Tag Archives: Project Sumter

#63 (Part Two)

Posted by natechen on

“Let me see if I have this straight.” Kevin studied the grim faced old man who sat facing him. “You think that I have some inexplicable ability to – what, make funhouse mirrors using only the power of my mind?”

The other man laughed and tapped the picture he was holding. “You disappear entirely from the camera a few seconds after this. Also,” he shuffled through his pictures as he spoke, “you make a spotlight out of nothing here. From the lighting changes we can see in the surroundings after you and Grappler leave the camera’s view it looks like you can also create a powerful flash of light to blind people. My guess is that you can cause light to bend around you, either creating a small bubble of invisibility or functioning as a lens to focus intensity. The ‘funhouse mirror’ effect is just the set up. Am I right?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Mr. Kirishima, during the American Civil War Lincoln found Corporal Sumter, a man who could pick up cannons and fling them, and sent him against Shenandoah, a man who could take a cannonball to the chest and not be moved. Since then talented men and women have served in every conflict in American history, and in every imaginable capacity.” The old man folded up the pictures and tucked them away. “You’re employer heard a German U-boat that was hiding in an ocean current with it’s engines stopped and sunk it by humming under his breath. You are on camera using your ability and we have no reason to doubt what we saw. This is very much not a joke or a flight of fancy. The only question here is whether you have any interest in using your greatest talents or whether you’re content to continue being an aspiring film editor.”

“Film editing is using my talents.” He gestured to his eyes. “Even my unusual ones, although explaining all that would be kind of technical.”

“And possibly involve concepts we aren’t really equipped to understand?” Asked one of the twins, raising an eyebrow.

“Actually, yeah now that you mention it I’m not sure it would really make sense to you…” Kevin absently pushed his glasses up his nose as he thought about it. “Fine. Let’s say I can change the laws of optics.” Kevin kicked back in the sofa and spread his arms in a careless gesture. “So what? I doubt it’s the kind of thing you can duplicate, and not even the Secret Service is secret enough to make someone disappear without raising far more questions than you’re willing to deal with, so you’re probably not here to put me in some kind of secret breeding program.”

“No,” the twins said in a fairly disturbing unison. The one on the left, who seemed the more vocal of the two, added, “Talents enjoy all the human rights of any other person in the United States. The government shuts down those kinds of programs, it doesn’t run them.”

“Right,” Kevin said, not quite keeping a note of skepticism from creeping in. “So, what do you want from me?”

“It’s like this.” the old man got up and shuffled over to the apartment’s small kichen and started rummaging around, looking more like a wise old janitor than ever. “Under normal circumstances this is the part of our discussion where I’d tell you that Uncle Sam looks very poorly on private citizens attempting to serve as law enforcement. Even people like you, with your unique talents, lack the resources and manpower to keep the peace and build criminal cases that can be prosecuted in a court of law. All you can do is scare or beat people into submission. No matter how badly they can twist the laws of physics, vigilantes are a hindrance to a lawful society, not a help.”

Kevin mulled that over for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I can kind of see that. So what part of me is an unusual circumstance? You said you’re giving me a chance to participate, so I assume that means as a Secret Service agent?”

“Yes.” Janitor man leaned back in his chair. “Normally, there would be a lot of paperwork and review involved in sorting out your employment. In fact, invthe past talented individuals were not hired directly by the Secret Service, the management of talents in public service has been left entirely in the hands of an agency we call Project Sumter.”

“I take it that’s no longer the case.”

“No.” The old man steepled his fingers. “A few months ago a person of interest in one of the Project’s cases indicated his intention to cause significant changes in the nation’s policy toward talented individuals and, in the process, implied that with it would come large scale changes in our systems of government.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow. “In other words, you’re looking for a superpowered terrorist?”

“Yes and no. The Secret Service is technically supposed to leave the finding and prosecuting to other agencies. Whether we actually do that with Open Circuit or hunt for him ourselves is something to be decided by people with a higher paygrade than mine.” He found the cabinet that held the cups and pulled one out. “However the Service is interested in building a team of talented people who will be available at all times to respond to situations where Circuit, or anyone else like him who may pop up, might become an issue. We plan on operating on a much different paradigm than Project Sumter.”

Kevin leaned forward a bit so he could get a better idea of what was going on in his kitchen. “I’ve never heard of these guys so I guess that they’re not a widely known agency. I don’t suppose that’s the part you’re planning on changing?”

“No, we’re the secret service for a reason,” he answered, filling one of the glasses with water. “The differences are more in operation and treatment of talents. For instance, the career path for you at Project Sumter would be extremely limited. We hope to eventually have talented individuals at our highest levels.”

“How very open-minded of you,” Kevin murmured.

“Thank you,” the old man said, working his way back into the cramped room where Kevin sat, the water sloshing dangerously as he went. “In addition, we plan to actively locate and recruit talents. Project Sumter knows of approximately four hundred people with unusual abilities currently in the United States. That’s commonly believed to be about five to ten percent of the number of actual talents in the U.S., although there’s really no basis for that figure. It could be much higher or much lower.”

He handed the glass of water to the twin on the left and lowered himself back into the chair with a grunt. “The Project is generally reactive. When some talent does something that draws attention, they swoop in, explain the facts of life, asks them politely to avoid spandex costumes and public displays of their abilities and tells them they can have a job if they really want it. They’re constantly understaffed and overworked and, while that’s made each and every one of their teams very efficient, they simply do not have the budget or manpower to actively seek out talents and recruit them or take steps to prevent large groups of people, talented or otherwise, from forming around troublesome people like Circuit. In the past, that was fine. Now it’s not.”

Actually, to Kevin it just sounded like the burden of police work. “This may sound somewhat naïve, but isn’t reacting to trouble the way law enforcement is supposed to work? You make it sound almost like the Secret Service is about to launch a pogrom or something.”

The old man smiled and said, “Frostburn?”

In response, the blonde with the glass of water gave a practiced flick of the wrist, sending the water leaping up into the air over the old man’s head. Her sister reached out with a snatching motion and there was a soft cracking noise. A second later she held a frozen stream of water in one hand. There was a moment of quiet, broken only by loose bits of ice clattering to the floor, as Kevin stared openmouthed. She tossed the chunk of ice to Kevin, who fumbled it but managed not to drop it. It was clearly a chunk of ice, already melting in the warmth of his hands.

“This is Agent Frostburn,” the old man said, gesturing to the twin still holding the glass. She stepped forward and held it out to Kevin, who absently set the chunk of ice back in the glass. She frowned at it for a second and then it slowly melted back to into a liquid. “Her sister here is Agent Coldsnap.”

He gestured to the tall, wiry man who still stood in one corner of the room. “Finally, we have Agent Hush.”

“Fitting name,” Kevin muttered. “Does he talk at all?”

“Yes, of course,” Hush said, startling Kevin into staring for a moment.

When it was clear Hush had nothing else to add, the old man continued. “You’re free to ask them anything you want about the way the Secret Service has treated them and what they think of our policies and direction and they’ll do their best to assure you that it’s not some kind of witch hunt. And if you don’t want to join, that’s fine. In fact, if you want, we’ll even withhold the evidence of your involvement with last night’s events from Project Sumter so that you can stay off the grid completely. After all, we want your help, not to arrest you.”

Kevin tapped his thumbs together as he thought it over. On the one hand, the Secret Service didn’t seem to have whole lot to gain from staging a ruse like this just to get him to come along without protest. They probably could have just gassed him with something and dragged him off if they were really determined to dissect him, or whatever secret government bioresearch programs did these days. On the other hand, he’d never really expected to do anything with his ability beyond learn all the tricks to it from his dad and possibly teach them to his children if that ever came up. The family secret had been first and foremost just that: a secret. Using it with or for anyone else seemed almost blasphemous.

“To be honest, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you,” Kevin admitted. “I don’t really have a whole lot of tricks up my sleeve, other than bending light so I won’t reflect it, and even that’s only so useful.”

“Well, normally that’s where I’d say that there are scientists and more experienced talents who have put a lot of work into understanding your talent and will help you use it more effectively. But,” the old man offered a hapless shrug. “In your case, there aren’t.”

Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Not a talent you thought worth investigating?”

“Not exactly. There are 62 different kinds of known talents in the Project Sumter records, and time and money has been spent researching all of them. The problem is, your talent is new.” He gave that a moment to sink in, then said, “You may not think it’s much, but with a little time and creativity, I’m sure we can work out plenty of ways for you to earn your keep. But more than that, having a totally new kind of talent at our disposal? One no one has seen before, capabilities totally unknown? That in and of itself is an advantage you don’t find every day. Circuit’s greatest gift is preparation. He’s always a step ahead of us – but he can’t be a step ahead of you, because he doesn’t know anything about you.”

“Huh.” So if he joined this almighty janitor and his cronies he’d have to be the trump card. Kevin wasn’t sure he liked the kind of pressure that brought with it, so he hurriedly changed the subject. “So the first order of business is what? Grab this Circuit person at his next robbery?”

“If only it were so simple. The Stillwater Sound robbery, for example. The woman you saw is known as Grappler. She’s strongly believed to be an associate of Open Circuit, you so-called superpowered terrorist.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of his folder and glanced over it. “Do you know what she stole from the Stillwater building?”

Kevin shook his head. “Last I heard, we hadn’t even been let back in to inventory things. It’s my day off, so I figured I’d get the blow by blow tomorrow.”

“Four different kinds of wireless microphones, three large speaker set-ups intended for car stereos, a master soundboard for an auditorium and enough wiring to tie Gulliver to the Empire State Building.”

Kevin snorted. “I assume you mean King Kong, since Gulliver would only be as big as you or me and we’d hardly need to tie him to a skyscraper. All that together would barely cost five grand, ten if it was the really good stuff. Why steal it? If he’s this crazy scary terrorist he has to have the funding to just buy it.”

“Good question,” the Coldsnap said, absently folding her arms over her stomach. “We believe Circuit does have a huge warchest at his disposal. We know he’s committed a number of major robberies over the course of his career.”

“Most likely he just doesn’t want to pay for anything he doesn’t have to,” her sister added.

Kevin blinked and shook his head. “I wish you two wouldn’t do that.”

“What?” They asked simultaneously.

“Finish each other’s thoughts. Speak in unison. Be in the same room at the same time.” They laughed but Kevin wasn’t really interested in them for the moment. He took his glasses off and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “So what’s all that for? Is he going to stage the next Woodstock or something?”

The old man shrugged. “We don’t know. That’s just it, Circuit’s clearly doing a lot of illegal things, but with no clearly discernable pattern so far. He’s too meticulous and rational to be flailing about at random but we don’t know what his endgame is and we don’t have the manpower to investigate all the leads. That’s why we need people like you.”

“Okay, old man, let’s put it all on the table.” Kevin leveled a finger at him. “You have a terrorist to find. The Secret Service specializes in protecting U.S. officials, visiting dignitaries and the U.S. Mint, so I’m guessing the fellow you’re after is a material threat to one or all of those. I have a unique ability that you want on your side. Not to sound crass, but what’s in it for me?”

“For starters you get to actually use your talent for something more constructive than staring at a woman’s chest,” Coldsnap said.

Kevin sighed. “You know, since Frostburn was the person who called me out on it and she hasn’t said anything about it since I would really think you should let it drop.”

“You can tell the difference?” The old man looked over his shoulder at the twins, who were also sharing a startled glance, then back at Kevin. “It took me three weeks to figure it out.”

“Why is that so surprising? You told me the Chief is used to test the accuracy of sonar. You say you realize my gift is optics. So why wouldn’t I have great vision to go along with the other abilities, just like the Chief has great hearing?” Kevin tapped the glasses in his pocket. “You never thought that I might not need these?”

“The possibility did occur,” the old man replied. “But I’m still not sure what gave them away.”

“Lots of things. Even twins have unique fingerprints, pore patterns and whatnot. But the biggest thing?” Kevin patted his shirt. “In a cheap suit the weave of the fabric is rarely matched up in any rational way, the cloth is just kind of laid out at random, meaning if you can pick out pattern of the threads in the fabric telling one suit from another is easy.”

“And you can see all that?” The old man asked.

“Afraid so.” Kevin shrugged and gave the twins a grin. “You might be surprised what you look like when all your blemishes are under a constant close-up. Part of the appeal of working with film is that the camera lens filters most of that out for me.”

The old man leaned forward, his expression shifting from the friendly janitor that he’d been all night to something much more serious. In a instant he had turned into someone grim and a little disturbing, like a weathered hermit that had crawled out of his hole and decided he did not like what he found. “Mr. Kirishima. We know, better than most people, exactly how ugly the world can be, and believe me it goes a lot deeper than a little make-up and some stage lights can fix. You have an ability that gives you a unique take on how to improve things. The Secret Service will give you a better chance to use those abilities in a good way than anyone else in the nation. Better than Project Sumter. Certainly better than Open Circuit.”

As quickly as it came the burst of emotion went and there was nothing but a janitor in a badly fitting suit again. He leaned back into the chair, looking suddenly tired. “I’m not saying that wanting to work in Hollywood is a bad thing. There are a handful of people who have gone there and used it as a platform to advocate for a lot of good things, or made money that was used well. But what are the odds that you will be one of those people? Because if you join the Secret Service I guarantee you’ll be on the front lines within a month. The chance to make a difference, and the opportunity to start doing it soon, is about the only thing we can offer you. The question is, do you want it or not?”

“I don’t get to know any more than that before I have to take the plunge, do I?” Kevin asked ruefully.

“Just that we’re the good guys,” the old man said. “If you didn’t want to be one, why go so far just to stop a minor break-in?”

To his surprise, Kevin realized the man had a point. It also gave him one last thing to find out. “Why are you doing this then?”

The grim expression was back in an instant. “To catch a murderer.”

There were a lot of things Kevin wasn’t sure of, but one thing he knew for certain was that this old man was telling the truth. He held out his hand to the janitor and said, “All right, old man. I’m in.”

“Welcome to Templeton’s Avengers, son,” he answered, shaking Kevin’s hand. “You can call me Darryl.” He shoved himself up and out of his chair and pulled Kevin up along with him. “Now, time’s awasting. Let’s get cracking, shall we?”

Fiction Index

#63 (Part One)

Posted by natechen on

The last thing that Kevin Kirishima expected to find when he answered his door the day after the Stillwater Sound robbery was a set of leggy blonde twins. Certainly not blondes in featureless black suits flashing IDs that said they were a part of the Secret Service.

Sure, when your place of work has been robbed you expect to be interviewed by the police a couple of times, more if you were the inside man, but one doesn’t really expect the Secret Service to show up when a small technology company in the Midwest gets robbed. To say that Kevin hadn’t been expecting the visit would have been an exercise in understatement.

The blonde on the left cleared her throat. “Mr. Kirishima?”

So apparently this wasn’t a case of showing up at the wrong door. “That’s me.”

“Eyes up here, please,” said her twin.

Kevin did as asked, not that he had been looking at anything inappropriate. “There’s no name on your ID,” he said to her before taking a quick glance at her sister’s. “Either of yours, actually. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who I’m talking to?”

“Not just yet.” That came from a man standing behind them. Where the twins were blonde and blue-eyed enough they could have stared in Alfred Hitchcock films, he looked more like he should be the wise old janitor in a workplace drama. His hair was still fairly thick, but it was pure white. Lines of gray ran through a beard that looked like a goatee might if you suddenly stopped shaving and let it grow wild for a month or two. He leaned heavily on a metal cane and all in all looked decidedly unlike a Secret Service agent. “Mr. Kirishima, we need to come in and ask you a few questions.”

Kevin removed his glasses and polished them thoughtfully. “Maybe I don’t feel like letting people who won’t tell me their names into my apartment. And if I’ve got my U.S. Constitution worked out right, you can’t force your way in without a warrant.”

The janitor reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to Kevin wordlessly. It was a warrant, of course. What else would it be? Kevin adjusted his glasses once to hide his annoyance and handed the paper back. “Fine. Looks legit. Might as well come in.”

Without waiting for further invitation the twins barged through the door and into the apartment, crossing over each other’s paths as they did so. They took such care to do it while he was watching that it was an obvious ploy to confuse him about who was who. Kevin glared at their backs for just a moment before starting to close the door behind their older companion. He didn’t even get it halfway shut before stopping short.

There was a fourth member of their little group, a tall, thin man with a mournful expression, who looked like he was either Polynesian or perhaps Native American. He gave no indication that he realized he’d almost had the door slammed in his face, made no acknowledgement of Kevin at all, just squeezed his narrow frame through the door and started a long, slow circuit around the apartment, not seeming to pay any attention to what he saw. Kevin snorted and closed the door after making sure there weren’t any other weirdos waiting in the wings. Then he followed his visitors into the apartment’s living room.

Since he wasn’t in any mood to be hospitable there was no point in apologizing for the mess. Besides, on a normal day he was quite proud of his living room. It hadn’t been easy to find and collect all that video recording gear, and some of the older stuff was quite valuable. But with six different video cameras, three TVs, a wall of playback equipment and a nest of wires to connect it all, there wasn’t as much room for living as most people might expect to find in a “living” room.

But Kevin wasn’t most people and he had a feeling his guests weren’t either. The janitor had settled into the only chair, which just left the sofa. The twins had taken up flanking positions behind their boss, the old man, who was clearly in charge, and the quiet man was still blankly staring at the junk in the room, so Kevin took the seat on the sofa where he’d been sitting before company arrived, grabbed the remote and switched off the TVs.

“I’m sorry if we interrupted you,” the old man said in a pleasant tone. “But you understand we wanted to talk to you right away.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kevin replied. “If I knew what you wanted to talk to me about.”

“A breaking and entering at the place you work,” one of the twins said. “Stillwater Sound.”

“Really.” He leaned back and settled into the sofa. For once he wished the battered furniture gave a little more support. Normally it was comfortable but now he was sinking so far he felt small. With an irate grunt he shoved himself forward to the edge of the couch and said, “I thought the police had that pretty well in hand last night. Why the sudden interest from the Secret Service?”

“We’ll get to that, depending on how things go,” the old man said. “How long have you worked for Stillwater Sound?”

“About three years,” Kevin said. “I started as an intern after college and I’ve been there part time ever since. I just made full time last summer.”

“What brought you to a sound studio?” That one of the twins. She casually waved her hand at his collection of video equipment. “This doesn’t look like recording gear.”

“It’s not. I studied communications but my real interest was production for TV and film. I did an internship with one of the local TV stations. When I graduated,” Kevin waved a hand in the general direction of his diploma, which sat on a shelf beside an old Super 8 video camera, “I went to a job fair where I met the Chief – that’s Mr. Griswald, the owner of Stillwater Sound.”

“And he hired you?” She asked. “Why does a sound studio need a TV technician?”

“Because film is an audiovisual medium,” Kevin said. “Adding a soundtrack, voice-overs, remastering sound, removing background noise, all that stuff is a part of film and TV. And when you’re working with a small budget or amateur stuff video and sound work tends to get done with one piece of software, instead of doing video editing with one program and audio editing with another. The Chief thought it would be nice if we could get a piece of that pie and help out amateur movie makers at the same time, so about six years ago he started recruiting people that knew that end of the business.” He shrugged. “It’s not Hollywood, but it’s a place to start.”

“According to the police report, the break-in at Stillwater was just after seven at night.” The old man flipped open a folder he’d brought with him, turning pages until he found the one he wanted. “Are you usually in the buildings that late at night?”

“Only the last couple of days.” Kevin let himself relax fractionally. The questions so far seemed fairly mundane. The whole set up was really weird, what with the Secret Service agents and the badges with no names, but even if these were just really ambitious reporters he couldn’t see any harm in answering their questions. “If you work for Stillwater you get a major discount on using the studio. A friend, Susan, and her husband have a little New Ageish kind of a band. They do recordings, I help out.”

The janitor made a quick note. “Tell me what you saw when you came out of the studio.”

“You been out to the studio yet?” The old man shook his head. Kevin held his hands up, his palms at a right angle to one another. “It’s like this. The parking lot is a square and the old building is down here.” Kevin wiggled the fingers of one hand. “The new building is over here.” He sketched a large rectangle by the opposite corner of the parking lot. Then he indicated the edges of the lot between the two buildings. “All this is some sort of high tech graywater treatment ponds. Four or five of ’em, to be exact. It’s all very eco-friendly stuff, Federally subsidized, we have it to help pay for the new building. And the Chief’s son is a big believer.”

“Sounds smelly,” one of the twins said.

“There’s something to deal with that, too, so you don’t really notice it except on really warm days.” Kevin dismissed the issue with a wave of his hand. “Anyways, I definitely wasn’t smelling anything, just looking around, you know? And I see someone walking through them.”

The white haired man scribbled a note. “That’s not normal?”

“No, it’s not. The only people I’ve ever seen out there are the people who make sure the whole mess isn’t about to wash away or something. They come out about once every three months, poke around the banks for an hour or so and leave. They’re always in teams, and they never come at night.”

“So this person was alone?”

“Yeah.” Kevin tapped his fingers on his chin for a minute. “Nice looking lady. African-American, about five foot six, dressed in gray coveralls. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman in the group before now that I think about it. That’s kind of strange.”

“And you were sure she wasn’t an employee?”

“Stillwater’s big for a sound studio in Indiana, but it’s still a small company. I know everyone working there now and most of the time we hear about new hires before they do.” Kevin shook his head. “She had no business being there after dark and we both knew it. And when you’ve got a stranger with a backpack prowling around buildings with hundreds of thousands of dollars of sound equipment in them you get suspicious fast.”

“According to the preliminary police report you were the one who called security,” the blonde on the left said. “What prompted that if she was just standing around outside the building?”

“Maybe she caught you staring at her chest and started to get mad?” Her sister asked, with a quirk of the eyebrow and the hint of a smile.

Kevin wavered a minute. A hard look confirmed that the one who was asking wasn’t the same one who’d called him out at the door. It was another mind game, not legit banter. Absently he pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged. “She was a bit far away for that. Anyway, I have the security station at the gatehouse on speed dial and I let them know.”

“How many employees have the Stillwater security stations on speed dial?” The old man asked.

“How many Secret Service agents have no name on their IDs?” Kevin countered, folding his arms across his chest. “Look, I’ve answered your questions with pretty much the same answers I gave the cops-”

“You called security at 7:43 PM,” the old man said, ignoring him. “The initial break-in was at 7:09 PM, and the suspect left the building at 7:35 PM. There’s an eight minute window there that’s unaccounted for.”

“-and I think that’s who you need to talk to.” Two could play the ignorance is bliss card. Kevin went to reach for his wallet and jumped when the thin man materialized beside the couch and grabbed his arm. Kevin jerked away instinctively, startled by his sudden appearance. He’d been so quiet Kevin had almost forgotten there was a fifth person in the room. Best to try and calm things down. “I’m just going to give your boss the name of the detective I talked too after the robbery. I think you’d best come back with them if you want any more questions answered. This whole thing smells fishy and I don’t want to say anything I shouldn’t.”

The old man motioned for his gaunt friend to step back and he did. “Mr. Kirishima, do you know why the owner of Stillwater Sound is called Chief?”

“Well…” That was a matter of public record, so he didn’t see how answering could hurt. “He was in the Navy. Served in the Battle of the Atlantic and later Korea, I think.”

“That’s right. He was a Chief Sonarman when he retired.” The old man leaned back in his chair. “That doesn’t mean the Chief didn’t work for the U.S. Government anymore, though. There’s some jobs you don’t give up that easily. Chief Stillwater just changed job description. He doesn’t wear a uniform anymore and his assignments have more to do with research and development than intelligence gathering, but it’s important work and his talents make him a valuable asset. You might say he’s really made waves.”

Kevin frowned and absently started polishing his glasses again, giving the old man an appraising look. “Are you trying to tell me that Mr. Griswald is using Stillwater Sound as some kind of secret government testing site buried under one of the buildings?”

“Of course not,” the left twin said.

“It’s in the water pits,” her sister added. “He was a sonarman, not a nuclear physicist. He tests sonar equipment under something resembling real world conditions.”

“He what?” Kevin shook his head in bewilderment. “Why would anyone bother bringing sonar equipment this far inland when they could do those kinds of tests just as easily from a fishing trawler or something?” But even as he said it, his mind flashed back to the work crews he’d seen around the ponds every month. Not only were they all men as far as he could recall, but they came with buzz cuts and very good posture. Not typical for a company with a big focus on green technology.

“What’s more important,” the lead agent added, “is that, instead of just being a place to store wastewater, the ponds are actually a national security asset and are monitored as such. I want you to take a look at something.” He fished a set of papers out of one pocket and unfolded them. On the top was a grainy still taken from a security camera feed showing a woman approaching one of the wastewater ponds. From the angle Kevin decided it was probably mounted on one of the light poles in the parking lot. The quality wasn’t good and it had clearly been taken at night. Kevin felt his gut sink. “Is this the woman you saw last night?”

Kevin licked his lips and shrugged. “Hard to tell, as dark as it is.”

“Well, I suppose that’s entirely understandable. How about this one?” In the next photo the woman looked to be running towards the camera, the perspective suggesting it was mounted on the building. A bright beam of light illuminated her from the direction of the parking lot, which looked oddly dark.

Kevin grimaced. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“I see. And this one?” Now the woman scrambled frantically up the side of the new Stillwater building, somehow clinging to the rough concrete with her bare hands and feet.

“Now that looks a lot like someone’s idea of a bad joke.” Kevin shrugged. “I’m not an expert on Photoshop, but I’d guess it’s probably some kind of splice with a movie?”

The janitor raised an eyebrow. “You deny seeing anything like this last night?”

“Of course not. I like to shoot movies, not live in them.”

“I see. What about this?” The next picture wasn’t of a woman at all. It was Kevin, or rather Kevin as he might appear if he was looking at himself in a fun house mirror. His legs seemed to twist, his waist curved at an impossible angle and from the shoulders up he seemed to narrow until his head was half it’s normal size. It looked like he held some kind of portable floodlight in one hand, or at least a beam of light washed out most of the rest of the picture. Like the first, it was probably taken from a camera in the parking lot, although it was likely a different one.

Kevin tried to hide a wince, but the subtle change in expression on the faces of the agents facing him told him he hadn’t been successful. “I don’t suppose you’ll believe that’s another prank?”

“No, Mr. Kirishima, I’m afraid I won’t.” The old man shuffled away his photos and folded his hands in his lap. “Truth be told, I don’t blame you for hoping to convince me that you’ve been the victim of some sort of prank. But the photographic evidence,” he patted the folder, “along with the unusual way Stillwater Sound was robbed and the testimony and unique nature of your employer all point to one conclusion: That it is far more likely that your are an individual of unique talent. And if that is the case, then we have more to discuss than just your involvement in the robbery of a small recording studio and sound equipment dealer in the Midwest. But the fact is, there is more here than just a simple robbery. Even the Secret Service has it’s hands tied by competing jurisdictions, and there’s only so much we can do in this case. Aren’t you the least bit curious about why someone with the peculiar abilities like the Grappler would bother to rob Stillwater Sound?”

Kevin frowned. “Wait. It wasn’t for the sonar gear in the pond?”

“That may have just been a bonus.” The mighty janitor spread his hands. “Of course, a mere civilian couldn’t be briefed on any of the issues involved at all. But under the rules laid out by Project Sumter, people with talents like, say, Chief Stillwater, are entitled to know certain things before they plunge down the rabbit hole. Other agencies, like the Secret Service, aren’t allowed to go prowling around looking for new talents on their own, but oddly enough the Project’s rules don’t forbid us from briefing newly discovered talents we discover when the Project isn’t around. So you have a choice, Mr. Kirishima. Are you a person with unusual gifts, who’s interested in hearing what exactly happened last night, and why, or are you just a normal person who’s content to go back to work tomorrow and never know what happened? Which is it going to be?”

Fiction Index

Heat Wave: Liquid Fire

Posted by natechen on

Helix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And how does Open Circuit come into that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Warned her of what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter
Fiction Index

Project Sumter

Posted by natechen on

Starting on next Monday, October 1st, I’ll be posting weekly installments of the novel I’ve been working on for the past four or five months, so I suppose it’s time I talked about it some. So let’s start at the beginning: It’s called Heat Wave, and it’s the first of the Project Sumter files.

So what is Project Sumter?

Put simply, its the federal government’s talent management division. No, it’s not an agency for wannabe singers, actors and songwriters. It’s the semi-secret governmental organization dedicated to monitoring and enforcing the law among people with what we would call superpowers.

Its been a long time since the Project was inaugurated, longer still since the very first government sanctioned talent took to the field at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln. But in all that time its been a firm policy of the government to never coerce the talented people it knows of and to do their best to afford them all rights of normal citizens.

Unfortunately, sometimes Project Sumter finds itself confronted with people who are determined to flout the laws of the land using their talents as enablers. And when that happens, the Project’s own talented agents and their highly trained supervisors and support teams step to the forefront. This is their story.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of changes that an ambitious man with a lot of talent of the normal and unusual kinds might want to effect in modern society. A man with the vision, skills and organization to make things happen could go a long way. People might even rally behind him, rise up and try to effect their changes through force. Maybe because they think it’s their right, maybe because they think it’s the only way. This is their story as well.

Project Sumter, like most law enforcement agencies, has a very simple mission statement: Serve and Protect.

Revolution has a very simple objective as well: Change, whatever the cost.

Heat Wave is not the story of their struggle. No, that might be as inevitable as the Civil War that spawned Project Sumter, but the time for that struggle is not yet.

Before every conflict a breaking point is reached. Sometimes its the last straw on the camel’s back. Sometimes its the steady dripping of water that finally drives you insane. Sometimes it’s the slow charing that finally burns through a cord or burns down a fuse.

And then the heat is on for real.