Chapter 3
Opal stepped into Editor Moon's office and stopped cold. Being called into the editor's office wasn't anything unusual. Maybe there was an assignment. Maybe there were questions about progress on her latest article. Worrying just because the editor wanted to see you was something cub reporters did. Normally. Of course normally, she didn't find the paper's publisher waiting for her along with the editor. Mr. Varrick sat lounging in a chair next to Moon's desk. He gave Opal a lazy wave and a broad smile. She stood in the doorway staring at him.
Moon looked at Opal over her spectacles. "Please step inside, Miss Beifong, and close the door behind you." Opal swallowed nervously and obeyed. Moon gestured her to an empty chair. The editor gave her a ghost of a smile, which Opal hoped was meant to be reassuring.
"So, Opal - can I call you Opal? - I had a visit from your friend last night," Varrick said once she had seated herself.
Opal frowned, puzzled. "My friend?" She ran down a list of her friends trying to think who he could possibly mean. She couldn't think of anyone likely to pay Varrick a visit or who would be worth mentioning to her if they did.
"Republic City's own Mysterious Mistress of the Elements." Opal could swear she heard the Capital Letters when Varrick spoke. "The Avatar."
"Oh, her! I think calling us friends would be pitching it a bit strong. We've only met twice."
Varrick dismissed this with an airy wave of his hand. "Labels. The point is, you are known to the general public as the Avatar's reporter of choice. So naturally I decided to bring the story to you."
Opal forced herself to smile. After her hard work to be known as something other than Suyin Beifong's daughter or Lin Beifong's niece, it is was annoying to hear she had effectively placed herself in someone else's shadow. "Thank you, sir." She opened her notebook and waited with her pen poised.
Varrick began to recount the story of his big night. Opal jotted down the details. As he continued, a sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. She risked a glance at Moon. The editor was watching her closely, showing no sign of her own reactions to Varrick's story. Varrick was deeply engrossed in his own tale, which he told with extravagant hand gestures, lots of digressions, and an impressive amount of alliteration.
"So what do you think?" he asked her when he finished. "Great story, huh?"
She looked at her notes. Even allowing for the obvious self-promotion, there was certainly the beginning of a good story there. There were just two problems. Opal started with the one most likely to get her off the hook. "Malik broke the story about last night's events for us, didn't he?"
That slight smile returned to Moon's face. "That's right," she said.
"That means this is really his story. I can't just poach it from him."
Moon was still smiling but Varrick frowned. "Why not?" he asked.
"It would be one thing if one of my existing sources contacted me about this," she said. "Or if I went digging on my own. If I put in the work to get the scoop... well all's fair. But you're the boss. If you just hand it to me, if you take it away from someone who's already put in their own hard work, no one in the newsroom will ever work with me again. For good reason. Avatar's chosen reporter or not, you should really be talking to Malik."
"I already squared everything with Malik," Moon said. She turned to Varrick. "And you owe me 20 yuan."
He grinned, pulled a bill out of his wallet and handed it over. "When you're right, you're right."
Opal stared at them as she processed this. Malik was a friend as much as anyone in the newsroom was. But he was no more altruistic than she was when it came to pursuing a scoop. If he'd been willing to give up the story to her, it was probably because he had spotted problem number two. "OK then. I can write up what you've told me for tomorrow's paper. But because you are my boss, I can't write it the same as if you were a regular source. I've got to make it clear that you came to me to give me this information and that it hasn't been substantiated by outside sources. And I'd have to remind people that you own the Dragon."
Varrick's grin had faded as Opal had gone down the list. "That sounds like a lot of language designed to make me sound untrustworthy," he said in a mild tone.
Moon came to Opal's rescue before she had time to seriously panic. "That's because you are untrustworthy," the editor said. "People already know that. But they nonetheless trust the Dragon. If we want them to go on doing that, we can't pretend we don't understand you as well as the general public does."
He grinned again. "Good point. That's why you're the editor." He turned back to Opal. "So what's the alternative?" he asked.
"I do my job," Opal said. "I investigate this like I would any strange and suspicious goings on at any other company. You've given me a good starting point. But it will impress people more if I can back it up."
