"Just this way Mr. Hughes" the deep and gravelly voice calls, the doughy and rotund man in an ill-fitting suit ahead of me clumsily weaving his way through the mess of cubicles. The sound of keyboards clicking under a rainstorm of typing and the occasional phone conversation fills the air, the fluorescent lights and dull gray walls leaving the office space seeming far more depressing than it likely was.
As I pass by each of the small cubicles I can't help but peer inside, finding more men and women in various states of professional business wear. From three-piece suits to simple button-up shirts and slacks in an array of colors, the workers were certainly putting more effort into their appearance rather than their work.
While some seemed deeply engrossed in their screens, leaning in to read over numerous color-coded spreadsheets and court filings, most could be found browsing the web or on their phone as they sipped at their coffees and teas.
I try to keep my head down, not wanting people to see my face. While I'm able to duck below the walls of the cubicles I can't stop the workers from turning to see me, the blubbery man in blue ahead of me greeting everyone as we pass.
"Hey Michelle" the man calls out, waving his hand and sausage-like fingers at one of his middle-aged colleagues. "Have you met Jordan yet? He's helping us with the..."
"The Douglas Case, right?" the woman calls back, spinning around in her chair as she crosses her pantyhose covered legs and adjusts her flowing wavy black hair. She's somewhere in her forties to fifties, with her older-style black blazer sporting a heavy pair of shoulder pads despite her slender frame.
"You got it" the man chuckles, his chins shaking and his walrus-like mustache quivering beneath his squashed and bulbous nose. "Saw the whole thing, can even point them out in a line up and say exactly which one's pulled the trigger."
"Uh... Agent Davies" I croak, my anxiety reaching a peak as I remember that fateful night and the days that followed. "Should we be talking about..."
"Please, call me Carl" the man chirps, flashing me a coffee-stained smile as he clamps a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry, once all is said and done it won't matter if they know now."
It had all been a blur the weeks leading up to this moment.
It started on a Friday like any other, stumbling home in the humid night air after a night out with friends. After getting turned around one to many times I had decided to take a 'short cut' home over some fences and through the small industrial district rather than navigating around it.
As I pulled myself over the second fence, dropping into a bush with a painful series of scratches, I looked up to see several figures gathered around a set of cars.
Money changed hands, sets of keys were passed along soon after. From my position low in the bush I watched as the two groups, illuminated by a series of commercial work lights, walked over to each other's car. It took a moment for me to notice just how similar the vehicles were, the non-descript black sedans appearing downright identical as the men removed the license plates.
Two of the men popped the trunk of the nearest car, a pile of plastic wrapped bricks of white powder quickly snapping into view.
I watched in fear, unable to look away as my blood ran cold and my body froze up in shock, as the men pawed through the bricks as though to check them. A chill griped the air as the two men paused, their heads tilting up to look at the other group surrounding the other car and illuminating their faces in the work light.
The second group quickly climbed into the car, eager to make a getaway with their cash in hand. However, as they tried to start the car the engine merely spluttered and stalled, the two men standing by the drug laden trunk scowling as they reached into their belts and produced their firearms.
The third of their group walked around in front of the stalling car, the group inside scrambling to try and open the doors. The lightly tan man in his early forties simply shook his head, his graying stubble catching the light, and pulled a series of spark plugs from his jacket pocket.
With a nod the two men by the trunk opened fire, a shower of sparks and blood filling the disabled vehicle as the silence is abruptly broken. The shooting didn't stop until the two men's pistols ran dry, the cacophony of metal piercing metal and the cracking from the firing chambers soon being replaced with a series of dull impotent clicks.
Making a quick getaway, the three men hurriedly jumped into the other car, not even bothering to put the plates back on before peeling out of the back lot. As they approached the gate they slow, throwing two black shapes into the overflowing dumpster that sat by the street awaiting pickup.
After waiting for several painfully silent minutes, the low rumbling growl of a garbage truck growing in the distance, I make and sloppy dismount from my bushy hiding place. My stomach quickly upturned, emptying out over the dirt beneath me as I staggered towards the scene.
Between the phone call to 911 and fishing out the firearms moments before the truck arrived, the rest of the night seemed to move in a haze. I was shuffled from police station to police station, eventually winding up in a small coffee looking over pictures of various high profile criminals.
