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spookyspaghettisundae · 1 month

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High Noon, All In

Valentín Ruiz leaned against the kitchen counter. He slipped his leather jacket open, exposing the holstered gun on his belt, like a gunslinger in a Western movie showing his opponent he was armed and a force to be reckoned with. His gaze swept over Chloe Grant’s belongings, stopping on another cardboard box in the corner, and locking onto the contents he could spot in its open topside.

She had still been unpacking. Still moving into this new home. The knife block sat at the top inside that box, still wrapped in newspapers. Both of them could see hints of knife handles through the crumpled paper.

He peeled his sight away from the open box, and their gazes met. He scratched the stubble on his chin, then sighed. A long, weary sigh.

Though she remained speechless, Grant’s most prominent thought echoed like a scream inside her mind.

Her gun was upstairs. His was right at his hip.

It wouldn’t have looked good for him if he were to shoot her in her own kitchen, but they both had sophisticated military backgrounds, and both had been working in private sectors, shrouded in secrecy. To some extent, they both had the skills and knowhow of spies, and could make each other vanish from the Earth without a trace if they just tried hard enough.

Grant considered herself a good judge of character. But in a situation like this, all bets were off.

Their previous banter, paired with the flirtatious glint in his eyes, could have meant anything. Maybe he was always just like that, using it to disarm situations and make friendly. Or maybe he was a good actor, using it all to conceal more nefarious intentions, allowing the wolf to creep closer before it pounced. Or maybe it was entirely genuine.

She found Ruiz hard to read now. His poker face gelled well with his model’s face.

Eyes still locked onto her, he finally broke the awkward silence by saying, “I never asked, did I? You aren’t from around Texas.”

“Nope,” she said, popping the single syllable like a balloon. “You never asked indeed.”

He emitted something that died halfway between scoffing and a chortle. He chased that with a wam smile.

“Okay, well, are you from Texas? Or not?”

Grant’s phone buzzed. A short message. She hesitated to check.

Instead, she countered his question. “You said the job and HQ can wait, you needed to talk. Almost had me convinced it was something serious, but now we’re small-talking in my sorry excuse of a kitchen?”

She leaned against the other counter, opposite Ruiz, and crossed her arms. She sold her words with a crooked smirk.

He bought it.

“I’m from Cali,” he said, “and figured you were too, based on how you talk. Or maybe it’s Nevada?”

Her smirk transformed into a genuine smile.

A good guess.

He was good, after all.

“Yeah. L.A. You?”

Another half-chortle, half-scoff.

“Same. People say it’s a small world, but a city like that’s big enough for us to never meet before this job a couple o’ states over. How about that, huh?”

The phone buzzed again.

“Maybe we just got around a lot,” she said, her smile fading. “Is this… going anywhere?”

His sunny demeanor also faded. With a thumb hooked into his leather pants’ pocket, his right hand hovered dangerously close to his pistol all the while.

“What? I thought you wanted me to ask you out for drinks, off the job, sometime. Wasn’t that what you implied at Carrington’s?”

“I didn’t imply anything, I flat-out said it. But tell me something, now. You go to a lady’s home first to ask her out for drinks? Is that how you roll, cowboy?” Her lips twitched until they formed another crooked smile—keeping her cool, trying to lure his motives out into the open. “How’d you find this place anyway? You following me around now? Are you stalking me?”

He tilted his head, then shook it, averting his eyes. Like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he played it off with natural charm. A wide smile revealed a perfect set of teeth, just adding to the pleasant image. And he employed a soft, smoky chuckle to punctuate it all, to downplay everything.

Her phone buzzed again.

“Yeah, okay, I admit, I followed you here from Carrington, figured I wanted to ask in private,” he said. He was good. She had not seen his motorcycle on her tail for the entire ride. Offering Grant a sliver of relief, he unhooked his thumb, removing his hand from the vicinity of his gun, to wag a finger at her—to point at the phone in her jacket, specifically, just as it buzzed yet again. “You gonna get that?”

She grinned and grimaced both.

“You know, it’s work. Our work. I’m surprised your phone isn’t blowing up right now, too.”

He shook his head, still wielding that charming smile. “I prefer to keep it off when I have more important people to see.”

Oh, he was good. If he suspected that she knew anything about his espionage at Future Proof for Corsino, he was burying it under mountains of flirting.

Under other circumstances, it might have worked.

She slowly fished the phone out of her pocket, and it buzzed for the umpteenth time, now in her hand.

New messages flashed on-screen.

“We should be getting to HQ, saddling up already. And if you’d been paying attention to our employer, you’d know. We’re headed to the Appalachian mountains? Gonna be a long ride. So, I’m flattered you rate this…” she paused, using a gesture to bounce between the two of them, “as more pressing than your seriously lucrative job, but… I, for my part, would like to see those fat paychecks keep rollin’ in.”

He raised his hands like she had him in a stickup, palms facing her in surrender. With a nod of his head, he encouraged her to check her phone.

11:59, said the display.

High noon.

She fought the urge of looking up, to keep an eye on his right hand and the holstered gun.

As expected, messages from HQ were flooding her lock screen. Two of them in between had come from Danielle Bennett—from her own private number, not work.

Where ARE you? —Dan, 11:57

Grant held up a hand before Ruiz could say anything else. He shrugged in response. She took a moment to reply to Dan’s message.

Her heart was racing, but not because Ruiz was such a heartthrob. The silvery iron on his hip still kept her nervous enough, the subterfuge put all his flirting into question, and she still considered finding a way to elegantly excuse herself, to retrieve her own piece from upstairs.

For all she knew, she was about to take a bullet. Or ten.

Grant permitted none of this to surface in any shape or form. She bit her lip and answered Danielle, not HQ.

Had to make it snappy. Had to word it just right.

Her thumbs raced at a pace to match her heartbeat, tapping out a swift reply.

If anything happens to me, he’s at my place right now, and he’s got a private semi-auto 45 ACP, not issued by FP.

Message sent.

Grant quickly stuffed the phone back into her pocket. It soon buzzed more with a flurry of incoming messages. She knew they were all sent by Dan.

Without commenting on the flood of texts that kept her phone abuzz, Ruiz only arched a brow.

He stared into her eyes.

“Listen,” he said. A deep, shuddering sigh escaped him. The sheer power of it stunned her, and made her racing heart skip a beat.

He pulled off his beanie cap and ran a hand through dark hair, ruffling it as he visibly struggled to find the right words.

That sigh had blown away all flirtatious air about him. He shifted uncomfortably where he stood, still leaning against the counter. The hand so dangerously close to his pistol, it joined the other, folding in front of him and guiding his sight to the checkered floor between them.

“I am a spy,” he said. Each soft word landed like thunderclaps. “I work for an industry rival of FP’s.”

Her stomach knotted. The pause he allowed to follow only fueled her paranoia.

Was this another play?

Was he fishing for something else? Was he onto her, trying to find out who knew that she knew, to find whom she answered to?

Her mind flashed to Danielle Bennett, an innocent face on the surface of a sea of secrets.

Emotions started bubbling up from the depths.

Social engineering and confidence plays were tricky business, and whether this was a play of his or not, it had worked wonders in robbing Grant of her cool. She couldn’t think of any cards to play, and the sheer possibility of him being this stupid made her angry. It also somehow made her angry that his flirting might have all been hot air all along.

“What the hell?” she blurted out. “Why would you tell me that? Why me? Are you stupid?”

Another sigh escaped him.

He avoided eye contact.

Between her simmering sources of anger, and the very surprise of it all, she struggled to sense any deception. It was either a very good, aggressive bluff on his behalf, or her instincts were right, and he was coming clean to her in earnest.

Still, the question lingered. It compelled her to repeat it.

“Why? Why me?”

Another sigh from Ruiz now shuddered with gravity. He finally met her gaze again. The wet glitter of sorrow in his eyes hinted at a deep ocean of its own, an untapped well of tears, and a conflicted man hidden behind it all.

Everything he’d say would feel so very, deeply honest.

“When Spencer hired you, I… convinced Singh to let me get my eyes on your file. And when I saw that, I figured you were hired to ferret out any potential leaks or whistleblowers or spies in the organization. That’s kind of your specialty, isn’t it?”

Grant clenched her jaw so hard that her teeth almost started hurting from the pressure.

The look in his eyes reminded her of a puppy dog.

This, she hated. She really didn’t like dogs, not even in such an abstract sense.

“Well, I didn’t really sign up for that,” she snapped, “but I can see why you’d arrive at that misconception.”

Averting his gaze again, he shook his head.

“You know, I used to think it was the right thing to do. Everything about our company is shady. It’s shady as all hell,” he said. The words he used somehow dulled the edge. Maybe it was the softness in it, the sense of vulnerability he projected. His gravelly voice cracked, if ever so briefly. “Who’s the good guys, really? Who’s the bad guys? Sure, the extra pay didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt one bit. But I was convinced it was better for this to be out in the open somehow, that it might be dangerous if Spencer held all this power in his hands, all this knowledge. Y’know?”

It was a lot to process. If this was a play, then he had gone all-in, put all his chips on the table, and asked to see Grant’s hand.

She had nothing. Nothing to match it.

It didn’t even feel like a play. It was probably more apt to understand it as someone who was quitting the game altogether.

Where she failed to reply, he continued speaking.

“Now? Carter was shot. Dead. We buried him after some gung-ho military asshole shot him, and I think it’s my fault—no—I know it’s my fault. And Singh’s behind bars, and this fucking shake—”

He raised his hand. His left hand—the one she had not been watching as closely, as it had been farther away from the holstered gun on his hip—now that she focused on it, she could see that it shook.

Tremors shook it.

Ruiz balled his hand into a fist but the tremors remained. His eyes sparkled brighter.

“This fuckin’ shake doesn’t go away anymore. I fucked up, Grant. I want you to turn me in or whatever, or just hear me out. Fuck. I don’t even really know you. I’m sorry I’m dumping all this horseshit on your lap. I just… I need someone to talk, I guess.”

His words fell the softest he had ever uttered. He rubbed his forehead, hiding his eyes behind his hand.

It was the least rehearsed thing she had ever felt coming from him.

This player had quit the game. He was on the verge of breaking down in her half-furnished house, in her sorry excuse of a kitchen.

She bit her lip. The ball of anger dissipated into a much milder frustration, a tinier pit, churning in her stomach.

In that moment, she decided to take him at face value. She could have gone on and continued questioning his motives and his every action, but the puzzle pieces fit into their rightful places.

Grant didn’t really know him either, but… this…

This felt honest.

“Shit, man,” she muttered, stirring as she broke free from her quiet shock, “this is so, so much to take in right now. You have no idea.”

It was her turn to release a deep sigh. Part of it was relief. She didn’t want to be cynical.

“Can I—do you mind if I smoke in here?” he asked. He blinked many times, blinking away the glitter in his eyes before he’d dare show any tears.

“Yeah, I mind. There’s no smoking in my house,” she answered with firmness.

He wiped his lips with those trembling fingers.

The gun at his hip no longer exuded a tangible threat. It just rested there. Just like the gun upstairs, in her bedroom. She would fetch it later, after he left.

“Shit, man, we got a lot o’ shit on our plate as it is. Now you come to me with… this? Like I said, it’s gonna be a long ride to the Appalachian, we need to get to HQ, and I need to think about what you said. I’ll tell you this, though, I wasn’t hired for counterintelligence,” she said, omitting the part of her having been doing that without being asked to. And as much as she disliked dogs, the look he then cast her way made her think of a kicked puppy. She swept her hair back, suppressed a groan of frustration, and the harsh tone faded from her voice altogether. Everything softened. “We’ll talk about it more, okay? But we also need to do our job—the Anomalies, the specimens and incursions—people’s lives are on the line, and we gotta hustle. See you at HQ, okay? Let’s talk shop after we get back from the field. Okay?”

Instead of tears, he broke out into another hybrid between scoffing and a chuckle. There wasn’t anything flirtatious or playful about it, instead having turned into something resembling relief.

He’d soon leave. She’d soon have packed and left as well, heading downtown to Future Proof’s towering skyscraper. And soon after that, they’d be en route to Kentucky.

They exchanged furtive, secretive glances during briefings in the boardroom and briefings in R&D, and between every step of travel where they looked each other’s way.

Grant now shared the burden of his secret. They did not speak about it at all. She felt watched all day, all night, all flight.

The tremor in his right hand remained, visible to her despite all attempts at hiding it. On the final stretch of flight into the Appalachian mountains, only Grant saw it.

Mischchenko chewed over their field operation orders from Spencer while they performed a final check on their EMD rifles. Pruitt was busy piloting the airlift chopper.

Max Carter was conspicuously absent. It felt like he should have been there. Instead, there was just an empty spot on the bench next to Ruiz.

That conversation in the kitchen had been haunting Grant all the while, all journey long. Everything else since had flowed past her in a blur. The most she remembered was trying to calm Danielle down, saying they’d sort things out soon enough.

She went through all the necessary motions. Kept to herself otherwise.

Grant kept her masked, helmeted head down, and followed Mischchenko’s instructions. Checked and re-checked her EMD rifle. Their battery packs whined as they powered their weapons up.

By the time the black, unmarked chopper swooped down over foggy Kentucky woods in the middle of nowhere, it was noon again.

The Anomaly glittered below.

That terrible, beautiful globe of splintered, slowly spinning lights, like glass shards shining with brilliant reflections of the sun…

Reports indicated pterodactyls in the area as a primary threat in the incursion. Burch confirmed the veracity of the images, and Stantz was busy having Bennett and their other minions scrubbing all video and image footage from the ‘net.

For the operators on site, the helmet visors concealed their faces. This kept the warmth inside their body armor, and it also hid all their facial expressions.

Even so, Ruiz’s stare lingered on Grant every now and then.

And she thought back to the kitchen, and how he had played his final hand, laying all cards out on the figurative table between them. It made her think of the blue-white checkered floor.

Would she tell Spencer? They needed to make a decision. A very cautious decision.

Some part of her related deeply to Ruiz. In all honesty, she didn’t trust Spencer herself. The power of these Anomalies, the power to affect time itself…

On the ground, she looked up at the Kentucky Anomaly in awe. It shimmered where it revolved mid-air, hovering inches above the frosted forest floor. This scintillating sphere was big enough to let another T-Rex escape from the past into their present.

Mischchenko was busy handling Doctor Solomon’s new variant of the ALM—what he had been so excited to share with the class. His new “innovation”.

This new variant could not only lock the Anomaly to prevent things from passing through the breaches in time—it could alternatively enforce stability. They could effectively stabilize a Flicker, what the R&D team had labeled an unstable Anomaly, which would work wonders if they ever needed to herd dinosaurs back through a Flicker again.

Ruiz returned from a sweep of the perimeter.

“No eyes on our big birds,” he reported. “But you’d think we’d hear ‘em make big shrieks to match.”

The ALM refused to lock the Anomaly. Mischchenko jiggled a cable. Slapped the side of the futuristic device.

She answered with frustration ringing in her voice—not over Ruiz’s report—but the ALM’s refusal to obey. “Burch said they’d be more silent hunters. Might not hear big wings until it’s too late.”

“These woods are pretty quiet today,” Grant remarked.

And with that, Mischchenko froze. The helmet kept her face as unreadable as everybody else’s, but Grant sensed the sudden shift in her superior’s air.

“You’re right,” Mischchenko said. “And now that you mention it, it’s too damn quiet. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Her movements turned hasty. She slapped the ALM’s metal case again, this time prompting lights to flare up on its top. The spiky sphere at its front starting spinning, and the Anomaly reacted—

The mighty, scintillating ball of light collapsed, compacting, shrinking from a huge, spinning sphere into a suitcase-sized orb, frozen and immobile mid-air.

The ALM hummed in chorus with the chugging generator wired up to it.

“Shit,” Ruiz muttered, so quiet that Grant only heard it over the radio bud in her ear. “I only now got what you mean, Mischchenko. Something’s wrong. We should be hearing… I don’t know what. It’s too damn quiet out here. I don’t hear Jack or shit.”

Mere seconds later, the chirping started. Chittering and scuttling sounds, drawing closer, ever closer. Shuffling, squeaking, and above all, chirping.

Not the chirping of birds.

Chirping of things on the ground. Buzzing.

Wings, far tinier than those of pterodactyls.

The mist around the Anomaly’s site roiled. Things emerged from it. Many, many things. Things that caused that symphony of buzzing and scuttling and chirping.

A living flood neared from every direction around them. The forest grounds teemed with life. Insects, the size of dogs, swarmed those frozen grounds.

Their three-person team was surrounded.

Ruiz shot first. Then the two women followed suit. Their EMDs flared up, discharging bright bolts of energy into the crawling swarm of weird locusts. The earth crackled with electricity, and those bugs were slowed, sometimes stunned… but the rest of the living tide swarmed every closer.

And quickly.

“Open the Anomaly back up,” Grant shouted between shots into the swarm. Then, as Mischchenko failed to comply, she repeated herself. “Open the damn’ Anomaly!”

Mischchenko stopped shooting and swiveled. She backed up, then hammered the device, shutting down the ALM.

The locked orb of the Anomaly exploded, expanding back into the brilliant, rotating sphere it had formed before.

The three field operatives continued firing shots in a futile attempt at stemming the tide, but they would never stop it like this—only slow it down, at best. Backing up all the while, shooting into these alien hordes of insect-like mutants, the light of the Anomaly engulfed them.

Pruitt was shouting over the intercom for a sitrep, but he would receive none as they shouted at each other in their desperate retreat, then all communications died.

The team vanished into the Anomaly, and the swarm followed.

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