Mark Kirby traced the map with his finger until he found the city he was looking for: Veracruz, Mexico, specifically the city of Xalapa. He carefully pressed a pin into the corkboard to mark the location before tying a thin piece of yarn to it and connecting it to the others. He stepped away from the wall where the map hung to get a better look. He was looking to see if there was a recognizable pattern to Alex Luthecker’s movements.
Kirby had been tracking Luthecker for the better part of six months, starting in Tibet, leading to his near miss at the Siachen Glacier on the India-Pakistan border, and ending at the pattern reader’s last confirmed sighting in Xalapa.
By the time Kirby had arrived in Mexico, Luthecker, along with Nicole Ellis and his other followers were long gone. However, the impact of their influence on the inhabitants of Xalapa, Veracruz was still fresh. Kirby dared to stay in the Mexican city for an extra day. He wanted details.
Kirby knew to tread carefully when inquiring about Luthecker, as due to the events in Xalapa, it was a touchy subject. He was deep in cartel territory, Veracruz being one of the most dangerous states in all of Mexico, and Luthecker had just interrupted their product supply.
With countless unsolved disappearances, frequent kidnappings, and rampant extortion, the drug cartels ruled over all, including local law enforcement. And judging by the number of soldiers in the area, the cartel was clearly not happy about their encounter with the pattern reader.
Still, many of the locals, when free from the eyes and ears of the cartel, were eager to explain to Kirby what had happened. It didn’t surprise him to discover that Luthecker and his friends were quickly becoming a fixture in local legend.
The local people had already named them, a moniker that was only spoken in whispers: “Los Libertadores.”
From what Kirby could gather, Luthecker and his group had liberated several immigrants riding the Beast train north, a train that had been targeted by the cartels for slavery. Luthecker’s interference had led to the arrest of over a dozen cartel soldiers by “Federales” and not local lawmen on the take, as many of the soldiers were wanted in connection to several murders.
Most of the migrants had scattered immediately after the incident, and many had returned to the “Back of the Beast” as it was known, in hopes of still making it to the U.S. border.
Although their safe journey was far from guaranteed, Kirby detected a sense of boldness in the tone and mannerisms of the locals. They spoke with a sense of destiny that they credited with the arrival and actions of Los Libertadores. The sentiment was not altogether different from what he heard and saw from the soldiers he spoke with on the Siachen Glacier in India, after Luthecker’s pass through.
Kirby’s description of Alex Luthecker being an agent of change was seemingly more accurate than even Kirby himself suspected. It made finding Alex Luthecker that much more urgent, before the powers that be realized the true extent of the pattern reader’s impact. Before they decided Luthecker must be destroyed at all costs.
The one part of the puzzle that didn’t fit was the death of a sixteen-year-old boy during Luthecker’s liberation of migrants in Xalapa. According to local accounts, the boy died at the most critical juncture of Luthecker’s involvement. Something—if Kirby’s understanding of Luthecker’s abilities was accurate—the pattern reader should have been able to prevent.
He wondered if Luthecker had seen the patterns that would eventually lead to the boy’s death before it actually happened and had been unable to stop it. Or perhaps Luthecker had seen that the boy’s death was an unfortunate necessity, as part of larger set of patterns that only he could see. Or the worst possibility of all—the pattern reader’s abilities were degrading and over time, the memory necessary to calculate all possible outcomes and derive the exact one were too much for the human system to handle. And like any other system, eventually Luthecker’s abilities would breakdown and become inaccurate.
According to locals, the boy, Enrique, had been traveling with his younger sister Maria. The scuffle with cartel soldiers that had led to Enrique’s death apparently involved the freedom of the young girl. Maybe the patterns of the situation dictated that Luthecker had to choose between the two lives, between brother and sister. If this was so, it must have been heartbreaking for the pattern reader.
Kirby wondered what kind of impact that decision would have on the way Luthecker viewed reality—would it warp his ability to be objective? Would this be a catalyst and cause the inevitable degradation in memory that would impact Luthecker’s accuracy in event recollection? Or maybe the boy’s death was simply an outlier data point that Luthecker did not see?
Kirby wanted to speak with the girl to get a better understanding of the specifics, but she had disappeared. When the American scientist had asked around, the answers had all been the same. Maria had been last seen leaving with Luthecker and his group. For all Kirby knew, the young girl was no longer in Mexico.
Maybe the girl, Maria, fits into something bigger in some way, Kirby thought to himself. He stood back and looked at the pins in the map. Luthecker had gone from Los Angeles to Tibet, from India to Mexico, the last stop where he had joined up with several members of his group. It had come almost full circle, and Luthecker left a disruptive imprint wherever he went.
