by C. Gockel
The ravens shriek. The sphere hovers in the air about a foot off the ground. The robot inches forward, and the guys in the hazmat suits begin to move.
“Go check on Odin, Agent Rogers,” says Merryl. “Ericson, you’re with me!”
Gun still out, Steve walks over to the old man in armor, now lying on the floor. The ravens dart around him, gibbering and squawking. It’s not English but sounds eerily human. Behind him he hears the robot whirring. He picks up snatches of conversation from the guys in hazmat suits. “No radiation readings or biohazard signs....how did those guys get in here? What happened?”
Steve prods the old man with a shoe. Odin, if that is his name, doesn’t move; his eyelids don’t even flutter. But his armor swirls with light.
From behind him he hears someone say, “What are those guys doing?”
Steve turns to see Ericson and Merryl erect a strange silvery wire fence woven in hexagonal patterns around the sphere. As they close the seam of the fence, it seems to melt and coalesce over and under the sphere, forming a sphere of its own about four feet in diameter. The glowing sphere thing hovers in midair in the center.
“What the hell?” says a guy in a hazmat suit.
Taking out his badge and holding it up, Merryl says, “Department of ADUO.”
“I thought those guys were a joke,” someone else says.
Next to Merryl, Miles bends over his geiger counter thing, seemingly oblivious to everything. Shaking his head he says, “Readings are still off the charts.”
Within the new mesh sphere, the first small sphere begins to pulse again with light and dark. Suddenly, prongs of a dark material shoot outward from the glowing sphere like spokes and twist around the hexagonal netting.
“What the hell?” says someone.
And then the outer shell begins to grow, the hexagonal pattern stretching and throbbing, black material from the glowing sphere’s spokes crawling and curling around the mesh.
Miles and Merryl turn. “It’s never done that before!” Miles shouts as Merryl pulls him back.
From beside Steve a deep male voice roars. “What have you done?”
And then everything stops again. All the guys in hazmat suits are immobilized, as are Merryl and Ericson. The only things moving are the mesh sphere, pulsing outward, the silvery wire transforming to thick bars of black and silver, and for some reason, Steve and the robot. The robot is just a small 3 foot by 3 foot black metal body on tread wheels, with one long groping steel arm. As the arm hits the outer sphere, now composed of dark bars, sparks fly around the machine. There is blackness within the outer sphere. There is the rush of air again — this time it is so brusque some of the immobilized people by the sphere actually fall over, including Ericson and Merryl. Steve’s ears pop again, and then the robot just isn’t there.
The darkness fades, and through the bars he sees the pulsing blue light of the sphere.
“You will tell me where you got the technology for the outer sphere!”
Steve turns. The old man with one eye, Odin, is standing beside him, his armor pulsing with the same blue light as the sphere. Steve hears the ravens’ wings, and far off a subway.
Before he can process what is happening, Odin’s hand shoots to Steve’s neck. Steve tries to move — but he can’t. Below his neck his whole body feels numb.
He doesn’t have the foggiest idea where the technology came from, or even really what the Department of ADUO is, but no way in hell will he tell this guy.
Odin blinks. His one eye widens and then he smiles, and it does not make Steve happy.
Still, with a smile of his own, Steve says, “Agent Steve Rogers, Identification number —”
“You don’t know, but perhaps the Department of ADUO does,” the man hisses. “I hear you in my head, Agent Rogers.”
Steve’s mouth drops.
One of the ravens lands on the man’s armor and whispers something in his ear.
Leaning forward Odin whispers. “Steve Rogers, people I hear tend to be destined for greatness, the gallows, or both.” He pulls back. “Things will want the World Seed. Very bad things. Very bad people. You must keep it safe.”
The other raven lands on Odin’s opposite side and says, “Claire! Claire!”
Steve’s eyes go wide. He spits and hits the damn bird squarely between the eyes. With a squawk it rises into the air.
Odin’s smile becomes almost grandfatherly. “Keep her safe, Steven.”
The hand releases. Steve blinks and Odin and the birds are gone.
