Fic: Believe (part 2/4 + Epilogue)
Title: Believe
Pairings/Characters: Jon/"Stephen", Sam, Jessica, Steven Crowder, OCs
Rating: For Mature Audiences/R
Warnings: kidnapping, angst, mind control, minor violence, background major violence and death.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
For this Secret Santa prompt:
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", author's choice of correspondents
Prompt: Someone (an old rival? an archnemesis?) kidnaps "Stephen" for nefarious purposes. Jon must lead a crack team of correspondents to the rescue.
Niche: team!fic, hurt/comfort
Thanks to my beta Stephanie.
Links to previous parts: 1
Sam stared at Jon in confusion. “Crowder? The comedian? The guy who dissed you on his YouTube show?”
He nodded.
“Jon, we have to call the police, right now.”
Jon turned to Jessica. “Rick went to shut down the fire alarm in the basement. Bring him here.”
She nodded and all but ran out of the room.
”No police. He threatened to…” Jon grabbed Sam’s hand as if he was afraid she would reach for a telephone. “He said he’ll know if we get the authorities involved. Maybe he has a man inside the police department, I don’t know, but I can’t risk it.”
Sam pulled her hands free. “Maybe this is a prank? Maybe he got a hold of Stephen’s phone somehow and this is all an elaborate set-up to get you to make a fool of yourself?”
Jon shook his head. “If Stephen had lost his phone he would have called me.”
”Maybe he doesn’t know?”
There were three flights of stairs down to the basement. At the speed that Jessica was keeping it would take her less than a minute to arrive there.
”This number was added at three a.m. this morning. Trust me, if Stephen lost his phone it wouldn’t take nine hours for him to notice.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he’s in on it.”
Jon clenched his jaws. “He wouldn’t do that to me.”
Sam sighed. “Okay, you know him better than I do. What else did Crowder say?”
”He said he had given me coordinates and that I should arrive there alone, within two hours, unarmed and unbugged and not to alert the authorities.”
”It sounds like a trap. It probably is.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”
Jon nodded. “But I’m going to need all the backup I can get.”
Sam looked like she was about to say something when Rick reappeared in the room, not the slightest bit out of breath despite the fact that he must have run up the stairs. Jessica followed close behind.
”You wanted me?”
Jon nodded. “Who else is in the building?”
”No one but us. There were only about three or four people who were evacuated. The rest had already left for lunch when the automatic pager when out. Should I recall them?”
Jon paused for a moment. More people would make it harder to do what he wanted to do without raising any questions. “No. Send out a text message that there is no danger but that the building is off limits until tomorrow. Make up an excuse. Then call Kiran and Nick and tell them to get up here ASAP. Tell them… tell them they’re going to enjoy it.”
Before he had finished the sentence, Rick had already begun texting.
Jon turned to Sam again. “Sam, can you stay?”
She nodded. “Shutting down the building at noon on a Friday? That’s a lot of people who will be wanting to get to their computers and files for the weekend.”
“I don’t care. They can show reruns all of next week for all I care.”
A slight buzzing sound was heard. Jessica pulled out her phone. “It says not to return to the building until you get clearance from the head of security. Oh there’s the new one. Temporary smoke damage, that’s clever.”
Rick shrugged. “They’ll think I’m bullshitting them, but they respect me enough to stay away. Look, Jon. I may be out of my league here, but I’m sensing there is something other than general post-fire-alarm jitteriness going on here.”
Rick looked tense, like he was prepared to spring into action, but in a way that radiated cool competence rather than hot-headedness. Jon wanted so badly to be like him.
”Stephen’s been kidnapped and I’m going to go get him. I need Kiran and Nick to help me with surveillance and I need whatever non-lethal, easy-to-hide weapons you’ve got laying around that can pass through a metal detector. I also need whatever street knowledge you have on the availability of Counter Thought technology.”
Jessica raised her hand. “Weapons? There was nothing in my workplace orientation that mentioned weapons.”
”And, Jessica…” Jon pointed at her. “Jessica needs to go home.”
“Why? We’re safe here, aren’t we?”
Sam turned to her. She looked determined and ruthless in the way that made Jon glad they were on the same team.
”You need to go because we’re about to do some illegal shit, and he doesn’t want any of that to touch you.”
Rick passed Jessica on his way out, but she was too stunned to notice. Finally she stuck her chin out and crossed her arms in an apparent attempt to toughen herself up. If Jon wasn’t so goddamn terrified he would find it endearing.
”Well, who says I haven’t done illegal things in the past?”
Jon doubted it, but he didn’t have time to argue with her. “If you want to stay, you have to do exactly as I say.”
She nodded solemnly; all traces of youthful excitement gone. “I promise.”
”Go down to my office and go through the stack of phone messages on my desk. There will be one from Steven Crowder. Bring it here.”
***
Stephen pressed his lips together and turned his head away. The straw touched his cheek.
”Oh come on! I know you’re hungry.”
”You’re misinformed. I have a stomach of steel. I can go days without eating.”
“Oh really?”
His kidnapper put the jug down and reached for a white paper box. He opened it and held it up in front of Stephen's face so that he could see the neat compartments of whipped cream, caramel sauce and what looked like nuts coated in sugar, arranged around the thick slice of dark, glistening, absolutely delicious-looking chocolate cake.
”Well, in that case, I’ll just have to throw this cake out. I certainly won’t eat it. It has way too many calories for a balanced diet. It’s too bad, really. I asked the waitress to put on extra caramelized nuts. Well, I guess the rats will enjoy them. Unless you've changed your mind?”
Stephen whimpered. He had skipped breakfast to work up an appetite for Pecoral’s roasted lamb with creamed potatoes and the hunger was starting to get to him.
”How do I know you haven’t drugged it, if you won’t eat it?”
His kidnapper picked up a spoon and scooped up a large chunk of chocolate cake which he held up in front of Stephen’s face.
”Because I’m going to drug you later. And you’ll deal with it better if you don’t have an empty stomach, which will spare me the trouble of wiping up your vomit from the floor.”
Stephen’s mind raced. Even if his hands and feet weren’t tied and his entire body didn’t ache from exhaustion, he was unarmed, in a locked room with a captor who looked to be at least twice as strong as he was on a good day. Everything he had fantasized about doing in a situation like this was impossible.
Except… He could stall. Stalling was good.
”Fine,” he made sure to spit the word out. “But make sure you don’t get any cream on my shirt. It probably costs more than you make in a month, doing… whatever it is that you do.”
His kidnapper had a hurt look on his face when he shoved the piece of cake into Stephen’s mouth. He made sure to chew slowly, wanting to put as much time between eating and being drugged as possible.
It really was a delicious cake.
***
Kiran cracked his knuckles. “Okay, so we’re definitely leaving normal operating procedures?”
Jon nodded. “Yes. If anyone asks I made you do it. I can punch you in the face if you want to.”
”Both of us?” Nick was hooking up his computer to the server, standing by to follow any command that Kiran would give him. “That’s kind of far-fetched, no offense.”
”If you don’t want to do this…” Stephen is fucked “I don’t…”
Kiran leaned in over the desk. “Hey, don’t worry. We’re doing it. In fact Nick and I have been dying to take the wheels out since last time, haven’t we Nick?”
Nick looked sheepish. “Yeah, trawling through Lexus Nexis gets kind of old after a while.”
”Are you sure you don’t want him to punch you, just in case?” Jessica piped up from where she was curled up on one of the adjacent desks. “I can say I tried to restrain him.”
Kiran typed a quick combination of letters and numbers and the screen went white and blue.
”That won’t be necessary. I’ll make sure to cover my tracks. I’ll just be in and out and no one will ever know we were there.”
”Okay, network is hooked up. Now let’s see if we can get something out of the number in Stephen’s phone.”
Jon shifted nervously. “I never said it was Stephen’s phone.”
Kiran kept typing, his eyes on the screen. “You may not be as tech savvy as you would want to be, but you wouldn’t be dumb enough to use your own date of birth as the pin code.”
Jessica’s eyes were narrowed to slits, studying the screen. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
Nick looked up. “We’re going to find our target by tracing a call we’re going to make to his cell phone. If he’s moderately intelligent he’ll at least have turned his GPS off, so we’re going to have to do it manually. Of course, this requires that he picks up.”
Kiran tapped one of the screens to get the attention of everyone in the room. “These are the coordinates he gave you in Google Maps. Look familiar, Jon?”
”Yeah, it’s the deli at 49th and 8th.”
Kiran nodded. “Okay, Nick, stand by to begin the trace. Dialing in five… four…”
He typed in a few digits and a new window appeared on the screen. Nick had said they needed to keep the sound off on the other end of the call in order to trace it better, but Jon was sure this was a big fat lie.
”Hi, my name is Michael Steenburger and I’m calling from Verizon. I'm calling because you've recently purchased a cell phone and we have a special offer for new customers that I think you’ll be interested in. What kind of plan are you using right now? We got your phone number from the retailer. We work with all the major retailers in the Tri-state area.” Kiran snapped his fingers in the air silently. “All right, but keep us in mind. The offer expires in two weeks. Okay, bye.“
As soon as the call had ended, he pulled his Bluetooth ear piece off with a snap and swirled around. “Did you trace it?”
Nick’s hands had stopped typing. He shook his head. “There was nothing to trace. It’s a burner phone.”
Jon’s mind conjured up images of drug deals going down in shady alleys. “Wait, what? A burner phone can’t be traced?”
“Well, you need two cell phone towers to triangulate, and you have to know which are closest to the phone. It can take hours, and with the technology we have in this building,” Nick gestured towards the computer, “we can only trace calls while they’re in progress.”
Jon made up his mind. “Okay, screw it. I’m going to the rendezvous point. Keep an eye on me, will you?”
”Hey guys.”
Nick nodded. “Please be careful, Jon.”
”Guys!” Everyone turned to face Jessica.
“A burner phone is a phone you’re going to throw away after using, right? What do you say the chances are of someone installing Twitter on a phone they’re going to throw away soon?”
She held up her phone with the screen facing forwards. “Message to telemarketers: stop bothering people who know your products better than you do. Hashtag friendlyadvice, hashtag theconservativeisyourfriend. Tweet sent one minute ago.”
Jon’s heart almost skipped a beat.
”I’ll call his agent! If I call her in person, I’m sure she’ll give me his number.”
Nick shook his head. “What are you going to say? That you want to book him? She’ll never buy that.”
”Buy what?”
Sam had entered the room silently. She was carrying a small paper box. “Jon? Buy what?”
Before Jon had a chance to speak, Jessica had slid off the desk and was leaning against it, arms crossed.
”I’ve discovered that the perpetrator is using his private phone, which gives us the chance to pinpoint his location. If we have his number, which we currently don’t have.”
Sam looked nervously between Jessica and Jon. “If I had known that’s what you needed… Can you hold on for five minutes?”
***
”I’m going to assume that you followed the Heron trial carefully.”
“Of course! It was an attempt on the President. What could be more deserving of my attention than that?”
”I agree. So you know the details of the case, don’t you?”
Stephen nodded eagerly. “By heart.”
”Tell me.”
Stephen stuck his chin up, as much as he could in this position. This was an excellent opportunity to stall even longer; maybe even long enough for the cavalry to show up.
”As you’ve no doubt heard me say on my show many times. President Bush is the greatest President we’ve ever had. He was bound to have many enemies; external as well as internal. With internal, I mean domestic, not inside his body. Though of course there was that one time with the pretzel…”
His kidnapper coughed. “I’m not your captive audience; you‘re mine. Get to the charges.”
”On the morning of September 2nd 2004, three people dressed as members of the wait staff were arrested outside the Oval Office. One of them was Dr. Carrie Heron, a neuroscientist employed at the Department of Defense. In their possession they had a laptop, surgical equipment, tran… “ He cleared his throat. “Tranquilizers, and a previously unseen type of portable device. “
His eyes darted towards the table. There was a black shoulder bag propped up against the wall. It might be big enough to fit the equipment he had just described.
”During the days that followed, several hearings were held with the three captives. Their criminal intent towards the President was apparent. Dr. Heron refused to explain how her invention worked, but the CIA was eventually able to decode her research notes.”
”Describe how the device works.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some fancy science-y stuff. I didn’t focus on that part.”
His captor had started rubbing his chin, as if trying to will facial hair to grow on the smooth surface.
”But you know what the device was intended to do, don’t you?”
”Of course.”
”Tell me.”
“They were… They were going to use it to twist the President’s mind. To make everything right and true seem wrong and false, to make good seem evil and evil seem good.”
He felt himself start to get angry again, and it was a welcome change to being afraid. The anger was as fresh as the day when he had marched into Jon’s office and demanded that he denounce what the assailants had tried to do to the President. He had been instantly calmed when he learned that his boss was already planning to; that he was just as angry as Stephen was, even if it was for a different reason.
That was the moment he had realized he could trust Jon.
He glared at his kidnapper, hoping that he looked as furious as he felt. “Why are you making me say this?”
Suddenly, all playfulness vanished from the kidnapper’s features. He leaned down so that Stephen’s good ear was inches away from his lips.
”So that I’m sure you know exactly what I’m going to do to you.”
Pairings/Characters: Jon/"Stephen", Sam, Jessica, Steven Crowder, OCs
Rating: For Mature Audiences/R
Warnings: kidnapping, angst, mind control, minor violence, background major violence and death.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
For this Secret Santa prompt:
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", author's choice of correspondents
Prompt: Someone (an old rival? an archnemesis?) kidnaps "Stephen" for nefarious purposes. Jon must lead a crack team of correspondents to the rescue.
Niche: team!fic, hurt/comfort
Thanks to my beta Stephanie.
Links to previous parts: 1
Sam stared at Jon in confusion. “Crowder? The comedian? The guy who dissed you on his YouTube show?”
He nodded.
“Jon, we have to call the police, right now.”
Jon turned to Jessica. “Rick went to shut down the fire alarm in the basement. Bring him here.”
She nodded and all but ran out of the room.
”No police. He threatened to…” Jon grabbed Sam’s hand as if he was afraid she would reach for a telephone. “He said he’ll know if we get the authorities involved. Maybe he has a man inside the police department, I don’t know, but I can’t risk it.”
Sam pulled her hands free. “Maybe this is a prank? Maybe he got a hold of Stephen’s phone somehow and this is all an elaborate set-up to get you to make a fool of yourself?”
Jon shook his head. “If Stephen had lost his phone he would have called me.”
”Maybe he doesn’t know?”
There were three flights of stairs down to the basement. At the speed that Jessica was keeping it would take her less than a minute to arrive there.
”This number was added at three a.m. this morning. Trust me, if Stephen lost his phone it wouldn’t take nine hours for him to notice.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he’s in on it.”
Jon clenched his jaws. “He wouldn’t do that to me.”
Sam sighed. “Okay, you know him better than I do. What else did Crowder say?”
”He said he had given me coordinates and that I should arrive there alone, within two hours, unarmed and unbugged and not to alert the authorities.”
”It sounds like a trap. It probably is.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”
Jon nodded. “But I’m going to need all the backup I can get.”
Sam looked like she was about to say something when Rick reappeared in the room, not the slightest bit out of breath despite the fact that he must have run up the stairs. Jessica followed close behind.
”You wanted me?”
Jon nodded. “Who else is in the building?”
”No one but us. There were only about three or four people who were evacuated. The rest had already left for lunch when the automatic pager when out. Should I recall them?”
Jon paused for a moment. More people would make it harder to do what he wanted to do without raising any questions. “No. Send out a text message that there is no danger but that the building is off limits until tomorrow. Make up an excuse. Then call Kiran and Nick and tell them to get up here ASAP. Tell them… tell them they’re going to enjoy it.”
Before he had finished the sentence, Rick had already begun texting.
Jon turned to Sam again. “Sam, can you stay?”
She nodded. “Shutting down the building at noon on a Friday? That’s a lot of people who will be wanting to get to their computers and files for the weekend.”
“I don’t care. They can show reruns all of next week for all I care.”
A slight buzzing sound was heard. Jessica pulled out her phone. “It says not to return to the building until you get clearance from the head of security. Oh there’s the new one. Temporary smoke damage, that’s clever.”
Rick shrugged. “They’ll think I’m bullshitting them, but they respect me enough to stay away. Look, Jon. I may be out of my league here, but I’m sensing there is something other than general post-fire-alarm jitteriness going on here.”
Rick looked tense, like he was prepared to spring into action, but in a way that radiated cool competence rather than hot-headedness. Jon wanted so badly to be like him.
”Stephen’s been kidnapped and I’m going to go get him. I need Kiran and Nick to help me with surveillance and I need whatever non-lethal, easy-to-hide weapons you’ve got laying around that can pass through a metal detector. I also need whatever street knowledge you have on the availability of Counter Thought technology.”
Jessica raised her hand. “Weapons? There was nothing in my workplace orientation that mentioned weapons.”
”And, Jessica…” Jon pointed at her. “Jessica needs to go home.”
“Why? We’re safe here, aren’t we?”
Sam turned to her. She looked determined and ruthless in the way that made Jon glad they were on the same team.
”You need to go because we’re about to do some illegal shit, and he doesn’t want any of that to touch you.”
Rick passed Jessica on his way out, but she was too stunned to notice. Finally she stuck her chin out and crossed her arms in an apparent attempt to toughen herself up. If Jon wasn’t so goddamn terrified he would find it endearing.
”Well, who says I haven’t done illegal things in the past?”
