December 17th, 2267. 10:55 Vosture Prime – John’s Homestead

Elias needed no additional information to conclude that John was a monster. But the casualness in John’s description of that night’s events was just so callous to him. She wasn’t a target; she was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time. A saying that Elias heard early on in the colony but one he never quite understood. Yet still, he murdered her and she screamed out in fear.

His right hand was trembling slightly. It seemed like anytime John spoke he had to reconvince himself not to shoot John dead. But once again his inner voice screamed out to do just that. But once again, the rational side of his brain fought back, ‘we need more intel’ he thought.

“She had nothing to do with the conspiracy, didn’t she?”

“Aside from dating a mole, no,” John said as he watched the screen ahead of him, “When did you link the double murder to this whole game we were playing.”

“Hold on, you knew she had nothing to do with it.”

“I wasn’t positive, it was possible he told her about his scheme. In any case, anyone that was in that home, aside from children, was not going to survive the night,” John said chillingly.

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel any better.”

John smiled before he took a drink, “That is a fair response. Now then, when did you connect the dots on the double murder?”

“Far too late to do anything about it…” Elias trailed off.

“Like a month late?”

“November late.”

“Ooh, yeah, way too late,” John smirked as he spoke.

“Did you feel anything when you killed her?”

“Yes, recoil from the gun and a sharp pain in my left arm. Fucking asshole threw a knife at me,” John chuckled, “Truth be told, I preferred the knife over a gun.”

“You said that the wound would take roughly two weeks to heal?”

“It took twenty-four days to get to a point where my arm was back to one hundred percent, which is actually slower than expected. I am responsible for the length of recovery though. I aggravated the injury a couple of times working out and doing some yard work. But yeah, that’s within the expected timeframe for my biology,” John paused and turned to Elias, “I’m sure the DNA scan that you have of me will prove most valuable to your genetic engineers. Though I’d stress caution trying to replicate what comes naturally to me. As some added information, that timeframe was possible due mainly to the lack of any arteries that were sliced, which would’ve made the recovery time longer.”

“I’m not sure the benefits of such recoveries are worth it with your lack of morals.”

“Morals are generally societal and not necessarily genetically given,” John turned around and took a drink.

“Did William know Terry well?”

“No, not at all. In fact, he had no idea that Terry had access to the documents that he possessed. I, of course, helped him close that gap in a meeting with him the following the murders to ensure his data was not shared unexpectedly. There was no mention of anything related to what I did to Terry. It wasn’t worth the round of follow-up questions plus I didn’t want him to get wrapped up in the shit that I was doing.”

“Because you knew you were going to go low while he couldn’t.”

“Correct, hard to have a conspiracy when one party is acting independently of the other and oftentimes against their explicit wishes. Wiliam was quite clear that he didn’t want me to run a smear campaign or do anything else that was illegal to aid him.”

“How did you respond to that request of his?” Elias’ hand stopped trembling as he looked at John.

“I smiled and played dumb.”

“A non-answer. Why am I not surprised?”

“One that William understood immediately. He asked again and I gave him the same response. When the conversation didn’t change from the topic, I merely excused myself and left,” John paused, “William isn’t a dumb man, he knew instantly what was going on and what I was willing to do. But he didn’t know, and as far as I’m aware, doesn’t know that I was responsible for those two killings.”

“But why kill her, why not kill him and knock her out?”

“I’m in hostile territory Elias. My modus operandi has always been ‘kill first, ask questions later.’ I was like that in my youth and frankly, that mantra makes sense now. Maybe it should be to ask forgiveness later, but I digress. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and like it or not, without hard evidence to clear her she was an ancillary target that night. If I could have killed him and not her, I would’ve preferred that outcome.”

“Admit it, you were startled and just killed her because of your response.”

“I’ll admit that I was startled by her screech, I certainly was not expecting that. But whether you believe me matters little to me. She was effectively on the kill list that night; I had hoped she wasn’t in the house. A hope that did not come to fruition that evening.”

“Why couldn’t the police trace the spent shell casings back to you?”

John looked back at Elias with a puzzled look on his face, “Do you think we stamp our cases?”

