Steven considered all that he had just learned.
“You said I will bring him in ‘by any means necessary,’ General. Are we treating Carver as an enemy? I understand your desire to find him, but ‘by any means necessary’ could be a bit drastic.”
Larsen hesitated for a second before answering. “Carver is a threat to us, Ensign.” (Steven felt a moment’s pleasure at his superior’s use of his new title.) “He is a threat to all of us. He knows all there is to know about us – possibly more than anyone currently with the organization; damn it, he WAS the organization – and he’s unstable. Unpredictable. Out of control. Essentially, that makes him a dangerous weapon. Best case, he’s just crazy – that still makes him the equivalent of a malfunctioning nuclear bomb that may or may not go off at any second. Worst case…”
The General paused, momentarily appearing much older than his fifty-five years.
“I truly want to believe that he is still the man I called a friend, but the fact is, he deserted fifteen years ago. It seemed like he had some kind of debilitating mental illness – it seemed like he had some kind of magical Alzheimer’s, really. But what if he didn’t? What if he did go crazy, but not the way we all thought? What if he deserted because he was against us? What if he turned against our country?” Larsen pounded a hand on the table. “We can’t take the chance, Drisbane. We need him contained. He is a threat to all that we are. He could be a threat to civilians, too, if he’s gone renegade. He could be a threat to civilians even if he’s just crazy! Best case, worst case….whatever happens… Carver being out there, in the world… one way or the other, it has to stop.”
Steven pondered the gravity of the situation, and the possible danger. After a moment, he nodded. “I’m your man, sir. How are we going to do things differently than you did on your previous attempts to find him?”
“Well, for one thing,” Larsen replied, “we’re gonna make damn sure he doesn’t see you coming.”
And so it was that Steven Drisbane became, quite literally, an invisible man. The tech operatives that Larsen had recruited from NASA, John and Eric, had tweaked Wands to keep Steven utterly invisible at all times. These upgraded Wands rendered him not only physically invisible, but undetectable by magical means. His very molecules were hidden to a point of near non-existence. The energy he emitted through the sheer act of living could not be picked up by man or machine. Even if he were to walk up to someone and punch them, while cloaked, the other person would not feel it; they may wonder why they had a vague soreness around the jaw, if they noticed anything at all. Steven’s very matter was altered. He could not be heard, felt, smelled, or otherwise detected by any living creature while he was on the job, and he was always on the job.
Because of the myriad concealing powers of his new, improved Wand, Steven communicated with General Larsen only through typed messages – like text messages – and photographs sent via the Wand. Because of this new feature, and the Wand’s general aesthetic similarity to a smartphone, Eric and John named the souped-up device the “SmartWand.”
Steven had met the techs shortly after Larsen explained his new assignment. They were an odd duo. Eric Krull was a young man with dark hair and a slight build. He was hyper-intelligent but intensely socially awkward. He would speak lovingly and at length about each new gadget, and then realize people were paying attention to him and slowly, his volume would decrease and his gaze would wander downward until he appeared to be mumbling to his shoes.
John Johannsen was a bit older – in his mid- to late thirties, by Steven’s estimation – but equally awkward, in his own way. He spoke with a slight lisp, and rarely said anything pertinent to the mission or even the technology itself. Instead, he would interject occasional, sarcastic comments about Eric’s lack of social skills, or anything else that amused him. He often spoke of his former career as a musician, and seemed to resent the fact that he had joined NASA (and then the organization) rather than sticking with his passion. However, he was quite brilliant in his knowledge of technology, even if he didn’t seem very happy about it.
When Larsen had conducted his own search for Carver, he had started by searching for evidence anyplace that Carver had enjoyed going before his downfall. Because Carver had had (had helped invent) devices like the Broom to make traveling the world as effortless as a walk down the block, Larsen’s search basically spanned the entirety of Earth. To help narrow it down a bit, Larsen had asked the techs to come up with dronelike devices to scour the earth for traces of Carver. They delivered.
“They’re like satellites, almost, but they are intensely powerful and can trace specific molecules, energy signatures, and magical discharges ANYWHERE on the planet!” Eric had said excitedly, when explaining the devices to Steven. “And they’re ALL set to find Carver. They are seeking HIS molecules, HIS energy signatures, and his alone. We’re gonna track him down, for sure.”
John had added, “We were calling them the ‘Eyes of Sauron,’ but we’ve shortened it to the ‘Eyes’ for convenience.”
They pulled up the data the Eyes had retrieved. It seemed there had been no strong evidence of Carver’s energy traces for two months, when they were picked up in a small town in New Jersey. Steven and Eric both sagged a bit in disappointment; John looked vaguely amused; Colonel Larsen appeared totally unruffled. He clapped Steven on the shoulder.
“Buck up, Drisbane! That’s a lot more focused then my search was,” the General said, almost jovially. “Off you go to New Jersey. We’ll track him down if we have to search under every brick of that town.”
That is almost exactly what Steven did, over the course of the next year. He searched every inch of Woodford, New Jersey, meticulously and invisibly. Occasionally, the Eyes would return data that indicated Carver had been somewhere else, and he would travel there, and begin his search again. However, the Eyes picked up residual evidence of Carver in Woodford with some regularity. They were convinced that would be the place to find him; however, he found absolutely no hard evidence, in Woodford or anywhere else. He was beginning to feel rather defeated, and he questioned whether the Eyes were truly a valid tool to go by.
He was enjoying the quiet yet energetic little town of Woodford, though, which he invisibly inhabited while he hunted for Carver.
He liked the quiet, residential neighborhoods full of Victorian homes, and the hustle and bustle of the main street. He liked the quirky characters he saw on Main Street every day. It seemed like a nice place; he often thought he would like to visit again once he was off this assignment.
He messaged Larsen religiously of his progress, or lack thereof. One day, he reported finding a black sock that had been discarded in the street. Though he had no evidence linking it to Carver, he proposed that it could be Carver’s sock, based solely on the circumstantial evidence that it was black, as Carver’s uniform had been, and in Woodford. He asked to bring it back to the techs for testing.
Larsen apparently did not see the logic of this, as he responded, “Leave it ‘til tomorrow. Take the day off. You need a rest.”
Steven considered the wisdom of that statement, and decided the General was right. He took a nap for a couple of hours, and then wandered invisibly around town. He had noticed the library from the outside and thought the architecture was impressive; he decided to check it out. It had been a long time since he had enough free time to read for pleasure.
He searched through the fiction section, wondering how long it had been since he had done such a thing. At first, he didn’t notice the woman in the aisle. He had become so used to being invisible that he barely registered the presence of civilians anymore. When he bumped into her and she reacted, though, he panicked. There was no way she should be able to see him, much less touch him. He thought she HAD to be working with Carver, there was no other explanation. He went on the offensive.
He treated her as if she were an enemy that needed to be subdued and questioned, and had no qualms about doing so. Her eyes, however, gave him some misgivin
gs. There was fear in her eyes when he had his hand around her neck; there was abject terror in her eyes when the librarian walked through him. He realized she truly had no idea what was happening, and no idea what he was.
“What the hell is happening?” she whispered.
“I was hoping you could tell me. I guess we should talk,” he said, squatting so he wouldn’t be towering over her. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She said it so quietly he barely heard her.
“Fair enough. I’m sorry I choked you. I thought you were…. Someone else,” he said lamely. She stared blankly at him, and the librarian came rushing back over and threw an arm around the woman’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, honey, they’re on their way. You’re very pale; I don’t know what to do. What are you feeling?” the librarian asked the woman.
“Honestly… I don’t know,” the woman said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. She spoke to the librarian but she was staring at Steven. “I think I’m seeing things.”
“I’m real,” Steven said, helpfully. “It’s just that no one else can see me. Or hear me. Or touch me…. Or anything me, really. I’m not sure why you can.”
“And hearing things,” the woman murmured.
“Look at me, Deanna, look at me,” the librarian said, grabbing the woman’s face in her hands and jerking it toward her so that the woman looked at her eyes. “Your eyes look funny, and you’re a little clammy. I think you’re going into some kind of shock, Deanna. Do you understand? Do you hear me?”
“Uh-huh,” Deanna mumbled, her eyes wandering back to Steven.
“Deanna, huh? That’s a pretty name,” Steven said.
Deanna’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted, moments before the ambulance arrived. Steven decided to ride along; he didn’t want to lose the strange woman before figuring out why she could see him despite the SmartWand’s cloaking settings. Also, he was feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing for some reason.
“It wasn’t really my fault,” he thought. Nonetheless, he climbed onto the ambulance, unseen by the EMT’s, and rode to the hospital with her.
Deanna
Deanna opened her eyes, disoriented. There was a man in a blue jacket over her, saying, “Talk to me, hon. You with me? You take anything?”
She tried to answer him but there was an oxygen mask over her mouth, so she just shook her head. She felt like they were moving. The last thing she remembered was thinking her heart should not, could not, beat as fast as it was beating… at the library. Yes, she had been at the library. It was all coming back now. The man in black, Barb walking through him, the realization that she was hallucinating. It had been unpleasant.
Feeling very clichéd, she asked the man in the blue jacket, through her oxygen mask, “Where am I?”
“We’re going to the hospital, hon, you’re gonna be fine. What happened? You sure you didn’t take anything?”
“I’m sure,” she said drily, wishing she could take the mask off. “I had… some kind of an attack.”
“Okay, they’ll fix you right up at the hospital. You sure you didn’t take anything?”
Another voice, an all-too-familiar voice, said, “For fuck’s sake, she didn’t take anything.” Deanna’s eyes widened and she felt her heart start to race again.
The man in the blue jacket, the EMT, continued as if he had heard nothing.
“Cause if you took anything, we need to know so we can help… what happened? You ok?” The EMT checked a band around her arm, checking her blood pressure. “Your blood pressure just skyrocketed. What did you take?”
“Tell him you smoked crack in the library,” the man in black said, leaning over the EMT’s shoulder. “I just wanna see what he says.”
Deanna started hyperventilating, even with the oxygen mask blowing into her mouth and nose. The EMT was frantic as they pulled into the hospital’s ambulance-unloading area, turning dials on the oxygen tank and trying desperately to figure out why she was hyperventilating and why her blood pressure had so suddenly escalated. The driver got out and opened the back doors of the van; the two men unloaded the stretcher Deanna was on, popped the wheels down, and rolled her into the emergency room. A woman in a white coat, wearing a stethoscope around her neck and carrying a clipboard, rushed to greet them.
“What’s the situation?” the woman asked.
“Not sure, we got a call from the library, where the woman was unconscious. Librarian said she had some kind of attack, and then fainted. She – the librarian - thought the patient went into some kind of shock. The patient came to on the ride over, seemed ok, but then her blood pressure went from 120/70 to 150/100 within seconds, and she started hyperventilating under the mask,” the EMT responded.
The man in black, standing behind them, said, “Well, that’s not good. You really need to calm down.”
Deanna was fairly certain her heart was going to explode, it was beating so fast. She was petrified, both because she was seeing and hearing a person no one else heard or saw – a person other people could walk through – and because she feared being locked in the psych ward. It was one of her greatest fears, to wind up like that. Her trip to the adolescent unit the psychiatric hospital twenty years earlier had been bad enough. The idea of winding up as an adult locked away in a straightjacket, a permanent source of heartbreak for her parents with no control over her own existence, at the mercy of doctors….it terrified her. So, she stayed quiet.
She was wheeled into a tiny room, where the doctors removed her shirt and stuck suction cups with wires around them to her chest, presumably to monitor her heart rate and vitals. She was embarrassed to be sitting on a cot in just her bra in front of the man in black, then mad at herself for being embarrassed about a hallucination seeing her without her shirt.
Someone put a hospital gown over her torso, and she was grateful.
They swapped out her ambulance oxygen mask, which the EMT’s took, for another oxygen mask.
The woman in white said, “You didn’t take anything, did you? Any pills or coke or anything? We can’t help you unless you tell us.”
The man in black said, “Seriously, do they want you to be on drugs? Do they not have any other illnesses around here?”
Deanna shook her head, and murmured, “Nothing, no drugs.”
The woman in white said, “Okay, I’m gonna give you something to bring your heart rate down. You’re gonna feel a little pinch.” A needle stabbed her in the arm, and released something that stung a bit under her skin as it came out of the needle.
“So if you’re not on drugs, they’re gonna put you on drugs,” the man in black said. “That’s an awesome system.”
Deanna was quickly learning to tune him out. She was feeling calmer by the second, too. Whatever the stinging substance in the needle had been, it was a-ok in her book. Everything was going to be fine, she decided.
The woman in the white coat watched a screen over Deanna’s head for a few minutes, and then adjusted her oxygen mask. “Your heart rate’s looking pretty good, now. We’re gonna let you rest for a couple minutes, and then take some blood tests, okay? We’ll figure out what’s going on, don’t worry.”
Deanna nodded. Rest sounded good. “It’s really cold in here,” she said aloud.
The other woman pulled a thin blanket over her, and then left the room. Deanna heard machines beeping and feet walking by the door every few seconds, but it was white noise. Her eyelids were drooping.
“We really do need to talk,” the man in black said.
“Nope,” Deanna whispered. “You’re not even a person.”
“Look… Deanna… I am a real person, I promise. You’re just gonna have to accept the fact that I am real but no one else can see me, and we’ll talk more once we’re out of here.”
She shook her head slightly.
“We can talk here, but people are gonna think you’re talking to yourself. I’m trying to protect you, here, not me.”
Deanna shrugged a shoulde
r.
“You’re an incredibly frustrating woman, do you know that?”
“You’re an incredibly annoying hallucination, do you know that?” Deanna replied, though slightly muffled through the oxygen mask.
“Look, Deanna,” he grabbed her chin gently and tilted her face upward, staring into her eyes. “I am not a hallucination. I am real. My name is Steven. No one else can see me because… because I am disguised by magic,” he said. “But you can see me, and you can hear me and feel me, so please just trust your senses and understand that I am real.”
She stared up at him, remembering the Charles DeLint quote that had crossed her mind earlier: “That’s the thing about magic: You have to know that it’s here, it’s all around us, or it just stays invisible to you.” She had always wanted so badly for that to be true, for magic to be manifesting all around her, unseen by eyes that had become jaded by society and experience. Could it really be true? Magic? Her mind reeled.
Aloud, she said, “Disguised by… magic.”
He nodded.
“Are you a ghost?”
He chuckled. “I am alive and well, though calling me a spook would not be totally off base.”
“Like… a CIA kind of spook?”
He shook his head. “Not CIA, no. I work for a different outfit. You haven’t heard of us.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said, smiling slightly.
“There’s an invisible man talking to me in a hospital bed. I have some questions.”
Steven quirked an eyebrow. “Fair enough,” he said, finally taking his hand away from her face and sitting back a bit. “Do you wanna get out of here?”
Deanna blinked. “I mean… can I?”
He nodded and pulled out his phone again, tapping away at the touch screen. Deanna cocked her head, confused. “What are you, texting your ride?”
March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) Page 5