No Man's Land

6- Way Too Early in the Morning

Jana ****

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All four of us jolted awake at the same time. A flash of pain coursed through my body as I felt a sharp sting above my collarbone. Judging by their faces, the others had felt it too.

"The hell was that?" Chestine swore. I touched my hand to the spot, and it came away with blood.

"Shit. I think that was from our trackers." Carrie said. I quickly surveyed the clearing and looked at my watch. It read 4:37, but judging by the sun whatever time zone we were in was two hours ahead. Still, almost everyone in the clearing was asleep, covered by a small blanket or jacket. Only Reanne, who had offered to take the last shift of watch, and Jenna, who she was talking to, were awake. We had imposed the watch secretly to make sure that none of the passengers could do anything reckless or suspicious without us knowing.

"There's only one way to figure out if you're right." Michael said, rubbing his neck. I sighed and pulled back my skirt, removing the knife from its sheath on my left thigh.

"We can try mine." I offered.

"Do you want me to do it?" Carrie asked.

"As much as I trust you having a knife to my throat, it's okay. Do you have a mirror, though?"  Carrie laughed half-heartedly, and nodded as she riffled through her duffel before unearthing a compact mirror. "Hold that, would you?"

I braced the blade with my finger, and focused on the mirror as I created a small cut an inch above the center of the left side of my collarbone. The knife was made of one of those steele's that you often didn't feel the sting of till it was gone, so I didn't feel it right away. I quickly pushed out the tracker and held it in my hand.

Tracker's weren't standard procedure for CIA, or any government for that matter. It had been Michael's idea; he had seen a report on a man who had implanted an Apple Pay chip into his hand, and that sparked it. They were each loaded with one thousand dollars so if we needed money in a pinch we had that, and so that our handlers would be able to find us whenever.

Now, in my hand, the thing looked much simpler than that. And fried. It was simple and fried. 

"Damnit." 

"We need to tell the others. This basically confirms foul play. Whoever set this up is aware that we are alive so there's likely more coming." Carrie said, her voice dulling down. 

"Would you call this urgent?" I asked.

"Relatively." 

"In that case let's talk about it before the civies wake up." 

We all stood up, a quiet moment passing as we all unruffled our clothes. We had brought sleepwear, but wanted to spare the fabric. I pulled the orange bottle out of my oversize jacket, quickly dry-swallowing four of it's meager contents. We had been sleeping under a small shelter consisting of a tarp spread out in a tree above us to block any rain, and the light blankets that we had packed. It was certainly not the best experience, but better than nothing. 

As we crossed the clearing, I tried to brush out my collarbone-length brown hair with my fingers, before making two messy braids and tying them off with hair elastics. I could brush it out better later. I took a quick look down at the first person I had come upon. Thanks to human nature, the agencies had all slept in the same areas as their colleagues, while the normal passengers slept in scattered groupings. This man was Alexander Lewis, by my memory. I'd have guessed he was in his early thirties. 

Humans have this natural sense where they can usually feel someone's presence near them. Nothing spiritual or whatever, but because of basic instinct. Upon me standing at his feet, Alexander's eyes burst open. 

"What?"

"We're calling a meeting." His eyes flickered to the rising sun.

"At six in the morning?" 

"Hey, I'm not a fan either. Now help me wake up your friends."

"So it's confirmed, someone took the plane down on purpose." Carrie started off.

"How do you know that?"

"I'm getting to it. Basically, the four of us have altered wireless pay chips implanted. They also serve as a method of tracking us. Now this morning we wake up to discover our chips have been fried." The surrounding agents broke into murmurs before Maxine asked,

"How do you know it wasn't just mechanical difficulty?"

"Because Langley doesn't do mechanical difficulty.  These things are completely wirelessly controlled. To fry them you would need to flood the processor, which isn't a mistake easily made." I said quickly. "Besides, we removed mine and took a look at it, thus confirming our suspicions."

"If there is definitely foul play, we need to reevaluate the pilot's death. If he was killed by a transferable poison the culprit is likely here with us and/or has transferred it to others. Poisons with those extreme effects are really potent and could be leaving trace compounds everywhere." Parker said, a solemn expression written on his face.

"Like with the Litvinenko poisoning. He was the only one that died but dozens of people came in contact with the Polonium 210." Offered Reanne, who I recalled was one of the FBI.

"Exactly."

"Then what do you propose we do?" Asked Maxine. I shrugged.

"At the moment, there isn't much we can do. Keep it on the downlow, don't let the passengers know there's anything wrong. We should have enough collective materials to do a very basic autopsy on the pilot.  I'm not sure if any of us have a medical degree, but we should still have enough basic medical training to spot the basics."

"I can help. I did a stint as a field medic in the army." Offered a man, Ferguson.

"I double that. I've got field medic training as well." Carrie said. The man nodded and turned back to Parker.

"Okay, so Carrie and Ferguson will do the autopsy, and the rest of us will continue to do whatever it is we are doing." He declared. Perhaps declared wasn't the right word- he sounded like he wanted us to okay it. I nodded, and so did Maxine with everyone else. 

A/N: That was a bit of a shorter chapter, but there's more to come. As school starts back up, I may have to adjust my upload frequency from twice a week to once a week. Also, I referenced the name Litvinenko. Yeah. That's in reference to former Russian Spy Alexander Livinenko who was poisoned with Polonium 210. Thanks, BuzzFeed Unsolved- you've taught me a lot.