From behind him he hears movement. He turns, and over the heads of Merryl, Ericson and some of the guys in hazmat suits he sees the sphere...the outer shell is nearly 8 feet by 8 feet now.
Someone says, “What the hell happened?”
Ericson, looking at his geiger counter...or whatever it is, says, “It’s still growing, but it seems to have stabilized. Magic levels have dropped.”
“Where’s the bomb bot?” someone says.
“Shit,” says someone else.
That would be Steve’s assessment, too.
A cell phone goes off. Dusting himself off and standing up, Merryl pulls his phone out of his jacket mumbling about a secure channel. And then he turns to his partner Ericson and says, “Just got a report of an eight-legged horse on the corner of Jackson and LaSalle.” He takes a breath, phone still at his ear. “And now it’s gone.”
Saying something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a curse, Merryl looks around the room. “Did anyone see what happened when we were immobilized?”
“Immobilized?” says someone else.
Stepping forward, Steve lifts a hand.
With a nod, Merryl says, “Agent Rogers, you’re coming with us.”
x x x x
Amy stands across the desk from Agent Steve Rogers in the new downtown office of the Department of ADUO. The department used to be located in the main FBI office way out on west Roosevelt in kind of a sketchy neighborhood, but a few days ago they suddenly moved to a new office right across from the Board of Trade.
She plays receptionist for ADUO. “Plays” is the operative word. All the calls that come in seem to be classified and bypass her completely. It gives her lots of time to read, though, and that gives her a chance to keep up with her studies and apply for financial aid for next year and reapply for her scholarship. Also, the pay is good, the hours regular.
Steve is standing between piles of files in cardboard boxes, looking out the window, a huge black shadow in silhouette.
“You called me in, Sir?” she says, wringing her hands. Steve hates her. She’s not exactly sure why.
“Why were you an hour and a half late today?” Steve says turning around. His face is flat and unreadable.
“Well, I was coming in at my usual time, and as I was walking down the alley a pigeon with a broken wing came running towards me...because obviously it couldn’t fly...and well, I tried to ignore it, because you know, there are feral cats in the neighborhood and they deserve to eat, too, but it climbed up onto my shoe, I think it imprinted on me, and you know once something thinks you’re its mother, you can’t abandon it.”
Agent Rogers’ mouth opens slightly.
Amy looks at the desk, “Which doesn’t exactly explain why I’m late. I’m late because I took it to the clinic. I left a message on Assistant Director Merryl’s voice mail —”
“Assistant Director Merryl has been reassigned,” says Rogers. “I’m Acting Assistant Director for now.”
Amy bites her lip. Oh. Shit.
“Miss Lewis,” says Steve, “I haven’t gotten to your file yet,” he waves a hand at the desk, and Amy sees a stack of old-fashioned manila and red folders. “But I have to wonder, what are you doing here?”
Amy’s mouth opens; but she’s uncertain what he means, and no sound comes out.
“I mean, what are you doing at this job,” says Steve.
Oh. Well then. “I’m here because Agent Merryl offered me a job after he intervie
wed me,” she says. Right after she found out Loki stole all her money, and her grandmother broke her hip and then had a stroke, Agent Merryl had shown up at the hospital. He interviewed her extensively about Loki’s time with her — and confiscated her and Beatrice’s Alfheim clothes, and their Subaru. All Amy’s got left of the trip is a hadrosaur feather and a few glowing hairpins Beatrice misplaced in the garage by her gardening tools.
“Uh-huh,” says Steve. “I never see you actually answering the phone, Amy, or doing any typing or filing.”
Amy blinks. “Well, no one ever really gives me anything to —”
“Do you realize how deep in debt our country is?” Steve says, sitting down and scowling up at her.
That’s got to be a trick question. Amy tilts her head. “Doesn’t it change minute to minute with compounded interest?”
Steve is quiet for a moment. And then he gives her a hard glare and says, “I love my country and I hate to see anyone taking advantage of it...even in small ways.”
“Yes, Sir,” says Amy.
“There is no I in the word team, Amy, and no deadweight either. Find work to do, or find another job.”
