Water Fall: Cracks in the Dam

Posted by natechen on February 3, 2014

Seven Hours Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Helix

I threw my go bag down on my desk and slumped into my chair. It felt like it had been well over a year since I’d visited my desk, although it was really more like two and a half weeks, but by some miracle it had been kept clear of paperwork. Of course, I had a small book’s worth of handwritten notes in my bag that would have to be typed up and turned into something Cheryl could file. I wasn’t really looking forward to that, since it all basically boiled down to, “We talked to a lot of people who say they haven’t seen Circuit ever, or, if they’ll admit to that, not in the last six months to a year.”

That was probably to be expected, Circuit had to have been planning his most recent job for some time and for something of this size it’s no surprise that he avoided using any contacts we already knew about. It’s entirely possible that he’d even set up an entire network just to carry out this one job. That would be the kind of ridiculous groundwork I’ve come to expect from him.

Jack deposited his bag on the ground next to his desk, which was right beside mine, and gave me a critical look. “You should go home and get some sleep, Helix. You look like you’ve been awake for the past month.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” I gave him a critical look. I had no doubt I looked pretty rough, I sure felt like I’d run the whole way from Evansville back to the regional office. But never let it be said that Agent Jack Howell let a little road trip get him down, he still looked like he always did: like he was too big to quite get his suit to sit right. Today that was enough to make him look fresher and more alert than anyone else on the team, even the normally unflappable Teresa.

And he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to rub it in. “Because, unlike some of us, you look like you’ve been sleeping on park benches, not beds.”

“Some of the places we’ve stayed, that might be what those beds started life as.” I rubbed my eyes blearily, seriously tempted to do as Jack suggested. After two weeks on the road, no one was feeling their best. But I’d seen Teresa headed off towards her office a moment ago and I was willing to bet she wasn’t planning to leave any time soon. Bergstrum and Kesselman were at their desks just behind us and Mossburger had headed back towards Records. Now was not the time to be lying down on the job.

I glanced at the time and shrugged. “It’s barely after noon. I can put in a few hours before knocking off.”

“Suit yourself.”

Jack started unpacking his bag and I did the same. In about ten minutes I had all the stuff that was supposed to go back in my desk put away and my notes in a pile on one corner of the desk. With a sigh I picked them up and started sorting them into chronological order…

——–

Five Hours Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Massif

Lincoln claimed he was getting closer to finding Hangman, who he insisted was not as inactive as people had originally thought. Apparently he’d spent the last two weeks dragging Records personnel off of whatever assignments they’d been given and running them through archives and computer code from all over the Internet to help him find traces of Hangman’s activity. It had become almost an obsession for him.

I knew this partly because, when I’d gotten back into town two days ago I’d checked in with sifu to see if Lincoln had found anything. Sifu told me the family practically hadn’t seen him since the week before. Now, outside of wushu training, I hadn’t really gotten to know Lincoln much and I couldn’t tell if that kind of behavior was typical. But sifu didn’t seem to find it that surprising so I didn’t worry myself. If there was anything worth reporting I figured I would hear about it.

The other way I knew it was because, as soon as she heard I was back, Cheryl asked me to drop by so she could complain.

“Look, Agent Massif, I know that he’s working on an assignment that’s important to the Project but he can’t keep diverting our resources like this.” She leaned back in her chair, drumming her fingers on the empty desk. We’d moved into the vacant Records supervisor’s office since Cheryl wanted privacy for this conversation. There was only the one chair in the room at the moment so I was standing. Looming over Cheryl like that should have given me the upper hand in the conversation but it really didn’t feel that way. “In fact, in the last two days I don’t think he’s called for a single file from the archives. Put him out on the floor or turn him over to Analysis but get him out of our hair.”

“No.” I folded my arms over my chest and did my best to give her a hard look without anything more than a vague idea of where her eyes were. “Lincoln’s probably familiar with a lot of the big picture, our structure and a general idea of what some talents do, he’s still not cleared for the specifics of our open cases. He doesn’t even know about Circuit, just that Hangman is a person of interest in an open case. There’s too much classified information he could overhear in Analysis or on the floor. You Records people don’t discuss what you file; you just keep it in order. I think it’s the best place to keep him and Harriet agrees with me.”

“He’s in the way,” Cheryl said, sitting up and dropping her voice. “We don’t discuss active cases as much as you field agents or Analysis do but we still have to watch our step when he’s around.”

“Look, I know you’re busy but my team has been busy suppressing rumors related to the Emancipation Proclamation theft for the last four days, and before that we were all over the state of Indiana trying to find traces of Circuit.” I spread my hands helplessly. “We just don’t have the people to keep an eye on him right now and he’s part of an active investigation. If it’s becoming a problem, take it up with Voorman or apply for field work and take over that angle of the investigation yourself.”

I turned and headed towards the door because I really felt I didn’t have time to argue any more. Helix was supposed to be getting back sometime that afternoon and I wanted to see if he had anything new we could follow up on. Lying to the media and the victims of crime is a part of our job but it’s never sat well with me. My priest tells me I’m forgiven when I go to confession but it doesn’t do much for the guilt. And I have to wonder what the lies do to the people we tell them to. At the very least, in the case of Agent Herrera, I heard they created long term issues. As I reached for the doorknob I found myself almost envying Cheryl her dilemma-free Records work.

Then she said, “I transferred here in the oversight program, you know. Made it halfway through the training course before I got sidelined. Some sort of autoimmune problem led to a dethatched retina. There was a surgery and a long recovery time.” I heard the chair she sat in push back from the desk, caught a glimpse of movement as she stood and approached me, resolving into a solid shape as she got closer. What I could make out of her face suggested she was mad. Really mad. “I’m legally blind without corrective eyewear, get something like 20/80 vision with it. And I have permanent gaps in my vision. It’s enough to keep me out of the field. But don’t ever think I’m just here to babysit your files and extraneous personnel. I could do deskwork for any hidebound bureaucracy on the planet, I stay here because I know how important Project Sumter is. Let me do my job and I’ll let you do yours.”

The bitterness in her tone was strong enough I caught myself cringing, just a bit, and straightened back up. “I’ll talk to Lincoln.”

“Good.” Cheryl pushed past me and out of the office, leaving me feeling a little disoriented and very ashamed.

——–

One Hour, Fifteen Minutes Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

I tugged the scarf around my neck, accepted my long jacket from Simeon and slung it over one arm. The small garage on the city outskirts we were staging from wasn’t particularly cold, compared to outside, and I was already feeling a bit warm. The heavy pillar containing the Emancipation Proclamation had just been loaded onto the main van and strapped down. I touched my fingers onto the electrical contacts in the palms of my hands and ran a quick final check on the wiring in my gear. It wasn’t too late to cancel if things weren’t just right but it turned out I didn’t need to worry. Everything checked out.

Time to call it. “Heavy?”

“Everything looks good, boss,” he said, poking his head out of the back of the van and patting the Proclamation affectionately. “You want to make ’em let your people go? I think maybe they’ll hear you with this.”

“Grappler?”

She took off her signature long vest, folded it and handed it to Simeon, who slung it under one arm without comment. Then she slung her SMG and said, “I’m ready, so is crowd control.”

I nodded at her weapon. “Make sure the CC teams know we’re not actually planning to hurt anyone unless we absolutely have to.”

“Hurting regular people means they’re less likely to help us later.” She shrugged. “I get it. But you know how it is.”

Another nod, because I did know, and it was back to addressing the room at large. “Wallace?”

A van’s hood closed with a bang and Wallace leaned on top of it, wiping greasy hands. “Everything’s hooked up and running to Davis’ specs. I dunno if it’s gonna work as advertised but that’s not my department.”

“No it’s not. You and Simeon beat feet to Chainfall and see if there’s anything you can do there. Hangman?”

“No one’s ever done anything exactly like this before,” she said, tapping the bulkier than normal laptop she had an equally oversized shoulder bag. “But I should be able to kill satalite coverage of the city for fifteen minutes. We’ve got no more than that.”

“That’s still five more than we were expecting.” I rubbed my hands together and looked over the crowd of people we’d pulled together for this, the bang that signaled the opening of Operation Chainfall, the prelude to Thunderclap and the beginning of the end. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s showtime.”

——–

Helix

“Hey.”

I snapped awake and nearly slid out of my chair. Lying face down on your desk is not a comfortable way to sleep so I’d apparently decided to drift off leaning back in my chair instead. When Teresa woke me I’d slid so low I would have jerked myself straight onto the floor if I hadn’t grabbed onto the edge of my desk first. I took a moment to get myself in a better sitting position, ignoring Jack’s snickering and the papers I’d dropped on the floor, and said, “Something up?”

She smiled slightly and tossed another stack of papers onto my desk. “Latest write-ups on the efforts to keep the Proclamation theft quiet.”

“By which you mean the use of talents in that robbery quiet,” I said, picking up the stack and looking it over blearily. “The robbery itself was in the news for almost a week, I think they know about it in sub-Saharan Africa already.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “So far none of the major news agencies have mentioned women walking on walls or men jumping off balconies without getting hurt.”

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ in there.”

Teresa smiled. “In this case the key word is ‘major’. Several local news sources have hinted at strange goings on, to say nothing about the tabloids.”

“Did we feed any of the tabloids the real story to help discredit it?”

“Better than that.” I glanced over the top of the papers in curiosity. “We broke the details up into two stories and sold them to different rags. Now if the real story comes out it will look like someone just took them and ran them together to try and make things more sensational.”

I tossed the report on my desk in disgust. “This is still threatening to get away from us. Sooner or later someone’s going to be able to put out real, solid proof and we’re going to wind up looking like fools. We’ll wish we’d thought about our own credibility then.”

She sighed, picked up the report and put it on top of my go bag. “For now, just make sure your familiar with the story so you can stick with it in the field.”

“I guess I’ll have to.” I picked up the papers again and opened my bag, looking for a free spot to put them.

I’d just decided I could squeeze them under the laundry and next to my shaving kit when I heard Voorman yelling. That’s about as common as snow in June around these parts. My head snapped up and I saw him come rushing into the room, Samson trailing behind him like a thundercloud, yelling, “Clear the floor. We are now at Condition One, clear the floor!”

Clear the floor is one of those phrases that has it’s own unique meaning in Project Sumter. In fact, we drill on clearing the floor once a month, at least when we’re actually in the office. I was turning my chair upside down and shoving it on top of my desk before Voorman was finished talking. Desks started sliding towards the edges of the room within fifteen seconds. Mine was near the center of the room and I never got a chance to move it myself, Voorman said something to Teresa, who had stopped on her way back to her office to see what was going on, and she came and pulled me aside.

The first thing I said was, “What happened?”

“I’m not sure but Voorman wants you on it.”

There’s a giant map of the US built into the floor of the room, which is why the euphamism for that palce is “the floor” and not something else, but there’s not enough room in most buildings for a map of that scale to be left clear all the time so it doubles as the field team’s staging room. Voorman was pacing along one wall, waiting for the carpet over the map to be rolled back, when we got through the chaos and over to where he was.

“Open Circuit just hit Michigan Avenue,” he said without preamble. “A couple of city blocks were knocked out by EMP, he gave a speech while flying-”

“Flying?!” Teresa and I demanded in unison.

“Flying! Don’t ask me how.” Voorman shook his head in exasperation. “We heard through the police switchboard once they got a clear picture of what happened.”

“When was this?” Teresa asked.

“Minutes ago, less than ten, I believe. They were very excited about it.” Voorman gave no sign of amusement at that colossal understatement. “There were hundreds of people there.”

I thought about what I’d just been reading. “How are we planning to keep this quiet?”

“I don’t think we can. The fallout from this could break the Project. Only chance we have of weathering this is to grab Circuit before he can make things worse.” Voorman gave me a surprisingly steady look for a man who was usually a big ball of nervous energy.. “I think we all know you’re the best person for that job. Find Massif, take Samson and get it done.”

In spite of the insanity of the situation I felt a satisfied smile creep across my face. “It would be a genuine pleasure.”

Fiction Index

The Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

World Building: A Project Sumter Timeline

Posted by natechen on January 31, 2014

I thought I’d throw together another little world building post for you, this time focusing on Project Sumter and it’s history. If you’ve ready any of the fiction here you’ve probably gathered that Project Sumter is a government organization dedicated to enforcing the law among people with unique talents (read: superpowers) and keeping their existence secret. It’s also the largest legitimate employer of talents in the United States.

You probably also know that many of the rules that govern the Project are extrapolated from the rules governing a man known as Corporal Sumter, who was given his strange title and most of his assignments by no less than President Abraham Lincoln.

Believe it or not, Project Sumter was originally about Corporal Sumter, not Double Helix.

So there’s actually a very detailed timeline of what happened between Lincoln’s election in the mid-1800s and the Enchanter’s first arson in the early 21st century. I still hope to use a lot of that material, but here’s a semi-redacted version of that timeline (and honestly, what else would you expect from Project Sumter?)

April 12 – 13, 1861 – Fort Sumter is besieged and surrenders to Confederate forces.

April 15, 1861 – President Lincoln declares a state of insurrection.

June 22, 1861 – A cadet at West Point lifts a cannon that had fallen on another student in a training accident. He not only lifts it off the other cadet but slings it over one shoulder and moves it across a courtyard, a feat of strength that cannot be explained by simple adrenaline. This cadet gains something of a reputation.

July 8, 1861 – Word of the Herculean cadet makes it’s way back to President Lincoln, who sends for the man, later be known as Corporal Sumter.

July 10, 1861 – After meeting the cadet in person, the President decides to terminate his commission in the Army. He fears that allowing a superman to lead in a war that is at least partly about the respective status of races will send the wrong message. Corporal Sumter reluctantly agrees and all records of his enrollment at West Point are destroyed.

January 10, 1862 – A Confederate officer at the Battle of Mill Creek is observed being shot several times without apparent injury. When a cannonball strikes him and falls off like a dead fly Union soldiers become unusually concerned.

January 12-20, 1862 – Rumors of an invincible Confederate officer begin to circulated through the Union’s Western Theater of Operations.

February 3, 1862 – A letter reaches Corporal Sumter, sent by a friend from West Point, telling him of the strange officer on the other side of the lines. The Corporal in turn writes to President Lincoln, detailing the situation and asking if he can still serve the Union in some way. The President will later claim the letter was never received. The truth of this claim remains in dispute.

March 3, 1862 – With no answer from Washington, Corporal Sumter departs for the West on his own.

-Further details on the period between 1862 and 1865 are classified Top Secret. Further detail only available to those cleared for codewords CORPORAL SUMTER, SHENANDOAH, FOG OF WAR, BUSHWACKER and SHERMAN’S BANE, talent indexing numbers 0001 – 0005.-

May 18, 1865 – President Johnson thanks Corporal Sumter for his service and signs his discharge papers, ending his official service in the Union Army.

1865-1940 – The family of Corporal Sumter, Shenandoah and Sherman’s Bane remain under quiet surveillance by those members of the U.S. Government who are entitled to know what they are capable of.

Summer, 1940 – British intelligence reports intercepting communications regarding people with strange abilities, particularly power over ‘frost’. These reports are corroborated by soldiers returning from Dunkirk.

August 2, 1941 – The newly formed Office of Strategic Services, combining previously received reports from British Intelligence with documents scattered through Army records, concludes that precedents already exist for how the Army should deal with potential talented soldiers should the US be drawn into the new World War.

August 18, 1941 – The OSS sets out a proposal, later approved by the War Department, that creates the basic administrative apparatus of Project Sumter and recommends a total of six individuals who are believed to have talent that the Project could attempt to recruit.

October 2, 1941 – Daniel Wells, grandson of Shenandoah, is located by Project Sumter and reveals that his grandfather’s talent has not been passed down, although all the research Shenandoah did on his abilities has. The Project offers Wells a supervisory position and he accepts.

October 5, 1941 – Agent Wells approaches the granddaughter of Sherman’s Bane and offers her a position with the Project. She is given the codename Clear Skies and later becomes a member of the Women’s Army Corps.

October 20, 1941 – Corporal Sumter’s great grandson is located but declines to participate. No other members of the family demonstrate the original’s incredible abilities and Project agents return to Washington empty handed.

November 12, 1941 – Project Sumter’s headquarters is officially established in Charleston, South Carolina.

