by John McCrae
“Then why?”
“Because we’ve been trying to track down people who can give us answers, and you stood out. Spending a little too much money.”
“I’m a good doctor, that’s all!”
“Doesn’t account for it. Comparing you to your coworkers at the asylum back then, you were spending too much money. Just enough that I think someone was bankrolling you.”
“Your sources are wrong!”
“Don’t think so. I think someone was paying you to keep tabs on certain individuals within the asylum. Was it Cauldron?”
She shut her eyes, listened. She couldn’t make out any telltale gasps or movement.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“The other possibility is that you were working for a foreign government. A spy. Or, to be more specific, you were working as a spy for several foreign agencies.”
“Look at my neighbors! We do the same kind of work, we live at the same level!”
“Your neighbors are in debt, or they’re riding on the capital from smart investments. You aren’t. Just the opposite. Your investments are nil, yet you somehow have enough money sitting in the bank that you can coast into retirement.”
“No,” the Doctor said.
“The difference between you and the other people on my list is that you were stupid about it. Showing too much of the money. If it wasn’t me who noticed, it’d be one of the people paying you.”
“Nobody paid me! Your sources are wrong! I am in debt! Hundreds of thousands!”
“Let’s cut past the lies and bullshit, Doctor Foster. I’m offering you a deal. You and I both know that you won’t be able to maintain this lifestyle if your employers realize you were discovered. Depending on who they are, they might even take offense. Either they terminate their relationship with you or they terminate you.”
More of the house around them was blowing away, dandelion seeds in the wind. The wall surrounding the window was gone, and the roof was well on its way to the same state.
“I don’t- you’re wrong. These people you’re talking about, they don’t exist. I don’t know them.”
“Okay,” Faultline said. “Now, I’d have to double-check whether the person paying for the mission is willing to torture or kill you for the information we want…”
She hesitated, glanced at Gregor. He shook his head.
“…And he isn’t. Isn’t that good news?”
“God. I’m just- I’m a doctor! I work with politicians, sometimes with big name parahumans. The- the president’s friends come to me! But I’m only a doctor! I’m not a spy!”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Faultline said, “if we leave and we spread the word that we thought you were involved. If it’s an unfounded rumor, then nothing happens. Maybe your reputation takes a little hit, but a powerful man like you will bounce back, won’t he?”
“Please-”
“But if you’re lying, if you are involved, the people who paid you to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut will be upset. I don’t think you’ll be able to escape them by hopping on a plane to some remote country.”
She let the words hang in the air.
“I… if I told you, I would be in just as bad a situation. Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” she said, “I suppose you’d have to decide whether it was better to trust us and our professional, circumspect demeanor and the possibility that we’d let the details slip or whether you wanted to suffer the inevitable consequences if we started talking.”
There was another pause. She waited patiently.
“I was supposed to find out just how much the United States knew about what was going on. Like you said, keeping my eyes open. Twice, putting a special thumbdrive into one of the main computers. That was for the United Kingdom. I sent regular reports to another group. I think they were the C.U. I didn’t do anything specific for them. Just describing new inmates, recent hirings and firings, changes in policy.”
The C.U.l China. It was good to be right. “Did you download anything onto the drives, or-”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was supposed to plug them in, then wait. After, I took them out and destroyed them.”
“Very possible it was putting a backdoor into place, giving your employer remote access,” Faultline said.
“Why does this matter?”
“That’s our business, not yours. Did they ever show particular attention to an individual?”
“Some attention for the more powerful ones. Nothing ever came of it. I gave them more details, they paid me, that was it. The patients stayed in the asylum’s custody.”
“If you had to, how would you get in touch with them?”
“Email. Sometimes phone. They changed handlers. Been a while.”
“When did they last contact you?”
“Two years ago? About?”
“Why?”
“Wisconsin. The Simurgh attack. There was an open call for civilian volunteers. My contact from the U.K. left me a message. Asked me to volunteer my medical expertise, see who was filtering out.”
“Did he have a handle?”
“Christof.”
Her heart leaped. “Spell it.”
“C-H-R-I-S-T-O-F.”
A rare smile spread across Faultline’s face. Finally, after weeks of looking, they’d found a connection between two clues. Christof was a familiar name. She glanced at the others, and Newter gave her a little ‘fist pump’ gesture, smiling.
“How much did he pay you?”
“He didn’t. I refused the deal.”
Every clue points to a greater picture, how they operate and where the priorities are. In a situation where every piece of information was valuable and every avenue of collecting that information crucial, there was a lot to be said for identifying where the major players weren’t looking for clues. It suggested they already knew, they already had agents in play.
If they’d let him go so easily, there might have been others. But it suggested they were interested in what had happened in Madison.
Which meant her crew had reason to be interested.
“Keep talking,” she said. “Let’s talk about some of the other jobs.”
■
“Hate the heat,” Faultline said. “I never thought I’d miss Brockton Bay, but the weather was usually nice. Damn sun’s not even up and I’m sweltering.”
“It might be easier to bear if you wore something more… summery,” Newter commented, eyeing her short-sleeved dress shirt and the black slacks that were tucked into cowboy boots. She glared at him, and he smirked in response.
She’d have to put him in check or he’d be intolerable for the rest of the day. “Maybe I need to get the bullwhip? Or did you forget the drills?”
Newter groaned aloud. “You’re on that again.”
“On the wall. Go.”
Newter leaped across the hotel room and stuck to the wall, one hand planted above his head so he could stay more or less upright, his tail curling around his lower foot. “Pain in the ass. You know I’ll have to scrub the hotel walls after to get rid of the footprints before we go.”
“Deal,” Faultline said. “The practice could make the difference between you dodging a bullet and you moving too slow to avoid it.”
Spitfire and Elle stepped out of the bathroom, Spitfire with a towel in hands, drying Elle’s hair.
“How are we doing?” Faulltine asked.
Elle didn’t respond. She chewed slightly on her lip, and her eyes looked right through Faulltine as she glanced around the room.
“I think we’re about a three,” Spitfire said. “She brushed her teeth after I put the brush in her hands. Why don’t you sit down on the couch, Elle, and I’ll brush your hair?”
“I’ll do that,” Faultline said. “Get me a brush and then go finish getting ready.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Spitfire said. She glanced at Newter, and Faultline suspected she saw an eye roll there. Spitfi
re led Elle by hand in the direction of the couch, let go as Elle got close enough to Faultline. Faultline led the girl to the couch, then sat on the back of the couch with her feet planted to either side of the girl.
She caught the brush that Spitfire threw across the room and set to brushing Elle’s white-blond hair. “This is badly tangled. Were you sleeping in a tree again?”
Elle nodded slightly.
“I’ll try to be gentle. Let me know if I’m tugging too hard.”
Elle nodded again.
Faultline caught a whiff of hot sand, salt, and humid air.
“Don’t make water, okay, Elle?” Faultline said. “It’s not that we’re paying the deposit for the room, but it’s a matter of principle. We’re professionals. We don’t leave messes.”
The ocean smell faded away by the time Faultline had stroked the brush five more times.
“Thank you,” Faultline said.
The ‘Labyrinth’ power would typically clean itself up. When they’d left Dr. Foster’s estate, much of it had been turned to leaves, grass and flowers with electric blue petals. As the effect faded, the building would be restored.
What Elle’s power didn’t clean up was the aftermath the changes themselves wrought. If a stone pillar toppled onto a car, the pillar might disappear, but the car would remain crushed. A fire quenched by water would remain out, even as the moisture faded.
Gregor and Shamrock entered from the hotel room’s front door, holding hands. Both were in their combat gear, with some adjustments made to adjust for the heat. Shamrock wore black yoga pants and a green sleeveless t-shirt with her clover-leaf symbol on the front in black, her mask dangling from her right front pocket, her shotgun dangling from her free hand.
Gregor wore a fishnet shirt over bare skin, thick canvas pants and a snailshell-spiral mask strapped to his face, with holes worked into the gaps for his eyes. The dark vague shadows of his organs were visible through the flesh of his broad stomach.
“I’m sorry the rest of us aren’t ready to go. Slow start,” Faultline confessed.
“It happens,” Gregor said, in his accented voice. “And I know it is almost always Spitfire, Newter or Elle at fault. Not to say I would fault Elle. But you should not apologize for any of them. Only yourself.”
“Frankly, bro,” Newter said, “I’m surprised you’re even capable of moving. It’s not like you slept a wink, know what I mean?”
Gregor lobbed a glob of goo at Newter, who leaped to the ceiling, cackling. The slime bubbled away to nothingness.
“I took the role of leader,” Faultline said. “It’s my job to kick people’s asses and get them moving when we have a job coming up.”
“And I’m the client,” Gregor said. He’d taken a seat in an armchair, and Shamrock sat in his lap. Almost as an afterthought, he folded his arms around the young woman. “I could ask that you and the team are more casual with this job. Our destination is going to be there whether we leave before dawn or at sunset.”
Faultline shook her head. “I’d rather treat this as I would any job. If nothing else, keeping everyone on the straight and narrow means they won’t get sloppy on our next serious job.”
“Very well,” Gregor said. “Then I’d like to leave within thirty minutes.”
“We’ll make it ten,” Faultline said. “Pack everything up. Spitfire can help Elle get her stuff on. Elle makes us an exit from the balcony so we aren’t walking through the hotel in costume.”
She stood from the back of the couch, and nearly collided with a statue that had emerged from the wall above and around her. A woman, back arched, hands outstretched to either side of Faultline.
She led Elle to the bedroom, where Spitfire was pulling the last of her fire-retardant gear on. Her own gear was in a separate suitcase.
