Monday, October 7th, 2013
In Transit to New York City
"What are you trying to tell us? What are we going to find when we reach you?"
Camilla murmured softly to herself, staring intently at the small tablet computer in her hand, as she continued to study the data coming in from both PAN-Opticon and the sensor-rich grid that made up much of the infrastructure of Manhattan.
She'd never seen anything like it. It was almost as if reality itself was trying to tell her a story, only it couldn't make up it's mind as to what direction it wanted to take the narrative. One moment, PAN-O was swearing blind that half of Brooklyn suddenly Emerged at once, only to take it all back. Other readings, consistent with massive gamma ray bombardment, swept back and forth between the Jersey Shore and Long Island, except that after a few seconds, it was obvious that those readings were false.
False...or ghosts. Almost like a virtual event taking place, just next door to our reality; enough to affect our sensors, but evaporating the moment we try to take a closer look. Every time I catch one of these bloody things, there's a corresponding spike in chronoton emissions, and then it's gone.
Heisenberg, you bastard; you must be howling with laughter from beyond the grave.
The worrying part was the underlying current; a energy signature of sorts. Of the kind she'd only seen once before, almost five years ago to the day: Max's Emergence.
Clearly she's caught up in all of this, somehow. But...bloody hell. If we sent her into this, then we've made a right proper mess of things!
Camilla leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling of the C-17 Globemaster III that served as Damocles' mobile command center. She closed her eyes, letting the soft roar of the engines lull her into a meditative state; trying to take all the disparate pieces and make a cognitive leap of intuition.
"Alright." she whispered softly. "Some sort of massive event occurred...will occur...at 1:12 PM, New York time, if my extrapolation of the resonance buildup is correct. It must have been a disaster. Something so shocking that we sent Max back in time to warn us about it. But why can't we find her? Why is her temporal signature all over the place in Manhattan? And what about all of the other readings?"
Right then. Gamma radiation, in massive bursts. Most consistent with a nuclear explosion. But we're not seeing any sort of ghosts that would imply radioactive fallout. The seismic events...those are happening somewhere in Chinatown. At least we have a good idea where 'ground zero' is.
A terrorist attack. Some sort of nuclear detonation. That's the most obvious answer. But if Max stopped it, why are we seeing these echoes? Did it somehow interact with her powers? Possibly weaken the local fabric of space/time, make it more..brittle, somehow?
Years ago, Camilla once ran some simulations together with her compatriot over at Rising Sun, Shimiko Tetsumaru, as part of the creation of the Black Swan Event list. Trying to determine how atomic blasts temporarily warped, or possibly ruptured the local fabric of reality. The computational power requirements to model the effects were astronomical, and even with time procured from the world's most powerful supercomputers, their results were inconclusive at best.
Still,there are similarities, between those simulations and what we're seeing now. And why does PAN-O keep insisting that it's picking up Emergence events? Unless the shock of a nuclear blast suddenly creates enough instant trauma to cause individual persons to Emerge, if just for a moment, before their lives are snuffed out?
She groaned; they were looking at one of the most unusual time/space anomalies in modern history, and it was only growing stronger in resonance the closer they got to the zero-hour.
She wasn't sure if she could stop it, whatever it was. Assuming it could be stopped. Or perhaps, they'd stopped it already, and this was just the aftermath. As if the original nuclear - potentially nuclear, that is - event had displaced the very stuff of reality itself, and whatever actions Max might have taken in preventing the event from occurring was now causing all of the quantum particles that existed in all points of reality at once to come rushing back in to fill the sudden vacuum.
There wasn't anything more she could figure out at the moment, not without more concrete data. She let her attention drift back to her tablet, quickly glancing over the latest update from Martinet. Apparently, he was having a hell of a time establishing and enforcing appropriate departmental jurisdiction over the situation; this thing was 'noisy' enough that it had attracted the attention of not only DHS, but the FBI as well as the military proper, not to mention the quakes were strong enough now to trip up the equipment at the US Geological Service. With all these different groups jockeying for position, and everyone other than Damocles being more or less in the dark, the NYPD was bound to be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, wondering what the hell was going on.
She leaned over, and thumbed the intercom. "Albertson, what's our current ETA?"
"Hey bosslady." His bass voice rumbled. "Was just about to call you about that. Half an hour ago, we picked up a pretty big storm system drifting right into our flight path. It's kicking up a lot of turbulance, not to mention the headwind. We're going to fly around it and...I'm sorry, ma'am, we're doing our best, but there's a good chance we're not going to make it to the ground in time.