December 7, 1941 – The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

December 8, 1941 – Sumter’s great grandson arrives in Washington D.C. with a changed heart, seeking admission to Project Sumter. Within eight hours he is in Charleston, being sworn into Project Sumter.

December 23, 1941 – U.S. forces on Wake Island surrender to the Japanese after successfully resisting invasion for a little over two weeks. A long debate at Sumter HQ comes to an end and Corporal Sumter’s successor is named for a recently lost stronghold, just like his ancestor. Sergeant Wake’s file is officially opened in the Project records.

-Further details on the period between 1941 and 1946 are classified Top Secret. Further detail only available to those cleared for codewords CLEAR SKIES, CHIEF STILLWATER, SERGEANT WAKE, SAINT ELMO, COLD SPIKE and JACK FROST, talent indexing numbers 0006 – 0009, 0036 and 0044.-

September 22, 1947 – With the War Department recently dissolved Project Sumter’s administrative fate is left up in the air. After much debate, with the newly minted CIA pushing hard to be given control, the Project is instead made an independent body. No longer a branch of the military, it begins the long process of working out new long term goals and identity.

September 25, 1947 – A fundamental shift in Project structure occurs when the three seniormost talents, Clear Skies, Chief Stillwater and Sergeant Wake, decide to retire now that there is no pressing military need for their services.

-You actually need clearance to know what clearances you need to read about the Cold War. Seriously.-

April 18, 2004 – Double Helix, talent indexing number 3729, is taken on a field stress test by Senior Special Agent Darryl Templeton and Special Agent Eagle Ear. He discovers a pair of cold spikes who, it is later concluded, were part of a breeding program trying to foster talented bloodlines. It marks the beginning of a very troubled career with Project Sumter.

August, 2004 – It is believed that the talented serial killer Lethal Injection committed his first murder in this general timeframe.

February 12, 2005 – Lethal Injection’s killing spree begins to make news. Project Sumter determines these grisly murders are probably caused by a talented person and goes to Condition One.

March 8, 2005 – Teresa Ortiz’s father is killed by Lethal Injection. She will later be adopted by Javier Herrera, with the financial and legal support of the Oldfather Foundation.

May 17, 2005 – A hacker shuts down the Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, Arizona and prevents Lethal Injection from escaping Project agents. Lethal Injection is killed while resisting arrest. Analysts from Project Sumter determine that the hacker was a talented individual who was actually in the airport terminal, directly manipulating electrical circuits. A file is opened and the talented hacker is codenamed Open Circuit. The Project correctly surmises this is Circuit’s first crime. It will not be his last.

So will I ever go back and tell you what happened in those missing years? Surely there were plenty of freaky goings on during the Second World War and the Cold War, along with the Civil War, yeah?

Oh yeah.

But those are stories for another time. For now, I hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about the background of the story we’re telling right now. Tune in Monday for the next instalment of Water Fall, until then may you have as much fun with your world building as I do.

Water Fall: High Resistance

Posted by natechen on January 13, 2014

Author’s Note: Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been pointed out to me that last week’s post was a duplicate of my last post before Christmas break. I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s not what should have been put up last week. Rather than repost I’ve just edited last week’s post with the correct chapter. You may want to read it before reading this. I apologize for the mistake. Now on with this week’s chapter!

Nate Chen

——–

Three Weeks Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

“Well?”

Hangman shrugged and shook her head. “There’s nothing for sure here, you understand. Not everything the Project does has to come through the Senator’s office.” She waved at a collection of e-mails and drafts of memos she’d pulled up. “But from the looks of things nothing’s happened.”

I drummed my fingers absently on the back of her chair until she gently put her hand over them to make me stop. “Replacing a regional director-”

“The technical term is Senior Special Liaison.”

“-or whatever they call them has to be something that requires the Senate Committee’s approval.” I snorted. “And I’ve seen Mr. Wells in action before. There must be half a dozen times he could have made a major bust if he’d just asked Helix what he should expect. He’s not going to give up his grudge just because the greater good is at stake. They’re not going for the bait.” I took her hand and raised her out of the chair.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” she said, smoothing down the front of her skirt. “And regardless of whether Helix is down south or at the regional office he’s not going to be in position to respond to our next move.”

“Yes. Our next move.” At some point they’d stopped being my moves. Not for the first time in the last few days I thought back to my conversation with Simeon. Time to take some distance again. “How is the shooting practice coming along?”

She tucked her hands behind her back and did her best to look innocent. “Heavy says I’m qualified to teach a course on handling and maintaining sidearms and I should be competent with submachine guns by the time we leave for Indiana.”

“Really?” I stared at her blankly. “I know that he’s a good teacher but not even I passed muster that fast.”

“You didn’t grow up in Wisconsin as the daughter of an important politician, Circuit.” She shrugged. “I’ve had self defense training since I was ten and, when I turned eighteen, I went through a basic shooting course, too. My father thought it would be good for my self-confidence, even if I never had to use any of it.”

“Have you?”

“Only the part about being aware of your surroundings.” She gave me a knowing smile. “Of course, I’ve always been good at that. As for the gun training, I never bothered to get a license in Wisconsin because I was going to school in California and who knew where after I graduated.”

“Sensible.” I led her out of the server room and into the antechamber outside my office. “Of course, I don’t suppose self defense training includes any lessons on stealth or insertion techniques?”

She shook her head. “Being highly visible is a part of self defense. Assuming, of course, you’re a law abiding citizen.”

“It’s amazing how many different aspects of life take that for granted.” We were back on the landing outside my office now, the locks clicking closed as I pulled the door closed. “How is the Sorting Algorithm of Evil coming?”

“Currently we can run comprehensive background checks on anyone from the lower 48 states and Alaska. Gaining access to Hawaii’s databases comes next, followed by the larger Canadian provinces.” She held up a hand to forestall questions as she thumbed her phone and consulted something there. “We also have access to some other, less official sources of information integrated already – all the contacts you’ve built in the south, north Africa and Europe, plus a few from Hangman’s heyday. I’m working on gaining access to some classified government stuff and maybe a few unsavory sources that won’t know they’re working for us.”

Once she gave me an expectant look I went ahead with my question. “What if we get people from Mexico?”

“Normal citizens with have to clear customs and get this far north, which means we have some time before they get to us and need vetting. If they don’t come through legal channels or they’re not normal citizens then we already have the contacts to vet them via your southern crime rings.” She pocketed her phone and gave me another knowing look. “Or whatever it is you call them.”

“Extralegal resources.” I considered what she’d told me. “Check with Heavy or Grappler about scheduling some basic breaking and entering training. We may need you ready to pick some locks or otherwise help with petty larceny in the near future, provided you intend to continue working in the field.”

She laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, Circuit. Doing data analysis here for you is way more interesting than any college course I ever took, but I wouldn’t miss being in the front seat of history for anything.”

She swept off across the walkway and down the stairs to the ground floor where she would no doubt begin bugging Heavy until he stopped whatever he was doing and showed her some of his very, very wide arsenal of criminal techniques. I felt bad about sending Hangman after him but I thought it best to keep some space between us for a while. It was a delicate time for – well, everything, really.

There was plenty to do for my part, too. New maglev relays to check out, the EMP countermeasures to install and a personal visit to the Chainfall site to schedule. Our last major job before beginning Operation Chainfall was in two days and there were a million details. But before I could loose myself in them first I had to do something I hated. Manage my people.

There was an odd patch of shadow at the top of the wall. I turned to it but purposefully didn’t look up. “You can come down now, Grappler.”

There was a soft whisper of fabric and then she dropped to the ground from about shoulder height, landing with a barely audible thud, the beads in her dreadlocks rattling softly as they swished through the air. She was wearing her typical non-burglary clothes, a variation on pants, blouse and a knee length vest ensemble. This vest was a pale blue, with silvery plant life embroidered in it and she was wearing a matching bracelet.

Her grim expression was a stark contrast.

“That girl’s toying with you, Circuit,” she said with a huff. “You should just tell her to be on her way. Or better yet…” Grappler slid closer and laid an arm on my shoulder, leaning until she was almost brushing against my chest. “Show her you’re already taken.”

Simeon had mentioned that someone suggested the possibility Hangman was sweet on me to him, now I knew who to thank for that. I gently, but deliberately, took her arm and moved it off my shoulder, forcing her to straighten up to maintain her balance. “Grappler, I’m not in the habit of lying to people. When we transform from smalltime crime to serious business we’re going to need her information gathering skills more than ever, she can’t be nearly as effective as she is at that if she’s ‘on her way.’ And I’m not taken.”

Grappler tilted her head to one side and gave me a dazzling smile, the kind she used when she got caught casing a job and needed to talk her way out from security or suspicious property owners. “Not even a little bit taken?”

“If I wasn’t the time you showed up while I was in the bath I’m certainly not going to change my mind just because you flash a smile at me.” I shook my head. “Grappler, I don’t know what your problem with Hangman is.” I was guessing it was jealousy but I didn’t know that for sure. “But you’re not going to change my mind. She stays. She keeps doing what she has been. And that is all she’ll be doing.”

Grappler took a step back and gave me a critical look, as if trying to decide if I was the real Open Circuit. “Please don’t tell me you trust her.”

“Grappler…” I heaved a sigh and glanced around once, just to make sure we were still alone on the walkway. When I was sure we were I went on. “Just because you and your late husband lied to each other for four years doesn’t mean everyone is automatically untrustworthy.”

“I know that, you idiot.” To my surprise she wasn’t angry, but almost laughing. “I trust you, don’t I? And Heavy. Maybe even Simeon, when I understand what he’s saying. Your problem is, you trust too much.”

“Me?” I did a mental inventory of all the paranoid security measures I’d taken in the last twenty-four hours. It was a lengthy list. “Sorry, I’m not sure I follow that one.”

“Well, let’s see. You got four people you really count on right now.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “One is a guy who thinks he’s a butler out of an Agatha Christie movie.”

“Simeon prefers the term ‘office manager.'”

Finger numbers two and three. “Two of us were professional thieves who also managed to somehow miss the serial killer right under our noses.” Finger four. “And one is the daughter of a U.S. Senator who probably learned to lie before she learned what the truth was.”

“Davis will be disappointed to hear he wasn’t on that list.”

“Except you’re not going to tell him, because not even you’re dumb enough to trust that guy.” Grappler planted her hands on her hips. “Sometimes I’m amazed one of us hasn’t just clubbed you with a candlestick and had done with it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why would Simeon do that?”

“He’s a butler.”

“Office manager; and that’s an unfair stereotype.”

She gave me a frank look, her dark eyes boring into mine. “You want to go big time, you need to trust less, Circuit. Everybody’s going to be after you when these gigs are done. I don’t care about your crusade, but at least you pay the bills. So do me a favor and be a little more careful, okay?”

“I never thought I’d hear that advice from you.” I smiled and put one hand over my heart. “But I swear I will take no more risks than are absolutely necessary. Does that satisfy?”

“You swear with your right hand over your heart, Circuit.”

I glanced at my hands in mock surprise. “Is that a fact?”

Grappler watched me in poorly concealed amazement. “There’s something wrong with you lately. You were never like this before. Maybe it’s too late for you already.” She sighed and turned towards the stairs. “Just keep your head, okay, Circuit? All I’m asking.”

“I’ll try.” I watched her until her head disappeared down the stairs, then added, too softly for her to have heard, “But you’re right. It’s already too late for that. Far, far too late.”

——–

Helix

“Please tell me you have something in here.” I poke cautiously at the enormous pile of paper on Teresa’s desk, not entirely sure there wasn’t something alive in there. It certainly seemed to have a mind of it’s own, with files and stacks of paper occasionally rustling or sliding around without apparent cause.

She waved a hand vaguely at the assorted mystery papers on her desk. “I have a lot of somethings. Pretty much anything you could want. Care to be more specific?”

“Something on Circuit would be ideal…” The labels on the folders mostly faced one way and I browsed over them, just for kicks. Most of them covered parts of the case I was already familiar with, a few of them were flagged from the Southern office and it was probably best for my sanity to ignore them, since Wells wouldn’t me do anything about them anyway. One near the bottom caught my eye and I started carefully fishing it out.

“Your friend has been keeping a low profile for the past week. Aside from the vandalism in Charleston and Atlanta the only peep from him has been that stunt in Phoenix.” Teresa shrugged and closed down whatever she had been doing on her computer so as to give me her full attention. “Of course, Analysis isn’t sure that was Circuit but…”

“But it’s another case of a weird symbol turning up in a place connected with me in a high profile manner. This time as a hacking attack, in the same place Circuit made his first big cyber attack. And Hangman, or someone like him, helped break the story. That can’t all be coincidence” I started browsing through the file, which was a summary of the various leads Pastor Rodriguez – excuse me, Agent Samson – had been following up while trying to locate Senator Dawson’s daughter. There were a lot of false leads and he’d found couple of women with similar appearances, but no sign of Elizabeth Dawson herself. “Are you still working this case?”

“Just keeping tabs on it.” Teresa sighed and leaned back in her chair, staring into the corner of the cramped office. She hadn’t had enough time, either here or in the old building, to accumulate the mountains of assorted crap that supervisors always seem to wind up with. But in it’s own way that just made the office seem more bleak. “After the talk you and Jack had with the Senator it’s pretty clear there’s not much more we can do, for the moment.”

I closed the file and tossed it down. “Sorry about that. We probably should have discussed that ahead of time.”

She waved me off. “There wasn’t time, and you’re points were valid. It would have been different if we knew Brahms was coming ahead of time.”

“If it’s not too much to ask, how do you know the Senator and his family?” I closed the file, since there didn’t seem to be anything important there that I didn’t already know. “Seems a bit odd for a girl from the West Coast to know the family of a Senator from Wisconsin.”

“I met Elizabeth when we were in school. She was on the school paper and interviewed me as part of a series on adopted kids at Berkley.” Teresa smiled and her stare went off into the past. “After that she didn’t leave me alone. I think she knew a little bit about what her dad’s role on our Oversight Committee was about, and realized I’d brushed up against something similar. We talked about it a lot. She brought her dad to meet me when he made a campus visit, and the rest is history.”

“So you’re here to catch the bad guys thanks to a chance meeting in college?”

“Except I can’t quite seem to get the catching bad guys part right.” Teresa picked up the folder and glared at it, like she could somehow make it show her where her friend was through sheer willpower.

I sat down across from her and gently took the folder out of her hands. “Welcome to the real Sumter experience, Teresa. We’re not supermen. We’re just people with weird abilities.” I set the file aside again and said, “Let it bother you. You wouldn’t be human, otherwise. But remember that it’s not your fault. Ultimately, the problem here isn’t that you can’t fix this – it’s that Circuit broke things in the first place.”

Teresa laughed and it was surprisingly giggly. I wondered if she was more tired than she looked. “You make a good point.” Her smile faded almost as quickly as it came. “How did you meet the Templetons?”

“Darryl was my field stress test oversight agent. We worked off and on over the next two years when I was out west; then he agreed to go migratory when I needed a new oversight agent. That’s when he met Mona, she was in the Analysis office here.” I sat down in one of the chairs by the desk and leaned back. “They were a weird couple but it worked out.”

She leaned back in her chair, giving me an evaluating look. “And now they’re both gone. Are you going to be okay?”

“Maybe one day. You can never tell for sure.” I sighed and picked up a huge stack of fliers and promotions for historical sites and events around the nation, leafing through them for a distraction. Everyone had gotten them when Circuit’s pals had hit the historic Fort Sumter in their vandalism campaign. With the Phoenix airport on the hit list, too, historic sites seemed a lot less relevant all of a sudden. “I guess I just wish Darryl hadn’t left on some sort of a vendetta. I would get leaving because the job reminds him of Mona. But he just wanted to hunt Circuit. It’s like something out of a bad movie…”

I trailed off as came to a brochure from the Lincoln Financial Foundation, a finance group that had named itself after the president and started collecting related memorabilia. Since it seemed like I was done Teresa said, “You know, you could take a little of your own advice. Darryl is his own person, and while he’s not in the best place right now he is qualified to make his own-”

“I don’t believe it.” I shoved the rest of the pamphlets and junk onto the desk, jumping out of my chair with the Lincoln Financial brochure clutched in one hand.

Teresa got to her feet a little more slowly, a confused look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“We need to go,” I said, holding up the colorful, glossy piece of paper for her inspection. “I know where Circuit’s going to be.”

“What?” She snatched the flier out of my hands and glanced it over. “Indianapolis?”

I flipped the paper over and pointed to the right panel. “Right state, wrong place. He’s going to Allen County. He thinks he’s Nicholas Cage.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Crumbling Foundations

Posted by natechen on January 6, 2014

Three Weeks, Five Days Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Massif

“You ever done this before?”

Lincoln shook his head, somehow turning the gesture into a sweeping glance around the floor, the big, open section of the office where most of us grunts reside. “Fifth uncle does most of the work with you Project folks,” he said, doing his best to see as much of the office while keeping the conversation going and not letting me get too far ahead. By fifth uncle I knew he meant my sifu. Chinese families have this weird tendency to refer to relatives by number, even in English, something to do with correct forms of address. “I’ve never actually spoken to anyone from your organization besides you. And uncle doesn’t talk much about it. Assume total ignorance.”

“In that case there’s a lot of nondisclosure agreements and such that you’re going to need to sign.” I skirted along the outer edges of the floor, past the coffee station and towards the back hall that led to Records. “Fortunately, the people in charge of handling NDAs are also in charge of the files you’re going to need to look at, so we won’t need to run all over the building.”

“I have to admit,” Lincoln said, “this place wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I mean, you don’t even have a giant map of the country. Or a giant globe, or whatever.”

“We’re a regional office,” I said with a shrug. “Of course we have a giant U.S. map – we just put it away when we don’t need it.”

“Oh.”

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that from someone new to the Project I’d have a decent start on a retirement fund. Once we got through the floor Records was only a short hallway away. We had to pass the office of the Records chief but that position was empty at the moment, something to do with seniority requirements. Sooner or later Cheryl O’Hara would be moving in, but it hadn’t happened yet. So Lincoln would get the riot act from Cheryl in the Records department proper. I let us through the door and glanced around.

Unlike in the old building, where the shift supervisors had occupied a sort of reception desk that let them keep an eye on everyone coming and going into the record stacks, here there was just a set of eight desks in front of the aisles of file cabinets that stored the bulk of the information that Records was in charge of. At any given time you could expect half a dozen people to be at those desks and just as many to be circulating through the files proper. Not all of those people were actual members of the Records department, case in point, when we got there I immediately heard Cheryl quietly arguing with someone I tentatively identified as the analyst I’d met from Helix’s team a few days ago.

Normally when Cheryl’s arguing with someone it’s best to just talk to another Records staffer and it looked like we had at least three others to choose from. Problem was, we needed a Records Chief or suitable proxy to sign off on Lincoln’s presence in the department. Now under normal circumstances the Analysis chief could serve as that proxy. But since Darryl Templeton quit and hadn’t been replaced either, Cheryl was the closest thing we had.

So I took a deep breath and braced myself. As an afterthought I warned Lincoln, “This could be a little rough.”

“You’ve never seen fourth aunt when she finds out she’s out of szechuan sauce.”

I tried not to laugh, not so much because it was funny but because I have an aunt who’s the same way, except with lutefisk. And she’s Polish, not Chinese.

“Hi Cheryl, hi Mossman.” I made a point of calling to them from a decent distance away, before I could even see them as more than dull gleams of motion as the gestured to one another, so they had enough time to compose themselves before we got to Cheryl’s desk. “I was hoping-”

“Is this important?” Cheryl cut me off. As the new holder of the “person who is tardiest with paperwork” award, ending Helix’s two year reign, I was not one of Cheryl’s favorite people. The fact that I have a legitimate, untreatable condition that makes paperwork nearly impossible for me to do quickly or neatly isn’t an excuse in her mind. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

“I can see that, and if I could get someone else’s help…” I shrugged. While some people might be worried about offending Cheryl by implying they’d rather not work with her, anyone who’d known her for any length of time accepted that Cheryl wasn’t bothered by things normal people would be bothered by. I turned the shrug into a hand wave in Lincoln’s direction. “This is Lincoln He, one of our contacts in the greater community. We’ve brought him in because one of the people he’s worked with in the past keeps turning up during this investigation. But-”

Lincoln had been peering over my shoulder the whole time I’d been talking. Apparently Cheryl’s brusque demeanor didn’t intimidate him much, and since I’d met some of his aunts and his mother in the past I can’t say I was surprised. In terms of brusqueness they were at least Cheryl’s equals. That didn’t explain why he suddenly leaned forward and reached for Cheryl’s computer monitor.

Now being in the Records department means being a part of Project Sumter, and you get a fair amount of training to go along with that. How to recognize some of the more common talents, legal ins and outs of classified information and some very basic hand to hand combat training. To go with all that, a focus on preserving the secrecy of the records they’re in charge of that borders on a psychological condition – you really shouldn’t touch their computers or files with out written permission in triplicate. When Cheryl grabbed for Lincoln’s hand she wasn’t just trying to bat it away or stop him from touching her computer, she was aiming to put him in a fairly painful wrist lock and pin his arm against her desk.

And if Lincoln hadn’t studied wushu since he was eight it might have worked. Cheryl was surprisingly fast for someone who had spent most of her time at the Project behind a desk but she wasn’t anywhere near on par with sifu. Lincoln caught the movement and spun his arm in a snaking motion that knocked her hands aside just enough to let him recover his arm without ever being in any danger.

Before things could get any worse I moved between the two of them and said, “Whoa! Let’s all take a breather. Agent O’Hara, unless there’s more to you than has ever been officially disclosed, Lincoln could knock you senseless left handed and standing on one foot. Lincoln, try it and I’ll have to lock you in a tiny little room in an undisclosed location and try to get information on Hangman from someone else.”

“He’s not getting cleared for anything if he keeps acting like that,” Cheryl snapped. “In fact, I think he’s going to go in that tiny little room right now.”

“Did he say Hangman?” Mossburger asked.

I planted my feet, a subconscious move bred from long training. There was no way I was getting pushed around. “That is a decision to be made by a field overseer.”

“Not when it happens in my Records office.” Cheryl was looking at Lincoln, not me, so I guessed she was glaring at him.

He was nodding at Mossburger. “When were those pictures posted?”

“Pictures?” I stared hard at Cheryl’s computer screen. Then sighed and squinted, a shortsighted man in a world of corrective lenses.

“The Watch found them a couple of hours ago,” Mossburger said, swiveling the computer monitor so I could see it. I noticed that Cheryl wasn’t trying to stop him, but since I was leaning closer to the screen and squinting hard there may have been some kind of byplay between her and Lincoln that I wasn’t catching. “They went up sometime last night. We’re not sure what they mean.”

“See this?” Lincoln flicked a finger at the bottom corner of one of the pictures, a banner that clung to the side of a building. I couldn’t tell how it was held in place. In the corner Lincoln had pointed out there was the watermark of a gallows, a mostly completed stick figure dangling from the noose. The only thing it was missing was the head. “That’s Hangman’s mark. He attaches it to any kind of general statement he makes to the community at large.”

“This isn’t the reposting of something that he’s done before?” I asked. I’m not a huge Internet buff but I knew that kind of thing could happen.

“No, these are things that just happened recently,” Cheryl said, the edge in her voice suggesting she still didn’t like this but was willing to play along for now. “The Watch has been trying to keep them quiet, but these images went up on a couple of major news networks before we could put the fix in. We’ve got no idea how many people have seen it. I hear Senator Dawson might be on his way to chew us out personally.”

“You?” Lincoln shook his head. “Why?”

“Look at these pictures.” Mossburger pointed to the one Lincoln had used as an example earlier. The banner in it depicted a man wrapped in a rope that looped around him, snake-like. One end of it ended in a grappling hook. Then he gestured to the other picture, which looked like a stone wall with 2H2O written across it in black paint. “Two known associates of a suspect in the cases we’re working are codenamed Grappler and Heavy Water.”

“Oh.” My turn to say it. “Well that explains the first one. But what’s up with the weird chemical formula?”

“2H means deuterium, hydrogen with an extra neutron mixed in,” Lincoln said. “Combine it with oxygen and you get water that’s a little heavier than normal.”

“So it’s called heavy water,” I said with a snort. “Always inventive, those scientists.”

“What’s the deal with this Hangman person?” Cheryl asked. “What does he have to do with Circuit?”

I glanced from the screen to her, then over my shoulder at Lincoln. “That’s what he’s here to help us figure out. So we’d better keep him out of the little rooms and get him cleared for access to this stuff ASAP, don’t you think?”

Cheryl heaved a sigh but didn’t contradict me.

Mossburger checked his watch and said, “Well, I’ll come back when I can, but I think I need to get downstairs and check in with Agent Herrera. She wanted our whole team there when we briefed the Senator.”

“To make sure nothing got overlooked?” Lincoln asked.

“To make sure they all share pain equally,” I said.

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Sounds fair.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. You’re real pals.” Mossburger shook his head and started towards the elevators, leaving us with a still-simmering Cheryl and a lot of records diving to do. All things considered, I think I would actually rather have gone to the briefing.

——–

Helix

“So what brings you here?” I whispered to Amplifier, doing my best to ignore the increasingly bitter argument between Voorman and Senator Dawson.

“Scouting out the Senator.” It may have been my imagination but it sure didn’t look like she moved her lips to say it. I doubted anyone else in the room could hear her, which was just as well since, on top of Voorman, Verger and Teresa were in the room, along with that Movsesian kid we picked up at the same time as Amplifier, Mossburger and Jack Howell, my tactical team leader. I didn’t think anyone there would rat her out if she said something stupid, but it’s best that the opportunity never arises. “Harriet told me he’s the most important vote on the Oversight Committee and I should try and get an idea how to approach him.”

That explained the slacks and wine red blouse she was wearing, as opposed to her usual slacker-punk ensembles. I wondered, not for the first time, what kind of family background had produced her. She seemed just at ease in a stormy conference room as in a warehouse owned by a supervillian.

“I’m guessing screaming like the fat man isn’t the best approach to take.”

At ease, but not necessarily able to survive. “Just keep in mind he’ll be your boss if you make the cut.”

“Which one?”

I smirked. “Both.”

“Do you have something you’d like to add to the discussion?” Brahms Dawson slammed his hands on the table in front of me. “Or do you find this funny?” He’d apparently never figured out that neither his loft position as Senator or any of his physical bluster could intimidate me. My grandfather once flipped a Panzer Mark IV onto it’s back and I lived around him for half my childhood.

On the other hand, his daughter had been missing for close to a month now. He probably deserved some credit for being as restrained as he was. “Senator, with all due respect, all the leads we have right now can only be followed up by going to the Carolinas, Virginia or Georgia. I would love to be able to contribute by working those angles – but for that to happen you’ll have to strike some kind of a deal with Senior Special Liaison Wells, or take him out of the picture. I’d also like to point out that, under normal circumstances, I’d be migrating out west in about two weeks. It’s hardly a time for me to be leading the charge on an investigation.”

Dawson opened his mouth to say something but Voorman jumped in first. “Helix, this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve stayed north during the winter to help track Circuit. And you know changing the leadership of a region will not help the situation any.”

I snapped my fingers. “Exactly, Voorman.”

“Exactly what?” Dawson demanded. “There has to be something you can do. What about that real estate angle you were supposed to be following up on?”

“So far it hasn’t turned anything up, Brahms,” Teresa said, clearly doing her best not to stand up and try calming the man. The Senator was a friend and had gotten her a job with the Project; but Teresa believed in professionalism too much to try a personal approach here. Using his first name was clearly as familiar as she was willing to get while on the job. “We’ve done what we can to smooth the way for Analysis but…”

Jack cleared his throat, shifting his bulk slightly in the chair so he looked a little less like a side of beef waiting to punch something and more like a side of beef discussing strategy. “But with all due respect, Senator, we need to be here, waiting. Not running down leads.”

“What?” Dawson spun to glare at Jack, who was on the opposite side of the big U table. “That makes no sense.”

“It does if you remember that there’s more to this than just a crime spree.” Jack waved his hand in my direction. “This is personal. Circuit doesn’t just want Project Sumter to notice these crimes, he wants Helix to be involved.”

Jack was setting me up and I ran with the cue. “Why else hit the places he did? A banner held to the walls of Fort Sumter by nothing but altered laws of friction? Superviscus ink globbed all over the walls of Peachtree Station in Atlanta? Those aren’t just major Civil War sites, they’re part of my family history.”

“And the talents used to vandalize them are ones he’s deliberately drawn to our attention,” Mossburger pointed out. “He’s been building to this for a while, I think.”

“No thinking needed,” Jack said with a laugh. “I know. Circuit wants Helix running all over the place, trying to work out these petty vandalisms while he gets ready for something serious. If he gets us to change the management structure of a regional office or two, that’s just bonus confusion.”

Dawson narrowed his eyes and drew himself up to his full height. He wasn’t as imposing as my grandfather, or even Jack, but he did radiate a strange kind of menace all the same. Even distracted with worry for his daughter, even angry and, from the bags under his eyes, more than a little tired, he still had impressive charisma. “Those so-called petty vandalisms are on the verge of exposing everything we’ve worked to keep secret.”

“Then tell Wells to put an extra team or two on keeping a lid on it.” I sat forward in my chair, inverting Jack’s earlier move in order to get Dawson’s attention back on me. “That’s his job, and he doesn’t want my help doing it. That’s fine. Because right now my job is to prioritize finding Circuit over everything else, and running down south won’t help with that one bit.”

“They don’t have the experience-”

“So swear in Amplifier here.” I jerked my thumb in her direction and she jerked fully upright in surprise. “She just passed her field stress test with flying colors and she’s already come across Circuit’s operation more than most of Wells’ people. You can send her, if it will make you feel better.”

Verger straightened up, too. “Hold on. She doesn’t have a team ready to move with her. Unless Wells is going to set her up with one.”

“Then she’d wind up in the Southern office’s jurisdiction,” Voorman grumbled. “We’re shorter on agents.”

“Not my point!” I said in exasperation. “I am staying here. I am waiting for Circuit. And the moment he sticks his head out of whatever hole he’s dug for himself, I am going to chop it off. That will be the end of all this fooling about.”

Brahms stared at me for a moment and I crossed my arms, waiting to hear what his new complaint would be. To my surprise, all he said was, “Fine, then. But the next time he shows up in the Midwest I want you there with hell’s bells on, and I want you to sit on him until I get there and can drag some answers out of him.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. “Senator, if that’s what you want I think you’ll have to get in line.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Frogs in the Pot

Posted by natechen on December 30, 2013

Four Weeks Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Helix

“Mossburger!” I jumped up from my desk and hurried across the floor towards my analyst, who had just stepped in to the office and was headed towards the Records department. A handful of heads looked up from desks scattered around the room but for the most part this had gotten to be commonplace and I was ignored. Well, Mossburger looked like he wanted to bolt so it’s not like he was ignoring me but it’s not like we were attracting an audience either. “Where are those-”

Pritchard held up his hands to try and hold me off. That never works but he keeps trying. “Look, Helix, I know you’re still waiting on my analysis of the drug cartel-Morocco connection but until Forensics finishes cracking that shell company in Malta there’s not much we can do.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” I threw my hands in the air. “This is supposed to be my case and I’ve been locked out of it just because my grandmother supposedly betrayed the Lost Cause! Every lead we’ve developed so far leads south of the Mason-Dixie line.”

“Of course they do, Helix,” Mossburger said with a sigh. “Circuit set it up that way on purpose, to try and keep you away from his organization, remember?”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “You know, some days I really hate that man. Tell me we have something. Anything.”

“Well…” His voice trailed off and he glanced down at the folders he was holding. “It’s not directly related.”

“What’s not directly related?”

Mossburger sighed and handed me one of the files, which was had the codename “Grappler” and a talent indexing number on it. We number talents as we find them, with the very first being my great-great-grandfather, Corporal Sumter. Codenames are an easy way to refer to them but not easy to keep track of in databases, particularly since they get reassigned on a semiregular basis – there are over four thousand talents on record after all, and many of them never do anything of note with their abilities. Code names, on the other hand, are a limited resource so there’s some recycling that goes on.

