Authors: Riley Barton
“Ah, Miss McKelly! You made it.”
She turned and saw Mr. Edgard pushing his way through the crowd toward her.
“Just barely,” Luna replied with a lopsided smile, extending her hand to her boss.
“And not a moment too soon. If these people had to wait another minute to get a shot of your beautiful smile, we’d probably have a riot on our hands.”
To her horror she found herself blushing at his indirect compliment. He was nearly forty years her senior—and her boss. She definitely did
not
have any feelings for him—but his words still struck a cord in her heart that wasn’t easily ignored. She had actually lost track of how long it had been since anyone besides Alex had told her she was pretty, much less beautiful.
She found herself standing in front of everyone, blushing and grinning foolishly before she finally cleared her throat and spoke again.
“Um … thanks. Well … since I’m finally here shouldn’t we get on with the press conference?” she said, pointing at the podium in a desperate attempt to change the subject.
“Of course. Come with me. We’d better not keep the public waiting any longer.”
She followed Edgard through the sea of people and up a short set of steps to the podium.
“Attention please,” Mr. Edgard’s voice called out over the throng, “this press conference will begin in exactly thirty seconds and will continue for thirty minutes and thirty minutes only. Once that time limit has been reached, we will not be taking any more questions.” He gestured to Luna and motioned for her to stand beside him. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the head researcher on the Blister Wart project here at Unitech: Miss Luna Jane McKelly. Thank you.”
Luna
Jane
? Wow. I haven’t been called
that
for a while.
The room echoed with the sound of applause as Luna bit her lip and took a cautious step toward the mic.
She smoothed the wrinkles out of her suit, set her purse down behind the podium, and gave the reporters the most charming smile she could muster.
“Thank you for the introduction, Mr. Edgard.” She said, glancing at him for a fraction of a second before returning her attention to the sea of reporters. “If someone would like to start, I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than the room erupted with the loudly voiced questions of hundreds of reporters.
Luna leaned forward and strained to make out the questions being shouted at her. Finally she raised her hand and pointed to one reporter near the front of the pack—someone she recognized from the evening news.
“George O’Farrell, channel twenty news.” The thirty-year-old reporter said, flashing her his trademark grin. “How long have you been part of the research team working on the Blister Wart cure?”
“I’ve been working on this project for the past two years,” Luna replied.
“And how long do you think it will be before your labs have produced a viable human cure?”
“I can’t say anything for certain as of yet,” Luna said, “but in light of recent breakthroughs, I think it is safe to predict that a cure compatible with the human genome will be available to the public well within the next two years, if not sooner.”
“So I take it you’ve begun animal testing then?” Another reporter—this one a young woman from the New Denver Post—asked.
Luna nodded. “That is correct. Though we’re still in the early stages of testing, everything looks to be going smoothly. But once again, it’s too early to say for sure whether or not this first group of tests will be successful.”
She looked up from the newspaper reporter and glanced around the room before settling on a young man near the edge of the crowd.
“You. Yes, you way in the back,” Luna said, pointing.
The man cleared his throat and took a step closer so he could be heard over the crowd, “Max Harvey from the Tribune. Is it true you were injured during the recent Swamper incident?”
“Yes, that’s true,” Luna replied.
“Would you care to explain what you—a civilian—were doing in the swamp to begin with?”
“I was gathering important samples for use in my research.”
“So it was your fault that you and the agents assigned to protect you were attacked?”
“I had nothing to do with the attack,” Luna replied hotly, deciding right then and there that she didn’t much care for Mr. Max Harvey. “What happened in the swamp was unfortunate for everyone—including myself— and I wish it could have been avoided. However, it
was
necessary
for us to collect those samples. Without them, there would be no cure and you—my friend—would have no story. Next question please.”
“How are you and the agents recovering from your injuries?” Someone in the middle of the throng shouted.
“I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you anything about the other men who were injured,” Luna said, addressing the portly man who’d spoken. “However, I
can
tell you that I am doing just fine and should make a full recovery soon.”
Her statement was met by a flurry of questions, and she hurriedly looked around the room before pointing to another reporter.
“If your injuries were as severe as the official report indicates, then how is it you were able to survive for so long without Unitech aid? Did someone help you?”
Luna froze. Even though she’d already given her statement to Landers several times over, she still felt uncomfortable every time she was forced to repeat the hedged cover story Mark had given her.
She worked her small jaw for a moment then replied, hoping she sounded convincing, “Yes … I was helped by an inter-colonial merchant who was on his way between settlements. Luckily he came by when he did, or I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
“That sounds like your classic “Good Samaritan’ story.” A man in the front row replied, sounding less than convinced.
Luna nodded, and smiled, “Yeah … that’s exactly what it was. I don’t know about you, but I find it reassuring to know that there are still some people in this world—even Swampers—who are willing to go out of their way to help people in need. You can quote me on that if you want to.”
For the next fifteen minutes Luna did her best to answer questions the reporters threw at her. Though as time passed, she found herself thinking more and more about the time she’d spent in the swamp.
Ever since she’d come back to New Denver, a tiny kernel of curiosity had lodged in her mind. Now that the reporters had inadvertently brought up the subject, she found it hard to stay focused on the stream of questions.
Finally Mr. Edgard stepped forward and called an end to the press conference—much to her relief. Although she’d been looking forward to the event for the past twenty-four hours, she was more than ready for the nerve-fraying queries to be over.
“Miss McKelly? Is everything all right?” Mr. Edgard asked, drawing Luna’s attention back from her straying thoughts.
“What? Yes. I’m fine.”
Edgard smiled. “Good, you had me worried there—you were just staring off into space.”
Luna laughed. “No. I was just thinking about some stuff.”
She absently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked around at the quickly emptying room. “Um … how long was I just standing here?”
