just here to observe

“Dani.”

She turned to see the commander leaning out of his office door.

“Yes, sir?” She wondered if he was finally going to settle the long-standing debate of her going out into the field. He swiveled his head to invite her inside his office. The door had almost closed before she reached it, but he held it open with his knuckles. His face was turned away from her as she pushed the door in, careful not to smack him in the face.

There was someone sitting in one of the folding chairs in front of the commander’s desk. She didn’t get a good look at him because she turned to see the commander’s face. It was carefully blank.

“Dani I want you to meet Vincent Pereira,” he said, pulling on his coat to straighten it and nodding toward the man in the folding chair.

Vincent stood and extended his hand. His skin was soft, nails slightly longer than she expected them to be. Especially someone in their line of work. He wore a dark gray jumpsuit that was pressed and as he stared at her, waiting for her to shake his hand, there was a glimmer of something as his eyes shifted between hers.

“And what are you doing here?” She allowed her hand to be wrapped in his for the barest of seconds. She felt an unsettled tangle begin in her stomach. Maybe she was hungry.

“I’m here to observe your operations.”

“Why?” She tried to catch the glimmer in his eyes again while he figured out how to answer. What the hell was it? Something artificially installed, but he didn’t look like the type for body modification. His graying hair and tanned skin were evidence of that.

“Dani, be polite. Have a seat,” the commander ordered as he did the same.

“You of all people know how curious I am, Commander.” She threw in a smile, hoping that Vincent would take it as sarcastically as she meant it.

“I come from an outfit just like this in Sector Thirty-One. I’m here at the behest of my Commander to learn and streamline our own operations. Word travels, and we’ve heard that Sector Four has the best organization.”

Sector Thirty-One. The Wild West. There was no way that word of their operations traveled that far, even through the Railroad. Barely anyone made it out to Sector Thirty-One and if they did, communication was terminated for safety and practicality.

“You’re full of shit. Even if there was an outfit like ours in Sector Thirty-One, we can’t verify their existence any more than you can verify ours.”

“Dani-”

“No, his being here makes no sense. He’s probably a spy from the U.E.”

“Do you think someone gets placed as Commander without the common sense to think of those kinds of possibilities?”

The commander’s words thumped on the desk like a paperweight. Dani could feel the rebuke warming her cheeks. He was a fan of reminding her how much she didn’t know and couldn’t see.

“I asked you to meet Vincent because he will be closely studying your own unit. And I want you to be his liaison.”

“Seriously?”

Dani glared at Vincent who perched in his chair with a carefully blank expression. Whoever he was, he was used to being in the middle of conversations about himself. His indifference only made her angrier.

“Seriously, Dani. I won’t remind you to be civil. Vincent is to have full access to data, observations, recon missions, and the like.”

“I’m only here to observe,” Vincent chimed in. He was looking at Dani now, and the glint in his eyes was less difficult to pin down when he was facing her. Definitely a body mod.

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s an order, Officer.”

Dani bounced her leg a moment before she stood. She sized Vincent up as he stood too. He was built like an athlete, and his jumpsuit made it more evident. He must have been a field operative before - well, whatever he was now. Dani couldn’t even trust her own observations and it was unsettling. He was unsettling.

“Yes, sir.” She turned and walked toward the door, but turned back. Vincent was still standing in front of his chair, and both men were staring at her.

“You coming?”

Vincent glanced back at the Commander. He nodded.

As Vincent walked with her out of the door and down the hall, he asked, “So what’s the first order of business?”

“We have a recon mission to complete.”

She walked briskly down the hall in an effort to wind him, but he kept pace just behind her, which irritated her more.

“I’m just here to observe.”

Dani rolled her eyes.

“Just try to stay out of my way,” she turned back to her computer, “please.”

She sat back for a moment and let the computer screens sink into her eyes. They had a team of six waiting a block from the location for her signal. Their blinking green lights signaled their positions. She had three-dimensional building schematics pulled up. She had every route away from the building memorized. She had their drop-off point pinned with a red dot in the corner of her display. And she didn’t need the computer to map out the best route for the team to take.

She knew, within seconds, that they should approach from the north and enter on the ground floor. She’d cased the building the week before and remembered the ground-level window that lead to the basement. They could enter, drop, and basically stroll up to the third floor where the children were being held. Once they’d secured the children, they’d exit through the east side of the building, make the first right, continue for four blocks, then make a left. They’d be home free if no one followed them.

With a flick of her wrist, she’d pulled up the schematics for the surrounding buildings to double-check her backup plans.

“Base to Charlie One.”

“This is Charlie One. Go ahead, Base.”

Vincent watched her head flick back and forth between the monitors on the wall and relay instructions to their team. She spent a total of ten seconds looking at them before she gave instructions. He mapped out the path she gave them as she was speaking, and he had to sit back for a moment.

He’d heard of the brain chips they were beta testing on the east coast, but he didn’t realize they could be stretched to absorb this much data. Even when disconnected from the network, she could use the landlines to store and process databases worth of information to help her team navigate their expeditions. Commander Freeman was right. This girl was a golden egg.

He listened as Dani relayed the route to her team. For his own benefit, he assumed, she threw a three-dimensional display of the building onto the holocaster. He could see the green blinking lights waiting on street level, less than a block away. With another flip of her fingers, she overlayed a heat-sensitive map and zoomed out and up. In the very middle of the building was a large group of heat signatures. The children. He counted six.

Vincent watched as Dani called out directions and gave pointers, the green lights moving from their initial position to inside the building, down for a bit, and then straight up to the room where the children were. Dani switched from infrared to camera view. She must have hacked the U.E. feeds. Before she switched away, Vincent noticed lines, like tentacles, stretching from each child and down into the floor.

“What are you seeing, Charlie One?”

“The hostages are connected to cables, Base.”

“What kind of cables? Can you cut through them?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before…”

“Damnit, Charlie One, what are the cables made of?”

A pause. Vincent tracked the team’s movements through the hacked camera feed. One of the team members leaned down over a hostage. It was a little girl, lying flat on the floor, seemingly asleep. Her head was turned to the side, exposing the site of the cable connection. A silver, heart-shaped locket dangled from her neck. It was twisted with her cable.

“Base, if I had to guess, these cables are keeping the hostages alive.”

Vincent watched as Dani spun through five different camera feeds in rapid succession. She had her hand up, fingers stretched out, to command the display, but when she stopped on each view, she closed her fingers in a fist and bent her wrist down. When she opened her fingers again, the display changed to the next camera.

“Charlie One, pull out.”

The command made Vincent straighten in his chair.

“Base, come again?”

“I said pull out. Get out of there. Use the exit to the east and go down three floors.”

Vincent watched as Charlie One signaled to the rest of his team. Dani relayed directions to the team as they exited the building, and when they were in the clear, she pulled back from her display. With a swipe of her palm, the holocaster fell dark.

“Rusty, make sure they get back alright.” A young man to Dani’s left nodded and pushed up his glasses. She pivoted on her heel and pointed a finger at the door.

“You and I are going to speak to the Commander.”

Vincent watched the set of Dani’s shoulders become more rigid as they walked down the halls to Commander Freeman’s office.

They arrived at his door and she didn’t so much as pause for a knock. Vincent wondered if someone called ahead to give him a warning because the commander was poised, waiting for them to enter. His hands were folded neatly before him on the desk as he waited for them to speak.

“Sir, I need you to take a look at something.”

As she spoke, she procured a small, iridescent ball from her pocket. She set the ball onto the Commander’s holocaster, spinning it as she placed it. Instantly, images from the camera feeds populated the space between the Commander’s face and her rigid shoulders. They were stills from each camera view, each as close to the hostages as she could get. Vincent saw the gleam of the girl’s locket in one of them. He realized, belatedly, that she had used her palm to capture the images and dump them onto the holosphere.

“Are these the hostages you recovered?”

“Yes and no. I pulled the team out when I saw this.”

She zoomed in to give the Commander a better view of the cables that were connected to each of the hostages. “Each cable is connected at the base of the skull. We have no idea what it’s made of - if it’s biomaterial or simply mechanical.”

“And you didn’t want to risk cutting them free.”

“Correct, sir. I would like permission to gather a reconnaissance team to go back and perform tests on these cables.”

“To do what, Dani, unplug them?”

“If possible, yes. That’s the whole point, right? To recover the children?”

She stared at Commander Freeman as he turned it over in his head. He was eyeing Vincent as he did so. She looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Right?”

“Of course, Dani. The mission is to recover as many hostages as possible-”

“You mean children. Let’s humanize them for a moment, Commander. It’s what they deserve.”

The commander sighed, “We would like to recover as many hostages as possible, Dani. But this recon mission is risky.”

“No riskier than what we already do, sir.”

“Write me a detailed analysis of the mission by the end of the day. Then I’ll consider the possibility of recon.”

Commander Freeman was staring at Vincent the whole time he said this. Dani swiped her holosphere off the caster and didn’t say another word before leaving the office.