Jacobs’ Journal: Tape 11 - Calm Before…
After the crunch of the recorder jarred into action, Jacobs tested its effectiveness.
JACOBS: “Testing. One, two. Okay.”
Satisfied, he leaned back in the chair be had selected for its proximity to the recorder’s hiding place. He checked the watch under his sleeve.
JACOBS: “Late. Guess I shouldn’t expect—“
Hurried knocks punctured the air. Jacobs lightly rose and approached the entrance. As a precaution, he drew his pistol and checked the chamber. Prepared, he opened the door, with the feeble form of Wilson Miles spilling inside.
MILES: “I don’t think I was followed.”
JACOBS: “You didn’t use the knock!”
Miles’ relief fell to dread as Jacobs closed the door roughly in clear irritation.
MILES: “Sorry, I forgot—“
JACOBS: “I could have shot you. Maybe that would have been preferrable to the alternative?”
A rhythmic tapping at the door broke the tension, allowing Jacobs to stow his firearm.
Jacobs opened the door again, this time allowing two additional parties entrance before sealing it shut again.
JACOBS: “Fancy seeing you two.”
CHEN: “Spotted this one heading your way, thought I’d tag along.”
PENJANI: “‘This One’ didn’t appreciate the gesture.”
CHEN: “Can’t please ‘em all.”
JACOBS: “Still, you two spotted together could raise some eyebrows.”
CHEN: “So might the absence of muggins here.”
Chen nudged Miles carelessly with his elbow, with the diminutive form rubbing his side.
CHEN: “Speaking of, we should start this little shindig before the hour’s out.”
The four approached the impromptu square of chairs and sat in them. The old maintenance tunnel hadn’t been used in decades and had clearly been part of an older design. As technology overcame the limitations of the past, rooms like this became inconsequential and lost over time.
MILES: “Nice nook you got here.”
JACOBS: “Don’t get on my good side.”
The sting allowed silence to fall over the room. Already, the group was feeling awkward.
CHEN: *blows a raspberry* “We waiting on somebody else?”
JACOBS: “Anymore people piling in here, it’ll look like a clown car when we all fall out of the wall.”
PENJANI: “Can we get down to business? This is already taking longer than I’m comfortable with.”
CHEN: “Easy, girl. The party’ll get started.”
CHEN: “Heh, you should hear my karaoke.”
JACOBS: “Enough. Did you all want to make introductions, or should I?”
The awkward silence turned downright uncomfortable.
JACOBS: “Trust me to pick the introverts. Alright, clockwise: Major Aaron Chen, second in command of Site-19 armed forces, Head of Security. He works just beneath Colonel Hillard.”
PENJANI: “You invited the enemy into this charade? We might as well shoot ourselves now and save Lambert the trouble.”
JACOBS: “Hang on—Chen has gone out of his way to save my life on several occasions. If he wanted to shut us down, he would have done so by now.”
PENJANI: “Save you? Because he couldn’t get to the rest of us if you were dead, no doubt.”
CHEN: “Alright, you got me. Sit back, relax, take a breather til my boys’re done breaking down the walls. Appreciate you giving me more credit than what’s due, but...only thing that has potential here is you.”
JACOBS: “Any chance we can not tear ourselves apart before morning?”
Penjani turned away, waiving away her disgust at the soldier opposite. Chen, almost proud of his jibes, gave a curt nod. Miles shuffled his feet awkwardly, useless as always.
JACOBS: “Thank you. Next along is Engineer Penjani Rowe. She knows the mechanical ins and outs of this place like the back of her hand.”
MILES: “Can I say something?”
MILES: “What does your name mean? Pen-jani, it sounds nice.”
PENJANI: “It means to search.”
PENJANI: “A fuck to give.”
JACOBS: “And lastly, Wilson Miles, technical aid in our little plans.”
JACOBS: “Now that pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get up to speed on the plan: At some point in the coming weeks, we trigger a false containment breach. Miles will reprogram the system to detect multiple breakouts, causing the MTFs to scatter. This’ll buy time for our escort team to actually break 049 out of his cell. With Penjani’s help rigging the blast door into override, they’ll lure 049 towards Lambert’s office while Chen and I create multiple distractions. We let 049 do the dirty work, I take control of the Site, and done. No more Lambert, no more problem.
