Chapter 6: Confusion
"Hey brother."
The Debugger looked up from a dice game. "Delete."
AGENT walked back in the shop. "That wasn't very nice."
"Delete."
AGENT walked back in the shop. "I'm getting tired of this. I only have so many drones available, you know."
"I know. So DELETE goddamn it!"
AGENT deflected the burst of code instead of absorbing it, as he normally would have done. "What've I done?"
The Debugger buried his face in his hands. "Architect help me… I can't deal with psychos anymore!"
AGENT took a seat. "What happened?"
"I had to inform Theta, Kirke and Davies of their new function." The Debugger took off his glasses. "They reacted EXACTLY as I suspected they would. Even WITH the "fate-acceptance" protocols I hit them up with while they were under."
"Lemme guess. Theta yelled. Kirke glowered. And Davies just looked at you silently with those creepy eyes of his."
"I hate you because you think you know everything."
"I DO know everything." AGENT picked up a D20 from the bin next to the Debugger's station. "I noticed you haven't deleted me again yet."
"I'm tired and it takes effort."
"I could fix that."
"Stay out of my code you son-of-a-bitch or I'll rip apart your firewall and bring the Guardians down on your head."
AGENT wisely became silent. The Debugger threw his glasses down on the table and glowered.
"This is all your fault."
The renegade program didn't try to deny it. "It's a good idea, and you know it."
"That's why I'm mad. You're not supposed to have good ideas. You're fucking insane." He took the D20 from AGENT and rolled it a few times for something to do with his hands.
Watching the die, AGENT began altering its colors, turning it from plain white and black to a lovely opalescent purple. Normally the Debugger would have found this infuriating, but the color changes were slow and subtle and seemed to soothe him. AGENT prided himself on his alliterative thoughts. "Is it working?"
"We'll find out soon. They're on their first mission now."
"Awesome."
"If you cause trouble for them..."
"I won't, I swear." AGENT stood. "I'll be going now. You look like you need some serious downtime."
The Debugger looked startled. AGENT had never shown any form of understanding for him before. "...Thank you?"
His "brother" smiled and walked out of the shop.
The black sedan slithered through traffic, guided by Agent Davies's expert hands. The silence filling the vehicle was tense, resting heavy in the air like the smoke from Theta's cigarettes.
"Fuck."
This from Kirke, the Oldschool combat Agent.
"Fucking A'."
This from Theta, the Newstyle leader Agent.
A grimace from Davies, the silent driver.
"How long will it be?" Kirke asked, his voice seeming unnaturally loud. His new partners made him nervous. Theta was disturbingly powerful and Davies was just......... disturbing.
Theta took a long drag from his cigarette before answering. "Unless it shifts again, we'll be entering the Anomaly in approximately three minutes."
The car swung onto the exit ramp, a minute discrepancy in Davies' usually impeccable driving communicated his feelings about the matter.
"I don't like it." Kirke growled. "I don't like it."
"None of us do." Theta put out what was left of his cigarette and lit another one. "It's not nice to be thought of as expendable. Unappreciated."
"Buggy." Summed up Kirke. "A bunch of glitches, us."
"Speak for yourself, Kirke. My records clean as a whistle." Theta took another pull from the cigarette. "Cleaner maybe."
All three Agents went silent at once as they entered the Anomaly.
Contact with the Mainframe went dead immediately.
Davies shuddered so hard that his car almost careened into the concrete barriers at the roadside.
Kirke swore under his breath, clutching his ribcage as if he'd taken a sledgehammer to the chest.
Theta went white and dropped his cigarette.
"...Fucking hell." Whispered Davies. "Fucking... fucking bloody hell."
Della wrote poetry when she was bored.
It never was very good, but she told herself that in a few years she would look back on them and revise them into something beautiful.
Wishful thinking.
She lives within:
A world of glass and artifice.
Hands brushing windows into new realms,
Seeing the sane
The ordinary.
She appreciated the use of forms, but became frustrated with them quickly. Her free verse, while not masterful, seemed more honest to her than her form poetry.
She lives without:
A world of mass and matter.
Fingers light-tapping a window into herself,
Seeking the exotic
The bizarre.
I wouldn't mind a little bizarreositude around here at times. Della looked up at the ceiling. Suburban Maryland is a little TOO, if you know what I mean.
Della Roberts was the average teenage girl. She was 5'5" and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 pounds. Short blond hair curved around a round face with a weakish chin, a slender, pointed nose, and blue-green eyes. A modest scattering of freckles graced her cheeks during the summer, and she was seeing a dermatologist about her acne. She wrote poetry and short skits in her free time. She sang well, but was too lazy to take lessons, and her complete inability to dance kept her out of school musicals.
She was also an avid science fiction fan, which explained her taste for hanging out with geeks like Jaydeb and Mike.
She stood and paced, mumbling possible lines of dialogue for a story she wanted to write. Her hands fluttered restlessly.
"I need air." She said with a certain amount of finality, cutting off the imaginary conversation. "I need something to do." It struck her that a walk around Centennial Lake would be a wonderful occupation for a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of summer vacation.
She grabbed a bottle of water to keep the worst of the heat at bay, left a note for her sister, and set out.
"Smoke him out." Hissed Kirke, a manic glint in his eye. "Smoke the son of a glitch out."
"Not yet." Theta's alabaster skin was flushed with the stress of performing without Mainframe assistance. Physically, it wasn't difficult. The strain was in his mind.
They were tracking down a renegade Agent, previously designated Agent Robertson. The experimental Gamma units had chased him into the Anomaly, but the female Agents were considered vastly too unstable to risk continuing the chase. Robertson was considered extremely dangerous and they were to shoot to kill before asking questions.
Unfortunately, Robertson was intelligent enough to hide in the residential districts. Theta cursed under his breath. Normally the high population would be to their benefit, but denied of their ability to Jump, the Agents were forced to remain as hidden as possible.
"This place is so close to Wizards." Murmured Theta. "How is the Anomaly so strong?"
Davies lifted a hand off of the steering wheel, a gentle shrug. His blue-blue eyes scanned the area for a parking space. Kirke shivered involuntarily as those eyes passed over him.
They managed to remain inconspicuous through most of their search. Robertson was always kept in sight, but the frustrating presence of suburban children prevented them from just shooting the bastard.
"He's going to the lake." Theta sped up, his long legs covering the ground easily. Davies and Kirke started jogging alongside him. He reflected that they might enjoy the exercise had they not been forced into the Anomaly.
Robertson started sprinting as soon as he hit the paved path around Centennial Lake.
His pursuers followed suit before they could even think about it, their combat programming overriding conscious thought. They became blurs of white and black death.
Theta got to Robertson first, a knife sliced through the place where Robertson's throat had been a microsecond before.
The rogue dodged a second knife, three bullets from Kirke's gun, and tripped over a terrified girl on the path. She screamed, an earsplitting, inhuman sound, and attempted
to kick her way out of the battle.
She managed to get clear seconds before Robertson drew his gun on the Agents.
Bang.
Damn, that's loud. She covered her ears, remembering for some ungodly reason that a gunshot like that can cause instant damage to the ears. Other places as well. She screamed again as one of the men fell on top of her. Oh god I don't wanna die...Oh Jesus!
Another gunshot. The man was shouting something at her, trying to tell her something. He wanted her to run.
Another gunshot. He stopped shouting and started shooting back.
"RUN, YOU STUPID BATTERY!"
She started running as fast as she could away from the fight. The sound of gunshots followed her, but none of the bullets were meant for her. Della stopped by a tree to catch her breath, the battle now well out of sight.
...What....what in the hell were they?
She sank to the ground, hands covering her mouth. They wore suits. CIA? FBI? NSA? KGB? None of those sounded at all promising. Why would government agents be in Howard County, Maryland of all places?
Then again... if you were on the run from THE MAN, you'd go to a completely nondescript place too, wouldn't you? Yeah, I thought so.
The gunshots stopped and another, masculine scream split the air.
Ofuck
AN: And that's the end of chapter six, folks! I've actually got things worked out now, how things are going to go for our dear Agents and our not-quite-a-Mary-Sue. Merry Christmas!