Chapter 117

 

 

ISTF Headquarters, London

 

Thirty-six hours Later

 

“He was my best friend too. You’ve got to break out of this, C,” Jack said.

Calla glared out at the London sky along the glass wall that faced the street in the corridor leading to her office. The fog rolled in and settled at only a few meters’ visibility. The Mall was quiet with few cars moving as London showed its true face. Calla fought to make her heavy limbs move.

She took deep breaths until she was strong enough to lift her head. “I—”

“Miss Calla Cress?”

Her response was silence as an official from the office administration department approached. The man had wide eyes the color of coffee. Short and with a plump build he carried a tablet like most women carry an evening purse. “What time would you like to begin the briefing for Mr. Nash Shields’ memorial program?”

Calla failed to answer, flinched and went completely rigid.

Jack held out a hand in front of the man. “Not now, Clive.”

Summoning every shed of dignity, and a lock of ebony hair hiding her reddened eyes, she moved purposefully toward the office. Once inside she sank into her chair and swiveled the seat to face the window. Jack hadn’t left her side much since they left Utah when Reiner had sent a vehicle for them.

“You gonna be okay?” he said.

She nodded and straightened to relieve the ache in her shoulders.

Jack moved closer and she tried to distract herself by switching on her computer. “I’ve informed the museum that you won’t be in for a month. To be honest they should be used to this now that you’re an agent for the government.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

He dropped a flash drive on her desk. “Hey, boot this up.”

“What is it?”

“Just boot it up.”

She did as told and slotted the drive in the laptop. Jack entered some credentials into a program app that booted and decrypted the file. “This is a program I’ve written and have been working on for a while. I wanted to show it to Nash before… He asked me for a favor and I told him I would get to the bottom of this.”

“To the bottom of what?”

“Nash asked me to find out exactly why the genes of your child were on the NSA list? Because it wasn’t him. Even though he masterminded the list, it was stolen from the NSA. Nash hadn’t touched the list in six months.”

Calla leaned forward with a sudden shiver of apprehension as Jack drew himself upward and set a hand over her trembling fingers.

“I’ve found out exactly why someone wanted those genes. The world is curious about genetic engineering. So far, much has been happening in labs with experimenting and usually with unpredictable effects. Think of it. We want to look for possible abilities and enhancements of humanity. Scientists have been looking at how the natural world has given our animal companions on Earth physical abilities we may emulate with well-researched genetic engineering capacity,” Jack said.

“Like what?”

“Things that come naturally to you, Calla, the world has been trying to engineer for years, like a more resilient body. Slower aging and bodies mimicking, say, a shark’s regenerative processes. Next, think of the strength of a gorilla, something you have naturally, yet science is trying to create by changing muscle tissues. Look here,” he said, pointing to a paragraph and some calculations. “We’ve also tried to absorb energy from the sun and recreate a means of processing solar energy like plants do. We want to generate electrical charges much like an electric eel and see in the dark. Think of a cat and enhancing the sensitivity of our eyes’ rods and cones. You see, Calla, you can achieve all this and all you had to do was be born. You carry those genes from your ancestors and with every new generation they get better.”

“But that would not explain why our child would be a threat.”

“Actually, it does and it is quite simple. What’s kept humanity going? Love between two people has been the building block of populating the Earth. When two people are in love and, inseparable as you and Nash, something special happens.”

Calla tried to hide a blush.

Jack managed a supportive smile. “We turn to the natural process love plays in populating the Earth. Researchers have found that part of the subcortical system, the region below the cortex in a person’s brain, lights up when in love. When this area and other areas of the brain start working, they release chemicals and hormones including dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, and vasopressin. Oxytocin is key here. Researchers claim oxytocin indeed serves the continued propagation of a species, adding that, through evolution, it has maintained a central role in more complicated aspects of reproductive behavior. Some now call oxytocin the great designer of life.”

“Wow, Jack, you’ve been busy.”

It was the first smile she’d managed since they’d left the U.S.

Jack continued. “Matching your abilities and genes with a love so strong produces in you the ability to enhance your genetic reproduction. So together with Nash, you were producing some super genes and, yes, that’s exactly what the auction master wants to sell to the Blackhorse Group. The super gene—and a way to reproduce it.”

“Jack, that’s awful.”

