by P. S. Power
His input wasn’t needed for that. Not only didn’t he have a plan for them, but his experience with snow never had it lasting more than a few days, and if he’d seen more than six inches of it on the ground before, it had been in VR. The campaign that he’d been playing, Winters Kiss, had used it as an obstacle. If it was realistic or not, he didn’t know.
After he got a map marked out, showing the particulars, including the exact time, and what the size of the blast would be, including a red circle that showed how far out it would go into the city, he sent it to Kyle, who brought it up and read it, rather than asking him to explain.
“I… Understand. Is this the next issue, do you think?”
Ben focused, trying to find anything else, but only got hints of things. Ones that kept shifting around.
“There will be other things. Hit and run attacks? I don’t know if that’s the right thing to call them. Whoever is doing this is trying to get around us now. Nothing is firm, and the events keep being changed, so I can’t lock them down. But… And this is the interesting part, they have to be intended and real before that. So, another psychic? I don’t know who else could do that kind of thing. Maybe an AI?” Nothing jumped out at him, and everyone was neatly distracted by the new data that had come in.
There were some questions, but no one actually just turned around to ask him about it. Mainly because these were the smart people, and they knew that what he’d given them was everything that he had so far. The next trick would be getting more, if he could.
The thing there was that almost the entire thing was being planned in a different world, as far as he could tell. There was a single thread, to the intelligence that had sent the test the day before, but even that was hard to find. Like it was being hidden from him. Ben was tempted to just batter away at the thing until it gave up and let him in, but so far that hadn’t really worked for anything in his life. It meant that he ended up just sitting there, reading plain paper files, and logging what he got about them, while everyone else tried to figure out what to do.
“We need to evacuate, at that time, of course. If we do that, then there won’t be an explosion, most likely. Which will be more devastating to us than the deaths would be.” This came from Sean, who was a genius, looked to be about Ben’s age of twenty-two or possibly a few years older, and worked for a government agency, being there as a spy.
He wasn’t wrong, but the others didn’t really want to let millions die, to preserve the cachet they had with different government offices at the moment.
Kyle sighed, and then nodded.
“It’s nearly a perfect trap. If we act, they can simply do nothing, and the economic damage will be felt for years. Worse, they can simply alter their plans, and hit a different target, that we can’t possibly evacuate in time. If we fail to act, then the deaths will be laid on us, since we were the ones with the advanced warning. Any ideas?”
Nodding, and looking up from his current folder, he nodded.
“Lunch? I can go get something.” It would be hard to carry it all, in the snow, but Janine, the dark skinned woman, who was always nice to him, smiled.
“Thanks, honey. That’s a good idea. We aren’t going to fix this better if we’re hungry. I think we should enlist the government on this one. Possibly all of them. We can’t afford to be the only group on something this potentially devastating.”
Ben nodded, and got up, collecting their food preferences from their heads as he left. Not that it was hard. They were having chicken for lunch. If you didn’t like that, there were vegetarian options, but not exactly eighty-seven different meals to pick from. The food was good though, and he wasn’t exactly picky himself, so it was enough.
The place was packed when he got in, so Ben was able to wave Dave over, to help him get everything together. The blue haired man looked a bit put out by it, since he’d been sitting by the pretty new doctor that had come in. The one that he was trying to get into bed. Felicia. She turned around, to look at Dave’s ass as he walked away. The man was fit, so it was probably a nice view.
She smiled, seeing that he was looking at her, and would be picking up what was going on. She wasn’t averse to making friends, after all. Her original plan had been to go for Ben, but the man had steered her at the other fellow almost instantly, so it was either a trick, or just matchmaking.
Waving her over as well, he waited for them to both get there, and then turned, starting to make up trays. They could get lids for them, to keep the food from being crushed when they stacked them up in a bit.
Without waiting, he spoke.
“There’s a new countdown. It’s in about a month and is… Harder this time. We can get that data for you directly, Felicia. All you have to do is help us carry the lunch order in? Eleven trays is a lot for two people.” There weren’t that many people down below, but Ben was eating too.
As it was, his stomach hurt already.
From fear, not hunger, but old habits tried to surface when things went wrong.
Chapter six
The rest of the day had him up in the rec center, trying, with a bit of a sense of desperation, to work out how to stop an attack that, frankly, there was no way for them to even address. They could get the people away in time, at great expense, or let them die. That was about what the options seemed to be. Finally, in frustration, Ben started to focus on the people behind it. The ones from their world, that were doing it all. Bringing in the attackers like they were.
That had about as much result.
The only thing that Ben was getting was an eerie, blind and deaf, idea of a being. It collected information somehow, but it was so alien that he couldn’t really figure that part out. It didn’t think in words even. Just rapid ideas that bounced away before he knew what was going on, at least most of the time.
Beth and Dave were helping him, but in the end they collected an awful lot of him saying that he didn’t get it. Hours of that kind of thing, actually. It was bad enough that Ben would have thrown something in anger when they ended the day, if it weren’t for the fact that he’d been trapped in a comfy, form fitting chair that took about fifteen seconds to get out of.
Worse, it started snowing again. Harder this time, building up already, even as he walked to get more food. He’d gotten a nice full tray for lunch, then hadn’t eaten most of it. It had all tasted sour and off to him. From the chicken to the salad. It wasn’t the food however. No one had dumped floor cleaner on it or tried to ruin it for him some other way. It was just his feelings of concern.
Dinner wasn’t going to be much better, he decided, sitting directly next to Micha when he got there. She reached out, but didn’t touch him, though Mags, who was on the other side, did, taking his hand briefly.
“Hi, Honey. How was work?” She giggled a bit, trying to make it seem like it wasn’t just her not so subtle way of telling Micha that Ben and she were together.
He tapped Micha’s hand anyway, and then half stood, so that he could reach around and get everyone else in. Except Clark, who sat there, and didn’t put his hand out.
“It’s my turn on watch. I heard that the next attack came in?” He meant the information on it, but some of the others seemed surprised by it.
“New Year’s, in New York City at the big thing they do then? Bomb, dropped in on them from a different reality. We functionally have no way to stop them, and if we do anything to move the people out of harm’s way, they can just change where the attack will go.” They all looked at him for a bit, and then had him go over everything, blow by blow.
Even going so far as to find out about which streets would be affected most. Not that Ben knew that off the top of his head. It hadn’t mattered, and wouldn’t, except that Clark actually knew the city, being that he used to live and work there for a few years, decades past. That made it important to him, which Ben could understand, after a fashion.
Then, after a few minutes, everyone started talking about other things. It was the smart plan, given that they had
time before it happened, and couldn’t actually do anything at the moment. Not that it wasn’t also incredibly hard to just sit there like they were. Eating.
Mags took his hand again, the right one, which forced him to eat using his left.
“So, Christmas… Lenore was suggesting that we go to the White House for it? They do a nice enough party. At least it would be if we had you there, to keep it quiet for us.” She leaned into him, which wasn’t normal for her, as Lissa looked at them, a bit wistful.
Over the idea of having arrangements. Not over being with him. That he could take that from her expression was interesting, and finer tuned than what he’d ever managed before. At least if he wasn’t guessing.
The silver haired beauty smiled a bit, and sighed, dramatically.
“That would be nice. I haven’t gone to a good party in ages. I was thinking that we would just do a little presents thing here? If Ben decides not to hate me enough for that by then?”
She was hamming things up for Micha, and the woman played right into it, actually seeming interested.
“Trouble?” She glanced over at Ben, who decided that he should be the one to talk about it, rather than listen to himself being badmouthed by others.
“Yeah. Lissa kind of had a meltdown, after you left? She decided that what you did to me meant I wasn’t a real man, or some crap like that, so I had to cut her out of the circle of friends here, until she got back in line. That didn’t work, so I eventually had to slap her around and then shoot her to convince her that I was actually a human being. Which is insane, but all her. I just had to play my part in it.” They weren’t getting along perfectly yet, which was illustrated nicely by the face that Lissa made over what he’d said.
“It wasn’t really like that…”
Except the part where it actually was, of course. Thankfully Clark started laughing, his face strained.
“Wasn’t it though, Lis? You were being a horrible bitch to him, and then tried to act like it didn’t matter, because he was less than perfect in your eyes. Even while begging him to help you. It was pretty bad. You sort of deserved to be shot in the butt with a pellet gun.”
The weapon was small, and air powered, but fired bullets, not pellets. Apparently that meant the rounds could travel further, due to how the air resistance worked. They did less damage when they hit however.
Not that Ben had a chance to fill that part in.
Micha just nodded, and went back to eating. That was all. She didn’t even look over at Ben, and smirk, or act like it was funny. It was pretty well done on her part, since he really would have been upset if she had. It was horrible that Lissa thought so little of him. Even now she fought, daily, not to go back to just treating Ben like he didn’t matter. Or internally view him as weak.
If Micha started in on that road, or line of thought, he would have fought. Instantly, and without being able to really help himself. That was all her fault, too. Part of him was still terrified of the woman. It hadn’t been her goal, but it had worked out that way in the end. That meant Ben either had to run, or fight, and at the moment there was too much snow to really get away from her.
Thankfully, Lenore got the topic back to the idea of parties.
“I’m sure that Dad can get us all in, if you want? You and Clark are heroes, and Lissa here…” She smirked a bit and shook her head. “I didn’t catch that one at all. Not until it was on screen. That you were Casandra Banks? I used to watch ‘Gerring Street’. Reruns, but…”
Lissa nodded, and Micha made a face that closed in on being silly.
“I didn’t get it for over a year. I blame the fact that I was never that into virts, to be honest. A bit, but not enough that I got the face at first. Then you were gone, most of the time, so I didn’t really think about it. Now, Maggie Richards, her I knew about before I was even assigned to this place the first time. I was supposed to help break you out, if they were keeping you in their cultish rape dungeon. It wasn’t that, of course, so I couldn’t do much.”
