“Trainee White,” she greeted him, and gestured to the single chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
David took the seat. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said uncomfortably. For all the curiosity and determination that had led him here, the thought of what he’d agreed to do and just who these people were still scared him.
“This is just an induction interview,” she told him, echoing Michael’s words outside. “Normally, you’d have been given a decent tour of the Campus before this, but with the delay and the weather, we’ll put that off until tomorrow I think.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” David said more wholeheartedly, relieved to have avoided a slog through the storm outside. Besides, he reflected, he’d seen most of the grounds already when he’d been convalescing there.
“By now, we have explained to you some of the nature of the supernatural world around us,” Traci told David. “You’re rare in our recruits, as you’ve seen ONSET personnel in action and have some idea of just what we do. There is a vast gap, however, between our day-to-day operations and the mission of the Omicron Offices. Do you know what that mission is, Trainee White?”
“No, sir,” David admitted. He wondered what Warner meant, but as the conversation continued, he realized that he could not locate the source of the light on the painting behind Warner, and it was growing brighter—almost hurting his eyes and distracting him from his thoughts.
“That’s not a surprise,” she reassured him. “It’s not always clear. The mission of this organization and our sister organization at OSPI is very simple: we are to protect the people of the United States of America, mundane and supernatural, from the horrors that slip through the Seal.
“The Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation handles most of the day-to-day policing of the supernatural. We are the next line. When there’s an outbreak of vampirism, it’s an ONSET team that puts it down. When a crack opens and a dozen demons slip through, we deal with it. When an Empowered who’s too strong or too dangerous for OSPI goes rogue, we’re the ones sent to arrest him.
“We are the line between the innocent and the weak and those who abuse great strengths.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” David replied. Hearing Warner put into words what he’d felt when he’d decided to join this organization, and hearing that desire—that need—to serve and protect labeled as ONSET’s mission reassured him.
“Good,” Warner told him. “Over the next four weeks, you will be trained in the various types of enemies we face, the capabilities of your fellows in ONSET and OSPI, and the weapons and magics at our disposal. We will also train you in combating supernaturals and will put you through intentional stress training to attempt to awaken your powers.”
“What if I have no powers?” David asked. A part of him hoped that was true, while another part feared it. For all that he’d never shared his father’s narrow-mindedness, the thought of turning into a “freak” bothered him. The light from the painting distracted him from his thoughts. It was growing extremely bright—indeed, it now looked as though Traci herself was glowing.
“You do,” she said bluntly. She paused for a moment, looking at him oddly. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “It’s just the damned light on that painting.”
Traci looked behind her and then back at him. “There’s no light on the painting,” she told him.
He looked at her, wondering if she was toying with him. “It’s hurting my eyes, it’s so bright,” he told her harshly, and she looked at him for a long moment.
“White light? With some scattered blue and green speckles and some good chunks of red?” she asked.
David blinked against the light, trying to clear it out of his eyes, but then nodded. He hadn’t seen the speckles before, but now she mentioned them, he could pick them out. “I thought you said there was no light,” he demanded.
“There isn’t,” she said calmly. “That’s the aura of the security spell woven into the painting. A security spell most Mages don’t even notice.”
“What?” David demanded. She couldn’t be serious! Auras?
“You just answered your question about powers,” Warner told David quietly. “You are demonstrating Second Sight—right now!”
#
David drifted out of Warner’s office in a slight daze. Somehow, that moment of seeing the aura of the painting had woken something up, and everything seemed to have an aura now. The world was flipping out around him, and he had no idea what to expect now.
O’Brien glowed even brighter than Traci. The Commander was waiting in the lobby as promised, and he seemed to glow with an inner light he hadn’t possessed before. A deep red, almost purple, light seemed to emanate from the werewolf, suffusing him with an eerie glow. A weave of blackness woven through the red spoke to David, somehow, and without knowing why, he felt a great sadness from the man.
“Are you okay, White?” O’Brien asked, and David realized he’d been staring dumbly at the other man for a good ten seconds.
“I don’t know,” David admitted. “I just…everything started glowing.”
“Glowing?” the ONSET officer asked, then paused. “Second Sight.”
David nodded. “That’s what Warner said,” he admitted. “It’s…fucking weird.”
“I lived through the sixties,” O’Brien told him. “I know all about weird. Come on, I think we need to get you somewhere you can sit down.”
It took only a few steps for the werewolf to grab David’s shoulder and slowly support him back to the main security station at the entrance. The guard gave him an odd look, and Michael shook his head.
“He just turned on,” he told the man. “Second Sight. One minute, nothing; next, he’s seeing auras.”
“I’ll let front security know, too,” the guard promised, waving them through.
The next few minutes were a blur of colored light to David, with new auras intruding on his vision all the time. Somehow, despite O’Brien’s comments, it hadn’t occurred to him just how much ONSET tended to enchant.
When every single piece of magic, as well as everything alive, glowed like crazy, it sank home, all right. Everything from the walls to the biometric scanners to the uniforms the guards wore glowed in a psychedelic rainbow of light and special effects. He vaguely remembered giving ID and thumbprints to get out of the building and giving them again to get into a second building.
“What’s with him?” a gruff voice asked. David managed to focus enough to realize that the strange lights had faded there. The glows were down to only a handful of distinct sources, though a slight haze in the background suggested…something. He didn’t know what yet.
“Second Sight hit him in the middle of his induction interview,” O’Brien replied. “Can you give me a hand with him, Koburn?”
David shook his head. “I’m good,” he slurred. “Less magic here,” he finished, a little less slurred as he slowly cleared his head.
He was in a small sitting room with O’Brien supporting him and another man just standing from the couch. A few small paintings of animals—none of them glowing, thankfully—marked the brown walls, and the same blue carpet as the offices covered the floor. The black furniture—two couches and a trio of chairs—fit smoothly.
Most importantly right now, nothing except the two men was glowing. Michael continued to pulse purple, but the other man showed a soft but powerful pale blue that almost hid his roughhewn features.
“Right,” the man, who David began to realize couldn’t be more than five feet tall, replied. “We keep this area low-grade—mainly so we can train folks with the Second Sight here without them going nuts.” He extended a hand. “I’m Commander Ryan Koburn. I’m the training Commander for ONSET, so you’d better get better quick.” He grinned evilly. “I like my trainees whole before I break them.”
“Thank you, sir,” David said levelly, not entirely sure it was the appropriate response, and Koburn laughe
d.
“He okay with you, Koburn?” O’Brien asked. “My team is supposed to be drifting back in from leave today; I should go check up on them if White is good.”
“I’ll take care of him,” the short blond man replied. “You know that.”
“All right,” O’Brien replied, lowering David onto one of the couches. “Now, I’m your sponsor with ONSET, son,” he told David, “so if you have any major questions, the Commander can put you in touch with me if he’s not willing or able to answer them. You get me, White?”
“Yes, sir,” David replied. With his head finally beginning to clear, he suspected just how much of a commitment the Commander had made to get David into ONSET. He wondered why the man had bothered, though the thought of dealing with this kind of craziness without people who understood it was terrifying.
“Good,” the Commander told him. “Now rest up—having a power spring on you like that can be draining as hell, I’m told, and our training isn’t exactly a walk in the park. O’Brien, we’ll talk again soon.”
With a jaunty quick salute, O’Brien slipped out the door, leaving White with just Koburn, who grinned at him.
“This is the training center,” the man told David. “Includes dormitories, a shooting range, twelve different kinds of simulators and a lead-sealed room for magic training. Until you finish our little course, this is your home.”
David nodded understanding, keeping his eyes half-closed against the glare of the man’s aura.
“Now, I’m going to add Second Sight training to your schedule,” Koburn continued. “But we schedule the first week for basic training and assessment anyways. The dorms are through there,” he added, pointing to a door off from the sitting area. “Two of your fellow trainees are here already and three more will be joining us before we start tomorrow.”
With a slim but inhumanly strong hand, Koburn easily hauled David to his feet. “Until tomorrow, however, you need to rest. Meditate if you know how,” he instructed as he half-led, half-carried David into the dorm. “Otherwise, be ready in the morning. In the morning,” he added with a half-joking grin, “I get to break you again.”
Chapter 6
The training began at six AM the following morning, when David was rudely awoken from a dreamless sleep by a resounding alarm and a voice that took him a moment to recognize as Koburn’s bellowing “Reveille, reveille, assemble in five minutes.”
David made it out of bed, into the black military-style fatigues that had been hung on his door at some point in the night and out into the hallway to assemble with about fifteen seconds to spare. He was the second-to-last one out, followed by a diminutive teenager in black-rimmed glasses whose fatigues made it clear he was quite possibly anorexic.
Three other men, including the youth, and two women joined David in standing around the front room, waiting for Koburn. The instructor, in his black bodysuit and jacket, was exactly on time, entering moments after the boy.
Every single person in the room glowed with a shifting mix of colors to David’s eyes, and it distracted him. He didn’t know what they meant, and he didn’t know how to turn this Second Sight off. It left him off-pace and uneasy.
“At ease, people,” Koburn told them, though only one of the trainees—a heavy black man who was missing half of his right ear—was standing at attention.
“Before anything else, we are going to assess you,” the trainer said calmly as he looked over the trainees. David wondered just how they were going to do that, when the six trainees were only half-awake—well, with the exception of the black man, who David figured to be ex-military from his bearing, and David himself, who’d been through worse than this in police training years before.
“Follow me,” Koburn ordered, and led the trainees through a door at the end of the hallway. The door led to a simple set of spiral metal stairs leading down one floor to a short hallway with various doors leading off of it. The hallway was floored in bare concrete, making it the first area David had seen in the complex without blue carpet.
