Shiva: Cold Memories

[x-maverick.livejournal.com]

Maverick meets with Doug to learn about the decrypted data, and why his former associates are trying to kill him.



The morning air in Central Park was crisp, but with that hint of warmth to it that suggested that spring was not too far off. The squalling of a toddler taking a fall in the playground mixed with the squawking of the pigeons scattering before a bicyclist. Doug Ramsey sat on a park bench, a copy of the New York Times held open before him and a stack of similar publications running the gamut from the Village Voice to the National Enquirer sitting beside him.

Doug shrugged his shoulders under his beaten bomber jacket and quirked a half-smile that was obscured by the paper. The 'junior trenchcoats', as they had dubbed themselves, had all purchased short leather jackets in various styles. Amanda had her ubiquitous black biker jacket, Marie-Ange a more fashionable jacket that looked almost like a suit jacket, and so forth. But given the person he was expecting any minute now, and the nature and location of their meeting, Doug almost wished he had a full-length trenchcoat like Remy or Betsy had. It would have suited things more. After all, 'two men in trenchcoats meet on a park bench' was practically a staple of bad spy novels.

If Nord said anything about 'the eagle flies at midnight', Doug was just going to lose it.

"Mister Ramsey, I presume?" came the voice from behind the bench. North's voice was calm and flat, with almost no trace of an accent -the obvious signs of someone who'd been trained to mask their country of origin, to blend in with any populace. Today, however, he managed to look like any New Yorker in a dark brown trenchcoat, his newly-shaved face expressionless as he peered out over the park.

"Herr Nord?" Doug asked in reply as he folded his paper precisely and set it on top of the stack. "Or do you prefer North?" He'd taken the opportunity to read up slightly on the X-Men's files about the other man while working on the encrypted information that had been provided to him. Even without the description, there was little doubt that this was the man he was expecting. Despite the lack of expression, his body radiated a coiled readiness to take violent action if it became necessary, and his eyes missed little, even while they seemed to casually scan the park.

"North is fine," the older man replied, looking Doug over before shaking his head. "Christ, they keep getting younger and younger every year. What are you, twenty? Fuck's sake. Still, you come with a reputation, Ramsey, and what's more - you work for Elisabeth Braddock, and if she trusts you, well..." he spread his hands to punctuate the statement and turned casually to lean against the back of the bench. To anyone else it would have appeared a casual gesture - but to Doug's observation it was a calculated maneuver to ensure that both men could maintain a view of the area around them while keeping an eye on each other.

There was a reason for the stereotype of the "spies meeting in the park", after all. The open areas precluded direct close observation, and the omnipresent background noise of the city traffic, wandering flocks of geese, and wind through the trees provided the audio equivalent of a thick smokescreen should anyone try and eavesdrop remotely.

Rubbing his bare hands together and blowing on them to stave off the biting chill of the wind, North nodded absently to himself. "An attempt was made on my life last night by a former teammate of mine," he announced casually. "I'm interested in what you could find on those tapes."

"Twenty-one," Doug corrected wryly. Not that the single year was likely to make a difference in North's eyes, but it was the principle. Precision. "Maybe it's just that you keep getting older every year rather than the other way round," he couldn't resist a slight barb in return. His hand brushed against a messenger bag that looked like hundreds of others that young professionals carried their personal effects in.

"A fair amount of filler data, mostly financial records of Stryker's off-the-books stuff with Weapon X in the early nineties," he started in the same neutral conversational tone as North. "While that has some interesting tidbits, I suspect it's not the stuff you were looking for." He leaned forward, elbows on knees and fingers interlaced.

"The meat of things is the operating parameters for a distributed computer network, program codename SHIVA. It looks like the program piggybacks off of DARPAnet, which makes sense from an operational standpoint. Given how much redundancy was built into DARPAnet, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to take out all the nodes in order to halt the SHIVA program."

"An infallible insurance policy," North replied with a sigh, his tone almost carrying something like respectful admiration. "Colonel Stryker always had an escape plan, an answer for everything. We used to run training scenarios for the 'rogue agent' protocols. That's what SHIVA is, then. It's Stryker's rogue agent protocol, yes?"

Doug nodded. He understood the almost admiration. From all accounts, Stryker had been a real piece of work, but he certainly knew how to plan for eventualities. "There's a passive program, that keeps track of all of Weapon X's sleeper agents. The other piece is an active protocol that goes into operation if one of those agents breaks conditioning and goes rogue." He cocked his head at North, knowing that he didn't need to spell out that in this case, the 'rogue agent' was him. "If the rogue appears to be a threat to the overall security of the program, another agent is activated to..." He shrugged, unable to come up with a suitable euphemism. "Well, you get the picture."

North nodded. "That explains Mastodon. And now Wraith. Well, shit," he grumbled, jamming his hands in his pockets. "I know John Wraith, I worked alongside him for years. Last night... we always wondered, you know. If it came down to it, who could take out who. None of us wanted to go up against Logan, of course. I believe the plan if Logan ever went rogue was to call in an airstrike. But Wraith - 'Kestrel' was his callsign back then. Wraith was probably number two on the list of people that you never wanted to wind up on the bad side of."

Another pause for thought, then the former Weapon X operative spoke again, not making eye contact with Doug. "How many sleeper agents are there?" he asked. "How many am I going to have to kill before they get to me?"

"I don't know." It was a poor answer, but it was the truth. "There was a partial list on the tapes you supplied, but the data is corrupted after a certain point. There's no way of knowing if the garbled name that's last on the list is the actual last one, or if there are any more that come after it. One, ten, a hundred..." Doug shook his head.

"Then we'll need the original list," North surmised. "Stryker would have kept backups at the Alkali Lake facility. I understand that it's no longer operational after the X-Men's visit some years ago." He sighed and smiled in reminiscence. "I always hated that place. Fucking British Columbia. But Lyman mentioned that after it flooded, the US government seized what they could from the wreckage. They would have the recovered files kept somewhere - I need to find them." He turned and finally looked Doug in the eye, face suddenly impassive again. "Elisabeth Braddock helped me unlock my past once," he said. "Now I need your help to put it to rest."