Frog checked his notes. "Forty percent of those who take the drug speak in tongues and fall into a coma."
"And what percentage of the human population is a psychic at a level 4 or better?"
Frog smiled. "Forty percent, sir."
"He'd need one hell of a reliquary for something that big," SA-15 pointed out, and Jason stared at her a moment, which made her look away, pink.
"That's actually brilliant," he said. "You're right. So we're looking for someone strong enough to harness all this soul energy to summon the Devourer. We're looking for a large enough physical link to feed those souls into. We're looking for someone who has access to a substance derived from plants in the Middle East, as well as working out of a 15th century book of spells from the Middle East. If that same someone has ties to the Imperial Sugar plant, so much the better."
"Not to interrupt," Frog said, only choking a little, "but there's one more thing we should be looking for, too. A location. The magic that has to be performed on a scale this large would need some pretty secure facilities. And…it might be a good idea to find out why this dude wants a Devourer. Is he trying to destroy the world, purify it, what? We need a motive beyond 'crazy fucker.' Right?"
Jason, pleased, nodded at Frog. "We'll make an Agent of you yet, good sir. Go ahead with your current track of learning more about the pill's physical origins. SA-15, get on the lookout for a big warehouse or other building that pings the energetic radar—any baseline over a 3 means there's something going on inside. Hit the usual informants. Doyle couldn't be the only one who knew about this. Our first priority is to find the manufacturer and where he's keeping this stuff so we can destroy it before it hits the streets. Everyone please dump your notes thus far into my server sometime tonight so I can go over it. We'll meet back in 48 hours."
Thus dismissed, the team scurried on their separate errands, leaving him with the two constants in his life since he had transferred to the Texas branch: filling out paperwork and buying fruit.
Part Six
"Okay…why am I here, again?"
Rowan looked over at Frog, who was busy manipulating some sort of program on two of his three lab computers. "We need a test subject," Rowan explained. "We think that this model of the inhibitor may be the one. We've done trials on it with just me and Frog, but since he's not really psychic, there's only so much we can learn. Now we need to try it on you. If that works, the next step is wearing it around the base. After that, out in public."
"You're really that close?" Sara asked, amazed.
"Yeah," Frog replied, pushing his glasses back on his nose. "The last set of modifications to the output modulator seem to have done the trick."
Rowan opened the metal case on the lab bench, revealing three small pieces—two triangular bits about the size of quarters, and a long strip of metal with a click wheel, something like the one on an iPod. He took the two triangles and fit them behind his ears, then strapped the third around his wrist.
"How does it work?" Sara wanted to know.
"It's complicated," Frog said, "but basically it's a portable shield. It takes Rowan's energy, amplifies it through a series of crystals, and projects a barrier between his mind and those around him. The dial on his wrist allows him to raise and lower the barrier, and strengthen it or thin it out, depending on the situation. So if he's on a case and needs to sense something, he turns it down; if he's at the movies surrounded by people, he turns it up."
"So it has no effect on other people whatsoever?"
"None. It's designed to help him blend in. If it's turned to the highest setting, he's supposed to be invisible to any but the most powerful psychic sweep."
Rowan smiled. "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing."
Sara raised an eyebrow. "What about you? Isn't this dangerous if it malfunctions?"
"Not at the level we're working on today. There are seven settings, and there's only a risk once you pass level four. Four is where I'd set it for the average public outing. We'll be working at two and three. The worst that can happen there is that I get a migraine."
She wasn't entirely convinced, but she nodded. "Okay. What do I do?"
Rowan touched the center of the click wheel, and the two triangular pieces lit up. He took a deep breath. "Frog, are we recording?"
Frog gave him a thumbs-up.
"All right. Starting at level 1." Rowan touched the wheel, and Sara felt something very subtle about him change. She couldn't articulate it, but it seemed like a shimmer of heat moved over his aura, like a mirage.
Frog, staring at his monitor, nodded. "All readings at minimum. Safe to increase power level."
"Going to level 2."
Sara felt her heartbeat step up, waiting for something to go wrong despite their assurances. "Am I supposed to be doing anything?"
"Not yet. Frog?"
Another nod. "Minimum. Ready to try 3?"
"Okay." Rowan gave Sara a confident smile, and turned the wheel again. "Level 3."
Now, the change in him was much more noticeable—the shimmer returned, and flickered in her inner vision, though on the outside he looked just as he had before. To her senses he was there, only…paler. It was, she realized, the way someone changed when they shielded.
He was shielded.
“God, it’s quiet,” Rowan murmured, eyes half-closed. “I’d forgotten…”
"Readings on the output modulator are rising, but they're still well within tolerance," Frog said. "What are you getting, Rowan?"
The Elf closed his eyes all the way, concentrating. "It's working. I can't read her at all. Sara—I need you to drop your shields. Open yourself as much as you can."
Sara bit her lip, not at all happy with the idea, but Frog wouldn't get anything from her, and Rowan was well acquainted with her energy and her gifts. It was safe enough, at least, for her. Slowly, she breathed in and out, imagining the psychic protections she'd built around her mind parting like a curtain, opening inch by inch, only wide enough for Rowan to see in.
"All right," Rowan said, "Level 3 blocks out mundane energy levels, but wavers slightly with stronger psychic power present. Moving up to level 4."
"You said you were only going up to 3," Sara protested.
"If 4 doesn't block out one gifted Witch, there's no way it'll work in a crowded street," Rowan replied, turning up the inhibitor another notch. He looked frustrated until the new level was set, then his face cleared. "That's better. Full blackout achieved in…three seconds. Not bad."
Frog looked thrilled. "Readings are still well within tolerance."
"One last test," Rowan said, turning back to Sara. "Attack me."
"What?"
"Attack me. Psychically. Poke, prod, shove, whatever."
"You have got to be out of your—"
"Please, Sara," Rowan said. "This is the only way to be sure."
Angry with him for putting her in this position, she lashed out with her energy, the psychic equivalent of slapping him in the face.
He didn't react at all.
Sara paused, her irritation pushed aside, and did it again. Still no reaction. She reached out a third time, visualizing the energy as a finger, and poked him hard between the eyes.
"Well?" Rowan asked. "Did you do it?"
"Yeah. Didn't you feel it?"
Rowan laughed, and the satisfaction in his face made Sara's fears dissolve. "Not at all," he replied.
Frog whooped joyously and entered something on the computer. "Awesome," he said. "That'll do for now. How are you feeling, Rowan?"
The Elf thought about it a moment, then said, a smile spreading across his face, "Fine. Just fine. I think we can call this a success, Frog."
He reached up and removed the two earpieces, then took off the wristband, placing each back into its foam slot in the case. "Once you get your notes written up on this phase, we can move on to the next."
Frog grunted in agreement, already absorbed in whatever he was typing. Rowan took the case, locked it, and went over to
the lab's wall, where he entered a code, causing a door to slide open. He stowed the case inside and shut the door.
"Thank you, Sara," he said, kissing her forehead.
"You realize that if your head had exploded I would have kicked your ass," she pointed out, eliciting a grin.
“That won’t happen,” he tried to reassure her. “We’ve built several safety mechanisms into the system—it’s designed to shut off if the energy level spikes above a certain limit.”
“But what if that happens in the middle of a crowd of people? That would leave you totally unprotected.”
He looked serious again. “Having an energy spike hit my brain would be worse than being unshielded. Besides, that’s where the fail-safe comes in. If the system goes into shutdown, it emits a pulse just before it switches off that, well, switches me off too. I’ll be knocked unconscious for about ten minutes, giving whoever’s with me time to get me out of the situation and either reset the system or get me as far from the crowd as possible. I couldn’t go anywhere alone, at least not with this version of the inhibitor, but on the job at least I wouldn’t be allowed to anyway.”
She stared at him, openmouthed. “You’re going to trust a machine that much? But…so many things could go wrong!”
He took her hand and led her out of the lab, through the R&D department, and back toward the Floor. “Yes, they could. Why do you think we’ve been working on this thing for so long? This is the sixth model we’ve come up with. The last one was perfect until it hit the highest power level, and then it failed. That wasn’t good enough. It has to work flawlessly or I can’t in good conscience let Ness send me into the field.”
“Why do you have to go out at all? Isn’t there plenty for you to do here? I just…the thought of you getting hurt…”
He turned to her and smiled sympathetically. “I know, anama. But you don’t understand—you can come and go whenever you like, and all you have to do is get a pass if you want to go shopping, see a movie, even walk down the street. That you never go anywhere is your choice, not an obligation. I don’t have that choice right now. I have left this base less than a half-dozen times in twelve years. Considering I used to live in miles upon miles of endless forest, it’s like being a prisoner all over again, just in a gilded cage.”
Sara looked away at the pain in his voice. Yes, of course he was right, but she didn’t have to like it. “I understand.”
“I want to have coffee somewhere with windows, or smell the inside of a bookstore, or wander around downtown in this city I still haven’t seen. I’ve lived in Austin for over a decade and I know nothing about it. I hear there are bats.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Just…be careful, please.”
“You’ve helped me tremendously, you know.” He squeezed her hands, and continued walking, this time toward the elevators. “Thanks to you I’m strong enough to walk around the base without my mind being flooded with so much information that I can’t think. Just being able to eat dinner with other people is more than I could have hoped for a year ago. But I need more. If…if I’m not meant to go back to my calling, I have to at least contribute somehow. There’s a lot more I can do for people here—things nobody else can do. Except, perhaps, you, one day.”
She leaned on him in the elevator, his arm wrapping around her waist; they weren’t usually affectionate outside quarters, but as she’d seen already, word got around, and slowly people were noticing there was something going on. It was too bad she couldn’t explain what that really was.
The worst part was that, despite her witty words to Jason, she really hated what this was doing to the vampire. Every rumor he heard, every time he had to think about her and Rowan together, it was like a knife in his gut—she could see it. After the sparring match—and she was still too freaked out to think of it as anything less than a full-out fight to the death, even though Carlos had promised the twins did that sort of thing all the time—she had vowed not to rub it in his face again. How strong was Jason, really? Wasn’t there any other way to help Rowan without destroying him?
“Have you seen Jason since…the other night?” she asked, trying to sound casual. They hadn’t talked about it, but of course he knew she knew.
Rowan stiffened slightly beside her. He shook his head. “No, not yet. He’s been busy with a new case, and Frog and I have been in the lab nonstop for the last few days.”
“You should get together with him soon.”
“Why?” He stepped away as the elevator dinged and its doors released them into the ground-level corridor.
“What do you mean, why? You need a reason to spend time with the guy you’re nuts about?”
Rowan frowned, falling into step at her side on their way to the cafeteria, his eyes on the tile floor. “To tell you the truth, Sara, I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”
He stopped just outside the double doors and leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, looking so miserable for a moment that she nearly blurted out what she knew about SA-7, and to hell with all of it. She had promised Jason she wouldn’t, and she still wasn’t sure Rowan was ready to hear it anyway.
“Tired of me already?” she tried to joke, but if anything, that made it worse, as now guilt also hung around him.
“It has nothing to do with you,” he sighed. “You know I care for you, Sara.”
“Of course I do. I was kidding. I’m sorry.”
Rowan shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s just that the more we work together, if that’s what we should call it, and the more control I gain over my memories and my power, the harder it is not to respond to him.”
“And by respond, you mean ‘throw him down on the kitchen counter.’”
He half-smiled, but if possible there was even more guilt in his eyes. “Yes. But I’m so afraid…so afraid of what will happen if I do. What if…I just can’t, not yet, maybe not ever. And worse still…I know he’s attracted to me. I’d have to be head-blind and a moron not to know that. But for me…for once in my life, I feel more than that. I want more, and I think I may actually have more to give. But what if…I…I have no reason to think he feels the same way.”
Sara moved forward and hugged him, to the surprise of several people walking into the cafeteria at that moment. Until Sara had gotten hold of him, the Elf had rarely touched anyone. “Honey…you do, too.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked into his eyes. “Just this: before you give up on him, first, do me a favor.”
“All right…what?”
“Log onto the main server and pull up the SA duty logs—I know you have clearance for that.”
“What for?”
She took his arm and led him toward the doors. “I want you to look at Beck’s patrol route.”
He was utterly nonplussed. “Why should I do that?”
“Just do it, Rowan. Trust me. Consider it your remittance for making me poke you in the third eye.” She grinned, a bit mischievously, and tugged him along behind her. “Now, let’s see what’s for dinner, shall we?”
Part Seven
"Absolutely not."
A surprised and uncomfortable silence filled the conference room as Jason glared at the Elf who sat across the table, his own usually-gentle gaze gone stony. Next to Rowan, Frog looked like he wanted to hide under the table. At the far corner, Beck leaned back in her chair, suppressing laughter.
"Agent Adams," Ness said sternly, "I know you're the ranking field Agent in the branch, and that you have considerable authority, but let's not forget: I'm in charge here, and I'm the one who decides whether or not an experiment like this will or won't take place."
It took all Jason's will not to fix his glare on her, but aside from being insubordinate, it wouldn't do any good. Ness was the only person in the SA who was his match when it came to mule-headed stubbornness. Not to mention, she was right.
"You can't seriously be considering this," he said, maintaining his hold on calm by a sle
nder thread. "It's far too dangerous."
"Of course I’m considering it," Ness retorted. "This is the whole purpose behind the inhibitor. We need Rowan out in the field—we need him on this case. We're getting nowhere with the victims we've found so far. We need someone to get in deeper, past the surface of the mind where telepathy could benefit."
"So we bring the victims here," Jason said. "We isolate them in the infirmary."
The Agency, Volume I Page 21