Forever Until Tomorrow (War Eternal Book 5) Page 9

  Hopefully, Colonel Mitchell Hogarth would have something to offer.

  First things first.

  19

  Reggie picked up a french fry and shoved it into his mouth, chewing quickly, swallowing, and repeating. He couldn't remember the kinds of foods he had eaten before, but he was certain that none of them tasted as good as this.

  How could anyone forget anything with so much delicious, salty flavor?

  He didn't see Detective Lyle enter the diner. He didn't know the man was there until he appeared on his left and slid onto the booth seat across from him.

  "Nice place, isn't it?" Lyle said, motioning to the decor. "Can you believe we used to make things that looked like this?"

  Reggie eyed the diner. Red leather bench seats, lots of chrome, and waitresses in powder blue dresses and white aprons. Now that he was paying attention, it did seem out of place.

  "Ancient history," Lyle continued. "The food hasn't changed all that much though."

  The waitress stopped at the table.

  "Hey, Carson," she said.

  "Joan. I'll have whatever he was having."

  "Three orders of french fries?"

  Carson laughed. "Maybe a burger to go with one order."

  "Sure, Detective."

  "Three orders?" Lyle said to Reggie.

  "I've been waiting for you. I can't pay for this."

  "Of course, you can't. Let's cut to the chase, Reggie. You know something. I know you do. I can see it in those eyes of yours. They're experienced. Veteran."

  "You aren't going to believe me."

  "If you thought that, you wouldn't have asked me to come."

  "Maybe I would have. I'm desperate."

  "What happened to you the night you were found?"

  "I don't know."

  "Honestly?"

  "I'm not bullshitting you, Detective. I don't remember. My name? I don't know that either. The nurses at St. Mary's named me Reggie. Hell, I don't even know why. Was it in the report you read?"

  "No."

  "What I do know is that I was sitting in the hospital for twenty years. Then I saw a report on that terrorist attack in New York and I had to get out of there. I've been having nightmares since the day they brought me in. Visions of darkness and death and silence. They're connected to the Dove. I don't know how, but they are."

  "Maybe you just think they are because you know your history? A mysterious figure found the same night the XENO-1 crashed? You're already confused about your identity, it would be an easy step to take."

  "Yes, it would. And up until the point that I got into that car and it started to drive itself with me trapped inside, up until the point that it dumped me in the river, I was thinking the same thing. Wondering if I really was crazy, and if I were creating a fictional world around me to support my beliefs. Unless you're a figment of my imagination, I'm ready to rule that out."

  "I'm sure I'm real," Lyle said. "But a figment would say that, too."

  "I didn't want to tell you back at the station because I need to know if I can trust you. If I tell you the rest, will you help me?"

  "I can work with the department to arrange-"

  "No," Reggie said, cutting him off. "Not the department. You. Only you. Forget about your position as a St. Louis Detective. I want to talk to the Marine."

  Lyle was frozen as he considered. Reggie knew he would cave. His curiosity was going to win out. So was his patriotism.

  "You want to trust me?" Lyle said at last. "I could get into a lot of trouble by trusting you."

  "Someone tried to kill me today. Yes, you could."

  Joan returned with the burger and fries, placing it in front of Lyle. He didn't touch them.

  "I have a wife to think about," he said.

  "I understand. If you can't help me yourself, maybe you can at least help me get to New York?"

  "Why New York?"

  "I need to speak to Major Katherine Asher."

  "Who?"

  "She's a pilot. She's supposed to be on the crew of the Dove for her maiden voyage. She was injured in the attack."

  "Why do you want to talk to her?"

  "I don't know. I feel a need to ever since I saw her name."

  "How do I know you don't want to hurt her?"

  "You don't. I don't even know that. If you help me, you can stop me if I do."

  "That has to be the most backward request I've ever heard."

