BEYOND THE PALE: ( The Outlander ) (30 page)

River addressed Dakota,
“Ramesh only confirmed what Shondran already knew. He was being a pragmatist.
You on the other hand were foolhardy today, thinking that you could hold out on
Shondran. But I love you for your bravery and loyalty to me Dakota. I will
always remember what you did for me.”

Isa turned around to
introduce his friend Anton to both Dakota and Isa. He noted how the air of
seriousness, danger, and the lack of social skills induced both Isa and Anton,
to sit in the back ignoring each other. He tried to introduce some levity into
the situation by joking and revealing his friend's and his brother's
idiosyncrasies to each other. He had achieved a certain familiarity amongst
everyone by the time he reached his father’s private residence.

River climbed out the
vehicle and went to page Eli through the intercom. He had not visited his home
before, but he had visited him at his congregation again and his father had
given him his private address and an open invitation as a result. Eli answered
the door and listened whilst his son explained the general scenario and
predicament that he was in.

Isa watched the scene
intently from the vehicle. From this safe distance, he observed his father but
could hardly remember him and felt no connection or desire to meet him. Except
now he had no choice, and so he studied his father’s tall slim frame, and facial
features. He could see that he and his brother had inherited many features from
this tall mid fifties white man with a full head of shining silver hair. He
watched him walk away and then return with a long overcoat which his brother
brought back to cloth Dakota in. River then invited everyone in and Dakota,
Anton and Isa all sheepishly followed him inside and into the living room.

Eli had disappeared to
talk privately with his wife. However he soon rejoined the others in the living
room along with his wife, whom he introduced as Maryam, and had been married to
for twelve years. Maryam looked slightly older than her husband. She too had
turned grey but she had maintained the proud and regal features of an Arapaho
full native. She had kind eyes and a warm nature and she took Dakota by the
hand and led her into the bathroom collecting a first aid case on the way. This
left Eli standing awkwardly by himself and staring at both his sons, and Isa in
particular. Isa returned his awkward stare and looked very uneasy about his
circumstances. Eli broke ranks first and went to check on his wife's progress
with Dakota. He knocked on the bathroom door and entered to find his wife
working with a small pair of scissors and restyling Dakota's hair into a
shorter but pretty style. Dakota was sitting on a chair and now wearing a
dressing gown; she was holding an ice pack to left side of her face to reduce
the bruising. Eli asked her if she and his son were an ‘item’, but Dakota was
quick to set him straight. She told him that unfortunately another girl had
captured his River's heart. A girl that she initially thought was dead, but now
realised was alive and well and the sister of Anton who was sitting in the
living room.

                    ~~~

“So do you think you
will be able to get access to the tunnels” Anton re-raised his earlier topic of
conversation. “Dad and Ray Scott are under the impression that you can.”

“I think we can if I
can get my friend Ramesh to help me” stated River. “I have never been
underground, but Isa came in through a tunnel entrance in old Denver.”

“Oh really,” said Anton
with interest as he pulled a map of the local area tunnel systems from out of
his satchel, and laid it across the table in front of them. “Where about was
the tunnel entrance?” he asked.

Isa studied the outline
map of old Denver and located the tunnel exit which was marked X31 on the map.
Anton enquired how long the journey along the tunnels had taken, and Isa
replied that it had taken about six hours walking at a fast pace. Anton studied
the map studiously for a few minutes whilst the brothers tried to familiarize
themselves with it as well.

“X37 here!” Anton
pointed to an obscure tunnel exit in the hills to the north west of Denver. “It
is not likely guarded and less likely to be monitored than those in old Denver.
The one that Isa came through will be definitely off limits now. But this X37
is only a further twenty miles west of X31. That should take you another few
hours or so. I will access the system and open it the day you set off.”

“That is good Anton,
but how will we find it.”