Amy swallows. She can find a new job, but one that pays as well, and one she won’t have to relocate for, or force her to buy a car? Not in the months before she goes back to school. She’s promised the university one year off and nothing more. She’s found a great place to live, the upstairs is owned by a fellow vet tech and her doctor fiancé. And Amy gets to work at the vet clinic on nights and weekends and keep her skills up. She actually got to take part in a surgery last weekend. She can’t lose this job.
“Um, Sir?” she says.
“Yes, Miss Lewis?” says Steve looking down at a manilla folder with a bright red post-it attached on his desk.
“Do you have anything you’d like me to do?” she asks.
Steve looks up at her like he wishes she could spontaneously combust.
And then he spins in his chair, gets up, grabs a large box of files marked, “Purchase Orders - Non-Classified” and nearly throws it at her. “Take this and organize them in reverse chronological order. Make sure anything on the same date is alphabetized, too.”
Stumbling back a little bit under the weight of the box, Amy says, “Okay, yes, Sir,” and leaves the office with Steve already bent over one of the folders.
Amy takes the box back to her desk and tries not to cry. Why did Agent Merryl have to leave? It turned out ADUO had been watching her house ever since she met Loki. Merryl was the same old guy with too square jaw she’d seen buying ice cream one day — and the Mexican ice cream guy? ADUO, too, Agent Hernandez. She likes Agent Merryl. He is steadying, calm, and kind.
Now she is stuck with some patriotic hard-ass.
Opening the box, she rifles through a few folders — this assignment makes her want to cry even more than Rogers yelling at her. The files already look like they are in order...which means she’s just verifying they are in order, which is worse than ordering them to begin with. There is a special room in Hell for file organization quality control. Swallowing back her tears she rifles through the files. She blinks. There is a red folder wedged beneath the purchase orders.
Red almost always means classified.
She should pick it up and take it to Rogers right now. Sh digs out the folder and is going to take it to the office, really, when she notices the words “Agent Steve Rogers” on the tab.
Hum.
She shouldn’t.
She really shouldn’t. She looks at the red folder in her hands. She looks back at the box of filing. Her heart falls; just looking at the box bores her nearly to tears. She looks at the red folder again in her hands. This might be interesting. And she’ll just take a tiny peek. What harm can it do? And he’s got her file, and also her Alfheim dresses, and the Subaru so....
She starts flipping through the folder. At first it is just his history. How he was born in rural Alabama to poor parents, and then moved up to Chicago when he was eight or so — where he remained poor. She’d kind of have sympathy except, he just yelled at her. There’s his stint with the Marines, a bachelors from Yale on the GI bill, and a Masters Degree in public policy from the University of Chicago. She tilts his head. So he’s an impressive ass; those are the worst type. She flips through a few more pages; his hobbies include Kumdo, whatever that is. And then she reads his recent history — marriage, birth of his daughter, promotion to Public Liaison for the FBI’s Chicago Branch, divorce, and then...
Uh-oh.
Amy’s hands start to shake but she can’t put the folder down until she’s done reading.
She swallows. Okay, she’ll just take it to him and pretend she just found it. No problem. Easy. Hopefully, he won’t notice her trembling.
Taking a deep breath, Amy walks down the hall. It’s pretty empty in the building. Most of the agents seem to be elsewhere most of the time since they moved here. It’s a lot different from a few days ago when they were in the office on Roosevelt and all the ADUO agents seemed bored.
The door to Steve’s office is closed. She’s about to turn back when she hears a muffled, yet extremely familiar voice. Her eyes go wide and she’s suddenly too angry to even be afraid of Steve. Bursting into the room, she sees Agent Rogers behind his desk which is now on fire, aiming a gun at Loki.
“You really should tell me where you got the technology,” Loki says quietly.
There is the sound of the gun firing twice. Amy screams. There are two dull thuds in the wall next to her and Loki turns to her apparently unharmed.
Loki’s wearing a light gray suit, or at least he’s pretending to wear a suit. No tie though. And he looks like he has lost a lot of weight. His hair is black now, which is weird.
He blinks. “Amy,” he says. He blinks again. “I tried to wire you money, but apparently your bank account is no longer open?”
Her nostrils flare up, she goes hot — and it has nothing to do with the blaze in the room. There’s a fire extinguisher on the floor. Picking it up, Amy pulls the pin and aims it at Steve’s desk and yells at Loki. “You steal all my money and then you come here. Are you trying to make me lose my job, too?” She’s finally got a new plan, and things are going to work out, and he’s going to ruin everything all over again.
“You know him?” says Steve.
Loki’s face goes livid. “I stole nothing! You offered it to me! You said to take as much as I needed.”
“I didn’t mean to take it from my bank account!” Amy shouts. She can feel the veins in her neck popping.
Raising his arms, Loki says, “What did you mean, then, pray tell?” His eyes widen. “You can’t have meant just the money in your change belt? How was that supposed to buy me an airline ticket to Europe?”
“Ticket to Europe?” says Steve.
“You gave me your oath you wouldn’t steal!” says Amy, throwing the spent fire extinguisher at Loki. Of course it just goes right through him. She rips off the heavy sweater she’s wearing — it’s Chicago and the temperature fell 40 degrees literally overnight. Dropping it on a flame that’s not quite out on the floor, she steps on it with her shoe since Steve seems to be in some sort of shock.
“How did the fire extinguisher just pass right through him?” says Steve. “And why didn’t my bullets work?”
Ignoring Steve, she narrows her eyes at Loki. “You walked into my bank as me and withdrew all my money! That’s stealing and probably a felony.”
What is obviously an astral projection of Loki takes a step closer. Bending so his face is next to hers, he points a finger at her chest and says, “You told me I could take as much as I wanted. I thought your law was higher than any nation’s law!”
Amy stands, breathing heavily. Loki looks down at her chest and smiles. Amy follows his gaze. The shirt she was wearing underneath now ruined sweater isn’t really meant to be seen without an upper layer.
She crosses her arms over her chest and gives him a dirty look. And then she closes her
eyes. A tear falls out; she swallows and puts her hands to her face.
“Oh, damn it,” she mutters. The thing is, she can totally see how this happened. She did say to take as much as he needed, and he had seen her bank account info, and he just doesn’t understand rules and morality the way humans do.
For a moment there is no sound in the office but the click of the air conditioning that really should have been shut off when the heat wave ended. And then it’s like a dam that’s been building up for months finally breaks. Amy takes a heavy breath — and sobs. “After you left everything went to Hell! Beatrice broke her hip and had a stroke, I forfeited my scholarship because I didn’t have any money to pay for extras and because I was maybe in shock, and to take care of her, but then it didn’t matter because my mom came back and got durable power of attorney because I didn’t have a good lawyer, and she brought her creepy boyfriend, too, and I lost my home.”
She wipes her face. And despite it all she was kind of worried about Loki, angry, hurt and confused — but worried, too. She’d desperately hoped that his draining her bank account was some horrible misunderstanding, that she wasn’t that stupid, that she hadn’t been so misled by him of the inappropriate comments yet surprising heroism. And now she knows it was a misunderstanding, and she’s relieved... and more worried than ever. He’s too skinny, he’s unshaven and, “Why is your hair black? Is that just your astral image or is it real?” she asks. It makes his pale skin look absolutely sickly.
Loki’s just staring at her, his mouth slack. At her words he nervously runs his hands over his head. In the trail of his fingers the ginger color returns. “Oh, that —”
“That’s a very sad story,” says Steve, outside of Amy’s line of vision.
Loki gives him an angry look and then turns to Amy. “What is a stroke?”
“Blockage in the brain,” says Amy with a sniff.
Loki looks horrified. “Is it curable?” he whispers.
Shaking her head, Amy wipes her nose. “She’s really old; her brain isn’t as plastic. She doesn’t remember me anymore or anything really.”
“Why isn’t my phone working?” she hears Steve say, pacing around the room. “Or the fire alarms?”