Ntshona (18 page)

“Thank you for that,” said Two.

“What did you bring for us Lin?” asked Three.

Lin stood, removed a small digital storage device from a pocket on her person, and walked towards the centre of the desk where she leant over to the built-in projector and inserted the device, following which a holographic image of a pistol emerged. She then powered on her palm screen and configured it to work as a controller for the projector. “The bounty this time isn’t so plentiful, but I have got a couple of nice toys. First off, four of these,” the pistol’s specifications were also displayed in the projection. Then she tapped her palm screen to change the image to that of an automatic rifle, “I got two of these,” she changed the image again, this time to the shotgun, “only one of these, but we’ll likely never use it. And two of these wonderful little things,” and she changed the image once again, this time to display the details and specifications of the briefcase guns.

“Oh,” said One, “so you managed to get hold of them”.

“Ja, of course I did!” Lin replied. “I’d love to show you in person how to transform it, but this hologram will have to do,” and she tapped her palm screen again to start the demonstration animation.

“Excellent,” said Four, “but I thought this gun was developed to be able to avoid most forms of detection”.

“Ja, that’s right,” said Lin.

“Then why didn’t you bring one up here with you? It would’ve been a good test of its stealth capabilities”.

“To be honest, I couldn’t be bothered getting one out of their bag. It’s in the car though, you can go and take a look if you want”.

“We don’t have time for that now,” said One, “we need to continue”.

Lin ended the projection, removed the storage device and returned to her seat.

One directed his attention towards Lon and Eve. “To maintain a certain level of personal safety and anonymity, we cannot tell you a whole lot about ourselves. We will, however, tell you what we do. I imagine you’ve already been informed to some extent, but I shall continue nonetheless. As you must be aware, the government of our country are highly corrupt and oppressive. For most people, particularly the lower classes, they restrict what we know, what we earn and even what we’re allowed to do and think in our own country. But there’s a lot that you probably don’t know, including issues like trafficking into and out of the country, forced prostitution rings and with it forced sterilisation,” he stood and, holding his hands behind his back, began to pace around the far end of the table while continuing to speak.

“These are but a few matters that need addressed, but they aren’t strong enough reasons for the UN, or any other such groups, to interfere in the government’s dealings, especially without solid evidence of the depth and scale as to which these problems are implemented. Yet these aren’t the most pressing issues regarding the government that require resolution. We, as a group, are very aware of other, far more serious offences and severe human rights infringements; for a number of years we have been cataloguing and mapping human rights violations across the country, and collating them with national political events in order to build a case to take to the Southern-Hemisphere Development Community Tribunal, the International Criminal Court, or whoever else will listen. But damning evidence is scanty, and attaining it is quite near impossible, for a multitude of reasons”.

Lon shuddered at some of the reasons he had just heard. “So, do you think the government is behind all these disappearances that have been going on in the city recently?” asked Lon.

“Unfortunately, we can’t pin that one on them; there’s nothing that implies it’s their doing, there are hundreds of other possible culprits in this city alone”.

“However,” said Two, “if we’re lucky, we might learn something new about it once we’ve completed our objective”.

“What’s your objective?” inquired Eve.

“To put it simply,” began Three, “there do exist overseas groups who are interested in spreading condemning evidence of what the government has been doing for all these years, which in turn, we hope, will give good reason for foreign governments to step in and reform the country”.

“That sounds simple though,” said Lon.

“But it isn’t simple,” said One, “otherwise somebody would have done it a long time ago”.

“Well, what makes it so difficult?”

“Okay, can you give me evidence of the things that have been happening here?” said One.

“No
… I don’t have any,” Lon replied.

“Then tell me how to obtain some evidence,” said One.

This stumped Lon, he had no clue. He looked at Eve, who was equally as puzzled. “But if it’s happening on such a large scale, then shouldn’t evidence be everywhere?”

“Like One said, we need proof of the scope of their dirty deeds,” explained Two, “there are a lot of factors another country has to take into account before it will consider stepping in, and it’s difficult to uncover that scope when it’s the government, the institution that runs the whole country, that is hiding the evidence”.

Four continued. “You’ve got to realise that this country is an economic superpower, and upsetting its internal balance can have unwanted effects elsewhere around the globe; we have an important economy that if tampered with, could send the world into crisis”.

“Basically, we need seriously damning evidence,” stated One.

“Your clarification makes sense,” said Eve, “but based on what you’ve said, it seems too difficult to find the proof you need. How are you going to do it?”

“Well,” Strys voiced up, “we do happen to know a thing or two about the government, hey. Its main servers is where it keeps all its backup information, so it
must be where all the evidence is,” he leant back in his seat and rested his hands on the back of his head.

“Okay, simple enough, hack their servers,” said Lon.

Strys fell forwards and dropped his hands on the desk with a thud. “Ag, no man! It ain’t simple! We need to get to the servers in real life - face-to-face - because they’re impossible to hack via a connection, man! And we don’t hardly know nothing about the place where they are”.

“Where are they?” asked Lon.

“The Science Centre”.

This came as a shock to Eve, for she knew the scale of the Science Centre, it’s sophisticated security, and its complex design. Locating a group of servers in that place was not necessarily an easy task. “How are you gonna manage to physically find and hack a server in the Science Centre if you have no information about it?”

“Until now we’ve never truly had direct access to the Science Centre,” said One.

Lon’s stomach froze. “Until now?”

“Now we have Eve who works there. She’s our direct access”.

“Sorry
… what?” said Eve.

“You have access to the Science Centre because you work there, meaning we now have access too”.

“Just because I work there, doesn’t mean I’m not a wanted criminal!” she was becoming frightened.

“The fact that you’re a wanted criminal works better for us,” said Three.

Eve could not fathom why.

He continued, “basically, in your situation you have two choices: you can either continue to be a fugitive and do nothing but hide forever; or you can infiltrate the Science Centre, retrieve the information we need to condemn those government pigs, and potentially prove yourself innocent and discover where your friends have been taken at the same time. There’s nothing for you to lose”.

“Nothing to lose?” said Lon, “she could lose her life!”

“That’s obviously something we want to avoid, therefore we need to plan this carefully,” said Four.

“So it would be helpful for you to tell us everything you can about the inside of that building so we can factor it into the plan,” said Two.

“Don’t I have a choice in the matter?” despaired Eve. She turned to Cat to look for her disagreement with the proposition, however she did not get the response for which she had hoped.

“We don’t want to be heavy-handed like the government, but as it stands now, you’re the only person working in the Science Centre who we’ve managed get to see things from our perspective, which was all a massive coincidence anyway. This opportunity won’t arise again,” she explained. “Furthermore,” she continued in hopes to bring Eve around, “remember that Citizen Profile Database we were talking about earlier? It’s also backed up, meaning there still exists official information about your family connections”.

Eve began to tremble and her eyes swelled with tears. “I can’t go back there now, they’re bound to notice if I return. And after what’s happened over the last two days, I know they’ll kill me if they get their hands on me”.

“Don’t you want to be a national hero?” asked Two.

“How could I ever be a hero?”

“If you retrieve the information we need, it will end in the fall of the current government, and will make way for positive change in this country,” said Four.

This dialogue began to annoy Lon. “What makes you think you can bribe her? You’re asking her to risk her life for something that isn’t even certain!”

“This is the only thing that can bring change to our country!” shouted Four. “This must happen for the entire population to be freed from oppression, and to be living lives equal to those in truly democratic countries!”

“Please,” One interrupted with composure, “anger won’t make this matter any simpler to deal with,” he looked at Eve directly, “we know we’re not asking you a small favour, but please understand, we need you, and so does your country”.

Lon maintained his stance on the matter, “Why does it have to be Eve though? Can’t she just explain to you all she knows about the Science Centre, then you get someone else to take the job?”

“You clearly have no idea of the scale of the Science Centre,” said Three, “it’s not exactly something you can simply ‘explain’”.

Lon looked towards Eve, ready for her to state otherwise, however, she merely nodded and said, “It’s true”.

“Imagine a game of football,” said Two, “you choose a striker who doesn’t know the first thing about the game, other than that you’ve told him to kick the ball into the goal. What’s gonna happen? Will he try to score in the right goal? What happens when there’s a corner? How will he know when he’s offside?”

Lon took a deep breath. “I understand that, but there must be other ways! Can’t you send someone in who can send back a video stream so that Eve can tell them where to go and what to do?”

“Imagine a midfielder,” Two continued with the analogy.

“Okay, I get it,” said Lon. “Can’t you at least give her some time to consider it?”

“There’s no time to consider. We need a ‘yes’ right now,” said One.

“Why right now?”

One let out a frustrated sigh, “Because we’re on a time limit”.

Three continued, “As you’re probably aware, we’re in the run-up to the presidential elections. In recent years the SARP, the current ruling party’s antics have attracted the scrutiny of overseas parties, like we’ve explained. Now,
we
have a good idea as to the extent of our government’s corruption, infringement of human rights, etc., but we don’t yet have the necessary proof, which we’ve also explained. Our problem is that there are two kinds of these foreign parties, the unofficial ones who are waiting for the information we want you to extract, and there are the official ones”.

“What’s the difference between the two?” Lon asked.

Two added to the explanation, “The official parties are insisting that the current government have their records audited this time around, before the election. They want to uncover any discrepancies in finance, deviations from policies, evidence of corruption, nepotism; the usual problems, basically, but they likely expect it to be on a much grander scale than in most countries, which it most certainly is”.

“We want that to happen, don’t we? We want them to find proof,” said Lon.

“Sadly, it’s not that simple. The government, being who they are, have the ability to manipulate and falsify their own data, or even erase it completely,” said Three.

“In our favour, they’re not likely to erase
everything
on their servers. If that were to happen before being audited, it would be too suspicious,” said Two.

“But we need to capture
all
the data while it still exists,” added Four.

“How long would we have to prepare if Eve agrees to do it?” asked Lon.

“According to our sources, it was recently announced abroad that an international delegation will be arriving at the end of the week. This means we have to seize that information as soon as possible”.

“The end of the week?!” repeated Lon. “So, then we’d have to do it-”.

“Tomorrow,” interrupted One, “even then it may be too late”.

Eve was taken aback. Here was a great deal of pressure being lowered onto her shoulders, and she had no chance to steady herself ready to bear the weight. “Tomorrow?” she squeaked.

“Sorry, but yes, tomorrow,” said One.

Eve broke into a silent cry, the skin on her face became moist with tears, each representing a different emotion; upset, anger, frustration, despair, helplessness, remorse, and fear. The number of extreme scenarios she had faced had been mounting over the weekend, and they were to come to a magnificent end in a glorious suicide mission she was forcibly encouraged to undertake the following day.