by Brian Fuller
“I was pretty cold to her,” Trace explained. “Well, when the Dreads came over to harass her I, well, yeah.”
Cassandra laughed again, and Trace found her smile a little hard to get used to.
“You were a gentleman to a lady Dread. Oh, that’s just fantastic! Maggie is going to love this. I am going to demand to be present when you have to go over this stuff with the Archai and Operations. You are a classic, Jarhead.”
“Thanks. Did the Michaels pick up on the Dread Thrall?”
“They did, but in a rare display of brains, they decided to follow the thing around rather than going in for an all-out assault. I think they were still following it around until we confirmed you had Primus.”
“So what’s this ghost site in Nebraska?”
“It’s a place called Deep 6. Back in the sixties and seventies it was the training center and main operational headquarters all in the same facility. For some reason, they stuck it out in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. I’ve actually never been. Once they got Trevex up and running to house the training facilities in the late eighties, they built Deep 7 to serve as the central command hub. Deep 6 was sort of moth-balled, waiting for a day like yesterday, I suppose. Ramis and Athena got to fly in this morning, though the nearest airport is almost two hours away. You and I and most everyone else get a nice little road trip. So in honor of your mostly skillful jarheaddery of the last twenty-four hours—notwithstanding a few somewhat hilarious mistakes—I’ll let you choose the music—unless you suggest something that totally sucks.”
“Do you still have Tela Mirren’s stuff?”
“Yeah, sure. You must be in love, Jarhead. Does Dolorem know you saved her life?”
“It didn’t come up.”
She nodded. “Well, sit back and relax. I think we’re at fourteen delightful hours left on the road.”
“I’ll take a turn driving if you like,” Trace offered.
“Not a chance. I’ve got a land-speed reputation to maintain. You drive like the old man you were last night.”
Their passage through the heart of Nebraska came in the dead of the night, not that the landscape would have provided much to look at in broad daylight. Cassandra only had to use her Beauty twice to talk her way out of speeding tickets that probably should have earned her a trip to the county lockup. Doing a 110 on a seventy-five-mile-an-hour highway was bad, but ripping through a stop sign in sleepy little Miller at near the speed of sound should have at least earned her a stern lecture. But her high-class looks and apologetically heaving bosom secured her a get-out-of-everything-for-free card whenever men were concerned. Trace secretly hoped a female officer would pull her over so he could see how she would handle it.
Thanks to her precipitously dangerous driving, they arrived at a poorly maintained gravel road about an hour before dawn when they should have arrived an hour after. The road wound through low, brown hills spotted with snow. The washboard vibrations of the recently plowed road rattled the car.
A dilapidated guard shack surrounded by a cadre of glowing auras with BBRs greeted them a few miles in where the road dipped behind a substantial hill. A handful of cars was parked off to the side, all of them filled with auraless Ash Angels, a line of Blanks pushed off to the side. One of the guards walked forward and extended his arm, signaling for them to stop. Cassandra rolled the window down.
“Ash Angel IDs, please,” the armed Michael said, his phone at the ready to type in the number. Cassandra gave hers, voice impatient.
“And you, sir?”
Trace closed his eyes for a moment. He really hated this conversation. “I’m not in the system.”
“I need your AAID, sir,” the guard prompted sternly. “It was assigned to you—”
“I know what an Ash Angel ID is!” Trace said.
“He was kept out of the system intentionally,” Cassandra explained, doing a fair job of keeping her irritation under control. “Look, we need to get in there right away.”
“Blanks aren’t permitted entry at this time,” he explained.
“What?” Cassandra exclaimed.
“Sorry, ma’am. Security precaution.”
“Well, you might want to call in there and let them know we have that little Primus thing that’s got everyone’s underwear in a bunch.”
“I will relay the information,” he confirmed robotically. “Please pull off to the side.”
“Unbelievable,” Cassandra complained after rolling up the window. “They’re still trying to pin this on Blanks.”
“You’ve got to admit it’s pretty much the only theory that makes any sense. A Blank is the only kind of Ash Angel that could pull off a betrayal like this without a very obvious sign that they had switched sides.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Cassandra stated. “There are other explanations. I think this is a communications breach. The Ash Angels have their own communications network, and someone has hacked it. They’re reading mission briefs, they’re reading technical schematics, they’re reading everything because we’ve put everything out on the network. There are a lot of ways they could have squeezed access out of someone, as you well know after your bathtub adventure. But Blanks are going to pay the price until someone figures it out.”
They waited for nearly twenty minutes before a red Ford SUV drove up, Ramis stepping out and crossing over to Cassandra’s Caddy.
“You have it?” he said, voice stressed.
“Hello to you too, Ramis,” Cassandra said pointedly. Trace handed it over. “Can we dirty peasants come inside the castle yet, or does Trace have to save the entire Ash Angel Organization before you’ll vet him? Oh, wait, that’s right. He already did.”
Ramis wasn’t taking any bait. “We’re working on it. No favoritism. No exceptions. You should get approval inside of an hour.”
He and the hard drive disappeared into the SUV and drove away. Cassandra shook her head. “Wow. Can you feel the gratitude, Trace? I swear it’s days like these that make me want to wrap it up and go work as a bus driver until my Sixth Ascendancy. Kids today are little creeps, but I could at least get a hello out of some of them.”
Trace grinned. “The boys anyway. That thing you do to police officers is just wrong.”
“Gotta use your gifts, Jarhead.”
About a half an hour passed before Cassandra received a phone call and they were cleared.
The road wound a couple of miles through round hills covered in dead prairie grass before it terminated in a large asphalt parking lot broken up by age. In the very center rose a weathered concrete dome barely the size of a convenience store. On the far end of the parking lot sat an empty helipad.
In the early predawn light, a single red bulb strobed to guide an unseen flight. About thirty cars filled the lot to half full, and Cassandra parked as close to the dome as she could.
As they stepped out into the dull Nebraska morning, a chill wind whipped past and ruffled their hair, Trace grateful he couldn’t feel its icy touch. Two Michaels stood sentry outside a nondescript metal door meant to withstand a bomb blast. A number six was barely visible above the door, the black paint faded and flecked away. Cassandra flung the door open, and they stepped inside, the difference in air pressure banging it closed. A Michael guard sat at a thick metallic desk just inside. He looked at their faces and waved them forward.
“You’re to go to the conference room at the bottom,” he informed them after checking his screen. “They’re starting in about ten minutes. They’ve had a devil of a time getting telecom hooked up.”
“Is someone else coming in?” Cassandra asked. “We noticed the helipad was active.”
“Both Archus Mars and Archus Magdelene are due any minute now.”
Cassandra’s face lit up. “We’ll wait, then. Sly girl never dropped a word that she was coming. I guess nobody’s saying much of anything right now.”
To pass the time, they examined the interior of the aging structure. Buzzing fluorescent lights hung from chains bolted
to the ceiling, almost half the bulbs blinking or dead altogether. Cracks webbed the concrete floor and ceiling of the circular room past the guard desk, a metallic elevator platform with a rail waiting for passengers at the center. More gray metallic doors ringed the room, bits and pieces of the letters and numbers that identified them clinging to the old paint.
The smell of dust pervaded everything, the particles flitting in the uneven light. Trace tried one of the rust-mottled door handles, finding it either locked or stuck. They walked until the dome above them reverberated with the beating of helicopter rotors, ceiling lights swaying with the vibration.
“Hope this place doesn’t fall on us,” Cassandra commented as they walked back toward the entrance.
Archus Magdelene entered after the uniformed Archus Mars opened the door for her. Cassandra and Magdelene embraced, while Archus Mars delivered a crushing, congratulatory handshake to Trace. “Hooah, boy!”
Magdelene shook Trace’s hand next. “Well done, Trace. The AAO owes you a favor.”
Trace nodded. The recognition felt good.
They congregated on the metal platform.
“Here we go,” Mars said, yanking a stubborn lever backward.
The descent began with an unsettling jerk and a whining noise that persisted all the way to the bottom.
“I guess they haven’t kept everything oiled,” Archus Mars shouted. “So, Trace, is Archon Ramis going to let you graduate now that you saved his pencil pushing butt? He’s going to get reamed over security at this little conference.”
“You know he’ll blame the Michaels,” Archus Magdelene warned. “While he may have been the administrator of Trevex, your men were in charge of security.”
Archus Mars frowned. “If he tries to pin this on me, I’ll have him filing papers in the bowels of Deep 7.”
The elevator clanged to a stop in a small anteroom with the same markers of age and decay as the one they left.
Everyone stepped off, but Archus Mars grabbed Trace’s arm. “Just remember, son, the offer stands. We could use you in the Michaels.”
“Give it up, Mars,” Archus Magdelene admonished. “He belongs to the Gabriels.”
To Trace’s horror, Athena waited at the bottom dressed in her pantsuit and juggling a pile of clipboards. All the clipboards had a stack of papers a half mile high, except one that was a complete mile and a short walk.
Cassandra cast a disintegrating frown at Athena and got a short stack. Trace exhaled roughly as he received the weighty one. Athena turned toward the Archuses and signaled to the double doors.
“They’re about ready to begin,” she said. “Please come inside. We’ll call for Cassandra and Trace when needed.”
They all disappeared through the double doors on the opposite side of the room. Trace looked at Cassandra and shrugged, chagrined that there weren’t even any chairs for them to sit on.
Trace slumped against a wall. “Seems like a place like this would have a closet of those beat-up folding chairs.”
“How in the hell did they come up with all these forms?” Cassandra moaned. “Trevex was destroyed, and this place has been nonfunctional for over two decades! I swear the woman can produce a stack of BS to fill out simply by wishing it into existence. Maybe it’s some new Bestowal no one’s heard of: Forms from Hell or something.”
“I’m pretty sure only Dreads would get that Bestowal. I’m going to be down in this hole filling these out until summer.”
Cassandra joined him against the wall, and they got to work.
Trace answered the questions curtly to spare himself as much torture as possible. If only he could type it in it wouldn’t be so bad, but he was as slow at forms as he was at morphing.
“Jarhead, you know that you stick your tongue out when you write, right?” Cassandra said.
“Yeah, yeah. Shut up.”
Trace hadn’t even put a dent in his stack before the door swung open and Athena stepped out.
“Trace, Cassandra, you’ve been summoned.”
Chapter 25
The Unknown
The double doors boomed shut behind them.
Athena pointed down the stairs. “Please be seated at the front.”
The auditorium reminded Trace of an old-school briefing room from his military days. Two rows of metal-backed seats sloped down to a platform where a rickety tripod projector screen displayed members of the Ash Angel leadership who had conferenced in. Strands of power cords and network cables ran along the whitewashed cinder-block walls, feeding a bank of computers and a portable projector at the front. Only one of the hanging fluorescent lights worked. The room was half full, and Trace recognized a few of the faces from his earlier briefing after rescuing Prescilla.
Trace picked his way down the concrete stairs behind Cassandra. Three of the Archai—Archus Magdelene of the Gabriels, Archus Mars of the Michaels, and Archus Ebenezer of the Scholus—occupied the front row, Archon Ramis and the heads of Southwest Operations joining them. The rest of the Archai gazed into the room from the confines of their little squares on the projector screen.
Two empty chairs waited at the front on either side of the aisle. Trace took the one to the right, Cassandra the left, metal hinges screaming in protest at being called into duty. A tech came over and clipped microphones to their shirts, Trace feeling a little under dressed in clothing shredded by bullets and reeking of exhaust and oil.
“We begin the second session today with testimony from Trace and Cassandra,” Archus Magdelene began. “For the record, Trace is still in training under the direction of Archon Ramis, though he is serving in an active-duty position with his trainer, Cassandra. This special arrangement was put in force after Trace failed to perform to Archon Ramis’s satisfaction during his Active Mission Evaluation.”
“And Archon Ramis was the only dissatisfied one,” Archus Mars interjected.
“This is hardly the time, Mars,” Ramis said wearily. “Maybe if you spent more time evaluating your troops rather than my trainees, Trevex would still be in one piece.”
“Gentlemen,” Grand Archus Gideon interrupted from his little square on the screen, “you are not the reason for this session. Let us proceed without any further tangents or distractions. Continue, Archus Magdelene.”
“Yes. First, Cassandra, where were you and Trace when you learned that Trevex had been hit?”
“We were attending Trace’s first Ascendancy party at a local eatery. Lear, his Ash Angel father, arranged it.”
Archus Magdelene had Cassandra retell what she could of the Dread encounter on the bus, and then turned to Trace.
“Trace, everyone in this room knows bits and pieces of what happened to you starting about forty-eight hours ago, but because of some of the extraordinary circumstances and claims related to the events, we would like you to start at the moment you entered the Hammer Bar and Grill and describe everything in the best detail that you can. The floor is yours. We may stop to ask you questions. We’ve got a little whiteboard set up so you can loosely sketch the important locations and detail what happened inside. The digital map of the main areas of engagement is also available for your narration. So, as you approached the Hammer Bar and Grill, what did you see?”
Trace retold the story in full, his absorbed audience hardly moving. Reactions ranged from shock to outright skepticism. He tried to fudge defending Dahlia from the harassment of her fellow Dreads, but Cassandra wouldn’t let it go, eager to share the joke. When he came to the part where Dahlia gave them time to escape, the whole proceeding ground to a halt.
“Trace, that makes no sense, son,” Archus Mars commented. “You know I’m on your side, but those animals don’t give Ash Angels a chance. Their hatred for us is almost instinctual.”
“I concur,” Ramis added. “While I won’t go as far as to say that this little detail is fiction, it is certainly some gross misperception during the heat of the moment. Most likely she was setting them up.”
“You’re both wrong,” Archus S
imeon of the Sanctus objected. The man who looked like Santa Claus had largely sat on the sidelines, but now he sparked to life. “All you Michaels and Gabriels see when a red aura comes into view is some animal waiting for a bullet. You forget that these people were as human as you and I. Yes, in life they committed some atrocity, but they are still capable of finer feelings. After an evening of manhandling, Trace’s unexpected gesture may have triggered something in the Dahlia woman that, as we can see, was a blessing that helped Trace and Dolorem escape. Divine providence guided Trace to act in a way that would touch her heart.”
“No, Simeon,” Mars said, voice hard. “You should know better. Remember the Sanctus’s stupid Dread Recovery Program? After a hundred attempts, you managed to get three Dreads to turn while losing, what, six Ash Angels on capturing the others? You can’t tell a wolf not to hunt. She was up to something.”
“That makes no sense, Mars” Simeon countered. “Her actions directly led to the recovery of the hard drive. Where’s the setup?”
“Gentlemen,” Grand Archus Gideon intervened. “We need to accept that we are treading through an unprecedented area here. What the Dread woman’s motives were for acting as she did are not particularly relevant right now. I trust that Trace is being forthcoming, and we will have secondary confirmation from Talisman, or Dolorem, as he calls himself now. Please proceed with the narrative, Trace.”
The interwoven discussion and examination dragged on for two hours. While no one said it, the word liar hung around Trace’s neck. Even the supportive Simeon had no idea of what to make of the auraless Dread and the device Trace claimed could control Dreads.