End Game

Part III -- Burden of proof

Tim and Min met next morning at Zest for coffee and muesli. "Damn the expense," Tim had said. "Given what Husk is paying us, we're worth it." He was feeling enthused, filled with unfamiliar emotions – something to do with the intimacy implied by sharing breakfast, itself an echo of the evening spent huddled together in Karen's study. It was a feeling he would have liked to impart to Min if only he could find some way of phrasing it that did not come across as too presumptive or revealing. For a moment the raw fact of their having known each other for only a few days seemed as wispy as the mist from Min's coffee.

"Perhaps we'll find out something more today," he said instead. Their efforts the evening before had succeeded in adding only one more name to their list – Stephen Chen, another imaging specialist. As pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, it all looked like blue sky to Tim. Except for the infectious disease specialist, who seemed to belong to a different puzzle altogether.

Min looked up from her muesli. "I hope so." Her expression shifted. "Look, I meant what I said last night. If we can't get some certainty about what is going on, I'm going to have to go back to my real job."

"Really? After taking all that risk to bring a camera into the warehouse? Could be a huge opportunity you'd be passing up..."

She must have seen something in Tim's reaction because her voice softened. "I get it, I do. But this thing could be anything. It could be that whatever it is is all over in a month's time and we're kicked back out on the street again. Maybe I'm wrong and to leave will be to pass up the best thing that will ever come my way. But I can't take that risk. Unless we can figure out what this is really all about then its more than I can afford to stick around in blind hope."

Suppressing the feelings these words invoked, Tim went back to his argument of last night. "What about all that extra money Husk is paying you?" He pulled himself up for a moment, not wanting to sound pleading. "Girl's got to eat, you know." He made a vague gesture at the surrounding restaurant as if this bolstered his case.

"Girl's eating just fine." She took a sip from her coffee. "But it all seems so – I don't know – flaky's not quite the right word, but something like that. Husk clearly can't be trusted. He's doing what he's doing and our welfare is nowhere on his action plan. I've got a real life waiting for me. I need something more substantial before I'd consider leaving all of that behind."

"It's only a job."

"You think so? With Husk it's hard to know exactly what it is."

*

Positive attitude, Tim reminded himself as they walked the short distance to the warehouse. The old Tim might have done something desperate, what exactly he couldn't quite imagine, but something certainly. Stay optimistic and go with the flow, he told himself. Perhaps something will come up to keep her here.

Tim's prayer had an answer of a sort. As they made their way through security, it was clear that something was indeed happening. The journalist, Emmy-Lee, was back in the building.

"Oh, it's you two," she observed on noticing the new arrivals. "I'll talk to you just as soon as I've sorted this lot out."

"Media training," one of the umpa lumpas whined. "Are you serious?" Keith Costa, molecular imaging specialist – having browsed his online profile the night before, Tim identified the man with ease.

"That's right," said Emmy-Lee. "Playtime is over... or soon will be. When all this goes public people are going to come asking questions. I need to make sure you know how not to answer them."

Tim and Min found a quiet corner where they could watch this little performance. It seemed to Tim like an exercise in herding cats, though he had to admit Emmy-Lee seemed to possess some natural instinct for the task. She took up station by the coffee-maker, refusing people access to it until they had brought their chairs across and formed a small circle. This tactic seemed to work. Grumpy but acquiescent, the team gathered. The whole thing felt vaguely reminiscent of elementary school.