by Steve Hester
CHAPTER 8
Jacob didn't remember falling asleep. His mind had been burning all night but at some point his body had over ruled it and he'd woken to find his head stuck to the leather top of his desk. Someone had brought him a cup of tea while he'd been out. It was stone cold and the milk had coagulated on the surface like a swamp. Knowing how some of the people in here treated tea there most likely was something swimming under the surface with rows of teeth.
Jacob and Annie had arrived back at the base leaving the small clean up team to deal with the beast from the roof. It had shown up about twenty minutes after they had and was now sleeping fitfully in a holding cell downstairs. It'd have to be sent back to where it had come from but it could wait for now.
Annie had been silent all on the way back. It had only taken them ten minutes or so but the silence in the car had made the time stretch out. It had carried on in the lift as is shot down several stories below the Manchester streets. What could he say? Team members fraternising was page one of the rulebook and the only thing it had said about it was a very emphatic NO! Connor was a Key, he should have known better, so should Annie. The danger they were all exposed to meant that every day could very easily be your last but that's when people really looked hard at things wasn't it?
With every tomorrow a lifetime away you started to take stock of what you had today and it was then that people reached out for each other and who else was there when this was what you did for a living? Jacob stared down into the murky depths of the tea. He'd already been there himself hadn't he? He couldn't stand there and say it wasn't allowed when there had been Andrea. The wound in his heart split open for a moment as his memory started to wander...
No. There's no time for that is there? There's too much to do. He looked at the mountain of paperwork on his desk. Annie had been right; this was no place for a field agent. The chase had been the thing, not all the politics that the rank of Commander now carried. Politics! Ha!
The base had been silent when the doors had opened. Faces just stared at them, some out of sympathy but most had been hoping that it hadn't been true, not Connor! He was all right, wasn't he? Smithy had tried to say something but thought better of it when he saw Annie's face. She'd then disappeared off into the bowels of the base carrying Connor’s chain with her.
Then there had been the conclave. It had gone exactly how Jacob had expected: badly. He'd stood in the conference room and explained the situation to the bank of faces before him on the wall. Heads of the remaining branches of Gothic from around the world and of course central command waited until he'd finished his story. The commander of the Italian branch was the first to speak up, his words automatically translated through the software embedded in the video link.
Jacob disliked Giovanni intensely. Antonio had been much more relatable. Both he and Jacob had learnt the ropes the hard way having both been police officers before they'd been recruited. They'd learnt the streets and knew that what was written down in the boardrooms of the upper echelons of command didn't mean a damn thing when someone's trying to stick a knife between your ribs. Jacob had been quite saddened to learn that he'd died during an infestation of gremlins that had broken out in a small apartment block in Florence. They were vicious little bastards; it was no way to go.
Giovanni on the other hand was a born bureaucrat who was only interested in the final reports and a strict adherence to doing everything by the book. His grin on the monitor made Jacobs fists itch.
“I would like to know what you were doing in the field! A commander’s place is at the head of his troops not in with the foot soldiers.” He said, barely holding back a sneer.
“What would you know about it?” said Jacob before he'd been able to rein his tongue in.
“I know enough to know that once the signal started to fade out then you'd need to be on your guard, maybe even abort the mission. You do not send your Key in alone with no chance of being able to monitor him.”
“It was a masking stone! Do you know how many there are out there? There can't be any more than twenty and almost half of them are locked up in our vaults. You know how you can tell it’s a masking stone? When you look at it!”
Saskia spoke up next from America. “He does have a point Jacob; you know it as well I'm guessing. If the signal dropped out your first instinct should have been to pull the team out.”
Before Jacob could reply Giovanni butted in “Something you would have been able to do if you had been at your post instead of going out trying to do a younger man’s job!”
“It was only a trap and bag, we had the tracker on the damn thing and it was Connors idea to try and head it off. I may be in charge but you all know that if a Key wants to do something we can't stop them. We have a minimal staff on as Central is fully aware and a lot of our other agents were on assignment...”
Giovanni snorted. Jacob carried on and pretended not to notice. “...some of them very sensitive. Given the situation I made a judgement call and went out with Connor and Annie to start containment.”
“And yet Connor is dead” said Saskia matter of factly.
“Yes. Yes he is.”
There was a silence. Jacob turned and rested his hands on the conference table behind him, it was either that or smash Giovanni's monitor to try and wipe the grin off his face.
Throughout the conversation the screen from Central remained quiet. Unlike the others the face on it was hidden in shadow and backlit leaving only a smoking silhouette of indeterminate gender. When it spoke its voice was modulated and warped, the head of Central and the entire Gothic organisation was a closely guarded secret known only to a small handful of people.
“You believe you took the right course of action?” It said. Jacob thought for a moment and turned round.
“Yes I do.”
