Awake, Chapter Eight
Ao3 link here
While Ochre was at Spectrum London, Scarlet had been anything but idle. Selecting his scruffiest-looking clothing, the I.D. that best matched it, some cash, and one of the pre-paid bus cards kept at the house, he ventured out into the grey morning.
After visiting three charity shops (and rummaging in their bins for rejected donations), he had an old backpack, a sleeping bag and a blanket, and a collection of second hand clothes: jeans, half-dead sneakers, a long brown scarf, two sweatshirts, three tee-shirts, a pair of fingerless gloves that used to be olive green, a faded navy blue raincoat and a black watch cap, all of them shabby, shapeless and the coat and jeans were a size too big.
Once he was back at the house, he laid everything out on the floor, added more weathering and tattering with his knife, and hid some spare handcuff keys and some lock picks in the hems and waist band. The potted plants beside the lounge windows and the rubbish bin from the kitchen provided things to rub into the clothes to provide stains and some of the smell, and a hearty floor workout in his costume provided the rest.
He hadn’t shaved since leaving Cloudbase so he already had a heavy coating of stubble, and the classic trick of candle wax on stretched skin put a distinctive curving scar under his right eye: like the Australian accent he’d used at the apartment building, it was a focus point for any witnesses to throw the authorities off his scent. Very strong instant coffee swished like mouthwash stained his teeth, and he rubbed more dirt from the potted plants into his fingers and under his fingernails to complete his disguise. He’d gotten himself a takeaway coffee while he was out - he needed the cup, now washed and carefully dried - and he was figuring out what weapons he could take with him when Ochre came back: this was supposed to be a stealth mission after all, and with the way knives were cracked down on, if he was out and about as a homeless person he couldn’t chance taking a gun. As a respectable tradesperson he could get away with it, but not a rough sleeper, a magnet for bobbies.
When Ochre came in after getting the all clear, his double-take was very satisfying. “...I doubt your mom would recognise you in all of that,” was what he finally said.
Scarlet barked out a laugh. “I’m half tempted to see if she will,” he grinned. “Did you get the transmitter?”
“Yup.” Ochre unslung the backpack from his shoulder, put it down on one of the chairs and took out what looked kind of like a mini stapler: the injector unit for the transmitter. “Wearing your tags?” he asked as he checked it over.
Scarlet tugged the chain for his dog tags out from under his clothes and looked at them. They were almost identical to the ones worn by WASP and WAAF - a deliberate design choice for situations like this. It was a risk but… “Yes.” He tucked them back under his clothes. “If I get picked up by Constable Plod I’ll need them to back up my claims. If I get picked up by the suspects, well, they know what I look like anyway.”
“Gotcha. Weapons?”
“I’ll take my Asp.” Scarlet nodded to the collapsing baton he’d put on the table, next to the burner phone he’d use to make his check-ins. “It makes a good yawara if I have to hit someone and the constabulary won’t get as excited about it as they would a knife or a gun.”
“Makes sense.” Checks complete, Ochre came over with the injector unit, a couple of alcohol wipes, and a swab. “Siddown and we’ll get this in. Left or right?”
“Left.” Paul shoved up the sleeves of the coat and sweatshirt he was wearing underneath, took off his watch, sat down at the table and put his arm on the table - this needed stability and a steady hand. He watched as Ochre carefully prodded his wrist to find the landmarks needed for correct placement. The transmitter was as long and wide as two grains of short-grain rice laid end to end, but it had to go between the radius and ulnar, shallow enough to not hit the intraosseous membrane between them, but not so shallow it would pop back out, and right into the little ‘gap’ between the ulnar artery and nerve on the pinkie side of the wrist, and the tendons that made the fingers work.
“Okay, got it.” Ochre grabbed the first wipe and firmly cleaned the spot, rubbing from the centre out in ever expanding circles. The second wipe followed the same path as the first, then Ochre very carefully positioned the business end of the unit against the spot. A check, a fine adjustment of the angle, another check, then, “on three, One, two, three.” Click.
Scarlet winced and grunted, that thing hurt like the dickens! “We’re good?” he asked as Ochre took the injector away and applied pressure with the swab.
While Scarlet took over ‘keep pressure on’ duty, Ochre pushed a button on the side of the applicator and waved it over the injection site, nodding when it beeped once at him. “Yup, in place and good signal. I’ve already sent Green the serial code, he’ll be listening out for it too.”
“Thanks.” Scarlet checked the site, saw it wasn’t bleeding and the scab already looked flakey, and pulled down the sleeves to cover it. His watch stayed off - it was too nice for a rough sleeper to have - and he shoved up his right sleeves so he could put two elastic hair ties on his right arm to hold the small baton in place.
While he made his final preparations, Ochre tidied up and checked the terminal under the stairs. “Okay, nothing yet from Magenta, so I’ll be following you,” he announced as he shut down the computer. “I’ll get changed and head out once you leave.”
“S.I.G.” Scarlet shoved a few granola bars into his backpack, well stuffed with the rest of the things he’d bought as a cover for his disguise. “Don’t rush. I’ll be ambling at best, I’ll draw too much attention if I march on up and sit myself down.” He swung it up onto his shoulder, made sure everything was in place and secure, and took one last look around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. “You be careful as well. Yes, they’re after me, but they’ll quite happily take you if it’ll draw me out.”
“S.I.G.” Ochre glanced at the gun locker beside the computer. “I’ll bring an extra ‘friend’ or two in case we run into trouble.”
“Good idea.” Finally ready, Scarlet made for the back door. He’d climb the fence at the back of the property and into the grassy fields surrounding the industrial area behind the houses. A little cross-country and he’d be on Bath Road. From there it’d be a bus, two trains, and a walk. ‘I should get there just after 1800.’ He glanced up at the threatening sky as he shut the back door behind him. ‘Here’s hoping that holds off, or this is going to get pretty miserable, pretty quick.’
0o0o0
“Tea or coffee, Mr Winslow?”
Chuck looked up from his paperback and smiled at the pretty flight attendant. “Coffee please, black with one sugar.”
“Of course, sir.” She turned away, and the promised cup appeared a short time later.
“Thanks,” Chuck smiled again, then looked at the disappointingly small cup. Typical. ‘Even on a Fireflash, ‘the Rolls Royce of the skies’ they skimp wherever they can. Oh well. Coffee is coffee.’ He set his book aside and sipped the decidedly tepid coffee as he looked out the window and watched the clouds, and far below that, the distant Atlantic Ocean, whip past them.
Things were progressing well, all things considered. The Nevada site was perfect, an old NASA Mars-habitat research facility that’d been mothballed just five years ago, it barely needed any work to bring it up to spec. Jericho had three names already, and all of their backers were drooling over what they could do with harder-to-kill agents. ‘It’s a pity we have to rush things and force him out into the open instead of waiting for another opportunity, but the bosses want what the bosses want.’ Chuck kept his frown internal. They were so impatient! If they’d just let them manage this themselves, it’d have been much easier, much quieter, and not nearly as attention-grabbing as three attempted assassinations! ‘But then again they’re not the ones risking an angry augmented special ops hunting for them. It’s easy for them to order us to stick their necks out. Ah well.’
The coffee finished, Chuck put down the cup and went back to pretending to read. With today’s developments Debora needed help setting more fires around Spectrum London. They had a window of opportunity, but it was going to shut fast. Jericho couldn’t be spared from his recruiting, so it’d fallen to him to cross the pond and go assist. ‘All going well, I’ll be there by 1800.’
He turned a page in his book, a pulp fiction fantasy that he’d only grabbed because it had an oriental-style dragon on the front, and his eyes landed on a word: ‘immortality’. He had to resist the urge to smirk. It was almost serendipitous.
His family, like so many, were immigrants to America, fourth generation. Genealogy, that connection back to the lands of their ancestors, had been a great passion of his father’s, to the point that the 18th birthday gift for each of his children had been a massive bound book: the genealogy of their families, traced back as far as possible.
Chuck hid his smile like he’d hid his frown. His big brother, so Americanised he only ever used his American name - Aaron - had thanked their father with that fake smile put on for gifts that weren’t that great, riffled through the end of the book until he found their names, then put it down and went to go play football with his buddies.
He, however, even though only sixteen, had taken down that book and spent night after night studying it, working back in time as he traced convoluted family trees and researched what was happening in the world when so-and-so or such-and-such was born… and then he’d come to a fateful name. Chuck remembered that thrill when he’d read the characters, both archaic and modern, followed by the English translations: Yunying, or Jin Yunying, his direct maternal ancestor, and third sister of Puyi, the last Manchurian Emperor of China.
Royalty and nobility, both generations deep, ran through his blood.
The effect on him had been electric. He wasn’t just anyone, he was special, and his family had carried the mandate of heaven - a mandate that he was determined to somehow recapture, if not for himself, then for his children. He’d quietly checked and confirmed he could make a good case for citizenship in the United Asian Republic, and then he’d buried his dream deep down inside himself. To get to where he needed to be, he became like his brother, the best American he could be, fully loyal to the red white and blue - but that was only on the outside. All this time he’d been fostering contacts, making friends and allies, and building alliances for when the day came and he could start to turn his dream of regaining his birthright into reality. ‘But there’s something I need first, and Scarlet’s the key to it.’
Immortality.
The still-lingering chaos in the wake of the assassination of the previous Director General of the UAR showed that democracy had a very large Achilles Heel, not to mention the utter shambles so many countries were left in when the charismatic leader they elected was all show and no substance. But someone raised from birth to rule, educated and moulded and shaped, their successor already picked and primed for a smooth transition, that was a different story altogether. ‘And if I can be immortal, if I can have what my ancestors strove for, I can play the long game. I’ll get myself elected, train my successor, then guide them from the background. I can give them wisdom and experience so they don’t make mistakes, and the glory of the Middle Kingdom can be reborn, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.’
This time, Chuck couldn’t hide his smile as he dreamed of what could be.
0o0o0
While the Fireflash started to make its descent and Scarlet waited for the first of his two trains, Major Laurel was standing at her desk, her hands planted flat on its surface so she wouldn’t - and couldn’t - curl them into the fists she dearly wanted to make.
Across from her, Lieutenant Cream was whiter than his tunic, and the two non-coded lieutenants flanking him didn’t look any better. The only point in their favour was that after alerting Major Perse, the chief of security, they had come to her to confess, but that point was very, very small in the face of the monumental cock-up they’d made.
“What,” Laurel began in a low, cold voice, “do you mean the prisoner has escaped? This is Spectrum LONDON!” The words surged out of her in a roar. “We are the PREMIER terrestrial base of Spectrum!” Narrow-eyed, she dropped her tone and volume to a hiss. “Prisoners do not simply ‘escape’ this building. Explain.”
Cream swallowed hard enough his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “M-ma’am, they-they-they had the paperwork…” he stammered out. “Transfer to S-S-Spectrum Wales, ma’am. When we didn’t get the ‘prisoner received’ call from Wales we realised…”
“And you didn’t think to confirm with me before moving a prisoner?” Laurel interrupted him with a snarl.
“N-no ma’am.” Cream was quivering in his boots now. “I-I thought…”
“Shut up.” Major Laurel pushed herself upright and pointed to the outer office. “Full report, all details, everything you remember, write it all down, now!”
The trio bolted.
As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, Major Laurel stabbed the intercom on her desk. “Laurel to Perse, anything?”
“Nothing good, Major,” Perse, as usual, was sounding completely unruffled. Nothing flapped the woman. “We have the leak, one of the guards on the holding cell thought it was funny and ran his mouth. It must have been passed up through the chain and Interlink sent a rescue party with fake transfer documents. I’ve checked, the SSC’s already been returned to the Fleetway depot. I’ve already got the guard and there’s someone enroute to check out the depot, but they’ve already got almost four hours’ head start on us.”
“Damnit.” Laurel drew in a deep breath. “Do we have any idea where they’ll have gone from there?”
“No, Major.”
Laurel dropped into her chair with a groan, holding her head in her hands. Her head had been pounding since midday, ever since the attacks she’d been living off caffeine and cat-napping at most, now everything was starting to blur into one great big blob. “Perse, remind me, what did Carter do? What was he in charge of?”
A pause, then, “Carter was in logistics. His tasks were receiving shipments, dispatching parts and supplies, and…”
She lifted her head, that hesitation did not bode well. “And what, Perse?”
“...stocking the safe houses.”
