STAKECLAIM

Theo had long since taken full advantage of the lull in the operational tempo, by the time Maho made it back.

She found him snoozing, sank into one of the rare accommodations for comfort in their pragmatic setup, a factory-fresh leather chair that still reeked of tanning oils.

Maho elected to not wake him for the moment, and proceeded to rifle through bare cabinets for two cups and cheap coffee. She treated herself to a pot, and those first few sips of fresh joe straightened her right up as she settled on a stool.

Theo elected to make himself known then.

“What’s the word?”

Maho jumped for just an instant before replying irritably. 

“Do you enjoy surprising people?”

She whipped her head back, and Theo saw her squinting as she tried to pick him out in the gloom. Maho didn’t wait for his answer before speaking again.

“Now that you are awake, we can have our debrief. Get moving.”

She brought two steaming mugs to the largest table, setting hers down and sliding the other opposite with exacting precision. With equal care she proceeded to lay out dossiers and photos, the bureaucratic bycatch from their raid, on the tabletop.

Theo came into the light, jouncing a chair to face Maho and dropping down in one fluid movement. He ventured a sniff of the coffee while he waited for Maho to start, but refrained from drinking. He noticed then that Maho had a habit of sitting on the very edge of her chair; she had sat that same way in the warehouse.

“My superiors have reviewed the situation.”

When she did speak, Maho set the same tone as their first brief. Nothing remained of the shakiness from before, as if the incident earlier had all been in Theo’s head.

“They believe we have dismantled the core membership– what remains is merely cleanup. Accordingly, they have decided to bring the joint operation to a close. They see no further need for your participation.”

She paused, then followed up with the standard courtesy.

“My superiors have asked me to convey their gratitude for your part in this operation’s success.”

Theo let out a hollow laugh. His gaze pinned hers stubbornly.

“Gratitude won’t chase any stragglers down. You’re really just going to let them go?”

“That is what you would call a non-issue. If there are even any left.” Maho said flatly. 

“I’d bet on it. Always are. How about those guys’ phones, did we lift anything outta ‘em?”

She shook her head, snapping the dossier shut as she got up.

“Even if we did, that is none of your concern now. We will finalize the details of your departure by tomorrow. Until then, rest.”

“Hear me out, will you?” Theo called. 

Maho hesitated. Theo tried to figure out what she was thinking. In her mind, she probably thought they wouldn’t be working together for much longer. Which meant that she should be inclined to grant him this last indulgence. 

She resumed her seat and waited. His guess was right. Theo started leafing through the photographs, finding the ones he wanted to show.

“When I took out that last guy,” he said, “I shot through a storage box, this one– only packing peanuts and bubble wrap inside that thing. If that was all there was, then whatever was inside– well, where did it go?”

Maho waved a dismissive hand. 

“An empty box tells us nothing. As we saw, some of the artifacts were already unloaded on the warehouse floor. We have no intelligence on whatever plans they had for the collection, if they were even planning anything coherent. You said it yourself– these were lunatics and amateurs.”

She wasn’t buying what he was driving at. To her, the case was open and shut, and she wanted him out of here. That was fair, though Theo. He would have been all too happy to oblige her. 

But the mission wasn’t finished, not yet.

His mind raced as he stared at the tabletop, willing the documents in front of him to give his hunch a semblance of reasoning. His eyes hovered on the rough transcript of their interrogation of the madman, and suddenly Theo had it. He snapped his fingers. 

“That one lunatic, he was the nurse for a local high school, was he?”

”Hokishi Public High School. What of it?”

“That part of his rant, where he was saying something about ‘starting with our future'. There’s that old saying– ‘The children are our future.’ That's it. If they have plans tied to the school, you can’t possibly ignore it.”

Maho exhaled sharply, revealing her exhaustion. 

“If we were to act on the ramblings of every cultist, nothing would be accomplished. We have more pressing concerns at this time. My organization’s resources, unlike yours, are limited. And, again, like you said– what can they do without the collection?”

Theo thought he could detect a give to her voice. He replied readily. 

“You sure about that? You’re ready to let a few slip through the cracks to spare on the budget, even if it ends in students, children, getting caught up in this? You saw what I saw. These might be amateurs, but they’re not lacking in motivation.”

He could tell Maho was coming around, could see the first cracks in her certainty. The idea had a foothold now in her mind now. Theo continued.

“You have me and my skills here. My superiors have placed me at your disposal, and you haven’t even begun to milk your money’s worth out of me. If you’re worried about resources, I can pitch a plan that won’t cost much more than a little daring.”

Finally, Maho took Theo’s bait.

“And what exactly do you propose?”

He smiled. Now for the final push.

“You have a medical background– why not replace our dead nurse? Infiltrate the school.”

Maho's eyes widened . “Undercover? If there are members there, as you say, I would be suspect from the moment I stepped foot in that school.”

“Precisely,” Theo countered. “Their eyes on you, that gives the real asset room to work.”

“And who would that be?” she demanded. 

Theo’s smile turned outright devilish. “I seem to remember you pointing out that I look young enough to be a student.”

Maho’s confused reaction slowly turned to one of incredulity as she began to work out his proposal.

“Impossible. You already stand out a foreigner, let alone your little escapade on arrival. And you cannot conduct an undercover operation like this on a whim. It is impossible.” she said.

“And that’s exactly why it’s possible. Someone my age working this kind of op? The bad guys would never dream of it.” he fired back.

Theo rose and lurched forward. Meeting gazes with his Japanese counterpart, his blue eyes blazed with bloodlust.

“Listen! The more time for them to go to ground, the harder it will be to root them out. The cancer is still there, it’s only a matter of killing.”

Maho nearly jumped at Theo’s sudden energy. 

“You are crazy.” she said, her lips curling.  She stared at him in the dim light, weighing his fervor against her qualms. At last, she nodded once. “I will run it by my superiors in the morning. But I cannot promise anything.”

With a final effort, she stood and brushed off a stray strand of hair.

“But first comes rest. Get some sleep of your own. And one last thing. I need you to turn in that phone I gave you. S-O-P.”

Theo winced inside.

“About that.”

Almost sheepishly, he dug into his pocket to comply, producing the phone in question; minus large parts of the screen and its housing, and its functionality. 

Theo thought he saw Maho’s eyebrow twitch. Without another word, she climbed up the stairs to head for her room.

Left with the broken device, Theo thought it prudent to wait a few minutes before gathering his gear and making his own way upstairs. He found himself in a long bare corridor with rooms to one side and at the far end.

Thanks to a handy message taped to the door, he identified the bedroom that would serve as his lodgings, never minding that it was just the bare essentials. Just then, he might as well have been at the Hilton. Once inside, he placed a hardshell laptop on the bare desk with a mind for one last task.

Maho might have promised to take his proposal upstairs, but that didn’t mean he could just lay back and expect the Japanese to let him have his way.

He activated the satellite link and typed up a rapid update homewards. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he relayed today’s events and the details of his little plan in shorthand, ending on the enter key to send the message bouncing off through space. 

While he waited on the response, Theo heard rustling and jostling in the next room over, which suggested that a certain somebody was turning in for the night.

Must be real… tired…

But for all the overgrown bureaucracy of the modern era, their outfit retained something of a rough-and-tumble spirit: equal-parts by expedience and by design. 

Sure, best practices were bought with the blood of your predecessors, so easily lost if they weren’t written down in endless manuals and notices and too often ignored regardless. But in their business, the authentic antediluvian doorstoppers had the unfortunate tendency of unraveling the human mind. Hence you were just as likely to go by the book as you were to burn it. 

That wasn’t necessarily a free pass for a grunt like him, but Theo possessed something of a unique status within the Program as well. He made no bones about leveraging that status if he felt that it was for the good of the mission, and he did so now.

It took some haggling, but by the end of the hour she’d granted his plan her blessing, but not extra time– “in and out”, like he'd heard Lasch say. On her end, she’d make the necessary overtures to the Japanese. Theo had a little under a month to produce results, before the operation was concluded according to the original timeline.

Theo cut the connection off and rocked back on the chair as the screen’s glow blinked off around him. He stared at the blank screen for a while after, conviction settling into his bones. He never wanted this mission, but damn if anything was stopping him from finishing it.

New tasking: find proof of any lingering activity, root out the remaining members. And, if there were missing artifacts, track them down.

Stumbling on wooden legs to the bed, he couldn’t bring himself to care that it didn’t even have covers on as he crashed to the mattress. His eyelids sagged like lead weights, and once he let go they slammed shut.