Category Archives: Heat Wave

Heat Wave: Fire Drill

Posted by natechen on

Helix

The alley outside of Firehouse 10 was still full of puddles from the fire hoses. You would think, with a firehouse being occupied by some of the best people in the county for fighting fires, that the building might have gotten through the blaze mostly unharmed. And under normal circumstances you might be right.

The half-melted, charred wreck of a fire engine that I could see inside the firehouse’s garage gave a hint at why that might not be the case this time around. A firefighter is frequently only as good as his equipment, and fire isn’t something people are well equipped to fight with his bare hands.

Normally.

Still, the firehouse was a big place, with enough room in the garage for eight engines, and it looked like only one was a total loss. Two more were parked out front, surrounded by firefighters carefully checking and packing away their gear. I managed to gather that much just walking past the front of the building on my way to the alley where Agent Verger said Al Massif was at the moment. I left Jack and Herrera, who was still dressed as a thrift store shopper and probably not being taken as seriously as she’d like, with the arson investigators while Kesselman and Bergstrum were on the prowl for signs of Circuit. And they say I have no situational awareness.

It was an average place, as far as alleys go, about wide enough for one and a half people and full of the kind of junk you’d expect: cardboard boxes, plastic bags full of things best left to the imagination, potted plants desperately clinging to life and the rusting bottoms of old fire escapes just overhead. Leftover heat from the fire pressed down on the alley and walking into it was a lot like walking downhill, except the ground was level. Which probably doesn’t make as much sense as it might if you felt the world around you like I do.

Once upon a time there had been a chain-link fence across the mouth of the alley, but now it was bunched in a twisted mess on one side of the alley. I probably would have just melted the padlock off of the gate and left the rest of the fence intact, but it looked like the Firestarter, or the Enchanter or whatever you wanted to call him, was growing more destructive over time. Typical arsonist behavior, no matter how you’re starting your fires.

I found Massif crouched on his haunches, running his hand lightly along the edges of a two foot hole in the concrete wall. A plastic trashcan sat against the wall a few feet away. If the trail it had left in the muck on the ground was any indication, it had started out right in front of where Al was crouched suggesting the Firestarter might have used it for cover while melting his way through the firehouse walls. As a courtesy, I pulled up against the heat in the area, sending much of it sliding out into the street, then held it steady somewhere around the eighty degree mark. Not only would that make things a little cooler, it would make it easier for Massif to make sense of what was going on.

Massif is a vector shift, and that means seeing the world in a much different way than your average joe. Of course, that’s true of pretty much all talents, from Amplifier’s super hearing to my ability to “feel” heat in unusual ways, most talents see or hear or feel the world in ways much different than normal. Trying to describe it to a normal person, or even to another talent who’s gifts lie in a different direction, is really an exercise in futility.

But I did know that people like Agent Massif and his ilk don’t just see an object, they see how it’s moving. And air is moving all the time, in no small part due to heat, so for a vector shift day to day living is an adventure in sensory overload, kind of like walking around drunk all the time. Massif once mentioned that I was a lot more stable looking than most people because I regulate the temperature of the air around me and the farther I expand that influence the easier it is for him to see what’s going on. As self-centered as it sounds, I’m not sure how he gets by when I’m not around, which is most of the time. I do know Agent Verger has to drive him around because he’s not safe behind the wheel.

Needless to say, Massif noticed the change in the air around him immediately and jumped to his feet, looking around with a grim expression. Since he was at the site of an arson started by a guy with my talent, that was an understandable reaction. His expression cleared as soon as he saw me, though, and he lumbered over and wrapped me in an bear hug that set my ribs creaking.

“Helix! Glad you’re here.”

I’m not a very touchy-feely person but I still resisted the urge to pry myself out of the hug. Al may be disgustingly tall and good looking to boot, but for whatever reason he decided he was my friend even though I’m the one who figured out he was talented and roped him into this job. Any person who puts up with you for more than two or three years and can still smile every time he sees you is a rare thing, and they’re worth a little work to keep happy.

So I pounded Massif on the back once or twice, enough to satisfy whatever standards of male affection he subscribed to, and did my best to hold my breath until he let go.

Once I was out I said, “Looks like you’re in a real mess this time around, Massif.”

“It’s not my kind of thing, that’s for sure.” He waved his hand at the firehouse. “This is the work of a real nutcase. It looks like he went straight through the wall and hit the firetruck just inside – cooked it up until the gas tank blew.”

I knelt down and peered through the wall. Sure enough, the blackened chassis of the firetruck that I’d seen before was just a dozen feet or so beyond. I craned my neck way back to look at Al. “You know, I’m not an expert on the subject since I’m usually discouraged from cranking up the temperature around anything that runs on petroleum, but I wouldn’t think one truck’s gas tank could set fire to this building.” I stood and took a step back and looked down the wall which, sure enough, still looked to be solid concrete. “Sure, one or two trucks might catch, but why start the fire here?”

“They think the Firestarter used some kind of accelerant this time around,” Massif said. “Looks like he had some more gas cans with him, stacked them by the wall so they’d catch and spread the fire once things got going. The change in MO had them questioning whether it was really our guy this time around.”

I glanced down at the hole in the wall. “I trust that there’s no question about that now?”

“Oh yeah, but we were sure from the get go. Checked the weather people’s radar recordings before we even headed out. They show the usual temperature drop and weird weather you get from an active heat sink. Sudden clouds forming, random, highly localized rain. That kind of thing.” He gestured back towards the mouth of the alley. “Half the firehouse was out on another call when the fire started, right now we’re trying to determine if that was a deliberate distraction or the Firestarter was just waiting for an opportune moment. Thoughts?”

“He probably just waited. Every other fire he’s set so far falls into some sort of pattern, I doubt he’d clutter it up now.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and sighed. “Honestly, the whole chasing the Firestarter and catching him thing is not our gig anymore. We’re more here to keep an eye on the crime scene and try and grab Circuit if he or any of his people show up.” Not an easy job, what with no good way to close off at least one end of the alley and plenty of access from above, but then easy is not what we sign up for. “I should probably get Bergstrum over here and see about setting up some surveillance.”

Massif nodded, although he didn’t look very happy about it. “Seems like a waste of time. If Circuit hasn’t already come and gone he probably won’t show up for a few days more. If he comes at all.”

“My thoughts exactly. But in this job, the one day you don’t cover all the bases is the one you wish you had.”

“Sad but true.” Massif glanced at the entrance to the alley and dropped his voice. “There’s one other thing you should know about. Just in case it makes a difference somewhere down the line…”

Sometimes it seems to me that Project Sumter is keeping its eyes on the wrong people. Sure, I have more practical uses in urban warfare than a than in law enforcement, but even if I did go rogue I’m not exactly subtle or hard to find, and much more fragile than most people would expect. On the other hand, tell me to somehow get a command vehicle and spare personnel to run it out of our office while it was in the process of relocating and I’d have said you were out of luck. Herrera had managed to get the vehicle and volunteers to staff it who were standing by for her call. Not natural.

Still, if there’s anyone with no right to complain about not natural it’s yours truly. What’s more, my parents were not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth and I took after them.

We set up some basic surveillance around the firehouse and came to an agreement with the police and arson squad about how it would be handled over the next few days. Actually, Verger and Herrera did that, I rounded up some of the extra bodies Herrera had swindled into coming out and did the best I could to work out some sort of plan for keeping an eye on the building.

About seven in the evening Jack took over and told me to knock off. He’d finish our shift and then Massif’s people would take over. Since I was still running short on sleep I was only too happy to do just that. But before heading home I thought I should check in with Herrera and see if she wanted me to do anything else on my day off.

Our command van was located about a block and a half away, well outside of the clean-up zone. When we’d arrived that had been as close as we could get but the streets were mostly clear of the response vehicles and news vans that had cluttered them at first. Only Firehouse 10’s firetrucks were still out on the street, since they weren’t entirely sure the garage they normally parked in was still stable.

That didn’t mean the streets were clear, the general public had come and filled them back in with their cars and SUVs almost as soon as the emergency workers had left but there were far fewer people milling around on the sidewalks now, so I spotted the man leaning on the van and smoking a cigarette long before I got there.

I actually considered turning around, heading for my car and calling Herrera before I drove off but that idea was squashed almost as soon as I thought of it. I promised myself long ago that I’d never show my back to Brahms Dawson and I wasn’t about to start just because I was a little tired.

Of course having clear sight lines goes both ways, and the Senator saw me coming just as clearly as I could see him standing there. As I hesitated in the street for just a moment he pushed away from the van and came to meet me while I was still a few car lengths away, which really settled the matter.

I’d never seen him out of what I think of as full regalia – suit, tie, perfectly styled hair, prepared speech. Today he was in jeans and a short sleeved polo shirt. It still probably cost more than I made in a month, but it was the first time he’d ever seemed to be anything other than another suit in the office, if an important- or self-important- one. Which reminded me to glance around for his security people. To my surprise, I could only make one, watching quietly from across the street. I had a feeling this wasn’t one of his normal business visits to the People On The Front Lines.

The Senator stopped to tap the ashes off of his cigarette before looking me in the eye. I don’t think he’d ever done that with me before, and I was surprised to see that he looked tired and more than a little distracted. I suppose he’s got as much reason for that as anyone, maybe more, but that didn’t earn him any sympathy from me. Still, I heard the voice of Bob Sanders whispering that there wasn’t any need to pick a fight with him if he wasn’t offering one.

I wasn’t sure when Sanders had stopped being a voice that annoyed me in real life and became a voice that annoyed me in the back of my head, but I wasn’t sure I liked it. Worse, I was pretty sure he was right. So I just plastered a neutral expression on my face and nodded in greeting. “Evening, Senator.”

“Double Helix,” he said, taking a last drag on his smoke.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” I said. The obvious being the only thing I could think of to say.

Senator Dawson just shrugged. “I’m afraid I started as a young man, and kept them as my only vice. The public doesn’t like a leader without some humanizing quality. The only other option was to take up drinking, which my wife wouldn’t have cared for. So I’ve stuck with it.”

For some reason I found that funny and wound up laughing in his face before I could stop myself. “You risk lung cancer to score political points?”

“No stranger than you risk ulcers or getting shot to do your job,” he said, tossing the cigarette butt on the ground and grinding it out under one shoe. “Everyone takes risks doing their job, whether they realize it or not. The important part is to pay attention to the ones you’re taking, and be ready to live with your decisions.”

“You’re being surprisingly straightforward today, Senator,” I said, trying to read what might be going on behind his tired expression. To someone passing on the street we might have looked just like two guys swapping our thoughts on the Bears this season but I felt more like I was about to walk into a gunfight with nothing but a Swiss Army knife. My first instinct was a tactical retreat. “While I’d love to hear what’s brought out this incredible streak of honesty, I’m actually here to talk to my boss. So if you’ll excuse me…”

“She’s in the van.” The Senator jerked his head slightly back towards the vehicle he’d just been leaning against. “Asleep. For the first time in the last forty-eight hours, I believe.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s it? I was under the impression she only dozed a couple of hours a week, and wasn’t planning on a nap ’til this Sunday.”

He chuckled. “She does give that impression, doesn’t she?” The humor drained away as quickly as it had come. “I hear there was a fatality today.”

“Yeah. Massif says one of the firefighters had part of the floor give under him while they were clearing the second floor.” Absently, I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Just bad luck.”

“This Firestarter guy has killed now,” Dawson said. He wave off the beginning of my objection. “An accident, sure, but you and I both know that in the long run that’s not going to matter as much as the fact that someone died because of his crime. You people are going to be twice as focused on catching him, and he’s most likely going to have fewer qualms about endangering people with his next fire. So far, he’s been careful to light them at times when fewer people were likely to get hurt. Now he’s going to escalate.”

“If you ask me, he’s already escalating.” But the Senator was right. Even today, the Firestarter hadn’t touched off the blaze until part of Firehouse 10 was out responding to another fire. He was being cautious, but that might not last. “Still, I don’t see how it’s your job to warn me about the risks of doing mine.”

“It’s not.” He glanced back at the van. “But I’m worried about Teresa. She’s wanted to be a cop all her life, and damn the consequences.”

Unable to resist the urge, I said, “What an unprofessional thing to say.”

Senator Dawson stopped short. “What?”

“Nothing.” I tried to squash the smirk but it slipped out anyway.

“Fine. But you’re right, Teresa isn’t exactly professional about this. Sometimes it seems like she lacks perspective.” He absently fumbled around in his pocket and extracted a pack of cigarettes. “Even Elizabeth was worried that she’d be biting off more than she could chew, and she doesn’t even know what all a job with the Project brings with it.”

“Elizabeth.” I frowned, trying to remember if I’d ever heard the name before. “Your wife?”

“My daughter.” Dawson rubbed his forehead with his free hand like a man with a headache just waiting to make itself heard. “They went to school together, not sure how they became friends but Elizabeth was determined to make her one of the family. I went along with it at first because I hoped Teresa would be a good influence on her.”

“And you wind up sticking her in with all of the freaks.” I smiled grimly. “Seems kind of contradictory, if you ask me.”

That got me a grimace and I suspected the Senator’s headache was starting to really kick up its heels. “You just don’t get it, do you, Helix? Yes, I know that you have no control over being born with your unique abilities. I don’t hold it against you personally, but on a instinctual level that intimidates me, just like it will anyone else. Why else keep you talented people a secret? We can’t have a smoothly running society with that kind of power imbalance inherent in it. Someone has to act as a balance between you and everyone else.”

I snorted. “Don’t act as if its anything other than an ego trip, Senator. There was another guy who recently suggested he needed to be in charge in order to keep society from falling apart and to be perfectly honest, I’d more inclined to trust him with the job than you. But if it comes to that I’d really rather give the job to Robert Sanders than see either of you in charge. Why can’t people like you just leave the rest of us to work things out on our own?”

“Because most of you don’t work at it. I should know, my-” He stopped himself and rubbed a hand over his mouth, looked down at the pavement and gathered his thoughts. Finally he shoved the neglected pack of cigarettes back into his pocket and sighed. “I’m sorry, Helix. I’m tired, and I’m talking around the point. You’re not a fan of that, as I recall.”

“That’s a fair assessment,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “You wanted to talk to me about something. If it’s not a balanced society or your family, what is it?”

“Teresa. She’s a sweet girl, as much a part of my family as she ever was with either of her other two, and what she has accomplished is amazing considering all the handicaps she’s had, but to get where she is now she’s had to overwork herself, almost like it was a religion.” For the second time in his life, Brahms Dawson looked me in the eye. “Since you joined the Project eight years ago no one has worked to prove themselves like you have. But you’ve always managed to find a balance. While there have been plenty of reports suggesting you’re short sighted and reckless, no one’s ever accused you of overworking of overstressing. I want you to keep an eye on Teresa for me, try and help her do the same.”

“You know it’s funny, you keep repeating thing’s I’ve just heard. You’re not the first person to ask me to keep an eye on Agent Herrera, either.”

The ghost of a smile quirked the edges of the Senator’s mouth. “Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. In fact, there’s a lot of reasons for you to want to do what I’m asking you, things like making sure your oversight agent is clear headed when you need her to be, and since you’re already keeping an eye on her how much of an added burden can it be, really?”

I studied him hard, but I still couldn’t see any sign of motives other than concern. I wasn’t getting the whole story, but my gut said what I’d heard was true. “Not to sound crass, but how does that help me do my job? Besides the obvious, of course.”

Dawson’s smile vanished and his expression became completely sincere. Not the polished, smooth sincerity of a person who had practiced these lines a dozen times in front of the mirror before convincing hundreds or even thousands of suckers with them. No, it was the fragile, brittle sincerity of a man who wasn’t sure he’d ever be believed, but was going with the truth for once anyway. “This may sound surprising to you, Helix, but I’ve developed a real respect for you over the years. I don’t like you, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. But with the right education, with the right mentors, with the right system, we can eliminate the differences that cause that and make a better world. Teresa wants to be a part of that. I want to think that in time you’ll want to be a part of that, too. Wouldn’t that help you do your job?”

For the second time that night I found myself laughing. “What’s really scary is I think you believe that, Senator. Unfortunately, my job doesn’t deal much with maybe-somedays. Now, as you already pointed out I’m an expert in balancing my work with the rest of my life. Today was my day off, my boss is asleep on the job and I’m ready to go home, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

His face fell. “Helix-”

“Tomorrow is theoretically Agent Herrera’s day off. Unfortunately I’ll be in the office, and once she gets there it’ll be impossible to throw her back out again, so you’ll just have to invent some excuse to keep her from getting there if you want her to relax some this week.” I ran my fingers through my hair and could almost feel it pulling out between my fingers, leaving me a little closer to my father’s hairline. “I’ll talk with the tac team boys, maybe Mona, see if we can work something out for after that.”

A bright smile bloomed on Senator Dawson’s face, of the satisfied, friendly, political variety. “Thanks, Helix. It-”

“I’m not doing this for you, Senator,” I said, feeling more irritated now than I had through the rest of the conversation. “I’m doing it because like you said, it’ll make my job easier. And she deserves the chance to do this job right.”

He nodded, the moment of political handling already past. “I know, Helix. But trust me, you won’t regret it.”

I certainly hoped so.

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Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Slow Boil

Posted by natechen on

Helix

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they organize a place. For example, anyone who wandered into Pritchard Mossburger’s new apartment would instantly realize that he had an organized mind. His new furniture, although a mismatched collection of second hand stuff, was still arranged symmetrically in one corner of the room, with a sofa at the center and two chairs flanking it. A long, low table ran down the side wall. It all looked like it had been organized by a T-square. However, before one could start thinking that he was an OCD neat freak you’d notice the cork board in the corner, already collecting newspaper clippings and printed blog articles that both dispelled that illusion and warned you that he might be mentally unstable in an entirely different direction.

All of that wouldn’t mean quite as much to you as the two big guys sprawling on his sofa or the even bigger guy who dwarfed the beaten up recliner he sat in on the right. Even if you never made it past Jack, Bergstrum and Kesselman to Herrera sitting in the other chair or me standing in the middle of the room and staring at them, you’d realize that Mossburger wasn’t your typical conspiracy obsessed genius with schizophrenic tendencies. That’s just one of the reasons we love him.

“Hey, Helix, you with us?” Bergstrum asked, waving his hand lazily across my field of vision. “Meeting’s going to start soon.”

“I hear you,” I mumbled, still staring at the couch he was sharing with Kesselman.

“What he’s trying to say is sit down,” Jack said, leaning forward and scratching his knee absently. “You’re making us all tired just looking at you. If there’s something so special about that couch you should have taken a closer look at it when we were helping the preacher fellow load his truck.”

I snapped my fingers. “That’s where I’ve seen it before.” A moment’s pause as something registered in the back of my mind. “We didn’t load a sofa on Rodriguez’s truck. I would definitely remember moving two sofas in one day.”

“It was on there already, I saw it in the back.” Jack snorted. “You need to work on your-”

“Situational awareness,” I said in unison with him. “I know, I know. You keep telling me that. Along with Sanders, Mona and occasionally Al Massif, Broadband and a bunch of other people I’ve already forgotten.”

“Maybe you’d remember them better if you were paying attention?” Kesselman ignored my scowl and hopped up to poked his head into the apartment’s cramped kitchenette. “Hey, Mossman, you don’t have feed us a four course meal!”

“Good, because I couldn’t make you one.” Mosburger came in carrying a pot of coffee and a pitcher of ice water in one hand and a tray of mugs in the other. “But I thought something to drink would be a step in the right direction. There’s sodas in the fridge, too.”

He put the dishes on the table and left them there as he and Kesselman retrieved a couple of chairs out of the kitchen. I stared at the coffee pot and ice water for a minute, feeling my fingers twitching in annoyance, then gave in and picked up to the ice water and moved it to the other end of the table.

Herrera watched me do it, an amused look on her face. “Something wrong, Helix?”

“It’s distracting. You have no idea how distracting thermodynamics can be.”

Jack laughed. “You think that’s bad? Leave a chunk of dry ice out sometime and watch him squirm.”

I gave him my darkest scowl. “I thought you were one of the good guys.”

“Sure I am.” He laughed again. “It’s not like it’s your secret weakness or something. You never notice these things when you’re focused on something, they just bother you when you’ve got nothing else on your mind.”

Herrera clapped her hands together and said, “In that case we might as well get started so Helix has something to think about besides coffee pot feng shui.”

Mosburger and I took seats in the kitchen chairs, which also looked like well worn second-hand furniture from somewhere, and settled in. We started by retreading over what I’d heard that morning. A break-in at the Project, relocation, a possible lead on the Firestarter. I turned Herrera’s books back over to her at that point and said, “While I’ll admit that these look like they could be the source of the Firestarter’s name for himself, and we should probably talk to Analysis about relabeling him as the Enchanter just for simplicity’s sake, I’m not sure that this really helps us in our primary goal, finding Circuit and throwing him in jail.”

“Except,” Mosburger held up a pile of paper that he had been skimming through, “that Circuit implied in his phone call last night that he was interested in the Firestarter. Or the Enchanter, or whatever you want to call him. He mentions it at least twice in this transcript, and I haven’t even finished it yet.”

“What are the odds it’s just some sort of red herring?” Bergstrum asked. “Circuit does that kind of overcomplicated psychological thing from time to time. Are we sure he wasn’t just trying to distract us from something else he’s up to? Has anyone followed up the theft that put Gearshift and his buddies on him in the first place?”

“Apparently he stole a grad student’s senior thesis project,” Mosburger said. “I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, I haven’t gotten the report on how Clark Movsesian managed to track Circuit from Texas back to his warehouse in the city, but I am fairly certain that it’s not directly related to the Firestarter. There’s no practical use for a miniature hydroelectric turbine around here.”

Jack leaned back in his chair and scratched at his chin absently. “I followed up the phone trace Forensics was running while Helix was chatting with Circuit last night. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to help us any. It was either routed through a labyrinth that puts the Greeks to shame or somewhere along the line Circuit hacked things so he could make it look like the call was coming from wherever he wanted. Forensics says they traced it to the Island of Malta, San Antonio, LA and a couple of other places. It even showed as originating in the building at one point.”

Bergstrum sat up a bit straighter. “Could he have called while he was already inside?”

“Service is spotty through most of the building,” I said. “Shelob keeps it that way to help enforce the no outside networks policy.”

Jack got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Here’s what I don’t understand. Why did Circuit offer to cooperate with us if he was just planning to steal our files on the case and run off with them?”

I turned in my chair so I straddled the back and held out a hand. Jack handed me the coffee and filled another. Herrera waved for a cup too, so he wound up pouring a third. After a fortifying draught of caffeine I said, “Circuit’s the classic chess master. It’s unlikely he’d just ask us for information without planning what to do if we didn’t hand over what he wanted the easy way. What I don’t understand is how he knew where to go in the first place. The office is a secret government installation. It’s not like we’re listed in the yellow pages.”

“I asked Voorman if there were any leads on that.” Herrera paused to sip from her coffee and grimace, I wasn’t sure whether that because she didn’t like the drink or what she was about to say. “Apparently he’s put Agent Sanders on that inquiry, but the exact details, leads, sources, that kind of thing are all hush-hush so far. Officially so as not to compromise the investigation.”

Unofficially so as not to make Voorman or anyone else look bad. “As much as I’d like to follow that up, it’s out of our hands,” she said aloud, handing the much battered and worn books I’d just returned to her on to Mosburger. “Pritchard, take these in to Analysis as soon as you get the chance, see if that gives you getmen any insight into what the Enchanter is going to do next. I talked briefly to Agent Verger this morning, she’s agreed to keep us appraised of the Enchanter investigation in case that turns up something that points us back to Circuit. The rest of us will look into the warehouse Circuit was using, see if we can back-track it to him.”

“Join Project Sumter, see the world’s paperwork,” Jack muttered.

Herrera gave him a sympathetic look and waved a stack of papers she was pulling out of her messenger bag. “I understand where you’re coming from. This is my little piece of paperwork heaven, forms and regulations from one of the countless Federal departments I’ve never heard of that I apparently need to familiarize myself with.”

Jack leaned over a bit so he could see what Herrera was holding, then raised his eyebrows and exchanged a glance with Bergstrum and Kesselman. Either Herrera missed it or wasn’t curious, because she set them aside and kept digging around in her bag until she produced a spiral bound notebook and said, “I have a few leads I want to try and run down today, and I want to hear any ideas from you as well. But,” she gave me a slight smile. “Not all of us were supposed to be in the office today, back when we all expected to have an office to be in. So if they’d rather call it a day…”

I got up out of my chair, saying, “I think that’s my cue to leave. Will our new offices be ready for us by tomorrow?”

“I think so,” Herrera said as Mosburger picked up the papers she had set aside and started flipping through them.

“Then I’ll see you there,” I said, and started towards the door.

“You know, I had to go through this stuff on my first day,” Mosburger said, tapping one finger against the papers. “They make all the analysts muck through it once. If you can’t figure out it’s a prank in less than four hours they figure you’re second rate.”

“What?”

“The Department of NBH isn’t a real place,” he said. “There’s a lot of strange Federal offices out there, I know I dealt with some in my last job, but I don’t honestly think one of them deals in newbie hazing. Whoever put you on this stuff was probably just pulling your leg.”

I quietly latched the door behind me and quickly made my way down the hall to the elevator. Maybe letting Herrera think there was a massive pile of paperwork she needed to read through hadn’t been the nicest thing to do, but honestly, the woman needed to take things a little easier than she had been or she’d burn herself out. And the NBH stuff was pretty funny. If you knew it was a joke.

Or so I told myself. I didn’t have to tell myself much else because, before I could even call for the elevator, my phone rang. Since I was supposed to be out of the office it wasn’t surprising for my phone to go off. But I’d just been in the same room as most of the people who would normally call me on my day off, and I didn’t think Herrera was the type to call just to chew me out for playing a harmless joke on her.

As it turned out, I was right. The number wasn’t familiar to me at first but after a second I realized it was Aluchinskii Massif’s. I unlocked the touch screen and answered, pressing the call button for the elevator with my free hand. The door slid open as I spoke to Massif. We were done before it could close again, but rather than get on I hurried back down the hall and rapped on Mosburger’s door.

After a moment Kesselman opened it. If he was surprised to see me he didn’t show it and let me shove past him and back into the room without resistance. “I just heard from Agent Massif. The Enchanter hit a fire station downtown today. He says if we want to check out the scene now is the time.”

Herrera’s expression morphed from irritated to businesslike in a split second. It was a nifty trick and I needed to learn it one of these days. “How long ago was that?” She asked.

“Two hours or so, from the sound of it.”

“Does it matter?” Jack asked.

“Actually, no, I guess not.” She quickly shoved her papers back into her messenger bag. “Let’s move, people.”

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Heat Wave: Parallel Circuits

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

“Children’s stories?” Heavy gave me a skeptical look as Grappler slid the laptop away from him so she could see the screen. “You want me to believe that the Enchanter is basing a campaign of arson all across the city on a series of children’s stories?”

“Not the whole thing, no,” I said, paying more attention to rewiring my vest rig with new, better insulated and more conductive wiring. I’ve done a lot of electrical work in my time, but doing it with one arm in a sling was proving a real challenge. “But Hangman tells me that the villain in the series also called himself the Enchanter. He took over a city using fire magic and denied it ever had a king. His propaganda people had the slogan, ‘There is no king, only an Enchanter. Death to pretenders.’ Sound familiar?”

“Sure. How does that help us deal with him?” Heavy asked skeptically.

“I’m not sure yet.” I did a quick check of all the connections and set the vest aside. “I’ve already asked Simeon to try and procure a copy of the books, hopefully that will give us more insight.”

Simeon nodded in acknowledgement and went on arranging the day’s newspapers on my desk as he said, “Unfortunately, the books only had a small printing and is something of a collector’s item. It will take a day or two for the set I’ve ordered to arrive.”

Grappler closed the laptop with a snort. “I know that you’re not supposed to ask pros for their secrets, but how did Hangman know about this? The Project boys, places you can pull a heist, that kind of thing makes sense for a info dealer to know. This, not so much.”

“Believe it or not, I thought of that.” I slid my laptop out from under Grappler’s fingers.

She fluttered them over her heart instead. “You? Thinking of something? Go on.”

“I’m afraid so. I even went so far as to ask. As it turns out, it was pure coincidence. Hangman apparently knew someone who had shared them with him when he was younger.” I fumbled the laptop open again and hooked it up to a wireless card, then began loading the custom drivers I’d written earlier. “He’s been monitoring the Project’s investigation into the Firestarter independently for the last week or so, at my request. The Enchanter angle apparently reminded him of the stories.”

“Which is fine, I guess,” Heavy said. “Except that I don’t see how reading these books helps us find the Enchanter.”

“When I talked to Helix he told me that the Enchanter had left them a pattern in the locations he set on fire.” I slid a copy of the Tribune over and skimmed the front page as I spoke, not really paying much to the headlines beyond watching for any new arson stories. There’s useful information everywhere, if you know how to look, and reporters are paid to be inquisitive. I might as well take advantage of the fact. “All patterns have to come from somewhere.”

“Yeah, but he was using their names and addresses as the basis, not something out of a storybook,” Grappler protested. “Why change now?”

“Because he has their attention. He knows, or at least he thinks, that they cracked his pattern and probably that they did it by bringing in someone smart, who will even now be tracking down who he is and what his motives are. He’s going to start dropping them hints, and if he’s named himself after a storybook villain he’s going to hint at that until someone figures it out. People like him have to advertise themselves. It’s part of their nature.”

“You’re the expert on that, so I’ll take your word for it,” Heavy said, swiveling his head so he could read the paper. After a moment he said, “Did you see this, boss?”

I looked over at that part of the paper. The headline that had Heavy’s attention read “Police Mocked in Serial Arson Case as Tempers Flare”. There wasn’t much there, just a short article chiding the city police and fire department, along with several man-on-the-street quotes to show that people wanted to know how their tax dollars were being spent to catch the man responsible. But at the end of the piece was an anonymous quote mentioning that the police had heard from directly from the arsonist. I glanced at the name of the author. “Anyone heard of this Grant Bennet before?”

“He’s a relatively new reporter,” Simeon answered. “Written for the Tribune for three years or so. The editorial staff has taken a liking to sending him after anything they want attacked in a way they can easily distance themselves from. He does seem to be well connected, though.”

All the good journalists are. But a little known journalist, new to the city and looking to make a name for himself? Potentially useful. “We need to reach out to him. See if he knows anything and if he might be persuaded to share it with us.”

Simeon took out a small notebook and scribbled in it for a moment. He asked, “Do you want to do that personally, or through channels?”

“It needs to be soon…” I thought for a moment. I like to do some things myself, and drawing new people into the fold is one of them, especially since the fiasco in Morocco. But I am also a limited resource. Still. “Other than optimizing the latest batch of transformers for the Chainfall site, there shouldn’t be anything more important than tracking the Enchanter this week.”

Simeon cleared his throat. “Actually, I heard from Mr. Davis while you were out yesterday. He said he hoped to have a preliminary test product for the mass produced hydroelectric system on Thursday. You have another engagement that day, so I made a tentative appointment on Friday.” Simeon folded his hands behind his back, looking very pleased with himself.

“Wait a minute.” I frowned. “I have something on Thursday?”

“Yes. On the other side of the partition.”

“Ah.” That meant my other, commonplace identity had a meeting or something similar that couldn’t be handled through teleconferencing. I wasn’t ready to give up that identity just yet, if for no other reason than it being a good fallback if I should ever need one. “It can’t be helped, then. When did Davis submit the production plans?”

“Yesterday, sir. Mr. Davis proposes that…” I tuned the rest of Simeon’s summary out. While in a lot of ways he behaves as a secretary or a butler, the fact is Simeon has an MBA and a couple of decades of business experience. If he thought it was worth my time to see what Davis had to show me, it was worth my time to see it. What bothered me was the timing.

It had been five days since the Enchanter’s last arson. He had never struck twice in a week and never gone more than sixteen days without a fire. By that math, Friday was the day we could begin expecting something from him.

On the other hand, he’d stumbled into Project Sumter’s boys during his last escapade and he had to know his pattern had been cracked. The fact that it had been cracked by someone else and the Project hadn’t known about it when they scheduled the visit to that location wasn’t really germane. The question was, would that change his timing? Did he have a plan ready to go as soon as he was discovered or had he not been expecting that? Or was he reeling in confusion after his run-in with Helix, surprised to find there was someone who could match his talent?

While I was fairly certain what kind of behavior we could expect from the Enchanter once he finally got his bearings, I didn’t think it likely that the Enchanter had actually thought this far ahead. Personally I found it more likely he was licking his wounds, and would lay low for longer than normal while he decided what to do next. But I wasn’t sure enough that I wanted to commit myself every day next week. Chasing the Enchanter was technically a side project, and Davis’ work the main goal, but I was becoming more and more loath to leave the matter alone. The man was dangerous, far more so to my long term goals than well intentioned but misguided people like Helix could ever be.

And that was enough to make the decision for me. “Meeting with Davis on Friday is fine,” I said. “But after that we’re going into high gear on this. The Enchanter is our number one priority. Grappler.” She sat up a bit straighter. “I want you to find this Grant Bennet person and talk to him. Try to work out if he knows more than we do, and if so what. Turn on the charm.”

She favored me with her best smile and said, “You know he won’t be able to resist. But next time, I want in on the big show, no leaving me out.”

That prompted a smile. “Don’t worry about that. It’s not like I can afford to sideline one third of the talents at my disposal when we’re going up against both Project Sumter and the Enchanter. Speaking of which, Heavy, I want you to get in touch with some of your old friends, anyone who might have heard about that human wall we ran into last night. If he turns up again, I want a better picture of what we’re dealing with.”

“I’ll run down some leads. But with that,” he pointed at my sling, “are you really going to be in any position to take on the Enchanter when he turns up again? And what if the Project comes along for the fun?”

I rubbed my arm and grimaced. Just talking about it caused psychosomatic itching, and I hadn’t even been in the sling a full day but if I wanted the arm to be useful in the future it had to rest now. “Honestly, I’m not in a good position to aid in arresting a criminal right now. And I don’t want to risk taking on a heat sink in something that doesn’t approach top form. So we’re not going to try and grab the Enchanter during his next arson, even if we can successfully predict where it will be.”

“We’re not?” Grappler asked, confusion evident on her face.

“No.” I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “We’re going to rest up and try to crack his patterns, compare our conclusions to his next attack and be ready for him the time after that. I’m not happy about it, but it’s the best move we have with our limited resources.”

Heavy leaned forward, looking concerned. “I’m not happy about messing with a guy who can boil water just by getting a little worked up, but if you want to catch him isn’t it better to do it quick? What if the Project catches him first?”

Then the Enchanter remains a potential problem, albeit a contained one. There hadn’t been any fatalities in his arsons so far, so a murder charge and the resulting death penalty case was out the window, meaning the Enchanter would always be around. I wanted the problem solved more permanently. Also, any likelihood of finding common ground with the members of Project Sumter would dwindle. I wasn’t optimistic about anyone spontaneously switching sides just because I had helped them catch a few criminals over the years, but when my time came I would need trained, experienced law enforcers and talents would be a nice plus. Overtures of good will now could go a long way in the future. But the Enchanter was not the only avenue for such overtures.

“If they catch him, then good for them,” I said. “Chainfall becomes our number one priority again.”

“Our position is unique,” Simeon said, a glint of excitement shining through his normally placid expression. “The Enchanter thinks that Project Sumter is what we represent, but we face no repercussions if we choose not to rise to his challenge. There is no one to punish us if we do not catch him before he strikes again, our funding cannot be cut and we cannot loose face with our superiors. Waiting to see what he will do costs us nothing but time and can gain us a lot.”

“Especially because it gives us time to prepare something special for our hot tempered friend.” I waved the hand with the sprained fingers in Simeon’s direction. “With this thing as it is, I’ll need help from you to get the plans drawn up and I want Davis to help us test it. Let him know we’ll be doing that as well on Friday.”

“Of course. How soon do you expect to need this surprise ready?”

That was a good question. While nothing about his activities had ever struck me as impulsive, I couldn’t get over the feeling that the Enchanter would move faster now that his game was getting more interesting. He would probably make himself known in less time, rather than more. Call it ten days from one fire to the next, no more.

In which case we would need to be ready sooner rather than later. “Ten days. In fact, we all need to have our share done by then, a week if you can swing it. The clock is ticking, people. Get to work.”

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Heat Wave: Tempering

Posted by natechen on

Helix

Amplifier chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. After a moment she got up out of her chair and paced away, taking a long pull on her bottle of water. Herrera shot me a concerned look, probably wondering why I’d laid it on so thick. Or maybe wondering how much of what I’d said was true. I had no doubt that she’d gotten a similar speech from someone when she signed up, and at least she had spent some time in the HSA, but the fact is, until you’ve actually been in the Project for a year or so you have no idea what the job is really like. But maybe that’s true of every job.

Herrera looked like she was on the verge of saying something but Amplifier beat her to the punch. “Which are you, Helix?” She ran her fingers casually along top of a small chest of drawers that was waiting for it’s second coat of varnish. “My grandma used to say that a person who tries to tell it like it is says more about themself than the way things are. Want to hear what I hear?”

“Sure, why not?” I folded my arms over my chest. “What’s your great insight into my inner workings?”

“One,” she held up a finger to signal the number, then leveled it so it pointed at me. “You love your job, or you wouldn’t put up with all the draw backs that come with it. You could have gone back to carpentry years ago, if that’s what you wanted.”

Amplifier strolled back over to where we were sitting and leaned her arms on the back of her chair. “Two, you’re a sweetheart trying to pretend you’re cynical and you’re bad at it. No one buys the shtick where you try and scare people off by pretending you’ve ruined yourself anymore, it’s overdone. I get that it’s a hard job, but people never got anywhere by running away from challenges. Besides, one of my best friends is a certified genius, and you know it or your people wouldn’t have tried to recruit him already. I think, between the two of us, we can come up with some ways to deal with the worst parts of the job.”

I raised my eyebrows a bit and said, “Anything else you managed to glean from all that?”

“Yeah.” She rested her chin on top of her arms and said, “You really think doing this job for as long as you have has ruined you somehow. Well, I’ve got a newsflash for you, I’m pretty sure every job you can possibly have does that. I worked in a fast food place for two years and it ruined my faith in humanity. I’ve been in a band for three years and it’s ruined my faith in art. I’m not sure you’re a worse person just because you job has ruined your faith in yourself or your talent. There’s plenty of people high on themselves already, anything that keeps you off of that has got to be a plus, right?”

“There’s a delicate balance somewhere in there, Amplifier, and I’m not sure you’re hitting it.”

She laughed and swung herself around the chair and back into the seat. “Well, not everything has to go one way. You mentioned going into research a minute ago. What’s that about?”

“Well there are a few people, most of them with letters after their name but no talents in the Sumter sense, although there are exceptions, who do research on exactly what talents do and how they might be related. For example,” I held up my water bottle and sloshed it back and forth. “What I did to cool this water down from room temperature to cold and refreshing is technically known as ‘cold spiking’ and it was once considered a separate talent from mine. About three decades ago some eggheads on the West Coast got a heat sink and cold spiker together and they managed to duplicate each other’s abilities on a small scale. Now they’re considered the same talent, but they work different sets of muscles, so to speak, so most people figure out how to do one early on and have a hard time working up to the same level of proficiency with the other. Most of that kind of info funnels back to the Project and helps the analysts and field agents out. In your case, there’s even more experiments being run, and if you just wanted to help out from time to time, I’m sure no one would say no…”

Herrera and I spent the next hour and a half explaining the many different possible things a person could do while working directly for the Project and as contractor. In the end Amplifier left not because we were done covering all the possibilities but because she had to get to class. I walked her to the door and was surprised to see that she hadn’t come on a motorcycle, or even a slovenly old junker but rather a sleek new hybrid station wagon. It didn’t do much for her image as a member of a garage band although it was probably pretty useful for hauling all their equipment around.

I shook my head and glanced around the parking lot. It was still early in the day so the only other car, besides mine, was the kind of rust bucket I would have expected from my other guest. I glanced at Herrera. “You two drive over separately?”

“What makes you think I didn’t just ride the subway?” Herrera asked with a raised eyebrow.

“People in our line of work don’t usually enter an enclosed space with a bunch of strangers unless it’s part of our job.” Since Herrera hadn’t made any move to leave I stepped back into the workshop and closed the door behind me. “Was there something else, besides the spontaneous recruiting talk?”

“As a matter of fact, there was.” Herrera strolled over to the chest of drawers Amplifier had been examining earlier and looked it over, as if she could figure out what Amplifier had been thinking while looking at it. “But before we talk about that, what was with that recruitment speech? Not the most encouraging thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Can I be honest?”

“I can’t imagine lying would help.” She shot me an evaluating look, softened with the ghost of a smile. “And I’ve gotten the impression you’re pretty bad at it.”

“You see right through me.” I scooped up the tabletop I’d been working on the night before and moved it to the side of the room, taking the moment to gather my thoughts. Once I had it leaned against the wall I did the same with myself and said, “It’s like this. I’ve had a few different oversight people in my time, but I’ve been with Bob Sanders the longest. We worked out a system for pretty much everything we could expect to do as talent and oversight, and we played to our strengths. For the most part, that means I was the bad cop. Now I gather that you may not like the idea, but the fact is it worked and it worked because we each knew what we were doing. I’m not Sanders’ biggest fan, but he knew what he was doing and he made sure the rest of us were on the same page.”

I held up two fingers. “Twice now you’ve taken us straight into important discussions with a valuable but potentially dangerous individual with little to no warning or time to plan our strategy and which way the conversation is to go. That was sloppy.” I jerked my thumb at my chest. “The first time was my fault. I’m the more experienced agent, I should have said something before we went in to talk to Amplifier yesterday. I definitely should have said something afterwards, and in fact I meant to bring it up tomorrow, because I didn’t think it would be relevant until then. It shouldn’t have been. But in the four days you’ve been my boss you’ve piled in a month’s worth of work.”

“You think I’m moving too fast?” She didn’t sound offended or curious, just a little sad. Not what I had been expecting.

“To use a handy analogy, if you don’t know what kind of wood you’re working with,” I rapped my knuckles against the tabletop, “you won’t know what the right tools for the job are. Or, measure once, cut twice. Or even-”

“All right,” she said, her faint smile coming back. “I get the idea. Two, megalomaniacal ass? Voorman wasn’t very happy with your cursing at a person of interest over the phone yesterday-”

“We monitor all phone calls as a quality assurance measure.”

Her smile twitched but didn’t grow, and she loose her train of thought either. “-and I’m not sure he’ll be any happier after hearing about that.”

“It can hardly be unprofessional to mention a term used on the Federal NBH Employment Termination form.”

Herrera’s expression wavered just a bit, the kind of look people get when they think you’re joking… but they’re not quite sure. “You’re kidding.”

“Look it up. It’s under section four, mental instabilities.” I stood up and started collecting the empty water bottles. “So. Something else besides the recruiting talk?”

Her fingers drifted down the left side if the chest of drawers. “How long have you been selling furniture?”

“I started selling independently instead of through a dealer about a year and a half before my pieces started showing up in Circuit’s instillations. That is what you’re wondering about, isn’t it?”

She turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I was wondering how I missed the fact that your maker’s mark is half a strand of DNA when I saw it in Circuit’s warehouse.”

“Most people think it’s a spiral staircase.” I shrugged. “After all, as Amplifier said, carpentry isn’t very agentish. DNA isn’t very carpenterish, for that matter. I’m not sure how Circuit figured out I was making the stuff, but I’m guessing it had more to do with his hacking skills than the maker’s mark.”

“Has anyone ever followed that up?”

I spread my hands. “How are we supposed to do that? Put a tracer in each piece I sell? Even if we could afford the time and resources to do that and track them all, how are we supposed to tell which pieces Circuit’s bought? And what do we tell the judge when we ask for a warrant?”

“Point taken.” Herrera turned from the chest and folded her arms across her chest. “The Project headquarters was broken into last night.”

I paused, an empty water bottle halfway into the empty paint bucket I kept for recyclables. “What?”

“Someone got into the building, ruined a security camera, broke into the evidence room, tased three agents including Al Massif and stole all the evidence relating to the Firestarter case.” She picked up a messenger bag she had brought with her and fished out a sheet of printer paper. “There’s a video of the pair of them, from the security system of a restaurant down the street, but otherwise no indication of who it might be. Here’s a still frame.”

I snatched the sheet out of her hand and stared at it. It was just a blurry image of two men in street clothes jaywalking. The camera that took the video must have been forty feet away, making it pretty much useless for purposes of identifying who they might be. I looked back at Herrera. “That doesn’t tell us much, but I’m guessing we’re assuming this was Circuit and one of his people?”

“Not officially, but the evidence all points that way. He just expressed an interest in the Firestarter case a few hours before the break-in, and he strikes me as the type to be ready to take what he wants if no one will give it to him nicely.”

“You’re a good judge of character,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth. I try not to take my job personally, but some things really grate on you. “What’s our next move?”

“We move.” Herrera rubbed her arm absently like she felt a draft. “The location of headquarters has been compromised so the whole office is being packed up and moved to the auxiliary location.”

Which had been our primary location until three years ago. It was a decent facility, but farther out than our current location and missing some of the nicer bells and whistles, like a lead lined holding cell, that incorporated the state of the art in talent countermeasures. “Wonderful. I suppose we’ll have to wait a few days until we get settled before we get back to the case.”

“Excuse me?” She glanced over her shoulder as if checking to see if there was anyone else in the room. “Are you still talking to the woman who did a month’s worth of work in four days?” She looked back at me and smiled. “I’ve talked Mossman into putting us up this afternoon. We’re meeting at his place at three this- Helix!”

I jumped a bit then realized she was staring at my hand, which was still holding the sheet of paper she’d given me. Except it was now on fire. “Sorry! Sorry.” I quickly balled the sheet of paper up in my hands and began gently pressing the heat out of it. “That happens sometimes. Just FYI, you probably shouldn’t hand me anything flammable then tell me bad news.”

“Right.” Herrera watched wide eyed as I tossed what was left of the paper in the trash and dusted the ash off my hands. Then she slowly shook her head and said, “I guess hearing about it and seeing it in action are two different things after all.”

“I guess they are.”

“So. Mossburger’s place, three o’clock. You mind showing up on your day off?” She started rummaging through her messenger bag again.

“Normally, yes, but for Circuit I’ll make an exception.”

“Good. Now, you remember how I said I thought I had an idea about the Enchanter when we visited Circuit’s place yesterday?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “You said you needed to look into it.”

“Well, I did. It’s especially relevant after hearing that Circuit thinks the Enchanter and the Firestarter are the same person. I think I know what the source of the name is, and hopefully that will give us some insight into the Firestarter and, by extension, Circuit.” She pulled a pair of thin, well worn books out of her bag and started to hand them to me. Then she paused and gave me a skeptical look. “Are you safe with flammable objects yet?”

I put my hand over my heart. “I promise that they will not catch on fire.”

Apparently satisfied, she gave me the books and a moment to look them over. One was green, the other purple. They had charming watercolors on the front of fraying, well handled dust covers. One had a long rip along the back that had been taped together. They looked more appropriate to a library’s story circle than a criminal investigation. I looked back up at Herrera with a skeptical expression. “Children’s stories?”

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Heat Wave: Pressure Cooker

Posted by natechen on

Helix

I awoke in a familiar way, flat on my back, sore all over and staring up at a featureless ceiling. Now I’ve spent my share of time in a hospital. Pretty much everyone in the Project has, with the exception of Mona, who I don’t think has ever gotten an injury worse than a paper cut. But the fact of the matter is, it’s a dangerous job and we get hurt a lot doing it. On average I’ve probably spent a month out of each year I’ve been with the Project laid up with some sort of injury.

The problem was I couldn’t remember doing anything recently that would get me stuck in one.

What had I been doing yesterday? Hadn’t gotten drunk, hadn’t been in a car chase, hadn’t knocked a military helicopter out of the sky by creating the mother of all updrafts. In fact, other than getting a phone call from Circuit, yesterday was pretty tame.

Right. Phone call from Circuit. I sat up with a groan, awareness slowly filtering back through my groggy mind. With it came the smell of sawdust, which you don’t usually get in hospitals, and the feeling of rough wood under the seat of my pants, definitely nonstandard. It was starting to look a lot more like I’d fallen asleep in my workshop than gotten stuck in the hospital again.

I hefted myself off the half finished tabletop I’d fallen asleep on and tossed the chair cushion I’d used as a pillow back onto the chair it originally came from. According to my watch it was a little after nine in the morning, which meant I’d only been asleep for about four hours. I was frankly surprised I’d been able to get that much rest, as half finished furniture doesn’t make for a comfortable night, but then again, I had been pretty tired. After all, when I’d gotten there the night before that tabletop hadn’t existed yet.

As I smoothed my clothes down I discovered they were covered in small clumps of glue and sawdust. I grimaced, wishing I’d thought to change out of my work clothes before I came. It occurred to me for the hundredth time that it might be a good idea to start keeping a spare set of casual clothes in the workshop. At least this time I had managed not to ruin another pair of pants.

My workbench was fairly typical, consisting of a sturdy board with a number of cups full of nails, screws, pencils and other sundries, slots for larger tools, hooks along the sides for things like clamps and planes, and a pegboard along the back for most of the precision tools. The larger tools, like the circular saw, had their own tables in other places around the workshop. Before staggering over to my makeshift bed and passing out the night before I’d left a couple of newly shaped table legs lying there, intending to sand them down into something usable whenever I next got the chance. I was examining one of them, to determine if I wanted to try the belt sander on it or just finish it by hand, when someone knocked at the door.

Now, you’re not exactly supposed to turn a U-Store It rental space into a carpentry shop, but the manager knows me and is willing to turn a blind eye. It’s still not something I try to just tell anyone about, and most of the people who do know about it know that I go there when I want to be alone and unwind. Getting visitors there is pretty unusual.

So I took the table leg with me when I went to answer the door. Because you never can tell.

The door swung inwards and I kept myself a half step behind it as I opened it, the table leg held behind my leg. I’ve been in the business long enough not to drop my guard just because the person on the other side of the door was blond, female and even shorter than I am. It took a minute for my still groggy brain to work past the half dozen piercings, which she hadn’t had in the first time we met, and the radically different wardrobe.

My eyes narrowed slightly, as much from suspicion as a reaction to the bright sunlight outside. “Amplifier?”

She gave me a slight smile. “Who were you expecting? The President?”

“No.” I leaned my table leg up against the wall as I stepped out of the doorway, letting her in. “We haven’t gotten a visit from one of those since VE Day.”

Instead of her original Biker Girl ensemble Amplifier had shown up in a tightly fighting T-shirt that advertised some band I’d never heard of and a worn pair of cut-off jeans that ended just above her calf. She wore a thin string of chain links, clipped together with a small carabiner clip, in place of a belt. Her piercings were all plain studs. It was a different look, but then again, she was in a band and I hear that’s a job for unusual people.

Even more surprising was her friend, who swept in behind Amplifier just as I was about to close the door. She looked like she’d been attacked by a thrift store, wearing a slightly large pair of cargo shorts and an equally baggy button up shirt on top. A wild mass of curly hair sprouted from underneath a worn, battered San Diego baseball cap. Something clicked in the back of my brain, which had finally resigned itself to being awake and started working again.

“Herrera?” I asked, closing and locking the door behind her.

“Who else?” She asked, turning and giving me a mischievous look from under the cap’s brim. “Didn’t Sanders mention we were stopping by last night?”

“Yeah, he said something about it.” I just hadn’t expected her to be able to find this place. “I just wasn’t expecting you to…” Show up looking like a bum didn’t seem like the right way to finish that sentence. “Show up so early.”

“I have classes from noon until late in the day,” Amplifier said, poking through some of the lumber I kept along the wall. “What do you do in this place?”

“I make furniture,” I replied, waving absently at the half dozen pieces I had in various stages of completion scattered throughout the space. “What does it look like?”

“A place where people make furniture,” She said with a shrug. “It just doesn’t seem very agentish, you know?”

“Neither does rock band singer,” I said, scooping up the table leg and heading back to the work bench to get some sandpaper. “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” Herrera confirmed, tipping a mostly finished chair up on one side and examining the bottom. “Amplifier wanted to hear more about the life, and I suggested she talk to you, since you’re the senior-most talent on active duty in this branch.”

“And I have to do whatever you tell me?”

“And that.”

“Makes sense. Okay, ladies, pull up some chairs. Can I offer you something to drink? I keep some soda and bottled water around here.”

“Water would be great,” Amplifier said. “It’s a scorcher out there and it’s not a whole lot better in here.”

“Sorry, air conditioning isn’t a real priority in places like these.” I fished around in a cooler next to my workbench until I came up with a couple of bottles of water, which I held in one hand and tapped with the knuckles of the other until they started beading with condensation. Satisfied that they were cool enough, I handed one to Amplifier and offered the other to Herrera, who shook her head. I shrugged and kept it for myself.

There were a few chairs in usable condition scattered about, Herrera already had one and it only took a second for Amplifier to grab another. I settled onto the stool I kept at the work bench and took a quick drink of water to clear the cottony feeling out of my mouth. That done, there really wasn’t much to do except dive right in. “Care to guess why I’m a closet carpenter, Amplifier?”

“Um… it’s a hobby?”

“Yes and no.” I set aside the water bottle and began sanding the rough edges off the table leg, letting the rhythm of the work take over my hands as I tried to figure out what way to take the conversation. I’ve done this kind of thing a lot over the years, but that doesn’t mean it’s gotten easy. Usually I have more time to get familiar with the backgrounds of the people I’ll be talking to and to work out where I’m going. “My dad was a carpenter and I’ve helped him since I was six. It’s not exactly what I’d call a hobby, just something I’ve always done. It’s also my retirement plan.”

She blinked. “You what?”

“Retirement plan.” I held the table leg up and examined it for a moment. “Handmade furniture is a small market, but it pays well. I do alright with my salary and housing stipend, but the fact is I’m working an entry level position and, odd as it may sound, there’s little room for advancement for talents in the Project.”

“Wait, what?” Amplifier leaned back slightly and narrowed her eyes. “Entry level? Teresa just said you were the senior-most agent.”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of Lincoln’s Rule.” I went back to work on the table leg. “It’s the first and biggest issue with working in the Project.”

“Lincoln’s Rule?” Amplifier straightened again. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Unfortunately, no.” I paused to brush some sawdust off of the table leg. “As you might guess from the name, Project Sumter began, in a much more limited capacity, during the Civil War. President Lincoln heard about a man at West Point who had superhuman abilities and wanted to find ways to use him in the war effort. But he already had grave misgivings about the South’s ideology and, in particular, their glorification of planters as a kind of American nobility.”

“Wait, when was this?” Amplifier crossed her arms. “I thought the Civil War was started to preserve the Union, and slaveholders only came into it when slavery proved the more palatable justification.”

I shrugged. “You know your history, although really, giving a nation as ornery and stubborn as ours any one motivation for anything is probably stupid. But regardless, Lincoln was just like any other man, he changed with time, and no time changes men like war time. More importantly, Lincoln knew the importance of symbols. The country gentleman was a symbol of the South. Lincoln wanted his army to be an army of the people. He didn’t want a super soldier becoming a war hero, he wanted average men to fill that role.”

Amplifier frowned and pulled her legs up into the chair, which was big enough she could easily sit in it Indian style without discomfort. “So what happened to the guy from West Point?”

“He was taken out of West Point, made an enlisted man and put under the command of an officer President Lincoln trusted. He served throughout the war and did good things, then retired and went home. Not a bad deal, all told, except it’s been the pattern the government defaults to when employing talents ever since. We can have a little bit of authority, serve as an NCO, for example, but we can’t be part of operational decision making, so an officer’s commission is right out. And we still operate with dedicated leash holders.” I nodded at Herrera, who looked a bit hurt.

“Not there’s no good reason for that policy,” I continued. “As you’ve probably heard, with great power comes great responsibility. I know that I’ve needed an oversight agent to real me in on more than one occasion, and the more destructive your talent can be the more important they become. But, unless you want to dedicate yourself to research full time there’s a limit to how far you can go.”

“So you’re planning to make up what you loose in salary through furniture making?” Amplifier looked around at the workshop again, then smiled slightly. “I guess that works out well.”

“Most people don’t stay with the Project for more than five or six years before moving on to something else, though.” I examined the table leg for a moment and set it aside, satisfied with it for the moment. “Having a fallback plan is one of those nagging little realities that most people don’t think of when they’re busy thinking about playing superhero.”

“On the flip side,” Herrera said, “we’re always looking for agents, which means that even if you choose not to join the Project now, there might be a future in it for you.”

“True enough. I know one guy who didn’t join up until he was fifty five, and he’s done a lot of good work for some of our branches over the years.” I dusted my hands off and rested them on my knees. “And that brings me to point number two that you should think about.”

“Health insurance?”

“No, that’s number three though, so keep ahold of that thought. Number two is, while the Project is at the beck and call off all the agencies of the Federal Government, for the most part we do law enforcement work. There’s a lot of running down paper trails, some stakeouts and the occasional bust like the one we found you during. But it’s mostly pretty boring, especially for the first two or three years. That’s time you’re not doing something you might be better at. Now you, you’re part of a band right? Singer?”

She bit her lower lip. “Yeah, that’s right. But anyone can do that, Clark and one of the other girls write all the music and lyrics. It’s not like I’m vital to the band.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I said, leaning back against my workbench. “After all, your talent gives perfect pitch, right? And you probably never miss a note unless you want to.”

For the first time since I’d met her, Amplifier broke eye contact with me and looked down at the ground. “Sure, but that’s not… it’s like cheating, right? I get an edge, so it’s not the same.”

“Nonsense.” I smacked my hand against the work bench for emphasis, startling her back into paying attention. “The fact that you have control over wave frequencies and strength is no more cheating that just being born with perfect pitch. How off key a note can you make sound right?”

“Uh… maybe a quarter step?” She didn’t seem entirely certain that was the answer I was looking for, but that was okay because I had no idea what it meant.

“So you still have to work at getting in the right ballpark?”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s not all getting the right notes. There’s tempo and feeling, too. And if I’m using all my concentration on keeping myself in tune that won’t come out right, never mind how tiring it would be.”

“And you’re good at all of it, I’ll bet. And you enjoy it, or you wouldn’t be in a band.”

“Or studying music and recording in school. So what?”

“So, the Project doesn’t need agents with high visibility. It’s the other way around, actually. These,” I waved to the tools on my workbench, “don’t really care what age I am, or when the last time I used them was, so long as I still know what I’m doing. But age and appearance are a big deal for musicians, especially women, and any musician that disappears for a time is bound to be mostly forgotten.”

I held my hands out like the balances on a scale. “So you can shoot for a musical career now, but you may not be ready for the demands of the job afterwards. On the other hand, entering the Project now almost guarantees giving up all the progress you’ve made towards that career goes away, and it’s not a given you’ll get it back.”

“So you’re saying that people should never have to give something up to help others?” Amplifier asked skeptically.

“Just that they should really think about the costs, so there’s no second thoughts later,” I said. “Which brings us to point number three.”

“Health care.”

“Partly. Doing this job hurts, sure, you get knocked around a lot doing it. But Project Sumter appreciates that, and the fact that we have small salaries, and compensates for it accordingly. More than that you’re expected to do a fair bit of knocking about yourself. Did Herrera mention what kind of roles are generally assigned to a wave maker like you?”

“Not exactly.” Amplifier glanced at Herrera, who nodded. It looked like one thing Amplifier had gotten was the need try and share as little about her talent as possible. “She did mention that we’re above average when it comes to potential for collateral damage, so I might not get sent on as many field operations as other agents.”

“True, to an extent,” I said with a nod. “I’m a high collateral damage causer myself, but as time goes on you can expect that your supervisors and the Senior Liaisons will figure out ways to use your talents efficiently. What I don’t think you realize is what kinds of situations you might be asked to deal with.”

Amplifier crossed her arms and dropped her feet back towards the floor. When she realized they wouldn’t quite reach she frowned and braced them on the crosspiece between the chair legs instead. “What kind of things are we talking about?”

“High potential for collateral damage translates into really big hammer.” I hefted a heavy wooden mallet from my workbench for example. “Which means you’ll get situations where hammers are called for. For example, one potential use for your talent is to shatter large objects. Ever wanted to be a one woman demolition team? Because you could probably shake apart most concrete buildings with the right harmonics and enough power.”

She gave me a skeptical look. “How often would that even be necessary?”

“You might be surprised.” I set the hammer back in its place. “The point is, you’re probably going to be doing things that have a high risk of getting someone hurt. This isn’t comic books, this is real life. As you’ve probably already noticed, most talents don’t come with built in indestructibility to help keep you alive. And just because we’re trying to be the good guys doesn’t mean no one will ever get hurt long term by something we do. If you’re not prepared to have one or two people go deaf because of your powers, at the very least, then you’re probably not ready for this job.”

“That seems…”

“Harsh?”

Amplifier jerked back a bit from my challenging tone. “Self-righteous.”

