Imprint (Pt. IV)

The alarm started going off at 5:30am, but Sophie managed to hit snooze twice before the profanity-laced arguing started. It got louder and louder as more people started showing up outside the unemployment office, and by 6:00am, we had no choice but to get up.

"Told ya," I gloated, walking towards the bathroom, " best alarm clock in the city."

Sophie let out a large yawn, rolled off the sunken couch, and shuffled to the kitchen to start making coffee. Within 20 minutes, I had an omelet with bacon, sausage and toast laid out for the both of us, and we talked through the plan one more time.

"So, you're going to make a call to the newspaper and ask to speak with Chelsea Parks. If she isn't there or refuses your call, don't leave a message, just head there and wait it out. Once you corner her, sell her on the exclusive then tell her we'll meet at Empire at 7pm."

"What if I can't do it?"

"You can do it, Sophie. God knows, you've been through tougher things than briefly lying to a reporter. You have the upper hand. Remember that."

With my seeds of encouragement firmly planted, Sophie threw on her t-shirt and jeans, a pair of casual sneakers and left the apartment. Once she was gone, I took a shower, made myself look the part, and waited.

____________________________________________________

"Um, yes, hello," Sophie chimed in her sweetest voice, "I need to speak with Ms. Chelsea Parks. She's a reporter on Alien Affairs.

"Who may I say is calling?"

" My name's Leia Vader," she said softly, pulling from her Star Wars trivia.

"One moment, Ms. Vader," the receptionist replied, clearly completely unaware of any reference.

Twenty seconds passed before she returned to the line, " Ms. Vader? Ms. Parks is in her morning briefing with her editor. May I leave a message or number?"

"No, that's alright, I'll try again."

"Very good. Have a nice day."

Sophie began walking down the street looking for the closest printed stand. It was still hard to believe that newspapers survived in printed format these days, but she was grateful for it, as were all the newsstand vendors in the city. She found one, picked up a copy of The Post, and flipped to the Alien Affairs section.

"Hey, you buyin' or you readin'," the vendor asked gruffly, clearly feeling he had enough difficulty selling papers these days.

"I just need to look at one thing."

Glancing at page 7A, Sophie took a good look at the small black and white photo of Chelsea Parks to make sure she knew who she was looking for.

"Hey, lady, I'm talkin' to you."

Sophie quickly folded the paper back up and set it on top of the pile. "All done. Thanks."

Before he could respond she went around the corner and started walking towards the Post building. It was 10:30am, by the time she reached it. Despite the casual sneakers, her feet ached. She laid on the edge of the cold, stone fountain at the bottom of the steps that lead into the building.

"Now we wait," she reassured herself trying to remember every detail of the image she had studied. It wasn't a great picture, pretty grainy, but it would have to do.

Exhausted from her brisk seven block jaunt she nearly fell asleep before Chelsea Parks sauntered down the stairs around 12:45pm. Sophie jumped up, took a deep breath and began following her.

"Ms Parks! Ms. Parks!", she cried trying not to sound desperate. After a few steps Chelsea stopped and began looking around to see where the voice was coming from.

Once her eyes landed squarely on Sophie, she repeated, "Ms. Parks!" and shuffled up to meet her.

"Do I know you," Chelsea asked directly.

"No miss, I mean no ma'am."

"Ma'am is for my grandma sweetheart, Chelsea is fine."

" Ok, Chelsea. I tried to reach you a little earlier today, but they said you were in a meeting with your editor."

"Meeting, huh? That's a nice way of puttin' it. I prefer to call it a fight to the death, but I guess you could call it that if you want."

" Um, you see, I had a story, an alien affairs story, and I...."

" Listen, if this is about seeing a grey walking around your backyard or lights flickering in the sky, I've got a hundred of those tips. I do stories that are more engaging than that: detailed alien abduction, direct alien contact, covert government ops, that sort of thing. I gotta run to lunch hun." She patted Sophie on the arm, brushing her aside, and turned to walk away.

Frantically, Sophie shouted, " What about Breaker stories?"

Chelsea stopped, turned and calmly asked, " I don't know hun, what about Breaker stories? Tell me something I don't know."

Chelsea's direct demeanor intimidated Sophie, but she tried to put her sentences together coherently. "Well, um, I read your article about the Breakers who cracked the alien code, and how they all supposedly went into hiding."

"Yea, that's what I wrote."

"Well, wouldn't you like to know how they did it? To talk to one, or get the inside scoop, as an exclusive, I mean."

Despite Sophie's disjointed presentation, Chelsea's ears perked up when she heard the word "exclusive". Nevertheless Sophie's jumbled word salad continued,

"They broke the link from our portals, you know? My cousin was one of them. He helped crack it, and knows all about how it was done."

"If that's true, he'd be in a safehouse somewhere." she replied suspiciously, "No one has talked with any of those Breakers since they figured it out on Wednesday night."

"That's not true, Ms. Parks, I mean, Chelsea. I have."

"What's your name," she asked, squinting her eyes as if she were trying to see something that wasn't there.

"Leia Vader. My cousin, he was a part of the group that did it."

Chelsea slowed her speech down to be more deliberate, "So how would you have talked to someone from that group, even if he was your cousin? They're supposed to be at an isolated and secure location."

" I can't say Chelsea, but if you'd like to talk with him, come to the Empire Diner at 7pm tonight. Don't let anyone know about it. It's too risky."

"Why would he want to talk to me at all? He should be protecting himself. How could he possibly get out of wherever they had him?"

"Empire at 7pm," Sophie repeated, then turned and sprinted the other way.

Running all the way back to the apartment Sophie slammed the door excitedly as she came in. She was so proud of herself. She spun around, and was immediately startled by a frail boy staring at her from the empty living area of the apartment.

