Erica wandered through the corridors of Sky One with a sandwich in her hand. It had been a frustrating day and she hadn’t learned much more about Jacobs’ background. She stepped through a door into a lab area and paused, watching her partner move around with practised ease. The young man had come here as soon as they had returned from MIT, stating that he needed to work on some samples. That had been four hours ago and to Erica’s knowledge he hadn’t even stopped to eat.
She walked over to the cluttered lab bench and put the sandwich down, carefully selecting a clear space. For the life of her she could never work out how Trek managed to work in so much mess.
“Hey,” she said lightly. “This place is beginning to look like your room.”
Trek snorted in exasperation.
“I’m kind of busy Erica. I don’t really have time for a fight right now.”
“I brought you a sandwich.”
The young genius blinked in surprise and then eyed his blonde companion suspiciously.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t always want something, Trek. I just happened to notice that you missed dinner and I thought you might be hungry.”
“Ok now I know something’s up. What’s in the sandwich? Rat poison?”
“It’s peanut butter if you must know. I’m hurt that you’d think I’d do anything to it. Can’t I be thoughtful for once?”
Trek rubbed his eyes and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he apologised, “it’s just that I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m already tired.”
“Well you can stop for a sandwich at least,” Erica stated.
Trek half smiled and put down the slide he was holding. He sat down on the opposite side of the bench and took a large bite from the sandwich.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, his mouth full.
“That’s gross,” Erica shuddered.
The young man swallowed his mouthful.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just suddenly realised I was hungry.”
“So how’s it goin’?”
Trek frowned and shrugged.
“Not great. I don’t know if Kyle realises just what he’s askin’ me to do.”
“You’ll get it… you always do,” stated the blonde ex-thief.
Trek sighed again.
“You know the day will come when I won’t be able to do what Kyle wants in time… I always worry that that day’s gonna be today… most of the time the pressure keeps me on my toes. I guess I enjoy it most of the time… but at the moment…” he trailed off into silence.
Erica regarded her companion seriously.
“At the moment you’re tired and more than a little depressed,” she observed. “There’s something else botherin’ you though. You’ve been too quiet all day. That is it?”
“Professor Wiseman asked me to leave FLAG and join his team yesterday.”
“Oh,” said Erica in surprise. “So how’d he take it when you said no?”
The room was silent for a minute. Erica stared at her companion with a sinking feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. Trek was avoiding her gaze, biting his lower lip and fidgeting awkwardly.
“You did say no didn’t you?” she asked incredulously.
“Not exactly,” the young man mumbled.
“So what exactly did you say?” Erica demanded.
“I said that I would think about it,” he snapped. “The truth is that you don’t really need me.”
“Don’t need you! Of course we need you! Who the hell else would we have?”
“I don’t know,” Trek answered. “It’s just that I’m not sure I belong here anymore… I’m not sure I ever did belong.”
Erica glared at him. She couldn’t believe that someone who was so smart was being so unbelievably dense.
“Well I guess there’s no more to say then,” she said coldly.
Trek looked at her sadly. He had hoped that she wouldn’t react like this.
“Look,” he said, “could you do me a favour and not tell Kyle about any of this just yet? I haven’t actually decided what I’m gonna do and I need to think things through without and ‘help’.”
“Whatever,” said Erica as she turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.
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Early the next morning Trek sat watching the sunrise and thinking dark thoughts. He had been up all night working at producing an antigen and had come to a conclusion that he really didn’t like. Too tired and numb to carry on without a break, he had slipped out of Sky One and was now nestled against one of the great plane’s back wheels enjoying a cigarette. None of the other team members knew that he smoked and he preferred to keep it that way; enjoying his guilty little pleasure in secret without anyone nagging him.
The sky was really beautiful with the sun setting the clouds on fire as far as the eye could see. For a minute Trek was able to lose himself in it before his mind turned back to darker matters.
He took a long drag on the cigarette, closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wheel behind him. The meeting this morning promised to be moderately unpleasant especially given what he was going to tell Kyle. Still there was no avoiding it; it had to be done.
He stood slowly, stretching and listening to the faint pops coming from his back as he did. Grinding the cigarette butt under his heel to make sure that it was out, he slowly made his way back inside to the lab to check on the samples he had left running.
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Kyle sighed in exasperation. The morning meeting was about to get under way and as usual Trek was late. It really was getting to be a bit too much of a habit for Kyle’s liking. In addition Erica seemed to be upset about something and the resulting tension gave Kyle a horrible feeling that the meeting was not going to go well. Not for the first time he wished that his team could be a little more like the Mission Impossible team.
He frowned as his youngest team member entered the room in no apparent hurry. There were times when he wondered if Trek was going out of his way to make things more difficult; adding pressure to a situation by working to his own schedule – one that didn’t always fit in with everyone else. This was one of those times.
Kyle’s frown deepened as he noted that Erica and Trek were sitting as far away from each other as they possibly could and were avoiding even looking at each other. He sighed. Some days he wished that he hadn’t bothered getting out of bed.
As Kyle opened his mouth to speak he was interrupted by Trek.
“Kyle, before you say anything there’s something I need to tell you… and you’re really not going to like this.”
“Go on.”
“Several years ago I was working as a research assistant at MIT,” the young man paused and swallowed before going on. “I was assigned to work with Livingston Jacobs.”
As the young genius fell silent again Kyle stared hard at him. Trek was staring at the table, refusing to meet anyone else’s eyes, his hair hiding most of his face.
“Carry on,” Kyle ordered, his tone hard.
“I worked with Dr Jacobs for nearly two years. I wish I could tell you he was some kind of monster but the truth is that he was always very good to me,” the boy paused again and sighed. “It makes what happened a bit harder I guess. One night I’d been working late… had to wait for some tests to finish. As I was leaving I noticed that Dr Jacobs’ light was still on. I stuck my head around the door to say goodnight but he wasn’t there so I kind of snuck a peek at what he was doing. He was working on the Tarsus virus. On mutating it. At the time I didn’t know why. What I did know was that there was no logical reason for him to be messing with it. It had nothing to do with the project we were working on.” He sighed again. “A couple of days later I was talking to someone else from the faculty and I kind of let slip what I’d seen. There was an inquiry and Dr Jacobs was fired for misappropriating college funds. I know I should have told you all this at the start of the mission but it all felt like it was so long ago. Sometimes it feels like it was a lifetime ago or that it happened to someone else and I’ve only heard about it. I knew I had to tell you though when you said that he was still working on Tarsus,” Trek paused again and looked up at Kyle for the first time. “I can develop an antigen from a sample of the original unchanged virus. But it wouldn’t work on a mutated version. Like I said yesterday Jacobs has been playing with Tarsus for at least ten years. And without knowing exactly what he’s done to it there’s no way that an effective antigen can be developed. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
The room fell silent, the tension palpable. Finally Kyle squeezed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
“Shit,” he swore. He opened his eyes and gave Trek a frosty look. “You should have told me you knew Jacobs.”
The young man looked back at him steadily.
“I know,” he said simply.
There was a long pause.
“What does the Tarsus virus actually do?” rumbled Duke.
“There are two forms,” Trek stated, “one is water borne and the other is airborne – obviously the airborne form is the really scary one. Tarsus is also fast acting. Within twenty-four hours of exposure symptoms begin to develop. At first it presents like a mild case of flu with the occasional nosebleed. By forty-eight hours the internal organs begin to be irreparably damaged and from here on victims are in increasing pain. By seventy-two hours most victims are comatose with death occurring shortly after. There’s an eighty percent death rate among victims and most survivors are left with horrific side effects.”
“Ok so we need to stop this,” interjected Jenny. “What’s our next move?”
Kyle looked at each of his team in turn.
“Well you told me last night that Jacobs has definitely been visiting Steel Jenny, so we need to find out what the link is between them and to identify the potential targets.” He sighed. “Steel’s an anarchist but whatever he’s doing has gotta be for his own good. We need to find out where Steel’s still getting his money from too. We need to shut both these guys down permanently.”
“Is there anyone Steel’s got a grudge against?” asked Erica.
“I started looking into that last night,” responded Duke. “There’s a long list.”
“Ok,” Kyle said, “we’ll split the list up between us. Take a couple of names each and see what we can come up with on them. I think we can probably have some breakfast now ok? Oh, and Trek, I think we need to talk.”
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Erica sighed as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Staring at a computer screen for the last few hours had given her a headache which wasn’t helped by the conversation she had had with Trek last night.
She rolled her neck and took a sip of the steaming coffee, nearly scalding her mouth in the process.
She didn’t really understand how Trek could think they didn’t need him. Much as she teased him she couldn’t imagine the team without him.
Erica sighed again and drained her cup. It was time to get back to work.
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“Kyle.” Kat’s voice broke the TKR team leader’s concentration. “I’ve found something you might be interested in.”
Kyle quickly saved the file he was working on.
“What have you found Kat?”
“I was checking the names that you gave me and cross-checking them with Livingston Jacobs’ background. He has a daughter. Melissa. Her mother remarried when she was two and her new husband legally adopted Melissa. The husband’s name is John Drewton. I did some research on him and found that he was the judge who sentenced Lewis Steel.”
“Thank you Kat.”
Kyle pressed a button on the console and called the human members of the team to the situation room. As soon as they were all present he quickly told them of Kat’s discovery.
“So both Jacobs and Steel may have a grudge against Judge Drewton,” Duke observed.
“Yeah,” Kyle answered shortly. “Jenny, you, Dante and I are going to go and have a talk with the judge and his family. I think Judge Drewton just became our number one target.”
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To be continued………