“People get hurt one way or another every day, Amplifier. Our job is to try and keep that to a minimum. And that’s hurdle number four.” I leaned forward like I could press the spirit right out of her through presence alone. “This job tells you to keep the peace and you have incredible abilities to do it with. It also requires that you lie to most everyone you meet and keep them in the dark about what really happens in the world around them. It demands that you make decisions for the greater good without the input or okay from the people who you’re supposed to be helping. Do it for two years and you’ll either become a megalomaniacal ass or curse yourself because you think you are one. If you’re the first they lock you up, if you’re the second they do anything to keep you from leaving. So the real question is, are you ready for it?”

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Heat Wave: Power Drain

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

Our exit strategy from Project Sumter boiled down to stealing the last working car in the motor pool and driving out the main door. With the rest of the vehicles sabotaged by Heavy on the way in, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to follow us and our own skills ensured we were not seen leaving. Even so, we didn’t get out that far ahead of the lockdown. As Heavy drove down the street away from the building I could see shutters beginning to drop over the windows. It was impressive how such a little thing could transform an innocuous office building into an imposing edifice. I made a mental note of the effect, for future reference.

Since it only makes sense for supervillains to behave as if all government vehicles come with a GPS tracker as a matter of course, we didn’t stay in the sedan for long. Even if the Project couldn’t follow us themselves, now that they were aware of the break in it was only a matter of time before they asked the local police to find the car for them. In fact, the only reason we used one of their vehicles at all is because we didn’t want our van to be caught by any of the building’s cameras. So we met Grappler a half a dozen blocks away and changed vehicles, only pausing long enough to transfer the boxes we’d taken from the Project and for me to fry the sedan with an EMP that drained the last of my vest’s battery reserves. Police departments are adding video cameras to more and more of their patrol cars, and it wouldn’t be odd for the federal government to follow suit. It’s best not to take chances when it comes to leaving evidence behind.

After that, there wasn’t much to do but settle in for the long ride back to headquarters and start patching ourselves up. “Ourselves” in this case basically being me, as I was the only one with more than a few light bruises.

Heavy Water insisted on strapping my right arm down, in spite of my own insistence that it hadn’t been that bad since he got it back in socket. Still, the argument that strapping it down was to ensure it wouldn’t get worse had weight, so I finally relented and let him tie me up, reasoning that I could always take the restraints off again if I needed too. Heavy also decided that my fingers were not broken, but splinted the smallest two anyway.

So, with my ability to work with my hands seventy percent neutralized, I had no choice but to settle into my chair, kick the boxes we’d stolen over to Heavy and say, “Do me a favor and have a look at that, will you?”

He just grunted and ignored the box, fishing through one of his bags of junk that were stored in the van on a semi permanent basis and coming up with one of those little prescription bottles full of pills. He dumped a couple out into his hand and held them out to me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This would be a painkiller,” Heavy said. “For the pain. Which, in spite of your being a smart guy, you’re ignoring.”

I swiveled my chair around to face the computer console and turned it on with a twitch of my talent. Ironically, while I’ve found that one can build simple programs and track computer activity fairly simply with my talent, the focus of modern software on a mouse or touchscreen driven interface actually makes routine tasks more difficult, since those are not easy to emulate. However sometimes it’s the only option I have. This was definitely one of those times. As I waited for the terminal to boot up I said, “I need a clear head right now, Heavy. It’s only a matter of time before the Enchanter makes his next move, and I want to be ready for him.”

Heavy sighed and dropped the pills into the pocket of my jacket, then put the bottle away and reluctantly picked up one of the boxes we’d retrieved from the evidence room. As he started to dig through it he said, “You’re sure in an awful hurry about this guy, boss.”

“Well of course,” Grappler said from the front seat. “Common sense says the Enchanter is the most dangerous person to us out there.”

“What?” I looked at the back of her seat. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Easy.” She threw me a quick, self satisfied glance in the rearview mirror. “The biggest, baddest bad guys always show up last, right? So that makes the Enchanter more dangerous than you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m far more terrifying than the Enchanter could ever hope to be.” I glanced back at my screen and smiled. “Case in point. We now have complete access to Project Sumter’s active investigation files. A near impossible task for others, accomplished in half an hour with my expert leadership.”

Heavy glanced over my shoulder and grunted. “Let’s hope that’s more useful than what we got from the evidence room.” He shook the box he was holding in his lap once. “This stuff is mostly melted crap that they found at the arson sites and took away with them so they wouldn’t have to explain it.” He hefted a piece of half melted concrete in one hand and admired it. “I didn’t even know you could burn this stuff.”

“Anything melts if you get it hot enough,” I said, skimming through the files we’d just stolen and looking for the Enchanter’s case. “Although I don’t think any burning was involved with that, it was probably somewhere near the Enchanter’s point of entrance when he burned his way into a building.”

“Either way,” Heavy said, dumping the debris back into the box. “It’s not that useful. Here’s hoping the stuff you got there is better.”

“Well, let’s have a look then, shall we?”

As it turned out, there wasn’t much to be had from the electronic side of the night’s work either. The Project was kind of at a loss on the Enchanter front, or, as they called it, the Firestarter case. It was currently slated to be turned over to Senior Special Agent Harriet Verger and Special Agent Aluchinskii Massif, a team I wasn’t familiar with. Aside from establishing a pattern to the addresses of the buildings being targeted, and that almost entirely by accident as it was technically done by someone they interviewed, Agents Sanders and Helix hadn’t really learned anything I didn’t know already while they were working on the case, and Agents Verger and Massif hadn’t officially taken over yet, so the case was actually in a sort of administrative limbo at the moment.

Other than discovering that Aluchinskii Massif was the name of mountainous region in Siberia I didn’t learn anything new. Actually, I had to Google Aluchinskii Massif in order to find out what it was, so I essentially got nothing directly from the Project.

Suffice it to say that I was not a happy man once we got back to our little home away from home, parked the van and dragged ourselves into the small, out of the way, half buried concrete building that served as my current primary base of operations. Worse, once we were there I had to take off the wrapping Heavy had put on my arm and struggle out of my gear. My arm hadn’t been bothering me much up until then but moving it enough to get out of the vest was an interesting experience, to say the least.

Grappler tisked as she helped Heavy carefully extract me from my various piece of gear and said, “You’ve got to go with something easier to get in and out of if you plan to keep getting hurt like this.” She straightened for a moment to show off her sleek black pants, tank top and flowing, light brown knee length vest. Or perhaps there were other things she was hoping I’d pay attention to. And, with Grappler, one cannot rule out the possibility of a general desire for attention.

“Problem with that outfit is the accessories,” Heavy said, taking his belt, complete with holster and pistol, and draping it over one of her shoulders, then doing the same with my belt on the opposite shoulder. “See? It doesn’t look right.”

She gave a very put upon sigh and stalked off to the weapons locker. Heavy offered me a hand up and I accepted it, struggling to my feet and suddenly feeling very tired. “What time is it, Heavy? Do I even want to know?”

“You don’t, boss. If I told you it was late tonight, you’d want to work some more, since you never turn in before midnight. If I tell you it’s tomorrow, you’ll say you got too much to do to day, so you’d keep going then, too.” Heavy dropped his hands onto my shoulders and pushed me towards the short flight of stairs leading out of the garage and into the main part of the building. “You don’t want to know what time it is, you want to go to sleep. So take your pain pills and find somewhere to pass out.”

It was hard to argue with Heavy’s reasoning; he was entirely correct. So I trudged up the stairs and pushed through the door into the situation room, feeling more and more exhausted with every step.

The situation room is a fancy name for the big open room that lets me keep track of things. Even I can’t keep all the layers of my various plans, contingencies and back ups straight in my head, so I keep a real time representation of them going at my headquarters. Unlike what you typically see on TV or in movies, that doesn’t mean a large map sitting out where anyone can see it and try and figure out what I’m doing. Instead, schemes are broken down on a series of password protected, physically isolated computer terminals. Physically isolated means that they’re not connected to outside networks and have no standard input devices like keyboards or touchscreens, so pretty much the only people who can get anything out of them are fuseboxes, like myself, or people with ten pounds of specialized equipment and several hours of free time.

It’s a clumsy way of ensuring operational security, but it also keeps the details of my endeavors safe from enterprising people like Hangman, who are already too resourceful by half when it comes to finding information.

On top of that, there’s a half a dozen regular computer terminals and the usual spread of office equipment that you need to keep a large operation running, regardless of it’s purpose or legality. All that is arranged on a balcony that runs around the outside of a much larger room, overlooking the assembly and testing floor where my engineers like Davis work on building and safety checking various pieces of equipment before they’re moved to their final staging areas. Any time after midnight the place is almost deserted, so I wasn’t surprised to find the room pretty much empty when I arrived.

I was surprised to find Simeon Delacroix waiting for me on the balcony.

My office manager looked as calm and dignified as ever and, if his sleep had been interrupted, or he’d otherwise been inconvenienced by arranging to meet us in the dead of night, he showed no signs of it. His suit was cleanly pressed, his waistcoat and pocket watch were in place and he looked clean shaven, well groomed and alert. I felt a brief twinge of jealousy, since I was pretty sure I was none of those things, but I know that whatever it is that give Simeon his superhuman sense of timing and poise, it’s not something I’ll ever have the time to unravel and master. Not if I want to stay out of prison and on top of the talented underworld.

So I just gave him the evil eye and said, “You’re up late, Mr. Delacroix. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Correspondence, sir,” Simeon said, producing a pair of letters with a flourish. His voice was studious and neutral, designed to inspire trust and confidence, with any regional accent having been rigorously removed long before I met him. Even so, there was a trace of concern in it as he looked me over and took in the various medical accessories Heavy had added to my usual dress. He pulled a pen knife out of his vest pocket and quickly slit the envelopes open for me. “You wished to be notified if any word came from the Enchanter while you were out, either to you or to the police.”

I straightened just a bit, suddenly more alert and glad I hadn’t taken those painkillers yet. “He’s sent something out, then?”

“A letter to the post office box you keep in the city, sir,” Simeon said, extracting a sheet of paper from one envelope and handing it to me.

I took it in my one useful hand and glanced it over. All it said was, “There is no king, not by hatchet or taxi. Death to pretenders.” Like the other note, it was signed Enchanter.

“How incredibly cryptic. And useless.” I folded the note up and shoved it into a pocket. “What else?”

“A photocopy of a letter sent to the police, same as the last one they received, obtained by your connections in the department and forwarded through the usual means.” Simeon handed me the second letter, which was identical to the first.

“Again, he sends the same letter to multiple groups,” I said, absently fingering the letter as I tried to figure out what it meant. “Why those groups and no one else? And what, if anything, are they supposed to mean to us?”

“I’m sure that interpreting them is half the challenge intended, sir,” Simeon said, folding his hands behind his back. “Are either of you hungry? The kitchen staff prepared some light refreshment, I believe, before they left for the day.”

“Now you’re talking, Simeon,” Heavy said. “It’s that kind of thinking we keep you around for.” Heavy gave Simeon a slap on the shoulder and grinned. “You coming, boss?”

“No, I think I’ll take your advice and just turn in for the night.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand. “Although as stiff as I’m feeling right now, I’m not sure I’ll ever actually get to sleep.”

“It passes, boss. See you in the morning.” Heavy trotted off towards the kitchen and I turned to head the other way, towards my office and the small cot I kept there for the times I slept over.

Simeon cleared his throat once and I stopped. “Was there something else?”

“Yes, sir. You received a phone call earlier this evening from a…” He hesitated midsentence. There aren’t many things Simeon hesitates to say. But one thing he hates is the way most of us talents go by code names while we’re working. He understands the importance of protecting our identities, but he always calls me “sir” when we’re in a situation where he can’t use my real name. If I had been contacted by someone using a codename he would usually just call them a gentleman or a lady. Unless he didn’t know their gender, which probably meant…

“Hangman? Did Hangman call?”

Simeon shifted his shoulders slightly, obviously relieved that I’d figured it out on my own. “Yes, that was the name they left, sir.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Did he say why he called?”

“Just that he had something that might interest you.”

“I see.” I mulled that over, then said, “When was this?”

“About half an hour before you returned,” Simeon said. He produced a slip of paper with a phone number on it and handed it to me. “This was the number given, should you with to return the call. But sir, I thought you should know that this didn’t come up through channels. We were contacted here, not at one of the satellite locations in the city or further south.”

“Hangman shouldn’t know this location’s number.”

“And yet,” Simeon said, folding his hands behind his back, “it would seem he does.”

Too resourceful by half. And yet, that was what made him so useful. “All right, Simeon. Thank you.”

“Not at all, sir. Just doing my duty. Will you be needing me again, tonight?”

“I’m not sure.” I looked down at the number on the paper I was holding. “I suppose I should talk to him tonight.”

“That might not be best sir,” Simeon said, looking meaningfully at the improvised sling on my right arm. “There’s no telling what that man wants from you. It might be best to see what it is when you’re in top shape.”

“Maybe.” I started towards my office again. “But you don’t make deals with the devil because you’re in a position of strength. Besides,” I turned back long enough to give him a grin. “He’s a good player but he’s new to the game. If I don’t give the kids a handicap then it wouldn’t be any fun.”

Simeon smiled slightly. “Very good, sir.”

As I walked into my office I contemplated the number Simeon had given me. The whole day had been spent trying to get something that would help me track down the Enchanter. Helix hadn’t been any help, and neither had raiding Sumter’s local office. But they say the third time is the charm. I picked up the phone in my office and dialed. The line picked up on the second ring.

“It’s Circuit, Hangman. Tell me what you got…”

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Heat Wave: Charge and Resistance

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

There was a moment of surprise as the man in the doorway drew back a half step. His attention had been on someone in the room, and he’d only seen me out of the corner of his eye. I had a split second before he realized he didn’t know who I was and I used it to plant my feet and drive my shoulder square into the center of his chest.

Now that may sound like an impulsive action for someone like me, who’s used to careful plans that require minimal effort. But in this case, it was the only option that made sense. He wasn’t sure who I was, because he hadn’t seen me clearly yet. I wasn’t wearing a mask or anything like that, so I looked fairly innocuous. I could try and pass myself off as someone passing through, like I had with that college student in Texas. In fact, that would be what I would try to do under most circumstances.

Except this wasn’t a normal job. I wasn’t breaking into a lab, a bank or a corporate office. I was in the basement of Project Sumter’s Midwest headquarters, a secure government facility, and I was about to break in to the evidence room. Playing coy wouldn’t help, and it would give this guy a clear look at my face. He had to be taken down as quickly and quietly as possible.

The idea was to slam him to the floor and hit him with enough current to keep him down for the count as he fell, then deal with whoever else was in the room before they could do something inconvenient, like grab a handgun or worse, call security. This plan hit an immediate snag when the other man didn’t go down.

In fact, he didn’t even back up or grunt in discomfort. It was like slamming into a brick wall, except not quite so abrasive. I shifted my feet to get better traction and pushed harder, but he still didn’t move. Trying all that didn’t take more than a second, and I was just about to back up to try something else when the blond man got around to grabbing me, one hand on one shoulder the other under the opposite elbow, and twisted me through the door and flat on my back on the ground.

I reached up with my left hand and snagged his ankle, then gave a sharp tug. Nothing happened. It was like trying to yank over a flag pole. I’m getting close to forty, and I’m not as spry as I used to be. Any other time I’d wonder if I was getting soft, that maybe the fall had taken more out of me than I thought. But here, in the basement of Project Sumter, I was certain I was dealing with a talent. And unfortunately, it was one I didn’t recognize.

With a twitch of my own talent I tripped the switch in my gloves, intending to trigger the electrodes built into them and carry out the electrocution part of my plan, even if the toppling part wasn’t working. I immediately discovered a new design flaw in my set-up. Rather than having a complete taser rig in both hands I had put a positive terminal in my left hand and a negative terminal in my right. With only one hand on my target, no current would flow unless the man was grounded in some way. Which he apparently wasn’t. And not even I can force circuit out of open air with so little charge to work with.

I tried to bring my right hand up and grab hold of his leg with it, but he was bending down at the same time to grab my left and it was a simple matter for him to switch targets and grab my right wrist. A second later Heavy Water slammed into his back and stopped dead. It was kind of eerie to see a six foot tall man, weighing in over two hundred pounds and in training stopped dead in his tracks by a man just as tall but at least twenty pounds lighter who wasn’t even paying attention to him. I probably would have given that some more thought if it hadn’t felt as if something extremely heavy slam into my left hand at that exact same moment. I lost my grip on the other man’s ankle and my entire arm and shoulder wrenched up and around and flipped me halfway over onto my chest. A dizzied glance didn’t show any source for what hit me, but I didn’t have much time to look.

The blond man held onto my other arm just long enough that getting flipped over wrenched it out of its socket before letting go and turning around to deal with Heavy Water, leaving me face-down on the floor, right shoulder in significant pain and left hand reporting that it was very possible some fingers were broken. And worse, I had no idea what had happened.

I’d like to say at this point that one of the many gifts my talent gives me is the ability to switch nerves on and off like all other electrical circuits. Alas, real life is not so convenient. I’m not sure if it’s the chemical component to nerves, or if some part of my subconscious just doesn’t want to tamper with my own body that way, or if there’s something else I don’t understand causing it, but messing with the nervous system is outside my abilities.

So I had to brace my left elbow and push myself up onto my knees with no relief from the pain. I was vaguely aware that someone had come up and put a hand on my shoulder, thankfully the one that was still socketed, and was saying something to me. Probably an admonition to behave myself. Grabbing his leg and shocking him down to the floor was simple, if uncomfortable.

He grunted in pain as he collapsed and then I gave him a second shock to the body, to make sure he stayed quiet. While I did so I heard the sound of ceramic breaking, followed by a wet splat.

I looked up to find that Heavy had stopped using plain force on the blond man and switched to tricks. Where I favor magnets and Tasers as my primary tricks, he carries a number of hard ceramic containers filled with ink and scored along one side. He’d apparently backed up from the other man and broken one on the door frame. The ink settled in his hand in one large glob, refusing to flow apart as he used his own talent to make it more viscous than cold oxtail soup. The blond man backed up a step but Heavy flipped it forward like a man pitching underhand and the whole glob flew in a gentle arc that slapped the other square in the face and stuck.

As Heavy’s victim staggered back, clawing at the ink blob and making a mess out of his hands for his trouble, I clambered to my feet and slapped both hands into his back, ignoring the shooting pains from my fingers and shoulder as I triggered my taser a third time. He stiffened and went down, proving that whatever his talent was, it didn’t make him immune to electricity as well as physical impact.

With the blond man finally out of commission I had enough time to glance around at the rest of the room. The first thing to do was to make sure there wasn’t anyone else in there, which was difficult with all the shelves running down the length of the room. But there wasn’t anyone here in the entrance, or behind the desk that was right next to it. I glanced over at Heavy, who was stripping the blob of ink off the face of the blond man so he wouldn’t suffocate. I jerked my head towards the back of the room. Heavy just nodded and slipped off, quiet as a ghost.

The second thing to do was check the charge in my vest. To my dismay, it was almost three quarters empty. Not much I could do about it at the moment, except do everything I could to avoid having to use it again on this trip. I made a mental not to come up with some way to charge it from conventional current without needing specialty equipment.

All that was left was priority number three. I stepped over to the computer and rested one hand on it.

A computer is nothing more than a massive collection of circuits that process information based on one factor, whether a given circuit is open or closed. These circuits form patterns upon patterns, and the astute mind which has had enough practice can interpret them. If they were born with the fusebox talent, they can even manipulate those patterns with a little practice.

It’s not the most elegant way to program a computer but it is a great way to get a look past firewalls or other password protections. And, since all I wanted to know at the moment was whether or not an alarm had been sounded, direct interface was the best way to go. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to determine that there was no sign of anything like an alert going through the system. No files were being deleted or removed, the firewall wasn’t locking the terminal out from the rest of the network and it didn’t look like anyone was trying to access the cameras in the room from outside. Satisfied, I lifted my hand off of the computer tower.

“Coming your way!” Heavy called. That was followed by a wet splat and the sound of someone falling to the floor. I hurriedly stepped away from the terminal and glanced down the rows of shelving. A short brunette woman lay sprawled on the floor in a puddle of ink that was no doubt as slick as oil. Of course, on a linoleum floor, like you find in most government buildings of a certain age, pretty much any liquid would make things slippery.

I stepped down the hallway to block the woman’s path, but I needn’t have bothered. Heavy was on her almost before I could do anything, slipping a plastic zip-tie around her wrists before she had a clear idea what was going on. A moment later she was gagged and dragged into the corner of the room.

While Heavy was doing that, and trussing up the other two men we’d stumbled into at the door, I started poking through the various boxes and other detritus on the shelves. When he finished and came to help me look around I said, “I hope she didn’t see your face clearly.”

“I told you we should have worn masks,” he said. “It’s not worth it to ‘look inconspicuous’ if they know who to throw in jail afterwards.”

“We’d never have gotten past that wall man if we wore masks, he’d have figured out we were up to no good in time have someone hit the alarm.” The boxes on the shelf were dated too early to be what I wanted. I waved for Heavy to follow me and moved on to the next aisle. As we walked I said, “If you’re worried about my methods you could always go in business for yourself. You’re certainly capable of it.”

“Not me, mister,” Heavy said, shaking his head emphatically. “I promised myself once that I’d never be one of those guys who just went around causing problems for the hell of it. You, you got standards, boss. But you still know that you need to raise havoc from time to time. I like that.”

“Um…” I really didn’t know what to say about that. “I’m not exactly an altruist, Heavy. I’m doing what I do because it needs to get done, true. But also because I’m the only person who can do it right. I prefer jobs well done, no matter how ‘important’ they are, to being a hero.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Heavy said, and shrugged. “Maybe you just don’t hear it like I do. Anyway, I like the work, it pays well and…” He glanced at the aisles of boxes. “I think it’s better for Grappler, too.”

Suddenly I found myself interested in the shelving as well. I realized we were now at the end of the last full aisle, the last row of shelves just beyond was empty. I headed down it. “Heavy, you know that I’ve never really-”

“Wall man.” Heavy said, cutting me off. “Is that what they’re called? That big blond guy from before?”

Grateful for the change of topic, I switched mental gears and thought about it for a second. “Honestly, I’ve never heard of anything like him. It’s not like I’ve seen a comprehensive list of all talents Project Sumter knows about, and I doubt any such list encompasses all the existing talents in the world. He’s really bothersome, whatever he is. I’m not even sure what he did to my arm. It’s like you rammed into me, instead of him.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Is any of what we do?” I pulled a box off the shelves and rifled through it. It was full of the kind of junk you’d expect in any mundane evidence box. Stuff in little plastic baggies, stuff in big plastic baggies, stuff in plastic baggies of every size in between. None of it looked like what I wanted. “Whatever it is, it has it’s limits. Good thinking dropping the ink on him, but why’d it take you so long to jump him?”

“Didn’t want to get shocked when you tased him,” Heavy said. “When I realized you weren’t going to be able to I tackled him, for all the good it did.” He waved to my right arm, still dangling slightly awkwardly. “Want to take a second to get your arm back in socket?”

“When we find what we need.” I put the lid back on the box I had pulled, wincing as my right arm moved in some way it didn’t like, shelved the box and picked a new one. This time it only took a few seconds of pawing through it to come to a conclusion. “This looks like part one.”

Heavy smiled and tipped his own box so I could see the contents. “And this is part two.”

I smirked and pulled a small case of tools from my belt. “I told you this would work out fine. Let’s wrap it up.”

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Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Circuit Breaking

Posted by natechen on

Helix

A law enforcement agency runs on three things – shoe leather, information and caffeine. There’s no particular hierarchy to those, by the way, you need all three in equal amounts. So I knew that, if I wanted to talk to Sanders, all I had to do was loiter around the coffee pot long enough and he’d show up. I wasn’t sure if I’d see Herrera or Mosburger first, and wasn’t quite sure how I’d explain what I was doing if I did, but fortunately that proved to be a moot point.

In fact, I’d only been waiting around for ten minutes or so when Sanders came out of his office and headed my way. There was a spring in his step in spite of the fact that, if they’d stayed on program, he was about to give the run down on one of the more frustrating cases we’d tackled in the last two or three years. It probably had something to do with having an excuse to test the waters with Herrera.

Normally I’d have no problem bursting Sanders’ bubble. The man can hardly keep his feet on the ground as it is, I figure anything I can do to help him keep his wits about him counts as a favor. But the correct way to bust someone’s bubble is to deflate their ego a little, not to drag up serial killers eight years dead. Just thinking about it had me scowling.

Scowling is enough of a typical expression for me that Sanders didn’t comment on it when I slid in next to him while he was filling a trio of disposable coffee cups. He just shot me a big grin and said, “I like her, Helix. She’s pretty, smart and charming. You don’t find all three that much, around here especially.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to strike a casual tone. “For instance, you’re just charming, and only on your good days.”

“Me?” He gestured to himself with the coffee pot, almost sloshing it all over the front of his shirt. Acting careless is one of his tricks to keep people off guard but he’s had way to much practice to actually drop, spill or otherwise loose control of something so easily and I didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m all charm, all the time. And you know there’s no one better looking in this building.”

“The night shift’s come in by now, Sanders, the building’s practically empty.”

He handed me a pair of full coffee cups and scooped up enough creamer and artificial sweetener to qualify most foods as a health hazard. “Speaking of charm,” he said, pouring additives into his own coffee until it was just a pale imitation of its former self, “Voorman’s not going to be happy with what you said on the phone tonight.”

“Which part?” I asked, flipping back through my conversation with Circuit in an attempt to identify something that might qualify as a problem.

The smirk on Sanders’ face hinted that I shouldn’t have bothered. “The way you answered the phone. That kind of language is extremely unprofessional and reflects badly on the Project. You know he’s touchy about those kinds of things.”

“Right,” I said, letting all the sarcasm out for the first time since I’d been reassigned. “I’ll certainly try to keep common courtesy in mind while I’m trying to distract megalomaniacs over the telephone. We certainly wouldn’t want those kinds of people to get the idea that we’re some kind of cut rate private security group instead of a well trained government agency.”

“That’s the idea, Helix. Keep it professional.” Sanders finished with his own coffee and started back towards his office, forcing me to tag along. I kept an eye out for other people as we went but, like I’d said, the place was mostly deserted at night. “What were you doing before the call, anyway? You weren’t at your desk.”

I dropped my voice and tone just a tad, not enough to sound like I was whispering conspiratorially, because that just attracts attention, but enough that it wouldn’t carry as well. “I was asking Cheryl to pull some files related to what you were asking me about at Mona’s party.”

Sanders paused and glanced at his office door. It was about twenty feet away and we could clearly see Herrera and Mosburger in there chatting with each other. There were both facing Sanders’ desk, and so they didn’t have a clear view of the door. Satisfied, Sanders looked back at me and said, “Was it any use?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking.” I fidgeted, suddenly wishing that I didn’t have my hands full. “There wasn’t anything conclusive there, but there is a possibility that Agent Herrera is the relative of a crime victim. One of the one’s we’ve investigated.”

“Well that’s interesting,” Sanders said, absently sipping from his coffee. “But I don’t know if it’s relevant. It’s true that we could just get her removed from the Project if your lead pans out, but it doesn’t really tell us what Senator Dawson’s motive for sending her here was. He’s still got another five or six years in office, assuming he doesn’t get reelected again, so we’re going to have to deal with him for a while yet. Better the devil you know, and all that.”

“All true,” I said. He did have a point there, and one we hadn’t thought of while hacking over the possibilities earlier. “But I thought you should know…” I glanced down at the coffee, then around at the room again. There still wasn’t anyone in sight beyond the two in Sanders’ office. Best get it over with. “We think she might be the daughter of one of Lethal Injection’s victims.”

For a moment Sanders didn’t show any reaction. Then I realized he’d gone pale, not an easy tell to pick up on a guy like him, and his coffee was sloshing in his cup. I started to say something, but Sanders rallied enough to beat me to the punch. “How sure are you?”

“Not entirely,” I admitted. “Injection’s second victim had a daughter named Teresa and there was an EMT, last name Herrera, at the scene.”

“Flimsy,” Sanders said. But it sounded hopeful, rather than dismissive.

“When you’re right, you’re right,” I said. “But I’m not a big believer in coincidence. There’s more going on here than we know yet, and somehow Lethal Injection plays into it. And I’m not just talking about the way Circuit’s connected to both cases.”

“Then find out what it is and bring it to me. Or Voorman,” Sanders said, jabbing at me with his coffee cup. “If it’s not important, I don’t see why you bring it up.”

“No? You’ve clearly never carried a grudge before.” Sanders adjusted his tie impatiently, clearly ready to have this conversation over with. But I didn’t think letting him out of it just yet was a good idea, and I took the opportunity to shove one of the coffee cups I was holding into his free hand. He stared at it as if he’d never seen it before. “Here’s something to think about. If she stays here, sooner or later Herrera is going to start poking around to see what really happened to her father and the man who killed him. That’s going to lead her to Operation East/West and Lethal Injection.”

He looked up from juggling coffee cups and said, “What are you going to tell her?”

“Me? Nothing.” Like most people would, Sanders was holding both cups in front of his chest, not quite touching but close. I stuck the third between them and he fumbled get them arranged into a pyramid that he could hold with only two hands. “I wasn’t on the scene with Lethal Injection was brought down. I’m certainly not the person who shot him.”

Sanders flinched and I folded my arms and looked away, already regretting shooting my mouth off. A classic example of why I tried to let Sanders do the talking most of the time. If only that was always an option this time around.

Still, it was a good thing I did look away just then, because I saw one of the other field agents, probably from Al Massif’s team, threading his way to his desk. I lowered my voice a bit more and said, “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” I looked back in time to see Sanders nod, a perfectly normal expression tacked onto his face. “I’m out tomorrow, I’ll be at my workshop. Let me know if you need anything before I come in again.”

I tried to beat a hasty retreat but before I could get more than a few steps away Sanders said, “Oh, Helix?” I paused to glance back at him, but didn’t turn around. “Herrera said something about a meeting with you tomorrow. Does she know where you’ll be?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” I said. “She’s a trained investigator. If she needs me, she can find me.” Sanders just shrugged and we went out separate ways. After debating about it the whole way out of the building I finally decided I was too wound up to sleep. The workshop was closer anyways…

Circuit

“Sidearm?”

I checked the clip on my SIG, then loaded it and racked the slide. “Check.”

“Taser?”

I held up my hands to display the gloves I’d built my upgraded joy buzzer into after the last one proved to be poorly insulated. “We’ll be trying the static charge rig again.”

“Are you sure? You haven’t had a chance to test it out since the last time…”

“I’ll take my chances, Heavy,” I said, connecting the electrodes to the battery lined vest. As I’d hoped, it had proven fairly simple to keep the charge up by syphoning loose static charge, along with other forms of stray current, into the batteries. It wouldn’t last forever, but it did slow down the rate I burned through the reserve.

But Heavy didn’t seem very impressed with it’s performance so far. He just sighed and said, “It’s your funeral.”

“Trust me on this,” I said, checking the connections a second time. The vest supplied power to both the electrodes and the pair of electromagnets coiled around my arms. It was important to make sure they were connected to the right ports. There was a trigger for each one built into my new gloves, and it would be unfortunate if they wound up switched and I accidentally shock Heavy Water when what I really wanted was to extend my talent’s reach with a magnetic field.

Heavy didn’t question my faith in my handiwork, just turned around so his back faced me, not so much a snub as a request that I check his body armor. As I made sure he was firmly enmeshed in his gear Grappler leaned around the side of the driver’s seat and said, “Are you boys sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“Yes,” I said, cinching Heavy into his armor a bit tighter. “Breaking and entering is a two person job, the better to avoid detection. We need my talent to bypass security and Heavy has more experience than you. And someone has to stay and drive the getaway car.”

Grappler sighed, doing her best to look both fetching and disappointed, the better to convince us to take her along. As usual, she succeeded admirably. But, while she’s probably the most striking African American woman I’ve ever met, I’ve also built an entire career, on both sides of the law, by ignoring distractions. I wasn’t about to start being swayed by one pretty face. “We’ll be back in an hour, two at most. If you don’t see us by then…”

“I know, go get Simeon and tell him the score.” She turned back towards the front of the van and settled into her seat again. “Get moving, then. I’ll meet you at the pick up point.”

Heavy turned around again and slipped a plain windbreaker over most of his gear. I was doing the same with a sport coat. “First problem is a security camera on the corner of the building,” Heavy said, leaning over one of our computer consoles. “It takes six seconds to sweep from it’s first position to the second, where it remains for four, then sweeps back and watches the other way for the same period of time. Cycle begins… now.”

We stepped out of the van and made our way across the street. I flicked my electromagnets on as I did so, keeping a careful count in my head. Twenty seconds later, as the camera settled into a position facing away from us, I locked the circuit powering its motor open, immobilizing it. Much less obvious than simply disabling it for a number of reasons. Any person in the security center watching it was much less likely to notice a stationary than one taken out by, say, an EMP. It’s also much more likely to be treated as a simple malfunction. And if it does go unnoticed at the time, the camera goes back to normal performance once we’re gone and no one is the wiser.

“Problem two,” Heavy said quietly, once I gave him the all clear signal and started across the street. “Exterior door. Plans show a simple mechanical lock.”

“Unlikely,” I mumured. And as I expected, the lock proved to be a complex mechanical-electronic hybrid. It looked like I’d need to swipe a key card while unlocking it if I wanted to enter the normal way. I’m sure, one of these days, people will realize this really isn’t any more secure than an old fashioned padlock and start throwing bars across the inside of their doors again, but until that happens places like these are my oyster. The building plans didn’t show any other security beyond this point and, aside from cameras, it should be a breeze.

The card scanner was right there in the open so I didn’t even need to use a magnetic field to manipulate it with my talent. I just rested one hand on it and motioned for Heavy to pick the lock. Once he was finished I disabled the sensor that monitored the door. While it blissfully thought the door was closed we slipped through, then I shut down the magnets and everything outside returned to normal. I tapped one thumb into the other palm, letting me check the charge left in my vest. Barely a tenth drained.

Heavy and I produced flashlights and switched them on to augment the dim lighting in the parking garage we found ourselves in. It was hard to see much of anything clearly, but I could tell that there was a row of cars stretching into the dark on our left, giving way to larger vehicles about forty feet away. To the right I could see the basic vehicle care facilities that go with any kind of serious motor pool.

I waved Heavy off to check on the vehicles while I moved into the maintenance bay. Beyond that I found what I really wanted, a door into the rest of the facility. It was closed and locked, but a quick check didn’t reveal anything beyond that. I nodded to myself and doubled back into the work area and started rummaging around. I finally found what I wanted a few minutes later. The motor pool’s collection of spare keys was kept in a lockbox on one wall. It was clearly labeled, which made things easier, but also locked. I could have just forced the lock, or perhaps cut it, with some of the tools on hand but finesse is a virtue in its own right, and so is staying in practice. I pulled out my own lock picks and got into the box in tolerable time.

The keys were all labeled by make and model, and came with remote operated locks, so I just took the first set of sedan keys I came across and hit the unlock and lock buttons. Then I closed up the lockbox and relocked it. A few minutes after I finished Heavy came back and joined me at the door. I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Finished already?”

“If you ever did this for a living you’d know how stupid that question makes you sound,” Heavy said, sliding past me to the hall door and cracking it open in a staggeringly short period of time. I had to admit, when it comes to this kind of thing Heavy Water’s in a league of his own.

You could tell just by the way he moved us from the motor pool down one floor to the basement of the building. Even though he had identified all the places cameras were likely to be installed, and even though it was after midnight and the building was, for the most part, as silent as a tomb, he still moved around ever corner with caution and approached every door with care. In under twenty minutes he had us from the motor pool down to the objective with nothing but a handful of security cameras, handled as easy as those outside, as obstacles.

The door itself was more of a problem. It looked like it was locked physically, with a camera fixed on it and probably someone at a desk with a panic button on the other side. The first thing I did was knock out the camera. Since it didn’t move, it had to be fried. Hopefully the fact that only one camera had gone dead would be enough to keep us from being noticed until after we were out.

On the bright side, it did give me a chance to test out a function of my new gear that I hadn’t had a need for yet. The magnetic coils around my arms were just as capable of creating a weak EMP as they were a more sedate magnetic field, and a brief burst from them left the camera inert. It also drained another twenty percent of my vest’s charge, which was less than satisfactory efficiency. I made a mental note to work on that as I used a more normal magnetic field to check that the camera was indeed out of service. The door would be more of a challenge, but now that we were free to move down the hallway I was confident that Heavy could get through it.

I strode up to the door and waved Heavy back for a moment, so I could check the door for electronic alarms of some sort. I had just leaned forward to touch the frame when the door swung in and revealed a tall, blond man in the process of coming out.

The door would prove to be much more difficult than I had anticipated…

Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Flash Point

Posted by natechen on

Helix

“Ortiz’ daughter was named Teresa?” I leaned back in surprise. “Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What were you expecting then?” Cheryl asked.  “You are the one who wanted to see the file.”

“One of the EMTs who came to the scene was named Herrera.” I tapped the appropriate part of the old draft I had found. Cheryl flipped through the stack of papers to the correct final report. “I talked to him way back when, but I was hoping there might be something more on him in the file. Like whether he had a daughter.”

“But you didn’t realize Ortiz had a daughter, or that her name was Teresa.” Mona didn’t make it a question. “I find it hard to believe both men had daughters named Teresa. But if Ortiz’s daughter is the Teresa here now, under the name Herrera, shouldn’t you recognize her? Eight years is a long time, but you make the case sound like such a big deal…”

“I never met any of the families of the victims.” For which I was privately grateful. “Let’s face it, the Project doesn’t have enough coverage to be an effective first responder and Lethal Injection was spread out across two fairly large states. Mostly, by the time we arrived at the scene the locals had usually taken charge of any family of the victim, and it’s not like we have the extra personnel to assign our own family liaisons with. In fact, we tried not to tell the family anything about our investigations.”

“Which is sad but understandable,” Cheryl said as she ran one finger down the page she was looking at. “Here we are. Javier Herrera, married, three children. Doesn’t look like we dug any deeper than that. We don’t usually look too hard at incidental persons on the scene, so that’s not surprising.” She flipped the papers closed. “Still, Mona’s right, it does seem like a stretch to call it a coincidence that a man with Agent Herrera’s last name was there the day Teresa Ortiz’s father died. Ms. Ortiz would be the right age to be Agent Herrera, too.”

“So, speculation?” I tapped my fingers absently on the tabletop. “Did Javier Herrera take in Teresa Ortiz after her father was murdered? That would explain why Teresa Herrera’s records were sealed.”

“It’s possible, but it would require unusually fast work on the part of the local authorities to get it done before she came of age,” Cheryl said, absently stacking the East/West into a neat pile again. “Unless Mr. Herrera had some kind of pull, which you wouldn’t expect of the typical EMT. If Agent Herrera is Teresa Ortiz, then the sealed records are a real plus for her.”

“How so?” Mona asked.

“In the last year two field agents have turned out to have connections to the past victims of talented criminals,” Cheryl said. “In both cases those agents were immediately taken off of field work due to concerns about their objectivity.”

“But they leave field agents with long working histories with talented criminals on the same case for years,” I muttered.

Mona spared me a sympathetic look. “New question. If Agent Herrera is Teresa Ortiz, why did Senator Dawson spend so much political capitol getting a handpicked agent into the Project when finding out such a simple thing could get her removed from her position?”

That was a great question, and it quickly became apparent that Mona didn’t have the answer. We stared at her for a moment and she blushed a bit. “Maybe there’s just something about her that puts her ahead of the pack?”

“There’s nothing in her HSA record that’s particularly stands out,” Cheryl said. “I mean, she was efficient and had a good record, but nothing that puts her in the top five percent, say.”

“I didn’t realize they ranked people like that,” Mona said.

“I think we’re using the Cheryl O’Hara Snap Judgement ranking system,” I said, reaching over to tug the East/West file away from Cheryl.

She put one hand on top of it to keep it in place. “You haven’t officially signed that out yet. Maybe Herrera came up with a novel approach to catching Circuit?”

“I’ll sign it out as a resource on Open Circuit later, his phone call certainly makes it relevant,” I said. Cheryl’s hand didn’t move so I relented and pulled back. “And Herrera did have the location of Circuit’s warehouse, but I’m not sure that would explain why the Senator pushed so hard to get her into the Project. It was a minor tip, and very recent. This kind of thing has to have been in the works much longer than that tip was around.”

“Maybe the Senator had a new idea to catch Circuit, and he needed someone to help him try it out?” Mona rested her chin in her hand and stared absently at the far wall, sure sign that the wheels were starting to turn at high speed. “But that wouldn’t explain why he’d choose Teresa as his catspaw.”

“No, I think Cheryl was on to something,” I said, slowly cracking my knuckles as I thought about it.

“I was?” Cheryl straightened a bit. “About what? Herrera not being a stand out?”

“Not exactly.” I drummed my fingers again as the idea coalesced. “It’s just that when I first met Agent Herrera she was with Senator Dawson and I wasn’t quite sure how he could stand being around her. She strikes me as a natural born people person, with tons of charisma and presence and she’s better looking to boot. Why would he let himself be overshadowed that way?”

“You’re not really helping us explain why the Senator would want Herrera in the Project,” Mona pointed out.

“That’s just it, what if he didn’t want her in, but she did. What if she was the one looking for any available route into Project Sumter and decided Senator Dawson was the path of least resistance.” I leaned forward and tapped Cheryl’s file. “She’s got a powerful motivation, at the least.”

“So you think she’s here for revenge? A real life Batman, out to fight the talented criminals so they can’t cause other people grief?” Cheryl asked thoughtfully. “It’s possible.”

“But it doesn’t explain how anyone, no matter how motivated, could get Senator Dawson to spend a great deal of political capitol getting them admitted to Project Sumter when the Project is very likely to kick them out as soon as they stumble across the right file. Which we’ve just proved doesn’t take that long.” I opened my mouth to say something but Mona kept going. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the Senator must have thought there was something worthwhile he could get out of the arrangement.”

“I’ve never met Senator Dawson,” Cheryl said. “And I’m not really that familiar with the Senate Committee decisions, since Records only deals with field reports. What does he want to do that having a field agent in the Project could help him accomplish?”

“He could get information that usually isn’t forwarded to the Senate Committee,” I said. “Or keep abreast of developments in cases without being reliant on official Project sources.”

Cheryl’s face made it clear that, whatever she thought of that, it wasn’t very nice. “While I’ll admit that’s something, I’m not sure it’s worth all the effort it took to get Agent Herrera into the Project. Mona makes it sound like it took a lot of work.”

“It did,” Mona said. “I can’t say much beyond that, but it is something Senator Dawson has been working towards for some time. I’ll agree that whatever he might want Herrera in the Project for, it’s probably something more significant than just an inside source.”

Not something I really wanted to think about. The long and the short of it is, a lot of the safeguards that keep talented people like myself safe from persecution and exploitation rely on secrecy. That’s one of the major reasons why, nearly a century and a half after it’s creation, Project Sumter remains a top secret, undisclosed portion of the government. Secrecy is part of our lifeblood and to people like me, who have been raised with the reality of talent since our births, there’s few things more important. Not even our Senate Committee gets to know everything about us. If compromising Project secrecy was just a side benefit of getting Herrera into her current position, how bad was Dawson’s real scheme?

“Maybe we’re thinking of this the wrong way.” Cheryl leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers, tapping her chin with her thumbs. She didn’t have the same level of commitment to secrecy as I did but, as part of the Records department, it was still a major part of her job. While she hadn’t seemed excited about playing politics with the Senator’s hand picked oversight agent when I first asked for the East/West file, now she seemed a little more invested in the idea.

“The Senator’s biggest failed initiative was his proposal to require all talents to register in a database that would list their name, current location and talent.” She glanced at me. “I can mostly guess why you might not like that idea, Helix, but what are the official reasons it got shot down?”

“Budget,” Mona said immediately. “There just aren’t enough resources allocated to the Project to make such a thing feasible, even if it weren’t kept a secret. We barely have the resources to do normal law enforcement and locate and brief new talents that show up. Tracking all the known talents in the country would require us to tripple our staff, at the very least, and there just isn’t enough money for that, never mind enough trained people.”

“There’s also the privacy and other civil rights issues,” I added. “Many members of the Committee were concerned about what might happen to their careers if they were ever associated with a program to monitor people who weren’t guilty of anything more dangerous than being born with unusual potential. Our friends in the Justice department-” Mona suddenly bolted upright and darted out the door. “-had similar concerns.”

There was a brief moment where we just sat there, Cheryl looking stunned while I tried to think of other recent changes in procedure that might be credited to Senator Dawson. “There was a plan a while back to try and get more experienced legal advisors onto the staff, but that failed for reasons that don’t have anything to do with the Senator. In fact, I think that was actually a pretty popular idea with everyone but the lawyers.”

“Right,” Cheryl said, still looking at the conference room’s door. “More importantly, should I be worried about whatever Mona’s up to?”

“Oh, that?” I glanced back in the direction Mona had headed. “Happens all the time.”

“If you say so.” She blew out a breath. “Why didn’t the lawyers like the idea?”

“I think it didn’t pay enough.”

“Naturally.” There was another moment of silence while we contemplated Shakespeare’s famous suggestion to kill all the lawyers, but before I could suggest we look into that as a new policy initiative Mona swept back into the room carrying a small pamphlet that looked vaguely familiar.

“What’s that?” Cheryl asked.

By way of answer Mona spread the pamphlet out on the table. Among other things there was a prominent picture of Senator Dawson smiling at some sort of event and one of those tear-out donation cards. “Senator Dawson brought in a stack of these during his last re-election campaign. There were a bunch of them left in various places around the building, I don’t think anyone took one.”

“He’s from Wisconsin,” I said. “How many people here could even vote for him?”

“I’m not sure that matters to us right now,” Mona replied, skimming over the pamphlet. “I didn’t take one but I did read one, once. Here we are. ‘If elected, the Senator will push for funding to support research into all spheres of medical stem cell treatments, including existing embryonic stem cell lines, adult stem cells and hybridized stem cells.'”

“What’s a hybridized stem cell?” Cheryl and I asked as one.

“It’s a new approach to gene therapy crossed with adult stem cells,” Mona said. “With adult stem cells you grow new organs or some such based on the person’s own genetic code. But if the person you’re treating has some sort of congenital defect, you’re likely to wind up with the same problem all over again. You can’t grow a good heart off bad blueprints, for example. The theory behind hybridization is, you replace whatever the faulty genes are with functional genes from a healthy individual, then grow the new organ.”

“They can’t even get stem cells to grow organs yet, regardless of where they come from,” Cheryl said. “Why push such far flung research?”

“I don’t know.” Mona began folding up the pamphlet again. “But we don’t know much about talents and genetics yet, even after several decades of research. What if all it takes is a hybridized stem cell treatment to create new talents?”

My gut clenched at that idea. “You think the Senator was somehow working towards that?”

“It’s a possibility,” Mona said, putting the pamphlet aside. “But it’s based on a lot of fairly fragile evidences and suppositions. The Senator’s campaign goals. Teresa Ortiz as Agent Herrera. The Project’s current lack of significant data on existing talents, which the Senator has tried to remedy.”

That’s a getman’s life in a nutshell. Make fragile leaps of logic. Astound everyone when you’re right. I knew better than to write her conclusions off, and apparently Cheryl did too, but she also saw something I hadn’t thought of yet. “Why does putting Agent Herrera in the Project help Senator Dawson develop hybridized stem cells?”

“Easy,” Mona said. “We can’t maintain a database on all known talents, but criminal talents are different. They’re imprisoned and monitored just like any other criminal. And one of the things we do is take a DNA sample from each talented criminal we arrest.”

“And then, whenever there’s a crime involving a specific kind of talent you compare forensic evidence found at the scene against known criminal talents of the same type. I’ve seen some of those Forensics reports. Records, remember?” Cheryl pointed at herself in case we weren’t sure what she meant. “I’m not an expert on genetics, but I don’t see how those DNA records might help the Senator with his hybridized stem cell schemes, assuming he even has any. There’s only a few hundred criminal talents on record, and half of them probably don’t have DNA on record, since they’d have been active before the technology for it existed. That leaves maybe two or three examples of any given talent for study. Scientists need hundreds of examples to get an accurate picture of gene structures, don’t they?”

“A ambitious field agent with a chip on her shoulder would push aggressively to arrest more criminals,” Mona said, ticking the points on her fingers. “We’ve already seen that in Agent Herrera’s push to arrest Circuit. More criminal talent records results in a larger statistical sample. It also makes it easier and easier to make the case that a comprehensive talent database would save us effort in investigating and prosecuting talented crime.”

“That’s nonsense. There’s no evidence that Circuit was ever even contacted by-”

“Ladies!” I waved my hands for their attention. “I don’t think we’re going to get any farther on just speculation. It’s time to go out and look for some evidence.”

I started to get up from my chair but Mona waved me back down. “Hold on. Where are you going?”

“Um… to think about how to get some evidence?”

She shook her head sadly. “You know, Sanders may have been the one to recruit you into helping manage Herrera, but he’s not the only one Voorman has working on this.”

“I appreciate that, Mona,” I said. “But if anyone has the connections to run down what happened to Teresa Ortiz after her father died, it’s San-”

“Me,” Cheryl said. When we turned to give her that look surprised people always seem to give, she just shrugged. “If the Senator is trying to pull something weird with the Project records I don’t want to be involved in it. But,” she held up a finger to emphasize her point, “if there is no connection between the two Teresas then your whole line of reasoning goes from sketchy to worthless, and I’m out. You can get Sanders to run down the information you need in the future.”

I glanced at Mona, since I wasn’t part of the inner circle in this whole unofficial probe into Herrera’s past it would be better to let it be her call. She said, “That sounds fair. And with the Firestarter case still open and who knows what else likely to wind up on our plates in the near future, what with Circuit still at large and two new talents in town, who knows how much free time Sanders will have in the near future. If you want to tackle tracking down what happened to Teresa Ortiz I don’t see any reason to say no.”

“Okay, with that settled…” I pointed at Mona. “There is something you could look in to. You majored in Biology in college, right?”

“Yes…” She could clearly see where this was going.

“In your spare time, see if there’s anything to that wild stem cell idea. If someone’s looked into it and proved it can’t be done, then that’s probably not the Senator’s actual goal here. Otherwise, try and figure out what other things he might be doing to push that idea while Herrera’s doing her thing here.” I got to my feet and started towards the door, then paused and glanced back at the two of them. “And no one mention this to Sanders just yet. I’ll break it to him.”

Cheryl raised an eyebrow. “You?”

“Me.” I sighed. “East/West was a nasty case for everyone. But of all of us, here, it was probably worst for him. He should find out it’s coming back to haunt him from someone who was there.”

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Heat Wave: Liquid Fire

Posted by natechen on

Helix

“Circuit?” Nothing but silence met me on the line, and I slammed the handset into it’s cradle. “I’m so glad I could waste ten minutes of my life on that.”

At the next desk over, Sanders hung up another phone, shaking his head in disbelief. “He’s been on the books nine years and we never had a hint he was so… crazy.”

“He’s good, that’s for sure.” I leaned back in my chair and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to gather my thoughts. Just listening to Circuit rave seemed to have driven them all out of my head. “Never shown his hand if he could help it. What scares me is that he apparently found people who agree with him. There ought to be some rule limiting how many cranks of a given type there can be.”

“You can’t legislated what people think, Helix,” Herrera said.

I swiveled in my chair so I could see the desk behind me, where she was sitting. “I’m talking about laws of nature and probability here. I mean really, did you hear that guy? And there are people who are willing to help him out?”

“Doesn’t mean they like the ideology.” Herrera pushed her chair out from the desk and stretched back, then stood up. I blinked and told myself to focus. I took small comfort from seeing several other men in the room do the same thing out of the corner of my eye. “They may think there’s something in it for them, or maybe they’re just natural followers, and an authoritarian personality can naturally dominate them. That is basically what Circuit said he plans to do with the whole nation, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if I like to give credibility to anything Circuit says, but you may have a point.” I rubbed my eyes and stifled a yawn, then shoved myself up out of my chair. “Someone should find our analyst and have him look over Circuit’s activities since he became a known element, look at them from the perspective of an organized anti-government idealist rather than a simple miscreant.”

“In the mean time,” Sanders said with a smile, “it sounds like your team is going to need to get better acquainted with the Firestarter situation. That’s still my case, at least until Agents Verger and Massif can get back from their last assignment. Agent Herrera, would you like me to give you a quick briefing on where that case stands?”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. “I was on the Firestarter case not four days ago. I haven’t heard about any big breaks in it, so I think I can get our team up to date.”

“Maybe,” Herrera said. “But I’d like you to focus on trying to figure out what Circuit is likely to do next, assuming he actually does plan to try and stop the Enchanter on his own. I’ll get Pritchard and Agent Sanders can bring us up to date.”

Sanders’ expression slipped just a tad, but he quickly recovered and said, “That sounds like a good idea. Meet me in my office in ten minutes?”

“If I can find my analyst that quickly.” Herrera turned and glanced around the room, which currently included the three of us, half a dozen analysts and one or two people who I’d guess were from Forensics or Records. “Has anyone seen Agent Mosburger recently?”

“The new guy?” One of the analysts asked. “I think I saw him headed towards Darryl’s office half an hour ago.”

Herrera headed off that way while Sanders headed to the elevator, presumably to get back to his office, leaving me at loose ends. It was tempting to go home and get some sleep, leaving the problem of trying to anticipate Circuit for later. But I had plans for the next morning, which was my day off, and I didn’t want to leave too many loose ends lying around the office, so I thought it would be a good idea to go and see if we had ever actually gotten anything on the phone trace we were running on Circuit’s call.

That kind of work is handled by a special part of the forensics team, so I headed towards the elevator. I was waiting for it to arrive when Mona caught up to me.

“Come on,” she said. “You need to see something.”

If it was Sanders or Herrera, or even Jack, I might have questioned that, but Mona was my field analyst for two and a half years and in all that time, when she’s said I should see something, it always proved to be something I needed to see. I didn’t think that had changed in the few days since I’d been reassigned, so I followed her back up the hallway to a small briefing room in the corner of the building. To my surprise Cheryl was already there, seated at the table with a stack of paper, clipped and stapled into about a dozen separate chunks, in front of her.

Mona closed the door behind us as I sat down at the table. “I take it this is about the East/West file?”

“You got me curious so I pulled it up, but I’m not really sure what you wanted it for,” Cheryl said, thumbing the corner of the stack of papers. “I gave it a quick glance over before I signed for it and came down here, but I didn’t see anything that seemed to have bearing on active cases. Unless the fact that it involved Open Circuit is enough to make it relevant.”

“Actually,” I said, “since he just mentioned it to me a few minutes ago, it might.”

“Wait.” Mona held up a hand as she sat down, looking almost as if she was waiting to be called on in class. “Before we go any farther, does anyone want to tell me about the East/West file? Is it an operation file, a research file, a file on a specific talent…?”

“An operation file,” I said. “Operation East/West refers to the manhunt for a talent known as Lethal Injection.”

“And how does Open Circuit come into that?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Darryl never mentioned this case to you at all?”

“Why would Darryl mention a case she’s not cleared for to her?” Cheryl asked, clearly a little scandalized at the idea that someone would break with procedure like that.

I tried not to look impatient. “It was a significant case in recent history, as well as the first case I worked on. It’s when I met Darryl and Sanders, in fact. And as so many people have pointed out recently, I’ve spent a large portion of my time with Project Sumter working on one thing or another that has Circuit as it’s root cause. That might have made East/West relevant to my analysts at some point, don’t you think?”

“If it did, no one ever mentioned it to me around the office,” Mona answered. “And we don’t bring work home. Darryl’s too much of a perfectionist to ever be able to put it down if he did, and you know I’d just feel insecure about whatever calls I’d made on a case during the day and spend all my time on the phone changing my mind. It’s much simpler to just police each other and never let work in the door.”

“Reasonable,” I said. “And East/West isn’t exactly the kind of thing that comes up in casual conversation. It’s the only case in my time with the Project where we actually went to Condition One.”

“I saw that,” Cheryl said, picking up the top stack of paper and flipping a few pages. “In fact, going to Condition One was one of the first actions taken on the case. But there’s no mention in here of what it means, and I didn’t have a time to look it up.”

“Condition One is when the Project goes to battle stations,” Mona explained. “It’s kind of like a state of emergency. I don’t think it’s been used all that often, though you’re in a better position to know that kind of thing than us. Basically, I think the Project only moves to Condition One when they know for a fact that a talent has used their abilities to kill someone.”

Cheryl bit her lip. “Yeah, I can see that being a cause for alarm for a bunch of reasons. It’s tough to keep quiet, it requires particular care in handling arrest and prosecution and then there’s the family of the victim to consider…”

“Victim?” I shook my head. “You misunderstand. Condition One can be called whenever a talent directly causes a fatality, whether they used their ability maliciously or in self defense, accidentally or intentionally. We don’t go to Condition One every time we find an incident like that, but we could.”

“Really?” Cheryl looked a bit surprised. “That seems like awfully vague. Not that vague is anything new for the Project. But, even assuming it’s intended for containment of fatal incidents where talents are involved, what does it actually mean?”

Mona shrugged. “That part is fairly straight forward, really. First off it involves taking all field agents off their current assignments and reassigning them to working on the fatal incident, usually as containment or to follow up leads that would normally be left to local law enforcement or associated federal agencies, to cut down on the bureaucracy involved.”

“I’m not entirely sure it helps there,” I said. “Since the Project is hardly the paragon of red tape cutting.”

“Secondly,” Mona ignored my interruption, “while we’re under condition one the rules about civilian talents staying out of Project business are lifted.”

Cheryl’s eyes widened. “You mean we don’t enforce the anti-vigilantism rules under Condition One?”

“It’s worse,” Mona replied. “Talents with criminal records can also contribute to solving the case, with the possibility of receiving a reduced sentence or even a pardon for previous actions.”

“That’s how Circuit’s name wound up in the East/West file,” I said. “He got wind of what was going down and spent some time looking for Lethal Injection himself. In fact, as he has so recently reminded me, he gave us the tip that actually led us to Injection.”

“I suppose he wasn’t interested in the pardon then?” Cheryl asked.

“No, he obviously wasn’t, although we did hold off on actively trying to chase him down until he did something illegal again.” I shook my head. “Circuit’s involvement with East/West wasn’t what I wanted to look into when I asked about the file, though it’s certainly become more important in the last hour or so.”

Cheryl restacked her papers and said, “Well, if it’s not about Circuit, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Condition One, what were you wanting to know?”

“Actually, it’s about one of Lethal Injection’s victims.” I fished out the handwritten piece of paper I had found while rummaging through my desk. “I don’t have the name, but I do have the date we were on the scene. 30 May.”

“Hm…” Cheryl flipped through the various piles of paper with a practiced eye. “First victim, Nolan Richards, found dead on the third of the month. Second victim, Hernando Ortiz, killed May 30th.” She pulled out the relevant bundle of reports and went through them, then stopped on one page and turned pale.

“Cheryl?” Mona leaned forward, concern evident on her face. “Are you alright?”

She turned the page with a shaking hand and said, “There were pictures, that’s all.”

Which I should have thought of. While there’s probably no such thing as a good first case for someone in law enforcement, Lethal Injection had proven to be a very, very bad one. “Sorry, should have warned you.”

“Warned her of what?”

“How bad it would be.” I rubbed my forehead. Even eight years later, thinking about that time was tough. “Lethal Injection was more than just some guy who caused a fatal accident with his talent, or a crook who let things get out of hand during a job. He was a honest to goodness, talent wielding serial killer.”

“No wonder Darryl never told me about him,” Mona said in a hushed tone. Serial killers are something no one in the Project likes to think about, for all the usual reasons plus the added difficulties of containing and managing the existence of the talents involved in that kind of a mess. “What was his talent?”

“Waterworks,” Cheryl answered. “Manipulation of the viscosity of liquids. Not exactly a dangerous talent.”

“Not on the face of it,” I said. “But when you find ways to get toxins and acids into highly concentrated liquids that you roll up into little beads? That’s what happened to Ortiz. Injection tossed little balls of sulfuric and hydrochloric acids on him until they either caused enough damage to kill him or the shock did him in.”

“Not to mention that blood is a liquid,” Mona added.

“He figured that out, too,” I said bitterly. “Eventually.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after that. Then Cheryl started skimming the case file again. “Ortiz was a postal worker, doesn’t say what part of the postal service he worked in. Worked for the USPS ten years, nothing remarkable about his record. Thirty-nine years old at time of death. Not in financial trouble. Good looking man, when he was alive.”

I resisted the urge to point out that that wasn’t exactly an appropriate thing to say about a dead man. Cheryl turned over the page and continued reading. “He was a widower, doesn’t say how his wife died. They had one daughter, sixteen years old at the time, who found the body.” Mona made a little pained noise at that, but didn’t say anything. Cheryl paused for a moment, and at first I thought she was just waiting to see if Mona would say anything else. But then she looked up at me and said, “The daughter’s name was Teresa.”

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