Thunder Clap: Bad Company, Stranger Characters

Posted by natechen on September 22, 2014

The straps holding him into his wheelchair were very sturdy. Nothing short of a chainsaw would be getting him out of the chair until they were removed. The wheels were firmly locked in place by the clamps in the floor of the van. Matthew Sykes leaned back in the chair and did his best to get comfortable. At the very least, that was one thing wheelchairs had in their favor – they were intended for people who spent a long time in them.

The stress ate at him for a while, inevitable considering his circumstances, but mostly he worried about his wife and whether she’d met her guards or made her flight rather than his immediate circumstances. He’d never been the worrying kind, business wasn’t kind to those who couldn’t have confidence in their decisions, but the situation he was in was unique, and not directly a result of his own decisions. But even with all the stress he was under, certain facts, like being woken up very early, were inescapable. As the van roared to life and started towards it’s destination a gentle sloshing sound from one side of the van slowly lulled him to sleep.

Sykes woke to the sound of a low flying jet coming in through the back door, currently open to allow the big man from earlier and a new friend of his to wrestle a second wheelchair into the back of the van. It took only a few minutes for them to clamp it in place and tumble out the back. They were silent during the whole process and Sykes saw little point in talking to them.

And the van’s new occupant was doing plenty of talking for everyone, laughing and joking about the wild living of young people these days. He sounded almost like a stereotype of a ninety year old man, his voice gone a little high and wheezy, and he was speaking with an odd rhythm that suggested he was a little short of breath. Sure enough, as the men who’d brought him in moved away Sykes could see that there was an oxygen tank attached to his chair and tubes running up to his nose.

The man’s obvious infirmities didn’t seem to have handicapped his voice or good humor, though. Once he was in place and the back door was closed again, leaving them alone in the relative darkness of the early hour, the old man turned to Sykes, a glint on his glasses the only sign of the motion, and said, “Well, son, what brings you here this time of night? Most respectable men are still asleep right now.”

“I couldn’t really say,” Sykes said, rubbing absently at gritty eyes. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Oh, six thirty, I would guess,” was the answer. “I’m surprised you don’t know. Didn’t you fly in?”

“No,” Sykes answered quickly and decisively. After a moment’s uncomfortable silence he added, “I tried learning to fly once. I don’t trust myself on planes now.”

The old man gave a huff that might have been a laugh. “That why a man your age is in that chair? It doesn’t suit to run from the things that weakened you.”

“I’ve lost four parents in this life, to suicide, drugs and airplanes.” Sykes shrugged, more uncomfortable by the moment. “It’s a short enough list of things to avoid, and not likely to get any longer.”

Another awkward silence. “Sorry, son. That was rude of me. I think I’m loosing my touch.”

“No worries,” Sykes said, the ghost of a smile on his face. “I’ve made my peace long ago.”

“Still, it begs the question,” the old man said. “If you didn’t fly in, and I didn’t, why are we at an airport?”

“I don’t think we’re going to learn that any time soon.” Sykes looked his companion over again. It was hard to tell in the light but he really didn’t look like anything other than an infirm old man. “Speaking of obvious questions, what brings you here?”

The gleam of the old man’s smile was back. “Me? Old Stillwater just couldn’t pass on the chance to get back in the field. If I don’t keep my hand in the game I’ll keel over and die. What about you?”

“I suppose…” Sykes trailed off and tried his best to sort through the possible answers to that question. “I suppose I’m paying for my sins.”

“As good a reason as any. Poor choices or poor friends?”

Sykes chuckled ruefully. “You can’t have the second without the first. But in my case, I think it was mostly bad friends.”

“Poor choices are easier to straighten out, poor friends tend to fight back,” Stillwater said. “My sympathies. Had a few friends that didn’t get on with reason in my time.”

“Just a few? I’d think a man your age would have had more friends than that.”

The old man laughed. “Okay, more than a few. But only a few that really went off course. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems – it isn’t always.”

“No,” Sykes said softly. “I’m pretty sure it’s bad.”

“You’ll just have to be better then.”

Sykes narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the old man’s expression in the dim light of the van. He didn’t sound insincere. “What do you expect me to do under these circumstances?”

“For starters you can get your mind on the problem.” Not insincere but definitely annoyed. “I know you got a life outside this van, but I served on ships full of guys that had lives outside the hull. When you spend your whole shift on the sonar, listening for the Kraut U-boats coming for you, there’s nothing you can do but listen and think. So you learn to plan ahead and good. Who do you talk to as soon as you hear the screws in the water? How fast can helm be notified of incoming torpedoes? What do you need to do to light a fire under whatever needs burning?”

“You must have been a real terror to your ratings.” Sykes shook his head. “Still, you do have a point. What-”

The back doors of the van swung open again, cutting off his next question. “Alright, it looks like everyone is here.” There were two new people at the back of the van. The speaker had a smooth, cultured voice and the clean, elegant cut of his suit could be made out beyond the harsh glare of parking lot lighting behind him. “I was caught a bit unawares and I do apologize. However, now that everyone is here I suppose we can set things in motion.”

He turned to the other new person, a tall, African-American woman who looked like she’d fit better in a Greek myth than modern America. Her long, tan vest covered a shapely figure from shoulder to knee and her charcoal clothes were accessorized with paracord and a host of indistinct but dangerous looking equipment. The man handed her a slip of paper and said, “If you’d care to get behind the wheel, this is a list of your destinations. I’ve already spoken to the rest, they know where they’re going and where to get off. Your instructions are on the next page. Don’t read them until you reach your final destination.”

The woman took the papers hesitantly. “What about you?”

“As always, I have my own business to attend to. You take care of yours and this will all end as planned.” The well dressed man clapped his hands together and said, “I suppose we should get on our way. Good luck and stay out of trouble. At least, until it’s time for you to cause it. Then you can do as you like.”

The two men from earlier climbed into the back of the van and pulled the doors closed behind them, then found seats on some crates strapped into the back corners of the van. There were no real chairs, although the brief illumination while the doors were open was enough to see that something had been bolted along one side of the van at some point. A half a dozen tanks about the size of fire extinguishers strapped down along the opposite side was the source of the sloshing sound heard when the vehicle was in motion.

While one of the two men was the man who’d come to Sykes’ door earlier in the day, the other was a strange, nondescript man with brown hair and an athletic build. Sykes frowned. “Who are you?”

Stillwater answered. “That’s my tactical agent. It’s been a while since I did field work, but when talents came out of the woodwork a while ago Sumter thought I should have someone to keep me out of trouble.”

“You mean this doesn’t qualify?” Sykes asked, incredulous.

“This is the definition of trouble,” the brown haired man answered. “But it’s also the biggest chance a guy like me gets. Chief Stillwater wasn’t the only one who couldn’t pass on the chance.” He broke into a grin. “We’re on our way to catch the biggest criminal Project Sumter has ever let get away.”

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Thunder Clap: Shocking Claims

Posted by natechen on September 15, 2014

Helix

“Your city?” Not for the first time Circuit managed to shock me with his audacity. “Does the city know that? I think they might have other ideas.”

Circuit laughed. “Cities have never had any real choice in who owns them, Helix. You know that. They are in the hands of those who can manipulate them properly, and in this day and age that’s me. Consider this a courtesy call.”

I looked down at the line of unconscious people at my feet, then back up at the camera. “What courtesy exactly am I supposed to be expecting? Because so far it’s not looking inviting.”

“Yes, I am glad you are the one who found them. It saves the trouble of having some hapless passerby try and run you down – or worse, having the police do it.” He steepled his fingers and cocked his hat slightly so I could make out a single eye gleaming at me from underneath the brim. “This is my notice to you that this city is now under my protection.”

“Your… protection?” I glanced at Teresa, hoping she had some better idea what was going on. She just gave me a blank looked, followed by a shrug that suggested that I was the expert on Circuit’s thought processes and I should figure it out for myself. So I said, “How does knocking out the city’s power grid count as protection, again? Or is this a kind of racketeering scheme? The city pays you or no power?”

“Nonsense. I’m talking about the kind of protection you can’t provide.” Circuit spun around to face the windows and gestured out the window at the city below him. “Do you really think anyone’s ever done an adequate job of protecting all that? The police? The FBI? You? Of course not.”

I did my best to keep a smile from my face. “And your knocking out half of the city’s power grid-”

“Three quarters,” he corrected.

“Three quarters,” I said, the humor of the situation quickly draining away. “Your robbing three quarters of the city of it’s power is protecting the people of the city how?”

“Robbing?” Circuit turned his chair just enough to glance back at me. His face wasn’t visible but his tone told me it was his turn to be amused. “No one is entitled to electricity. It’s a convenience only, and one I’m sure people will willingly give up for safety, just like they’ve put up with airport security and End User License Agreements. So long as their precious lives aren’t disrupted, what do they care if they really have freedom? I’m building a world of safety – the world they want. What does it matter if the lights come on when they flip a switch?”

“So who does make that decision? You?” I shook my head sadly. “You’re unbelievably smart, Circuit. I’ll give you that. But even with your talent for reading electric potentials there’s no way you can monitor an entire city’s worth of electricity use – and that’s before we even talk about trying to protect the city.” I put enough emphasis on the word protect to make it clear I thought he was doing the opposite.

“And yet right here in front of you is the evidence to the contrary. It’s just a small start, I’ll admit. But if you were to take the time to look around,” another gesture at the cityscape, ” I’m sure you’d find this little achievement repeated over and over again. All it takes is enough successes like this and soon, surprisingly soon, you’ve created a city where no one would dare step out of line.”

I snorted. “That’s reassuring. So what’s the courtesy call about, again?”

Circuit spun and leaned forward to loom over the camera. Although I got a clearer look at his face it still wasn’t enough to make out much of it. Enough to give me a strange feeling in my gut, though. I was having a lot of those lately. “The call is to warn you to leave well enough alone, Helix. This is now my city, under my protection. I won’t tolerate you or anyone else trying to do my job here, anymore than you tolerate vigilantes in your territory, interfering with your job. It’s time for you to step down and let a real expert do the job.”

“You realize that, even though you do have a lot of experience working with criminals, you still kind of count as one yourself?” I folded my arms and added as an afterthought, “Or a vigilante. Or both.”

“History will prove which of our opinions is right, I think.” Circuit leaned back in his chair and pointed a finger at me. “I’ve given you fair warning. Leave or face the consequences.”

He twitched his finger once, like he was pushing an invisible button, and the TV switched off. I glanced back at Teresa and we quickly stepped off to one side of the display window, huddling up with Gearshift, who was quickly tapping the screen of his smartphone.

“How much did you record?” I asked in a soft voice, sure that Circuit could still eavesdrop on us even if we couldn’t see him.

“I didn’t get the first ten seconds or so,” he said. “And I had a bad angle so I don’t know how much of the visuals are going to be of use. But we’ve got all the audio.”

I gave him a slap on the back. “Well done. Lets-”

The screen of his phone suddenly went dark. We all stared at it for a few seconds then Teresa dug her phone out of a pocket as I felt a headache coming on. A second later Teresa said, “I think we’ve been EMPed.”

Gearshift cursed viciously. From the look of the case and the cleanliness of the screen I was guessing it was a new phone. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Most insurance policies consider destruction by malicious terrorist adequate reason for replacement.”

“I guess.” He stared at it for a second then shook his head. “Fastest I’ve ever had one of these turn into a paperweight, though.”

“Hang on to it,” Teresa said, matching actions to words by putting her own back in her pocket. “There’s a chance Forensics can recover some of the data on it.”

I pulled a hand across my face, trying to wipe away all the exhaustion I was suddenly feeling. When I could see again my eye fell on the unconscious people at the base of the window. “Okay, let’s head back to the venue. We need to let everyone else know the score and figure out what we’re doing next. And find someone to grab these poor saps off the street before Circuit remembers to come back and grab them.”

The three of us set off across the city at a fast pace, doing our best to remain alert. I’ll confess to being more than a little distracted, though, with my brain spending a lot more time trying to work out Circuit’s angle this time around than paying attention to what was going on around me. Teresa slowed down a step or two for some reason, I have to confess I’m not sure why, and I nearly ran into her. She glanced back at me and frowned. “You’re making your ‘Circuit is bugging me again’ face, Helix.”

“I don’t have a ‘Circuit is bugging me again’ face. That would be a stupid face to have.” I looked at Gearshift. “I don’t have make that kind of face, do I?”

He held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. This is our first time working together, am I right?”

That was enough for me. “See? The man says I don’t have that kind of face. He would have noticed it by now.”

“He is noticing it, right now,” Teresa said with a laugh. “He’s just scared to admit it.”

“Scared? Of what?”

She shook her head. “Forget it, you’re just trying to change the subject now. Seriously, Helix. What’s wrong? Aside from the obvious.”

I cracked my knuckles absently, trying to figure out what to say next since she’d cut off the easy comeback. “It just doesn’t sit right.”

“What doesn’t?” Gearshift asked.

“Him calling me out.”

“But he did that during the Enchanter business back when I first joined,” Teresa pointed out. “That was another case of him trying to do our job to make a point.”

That was exactly what was bothering me. He had called us out before taking a direct hand in the Enchanter case. “Maybe. But last time the point of contacting us was to give us the chance to work together. Why call us now? He can’t possibly expect us to back off.”

“He does have a weird idea of fair play,” she answered. “Maybe he just feels he has to, in order for things to be done right.”

“Could be. But I’d have expected him to do it before hand, to make his eventual move that much more impressive when it looked like we were powerless to stop it.” I hesitated, a new thought occurring to me. “That’s what’s wrong.”

Teresa and Gearshift both gave me quizzical looks. “What?”

“Wheels within wheels.” I could tell they didn’t get it but instead of explaining I picked up my pace. “Come on. We need to get those looters picked up and back to the venue. I need to talk to an analyst…”

——–

Izzy

“Why does she have a tire iron?” Helix stormed through the backstage area, voice booming much louder than you’d expect for such a small guy. He was talking about Jane, who for some reason still had the tire iron she’d picked up at the shopping plaza in one hand.

“We had a little trouble, Helix,” Al said, getting up from the small cluster of people sitting by the back wall of the venue. “There-”

“No tire irons,” Helix said. “Loose it somewhere.”

Jane and I exchanged a bewildered look but while we were at it Amp gently slipped the tire iron from Jane’s hand and passed it to Clark Movsessian, her drummer, and Clark made it disappear almost like it was magic. Al watched the whole thing impassively and, once the show was over, said, “Done. Want to share what the big issue is?”

“Where are Cheryl and Samson?” Helix asked instead.

“Cheryl was missing when we got back,” Amp answered. “Samson went to try and find her. I heard them talking with the manager a few minutes ago. I think it has something to do with the generator not being enough to keep the full air conditioning system going – you of all people must have noticed how hot it’s getting out there. People in the crowd are going to start passing out soon.”

“Great. Just what I need today.” Helix slumped down onto one of the boxes we’d been using as seats and leaned his head against the wall. “Terrorists are taking over the city while we’re waving tire irons around and letting people pass out.”

Al sat down on the floor next to Helix and said, “So you’ve confirmed the outage was caused maliciously.”

Helix nodded. “I just talked to someone claiming to be Open Circuit, and in complete control of the city. He’s got a nice little view to go with it. He not only spotted us moving around but managed to EMP bomb us and he’s taking out looters and leaving them on doorsteps like he thinks he’s a stork or something.”

“Circuit’s back and he’s worried about a tire iron?” Jane whispered to me.

“Little things. He needs to have the little things because sometimes that’s all he can get,” I whispered back, echoing something my mother had said to me many times.

“Why do you say ‘claiming to be’?” Gearshift asked. “I didn’t see anything to make me think it’s not him.”

Clark shook his head. “If Circuit’s existence was still classified it I’d say that’s enough to assume it’s him. But there were copycats for months after we cracked his last operation. There’s a chance whoever you saw is another one, although if his is he’s doing a lot better job of it than anyone else who tried. Circuit plays big and wiping out the city’s power grid is the closest anyone’s ever come to his level of ambition.”

“Not wiped out – taken over,” Helix clarified. He went over the whole conversation his group had just had with Circuit for us. “And there’s another thing you haven’t considered, Movsessian,” he said when he was done.

“What’s that?” Clark was a field analyst and considering things was his job. He looked a little miffed at the idea that he wasn’t doing it.

“He could be a decoy Circuit set up to distract us. Circuit never directly does whatever it is he wants to do, he’s always juggling multiple things at once – this could just be another gambit to distract us while he does something else. Whatever that is.” Helix pushed away from the wall and pressed his palms into his eye sockets for a moment, then shook his head. “No point tying ourselves into knots over it, though. Amp, I want to talk to the manager. Can you ask him to come over here with Cheryl and Samson?”

She nodded and backed a step or two away from the group, lips moving but not making any sound we could hear. Helix slapped his hands to his knees and gripped them like he was looking for something stable to hang on to. “We’ve got work to do, ladies and gentlemen. For starters, Circuit has a headquarters in the city. Someplace high up, with a view of the lakefront and no similarly high buildings between it and the lake. Teresa, Gearshift, did either of you-”

“Waltham Towers.” Clark said it with such certainty that Helix stopped midrant for a full two seconds.

“I agree,” Lincoln said, piping up from his spot by the wall. “Waltham Towers is the skyscraper closest to the lake. I’ve been in most of the big ones one time or another and you can see the Towers from all of them, most of them have at least one other big building visible from them.”

Helix scratched his head. “Well that’s kind of useful, except we can’t be sure the image we saw was taken from the public observation area of the building, or that it didn’t come from one of the big buildings that didn’t have an observation deck or some such.”

“No. It’s definitely Waltham Towers.” Clark smiled. “You know how the property changed hands about four years ago because the last owners were in trouble financially?”

“How about I take your word for it and you get to the point?” Helix suggested.

“Three guesses who was middleman and did the accompanying remodeling.”

Helix’s eyes narrowed. “Keller Real Estate and Development.” It wasn’t a question. “That must have been a big deal for them.”

“The biggest they ever closed,” Clark confirmed. “It’s not one of the properties we had a special interest in from earlier investigations but when Circuit disappeared we pulled a complete list of everything Keller Realty has worked on and that was at the top of the list.”

“Okay, that is a pretty strong case for that being the center of operations. And if it’s true, it’s another reason to suspect Circuit and not someone else.” Helix looked at Amplifier. “Are they coming?”

“They’ll be here in a minute.”

“Good. That leaves three little things to take care of. Or one big thing, depending on how you look at it.” Helix pulled himself to his feet and dusted his hands off. “Gearshift. Jane. Isabella. You three aren’t cleared for field work yet but we need people on the ground right now and you’re close enough that I’m willing to give you a pass. But I’m not forcing you – if you want to cut out now it won’t look bad on your record. So. Field promotion to active field agent or bow out and wait for another day?”

Jane answered immediately. “No time like the present. I’ve got a bone or two to pick with my ex-boss anyway.”

“I’ve cleared everything but my wall diving certificate anyway,” Gearshift said with a grin. “So long as I don’t try to run straight through a skyscraper we should be okay.”

“So long as you don’t get cocky,” Helix said with a smirk. Then he looked at me. “What about you, Izzy? You’re the youngest here and honestly, from a PR angle, I don’t like the idea of someone under twenty-one out on this.”

“To say nothing of what her father might say?” Papa asked, looming out of the backstage shadows to tower behind Helix.

Helix didn’t even glance back at him. “She’s an adult and I started field work when I was even younger. I’d be something of a hypocrite if I didn’t give her the chance – and that’s something you’re not very enthusiastic about, isn’t it?”

Papa just grunted and looked at me.

Which kind of put me on the spot. I knew my father didn’t want me running around with a supervillain on the loose. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be left out when Jane and Al were risking their necks. But more than anything I hated the thought that someone was willing to cause all this mayhem just to try and prove a point – if this was what it took the point wasn’t worth arguing.

“Don’t let anyone twist your arm into it,” Helix said, sensing my indecision. “If you don’t want to do it you’ll just be a liability.”

I took a deep breath and said, “What if I just want to knock Circuit into the next time zone?”

Helix smirked. “Then you’ll have to get in line. I filed my NBH-186 years ago, that means I get first dibs. Now all three of you need to raise your right hands.” He waited until we did. “You going to do all you can to drag Circuit in and throw him in jail?”

Gearshift said, “Yes.”

Jane and I exchanged an uncertain look and did the same.

“Great. By the powers vested in me, etcetera, etcetera, you’re field agents. Put your hands down, this isn’t an elementary school.”

“Huh.” Gearshift looked at Amp. “That felt kind of anticlimactic.”

“That was pretty ceremonial,” she said with a smirk. “When he made me an acting field agent, last time Circuit went wild, I only got one etcetera.”

“There was only one of you at the time.” Helix waved papa and Cheryl into the circle. “Now listen up, people. Circuit’s one step ahead of us – again. That’s fine. We always have been and we’ve gotten better at winning from there every single time. Here’s what we’re going to do this time.”

Thunder Clap: Shake Up

Posted by natechen on September 8, 2014

Izzy

I really should stop listening when people tell me something is worth a shot. And by people, I mean Jane. She has this idea that just because I’ve never used my ability to smash anything for kicks I’m repressed. I don’t understand why she seems to think smashing things is going to be such a productive route to solving so many problems.

But let me back up here. We went to visit Al’s friend, Lincoln He, who is the nephew of Al’s wushu instructor, as a part of our patrol. That meant going into the outskirts of Chinatown.

Now I have nothing against Chinatown or the He family but I swear it has the highest concentration of shops per city block anywhere in the U.S. They come in individual stores, strip malls and quaint little plazas with fancy Oriental gates, and in every other possible arrangement you can think of short of actual shopping malls. A surprising number of these storekeepers live on top of or behind their shops but most of the newer shopping centers have done away with that old time convention.

Lincoln He doesn’t live in one of those newer shopping centers.

He lives on a little plaza with oriental looking storefronts facing in on a nice courtyard with waist high red pots and planters holding live plants and bushes, a worn wooden railing marking a walkway around the outside and, at least at the time we arrived, a half a dozen people poking through the stores with crowbars. That last part was not a typical feature of the shopping center, which I guessed from the way Al reacted when he saw them.

We had six people with weapons, mostly crowbars or baseball bats with one tire iron mixed in to switch things up a bit. They were all male, which wasn’t really surprising, and they were in the process of trying to pry through one of those folding metal security doors at the front of a shop when we walked into the courtyard. Other than a little vandalism that ruined perfectly good trees I didn’t see an signs of long term harm done yet.

“Hey!” Al called, reaching into his back pocket for his ID, “Put down you weapons and step away from the door.”

“Who’s that?” I heard one of the thugs ask his friends. The general consensus was that they didn’t know and they didn’t care. In their defense, the three of us were all dressed in T-shirts and jeans or, in Jane’s case, cargo pants so we didn’t exactly look intimidating.

At least, until thug number one stepped up to give Al a shove and wound up coming to an almost comical dead stop as Al diverted the force of the push into the ground at his feet. Thug one started to back off a step, maybe to bring his baseball bat into play, but Al turned the move into a takedown, rolling his opponent back while tripping him with one foot and letting him slam flat on his back with an added shove’s worth of momentum.

Things turned hectic after that.

For the first few seconds of the fight my contributions consisted of taking one of the other would-be looters and turning his crowbar into a set of impromptu handcuffs. That took the fight out of him and gave me enough time to get my bearings – a lot happens in a fight in just a few seconds but, at the same time, if I’d accidentally broken the man’s wrists while tying him up because I wasn’t paying attention I’d have been in all kinds of trouble with Al. Not to mention Helix.

Stunned boy was back on his feet but leaning on his bat for the moment. Al was going three on one with most of the remaining thugs while Jane was holding the tire iron and gleefully stomping on her opponent’s toes to keep him off balance. Since none of the thugs were using bladed weapons, which could actually hurt Al since cutting and whacking apparently aren’t the same thing from a physics standpoint, I grabbed Jane’s dance partner by the belt and dropped low, using leverage to swing him around into an underhanded toss into thug one, who was still disoriented and went back down flailing and shouting under his partner in crime.

At that point it should have just been mopping up except it turned out our friends had friends. Friends with guns.

Another three guys, each with some kind of handgun, chose that moment to come running into the plaza, shouting in an attempt to figure out what was wrong and clearly demonstrating why one of the first things you learn to do in just about any kind of tactical training program is communicate clearly. I had no idea what they were actually saying but guns are a problem for just about everyone. Even Al couldn’t move around freely under steady gunfire.

Jane saw them too and came up with a solution first. She pointed to one of the large planters, about eight feet long and two wide, and said, “Stack and shove!”

“Can you tank the recoil?” I asked.

“It’s worth a shot!”

——–

Okay it’s time for a quick explanation of how my talent works. Papa and I are taxmen, a name that was coined because we supposedly levy a tax on entropy. In a nutshell everything you do takes energy and most of that energy is wasted as entropy. When a taxman like me is around we take a small portion of that energy and store it for later use. The name is genderally pejorative because it was coined in the late 1920s.

Now that idea sounds really simple in principle because it is. Dr. Higgins, one of the guys Project Sumter has been been working with to build a better picture of how talents work, has this huge mathematic equation that lets you figure out exactly how much energy we steal in a given situation but we never use it. You see, we can sense that waste.

Don’t ask how I can sense an abstract law of physics at work. I spent an hour trying to explain it to Dr. Higgins and we both wound up confused. That’s how it usually works when somebody tries to explain their talent to someone who doesn’t share it.

What’s important here is that we know when entropy is happening, we feel it as it makes us stronger and we know how much power we have from it to use. What we don’t do is project it like it’s some kind of mystical energy or a forcefield or something. We exploit loopholes in physics, we don’t break them. I can punch a car and fling it across a parking lot but only if I can somehow brace myself against that equal and opposite reaction people like to talk about in Einstein voices. Otherwise the car just rocks on its suspension and I fly back into whatever’s behind me.

This is a big part of the reason why Massif is my combat instructor. Wushu is a martial art that’s largely about positioning the self to best direct force and he has taught me more ways to effectively use my talent in the last year than papa learned in nearly ten years working for the Project. What he hadn’t let me do is apply any of that knowledge. I don’t have a feel for my strength yet, as he puts it. and so he’d been leery about my trying anything he’d taught me on someone who was less than moderately indestructible.

But Jane is part of a moderately indestructible group of people and working together as much as we had in the past year we’d discovered that her ability to trap incoming force let her brace me when I really needed to move something.

——–

The planter was way to heavy for me to do anything but maybe pick it up and throw it. Problem was that would keep me stuck in one place long enough I was likely to get shot in the process. So instead Jane and I lined up one side of the planter, Jane bracing me as I gave the planter a hard shove. Since she’s a vector trap, Jane was able to take all that equal and opposite reaction and store it for later use. I got a really solid shove on the planter and it went towards the guys with guns like I wanted.

Unfortunately, as Al says, I don’t know my own strength. I’d never done something like that before.

I way overshot the mark. Instead of sliding the planter along the ground and clipping the newcomers with it; the thing rolled over once and flipped up a good fifteen feet in the air, scattering dirt and plants across the courtyard in a bizarre reversal of rain. The three new guys threw their hands over their heads as the cloud of dirt and plants fell on them, one was taken out by a small bush landing on his head the other two dropped their guns as they wiped furiously at their eyes and spat dirt from their mouths. The planter crashed to the ground behind them and rolled straight over the decorative gate, sending it careening into the street beyond in splinters.

Behind me, Jane stumbled and fell back on the ground, the pavement beneath her shattering as she lost her grip on the forces she’d just absorbed and it went careening through the ground as she landed. Clearly she hadn’t been as ready to handle the recoil as she’d thought.

The two thugs left fighting with Al saw all that and decided that dropping their weapons like they’d been told was the better part of valor. As for our unarmed combat instructor, he let the thug he’d been grappling with out of the hold he’d been in and shoved him away with a sigh. Then he folded his arm behind his back and surveyed the scene, trying to look harsh but a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

That was when we heard Lincoln yelling from across the courtyard, “What are you kids doing on my lawn?”

——–

Helix

We’d just about reached the halfway point of our look around town when we spotted the bodies.

I confess to having the stupid thought, about two minutes before we stumbled on them, that we were going to have a really simple time of it. Everything had been going so well.

Gearshift looked like a natural for field work – he paid attention, he pointed out anything he thought looked odd right down to the unmarked white van we passed a few blocks from the concert venue – which Teresa photographed with her phone in case we needed to run the plates – and he kept his mouth shut the rest of the time. I remembered him as a headstrong, stubborn kind of a guy from our first meeting a couple of years back but I guess field training had steadied him some.

Of course a fog bank like him could easily kill himself if he did something stupid like trying to walk through the load bearing wall of a building and causing it to fall on himself. It was a sobering revelation and news to most of the living ones we found.

There weren’t even that many people out on the streets. Most of the city seemed to have settled in to wait out the power outage. It wasn’t that we didn’t see people, there were a fair number out on the porches or decks of the houses we passed, but they didn’t seem interested in going anywhere.

But several blocks on the houses gave way to an apartment building and beyond that a small strip mall. There was a drug store, a grocery, a hole in the wall restaurant and an electronics store advertising cheap smartphones. There were nine people lined up under the big window of the electronics shop, all seated with their back to the building, heads propped up on their knees and with hands seemingly at their sides. The store window behind them was broken.

One of the best parts of weird experiences is that, even when your job is dealing with them, they’re still new and exciting every time.

This is also one of the worst parts about them.

A glance at Teresa confirmed she was thinking along the same lines as I was. Gearshift just waited for me to give him a signal. After a moment’s thought I didn’t see anything for it but to wave them forward.

We spread out a bit so we’d have room to move if we needed to and Teresa produced a sidearm from a holster at the small of her back, hidden under her loose fitting shirt. Gearshift looked a bit surprised to see it but he shouldn’t have. I’d come to realize that her battered, thrift store purchased T-shirt and cargo shorts, both of which looked like they came out of the men’s section, were just another expression of a deep seated pragmatism that came from a childhood spent living at or near the poverty line. That pragmatism didn’t let her spend more than a few dollars on clothes unless she had to and it didn’t let her walk around the city with herself or her friends unprotected.

In this case, though, we didn’t really need much protecting. There was some stray glass on the ground but the eight men and one woman we found weren’t really that much of a threat. They were all unconscious with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. A couple of crowbars and a baseball bat lying on the ground or leaning against the broken windowsill gave a pretty clear picture of why those people had come there.

I gave one of the sleeping men a poke with my toe, just to see what would happen. He didn’t even groan. I had to lean in close enough to hear him breathing before I was sure he was alive. A glance through what was left of the window confirmed that there wasn’t anyone on that side of it and it didn’t look like anything had been taken. Teresa stood on the other end of the line of people, giving her a better view of the interior of the shop through the window. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone there,” she reported after a moment. “What do you think happened?”

“Looks like vigilantes,” Gearshift said with contempt I found ironic, given that’s what he’d been when we first met. He trotted up to the wall, his feet sending tiny ripples through the sidewalk as his density increased to the point where matter around him was nearly a liquid in comparison. He gave me a look and jerked his head at the wall. Did I want him to go through it and get a better look inside?

I was about to make my answer when the TV in the store window switched on and said, “I’m very flattered to hear that you think so, Agent Gearshift.”

Teresa snapped her gun up and trained it on the TV while Gearshift just jerked back from the wall like it had burned him. I held still. There was no way the man on the screen was anywhere near close enough for my moving to matter, one way or another. Either we were already in a trap or we weren’t.

The TV showed a slightly grainy view of a man sitting in a leather desk chair in front of a row of floor to ceiling windows that gave a stunning view of the city. Most of the visible skyline was dark but I could make out the lights of civilization out in the suburbs and the more remote patches of the Lake Michigan shoreline. The man in the chair concealed his face with a fedora pulled low over a long scarf, wound around his face like a mask. He was dressed in a pinstripe vest and pants, a plain white dress shirt and a mess of wires and reinforced electronic gear that spilled off his belt and vambraces onto the chair he was seated in and most of the visible floor around him.

A closer look at the TV let me spot a small camera attached to one of the corners and pointed at us. I narrowed my eyes and addressed it, not the screen. “Hello, Circuit.”

“Double Helix.” The man leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “It has been far to long. Welcome to my city.”

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Thunder Clap: Burning Questions

Posted by natechen on September 1, 2014

Helix

The room was total blackness but the one bright spot, so to speak, was that Sumter had an agent on the scene who didn’t need the electricity on to make herself heard. Almost as soon as the lights went out Amp was saying, “Sorry about that, people. Some kind of glitch, probably. Give us a few seconds and I’m sure the backup generator will kick in.”

The last word was barely out of her mouth when sure enough dim emergency lights flicked on around the hall and you could see your hand in front of your face again. I’m sure there were exit signs and the like on the same loop that had been on the whole time but when you’re only five foot three and in a crowd it can be hard to tell these things.

People in the crowd were milling and muttering – really, talking pretty loudly since it was a rock concert and eardrums were probably numb by now – but I’d spotted something during the two or three seconds of blackout that bothered me. The hair on the back of my neck was starting to prickle with that weird kind of sixth sense that I never believed in until I started doing law enforcement work. The feeling that there was something out in the world that was very, very wrong and was about to drop in my lap. “Samson!”

I looked around but there was a lot of noise and no sign of the strong man at the moment so I doubted he’d heard me. Teresa gave me a curious look and tried to say something over the crowd noise, gave up, then pointed off to my right. I glanced over and saw Isabella Rodriguez about ten feet over, watching the crowd around her a little nervously. Massif and Cheryl were there, too. Between the dark, the noise and the general confusion I figured it was faster to push our way over to them and set out to do so. In the end it still took almost two minutes of shoving and grunting to make it over to them.

“Crazy night, Helix,” Massif said, adjusting his position slightly. He was keeping his back to the stage at the moment, blocking the ladies from most of the press of the crowd. We were pretty far back so there wasn’t that much of a crowd, not like the front, and there was only one of him so I had might doubts about how effective he was being, but I didn’t see any reason to say anything about it.

So instead I said, “Crazy’s a good word for it. Izzy, I need to know if you can handle something for me.”

“Me?” Izzy’s voice came out as a squeak, which was funny since she was the second biggest person there. Not that she’s overweight or anything but, just like her dad, she’s got a broad build and really looks like she could be an Olympic athlete of some sort, provided the Olympics didn’t pass the ban on talents they had been discussing when I last heard. In terms of weight she’s probably just a little over average for her nearly six foot height, and that just because taxmen like her pack on a lot of muscle mass, even if it has nothing to do with how their ability works.

“You. I just need to know if you think you’re capable of something. See that catwalk?” I pointed up about two stories over our head where the lighting rig for the venue was. “I want to know if you think you can jump up there and run to the windows, take a look outside.”

Cheryl waved her had to get my attention over the crowd noise. “Sorry if I’m just the out of the loop office assistant here,” she said once I nodded at her. “But couldn’t we just go outside?”

“Not doing that is the point of the exercise,” I confirmed, turning my attention back to Izzy. “Can you make the jump? More importantly, can you stick the landing if you go up there? You might survive landing on someone if you fell but I don’t think they would.”

“No, that would probably be bad,” she agreed. “But I think I could make it. Want to give me some idea what I’m looking for out there?”

“I want to know if the whole block is out of power or if it’s just us. And keep your head down, we may be under surveillance. Amp?”

There was a moment of silence as I waited for our wave maker to answer and our little group spent most of it staring at me like I’d grown a new head. Finally, Teresa said, “Which are you expecting to find?”

“Either one’s bad,” I said, “but looking out the windows when the power was out I didn’t see any ambient light. That’s not good. This is one of the biggest cities in America. The streets never get that dark. Amp?”

“Just a second Helix.” Amp’s voice was being thrown, via another useful application of her talent, from where she stood on the side of the stage, standing with the rest of her band and some of the stage crew. “Staff might want me to make an announcement.”

“Wait.” I held up a hand to stall Massif and Izzy, who were starting to look over the scaffolding for a good landing point. After all that time working covertly, and with virtual superpowers to boot, I tended to overlook obvious solutions. “Amp, does the staff know what caused the power outage?”

“Checking.” I rocked back and forth on my feet as I impatiently waited for the answer. “Okay, the stage manager says they looked out the loading dock and at least this street is down, from the looks of things possibly the entire block.”

I nodded even though there was no way Amp could pick me out of the crowd. “Tell him we’d like to keep the people in here for a while, if that’s okay with them, then find Samson and have him meet us back stage. Bring Movsessian and Gearshift with you.”

Massif shot me a look and motioned toward the stage entrance, asking if he should start towards it. I nodded and the big man started half walking, half swimming through the crowd with slow and deliberate steps and gentle sweeping motions of his arms. The rest of us fell in behind him, taking advantage of the trail he’d broken as best we could.

As we made our way slowly through the crowd Teresa leaned down distractingly close and asked, “So why was that important to know? And why did you want the people kept here?”

“Just… precautions.”

“Right.” She was quiet for a second but didn’t back away. “You know, these concerts are not exactly unpublicized. If someone wanted to cause Project Sumter trouble this would be a really easy way to do it. I’m kind of surprised they don’t have more security.”

“We didn’t want to paint a target on it.” I started to shrug, then stopped when I nearly clipped her in the jaw. “Besides, so far no one’s broken any of the old rules from before we were outed. Why start now?”

“Because criminals are always breaking rules, so what’s one more? Because maybe they just hadn’t found the right time to?” She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to give voice to what we both knew we were thinking. “Because no one’s heard from Open Circuit in two years and as far as anyone knows he still hates our guts.”

“Hate is probably the wrong word for it. I’m not sure what it is Circuit feels about us. Contempt, maybe. But otherwise, yes, all those reasons had occurred to me.” The old rules were all common sense stuff, at least for anyone who actually knew how the game was played. The glass cannon rule, for example, basically meant that since almost all talents are just as easy to kill as most people, but many of our abilities can be used to kill someone fairly easily so if we set our minds to it we could kill ourselves off pretty quickly. So by unspoken agreement talents had avoided killing each other, or anyone else, with our abilities directly.

Another rule was, much like agents in the Cold War, we didn’t attack each other when we were “off the job” at home or just out on the town. In part that was to help maintain secrecy but also it was just another way to try and avoid a bloodbath. But, for someone like Circuit who ultimately aimed for governmental overthrow, that particular motivation might not have as much force.

When he had set out to make the world at large aware of our existence by going on a spree of increasingly violent robberies across the Midwest, ending in a secretly constructed bunker hidden in a state park where he’d been doing something we’d never quite figured out. Where before he’d scrupulously followed all the unwritten rules during those couple of months he and the surprisingly well equipped criminal organization following him had pulled no punches and left more than a few people maimed or dead. Why should the other rules have any more hold on him?

We’d smashed his center of operations for his last gambit but he’d escaped and evaded all attempts at detection. It was more than time for him to show up again and the fact that he’d been gone so long had me more than a little spooked.

And I was not only the agent who had spent the most time working to apprehend Circuit. I was also the leader of the taskforce that was technically supposed to be working at bringing him in, making me a natural target for him for a number of reasons personal and professional. But we’d had no leads on that front in almost six months and no useful leads in over a year. A part of me had thought he might be gone for good.

One could dream, anyways.

“Do you think this could be him?” Teresa asked.

“Honestly don’t know. But I don’t believe in coincidence and we are right here in the middle of the problem.” I glanced back at her. “What do you think?”

“I was hoping you had a clear idea,” she admitted. “He’s been almost half your career.”

There really wasn’t anything more to say after that.

Amplifier started making another announcement just as we got to the stage door. By the time we’d wrestled our way the last few feet and gotten backstage she was almost done and had rejoined the band and what I presumed to be the stage manager off in the wings by the loading dock. Everyone but Samson was backstage by that point, giving me a roster of myself, Teresa, Massif, Amplifier, Movsessian and eventually Samson to work with in terms of trained field agents plus Gearshift, Izzy and Cheryl as people who knew a fair bit about the job but didn’t have certification. And then there was Jane Hammer, technically a criminal on probation and something of a wild card.

“Okay, here’s the way I see things,” I said, gathering my little circle of agents around me like a football coach. “The power’s out in at least part of the city and it’s not because of weather. Temperature outside is even so we’re not going to have much wind or rain. That leaves some kind of glitch at the level of regional knocking out power to the grid or a deliberate attack on the power system. The first is kind of bad, the second is terrible. Anyone have anything to add?”

