He shoves a slide showing four MRI brain scans onto the projector. Oh dear. I think I know what’s coming up, and the only reason it’s not my breakfast is because I didn’t eat this morning.
“On the upper left, a cross-section through a healthy adult human brain. Here’s the cerebral cortex, this is the cerebellum, here are the intraventricular foramina, channels filled with cerebrospinal fluid that perfuse the brain.” He points them out. “Now, here on the top right is a similar view of the brain of a practitioner with advanced Krantzberg syndrome.”
The difference is visible, even at this scale. The bright cerebral cortex still has a thin rind of white, but there are dark bubbles scattered through the interior. The foramina are larger, the cerebellum oddly withered-looking. “Note the classic signs of a neurodegenerative pathology,” Dr. Mike says, pointing out the features to watch for. “Feeders attracted by the subject’s repeated introspection and visualization of summoning vectors have, over time, chewed microscopic chunks out of the cerebral cortex until the interior is a barely functional lacework. The human neocortex is structured as a sparsely connected network, and the feeders preferentially leave the long-range connections alone, not wanting to kill their host prematurely; but microvascular accidents associated with their activities have caused ischemic degradation here, here, and here—” He points to the largest patches of darkness. “The patient died three weeks after this MRI scan was taken; at post-mortem, after the CSF was drained, his brain was found to weigh about two-thirds as much as expected based on its exterior dimensions. The rest was scar tissue and fluid.”
Mhari is making faint choking noises beside me: she holds a hand daintily in front of her mouth. Tough. Dr. Mike ploughs on indefatigably. “Now, moving on. Bottom left: this is the healthy brain of a three-sigma superpower who first came to our attention five weeks ago. As you can see, it looks superficially similar to that of the control case above. And now”—he points to the bottom right quadrant—“for something completely different!”
I squint at it dubiously. “This is a cross-section of the head of the three-sigma power known as Strip Jack Spratt. Spratt died of a subarachnoid hemorrhage while in police custody in the wake of the incident in Trafalgar Square. At the time of his demise the police surgeon had provisionally assigned him a diagnosis as an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic with the controlling-machine delusional archetype and superpowers, the psychological impact of which we may assume to be destabilizing with respect to his grip on reality. As you can see, the left hemisphere is largely intact. And if you would like to compare it to the advanced K syndrome example above . . .”
The similarities are unmistakable. Enlarged foramina, dark bubbles, lacy cortex.
“In my opinion, Mr. Slaithwaite had less than two months to live at the time of his hemorrhage. In fact, the hemorrhage was almost certainly a side effect of his K syndrome: about ten percent of cases experience a cerebrovascular accident rather than dying of dementia. Now, you must focus on this: examination of his medical and police records show no sign of paranormal capabilities more than four months prior to his arrest in Trafalgar Square. So the unpleasant conclusion is that he went from zero to advanced K syndrome in around three to four months. Total life expectancy post-superpower: six months, the last two of them with an advanced neurodegenerative condition. Being an uncontrolled, fully active three-sigma supervillain is about as lethal as contracting an inoperable diffuse astrocytoma or similar brain tumor.”
Dr. Mike glances around at us. His eyes are tired and baggy. “This isn’t universal,” he says quietly. “We have some superpowers who have been confirmed for six months now. I managed to persuade two of them to undergo MRI scans and there is no evidence of active disease. You must understand that for the time being this remains a one-off—we don’t have enough samples to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that the superpowered are subject to K syndrome or a related neuropathy.” I feel a faint shaking through the seat of my pants: it’s coming through Mhari’s chair, which is hooked up with mine. She’s shuddering. It’s her personal nightmare: PHANGs need to drink blood from a living human or they succumb to a not-dissimilar degenerative condition, V syndrome. It’s ugly, progressive, and ultimately fatal. Without thinking I reach for her hand. Her fingers close convulsively around mine, almost painfully tight.
Dr. Mike presses on. “Nevertheless, I believe there is sufficient evidence to strongly support the hypothesis that the superpowered are just as subject to K syndrome as occult practitioners. Superpowers all manifest a strong thaum field: it would be logical to anticipate that feeders are drawn to them—and unlike a ritual practitioner, or even a PHANG, they have no defenses. Finally, although the rate at which new superpowers emerge appears to have plateaued, they continue to do so. And we have no way of tracking the spread of low-level powers. The worst case now is not that we face a superhero singularity, but that we face a low-level pandemic of K syndrome affecting the wider—undiagnosed—population at a rate that could potentially be as high as one in ten thousand people per year. If this hypothesis is supported, we need to identify all superpowers as a matter of urgency and arrange for them to receive the same training and protective measures as our own practitioners. To do otherwise would be unconscionable and inhumane.”
The SA stands, and walks to the podium. “Thank you,” he says, his smile slightly strained in the face of the stunned silence that follows Dr. Sanchez’s and Dr. Mike’s presentations. “That was most thought-provoking!” His smile vanishes. “Now, as you can imagine, this presents us with something of a conundrum. So I’d like to devote the rest of this session to discussing ideas for monitoring, tracking, and if possible, remediating the problem of K syndrome parasites afflicting our three-sigma and higher superpowers. Not to mention dealing with public awareness of the risk of K syndrome to the lower-powered. Does anyone want to speak first? Ah, Johnny, I see you already have your hand up . . .”
* * *
“What about Bee?” Mhari demands. Her voice is shrill and grates on my nerves. “And Torch?”
We’re walking along the fourth-floor corridor in the direction of the stairwell. I feel numb. I don’t want to be having this conversation: “What about Jim?” I counter.
“What about”—she stops dead, blank-faced—“what?”
I keep going for a couple more steps, then turn on my heel to face her. “Officer Friendly,” I say quietly, “is at least a three-sigma power. How much of what he does is down to the fancy armor, and how much is his own mojo?”
“I assume it’s mostly him, but I really don’t know.” She pauses. “But I know who will.”
I allow Mhari to lead me down the stairs to the third floor, then along the corridor leading to the HR hive. Strictly speaking the New Annex only houses Field Ops personnel and supporting specialties; there are a lot of outlying groups, including R&D, Training, Admin, Analysis, and HR, all of whom have their own offices elsewhere in the capital (and in some cases outside it). But Field Ops has its own rather specialized HR requirements, and consequently HR has its own outpost within Field Ops’ territory. It’s there to handle things like payroll and pensions for Residual Human Resources,* disciplinary hearings for chaos magicians, and new background identities for operatives who have been declared dead. Mhari is clearly familiar with these offices, for she heads straight towards one corner, knocks on a door, and says, “Alison? It’s me! Do you have a couple of minutes?”
“Sure! Come in!” Alison is a chirpily cheerful thirty-something in a canary-yellow top and big bold spectacles with shoulder-length brown hair. “You’re looking good, Mhari! Who’s this?”
“This is Dr. O’Brien, my director,” Mhari says. I smile and do the office-hello waggle-dance, and Alison buzzes right back: pretending we’re all worker bees together, got a hive to run, honey to store, pollen to collect. “We’ve come up with an unusually knotty HR problem, and rather than go through channels I was hoping you co
uld help us sort it out here and now.”
“A problem?” Alison looks suddenly wary.
I take a deep breath. “We’ve just been to a briefing that I can’t share with you in detail yet. It has some worrying implications for the risk of medical disability”—I catch Mhari mouthing K syndrome out of the side of my eye and send her a disapproving look—“and in particular some of our staff are potentially at risk. Direct employees I know how to deal with. The trouble is, one of the people in my group is actually a designated liaison officer from another organization: the Metropolitan Police, by way of ACPO. His personnel file here is probably no more than a placeholder—a record of him signing Section Three and being approved for liaison. What I want to know is, what can I legitimately get hold of?”
Alison looks puzzled. “He’s a policeman? On the cleared list, am I understanding this correctly? With the Met?”