Koburn stopped at a door halfway down the corridor and pointed to it. The sign on the door read Simulation Training Theater.
David followed the other trainees through into a small room on the other side. Concrete walls hosted a small number of lockers and several low benches. A horizontal locker was open, revealing a number of what appeared to be submachine guns.
Koburn removed one and showed it to the trainees. “This is a paintball carbine,” he said calmly. “Each is loaded with a full carbon dioxide cartridge and a magazine of one hundred paintballs. You may take one spare cartridge and one spare magazine. Make sure the magazine matches the color of paintballs in your gun.”
The trainer gestured at the door on the far side of the room. “Beyond that door is a training theater fully set up with a replica of a railway station. An opposing force is set up in there with identical weapons and reloads to you, but with red paint. You are a team; take them out. Any hit is considered a kill.”
The trainees hesitated, looking at each other, and then, one by one, starting with the black ex-military man and ending with the undersized teenager, took a paintball gun and entered the training theater.
#
David lasted, by his own count, one minute. In reflection afterward, he was almost proud, at least in comparison to the rest of the trainees. The only trainee to last longer than him was the black man, and he had managed to hit one of the opposing force. Of course, the man he’d hit had shot him at the same time.
The black man, whose name he had learned was Leonard Casey, a former sergeant from the 101st Airborne, had survived for almost five minutes beyond any of them but had only managed to take down one member of the opposing force himself before he’d been lured into an ambush and covered with paint.
“Your opposing force,” Koburn told them as the trainees lay around the benches in the entry room to the theater, “was ONSET Four, currently assigned to the Campus on inactive reserve. One of you is the former commander of a police special tactics team”—he gestured at David—“two more of you are from our sister office at OSPI”—he waved at the two women—“and one of you is military”—he gestured at Casey—“but you really didn’t stand a chance.”
“Part of that is because ONSET Four’s men are fully trained supernaturals,” the trainer continued. “For example, the Mage used a series of illusions to lure Casey into the ambush.”
Casey grunted in response. David wondered how it felt to realize that skill and training had been trumped by a single spell.
“However, all of you are here because you have been identified as either supernatural or high-likelihood potentials,” Koburn told them. “Supernatural abilities are not the only things that separate you from ONSET Four. They are trained as a team, working together to make the best use of their abilities.
“You will be as good,” the trainer continued. “Or you will not be ONSET Agents.”
#
For the next nine hours, Koburn drilled the entire group of trainees on small-unit tactics, marksmanship with a wide variety of weapons, and the general material that any SWAT or high-threat-response officer in the country would need to know. There was information on supernatural threats and responses that other high-threat-response personnel wouldn’t need to know, but it was still mostly a normal course.
After nine hours, Koburn let them take a break—they’d eaten lunch during a lecture component—to “let the lesson sink in.” He then announced that two people had special classes as soon as they finished dinner: David White and Eric Shanks.
Dinner was a slow meal, the trainees physically and mentally exhausted. David learned that Eric Shanks was the young teenager. Shanks was the youngest person in the room at nineteen, and David was the oldest at thirty-one. Casey, the ex-Airborne, was the next oldest at twenty-eight.
The rest of the trainees were in their early twenties. Both of the women confirmed Koburn’s identification of them as being ex-OSPI personnel. One, a tall leggy
blonde named Leila Stone, was already a trained Mage—an Inspector who had requested a transfer to ONSET. The other, a tiny redhead named Bella Samuels, had been a security officer for ONSET before springing a positive on a test for supernatural abilities and being offered a choice of Inspector training or ONSET.
The last of the trainees kept to himself, a light-skinned Asian man with long hair who watched the rest of the group in silence with shadowed eyes. When asked for his name, he gave it as Hiro Tsimote gruffly. He ignored further questions, and left once he’d finished his meal.
#
David’s special class turned out to be in controlling his Sight. As he was still drained, despite the hearty meal, the class with Koburn proved extraordinarily difficult and brutal. By the end of two hours, David had learned to at least mute the auras so they were not as distracting, and believed he’d achieved a beginning understanding of what the colors meant.
At this point, David had been in one class or another for almost fourteen hours, and Koburn sent him away with a curt “Get some sleep; you’ll need it.”
He met Eric on the way back to the dormitory in the training bunker, and the youth looked shaken. Neither man felt like talking, and they made their way back in silence.
Only one of the trainees was still up. Tsimote was reading a small black-bound book as they entered. He looked up, and a tiny gesture suggested for David to come join him. David bid Shanks good night and joined the Asian man.
He was shocked as Tsimote reached out and touched him on the neck. A moment later, David realized the man had touched the scars from the vampire bite.
“You too,” the Asian said in a hoarse voice. It wasn’t a question, and Tsimote brushed aside his long hair to reveal a similar set of scars on his own neck. “They got my family,” he said grimly, “and almost got me before I summoned flame and burnt them all away. I still nearly died.”
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