The figure on the monitor took another drag of its cigarette and nodded.
“Then you did the right thing.”
Giovanni was naturally the first to speak up. “Central, how can you say that? A key has been killed...”
“Assassinated.” said Jacob.
“Assassinated, killed what's the difference? He is still dead and the seals on earth have become weakened because of it!”
“The difference is that this was planned. Someone wanted him alone. They were tracking him up on that roof.”
“And the fact that he was up there alone had nothing to do with you being out of shape?”
“Listen you pencil pusher, we were never supposed to have been up there. They'd been waiting to catch Connor alone. That's why the timing matched the shops closing. The streets were packed but Connor would have had no problem finding it! They wanted to catch him alone! Anyone who had ever worked the streets would know that this was a set up!”
After that the argument escalated until Central intervened. He had made the right choice given the situation, the shadowy image had said but it didn't make him feel any better.
He sat staring off into space as he absentmindedly stirred his tea with a teaspoon that was so stained with tannin it looked like it was made out of chocolate. It had been stuck to the desktop and now there was a slight hummock in the leather where it had been pulled off.
Someone wanted Connor dead but the question was who? Which side? Well both of them obviously but which one had it been this time? Who had hired an assassin?
He stood up from his desk, carrying the tea over the big picture window opposite and looked down. Down below people milled about working but there were more in than usual. One or two glanced briefly up at him, nodded and then carried on with whatever it was they were doing. Nobody wanted to be at home, they wanted to be here just in case they could be useful but how Jacob had no idea.
Connor had been the key here for about the last 150 years and in that time there had been 16 Commanders. No one here had any experience of The Passing or how it worked least alone him. Oh there were books and guides and some the other Keys around the world had come and gone during his lifetime but they were spread
all over and spread thin. Right now he was in charge of a ship and had no idea how to work the rudder.
Below people were expecting him to know what to do so he'd just have to do his best. Just how good that would be remained to be seen. He took a swig of his tea. Realisation kicked in too late as the tepid gloop swirled in his mouth. He gagged slightly; eyes bulging and spat it back out into the cup. He smacked his lips, trying to exorcise the taste from his mouth and stared at the spoon in his other hand. If only they could hire a cleaner he thought.
He stomped out of his office and down onto the main floor of the base.
It was a strange mish-mash of a place. High vaulted ceilings that wouldn't look out of place in a cathedral mingled with the latest high tech pieces of computer technology. Thick black cables were wrapped round marble pillars and disappeared into the dark of the ceiling and apart from the odd patch of threadbare carpet most of the floor was raised metal walkways. Crowning it all set in a man-made stalactite was a gently pulsing purple crystal. He saw Smithy at his terminal and walked over, handing his cup to a passing technician.
“Scrub that. Properly! Use bleach.”
The technician gave Jacob a nod and then walked off aghast at the primordial soup in the cup.
“How's the search going Smithy?”
Smithy swivelled round in his chair, tapping a pen on his teeth.
“Well surprisingly. We have four, well, HAD four potentials according to the Bloodline. None of them have tried to manifest themselves yet so at the moment your guess is as good as mine.”
He spun his chair back around and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. The screen switched and the details of four people popped up on it. There were driver’s licences, passport details, bank forms, and mortgage deeds; pretty much anything you could want to know about someone that they wouldn't want you to know. Jacob leant in and studied the details.
“What do you mean had?”
Smithy brought up the details of one. “Anthony Prowler. Bit of an unfortunate name as you’ll see. Back from military service a week ago, this morning his wife came home from the night shift and found him in their bedroom with his head blown off. Looks like there was a struggle of some sort, bedroom was turned over. Police are saying it was a burglary gone wrong.”
“They have any ID on the weapon?”
“Yep, it was his service issue Glock, brought it back with him.” He looked at Jacob over the frames of his glasses. “Looks very suspect to me boss.”
Jacob stared at the face on the monitor. He was unremarkable in many ways according to the details Smithy had pulled up which was to be expected. A potential was never exceptional, it was a way of keeping them protected and hidden. Anthony had earned a few medals but nothing to say he'd jumped on a grenade or fired a heavy machine gun mounted on the back of a jeep to fend off waves of insurgents. Married, no children, no siblings, parents long since dead.
A soldier though shot with his own gun. When Jacob had been in the police, all the ones on the force belonged to the Firearms Unit. Gun crime in the UK had always been an issue but with strict gun control laws they were very rarely called out. The Firearms Unit was odd though; a bunch of maniacs who treated their weapons like children. They were stripped down, oiled, well maintained and the unit went through regular drills for close quarters combat as well as time spent on the firing range.
A soldier would have been just the same. Gun control would have been drilled into them, especially if they were infantry. Still, there always were mental factors to figure in. Maybe...
