The Conduit: Chapter 5

Jane was still on his mind as he sat in his office with his hands clasped in front of him for over two hours. Their first meeting was anything but productive. It made things clear to Max. He would have to work harder to gain her trust. She was every bit like the scared child she appeared to be, and rightfully so. The way Jensen and his team found her, it was obvious she’d been through something extremely traumatizing, and Jane didn’t give him the immediate sense that she understood everything that was happening to her.

Even with the reality of her situation and things she should perceive as reasons to be afraid of them, he felt as if something were out of place. Many of her mannerisms fit with the context of her situation in ways Max expected they would. Yet, some of her patterns were completely surprising, and at times very unnerving. She was enigma wrapped up inside of a puzzle box. Max wondered if he could solve the puzzle that was Jane Doe.

Every time they opened the barrier, allowing them to pass things through to Jane, she looked as if her senses were being overloaded. The experience appeared to overwhelm her. Max thought he saw her smelling the room. He wondered if it was the odor of the sea, and the salty air being piped in through the ventilation system. It was meant to lull her, and other prisoners, into a sense of calm. Looking back, he questioned it being innocuous and began to think there was more to her responses. What was she so fixated by? Was it him?

Most of his questions were warm up questions meant to help him build a rapport with the young woman. He inquired about recent memories, specifically those before Jensen and the troops who found her in the village. He hoped to get her to open herself up to him and feel as if it was of her own volition. A voluntary statement about the past was always more reliable than ones gained by deception, or torture. However, he knew it was unlikely that she’d be open about recent events, particularly if she was confused about where she was found, or if it had been the one that somehow caused all the carnage.

Meeting with the doctor was meant to help them ascertain if Jane suffered from any injuries or medical problems that might hinder her from recalling recent events, remember where she was from, or who she was. Her vital signs were healthy, and Jane had yet to show indicators she suffered from any physical trauma. Max knew those weren’t guaranteed to be useful, and even after scans and tests, they hadn’t found anything unusual about Jane Doe. At least not yet. Still, she wasn’t sharing who she was, or as Max wondered, couldn’t remember.

For the fifth time, Max found himself going over the mission report, examining every detail of her retrieval. The team that Jensen ran was as confused as she was, leaving him with little clues to help break the girl or to get her to talk. Everything about her made Jane seem like a kid, and having to torture a kid for information was so outside the lines it was unthinkable. Even though the group would eventually order enhanced interrogations, Max didn’t want to go down that road.

The day was getting away from him as he’d been locked away for hours, focusing on the subject he was meant to study. He looked up at his window, seeing the setting sun as it dipped beneath the ocean. It had been eighteen hours since he started. Max logged out of his computer, closed his workstation, and exited through the control center as he announced he would be in his quarters or on the coms system.

“Goodnight, everybody,” he said to the techs in control as he walked out of the command center.

Walking out of the control center at nearly nine o’clock, he stopped to catch his breath as he stepped into the uncomfortably thick humidity. While locked away, he’d missed the past hours of an intense heatwave passing through the region. Even late in the evening, the temperature mixed with miserable humidity, making even the remote South Pacific location harder to work in. Max remembered the last time he felt such conditions, in the Columbian jungle.

As the breeze felt like opening the door to a blast furnace, he couldn’t wait to get below where it would be cooler. Max walked to the lifts and used his key card to go to the lower levels. He pressed the button labeled two, taking a quick trip down to the cantina level.

There were a couple of dozen staff and crew members at the cantina. As Max entered, several of his staff noticed him and gave an acknowledging nod. He ordered his usual, a beer, burger, and fries, before finding his way to a table with a view from fifty feet below. The water was cloudier than usual, due to the heat above, which changed the view to a less distracting experience. It was because of the global temperatures influencing the water temps, especially when they got further south of the equator.

Max contemplated what the oceans would be like in another fifty years. There were still vast swaths of land beneath the sea that were unexplored, and remarkably untainted by the touch of mankind. Picturing the future, Max envisioned a far dirtier world than the one he spent most of his life in. Then there were the realities of the sea rising with the rise in planetary temperatures, the surge in numbers of people on Earth, and the greed of corporations bent on stripping the planet of every resource in the name of making their shareholders happy.

Sitting at his favorite table, the coolness of the ocean temperatures helped keep the cantina at a comfortable degree. Max sipped his beer while he read over some daily reports from other departments. As he finished one, signing it before putting it in a file, he moved on to the next. It was a mundane task, but it was something that came with the job of station chief.

Three reports into the file, Max found a note written in Shelly’s handwriting. One of the launches took an unscheduled trip out to the first markers. Looking over the report, and examining the GPS printout, it was obvious that whoever took the launch went out to the Starry Night, which was still anchored at sea.

“Dammit,” sighed Max.

He knew it had to be the doctor. Nobody else showed the kind of curiosity about the yacht she had displayed. He didn’t understand why she was so interested. As he read the report, preparing to sign off on it, Max looked up to see Susan walking toward him.

“I was just thinking about you,” he sarcastically told her as she approached.

Susan smiled and rhetorically said, “Is that so?”

“I was wondering what you were up to today,” he deceptively suggested.

As she stood there, considering her answer, Max repeatedly pointed at the report in front of him and the satellite image of the anchored mystery yacht. He watched as her expression changed from cheery and upbeat to more somber and worried. Susan was a member of the Oceanic, and as such, Max was her boss.

She eventually confessed to violating the order. As she did, Max told her to sit down, listening for the excuse he expected her manufacture. He knew people didn’t like getting in trouble at work and expected her to try to excuse her behavior. He was only half correct.

“Yes, I disobeyed an order,” she admitted. “But can’t we talk about it?”

Max thought to himself, ‘this should be good.’ He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, staring at the attractive doctor under his command.

“I just wanted to check out the scene. I thought if I could find forensics that filled in the blanks, I might be able to answer the question, what happened to the crew and passengers?” explained Susan.

Max tapped his foot on the floor as he thought about how to respond to the doctor’s obviously well thought out ruse. Had she found something of value the picture might be different. He would have to admit that he was wrong in not authorizing her request to inspect the yacht. He imagined if she had, she would already be boasting about being successful. She had yet to boast.

“And?” he asked, “Do we have anything?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Susan, do you know the risk you took going out there?” he demanded to know.

Susan went on to remind her boss that she was a qualified boat operator and had grown up on the waters. She also had some experience in forensic evidence after interning with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With all her qualifications, she knew what she was doing.

“And if something happened to you?” he asked.

She reminded him that nothing happened. There was something she’d noticed that Max and Han hadn’t mentioned to her. The yacht was professionally cleaned after it was cleared. There wasn’t a single fiber, chemical, or hair that didn’t belong there. If the crew and guests were taken, they were surgically extracted from the craft. If there’d been more to it, there would have been blood or DNA that they wouldn’t have had time to erase. Susan admitted it didn’t set well with her.

Had she uncovered something, wondered Max. Whey they recovered the Starry Night, he and Han hadn’t noticed the lack of evidence. They knew it was mysteriously empty, but they’d focused on looking for signs of a struggle or other clues. Max was more concerned about Jane and the timing of taking her aboard the Oceanic. He’d never stopped to think about what he didn’t see.

There were no signs of a struggle aboard the boat and with the way the drinks and food were set out it appeared whoever the passengers were had disappeared with the crew. As they reconned the boat, they hadn’t seen a single bullet hole. Even the passenger rooms were relatively unscathed. Other than a couple of unmade beds, everything was normal.

“Alright,” nodded Max. “You bring up a valid point. Now, let me do the same thing. We are a thousand miles from land. You are the chief medical officer aboard the Oceanic. If something happens to you…”

Susan’s head dropped. He had presented a valid argument she didn’t always consider. She had two assistants, but nobody with her qualifications. If something happened to her and someone needed emergency surgery they’d be waiting hours to days.

“You’re right,” she sighed.

In his head, all Max could think about was his father’s voice. His dad’s wisdom wasn’t always true, but in this case, something he said brought a smile to Max. Marcus Shepherd’s views on women weren’t very modern, but he’d had a happy marriage. Part of that was because he didn’t often push an argument, and when he did, it was because it was one worth winning. That was why Max remembered hearing his father say over and over, if you win an argument with a woman like your mother, mark it on the calendar, because it’s not likely to happen often. Right then, as they sat at the cantina, Max wished he had a calendar.

“Can we agree to no more unauthorized excursions?”

Susan considered his position, and it was a hard one to fight against. But she wanted to be free to come and go as she desired. She countered his opinion with one of her own. It was become more of a negotiation in her view than it was his, but she was pleasantly surprised when he listened and was fair.

“How about I file the proper paperwork, post a travel plan, and agree to carry a weapon if I go out again,” suggested the doctor, full well knowing she wanted another look into the mysteriously adrift yacht.

“And if I say no, and decide to confine you to the station?”

Susan laughed at his question, telling him it wasn’t in his best interest. She wasn’t going down without a fight and wasn’t going to be denied access to the Starry Night. This was her chance to work on solving the mystery of a genuine ghost ship. There wasn’t anything he was going to say that would make her back off.

“Alright,” he sighed, relentingly. “I can see we aren’t going to see eye to eye. But you’re to notify security when leaving the station, for any reason. You disobey that order, and I’ll lock you down in your quarters under a two-man guard detail and request that you be replaced. You’re my responsibility. And that means making sure you make it back to the mainland when this rotation is over.”

There was a growing grin on Susan’s face as Max gave her his final offer, and she loved every minute of seeing him squirm.

“Stop smiling dammit!” he barked at her. “This is only until something goes wrong! Understood?”

She nodded, biting her lip to curtail her excitement. “Understood, boss.”

The doctor skipped back to her party of colleagues, leaving Max to stare as she left him alone. His dinner finally got there, and he decided to get it out of his mind so he could eat. Part of him felt like he caved too easily, but she’d done a good job finding that the yacht had been scrubbed of any evidence. Maybe she’d find more, maybe she wouldn’t. Either way, it was something worth informing the naval investigative team if they ever took possession.

Later in his quarters, Max sat reading a book when the alarm at his door alerted him. Someone was there to see him after ten o’clock. He grumbled to himself about how it better be an emergency. He wasn’t nave enough to believe it would be.

Max opened the bulkhead door, surprised to see a woman standing there, sexily biting her lip. Her sultry voice and deep soulful look caused him to freeze as she put a hand to his chest, slowly squeezing herself between him and the bulkhead frame. She invited herself into his living area, purring like a jungle cat as she pushed herself against him.

“Have you been thinking about me, Maxwell?”

The woman was in his room as the door whisked closed, and wow was all poor Max could think. Who was she, and why was she there, coming to him late in the night? None of his questions recallable from last time, Max stared as the black silk robe fell from her shoulders, revealing her naked body as she looked over her shoulder, motioning for him to follow.

Max was in a trance, a deep and gripping trance that held him like an iron vice as he slowly stepped toward his bedroom. There she was, seductively staring at him with dark bedroom brown eyes. The smell filling his nostrils was familiar. This was the woman that snuck into his bed before. She had returned, she had revealed herself to Max. Now, he would know which member of the crew left such an incredible memory etched in his mind.

She reached up, pulling him by the tee shirt collar, until he was on top of her and the two were kissing. Quickly, she pulled at his shirt, sliding up and over his muscular body. She pulled him to her, her tightly toned body pressing warmly into his flesh. Their arms wrapped around one another, rapidly becoming a writhing mass of flesh trapped in the throes of desire and passion.

“Who are you?” he mustered through his excited and labored breathing. “I don’t recognize you from the crew photos.”

“I’m here for you, Max,” she replied. “I am yours.”

She pulled him tightly, as if trying to crawl inside of him. Max tried to restrain himself in the middle of the primordial desire he felt for the beautiful creature beneath him. He wanted to distance himself from the woman, and to be inside of her, two beings sharing the same bodily space. He needed to know who she was, and with the powerful draw he felt for her, could not contain his lustful passions. Max couldn’t stop himself and began pulling at his belt and tearing at the button containing him in his pants. Their passionate kisses ignited a heat in him. He felt as if he were on fire, succumbed to a hellish landscape of fire around his soul.

“I’m here for you, Maxwell.”

Her voice echoed through the room. Or was it inside his head? He tried to push himself up and away from the woman but was stuck to her. The fleshly bodies containing who Max and the woman were seemingly fused together, as strands of flesh stretched between them. Max was being sucked into her, losing himself in the woman.

“Who are you?” he plead. “What are you doing…”