Tag Archives: Circuit

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: Short Fuses

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

A rush of garbled voices on the other end of the line met my announcement. I heard the unmistakeable sound of someone putting his hand over a handset and they became completely unintelligible, but I didn’t really need to hear much of what they were saying to guess the content. It probably boiled down to everyone asking, “How did we manage to miss that?”

“Helix.” I said, in a normal tone. The babble continued, so I raised my voice a bit and repeated myself. I had to repeat the process twice more until the voices quieted down.

A moment later, Helix’s voice came through clearly, saying, “What do you get out of doing our job, Circuit?”

“A lot of things, Helix,” I said, trying, and mostly failing, not to grin at his confusion. Even if he wasn’t there to see it, a sloppy habit is a sloppy habit. “The three most significant benefits are these. I keep the public blissfully ignorant of talents, a situation that benefits me just as much as you. I keep the Enchanter from gathering other people to his cause. And I do a little something to convince you that I’m not the villain you think I am.”

“Not a villain?” Helix scoffed, which is something you don’t hear much any more. “Not a villain? Have you forgotten what happened in Morocco already?”

“Do not-” I slammed the heel of my hand down on the console in frustration. I knew that was going to come up sooner or latter, but somehow it still managed to surprise and irritate me. Heavy Water was staring at me from the next chair over and I waved him back to checking his gear, then turned the motion into a general shaking to get the tingling out of my fingers.

Helix remained silent through the whole process, whether startled by my outburst or stewing as he waited for a real response I couldn’t tell. After a second or two, with my temper mostly under control, I said, with diction as careful and clear as I could make it, “Do not blame me for Morocco. What happened there was in total disregard of my express orders. Yes, the funding came from me but it was not properly used.”

Still irritated, I got up and paced to the back of the van, a journey of about two steps, then back to my seat, and repeated the process, nearly making myself dizzy as I went on. “Morocco was a mistake and I will not repeat it. But I saw what it was and I closed it down. I did, not you. Just like I did with Lethal Injection and like I’m doing right now, with the Enchanter.”

“All you managed to do in those cases was make bigger messes for us to clean up.”

“I stopped what was wrong, Helix. I don’t think even you will argue with that. The fact that my organization does not have the resources yours does in terms of containment and cover up does not change the fact that something needed to be done.”

There was a long pause and I leaned against the back doors of the van, trying to give my simmering annoyance a chance to cool by wondering what Helix was doing. Massaging his temples? Rubbing his forehead? Throwing paperclips at the other members of his team?

Unfortunately, I kept coming back to the little issue of his being completely correct. A couple of years ago I had tried farming money raising activities out to certain elements in Africa. Unfortunately, I hadn’t ever seen any return on that investment and I’d found my name and organizational weight being thrown around ways I never even dreamed of.

I shut that operation down. Permanently. Apparently Helix got stuck cleaning up afterward. I should have expected that, really, because who else would they send?

“I apologize for the inconvenience I’ve caused, Helix, but I do admire your capacity to deal with it. That’s one of the reasons I’m offering you my help this time.”

“Help?” Helix’s voice rose to a shout. “Is that what you call it? Circuit, I don’t care if you were outside of US jurisdiction, you still provided the funding, the training and the organization to let those people do what they did. That makes you responsible for what they did. The fact that you’re sorry about it doesn’t mean you’re not scum.”

“Scum?” My voice dropped down until it was barely a murmur. Heavy glanced up with a worried look and began shutting off the equipment at the work stations, which was probably a smart move.

“Do you know the difference between the two of us and people like the Enchanter, my late, unlamented associates in Morocco or even the Senator who runs your Project?”

Helix matched my icy quiet with an equally dry tone. “Enlighten me.”

“We do something, you and I. By any objective standard, the bandying about of words that passes for modern politics is as superfluous to society as the brutality of a dozen street thugs in the Third World. Enchanter and anarchists like him see the politicians and the thugs and they think they’re the problem, when they’re actually a symptom. The Enchanter wants to burn down modern society and replace it with the basest barbarism because they think that will make them free. What they don’t realize is that all it will do is make the politicians and the thugs swap places. But you and I, we know the real problem, and we’re doing something about it.”

“I have a newsflash for you, Circuit. If you think the problem is that there’s too many thugs out there sucking air, then we definitely aren’t dealing with the same problem. In fact, I’m not sure we’re even in the same zip code.”

Even though I was leaning against the back door of the van, far from most of the electrical wires in the vehicle, I could still feel the current moving through them, balancing potentials. There was a beauty and elegance to the simplistic focus of electrons moving through wires that I have always loved. It’s a trait Helix shares with electricity and, I think, one of the reasons why I’ve never taken his constant interference in my work personally. He can’t not do his job any more than negative charges can seek the positive.

But there’s a rhythm and pattern that even the simplest of computers brings to that single-minded electronic drive. It’s hypnotic, at times, and soothing at others. And it has a simple lesson to teach the attentive. “The key is control.

“In olden times, people had self control. The States never could have united if their leaders didn’t realize that giving up a few of their prerogatives to form mutually binding agreements would result in greater power, a power needed to gain any meaningful freedom from Britain. Back then, in a way, each man was a tyrant in and of himself, ruling his life with an iron fist so that the excesses that would prevent him from living meaningfully would be controlled.”

“So, what? Are you calling yourself a founding father?”

“Hardly.” I was distantly aware that Helix was trying to make fun of me, but I refused to rise to the bait. For one thing, it would do a lot to undermine my point. “The world you and I live in is nothing like theirs. People don’t learn to control themselves anymore, and they don’t believe in building anything. Instead of useful work we get empty protest, noble ideas are replaced with vapid “dialog” and self restraint is belittled while anarchy and indulgence are the height of culture. All the while the handful of people who do anything meaningful are expected to carry the burden of providing for everyone else.”

Helix grunted. “You’re not wrong. But I think a man of your abilities who really wanted to fix those problems would do more good as a teacher than as a… whatever you are.”

“Oh, but I am a teacher,” I said, feeling the electricity in the van begin to pulse in time with my words. “People today expect someone to look after them. They’re not even qualified to eat without a half a dozen rules to help them make the right choices. Well, we live in the information age, where power is in the hands of the one who can master the circuit just as much as the one who masters the gun or the dollar. Who better to run the show than a man even the government recognizes as a master of circuitry?”

“What are you saying, Circuit?” Helix’s voice had gone just as cold and low as my own. “That you’re the new Messiah? A one man army, come to set the world aright? Lots of other people have tried that, none of them have succeeded.”

I snorted and the surge of current shorted out the van’s dome light. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s true that, to a certain degree, it will take a single man with a clear vision and immense power to create and enforce the new rules. But I need other people, just like anyone. I have some allies. I need more. You, and most of Project Sumter, are cut from the right stuff. You can keep secrets and know the importance of law and order. And, whether you like to admit it or not, the slipshod way you go about trying to find and educate talents right now is not going to be enough in the very near future. You can’t keep a lid on talents forever, but once the genie’s out of the bottle the government will never be able to deal with the backlash. You need me.”

“So we should put you in charge?” Helix actually sounded a little thoughtful at that, and I felt a spark of optimism. If he was taking the dangers I foresaw seriously, then implementing a solution in time to save society from total disintegration might not be a pipe dream. “Sorry, Circuit, but no dice. I’ve seen what your problem solving looks like. We don’t need more of that.”

“Let me prove it to you. Share your files on the Enchanter with me and I’ll run him to the ground. I have connections that won’t talk to you, and ways of gathering evidence shortsighted courts might not approve of.”

“How simple can I say this?” Helix bit each word out. “No. We will catch the Firestarter ourselves. And if you come anywhere close to this investigation, I will personally cuff you and throw you into a hole so deep you’ll forget what daylight looks like.”

“Fine.” I felt something in the van’s power locks short out under the force of my reply. “But the change is coming, Helix. It’s necessary and unavoidable. The people of America no longer know enough about governing themselves to ever hope to govern anything else. Once the society collapses it will be a new dark age unless someone does something to stop it. Someone willing to grind common sense back into them no matter how little they want it, who’s willing and able to force them to fight for their independence again. What it amounts to is, if they can’t or won’t rule themselves then they will bow to me.”

The stray charge that had built up in the wires near me as I spoke burst free and flooded the van for a brief second. My headset gave a brief click and then died. I absently pulled it off and threw it to the floor. “Heavy!”

“Van’s locked down, boss,” he called from the front seat. “Grappler got most of it sequestered before you started raving.”

“It’s not raving, Heavy, it’s telling people the truth. They frequently look very similar.” I pulled the disposable phone I’d been using from one pocket, checked to make sure the same pulse that fried my headset also fried it’s memory, then tossed it on the floor. “It seems like Project Sumter is unwilling to cooperate with us.”

Heavy raised one eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, we have to do this the hard way.”

He rubbed his hands eagerly. “Boss, that’s just what we’ve been waiting to hear.”

Heat Wave: Crossed Wires

Posted by natechen on

Helix

As the local king of disorganization, I learned pretty much everything you need to know about keeping Cheryl happy by not doing it. At this point, that should come as no surprise. But when I left Herrera’s office I had every intention of practicing what I preached. I spent the next hour and forty-five minutes writing up an after action report on the warehouse raid, and another forty knocking my notes on Amplifier’s debriefing into shape.

Thus armed with fresh computer print-outs, properly sorted, paper clipped and ready for filing, I made my way up to the top floor where the Records department perches over its nest of moldering files like some bizarre sort of carrion fowl.

The Records department is set up like this: You step out of the elevator into what’s probably the least welcoming reception area on earth, or at least the upper Midwest. There’re a door to the stairwell on the left and a desk built into the wall on your right an a whole lot of empty space. They don’t even have potted plants there. In the far wall there’s a secure door that leads into the department proper. Only people who are actually employed by Records can get in or out of that door.

Worse, because of the institutional paranoia that has grown up in the Project since our records were compromised a few years ago, if we want to do a search of files we haven’t contributed to, or files that are now closed, or pretty much anything that isn’t on our desk right that instant, we have to go through Records to do it. As a result, our Records people are the most over worked and underpaid Project employees. It’s not at all surprising that they’re also some of the grumpiest.

When I got there Cheryl was at the desk. No real surprise there, she’s almost always at the desk, on the front lines trying to hold the unwashed masses of clueless field agents and demanding supervisors at bay and let the Records people focus on the important work of trying to figure out bad handwriting and transcribe it into the Project databases.

Actually, we don’t turn in handwritten reports anymore, and haven’t in ages, but you wouldn’t guess that from talking to a Records worker.

As soon as Cheryl saw me coming out of the elevator, reports in hand and on time, a suspicious looked crossed her face. This is not the kind of punctuality I’m known for, and as a rule of thumb if someone’s making life easier for you it means they want a favor in return.

Cheryl probably learned that lesson early in life. She dresses real classy and has a great figure to boot, and when she first started working the Records desk you’d usually find a small crowd of people loitering around trying to make small talk with her whenever you filed a report. That was two years ago, and it’s mostly a thing of the past now. I was the only one there when I arrived.

“Agent Double Helix,” Cheryl said, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit? You don’t have anything due for another forty-eight hours, I wasn’t expecting to see you for another week.”

“You’re here pretty late, yourself, Cheryl,” I replied. “It’s after eight, I thought you’d be out of here hours ago.”

“Are you kidding?” She shook her head. “With a major raid today, in conjunction with local SWAT, accompanying evidence processing and two new Talent files to open, do you honestly think we have the time to take the evening off?”

I hefted the reports in one hand and set them on her desk. “Speaking of which. Write ups on the raid, after action report, paperwork for opening a file on talent #4322, notes on first debriefing of the same.”

Cheryl gave it a quick once over, then said, “What about #4323? You’re not about to let someone else open a file on a talent you found, are you? It’ll ruin your numbers.”

“Voorman beat me to it,” I said, offering a halfhearted shrug. I really didn’t feel like going over that a second time. “If there’s paperwork to be filed on Gearshift you’ll have to wring it out of him.”

With deft hands Cheryl racked the paperwork and added it to a small stack on her desk. She did it all without looking, instead evaluating me with a scornful glare. “All right, Helix, what is it you want?”

“Is this where I play coy?”

“Most people do,” she said dryly. “It doesn’t make them any more likely to get what they want and it’s not very original, either. Just insults my intelligence.”

I always got the feeling that Cheryl finds most kinds of banter insulting to her intelligence. On the bright side, that’s not problematic for me unless I’m trying to turn in paperwork with Sanders along. “I need access to an old file.”

Cheryl nodded and turned to her keyboard. Apparently this meant I’d passed muster. “What kind of file?”

“Operation East/West.” I leaned on the desk and did my best to look casual. “It’s appended to talent #4085, codewords Lethal Injection, Double Helix and Open Circuit.”

“You’re cleared for all of those,” Cheryl muttered, reading the information she’d pulled up on her screen. “But file #4085 has been closed and sealed. Lethal Injection is marked as dead. Is this relevant to an ongoing case?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s got to do with something I’m looking into for Sanders.”

Cheryl frowned. “He doesn’t even have any cases assigned to him at the moment. You boys aren’t up to some kind of mischief are you?”

“We’re a clandestine government organization, Cheryl. Everything we do counts as mischief by definition. It’s for a worthy cause, though, and we’ve unofficially been formally asked to look into the matter by people high up.”

“Like who? Is this something the Senator put you onto during his visit a few days back?”

There’s a lot of politics in any job, but especially in one where you’re actually working for politicians. In my case, I don’t like it but I deal. It’s not what I’m here for but I don’t believe in letting it get in the way of what I am here for. But some people don’t like politics in any shape or form. With a job and attitude that focused on getting the facts in order, it’s no surprise Cheryl was one of them. Still, I’m sometimes surprised at how much she manages to miss sometimes.

“No, he didn’t.” In this case, I decided flat denial would work best. In fact, I like to go with flat denial whenever I can get away with it.

Unfortunately, Cheryl wasn’t willing to let me remain mysterious. “Well, what do you want it for, then? I can’t just sign out a closed file on a deceased talent on Sanders’ say so, even if both of you were involved in it.”

“It’s kind of-”

The rest of my explanation, which I’m sure would have been stunningly persuasive once I figured out what I was going to say, got lost in the sound of the stair door being shoved open. I turned to see Kesselman, looking more than a little out of breath. He spotted me as son as he came to a stop. “Phone call for you downstairs, big guy.”

Feeling like I must have missed something, I pointed at myself and raised my eyebrows.

“Yeah, you. Downstairs in the analyst offices.” He paused to gasp for breath.

“Well, why didn’t they just take a message?”

“It’s from someone who says he’s Open Circuit.” Kesselman motioned down the stairs. “Says he’s on a secure line, doesn’t want to transfer. He’ll hang up if you’re not there in two minutes, Herrera says hustle.”

When the boss says hustle, you hustle first and question later. As I sprang for the stairs I looked over my shoulder and said, “I need that file, Cheryl.”

Then I proceeded to go down four flights of stairs in under twenty-five seconds, which I don’t recommend for anyone who’s not a Hollywood stuntman, and burst onto the Analysis floor trying to run and keep weight off the ankle I’d just sprained at the same time. Darryl waved to catch my attention, he was standing by a desk with Herrera and Sanders.

Sanders was on the phone and as soon as he saw me come out onto the floor he said, “He’s here now,” and held the phone out for me as I ran over to take it.

The last thirty seconds had left me out of breath and in pain so I just grabbed the phone out of his hand and covered the mouthpiece as I took a second to steady myself. All three of the other people stared at me with naked impatience, which didn’t make gathering my wits any easier.

So I disregarded several Project rules of conduct, not to mention everything my momma ever taught me, and slapped the phone to my ear then said, “What the hell do you want?”

Circuit

“Quite well, thank you.” A moment of silence answered my non sequitur. I shrugged and wound up fiddling with my hands free headset for a moment until I had it properly settled again. There are good reasons for the things, I’m sure, but I’ve never found one that would sit on my head for any length of time unless duct tape was involved. For obvious reasons, I dislike that approach.

Helix still wasn’t saying anything after I got the headset settled again, so I decided I’d just have to keep going. “You know, in all the time we’ve known each other this is the first time we’ve actually spoken beyond the stereotypical police drama stuff. Being cordial would cost you nothing. And it would keep me on the line longer for your phone tracker to do its thing.”

“Sorry, Circuit, but cordial is not my thing.” I knew enough about Helix to know he wasn’t a big man, but he had a surprisingly pleasant baritone voice in spite of his stature. It sounded a bit raspy, though.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I catch you away from your desk? You sound more than a little winded.”

There was a murmur of voices on the other end of the line. “What do you want, Circuit? I don’t honestly believe that talking to you for an extra thirty seconds is going to let us get any closer to tracing your location and I do think hanging up on you before you make your point is going to make you annoyed enough to do something stupid.”

I blinked. As a matter of professional survival I have a healthy respect for Helix’s capabilities. He’s a skilled man, with training from the largest talent watching agency in the nation and a wealth of practical experience. But I hadn’t expected him to be so blunt. “Very well. Did you find what I left for you?”

“The chair? Yeah, it was right where you left it. Wanna tell me what that’s all about?”

“The chair? I sit on it, of course.” I snorted and settled myself into my seat in an attempt to get comfortable, probably just a case of my subconscious acting up. The van I was sitting in was custom built, but not for comfort. “I wasn’t asking about the chair, Helix. Have you read the letter yet? If not, I can always call you later.”

“The letter?” Another murmured aside. “You mean the one from the Enchanter guy? Yeah, we found it, but I don’t have it here. You want me to run at get it from the forensics guys? Though I’m not sure they have it off the truck yet.”

As Helix was talking Heavy Water opened the side door of the van and slipped in, handing me a set of folded blueprints that had come to me through certain channels and that I would be needing in the near future. “Not necessary. Just tell me, what did you think?”

Helix made a funny little exasperated noise and said, “I think you’ve either got some really weird idea of a pen pal or you’ve finally decided to take up the profession of crossword puzzle setter. I have no idea what that was, Circuit. Now why don’t you answer me something.”

“Of course, Helix. We’ve worked together long enough for you to ask me one or two questions on this auspicious day. But before you fire away, I need to make a quick adjustment. You know, one of those things that keeps you frustrated and me from incarceration.”

The van wasn’t laid out in the normal fashion, with two benches in the back capables of holding a total of five people. Instead, the back was entirely open, leaving more space for whatever I might need to pile there, and there were two chairs facing computer consoles across from the sliding door, one of which I was sitting at. I put the blueprints down on my console and said, “This may be a little loud.” There was a sudden burst of static as I tweak electric potentials in various parts of the computer, feeding it various commands. A lot of the noise was purely cosmetic, something built into the repeater built into the van, but as I’ve said before, appearances are important. And, to be fair, I was actually doing something I didn’t want Helix thinking too much about. “There we are. Finished.”

I was answered by the sound of muffled cursing on the other end of the line. It took a second for Helix to wind down, then he said, “What are you doing, playing with Faraday cages?”

“That’s surprisingly astute of you, Helix,” I said. “I had no idea that you knew so much about electronics.”

“Don’t give me that. You handed my team the solution to our first major case, gift wrapped, and then you scoffed at the pardon that came with and proceeded to spend the next eight years wreaking havoc. You really think I don’t read those technical journals you leave sitting around? We’re not stupid, you know. Anything you’re interested in, I am too.”

“Which only serves to reinforce my high opinion of you.” As I spoke I pulled up a simple GPS tracking program, the kind of thing that will find anything, anywhere in the world, and tell you it’s exact latitude,  longitude and height above ground, and set it to work. “I want to try it again.”

“You want to leave me more trade magazines?”

I laughed. “No, not what I was referring to.”

I had intended to say more but a sudden rustle of sound on the other end interrupted. “Well would that tell me how you make a cellphone trace say you’re on the island of Malta? Because I, for one, would like to know how that’s done.”

“Generally, one books a flight to Malta and then places a call from his cellphone.” Heavy was already unfolding the blueprints and consulting them before the computer finnished it’s queries. “But let me restate that what I want is not to give you a new set if ideas to develop countermeasures for. Rather, I want you to consider letting me help with a little problem of yours.”

There was a split second of silence, then, “I’m not sure I follow.”

“It’s like this, Helix,” I said, looking over the places Heavy had marked out as potential entrance zones. I pointed to one and nodded. “You have a problem. You call him Firestarter. He’s both talented and destructive. Perhaps worst of all, he uses his talent to help his baser urges find expression. He’s not just a danger to the general public, he makes it difficult for the Project to maintain that lovely fiction that the world is a sane, predictable place without sudden surges and shifts in the evolutionary status quo.”

“I’m familiar with the Firestarter case,” Helix replied. “I was even on it for a little while.”

“Not at all surprising,” I said. “What’s more so is that you’re not on it now.”

“These things happen. I fail to see how the problems Firestarter is causing us can be any of your business. What’s one miscreant’s arsons to another’s armed robberies, money laundering, extortion, conspiracy, kidnapping and interstate flight?”

“You forgot several varieties of grand theft,” I said. “And surely, with all the crimes the federal government wants me for, the interstate flight warrants can hardly be germane anymore.”

“Of course. How could I forget?” Helix sighed. “I honestly don’t see where you’re going with this, Circuit. Do you think we don’t have the resources to chase both you and Firestarter at the same time? I know you have an incredible information network at your disposal, and if you have a tip on Firestarter that you’d like to share, we’re always willing to act on those. But what’s your angle?”

“You don’t see the difference between me and Firestarter?” I asked, affecting a wounded tone. “Honestly, Helix, I’ve always hoped you gave more credit than that.”

“More credit than what?”

Heavy Water is touchy about his plans, so I didn’t write a big fat X on which room our objective was in, just tapped the correct part of the prints twice, then did the same for places I thought we might want to avoid due to electronic surveillance.  “More credit than you give a two-bit miscreant like him.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s managed to perpetrate a number of arsons without getting caught, and unlike you he’s managed to leave a subtle pattern to annoy us with. You have no pattern at all, and perpetrate crimes strictly for your own gratification.” Helix’s tone was slightly condescending, as if he was unsure I was keeping up.

“Not strictly for my own gratification. And leaving patterns is the work of an amateur, I am a true professional. But most importantly, Firestarter is an example of society’s problems, I represent the solution. Did you read the Enchanter’s note?”

“Yes,” Helix said, dragging out the word in a way that made it clear he was still trying to follow the sudden subject change.

“Did you happen to look at the envelope it came in?”

“No, I didn’t. Should I have?”

“It’s return address was 1457 Ferntress Avenue, the home of Paul Moreau, the Firestarter’s first victim.” I gave that just a moment to sink in. “Sources tell me police Precinct 27 received an identical note returned addressed to the home of Peter Morrison. I wouldn’t be surprised if notes were credited to Amelia Morgan and Pritchard Mosburger as well.”

“You think this Enchanter and Firestarter are the same person.” Helix wasn’t asking a question. “And you plan to help us catch him for reasons of your own.”

“There is that incredibly sharp insight I have come expect.” I leaned back in my seat and laced my fingers behind my head. “We underground talents have our own ways of passing news around, you know. This is not the first I’ve heard of the Enchanter. He’s actually managed to make a name for himself in the last year or so, and not in the quiet, unobtrusive sort of way many of us get our start. No, he is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a real firebrand.”

Helix groaned. “You should get something added to your rap sheet just for that.”

“Do you know why he sent me that letter?”

“Because he can’t stand your puns?”

“That might have been a part of his motivation, but I doubt that was all of it.” Heavy handed me the blueprints, this time with a route from entrance to objective marked on them, and I sat back up and began to study them again. “He’s an anarchist, Helix. Everything there is to love about a structured, organized society, he hates. But in particular, he hates the idea that there’s someone out there who will come down on him like a load of bricks if he ever tries to use his talent for anything beyond boiling water.”

“So you’re saying he doesn’t like the Project much more than he likes you.”

“I imagine he wouldn’t, if he knew it existed,” I said, setting the plans aside for the moment. We were getting to the good part and, without any visual cues to clue me into Helix’s state of mind, I was going to need all my attention on the conversation for the moment. “But so far as the Enchanter is concerned, the person waiting to jump on him is me. I started stymieing his attempts to take his anarchist’s manifestos into public venues two months before his first arson. So in a sense, as far as he’s concerned I am Project Sumter.”

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Fiction Index

Heat Wave: The Wood Pile

Posted by natechen on

Helix

As it turned out, Circuit had actually left is a lot, but not much of it was meaningful.

Perhaps because he didn’t want to draw attention by bringing in a fleet moving vans, Circuit had chosen to leave behind most or all of what passed for furniture inside his little environmentally sealed bunker. Most of it was piles of pallets and crates with boards laid across the top to serve as makeshift tables. There was an empty server rack over in one corner and a serviceable desk nearby. A hand crafted walnut chair sat by the desk. Beyond that there was a map of the city with a bunch of papers tacked around the edges. Here and there a discarded piece of electronic equipment sat, either forgotten or unneeded.

SWAT had declared the room free of danger before letting us in, but I still felt a twinge of caution as I poked through the piles of junk. The whole place was kind of depressing, and not just because there weren’t likely to be any signs of where Circuit was in it. It reminded me of an empty factory, a place that used to have purpose but didn’t any longer.

I shook off the melancholy and walked over to the desk, pulling on a pair of white gloves as I did. Contaminating the crime scene is still a blunder, even if asteroid impacts are more likely than Circuit leaving fingerprints for us. Mosburger trailed along a few steps behind me and Herrera went part of the way with us, but went to look at the map instead. Mosburger started poking through the drawers on the desk, musing to himself, “You have to wonder if it was even Open Circuit who was here. There could be any number of reasons for someone to use this kind of elaborate vacuum set up.”

“Yeah,” I said, turning the chair over and looking at the bottom side of the seat. “But this almost guarantees it.”

“What?” Mosburger asked, looking back at the chair with a confused expression.

I tapped the maker’s mark stamped on the bottom of the chair. “This. Circuit has left at least one piece of furniture of this make at every place of his we’ve raided in the last four years.”

“How many is that total?”

“Counting this, six,” I said, setting the chair back on its legs.

“Is it always his chair?” Mosburger asked, looking at the furniture a little more closely.

I shrugged. “It’s not like he labels them, and not every place we find is his personal laboratory, but yeah, we think so. It would certainly fit what he seems to be doing.”

“What? Is it some kind of message?” He was studying it more closely now, as if a simple wooden chair that consisted of four legs, a seat and a back could tell him something. And he was a getman, maybe it could.

“Personally, I think he’s just making fun of me.”

“You?” That got a raised eyebrow. “What makes you think this is personal?”

I waved my hand at the chair. “This came from the same online store as all the other pieces. It’s a-”

“Hey, Mossman!” Jack waved from over by the server rack. “We got something here that requires your particular talents.”

“Right!” He got up and started away, glancing back long enough to say, “Fill me in later.”

A nod was all he got for confirmation, but I was sure that he’d here about the chairs sooner or later. I went back to the desk, but didn’t really find much there. It was mostly piles of old electronics and computer trade magazines, most with dogeared pages. I left them be.

“You folks think you’ll need anything else before we go?”

I jumped and turned to find the SWAT Lieutenant had snuck up on me. Tunnel vision strikes again. “No Lieutenant, uh… I never got your name.” And suddenly, I felt bad about it. We’d dragged him and his team off their normal beats to help out here and they had found a big fat nothing.

“Don’t feel bad, Agent Helix, I didn’t give it. Harold Duncan.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it. He glanced around and sighed. “I gotta say it doesn’t feel right to just up and walk off with the scene unprocessed like this.”

“What department do you usually work, Lieutenant Duncan?”

“Vice.”

That made sense. He probably went along on a lot of raids like this before he even got anywhere near joining SWAT. Or not, the Project doesn’t really get involved in the drug trade all that often so I wouldn’t know. “Well, when you look at a scene like this what are you thinking about?”

Duncan looked around and shrugged. “Chain of evidence, how many convictions we can get at this level and how far up the food chain we can go.”

“See that’s just it.” I spread my hands. “The only part of that which really concerns us is going up the food chain. The classic motive, means and opportunity trifecta makes our job very easy- there’s only so many people with a given talent in the country, and there’s usually only one per state. It just boils down to proving opportunity, since you can manufacture a motive for just about anything. ”

“That must be nice,” he murmured. “Keeps the suspect pool down.”

“And with Circuit it’s even easier. We’ve got a list of crimes a mile long we can pin on him if we ever find him. But what it means in this case is that we have our own way of dealing with these scenes. Yeah, it’s similar to yours, but we like do have our own guys do it for reasons I’m sure you understand.” The look on his face said he did. We were muscling him out for reasons of secrecy and jurisdiction and expertise and he knew it. I could also tell he didn’t really hold it against us. He was just uncomfortable because of it. Hopefully he’d get over that if we needed to do this again.

“Well, good luck to you, then,” he said finally. “We need to get back to our precincts.”

“Good working with you, Lieutenant Duncan.” I shook his hand and he went on his way, stopping to look over the warehouse one more time before he left. I mused for a moment, wondering if we’d see his name on an application to join anytime soon.

“Helix.” Herrera motioned me over to the map. She was browsing over the various papers stuck up there. Most of them were just notes about road construction or, on occasion, buildings being renovated. There were a few photos mixed in and there didn’t really seem to be any theme to them. Houses, restaurants and office buildings were all there.

I couldn’t tell what she found so fascinating about all that, so I said, “Any idea what this is?”

“None. You know the talents in the Midwest pretty well, right?”

So this wasn’t about the map, apparently. “I’ve probably met half of them personally. Don’t know as I could remember all their names or talents, much less where they were at the time.”

“Is there one called Enchanter?”

“Not that I know of.” I folded my arms and gave her an appraising look. Her attention was still on the map. “Should I heard of him?”

Herrera pointed out a note on the map. “What do you make of that?”

I carefully poked a photo of a narrow, three story row house out of the way to get a better look. It was a printed note on white paper, the kind of thing you might find on photocopiers in any office anywhere in America. It said, “There is no king in America. Death to pretenders.”

It was signed, “Enchanter.”

“How about that,” I said. “Never seen anything like it before. It’s definitely not written by Circuit. He doesn’t strike me as the type to enjoy fanciful names.”

“I agree with you there,” she said. “The message sounds familiar, but I can’t think of where I’ve seen it before.”

I frowned. “Doesn’t sound like song lyrics or something you’d put in advertisements. On TV maybe?”

“No.” She frowned and closed her eyes, then opened them again. “I feel more like seeing them is familiar. I’m more a visual person, anyway.” She closed her eyes, this time covering them with one hand.  “I’m sure I’ve read this before, but I’m not sure where.”

“You giving the new boss headaches already, Helix?” Jack shouldered his way into the conversation, Mosburger by his side.

“Trying to relieve them, actually,” I said. “You remember any talents under the code name Enchanter?”

Jack shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.”

“Never mind,” Herrera said, looking up again. “I’ll look into it when we get back to the offices.”

“Then Mossman has something for you to see.” Jack nudged Mosburger in the shoulder and he held up a small gray box in his hands.

It looked like a simple metal case, just big enough to cover both his hands, with one of those little black antenna things and a bunch of wires sticking out of the side. It looked just like a bunch of other, similar boxes scattered about the room. It could be a hard drive, a modem, or any one of those other parts you cram into a computer to make it work. As far as I could see, there was nothing special about it.

Herrera apparently agreed with me, because after staring at it for a minute she said, “So what?”

“This is the only piece of gear in the room that was still hooked up,” Mosburger said. “Agent Howell found it over by the rack. It looks like it was designed to go straight into the wall.”

“What’s it do?” I asked.

“I was kind of hoping to find out, but it doesn’t look like it was intended to open,” he said. “My guess is that it’s some sort of cell phone repeater, so that Circuit could still talk to people while he was in here. Second guess would be that it’s a wireless internet signal repeater, same concept except it gives you the Internet. Jack told me to bring it with me.”

“Right.” I glanced at Herrera. “Do you want me to crack it open?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Do you want me to melt the case?” I rapped my knuckles once on the thingie for emphasis. “I need your okay before I can fire up the ol’ heat sink. That’s what the oversight agent’s for.”

“Can you do that without damaging the contents?” She asked.

“It’s possible,” I said. “The case is metal, which conducts heat better than air, so any heat that leaks from the sink should flow back in faster than it would in open air. Less likely to cause damage.”

“But still possible?”

“Anything’s possible, ma’am. I can’t say how likely it is.”

“Right.” She glanced back at Mosburger. “Is there anything opening this tells us that can’t wait until we can get it back to the offices?”

“We might be able to access a call log from it,” he said dubiously. “But this looks like a custom built model that probably has all kinds of safeguards on it. It might tell us something about how Circuit encrypts or disguises his communications. But no, nothing that would matter right this moment.”

She nodded. “All right then. When the forensics people get to it we’ll have them mark it priority and they’ll rip it apart first thing when we get back. You’re job is to outthink Circuit, not pick apart his gadgets.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Jack said, “with Circuit it can be one and the same.”

 “Duly noted.” She sighed. “Hopefully it tells us something, or this whole thing was a waste of time. See if forensics wants any help. If not, we’ve got people to debrief back at the office. Let’s get moving.”

