by Therin Knite
Gloria, a seasoned agent with a surly demeanor, pushes past the frontline of agents and shoves her Ocom in my face. “Adamend, I’ve got a triple homicide by arson to solve, and I need it done fast. My team’s exhausted all their resources. Take a look at the scene. Tell me what you think.” The picture on her Ocom is of a formerly posh penthouse living room, now a mess of black char and burnt body ash. The image was taken at a poor angle by a photographer named Wolf. I’d recognize his shitty work anywhere.
“It was the estranged female partner who works in Moscow,” I say. “She took the Pacific Transit Rail to Vancouver then drove here in a rental the day before the murder. She arrived back in Moscow last night. Tracked her movements using her phone records in the call database. You can simply tell the Russian branch to go grab her. That all?” I stick my Ocom in its desk port, and the interface extends to cover the entire transparent desk screen. My message box has a large counter above it. Since I returned to the office, I’ve gotten fourteen messages, mostly from other agents about ongoing casework. But there’s also a long text message from Director Brennian.
Gloria scrunches her nose and growls. “You looked at the case already?”
I double-tap on Brennian’s message and skim it as I reply, “Of course I did. I saw it two days ago. I solved it two days ago.” The director wants to know about my work on the Manson case, as he got an irate note from Briggs about my behavior after our confrontation in the victim’s yard. Sighing inwardly, I type out a reply explaining what happened, and also tack on a question about this weird EDPA group.
Gloria’s cheeks puff out as she processes my statement. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.” I wave her away. “Next!”
She looks ready to deck me right here and now for all the hungry vultures to see. Instead, she storms out of my crummy little office in a huff, running face first into the bulky chest of Commander Briggs. Her lips let out a string of nasty swears and threats before she realizes; she goes rigid a moment later, back straightening, hand coming up to a shaky salute. “My apologies, sir.”
Briggs stares down at her, mouth drawn into a thin line. “Accepted. Barely. Now get yourself back to Homicide, Shay. You’ve got work to do, if I’m not mistaken. Something about calling the Russian branch to catch a killer?”
Gloria runs off without another word.
The rest of the crowd has gone silent. They glance at Briggs and then at me, some of them wondering if I’m in trouble, some of them wondering if they’re in trouble, some of them praying that their cases will still get solved before lunch. Because, hey, it’s not like they’re smart enough to solve them without me, right?
Behind Briggs is the slim form of Ric Weiss, the lieutenant commander, who rarely emerges from the Main Deck, where all the most vital operations of the Washington IBI office are performed. He’s a second pair of hands for Briggs, who, despite his best efforts, can’t be in two places at once. For Weiss to be seen next to his commander can only mean “Something is going down,” as Jin would put it.
“Clear the doorway,” Briggs says.
The crowd parts to let him pass. Weiss follows him onward, stopping a few inches before the threshold to my office. As soon as Briggs invites himself to sit down in the secondhand chair in front of my desk, Weiss hits the control pad on the wall, and my door noisily slides shut on its rusty track.
“Busy day, Adamend.” The commander laces his fingers together and leans back in the chair.
My Ocom signals another incoming message, and I quickly read Director Brennian’s reply as I say, “Every day is a busy day, sir, when you’re the only one who does any work.” The director tells me, in no uncertain terms, to steer clear of EDPA because they’re trouble and I don’t need that hassle in my life. Which, of course, only piques my curiosity more. Hm, what to do about umbrella girl and her entourage? I can’t just let them go.
“Don’t be arrogant,” Briggs says. “I know it’s hard not to be, given how smart you are, but it doesn’t help your career to think yourself better than everyone else. Especially when no one’s willing to give you credit for all that work you do.”
I scoot back farther into the fancy desk chair (that I bought with my own money) and purge EDPA from my thoughts for the time being. Briggs is right. Of the four hundred twenty-nine cases I’ve solved in the eight months I’ve been officially employed by the IBI, only seventeen of them have my contributions listed. Agents aren’t required to list consultants, and CSI guys are consultants on everything except cases they are specifically assigned to.
