The circle had formed spontaneously in the Hub’s kitchen. Seven people stood around an invisible middle point, a centre of gravity nobody could see but everybody acknowledged. Like an improvised theatre group, they had agreed that in between them there was a physical object nobody could cross without invalidating the reality of the scene. Ada held a cup of coffee to her lips and slurped from the overflowing vessel. Black, bitter, boiling hot. It was perfect.
Last night was a fuck-up of epic proportions, and a post-mortem was due. The agenda of the meeting followed the usual four-point incident protocol that every member of the circle knew by heart: Assess, Mitigate, Fix, Learn.
First, assessment: They had made a process error by allowing an unknown individual to schedule a face-to-face over the emergency line. Ada nodded at Tom, standing directly across from her in the circle, requesting him to speak his mind.
“Yeah… he did the three-ring dial emergency code, so I called back on the third”, said Tom. “My mistake was I didn’t ask for the handshake. We had just changed it and I hadn’t memorised the new phrase. I was too lazy to log into the VPN to check the weekly update, so I let it slide. I’m sorry, that was my bad.” The Collective cultivated an environment of accountability, and owning up to your mistakes was a cleaning ritual that their members almost cherished. Much like the catholic confession, admitting to your mistakes purified the soul and affirmed the social bond between the members of the group. The circle murmured, accepting Tom’s apology.
Further assessment: They somehow missed their guests’s tracker. They’d relieved William Webster from his earthly possessions, tailed him all the way from his home to the airport, from the airport to Brighton, and kept on his tail the entire day.
“Fook me”, said Rob, a pierced, stubbly man in his early thirties, clad in shades of green. “He left home early in the morning and there wasn’t a fookin’ soul around. On the train, he changed his clothes from head to toe. I gave him back his passport, but what are the fookin’ odds….”
Tom replied: “I picked him up at the Brighton station and kept on him until he got to the club. For all I could tell, I was the only one on him.”
“All right”, said Ada. “We must have missed something. Let’s assume from now on that until we find a new vector, the existing exhaust list is not complete.”
Nods. Murmurs. The room was in agreement.
“So, do we think they followed us here?”
“You said you gave them the stunner?”
“Yes. They were hundred percent unconscious by the time we took the tunnel. I talked to Claire, the girls called the cops on the guys and they’d been taken to the drunk tank. No way any of them followed us.”
“So, we’re good?” said Rob.
“I think so”, Ada replied. “But that’s only a hypothesis based on available evidence.” She stretched out her arms. “I have no idea at this point. We have no logs.”
Sympathetic murmurs. Debugging this shit was hard, doubly so without data. No conclusive negative test made everyone nervous.
“Ok, so how do we mitigate?”, asked Carla. She was always equal parts calm and uncomfortably intense. However, in emergency scenarios like this, she was your best friend, since she could keep the group moving towards the needed direction without sowing chaos by over-reacting.
“We’ve secured the tunnel entrance on both sides”, said Tom.
“I’ve turned on the DR’s”, said Rob.
“We should get rid of him”, said Carla. “If it’s him they’re after, he’s only going to be bringing on drama we don’t need… especially not right now.” She threw Ada a meaningful glance.
Ada took a sip from her coffee and tried not to over-react. Within the Collective, rationality tended to prevail, and emotional arguments were easily detected, dissected and discarded.
“He is not safe. If we send him back, who ever is after him will have full access to him, and he now knows how to get here. If they aren’t onto us already, they will be after they get to him.”
Murmurs.
“So, how do we start to fix this, long-term?”, Ada asked. She was in a hurry to move from the mitigation phase to sustainable solutions, because the former might involve hastily concocted sacrifices she was not ready make. Not before she’d have had some time to think it through, anyway.
“Do we know who’s after him?”, asked Carla.
“Not yet”, Ada replied. “Probably not the Triads, they wouldn’t use an Irish team. So we have three options remaining. Unless it’s a nation-based attack, in which case it could be a hundred.”
“I think the solution to this problem lies in figuring out what they’re after”, said Carla. “What do they want?”
“Khhrrm.” From the doorway of the to the service corridor, a sound of throat being cleared.
The circle turned its collective heads towards the room’s entrance.
“I think I know the answer to that”, said Wint.