23: Momentum

Olivia flexed her wings after nearly two days cooped up inside after their attack on the Arena. The ache in her back muscles vanished after a few hours, but the others spent an entire day recovering from two back to back fights and a run across a city. They at least managed to get a few more leads on Sanchez, not that Olivia could have helped much. She let out a yawn. Since the fight with the Watch, her ears picked up a faint sourceless ringing. Without the weight of exhaustion, it kept her from getting a full night sleep as it oscillated between ignorable and obnoxious. It forced her awake early, before everyone save Amanda, and she wandered up to the roof to get some space.

The rising sun rose over the plains city to the east, bringing it to life. Garish neon lights from about three quarters of the skyscrapers faded in the golden light, though never vanished. Why are a bunch of them always dark? They look abandoned. Why build them if they’re not used? The day promised to be a clear one, with only a bare handful of clouds in the sky on the horizon, far to the north. I wish I could fly during the day more. I bet I could see forever when the sun is up.

With a sigh, she prepared to rise from her seat on an inert AC unit and head towards the back door to their shop. People still used one of the units at the far end of the building, there would be no mistaking her wings if they looked her way. Apparently I look even scarier than I thought. I didn’t know I looked and sounded like a roaring monster. I should have known. At least I look a little better now. She ran a claw through her now clean hair, making sure the loose ponytail over her shoulder stayed at least somewhat straight.

Why do I like it? It’s like why I’m saying sorry. Why? It looks better, but that’s not it. Not all of it. I barely look at myself. It feels better. It’s not getting in my face and doesn’t feel like a shell of crap. Maybe it is looks. I look less scary. Less wild. But why do I like looking less scary? Because then I don’t scare people. Why is that good? Like Chris said, scary things look like they might hurt people. I don’t want people to think I’m going to hurt them.

Why why why? Olivia spread her wings and dove off the edge of the roof, gliding to the ground a few stories beneath her. Her clawed feet dug into the old, crumbling asphalt of the strip of pavement behind their building. Old piles of trash, some covered in tarps or broken furniture, clustered around long abandoned dumpsters. The smell, thankfully, had long rotted away to a mere annoying undercurrent.

Amanda twisted around in her chair at the sound of Olivia opening the steel door. “Olivia, can you come here for a minute?” she called out from her workbench. 

“What is it?” asked Olivia, once she reached her. 

“I have a phone for you,” said Amanda, passing the phone to Olivia. Though small in Olivia’s hand, the hard plastic brick seemed solid enough.

“Am I supposed to call someone?” That’s what Chris did with his, right? This isn’t that phone though.

“No, it’s yours to keep. Give it a try,” said Amanda. 

She spotted a hinge at the top and flipped open the phone. The screen flickered to life and read “Yes or No”.

Nothing more appeared. But what’s the question? There’s no question. Maybe I’m just missing something. She considered the tiny buttons on the lower half of the phone, hovering a sharp claw tip over a button. I don’t want to break it. She curled her finger and maneuvered the outer tip of her hooked claw to the button and pressed “Yes”. 

“Error”.

“Yes or No” reappeared. 

She pressed “No”.

“Error”. But… but… what?

“Need some help?” asked Amanda, catching on to her confusion.

“Um.” Olivia showed her the screen. “I don’t think it works.”

Amanda repeated the same song and dance as Olivia. “Damn it. That shouldn’t happen. It worked before. Let me fix this.” Amanda took the cellphone back and plugged it into a computer. 

Olivia watched over her shoulder as Amanda flew through several different windows on her computer. Lines of either text or code, she had no idea which was which, scrolled by. I hope all this makes sense to you. Amanda grumbled under her breath. After a few minutes, and checking one box that had been unchecked, Amanda tried the phone again. 

“There we go. Try it again.”

Olivia flipped open her new phone once more and found a pleasant blue on the screen, with several icons she didn’t recognize. “Cool. Now what?” I don’t know any numbers I can call.

