CHAPTER NINE
1472 Words
CHAPTER NINE
After the near-anxiety attack during his lecture, Reid called it an early day. He texted Maya that he wasn’t feeling well and had headed home; she replied that she would be going to the library after classes were out. He wasn’t far from the campus, so he could pick her up when she was ready. Sara was in an after-school art club, so currently he was alone in the house, upstairs in his office, and sitting on the floor with a box before him.
Alone with his thoughts and a cardboard box, Reid let his mind return to the question that Maya had asked him earlier. “Did Mom know?”
The formerly repressed memory of Kate’s anger and the discovered gun had him doubting his answer. What if she had? he thought. What if Kate had found the gun and the argument in his memory was the catalyst to his eventual confession of his real vocation? On the other hand, though, he had trouble believing that Kate would have been okay with that sort of revelation. He remembered her right up to the time of her death; they had been happy and in love, raising their two girls together. He doubted it would have been so easy if she knew the truth, that her husband and the father of her children had been keeping such a dangerous secret from them.
He couldn’t remember, and anyone he could have asked about the truth was dead.
Reid opened the box that sat in front of him on the floor. Inside this box was an envelope, and within that was a photo and a letter. The photo was of him and Alan Reidigger, standing before the Fontana delle Tartarughe in Rome, Italy. His arm was around Alan’s shoulders, and they were both smiling, maybe a moment or two from bursting into laughter.
Of course, he didn’t remember this photo being taken. He didn’t remember ever laughing with Alan Reidigger, the man who had been sent by the CIA to kill him, his best friend. Instead, Reidigger had sought a solution—an experimental memory suppressor that the CIA had been secretly developing.
The accompanying letter was handwritten in Alan’s neat, legible print. Reid didn’t need to read it again. Even though he hadn’t looked at it in three weeks now, he had it nearly memorized. Its words crossed his mind often, whenever he stopped doing anything for more than a few minutes and allowed himself to dwell on his situation.
In the letter Alan disclosed the name of the neurosurgeon who had implanted the memory suppressor, Dr. Guyer in Zurich, Switzerland. Alan believed that the doctor could bring back everything, all of Reid’s memories, if he wanted to.
Many times, more times than he could recall or even count, he had thought about this mysterious Guyer. Reidigger had chosen the doctor himself—obviously he was someone whom Alan trusted to open up Reid’s head and mess around inside it. He couldn’t be hard to find; even a simple internet search would likely yield some result, a phone number or an email address. But that was just the first step of many, and even taking that first step felt like a leap into the void. There would be no going back.
His cell phone rang, startling him in the otherwise silent office. He chuckled at himself for his jumpiness and checked the screen. The caller was unknown. He let it go to voicemail.
A moment later his phone chimed with a text message. Again it was an unknown sender. The message simply said: Answer the phone, Zero.
Reid groaned. He knew exactly who it would be when the phone rang a second time. It seemed that someone had gotten tired of waiting for his answer.
“Hello, Cartwright,” he said flatly as he answered the call.
“Zero,” said the deputy director by way of greeting. His voice was low, lacking any sense of joviality. “You should know you’re on speakerphone. I’m here with Assistant Director Ashleigh Riker. She’ll be heading up Special Operations Group.”
“Congratulations, I suppose.” Reid was immediately suspicious. It would be one thing if Cartwright was calling for his answer. It was a different story with another director on the line. He waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Thank you,” said Riker. “Though I wish we were being introduced under better circumstances.”
Reid held back an audible groan. Something was definitely amiss. “What do you want?”
“Straight to the point,” said Cartwright. “Good old Zero.” He sighed. “There’s a crisis situation. Come to Langley. Let’s talk.”
“We can talk now,” said Reid. He knew that going to CIA headquarters would mean giving them leverage to convince him to do whatever it was they were going to ask of him.
“I’d rather not do this over the phone,” said Cartwright. “There are things you should see.”
