The Z Contingency

Chapter 4 - Emily

Simon Zaine had just settled in for the morning behind a dull gray metal desk that seemed much too large for his small office in the basement of the U.S. Treasury Annex building in Washington, D.C. "Battleship gray" he thought. He was sure the desk was Korean War surplus.

Simon closed his door - a flashing icon on his screen indicated a secure incoming call was waiting to be connected. After activating the protocol to lock down the private tunnel through the net, Simon was greeted by the shadowy face of one of his counterparts. Simon had met him only once before, many years ago at the orientation session, when he first joined the agency.

"I'm sorry we have to be reconnecting under these circumstances." A chill suddenly ran down Simon's spine. "Take a look at this, but brace yourself. I think it's someone you know," and then off to the side "Okay, patch him in."

The display changed over to a poor-quality video that looked like it was being streamed from a phone camera. The scene appeared to be a small village in a mountainous region. The surrounding area was arid. Only a few scraggly trees and bushes could be seen growing in the bare rocky ground. Several squat buildings made from clay bricks were arranged in a circular fashion around a central plaza, looking more like a collection of children's building blocks than houses.

From the shadows, it appeared to be mid-afternoon. Simon knew he was watching a live feed from the region near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As the scene zoomed in on a central plaza, several bodies could be seen strewn in an open area between the buildings, strewn about as if a child had suddenly tired of her dolls and discarded them, but it was clear that these were not dolls but people. It was equally clear that they were no longer among the living.

As the image on his screen filled with the bodies, it became clear to Simon that they were not only dead, but had been tortured to death. Eyes were swollen shut, noses were broken, teeth were missing. Angry red cigarette burns could now be seen marring the victims' skin as the camera panned over the bodies. Simon thought he heard someone in the background choking back the urge to vomit.

Finally, the camera moved to focus in on one of the corpses. The blood drained from Simon's face. Even in the condition it was in, Simon could see his sister's features in the bruised and bloated face that filled his screen.

Simon Zaine was the son of an American diplomat father and British mother. His parents met and married when his father was stationed in London. Simon was born at the Embassy two years later. His sister, Emily, came less than a year after. They had spent much of their early childhood in England, and the two were inseparable. Even after they had grown, and had gone their separate ways to different schools, to different lives, they had stayed very close.

Emily Zaine, or Millie as her friends called her, had been working for an NGO advancing the rights of women worldwide, and especially in the Middle East. She had studied the Muslim faith as her minor in school, and found it to be interesting, even attractive in some respects. She believed that the treatment of women as property, was contrary to the teachings of the Koran, and set out to educate the women, and the more liberal-thinking men of Afghanistan, accordingly. A week ago, when she was on a humanitarian mission delivering food and warm blankets to a remote village that had been devastated by an errant drone attack, her group was kidnapped by radicals that had learned of her group's activities.

"I've seen enough." Simon managed to say with only the slightest tremor in his voice. He disconnected the secure channel, and got up to crack open his door. The smallness of his office, probably no more than a hundred feet square, seemed abnormally stifling. He needed air.

Shutting Simon off in that small, gray office was a plain door that seemed unusually heavy for its size. In the middle of the door was a frosted glass window with words etched on it. Simon's vision blurred as he thought about those cigarette burns, and stared at the backs of those words. Words that read: