The spacious halls of AIT had surprisingly little traffic for a building of its size. Only a few men and women in business attire walked across the gleaming floors, each striding as though with blinders on as they zeroed in on their various destinations. Chimera certainly wasn’t a place for comradery, something Elena dearly missed from her brief time in the Army.
Nathan ignored it all as usual. “Are the samples ready? Arranged like I told you?”
“Of course.” She squashed the irritation that flashed up. Nathan knew she was his handler, in charge of reporting his every move. To compensate for his inability to do anything about it, he in turn treated her like a dimwitted personal assistant.
It certainly wasn’t the type of arrangement she’d had in mind when she signed up with AIT. She thought she’d be placed in their military division, where her combat training would be put to use against terrorist cells on US soil. Chimera Global turned out to be more interested in her psychological skills. While she majored in psychology and enjoyed it to a certain degree, she had joined Chimera for the opportunity to engage in actual combat, not the mental sparring required to deal with an anomaly like Nathan Ryder.
She swiped her badge card at the door panel, allowing entrance to the laboratory.
Nathan immediately focused his attention on the samples. A hundred small cups of soil and gravel were arranged in orderly fashion on a large table. Characteristic to his nature, Nathan fussed over and rearranged the samples despite the fact that nothing was out of place. Elena remained silent. She had learned early on that nothing could be said to dissuade Nathan when he wanted to get things ‘just right.’ He was obsessive-compulsive to a degree, though she noticed he could sometimes restrain himself if the situation called for swift thinking or action.
She tried to distract him with conversation. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with your research. I read your book. The… Blurred Man?”
“I wasn’t aware you had a proclivity to reading, Private Ruiz. What did you think?”
“Science fiction isn’t really my thing.”
“Cute. Your future as a comedian is a sure lock.”
“No, seriously. It sounds like an episode of X-Files. You claim governments around the world have covered up the existence of some mystery man who can’t be caught on camera and appears at nearly every unexplained or disastrous event.”
“If it wasn’t true, why was I suddenly targeted by multiple intelligence agencies?”
“Come on. That’s the paranoia talking.”
“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.” Nathan nodded to an assistant by the door. “You can bring him in.”
After the assistant left, Nathan took a seat. With his gaze still locked on the samples, his next words caught Elena completely off guard.
“Talk to your father lately, Private?”
Elena felt the blood drain from her face.
Nathan turned his head just slightly. “I wondered why you got stuck with this low-level babysitting job when you obviously sought a position in Chimera’s private military operation. So I dug into your history a bit. Must be an enormous hurdle to have a father who’s a terrorist. No wonder the Army sent you packing.”
Elena took a deep breath. He’s trying to get under your skin. Don’t let him. “My father isn’t a terrorist. He’s—”
“A sympathizer. I know. Don’t think the CIA sees too much difference, though. Nor the average American. We tend not to think too much of people who are open to betraying their own country. Funny, I don’t think I’ve heard of a Mexican terrorist before. Your old man’s a trailblazer, give him that.”
Fury scalded Elena’s cheeks, despite her efforts to remain calm. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Sure it is. Did you see this photo?” He held up his phone.
Elena wanted to avert her eyes. She had seen the photo, and many more like it when she had been called before the Army review board. She endured the accusatory stares and thin-lipped deliberation, as if she had foreknowledge of her father’s decent into apparent insanity.
He had never been the same after her mother’s death in New York on 9/11. Elena was only nine years old at the time, and had watched her kind and attentive father become a brooding alcoholic and anti-government protestor. Convinced by conspiracy theorists that the US government was behind the bombing, he never recovered from the loss.
She finally faced the reality of his downfall when she was summoned before the review board. She was shown photographs of her father, looking unruly with a tangled beard and wildly tousled hair as he conversed and attended meetings with men and women under investigation for ties to terrorist organizations. Reports were vague, but after being detained he explained his presence as “trying to understand the truth” and not actually attempting to attach himself to terrorist cells. When the investigative board couldn’t find sufficient evidence to build a concrete case against him, he was subsequently put on a government watch list and released.
But not before destroying his daughter’s dream of a military career. All of her time and effort spent in training, overcoming a grueling boot camp, and finally becoming a member of the Armed Services was wasted, along with her hopes of honoring her mother’s memory through service. Elena was given an honorable discharge and booted back into civilian life as though her military aspirations were a bad memory.
Nathan continued in his offhand manner, as though unaware of the salt he rubbed in her still-tender wounds. “Fathers will always let you down, won’t they? Small wonder Chimera targeted you. They have a long history of scooping up servicemen and women with checkered pasts.”
“My past isn’t checkered, Mr. Ryder. My father’s actions have nothing to do with me.” Her voice grew heated as she stepped closer to him. “What’s with you, anyway? You get off on pushing people’s buttons? How did you get that info anyway? Those files are supposed to be sealed.”
“Sure. By Chimera. I have limited access to their system, which didn’t suit me well. So I made it less limited. Not my fault their firewalls are vulnerable to certain payloads.”
“You broke into their system? That’s a complete breach of protocol, and you know it.” Elena heard her voice grow increasingly high-pitched, but couldn’t stop the rush of anger at Nathan’s smug and invasive delivery.
“What are you going to do, report it? Get me fired?” Nathan’s smile was mocking. She knew being fired would be a celebratory day for him. He consistently maintained that Chimera was more captor than employer, something Elena had yet to see any proof of. It wasn’t unusual for a privatized corporation to keep tight surveillance on their outside contractors. Espionage was always a threat to be on alert for.
“No. Maybe I’ll get you locked into your little office. Restrict your access to even tighter parameters. Make sure you don’t leave the room without my direct permission. How about that?”
The door opened at the shrillest point of her explosion, admitting the surprised aide and Michael McDaniel. Both looked slightly uncomfortable, like children in front of their arguing parents. Elena bit her bottom lip, immediately guilty over her lapse of control.
Nathan appeared perfectly cheerful, however. “Come in, Michael. Have a seat. How are you?”
“Pretty good for a prisoner, Mr. Ryder.”
“I told you about formalities. Call me Nathan. Or Nate, if you wish.”
“Yeah. Ok, Nate.”
Elena resisted rolling her eyes when Michael sat down at the table opposite Nathan. It was irritating to witness Nathan’s complete change of attitude in dealing with Michael. She knew the two connected because their mutual feelings of imprisonment and unfair treatment, which was ridiculous. Michael was in treatment for his unstable mental state which made him unsafe to be in the public, and Nathan was free to come and go as he pleased. Yet both men suffered from massive doses of paranoia and self-importance, a potent cocktail that made them oblivious to the simple truth of their positions. She would be so glad when her assignment finally ended.