"Gees, is that you?!" she exclaimed, taking a step forward from the door.

"Yes it's me," I replied calmly, "who else do you think it would be?"

Before I was recruited as a Breaker, I had dabbled part-time with a local theater group. Just a few productions, but enough to learn some make-up tricks and basic acting skills. Hopefully they'd prove useful.

"So, did you find her?"

"I sure did, and I think I sprinkled just enough pixie dust to peak her curiosity," she gloated.

We had about three hours before the meeting. Just enough time to grab a bite, review our strategy and get ourselves into position.

___________________________________________

At 6:45pm we wandered into the Empire diner to claim the corner booth. I glanced at the counter, hoping "Old Slurpy" wasn't there to distract me today. The coast seemed clear for now.

I pulled the gray hood of my sweatshirt up over the spiky blond wig, made sure my hair was tucked securely under its edges, and kept my head down.

"How do I look," I asked, peering up at Sophie without moving my head as she was flipping through a desert menu she pulled from behind a ketchup bottle.

"Pretty scrawny actually, but at least the facial hair makes it a little more convincing, and your voice is generally on the low side. I guess you could pass. You'll pass as a Breaker nerd. Here, put my glasses on."

She handed me a pair of black plastic glasses with square frames from her coat pocket. I put them on thinking I wouldn't be able to see much, but nothing changed.

"Are these reading glasses or what," I asked, confused as to why the lenses had no effect on my vision.

"No, I just thought they would be cool to wear at Breaker meetings. I stole them from a drug store. You know those glasses for old people, but they just have plastic lenses. I wanted to blend in with the crowd."

"Ok," I said slowly, shaking my head.

The waitress walked up. "What would you folks like?"

"I'll have a glass of water," I said in a low voice, hoping she wouldn't recognize me.

"Ok, sir, and you miss?"

"I'll have one of those brownies with the ice cream," Sophie declared.

I peered over the glasses as the waitress went to retrieve the order.

"Are you kidding me," I whispered.

"What? Nerds don't eat dessert," she asked innocently.

Shortly after Sophie had finished her final bite, Chelsea entered the diner and Sophie waved to get her attention. Chelsea walked briskly towards the table and sat.

"Sorry, had a deadline to meet. Chelsea Parks," she said in my direction while extending her hand across the table.

I nodded but didn't offer my hand fearing she'd find them too feminine.

"Syd," I said without giving a last name.

"That isn't your real name is it?" she asked without waiting for an answer. "That's fine, you'll just be an anonymous source anyway. So Syd, your "cousin" here claims you were at the Breaker lab where they figured out how to unlink the alien Imprint program, is that true?"

"Yeah," I replied quietly.

"I thought all those Breakers were in hiding, how is it that you're here talking with me, and why would you want to? Something you want to share?"

"We figured out how to break the link. The Breaker leader called their contact at NSA who said they were gonna coordinate it, but that's not what happened. That story you're spinning, isn't what's really going on."

Skeptical, yet interested, Chelsea continued prodding, "How do I know you're not spinning a story?"

"Because I watched every one of those Breakers get blown away by an onslaught of government agents. None of them are actually in hiding at all, including me."

"If that's true, why are you still sittin' here," she inquired with the required amount of journalistic skepticism.

"After we found a way in, the leader of the group called his government contact to report what we had found. They fed him some line about sending people to coordinate our technical response with their physical one to get these supposed aliens off our systems and out of our airspace as soon as possible."

"Yea, that makes sense to me. God knows I've run into enough walking zenbots to last a lifetime. The sooner the better."

"Well, that's what we all thought too - they had a plan and we'd be part of executing it."

"So what happened," she prodded, impatiently tapping her fingers on the table in front of her.

"What happened is, I went to the bathroom."

Taken aback, an unexpected glint of annoyance came over Chelsea's face, "That's hardly newsworthy," she replied glibly.

"Do you want to hear this story or not? I wasn't finished."

"I went to the bathroom while we were waiting for the agents to show up, but as I was wandering back, I heard muted pings and metallic clinks from inside the room I had come from. I peered through a side door, and saw them mow down everyone inside. It was a bloodbath. Instead of executing a coordinated effort, they were executing the Breakers. I shuttered and ran out a side door into the alley, went home and called Leia to let her know I was alright."

"What, wait, who is them? The aliens?"

By this point, the rapture of having an exclusive interview was starting to get the better of her journalistic integrity, but she had a million more questions to ask.

"They weren't aliens, they were government. Long, black coats, and guns with fancy silencers."

"Uh-huh," she said, typing notes into her phone. "So if I believed you, what makes you think I can do anything with any of this information?"

"You seem to be the only person in the media lately with inside knowledge on Alien Affairs, so it seemed like you were the right person to tell. If not, we can always..."

"Wait, wait, wait, I got ya. Let me do a little digging and see if I can get any feathers ruffled on this. How do I reach you again once I've got more info?

"Let's just plan to meet back here on Monday at the same time. That should give you several days to dig, " I offered.

"Alright, I got it." she said, getting up to leave.

"And Chelsea," I said sternly, " be very careful what you say and to whom you say it."

"Yup, got it," she said, brushing me off, and scurrying out the door of the diner.

"Well, that went well," Sophie declared.

Personally, I wasn't feeling so comfortable with the whole thing. "I don't know, I'm worried we may have sent her off in a dangerous direction. Frankly, I didn't anticipate she'd be so eager to help us."

"She's smart, she'll find a way to get whatever info we need."

Restlessly tapping my feet, I replied, "Maybe, but I certainly hope she doesn't get herself killed doing it."

Wondering what happens next? Once each short chapter has at least 10 views, I'll write and publish the next so if you enjoyed this story, please keep on reading or check out some of my other stories . Thank you for your support.

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