“You still got eight hours of sleep, what you complaining about?”
Noriko gave up. Why did she even try to argue with a woman that only required four hours of sleep a night?
“Well? How is your first week at work going?”
Between moving, getting a new partner, and facing a rogue ley line, Noriko hadn’t had a chance to really process it on an emotional level yet. So her own words surprised her a little. “I think I’ve landed in a good place. The people here are kind with good personalities, and so far the work seems interesting.”
“You’ve done something already?”
“Um, just a little? Tehachapi seems quiet for the most part, but apparently when something does happen, it’s major and affects the whole town. My new partner and I went into the desert with our team. There was an unstable ley line that we managed to get to in the nick of time.”
“Ehhh? That sounds quite serious. How did it happen?”
“We’re not quite sure yet. We can’t find a cause for it, and my team captain checked that line himself not five days prior to it going, and it was stable then. Having a ley line suddenly flare up like that has us all agitated.” Noriko didn’t need to explain why as her mother would understand the situation perfectly well. “But Captain Banderas isn’t shrugging this off. He met with the other team captains and we’re all now actively patrolling our areas much more than usual to make sure we don’t have any other ley line problems.”
“I should hope so. It sounds like he’s a good captain, to be proactive about the problem like this. Haru mentioned to me that you had a partner. Really, Ri-chan, do I have to get that kind of information via your brother?”
“If you checked your email on more than a weekly basis, you wouldn’t have to rely on Haru-kun,” she shot back sweetly.
“You know I don’t do well with emails, I want to hear my children’s voices.”
“Then you’ll have to wait for Sunday. It’s the only day our work schedules don’t overlap.” Noriko leaned back in her pillows and enjoyed the give-and-take with her mother. Their relationship had always been like this, neither really giving ground to the other.
“Stop being stubborn and tell me what he’s like.”
Noriko took a second to think about how to explain this. “My first impression of him was strange. And I still don’t really understand his sense of humor. He’s nice looking, with an amazing voice, but he has this attitude…I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like nothing would ever really panic him. He’s very laid back.”
“Give me an example,” her mother suggested. Was there a tone of worry in her voice?
“Like when we went to rescue the bear.”
“Rescue a bear?” her mother repeated dubiously.
“Apparently that happens rather often out here. The black bears in this area like to climb the telephone poles and they get stuck on top. It takes a team of people to get them safely down again. We got called to the rescue the first day, and at first I didn’t think Cameron was really paying attention. He wasn’t even facing the right direction, really. But when the bear fell, he instantly caught it. And then he held it there for a good half hour until a vet could come. He didn’t seem to mind at all—he was joking with our team while waiting.”
Her mother hummed a note thoughtfully. “So he does have a work ethic.”
“I think he has a good one. I’ve never seen him slacking and he’s always willing to learn. It’s just that he doesn’t approach anything the way that I would approach it and he’s usually joking around with people while working.” Honesty compelled her to confide, “My captain has now assured me twice that if I want to get a different partner, I can tell him, and he’ll notify command to have me changed to someone else. But I don’t think I want to. I don’t always get his sense of humor but partnering with him is very easy. I don’t think I’ve ever meshed as well with someone else.”
“Not even with Sam?” she asked in surprise.
“Not even with Sam. I was kind of shocked too.” It was moments like this that she blessed the fact that she was a Mægen like her mother, as she would understand what Noriko was trying to say. “With everyone else, it was like I was pouring water out onto empty ground. I was forcing myself to be the conduit directly to them as they didn’t seem to know how to reach out and meet me halfway. With Cam, he not only reaches out, he shapes his own power to receive what I give him. I’m not pouring water uselessly onto the ground anymore but into a cup made to hold it.”
“Ahh,” her mother said in perfect understanding. “It was like that when I met your father. I had finally met someone that knew how to receive what I could give.”
“Is that why you’ve stayed with him all these years?” she teased, as only a daughter could. “Despite the fact he drives you crazy?”
“I swear if that man buys one more how-to manual, I’ll strangle him. Now he wants to re-do the kitchen.”
“Are you going to let him try?”
“After what he did to the hallway bathroom? Arienai. The man is not a builder, I keep telling him this, but he’s not at all listening.”
It was an eternal struggle between her parents. Her father loved to work with his hands, but often would dive into a project he had no experience with and would quickly get in over his head. Her mother was always the one that had to pry him loose and hire professionals to straighten out the mess. It happened once a year, this routine of theirs, and Noriko was convinced that it would keep happening until the two of them ended up in a retirement home.
“Now, don’t change the subject. I’m calling to make sure that everything is alright. This young man, what is his name?”
“Cameron Powers.”
“Cameron Powers. He is good to you?”
“Kind and patient,” if with a questionable sense of humor, “and he’s easy to work with. I don’t think you need to worry about me.”
“I’ll take your word on that for now. Your studies? You’ve found time to keep up with them?”
Noriko rolled her eyes. “I ask you, who is your best student?”
That had her mother chuckling. “I do admit it’s you. Have you forgotten anything? You were in such a rush to leave I was worried that you wouldn’t take everything you needed.”
