DISCLAIMER: Mage: the Ascension and the World of Darkness is the property of White Wolf Publishing. All characters in this story are, however, mine.
I hadn't really intended for these stories to "lead" anywhere, but that last review got me thinking – if they were leading up to something, what would that be? Hence this, which is a point where they start flowing together ever so little. I'll just have to see where this leads, won't I? =]
Albert was in the kitchen unit, grabbing a snack, when the lights went out. He was left standing there for a few seconds, blinking in the sudden pitch darkness, until the emergency lights went on. A somewhat disconcerting blue glow covered the undecorated metal surfaces of the room, and illuminated Albert's tall, lanky frame.
He pressed his tongue to the side of a certain tooth, keying his radio implant into action.
"Agent Tulip calling Agent Hyacinth," he said. "Calling Agent Hyacinth. Reynolds, what's up?"
No response.
"Agent Tulip calling, oh, just about anyone who feels like answering," he said. "Hello, hello, am I talking to myself here?"
Agent Rose calling Agent Tulip. Albert, quit being an idiot, a female voice said. It was very disturbing sensation; it was like someone he couldn't see or touch was standing right next to him, talking into his ear, and only because he had a lot of experience with this did he know that there wasn't. It was like having a ghost in the room. We have communications protocols for a reason, you know. If you want to know if anyone is responding, you call everyone in turn. You don't just shout 'is anybody out there?'.
Albert went back to making his peanut butter sandwiches.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, not sounding too put off by the rebuke. "It's just that power went off here, and now our respected head of Power Station isn't responding."
He's not responding because he's out on an assignment, the voice in his head answered. There's a Node that's at risk of falling into Deviant hands. Orders from above is that if we can't keep it, we should at least drain it of as much Primal Energy as we can before withdrawing. That's Reynolds' department, so he's there. So is all available combat personal, for that matter.
Albert spent a few moments appreciating the irony of the situation. He had spent the last few hours on the Digital Web, assembling information. Because of this, he had remained uninformed of events taking place around his actual, physical body. Technology tended to cause all sorts of wonderful paradoxes.
"Combat personal?" he said. He finished the last sandwich and placed it on a tray along with a big glass of milk. "Isn't that pretty much everyone but you and me, Louisa?"
Your point being?
Albert grinned.
"Only that what with the mood lighting and all, that's actually kind of romantic."
Don't flatter yourself, Louisa said, sounding disgusted.
"Tell you what – I'll stop flattering myself, if you promise to do it for me," Albert said cheerfully as he headed back to his quarters.
Albert, I just lost a six-page report to Farson because my computer shut down. Could you try to be less annoying? I've got all I can take in terms of annoyance right now, thanks.
Albert's grin disappeared. He had full sympathy for computer shutting down at inconvenient times. In fact, part of his big mission in life was to take care of inconveniently down-shutting computers.
"Well, that sucks," he said. "If you want, I could try to reconstruct as much of that report as I can once the power comes back." He winced. "Which, I suppose, will be when Reynolds gets finished with whatever's going down at that Node, comes back here and fixes it… because I don't suppose there's any chance that this is something like a blown fuse?"
That's possible? Louisa said. Reconstructing a file that hasn't been saved, I mean?
"Well, I'm not saying it'd be easy," Albert said, somewhat smugly. "But if I couldn't work miracles, I wouldn't be here, would I?"
Now you're flattering yourself again, Louisa said, but she sounded friendlier this time. But thank you. I'll owe you one if… what? No!
A piercing scream made Albert flinch, spilling his milk all over the tray. Then there was silence. Nothing – not even static.
"Agent Tulip to Agent Rose!" he said. "Agent Rose! Louisa! Come in, Agent Rose!"
No answer. Albert put the tray down on the floor and started running.
"Change frequency two five six nine zero!" he yelled as he ran. He heard a faint click in his ear as his implant registered the command. "Agent Tulip to Agent Daffodil! Urgent! Urgent! Come in, Agent Daffodil!"
No one else might be available, but Jake was like him; he had a radio wired straight into his brain. And in a combat situation, he would be listening to this frequency to make sure he didn't miss any orders from superiors.
Agent Tulip, a dry voice – not Jake's – said in his ear. This is Agent Cerebral. Change frequency immediately. I repeat, change frequency.
Albert almost groaned, but of course Cerebral would be able to hear him if he did, and he wouldn't appreciate that kind of disrespect shown to him. Of all the time-consuming things that might happen right now, having to get past Agent Cerebral, also known as Patrick Farson, Supervisor of all Technocratic operations in the Dougal area, was perhaps the worst. This was a guy who had made a religion out of not budging…
"We have a situation in Station 2340," Albert panted as he rounded a corner into yet another deserted, faintly lit corridor. "I think we may be compromised."
