Erasure and Affirmation (Hypernaturals 11)

The Sirens Have Landed

After Olivia hung up, Denise said: "Morgan. I am so sorry. I knew you had fans on the Crew. I knew we had a backgrounder on you from way back when you were first a 'trusted human'. We naturally ran security on someone that was going to be doing security for us. I did not know they had that."

Morgan gave Denise a bemused expression. "It is very odd to have 'fans' of my work. It is odder still to have someone masturbating to nude pictures of me. I infer that is something she might do."

"Yes, well. I suppose welcome to what it is like to be a celebrity? Still: That was very generous of you. Olivia is harmless. Put her in a hot tub full of naked horny women, and she can't speak. IF someone thinks that is cute and hauls her to a lounge chair for carnal activities, she lights up like a Solstice tree. If you meet her someday at a Conclave, she'll have a meltdown. Not a bad one. I mean, she'll melt on the spot. A pool of Olivia right there on the floor, with loving eyes looking up at you from the puddle. If you are naked in a hot tub? Fangirl will have a heart attack. There is a reason we keep her at a desk rather than let loose in field operations. What she called 'Dark Arts' is her chained to a desk." Denise explained.

Denise flicked a look at me. "Why do you look like that? You have fans too, these days, you know. Shit! I bet there are naked pictures of you too. Damn it. I need to make sure we censor those background checks. I don't need my Crew making hobbies of looking at naked celebrities."

That was not why I pretended to be unhappy. "Denise: I do not fucking care if everyone on the Crew carry's around wallet-sized naked pictures of me in their bags. It's just skin. Humans are weird about skin too, but I never have been. They want to look at my stupid ass naked that is their problem, not mine. If it makes them happy, then good for them and cost me nothing." I said.

"Then why the face?" Denise asked.

OK. Now I can register my fake complaint. "Because I don't have naked pictures of Morgan. Or Helen, Jessica, or you. I like looking at you all naked too, you know. I am only Vampire. But no..." I inserted an overly dramatic sigh here for effect so that she would know I am goofing off. "Instead, I have to wait around for someone to take off their clothes. I will only live for a few millennia, you know. Not nearly enough time to admire you all."

"Only you would worry about that when we just stole a damn bio-weapons facility." Helen pulled back on my chain.

I shrugged. "Past tense. We have it. They don't." I said.

"Now the real work begins." Jessica contributed.

"Dealing with our billy goats libido?" Helen asked.

"No. Rebuilding the damn lab. You get to deal with his libido while Mom and I get a fucking weapons lab." Jessica complained. "Talk about you getting the better end of that deal."

"I will help you, Helen." Morgan said.

"I thought you might. Lady Billy Goat." Helen pulled on Morgan's chain.

"Technically, that makes me a Doe or a Nanny." Morgan replied.

Helen shook her head 'no at that idea. "No. You are a Billy Goat, lady. I have been in bed with you. You are no Nanny."

"I love that about her." Jessica said wistfully, knowing she was being left out of the adult activities at some point.

Denise got a call.

"Hey Boss. The Sirens have landed." Said a woman that Denise obviously knew but who did not introduce herself. She jumped right into the news.

"How many?" Denise asked.

"They came screeching up a few minutes ago. Good reaction time: from the time we un-looped the cameras to them getting there was seven minutes. The first wave was two cars. Eight guys. Uniformed private security. Hand weapons only. They went racing into the front lobby and found the place wide open. Two minutes after that, troop carriers arrive. You know the type: Those big vans that seat fifteen or so. So about thirty more goons. Still only hand weapons. Oh. Wait. Here comes a panel van... Hitting the back dock. SWAT team looking guys. M-16's. Battle gear. Going in through the dock." Pause. "Running through the building now. We can see them on the interior cameras. They are not taking out the camera's so they do not know we are tapped in. Looks like a standard sweep. Clearing the space. Trained guys. Hand signals and everything."

"Anyone calling into their command and control?" Denise asked.

