by Mark Eller
"Our corrupt elected officials are not happy with you," Faith corrected. "My previous director still is not happy with you. However, we who are the lonely agents of the law love you. So does the new director. Because of you, many things have been shaken loose. Assemblywoman Sporlain has died, and because of Miss Bivins' charges of attempted bribery and extortion, we were able to get our hands on her personal papers. A lot of interesting information is in those papers. In a few weeks we'll start making arrests, but the suicides started a couple days ago."
* * *
"Is this the place?"
Celine looked through the warehouse window and studied the building across the street. Frowning, she shook her head. "I don't know."
"Well, there are four others," Aaron reassured her. "I'll take you to them once this is over."
"If you two would quiet down a mite, we could get on with this business," Larns said. She looked animated, her face alight and grim with purpose.
Twenty troops surrounded Aaron. Only half were IFBIS; the other ten were N'Ark Guards who had been pulled secretly from the ranks early that morning. Almost all were older veterans of the streets. The only exception was one young woman who wore the uniform of a trainee. She seemed out of place in this crew, but her face showed no less determination. Sergeant Walker, the trainee's shepherd, looked grimmer than the others. The pair seemed thoroughly disappointed that they had been given the task of watching over the two civilians.
"Five children lived," the young trainee said to Celine. "One died."
"And the others?" Celine asked. She stared at the woman with an intensity that told Aaron she was using her Talent to discern lies.
"They all have homes. Makky is apprenticed to a locksmith." The trainee smiled momentarily, the only smile Aaron had seen all morning. "I'm not sure if that apprenticeship is such a good idea for a thief."
"Thank you." Celine's expression relaxed.
"It's noon by my watch," Larns said. "Every house is scheduled to be hit sometime in the next thirty minutes. Our go is ten minutes from now, so everyone get to your positions."
With grim nods, three-quarters of the troops slowly filtered out of the warehouse but did not head directly across the street. Some turned left, some right, some went into the playground. Within seven minutes they would cover three sides of the house. Three minutes after that the troops left inside the warehouse would head directly for the front door.
The wait was interminable. Aaron sweated and touched his .38. He was not the only one having problems. Even Larns seemed impatient and nervous and anxious. She tapped her foot during the entire ten minutes. The corner of her mouth twitched, but her eyes grew harder as she peered out the window.
Finally, she gave a curt nod, then swung open the door and headed out. Five troops and Aaron and Celine followed. The mood was grim satisfaction.
"Remember," Larns admonished, "make it fast. The fewer children harmed, the better."
The front door was locked. Aaron's key did not work, so they simply knocked.
They waited, toes tapping impatiently on the walkway until the door slowly cracked. Aaron briefly saw a taut safety chain stretch between the door and the frame. "Yes?" a thin female voice asked. "Can I help--?"
Crowley kicked in the door. Wood splintered; the woman screamed, and people streamed through the opening. Aaron was almost last, so he missed the action, but he did see Crowley kneeling on the floor, placing handcuffs on a fifty-something woman.
Crowley glanced up at Aaron. "Always wanted to kick a door in. Gave me a bit o' satisfaction, it did."
Aaron did not have time to nod. Apparently, the trainee and her watcher were not staying behind while the action was ahead. Already, they were heading for the stairs. Since they were supposedly watching over Aaron and Celine, Aaron figured he needed to keep up with them.
Sergeant Walker and her trainee leaped up the stairs, covering three steps at a time. Aaron and Celine ran after them. Once they reached the top all sense of protocol ended. Walker and her young charge went one way; Aaron and Celine went the other. Aaron held his .38 in his hand. Celine held a knife.
Walking deliberately down the hall, Aaron started flinging doors open. The first three rooms were empty except for stacked bunks that had huge staples driven into the bedsteads. The fourth door was locked. Aaron tried to kick it in, but he did not have Crowley's brawn. Giving up, he raised his gun.
"Cover your ears," he ordered Celine.
He fired twice. The brittle lock shattered.
This time the door opened.
Aaron looked into a fair-sized room containing six children chained to a line of sewing machines. Since no adults were in the room, Aaron stepped back into the hallway.
The next door down was also locked. Aaron aimed his gun, fired twice more, and smiled grimly when another lock shattered. Like the last room, it contained six children with sewing machines. However, a youngish man also occupied the room. Holding a preteen girl in front of him, he pressed a knife to her throat.
"Don't come closer!" he shouted. "I'm leaving now. If you--."
Aaron pointed his gun, but he was too late.
Thwick
A knife handle protruded from the man's left eye, its blade buried deep. The man's knife arm sprang outward, the blade flew free, and the screaming scarecrow of a girl dropped to her knees while the man fell and died.
"Automatic reaction," Celine said calmly while walking forward to pull her blade free. "Arm just naturally jerks outward when a person is killed by a knife to the brain."
Aaron didn't want to know how a person so innocent-looking came by that particular knowledge. He also didn't want to know how she learned to throw a knife so well.
"Now let's find some keys," Celine said. "Worst case, I can use a needle to pick the locks. It's what I did the last time. Just takes a little longer is all."
