Number Seven //Book Two// - Dark Matter - COMPLETED

She's One of Them Now

"All right, it's looking good in here." A man says as the crew works on the Transfer transit pods. "Well, glad I could help you source these materials. I guess there's nothing left for me to do than to wish you all best of luck and bid you a fond adieu."

"You're not going anywhere." Two says.

"I'm... I'm not?" The man asks.

"You're coming with us." Two says.

"I am? I-I-I can't." The man stutters. "I mean, I gotta get back to work. I mean, I got I got people depending on me."

"Yeah, right." Three says. "What's to stop you from informing Reynaud and collecting some kind of snitch reward for your troubles?"

"Oh, well, my, uh, professional responsibility to you as your handler." The man says.

"We fired you." Kal says.

"Hey, no paperwork was signed!" The man says. "Come on, guys! You're, like, my best clients! I mean, from a purely practical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense financially for me to screw you over. So, we good?"

"Yeah." Two says. "You're still coming with us."

"Oh, fine." The man says. "Well, this brings to mind the response of the hunter when faced with Valmiki in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana." He tries to run away.

Kal and Three go after him.

"Thank you." two tells the boys.

***

"Ha!" Five exclaims from the computer.

Two looks up from the pod she and Seven are working on.

"You cracked transfer transit?" Two asks.

"Oh, I did that about an hour ago." Five says. "Then I cross-referenced the dates and times of Alicia Reynaud's public appearances over the last month with the transit database and came up with this matching point of departure."

"Her headquarters." Two says.

"And the subspace address of her transit pod." Five tells her.

"Well, can you unlock it?" Two asks.

"I just disabled its security protocols." Five says. "We're in."

"You're good." Two tells her.

***

"So for all we know, we could be transferring into a room full of guards?" Three asks in the mess hall.

"It's possible, but unlikely." Two says.

"The odds of someone being able to hack into the transfer transit database, localize a specific pod's address, and bypass its security protocols to gain access are super slim." Five says

"Are you showing off?" Kal asks

"No!" Five exclaims and Seven smiles "I'm just pointing out how tricky it can be to pull off something like this and - yeah, I guess I am."

"Worst-case scenario, someone on the other side kills our clones or stops the transfer process midstream." Two says.

"Then at least we'd know." Kal says.

"And we'd need to come up with another plan." Four says

"This plan's fine." Two says.

"So who's going?" Four asks.

"Well, we've got four pods." Two says. "I'll take one."

"No, you won't." Kal says.

"Why not?" Two asks.