Ark-13: An Odyssey (10 page)

Danny jumped out of his seat as Jake entered his pod.

“Where have you been?!”

“I got held up…” Jake explained, trying to calm him down as he brought out his holographic. Danny snatched it from his hand and began feeding the data into his computer, shining on the wall.

“I think Booker knows about us.”

“What do you mean?!”

“He’s sniffing something.”

“Do you still think he’s the GENESIS mole? Colonist #309?” Danny brought up the colonist list.

“Let’s just see…” Danny scrolled through the list through the 100’s and the 200’s. He slowed the scroll with a flattening of his hand as it approached the 300’s.

And then colonist #309 appeared.

Jake and Danny gazed in disbelief at the name next to colonist #309.

Upon reading the name, Jake’s mouth dropped in incredulous shock. His face fell numb, vapid of all expression other than disbelief. He exhaled abruptly, having to remind himself to breath and his eyes dried as they remained fastened to the name of the spy among them.

“It can’t be…”

“The mole is a councilman?” Danny tried to make sense of it.

“The day before Launch… he already had his armport…” Jake recollected as his eyes focused on the name before them.

ANDREW LANGFORD

“He is the Director of Resources. GENESIS planted him to be guardian over the supply drops,” Jake postulated. “Resources are everything. That is why we don’t have access to the water, electrical or food plants.”

Together they spent a moment lost in the sight of the name – mentally exploring its implications. Strategies began to form and change as Jake had prepared to see Jim’s name but not Andrew’s.

“How do you want to go about this?” Danny asked after a muted minute. “Do you want to bring him in? Junior can beat whatever we want out of him!”

“No, no, no… we need to watch his movements and see what he leads us to,” Jake suggested from his contemplative stance.

“Let the rat lead us to the cheese?” Danny smiled, arching his eyebrows.

“You mean mouse?” Jake asked, causing Danny’s smile to fall.

“Like rat… get it? I was going for a pun…” Jake’s face remained static. Danny cocked his head to his shoulder and went on the defense. “That was funny and you know it.”

"Does he have a pod?" Jake returned to business.

"Yeah... want to take a look?" Danny's fingers were already combing through the surveillance server for the feed. After scrolling through the hundreds of cameras, he came to the pod feeds - each labeled by a name of a colonist. He navigated to the L's and found Langford. After clicking on the surveillance feed, a window popped up from the selection.

SURVELLAINCE FEED UNAVAILABLE

"What?" Jake asked upon seeing Danny's confusion.

"They’ve blacked it out.”

"Whatever is in there… they don’t want anybody to see…” Jake marveled.

"Tomorrow is the harvest. He will be busy logging the crops brought for sale in the Stalls."

Danny brought up a camera feed of the Stacks that showed the pods for the colonists. With a wave of the hand, the feed zoomed in on the outside door of Andrew Langford’s pod, as if he was a sniper locking on his target.

"Alright then... we go in tomorrow!"

"Do you want me to call in Junior and the others?" Danny asked.

"No... they need to begin recruiting..."

"You are going to love this." Danny adjusted himself in his seat and turned to immerse himself in the computer shining on the wall before him.

“I can match the names from the same map to the vital signatures I had previously discovered. I logged all colonists with higher cortisol levels, which is the main hormonal indicator of stress. They call it the fight or flight hormone. Then I accessed the brain activity to find colonists with high subgenual anterior cingulated cortex, which is responsible for fear management.”

“How did you figure all of that out?” Jake leaned back impressed with his acumen.

“Found a Biology textbook in the Archives…” he shook his holographic, before turning back to the screen on the wall.

“Now by focusing on these two vitals, I was able to narrow down our colonists to those who are pissed off and courageous enough to do something about it. These are the people our insurgents will approach about joining us. So without further adieu, allow me to present to you…” Danny’s fingers tapped out a few more commands and with one more hit of a key, a long list of colonists began streaming down the screen.

“…our soldiers.”

The next morning Jake leaned against the entrance to the Stalls. The colonists shopped through the different vendor booths as the week’s harvest was now for sale. Danny had distributed the names of prospective recruits to Elijah, Zoe, Lucy and Junior. They had already begun approaching the candidates in the most discrete way possible. But Jake had different plans, as his eyes found Andrew Langford in the crowd.

Andrew milled about his business as usual, jotting the amount of crops each vendor was able to harvest for the week. He smiled and laughed with the colonists manning each booth. He was a favorite among the colonists and not viewed to be an out of touch war mongrel like Jim Booker.

“Alright… I’m going in,” Danny spoke to Jake through his comm.

“Roger that, I’ve got eyes on Langford, you’re all clear.” Jake reported back and slowly followed Andrew through the stalls.

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Danny rounded the corner and headed for the Stacks. His eyes first climbed the high metal wall that separated the colonists from the Resources. The large monitor towered overhead, flashing the different surveillance feeds from around the Ark. After tracing the rows and levels to Andrews’ living pod, he started for it.

Danny climbed four levels and walked seven pods across until he arrived at Andrew’s pod. Before entering, he turned and surveyed the Stacks floor – the coast was clear.

He slapped the enter button outside the door but the door did not budge.

“What the?” he hit the button again, but the door remained locked.

“Jake, do Councilmen have locks on their pod doors?”

“No… he’s heading toward the Stacks… I’ll stall him, hurry up and get in there!”

“Working on it!” Danny responded. Danny ripped off the enter button from the wall and began sifting through the wires that sprawled out from behind it. Danny began splicing wires, as if hot wiring a hovercar.

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Jake jogged over to Andrew and cut him off from the exit.

“Hey Andrew! What’s up?!” At first, Andrew leaned back on his heels, taken aback by Jake’s sudden approach.

“Just logging the harvest…”Andrew noted, as if stating the obvious.

“How’d we do this week?”

“We did okay, next week will be better,” Andrew nodded and started toward the Stacks, but Jake persisted in the conversation.

“Hey! I wanted to apologize for not being able to meet you and Sophia for drinks last night. I wasn’t feeling well at all. I heard about Coop, though! What happened?” Jake asked, trying to engage Andrew.

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Sparks flew as two spliced wires connected. Andrew’s pod door snapped open, revealing a startling sight to Danny as he stepped through the doorway.

“Holy…” Danny surveyed the contents of the pod. There was nothing standard about it, rather there was a bank of computer monitors and a desk littered with notes on different colonists. Upon stepping forward, Danny noticed the computer monitors showed the surveillance feeds from around the Ark. He zeroed in on the one showing Jake speaking with Andrew at the entrance to the Stalls.

And then he noticed something behind him in the reflection in the glass. He turned to meet a shocking sight before him – seven headshots, taped to the wall of the pod labeled ‘Insurgents’. The headshots belonged to Jake, Junior, Zoe, Lucy, Elijah, Coop and lastly him.

The realization hit him.

“He knows…” Danny spoke through a gaping mouth. He then turned back to the feed, worried for Jake, who was still speaking to Andrew.

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“Yeah, Coop just went crazy… I guess you can never really know who someone truly is on the Ark.” An ominous smile spread across Andrew’s face.

“Yeah… I guess not…” Their eyes met in stalemate. Then Jake heard Danny’s voice in his ear.

“Jake! Listen carefully. Langford knows… he knows about us!” Jake dropped his head upon hearing the message. His eyes wandered as if trying to find the words meaning on the ground.

“Are you okay?” Andrew’s tone grew darker.

“Yeah… yeah… I’m just still getting over that bug I had last night,” Jake improvised.

“Oh… well here, let me check your levels for you.” Andrew’s holographic was already in hand. His grip on Jake’s arm was tight. He plugged it in, moving aggressively. A holographic screen shined between them, but their eyes remained locked on each other through the hologram.

Andrew gritted his teeth as he scanned Jake’s levels.

“That’s odd… your immune system activity is low. Temperature is normal. Blood oxygenation is fine. By the look of it, you aren’t sick at all…” Andrew’s grip tightened on Jake’s arm. And then his eyes focused through the hologram onto Jake’s.

A moment hung in the air as Andrew’s expression grew fiercer.

And then Andrew’s fist broke the screen and collided with Jake’s face. Jake crashed to the ground as Andrew sprinted off through the Stalls in the other direction, leaving his holographic in Jake’s arm.

And the chase was on.

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Danny watched the cameras in Andrew’s pod and followed the chase as it hopped from screen to screen through the Stalls. He sat at the computer and began drilling into Andrew’s personal hard drive. Hundreds of documents flashed before his eyes, each faster than the last. They were all addressed to Dr. Langford.

“Jake, he’s been receiving hundreds of directives from GENESIS. We only caught one of them.”

“Where is he?!” Jake shouted over the comm, having stumbled back up to his feet. Danny swiped the inbox aside and refocused on the security feeds. Jake had lost ground on Andrew as he pushed his way through the busy marketplace of the Stalls.

“He’s heading toward the Loop and back tracking, turn right now! You’ll cut him off!” Danny watched as Jake scrambled out of the Stalls, meeting Andrew and tackling him across the Loop. Andrew maneuvered out of his grip and continued running up the Loop like a hamster in a hamster wheel. Jake gathered his feet and continued his pursuit.

Andrew looked up at a nearby camera with a look of concern. Then he pulled a remote device from his pocket as he ran by and pressed the trigger mechanism on the device. The screen Danny watched went black, while the other monitors on the wall flashed the word “Abort”. The hundreds of messages deleted before his eyes and sparks began to fly out of the sides of the console.

