Persist (Discipline Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  Chapter three

  Strangely enough, his workload changed nearly instantly as soon as the last of the new attacks was dealt with. It wasn’t even in the way that Ben would have thought, given everything. He’d been working hard, and could have accepted that people wanted him to rest as being a thing, for instance. It would have even been possible that they’d have wanted him to learn to fight himself, or be put in with Clark, learning to use his TK without passing out each time.

  Even a few hugs, or pats on the back from the others might have been allowable. For them, too. The others had almost all seen combat and it was about as intense a situation as anyone could have survived, without better equipment.

  Instead he was called in to Kyle’s office, and the older man set him to reading files.

  On paper. The kind that came in dingy folders that were an off yellow color, and had finger prints all over the outside. There was a stack of them which was nearly a foot high, and a tiny composite table set up, along the far wall, with a single chair.

  “Read these. I’d like your opinion on them all, as soon as possible. Please don’t remove them from the office here.” Then he went back to work, as if that explained the strangeness of the whole thing more than easily enough.

  “Um, not to be that jerk who always asks questions, but…” He really could have used a little more information. Kyle just smiled, his wrinkled face pleasant seeming, in the moment.

  Then he kind of winked at Ben. It was friendly seeming, but didn’t explain anything really.

  “I want your assessment. Not for you to go over what I think. An unprejudiced eye?”

  Ben still didn’t get it, but started in, carefully taking what should have been a museum piece off the top of the stack, wiping his hands off first on his pant legs, in case he was all oily or had dirt on his fingers. Not that he did, in particular, but it felt like a thing that could happen, suddenly.

  What was in the file, the very first one, wasn’t much. It had twenty sheets of paper, and some old time photos that had to have been nearly a hundred years out of date. They weren’t even in three dimensions. All of them were of a single woman, who had, according to the paperwork, gone missing. The case itself had been closed, nearly seventy years before.

  It wasn’t really interesting to read about or anything. She’d been walking in the forest with a group of other people, friends of hers, and had vanished when they went around a bend. It wasn’t until Ben found himself there, back in time, watching it happen, that he worked it all out. She was simply gone.

  There had been no falling down a hill, or into a ditch that had gone unnoticed. She vanished, quite literally, and then, when Ben tried to follow along, he hit a wall that kept him from moving past it. In fact, the quality of it told him that if he tried too hard, he was going to end up kissing the wall behind him, in real life.

  “This one. Meredith Lacombe? She moved into another reality, I think. Not on purpose. She was thinking about how to get her school loans paid off, and if she was going to sleep with a friend of hers in a tent later that night. Then, wham, gone. The feeling is the same however. I can’t follow along. I tried and ended up flying through the air, a few days ago. As in bodily impact with the wall, so I’m not trying that one yet.”

  Kyle nodded, but didn’t comment. The only thing he did was to make sure there was a small, almost tiny, camera array set to watch Ben after that.

  Not all of the files were like that. The second one wasn’t about a missing person, but a haunted hotel, which simply wasn’t. The people there had just fooled themselves with scary stories, and collected random bits and pieces of lore from visitors over time, not caring that most of the people that saw and heard things were more than a little drunk or stoned. He didn’t even bother with that one, just setting it to the side, in a separate stack than the first one.

  The third file was a missing boy, who had also been in the forest, with his family. Ben watched it all play out, and stood suddenly, then, because it was only fair, threw up into Kyle’s waste basket.

  “Fuck. Just… Fuck!” He didn’t speak until after he’d finished removing his lunch from his system, possibly down to the chemical level. It took a bit, and Kyle just watched him, his face blank and mind concerned.

  “He… His family, his mother, father, and sister? They killed and ate him. Just… Fucking hell!”

  Being a monster, even if Ben hadn’t noticed it before, the older Cymed nodded, and waved at the file again.

  “Can you tell us more? Where did it happen? When? Are there any remains that could be found now?” The words were cool, but that was the man trying to be professional, and not show how grossed out he was too.

  Part of that had to do with Ben tossing his fruit salad into his bin, but only a little. Most of it was about the story from over fifty years before, of familial cannibalism. That part got Ben to think a lot less of everyone else in the world, even if most wouldn’t have done anything like these people, the Smurl family, had been, for generations. It was a tradition with them, and if he had it right, wasn’t going to end with the dead boy, Thomas.

  Kyle let Ben work on it, even if it took nearly an hour, and was old. In the end he had a location for the few remains that were buried in a national forest, and the names and addresses of ten surviving members of the cannibal clan that had done it. They didn’t normally eat their own, of course. Only if they were too weak to make the cut.

  It left him shaking and sweating by the end, but he moved to the next file, since there was a stack of them, and part of doing things was always going on, even if it got hard. Persistence was one of the things that Ben had decided were important to him now. If nothing else, even if he had to have nightmares forever, maybe one or two people could be saved from being murdered and eaten.

