“Have you ever heard of the Minus Faction?”
Ian lifted his head. He’d been resting it on his arms on the table. It was late and they’d been grilling him for the better part of an hour. He thought about the name. “No. Is it a band or something?”
“No. Nothing like that at all.”
They had taken him to a government building north of town and left him alone in a small, off-white room marked Interview 3. Several gruesome, boring hours passed, and he started to feel like he might pee his pants. His feet fidgeted in his Converse. He had stared at every crease in the carpet twenty times. He figured they were using boredom and a full bladder to wear him down. But the joke was on them, he thought, because he would have spilled his guts about the porn hours ago. And the music.
When the door had finally opened, he actually smiled. Special Agent Scanlon walked in and put a voice recorder on the table. She was followed by an associate, Agent Howser, a husky man in a blue suit. They asked him to recount his movements for the last two years. They asked about his family, his work, his relationship with Emli. They seemed particularly interested in the death of his parents, especially his dad, and his insistence that he had few friends. When he asked what it was all about, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was only to answer questions, not ask them.
The agents’ eyes were bloodshot and their voices were grainy as if they were recovering from a cold or had had too little sleep. Ian tried to be patient. He hadn’t requested a lawyer. He said he wanted to cooperate, to clear it up, whatever it was. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but as the questions came like blows from a battering ram, one after the other, and as his bladder screamed at him from under the waist of his tight pants, Ian was at the end. He wasn’t even sure what time it was. Probably after midnight.
“So you don’t claim to be a member?”
“Of the Minus Faction? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“What about your girlfriend?” Agent Howser had thinning hair and a permanent growl.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Is she a member?”
“I told you, I’ve never heard of them before.” They were trying to trick him into slipping up, contradicting himself. Was he some kind of suspect? His palms got clammy. Then he worried that his discomfort made him look guilty, which only increased his discomfort. He shifted in his seat.
Agent Scanlon noticed. “What about Anonymous? You work with computers. Surely you’ve heard of them.”
“You mean the hackers?”
Agent Howser crossed his arms. “Since they split from Anonymous, the Minus Faction have graduated from hacking to outright cyberterrorism.”
“I didn’t even know they had factions.” It seemed silly. “That makes it sounds like there’s a war or something.” He snorted. “Faction.” He repeated the word with emphasis.
“That’s exactly what they think.” Agent Howser was impatient. “According to the Faction, my partner and I are unwitting pawns in a global conspiracy.”
“Dupes.”
“We don’t like being called that.”
Scanlon shook her head. “That’s not a way to get on the Bureau’s good side.”
Howser uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. “I’m getting real tired of your bullshit.”
Ian was quiet. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a good job.” He didn’t know what to say. “Maybe I could help if you told me what this was about.” He worded it so it wasn’t a question. His leg bounced up and down. He really, really had to pee.
Scanlon produced a photo. “What about this? Ever seen this before.”
Ian shook his head and shrugged. “What am I looking at?”
It was a cubical box roughly four inches across. It was made of brushed metal. The top lifted on a hinge. It looked high-tech.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. I told you, I don’t even know what it is.” They didn’t believe him. About anything.
Howser paced. “When did you first meet Derek Wilkins?”
“I don’t know him either.”
“What about a man named Prophet?”
Ian looked up. The agents both saw it. They stopped and waited.
Ian had intended to cooperate. But just then he wondered if admitting to the messages he’d received, however strange and tenuous, would only amplify their conviction that he was some kind of terrorist, and that he was lying.
Ian looked between his interrogators. They were bullying him. It wasn’t just a friendly chat. Whatever they were on about, it was serious. But that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was how much it was just a job to them. This is what they did. Tonight they were interrogating him. Tomorrow they’d probably have some reports to file or something, and then they’d go home to their families, or to a little league game. They had nothing personal at stake. Nothing at all.
“Look, I’m sure we can clear all this up. But maybe I should have a lawyer or something.”
The agents looked at each other. Scanlon nodded while her partner cursed and walked out of the room. The door slammed behind him. Then it was quiet.
Scanlon stared at Ian. It was uncomfortable.
“You sure you want to play it this way?”
Ian wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“You’re not a US citizen.” She waited. “Obstructing an active investigation is more than enough reason to yank your visa. No work visa means no job. All we’re asking for is a little cooperation.”
Ian was quiet. “I just think I should maybe have a lawyer here. I don’t know why that automatically makes me a criminal.”
“You know, believe it or not, you are not our biggest problem right now.” She pointed. “In the next room, we have none other than Jonelle Burnhardt, alias Betty Six, whose very lengthy tenure on the Most Wanted list ended today thanks to an anonymous tip. She popped up right about the same time you did. To be honest, my partner and I haven’t slept much in the last 48 hours. We’re a little grouchy. We’re fitting Ms. Six with an orange jumpsuit right now, and she’ll be heading to Nevada in the morning.
“You’re a foreign national. We’re an hour from the border. That means we can’t risk letting you go. If we don’t get what we need, we gotta put you on the same transport. That means you’re not going home today. Do you understand?”
Ian had no idea what words he could say to convince her he didn’t know anything, that all of this was a huge misunderstanding. He felt abandoned. By everyone. He just wanted a lawyer, someone who knew about this kind of stuff, someone to talk to. A friend. He breathed through his mouth, ready to speak as soon as something came. “Can I please go to the bathroom?”
“Okay . . . you know what? Forget all this. Doesn’t matter.” Agent Scanlon cleared the table. She stuffed everything into a folder and dropped it into a small, plastic-lined trash can in the corner. She looked at Ian like she was deciding something.
Ian looked back. He scratched his unshaven cheek. His leg shook the table.
She turned off the recorder. “We went to your apartment.”
“Oh?” He wondered if they found the porn.
“Reminds me of my son’s room, right down to the filthy shower.”
Shower. Bathroom. Have to pee.
“Do you wanna hear a story?”
Ian didn’t answer.
Scanlon leaned in. She lowered her voice. “Approximately eight months ago, that box was stolen from a secure research facility in Silicon Valley. That would be a problem for the state of California, except for what they took: a culture, some kind of bacterial something-or-other. The nerds at NASA say it could be weaponized. They say the loss of life could be significant. Do you understand? We’re not talking airplanes flying into buildings. We’re talking Biblical plague.”
Ian felt his body go cold. The color drained from his face. She was serious.
“Most of the leads have gone cold, not that there were many in the first place. It’s like the box just up and disappeared, like someone beamed it out of there.
“Then, out of the blue, one of the researchers says he wants to make a confession. Says he helped steal it. Says he’s dying and doesn’t want that to be his legacy. Says he can give us the names of his accomplices. Three people, two of them recently deceased. Guess who the third was?”
Ian exhaled slowly. This was bad. This was very bad.
“I’ve been doing this job a long time. I can tell when someone’s in over their head, and when they know it. So this is it. This is your lifeline. The only one anybody will throw your way. After this, things get really, really bad for you. You can get a lawyer. That’s your right. But then we have to ask why? If you really don’t know anything, why not just cooperate? We’ll hold you while we get a warrant and turn your life upside down. Search your work, your apartment, interview your friends, your boss, your coworkers. And you can kiss that visa goodbye.
“I want to believe you’re innocent. I do. If you are, then none of that will amount to anything. But by then, anyone who’s had anything to do with you—old girlfriends, distant cousins, the bullies who picked on you in school—will know you’re in the Terrorist Screening Database. The big watch list. Try passing a background check after that. Or getting a decent job. Ever.
“Meanwhile, you’ll have been wasting everyone’s time, leaving the bad guys to perpetrate whatever dastardly deeds they’re planning. Is that what you want? You want to be responsible for the deaths of thousands? Millions?”
Ian held his breath. It all seemed so stupid. A mistake. Agents Howser and Scanlon were probably skilled interrogators. Ian figured that making threats, especially to powerless people like him, probably worked most of the time. He figured that after a couple hours, or maybe a night, they’d be satisfied he was telling the truth and let him go. That’s how it worked, right? He’d be home soon, then back at work wrapping up the project. Then back to Vancouver.
He needed a job.
Ian’s bladder was burning. His voice was soft in the quiet room. “Please, I just wanna go to the bathroom.”
“All right.” She stood. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”
And then she walked out.
Ian lay on the cot in his stark white cell listening to the distant klaxon that had woken him. He looked down at his orange jumpsuit. He’d never been booked before, or spent a night in jail. It was all surprisingly mundane. He was just happy to get a little rest, and that they finally let him pee. That alone had made him feel so much better, he’d actually smiled. Maybe tomorrow the lawyer would help him work it all out. This would just be a crazy story to tell his kids. “That time I was accused of being a terrorist.”
There was a click. The heavy door to the cell opened and a child walked in. Ian sat up. His body gave a tiny jerk of surprise. She was wholly out of place.
“Excuse me.” It was involuntary. He didn’t know what else to say.
The girl was maybe ten or eleven and very thin with an impish nose and reddish-brown hair just past her jaw. Her tennis shoes were purple. Colorful plastic baubles hung from the belt loops of her jeans. She wore a fuzzy gray hoodie, almost like a stuffed animal. Ian recognized it immediately.
She closed the door and set a bulging plastic grocery bag on the floor. “Don’t talk for a sec.”
“Little girl, I don’t think you’re supp—”
“Shhh! I’m thinking.” The girl sat Indian-style on the white vinyl and dug into the plastic bag. She removed a green plastic dart gun. It had been modified. There was a small canister of compressed gas on the back. The top lip of the barrel was metal: long, thin, and sharp, like a tapering needle. She pushed a clear plastic tube down the barrel until it clicked. Inside was a miniature coil. Then she pulled a tablet computer from the bag and began to type.
Ian had been transferred to the county lockup for safe keeping. He hadn’t been asleep very long when the alarm sounded. It had to be three or four in the morning. There was shouting in the hall. “What’s going on out there?”
The girl ignored him.
Ian watched. She wasn’t playing a game or surfing the internet. There were no graphics, no sounds. The screen was mostly black. She was typing at a command line. He remembered enough from college to recognize she was sending instructions to a server via a terminal emulator.
“Okay, you can talk now.” She didn’t stop typing.
“Nice Totoro hoodie.” He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Thanks. I got it in Japan.” She didn’t look up from the screen.
“Cool. I’m Japanese. Well, half.” Ian sat on the cot and leaned against the white wall.
“I know. You’re named after your dad.”
Ian stiffened. It was a very unnerving observation. “How do you know that?”
“I have a photographic memory.”
“No, I meant—”
“If you meant where did I read it”—the girl kept typing on her tablet—“then you should’ve asked that.” The fuzzy ears of her hoodie shook with the hurried movement of her hands. “You’re about to get snagged.”
“Snagged?” Ian felt old. “Is that some kind of prison slang?”
She made a face but didn’t look up. “You’ve been added to the Terrorist Screening Database.”
Apparently Agent Scanlon wasn’t bluffing. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s easier to crack their system from the inside.”
“No, how did you get into a jail?”
“Pffft . . . That’s easy. No one ever suspects a kid. There. It’s running.” She showed Ian the screen. Lines of white letters scrolled across a black screen. “Couple hours from now and you’ll be gone.”
Ian shrugged. “What am I looking at?”
The girl rolled her eyes and lowered the tablet. “I thought you worked with computers.”
“I’m a business analyst. I take requirements from end users and—”
“I know what a business analyst is.”
“You do? What are you, like ten?”
“I’m eleven and a half.”
“Oh, and a half. I’m so glad we clarified that.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
“Asshole?” Ian leaned away, shocked. “Should you really be talking like—what is that?”
The girl picked up the dart gun. “It’s an oscillating induction coil.” She stood and walked to him.
“What are you doing with it?”
“I’m implanting it under your skin.”
“Wait, what?”
The girl jabbed the sharp end into Ian’s leg and pulled the trigger. There was a snap and a hiss of compressed gas.
“OW!” He jumped back and out of his cot and fell to the floor. It hurt. He stared at her, wide-eyed. His left thigh stung. There was a small hole in his brand new orange jumpsuit.
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure it’s sterile.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Wink.” She put the gun back in the bag. Ian saw red on the tip.
“Shouldn’t you wipe that off or something?” He stood and sat on the cot. He rubbed his leg, then looked at it. He couldn’t see anything. “What the hell did you just put in my leg?”
“Okay, this is what’s gonna happen.” The little girl spoke with her hands, like a tiny professor. “You’re gonna be loaded up for transfer. But you won’t make it.” She was very serious. Tiny flecks of worn, mismatched color clung persistently to her nails, which were frayed at the edges as if they’d been chewed. She had a Band-Aid on the back of one hand. Integral equations were written over it in green ink. “They’re going to put you in front of this projector-looking thing, kind of like a movie camera. Don’t fight it. After they let you go, I’ll trigger the coil and it’ll wipe the entanglement. Then we totally need to find the box.”
“Who’s we?”
She stood. “Have you ever heard of the Minus Faction?”
Not that again. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Oh, great.” The girl rolled her eyes. “You’re a moron.” Something chimed in the girl’s pocket, and she pulled out a slim phone. “I have to go.”
Ian flashed a fake smile. “Gee, already? It’s been so much fun.”
The girl grabbed her bag, stuck out her tongue, and walked out.
Ian watched the cell door shut. He heard it lock behind her. He sat back. His leg hurt. He looked at it again.
What in the holy hell just happened?