“With this,” Anton had
pulled out a large yellow hand held device with an eight inch touch screen. “This
is a tunnel mapper from my office. It has got a copy of this map here on the
table, and all the tunnels leaving New Denver. It has a 60 hour battery life
and GPS positioning that will identify which tunnel you are in and show you all
the exit and access points within range. The route that you need to go to
access X37 is along the support tunnel that adjoins 5W1 which heads due west.
So you need to get down to the 5th sub level. Please don’t get caught with it.
These are restricted items, and so it could incriminate me.”

River picked up the
Tunnel Mapper and began to navigate through the different displays and
functions. Anton looked impressed at how River had recently become more adept
and familiar with gadgets and technology. Apart from an exit route west through
the tunnels, there was much that River wanted to talk to Anton about, and he
asked Isa if he might allow them some privacy to talk. Isa had little choice
but to go and seek out the others. This meant he should probably go and talk
with his birth father.

Once alone, River
wasted no time before enquiring about Audrina, Valerie and Nathan, and how
Anton had found him.

“I found you through
your credit actions once you had re-activated your identity bracelet. There are
still many people hunting you down but they didn’t know how to find your new
identity like I did. As a result Dad and Ray have been searching for you for a
long time using your last known transactions.”

“Yes I know, I got some
of your father’s messages that he left at Wendy's restaurant.”

“Why didn’t you reply?”
asked Anton.

“I didn’t know whether
I could trust him.”

“Nor did I for a while”
agreed Anton, but we worked together on saving your community at Avana from
being located and taken out by Rangers. After that I trusted him,” River looked
astounded by this news. “River there is so much that has happened,” Anton
continued. “…Audrina is three and a half months pregnant. She was instructed to
terminate it when they found out, but despite all condemnation, she wants to
have the baby. It’s a boy.”

River was dumbstruck, “Is
it my child?”

“Of course it is. Why
do think you got in so much trouble.”

“Because she said I
raped her,” replied River.

“She is very upset
about saying that. However, that was not the real reason. Somehow you both
managed to conceive despite your contraceptive implants. You may have rejected
yours, but hers was also nullified. They assumed that you had intentionally
disabled it. Intentional conception without a license is a big deal. You know
she misses you badly and that she has left home. She lives near the financial
district now.”

“I have to see her.”

“You cannot do that
River. She is under a lot of surveillance by those men that took you when you
were with my father at his Headquarters. They are called Psych-Ops. They want
to detain you as a priority. They will not give up searching because they
consider you to be a bio-threat to the citadel. They will experiment on you if
they capture you and then probably kill you. You have to leave; it is only a
matter of time before they capture you.”

River looked desolate
at this news but also amazed that Audrina was having his son. “You are such a
good friend Anton. If I leave this citadel I will miss you sorely.”

                      
~~~

River had so much on
his mind right now; love, revenge, anger, and thoughts of impending escape.
However he had to keep it together and stay in control. He needed to talk with
his father, and so he went to seek him out. He found Eli sitting in the kitchen
with Isa and asked if he could talk in private. Isa gladly obliged and looked
relieved at the prospect of being anywhere other than with his father.

“Father, as you have
probably guessed, I am in trouble and so is Isa. We need to leave the citadel
and return to Avana, and Anton has helped map us an underground route to get
out. However, I need my friend Ramesh who is in your congregation to get both
me and Isa underground. I cannot contact Ramesh directly because he is being
watched. He might not want, or be able to do this, as he may get in trouble.
But could you contact him, and ask him if he will help me.”

“Of course I will son.
I know he will help you if I ask.”

“Why are you so sure?
He has a lot to lose if he gets caught.”

“Because the redeemer
wills it; of that I am convinced.”

“Oh Lord, Father ..!” -River
was shaking his head- “I just don’t get your religion. In my heart, I feel that
your religion robbed me of a Dad.”

“Son, leaving you, and
your brother and mother, was the hardest sacrifice that I have ever had to
make. I will always bear that pain in my heart until I die. I loved your mother
like I loved you, but there is some love which is destructive.”

“What do you mean by
destructive love?” asked River.

“I know about the great
love that torments your own heart my son. A girl like Dakota who is loyal and
loves you would make you a perfect wife, but there is someone else that has captured
your heart and you do not want to let go of this love.” Eli paused to see if
his words were welcome in River's ears. His son seemingly wanted his advice. “There
are only two kinds of love, the kind that is constructive, and the kind which
is destructive. All love is profound and meaningful, at least to one person who
is feeling it. However if it is not in balance and mutually constructive then
it will inevitably drive that person’s spirit on a course to destruction.
Sometimes you can feel that loving a certain person is both profound and
meaningful. But if it drives you to sacrifice everything that makes you just
you; that being your core spirit, then you have to walk away, no matter how
much it hurts you, or that other person, or others.”

“Is that what you
recommend I do,” River asked his father.

“Yes son.”

“Is this why you walked
away from us?”

“Yes son. If I stayed
it would have been destructive. I would have denied myself my own destiny, yet
your mother would have been destroyed by mine. If I hadn’t walked away, I would
have brought you here.”

“You are right,” said
River to his Father. “Mine is a destructive love, but now I have a son too, and
you will be a grandfather. I do not know whether I can walk away. And you are
also correct about Dakota. That girl is special. She withstood torture for me
today. I should love her back, but I cannot control the way my heart feels.
Please Father; do me one last favour and look out for her. She needs to be
protected from a man called Shondran. Will you let her stay here with you for a
while, and can you help her find work somewhere else in the metropolis,
somewhere safe.”

Alan Stanton declined
his co worker’s offer to collect him ‘something’ from the canteen. Not that he
wasn’t hungry; quite the opposite. For this was his first day back at work at
the Citizens Protection and Security Headquarters in Central, and his work
detail had just rotated to the middle shift for the next four days. He was a
Surveillance Officer and his work entailed managing numerous automated
surveillance alerts and allocating security officers and assets to higher
priority alerts. He had just returned to work from his four day break and was
two hours into his eight hour shift which started at 4pm, and usually he would
be having his main meal at this time of day.

No he declined for two
other reasons. Firstly, because he had to adapt to the regiment of the new rota
hours to which he would be keeping for the next eight days, and secondly
because he didn’t approve of his work colleagues taking ad hoc breaks. This guy
was always doing that, and offering to run errands for others was just one of
his tricks to walk away from his desk. Stanton looked down the row of five work
stations unimpressed that now two of the five designated officers were absent.
It was still two hours until their designated lunch break when all of their
calls would be diverted to the other teams. But right now, three of them would
have to cover the overspill of feeds from their absent team members. Stanton
popped another appetite suppressant pill into his mouth and resolved to manage
as best he could. He couldn't abide slackers who shirked work or had no pride
in their job. Personally, he liked working as a Surveillance Officer because it
was fast paced, interesting, and allowed him to take charge and control the
actions of Security Officers and other CPS officers who often out ranked him.

He worked at a long
bench row of desks that accommodated five surveillance officers and their array
of multiple interactive screens. You wouldn’t find any personal items or
clutter on these desks; they were hot desks which had to also serve the team
members from all the rota shifts who manned these offices all day, and every
