"No." Sarah knew she'd said it too firmly as soon as the words left her lips. But it was already too late to take it back. She'd probably angered Nick, and her mission would be over regardless of what Willy and Jaeger wanted because Nick would never want to have anything to do with her again. At least Michael would be cheered by the news.
Nick's eyes fell to his lap, his lips trembled slightly, and she saw his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He wasn't angry. He was sad, or heartbroken, or on the verge of despair.
She remembered feeling the same, years ago, when she'd first gone to the Lal Orphanage. Alone, desperate, guilty. Needing the friendship of the other orphans yet terrified of being rejected. And so she had built a façade of superficiality to hide her vulnerability, a façade that had only come crashing down when Jaeger's abuse shook her to the foundations of her soul.
Nick was the same. He was not really just some narcissistic rich kid. He was just as sensitive as she had been, and he'd built a protective façade of insouciance just like she had.
She found herself reaching across the table and placing her hand on his. He almost flinched away, but then his shiny green eyes rose to hers and held her gaze. "I'm sorry Nick. I can't go with you. Not tonight."
Nick sighed deeply and then raised his hand to cue the waiter for the check. Sarah pulled her hand back from his and waited with a bland smile on her face while he arranged the payment.
As Nick escorted her out of the restaurant and helped her into a cab, Sarah felt a ball of intense excitement in her chest. Instead of the affected air kiss she had greeted him with, upon kissing him goodbye she let her face linger beside his for a moment, and was thrilled at the rough brush of his beard stubble on her cheek.
On the ride to Grand Central station, where she would catch a mag-train out West, she was able to calm herself. She'd drunk a little too much wine, gotten a little too deep into her act, but she hadn't lost her head completely.
Nick was likeable. His genetic engineering had given him all the looks and brains humanly possible. His awesome wealth and power made a beguiling contrast with his evident vulnerability and barely repressed desperation for companionship.
And it was clear from his reactions to her that he liked her back.
But Sarah was no longer the girl who would get foolish crushes on every attractive boy she met. No, the excitement Sarah felt building up in her belly was not related to Nick himself, but to completing her mission, and snaring her prey.
***
Colonel Rad Jaeger rubbed his hands together firmly. He was growing more and more concerned about the performance of his expensive and irreplaceable espionage team. "Are you sure Sarah's going to maintain her professionalism in this assignment?" he demanded of Major William Johnson.
Willy raised his hands off the table palms upwards. "Why not, sir?"
"Have you reviewed the footage from her TacWave?" asked Jaeger rhetorically. He wasn't sure if Willy was really as incompetent as he seemed, or if he was just stonewalling.
"Yes, just now, with you," responded Willy with a shrug just faint enough that it couldn't be construed as insolent.
"Tell me then, what did you see?" asked Jaeger, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands behind his head. Whatever Willy was up to, Jaeger wasn't going to let him off easy.
Willy shook his head, as if to say, isn't it obvious? "Sarah and Nick Lal eating dinner, sir. Just as at the charity ball where we inserted her, she did a great job of building rapport with him. I'm sure she's on the way to developing a trusting relationship." He paused. "Colonel, if this is about her failure to discuss Sparkwise Energy, it's just not appropriate for her to raise that topic at this point."
Jaeger sighed in exasperation. Willy was an expert in psychology. Perhaps he was devoting all of his training to the sole purpose of aggravating his commanding officer. "I am aware we can't have our undercover operatives blowing their cover."
"So..." Willy let his half-formed question hang in the air.
Jaeger leaned forward and pronounced his words very clearly, so that Willy would have no room to misunderstand him. "You are just looking at the holovision images and listening to the sound. Have you looked at the records of her biometrics during the dinner?"
"Not in detail." Willy pursed his lips and looked down at the tablet in his lap.
"Watch the end," directed Jaeger. "When they kiss goodbye." He couldn't help letting a mocking tone enter his voice as he said the last two words.
Willy ran his finger over the tablet and watched the encounter play out for thirty seconds. "Her heart rate speeds up afterwards." He raised his open hands palms out. "She has to feel those emotions, somewhat, to make him fall for it. Acting is not easy, sir."
"Surely you see that her heart rate stayed elevated when she was in the cab, Johnson."
Willy appeared to be making a show of staring intently at his computer tablet.
