Crow - The Awakening (38 page)

But, as with all things, his little reverie had to come to an end. It was getting late and he didn't want to miss the last bus. He got up and started trotting again and the puma followed behind him, trying to swat his feet until she got bored and ran off into the forest to hunt. Steven stopped several times to pick mushrooms that he had been deprived of by city living until his bag bulged and then continued the trot until the forest thinned.

Feeling very refreshed, Steven emerged from the forest and walked the few blocks to the bus stop. Even refreshed, he still had the creepy feeling that he was being shadowed. He looked around, but felt silly. There was no one around. He wondered if his imagination was starting to act up again, especially since he was seeing those plants again, and decided to prioritize the hunt for a source of ingredients for the medicinal tea that had helped him.

Glen spilled his coffee in his lap for the second time that morning. Grumbling, he found some wadded up napkins to wipe it up. He couldn't figure out how the other surveillance agents managed to not spill. Looking up, he took note of another customer walking into the mailbox rental place, and through the window noted which box that person went to. No, it wasn't Steven's. He took another peek through the dash mounted camera to make sure it was still recording. Someone back in analysis was going to be as bored as he was watching the hours and hours of video, but it was critical to not miss anything.

Normally their surveillance involved hidden cameras and them being completely out of sight, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. But since the brass really wanted to acquire this target, it called for an over-the-top physical presence. On detection, the target was to be acquired no matter what the circumstances or collateral damage. But there were few things Glen disliked more than stakeouts. Still, it was a mission he had no problem volunteering for, given the hopeful product of that stakeout. Their target has had direct contact with aliens after all, and the one who apprehends him would definitely be noticed by the elders of the organization they belonged to.

A phone call interrupted his thoughts. He looked at the caller ID and didn't answer. It was a simple recall code and required no response. Someone else must be relieving him early. Sighing, Glen put his coffee in the holder. He thankfully stretched his legs then started the vehicle, eager for a very welcome break. Looking in the rear view mirror, Glen noticed a similar vehicle pulling up behind him and he nodded at the driver.

The sniper looked down out of the window of the apartment, noting that the suburban was leaving. He was about to call him to find out where he was going since that was his ride. But a knock at the door of the apartment he was using interrupted him. It was a vacant apartment so who ever was knocking was suspect. He pulled his pistol, twisting on the silencer, and stood to the side of the entry way. Ready to respond, the sniper opened the door a crack. He saw a young teenager bopping to something he was listening to on his earplug headphones while he waited for the door to be answered. In his hands was a large insulated pizza box. He looked past the kid down the hall but didn't see anything suspicious.

"I didn't order pizza," the sniper said through the crack in the door. The boy still didn't notice that the door had opened a little so he opened the door more, getting the teenager's attention as he kept his pistol hidden from view. The delivery boy pulled the earplugs from his ears and smiled widely.

"Hi! Thirty minutes or less, guaranteed. I have two large pizzas for you, one with pineapple and Canadian bacon and the other with sausage, pepperoni and..." he looked at the ticket, "...extra cheese." He said before the sniper could say anything.

"I didn't order those."

The delivery boy looked at the number on the door and showed him an addressed ticket. "Is this you?"

The ticket actually had his name on it. The only person who knew he was here was his boss. He was about to tell the boy to leave when it occurred to him that the suburban may be bringing in other agents for a lunch meeting. "Yes, I guess it is." He surreptitiously put his pistol in its back holster and dug for his wallet as he opened the door a little more, still scanning the hallway behind the boy. The kid grinned, holding out his hand.

"Ooh, I can't break that. Do you have anything smaller?" he said as he saw the large bill the sniper had pulled out of his wallet.

"Sure, let me see here," the sniper pulled out a few more bills and gave them to the kid, and stuffed the larger bill back in the wallet. "Keep the change."

"Excellent! If you need more pizza, you know who to call!" The kid ran down the hall and hit the down button on the elevator, waving back at the sniper who poked his head out the door to watch him go while he put his earplugs back in his ears and started bopping again.

