On My Skin - Part One
Title: On My Skin
Author: escapes
Artist: mizumichan
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, sadly. If I owned them things would have ended a lot differently.
Characters/Pairings: Luke/Noah, Casey, Maddie, The Colonel
Word Count: 25,000 so far. WIP but will be completed shortly.
Warnings: Some violence, some smut, drama, a minimum of political goings-on
Spoilers: Show's over. So if you're being spoiled, Im sorry for your luck, son
Summary: AU set in the near future. Luke is the public face of the Amorial Vine implant, a nano-skin technology that reacts to the chemicals your body produces when you meet your soulmate. Billions have found the love of their life, but Luke's arm has remained stubbornly blank. Noah Mayer is the son of Colonel Winston Mayer and quietly fund the campaign in his the Colonel's shadow. When he starts to learn things about the way the campaign is being run behind his back, Noah leaves and takes a position about Northwestern teaching Film Studies. He's taking his life back and the first thing he does to celebrate his freedom is get the implant, something the Colonel had forbidden. With the move and the implant, Noah sets off chain of events that change change five lives and the fate of a nation.
Go see the amazing art here: http://mizumichan.livejournal.com/251114.html
Author’s Notes: I'm sorry for the delay in posting and the fact that it's still a WIP. There ware times during this that my life seemed like it was actively conspiring against me to get it done, up to the death of a family member in the days before my original posting date. I apologize that it's being posted as a WIP, but I will keep going until it's done and post it asap. Very big thank you's to crownroyal_51 noelleleithe and freakykat for the cheerleading and betas.
Chapter 1
Closing the door to his condo behind him, Luke let out a long breath as he leaned the back of his head against the door. It had been a hell of a week. Press junkets were never something you looked forward to if you’d ever done one before. There were only so many times you could answer the same question before you started fantasizing ways of escaping the room with the most amount of collateral damage to the nosy reporters.
It was one thing to work for the company that had discovered the chemical chain reaction that went off inside the human body when a person met their soulmate. It was another thing entirely to be the grandson of the president of that company. Mostly it meant that he was the face of World Wide Industries and, more important to the reporters, he was the recipient of implant #001.
Carding his hand through his hair, Luke had a stray thought about making a hair appointment before the dirty blond, ever-changing mess he called a hairstyle got completely out of control. He shrugged the strap of his satchel bag off of his shoulder, dropped it, and kicked off the oxfords his feet had been wedged into for far too long this week. Wiggling his toes with a sigh of relief, he used one foot to step on the sock covering the other, maneuvering until both of his feet were bare without him having to use more energy to bend over to take the socks off.
He pulled off his suit jacket as he padded into the living room and threw it at the back of the sofa, not caring whether it reached its goal or not. Too tired to go through the effort of showering, he walked into his bedroom and changed into a pair of sleep pants and a worn t-shirt that spoke of its age and comfort in the way it automatically hugged around Luke’s torso.
It was nice to have his forearms uncovered again. The whole week he’d carefully been keeping them covered, tired of the looks at the blank canvas of his skin and then the inevitable platitudes about giving it time that followed.
Once the scientists at World Wide had cracked the chemical sequence that sparked when a person met their soulmate, they named it the Amorial Sequence and started working on a way for people to know that they’d met their soulmate. True love through chemistry.
Their solution for marketing their discovery was to invent a nano-skin implant that held a receptor plugged into the recipient and monitored continuously for the release of chemicals caused by the Amorial Sequence. Once the sequence was detected, the nano implant released a pigment that reacted with the chemicals, turning them various shades and bonded those pigments with the DNA of skin cells. The process would create a two-part tattoo called the Amorial Vine, with each soulmate in a pair bearing half.
Making his way to the kitchen, Luke pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and a bag of chips from the cupboard. He headed for the couch, promising himself that he would call for take-out of actual food when he was up to facing the outside world again.
Ripping open the chip bag and shoving a handful into his mouth, Luke used his free hand to turn on his sound system and the soft mechanical voice asked for his preferences. Closing his eyes, Luke knew he didn’t want his usual pop-leaning music. “Instrumental, classical to 1940. Include movie instrumentals up to present. No Zamfir or other pan flute.” The mechanical voice confirmed, and within seconds the first song started playing. Luke sank further into the couch and blindly reached for the water bottle, refusing to open his eyes. Opening it and taking a swallow, Luke let out a contented breath. “Happy Birthday to me.”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“No, that won’t work. He has to be at a meeting on Capitol Hill at eleven o’clock. He can’t make it from there to hotel in time. You’ll have to find another venue that’s closer or move the interview back.”
Noah watched as the intern’s face paled at the thought of telling his father about a change in schedule. He understood that reaction. If there was one thing his father was, it was intense. He didn’t roll with changes to his plans; instead, he chose to berate and overreact, running through interns like changes of clothes.
Sizing up intern number 57, Noah wasn’t holding out much hope that this one was going to be the keeper. “The Folger Shakespeare Library is not far away. See if we can rent the Founders Room for the evening. It will make a commanding background for any pictures the press takes." He paused as he considered mentioning what was on the tip of his tongue. “And button your cuffs. You don’t want the Colonel to catch sight of your implant.”
The intern paled again and nodded, quickly buttoning her cuffs so they wouldn’t raise and show off the small scrolls of pigment that Noah recognized as the sign that her soulmate had the implant as well.
As she reached for her phone. Noah had a moment of guilt for not being able to remember the intern’s name, but he’d given up somewhere around number thirty-five.
“Noah.”
His name wasn’t spoken loudly, but the commanding tone in it could have only come from one person. Rising from his position at the desk next to the intern, Noah walked silently over to his father and waited for his orders, just like the good little soldier he’d been raised as.
“I’d like you to meet Reverend Jedediah Whitehall. He’ll be joining me for dinner. Make sure arrangements are made.”
Noah could barely respond with the expected, “Yes, Sir,” before his father had turned back to the Reverend and effectively dismissed him.
Turning on his heel, ready to follow his father’s orders, Noah stopped when a hand was placed on his shoulder. “Noah, that’s a good Christian name.”
Noah shifted slightly so he was facing the well-dressed man that was speaking to him. “Thank you, Reverend Whitehall,” he said, sizing up the man in front of him. It was obvious that the preaching game still brought in the faithful and, more important, their wallets. Noah noticed several high-end labels as the makers of the Reverend’s clothes. Cufflinks flashed as the hotel room lights caught the facets of cut gemstone as a hand was extended to him. “Call me Jed, Noah. It looks like we’ll be spending time together, so there’s no need for formality.”
Noah nodded as he shook the Reverend’s hand, knowing that with his father, there was always the need for formality. “Pleasure to meet you. I have heard much about you,” he said as he carefully stepped around the name issue in a way that the Reverend wouldn’t notice.
“I wish I could say the same, Noah. I must confess that until very recently, I had no idea that the Colonel even had a son.”
Noah knew not to react to that. His father barely acknowledged him as more than one of his campaign staff, but as the parade of wives that inevitably turned to ex-wives came through with all their drama, and the campaigns for each political office his father had run for getting larger and more invasive, Noah was glad that he was relatively unknown. “I’ve been finishing my education and helping the campaign when I can. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll let you and the Colonel finish your meeting.”
Noah made his way across the room and picked up the phone, adding one more to the reservation that evening at The Monocle, his father’s favorite place to be fawned over while having a meal. His next call was to place an order for his own meal from room service, to be delivered while everyone else was out for dinner.
Placing the phone down, Noah flipped through the binder that held the schedules for the Colonel’s day, week, and month, making sure the changes he had discussed with the intern had been noted and updated. Everything was kept digitally, but his father was distrustful of being at the mercy of technology. So, a paper schedule was kept and constantly updated.
Only when Noah was satisfied that the agenda would hold up to one of the Colonel’s frequent surprise inspections did Noah allow himself to retreat to one of the bathrooms of the suite. Hanging his suit coat on the hook behind the door, he carefully rolled up his sleeves and turned on the hot water as far as it would go, dousing his hands in soap and scrubbing furiously. Even with the steam billowing out of the sink and his hands lost in a growing mass of soap studs, Noah could still feel his skin creeping from being in contact with Reverend Whitehall.
Noah’s mind whirred as he scrubbed, trying to figure out what his father was up to. Why would he be courting the leader of the nation’s biggest fundamentalist Christian church? That man and his followers routinely targeted gay people and immigrants, running them and the organizations that helped them out of cities and out of business. Looking at it from a political perspective, Noah knew that the Whitehall family was tied closely to many prominent Republican families. That was part of the allure to his father, Noah was sure, but the Reverend was known as a zealot, even amongst his own family.
Noah pulled his red and throbbing hands out of the water, his mind still trying to find the Colonel’s angle. There had to be another reason that the Colonel was getting involved with the Reverend, Noah just didn’t know what it was. There was one thing Noah knew for sure. No way was anything good going to come out of this alliance the Colonel and the Reverend were forming.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Luke watched the sunset painting the faces of the buildings around him orange and red as he let the peace of his own home and the calming music work better than the best masseuse on releasing the tension that had built up over the week leading up to his birthday.
He knew better than to turn on the television. It was ten years to the day that he was the first person to get the implant, on his 18th birthday. If he turned on the television, he’d only be subjected to his own face and the reporter’s faux sympathy at how poor little rich boy L S still hadn’t found his match. Then they’d trot out the statistics of how many millions of people all over the world had the implant and how many matches had been made in the last ten years. Next would be a spotlight on some of the matches, complete with romantically inspirational music.
Of course, they’d cover those that weren’t able to get the implant. Every person went through a pre-screening test that was able to determine if you had the genetic markers in your blood that responded to the implant. Even though World Wide was careful to only say that the markers to make the implant successful were not present, never saying that they had no soulmate, the media and the general public were not so kind.
The reports would end on a high note, following a fresh-faced and nervous 13-year-old on their visit to one of the clinics to get the implant. Luke knew all of this, because he’d written the suggested storyline treatments that had been handed out to the media outlets that were doing a story on the 10th anniversary of the implant.
Grabbing his phone, he put in his usual garlic chicken order at the Thai place a few blocks away and stood up, stretching the kinks out of his body as he made his way to the bedroom. He grabbed a long-sleeved shirt and pulled it on over his t-shirt. He tried not to let the bitterness swell up that ten years later, his lower arm was still as unblemished as the day the implant was done; that the first thing people looked at was his arm and not his face when meeting him. For the last nine years, his arm had always been covered. Luke had only being able to stand the looks for a year before removing the temptation from sight.
Making his way back to the couch, Luke pulled out his tablet and tapped on the icon that brought up the news articles he’d saved over the past week, too busy with all the press junkets around the anniversary of the implant to read much beyond the headlines.
He started working his way through the highlights, starting with the articles he had to read for work, technology and business related, and then catching up on the latest gossip with the entertainment articles. He knew he'd be meeting Maddie for lunch the next day, and she’d expect him to keep up with her fascination for all things scandalous. He saved the articles on politics for last.
While he worked full-time for World Wide as the face of the Amorial implant, Luke wouldn’t let it take over his life completely. He’d released a few novels, each one growing his audience steadily. They mostly centered around suspense and intrigue, something he’d gotten a taste for at the hands of Maddie and her love for classic movies. He was in the researching stages of his next novel, trying his hand at a political thriller, and being an election year it was making his research very easy. The race for the White House was in full swing, new allegations flying every day.
This Colonel Mayer person that was emerging as the next great Republican hope was a walking, talking, larger than life character from a book. He was amusing to watch right now, but Luke could see him becoming downright terrifying if he got into the presidential office.
Taking a break when a knock sounded, Luke grabbed his wallet on the way to the door and took the food from the delivery person. He was a regular customer, so there was no awkward arm glance any more, even with all the increased media coverage this week. His mouth was watering by the time he got back to the couch, the aroma of garlicky chicken wafting around him. Cracking the chopsticks apart, Luke dug in while he continued reading all of the political going-ons of the past week.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Noah sighed as the last of the entourage left the hotel room, security going with his father for dinner, the rest taking advantage of a rare night off. Noah was a little surprised that only the Colonel and the Reverend, along with the ever-present security detail, were going for dinner. His father was nothing if not an attention whore. The more hangers-on he had, the more important the Colonel considered himself. Noah knew it was the troop mentality that his father was used to from years of being in the Army, that he was never truly at home until he had underlings to boss around, instead of just his son.
Shaking his head, Noah cleared any thoughts of his father out of his mind. He didn’t want to mar his precious few hours alone by thinking about his father. His meal was already ordered and set to come at seven. He glanced down at his watch. He should have just enough time to get a shower in before dinner. It was also enough time to make sure no one came back to grab anything forgotten before he got down to business.
Clean and hungry, Noah turned the television on while he waited for room service. He switched it off of Fox News, his father’s preferred news channel, and flipped though the channels until something caught his eye. Putting down the remote, he watched as a story came on about the Amorial implant. Looking down at his forearm, Noah wondered what it would look like, what it would feel like knowing that his soulmate was out there and that he’d know when it happened. The Colonel was very vocally against the implant, fighting against the tsunami of millions that had gotten the implant and the millions more that would get it the day they turned thirteen, all around the planet.
Noah remembered when the Colonel used to refuse to hire anyone on his staff that had the implant, but with the way he went through staff, even someone as stubborn as the Colonel had to concede defeat, instead changing his policy to keeping the implant covered in his presence. He tolerated the implant now, for everyone but his son. Noah hadn’t been told verbally, but he knew that the Colonel would consider getting the implant tantamount to treason.
His food came during a commercial break and he was settled back in front of the television as the reporter talked about interviewing World Wide spokesman and implant number 001, Luke Snyder. Noah watched as a cute blond man about his own age smiled at the reporter when she noted that his lower arm was covered. Noah chuckled as Luke raised his shoulder and gave a line to the reporter about being a modest guy, his eyes sparkling with mischief the entire time.
Noah found himself smiling and chuckling as he ate, listening to Luke’s rapport with the interviewer. His father would have killed to have someone as skilled in dealing with reporters as Luke seemed to be. He was just the right mix of serious and playful and Noah found himself making mental notes on how Luke redirected the interviewer if she started straying too far off of the points that Luke wanted to discuss.
By the end of the segment, Noah was impressed. He couldn’t imagine dealing with the whole world being invested in your love life, living with the anticipation of meeting your soulmate for 10 years and having nothing happen. He switched the channel after the segment ended, looking for something to put on in the background as he did some searching for what his father was up to with Reverend Whitehall. Seeing that AMC was showing Roman Holiday, he hesitated,. It was one of his favorite movies and there was no way it would be just background noise.
Sighing, Noah clicked it to a music channel and walked over to the desk, flipping open the lid to the laptop that sat there. He asked for it to power off and then pulled a thumb drive out of a hidden pocket in his bag. Pushing it in the port, he powered the laptop back on and hit the key as the command screen came up that redirected the computer to boot through the thumb drive. As it booted into the hidden partition on his drive, Noah chastised himself for getting lax around his father. It hadn’t even been a week since the last time he’d done a recon mission into his father’s system and he’d been blindsided by the appearance of Whitehall. He’d have to dig deeper today; underestimating the Colonel was a mistake he was not going to make again.
Keying in the passcode, Noah thanked whatever power out there that had him assigned to be roommates with a computer science major who hacked into systems for fun. It had been invaluable to him, from stupid things like adding food plan credits onto their accounts when things got lean, to the custom partitioned laptop that Kai had built for him when he’d started his assignment on the campaign. It was the best tool that Kai had created, an anonymous operating system hidden behind the standard one.
Once he was fully in the partition that Kai had created, he launched a program that located the chip in the Colonel’s phone he’d planted there that reported on his father’s location. Seeing it was reporting from the Monacle, where it should be, Noah keyed in a command and code flew across the screen. Within seconds data started streaming back to him.
The whole process took less than five minutes and made an exact copy of the files in the Colonel’s computer, phone, and tablet. All of them gave up their data in the background without letting anyone using them know a thing. Noah had tested it himself, running the program across the room from the Colonel as he had been using his laptop, and it had worked flawlessly.
The Colonel has always taught him that the only person you could rely on was yourself and that everyone had an agenda of their own. Noah had taken very little from the Colonel to heart, but this was the exception. He’d watched his father deal and bribe his way up the political food chain and knew that the Colonel held no loyalty to anyone but himself, not even his own son. When Noah considered what he was currently doing, Noah knew his loyalty to the Colonel was just as nonexistent.
Noah searched through the changes that had been reported on his father’s systems and went through them one by one. A lot of them were speech drafts and correspondence with other Senators, but when Noah started scanning financial information, his eyebrows furrowed. There were donations to the campaign here that were not on the listing that all of them had access to, including campaign auditors.
Noah highlighted the names he didn’t recognize and filed them away for further research. One thing was clear: his father was taking money from more places than he’d reported. A lot more places.
He opened another window that launched a search command that dug deeper into all of the Colonel’s systems using the donor names he didn’t recognize, and only one of them had any sort of trail. He followed that trail as far as he could, but it ran cold well before he could find out who was behind the money.
Frustrated, he sent the list to Kai, knowing his friend would be amused for maybe an hour before he had everything about everyone on the list, including what color underwear they had selected this morning.
Moving on, Noah ran a search of everything on the Colonel’s computer that had Reverend and Whitehall attached to it. Then he searched for every variant he could think of, initials, short forms, and partial words. It brought up a list of things, including names and information he knew had nothing to do with the campaign. Noah started reading through them in chronological order, his eyes widening as he read further. Hitting a few dead ends, Noah dug deeper, forcing his father’s data to give up its ghosts.
When he finished, and the scope of what his father was up to was laid out in front of him, Noah sat back in his chair, stunned.
PART TWO
Author: escapes
Artist: mizumichan
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, sadly. If I owned them things would have ended a lot differently.
Characters/Pairings: Luke/Noah, Casey, Maddie, The Colonel
Word Count: 25,000 so far. WIP but will be completed shortly.
Warnings: Some violence, some smut, drama, a minimum of political goings-on
Spoilers: Show's over. So if you're being spoiled, Im sorry for your luck, son
Summary: AU set in the near future. Luke is the public face of the Amorial Vine implant, a nano-skin technology that reacts to the chemicals your body produces when you meet your soulmate. Billions have found the love of their life, but Luke's arm has remained stubbornly blank. Noah Mayer is the son of Colonel Winston Mayer and quietly fund the campaign in his the Colonel's shadow. When he starts to learn things about the way the campaign is being run behind his back, Noah leaves and takes a position about Northwestern teaching Film Studies. He's taking his life back and the first thing he does to celebrate his freedom is get the implant, something the Colonel had forbidden. With the move and the implant, Noah sets off chain of events that change change five lives and the fate of a nation.
Go see the amazing art here: http://mizumichan.livejournal.com/251114.html
Author’s Notes: I'm sorry for the delay in posting and the fact that it's still a WIP. There ware times during this that my life seemed like it was actively conspiring against me to get it done, up to the death of a family member in the days before my original posting date. I apologize that it's being posted as a WIP, but I will keep going until it's done and post it asap. Very big thank you's to crownroyal_51 noelleleithe and freakykat for the cheerleading and betas.
Chapter 1
Closing the door to his condo behind him, Luke let out a long breath as he leaned the back of his head against the door. It had been a hell of a week. Press junkets were never something you looked forward to if you’d ever done one before. There were only so many times you could answer the same question before you started fantasizing ways of escaping the room with the most amount of collateral damage to the nosy reporters.
It was one thing to work for the company that had discovered the chemical chain reaction that went off inside the human body when a person met their soulmate. It was another thing entirely to be the grandson of the president of that company. Mostly it meant that he was the face of World Wide Industries and, more important to the reporters, he was the recipient of implant #001.
Carding his hand through his hair, Luke had a stray thought about making a hair appointment before the dirty blond, ever-changing mess he called a hairstyle got completely out of control. He shrugged the strap of his satchel bag off of his shoulder, dropped it, and kicked off the oxfords his feet had been wedged into for far too long this week. Wiggling his toes with a sigh of relief, he used one foot to step on the sock covering the other, maneuvering until both of his feet were bare without him having to use more energy to bend over to take the socks off.
He pulled off his suit jacket as he padded into the living room and threw it at the back of the sofa, not caring whether it reached its goal or not. Too tired to go through the effort of showering, he walked into his bedroom and changed into a pair of sleep pants and a worn t-shirt that spoke of its age and comfort in the way it automatically hugged around Luke’s torso.
It was nice to have his forearms uncovered again. The whole week he’d carefully been keeping them covered, tired of the looks at the blank canvas of his skin and then the inevitable platitudes about giving it time that followed.
Once the scientists at World Wide had cracked the chemical sequence that sparked when a person met their soulmate, they named it the Amorial Sequence and started working on a way for people to know that they’d met their soulmate. True love through chemistry.
Their solution for marketing their discovery was to invent a nano-skin implant that held a receptor plugged into the recipient and monitored continuously for the release of chemicals caused by the Amorial Sequence. Once the sequence was detected, the nano implant released a pigment that reacted with the chemicals, turning them various shades and bonded those pigments with the DNA of skin cells. The process would create a two-part tattoo called the Amorial Vine, with each soulmate in a pair bearing half.
Making his way to the kitchen, Luke pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and a bag of chips from the cupboard. He headed for the couch, promising himself that he would call for take-out of actual food when he was up to facing the outside world again.
Ripping open the chip bag and shoving a handful into his mouth, Luke used his free hand to turn on his sound system and the soft mechanical voice asked for his preferences. Closing his eyes, Luke knew he didn’t want his usual pop-leaning music. “Instrumental, classical to 1940. Include movie instrumentals up to present. No Zamfir or other pan flute.” The mechanical voice confirmed, and within seconds the first song started playing. Luke sank further into the couch and blindly reached for the water bottle, refusing to open his eyes. Opening it and taking a swallow, Luke let out a contented breath. “Happy Birthday to me.”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“No, that won’t work. He has to be at a meeting on Capitol Hill at eleven o’clock. He can’t make it from there to hotel in time. You’ll have to find another venue that’s closer or move the interview back.”
Noah watched as the intern’s face paled at the thought of telling his father about a change in schedule. He understood that reaction. If there was one thing his father was, it was intense. He didn’t roll with changes to his plans; instead, he chose to berate and overreact, running through interns like changes of clothes.
Sizing up intern number 57, Noah wasn’t holding out much hope that this one was going to be the keeper. “The Folger Shakespeare Library is not far away. See if we can rent the Founders Room for the evening. It will make a commanding background for any pictures the press takes." He paused as he considered mentioning what was on the tip of his tongue. “And button your cuffs. You don’t want the Colonel to catch sight of your implant.”
The intern paled again and nodded, quickly buttoning her cuffs so they wouldn’t raise and show off the small scrolls of pigment that Noah recognized as the sign that her soulmate had the implant as well.
As she reached for her phone. Noah had a moment of guilt for not being able to remember the intern’s name, but he’d given up somewhere around number thirty-five.
“Noah.”
His name wasn’t spoken loudly, but the commanding tone in it could have only come from one person. Rising from his position at the desk next to the intern, Noah walked silently over to his father and waited for his orders, just like the good little soldier he’d been raised as.
“I’d like you to meet Reverend Jedediah Whitehall. He’ll be joining me for dinner. Make sure arrangements are made.”
Noah could barely respond with the expected, “Yes, Sir,” before his father had turned back to the Reverend and effectively dismissed him.
Turning on his heel, ready to follow his father’s orders, Noah stopped when a hand was placed on his shoulder. “Noah, that’s a good Christian name.”
Noah shifted slightly so he was facing the well-dressed man that was speaking to him. “Thank you, Reverend Whitehall,” he said, sizing up the man in front of him. It was obvious that the preaching game still brought in the faithful and, more important, their wallets. Noah noticed several high-end labels as the makers of the Reverend’s clothes. Cufflinks flashed as the hotel room lights caught the facets of cut gemstone as a hand was extended to him. “Call me Jed, Noah. It looks like we’ll be spending time together, so there’s no need for formality.”
Noah nodded as he shook the Reverend’s hand, knowing that with his father, there was always the need for formality. “Pleasure to meet you. I have heard much about you,” he said as he carefully stepped around the name issue in a way that the Reverend wouldn’t notice.
“I wish I could say the same, Noah. I must confess that until very recently, I had no idea that the Colonel even had a son.”
Noah knew not to react to that. His father barely acknowledged him as more than one of his campaign staff, but as the parade of wives that inevitably turned to ex-wives came through with all their drama, and the campaigns for each political office his father had run for getting larger and more invasive, Noah was glad that he was relatively unknown. “I’ve been finishing my education and helping the campaign when I can. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll let you and the Colonel finish your meeting.”
Noah made his way across the room and picked up the phone, adding one more to the reservation that evening at The Monocle, his father’s favorite place to be fawned over while having a meal. His next call was to place an order for his own meal from room service, to be delivered while everyone else was out for dinner.
Placing the phone down, Noah flipped through the binder that held the schedules for the Colonel’s day, week, and month, making sure the changes he had discussed with the intern had been noted and updated. Everything was kept digitally, but his father was distrustful of being at the mercy of technology. So, a paper schedule was kept and constantly updated.
Only when Noah was satisfied that the agenda would hold up to one of the Colonel’s frequent surprise inspections did Noah allow himself to retreat to one of the bathrooms of the suite. Hanging his suit coat on the hook behind the door, he carefully rolled up his sleeves and turned on the hot water as far as it would go, dousing his hands in soap and scrubbing furiously. Even with the steam billowing out of the sink and his hands lost in a growing mass of soap studs, Noah could still feel his skin creeping from being in contact with Reverend Whitehall.
Noah’s mind whirred as he scrubbed, trying to figure out what his father was up to. Why would he be courting the leader of the nation’s biggest fundamentalist Christian church? That man and his followers routinely targeted gay people and immigrants, running them and the organizations that helped them out of cities and out of business. Looking at it from a political perspective, Noah knew that the Whitehall family was tied closely to many prominent Republican families. That was part of the allure to his father, Noah was sure, but the Reverend was known as a zealot, even amongst his own family.
Noah pulled his red and throbbing hands out of the water, his mind still trying to find the Colonel’s angle. There had to be another reason that the Colonel was getting involved with the Reverend, Noah just didn’t know what it was. There was one thing Noah knew for sure. No way was anything good going to come out of this alliance the Colonel and the Reverend were forming.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Luke watched the sunset painting the faces of the buildings around him orange and red as he let the peace of his own home and the calming music work better than the best masseuse on releasing the tension that had built up over the week leading up to his birthday.
