Rain drop on the windows of the St. Regis, blurring the city lights into streaks of regret. I sat in the dark, the burner phone in one hand and the tablet in the other.
Don't trust the General and check File 001.
The voice on the phone had been distorted, but the specific rhythm of the taps that used to be my father's, No-No It was impossible. My father was ash in a collapsed basement and I had seen the report, I even paid the Janitors.
I looked at the tablet, It knew the stock prices in Tokyo. It knew Senator Gable's heart rate. It knew the location of every police cruiser in a ten-mile radius.
But it hadn't known about the call.
For the first time since I got the tablet, I felt of something colder than fear: I felt isolated. The tablet wasn't a partner.
I raised my finger to tap the file directory because I needed to see File 001.
Bzzt.
The screen flashed red not the soft amber of a warning, but a violent, light that glows the entire hotel suite.
CRITICAL ALERT: PERIMETER BREACH.
LOCATION: HAWTHORNE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE.
UNIT: JANITOR TEAM ALPHA.
STATUS: FIGHTING.
I stared at the screen, Hawthorne. That was where I had sent her.
"Show me," I commanded, my voice cracking.
The screen shifted to a live tactical map of the facility, located twenty miles north in the quiet, forest.
Blue dots represented the Janitors : the elite security team the tablet had hired to 'guard' my mother. There were 6 of them.
As I watched, one blue dot blinked out then another then two more.
They weren't just disappearing. Their Heart rate: 0. BP: 0.
"Who is doing this?" I asked "Identify attackers."
The tablet processed. A loading bar spawned in the center of the chaos.
ANALYSIS: ... ANALYSIS: ... ERROR: UNKNOWN ATTACKERS.
MATCH: NONE.
DATABASE: NO RECORD.
My stomach dropped "What do you mean 'no record'? You have access to the CIA, the NSA, and Interpol. Who are they?"
ERROR. ERROR. VISUAL SIGNATURE UNRECOGNIZED.
The machine was blind.
I grabbed my jacket and I hit the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. The black sedan was waiting at the valet stand.
I threw myself into the driver's seat this time. I start the car and drive as fast as possible.
I accelerate it.
The drive took nineteen minutes but I did it in eleven.
The Hawthorne Institute was a fortress disguised as a Medical facility. High stone walls and a gate that was supposed to be impenetrable.
When I arrived, the gate was gone. It hadn't been blown open, it had been cut. The heavy steel bars were sliced through with thermal lances, the edges glowing a dull, angry orange in the rain.
I turned off the headlights and rolled the car into the shadows of the driveway.
The silence was absolute, No alarms, No sirens. Whoever hit this place had severed the hardlines and jammed the cellular frequencies. The tablet in my pocket was vibrating, trying to reconnect to the network, furious at being cut off.
I got out of the car. The smell of burnt propellant hung heavy in the wet air.
I moved toward the main entrance but the glass doors were shattered.
In the lobby, I found the first Janitor. He was a massive man, ex-Spetsnaz, wearing full tactical gear. He was slumped against the reception desk. There was no blood on him just a small, precise puncture wound in the neck.
Stabbed? Or poisoned?
I stepped over him because I needed to get to the security room. I needed to see what the tablet couldn't.
The corridors were empty, emergency lights flickered, casting long, jumping shadows. I found the control room on the second floor. The door was open inside, the two monitors were dead the Janitors assigned to watch the screens were unconscious in their chairs.
But the recording system was hard-wired so, It was still running.
I shoved the unconscious guard out of the chair and grabbed the mouse. My hands were sweaty. I rewound the feed by ten minutes.
"Show me," I whispered.
On the screen, night-vision footage played out in silence.
A black van pulled up to the service entrance. No license plates, No markings and Four men stepped out.
They moved like water. They weren't wearing the bulky tactical gear of mercenaries they wore sleek, matte black body armor that seemed to absorb the light. They didn't carry assault rifles they carried compact, suppressed submachine guns and batons.
They breached the door in three seconds.
I fast-forwarded.
Camera 04: Hallway. The Janitors engaged them. It wasn't a fight it was a play for them. The Men in Black moved with a synchronized brutality I had never seen before they anticipated every move the Janitors made. It was like watching a grandmaster play chess against a toddler.
Camera 07: The Ward.
I froze the frame.
My mother's room.
The door slid open and two of the Men in Black entered.
I leaned closer to the screen, searching for fear. I expected to see my mother screaming, fighting, terrified that the Syndicate had come to finish the job.
But she wasn't screaming.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed. She had her coat on, had her bag packed.
She was waiting for them.
One of the men, the leader stepped forward. He was tall, lean. He didn't grab her, he didn't handcuff her instead of that he offered her a hand.
She took it.
"Mom..." I breathed.
They moved into the hallway. The camera angle shifted.
My mother stopped and looked up not at the man, but directly at the camera lens. She knew where it was and would come looking.
She raised her right hand to her chest and placed her palm flat over her heart. Tap. Tap. Then she flattened her hand and pushed it outward, toward the camera.
The air left my lungs.
It was a signal from twenty years ago. When I was five, and my father would shout, and the house would fill with the noise of breaking glass, she would hide me in the closet then she would kneel in front of me, put her hand over her heart, tap twice, and push away.
I am safe, stay away. Do not come out until the monsters are gone.
She wasn't being kidnapped rather She was being rescued.
But by whom?
On the screen, the group moved toward the exit. The leader paused and seemed to sense something. He turned back toward the camera, as if he could feel my eyes on him through the recording.
He reached up to his face. For a second, I thought he was going to remove the mask.
He didn't.
Instead, he raised his left hand to his ear. He hooked his thumb behind his earlobe and tapped the side of his skull with his ring finger. One, two, three. Rapid, rhythmic taps.
Then he turned and vanished into the night.
I fell back into the chair, the squeak of the leather loud in the silent room.
I knew that tic.
I hadn't seen it in years, but I knew it.
It was a nervous habit. A phantom itch. The muscle memory of a man who used to wear a comms earpiece twenty-four hours a day, for decades, and was constantly checking if the channel was open.
The man in the black armor wasn't a stranger.
I stared at the empty screen. The tablet in my pocket finally reconnected, buzzing with a update.
ALERT: ASSET 'MOTHER' LOST.
TRACKING: FAILED.
HOSTILES: EVADED.
INSTRUCTION: DEPLOY AERIAL DRONES.
I pulled the tablet out the blue light reflected in my eyes.
"Cancel," I said.
CONFIRM CANCEL? ASSET IS HIGH VALUE.
"Cancel!" I shouted, smashing my fist onto the desk.
ORDER CONFIRMED. PURSUIT CALLED OFF.
I sat there in the dark, my heart beating against my ribs like a trapped bird.
My mother was gone and She was with the Men in Black and she had told me to stay away.
There was a third player on the board. Someone powerful enough to blind the tablet, Someone who knew the childhood signals of the Thorne family and someone who commanded a hit squad that made the Shadow Cabinet's mercenaries look like amateurs.
I stood up and wiped the security footage, deleted the logs.
The tablet didn't need to know what I had seen.
If the machine was keeping secrets from me, it was time I started keeping secrets from it.
I walked out of the asylum, past the unconscious bodies of the men I had paid to protect her. The rain had stopped, leaving the world cold and wet.
I had three days until the funeral 3 days to prepare a trap for the Syndicate.
But now I knew that while I was hunting them, someone else who is watching from the shadows was hunting us all.
I got back into the car and looked at the empty passenger seat.
"Stay safe, Mom," I whispered.
I put the car in gear and drove back to the city. The war was coming, and I was the only one on the battlefield who didn't know who the real enemy was.