Chapter Fifteen

Susan’s Revenge

An invitation to join a meeting on the dev floor was unusual for an Operator to receive, but things weren’t exactly normal in the office these days. Susan made her way to work as usual and took care of some paperwork and follow ups with the local police in relation to the incident the Friday before. Operators Owens death was a shock but she was well used to it from her time on the force. The O Room was in a panic. They had a conference call with the leadership of the CIB and some members of the Central Commission itself. Susan was glad to be giving it a wide berth and to be heading down to the dev floor instead. She decided to grab a coffee as she got there. The devs had coffee machines just inside the main entrance that had better coffee than the rest of the building. As she was putting the lid on her cup a tall ponytailed man approached her. “Susan right?”. Susan extended her hand and greeted him. “My name is Johan, Charlie is caught up in the O Room so I am going to brief you instead. Step into Charlie’s office just over there and I will be with you in a moment”. Johan began selecting a coffee of his own from the machine. Susan made her way across the dev floor, through the maze of cubicles and into Charlie’s office. There were two chairs either side of a minimalistic table. The only item on it was a folder with no markings which Susan was tempted to take a peek in but decided to wait. Johan entered the room, activating the jammer and sat down across from Susan. “Thanks for coming Susan. What I am going to discuss with you is not going to be easy listening. I am going against the O Room under orders from Charlie. You must commit to keeping this between us.” “Is this about Kennedy and Fleet…”. “Not a million miles away Susan, we will get to that”. Johan took Susan through the beginnings of Oculus and the period of time when the Lens Laws were coming into effect. “When we were running Oculus at first, the Central Commission saw the potential early on, and we saw their lust for its implementation. In order to sow resistance to the lens, to protect the privacy of the individual, a small enclave of us acted. We released access to Oculus to undesirables, people who would use it for the very worst of reasons”. Johan opened the file Fleet had given Charlie and slid it across the table. Susan took a glance through it and pushed it back across the table. “I have seen this already”. “No. You haven’t seen the full file. Take your time”. Johan pushed the file back to Susan who took a second look. Page after page Susan grew angrier and angrier. “You’re a lovely fellow aren’t ya, Johan”. Susan closed the file and put it into her bag. “I am sincerely sorry about what happened to you Susan, and the others, but I must insist that the file stays with us”. Susan rose to her feet and threw her coffee over Johan. “You tell Charlie not to worry his little head about this file”. Susan left the room and made her way to the the elevator. Johan was following her but she knew he couldn’t risk making a scene and he knew it too. He veered off towards the bathroom as the elevator door closed well before he could make it. The elevator opened at the ground floor and Shiels was standing their waiting to go up. “Sue, how’s things?”. She just brushed past him and made her way to the entrance. She looked back to see was he following her. He was just standing there grimacing away. Susan made it to her car and headed for the outskirts of town to Apartment 14, Cooper’s Square. She finally had a name and an address for her assailant.