day. There were four other set-ups like this each in a separate room. It made
sense to organize it this way because of the noise from five Surveillance
officers all talking on communicators whilst trying to concentrate was
bearable, whereas the cacophony from twenty such officers working together was
not.

Each officer was
allocated a random selection of automated surveillance feeds. There were so
many that they appeared on continually updating lists which displayed the
higher ranking priorities at the top. Each entry represented a citizen who was
under surveillance. A priority codes of five, meant that they were inactive and
no threat; perhaps asleep or at home. A priority of four meant that they were
active but posed no threat. A priority of three or above required the
intervention of a surveillance officer. The priority codes could be
automatically changed by the computer system. When a surveillance system or
camera noted that a target was moving out of its scope of monitoring, it raised
the code to a three designating that it needed certain intervention. Priority
codes one and two were usually raised at the discretion of a watching
surveillance officer. A code two was employed when a local asset needed to be
mobilised to follow a target. A code one priority required the urgent
apprehension and arrest of a target. The codes did not reflect the importance
of the targeted individual, but only the change in circumstances to their
surveillance. The targets could be arbitrarily chosen by any Security or
Intelligence Officer from the Interior Office. Only they could open or close a
case; the system just managed their surveillance.

Like most of his
colleagues, Stanton cared little for who these targets were, or what they were
supposed to have done. If he wanted to know, there was a brief note section
which outlined the nature of the threat concerning the particular target. Alan
Stanton prided himself on his multi-tasking abilities which were definitely a
core requirement for this job. He usually had a number of code threes on the go
and was quite competent in managing them. The threes would flash at the top of
list on his management console. If he did not action an intervention within 60
seconds, an alarm would sound on his system. If he didn’t action it within 90
seconds, it would pass on to another surveillance officer. When this happened
it reflected poorly on the initial surveillance officer. He was already
managing one code three when he saw the system had raised a new priority three
which had started flashing on his management console. He clicked on it almost
immediately, which brought the camera feed up on one of eight divided sections
on his large forty inch display. In an adjoining screen section, it showed some
relevant notes regarding this particular target and her local environment. Her
name was Audrina Carlson and she had just ‘clocked out’ at her workplace which
was Gold Shield Securities in the financial zone. Stanton watched her coming
down a steep escalator to the ground floor plaza at Gold Shields. She was a
pretty young woman wearing a smart trouser suit and a chic silk scarf head
wrap. It was just after six o’clock, so he assumed that she maybe heading home
for the day. He clicked on her present GPS location, and a new separate display
of available CCTV, surveillance cameras, and CPS officers or plain clothes
assets in the local area were revealed. He commandeered a street CCTV feed that
watched the front of the building. He was presently watching her on Gold
Shields own security cameras, but he needed to know in which direction she
would be heading once she reached the street. Her notes said that she usually
took a taxi home from a nearby taxi rank. He also read that she had a linked
association with a priority code one target named Eli River whose present
whereabouts were unknown. The case notes advised that her priority should be
raised accordingly if she appeared to be making a rendezvous with the linked
target. 

Stanton watched her
walk past the taxi rank and head down the street. He watched her for a while
not sure whether to raise the priority. His local information display
identified available surveillance cameras, and he would switch from one to the
next with a single touch of the screen. It was when he saw her walk up the
stairway to the Elevated Metro station, that he raised the priority to a code
two. He searched for a working metro camera and found a platform fish eye
camera which was not really practical for him. Stanton was also concerned that
the metro trains only had fixed cameras in their carriages which were
insufficient for his needs. Priority code two allowed him to commandeer any
available plain clothes asset or CPS officer in the local zone. He could only
find a CPS enforcement officer who was both nearby and available. So he
activated a status 2 alert to commandeer him from his current duty assignment.
When the officer acknowledged, Stanton connected to the man’s ear piece
instructing him to conduct ‘eyes on target’ until she reached her destination.
He quickly forwarded a screen shot which he had taken of Audrina as she was
coming down the escalator at Gold Shields. This appeared on the CPS enforcement
officer’s personal visual display. By now he had reached the stairway of the
metro station and was bounding up them. He scanned both platforms from a
vantage point and saw a girl wearing the same outfit who appeared to be the
target. He joined her on the platform and when Stanton saw him appear in view
of his platform camera, he confirmed with him that he had ‘eyes on the target’.

When Audrina boarded
the next train, so did the officer. Stanton asked him to maintain a discreet
distance so as not to discourage the target from following her intended route,
and to follow her wherever she exited. Sure enough, when Audrina stood up to
exit at the next stop, the CPS officer got ready to exit too. He capped his
hand discreetly over his mouth piece and said the word ‘
Berkley
’ quietly
to warn the Surveillance Officer. Stanton immediately conducted a search for
local surveillance assets in the Berkley Station area. He also commandeered the
station platform camera and was able to watch Audrina waiting for the train to
leave before disappearing into a passageway in the direction of the exit.

“Follow her please but
keep your distance. This target may be downgraded to a code 3 because she lives
here in Berkley,” Stanton briefed the CPS officer.

The uniformed officer
hung back a good fifty yards from the Audrina who was walking at a slow pace
and lagging behind all the other exiting passengers. He didn’t want to risk
getting closer, and he could still watch from a distance. He could see that the
lift at the end of the passageway was out of action and an engineer in a boiler
suit and cap was working on the door. Many of the exiting passengers were still
trying to get in and use it and the engineer appeared to be directing them to
use the stairs instead. When the target walked by the lift, she appeared to ask
the lift engineer likewise, except this time the engineer removed the out of
order sign and let her onboard. As the doors of the lift started closing, the
uniformed CPS officer started to run towards it but he failed to catch the
doors before they shut. It hadn’t moved yet, but the doors would not open. So
he breathlessly warned Stanton on his communicator that the target was
proceeding to ground level by lift and that he had lost ‘eyes on’ contact.

“That is okay, Officer,”
Stanton reassured him. “Take the stairs and see if you can view her exiting the
ticket barriers. I have a plain clothes asset ready and available to follow her
from the station entrance. As soon as she confirms ‘eyes on’, you can
disengage.”

The officer then raced
down the two flights of stairs and was surprised to actually beat the lift to
the ground level. He was able to calmly watch inconspicuously as Audrina exited
the lift and passed through the ticket barriers.

Stanton was now in
communication contact with the plain clothes officer that was waiting by the station
entrance. When this woman identified Audrina as the target, she let Stanton
know, who then dismissed the previous uniformed officer without even a thank
you.

These plain clothes
officers were available assets to the surveillance officers. There would always
be a few plain clothes officers on duty in each zone of each District. Their
work schedules were kept purposely free in order to make them available assets
for surveillance or to arrest targets. They were expert at being inconspicuous
and at following targets with practiced stealth.

This lady officer kept
her distance as she followed her target for three blocks to her apartment. She
stood back discreetly and watched her target swipe her door pass and enter
through the door.

When it appeared to Stanton
that Audrina had actually gone home, he lowered the priority code to a Three
and dismissed the plain clothes officer. He managed to commandeer the
building’s internal CCTV which monitored the stairs, lifts, and hallways, but
when he saw the target enter her apartment, he lowered the priority code to a
four and marked his own actions as non pertinent. As he disengaged his own
intervention from her ongoing surveillance, the computer system automatically
took over. Stanton however was already actively engaged on another priority
three case.

Another CPS officer,
Major Nathan Carlson was sitting nearby in a non service vehicle. He had
activated the time freeze program on his own inbuilt surveillance inputs as
soon as he knew Audrina had reached Berkley. There would be no record of him
parking opposite his daughters address, and his location would not appear on
any Surveillance Officers local information display. Personally he had found it
easy enough to spot the plain clothes officer that had been following his
daughter. He recognised all the signs, the slow pace, the quiet discreet
talking into a hidden police communicator and the serious look on her face. He
watched the front door close to his daughter’s apartment building, to which he
had yet to be invited. He then waited for the plain clothes officer to
disengage, and knew that she had stepped down once he saw her openly talking on
her communicator. Whilst he still watched her walking away, he became aware of
his rear door of his car opening and someone sitting down behind him.

“Hello Daddy,” Nathan
turned around to return Audrina’s greeting. She was wearing a boiler suit and
had a cap pulled down over her face.

Meanwhile in Audrina’s
apartment, Anton kicked off the uncomfortable shoes and removed his wig and
head scarf. This was not his first time here, and so he helped himself to a one
of the beers that he had previously left in her refrigerator. Returning to sit
and relax on Audrina’s couch, he reached out for her home entertainment remote
whilst he rested his beer can on his fake pregnancy bump.