Thursday, 7th February 2019Martin stepped back into his apartment, stepping through the secondary door into the small office space that was meant to be accessible to his team. The experience with Charlotte could scarcely have gone worse. It was clear that she was deliberately behaving erratically, and had managed to lose the small surveilnce detail that had, so far, not been reassigned. He’d thought that maybe a bit of pressure would help, but it seemed like even that was beyond him at the moment. It would be so much easier if…

  “Mister Alden?” The mixture of disdain, faint amusement and disappointment was almost startling as his superior walked through the other door. Usually Johnson would at least feign respect, but this time the disdain with which he regarded Martin was vividly apparent. He’d been waiting in what was meant to be his private space. As though such a thing ever existed in the organisation. But usually it was at least honoured in appearance.

  Martin focussed angrily on the corners of Johnson’s gsses, unable to quite look him in the eye. “That’s not my name, sir.” He had a marked ck of patience when Johnson was involved, and the honorific nded as the insult it was meant to be.

  “Would you prefer I used your real name, Martin?”

  The shock on his face was palpable. “You know full well what my service identity is. Using it would be common respect to a colleague, sir.”

  “Fine. I can call you Mark if you wish. But your field work has been cklustre of te, so I’m not sure I see the point in trying to maintain both your current cover identity and your service name since I don’t think we’ll have much use for either soon. You’ve basically revealed who you are to some random girl and after that st debacle, I have to wonder if perhaps you’re losing your touch.”

  Martin paused, thinking. Perhaps, despite his dislike for his current superior, he perhaps needed to take a less adversarial approach. Eventually he managed to summon, "What can I help you with, sir?” in a tone that at least sounded somewhat chagrined.

  “It appears that your quarry has gained rather more information on your alias than would be desirable.”

  Even despite the overblown nguage, Martin could feel the derision being dled over him. Questions of his competence had been there from the moment he’d been ‘promoted’ out of field work. While his newish team of analysts, along with the surveilnce crews he was now expected to manage, seemed to still respect him, that was unlikely to st if things didn’t improve. And here he was with some little club of hackers getting dangerously close to exposing the person he’d been tasked with protecting. Although he was pretty certain they were also ying some groundwork for that same individual’s non-voluntary exit from the company. If his suspicions were well-founded, doing the job right protected several senior people in the organisation. Killing the hackers would have been easier, he felt. It really wasn’t entirely clear why that option had been so explicitly ruled out.

  “Maybe we should just send in someone with a little more experience dealing with such matters?”

  Martin bristled slightly, but attempted to cover it, knowing that if Johnson knew he was getting to him it would lead to more and worse attacks on his competence. “No sir,” He somewhat successfully kept the insolence out of his voice. “I don’t feel that will be necessary. I’m aware that Ms. Jones has managed to obtain a rger than ideal quantity of information regarding the Christopher alias, but I feel that this may actually be desirable in this instance.”

  “Really, ‘Mark’? Would you care to enlighten me as to why?”

  “It keeps her engaged in finding me, rather than working out what Ms. Mitchell was attempting to do.”

  Johnson gazed coolly at him.

  “You think she won’t do both?” Johnson sounded sceptical.

  “Oh, I’m certain she’ll try to do both. Unsuccessfully.” His lips thinned as his mouth formed something disturbingly resembling a smile.

  “I hope, for both our sakes, that you’re right.” For a moment the authoritative nature of Johnson’s voice was gone. He paused for a second as if considering and discarding another statement entirely. “You know what will happen if you let this get out of hand.”

  Johnson turned sharply and walked from the office, the door clicking quietly shut behind him.

  Martin snorted derisively after a few seconds. Knew what would happen? Of course he knew. He’d be dead.

  He slipped into the main room and let his gaze wander. Open pn living – it wasn’t really his style, but almost all the organisation’s apartments were simirly id out. They had, by and rge, been decorated by the same uncaring corporate hand. The walls were a uniform shade of grey-white, and the dark shape of the sofa stood out starkly against it. It all barely disguised its underlying nature. The furniture simply looked like it’d been borrowed from a corporate waiting room.

  All of it was infinitely repceable, with, he knew, a warehouse filled with equally bnd items to trade in should any piece be ‘soiled’ or ‘damaged’ during an operation. For the first time since he’d started field work, Martin pondered how many of his juniors were waiting for him to be considered soiled, and step in as his repcement.