“About five minutes.” Edgard replied carefully.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Luna berated herself and bent down to retrieve her handbag, hoping that she didn’t wake up the next morning to find her spaced-out expression plastered all over the newspapers.
“Will you be going back to the lab today?” Edgard asked, clasping his hands behind his back.
Luna stood and slung the purse over her shoulder. “No, actually I was going to go to my light-therapy appointment.”
“Light-therapy? Now?”
She nodded. “I’m a few days overdue. Plus I’ve already had Alex lock down the lab for the day, so I don’t think it would be fair to him if I went back and had him open everything up again. He might short circuit.”
“I suppose that makes some sense,” Mr. Edgard said with a smile. “Just be sure to keep your phone with you. You never know when someone may need to contact you.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” She said, starting to make her way back to the elevators.
“That’s what you said about this press conference, remember?” Edgard called after her, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, I know. But seriously, don’t worry. I’ll have my phone on.”
Luna waved goodbye and climbed into the nearest elevator.
Forty minutes later she was sitting in the waiting room at the light-therapy ward, flipping absently through the crumpled pages of a four-month-old magazine while Mark’s warning repeated itself over and over in her mind.
“ … Bad things have a habit of happening to people who stick their noses into things they shouldn’t. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times to hundreds of people, and I would hate to see something happen to you. It’s for your own good that you forget everything that’s happened to you out here. And I mean everything!”
Those were his exact words. And even though their meaning was undisputedly clear, Luna found herself doing the exact opposite. Though she tried, she couldn’t forget.
Finally Alex called her name.
“I’m here, Alex.” She replied, waiting for Alex to confirm her identity from her voiceprint.
“Ah, excellent. Your treatments will be in the same room as always, Doctor.”
Luna nodded and walked through the sliding door separating the hallway and treatment rooms from the waiting area. She made her way down the hall to what had become her designated treatment room.
“You’re early today, Doctor,” Alex commented as she undressed and placed her folded clothes on the bench beside the treatment bed.
“I decided I didn’t want to go home and then have to come back in,” she replied, reaching into her handbag for her all-purpose device.
She switched the device on, then plugged it into a tiny port on the side of the treatment bed.
“What are you doing, Doctor McKelly?”
“Oh … nothing. Just a little research. You know, fun stuff.” She said, lowering herself into the glowing therapy bed.
“Ah, of course. I understand,” Alex replied, even though she knew that he didn’t even understand the
concept
of “fun stuff”.
The bed’s lid slowly eased shut, and she covered her eyes with a pair of tinted goggles.
“Do you remember what I said last week?” She asked Alex once the treatment had begun.
“Yes. If memory serves me correctly, I believe you said, ‘reduce temperature by about eleven degrees’.”
“And have you done that?”
“Yes,” he replied. If she hadn’t know better, she would have thought he sounded
smug. “Will there be anything else, Doctor?”
“Actually, yes, there is one thing. Could you polarize the bed’s internal holo-screen and allow a system link to my all-purpose device?”
“Of course. Polarizing screen.”
Luna watched a translucent square materialize above her head, and then she heard Ada’s familiar voice echoing inside the cramped treatment bed.
“Hello, Miss Luna. How can I be of service?”
“Ada, I want you to do an Internet search for key words: Jack Anderson, Mark Anderson, Unitech, and the Anderson family.”
“Of course, Miss McKelly. Might I ask why you are doing this particular search?”
“Oh, just curious.”
“I see. Please wait a moment while I access requested information.”
A few seconds later the holographic screen began to shimmer and dance with hundreds of pictures, videos, and articles—all pertaining to Jack Anderson; his wife, Elaine; and the Unitech corporation.
Luna shifted her weight off of her healing shoulder into a more comfortable position where she had a better view of the images playing across the holo-screen. It would take her
days
to sift through everything that had come up with this first search.
“Ada, copy all this information to your main database. There’s too much here for me to go through in just one day,” she said with a giddy smile. Having this much information to sift through was exhilarating.
“Of course, Miss Luna. Copying to main database.”
Luna raised a finger to the holographic display, opened the first article that came up in her search and began to read.
Chapter 18
Keith walked stiffly through the security office’s doors and sighed.
Debriefings had to be the most dreaded part of being an agent. Bullets and alligators he could handle. Seven hours of one of Chief Landers’ legendary debriefing sessions? Not so much.
First, he had been confined to a chair for three hours while the Chief asked him question after question. Then he’d been ordered to compile a written report—a report that had to be submitted to Alex before Keith was allowed to leave for the evening.
Finally, after four hours of working and reworking his in-depth, no-detail-spared summary of the mission, the grueling process was over, and he was free to leave.
He sighed again and moved through the parking lot toward his black Mercedes.
He respected and looked up to his boss, but he silently hoped that his meticulously detailed report would be enough to keep the chief occupied for a day or two—giving him a chance to catch his breath.
He tossed his briefcase in the passenger seat of his car, and inserted the key into the ignition. The dashboard flickered to life, and he instinctively glanced down at the car’s holographic clock—a habit he’d picked up as a student driver.
“10:30,” he muttered to himself. He had known it was late, but he’d never thought it was
that
late. No wonder he felt so tired.
He put the car in gear and pressed his foot down on the gas pedal, urging the Mercedes out onto the street. Keith switched on the car radio and lost himself in classical jazz until he arrived at his high-rise apartment building nearly a half hour later.
He groaned and stretched, trying to work some of the stiffness out of his healing muscles. Despite the accelerated recovery made possible by advancements in medicine, he knew he still had to take it easy for a few weeks and let his body recover naturally: something he wasn’t too keen on doing. In the world of agents, recovery time equaled desk time, and desk time equaled long, uneventful days stuck in the office when his skills could—and should—be put to better use elsewhere.