Nova Sol - Rebellion (Being Translated)

All roads lead to Rome...

David was a little restless. His friend's call had left him worried. He called his travelling agent and booked an urgent flight to Rome. Leo was not the type to call when in trouble, especially because of his military training, that let him handle most situations. But clearly what had happened was a bit more than he could manage, and that was worrying. They had already discussed in previous security meetings the possibility of corporate espionage, but to get to the point of using extreme force to get whatever they wanted to get was something that spelled red alert everywhere.

He had gotten up for a glass of water, and his head was spinning with thoughts. Who had attacked Leo? and more importantly, what were they after?

He opened a sketch window from his PC to the kitchen's table, that was also a screen. He drew the latest events, from his travel to Brazil, Sparrow's e-mail, the attack on Leo, and everything else on the digital canvas. He had five names in total: Sparrow, "Farscape" project, Leo, Dryden Corp. and himself. To these names, he traced lines to the situations happening: Sparrow's e-mail to himself and to an "unidentified object", Leo's trip to Rome and the attack of the strangers to Leo's name, and connected that idea to Dryden Corp. He put his own name under Dryden Corp, and "Farscape" directly under that. He drew a dashed line between the attack and the project, trying to connect them, but only as hypothesis. He saw the clock, it was midnight. He remembered he had made a date with Aline, his neighbor, for tomorrow. He would have to reschedule, so he decided to write a mesage to her apartment's electronic inbox. He didn't give many excuses, but wrote down his number in case she wanted to contact him. He turned on the TV, but there were no relevant news.

Curiously, that situation made him work harder that night. He wanted to finish the project quickly, to avoid future attacks on his company and the people that were around him. He worked non-stop until the next morning, making lots of advances that he previously hadn't been able to make in the last weeks. He took a shower, packed his suitcase with some clothes and several prototype gadgets he had in his apartment. Then he grabbed a travelling mug with coffee on it, and went out to get on the cab. A thousand ideas were still spinning in his head. He had passed the idea map onto his tablet, trying to see the big picture. He connected one more line between Sparrow and Leo, with another color, since they had met eachother in the Oil Wars. He also connected Jenny to Leo. More ideas circled his mind. He arrived to the airport, passed his ID chip through the check-in and headed to customs. He decided to leave the map aside for now, and saw the news on the TV set in the waiting lounge of the airport. A land-to-air attack in the port of Shanghai was being reported, but there were no more details about it. His phone vibrated and he checked the screen. "New Message" was blinking. It was Aline, who had sent a message with a single phrase: "Ok, but you better make it up to me for standing me up :)". David smiled a bit, though he wasn't really sure why. "The girl knows what she's doing" he thought.

David checked again his hidden mail inbox. "You've got one new message". He plugged in the decoder to his tablet, and let the program do its magic. Since the mail had less information, the message was decoded after 15 minutes. "Saint Petersburg, Konyushennyy pereulok. Shtolle Café. Monday 4 pm". He immediately knew it was from Sparrow, and planned accordingly to be there at the time mentioned. He would probably have to leave Leo in Rome for a few more days, since it was a tight schedule. He decided to leave his thoughts for a while, and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, with a bottle of mineral water to the flight attendant. He would have plenty of time to collect his thoughts once he arrived to Rome.

Jack was anxious. He had passed the entire night in his study, making his contacts inform him of the situation of the package. His contact in China had told him that they were following the aircraft, and that it was heading to Russia. He immediately ordered to intercept it, and the contact said they were on it. An assault team was heading there as they spoke. He decided he could not do anything else for the moment, so he took his sportsbag and headed to the swimming pool in the gym. He was used to swim 5 kilometers every morning, to be active and alert during the day. The demands of his job were very high, so he needed to be ready for anything. As he swam, he felt someone watching him. "They" were probably following him, but with the current situation "they" couldn't do much. "Let them observe, they can't do anything in public places, thanks to the little genious we have in the company" he thought, pointing out David's security system for cities. He would be at the office by 10 o'clock, and "they" wouldn't be able to watch him once he got inside the building. A crazy idea went through his mind "What if they are paying someone inside the company?", but ditched the thought quickly, since most of Dryden Corp's staff had passed tight security filters, and the probability of that being true was very low. "Don't get paranoid, Jack"