"Think you can get an interview with the Avatar as part of your investigating?" Varrick asked.
"I really don't want to promise that. She's the one who knows how to contact me." She reflected that this might be a good time to give a little ground. "I can see what I can work up for a preliminary article that might catch her interest. While still sticking to the facts, of course."
"Of course," Varrick replied with an airy wave of his hand. She honestly couldn't tell if he was sincerely agreeing or was mocking her.
"Well," she said. "I guess I'd better get to it." She stood up.
"Glad to know the story's in safe hands," Varrick said.
Moon gave her a nod. "Very good, Miss Beifong."
Opal shut the door to the office and let out a deep breath. As she made her way back to her desk, she thought she saw more stares from her fellow reporters than usual. As she passed his desk, Malik looked at her with open curiosity and asked, "How did it go?" Of course he had known what was coming even before Moon had called her in.
"Are you sure you don't want this story back?" she asked in turn, pitching her voice loud enough to be overheard by the reporters at the neighboring desks.
Malik chuckled and gave her an ironic salute. "Beifong, this once it's all yours."
Weekend shifts had their downsides, but this once it worked to Korra's advantage. Her mid-week day off gave her free time start an investigation of the previous night's events. And a phone call from Pema first thing in the morning let her know she had more to investigate than she had expected.
When she got to the meditation center, she found Jinora leading a group of visitors through a meditation session in the front room. She knew that the center wasn't just a front, but she usually didn't encounter outsiders there at such an inconvenient moment. Ikki was also in the front room, apparently waiting for her. She grabbed Korra by the sleeve and dragged through to the back. She held up her finger in a theatrical shushing gesture.
"Jinora looks like she's recovered," Korra said in a quiet voice.
Ikki waved this remark away. "Pfft," she said. "She's fine. I don't know what all the fuss is about."
"I hear that you thought she was dying last night," Korra said, smiling.
Ikki folded her arms and turned up her nose. "Yeah, but she wasn't."
"And how are you doing, kiddo?"
"All right, I guess." She shrugged.
Korra wasn't buying it. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"You're going to talk to Mom and Aunt Kya. And I've got nothing to do but hang around. Meelo is over at a friend's, but I'm supposed to wait and keep him distracted if he comes back early. Like Meelo would do that." She glanced at the door to the front room and lowered her voice further. "All this exciting stuff was going on under my nose all this time. And now I know about it, but I still don't get to do anything interesting."
"Exciting isn't always good," Korra said. "And I'm not sure the stuff we'll be talking about will actually be that interesting." Ikki gave her a skeptical look. There was something about the look on her face that suggested she'd heard it all before and still wasn't buying it. "I've got an idea," Korra said. "Don't go away. I'll be right back."
Walking quietly, Korra went back out to the front room and out the front door. She walked to the news stand down the street, bought one each of the major local newspapers, and carried them back to the meditation center and into the kitchen where Ikki sat slouching in a chair. Korra handed her the stack of papers. "How'd you like to do some research for me? I was planning to do this myself a bit later, but maybe you can save me some time."
Ikki's eyes grew wide. "What do you want me to do?"
"Compare the different accounts of last night's events. What do they agree about? What do the disagree about? Who has evidence and who's just guessing? And does anyone know anything that no one else does."
"You got it!" Ikki jumped up from the table and grabbed a pen and the pad Pema used for her shopping lists. "If Meelo gets back before I'm done, what do I tell him I'm doing?"
"Call it 'homework', and he'll lose all interest," Korra said.
Ikki spread the papers out on the table and started reading. Korra shook her head and grinned before heading upstairs to Pema's study. As expected, Pema and Kya were both waiting for her there. Pema was seated behind her desk looking her usual cheerful self, but Kya was slumped in a chair, eyes half closed. She sat up and blinked at Korra's entrance. There were dark circles under her eyes.
Korra frowned. "You look tired. Are you sure this meeting shouldn't wait until after you've had some shut eye? Aren't you still on the graveyard shift tonight?"
Kya yawned. "I'll head home and sleep when we're done here. It'll be fine." She smiled. "I do know how to take care of myself, Dad."
