Raider by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman [Buchman, M. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

42

“You want me to what?”

General Firat had escorted him, without Onur, to an empty conference room inside Siberkume. Metin hadn’t even known this underground level existed. By the way the armed guards inspected him, he wondered if they’d let him leave without the general at his side. He’d just be dogshit on their bootheels.

For the length of two normal heartbeats, about ten at the moment, General Firat looked as if he might agree that it was a crazy test of his system.

Then Firat’s military officiousness snapped into place.

“This aircraft,” he placed a file folder on the table and opened it, but Metin couldn’t manage to look down.

Firat thumped a finger on the folder’s contents.

Metin did look down but couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

“In two hours it will fly into this mountain,” one more resounding finger thump that echoed off the carved stone walls. It wasn’t a conference room; it was a dressed-up dungeon.

“But the people aboard. They—”

“Are not your concern.”

He waited, but the general didn’t add anything else.

Metin was not a soldier. He was just a programmer at Siberkume.

He’d earned his way in by unlocking a test site in only nine hours. He still held the Siberkume record by a factor of two. A detail he’d only briefly enjoyed having displayed on the main entry display screen. Few other than Onur would speak to him…even when they needed help.

Every three months, a new secure site was created and given to the Siberkume coders to crack before it was moved to the applicant testing. Those results, too, were posted prominently. He still held top place, and Onur had climbed from mid-pack to top three. Only the hard-bitten and homely Zehra stood between them, but she spoke to no one—ever.

Besides, she was more interested in creating security.

Metin only got seriously charged when he was breaking it back down.

He looked at himself in Firat’s eyes.

“I…am not…your…tool.” All the conviction he could muster barely reached the walls of the small underground conference room that felt as if it might become his tomb.

“Oh, but you are.” Firat pulled out a second file folder.

When he opened this one, Metin managed to focus on it.

It was what the Americans would call a “rap sheet.”

Not his, so he relaxed a little as he read it.

It listed meetings, contacts, protest rally attendance, and actions there. It was a long list.

Each event was documented in a style so lurid that even an innocent would be damned by the language alone. It was also incredibly detailed and in the first person. A single, tortured signature would turn it into a damning confession.

People had been “disappeared” for less.

He flipped through the pages, until he reached the final one.

Asli was looking up at him.

She was smiling, her teeth shining against her dusky, perfect skin. Her black eyes twinkled with the brightness of some prank she’d just witnessed, or more likely perpetrated.

He and Onur were clearly visible as well; close enough to either side to be pressing their cheeks to hers. Also smiling.

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