“The Met have seconded him to the Association of Chief Police Officers, who have assigned him to my unit, which is nominally part of the Security Service but staffed with a mixture of Laundry, SS, and ACPO bodies.” Alison begins to look twitchy as I lay it all out before her. “In addition to this employee being a police officer, he’s a three-sigma superpower. I need to know the precise date on which his powers began to manifest, and their scope, as tested—”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Alison asks. Clearly she doesn’t lip read.
I give up. “We think he’s at risk of a neurodegenerative condition,” I tell her. “One associated with his superpower. I will ask him directly if I absolutely have to, but I’d prefer to perform a preliminary risk assessment and identify our options before I talk to him and, if necessary, refer him for counseling. I don’t have his full personnel file, and although he’s working for me he’s outside my reporting chain: I can’t pull his records without cutting across at least two agencies, which will take time. If he’s at risk, this would obviously be bad. If he’s not at risk, I’d prefer to avoid alarming and upsetting him needlessly. So what can we do?”
“Oh, Mhari.” Alison’s expression is priceless. “You do find them, don’t you?”
“I do my best.” Mhari looks rueful. She leans forward, making eye contact: I hope she’s not trying to roll someone in HR with her PHANG mind-control power, but no . . . “What do you think we should do?”
“I think you’d better give me Problem Child’s full name and identifying details. And an email address”—she sends me a significant look—“where I can reach you. So you want to know about the scope of his superpowers?”
“Yes,” I say. “And one other thing. In strictest confidence now: when he’s not being a regular officer, he has a secret identity you might have heard of. He’s Officer Friendly. Yes, he’s working for me in both capacities. The thing is, I’m also curious about the capabilities of his special armor. If he’s at risk of K syndrome whenever he exercises his superpowers, it may make a huge difference if he’s relying on the armor for strength, flight, or other capabilities—or if he’s doing it all himself via an unconscious invocation loop. Someone must have arranged for him to get his hands on it—my money is on ACPO—so there will be records in his professional training and development transcript pointing to when and who taught him to operate the thing.”
Alison smiles. “I like the way you think. That’ll be a big help, if I can find someone with access.”
I stand. “If you can do this for me, it’d be more than a help: it might save his life.”
She stands and waves us towards the door. “Message received.” She nods at Mhari. “We must get together some time, eh?”
Mhari nods. “Been too long,” she agrees. “Must fly! Until next time . . .”
* * *
I go in to the office early on Wednesday, because I’m meeting up with Jim and we’re going off-site for the day. We have a dog and pony show to deliver, and I’m actually quite nervous because a lot of our future work will hinge on how it’s received. I made sure to leave work early yesterday for a hair salon appointment, and today I’m wearing my sharpest suit so I’m looking my most presentable. It’s not the Home Office: it’s an even more secretive and powerful organization—the Association of Chief Police Officers.
It was Jim’s idea, actually. He came up with it late last month: “The Manchester business with Alice Christie got me thinking,” he said. “The Home Office has a clear view of what we’re doing here, and the people at Hendon are aware of you—but I haven’t seen much high-level chatter yet. I think it’d be a good idea to prepare a series of in-person briefings about the Transhuman Police Coordination Force and its work, to get the commissioners up to speed—otherwise there are going to be misconceptions, and they’ll fester.”
“Sounds good. We ought to do that, and sooner rather than later—I’ll get Karim and Gillian, or whoever’s available, to pull together a bunch of slides, then you and I can go over the raw material and see if we can turn it into a lunchtime presentation? Do you want to see if you can organize a session with an audience we can poll for feedback later?” The offer of free food ought to bribe at least a couple to sit still while we PowerPoint at them, then we can use their responses to refine the pitch.
“I can do better than that,” Jim assures me. “ACPO has semiannual summit meetings attended by Chief Police Officers from just about every force in the UK, right here in London, and the next one is in two weeks. There’s a day of briefings and presentations after the general meeting, and I think I can get us a speaking slot. It’s a first-class opportunity for networking, too. I can introduce you to all the main players.”
