Transient - Complete Book One (Episodes 1 - 4) (Transient Serial) Page 17

  “I’m the window seat,”Rae mumbled.

  “I figured.”

  He stepped into the aisle so she could get in. He was tall, and she could smell the cologne on him. He was wearing a blue suit with a thin black tie, but the tie was loose and the top button of his dress shirt was undone.

  Businessman, probably commuting.

  She edged into the seat. It wasn’t easy, or comfortable, but she did it. Plopping herself down into the window seat, she found her seat buckle and latched the two parts together over her lap. She kept her purse in her hands.

  The businessman sat back down again.

  “Hello, I’m Drew,”he informed her, and offered his hand.

  Rae shook it. It was dry and warm, and had a self-assured strength in the grip. Here was a man who knew how to shake. Definitely a businessman.

  “I’m Rae,”she said hesitantly, wondering if it was some kind of airplane protocol to introduce yourself to the passenger sitting beside you on a flight.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Oh, God. He recognizes me.

  The window shade was down. Rae raised it and looked out, so she wouldn’t have to look at the guy sitting next to her who had seen the TV clip and as a result thought he knew all about her.

  Transient.

  “You’ll have to put your bag under the seat or in the overhead compartment,”said the guy called Drew.

  She clutched the bag tighter in her lap.“Why?”

  He shrugged.

  A female flight attendant came down the aisle, glancing left and right, left and right. When she saw Rae, she stopped.“Miss, you’ll have to put your purse under the seat or in the overhead compartment.”

  “OK,”Rae said. She double-checked the clasp on her bag, then stowed it under the seat in front of her.

  The flight attendant nodded.“Thank you.”She moved on.

  Drew grinned.

  “I hope you enjoyed that,”Rae said, annoyed.

  “Very much.”

  He had a deep, resonant voice, like he might have sung bass in a choir. He didn’t look much older than Rae. Early twenties maybe.

  Probably fresh out of college. And thinks he knows everything.

  “Is this your first time on an airplane?”Drew asked.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “Then relax.”

  “I am relaxed.”

  “Relax your hands then,”he said.

  Rae noticed her hands were balled into fists. She tried to let go of the tension, but this guy wasn’t making it easy.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “If the plane goes down, you’ll die. But you already know when you’re going to die, don’t you?”He gave her a sideways glance.

  “I know the date they told me.”

  Drew just smiled at that and then looked away from her, gazing down the aisle to where the flight attendant was now taking her position for a safety demonstration.

  “You should watch this.”

  “What?”she asked.

  “The safety lecture.”

  The safety lecture was mechanical and straightforward, all about exits and oxygen masks and what to do if the worst happened. There was no emotion to it.

  Drew reached out to the seat between him and Rae, took a large laminated card from the seat pocket, and handed it to her.“Some additional reading if you need it.”

  “Thanks,”she mumbled.

  The laminated card had instructions in simple pictures and arrows that told the same information about what to do in the event of an emergency. While Rae had never been on a plane before, she’d seen enough movies that the information was more or less familiar.

  She tucked the card back into the seat pocket as the plane started to move. It was backing away from the terminal, rolling slowly on its big wheels.

  Rae looked down to see some workers below. They wore bright-green neon vests, and carried lighted sticks. Luggage vehicles zipped over the tarmac, careful to avoid the path of the planes.

  “I don’t know why they still give that lecture,”Drew said.“We all know what’s going to happen.”

  “We think we know,”she countered.

  He gave her a long, fixed look.“You have your doubts?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “If I did,”he said,“I’d keep them to myself.”

  “Why?”

  He paused for a moment before continuing.“We live in a world of believers. Who wants to stand out?”

  “I already stand out,”she answered.“You knew who I was the minute you saw me. How?”She knew the answer but still she wanted him to confirm it.

  “The Internet. You were on a YouTube clip.”

  “But it was the TV interview, right?”

  “Sort of,”he said.“Someone cut together a funny video of your interview responses, made it sound like a rap song.”

  Rae knew the one. It had gone viral last week. Embarrassing.“Yeah, I saw it.”

  The plane taxied onto the runway. For a moment she could see the plane ahead of them taking off, but then theirs turned, and she lost the view out her window.

  “Actually,”Drew said.“I do know why they still give the safety demonstration.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because change takes time.”

  “Things seem to be changing pretty fast to me,”Rae said.

  The plane’s engines started to roar. They accelerated down the runway. Rae watched the wing out her window. It was ahead of where she sat, just a few seats forward to the exit door, and she could see the flaps moving on the wings. She felt the acceleration, her body pressed against the back of her seat.

  “The big things change fast, but it's the little things that hang on,”Drew went on.“The habits. The laws. Like the safety demonstration. It's still the law. Most of the people on board–all of the adults certainly - already know when they're going to die. So why hasn't the law changed? Because it takes work. It takes effort. Someone has to care enough to repeal, change, adapt an old law for new times. They could choose not to enforce the law. And I imagine the FAA regulations on safety demonstrations would not be enforced, if put to the test. At least not enforced evenly. Some would care about the letter of the law, some would see that the spirit is broken. The spirit of the law I mean. And eventually, people would stop giving safety lectures on airplanes, and few if any would be fined or lose their jobs because of it. And over time the safety lectures would be a thing of the past, even if they're part of the regulations. No one would notice or care. That's a culture shift, maybe even a generational shift. That's what takes time.”

  The plane was in the air now, and the world was falling away. She had hardly noticed the moment of transition when the wheels left the tarmac. She had been listening to her co-passenger’s deep voice, and it relaxed her a little. She was glad for the distraction. Focusing on his voice had eased her fears. It almost didn’t matter what he said. Just to have someone beside her chatting away was enough to make the difference. And he probably knew that too. He had rambled on so she would have something other than her fear of flying to focus on.

  Thank you.

  But she didn’t say it. She didn’t know this guy.

  It seemed odd to be forced to sit next to a complete stranger for two hours, with no way out. This guy didn’t seem rude or creepy. That was a blessing. He was a little cocky, a little obnoxious and very talkative. But not mean.

  Rae glanced over to steal a better look at him as she hadn’t really studied him properly since she’d sat down.“Well, we’re flying now.”

  “We are indeed. Congratulations,”he said.“You’re doing great.”

  He had longish dark hair, hazel eyes and a cute smile. He smiled easily, and he punctuated his sentences with an animated look in his eyes. He had a face that seemed easy to read. She liked that. It was the guarded ones who kept he
r on edge. Guys that didn’t smile, didn’t talk, didn’t look you in the eye. Drew was looking at her now.

  She looked away first, and glanced out the window. They were already passing through clouds. Still climbing. She could feel the tilt in the plane, like she was strapped to a rocket ship.

  I kind of am.

  “We’ll level out soon,”Drew said.

  And moments later, they did. The plane seemed to lean forward a little and settle in to an altitude just above the clouds. She felt an odd sense of separation, almost unattached, though she was still strapped into her seat and probably moving faster than she had ever moved before. The clouds passed below the window in little white puffs, moving faster than the ground far below. Rae knew that was just an illusion created by the distance.

  Parallax. That was the word.

  She watched the parallax of the clouds rushing across the top-down view of the city. And soon they were out of the city and over the mountains, which seemed like no more than piles of dirt beneath her feet, little ant hills she could step right over.

  “My first flight was over the ocean,”Drew said.“From San Francisco to Hawaii. Nothing but water and clouds. You’ve got a better view on this flight.”

  “You’re from San Francisco?”She didn’t mind encouraging him now. It was good to have someone to talk to.

  “Not originally. I live there now. A little north of the bay. San Rafael. But I work in the city.”

  “Stock broker?”she guessed.

  He laughed at that.“Hell no. Security. I’m a tech consultant. Which means I fly around a lot. Mostly I work on planes.”He laughed at that too.“You must be from L.A. then. If this is your first flight.”

  “Not the city. I’m from a small town outside L.A. You wouldn’t know it.”

  “Try me.”

  She didn’t want to give too much information about herself, so she changed the subject.“We just drove to LAX for the flight. My mom dropped me off. She seemed more worried than I was. She’s not used to me being away from home.”

  “You live at home, then. This must be a big day for you. Getting away. That sense of freedom. Exhilaration. My mom used to worry about me, too. She’d dress me up, and watch from the window as I went out to the school bus.”

  “Doesn’t look like your mom has to worry about you now,”Rae observed.

  “She passed away.”

  A sense of guilt swept through her.“Oh I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I was twelve when it happened. It’ll be seven years in February.”

  He’s…nineteen? Eighteen? This surprised her. He looked twenty-three, at least.

  He must have read her mind.“I know. I look older, right? I get that a lot. I graduated Berkeley when I was fifteen. I’ve been working since then, consulting mostly, though I started out with a big tech company.”

  “Which one.”

  “OBK.”

  Rae’s heart stopped.

  He’s one of them.

  Drew saw her look, and laughed.“You hate me now.”

  “No, I…”She bit her lip.“No, why would I hate you?”

  “I don’t blame you. It’s easy to hate OBK. I don’t hate them. Some of the people there I don’t like, but that’s only natural. I didn’t like working with a giant corporation. They weren’t so big in those days. And I was just a kid, straight out of college and excited to find work with a big company paying big money, doing big things.”

  “What did you do for them?”

  He hesitated.“I’m afraid that’s classified.”

  “Classified? They’re not the government.”

  “They’re a government contractor. Or they were. Anyway, I’m joking. Not classified. But I signed an NDA.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Non-disclosure agreement. It basically says that I’m legally prevented from talking about what I did for them. Most of it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway. Very technical. It would just bore you. Or make you angry. It might make you angry.”

  Suddenly Rae got it.

  “You worked on the cryptograph.”

  “On the tech side, but yes. In those days, it was all about the test. Now OBK has their fingers in a lot of different pies. But it was just the cryptograph formula back then, trying to get things right. Fix the bugs, that sort of thing.”

  “What kind of bugs?”

  He laughed again.“None of your business. And they’re fixed now.”

  Rae thought that was rude, but she was the one who asked, and he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to. She felt like arguing with him about OBK, trying to convince him he was part of the problem, not part of the solution, but he seemed tied up in the new world, the new order, and she was feeling queasy again, and not looking for a fight. He was probably telling her all this because he knew from the TV show that she felt differently, and was trying to convert her. Like Logan and Jenny and all the other OBK evangelists that seemed to be everywhere lately.

  She wanted to rest, so she picked up an in-flight magazine. Drew let down his tray table, opened his laptop, and started working. Rae put the magazine away, closed the window blinds, and then her eyes.

  She was woken once by the flight attendant asking her if she wanted a beverage. She declined. Drew was still typing on his laptop, and the rhythm of it put her back to sleep.

  Rae woke a final time to the jolt of the landing. It wasn’t a hard landing, but hard enough for her dozing self to notice. Her eyes shot open and she pushed the window blind up to see the tarmac streaming through her field of view. The runway slowed beneath the plane, and it taxied to the terminal.

  Once the plane stopped and they were given the clearance to leave, Drew stood first and offered his hand. She shook it politely.

  “Nice to meet you Rae,”he said.“Enjoy your stay in San Francisco.”

  “You too,”she said, before remembering that he lived here.

  Drew just nodded and left.

  Chapter 18

  In the terminal, Rae watched the baggage carrousel going around and around. There was a crowd of people with her, and she recognized a few of the faces from her flight, but she didn’t see Drew. Perhaps he hadn’t checked any luggage. From what Rae saw, he only carried on his computer bag. But he was dressed for business, so maybe he travelled light. No bags, no change of clothes. Going home, presumably.

  Why am I thinking of him?

  He was nobody to her. It didn’t matter. Drew was friendly enough, and it was good to chat with someone for a while, it calmed her nerves for take-off, but there were some things about him that had put her on alert.

  He worked for OBK.

  In the past, maybe. She hadn’t pried too much about that. Maybe he didn’t work for them anymore.

  Then an odd thought struck her.

  Was he following me?

  Of course, OBK knew who Rae was. She had been on the media, and online in various public forums. She’d spoken out publicly against the company and rejected their offer to represent them. The media had even given her group a name, the Tetrad. Someone at OBK must be keeping track of what they were saying. Very few people were willing to speak out openly against them, or against the cryptograph, and those who did stuck out like a horse in a shopping mall. If strangers knew who Rae was, and recognized her on the rare occasions she went out in public, then OBK certainly had her picture in a file somewhere.

  More than my picture…

  OBK knew almost everything about her. They had her cryptograph results, lab tests, and her DNA on file. Probably her media appearances and everything she’d written online too. Maybe they even had her old school homework.

  Rae had heard about corporate espionage. All major conglomerates had a security staff, and most of them used their security apparatus to spy on their competitors.

  But OBK had no competitors, no opposition.

  Except Tetrad.

  It was a competition of ideas, and OBK had won that years ago, but now there was a new group, a bunch of tran
sients, mostly teenagers who were openly questioning the system. If it was a movement, it was a small one. Hardly worth paying attention to, really.

  Rae wondered what she would do if she were the head of OBK security.

  Pay attention.

  That guy…Drew…could still be working for OBK. He’d admitted working for them in the past. The company could have found out about the plane tickets, and bought a seat on the flight for one of their agents, in order to place an operative next to her.

  They could be watching me even now.

  She glanced around at the faces. A few people caught her gaze, and returned it. A few more were staring, and looked away. She was a young woman, attractive enough to get some honest glances. Were they looking at her because they thought she was pretty? Because they’d seen her on television? Or because they saw her as a threat to OBK?

  Don’t be so paranoid.

  And yet, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense to be suspicious.

  Apollo is suspicious.

  He didn’t want to be known to the public, and certainly not to OBK. He was the most paranoid of the group, and probably for good reason. If there was one person OBK would want to get their hands on, it was Apollo

  She took out her phone and sent him a text:“I might have been followed.”

  He texted back:“What do you mean?”

  “There was a guy on the plane next to me.”

  “So?”

  “He recognized me.”

  “You’re a minor celebrity now. That’s bound to happen. Get used to it.”

  “He said he once worked for OBK.”

  “Oh.”

  “We need to be careful.”

  “Always,”Apollo texted, then added a second text:“What did he looked like?”

  “A businessman. But he was young. Graduated college early, as a teen. He’s eighteen now, I think. Went to Berkeley. His name is Drew…I didn’t get his last name.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Mom died when he was young. Worked for OBK, but he must have been a kid. Made it sound like it was years ago.”

  “OK. How was the flight otherwise?”

  “Fine. Mostly slept. Was nervous at first.”

  “First flight, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got through it. Thanks for coming. You have packages waiting for you at the hotel. Stuff for tomorrow. Look through it tonight, and if you think you need anything else, let me know.”