Jon doubted it, but he didn’t have time to argue with her. “If you want to stay, you have to do exactly as I say.”
She nodded solemnly; all traces of youthful excitement gone. “I promise.”
”Go down to my office and go through the stack of phone messages on my desk. There will be one from Steven Crowder. Bring it here.”
***
Stephen pressed his lips together and turned his head away. The straw touched his cheek.
”Oh come on! I know you’re hungry.”
”You’re misinformed. I have a stomach of steel. I can go days without eating.”
“Oh really?”
His kidnapper put the jug down and reached for a white paper box. He opened it and held it up in front of Stephen's face so that he could see the neat compartments of whipped cream, caramel sauce and what looked like nuts coated in sugar, arranged around the thick slice of dark, glistening, absolutely delicious-looking chocolate cake.
”Well, in that case, I’ll just have to throw this cake out. I certainly won’t eat it. It has way too many calories for a balanced diet. It’s too bad, really. I asked the waitress to put on extra caramelized nuts. Well, I guess the rats will enjoy them. Unless you've changed your mind?”
Stephen whimpered. He had skipped breakfast to work up an appetite for Pecoral’s roasted lamb with creamed potatoes and the hunger was starting to get to him.
”How do I know you haven’t drugged it, if you won’t eat it?”
His kidnapper picked up a spoon and scooped up a large chunk of chocolate cake which he held up in front of Stephen’s face.
”Because I’m going to drug you later. And you’ll deal with it better if you don’t have an empty stomach, which will spare me the trouble of wiping up your vomit from the floor.”
Stephen’s mind raced. Even if his hands and feet weren’t tied and his entire body didn’t ache from exhaustion, he was unarmed, in a locked room with a captor who looked to be at least twice as strong as he was on a good day. Everything he had fantasized about doing in a situation like this was impossible.
Except… He could stall. Stalling was good.
”Fine,” he made sure to spit the word out. “But make sure you don’t get any cream on my shirt. It probably costs more than you make in a month, doing… whatever it is that you do.”
His kidnapper had a hurt look on his face when he shoved the piece of cake into Stephen’s mouth. He made sure to chew slowly, wanting to put as much time between eating and being drugged as possible.
It really was a delicious cake.
***
Kiran cracked his knuckles. “Okay, so we’re definitely leaving normal operating procedures?”
Jon nodded. “Yes. If anyone asks I made you do it. I can punch you in the face if you want to.”
”Both of us?” Nick was hooking up his computer to the server, standing by to follow any command that Kiran would give him. “That’s kind of far-fetched, no offense.”
”If you don’t want to do this…” Stephen is fucked “I don’t…”
Kiran leaned in over the desk. “Hey, don’t worry. We’re doing it. In fact Nick and I have been dying to take the wheels out since last time, haven’t we Nick?”
Nick looked sheepish. “Yeah, trawling through Lexus Nexis gets kind of old after a while.”
”Are you sure you don’t want him to punch you, just in case?” Jessica piped up from where she was curled up on one of the adjacent desks. “I can say I tried to restrain him.”
Kiran typed a quick combination of letters and numbers and the screen went white and blue.
”That won’t be necessary. I’ll make sure to cover my tracks. I’ll just be in and out and no one will ever know we were there.”
”Okay, network is hooked up. Now let’s see if we can get something out of the number in Stephen’s phone.”
Jon shifted nervously. “I never said it was Stephen’s phone.”
Kiran kept typing, his eyes on the screen. “You may not be as tech savvy as you would want to be, but you wouldn’t be dumb enough to use your own date of birth as the pin code.”
Jessica’s eyes were narrowed to slits, studying the screen. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
Nick looked up. “We’re going to find our target by tracing a call we’re going to make to his cell phone. If he’s moderately intelligent he’ll at least have turned his GPS off, so we’re going to have to do it manually. Of course, this requires that he picks up.”
Kiran tapped one of the screens to get the attention of everyone in the room. “These are the coordinates he gave you in Google Maps. Look familiar, Jon?”
”Yeah, it’s the deli at 49th and 8th.”
Kiran nodded. “Okay, Nick, stand by to begin the trace. Dialing in five… four…”
He typed in a few digits and a new window appeared on the screen. Nick had said they needed to keep the sound off on the other end of the call in order to trace it better, but Jon was sure this was a big fat lie.