“So here you can check the weather for the next week; daily highs and lows, chance of precipitation, et cetera,” said Amanda as Olivia sat on the edge of a cot, tail curled to the other side. She pressed a few more buttons. “You can set an alarm here, change the time, and use it as a stopwatch. This is the default browser, an internet assessor thingy. If you feel like getting another one from the app store, they should be compatible.” 

Listening to her makes the ringing go away. That’s weird.

Amanda flipped the phone closed and passed it to Olivia. “Those are the basics. Oh.” She spun in her chair, grabbing a cord from her desk and spinning around to face Olivia again. “Here’s the charger. Kind of important.” 

Olivia took both. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Ask me if you have any questions. And you might want to go through the settings and change it how you like.”

“OK.” Cool. I thought you just called people with phones. Olivia slipped it into her pocket for later. Wait. “Is this what you’ve been working on all last night?”

“Mostly. What did you do last night?” asked Amanda.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t fly, so I just walked around on the roof for a little bit, and read a book.” I may or may not have been looking for something to do. Though there was this one guy I saw across the street… maybe? It was kind of hard to tell.

Amanda smiled. “Oh? Which one?”

“Ben gave me a Calvin and Hobbes book yesterday. He said it was his favorite.”

“A comic book? Ben has a favorite book?”

Olivia shrugged. “I liked it. The book, I mean. I got the humor, so that was a plus.”

Amanda’s eyes lit up. “If you want, I could probably put an audio book reader on your phone, too. There’s actually a neat little trick I use to boost the memory of a computer. For your specific phone it’s all on the sim chip.” You lost me there. Sim chip? Amanda picked up on her confusion. “Hold on, can I see your phone again?” asked Amanda.

“Sure.” She passed it to Amanda, who flipped it over and opened a panel in the back. She pulled a small white chip out.

“Sim chip. The rest of your phone itself is dumb. This is the brain of it, so to speak. I take the company’s phone, yours is an old CTC phone, and put it through the wringer. It can store more than the average phone, basically. It’s a conglomerate of a smartphone and a dumb phone, so you might have some compatibility issues with some apps, but audio should be good. This is just your phone, not all are the same.” Amanda began putting it back together.

“OK. Um, one more question,” said Olivia. It’s probably dumb, but I’ll just have to get over that.

“Yeah?” said Amanda, returning to Olivia.

“CTC?”

“The Congo Telecommunication Company. They have a different name in Africa, but translated here in the states it’s just the CTC. Had a big patent war with Apple a couple years ago over rounded edged phones or something stupid like that. Stuff like that is why I’m not working in industry right now.” Olivia heard Ben waking up from behind his curtained off room, clothes rustling as he got dressed.

“So do I owe you anything for it?” I really don’t like just taking stuff from other people. I did that enough before. I mean, she’s not a homeless shelter, but it’s the principle of the matter.

Amanda sighed, closing her eyes. Sorry. Before Olivia could say anything, Amanda said, “If it will make you feel better, let’s call it twenty bucks, whenever you can.”

“OK!” I think I can do that.

At that moment Ben walked out from his curtained ad hoc room. He blinked the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes and said, “Hey.”

“Good morning,” said Olivia. Amanda studiously ignored him. He joined them anyway, bare feet padding across the oil stained concrete floor. 

“Got a phone now?” he asked Olivia, motioning to the one in her hand.

“Yes,” she answered, showing him.

“Is that an old Iroko phone? Haven’t seen one of those in a while.” Iroko? Where did that come from? “Flip it over,” he said, making a flipping motion with his hand. “It’ll say on the back, for any phone, really.”

She did so. “Um, yes, it says Iroko. What does Iroko mean?”

“It’s a kind of African tree, I think,” said Amanda.

“Yeah. Their namin’ theme is trees. Never figured out why, not like they’re tree huggers or anythin’,” said Ben.

“Hey, the military names their helicopters after Native American tribes, and they haven’t exactly been the crusaders for Native American rights in the past. Or present,” pointed out Amanda.

Ben shrugged. “True. Still though, I like my iPhone.” I keep hearing these iNouns everywhere.

“What? Why? Apple is Nazis,” asked Amanda with disgust.

“Now that’s a bit of a harsh comparison,” said Ben.

“Hyperbole. It’s the best thing ever,” deadpanned Amanda. Ben started laughing. 

Um, what? Wait, I should speak up. “Hyperbole?” asked Olivia.

“Another word for exaggeration,” explained Amanda.

“Wait,” said Ben. “You know what Apple is?”

“It’s a big technology company, I think. Right?” said Olivia. I can figure stuff out. Sometimes.

“But you don’t remember words like hyperbole?”

“I don’t know. I just forgot random stuff, I guess. Not everything. Just a lot. And I didn’t know what Apple was before. I can read stuff on my own, you know.” Amanda just leaves her computer playing TV for noise. 

Movement caught their attention. Chris paused as everyone turned to him as he exited his curtain room. “Good morning, everyone.” Olivia smiled and waved in response.

“We’re bored, entertain us,” said Ben.

“Well you’re shit out of luck, I need my coffee.”

“We’re out,” called out Amanda as he headed for their kitchen in an empty office.

“Already?” Chris grumbled. He abandoned his quest for coffee and instead lowered himself into a chair beside Amanda, scratching at his neck. “I miss anything else? Have you three elected to form a hippie commune?”

Ben snorted. “Nah, always hated tie dye. Catchin’ Olivia up on modern technology.”

“That’s good. Do we have any plans for today? I’ve got the feeling we’re getting close to Sanchez.”

“So I don’t got a car. I’m guessin’ you two had yours taken by the MHU. That’s gonna make our lives really fuckin’ hard.”

“I can still move kind of fast,” spoke out Olivia.

“What about the rest of us?” asked Chris.

“Oh, I mean, for some stuff, I guess. Never mind.”

“No, you’re right,” said Chris with a quick nod. “But we can’t just have you run around and do everything for us.”

“Could steal one,” suggested Ben.

The others, Olivia included, grimaced. “I’m not sure I like the idea of that.”

Ben shrugged. “We sit still, we die.”

“I don’t suppose we could just buy another one,” mused Chris.

“There’s only fifteen grand on that card I gave Ben,” said Amanda. “I’m not sure how we’d even do that without drawing red flags.” Silence reigned for a moment, as Ben and Chris turned in unison to stare at her. “What?”

“Fifteen grand?” repeated Chris. Oh, is that a lot? It sounds like a lot. How much does a car cost?

“Yeah,” replied Amanda, eyes flickering between the two. 

“I could get like ten crap used cars for that much!” explained Ben. “I’ve been carryin’ a year’s worth of rent in my pocket? You serious?”

“Really?”

“Fuck yeah. Hell, could pay in cash if we wanted to. What the hell was your first car?”

“Nothing special, but it was more than fifteen thousand.”

“Fifteen thousand can’t buy a car? You ever been used car shoppin’?”

“No,” admitted Amanda. “Why is this such a big deal?”

“You handed a guy who you don’t like or trust fifteen thousand dollars like it’s nothing, and only seem to be just now realizing how much that was,” explained Chris.

“We’ve been eatin’ little oatmeal packets,” grumbled Ben, shaking his head. Despite his annoyed tone, his amused smile never wavered. “I coulda grabbed a grill an’ some steaks, god dammit!”

“Enough, Ben,” cut in Chris, his voice more restrained and level than Olivia had ever heard before. “Amanda, this would have been good to know before.”

“I thought you were being frugal,” snapped Amanda.

“Cuz I gotta be!” replied Ben.

“How much money do you have available at the moment?” asked Chris.

“Why?” she replied.

Chris took a deep breath before explaining, “I’m trying to figure out how much money we have access to.”

“We?” Amanda leaned back, face closing off, quashing all emotion. “I’m not sure you all need to know my entire financial situation.”

“Fine,” said Chris, raising a placating hand. “How much are you willing to part with?”