“I did forget a few things,” Noriko admitted, “But I was able to buy them here. Right now I’m just low on furniture. The dorms here are rather nice but they basically give you a bed and a couch and that’s it. I bought a small table for the living room, so I have somewhere to sit and eat, but I really should buy more things.”
“Do you plan to stay in the dorms, then?”
“They’re very convenient for work and the rent’s cheap. Unless something happens to force me out, I think I’ll stay here for a while.” Tired of trying to talk while lying flat on her back, she rolled out of the bed and wandered into the kitchen. As she cooked up breakfast, she continued talking to her mother. It wasn’t anything important, and yet it was at the same time. Sometimes, when this far away from home, it was nice to have a familiar voice to talk to.
Eventually she got off the phone and ate her somewhat cold breakfast. As she ate, she looked around her apartment. Furniture shopping definitely had to happen in the near future. In her immediate future, however, she had boxes to deal with. Many, many boxes.
Pointing a finger at the nearest stack, she informed them, “I refuse to acknowledge your existence until I am showered and dressed.”
At that point her phone bleeped at her. Popping open the messenger, she saw an invitation from Tye addressed to her, Sam, and Teddy for lunch. “Or I can be completely irresponsible,” she decided with a smile on her face.
It wasn’t like the boxes were going anywhere after all.
Noriko was not an interior decorator, and she could hardly claim that she had an artistic eye, but it didn’t take one to realize that the Tehachapi Police Station needed a good makeover. The station had been built in 1950 then remodeled haphazardly through
the years, so it was a clash of styles without any unifying force. The dark wood counters that split the waiting area from the bullpen showed their age, the grey laminate floors were three decades newer and clashed terribly, and offsetting it all were the walls. The bright, sunny, yellow walls. Or at least they were supposed to be sunny—surely that was what the painters had intended—but the color was more glaring than anything.
Some person had had mercy on the Gældorcræft Forces, and their side of the offices were not painted yellow. If she could ignore the left side of the station, her eyes were safe, as the right side was painted an honorary GF red. Noriko hadn’t done much more than stick her head into the other GF teams’ offices, but the peeks she’d had suggested that the only difference between them was how the desks were configured.
Today, however, she’d come in earlier than usual to get her official badge and radio band. She couldn’t immediately escape into the safety of her office, so, instead, she tilted her head to avoid that awful yellow. As she walked, she greeted the few faces she recognized, sometimes side-stepping around them if they had someone in custody. Most of the people in cuffs were sullen (no surprise) and a few glared at her. She ignored it. They were not her problem.
It was just as well the bullpen and the GF offices were separated by thick walls, as there was a lot of activity going on this afternoon. People were yelling, swearing, a few were crying, and it was enough to give her a headache just walking past it all. The sound level dropped as she gained the hallway that led back toward the IT department and Legal.
Sticking her head inside, she gave a light rap on the open door. “Hi.”
A very short, petite woman with distinctly Asian features lifted her head from the computer she was typing away on. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“Hi. I’m Noriko Arashi, part of the Pathmaker Team,” she introduced herself.
“Ah, yes, hi,” the woman responded with a slight accent, popping out of her chair. Stretching out a hand, she said, “Khanh Chau, nice to meet you. My husband said you were supposed to come by and get a badge and radio band, is that right?”
“Yes.” Khanh Chau? What nationality was that? Not Japanese, that was the only thing she was sure of. At least this woman made her feel taller, as Khanh was definitely under five feet tall.
She ducked under a desk, pulling out a plastic blue bin, and popped up again. “These are yours. If anything happens to them, just bring them back, we’ll replace them.”
The way she so casually assured her of this worried Noriko. Had someone already warned them how bad she was with electronics? Or perhaps it was commonplace? Not about to ask, she pasted a smile on her face instead. “I will, thanks.”
The band was of course GF red again, although this set had her initials in black on it, like her phone did. She snapped it onto her wrist right next to where her phone sat, tightening it enough that it wouldn’t slip around. Then she glanced at the badge. It was the magnet type so that it would attach directly to her shirt pocket’s magnetic strip. There was the usual information, her picture, and a large red stripe along the bottom. To show that she was GF? She couldn’t figure out what else it could mean.
Thanking the woman again, she retreated back down the hallway and into her own office. Even though she had come into work a little early, she found that almost everyone was already there.
Lizzie came in right behind her, catching the door right before it closed. “Got your badge?”
“I did,” Noriko confirmed. “Explain to me why we have a radio again? That’s old tech.”
“Because the government does not easily update,” Lizzie drawled, shrugging, although she seemed amused. “If they have a system that works, they try not to change it.”
That made sense, but Noriko wasn’t entirely convinced she knew how to use the thing.
A wave of disrupted power rolled through the air, visible to the naked eye. To a normal person, it would not be obvious, but every Dwolcræft and Mægencræft in the room immediately flinched from it. It was like a shockwave, one that only they could see, but the effects were obvious as it caused a temporary blackout throughout the office. The power was loose and volatile, jarred from the ley lines it was supposed to flow through, preceding a low rumble from the earth.