”Hi, my name is Michael Steenburger and I’m calling from Verizon. I'm calling because you've recently purchased a cell phone and we have a special offer for new customers that I think you’ll be interested in. What kind of plan are you using right now? We got your phone number from the retailer. We work with all the major retailers in the Tri-state area.” Kiran snapped his fingers in the air silently. “All right, but keep us in mind. The offer expires in two weeks. Okay, bye.“
As soon as the call had ended, he pulled his Bluetooth ear piece off with a snap and swirled around. “Did you trace it?”
Nick’s hands had stopped typing. He shook his head. “There was nothing to trace. It’s a burner phone.”
Jon’s mind conjured up images of drug deals going down in shady alleys. “Wait, what? A burner phone can’t be traced?”
“Well, you need two cell phone towers to triangulate, and you have to know which are closest to the phone. It can take hours, and with the technology we have in this building,” Nick gestured towards the computer, “we can only trace calls while they’re in progress.”
Jon made up his mind. “Okay, screw it. I’m going to the rendezvous point. Keep an eye on me, will you?”
”Hey guys.”
Nick nodded. “Please be careful, Jon.”
”Guys!” Everyone turned to face Jessica.
“A burner phone is a phone you’re going to throw away after using, right? What do you say the chances are of someone installing Twitter on a phone they’re going to throw away soon?”
She held up her phone with the screen facing forwards. “Message to telemarketers: stop bothering people who know your products better than you do. Hashtag friendlyadvice, hashtag theconservativeisyourfriend. Tweet sent one minute ago.”
Jon’s heart almost skipped a beat.
”I’ll call his agent! If I call her in person, I’m sure she’ll give me his number.”
Nick shook his head. “What are you going to say? That you want to book him? She’ll never buy that.”
”Buy what?”
Sam had entered the room silently. She was carrying a small paper box. “Jon? Buy what?”
Before Jon had a chance to speak, Jessica had slid off the desk and was leaning against it, arms crossed.
”I’ve discovered that the perpetrator is using his private phone, which gives us the chance to pinpoint his location. If we have his number, which we currently don’t have.”
Sam looked nervously between Jessica and Jon. “If I had known that’s what you needed… Can you hold on for five minutes?”
***
”I’m going to assume that you followed the Heron trial carefully.”
“Of course! It was an attempt on the President. What could be more deserving of my attention than that?”
”I agree. So you know the details of the case, don’t you?”
Stephen nodded eagerly. “By heart.”
”Tell me.”
Stephen stuck his chin up, as much as he could in this position. This was an excellent opportunity to stall even longer; maybe even long enough for the cavalry to show up.
”As you’ve no doubt heard me say on my show many times. President Bush is the greatest President we’ve ever had. He was bound to have many enemies; external as well as internal. With internal, I mean domestic, not inside his body. Though of course there was that one time with the pretzel…”
His kidnapper coughed. “I’m not your captive audience; you‘re mine. Get to the charges.”
”On the morning of September 2nd 2004, three people dressed as members of the wait staff were arrested outside the Oval Office. One of them was Dr. Carrie Heron, a neuroscientist employed at the Department of Defense. In their possession they had a laptop, surgical equipment, tran… “ He cleared his throat. “Tranquilizers, and a previously unseen type of portable device. “
His eyes darted towards the table. There was a black shoulder bag propped up against the wall. It might be big enough to fit the equipment he had just described.
”During the days that followed, several hearings were held with the three captives. Their criminal intent towards the President was apparent. Dr. Heron refused to explain how her invention worked, but the CIA was eventually able to decode her research notes.”
”Describe how the device works.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some fancy science-y stuff. I didn’t focus on that part.”
His captor had started rubbing his chin, as if trying to will facial hair to grow on the smooth surface.
”But you know what the device was intended to do, don’t you?”
”Of course.”
”Tell me.”
“They were… They were going to use it to twist the President’s mind. To make everything right and true seem wrong and false, to make good seem evil and evil seem good.”
He felt himself start to get angry again, and it was a welcome change to being afraid. The anger was as fresh as the day when he had marched into Jon’s office and demanded that he denounce what the assailants had tried to do to the President. He had been instantly calmed when he learned that his boss was already planning to; that he was just as angry as Stephen was, even if it was for a different reason.
That was the moment he had realized he could trust Jon.
He glared at his kidnapper, hoping that he looked as furious as he felt. “Why are you making me say this?”
Suddenly, all playfulness vanished from the kidnapper’s features. He leaned down so that Stephen’s good ear was inches away from his lips.
”So that I’m sure you know exactly what I’m going to do to you.”