The moment the words left his mouth – and travelled through the hypertech circuits wired into his brain, were encrypted, and started to get broadcasted – he wished he could take them back. Compromised was a word that superiors tended to hate, which was why he had used it; it was likely to get a reaction out of Patrick. What he realised, just a moment too late, was that it might not get the right reaction out of Patrick. Compromised meant that delicate data and dangerous technology might fall into hands not fit to handle them – i.e., anyone's hands but the Technocracy's.
And the most efficient way to prevent that would be to trigger the explosives buried beneath the Station. Albert wasn't supposed to know about them, but come on, information was his job.
Would Patrick consider two operatives acceptable casualties for keeping data and technology out of unfit hands? Albert suspected that the answer to that one was a big 'you bet'. The real question was how highly he valued the Station itself, and all the extremely expensive machines in it.
Of course, if he had pulled all the fighting personal out, he had probably pulled most of the interesting weaponry out, too…
Agent Daffodil to Agent Tulip, a rough voice rumbled. Jake. What's your status?
Albert opened his mouth to answer, but then one Agent Teal – Albert didn't know the fellow, but then, contact between Stations, even Stations in the same city, was kept very limited, just in case – appeared on the line and requested reinforcements to section three, and then Patrick came back and ordered Agent Jasmine – this one he did know, Zara was another member of Amalgam 2340 – to take two Superiors and help Teal out, and then Jasmine came back and reported that she had her hands full here, thank you very much, though she put it somewhat more politely than that…
… and all in all, by the time Albert was free to answer Jake, he had already reached Louisa's office.
Normally, it looked a lot like most of the other rooms in the Station; a cubic space with metal sides, the proportions thereof calculated within six decimals to be the smallest ones not to cause a feeling of claustrophobia, furnished with a white plastic desk with a workstation on it, a white plastic chair and little else. Now, however, it looked like a bomb had gone off in here – except that if one had, Albert would have heard it; the Station was big, but not that big. The furniture were half-melted blobs of plastic on the floor, and the workstation was shattered to pieces, scorched bits of chips and wires lying all over the floor.
"Agent Tulip to Agent Daffodil," he said, breathless with equal parts shock and exertion. "There appears to be a hostile in the Station. It attacked Louisa. I don't know where she is now."
Agent Daffodil to… Jake began.
Agent Cerebral to Agents Tulip and Daffodil! Patrick roared. Daffodil, discontinue this conversation and return to your post! Tulip, remove yourself from this frequency immediately! A team will be sent to relieve you as soon as that is strategically possible.
"But!" Albert yelped. He was so not capable of dealing with anything that could do this to a room! He was a communication-and information officer, for crying out loud! As for Louisa – if she was even alive; nothing in here looked like it was part of a person, not even a scorched part, but that didn't mean anything – her speciality was outside liaison. They needed a Jake, or a Zara, or, heck, even a Reynolds would do – at least he knew how to handle an energy weapon. But if Patrick wouldn't send anyone…
And if you ever refer, over an open channel, to a Union agent by anything but their designated codename again, Patrick growled into Albert's unfortunate ear, I will make personally make sure you do nothing but sort data for the rest of your life, Agent!
"That's assuming I get a rest of my life longer than five minutes!" Albert grumbled, but he tongued off his implant before he did so. Thou shalt not screw with thy Supervisor; that wasn't written on any stone tablets – or encoded on any silicone chips, for that matter – but it damn well should be.
Well, then. No backup, and a pissed-off Deviant in the building. No worries. If he couldn't work miracles, he wouldn't be here, right?
Right.
Looking nervously around, Albert set out for Power Station. Maybe whatever had gone wrong there could be fixed. If it could, he would suddenly have access to all sorts of neat little tricks when dealing with this Deviant.
Dregvant… a voice whispered in his ear.
Albert jumped and spun around, but there was no one there.
"Test," he said, but the tone that should have resounded in his ears to show that his implant was active and functional didn't come. So he hadn't forgotten to turn it off, then. Which meant…
Hell knew what it meant, to be honest.
He reached Power Station – a big room, approximately at the centre of the Station, filled with strange machinery – but he saw with a single look that he was too late. The Deviant had been here, too. Reynolds' generators, his Primal Energy solidifiers and his Primal-to-electricity converters, were wrecks of fried circuits and cracked metal.
Another booming explosion that he hadn't heard.
Just what the hell was loose in here, anyway? You could probably do this kind of damage with a blaster – a serious blaster, anyway – but much as he would loved to, he couldn't quite convince himself that this was the work of a guy with a blaster. No, more likely than not he had a Reality Deviant on his hands.