“There are also over five hundred agents employed here,” he adds. “And most were here long before you. They have invaluable experience, and they remain employed here because they have done invaluable work using their skills.”
“I know, sir.” Knowledge of the truth, however, does not stop me from feeling like the lonely island of intelligence in a sea full of idiots. Not with people like Gloria barking up my tree every other day.
“I know you know. You know just about everything.”
“Hardly.”
“Arrogant and modest at the same time? Odd.”
“Nope. Logical. I’m twenty-three. I can’t know everything at my age. I don’t have the life experience. Give me another fifty years though. I might know everything then.”
Briggs lets out a deep sigh. His eyes scan my office, affectionately dubbed the “closet office” by Jin. Junior agents get cubicles. Regular agents get offices. Regular agents who should be junior agents but aren’t because of “special circumstances” get stuck here. Or so I presume, given my personal experience.
“How many hours a day do you get hounded like that?” Briggs nods toward the door.
“All eight hours, sir, including my lunch break.”
“And they don’t give you a shred of respect, do they?”
“Of course not. That’s not what’s important though.”
His dark eyebrow arches. “What is important, if not respect?”
“The answer, sir. Solving the case. Catching the bad guy.”
Briggs pulls his Ocom from a vest pocket and gives me a knowing look. “I suppose that would be the most important thing to someone like you.” His gaze shifts to the screen mounted on the back wall of my office, and I swivel my chair around at the same time Briggs’ home block pops up on it. He’s got three hundred messages in his inbox. “Which is why I came to apologize, actually.”
“I’m sorry, did you say apologize?”
Briggs doesn’t apologize to anyone. Ever. Unless…
Sure enough, the man pulls up a three-dimensional rendering of the dragon that killed Victor Manson last night. Its head isn’t quite the right shape. Its tail spikes are a tad too short. And its wings look more like giant rubble triangles than anything else. But it’s unmistakably the monster I spent hours reconstructing at the crack of dawn this morning.
Briggs stares at it pensively. “My scenario runners spent five hours building this thing, using the best software available in the world. Most of their initial parameters failed to come up with anything at all. They sat in front of their screens all morning, shaking their heads, lost and confused. It wasn’t until someone mentioned the overheard conversation between you and Connors that they got a manageable model working. You solved this case in, what, five minutes?”
“I didn’t solve it, sir.”
“Pardon?”
“I found the weapon that killed Manson. The responsible party, however, is still at large.”
He leans forward and taps a finger on my desktop. “You don’t think it was an accident? Some escaped experiment like you originally postulated?”
“No. On the way back to the office, I spent some more time thinking about it, and I found a more likely scenario. The escaped lab project theory doesn’t account for the dragon’s disappearance. The only way a twenty-six-foot-long dragon could wreak havoc in a cul-de-sac and get away unseen is if someone deliberately set it loose an
d then recaptured it. Think about it. It only killed Manson. It only damaged his house. Only his lawn. Only his fence. And then it was gone. What are the odds of that occurring by coincidence?”
Briggs hits the play button on his Ocom, and my wall screen runs through the modeled scenario of the dragon toasting Manson. “You think someone used a dragon to kill him?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
He exits the scenario and opens a file labeled Manson Clients. “Would you like to find out who?”
Lunch with Briggs is like sitting at the king’s table in a medieval fantasy novel. Everybody hates you because the king likes you, and they all secretly plot the best way to bring about your painful demise. In the IBI lunchroom, this comes in the form of whispers and intermittent glances from the various office cliques: Homicide in the far right corner, Cybersecurity near the salad bar, Special Forces next to the finger food serving line. When we first sit down with our trays—me, Briggs, and Weiss—the entire room falls into a startled hush. Briggs sits with Weiss and no one else. Ever.
Change is anathema to the IBI.
Before I can bite into my sub, I spot Jin mouthing words to me from his place at the end of the Cybersec table. On his first try, his message reads something like: Wart our yodeling? Then he realizes his exaggerated enunciation makes him incomprehensible, so he tries again, his lips moving at a normal pace this time around. What are you doing?
I smile and take a large bite out of my sub. Jin pouts and stuffs a handful of fries into his mouth. He’s well aware I’ll tell him all my dirty secrets later today, but the man is a gossip lover at heart, and it physically hurts him to be left out of the loop for even half a second. Unfortunately for Jin, this is neither the time nor the place to tell him I’m about to do something illegal.
“Having a secret conversation with Connors, are you?” Briggs sits across from me with a bowl of extra-cheesy nachos in front of him. Weiss, seated next to him, is apparently having nothing for lunch except a bottle of mineral water; his eyes are closed, his face serene, and anyone foolish would think he’s catching a catnap. But I spy his ears perking up at the smallest sound, catch him regulating his breathing on purpose. Even in a relatively danger-free zone, the former army sniper is on guard.
“Not so secret when everyone within a mile radius can see Jin’s obvious gesturing,” I say. “It’s a good thing he does most of his work on the computer.” I grab the pickle next to my chips and break it in half with my front teeth. The crunching sound breaks Weiss’ concentration, and his eye cracks open to locate the source of the offending noise.
Briggs chooses to ignore my meddling. “Connors does good work though. He’s smarter than you give him credit for.”
“On the contrary, I give Jin a lot of credit. I think he’s smarter than half the people in this room.” From the corner of my eye, I scrutinize the furious silhouette of Gloria Shay. Black hair, black suit, and back to me, she’s a gray-scale cutout in a room full of color. And yet, the stiffness in her shoulders, the tilt of her head, and the wave of her hand radiate the same emotional vibrancy as all the faces in plain view. Most people are confused to see me sitting with Briggs. Gloria is dismissive. Her critical flaw. In every case she takes on, she trivializes the little details that provide the biggest bang for your buck, and so she always takes the long road to a simple an—
Movement. Weiss taps on Briggs’ shoulder, and a secret message passes between them. They have a system, Weiss and Briggs. One that I have yet to crack. It consists entirely of nonverbal cues that somehow transmit complete, complex messages. Emotions, jokes, and obscene amounts of information jump from one man to the other on a daily basis, and neither of them ever has to say a word. It is the kind of system that emerges when two people work side by side for thirty-seven years.
Briggs closes the top on his nacho bowl and motions for me to pack the rest of my lunch. “Seems we have a bit of a time crunch. You can finish in my office while we chat about your new assignment.”
What event triggered this “time crunch” is not for me to know, judging by Briggs’ expression. I trail behind him and Weiss as we exit the cafeteria, and when I place my tray in the return slot, I dare to peek at the subdued lunch room. About seventy-five agents stare back at me. Their emotional range stretches from neutral to the Ninth Circle of Hell. With some extra spring in my step, I catch up to the commander duo.
From behind, Briggs and Weiss make a ludicrous pair. One well over six feet, the other barely half past five. One with an ultra-dark skin tone, the other with a moonlight-pale complexion. One ripped beyond comparison, the other skinny as a rail. One a weathered SWAT veteran, the other a decorated sharpshooter who’s never gotten closer than a thousand feet to any fight. And yet, when you view them from the front, their faces show the ultimate solidarity, understanding, and friendship. And the more you dig into their skill sets, personalities, and backgrounds, the more they make sense as a set. They are perfect counterweights.
I’ve spent way too much time wondering if they’re secretly a couple. (If they are, they hide those feelings somewhere in their special code.)
Briggs’ office is positioned above the Main Deck. It’s framed with one large window-wall that gives anyone inside a panoramic view of all the most important happenings in the office. As we flank the three-tiered Deck, few agents below bother to acknowledge us. These are the real professionals of the IBI: former Special Forces leaders, retired from decades of dangerous field duty, hardened communications liaisons, worn rough by years of fending off the press, specialists in every field imaginable running disaster scenarios and updating IBI standard protocols to account for new discoveries. These are the people who keep the world running. These are the people I respect.
