Of Doubts and Traitors

 

 

Dyna moved through the halls of Psychodynamics. The wood and brass walls and the marble tiles had a warm feeling to them. Not the cold, clinical decor of a research laboratory. She had to wonder if it was supposed to be comforting to the people walking through. Psychodynamics, and the Carroll Institute as a whole, delved heavily into the mind. Not just in terms of psychic abilities, but in mental health and psychology as well. They would know better than anyone how to decorate their buildings to achieve a specific response.

Perhaps it was her paranoia talking, but the whole place just felt a little more sinister than it had a few months ago. How much of the facilities, from the lecture halls to the dormitory rooms, were designed to elicit responses, feelings, or other mental states. Most of it, probably.

Of course, down here in Psychodynamics, Dyna wondered who the comforting decor was for. Probably not the artificers. There were only a handful of them and none seemed to spend much time inside. With that fact in mind, Dyna had to imagine that the comfort was aimed at the researchers and other personnel of the facility.

“Are you there yet?”

Dyna jumped out of her skin, one hand slamming into her ear like an insect had just crawled inside.

“Why are you shouting?” she hissed.

Ruby didn’t respond straight away, giving Dyna a moment to fuddle with the volume control of her earpiece. A tiny little bud with even tinier buttons.

Of course, when Ruby started talking again, she did so in a normal tone of voice. Combined with the lowered volume, Dyna couldn’t hear her at all. Apprehensive, Dyna slowly turned the volume back up just enough to hear.

“—keep you on your toes. Emerald always says that we need to be prepared for anything.”

“And that includes my supposed ally shouting into my ear?”

“Anything.”

“I doubt she meant it literally,” Dyna grumbled. “What did you want?”

“I asked if you were there yet.”

Dyna glanced around.

The Psychodynamics office complex wasn’t a large place. She had just walked through a door into a long hallway with several half-office half-cubicle rooms. They were fairly spacious work areas with decent lighting, mostly separated from the hall by a large glass window from the waist up. But they lacked doors, making them more of cubicles than proper offices.

Naturally, important people had fully enclosed offices. Dyna had seen the inside of Doctor Cross’ office, not far from where she currently was. A large room filled with all manner of gadgets and gizmos, only half of which Dyna had recognized. All of them, presumably, were devices related to the mind and psionics.

“I just arrived,” Dyna said, stepping further into the office complex, past a large glass cube of a meeting room right at the front and into the rows of office-cubicles. “What was the name again?”

“You’re looking for a Pitrelli. Not sure on the first name.”

Nodding, Dyna walked along. Next to each door, the offices all had small plaques stating the occupant’s name and their job title. Many were blank. Like most of Psychodynamics, the office complex seemed to have a certain vacancy to it. Another psychological trick? Or had they simply planned for an expansion in personnel that wasn’t currently there?

Dyna shook her head and focused.

Most of the names blurred by. She didn’t recognize many. Dyna had learned the names of the lower-level techs that she interacted with regularly, like Harold and Jenkins. Harold, as Cross’ assistant, had an office here. One with a proper door on it. The others? She wasn’t sure if they had offices here. Jenkins normally showed up in those silver suits, an attire which Dyna attributed to those relatively low on Psychodynamics’ totem pole. The ones saddled with the grunt work.

It took a switch down a second cubicle-lined hallway before she found the office. Giuseppe Pitrelli. According to the plaque, he was a memory specialist. Dyna wasn’t quite sure how Ruby found him, but if anyone in Psychodynamics had information on her head, it would be him.

Unfortunately, there was one small problem.

The office was dark. Lights out and terminal powered off, Pitrelli wasn’t in.

“He’s not here.”

“I know. It says here that he is on vacation.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, scowling at the empty air while wishing she was scowling at Ruby. “How are we supposed to get his help if he isn’t—”

“Help? When did I ever say we were getting his help?”

“What?”

“Go in, quick. Before anyone sees you.”