“No! He’s fried his hard drives! I’m blind now Jake! Don’t lose him!” Danny shouted into the comm.

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Jake sprinted up the Loop, pushing colonists out of his way as he trailed Andrew. They ran passed the Archives and the Recreation Deck until they twisted across the bridge leading to the center of the Ark - the Stacks. They ran through the crowds, alarming any colonist they passed. The living pods towered on either side of them as Andrew headed for the main supply drop chute. Andrew tapped his ear and shouted, Jake could just barely make out what he yelled over his heavy breathing.

“This is Andrew Langford requesting extraction!”

Twenty yards ahead, the main chute snapped open. Andrew slid through the opening at a full sprint. The chute then shut immediately after Andrew passed through it. Jake came to a halt and slapped the window to the Drop. Andrew found his feet on the other side and locked eyes with him.

Jake fumed as Andrew raised one gentle hand and waved a farewell.

Andrew then zipped upwards through the chute and out of sight, as if being pulled up to the Bridge.

Jake raised a lone fist to the window and beat on the glass as he met another dead end. After catching his breath, he noticed a ladder in the Drop. He wondered if it led to the Bridge and he knew he would have to climb it to find out.

The Assembly met in the same dark room as usual and listened to Jake’s account of Andrew’s disappearance. He tailored the story to exclude the Insurrection’s hacking of the X drive and spying on him.

“So he just punched you in the face and ran?!” Jim Booker challenged the assertion.

“He must have thought I was on to him or something… but yeah, he ran the Loop and across the Stacks to the Drop. I heard him, clear as day, say into some sort of communication device in his ear, ‘this is Andrew Langford requesting extraction’. And then the Drop opened allowing him to pass through and then it snapped shut behind him. I could see through the window to the door, he then flew upwards as if being pulled by some sort of magnet,” Jake explained.

“That sounds absolutely ridiculous,” Sigh Pritcher mumbled. Jim Booker was pleased to see the Chairman of the Council’s disbelief of the story.

“Well, it’s true!”

“Are you feeling okay?” Jim feigned concern as if questioning his mental stability.

Jake continued to plead his case. “Look, I had begun to be suspicious so I ended up looking in his pod. His pod had a large computer console with multiple surveillance feeds and notes on all of us. He was watching us the whole time, reporting back to GENESIS.” His voice grew desperate.

“I thought searching people’s pods was against the law… I thought you were expressly against that.” Jim Booker recalled Jake’s rejection of his initiative.

“The fact of the matter is that Andrew Langford was a spy! For GENESIS! Why did GENESIS plant one of their employees among us?” Jake’s intonation grew dark and fierce as he slapped the table. The momentary loss of control was all the Assembly needed to write him off.

“Even if what you are saying is true, what do you recommend we do about it?” Sigh asked through a hopeless exhale. Jake adjusted himself but did not answer, causing the others to shake their heads. After a silent pause in the room, Sigh continued. “What we need to do is to replace our Director of Resources…”

“I can’t believe you guys are just going to let this pass!” Jake started again.

“The world is different now, Jake… we have to wake up every day and face a harsh reality and that is that the world is gone. And along with the other twelve Arks, we are the only survivors of the human race…” Jim Booker lowered his voice from the typical emotional tone to a reasonable cadence. “GENESIS is not what’s screwing us, Jake… fate is.”

Jake realized that the Assembly would remain as ineffective as the governments of Earth and that he would have to take things into his own hands.

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After the meeting, Jim Booker followed Jake at a distance up and around the Loop and across the bridge to the Stacks. Jim kept his distance, careful to ensure that his tail went unnoticed. He watched as Jake ascended a series of ladders and made his way across the railing to a pod that was not his own.

He slapped the door open and began talking upon entry as if meeting someone. Then Jim’s eyes moved from the pod to one located on the next level and down the row. It was Andrew Langford’s pod.

Jim ascended the ladders himself and walked the catwalk to the pod. He slapped it open and was amazed by what he saw before him. He stayed at the entryway and allowed his eyes to wander the pod before entering it. Only after his initial scan was done he walked into the pod and inspected his surroundings as if it was a crime scene. He pressed random buttons on the computer console but it did not respond. He then flipped through some of the notes where he found random colonist names. The appearance of the pod confirmed Jake’s accusations but before he could connect the dots, his eyes turned to the wall. There taped up on the wall were the headshots of the Insurrection, labeled as such.

Jim’s eyes widened at the discovery and then narrowed as if he had finally found the answer to his suspicions.

“I knew it…” he gasped aloud to himself, upon focusing on Jake’s headshot as if it were a target. Jim tapped his communication device on his ear.

“Peter?” he called his second in command.

“Yeah, Jim.”

“We need more enforcers, start recruiting. I have discovered a home grown terrorist cell.”