The Conduit: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

In the months since the Oceanic disaster, the group took Max Shepherd, Jensen Shaw, and Shelly Hammers into custody. The rest of the crew and Oceanic staff were treated, paid, and forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. The area was cordoned off for further investigation, and access to the Oceanic was only allowed by special permission.

Max woke up one morning, and it was like every other morning. The light from his window was artificially simulated. There were no real windows wherever they were being held. There also weren’t many people wherever they were held. He’d only heard of detention facilities like this one, and what little he’d figured out wasn’t enough to help him, Jensen, or Shelly escape.

Sixty-seven days passed, and there were no lawyers, no charges, and no access to the outside world. They weren’t even allowed to watch a news channel on the television. Their access to media was as restricted as an Iranian prison center. There were five movie channels, an impressive selection of books for a prison library, and they could order specific books sent to a device in their cells.

Every morning, the three were taken from their cells, searched, and their cells were thoroughly vetted. That was the time they would be reunited. They were allowed the entire day together, to talk, to play cards, or chess. Other than that, meals were delivered to their unit; their miserably white, overly bright, prison unit.

“Good morning Mr. Shepherd,” a faceless guard in black tactical gear said entering his cell.

“If you say so,” Max replied.

Max got up from his bunk, assumed the position, and let the officer wave a metal detector over him before frisking him. This was the routine, every morning, for sixty-seven days. Once done, he would go out to the common area and await Shelly and Jensen.

Shelly would stretch as she walked to the table, always looking as if she were going to strike one or both. She had covered for them, and this was her reward. Max expected her to punch him right in the mouth, but she never did. He thought it was mostly because of the information she watched Jensen torture out of Susan.

Jensen, on the other hand, was at peace with their predicament. He’d been through worse so spending some time locked down until the group decided if they could trust them, was a vacation. He too, wanted to get out and hunt down Jane Doe. Whatever she was. If only the group’s security team had waited five more minutes before bursting in, Jensen might have gotten the answers they needed.

As the three sat in the center of the room, waiting for the invasive morning searches to be completed, they watched as one by one the security staff exited without anything to report. None of them were stupid enough to make their situation worse. As the head of the team walked out of the common area, a kitchen worker pushed a cart in. They were at least being fed well, Max thought to himself.

“Well, that was as much fun as a prostate exam,” sighed Jensen.

“If you’re comparing them, you’ve not had one,” laughed Max, thinking about his last exam and how uncomfortable it was.

This wasn’t Max’s first go at prison life. In the years before he was put in charge of the project to make the barriered detention units a reality, Max was paying for his sins in the Middle East. He was one of six that found themselves on the wrong side of accepted history, having done what was asked of him, but at an incredible cost. There was no protection or indemnification from those above him. They’d sold he and five others down the river in an attempt to cover-up the fact that the president authorized such extreme tactics through the chain of command.

Now, being held in detention, without charges, he was back where the group found him. He was lost in the void of the world’s darkness, and this time he had no idea why. Number one’s plans were always on a need-to-know basis. Max’s only refuge would be if the group deemed that he would need to know. Otherwise, he knew he and his companions might be there a while.

“So, boss. Do you have any idea where we’re at?”

Jensen posed a good question. If they were to try getting out of lockdown they were going to need to know where they were. Max didn’t have a clue where they were being held. Other than rumors of such places existing, the locations were kept beyond top secret. Only a select few people in the world knew of their locations, and not many more knew with any certainty that they existed.

“Black site,” he quietly answered.

“Great, that should narrow it down considerably,” sighed Shelly.

“All we can do is give it time,” Max told them.

He hoped that was the case. But the black site system was created to hold people indefinitely. There had been other systems before the current one, but they were all subject to oversight and could be interfered with by activist groups like Amnesty International. Human rights groups managed to close half the known sites, knocking them down one after another.

The intelligence agencies in the world banded together to formulate a plan to get around the interference of human rights groups. He’d heard whispers of a new system being developed while he was locked up the last time. The new system was to be more mobile, hard to locate, and escape proof. They kept the location of the system to a tighter circle. Max imagined, in the United States, that meant the president and the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the NSA, CIA, and maybe two or three others. That would be it.