Dyna didn’t move save to glance up. Her eyes met with the glowing red ember beneath the five lenses of a hallway security camera. After maintaining eye contact for a full second, Dyna turned to the side, pressing her finger to her ear. “Ruby—”

“You aren’t moving.”

“What am I doing here?”

“You’re getting information. Get inside quick, then pull out that drive I gave you and plug it into the terminal. It will do the rest.”

Dyna looked at the computer through the glass window of the office, then up to another security camera. Turning around, she spotted another camera in the office on the opposite side of the hallway, then another camera down at the other end of the hallway.

Nodding slowly, Dyna turned back the way she had come and started walking.

“Wait, you’re going the wrong way.”

“There’s like ten cameras and they’re all staring directly at me,” Dyna whispered, trying not to panic as her pace increased.

She was going to turn the corner to find a hundred security guards lined up like football players, ready to tackle her to the ground.

She wanted to know. The truth was out there somewhere. But here and now? Absolutely not. There had to be some other way that didn’t involve hacking into a computer while being recorded by a department store’s entire collection of cameras. She had promised not to tell Emerald, but if this was the quality of Ruby’s infiltration suggestions…

“You can’t just run away at—”

“You can’t expect me to…” Hesitating, Dyna searched for the proper word. Unable to find it, she said, “You can’t expect me to you know what into the computers. Beatrice will have this place on lockdown the second I touch one of them.”

“I told you not to worry about that thing. It’s just a secretary.”

Dyna wasn’t sure if Ruby was downplaying Beatrice’s abilities or if she didn’t know. Having seen Beatrice in action first-hand, Dyna absolutely did not believe that Beatrice was just a secretary.

She had to remind herself that she hadn’t done anything. If anyone reviewed the security footage, or got an alert from Beatrice, Dyna could simply say that she had intended to visit a memory specialist for reasons completely unrelated to the Carroll Institute possibly modifying her memories. Finding him gone, she had turned and left. That would work.

Turning a corner, Dyna slammed into someone hard enough to send them both to the ground. A spike of panic shot through her, fearing that it was a security guard on his way to apprehend her. Mildly disoriented, Dyna scrambled to her feet.

Just before she turned and ran off, she realized that it was not a security guard at all.

“Harold?”

The research assistant sat on the floor, surrounded by a scattering of papers and one foil-covered disc.

“I am so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Dyna?” He looked up, narrowing his eyes. “What are you—”

Harold pressed his palm against the floor to help himself get back up, only to remove his hand with a hiss. Turning it over to examine the pain, he showed off a fairly light skinning of his hand. A bit of dirt and a few tiny lines of blood. It must have happened in the fall.

“I am so sorry,” Dyna said again. Bending, she started collecting the papers he had dropped. “Let me help you. Is there a medical area near?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just wash it off in the bathroom.”

“Are you sure? What if it gets infected?”

“The soap is antibacterial. What are they going to do in the infirmary? They’ll just wash it off there.”

“What about bandages?”

“It’s fine. Barely bleeding. It will probably stop before I even get to the bathroom.” Standing up with a little more care, Harold glanced down at the papers Dyna had gathered up. She was just about to reach for the silver disc when he, a little louder than necessary, said “Don’t!”

Dyna’s hand froze just above the foil covered disc. “What?”

“Don’t touch it,” he said, crouching down. Carefully, almost as if he was afraid to touch it, he inspected it, turning it over a few times before finally picking it up with his less injured hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sure people have warned you that some things in Psychodynamics are a bit more dangerous than others. Best to leave this one to me.”

“Oh…” An artifact then? Those seemed to be about the only thing people worried over here. Judging by its size and shape, it was probably that Aztec calendar that Cross had been inspecting the other day.

Harold tucked the artifact under his arm to free his hand, which he promptly used to start picking at his other hand.

