(Tommy - On Set)
"And ... ACTION!"
Tommy sprinted across a narrow avenue between stacks of crates. Several uniformed officers opened fire, their shots striking crates and columns, but not the crime lord.
"Hold your fire!" shouted the hero of the piece. Their characters had their history; Tommy's villain had slain the detective's fiancee two nights before their wedding, a gory spectacle to 'send a message.' Prior episodes had hinted at something more than a professional rivalry, but the writers hadn't been forthcoming with the full story.
The actor was the ruggedly handsome type, voted People Magazine's sexiest newcomer the previous year (Tommy was still in the running among the 50 Sexiest Men issue) , and expected to score another Emmy come awards season.
"You've got nowhere to go, Xiao. Give it up."
"It is not as simple as that, Detective. It never has been," you reply. The dialogue is a bit stilted, but the fight scene that would shortly ensue would keep detractors quiet for the next two weeks ...
"You brought this on yourself, and you know it," the gangster says, smiling a mirthless smile. "But then, you always were a cocky gwailou bastard, thinking the rules don't apply to you, weren't you?"
Xiao starts undoing his cuffs as he continues. "You don't even recognize me, do you, Little Falcon? You don't remember your brother, Little Dragon, the one who payed the price for you to leave the temple that day with your life?" He rolls up one sleeve, revealing the snarling tiger tattooed there, reveling in the shocked look on the detective's face.
The second sleeve rolled up, the feral tiger and dark dragon revealed, Xiao takes a stance. "I paid the price for you to walk away, and you chose to come back. So now I have the duty and pleasure of making right that mistake of mercy!"
And with that, the fight scene commences.
Your former brother strikes a warrior-ready pose. His form has not suffered from secular life, nor has his speed ...
It is, of course, Hollywood artifice. Block. A flurry of kicks and near hits. A brief hold as The Detective gives a minute shake of his head. This is a path neither character can turn away from ...
"I never asked for this," the Detective says.
"You knew they would send me," you say. "You must answer to the Master, or everything you value will be taken away from you, ending with your life."
"So you're just a pawn of Master Baht?"
"I am his adoptive son, as you once were. I -"
You hesitate, not because the script calls for it, but because there's something that is wildly out of place. A tall figure, a Mandarin out of some Chinese opera, is standing off camera, frowning. You know it's not some weird plot twist to bring Master Baht into the game, because he's been cast and shown in flashbacks that are now gaining added import, since we know the two young novitiates are Xiao and Detective Corveau ...
Tommy pulls himself back into character - if that's Yue Fei, he can wait till they get the scene in the can, and if not, well, they can still wait.
"...I will be the next Master of Wudan Mountain, with all that comes with that. But you, Little Falcon, will be dead, another lesson for those who might think to betray us!"
There's a heartbeat, a space in which years of pent-up emotion could be expressed in words, but, just as quickly, it is gone, and there is only two men who once called each other brother ...
Falcon dodges the first flurry of blows. You can tell it's not because he's biding his time to study your style (admittedly different from that of two novitates just delving into the traditions), but because he hasn't quite come to grips with his situation, and the past that has overtaken his present.
"Tingzhi, Xiao Lung," he pleads again. Stop.
"Too late for that."
As you delve into the fight, even as rehearsed as it is, you feel the power flow through your veins, the exhilaration of the fight. There's a moment where your character is supposed to twist out of the way to dodge a blow, but the move becomes something much more as you slide into the move and then dash up the side of three shipping containers ...
"Cut! What the holy hell was THAT?" shouts the director. "Freakin' fabulous! Oh, baby, that was pure gold!"
"Yeah. Yeah, I can write that in, gimme a moment," the writer is babbling. "Oh, yeah."
"Damn. What did they put in your coffee?" Falcon asks.
"Years of training, natural talent, and the alignment of the stars," Tommy answers with a shrug and a smile. "That's the sort of stuff I went into kung fu to get to do, y'know? " He nods over to where the director and writer are making enthusiastic noises at each other. "I'ma step outside a sec while those two hash out what we're doing next, holler when they've got a plan, OK?"
As he walks past the frowning Mandarin, he says quietly, "If you're Yue Fei, walk with me," without breaking his stride.
"Ni hao, and all that jazz," the Mandarin says. "As you have surmised, I am Yue Fei. I am - wait for it - your 'spirit guide,' appointed by your illustrious father, the agile and puissant Sun Wukong.
"I am not, however, a walking fortune cookie," he says. "Nor am I a babysitter, even if you are something like my eighty-third cousin fifteen times removed."
"Any questions?"
Once Tommy is outside, he pulls out his phone and holds it to his ear like he's talking, to disguise the fact that he's talking to what's presumably a ghost. "So, what do you do for me, and what do I do for you? This is going to be a working relationship, and that's fine, but I need to know what I'm working with here."
"You are the mortal son of Sun Wukong. In time, your powers will grow. But even as the tiniest spark of your august lineage quickens, you will far exceed the abilities of mere mortals," Yue Fei tells you.
"I am here to guide you. You do not simply hand a sharp knife to a child and bid him be on his way. I have no martial instruction to provide; if you wish to pursue other forms, you will do so through mortal teachers. And, I am here to warn you. Such powers are things of legend for a reason. They come with a price, and with equally legendary enemies."
"What sort of price are we talking here?" Tommy asks. "Are we talking 'with great power comes great responsibility', or 'kill puppies for Satan'? Because if it's the latter, well. I've apparently got a family tradition for dealing with complete bullshit now."
"Dead puppies are no fun," Yue Fei says solemnly. "It is a game of gods and powers. One does not move a piece without consequence, but those consequences are not always obvious or immediate. Do you not wonder about recent events here in New Orleans and the Gulf?"
"...until now, not really," Tommy admits after a moment. "So, for reference, how gonzo should I be expecting this new world full of children of gods and what-all else to be? Should I be watching out for demons and those hopping vampire zombies?"
"The god business is crueler than most," Yue Fei says, somehow managing a Hunter S. Thompson drawl. "Did you know the Christian Bible borrowed the temptation of Christ from Buddha's encounter with Mara? So, yes."
"But do not expect all of them to be the enemies of the Celestial Bureaucracy."
"I'm assuming you're referring to demons, and not the vampires," Tommy comments. "Look, can we skip the dire portents phase and move on to where I sign? I'm a martial arts actor and stuntman. I know exactly how dangerous this life can be, my brother's an actuary - I have literally had the math done. I'm happy to accept more danger in exchange for getting to be an honest-to-gods Hero-with-a-capital-H over swapping between 'Evil Martial Arts Dude' and 'Kung Fu Sidekick' for the rest of my career."
"A career is still a choice," Yue Fei says. "You don't always get to choose to be a Hero or not. You either are, or aren't. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle, but you can still cook without being a master chef. You can still paint without being a Rembrandt. But you cannot be a Hero without accepting it."
"Kind of like being a guide to said hero," he mutters.
"I sense a certain lack of enthusiasm about your position in this," Tommy deadpans. "Anything I can do to help you out there?"
"Don't get yourself killed?" Yue Fei gives a wry chuckle. "He's the One! Kid gets trampled by a horse. But that's okay, another turn of the wheel, and this kid, he's the One! Arrow in the gullet, right in the middle of a pretty decent speech, too. Third time's the charm, right? Nooooooo, this One is burned alive with an entire village he'd convinced to rebel.
"So, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't really want you to be the One. Even if you are. And, I must admit it's a bit creepy that your television character shares the name of my first ward. The kid who fell from his saddle, got dragged down a rocky hillside and trampled ...?"
"So, sounds like we need to change the narrative, then," Tommy says. "Working solo's not my thing, and clearly hasn't worked out well for you, so we find a crew to roll with."
He pauses for a moment, considering. "I mean, if Sun Wukong's having kids, there have to be other gods doing it, right?"
"Indeed. There are many such as yourself, I am told," Yue Fei says. "Gods of Creation, gods of Death, gods of Justice, gods of Storm, gods by the bushel! And, maybe you can find a nice girl and settle down, raise some godlings of your own."
He laughs. "Kidding. That comes later, if there is a later. More likely to be an arrow through the gullet. I will find you later, and show you how to find others."
"I can tell that working with you is going to be all kinds of fun," Tommy says. "But now they're probably ready to get back to work in there."
He puts the phone back in his pocket, rolls his shoulders, and starts slipping back into the skin of badass kung fu gangster as he heads back on set.
"Shit. Well, that's just great," Trey Petrelli muttered. Catherine's tortoiseshell cat had bolted past him the moment he opened the door - it was something she'd always warned him about, and now the damned cat was loose.
"Raster! Come on!" he called, exasperated. The cat wouldn't come back, of course. "Goddamn it, Cathy. I can't ..."
He sat down on the couch and buried his head in his hands. She was dead. The police had told him earlier this afternoon, he'd gone down to the morgue and tried to focus only on her face, tried to imagine her smile and sparkling eyes, and not walk away with the memory of her hacked-up corpse.
"We'll find whoever did this, Cathy," he promised the darkness. "And then I'll make them pay."
Kaycee stopped to take off her heels. It was a choice between walking the last block over a grimy sidewalk and that special pain that came with spending a night in heels, working at the club. Although right now, all she felt was a bone-deep weariness that came from morning classes, two jobs, and nowhere near enough sleep.
Which was probably why she didn't notice the van, its headlights off, following her a half-block back, nor the man walking alongside it.
"We've got a problem," the M.E. said.
"I'm listening," said Kate Spinelli. "Mu-shu there, General Tso's Chicken in that one, Potstickers. Have some."
"You'll want to put your food down."
"That bad?" Spinelli frowned, finishing a potsticker and setting down her chopsticks. "Okay. Spill it, Doc."
"You don't have a murder on your hands," he said. "You have a serial killer."
"Because of some knife that belongs in the King Tut exhibit?" Spinelli asked.
"In part. But it's not just her heart that's missing. Other organs have been removed," the M.E. told her.
"Black market organs? Isn't that an urban legend? Waking up in the bathtub with a note to inform you your kidney has been removed?"
"I'm afraid it's more twisted than that. Everything points to the preparations for mummification."
"Mummific- oh, Jesus. Has the Chief seen your report?"
"Yes. Here's your copy," he said, handing over an internal correspondence envelope.
"So," bellowed Jim Ashton. "Doc tell you his theory? Girl gets kidnapped, they're ready to mummify her to serve King Tut or Ra or some other Stargate SG-1 bullshit in the afterlife, then they discover she has fake tits, so she's not pure enough, gkkkkkkk."
"Doc?"
"She did have breast augmentation. A modest one," he said. "The rest is Detective Ashton's theory."
"Oh, hell no," Spinelli said as she realized why Ashton was here.
"Pressure from on high, apparently," Ashton said. "Relax. We'll find some freak show in an abandoned building and it'll be open-and-shut."
"I'm not that lucky," Spinelli said.
Twylla rolled up to her apartment around 9:45. To her surprise, she saw Mrs. Cho sitting out on the front stoop, sipping a cup of something warm that steamed in the night air. Probably tea.
"Mrs. Cho!" Twylla called as she strolled up. "What are you doing up?"
"Ah, couldn't sleep," the elderly Korean woman answered with a smile. "So, I come out and listen to night. It not too bad, tonight. Pretty quiet!"
Roscoe bounded up the stoop, appearing for all the world like he was going to bowl the tiny woman over. But, he came to a careful stop beside Mrs. Cho and sat down, wagging his tail happily.
Mrs. Cho sat down her tea and buried both hands in the fur around his neck, scratching and patting, "Roscoe! You good boy! Yes, you are!"
Roscoe couldn't have looked happier, grinning and drooling like the gentle giant that he is.
"Oh! I made something for you. Be right back," Twylla hurried to her apartment, leaving Roscoe to wallow in Mrs. Cho's attention. She returned shortly with a bundle in her hands.
Mrs. Cho took it from her and unfolded it to reveal a soft, cream colored throw blanket. Twylla had knitted it over the past couple of weeks while watching TV.
"It beautiful!" Mrs. Cho said, running an appreciative hand over the finely looped blanket. "Thank you!"
"Well, I figured it would be nice to snuggle under while you watch TV," Twylla takes a seat beside Mrs. Cho. She smiles and looks out over the small pond in the apartment's courtyard.
"I tell you what. You come over tomorrow. We make blackberry cobbler and watch Yi San," Mrs. Cho reaches over and pats Twylla's knee affectionately.
"But, I don't speak Korean!" Twylla laughs.
"Who care?" Mrs. Cho exclaims. "Those boys hot. Cho may be old, but not dead yet!"
The two women laugh, leaning against each other and enjoying the evening.
Twylla and Mrs. Cho sit outside for another 15 minutes or so, laughing and chatting. Mostly, it's Mrs. Cho catching Twylla up on the plot in Yi San, in preparation for tomorrow's day of cobbler and ogling.
Eventually, Twylla excuses herself. She kisses Mrs. Cho's wrinkled cheek and gathers up Roscoe, who has been laying contently on his side snuggled up against the elderly woman. She goes inside and closes the door behind her with a deep breath. Now that she's home and all the clandestine meetings are over, she suddenly realizes exactly how tired she is. Her shoulders slump and she rubs at her eyes, wanting nothing more than to sit down on the couch and veg for a while. Even though the evening had not been physically difficult, it had been an emotional roller coaster of anger and fear on various levels.
"Nope. Still got work to do, Twylla. You can rest when you are dead," she mumbles as she tosses her purse aside and makes her way back to her office.
