Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (34 page)

FIFTY-ONE

Dodging the morning sun in the shadows of darkened alleys, the agents, Gabriella and Aban, wove their way through the industrial district of the LTZ. They finally found that which they had been seeking, the abandoned warehouse where Evangeline had disappeared from their radar. Their advanced gadgets and instruments were unhelpful as they tried to pick up her trail among the pieces of trace evidence they found scattered within the abandoned building.

Aban put away his tools and began sniffing the air, canvassing the warehouse in ever-widening circles. Gabriella followed his lead, pursuing her own search pattern in the opposite direction. With a prolonged inhalation through the nose, Aban found traces of Evangeline’s scent masked among the scents of several others that he did not recognize.

Gabriella joined Aban where he stood taking in deep gulps of air. From the memory of a distant nightmare, she recognized the familiar scent of one particular woman. She resisted the urge to flinch at the memory, forgetting for a moment that it had happened to the previous Gabriella.

“The woman that killed me was here,” she hissed.

She touched her arm console, activating the paired-mode function of her communicator which permitted them to have a three-way conversation. Campbell’s voice spoke into her ear. 

“What have you learned?” he asked. Relief flooded through her body. Campbell’s voice was calm and even, a far cry from his hysterical rants after her debacle in Jack Evans’ home.

“The woman who disposed of my agent was here where Captain Evans went missing,” she answered. “Given the olfactory decay, it happened five or six hours ago. My guess is that they left in some kind of transport vehicle.”

Aban spoke up. “I detect iron oxide and fertilizer as well. The transport has been used in an agricultural area with very old buildings. I believe the iron oxide pre-dates anything in the LTZ.”

The female agent could swear she heard Campbell smiling on her headset.

“Excellent. This is the best lead we’ve had in years. Continue to gather trace evidence. I’ll task research to determine which vehicle left with Captain Evans and provide further instructions.” The channel died and and filled the warehouse with silence. The only sounds they heard were those of their own heartbeats echoing through the empty building.

Splitting up, Aban and Gabriella moved through the building like ghosts, absorbing the sights and smells around them, unwilling to pass up on the slightest clue that could lead them to Captain Evans. Gabriella followed her attacker’s path down a flight of stairs while Aban tracked the movement of the vehicle toward an overhead door on the far wall from where they had first entered the building.

Gabriella’s path led her to a submerged tunnel that connected with the basement of the building across the street. From the tunnel, she progressed through a series of underground storage racks, a maze riddled with spare machinery parts. On the other side of the racks, she saw sunlight cascading down a flight of stairs. The steps rose up a stairwell that exited onto the street.

“I’ve followed the woman’s trail to a street level exit. I can hear pedestrian traffic above,” she whispered into the air.

Aban’s voice came back, dull and muted, as if he were in an enclosed space.

“I’ve found the door where the transport left the warehouse. They went through an old decontamination wash. The scent of the vehicle ended at the outer door to the street. However, I may be able to track their course on the street now that I know what to look for,” he said, surrounded by his own echo.

There was no way for them to roam undetected among the public in their black uniforms. They had to leave the safety of the shadows and venture out into the dawn. Although they were invisible to each other on opposite sides of the building, the agents moved in harmony with the other in fluid motions. In unison, each had activated the cloaking function of their suits. The black body suits trembled and shimmered, morphing into the common white robes of Angels.

The female agent approached the exterior door, opening it just far enough to catch a glimpse of the people on the street. She waited for a gap in the traffic or some other distraction that would permit her to exit the building unnoticed. Laughter and shrieking caught her ears, and she spotted a large group of children playing across the street. She cracked open the door a little wider and discovered that most of the pedestrians were paying attention to the children and their game.

With the quickness of a lightning strike, she slipped out the door and onto the street, joining another Angel who had meandered into view. With her white hair and dark blue eyes exposed, and donned in simple robes, she took the arm of the Angel and adopted a serene countenance. The second Angel seemed unaffected by the sudden appearance of company. They exchanged pleasant greetings with each other, as well as with the other pedestrians they encountered on their path.

Within a few steps, the scent of her attacker was waning. Without a word, Gabriella departed from her new friend and retraced her steps back toward the open stairs from which she had just emerged. She picked up the zigzag trail once more, and like a blood-hound followed it for several blocks until it became clear her path led back to the maglev station. She broke off from the hunt - she needed to discuss her progress with Aban.

She found a small alley and looked both ways down the street to make sure no one would notice her disappear. She walked several paces into the dim, narrow space before ducking behind a stack of crates and boxes. It was not an ideal place to morph back into her uniform, but it would have to do.

Her robes retracted and darkened once again, revealing the equipment and compartments built into the fabric. She activated her communicator.

“Can you speak?” she asked. If his situation were unsafe, silence would be his answer.

“I’m sitting at an empty shuttle stop,” Aban answered in a whisper. “I lost the scent of the transport at the closest intersection. There were too many similar vehicles passing through. I couldn’t determine which one was theirs.”

“My trail resulted in a similar dead-end,” she responded. “It looks like after they abducted Evans, the woman went back to Olympus. I assume it was to track down the husband where she killed me.”

“Understood,” he answered with another low whisper.  “Inform the director of our situation and request instructions, then rendezvous at my location.”

She deactivated her communicator and began typing a message to Campbell on her arm console. After expressing the dead-end trails and requesting additional directions, she deactivated all her equipment and morphed her uniform back into her Angel robes.

She walked out of the alley as if she belonged there, dismissing the confused glances of the pedestrians with a slight nod and a warm smile. She made her way in a steady but unrushed pace to the shuttle station. From several blocks away, Gabriella watched Aban skipping multiple shuttles as he busied himself reading the schedule scrolling down the display glazing outside the covered area.

She approached and he seamlessly fell into step beside her. They walked a few yards down the block before sitting down on a low wall that divided the sidewalk from a small office plaza. They did not speak to each other, but rather they watched unaware pedestrians strolling by, making eye contact and flashing them their best Angel smiles as they went along their unassuming way.

FIFTY-TWO

Although Gideon carried out Jack’s orders by searching for Evangeline through all means accessible to him, he had not ceased monitoring the warehouse where Evangeline was last seen. Two mysterious shadows entered the building, but several scans of security footage never depicted them leaving.

              The only figure Gideon witnessed leaving the building was a male Angel who had walked out of a vehicular airlock door. Gideon knew this was peculiar behavior for an Angel, to be in the warehouse in the first place then leave through an inconvenient exit. He resembled the other Angels on the streets, but there was an inexplicable, almost unnatural, urgency to his gait. This behavior did not exist in other Angels Gideon had observed. The subtleties were not significant enough for Human eyes to detect, but to his AI programming, they were stark differences.

Gideon attempted contacting Jack on his communicator once again, but the signal failed to reach him, just as it had the last one-hundred-seventeen times Gideon had tried to establish a connection. Gideon had lost the signal once Jack had traveled several hours outside the LTZ toward one of the uninhabited parts of the continent. Gideon would continue searching for Evangeline, as per his directive, and he added Jack’s unknown status to his task list as well.

The atypical Angel had seated himself at a shuttle station, and Gideon fixed him on a display in attempts to study why that one behaved in a different manner.

FIFTY-THREE

Campbell’s team of analysts poured over thousands of hours of security recordings from the LTZ, trying to identify the transport vehicle used to smuggle Evangeline away from the warehouse. Once Gabriella and Aban had informed them where the vehicle had left the building, as well as the vehicle’s approximate age and use, the analysts were able narrow their focus to a few dozen specific feeds. They had started with feeds adjacent to the warehouse, and then they expanded their range when they discovered the records of several key cameras were distorted and indiscernible.

Prior to receiving the updated report from the agents, the team had been tracking the refuse transport that carried the damaged agent that had been dumped from the Evans’ balcony. That particular vehicle had been loaded with flammable waste materials headed for the textile district to have its contents incinerated in an older fuel-burning furnace.