Faultline was a believer in doing things right. Image came secondary to effect, and doing the job right was better for image than having the best costume. Her own costume blended several functions. A bulletproof vest, lightweight, with a stylized exterior, formed the most expensive single component of the outfit. She tied her hair back into a crude bun, then gingerly drew the ‘ponytail’ from the side of the suitcase. Unfolding the surrounding cover, Faultline slowly and carefully used her fingers to comb the fake hair onto a semblance of order. The bristly hair extension masked a thin, flexible rod in the core, with painted spikes protruding at various angles. It was all too common for an enemy to reach for the ponytail in an attempt to get her. Their hands would be impaled on the waiting spikes, if they weren’t invulnerable, and the hair extension would come free, giving her a chance to escape.
Belts with various tools and weapons were strapped to her upper arms, forearms and thighs, held in place with suspenders. Knives, lockpicks, various pre-prepared hypodermic needles, climbing tools, sticks of chalk, a mirror, a magnifying glass, iron wire and more were on hand if she needed them. She ran her finger over the belts to ensure that each pocket was full.
She checked her semiautomatic, then slid it into the holster at her left hip. A flare gun went into the holster at the right. Flowing sleeves that would mask the belts and their contents were buckled on next, followed by a dress with a side pocket that would let her access the gun in a pinch. The buckles meant that anyone pulling on the fabric would pull it free rather than get hold of her.
It was amusing, just how much of a contrast Labyrinth’s costume was. The robe was easy enough to wear that she could put it on over her clothes. It was green with a ‘maze’ drawn on the fabric. There were no safety measures, only minimal supplies and gear.
Faultline donned her mask, more a welder’s mask with a stylized crack to see through than anything else, then led the other two girls back into the main area of their hotel room.
Newter had changed, but he didn’t need much. He had handwraps and footwraps that left his fingers and toes free, basketball shorts and a messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He was the first one to exit the apartment, disappearing out the window, then poked his head back in long enough to give a thumbs up.
Elle opened the window into a proper exit, complete with a staircase leading to the road behind the hotel. Faultline paused to look at the looming stone wall, only a few blocks away. Three hundred feet tall, it was all smooth stone. Parahuman made, no doubt. The barrier encircled the area the Simurgh had attacked, containing everything within.
Every house and building within three hundred feet of the wall itself had been bulldozed. She couldn’t help but feel conspicuous as they crossed the open area. It was dark, there weren’t any spotlights, but she couldn’t help but be paranoid.
“Cell phones are dead,” Shamrock commented.
Faultline nodded grimly. Of course there wouldn’t be any transmissions into or out of this area. No messages of any sort would be permitted. Not even water entered or left the quarantine area, let alone communications or goods. Anyone still inside was left to fend for themselves with whatever resources they could gather.
She’d checked and double checked the measures authorities were taking, ensuring that the area wasn’t being watched for intruders. There weren’t any people on the wall, and the only surveillance was busy keeping an eye out for anyone who might be trying to make it over the top of the wall.
Going through the wall? Anyone digging through would be caught by the daily drone sweeps, and anyone trying something faster would make too much noise.
Besides, they certainly didn’t expect anyone to be trying to get in.
Faultline touched the wall. She felt her power magnifying around her fingertip on contact. She just had to will it, and her power would dance around the contact point, leaving a hole a third of an inch across. If she really pushed for it, it would extend several feet inside the object.
Her power worked better with multiple points of contact. She touched with her other fingertip, and felt the power soar between the two, running through the surface like a current.
She let it surge outward, and a fissure appeare
d.
She tapped one toe against the wall, and power surged from either fingertip to the point of her toe, drawing a triangle. Moving closer to the wall until she was almost hugging it, she moved her other toe against the surface. Four points of contact, six lines.
Then she pushed, literally and in the sense of using her power. The power surged into the object, the lines widening and she swiftly backed away as the resulting debris settled.
Once the dust had more or less cleared, she could make out a tunnel, roughly door shaped. Her power had destroyed enough of the material that there was barely any debris on the ground.
“Labyrinth,” Faultline said, “Shore it up? Make a nice hallway? Taller and wider than this, please.”
Labyrinth nodded. It took only twenty or thirty seconds before there was a noticeable effect. By the time they were halfway down the tunnel, there were alcoves with statues in them and torches burning in sconces.
Walking through the tunnel was claustrophobic. Faultline could handle that, but she could see Shamrock clinging to Gregor. It made his progress through the narrow tunnel that much slower.
How fragile civilization is, Faultline mused, as she emerged on the other side. Newter clambered up the side of the nearest building for a vantage point.
Some of it was the Simurgh’s doing, no doubt, but the thing that made her catch her breath was the degree to which things had degraded. Windows were broken, plants crawled over the surroundings, a building had collapsed a little further down the street. Stone was cracked, windows shattered, metal rusted. The buildings, the cars that still sat in the middle of the street, they looked as though they had been left abandoned for a decade, though it was closer to a year and a half in reality.
It didn’t take much. Animals found their way inside, fires started and spread, and weather damaged the structures. Once the spaces were partially breached, the wind, sun, rain and temperature were free to wear on the interiors, and everything accelerated.
That damage, in turn, paved the way for other things to take root. Mold could get into materials and surfaces. Plants could take root, winding roots into cracks, widening them. Ice did much the same in the winter months.