She plops down in her computer chair and starts to fire up the P2P program when a thought occurs to her. She pulls out the burner and zips off a quick text to Kenari.
Do you still have those drives or did you pass them to your guy? Easier for me to borrow them and copy than transfer.
After that, she turns her attention to doing searches in the deep, dark corners of the internet where people like to keep things hidden. Who are the Argus Group? And, has the scion data been offered for sale, somewhere? It seems unlikely that it has since most people would think it was nothing more than a bunch of malarkey but...better to check and find nothing, than not check and miss important information.
After thirty minutes of poring through the web, you're about to claw your eyes out. The Argus Group seems to be the latest iteration of conspiracy theory fodder, similar to the Bilderbergs and Tri-Lateral Commission. All that's missing is a dose of space alie-
Urgh. Never mind.
Still, there appears to be kernels of truth amid the dross. Certainly, the Argus Group exists. Some of the crazier 'truth' sites may even be their work, a means of trawling the web for their own digital footprints and separating the curious from the credulous. And you have a better idea of where to start than most.
Thus, it's time to doff the tin-foil hat and put on the headsets and some serious hacking music. (Is there such a thing?)
But this time, you're adding additional steps to your hopscotch routine, including two recursive loops. There's no reason to believe that Argus is oblivious or inept. Instead of approaching from the decoy site, you prepare for an end run, a more demanding hack where your only goal is to identify the real host system.
No one ever goes through the front door of the CIA.
Twylla double and triple checks her setup. She knows that if anything goes wrong with this, she's going to have to run...maybe both in the cyber and physical sense. Who knows? But, hopefully, everything will go okay. Fingers crossed!
Before she dives in, though, she sends out a text via burner to Kenari. She considers sending one out to the whole team but it's probably best to keep things tightly reined, for now. If someone comes searching, Kenari has another hacker that can help hide her tracks. Sebastian has nothing of the sort. And, she simply doesn't want to drag Sven into this mess if she does get caught.
Looking for Argus. Trying to verify host system. Going into CIA. If I disappear, shit went all sideways. Wish me luck!
Setting the burner aside, she sets to work...
It's surprising, of course, that there are vectors leading into Langley, let alone ones that aren't air-gapped for maximum security. But, then, it's part of the system exploited by Manning and Snowden through the simple method of using a USB key.
The sooner you jump from a gateway into a secondary or even tertiary host, the further you'll get before any tracers burn through your safety margin. There were no detours through public utilities this time - no sense leaving a recognizable footprint. Instead, it was a merry chase in and out of a series of day-traders ...
A system linked to identity credentials is a tempting target, but you're not planning a trip to CIA Headquarters any time soon. Instead, you peel back the layers of encryption and access to garner yourself the Golden Ticket for this once-in-a-lifetime trip into Wonka's Factory. Only the Oompa-Loompas around here all carry MP5 submachineguns.
I never dreamed that I would climb / Over the moon in ecstasy / But nevertheless it's there that I'm / Shortly about to be ...
Over the course of several minutes, you're an Air Force colonel, a mid-level data analyst, and a White House advisor, handing off access in a series of slightly madcap trades. Some of these people will doubtless not have a clue about Argus, but whoever investigates won't readily believe that their names were pulled out of a hat.
There. The Everlasting Gobstopper. Martinez, Lt. Colonel Catherine.
Shit, the girl was a light colonel? Holy Mother of God, what have you stepped in?
(Sven- After everyone leaves his office, same night))
Sven mulled over all the information he had received. He had two targets for Monday - well, three. He needed to follow up with Detective Spinelli and see where her investigation was going, he wanted to try to hunt down Trey Patrelli and see which ways his wind blew, and outside of the world of Might and Magic he also needed to look out for Art's hit piece.
Finally, he pricked his finger on Conscience, broadcasting Hey Christine, are you free? We've got ourselves an epic quagmire to sort through.
Still at the office, wrapping up after City Council meeting, comes the answer. If you stop by, use the side door, please.
Use of the side door isn't an unusual request, as you've gotten a reputation as a political heavy hitter, and that's all it takes. A security guard sees you walking down the hall, takes note of where you're going, and the grapevine does the rest, whether it's gossip about 'Porter's attack dog' or Machiavellian plots behind-closed-doors.
Christine looks tired, and you know that means she's been burning the midnight oil. In all the years you've worked with her, you know she pulls all-nighters that would make most executives curl up in a whimpering ball, pretending to go home only to spend the night working in her office there,then coming back to City Hall in the morning.
"Well, the universe seems to be trying to tell us something," she says. "This Detective Ashton, warts and all, just got assigned to a high-profile murder along with Detective Spinelli. We had an off-the-record talk with the Chief of Police, and he shared some of the details with us."