"Just now. A guy standing near the break room is looking around the cleared space and pulled out a walkie talkie." pause. "It's an encrypted radio, but we already have their comm's and their setup. So.. Sec. Dialing around for the frequency and the protocol of the day..." Said unknown Crew person. I wonder if she has nudes of Morgan too.

A different voice came in mid-sentence as the Crew person piped in the radio traffic.

"... One. Nothing. It's all gone." The man on the scene said.

"What about the computer room?" Another man asked. The command and control person.

"I looked in there before I called in. When I say it's all gone, I mean everything. The only thing in the building is the furniture and unused office supplies. Also, the kitchen was untouched other than a table being turned over. I am guessing that happened during the raid."

"They emptied the place, and we got nothing on any security camera." The man not in the building said.

"We have nothing at all. Every desk has been opened up and looked through. Every physical file is missing. Pictures of people still on the desk. All the sports banners and stuff untouched. They were after information. Entire file cabinets are missing. In the data center, the backup tapes are gone. The computers are gone. The data center is a bunch of empty racks and screws laying all over. Not a computer, cable, or power cord left. They took that place apart fast." On the scene guy said.

"Fucking Vampires. Their goddamn Crew. Had to be." The not-on-the-scene guy said. "The Assembly is going to be pissed."

"Has to be them. No one else could have done this. It's not the Assembly I'm worried about man. How did they find this place? How did they take it without us knowing a damn thing? Shit, man: they are going to out for us now. We already were in shit over that Vampire lady we took years ago. They never kicked our ass for that. Now this? We are so extremely fucked."

"Likely. I told the moron powers that be that moving up the dates was a bad idea, but they wanted to test the shit on that Stupid Liaison guy: Make sure it works. From what I hear, they saw him up and around down there, so it didn't even fucking work. All the years, money, training, and fucking secrecy for nothing. Should have kidnapped another Vampire lady. They lose track of those. Going in on that guy was dumb."

"They partly did that because he is down there. How did they find this?" guy-in-the-building asked.

"I don't know, man. If I had to guess, it was those two Assembly idiots they stuck out into Vampire land. Bet they blabbed. Damn Assembly outsmarting themselves. 'We want to know what they know' bullshit. You know what they knew? Fuck-all is what they knew until we tested this worthless garbage."

"But they didn't know about this place. That was obvious! That was the whole damn idea! Test it, and have it far enough away from here and us to maintain deniability." The on-the-scene guy said.

"Look man: We worked with Crew on that Ninovan thing. Those bitches are sharp. Who knows how they found out? They did, so now we not only attacked like their favorite little Vampire guy, they know we were planning this. We are fucked. Up the ass corn cobbed. You know what those bitches can do to us. You saw the pictures from the Siren hall. We have to find that shit and fast. All right. I'm hooking up with traffic. We need to find where they went... God damn it! If we have to fight Crew to get it back we are going to need a damn army! We are SCREWED!" The remote person said and clicked off abruptly.

The Crew voice came back on. "I see them looking at the traffic cams now, trying to find you. They won't. We'll stop fucking with the cams soon since the drop-outs are not a good look to have, but the trucks are in a 100-kilometer expanding sphere now and blended into traffic. No way they can tell what is what anymore. We are very sharp bitches."

"Ok. Thanks for the update, sharpie. Let me know if anything turns up." Denise said and hung up.

"I wonder if they looked out in the fields. They might see numerous rodents running free out there. I wonder if shock troops know hamsters are not normal for the area." Morgan mused.

Denise looked back at me. I was not making my face anymore. She followed up anyway. Crew Leads are multi-track. "I will let you take all the naked pictures of me you want for you to look at when I am not around. Later. Head in the game. We did it!"

"OK. Vampires now have a Biowarfare tech lab. We stole it. That explains why the Sirens aimed Biowarfare at us. Vampires can steal stuff like this. Obviously, we cannot be trusted."

"Also: Sirens hate sharp bitches." Denise said.