Lukas stepped through the open door and rapped his knuckles on the cold, polished surface. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Director Terrell looked up from his seated position behind a large metal desk. His silver hair and gray eyes echoed the rigid feeling of the office. “Yes. Close the door and have a seat.”
Lukas did as he was told, settling himself into one of two uncomfortable chairs facing the desk. If he had been any one of the other thousands of operatives who worked for Outlier Control, he might have been nervous. But he had a special relationship with the director. Terrell appreciated intelligence and talent above all else, and Lukas had an abundance of both.
“I wanted to show you something,” Terrell said, waving his hand toward one of the two-dimensional screens on the wall of his spacious office. It flickered to life and began playing what appeared to be footage from an old security camera. “Tell me what you see.”
Lukas sat up straighter in his chair. This was obviously another of the director’s tests of which he was so fond. “It’s from the Barrens,” Lukas began, noting a slight gradient in the color of the foggy sky at the center of the footage, telling him which direction the sun was shining. “East. Segment Three.”
“What else?”
Lukas ignored the four people in the footage for the moment and concentrated his attention on the less-obvious details. It was a discipline instilled in all operatives from their earliest moments of service, and one the director was sure to appreciate. “From the elevated position, I’d say this is from a rooftop camera. Time of day is … about seventeen hundred.”
“Eighteen zero nine this evening, to be precise,” the director said. “I had the footage run through image processing to filter out the fog, so it appears to be earlier than it is. Keep going.”
Now Lukas let himself take in the details of the people in the footage. “Three males. Age could be anywhere between mid-twenties to late-forties. The glow around their hands suggests they’re in the system, but lowrates, judging by the dirtiness and thickness of their clothing. Outskirt thieves.”
“What about the other?”
Lukas leaned forward in his chair. “Female. Fourteen to eighteen. Well rated. Wrong place at the wrong time. She’s about to get her credits stolen.”
“Good,” Terrell said with a smile. “Now keep watching. When it’s finished, I want you to tell me why this is important.”
As the footage progressed, Lukas watched the thieves in the foreground swipe the girl’s credits with a portable scanner. In the background, two people came running. One dropped to the ground a few seconds before the next. They were too far away for the thieves to notice, but the image processing allowed Lukas to see them clearly enough. He could already tell by their movements that one was female, the other male. Both were young. The female got up and started jogging toward the group.
“Do we have audio?”
“No,” Terrell answered.
Lukas wished he could hear what the newcomer was saying, but he could tell by the men’s body language that they didn’t consider her a threat. There was some back and forth, but the second girl was doing most of the talking. Then she walked right past one of the thieves and embraced the first girl, indicating they were friends. “Interesting technique.”
The director nodded, but kept silent.
The two girls were making their way toward the city when one of the thieves finally realized what was happening and jogged over to them. When he took hold of one of the girl’s wrists, the young male got up and ran toward the conflict. As soon as his presence was known, the body language of the men shifted into combative mode. One pulled out what looked like a knife. Lukas was watching his movements so closely he almost missed the preemptive attack, not expecting it to come from one of the girls. He suddenly got up from his chair and moved closer to the screen, watching it unfold with disbelief. When the three youths ran away, the assailants were still on the ground. Then the screen went dark.
Lukas turned to his director, surprised by the abrupt end to the footage.
“Tell me what you saw,” Terrell said.
Lukas walked back to his chair and sat down. “There were maybe two or three possible ways of coming out of that situation alive. And hundreds of ways to end up dead.”
“Those are unlikely odds.”
“She’s had training, then.”
Terrell smiled. “I knew I picked the right man for this operation.”
Lukas didn’t bother trying to hide his surprise. “Wow! Thank you, sir.”
The director rose from his chair. Another wave of his hand brought the screen to life again, showing video clips of the same girl running through the Outskirts. Climbing over fences. Throwing rocks.
“Her name is Rena Waite, adopted daughter of Marshall and Clarine Waite. They’re a lower-middlerate family living in Segment Three. They have two other adopted children. Gareth, five. Suzanne is two. Nothing particularly interesting about them. The parents are both productive citizens. Marshall works as an efficiency consultant, and Clarine is a part-time logistics supervisor at their local food distribution center.”
“Why do we have this footage of the daughter?”
Director Terrell leaned against his desk, crossing his arms. “Rena showed up on OCON’s watch list just over nine years ago. A few of our operatives had tracked down a high-level Outlier living inside the city. When we took him into custody, the girl was there, hiding in a dumpster. We’re not sure how much she witnessed. The operatives scanned her implant and checked her history. It turned out she ran away from a nearby orphanage several months prior. The operatives ‘versed law enforcement and left the scene.”
“Was there a connection between her and the Outlier?”
“We don’t know. They were fleeing together, but she might have been his hostage. He died shortly afterward from injuries sustained during his apprehension. We weren’t able to question him. But Rena was added to our watch list per standard procedure.”
“So what is all this?” Lukas asked, pointing at the screen.
“You tell me.”
Lukas watched the footage closer this time. It ran on a loop. Rena could be seen running in the Barrens. Scaling various buildings and mechanical equipment in the Outskirts. What Lukas had thought was just her throwing rocks, he now realized was something more menacing. She was practicing her aim, breaking out the windows of an abandoned building. “It looks like she’s preparing for something. Or maintaining skills she learned previously.”
“Precisely.”
Lukas squinted. “You think the Outliers planted her here?”
Terrell pushed himself away from his desk and walked back to his chair. “If so, it would certainly affect the scope of our operations. Are they using children exclusively? Or do they already have adults in position? We’re assigning you to Rena. We want to know where she goes, what she does, and who she talks to. Most importantly, how she thinks. If this turns out to be a new strategy of the Outliers, we need to understand it.”
“I’m flattered you chose me,” Lukas said, “but why?”
“Many reasons. You’re the same age as Rena. You’ll be able to shadow her better than an adult, without drawing suspicions. And Rena’s an orphan. Considering your parents were murdered by Outlier radicals, I thought this operation might hold a special significance for you. If Rena turns out to be what I think she is, then you are in many ways the same person on opposite sides of this war. And quite frankly, you’re more intelligent than others several years your senior. I didn’t think any of our other young operatives were even remotely as capable as you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The director simply nodded. “The full work-up on Rena’s family and friends is being sent to you as we speak. Your assignment begins first thing in the morning, so you have a lot of reading to do.”
“Who needs sleep, sir?”
“Dismissed,” Terrell replied, smiling just a little at Lukas’s comment.
o o o
Rain had begun falling on the Barrens. The fog was washed away, replaced by a different kind of visual obstruction. The cold, wet environment motivated the officers to speed up their investigation of the crime scene. None of the citizens were equipped to withstand the Barrens for very long. Not even the police.
Ten minutes after the officers had left the area, John Barrett gave the order for his recon team to pull back. They were well out of range of the nearest city camera, and the falling rain provided plenty of concealment. Even though the robbery had surely caught the attention of OCON, their operatives didn’t have the technology to see far through the fog and rain. Only the Outliers had that. Even if operatives were watching through the city cameras, movement was a low risk.
Still, each team member followed protocol, inching along the ground as though their positions had already been identified. Only the most trained eyes would have suspected anything. To everyone else, the recon team would have looked like a few more clumps of weeds visible one moment and gone the next. A half hour later, Barrett’s team was back at their rally point several hundred meters farther out than where they had been positioned during the robbery. Without the need for secrecy, they climbed to their feet and huddled close to each other. The rain pelted their long, drab clothing, running off in sheets. The wind had also picked up, threatening to rip off the attached foliage that served as their camouflage.
“How many of you saw that?” Barrett asked his team, flipping up the goggles that allowed him to see through the fog.
They all nodded.
“She took out those men in under ten seconds,” said one of his soldiers.
“With her bare hands,” another said.
“Well … she used a knife for the last two.”
“Yeah, but she had to take it from the guy first. And all of them outweighed her by twenty kilos, at least.”
Barrett smiled as he tucked his long-range rifle under his cloak. It was clear his team members were impressed. And their opinions matched his. What the girl had done was extraordinary. She’d been under Outlier surveillance for quite some time now, given her affinity for the Barrens. But this was something else entirely.
“You know they’ll blame the robbery on us,” said one of his soldiers.
“That’s right,” Barrett agreed. “The citizens will keep getting a steady diet of propaganda until there’s enough public support to come looking for us.”
“At some point, OCON won’t even need to hide from citizens,” another soldier chimed in.
“Not much we can do about that,” said another.
“Except follow our orders,” Barrett concluded. “Let’s get back to the commander and let him know what we saw. I expect he’ll put this girl at the top of our potentials list.”
“Yes, sir,” said the recon members as they pulled their goggles down over their eyes again.
“Move out,” Barrett ordered, leading his men across the wet and frigid terrain.