All is Fair Ch. 03

He sighed to himself, one of those well-practiced gestures that anyone around him would mistake for mild irritation and impatience, and he arrived at the lift. Predictably, the group of people waiting in the lobby for it gave him the now obligatory double take, then gave him a wide berth. He didn't even grace them with a look in their direction.

He just tried not to think of Lucy and how utterly horrified she would be by the person he was pretending to be. He tried not to think of Natasha and the look that would wash over her face if she realized her Dad was one of the bad guys. But mostly, he tried not to think of Jenny. The fear he saw in the eyes of everyone around him was mercifully absent in hers... that changing would be a fate worse than death. Thoughts of them had no business in a place like this.

They were the light, and he worked in the darkness. Those were rightfully mutually exclusive concepts and mutually exclusive parts of his life.

By the time the elevator arrived, he had upgraded his little facade to include an impatient tap of his foot; it was enough to ensure that every man and woman brave enough to step onto that elevator with him was more than a little on edge.

The unwashed masses, the peons, the plebs, the useful idiots, the mob, these were things he had to repeat to himself, over and over in his head. They were not thoughts that came naturally to him, which meant maintaining this air of dangerous disdain relied on him maintaining his inner focus, and if he was being honest, that shit was exhausting.

Finally, after at least half a dozen stops on the way up the enormous main building, they finally got to the 91st floor, where his office and the cubicles of his inner circle were located. Over the general hubbub of work being done and conversations being held, he could hear Ben.

Ben was gay. Ben wasn't just gay, Ben was very gay. He was the kind of effeminate gay man who fully embraced his sexuality without giving a single flying fuck what anyone else thought of it. He was loud, he was uncompromising with his words in either praise or beratement, and he was as loyal as they came. Adam enjoyed Ben, there was nobody on earth who would hold a secret like Ben could and he fully epitomized the personality which made him an effective and brutal gatekeeper to his inner sanctum... and at that very moment, Ben was being Ben.

"I don't know who you think you are," a loud, female voice echoed over the bullpen - the name given to the banks of cubicles filled with his closest employees, "but you are going to tell me where he is, and if you don't tell me, I will have you fired by lunchtime!"

"Yeah, good luck with that, Sharon," Ben's calm but blistering retort came right behind the first voice, "He is not in the office, I don't know when he is due to arrive, and there is no reality on God's green earth that makes you entitled to know where he is when he isn't here. So you can wait like everyone else, you can be informed when he arrives and you can come back then, or you can not see him at all. But if you even try to enter his office without permission, I have those lovely men from security on speed dial and they will haul your ass out of here so fast it will knock those cheap highlights out of your hair."

Adam slowed down as he rounded the corner into the main pathway that led between the cubicles, and into Ben's eyeline. The man spotted him after only a few seconds but made no attempt to alert the bristling woman to his presence.

"What is your name?" She seethed

"Ben."

"Ben what?"

"Just Ben is fine. You don't need to know anything else about me."

"I don't need... do you have any idea who I am??"

"I know exactly who you are, Sharon. I play squash with your boss every Tuesday."

"You will call me Miss Vickers!"

"Yeah, I won't be doing that." Ben smiled a smile that made no attempt to reach his eyes. "Will there be anything else?"

"I'm not going anywhere until I see Adam, asshole"

"Adam?" Ben raised an eyebrow challengingly. "I'm familiar with everyone on a first-name basis with Mr Doncaster. You aren't one of them. You're not as important as you think you are, Sharon, you are a secretary, just like me. You have no power, you have no authority, and you are nowhere near high enough up the food chain to make demands here. Earning your bonuses under your boss's desk is too much of a cliche for it to get you through doors on the 91st floor."

With a shriek of infuriated indignation, the woman lunged over the desk and grabbed Ben by his immaculate tie.

"That would be a mistake,"

"What are you going to do, dickhead? Speed dial whoever's cock you're sucking in security and hope they get here in time to stop me putting you in your place?"

Ben smiled again. "You are getting skank on my tie," he retorted.

Sharon, apparently that was her name, swung her hand back. "Life will become very unpleasant for you if you follow through with that," Adam said loudly and in his most menacing tone.

Sharon froze, her shoulders hunching up defensively as the rest of her physically shrank. Ben's tie was released in a heartbeat and he casually tucked it back into his suit jacket. "Morning, Mr Doncaster," he smiled.

Sharon climbed back down off his desk and turned around. "Mr Doncaster..."

"I thought it was Adam," Ben remarked, making it very difficult for Adam to keep a straight face.

"Mr Doncaster, I have been waiting for almost..."

"Let me tell you what is going to happen now," Adam said, not giving the woman the chance to finish her sentence. "You're going to leave. If I see you on this floor again, I will classify you as a security risk for trying to gain unauthorized access to my office. You know what that means, don't you?" He waited for Sharon to gulp, and then to nod. "You are going to tell your boss, whoever he is, to report to me within the hour, to explain to me who the fuck you are, who the fuck you think you are, laying hands on my people, and present me with a very detailed and very creative plan on what he is going to do to reprimand you, or I will do that part for him. Then, and only then, can he tell me what it is he wants. Now, Is there any part of that you aren't clear on?"

"No, Mr Doncaster, Sir."

"Good, now get out!"

If it was possible for a human to leave a trail of fire in their wake as they fled the room, it would only have been marginally more comical than Sharon's flight from danger. Of course, Adam had no intention of following through with his threat, but his reputation for having done so in the past was enough to lend it weight.

"Bye Sharon, have a lovely day," Ben called after her.

Adam arched an eyebrow at him. "Sharon Vickers, secretary to the head of the Financial Fraud Division," Ben explained. "She's been blowing Mr Peters for about eight months now and thinks that's enough time to start pressuring poor Bob into leaving his wife. Silly girl."

"And what does Mrs Peters think of all this?"

"Oh you know her, She thinks it's hot." Ben shrugged

Adam snorted out a laugh. "Still kicking his ass at squash?"

"He's getting better, actually," Ben leaned back in his chair. "If he could be tempted to the dark side with me, I'm sure we could strengthen his wrist." Adam squinted at Ben's teasing smirk. "It's a gay joke, handsome, don't worry. How're Jenny and the kids?"

Adam laughed again, "They're good, Jenny sends her love. I'm supposed to properly berate you for not visiting lately, though."

"Oh, well then consider me suitably berated." Ben gave him a lopsided grin, "I'll try to get out to see them this weekend."

"Any messages?" Adam smiled.

"Sharon Vickers from Financial Fraud was looking for you," Ben smirked, "Otherwise, no. Oh, wait, actually, Steph down in HR wanted to inform you that Frank Horrigan hasn't come into the office, or signed into his terminal at home since the day before yesterday and doesn't have any leave booked. She wanted to know if he had been in contact."

Adam's smile was wiped from his face. He hadn't heard from Frank since his call, but that had been from the office. It wasn't like Frank to just not turn up. That cold flicker of fear crept down his spine again as he remembered the conversation that had immediately followed his last call with Frank. Adam was a dangerous man, but Sandra White, the Minister for Internal Security, was on a whole other level. He was the thing that went bump in the night, he was the monster that hid in the dark, but she was the thing that even the monsters were afraid of. "Send his contact details through to my terminal, and I'll try to get hold of him."

Ben, ever observant, spotted the shift in his expression instantly. "Is everything alright?"

"I hope so, Ben, but best not dwell on this conversation," He gave Ben a pointed look, one Ben had seen and understood many times before. One that reminded the younger man how dangerous the wrong information could be to people who weren't supposed to have it. It was a polite, and even caring way for Adam to silently say "Forget this conversation ever happened, for your own sake."

Ben swallowed hard but didn't press the matter. Ben had a great working relationship with everyone on the floor, and Frank was no exception. Adam didn't pretend to pay much attention to office gossip, but even he had heard how Ben had taken Frank - a much older, straight man - under his wing to teach him the mysteries of style and personal presentation that Ben seemed to understand by instinct. Frank, never a man too proud to admit he needed help, let alone refuse it when it was offered, had, by all accounts, thrown himself behind every one of Ben's suggestions. The goal being, as in all things, to get himself laid, if not just to live more healthily, but even Jenny had commented on how much better Frank had been looking after their last office gathering, so it had clearly been working. Ben, more than likely, would have considered Frank a friend, and one look at Adam's face was all the young man needed to know that his friend may be in trouble or worse, and yet asking questions about it, any question at all, could be enough to land Ben in that trouble, too.

It really was a fucked up society they lived in.

With a nervous knot wringing around his stomach, he patted Ben on the shoulder and then headed into the vaunted bastion of his office.

Adam spared a moment to take a breath and he looked around the room. The ISD complex was a set of five towers growing out of the sprawling lower-leveled complex around it. Most of the main buildings were barely fifteen stories tall, and the five towers seemed to reach into the heavens like a set of bristling glass and titanium fingers. Each of the towers was a different height, and like with all things in the Imperium, your position in the tower was a sign of the respect and prestige of your department. The ISD had many, many functions, but it was, at its heart, an investigative agency. Adam was the head of the investigations division, and therefore, on days Minister White wasn't here, he was the highest-ranking man in the complex. In the three years that Minister White had been at the head of the ISD, she had been to the offices twice, and one of those was her initial tour around the place. Adam's office was in the tallest tower, and only White's office, one floor above his own, was higher placed.

You would think that would entitle him to a grand, oak-covered, throne-room-like office that took up more space than was reasonable for any three others, and maybe it did. But he didn't want that. It was a waste. The only thing in his office that held any sort of comfort for him was his chair, an exact copy of the one at home. It wasn't its comfort that he valued it for, though; it was its links to his family. Adam was a man with no shortage of hostile or even professional enemies, and so having pictures of his family on display or any links to them proudly dotted around the office - as much as he would have loved that - was a risk he wasn't willing to take. Not even the ISDs main index had his real home address, and the only references in there to his wife and daughters were the fact that they existed. Everything else was kept private, only shared with the people on this floor whom he trusted, people he was sure couldn't be coerced into giving up his loved ones if times got tough.

The only other thing about this office that held any sort of meaning to Adam was the view. Ninety-one floors above the earth, the world yawned out of miles upon miles in every single direction, and almost all of it was viewable from his seat of power. Caracas may have been hot and humid, so much so that the temperature control systems struggled to maintain a climate he was more used to, but by god, it was beautiful. Adam didn't know, before taking in that view for the first time, that there were so many different and vibrant shades of green, nor did he realize the sky could be such a dazzling shade of blue or the sun so bright within it.

A chime from his desk pulled his mind back to the present. The icy grip on his stomach, having barely relaxed its hold on him, reasserted itself with a vengeance as he swiped his hands over a few hidden icons, and the holo-terminal hummed quietly into life. In only a few moments, he had opened the message from Ben and tapped on the icon sitting conveniently next to Frank's com channel identifier.

The display changed to the symbol of the ISD, a silver and black shield with their motto in Latin beneath it.

Semper Vigilans

Ever Watchful.

A tone played out through the system's speakers at the coms channel was connected and rang on the other end. For reasons that he couldn't quite put into words, he was already seriously doubting that Frank would be answering the call.

So it came as something of a surprise when the call connected.

Adam's eyebrows furrowed deeper for a moment as, rather than the portly, rather overweight face of Frank Horrigan, the face of an older, dishevelled-looking woman appeared through the feed.

"Err, Hello," Adam said politely. "I was looking for Frank Horrigan."

"You must be Mr. Doncaster," the woman said hoarsely. "Frank always spoke very highly of you." Adam didn't miss the use of the past tense, and those frigid fingers tightened their grip on his stomach. "Frank..." she choked back a sob, "Frank was killed yesterday. He was hit by a hover car on the street outside."

"Oh Jesus," Adam gasped. To the woman, it doubtlessly sounded like a muttering of shock and dismay, and perhaps she was right. But the reality was that hovercar accidents involving pedestrians were extraordinarily rare these days, and that gasp was a realization that Frank's death was almost certainly not an accident. "I am so sorry, Mrs..."

"Horrigan," she sighed. "I'm... I was... Frank's mother."

Adam blinked. The human mind was capable of some truly astonishing feats of tangential thinking, but the woman calling herself Mrs. Horrigan immediately had him thinking that Ben had been training a lothario in the ways of seduction when he was already married, and that thought had managed to fully compose itself in the fraction of a second it took before Mrs. Horrigan clarified that she was his mother. Thankfully, he recovered quickly. "I... I don't know what to say, Mrs Horrigan," Adam offered as gently as he could. "Frank was a hugely valuable member of my team, and he had a lot of friends here who will be heartbroken to hear this tragic news. He was... he was a good man."

The tears were streaming down her face now, and her shoulders were rocking with the silent sobs that she was barely containing. Adam was watching a woman's world collapsing around her; her child, her baby, her reason for being, had been killed, and Adam couldn't even begin to imagine what that must have done to the poor woman's soul, just like he couldn't imagine the pain he and Jenny would be in if something ever happened to one of their girls. "Thank you," she sobbed.

"Mrs Horrigan, I am going to send you my contact information," Adam went on, trying to compose himself. "If there is anything you need, anything at all, I don't care how small or insignificant it may be. I want you to get in touch, and I will do everything I can to help you through this awful time. Please, accept my sincere..." he stopped himself and sighed heavily. "I don't have words to tell you how sorry I am, how sorry all of us are, for Frank's loss. The world is a poorer place without him."

She tried to smile through her heart wrenching sobs. "I can see why he liked you so much, Mr Doncaster," she croaked. "Thank you. I... I think I will take you up on that. I... I have to go."

"Thank you for answering the call, Mrs Horrigan, Goodbye."

She nodded but said nothing else before closing the channel.

Adam sat there in shock for a few minutes, his mind racing through every single possibility that didn't involve Minister White being involved in Frank's death. There weren't many of them, and it was not like he could openly accuse a member of the high council of murder, even if he had irrefutable proof. Instead, he would have to jump through hoops and go through the motions of following protocol. An ISD agent had been killed; an investigation into his death would need to be opened to rule out foul play, even if he already knew that investigation would find nothing, and if it did, the culprit was untouchable.

"Fuck!" he spat before turning back to his terminal and putting an internal call through to Ben. "Rally the troops," he said when the younger man answered the call. "Meeting room two, ten minutes, no exceptions."

Given the way their last conversation had ended, Ben's concerned frown was hardly unexpected, but he followed his instructions with a brief "right away" and closed the call.

Adam turned his attention back toward the window and gazed out over the landscape. He had barely had time to organize his thoughts into something coherent, his mind thinking that maybe a minute or two had passed when his terminal chimed again, shocking him to see that he had been lost in thought for almost a quarter of an hour. "They're all ready for you, Sir," Ben's voice notified him.

"I'll be right there," Adam sighed heavily.

He shut off his terminal and headed out of his office, passing back along the gangway between the now deserted cubicles and hooking a right into the first and largest of the meeting rooms. The entire team, the whole floor, and some thirty-odd people were gathered inside. The dull murmur of conversation halted abruptly as soon as he stepped into the room.

"Thank you all for coming," Adam said, trying - and probably failing - to keep an air of professionalism in his tone. "I've just been made aware of a situation that I felt you all need to know about, and it is best you hear it from me," he waited for a few heartbeats to ensure that he had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. "Yesterday morning, Frank Horrigan was hit and killed by a hover car outside his residence."

It was brutal; it was maybe even a little heartless, but it was better to deliver the news as effectively as possible. Frank had been killed; he hadn't died in an accident like a bad fall down the stairs or a drunken stumble into a river, it hadn't been an illness or natural causes; he had been killed. Ripping off the bandaid in delivering the news like that would shock his subordinates into taking the situation that little more seriously. "I know some of you were close to him, and if you need a moment to process this, then you can take all the time you need," he flicked his eyes to an utterly devastated-looking Ben. He was barely holding it together. "But there are some very important factors that need to be considered here. Frank was one of us; he was a member of ISD, and that means we have to be absolutely certain that his death happened exactly how it appears to have happened. There can be no room for errors on this one. If this was an assassination made to look like an accident, I want to know about it!"