“I can’t tell you were, but I can tell you that these places were designed to keep people from the world. We haven’t been arrested,” he explained, then hesitated.

“Then what would you call it?” asked Shelly.

The idea, unfortunately, was something he helped to conceive during his first tour of duty. Max was assigned to work with DARPA during that tour, and when the Thai government forced the United States to shut down one of the first locations, Max questioned the locations. Lawyers, human rights groups, and different governments became a problem because of the systems’ antiquated design, not to mention the methods being utilized during the early years of the war. It was then that Max started to design a new facility, a facility that wouldn’t be so easily discovered.

In the new facilities, they’d be relocated. They could be moved if anyone believed the security around them was at risk. If someone stumbled upon them, they would be arrested and detained until they were dealt with, while the facility would disappear. Max, after sixty-seven days, was starting to believe that his design was taken from a concept to a reality. He didn’t know where they were, but there was a hint. It was in the air, and something he wouldn’t ever forget. It always gave him peace. It was the saltiness in the air that told Max, they were somewhere on the ocean. He didn’t want to tell his friends, but Max knew they weren’t getting out the easy way.

“I’d call it disappeared,” he admitted, picking up his tray and taking it back to his cell.

Joe Mazucca drove a black Suburban into the Marquette Heights development and parked. He stepped out, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. His hair was expertly cut, and he was clean shaven except for the mustache and goatee. He checked the sidearm hanging from his shoulder and positioned his jacket so it wouldn’t be obvious.

Jane awaited him and stepped out of the back seat after Joe opened the door. She was dressed in an evening gown. It was a beautiful night, and the stars shone brightly in the heavens above them. Jane smiled at her guardian as she got out, her hand being held by his as he assisted her. They appeared to be a dashing couple, but Joe was there for her protection, and to do the things that needed to be done.

“You are definitely dressed to kill,” commented Joe.

“Thank you, Preacher,” she smiled.

Jane took a minute to take the scenery in. The Marquette Heights development was an intriguing opportunity for the local area. As she’d spent weeks in a hotel room, learning as much as she could from the television and the internet, Jane had her eyes on a goal. Only she knew what that goal was, but she assured Joe that it would serve to further her long-term plans.

The two entered the fifteen-story building amid a crowd of other interested parties, not paying attention to any of them as potential challengers. Jane recognized that she was above the rest of the pedestrians looking for a space, knowing that she easily could tip the scales in her favor. The view of the river and the views of the hills to the west appealed to Jane. She was going to have one of the premiere spaces, and didn’t care who had to suffer for it to become a reality.

Jane and The Preacher were invited into the empty penthouse. The top floor living area was perfect for Jane’s plans. There was plenty of space, a private elevator, and a helicopter pad on the roof. After taking a glass of champagne from one of the attendants, Jane and Joe stood by the windows, marveling at the future piece of their plan.

As Jane stood there, she noticed the developer making the rounds. His name was Wilson Smith, and he was in his element as he met and greeted the perspective buyers. Watching the developer network around the room she told Joe how easily she’d have him sign the penthouse over to her. From there, they could further their agenda. It was from there they would begin to build.

“I don’t see how you’ll get it done,” admitted Joe.

The Preacher felt the power coming from his companion like heat emanating from a blast fortress. He felt her aura and the power brewing within the diminutive Jane as she stared into the night skies surrounding the tower, a wicked smile forming. As Jane stood there, in silent contemplation, he turned his attention to the crowd and the people fluttering around them. Any one of them could be a problem. As her guardian, Joe Mazzuca’s job was to keep people from becoming problems. He silently worried that the grandiose ideas brewing in her mind could lead them to problems neither of them wanted to face.

Sweat glistened on the back of Max Shepherd as his arms pushed him off the floor of his cell repeatedly. His short breaths and the movements of his frame repeating the action were wearing him out. Sleeping in a cell wasn’t easy, and Max was struggling to wear himself out with such little space to work with. His anger was boiling over when he heard one of the security staff yelling, “SHEPHERD!”

Max looked up as he stopped, holding himself up from the ground using his two muscular arms. The two security staff members stared at him, their flashlights gleaming off his eyes. He told them to get the lights out of his face.

“Get your shirt,” one of the men behind the masks ordered. “Somebody wants to see you.”

Max put his hands through the hole in his door and the two officers put cuffs on him. They opened the door and took him by the biceps as they escorted him out of the unit where he spent the past two months. Max asked where they were taking him, but each remained stoic about the truth. As they walked him through the corridors, leading him to a staircase going up two levels, Max began to suspect he was right. The odor he smelled in his unit grew stronger.

“In here, and have a seat,” one of them ordered.

Max was pushed into an empty room with a table and a light hanging overhead. The metal door slammed behind him. It was surprisingly heavy, booming loudly through the chamber like room. Max tested the door, finding it locked from his side. There wasn’t much more for him to do but sit and wait.

Max waited for what felt like an hour. His understanding of time was off after being locked down for two months and not seeing either the sun or the darkness of night. As he got drowsy, his head bobbed up and down, his chin hitting his chest and waking him up. Max was getting frustrated just sitting there, continually nodding off in the partially darkened room. Finally, after a lengthy wait, he heard a sound. When he heard a second sound, he knew it was getting closer.

Max looked through the shadows as a doorway opening allowed light to come into the room. The shadowy figure of a man walking in told him this was why he’d been drug out of his cell. Who the man was, he didn’t know, until he heard the man’s voice. There was no longer a filter or a computer screen between them. Max was in the room with number one.

“Commander Shepherd,” the man said, stepping out of the shadows.

Max shook his head in disbelief. Why didn’t he see it coming? He cursed himself for not being smarter. There were a select few individuals in the world who had the clout to pull off something like the Oceanic Station, or to place Max there to construct his barriered detention unit. Even fewer knew about his plan to engineer the first electromagnetic barrier system.

“Son of a bitch,” sighed Max.

“Save it, Commander. We have a real problem to deal with after the fiasco aboard the Oceanic Station. You were responsible for a ten-billion-dollar facility and her crew. What the hell happened?”

Doctor Susan Patterson was what happened, Max explained. Max sat there, in cuffs, recounting how the doctor had infiltrated the station with assistance from someone on the outside. Whoever had helped her was well funded, had international connections, and wanted Jane off the station. Max looked at the man in front of him, General James Atwood, and promised him that none of it would have happened had they been more succinct about who or what Jane was.

“What do you mean?”

“We found the doctor’s notes and the test results. Forensic test results that concluded the girl wasn’t what she appeared to be,” explained Max.

“So, you know,” the General acknowledged.

Know, thought Max. What they knew for certain could fill a thimble on a Monopoly board. They didn’t know enough to answer any questions other than the girl was special. They had no idea who she was, or for that matter, what she was. Max understood enough to know she was probably the oldest living thing on the planet, but he didn’t understand how any human could have lived that long.

General Atwood wanted to know everything Max had discovered while he worked with Jane so Max recounted the dream she described to Susan and him while she was being interviewed. As Max described it, the best he could, General Atwood cringed. What he was hearing amounted to the worst fears of the group. He had prayed that they were wrong about the girl, wrong about her existence.

“Max,” sighed General Atwood. “What if I can put you back in play?”

“What do you mean?”

General Atwood promised Max, if he cooperated, that he could get him released from lockdown and fund him running an operation to go after Jane Doe. He promised funding, agency cooperation, equipment, and the choice of who he worked with.

“You’d have to tell me one more thing,” replied Max.

Before Max would agree to go after the girl, to put anyone else’s lives at risk, he wanted to know the truth about the groups hunt for the girl. He wanted to know what they believed her to be, and what they wanted with her. Without that, Max told the general that there was no deal to be made and he could have him sent back to his cell.

“I’ll give you everything we have, the rest you’ll have to decide what you want to believe,” General Atwood told him, throwing a classified file in front of him. “Max, I assume that Shaw, and Shelly Stevens are part of the deal.”

Max nodded, looking at the file in front of him. Max picked it up, started to flip through the pages, as he was carefully watched by James Atwood. As Max moved from the first to the second page, then the third, he was stunned that the United States Government was remotely involved in such an operation. By the time he’d briefly scanned the first five pages, Max knew what Atwood was asking him to lead. He looked up at Atwood, then nodded.

“I’ll get the paperwork done so we can have you and your companions ready to go in an hour. You’ll have to sell them on this,” ordered the General.

It shouldn’t be a problem, thought Max.