Test Subject 001 - Epilogue 03

There was another pause, when suddenly a lightbulb went off in Ms Abel’s head. She grabbed a tablet that was lying on the desk and looked at it again. She sat down again, as if she had the biggest migraine in all of existence. “How… You tested stuff on her, didn’t you? That’s where you’ve been skulking around these past few weeks. You used AGNI resources…”

“None that involved any of our regular clients. Just the new one. I told you I had my suspicions about their true identity, and I took a chance. Worst case, E-Division is prepared for them.”

“And best case?”

“She didn’t bat an eyelid when she saw all those weapons and devices, which means she’s not involved in whatever game E-Division is playing by trying to contract 'illegal arms developing and dealing networks' for whatever they are planning.”

“She being clean is your best case scenario?”

“Do you really want a dirty WMD walking around leading one of the most powerful organisations in the country, no, world?”

“You’re right. We need to start preparing contingencies.”

“I’ve roped in the Brain Trust. Project Underworld is back on track. I’ve put out feelers in most of my networks. There are a few that you’ll need to reach in more… traditional ways.”

“And what about the cyber attacks we’ve had over the past few days?”

“I had Sid upgrade all our systems to block them, but it seems the ones at the old base were missed. I had to cut the hardwires to stop it from breaching our main server’s firewalls and then take the whole base offline to isolate the problem. I’ve shared the code with Sid. He’s having a look and will tell us who engineered. One of the perks of running our own OS is there’s only a handful of people who can pull off a stunt like this.”

“You think she was involved in this?”

“We’ll find out soon enough. If she was, I might have answers sooner than Sid will. In any case, it’s late. Let’s catch up on that Energy Type's case in the morning. and … Thanks.”

“You can thank me if we ever get out of the growing mess we keep finding ourselves in lately.”

“Become big enough and everyone wants a piece of you. Besides, you know how much we hate smooth sailing. It just means it’s the quiet before the storm.”

*** 

Back at home, the Fixer is tossing in bed when his phone goes off. The backdoor was activated. He had worked with Sid to set up a fake database on an isolated server so that whoever used the backdoor would only see the files he wanted them to see. He pulls up the folder list; among the many AGNI projects he’s strewed in there, he’s included files that would seem like notes made by Ms Abel and himself. He waits for what seems like ages, before whoever is on the other end of that connection opens his personal folder and goes straight to the folder labelled, ‘Victory Girl’.