Campbell considered the cremation of agent’s body both a hindrance and benefit. He had hoped to recover the body in order to conduct an autopsy and gather any evidence that would help him discover the Dissidents’ location. However, he was also relieved that the public would not be able to happen upon another Angel’s body. He had grown weary of the risks of the sterilization procedures he had to perform to keep the truth contained.

If it had been up to Reynolds, the Quorum would have accelerated the plan long ago; it would have no longer mattered if the truth was discovered. Campbell, on the other hand, believed that the slow pace set by Zeus himself was the wiser course of action.

Campbell’s attention switched from his understanding of the plan to the group of technicians gathered around a single display in the corner of the lab. The growing din of their voices talking over each other made him exit his office and see what was causing the commotion.

He stalked toward the excited analysts. His ears picked out their voices leap-frogging over each other.

“Zoom in on the ID plate!”

“Double-check that time code.”

“Can you get an image of the operator from the camera across the street?”

“Report!” he barked to the crowd.

The startled technicians all looked up at their director, the racket of their overlapping conversations silenced as if with a mute button. A path opened up in the crowd like the parting of the Red Sea, giving Campbell a clear path to the analyst’s station at the center of the frenzy. He strode between the technicians, progressing toward the one seated at the console. Campbell stood behind the chair, waiting. The oblivious analyst sensed the foreboding in the room, turned around in apprehension, and stood when he recognized the cause of the silence.

“Sir!” he said. His eyes darted around to his colleagues in the group. He was a newer member of the team and displayed uneasiness being the focus of his superior’s attention. Clearing his throat, he threw back his shoulders and met Campbell’s piercing stare.

“I think we’ve found it,” the rookie said.  Campbell walked around the man, rolling the chair off to the side so he could review the findings for himself.

A magnified map of the southwest quadrant of the LTZ was on the large display. A line branched off from the location of the warehouse, showing the last known route of the vehicle. The disjointed line vanished for several miles then appeared again, just to end at a road extending beyond the LTZ border

“Does this mean,” Campbell asked, jabbing his finger at the line on the border, “that you’ve had another sighting? Do you know where they are?”

The young analyst looked over his shoulder with wide, questioning eyes. An older analyst stepped forward and stood at Campbell’s right side.

“There was a small cargo transport seen leaving the warehouse around the time in question. It took a direct route to an arterial road, here!” He pointed at the map, tracing parts of the suspected route with his finger as he explained. “It was identified at this checkpoint before it disappeared from the surveillance network. Later, this security camera at the edge of the southwest agricultural zone spotted the vehicle. But it hasn’t been seen reentering the LTZ by any other entry camera on the border.”

Campbell smiled to himself. “Send this information directly to my display,” he said, his eyes locked on the map. “The rest of you, return to your stations and resume your previous assignments.” He marched out of the lab, and all the technicians scurried to their screens, their eyes low to the ground as he strode past them.

As Campbell headed towards the door of his office, the delight of an impending victory welled up inside him. After months devoid of information, he hoped their new intelligence would lead them to the location of the Dissidents. The elimination of those radicals was a small price to fulfill his mission.

He entered his private office, which no longer resembled a disaster area. While the analysts had been busy searching for the refuse transport, he had returned his office to its pristine condition. He could never concentrate in an untidy environment. He needed order.

He activated the privacy feature on his office glazing and once again, his office blended into the adjacent walls. He walked around his desk, sat down in his chair, and activated the console on his desk. His fingers flew as they typed.

“ACQUIRE A VEHICLE. TRACK TRANSPORT. DETAILS INCLUDED.”

He attached the vehicle’s ID, image, and path of travel from the warehouse to the LTZ border and sent the message. He then leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. A wave of calmness washed over him as he drew another step closer to the ends he had been working towards for so long.

He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and pressed his lips against the tips of his fingers. A vicious smile appeared on his face as he started spinning around in his chair in a slow circle.

“This is the best news I’ve had all week,” he thought to himself. “Now, what do to about that fool?”