He knew better than to turn on the television. It was ten years to the day that he was the first person to get the implant, on his 18th birthday. If he turned on the television, he’d only be subjected to his own face and the reporter’s faux sympathy at how poor little rich boy L S still hadn’t found his match. Then they’d trot out the statistics of how many millions of people all over the world had the implant and how many matches had been made in the last ten years. Next would be a spotlight on some of the matches, complete with romantically inspirational music.
Of course, they’d cover those that weren’t able to get the implant. Every person went through a pre-screening test that was able to determine if you had the genetic markers in your blood that responded to the implant. Even though World Wide was careful to only say that the markers to make the implant successful were not present, never saying that they had no soulmate, the media and the general public were not so kind.
The reports would end on a high note, following a fresh-faced and nervous 13-year-old on their visit to one of the clinics to get the implant. Luke knew all of this, because he’d written the suggested storyline treatments that had been handed out to the media outlets that were doing a story on the 10th anniversary of the implant.
Grabbing his phone, he put in his usual garlic chicken order at the Thai place a few blocks away and stood up, stretching the kinks out of his body as he made his way to the bedroom. He grabbed a long-sleeved shirt and pulled it on over his t-shirt. He tried not to let the bitterness swell up that ten years later, his lower arm was still as unblemished as the day the implant was done; that the first thing people looked at was his arm and not his face when meeting him. For the last nine years, his arm had always been covered. Luke had only being able to stand the looks for a year before removing the temptation from sight.
Making his way back to the couch, Luke pulled out his tablet and tapped on the icon that brought up the news articles he’d saved over the past week, too busy with all the press junkets around the anniversary of the implant to read much beyond the headlines.
He started working his way through the highlights, starting with the articles he had to read for work, technology and business related, and then catching up on the latest gossip with the entertainment articles. He knew he'd be meeting Maddie for lunch the next day, and she’d expect him to keep up with her fascination for all things scandalous. He saved the articles on politics for last.
While he worked full-time for World Wide as the face of the Amorial implant, Luke wouldn’t let it take over his life completely. He’d released a few novels, each one growing his audience steadily. They mostly centered around suspense and intrigue, something he’d gotten a taste for at the hands of Maddie and her love for classic movies. He was in the researching stages of his next novel, trying his hand at a political thriller, and being an election year it was making his research very easy. The race for the White House was in full swing, new allegations flying every day.
This Colonel Mayer person that was emerging as the next great Republican hope was a walking, talking, larger than life character from a book. He was amusing to watch right now, but Luke could see him becoming downright terrifying if he got into the presidential office.
Taking a break when a knock sounded, Luke grabbed his wallet on the way to the door and took the food from the delivery person. He was a regular customer, so there was no awkward arm glance any more, even with all the increased media coverage this week. His mouth was watering by the time he got back to the couch, the aroma of garlicky chicken wafting around him. Cracking the chopsticks apart, Luke dug in while he continued reading all of the political going-ons of the past week.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Noah sighed as the last of the entourage left the hotel room, security going with his father for dinner, the rest taking advantage of a rare night off. Noah was a little surprised that only the Colonel and the Reverend, along with the ever-present security detail, were going for dinner. His father was nothing if not an attention whore. The more hangers-on he had, the more important the Colonel considered himself. Noah knew it was the troop mentality that his father was used to from years of being in the Army, that he was never truly at home until he had underlings to boss around, instead of just his son.
Shaking his head, Noah cleared any thoughts of his father out of his mind. He didn’t want to mar his precious few hours alone by thinking about his father. His meal was already ordered and set to come at seven. He glanced down at his watch. He should have just enough time to get a shower in before dinner. It was also enough time to make sure no one came back to grab anything forgotten before he got down to business.
Clean and hungry, Noah turned the television on while he waited for room service. He switched it off of Fox News, his father’s preferred news channel, and flipped though the channels until something caught his eye. Putting down the remote, he watched as a story came on about the Amorial implant. Looking down at his forearm, Noah wondered what it would look like, what it would feel like knowing that his soulmate was out there and that he’d know when it happened. The Colonel was very vocally against the implant, fighting against the tsunami of millions that had gotten the implant and the millions more that would get it the day they turned thirteen, all around the planet.