Korra rolled her eyes but smiled back. She always did have a sass mouth, Aang's voice said in her head. Korra ignored him. "All right. Message received. I won't nag." She plopped down in an empty chair. "So what's the skinny?" she asked.
Kya laid out her observations from the night before. Korra listened carefully. Kya's report was careful, thorough, and convincing. "You're right," Korra said, once the doctor was finished. "That's too much to be a coincidence. Do you think it was some sort of deliberate attack on the city?"
Kya spread her hands. "No one was done any permanent injury, as far as I can tell. Although one man got in a car crash because of his headache. The fact that it wasn't worse might have been more luck than judgment on someone's part."
"And you didn't spot any common factor between the victims?" Pema asked, leaning forward on her elbows.
Kya shook her head. "Nothing. Different ages, sexes, you name it. Pretty much a cross-section of Republic City as far as I could tell."
"There's at least a connection between Jinora and me," Korra said.
"You mean the fact that she's got Southern Tribe ancestry?" Kya asked. She shook her head. "That won't wash. There was no consistent ethnic background. And why did it affect her with one quarter blood and not me with one half blood?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of I'm the Avatar and she's descended from my last life," Korra said. "Although really all of your objections apply just as well to that."
Pema gave Korra a crooked smile. "Well maybe not all her objections. With almost two hundred past lives over the past ten thousand years, there's probably a lot of people in Republic City who the descendant of one Avatar or another. Some might be descendants of your past lives many times over."
Korra stared at her. "That's actually a bit disturbing if you think about it."
Pema shrugged. "You should probably get over it. It's an inevitable consequence of reincarnation and it applies to all of us."
"So we can all be equally disturbed," Kya said dryly. "Anyway, it doesn't really get away from my second point. Even if that's the connection, most of those people are distant ancestors. Why them when more recent ancestors of an Avatar are unaffected? I think it's likely that we won't be able to figure out a connection until we understand the actual cause."
"That I might be able to do something about," Korra said. "Well, not me personally. But making arrangements for it is the next thing on my to-do list."
Household duties kept Yin occupied for most of the morning. She did not manage to get a spare moment to visit the crime lab until early afternoon. She had orders to send out to the Ghost's network of agents, and they really should have been issued earlier. Her dual life as Miss Sato's majordomo and the Ghost's Medium could be taxing. She marveled at Miss Sato maintaining her own much more active alter ego.
The light was on over the wire recorder, indicating that a new call had come in since last night. Curious, she rewound the spool and switched the machine to playback. A slightly familiar voice came out over the speakers.
"Oh. Um. Hi there. It's me. Except that probably doesn't help, you probably get calls from a lot of people. This is awkward. Why is this awkward? You gave me this number. Surely you expected a call at some point. Argh." The voice cut off briefly. Then there was a throat clearing noise, and speech resumed in a somewhat more composed manner. "This is the Avatar calling for the Ghost. I investigated the events at Varrick Tower last night. I have a piece of evidence I'd like to bring to you. I could really use your technical expertise." There was another pause. "This would be easier if I could have you call me back. I guess I'll try again later and if I can't speak directly with you or one of your people, I'll swing by the agreed upon place around nine." A final pause and the voice concluded, "Thanks. Bye."
Yin shook her head, smiling. Miss Sato had once predicted that things would not be dull with the Avatar around, and she wasn't wrong. She briefly considered saving the recording so the boss could hear it. In the end she took pity on the Avatar instead. She noted down the bare facts to report later to the boss and wound the spool back again, leaving it so that the next call would record over the message. "We were all young and insecure once," she murmured to herself. Then she sat down at the phone and started issuing the Ghost's orders to the network.
Almost precisely at nine there was a knock at the safe house window. Asami opened it to see the Avatar standing out on the fire escape. She handed Asami a wooden case before climbing in through the window herself. "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," she said.
Asami hefted the case. "This time it's my turn to say 'And I didn't bring you anything.'"
The Avatar laughed sheepishly. "Well, all I've really brought you is work. I hope you don't mind."
Asami carried the box over to the table and set it down. "What is it?" she asked.
"That's what I'm hoping you can tell me. This was hooked in to the antenna at Varrick tower, presumably before it got destroyed. Varrick didn't seem to expect to see it there and couldn't explain it. You seem to be good at gadgets, so I was hoping..."