  When he looked at the next file, it was really old. The story was pretty straightforward. A man vanished in broad daylight from a New York city street, in eighteen-forty-three. Then, a hundred years later, he reappeared and was promptly hit by a car, dying from the injuries. It wasn’t a great thing to watch, but there was no sense of the man having ever left the location he’d been in.

  He’d just stepped wrong, in time, and skipped a bit.

  “This was… A natural time jump? No one planned it. There was a wrinkle in time, I think. That’s hard to feel, but it was kind of a large one.”

  Kyle came to get the file, and nodded after the first glance.

  “I’d wondered for a long time, on this case. It was rather famous, but a lot of people figured it to be a hoax.”

  Even Kyle had, back when he’d first encountered the tale. When it had happened. At least the tail end of it, in the nineteen-forties. Ben slipped into that time, and was inside Kyle’s head. He looked younger back then, but still about thirty or so. It was about what he really looked like and would have still, as well, when Ben knew him, if he hadn’t tried to artificially age himself.

  Which fit what he knew about the man, but had never mentioned to anyone. He was old. At least a few hundred years. Ben might make that kind of age himself, having had genetic treatments that would keep him from aging. That was kind of a new process however, no more than about thirty years old. Even at that, the older protocols for it had been a bit spotty. It wasn’t a thing that had been around in the eighteen-hundreds. Not that had ever made his history lessons.

  That wasn’t the job however, and it was really clear that the man wasn’t secretly in with their enemies, or from a different world. For some reason he’d just never aged really. That was all. On the good side, he’d lived in times when there was real personal freedom, and remembered it vividly. It was a subtle difference, but one that was telling. For instance, when he’d been a boy, people didn’t have to hide it if they disliked other people, or groups. Now you had to be careful, since saying the wrong thing, in the wrong place, was grounds for a lawsuit, or even arrest.

  So the Cymed boss, which Kyle was at least for the day to day things there, was actua
lly on his side, as far as the government stuff went. The reasons were a little different, but no less real.

  Ben kept going, putting about half the folders on the pile that the ghost hotel had gone into. There was really nothing to them. They didn’t even get a comment for the most part, just set aside. That made the rest of it go faster.

  In the end there were six of the fifty-nine files that were actually related to people simply being stolen away to other realities. Oddly, there had been two of them that Ben was nearly certain had to have been accidents. The rest were kidnappings from the feeling of it. Or, more accurately, people being collected, for some reason.

  The biggest pile were the ones that weren’t real at all, just misunderstandings. The second largest were murder victims. The cases were all old, so most of the people would have been dead by then anyway, or in a nursing care facility, but that didn’t mean they didn’t deserve for someone to try and do what they could for them. Even if it was just name their killers.

  In the end that had him skipping dinner, and working well into the night, finding maps on the web, since Kyle had access that way, and marking locations as specifically as possible. As well as the names of the murderers. It wasn’t fun work, but he refused to give up on it. At least until Kyle stood up, stretched and waved at him.

  “I’m going to raid the mess hall. You should come with me. We have more to do tomorrow. There’s an almost never ending amount of work to do, for you. The others here as well, now that they aren’t going to go insane on us. Come along.” He sounded cheery about it, instead of dead inside, like Ben felt.

  They moved fast, but not at a run, and their raid was just going to the front of the place and pulling the handle, not involving climbing through a window at all. Inside, near the back, where the food was normally laid out, there was a covered tray, that held what looked like fifty sandwiches of various sorts. They weren’t special, but seemed fresh and like they were there to be eaten, not kept for the next day. Kyle took several and gestured with his head for Ben to load up a tray of them as well.

  He was starving, but only took two. It wasn’t enough food, but no one would have known he was coming, so if he took too many, someone else would be going hungry, later.

  They settled at the nearest table, Kyle eating carefully, savoring each bite, rather than simply cramming the food home. Ben copied that, almost not able to help it. The waves of intent coming off the other man were kind of powerful, and carried him along. It was probably part of why he got to be in charge, Ben figured. If you focused that hard on everything, it influenced how things worked in the world around you.

  Finally, after a while, the other man spoke, after taking a rather large breath and setting the remains of the half sandwich he had on the edge of his plate.

  “I hear that you’re setting up a more advanced course for the others? Using Ali’s new system of running?” There was no condemnation in the words, just a bit of annoyed reticence.

  “I am? This is news to me. When did I start it, and how?” It was just possible that he really had, and not understood it was happening. He’d had some missing time, at least once when it was recorded, even if he didn’t know about it. Apparently he’d gotten bossy during that portion of things and had given out some pretty specific orders.

  Kyle actually smiled at him, not really thinking that Ben was the type to bother lying about anything that unimportant.

  “Oh? Dave and Bethany both put in for the training with Ali. A few others as well. They all said it was your idea?”

  Ben didn’t recall that at all. Not until he went back in time, and had to do the conversation over again. That didn’t take long, so he nodded at Kyle who was suddenly there, eating again.

  “Right. I mentioned they should try it. It works pretty well. Not that people shouldn’t work on fighting as well, but right now that isn’t always useful. If they get cornered by something, it can be though. I need to learn to fight still, too, but the running away stuff is faster to learn and slightly more effective. At least for keeping you alive. That won’t protect anyone else really, but…” It was hard to describe that having an extra skill never hurt.