“Even I am envious of what you have with Nash. It makes sense now why everyone tried to keep you apart. You see, without that bond, the gene lies dormant. I’m guessing that’s also why you were a threat when you were born. I’m beginning to see that Cresses in love and their passion are indeed a superior power,” Jack said.

 

 

 

 

“Do you really think so?” Calla said.

“You and Nash generated the enhancement of the ultimate human being. Nash gave me the name of your doctor and I must admit he also played a part in this discovery. He alone knows.”

Calla recalled Bertrand’s interest in Gibraltar.

“Dr. Bertrand, your French doctor, and I have been busy. Think of it, combining the best of humanity and science in a cell from which life emerges, sprinkled with an overdose of oxytocin. So, not only are genes produced with the ability to self-heal and defy gravity but also the most important thing we found is that you alone carry the gene that can help humanity tap into one of our greatest quests, the use of one hundred percent of our brains and possibly create genes that conquer life and its vulnerabilities.”

“Humanity has always been afraid of anyone that is different. I’ve lived it.” Calla said.

“Now imagine these genes are cloned and can be reproduced scientifically? You end up with one unstoppable program. Then imagine a government programmer gets a hold of this and then creates an army—”

“I get the picture.” She let out a deep sigh. “We just wanted a baby. We just wanted to have what everyone else gets to have.”

“I know.”

Her heart was breaking for Nash and now she had an even bigger problem. “Who else knows this, or got to this before us?”

“My guess is whoever commanded the twins, or even Lascar, to go get the sample. They created the tranquilizer serum and gun that extracted the it from you. My personal theory is that it’s someone who’s been watching you a long time. If these three knew about your pregnancy, then they would have behaved differently in Utah. They wouldn’t have tried to kill you. You’re too valuable to anyone who knows this.”

“Like Laskfell—”

“He’s dead.”

“Unfortunately, I believe he was the smartest of the bunch and he designed this plan years ago. But with him gone, the question is who did he pass this information on to?”

“The seller. And only the twins or Lascar can lead us to the seller.”

“What about the person you keep calling Taiven? Allegra?”

“Taiven, Merovec and Allegra would never harm me. Vortigern, on the other hand, I’m not so sure,” Calla added.

“So back to Laskfell—”

“Mason may be dead, but his legacy is not … The man took an overdose of an anti-aging pill created by the operatives.”

“But who else?”

“I don’t know, Mason had many collaborators. We’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“We apprehended all the men and women who conspired with him and none of them are active—”

“Did we?”

Jack pinched his lips. They heard a knock at the door and Allegra poked her head through. “Calla. I just heard and had to get here as soon as I could.”

Allegra took a seat next to Jack. “I know you’re thinking of how you can process this, but maybe I can help.”

“I don’t think anyone can help,” Calla said.

“Calla, I know Nash was your life. I get it. I lost someone once too. The mistake I made was thinking about it too long and not doing something. I ended up living someone else’s life and not mine. Don’t do that.”

Calla rose. She ran her hands through her hair. We have nothing.”

“That isn’t entirely true. You have Nash’s distress card. I looked at it and Nash made allowances should this moment come. You see, Nash put the list together and identified the technologies and what they could do. But looking closer at his compilation of the list, he also identified their weaknesses. Haven and Alex may have the list, but I doubt they know the value or danger of what they have.”

“What do you mean?” Calla said turning.

“Alex and Haven were twin operatives orphaned at age two by an operative mother. She ran away with a lover. When she discovered she was pregnant she knew she couldn’t live in a world were operatives were hunted like lab rats. The world couldn’t understand her children. She hid them when they were two and was killed by a rescue operation led by Vortigern that went bad. I didn’t hear of the case until I got into ISTF and worked with your father on it at MI6. We learned that they searched for those twins for six years after they disappeared at the age of two.”

“Where did they go?” Jack asked.

“Not sure, but the NSA’s special division on the paranormal found them seven years later when a building exploded at MIT in Boston. They found that the girls could do mathematics and physics way beyond their scientists at NASA or the like. They took them in and God knows what experiments they did on them: no parenting, no nurturing and so on, that’s when the girls escaped the government system three years later. They blended into society. They must’ve lost contact with one another from the moment they were found at age fifteen. But each had a desire to pay back the NSA for what they had done, so they ended up back blending in the NSA with new identities and that’s how Alex and Haven were reborn.”

