Chapter 26: Trust Exercises
Despite the Warehouse having three full-fledged agents, Rios still felt like he was on babysitting duty half the time. Like now, when he, Raffi, Soji, and Elnor were on their way to Seattle to investigate a pilot suddenly forgetting how to fly a plane while in midair. Elnor was definitely the one they were keeping a close eye on, but Rios also felt a certain big brother protectiveness of Soji with her young age, so really it felt like he and Raffi were two parents with teenage tag-alongs.
They arrived at the Seattle hospital where the pilot had been admitted as a patient after his lapse.
"Elnor, sweetie," Raffi said, "maybe we leave the katana in the car this time."
Elnor pursed his mouth unhappily. "You are all armed."
"With Teslas," Soji pointed out. "They only stun, not decapitate."
"Do I get one?"
The three agents shared a look at that. They hadn't given the kid access to anything related to the Warehouse.
"We'll talk about it after this case," Raffi said. "But this is a hospital, you really don't need a weapon."
Elnor still looked disgruntled but didn't argue as he put his sword in the back of the SUV. Then they headed inside and upstairs to where the pilot was being kept, showing their badges to the nurse's station and asking to speak with the attending physician. They then found the pilot in his room, coloring in a coloring book.
"I'm Dr. Talmudge," a man in a white coat introduced as he came over. "How can I help you?"
"We've been asked to look into the case," Rios answered. "Pilots don't typically forget how to fly a plane while in the cockpit. There's concern this won't be an isolated incident."
Raffi nodded to said pilot in his room. "What's with this?"
The doctor shook his head regretfully. "This man, who has a degree in aeronautical engineering, thought he was in college yesterday and today thinks he's five years old. It's some sort of accelerated Alzheimer's."
"Do you know what triggered it?" Rios asked.
"I'm afraid not. None of our tests have come back positive for anything wrong. We're testing for genetic disposition, but those results take longer."
And given the rate of regression, they might be too late. This definitely could be an artifact.
A nurse came hurrying over at that moment. "Dr. Talmudge, excuse the interruption, but we've just had a similar incident to your patient. One of our surgeons was in the middle of performing surgery when she suddenly freaked out. By the time they got her out of there, she claimed to have no memory of going to med school."
Dr. Talmudge stiffened. "Is she being transferred to this unit?"
The nurse nodded. "I'll let the staff know to bring her here."
"What about the patient she was supposed to operate on?" Soji asked. "Are they okay?"
"They almost died, but we were able to get an on call doctor in there," the nurse replied.
"Did this surgeon have any interaction with our pilot here?" Raffi asked.
Dr. Talmudge frowned. "No. Besides, Alzheimer's isn't contagious."
Rios and Raffi just shared a knowing look; a normal form of Alzheimer's wasn't contagious.
The agents went to find a quiet place to talk while the doctors dealt with their latest patient. Raffi pulled out her Farnsworth and called up the Warehouse.
"You rang?" Steward answered primly.
"We need you to look into the paper trails of two amnesiac victims," she said. "The pilot, and now a Dr. Susan Tatum."
The hologram didn't say anything, but the rapid flickering in his eyes showed he was working on it.
Elnor leaned toward Rios and asked, "You have a twin?"
He grimaced. "No. I have…copies. It was an accident."
"They're holograms," Soji told him.
Elnor arched a brow. "There's more than one?"
"Unfortunately," Rios muttered.
"I found a commonality in their credit card charges," Steward said. "Multiple for Dr. Tatum but only one recently for the pilot. It's for a coffee shop on Canal Street."
"I'll check it out," Rios said.
"Take Elnor," Raffi added quickly.
Rios paused awkwardly. "It's basically grunt work."
"Right, and he's the initiated grunt."
Rios flicked an uncomfortable look at the kid, who looked nervously hopeful, almost like a kicked puppy dog. Rios sighed and beckoned for him to come. "We're still leaving the sword in the car."
Elnor nodded eagerly and they headed down to the SUV, leaving Raffi and Soji to look into what artifacts were associated with memory loss.
"I know you don't trust me," Elnor said on the drive downtown. "But I assure you, I will not betray you."
Rios flexed his hand around the steering wheel. "Trust has to be earned over time."
Elnor lowered his head. "That's what Raffi said."
An awkward silence filled the SUV.
"Look," Rios said, "I don't harbor any ill feelings toward you. You're young and you got mixed up with the wrong people. But that doesn't mean you don't still have to make up for it."
"I understand, and I will," Elnor vowed.
They didn't say anything more as they pulled up outside the coffee shop. Rios pulled out his phone to show the barista pictures of the two victims.
"Don't know the guy," the barista said. "But she's tall mint tea every Wednesday afternoon. Don't know anything else about her, though."
"Was she meeting someone every Wednesday?" Rios asked.
"Nope, always came in alone and got the tea to go."
Rios put his phone away. "Thanks."
He and Elnor exited the shop and stood on the sidewalk.
"Now what?" Elnor asked.
Rios was busy scanning the surrounding buildings. "This shop isn't anywhere close to the surgeon's home and place of work, so why come all the way out here for a mint tea from a chain shop? If it wasn't to meet someone, then she probably had other business in the area."
He pulled out his Farnsworth next to call the Warehouse. Enoch answered the other line.
"How may I be of service?"
"I need you to get into security camera footage for the area we're in for Wednesday afternoons and see if you can track our surgeon's movements."
"Aye-aye," Enoch replied.
"This one has an Irish accent," Elnor remarked.
"There's also English, Scottish, and Chilean," the holo replied jovially. "We haven't been formally introduced, I'm Enoch."
"We're on a time table here," Rios interrupted tersely.
Enoch shook his head in fond exasperation and returned to work.
"This seems…awkward," Elnor went on.
"It is," Rios said.
"Here," the holo declared a moment later. "I found footage of your victim entering this building. More than that, I can't say." He sent the address through the Farnsworth.
Rios looked up and down the street for it. When he spotted it, he said a curt thanks and hung up, then looked both ways before crossing the street. Elnor hurried after him. It was a business complex, and Rios scanned the name plates on the directory. There were a couple of dentist offices—that wouldn't be every week like clockwork. Paralegal offices…also not likely to be so regular. A therapist, however, fit the bill.
"This one," Rios said, pointing to the directory.
"How do you know?" Elnor asked.
Rios explained his reasoning as they headed for the office of a Dr. Talia Richards. He paused outside the door and added, "Let me do the talking."
Elnor nodded, taking the directive seriously.
Dr. Richards's practice looked like a small one; she didn't even have a receptionist. They stood in the waiting room outside her office until her door opened and a patient exited.
"Dr. Richards?" Rios asked, pulling out his badge. "I'm Agent Rios with the FBI. I have some questions about someone who might be a patient of yours."
The woman faltered. "Oh, all right, come in."
They entered her office and she shut the door. "I have another patient coming in ten minutes. How can I help you?"
"Is Dr. Susan Tatum a patient of yours?" Rios asked.
Dr. Richards hesitated enough to confirm it. "If she was, you have to know that doctor/patient confidentiality prevents me from discussing anything about them."
"I do know that, but Dr. Tatum is very sick with an unusual condition, and we're trying to determine whether it could have been maliciously induced."
Dr. Richards's eyes widened. "Oh my. Well, then, yes, she was in this office—I'm neither confirming nor denying as a patient."
"Understood. Did she have any interaction with another person while here? Another patient in the waiting room?"
Dr. Richards pursed her mouth. "That's getting into a very gray area, Agent Rios."
"I understand, but this is very important. What about where Dr. Tatum went before or after her sessions? In this neighborhood specifically?"
She shook her head regretfully. "I'm sorry, I don't know."
Rios pulled out his phone to show her a picture of the pilot. "Have you seen this man in the area?"
Dr. Richards's eyes widened. "Um, yes, he was here a couple days ago."
Rios straightened. So they were on the right track. "Another patient?"
"He- he was several months ago," Dr. Richards responded hesitantly. "He came by to touch base. Is he sick too?" she asked concernedly.
"Yes, and we need to find the cause. Have you recently come into possession of any antiques?" Rios asked.
Her mouth moved soundlessly as she gestured helplessly at her office decor, which was all vintage style, though whether they were replicas or actual antiques required closer examination.
"Why are you asking about antiques?" she asked as she nervously fingered her shirt collar.
"Our department deals with toxic or contaminated artifacts," Rios replied. He nodded to Elnor, and the two of them began to survey the various objects. "Is anything here new?"
"Um, the lamp set."
The outer office door opened as the next patient arrived.
"Excuse me," Dr. Richards said and quickly went out to greet them.
Rios immediately pulled on his purple gloves and went to the lamps. He handed Elnor another pair to put on, then pulled out a large neutralizing bag. He stretched the opening wide and nodded for Elnor to stuff the first lamp in. But there were no purple sparks. They did the same with the second lamp, also to no effect.
Elnor frowned. "Are these not the artifact, then?"
Rios also frowned. "No."
They moved around the office, picking up the various other vintage decorations and testing them in the neutralizing baggie. Most of them were knockoffs and didn't give off any electrostatic sparks. Which put the agents back to square one.
Dr. Richards poked her head in. "Um, my next patient is here. Is my office safe?"
"It appears so," Rios answered and hastily removed his gloves. "Sorry for alarming you." He pulled out his card to hand her. "If you think of anything else, let us know."
She nodded, still looking apprehensive as Rios and Elnor left.
"If the artifact wasn't in the doctor's office where the two victims were, where would they have come into contact with it?" Elnor asked.
Rios shook his head, at a loss again. "We'll have to keep looking around the neighborhood."
"Grunt work," the kid repeated Rios's earlier words.
"Yeah, but still important."
Unfortunately, their search didn't uncover anything, and Enoch's perusal of security camera footage from surrounding buildings didn't yield any clues either.
Rios's Farnsworth chimed and he pulled it out to answer.
"Another patient has been brought in with the same symptoms," Raffi said without preamble. "A twenty-two-year-old who already thinks he's two. He's got fewer years to regress through."
"Any connection to a Dr. Talia Richards whose office is located across from the coffee shop our other two victims visited?" Rios asked.
"One moment," Emil chimed in, having been conferenced in.
"Who's this Dr. Richards?" Raffi asked, and Rios filled them in on what they'd found in the therapist's office, or lack of anything.
"There is no record of the third victim being treated by her," Emil came back. "Nor is there record of him visiting the same coffee shop, though he could have paid in cash. We're reviewing surrounding security footage again."
"His apartment is only a few miles from where you're at," Soji spoke up.
"We'll check it out," Rios replied and hung up. His phone vibrated with a text of the address a second later.
So he and Elnor headed back to the SUV to make the drive. Halfway there, however, Rios suddenly felt a strange flush of confusion. The vehicle started to swerve, and he jerked it back into its lane with a jolt. What the…
"Agent Rios, are you all right?"
He startled and whipped his head to the side to find some punk kid in the passenger seat. Rios slammed on the brakes. The car behind him blared its horn, but he ignored it.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
The kid furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"
Rios looked around frantically. This looked like an agency SUV, but he couldn't remember where he was going—or what city this even was. "What the hell is going on?"
"Oh no," the kid breathed, looking shocked. "I don't understand—there was no artifact."
"Artifact?" Rios repeated. "What are you talking about?"
The kid's expression turned gravely serious. "Agent Rios, I know you're confused right now, but you need to trust me. Give me your Farnsworth."
"My what?"
"It looks like a large tin. It's in your jacket pocket."
Rios shook his head dubiously. He didn't know what was going on, but he was going to find out. He dug in his pockets for his cell to call Vandermeer and pulled out both his phone and a strange device. The kid in the passenger seat reached for it, and Rios jerked back against the door. The kid immediately raised his hands non-threateningly.
"We're working on a case," he said. "And you got exposed to something that's messing with your memory."
Rios narrowed his eyes skeptically. That sounded preposterous…and yet how could he not know where he was or how he'd gotten there?
"Please," the kid continued. "Just trust me."
"I don't even know you."
"Not very well, no. We just started working together. But I've been learning a lot from you, Agent Rios."
Well, the kid knew his name…
"Including that trust has to be earned," he went on. "But, sometimes trust also has to be given in faith."
Rios hesitated uncertainly but eventually decided to hand over the strange tin. When the kid opened the lid and a young woman's face filled the shimmering dome inside, Rios gaped in stupefaction.
"That was fast," the girl said. "Did you find something?"
"Agent Rios is losing his memory," the kid said urgently. "But I have no idea how he could have been exposed or to what."
"Shit. The artifact must have a delayed effect."
Another woman appeared next to the first. "Get him to the hospital, ASAP."
The kid nodded and disconnected the call. He then looked at Rios with a grimace. "Do you mind switching places so I can drive?"
Rios didn't like the sound of any of this, but it seemed oddly legit…so against his better judgement, he consented to trust this complete stranger with the cosplay hair.
Elnor stood outside the hospital room Rios had been admitted to. He couldn't believe this had happened; he'd been with Rios the entire time! How could he have come into contact with the artifact and Elnor didn't?
The seasoned agent had already regressed to a belligerent teenager and was arguing with Raffi, who was trying to calm him down. After a few more moments, she came back out to join the rest of them in the hall where Soji had Picard on the Farnsworth.
"Got anything?" Raffi asked agitatedly.
"I didn't see anything out of the ordinary," Elnor responded. "And we tested everything in the therapist's office. I don't know how this happened!"
"We know, kid," Raffi assured him. "JL?"
"We found a few artifacts associated with memory," he answered and held up some pictures to the lens.
Elnor straightened with recognition. "The tie clip! The therapist was wearing it." He frowned. "But if that's the artifact, why wasn't I affected?"
"Are you sure she was wearing this exact piece?" Picard asked.
"Yes," he insisted.
She must have been so flustered by their visit that she'd forgotten to tell them about it.
"Walter Winchell's Tie Clip and Cufflinks," Picard said. "The clip is activated when the wearer asks a question and the person answers."
"Agent Rios told me to let him do all the talking," Elnor said.
"Did she ask him anything that he answered?" Raffi checked.
He nodded. "She asked if the pilot was sick and why we were asking about artifacts. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Soji told him. "Finding artifacts isn't an exact science."
"We need to find that therapist and that tie clip," Raffi said. "The pilot is now on life support. His involuntary systems have begun to shut down, like his brain has literally forgotten how to keep the body alive."
"That's exactly what's happening," Picard replied. "But neutralizing the tie clip won't reverse the effects. Only the companion cufflinks can."
"Then let's get back to her office," Raffi responded.
"Actually," the Rios hologram with the Irish accent piped up. "You don't need to. I just found her entering the hospital."
"What?"
Soji's eyes widened. "What if she knows what the artifact does and is coming to finish the job before we can stop her?"
"Like hell," Raffi swore and took off down the hall.
Elnor and Soji hurried after her. Since the pilot was the first victim, Raffi made a beeline for his room where they found Dr. Richards standing over the man's bed with the tie clip in her hand.
"Stop!" Raffi yelled, pulling out her Tesla gun.
The woman startled and threw her hands up, dropping the tie clip on the floor. "I'm sorry," she blubbered in distress. "I didn't know this would happen."
Soji darted in to snatch up the tie clip and dumped it in a neutralizing baggie.
"I was trying to fix it," Dr. Richards continued to exclaim.
"Then where are the cufflinks?" Raffi demanded.
Her brow furrowed in confusion. "What?"
"The matching cufflinks are the only way to reverse this."
Dr. Richards's eyes widened. "I didn't know. They must be in one of the boxes I just inherited from my parents. You have to believe me, I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
"She's telling the truth," Elnor informed the others.
Raffi hesitated a beat before lowering her stun gun. "Alright, then let's go find those cufflinks."
They all accompanied the therapist to her home where she had several unmarked boxes filled with old things.
"If you didn't intend to hurt these people, what did you intend?" Elnor asked curiously as he dug through one of the boxes.
"I knew the family legacy of Walter Winchell and how he had a way of getting the truth from people, and then what his tie clip was capable of," she replied, still distraught. "I thought I could use it to help my patients by making them forget their trauma so they could resume their lives. I had no idea it would erase more than that."
"You were trying to erase bad memories?" Raffi repeated dubiously.
She nodded. "The pilot, he was involved in a plane going off the runway into the ocean a couple of years ago. I was brought in as a crisis counselor through NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness."
"Explains why there was no record of him as her patient," Soji put in under her breath.
Dr. Richards frowned at that but continued, "He came by earlier this week to thank me for my help, but also that he couldn't take the anxiety of being a pilot anymore. That was his life's dream, his career. I just wanted to help him. And Susan Tatum, she couldn't seem to move forward after her husband's death. I really thought the tie clip would only erase those horrible memories."
"You do realize how disastrous that could turn out even if you were right," Soji pointed out. "I watched my father and sister die when I was a kid. And yeah, that was a horrible thing to bear, but to forget they were dead and not know where they were? Or that I ever loved them? That'd be worse."
Dr. Richards did look very remorseful over it.
"What about Mike Garcia?" Soji asked next.
Dr. Richards's expression crumpled as she remembered another of her victims. "I talked to him in a bar after work. He was struggling with addiction. God, I thought I was helping them."
"And yet you used it on Agent Rios when he came to question you," Raffi said tartly.
The woman blanched. "I didn't mean to! I was going to use it on my next patient, but your visit caught me off guard and I didn't realize I had it on…but as soon as I heard the others were sick, I took it off!"
"Found them!" Elnor declared and held up the matching cufflinks.
They hurried back to the hospital with them and went to the pilot first. Raffi held the cufflinks in one hand and prized the man's eyelids open with the other so he could "gaze" at them. There was a shimmer of light in his eyes, and then he blinked, quickly followed by panic as he fought the breathing tube.
"You're going to be okay," Raffi told him and dashed from the room.
They all followed as she went to the surgeon next, then the kid, and finally Rios. With a simple look at the cufflinks, he was restored just like the others.
"Mierda," he muttered, looking down at himself wearing a hospital gown.
"You okay?" Raffi asked. "You know who were are?"
Rios gave an unsteady nod. "Yeah, I'm good."
"I'm so sorry," the therapist started to apologize again, and Raffi and Soji turned to lead her out.
Elnor lingered. "I'm sorry too," he said when it was just him and Rios. "I didn't have your back out there."
Rios quirked a brow at him. "Neither of us realized what the artifact was. That happens in this job."
"Still, I wanted to prove myself to you. Prove that you could trust me in the field."
Rios considered him for a beat. "Sometimes trust also has to be given in faith," he said.
Elnor furrowed his brows in confusion.
"I remember what you said," Rios went on. "And you were right. If I could trust a strange punk-ass kid I'd never seen before, I think I can trust a certain Qowat Milat warrior who's done the right thing when it counted."
Elnor didn't know what to say, but he inwardly beamed and inclined his head in gratitude.