Book I - ch 30. Once Stabbed, Twice Shy

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Pegasus closed the door to Sarah’s room with forced slowness, replaying her words in his head. Such a strange thing for her to say about his first meeting with Robyn. And stranger still the way she acted afterwards, clumsily covering up her slip of tongue.

Maybe it was bothering him more because he’d let his guard down around her.

He went through the motions automatically, checking the lock on her door to make sure it hadn’t been tampered with or accessed recently.

Sarah having left her sandal holding the door open would suggest she hadn’t figured out the code to this room like she had the previous one. He made a mental note to request a change in the code.

He was probably overthinking a simple mistake, but he couldn’t let it go. The consequences of ignoring any inconsistencies could be deadly in this place.

In his mind, he went over Sarah’s behavior, starting with the day they tracked her down after the attack. She’d certainly seemed heartbroken and lost. And when she woke up here in the compound, she’d seemed angry, confused, distraught, and still lost. It felt genuine.

Maybe those feelings were real to a certain point, and the rest of it were lies. It wasn’t impossible. If that were the case, he would’ve been played alongside everyone else. Even more, because he was the one spending the most time with her.

Pegasus shook his head, disagreeing with himself. Sarah couldn’t have been up to anything so far; she’d been locked in a room for the better part of her stay. Her two escapades the only incidents of note.

She didn’t have access to any coms that would connect her to the outside world during that time. He was sure that she hadn’t had anything with her when they went out to the cemetery.

The memory of watching her face when she saw Robyn’s gravestone intruded. He couldn’t ignore how real her reactions were. Could someone really be that good at faking an emotion? Or could something be real and still a lie at the same time?

Still unsure of what he had decided—if anything—he called up Cypher’s station from the nearest com. There was a familiar signal that indicated the call was being rerouted.

“Chaos central, how may I help?” Michael asked.

“It’s Pegasus.” He paused for a couple of seconds, still organizing his thoughts. Start with the basics. “I need a change for the internal lock code and an alarm set up for Sarah Owens’ room.”

“Something wrong?”

“Don’t know yet. Something’s bothering me, but it might be nothing.”

“Okay. Personal or general alarm?”

“Personal.” That meant the alarm would only warn him if anyone opened the door from the inside. It was enough to give him some peace of mind and it wouldn’t add to the general chaos unnecessarily if it turned out that he was being paranoid.

“Is that all?”

Pegasus tapped a finger on the wall. “I’ll assume there’s no one watching the cameras right now?”

Michael laughed. “They’ll be running by themselves for a while. Everyone’s glued to their data streams or reviewing footage. Do you need anything else?”

“Could you send me Sarah’s verification questionnaire and interview recording, the logs for any outside calls made during her stay with us, and the footage from the university that we have of her?”

“You do know someone went over all that already, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You think we missed something?”

Pegasus shrugged to himself. “I’m not sure what I think.”

“What do you want all that for?”

“Can you send it or not?” Pegasus tried not to sound as impatient as he felt.

A moment of silence on the other end. “I see you don’t have your tablet with you.”

He sighed. “I’ll look at it from one of the terminals.”

“I’ll see what I can get. The logs will probably take a while because the request will have to go through Cypher. I don’t think it’s gonna be anytime soon unless you wanna get them yourself from the mainframe.”

“That’s fine. I know you’re all busy. Send me what you have on hand and I’ll track down the rest.”

It would take forever, but he was probably better off accessing them himself. He could hear Michael typing away at his console in the background.

“I’m really sorry. I’ve got a pile of requests from Zeus, and Center is breathing down our necks. Lore is really backed up and started sending her stuff over, too. It’s madness up here.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not even sure when was the last time I saw Cypher take a breath. Or blink, for that matter. I should probably go check his pulse.” The typing stopped. “Okay, I can get you everything but the call logs.”

“Thanks, I know, bad timing.” With the bombing threat looming closer, there was little time for anything else.

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“You’re not really gonna sort through all that yourself, are you? Or are you gonna wrangle up some of your fellow wounded?”

“Why not? They’re probably the only ones who aren’t busy,” he joked.

“At least let them get stitched up first,” Michael muttered. “Okay, sent! And I gotta go. We’ve got a lead on the transport van…”

Pegasus could hear a voice talking in the background.

“Thanks,” he said, but Michael had already disconnected.

As Pegasus made his way back towards the infirmary, he progressively felt he was making a huge deal out of nothing.

He pulled out a pen from his pocket—he’d forgotten he still had it with him. Spinning the pen between his fingers made him once again think of the time he’d spent with Sarah.

Saying his concerns were nothing was all well and good, but he wouldn’t set his mind at ease until he went through the motions of investigating it.

A misunderstanding wasn’t out of the question. It could be a joke Robyn had played on her sister. Talking to Robyn before he got started sifting through countless hours of footage was probably the best course of action.

He stopped at the first available station and logged in. Michael had sent him everything he’d asked for except the call logs. His fingers tapped the side of the keyboard.

There was another possibility he hadn’t wanted to consider, but the thought had crept into the corner of his mind. To be thorough, he had to examine everything, even the possibility that Sarah hadn’t misheard or misinterpreted Robyn’s words.

There was no obvious motive for Sarah to lie about what she’d heard. And if Robyn hadn’t been joking or making things up just for the hell of it—which was also likely—then he had to consider that maybe Robyn wasn’t who she seemed to be.

He rejected that thought. Sarah claimed that conversation took place soon after she woke up after her fall, which would mean Robyn hadn’t been outside yet since she’d almost died.

Even after that, there had been few opportunities to replace her. Robyn had only left on a couple of missions and once with Unicorn to her house. And on the day their parents were killed, Robyn almost died herself. A few more minutes and she would have. There wasn’t much point in replacing someone only to try and kill the replacement.

He didn’t want to believe it, but now that the thought had occurred to him, he knew he’d also have to check her movements, going back who knows how long. It was a nightmare.

First, he placed a call through to the infirmary. “Is Dragon done yet?”

“She finished her debriefing a moment ago,” the nurse who answered told him. “We’re about to sedate her so we can fix her shoulder.”

“Thanks.”

It would be a while before he could talk to her, so he might as well start sorting through the mountain of information.

He stared at the prompt on his screen, deciding where to start, and who to start with: Sarah or Robyn.

It would be easier to discard any abnormalities with Robyn. As for where to start looking, that was obvious.

The hardest thing to fake was the random re-entry code, the one each person had to memorize every time they left the compound. The thing was as close to truly random as it could be and impossible to hack from any other terminal.

The re-entry procedure hadn’t always been that way. The passcode used to be rotated at random intervals, sometimes as much as three times a day, but it was the same code for everyone. A few years ago, an impostor returned with them from a mission. Panther, the operative in question, had been separated from the team and replaced. The impostor was able to enter the passcode to gain access to the compound by observing the team, so no one suspected a switch.

He would have gone undetected if not for Scorpion. She’d been needling him about his ex-girlfriend’s wedding since before they left for the mission. The more she insisted, the more it became obvious that the man who returned with them had no idea what she was talking about.

The impostor still managed to stab Pegasus and shoot Scorpion before Dragon and Griffon took him out. Unfortunately, dead people don’t answer questions. But it was a lesson learned, and the current procedure was set in place.

The re-entry log archives on the main computer held only the information pertaining to whether the codes had been correct and how many tries were needed. The codes themselves were kept only in an isolated system.

Pegasus searched the re-entry logs for abnormalities, namely, people who had punched in the wrong code, even if they’d gotten it right on a second try. After failing both tries, alarms went off, and a thorough security check was mandatory.

There was only one abnormality recorded, from a few months back. He remembered that one. It had been Scorpion. It didn’t raise any red flags since she’d been pretty out of it at the time because of a mild concussion. She also got it right the second time, and she’d never been out of Robyn’s line of sight during the mission.

Next, Pegasus pulled up the communication logs for outside calls. There weren’t that many, but it would take forever to go through it all by himself. He did a quick search for calls using Robyn’s ID in the last five months. There were a few earlier calls made to her house, her parents’ and Sarah’s cell phones, but there were no calls after the New Nation attack.

Sarah wouldn’t have been able to access any outside lines, and if she had gotten a hold of anyone’s codes, it would have been her sister’s.

Pegasus checked his watch. He’d have a few more minutes before the doctors were done with Robyn.

Since there were no outside calls and no abnormalities with the re-entry logs, the next logical step was to check Robyn’s mission logs, camera, and com. He should also check her computer for recently accessed files and watch the surveillance for her recent movements.

Pegasus entered his personal code when requested by the system to access mission logs. As soon as the pandemonium subsided upstairs, he’d likely get questioned about all the poking around he was doing.

His hand was hovering above the keyboard, ready to type in a search. An irritated-looking cartoon face popped up on screen.

For a second, he thought he’d tripped some new security measure, but the message was obviously custom-made and intended for him: REST!

He glared at the screen.

“What in the world do you think you’re doing?” Cypher’s voice came as if from the irritated little face. “We’re busy up here.”

“So is putting a guard outside Sarah’s room asking too much?”

“All hell broke loose. There was an explosion outside the mall. There’s a huge traffic jam near city hall so that could be a target. And I get a blip on my screen because you’re messing around with mission logs.” There was a pause. “A guard, what for?”

“Do you need me to do anything?” Pegasus asked, latching on to what Cypher said about an explosion. Would the New Nation have made their move?

“There’s nothing for you to do right now. We’ll have footage for reviewing later. We’ve got everyone and recruits out on the streets doing damage control and searches. I’ll let you know if you’re needed for anything. You know, if anything else goes boom.”

“Okay, so unblock my codes.”

There was a long silence on the other end. Pegasus wondered if Cypher had gone off on some tangent and forgotten him.

“What do you want mission logs for? What are you up to?”

“I’m checking something out.” No need to worry Cypher about it, especially since he had yet to find anything concerning.

“I guess that means you don’t have permission to be sniffing around the logs?”

“I have the clearance,” Pegasus replied sharply, checking his tone the next second. “And I can get the permission.”

“Alright, alright. No need to get testy. I don’t have time for this.”

“I’d imagine not. So stop playing games with my access codes.”

A grunt sounded on the other end, followed by a half-spoken sentence that sounded like an agreement and then Cypher was off.

Despite Cypher’s words, Pegasus considered going upstairs to see if he could help.

The com sounded.

It was the nurse he’d talked to earlier about Robyn. “I thought you’d like to know that the doctor finished with Dragon. We’ll be keeping her here a little longer until the sedation wears off, but you can talk to her if you want.”

That made up his mind for him.