“That’s why Nash left the secret ops of the NSA and created the list,” Calla said. “If he could defend all the dangers the NSA feared, then maybe he could isolate them and destroy them if need be.”

Jack sank into a seat.

“Both Haven and Alex were operatives commissioned by an overly ambitious project by this arm of the NSA called Horizon. Nash was put in charge of it to defend the deadliest and most threatening operative technologies they discovered. It turns out that the biggest threats are you and your legacy. Let’s hope that knowledge hasn’t left their circles.”

Calla glared at Allegra, her heart in her throat. “I think I understand my parents a little better.”

“Nash believed in letting the world run its course without intervention and he’s given his life for it but not without passing on the baton to you,” Allegra said.

“We still have nothing to go on,” Calla said.

Jack intervened. “The real value of the list was the technologies and what they could do. Nash put all that information in a quantum computer as part of Project Horizon, which our very own prime minister knew about. That quantum computer houses the world’s knowledge and future innovation. Think of it. Nash would have made allowances. What we need to do now is think like Nash; and Calla, you can do that.”

Calla thought for several moments. “If Nash created that list, then he would have created a way to destroy it.”

“Exactly,” Jack said.

“The computer is gone, but the memory pod is in the hands of those three morons. Morons that need a visit. One more thing,” Jack said and dropped a small case on the table. “Just for you and tagged to your fingerprints and DNA. Only you can use it. This is an electrically charged projectile launcher.”

He drew out a weapon from the case that he’d been working on from.

Calla hated guns. Nash had always wanted her to have a weapon of some sort. He’d probably spent weeks assimilating something Calla could use instead. He glared at it and was satisfied. She felt Jack’s concern. He had to make it up to Nash by giving Calla her own unique weapon.

Small as an access card, it fit perfectly in her palm when she held it.

“I call it the launcher. It fires non-explosive projectiles at extremely high speed, faster than the speed of sound. It’s my debt to Nash and to you and will keep you safe if you don’t want to carry a gun.”

 

 

 

 

Two Hours Later

 

Allegra’s eyes hooded with sympathy. “Come, we need to go.”

“Where?” Jack said.

“And you, young man, your knowledge could be of great help to us.”

Allegra would do whatever was in her power to help Calla. Most importantly she had the right connections between the government and the operatives that would make locating any further auctions that much easier. Her eyes said it all.

Calla tried to divert the gaze of her older most dear friend.

Allegra defied everything, authority, age and logic. That’s what made her so brilliant. If Calla was to come out of the hole she was slowly slipping into, Allegra could help.

“Calla, you’ve got to get out of this dark pit and face them. That’s what Nash would’ve wanted. I need to show you something deep in the Cove. You need to know that what Nash has sacrificed his life for isn’t worth losing,” Allegra said.

 

 

Twenty minutes later they strode into the London Operative Cove. The forty-one floors of the arch, shaped skyscraper with its alternating pattern of dark and light-colored glass was the location of the operatives’ London headquarters. Disguised under a corporate banking environment it was anything but.

It housed offices and research centers the operatives had developed for centuries. The Cove was a place Calla had been once when Vortigern had run it, and stepping into the venue under her new circumstances wasn’t exactly a treat.

They took the elevator to the seventh floor. She’d only been to two coves and knew that at least a dozen were scattered in several locations around the globe. This venue resembled the one she’d seen in Africa with its whiteness and bright lights. Rooms of technological research lined the entire floor they were on.

“Coves are off any radars. You know that Vortigern’s position is vacant,” Allegra said.

“How many positions must I fill, Allegra? I’m a museum curator who only wanted to find my parents and live a normal life,” Calla said.

“Your life is anything but,” Allegra added.

“You can say that again.”

Allegra took her into the last corridor on the floor. The lights above hurt Calla’s eyes and distracted her for a moment when an operative clad in white joined them.

“Miss Driscoll, we have everything ready for Miss Cress.”

The man who spoke was an operative she’d one seen in charge of many research projects and worked created her operative combat suit.

Allegra nodded thanks and turned to Calla. “This is Grant and he runs the file room. The British government would love to know what we know. But for years we’ve kept it from them. Calla, all this is at your disposal. I’m about to share what we know about the twins that can help us find them. Vortigern kept a file on them for years.”

