21st October 2020
Mud. Aoife hated mud. Assuming she survived the worst the British weather could throw at her, she made a personal promise to never assume things couldn't make her more miserable than they already were. She'd thought being overworked was bad enough, but it didn't remotely compare to being hauled up a hill in a storm, for the sake of other people's bullshit. Almost as soon as they'd got out of the Land Rover SUV the heavens had opened and she found herself wondering why anyone would ever come out to the countryside voluntarily. At least Nat seemed to be enjoying herself, the only telecoms engineer left on staff was in her element and had immediately trudged off into the fog, leaving Aoife to swear as she disappeared.
Aoife was certain she looked like something out of one of the trashy post apocalyptic movies Ethan liked. Her eyes were the only part of her face visible, a small strip between the heavy respirator protocol demanded she wore off site, and the beanie she had pulled down tight, clumps of green hair sticking down with the original mousy brown starting to peek through. The oversized boots were her own fashion choice, but the coat Palisade had deemed to kit her out with was predictably a size too large, and left her waddling around like she was in some sort of dark blue hazmat suit.
Their main satellite dish was only a few dozen metres away, Taymont Hall only a couple hundred down the hill, but in the rain and low cloud they might as well have both been invisible. The majority of the work the North England Broadcast Corporation did was over regular, if encrypted, internet cables but for the really heavy duty stuff, or anything particularly sensitive, they had a government relay set up overlooking the Hall. And the fact it hadn't been supplied by Palisade themselves meant it was one of the few pieces of hardware that had worked reliably from day one. Or at least it had until the feed was cut without warning overnight.
Almost losing her footing on the slick ground Aoife swore loudly, causing the optimistically named security 'officer' next to her to start, his hand going for the gun hanging from one shoulder. She almost felt sorry for him. Palisade had done little more with their government money than hire bouncers on ego trips, but it wasn't like he wanted to be here any more than she did, or as if he was the one who wrote the idiotic protocol demanding she had an escort to so much as a foot off site.
If she was honest with herself, which she absolutely wasn't going to be, a small part of her was glad to have something different to do with herself. Last night was meant to be her movie night with Ethan, like every Wednesday. It wasn't like they had it in writing but that was the unspoken deal they had; no matter what was going on they'd work their asses off to make sure they had a couple of hours together and stream Kurosawa or Hammer Horror or Harryhausen, sharing a love for the sort of cult movies that got both of them into media in the first place. They were meant to keep each other's sanity in check.
But he'd blown her off. A brief, apologetic message had appeared on her screen instead of his face at their usual time, breaking their streak just when that was the last thing she needed him to do. And the worst part was, no matter how hard she was mostly succeeding at being mad, a larger part of her just hurt. Everything was too much, she was tired and stressed and she didn't realise how much needed him right now until he wasn't there. She wanted him to watch stupid fucking movies with her, help her forget the stress and make her feel like a human. And that want kept managing to be so bigger than the anger that he wasn't.
Having a broken satellite to help fix might not brighten her mood, but at least it was hard for the weather to make it much worse.
As Nat came back into view alongside the hazy outline of the dish Aoife was reminded, again, that it was always possible to get more miserable. The butch woman, coat whipping about in the wind, was already inspecting the main data line where it was hanging limp from the dish, completely severed despite being almost a foot thick and swaddled in insulation. Aoife moved closer and Nat, body language tense, held up one end for her to see and it became worryingly obvious how neatly they'd been clipped. It was the work of industrial tools rather than some freak event, premeditated, intentional. Aoife's heart sank and her eyes strayed to where the power cables were all similarly cut despite being just as robust. Whoever had done it had also tried to go to work on the dish itself, damaging several of the connections and buckling the frame that was holding it up before either giving up or getting spooked away.
There had been talk for months of conspiracy morons skulking around but they'd never tried anything like this, and the rumours had largely become part of the furniture. To have someone targeting their equipment so decisively was a massive escalation, and exactly the sort of thing the arseholes from Palisade were meant to be safeguarding against.
"Just how fucked are we," Aoife asked, voice muffled by the mask and weather. Nat responded by wavering a hand in air in a gesture of non-commitment that spoke volumes. The other woman was the most natural optimist Aoife had met and if she wasn't being emphatic then the answer to how fucked they were appeared to be 'very.'
Frustration bubbling over, Aoife lifted her head and screamed into the storm.
*****
Ethan turned the coloured note over, studying it in his hand, as if he expected to suddenly find some extra insight that wasn't there. It was five days since he'd been thrown into the world of Project Upstart and he still frequently caught himself looking at things as if there was some spell to be broken. Desks and computers had been brought in to Studio 3 to give Project Upstart an office space to function out of and the post-it-note he held was one of a mosaic of the garish paper squares that spilled out across one wall, where he and Lukas had used them to map out every individual task and step to be completed before they went public. It could have all been planned out on a spreadsheet, but Lukas had insisted this would visualise things to keep minds focused more sharply. Ethan thought it just made things seem more overwhelming than they needed to be.
The current core of the project was the block of programming they needed to have ready to introduce the vaccine from the moment the Scotland and London teams broke the stark reality of DuoHalo to the country. That main mass of stickers was then flanked by the additional goals they'd set themselves, repackaging additional footage and segments into the start of a public health campaign, as well as ongoing videos that Averna could upload to offer continued, dedicated content and support to those vaccinated. The majority of the latter would come later, but they wanted their workflow established long before they got there.
It was the smallest block on the far right, squeezed up into the corner of the room in neat pink notes, that the current object of his attention had been plucked from however. Sat underneath the headline 'Recruitment' each of the handful of labels simply held a name, a date, and a 'Team' name in Nia's handwriting;
'Stephanie Holloway, Team Kaminski, 22/10/20'
'Alyx McNamara, Team Barclay, 24/10/20'
'Jessica McNamara, Team Knight, 24/10/20'
There were a dozen or so of them, each a member-to-be of Project upstart, each picked by the Delphi Algorithm to be partnered up with either Lukas, Rhys or himself. And while the smallest section of their wall, there was an acceptance that this is what would be taking up most of their time for the first week or two. Ethan read the note in his hand for what seemed like the 20th time, the paper somehow managing to feel heavy between his fingers.
'Farah Hassan, Team Knight, 21/10/20'
His Team, today's date. She was apparently already on site, being briefed by Nia, and Ethan was less than an hour away from two partners becoming three. He understood that just Evie and Nia weren't really enough to keep him fully immune. The data from the US made it perfectly clear that a man needed at least half a dozen partners for his serum levels to be high enough, and there were indications that the UK's current DuoHalo strain was even more demanding. Even so, whenever they'd been able to let the dust settle between all the work and sex the last five days had seen a burgeoning romance between the three of them and, as apprehensive as he'd been at first, he was now worried about letting anything puncture that feeling. He felt like a teenager again, every interaction with the pair of women he was heady, fresh and occasionally awkwardly disarming, with his emotions straining at the bit as he tried to keep them reigned in. They had all but officially moved into the honeymoon suite together, spent a date night where Nia had opened up one of Taymont's restaurants for them, talked late into the evenings; fucked incessantly.
He looked up and realised both Evie and Rhys were watching him from their desks.
"How are you managing to put up with him over thinking things like this," Rhys asked Evie with amusement that strayed towards schoolboy mockery without quite reaching it. Ethan hadn't quite been able to pin down his feelings on Rhys Barclay fully yet. The (technically former) tabloid hack was clearly excellent at what he did and he had practised way with words and copy that was proving invaluable in helping Project Upstart get straight to the thrust of what they wanted to say. It was hard not to respect his talent. And yet, Ethan couldn't help being consistently aggravated by the privileged condescension which Rhys so readily lapsed into. He found it hard to shake the sense that if the Londoner was given the choice between another expensive suit or attempting human decency, Saville Row would win every time.
Ethan was grateful when Evie pretended to ignore Rhys, her background meaning she was much more at ease in that sort of company and knew that simply refusing to acknowledge him was far more withering than anything that might be said. She crossed the room instead and kissed Ethan, softly. "Maybe you should get some air before Nia calls you?"
He wanted to point out it had also been hours since she had taken a break. While the reality probably wasn't quite as overbearing, it almost seemed like every single one of the squares decorating the wall needed to be run by Westminster; debated, amended, passed further up the chain several times and then finally signed off the way they were in the first place. But then Evie Kimura didn't do breaks, didn't seem capable of letting up from what she put herself to for a second, and he knew better than to try and make her.
"I'm good I just need to get these video files squared away," he explained. The monitor beside him had clips Nia had managed to get her hands on from the US of women with nasty looking burns in streaks across their skin. They had all read in Averna's literature about how once a woman had become imprinted that another man's semen would be physically harmful to her, but it had been decided they really needed the visual examples to keep people from learning the hard way. Rather than reviewing the files into their archive however, Ethan had spent most of the last hour with his own thoughts, the task resolutely unfinished.
A delicate finger reached over and Evie pressed the monitor's power button, causing the images to disappear, and kissed him again.
"Ethan, come on. I can pull rank on you if you want," she insisted gently, playfully, a hand on his cheek bringing his gaze to meet hers as she gifted him an understanding smile. He wasn't sure it was possible to get tired of the way she kissed him, the way she looked at him.
Five days since they had rekindled things was more than enough for him to realise he was in love with her, and he'd quickly stopped caring whether that was natural or the vaccine. She may not have had the same intensity to her presence as Nia, but Evie was no easier for him to say no to. Diligent, dedicated and considered, if occasionally quietly understated, she was a force of nature in her own right and certainly was't quick to take no for an answer, insistent as a warm spring breeze.
There was still an occasional sadness to her too, something that slipped through every so often with a reluctance to be drawn on past relationships and the loss that had caused her to step back from Ethan once before. He wanted to help, but was smart enough not to press either, letting her cover over any lingering hurt with the moment to moment they were getting to share now.
It was only once she kissed him a third time that he realised he'd become caught in the brown of her eyes for several heartbeats longer than he meant to. "Fine," he said, relenting gladly, even after such a short space of time they knew how easy it was to just surrender to each other. "You win. I wasn't getting far with it anyway."
