Sophie went for the elevator as soon as she lost Chloe. The car dropped a little as she entered. She pressed 14, willing the door to close more quickly. She didn't have any sort of real authority over MCCP operations. Not officially.
Officially, she worked in human resources. A title mostly intended as an inside joke. She did have a role screening out plants and spies from the ranks of new hires and employees… She'd even found a few dozen over the past two years. None had ever made it past the initial job interview process. But it wasn't her focus - and she wasn't the only telepath lurking the halls these days.
She watched the numbers slowly drop. A little anxious. A problem she couldn't solve on her own.
Well, it wasn't really a problem so much as a worry.
Maybe not 'worry', exactly. Not one she'd admit to.
It's not as though they were off plan.
Had to have one and all…
It was the timing. Two out of four were disconnected from her. And all three groups possibly in jeopardy.
Chloe was offline. But…that didn't necessarily mean anything. She wasn't indestructible - but she was durable. To a degree that the difference between the two words meant very little in the everyday world.
And Ty and John appeared to be trapped. They were there, but not talking through her. And those two trapped in some dangerous corner was hardly a new phenomenon. Between their skills and toys, they'd find a way home. Or make one.
And Max was…well, she didn't know what the situation was with Max, but…she was Max. That calmed her. Max. Their nuclear deterrent. Their guardian, savior, and occasional avenging archangel. Universal reset button… Friend. She'd be okay. Which meant they all would. At least…in the final timeline. Unspoken contract.
But Max isn't the only one with a responsibility to keep it that way, Sophie reminded herself.
She pushed 14 again, as though it would speed her descent.
She wasn't sure why she was feeling nervous tonight. They were all capable. Still. Little backup heading out wouldn't hurt, right? Never need it til you need it? Get the cleanup crews on their way at least? It was something she could do.
She'd taken inventory earlier. There were two live operations that required a full support staff tonight.
The first was collecting intel on a multi-border human trafficking ring. It didn't appear to have ties to anything else they were working on. But it was human trafficking. Slavery. No place for it in this world, and no place for it in the world they were building. They had the resources to help, weren't bound by bureaucratic nonsense, and they had no shortage of volunteers among the staff. And it was a zero tolerance thing for Max personally. Sophie was the only one besides Max who understood the details.
The second was an escort mission. Two of their staff biologists were in the field to collect additional endangered specimens for the arks. Backups. Safety copies. These specific specimens only lived in what was currently an active war zone. All the more reason for urgency. Fast in and out. One week.
Each mission had its own ops center. An entire floor of one wing, and a few hundred support staff working in shifts. Monitoring communications, research, imagery from drones and satellites, keeping an eye on assets, directing teams, liaising with outside forces when needed. Always something.
Both missions were important, but the latter was in a minor holding pattern for another two hours while their field team caught up on sleep. That's where she was headed. 14th floor. Elevator dinged. As the doors opened to the central core, Sophie headed to the far side of B-wing. Reached out to Ariel Ishii, mid-shift ops lead on the escort mission.
Hello Ariel, apologies for disturbing you uninvited.
Ms. Martin. 私の脳は、あなたの脳です。 What can I do for you? Is this about the museum incident with our fearless leaders? Or the street explosion near Henderson? Or the videos?
General aftermath. Wait, what explosion?
Gas line maybe? Or IED. Unclear. So…all of the above? Been on since 11:30. Quiet broke just after midnight…
What's been happening?
Ops control tried to recall a single team. But lines in to them and reception have been blowing up. It's been all over social and the news. We've been helping out, taking overflow on inbound calls for a few. Mostly off duty personnel checking in, asking if there's anything they can do to help. A few hundred too many are already heading our way. Tried to wave off as many as we could, but…
No… If they want to come, let them. We can put them to work.
Noted. Hang on… Okay. Done. Don't take this the wrong way, which, I guess you can't, so never-mind. Why are you in the office tonight? I'm assuming you're around, anyway?
We came here after the attack. I've been playing conduit. Ty Williams, John Michaels, Max and Chloe split up to rescue the family members of the museum shooters.
Wow. Every part of that sounds like overkill. Um. So where's the problem?
Might be nothing. But I need to re-task you and part of your floor for an hour perhaps? A few can keep an overwatch on the sleeping ones in the field, yes? Once we get another floor up and staffed, we'll let you go. But for now, we'll need help directing a couple of teams here, probably need to move a few dozen prisoners from multiple locations, take over some active drones - backup mostly. Easier to show you, if I may?
Sure. Where are you? I can come to you.
I'm standing next to you.
Ariel turned her head, startled in her chair. Jesus Christ. You just scared the living shit out of me! Wow. Okay. Yeah. Please don't do that? No…offense.
Sorry. My fault. I forget to make out-loud noises sometimes.
…surrounded by goddamn ninjas…
John placed his gloved hand flat on the wall next to the door. Tapped his forearm to bring the display to life, hit the T-scan icon. Palm tingled. Holo over the back of his glove showed what was on the other side. He counted nine hostiles beyond the wall in various states of cover. Two approached the door. Looked like they were in standard gear. Fatigues. Suppressed MP-5s. Plate body armor covering their upper chests and backs. Side-arms. Pads. Kevlar helmets. Slow. Top-heavy. Good.