“What sort of things?” Reid asked. “What kind of situation?”
“Agent, you know we wouldn’t have called if this wasn’t important,” said Riker. “We understand your position, and your predicament—”
“Do you?” Reid said bitterly. “I’m not sure you know much at all about my ‘predicament,’ Assistant Director.”
“…And that’s why we haven’t bothered you for your answer yet,” Riker finished. “But it’s been a month. So we need you to come in now, or tell us you’re not coming back at all.”
“Look, Kent, people are going to die,” Cartwright said somberly. “If you don’t believe me, get online and look at what’s happening in Barcelona. We have reason to believe it may be just the tip of this iceberg.”
Reid frowned. He hadn’t been in front of a computer all day; he had no idea what was happening in Spain. Had there been some sort of attack?
“Fine,” he said finally. “I’ll come. I’ll listen. But I’m not making any promises.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” said Cartwright. “Be here as soon as you can. We’re briefing in forty-five minutes.” He hung up.
Reid sighed in defeat. Langley was only a thirty-minute drive; he had some time to look into whatever was happening in Barcelona, and…
He looked up and blinked in surprise to see his elder daughter standing in the doorway.
“Maya! When did you get home?”
She stared at the floor, avoiding his gaze. “Few minutes ago,” she said. “I finished early and took a bus.”
“Jeez, Maya, you should have let me come get you—”
“That was them, wasn’t it?” she interrupted.
He frowned. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough.”
“That was nothing,” he said quickly. “It was just…” No more lies, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to offer up information, but if she asked, he wasn’t going to lie to her anymore. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “That was them.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Just to Langley. It doesn’t mean I’m taking an assignment.”
“But you will. You’re not the kind of person who stands by if you could help.”
Reid didn’t know what to say to that. He rose and hugged her tightly, and she squeezed him, and though she didn’t look up at him he could have sworn he heard her sniff once. He knew that she was scared for him, even if she thought she had to be strong and not show it.
When he released her, Maya wiped at her eyes before he could see if there were tears in them or not. “Does this have anything to do with what’s going on in Spain?” she asked.
Reid was taken aback that she was more informed than he was—but then again, she was a child of the tech generation. “What’s going on over there?”
“They’re not entirely sure yet,” she told him. “Or they’re not saying. I heard some kids in the library talking about it. Here, take a look.” She pulled out her cell phone and brought up a video. “This was taken less than two hours ago.”
Maya held her phone up sideways as a news broadcast played. The sound was muted as a female reporter stood in front of what appeared to be a hospital. Behind her, a small crowd had gathered at the entrance. People in bright yellow hazmat suits scurried about, some of them on crowd control while others erected some kind of medical tent in the parking lot.
As Reid watched, a member of the crowd staggered and keeled over, collapsing right there outside the hospital. Two yellow-clad workers rushed over and loaded the man onto a wheeled gurney while other would-be patients shoved past them, trying to get into the ER.
Reid’s mouth fell open slightly. It looks like a war zone. The news broadcast played like something out of a movie, something too horrific to possibly be reality.
On the video, the reporter’s eyes suddenly widened in shock as she pointed at something out of frame. The cameraman panned just in time to see a sedan T-bone their news van, spraying broken glass in every direction.
“Oh my god,” Reid murmured. “What is it?”
“It’s some kind of viral outbreak,” Maya said. “But it doesn’t seem like anyone knows what yet.” She glanced up at him. “You didn’t answer me. Is this what they need you for?”
Reid barely heard her question. A biological weapon, he thought. Spreading fast in a civilian population. No natural disease would just blindside a major city like that, and it would be far too much of a coincidence that the call from Cartwright came mere hours after the infection began.
Moreover, he knew that his daughter was right. Before he even got to Langley—before he even got in his car—he already knew that if his help was needed, he wouldn’t be able to stand idly by, even if it meant putting himself directly in harm’s way.
- Writer
