Brain Storm (US Edition) (10 page)

Unbelieving Sara called up the related files. The woman, identified as Carla Swift, had been searched soon after escaping the situation with the mech and they had found a pistol on her. Forensics had identified that weapon as being the same one as that had been used to kill the hostage Sara hadn't been fast enough to save. Gunshot residue on Carla's hand confirmed that she had fired the gun within the last twenty-four hours.

But there was no way she could be the killer.

Sara read on. The victim was identified as a Doctor Karl Grosset, an expert in the field of bioengineering and genetics. Apparently the CDM had been trying to get
at him through this Carla  to build them some biological viral weapons. The suspected motive for the killing was that he could identify Carla as a member of the CDM.

Sara thought back trying to see if it was her memory that was at fault. Had she overlooked something that would indicate that this report was actually telling the truth. She hadn't actually seen Grosset getting shot and so it was theoretically possible that the terrorist she had killed hadn't actually been the one who executed the doctor.

But there's no way anyone else was in there to do it. That wound was fresh, the doctor had only just died and there's no way anyone got past me.

It wasn't just her own pride that made her sure no-one had slipped out of the statue it just wasn't possible. Other teams had been watching the exits out of the statue and to get into that crowd Carla would have had to cross a lot of wide open space filled with advancing security teams not to mention the multitude of journalists and news teams gathered like a flock of carrion birds.

But why would Ash put false details into his report?

What the hell is going on?

Chapter
Eight

What the hell is going on?

They had fed her. They had let her get clean, albeit letting the guards get a certain amount of perverted pleasure into the bargain. And they had given her clean clothes. But then she had been dumped back into this cell that was still stinking with vomit. She had taken those moments of contact, loathsome as they had been, as good indications. They meant that she hadn't just been locked away and put out of sight and out of mind. Whoever it was that had imprisoned her had taken care to provide her with food and to let her be clean. But now she was back to feeling abandoned. They had locked her up again and didn't appear about to provide her with any answers.

Carla had nothing else to occupy her anymore, she had tried to fill her time with other activities to keep her from thinking over why she was here but it just wasn't working any more. In the end she decided that if she was going to be preoccupied with it so much she really should try and see if she could come up with any answers for herself. She had to attack it logically. Start at the beginning. Well that would have to be when the security mech informed her that she was under arrest and decided to summarily execute her.

Or was that the beginning?

Carla had been told before then that she was in danger. Karl had been in the area around the statue just before Carla had been there, he could even have been one of those held hostage inside. Was it a coincidence that the man who had warned her that her life was under threat was in the area close by where she had almost been killed.

At first Carla had taken Karl Grosset for a crackpot. Here was this middle-aged man who suddenly turned up out of no-where at her apartment and scared her with insane stories about her being hunted down by a shadowy
organization. For the longest time she hadn't believed a word of it. She had even called the police on Karl for harassment.

Poor Karl. She still didn't know what had happened to him. She hoped he was all right. She
realized that however compelling the information he had given her had been she still had never really believed that the threat towards her was real. She had believed him enough that something strange was going on that she would move out of her apartment, leave her old life and disappear into the poor sector while he helped her to understand.

Would she ever find out all that Karl had wanted her to know now. Would the people who had her reveal that information or would they simply kill her. She held on to the thin thread of hope that if they wanted her dead they would have killed her already. But that thread was stretching thinner as time went by and she came up with more and more scenarios that would end with her dead. There was no way she was being held by any official
organization, they all had strict rules on how prisoners were supposed to be dealt with.

The fact that she had seemingly been rescued from death at the guns of the security mech didn't mean she was safe now, it could be that they just didn't want her body to be found. The
time they were taking now could just be so that the preparations for disposing of her could be finalized.

Carla tried to shore up her hopes by remembering that they weren't just keeping her alive. They had kept her fed and clean. That had to mean that they
wanted her for something. Carla's hope was lessened somewhat as thoughts of all manner of nasty uses for her flitted through her mind.

Stop!

She shouted the word out inside her mind. She couldn't go on like this. This was how she had started and she was just going round and round in circles. She had asked herself all the same questions before and come up without any answers. If she kept retreading this same path over and over again she would go insane.

She dredged up the memories of her conversations with Karl to see if she could come up with anything to let her guess at why she was wanted. Karl had always been very circumspect with her giving away only a small amount of information. He had told her that she was special but hadn't elaborated on how. He had told her that she wasn't who she thought she was.

She had conducted an investigation of her own and had found that her parents, who she thought had died when she was very young, had never existed. There were records of their births, of their marriage to each other and their deaths in a car crash. But other than that there were no records of either of them working, neither of them had had any brothers or sisters and Carla had found it impossible to search back farther to trace their parents her grandparents. It was like her mother and father had only been created in a hurry so that she would have some parents.

Karl had never told her who her real parents were or why she had been put into foster care. Nor had he told her why she was in danger or who was after her. In fact now that she thought about it he hadn't told her much and she wondered why she had ever gone along with him and left her good life behind in the first place. There was just something about him that made her want to trust him. But what did she really know about him? He had told her that he was a doctor but she had never checked up on that. Was it a coincidence that Karl had been in the vicinity of the statue when she had been taken? Or was he behind all of this.