He gave Tyrell the count over his shoulder with his other hand. Backed away from the wall.
He recognized Blanca and Antonio from their photos when they first crashed into the room. Blanca was on the bed, Antonio in the chair by the windows. Both had been worked over pretty hard. The room smelled like sweat, copper and antiseptic. Antonio's left hand was wrapped, bloody. Confirmation on the finger story, anyway. Tyrell had already cut the zip ties, said they were here to help. Both were on their feet by the time John turned.
In a low voice, he said, "I need you two in cover. Bathroom - bathtub. Go now. Don't come out. We'll come get you when it's clear. Do you understand?" They nodded, obviously out of it. Moved off together. John looked at Tyrell. "Help me move this mattress in to cover them?"
Once the mattress was in place over the tub, they exited the bathroom. John killed the lights, closed the door on them.
He and Tyrell pulled their head protection from thin packs. Kinetic armor helmets with a closed face mask, integrated optics. Strong magnets snapped the front and back halves together, securing them around their heads. Rigid. Light. Padded inside. In combination with their seamless full-body armor, they were safe from most anything in the next room.
In contrast to the fabric and steel of a standard tac kit, their armor wore and felt more like a wetsuit. Chloe's design recommendations were obviously influenced by the sci-fi exo-suits of anime and video games. Future tech, but not too far out. Arc pads, imaging, diagnostics, video and comms all integrated. Most of the effort for this first gen was in the materials and construction.
From the outside in, they were built from thin carbon-ceramic ablative foam segments over a tightly woven exotic-fiber and polymer substrate. A middle layer of reactive, conductive fluid was sandwiched between the inner and outer layers of the suit. Self-repairing, it generated power through the wearer's physical movements, while active strand bundles lightly amplified muscle and movement speed. The suits were soft and pliable, but firmed up when struck - in proportion to the force applied. Non-Newtonian behavior under fire.
Fists or bullets. Didn't matter. They'd been there for the lab testing. Little short of a .50 would punch through. AP or incendiary ammo could be a problem, but that was true of most any armor system. Knife blades usually tangled at the outer fiber layers. They were comfortable. Light. Fluid. Chloe joked that the next gen would come with blinky lights, jet packs, active camouflage and energy barriers. He was pretty sure she was joking.
He caught their dark reflections in the mirror as they went to pull back the armoire covering the doorway.
Had to admit - it looked pretty fucking badass. Now for the beta test.
Chloe felt a slight pain, pressure. The world turning. What had been a dull background thrum of half-felt vibrations crystallized into excited voices, crackling flames, shoes on concrete, and distant sirens.
"Are you okay? Can you hear me?"
"She's breathing…"
"Get that helmet off…"
"No - leave it. She might have a broken neck. Wait for paramedics…"
Strangers' voices.
Her own breathing echoed back to her, muffled through the padding around her ears and head.
She let out a breath in a long, low "Ow."
Have to open your eyes sometime…
Max opened her eyes.
Gravity bends time more than space, assholes…
She slowed the world to barely a crawl.
Watched as the magnetic field lines channeled the descending mists into nearly invisible curving streamers around her, vibrating slightly, even in super slow-mo. She pushed herself up off the plate. The ice layered over her shattered upward, a million fragments exploded, launching slowly, suspended in midair. Some of the smallest pieces were drawn to the lines of condensed mist.
As she stood, the canvas of her shoes, brittle from the freezing liquids, cracked and tore away from her, stuck to the floor. Her dress suffered the same fate, tearing along her sides first, then across front and back, thin frosted fragments of blue falling away like foil, trailing in space once clear of her influence.
Oh Goddammit…
Way to ruin the moment Max.
Ugh. First rule of not mooning the bad guys - don't moon the bad guys.
She sighed. I mean, Chloe could probably rock a proper terrifying beat-down half naked, but this isn't a good start for SuperMax style pwnage…
Fuck it. Whatevs. Rerun. Need to heal the frostbite and scrapes anyway.
She rolled her eyes, shrugged, went to rewind, caught herself. Instead, jumped back into her captive, prone state, eyes closed. This time, she stopped reality first, warmed her skin and clothes while kicking in a rapid cellular rewind on the cold-damaged parts of her body.
Okay. There's prolly at least million things I can do. But this is a rare opportunity. This is them bringing their A-game with tech that doesn't exist in the real world yet. We'll save the hostages; we'll capture their dudes. Given. But Chloe would be disappointed if I didn't play a little in the moment. Test some things. And maybe flattening these asshats once or twice wouldn't feel terrible either. Not after the shit they've pulled on everyone tonight to get us here…
She took a mental picture of the moment. A control point. A new marker to come back to.
She sped the world to barely a crawl. Pushed herself up off the plate. The ice shell that remained outside her captive layer of warmth shattered, fragments exploding outward, launching slowly, suspending in mid-air.
She rose to her feet. Thankful that her attire was along for the ride this time. She felt the downward pull. More than the usual gravity. But now, the physical effects were spread over more time - and greatly reduced. Standing, pressure off, she took her time. Scanned the room again.
Five men wore silver cold-suits. They were the ones who sprayed her down. Hoses attached to long thin metal nozzles, snaking back to supply lines along the wall. Half a dozen men in tactical gear aimed inward from each side of the warehouse. Most of their weapons she recognized. A few others looked more exotic. Different. Cables hung off the backs of them, running down through open doors in the floor. Power feeds, probably. Looked like early handheld rail-guns or energy weapons. Cause the large ones work so well…
At the front of the room, between her and the stairs, another five men, the middle one on his phone. Oddball. He was over-tan, messy sun-bleached brown hair, wearing sunglasses, t-shirt, and a brown linen suit.
His eyes were on her, slow. Widening, just beginning to realize that she was up in his frame of reference. She held his stare. Pivoted from her hips, struck the air to each side in sequence with the back of her hands. She walked off the plate toward him. Shockwaves spread outward - from her initial rise, the strikes and her movements - ripping the air. Sending compression distortions through the tangled force lines already muddying the scene…
She drew closer to normal time. The walls and ceiling of the warehouse exploded outward, riding the leading edges of the shockwaves like sails. Sails with irregular splotches of red that used to be people. The five in front of her pasted against the front of the warehouse. The room at the top of the stair folded, tumbled away.
Crap.
Usual shockwave caveats apply. Not good with buildings. Not good with hostages. She looked back, then down. The waves had all traveled outward, not doing any real damage below. The machine hummed on.
She jumped back. Landed at her marker, just after the warm and healing had completed. Opened her eyes…
She already knew. Bare minimum, all she really had to do was rewind or jump back to the moment before she walked in. All it would take to avoid the trap completely.
The machine just couldn't hold her. At least, not in enough directions to be useful as a trap.
But she was here. Wanted to push beyond the obvious. Other boundaries. She started simple.
Slowed the machine itself, walked out. Check.
Isolated the machine in time. Check.
Threw the top of the machine through the ceiling into orbit. Check.
Sped it up, throwing power out of phase. Check.
Bubbled it. Rotated the bubble, severing all connections. Check.
Slowed the world. Check.
Beat up the dudes. Took a break for light Q&A with brown-suit guy. Not a village idiot…but still in the row-boat. Check.
Stopped time. Duh. Check.
Bubbled the entire block, half a mile or so across, rotated it a couple of degrees, severing incoming power and utilities. Check.
Reduced her own immersion, reducing the effects in real-time, pummeled the cold-sprayers for practice. Check.
Folded herself to their prefab house on planet Steve. Fort away from the world. Drank a glass of water. Check.
Folded a large section of the machine's coils directly into the sun. Check.
Carved the machine apart with the holographic event horizons of a thousand frozen mini-spheres of time-space. Check.
Bubbled herself. Locked to Jupiter as a frame of reference. Flew off into space. Check.
Warmed the air around the rotating disk beneath the middle of the structure. Check. Huh. That actually worked?
Created a gradient of differential time from the back to the front of the warehouse. The magnetic and gravitational fields piled up in space, fed-back, dragging, tore the machine apart. Check.
Applied the lessons of their device, added some of her own influence. Moved the focal point of increased density around the room, crushed a few people. Oops. Sorry! But…um…Check.
Went the other way, reversed the curvature, created a void of lightness, drifted up into the air. Check. And…tickles!
Still playing, she increased the density of space next to the coils below. A little bit too much. Punched a small hole through the universe - a modest singularity. Which, unfortunately, dropped down into the earth immediately after killing the machine… Soooo that's a jump back… Yeah… Uncheck. No rogue black holes orbiting inside the planet, waiting to surprise murder us all in a hundred years, kthxbai.
So many more paths. All of them seemed viable. Some better than others.
It had been a while since she'd had reason to stretch.
She understood why they thought this would work. She might have been boned if her power was a real power, and not just a facet of intersecting existence. If she'd been a fully embedded region of shared time-space with nowhere or nowhen else to go, the trap could have done real damage. But they didn't know. What she was. Chloe hadn't even gotten to that point of suspicion until after a couple hundred years from now in the alt timeline. Only after upgrading to gen 6 augments and a neural lace. Here? Now? They didn't have the equations or the variables. Or nearly enough information to even suspect they needed to ask different questions. She was powerful, super weird, but still just a person to them, really. A mutual citizen of their shared universe. Another talent, bound by common rules and laws. What else was there?
Yeah. Or not.
Back to the present. Back to the beginning. Final run.
Clothes on? Check.
All healed? Check.
Everyone alive? Check…
She ended with the sensible thing. The easiest path. And possibly the least dramatic…at least visually.
She reduced her own immersion in their universe.
Negated the effects of the various forces on her body completely.
She peeled herself up off the target plate in normal time. Pulled her legs under, rose to a crouch in her blue cocktail dress. She stood slowly, deliberately, straight up onto her feet. Ice fell away, accelerated into the floor. Shattered chips bounced off her sneakers. It still felt a little like standing on a subwoofer. The machine was on, mirages in the air violently shearing, rippling around her. Head down, she lifted her eyes.
The man in the sunglasses and brown linen suit stood two-dozen feet in front of her. He calmly spoke orders into his phone. As she rose, he gave other orders more loudly to the room. His name was James Andersen. She knew this because he'd made a point of telling her during a few of her prior play-throughs.
The men in the silver cold-suits pressed in, all five of them. Their metal rods spewed pressurized freezing liquid at her from all angles. None of it reached her. She smiled. Flying ice and liquid converted directly to thick white vapor, thanks to the layer of accelerated time inches above her skin. The fog cascaded down her to the floor under the intense flow of gravity and magnetic fields.
The forces shifted. Twisted. They changed something.
The field lines of the magnetics finger-painted sideways through the collapsing mists, twisting, knotting in some places.
Max shrugged. She was done experimenting. Satisfied that she'd learned what she needed to.
She didn't want to hurt any of them - a lot of contractors found themselves in front of her the same way John and his first team had. Just paid and not given any real details, or sold on the idea that she was a significant threat, blah blah… But they probably weren't part of the bigger picture. Not everyone was a lost cause. It's part of why she stressed non-lethal methods wherever possible, across ops, teams and her own behavior.
Enough.
"Bubble 'em all, let Margaret sort 'em out…"
She ironically froze the cold-suit guys first, each in their own sphere. Then the dozen with armor and guns stationed around the perimeter. Then the four in front with Andersen. Him, she pulled right to the ground. An afterthought, a microscopic application of her own command of gravity.
Hers.
Not enough to really hurt him. Just enough for a message.
Something simple. Something they all had to learn eventually - at least in spirit.
She wasn't a fish.
Chloe loosened her chin strap, rolled halfway onto her side and pulled her helmet back. Got stuck on her forehead until she gave it a push up on the back. It clunked to the sidewalk and rolled to one side.
"You really shouldn't move."
"I'm okay, Walt…but thanks." She'd only been down for a minute. But she could see herself and the small crowd from above.
"How…did you know my name?" He looked to others in the loose semi-circle around her in confusion.
"Long story." After a quick self-eval, she sat up. Nothing broken. "Was anyone else hurt?"
"Not that I could see. Some cars are on fire and some stores are blown up back there." said a woman near the tree. Julia. Chloe refrained. She knew it mostly just freaked people out. All just data, though. It was all right there. "You're lucky to be alive!"
"You have no idea…" Her leather jacket was torn at the shoulder. First point of impact. She flipped the loose bit down, looked inside. T-shirt sleeve smudged up, but whole. No skin damage. Boots scuffed to shit, thinning leather at her hips, outside of the knee. Elbows of her jacket similarly worn down. As advertised… Thanks for the sales advice, old-timey biker dude.
"I think your motorcycle is a loss, though."
"Shit."
Sophie? John? Anyone?
Chloe! We just located you on surveillance cameras. Are you alright?
Hi - yeah - I'm okay, Sophie… Fuckin' pissed, but okay. You guys got a floor up already? What's happening?
Tyrell took two hits to the chest at close range.
Closed distance, pulled the shooter's weapon down with a strike from one hand, pressed his free palm against the man's exposed neck. Quick jolt from the pads, and his target's legs went out from under him. Tyrell moved on to the next.
Duck, strike, press. Down.
Shrug off bullets. Deflect knife. Zap. Down.
John pulled a man out from behind a bookcase, jolting him into unconsciousness as he tossed him to the ground.
You guys still there?
Hey - yeah - sorry Sophie. We've been focused on our hand to gun combat skills here.
Okay Ty - didn't mean to disturb you.
No, no, we're good - almost wrapped. John's just going after a runner. What's up?
Chloe. They set an explosion trap for her in the street.
She okay?
I'm good, Ty. Fuckin' precogs, man. Only way. I didn't even know I was turning down that street until you guys said Antonio was with you. Ruined my fucking bike... I spent months tweaking that thing.
Ouch. Track 'em down yet?
Working on it.
John replied. No precogs here that we can see. Just contractors. Plus hostages.
What about Max?
She disconnected, let me…
Max interrupted Sophie as she worked to untie them. Hey guys - sorry - I dropped off. It's been a long night. Got carried away with all the jumps.
What happened, doll?
You're gonna love this, Chlo - some sort of giant-ass gravity thing. Tried to stick me to it, then hit me with liquid nitrogen and some other stuff.
Gravity generator? For reals? I wanna see?
Figured. Left it in one piece for you.
You're so my favorite minion right now! And, uh, how hard did that little plan not go their way? Did you play at all?
Heh. I try. And it went 'bout like you'd expect. Everybody's packaged up here, but none the worse for wear. Anyway, this machine thing is massive. It goes down a long way underground beneath the warehouse, but there's other parts that go out for a few miles in every direction. Like six particle accelerators all crossing here, but not that, exactly.
Can't wait. Bike's toast, so I could use a lift? Precog assholes left a bomb for me.
Rude.
I know, right?
You're okay though?
Only a bomb.
K. Be there in a couple of minutes…
Cool. I'll be here, chillin' by a fire…
Max, quickly, did you find Marietta and Nessa there at the warehouse? Are they safe?
Yep. I'm with 'em now, Soph. Little one's untouched, but they're both pretty shaken.
Max untied Marietta first. Together, they released Nessa. Mother and daughter both locked into a desperate hug. She gave them a moment. "It's over now. We can walk right out whenever you're ready. They can't hurt you."
"Thank you. I…gracias. …don't know…what we would have done." Marietta stood, lifting Nessa with her. The girl buried her face in her mother's neck.
Max took the lead, walked out the door, motioning them to follow. Marietta held Nessa close on the way down. Marietta's face and arms were bruised, but she seemed physically okay otherwise. Max walked them down the stairs, out past the bubbled men.
The machine was still on. Wisps of fog pulled to the center of the room. Max walked them around the left side, behind the bad-guy-bubbles, near the wall. Exposing her to their captors again was a risk. She knew this would all be scary and confusing, but she wanted to Marietta to see that the people who took her and her daughter were completely powerless now. Might help with closure. At least a little.
Marietta looked like she wanted to stop, try to understand what she was seeing. Max had seen that before. Confused curiosity at odds with the flight reflex. Max led them outside through the front door. Warmer, but still cold.
Need some cleanup here at some point, Sophie. If anyone's around this late?
Personnel won't be a problem tonight, Max. A lot of people saw the feeds, headed in. Ariel already has four of the big ring-drones, two teams of twelve, and a flatbed with shipping containers heading to each of your locations. We assumed, for the prisoners.
Thank Ariel for me? Hey - if I send you a mental image of the shape of this machine and the ring system, do you think you guys could overlay that on a city grid, and maybe Ariel could muster up a couple of additional teams to investigate and secure a few spots? I think there are some control centers along the ring paths, probably hidden in normal looking buildings. They weren't doing any of that from here, and the guy in charge was giving orders to remote crews. Might be able to pick up some stragglers if we're quick?
Send me the image now, Max. Or maybe Chloe can see too, do the overlay in her head? Just give us the addresses? That way we can put it right up on screen and get going without waiting for my drawing skills to improve? We'll be in our own control room within half an hour probably.
K. Hang on. Sophie - Ariel's on 14 tonight? I'm gonna bring these two back first - have a med team meet us in The Terrarium? Flip it to daylight? And probably need some blankets, light food and juices as well - no idea how long it's been since they've eaten. Trauma counsellor might be helpful too - telepathic or bilingual if possible? Chlo - I'll grab you real quick on the way back and we'll meet the cleanup teams back here.
Sure. Done.
K, Max.
Max walked them clear of the building. "If it's okay with you, I'd like to take you both somewhere warm and safe? A medical team and food are waiting? Is that okay?"
Marietta nodded.
Still in shock. "Okay. This might be disorienting. But I promise it's perfectly safe. Fastest way…" The desert night was gone, replaced with artificial sunlight, warm grass, bubbling waterfalls, calm pools with brilliantly colored fish, and an expanse of indoor forest stretching the final third of the way to the outermost wall of the wing. A red squirrel ran up a tree as they appeared, looked cautiously back. Nessa's eyes went wide. More amazement than fear. That's good. She'll bounce back okay.
A medical team walked across the lawn toward them. Halfway point.
Marietta sat down on the grass, still holding Nessa. Looked up at Max, tears welling. She said quietly, "Eres un ángel." As if that was all the explanation she'd ever need to make perfect sense of this night. She nodded once, before returning her attention to her daughter.
Max mouthed a 'thank you' to the med staff as they approached and knelt to offer aid. She backed away, turned.
John, Tyrell - you guys good there?
Yep.
Yeah, we've got this. Do your thing.
Max gave a last look back, winked at Nessa, vanished.
Chloe leaned back against the brick wall of the storefront. She gave Sophie the addresses, near as she could tell from Max's weird sense-map. While she waited for Max to arrive, she replayed a detailed reconstruction of the explosion in her head. Built from information taken from a variety of sources, including local cameras, accelerometer data from phones, USGS seismometers at UNLV, a few satellite images, black box from the KTM, and her own drone escorts and personal telemetry. Scrubbed, time-codes synced up.
Dark. Pools of yellow streetlight. Headlights and taillights layering over. It was a last second decision. Saw the moment she committed to the new direction. The tiny wobble. Watched herself take the corner, leaning hard. She slowed the playback, experiencing every angle at once. She stopped the simulation with the first signs of the explosion. The cell signal. Cracks in the roadway leaking light below her. The first milliseconds. Someone was watching her. Triggered the device. From where? She backed out, painted lines of sight from every window of every building, every car. Marked pedestrians who appeared to be on their phones. The data was far from perfect, but it was enough to extrapolate. Maybe narrow the field of possibilities… She removed all of the lines that traced back to empty places.
Stripping out all of the definite negatives left her with four candidate windows and two cars she didn't have a good view into. She marked the exits of each building and the vehicles, ran the simulation forward to the present, looking for signs of movement. In the time after the explosion, people came out of two of the marked buildings. Four people who came out of the first apartment structure went out to the street. Checking their cars, generally trying to see what was happening. Three people who came out of the second did the same. One man followed, went the opposite way. Walked two blocks over. Chloe retrieved more data. Followed the new target to a parked car. Picked up the plate from a traffic cam. Followed his trail forward. Couple of miles away in traffic, but appeared to be heading for Summerlin, on the west side.
Might still be nothing, but she wanted to follow. Tagged. Moved the trace to background. What if she hadn't turned?
Sophie? Can you guys get an EOD team from LVPD out here? They'll probably need bots. Have them seal off the area, check under the other streets leading away from that intersection? They're looking for something in the sewer tunnels. A break in the ceiling, something installed above it probably. Or look for wires running out to an exposed antenna. Might be nothing, but there's a chance they had a backup plan.
Sure, Chloe. We're on it.
Danke.
Max left the light and grass, arrived in the middle of a street of chaos. Buildings, cars on fire. Crater in the middle of the road. Water shooting out from broken mains, and the slight eggy smell of natural gas. People milled around while sirens approached. Emergency services were slowed by traffic, which backed up as drivers slowed to see what they could. She looked around for a few minutes before finding Chloe.
"You weren't kidding about the whole 'chilling near a fire' thing."
Chloe stood up as Max approached. "Hey. They killed my fucking bike." Pointed to the tangled mass of orange tubes sticking out of an SUV.
"Sorry love… I'd totally rewind to warn you, if there weren't so many other moving parts at the same time…"
"No, no. Hadn't actually crossed my mind."
"Liar." Max smiled.
"Anyway…"
Max looked Chloe over. Hand on one arm, she pulled down at the torn shoulder of her jacket with the other. "So…what happened? You really okay?"
"Me? Psht. I'm fine. Officially irritated at these assholes, but what's new there, right? Came around the corner, and just 'boom'. Something underground back there. Landed over there near the tree"
"Ouch." Max winced.
"Could have been worse."
"If you'd been normal?"
"Splat. Crunch. Probably."
"Unlike."
"Turned off the soreness for now. Between hanging out with you and the nano-repair crew, I'll be good as new in an hour. We're cool." Chloe took Max's arm.
"Well, sorry, Chlo. I know getting blown up sucks. Would it cheer you up at all to play with a giant gravity generator?"
"Dude, is that a real question? Like why are we even still here? …"
Max stopped her. "If you say 'let's plow'…"
Chloe laughed. "You're still giving me shit about that? Come on, that was like twice. Weeks ago dude. Besides, you know Duckie rules."
Max laughed, leaned into her, rested her head on Chloe's shoulder as they stepped from the fiery street to the inside of a frosty warehouse across town.
"Woah. Cool."
"You couldn't resist…"
John looked at his phone. 06:30. Daylight soon. Leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes. Contemplated his empty coffee mug.
Ops teams started arriving at the penthouse location around 01:00. He left Tyrell to it, caught a helicopter ride back to HQ. Along with Blanca and Antonio, who were greeted by med staff once they landed. A new ops floor had spun up by then, so he took over for Ariel as lead with the new team. Her field units were waking up, so good timing all around.
From his seat in the command space, middle of the wing, he could see everything in play. Twenty-foot ceilings. Live conference table in the center with an active holo of the city, rings of large displays around him giving drone's eye views, real-time operational info from personnel in the field, comms and other useful details. Everything he needed for theater overview, threat analysis, coordination and decision-making. He liked this configuration. Desks, workstations, conference tables and VR lounges for manual drone control were arranged radially, outward from center. Clustered into group work areas. The glass walls down each side of the wing were currently opaque, doubling as display spaces. Any visuals or info feeds could be thrown up for the room to see as needed.
Even with all the large-scale displays, the bustle, his attention pulled back to the smallest.
Missed texts from Tracey.
TW: 12:20am: Where are you? I don't know what just happened.
TW: 12:28am: I can't find you. WTF? Did you leave?
TW: 12:56am: WTH are you?!
TW: 1:17am: Call me please? I don't know what to tell anyone. Police. Media. It's a circus.
TW: 2:40am: FFS
TW: 3:30am: I'm home. Are you safe at least? Call me.
TW: 3:58am: Are you alright?
TW: 4:17am: I don't care if it's late. I can't sleep anyway. Where are you? I'm not mad. Just call? Please? Something?
Finally, he'd caught a breath, noticed. Sent one back.
JM: 4:30am: I'm so sorry. Had to go to work. I'll call you when I can.
TW: 4:30am: What do you mean work? How could anything at the office be more important. I was fucking shot, John. A bullet. From a gun. Then I wasn't. And you're at 'the office' at 4:30 on a fucking holiday doing what? Is Ty with you? Are you guys out drinking?
JM: 5:10am: Listen, I'll explain everything later. Promise. Just please, trust me. I didn't just take off on you.
TW: 5:10am: You did. Going to sleep. Not sure I can do this.
He hadn't replied yet. Couldn't think of anything to say over an open line that wouldn't make things worse. Sometimes, doing nothing is a viable action…
He reviewed the field summary threads, just to give his mind something else to turn over.
Penthouse. Ops arrived. Forensics team. Tore the place apart. Nothing of significance beyond the rescued hostages. Captured twelve contract operatives. Processing identities in holding, below ground HQ. Staff chasing paper trail on lease, etc. Probably smoke.
House. LVPD sent to Henderson house (Price's original destination). Rental. Empty. Sign of squatters.
Warehouse / "The Device". Ops arrived. Forensics team. Science team. Caulfield and Price onsite. Captured operatives released from temporal holding into physical custody. New POI captured, James Andersen. Running background. Processing identities of everyone downstairs in holding. Price requested a thousand roach bots. Drone delivered. Massive underground complex, macro-components in surrounding warehouses. Two square blocks appear to be linked below ground, structures above largely facade. Preliminary info suggests Device and area co-construction dates to mid-1950's. Voice cap from Price, while examining The Device below grade: "This is some Fallout lookin' shit, yo." Teams and tech scanning. Couple of laptops found. Encrypted. Site secured. Occupied. Researching provenance, ownership trail. Consider new facilities, legal, to support long-term takeover. Investigating.
Energy ring structures. Teams dispatched to addresses Price provided. Mostly accurate. Three individuals captured. Processing. Structures, design, tech all seem to support mid-century origins. Old files in designated control 4 location pointed to a seventh address. Team sent. Records storage building of some kind. Begin bag and tag. Might take through the weekend. Transport back to HQ for scanning, analysis.
IED site. LVPD handling. Second device found under adjacent street. Disarmed. Price tracked suspect to residence in Summerlin. Drones on station, monitoring activity.
Hostages. All four retrieved without incident. Attended. Observing, repairing overnight in med-wing…
John's phone buzzed. Tracey.
TW: 6:35am: Shit. I shouldn't have said that. Frustrated. Didn't mean it. Sorry. Just…call me when you can? Love you.
Max caught herself. Eyes sneaking closed. Sleepy. Long night for her, especially with all the jumps. She'd been waiting for them to load up for half an hour. Last thing before she could catch some sleep. Day shift was on the rest, and Chloe went upstairs to crash a few minutes ago.
Sun was up. 8am. Friday, January 1st, 2016.
She'd been here before.
She remembered this morning. From before. In Seattle. Chloe was working two crap jobs; Max was on a winter break from classes. Chloe really wanted to go out for New Year's the night before, so they did. Chloe had enough to drink to be funny without crossing over into ranting or tears. Shitty bar. It was a fun night. A good night. Max dragged them out to Pam's Kitchen for breakfast and coffee early the next morning. Outdoor cafe near their shitty apartment. Home away from home. That was the morning they met Emo. Or rather, saved Emo…
Max's eyes shot open. "Oh! Fuck!"
She jumped up, folded herself to the sidewalk in front of Pam's in Seattle.
Turned, looked out over the street.
She'd arrived too late.
"Seven left. I'm coming baby. Oh my god…" She spun the universe backward, watching. Looking for the moments before the car hit him. There! The first time, they were eating. Chloe watched, horrified. Max had to play rewind frogger with traffic to get out to him at all. A few seconds at a time. It was awful. This time, she held the world in a freeze with barely a thought. Walked out around the cars, knelt down. Released time and picked up his fuzzy little body for the first time again. Little claws clinging to her shirt like she was a screen door. Those blue eyes. His tiny cry. "I'm here." She smiled. A tear started to fall toward him.
Folded back to their bedroom in Vegas. Sat down with him on the bed. The adrenaline surge finally faded away. It was a complete accident that she'd remembered at all. How had she been so careless? She lay back on the bed, he clambered up toward her chest. She scratched his head between the ears like he always loved. Awww. Our little buddy… He settled down, closed his eyes, purring. Little paws reaching out. So tiny. Just a whisper of black fuzz and blue eyes.
Chloe walked in. Saw Max on the bed. "Hey - thought you were still doing a quick supply run?"
Max looked up, put a finger to her lips in a silent 'shhhhhh'…
Emo stretched. Yawned.
Chloe's eyes went wide as the memory clicked, her hand went to her mouth. She knelt onto the bed next to Max, "is that…"
Max nodded, eyes smiling.
"Oh my god… How?"
"I almost missed him. Got so fucking lucky, Chlo."
"I totally remember! Her memories, but yeah. Holy shit - he's so goddamn adorable! Can I hold him?"
Max laughed, "Yeah. We got him. Um. Here - I had to spin back a little to catch him, and I still need to do that run in a few minutes. Watch him? I'll bring back some food in like half an hour?"
Chloe fell over softly next to Max, reached over and pulled Emo to her. "Hey there lil dude…"
Max shook her head. The cute of Emo attacking Chloe's fingers again was almost too much. "I'll be right back. You two behave."
"No promises."
Max gave them both a kiss. Vanished.
Chloe moved her hand under the blanket. Emo pounced, tail twitching, eyes wide. Listening for the next sound, waiting to feel the next movement.
She remembered how in love they were with this ridiculous little bit of fluff.
How heartbroken they were when he died from kidney failure after only seven years.
She held that thought in her head for a few minutes too long.
"Not this time…" Chloe moved her hand out from under the blanket. He pounced again. She rubbed his nose with the tip of her index finger. He closed his eyes, gave her kisses. Like he always did. She released half a dozen microscopic repair bots through a pore in her fingertip. They went for a sandpaper ride. They'd take up residence in him. Build more of themselves over time. Keep him healthy.
Max appeared downstairs in the loading room. The lowest extension of the parking garage, under C-wing. Fifteen shipping containers in numbered spaces. She AirMax'd the blue metal boxes from place to place a couple of times a week. Supplies, personnel. Rarely prisoners. Two containers this morning. Special run. One held the contractors and others captured last night, secured, blindfolded. The other container was half filled with supplies and records, leaving the other half empty for additional support staff. They'd help manage the influx.
Once they reached their destination, the prisoners would be processed, scanned for intel, intention. And over a period of a week or two, Margaret and teams of others would interview and evaluate them. Physical, emotional, psychological - running precognitive and telepathic evals in parallel. Deep files generated for everyone.
Goal was to screen out and separate the ones who could be safely released. So far, that had been all of them. Well, most. Some who committed real crimes had been turned over to law enforcement. But no torture, no mistreatment, no hostility. Most were wrong choice of employer and mission. Wrong career for this changing world. This stopover was used as a realignment opportunity. They'd be released with a stern warning to embrace a more universally beneficial career. And monitored for life, of course. And through shells, they'd found ways to follow up inconspicuously, help with retraining, education, and alternative job placement and so on. Designed to feel like the normal opportunities and shifts that happen in life. Behind the scenes. No connection to them.
Some, a narrow few, would be recruited to MCCP. But only after the strictest sort of testing, background research, deep analysis. Had to know them better than they knew themselves. Only a few had passed.
They had facilities for more permanent retention, but hadn't needed them. She had a feeling with James Andersen though. He wasn't ex-military. Wasn't a contractor. Might even be their first capture of someone above street level. Margaret would give her the rundown on the next visit. For now, her job was simply to move them. Then - upstairs cuddle-party.
Doors closed with a clang and squeak. 8:15. Max double checked destinations on the boxes against the ground marks, and got a verbal confirmation from the duty chief. She knew where they were going. But mistakes would be mistakes. This was a triple-check for her, more than anything.
Area cleared, she folded herself and the containers to a large hemispherical room, forty feet across. The floor was concrete. The walls were bumpy but smooth. Painted bright white. A ring of light bars circled the room six feet from the floor. A single perfectly round tunnel led out to one side. Three containers stood empty on the far side of the room. Normally, she'd bring them back. Trash, returning shift personnel, whatever. They had no direct communication with the site, so no one was expecting her until Tuesday. She opened the container with staff and supplies. They filtered out, started the process of unloading.
She took a quick walk down the corridor, a left, then a right. She knew the tunnels. Chloe might have designed them, and engineers might have guided Max with lasers and projected marks, but she built them herself. Carved straight out of the raw rock with frozen bubbles. Rooms were mostly large spheres, with storage levels below the equator. Spheres were separated top and bottom with flooring of steel and concrete. Long corridors joined everything. These spaces went together pretty quick. Once she carved, teams followed behind with spray-on seals, paint, floor and divider infrastructures, utilities, lighting. Max ran plumbing separate - just smaller tubes carved along the periphery, gravity permitting. The intersections, corridors, and patterns were familiar. Landing pad, living quarters, kitchens, hygiene, and recreation areas were always common elements, always in the same orientation and locations. Made it easy for people to switch between sites. Where they differed was in the configuration or rooms beyond the right fork. Holding. Ark storage. Research. Whatever. Some were minimal in scope. Others vast, and multi-level, depending on their purpose.
Max finally found someone awake in the rec area. Playing Mario Kart. Let him know they had an off-schedule delivery. He'd wake everyone up, handle the rest.
With that, her work was done. Traced her steps back, waved a goodbye to the staff in the landing area. Folded back to the loading space under their tower. Signed off on the move, bounced to the grocery store, then back upstairs to their kitchen. She poured a bowl of soft kibble and another of water. Walked them into the bedroom, set the bowls on the floor.
Chloe was already asleep, kitten upside down and all bunny-paws in the crook of her arm.
Max waved a piece of kibble in front of Emo's nose. A twitch. Eyes open, head up, looking for the smell.
Max picked him up, showed him where the food and water lived. Sat with him on the floor while he ate, rubbing his back. "Hello, old friend…"