Jack, not being a cræfta despite belonging to the Gealdorcræft Forces, could not see or feel the power. But he certainly noticed the rumble under his feet and the two-second blackout. “What was that?” he demanded sharply.
Their captain was already out of his chair and moving for the large holograph screen on the wall. “Nothing good,” he responded, looking a little grey around the edges. “It came from the base. Jack, call them now.”
As their coordinator, it was Jack’s responsibility to make contact for any job they took. Especially where the base was concerned. The man started moving even as Banderas left his chair, calling out the code as he did so. “Call Main Base. Torstein, Jack, code 00761.”
“Calling Main Base,” a canned female voice responded calmly. “Please hold while I connect your call.”
Another call came through, a green phone shaking in the bottom left corner of the screen with a name scrawled above it in italics: Main Base, Commander Hays.
“Accept call,” Jack ordered.
The phone blipped out and a man in his early fifties appeared on screen. His eyes were too wide in his pale face, GF red jacket somewhat askew as if he had slid into his chair instead of sitting in it properly. “Torstein. I need your team NOW.”
Banderas whirled and grabbed the backpack that rested behind his desk. Taking that as a cue, Noriko snatched up her gear as well, ready to go when everyone else did.
“Commander, let me transfer your call to our team’s channel so you can brief us as we drive,” Jack requested.
“Excellent suggestion, do so.”
Banderas barked out, “Move, people, load up. Partners sit together so we can deploy quickly when we arrive.”
They moved as a unit out of the doors at a half-jog, and loaded into the same vehicle that Noriko had ridden in three days ago out to the base.
It was Jack that punched in their destination before he even sat down, then pushed the speakerphone button on the van’s display module so everyone on the team heard the commander with crystal clarity. “We’re on our way, Commander. What’s the situation?”
“I honestly don’t know the full details at this moment. There were two night tests being done up at the Lab, only one of our partners scheduled to work tonight in support. Two minutes ago, test cell 2-A blew to smithereens. I have no further information than that.”
Noriko felt a wave of sickness twist her stomach. A night test gone wrong meant not only the possible loss of life to anyone working on that test cell, but also that it could set off the area below them into a backlash of energy in exactly the wrong way, setting off an earthquake. The one thing that California absolutely did not need was another earthquake.
“The Fire Department at the Lab and on Base are already responding, but…Torstein, we’ve had a flu epidemic on Main Base for the past two weeks. I am desperately short on people right now. I’m sending what I can up there, but I’m putting your team in lead. You’re the only full team I have at the moment.”
“Understood, Commander. We will take lead.”
“Team Pathmaker, keep me updated as you make progress. Especially report to me any survivors. Right now we have no idea how many people we’ve lost up there. Your first priority is to make sure that we’re not going to get an earthquake from this. The second is to find any survivors. After that, figure out just what in heaven happened.”
While Noriko believed that his priorities were exactly in the order he listed, she couldn’t shake the idea that what he actually wanted was for the team to do it all at once.
“Team Pathmaker copies orders loud and clear, sir. ETA twenty minutes to arrival.”
“If any of you are religious, start praying. There are good men and women up on that
rock that I don’t want to lose tonight. Hays, over and out.”
Torstein ended the connection and looked up. “Captain?”
Banderas didn’t answer him, but looked at Cameron and Noriko. “You’re the strongest pairing I have, individually, but also the greenest. I’m asking you this because I need to know an honest answer. What are you not comfortable doing?”
It took strength to admit to any weakness out loud. Noriko had to wet her lips and force the words out. “Sir, I’m not good with channeling power into a machine. I tend to fry them.”
“I’m good at that,” Cameron stated, for once not seeming like he was either joking or flirting. “But I can’t concentrate on more than two things at the same time. My Spidey taught me how to climb something without any rigging, sir, so we can go anywhere you need us to.”
“Spidey?” Charlotte repeated, bemused.
“You climb a steel beam with your bare hands the first month of work,” Lars repeated his words from Saturday, “you get stuck with the nickname Spiderman. Cap, I should tell you, Noriko can feed both me and Cam power at the same time. I tested her limits a little, just in case she had to do an emergency partnering with me.”
Banderas demanded a confirmation from her with his eyes.
She managed a taut smile. “If you want me to feed power into multiple people at once, that I can do. Three’s about my limit.”
Jack let out a low whistle. “They really didn’t rank you right, Noriko.”
“That makes it obvious how to deploy you, then. Charlie, you and I are going to investigate the ley lines in the area and siphon off any energy we find. Let’s stop an earthquake from happening if we can. We’ll be working in conjunction with whoever they’re able to send from Main Base.” Charlotte nodded firm agreement. “Lizzie, Lars, you help those two. The control center for the test cell is in its own bunker, mostly built into the mountain. With an explosion of this size, odds are its buried. Find the survivors. Lizzie, if you find any excess energy, channel it into the nearest working generator if you can. If you can’t, tell Jack, we’ll put someone on it.”
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 6