“The card Ben has. The rest I can’t tap into unless it’s an emergency.” Before Chris, annoyance crossing his face, could reply, she added, “Real, no shit, ‘we are going to die right now’ emergency.” Olivia tilted her head to the side, eyeing Amanda. Her heart is beating really fast. Why are her face and hands twitching so much?

“OK, good to know,” said Chris. “I think we’re rested enough to start going after Lehman Construction.”

“Um, those people before. The Watch. Are they going to be after us too?” asked Olivia. My ears are still ringing from them.

“Yeah, where the fuck did they come from?” added Amanda. 

“The Watch’s got a weird relationship with the cops. They don’t like runnin’ to ‘em every time somethin’ major happens,” explained Ben. “Might have been lookin’ for Sanchez’ men out there, an’ we just stumbled into ‘em.”

Chris nodded. “Alright, back on track. This place is going to be defended. They’re insane if they can’t see the pattern. But we’re going to have the element of surprise if we do this right.” He’s always so focused. 

“Every problem can be solved with the proper application of explosions, might I add,” cut in Ben.

“Yeah. That’s super illegal,” said Amanda.

“I’m aware,” said Ben.

“Alright, for today,” said Chris. “No explosions. You get us transportation.” Ben gave him a sloppy salute. “I’ll go over what to look for with Olivia. If we can have a pair of eyes in the air, she might be able to see defenses and people that would be hidden from us on the ground.”

“OK,” said Olivia. If it’ll help. I’m not sure what I’m going to be looking at though.

He turned to Amanda. “I’m not going to tell you how to do your job. You’ve delivered every time I’ve asked. Get whatever you can on Lehman Construction.” 

“Already started. About that MHU contract they have,” she said. “Should we tell the MHU?”

“Who do you trust?” After a moment of silence, Chris added, “This isn’t a trick question, I really want to know. I would say Cyrus, but he’s god knows where, not that he wasn’t loopy by the end. Bob?”

“If the main target of the city’s MHU is able to get his front operation business for the MHU, there is something seriously wrong going on. How high up is the rat? If we tell someone who is trustworthy, are they just going to get found out by the rat?” asked Amanda. “I don’t know anyone there to tell.”

Chris gave a grim nod. “I know.”

“The press?” asked Amanda.

Ben barked out a laugh. “Controlled by the government in all but name,” replied Chris. “We only have so many man-hours, let’s put a pin in that and focus on what’s in front of us.”

Tasks in hand, the group dispersed.

***

Wind whipped past Olivia’s face as she coasted high above the city. The headquarters for Lehman Construction squatted below her, an older ten story building of steel and glass. The main tower rose above a wider two story ring. She kept high up, out of sight of anyone who might be looking down below. No one ever looks up. It’s night. I should be safe. We talked about this. The Tech Center, a sort of secondary smaller downtown area, stretched on all around her. 

Her head still swam after Chris’ crash course in surveillance. The hours had flashed by, but Olivia felt a little more confident in what to look for.

“Look for burn pits. They might be burning trash or documents to get rid of evidence.

Olivia took another pass, lower this time to catch the scent of the air around the building. A vaguely familiar scent of a light, almost sweet oil caught her nose, before concrete powder washed it away. There’s a lot of gas and stuff here. But is there any ash or soot? She circled one more time, keeping an eye to the ground for the dark marks of burn pits on the ground. Nothing.

“Pay attention to the parking lot. They seem fond of things underground, this won’t be perfect, but this might give us a general idea of activity. Take a note of how many cars you see, where they’re parked, and what types of cars. We don’t care about a fleet of work trucks, this is still a real operating business. But expensive cars? The type that might be rewards, or flashy status symbols? Those we care about.” 

Olivia could only spot a small handful of cars scattered around the parking lot at the late hour. None stood out as unusual, though she did see four motorcycles near the employee entrance. That’s a bunch, does that mean anything? 

Well inside the premises, in a fenced off area, a van parked against a wall caught her attention, or rather, what was on top of the van. That looks like those antenna things Amanda put on our roof. Olivia swooped down for a closer look, struggling to make sense of what she saw. There’s extra stuff on them, they look bulkier, but the do look similar. Several crates rested against the back of the van, along with an empty wooden pallet leaned against the front. It doesn’t look like it’s moved in a while. Though hard to make out even for her eyes at that angle, she managed to read ‘Lock Corp.’ along the side facing the wall. 

“If there are any people, take note of them. Patrolling guards walk slower and more deliberately than workers coming off their shift.”

Olivia marked a few people on the lower roof. She spotted the occasional minuscule glint of cigarette embers, though they never left their positions other than to walk a slow circuit. OK. Not on smoke break. A pair of women, smelling of chemicals when Olivia swooped overhead for a closer look, strolled to their cars. Cleaners? They smell like that stuff Chris uses in the bathroom. Bleach? I think that’s what he said it was. They’re probably fine.

She circled a few more times, making out several protrusions recognizable as cameras. A few windows were lit, though tinted to keep her from taking a good look in. She saw motion in some of them, and kept a mental note of their location. Two hours passed before she finally decided to call it quits, gleaning no new information from the gang headquarters below her.

I have time. We’re going to sleep through the day anyways. Her winding route back to the shop took her past her old apartment. The ragged hole where Tod had punched her out still marred its wall. I guess it is still being watched, I swear I saw a guy on the roof for a second. I kind of miss the apartment. That couch was comfy. 

Finally, she pulled up to land just outside the back door to their shop. She angled herself through the metal door frame to find the others standing or sitting around a beat up, crooked old table they’d found somewhere. Olivia could see three different deep gouges on the top, and a set of printed off blueprints only partially concealed a large dark discoloration on the rough surface of the wood. 

“So what are we looking at?” asked Chris.

Olivia relayed all she’d seen, heard, and smelled. Chris nodded, as Amanda split her attention between the conversation and a laptop off to her side. Ben simply drummed his fingers against the table’s edge. “If they’re not burning evidence they might not know we’re coming,” pointed out Chris.

“How?” asked Amanda. “We just might not be able to see it.”

“Shredders are a thing.” added Ben.

Chris grimaced and ceded the point with a nod. 

“I think they know we’re coming,” said Amanda. “There’s a lot in this building that’s been disconnected. Like, granted, I’m not some magic leet hacker or anything, but I couldn’t ping anything in that building. And the Lock Corp van is a bad sign.” Leet?

“Who?” asked Olivia.

“Lock Corporation is a big merc security company, one of my brothers signed on with them,” said Ben, beating Amanda to the punch. 

“Wait, really?” she asked, attention snapping fully to Ben without a hint of malice. Is she worried?

“Don’t worry,” replied Ben with a laugh. “He’s in some miserable sand pit in the middle east.” 

Amanda’s worry did not lessen in the slightest. “I think they know we’re coming. Lock Corp is mostly east of the Mississippi,” she explained. The what now? “They only recently started expanding into Westward. They can’t have been set up for that long.”

“Um,” began Olivia, waiting to make sure she wouldn’t be talked over. “It looked like the van was there for a while.”

Amanda frowned. “Olivia, did it look like this?” She pulled up a picture on her laptop for Olivia to confirm. “That’s definitely sigint equipment. We’re going to have to be very silent when we approach.

“What? Sigint?” asked Olivia. I don’t think sigint is a word. Right?

“Signals intelligence,” replied Amanda. “Think of detecting and listening in on signals.”

“I mean, it kinda makes sense for Lehman to contract a security company for shit they can’t do themselves.”

“Did you see anything else, anyone else, or was it just the van?” asked Amanda.

“Just the van,” answered Olivia. 

“OK, that’s better. Lehman might just be leasing equipment, and maybe an operator if that’s the case,” said Amanda, relaxing.

“How much of a problem is this going to be?” asked Chris.

“Not much of one. They know what they’re doing, but I can skirt around most of their equipment and techniques. Like I said, we’ll need to keep chatter to a minimum around this place. If we use them too much, we’ll give them info on how our comms work and compromise them in the future.”

Chris nodded, satisfied. “What about the company itself? Lehman, not Lock Corp.”

“On paper, Mark Lehman, the son of the owner, is still CEO, but no one has seen him for years, outside of the occasional social event. No clue what’s going on there and I don’t feel like wasting time digging. They have a good reputation, from what I’ve seen. Their workers are a bit more annoyed.”

“How can you tell?” asked Ben. “You ain’t left the building.”

“Oh, there’s a new ‘rate your boss’ website thing online. A lot of employees have complaints about long hours and poor communication. And weird subcontractors.”

“Think we might be able to find a friend on the inside? One with keys?” asked Ben. 

“We don’t have the time, energy, or expertise to do something like that,” pointed out Chris. “Physically, what are we dealing with?”

Amanda tapped the blueprints on the table. “So this is what I’ve got on the building itself. It was supposed to be a children’s hospital, but funding dried up,” explained Amanda. Huh? Oh god, that’s terrible. “Lehman Construction took it over. Other than big structural things like load bearing walls, this should be taken with a grain of salt. I’ll be amazed if Sanchez just left blueprints of his own headquarters lying around for anyone to find. He’s proven shockingly competent at adapting physical structures to his own needs and covering his tracks.”

“Shockin’ly?” repeated Ben.

“Mob boss and structural engineer are two completely different jobs.”

Chris sat upright and pointed out, “It’s not just him.”

“True. But he is the shot-caller,” explained Amanda. “He makes good calls, and we have to assume he or someone advising him knows their stuff. This is too competent a company to simply be a front.”

“That CEO you mentioned?” I hope he’s OK. If he’s not helping the bad guys, that is.

Amanda shrugged. “Maybe. With this and what Olivia brought us, we can make a rough idea of a plan.”

“Which will turn to shit the moment we meet the enemy,” said Ben. Everyone looked at him. “What? Murphy’s Law.”

Amanda rolled her eyes and said, “Anyways, there are three entrances, one of which is fairly out of the way.” 

“We can’t split up like last time, we’ll be overwhelmed,” said Chris. We almost were, last time. “Where are the elevators and stairs?”

***

Boiling dark thunderclouds over the mountains swallowed the last of the sunset. Looking to the north or south, Olivia could clearly see the sharp line of the spring storm front moving in, where pale blue sky gave way to clouds. It was so nice and sunny yesterday. Can we just go back to that? I know it’s night now, but it’s the principle of the matter.

Olivia watched for anything unusual at the entrance they’d marked. The others knelt or sat out of sight below the lip of the roof they hid on, preparing themselves and their gear. Just like the night before, she saw only cars streaming away as the work day ended. Their own new car, a beat up old clunker even more cramped than the jeep, lay parked behind a wall in a nearby parking garage. No sirens came their way that she could hear. She could trust her ears again, now that the ringing had fallen off over the day. I guess they’re fine now. She took a deep breath. Don’t mess up.

“Hey, you all right?” asked Ben, making her jump. He slipped on his grinning metal comedy mask.

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Kind of,” she stammered in reply. Good job me. Way to babble.

“You look nervous.”

“Is it that obvious? I’m just worried, I guess.” Chris and Amanda, scattered around the roof and lost in their own tasks, paid them no attention. Amanda, face unreadable under her helmet, studied a small, rugged laptop she’d produced from her backpack. Chris flipped through some papers he’d brought, lists of names to look for inside.

“Just don’t fuck up! Easy.” Of course.

“I know. I just don’t want any of us to get hurt.”

He glanced sideways at Olivia. “You gonna be able to do this?” he asked.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Figured I’d ask. We got this.” He punched her elbow and returned to organizing his pistol magazines.

A nervous silent hour passed, then Chris grunted as he stood with his rifle. “Let’s get started.” No going back now. Lightning cracked the sky over the mountains, and thunder rumbled across the plains.