Noah remembered when the Colonel used to refuse to hire anyone on his staff that had the implant, but with the way he went through staff, even someone as stubborn as the Colonel had to concede defeat, instead changing his policy to keeping the implant covered in his presence. He tolerated the implant now, for everyone but his son. Noah hadn’t been told verbally, but he knew that the Colonel would consider getting the implant tantamount to treason.
His food came during a commercial break and he was settled back in front of the television as the reporter talked about interviewing World Wide spokesman and implant number 001, Luke Snyder. Noah watched as a cute blond man about his own age smiled at the reporter when she noted that his lower arm was covered. Noah chuckled as Luke raised his shoulder and gave a line to the reporter about being a modest guy, his eyes sparkling with mischief the entire time.
Noah found himself smiling and chuckling as he ate, listening to Luke’s rapport with the interviewer. His father would have killed to have someone as skilled in dealing with reporters as Luke seemed to be. He was just the right mix of serious and playful and Noah found himself making mental notes on how Luke redirected the interviewer if she started straying too far off of the points that Luke wanted to discuss.
By the end of the segment, Noah was impressed. He couldn’t imagine dealing with the whole world being invested in your love life, living with the anticipation of meeting your soulmate for 10 years and having nothing happen. He switched the channel after the segment ended, looking for something to put on in the background as he did some searching for what his father was up to with Reverend Whitehall. Seeing that AMC was showing Roman Holiday, he hesitated,. It was one of his favorite movies and there was no way it would be just background noise.
Sighing, Noah clicked it to a music channel and walked over to the desk, flipping open the lid to the laptop that sat there. He asked for it to power off and then pulled a thumb drive out of a hidden pocket in his bag. Pushing it in the port, he powered the laptop back on and hit the key as the command screen came up that redirected the computer to boot through the thumb drive. As it booted into the hidden partition on his drive, Noah chastised himself for getting lax around his father. It hadn’t even been a week since the last time he’d done a recon mission into his father’s system and he’d been blindsided by the appearance of Whitehall. He’d have to dig deeper today; underestimating the Colonel was a mistake he was not going to make again.
Keying in the passcode, Noah thanked whatever power out there that had him assigned to be roommates with a computer science major who hacked into systems for fun. It had been invaluable to him, from stupid things like adding food plan credits onto their accounts when things got lean, to the custom partitioned laptop that Kai had built for him when he’d started his assignment on the campaign. It was the best tool that Kai had created, an anonymous operating system hidden behind the standard one.
Once he was fully in the partition that Kai had created, he launched a program that located the chip in the Colonel’s phone he’d planted there that reported on his father’s location. Seeing it was reporting from the Monacle, where it should be, Noah keyed in a command and code flew across the screen. Within seconds data started streaming back to him.
The whole process took less than five minutes and made an exact copy of the files in the Colonel’s computer, phone, and tablet. All of them gave up their data in the background without letting anyone using them know a thing. Noah had tested it himself, running the program across the room from the Colonel as he had been using his laptop, and it had worked flawlessly.
The Colonel has always taught him that the only person you could rely on was yourself and that everyone had an agenda of their own. Noah had taken very little from the Colonel to heart, but this was the exception. He’d watched his father deal and bribe his way up the political food chain and knew that the Colonel held no loyalty to anyone but himself, not even his own son. When Noah considered what he was currently doing, Noah knew his loyalty to the Colonel was just as nonexistent.
Noah searched through the changes that had been reported on his father’s systems and went through them one by one. A lot of them were speech drafts and correspondence with other Senators, but when Noah started scanning financial information, his eyebrows furrowed. There were donations to the campaign here that were not on the listing that all of them had access to, including campaign auditors.
Noah highlighted the names he didn’t recognize and filed them away for further research. One thing was clear: his father was taking money from more places than he’d reported. A lot more places.
He opened another window that launched a search command that dug deeper into all of the Colonel’s systems using the donor names he didn’t recognize, and only one of them had any sort of trail. He followed that trail as far as he could, but it ran cold well before he could find out who was behind the money.
Frustrated, he sent the list to Kai, knowing his friend would be amused for maybe an hour before he had everything about everyone on the list, including what color underwear they had selected this morning.
Moving on, Noah ran a search of everything on the Colonel’s computer that had Reverend and Whitehall attached to it. Then he searched for every variant he could think of, initials, short forms, and partial words. It brought up a list of things, including names and information he knew had nothing to do with the campaign. Noah started reading through them in chronological order, his eyes widening as he read further. Hitting a few dead ends, Noah dug deeper, forcing his father’s data to give up its ghosts.
When he finished, and the scope of what his father was up to was laid out in front of him, Noah sat back in his chair, stunned.
PART TWO