Jerry

I encountered Jerry today. That did not go well. I was checking if the way was clear when a trio of ex-USECs rolled into view. One of them was Jerry, my old rack-mate. I'd recognize him and his gait anywhere. 

"Hey Jerry! It's me." I stood up and waved, weapon slung.

Briefly I saw worry flash across his face - but not recognition. He raised his weapon and I dropped to the ground, fast, and rolled down behind the ridge I had been standing on. I hit the bushes and ran as a fireteam's worth of gunfire tore up the location I'd just been in.  (If you never witnessed it, it's a lot - a simple three or four man fireteam can put down a mind-boggling amount of fire).

Fortunately they didn't follow. I ran away hurt. Not physically, but upset that Jerry, of all the people in Tarkov, had just tried to kill me.  I really am alone.

Jerry and I were never close, but for a year we had bunked together - sharing a small room in the USEC barracks on campus. We had developed an elaborate, ever increasingly byzantine set of protocols for handling the event that one of us managed to sneak a woman up into the room. It was an ongoing joke.  Jerry worked campus security like me and we often ended up sharing the same assignment. So there were many days we'd both wake, do the shift together, eat together, sit around in the evening together, like some old married couple.  I don't think we ever fought, though sometimes we'd get on each others nerves.

The day after the banana accident and the airport things got weird. The campus was closed, the Russian army had arrived and cordoned it, but, strangely, hadn't occupied it. (Why not?) Their presence made me nervous, and not understanding why they were outside and not inside, made me even more nervous. While much of the USEC chain of command had bugged out, our campus security manager was still there. He lead Jerry and me into the bowels of one of the office buildings and we began gathering memos, files, laptops, flash drives, printer memories from certain desks and offices to be destroyed. We pushed a big mail cart, and started gathering stuff. 

But after the day before, I was a new me.  Or, rather, the old me. The one I'd been back in the service when my job was to know everything. No surprises or it'd be my head. So once our manager moved on to some other team, I began scanning things before dumping them into the mailcart.  

The membrane transferrin receptor-mediated endocytosis or internalization of the complex of transferrin bound iron and the transferrin receptor is the major route of cellular iron uptake. This efficient cellular uptake pathway has been exploited for the site-specific delivery not only of anticancer drugs and proteins, but also of therapeutic genes into proliferating malignant cells that overexpress the transferrin receptors. This is achieved either chemically by conjugation of transferrin with therapeutic drugs, proteins, or genetically by infusion of therapeutic peptides or proteins into the structure of transferrin. The resulting conjugates significantly improve the cytotoxicity and selectivity of the drugs. The coupling of DNA to transferrin via a polycation or liposome serves as a potential alternative to viral vector for gene therapy. Moreover, the OX26 monoclonal antibody against the rat transferrin receptor offers great promise in the delivery of therapeutic agents across the blood-brain barrier to the brain.

OK, I don't understand any of that, but it gets its own file folder and is covered with excited post-it notes, and this office has leather furniture and an expensive desk. Maybe it's important. I slipped it under my armored vest.

TerraGroup Labs Confidential - Candidate Site Locations Survey - XPTIW

Hmm, seems older, possibly outdated. But understandable. Fuck it. I slipped it into my vest with the other.

"Watcha doing?"  Jerry had seen me.

"Nothing"  I lied.

"OK"

We moved on, filling the mailcart.  When his back was turned I pocketed some flash drives, and vested a few more memos and reports. In the corner of my eye, I saw Jerry fold up something and jam it into his rig. Damnit - that bozo is going to get us caught. 

In the next few days, everything just slowly dissolved. The city was being evacuated, children top priority. One day our campus security manager was just gone, leaving a dozen rumors behind. Some said he had a Tarkov lady-friend who had a kid and they had pretended to be a family and snuck out with the evacuations. Others said he had been arrested and executed by the RUAF.  I suspected that USEC had got him out. 

For once I wasn't going to just wait for things to happen. I needed to get out. First, get out from under the guillotine that hangs over campus.  That Candidate Site Survey report I had taken was gold. I knew TerraGroup had other labs in Tarkov, and this report was old - from when they were looking to build some underground lab. (Why underground?)  The best part of the report wasn't the sites they were considering - but the sites they were rejecting.  One of them was some old secret Soviet-era fallout shelter. Too small for a lab facility - but not too small for me.  Could I find it?  I started disguising myself as a civilian and sneaking out to find it.  Jerry saw me come and go, but didn't ask any questions.

I found it. OMG shithole.  But isolated, hidden and securable. I returned to campus to get supplies. Jerry was in our room. 

"How's it going?" he asked

"Campus isn't going to be safe - need to get away".  I carefully avoided using pronouns - don't want to invite him, but not exclude him either. I could tell he was still burned at me lying to him before.

"Yeah. Me too."

So I guess we are good? I started packing up my things.

"It's like fucking Facebook." he said, unprompted.

"Come again?"

"The user is the product. Like Facebook."  He jabbed his finger up and down on some folded paper on the table.  I recognized it as the report he had swiped. I reached to look at it, but he picked it up and put it back in his pocket. Maybe we aren't as good as I thought.

"Stay safe out there, man." he said.

"You too.  Uhh, see ya".  

"See ya".

I swung by the armory in the basement on my way out - took as much as I could carry.  And I could tell by the slim pickings that I wasn't the first to have done so.  

That was the last time I saw Jerry, until today. I guess I'm glad he's still alive. And he has a crew. Good for him. Stay safe out there, man.