The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  Edith took a long, slow drink of wine, then looked at the glass in her hand. She thought of the experience she'd had in her apartment, where the old Edith was the wine glass, and she smirked.

  “Do you not like my answer, Edith?”

  “No, it's not that. I guess I just expected you to dodge the question and that I'd have to work for a concrete answer.”

  “I'm glad you understand. I've explained this to many people over the years, and for most of them I've had to come up with all sorts of analogies, which is rather difficult for me.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the Irish ballads splash up and soak into her shoes and socks, feeling the mems watching her from within the walls of the place and from within the flags and trinkets hanging from the ceiling. She could sense their interest in her – an alien who somehow had a connection to them.

  “I can help you with that – with the memories.”

  When she opened her eyes his inhuman gaze was piercing through her demeanor. “I'm listening.”

  “I'd like to talk to you about the Agency. If you were to join, I could help you hone your abilities, most likely at a much quicker rate than if you were to work on them alone. I've... worked with memory readers in the past.” Roman's hesitation was the first time she'd seen a quiver of emotion in his face – though that emotion was gone in an instant.

  “Were... were they the one who betrayed you?”

  Roman took a sip of his drink. “Yes, they were. Her name was Rachel. I'm still not exactly sure what happened to make her turn on us, but I'm not convinced that it had to do with memories. And she was one of the best Agents I've met. She was one of us for over twenty years before she turned.”

  “That's horrible.”

  Roman took a longer drink and Edith took it on herself to shift the conversation. “Last week I was a pastry chef – or at least I pretended to be one. I had a business I cared about and some kind of plan for the future. I don't have any of that anymore, Roman. I feel like I'm going to do something big, that there are so many possibilities within my reach, I just don't know what they are yet. Maybe what I'm going to do is linked up with being one of your Agents.”

  The half-man across the table from her took the last sip of his scotch, looking at her and weighing something in his mind. “This is a little off-protocol, but I'd like to take you to our headquarters. I think it will give you a better scope of what the Agency is and how we can help each other.”

  Edith finished off her wine, looking again at the glass in her hand. “Mars is there.”

  “Yes. Did she tell you?”

  “I just met you, Roman, but you already seem like one of the most logic-based people I've met. And if I were you, and wanted me to join the Agency, I'd bring Mars into the mix, since I already have a connection to her.”

  Roman sat back in his chair and smiled, looking oddly human. In fact, it seemed he was looking slightly more human the more scotch he drank. “Yes. Mars is part of the equation, but not all of it. I'm reminded of The Function's rule of five. He's always said that there should be at least five reasons, five things that you are gaining, for any single course of action. I don't adhere to that philosophy, but it seems fitting in this case.”

  She set her glass on the table. “Well, I look forward to the other four.”

  Roman peered into his empty glass, as if watching the residual scotch melt down the inside walls of the glass to pool at the bottom. “You may find five, if you pay close enough attention. Myself, I can see seven in total – but we'll see how many are visible to you.”

  * * *

  They traversed the seemingly endless stone hallways underneath the city, all lit by gas lamps mounted into the walls. They'd gotten below the city by lifting a grate in the sidewalk and climbing down a ladder. Roman had led her through a series of hatches and tunnels until they came to the gas-lit hallways. Edith knew that he was leading her in circles so that she wouldn't know where they were. She didn't mention to him that she could feel the mems above her and even a few in the walls around her, and that some of them had pictures of The French Quarter and The Central Business District above in their make up, so most of the time she knew more or less where they were.

  The more Roman spoke of the Agency and the city, the more she was fascinated with this newer look at the city she loved and with the idea of working with him and his crew. She recognized, though, that she might have been falling in love with the idea of having a concrete direction in her life rather than with the actual direction itself.

  “So Julius isn't here now?” she was asking Roman.

  “Not at the moment.” He led her into a huge room full of tables which were all covered in strange devices. “He is on a vision quest of sorts, finding out what direction to take the Agency. He should be back later today.”

  “What!” a voice yelled from across the room. Then Mars was running down the length of the room, between all the tables and shelves. She threw her arms around Edith and picked her up in a bear-hug.

  “Hi Mars,” Edith laughed.

  “You joined up, huh?”

  “Not yet.”

  Mars put Edith down and looked at Roman. “Edith is an exception. There are some things I'd like to show her whether or not she joins, that require me to allow her in here.”

  “Gotcha.” Mars looked back at Edith. “Your hair looks fucking hot like that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mars put her open hand to the side of her mouth and whispered very loudly and dramatically, “You should join!”

  “Maybe...”

  Mars was completely radiant – like she'd slept for days and was now just overflowing with energy and life and joy. It was then that Edith realized that Mars' hands were covered in grime and some kind of goo.

  “Is that the goo from the people-suits?” asked Edith.

  Mars shook her head, her eyes glancing at Roman for a split second. “No, but I can't really talk about it. Very top-secret-hush-hush-have-to-kill-you sort of stuff.”