* * *
Celine was picking locks when Larns entered the room. When she took in the dead man on the floor, her face flowed into an expression of pure satisfaction. "Good job. If you'd been a regular, I'd have to do an investigation to see if this death was justified. Since you're both civvies, I get to only shake my head and say we professionals could have done a better job of apprehending this culprit." She spat. "Of course, I'd be lying when I said it. Truth is I'm jealous. The rest of us didn't get to kill a single one of them. That honor will belong to the executioner." She handed him an object. "You seem to be the man who knows everything. Mind telling me what this might be?"
Aaron lifted the instrument and frowned. "Please tell me somebody was not talking into this when you ran across it."
Larns shook her head. "Can't tell you that. Woman was hanging onto this and chattering away like the thing had a brain of its own. We had to pry it out of her hands. Broke two of her fingers doing it."
"Damn!" Visions of sudden disaster shot through his head.
Larns instantly pretended she had grown deaf. Not even the flicker of an eyelash indicated she had heard him issue profanity in the presence of children.
"This," Aaron explained, "is a two-way radio. It converts the sounds entering its receiver into radio waves. The waves travel through the air until they encounter another two-way radio. That radio converts the waves back into sound, and the sound comes out of the speakers."
No one in the room showed the least sign of comprehension.
"Forget the details," Larns said. "Are you telling me my prisoner was telling somebody out there what was happening?"
"Yes."
"How far does this thing go?"
Aaron shrugged. "Maybe a mile. Might be as far as five or even ten. I don't know how powerful it is or what kind of atmospheric interference there might be."
Larns studied the radio. Her brows creased in thought, and her eyes clouded.
"Damn," she said in a faint voice. "This could fuck everything up."
Strangely, nobody seemed to hear her curses, either.
* * *
The raids
had been completed in less than two hours. After that came the clean-up. Another six hours passed before all the results were in.
A minimum of twenty officers hit each Turner House. At every House they made at least five arrests. In one House they arrested eight. Two other suspects were killed. One child received a mild cut requiring three stitches, and an IFBIS officer suffered a more serious slash across her ribs when she selflessly went to the rescue of that child. She was promised a future commendation for her valor. The child gave her a kiss. The woman said the kiss meant much more to her than any medal ever could.
Celine eventually made the rounds of all the houses. None were where she had been kept. This revelation sent Larns into a round of cursing and caused every officer involved in the raid to swear they would discover every last workhouse in the city and shut it down.
Turner Wear disappeared off the clothing racks. During the next few days, vast amounts of money were confiscated and records were seized. No sign was found of Dan Norbright, the director who had been in charge of this horror. What they did find was at least one solar-charged two-way radio in every office but one.
Where did these radios come from? Aaron had no idea, and unfortunately, the only person who could answer his questions, Mister Norbright, the director, had escaped though a hidden tunnel. Because at least three of the people in IFBIS custody had radioed out a warning, Norbright had not only escaped, he had cleaned out his personal safe, too.
And there were two hundred and sixty-four traumatized children to deal with. Volunteers appeared once the news of the raids had hit the press. Aaron quickly hired completely new staffs for all five of the N'Ark Houses. Within two weeks, half the orphans had been adopted into stable families.
The remaining children were resilient. They quickly bounced back from their ordeal, gained weight once they were weaned off drugged food, and learned how to play on the playgrounds that had been built for them. By the light of day, they were no different from other children except for the occasional furtive gathering and a few hushed whispers.
Only at night did the worst of the damage show, when so many woke from restless sleep. Some woke with screams. Some only cried. The most affected woke in silence and focused sightless eyes on the ceiling overhead for hours until finally breaking down into violent shaking that drew the attention of the new workers.
Because of this, the Houses were most heavily staffed at night. The personnel rotated between shifts because very few people could deal with the children's night terrors on a constant basis. Only three women managed to stay on the night shift without falling into depression.
Heralda stopped by one morning while Aaron was trying to teach a young girl her numbers. She gave him a knowing look and reminded him that the One God, the Son, and the Ward, had promised that he still had tasks to accomplish. More would be demanded of him, but that time was not yet. Her god would grant him a few years of freedom before using him again.
Freedom, Aaron noted, but not peace.
* * *
Two months passed, and the leaves started to change. Green turned into reds and oranges and yellows that drifted into piles on the ground or stayed attached to branches and shriveled into brown wisps of their former glory.
Zisst, Aaron discovered, liked to do somersaults. The strange animal spent hours tumbling and rolling across the floor of Aaron's apartment. Often, in mid-roll, it leaped into the air and fell into a comical heap that flattened out into something three times thinner than nature intended.
Heidi was right. Zisst was flexible and mutable. During these last weeks, Aaron spent time studying the beast and could no longer say what the animal truly looked like. Even the multicolored coat of thick fur did not stay the same.
"It's a silly thing," Felicity said while her hands gently rubbed Aaron's temples. Sighing, he stretched further out on his bed. She had finished massaging his back, but his headache had not yet disappeared. Her fingers on his scalp felt like heaven.
"You're too tense," she said. "When you tighten your neck muscles, it's bound to give you headaches."
"I wouldn't tense up all the time if I wasn't trying to relieve pressure from the headaches," Aaron said. He pressed his head into his mattress, arching the back of his neck as he did so. Vertebrae crackled and snapped from the movement.
Overall, Aaron felt much better than he had before Felicity started working on him. Her treatments were a regular occurrence now. Three times a week she came to his apartment. Zisst played while Aaron lay on his bed and Felicity massaged his taut muscles and talked.
"You've made progress," Felicity said, "but I think most of your changes are only on the surface. We've yet to get to the deeper places in your mind."
"I think you're right," Aaron mumbled into his pillow. Closing his eyes, he relaxed, and enjoyed as her hands worked their way down his body.
Chuckling, Felicity playfully slapped his back. "You are so unusual. We've been doing this for a few months now, and I have yet to see a hint of the common male reflex out of you no matter how or where I touch you. I wonder if this is normal for you, or if it's something connected only to me. Perhaps the confused state of your mind effects your physiological reactions. I want to explore that subject tonight."
"It's you," Aaron said, keeping his eyes closed. "Your signals shout neuter. If a different woman were doing this, you'd see that missing reaction."
Felicity remained quiet for a moment. Her hands stilled, and then resumed the massage. "Interesting. I have a strange feeling that today's talk is not going to be about you after all. I'm somewhat interested in any other observations you might have made about me. Please remember that I normally see myself in the same way you see yourself--from the inside looking out. You've already taught me one thing."
"Oh?"
"I've always wondered why people seemed uncomfortable around me. I'm not usually included in friendly banter, and I've been nicknamed the Mule more than once. I never before realized that my signals might throw people off." Her hands stopped once again, moved away. "You might want to chase down your pants. Zisst seems to have a fondness for them."
Opening his eyes, Aaron saw Zisst dragging his pants out the bedroom door. "Hey, you little blighter," he called, "give them back."
Zisst ignored him.
Groaning, Aaron rolled over on the bed, stood up, and followed Zisst into the living area. "Come on buddy."
Zisst growled.
"Never heard him do that before," Felicity said from the bedroom doorway.
"Me neither. I wonder what--."
The front door swung open, and two people walked in.
"Oh my," Saundra Clarice said when she caught sight of Aaron. "I didn't expect to find this when we paid a runner to shadow you here. Naked and everything. What happened to your vaunted values?" Giggling, she waved a misshapen hand toward his groin. "I guess I didn't miss out on anything special after all."
Aaron only vaguely heard her. He barely noticed the maimed hand. Instead, his attention focused on her companion. The man had thin lines of scarred valleys and raised ridges running from the top of his bald head to his neck and most likely beneath his shirt. His hands were bent and scarred, but one of those hands held a pistol pointed straight at Felicity's head. For her part, Felicity held perfectly still. She knew what the pointed gun signified.
"Surprised, Aaron?" the man asked. "If you read your mail or the personals you wouldn't be. We would've had this meeting months ago. Why don't you introduce us to your friend?"
"Felicity," Aaron said carefully. "This is General Field and Saundra Clarice. The General is a murderous, egotistical megalomaniac with delusions of a grandiose predestination. In her off-hours, Miss Clarice is an occasionally sweet cab driver, but as a general rule she's a vicious bitch. General, Miss Clarice, this is Miss Stromburg, my physical therapist."
Saundra's eyes roamed over him. "Physical therapist? Is that what they're calling it now?"
"In my off days I pose as Dan Norbright," the General
said conversationally. "You ruined that one for me, too. Those Houses of yours were a sweet deal until you broke up my party. By the way, if you want to keep this conversation going, I suggest you blink real fast. The first time I see your eyes close for more than an instant, I'll assume you plan on leaving and will kill Miss Stromburg. I'll then hunt down your wife and children and kill them, no matter how long it takes."
Saundra skipped happily over to Aaron. Planting her hands on either side of his face, she turned it from side to side. Aaron shuddered at the feel of her polished knucklebone pressing into his cheek. Leaning forward, her tongue flicked out and dragged across the corner of his mouth. It felt like wet slime against his skin.
"Baby has been very bad," she said in a voice so normal that the hackles rose on Aaron's neck. "Now, why did you tattoo those lips on your face?"
Zisst leaped.
Saundra started, began an outraged scream, and Zisst flattened and spread thin across her face. Saundra staggered back until her legs connected with the edge of an end table. Falling to the floor, she started rolling.
Field did not move. His aim remained steady. "Call it off."
"I can't," Aaron said. Field's aim shifted. He fired.
"Kerleet!"
Springing free, Zisst raced for the bedroom, leaving bloody footprints on the floor. As it reached the doorway, Field fired again.
Zisst was flung against the doorframe. Sliding to the floor, it lay still while an ejected casing clattered across the floor.
Saundra gasped. Blood spurted from her bullet-torn cheek, coating the shards of her newly shattered teeth with red.
"GODS!" she laughed. Blood spewed from her mouth, fell across her chin, and dribbled down her front. "It hurts! It hurts! Thank You!"
Her voice came thickly to Aaron. His ears rang from the contained gunshots.
"She needs serious help," Felicity observed to Field. "You do realize that people will soon arrive to investigate the noise."