Qek hit the soft-sand and didn’t get up. He wasn’t knocked out, but was breathing heavily, shooting clouds of sand away from him each time breath left his wide lips.
“Okay,” Hunter said. “You two are done. Qek, how is your face?”
Qek got up to his knees and looked over at Hunter, giving him a thumbs up.
“Tristan,” Hunter continued, “you want to stay in? Does your suit need to charge or anything?”
Tristan flipped open the visor on his helmet to call back, “Nope! It’s solar powered. Should be good till midnight.” He flipped the visor back down. Tristan reached his hand out to Qek to help him up, and I figured it’d be best wait to talk to Hunter until the exercise was finished. My plan was to wait for Hunter somewhere in the south wing so I could grab him when he came back inside.
Just as I was getting ready to walk away, Hunter turned to me.
“Ivy,” he said. “Get in there.”
“Get in where?” I asked. “You mean in the pit? With Tristan?”
“That’s what I mean.”
I looked at Hunter, almost incapable of believing he could be serious, but he didn’t budge. If he was joking, no one else around could have blamed me for not knowing. “He just took Qek down,” I said.
“Now you go take Tristan down,” Hunter replied.
“Come on, Ivy!” Tristan called. “I’ll take the suit off. We’ll just spar.”
“You will not,” Hunter called back. “Leave the suit on, Tristan.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How do you expect me to beat him? He just took down Qek. Qek is a Strongman.”
Hunter stepped forward a few paces, and lowered his voice so only I could hear. “Ivy, when you leave this academy, you’re going to be put onto a team based on your own skills. Tristan beating Qek today–that data will be used to make sure both of them end up on whatever team will be best for them, and best for the people they’ll be out in the world trying to save. I don’t know what kind of team you’re going to be put on. Do you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Well, what if you’re on a team with someone like Qek, and they get taken out? What are you going to do? Are you going to call Headquarters and ask them how they expect you to handle the situation, or are you going to step into life’s soft-sand and do something?”
I started looking around, but Hunter spoke again, his words snapping my attention back to him.
“Nobody else can help you right now,” Hunter continued. “Now what’s it going to be? This isn’t Tristan and Qek—this is a villain and your teammate, and you’re all that’s left. What are you going to do?”
I stepped into the soft-sand and walked towards Tristan. His visor was still up, and he made a face that seemed like it was trying to convey that he was sorry and surprised at the same time. Hunter yelled for us to begin, and Tristan swung wide with a left hook. There were only two combinations we’d been taught that opened that way, so I ducked and stepped to my right, avoiding his right-handed uppercut. As I stood tall once more, all I could think to do was jump at his suit. There were no grooves for me to dig my fingers into, but I managed to climb onto his back and flip open his visor. I caught Hunter’s eye as I clung to Tristan’s armored back, which was hot from the sunlight, and something in the way Hunter looked at me told me that if I didn’t give it my all, he wouldn’t help me. Call it intuition, but I could tell he was looking for something, and that if he didn’t see it, he’d never tell me what he actually knew. Or not all of it, anyway.
With the visor still open, I went for the only move I could, and stuck my finger in Tristan’s mouth, hooking his cheek and pulling to the side. I didn’t use much strength, but Tristan turned his head with the move, and screamed a little. He swung around in the suit quickly, causing my legs to fly outward, and my hands came free. I landed in the sand five or six feet away, sliding to a stop. Tristan reached up to wipe his mouth.
“What the hell, Ivy!” he yelled.
My eye caught Hunter’s again, and he had the same look on his face, like he was still searching for something, waiting for me to make the right move. Tristan started to yell again, but I got up and rushed him, grabbing a handful of sand on the way. As I got closer, I threw the sand in Tristan’s face, and watched as he inhaled a solid chunk of it. He coughed, and I took a small running start before jumping and extending both of my feet forward, kicking him with my full bodyweight straight in the chest, only to bounce harmlessly off. He continued to cough as I got up, and closed his visor.
“Seriously,” he wheezed, coughing again, “Not cool.” Tristan grabbed my foot and tossed me away like a pillow, my body rotating once around in the air. I tried to get my bearings in the air, which equated to my arms and legs flying wildly every which way as I flew sideways, and ended up landing on my back.
Great, what do I do now?
We can help, if you want.
What are you going to do?
You don’t need to worry about him dying. We know you don’t like that.
Fine. I’m pretty much out of options at this point.
We’ll start now.
Tristan came walking over, his visor still closed, and stopped, pointing at me. “That was a dirty move, Ivy. I think I got some of that sand in my lungs! Why would you… would you…”
And then he collapsed, his heavy metal suit falling face first into the soft-sand.
I walked back towards Hunter, slapping some of the sand off of my clothes. His eyebrow raised as I approached.
“Hey,” I said. “Can we talk?”
Hunter looked at Tristan, then back to me.
“He’s not dead.” I said, and Hunter squinted for a moment, but seemed to accept it.
His reply, “Let’s go to my office.”
CHAPTER 3—LOCHLAN IN CHOUDRANT
When Khard and Lochlan arrived in Choudrant, their first course of action was to decide whether they wanted to speak with O-Rell’s team or local authorities first. Like so many other small towns, funding for local police in Choudrant had been nearly non-existent for almost a decade, their ratio of police officers to population set at a point that brought down the national average. For the eight thousand or so residents of the area, there were less than ten police officers. At that point in time, two officers were on maternity leave and another was finishing up his vacation. With just a few more police officers to talk with than Capes, Khard and Lochlan decided to start there.
When Lochlan recalls these events himself, he’ll often mention how uncomfortable the charge port in the car was. Most Field Agents are used to charging their parts on the way to wherever they’re sent, and while Lochlan will swear to whoever will listen that the charge port in the car was built wrong, I personally think he had just grown used to not utilizing the feature on his body once he’d stopped being a Field Agent and was just using that as a poor excuse. I’ve asked Khard whether or not the charge port was built wrong, and never once has he agreed. Either way, after stretching and getting their bearings, the two of them walked into the Choudrant Police Station at a little after ten in the morning. After being greeted by an officer sitting at the front desk—a girl my age with bright red hair and freckles—they were ushered in to sit with her mother, Syndra Rainch, the local Chief of Police. Chief Rainch had been in her position longer than Lochlan had been in The Control, and the last remnants of her own head of red hair were almost completely replaced with a white and gray mixture. True to her southern roots, Chief Rainch had arranged for some snacks to be available to welcome the two Agents, with some mango and kiwi-flavored nutrient paste shipped in before their arrival. Her daughter, the young officer, set down some sweet tea before heading back to the front of the station.
Her daughter is a good person.
How could you know that? Have you ever even met her?
Trust us, she is.
“Welcome to Choudrant,” Chief Rainch said as the three of them got settled.
“Thank you kindly,” Kh
ard replied. “You and I spoke on the phone, ma’am. I’m Agent Khard, and this is Agent Lochlan. As you know, we’re going to be in the area for a little while. Were you briefed on why?”
“I assume it’s to do with O-Rell.”
“That’s correct,” Lochlan said. “How did you know?”
“He and I play cards twice a week, except he missed th’otha day, and I couldn’t get a hold of him. When y’all called the next morning, I figured the two were related.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Khard asked. Both of the Agents placed the small electronic notebooks they carried, which were linked to their brains, on their laps in unison, each setting their right hand on top. Neither of them likely needed to take notes to remember the conversation, but protocol demanded that they did anyway. The small machines on each of their laps quickly synced up with partnered chips and software in each of their right hands and transferred their conversation, along with corresponding thoughts, into their respective notepads.
Chief Rainch leaned back in her chair a bit, thinking to the last time she and O-Rell had gotten together. “Well, it’s been over a week. The night before I received the call from your office, O-Rell had already missed one card night, and that was the second time he didn’t show. But he had called the first time, you see, so I was only worried because I couldn’t get a hold of him. But back tracking, it had been about a week at that point, so it’s going on about sixteen days now.”
