Chapter 4: Valerie

It had been a slow day at the office for Valerie Kane. It was her first day back on duty and she'd spent it stuck behind a bench filling in forms, filing forms, reading more forms and finally ploughing through the mountain of paperwork that had stacked up in her in tray. Her hand drifted down to her side. The stitches were out. The wound was healing nicely. Her doctor was happy with her progress. The obligatory psych eval had been done and passed. She'd been cleared for duty. It still itched though.

Her thoughts, bored with the sight of yet more paper and longing for a new case to distract her mind, meandered back to her debriefing this morning. It wasn't so much that she had been ordered to keep the details of 'the incident' under wraps: that was normal in her line of work. Nor was it the feeling that somebody higher up was keeping things under wraps even from her: that too was normal. Instead, it was the nagging feeling that something about the whole thing was about to come back and bite her on the ass. Last time it had been a 'small' claw in her side and that had hurt enough.

Sure enough, as the day wore on and the office emptied, she heard a familiar and long awaited tread behind her, followed by a tap on the wall of her cubical.

"You got a minute, Agent Kane?"

Valerie turned on her chair. "Sure Ma'am. Here?"

"My office. We have company waiting."

Valerie rose, wincing, and followed her boss through the maze of cubicles to the enclosed office at the far end of the room. The blinds were already down. As the two women entered, a seated man looked round. He seemed nervous. Valerie noted the glasses hooked into the top of his V-neck sweater, the greying hair, the pad in one hand, mechanical pencil stopped in mid-twirl in the other.

"Agent Kane, please have a seat," her boss began, waving a hand in the vague direction of the only other chair in the office. "I would like you to meet Doctor John Foster. Doctor Foster has consulted for us on a number of occasions previously and has the same clearance level as yourself. You may speak freely before him, and he before you likewise. He is to be your new partner for the duration of the assignment."

"With all due respect, ma'am, isn't it a little fast to be assigning me a new partner?" Valerie frowned. "Mitchell was only buried last Tuesday!"

"Trevor Mitchell was a good man and a good agent," was the dispassionate reply, "but a situation has arisen and the two of you are the people most suited to the job. Like it or not, agent, we need you on this assignment, you need a partner, and Doctor Foster is, at present, the best man for the job. He's not had your training, I'll admit, but he has a unique insight into the case that is essential for its handling."

"I-I know I don't seem like much, Agent Kane," stammered the voice of the good doctor beside her. "A-and I know I cannot replace your previous partner, nor am I trying to, but I would like to help you prevent what happened to him happening to anyone else, if possible."

Valerie Kane looked back to her boss. "So that's the assignment? One government agent and one scientist on a giant monster hunt to save the world? I know we've had our funding cut, but isn't that a bit resource deficient?"

"On the contrary," said the older woman. "You will find you have an entire team and indeed and entire building at your disposal. You may, by now, have realised that we have been aware of the problem for some time, as have our counterparts across the pond. They have been good enough to share some of their knowledge with us. Although we do not believe for a second that we know everything they know, it has been enough to construct some... devices that will help you, and enough information to allow the doctor here to begin researching others."

"Help us do what, exactly?" Valerie asked.

"Study the incursions. Contain their... impact. Perhaps work out how to control, or even stop, the phenomenon altogether." Two slim folders were passed over the desk to Valerie and the doctor. "You will find everything you need to know in here. Some you already know, some Doctor Foster already knows. By the end of it, you will each know the same facts at least. On the first page you will find the co-ordinates of your new base of operations, followed by a list of personnel assigned to the project. All requisitions will come to myself alone, through you, Agent Kane. I expect a weekly report, and not from the new stations. I suggest, if you have finished dealing with your overflowing desk, you make your way there and familiarise yourself with the details. I should add that, while you will be overseeing the assignment as a whole, Doctor Foster has authority over research and development, and any other scientific issues. You may wish to stop off at home and pack a bag: there are sleeping quarters there for all staff and I believe your room is quite spacious. They were only meant for occasional use, but I do believe some of the staff have made them quite personal."

Valerie remained silent for a moment, her mouth paused in the middle of framing her next word. She took a breath and picked up the folder. She nodded silently and levered herself upright, tightening her jaw against the pain in her side. She looked over at her new partner. He had copied her actions and was watching her patiently.

"I'm taking my car," she said. "Do you need a lift?"

"I'm good," he replied. "I'll meet you there."

She nodded and left.

"Are you sure you are ready for this doctor?"

Doctor John Foster turned back to the enigmatic woman seated on the far side of the desk.

"I don't think anyone is ready for this, ma'am," he replied, "But I think I at least know what I'm not ready for!"

XXXX

Valerie opened the door to her apartment and headed for the bedroom. She already had a basic overnight bag in the back of her car, but all agents had that so she had to believe the suggestion had meant she would be needing a more substantial kit bag. She hauled a case out from the top of the wardrobe packing sensible shoes and a pair of boots first, stuffed and padded with a few personal items. The usual kit list went on top of that, although she took care to include some all weather clothes as well as her spare suit and a series of well folded shirts. It would be safe to assume from the information she had that she would have to be prepared for any eventuality, so she packed accordingly and for a long stay.

Half an hour later she was on her way. The co-ordinates had been programmed into her sat nav and the quickest route selected. It was going to be a long drive, so she had stocked the car with food, coffee, water and her iPod. The rise and fall of the prelude to Suite Bergamasque drowned out the gentle drone of the engine and the rumble of passing traffic. She turned out of her street and headed East.

By the time she first saw her new base, she had almost exhausted her entire Debussy collection. It could only be the base: there were no other buildings within sight. At first glance it looked like a ruined church, the setting moon casting an eerie light through an empty bell tower. Sure enough, the sat nav led her to the tall double door of the church. A weathered statue at the apex of the doorway, and a faded sign on the door itself, proclaimed the building dedicated to Saints Christopher and Francis. An odd pairing, she thought, but perhaps the more recent, though still abandoned, monastic buildings appended on to the side of the church provided a clue there.

There were no other vehicles visible. Valerie stepped out of the car and walked over to the small door inset into one of the larger ones. She knocked.

Silence.

She tried the handle. It was locked. She knocked again.

She was just about to walk away and make her way round the building when she heard a key in the lock. After a moment of silence, the large double doors swung outward, forcing her to step back. There was nobody pushing them. Valerie raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry, I was talking to the guard," said the still unfamiliar voice of Doctor John Foster from the gloom within. "Bring the car in and I'll show you round."

"You sound like you know the place, doctor," Valerie replied, peering into the darkness.

"I ought to," he said, answering the implicit question. "I helped to design most of it."

Valerie drove into the depths of the darkness. She heard the doors swing shut behind her and paused to look at the interior now illuminated by her car headlights. On one side were a row of identical black vans and SUVs. On the other side was a more sparsely populated row of varied cars. These, presumably, belonged to the staff then. She found a space by a pillar and parked the car, collecting her bag and case before rejoining the doctor, now holding a torch, in the centre of the nave.

"You sure we're not going to get sent to hell for using God's house as a parking lot?" Valerie asked the doctor as he led them towards the right transept.

"As a scientist, I feel I have to fall back on our collective favourite answer and say 'I don't know', Agent Kane," replied Doctor Foster. "But if our motives are pure, I don't see why we should. This is a place of sanctuary. Once it was a sanctuary for Franciscan monks. Now it is a sanctuary for this operation. It keeps us hidden from the outside world, and the less they know of the dangers before us, the better."

Valerie couldn't help notice the stutter and nervousness had faded. The doctor was on home ground now. "Call me Valerie when we're not on duty," she said. "The 'agent' business is for the public's benefit, not mine."

"John," he nodded in reply, opening the door at the end of the transept. "Sleeping quarters are straight ahead, where the monks slept. There are a few shared rooms and one dormitory, the guards use that and are rotated on shifts, so there's always someone sleeping in there. Most of the rest of the staff are scientific or medical and they have the shared rooms and, in the case of our medics, most of the single rooms. We have a single room each. Mine belonged to the Prior, yours to the Abbot, so they each have offices attached. You have another office downstairs in the main building, and I have a lab. Here we are."

He waved the torch at an imposing wooden door. The wood was darkened with age and a suspiciously new lock glinted in the light. She turned the handle and went in. Behind her, John flicked a switch, illuminating the room. Valerie blinked in the sudden light, waiting for her eyesight to readjust. When her vision had cleared she saw a long wooden desk opposite the door, an old bureau on one wall and a tall chest of drawers on the other. There were candlesticks on each of them. Two black rectangles in the wall behind the desk marked the presence of two closely shuttered windows, each with the telltale gleam of metallic modernity. She headed towards the door in the side wall next to the bureau. It opened onto a small, sparsely furnished room with a single bed side-on to the wall, a table with a washstand and mirror, a simple wooden wardrobe and a wooden chair.

"The bathroom is just down the hall. I say bathroom, but there's only a shower. It's shared between everyone in this corridor. That's the two of us and two of the medical staff. It's modern enough: it had to be completely refitted before we moved in. We're lucky. The dorm and the shared rooms are all sharing the old bathhouse. It's been modernised too, but it's still too small for everyone. There is another bathroom at the end of each of the single room corridors, and there are better facilities downstairs of course."

Valerie deposited her bag and case on her bed. "I think it's about time I had the grand tour," she said, turning to face him. "Feel free to start with 'downstairs'!"