  Luckily, the sense of annoyance from the other man faded then. Ben having suggested to a few friends that they try something new was very different than the newest man setting policy, and putting full programs together, which was how Kyle had been seeing it. Then, Ali had kind of presented it that way, wanting to get her way. It made sense, given the woman’s predilections. She really enjoyed getting what she wanted, after all. Not that most people didn’t.

  Ben winced a bit, having picked up far too much from the other man about things. He was good at shielding, but hadn’t bothered for most of the day. That was down to the fact that you could shield, or work. Not do both at the same time. So the boss had picked getting his job done over the rest of things. Protecting the secret of his age, and the mission that they really had.

  Then, with that teaser running through his mind, the man blocked so hard that it felt like a wall coming down.

  Ben covered the shock of it by eating more.

  After that, Kyle smiled at him, and patted Ben on the shoulder.

  “You need to go and get some sleep. I could use some myself. It’s been a long few weeks. I have something different for you, after lunch, tomorrow? Some new reports have been coming in, from our friends in various government agencies. I’d like them to be checked out?” Why that was, the man didn’t project or let on about.

  Ben figured it would be about seeing if they were being lied to directly, or only by omission. After all, there was no real reason for the government to feed them data about anything in particular, even if they were sharing everything they had, going the other way.

  The older man walked off in a different direction than Ben needed to go, since he lived off in one of the cabins, alone. That was the direction he was headed at any rate. There could also be a secret underground complex of nice rooms that the others all got, but he doubted that one. Especially after he flashed on where Glenda was, sleeping peacefully. The large form was in a tiny room that was almost identical to the one that he’d been given at first. The only real difference was that she had electronics in hers. Including a portable EEG, that was sitting near the center of the room, and a holo projection set up that was just on the wooden floor.

  It was hardly a secret palace, or anything of the sort. Feeling a bit better about things then, knowing that he wasn’t being slighted that way in particular, he walked through the dark, toward green one. His home, as it was. The night was very chilly, so he hurried along. It had been cool earlier, but now it was different. There was no sign of stars in the sky, which were pretty normal at the compound at night. They had lights, but they weren’t that bright, so you could see the Moon and things like that really clearly compared to being in a city.

  That meant clouds, and, he didn’t doubt, snow.

  At least it was thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit out already and dropping. That was almost zero, in real measurements. The numbers that had flashed up always gave him old fashioned things that way. Miles, feet, and gallons, instead of metric, even though he was more used to that kind of thing, from his day to day life. He could kind of translate them, back and forth in his head, but that never showed up in his delusions for some reason.

  What did come was a weather report. According to his incredible annoyo-vision, it was going to snow later, though that would only end up being a dusting. Where he’d grown up that kind of thing was rare, so it was sort of exciting for him. Not enough for him to stay up late to watch, however, or to freeze his butt off standing around outside. In fact, he jogged back after that, making better time than he would have figured. He was a tiny bit out of breath when he closed the front door to the place, but he didn’t need to have bothered being that silent, since everyone else was still awake, waiting for him to come in.

  To his surprise, that meant everyone. Clark, Lissa, Mags and her little sister, Lenore.
Ben knew that the woman had left for a while, but it seemed she’d come back, for a visit. A real one. That idea was strange to him, since they were all incredibly boring there, what with the constant work and training, but he smiled anyway, and moved to give her a hug. She didn’t even try to shake him off, just wrapping him up tightly for a bit, and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Ben! I lasted about six days off in the country alone and decided to come and visit. It was better out there, but I guess I need people, even if they’re bad for me. So I came here.” She was in the null effect, and had been from the moment they’d touched. It was interesting, but the instant that kicked in, Ben was in the center of a world of relative mental silence as well. Even though the girl wasn’t that brilliant of a psychic, really.

  Just enough to drive her toward mental problems and not really aid her in any other way. Her eyes were locked with his however, as she smiled. For a moment, he didn’t get it, until Mags moved in and pushed her sister to the side. Not all that gently, though it was done playfully.

  “Get a room, why don’t you?” She was being a little snarky, but Ben didn’t think anything of it, since she always did that kind of thing. It was her secret skill. Being absurd at the wrong moment.

  After all, if Lenore was going to flirt with him, even after she had what she wanted, his amazing island of silence effect, then he should be allowed to see where it went.

  Lenore snickered a bit, and covered her mouth.

  “Jeez Maggie. I was kind of planning to work up to that one, you know?” This was playful too, and not meant to be real, from her expression. Ben caught the flickering changes and knew what they meant, far more clearly than before.

  She was a bit put out by Mags having called her on her interest in Ben and hadn’t actually decided what to do about it. He was nice, but weird enough that no one would really feel all that comfortable at the White House if she brought him along to Christmas dinner. Though, if she were attending that, she really did want him to be there. The big problem was that he didn’t really seem to play well with others all the time.