"Bloody...damnit!" she swore. She'd been trying to contact and corral as many East Coast resources as she could, but Damocles was still a tiny fish in a big pond. Incredibly exotic and increasingly valuable, but still something of a mouse that constantly insists on roaring. She could probably get a secondary science team into position ...maybe. But without her direct expertise, they'd no doubt overlook something. At the very least, she hoped they might be able to record their findings, and she could study it later.
"Right then. If you're absolutely certain there's no way you can get through or above that storm without unacceptable risk, we'll just have to roll with the punches."
"Hold on a moment, jefa." Rodriguez cut in. She served as co-pilot and navigator during flight operations. "Uhh...I just got the latest data from NWS. That storm? It just sorta starting picking up speed and shifting direction. If the projected path it's taking holds, it'll cut around and to the back of us pretty soon. Better yet, it's gonna open up a seriously useful tailwind corridor. If we take it, we'll have no trouble getting there. Ahead of schedule."
"Huh." Albertson murmured. "Can't say I've seen a storm system move that cooperatively before. Talk about a lucky break. "
"Hmmmm" Camilla murmured, deep and low in the back of her throat. "Yes. Luck. Well, keep me informed if anything changes."
"Will do."
"Luck." she repeated. "Or design? Perhaps something or someone is making sure we make it."
She wasn't sure whether to take comfort in or be terrified of the possibility
Walking to the small bar near the middle half of the passenger deck, she helped herself to a shot of whiskey in clear defiance of normal protocol, glancing out pensively through one of the windows. Wright and Sweeney were passing the time by playing poker.
"Kind of early for the hard stuff, isn't it Ma'am?" Wright asked.
Camilla shrugged. "Something tells me we're going to have the sort of day where we're all going to need a little extra courage before it's over.
Things continued to go smoothly as soon as they touched down. Surprisingly so. The vans ran down the ramp the moment the plane was off the runway, and they headed straight into the city. Traffic was cooperative and well routed, despite the initial complications with coordination and they managed to make it well ahead of schedule into Chinatown; not once did they hit a red light.
Curious that. Very curious.
To the average person, it might all seem like good luck. To Camilla, always calculating the odds, always crunching the numbers, as natural as breathing at this point, she couldn't help but feel like the fortune was unnaturally on their side.
First the storm mysteriously blowing off the moment it might present a threat, and now this. As if we're starting to see distant quantum flux events already, from whatever phenomenon is building up in Chinatown.
With fifty minutes to spare, all three vans screeched to a halt near Elizabeth Street. Camilla was pleased to see that a minimum two block area was already cordoned off. All seemed to be running smooth as silk; at least until they came to the agent manning one of the barricades, holding a hand out commandingly as he ordered them to halt. Not that this was out of the ordinary; Camilla expected they'd just be waved on through, and go about their work.
The rather non-descript towheaded man in a dark suit, and sunglasses walked over to the van. Camilla popped out of the back, badge in hand, which she proceeded to flash.
"Special Agent Davies, Homeland Security. I believe we're expected."
The man pointedly scrutinized her badge. He frowned and then glanced up, pointedly refusing to identify himself. "What the hell branch is the SOAP? Never heard of it."
"Then we're doing our job. Now, as I said, I believe we've been expected. If you could please let us pass, we're in a bit of a rush to contain the situation." Davies responded.
The other agent's frown deepened. "Look, it took us two hours to properly establish this perimeter and lockdown the area. I'm not about to let in a bunch of yahoos from some agency I've never heard of in without official clearance from my supervisor."
Camilla let out a hard, heavy sigh, and considered her options. This wasn't exactly new territory for her; departmental rivalries were bad enough, but the SOAP and especially Damocles was enough of a "black" agency that she often ran into this sort of suspicion.
She could try charm, or she could wait however long it would take, with time rapidly ticking down. Or she could proceed straight to the 'nuclear option'; given that she and her team were tracking a ghost of a atomic blast, that second option fit.
She reached into her coat, pulling out her cellphone. Pressing a few speed dial buttons, she held it to her ear, and spoke softly once the other side answered.
"Director Comey? Yes, my apologies, it's Camilla Davies, from Homeland Security. The SOAP? Right, yes, I am calling about the situation in New York City. We're just a block away from where I need to deploy my team, but one of your men seems to have other ideas. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind having a chat and working it out? Right then, cheers. Thank you, sir."
She handed the phone out to the other agent.
"Hello?" he said. Blinked, and then paled, as he realized exactly who it was that was now sharply addressing him.