  “Edith,” said Roman, “If I may steal you away to the other side of the laboratory? Unfortunately I don't have the excess of time that I'm used to having.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Mars smirked and hurried back to her lab table and Edith followed Roman across the room, where there was a revolver in a vice-like contraption. Underneath the gun was a large, clunky metal glove-gauntlet with tubes of liquid screwed into the sides of it.

  “Dean's gun,” said Edith.

  “The very one. This gun has an extremely strong bond to Dean's consciousness, to the effect that his current short-term memories can be accessed – that is, by someone with the power to do so. Which means you'd be able to see his memories the moment after they're formed.”

  “Ah, so that's reason number two. What's with the glove?”

  “This is the Extraction Glove. It's designed to help a memory reader extract memories from a consciousness without the memories having to actually enter the memory reader's mind. So you can see and collect the memories, but they actually reside in the glove and can be hooked up to a copying device that will make duplicates of the memories. The glove's defenses make it much safer to deal with the memories of an unstable mind.” Roman put a hand on the metal arm of the glove. “Rachel called it the Bullet-Proof Vest. Her ability acted much differently than yours, though, and she was never able to successfully copy memories with it. Though I feel that you would learn to copy memories very quickly, if you choose to try it.”

  “Why are you so sure her ability and mine are different?”

  “She could have never done what you did with Dean Smith.”

  Edith nodded. “But there's no way that you built that glove just so I can spy on Dean Smith.”

  Roman shook his head. “The glove, if someone learned to use it efficiently, would also be able to extract someone's memories directly.”

  “You mean like from their head?”

  “That is exactly what I mean. The main rea
son I've asked you here, and the reason that I built the Extraction Glove, is that for many years I have wanted to find a way to create a sort of record of the Agency. It's history mirrors the history of the city, and many good people have lived and died in the Agency's ranks. It would be no small task, but not all the work would have to fall onto one person's shoulders. You, Edith, could agree to this extraction job, and I could train you to hone your abilities, whether or not you join the Agency.”

  “So... I would pick memories out of Agents' heads, like you and Julius, and then what?

  “You would pluck out the memory, make a copy of it and then merely set it to the side. One or several people would then be employed to sort through the memory copies and create the record. I'm not quite sure what form the record would take – since this hasn't been done before, I haven't spent too much time worrying about the guesswork.”

  “Because first you had to find a memory reader that could do the job.”

  He nodded.

  Roman's words stirred her up even more than the thought of having real direction in her life. The idea of fusing her ability along with her organizational and business skills in such a surreal way seemed better than any job she could think of. “Whether or not I join, this project of yours really seems like something I would get into.”

  “That's the best news I've heard for a long time.” The shrill ring of a phone broke their conversation. “Excuse me.” Roman walked over towards the front door where there was a payphone installed into the wall.

  Mars looked up from her lab table, pushing a large contraption with various lenses and metal hinges and tubes up off her eyes and onto her forehead. ““Holy crap, is that like the batphone?”

  Edith broke into a laugh that rolled into a larger laugh, and had to cover her mouth and lean against a nearby table. Realizing that it might have been the first time she'd laughed in a week made her so happy that she almost cried.

  Mars pranced over to her with the silly contraption still strapped to her forehead. “Seeing you laugh made me need to hug you again,” she said, throwing her arms around her.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” she whispered. “I love Roman, but he doesn't seem to get my sense of humor, or anything that I reference.”

  Edith looked over at him as he was speaking into the phone. Whoever it was that called could have been telling him the world was ending, or that he was invited to a birthday party – his expression gave away absolutely nothing. “I can see the culture gap, like he's from another country. But he can't be, right? He's given up his life to protect this place.”

  “He's just really, really old.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

  Roman hung up the phone and walked back up to them. “That was The Wellington Bank. He just noticed some extremely large time skips leading into the early parts of the last century. The skips are roaming around and have been sucking people through both ways – we're uncertain how long it's been going on.”

  “Where are the people going when they're being sucked up?” asked Edith.

  “They're going to wherever the other side of the skip is. Whether it's 1910, 1920 – they're being thrown into that time, while people from that time are being thrown into this one.” Roman walked over to a shelf and began slipping a few devices into the pockets of his coat, while clipping a couple more onto his belt.

  “Alright!” said Mars. “What do you want me to grab?”

  “I need you to stay here. I need what you're working on to be ready soon. And I need you to monitor the phone. It might be someone else reporting more time skips in another area, or it might be me calling you.”

  “What do I say when I answer?” she asked.

  “Just the Agents... of something. It doesn't matter so much.”

  “What about The Agents of Badass?”

  “That's fine for now.” He turned to Edith. “Edith, you should stay with Mars. It may be dangerous up there. There's no knowing what or who is coming through, and if you get sucked into the other time we might not be able to get you back.”

  Roman turned to leave and Edith grabbed his arm to stop him. Touching his arm, even through his coat, she was suddenly aware of how inhuman he was. Beneath the coat he felt like thick, dense bone – not at all like flesh. “Look, Roman. You want me to care, you want me to give up my life to your Agency? Everyone I know and care about in the city is in The CBD. I'm going to go make sure they're ok.”

  Roman grabbed some kind of large device with a screen, a handle and several lights on it from a nearby shelf and pushed it into her arms. “Good, you can carry this. Let's go.”

  Then they were running through the hallways, making Edith very happy with her decision to wear sneakers and jeans.

  Roman glanced back at her. “Because of time restraints, I'm taking you out the main entrance. Strictly against protocol. Julius is going to be pissed when he finds out.”

  “How will he know?”

  They turned a corner and ran up next to some kind of glowing blue aquarium full of tubes and bubbles, where he turned a dial on the wall. “I'll tell him. It's protocol that we tell each other when we break protocol.” The ceiling opened and a set of stone stairs came down with the sunlight. Edith could hear the splashing of water and the sounds of jazz music and people talking. Roman looked over at her as the stairs came down to their feet. In his eyes again she saw that quiver of emotion that was kept so well hidden inside of him. Along with that emotion was a tiredness Edith hadn't noticed before, and Mars' words that Roman was really old made even more sense. “Julius thinks that I am too quick to have faith in certain people. I think he's right, but I hope that he and I are wrong in your case, and that my faith in you is well placed.”

  File 23 :: [Mars]

  Mars sat hunched over the device Roman had her working on – she'd finally gotten used to the different lenses over her eyes, letting her eyes barely cross as she looked through the goggles strapped to her head and face. Using the goggles was like looking at one of those magic picture books where the picture looked like colorful TV static until the 3D image popped out at you. Except that instead of seeing a unicorn or a cardboard-cutout version of the Empire State Building she saw drifting patterns of light and small glowing dots. So far Roman had only trained her to recognize the tiny glowing spheres that were the Wonder runoff exuding from the dark green vials that were screwed onto the device she was tweaking. Sure, there was a lot more going on around the device – thin yellow beams and little magenta explosions – but Mars had no idea what those were.

  She sighed and looked across the room towards the phone – which she couldn't see of course, since the lenses over her eyes turned everything more than a few feet in front of her into a bluish-yellow blurry mess.

  Before Edith had shown up, and before the phone call and the sudden departure of Edith and Roman on what Mars could only imagine was some death-defying and amazingly awesome adventure, Mars was on track to be done with her current project in less than an hour. Now she was wracked with anticipation and lip-biting. It had been nearly an hour and she kept getting distracted by her thoughts, by her body's need to move, by wondering why Roman hadn't freaking called her yet. For gods' sake, the city was in peril! Why wasn't anyone calling the Agents to ask for aid in this time of need?!

  “Ouch! Fuck!” Her hand had slipped while turning a tiny crank with a tool that was a mix between a screwdriver and a periscope, sending the knuckle above her pinky finger jamming right into the metal table. Mars jumped up, her stool falling onto the floor as she shook her hand in the air. She gritted her teeth and then held her hand between her thighs and squeezed her legs together. Slowly the throbbing began to subside.

  Then the ringing of the payphone cut through the pain and reawakened her anticipation. She pulled her hand out from between her legs and walked straight towards the phone, forgetting that she was mostly blind and slammed her hip into the corner of one of the metal lab tables. She slouched agains
t the table, nearly falling onto the floor. “Oh, fuck me!” She pulled off her goggles and dropped them on the table, then limped awkwardly over to the phone. Mars took a deep breath to compose herself, picked up the receiver and spoke into it. “The Agents of Badass, this is Mars speaking. How can we save the city today?”

  “Mars, it's Roman...”

  He proceeded to tell her what items to get from the lab, and where to meet him.

  “You got it, captain.”

  There was a moment of hesitation on the other line. “I'll see you in approximately twenty minutes.”

  Mars nodded and hung up. “Damn it. What's wrong with 'captain'?”

  She grabbed a black duffel bag from a storage closet, then ran around the lab grabbing the few things he'd told her to bring. She ran out the door and was nearly knocked over. She shook her head and looked up at the domineering black man looking down at her with his golden eyes, two muddy crutches wedged under his arm pits. The mass of braids raining down to his shoulders made him look like some kind of shadow-lion.

  “I, um...” She swallowed. Mars had never seen him up close before. He was crippled, but she still felt like her life was held by the fist of his one hand.

  It was that very hand which reached out and gripped her shoulder. “Welcome to the Agents, Mars. I am so very glad that you've chosen to join us.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Julius. There's... uh... trouble.”

  His face fell and his shoulders raised. “What kind of trouble?”

  She told him of the time skips and of Edith. Then he hobbled into the lab and pointed at the contraption that was meant to be his false leg. “Is that ready?”

  “No.” Then she saw the look in his eyes and nodded, running over and instantly figuring out how the straps worked as Julius hobbled over to a stool and sat down.

  “Can you put it on me in less than two minutes?” He pulled up the pant leg of his missing leg.

  “Yes, sir.” She hefted the false limb off the table and knelt down in front of him.