Quaranteam - The Upstart's Knight Ch. 05

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."

"Good,'" she replied, teasing him with, "it's so much easier if I don't have to get Nia down here to make you see sense."

He laughed, "no, please, I said I yield. Have mercy."

Evie finally eased back away from him, as if realising how long they'd lingered in each other's personal space and perched herself on the edge of Ethan's desk. Across the room Rhys had gone back to 'working' with feigned politeness but it was obvious he was still keeping a watch out of the corner of his eye.

Taking her phone out of her pocket, her tone shifted to something more suggestive. "So...I was saving this, but you feel like you could do with something else to think about right now?" He was about to ask exactly what she meant as her fingers tapped away at the device, but was stopped by his own phone, placed atop the desk, lighting up with a message notification.

Ethan didn't need help recognising the swell of Evie's arse in the picture that filled the screen, or the now familiar folds of her pussy. After a moment he even was able to appreciate that the skirt that was hiked up to allow the close up shot of her crotch was the same one she was wearing now, the delay in realisation only coming from the fact that his attention was more immediately grabbed by the contour of a black plug snug within her asshole.

There was a self-inflicted blush on Evie's cheeks as he looked back to her in surprise. The pink tinge on her pale cheeks was something Ethan was getting used to, although familiarity didn't dim his appreciation. Evie was significantly more sexually experienced than he was, but possessed of an outward modesty that wrapped her appetites in a coyness that begged to be teased apart. He did his best not to shift too obviously as his cock stiffened, thoughts tripping over his own arousal.

"Are you still..."

"Yes," she hissed quietly, glancing in Rhys' direction while seeming to enjoy the danger of potential interruption. "Keep it down."

He tried to keep up with the implications of the fact she was doing this for him, his attention, their mutual gratification. She was like something out of a dream and the animal part of his brain strained against the rational.

"God Evie, I...oww" he started speaking, still much too loud for anywhere near the discretion Evie was after, and she cut him off with a light jab of her shoe into his shin. There was exasperation with him on her face, but no little amusement either, and she returned to typing.

*Evie K: Maybe I want you to remember to come back to me after Farah gets here.*

Taking a breath, Ethan managed to control himself, grinning as he composed a reply with his own message.

*Ethan: We can see. I might need a little more reminding?*

Evie blushed again then smiled. Theatrically she placed a finger against her chin in a show of consideration.

*Evie K: Well...if you need it*

A beat passed and then another picture appeared. Taken from a similar angle, a pair of Evie's fingers were captured spreading apart her lips, inviting, slick and pink in contrast to the black of the plug still in frame, the sheen of her arousal smeared across the digits. He felt his blood rush. Just how many of these did she have taken for him anyway? When did she take them? How much thought had she put into this?

*Ethan: Fuck...*

*Ethan: I think I'm in love*

He typed the declaration without thinking, intending it to come across as playful and flirtatious but immediately regretted how heavily it cut through their interaction. Emotions tugged at Evie's expression and he felt a brief moment of panic as he struggled to read exactly what she was thinking. As much as she claimed to be over past hurts this last week had been a rollercoaster for both of them and he worried that this felt too candid, too fast. More than she was ready for. Evie flushed, glancing away as the moment suddenly turned awkward.

His anxieties risked running away from him until she leaned back in, once again lingering her lips against his. "You could have picked a more romantic way to say it..." she said, forehead still pressed against his, her voice quiet with attempted humour masking her self-consciousness.

Ethan went to speak, but she gave a shake of her head and stopped him with a slight smile.

"Laura and I are meant to be briefing the cabinet in half an hour," she continued, looking towards the clock and rising to stand, already drawing herself back from getting too caught up in feelings she apparently needed effort to unpack. "And you're needed elsewhere maybe we both should have picked a better time for this?""

"A better time? I'll check my diary, might be able to pencil you in next month" he joked, keen to try and lighten the mood again.

There was a roll of her eyes. "Just make sure Farah feels at home for me?"

He nodded, letting her go, reminded again, still kicking himself and reminded that things were imminently about to get even more complicated. "I'll do my best."

Simply doing his best barely felt like it was enough. Evie deserved better than fumbled proclamations and cluttered attempts to stray through feelings. But as she paused and looked back in his direction from the door, the adoration was unmistakable, and he decided maybe he wasn't doing such a bad job after all.

A chuckle came from the other side of the office as soon as Evie left. Ethan had half half forgotten that Rhys was there, using his monitor as cover, and he was tempted to make his own excuses and leave rather than be left to engage the journalist on his own. Doing that felt a little too obvious of a snub however, so he relented, reluctantly letting him speak.

"You lucked out there," Rhys noted in a way that managed to feel seedy rather than authentic. "Not that Lukas and I are doing bad for ourselves, but you? Your luck?" He gave an impressed whistle to make his point.

"It's not like I asked for this, the algorithm just.." Ethan began to protest in return, only for Rhys to brush him off with a dismissive wave of a hand.

"Oh please, you don't have to keep playing the humility card when it's just us. You can crow a bit about how well things are going for you if you want. Most people would kill to be in your shoes even before adding a celebrity to the mix."

Farah Hassan wasn't exactly what Ethan would call A-list, but celebrity definitely wasn't an inaccurate word for her. Although it was one he'd been trying not to linger on. A former cricketer turned aspiring presenter she certainly had a profile several magnitudes above any other woman to play the sport for England and he'd had to triple check with Nia when he'd been told the British-Asian woman was going to be joining them.

He found it hard to argue with Delphi's choice on a professional level at least. Born to working class Pakistani and Indian immigrants in Bradford, Farah had come to public attention not because she was the best at what she did but because of the easy, energetic charisma she had, going viral every time she showboated by juggling a simple catch or cracked jokes in a post match interview. And when her career had ended just before the pandemic it seemed natural to most people she would move into the media. If they were looking for someone to be the symbol of what they were doing Ethan was struggling to think of better, the perfect poster girl for exactly the sort of modern Britain he thought they needed to be speaking to. The personal implications on the other hand were somewhat easier to have doubts over, but then that feeling was becoming a familiar one.