Tag: dec

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Restricted (part two)

Dec scoured the ceiling with his gaze while he found just the right words. “Well you see,” he bellowed over the next song, “I’m kind of on the clock. Weird hours.” He shifted in his seat, pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket. It was another origami piece, this time a paper balloon that was collapsed. “Ever see one of these?”, he asked. “I think so. You’re supposed to pull on these corners then blow in the hole to pop it open, and look inside, right?” “You got it. Try it.” Res studied it briefly, lifted it up by the “wings”, and puffed into the exposed hole on the end, inflating the balloon. She peered inside, where a little handwritten note said “Is it private here?”. Res slowly sat the balloon down, stared at Dec, and nodded yes. “Good,” Dec said, “because I have another message to deliver. I don’t know who this is for, but you guys gotta stop chasing this ghost. It sounds dangerous. They’re getting more than concerned. Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t exactly twist my arm to get me to deliver the message, and I hate that it has to be like this, but…” Before Dec could finish his sentence, Res practically jumped across the table and laid a passionate kiss on him, feeling some stubble grind into her tender skin. The contrast just made her more excited. “Let’s finish this lecture later,” she said as she started pulling his shirt over his head. Dec was stunned but he put up no resistance; business and pleasure, why not? Res quickly reached behind herself and instantly released her bra before removing her own shirt, pressing her skin against his with another kiss. She felt his heart pounding. It was powerful, nearly audible. Without losing the embrace, Dec stood up and carried her to the bedroom, quickly noticing a new toothbrush still in the packaging at the foot of the bed.

After some time, lying flat on his back covered in sweat and Res’ lipstick, with Res draping herself over his massive frame, left leg overlapping his own, he took a really good look at her. Skin, impossibly soft and young to the touch. If he hadn’t read her file, he might have easily mistaken her for a 17-year-old, and this would never have gone this far. Her eyes were a light brown, hazel color, even here in the dimly lit bedroom, they looked like there was an inner light making them glow. He reached over with his Terminator arm and stroked the shaved side of her head which felt freshly shaven. Her gaze darted around his face as he touched her gently, apparently awaiting some more encouraging words. He managed to pet the side of her head that wasn’t shaved and was surprised at how soft her hair was. “Most men aren’t this touchy; I’m surprised you’re still awake with me. This whole touching business is usually me after the guy falls asleep,” Res cooed, while she absorbed every brutal detail of his scars and his iron-jawed visage. Contrast. Suddenly she was transported back in time, mentally, to the story about how her parents met. Was this what mom experienced, the first time? This infatuation, this weird appreciation for the exotic?

Dec announced that he was overdue for a bathroom break and ducked into the bathroom to relieve himself. His scent was already soaked into the pillow and sheets where he was laying, and Res didn’t miss an opportunity to deeply inhale what he had left behind. There were no hints of colognes, or aftershave, or anything of that nature. It was just…his sweat, with a hint of some kind of soap. As Dec returned to the bed, he reached for the toothbrush. “Not so fast, soldier,” Res teased. She wasn’t done, and led him by the hand to the shower. Res traced the scar around his arm with a single finger. She couldn’t comprehend what was under the skin.  

The next morning, Res was still asleep as Dec performed his sit up straight and get out of bed routine. He headed to the kitchen and started brewing some coffee with the percolator, after fishing around in the cabinets for mugs and coffee beans. He really didn’t want to reinforce the message with Res, but he had to. That was the whole point of coming over, and this was no time to get attached. But before he could even come up with a nicer way of breaking it to Res, he heard her from the bedroom. “If you’re making coffee, I want some,” she said, “doesn’t need to be fancy, I’ll drink it black.” Of course you will. That’s the way Dec was making it. He didn’t have the luxury of sugar or milk during wartime, so he learned to like it black. Tasted better anyway, as long as the beans were fresh.

Res arrived in the kitchen looking like a big kid, with Dec’s oversized shirt practically swallowing her whole. This was the awkward time, the morning after, and she sensed an uneasiness hanging in the air. What was last night? Just two desperate loners looking for a connection, or something better? She had to tread lightly. Decided to keep it light. “Good, you found everything”, she said, smiling approvingly, as she admired the fresh cup, still steaming. “Yep. I did. But at my place, everything is about 3 feet higher. You’d be crawling up the cabinets if the roles were reversed. Nearly threw out my back bending down for this stuff,” Dec joked, and Res grinned as she blew the steam away for her first sip. “Listen, Res, about last night…”, said Dec, “I don’t want it to be weird. We’re two adults, and here we are sharing some coffee. But that wasn’t my whole intent of coming over. I know how this sounds, but allow me to finish.” Res nodded and sipped the hot coffee, not sure where this was going.

Dec paused as he took a drink, then continued. “I’ll say this one last time, and be done with it. You remember before, the warning about ghosts? Well, there is a lot of interest, and it involves you, Sheepdog, and hell, maybe even Beat. Too many eyes watching for something that shouldn’t exist. Looking too closely. You gotta stop looking. If you find something, well, I don’t know what the next step is, but it’s bad, maybe even deadly. Tell your buddy Sheepdog too. Maybe even word for word. Don’t get me wrong, I like you Res, and that’s half the reason I’m saying this in person.”

Res was staring at him, wide-eyed now, soaking it all in. What could happen if they did find something? What if they already found it but just didn’t know what they had seen? She could tell, Dec was dead serious. This was their last warning. Whatever was going on, she felt they needed to get about ten miles from it, immediately. “So if that’s half the reason, what’s the other half?”, she quipped.

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Restricted (part one)

After returning home, Res got a call on her comms. It was Dec, right on schedule. “Hey Res, just returning your call. What’s up?” He was playing it cool, as if none of this was his idea. “Dec, thanks for calling me back,” Res said, “I think you wanted to meet with a friend.” She lingered on the word friend, and bit her bottom lip, hoping that came out right. Dec didn’t seem to mind as he said, “Yeah, I could meet with a friend. This friend would probably have to come over here though. I’m in for the night but have time for some discussion.” Again, Dec was coming off a little too formal. Res was having trouble reading him, her head swimming in liquor and some ideas starting to bubble up. Meet at his home? She really wanted to, but she wasn’t sure about the circumstances. Still, the idea of pushing forward to explore her fate was too tempting. “Do I need to bring anything with me?”, she asked, probing. “Maybe a toothbrush and some origami paper”, Dec replied dryly. She couldn’t tell if he was joking around or there was something else going on here. “I’ve got a few shots of your favorite whiskey if that’ll seal the deal”, Dec added, trying to tip the scales. He heard some hesitance in her voice, and they weren’t exactly dating, but more liquor would probably loosen her nerves a little. It was a bold ask.

Res hemmed and hawed for a minute, glanced at the clock, and cleared her throat. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to stop by, but what about coming over here?” Dec sensed the mistrust. She had every right to distrust him at this point, and in her own home, she would probably feel safer. “Only if I can borrow your toothbrush,” he said with a half grin. The subtext was clear. Dec wasn’t just planning on stopping by for a nightcap. He was up to something. Res knew exactly what that something was, it wasn’t her first rodeo. “Give me about 15 minutes,” she said, “let me get this place in some kind of order real quick. You know where I live, I assume?” Dec knew, but feigned ignorance, to avoid giving away the plot. “I’m over on Spectre Street, unit 3050. Third floor, top of the stairs,” she said. “See you in 10-15 minutes. Does your roof have a (landing) pad?”, Dec asked. “Yeah, they installed it a few years ago. Nobody uses it, not too many fancy quads flying around this neighborhood. It’s all yours,” Res said, as her anticipation began to increase. How could he afford to fly a quadcopter on his pension? With Dec, it had been one question after another, and she was dying to get some answers.

She took a few minutes to punt her floor clothes into the laundry closet and check her breath. Funky. This called for a mint, but it would just turn her breath into Goldschlager, a peppermint laced liquor. Even brushing her teeth briefly wouldn’t have changed the funk, just mask it for a few minutes, and Dec was bringing whiskey anyway. She rinsed out a couple of shot glasses and checked the fridge for a few beers. Some Jamaican lager, Red Stripe, was about all she had left. It would have to do. Time was running out and she did another once over in the bathroom mirror, just making sure everything was in place. Teeth, check. Lipstick, bright. Nails, glued on. Legs, depilated. Other areas, also depilated. This was as good as she got on short notice. As she left the bathroom and the light automatically faded off, she heard the tell-tale high-pitched whine of a quadcopter landing, above, and the motors spinning down. A few moments later and there was a knock at the door, and she was already standing there. Before she opened the door, she quickly messaged Sheep on her comms.

Got company. Not really sure if it’s good news or bad. Will talk tomorrow. – Res

With the way things worked, from her point of view, if anything bad was going to happen, at least Sheep would be suspicious if she didn’t follow up the next day. Just a precaution. She wanted Dec there.

She waved her hand in front of the door sensor, and two bolts retracted immediately. A third mechanism silently began opening the door, and Dec came into full view. She had forgotten how he absolutely towered over her when they were both standing. Dec cracked a crooked grin, held up the bottle, and said, “nice place. Real nice. Mind if I come in?” Res was still reeling by the absolute size of him, heart pounding in her chest, and stammered, “oh, yeah, of course. Make yourself at home.” She smiled, but it was simultaneously a nervous grin and a hungry, toothy smile. She broke eye contact as Dec made his way into the room. “You live alone here?”, he asked, making small talk. “Most of the time, yes. Sometimes Sheep crashes on the couch. I’ve offered him the second bedroom but he never makes it that far.” Dec got about halfway into the room and motioned, with the bottle, towards the shot glasses in the kitchen. “How about we do a little damage first?”, he asked. Res obediently retrieved the glasses from the sink and placed them carefully on the table, lined up vertically in the center. Dec removed the cork cap and poured two fingers of whiskey each, before re-capping the bottle and placing it on the table. “Chasers?”, he asked, and Res opened the fridge to retrieve the Red Stripe beers, carefully setting them down on opposite sides of the table. Dec took a seat opposite Res and lifted his shot high. “How about a toast? To strangers, to ghosts, to Sheepdog and Res!”. Res dutifully lifted her shot, tapped glasses, and emptied her glass before taking a swig from her Red Stripe. She noticed Dec didn’t touch his beer, yet.

Res was feeling, well, a lot. Dec had walked in like he owned the place and started guiding her around like it was a regular thing. Then again, did it say anything about him, or the kind of soldier he was before? Or did it say something about Res, that she was happy to have company, especially this company? “What was that toast about, honestly?”, Res probed. “Well, I figured it was perfect, for setting the stage here. Hey, do you like music? I swear, I can’t go ten minutes without some background noise. Ears ring most of the time; old injury, and music helps,” he replied. Res looked away and thought for a second, trying to guess his genre. “Iris, play artist Metallica, song, Harvester of Sorrow”, she said to her automation system, and instantly, Metallica was streaming from seemingly everywhere. “Louder,” Dec said. “Iris, increase volume 30 percent.” Now it was rocking as the intro built up tension, primal drums pounding out the beat. Dec was looking directly at Res, eyes half closed, before closing his eyes and doing a little headbang motion to the beat. He didn’t see Res blush for a moment as she tried to keep eye contact. He’s funny, she thought, as she watched him rhythmically bob to the song, and it was undeniable at this point. He will get what he came for; information, or something more…personal. Maybe both. Maybe neither. That toast said just about everything she was worried about and nothing more.

As the song began to end, Dec poured another shot and, noticing Res’ glass was empty, went ahead and poured hers too. This time it was her turn. “A toast, to friends, mysteries, and whatever the hell this whole thing is tonight”. Dec chuckled, tapped glasses, and downed the shot. Now it was time to crack open the beer, that second shot had some heat with it. “Look,” he started, “we can play games for a while. That’s fine by me. I like your place, I like this whiskey, and I’ll be damned if I don’t like Metallica, loud. Most of all, I’m pretty sure, I like you.” Res felt another blush but couldn’t tell if it was the whiskey or his statement. “The feeling is mutual,” she chirped, “but you didn’t just come here to throw back shots with a pretty girl. What’s on your mind?”

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Digital Equipment Corporation (cont.)

His Team Lead confirmed his suspicions. It was Sheepdog that was playing ghost hunter, and he was getting too close, way too fast. Dec respected his tenacity and detective skills, because Dec still had no idea what all the fuss was about. The Team Lead suggested that maybe someone had cracked the mystery of optical camouflage, and was actively using it to avoid video surveillance. This was bad news for a lot of people and organizations that relied on it, including the judges, the courts, the cops, and last but not least, his own employer. The AI didn’t have a single pair of eyes, they had thousands of them, going beyond the visible spectrum into the realm of thermal and night vision. But evidently, this new tech that nobody knows exists, does exist, and nobody has any idea of who is using it.

Splicer had “missing footage” of a person that did use it. Person, or people, or…. they could only speculate. All they really knew was that if Splicer had a blind spot, no one could know. It would ruin their reputation. They weren’t even sure if it was a set of cameras, or satellites, that were somehow faulty or compromised. The stakes had been raised. In the wrong hands, this kind of tech would give a huge advantage to an enemy, a murderer, any kind of opposing force. Yet it was out there, in the wild, known only by the images it didn’t leave behind.

Now, even Dec was starting to feel a little creeped out by the situation. He remembered a few engagements during the war when his crew had been totally blindsided by a column of drones headed straight to their position. The highest tech in the world, and something slipped past all the defenses, electronic and kinetic. The electronic countermeasures failed, satellites were obscured by dust storms, and some spotters were looking the other direction for a little too long. It forced him to accept that even the best equipped, best trained, best protected force known to man still had vulnerabilities. That was usually the way of war; a fast tank must have light armor. Light armor was a tradeoff. Couldn’t survive a direct hit to the turret, but could outrun just about anything else. All those gadgets, all those batteries, satellites, sniper spotters… all it took was a few minutes for it all to break down before the drone swarms arrived. “Stay frosty” was in his vocabulary because nothing was really truly buttoned up on the battlefield. There were just long quiet stretches of time broken up by very loud times, and you had to keep a cool head to know the difference and react when action was required.

This was one of those times that required action.

Dec floated his idea of covertly getting a message to Res, who would then be compelled to contact him directly, for another meeting. Dec would need details, insight, and a little luck. She was already friendly with him, flirty even, so gaining her trust wouldn’t be much trouble. He could casually interrogate her through conversation, if he could get her alone and relaxed. Although she worked with Sheepdog and may know more about this than Dec did, Dec couldn’t ask too many questions or raise her suspicions. Especially since they all knew the reach Splicer had, as an organization, and what it was capable of doing if it felt threatened.

“Tip of the spear”, the Team Lead told him before they wrapped up the call. “You’ve got to be the tip of the spear. We don’t know what’s at stake here, honestly, but if I’m discussing it with you and the rest of the team, clearly, it’s got us all very, very concerned. I trust you’ll carry this out, Dec. Keep most of it under wraps, and get that damned Sheepdog 50 miles from this thing. Whatever you tell Res, don’t tip your hand. We need to reinforce the trust in Splicer, not sow doubt, especially not internally. Everyone believes in what we do here.” Dec wasn’t so sure about that last sentence.

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Digital Equipment Corporation

Dec awoke abruptly, as he usually did, sitting up in bed straight and fast. Some parts of his training never went away. He reached over and decocked the pistol he slept with, carefully thumbing the hammer to ride it down slowly and carefully. Once he was awake, that was it, there was no alarm-slapping or turning to the cold side of the pillow and grabbing a few extra minutes. Rise and shine. He reached over to his dump plate on a bedside table, placed his gun there and traded it for his Overwatch ring. It didn’t have an official name, since he didn’t have an official title. Dec and his team were essentially a black op. They didn’t even show up on the Splicer budget. Some clever nerd in accounting spread their budget out across office supplies and a hundred other mundane things, paid to all kinds of fake shell companies, eventually landing in Dec’s team’s phony consulting firm. The money was good but the action was lacking, most of the time. There’s that old question, who watches the watchers?

That’s where Dec and his team came in. They watched the watchers. Good thing too, because on more than one occasion, someone at Splicer would go off on a tangent, looking too closely at something or someone. For an organization that sells digital and physical defense, they needed rock solid people behind the scenes. That was true for the most part but again, once in a while a curious cat stumbled across something they shouldn’t. They would also abuse their powers of surveillance, which was a recurring theme so it must have been tempting for a lot of analysts. One time it was harmless. An ASE started collecting footage of some random woman, and as time went by, he studied the footage so carefully, he crafted a plan to date the woman. He already knew her habits, what she liked to eat, her routine, at least everything you could know as a sort of private investigator. Dec’s team was assigned to the ASE in question to make sure he didn’t take it too far. Physical contact was a big no no. After all, the Splicer Organization was basically an urban myth to most people. By the time the ASE made it to the woman, it would be too late, so they watched and waited, but more importantly, they warned him first.

Warnings are very effective, especially when you know more than the target; living and working in a shadow layer of the company had its advantages. The ASE decided to make his move on a Friday night, with an attempt to bump into the woman at the grocery store. As he crossed the threshold into the store, Dec and Sharp took one arm each, and led the ASE to an unpopular corner of the store. Five minutes later, the ASE got the picture and decided to leave. Apparently, he was so shaken up by the experience, he didn’t return to the office for a week, and even then, he tried to turn in his resignation letter. His manager ripped it up and pointed at his desk without saying a word. The ASE didn’t put up a fight. The message was delivered and received and he was welcome to continue working, minus that one thing.

“Dec, get out of your head”, he thought to himself. There were other things to do besides reminisce about his job, and he refused to let his mind wander too far. He had some rough years in the war, saw a lot of damage first-hand and among his group. The biggest problem with modern medicine and technology was just how much damage it could repair, and how quickly. He saw men missing a leg one day and back in action a week later on some custom-made carbon fiber replacement. In the old days, you were out of action and sent back home. Now, the battlefield could become home, with short stints in field hospitals just behind the lines to get stapled back together and doped up to your eyeballs. This led to a whole new form of PTSD, but they called it Extended Battlefield Trauma, because it dug deeper due to all the nonstop stress. They were still ironing out therapies to treat a lot of the vets, but most vets chose to deal with it the way generations before them had dealt with it. A group of friendly vets and plenty of liquor, on a regular basis. None of them were time bombs, but many of them had unimaginably deep mental wounds. From time to time, the Moderns would give them some new experimental brain drug designed to help rewire your brain and return you to “normal”, but at best, these new drugs just helped them cope and get by day to day. Life was still damaged.

“No seriously, GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD”, Dec muttered under his breath. Gotta go somewhere, gotta do something besides think. He cracked open his remote terminal and checked for messages. There was only one, and the title alone riled up Dec. It read, “Ghostbusters Needed Immediately”. He knew what came next. Either Res or someone on her team hadn’t gotten the message to stop digging into whatever this ghost footage was. Why was this such a problem? He was sure that Res got the message and didn’t need a reminder. He looked over her profile, and she seemed very risk-averse, preferring not to poke any bears or stir up any trouble. Even her teammate Sheepdog didn’t seem like much of a threat, but Dec couldn’t exactly apply more pressure, or these bloodhounds would just be convinced they were following the scent and never give it a rest. Dec decided to bump into Res again at the Meatspace bar where he would pass her some sort of secret note, leading to another face-to-face meeting. Since he was convinced that Res wasn’t pursuing the ghost anymore, she would have to be persuaded to get Sheepdog to drop the bone, if he was the one still hot on whatever this trail was. However, before any action was taken, Dec would have to run the idea up the flagpole and see what his Team Lead had to say about it. He already had contact with Res and he didn’t want to run her off. So he requested a meeting with his lead, and began plotting his next move.