Office 13A, The Thaddeus Complex, 14:32
A table, on which several printouts of compiled information are spread, nestling next to coffee cups and a sleeping cat on the hard lacquered surface.
On one side, a slim, dark-complexioned woman who shifts through the papers, and picks up those that she reads aloud from. On another, a shorter woman with cobalt-blue hair and eyes as sharp as the scars along one cheek, scrutinising the papers. And on the other, a tall man with dark skin, wild hair, and a labcoat seemingly made by the application of a sewing machine to a junkyard tickles the recumbent cat under the chin, which does its best to ignore the attention.
"A beldam and a horla," said Coraline thoughtfully. "I don't think we've ever fought those as a pair before."
"It isn't a usual combination, certainly," said Maria absently, her eyes on the papers. "What do they get from it?"
"It actually makes a pretty horrible kind of sense, when you think about it," said Wybie. When Coraline and Maria ventured glances in his direction, he explained. "Psychephages cooperate when their hunting can complement each other, right? Beldams feed on desire, and most often on children. Horlas feed on anything that feels despair. What do missing children leave behind them?"
"Parents," answered Coraline. Her jaw tightened. "Where, and for how long?"
"Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, an apartment building on a main street." Maria turned pages. "For at least forty years. Management for the building's shifted a few times more than average as well. Conservative guess, around four victims, adults and children combined."
"Bay Ridge. That's not so far from where we took out that phylax in the old Methodist church, remember?"
"Pretty hard to forget," said Wybie. "You figured out you could only get to its lair via a point on the roof."
"That's right," said Coraline. "So you stayed at ground level to deal with anyone who wanted to ask why two people were clambering up a ladder onto the roof. We had to get to the steeple, so we had to climb up some piping after we used the ladder…"
"…Which was the exact moment when the pigeons nesting in the steeple took umbrage to our presence," said Maria dryly.
"Best. Mission. Ever," said Wybie. "It's pretty hard to ward off people when you're too busy pissing yourself laughing, though."
"You're so considerate in times of need, I've always thought," said Coraline.
"Hey, you drew quite a crowd. They all thought it was some kind of theatre."
"Let's get back to the interesting things Maria's saying, shall we?"
"Please do," said Maria, looking back down at her paper. "We've learned not to assume a typical lair layout for paired psychephages. But we can expect at least some blend of beldam features and horla characteristics. What info have we got on horlas, Mr Scientist?"
"Horlas? Honestly, not that much." Wybie waved a hand in a vague manner. "As raw power goes, they're only a little below beldams. Human-sized, have some limited Sur-real shaping ability, and I think they're capable of exerting mental influence on people in their territory. But they're still like any other psychephages. Iron isn't their friend. Introduce it to them at length."
"Just so I can broach the subject while we're still tangentially on it, how much ferroshot do you two have?" asked Coraline. "If we do this tomorrow, then that'll give me time to make some new rounds. Wybie, you're on .45, aren't you? And I know you're a .40, Maria."
"I could use a top-up," admitted Maria. "I'll check if there's anything else I can scrounge up, but I wouldn't hold your breath."
"You know what you have to do," said Coraline. "We'll make an early start tomorrow."
Storage 4, The Thaddeus Complex, 19:02
For Wybie, the world around his lab was in a state of rhythm.
From above, there came a constant, muffled litany of whirring and muttered blasphemy as Coraline worked over the bullet press on the first floor, turning out new iron rounds for his and Maria's pistols, absolutely focused on the work.
From behind him, on the same, there came a dull thud-thud-thud, broken up by stretches of silence, the sound of Maria getting in some practise shooting with fake rounds.
But inside his lab, there was no sound whatsoever. He thought furiously in silence, his pen hovering over his notepad. Tripod regarded him with flat eyes, perched atop one of the halves of No. Eleven.
"What am I missing?" Wybie demanded of no-one in particular. "There's got to be something stupidly obvious I'm missing in breaking down the barriers between here and the Sur-real. What is it? Any ideas?" he demanded of Tripod, who favoured him with a level look, an arched back, and a hacked-up hairball.
"That isn't a constructive contribution."
Office 20B, The Thaddeus Complex, 20:41
"Hey, Mom. Sorry I haven't called earlier. It's just, you know, work. Government takes the hours of your mortality and throws them in a shredder for chuckles."
Coraline stood by the press, one hand resting gently on it while fresh iron bullets enclosed in plastic sabots cooled, her other hand holding a cell phone to her left ear, from which a low, staticky murmur came.
"Well, I don't know. Maybe the Chief of Staff needs the mortality of mortals to sustain his dark existence. I wouldn't put it past him."
"What do you mean, 'uncharitable'? I'm the very soul of charity. Was that a sardonic laugh? Have I ever lied to you?"
"That doesn't count. I was fourteen at the time, and I was bored. You're allowed to lie when you're fourteen and bored, and you got the car repaired eventually. It wasn't a total write-off."
"How's Dad? Is his recovery still … oh, that's great. Modern medicine for you, Mom. Did he get my card?"
"Knew it would have him in stitches. Well, more stitches. Oh, come on. He would have made that joke as well. He'd be ashamed if I didn't make that joke."
"Work's still nothing special. File papers, look bored at meetings, fritter money away, the usual."
"Wybie? Why would … come on, Mom. We've been friends for too long to try messing with it now. I mean, we're technically work colleagues as well, so we probably couldn't even if we wanted. And I'd rather not … we're just friends. Really."
"Stop laughing in a knowing way. I hate when you do that."
"Look, we'll make a deal. You stop laughing in a knowing way, and I'll do my best to get into a steady relationship before you turn sixty. Deal?"
"Untrustworthy? Me, your loving daughter? Why would … for crying out, am I ever going to live down the car? I was fourteen."
"I'll be on a trip for the next day or two, just so you know. I might not be able to get in touch with you at all times. But I will phone you back first chance I get, alright? Give dad my love."
"Love you too, Mom."
Just outside the Thaddeus Complex, 06:56
"What's the holdup?" demanded Coraline, leaning against the department's van. "I want to get an early start."
"But Your Dread Sovereigncy, some of us weren't conscious an hour ago." Wybie held a suitcase under one arm, and his left hip under his coat bulged with the mass of a holster. He had just come at a brisk run from his apartment, and stepped reluctantly through the dry, dark dawn, through which fingers of cold stabbed.
"Invest in coffee. We're operating on 'saving someone's ass' time. You've got to be up-and-at-em. Let's see some go-getting attitude."
"Bleeaargh."
"Or some zombie-on-depressants attitude. That works too, I guess." Coraline turned to face the next figure emerging from the complex. "Everything sorted?"
"That's everything." Maria also held a satchel, and had a holster under her coat. "Locked up, logged off, ready to kick fundament."
"Awesome."
"There's just a thing … I was looking at my inbox. I'm not sure, but I think there's something strange going on with the other cabinets. Do you think it's …"
"If it's serious, we can deal with it after we come back. Let's just focus on the job." Coraline waved her past, and looked at the last figure in the doorway, who looked even more sleep-deprived than Wybie.
"Sayid, you're henceforth promoted to Acting-Everything-in-the-Department. Hold the fort, deal with any calls in your usual manner, and don't talk to any strange men. Clear?"
"Crystal. Is this perchance going to be one of those promotions that doesn't get me paid anything extra and which you take away as soon as you return?"
"Hey, you're learning."
"I call driver's seat," called Wybie from the van.
"Ha. You made a funny joke."
Somewhere between Washington DC and New York, 09:01
"You know what's always bugged me about our van?" said Wybie from the back. "The music player won't work for love nor money. I mean, we can make planes that can cross the Atlantic in an hour, and we can make zeppelins that go forever on a single gallon, but we can't make a functioning entertainment system. What gives?"
"It goes for sixty hours on a full battery, and you're complaining about the music facilities?" said Coraline distractedly, her hands on the wheel, her eyes on the rushing landscape. Power sections of steel and wire on either side yielded intermittently to rolling green fields, wet with dew, fat with life. Mist shrouded the highway.
"Well … yes. Yes, I am. I'm that cozened."
"You could just bring your own player," pointed out Maria from the shotgun seat.
"I've never gotten round to getting one." Wybie thought, and then his eyes narrowed with triumphant realisation. "Hey, Maria?"
"What's that look? That isn't a good look."
"You know how you went to choir in high school?"
Stony silence. Then, "This isn't something I'm suffering alone, you realise that?"
"Why do I have the feeling that the most blissful period of my life has come crashing to a stop before I had time to properly appreciate it?" said Coraline.
A little closer to New York, 09:17
"…Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops. That's wheeeere yooouuu'll fiiiind me…" sang forth from the van, in two different voices, one clear and mezzo-soprano, the other untrained and approximately baritone. "Somewhere, over the raaainbow…"
"Oh my god, I am this close to killing us all. This close."
"This is fun," said Wybie, breaking off from the song. "We can make her emphasis everything."
"Hate you all."
New York, 11:00
By the time Wybie and Maria had moved onto the assorted songs of The Sound of Music, and Coraline had threatened them with at least several dozen forms of death in escalating order of horribleness, New York had risen from the land like an awakening giant, a massive conglomeration of life and concrete and metal.
The city remained the largest in the country, and it pulsed with people. Energy and drive and vibrancy poured through the streets, and made the place unique. Beneath a rough and chaotic exterior was a deep and heartfelt humanity of all stripes and shades, where people shouted across the street to give directions and help the lost, where people walked casually down the street in costumes beyond the bizarre, where five minutes walking could take you between slick upper-crust department stores, street performers, city parks, and sky-stabbing office blocks of glass and high-grade steel.
Such a city attracted attention from psychephages like predators to a watering hole. The department had made seven journeys here alone so far in the last three months.
Past the human tumult, toothed shadows lay in wait, ready to ambush.
Midday rose over the city, over the rivers of traffic, over the battered van belonging to the department.
"Brooklyn, Brooklyn," muttered Coraline. "Some big signs saying 'Brooklyn thisaway, morons' would come in handy. What does this place's planning department do with its time? Have rubber band fights?"
"Left down this upcoming junction, then keep going until you see the lights for the big casino. Then you take a right just after it and you can't miss the signs," said Maria quickly.
"I knew that. Just testing you."
Suntouched Apartments, Bay Ridge, 11:32
Maria didn't do social situations with people she didn't know very well. Wybie was too much for one conversation. So it fell to Coraline to do introductions.
She opened the door to the ground floor of the apartment building, the other two trailing behind her. She recognised the type of place as soon as she walked in. The ceilings were low, and the furniture and furnishings were worn with age. There were scratches in wood panelling, a few permanent grooves in the walls, and the whole place looked as though it had seen better days. But the carpet on the floor, thin as it was, was clean and dust-free. No cobwebs lurked in corners, and any surfaces had been cleaned.
It was a run-down place, but not because of a lack of effort from the people who ran it.
She saw the place's manager alone behind the reception desk; a middle-aged, care-worn man whose dark hair, speckled with strands of white, receded over a weathered scalp. Lines had grooved themselves into his face, markers of care and stress. And there was a torn, hollow look behind his eyes as well, one she had seen too many times to count, a look accented by the odd clutch at the cross hung around his neck.
And if Coraline had to hazard a guess, she'd say that most of that care came from a recent and near-at-hand source.
"Mr Elachi?" said Coraline. The man looked up, and the worry in his eyes transmuted on the spot to blank astonishment.
"Yes?" he said. "To whom am I speaking?"
"My name is Coraline Jones." She presented her ID card. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."