In Darkness, there was Light (closed)

[Fortuitus]

~*~ 2 years prior ~*~

Darkness.

Darkness in a room barely big enough for her to move around. If she had to guess, it was a room about 6x6. No windows. One door.

Footsteps.

Footsteps that sounded as if they were coming toward the room.

She shifted, just as she always did when she heard those footsteps. It was the same.2 sets of steps. One from a male, around 180 pounds and no taller than 6'3"--pretty skinny for a tall guy.

Wait--not skinny..lean, well muscled.

He wore cologne. It was a spicy scent. Almost like cinnamon.

The other man. Heavyset--around 220 pounds but shorter than the first guy. Maybe about 4 inches shorter.

He always had a lingering scent of cigarette smoke. And the shortness of breath to match along with the wheezing. He never did much except hit her. He never touched her as to help the other man. The first guy did all the physical work--lifting her, throwing her around, strapping her down..making sure she was always reminded of who was boss..

Their sessions didn't last as long nor were as intense as they used to be. She was learning.

The two men agreed on that.

Soon..

Almost too soon, she started to forget who she really was.. Forget that she was a young woman, literally just fresh out of MCBT (Marine Corps Basic Training) and one of the few lucky enough to be selected to attend Force Recon...she remembered making it through the first 5 days where the initiation was tough. But she made it that far. She had just been a number.

Another face in the crowd of soldiers that were weary and tired and ready to give up..or at least have the urge to give up.. Their bodies cried to them to please stop this nonstop movement, but their minds said something different..keep going..

Keep going..

That was the mantra they had settled on.

Keep going..

It had been dark when she was taken. She was too tired to fight, the human body was not meant to survive on such minimal rest..yet, instinct told her to fight back because she was in danger..she had no choice. All she remembered was, it was dark.

She didn't cry. She didn't scream.

2 men were taken by surprise as they hadn't expected such wiry power in such a small thing.. It was then they knew how to handle her.

Drugs.

A prick of a needle to her neck as 2 men held her down.

After that..?

Darkness.

 

[Bevatoria]

Note: This thread is loosely based on the show 'Person of Interest'. Knowing that might help place a lot of this in context, or at least help it make some sense. Hope you enjoy!

***

"Eyes on our mark, Sloan."

He gave no response to that statement. To any untrained individual, listening to this conversation out of context, it definitely sounded like a military conversation, like something meant to be cryptic, hinting at something else. Perhaps someone to be followed for observation. To be...taken out? Like in a movie, or TV show, a quick message right before a sniper shot? In this case, it was something much simpler, built by something much more complex.

The communication came across secured telephone lines. Not military grade, though. Better. For any other being in existence, finding hardware and software better then military grade wasn't possible, simply because it practically didn't exist. Unless you built it yourself.

Which was exactly what Lionel Sloan had done. His much younger and normally disheveled appearance fooled most people, to say nothing of the many security systems he could fool. For all intents and purposes, he and his partner did not exist to 99.9% of the world's population. To every computer system out there, as well.

Except the one he built. The one he had a secure, undetectable back door into. His pride and joy. The Construct. Something intricately designed to hack in to every camera, computer system, and cell phone in the world, and use them. Not for anything nefarious; Lionel found it fitting that he had used such genius intended for such good. He'd created something to protect the world, to anticipate the probability of danger, and help prepared the world's governments for it.

He had brought it to the department of defense, who'd agreed to fund his research and development. Four long, hard years. Many days where he never left his office (the DoD had conveniently given him another one to 'live' in). No vacations, little contact with the outside world...a world that had given him such sorrow. But he was determined to build into it, to make it a better place with his genius. To prove it had misjudged him.

And they bought it, promising to share it with the world. Lionel smiled, satisfied as the government had gingerly placed the Construct into a box, shipping it to somewhere much more secure. He'd thought he'd done well, then.

Not so much after when the DoD gave him a cheque and told him to piss off. It wasn't that they didn't compensate him fairly...quite the opposite. The money and resources he'd put in the project were repaid over a hundred fold; he had enough to retire and keep his family in comfort for three generations. But Lionel wanted them to keep their promise, to share his invention and help make the world a better place.

The people who controlled it now wanted to help others, all right. If by 'others', they meant themselves. Even as Lionel despaired at their betrayal, he hadn't gotten to where he was without contingency plans. And so, even as he enacted his, he knew he'd need help. He'd always had access to the Construct, even if destroying it was well beyond his means now. But he could use it. Without their knowledge, as its massive programming and code was almost indecipherable to anyone who didn't know how to read it. He used it to erase any trace of him from the public record; as far as anyone else knew, he'd retired to the middle of nowhere. Gone without a trace, with an everlasting pile of money.

But he knew he'd need help. Lionel had never been one for going outside much, and if he was to use the Construct for its true purpose - to help others - he was aware of two things. One, that he'd need to do it on a much smaller scale - not preventing disasters, or tragedies, but merely bad goings on. Murders, or kidnappings. That was the most he could hope to do and stay undetected.

And two, he'd need help. Which was where his partner came in. Ian White was that person. An ex-military who'd been wrongly charged when he'd defied orders to save his friends, Lionel knew he'd found his match. It had taken some convincing, but now the two of them worked together, unseen.

Ian was the brawn. Lionel was the brains, in his hideaway. Several computer screens were on the desk, with more then one keyboard, a mouse...every manner of gadget he needed.

"Mr. White, I'm getting more signal traffic in the area, so your threat should show itself soon..."

 

[Fortuitus]

~*~2 years later~*~

She sat at the bar in the small coffee cafe, sipping a mocha cappacino as she read the morning paper.

Probably nothing out the ordinary for most, in fact, it seemed routine. Her apartment was only 2 blocks from here. It was only 7:30 AM and her day had just started.

But today, it seemed a bit off. Everything, including the backdrop, the surroundings all seemed too..normal.

She didn't notice a man sit beside her, order a black coffee and drummed his fingers as he waited for it. When it finally arrived, he placed too much sugar in it. Something she shouldn't notice, but did. She set her own cup down and set her paper down, her stare was far off, as if trying to remember something.

No word was said between them for a long while, until the man cleared his throat and steepled his fingers in front of him, speaking in a voice meant only for her, "Calico."

That was it.

The woman, who was young, but if truth be told, had a lot of years in her eyes. She never looked at the man as he spoke but stood, left a few bills for her morning drink and walked out the door. Her look was intense, focused.

Calico.

The job was on. As she put her hands in jacket pockets, she could feel the coolness of steel from a gun in a shoulder holster under her jacket. She knew about the weapon..at least she knew about it now. She could tell you about every inch of the weapon, it's firing power, how much it weighed with each bullet..and yes, that included the bullet in the chamber. She could take it apart in the dark and put it back together with out so much as second guessing herself.

She was that good.

The man, Nate, knew how good she was. Hell, he was the one who trained her. She'd get the job done, not get caught and of course, not be aware of much afterward..

She was perfect. Killing was second nature to her. Her target was simple. The Mayor's secretary. It wasn't a huge hit. In fact, this was one was just for practice until 'they' were ready to send her out on her real mission soon..

Very soon.

 

[Bevatoria]

Another bad guy down. Another kidnapping thwarted, a mysterious 'care' package left for the cops to pick up. Certain cops, anyways. Ian didn't necessarily approve of their working directly with any of the authorities, whether said authorities were aware of their machinations or not. But like the professional he was, he adapted to whatever was asked of him. Lionel wouldn't exactly call what they had a 'friendship'; the relationship stretched beyond that. They were responsible for one another in a way that a husband and wife never were. Ian, for continuing Lionel's work and grand vision; something he himself had come to believe in during their partnership. Lionel, for Ian's safety. Both for his sake and for the sake of their work. After all, it would do them no good if they sacrificed each other in order to protect innocent, unsuspecting civilians. They took risks, tried to cheat death, but cheating it was far different from courting it.

Now safely outside in an alleyway, having taken a rear exit from the hotel, Ian peered up at the camera that Lionel was watching him from. They knew each other amazingly well at this point. "We done for the night, Sloan?" The two were never really apart, even as Sloan took up residence in his highly exclusive - and highly discreet - apartment building in the heart of downtown. Lionel took another glance at his screen, seeing no budding threats at the moment, and shook his head. The Construct always judged threats based on cell phone traffic, emails sent, text messages, file attachments...it was highly complex, and something Lionel was fairly certain he couldn't explain to anyone.

Still, he smirked even though Ian couldn't see him. "Keep your phone on, Ian."

"I always do."

He waved to his unseen friend as he exited his view, and he could swear he saw a smirk from Ian. The Construct would warn him if anything came up, so Lionel flipped to another window; something far more troubling then just a random series of murders. It was something that the Construct was having trouble grappling with; and as such, so was he.

It wasn't foreign to Lionel that something would come up that a computer system would have trouble processing. Even with the mind boggling amount of coding and work that he'd put into it, there was just no accounting for every possible variable in the world. It wasn't done. And so when the construct occasionally came to him with errors or problems, Lionel had gotten used to dealing with them.

The issue was the nature of this problem. That the construct was theorizing that there was an unknown element. Again, far from a shock for Lionel (or Ian, as he'd been briefed on this as well). But the construct had postulated that this unknown force was acting against them. Another group. operating from the shadows, with no virtual footprint to use against them. Nothing for the construct to latch on to so that they could deal with it.

The possibility didn't surprise Lionel. But what was bothering him was the nagging thought that these people were going to act directly against them...against what him and Ian were doing. He felt safe and secure inside his virtual bunker, a building in the middle of nowhere that nobody cared about. But he worried about Ian, and as he did, he flipped to a camera inside the man's residence, staring at it grimly.

If we are targeted, you are the one in danger. Lionel had been suspicious like this before. Like all of the other times, he hoped he was wrong.

Several more hours passed, before Lionel drifted off to sleep in front of his screen. What woke him came as a surprise.