“Yes, we do that in the Union.”

“Wow, nice police state you’ve got there,” John said sarcastically, “Cases are not individually marked or assigned to a person. Guns are, but not ammunition. The rounds were common ten-millimeter caliber, without having my gun they would never be able to trace it back to me. And that gun that I used was taken out of effective service. I replaced the barrel, ejector, and firing pin on that gun the day after it was used. Doing that, which is legal and doesn’t require any notification, effectively eliminates gun matching from any rounds or casings that are recovered.”

“You knew what you did was wrong and yet you still justify your actions were correct.”

“Because they were the correct thing to do and within my remit to conduct my mission according to the orders I received,” John’s voice didn’t share a hint of emotion within it, “I was cleared to do what I did, and the blunt honest truth is it is not the first time I’ve done such a thing. How did the move to the new location go?”

Elias snorted as he shook his head, “To use one of your parlances, it was a clusterfuck.”

5 Months Ago. August 2nd, 2267. 06:00 Elkhart Lane – Rose Building

Elias was holding the door open for Linus. In his hands was one more load of stuff that was brought into the new headquarters. Constantine was following close behind.

“The other truck should have the rest of the gear,” Constantine said, “Though we may need one more trip to strip the old building.”

“What a fucking mess this is,” Elias cursed under his breath.

“That it is, but we have no idea if we were compromised or if it was an issue with a local. Considering the former, it is most unlikely to repeat here.

Unlike their previous location, they were in a much more modern building. The downside to it is the lack of space. The dorm portion of this new building was so much smaller. There were only two large rooms along with six other rooms. One of the large rooms was being set up to sleep four people. In the old building, everyone could have had their own rooms.

Elias then turned and saw Daphne standing in front of him wearing a scowl on her face, “I’m moving into your room.”

“Don’t look so enthused about that,” Elias responded sarcastically.

“Why in the hell are we here and not…”

“Maybe if someone was better with money we would’ve had more to get a nicer place,” Elias said, “Irrespective of past indiscretions, I am happy to have you with me.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I’ll see you later, our office is a fucking mess,” Daphne said in a huff before walking away.

Constantine walked back and stood in the corner behind the door, “Pleasant girl. My team and I have some things to do. Will you be alright without any additional guards?”

Elias nodded, “Linus is parking the first truck. Once Marion drops off his last load, he will do the same to that truck. We have at least a day’s worth of work getting everything unpacked and sorted out.”

Constantine watched Marion and Viviana walk through and slapped Elias’ shoulder, “We’ll find out what happened to Kaius. When things settle down, we’ll have a ceremony in the forest to inter his body and honor him.”

Elias nodded, “I feel like we’re dishonoring him by leaving him there, but…”

“As distasteful as that decision felt,” Constantine said, “It was the right decision. We simply don’t have the space here at the moment. When everything is moved, we will jerry-rig a power source and move the freezer into the back of the third truck and keep him here.”

“Thank you, it will make me feel much better than we know his body won’t be desecrated by the vagrants of this world. What kind of work are you guys doing today?”

“A follow-up lead from the data Kaius brought back with him. And of course, looking into his death as well. There are some locals that Linus and I will be having a talk with.”

“Good luck, if all goes well this space will be livable when you return.”

Constantine gave Elias a grim look, “I’m afraid of wishing for luck, but we need it all the same.”

Marion then returned, paused, and stepped out of the way for Constantine, “Sir, Viviana is going to grab the last box, I’ll be moving the truck to the parking underground.”

“Good work, I want you to help Daphne out and get that office set up,” Elias paused and looked at Viviana as she walked by, “Viviana, you and Castor are to get the kitchen set up.”

“Understood,” Viviana said quietly without looking at Elias.

Elias didn’t notice the disrespectful attitude and walked down the hallway. He saw his team looking listless. Orders were barked out and the people moved to do the work they were ordered to do. But this was the first time that Elias had seen his team so demoralized.

Ellie was also quick to notice that too, she was about to ask to speak to Elias in private but opted to wait to speak later. She, unlike the others, was left to her own devices to unpack their make-shift clinic. With the exception of the examination bed, which Castor was ever so willing to help her set up.