And considering the circular nature of Luthecker’s travels it wasn’t hard to predict where he would most likely end up next. According to the pins on the map, he would be home in Los Angeles. With over thirteen million people, finding Luthecker would still not be easy. But at least Kirby had an idea where to look.
Kirby hoped to find the pattern reader soon. He hoped to speak with Luthecker about the process that created him. He hoped to introduce Luthecker to his genetic second mother.
A knock on the door interrupted Kirby’s train of thought. He took a deep breath for patience and moved to the door of his small one-bedroom apartment in Studio City. He already knew who was at the door before he answered it.
“Mr. Turner is very upset with you, Doctor Kirby,” said the man in the crisp-blue suit and purposefully visible sidearm.
Kirby looked down at his own left wrist, which was shackled to a steel table. He sat rigid in his matching steel chair, as he examined the pale-gray walls of the room.
Kirby could almost hear the screams of the countless people held in this cell, those who had come before him.
“I’m not a terrorist,” he replied.
“All it takes is the suspicion. Just the label itself, and then it’s over for you. For anyone.”
“I have my rights.”
“The need for national security says otherwise.” The man who sat across from Kirby, dressed in the perfect blue suit, kept his eyes locked on the scientist as he slowly loosened his tie.
“Who are you?” Kirby asked.
“My name is not important.”
“You’re an operative for Coalition Assurance. The enforcement arm, or should I say the hit men of the Coalition. What are you, ex-Special Forces? CIA? Are you now part of the Coalition torture squads?”
“Doctor Kirby, this is simply a debriefing.”
“I’m chained to a table.”
“As a precaution.”
“Precaution for what? You’re a trained killer and I’m a civilian.”
“Doctor Kirby, if I were you, I’d cease with your hostile tone.”
“My hostile tone?”
“I wouldn’t let it descend into an interrogation if I were you. So let’s just answer some questions, shall we? Now—Mr. Turner wants to know why you didn’t report evidence of the missing asset in India.”
“Gee, I don’t know, maybe because it’s a foreign theater, and I didn’t want you goons showing up and causing a major incident. Like you fools did in Trans Dniester.”
The man in the suit showed no reaction. “We have interests in that region.”
“Of course we do.”
“And no interests in the asset Alex Luthecker.”
“You have no clue about the asset Alex Luthecker,” Kirby said.
“You were given a job with specific parameters.”
“I was laughed at. I wasn’t given the resources to succeed. I wasn’t supposed to come up with anything. I was supposed to disappear.”
“Nevertheless, when it comes to intelligence of any kind, it is your obligation to keep Mr. Turner up to date in real time.”
“We are in the early stages of the sixth great extinction in this planet’s history. If the current trajectory remains in place, our species has a less than fifty percent chance of surviving beyond the next two hundred years. How’s that for real time?”
“That’s not why we’re here.”
“Of course it is.”
“The data for what you claim is inconclusive.”
“You’re an idiot.” Kirby leaned in toward his well-dressed captor. “I believe that the only way to turn this extinction-level reality around and find a way to save our sorry asses is through Alex Luthecker, and even then, it’s a slim possibility,” Kirby continued. “We need his mind on the problem. We need advanced-level thinking on the challenge, not current-level thinking.
“He needs to be brought in. He needs to be studied. He needs to be understood and accepted as the long-term solution that he is, before what he sees overloads his memory system and breaks him down, which is a real possibility.
“You tell your boss that I know how to get to him. I know how to convince him to work for us. You tell Mr. Turner that I know how to monetize Alex Luthecker, all in the name of the Coalition.”
The man in the perfect suit with the visible sidearm tilted his head. The claim of monetization by Kirby was unexpected. “How?”
Kirby kept himself from reacting. With that one word question, he knew he was getting out of this cell. He knew that he just bought himself some time.
“You tell Mr. Turner that if he doesn’t want to meet with me, then he’s just going to have to trust me. And there’s one more thing.”
Kirby kept his eyes locked with his captor. In Kirby’s mind, there was still a closing line to deliver—a signal, one that would signify loyalty, a line that Turner would understand.
But he wanted the hard-muscled, but soft-brained, knuckle-dragger in the suit to ask. He wanted the larger, stronger man to sense the shift in power, even if he was too dumb to understand it.
“Which is?” The man in the crisp suit finally asked.
“You tell Mr. Turner that when I deliver Luthecker, he’s going to have to give me my cut.”