by Bob Mayer
“Define several,” the Keep said.
“Both lungs, heart, kidney. More than any hospital would ever do or is capable of doing. And the surgery, it’s perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“So dead guy had a good medical plan,” Scout said.
“And here.” The Acme pointed at the same side of the burned thigh. “See his buttock. Skin grafts. They start all the way up at the arm on that side and go down to the scar. It was as if whoever was doing this to him was working their way down his body.”
“He was getting fixed,” Nada said.
The Acme looked up. “What?”
Nada pointed at the body. “He was getting fixed, bit by bit. He got exposed to lethal radiation but didn’t die. And part by part, he was getting fixed. Stuff replaced.”
“Yes,” the Acme agreed, “but medical science doesn’t have that capability.”
“Our medical science doesn’t,” the Keep said.
“What about the suit he was wearing?” Moms asked.
“Armor with some sort of gyroscopic enhancement,” the Acme said. “Also, on the inside of the head part, various imaging screens. As I said, the hands and feet ended well short of the end of the suit where there were controls to be used. But that’s not my area of expertise. There are others working on it right now.”
“How did the thing fly?” Roland asked, cutting to the chase.
“No idea,” the Acme said. “Again it’s—”
“Not your expertise,” Nada finished for him.
“The spear?” Roland asked, as always, focused on weaponry.
“The metal is being analyzed, but we couldn’t immediately identify it.”
The Keep was frustrated. “So we’re not closer to figuring out who this is or where—”
“The tattoo,” Scout said, coming full circle. She pointed at the symbol of an inverted triangle with the face of a roaring black bear on the inside, framed in red.
“Yes,” the Acme said. “We had it imaged and it’s being run.”
“Spetsnaz,” Nada said. “Russian Special Forces. From a while back, while the Soviet Union was still a union.”
“Always lead with the headline,” Scout said to the Acme.
“He’s not old enough,” Moms said. “The Soviet Union fell apart over a quarter century ago. The guy would have been in elementary school at best.”
“That’s what it is,” Nada said.
Moms summarized. “So we have someone who was Spetsnaz, who was exposed to radiation and should have died but didn’t, has had organ replacement and skin grafts at a level our science can’t do, and armed with a weapon with metal we can’t place.”
“Great,” Nada muttered.
“And he flies,” Roland said.
“Yo,” Mac said. “Anything in the database about something like this? White armor? The red—is that hair?”
“Yes, it’s human hair,” the Acme said. “We’re trying to track its DNA, but it’s not his hair. It was added on to the suit. A brief examination reveals the strands to be that of numerous types of hair, woven together, all dyed bright red.”
“A trophy,” Nada said. “Of its victims.”
“A Valkyrie.” Foreman’s voice was low, but everyone heard him, and they all turned to face him.
“Valkyries,” Foreman said. “There have been reports of creatures like that around gates. We’ve never captured or killed one before. But that’s what they’ve been labeled.”
“You never had the Nightstalkers before,” Scout said, earning an appreciative nod from Roland.
“Labeled by who?” Eagle asked.
Foreman looked surprised, as if caught in a lie, but recovered quickly. “The Patrol, of course. Tell them of the legend of the Valkyries,” Foreman instructed Edith.
“Valkyries,” Edith Frobish said, reminding everyone she was still with them. “The handmaidens of the gods. From Norse mythology. The Valkyries are rather complex creatures in the role they play in the infrastructure of that mythology. The name means ‘chooser of the slain.’ In essence, the belief was that the Valkyries chose which warriors lived or died. For those who were killed while fighting bravely, the Valkyries bore them to Valhalla, the hall of the slain.”
“Is that what happened to the guard’s body?” Nada asked. “Carried off by these Valkyries?”
“I have no idea. Although Valkyries were technically female,” Edith continued, “once someone was in that suit you couldn’t exactly tell the sex. The concept arose among the Norse as a way of changing the gore of the battlefield to a place of honor and potential paradise. We have a painting here in the Met. The Ride of the Valkyrs by John Dollman, painted in 1909. I can show it to you.”
“We’ve seen the real thing,” Moms said.
“Mythology doesn’t spring out of nothingness,” Foreman said. “I believe there is truth at the core of practically every myth. And since, as you say,” he nodded at Moms, “we’re looking at the real thing, then others in our past have looked at the real thing. Not being able to explain it, it then evolved into myth.”
“Monsters,” Scout said.
Foreman nodded. “Yes. Many of the legends of monsters come from things like this. Things that came through gates into our world. I don’t believe it has happened often or in great numbers and only in certain places. Thus there is little trace other than legend.”
“This wasn’t a creature,” Scout noted. “This was a man in a superhero suit.”
“A Russian man,” Roland said, his way of throwing a non sequitur into a conversation, but hitting on a key point.
“That’s not a monster,” Nada said. “It’s a guy. Who can be killed.”
“That guy I sanctioned on Whidbey,” Roland said. “He said something weird. He said something about the Patrol and about the Ratnik. Neeley said Ratnik might be Russian.”
Doc had his phone out and was already Googling it. “Ratnik has a couple of definitions. It’s the new generation of Russian military equipment: night sights, body armor, etc. That might apply here.”
“The Russians fielded this?” The Keep was skeptical.
“It was also a Bulgarian right-wing movement prior to World War Two,” Doc added. “Pretty much wiped out during the war.”
“More likely on the first one,” Moms said. “But this technology is way ahead of anything the Russians have. That anyone has.”
“In our timeline,” Foreman said.
The group stood silent, each member lost in thought, but apparently no further in those thoughts until Scout spoke up.
“Excuse me.”
Everyone turned to look at the youngest person in the group.
“We’re skipping something very important,” she said. When no one challenged her, she continued. She turned to the Keep. “You said that your instructions were to wait for the entire team to arrive before moving forward, correct?”
The Keep nodded. She seemed about to say something about the young girl hijacking the meeting, but bit it back.
“So we wasted over four hours doing that, right?” Scout didn’t wait for an answer. “Who wrote those instructions you were following?” she asked, and this time she did wait.
The Keep shook her head. “I don’t know. They were in a safe in my office. A safe that could only be opened by myself and the President.”
“Did you write them?” Scout asked Foreman.
“No.”
“All right,” Scout said. “Let’s assume the Patrol wrote them. And the Patrol has managed to keep a very, very low profile all this time. Not as hard as we would think given most of its agents are not of or in this time. So we’re caught in a bad loop here, but not as bad as we think it is. The Patrol wanted all of us here for a reason and must have expected some time to be used up getting us here. The Nightstalkers. Why?”
Scout waited, but there was no answer. She rolled her eyes. “This is the center of it. The first anomaly. Ripple. Shift. Whatever.”
Doc jumped in. “Yes. E
xactly. The HUB disappearing.”
“Right,” Scout said. “But it’s not just the place. It’s us. We’re part of it.” She pointed at herself, then waved her hand taking in the team. “I think we’re noticing things the rest of the world isn’t. I had something strange occur right before being alerted. Nada, you too, right?”
The team sergeant nodded.
“Who else?” Scout asked.
That caused a reaction as several of them started to speak at once.
Moms took charge and slapped the autopsy table. “Listen to Scout.”
“I don’t know why,” Scout said, “since the rest of the world seems to be doing okay, but something affected us.” She pointed. “Doc says Ivar disappeared. Roland, something happened to the Sanction you just completed, right?”
“We killed the sonofabitch,” Roland said. “But then he just disappeared from the body bag.” He didn’t add that Neeley had kissed him, but his face flushed red at the memory.
“So that’s two people disappearing,” Scout said. “Ivar and the sonofabitch.” She turned to Nada. “You remembered something that Frasier blocked. But Frasier didn’t use his little Men in Black headphones on you to unblock you. You just started remembering, right?”
Nada nodded. “But only bits and pieces,” he added with a glare at Frasier.
Scout also looked at Frasier, who’d remained inconspicuous throughout all this. “How did that happen? How did Nada start remembering what you blocked?”
“I don’t know,” Frasier said.
“Has something like this happened before to a block?” Scout pressed.
“No.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped.
“I noted that details had changed in the historical text I was reading,” Eagle said.
Scout nodded and turned to Moms. “What happened to you?”
“Someone appeared in a family photo from a long time ago,” Moms said. “Someone who wasn’t in the original photo.” She also seemed about to say something more, but halted.
Scout nodded. “My mother made bacon this morning. And sang. That’s as weird as Ivar disappearing. Trust me.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Nada said.
Scout looked at the Keep. “What happened to you?”
The Keep shook her head. “Nothing. Other than getting the alarm from here.”
“Hmm,” Scout said. “All right. If the Time Patrol left those instructions, and they wanted to make sure we were all here before we did anything, but they also knew we’d pretty much be clueless, then there has to be a connection between those occurrences.”
“Why us?” Nada said.
“Exactly,” Scout said. “So the answer is in this room. We just have to figure out what it is.”
For once, Doc had an answer. Sort of. “We’ve all been near disturbances in space-time. Except for the Keep,” he added.
“Near what?” the Keep asked.
“Rifts,” Roland said, for once elated to have an answer. He knew Rifts and Fireflies well because he’d dealt with quite a few in his time. And killed quite a few Fireflies.
“Exactly,” Doc said. “Maybe we’re more susceptible because we’ve already been touched by a shift in our time-space continuum? We’re closer to the edge of our timeline in some way.”
“How are the Rifts associated with this?” Nada asked.
Doc shrugged. “We still don’t even know what Rifts are. But we shut the last one down and got our people back from all the years they’ve been opening since the first one at Area 51 in 1947. As far as we know, that was the first one. And as far as we know, the one in Tennessee at the dam was the last one. Whoever’s on the other side returned the people who sent over the Demon Core and opened the first Rift.”
“The Can at Area 51 didn’t pick up any activity here,” Moms said. “We would have been Zevoned if it had. We haven’t had a Zevon,” she added with a glance at Nada, “since Tennessee. Whatever this is, it’s different.”
“But it affected us first, apparently,” Scout said.
“Yo,” Mac said, getting everyone’s attention. “Let me ask you all this. Where the hell is Ivar?”
No one had an answer for that.
“We have to remember,” Doc said, “that in North Carolina, Ivar went through a Rift. And he came back. He’s the only one on the team who did that. So maybe he was the most susceptible of all of us. Maybe he’s the only one that’s traveled to another timeline and back?”
“But he didn’t remember much at all,” Eagle said, “about what was on the other side.”
Everyone turned to Frasier. He held up his hands defensively. “I had nothing to do with Ivar or his memory.”
“Wait a second!” Edith Frobish almost yelled, which meant she was barely heard. She reached out and grabbed Eagle’s shoulder in her excitement. “What exactly was changed in that history you were reading?”
In reply, Eagle pulled out his phone, accessed his Kindle app, and directed it to the appropriate page. He handed it to her as he spoke to the rest of them. “The author writes that the Lateran Obelisk is still in Egypt. But it’s in Rome. Has been in Rome since 357 AD.”
This time Mac didn’t have a smart-ass observation.
“Is it?” Scout asked.
“Frak,” Moms muttered. “Kirk get me—” She paused in her order to the commo man who was no longer with them. She picked up the blood-covered comsat set and made access back to Pitr at the Ranch.
The Keep was also on her phone.
But Edith wasn’t paying attention. “The Obelisk. That’s it. The marker. We have to check it.”
“Check what?” Doc asked.
“According to my sources,” the Keep said, “it is still in Rome.”
“But for Eagle,” Edith said, “it isn’t!”
Roland grabbed a chair and sat down in it. “Can we just shoot something?”
“We’re having a divergence of realities,” Doc said.
Edith was excited. “Yes. The Administrator said a ripple wouldn’t be noticed, even a shift, unless it was specifically looked for by someone who also was affected by the ripple.”
“I don’t get it,” Nada said.
Edith was vibrating, edging toward the door. “This young lady,” she said, indicating Scout, “has it right. Not only is our time starting to be affected, but we’re affected to varying degrees. Those of you who have been on the edge of a disturbance are being touched by the ripple first. Everything is normal for everyone else. Until it’s too late. Because Patrol agents travel through gates, they also are more susceptible to noticing changes that others wouldn’t. That I know.”
The Keep got that. “That’s why the Patrol ordered me to wait until all of you were here. You’re the one that would see the changes if the Patrol wasn’t around.”
“Exactly,” Edith said. “But now, let’s see if we’ve gotten a marker or a message about what changed in the past to affect the now.”
“What kind of message?” Moms asked.
“An agent sending a request for information or noting an anomaly from what the agent knows to be true history.”
“The art?” Eagle asked.
“Yes,” Edith said. “But there’s one place I always check first. Cleopatra’s Needle.” Edith began to head toward the door.
“Hold on,” Moms said. She pointed at the body. “We know we can kill this. Doc, take Mac and Roland and Eagle. Go down to the cavern. Send a probe into that gate. Get me more information on it. Mac, build us up a ramp so we can go into that gate if we have to. Roland, anything comes out, you kill it. Eagle, back him up and prepare for infiltration.”
The nameplate read LOUISE SMITH. She had a thick gray bun, reading glasses perched on her nose, and wore a bulky sweater of some indeterminate muted color that was draped over her shapeless body.
She was the gatekeeper to the inner sanctum of the Cellar. She’d sat in this outer office for over twenty-five years for Hannah’s predecessor,
Nero, and she’d simply stayed in place as he passed on and Hannah took his place. If Ms. Smith had a life outside of this office, Hannah knew nothing of it. She could undoubtedly have retired years ago on a government pension, but the fact she didn’t indicated she actually didn’t have a life outside of this office.
She was rarely perturbed or startled, an essential trait for someone in this position. No one entered the doors behind her, leading to the hallway to Hannah’s office, without her permission.
But when the doors behind her suddenly hissed open on their pneumatic arms, Ms. Smith was indeed startled. She turned with surprising alacrity for someone who sat so lumpily in her chair.
“Ma’am?” she asked, while she tried to remember the last time her boss had left her office unannounced. Had she missed something on the schedule? A meeting with some senator or congressman who needed to be threatened into silence? A briefing at the CIA? Such an oversight would be unprecedented.
“Ms. Smith,” Hannah said, nodding. She further surprised her secretary by walking up to her and sitting on the corner of her desk.
Ms. Smith turned her seat to face Hannah, uncomfortable with both the action of her boss and her proximity. Ms. Smith did not enjoy people within five feet of her, and Hannah had breached that distance by six inches.
But Ms. Smith did not protest. She didn’t scoot her chair back six inches. “Yes, ma’am?”
“In your time with Nero,” Hannah said, “did you ever hear of a program called the Time Patrol?”
There was no hesitation in the reply. “No, ma’am.”
“Certain?”
A tic of irritation, uncontrollable, registered in Ms. Smith’s left cheek. “I’m certain, ma’am.”
“Ever hear of a man named Foreman?”
“The Crazy Old Man?” Ms. Smith nodded. “Is he still around? It’s been years.”
“He’s still around,” Hannah assured her. “What do you know of him?”
“He visited Mister Nero several times over the years. I was never privy as to what transpired between them.”
“Do you know what Foreman does?” Hannah asked. “Who he works for?”
“Foreman was early Agency,” Ms. Smith said, referring to the CIA. “In it before it was even called the CIA. If he’s still there, probably no one knows what he does anymore. He’s outlived everyone. Including Mister Nero.” She paused, as if considering what she said next was an indiscretion. “Mister Nero thought Mister Foreman was a bit bonkers.”