“Please, let me make it up to you,” Dyna said with a wince, glancing down at the top document sitting atop the yellow folder she had picked up in an attempt to avoid looking at his wound. Some kind of incident report? A lot of it was unreadable. Not from dirt or any other consequence of the fall, but from thick black marker striking out words, numbers, and even an entire paragraph. She stared at that black marker a little longer than necessary before sucking in a breath and forcing her eyes up to see Harold inspecting his hand a little closer. “I’ll carry them to wherever you need them.”

“It’s fine. They’re just going to the archive. Nothing that needs to be done now.”

Dyna blinked, then blinked again. “Archive? I thought everything was digital.”

“There are hard copy backups of most important documents, both here and off-site. For now, just take those back to my office, would you? It’s just down the hall. Across from Doctor Cross’ office.”

“I know where that is.”

“Good,” he said, clenching his fist with a small grimace. “I’ll pick them up later. Try not to run around the halls too much. I can only imagine what would have happened had you knocked over Doctor Cross.”

Dyna winced, remembering the incident in the meditation room the first day she had met Cross. He had fallen, but didn’t seem too upset. Of course, at that point in time, he had been far more excited about the prospect of her psionics than he was today. “Sorry,” she said again.

“I’m going to go clean this up,” he said, nodding his head back down the hall to where the sector’s restrooms were.

With that, he turned and started walking off. Dyna had to assume that the documents he left in her hands weren’t actually all that important. Either that or he trusted her far, far too much. Harold was the disgruntled sort of worker. Dyna didn’t exactly know him well, but did know that every time Doctor Cross opened his mouth, Harold would end up with a scowl, rolling his eyes, or otherwise put-off by whatever the doctor had to say.

Especially when Doctor Cross forgot his name.

Somewhat calmer after that encounter turned out to be nothing to worry about—and especially after seeing no sign of security forces rushing at her—Dyna flipped through the folder of papers on her way back to Harold’s office. Incident reports, updates to artifact documents, and a personnel file so heavily blacked out that Dyna couldn’t understand why they would bother to keep a hard copy of the file. She didn’t read any of them closely; none were about her.

His office was in the nicer section of the complex. It sat just a short walk down the hall from Doctor Cross’ office, in the section where the offices actually had doors. The door had a small plaque. Harold Porter. Research associate. Despite having a door, the lock hadn’t been set. Dyna walked right in.

Although his office had a door and was in the nicer section of the office complex, it wasn’t all that special. Little more than a long desk with a terminal set into it and an accompanying chair. No long couch or bookshelves like Cross had. It did have a few pictures hung up, but they were the most generic vista-style shots of mountain ranges and prairies that Dyna had ever seen. She wondered if they came with the office and he had simply never bothered to replace them.

Shrugging her shoulders, Dyna set the folder down on his desk and turned to leave. In doing so, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

His terminal, much like his door, was not locked.

Dyna froze and slowly looked around the office again.

No camera. Privilege of his station? Or… No, wait. There was a camera. Dyna simply missed it on her first scan of the room because its bright red light wasn’t bright or red at the moment. It was powered off, much like the cameras in the room she had changed in after her initial incident down here in Psychodynamics.

Sabotage? Faulty wiring?

Dyna glanced at the terminal again. “Ruby?” she said, pressing her finger to her ear.

The other girl hadn’t said anything since Dyna bumped into Harold. She was probably upset about her plan being ruined. And, after waiting a moment, Dyna still didn’t receive a response. Scowl on her face, Dyna pulled out her phone to message the girl and tell her to get back on the line.

Before she got more than two words out, she heard footsteps coming up the hall.

Harold? Back already?

Dyna’s stomach tightened. There was nothing strange about her being here. He had asked her to be here. If he wondered about why she was still here, she could simply say that she found the pictures interesting and had gotten distracted.

But he might ensure that she left. He might lock his door. He might lock his terminal. This was an opportunity that had fallen into her lap. A far better opportunity than Ruby had come up with, in her opinion.

Dyna’s eyes darted about the room. There was a filing cabinet in one corner and next to it, a tall closet-like… well, it was a closet. A free standing closet, taller than she was and wide enough as well.

