Team Knight gets its fourth member.

Based on a post by AgathonWrites, in 12 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.

Chapter 5.
21st October 2020.

Mud.

Aliza 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 Aliza to swear as she

disappeared.

Aliza

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 meters 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 Aliza 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 realize 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 Aliza

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.

Aliza 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. Aliza'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 rumors 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

assholes from Palisade were meant to be safeguarding against.

"Just

how fucked are we," Aliza 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 Aliza

had met and if she wasn't being emphatic then the answer to how fucked

they were appeared to be 'very.'

Frustration bubbling over, Aliza lifted her head and screamed into the storm.

Ethan

turned the colored 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 visualize 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, Rex 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.