned? Autopsy would show that you ate food that I did not and were
poisoned. Then, your brother would have a blood-grudge.”

      
“Seems you do know a little bit about
us.”

      
“You seem eager to die, Colonel,” Isa
noted. “I might have poisoned the food, and you dove right in.”

      
Colonel Amori chuckled.

      
“Either way, I would have you cornered,”
he said. “To think, in just one short month, I have brought the greatest Golden
Elite in history to heel.”

      
“No, you have not,” Isa said strongly.

      
“We’ll see about that,” he said. He
leaned forward. “And I want to thank you for inviting me to stay in your home
while I’m here.”

      
“I’ve done no such thing,” Isa growled.
“You are not welcome to stay here.”

      
“I need to keep an eye on you,” Colonel
Amori said. “I’ve invested a lot of time, money, and technology into this so
far, and I will not have some altruistic Elite fuck it up.”

      
“You’ve already signed your death
sentence,” Isa said simply. “
You
were
the one who fucked it up.”

      
“Fine,” Colonel Amori said, shrugging. “I
have camera feeds everywhere in the house, and in the Syndicate Building.
Honestly, you should consider increasing your security. It’s amazing that no
one has done this already. You left yourself open. You can only blame
yourself.”

      
Another sleepless night left Isa was with
a splitting headache. She went to the Syndicate Building and passed everyone
without greeting them, her head down and her eyes dark with exhaustion. The
other Elites figured that she was merely tired from having to handle the
stubborn Colonel Amori so soon after the Kreon incident. They let her go to her
office without pestering her.

      
Isa walked to her NCB chair as it greeted
her entrance, turning to her. She stopped next to it, putting her hand on the
cold metal and staring distantly into the machine.

      
When her legs began to tire from standing
still for so long, she walked to her desk and sat at it, staring at the stacks
of files and drives on the surface.

      
She had spent the entire night and
morning thinking about the security in the Syndicate Building and in Anon
Tower. While she had not programmed it—the coding had been in place for
generations—she knew that it had been updated as necessary by various Elite
programmers and engineers. She tried to think of ways that Colonel Amori could
get into the building to plant his cameras, or how he could rewire the existing
cameras. She was sure he could not access the codes to get into Venus’
mainframe and access her cameras.

      
However, there was a sick feeling in her
stomach.

      
The bruised area where the node had
entered her body was evidence that he could have access to Venus’ mainframe.

      
She glanced around the hidden cameras in
her office, her body on high alert.

      
When the soft chime in her ear alerted
her to a phone call, she jumped, startled, and then groaned, cradling her head
in one hand as she gently tapped the area just in front of her ear.

      
“Elite Isa.”

      
“Yes, I can see you.”

      
Isa’s eyes went wide and she
straightened.

      
“You stood completely still for nearly
three hours,” Colonel Amori chuckled. “I was beginning to think you had looped
the security feed.”

      
“How do I know that you’re not just
tracking me?” Isa challenged.

      
“Fine, I’m watching. Do something.”

      
Isa turned to one of the cameras and
flipped it off, glaring.

      
Colonel Amori chuckled. “Excellent. Good
to see the lack of sleep has not dulled your edge.” Isa felt dirty just
listening to the way his voice oozed with supremacy, even as she tried to
ignore the way he told her he had been watching her sleep—or not sleep—at
night. “You flipped me off. To be specific, you flipped off the south-west
camera in your office.”

      
Isa lowered her hand.

      
“What do you want? I need to
concentrate.”

      
“I have a task for you,” he said. “There
is something I’m very interested in. You’ve managed to terraform part of this
planet to grow crops from Earth.”

      
“It’s a protected site,” Isa said darkly.
“If you attack there, you will wage war on every planet in the Altereye
System.”

      
“I am merely interested in how it works,”
Colonel Amori said with a cold laugh. “You’re quick to assume that I want to destroy
everything.”

      
“I thought you
did
.”

      
“I just want to know how your terraform
greenhouses function. Perhaps I can bring the idea back to Gihron and we can
produce more food for our people,” Colonel Amori said. “I will meet you for
dinner and I expect the information by then.”

      
Isa was about to protest when Colonel
Amori disconnected the call.

      
She groaned and cradled her head in both
hands once more.

      
The door opening caused her to jump,
standing up quickly, worried. Remus stopped in the doorway, surprised by her
startle.

      
“Are you alright?” he asked, walking in
as Isa let out a shaky breath and sat at her desk again.

      
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she said.
“Hard for my brain to settle.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I had
a question for you. What is the status on, uh, what’s that one city called with
the spire monument to the Alliance?” she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion
as she tried to think of the name of the city.

      
“Dyran?” Remus asked slowly, surprised
she did not remember.

      
“Yes, the name was escaping me,” Isa
said, forcing a smile.

      
“You must really be exhausted,” Remus
noted. “Why don’t you go home? Or just sleep for a bit in here?”

      
“No, I have too much to do,” Isa
protested. She took a deep breath, rubbing her temples.

      
“Well, if you want, I can come over later
and we can work on getting you to sleep,” Remus said with a smile.

      
Isa smiled as well and shook her head.
“As tempting as that is, I must refuse. It’s alright. Dr. Busen gave me
something to try tonight, so hopefully I’ll get some rest.”

      
“You’ve already spoken to him?” Remus
asked. When she nodded, he blinked at her, surprised. “That’s not like you,” he
said teasingly. “You’re actually being proactive about your health?”

      
“Be quiet,” Isa said with a strained laugh.
“What is the status on the greenhouse project in Dyran?”

      
“The plans were approved a week ago. Maki
is working on coordination and preparation.”

      
“I would like to see those files before
he gets too far.”

      
“…alright,” Remus said, wondering why she
would want to look over the files she had pushed to have approved and acted on
as soon as possible. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

      
“Yes, I’m fine.”

      
Remus discussed a few other work-related
things with her before leaving her office once more. She leaned back in her
chair and took several deep breaths. Dyran was a new terraform development. She
did not want to give Colonel Amori information on Saera, the city of engineers,
agricultural specialists, and workers that ran the enormous facilities that
produced crops from Earth. Most of Tiao’s food was grown and distributed from
Saera, and because food-related sites were heavily protected, she had never had
fear that it would be under attack. However, she still wanted to keep the city
as safe as possible from the dangers of Colonel Amori.

      
Isa glanced around the office once more,
wondering if his eyes were on her in that moment.

      
She stood and walked to her NCB chair,
climbing in and signing into the mainframe. She spent hours going around the
mainframe, trying to find weaknesses and trails that would tell her how the
Colonel was able to watch her at home and at work. However, even after
searching, she could not find anything suggesting Venus’ mainframe had been
hacked.

      
Isa was beginning to fear that Colonel
Amori was doing his work under her name, using her codes from her internal
processor as Golden Elite to grant him access to everything in Venus’ mainframe
and leave no trace.

      
The Golden Elite decided to send a very
short, simple message into Venus’ encrypted archives, hoping that Colonel Amori
could not access the area, let alone understand and read the message in Venus’
coded language.

      
Possible
breach of security. No information is safe.

      
Isa met with the Colonel that night for
dinner and gave him the information on Dyran. He took it quietly and then ate
the simple dinner that Rayal had cooked before asking to be excused for the
night. Isa told herself that she would call a physician for her caretaker the
next morning, worried about his declining health.

      
Colonel Amori did not speak to her over
dinner, and when he finished eating—Isa had not touched her food—he took the
drive with the information on Dyran and left without a word.