Whisper and Warrants
1315 Words
CHAPTER 5:
The last time Elira had felt this numb was beyond her memory. That time, she had time to race ahead in her thoughts, as the cab moved down the gleaming streets of D.C., but still, her emotions lagged behind in the shadow of Caelum.
When I feel sure, I will stop you running.
The words were a response like a pledge. As a judgment.
When she finally arrived in the company apartment where she had been booked into, her phone fell into silence. No more telephone calls on the part of Caelum. Nothing new on security. And it was all the louder because it was a silence, my dear, she was beginning to see.
An hour later, she walked up and down the living room. Then two.
Whenever she looked towards the window, half of her beliefs told her that the window might have a camera being used. A lens that takes her portrait. Her head was scarred over the memory of that time-stamped picture, the one in which Zayden was in the photo with Mrs. Harlow.
It is being observed.
She was drawn to move her laptop in front of her and log into her encrypted mail.
Nothing.
That, however, would not make her feel better. The silence was not quietude. It was computation. Somebody somewhere was waiting to pounce on her when she erred. And Elira did not have it in her spare.
On the following morning, she was at Royce Biotech through the brisk air. Camden met her smiling as usual, but with an additional tension in his eyes.
“Oh, you always look like you haven’t slept,” he said.
Said she to herself, I might as well.
He took her to the main working laboratory and pointed at the new set of diagnostic prototypes. “We are just about to go to phase two. The immune sequencing is stalling.”
“It would be amazing,” she said, and made her voice remain calm. “This might alter a lot.”
“It will. As long as it is taken out of the hands of the wrong people.”
Her heart bounded on her ribs.
“I can see what Iron Spire is after, Elira,” Camden said, turning over a laboratory file casually. “And I suppose you are here to judge the chances of the thing being integrated. However, there is something I would like you to comprehend...”
She gazed up quickly. “I am hearing.”
“It is not a company that is to be sold. And no fancy talking by their executives or even the sounds of their reports will make any difference to me, because I will not allow this work to become yet another statistic of a corporation.”
He did not say it threateningly. It was a man defending a dream that he said so. And in some way, that was more dangerous.
Elira jerked an assent. “Of course. I am just an onlooker.”
But Camden had not finished yet. “The keeping of observation is a virtue, Miss Vale. Whom are you loyal to?”
She hesitated.
To Caelum?
To Zayden?
To herself?
That she said nothing was enough reply.
Camden had a plaintive sigh. “That is how I thought.”
Later that night when Elira was sitting in the dark apartment alone, her inbox chimed.
Heading: Round Two
The message: You are not the only one who can play pretense.
Annexed: A low-quality CCTV-captured image. Her. Royce Biotech. Date-and-time stamped five minutes ago.
Elira felt the cold shivers of blood.
Not only that.
Monitored.
Viewed behind locked doors.
She switched on the code and dialed Caelum right away.
He replied after the third ring.
Without preface, he said, “I suppose you have seen it.”
“You guessed I was watching again?”
“Aw, I said I warned you you are in the deep seat, Elira. This is no longer only about you or me.”
“The Royce facility has cameras. Private ones. They are available to someone.”
“I already have my technical unit parsing through feeds. I feel it is not Camden. One is that he is not a reckless young man, though stubborn.”
“And what if it is somebody, not him?”
“It is a person who wants you to fail. Or run. Or the two.”
Elira wound her hand over the phone. “This is not a threat anymore. It is a clock countdown.”
“I shall go down by air.”
“No.”
“Elira”
“Keep in your place. Once you come here, they will realize that they have shaken us.”
He reflected for a moment. Then: “I have already submitted the first court request. Within the week, it would be legal custody.”
She drew in her breath. “You promised”
Caelum spoke coldly: “I vowed his life would be spared. And now, the only thing I can do to ensure that is to be in control of things. Each bit of it.”
“And me, too?”
His silence made her realize it all.
“Yes.”
It was in the middle of one of her staff meetings one of her days back in Royce Biotech that Elira received a visitor. The receptionist came to the conference room and told Camden something in a whisper.
He frowned. Then gazed at her.
“Elira. Here to see you is somebody from Iron Spire legal.”
She blinked. “Legal?”
It seemed to concern him, and he shrugged his shoulders.
She excused herself and went outside. Next to the elevator stood a rather tall woman in a graphite suit, carrying a slim briefcase.
“Elira Vale?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Dana Cortes, and I am the internal counsel of Iron Spire. Mr. Vallis wants me to say these things.” She gave her a sealed manila envelope. “Your own written appointment contract. He thought you would like to get it face to face.”
Elira opened it slowly. She read down the first line:
Top Acquisitions Liaison to CEO – Conditional.
Her stomach fell.
On the bottom, in unmistakable handwriting of Caelum:
You told me to write your mail. I would rather do it like this.
The contract was not simply one. He was caught in a trap. A promotion by the name of a leash.
She sighed and said, “Thank you.”
Camden walked out of the conference room as Dana walked out. He looked at the envelope.
“Problem?”
“No,” said Elira to herself, going off, folding the paper, crushing it to her breast as upon a wound. “Not as yet.”
That night, when the sun was setting over the D.C. skylines, she stood on the roof of her building, totally alone. The coat was pulled by the wind.
Her phone went buzzing again.
No sender.
No subject.
Message: He can never shield him against his nature. Tick. Tock.
Under it: A photograph. Zayden in the lobby of the hotel. Having a muffin. The time-date: five minutes back.
She was not in the hotel anymore.
That meant...
She turned swiftly and ran along the skyline, the streets, the traffic lights, all the windows.
They did not look at her anymore.
People were trailing after him.
Her cell rang.
Caelum.
“I have a hit on the IP of the sender, Elira. It is bouncing with the proxies, yet there is a pattern. Somebody has been following both of us. Then the picture today”
“I know,” she whispered. “They have graduated from intimidating me.”
There was a pause.
Then Caelum uttered the words that she dreaded the most.
“Time is coming short.”
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD