“I like the walls. Reminds me of an old castle.”
“I am very fond of this place. The Agency has several headquarters, but we only use one at a time. We had to suddenly switch to this one when Rachel, the former Agent, turned traitor and acted against us. She knew the location of the headquarters we were previously using, so we sealed that one off and moved to this one. Then we were busy with the business of trying to stop her, which we did, most of the Agents losing their lives in the process.” Roman ran two fingers across the stone wall and looked at the gray dust on his pale white fingertips. “We were too busy at the time to clean. And then for the past several months there's only been myself to do all the Agency work.”
“What about Julius?” She'd only seen the leader of The Agents Of a couple of times, and never up close. She knew he'd been badly crippled, but that he was still around.
“Julius has been going through an... introspective period. Taking a sabbatical, if you will. But I believe he's going to be fully engaged again shortly. Now, if I may...” Roman pushed open the large wooden door. The vast stone room beyond was as large as a small city block, and as they walked into the room dozens of gas lanterns which were embedded into the walls all sputtered to life. The room had more lab tables than Mars could count, all covered in tools and equipment and papers. There were shelves full of books and stones and skulls, glass cases displaying all kinds of specimens – creatures that Mars had never seen before.
“Wow! You have one hell of a laboratory.”
“Now it's our laboratory, Mars. This is where I'm going to apprentice you, teach you my way of designing and building devices. I'll teach you the properties of Wonder, of ghost objects, of all the creatures in and around the city – what they're made of, what they breathe and eat to sustain themselves. What kills them, if anything.
“You will spend roughly one third of your time down here in an apprenticeship with me. Another third you will spend training with me to be an Agent – learning the workings of the city, learning the kinds of tasks you will be sent to accomplish. I will train you how to fight – as I'm sure you know, the Agents may not use or even touch lethal weapons. So you will need to learn how to defend yourself with your bare hands, and later on with devices that I've created and that you will learn to create. You will teach me how your gift works for you, how you heal the entities, and I will help you hone your abilities and bring them to their fullest potential.”
Mars was so completely aware of the room around them, of Roman standing there talking to her, of the butterflies in her stomach. It was as if her whole being were trying to drink the moment into itself. She thought that this was how someone winning the lottery might feel. Yet at the same time, strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), she felt like she'd always been part of this world – that she'd just never had a clear way in before.
“What about the... uh... third third? The last third of my time?”
“That third is yours. You will live. You will make the best of that time in whatever way you see fit. Keep yourself from winding up too tight, keep yourself from being too stressed. Of course, these 'thirds' are just rough estimations – they are very malleable. You will always be on call.”
Mars nodded. “So when do we start?”
Roman smiled. “The eagerness of a new Agent can be very refreshing. I believe you've brought something for me.”
Mars swung her messenger bag in front of her and ruffled through it (she'd brought a couple of thin coats, figuring they'd be underground and that it may be chilly) and pulled out Dean Smith's revolver. She held it towards Roman for him to take, but he shook his head.
“I cannot touch it. It is not physically possible.” He motioned her to follow him deeper into the room. “This way.”
“But I'm 'wielding' this gun, right? Isn't that bad, since I'm an Agent?”
“I have not officially instated you yet. I had to wait until you were done handling the revolver.”
He led her past several lab tables and glass cases, up to a wall where there was a large steel shelf with a sort of display stand and leather straps and metal vice-like clamps welded into it. “It should fit nicely onto the stand.”
Mars lifted the revolver and placed it on the stand. It stood up, pointed sideways like it was being shown off to a room of antique gun connoisseurs.
“Now if you would, strap it down, then tighten the clamps.”
Mars pulled the straps tightly around it and turned the swivel of the vices, tightening them around the gun. “This revolver isn't going anywhere.”
On a shelf that jutted out just below the revolver and the stand was a large metal glove with rubber wires and empty vials screwed into it. It looked like a big metal claw.
Mars poked at one of the wires. “So what's this for?”
“This is the Extraction Glove. If Edith joins us and learns to wield it, she can use it to extract Dean's memories from the gun, and he will become our mole in whichever dark element of the city he chooses to become part of.”
“And if Edith doesn't join?”
“Then releasing Dean just becomes a huge risk to us. A risk without benefit. The only good side is that, historically, he seems to enjoy pitting the darker forces against each other, and every once in a while that turns out in our favor.” He turned and motioned for her to follow him across the room to a lab table. “Mars, do you love this city?”
“Yes, of course.”
Roman took from his coat a small glass vial with a cork in it. He pulled the cork out and poured a tiny amount of clear liquid onto two of his fingers. “This is water taken from the Mississippi during the very beginnings of this city. If you are truly ready to become an Agent, repeat after me these oaths. They have been modified throughout the years and were first written down centuries ago.” Then he began to say the five oaths of the Agents and Mars' heart began beating loud and strong as she repeated the words back to him. Each time she finished one of the oaths, Roman reached out and smeared the water across a different part of her face, neck and upper chest.
I vow to protect the city of New Orleans from those who would do her harm or destroy her.
I will never use nor hold a weapon.
I vow to serve the city of New Orleans with all of my actions and thoughts.
I understand that by protecting the sanctity of the Agency, I am protecting the city herself.
I vow that should I quit the Agency in the future, I will never divulge secrets that would do it or the city harm.
Roman put a hand on her arm. “Congratulations, Mars. You are now part of the Agency.”
Mars felt the enormous weight of protecting the city press down onto her shoulders, but that weight was not oppressive – it was actually freeing – filling her with purpose and energy and focus. “Thanks, Roman.”
“For your first task, I want you to tell me what this is.” He turned to the lab table. On it was a rod of steel, several feet long, with some kind of pivot and spring system on one end, and a plastic bowl with straps on the other. There were little springs and screws and tubes and vials sticking out of it. There were a few tools laying around it, like it was not yet finished.
“Some kind of container.”
He didn't answer – only looked at her. It was a test.
She went over the object with her eyes and her mind. It reminded her of something she'd seen before. “An extension,” she said to herself. The bowl was smooth, like it was to fit onto something soft, like a person. It probably wasn't a hat. The springs were used to push against something, to absorb the impact of pressing against something. They were shocks, like on a bike. She looked at Roman. “It's a prosthetic leg.”
“Good. It's important for a scientist to constantly be deciphering everything. Make it a habit, as you walk around in life, whether on duty or not, to pull apart everything with your mind. Figure out what it's made of and what it is capable of – what it can do that no one would normally think of using it for. Doing this will speed up your mind
so that you can quickly analyze any situation on the spot. In the field, you will not have time to guess or figure things out. You must become so quick that you can look at something and know what it is near-instantly. Others watching you should think that you are familiar with the item, even if you've never seen it before.”
He took her to another lab table which had a strange contraption on it. It was a box the size of a shoe box mounted onto a short wooden shaft, with pulley and rope running down the shaft and a few levers. “Figure out what it is. But if you touch it, be careful with the levers. I don't want you getting hurt on your first day.” Roman started walking towards lab table with the prosthetic leg. “I'll be finishing up this leg. Tell me when you figure out that device.”
Mars stretched and cracked her neck, then rubbed her hands together. “Alright, here we go.”
File 19 :: [Edith Downs]
During the next several days Edith split her time between soaking in baths and watching old movies, all while attempting to regulate her wine intake. She had been forced out of the house by her lack of wine and had walked to the corner store in a colorfully ridiculous hat and giant sunglasses. No one cared what she looked like, of course – people regularly walked the city wearing circus uniforms or brightly colored wigs or cowboy hats with dolls tied to them. No, not a person lifted an eye except to say “hi” as she passed – she was just another neighborly stranger to them, stupid hat or no stupid hat. But when she was standing in line at the corner store with four bottles of mediocre red wine bundled in her arms, she looked at the mirror sticking out of a display of sunglasses on the counter. She looked silly, but that wasn't what was wrong – she just didn't look like Edith. She shuddered and looked away, forcing the tears back into the corners of her eyes.
As she toiled around her house during those days, Maurice was happier than ever. Edith hadn't spent so much time at home for quite a while, with Le Croissant Cité having consumed her life for so long. Of course he still found reasons to run around the house complaining, but it was more out of habit – she could tell that his heart really wasn't invested in the weak tantrums.
The words of Wole kept entering her mind, about not doing anything and seeing what it is that you're still doing (or something like that). She'd like to think that his words were the reason she was wandering around the house for days, barely even going outside to sit in the courtyard. But in truth every time she thought of going out to eat, or calling up someone she knew to get dinner or drinks, or going in to the shop, she'd just start crying. She cried more in those days than she'd ever cried in her life. So she was following Wole's advice by default.
It wasn't until the fourth day that she pulled a chair up to the mirror to really take a look at the “newer” aspects of her appearance. She parted her hair down the middle and brushed it down the sides of her face. There was a clump of hair near the corner of her forehead, above her discolored eye, that was yellowish-brown – though for being “yellowish-brown” it wasn't that off-putting of a color. The hair was discolored starting at the roots and went on for about three inches. It would either grow out and become black again, or keep growing in that color and she'd have some weird-looking streak.
Edith pulled her hair back into a pony tail and looked at her eye. There weren't any weird spots on it or anything, and now the whole iris looked to be the exact same color as the streak in her hair. Above and below the eye her skin was discolored, nearly the same yellowish-brown. The discoloration above her eye pulled up into a thin point, spiking through the middle of her eyebrow. She pushed around the black hairs of the eyebrow and saw a thin streak of roots there that were discolored too. “Damn it!” she said. She felt the tears coming, but pushed them back. They'd come eventually, but she didn't need to be crying all the freaking time.
She sighed and sat back in the chair. With her hair pulled back, the little streak actually looked kind of elegant if she pretended it wasn't herself she was looking at. Like when young women get gray streaks in their hair and it makes them look more professional or graceful.
Looking at herself, she just couldn't picture herself being behind the counter at her shop anymore. It didn't even feel like her shop when she thought about it – but more like something she'd read about or seen in one of the movies she'd been watching. And then it suddenly hit her – the yellowish-brown color was the sepia tone of the photograph. Like it had rubbed off on her or was burned into her through the person-suit. But the realization really didn't make things better or worse – it did absolutely nothing. She was dead to it.
The tears started coming back, so she poured them a glass of wine.
Walking over to her tear-blurred loveseat, she suddenly couldn't even bear to sit on it. The thought of sitting on it held such a strong memory of the previous years of her life, which were all about something that was dead now. Something that never really had life in the first place. She was a thirty-five-year-old woman and all she had was a bunch of debt and a business which was now going to collapse in on itself, imploding like a dying star (except far less tragically romantic).
She slid down to the floor in front of the loveseat, setting her wine glass on the coffee table as the tears rolled in jolting sobs. Leaning back against the edge of the loveseat, she looked up at the ceiling and felt the tears streaming down the sides of her face, crawling down to her ear lobes and diving off.
Edith closed her eyes. “I'm not doing anything,” she whispered. “I'm not doing anything. So what am I still doing? What is it that I do, when I'm not doing anything?”
She took a deep breath, feeling the air fill her lungs, feeling the weight of herself on the wooden floor, feeling the skin surrounding her, the apartment surrounding her. “I'm being a fucking mess.” She smiled a little. “I'm Edith, and what I'm good at doing is being a non-productive, tear-stained mess. Nice to meet you.”
Opening her eyes, she took another deep breath and pushed her head forward. She wiped her cheeks with the sides of her hands and took a drink of wine. Then, setting the wine glass on the table, she just stared at it. Very slowly she pulled her hand away from the wine glass and a net of butterflies was loosed in her stomach. Every edge of her skin was tingling, and from both of her eyes a single tear fled down to her chin, but they didn't even feel like they were Edith's tears. The nearly full glass of wine was the old her and the hand pulling away was herself pulling away, letting the old Edith go, setting her free.
The old Edith, with all her problems, her worries and insecurities, her strengths and passions. Her beauty.
“Thank you,” she said to the old her. “Thank you for letting me be you.” A shudder ran through Edith's body as she felt so many strings tying her to that life with their little knots. Then she felt all the knots being loosened and undone, the strings between her and her old life left to dangle. She saw her very life, the life she'd been building and aspiring to, drifting away. The lack of that life left this incredible empty space all around her, but within the emptiness itself was something like a sound, a hum. The hum surrounded her, vibrating out from inside, but it also came from everything else in the room – the loveseat, the walls and ceiling and table, the pictures and bookshelves and lamps. She felt life humming through herself, felt life humming through the whole room.
The very sense of her body slipped away and she slid sideways onto the floor until she was lying down, staring at the table leg with one of the bookshelves in the distance, her wet cheek pressed flat against the cool wood of the floor. She didn't know how long she was like that, just feeling the hum of life moving in and out of herself, becoming her and becoming the room, barely aware of her field of vision. But at some point it occurred to her that there was movement. There was a pet – yes, she had a pet. Maurice. Perhaps Maurice was walking around, hungry or wanting to play.
But it was not Maurice that she was seeing. Little figures of violet and blue were walking or crawling slowly towards her, just a few of them, each no bigger than one of Edith's fingers. One of
the mems wandered hesitantly up to her face, and Edith could see its curiosity mixing into its caution like a cocktail. She knew this mem. It was one of the mems from her apron, the one she'd gotten from an estate sale when she was six. And the others behind it, she knew which items they were from as well. She'd never realized how distinct they were, how easily she could tell them apart. Not only that, but she could read their emotions, their desires, like reading the expression on someone's face. And what she read from them was compassion.
The mem that had gotten up close to her face reached out and touched her still-wet cheek, rubbing it with its arm, trying to dry it. And Edith felt compassion just pouring out of the little mem and splashing up onto her. She looked past it, at the others. She'd never realized how sentient they were, how alive they were. And she'd never known what they felt for her – that they loved her.
Their love moved into her – she felt it inside her body like it was air or blood or bones. Love more real than anything she'd ever felt before. They'd been with her for most of her life. They knew her better than anyone or anything else – of course they did, they'd been inside her freaking head. They knew how she worked, how the inside of her head moved.
Edith smiled at the apron-mem. “Hello.” It had been with her almost thirty years now.
Then, behind it she saw an approaching mem that she didn't know. She tilted her head up so that it was closer to being vertical. “And who are you, little friend?” And it whispered to Edith in images and emotions, which she saw with more vivid detail than she ever had before. A grandfather clock was where this mem came from, in a neighbor's apartment on the other side of the building. Edith knew the neighbor by sight but had forgotten his name. They just greeted each other in passing, sometimes chatting a little. The grandfather clock had seven mems living in it, and they were memories of her neighbor's great grandfather who had built the clock, and of her neighbor's great grandmother. Edith got images of the clockmaker as a man, images of a woman he fell in love with and married, of their three children, of his wife sitting with the clock, waiting for the clockmaker to come home from war. Then images of the woman growing older and older, every so often coming to lay a hand on the clock, pulling the memories out of it – memories of the man she loved.
The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1) Page 13