“Any history of depression, PTSD or the like?” asked Jacob
Smithy swung back around and brought up the late Anthony Prowler's most recent psychological evaluation file.
“Nothing, I checked. According to his C.O. he was a model soldier; usually kept everyone else's moral up. Unless his shrink was an idiot and it's just a possibility mind, but if he was it could be easy to miss it.” He tapped a few keys and the police reports came up. “According to the police officers who interviewed his wife, he was looking forward to going back out on his next tour. That doesn't sound like someone who wants to blow their own brains out.”
“I don't like the timing,” said Jacob straightening up. He tried to ignore the twinges of pain from his lower back. “Connor first and now this guy a few hours later? No way was this a coincidence. Find out who we have free, I want the other three looked after. This is top priority right now, I don't care if Satan himself is about to burrow out of the ground in Longsite, we keep these three safe, got it?”
“I'll do my best boss, but it's not going to be easy. Ever since last night activity all over the city has been going crazy! It's like their all crawling out of the woodwork while the cats away. We're going to have our hands full if we don't find this new Key in time.”
“Do what you can. Pull people in from holiday, prioritise existing cases and pull agents off them if needs be and reassign them. We look for the Key, everything else is secondary.”
Smithy nodded. “Yes boss...”
Jacob stopped as he was turning away. “There something on your mind?”
“It's Annie.”
“What about her?”
“She went straight into her room when you got back. Then when you'd gone for the conclave she went into the training room. She's been in there all morning now.”
“Think I should go talk to her?”
Smithy sniffed. “Well I tried and she gave me a look that could kill, if you follow me. I tell you it's a good job...”
“I'll go see her. Sort out the protection detail, will you?”
The training room was the size of a football pitch. Climbing bars, ropes and crash mats were everywhere and the far third of the room was a state of the art gymnasium that no one used. The field agents usually got their exercise with roof top chases and the “lab boys” as Jacob thought of them usually had their hands full with some fantastic new piece of technology or deciphering some arcane tome or inscription to bother.
Annie was getting the most out of it now. Jacob marched down the empty space that made up most of the room, across a sparring mat to where she was viciously but expertly fighting a set of Wing-Chun training dummies. They spun on their greased axels as she hit one of the arms and blocked the follow up arm coming round. A small pile of wooden arms were tossed in the corner, each one snapped and the way she was treating the ones on the dummy it wouldn't be long before they'd be no use for anything other than firewood either.
He stopped and watched her for moment. Her hands and legs moved at blistering speeds, her breath was heavy but steady and she was soaked in sweat.
“Save it.” She said. Jacob just carried on standing there, hands in his trouser pockets.
“You had any sleep?” He asked.
She responded by blocking one arm and bringing her hand down sharply on another. It snapped in two sending a small chunk whistling past Jacobs’s head.
“No.” She stopped and walked over to a gym bag and pulled out another arm and started to switch it with the broken one. There was an awkward pause.
“I'm not going to insult you by asking if you're alright...”
“Good.” She snapped.
“Yeah, thought you'd say that.” He walked over to one of the gym's exercise bikes and sat on it. “Ah! Always hated these saddles, they make your arse numb and your balls ache.”
Annie had fitted the new arm into place. “What do you want Jacob?” She started to pound the dummy again.
“Same as you, I want it still to be yesterday, to do things differently. I want to tell Connor to wait for us before going up there. I want to go back and make the decision not to even go out after that thing, stay here and watch a movie on Netflix! But I can't. Any more than you can.”
There was a brief pause in the punching before Annie let out a snort and carried on.
“Look, you know how this is supposed to go!” said Jacob. “This is the bit in the film where the sergeant comes asking t
he grizzled old warrior to step into the fight just one more time. You know I'm not good at that sort of thing, I'm more used to being the grizzled old warrior and god knows I'm feeling it more these days. There's a difference though.”
“Yeah, and what's that?”
Jacob thought for a moment. “I had it there for a second but it's gone. Sod it, I've never been good with speeches.”
He swung his leg off the bike and sighed.
“There's nothing we can do for Connor now. We need to find out who did this and stop him.”
Annie stopped punching. Jacob leapt into the silence.
“Connor's killer is still out there. I need you with me because I sure as shit can't do it without you. You're the best, always have been. We both know full well what this life of ours has to offer; midnight fights and chases and an early death. Connor knew it too.”
Annie stared at the middle distance lost in her head. She cracked her knuckles.
“Yeah, he did.” She turned to Jacob. “We take this guy down, hard! I want to look into his eyes and send him back where he came from in pieces. I want to hurt him.”
Annie had never been the most genial of the team but now there was an icy coldness to her that slightly unnerved Jacob. He remembered the night Andrea...
“He's going after the potentials. We need to beat him to them. Wherever he's from, let's send him back with a message.”