But Analysis does like to try and be poetic when handing them out, and Grappler didn’t sound like their style. From the indexing number it looked like Grappler was a recent find, too. I flipped the folder and glanced at it. “How does this tie back to the weapons dealers again? Another associate of theirs?”

“No. Remember last month, when Circuit broke into our old facility and installed a back door into our computer network?”

“Yeah.” I snorted. “That was a mess. Gutsy, unexpected and surprisingly effective. Typical work for him. Did we ever track down what all he did while he was in our systems?”

Mossburger waved the folder he was holding at the one I was looking at. “I think Forensics is still working on it, but they’re sure these two files were part of it. He created them and appended them to his file as known associates. Presumably that’s why there’s so little information on them.”

I studied the file with a great deal more interest and discovered that he was right. All of the biographical information was blank – not redacted, which was to be expected, but entirely blank. If the Records department had returned an entirely blank file to Analysis after the discovery of a new talent I think Cheryl would have personally hunted down whoever was responsible and locked them into the vault for the rest of their life. Other than noting that Grappler was a wall walker, a person who could tweak friction in bizarre ways, and that he or she was a known associate of Circuit, there was nothing in the file.

I closed it and handed it back to Mossburger. “And the other one?”

“For a talent called Heavy Water, a water worker. Analysis thinks he’s the one that came with Circuit the night of the raid. Massif was sure there was a water worker with them, and how many can there be in one group, right?” He took the file and shrugged. “We’re not sure why Circuit wanted them entered into our files under those names but I thought it might be worthwhile to check into old cases involving Circuit and see if I could find evidence of their involvement we might have missed because we were so focused on looking for the work of a fuse box.”

“Right.” I cracked my knuckles. “Well, that’s something, I guess. Did you want a hand?”

“Actually, there was-”

“Helix!” Jack was waving to me from his desk. “Someone calling for you or the boss. You gonna take it or you want I should track down Teresa?”

I sighed. “Nevermind, Mossburger. Let me know if you can turn anything up, though.” He nodded, looking a little relieved, and I headed back towards my desk. “I’ll take it, Jack. Who am I talking to? State police? FBI? Senator’s aide?”

“I don’t think he’s any of the above,” Jack said, handing me his phone rather than bothering to transfer the call to mine. “He said his name was Sykes.”

——–

“Glad to see you again.” Matthew Sykes greeted us from his wheelchair as the secretary ushered us in to the conference room. “I apologize for the poor accommodations, I’m afraid our office here isn’t very large.”

It’s true that it wasn’t a very spacious room, around fifteen feet square, and there weren’t any personal touches to it. But it had a table and chairs, and as far as I’ve always been concerned that’s all you need. It’s not like anyone would want to spend much time in one. I took a seat in one of the two chairs closest to the door and Teresa took the other, putting us directly across from our host. “If you think this is a poor accommodation, Mr. Sykes, you’ve never been to a meeting in a government office.”

He chuckled a little even though my joke was pretty flat. “I have to admit, Mr. Sykes,” I continued, “I’m not quite sure why you’re here. I don’t suppose you’ve spent the last two weeks here in town?”

“No, not at all,” he said, drumming his fingers lightly on the table top. “I’ve been back to Springfield and out at a few other places where we’re – but that’s not important. No, I’m afraid I’ve come back here specifically to speak with you.”

“Then I hope that the trip will prove worth your time,” Teresa said, leaning forward in polite interest. “But I’m afraid I’m just as confused about the nature of your call.”

“Yes, well…” Sykes studied his hands for a minute. That slow, sleepy attitude that had stood out to me when we first me was still there, but where before it had seemed like general good humor now it felt different. More like being watched by a sleepy cat that wasn’t sure if you were a problem yet. “You know, one of the ways we businessmen survive is by talking to each other. Even when it isn’t strictly proper for us to do so.”

I nodded. “What you’re trying to say is that Roger Keller told you why we were visiting him the day we met.”

“And with good reason,” he was quick to add. “You see, I’m an investor in several of the properties you were asking him about. He thought I should know, in case there was anything I thought I should bring to your attention.”

“And it took you two weeks to think of something?” I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. “That’s quite a delayed reaction, Mr. Sykes.”

“Only because there wasn’t anything I could think of until the news broke yesterday.” He reached into the inside pocket on his jacket and pulled out a rumpled envelope. “Do you remember those serial arsons that took place a month or so back?”

Teresa and I exchanged a glance. That could only mean the Enchanter case, but I could tell by her expression that she didn’t have any more idea how Sykes had connected our inquiries into Circuit’s real estate to then Enchanter than I did. It had been highly classified stuff – still was, as far as I knew. “We were briefly involved in that case, as a matter of fact,” Teresa said noncommittally. “Why do you ask?”

He slid the envelope across the table and sat back in his wheelchair. “I’m not sure if you would have heard, then, but at least a few places hit received a letter before the arsonist struck.”

With a sneaking suspicion of what I would find, I picked up the envelope and looked inside. Sure enough, there was a typed letter inside that said, “There is no king in America. Death to pretenders.” It was signed by the Enchanter.

I handed the letter to Teresa and asked, “When did you get this?”

“I’m not entirely sure. My secretary is actually the one who handled the letter initially, believe it or not we get all kinds of cryptic or outright threatening letters. It comes with being a successful business.” Sykes shrugged carelessly, he seemed a lot less tense now that he’d handed the letter over and we weren’t yelling at him. He looked less like a watchful cat and more like a man who found life amusing at best and boring most of the time. But as he explained he did seem to grow a little more animated. And why not? Everyone enjoys talking about themselves a bit.

“We keep a file where a lot of the minor stuff goes, while the dangerous stuff like death threats we turn in to the police. That,” he waved at the letter, “went into the file. If you leave me an e-mail address or similar way to contact you I can see that the details get to you.”

“And this was sent to one of the properties you and Mr. Keller are investing in?” Teresa asked, slipping the letter back into its envelope and setting it on the table.

“That’s right. And I’ve contacted Roger about it as well. He’s checking to see if they received anything similar.” Sykes rubbed a hand over his face, for just a moment looking less like a sleepy philosopher and more like a tired, middle-aged man. “He didn’t say why you were looking into the properties, but from the sounds of it the arsons weren’t the reason. I suppose this wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped.”

“No-” I started, but Teresa touched me on the arm.

“I’m sorry,” she said, getting to her feet. “Could I consult with my colleague outside for just a moment?”

Sykes laughed, his expression closer to what I assumed was normal for him. “Sure. Take your time.”

The hallway outside was fairly quiet, the only noise was the bustle of the telecom company’s phone operators a good twenty feet away. Once the door was closed behind us I asked, “What is it? The Enchanter is under wraps now, I tend to think Sykes is right – there isn’t much here that’s useful to us.”

“Except the Enchanter got a lot his information from someone who worked with the underground talent community,” Teresa said, ticking points on her fingers. “That person went by the name Hangman and only worked over the Internet. At some point, Hangman warned the Enchanter that Circuit was on to him and probably going to take steps to stop his arson spree. Later, Massif’s investigation into Hangman dead-ended when it turned out no one had heard from him in a month or two.”

“You think the Enchanter isn’t the only one who got on Circuit’s bad side?”

She nodded. “It’s certainly possible. If nothing else, it might justify putting more resources into finding this Hangman person.”

“True.” I shrugged. “But one letter to one of the owners of a piece of property Circuit might have been interested in isn’t much of a connection.”

“Fair enough.” With that, Teresa stepped back into the conference room and picked up the envelope with the letter in it. “We appreciate your telling us about this, Mr. Sykes. It may lead to a new development in the case. We’ll be sure to contact Mr. Keller and ask him if he or any of his clients might have received similar letters. I trust we can take this with us?”

“Of course.” Sykes grinned again, looking pleased like a child that had just won a footrace. “I’ll be sure to let Roger know. I’m sure he’ll lend a hand – we’re always glad to help out. It’s almost a requirement for people like us, but I’m sure you’d understand that, Agent Herrera.”

——–

Circuit

“Long day?”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly midnight. “I’ve only been awake fifteen hours, Hangman. It doesn’t start being a long day until we roll over thirty. I appreciate your concern but there’s far too much to do today to be wait until tomorrow.”

“Technically speaking it’s tomorrow already,” Hangman pointed out, but not in an argumentative tone.

“You’ve been poking around in East Coast servers too much lately,” I said. “We’re on Central Time here.”

“Of course. It will be tomorrow soon.”

I smiled slightly to myself and said, “Go ahead and ping the servers. I want to get this set up as soon as possible.”

“If you say so.” From my place in the server room it was easy to get a feel for the constantly shifting electrical potential of my outpost. Hangman’s laptop may have been two rooms away in my office but, thanks to the top of the line network that ran through the building I was able to feel the constant, subtle shifts of her typing, the computer’s processors whirring away. As she set up her next hacking maneuver her voice was fed through the intercom, so we could follow what the other was doing. “I’m still not sure why you want to do it this way, instead of just turning the information over to third party reporters like we did with the letter from the Enchanter. It would be safer that way.”

“There’s more to this game than safety, Hangman. They need to know someone other than the usual suspects is behind this. It has to be distinct from the other news from the beginning.” I shifted the balance of my own talent to the handful of routers that actually led to the outside world. “Ping the server.”

“The query is away.”

In less time than it took her to say it a data packet pulsed out of our network, through a barely discernible path to a newscaster’s servers hundreds of miles away. Getting information from that distance was as much art as science, like a spider reading vibrations coming along it’s web. But most firewalls are not subtle things and the denial of access that blocked Hangman’s probe was easy to spot.

“Again,” I said, shifting potentials again to lock down the the code that would deny access. Ninety seconds later, Hangman had convinced the firewall that her presence in the system was legitimate and I no longer had to hold my foot in the door. It had happened three times as fast as using an automated program to accomplish the same work. There certainly were upsides to having someone like Hangman around to make my load lighter.

Since this was the last intrusion we had planned I disconnected from the servers, stripping off the Velcro wristbands that held the electrodes in place against my skin and closing up the specialized router I used for these intrusions. While I can do this kind of work just by touching a keyboard, Davis had put this system together to increase my sensitivity by a considerable amount and I’ll confess I’ve grown fond of it. For my first joint cyber-espionage endeavor with Hangman I thought it prudent to have every advantage and, although we hadn’t needed it, caution pays. Especially in my line of work.

I let myself out of the server room, locked it and joined Hangman in my office. “Progress?”

“All over but the waiting.” She didn’t look up from her computer screen as I glanced over her shoulder. It looked like the software that would let us manipulate the major news network’s content, at least for a short period of time, hadn’t encountered any hangups on instillation so far.

I nodded with satisfaction and dropped into the seat behind my desk, swiveling in it so I could look out into the undisturbed Wisconsin forest outside. “Soon enough we’ll be ready to move out of here. Chainfall’s coming up soon.”

“Are you going to miss it?” Hangman got up and moved around to the side of the desk, looking out into the dark with me. “For all your technological focus you’re surprisingly fond of places like this. The Chainfall site isn’t that different. You even told Grappler to be easy on the Stillwater facilities.”

“That company was owned by a former Project agent, you know.” I leaned back a little in my chair. “In the old days, Project Sumter did more harm than good. They just haven’t reevaluated themselves in the last fifty years. That’s their real failing. People like Chief Stillwater, he was in the Navy during the Second World War, they’ve earned a little respect. They were a force for good, in their time.”

Hangman’s hands slipped over the back of my chair and began massaging my shoulders lightly. “And now it’s your time, I suppose?”

Simeon’s warning came back to me then. The possibility that Hangman had come to me interested in more than a chance to show her skills. That she might have some sort of a romantic interest, childish or otherwise.

That one way or another, she’d have to face the reality of Thunderbird.

I got up from the chair, letting her hands fall away as I stood. “Now it’s time for sleep, I think.”

“Even after just fifteen hours awake?” She asked in a teasing tone.

I gave her an arch look over one shoulder. “An old man needs his rest.”

“Old?” She smiled. It wasn’t a smirk, like she so often used when joking with Simeon or Heavy, nor an attempt to ingratiate herself, like I had seen in pictures I turned up when trying to gather information on her, like she used when dealing with Davis or one of the other men in the installation that seemed to gather around her when she wasn’t locked away with her laptop running some kind of data analysis. There was something genuine there, not a front or a tool for dealing with people. I just wasn’t sure what it was. “The future shouldn’t be calling itself old, Circuit.”

“No?” I put a hand on her shoulder and gently maneuvered her towards the office door, being careful to stay behind her every step of the way. For some reason I was suddenly ashamed to look her in the face. “Well, a word of advice. We’ll all need all the rest we can get in the next few days. Big things are coming.”

Hangman laughed. “Whatever you say. Good night, Circuit.”

“Good night, Elizabeth.”

I don’t think I realized then I’d called her by name. Didn’t notice her staring after me with that strange smile as I walked away. All I really knew was that, for the first time since I’d become Open Circuit, I was on the run from something and I had no plan how to deal with it.

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Echoes and Avalanches

Posted by natechen on December 9, 2013

Five Weeks, One Day Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Massif

It takes a lot of hard, boring work and careful fact checking before cops can go from getting a tip to getting a warrant. Life for those of us working for Project Sumter is complicated by the fact that we are not technically a law enforcement agency (what we are, technically speaking, is pretty vague). If we want to raid a place or make an arrest we actually have to coordinate the operation with some branch of government that can legally do those things. On my team, most of that work is usually handled by Harriet or Dominic Screeton, my tactical team leader, so I spent the most of the time between getting sifu’s tip and the resulting sting working with Amplifier on various parts of her application process.

Mostly it was the formal address to the Senate Committee, which is one of the two big hurdles every talent joining the Project has to face. But once Dominic started talking about the kind of operation we were looking at I decided I also wanted to bring her along on that. The field stress test is the other big hurdle we all have to go through and the sooner Amp took her first crack at it the better it would be for all of us.

Most of Dominic’s law enforcement contacts are with the state police, which turned out to be fortuitous since they were already aware of the group that had wound up with Circuit’s damaged van. They seemed to be some kind of low grade arms dealers, mostly working with drug dealers and the like. I’m not sure how they planned to market an armored delivery van, other than possibly as a way to ensure drug shipments never got hijacked. Regardless, they apparently couldn’t find a buyer as easily as they thought.

The operation was shaping up to be a kind of sting. We’d give the State Police an excuse to crack down on the operation by suggesting they serve a warrant that accused them of accessory to assault. After all, the van had been last used by Circuit, who had merrily shot at Agent Samson at least eight times in the course of his escape from the Diversy Street incident. Now these guys were trying to sell it rather than turning it in as evidence of a crime. Even if we couldn’t make the original charges stick with what we found when we raided their place the State Police were bound to find something else they could charge the arms dealers with once they’d searched the building. The police could close down the death merchants, we’d get our van. Wins all around.

If this sounds like a lot of carefully cultivated self interest, well, welcome to my world. Helix sometimes wonders if keeping all our secrets is worth the time we waste on this kind of thing. I just try not to worry about it too much.

Especially when I had to worry about getting Amplifier through a crash course in field work, which is what we spent the rest of our time working on. When Helix first stumbled across her, Amp was working with a couple of friends, trying her hand at vigilante work. They’d been smarter than most, investing in body armor and some basic communication gear, but Amp proved to be woefully untrained in the use of firearms and teamwork, and she was still far below the basic conditioning threshold we like our agents to have. On the other hand, we weren’t planning to just throw her on the front lines and by the time we had all our paperwork squared away Harriet and Dominic agreed she was readyish for the field.

I walked into the briefing early that morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of the files we had on the arms dealers in the other. It wasn’t a big time operation but there was enough money and people behind it that we could be looking at some serious opposition and I wanted to be sure exactly what we might be dealing with before we went in. While bullets don’t pose much danger to me, just about anything chemical works just fine and I can be stunned by a flash bang same as anyone else.

I was looking over the speculation on whether the folks we were about to tangle with had any – the state police were fairly sure they didn’t – so at first I didn’t notice the slight change in the air when I entered the briefing room. After all this file wasn’t in Harriet’s special 24-point font, so I had to hold it pretty close just to read it properly. With the paper practically plastered to my face there wasn’t that much of the room around me visible so it took a few seconds for it to register; but the way things are moving around me always clicks sooner or later.

“Helix?” Once the papers were out of the way I could see that yes, he was in fact sitting at the table. Well, not exactly sitting, more like slumped in a chair with his head resting on his arms.

“Hi, Massif,” he said, voice muffled. He lifted one hand and waved it in a vaguely welcoming way. “What brings you here?”

“I have a morning briefing.” I dropped the papers onto the table and took another sip of coffee. “What brings you here?”

Helix raised his head to look at me. Even though his talent being present made it easier to see through the fog of random movement in the air I couldn’t read much in his expression beyond general exhaustion. “I have a morning briefing, too. Someone must have goofed up.” He fumbled in his coat pocket for his phone and eventually found it. “I am not in the mood for this…”

“I would never have guessed. You only look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

He snorted out something like a laugh as he thumbed buttons on his phone. “Just flew back into town last night. Musta put in a hundred hours in the last five days. Jet lagged, cranky, in the wrong briefing room.”

I shook my head and focused on finishing my coffee. When Helix gets in a mood like that it’s best to stay out of his way. “Wait.” I paused with my coffee halfway to my lips. “You went out of town? Why?”

“Circuit hijacked some army trucks. There’s a write-up about it coming.” He lifted his phone to his ear and waited a second or two. “Teresa? What room is our briefing supposed to be in?” A pause and then, “That’s what I thought.”

He hung up without saying any thing else and looked back at me. “I think you’re in the wrong place.”

“Who?” We both looked over at the door, where a familiar, vertigo inducing knot of impossible was walking in.

“Hey, Sam,” Helix said, putting his head back down on his arms. “Don’t tell me they triple booked this room or something.”

“Not that I’ve heard.” Agent Samson took a seat at the table. He hadn’t brought anything with him but he still seemed to take up half the table. I unconsciously inched a few steps away. “How’s things coming with the van follow-up?”

“Well actually-”

“Helix!” Amplifier practically bounced into the room. Helix jerked upright, sending his own cup of coffee teetering across the table. Samson caught it before tipped over entirely. Sadly he couldn’t also grab Helix before he tipped out of his chair when Amp wrapped him in a bear hug so I had to grab them both before our senior talent got sidelined with broken ribs or something.

Have I ever mentioned that Helix has serious ideas about personal space? I think it has something to do with the way he can only affect temperature in the area immediately around him; and I’m not sure if he just doesn’t like other people’s body heat being there, messing with stuff or if he’s worried about someone getting hurt. Regardless, he wormed out of Amp’s hug in record time. As he started to straighten out his suit he said, “Good morning, Amplifier. What brought that on?”

“You’ve barely said ‘hi’ for the last two weeks!” She protested. “Where have you been?”

“Out of town.” He took his coffee back from Samson and sucked down about half of it. “What is going on here? Don’t tell me there’s supposed to be four meetings in one room.”

“Amp’s getting ready for her field stress test,” I said quickly, trying to get a sense of where all this was going. Helix was right, it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for us all to be here at the same time. “She’s actually supposed to sit in on my briefing. What are you here for?”

“Dunno.” He tossed off the last of his coffee and looked at the empty cup glumly. “Teresa just called me up this morning and told me we had a meeting here.” He glanced at Samson. “Pastor? What brings you here? Something to do with your media notoriety?”

The big man sighed. I’d heard about his appearance on television and I was still trying to get over the idea of Project Sumter’s personnel being interviewed on the news, but I had to admit it did seem like a good angle for a missing persons case to take. It’s just that we so rarely investigate those and. when we do, there are other considerations to take into account.

Like secrecy.

The two actually don’t work that well together. We’d probably have left the Elizabeth Dawson case alone if it hadn’t been for her father and the fact that pretty much everyone was sure Circuit had something to do with it. But our point agent on that case didn’t really look happy with the notoriety his part had brought him. “We’re probably going to have to pull a team of analysts together to go over all the tips that newscast has provided but no, that’s not why I’m here this morning. We’re here because Massif’s team has finally tracked down one of the leads we handed off to them.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, waving at Amplifier with the files I’d just been reading. “That’s why we’re here. But what about you two?”

“It’s going to be a joint operation,” Voorman announced. We all, except for maybe Samson, turned in surprise. I’d been expecting Harriet to be leading this briefing. Helix had no doubt anticipated having Agent Herrera leading his briefing. But Voorman closed the conference room door behind him and locked it, so he obviously wasn’t expecting anyone else. “In case you are wondering, I’ll be briefing you talented people, Agent Herrera is in charge of field analysts and Agent Verger is going to be coordinating the tactical teams.”

Helix threw me a glance, something I caught more as a quick movement then a meeting of the eyes. He asked, “A joint operation?”

Amplifier cleared her throat. “I take it that doesn’t happen very often?”

“It hasn’t happened in over seventy years,” Helix said. “Not since Project Sumter was part of the war effort. Getting the tactical support and complicating factors of various talents to work together smoothly is very difficult. I’m not sure this is a good idea, Voorman.”

“We’ve been considering some revisions to normal procedures over the last few weeks,” he said. “And by we, I mean certain Senior Liaisons and the Senate committee. They’ve decided this is a good test case.”

That got an inaudible grumble from Helix. At least, I couldn’t make it out and I don’t think Voorman did, but from the way Amp snickered it probably wasn’t very nice. “Sir, with all due respect, why this one?” I asked. “The write up from the state police suggest there’s only twenty or so of these guys, and there’s no reason to expect all of them to be there at any given time. I think between us and the police we can handle this.”

“And I would agree with you. Except we received these from the South two days ago.” He set a pair of files on the desktop and pulled glossies out of them. At first he made to put them up on the whiteboard that dominated one wall in the room then he caught himself and handed them to me, apparently remembering I wouldn’t be able to see them otherwise just in time.

I squinted at the pictures as Voorman went on. “These two people are known criminals with unusual talents. The man is Static Shock, a fuse box, and the woman is Jane Hammer, a vector trap.”

“Vector trap?” Helix sounded as confused as I was. “What’s a vector trap?”

“You don’t know?” Amplifier asked, incredulous.

“There’s sixty-two known talents and some are rarer than others,” Helix said defensively. “I can’t have met or heard stories about them all.”

“I’ve never heard of vector traps either,” I said, passing the photos back to Voorman.

He put them up on the board as he said, “I’ll be covering the capabilities of both of talents, as not everyone here has heard them before.” I knew he was referring to Amplifier there, since I was pretty sure the rest of us were familiar with Circuit’s abilities. “But Agent Massif, I hope you took special note of Jane Hammer. We’re expecting you to act as a counter to her abilities.”

“Right.” Just as soon as I knew what those were I could get started. Unfortunately, Jane had looked pretty unremarkable – a brunette woman in ratty jeans and jacket that were either very old or very expensive. “I don’t suppose we’ve got any kind of way for me to pick her out of the crowd?”

Voorman pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, loosing very little of height in the process. “From what I hear she’ll be almost as distinctive as Agent Samson here, at least in your eyes. Her rap sheet says she’s also six feet tall, so that should help the rest of you identify her out.”

“Lovely,” Helix muttered.

“But all this is just in the event that the situation deteriorates,” Samson added. “I’ll be praying that things don’t go that far. They might choose to simply surrender once we make ourselves known. Assuming these two are even there.”

“How often does that happen?” Amplifier asked.

“Sometimes,” Helix said, voice grim. “But not often enough.”

——–

A weapons ring would be the perfect kind of thing to run out of an abandoned warehouse, or at least that’s what you’d think, right? So of course this particular group decided to hunker down in the back of an office complex. As nearly as we could tell the front half of the building was devoted to a legitimate business that managed vending machines. The constant in and out of concessions served as a cover for moving the other, more exotic wares that were sold out of the back.

The building all this happened in was a large, L-shaped three story structure. From the blueprints on file at city hall, most of the storage space in the structure was on the ground floor in the short part of the L. There was a small loading dock there with enough space to hold a half a dozen regular vehicles or a couple of semis at a time. We figured that was where the van we wanted would be kept.

Now since the van was merchandise the dealers had been looking to sell the state police had decided the easiest way to handle things was to pose as a group of people interested in buying the it. The police had handled that side of things through their own channels but, at our insistence, they’d agreed to pair me with the man that went to check out the vehicle. The rest of the Project people on hand would hang back with the police team and wait for our signal to sweep in and round up anyone we managed to catch on site once we’d confirmed that yes, this was the vehicle we’d come for. If it wasn’t our warrants would start to look a lot flimsier in court.

And yes, if we want to maintain good relations with the police that is something we have to think about.

What really struck me as funny about all this was that buying what was basically a small APC from a back alley arms dealer turned out to be a lot like buying any other used car. The dealer rep who brought the van out to the parking lot for us to look at spent most of his time talking, detailing the van’s gas mileage, it’s good condition, it’s spacious interior (which looked like it had been made that spacious when a cut-rate chop shop ripped all the innards out in one hour’s time) and, of course, the bulletproof plating. In turn, the undercover cop who was handling most of the deal pushed for a lower price and asked to take the van for a test drive, a cover so we could check the VIN. If it wasn’t the right van our warrant wasn’t valid.

And me? I wound up standing around and looking tough, which is fine since I’m a pretty big guy, at least vertically. The important part here was to make sure my temporary partner didn’t get hurt, there were only the two of us and if things got hot it would be a minute or two before the rest of our teams got there. So when he climbed into the van to check the VIN I moved so that my body blocked most of the door.

The rep and his two bodyguards were just starting to get curious about what the cop could be doing when he reached out and tapped me on the shoulder. I nodded back to him and he slammed the van door closed. One of the guards took a step forward to protest but I shoved a palm to his chest and brought him up short. With my other hand I pulled out a badge and said, “Gentlemen, you’re under arrest for accessory to the crime of assault.”

Dealer rep and his other bodyguard exchanged a look and the rep said, “You’re serious?”

“You have the right to remain-”

The bodyguard pulled a pistol of some kind and shot me before I could get any further and I assumed that pretty much ended any possibility of reading them their rights, or their coming peaceably for that matter. The rep had already turned towards the building and started yelling “Five-Oh!” when I took the other bodyguard, who had tried to back away when his partner started shooting, by the wrist and threw him to the ground.

The guy with the gun just stared at me for a second, then fired three more times. He only hit me twice and I felt more than saw the spikes of momentum bleed out of the bullets, through my body and down into the pavement at my feet once they made contact with my skin. Since the guard I had thrown probably had a gun too I kept hold of his wrist and used my position of superior leverage to quickly wrench his arm out of socket with a disturbing popping noise.

With his dominate arm out of service I figured I could focus on the other two, who were now staring at me like I was… well, what I was. Some kind of freak.

They bolted for the building as soon as I took one careful, measured step towards them. Unfortunately, since keeping at least one foot on the ground is a survival skill for me I had to keep that pace and let them get a good ways ahead of me. I’m told the slow, deliberate approach can be very unnerving to watch but I’ll tell you this, it’s frustrating to do. Not only did the other two guys get back to the building way ahead of me, at least two other people started shooting at me from the windows. I knew I couldn’t get hurt by it but they were ruining a perfectly good shirt and it was obnoxious. Plus the bullets were hot and they burned when they got stuck under my clothes.

I did my best to brush them out as I went but quickly wound up with bigger concerns on my hands. I’d covered about half the distance between the van and the building when something dropped off the roof and hit the ground, becoming a very bright knot of momentum that rocketed towards me like a cheetah after it’s prey.

The vector trap had arrived.

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Loose Wires

Posted by natechen on December 2, 2013

Five Weeks, Three Days Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

I climbed out of the back of the van, wiping my hands on a rag. Davis was a couple of steps behind me. “The tweaks to the maglev relays are good, but if we add in your new toy it’s going to necessitate rewiring the whole vehicle. Again.” He tossed his own rag back into the van without bothering to look where it landed. “I’m not saying that it’s a bad move, but it might be easier if we just pulled out the computer and communication gear from them. That would solve most of the load issues.”

“That’s fine.” I tucked my own rag into the back pocket of my coveralls. “I’m not entirely sure we’re going to be able to keep these vans after the operation. It’s best we leave as little nonessential equipment on them as possible.”

“And it helps us with another problem.” Wallace, my mechanic, was still poking around in the back of the vehicle. “I’m not sure that thing you want us to install would fit with everything else you want to bring along. If we take all the IT stuff out that should help with the crowding some. Even so, it’s going to be a tight squeeze. Are you sure we need it?”

“It’s an EMP-countermeasure, Wally,” Davis said in exasperation. “If they want to keep using any of the electronic gear after clearing the perimeter they’re going to need it.”

“And after all the trouble I went to get it, I’d hate to leave it behind,” I added. “How soon can we start duplicating it?”

“The lab has a preliminary knock off ready for testing,” Davis said. “If you want we can-”

“Excuse me, sir.” Simeon carefully picked his way through the garage. “Do you have a moment?”

I sighed. There was always something and we were getting ready for out biggest job yet, but the constant interruptions were beginning to wear on my patience. “Yes, Simeon. What is it?”

“New development on the news, sir. I thought you’d want to know.” He offered me a tablet. “I don’t know to what extent it will affect your current plans, but fore the long term it may be relevant.”

Wallace took Davis by the arm and gently pulled him away saying, “We’ll get started pulling all that computer gear out of the vans.”

“The auxiliary vans, Wallace,” I said absently. “Not the good vans. We’ve lost one of those already, we’re going to need all the mileage we can get out of the others.”

“You got it, boss.”

I acknowledged Wallace with a grunt, most of my attention on the tablet Simeon had just handed me. It was cued up to a news clip. The reporter was interviewing a familiar face.

Pastor Manuel Rodriguez looked a lot different from when I’d first met him. Then, he’d been dressed more like a janitor than a man of the cloth, his short sleeves revealing tattoos that would have been at home in any ghetto or barrio in the city. But for this interview he was wearing a conservative suit and tie that wouldn’t have been out of place on an office worker or a Sumter agent.

Neither appearance hinted at what truly made him dangerous: The way he sided with the establishment and backed it with inexplicable physical strength. I had personally witnessed him throwing a desk that must have weighed at least a hundred pounds two city blocks. He’d then ripped the back door off of one of my armored vans one handed.

Actually, in terms of total destructive potential nothing he’s done holds a candle to someone like Helix, who can melt concrete if he wants to, but he’s also inhumanly fast and, unlike Helix, who’s powers take some time to get going and are kind of unwieldy, Rodriguez is contained and fast. On top of that, I have no idea how his talent works. I was not happy to see him on the news and I was even less happy once he started talking to the reporter.

“I’ve spent the last twenty years working with the misguided youth of the city,” he said. “When I was young I made my share of bad decisions. Whether it’s dealing drugs, getting into fights or running away from home, many young people act out simply because they’ve never seen a better example. As a pastor, it’s my job to present the example of Jesus Christ as that better alternative. But when-”

“If you just wanted me to know about Rodriguez, I kind of guessed he would wind up in this sooner or later,” I said to Simeon. “If someone with his background and talents wasn’t involved with Project Sumter somehow I’d have been very surprised.”

“That’s not it, sir,” Simeon said, directing my attention back to the video feet. “Look, it’s coming up now.”

The reporter had asked the pastor something during that brief exchange. Now the video showed a series of pictures as Rodriguez’s voice answered. The first half dozen or so were of Hangman – or rather, Elizabeth Dawson – over the last year or so of her college career. “The Senator spent quite a bit of time here in town last month and it’s not unreasonable to assume his daughter might have come down here to visit him as a surprise.”

Anyone who thought that obviously didn’t know them very well, but then it did sound well enough to the general public. “Over the years I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the community,” Rodriguez continued. “And when kids drop off the radar for whatever reason and worry their families there are people I talk to. I’ve found that people are more willing to speak to a leader in the church than the police. In this case, they were also willing look through pictures.”

I sucked in a breath as the pictures changed from Hangman as a graduate in cap and gown to pictures of her in Millennium Park. She wasn’t actually the focus of them, it looked like she’d just wound up in the background of a picture or two, but it was definitely her. In the first she was seated by an artificial stream, kicking her feet in the water. “You can see Ms. Dawson here, in Millennium Park, the day her disappearance was reported, that’s a day and a half after she was last seen by anyone who knew her.”

The next picture was timestamped a bit later in the day. I mentally cursed digital cameras and their wealth of useful information. There were some days it felt like technology companies were deliberately trying to make my job harder. “In one of the photos shared with us you can see Ms. Dawson speaking with an unidentified man in a suit. Investigators are beginning to-”

I paused the playback and looked up at Simeon. “How complete of a description do they have?”

“Not a very good one, sir,” Simeon hastened to assure me. “You were only photographed from the back and that’s not your natural hair, so all they really have is your build. But they know someone was with Ms. Dawson shortly before she disappeared.”

“Not that they didn’t suspect that already,” I muttered. “But now they can definitively prove it. Was there anything else of importance? Other than the fact that Rodriguez is involved with this somehow.”

“Somehow?” Simeon quirked his eyebrows. “You don’t think he’s directly connected with Project Sumter?”

“Oh, sure. He has to be.” I shrugged and handed the tablet back to Simeon. If there had been something else I knew he would have brought it up immediately instead of asking about Rodriguez. “But the fact that he can be about it so publicly is annoying and unexpected. As is the fact that he’d be working on Hangman’s case rather than mine.”

“To answer you directly,” Simeon said, tucking the tablet under his arm, “no, there’s nothing else of note in this news broadcast. But I thought you would like to know all the same.”

I rubbed my chin absently, trying to focus my thoughts. “We need to get the media’s focus on something else.”

“That would be convenient,” Simeon agreed. “I don’t suppose you have a way to do that on hand?”

“In fact, I have a few thoughts on how we might do just that. Let me try and decide how to best implement them.” I refocused on the present. “If that’s all, I should really-”

“With all due respect, sir, it’s not quite.” Simeon hesitated for a minute, which was surprising enough, then he took the tablet, turned it over in his hands and then firmly clamped them behind his back. “Sir, this may not be any of my business but have you spoken to Miss Dawson since you returned from your trip out west?”

After all the fidgeting I had expected something a little more significant than that. “Not since the after the fact analysis. I’ve been quite busy. My other persona had an appearance to make, the EMP-countermeasure needs-”

“Yes, sir, I’m aware of your schedule.” He didn’t outright say he had written it but it was implied in his tone. “But… Sir, do you remember what you said to me when you first hired me?”

“I was going to give you the biggest administrative challenge you’d ever faced?”

That got the ghost of a smile on Simeon’s typically serene face. “After that.”

I sighed. One of the reasons I rely on Simeon as much as I do is because I know he makes up for many of my weaknesses while also understanding me well enough to function as a proxy in most situations. Unfortunately he has this mysterious compulsion to try and fix my failings in his spare time. I’ve learned to suffer through it as part of the price of keeping his most excellent services.

And that means playing along with him when he wants me to. “You’re better at judging people than I am.”

“And as such, I am in charge of managing your staff.”

I glanced around the garage and sighed. “Perhaps we should move to my office for this conversation.”

“If you prefer,” Simeon said.

“I do.” The garage was on the ground level of the compound and my office was on the second floor so I headed towards the stairs on the far wall, Simeon walking beside me.

“Sir, I know it’s not your habit to overanalyze the history of your employees unless you think it has a direct bearing on your plans.”

He paused like he was expecting a response; but it was a very cryptic statement and I climbed half the flight of stairs before saying, “Okay, I don’t quite follow you. I know that, outside of Davis and maybe you, none of us are exactly ordinary. But what does that have to do with Hangman?”

Simeon nodded, like that was about the response he’d been expecting. “Sir, you are aware that her father’s stance on unusually gifted individuals is very… strict.”

“If you’re saying that her father is an idiot who believes natural talent, of any kind, is an offense of some kind then yes, I’m familiar with Senator Dawson’s stance.” I shrugged. “He takes the nature versus nurture conflict too seriously. If he really believes all we need to do to build the perfect society is crush human nature under a system of education that acknowledges no differences between people he’s crazy.”

“Maybe. But his insanity has had serious repercussions on his only child. After all, Miss Dawson demonstrated exceptional talent for mathematics and programing from a young age, an ability her father actively discouraged her from pursuing. Am I correct?”

I nodded, fishing around for the set of keys that would let me into the office and records part of the complex. With my abilities, electronic locks seem more like a liability that a properly built set of mechanical locks. “She had to teach herself, which only made her better at what she does, in my opinion.” I slipped the two keys into the door’s locks, one at waist height one at shoulder height, turned them and opened the door into the antechamber. “So on the whole, not a bad exchange.”

“Except she had to do it with no affirmation from her father. Children who have lacked a meaningful father figure in their lives have a tendency to seek a surrogate.”

I paused with the keys half out of the locks. “What, you mean me?”

“Well…” He shrugged, a distinctly uncharacteristic thing for him to do. “That’s the most immediate result of it, yes. But more than that, you told me she had ‘bought in’ to your ambitions.”

“In the long term, as she understands them, yes.” We were still in the open platform over the workshop and garage so I stepped into the antechamber and motioned Simeon in after me, then closed the door. Something made me keep my voice down despite the fact that we were alone in the small chamber, with the only exits being my office, the server room and back out into the main part of the complex. “I haven’t explained Operation Chainfall to her yet. Or the Thunderclap Gambit.”

“To say nothing of Thunderbird?”

“To say nothing of that.” I shrugged. “She is a very, very good analyst. She might have guessed at what Chainfall aims to do. Possibly even Thunderclap.”

SImeon nodded. “I guessed as much, so I can only assume you did as well, and find it to be acceptable. Are you going to tell her about Thunderbird?”

“Of course not. It’s not relevant.” I scowled. Hangman hadn’t been exactly thrilled when I’d held back information on our last jaunt but surely she understood I couldn’t tell her everything. I didn’t mind if she figured things out on her own, independently drawn conclusions aren’t nearly the liability my spelling things out could be. And I don’t like spreading deliberate disinformation among my own people, it cuts down on trust and makes running an efficient operation harder. “What does this have to do with Hangman?”

“You and Miss Dawson had significant disagreements about operational parameters after your first joint field effort, did you not?”

I rubbed my forehead for a minute, willing myself to be patient. For some reason I was getting fed up with Simeon’s roundabout approach. Normally he didn’t upset me at all. We had the best working dynamic of any two people in my organization. It could only be because I was getting so close to my endgame. “Okay. Yes, you’re right. She was impulsive, and it could have blown the whole operation if she got caught outside of the van. I don’t think she’s ready for field work yet, but that’s not her fault. She doesn’t have the experience Grappler and I have, or the upbringing Heavy did. We’ll just-”

“You’re missing the point, sir.” Simeon drummed his fingers absently on the side of the tablet he held. “You see, based on the… extreme measures Miss Dawson took to engineer a meeting with you, the way she’s behaved since you met, the time she’s spent in planning and analysis with you…”

I frowned. “You think she wasn’t sincere when she said she was joining for the cause?” Suddenly I stood straight as a new idea leapt into my mind fully formed. “Do you think she’s trying to get a picture of Thunderbird? Turn it over to her father and prove herself somehow?”

“No.” Simeon said it quickly and firmly. “No, I think she was entirely truthful about joining so that all people of talent could find the freedom to use their talents. From the time we’ve spent together it seems that’s all she’s ever wanted to do. You’ve given her that opportunity and you value her contributions. Not only that, you encourage them and try to help her be better at them.”

“So she’s loyal.”

“Loyal is not the word I would use, sir.”

I stared blankly at Simeon. He was waiting to be prompted again. “What word would you use, Mr. Delacroix?”

“I…” His mouth was open for a moment, then he closed it and cleared his throat before trying again. “Understand, I thought her behavior was odd at first. But I didn’t understand it until… Well, something was said to me that suggested it. Once I came to study the problem from that perspective it made more sense.”

“What perspective, Simeon?”

“Love, sir.” He sighed. “I believe that, at the very least, Miss Dawson has a very strong crush on you. Maybe her feelings are more mature than that, but I can’t say for sure right now.”

“What…” My voice trailed off as my brain tried to assimilate that idea. “Simeon, I’m at least fifteen years older than she is.”

“Thirteen years, two months actually.” He shrugged again and the motion made me dizzy. Or maybe it was just my head spinning. “Sir, in my experience that doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Especially to the kind of young woman who gets caught up in a romantic cause like the crusade you’re on.”

“Simeon, I’m trying to conquer North America, not save the world. What kind of woman-” I caught myself. As Simeon had just pointed out, he’s better at reading these kinds of situations than I am. Best to assume he was at least partially correct. “Fine. But, Simeon…” I shook my head. “That just means Thunderbird is…”

“Yes, I know.” He sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. I stiffened. “Sir, forgive me but I’m about to be very blunt and very personal.”

I stared at him a moment, wondering if I should just electrocute him and make a run for it. I’ve made more impulsive decisions. But they were all a long time ago, when Thunderbird was still a vague idea in the back of my head, not an endgame that was only months away. “Go ahead, Simeon.”

He nodded and seemed to gather himself up for the final push. “Sir, I’m telling you this mostly because you need to start taking it into account. If I’m right then yes, Miss Dawson is going to hate the ideas underpinning Thunderbird. But more than that, she’s going to actively try to insert herself into your plans. To get your attention and win your favor, regardless of what she knows.”

I nodded. “Yes, I can see that. And not speaking to her for several days after our last argument just because I have been busy is not going to be acceptable to her.”

“Agreed. But I’m sure you can find a way to deal with any fallout from that quickly enough. Assuming Miss Dawson hasn’t taken the initiative on that as well.” Simeon leaned a little closer and dropped his voice down to a murmur. “What I wanted to say is… I think you might need her.”

“Of course,” I said, baffled. “I’ve been relying on her data-”

“No, sir,” Simeon said, cutting me off. “As you’ve just said, your goal is to conquer a continent. Your reasons for doing it aren’t even all that selfish. But they’re still not something many are going to understand. One of the few who will has come and found you, and might even be interested in more than just helping out.”

He took his hand off my shoulder and stepped back, resuming a more normal tone. “I’ve seen you take on challenges and stress that would break a dozen lesser men, but even you must have some limits. And not even I really understand your motivations. If you want to see this through, a companion who does ‘get it’ is something you’re going to need. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, you should think about it.”

Having said his piece Simeon gave me a slight nod of the head and let himself back out. I didn’t really acknowledge him leaving, in fact I didn’t surface from my thoughts until a few minutes later. The whole idea just seemed so preposterous. I didn’t have time to think about romance, much less a romance as preposterous as wooing a woman a decade my junior.

In fact, without Simeon’s calm presence there to reinforce the idea it was starting to look truly absurd. But he might be right about the father figure idea. I did need to go and talk to Hangman, let her know I still valued her abilities in spite of her impulsive decisions in the field. I nodded to myself. I would do it right after checking a few things in my office.

So I unlocked my office door and let myself in to find Hangman sitting behind my desk, her feet up on the writing surface, fiddling with her laptop.

“Hi, Circuit,” she said, putting her feet down as soon as she saw me come through the door. Then she fished her earbuds out and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. At least she probably hadn’t overheard the conversation out in the antechamber. “I wanted to talk to you.”

I felt a moment of sudden awkwardness, Simeon’s words still fresh in my mind. So instead of demanding to know how she had gotten into a locked office to which she didn’t have a key, or why she thought I would have time for her with all the other things on my plate or any of a dozen other potentially relevant questions, all I managed was, “Oh?”

She looked back down at her laptop. “I’ve been sorting back through all the jobs you, Grappler and Heavy have done in the last year.”

“Yes?” Another part of the far-flung Chainfall plan which she hadn’t been told about. Apparently she was still trying to run down the various elements of that on her own. “What about them?”

“Three bank jobs by you, focusing on electronic sabotage, five heists by Grappler where authorities are still trying to figure out how a catburgler could have climbed in and out without leaving traces – which she doesn’t leave, of course – and one massive water system shutdown by Heavy Water.” She glanced up from her laptop. “At least, I’m assuming that taking place at the same time as the warehouse raid where you picked up those superconductors in Memphis wasn’t a coincidence. The cause of the water company’s difficulties was never officially found.”

“Because turning normal water, even sewage water, to gelatin without the addition of any chemicals isn’t the kind of thing Project Sumter likes getting around.”

She set her laptop to one side of the desk so she could lean on it and give me a mischievous look. “And then there was the Stillwater job just a few days ago, where Grappler actually went in to steal equipment and didn’t bother shutting down any of the cameras in the security system. Sure, it was a smalltime company with small time security, but still. Circuit, why does it look like you’re deliberately doing jobs in ways only people with your unique talents could do?”

“Because I have talented staff?”

“But you never did that in the past. Just in the last year or so.”

I crossed to the desk and rested my hands on it’s top, scowling down at her. “Hangman, why are you here?”

She ignored my attempt at intimidation. “Circuit, you’re trying to end the Masquerade. Trying to tell the world talents exist. And you’re doing it wrong.”

The scowl grew deeper. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, no one’s going to care about robbing banks or warehouses unless they own them. If you want the public to know you exist then you’re not stealing the right stuff. You need to get creative. Send a message. Trust me, I might have hated studying journalism but one thing I’ll always remember is the importance of having a point to a story and getting it across by any means necessary. You want to deal with Project Sumter, built on Lincoln’s Law and dedicated to keeping talents a secret? You don’t steal money, superconductors or sound equipment.” She turned her laptop so I could see the screen. “You steal this.”

As I read the information on the screen I didn’t follow what she was saying. At least, not at first. But then the pieces began to fall into place and I felt a manic grin sneaking it’s way across my face. By the time I was done I could see what she wanted me to do, so I looked her in the eye and said the first three words that came to mind.

“That is brilliant.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Pointed Questions

Posted by natechen on October 28, 2013

Six Weeks, Four Days before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Massif

Helix likes to complain about how Project Sumter has procedures for everything. He once joked that he thought we had to file paperwork just to get a bathroom break while we were in the field. On the other hand, I think that just shows how much of Helix’s life has been eaten up by the Project. Apparently, his grandparents have been telling him stories about Project work since he was seven or eight and it progressed until working for Project Sumter was the only career path he could conceive of.

So what Helix doesn’t seem to realize is that all of life is full of procedures. The only difference is the paperwork is a lot less intense outside of our office.

“I should have asked earlier,” I murmured to Amplifier as we followed Sifu up the stairs. “Can you handle green tea? He’s going to serve it to us and it’s rude to turn it down.”

She gave me a quick grin. “Handle it? I was practically raised swimming in the stuff.”

“All the caffeine would go a long way to explaining your personality,” Harriet said from a few steps behind us. She didn’t seem to be having trouble with the stairs but she did sound a little winded. With a conscious effort I made myself stop monitoring my boss’s physical condition. She was getting up there, sure, but she was still cleared for field work and I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by second guessing her. That kind of distraction could be dangerous in field work.

While my sifu doesn’t have talent in the same way that Amp and I do, he does live a life that’s not that different from ours. Teaching wushu and dealing with talents are some things he does, but it’s not what he does for a living.

Sifu also owns a small store in Chinatown, one of those tourist trap kinds of places that sells a bunch of authenticly made in China bric-a-brac, but that’s not what he really does either. It’s run by a selection of people from his family, mostly nieces and nephews, and his oldest daughter. No, Giancarlo He is an acupuncturist, which means he gets paid to stick needles into people to help relieve their aches and pains. There are a surprising number of people who think this is a good idea and some of them have a surprising amount of disposable income, so he does fairly well for himself.

The top floor of the building where the store is located also serves as his home and office. It’s cramped, but I’ve never one heard him talk about moving out. We turned left at the top of the stairs and Sifu let us into the small treatment room. It consisted of an polished walnut desk with an equally classy chair, a long wooden table with a stack of cushions on one side and a two other chairs. A cabinet in one corner held all the acupuncture stuff and on top of it sat a tea pot and four cups. Sifu busied himself with the teapot immediately, I took a seat on the edge of the table and the ladies took the two treatment chairs.

“Why do you call him Little Mountain?”

Sifu chuckled at Amp’s question. “Because he is as stubborn and unmovable as a lump of rock.” He quickly placed three cups of tea on the table for us and kept one for himself, settling into his office chair with a sigh and keeping an eye on her the whole time. “You do not look like someone that Little Mountain has brought to me to learn wushu.”

Before answering Amp paused to take a sip of her tea. “This is good,” she murmured, setting her cup back down and leaning back in her chair with a look I was beginning to realize was anticipation. She actually enjoyed chatting up all the weird people she was meeting, which was a good thing for her chances of working in the field. “I’m not here to learn wushu. In fact, Agent Massif said he really shouldn’t be teaching me. Apparently you wouldn’t like it.”

Sifu turned to look at me and took a sip of his tea. I did the same through sheer habit, you’re supposed to follow your sifu’s lead on everything when you’re a student and I’d never forgotten it. Of course, I don’t like green tea, so I found myself grimacing at the taste as I set the cup aside. “It’s not traditional to choose your own first student,” I said. “But mostly it’s because you’d start developing a bunch of habits that won’t necessarily mesh well with the training Project Sumter has waiting for you down the line.”

“Unfortunately, to them you will be an agent and not a person,” Sifu said. “Your training will be tailored to their needs, not yours.”

“Or you could say that we’re focusing on giving you skills that you can use to serve the public, rather than skills for self defense and personal improvement,” Harriet said, taking a tranquil sip from her own teacup. That kind of verbal sparring, like the tea or Sifu’s perpetually dour attitude, were just part of the standard procedure for a visit. But they didn’t seem to be making the best impression on Amplifier, so I decided to break with protocol and try to get to the point.

“Sifu, we’re not here to talk about wushu or differences in training doctrine.” I took another gulp of tea in an effort to make up for breaking with pattern. It sounds weird, I know, but that’s the give and take on these visits. “We really just want to find out about a couple of people in the community.”

Sifu sighed and looked into his tea. Being a teacher of any kind comes with a lot of responsibility for someone in Chinese society. In the small, rural villages where his parents grew up a sifu would probably be a part of his student’s entire life, a sort of third parent. By that measure, I’d qualify as a really bad child, since I never call, write or see him in person unless it’s to ask a question. I know it’s a purely cultural thing and you can’t go around bending over backwards to accommodate all the different expectations you encounter in life. But Sifu’s still really good at making me feel guilty about it.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Two things.” I shifted my feet, partly to try and get more comfortable on the edge of the table, partly to try and shake off the nagging sensation of guilt. “First, do you know of any place where a person with unique talents could get his car worked on? Specialty modifications to cut down the chance a fusebox is going to blow out his radio, for example.”

Sifu leaned back in his chair, fingers absently tapping on the sides of his teacup. “There hasn’t been anyone like that local in three or four years. The last fellow was called Wally the Wrench, or somesuch. He actually lived in your part of town.” By which Sifu meant the Polish neighborhood. “He apparently got a job offer somewhere else, though, so now the closest person I know of who does that kind of work is across the state line, in Gary.”

Harriet made a note of that, then said, “Do you know of any others? It’s probably worth following up on them all.”

Sifu set aside his tea and fished around in his desk until he found an old-fashioned Rolodex and started flipping through it. “I know of at least eight, from Texas to the East Coast. Do you want them all?”

“That many?” Amplifier asked in surprise.

Sifu gave her a quick smile. “I know a few people here and there.”

“Well, that’s just it,” she said. “Why are there even that many people in that line of work?”

“They probably don’t do work for talents that often,” I said with a shrug. “But once you do it, even if it’s just once or twice, your name gets passed around. Some of these people have probably gone years between jobs for talented people.”

Sifu grunted, copying the information from his Rolodex onto a sheet of paper. “Just as you say. There are probably a hundred people in the country who meet the criteria you asked about. Eight is not that large a number. It is strange that the only one here would get a job elsewhere. I never though of mechanics as the type to move around a lot.”

“Yeah, that is-” I stopped as a thought hit me. I knew it showed because Harriet and Amp both turned to look at me, but I didn’t want to mention too much about the case in front of Sifu – one of the reasons I keep my distance from him is that he’s really not supposed to know a lot about what I do and I’m not certain I could keep myself from asking him for advice constantly if I did hang around him a lot. But I’d just remembered what Samson said about Circuit possibly having a whole set of replacement parts for his armored van and couldn’t help wondering why he wouldn’t get a personal mechanic, too. It fit with the kind of thoroughness that we, or at least Helix, had insisted was a basic part of his personality at yesterday’s meeting. “Sifu, do you know if Wally left any kind of contact information behind when he moved out?”

He glanced up from his Rolodex. “Of course. I made it a point to ask, since keeping track of those things is what I do.”

“Where did he say he was going?”

“Overseas.” Sifu shrugged. “As I said, very strange. Perhaps he got a government contract?”

“Maybe.” I glanced at Harriet, who waved her hand slightly to show she was following my line of thought. Helix had been tapped by the CIA for some kind of job in Africa two years ago. Rumor was Circuit had been involved. “Give us Wally’s last known contact info too, please. It might be worth following up.”

“Very well.”

I finished my tea and made another face. The others could get away with just drinking a little, as a former student I knew I had to drink it all. “Anyway, you ready for the second thing I wanted to ask about?”

“The day I cannot write and answer your simple questions is the day they pour my ashes into an urn, Little Mountain.” Sifu waved a hand for me to continue.

“Right. Do you know anything about a contact like you who goes by Hangman?”

“Hangman?” Sifu laughed. “Of course I do. I’m surprised you even have to ask about him. You people should know about Hangman already. He is quite famous in our circles.”

“You’ve met?” Harriet asked.

“No, we haven’t. I don’t think anyone has met Hangman, he’s quite the recluse. He knows a lot and I don’t think he came by the information in a legitimate way. In fact, I’ve heard some things I’ve never heard about gifted people before in the last year or so, and if you trace the rumors back far enough they always seem to come from Hangman.” He handed me the sheet of paper he’d written the contact information for Wally and the other mechanics on. “Mind you, that doesn’t mean Hangman’s information is correct. I haven’t passed any of it on myself.”

“We appreciate that,” I said, tucking away the paper. “How do we go about meeting this Hangman if we were interested in talking to him?”

Sifu shrugged. “As far as I know, you don’t. He’s an information broker, and people who deal in secrets have a tendency to die with them, eventually. Hangman has tried to prevent an untimely death by conducting all his deals over the Internet. I’ve never heard of anyone who’s met him in person.”

“Have you ever dealt with him directly?” Amplifier asked. “Even knowing how to find him over the Net could be useful.”

“I haven’t, but my nephew Lincoln has.”

That made sense. Lincoln He was the family network administrator, he spent a lot of his time making sure the technology that ran the family businesses was functional, but he’d also started studying wushu with me when I was twelve. In another ten years, if I was still around, I would probably be dealing with him instead of Sifu. “I’ll get in touch with Lincoln, see if he can tell us anything more.”

“That won’t get you far, Little Mountain,” Sifu said, a note of regret in his voice. “Hangman wasn’t unwise in taking all the precautions he did, but they don’t seem to have helped as much as he hoped. From the sound of things, no one has heard from him in-” Sifu paused to glance at something on his desk, “-almost a month. Lincoln mentioned it to me the last time he was through to check on the computer wiring.”

Presumably Sifu was referring to the network routers or something. Since it didn’t really matter I ignored it. “We’ll get in touch anyway, in case Analysis can do something with what he knows.”

“If they do, let him know,” Sifu said. “He’s been quite worried, and I don’t think he’s the only one. While Hangman never said much about how he knew what he knew, he was very fair in making sure people heard it and he’d gotten to be quite popular.”

“We’ll let you know if we find out anything,” Harriet assured him. “But honestly, finding the van armored like an APC that disappeared week and a half ago is probably a higher priority than finding an information broker who disappeared a month ago.”

Sifu perked up a bit. “What’s that? You’re looking for a full sized van fitted with military grade armor?”

“That’s right,” I said slowly. “What about it?”

“I was contacted a week ago by someone trying to find a buyer for such a vehicle.” Sifu pulled out a drawer of his desk and picked through it. “I told them I was in the business of passing on wisdom, not taking commissions. But he did leave me a contact method. Would you be interested?”

I snatched the offered piece of paper out of his hand and laughed. “Sifu, you’re priceless.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?” Amplifier asked.

Sifu chuckled. “Young lady, mark this well and it will only be a matter of time before you surpass Little Mountain, at least as a detective. He never mastered the lesson, it seems.”

“What lesson?”

“To understand something you must begin by asking the right questions.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Water Fall: Dark Desks

Posted by natechen on September 9, 2013

Seven Weeks, One Day before the Michigan Avenue Proclomation

Massif

I exist in a perpetual haze.

It’s not drug induced or anything and I’m not exactly what you would call absent minded, but I was born with the ability to see and, to a limited extent manipulate, movement. And I mean all movement. For example, the air is in motion. Everyone knows that, but I can see it. Problem is, I have trouble seeing anything behind the air that’s moving.

Other people live with transparent air, unless they happen to be smokers or something, but I’ve never been able to see through more than ten feet of the stuff, and even then most of the details are different in ways that are hard to explain. It’s almost like being in a different world. I can’t drive, reading for more than ten or fifteen minutes gives me a headache and I have a hard time telling people apart.

I’m saying all this so you’ll understand that the day I walked in to the office and realized I could see my desk on the other side of the floor, it bothered me. It was something unusual, and for a person who’s job is half cops and robbers and half spy versus spy unusual is bad. There are thirty-six steps from the door to my row of desks, and my desk is the third down; I knew that for certain because it’s the kind of thing I have to commit to memory as soon as I move to a new office. I also knew it was way outside of what I’m normally able to see with any kind of clarity.

I’d seen that kind of thing before, usually on the shooting range when I let people shoot at me – don’t ask. Bullets create that kind of clarity of vectors when they streak towards their target, which makes it easy for me to pick out where they’re coming from. Which probably meant that my desk was at the center of some kind of constant force, pushing outward. Kind of like a constant wind or a sustained explosion, although what either one of those would be doing at my desk is anybody’s guess. And again, this would not be business as usual.

The upside to all my visual impairments is that I can be virtually indestructible under the right circumstances, which the Project Sumter dossier on vector shifts describes as, “any time the subject has their feet on the ground.” I actually come with training in how to walk so as to maximize my contact with the ground, if you’ll believe it. So I started towards my desk, planting my feet with deliberate care and keeping as alert as possible for any sign of trouble.

Trouble was waiting for me, sitting there with her boots up on my desk and earbuds in, eyes closed and paying no attention to her surroundings at all. She was petite, dressed in beaten up gray cargo pants that might have once been some other color, wearing a formfitting blue tank top and absently tapping her fingers on her stomach in time to some unheard song. The air around her seemed to shimmer and pulse slightly. I stared at the girl, and at the time I didn’t think she could be older than sixteen, trying to figure out how she had gotten into the office and to my desk. We have pretty good security, it took one of the most dangerous criminal minds in the nation seven or eight years to find and break into our offices and that was only because he tricked us into helping him out.

Now I’d swear, with the music on and all, there was no way she should have been able to hear me coming. My wushu sifu put me through a whole series of exercises to stifle the sound my footsteps that are really effective, even with heavy Western shoes on, but almost as soon as I got up to the desk the girl opened her eyes and pointed at my desk. I followed the pointing finger to a reddish blob which I guessed was a folder left there by my supervisor.

Harriet’s worked with me for the last year and a half and she’s developed some systems that help us get around my vision problems. One is the color-priority system. A red folder means I need to read it right away, helping important stuff to stand out from the mess of other papers that wind up scattered around the office. Since Trouble looked like she was content to wait until I’d read whatever was in it before talking to me I picked it up and flipped it open.

Trouble’s photo had been clipped to the top, smiling back at me with a sardonic grin. According to the file, her codename was Amplifier. Under that were places for a lot of personal information that had been redacted, although I did learn she was four years older than I had thought, followed by the codeword for her unusual talent and a brief description. Project Sumter uses the word talent to refer to pretty much any kind of unusual, innate ability to manipulate the forces of nature, usually in a way modern science can’t explain. Unusual was a pretty apt word, in this case, because in four years with the Project, I’d never heard of a wave maker. The file said I could expect her to manipulate the volume and frequency of sound waves, both consciously and subconsciously, so as to maximize acoustics and achieve other effects. That would explain why I could see her clearly, save for that pulsing effect. Sound is air in motion, too, and if Amplifier controlled the sound around her it probably had a steadying effect on the air itself.

The file said she also had unusually sharp hearing, which might explain how she heard me walking up.

I quickly squinted through the next couple of pages, which was basically a brief summary of what Amplifier had been up to since the Project discovered her. The last page was a summary of said discovery. A quick glance at the signature on the bottom confirmed that yes, like the majority of talents in the Midwest in the last five years, Special Agent Double Helix had found her. I flipped the folder closed, mostly satisfied, and waved to get her attention.

Amplifier sat up and took her ear phones out then raised an eyebrow. “I can hear you if you talk, you know. My dad never used to believe that but I would think you guys would get it.”

“Welcome to Project Sumter,” I said, ignoring what sounded a lot like a conversational land mine. “I guess you’ve been here for a few weeks but they keep me running far and wide most days so it’s no surprise we’ve never met.”

She smiled slightly and shrugged. “If you say so. I’m guessing you’re Aluchinskii Massif?”

“That’s me,” I said, sliding into my chair. I thought sitting down might get us on eye level and make things more comfortable but I was surprised to find I was still a good four or five inches taller than she was. So I leaned back in my chair some to get as close to level as possible, keeping care to leave one foot on the floor, and made the best of it. “It’s pronounced like ‘massive’ by the way. The ‘f’ makes a ‘v’ sound.”

“Is that something you have to say a lot?”

I shrugged. “Not really. Most people just call me Al or Massif. It’s never a problem unless people see it in writing.”

“Right. Teresa texted me and told me you and your boss would be filling in for her team. I guess they’re busy today.”

“That’s right.” I briefly sifted a hand through the stack of stuff in my inbox and then gave up looking for what I wanted. “I think Harriet’s going to be out of the office, at least for the morning, so you may just be stuck with me for the moment. I’m guessing you’re applying for a position, based on what I’ve seen, but I’m not exactly sure where in the process you are. Have you gone along on an active field case?”

“Yeah. Something out on Diversy Street, that turned out real weird. We watched a school building for about five hours then there was a big ruckus and Teresa wound up sending me home without even making me sign anything.” She scrunched her nose up, showing an opinion on the Project and its love of documents that I found vaguely nostalgic. Most agents were like that for a year or two before they resigned themselves to their fate. “Anyway, I don’t think it technically counts.”

“No,” I said, doing my best not to wince. The Diversy Street incident had been a mess. and it probably wouldn’t have counted under any circumstances. “Even if it had, you were in the field with Double Helix. He’s notoriously tough as senior talent, he probably wouldn’t have signed off on your first field run anyway. It took me four tries to pass.”

“Pass?” Amplifier tilted her head. “I thought the point was just to make sure we got a good idea of what field work was like. I didn’t realize it was a test.”

“Well…” Technically, it wasn’t. And we weren’t supposed to explain what it was. “Let’s just say there’s more to it than just showing up and looking pretty.”

“Well obviously,” she said with a grin. “You passed.”

“Thanks.” Nothing like a kind compliment to get your day off to a good start. “I can’t really arrange for another trip into the field right now, both because my supervisor is out of the office right now and because I’m kind of in-between assignments myself.” I picked the folder back up and squinted at it some more. “It doesn’t look like we have a complete record of your capabilities. The basic function of most of the known talents is well documented, but between personal discoveries and home made gadgets to help things along, new talents tend to broaden our understanding of talent almost as much as the scientists we employ.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “Do I get to see a list of what you guys know already, or what?”

I tossed the folder back on the table and shrugged. “I don’t think that’s the way it works. The Records department took a complete statement from me, then sent it on to the right parties, who called me in for questions on anything they found interesting. I’m pretty sure it still works that way. Makes it easier to process the results and keeps you from leaving out something you might think is unimportant, but it keeps smart guys from having to come up here every time we find someone new.”

Amplifier hopped to her feet and said, “I guess I should get over to Records, then. I can follow directions,” she added as I stood up also. “It’s not like I need an escort.”

“Relax,” I said, shushing her with my hands. “You actually do. I’m not sure how you got in the building this morning, but you’re not an official member of the Project yet, so you actually shouldn’t have been let in. If nothing else you need someone to go along and keep security off your back. Plus, it’s policy not to let talents who aren’t working for us be interviewed in any way, shape or form without a talented agent along with them. It’s kind of like having your lawyer along.”

“Oh.” She relented and let me lead her across the offices and towards the elevator that would take us up to the large, locked room where our interim Records department was being kept. “Why didn’t Helix ever mention that to me? He was always along for stuff before, but he never said why. You would think that would be kind of important for me to know.”

“Helix is our senior talent in this branch. Unlike most people, he does his job with almost no consideration for possible personal or political complications from doing it, so most people tend to stay out of his way and play nice. Unless they’re really high up the totem pole, he can cause them more grief than it’s really worth. He was probably counting on that reputation to keep you out of trouble.” I called the elevator and then gave her what I hope was a reassuring smile. “I’m going explain things or they’ll waste a bunch of time trying to track him down before they interview you.”

“You just called him a ‘senior talent’ again.” She folded her arms over her chest. “That’s something else he never mentioned.”

“Well, that’s because it’s not really, technically his job description.” I waved a hand absently. “You won’t find it on an org chart or anything. It just means he’s the talent in this branch with the most time in the field. It gives him a little more clout with management and proves he’s worth our respect, too. Most field agents last three to five years before they quit or have to be reassigned to other duties. Helix has been out there for eight, and that’s impressive in it’s own right. Senior talents know more about the way the job works and what kind of things to expect than anyone else, so the regional management, people we call Special Liaisons, tend to keep them near the regional office, held in reserve for major problems that require a heavy hitter. In the mean time, they do a lot of paperwork and other light duties.”

“Gee, thanks,” Amplifier said, looking a little miffed.

“Actually, training new talent is one of the major things that will get a senior talent called out of the office. We’re rare enough, and turnover is high enough, that recruiting and training new hands is one of our top priorities.” The elevator dinged and we stepped out into the Records office reception area, which was basically an over-glorified security foyer.

“So tell me something, Massif Man,” Amplifier asked. “If that’s true, what kind of disaster is going on that pulled him out of the office today? And why did you get left behind?”

“Just Al is fine, really,” I said.

“Right, and you can call me Amp like Jack and the rest of Helix’s team does.” She waited for me to say something and, when she got impatient, leaned against the elevator door and said, “So?”

Since it was clear she wasn’t going to move until she got an answer I caved. “Like I said, turnover in field work is high. He’s out of the office today because he’s attending a funeral.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Trial By Winter

Posted by natechen on August 19, 2013

When the pipes in the house froze they started to get really nervous. The snowstorm in the New Mexico had surprised them a little, more because it rattled the thin walls of the house like a ghost rattled chains than anything. The sense of high flying altitude had been unsettling too, but after a while they got used to it. But when they got thirsty and realized they couldn’t get any water out of the pipes, that’s when they started to get really nervous.

They had just made their third complete round of all the faucets in the house and come back to the kitchen sink to try and think up something to unfreeze it when they noticed someone was coming.

It wasn’t like they heard footsteps or anything. But there, on the edges of their minds, like a small weight, something pushed down on the edge of the cold. It was getting warmer in a small area. That usually happened when people wandered into an area they had frozen, usually attracted by the snow. But if they weren’t prepared for the cold, and in New Mexico who would be, they tended to leave pretty quickly. But this warm spot was making it’s way in to the house and towards the door.

The two girls exchanged a glance. “Do you think Frau Nagel is back?”

Her sister shook her head. “She can’t move the cold. She wouldn’t come here alone.”

“When she finds out that we made cold without her permission she’ll be mad enough it won’t matter,” the first girl said.

They shared a knowing nod and started to move towards the laundry room at the back of the house. They hadn’t gone far when the door to the house rattled. The girls stopped and exchanged another glance. Both Frau Nagel and Herr Schmidt had keys, had the only keys to the house. Anyone who didn’t have a key wasn’t supposed to come in.

Reluctantly, the sisters stepped back to the kitchen counter and set their water glasses there. They were still thirsty, how could they not be after so long in the cold? But robbers breaking into the house couldn’t be tolerated. Herr Schmidt had been quite clear on that. It was one of the few things he and Frau Nagel agreed on.

The girls had gone half way to the door when the sound of the lock clicking brought them up short. They didn’t have time for anything else before the door swung open. It wasn’t Frau Nagel, which made things a little easier.

Things like lock picks were beyond the two of them, so they simply assumed that the two men at the door had gotten a key from somewhere – most likely, Frau Nagel, as she had gone out to “look in on someone” before the cold. One of them was fairly short, only a few inches taller than they were. He was saying, “How often do you have to do that, anyway?”

The taller man tucked something into his jacket pocket and then shrugged. “Often enough that it’s better not to talk about it.”

Once again the sisters exchanged a dubious glance. If these were the people Frau Nagel had gone to look in on they were certainly a strange pair. The taller man was plain, except for his goatee. The shorter man had light brown hair and blue eyes, except for his height he looked every bit the good German, so that was something at least. But they were both speaking English. With a silent nod, one of the sisters stepped forward.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “May I ask why you are here?”

The shorter man jerked, as if surprised. On closer inspection, the girl decided he couldn’t be that much older than they were. He didn’t have lines on his face like Frau Nagel or Herr Schmidt did and, of course, he was not that tall. Surely he must be young then.

The plain man murmured, “Field work means being on your toes, Double Helix.” Then he knelt on one knee and rested his hands on the other and gave the two sisters an evaluating stare. “Now what do we have here?”

“Has Frau Nagel sent you for the eugenics test?” The same girl asked.

“Eugenics?” An eyebrow went up on that plain face. “I’m not sure. I’ve never met Frau Nagel, is she around here?”

“Oh.” The other sister shrank back behind the one who had been talking up until then. “Frau Nagel and Herr Schmidt are very insistent that we not talk to strangers.”

The shorter man rested his hands on his hips and nodded. “That’s really good advice, ladies.” The girls blushed slightly at being called ladies. “I don’t suppose Herr Schmidt is here either?”

There was a short pause for a whispered conference between them, then the girls nodded solemnly. The older sister swallowed once and said, “He’s in the back room. Do you want me to take you to him?”

“That’s all right, honey,” the plain man said. “Why don’t you just ask him to come out here? We can wait.”

“I will take you to him,” the older sister said firmly. Then she wavered a bit. “Unless one of you would rather remain here?”

The plain man stroked his goatee once and looked at her thoughtfully. He seemed to be wondering why she was suggesting that rather than seriously considering staying behind. “No,” he said finally. “I’m afraid that without my friend close by it would be a chilly here for me.”

“You can push the cold?” The younger sister asked. Both girls gave the shorter man an expectant look.

“Well…” The young man wavered for a second, and it was time for the two men to exchange a glance. But his older companion just gave a quick shrug, leaving him to figure out an answer on his own. The girls leaned forward a bit, eager to hear the answer. “I guess it’s something similar. Close enough that it doesn’t make much difference, probably.”

“Did Frau Nagel really not send you?” The older sister asked.

“Never met her,” he said. “I’d like to, though.”

It was a hint and the girls knew it. The sighed and started towards the back of the house. The younger hesitated as they reached the kitchen, and her sister stopped and gave her a gentle nudge towards a chair, saying, “Wait here.”

“We’re not getting you into trouble, are we?” The young man absently cracked his knuckles as they walked, although it seemed more like a nervous habit than anticipation.

“We are already in trouble,” she answered.

“Well, maybe when we talk to Herr Schmidt…” His voice trailed off when the girl opened the door.

Herr Schmidt stood there, his skin a pale blue, two fingers snapped of the brittle end of his hand. The girl looked back at the two men and said, “We are not supposed to move the cold unless someone is here to supervise us. My sister is worried that Herr Schmidt won’t recover. We’re keeping him cold until Frau Nagel can tell us what to do.”

The older man swallowed hard. “Uh. I don’t think that’s going to help any.”

“Agent Templeton,” the younger man said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Can I talk to you for a second? Outside?”

——–

“Double Helix, you’re in over your head.” Darryl Templeton folded his arms and gave the kid a hard look over. “Maybe you should head back to the van.”

“Aren’t you the one who just told those girls you’d freeze without me around?” The kid planted his hands on his hips, a posture he used whenever he was feeling stubborn. Darryl had only known Double Helix a few days, but he’d spent a lot of that time being stubborn. “I’m not going to wander off and let you freeze. And I’m worried about those girls.”

Darryl sighed. “And it’s not a bad thing that you are. But do you even have any idea what’s going on here?”

“My best guess is they’re related to Jack Frost.” Helix glanced over his shoulder, back at the house, where the two blonde girls were waiting, huddled in the doorway. “The names of their guardians and their German accents, along with their talking about eugenics, all make them-“

“Wait.” Darryl held up a hand. “You’ve lost me. Who’s Jack Frost? Outside of fairy tales, I mean.”

Helix looked back, seeming a bit surprised. “You’ve never heard of him? Do you know anything about Sergeant Wake or Operation Underworld?”

“I’d never heard of Sergeant Wake until I read about him in your file. I suppose this has something to do with the founding of Project Sumter during the Second World War?”

“Yeah.” Helix grew more animated. “He was assigned to-“

“Hold up.” He wasn’t glad to cut the kid off, it was the most positive expression he’d seen out of Helix since they met. The kid seemed to brood a lot, although that might not be surprising given all the scrutiny he was under at the moment. But rules were rules. “You probably shouldn’t tell me anything more about the Sergeant or his activities. I’m not cleared to know it and you’re not even a part of the Project, so you might get in trouble for even thinking about it.”

“Whatever.” Helix snorted and chewed his lip for a second. “This is bad stuff, Agent Templeton. These girls are so brainwashed and out of it they think keeping Schmidtsicles in the back room is a good idea. The kids need help-“

“Kids!” Darryl laughed. “They’re maybe twelve. That’s what, five years younger than you?”

“Not the point.” Helix fumed for a minute. “Look, they’re identical twins with talent and-“

“They both do?” Darryl’s jaw sagged a bit. “That’s… the file only has one codeword…”

“You’re worried about your paperwork at a time like this?”

“No, it’s just…” Templeton hesitated. “Identical twins, with the same talent? The eggheads will have a holdiay with this.”

“That’s part of what I’m worried about.” Helix folded his arms. “These girls have been a commodity all their lives. If my grandfather was right, the remains of the Nazi talent management program have been trying to get talents to pass from parent to child for nearly a hundred years. These kids are brainwashed and they plan to use them like they just won the National Dog Show. Breeding, or something. What they need is to learn to use their abilities from someone with a conscience.”

“Did you have someone in mind?”
“Clear Skies taught me the ropes.” Helix spread his hands. “I figure she’ll do for these two, as well. Cold spikers and heat sinkers are close enough in nature that at least she won’t get herself the liquid nitrogen treatment.” He gave a quick glance at the dusting of snow around them. “And Project Sumter won’t have to try and explain why winter has shown up in the middle of the desert.”

Templeton thought about that. Clear Skies may have been able to handle a young and rambunctious Double Helix, but she’d been younger then. He’d never met Helix’s grandmother, but he was willing to bet she wasn’t as spry as she used to be. And there was the whole disturbing question of what had happened to Herr Schmidt in the first place. At least there, the girl’s conditioning was likely to play in their favor.

Darryl walked back to the door of the house and motioned for the girls to come out and join them. After a moment’s hesitation, they did. He dropped into a crouch to get a little closer to their eye level, hoping to engender a little trust, and said, “Okay. My name is Darryl Templeton, and my friend here is Double Helix.”

The girls nodded solemnly but didn’t say anything, so he pressed on. “We’re going to take care of Herr Schmidt.” True, although ‘taking care’ would probably involve a plain coffin and quiet burial. “Then I’m going to go and try and find Frau Nagel. Double Helix is going to go with you somewhere, but where depends on your giving me a truthful answer to one question.”

“Of course. Anna and-“

“No names,” Helix said quickly. “Agent Templeton is going to give you new names, and we need you to use those as much as possible.”

“Oh.” The girls nodded sagely. “Yes, we always get new names when we move.”

That made Darryl feel a little queasy, but he did his best to ignore it. He pointed to the girl on the left and said, “From now on you’ll be Frostburn.” He turned to her sister and wavered. There had only been one new code name for a talent opened. “You can be…”

“Coldsnap,” Helix suggested.

“Coldsnap,” Darryl repeated. “Okay?”

“Those are funny names,” Coldsnap said, wrinkling her nose.

“You could be stuck with Double Helix,” Darryl pointed out. Helix grumbled something but Darryl ignored it. “Now, I need you two to tell me what happened to Herr Schmidt.”

There was a moment of embarrassed silence from the girls, then Coldsnap said, “It’s because of the eugenics.”

“Huh?” Helix’s question wasn’t the most intelligent, but it did kind of summarize Darryl’s reaction as well.

“You see, Frau Nagel and Herr Schmidt say we are some of the best Germans there are,” Frostburn said, sounding a little proud of the fact. “So we must be very careful not to look at men who aren’t also of good Aryan blood.”

“That was why, last year Frau Nagel told us very strictly not to go into a room with Herr Schmidt if she was not there,” Coldsnap added, sounding a bit apologetic. Darryl realized she was probably referring to the fact that, from what he’d seen, Herr Schmidt had dark, curly hair that didn’t really mesh with the Aryan ideal.

“So when Herr Schmidt came into her room,” Frostburn nudged her sister, “we were surprised. And…”

“It was an accident,” Coldsnap hastened to add. “We were surprised, and rushed out and he grabbed at me and…”

The girls trailed into silence and Darryl sighed. The worst part was, he couldn’t tell if this was just some kind of simple misunderstanding or if the man had actually been some kind of pervert or if it had been some kind of combination of the two. Probably the latter, with the idealized position the girls held in Schmidt’s twisted ideology not helping matters at all. “All right. If the two of you will turn down your cold and let the desert go back to normal, Double Helix will take the two of you to meet his grandmother.”

“Really?” Coldsnap seemed surprised. “Will that be all right?”

“Relax,” Helix said. “If there’s one thing Clear Skies has always wanted and never gotten, it’s more grandchildren. She’s only got me, and I think she always wanted a granddaughter or two.”

Darryl took his arm and led Helix off a few paces, then lowered his voice. “Look, kid, I know this is a big deal for you, but seriously, in my book you’re already qualified for field work. If you want to work for the Project I think it’s just a matter of finishing the paperwork. You’ve made it past the Senate Committee and kept a level head in the field. The deal isn’t going to fall apart if this doesn’t work out, so don’t put too much pressure on your grandma, okay?”

Helix just gave a wicked smile. “Agent Templeton, all I can say is you’ve never met Clear Skies.”

The girls flanked Helix as he led them back towards the waiting vans, which had to park half a block away to stay outside the worst of the girl’s unnatural cold. Of course, with the girl’s cold spikes gone, the temperature was rapidly climbing back up to desert norms. Frostburn was saying, “Your Grandmother must have very good German blood as well, if you could make it through the cold. It’s too bad Frau Nagel couldn’t give you the eugenics test. I think you’d have good, German children.”

Helix gave a nervous chuckle. “Listen girls, let’s not mention eugenics tests or children around Clear Skies, okay?”

“Why not?” Coldsnap asked.

“Because if there’s one thing Clear Skies wants and hopes to have in the near future, it’s great-grandkids.”

Darryl just shook his head and started back into the house. There was still a lot of clean-up to do, and the mysterious Frau Nagel to look for. One thing he was certain of, if Double Helix did come to work for Project Sumter, whoever his supervisor wound up being would have a lot more paperwork than normal to deal with. Not an appealing prospect, that. Not appealing at all.

Fiction Index

Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

Tag Archives: Project Sumter

Water Fall: Cracks in the Dam

World Building: A Project Sumter Timeline

Water Fall: High Resistance

Water Fall: Crumbling Foundations

Water Fall: Frogs in the Pot

Water Fall: Echoes and Avalanches

Water Fall: Loose Wires

Water Fall: Pointed Questions

Water Fall: Dark Desks

Trial By Winter

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: