Heat Wave: Stray Embers

Posted by natechen on December 3, 2012

Helix

“We need a new plan,” Herrera said. “Kesselman, see if you can get ahold of that SWAT team and coordinate with them, take the new factors into account. Helix, how do you want to handle these people?”

“Click my red shoes together and hope they go away?” I suggested. “Honestly, I have no idea. We don’t usually catch amateurs in the act.”

“Forgive me if I sound like an amateur myself,” Mosburger said, “but what kind of an amateur are we talking about right now?”

“Amateur crime fighters, Mossman,” Jack said. “Typically, but not always, talents who have gotten it into their heads that they’re the heroes in some comic book somewhere, and set out to right the wrongs of the world.”

“And boy have they ever found a whopper,” I said. “Of all the criminal organizations they could pick to poke at, they go after Open Circuit. Why me?”

“The innate perversity of the universe tends towards maximum.” Mosburger fitted his helmet on over his head, making him look a lot like an academic masquerading as a soldier. “Doesn’t the Project have a protocol for dealing with talents like this? You seem to have everything else.”

“We do,” Jack said, passing earpieces to Bergstrum and Herrera as soon as Lanier, out tech guy, had them checked out. “It’s pretty simple, really. Step one is determine if they’re in our records or not. Unfortunately, you can’t do that from a heat signature.”

“And since it’s a procedure that can require two or three hours of explanation per talent it’s hardly suited to the present circumstances,” I added. I fitted an earpiece on myself then strapped my own helmet on. “I’d like to propose a different approach for the time being.”

“Go ahead,” Herrera said.

“We throw them all in jail and forget we ever saw them.”

“Try again,” she suggested.

I frowned, because that was the only practical idea I had a the moment. “We go home and let them get fried by Circuit’s booby traps?”

“Or not.”

“We could always just send them back to the office and tank ’em until we’re done here,” I said, more thinking out loud at this point. “We don’t normally initiate new talents there but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“How do we hold them when we don’t know what their talents can do?” Mosburger asked.

Jack threw an arm around his shoulders. “Well, Mossman, the idea is that you figure it out before we send them off.”

Mosburger seemed to shrink into his armor, making it even more comical looking. All he said was, “Oh.”

“Relax,” Jack said with a laugh. “We’ve all got plenty of field experience, too. You’ll be fine.”

It was true, outside of Mosburger and Herrera we had a minimum of four years experience in field work a piece. Just to be on the safe side, though, I crossed my fingers.

It took another ten minutes for the SWAT team to arrive and get set up. In that time the three people in the warehouse wandered out of my range on one side of Circuit’s sealed room and came back on the other. Apparently, they were doing the same thing we had been, except with a closer view. That reinforced the idea that they were amateurs, but didn’t tell us much else.

Since there were potential civilian complications wandering around in the warehouse we decided the best approach was not the usual door-buster routine most people associate with SWAT operations. Instead, there was some more low-key reconnaissance, which would theoretically be followed by the door-buster routine. Among other things, they discovered that the main employee entrance was unlocked and standing open.

“That settles it,” I said. “Circuit’s not here anymore, and those aren’t his people. He’s not one to let things get that lax.”

“Which does beg the question who these people are and how they got in here,” Jack said, leaning against the side of one of the SWAT vans and eavesdropping on their radio chatter.

“I was wondering if we’d ever get a chance to go in there ourselves,” Mosburger replied, wiping sweat from his face with, of all things, a black bandana that looked way to gangster for a retired engineer.

“They wouldn’t have let us come out here if they weren’t planning to take us in with them,” I said. “Besides, if one of the people in there is a talent, they’ll need us.”

“And if they aren’t?” Mosburger asked.

“Then we book them for criminal trespassing and give them a stern warning about the dangers of vigilantism,” one of the SWAT members said as he stepped out of the van. “I’m more worried about if they are. This is our first time working with Wizard Central, and what I want to know is if we’re even going to matter in this operation.”

I exchanged a glance with Jack. This was the first time I’d heard the term Wizard Central, but it was pretty clear that was local slang for Project Sumter. Looked like there were some misconceptions to straighten out. Thankfully, Jack was on the ball.

“Look, Lieutenant,” he said, “I know that you’ve probably seen a lot of movies or TV shows or some such crap that has a half a dozen near-invincible supermen doing huge, crazy, world-saving stuff on a regular basis. But that’s not the way talents actually work.”

“No?” The cop pointed at me. “Didn’t I hear something about him melting a hole in the wall a couple of minutes ago? You telling me that was just hyperbole?”

“No, that’s a practical option,” I said. “But in our line of work that makes me something called the glass cannon.”

“The what?”

“A rule of thumb that actually relates back to wizards, Lieutenant,” Mosburger said. “It basically refers to something powerful and dangerous, but fragile. Based on what I’ve read, most talents have greater awareness than the regular person. Some of them, like Double Helix here, have a lot of potential to cause damage. I’ve yet to see or hear of one that couldn’t be stopped by the kind of equipment you people are carrying.”

“Honest truth, that,” Jack added, patting his own handgun. “If it weren’t the case I’d be carrying something a lot bigger than this.”

That seemed to satisfy the cop, who went back to sorting out the other officers on his team. I got the impression he was the one in charge, particularly since he seemed to be the one coordinating with Herrera. A couple of minutes later we were broken up, two of us to two SWAT officers, and got ready to go in.

Herrera and I wound up at the unlocked employee door, closest to the people inside. Jack and Mosburger were going in through a side door, Bergstrum and Kesselman the back. There were other teams for the loading dock and the fire exits, but there weren’t enough of our people to go with every SWAT group.

There were a few minutes of confusion when we went in, the kind of shock and awe entrance that looks impressive for the sole purpose of looking impressive and keeping unhardened civilians from doing anything stupid. It’s heady stuff when you’re there but really boring to talk about because it’s basically all shouting and noise, at least when everything goes well.

Fortunately, this was not one of the cases where something went wrong, probably because Circuit is too smart to deliberately antagonize the law when he could just ignore us and do whatever he wants. There were no booby traps on any of the entrances, in fact the only thing in the warehouse was the massive concrete block that held Circuit’s vacuum insulated chamber.

And three sheepish looking civilians who looked like they couldn’t even be out of college yet.

I groaned inwardly. It’s not that I was never that young, idealistic and obnoxious, because I was. There’s reports filed away somewhere in the Records department that can prove it. But it’s a far cry from knowing you have a past to having to deal with it a second time, from the other side.

I do have to give those three credit for being more sensible than most. The smaller two of them were wearing body armor, not high grade stuff, the kind you might see a serious motorcyclist wearing to protect against a bad fall. It didn’t protect the lower body but it would get the job done against anything short of close range gunfire, at least for a little while. They also hadn’t made any attempt to add a logo or brightly colored patterns to their clothes. Other than the body armor, they looked just like people off the street.

They lost points for letting one of their number run around with no armor. Also, only one of them was wearing a helmet. Two of them were men, one thin and one big and blocky, no surprises there, and the other was a petite young blond woman who was arguing with the Lieutenant and her skinny friend at turns. I instantly labeled them Skinny, Charlie and Biker Girl.

“All right, folks,” I said, using my best authoritative cop’s voice, “at this point we should probably mention that you have the right to remain silent!” That instantly got me everyone’s attention. “There’s a whole bunch of other rights that you’ll be advised of shortly, but that’s the one we really want you to exercise right now.”

“You can’t arrest us without telling us why,” Skinny said.

“I think criminal trespass is pretty clear cut at this point,” Herrera said. “We can probably add obstruction of justice to the list if you don’t cooperate.”

Which I’m ninety-nine percent sure is untrue, but most people, myself included, don’t know what obstruction of justice actually means, so you can throw it around all you like until it’s time to go to court. Or at least until the attorneys show up.

“Look, we’re not trying to make any trouble,” Charlie said, “We’re on your side, but-“

“If you’re on my side, Charlie,” I said, “you’ll go with the nice folks from SWAT and let us do out job.”

“Charlie?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“As in Charlie Brown,” I said. “You’re not the only blockhead here but-“

Herrera elbowed me gently and said, “I’m sure you folks have questions, but I think they’re better answered back at the office.”

“What office is that?” Biker Girl asked. “I don’t see a badge on you two.”

I reached for my ID automatically, flipping it open at the same time Herrera displayed hers. I noticed Skinny glancing back and forth between the two and followed his line of sight in the corner of my eye. Apparently he had been thrown because my ID was issued by the FBI and hers was from the HSA. I made a mental note that we should probably do something about that.

The subtleties of Federal IDs were lost on Biker Girl, or she saw all badge carriers as the same, because she just crossed her arms and said, “Is this where we disappear with the black suits and are never seen again?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the totally unnecessary melodrama. It would be unprofessional. I was saved from having to answer when the Lieutenant leaned in and said, “Agent Herrera, do you want us to try and breach the door?”

He jerked a thumb back at Circuit’s concrete box. I’d been so focused on trying to get these civilians out from under foot I hadn’t noticed the entrance was no more than twenty feet away. It was actually a pretty simple thing that reminded me of the door to a walk-in fridge. I walked over to the door, running my hands along the concrete as I moved. A couple of feet away from the door my fingers passed over a ripple in the concrete and I paused. If I looked carefully I could see that there was a raised circle of concrete about two feet wide in the wall. It wasn’t very big. I doubt I’d have noticed it if I hadn’t been touching the wall, but it was there. It looked almost like someone had dropped a rock into a pool of water, then transferred the last ripple onto the concrete before it hardened.

“Something wrong, Helix?” Herrera asked, from just a half a foot behind me.

“Not really,” I said, moving on. “I just remembered a story my grandfather used to tell me.”

The door was well insulated but I could tell that the insides were still really cold. “Not sure blowing it off the hinges is a good idea, Lieutenant,” I said. “I don’t know what Circuit was pumping through to cool this rig, but I’d bet good money exposing it to air can’t be healthy.”

“There’s nothing in the door,” Biker Girl said. “If there was anything being pumped through before it’s gone now.”

I turned and quickly crossed back over to her as the Lieutenant asked, “How would you know?”

She gave the poor cop that classic “like duh” look that only women can pull off. It tilted her head at just the right angle for me to pick out a series of four piercings in her ear. They were hard to spot because the rings or studs she normally wore in them had been removed. I frowned and pitched my voice to a whisper even I couldn’t really hear, then said, “Don’t talk about your hearing.”

Biker Girl gave me a surprised glance, but said, “Nevermind.”

The Lieutenant glanced from me to her, then back again. Clearly he knew something had happened, but he seemed to get that we wouldn’t talk about it out here in public.

“She’s right, though,” Mosburger said. I jumped and swung back to face the door. Mosburger and a couple of SWAT people had jimmied open a metal box that looked kind of like the ones you see over underground power lines. He gestured down at it. “This has hook-ups that you might expect for something like a dishwasher, but could easily run a small pump system. But there’s nothing here now, which means they probably drained the coolant out and removed the pumping system when they left.”

I sighed. “Which means they probably had a lot of notice.”

“Wouldn’t take more than an hour, Helix,” Mosburger said.

“But it’s not the kind of thing you’d prioritize while clearing out,” Herrera said. “You’d probably save it until last.”

“We’ll, we’re hear anyways,” the Lieutenant said. “We might as well go in.”

“Helix, how did you get through last time you visited one of these place?” Herrera asked.

“The way I usually get through just about anything,” I said. “The melty way. Which means letting SWAT take the door off its hinges this time has the benefit of novelty.”

“Do you think the door will still be trapped, if it was ever trapped at all?”

“Not his style,” I said. “He doesn’t go out of his way to cause difficulties for us. He just wishes we’d show him the same courtesy.”

“Then we’ll go through in a minute,” the Lieutenant said. “What about these three?”

Herrera shot a glance at Mosburger, who shrugged. I said, “Those are our case, not yours. Bergstrum and Kesselman can take them back to the offices, I don’t think we’ll need them here. And Bergstrum.” I grabbed his elbow as they came up to take custody of the three musketeers. “Put Charlie there down in the L2 tank.”

Bergstrum grunted his acknowledgement and a minute later we were back to having a civilian free work environment. I felt some of the tension between my shoulders relax immediately. As the SWAT boys started setting up to get into Circuit’s little bunker Herrera leaned in and asked in a low voice, “We have a holding room in the basement?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Normally you’d be shown it during the orientation tour, but I don’t think you’ve had time for that yet.”

She gave me a funny look but didn’t have time to ask about it before the Lieutenant came back and said, “We’re ready.”

“All right,” Herrera said. “Let’s see what Circuit left us.”

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Heat Wave: Thermal Vision

Posted by natechen on November 26, 2012

Helix

Problem one: Project Sumter is not, in the strictest technical sense, a law enforcement agency. Nor is it a branch of the military or part of the American intelligence network. Although we loan our personnel to the organizations that handle those responsibilities, we ourselves don’t have any jurisdiction or special authority to engage in law enforcement, intelligence gathering or military operations unless we’re working in conjunction with some other branch of the government that does. In order to act on the evidence that Herrera and the HSA had provided, Project Sumter would first need the cooperation of the police and a warrant from a local judge.

Problem two: As a collection of super-specialized operatives that tend to come in and take over situations that fall under our purview, we’re not usually very popular with people like the FBI, the CIA, the Marines, local police, ect.

Now, in the past, I wouldn’t have had to worry about these things, since Sanders’ team was on indefinite loan to the FBI, so any case that fell under their purview was open to us by some sort of bureaucratic deal he’d worked out two years ago.

But I’d been transferred to Herrera’s team which was, for all practical intents and purposes, a different section of the Project that didn’t have that kind of convenient arrangement to fall back on. Once our briefing with the Senator and Agent Herrera was over we wound up spending the next thirty hours cutting our way through the mess of red tape necessary to get the locals to sign off on our proposed operation and a judge to issue a warrant.

Luckily for us, we had a US Senator in our team. It was one of the few times I’ve ever been glad to be associated with Brahms Dawson. On top of that, Kessleman had been a local cop before joining the Project and, once he and the rest of Jack’s tactical team straggled in later that afternoon, he was able to get in contact with some people he knew and smooth things a little more.

Still, most of us spent the night on cots tucked away in the back corners of unused offices or conference rooms, waiting for the word to go to come in. Actually, all of us did except the Senator, who really seemed like he wanted to stay. He only left because Herrera shooed him away to some event of his daughter’s. In spite of how busy we were I found a moment to wonder how an ambitious twit like Dawson ever found the time for kids.

Finally, sometime around dinner time that evening we got the green light. To my intense disappointment we wound up going in saddled with a SWAT team. While I’m sure the local SWAT guys are competent in their job I’d have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they didn’t have thirty seconds experience dealing with talent in general, and Open Circuit’s not a normal talent either. Plus, the SWAT team wouldn’t be available until the next day.

Herrera got the rest of us together just before six that evening and briefed us on the plan, which essentially boiled down to “hit him around ten AM tomorrow” and told us to go home and get some sleep. It was a good call, although I wasn’t sure how much sleep we’d be getting that night. What I found most impressive was that, even after a night in the office, she still managed to look collected and cool. I wondered how well that cool would hold up under fire.

Rather than spend a lot of time wondering about it I decided to do as I was told and get some sleep. I’d see how she did under stress tomorrow. There’d be a lot more information to go on after that.

I arrived back at the office the next morning and was greeted by the distinctive odor of chocolate chip cookies drifting out of the offices. That could only mean one thing: Mona had been baking last night. I followed the smell into Sanders’ office to find a double batch of cookies heaped in a large red tin. Mona and Sanders were there too.

I reached out to grab a cookie and Sanders smacked my hand away. “What are you doing?” He asked. “Those are for the people who will be doing actual work today.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, trying to slip around him and grab a cookie with little success. “We’ve got an operation in a couple hours, haven’t you heard?”

Sanders snorted and folded his arms over his chest, saying, “Yeah, I heard. You’re gonna pile in a van and wait six hours for the locals to show up and then find out they’re all on a domestic disturbance call on the other side of the city and can you guys wait until tomorrow? Sitting in a van all day isn’t work.”

“Very unsympathetic, coming from a guy I know has done the same thing six times before in his life,” I said, taking the moment when Sanders opened his mouth for the inevitable comeback to dart around the other side of him and make another grab for the cookies.

Mona pulled the tray just out of my reach and gave me an admonishing look. “Leave the cookies for people who will enjoy them, Helix.”

I stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean, Mona? Everyone likes your baking.”

“I’ve noticed,” Mona said with a smile. “I wouldn’t keep feeding it to you guys if you hated it. But you hate chocolate.”

I stared open-mouthed for a minute. “I do?”

“You do, but you keep eating it and saying it’s delicious to make me feel better.” She gave me a light pat on one arm. “Best field analyst in the Midwest, remember?”

“I don’t know why anyone bothers trying to keep secrets around here,” I said, slumping slightly.

“Because you’re a sweetheart,” Mona said. She pulled a square tupperware container out of a bag on a nearby chair and held it out to me. “I baked you a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies instead. Take care today.”

“You’re the best, Mona,” I said as I snatched the cookies out of Mona’s hand and scuttled away.

Now only a fool eats when Jack Howell is giving a briefing, he’s the kind of man who demands absolute attention during briefings, and with good reason. Since Herrera was a newbie who wasn’t entirely up on the safety procedures that go hand in hand with being on the same team as a heat sink who expects to go active, Jack got to run our prerollout briefing. That included explaining how to properly strap on and check the complicated insulating body armor that, in theory, would keep people from getting roasted if I needed to light up Circuit’s warehouse for a late summer bonfire.

I’ll be the first to admit that all of that is important information, even the obligatory reminder to take care of your equipment because it is expensive. In fact being forced to sit through the whole lecture for the umpteenth time would have been worth it just to see Mosburger’s reaction when he learned one suit of the stuff cost nearly a hundred and fifty grand. Newbies get used to the Project’s expense budget eventually, but it does take time.

However the upshot of all that was that I wound up sitting around for almost three hours while Mona’s cookies got cold. I didn’t get a chance to crack them open until the eight of us were in our van and headed across town towards Circuit’s latest hideout.

I dug in as I watched Mosburger struggle awkwardly with his body armor. Kesselman was trying to help him get suited up but it looked more like modern art waiting to happen than someone getting ready for a potential combat situation. Everything about this mess, from Circuit’s involvement to the obvious greenness of my current team, was making me nervous.

Once we arrived on site Herrera got out of the front seat and moved into the back with the rest of us. “SWAT says they’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

As a matter of automatic courtesy I held the box out to offer Herrera a cookie. She peered in, saying, “Are these the chocolate chip cookies I was smelling earlier?”

“Oatmeal Raisin,” I said around a mouthful.

Herrera looked vaguely offended. “Did we not rate chocolate chips?”

“Helix doesn’t like chocolate,” Mosburger said without looking up from the boots he strapping on for the third time.

“Is there nothing sacred anymore?” I asked, spreading my hands to the van’s ceiling. “I prefer birthday pie to birthday cake too, is that such a crime?”

“Sorry,” he said, glancing up from his boots. “I heard Bob and Mona arguing about it this morning.”

“Sanders? What was his problem?”

“I’m not sure. Something about her assignment being therapy, not an excuse to baby all her co-workers.” He shrugged. “Not sure what that was supposed to mean.”

I grunted in disapproval. It meant that Darryl had talked Mona into transferring to field work as a way to distract her when she found out they couldn’t have kids. Yes, she probably babied her co-workers as a kind of substitution. Sanders should have known better to bring it up around other people, though. I gave Mosburger a stern look and said, “None of your business.”

Mona raised an eyebrow. “Your last field analyst was in therapy?”

“All getmen are in therapy,” Jack said as he checked through the contents of his utility belt. “It comes with the territory. If you aren’t yet, Mosburger, you’ll get your chance.”

“What’s a getman?” Herrera asked.

“Oh good,” Mosburger muttered. “I’m not the only who doesn’t know these things.”

“It’s what we call field analysts,” I said, ignoring Mosburger’s grumbling.

“Why?” Herrera took off her jacket and began shrugging into her own tactical gear. At least she seemed familiar with the basic mechanics, if not the particular challenges of our specialty equipment.

“Because they always get their man,” Jack said.

“Or because they get things first,” Kesselman added.

I dusted my hands off and closed the empty box of cookies. “Also, I think it has something to do with the fact that the first one was from Gettysburg.” I got up and moved to the seat Herrera had abandoned at the front of the van.

“Going somewhere?” Jack asked.

“Just getting a feel for the place,” I said.

We were just across the street from the warehouse. I can feel heat anywhere within about half a city block when I really focus on it. That wasn’t enough to let me get a sense of the whole warehouse, but I could tell one thing important right off the bat. “Hey, Mosburger, I think I figured out why Circuit wanted this place as a hangout.”

The Project’s newest getman got up and clomped forward to look over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

“It’s one of the only places in the city where he could create a vacuum walled chamber to work in.” I felt my way outward again, just to make sure. There was no getting around the dizzying sense of finding an area that had no heat in it, in fact had no medium to conduct heat.

“He’s used a set up like that before, hasn’t he?” Mosburger said, quickly answering his own question. “When he was operating out in eastern Arizona. I remember reading about it.”

“Why?” Herrera asked. “What does working in a vacuum accomplish?”

“Not in a vacuum,” I said, “in a room with walls that have a vacuum chamber in place of insulation.”

“Circuit appears to know a lot about electronics, and, given the nature of his talent, that’s not surprising.” Mosburger rested his hand on the headrest of my seat and began drumming his fingers absently. “My guess is it serves to make them less detectable to Helix as they’ll leak much less heat.”

“That’s more like waving a red flag to me,” I said. “There’s nothing as obvious as a vacuum, trust me on this. If he’s trying to keep that place a secret, it doesn’t add up.”

Mosburger thought for a moment, then nodded. “You’re right – unless it’s serving as a blind for whatever his real countermeasure is.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Herrera said. “It can’t be a perfect vacuum, can it? He has to get in and out somehow.”

“There’s probably a door pumped chock full of coolant somewhere in the set up,” I said. “That’s what the room in Arizona was like. It’s just not on the side facing us now.”

Herrera tapped Bergstrum on the shoulder. “Take us around the block once. Helix, see if you can pin down where that door is, find out anything else about this set up Circuit’s got running. Look for any major differences between now and the way things were in Arizona.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much. The warehouse wasn’t even in range part of the time. We’d gotten all the way around to the other side of the building when I slapped the back of Bergstrum’s chair. “Hold up. I got three people in there.”

“People?” Mosburger said. “What are people doing in there? Moving out some of Circuit’s stuff?”

“No, at this point he’s got everything he’s ever gonna want out of there already,” I said.

“So you don’t think they’re some of Circuit’s people?” Herrera asked.

“Honestly, no,” I said. Checking their locations again. All three were still plastered up against the edge of the vacuum insulated room. “I think they’re probably worse, in their own way.”

“What’s worse than Circuit in this situation?” Mosburger asked.

I exchanged a glance with Jack, who nodded for me to go ahead. I sighed and said, “Amateurs.”

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Heat Wave: Feed the Flames

Posted by natechen on November 5, 2012

Helix

To most people it probably seems strange that I could be relieved of duty one day and, not twenty four hours later, walk back into the office to take on a new position. It’s not really a surprise if you think about it, though. There are over four hundred living talents on record in the continental U.S., yet the Project employs only eighty-eight of them.

With those eighty-eight talents the Project must keep a vigilant eye out for criminals who are aided by talent, try to find new talents as they crop up and warn them to try and keep a low profile, and remain ever vigilant against the possibility that foreign powers will use talents as spies, or worse, soldiers. As you can imagine, we’re pretty busy. Unless we’ve done something that seriously threatens the public interest, Project Sumter can’t afford to remove us from duty for more than a week or so and that’s more like a slap on the wrist than a real disciplinary measure.

Sure, coming back in less than a day was unusual, but these are strange times even without Senator Dawson in the picture.

When I walked into the office the next day I didn’t head up to the floor where Sanders and the rest of our team usually meets. For one thing, I wasn’t really a part of his team anymore, which was both freeing and uncomfortable. I’ve worked with Sanders since I started with the Project, and there’s a certain amount of familiarity to him no matter how much I think he’s a shallow jerk. Also, if the Senator was involved in getting someone appointed to the Project I had no doubt he’d be there to log some face time with the “regular Joes” who worked with us talents and we don’t receive VIPs upstairs.

But most importantly, the phone call I got told me to go to one of the ground floor visitor’s meeting room.

If I hadn’t been sure that Brahms Dawson would come to see his pasty off on her first day of work before I got to the office all doubts would have been removed as soon as I stepped in the door. The ground floor reception area was crawling with people who had the unmistakable look of private security agents. To the man on the street telling the difference between a private security firm and a member of the FBI might seem challenging. After all, we both wear dark colored suits to work every day, unless we’re undercover, right?

Here’s the secret: Private security can afford nicer suits than we can.

Unlike the reception areas on the other floors, our ground floor entrance sees the occasional guest from the general public, and as such has things like chairs, potted plants and receptionists who know how to smile in order to make people feel more at ease. It’s a nice contrast to, say, Records, where there’s no seating and Cheryl will scowl at you until get out of her foyer and get back to work.

The only concession to the secure nature of the building in the public entrance is Shelob’s desk, where our unusual building security chief can usually be found. Except that morning Shelob wasn’t there, replaced with one of the many security suits that mobbed the area. I had to go right past him to get to the conference room and I hadn’t even gotten to the desk when he spoke up.

“Sir, you can’t go back there,” the suit said. He got up from the computer terminal he’s been sitting at. From where I was standing I could see that, regardless of whether this guy had booted Shelob during the Senator’s visit, they’d seen fit to leave to leave her feeds from the outside security cameras untouched, so at least they had some good sense.

I held up my ID, which should have been enough to get me inside this or any other building connected to the FBI or Project Sumter. “I’m cleared for this area.”

“Yes, sir, I can see that,” the bodyguard said. “But right now the main conference room is being used by Senator Dawson and Mr. Voorman, and the Senator does not want to be disturbed.”

Now all the conference rooms in our building are pretty much the same size, and I was tempted to point out that only the enormous ego of a US Senator could instantly transform one into the “main” conference room, but in the end I figured I was best served by letting it be. If Dawson and Voorman were hashing something out it was probably best that I leave well enough alone. Voorman may not be my favorite person to work with, but he’s better at making sure the Project and its Talents are looked after than anyone I know.

I shrugged and said, “Okay, if that’s the way he wants it. Does he know you’re watching that?”

The man started slightly and turned back to his computer in surprise, one of his camera feeds had changed to a documentary on the life and habits of wild donkeys. I left the guard to work out how that might have happened and walked back into the foyer. The one person who didn’t look like he belonged to a high class rent-a-cop service appeared to be in his late fifties, was dressed in a long sleeved shirt in spite of the heat, and sat on one of the benches with a briefcase and a cane by his side.

I walked over and sat down next to him. “How are you, Broadband?”

“Well enough, Helix.” Broadband’s face twiched, followed by the sound of muted cursing from the man at the desk. “Just here to file some reports with Cheryl.”

“What’s the hold up?”

“The elevator is currently undergoing a security check that would be compromised by the presence of unauthorized personnel.” Broadband grimaced and rubbed one knee. “I guess I’m stuck here until they free it up.”

I grunted. “If the Senator’s still on the ground floor, what do they care about the elevator for?”

Another twitch of the muscles on Broadband’s face. “I don’t know, son. I don’t know.”

“Funny,” I said. “I met a man the other day who didn’t want to be my dad. Now you’re volunteering.”

Broadband laughed. “Takes all kinds, son. Let an old man talk, you might learn something. Why the other day, while I was in Cincinnati with the boys…”

He kept rambling and I let him. Harmless talk is one of the things that makes him so go at what he does, I’m told, and it never hurts to let people keep in practice. His face kept twitching, the senator’s guards kept cursing, and I just enjoyed the show.

After about ten minutes of that Voorman finally put in an appearance, walking out of the conference hallway while mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. He glanced around the room and spotted me then motioned me over. “They’re ready for you. I won’t ask you to be nice, but don’t deliberately try to piss off the Senator, please?”

I put my hand over my heart. “I promise not to tap the window, stick my fingers in the cage, feed it, or otherwise excite the politician.”

“That’s the idea,” Voorman said, giving me a light slap on the shoulder and headed towards the elevators without a backward glance. The suit started to get up to say something to Voorman but then I heard Broadband cough and the computer screen went crazy. I just shook my head and headed back to the conference room, if our counterintelligence specialist managed to slip Voorman past the security goons I was sure I’d get the play by play from Shelob later.

I had been expecting to be the first person on Herrera’s ops team to show up. After all, there hadn’t been anyone else out there with me, and getting places early is one of my specialties.

So I was surprised to find Pritchard Mosburger in the conference room when I got there. I looked around in surprise, wondering if perhaps I had the wrong room, then glanced back at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was called here by Mr. Voorman,” Mosburger said. He hunched his shoulders defensively. “He said this would be a simple starting assignment. Apparently I’m up to field training already. It was a sudden thing, I’ve been here since six, filling out all the paperwork for HR. Then Mr. Voorman comes up and says am I ready for an assignment? So I said sure, and here I am.” Mosburger relaxed a little and offered a weak smile. “Two days on the job and I’m already a field analyst. Must be doing pretty good.”

“It depends on how you look at it,” I muttered, leaning on the back of one of the chairs. It seemed a safe guess now that Dawson and Voorman had been arguing about who our field analyst would be. Analysts fit for the field are almost as rare as talents, and in just as high demand. I was willing to bet the only other qualified person available was Mona Templeton. The senator knew her already; I was willing to bet he’d rather have a total rookie who didn’t like Voorman yet than an actual field ready agent who did.

“Where is the Senator?”

“Agents Mosburger and Herrera were waiting in the other conference room.” Senator Brahms Dawson walked in as he spoke, looking as immaculate as always. I took a minute to reckon it up. With his steel gray hair shellacked into a perfect side part that wouldn’t move in the wind, his tailored brown suit pressed to razor sharpness and his fit figure showing the signs of daily exercise, I estimated that, in order to get here early enough to argue about field analysts with Voorman he must have gotten up some time around three this morning. Momma taught me to be a stickler for punctuality, but even I don’t start getting ready that early.

“Taking a moment to make sure Agent Herrera didn’t want to back out?” I asked.

“Why not ask her yourself?” Senator Dawson favored me with a sardonic half smile as he stood by the chair at the head of the table. His question made me realize that he wasn’t alone. Tunnel vision is one of my biggest problems in tactical situations, and the Senator must qualify because I’m sure there’s no way I would have missed Agent Herrera otherwise.

She was standing a half step behind the Senator and let me just say, as an expert on the subject, that she was smoking hot. She had high cheekboness and a strong, sharp nose and she was tall. I’d guess she was about five-foot ten, although an inch or two of that might have been heels, I didn’t want to bend over and check, but more than her height or looks she had the kind of presence that attracted attention, part practiced poise, part natural charisma. I recognized that kind of thing from Sanders and, for that matter, the Senator.

In another ten years I suspected Dawson might not want to be in the same room with her. He’d be overshadowed, and that’s the kind of thing politicians can’t stand. “Special Agent Herrera.” I stepped away from the chair and held out my hand. “Special Agent Double Helix. No offense. This is a strange job and not everyone wants to be here.”

She favored me with what looked like a genuine smile and gave my hand a firm, friendly shake. No trembling, no jerking the hand back as soon as I let go. Surprisingly normal. “No offense taken, Double Helix. And please, call me Teresa. I knew what I was getting into when I volunteered for this position; I hope you’ll find I’m ready for it.”

I glanced at the two inch folder she was holding under her other arm. It looked a lot like she’s already had a chance to do a little reading on me, so maybe she did have some idea what she was in for. “Let’s hope you’re up for the challenge, then. And if we’re being informal, you can call me Helix like everyone else. Less of a mouthful.” I looked around at the room, then back at Senator Dawson. “All we’re missing is the tactical team. Who do we have? More handpicked rookies?”

“Actually,” Herrera said, “I’ve asked that your previous tactical support team be transferred over with you. I’d hate to have you be the only experienced agent on the team, and I’m told your talent can be difficult to work with.”

“‘Doesn’t play well with others’ often appeared on my report cards,” I said dryly. However, I was also relieved. It had taken Jack and the others a while to get used to some of the difficulties heat sinking can pose, I hadn’t really been looking forward to the idea of breaking in a new team. “Are they coming?”

“Agent Sanders apparently told them they could come in a bit late today” Dawson said, a hint of disappointment tingeing the statement, as if he’d been looking forward to seeing a bunch of guys who’s major hobby was adjusting gunsights. “Apparently most of them were here late last night, in some sort of strategy meeting.”

I shrugged. “Then I assume this is all of us?”

“Correct, Helix,” Herrera said, stepping away from the table and closing the door to the meeting room. To my surprise, Senator Dawson slipped into a chair as Herrera moved to the head of the table. I had assumed that the Senator would take the lead in this meeting.

Agent Herrera handed me a normal looking manila folder marked with Open Circuit’s talent ID number. I glanced up at her as she handed a thicker folder, probably a copy of Circuit’s file on top of whatever I got, to Mosburger and cleared my throat. Herrera looked back at me and said, “Yes?”

“We’re going after Open Circuit?”

She gave me a surprised look, perhaps because I’d recognized the ID number without having to look it up, but gamely said, “That’s right.”

“Huh.” I glanced down at the folder again and felt a powerful urge to incinerate it. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that might be misunderstood in the present company. I folded my arms firmly across my chest in an attempt to suppress that urge, the leaned back in my chair to give Herrera a second, closer examination.

She was still well put together, no getting around that. But now that I was paying more attention, I realized that she also looked fairly young, maybe even a few years younger than me. I put her somewhere around twenty five, tops. Young, and possibly naive. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but as a rule of thumb Project Sumter does not encourage its talents to develop any kind of antagonistic relationship with persons of interest.”

Mosburger paused his perusal of the folder to stare at me. “What’s that?”

“I believe Helix is trying to say that he doesn’t have an archrival, no matter how much it seems like it,” the Senator said with a wry smile. “But he has the most experience working against Open Circuit, which is one of the reasons he’s on this team.”

I wasn’t sure if he was saying it was one of the reasons Voorman had pushed for me to be on this team, or if he’d decided my presence was an acceptable risk to whatever Herrera’s goals were because of it. I just shrugged. “I want to make sure we’re not struggling under the unfortunate stereotypes perpetuated by comic books and movies. Project Sumter does not like emotions interfering with its operations.”

Herrera leaned forward slightly, looking a touch worried. “And yours could?”

“There was an operation a while back.” I felt my face twisting into an uncomfortable grimace and tried to squash it. “It was for the CIA, so I can’t talk about it unless you’re cleared for that.” Herrera shook her head. “But it’s definitely compromised my emotional distance. I’d prefer not to run the risk of another face to face encounter.”

“What kind of risk?” Mosburger asked. “I heard a little bit more about your talent yesterday, and this guy,” he waved at Circuit’s file, “doesn’t sound nearly as dangerous as you.”

“I’m not worried about him hurting me,” I said. I shoved my way up out of the chair and stood. “But last time I came pretty close to roasting him. I’d rather not have a repeat performance.”

“But you have no problem destroying property at random,” Dawson said dryly.

“Hey, that helicopter had it coming,” I said, trying to lighten things up.

“That helicopter was government property,” the Senator replied.

“Which had its control systems overridden by Circuit, making it a material threat to the surrounding area.” I shrugged. “Sure, melting it cost money but not as much as letting a fully equipped Apache off the reservation would.”

“Helix does have a history of collateral damage,” Herrera said, holding out his hands to calm us down. “But he’s almost caught Circuit twice, and his talents do offer him certain strategic advantages against Circuit’s. Hopefully that will offset the risks involved in his working on this case. Particularly because this time we’re fairly certain that we already know where to find Circuit.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do we, now?”

“We’re going to be acting on some information the HSA acquired recently.” Herrera opened her own folder and set it on the table in front of her. “You’ll see that we’ve traced several strange transactions through a series of shell companies to this location in the city.”

Mosburger was looking at his own folder again. “Concrete and steel, nothing special there. Lightning rods and outboard motors. That is strange. Wireless routers and fishing tackle?” He glanced up. “What kind of places sells both those things?”

“It was an Amazon.com order that we intercepted through other means,” Herrera said, handing out a photograph of an inconspicuous looking warehouse. “All these materials, and a few other things, have wound up here in the last two weeks. We’re fairly certain, based on the kinds of materials purchased, the location and the kind of financial shell games used to get them there, that this is Circuit’s work.”

An inconspicuous warehouse on the east side of the city is harder to find than many people think. Which is to say, they’re rare, which actually makes them stand out more. I wasn’t actually sure why Circuit would have chosen such a place for storage, and thinking about it too much sounded like one of those “but if he knows we know then…” headaches waiting to happen. So instead I said, “He won’t be there.”

Herrera’s confident smile slipped just a bit. I expected to see resentment or maybe outright anger at being contradicted behind it. She struck me as an ambitious career woman, maybe someone planning to piggyback on the Senator’s political standing. I figured raining on her parade might crack her pleasant exterior and show what was within, and I was right.

I just hadn’t been expecting to see uncertainty under all that poise. I knew that look. It reminded me of someone who had to do a presentation in Public Speaking 101 and got asked the one question they didn’t have an answer for. It was one of the reasons my highest educational letters are GED.

“It’s not a bad idea, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” I said quickly. “Circuit’s downright uncanny at dodging things. There are plenty of signs that he leads a large organization, but we’ve never caught any of them in a raid. In fact, I think we’ve only caught two of them in all, and that was by accident. Putting all this together is impressive, don’t get me wrong, but it could just be something meant to distract us. That kind of wheels in wheels is his thing.”

Herrera nodded, her moment of uncertainty gone. “You’re right. But our records show that his latest shipment of goods hasn’t actually arrived yet. He clearly thought this location was secure as recently as a week ago. Even if he has heard about this already hopefully he won’t have had time to get away clean. And if it’s just a decoy, at least we’ll know that he’s getting desperate. I can’t think of any other reason for such an elaborate ruse. But I do appreciate your input, as the Senator said, it’s one of the reasons I asked for you on this team.”

She had asked for me. Yet another strange thing to add to the growing list of oddities in Agent Herrera’s stay here at the Project. “Well,” I said, “I guess I should also mention that he’s very fond of booby traps…”

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Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Stirring the Fire

Posted by natechen on October 29, 2012

Helix

I let myself into my apartment and glanced around before turning back to grab my end of the couch. “For a secret government organization, you lot are really lousy at skulking. Maybe you should have your people work on that, Gramm.”

“Counting yourself in that are you, Helix?” Ed Gramm came over and held the door open as Jack and I finished getting the furniture into the big main room, then closed it as we parked the couch in a free corner.

“Hey, I’m just a mild mannered civilian, have been for hours.” I said, dusting my hands off and fishing out my wallet. “My name is Benjamin Dornier.”

“It’s more convincing if you don’t have to check your driver’s license to remember your name, buddy,” Jack said, wiping his face on his shirt as he headed towards the bathroom. “And I don’t care if there are other people here already; I’m borrowing your shower.”

“Probably best you don’t smell like old gym socks when we get started.” Ed tossed me a pale pink bow. I gave him a skeptical look and he pointed at the couch. “Put it on. I don’t think you’re planning on wrapping it but it ought to have something on it, shouldn’t it?”

I sighed and stuck the bow on the couch. “Why did I invite you to this anyway?”

“Because I was Mona’s first boss and she still likes me even though that weasel Voorman stole her for his department?”

“Yeah, that kind of talk really makes me feel better about you being here.” I headed towards the kitchen to check on things in there, but as I left I called over my shoulder, “Just remember who’s party this is and try to keep a lid on things, okay?”

Two hours later there was a knock at the door and I went to get it, switching the lights off as I went. Behind me, a dozen or so people scurried away to hiding places, muttering and snickering as they tried to squirrel themselves away in my admittedly tiny living room. I tried not to sigh. Skulking isn’t my specialty, but I like to see things done well, and this didn’t really qualify.

I opened the door to reveal Darryl and Mona Templeton, who I swept in with one hand while closing the door with the other. “Come on it,” I said. “This your first time in this place? I change apartments so regularly it’s hard to keep track of which ones you’ve seen.”

“I don’t think we’ve been here before,” Darryl said.

Mona patted him on the arm, which I recognized as a shushing gesture. “Helix, are you sure you’re up for company? You just got laid off today. We can come back some other time.”

“I’m fine, Mona,” I said, gently guiding them away from the door. “It’s just a temporary thing, and it’s not like this is the first time. Besides, you only have one birthday a year.”

Jack hit the lights and people came tumbling out of hiding calling, “Surprise!”

“And,” I added, “it would kind of ruin the party if you ducked out now.”

Mona shook her head. “A surprise party. How did you guys manage to plan a surprise party without me figuring that out?”

“Simple. Ed and I are just as smart as you, and we had Jack and Helix to help us make it happen.“ Darryl kissed his wife on the cheek and led her over to her new sofa.

From that point, things got to be something of a blur. I like to plan things but I don’t like crowds so much, so while putting together the party with Darryl had been fun, this part was less so. On top of that, most of the people there were current or former members of Ed’s analyst team, which Mona had belonged to before transferring to field work. I didn’t know them that well. Most of the people from my team had been kept at the office with Sanders. I was pretty sure Jack hadn’t been called in only because Sanders conveniently ‘forgot’ he was on vacation today.

Jack and I focused on keeping the drinks and food flowing, which didn’t really keep us that busy, and I generally tried my best to play a good host. At least we had managed to keep Mona from baking her own cake this year, which I considered to be a victory in and of itself. I was just about to go and get a new bottle of wine and perhaps propose a toast when I noticed the body heat of someone coming up the hallway.

Normally I wouldn’t have paid any attention to it, because it is, after all, an apartment building and people come and go all the time. But this person stopped outside my door and just waited there. No knock, no buzzer, no shouting over the noise of the party, which he could certainly hear, no phone call asking me to let him in. I frowned and caught Jack’s eye, nodded towards the door and slipped through the crowd in the living room to the door.

A glance through the peephole revealed that my mystery guest was Bob Sanders. I frowned. If he was coming to join the party after all he would have knocked. So he probably didn’t want anyone to know he was here. I quickly glanced around the living room.

Ed Gramm had his back to the door, talking to Mona. He’d behaved himself so far that night, not trying to talk Mona into rejoining his team or some such foolishness, but he probably wouldn’t miss a chance to call Sanders out on being away from the office, either. I flipped Jack a quick hand signal that meant I was going to scout ahead and then slipped into the hall.

Sanders was carrying a small bouquet of flowers, a bottle of wine and a card. In contrast to his cheerful looking packages, the man looked strained and tired. I raised an eyebrow. “Working up the nerve to come in?”

He snorted, as if that was a preposterous idea. Which, admittedly, it was. “Just wanted to avoid complications.”

“You’re not staying.” I wasn’t asking, that much was pretty obvious.

“I need to be back at the office in half an hour,” he said. “And besides, I’m not supposed to tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

“Ooh, this is one of those conversations.” I nodded. “And Mona’s party is a convenient excuse.”

Sanders sighed and motioned down the hall, where there was a small corner lounge. “Let’s get out of the hallway.”

I nodded and we walked down to the chairs there. Sanders stopped long enough to set down his gifts on the table and then joined me by the window. He sat in a chair, I leaned against the corner. We both pointed ourselves outwards, facing the two entrances, so we could watch for anyone approaching. As a result, we could only glance at each other out of the corner of the eye but at least no one could sneak up on us.

“I’m sorry about the party,” Sanders said. “I’ll apologize to Mona tomorrow.”

“Fair enough,” I said with a shrug. “We’ve all been where you are before. I’m just not following why you came after you said you couldn’t.”

“Voorman needed an excuse to for one of us to talk to you. Tonight.” Sanders shrugged. “No one but you and Darryl actually knew I said I wouldn’t come, so he figured he’d send me with his gift.” Sanders motioned to the bottle of wine.

I nodded. “Makes sense. He and Gramm can’t stand each other, so they wouldn’t be at the same party. Sending a runner is Voorman’s style.”

“Right. So here I am, officially to give Mona her birthday present, unofficially to tell you to answer your phone tomorrow morning.” Sanders smirked slightly.

“I always answer my phone, even when it’s two thirty in the morning,” I said in confusion. “It’s part of the job. Why would I not answer my phone tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, you’d answer the phone but you wouldn’t answer it the right way,” Sanders said, his smirk growing. “You see, tomorrow you’re going to be asked if you’ll come into the office for reassignment.”

“Sanders, I just got officially relieved of duty…” I paused to check my watch. “Six and a half hours ago. The Project doesn’t just pull someone off duty so they can call them back less than twenty four hours later.”

He stopped smiling. “They do when he’s one of only eighty eight talents in the whole country certified for law enforcement work.”

“Right.” I grunted in disgust. “Like they haven’t already thought about that.”

“This is what I mean when I say you wouldn’t answer right,” Sanders said morosely. “Knowing you, you’d just tell them to take a flying leap and hang up.”

“Oh, I could be more inventive than that.”

“And I wouldn’t blame you,” Sanders said, abandoning his watch on the hallway to level a stern look at me. I humored him and met it. “But there’s more to my job than just keeping you happy.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that actually a criteria of doing your job?”

“More than you know.”

I shook my head with mock seriousness. “Well, Sanders, I’ve gotta tell you, you’re doing lousy.”

He ignored my jibe. “The Project is taking on someone from HSA for overseer training.” I nodded. While I work for the FBI most of the time, I’ve also worked with the TSA and the CIA. Project Sumter as a whole is available to all the many abbreviations of the federal government but we don’t actually belong to any of them.

Instead, our team leaders are drawn from the ranks of various agencies, receive basic training and work a year or two in the Project then return to wherever they came from, so when we’re called in there will be someone who knows the score to work with us. I wasn’t surprised to hear that we had someone from the HSA coming in to be a team lead. It’s a good career move for them, and it keeps the Project well supplied with fresh blood from which we draw a much smaller core of experienced, full time oversight agents.

But what Sanders said next did get me to sit up and pay attention. “Special Agent Herrera is being sponsored by Senator Brahms Dawson.”

“Oh.” I stared off down my hallway, not really watching it anymore. That had a lot of implications. “So he’s a friend of our favorite secret Senate committee leader, is he?”

“She is,” Sanders said, both confirming and correcting at once. “She’s from Utah, so she’s not from Dawson’s state but they seem to have known each other for a while. He’s had a hand in her education and helped her join the HSA and he’s been going to great lengths to make sure she gets a chance to work with us. If we can’t get a team assembled soon she could be pulled by the HSA for other duties.”

“And whoever is up next may not be quite so friendly with the Senator,” I said, nodding in understanding.

“Oh, it’s better than that,” Sanders said with a grin. “The next person in line for a team leadership position, in line for a permanent oversight position in fact, just turned thirty six today.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Mona’s bucking for her own team?”

“Has been for quite a while.” Sanders laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back in his chair. “In fact, keeping her out of an oversight position has been Senator Dawson’s pet hobby for the past five months. Voorman got her the job by agreeing to let Herrera go first.”

“On a temporary basis, of course.”

“Of course.”

“So,” I said slowly, feeling my eyes narrow. “Why does the Senator want this woman in the Project so badly he’d be willing to hand his nemesis such a big concession?”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “We really don’t know much about Herrera other than that she’s 25, female and Hispanic.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing at all? Aren’t we on permanent liaison with the FBI?”

“Herrera’s juvenile records were sealed when she turned eighteen,” Sanders said. He spread his hands. “The FBI is wary of pushing too hard to get them, particularly when it’s people from the Circus who are asking for them.”

Whenever Sanders calls the Project by the FBI’s pet name it means that he’s already thrown all of his considerable talents of persuasion into getting what he wants from them and still come up blank. His favorite way of showing frustration is making others look unreasonable.

Still, this time I felt like siding with the FBI. Sometimes records are sealed with good reason. “What do we know about her after she turned eighteen?”

“Just that she got into UC Berkley where she majored in social work.”

“And managed to attract the attention of a certain Senator from Wisconsin?” I asked.

“Essentially,” Sanders said. “She attended a rally or something there; we’re kind of fuzzy on the details. But she’s known the Senator for the last six years and it looks like he’s been grooming her for this job.”

“So what kind of viper is he looking to slip into our midst?” I mused. And maybe I was jumping to conclusions about Agent Herrera, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep and my opinion of the Senator was pretty low. Nothing personal, but he had once suggested registering and tracking all known talents in the States and that’s something we’re all a little touchy about.

“We don’t know,” Sanders said. “But Voorman is desperate to find out and contain the damage. That’s why, when the Project calls you and tells you they’ve changed their mind and want to put you back on duty, you’re going to say yes.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose for a moment, fighting a headache that had been growing back there all evening. “So I can either forgo a well earned vacation to babysit a rookie field overseer, or let Brahms Dawson finally get whatever hold over talents he’s been looking for since he joined the Senate Oversight Committee twelve years ago. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s about what it amounts to.”

I spend a moment saying goodbye to the idea of a blissful week in my workshop, then looked up at Sanders and said, “All right. I’ll be there.”

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Heat Wave: Burnt Fingers

Posted by natechen on October 22, 2012

Helix

Bureaucracy at work: In order for Project Sumter to kick me out of the offices for the next week, I have to come into the office and sign paperwork.

Now if I was a cop, yeah, maybe they’d just take my gun and my badge and send me home for a little while, paperwork to be filed by others. The problem is, I have a talent that lets me melt through steel and concrete, and I can’t be sent to take some time off without the powers that be giving me a Very Clear Warning about behaving myself.

So after going home, stripping out of clothes reeking of smoke, hitting the shower and then getting an unrestful night’s sleep I got up the next morning and went right back to the local offices of Project Sumter. Sanders was in his office with the paperwork in hand and notary witnesses at his side and had me out again in under five minutes. But not before extracting a solemn promise from me that I would take it easy for a while.

Always a kidder, that one.

I asked him if he had plans that night but, unfortunately for him, Voorman had pulled the entire active team on the Firestarter case in for an all-nighter. It’s that kind of thing that makes people around here wonder if getting periodically relieved of duty isn’t part of some secret plan of mine to get out of work.

Technically speaking, once I was relieved of duty I was supposed to be restricted from accessing all files and offices to ensure I wasn’t trying to follow up any of the Project’s open cases on my own. Fortunately, I’m not terminally stupid or suicidal. Chasing talents is a team sport and trying it on your own is a one way ticket to a shallow grave. Anyone who’s worked here for more than a month knows better than to try it.

So Sanders didn’t have someone escort me out, nor did anyone really seem anxious to force me to leave once I had signed on the dotted line. Under normal circumstances I would have been itching to leave anyway, as my workshop was calling to me, but as I left Sanders’ office I passed Mona on her way in, so I took the opportunity to slip down the stairs to Analysis and ducked in.

To my surprise the first thing I saw as I wove through the ranks of empty desks was Pritchard Mosburger, with a man I didn’t recognize, being ushered into one of the conference rooms. Mona certainly hadn’t wasted any time getting him sworn in, but that wasn’t really surprising. There’s a lot of turnover in Analysis. It has something to do with shoving a couple dozen highly paranoid, barely stable geniuses into a small room and telling them to deal with each other while trying to track down people with the kind of talents that make you want to dig a hole to hide in and pull it in after.

Believe me, I know most of our getmen and, while someone who puts together conspiracy theories for fun might sound far out to your man on the street, I was pretty sure that Mosburger was actually on the saner side of our Analysis team. But he wasn’t the sanest. That particular honor belonged to the man who I’d come to see.

Darryl Templeton, Mona’s husband, was head of the Analysis department and quite possibly the sanest man I know. His office was on the far side of the common room and the door was conveniently standing open. I made my way towards it, keeping an eye out for roving getmen as I did so. It’s not that I dislike our analysts; it’s just that the female ones love to come and ask me questions about some of my coworkers. Questions I generally prefer to avoid.

A huge part of my career at the Project has been spent doing my best to not understand Bob Sanders. I really have no idea why he doesn’t seem to want to hang on to a girlfriend for more than a few weeks and I wouldn’t want to explain it to an upset woman if I did.

Fortunately the floor was pretty empty at the moment, I didn’t see anyone besides a couple of guys I vaguely recognized sorting through newspapers from the southern part of the state, so I made it to Darryl’s office without incident. Unfortunately, Darryl wasn’t at his desk when I glanced in. That’s not unusual, half of Darryl’s job involves making sure files get to people and Project Sumter has the most draconian network security policy I’ve ever heard of in a government institution. We don’t have one.

A network, that is.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We have computers and a local rig set up here in the office, but its physically separate from the outside and there’s no way to have any electronic device in the building without a cellular data plan contact the outside. Obviously, it’s against the rules to have such a cellular device in contact with the LAN. As a result, all files are sent from one office to another in hard copy. Somehow, this is supposed to make them safer.

This rather bizarre policy is the result of a couple of major hacking attacks three years ago that resulted in a lot of our research files getting stolen. There’s a lot of information on talents out there in the wild and the only reason we can think of that it hasn’t wound up in the hands of the media is that whoever stole it was a talented individual with a vested interest in keeping it secret. My money is on a talent we call Open Circuit, who’s made quite a name for himself in cyber warfare in the last decade or so, but he’s not the only one who could pull that kind of thing off.

The upshot of all that is a lot of highly classified files enter the building from other parts of the Project and only three people are actually cleared to receive them. One is Voorman, who never actually does it. One is the non-existent head of our Records department. Our last one quit months ago and was never replaced. That leaves Darryl, who, as head of Analysis, is pretty much authorized to collect and share anything with anyone in the office he thinks worthy.

Of course, he also has to sign for all outgoing files, so some days he can spend as much time in the mail room as he does in his office. That was a little disappointing, since I’d hoped to talk to him quickly and get out to my workshop with a minimum of time lost. Still, there was nothing to do but wait, so I settled into one the chairs in front of his desk, propped my feet up on its immaculate surface and tried to grab some shuteye.

Apparently I succeeded because I woke up when someone dropped a large stack of paperwork onto my stomach. I sat up with a grunt. “If you’re going to be hogging space at my desk you can at least earn your keep.” Darryl slid into his own chair and plopped an even larger stack of envelopes and a single cardboard box onto one corner of his desk. “Speaking of which, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be suspended without pay, or something?”

“That’s exactly what I am,” I replied, taking the pile of paper and dropping it next to the box. “Which means I can’t look at any of that on pain of pain. Sorry.”

Darryl did his best to draw himself up to an imposing height and glare down at me. Since Darryl’s only five inches taller than me, just like all the other average American males, and kind of skinny to boot, it didn’t really work that well. I’m used to it. Still, I suddenly felt bad giving him a hard time.

When I joined the Project eight years ago Darryl had been my field analyst, the job his wife has now. He’d moved into the offices after a bad car wreck a few years after. That had aged him some, but these days it seemed like he had more gray hair in his beard every time we bumped into each other. Meeting his stare, I saw more wrinkles around his eyes than I ever remembered there being.

I held up my hands in front of my chest. “All right, I’ll be going. I just wanted to make sure you and Mona were still coming over tonight.”

Darryl’s expression softened somewhat. “Are you sure you’re up to it? You had a rough day yesterday.”

“Hey, Mona was out there too.” I waved him off. “If she feels like she can make it I’m good too.”

“Mona didn’t get relieved of duty today,” Darryl said earnestly.

“This is nothing new, Darryl. I swear they do it to me at least once a year. It’s like a habit or something. You know it; you sat through it once or twice.” I leaned over the desk and lowered my voice, to make sure he was listening. “I’m fine, and if you try and back out on me I’ll prove it by sneaking in here and melting your desk into a puddle.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Darryl’s mouth before he could suppress it. “Well, at least I know you’re feeling fine. I guess we’ll be there.”

“Glad we got that straightened out.” Darryl and I turned to find Jack leaning against the doorframe. He turned his attention from Darryl to me. “If Sanders finds out you’re still here he’ll have a cow.”

“Why’s that?” I asked. “He’s not a big stickler for the rules.”

“Because he’ll have to file an addendum to your suspension paperwork showing that you were somewhere you weren’t supposed to be when you weren’t supposed to be there.”

“That doesn’t even sound like it makes sense,” I said.

“It probably doesn’t,” Jack said with a shrug. “But it’s what he’d have to do. And you know how much Cheryl hates dealing with addendums.”

I brightened a bit. Watching Sanders go at it with the day shift manager from Records was always fun. “Maybe I should go down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat before we-”

“Come on, partner,” Jack said, grabbing me by one arm and hauling me out of the chair. “It’s time to go.”

“See you tonight, Darryl,” I said, and let myself be dragged out of his office.

“Don’t work too hard,” Darryl called as I left. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

An hour or so later Jack and I were in the bed of his truck, parked outside a U-Store It garage in the process of tying down a sofa. It was another hot afternoon and Jack had managed to keep a steady stream of grumbling about it going pretty much ever since he stepped out of the cab. Unfortunately, tying down a hardwood framed sofa in such a way that its finish doesn’t get scratched isn’t simple or fast, and I wasn’t about to let this beauty get ruined for a moment’s carelessness.

I was in the process of fitting the second to last set of bungee cables and rubber pads into place when we heard a series of muffled crashes and bangs from the garage a couple of units down the way. I popped up out of the truck’s bed like a groundhog looking for its shadow, hands braced on the side, and looked around. It was part classic rubbernecking instinct and part well honed desire to find trouble and sort it out, and it was the kind of urge that drove me to be a civil servant in the first place.

But I’ll admit that the real reason I hopped down from that truck and went to see what was going on was a feeling of general laziness. I’ve never been one of those people who deals well with having time on their hands. I like to be doing things and I like to be at the center of the action. Playing the moving man just didn’t quite cut it.

I heard Jack jump down from the truck behind me as I made my way over to the garage the noises came from. There was a large U-Haul parked out front, the kind of thing you might use to move a family of three from one side of the city to the other, but there was no sign of anyone in or around it, no one outside the garage at all.

I peered around the side of the truck and called, “Hey, is everything all right in there? We heard something falling.”

Before I had finished talking a man in a suit jacket backed out of the garage with a metal floor lamp in his hands. He was trying not to bang the light fixture on the top of the doorframe while still getting the bottom over the drift of boxes that blocked half the entrance. With his back mostly to us and his head pointed down, I didn’t recognize him until he spoke.

“I’m all right, though I’m not sure all these boxes are.” He said, his attention still fixed on the mess on the floor.

Now I’m not an expert with voices, in fact I’m as likely to forget one as remember it, but I’d only met the man yesterday and he’d struck me as a bit strange even then. I raised my eyebrows and said, “Reverend Rodriguez. I gotta say, you keep turning up in places I wouldn’t exactly expect to find a man of the cloth.”

Rodriguez set down the lamp as soon as it was clear of the garage door and turned around, looking just as surprised to see me as I was him. “Well, well, the FBI,” he said. “Twice in two days. Is this a coincidence, or is there some problem I need to know about?”

“No problems today, Rev,” Jack said, “we’re off duty.” He waved one hand to encompass the storage facility. “Looks like we just store our junk in the same place.”

I glanced into the U-Haul, which looked to be about half full of furniture and other household goods, then into the garage, which contained a lot more of the same, and said, “Wow. You do pretty good for a church man, Reverend.”

Rodriguez chuckled and said, “Not mine, actually. It’s the church’s, some of our members donate furniture as they buy or inherit or just find new things, and we keep it here against unexpected need in the community.”

I considered the floor lamp standing next to him and the boxes near his feet, one of which apparently held a toaster. “This is for the people who lost things in the fire.”

“Exactly. A few of the deacons put together a list of pressing needs and worked out what we could do to help.” He gestured to the U-Haul and shrugged. “It won’t heal the emotional hurt that comes from this kind of disaster, but it is a step in the right direction.”

Jack rubbed the back of his neck for a moment as he considered what we were looking at and then said, “You know, Reverend, a lot of those people probably had renter’s insurance to pay for things like this.”

“That can take weeks or months to come through, though,” the other man said, turning and hefting the lamp again and moving it into the truck. “And it brings all the comfort and reassurance of bureaucracy with it, which is to say none at all. Besides, God’s people are not called to let other people deal with it when we’re perfectly able to help on our own.”

I shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that, I guess. Where are your other people? We didn’t see anyone else here.”

“Just me right now, I’m afraid,” Rodriguez said. “Some of the deacons were planning to come once they got off work, but I didn’t see any reason to wait for them before starting.”

Jack snorted. “I can respect that, Reverend, but it looks like you’re fixing to hurt yourself. Do you need a hand?”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt…” Rodriguez looked the two of us over. In traditional fashion one of us, namely Jack, was big and burly and the other was small and scrawny. But if he had any concerns over my ability to pull my weight he kept them to himself. “But if you’re going to help you have to settle for calling me Pastor Rodriguez, or just Manuel, like my friends do. There’s only one man worthy of reverence and sadly, it’s not me.”

I exchanged a glance and a shrug with Jack. If the pastor wanted to be nitpicky about things like that, well, that was kind of his job, I guess. So we wound up spending the next two and a half hours helping Pastor Rodriguez fill his U-Haul with random household objects then restack everything that had been moved or knocked out of place in the process.

By the time we were done there were about half a dozen other folks there who were introduced to me as deacons from Rodriguez’s church. I shook hands with all of them, did my best to remember their names, and then went back with Jack to finish tying down the sofa. We piled into the truck’s cab in a much better mood than we had been before and made it back to my apartment without incident.

We hauled the couch up the back door and into the freight elevator, stopping to get the keys from the manager. As we waited for the doors to open and let us out onto my floor Jack took a moment to wipe the sweat off his face with the edge of his shirt. “It’s pure murder out there, Helix,” he said as he grabbed the edge of the couch again. “I think I’ll need to borrow your shower once we get this thing settled.”

“Fine by me,” I said, looking behind me as the door slid open then backing out into the hallway. “I’d prefer you not smelling like road kill anyway.”

It was about three hundred feet from the elevator to the entrance to my apartment, pretty much a straight shot down the hall. We’d gotten about halfway there when I slowed to a stop. The ability to sense heat isn’t something I have to concentrate to do; I just have a general sense of what’s around me at all times. And as a general rule of thumb, human beings are about twenty to thirty degrees warmer than the air in a climate controlled building, even one where the climate control is second rate, like my apartment complex. Four or five people standing around in an apartment stand out, especially if that apartment is supposed to be empty, like mine was.

“Problem?” Jack asked.

“I think you’ll have to skip your shower, Jack,” I said. “It looks like I’ve already got company.”

Previous Chapter

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Fiction Index

Points Of View

Posted by natechen on October 19, 2012

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: Kindling

Posted by natechen on October 8, 2012

Helix

“Look, when a cop is involved in a shooting they take away his badge and give him some time off. This is no different.”

I gave Senior Special Liaison Michael Voorman a hard look. “Don’t try and sell me that. If a bomb squad doesn’t disarm a bomb properly they aren’t pulled off duty for it.”

Voorman ran his hand over his the tattered wisps of graying black hair that dotted his head, shaking it sadly. “No, Helix, they’d probably be dead.”

“The problem was already there!” I protested, ignoring his point. “If I hadn’t done anything the arsonist would have still burned that apartment building down!”

“That’s not his pattern,” Voorman said calmly. “He typically only torches one apartment in a building himself then lets the fire spread as it will. The fire department has usually caught them before they can spread too much farther. You, on the other hand, wrestled him for his heat, or whatever it is you people do, and wound up causing stuff to spontaneously combust all over the building.”

I paced the length of the police van that was serving as the cleanup command center and glanced out the back door. Harsh artificial lighting spilled in through from outside. Night had fallen and I hadn’t even noticed. The top half of the apartment building was now a gutted wreck, with smoke damage blackening the top half of the building and leaving whole structure looking damp and disheveled.

I turned back to Voorman, who sat fidgeting by the van’s radio panel looking for all the world like he wanted to sit down at the computer there and file some paperwork rather than talk to me. That was typical of him. Voorman didn’t shy away from conflict, but he was notoriously uncomfortable around talents. I’d always thought that odd, since a Senior Special Liaison can manage anywhere from one to a dozen talented individuals and their teams.

“If I wasn’t called in to beat this guy at his own game,” I asked, “what exactly did Project Sumter assign me to this case for?”

Voorman looked up and pushed his glasses up his nose, blinking owlishly as if the question surprised him. “To be honest? I think the higher ups were expecting you to be some sort of damage control agent. Dampen out the fires by stealing so much heat from them the chemical reaction would no longer be self sustaining.”

I jammed my hands into my pockets and studied him. I’d only really talked to him a couple of times before, so reading what he was thinking was difficult, but I could tell he wasn’t intimidated by me. Lots of people are, I’ve learned to recognize the guarded stance and sideways looks, but Voorman had none of the usual signs. Funny, given how he was one of the few people I knew who was shorter than I was. Of course, that really shouldn’t be surprising given how many talents Senior Special Liaisons meet in their careers, but it was different, and it made figuring out where he was coming from harder. Since subtlety is not my strong suit, I decided to stick with the direct approach.

“I could do that,” I said. “But it’d be a waste of my time. Everyone knows that I’m the best heat sink in the Midwest, possibly in the whole nation. It’s the middle of August. There literally is no better time for people with my talent to be out taking names.” I rapped my knuckles on one of the computers for emphasis. “There’s at least half a dozen potentially dangerous talents at large in the Midwest Command District, so why did the Project send me out to hunt another heat sink if they didn’t want me doing everything I could to run him into the ground?”

Voorman shrugged and straightened the bottom of his rumpled, sweat stained suit jacket around his somewhat pudgy middle. “Honestly, I don’t know. It seemed like a waste of your particular abilities to me as well. It wasn’t explained to me when the assignment was handed down. I had assumed that since your… chief interest hadn’t been heard from in some time the higher ups wanted to hold you in reserve against future appearances. So they gave you a simple assignment they wouldn’t feel bad pulling you from at any time.”

I grunted. “That worked real well. Now I’m unavailable even if Circuit does show his face around here again.”

“I’m sure they’ll work something out if it comes to that,” Voorman assured me, giving me what he probably thought was a comforting pat on the back and ushering me towards the back of the van. I bristled a bit at his touch, as I’m not a touchy feely person, but he didn’t seem to notice. “They’ll probably even consider brining you back in. But in the mean time, I suggest that you relax for a bit. You haven’t really taken much time off in the last few years. Think of this as a vacation you’ve earned, rather than one that’s been forced on you.”

“Right,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped back into the smoky air outside. “A vacation.”

Being outside was a trade off. The air wasn’t nearly as still and close as it was in the van, but the pavement still angrily radiated all the heat it had picked up during the day. I grimaced and adjusted the light windbreaker I wore, which had large yellow letters on the back identifying me as a member of the FBI. If it hadn’t been for that, no one on the scene would have been wearing them.

Well, that and the hot ash that sometimes still drifted down from the gutted apartment building next door. No one wants burns all over their arms, so most of the people on site were wearing something with sleeves and sweating for it. Except for me.

See, heat sinks tend to unconsciously regulate the temperature around them to a reasonable 75 degrees Fahrenheit so we’re comfortable no matter what the surrounding temperature is. It’s useful when you’re trying to melt through bulletproof plexiglass but it looks awful strange when the temperature’s pushing one hundred and you’re the only one not sweating. So as I left the van I forced myself to let my personal bubble of comfort go and instantly felt awful. Odd as it may seem for someone with my talent, heat makes me cranky.

So it’s no surprise that I snapped at the priest when he popped up out of nowhere and offered me a bottle of water. At least not to me.

He looked like a pleasant enough sort of guy. He was about six foot two, which made looking him in the eye difficult for me but didn’t really qualify as a strike against him, had pleasant Hispanic features and a well kept mustache and was carrying a cooler under one arm. I pegged him as a priest due to his sport jacket and tie, the kind of accessories only priests or government workers would sport in this weather. And if he had been a government worker he would have had some kind of ID at the ready, which he didn’t, so he had to be a priest.

That, along with the pocket Bible poking out of one jacket pocket and the cross pin on his tie made me pretty sure he was a priest. He met me halfway between the command van and the nearest ambulance, a friendly smile on his face as he offered me a bottle of water and started to say something. I beat him to the punch.

“This is a crime scene, mister,” I told him. “And the building over there might not be safe. If you’re not a part of a public safety service, you probably shouldn’t be here.”

“I know,” he said, neither his smile nor the water bottle in his hand wavering in the slightest. “That’s why I’m here. God is present in times of trouble as well as times of peace, and his people have a duty to show that by being there as well.”

That sounded innocent enough. It also sounded a little bit too good to be true.“You been handing out water to everyone on the scene?”

“It’s hot weather to work in,” he replied. “You all looked like you could use it. The fire captain and I have worked together before, so I thought I’d come down and see if our congregation could help out this time, too.”

That sounded easy enough to check out. “Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle slowly. It hadn’t been opened, which was a good sign. “What’s your name, Father?”

“I’m Pastor Manuel Rodriguez, from Diversy Street Evangelical Church a few blocks down that way,” he replied, nodding his head away to the west. “And I’m sorry to say that, while I’m flattered by your offer, I have three daughters to be father to, and no time to add a son as well.”

That managed to get a half hearted grin in spite of my bad mood. “Alright, Reverend then. You come all the way out here to hand out water bottles?”

“Actually, I was going to offer to put up people made homeless in fires.” He looked around at the parking lot we stood in. There were still dozens of people who had lived in the building milling around that didn’t look like they had anywhere else to go. “Members of the congregation have opened their homes in similar circumstances before. We’ve never handled anything this big before, but…”

That was unusual. In fact, I’d never heard of anything like it before. There certainly wasn’t a routine procedure for what to do if a priest showed up and offered to take homeless people of the government’s hands. I shrugged and said, “Well, if you’re going to be taking people off the scene you’ll need to let the FBI know where they’re going, in case we need to talk to them again.”

“Yes, Captain Goodrich mentioned that to me. In fact, that’s why I was headed this way in the first place, he said your command vehicle was over here.”

“This way.” I stepped aside and gestured back to the van I’d just left as if I was a doorman at one of those ritzy hotels.

He nodded and said, “Thanks.”

I watched him as he made his way in to talk to Voorman and shook my head. There are strange people the world over, and sometimes I think the sole purpose of my job is to let me meet them all.

But the strange pastor and his water bottles were now Voorman’s problem and I left them in his capable hands. On the far side of our appropriated parking lot I spotted Mona and Mosburger near one of the ambulances on the scene. The latter had a bandaged taped to the palm of his hand and was scratching nervously at it as I walked up.

“What did he say?” Mona asked.

“Something about passing out water bottles,” I said.

“What did Voorman say?” Mona asked, without missing a beat.

I spread my hands. “About what I expected. I’m on vacation until further notice.”

She sighed. “I guess that’s no surprise, given what happened. But I really wish they’d cut you some more slack. Other talents use force more frequently than you and don’t face nearly the repercussions.”

“It’s actually reasonable for the Committee to be worried about this,” I said with a shrug. “Property damage makes them look bad, even if their connection to it isn’t allowed into the press. I just wish they could get over the fact that this kind of thing is part of dealing with talents. It’s gonna happen whenever things hit the fan.”

“Excuse me,” Mosburger said, raising a hand tentatively, “but should I be hearing this?”

“Depends,” I said, shooting Mona a glance. “Has Agent Templeton asked you about your… uh, work, yet?”

“If you mean the newspaper clippings, then no, not yet,” he said, looking back down at his bandage.

I made a go-ahead gesture to Mona, since this was technically her department. She nodded thanks and said, “I couldn’t help but notice that you were interested in a number of recent bank robberies.”

Mosburger nodded, but didn’t say anything else. So Mona pressed on. “Why those particular bank robberies? They were scattered across the country and happened weeks or even months apart. No similar characteristics. In fact, no real characteristics at all.”

“Not entirely true,” Mosburger said, still not looking up. “They all featured different minor electronic glitches that probably caused the people involved to go unnoticed.”

“Not much of a common thread,” Mona said casually. Then she leaned against the ambulance and said, “But you’ve already proven that you’re good at picking out common threads other people might not have noticed. So again, what was it? Why those robberies?”

He finally looked up at us and said, “This is gonna sound stupid.”

“So did the AM/PM thing, at first glance. You were right about that, so why not this time?”

He shook his head. “It’s for Trump Illuminati.”

There was a moment’s pause as Mona and I glanced at each other. I shook my head to say I’d never heard of it either. Finally, Mona looked back and asked, “It’s for what?”

“It’s an annual contest for conspiracy theory buffs,” Mosburger said. “The idea is to create the most far out conspiracy theory you can support using news items from the current year. You’re not allowed to go outside of a set 365-day period.”

“Wait, you mean all of that was a joke?” I really should have left the questioning to Mona, but I couldn’t help asking.

“Not a joke,” he replied quickly. “Or it was at first, but in trying to sound as convincing as possible, I think I might have accidentally convinced myself. Or something. I don’t know…” Mosburger leaned back against the door of the ambulance. “I was… well, not laid off, but I took an early retirement package this year.”

I looked him up and down and raised an eyebrow. Mona said what I was thinking. “Early retirement at your age?”

He laughed. “I may not look it, but I’ll be fifty in a year. I worked for Tri-State Power since I got my engineering degree.”

“So you know electronics.” Mona wasn’t asking.

“Electrical engineering with a specialization in control systems.” Shrugging, Mosburger uncapped his bottle of water, but didn’t drink. “I stick to my strengths, that’s why the bank robberies caught my eye. It seemed like it’d be easier for me to put together a good entry this year if I did that.”

As he took a swig of water Mona asked, “Is this the first time you’ve done this?”

“No,” he said, recapping the bottle. “It’ll be my eighth year this year. I made the top ten last year, but the judges decided my submission was ‘not persuasive enough’ to merit a prize.” He made air quotes for emphasis.

“So this year you were what?” Mona clapped her hands together, as if she was praying, then tapped her index fingers to her lips. I wondered why she was thinking so hard about this, but then, that’s why she’s the getman’s analyst and I’m not. “Looking for electrically related incidents and trying to tie them together?”

“Exactly,” Mosburger nodded. “I was looking for an angle on both the bank robberies and these fires. When I realized there was actually a pattern to the fires, even if they weren’t electrical fires, I kinda got more absorbed in that than anything else.”

“Hence the fire suppressants,” Mona said with a nod.

“Right again. Although…” Mosburger threw me a skittish look. “I kind of understand why you told me they wouldn’t really do me any good.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

He shrugged. “The windows blew out before we saw the fire.”

“What?” I could tell from Mona’s expression she followed that logic, but I didn’t.

“When a building burns the heat causes the glass in windows to expand rapidly and as a result they explode outwards.” Mossburger mimed a small explosion with one hand. “But the windows on the floor you were on exploded several minutes before we saw any sign of open flames. It sounded like there was a thunder clap, then they just exploded.”

“Maybe the arsonist set off some sort of incendiary?” Mona suggested.

“No.” Mosburger pointed at her radio. “I heard someone on that saying that he found a door melted shut. Meaning the arsonist had something capable of melting steel.”

“A wielding torch could do that,” I said.

“Maybe, and if the fuel tank exploded it could even cause the changes in air pressure that probably blew out the windows upstairs.” Mosburger stood up and paced away from the ambulance. “But I don’t think so.” He turned back around and leveled a look at me. “Because it was raining a few hours ago, even though the day was supposed to be sunny.”

“Go on,” Mona said, clearly enjoying herself now. Apparently she saw the logic where I didn’t.

“It got too cold, too fast,” he said, spinning around to face us. “I’d guess it was no more than sixty degrees outside by the time we got down that fire escape, thought it must have been ninety when we started. Where did all the heat go?”

Mosburger didn’t wait to be prompted this time, he jabbed a finger at me and said, “You sucked it into the building. You and the arsonist, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Then somebody screwed up and the air you’d superheated tried to be normal again, just like it does after it’s been superheated by a lightning bolt. The air pressure change blew the windows out and the temperature changes triggered the rain storm. That’s the only comprehensive explanation for what we saw today. You’ve got some kind of supernatural power, don’t you?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, really, I’ve never been called supernatural before and it seemed a little silly to me. Mosburger flinched slightly, which suggested that hadn’t really be the reaction he was expecting.

“Relax, Mr. Mosburger,” Mona said, shooting me a look that said I might want to calm down and stop scaring the civilians. I recognized it because I get it a lot. “You’re not in any trouble. And while you’re theory is pretty good, I’m afraid you won’t be able to share it with the Trump Illuminati folks. On the other hand, if you’re interested in it, there might be a job in it for you…”

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Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Dry Tinder

Posted by natechen on October 1, 2012

Helix

The first thing I noticed about the room was how cluttered it was.

Now, it wasn’t a mess like my desk is. There was clearly some kind of a system at work in all the piles of newspapers, computer printouts, maps, sticky notes and sundry other office supplies that seemed to cover every available surface in the apartment’s main room. But whatever was going on there, it wasn’t something that was evident to the casual observer. It looked like a giant scrapbook had exploded in the middle of the room and someone had just shoved the resulting mess into piles.

The guy who had let us in looked more like a computer repairman than a scrapbooker, though. He was fingering the warrant Bob Sanders had given him suspiciously, like he thought it might be a fake. “Nice place you got here,” I said as I headed towards the back of the flat. “Anyone else home?”

“No, I live here alone. Can I ask what this is all about?”

“Relax Mr. Mosburger,” Sanders said, waving me on to check out the rest of the apartment, “we’re just here to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?” Mosburger demanded. “I haven’t done anything illegal!”

“Not exactly illegal, no. But you’ve purchased a considerable amount of fire suppressant chemicals in the last few days and the city is in the middle of a two month serial arson case,” Sanders said, clearly trying to sound reasonable. “You can understand why we might be interested in that, can’t you? Is there something we should know?”

When it comes to questioning people Sanders is pretty smooth, much better than I am. It’s one of the reasons why we’re on the same team. I tuned them out and focused on searching the kitchen. Nothing of interest there, and it didn’t look like any of the scrapbooking materials had migrated out this far. I checked out the window on the fire escape too, just to be thorough. As I suspected, there wasn’t anything out there either.

Mona Templeton was emerging from the bedroom door in the other corner of the main room as I stepped in from the kitchen. She gave a slight shake of her head to let me know she hadn’t found anything very interesting either, then went back to stand by the door with Jack Howell. I turned up my Sanders filter and began looking over Mosburger’s scrapbooking efforts.

It was pretty interesting, really, especially to someone like me who’s technically a part of the FBI. It looked like he had been collecting newspaper clippings on similar crimes from the local newspapers, the paper from the state capitol, plus a few local news feeds and local gossip. It’d be impressive, if it wasn’t so disturbing. I wondered exactly what he did with it all.

The largest stack of recent clippings looked like they all dealt with the string of arsons Sanders had mentioned. I picked up the top clipping only to find that it was taped to the next and the next. It looked like pushpins had been stuck through the paper in some places. There was a corkboard near the desk and I took the stack over to it. There were plenty of pushpins to stick through the holes, in fact more than was really needed just to hold the selection of clippings to the board. I realized as I pushed the pins in that they didn’t just hold the clippings up, if I were to fill in all the holes there would be a pin by the name and address of each of the arson victims.

“Hey Jack,” I called. “Come look at this.”

Mosburger noticed what I was looking at and his expression clouded up. “What are you doing?”

“Searching your apartment, like the warrant says,” I replied. Jack came over and peeked at the clippings. “Do you see what I see, Jack?”

“Looks like someone’s been admiring our arsonist’s handiwork,” Jack said. “Maybe even keeping a record of his own achievements.”

Mosburger grit his teeth. “That makes no sense. If I was your serial arsonist, why would you have come here because of my purchasing fire suppressants?”

“You need the one to make the other safe.” I tapped the name of the first victim in one of the articles. “Alexis Moreau says she saw someone matching your description lurking near her place three nights ago.”

“If she saw me at night what makes you so sure it was me?” Mosburger asked.

“We’re really not,” Sanders said. “But you were tentatively identified by a cop who responded to the fire at Peter Morrison’s. You shouldn’t have stopped by the convenience store just a block away, but pretending to be a journalist and asking a beat cop for details was really pushing it too far. Most of the boys on the beat know the reporters they’ll be dealing with. Not that checking out your phony name was that hard.”

“Believe it or not, that’s enough for a warrant, given how bad people want to catch our man right now,” Jack said. “And here we are. So, would you care to take another go at explaining all this?”

“And don’t tell us you’re writing a book. You wouldn’t believe how many times we hear that,” I added, still sifting through the piles of paper.

Mosburger sighed. “Fine. I’m not a journalist and I’m not writing a book. But I’m not the arsonist either. I bought the fire extinguishers because I’m worried that I might be the next person he targeted.”

“Alright,” Sanders said, carefully considering his words. We hear a lot of strange things when dealing with serial crimes, and someone getting the idea in their head that they’re the next victim is just as common as some of the other loopy things we hear, but it’s particularly tricky. The person could always be right. “Why don’t we head back to the office and you can tell us exactly why you think that-”

“No, no, no, don’t patronize me, Agent Sanders,” Mosburger said, clearly annoyed. “I know it doesn’t sound very plausible but-”

This time I cut him off, handing Sanders another collection of clippings. I saw his eyebrows rising as he looked at the headlines. “All right Mr. Mosburger, there’s no need to get upset,” I said. “If you want you can tell us here. Why do you think you’ll be the next victim?”

He was clearly a bit surprised at my attitude, although he was also trying to divide his attention between talking to me and watching one of his other miniature scrapbooks pass through the hands of the three others on my team. His head swung between me and the rest like the weight on a clock. “I… uh, well, it’s kind of complicated.”

“I work for the FBI, buddy. Complicated is our everyday.”

Suddenly the others were forgotten and Mosburger’s attention was squarely on me. “Speaking of which, I can’t help but wonder why you guys are even working this case. Arson isn’t usually your beat, is it? Or do you think this is terrorism?”

“I hate to be cliché, but I’m asking the questions here,” I said. Then I gestured to the subject at hand, his news clippings of the arsons. “What do you see here that makes you think you’re the next victim?”

Mosburger sighed. “It starts with their names.”

“Their last names all start with the letter ‘M’. We noticed that,” I said. “But that’s an awfully vague connection, don’t you think?”

“Undoubtedly.” Mosburger collected some thumbtacks and began pushing them into the clippings I’d started on, using one color for each different kind of data. “But look at this: Paul Moreau was the first victim. He lived at 1457 Ferntress, and his house caught fire sometime around three in the afternoon two and a half weeks ago. Amelia Morgan lived in apartment 812 of her complex, the fire alarm there went off at 8:22, shortly after she left for work that morning. Similar patterns appear in the other three fires reported.”

I felt my brows creasing as I tried to work it out. Finally I shook my head and said, “OK, I give up. What patterns?”

Mosburger snorted and pointed to each piece of information again. “1457 Fentress. Paul Moreau’s initials are PM. That’s 2:57 PM in military time. If you give the fire about ten minutes to propagate after it was set, that would be about the time the arsonist touched it off. Amelia Morgan, apartment 812-”

“8:12 AM,” I finished, as realization dawned. “Peter Morrison of 1734 Rothman Lane, who’s house was seen burning at about a quarter to four in the afternoon. Pritchard Mosburger, in apartment 1322.”

As if by unspoken agreement, we both checked our watches. It was five minutes ‘til one. I grabbed the radio from my belt and called our backup squad downstairs. “Bergstrum, check for an open circuit. I repeat, check for an open circuit. Over.”

Mosburger did a double take, looking from me to the news clippings and back again. “Check for a what?”

There was a sudden flurry of activity as Jack, Mona and Sanders sprang into action, Jack and Sanders moving out into the hall together as Mona carefully closed the door behind them. “Wait,” Mosburger said, suddenly alarmed. “Where are they going?”

“To make sure our arsonist isn’t sneaking up on us,” Mona replied. “And if he’s coming up the stairs to torch your place it’d be a perfect time grab him.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Mosburger replied frantically, “that guy is not your usual kind of dangerous. I checked up on each of the arson sites. There’s no sign of what he’s been using to set the fires, right?”

“The police don’t know,” I confirmed. “I suppose you’ve figured that out, too?”

“I think I know,” he said, “but it’s hard to explain and they don’t really have time…”

My radio crackled again, cutting him off. “Bergstrum here. We got problems. Security footage shows a man none of the guards recognize coming in six minutes ago. Over.”

“Templeton,” Mona said, talking into her own radio. “What are the odds the building rent-a-cop just doesn’t recognize him? Over.”

“Kesselman,” a new voice answered. “Whatever the odds you were about to give, forget it. The stairwell door has been forced, someone went through it who doesn’t have a building key, same as in the last apartment arson. Over.”

“Snap decision, Mona.” I waved at the papers Mosburger had collected. “You’re the expert; do you think it’s worth saving?”

“No,” Mona replied instantly. “There’s nothing here he couldn’t put together later, and I’m more interested in talking more about–”

“Talk about it with him,” I said, grabbing Mosburger by the arm and hustling him towards the kitchen. “But do it later. For now, I think it’s time to abscond with the goods.”

“Wait,” Mosburger said. “Your guys in the hall–”

“Are doing their job,” I finished. “They know the risks and can do their jobs. You, on the other hand, are a complete novice who shows potential. If you’re still alive in eight hours maybe we’ll talk about getting you briefed on a few things. Maybe even offer you a job.”

There was a lot of clattering as we stumbled through the kitchen, Mosburger was clearly not good at multitasking. I would have preferred it if he had paid more attention to where he was going and less to telling me how to do my job, but that’s admittedly not the way the general public usually deals with law enforcement.

“Look, Agent… I didn’t get your name.”

“No,” I confirmed. “You did not. Can this wait?”

“Fine, be mysterious,” Mosburger said as I hustled him onto the fire escape. “But you don’t seem to realize that this arsonist isn’t setting chemical fires, he’s starting electrical fires.”

I stopped in the process of climbing out onto the fire escape myself, one foot on the windowsill. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Mosburger, I’d love to hear how you arrived at that conclusion. But later. We’re pretty sure we know what this guy is doing, and electricity isn’t involved. What makes you they’re electrical fires, anyway?”

For a moment, in spite of the fact that we were thirteen floors of the ground with me halfway through a window and Mona two steps behind us, waiting for her turn, Mosburger managed to look and sound more like a surprised college professor than a man with a strange scrapbooking hobby.

“Do you even know what I do for a living?” He asked.

“No,” I said gamely, “that’s usually Sanders’ department.” I finished climbing out onto the fire escape and looked down. For most people that would be a problem, but I’ve always been pretty good with heights. It didn’t look like there was anyone down in the courtyard below at the moment, so I helped Mona through the window then said as an aside to Mosburger, “I’m usually the muscle.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, distracted from his line of thought by the idea of a man of a standing no taller than five foot three and weighing maybe one thirty in wet clothes claiming to be muscle. Since my evil plan had succeeded and he had stopped talking I told Mona, “Take him down to the ground in one piece. We’ll try to–”

I’m not really sure what we were going to try and do but as it turns out it didn’t really matter. Gunshots from inside the apartment sent me scrabbling back through the window while Mona tried to convince a still-protesting Pritchard Mosburger down the fire escape.

Now when a guy has already essentially proven his ability to find patterns we’ve missed, you might think me stupid for ignoring what he’d been trying to tell me for the last several minutes. And you’d probably be right. But in this case, I had a unique perspective. I knew how our firebug was lighting things off; you might say that fire is something of a specialty of mine, just like patters were obviously one of Mosburger’s. You wouldn’t be a hundred percent accurate but it’s close enough for most purposes.

Sanders and Jack piled back into the main room, abandoning the hallway at the same time I was running in from the kitchen. Both men were sweating profusely and Jack’s gun was missing. A moment later a loud series of bangs started in the hallway.

“Cooked your gun?” I asked.

Jack nodded. “He’s three doors down the hall, thrown up a sheet hot enough that it causes blisters almost instantly.” He held up his red and swelling right hand to prove his point. “That guy has obviously been working his talent.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” I asked. Both Jack and Sanders shook their heads.

Sanders wiped the sweat out of his eyes on his shirt sleeve, then poked his head out the door. By the time he pulled it in again his dark skin was glistening again. “Hallway’s still clear. Call it, Helix, do you think you can stop him without burning the place down?”

“I dunno, Sanders. It’ll be a tossup at first.” I leaned my head against the wall and felt the heat on the other side. Lots of people say that heat rises, but I don’t suppose they’ve ever thought about where it rises from. After all, what goes up must come down, right? Modern science has a principle that explains why heat spreads out. The eggheads tell me it’s called entropy. But for every action there’s an opposite reaction, and I call that a heat sink.

Someone had built a real whopper of a sink out in the hall. The heat there was pooling deep and overflowing its banks in angry red waves, only to run back down into the sink time and again. I looked over at Sanders. “I haven’t seen a heat sink that good since my grandma was alive. I think I can eventually cut him out and take the heat, but I’ll have to get close and it’ll take time.”

“I don’t like that. It could go anywhere while you’re fighting over it.” Sanders glanced out the door again. “Can you use your fancy heat sense thingy to tell what part of the building he’s in?”

“No,” I said. “The air temperature in the building is too erratic for me to tell what’s him and what’s just a pocket of cool air caught in some kind of eddy.”

“Just heard from Kesselman,” Jack added, “he says the door to this floor has been melted shut.”

That wasn’t good. And not just because it meant Kesselman and the other half of our team couldn’t get to us. It meant our man could sink enough heat to melt a steel door, and that took serious talent.

“All right, boys, it’s time to start taking this seriously,” I said. “He’s a heat sink and a good one. Is the building evacuated?”

“No one’s sure,” Sanders answered, “but I’d say it’s as close as it’s gonna get. Bergstrum says the security guards think about half the people who live here are out.”

And it was the middle of the work day. The reasoning there was pretty obvious, odds were everyone else was at work. “You want I should roll him up?”

Sanders frowned. I couldn’t rush him but it’s also against the rules for me to do anything without his okay, so I settled for tapping my foot impatiently. After a second he asked, “How do you think he’s planning to get out of here once the fire’s going?”

“If it was me, I’d just crush the sink down into as small a space as I could and melt back through the door.”

Jack took his turn looking out the door. “Better decide something soon. The paint’s melting off the walls out there. The part of the wall he’s pushing that sink through is gonna catch soon.”

“Alright, try it. But careful, huh? We don’t want any more property damage on our hands.” Sanders glanced a Jack. “While he’s busy with that we’ll try and secure this guy. Keep in mind that just because he doesn’t want to risk a gun in all that heat doesn’t mean he couldn’t carry a knife.”

“I dunno,” Jack said. “Even if we bag him, we don’t have the right containment for him here. Are you sure you can hold him that long?”

“No,” I said, “but I’d rather have him under wraps, no matter how poorly, than loose this chance to nail him. Are we good to go?”

“Ready,” Jack answered.

I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, stretching the fingers of my hands out and pushing down on the heat around me. A heat sink of my own formed and the temperature in the hallway began to drop slightly as the loose heat flowed into it. As it did I yelled down the hallway, “This is Special Agent Double Helix of the FBI. Release your heat sink and step into the hallway with your hands up or we will remove you from the building by force.”

No one answered, so I grit my teeth and started down the hallway. Like Jack had told me, there was an open door a little ways down with a sheet of visibly rippling air in front of it.

Almost immediately the heat sink started to push down the hall towards me. As the heat got less concentrated it got less intense, just like butter scraping across bread. That was a comfort. He was stretching the sink out instead of just pushing it down the hallway at me. It meant that he didn’t know how to build a heat sink that didn’t touch his body any better than I did. It would also make my work easier if the heat was spread out.

I deepened the heat sink in my hands. As I pushed a channel formed between my heat sink and his and the temperature between the two began to equalize, spreading the heat farther and reducing the overall temperature even more. I was about to push even harder, deepening my heat sink even further, when he seemed to realize what I was up to and jerked back. The equilibrium between us broke and, although I pushed as hard as I could, trying to crush down the heat gushing up, it wasn’t enough. It slipped free and all around me, the world turned red…

Next Chapter

Fiction Index

Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

Tag Archives: Helix

Heat Wave: Stray Embers

Heat Wave: Thermal Vision

Heat Wave: Feed the Flames

Heat Wave: Stirring the Fire

Heat Wave: Burnt Fingers

Points Of View

Heat Wave: Kindling

Heat Wave: Dry Tinder

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