  He walked over to the sink, filled the kettle, and let his mind wander. The light outside had faded, leaving inky spshes of darkness between the pools of light across the car park. Rank amateurs, he thought, sitting outside in something so distinctive and visible. He wondered momentarily if any of the small cn of hackers was going to cause trouble during the remnants of the day. Decanting steaming water into a mug with economy of movement, he skimmed into one of the few separate spaces of the apartment.

  While he had an office closer to the heart of the building, deep in the analysis centre, the one here has a bit of a view, and he was rarely interrupted. Although he was required to prop the door to the hallway open before settling in to work. “I know you’re new to this, and so I’m giving you a little grace. But as you’re no longer an operative, and have a team, I expect you to be approachable,” Johnson had opined. The propped door was the nearest thing to a compromise he’d come up with.

  Positioning himself precisely in front of the computer, Martin waited through the procession of small start up sounds, methodically positioning the keyboard exactly in his favoured position. He sipped his water whilst the tracking application located tags. Getting most of the vehicles on the farm tagged had taken a ludicrous amount of staff time, and the map showed an array of icons for the many cars, vans, and bikes clustered under that roof. Ms Jones’ motorcycle was disconcertingly not currently being tracked, the little red excmation showing its st reported location, but he presumed the bike to still be in the courier office. He’d seen the fire evidence, and was immediately concerned that Ms Bankes, with her customary attention to detail, would likely locate the tracker whilst repairing the bike. Since Ms Jones had done so much damage to the wiring stripping it down, it seemed likely Ms Bankes might opt to repce the entire loom. He’d sent orders down to one of the operatives to temporarily remove that tracker, even if it had been burned.

  He set down the drink and tapped a short message into a mobile phone before ying it quietly to one side and switching to watching a stream of web-addresses from Ms Jones’ computer. It seemed she’d taken to reading many more general news sites, and even some disconcertingly unexpected gossip sites. The character of her web browsing habits had changed dramatically since they’d met. True, he’d not spent as much time as he should have on her early on. She’d seemed fairly much an uninterested bystander, more a security curiosity than a direct threat, but then everything had shifted so dramatically. And, when he looked at her a little more closely, he realised just how anomalous many of her early records were. Most concerningly, his team had so far failed to locate any convincing evidence she’d actually been born or existed for the first two decades of her life. The hospital she had apparently been born at had been closed a few years ter and records were frustratingly spotty. Her primary and secondary school had both closed - again leaving little information. Lack of information was the was one thing that seemed to be consistent across all of her early records.

  Still, knowing who she was wasn’t the most significant concern. Right now, where she was located was a more pressing issue. Unfortunately, at the moment it seemed that several of the objects that should be being tracked were... well, not being tracked. The phone next to his keyboard chirruped and he made no attempt to disguise his disdain. Another team member reallocated.

  Johnson was slowly removing his entire team. Martin wasn’t entirely sure whether the motive for this was to cause his failure, or to protect Johnson’s preferred team members. But it was getting increasingly difficult to keep accurate track of Jess’ friends with the limited number of operatives he had on hand.

  It looked like he’d have to make a trip to confirm Charlotte’s location. Again. He took another quiet sip of the water. It would, he thought, be easier to just kill her. He revelled in the simplicity of that resolution. Knowing it wasn’t an option at the moment didn’t completely remove the sensation of calm he felt while considering her eradication. He debated pushing Johnson for a little more information as to why he’d removed that option from the table.

  Behind him there was a quiet tap on the doorframe. He nodded without turning and the woman quietly stated, “We’ve got a hit off the CCTV.”

  Without even turning around, Martin could hear the woman’s smile.

  “There’s one camera – it’s a new one and it looks like she didn’t know it was there until after it caught her. She looks away the moment she sees it.” She sounded deeply relieved. “She got on a train to Gsgow. But we tracked her back to the ticket machine and the only ticket that was sold in the right period was to Corrour. No CCTV on the Gsgow train though.”

  His smile evaporated more quickly than it’d appeared. “No CCTV on the train? Why not?”

  “Oh, apparently the normal one had been vandalised and they put some old carriages back in service to run all that day. All a bit unfortunate, really. But I’m checking the CCTV up at Gsgow – see if I can catch her changing trains.”

  “And the team’s also checking the CCTV at the intervening stops, yes? Checking if she hopped off and met anyone?”

  The young woman’s face fell as she contempted all of the stops. “Are you sure that’s necessary sir? Given the staff avaible, I was concentrating on locating her at Gsgow and checking she got on the Corrour train.”

  Martin sat silently for a moment considering his now markedly reduced resources.“Given our resources – yes, concentrate on Gsgow initially. When you’ve completed a preliminary scan of the CCTV from Gsgow and, ideally located her, then one of you continue following her, but get at least one team member to start scanning through all the stops from the Intercity and confirm she didn’t disembark at any point.”

  “Sir?” The analyst hesitated before continuing. “The other team members? Johnson reassigned all the other analysts this afternoon? The team...”

  Martin interjected, “Johnson’s reassigned team members without informing me?” He took a slow breath. “So the team is?”

  She looked steadily at him. “It’s me sir. Just me. There are no other analysts. I believe there’s still a small surveilnce crew. But I’m not in that loop, I’m afraid. I’ve got the computer scanning the video from Gsgow already, but if it doesn’t catch her then I’ll do it by hand. I’ll also start the computer scanning the video from those stations, but Ms Mitchell’s very good. I think it was just her misfortune that we caught her the first time.”

  Martin sighed deeply before finally muttering, “So why are you stuck here?”

  “Oh, I upset Johnson st year. I disagreed with the way he was running the Lilly project, and, apparently unwisely, I said so. I’ve been screwed with my assignments ever since.” She paused and then, rather betedly, added, “Uhm. With respect, err, sir.”

  He picked up his gsses and fiddled with them absentmindedly before replying. “We better make sure this assignment doesn’t screw up your career any further then. Given the paucity of our team I think it might be advisable for me to assist with examining all that footage, then.”

  He stood and started to walk towards the door before abruptly turning. “Has he revoked our access to the centre?”

  “Not yet, sir. Although I imagine he will.” She paused and took a deep breath, steeling herself for her next admission. “I think he’s trying to cut us… well, you, loose, sir. Distance you from the organisation.”

  “You’re disconcertingly frank, Ms Fisher.” He smiled. “I find that quite refreshing, and I imagine Johnson hates it beyond words. We best prepare, then, for our upcoming expulsion, and make good use of the resources we have while we have them.”

  Martin had never been terribly fond of the analysis offices. Hidden in the core of the building, they were mundane, corporate in an incredibly bnd way, and filled with people who expected him to be someone he most definitely wasn’t. And, anyway, they signified his separation from the joy of individual combat and the delight of terminating those person to person experiences with finality. After walking down through the block of private apartments, they wandered through the leased out public offices. A series of holding companies obfuscated ownership of the building and many of the companies renting space had nothing to do with Liberty. They just liked the highly discounted pricing of the workpces. Finally, he tapped his passcard, letting them both into one of the much less externally apparent offices, and was reminded why he’d been assigned this building to use.

  The dingy analysis office they’d been left with seemed more dispiriting even than he’d remembered. Chipped paint, worn carpet tiles, and the damp-stained ceiling revealed the building’s decline. The group had let maintenance slip with the building being pnned for demolition - its value had been deemed extracted and its position was too easily identified, as Ms Jones had so aptly demonstrated. Martin let out a brief mirthless ugh – the building reflected his own trajectory. A few rows of desks y before them, the bck dust-free squares on the desks and the rubbed bare patches of carpet clearly demonstrating where computers and, at one point, analysts had been.

  He pulled a ptop from his bag and pced it neatly on one of the recently vacated desks. Thankfully they’d only got as far as the computers, he thought, as he clicked the network cable home.

  He turned to face the analyst. “Cass, isn’t it? How far did you get?”

  She logged back into her workstation, which provided her with a rge number of possible hits. After some time and a lot of staring at grainy video, she admitted that none were Jess. Cass muttered under her breath, before tweaking some settings and running the scan again.

  “Sorry sir. It’s not found anything useful. It’ll take a while to run through again. Then I’ll have to do it by hand if it still doesn’t work. You could start on the stations the train stopped at? If you work from Gsgow backwards, and I start at the other end?”

  Martin flipped the screen up on his ptop, logged in, and started to stare at the dismal-quality footage.