The faces where easy to pick out, their scowling features having seared themselves into my mind. With the identification more calls were made, eventually leading to me sitting in a room with Agent Carl Davies.
Witness Protection was on the cards, or at least that's what he had told me, that and Relocation. The lighthearted man chuckled through his sugar dusted donuts, his mustache sending out plumes of powdered sugar with each belly laugh.
If it was before the trial it would just be Protection, hiding me away until I could give evidence properly. It would only be temporary, at least he hoped so, just until the case could be finalized and I could give evidence.
Of course, if there was any ongoing risk of retaliation, then I would need to be further protected and placed into their permanent Relocation program. Carl had struggled to give any details really, mostly hemming and hawing about how exactly they would make me disappear.
However, it was really the only option. The thought of what happened to those who crossed those men still sitting firmly in my mind.
As I follow Carl through the office, the wide man leading me out of the cubicles and into a series of crammed hallways, I try my best to keep calm. My mind races with thoughts of being found out, of someone letting slip who I was. It wasn't like I was that plain, my towering frame kind of making me stand out in a crowd.
As we walk slowly by a series of meeting rooms, the people inside either ignoring us or giving me a little wave or approving thumbs up, I get closer to Carl.
"Uh Agent..." I wheeze nervously, pulling the hood of my hoodie up and over my head to try and hide my face.
"Please, Carl..." the man laughs, dabbing some sweat from his receding hairline with a handkerchief. "Agent Davies was my father" he states, his laugh getting deeper as he revels in his own joke.
"C...Carl..." I whimper, hunching down to get closer to him as I whisper. "What if someone..."
"What if someone tells the Douglas's who you are?" Carl asks, his warm smile turning to a devious grin as he finishes my thought for me. "Wouldn't matter if they told them right now, this second, heck you could call them if you'd..."
"No!" I shout in shock, a cold sweat running down my back. "I mean, what are you..."
"Well you see..." Carl states, pausing beside a room labelled
'Case File Annex: 1970-1973 - Redacted Only'
For a moment I think he's simply planning on fetching something from the room, the doughy man needing to suck in his gut to get in through the slim door frame. However, as I watch him walk around the shelves I hear something whirring deeper in the room.
Following him in it simply looks, and oddly smells, like a storage closet as the musty scent of old paper fills the air. With a deep breath, laden with dust, I catch the slight smell of o-zone lingering around as well. As I approach the end of the shelves I find none deeper in the room beyond them, those I could see through the first set apparently just being pictures.
My eyes go wide as I watch Karl approach the large metallic ring at the back of the room, the device looking like some horrifically homemade MRI. Hundreds of metal cables wrap around some internal ring, a thin layer of frost forming on the outside thanks to the intense coolant pumping through the machine.
Despite the massive device a tiny little laptop sits beside it, the glowing black screen reading with dozens of small command lines. A small black box sits to the right of the device, the space fitting one or maybe two people with a tight squeeze. The cramped size is largely thanks to the thick walls, the thick plates of lead keeping the space limited.
"Here... we... are..." Carl chirps, moving to slap the side of the coils of metal before stopping himself as he feels the chill emanating from the machine.
"What... What is..." I huff, pulling back my hood as I try to understand just what the hell I am looking at. The machine is an odd mixture of haphazard home-made nonsense, with small hints of something crisp and smooth underneath.
"Witness Protection" Carl chuckles, instead choosing to lightly tap the laptop. "Advanced Witness Protection. This bad boy will keep anyone from finding you ever again if you don't want."
"H... How can it do..." I stammer, walking over to inspect the laptop. The lines of codes unfortunately mean nothing to me, the spaghetti text looking cobbled together to get to some end goal beyond my understanding. "You been saying me name..." I state, swallowing hard as I look back to the door only to find it obscured by shelves "Everyone knows..."
"Well that's simple" Carl chortles, patting the file under his arm. "We'll just make Jordan Hughes not exist."
Before I can respond I hear the door open once again, another person entering the once private space as they round the shelves. A short young woman in her mid-twenties shambles around the corner, a tuft of toxic green hair sticking out from beneath her black hoodie as her fingers clutching at a hard drive despite the overly long sleeves.
"Wendy!" Carl calls out, waving at the short girl without so much as a nod in acknowledgement from the young woman. "Can you explain how this... thing works for young Mr. Hu..."
"Classified" the rough and croaking voice huffs from beneath the hood, the short girl rapidly plugging in her hard drive into the computer before hammering away at the keyboard.
"Come on Ms..." Carl begins to muse with a grin, placing the files in his hand down in the lead booth before placing his hands on his hips.
"No 'come on' today, it's my day off and Davids out today so you're eating into my..." she snaps, the screen rapidly filling with more code as the whirring inside the device builds more and more.
The frost begins to melt from the device, the heat inside the wires rapidly building to a worrying degree. I look between the short technician and the older overweight man, trying to get some indication of what was happening.
"Okay okay, I'll try to... umm..." Carl states, stroking his mustache a little in deep thought. "We found this... thingy a few years back. It let us fiddle around with... well... a lot of things, but it stopped working after only a few test runs..."
"And now we need to keep the fucking thing pried open and cooled with more helium than it'd take to run the LHC just to get it to effect a single fucking..." the technician grumbles, smacking the keyboard a bit as she deletes a few lines of code before rewriting it. "And David keeps messing with my fucking..."
"What Ms. Hale is trying to say... I think... is that we only have very limited use of that device now" Carl explains, wincing slightly as he watches the girl pound at the keys in frustration. "Didn't even get to do anything truly world-scale with it before testing was over, but it still works great for making people... disappear and reappear."
Carl pauses for a moment, waiting for some sort of response from me, only to receive a slack-jawed stare in reply. Adjusting his tie a little, loosing it to free up his flabby neck he gestures between the device and the lead booth.
"This can rewrite reality around one specific person, creating a new life that they've lived up until this point and erasing the old one. And this can prevent the re-write from effecting certain people or documents."
"Why..." I wheeze, approaching the machine as I feel the humid air build around it. "Why don't you just... re-write all..."
"Criminals?" the technician scoffs,shaking her head. "This thing takes and insane amount of power to run, can't do it for just anyone. Besides, needs a willing target... at least it does now" she grumbles, frustrated with the limited capabilities of the defunct device encased inside.
"So..." Carl interjects, trying to get us back on track. "We can put you in, getting rid of Jordan Hughes to the world at large and giving you a new and complete identity for your own safety."
"What... What happens if no one..." I wince, looking at the cramped little lead room.
Carl, catching my glance, lets out a low rumbling belly laugh. "What if no-one waits in the other room? Well we do that for permanent Witness Relocation, once trials are over but the threat still remains for the indefinite future" Carl explains with a chirp, tapping the booth. "Don't worry, we try to make the new life as nice, albeit plain and realistic, as we can based on our talks with y..."
"No... I mean what happens if it's before a..." I try to ask again, rephrasing my question before getting cut short.
"Trial? Would never happen" Carl says, shaking his head and jostling his double chin. "The volunteer agent needs to be in the room with the file, otherwise the case would vanish in an instant."
"In other words, yeah it can happen" the technician states dryly, glaring at Carl. "And no one would know it even happened. No records, no evidence, no trial, full and irrevocable Witness Prevention and tampering in the highest..."
"But it'd never happen" Carl states in a calm and serious fashion, his jovial nature seeming to slip away as his tone shifts.
There is a pregnant pause in the room, the sudden change in tone causing us all to stand in silence while the technician works. Finally, after a few short minutes the whirring inside the device reaches a fever pitch, rattling the shelves and my fillings before suddenly dying down to a smooth and level pitch.
"Done" Wendy states, pulling the hard drive from the laptop. "I need a coffee. Once the volunteer gets here just press..."
"Enter, I can do that Ms. Hale" Carl huffs, obviously still frustrated at her previous comments. We both watch as the short technician shuffles out of the room, grumbling under her breath about this and that. "So, Mr. Hughes..." Carl chirps, his jovial nature returning in an instant "Climb on in, and do mind the edges."
Swallowing hard, I look between the device and Carl. My stomach sinks a little, the image of the three men from that fateful night flashing through my mind as I shuffle over to the device. My mind races struggling to come to terms with, or even full comprehend what was about to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment