Fountain of Youth - Short Story

“It has been my understanding that all your assets are in place and are ready to acquire the target” - growled a voice from the other end of the phone. “Yes Sir. They acquired the target 43 min ago.” – I answered nervously after confirming the location of my assets with my Extractor, Marie. “We have reason to believe that the assets are experiencing logistic issues hence the delay.”

“Listen Mr. Faisal, we put you in charge because you are an experienced team leader. The board members and I gave you this opportunity because of your proven track records. If you fail to deliver us what is expected of you then you will be solely responsible and will face the consequences later. This project is too large to fail. Use whatever you want, satellite, UAV or hack in to CCTVs but we want you to assure us that the work has been done properly. Bravo shift is waiting for the item for reverse engineering. I hope to hear from you in the next 30 minutes” – The line got disconnected.

I was tensed as I rubbed my neck while staring at the large blue screen clinging on the wall. “Can someone tell me why we can’t communicate with our agents” – I was frustrated. “Sir, there is a possibility that the agents took a detour and had to go through Rancho line tunnel” – Answered one of the staff. “That could be a reason. Our biometric sensors work on different frequency which is why we are still able to see our agents’ health.” Marie gave her analysis on to the situation. “It could be possible but that could also mean that does tell us the location of our agents.” I told Marie as I smashed my fist on to the table in anger. “That was not part of the plan” – I yelled at Marie and walked outside the balcony to clear my mind and to get some fresh air.

Marie soon joined me at the balcony. Marie and I have been working together for a very long time. She is talented, hardworking, smart and extremely attractive. I always had a soft spot for her and she seems to know it but given the nature of our work, I have never talked to her about my feelings. I find it easier to discuss my problems with her especially when we are alone. “What’s it all about Fez?” – That’s the nickname she gave me when we first joined the agency together. “I have always followed your orders and never questioned your authority but this project is making me uncomfortable. What is this project? What are we acquiring that is making the upper management edgy?” – She spoke with such perfection but I can’t let my emotion control me.

I stood there silent, admiring the beauty of our Majesty city, the gigantic skyscrapers that disappears in to the clouds, the contours of which are decorated by guiding lights signaling system used to warn incoming aircraft pilots. The city underneath and the sky above were jammed packed with cars and aircrafts, respectively. And somewhere in this colossal of a jungle are my agents, with whom I am unable to communicate. I wanted to share my secrets with Marie but I couldn’t. “All I can tell you Marie is that we are simply doing our job. You will know soon. I can assure you that” - I said with my back turn against her.

She seems to have understood my gesture hence she left me alone without saying a word. I feel guilty now but this is what I am supposed to do. This is how I am supposed to behave. I don’t know what to do now. My UAVs thermal image is not giving me any clues; my geo-transponders are useless while the cargo is underground. CCTVs are out of questions since the system would be off-line. I know this because I did this in order to protect the cargo and the agents from the government and from other corporate spies who are waiting for an opportunity to hunt us down.

The tunnel is right in front of me. It is under the ring road that connects most of the city. It was supposed to be closed for maintenance until the police decided to reopen it to divert the traffic. I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or the Xenon Group’s agent got tipped off of our plan and decided to close the road as a countermeasure. This is bad news.

I walked in to my control room and saw Marie’s eye fixated in to the monitor. There was a sense of urgency in the air, everyone was worried sick. I can’t blame them; this is the first time we lost contact with our agents. It was a clusterfuck. “We need to activate our assets.” - I spoke loudly expecting someone to respond. “Who do you want to activate.” - Marie asked immediately as soon as the room went silent.

“Activate Pax, tell her to follow the path taken by the cargo up until the moment the transponder stop sending data. I want to see the road and the traffic situation. Display all routes on to the screen as well as her head-cam feed.”

It took 15 minute for Pax to activate her head-cam feed to start streaming video. Pax is a trusty agent of mine, a Thermal Huntress as people here would like to call her, responsible for keeping check of street based surveillance. She comes handy when we want to identify other corporation agents and their substations. By means of a thermal image camera and sonar, Pax scans the neighborhood and send the data back to us which gets clean and analyst by our agents. The easiest way to identify a normal residential apartment from corporate espionage substation is to identity the heat signature emitted from the building. Substations require servers which eats power at high quantity. These servers generate a lot of heat which gets emitted from the building. We compare the heat signature with our server that calculates the heat index of building to resident ratio. If the heat index is large then we flag the building for potential corporate substation.

Marie was busy guiding Pax through the city maze. We could see her Kawasaki navigating through thick traffic in an attempt to visually pin point our cargo and agents. Pax followed Marie’s instruction and entered the tunnel. “Tell me you are seeing this.” - Pax slowed down her bike and aimed her head-cam to a burning cargo truck. There were police cars, ambulances and Private Xenon security personnel – some guarding the truck while the others were scanning the burned remains.

“All is lost.” - I thought to myself. “I failed this mission, it was my mistake” - I whispered as I was staring at the screen in front of me. “But this is not the end, it never is.” - I recalled my training. “Pax, slow down there.” - I shouted at the screen. “What’s at the rare end of the truck? Zoom in, I want to see”

“That’s the rear view camera of the truck.” - An agent told us. “Pax, I want you to slow down while we jack in to the Autostar” - I gestured my hand to the team sitting right across the screen. Autostar is a security video logger designed by AutoCorp, an electronic giant responsible of revolutionizing the car industry. Just last year, they bought their last remaining rivals and became the largest vehicle dashboard electronic monopoly of the world. Autostar records the vehicles commute. It was introduce to prevent car theft, insurance fraud and help governments and mega corporations with surveillance. Jacking in to Autostar is hard work as the security pin changes every 5 minutes but it is not impossible.

It took the team 2 minutes to hack in to Autostar and retrieve the video of the truck’s commute. “Show me the video on the screen” - I demanded. A new window popped up in front of Pax’s first person video feed. The video started playing the recording from 01:12 but the agents were smart enough to fast forward the video to the point it was stolen by my agents and used to transport the cargo. I could see Dom, our infiltrator, and his team of mercenaries standing outside Xenon’s research facility carrying a modified assault weapon and leading the way to transport the cargo using tow trucks and large forklift.

“You clever bastard, Dom” – I muttered to myself. Half way through the video before entering the tunnel, Dom and his team made a sudden stop and unloaded the cargo in to another truck that was disguise as Xenon’s food truck. This was not part of the plan but boy I am glad to see this change of plan. He hijacked an SUV that was trailing behind the truck and scared off the poor man driving it. Some if his team entered the new truck while the rest got on to the original truck with decoy loaded on top of it. Dom’s mercenaries seem to be controlling the truck remotely which explain why one of the mercenary was using his laptop. Dom and two of his mercenaries followed the truck in the SUV.

The video showed the truck entering the tunnel while the original cargo truck exited on to different highway but 3 minutes later, the truck got ambushed. Xenon’s security was on their tail, they were unable to see the SUV with Dom in it. Xenon’s security cars followed the truck close enough for the security to jump on top of the truck to fight Dom’s mercenaries. Dom was patiently waiting for the right opportunity to strike Xenon’s security. All of a sudden, Dom hung out of his SUV and started aiming at the truck’s tire. He fired several shots before the entire screen flipped upside down before the feed went offline.

“If Dom has the truck then why is he not communicating with us” – asked Marie while punching in numbers in to the computer trying to get the communication back online. “I don’t know maybe he is keeping radio silence and low profile which means he must be hiding in one of our safe houses” – I answered excitedly as if I hit a jackpot. “Show me all of our safe houses with the recent log entry. I want to see which safe house had the recent entry. All telephones in these safe houses are programmed to receive incoming calls so call the safe house on land lines to check for our men but make sure. I am pretty damn sure Xenon must have deployed their Thermal hunters by now” - I ordered everyone in the room. “Also caution all substations to halt their activities and reduce their heat signature by 23% that should make us invisible against Thermal hunters.”

“There have been 3 recent log entries in safe house Echo, safe house Zulu and safe house Bravo.” – One of the agents informed me. “Analyze the video and look for the name of the exit that Dom and his men took.” – I regained my confidence after watching the video.

Before anyone could answer, the agents were back online. “Damn it Dom? There are dozens of ways to communicate to us especially In situation like these” – I was relieved to know that I didn’t lose anyone. Dominator and his team was hiding in the Zulu safe house. “A man got to do what he has to do, honey” – he attempted to joke about it. “I do not have time for this, where is the cargo” – I asked patiently. “It should be on your way any time now. Beside, this is one hell of a job we pulled tonight. I do not know what this cargo is but it better worth our lives.”- Dom expressed his feeling. Soon, an operator reached out to me and told me that the cargo has arrived. Without thinking twice, I rushed toward the elevator disconnecting the line Dom was on. “You wanted to know what this is all about. Come let me show you” – I told Marie while holding the elevator door.

We reached to the level 6 of our building basement which houses our most secret projects. It consists of a clean room for semiconductors fabrication and also houses a assembly plant that are used to reverse engineering our rivals product. As we descended down the basement, I managed to see the truck right in front of me. I felt like a birthday kid waiting to receive his gift. As soon as the elevator door opened, I rushed out of the door before it was fully opened. I saw my team waiting for my command before removing the item. “I want you all to get the item in it carefully remove. It will be heavy so use forklift and avoid touching with your bare hand. Wear insulation and remove electrostatic from your body. I want someone to lay down insulation mat inside the clean room and place the device inside. Quick.” – I ordered the team while telling Marie to inform the HQ about the cargo. A large cubical device with lots of electronics components, running actuators and blinking lights was removed from the trunk. Right in the middle was a clear glass sphere with electric charges running across the sphere surface. As if some sort of chemical reaction is taking place inside the sphere. The device was carefully place inside the vacant clean room.

“Do you remember the sunflower war that took place 6 years ago” – I asked Marie who was intensely looking at the device we acquired. “Yes” – Marie answered confusedly. “Both sides were heavily funded by Xenon and us. We were representing the East while Xenon was funding the West. Remember, during war time, the best in the country comes forward and solve a specific task such as logistic problem for the army, medical problems for the infantry and so on. And the best part is at war times what we cannot achieve in 10 years are usually achieved in few years hence our planner decided to introduce a little experiment. They trick our allies in believing that they require a new energy source that would allow them to make new plasma weapons. Our planners managed to provide our allies with the research that was taking place in our laboratories codename Fountain of Youth. Convinced and blinded by having a super weapon, the rest of the research was carried out by our allied countries. This allowed us to save a lot of our money and we could concentrate spending our money in some other business while our allied country could do the research for us. As with any war, both side was suffered great losses and the local government of both nation was completely overwhelmed by the protest that took the street of the two countries. The laboratory working on the research we provided was destroyed and we thought all our research was gone to waste but it turned out Xenon got a hold of our research. Our allied managed to design a prototype from the research we gave them. It is an entirely new energy system that could be said to use quantum mechanics to generate electricity. Imagine an actual perpetual motion machine capable of generating energy from the interaction of subatomic particles. No nuclear, no solar, no wind but energy from quantum states. Somehow Xenon found about our research and stole the laboratory while destroying the lab to hide the existence of the machine. Our sleeper agents managed to get the information across which is when we decided to get what is rightfully ours.”

“So this is the fountain we have been fighting for all along.” – Marie spoke with amazement in her eyes. “This is going to answer all our energy need. But I do not know, I am not getting a good feeling about this. For a machine this powerful, we should have expected heavy resistance from Xenon. Hell, this device is worth killing for, Something tells me this is not over.”