Was it the best decision? Absolutely not. She could explain her presence away right now. If he opened the closet, she would be unable to say anything.

But Dyna’s panicked, paranoid mind that didn’t particularly want to be caught in any position, saw it as the best opportunity to evade the situation. She rushed to the closet, opened it up, stepped inside, pressed herself against a few thick coats, and used the protruding inner magnet to pull the door shut.

She stopped moving and held her breath.

The office door clicked open a mere second after.

“—just a small delay,” Harold said. Talking on a phone? “Yes… Yes… I’ll make it in time, don’t worry. I need to do a quick check that all the files are here and I’ll head to the delivery point after… Yes. I understand. Cross won’t care or notice.”

He didn’t say anything else. Dyna heard a bit of rustling papers. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute, but Dyna felt like she sat in that closet for hours. Her nose itched, she needed to move her legs, something was poking into her back, and her heart hammered in her chest loud enough that she couldn’t believe that the man on the other side of the thin wood door couldn’t hear it.

The rustling of papers stopped. A few heavy footsteps moved away from the closet. Shortly after, the door clicked shut. Dyna waited until she couldn’t hear footsteps against the tile floor anymore, then waited another full five minutes.

At least she felt like she could breathe again.

What had that conversation been? It certainly didn’t sound like he had been taking documents to some archive. Cross wouldn’t know or care? Who was he meeting with?

Id jumped into Dyna’s mind. Not literally, not like she had in the detention center. But it was the first thing she thought of and, possibly, the worst thing she could think of.

Doctor Cross’ trusted research associate was working with the enemy?

No. It couldn’t be. That conversation had to be about something else. Office romance, perhaps? That would fit. He was meeting with someone else in Cross’ department for a little romantic rendezvous—after dropping off the files at the archives. That was something Cross wouldn’t care about.

Right?

But then… why did he have that artifact with him? Shouldn’t that be locked up in a vault somewhere? If it was the Aztec disc, and it was as dangerous as Cross implied, then Dyna really felt that a little foil wrapping around it wouldn’t be nearly enough protection from the outside world.

Despite trying to rationalize it, the tension in Dyna’s shoulders didn’t disappear. In fact, it only got worse. The very back of her neck stung like someone had jabbed her with a syringe filled with adrenaline.

Stepping out of the closet took a whole lot more courage than she thought it would take. There was no one outside, and yet her foot trembled until she had it firmly on the tile floor. Even then, she felt like she might fall over until she got her other foot on the floor.

Dyna looked around the office again. Empty. His office didn’t have a large window either, just a small one on the door. Someone walking by would have to deliberately look inside in order to see her. If they were doing that, they were probably coming in anyway and it would be too late.

Harold himself had sounded like he would be gone for a time.

That gave Dyna a moment. She quickly started looking around the office, both around the desk and in the closet and filing cabinet.

Dyna wasn’t looking for anything on her. No documents or secret memory alteration files. No, she was looking for photographs. Any photographs of a woman or man who might fit with her rendezvous theory.

She found nothing. Nothing but more generic pictures of mountains or creeks. The man might be in love with nature, but nature probably wasn’t calling him on his phone.

A chill ran down her spine and she rifled through his desk drawers. She pulled out a small black drive. Identical to the one Ruby had given her. The one that was supposed to ‘do everything else’ after plugging it into a terminal.

Did that mean it was some kind of hacking program? Not necessarily. It could just be some random portable drive that both Ruby and Harold had bought from the same place.

Did that possibility make Dyna feel at all reassured?

Not in the slightest.

Pulling out her phone, Dyna called Ruby’s number.

The girl picked up on the first ring.

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Ruby, I—”

“Here I am, sitting in Pitrelli’s office, doing work I assigned to you.”

“Ruby—”

“Didn’t you say you would follow my orders? Emerald always comes up with creative punishments. I don’t think I’m that creative, but I can—”

“Ruby! I think Harold is a traitor!”

The other side of the phone line went silent for a long moment before Ruby said, “Who the bleep is Harold?”