PENJANI: “Tall order for four people and an ‘escort team’.”
JACOBS: “They should be able to get the job done. Are we clear on the plan?”
CHEN: “Yeah, we may have already hit a snag.”
JACOBS: “Of course. In which area?”
CHEN: “Was always a long shot, you know it.”
PENJANI: “I’m assuming that was your escort team.”
JACOBS: “Nail on the head. So what’s the damage?”
CHEN: “Hillard personally reassigned their whole group to the 939 containment area.”
Jacobs rested a hand on his forehead, feeling a migraine coming on.
CHEN: “Lambert wanted to poke a stick at his new pets before they’re shipped back to Area 14. They’re as good as lizard food.”
PENJANI: “Where did he put them?”
CHEN: “939? Sub-Level thirty-two.”
PENJANI: “In the north-west wing? Idiot! He told me he was moving 173 into that cell. It’s not equipped to contain multiple 939 instances. He’ll kill us all someday.”
JACOBS: “Hopefully not before we kill him first.”
MILES: “Sorry, but if we can’t get the D-Class to help us, then...shouldn’t we call the whole thing off?”
CHEN: “You afraid to take a risk, kid?”
MILES: “I know well enough when something’s not worth getting myself killed over.”
JACOBS: “You don’t wanna die? Shut up!
The room plunged into immediate silence. Miles slowly drifted back into his chair, remembering his place. Jacobs, composing himself, wiped the heat from his brow.
JACOBS: *sigh* “It’s too late to source anyone else for the job, and none of you are expendable. Except perhaps you.”
JACOBS: “I have to be the one who brings 049 to Lambert. He won’t trust anyone else.”
Chen clapped Jacobs on the back with a complimentary palm, much to his annoyance at being touched.
CHEN: *chuckles* “You really do have a death wish, Jacobs, but at least you have the balls to go with it.”
PENJANI: “Jacobs, 049 is not something you want to let your guard down around. He can get in your head, that one. Believe me, I lost a good friend to that thing...one of my last.”
JACOBS: “I’ll be okay. It’s not like I’ll be locked in a room with him. Just need to make sure I live up to my end of the deal...or next time you see me—“
CHEN: “Don’t worry, I’ll put you down.”
JACOBS: “Thanks, ‘preciate ya…”
The three outsiders looked awkwardly between each other, aware of the dead-man amongst them.
PENJANI: “Really could use some booze at this meeting. Goddamn depressing.”
JACOBS / CHEN / MILES: *chuckle lightly*
CHEN: “Part of the pay packet, honey.”
PENJANI: “You get a pay packet?!”
JACOBS: “I was saving this...for a special occasion.”
Jacobs scraped a bottle of scotch out from under his chair, followed by four cups frisked from the canteen. He pours the group a round each.
MILES: “That bottle’s half-empty.”
CHEN: “Leave the man alone. He’s more fucked-up than the rest of us.”
JACOBS: “Ab-so-lutely. Came up with this batshit plan, didn’t I? Cheers.”
The group drinks it all straight down the hatch. Well, almost all.
Chen pats Miles’ back with a little more force than necessary while Jacobs starts on refills.
JACOBS: “Okay. Only water for you.”
MILES: “Sorry, scotch isn’t my type.”
PENJANI: “They don’t serve juice, kid. I can’t remember the last time I had a taste of one of these.”
CHEN: “When this is all over, you should come out with me to the city. Nightclubs there can hook you up with another taste.”
PENJANI: “You don’t want to do that.”
CHEN: “Why not, ‘Mr. Allen Brack’?”
Penjani slams her cup upside-down on the table.
PENJANI: “You couldn’t keep up with me.”
JACOBS: “For a man with a gun, you’ve been letting her get all the shots off, Chen.”
CHEN: “Purely for protection, I assure you. Think I might need it now?”
JACOBS: “I do. I think you bloody might!” *laughs*
Jacobs and Chen toast each other.
PENJANI / MILES: *chuckle*
PENJANI: “You’re not quite how I imagined you, Jacobs.”