“And the last time you saw him, it was for a card game?” Khard asked.
“Oh yes,” Chief Rainch said with a smile. “We love our cards in Choudrant. O-Rell took a little while to warm up to ‘em, maybe about a month or so, but he came ‘round proper eventually. Of course, when he started winning, he started coming early each time.”
“You get together with others on these nights?” Lochlan asked.
“There’s five of us. Myself, my daughter Mindy, who y’all met, O-Rell of course, Frikshen, and Wallace from down the way. We normally play poker one night and five-card brag on another, unless Wallace doesn’t show, and sometimes he doesn’t, and then we’ll play bridge.”
“You all get together and gamble?” Khard asked.
“We don’t play with real money, Mister Khard. We use colored chips I found in my attic. It’s a social event, you see.”
“The last time you all got together, did anything feel off with O-Rell?”
Chief Rainch leaned back in her chair again, drawing her wrinkled, liver-spotted hands to her face, her eyebrows crushing together. She took a deep breath through her hands, the air flowing loudly before answering. “No, he seemed the same as usual.”
“What reason did he give you for missing the session?”
“Well, as I can recall, he and the other Capes got a call. Somethin’ important, outside of town.”
“Sorry, Chief Rainch,” Lochlan interrupted. “You said it was outside of the city limits?”
“I did, and so did O-Rell when I talked with him. Why? Y’all hear something different?”
Khard reached his left arm over to Lochlan, and took his right hand off of his electronic notebook to briefly reach into his bag on the floor next to him. He handed Chief Rainch the picture of the changed O-Rell mid run. “Chief Rainch, can you tell us anything about this photograph?”
Chief Rainch delved into a drawer in her desk to retrieve her glasses, and then picked up the photo and holding it out in front of her face. “Well,” she said, “Probably not anything you don’t already know. That’s O-Rell, though he don’t look right.” She brought the picture a little closer to her face, squinting, “That looks like the Halley property—they’re almost right on the southernmost city line. That tree-line he’s running into marks the edge of city limits.”
“You’re sure that’s where the picture was taken?” Khard asked.
“I am.” Chief Rainch pointed at some of the flowers in the photograph, turning it around so the Agents could see. “Halley property is the only place you’ll find daisies in Choudrant. The Halleys are in the wedding business. They grow all kinds of flowers so they don’t have to worry none about ordering them for their clients.”
“Thank you, Chief Rainch. We don’t want to take up too much of your time today. We’ll be back around if we have any more questions.”
“Well alright. Don’t be afraid to take some of that paste with y’all. We both tried some and we ain’t trying to keep it for ourselves. Must be an acquired taste. I can’t say I’m gonna do much with it if it doesn’t go to you.”
“Thank you kindly,” Khard said.
“Yes, thank you,” Lochlan finished.
“Mindy’ll see you both out. Just come ‘round if you need me.”
Before they had exited the office, Khard was on the phone, setting an appointment to go and look around the Halley’s property. As they stepped outside, Lochlan held the door open with his back against it and nearly crashed into a man who was rushing inside.
“Beg-yuh pardon!” the man exclaimed as he rushed inside. As he moved past, Lochlan took note of the dirt on the bottom of the man’s pants which was colored a deep red, like clay. In spite of his enhancements, Lochlan wasn’t able to get a good enough look at the man to properly see his face, or the clay slinging off the bottom of his pant legs as the man stepped by, his thick frame covered in enough hair that it appeared to be bursting out of his shirt from inside the neck and arm holes.
The moment he was off the line with Mrs. Halley, Khard was back on his communicator, calling O-Rell’s teammates. It was Gil who answered his communicator first, prim and proper, with a level of formality that was completely unnecessary. Khard told Gil that they were on their way as he and Lochlan stepped back into their vehicle, which was already programmed with the address to the GHS house where O-Rell had lived with his teammates.
While listening to Khard’s tone as he spoke with Gil, one of the sensors in Lochlan’s ears picked up that Khard was speaking through a slight filter. Filters were an older technology, few Agents at The Control still bothered to have them installed on their vocal cords. While the filters were originally designed to simply clean the air that the Agents breathed, some Agents talked through the filters, which they could manipulate slightly with practice to enhance their speech in different ways. Some Agents could make themselves sound more menacing, while others could manipulate the filters to sound friendlier. Lochlan picked up on the slight manipulation in Khard’s voice, which the older Agent was doing to make himself sound chummier than he might have otherwise while speaking with Gil. Khard’s conversation with the Elementalist was over quickly, and Lochlan couldn’t help but inquire about the tactic.
“Why did you filter your voice?” he asked.
“Not sure what our angle is yet,” Khard replied, pulling the small electronic notebook back out of his pocket. “I want to make sure we can get as much information as possible right now. Need to seem less threatening, if we can. You know how Capes can get when it comes to… well… us.” Khard swiped his fingers across the surface of his notebook, pressing lightly in between page movements, and the device gave a small beep. “We received confirmation from my contact up north, O-Rell’s blood was definitely irradiated. You see what it says in those results?”
Lochlan looked at his own electronic notebook, where the results began to appear, noting the highlighted portions of text on his screen that jumped out at him. “Oh,” he said. “This is one hundred percent confirmed?”
“Triple checked. They were able to tell that O-Rell had been hit with at least three hundred and fifty rems of radiation, and that it happened more than once.”
Each Field Agent is taught about the dangers that radioactive mission sites can pose to their upgrades. While many Agents are able to take doses of radiation that would be fatal to the average person, even someone as upgraded as Lochlan would have needed to do their best not to get hit with anything over two hundred rems more than once or risk radiation poisoning. Three hundred and f
ifty rems were more than enough to kill someone—taking in that much would be beyond fatal. Lochlan wondered how O-Rell hadn’t already turned to soup.
“Do you think that’s what caused the changes to O-Rell? The radiation?”
“I don’t know how it could have. Even the Ch05En gene can’t be activated with radiation like it can with stress. I’ll tell you one thing, though: if we’re going to find O-Rell, we’d better find him quickly. If the average person has a fifty percent chance of dying within sixty days after taking in one dose of that much radiation, O-Rell may only have hours left. He should have been dead already, according to my contact and, you know, logic.”
Lochlan let the facts run through his mind as the car continued on to the GHS housing. He watched the little shops on Choudrant’s Main Street roll by slowly, the car treating the area like a school zone, as there was no posted speed limit. He thought about how radically O-Rell’s body had changed, and the high dose of radiation, and wondered whether or not O-Rell could really be the first Chosen whose body had changed again after their Ch05En gene had activated. Lochlan began to wonder other things as well, like whether or not Khard was sharing everything he knew. As Lochlan continued to work backwards in his mind, he realized he hadn’t been given much information at all before heading away from the field office and coming to Choudrant. He wondered whether Khard was meaning to keep details from him, if there truly were details to be kept secret, or if he hadn’t been given them simply because he hadn’t asked. While the two of them were beginning to become familiar with each other, Lochlan still wasn’t sure how to pose such a direct question to someone who, regardless of Khard’s casual demeanor, was still above Lochlan in The Control. If Lochlan were still basing his interactions with Khard on The Game, questioning whether or not he’d received critical information could potentially cost him points down the line. But if he were taking Khard at his word, based on what the man had said to Lochlan during their lunch together, Lochlan should be able to talk to Khard freely without fear of repercussions. Lochlan’s mood module began to run hot, a slight clicking and popping noise accompanying the hardware as it worked to keep Lochlan’s mood at an even level. Khard heard the noise, though he was unable to feel the heat coming from Lochlan’s neck through the thick Louisiana air.
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