Jaeger wondered what thoughts were going through Willy's head. Willy's choice of Sarah to receive the TacWave had troubled Jaeger at the time. He'd only acquiesced because Willy had spent his career selecting and indoctrinating counterintelligence officers. That's why Jaeger had brought him on board to begin with.
That choice had been made six months ago. Three months ago, Jaeger had become so worried about Willy's mishandling of Sarah's training that he had stepped in himself. She'd made a lot of progress and toughened up quite a bit in recent weeks, yet Jaeger never felt she was fully focused, nor completely dependable. Her emotions during her mission the previous evening only worsened his misgivings.
"Sir, are you suggesting..." Willy began, his brows furrowed in what appeared to be a mix of concern and confusion.
"Her biometrics definitely suggest that she has real feelings for her target. Wouldn't you agree?" Jaeger wanted the point to be perfectly clear so Willy couldn't pretend he hadn't understood it later. "It's one thing if Sarah and Michael are attracted to each other. Hank's observed the same nonsense among the other batch of trainees. I know, they're kids. It's natural. And at least we can always keep them chaperoned here at the ranch. But falling for the enemy is a very serious breach of duty."
Willy sighed. "Do you want me to remove her from—" he began.
"No, no, not yet," said Jaeger. He would prefer to remove Sarah from the entire program, but Hal O'Brien had arranged funding sufficient for only two TacWaves and now that money was spent. There was no one he could replace Sarah with. "We need her keeping track of Sparkwise. The economic situation is deteriorating fast. We've got student protests at half the universities in the country and unions going on strike. This unrest will spread into the general population fast, so we don't have time for second chances. And now that Senator O'Brien is pushing a legislative agenda against the Aeons, we need whatever intel we can get to support him. If Sarah can't keep her hormones in line, we'll take necessary measures to correct her behavior."
A strange expression played across Willy's face before disappearing. For an instant, Jaeger thought the Major was smiling mockingly, as if he'd won some important victory by outsmarting Jaeger. Then the moment passed and Willy's face returned to a neutral expression.
Jaeger joined Willy in silence for a moment before shaking his head and rubbing his hands together in irritation. It was going to be hard to defeat the Aeons if his agents couldn't help developing crushes on their opponents. "We built features into Sarah's TacWave so we can see what she sees, hear what she hears, and know what she knows. Why didn't we add a feature that controls what she feels?"
***
Nick listened uneasily from his side of the Sparkwise energy conference table. Above the table, an image of the globe slowly rotated, revealing the locations and status of Sparkwise's many energy projects, as well as those of its major competitors. Laura and Kobus were reveling in their success in capitalizing on the explosion at the Five Mile Creek pipeline station. "Guys, I'm glad we're doing well. But how is it we were able to profit from this disaster?"
Laura turned to him and her smile of triumph faded. "We used advanced statistical probability models to buy assets with high contingency value. Our analysis worked."
"I don't remember implementing those models."
"Nick, if you would pay more attention at these meetings, and get more involved, you would know what the company is up to. You're a smart guy, and I want you as more than a silent partner. You can add a lot more value."
"I'm trying to get more involved now. Isn't the government going to want to know how we predicted in advance that all those pipeline junctions we bought just happened to be the only ones that didn't explode?"
Kobus' Polar bear fangs glinted as he smiled. "That's why we used shell companies and false—."
"What Kobus means is that our tax efficient holding structure makes it unlikely anyone will ever trace those transactions back to us. Which is a good thing, because the last thing we want during our rapid expansion stage is a bunch of idiotic government agents bumping around on a wild goose chase."
Nick could not shake the feeling Laura was hiding something more serious than illicit holding structures from him. After watching his father's efforts to protect Langar Foods' monopoly, he understood some rough tactics were necessary to build an international business conglomerate. Yet there was a line between skullduggery and outright criminality. He knew Laura habitually bent rules, yet he couldn't bring himself to believe she could have engineered a disaster that had crippled the nation's already moribund energy infrastructure and killed thirty people.
"Nick, I don't really like the way you're looking at me. Do you really want me to say it? I had nothing to do with that disaster."
Kobus chuckled. "Ha, next thing you know, Nick will be blaming you for the Hurricane ineenstorting."
Neither Nick nor Laura laughed at Kobus' remark.
After holding Nick's gaze for several seconds, Laura stood up and spun the globe to highlight Africa. "Let's talk about how we're going to secure our Nigerian ventures."
Nick didn't want to dwell any longer on the possibility that Laura had known about Five Mile Creek in advance. But the topic of Nigeria raised another concern of his. "We wouldn't need so much security in our Nigerian venture if we used a local firm. Why are we using Abril Espinoza's engineering company to do this job? Her firm is based in Guadalajara; her people don't know their way around Africa, and their expertise is in high-end hotel architecture and design, not greasy oil field infrastructure."
Laura responded sharply, "Because Abril's an Aeon and we always work with other Aeons when we can. And they work with us in return."
"It's not practical," protested Nick. "It costs more, and causes us so much trouble to find accommodations for her people. We'd be better off if—"
Kobus held up a paw. "Bra, are you forgetting what we get in return from Abril? Her other business, Aeonic Avionics, buys as much of its fuel from us as it can. How does the saying go? Een hand washes die other, ja?"
"I'm all for working with other Aeons when it makes economic sense. But we shouldn't need to scratch each other's backs," protested Nick, working hard to hide his exasperation. "As you guys are always pointing out, we have our MindWaves and we can outthink any natural human. Since we're so much smarter than everyone else, we have nothing to fear. We should just run Sparkwise Energy in the most efficient way possible, and work with whomever offers the best prices."
Laura screwed up her face in disgust. "Natural humans. The nats are starting to team up against us. Not long ago I found two of them trailing me in the ether. They managed to escape just before I could identify them. And last week, some American senator recently proposed a bill to outlaw MindWave use in business. And you must have seen that there's an anti-MindWave movement on college campuses. Those idiots occupied the Boston Commons."
She rolled her eyes. "Those are our future business competitors, scampering around the park like a bunch of rats, smoking pot and planning how to shut us down. By n ow they've been there for months and they're prepared for a harsh winter. They couldn't have done it themselves. Clearly there are powerful forces arrayed against us, who are supplying and funding these student provocateurs."
"Laura's right, bra," Kobus explained to Nick, almost apologetically. "We've only gotten by because we make groot donations to politicians. But so many people hate us, we've had to start making direct donations to schools and churches."
Laura continued, "We Aeons are destined for a great future. Yet if we don't act smart, we'll all find ourselves in prison on trumped-up charges. We need to stick together, to build a system of cooperating companies that together have the power and the clout to protect ourselves."
Nick squinted. "We're not all sticking together. What about Chengwen Xu? Remember we went to his 19th birthday party a while back? Recently you've made a point of refusing to work with him. Chengwen's an expert in commodity trading, he can help us with our risk hedging. But you've cut our business with him to zero."
There was an uneasy pause as Kobus and Laura exchanged glances. Nick got the sense he had raised a taboo subject.
Laura sighed. "Nick, Chengwen is not a real Aeon."
"What do you mean? He has a MindWave, just like we do," responded Nick. "He hangs out in the ether, or at least he used to before everyone started shunning him. If he can get into the ether, he must be an Aeon." He was baffled.
"He's more like a... half breed," corrected Kobus. "Ja, he has the MindWave, but he wasn't genetically engineered. In real life, he's a short, skinny grazelda. He's not one of us."
"I thought the MindWave was what defined an Aeon," asked Nick. "Infinite knowledge, ability to create worlds. It's about what's in our heads, it's not about our genes or how we look."
Laura pursed her lips. "There are those of us who are fit to have these abilities and share our great destiny, and then there are people like Chengwen. He does not share our pure genetics, so he is not – he cannot be – divine like we are."
Nick looked down at the table for a few moments. What Laura and Kobus were saying didn't make a lot of sense. He was tired of arguing with them about the strange beliefs they shared. "Fine," he sighed. "Look, I have to go meet someone anyway." Before either Laura or Kobus could react, he exited this part of the ether.
***
Sarah watched silently as Michael shook his head slowly and pursed his lips. "Laura is a tough nut to crack. Everything she does is encrypted about half a dozen different ways."
"What does she spend her time doing?" asked Willy impatiently from behind his desk.
"She operates in her own worlds, worlds she completely controls to the finest detail. In fact, she's frequently in multiple worlds at the same time. Only one of them is the real her, her consciousness, her avatar, whatever you want to call it. The others are decoys autopiloted by her MindWave. The psych briefing was correct that she's paranoid. It's taking a long time to figure out what she's doing."
Willy rubbed his hands together impatiently, doing a passable imitation of Colonel Jaeger's condescension. "Michael, you've been on this assignment for three weeks already. You're here to report your progress, not list excuses."
"I'm sorry, Willy. I just want to explain that the information I have so far is not necessarily reliable. I'm making progress but there may be a lot of garbage information in what I've collected."
Willy waved a hand dismissively. "Just get on with it. When you make your reports to Colonel Jaeger tomorrow, he's not going to want to hear these caveats."
Michael continued. "Well, the way I've followed her is not to follow her at all. I figure out where Kobus and Nick are. If Laura is in the same world as one of them, I think it's usually the real her. I'm even learning how to follow her avatar as it shifts from one world to another."
Willy smiled slightly and leaned forward. "Good, this is what we pay you the big bucks for."
"Wait... we get paid?" interjected Sarah. "Oh yeah, we're commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants, aren't we? Where's our pay?"
"Your check is in the mail," replied Willy evenly with a sidelong glance and a wink. Just as quickly as it had cracked into a smile, his face switched back to its original businesslike expression. "Michael?"
Michael paused for a moment as if searching for the right words. "The psyche report was also correct that she's a genius. Thanks to genetic engineering, her native IQ is 190, and the MindWave adds about 100 IQ points. And I think she's using custom AI subroutines to magnify the effects of the MindWave."
"Just how smart are you saying she is? Quantify it."
"IQ 500. But not just smarter, also faster. The MindWave creates artificial neural connections that are much faster than natural ones, and much more precise memory to prevent data loss. So her mental capacity is not just like one person with a 500 IQ. It's like a team of two dozen people, each with an IQ of 500."
Michael waited a moment for Willy to respond, but the officer just sat watching wordlessly.
"She's tireless at using her mental talents. When she's not with the other Aeons, she spends her time working on advanced technology, like understanding the Langar Foods cloning technology. And I need to emphasize, Willy, that she's damn good. I can barely understand what she's doing, but she's at the cutting edge in several fields."
"So she's developing new technologies? Like what?"
"So far most of it seems to have two uses. To make money, or to control information. I'm afraid she's also trying to develop weapons. I've found information about laser beams and electromagnetic tractor fields. Like I said, she's paranoid; she seems to fear a clash between the MindWave users and the rest of the human race."
He paused again, before continuing in a lowered voice, "Actually, sometimes I think maybe she wants the clash. I think she really looks down on regular humans. She's started to refer to us as gnats."
"Gnats?" asked Willy, with a wrinkled brow. "Like, little bugs? An annoyance, a parasite?"
"It's a play on words. Natural humans. Humans with no MindWave are natural. That's a common expression among MindWave users. She's shortened that to nat. And, yes, I'm sure it hasn't escaped her notice that nat sounds like gnat. And since she's helped all the other MindWave users learn how to use their implants, they all look up to her, and they've started using the same term, too."
Sarah repressed the urge to interrupt and point out that based on Michael's eavesdropping, Nick was the only Aeon that didn't use that word.
"She sounds like a really charming young lady. Are you going to bring her home for dinner?"
Michael responded with a flustered glance at Sarah.
Willy waved away his own remark. "So we have a charismatic sociopathic genius equipped with a supercomputer and an endless supply of money. Anything else you want to highlight?" he asked with a sigh.
"Since she's so brilliant, you might wonder why she spends so much time cultivating relationships with the other MindWave users. She doesn't really need anyone's help."
"No, it sounds like she doesn't."
"She has certain beliefs, beliefs that motivate all of her behaviors. You already know she calls herself an Aeon, which means a demigod in the Gnostic religion. Even Sparkwise – it's a reference to the divine spark, which Aeons possess and normal humans don't. The connections to Gnostic mythology are not random. She's into that stuff."
"That stuff?"
"The Gnostic concept of divinity through intuitive knowledge. She thinks she's a god. Or demigod... Aeon or demiurge are the technical terms. And I suspect she increasingly views her ability to create new worlds in the ether as the creative ability of a true god, the one god who manifested the real world. She digs the divinity angle big time, and she wants to have a pantheon of lesser gods that she can lead. That's why she's working hard to implant those beliefs in the other Aeons."
"Is she succeeding?"
