After a few minutes of hastily drawing things out, Sang took a deep breath and sat back. “There, that’s all of it,” she said.
“Lemme see,” O’Hara said as she snatched the paper out of Neil’s hands. She read over it for a few minutes, her eyes darting back and forth. “Interesting. Some of these symbols, these patterns... Definitely some kind of encryption. We’re gonna need an expert to poke around with it. Neil, can you call Fred?”
“Fred’s a nutcase,” Neil groaned. “Can’t we just call one of the guys from the agency?”
“Oh yeah, that’ll be easy to explain. Hey, code cracker, do you mind quickly deciphering this alien language for us? Thanks,” O’Hara said, shaking her head. “Fred might be a little out there, but he’s good with this kind of stuff. Dude was a linguistics professor for twenty years before he had one little manic episode. Can’t judge his work by one small incident.”
“Small incident? He burned down his own trailer and claimed that it was time to start anew and rise from the flames! That all language was nothing more than lies, and that he would invent the one language that was true!” Neil protested.
“Yes, but the good news is that his wife and kids had already moved out two days before he did that, so no one was hurt... And besides, that language of his is fascinating stuff. Get on the horn; call him.”
“Fine, whatever,” Neil said. “If he burns this place down, though, I’m blaming you.”
“Duly noted,” O’Hara said as she took Neil’s seat and leaned in close to Sang. “How you holding up?”
“I feel okay. My head is killing me, but I’m fine otherwise,” Sang said. She shifted a little in her bed. “What about Van?”
“Who cares? We got the message—we’re closing up shop,” O’Hara said.
“What?” Sang gasped.
“Look, we were ordered to investigate for alien communication and we found it. If this thing turns out to be real, then it’s big news. Big enough to bring in an actual operation on this thing. Get real agents on the ground—more investigators, bigger budget. If it ain’t real... well, we’ve spent enough money on this job and it may be time to go ahead and call it a loss. The taxpayers aren’t going to be happy, but other than that? No harm, no foul.”
Sang shrugged. It seemed a little anti-climactic to just stop right now. “Well, I think I’m going to stick around on this mission, if that’s okay.”
O’Hara shook her head. “I have no idea what happens next; we’ll have to get this message decoded first. In the meantime, just hang out and get some sleep. You’re probably suffering from some kind of trauma. The doctor doesn’t particularly know what happened, so we’re going to need a neurologist to check your head and make sure everything is okay.”
Sang sighed, the urge to fall asleep already overtaking her. It had been an intense experience... contacting whatever those aliens were... and it was somewhat of a relief that the mission was more or less on a break. As Sang began to close her eyes, though, a thought occurred to her: why hadn’t Van logged out? He’d been extremely nervous about being in Sleep Time to begin with, and would have left the moment Sang had vanished—if he’d had the option. Something wasn’t right, she realized.
Sang waited for O’Hara to leave the room before she scrambled out of her bed. She was careful to remove the IV, and then she grabbed a terrycloth robe that had been hanging off the door to the medical room. She hastily put it on over her hospital gown. There was no time to find other clothes—she had to check on Van. She staggered toward the pod room.
Inside the pod room was a small team of technicians; they were busy analyzing the pods. Sang could see a few of the technicians were measuring her own pod. “Hey, what’s going on?” Sang demanded as she limped up to the tech team.
“We’re taking this offline,” the lead technician replied. He was a short man with coke bottle glasses and a sneering face.
“Why?” Sang asked.
“Agent Neil ordered it. Said we’re putting a pin in the operation until further notice,” the man said. His name badge noted that his name was Earl.
“Well, I’m not done with it, so you can’t dismantle my pod,” Sang said, curling up her fists.
“Hey, lady, look... we’re not in charge here, but a job’s a job,” Earl said, nodding to the team. They hastily began to unplug some of the cords from the machine.
“Hey!” Sang said as she swiftly kicked Earl right in the stomach, causing the man to slump down and wheeze hard. “I’m in charge right now, and I’m saying this thing isn’t going to be dismantled until I give the okay. Understand?”
The four other technicians had all gasped at her assault, and now they looked on in horror as Earl writhed on the ground. Sang hadn’t meant to kick him so hard, but there was a voice in the back of her head saying that something was wrong.
And while she couldn’t remember what was bothering her, she knew the aliens had warned her about something specific. She just couldn’t remember what.
“The hell is going on?” Neil asked as he stalked into the room, a burrito in his left hand and a magazine in his other.
“You ordered them to take the pod offline!” Sang shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Neil.
“Yeah, cause we’re done here. Job’s over. We got the message thingy; we’re gonna decode it and figure it out from there. We’re packing up and getting out of here. Someone was spotted scouting this place out a few hours ago. We’re thinking it was either the Russians or Draco. Either way, we gotta bail.”
“What about Van?” Sang asked as the injured technician was hastily pulled away by the rest of the team. They all then scattered out of the room, apparently hoping to avoid any kind of serious injury.
“What about him? We’ll roll the pod out into the alleyway behind here, cover it with a tarp, and then when he wakes up, he’s free. And he gets to keep the pod,” Neil said. “So I don’t know what’s up with you, but you seem a little too frantic right now. We accomplished our job—why are you panicking so much?”
“Van’s in trouble,” Sang insisted. “I know it. The conversation with whatever those things were... they told me… something. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it. But I know there’s something off here. Something really wrong.”
“How is that our problem? It’s a freaking video game; Van will be fine. The doc said that if the unit powers down on its own, after a few hours, it uses some kind of safety disengagement system. He’ll be booted out of the game and it won’t affect him at all,” Neil explained, shaking his head as he walked over to the pod where Van was. “What, you think he’s in some kind of real danger?”
“How did those players die?” Sang asked. “Way back, the ones you first told me about? They died during Sleep Time! Draco must have done something to them.”
“Yeah, the sinister game company must have done something terrible,” Neil replied as he unwrapped his burrito and began to eat it while looking at all of the buttons on the pod’s interface. “Maybe they were tied to a train track by Draco and, when the train hit them, they died!”
“Are you seriously mocking me when you actively worked behind my back to trick me into a job where the primary goal was to find aliens?” Sang asked.
“Look, I’m sure he’ll be fine. There’s no reason to worry about this guy. Even if he is in danger, it’s not like he’s worth saving,” Neil said.
“Let me back in. I need to go back in there and find Van before he gets hurt. If they disabled his log-out ability, I’m the only way for him to get back out. I can use a bypass to get us both out.”