They entered a windowless room bathed in white light. Steel cabinets lined the far wall. Several terminals lined one work desk and stood suspended in the air above the desk stations. One wall displayed a screen. Grant pushed down a button on the desk and a stainless-steel box slid out of the wall. He placed his hand in the cabinet, found a thin slate and raised it.

“This is it,” he said.

Calla glanced round. Being an operative wasn’t a bad thing. Nash had never thought so. It suddenly dawned on her that she was the only one who’d ever thought being an operative was a problem. Being different was her greatest strength not her weakness. Nash saw that all along.

She straightened her shoulders and took control of her emotions. They accessed the contents they searched for by slotting the file in a holder on the closest terminal.

Calla observed as information surfaced about the twins. “Allegra, I should’ve believed you. You of all people have known that being an operative was a good thing.” She suddenly stopped. “Grant, can you please scroll back a page?” she said her attention drawn to a name.

“I have seen or heard that name before, Fay Jasso What’s his link to the girls and to Mason Laskfell?”

“We’ve not yet been able to understand that because we haven’t had access to all Laskfell’s files. You have government credentials that let you in with ISTF. We could try those.”

“Does this file also have the girls’ NSA records?” Jack said.

“Very little.”

Calla raised an eyebrow. “Jack, before your tablet was destroyed in Utah, it linked up to the NSA database. Did you retrieve anything from it with your phone? If you send any information to the chip here,” she said, rubbing the chip at the back of her neck Jack had created for database cross references. “Perhaps I can look into their NSA files.”

“And?”

“We may be able to find this Jasso. We cross reference and find everyone they were linked to from the day they were found. Especially anyone psychologically connected to them. I believe we’ll find the common denominator. If they’re going to cash in, in the next auction, it’ll be a pure act of revenge.”

“What will it gain us?” Jack said.

“I refuse to have Nash’s child haggled in front of a bunch of money-hungry revenge seekers. We need to make sure they never cash in at the auction. First, we find the auction and I believe our best information will come from the mastermind himself. Laskfell.”

 

 

 

 

Shoreditch, East London

 

Day 28

Saturday, August 3, 7:20 p.m.

 

Jack glanced over his notes, his head in his hands as he sat at his office table. Mason Laskfell hadn’t been an ordinary criminal. Like Calla he was an operative that made it his one mission to see that the Cress line didn’t live to its potential. He’d hidden his identity for decades in organizations, governments and before he was apprehended at ISTF and within MI6.

Their last visit to his house in Hertfordshire, still a crime scene, had Jack cross referencing everything they’d found. The place had always held a mystery. Jack had taken some files and data drives that had been confiscated. He slotted them one by one into his computer.

Still, no Jay Fasso. The man was a phantom. If anything, the girls’ records from the Cove mentioned his name. But that was the only place his name appeared listing him as a social worker, yet his entire Massachusetts records had been expunged without a trace. Scrolling further through Laskfell’s files Jack couldn’t find links to NSA’s Room 717. It was taking several hours. Hours they didn’t have.

Nash, my friend, give me a clue.

Jack could access Laskfell’s confiscated items as long as Calla was head of ISTF. What was the link between Haven, Lascar, Mason Laskfell and Alex and now this Fay Jasso? Laskfell knew about them, but what had he planned for them? Had he been the one to connect them to the Blackhorse Knights? And why was finding any information on that group harder than locating a comet in space?

One thing he knew, Laskfell was the link. A name kept surfacing in all the details he was cross referencing, a code name:

 

Talon

 

If Alex and Haven had been the ghost hackers controlling the Vault, who was controlling them and information on the group? Someone out there not only knew Calla and Nash’s relationship mattered, they knew everything.

Jack felt like he was playing against a god. He’d lost his best friend. Nash had put his life on the line so many times for him and he needed to do the same. Nash once told him that technology in his hand and a mind drawn to science were Jack’s greatest weapons and important to the world. But he also worried about one thing. The same thing Nash worried about. That’s why he’d given Calla the projectile launcher, in essence a weapon that didn’t threaten Calla’s resolve to not use a gun.

He looked at their files again.

Much money had gone from several of the twins’ accounts over several years. He couldn’t cross reference them all, not tonight. There was an account in just about every major city. His computer continued calculating. Where were they going to get more billions?

Then it hit him.

He grabbed his coat.