JACOBS: “Not much to the imagination. What’d you expect?”
PENJANI: “No. It’s not that. You were different when we met before. You seemed…”
PENJANI: “Soulless.” *Pause* “I saw faces like yours a lot when I was a child.”
JACOBS: “Where did you grow up?”
PENJANI: “Zambia. Just shy of the Congo border. My family fled when the conflicts started, because they knew that of all of us, their children would be most in danger. But lines on a map can’t stop a militia. I lost my brother when I was three, and many, many friends in the years that followed. When I was ten, we hid inside the cellar to keep away from the soldiers. I looked outside to see if they had gone, and saw my brother standing there with a gun and the colours of his kidnappers. He stared, I stared, and though we knew he wanted to hide with us and be free, he knew that there was no hope. That doom would follow him back to us. That’s how all the kadogos looked, they remind me of you.”
Penjani pours another glass, misty-eyed, in another time and space.
PENJANI: “So he left, and the army began patrolling the border from then on. I never saw my brother again.”
Penjani opts to sip from the cup this time.
WILSON: “W—What happened next?”
PENJANI: “We moved, I found my passion for engineering. Left for America to make my fortune and bring my family with me. I thought...I thought it might help my parents be as close as they had been when I was young. They weren’t the same after… Still, I have my love. My creations. Give me a problem, and I’ll fix it.” *hollowly* “I can fix anything.”
CHEN: “I was never much of the hot-fix kinda kid. Always found a way to disappoint, which made me happy in some weird way. Chaotic Neutral that I am. You grew up in Africa, I grew up in China, and not in flashy Hong Kong either. Where I lived, status was everything, and my father expected me to carry on the family business.”
CHEN: “Soldiering. Father was a General, well respected. His daddy before him, and his daddy, etcetera, etcetera. Marrying my mother was a diplomatic move to please the West, and probably the only thing that saved my life in the end.”
JACOBS: “Why, what happened?”
CHEN: “Like I said: troublemaker. I couldn’t stand the absolute adherence to regulations, the constant stick up the arse attitude they all had. But I couldn’t leave, so I just...muddied the playing field a little bit.”
PENJANI: “You played the system.”
CHEN: “Finally, something we agree on. Class politics dictate that you can do any shitty thing you want, just don’t tell anyone about it. Well I was the one who told. Not on myself, everyone else—and not directly either. More like anonymously disseminated blackmail. And since their hierarchy was dropping like flies, eventually they had to promote me somewhere up the line.
JACOBS: “Now I’m waiting for the ball to drop.”
CHEN: “It was too good to go unnoticed, and my superiors felt it in their best interests to make me disappear. Thanks ma. So they packed me in a box and shipped me to America like some foreign exchange soldier.”
JACOBS: “How’d you wind up here?”
CHEN: “Luck? Misfortune? I don’t know. But I don’t know if daddy’s disappointment was because he had a prick of a son, or because I was caught. Hasn’t picked up the phone to check since I left...and yet here I am, still up to my old tricks.”
Jacobs skulls his cup straight down.
PENJANI: “What about you, Jacobs?”
JACOBS: “My life isn’t interesting.”
CHEN: “I doubt that somehow.”
MILES: “I could tell you about my life.”
JACOBS: “You don’t have a life, Wilson, and it’s too late to pretend now.”
Despite the quiet, Jacobs poured another cup and loudly gulped it down, before continuing.
JACOBS: “No parents to speak of, so...I guess that makes me lucky in some regard. Childhood was what you’d expect, government job straight out of secondary school, semi-retired when I landed a job with the Ethics Committee. You know how it is.”
PENJANI: “You always say so little. What is it you are afraid of?”
JACOBS: “My life is a vast and tangled mess of memories that will never leave my mind. There is nothing therapeutic to be gained from monologuing about my abysmal existence in front of you.”
Jacobs’ bitter tone undercut the small vibe of camaraderie that had drifted into the chamber. To disperse it further, perhaps as a result of the booze, Jacobs decided he wasn’t done yet.
