Bombs

She thought about the footage of JABS deploying bridges across the Niagara River.

She remembered watching the footage of battle tanks, MRAPs, and wheeled APCs moving across southern Ontario. She knew about the steady insurgencies and the need for secrecy. She saw the American propaganda networks showing their victories pushing through the Darien Gap, the high Arctic, and ENDING CENTURES of CIVIL WAR and UNENDING CONFLICT IN THE African continent. The gratitude for her attention seemed insincere.

Americans called it Federation. Scholars called it neo-colonialism. Most people called it occupation, things like contamination, or to some, infection. Some even went so far as to say infestation. She felt that was too extreme.

The defensive walls had been erected long before the Niagara incursion, though. The AtkinsRéalis contract was, incredibly, delivered on budget and on time, with incredible foresight by the Côté Parliament. And despite the justifiable accusations of corruption by the Rooney opposition, defensive walls were a sound investment, despite the ficticious scandal leading to the goverment completely changing hands and delivering Rooney a majority. Her job had been saved by that election.

Not only that, Rooney seemed better positioned to handle the country after the Western separation. She remembered the last time she'd been in Banff, before it required a customs check. She'd seen a bear through a set of binoculars. Then she thought about recently, a trip to Saskatoon for work, which needed a full security inspection with the recent crackdown.

"You can't be too careful these days. You Eastern Canadians have some real problems. Us Canadians don't," said the WCBSA Agent, "now can you please unlock your phone?"

She didn't even know anyone like that, she said. She just wanted to log in, show her face in a 9:00 AM meeting, look engaged at 2:00 PM, but otherwise syphon tax dollars from her private industry past self, she reasoned, to her civil service present self. The point being that while she sat idle, or watching video content, she wasn't wasting anyone else's money than her own, which had simply worked its way through a complex system back into her pocket at a later date.

"That's what they always say. We don't know what it's like on the outside of our, what do they say, turtle shell? Our safe little bubbles?"

I looked her dead in the eye, "Aren't you safe?"

"Today? Yes. Tomorrow? Who knows, we might wind up finally wiped out if they can get the money into the Montana launch sites."

"That's a pretty big if, whereas I have to worry about, say, food, hell, water some weeks. All the while being shot at from all sides? After Hamilton I just wanted to be alone, Liv, and this more or less lets me do that."

"I get it but," she said, "working for the Enemy? That's treason."

"No," I was waiting for this, "According to section--"

She stopped me. "I don't care what the GNACPP says. It's what morality says here. You're picking up our people and trading them like..."

My mind raced for a comeback. Easy for you to say, you don't remember. Easy for you to say, you still have both arms. Easy for you to say you weren't there. Easy for you to say you didn't feel the pressure kick of a fifty pound bomb going off in front of you, making you feel every single organ jiggle. Easy for you to say, you didn't see poor kids tricked by the government into getting shredded by 30mm bullets from a helicopter hardpoint. Easy for her to throw that word around, that's for sure."

What comes out of my mouth, however, is a mangling of vowel sounds as I struggle around my tongue. my hyoglossus deciding at this very moment to take a little stretch, locking into place, forcing me to say. "Heughuuer daon'she whatch eur talk--" unlocking, I swallow, "talking about. Maybe you should think about it from my angle. Everyone's got to pay the piper one way. Hell, a friend of mine runs a supercharger station. Big one too. He's paid directly by an American company to run it. Is he guilty of treason?"

I felt was starting to win the argument, so I continued, "Another friend of mine ran lines for Amazon clear through to Chalk River. Everyone of them shot at in the early days. Most of 'em at St. Cath's or with me in the Hammerfall. The same fifty kilometers trade back and forth weekly, and the real soldiers are all chasing little green men around the African grasslands. We're long out of the news cycle. There are sexier stories out of the Steppe."

I could see the wheels turning in Olivia's head. Whether it was to get rid of me, or whether she remembered how she owed me a favor, she opened her computer and started poking at it.

"Read me the serial number," looking over her glasses at me, I read the sequence out.

"3-Quebec-5-Kilo-7-2-8-2-8-5-Romeo-2-Charlie"

Looking at her glasses I could see the loading spinner reflect, which was soon replaced by a different screen of information.

I can hear her voice fall into a hiss"You didn't tell me you were fucking around with PMCs too, man! Regulars I can understand but those guys... fuck Mitch, what the hell happened to you?"

"Look, do you know where he's at?"

She looked down at her screen. Her eyes darted back and forth.

"No. He's... okay, he's in the system, and had medical, but once he's moved to a different org I can't see him. You'll have to go to MerCo for his actual location, and ot know if he's ok or ... whatever it is you're doing."

She finishes her croissant. I finish my coffee.

"Look, when you're done whatever the fuck you're doing, can you promise me you'll look in the mirror? You don't see it now, but afterwards, you might see what I'm looking at here, and you may not like it either." Olivia got up to leave, "Fuck you, but good luck."

I wasn't super happy with how that conversation ended. There was a time and a place where I wouldn't let it end like this, and at least she gave me a lead, but I felt like absolute dogshit after that. She disappeared up the elevators without looking back at me.

All I could think in that moment was 'Fuck me."

I sat there for a minute before I finally got the courage up in me to head to the car kiosk and press the button to call a MetroCar. Taking a look at the nav, I saw that the MerCo "Embassy", if you could call it that, had taken over one of the older complexes on Sussex, which at least still had its name intact.

After a short drive, the MetroCar stopped and opened, letting me out in front of the fortified gates and 12-foot walls that encircled the MerCo Embassy complex.

Established as a foothold for Mercenary-to-Government relations, the MerCo Embassy was largely an office complex, but just inside the property line, and for an agreed no-fly zone, MerCo guards were usally standing around with oversize weapons, trying to look tough, but utterly incongruous with the Children's dress boutique across the street, or the patisserie below the barber shop kitty-corner from them.

I walked over to the gate, and saw two helmeted MerCo guards looking back at me holding what looked like some kind of LMG, like a BAR or something. The other one had a more reasonable MP7, but again, the odds of an insurgency of impeccably dressed girls rushing out of Mme LePense Petit Belles likely didn't require that kind of firepower.

We looked at each other for a while through the wrought iron gate, neither of them approaching me.

I finally hit the intercom button, and as though they suddenly remembered how to do their job, they started walking towards me, I could see both were wearing gaiters.

One of them whacked the other on the helmet with his hand, which was in one of those plastic-knucked gloves bike couriers used. It made a firm and satisflying CLACK, causing the LMG toting guard to fall slightly off balance because of the size of his weapon.

Steadying himself back in, the MP7 said, "I fuckin' told you he wanted to come in."

"Yeah yeah yeah." LMG lifted his visor up.

MP7 spoke to me first. "Hello sir, how can we help you."

It was more of a statement than a question, "I need to come and do a lookup for an exchange?"

LMG: "Exchange, what kind of exchange?

MP7: "Foreign exchange? We don't do foreign exchange here."

LMG: "Yeah pal we don't sell anything here either so we don't have another size."

Both of them laughed.

I did not.

I try to get my point across, "You guys did a pickup from me for--"

MP7: "Oh a pickup! Like a truck there beave?"

Based on the emphasized B, he's one of those people that thinks calling me 'beave' is some kind of a slur I'm supposed to be shocked by. Finally having enough of it, I pulled my forms out of my bag and held them up.

They were still having a chuckle when I said, "Fucking. Exchange," I say, showing them the 8-799 and 9-7-799, which clearly have the words "FEDERAL CAPTURE", and " OR OTHER DETAINMENT FOR THIRD-PARTY EXCHANGE" printed on them both of them, clearly outlining what they're for.

LMG: "Ah shit, yeah, ok. Oscar do you remember how to do these?"

"Uhh..."

"You're supposed to let me in to see someone," I say, trying to sound helpful rather than amazed at the intelligence level I was seeing here.

Oscar flipped up his visor as well. "Okay. Do you have any weapons or guns or bombs or anything?"

Incredible. "Bombs?"

Tweedle-dee with this LMG cuts in with, "well I dunno, do you?"

"We do have to ask," Oscar said.

"I don't know why we have to ask."

"We do."

"Not about bombs."

"But we have to ask."

"They never do."

"No never."

"Well..."

"There was that one guy."

"Yeah, one guy."

"We got him though, right?"

"Yeah we got him."

"Well Chris got him."

"Good guy Chris."

Oscar turns back to me, "So do you have any bombs or guns?"

"Uhh.. .no," I say, finally getting a chance to answer their question.

"All right. Step on through the magnometer and I think Vic's on duty."

When I was finally let inside, the first thing that struck me was the vastness of the seemingly unnecessarily large open lobby. To the left, I saw a bank of elevators, but other than that, the cream coloured tiled floor lead up to a counter, with a pair of monitors on it, telling me that this at one point was likely a hotel. Approaching it, I heard the elevators open, and out stepped a thinner guy who somehow skittered behind the counter faster than I thought possible, and looking me up and down, he opened his mouth, and in his clearly-I-am-faking-how-low-my-voice-is voice "Yes, can I help you?"

More than his face being one of the more punchable I'd seen in a while, he was wearing enough perfume or whatever that I needed to wince before I could determine his face's punchability as a certainty. His hair was styled in that annoying greasy curl that makes his head resemble a black piece of broccoli. Even his glasses were the annoying circle kind that I've never liked.

"I've got a 8-799 and 9-7-799, looking for a check?"

"An 8-799 and 9-7-799... What are those?"

Don't these guys do this for a living?

I pop the two pieces of paper on front of who I assume is Vic. He looked right at them, studied them for a solid minute, and then picked up a handset for a phone I didn't notice; my eyes were still watering.

"Yeah hi... I've got.." He moved his mouth from the handset, "Sorry can I get your name?"

I consider my options.

"No."

He pauses.

"Uhh... someone. Yeah they've got these federal capture exchange detainment forms? Uh huh. Yeah. Okay." He hangs up the handset. He handed me back my forms and said "Okay. Someone will be right down."

Seeing no other option, I leaned up against one of those dumb half-seat things up against the wall. A couple minutes passed, when eventually the elevator door opened. I didn't recognize the man who emerged first, but right behind him was someone I definitely recognized, my 'good pal', Agent Jack Dakota.