Chapter 19 : The Bait
The USB drive was matte black, unmarked, and sitting in the exact center of Broyles' desk when I arrived at the field office.
"Nobody saw who placed it," Broyles said. His voice carried the flat control of a man who had just learned his secure facility had been breached. "Security footage shows nothing. The drive appeared between 3:17 and 3:23 AM during a camera sweep."
Six minutes. Jones' people had placed a device on the Deputy Director's desk with a six-minute window and zero witnesses.
"Have you opened it?"
"Tech team verified it's clean — no malware, no tracking. Just a text file and a set of coordinates." Broyles turned his monitor to face me. "Read it."
The text was simple, elegant, the prose of someone who enjoyed precision:
Boston Harbor. Forty-eight hours. Bioweapon release targeting water treatment intake valves. Fourteen thousand casualties projected within seventy-two hours of exposure.
I have the neutralization protocol.
Send Clark. Alone.
Meeting coordinates attached.
I stared at the words until they stopped making sense, then kept staring until they made sense again.
"He's not hiding," I said. "He's negotiating."
"He's demanding." Broyles' jaw tightened. "Jones escaped federal custody, evaded a city-wide manhunt, and now he's using a bioterror threat as leverage to get a meeting with a provisional consultant."
"With me specifically."
"Yes." Broyles' eyes met mine. "Care to explain why David Robert Jones knows your name?"
The question hung between us. I didn't have an answer that wouldn't make things worse.
"I don't know."
"That's not good enough."
"It's what I have." I pulled up the coordinates on my phone — a warehouse district in South Boston, industrial, isolated, exactly the kind of location someone would choose for a meeting they wanted to control. "The threat is real. Jones' previous intelligence has been accurate. If he says there's a bioweapon pointed at the harbor, we have to assume he's telling the truth."
"And if the meeting is a trap?"
"Then it's a trap I walk into with my eyes open."
The briefing room was tense. Olivia stood with her arms crossed, her expression communicating exactly what she thought of the proposed operation. Walter examined the USB drive with scientific curiosity, as if the physical object might reveal something the contents hadn't. Peter leaned against the wall, watching everyone without speaking.
"We can't send a civilian into a meeting with a known terrorist," Olivia said. "Jones has killed people. He's tortured people. Whatever he wants from Clark, it's not a friendly conversation."
"The alternative is letting the harbor threat proceed unchecked." Broyles' voice was measured. "We don't have time to find the bioweapon independently — Jones knew that when he set the forty-eight hour window."
"So we find it anyway. Walter can analyze the likely compounds, we can—"
"Agent Dunham." Broyles cut her off. "I appreciate your concern for the consultant's safety. But this is his decision to make."
All eyes turned to me.
The weight of the vest pressed against my chest — I'd been wearing it since Olivia gave it to me, a constant reminder that the danger was real and getting realer. Jones wanted to meet me. Jones had compiled enough information to ask for me by name. Whatever game he was playing, I was already part of it whether I agreed to the meeting or not.
"I'll go," I said.
Olivia's expression flickered. "Kade—"
"He's going to find me eventually. Better on terms I choose than terms he sets." I looked at Broyles. "But I want backup. Hidden, not obvious. Someone who can extract me if things go wrong."
"I'll do it." Peter pushed off from the wall. "I know the South Boston warehouse district — spent some time there when I was younger. I can position without being seen."
"That was fifteen years ago," Olivia said.
"Some things don't change." Peter's eyes met mine with something that wasn't quite trust but wasn't quite suspicion either. "You sure about this, Clark?"
"No." The honesty surprised me. "But I'm sure about the alternative being worse."
The wire was small, professional, the kind of equipment that only showed up in federal budgets. Astrid fitted it under my collar while the rest of the team prepped tactical positions.
"The range is about three hundred meters," she said, adjusting the microphone placement. "Peter will be within that radius. If anything goes wrong, say 'I need to leave' and he'll move in."
"And if I can't say anything?"
"Then he watches and makes a judgment call." Her hands paused on my shoulder. "Be careful, Kade. Jones asked for you by name. That's never good."
The warning echoed something I'd felt since the USB drive appeared — the sense that I was walking into a situation I didn't fully understand, following a script I'd thought I knew but had long since diverged from anything predictable.
"I know."
"Do you?" Astrid's voice was quiet, gentle, the tone of someone who had decided to say something difficult. "You've been different since the pyrokinesis case. Quieter. More uncertain. Like something changed that you're not telling anyone about."
The Translation sickness. The fever dreams on the bathroom floor, the system rewriting my biology to process energy signatures I'd never been designed to handle. The growing awareness that my meta-knowledge was degrading, that every intervention I made pushed the timeline further from the script I'd been following.
"Something did change," I said. "I just don't know how to explain it yet."
"You don't have to explain it to me." Astrid stepped back, checking the wire's concealment. "Just... come back. The team needs you. More than they admit."
I nodded, not trusting my voice to respond.
The coordinates led to an abandoned textile factory in South Boston — Jones' choice of venue, Jones' rules, Jones' game.
Time to find out what he was playing for.
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