Circuit

“No, I do not want you to look into optimizing the design, Davis,” I said with as much patience as I could muster. “Mr. Nayar has already done most of that work for you. What I want you to do is duplicate it, stress test it and then start building more.”

“Look, I’m sure it’s good work. But this,” my supervising engineer gestured at the hydroelectric generator with expression of tolerant disdain, “was built by a grad studen. I’m sure with a few days work we could make it even more efficient.”

“I’ve no doubt you could. But what I want is not a new prototype that requires a new round of testing. I want this prototype functional and mass produced, and I want it yesterday.” Davis opened his mouth to protest but I held up a hand to stop him. “Once you have a proposal for producing more of these, you can look into improving the design.”

I’d hoped that would be enough to mollify him but apparently he was still upset, because he started to say something again. This time he was cut off by Heavy Water, who slid into the room at a half run and grabbed me by the arm. “They just showed up, Circuit!”

“Who?” I wasn’t expecting anyone at this location. At least, no one other than Davis and his perfectionist work crew, who’s enthusiasm I normally appreciate more. Then it clicked. “The Project raided Warehouse Three?”

“We just got the word,” he said. “Delacroix called it in a few minutes ago, said it looks like they bypassed the outside alarms somehow.”

I frowned. The outer alarms consisted of basic temperature and barometric pressure measuring devices attached to equally basic transmitters, the idea being to detect the weather changes created by an active heat sink. If they hadn’t been tripped then the Project had gained entry using conventional means rather than Helix’s talent, or some other talent that I hadn’t anticipated. That was odd.

Usually, the FBI doesn’t give any kind of major ordinance to Helix’s team. They know that if he needs to go through something he can do it himself, so why waste their precious budgetary allotment on joint ops involving him?

It seemed his new oversight agent had more pull or different contacts than Robert Sanders. That could be a problem.

Aloud I said, “Well, nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. That’s what the back ups are for. Still, we need to get moving.”

“The van’s ready to go, boss,” Heavy replied. “Say the word.”

“I want that production plan by Tuesday, Davis,” I said, giving the engineer one last stern look. Then I turned and headed out the door with Heavy. “Let’s go say hello to the Feds.”

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Heat Wave: Subtle Currents

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

In order to accomplish my goals in modern day society I require large quantities of cash and materiel. Some things I buy, because there’s no other, better way to get hold of them. A piece of land, for instance, is almost impossible to steal from someone. You’re better off just buying the deed.

However, things like land tend to be very expensive, and I find it wise to keep as large a reserve of liquid cash on hand as possible should I suddenly need to make such a purchase. Thus, even when I could afford to buy something I could also steal, I always choose the latter.

I had to explain all of this to Hangman, who was becoming more and more curious about my work the longer our association lasted, before he consented to finding a list of places where I could acquire the things I needed next. The same principle applies to time as money, incidentally, which is why I have information brokers to find information for me and I focus on things only those with my particular talents can do. I will admit that Hangman’s increased prying into my affairs did have me thinking of changing brokers.

Fortunately Hangman handled this request with his usual speed and efficiency, finding four places where I could find what I wanted scattered around the country. I choose to visit a certain university in Texas to get what I was after this time, both because it was far away from my home base and because it was a university.

Higher education in America represents one of the largest wastes of money in the entire nation. Colleges these days serve primarily to hammer the rough edges of individuality off of people, forcing them to conform to the idealogical lockstep of their professors in exchange for the piece of paper that they have been assured will keep them fed and satisfied.

Colleges get truly absurd amounts of money from the students and various levels of government for their brainwashing and they spend it liberally in making improvements and carrying out research, which in turn attracts even more money from the successful graduates who feel some misplaced sense of gratitude for success they would probably have earned on their own, and at a much reduced cost, if they had just found a seasoned pro to show them the ropes for a few months instead of locking themselves into an ivory tower for four years. On the bright side, the absurdity of the modern university is helpful to me in two ways.

One, people who come out of them are totally lacking in any kind of meaningful identity. The brainwashing their professors put them through makes them pliable and interchangeable. After all, once you sand the rough edges off blocks of wood they stack nicely and if one breaks you can throw it out for another. This is a crime against the people involved, but in order to fix it I’ll have to endure it for now.

Two, the disappearance of any kind of imaginative thought from college campuses makes them very easy places to rob.

Here’s how you move across a college campus late at night without getting into trouble: One, own a fairly inconspicuous white van. It should be about five or ten years old, beaten up, with painted over windows. Or no windows at all, if you can help it. Paint some totally innocuous sounding company name on it, like, “Hoffman Plumbing” on it. Two, don coveralls and glower at the students like you’d rather have their bright future as corporate drones instead of your current position as business owner.

You are now free to move about the campus.

I wanted a place in the civil engineering building so I parked my van half a block away and headed towards the chemistry building. Thanks to thousands of dollars of alumni and taxpayer money the entire campus was defended by state of the art electronic locks of a type I was very familiar with. The are secure from anyone without a keycard or the ability to manipulate electronic potential.

Actually, they’re secure from most fuseboxes like me, too. Convincing the lock that I had a legitimate keycard would require more specialized equipment than I wanted to carry with me and the circuits that controlled the actual lock were buried deep in the door, with no way for me to touch them. While a fusebox can reach a great distance through a circuit they’re close to, if they’re not within two or three inches a connection can’t be established.

Or so the prevailing theory goes. A few years back I found out that a properly calibrated magnetic field can be used to extend your reach. With a thought I flipped on the electromagnetic coils I was wearing strapped to my forearms, underneath my clothing, and suddenly I could feel the electronic circuits in the doorframe tingling. It took only a light push to trigger the solenoid that retracted the lock and as easily as that, I was through the door

Once I was through the door and into the building I made my way through the second floor breezeways that connected all the science and engineering buildings until I found the one I wanted. Then I ducked into a restroom and stripped off the coveralls. Underneath I wore my recently completed vest over a white button-up shirt and a pair of dress slacks. I smoothed the silk fabric that covered the delicate electronics beneath, enjoying the feel of it for just a moment.

In my business, style is just as important as power and intelligence. I like to think that I’m a master of all three.

I pulled a clip-on tie out of a pocket and slipped it into place. While style is important, I feel that wearing something that can strangle you or break your neck is taking things too far. Once again equipped to look like someone who might belong, either as an instructor or some sort of outside authority, I set out down the halls until I found the place I wanted.

Grad students are the middle management of the university system. Overworked by their employer/professors and usually loathed by the students whose education they wind up primarily responsible for, it’s really something of a miracle that any of them ever stick around to finishtheir degree. Worse, in addition to all the work and emotional punishment they have to stand up to, they also have to come up with a project of some sort to prove their ability in their field of study.

To do that they’re given, among other things, a lab in which to do their work. At least, if they’re working in the physical sciences.

I was about to visit one such lab. The one uncertain element in my plan, the one factor I couldn’t do anything to mitigate, was the tendency for grad students to work late at night. This was as much because they were busy with other things during they day than any real nocturnal leanings on their part.

So I wasn’t surprised to see a light on under the door of the lab. Disappointed, yes, since this made my life more difficult, but not surprised. Overriding the electronic lock was out of the question right now. That would attract attention and suspicion, which I didn’t want. So I moved on to Plan B.

I knocked.

Professional lawlessness requires a fair amount of reckless behavior along with everything else.

There was no answer after five seconds, so I knocked again, striking an impatient pose and tapping one foot on the floor. A moment later the door swung open and a young man of Indian descent opened the door. “Can I help you?” He asked.

I gave a deliberately brittle smile and said, “I hope so,” slipping a business card between the fingers of my right hand and holding it out to him. “I’m Daniel Hoffman, the investor that Doctor Porter mentioned. I know I’m here much later than I said I’d be, but there as a mix-up at the airport and my flight got here late. You know how it goes.”

“Not really,” the young man replied. “I’m sorry, but Doctor Porter didn’t mention any investor to me. Maybe tomorrow you can-”

“Well, he’s busy man, he probably forgot” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “But you are Mr. Trenton Nayar, aren’t you? Working on the portable hydroelectric project?”

After a moment’s hesitation he said, “Yes, that’s me.”

“Well, Mr. Nayar, I have a business proposition for you and, if everything goes well, it might even have all your student loans paid for by the time you’re finished with your doctoral thesis.” I pushed the business card a little farther forward and favored him with a slightly more honest smile. That’s the real trick to seeming honest, don’t start off seeming like you’re trying to win them over. I knew I still looked like a tired corporate shark, but that was just it. The less he thought of me as a thief the better off I was.

Hesitantly, Nayar took the card and looked it over. The dossier that Hangman had sent hadn’t included much about him or Dr. Porter other than their names and the fact that they were working on a high efficiency miniaturized hydroelectric power generator. I wasn’t sure if Trenton or his professor had even been looking for an investor in his project. It seemed unlikely, but the strange thing is, the more unlikely a lie is, the more believable it becomes.

“What exactly is your business proposition?” Trenton asked, stepping aside and finally letting me into the lab. There was the usual mess of computer equipment and parts scattered over a number of tables, and schematics pinned to the whiteboard on the lefthand wall.

I strolled over to the blueprints and studied them as I spoke. “It’s really a very simple thing. You’re working on a portable improvised dam and generator that can create power with less headwater and more output than anything on the market.”

There was a blueprint there showing a simple cofferdam made of high strength rubber and metal anchoring points with a hydro turbine at the center. It was really quite elegant. “This creates what, two kilowatt/hours at peak performance?”

“Four and a half,” Trenton said. The answer had a touch of pride in it, and well it should. In addition to being privately owned by people who weren’t likely to have the resources to track me down themselves, this was one of the most efficient generators around. Another reason to want it for myself.

“So you have a portable generator that produces two to four times what similar items on the market are currently capable of, and with your portable cofferdam, in more places.” I shoved my right hand in my pocket and turned to face him. “Why are you surprised that someone would want in on that kind of technology? Decentralized power generation is the way of the future, with all the regulation making building large commercial plants so much more difficult, systems like this are the first step to building that infrastructure.”

“You sound like you know a lot about power plants,” Trenton said.

“That, and governmental interference,” I replied with a smile. I waved my free hand at his prototype on the table, getting a better grip on the device in my pocket while he was following it. “Is there any chance its ready for a field demonstration?”

“We’ve run a few sandbox tests,” Trenton said, his pride now clear. “It’s held up fine under them, so I don’t see why not.”

I pulled my right hand out of my pocket, carefully palming the metal disk there as I held it out to Trenton. “Thank you, that would be excellent.”

The poor sap took my hand with a grin that vanished a moment later as his body went rigid. A carefully calibrated blast of electricity coursed out of the capacitors in my vest and fried his nerves with all the strength of a police grade taser. It’s a little bit harder hitting than a joy buzzer, but some tricks never get old no matter how you switch them up. I cut the current and let go of his hand as he slumped to the floor, saying, “But it won’t be necessary.”

The entire generator rig only weighed about eighty pounds, but it was awkwardly shaped. Worse, my right hand wouldn’t stop shaking from the current I’d exposed it to. I had expected my talent to provide me with a little more protection from the electricity than I’d gotten. The taser delivery mechanism looked like it was going to need a little more work.

I decided that the best thing to do with it would be to throw the whole thing in the lab’s trash can, which had been thoughtfully provided with wheels. Ten minutes later I was out on the building’s loading dock, where my van was waiting for me.

The back door popped open and a middle aged African-American man who I call Heavy Water leaned out to help me load the turbine and cofferdam into the back. Then we scrambled up to the front seats and buckled in. My hands still weren’t steady so I took the passenger seat reluctantly.

“Where to?” Heavy asked as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Home?”

I leaned my head back in my seat, thinking about it for a moment. Then I sighed and shook my head. “Not just yet. There’s something I need to do first. It’s going to be tricky, though, so I’ll understand your wanting to sit it out.”

“Never happen.” He shook his head. “I let you be the boss because I think you got enough sense to get us what we need without causing us trouble, don’t I?”

“Well, this is a uniquely difficult chore, even for me.”

“Yeah?” Heavy glanced away from the road long enough to give me a curious glance. “What are you planning to do?”

I smiled. “I plan to talk to Double Helix…”

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Heat Wave: Charging Up

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

I was rebuilding an electromagnet from scratch when the phone call came.

I try not to mix phone calls and electrical work as a rule, but I had just switched to a new phone, and the only one who had the number so far was Hangman, and not because I’d given it to him but because he always seems to have my number. I frowned and set aside the magnet and moved to the other side of the workbench where I had left my jacket, fished my phone out and answered.

Now like I said before, usually, when Hangman calls, he, or she, sends me a fax as a signal, but today I got to speak the man himself. Or, at least, I got to talk to a computer generated, flat and expressionless voice. That kind of theater is a little overdramatic for my tastes, but I’ll admit that it serves to keep some of the mystery surrounding the Internet’s biggest information dealer intact.

I didn’t know that when I answered the phone, though, I was expecting the usual electronic mess. So I just pushed the call button and waited.

After a moment, I heard the voice drifting up from the speaker saying, “Pick up the phone, Circuit.”

I raised an eyebrow and put the phone on speaker and took it back to my work area. Since magnets can scramble electronics I put what I had been working on away and pulled out a set of microbatteries to keep my hands busy while I was talking. “This is unusual. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Just calling because I wanted to ensure my newest cash cow doesn’t get arrested before he really starts spending money.”

“Arrested? Me?” I finished working the batteries into a sequence and picked up the vest I planned to set them it. While it was designed as tactical load-bearing gear, it looked like part of a three piece suit. Appearance is as important as ideals, after all. “What makes you think I’ll be arrested in the near future? Or at all?”

“Call it a hunch,” Hangman replied.

“I take it that having this hunch explained to me will cost money,” I said, amused. Perhaps it’s a side effect of my talent, but working with electronics always puts me in good humor.

There was a long pause from the phone, and for a moment I thought I’d lost the signal. Then Hangman said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re a cynic, given your line of work.”

“My dear man,” I said, taking a pair of needle nosed pliers in one hand and the vest in another, “cynicism is an entry requirement. Don’t confuse that with callousness or some other lack of feeling.”

“So you’re not worried about it? Then I can-”

“I am always concerned about the possibility of arrest,” I said, interrupting. While it might seem rude I was glad of the opportunity to do so, as I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any lag time between my interruption and when Hangman stopped speaking. I kept talking as I thought about that. “What I’ve learned to do is be philosophical about it. You’ll learn to do the same.”

“Is that a fact?”

Hangman didn’t dispute my status as the older, more experienced of us. Another little tidbit to file away. “So tell me, how much will an explanation of your little hunch cost me?”

“This time, perhaps more than you’re willing to pay.”

I stopped my hands’ continuous busywork at that, raising one eyebrow in curiosity even though Hangman couldn’t see it. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I want you to do me a favor.”

There was another silence as I thought about that. Hangman seemed inclined to let me stew. Finally I said, “I won’t do you an unnamed favor. I’m a sensible man; I don’t deal in any of that unspecified debt hanging over your head stuff. If you don’t know what you want then just ask for money. It’s almost as good.”

“No,” Hangman said, and there was a stutter from the speaker that could have been a laugh before the computer mashed it into an emotionless noise. “I know exactly what I want. If we make this trade, I keep you out of jail and you tell me exactly what it is you’re trying to do.”

“What, you mean you don’t know already?” I said, letting surprise fill my voice.

“I specialize in acquiring facts, but I don’t always have the expertise to understand what they mean.” I heard a loud clicking noise over the phone that I couldn’t quite place. Apparently Hangman’s voice modification software hadn’t been programmed to filter out whatever it was.

Strangely enough, Hangman’s voice got louder as if he was trying to be heard over it. Was he near train tracks? Or was this deliberate disinformation to keep me guessing? It was hard to tell just how subtle he really was, particularly when he did things like bluntly asking what I was doing.

“At the moment, I’m working on creating a highly advanced microstorage device for-”

“Not what I’m asking, Circuit. You’ve been quietly moving around North America for the last ten years, building resources and making connections, but other than that you’ve not done anything of note. Sure, you’ve stolen enough money to keep afloat and build whatever it is you build, but you’re remarkably quiet for a person with talent operating outside of sanctioned channels. What is it you’re aiming for?”

“Who says I’m aiming for anything?” I said innocuously. “I’m just in it for the money.”

“Then you’d be competition for me, not a customer,” Hangman said. There was another of the odd, stuttering noises. “No, if money is what you wanted you’d be retired already. I want to know what you’re really after.”

“Why should I explain myself to you?” I said. “You’ve already mentioned I could be arrested. Avoiding that now is as easy as going to ground. I don’t need to hear the rest.”

“Not even if Double Helix is involved?”

I froze for just a moment. That shouldn’t have been enough to tell Hangman anything, but I heard the eerie sound of modified laughter again and Hangman said, “Does he bother you that much?”

“Not enough to make me want to explain myself to you.” I said sourly.

“Okay,” Hangman said, and I swear it managed to sound placating even after whatever computer mangling the sound went through. “I’ll add a little more carrot. We can meet in person and you can tell me all about your plans.”

Now that was valuable. So far as I knew, Hangman never met anyone in person. It would give us each something over the other, to keep the tables balanced. “That’s fair,” I said, curiosity about Hangman getting the better of common sense for just a moment. “But not now. The meeting comes in a month or so.”

“Assuming you’re not in jail?”

“Yes, assuming that,” I conceded. My hands had fallen idle and I set them back to work. “Now tell me about why I’m in such danger of being arrested.”

“Have you heard of Senator Brahms Dawson?”

“The name is familiar,” I said. “From Montana, isn’t he?”

“Wisconsin.” A brief pause that could have been anything from pulling a file to taking a drink. “Dawson and Special Liaison Michael Voorman have been quietly struggling over the direction of Project Sumter for the last six years.”

“I didn’t know they had a Senate committee,” I said. “I did know that Dawson is a big advocate for genetic research. I could see how that would make him unpopular with most of the talents in the Project.”

“He’s proposed a tracking system for known talents along with mandatory DNA analysis,” Hangman said.

“Which means most of Voorman’s talents probably side with him over the Senator,” I said. “What does this have to do with getting me arrested?”

“Double Helix is the embodiment of what the Senator wants from talents,” Hangman said.

“Right,” I said, accepting that I was just going to have to listen to Hangman’s whole explanation before we got to the relevant point. Hopefully no one was planning on arresting me right that second. “What is it about Helix that the Senator wants? He’s very good at what he does, but he’s never struck me as politically minded.”

“He’s not really. Mostly, I think the Senator is attracted to the hereditary nature of his involvement with the Project,” Hangman replied.

“Hereditary?” That was the first I’d heard of it.

“Do you know where the Project gets its name?”

I thought for a moment as I tried on the vest, making sure the fit was right and nothing was poking me. “I was under the impression it was named that because the first government sanctioned talent operated during the Civil War.”

“Correct,” Hangman said. The rest sounded suspiciously like a lecture long rehearsed. “The very first talent in Project records is known as Corporal Sumter.”

I frowned. The first three talents in Project records are somewhat infamous among talents outside the Project, mainly because it seems like none of us know what their talents were. There’s been rampant speculation, but I’d never even heard of someone knowing their codenames before. My estimation of Hangman’s talents went up another notch.

Not that he had stopped talking while I was busy being surprised. “The Corporal went up against a total of three different Confederate talents over the course of the War Between the States, most of them more than once.”

“Such as Sherman’s Bane and the Bushwhacker?” I asked, anxious to shorten this lecture somehow. I dislike long phone calls. While I don’t think Hangman would try and track me, he had to know I’d be leaving this location as soon as our conversation was done as a guard against arrest if nothing else. There’s always the possibility someone else is out there looking.

“Those are two of them,” Hangman admitted. “Sherman’s Bane is particularly relevant to this discussion.”

“Because he’s the first heat sink in Project records?” I asked. This line of thought was starting to make sense.

“Not only that,” Hangman assured me. “I understand that, if you go six or seven generations back, he’s also in Helix’s family tree.”

I whistled. “Hereditary talent and a Senator with an interest in genetic research.”

It’s not unheard of for talents to run in families, but by the same token it’s not a given, either. While no one’s ever isolated a gene for any talent that I’ve heard of, the accepted wisdom is that they’re recessive, meaning they show up only when both parents have the trait somewhere in the family history, and even then only rarely. I could see how a politician with a passion for genetics could see finding proof for that theory as a worthy goal.

“Senator Dawson is also an aggressive humanist,” Hangman continued. “He doesn’t like the idea of a select breed of specially talented people rising up into a new oligarchy.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“Meaning he’s used his position on Project Sumter’s oversight committee to try a number of things,” Hangman answered. “He’s tried to shut it down, to force it to register all talented individuals-”

“That doesn’t mesh well with the Project’s insistence on keeping talents a secret,” I said.

“He’s against that too. His latest idea is to basically boils down to locating talents and then trying to switch of the genes that give them their abilities so future generations will be stock humans.”

“Which is fascinating, I’m sure,” I said, running my hands down the front of my vest and searching it for anything out of place and pleased not to find it. “How does this result in my impending imprisonment?”

“Dawson needs to gain standing with the Project,” Hangman replied. Once again I found myself projecting smug satisfaction into his expressionless voice and forced myself to stop, so I could evaluate his next statements without prejudice. “To do that he’s been grooming an oversight agent who will be starting with the Project tomorrow, and whose sole duty will be to find and arrest you.”

“Thus proving that this agent, most likely with some help of the Senator’s, is able to do something Project Sumter hasn’t been able to accomplish for nearly ten years,” I said, nodding as I saw the logic.

“I have solid information that suggests the Senator is aware of several of your safe houses, and will be moving against them in the next week.”

“And what makes you think I can’t deal with this on my own?”

“Oh, I know you could,” Hangman said. Now I knew he was being smug. He never wastes time on empty phrases like that unless he’s gloating. I know, I’ve lost to him in Scrabble many times before. “What might put you off your game is learning that the agent’s name is Teresa Herrera.”

I froze. It was just for a moment, but that name took me back eight years, to the heady days when I was just a rookie talent, an unknown with no file at all in Project Sumter’s archives. “Herrera? You’re sure about that?”

“Yes. She’ll be oversight for Double Helix until she learns the ropes.” There was another pause, then a distorted noise that could have once been a sigh. “You have history with both of them. You can’t beat him, you can’t get away from her. I thought you’d like to know. So you could take measures.”

Slowly I dragged myself back to the present, found myself nodding to a hard used workbench with a disposable phone sitting on it. A useless gesture to an empty room. I frowned, for once feeling like I should just take a week off and sleep for a while. But the life I’ve chosen doesn’t allow for that kind of thing.

“Thank you, Hangman,” I said, wondering how long I’d been silent. “That is very useful to me. I think I need to make a slight change in direction for the next week or two.”

“How so?”

“You wanted to know what this was all about, right?” I shrugged. “Consider this a down payment: For what I’m planning to work, I’ll need the men and women of Project Sumter on my side.”

“Well, most of them don’t like Senator Dawson much,” Hangman said. “But I don’t know how you’ll be able to use that to overcome the twenty or thirty felony counts in your file.”

“Easy,” I said, peeling off my vest and rolling up my sleeves in preparation for some serious work. “I can’t have people burning my city down any more than they can.”

I turned away from the bench and moved down the wall to a large map of the city. I pull the letter that was pinned next to it down and looked it over once. “What can you tell me about the Firestarter case, Hangman?”

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Points Of View

Posted by natechen on

By this point you’ve probably realized that Heat Wave is told from two different perspectives: Double Helix, a member of Project Sumter, and Open Circuit, a wanted man. You’ve probably also noticed that so far, Helix has had more time in the driver’s seat than Circuit has. You can expect that pattern to continue, at least for the near future. But here’s a fun fact: When I originally had the idea for these two characters I actually intended for Circuit to provide most of the perspective.

Helix is pretty much an accidental viewpoint character. I never even intended to use him to provide perspective. When I first created him, Helix existed pretty much entirely to provide a foil for Circuit. So how did he wind up becoming the primary point of view?

Well, as you might already suspecte, it had very little to do with his character and a lot to do with Circuit, and a little bit with the needs of the story (Circuit and Helix existed in a number of forms before they found a home in the world of Project Sumter.)

The protagonists of Heat Wave started off in a series of unpublished short stories told from the perspective of Circuit that served to help me refine their voices and establish many of their important character traits. I hadn’t been working with Circuit and Helix long when I came to realize that, while Circuit could be fun to write and has a unique way of looking at the world, prolonged exposure to him steals much of his charm.

For one thing, he’s very superior and sooner or later your going to get the feeling that he’s looking down on you for something or another (which is understandable, because he is.) For another, he’s not very sympathetic to others, which also serves to make him hard to sympathize with. But most of all, he’s given to sermonizing on the importance of his own point of view, which can really get dull.

Worse, he wouldn’t be as effective a character as he is without those qualities, so I couldn’t simply sort through a box of writer’s tricks for replacement quirks. Circuit really needs to be a sanctimonious, arrogant know-it-all in order for Heat Wave and some of the ensuing stories to work.