The thought made him very deeply uncomfortable. And why shouldn't it? The very concept of a Deviant was scary, wasn't it? A Deviant was a person who had been Empowered, just as Albert himself – and Louisa, and Jake, and even that miserable bastard Patrick – had been Empowered, but who had, either from the shock of the mental transformation or from the encouragement of other Deviants, had crossed the line between genius and insanity. A Deviant, like a Technocrat, could understand the workings of the world, the intricate interplay of a million different elements, to a degree that no unEmpowered human mind was capable of, and, through that understanding, achieve effects that to the untrained eye would resemble… well, magic.
It wasn't that Albert had a problem with Deviants, really. The Technocracy as a whole had, certainly, but while Albert did believe in the Technocracy, he had always felt that it wouldn't hurt it to mellow out a bit. A lot of the Deviants he had met were nicer than a lot of the Technocrats he had met – he wasn't going to share that one with Patrick or anyone like him, but it was true. But the concept of a Deviant was still scary, and the concept of a hostile Deviant roaming around these corridors…
… well, the word 'terrifying' came to mind.
This Deviant had missed something, though. There was a terminal by the wall, and Albert just so happened to know that this one was powered by the same batteries that ran the emergency lights. It was there so the head of Power Station would have a tool for calculations and simulations and whatnot to help him restore power if it was cut. Albert sat down in front of it and went to work.
Technically speaking, there was no way to direct the electrical currents that ran the emergency lights into any other device. The emergency lights ran on a whole different set of wires than the rest of the building, so that anything that happened to the Station electrical system would not happen to them. But technically speaking, you couldn't bring back data that had been in short-term storage when the power was cut. To the Empowered mind, a whole lot of things that were technically speaking impossible were just interesting challenges.
Besides, he had spent the last few years being responsible for the computer system controlling the Station, just as Reynolds had been responsible for its physical counterpart. Albert and the Station 2340 computer system understood each other.
Somewhere in the facility, a security camera came back online and started transmitting the image it was seeing. It was just an empty stretch of corridor, but Albert still punched the air in triumph. Another miracle worked, as per job description.
He sent the camera back to sleep and activated another, noted that it wasn't showing anything interesting and exchanged it for yet another one. He kept switching, all while the makeshift algorithms he had rigged up to make Station 2340 do what it had never been designed to do kept threatening to run the system outside of perimeters, forcing him to compensate again and again. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
The cleansing fires of Asha will burn you, dregvant… said a voice in his ear.
"Now that's not a very nice thing to say," Albert mumbled and kept working.
There; one of the cameras activated just as a slim figure walked past it. Louisa was blonde, trim and wearing, as per usual, an impeccable business suit. Right now it was a little less impeccable, though; parts of it were smouldering. She looked shocked, and scared, but composed. There wasn't a whole lot that could make Louisa become less than composed.
Albert checked the position of the camera, then entered a few more commands into the computer, where after it shut down. He left the levelled Power Central with long steps.
He found Louisa quickly enough, or at least, it didn't take too long for her to jump out from behind a corner and hit him over the head with a flashlight.
"Aoch," Albert said reproachfully and rubbed his head. Luckily, Louisa wasn't that much of a slugger. It had been a fairly inefficient blow, and besides, it wasn't a very big flashlight. Even so, he was getting a bump out of this one.
"Sorry," Louisa said. She didn't sound too apologetic, though. It wasn't in her nature. "I thought you were her."
"The Deviant," Albert said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah." Louisa scowled. "One moment I'm sitting at my desk, and the next this girl in an Arabian Nights outfit stroll in and throws fire at me." She put her hands on opposite shoulders, hugging herself. "I was lucky to get out of there alive. If it hadn't taken her so long to get another shot ready…" She growled. "Fucking lunatic!"
Albert didn't object to that description.
"I've called for backup," he said, "but our fearless leader told me that we'll get it when he's good and ready and no sooner."
"He would," Louise muttered. "Well, fine, let's get out of here."
"Uh, I'm not sure we can, actually," Albert said. "Aren't the outer doors supposed to lock themselves automatically when power goes out in here? There's a battery-powered opening mechanism, too, but it has to be accessed from the outside."
"What?" Louisa said. "What for? That locks the thing that broke the power in, sure, but it locks all operatives in, too!"
"Well," Albert said, "I think the idea is that either the operatives can deal with the enemies, or the enemies will be blown to pieces when the Supervisor triggers the explosives under the Station – and blowing a an enemy force to pieces that was large enough that a whole Station's worth of operatives couldn't deal with them isn't too bad an outcome, either."
"What explosives under the Station?" Louisa said, somewhat wild-eyed. "I didn't know there were explosives under the Station!"
"Never mind," Albert said. "You're pretty good at that super-psychology stuff, aren't you? Here's what we're going to do…"
The Deviant didn't take very long to find them. Albert hadn't really expected her to. That voice whispering in his ear belonged to her, one way or another… and that meant that she had been keeping tabs on him. Seen everything he had done.
He could only hope that she hadn't understood it all, too.
The woman was in her early twenties, tall and elegant, with blonde hair that fell in a long braid down from under a turban. She was wearing puffy trousers, an embroidered vest and shoes with curled toes. Albert could see what Louisa had meant. Arabian Nights, indeed.
She didn't carry any weapons except for a crooked knife at her belt, but she was holding a cupper flask in a way that suggested she took it very seriously. Albert would have laughed, had he not been out in the field often enough to know what Deviants could do with seemingly insane tools. For an Empowered mind, anything could be made reality, from the ordered vision of the Technocracy to the sickest fever dream of the craziest Deviant. You just had to figure out how.
"Greetings," the Deviant said.
Prepare to die, dregvant, the voice said in his ear. The Deviant sighed and facepalmed.
"Okay, George, you can quit it now," she said. "I mean, come on, don't you have any sense of drama? I'm standing right in front of them. That's supposed to be the scary thing here. You whispering in their ears was just something to get them as shook up as possible before getting to this."
Sorry, George the disembodied voice said.
Louisa slumped her shoulders ever so slightly, and exhaled slowly through her nose.
"You're that carpet-flying lady who Zara chased through town last week, aren't you?" Albert said.
"I am indeed," the Deviant said brightly. "So her name's Zara, huh? Can you believe that she was shooting at me when I was right between her and a bunch of innocent bystanders?" She shook her head disapprovingly. "I'd tell you to have a firm word with her the next time you see her, except you'll never see her again. You know, on account of I'm going to kill you and all."
The corners of Louisa's mouth twitched, as if she was actually finding the stupid joke funny.
"But we're innocent bystanders too," Albert said earnestly.
"No, you're not," the Deviant said firmly. "You're dregvanti. You're liars, deceivers, impostors, traitors, tricksters and dishonest good-for-nothings."
Louisa crossed her arms over her chest and gave the Deviant a stern look.
"How did you get in here?" Albert said. "Come to think of it, how did you know where to find us in the first place?"
The Deviant seemed to be having a hard time tearing her eyes away from Louisa, but she turned her head and smiled tightly at Albert.
"One has ways," she said.
Louisa shifted her weight, as if she was uncomfortable.
"You might as well tell us," she said. Her voice was low, calm and void of emotion. It sounded like she was talking to herself. "We're going to die anyway."
"I… guess so…" the Deviant said hesitantly. Then she shook her head. "No! No, if I do that, your spirits might come back and tell your friends. No, that won't do." She lifted the bottle. "Good-bye, dregvanti."
Louisa drew herself up with a jerk, like she had almost fallen asleep where she stood.
"We don't deserve to be killed that way," she said in the same neutral voice. "It's too good for dregvanti. We should be killed by our own dirty machines."
"… yes…" the Deviant said dimly.
Louisa's expression turned vague, sleepy.
"There are explosives under the floor," she said, "waiting to be triggered. If you went away from here and then did it from a distance…"
"Yes… yes," the Deviant said, nodding quickly. A smile was spreading on her lips, and her eyes were shining. "I'll just…"
She spoke a long rant in some foreign language, and suddenly faded away like she had never been there. The Technocrats remained silent for a little while, just in case she might come back. Then Albert turned to Louisa.
"Nice job," he said matter-of-factly.
Louisa shrugged.
"It's just body language," she said in her normal voice. "If I synch it perfectly with hers, then she loses the ability to tell where she ends and I begin, so whenever I say something, it's like it's her thinking it. So I did my part. Will your part work?"
"We'll know in a few minutes," Albert said. "When she's done working whatever hodgepodge she thinks is going to detonate those bombs."
"What's going to happen then?" Louisa said.
"Well, if all goes right," Albert said, "the process I started in the computer system is going to give her, or anyone else who tries to meddle with those bombs, one hell of a feedback. It should knock her out for a while."
"And if all doesn't go right?" Louisa said.
"Oh, then the bombs go off and we die quickly but painfully," Albert said, deadpan. "But I'm almost sure that won't happen."
Louisa glared at him, but he just looked back at her peacefully until she gave up.
"Wait a minute," she said. "What if Farson decides we're a liability and sets off those bombs himself? Won't that hit him with that feedback?"
Albert shrugged.
"Well, it's not like the computer knows one person from another."
"Oh." Slowly, Louisa started to grin. "What a shame that would be…"