Carla didn't want to believe that it could be Karl who was doing this to her but he was the only concrete suspect she could think of.

***************

She was dumped back inside the cell. She curled up on the cold hard floor and cried. She always cried. She cried when they came for her. She cried when they started doing those terrible things to her. She cried when she woke up and they were still torturing her. She cried when they dumped her back into this room because she knew that it was only a matter of time until they came for her again.

              Her body ached all over and she was in constant pain. Whatever it was that they did to her in that room it was excruciating and hurt for hours afterwards. Sometimes the agony had only just started to fade when they came for her and subjected her to it all over again. Sometimes she would  go for days on end with the pain never ceasing. She looked forwards to those mornings when she could wake  up and the pain would only be a dull throb in the background.

Was this all that life was? She had an idea that there was something more than this. Stories of places where pain wasn't a constant companion. Where children mixed together and had fun. But those things seemed so alien to the little girl who was trapped in hellish world of pain and hurt.

Had she been a bad person? Surely however bad she had been she didn't deserve this.

Her body was covered in scars where they cut into her when she was asleep. Recently they had shaved her head and she could feel scars on her bare scalp where they had started cutting into her skull. She reached up and felt the sharp stubble where her hair had just started coming back. She had had gloriously long red hair until they hacked it off. The only reason she had known that it was red was because it was so long she could easily see it, they never provided her with access to a mirror. She had no idea what she looked like. Her hair had always been knotted but she had enjoyed trying to comb it out with her fingers. Now they had stolen even that small pleasure from her.

She rocked herself to sleep curled up in the corner of the room, tears continuing to fall.

***************

Sara barged into the outer chamber of Marc Ash's office causing his assistant to flinch and look up from the computer screen. Her fingers stopped tapping their rhythmic beat on the keyboard and a hand dropped below the level of the desk ready to hit the button concealed there.  If she hit that button it would call security to this office and cause reinforced barriers to surround Ash's inner office.

The assistant
recognized Sara, who was a frequent visitor to the office either for a commendation or a condemnation, and visibly relaxed although she kept that hand under the desk her finger no doubt poised over the button, it was part of her job to be cautious.

"Agent Fox," the assistant said in a cool voice. "Supervisor Ash is rather busy at the present time. I am sure you can understand that the events of last night require his immediate attention. If you would like to make an appointment I can schedule you in for-"

Sara held up her hand to indicate for the assistant to stop speaking. The other woman went quiet and looked at Sara waiting for her to speak. Her face maintained a neutral, professional expression even though Sara's rudeness must have annoyed her.

"I want to see him right now," Sara said, she kept her hand raised with her palm towards the assistant to keep her from interrupting. "What I have to say is related to the events of last night and he needs to hear me out." Sara lowered her arm and looked at Ash's assistant expectantly.

"Supervisor Ash asked for there to be no interruptions while he compiled his final report. Whatever you have to say can be reported to him later. If you think it is too important for that," The assistant's professional mask slipped for one brief instant letting Sara see that she didn't think that anything Sara could ever have to say would be all that important. "I am sure one of the supervisors conducting the debriefs for last night’s operation would be happy to see you. I can look  through the system and find out who is free for you."

Sara placed her hands on either side of the assistant's desk and leaned forwards over the top of the computer screen so that their faces were only
centimeters apart. "I suggest you inform him that I want to see him right now before he is through compiling that report. If you fail to do so I can assure you that when he does get to hear what I have to say he will
not
thank you for standing in my way."

Sara brought to bear all the weight of her voice on the poor assistant. Sara had used that voice to back men who were physically much larger than herself into a corner. She had used it when she was unable to get to her weapon to cause cold blooded killers to throw down their own. This woman displayed more mettle than some of those had, she covered any fear with a glare of annoyance, but she couldn't prevent the
color from draining out of her head.

The assistant got on the internal line and explained to Ash that Sara insisted on seeing him. Ash must have asked her to put Sara off but the assistant told him that Sara had said it was urgent and was being very insistent. In the end Ash relented and the assistant glanced up at Sara but avoided eye contact.

"The supervisor will see you now."

Sara stood back upright and smoothed down her clothes. "Thank you
so much
for your help."

Marc Ash was already stood when Sara went through the doorway into his office proper. He was just coming around from behind his desk to meet her. Unlike Sara's small and spartan office the supervisors was of a fair size.
Like her office his contained cleaning facilities in the back although his were part of a full bathroom. As well as the desk and seating in front of and behind that he had a group of comfortable chairs arranged around a low table. On the walls either side of the simply functional communications and data analysis screens were display screens that showed images of the ECSIS logo, the European Confederation's flag and the Confederation's Chamber of Governance.

Ash dispensed with full formality by addressing her by her first name. "Sara, I hope this is important, I'm very busy right at the moment."

"It is sir," Just because he had started informally it didn't extend to allowing Sara to be too familiar, she still had to address him as befitted his superiority.