Camilla reached up, clapped him on the shoulder and murmured, "I'll be letting us through now. Trot on over and return my phone when you're done, won't you?" The unnamed agent gave her a mixture of a angry glare and frightened confusion., but did nothing else to stop her from moving aside the barrier and waving the vans through.
Once they were stationed in front of an abandoned tenement, Wright jumped out the back, shaking her head and snorting. "Was looking out from the back of the van; did you just dial the Director of the FBI?"
Camilla softly replied, a smile creeping across her lips, "His wife and I play canasta on occasion."
"Oh please. You fucking enjoyed that."
Camilla quirked a corner of her mouth upward. "Damn right I did. Now, let's contain the area. I've been waiting for an anomaly like this to try out some new gear I've recently developed. Those crates I had you all load into the vans? Open them up, and retrieve six of the devices. Set them up roughly equidistant from each other around those buildings there. Once that's done, I want you to make sure that absolutely no one makes it past the perimeter line we're setting up. Get Albertson, have him, Rodriguez, Sweeney and Snord each take a quadrant. I'll start setting up the rest of the monitoring gear. The actual science team is about an hour behind us; they won't make it in time for whatever's about to happen, but they can start crunching the data."
Davies' orders were quickly executed, and with barely twenty minutes until the final buildup of the event, everything was in place. Reaching over to one of the control panels, she keyed in a command sequence. All of the devices, thin metal towers roughly four feet high, set on small tripods, began to hum loudly. Rings of light set into their metal casing began to flash, and then pulse in patterns. There was a curious effect, like laser beams joining all of them together in a circle, before it disappeared.
"Right. So what are these new toys of yours, anyhow?" Wright asked.
"Quantum field stabilizers."
Wright lifted up her hands, and said with exasperation, "Oh right. I knew that. I took one look at them and said 'Yup. Sure is a fine quantum flux calibrator..."
"...stabilizer, and now you're just being cheeky." Camille smirked. "Long story short, the most current theory I'm pursuing with how an Emergence interacts with the fabric of reality is that the actual physical site where the Emergence itself occurs creates a temporary wound. This 'wound' then becomes a centralized nexus of quantum instability, at least until the flare window passes. This nexus and the newly emerged Special share a quantum resonance that gains in strength the closer they are to each other. This is why we can lower the CFI of the local reality if we move them out of the area; you'll no doubt remember what happened with Max and Arcadia Bay five years ago."
Wright nodded once, grimly. "And...?"
"I'm hoping that whatever this anomaly is, some quantum echo of a disaster that occurred in another timeline perhaps, that these devices will contain any disruptive quantum effects that will probably be unleashed when it gains full strength." Camilla mused.
"You're hoping?" Wright drawled.
"Yes, well, it's not like I've had a lot of opportunities to test them. Assuming we all survive what's about to happen, the data we get back will be of immense scientific value!"
The other agent shook her head, and muttered, "Wish you wouldn't be so damned excited. We literally have no idea what the fuck is going to happen in fifteen minutes from now, right?"
"No. But if it is going to be catastrophic, there's no sense in worrying about it now. We're too close to escape it, and I imagine we'll never feel it coming. If that's of any comfort to you." Davies chuckled lightly, patting Wright's arm, and then went down into the basement of the building where the anomalous readings were centered. It was dark, musty. Clearly not having seen much use in the past few years. The floor was almost entirely covered in oilcloth tarps, except for one bare patch that stuck out.
Hauling camera gear and spotlights with two other agents, they quickly got to work. The seismic shaking was unnerving, like a constant jackhammer was running beneath their feet. There was also something else in the air, which Camilla couldn't put her finger on. Like a mental pressure, weighing down on her brain, growing with intensity second by second. Not that she had any plans before to be in this basement when 1:12 PM rolled along, but she was absolutely certain now that they wanted to be clear of the area.
With three minutes to spare, they emerged from the building, and started turning on and testing the camera, lights and sensors, all running through to control displays in the lead van.
And then they waited.
Rodriguez glanced down at her watch, and murmured low. "Thirty seconds to go, jefa. You feel like making odds on us surviving whatever's about to go down?"
"Sure; if we all die horribly, I owe you dinner." Davies said.
Suddenly, Wright pointed out a finger and called out. "Whoa! Hey, the fuck? Who let him past...hey. HEY! Get out! Get! The Fuck! Back out here!"