Movsessian, the good little junior field analyst that he is, immediately jumped in. “The first thing I thought of when the power failed is bad weather so I tried to pull up my weather app but my phone has no signal. Neither does any other phone we could scare up back stage.”

I frowned and pulled my own cellphone out. It wasn’t a smart phone but it worked fine under most circumstances. But this wasn’t one of them. Just like everyone else’s, my phone was searching for service. I pushed the phone back into my pocket, that sinking feeling I’d had for the last ten minutes suddenly getting much worse. “Useful information. Of course that could just mean the outage is a lot more widespread than I’d thought, and the towers have lost power too…”

“Isn’t there usually a backup power supply for things like that?” Cheryl asked.

“As a rule of thumb, yes,” Movsessian replied. “And cell networks are very decentralized, so it would be a lot harder to knock out a whole chunk of it than for the power grid.”

“Or this could just be a local outage cause by secondary complications from the power outage,” Teresa said. “But I think we’re straying from the point.”

“Right. Well and good.” I held up my hands and tried to get them to refocus. “What’s our biggest problem right now?”

“Looters,” Samson said, joining our circle. “Somebody, somewhere is going to see this as a chance to get free stuff off of stores with no power and bad security.”

I nodded. “My concern exactly. So we’re going to go out, we’re going to stomp on some ruffians right proper and scout out around here for a couple of city blocks, learn what we can about the situation and head back here. Any of you know this neighborhood well?”

“I grew up a few blocks from here,” Massif said immediately. “Also, Lincoln He lives six blocks away. He knows every building on ever street within a mile of his family place. Could be useful.”

“Okay. Samson, Massif and I will each head up a team. We go out, we look around, we deal with any looting we find in the most controlled way possible.” Teresa made a sound a halfway between laugh and choke. I ignored it. “Massif goes and gets Lincoln so we have another person who knows the territory well on hand. We come back here and compare notes. Amp, with no phones-”

“I can’t play relay across more than a city block, Helix,” she said, shaking her head. “The buildings and the concrete ruin the acoustics. It’s just not going to work. Sorry.”

“Then we go without, I guess.” I didn’t like being out of touch but there was only so much we could do with the situation and I really needed a better feel for the situation than we could get by staying at the venue, especially with no cellphones to work with. “Our teams are Samson with Amplifier and Movsessian, Massif with Jane and Izzy and I’ll go with Teresa and Gearshift. Cheryl, hold the fort and, in the off chance any kind of cops or Project agents show up identify yourself and try to keep them here. If you can’t at least tell them we’re coming back here and try to get all the information you can out of them, what’s going on, what the scale of the problem is, what the responders are doing about it. Questions?”

There were none. “Then let’s get to it. Be back here in no more than ninety minutes, preferably an hour.”

——-

There weren’t any questions but that’s not the same thing as there being no objections. I knew there was at least one of those and I also knew that Samson was enough of a pro not to protest my team assignments in front of the others. He came and found me as we broke up after a cramped, uncomfortable few minutes around Movsessian’s phone, which apparently still had access to maps even if it didn’t have service, plotting out what ground each of our small teams would cover.

“I know what you want to say,” I said, ignoring the instinct to cower in front of the much, much larger man. Not for the first time I wondered how our old regional manager, known at the time as the Senior Special Liaison, had dealt with Samson all those years considering he was an even shorter man than I was. With a good eight inches and at least ninety pounds on me, Samson could loom like a hurricane over Florida. But grandpa had been just as unusually strong and a touch taller to boot. Besides, Samson was far more level headed than most lawmen you worked with in my line of work, myself included. He was only physically intimidating and I’d gotten over that long ago. “You don’t like the way the teams are set up and you want to go with your daughter.”

“That’s right,” Samson said. It looked like there was more trying to force it’s way out but he managed to wait and hear what I had to say, which I appreciated.

“No.” He was starting to loose the war against whatever he wanted to say so I hurried on. “First, I need an experienced field agent to lead each of these teams. Al is the Training Agent for both Jane and Izzy. He knows their capabilities best, they’ve worked with him most. And besides it’s bad form for me to assign them to someone else when he’s right there. I don’t have enough people to work with here to cut anyone else loose for his team. Not to say anything about how having your daughter on your team could impair your judgement and endanger you, her, whoever else would be on your team and the civilians around you.”

Samson worked his jaw around slowly and then rubbed his hand across his mouth, unconsciously mussing up then smoothing out his neatly trimmed moustache. “I just want my daughter to be safe.”

“I understand.” Actually, I didn’t but we at the Project have worked very hard to develop better people skills since we became a publicly acknowledged arm of the government and sometimes that means faking empathy. “But if I could ask, why did you let her sign up for field work when her actually doing it makes you so nervous?”

“I didn’t want her to but when they work together she and her mother can be quite persuasive.”

I put a hand on his arm. His shoulder might have been more comforting but I’m sure the image of me on my tiptoes would have been counter productive. “Look, Al Massif is the best there is when it comes to keeping people safe. You just look after yourself, okay? There’s always a chance this is just a colossal screw-up by the utilities people.”

Samson gave me a biting look. “Helix, men of faith believe because of their faith bears fruit in their lives, not because someone spins them fairy tales.”

“Well, it was worth a shot…”

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Thunder Clap: Rude Awakening

Posted by natechen on August 18, 2014

Matthew Sykes snapped awake, aware of three things almost at once. His wife was not in bed with him. But then, she was at one of those charity networking things, out of town for the weekend. He’d gone himself in the past but this year he just hadn’t had the energy the trip. Rather than back out his wife had offered to go in his place. Sykes found he missed her being there even though she’d only been gone a day.

The sky was still dark out, which surprised him. It was mid summer and the sun rose early. He was not the type to sleep restlessly so waking up before the dawn was not a usual part of his life. Then again, there was that vaguely musical jackhammer sound that might be what had woken him. A moment’s groggy though placed the noise.

His phone was ringing.

Not the public line, which didn’t even have a receiver in the bedroom and mostly went straight to voicemail, so his secretary could screen the messages, nor the direct line to the office of Sykes Telecommunications, the tristate company he remained sole owner and operator of. It was his private line, the one only a small handful of people knew the number for. To make sure it stayed that way he changed the number every six months, something he’d done only three weeks ago. Anyone calling that line was important enough to warrant a little lost sleep.

Sykes sat up in bed and fumbled for his glasses and phone. Once he was fully equipped he checked the number on the screen. It wasn’t familiar but it was in state. That could just mean someone was calling him from an unfamiliar location. Or it could be his number had wound up with someone he’d rather it didn’t. No way to find out but answer it, so he slid his finger across the touchscreen and said, “Matthew Sykes. What can I do for you?”

“Good morning, Mr. Sykes. I’m sorry to-”

“No amount of apologizing is going to make me less tired but it might bore me into drifting off again,” Sykes said, using the grousing to buy time to try and place the voice. It sounded familiar he wasn’t having any luck putting it to a name or face. “Just tell me who you are and what this is about and I’ll decide if I’m letting it go then.”

“Very generous of you,” the voice said dryly. “My name is Alan Dunn, although you might be more familiar with the code name Double Helix, which the media still likes to use.”

“Yes! I’ve seen you in the papers.” Sykes struggled around until he was sitting up in bed. “Is this about the Enchanter business? I heard he was trying to have his sentence overturned again and my office was contacted by the Project about the threat we received from him a few years ago.”

“Actually, no. I think if the Enchanter case was a problem we would have waited until office hours to try and contact you.” Helix sounded apologetic and more than a little tired himself. “You may not remember this but we actually met in person shortly after the Enchanter’s arson spree. I was operating under a pseudonym at the time, so that’s probably a part of it. We were following up some properties that you and Mr. Roger Keller had been investing in.”

“Oh yes!” Sykes scratched absently at the stubble on his chin as he thought. “Hoffman, wasn’t it?”

“That’s the one. Mr. Sykes, are you at home right now?”

“Yes, I am. Why do you ask?”

There was a muffled sound on the other end of the line, like someone was talking with one hand over the receiver, then Helix was back. “We’re sending someone over to pick you up. I’d like you to come in to our regional office… or at least somewhere close by. We’re still working on that part.”

“I’d be happy to, Agent Dunn, but I can drive myself, condition not withstanding.” Sykes slapped one of his useless legs and said, “There’ve been cripples longer than there’ve been cars, you know.”

“Yes, I didn’t mean to imply anything about your ability to get around. Mr. Sykes, I suspect you just woke up and haven’t watched the news yet so I’ll give you a condensed version. The Waltham Towers, one of the buildings you and Mr. Keller collaborated on, has been taken over by insurgents. We believe they somehow influenced the remodeling of the structure and have been planning this move for years, if not longer. We’re hoping you can give us some insight into what was done during the time the property was in the possession of Keller Development and Restoration.”

“Well we did redo the LAN and some of the infotech in most of the remodeling jobs we’ve done but…” Sykes shrugged, although Helix couldn’t see it. “Really, Roger could tell you more about the details. I’m not even sure I remember which building Waltham Towers was.”

“We’ve tried to contact Mr. Keller but haven’t been able to. And his house has been broken into.” There was something that sounded a lot like someone on the other end of the line being slapped for having a big mouth. Then, “That’s why we’re sending a team to pick you up. They have this number and will call you when they arrive. Do not answer your door until they do. If someone tries to gain entrance to your house before our agents arrive contact me immediately at this number.”

“That… sounds like good advice, Agent Dunn. Thank you for notifying me.”

“Stay safe, Mr. Sykes. I hope to see you when you get here.”

Sumter’s agent hung up without waiting for a goodbye but Sykes supposed he was busy enough that the rudeness could be forgiven. The businessman stared at his phone for a moment, putting together a new morning to-do list. First things first. He called the office and left a message letting them know he wouldn’t be in. Then he made a few other phone calls to make sure things would run smoothly. Then he levered himself out of bed and into his wheelchair.

Before his parents had died TV had been a kind of family vice. They would all gather around and watch it while eating dinner, laughing at whatever silliness was on that night and generally enjoying not having to work at getting along for an hour or so. But after prescription drugs wore out one parent and depression another, and he wound up in the group home, fighting over the TV had turned into a game only the older, meaner kids could win. Then the Sykes had taken him back out of there, and they didn’t believe in TV. In time, Matthew had become a convert in most respects.

Of course, anyone who didn’t share his upbringing might have more broadminded views. Like his wife. In the time they’d been together Sykes hadn’t quite managed to wean her of the habit just yet and so the only TV in the house was in her office, and that was where Sykes headed. Of course, as the owner of a multistate telecommunications company he was aware that there was news available on the Internet. But in odd ways he was a traditionalist and the one exception to his no TV policy was the news. Usually he watched it over lunch on the office lounge TV, mostly because he liked the local broadcast anchors. But at 4:30 in the morning, cable news would have to do.

“…insurgent organization has not identified itself,” the cable anchor was saying as the TV switched on. “But the spokesman who has been seen in the videos being posted has identified himself as Open Circuit. Project Sumter, the Federal Government’s agency dealing with unusually talented individuals, has confirmed that this is the same identity used by the man who first revealed the existence of the Project and unusual talents nearly two years ago. They have not said whether they believe this to be the same man or not. So far, neither Open Circuit or other members of his organization have made demands…”

Sykes muted the TV and fumbled for his phone, then made a few more phone calls, including one to a private security firm and another to his wife, telling her that the bodyguards were on their way. With that taken care of he copied down the URL for the videos the anchor had mentioned and started watching them. He’d only gotten through two and just started a third, mostly boring declarations of dominance and moral superiority and the like, when the doorbell rang. Sykes quickly rolled himself out of his office and to the front door, which he yanked open. “It took you long enough.”

The huge African American man on the other side of the door just smiled. It wasn’t a very comforting expression.

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An Incident in a Family Diner

Posted by natechen on May 19, 2014

The eggs were dry and rubbery and the coffee was closer to water than an aromatic beverage. He wasn’t sure whether the blacked squares on his plate were supposed to be toast or some kind of scouring pad to clean the tabletop with before he put his elbows on it. But it was still a sight better than what he had been getting before they grudgingly let him go.

After a couple of months the folks called Project Sumter had finally given up fighting in the courts and allowed those people arrested while the organization didn’t technically exist and not yet tried in one of it’s shadow courts to go free. That mostly meant those who had been arrested as part of their operations intended to find Open Circuit, of which he had been one. So while the food in that shabby little diner wasn’t everything he could have hoped for it was still more than enough to satisfy him, at least for the moment.

Still, it was time to think about priorities. A safecracker of his talents, both mechanical and electrical, had been able to make a good living before the world knew fuse boxes existed. Doing a little accounting work by day was just a way to make a little on the side. Now, it might be time to start thinking about a new line of work. No one had ever been able to pin anything on him before because he’d been careful never to do anything big enough to draw the scrutiny of people like the Project but now that talents were out in the open it might be a different story. Perhaps if he went to work for the other side of things. Businesses would need security consultants to deal with all the new wrinkles talents could put in their security.

He was in the process of spreading the thin, unappetizing contents of a butter packet onto his scouring pad toast when two unfamiliar men sat themselves on the other side of the booth without bothering to ask permission. He glanced up and looked around, wondering if the small diner had really gotten so crowded that there was nowhere else to sit. As he suspected, it hadn’t.

The two men were a study in contrasts. One was skinny, white and dressed like a typical cubicle slave. Starched white shirt, tie, cheap dress slacks, habitual frown. The other wore blue jeans and a worn red shirt with grease as an accessory, his hair and complexion hinted at the kind of messy ancestry that made census workers throw a fit when it was time to put down an ethnicity. They looked like they’d walked straight out of a stereotype handbook.

He put his toast down slowly, eating forgotten. He’d worked with conmen in the past and even the worst had been better than these two. Maybe Project Sumter wasn’t done with him after all. “Can I help you two?”

They exchanged a look, then slid into the booth one after the other. “I’m Doug Wallace,” the mutt said, sliding into the seat last, the office drone already getting comfortable and pulling a strange coil of wire out of his coat pocket. “This is Greg Davis. We’ve spent a lot of time looking for you.”

Davis set the coil of wire down in front of him and it seemed to pull at him. He reached out to take it but Davis pulled it back with two fingers. “Careful,” the office drone said, his voice smug. “This isn’t quite ready for you to handle yet. But you can tell it’s special, right?”

He pulled his hands back and resisted the urge to sit on them, just to keep them under control. “What is it?”

“There’s no technical name for it, but it’s basically a special kind of electromagnet.” Davis tapped the metal rod, about as thick as a man’s thumb, that ran down the center of the wire coil. “When it’s properly attuned to the bioelectrical field of a category of persons like yourself, fuse boxes we call them, it allows that person to use their unique talent over a distance, rather than just by touch.”

He blinked once. “That’s not possible.”

“But you can feel it right now,” Wallace said. “We can tell by the way you’re looking at it. Even though it’s not attuned to you yet, it’s charged and close enough to your frequency that you can feel it even if you can’t use it.”

Wallace was right and everyone at the table knew it. Under the scrutiny of these two men, who’s cardboard cutout personas were apparently just a front for the even more confusing people beneath, he didn’t see any reason in denying it. He licked his lips and said, “Sure. I can see that. I don’t suppose I should ask how you know I’m a fuse box to begin with?”

“Does it matter?” Davis asked, holding the magnet up between them as if letting him see it from all angles. “Ask what you’re really wondering.”

He touched one finger to the coil of wire then jerked back in surprise. The electric potential inside actually seemed to grate on him like nothing he’d ever experienced before. “How can I get one I can use?”

“It’s fairly complicated, actually,” Davis said. “Calibrating one properly can require as many as a dozen MRIs, several weeks of troubleshooting. Once one is properly configured more can be made fairly easily, but getting that first template measured and tested can cost upwards of a hundred grand. On top of that, you’d need-”

“They’re not available to the general public,” Wallace summarized, he friend glaring at being cut off. “It’d take months and thousands of dollars of medal work to get you set up for one. Why, are you interested?”

He stared at the small coil of wire and let the possibilities roll over him. “With something like that you could control pretty much any electric motor, possibly any microchip, in a city block.”

“Not quite that large an area, not with one of these,” Davis replied, tucking the electromagnet back into his pocket. “But you wouldn’t be limited to touch anymore.”

“Nothing will be safe,” he said in amazement. “You could crack practically any modern lock in seconds with the right training. Shut down electronic surveillance, hit computerized records to cover your tracks-”

“All been done already,” Wallace said with a shrug. “You’ve heard of Open Circuit, right?”

“Sure.” He scowled. “Apparently I was working for him before I got arrested. Not exactly something that appeals to a person, not knowing you’re working for a terrorist.”

“Come now,” Davis said with a condescending smile, “if you had access to technology like ours would you really want to advertise your existence?”

His expression turned thoughtful. “No, I suppose not.” Then his eyes sharpened and he was back in the present. “What do you two want with me then? I’ll tell you up front, after my last experience working for Open Circuit I’m not exactly eager for another.”

“Makes sense to me,” Wallace said. “But this won’t be like your last. This time you’re not going to be one of the rank and file. This time you get to be one of the inner circle.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And why should I believe that?”

“We need a fuse box to make these gadgets worth something,” Davis replied. “You were the easiest to find and the most likely to agree, but you don’t have to work with us.”

“You’re not doing a good job making your case.”

Davis leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “What if I told you we were building a network of devices such as the one I just showed which would allow a fuse box to control all the electricity in a city?”

There was a moment of silence as the three men stared at each other over the tabletop. Finally he asked, “And what would I do with such a thing, Mr. Davis?”

Davis answered with an unnerving smile. “Anything you want.”

Water Fall – Fin

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Water Fall: Storm Surge

Posted by natechen on April 28, 2014

One Week, One Day After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

It took a little more than five minutes for me to get from the command bunker to my destination, although that was at least in part because I had to go up, over the tree line, and come back down again to locate exactly where the crossroads I wanted was. Finding a trail was easy enough, making sure I had the right portion of the trail was trickier. Flying below the treeline at thirty miles an hour was definitely not an option and positioning technology is a double edged sword – I could risk revealing my position to Project Sumter if they were waiting for me to ping a GPS satellite. I could still tell where the maglev relays around the park were positioned and that gave me a general idea of where I was, otherwise the trip could have taken three times as long.

I’d just started sifting through the trees, looking for a good ambush spot, when my earpiece dinged to life with Simeon on the other end of the line. “I think we have a problem, sir.”

“Bigger than planning a very personal lesson on death from above for Project Sumter?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down in case the wave makers on the other side could pinpoint my location just from that.

“Yes, sir, quite possibly.” There was a loud, indistinct noise on the other end, then the distinctive popping sound of small arms fire. “Agent Samson was with Project Sumter’s team.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, rapping my knuckles on a nearby tree with impatience. “What’s all that noise? You aren’t out with a patrol, are you? You’re-”

“I’m in the power reserve bunker, as you instructed.”

“Then what-”

“The noise is Agent Samson.” Cutting me off twice in a row was a sure sign Simeon was upset. “He’s infiltrated the bunker and is in the process of destroying our reserves.”

I slammed my fist into the tree and kicked the maglev back into high gear, shooting up and across the trees at top speed. “How did he get in? If nothing else you could have armed the antipersonnel mines at the entrance.”

“He used the back door.”

“That bunker doesn’t have another entrance!”

“He’s renovated.” Another indistinct noise, followed by the sound of a large, center core power transformer being dropped. Or, in this case, probably thrown. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, he is renovating.”

“It’s not renovation if you don’t put all the pieces back together into something new and beneficial, Simeon.” I swooped in towards the bunker. By pressing the maglev array to its limit I managed to make it back to the power reserve in barely two minutes, helped by the fact that it was closer to my starting point than the command bunker and the fact that I’d burned out a relay to do it – if I couldn’t save the power reserve then I wouldn’t be able to fly and fire empion grenades at the same time and, of the two, I needed aerial denial more. Frying a few relays was acceptable losses. “I’m at the front door. I notice it’s not locked.”

“We’re a little bit busy in here, sir.”

The power reserve is basically a big, rough concrete bunker wired to allow a couple of hundred high capacity industrial batteries to charge in a protected environment. Most of the important bits are down below ground level, the entrance basically lets out onto a catwalk that overlooks the batteries – and yes, catwalks are a theme in villain design and I’m no exception. They’re cheaper than building a real floor and villainy is pretty much always on a budget.

About half the catwalk was torn up, mangled and twisted until it looked more like a pretzel than a walkway. Parts of it may have been missing entirely. One of the guards was actually wrapped up in part of the mess. At the far side of the bunker I could see a ragged hole where something roughly the size of a man had torn or smashed its way through a foot of reinforced concrete. My stomach turned over once and I swallowed. I’d known Rodriguez – Samson – was absurdly strong but it looked like I’d still drastically underestimated him.

Simeon was waving to me from the control room, the sounds of sporadic gunfire and tens of thousands of dollars in electrical equipment being torn apart came up from below. I slid to a stop on the catwalk just outside the door, crouching with Simeon in the frame to avoid the bulk of the dangerous stuff flying around outside. “How do things look?”

He shook his head regretfully. “Not good. I’ve already lost touch with two of our six guards and the engineer on the control panel bolted. We’ve lost about a quarter of our reserves and the remainder is dwindling fast. I’m still not sure how he’s avoiding being electrocuted with all the wiring he’s handling but the voltage doesn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.”

“That’s disappointing and extremely odd.” I slipped my SIG out of it’s holster and checked the magazine, deliberately not analyzing what immunity to electricity might tell me about Samson’s talent. I still had no idea how it functioned other than allowing him to perform absurd feats of strength. “We’ll have to deal with him in a little more direct fashion. He took cover when I shot at him at Diversy, and again when Grappler tried the same thing at the library. Bullets must hurt him.”

“They guards are trying that but not getting very far,” Simeon said, tugging absently at the lapels of his suit jacket. Even in the middle of a dingy concrete bunker he was dressed impeccably and, in a bizarre kind of denial of his circumstances, he’d refused body armor or a weapon. That was one reason I’d asked him to stay in the most out of the way bunker, so he’d be out of the line of fire. Not my greatest success, I’ll admit.

“Are the stairs still intact?” I asked, peering through the wreckage that was the catwalk.

“Sir, with all due respect, it may be best to pull back. There’s no way to be sure bullets will actually harm him and staying here just puts you in his reach.”

“I’m not letting him wreck this place ahead of schedule, Simeon.” I gave him my best disapproving look. “It could take months or years to track down the components to finish the Thunderclap array on the black market if we don’t finish fabricating the raw materials here.”

He held up a hand and, grudgingly, I waited to hear his piece. “I understand all that. You are intent on this and I’ve long since come to accept that. But if your set on getting yourself killed I don’t see why you’d object to blowing up a building or two along the way.”

There was a clatter from behind Simeon and Hangman rolled into the control room doorway on an office chair. “Wait, what?”

I glared at Simeon. “Why is she here?”

“The engineer bolted and she has the technical know-how to keep the systems running even when someone’s ripping the guts out of them.” Simeon shrugged. “It was a logical personnel allocation.”

What he wasn’t asking was why I had a problem with something that should be so obvious. Of course someone with Hangman’s computer background would be experienced in keeping an electrical system up and running. The only reason not to want her there was because of the danger. It wasn’t like me to ignore the obvious like that and Simeon didn’t have to say it out loud for me to know he was thinking it was purely for personal reasons.

“Hey, guys,” Hangman said, interrupting my thoughts, “can we get back to the part of this conversation where we’re sitting in a building with a bomb in it?”

“Technically there’s more than one bomb and they’re not that big. Blowing up your base is an essential part of supervillainy.” I ignored the look Hangman was giving me. “Simeon I’m not losing this round. It’s mine to win, we just need to stick it out a little longer and-”

“We don’t have a little longer, sir.” In an uncharacteristically familiar gesture he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “This is your last chance to make a clean break. I’ve never understood why you wanted to become a martyr, but-”

“Yeah,” Hangman broke in, pulling Simeon back as she crowded into the doorway with us. “Care to explain that part? What is he talking about, Circuit?”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead for a minute, wondering when it was I started feeling so old. “Hangman, how much of the plan – the long-term, gambit within gambit, let’s rule the world Plan – do you think you’ve figured out?”

She kept giving me the look and I stared at her until she sighed, accepting that this was a part of how things were going to go. “Well, first you use Thunderclap to take over a city’s electronics. Then you rule it with an iron fist while driving down crime rates and using your public persona’s influence to help bring the economy into line and establish functioning social services. Then you…” Hangman hesitated for a minute, clearly to the part of the plan she hadn’t quite figured yet. “Expand, I guess. Some people will come to you willingly and others can be bullied. At some point there will probably be a direct challenge or five, but-”

“But it will never get that far. Hangman, listen to me.” I reach out as if to put a hand on her shoulder or brush the stray hair from her face. She blinked, a little uncertain, and in that moment I had her by the lapels of the jacket and pulled her close in a way that no one would mistake for affection. “You are stupidly naive and it infuriates me, because I was just like you once. So here’s the truth, unvarnished. Tyrants crumble. Alexander the Great. Julius Cesar. King John Lackland. Napoleon. Adolph Hitler. Nothing they build endured. They don’t usher in new eras, they ripped down the old ones. It was always someone who came after then who did the work of rebuilding, all they were good for was the act of destruction. All.”

Simeon grabbed me by the wrists and broke us apart. “Sir-”

“This is a contest, Hangman,” I snarled, pushing myself to my feet using the doorway as a prop. I was mad and I didn’t know why. I’d spent the last seven years piecing together these ideas and the plans that would make them real, but talking about it always seemed to make me angry. It was perhaps the one thing I’d never stopped to examine. “I tear down their lies, their projects, their secrets, until someone comes and stops me. This is where I get the ability to do whatever I want and use it to find all the liars, the cheats and the bullies out there and grind them into dust so when they finally come and finish me off there’s no more trash out there to clutter up the new order. Because sooner or later that was going to be someone like me. Maybe Lethal Injection. Maybe the Enchanter. But me – I am going to do it right. I will make them hurt like they never have before, but it will be to make them better. And when I am done and buried, they’ll be able to rebuild without any of the old crimes weighing them down.”

“You’ve made a difference, Circuit,” Hangman said, slowly reaching out to take my hand. I jerked back instinctively and she hesitated, looking hurt. “Simeon is right. You’ve shown the world Project Sumter’s lies. You have almost everything you need to build the Thunderclap array. You can step back for a while, take stock, come up with a new plan. You don’t have to-”

“Do you know what a thunderbird is?” I asked.

“What does that-”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No.” She shook her head sadly. “I don’t.”

Simeon gently laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s a creature of wrath, Miss Dawson. A thunderbird’s wrath is unchecked and uncontrollable. Come. We need to go.”

I shook myself back to reality and realized I’d set my gun on the ground at some point during the exchange. I quickly scooped it back up, saying, “We can still contain this, Simeon. We’re nowhere near the endgame yet. I said it this morning – we’re winning this round.”

“Sir, I know you haven’t been paying the best attention so I’ll just tell you.” He nodded towards the edge of the catwalk. “No one’s fired a shot down there for the last ninety seconds. Now you might be able to outmatch Agent Samson with your superior maneuverability and one pistol but I doubt Hangman or I could add much to you side of the equation. And I seriously doubt you or Samson want us here.”

The worst part was, he was right. There hadn’t been gunfire for the last minute or so and I should have noticed and sent them away a long time ago. I sighed and tried to let the tension ease out of me. “You’re right. Go. I’ll see what can be done about Rodriguez.”

They’d gone a few steps down towards the door when the massive bulk of Manuel Rodriguez, full time preacher and part time government strong man, vaulted up from the ground floor and onto the wall above the catwalk, stopping himself on all fours like a human fly, except he immediately slid down and landed lightly on the catwalk. How a man his size managed to land lightly I’ll never understand.

“Actually,” he said, dusting off his pants and bulletproof vest, “before you’re on your way there is one thing that needs to be said.”

I tensed and eased the safety off my sidearm. “And what would that be, Agent Samson?”

He didn’t answer me, not directly. Instead he looked at Hangman and said, “Elizabeth Dawson. I have a message for you from your father. He wants you to come home.”

Fiction Index

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Water Fall: Hydroelectric

Posted by natechen on April 7, 2014

Six Days After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

I’d just turned in after another day of waiting for the shoe to drop when Wallace banged on my door. The two days after taking out a drone with an Empion grenade had been difficult, with most of us slowly getting more and more tense as we looked for signs that Project Sumter, or whichever government organization had sent that drone, was getting ready to pay us a visit. In the mean time, I’d spent a lively afternoon tramping through the underbrush and trying to track down the Empion grenade we’d used to disable the drone on it’s way over the park.

In theory, the grenades were supposed to launch off the maglev relays, shut off all extraneous systems and trip an EMP. Then, with internal circuits shielded by a bit of pirated military tech, they’d switch back on, link up with the nearest maglev relay and swing back to the holding area. Unfortunately, the switch back on part wasn’t working exactly as intended. I’d spent part of the previous evening and most of that day arguing about why it might not be working with Davis. When I wasn’t doing that, I was arguing with Heavy or Grappler over how to best set our handful of perimeter guards. Most were mercenaries with some field experience and I wanted to leave them to their own devices, but Heavy felt they’d get out of hand if we let them have too much autonomy. Worse, a few squads were gangbangers and other petty thugs Heavy had scraped together and who weren’t thrilled with taking orders from anyone, but were willing to listen to someone with enough street cred to command their respect. Eventually we compromised on Heavy leading the crooks and the mercenaries working on their own.

When I finally got to bed I was hoping for a solid five hours sleep before something else went wrong. It was not to be.

I yanked the door open just as Wallace was raising his hand to knock again. He blinked at me looking more than a little surprised, perhaps not used to seeing me without a shirt on. Then he rallied and said, “The eyes we’ve had on the Sumter headquarters say they dispatched a helicopter around two o’clock this afternoon. Hangman’s trying to hack in and get their flight plan, but no idea where they were headed yet.”

“They’re probably not coming directly here,” I said, drumming my fingers on the doorframe. “This location is in the middle of a jurisdictional nightmare, they can’t have cut the red tape in a day and a half, even if all five senators on the Talented Individuals Committee rally to the cause.”

“Well, you said to tell you as soon as they made a move, and now you’ve been told,” Wallace said with a smile. “I’m going to hit the sack.”

“You’re awful cheerful about this,” I said dryly.

“Other than running some checks on the last turbine in the concrete dam, I haven’t had much to do today.” He shrugged. “Lots less stress than the rest of you. Good night, Circuit.”

I watched him head off down the dreary hallway and turned back to flip the lights on and reached for my shirt. Wallace was a very phlegmatic man and took just about everything in stride but it wouldn’t do to run around the installation shirtless and start everyone talking. And I certainly wasn’t getting much sleep with Helix on the way. Might as well get a little work done.

——–

Helix

The biggest sticking point was what we would use to enter the park. Kesselman was a certified helicopter pilot and more than familiar with the EC-155s the Project used on those rare occasions we needed to be airlifted into a situation. We used that to get out to our meeting with the National Guard and we wanted to go in using it too. The Guard, on the other hand, wanted to go in using a Black Hawk, which meant we’d have to rely on them for pilots. That, in turn, would give them the leverage to insist we take Guardsmen along as tactical support, instead of our usual teams.

Even though there wasn’t enough room on a chopper for me, Massif, Samson, Amplifier, along with our assorted oversight agents and support teams plus Darryl and his team, I would still prefer that the tactical support we did bring had experience dealing with talents on both sides of the equation. To my surprise it was HiRes, the rookie from Darryl’s team, who gave us the leverage we needed to make the Guard go along with our plan.

We’d been in and out of meetings and teleconferences with various military honchos the whole of the previous evening and we’d pretty much figured that we’d have to wait on Washington to break the stalemate. Voorman and the team oversight agents were in yet another meeting and the rest of us were sitting in the situation room, in case our knowledge of the enemy’s talents was needed, and HiRes’ head was surrounded by the faint rainbow effect I’d come to realize meant he was using his talent to somehow see things that were far away and, on occasion, around corners. My best guess was that he was bending light somehow, which was cool and creepy at the same time. It was also something I’d never heard of before, and I had to fight the urge to pry into what he could do with it. Not knowing that kind of thing was a novel experience after twenty years of working with talents.

For most of the morning HiRes had been glancing around a lot, like he wasn’t used to all the hustle and bustle, but now he’d settled down and was just leaning back with his eyes half lidded, watching over the shoulder of various drone operators when he wasn’t skimming classified messages as the cryptologists decoded them.

Forstburn and Coldsnap had been keeping up a constant string of chatter the whole time, deflecting attention from him by virtue of being cheerful and pretty, and I’d been eavesdropping between fielding the occasional question about Circuit’s methods. The status quo had held for nearly half an hour before HiRes quietly murmured, “They’re using drones.”

“They told us they were sending in another wave of drones over the park at this morning’s briefing,” I said just as softly. “Nothing new there.”

“Circuit’s people,” he said. “They have a couple of those high altitude surveillance drones that double as a sat uplink. They think that’s how he’s spotting and shooting down our drones as they come in.”

“Well that’s a pain.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It sounds more and more like we’ll have to go in on foot. Jack will be thrilled. He can finally give that lecture on jungle warfare he’s been saving all this time.”

“Assuming they don’t just give the job to the Guard,” Frostburn said.

“Because they’re better suited for that kind of operation,” her sister added.

“Drones are good.” HiRes’ eyes snapped fully open again and he sat up straight. “That means they’re spotting us visually and not by radar. I can make a chopper invisible but I can’t screw with radar waves.”

“An invisible chopper.” I said, feeling my eyebrows creep towards my hairline. “That sounds too good to be true. What can go wrong here?”

“It’s a two way street,” Coldsnap said. “When HiRes does his magic no one can see you but you can’t see anything, either. You have to rely on other senses, or leave a hole you can see out of.”

“Your pilot should be able to fly us by instruments.” He waved his hand downwards. “And I can work it so we can see, and be seen, from the ground but not the sky. It’s all in where you choose to make the bends.”

“I’ll assume that makes sense somehow.” I drummed my fingers on my knee. He was definitely bending light. Interesting. “Other potential disasters? Things the Guard might say to try and keep us from using this route?”

“The public parts of the park have a PA system,” Frostburn said. “It wouldn’t be that hard to rewire it so it could listen, too. It’d be a cheap way to monitor those parts of the park and make sure we weren’t slipping through the underbrush. There might be listening stations all over the place by now. What if they hear us coming?”

I laughed. “Don’t you have the silent man on your team?”

“There’s a limit to how loud a sound can get before he can’t squash it anymore.” She tilted her head to one side, meaning she’d just thought of something. “Unless…”

“Unless we have two wave makers working on it.” I pointed at HiRes. “Find Amplifier and Hush, get them together and see if it’s possible. I have a phone call to make.”

I left the three of them to run errands and started looking for a quiet corner of the base, already scrolling through my contacts list for the number of a certain Senator who had just as much at stake in this case as I did.

——–

Circuit

Wallace and Davis came to me late the next morning, neither one looking particularly well rested. I gave Wallace a rueful look and said, “I thought you were under no stress?”

“I had an idea after talking to you last night,” he said with a shrug. “I wanted to see how practical it was so I checked with Davis. We were up most of the night getting the numbers crunched and some rough plans put together.”

I suppressed a yawn and took a gulp of my coffee. “What kind of an idea are we talking about?”

“One that will get us out of here by three tomorrow afternoon.” Davis handed me a sheaf of papers covered in sketches and notes. “Your plans call for us to make all our superconducting material and shape it into electromagnets here at Chainfall. But, with a few adjustments, we can turn CPC wire into magnets at Deepwoods, meaning can focus the hydroelectric capacity of here at Chainfall on manufacturing the superconductors. That cuts the time we have to stay here almost in half.”

I glanced up from the plans he’d handed me. “Deepwoods?”

“That’s what Hangman’s been calling the place up in Wisconson,” Wallace said.

“I see.” I went back to the papers and said, “This looks feasible. Make the changes here as soon as possible. Davis, I want you to take all the completed materials we have at the end of the day and return to the northern installation and begin prepping it according to these spects.”

“Just me?” He asked.

“I need Wallace here to help me finish checking over the second hydroelectric turbine in the permanent dam.” I set the plans aside and stood up from my desk. “We’ve had drone overflights most of the morning and I was busy shooting them down. Once we get that second turbine working we’ll have enough electricity to keep a blanket of Empion mines airborne for half an hour, more than long enough to knock down anything that can come to us through the air. That means Sumter, or whoever winds up coming after us here, will have to come by ground.”

“And by the time they can cut through the paperwork to do that we’ll be long gone,” Davis said with a smile.

“Good work, boys,” I said with a smile. “As long as we keep the hydroelectric turbines intact I think it’s safe to say we’ve won this round.”

“You make it sound like you expect to loose one of these days,” Davis said with a laugh.

Wallace and I laughed too, but in the back of my mind the Thunderbird gambit gnawed on my conscience. Davis was uncomfortably close to the truth for once. Hopefully he, or worse Wallace or Hangman, wouldn’t see through to the endgame until it was time.

But first there was Thunderclap. And before that, we’d have to keep the hydroelectric generators going for the next twenty-four hours. Simple enough, right?

——–

Helix

A week and a day after the event the press had started calling the Michigan Avenue Proclamation we were flying low over the marshy forest that held Circuit’s latest supervillain’s lair. The Guard wasn’t happy about it, but the ability to put an invisible helicopter in the middle of the opposition’s base had tipped the turf war in our favor and we were going in to sort things out.

As for flying invisible, it was really weird. If you looked up there was nothing visible but a nauseating pulse of twisted light over the chopper while the Indiana countryside continued to roll by undisturbed below us. On top of that, the combined efforts of Amplifier and Hush were suppressing most of the noise we were making, so the helicopter’s engines were making no more noise than the typical house fan. This also meant that if you wanted to say anything to anyone you had to yell at the top of your lungs, and even then our wave makers were pretty upset about it.

But thankfully we made it safely to the landing zone in the northern part of the park, about two miles away from what our drone reconnaissance suggested was the center of Circuit’s clandestine instillation. It wasn’t really anything more than a small, level clearing well removed from the public areas of the park and all of Circuit’s territory that we could identify. It was really quite impressive the way he’d managed to smuggle enough materials and labor into the park to build three hardened bunkers and one smallish dam. There was probably an inside man in the DNR or something, Analysis and Records were going to spend months working out how it might have been done, but in the mean time it meant that we had a lot of work to do.

Grandpa Wake used to tell stories about jumping huge distances, like the time he vaulted off a three story building onto a Panzer Mk. IV to bend the main gun out of shape. I’ll admit that I had a sneaking suspicion those stories were hyperbole, at least until Samson jumped twenty feet from the chopper to the ground and proceeded to secure our landing zone like nothing unusual had happened. Kesselman put us down without incident and the rest of us piled out in a less spectacular fashion.

I glanced around and suppressed a slight shudder. The group included Teresa and the rest of our team, Massif and Screeton, Amplifier, Sanders, Darryl and his team and Sampson. In all, there were eight talents present, twice as many as I had ever seen in one place outside of a briefing room. “All right people,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “You all have your assignments. Circuit’s had his chance to make history. Let’s show him how to do it right.”

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Water Fall: Flood Waters

Posted by natechen on March 31, 2014

Five Days After the Michigan Avenue

Helix

There were many problems that resulted from the revelation that talents walked among us. Believe it or not, Project Sumter had very detailed contingency plans in place detailing possible fallout from public knowledge of talented individuals. These scenarios cover pretty much everything from witch hunts and pogroms aiming to wipe out talents to individual talents who set themselves up as the leaders of cults.

Absolutely none of these scenarios mentioned the necessity of field agents taking part in press conferences.

I feel that this was a major oversight, because anyone who put an ounce of thought into it would have immediately banned me from getting within a hundred feet of any member of the press. In fact, I have no idea why that memo didn’t go out as soon as I pulled my stunt to rescue Teresa from the reporter mob. And yet two days after I did that I found myself staring glassily at a wall of microphones and ravenous, soul-sucking journalists. It was less than ideal for my peace of mind, and not just because I was wondering what had gotten into Voorman.

And while we’re on that subject, let me just say I found how easily he adjusted to the press a little disgusting. He gave the opening statement, a quick five minute summary of Circuit’s case and where we currently stood with it, using nothing but a couple of note cards and without showing any sign that he was nervous. This from a person who, a week ago, I would have told you was defined by his nerves. I’d say he looked totally in control of the situation except, as soon as he opened the floor to questions things went south.

If you’ve never seen the press all over a new story, it’s kind of like watching flies swarming over a dead raccoon on the side of the road. It’s obsessive, repulsive and relentless. The basic shape of things was like this: Voorman was at the center at the podium and to his left were the three Senior Special Agents we had that had been involved in the case since the beginning; my current boss, Teresa Herrera, my former boss, Bob Sanders, and Massif’s boss, Harriet Verger. These four were chosen for their extensive field experience, their familiarity with the case and the fact that, with two men, two women, one Hispanic, one African American and ages ranging from mid twenties to late fifties, they made a wonderful picture of the diversity and inclusiveness of Project Sumter. I would have preferred to face the press backed by my highly experienced tactical team, but they were all middle aged white males and hadn’t been invited.

Of course, the ethnically balanced, open and fair shtick may have been to counterbalance the fact that Amplifier, Massif and I were all white as they come. Only Samson broke the mold. Sure, that’s because the Midwest is a bit more homogenous than other parts of the country but that doesn’t play in front of the press and the fact that I don’t care for that kind of posturing much doesn’t change the fact that perceptions matter. The four of us were lined up by height, with Samson closest to the middle and the rest of us in descending order moving away from Voorman. We weren’t supposed to be there to talk, that was Voorman’s job, but we had been introduced to the public by our code names and our status as talented people made clear.

Unfortunately, as soon as Voorman finished outlining, in general terms, the extent of our current investigation into Circuit’s activities and what kind information we were hoping to get from the public the press was free to ask questions. The first question came from a reporter from the local broadcast news, a shortish Asian American woman with black hair pulled into a bun. “Agent Voorman, is there any indication of what this Open Circuit’s motivation in his crimes might be?”

“At the moment it seems to be purely self-interest, based on the pattern of his crimes,” Voorman said. “His public statements have suggested he wants to be seen as some kind of freedom fighter but so far most of his crimes consist of grand theft of pretty much every type and criminal trespass. And that’s just the things he’s wanted on five or more counts of. Not the behavior of an altruist.”

A journalist with the ragged haircut and slightly worn clothing of someone who didn’t have to get in front of a TV camera every day raised his hand and asked, “There’s a lot of people with what you call talents coming forward all over the country and saying they’d like to use them in a productive fashion. In interviews they’ve said that’s something you’ve forbidden, by and large. Are there plans to change that policy in the future?”

Voorman glanced at Sanders, who cleared his throat and said, “There’s been a lot of talk about that at the management level over the past few days, discussions I’ve been a part of.” I felt my eyebrows raise a bit at that. I had wondered where my old boss had gotten off to, since I hadn’t seen him with his new talent much recently. “Some talents do receive licenses for specific kinds of work already. State and Federal governments are debating how those programs might be expanded but our involvement in that is going to be strictly advisory from this point forward. Politicians will have to sort it and put it before the voters.”

A different, younger looking reporter near the back shouted, “What about superheroes?”

“That would-” Voorman began, but stopped short when Samson stepped to the edge of the raised platform we were standing on, picked up an empty metal microphone stand from off the floor and held it up for the audience to examine.

Then he bent it into a rough circle using his bare hands. The room went deathly quiet as Samson carefully set the bent pole on the stage and said, “My talent is one of the most powerful we know of in direct confrontations. If you want to see something really interesting we can go to a junkyard later and I’ll throw some cars. But the fact is, even I rely on equipment, backup and information from Project Sumter to do my job. I can’t take a bullet safely without a bulletproof vest, for example. I still only have two eyes and they only see in front of me, so I need someone to watch my back. Vigilantes have none of that support and are more likely to get themselves and other people hurt than solve any problems.”

“On top of that,” Verger added, piping up from the other side of Voorman, “the legal system itself doesn’t deal with them well. Evidence gained through vigilantes is rarely if ever admissible in court, and if they did take the stand we’d usually have to turn around and arrest them for trespassing or assault and battery. Vigilantism remains something the law highly discourages, and we are a law enforcement agency, no matter what else people choose to call us.”

“Don’t you think constantly dismissing the potential contributions talented people make out of hand is part of the problem here?” The anchorwoman who had asked the first question demanded.

“We’re not dismissing them out of hand,” Voorman said. “There are a lot of issues to be explored-“

“And that’s a process your agency has been actively suppressing for almost seventy years,” she said, too fired up to notice her breath gathering in front of her in an icy cloud. “Why do you call Open Circuit a run of the mill crook when he’s obviously been confronted with such widespread systemic injustice his entire life?”

“Because he’s a liar, a thief and a killer.” Both Voorman and Sanders short me warning looks but I ignored them. I’d been prepared for a lot of strange sounding questions from the press but I honestly hadn’t expected them to be sympathetic to Circuit. “Project Sumter has asked talents to keep what they can do a secret as much for their own safety as out of a desire to keep the public in ignorance.”

I stepped forward and picked up the stand Samson had left there and let it rest in my palm for a moment, until the heat gathered there melted through it and the two pieces tumbled to the ground. A flick of the fingers sent the last drops of molten metal sizzling onto the ground and I looked the reporter in the eye. She’d paled visibly. “On the face of it, what we can do is more than a little scary, don’t you think? Even fifty years ago, this kind of thing could have caused riots. Maybe times have changed and we can be out in the open safely. We’ll see. But it wouldn’t be the first time the government has erred on the side of caution and gotten it wrong. That doesn’t justify robbing people of their livelihoods, threatening their safety, or leaving their families in mourning. Circuit’s done all that, and the only reason for a person to act like that is pure selfishness.”

Behind me Voorman cleared his throat. “I think that will be all the questions for now.”

——–

“You are not doing that again,” Voorman said, his tone closer to exasperation than anger.

“Thank goodness,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. I didn’t let the air around me change in temperature but nerves still had me dripping. “I hate press conferences.”

“You’ve never done one before,” Sanders pointed out.

“But I’ve seen plenty on TV,” I replied. “And I hated all of them.”

“Helix,” Teresa said, visibly struggling to be patient. “It’s going to be very important that the press not paint us like a loose cannon or some other kind of threat to the public interest.”

“Because the press never smears people it doesn’t like regardless of facts,” I said, favoring her with a mock-naïve expression.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Voorman said, regaining some of his patience. “But it would really help if we didn’t feed them sound bites to use against us.”

“Hey big guy!” Jack waved to me from the other side of the floor, standing with Darryl by the computer that was keeping the situation map up to date. “Get a load of this.”

When your tactical leader says get somewhere you get, and when you’ve known Jack as long as I have that goes double. Teresa, Voorman and Samson went along with me and, due to longer legs, Teresa and Samson got there first. I snorted in disgust and Voorman spared me a sympathetic glance. Then we were at the desk and the moment of short men solidarity was over.

“What have we got?” Teresa asked.

Lincoln Wu looked up from the computer station, which he appeared to be in charge of. Apparently he had gotten some new clearances, a lot had been going on in the office in the last week or so and I was keeping up with less than half of it. “The National Guard in Indiana sent us this about two hours ago. Records is working overtime and the Watch has been pulled in, too, since censoring the news is less of a thing now, but we’re still having a hard time keeping up with all the tips and reports coming in so it got lost in the slush pile somewhere.”

He pulled up a new window and hammered a few shortcut keys, flicking through menus at a near-epileptic pace. A couple of seconds later we were looking at grainy image of a densely forested area.

“This is the Chain o’ Rivers State Park in southern Indiana. It’s a hiking and camping kind of a place and, until last year you could even go canoeing through the rivers.” Jack grabbed a sheet of paper that had a map, presumably of the park, printed on it and handed it to me as he went on. “The problem is there’s no one route, they can be like a maze at some points and people have gotten lost before, sometimes for a day or more. It was decided to add some markers and close off certain parts of the river, to help keep people safe. The canoeing was closed while the work was being done.”

Darryl picked up the story at that point. “Last week a cop who was there on vacation spotted some really heavy equipment being trucked through some of the maintenance roads. Concrete mixers, a small backhoe, not the stuff you expect to see in a State Park. Being outside of his jurisdiction and not wanting trouble, he called it in to the DNR. They sent in a couple of agents to look into it.”

“No one’s heard from them in three days. Things get a little murkier after that but the Guard got involved at some point,” Jack said, gesturing back to the computer screen. “So they asked for some satellite images and this is what they found.”

I leaned in for a closer look. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did they find?”

“These,” Lincoln said, zooming in on the lower right corner of the image. Now I could make out a strange boxy thing nestled in under the branches of a large tree on the bank of the river. A dark line ran out into the water.

“Is that a tree branch?” Voorman asked.

“We think it’s some kind of makeshift dam,” Darryl replied. “You remember what that girl Amplifier was tracking when we first ran into her?”

“A stolen prototype for a hydroelectric generator,” Teresa said. “One that would function even with very shallow water at high efficiency. Stolen by Circuit.”

“And look.” Lincoln hit another shortcut key, cycling quickly through at least a dozen other images. “They’ve found at least fifteen of them scattered through the park. There might be more, better hidden. Then there’s this.”

The last image was of an honest to goodness concrete dam. Jack tapped a knuckle against it. “That looks to have been built sometime in the last month, probably finished about the time our cop was visiting the park. It’s caused a lot of flooding but so far nothing in the public areas. The Guard didn’t want more people going in and not coming back out so they decided to send a drone to investigate.”

“I’ll be the FAA was thrilled with that,” I muttered.

“Not sure they’ve found out,” Jack replied. “Show them the footage.”

Lincoln cued up a video that gave us a bird’s eye view of the area around the park. As in, it actually dipped and swooped like a bird, it was pretty nauseating actually. I have no idea how the people who operate drones put up with it. The footage went on for about ten seconds before suddenly cutting out to static, then the words SIGNAL LOST came up on a black background. Samson grunted in surprise. “What happened?”

“Show them the satellite footage,” Darryl said mildly.

“Right.” Lincoln sounded a bit sheepish but did as he was told without further comment.

This time the satellite was focused on the drone so the terrain around it was pretty much a blur. But then the miniature aircraft came to a sudden stop and started to fall. Lincoln froze the frame before it went far and zoomed in. A gray blob was shooting through the bottom half of the frame, obviously moving pretty fast.

“There was a big blast of static at the time the drone’s signal was lost. It could be explained any number of ways, but smart money says this,” Darryl pointed at the blur, “is some kind of EMP device launched from the ground and set of to fry our machines.”

“Definitely Circuit,” I said. “I don’t know what he’s doing all the way out there but I don’t care so long as we can shut him down and drag him in.”

Teresa glanced at me, then over at Darryl. “What does the National Guard think of all this?”

“They were thinking it was a terrorist plot to take over a Park and poison the water supply. There’s a squadron of A-10 Warthogs based in Fort Wayne that they were planning to mobilize as part of an operation to storm the park and round up anyone present. Then the news about talents went public and local field offices started circulating information on Circuit’s case and they came to us.”

“So when do we go in?” Teresa asked.

“Actually, they just want us to send an advisor. They still plan to run their op, they just want someone from the Project to ‘look for unanticipated complications’ and suggest adjustments.” Jack’s tone of voice told me he thought that wasn’t going to be enough. By several orders of magnitude.

I felt my own eyes narrowing at the thought of just handing this job over to a bunch of soldiers and sitting in an office while other people dragged Circuit out of his watery little hideyhole. I glanced from Darryl to Voorman. “What do you gentlemen say we go and explain to the Guard the errors of their ways?”

Darryl rubbed his hands together and picked up his cane. “I’ll go get my team.”

I glanced at Voorman and Samson. “That’s the Secret Service spoken for.”

Samson shrugged. “Who knows that our position is not for such a time as this?”

That got a grin from me. “Okay, Mordecai, get your bags packed, time’s a wasting!”

“Wait.” Lincoln gave me a confused look. “I thought his codename was Samson.”

Samson laughed. “At least he didn’t call me Sam. Or Esther.”

“Then I’ll do it, Sam.” Voorman gave his partner and I a grim look. “You two need to calm down. We can’t take this op from them by force and we don’t have the standing to demand they turn it over to us. The National Guard isn’t going to give up on running their own plan unless we can bring them a better one, and they’re not going to let us execute our plan unless we give them a good reason why they’re not qualified to carry out that plan themselves.”

“Fair points,” Teresa said with a smile. “But we have the world’s foremost expert on Open Circuit to draw on so that should be easy to do.”

I frowned. “Darryl did work a lot of the early cases with me, but he had moved to Analysis chief before most of the really heavy stuff happened. This is Amber’s first time working a Circuit case, and Mossburger and Mov-“

“Big guy,” Jack interrupted. “She’s talking about you. Not the getmen.”

“Oh.” I stared blankly at him, then Teresa. “Me?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You. In eight years you’ve worked twelve cases involving Circuit, out of seventeen attributed to him in one way or another. And that doesn’t include whatever it was the CIA asked you to do in Morocco a couple years back. No one knows him like you.”

I swallowed once, hard. “I guess not.”

Jack grinned. “Then I guess you’d better get to work putting together a plan for us.”

“Yeah.” I’d never been in a position where I had to put a plan together before. But as soon as Jack said it I realized it was Circuit we were going after all the pieces just slid into place. “Actually, scratch that. We’ve got a plan. I just need to get Darryl back and make sure he’s on board…”

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Water Fall: Running Deep

Posted by natechen on March 10, 2014

Two Days After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Helix

It’s not something I normally go on too much about, but my boss is incredibly hot. And I don’t mean that in the sense that I would normally mean it – she’s attractive, not a great deal warmer than the environment around her. She’s got classic high cheekbones, a deft hand with makeup and a figure that could launch the siege of a large building, if not a small city. I mention this because, when I got back to the office late the next morning, it was surrounded by reporters.

I don’t think I have to say that this isn’t business as normal.

Getting out of my car I could hear them all talking and shouting at someone. I glanced over at Jack, who was climbing out of his truck a dozen parking spots away, and tilted my head. We hadn’t coordinated our arrival but that was the only thing about our entering the building that went uncoordinated. With a series of quick hand signals, half out of the book and half from a long history of working together, and Jack set off to trail blaze while I hung back to support if anything went wrong. Jack always trail blazes in crowds, in part because he’s so much bigger and more intimidating but also because he has this odd idea that I’ll take the term trailblazing too literally for anyone’s good.

So as I trailed along about twenty feet behind Jack I got a great view of him coming around the side of the building towards the doors. The moment when he spotted the crowd was truly priceless. His expression went from suspicion, since anything out of the ordinary is suspicious, to surprise, when he realized we were surrounded by reporters, to profound embarrassment, since being noticed by the public is the opposite of what we are technically supposed to do.

Someone had posted a pair of armed guards outside, which explained why the reporters were outside, and keeping a good ten feet away from the doors instead of swarming over the reception area just inside. I thought I recognized one of them as the leader of Al Massif’s tactical team. Jack peered over the crowed, clearly weighing the odds of getting through the press of press cleanly, spotted the guards and decided to make a go of it.

Not that any of the reporters paid much attention to Jack. Teresa had arrived at some earlier time and they were all clustered around her since, as I’ve said already, she’s pretty much the most eye catching thing around. Don’t ever let anyone convince you that doesn’t make a difference in how the news gets told. I decided that, given the situation, sticking closely to the normal routine of following Jack and clearing out anyone who tailed him wasn’t going to be needed and I should probably back up Teresa instead.

One thing that you have to develop in this line of work is your ability to be rude. Dealing with members of the public is a lot easier when you can keep them at arm’s length and reporters won’t take you seriously unless you spend the first five minutes trying to brush them off. Teresa comes from a background in Homeland Security so I’m sure she’d had Basic Rudeness 101 but in the few months I’ve worked with her I’ve noticed she really doesn’t rely on it much. While this probably ingratiates her to the regular people we meet, and it’s probably something we were all going to use more in the future, at the moment courtesy was just getting her mobbed by reporters who didn’t know it was time to back off.

Among the few upsides of being unusually short is the ability to sneak up on people, especially when they’re focused on someone taller than you. I got a satisfying jump out of most of the reporters when I stepped into their midst, took Teresa by the elbow and said, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.” Rudeness is different from being unprofessional, after all. “Agent Herrera and I are needed inside.” I steered her towards the door and, since there is an element of fair trade in these kinds of things, kept talking as I walked. “We’re not currently cleared to say much, as I’m sure you’ve already learned. There will probably be a statement released by the Senate’s Oversight Committee on Talented Individuals within the next day or two. Contact the office of Senator Brahms Dawson, of Wisconsin, if you want more details.”

The best part about talking to reporters is they all shut up while you’re doing it, so my statement bought just enough silence to hear a repressed snort of laughter from Teresa when I set the press on Dawson’s office. It was definitely the kind of game two people could play and, as the talented field agent with seniority in the Midwest, I suspected that I’d be in for reciprocal treatment, but in the mean time I was enjoying the mental picture of Brahms Dawson being ambushed by reporters demanding a statement at every turn.

There were at least twenty or thirty reporters out front of the office that morning and, being fairly short and content free, what I had to say didn’t get us all the way in the doors. Teresa knew better than to contradict me in front of the public so she waited until the barrage of follow-up questions was cut off by the door sliding closed behind us before she asked, “Are you sure that was something you should be saying?”

“It was factual and nothing they wouldn’t know in another day or so. It also keeps them from paying too much attention to us so we might be able to move with a little more freedom, if they’re camped out front with satellite vans and cameras it’s just one more way for Circuit to try and spy on us.” Another thought occurred to me. “And in a way, it’s a good chance for the Senator.”

Teresa glanced down at me as she started up the stairs to the second floor. “In what way?”

“Think about it,” I said, gesturing back at the press that crowded around outside. “They’re going to be all over this story. In fact, they already are. When they hear about the kind of information manipulation we’ve actively engaged in over the past fifty years they’ll skip straight past asking questions and go straight to demanding blood. The one shot the Committee has at saving their skins is if they can say their piece before anyone else.”

“Haven’t seen today’s paper yet, have you?” She asked, pulling a pile of newssheet out from under one arm.

Since it was the kind of question you can answer by doing something I decided not to say anything and just take the copy of the Tribune she was offering. The front page was dedicated to the attack on Michigan Avenue. In addition to a factual account of what went on and a man on the street interview with store managers and owners talking about what the economic impact of the attack might be there was a short article below the fold. Written by the paper’s sports writer, it claimed to be an interview with the man who masterminded the attack. I only had to read a few paragraphs to decide that it wasn’t someone trying to grab credit. Only Circuit could sound so self-satisfied, even in print.

I handed the newspaper back to Teresa. “Okay, so he’s a step ahead of us there, too. At least it’s just the local paper.”

“You talking about Circuit’s latest publicity stunt?” Cheryl was coming down the hall from the other direction, a stack of printer paper in one hand. “Because it’s not just the Tribune.”

I groaned. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Nope.” She waved the papers she was holding back and forth. “There’s three different articles that we know of so far. These are printouts from the Indianapolis Star and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. All your getmen are cleared to see them, along with oversight agents and anyone else you think needs to look them over.”

I gave her a blank stare.

“Right.” She sighed. “I guess information security isn’t such a big deal this time, is it?”

Teresa gently took the printouts from her. “The game’s changed, Cheryl. We’re all still working out the rules.”

“Yeah, well…” She threw her hands up. “In the mean time, I have to make sure we write down everything that happens on the way. So try and snag this guy before the paperwork backlog gets too severe, okay?”

“Will do,” I said over my shoulder, pushing through the door and onto the floor.

Our offices have never been the bustling, frantic command center you tend to see shown on TV. For one thing, we’ve never had the budget for that kind of staff. For another, we’re always short on field agents so they tend to wind up out in the field, instead of in the office most of the time. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it does mean that the floor is usually a lot of empty desks with one or two people filling out paperwork scattered about. Today there were no desks because the floor map was in use, but practically every available place to stand that didn’t put you on top of some part of the continental U.S. was occupied by qualified field agents.

“Busy day,” Teresa observed.

“Kind of surprising,” I said, trying to find Jack without resorting to standing on tiptoes. “The last time we went to Condition One we got out new assignments in the field.”

“Michael sent out notice that everyone should report here last night, while we were in the field.” I glanced up. Agent Samson, the only other guy in the room even close to Jack’s size, had somehow managed to sneak up on me in the crowd. He glanced at the printouts Teresa was holding and raised an eyebrow. “Good news, I hope?”

“We could use some, but this isn’t it,” I said, plucking the printouts from Teresa’s hand and passing them up to Samson. “What do you make of that?”

He made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat as he skimmed the printouts for a second, then sighed. “I saw the article in the Tribune this morning. I’m surprised he managed to reach this far in one day, but otherwise there’s nothing that surprising here.”

“What surprises me is that you’re here.” I folded my arms and gave him an appraising look. “Shouldn’t you still be on the disappearance of Dawson’s daughter?”

“We’re at Condition One,” Samson pointed out. “Why wouldn’t I be working this case?”

“Because you’re not a certified field agent anymore?” I suggested. “You’re not up on current procedure, you don’t have a tactical support team and, since we’re going to need Voorman here to handle PR as much as possible he’s not going to be able to be in the field with you full time anymore, so you don’t really have oversight, either.”

“Bob Sanders has been studying up on what I can do,” Samson said, matching my posture if not quite the level of hostility. “He actually served as oversight for me during the Michigan Avenue cleanup. Taxmen have traditionally moved without conventional tactical support, which I’m sure you know, and a lot of existing procedure is now a moot point. Helix, I’ve gotten the impression you don’t care much for me since you realized I was a talent. Part of it is probably because I didn’t slap Circuit down when I had a chance.”

I glanced down and away. “I don’t blame you for Mona’s death any more than I blame anyone who was there that night except Circuit. But you’ve been gone for over ten years just so you could preach in a run down school building. We could have used your help.”

“Yes, I figured it might be something like that.” Samson fidgeted for a moment, the sighed. “Look, Helix, when I joined Project Sumter there weren’t nearly as many problems on the scale of Open Circuit or even the Breeders that you found Coldsnap and Frostburn with. Most of my work consisted of showing up when we interacted with foreign talents to make it clear we had muscle or convincing talented people to lie about what they were, or else. I worked with the Project for six years and only had one case even close to the scale of what you’ve dealt with in the past.”

“So work on the problems with the system!” I threw my hands in the air. “I didn’t like the lying any more than you did, but I’ve been working to change things, at least when I had the time.”

He nodded approvingly. “I know. Even when I wasn’t active, Voorman passed on the occasional word about the kinds of reforms you’ve been stumping for. I’m particularly glad you managed to convince Project Sumter to share proven self control methods with the parents of younger children with dangerous talents. But,” he said, holding up a finger, “that’s something only you could have done. Between your grandparents and all those tricky cases you handled, you had a level of credibility and influence a former gangbanger who was once accused of manslaughter could ever hope to have.”

Next to me, Teresa made a surprised sound. “A gang? You?”

“MS-13,” he confirmed with a nod. “God prepares each man for his work. My history with them, and my experience here at Project Sumter, made me well equipped to deal with teens struggling with gangs, drugs or unusual abilities, or all three at once. But I couldn’t really help them find peace here. Project Sumter prioritizes the public over the individual. And Heaven knows the public needs it. But individual people need something, too, and the people of God exist to bring it to them. For a long time serving as a pastor was the best way to use my all my talents and experiences to do that.”

Ever since I could remember I’d thought of Project Sumter as the best existing method for dealing with the problems talented people presented in a democratic society. Hearing Samson say there was a better way to deal with things didn’t make me feel any better about him but I could grudgingly admit I saw his point. I wasn’t going to just then without prompting, but I could have if I’d been pressed. But I was getting uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation and we were starting to get a lot of attention from the other agents in the crowed around us, so instead I pushed us back to the original topic. “So you’re not on the Daswson case anymore?”

“Has anyone ever really considered them different cases?” Teresa asked.

“Not anyone on my team,” Samson replied. “Movsesian is at least eighty percent sure that her disappearance is related to Circuit and the only other possibility he considers likely is that she’s hiding out over a disagreement with her family.”

“She’s never gotten on that well with her dad,” Teresa said, “but I don’t think she’d drop out of sight for more than a month just because they were arguing about something.”

“And no one in her family remembers anything that could have made her that upset.” The big man shrugged his shoulders eloquently. “We’re not left with many possibilities beyond Circuit’s involvement. It’s surprising that he hasn’t tried to use Elizabeth Dawson as leverage yet, but that day may be coming in the near future. I don’t agree with Senator Dawson any more than you do, Helix, but he doesn’t deserve to have his daughter held over his head like that. And helping families who have lost track of difficult or estranged children is one of the things I do best.”

“But Circuit is way beyond anything you’ve dealt with before,” Teresa said, a note of understanding entering into her voice. “So you’re continuing to work the case on the Project’s terms.”

“And who knows?” Samson said. “Perhaps I first came to the Project in preparation for such a time as this. I just wish we knew more about how Circuit abducted her and what her current situation might be. The girl disappeared so flawlessly he might as well have made an elephant disappear right before our eyes.”

I blinked once. “Misdirection.”

“I’m sorry?” Teresa gave me a blank look, which was echoed by Samson.

“Circuit loves misdirection. Every job he’s pulled, whatever we thought his objective was turned out to be misdirection to keep us away from what he really wanted.” I turned to stare out across the map of the country, my gaze drawn to the Midwest where almost constant status updates were being projected onto the floor.

Samson moved to follow my line of sight, as if that might give him a clue what I was talking about. “Are you saying he abducted a senator’s daughter to keep us distracted?”

“I’m saying…” I pulled my eyes away from the map and looked over at Teresa. “Why would he announce he’s planning to take over the country?”

“Well, he needed publicity to help him gather-” Teresa broke off and stared at me blankly for a moment. “Are you saying taking over the country is a smoke screen for something else?”

“What could he possibly want?” Samson asked, incredulous. “World domination? Please don’t tell me people actually think that way.”

“No.” I looked back out at the map, Samson’s words of a moment ago ringing in my mind. For such a time as this. Because in the age of electronic security, the Internet and cell phones, was there ever a better time for a man with the ability to sense and alter electricity to make his mark? “He doesn’t want to rule the world. He wants to save it.”

Fiction Index

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Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

Tag Archives: serialization

Thunder Clap: Bad Company, Stranger Characters

Thunder Clap: Shocking Claims

Thunder Clap: Shake Up

Thunder Clap: Burning Questions

Thunder Clap: Rude Awakening

An Incident in a Family Diner

Water Fall: Storm Surge

Water Fall: Hydroelectric

Water Fall: Flood Waters

Water Fall: Running Deep

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