In addition it quickly became clear to me that only showing things from Circuit’s point of view wasn’t really working either. The stories needed some kind of insight into how Circuit’s enemies were working against him to really be effective, and Circuit himself couldn’t provide that insight without introducing a whole new host of problems (like, how does Circuit even have trouble with Helix if he understands him so well?)

When Project Sumter was added to the mix to keep track of talents and serve as an the organizational foil for Circuit, it only seemed natural to have a point of view on that side of things. Helix, as the most thoroughly established character in the story after Circuit, was the natural candidate.

As the story progressed Helix came to take more and more narrative time away from Circuit, in part because he has the more interesting early parts of the story and in part because Circuit with time on his hands is truly obnoxious. If you enjoyed Circuit’s opening narrative, worry not! Once he has something constructive to do it will be safe to let him out more often. In the meantime, hopefully Helix will be able to keep your attention.

Heat Wave: Shooting Sparks

Posted by natechen on

Circuit

I returned to my base of operations with the three telltales of a successful bank robbery in tow. The first, of course, was a large amount of untraceable cash. The second, a completely intact business suit. The third, the irrepressible smirk of a man who has taken what is his and has no intention of apologizing for it. To say that I was incredibly satisfied with the day’s work would be understating the matter.

I’m not going to describe the bank robbery, those details are on a need to know basis, and no one who’s not me really needs to know, but it was truly the kind of work a man could take pride in. I had been looking forward to taking a day or two off at my headquarters, catching up on some coding that needed to be done before my next major move and getting some hard earned rest from the constant paranoia that must accompany a man of my profession who is temporarily cooperating with others. While I didn’t really expect things to go exactly according to plan, I wasn’t expecting them to stray too far, either.

I was not expecting my phone to ring.

A man in my position cannot be free with his personal information, so my giving out the number is a rare occurrence, having it ring, even more so. I pulled out the cheap, disposable, prepaid cell phone I was using at the moment and wondered if it was time to get another. It didn’t have any built in Big Brother tracking features, but it didn’t have Caller ID either so I couldn’t tell who was on the line. After a moment of thought, feeling a touch adventurous, I decided to answer. So I lifted it to my ear while punching the “call” button and said, “Hello?”

“Eiyeiyeiyeiwaaaaaaazogahzogahzogah,” said my phone.

“Augh!” I said. Someone was trying to send my phone a fax. No matter how many times I hear that sound I will never be able to bear it without cringing. I can code computers by touch but not by voice.

It’s unusual to be getting a fax in this day and age, but it wasn’t an accident. In fact, given how few people knew my phone number and how few fax machines still exist, the odds of my getting a fax accidentally are probably larger than the Cubs winning the World Series next year.

As a man of reason I found it more likely that this was not an accident and rather one of many prearranged signals from one of my more reliable contacts.

I hung up the phone and left my briefcase by the door and picked my way through the debris of a half a dozen tinkering projects that were scattered about my underground apartment. I paused long enough to take stock, making sure the computer system I actually wanted was unboxed and ready to run. I had moved in only four days ago, and my usual set-up wasn’t entirely unpacked.

However villainy, such as it is, runs on information, and in the information age that means a computer. The computer I use for contacting the network of informants, brokers and snitches that I maintain is physically isolated from all of my others, and it is always one of the last packed and first unpacked, because sometimes being out of touch can be fatal. So it was out and waiting for me on the desk in back of what was, theoretically, my living room.

Booting a state of the art computer and getting onto the Internet is the work of but a moment, and I confess that a person with my talent doesn’t even have to touch the keyboard in order to make it happen. But in this case, I did. I’m not normally terribly paranoid when dealing with my informants, because if they were really smart enough to get around my safeguards they’d be using their information themselves, not selling it to me.

But this one was a special case, and I wasn’t about to start taking chances with him now.

An unsecured Internet game room dedicated to wordplay may seem like a strange place to start a highly criminal transaction, but that was exactly where I was headed. Ever since I’d first heard of Hangman a year ago he’d made it a practice to meet up with clients on a small social networking game site in the room for the game from which he took his name. As a rare service to customers with extensive lines of credit, he sometimes contacts us when he has information he thinks we’d particularly want to know.

Hangman was already there when I logged in, but that was no surprise. He had prepared a simple puzzle, only six letters. I smiled and typed in the solution, “Sumter.”

There was a flicker and I wasn’t in an internet game room anymore. There were no graphics, just plain, uncolored text. A box presented itself, asking for my user name and password. By the Hangman’s decree, all his customers used the code names given to their files at federal agencies, unless they didn’t have one yet, in which case I assume he gave them one.

This meant I had to log in as “Open Circuit”, not a name I am fond of but, until I can convince Project Sumter to change my file, it’s what I’m stuck with. As soon as I was logged in Hangman typed, “Congratulations on your latest exploit, Circuit.”

“What exploit would that be?” I asked. Playing coy is part of how the game works.

“A little matter of a bank in Detroit suffering an unauthorized withdrawal.” There was no way for plain text to convey emotion effectively but Hangman never struck me as the type to be smug knowing something he shouldn’t. Rather, he struck me as the type to enjoy being in on the joke. “Not why I contacted you.”

“I imagine not. Perhaps it has more to do with your wanting to make back some of that credit you owe me?”

“Pursuit of knowledge is its own reward.” I wasn’t sure if that was meant to sound sanctimonious or sarcastic. Fortunately, Hangman followed it with, “The information you feed me from the Sumter data files is worth more than just money to me.”

I nodded to myself, a tell I wouldn’t have allowed in person. Hangman was a mystery, other than the fact that he sold information to anyone who was buying, I literally knew nothing about him. But I had theories, and it was always nice to have hints to support or disprove them with. This was another hint that Hangman was indeed one of those who just wanted to know. Figuring out whether it was his real personality showing or just part of a persona he adopted was half the fun.

“Unfortunately,” I typed, “I don’t have anything new from the Project archives to share right now.”

Normally I did have a set of dedicated on-site and off-site computers that worked on various hacking attacks on known elements of Project Sumter, the US Government’s talent management bureau. Even with the recent changes to their information security policies there was always something to glean about them, and I frequently sold what I found to Hangman. However, the computers set aside for that task were still packed.

“Not a problem. I actually have some information about Sumter that might interest you. It’s about your favorite FBI agent.”

“I don’t have one of those. They’re all equally bothersome to me.”

One thing that Project Sumter and I have in common is that we hate the stereotypical depictions of what most people would call superpowers. There’s a lot of reasons for that, and which one is yours usually varies depending on whether you’re the government or a self-employed talent. But in spite of that, no matter where I go or what I do in the Western Hemisphere, there’s one particular governmental talent that always seems to turn up.

Thus, while I wouldn’t consider Special Agent Double Helix my archrival, he is the single most aggravating thing I’ve ever experienced. Hangman has somehow figured this out and brings it up from time to time, usually to help in extracting money from me.

“How much?” I added.

From the length of time it took Hangman to reply it was clear he had been halfway to finishing a snide reply when I asked, forcing him to delete it and start over.

“500. It’ll hit the news soon enough, but I thought you’d want to know, since it’s Helix.”

If it was going to be in the news on its own it must have been a big deal. Still, it’s not like Project Sumter was going to be mentioned on the news, their involvement would be buried behind several layers of innuendo and subtext. I’d have had to do some digging to know for sure Helix was involved. And Hangman’s right. Whether by deliberate design on the part of Helix, the US Government or some higher power, whenever I try to do anything significant Helix shows up. He even followed me to Morocco once.

Best to know what he’s been doing. “A done deal, Hangman. Take the credit from my account.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.” There was a few minutes pause, probably Hangman digging up the records for tidbit of information I’d just bought and sending them. Patience is a virtue, even for villains, and I spent the time unpacking more boxes. A sound from my computer told me Hangman had sent another message.

“Special Agent Double Helix burnt down an apartment building this afternoon, and it was a pretty big one. He’s been removed from active duty pending review of what happened, which could very well take a full month. Initial confirmation in the documents I just sent you.”

I read the message in disbelief, then read it again. Here I am, hard at work, robbing banks and spending cash to keep the economy turning, and what is the FBI doing? Sending Helix to burn down buildings. And then getting him laid off. This was better than I could ever hope for.

“Hangman, I’m breaking out the credit cards,” I typed. “I need you to find me some things. A lot of things, actually. Stand by for the list.”

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