"What did you learn, and what do you think?"
Sven sighed at that news as he settled in his usual chair. "Ashton is in my sights, and I already set wheels in motion to get him out of the way, but that was before murder was getting bandied about. I was going to try to wheedle my way into Detective Spinelli's confidence for the case on Monday so we could tap their resources, I'll keep an eye on Ashton and find out whether he'll be a boon or bane and... act accordingly."
Sven pulled up the crime scene pictures for Christine, who didn't bat an eye at their graphic nature. I'm sure she's seen worse in her time as a warrior of Tyr. "We don't have much on our end to be honest. We know that Catherine Martinez is the deceased, she worked at some social media startup. Her heart was cut out with what seems to be an Egyptian ceremonial knife, although Kenari, the Egyptian in our ragtag team, couldn't identify it specifically yet. Catherine was engaged to the CEO, one Trey Patrelli, who I'm going to try to hunt down this weekend and see where he stands in this."
He set his shoulders, saying, "There's another problem too, one that I'd managed to exacerbate. Evidently, Miss Martinez was managing a giant super-list of potential scions, and was coordinating with the FBI or some other dark corner of the federal government. They hadn't made any of us evidently, but we were all more or less being investigated, and you were in there as well.
"There was also a listening device at Sebastian's hangar - he's the one from that TV show - and when I had gone there to make hay over him spreading our names to his team I'm pretty sure I put on quite the show for whoever was listening. We haven't determined yet if it's the same people as were making the list, but it sure seems probable to me.
"Twylla, the blue-haired hacker, set some extra beefy protections on my equipment, I'll ask her to come in and take a look at your machine too just in case."
Sven texted Twylla while he spoke, "Hey Twylla, when u get a chance could u come to City Hall to set up some defense for Ms Porter?"
To Christine he said, "Does the name 'Argus' mean anything to you?" He pondered a second, "Or, left field here, is there something about Las Vegas I should know about?"
"Vegas? The only thing you need to know is that the odds favor the house. And if it's not the Mafia, it's the Yakuza," Christine says with a deadpan expression. "Why?"
You realize you won't be getting anything out of Christine until you tell her what you know. She's too practiced at politics to spill the beans, even if she has a play-by-play account to hand.
"And 'Argus,'" she sighs. "You are aware of the mythological reference, are you not? Just like the KGB, Argus is one of those entities that reinvents itself on a regular basis while staying true to its core mission: identifying Scions. What goes with that changes over time."
Still keeping an eye on her machine, making sure that no one has twigged to her intrusion, yet, Twylla turns her attention to the late Lt. Colonel Martinez.
What pies did you have your fingers in, Miss Martinez? Twylla thinks as she starts working her way out from that name, searching for assignments, other frequent contacts, organizations, clubs...anything that can point Twylla to exactly what Martinez may have been doing. It seems obvious that she was in charge of finding scions in New Orleans for the Feds. Head of IT for a social media company, database of scions on her computer...but, what else was she doing? Who was she reporting to?
Twylla hears her burner beep at her, but she ignores it, for now. She'll get to it once she is done and clear.
Profiling is nothing new to your experience. You've doxxed more than a few prominent executives and politicians who never realized their falls from grace would be sans a golden parachute. But the picture of Catherine Martinez is something different.
Top of her class at MIT, and right into the Air Force as a lieutenant seconded to Homeland Security and the USCYBERCOM (Cyber Warfare Command), where she was the lead on the Jade Dragon takedown, a Chinese hacker group that had left too much of a footprint in an offshore bank and became traceable. She'd come out of that with a set of gold oak leaves, and had traded those in for silver. And then she'd been vetted by someone deep in the Puzzle Palace, the NSA, whereupon her affiliation and rank seemed to vanish, her history sanitized, to the point where a fiance whose father worked in the same trade hadn't a clue. But her allegiances were clear. The database wasn't just idle curiosity; someone wanted the skinny on Scions for a reason, and that reason was national security. Either to co-opt them, or to make sure they didn't pose a threat ...
Well, poop, Twylla thinks, tapping her bottom lip with one finger. Everything recent has been wiped clean. Looks like if I want more about her recent dealings, I need to look through her emails. She probably didn't write anything openly but...she had to keep in contact with her gub'ment buddies somehow. It's a place to start, anyway.
Martinez was part of CyberCom. She would've known all the tricks of the trade for staying hidden. Burner phones, anonymous emailers, P2P networks...finding out what she was doing that may have attracted the attention of someone deadly will be no small feat.
Of course, it may not have anything at all to do with Argus and her database of scion goodness. The fact that she was a victim could be a coincidence. Twylla snorts. Yeah, right. We have someone keeping tabs on scions and that person just happens to get their heart cut out with a ceremonial knife. Too weird to be chance.
As long as I'm here... Twylla turns her attention to searching through recent reports. Something happened in Vegas. But, what? Is it something that the government knows about or is something confined to the scion 'community'...if such a thing even exists? (Twylla makes a mental note to dig into that idea a bit, later on.) She searches through any reports she can find dated within the last year, looking for references to Vegas.
With as many reports as the government generates, she knows that she may well turn up exactly nothing in the amount of time that she has. But, she would kick herself, later, if she didn't even try.
"Bullshit," you tell yourself. This is the government. Nothing is ever thrown away or deleted, only moved to a different file cabinet. Even crackpot notions of multilateral first-strike scenarios for a round of global thermonuclear war. Martinez' complete dossier has to exist.
You find yourself in that unusual space where your mind is approaching a problem from two different angles. The hack for doxxing Lieutenant Colonel Martinez, and a grave-digging job on whatever happened in Vegas.
"Oh, no. No, you didn't.*" one of your safeguards goes off.
But it's not the usual tracer. Someone's burning back down your line like wildfire. You're going to have time to grab one or the other, but not both - the dossier, or a classified document on Las Vegas.
Sven mulled over her obvious avoidance on the Vegas issue, but decided not to press. If it was something he needed to know, she'd tell him, and right now it was just something more or less random that Kenari had brought up in conversation.
"Yeah, the dude with a hundred eyes or whatever. Their name came up as one of the engineers of that list, if not the engineer, and Miss Martinez seemed to be an ally of sorts. I don't think they're the ones doing the murdering, but it's sounding like they're not fitting to be our friends either.
"You already know a lot more than we do about Argus, do you happen to have a contact there of some sort, or a place we could start? I'm afraid I'm in a race to get ahead of them before I find out what my little display motivates them to do."
"Crap! Crap in a bucket!" Twylla exclaims as she realizes she can't get both items in time. Almost without thinking, she grabs Martinez' dossier. That information is more immediate to what they are doing. Vegas may or may not be relevant.
Once that is down, Twylla immediately begins pulling out of the hack, closing up shop, sweeping away her tracks.
"Nothing to see here, folks. Just a hedge. Move along," she mumbles as her fingers fly across the keyboard, desperately trying to disconnect in time. Having the CIA in her lap falls squarely into Twylla's "do not want" column.
One thing you learn from Martinez' dossier is that Petrelli is a dupe, with no connection to Argus or awareness of his 'fiancee's' true identity. That doesn't rule out digging into Socialize!'s financials to see who bankrolled them. A project as hush-hush as Argus wouldn't depend on corporate largesse.
You wonder if their fairy godmother will disappear, or if there's enough invested in the startup to forward another CTO candidate along the same lines - after, of course, Trey Petrelli folds his hand.
The most important item is that Martinez was adopted, her true parentage unknown. And even though you want to reject it as 'too improbable,' you realize it would be the kind of eighteen thousand steps ahead the gods are capable of.
Martinez was a scion.
Twylla leans back in her chair, stretching her arms up over her head. Finding that not quite working on the spot she wants, she stands and arches her back, leaning...leaning...crack!...ahhhh. There it is. Sighing, she sits back down and thinks about this.
Hopefully, whatever Kenari grabbed will have some financials. I only snagged a little bit. Probably not enough to paint much of a picture, the young tech turns back to the folders that she had downloaded from Martinez' computer. Let's see if this thing has information about parentage or if it's just all guesses.
If Martinez' divine parent isn't listed in the dossier, then it might be in the database. Plus, it gives her a chance to search for any Aztec or Mayan scions. She's not sure about the names of those gods, but she's fairly positive that they will be the ones she can't pronounce. If there are any questions, she can always turn to wikipedia for answers.
Examining the folders and files from your previous run, the parentage of potential scions is indeed a topic of interest, with the data graded according to reliability. In families where there are multiple children, siblings are examined and excluded or marked for further investigation (all of Kenari's brothers are dismissed as potential Scions).
Life events are also part of the record. Trips abroad, unexplained turns of fortune, sudden career changes, accidents.
You look up Martinez' name. Oddly enough, she's not associated with the Aztec pantheon at all. She's a Scion of Hermes.
"Welp," Twylla rubs a hand across her eyes. "I think i'm done for tonight." She turns off the PC, her mind a whirl with all the things that she has learned. But, she is tired. It's been a long day and the need for a little relaxation is calling to her. Besides, it's late and the others may have already retired, as well. Relaying all of this can wait until tomorrow.
Twylla remembers hearing her phone buzz during that run and reaches over to check it. Seeing Sven's message, she texts back, Sure. Just let me know when to be there.
Tossing the burner aside, once again, she goes to the living room and flops onto the couch. She has been sitting for no more than a second or two before Roscoe joins her, taking up the rest of the seating as he lays across her lap.
"Oh, for...move your butt, fuzzball!" Twylla laughs and shoves at Roscoe's haunches as she digs for the TV remote control. Finding it, she flips the TV on and starts scanning for something to watch. All the while, one hand absently pets Roscoe.
Finding nothing of interest, she turns to the DVR. "Hey, look! We've got a couple of episodes of Rick and Morty to watch. Let's get schwifty in here!" she grins and starts it up.
Roscoe seems rather unimpressed with the idea of watching Rick and Morty. In fact, he's already sleep, snoring and drooling contently.
Twylla doesn't even get five minutes into the episode before she joins her guardian, head resting against the back of the couch, deep in slumber, the TV and the day's trials lost in dreams.
Christine sighs wearily. For an instant, she is both the exhausted public servant ... and the steadfast daughter of Tyr. They are not opposite sides of the same coin, but an oddly terrifying synthesis of the mortal and the divine. As one staffer back in New York put it, "Don't fuck with her unless you have your insurance paid up. And maybe not even then. I don't think they've found the body of the last mook who decided to test their luck."
"No, I don't have an inside track," she says. "Just ... lots of experience. I am ... somewhat older than I look, little brother. Give me your hand. It will be easier to ... explain."
With no reason to doubt or distrust your sister and guide, you take her proffered hand ...
... and you are standing in a crowded war room, a map of England and an encroaching Nazi Germany laid out upon the table. A calendar gives the date as August 11, 1940 - smack in the middle of what would become known as the Battle of Britain.
"Major?" someone asks. "It's time."
Christine nods. "Very good. Squadron 4 has the green light, and godspeed."
Argus has had many names over the years. The Allies knew of Hitler's obsession with the mystical, but we - Scions - feared that it was more than a search for historical relics. It was an all-out attempt to not only recruit among our number, but harness the power of myth in what could only be described as an attempt at apotheosis, a rise to godhood. So we tried to anticipate his moves, and block them. The effort became known as Delphi, and we helped create it.
After the war, we'd thought it dismantled, another special operations bureau that shuttered its doors and faded away. It resurfaced as Cassandra, working under the direction of HUAC. There were no Scions in its ranks, and no means of influencing their activities.
Again during the late 1960's and the Vietnam War. It was rumored that everything from the U2 Incident to the Mayaguez was related to our people, but we were at least able to spread enough misinformation that Congress laughed it all off as someone's LSD trip.
Argus. It has to be them. And, it has to be because of events that happened in Las Vegas, the unintended consequence of changing the future. Understand, brother - Ragnarok descended upon the world, and a band of Scions prevented it ... including your - our - brother.
Sven struggled to accept the vision, and managed to adapt to the sudden change thanks to his experience with psychedelics. His brain briefly flashing its own interpretations of some of her narrative with scenes from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and 'Hellboy.'
He held on to the visions tightly, trying to hold Christine hostage to that level of psychic connection without being too forceful, to see what perhaps she didn't want him to see. I had no idea, none at all. Ragnarok I can grok, end of the world, obviously averted, but what do you mean they changed the future?
Suddenly, the struggling ceases, and a moment in time blossoms, nuances unfolding like petals seeking the sun.
"You stand charged with defying the will of the All-Father," comes the accusation. "What say you?"
"I plead not guilty," says a golden-haired hero in whom you see more than a measure of your father's demeanor.
"This is no mortal court, Son of Tyr," comes the warning. "There is no pleading. Will you be judged?"
"I will," the hero declares. "What is done is done. I have no regrets."
There are murmurs of disapproval and defiant cheers in equal measure, until a resonant thud silences all - the haft of Gugnir striking the hall's polished floor.
"By sparing some and killing others, you have changed the future. The Norns will not be so easily denied, and now the Aesir must ever be vigilant. Our judgment is service in exile," the All-Father says. "Use the time to consider the price of defiance."
Christine breaks the link. "You may regret doing that, brother. We are of the same blood. Take care that Alexander's fate does not spill upon your own."
As Sven's vision condensed back into Christine's office, he fell back into his chair, not having realized he had stood up somewhere along the way. Rather than scrabble after the thousands of questions racing through his mind, he closed his eyes and sought his center. I'll have plenty of time to think about this later.
After a few moments he looked back up at Christine, who leaned against her desk, watching him patiently. She absent mindedly worried with a silver ring on one hand, adorned only by simple filigree that looked like braided rope.
A single question now burned in his mind, one he knew could define his life's course as the son of a God. He finally said, quietly but firmly, "The Norns are their - our - version of the Fates, right? Am I to understand averting Apocalypse was a punishable offense? What purpose is there to entrust the powers of the Gods to us mortals, if we are not free to use them to protect our mortal realm?"
"Yes, they are like the Greek moriae," Christine says. "Their hands can be seen in all things, be they of mortal or divine origin. Thus, the All-Father is not punishing Alex - he is removing him from the battle, until the repercussions of his killing Fenrir become clear. We could argue the fine points of the Norns ordaining Alex's actions or the All-Father's response, but this is not a debating society."
"And what comes next is of great concern to the gods. Mortals must choose, or they are less for it. What some of us fear is that they will choose to leave the gods behind. Forgotten, we may simply fade away as if we never were more than stories; or that as we fade, other, older beings will wake."
Sven didn't like where this was heading. It didn't seem fair that scions had to not only play by Man's rules, but were held against the laws of the Divine as well. He had always forged his own path, shirking the law and morality of the moment when his goal was important enough, and he could already tell that Tyr's blood running through his veins was only going to strengthen that urge.
Perhaps that was the fate of Tyr's children. Tyr had sacrificed his hand - and his leadership of the Aesir - for the sake of what was Just. Alex, too, had evidently sacrificed his own wellbeing for the sake of justice.
"Where was Alex banished to? Is he... here? On Earth? Or Midgard I guess."
"The All-Father has not said. Others besides you and I are curious, of course, even outside of the Aesir," Christine says. "I believe that if our paths are meant to cross, they will."
"Though I will, for the record, warn you against seeking mental communion with him as we have shared," she says, favoring you with a direct gaze. "If the future is malleable, then one must consider what and who belongs at the table."
"No disrespect to our family, but I think I'll have to make that determination on my own."
Sven tried to sum up the night's revelations, "So some secret Anti-Thule Society has gone all NSA on scions. A failed Ragnarok in Vegas. Fenrir is dead by our brother's hand. And now, even the Gods are unsure what happens next? Awesome. Anything else we should know? I think I'm fine going back to toiling with more mundane problems for a bit, like hunting down Miss Martinez' widower."
"Wait, what did you mean by older beings? Are we talking Cthulhu rising from the sea? Should we be looking through Lovecraft's writings for clues about this woman's murder rather than Egyptian papyri?"
"You're being literal, Sven," Christine frowned. "My warning is not meant as a threat. It's just that Alex has a reputation for being ... stubborn. And one of the reasons Father saw fit to assign me as your guide and advisor."
"Lovecraft was not far off in his visions," Christine laughs. "His ... talesare not entirely fiction, but neither are they completely accurate. There are those who came before, and those who rose only to fall. They are neither dead nor forgotten in some places. Your path may take you under their shadow, and it may be that our changing future is a dark one."
"Though the hands of the gods may be involved in this murder, they will be embodied in mortal beings who may, perhaps, have misunderstood their charter, so to speak. With all due respect to Detectives Spinelli and Ashton, justice under the laws of man will be one matter. You and I - and the others - will be concerned with higher laws."
"Okay, thanks Christine. I think I've got enough to worry about now." Sven chuckled ruefully. "In more mundane matters, I'll ask Twylla to come by on Monday to fiddle with your electronics. In fact, I'll just hire her firm to do a full upgrade for our offices. We have them sweeped for bugs fairly regularly so I'm more concerned with someone tracing our comings and goings than full-blown covert ops, but we'll have to see what shakes out. Meanwhile - keep an ear out?"
Sven got up and started collecting his things.
He didn't sleep well that night, his mind racing and seeking logic and sense in this world of Gods.
He didn't wake up until well past noon the next day. After a few cups of coffee, Sven called Faren. "Hey, I'm following up on this murder case, I need to find Trey Patrelli. Like it or not he's going to be in front of the press, and he'll need our support in the tough times ahead." Faren could read the subtext - We need to coach him on what to say.
"Assuming he hasn't crawled into a bottle for a Lost Weekend, we'll find him," Faren assures you. "Do you want to name drop on this? Say you're from Councilwoman Porter's office?"
"Yup, official channels, pomp and circumstance. We're very sympathetic to his situation and will be offering him all the support he needs."
Sven hung up and waited the call back to get in motion. In the meantime, he grabbed his Kindle and started reading the 'Poetic Edda.'