The Intelligence Director

Chapter Three

A single drop of sweat traveled a crooked path down Director Raze’s back. Dr. Alixter always had a way of making him feel like a grain of sand. It was worse than any of his superiors in the Army. And that was saying a lot.

Alixter certainly didn’t look happy to be here at two in the morning.

At least Raze could agree with him on that account.

Raze pressed his finger to the surface of his desk, accessing the primary tracking system. A map of the compound unfolded before him, taking up the entire surface of his desk. He moved his empty coffee cup, which was covering the Residential Sector, and for a flash of a moment, he thought about the lab assistant. The one he’d just paid a visit to. When this was all over he needed to make sure to clean up after himself there. He needed to make sure she didn’t remember his face.

But he couldn’t worry about that right now. He had higher priorities. Namely the missing girl.

His eyes scanned the length of the map, his chest tightening when he noted the absence of one very important blinking blue dot.

Flux.

            He pushed his finger against the intercom button. “VAS!”

            He could see his subordinate jump on the other side of his office wall. The one-way transparency block had given him and Alixter privacy while still allowing Raze to keep an eye on his operatives.

            “Vas,” he repeated in a subtler voice. He reminded himself to remain calm. He couldn’t let Alixter know just how panicked he was.

            “Yes, sir?” his agent’s shaky voice came back.

            “Double-check all systems. Make sure there’s been no signal interference. Or network disruption. Check all the backup systems as well. Report to me anything that looks unusual.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            He watched his agent spin his chair toward his screens and get to work.

“Does this mean you think we’ve simply lost her signal?” Alixter asked, arching a single eyebrow.

God, Raze hated when he did that. On anyone else a simple eyebrow raise might look harmless. But on Alixter it was downright creepy.

“It means I’m exploring all options,” Raze countered, wishing Alixter would get the glitch out of his office so he could actually figure this out. It was almost impossible to work with the president hovering over him like this.

“You’re wasting valuable time,” Alixter growled. “She’s not inside compound walls. Will you just run the damn satellite search?”

Of course, Raze had thought to run the satellite search. The glowing orange button on his desk screen had been taunting him since he sat down. But he knew what would happen if he did run the sat search and it did reveal that she had somehow gotten outside of the compound walls.  

It would mean his job.

His life.

Particularly if it was discovered why Raze hadn’t found out about the breach until a good thirty minutes after it happened. If he hadn’t been messing around in the Residential Sector with his comms off, the girl would still be here. He would have seen the alert the moment she stepped a single foot out of place.

So, no, he wasn’t quite ready to run that search yet.

Raze lowered himself carefully into his chair. “It could be a systems failure, in which case she may not even be gone. Are you sure she’s not just asleep?”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say.

Alixter’s stare was like icicles raking across his skin.

“She’s not asleep,” he said, the words squashed between his clenched teeth. “Dr. Rio said he returned home to find her gone. He looked all over the Restricted Sector. There’s no trace of her. And her tracking ID disappeared from all of our radars. What I want to know is how she managed to get past the outer security measures. The ones you swore were impenetrable.”

“Luman,” Raze spat under his breath.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s that damn Lyzender Luman. He’s been a pain in my ass ever since he got here.”

“Are you telling me a seventeen-year-old kid managed to break through a C9 security system? If that’s the case, then I have sincere doubts about your methods.”

Raze scoffed at this but didn’t refute it. “Let me just finish running the system diagnostics and then we’ll have a better idea of—”

“Oh, for glitch’s sake,” Alixter swore and before Raze could stop him, the president’s pale white hand was launching toward his desk. His finger jabbed against the orange button.

Raze shut his eyes as the search engaged. Somewhere up in space, a satellite was beaming a tracking signal down to earth that would locate the girl’s genetic implant and report her coordinates.

And any minute now it would reveal Raze’s worst nightmare. That the girl really was gone.

That she had somehow managed to bypass his top-notch security system. The one he’d spent years developing and perfecting.

When he opened his eyes the surface of his desk had transformed. It now showed a much larger map, covering twenty square miles of barren desert. The compound had been reduced to a tiny, inconsequential square in the center.

And there was her blinking blue dot.

Traveling west along Route 72. 

Raze could feel the walls of his office closing in on him. The room suddenly seemed no bigger than a nanoparticle.

Alixter activated Raze’s intercom. “Agent Vas. Get the director a hovercopter.” Then he turned his cold, steely eyes on Raze. “It would appear you have some explaining to do.”

##

This story continues in Chapter Four