JACOBS: “Wilson Miles. Parents: Harry and Marge. Born nineteen-ninety five in Boston, Massachusetts. Moved to Clarke County, Nevada when you were four, shook off the accent as a result. Bullied in school for your diminutive height, loner personality, very introverted, even after you hit puberty early. Developed a video game addiction by age eight, parents suspended your World of Warcraft account one year later. Cultivated an interest in computer sciences as you entered middle school, maintaining your isolation from the other students in favour of digital pursuits. Hit M.I.T. as soon as you left school, dropped out, broke into a secure Pentagon interface used for monitoring special operations in Europe and Asia before you were caught and employed by the government. From there you pissed off some very major figures who decided that they would rather shove you in a hole filled with horrors straight out of some Lovecraftian nightmare than simply fire you. I lied, Miles. You do have a past, it’s just very stupid.”
Chen finally took a sip of his second cup, slowly regarding their host with dubious eyes.
CHEN: “You sure there’s nobody else? Anyone you passed over?”
JACOBS: “No. I thought there was, but...just us now.”
PENJANI: “How did it get to this point? What was all this? Everything Lambert did, to us, to this place… Inhuman.”
JACOBS: “When I first started, I tried to get inside that man’s head. Figure out all the angles I could hit at his weak spots. And that whole time, I tried and I tried to find out just...why he chose here. That was a long fucking rabbit hole, let me tell you.”
Jacobs finished the dregs of his cup, knowing full well the bottle was dry.
MILES: “What’d you find?”
JACOBS: “Money can be made anywhere. That wasn’t a motive. Not power, certainly not love. But it had to be here. Site 19. A place filled with the most inhuman, terrible creatures unknown to mankind. Sometimes I think monsters need to seek each other out, subconsciously. Drawn together by some deep desire in the pit of what remains of their humanity. Because once they’re amongst their own kind, only then can they begin to feel worthy of existence.”
The thoughts stewed in the minds of those around Jacobs.
PENJANI: “Not every monster needs to feel like they belong. Sometimes, people don’t need a reason to be a monster.”
JACOBS: “Mmm. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what’s really buried beneath our humanity. At the core of us.”
Chen finally finished his cup, and placed it on the table.
CHEN: “I don’t mean to bring down the mood, but your parties are depressing as shit. And besides, I gotta get this one home for his bedtime.”
MILES: “Stop treating me like some kinda kid!”
CHEN: “Why? I thought you were into that. Get moving.”
Chen wrenched Miles out of his seat and the pair headed for the exit.
The door creaked open before Jacobs turned to them with a final thought.
JACOBS: “I’ll let you know when the plans are underway.”
CHEN: “Don’t be a stranger.”
The door clanged closed behind them. After a brief pause, Penjani rose from her seat as well.
PENJANI: “Do you really trust them?”
JACOBS: “Trust isn’t really a luxury I can afford in life. Do you?”
PENJANI: “I don’t want to see the worst in people, but often I’m given no other choice. I suppose I’ll see you once this whole thing kicks off.”
PENJANI: “But...but you told—“
Jacobs stood as well, looking evenly into Penjani’s eyes, not at all showing the alcohol hit him.
JACOBS: “I don’t give into trust, but I do allow myself some faith in certain people.”
PENJANI: “Why tell them the rest of the plan and not the date?”
JACOBS: “Call it paranoia, thought someone had searched the place before I got here. Besides, I wanted to make sure I’ve all my options covered. How long will it take to rig up 049’s cell to open remotely?”
PENJANI: “I can throw something together today. Why?”
Jacobs led Penjani towards the door conspiratorily.
JACOBS: “I have a few other requests to make of you—“
Suddenly, the tape recorder clicks over to a new sound. Heavy static fills the air, damage having befallen the audio. The older feeling of hopeful friendships and plans turns cold and dire in the hands of the new man in charge.
LAMBERT: “Did you honestly think you would get away with this?”
LAMBERT: “Well, you won’t be making that mistake again.”
The static becomes overwhelming, obscuring the last few words on the tape. Loud unmistakeable gunshots ring out, followed by pained screams and the sound of the alarm klaxon blaring overhead. As suddenly as it had started, the sound ceased.
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