newsletter’s readers. I agree. It’s a good idea.
Unfortunately, Mark’s not always the smartest kid. His overzealousness is problematic. He pulls a stunt where he sneaks into the police department looking for clues and sees a Mog for himself—the FBI-and-Mog partnership in action. Mark likely should have ended up in their custody or dead, but with some kind of luck he managed to escape.
With Purdy’s laptop.
Mark messages me after he swipes it:
Mark: They’ve got Sarah in Dulce. At that secret base from TWAU!!
Mark: I’m going after her. I gotta. I’m leaving Paradise right now. We’re gonna bust this thing wide open.
I almost laugh. Of course that’s where she is.
I start to type back to him, warning him that Dulce is a no-go. That it’s too dangerous. But as I’m looking at my satellite feed from the base, I notice something strange. There’s a very subtle glitch in the bottom corner of the screen. I keep watching and realize that I’ve been looking at a loop of the same twenty seconds of footage over and over again from the satellite feed.
Shit. I curse myself. I don’t appear to have been hacked, but there’s no telling how long I’ve had the fake feed running on my monitor. Why? Was this just an ordinary precaution? Or is there something more to it?
It takes me a few minutes to find a way around the repeating video, and finally the current state of Dulce comes into view. There’s smoke rising from the base, and it looks like several buildings have collapsed.
Something has gone down very, very recently in Dulce. And I need to know what.
An idea forms in my head. Mark James is going to Dulce. It’s not like I’ll be able to talk him out of it. Not when Sarah is involved. I can help him along the way. Give him supplies. Guide him. In return he’ll tell me what the base is like now. What happened there.
Besides, if he gets taken into custody, he’ll need someone on the outside to try and save him.
And so I respond:
Me: Be careful. The place is probably crawling with Mogs and FBI agents. Don’t do anything stupid.
It only takes a few seconds for him to respond.
Mark: Wouldn’t dream of it.
It takes all of a few hours for Mark to get locked out of Purdy’s computer, and I curse myself for not immediately insisting that he send the damned thing straight to me. It’s probably the same sort of firewall that fried one of my computers in Oregon. We’re possibly kicked out of the machine for good—or at least until I can figure my way around Mog securities—so my focus turns to making sure Mark gets to the Dulce base alive so he can tell me what the hell has happened there. To ensure that this happens, I put together a little care package and meet him in person at a closed-down gas stationon the Colorado–New Mexico border. I manage to get there only a few minutes before he does after driving through the night on my bike, going much, much faster than is either legal or safe. He wouldn’t be talked into waiting a few days, insisting on going straight to Dulce. Not that I blame him—it doesn’t seem like all that long ago that I was in his position.
I give him a box packed with supplies—even one of Raylan’s concussion/EMP grenades that I’ve been carrying around with me from base to base all these years—and have him sign a fake confirmation slip. I play the part of the courier.
He doesn’t think twice about the fact that I can’t be GUARD once he sees me. I’d been ready to play dumb, but I guess after referring to me as “dude” about a hundred times over the last few weeks, he never really gave any thought to the fact that his online partner might be female. I don’t correct him. If for some reason he ends up detained at Dulce and I can’t get him out, it’ll be in my best interest if he can’t identify me.
He looks different in person than in the photos I tracked down of him online. Strung out, with dark circles under his eyes. The events of Paradise and
Unfortunately, Mark’s not always the smartest kid. His overzealousness is problematic. He pulls a stunt where he sneaks into the police department looking for clues and sees a Mog for himself—the FBI-and-Mog partnership in action. Mark likely should have ended up in their custody or dead, but with some kind of luck he managed to escape.
With Purdy’s laptop.
Mark messages me after he swipes it:
Mark: They’ve got Sarah in Dulce. At that secret base from TWAU!!
Mark: I’m going after her. I gotta. I’m leaving Paradise right now. We’re gonna bust this thing wide open.
I almost laugh. Of course that’s where she is.
I start to type back to him, warning him that Dulce is a no-go. That it’s too dangerous. But as I’m looking at my satellite feed from the base, I notice something strange. There’s a very subtle glitch in the bottom corner of the screen. I keep watching and realize that I’ve been looking at a loop of the same twenty seconds of footage over and over again from the satellite feed.
Shit. I curse myself. I don’t appear to have been hacked, but there’s no telling how long I’ve had the fake feed running on my monitor. Why? Was this just an ordinary precaution? Or is there something more to it?
It takes me a few minutes to find a way around the repeating video, and finally the current state of Dulce comes into view. There’s smoke rising from the base, and it looks like several buildings have collapsed.
Something has gone down very, very recently in Dulce. And I need to know what.
An idea forms in my head. Mark James is going to Dulce. It’s not like I’ll be able to talk him out of it. Not when Sarah is involved. I can help him along the way. Give him supplies. Guide him. In return he’ll tell me what the base is like now. What happened there.
Besides, if he gets taken into custody, he’ll need someone on the outside to try and save him.
And so I respond:
Me: Be careful. The place is probably crawling with Mogs and FBI agents. Don’t do anything stupid.
It only takes a few seconds for him to respond.
Mark: Wouldn’t dream of it.
It takes all of a few hours for Mark to get locked out of Purdy’s computer, and I curse myself for not immediately insisting that he send the damned thing straight to me. It’s probably the same sort of firewall that fried one of my computers in Oregon. We’re possibly kicked out of the machine for good—or at least until I can figure my way around Mog securities—so my focus turns to making sure Mark gets to the Dulce base alive so he can tell me what the hell has happened there. To ensure that this happens, I put together a little care package and meet him in person at a closed-down gas stationon the Colorado–New Mexico border. I manage to get there only a few minutes before he does after driving through the night on my bike, going much, much faster than is either legal or safe. He wouldn’t be talked into waiting a few days, insisting on going straight to Dulce. Not that I blame him—it doesn’t seem like all that long ago that I was in his position.
I give him a box packed with supplies—even one of Raylan’s concussion/EMP grenades that I’ve been carrying around with me from base to base all these years—and have him sign a fake confirmation slip. I play the part of the courier.
He doesn’t think twice about the fact that I can’t be GUARD once he sees me. I’d been ready to play dumb, but I guess after referring to me as “dude” about a hundred times over the last few weeks, he never really gave any thought to the fact that his online partner might be female. I don’t correct him. If for some reason he ends up detained at Dulce and I can’t get him out, it’ll be in my best interest if he can’t identify me.
He looks different in person than in the photos I tracked down of him online. Strung out, with dark circles under his eyes. The events of Paradise and
Similar Books