"Yes. She's extremely charismatic and an expert at manipulation. It doesn't help that most of the other MindWave users are pretty untethered from any normal form of value system or supervision so they're pretty easy to convince. There's one big contradiction in her beliefs though."
"What's that?"
"Gnosticism sees the world as a realm of darkness, so inherently evil that even the worst actions within it cannot be judged immoral. The highest aspiration a person can have is to escape this world. But Laura claims she and the other Aeons are going to save the world, not abandon it. I don't know if she really believes that or it's just something she says to gain allegiance from the other Aeons."
"Great work, Michael." Willy paused for a second before turning to Sarah expectantly. "Sarah, time for your status update."
"Willy," stated Sarah, "This assignment is... difficult."
Willy looked up from the small tablet on his desk. "In what way, Sarah? You've gained Nick's trust in a very short amount of time." He grinned widely. "Frankly, even with the training in rich twit etiquette we gave you, we thought it would be hard for you to make any progress; we saw this as an advanced training mission where you'd learn from your mistakes. But, you're in. You've got him eating out of your hand!"
Sarah kept her face expressionless and Willy looked at the tablet again. "And we're lucky – Sparkwise Energy is turning into a real international energy company. We never thought these Aeon kids would get going so quickly; we would have been caught flat-footed if you hadn't succeeded so well in breaking into its inner circle."
He beamed up at her and winked. "I know it's tough, but your job is never going to be easy. And you've been doing a very good job!"
Sarah wanted to help Willy. But just as much, she didn't think it was right to deceive Nick. She pursed her lips, not sure of what to say.
Willy looked at her closely. "What's wrong, Sarah? I said you're doing a good job."
"I don't think the job is good!" responded Sarah, unsure of how else to explain her ethical quandary.
Willy's forehead creased with concern. "Why not?"
"I'm lying to, I'm spying on, and I'm abusing the trust of Nick," explained Sarah. Sarah's eyes slipped over towards Michael, who looked as unhappy as he always did when she was discussing Nick. Having Michael present made her conversation with Willy even harder than it already was.
She wanted to succeed at her missions and prove she deserved the trust and admiration of Willy and Michael. She just wasn't comfortable with this particular assignment. But saying so was making her very uneasy, because she knew it would call her loyalty and seriousness into question. It would also open her to spurious accusations that she had personal feelings for Nick. Such accusations would not just hurt her, but also Michael.
"That is your job," retorted Willy sternly as he put down the computer tablet.
"But it's not right," protested Sarah. She wanted to make her case that spying on Nick was unfair, yet also to appear loyal to the mission. If she could not convince Willy, there was no way she would convince Colonel Jaeger tomorrow. "You promised me I wouldn't have to do anything evil. And Nick is not a bad person, not someone we should abuse. He's a bit lost and insecure, and impressionable, but he's also a pretty good guy."
"I agree," said Willy, glancing down at his tablet. A hint of guilt showed in his expression. "He seems like a nice guy, especially in comparison to Laura. And your job is to make sure he doesn't change, doesn't become infected with her mad philosophy."
"Nick's a good guy. That can make him the key to unraveling the power of the Aeons. But it's obvious from Michael's report that Laura's trying to take advantage of Nick's good nature to manipulate him. And here I am, manipulating him in the same way Laura does."
Now she chose her words carefully. "He has real feelings for me, Willy. If he ever learns I'm spying on him, he'll feel betrayed, and the only person he'll have left to turn to is Laura, and we'll lose our chance to keep him on our side."
Willy's expression of guilt melted away and he stared at her with an uncharacteristically angry expression. "Lieutenant, Colonel Jaeger and I will be the judge of that. Your job is simply to execute your mission as we see fit. You're dismissed." He turned back to his tablet.
Shocked by Willy's sudden anger, Sarah spun on her heel. Before she stormed out of the door, she tried to make eye contact with Michael, but he was staring at the ground.
To hell with Michael if he couldn't be a grown up about this. Sarah needed to replace Laura's influence over Nick with her own. It wouldn't be long before Colonel Jaeger ordered some kind of direct action against Sparkwise. She needed to make sure Nick wasn't caught up in it and charged with treason.
If the only way she could save him was to lie to him, then she was going to lie as hard as she could.
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False Idols (and its sequel Do No Evil) are available for sale elsewhere but this novel is free on Wattpad.