So fast-forward to this morning. I go up to my office to deposit Lecter in the safe I’ve had installed there, collect my laptop (with preloaded presentation and a backup memory stick for emergencies), check the morning email for unexploded administrative ordnance, panic when I see the time, and head for the lobby. Where I run into Jim as he comes in. “Good morning, Dr. O’Brien.” He’s all formality today, from his mirror-finished black DMs to the epaulettes and braid on his dress tunic. “Are you ready to go?”
I shrug, but my jacket shoulder pads are so stiff they barely move. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s call a cab.”
ACPO headquarters occupies part of a gray concrete and glass slab of post-brutalist office space on Victoria Street, sandwiched between Boeing’s London offices, the Department for Business Innovation & Skills, and the back side of New Scotland Yard. It’s so anonymous it could be mistaken for a council office or a firm of accountants, if not for the trickle of extremely senior police men and women in dress uniforms arriving from the Yard. The cab drops us off by the front door, and Jim leads me inside to reception: “Chief Superintendent Grey and Director O’Brien from TPCF. We’re giving an open briefing on the new Force’s area of interest across the road later this morning.”
“Yes, sir.” The receptionist peers at his terminal: “I have your badges and kits for the breakout sessions here. If you’d like to go through the door to your left, Andrea will sort you out with your speakers’ packs . . .” A minute later we’re both wearing badges on lanyards and clutching printed schedules and a note telling us where to go and when. I follow Jim’s lead, happy to be socially invisible in unfamiliar surroundings.
“We don’t get to sit at the high table or attend the big meeting,” Jim murmurs to me. “How about we go up the road and give things a last run-through over coffee?”
“That’d be great,” I say fervently, and allow him to usher me along the covered walkway leading to the entrance, past the front desk, and up to the canteen. Where we drink enough coffee to wake the dead, go over our presentation one last time, double-check that the laptop’s battery is up to the job, and cool our heels until it’s time to go up to the eighth-floor briefing rooms that ACPO has booked for the breakout sessions after the principals finish with their main meeting.
The presentation:
&nb
sp; About sixty Very Important Police Officers have converged on ACPO HQ and the Yard for the day. They’re here to discuss important policy matters affecting multiple forces, to chat one-on-one about matters of professional concern with their peers from other forces, and to attend briefings from a variety of agencies and organizations: the Crown Prosecution Service, newly outsourced forensic laboratories, HM Revenue & Customs, the National Crime Agency . . . and us. Because these are Very Important Police Officers and their time is valuable, they have carefully planned which seminars and presentations to attend: consequently we get the undivided attention of just fourteen of them. The extra seats are filled by the folks from the CPS, outsourced forensic laboratories, HM Revenue & Customs, the NCA, and other agencies who aren’t actually giving presentations of their own at the same time as us. It could be worse: they’re not our core target audience but we’re getting the message out, and that’s what matters.
I’m not going to bore you with the presentation itself. You’ve probably sat through enough management PowerPoint pitches to write it yourself: open by defining a problem (the power curve showing the increasing frequency of superpowers over time), then introduce an organization to deal with the problem. Add a mission statement and an org chart, rhapsodize about your agency’s values, describe the future rollout of services, outline a protocol whereby your audience may send up the bat-signal to request your assistance, and finally thank them for their attention and reassure them that as valued stakeholders you welcome their feedback. Credits and curtain call.
The audience, as always at this sort of off-site summit/mini-conference, is far more interesting than the presentation itself. The front row is mostly middle-aged white men in senior police uniforms (one woman, one nonwhite: not even the most optimistic commissioner will deny that the UK’s police forces have some catching up to do on diversity, especially at higher ranks). But appearances are deceptive. You don’t get to Assistant Chief Constable or above without being a habitual overachiever with a razor-sharp mind. Half of them have doctorates; the other half had to work even harder to get there, whether at thief-taking or politics. We allowed five minutes for questions and I’m still answering them when one of the organizers pops in through the door to wave us out to make room for the next speakers.
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