16:23 Rose Building – Elias’ New Office

Ellie walked up to the third floor and went down the narrow hallway to where Elias’ team had set up shop. She could hear lots of noise coming from their room. She slowly pushed the door fully open and looked inside.

Alberic and Katherina were arguing with one another about where to put the terminal. Ellie giggled to herself when she saw Alberic drag the terminal to one side of the final table they had set up. Katherina shook her head and pulled it back to her side then moved the chair around. The two stopped their game when they looked up at her.

“What can we do for you, Ellie?” Katherina asked.

“Is Elias here?”

Alberic nodded and pointed to the door in the corner of the room, “His office is back there. As far as I know, he’s still in there. We’ve been focused on other things though.”

Ellie smiled as she walked by the pair, “Thank you.”

She walked over to the door in the corner of the room and knocked on it. To her surprise, it slowly opened inward. Ellie peered her head inside. Elias was looking through the holographic screen and gestured for her to come inside.

“The doorknob needs some adjusting, but all of our tools are being used at the moment,” Elias said, “Please, take a seat. What’s on your mind?”

“The clinic is fully set up and operational,” Ellie said, “It did help that it was the first batch of things moved over. I spent the last few hours reviewing Kaius’ autopsy results.”

“What have you found?”

Ellie closed her eyes and shook her head gently, “His family line suffered from mild anxiety and an equally mild case of hypertension. Usually, the family members suffer one or the other but not both. Kaius himself appeared to suffer from elevated levels of both compared to his parents and siblings.”

Elias leaned forward in his seat, “So, a natural heart attack was possible?”

“The possibility of it, even with his atrocious diet here, is hard to accept as reality, but it is distinctly possible. That’s why I went digging in their Extra-Net and focused on compounds that can induce a heart attack,” Ellie said, “There are three compounds that are most effective at doing so. Two of which are effectively pure poison and result in noticeable scarring of the blood vessels and surrounding tissue. Kaius had none of that.”

“And the third?”

“I’ll spare you from trying to pronounce its actual name, but it’s routinely called the Heart-Burster by intelligence agencies in this sector. It leaves behind little to no trace, but if one looks carefully enough you can find it. The downside to this is that all of our bodies produce a natural, and benign, variant of this compound. So, our bodies effectively mask the compound.”

“Isolating what is and isn’t natural is difficult.”

“Incredibly. I can’t rule out the possibility that he was injected with this. That is because I was able to record elevated levels of the natural compound in his body,” Ellie raised her hand up to stop Elias’ question for her, “The problem is there’s no injection mark. The drug can be ingested but the amount necessary to induce a heart attack through ingestion would leave substantial amounts in the stomach and intestines. Where we didn’t see any.”

“And you didn’t see an injection mark anywhere on his body.”

“None at all. And I looked at his family’s medical records again, that compound is elevated in their bodies as well,” Ellie sighed, “Which seems to imply that his elevated levels may not be a signal of being injected with anything.”

“Which means we’re nowhere near answering this question. Doesn’t help that the bloody camera in our garage hadn’t been working in the past couple of weeks,” Elias banged his desk lightly, “Dammit.”

“I am not one that is invested in conspiracies, sir, but is it not possible that Kaius was simply struck by bad luck?”

“There’s been too much bad luck here so far having lost a fifth of our personnel,” Elias closed his eyes, “How difficult is it to acquire this compound?”

“There are no production facilities on the planet. Not surprisingly, its use and creation are highly regulated,” Ellie frowned, “It is the most likely candidate but there’s not likely to be more than a handful of vials here on this planet if any are here at all.”

“Ellie, please send the compound's name, along with the others, to Alberic and Renata. I’d like confirmation that the compounds either don’t exist or are entirely accounted for.”

“Sir, I will be happy to do that, but if this is a counter-espionage operation, then you should know that we’d only be looking at official sources,” Ellie sat perfectly still as she looked at Elias.

“Have them check those less legal places. I’ll see what I can do to get an accounting for the gear Naval Intelligence left behind.”

“Thank you, I’ll continue to look into this matter,” Ellie then stood up bowed politely, and left the room.

Just as soon as she left Castor appeared, “Want your door fixed?”

“Yes, and thank you,” Elias said as he looked back down at his terminal.

Castor pulled out a Philips screwdriver and worked on adjusting the doorknob latch. A mechanic he was not, but he continued at the work despite the lack of gracefulness in doing so. Elias then looked up and spoke.

“Humor me for a moment, what do you think happened to Kaius?”

“Sounds like natural causes,” Castor said without much emotion as he remained focused on the doorknob.

Elias sighed, “I know that’s what’s been spread, but what do you think?”

Castor stopped working and looked over at Elias, “Let’s say you or I were an agent running a counter op, would either one of us stop at killing one person? At our home base during a time that none of us are expected to be awake?”

“Caution sometimes wins the battle.”

“But not the war,” Castor shook his head, “I think this is proof there isn’t an agent down here.”

“Please, expand upon that statement,” Elias said.

“I wanted to believe there was an agent. I still do, because the amount of bad luck we’ve experienced is shocking. But the more I think about it the more I believe that is exactly what’s happened.”

Katherina then walked over and inserted herself into the conversation, “I disagree with his conclusion, but if Kaius was murdered, why weren’t more of us killed last night? I wouldn’t have stopped at one.”

“Agreed,” Alberic added, “The inner door had recognized Kaius and shut off the security system. A competent agent would’ve been able to detect that. None of us were up at that time of the night, it’s not impossible to believe that he could have murdered everyone, or several of us sight unseen before absconding.”

“For the sake of argument, if there was an agent that murdered Kaius,” Elias said as he looked at his people, “Why would he give up the guaranteed kills of a certain number of our operatives?”

Castor shook his head as he shrugged. He couldn’t come up with any explanation that made sense. Katherina’s response was much the same. Alberic looked puzzled for a moment.

“He’d be giving up on knowing our location. He’d have to start over from scratch. We know none of our vehicles were bugged, that would set his operation back. That means he’d have to accept a loss of intel and control against us for a reason,” Alberic then shrugged

“Or he wanted us to move, maybe...” Castor trailed off as he thought, “But what’s the advantage there?”

“Stalling for time? Could he know what we’re doing?” Katherina asked.

Elias nodded his head, “I can buy the sum of those parts. He killed only one of us to drive us into action, but failed to eliminate all of us because he doesn’t know what we’re doing.”

“With respect, he could find out what we’re doing after we’re dead by going through all of our gear. That’s a bit of wishful thinking on our part personally,” Castor said.

“Agreed,” Elias said.

Alberic then said, “What if Kaius was a kill of opportunity and he either didn’t have the gear or certainty he’d escape unscathed?”

“Or he had something else pressing on him to get to?” Katherina said.

“Like what?” Castor asked sarcastically.

“Spy shit?” Alberic said sarcastically.

Castor then fired back, “Maybe he wasn’t prepared to assault our base at that time?”

The room grew quiet as Elias nodded. The speculative nature of this conversation was fascinating. And all plausible, but the problem was the lack of hard evidence to prove it. A point that young Castor was the one to put forth.

“The problem is all of what we just said was speculation. There’s no actual evidence that any of this is true though, right?”

Elias nodded, “That appears to be the case. Are the two of you done with setting up our new office?”

“More or less,” Alberic shrugged as he answered.

Katherina nodded. Castor turned back to the doorknob and quickly adjusted the last couple of bolts. Elias then spoke, “I want a list of everything that happened last night. We’ll chat about this tomorrow after lunch. Scan the police channels, hospital admittances, metro purchases, and complaints, everything.”

Castor quickly finished fixing the doorknob after Alberic and Katherina left the room quietly. Castor could be heard dropping his tools rather noisily on a table outside of the doors. Elias sat in his chair and stared blankly at the holographic display.

If Kaius were there, he’d tell him he was chasing a ghost. Maybe he was, but he wanted to put to bed this notion that there was a countertop once and for all. He felt like the mission was strangling him because of the uncertainty. He needed to know for certain what was happening.