Ben nodded, and glanced over at Micha, even if she didn’t look back.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? Everyone here is just… Doing what they want. They don’t even make us work. Not that there’s much else to do around here. Especially in the snow.” He tried to seem a little bit bored, instead of half freaked out, knowing that something bad was coming.
Across the table, Lenore grinned.
“Snow shoeing… Cross country skiing? Snow forts? Cuddling while we watch the snow falling through the window? Lots to do. Loads.” She looked at Ben, her face both teasing and serious.
Clark had to fight a smile, and Lissa rolled her eyes.
“Brilliant. You know that Mags is seeing him now. Just what we need, the battle of the Presidential sisters. Who will win Ben’s heart!” She hit the last line hard, like an announcer for a show. After a sweet looking smile, she nodded though. “Not that I don’t get the basic idea. There are things to do, even here. Right now though, I need to finish eating. It’s a chore for me. I…”
She stopped and looked away, then shrugged, knowing no doubt that half the room would hear anything she said.
“When I was younger, into my twenties, my mother used to punish me for eating too much. I had to stay thin, but her way of doing it was to withhold food, and then make me take pills that would cause me to throw up if I ever managed to eat too much. So now I feel sick when I eat, most of the time.”
Ben hadn’t known about any of that, specifically. That the woman had the worst mother ever, or at least one that was in the running, but not about the food issues. He’d just thought that she didn’t eat because she was afraid of getting fat.
Instead the real issue seemed to be that someone else had been afraid of their meal ticket getting too large. It was worse, in a lot of ways.
His face blank, he looked over at Lissa, and then smiled. It probably seemed mean, but he had a plan. The woman was out of her mother’s control, but Ben didn’t really know if she was still alive or not. He kind of thought that she’d died, which had let Lissa finally be free, from some things she’d dropped in conversation, but that wasn’t proof. He also didn’t know about her father.
“Lissa, would you like us to make things really fun for your mom?” He didn’t have anything specific in mind, but some nifty nightmares could do the trick.
Artfully the silver haired woman smiled at him, her face happier than it had been.
“She’s dead. Car wreck. I told you about that. Unless you mean to hunt her down in the afterlife? That would really work for me, actually.”
The memory came back then. Not of being told, though that was real enough, but the accident. It was actually what it sounded like. The woman had been riding in a rather high end electric, alone. The car’s computer noticed the out of control vehicle coming and tried to back up, but couldn’t do it fast enough. The woman in the other car was drunk, and had disabled her vehicle. At least that was the story. While the fat lady in the auto was drunk enough, and in a stolen car, she’d also steered right at Lissa’s mother.
On purpose. Trying to make sure they both died. There wasn’t even money involved in it. Doreen had been planning to kill herself anyway, and just wanted to take someone else with her.
Ben backed the time frame up, to see what was going on in her head, but she was simply looking to go out with a bang. To take away the life of another, because hers wasn’t all that great. Then, blearily and with tunnel vision, she saw the nice electric and smiled, then increased her speed using the hand unit she’d wired into the thing, as several alarms screamed. Then she did as well, right before she died.
Blinking, Ben tried to recall if there was an orange sphere on the left hand side of where he’d just been. Otherwise, things were pretty bad, because inside the null field, he shouldn’t have picked that up. Reliving a past event like that.
More, he didn’t know how it had happened. He’d seen the future that way, and other people’s memories, but never that of
dead people like he just had. He shook himself free of it, and everyone was acting like he hadn’t just sat there drooling over his plate for five minutes, even though he pretty much had to have.
Lissa glanced over, her face friendly, considering everything.
“Flashback?”
He nodded, but tilted his head to show that he really wasn’t certain.
“I… Just lived the car accident. Only that shouldn’t be possible. The other person, Doreen… She was trying to kill herself and take out someone else at the same time. There didn’t seem to be a good reason for it.” It didn’t occur to him until after the words came out that finding that out, if it was real, might be hard for her.
Rather than break down in tears she furrowed her brow.
“That… Doreen Wysmith. That was the woman’s name, so it would seem to be confirming that part. I didn’t know about the rest. We were told that she was just drunk and had broken the nav system, in order to drive herself around. There was never a hint as to why. That… Makes more sense. Hmm.”
The others seemed interested in the idea, but didn’t get that he’d done that while in the center of the null field. It was kind of a big deal. For him at least. The rest of it was holding solid however. There was no leakage from the others, or even the people at a distance, that he could tell. There normally was, but everything was mentally quiet at the moment. Unnaturally so.
He stood up, and left his tray, just walking away from everyone else. Heading outside, through the deepening snow. It was high enough that it went down the top of his slippers with each step. That didn’t stop him, not until he was far enough away.
Then everything came back. Normally. Shaking his head, he moved back in, feeling stupid.