Weiss breaks away from our group when we reach the door to Briggs’ office. He descends into the Deck and takes a seat at the desk screen that links to the massive wall-to-wall display. It usually features a real-time map of the United Republic of Earth, all the districts labeled, all the dead zones labeled, all the time zones labeled, and the world population, two-point-three billion, listed in the corner. Weiss hits a command on his screen, however, and an active mission log replaces the map. The first entry reads—
“Not for you, Adamend.” Briggs has seated himself in his expensive, custom-order chair, and he waves me a few feet forward so he can close his office door. Once I’m inside and sealed off from the rest of the world, he turns a digital dial on the edge of his desk screen, and the entire window-wall, door included, darkens to an impenetrable black. The wall is also soundproof. “Pick a chair,” Briggs says, pointing to four identical options in front of his desk.
I select the one farthest to the left. “Sir, you do realize you’re asking me to do something that could land me in prison, yes?”
Briggs reopens the Manson Clients file on his desk screen alongside the incomplete case report last updated earlier today. “You do realize you want to do something that could land you in prison, yes?”
“Wanting to do something and actually doing something generally have different consequences.”
He snorts. “Why play the devil’s advocate for your own cause? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have pursued the Manson case had I not intervened.”
“I would’ve, yes. In my own way. Blind research. Sneaking back to the crime scene. But using the internet and taking a leisurely stroll down Pennimore Street aren’t crimes. Actively spying on another federal agency is.”
Find out what EDPA does, Briggs said earlier, and find out who killed Victor Manson.
“You won’t get sent to prison.” He hits the compose button in his message app and addresses a text to me, attaching all the relevant files. “You’ll get a kick in the ass maybe, from the director board. But Brennian won’t let any misfortune befall you. He holds a great deal of power over the other directors. Plus, the man knows what EDPA’s up to, and he won’t let his little protégé get kicked out of the IBI for snooping around.”
�
��Yeah, I got the impression he knew something from the message he sent earlier. He told me to lay off it.” It’s a tad strange, now that I think about it. Brennian spends most of our periodic meetings explaining the intricacies of the federal bureaucracy to me, but he’s never mentioned any EDPA before. There must be something different about this group. Classified operations perhaps? An even greater secret?
Briggs hits send, and my Ocom vibrates in response, the message counter increasing by one. The commander says, “The director board has level six clearance. They all know what EDPA does. I’m unfortunately one step further down the clearance ladder. Five doesn’t cut it. But that doesn’t stop me from being irritated by EDPA’s actions.”
He selects one of the files he just sent me, revealing its contents: seventeen other incomplete cases. “They’ve taken all these from us in the last three years alone. There were more before this, but because I was a green commander back in my first few years, I was too foolish to see the pattern until the official files had been deleted. Someone with level six clearance has access to all our files, and they erase the EDPA-related ones less than twenty-four hours after we lose jurisdiction. These are my unauthorized personal copies.”
Every case listed is every bit as strange as the Manson debacle. A ten-foot-tall ghost dog terrorizing a rural neighborhood. A phantom van full of masked gunmen snatching people off the street and disappearing. A penthouse apartment suffering from abrupt shifts in gravity, people and objects left weightless in one room but twenty times heavier than normal in another. And the strangest of all: a circus that appears at the stroke of midnight and vanishes at dawn. All seventeen involve varying degrees of death and destruction.
“I’ve never heard of any of these events,” I say.
Briggs nods, solemn. “Media suppression. EDPA is a big fan.”
“So Manson’s death is simply the latest in a long line of strange, unexplained occurrences?”
“Seems that way.”
“Well, now I understand why you’re so willing to break protocol to figure this out. I honestly thought you were testing me at first, sir. Seeing how far out of line I am. You’re usually so by the book.” My palms are sweating, the sign of an infrequent burst of excitement. The Manson case isn’t some one-off anomaly. There’s a grander picture here. A complex story I can read. An impossible puzzle I can solve.