Back in the apartment he opened the pizza and smelled it. He was a bit hungry. He thought to wait for the others, but decided to go ahead and grab a slice. He walked back to the window and looked down at the mailbox rental. Nothing different there. Another black suburban had pulled in below so it looked like all was normal. He waited for the others to come up for lunch and resisted the urge to take another slice.

Steven got off the bus in front of the mailbox store and walked in, completely oblivious that anyone would have been watching it. The attendant looked up from his fishing magazine as Steven walked in. "Hi!" Steven said as he pulled out his key and looked for his box.

"Up one and over to the right," the attendant said.

"Oh yeah." Steven said, finding the attendant's memory remarkable. But then, he did spend all day here every day after all.

Steven checked his mail and grabbed a box containing a new smart phone and an envelope with his permanent drivers license in it. "Sweet! It finally came in!" Tickled, Steven pulled out his drivers license. He raised an eyebrow at the picture. "Well, it could be worse, I guess." He looked at the attendant. "My last one was taken right after I sneezed."

The attendant grinned and shook his head. "Bet the girls loved that picture."

Steven smiled. Well, no girls, but it was an odd looking picture. Nonetheless, he decided not to go into that with a stranger. Happy that things were starting to work out for him, Steven walked out of the store and down to the intersection in order to cross the street and wait for the bus at the bus stop on the other side. He was eager to dig out his smart phone but thought it might be prudent to do that in the security of his greenhouse rather than out there in the hustle and bustle. Besides, he still had to program it and it probably didn't have much of a charge, if any.

A moped was parked on the sidewalk chained to the bus stop. Steven looked at it, wondering if maybe he should get one with his next paycheck. But the buses were doing just fine at the moment and he was reluctant to spend that much money on something that may not have much benefit for his search. Still, he would like a little more freedom to go where he wanted to at any time rather than waiting on the bus. The decisions that cropped up on him when he got a little money, Steven thought wryly. Money can be a real hassle sometimes. He pulled out his box and inspected it, casually reading the text on the box as he passed the time waiting for the bus.

A kid in a pizza delivery uniform walked up to the moped. He smiled at Steven as he unchained it. "Hey there. How's it going?"

"Great! How're you?" Steven asked him, looking up, surprised.

"Never better." He took the uniform jacket off and tossed it in the trash can along with the pizza insulator. "Well, have a nice day, Steven," he said, grinning at him as he sped off on the moped.

Steven looked as he weaved through pedestrians on the sidewalk and finally jumped the curb off onto the street then he glanced back at the trash can. Did he just call him by name? Shaking his head, he wondered about all the strange things he'd seen in the city and missed the normal life of the forest. He looked at the drivers license again in the sunlight and grimaced. The picture was taken in a half blink that made him look like he was stoned. Shaking his head, he put it in his wallet and threw the envelope in the trash, and got up as the bus pulled up.

Laurence fumed at the team members who stood at attention, fidgeting nervously. He had a crumpled up envelope that was addressed to Steven's mailbox. "I give you a simple task. Watch a store and intercept a kid." He looked at the both of them. "You've had to crawl through sewers," he said to the sniper. "You had to break into a DARPA research facility," he said to Glen. "Here, all you had to do was grab a little boy. No firefight, no chases, no threat."

"We got played, sir. Someone knew we were surveilling that business," Glen insisted, handing Laurence his cell phone. Laurence went through the history and noted the number and time. It was posted just a few minutes before the relief was supposed to arrive. "I saw the relief pull up behind me. He had the tag and everything."

Laurence scowled at him, wagging the phone, and walked around the two of them, looking at the sniper.

"And you?" Laurence said to the sniper.

"Distracted by a pizza delivery. They had my name on the ticket. I thought it was for a meeting, sir." He looked decidedly embarrassed. He held out the ticket and Laurence snatched it from him angrily.

Laurence looked at it then rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing. "We've been compromised. Pack up and return to base immediately." He looked out the window of the apartment, wondering who could have orchestrated this. Laurence gave the phone back to Glen. "Give your phones to the lab when you get to base," Laurence said as they were quickly leaving the apartment, relieved to not be in more serious trouble.

Laurence sat on the chair the sniper had used and looked out the window down at the mailbox outlet. Who would have known about their presence here, even to the name of one of the agents? Who would have known Glen's number and the recall code? Laurence felt violated, wondering if it was even possible someone on the inside was betraying them. Their organization wasn't something you worked at as a job, but was a lifelong commitment that all of them were born into. To betray that would be serious indeed. He got up and straightened his shirt. He decided he would have to to pay the pizza place a visit later, just on the remote chance he could get something useful from them.

Steven reclined in the greenhouse watching his computer grind away. He had several windows up, each displaying the results of work of the many databases and files he was hacking into. For some, he was using the brute force of a vast distributed network to crack their password hash. For others, he was just scanning through massive databases using a number of search algorithms he had assembled to hopefully dig up something useful about his parents. He had scanned many of the files multiple times using different search parameters, and he was running out of ideas.

The particular databases he was working on had gaps in their files that pointed to media that wasn't connected to the servers and he couldn't access. Steven guessed they were physical tapes that had been archived. Some places had automatic retrieval systems for tapes like that but he wasn't having any luck accessing these. He wondered how hard it would be to access them physically. They were located at the company his parents used to work for with Sally and Jonah, which was just across town. He had hoped to get on as an intern there which would give him access, using Bret's summer internship as a stepping stone to get there, but sadly that ship crashed and burned. Steven frowned as he thought about it.

He pulled up architectural schematics for the building where the archives were stored and started giving thought about accessing that building surreptitiously. It was well secured. When he tried to get a job there, he was all but laughed out of the building because of his age and lack of experience. Breaking in would give him a measure of satisfaction for their rudeness. He was sure there was more on those tapes. The packet information on the files he had already retrieved hinted that they were stored on those tapes at one time or another, so there must be more. He needed to see exactly who else was involved in the research his parents were conducting and anyone who may have been directly or indirectly responsible for his parent's abduction.

He ran another search trying to recover the stream of his parents in the room sitting by the table. But with no frame of reference, he was finding that to be an extremely challenging job.

Sighing, he fingered the box that came in the mail absentmindedly and decided to set up his smart phone. After he unpacked it, he plugged it into his laptop and ran a jailbreak program on it to eliminate any limitations put on it by the manufacturer. Then he wiped the memory card in the phone and installed his own software and networking tools. He had already cracked into the phone system's networks and given himself a number, so he programmed that in and sat back and grinned. His laptop now fit in his pocket, for all intents and purposes. He left it to charge as he sat back, basking in his ingenuity.

The evening breeze wafted through the vents of the greenhouse and a palm branch tickled his cheek, waking him from his thoughts. Steven batted it away and sat up, stretching. It was late and he had worked hard that day helping Richard replace some plumbing. He looked around the greenhouse that was, by now, getting rather overgrown. Which was perfect for him. It was rather steamy in there, but the life was rich and palpable. It wasn't the deep forest, but it was a pleasant break from the sterile lifelessness of the big city. He thought he saw someone moving in the fig trees but on closer look he saw a dwarf banana waving in the slight breeze behind them. He wondered if he was starting to get paranoid now that he's been off his medicinal tea.

As he walked to the door he noticed the tropical dandelion still growing in the pile of dirt by the door. He stood there for a moment, looking at it. It actually looked really sad. The leaves were stunted and yellowing and the flowers drooped a little. He started to walk by and pretend he never saw it when he stopped looked at it again. He felt sorry for the pathetic little thing, and remembered all the sorry looking plants this greenhouse originally had when he first moved in. Unable to resist, Steven sighed, looked around to find an empty pot and then filled it with fresh soil. He knelt down by the plant and carefully dug it up. Its long taproot was well entrenched in the bricks that made up the flooring of the greenhouse but he was able to get most of it out and return loosened bricks back down onto the tarred surface of the roof. For an imaginary plant it sure seemed real enough. Perhaps this was the plant that inspired that imagination. He stuffed it into the pot with some extra soil and watered it well, then took it over to the potting bench by his computer. "Okay, then. We'll see if you're still there in the morning."