Asami nodded and flipped the latches holding the box shut. "Well, let's take a look." She peered inside. "Of course I might need to disconnect some things to really figure this out. But not before I'm sure I can put it all back together." She pulled a pen out of her breast pocket and gingerly moved the wires around. "Some of this looks like a radio relay of some sort. How was it hooked in?"
The Avatar shuffled her feet. "I didn't get a really good look, and it's not really my field. I think it was kind of spliced in on the cable that carried the broadcast signal to the tower."
Asami nodded. "OK. That makes some sense. It looks like it can receive an outside broadcast signal. When it's not receiving the signal on the antenna wire just passes through, but when it starts receiving it damps out the proper broadcast and replaces it. But there's also things in here that I don't understand. It looks like a resonance circuit in a way, but... No, I have no idea what this bit is supposed to do. Curious. I might have to take it back to my lab and run some power through it. Do some experiments."
"Yeah, about that. there's something you should know first." Asami looked up curiously. "Have you heard about the headaches some people had during the broadcast?" the Avatar continued.
Asami nodded. "Yes. The paper's mentioned that," she said. "And also an - associate of mine personally experienced one in my presence. It didn't look pleasant."
"Yeah, They have my sympathies. I'm apparently one of the susceptible people myself. What the papers didn't mention is that some people experienced them without having a radio turned on. You remember my doctor friend? She's the one who brought it to my attention. She saw a number of the sufferers at the hospital last night."
Asami gave a low whistle. "Now that is interesting. And you think this might be responsible?"
"It sounds far fetched, but I don't have a better candidate at this point," the Avatar said.
"Can't argue with that," Asami said as she went back to her examination of the device. "I promise I'll be careful with it. Set up some sort of shielded test chamber maybe." It should be easy enough to do, she thought, as long as radio waves were the only thing this produced. That was the question. Hurting people with radio didn't seem very likely. But if not radio, what? If this thing produced some sort of mystery waves, how could she tell? Maybe reverse engineering the device would give her a clue to how to build a receiver for whatever it put out...
She realized that the Avatar had said something to her while she was engrossed in her investigation. "I'm sorry. What was that?"
"I was just asking, did I do the right thing taking this away? I mean, if it does turn out to be evidence, we can't really bring it to the police anymore. Can we?"
"Oh," Asami said. She rubbed the back of her neck. "I suppose technically speaking that could be a problem."
"Technically speaking?" the Avatar repeated.
"Well, it sounds like the crime scene was already skunked before you arrived. Varrick really shouldn't have been let up there on his own, even if it is his building. The police should have kept it shut off. Since they didn't, any decent defense lawyer would contest any evidence found after they left. So on the balance, you taking this out of there at least gets this in our hands so we can figure out what it does without really hampering the police."
The Avatar mulled this over. "That sounds comforting, but it seems like a convenient way of looking at things."
Asami laughed. "Rationalization is a career skill for people like us."
"So you really just want to be the one to figure out what this thing does?" There was a teasing note in the Avatar's voice.
Asami grinned under her mask. "Three years of crime-fighting. I've seen guns and bombs, smugglers' souped up automobiles and forgers' printing presses. They're all really dull and straightforward. You've brought me my very first novel device. It's like Solstice come early."
The Avatar snorted. "Glad to be of service," she said.
"It's going to take some to analyze this. I can't set a timetable, but how about if I give you the preliminary results night after tomorrow?" While the Avatar was considering this, a thought occurred to Asami and she hastily said, "Actually, the night after that would be a better idea."
The Avatar nodded. "That will work fine for me. I appreciate it." She held out her hand and Asami shook it.
"Don't mention it. We're in this business together. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the challenge."
She escorted the Avatar back to the window and let her out of the safe house. After she had closed the window behind the other woman, Asami leaned forward and thumped her forehead against the window frame. "Sato, you're an idiot," she muttered to herself. She had almost double booked the Ghost's investigation with her own personal life. She already had arrangements to take Korra out in two nights' time. Mixing crime fighting with a personal life was a balance she was still getting used to.
