Smokescreen

7

A piece of white copy paper. It sat on his bed, taunting him. Black text stood on top of the plain canvas, warning him of the things to come; they dared to threaten him. He wasn't going to let that stand. Later, anyway. At that time, Ben was staring at the paper with shock and vitriol, wondering how he could have let anyone through his defenses in the past month since Erica was rescued. Not that she'd been around much.

He was being mocked, he was sure of it. Ben had spent years cultivating and testing his alarm system in his room. It was a combination of various childish booby traps to a messy floor to a high tech alarm system that connected to his watch and informed him that his windows or doors had been opened without the passkey. How could they have gotten in? The paper was signed with the same symbol that marred his neck and Erica's arm. The mark of Cain; the mark of protection and taboo. Who was this person?

Ben had continued to research, building upon the information that Chip had told him. Corvus was Latin for raven and rock. The drug lord had acquired one of the hottest club chains in the late 1980s. From there, they had used it as an underground for all sorts of things: drugs, alcohol, organs, weapons, fight rings, gambling, prostitution, piracy, and even for human trafficking at one point. The chain had been discovered in the early 2000's to be a hub for illegal activity after an informant had come forward to the FBI.

However, Corvus had been on the CIA's radar for a few years before that. They had been trading illegally internationally, shipping people overseas and importing drugs from other countries. When the chain, known as Bethel, started into that business, it became the CIA's problem: an international one. An unidentified body had been found by the coast guard, loaded up with drugs and alcohol, floating in the Long Island Sound. It had been an "open-and-shut-case" that was easily brushed aside when the clubs were shut down.

Clearly, that was not what had happened, and the cover-up had been the job of the corrupt system that used Ben as a pawn. They had marked the case as closed, content to ignore it. Ben scowled as he flipped through the stolen file, his skin crawling at the thought of the bastards who had chosen malfeasance over integrity as he reviewed the hundreds of lives that Corvus had affected.

They had flagged the drug lord as a possible suspect in Jason Stern's murder. Ben had never liked the boy, but he remembered the shock he had felt when the homicide had been announced by President Stern. Jason had been found floating in the Potomac with a strange brand on his stomach. This had been just after SPYDER was defeated, so the CIA brushed it off as something else. Ben had been given the same brand just months later. He wondered if he was supposed to end up in the Potomac too.

"Get yourself together, Ripley." The teenager muttered as he wiped away the tear collecting on his eye. Now was not the time to break down, so he bottled up his emotions once more and threw himself into his work.

After an hour or so, he detected a small ticking sound coming from his closet. Ben froze, reaching for his weapon on his hip, and slowly approached the wardrobe, trying to decipher what it could be. Should he engage? He weighed the risks. It sounded like a camera. They were clearly watching him. Who knew what else they were doing? There was probably a tracker in his phone, his shoes, anything.

He had to get out of there. It could be a bomb. They could be watching him. His breathing quickened as his brain went into survival mode. He wasn't panicking; He wasn't even thinking. He needed to leave. Ben took off his shoes, leaving them around his room. He messed up his room, breaking a post off of his bed and the closet door. He cut his arm, leaving a haphazard trail of blood to the window and opened it with gloves that he threw back into the closet.

They were coming for him, and all he needed to do was survive. So, Ben faked a kidnapping and grabbed as much gear as he could without seeming suspicious. He glanced once more at the scene he had created. It looked like a kidnapping had taken place, and he made sure to mess up his bedsheets and crack a glass on the floor.

If anyone cared to notice, which they hopefully wouldn't until he was called for a mission, all they would discover was no trace of a missing boy. Well, based on the agency's response in years past, he didn't have much hope that Benjamin Ripley, the poor failure who had so much potential, would be found at all. Why would they waste resources on him? If he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't. He was going back to the life he'd known before.

Ben secreted the files in a hidden drawer that he had built into the opposite side of his bed. He pressed his finger print into the scanner, placing the drawer back into place once he was sure the files were as secure as they could be. He had discussed a hypothetical safe like this with Erica before everything. He took a moment to check over the room, sure that most people wouldn't look too closely into the validity behind the destruction. Who would?

With that, Ben climbed out of the open window, breaking the lock from the outside and shattering the glass slightly. He scaled down the building, carefully avoiding the security cameras. His hand brushed against the cold brick of the corner as he peered around, determining that his best bet was to play it off like he was a student leaving to go to the nearby village for dinner if he couldn't sneak undetected.

The rubble under his feet seemed comforting as if it was grounding him down. The moon and the sky weeped as they watched the boy who had been through so much leave the place where he had once felt safe. But Ben had never been safe, even with the country's so-called "greatest" around him. He had almost died, again and again, and now, he was finally done. Agent Benjamin Ripley was no more.