  "I'll say it again, Detective. Someone tried to kill me today. They did it by hacking a system that you say hasn't been hacked in forty years. They've been looking for me for twenty years, and they located me within a matter of hours. Whatever I'm not remembering, I have a feeling it's important. At this point, I'm starting to wonder if losing my mind was an accident."

  He said it before he thought it, as though a subconscious truth had suddenly bubbled up to the surface. He paused then, catching the reverberation of the idea. Was he right?

  Lyle stared down at his burger for a minute before returning his attention to Reggie. "Fine. You win. If you are mixed up in something monumental, I don't want to be the one that let you slip away to do it."

  "Thank you, Detective. You won't regret it."

  "I know it's cliche, but I already do. So, tell me what you know and we'll go from there."

  20

  "So the car was talking to you?"

  Lyle took another bite out of his burger, and then lifted the shake he had ordered to go with it.

  "Someone was. He didn't tell me who he was, but he asked me if the name Watson held any meaning."

  "Do you think that's your name?"

  "No. It isn't. Whoever this Watson is, we aren't friends. I'm sure of that."

  "He's the one who tried to kill you?"

  "Probably."

  "Do you know who he is?"

  "No. I know he can hack into automated cars. Or his people can. The speaker also mentioned a search algorithm that was looking for me. I think he has hooks into private systems. Secure systems."

  "And what? I'm not supposed to tell anybody about that?"

  "Would they believe you? Based on the ramblings of a man who's been committed for the last twenty years?"

  "The facts don't lie. That's why I'm still sitting here. Anyway, what about the other name? Mitchell? Maybe that's you?"

  "It could be. That's who the person driving the car thought I was. Even if I am, I know as much about Mitchell as you do."

  Lyle was silent for a minute. Thinking. "We need to put the puzzle together. I'm looking at the pieces. You. Watson. Major Asher. XENO-1. The AIT. The Dove. A terrorist attack. An attempted drowning. How does it all fit? What's the common thread?"

  "Someone's trying to stop something from happening," Reggie said.

  "The AIT doesn't want the Dove to fly. They say it's because they're afraid we'll find more aliens, and that they won't be friendly. That we're setting ourselves up to be annihilated. Major Asher would be connected to the Dove as a pilot. Let's say you're connected to her and Watson is connected to you. Then we can infer that Watson has some relation to the AIT. Either as a member or as an outside party that is supporting them."

  "That makes sense," Reggie agreed. "Except how can I be connected to Major Asher? I've never met her."

  "How do you know?"

  "I'm probably old enough to be her father."

  "Maybe you are?" Lyle's smile was large. He had a sense of humor after all. "Seriously, you were the one who said you felt drawn to her. Whatever the reason is, that makes you connected."

  "Okay," Reggie said. "So the AIT is trying to keep the Dove grounded. They attacked a party and killed a bunch of high-ranking officials, which may prove to at least delay the launch. They also came after me the moment I stepped outside of the hospital. I think the question becomes - what do I have to do with the Dove? I'm not a pilot. I'm not even remotely affiliated with it. I was at St. Mary's long before the project was ever conceived."

  "Which circles you back to crazy. Except yo
u aren't crazy. I'm convinced of that. Is it possible that someone saw the XENO-1 coming before it reached Earth? Is it possible you knew about it and wanted to go public, and they stopped you?"

  "By burning my arms and leaving me half-dead in the street? Why not just kill me?"

  "Maybe they thought they did?"

  "No. I don't think they would have been so careless. Besides, if it were about that, why keep a lookout for me over the next twenty years? Why attack me now?"

  "Then it's about the Dove," Lyle said. "There's nothing else that even starts to fit, and you can put a puzzle together by excluding pieces as well as you can by including them."

  "I need to go to New York."

  "Not New York. Norfolk, Virginia."

  "Norfolk?"

  "Major Asher was transferred to the former naval base there. It's a UEA joint-operations base now that boats are outdated tech. She was admitted to the hospital there."

  "How do you know all that?"

  Lyle tapped the side of his AR glasses. "Former Marine. I have connections."

  "The military is broadcasting her location? That doesn't seem smart, does it?"

  "They got the terrorists."

  "What if there are more?"

  "On a military base? I think she's pretty safe there."

  "Fine. I need to get to Norfolk." Reggie leaned back in his seat, reaching into the pocket of the pants they had given him. He pulled out the small box. "First, maybe you can help me with something else?"

  "What's that?" Lyle asked.

  "You didn't open it at the station when you took it from me?"

  "Not legal without justifiable cause. Someone would have had to stick something on you."

  Reggie put the box on the table and pushed it across. Lyle picked it up and opened it.

  "I don't know what it is," Reggie said. "It's the only thing I had on me when they found me, all those years ago."

  "This predates XENO-1," Lyle said. "I haven't seen one of these since I was five years old."

  "You know what it is?"

  "A data card. An old data card. They found you with this, and they didn't try to figure out what's on it?"

  "Maybe they did? I didn't even remember that I had it. It could be encrypted."

  Lyle laughed. "And you forgot the password? That wouldn't surprise me. Talk about a clue, though."

  "Do you know how we can see what's on it?"

  "Nothing made in the last fifteen years is going to be able to read a card like this." Lyle picked up his shake and took another sip, his expression thoughtful. "Yeah, I think I know someone who might have the equipment to open it up."

  "We should go talk to them."

  "It isn't going to be that simple, Mitchell. She -"

  "Why did you just call me Mitchell?" Reggie said. The name felt both familiar and foreign. It seemed to fit, but it was tight and confining.

  "Because it's your name. Does it bother you to hear it?"

  "You don't have proof that I'm Mitchell."

  "I have more proof that you are then you do that you aren't. Look, if you lost memories on purpose, maybe associating with what you do know will help you pull them back."

  "You're a doctor now?"

  "If you don't want me to call you that, I won't. But it might help."

  Reggie thought about it. Why should he hold onto a name he knew wasn't his? One with no meaning, handed down by the nurses at St. Mary's? Lyle was right. Maybe it would help him remember.

  "No. You're right. Mitchell it is. Now, what's the problem with this contact of yours?"

  21

  The first problem with the contact, as Mitchell learned, was that she was a career criminal, the kind of contact that Detectives didn't want to go within one hundred feet of unless they absolutely had to.

  The second problem was that she had only recently been released from prison, after spending half a dozen years incarcerated thanks to evidence collected by Detective Lyle.

  Meaning that the contact, a former teacher named Evelyn Shine, didn't care for Lyle, and the feeling was mutual. Unfortunately, the Detective couldn't come up with another resource to help get access to the data card. Technology always moved fast, and it had seen an even more massive shift since scientists had started putting things they learned on the XENO-1 to practical use. As Lyle later explained, there were already whispers that the increasing prevalence of AI meant the singularity was quickly approaching, and humankind's glory days were going to fade behind the Dove as it activated its untested hyperdrive engines.

  It took Lyle most of the day to track Dr. Shine down, bringing Mitchell along as he shook down and bribed his contacts for information about her whereabouts. The process was also slower than usual because they couldn't rely on standard channels, assuming that Watson and the AIT were monitoring them. Mitchell also figured they had to know he hadn't died by now, and he enjoyed the thought of his unknown adversary kicking himself for screwing it up.

  Night had fallen by the time Mitchell and Lyle pulled up to the side of the road a few blocks from the apartment where Shine was supposedly staying, keeping the unmarked car out of view.

  "Anyone who has something to worry about from the Police knows how to spot these things," Lyle said. "We keep pushing for changes to the bureaucracy, and all we get back is how our jobs are going to be in the hands of drones and bots in the next ten years, so why bother."

  "Won't she recognize you?" Mitchell asked.

  "If she's staring out her window, probably. But I'll already be going into the lobby by then."

  They walked the short distance, keeping to the far side of the street. The housing block was relatively new, constructed of the latest polycarbonates and alloys, materials similar to the ones employed on the Dove. It allowed the buildings to take on an almost organic shape, with a lot of curves and folds. It was a high-end neighborhood, especially for someone who just got out of jail.

  More than once during the walk Mitchell caught a red light slipping across his face for the barest of moments. He saw it on Lyle, too. "What is that?"

  "Facial recognition. Scanning you to make sure you're clean. Only newer constructed blocks have it."

  "Clean?"

  "The government's been collecting data on people for centuries, right? Everyone has a profile, and we've gotten pretty good at assessing risk based on that."

  "What about privacy?"

  "You give a little to get a lot. The systems are all automated nowadays - only machines get access to the details. The only thing LE knows is how clean you are. Anyway, we've been utilizing this kind of stuff for years, but private installation was only approved recently."

  "What about me? I don't have a profile."

  "You do. A short one, but it exists. Your risk level is going to be a little higher because of your time in the hospital, but being with me will cancel it out."

  "How do we know they aren't watching the system?"

  "You mean the AIT?"

  "Or Watson."

  "They might be. I hate to say it, Mitchell, but it isn't possible to get around technology. There are cameras and sensors and scanners everywhere, especially in an area like this one. If you want to disappear, you'll need to head off to Fiji or Tonga or somewhere that's perpetually years behind."

  "Disappearing isn't an option," Mitchell said. "I'll have to take my chances."

  "We both will."

  They departed the street and walked along a winding path, situated in the middle of a well-kept lawn, itself surrounded by the undulating apartments. It was a peaceful setting. An idyllic way to live. It felt out of place amidst the other areas of the city he had seen. Too clean. Too calm. Was this the world that would rise from the ashes of the XENO-1?

  Mitchell shivered, even though it wasn't particularly cold. Ashes. His mind hung onto the word as if it were the most poignant of his thoughts.

  "You okay?" Lyle said, noticing.

  "Yeah," Mitchell replied. "I just have a bad feeling about all of this."

&n
bsp; "I've made a career out of bad feelings, and stopping them at the source. This is our building."

  "How does crime manage with all of these cameras and sensors, anyway?" Mitchell asked as they headed down a short path to the glass face of one of the buildings.

  "Criminals are like cockroaches. They always find a way. Less time on the streets, more time up here." He tapped his glasses. "Moving everything to digital systems didn't solve that many problems, it just swapped old with new."

  They entered the building. The lobby was clean and warm, with a variety of flowering plants growing along the walls, and plenty of ambient lighting to set a comfortable mood. A kiosk in the middle of the floor came to life as they approached it, projecting a female face into the air ahead of them.

  "Good evening, Detective Lyle. Welcome to the Shanderly. Who would you like to speak to this evening?"

  "Miss Evelyn Shine, please," Lyle said.

  "Miss Shine is currently unavailable," the hologram replied. "She departed her unit at seven fifty-one p.m."

  Two hours ago.

  "We'll wait in her unit for her," Lyle said.

  "Do you have appropriate credentials?"

  Lyle glanced back at Mitchell.

  "We'll come back," he said, motioning toward the door.

  They left the building together.

  "That's it?" Mitchell asked. "The machine tells you she isn't home, and we leave?"

  "Relax," Lyle said. "First of all, she's in her unit. Second, we aren't leaving."

  "What do you mean, she's in her unit?"

  "She was feeding the AI the lines."

  "How do you know?"

  "She's been away a few years. The system didn't follow the correct call and response pattern. The annoying part is that someone told her I was looking for her before we got here."

  "Maybe she's with the AIT?"

  "Possible, but unlikely. She's more of loner."

  "So, how are we going to get in there to talk to her?"

  "Around the back, through the emergency access stairwell," Lyle said. "Police have the clearance to open it for any reason. Evelyn is hoping that whatever I wanted her for wasn't important enough for me to stick around, though she's probably packing her things right about now." He smiled. "I wonder what she's trying to hide?"