Camilla groaned; one of the local NYPD clearly got too curious and managed to slip in during all the coming and going. There was a confused expression on his face, as if he wasn't sure he was the one being referred to.
"Oh...bloody damn! We need to get him...Alanna, damnit, get back here!"
Rodriguez ran off, trying to drag the police officer back towards the outside of the containment ring. Despite her better judgement, Davies ran along behind her, hoping the two of them could quickly drag him out together in time.
They nearly made it, but were a second or two behind when it happened.
When reality simply ceased to exist.
In a bright flash of light and a horrific roaring boom, a great curtain of searing heat washed over them. Camilla could feel every nerve on her body light up in agony. She was grateful that whatever was happening, she wouldn't be alive to endure it more than another few fractions of a second.
As quickly as it began, the worst of it passed. The air twisted and turned, as if constantly being warped by heat shimmer. Camilla was still on her feet, and although she felt like absolute shit, she was clearly doing better than the other two, who'd already vomited.
She managed to drag Alanna and the officer out of the containment zone.
"Sweeney? I want you to get both of them to the van, make sure they're okay. But that officer is not allowed to leave the area until we've figured out how to deal with him appropriately.
Shit. Going to have to keep this quiet, convince the man to shut his gob for his own sake. If Martinet gets wind of this...
Wright grabbed her by the shoulders. "Hey! You okay? You all just sort of...collapsed out there, out of the blue."
Camilla blinked. "What. Seriously? Did you all completely fail to notice the massive phantom explosion?"
Wright tilted her head. "Guess so. Don't know what it looked like from your end, but over here? Those fancy devices of yours started getting real, real loud, like they were working overtime. There was kind of a flash, but it was real brief, like I wasn't even sure what I saw at all."
"Huh. Well, then, it seems we're caught yet another lucky break. I shudder to think what we'd be having to deal with right now if we'd not manage to contain the anomaly. Whatever sort of...explosion or blast we experienced, it might have hit the entire city. We might be having to explain to the whole of New York what they just saw." Camilla stated.
"Well. I mean, this is kinda why they pay you the big bucks, bosslady." Wright said with a shrug. "And at least that damn jackhammering noise's stopped. God, that was giving me a headache."
Camilla blinked, as something suddenly occurred to her. She called out, "Someone...get me a geiger counter, please?"
After a few minutes, she was pleased to discover that neither she, nor Alanna, nor the police officer were quickly dying from radiation poisoning, or suffering from any other long term deleterious effects consistent with being exposed to a nuclear blast. If anything, she was surprised that she didn't find anything more. They all seemed to be in relatively good health, other than the lingering mental effects."
Her phone, having been returned to her earlier by a much more cooperative Agent Deckard - the man finally properly identifying himself, and apologizing appropriately - rang.
"It's Martinet. Davies, what the hell is happening out there in New York?! I've got the Generals at NORAD absolutely panicked. Cheyenne Mountain is convinced that the city was nuked, but the readings passed after ten seconds. Now they're about to drop to DefCon 2 unless I can give them a good reason to stand down!"
"I'm not sure what to tell them sir, other than I'm standing here now. In New York City. Clearly unhurt, and that if they start opening up the missile silos now, they'll needlessly alarm the rest of the world and feel silly about it afterwards. Tell them that the situation's been contained for the moment, and I will of course give you a full report as soon as I've got something more specific to tell you."
"You've got to give me a little more than that." Martinet demanded "What did you determine on the trip over, from the study of the initial results when the anomaly first emerged?"
Davies sighed hard. "To be fair, there were...ghosts. Virtual readings of a nuclear blast. As if it was supposed to, or possibly had occurred at this point in space and time previously, but then...didn't. And now we're seeing significant temporal fluctuations associated with this incident. If I had to hypothesize, based on what we know to date, I'd say that we're currently inhabiting a changed timeline. In the original, the city was completely obliterated. I'm sure from that point, Storyteller Protocol was executed, and we sent Max back with as much information as we could gather, in the hopes we could prevent it. Clearly she succeeded...to a point."
She started to wander towards the command van and continued, "Why any sort of anomaly emerged afterwards, I haven't a clue. What's more distressing, is that we still can't find Max. There's no trace of her on any of the trackers. I don't have enough information at present to determine if she survived the mission. I won't know more until I can study what's going on past the containment field we've set up. The good news is that the stabilizers worked, and kept the entire city from experiencing the temporary and curious sensation of...well..I suppose what it's like to die in a nuclear fireball."
Martinet growled, "I think I'm going to wait before I even ask what the hell that's supposed to mean. Find out what you can, and then give me a full report in two hours. In the meantime, I'll do my best to reassure the President and the Joint Chiefs that we're on top of the situation."
Camilla elegantly flopped down into the chair in the back of the van, and began going over all of the sensor and video data coming in.
It was a good hour before she came back out.
"So how are Rodriguez and...what was the name, Officer Grabowski? How are they doing?" Camilla asked as soon as she emerged from the van.
"Okay for the most part, still feeling a little dizzy and sick, but it's going away. Alanna's a pro so she's mentally recovering a lot quicker.I think we've managed to convince the other guy that there was a flashbang that went off. I implied it might have been his stupid ass breaching the perimeter that set it off, and I think he's happy enough to forget whatever it is he thinks he saw. No trouble getting him to sign an NDA." Wright reported.
Camilla nodded, "We'll have to keep an eye on him for a while, but that's the FBI's problem now. Given that the effect could have potentially spread out to the entire city, and was still strong enough, despite containment, to show up on several key government orbital monitoring networks, we got off especially light."
"Alright. Fair enough. So really, what the hell did happen? We've been staring at the video feeds for the past hour, and it just looks like a big ball of multicolored haze buzzing like a hornet's nest down in that basement."
Camilla sighed softly. "Based on what I've been able to discern from the data - and let me point out that we are charting some incredible new ground here - the description I could give the phenomenon is a - a multiversal space-time discontinuity. We know for a fact, or close enough to it, that a massive, multi-megaton blast happened in this spot. Apparently it doesn't matter that we prevented it, not entirely; an atomic explosion of that magnitude is still going to affect the quantum fabric of reality beyond the normal boundaries of linear time and causality; there's a reason why Hiroshima is the site of Incident Three. So take an area of four dimensional space that has already been damaged, for lack of a better word, and expose it to someone like Max..."
"Wait, are you saying that Max did this?" Wright jumped in, frowning deeply.
"What? No! I'm saying that if she was down there, and rewound for some reason, perhaps as a way to try and stop whatever was happening, or to buy herself more time, the combination of her manipulating time in a heavily damaged portion of the space-time continuum could cause a breakdown in...ugh. You know, why don't I just stop right there. I need to go down into that basement."
Wright blinked. "Seriously? Why? You saw what happened to Rodriguez. Hell, you obviously felt it too. Why do you want to go back?"
Camilla explained, "Because what I can discern remotely through sensors is achingly limited at this point. And also because I suspect I'm one of the few people who can do this. The containment zone is rife with quantum field fluctuations, with the normal laws of time and space now completely bent. The human mind has trouble processing that sort of thing, in the same way that Max bringing someone through time has a deleterious effect. "
"Oh, I get it. But since you've always been a little immune to all that shit, you're going to give it a shot?" Wright asked.
Nodding, she replied. "Precisely. I'm about to fit myself with a standard wearable computer package, and we'll see what we can see. But something tells me what what's down there needs to be witnessed by actual eyes. Sensors and monitors aren't going to cut it."
Roughly ten minutes later, Camilla hesitantly stepped past the invisible wall of stability the ring of devices provided, offering up a running commentary to the others who were safely ensconced and monitoring her vitals and audio-visual feed from the vans.
"Alright...I'm in. Definite sense of something strange. Like an internal compass going haywire. Curious, almost constant sense of deja vu. Like I've done and said everything a million times before, and can't remember when." Camilla slowly walked forward, making her way carefully down the stairs of the abandoned building.
"Huh. Other than a strange visual shimmer, nothing in the area seems to have changed all that much. Really, looking around at the building, I'm struck with the notion that it's stable as a rock within the context of space and time, and the air and everything else around it is washing up against it, like the sea against a pier."
"Uh...hey bosslady. It's Jenkowitz, I just arrived. Ummm..let me see here. Most of your vitals are within tolerance...barely, but your EEG reading is crazy! The monitors are insisting you're having an epileptic seizure right now."
"I probably am." Camilla noted dryly. "But with my superior cognition, I'm rather good at ignoring that sort of inconvenience."
Pressing ahead, Camilla made her way forward, into the dimly lit basement.
"Just ahead, there's that great, huge mass of colored light and noise. I felt that one, in my stomach now. Sort of a...I'm not sure, but...oh my gosh! I think gravity's been affected. Yes, the same sort of free-fall sensation in my stomach as when we did those exercises on the simulator plane." Pushing experimentally with the toes of her feet, Camilla started to steadily float forward.
The area of light grew, until it filled her vision. It was almost impossible for her to tell where the boundary lay, between the 'core anomaly' and the affected periphery around it, the event horizon as it were. The point of transition between the two was overly long. A good minute passed where Camilla knew she should only be traveling five or ten feet...
...and then suddenly was in the basement.
It took her a supreme effort of will to keep from immediately passing out from the strain. She could barely discern Jenkowitz shouting with concern into her earpiece, insisting that she pull back.
Come this far now. Let's...let's see what we've got.
There were a million voices, speaking, crying, laughing, a supremely dissonant cacophony. A thousand million billion overlapping images of different people and things washing over her; Camilla found herself drowning in an infinite sea of ghosts.
Need...need to focus on just a few, need...focus!
It took her a minute...or was it a millenia? A eternity and nothing at all, but eventually, a time came where she was able to begin discerning a small portion of what was occurring, filtering out the rest.
She tried to speak, rasping against the feeling of the wind constantly being knocked out of her. "It's...it's Max! I think? I can see it now. It's the same moment in time, the last minute...or two? Being looped over and over again. But it's not just one moment in time in our universe...it's...it's all of them!"
There were female Maxes. Male ones. African and Japanese Maxes. Short ones, tall ones. Ones made of metal, and flesh, and wood. One that looked like an impossible construct of crystal triangles that disappeared as soon as she took note of it's existence. Sometimes Max had her black haircut into a severe fauxhawk, other times he was rippling, muscular, his long red hair bound up in a ponytail.
Max spoke Chinese, English, Icelandic. Or Esperanto. Or sometimes she chirped or clicked like a bird or dolphin. She was interacting with a smaller child, curled up on the floor. A boy, no wait, a girl. Both? Or was it a dog. A cat? A sentient hue of the color green?
God damnit, that one just disappeared too! Why are some of these things popping out of existence the moment I get a good look at them? Especially the most fascinating and unusual ones!
"Davies! Davies are you there?" Jenkowitz shouted in her ear, from impossibly far away. "Don't know if it's related, but the CFI rating is starting to lower. Like...the moment you stepped into center of it all, it started to go down."
Camilla was beginning to understand what was happening. All of the multiversal possibilities of a particular scene were playing out in one confined moment of space and time; introducing a human witness into the act was finally causing the quantum wavefront to collapse. Like Schrodinger's classic thought experiment, Every possible alternate Max, from every possible outcome of this particular situation existed at once, albeit as virtual particles, until the the box was 'opened'. Now that this had come to pass, the chaos was beginning to resolve itself into order, however slowly.
The most unlikely alternatives are the first to be removed from the equation. Not that this solves the mystery of why reality is behaving in this fashion at all, but then again...why did whales beach themselves and birds fall dead out of the sky when Max Emerged? Why any of it?
Regardless, there were a few basic constants that Camilla could discern: There was always a Max, there was always a child, it was always the last few moments of a tense situation playing itself out, over and over again in a loop. Beyond that, there was too much going on, overwhelming even her incredibly enhanced brain.
But it's just a matter of time now. In a matter of days, possibly even hours if the decay is exponential, we'll be left with the last of the most likely outcomes.
Already, she could sense a decrease in the mental pressure, like a maddening hum just above the edge of hearing that was dying out. Another minute later, and she could no longer discern any Max's that were completely alien; while not all of them were human, there weren't any amphibian or reptile versions of her mucking about now.
Honestly, she could just stare for hours, at the patterns, the weft and weave of reality, the...
Blinking, and clearing her head, Camilla spoke in a firm tone, more for herself than anyone else listening in. "I'm...coming back now."
It wasn't much easier to depart than it had been to walk in.
Later that night, Camilla headed to an apartment that she kept in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. Part living quarters, part workshop, part safehouse, she primarily utilized it for trips into the city when she needed to go with Martinet to address the various high secrecy councils within the United Nations, who kept something approximating a watchful eye on Specials activity. At present she was in her living room, using the video conferencing terminal built into the wall to deliver her report to Martinet.
"Here's my current theory: We do know that based on our readings, there was a massive nuclear explosion in our original timeline. We should assume that Max went back in time twenty-four hours, per our established protocols. During that twenty-four hour period, or possibly over the course of several recursive periods as information was gained and additional iterations were required in order to fully come up with a solution, we, for reasons unknown, determined that we needed to send Max to New York City to deal with the problem. There is a younger child in the room with her, who appears be in agony. The most likely explanation is that they were in the process of Emerging."
"And something went wrong? Did we create a causality loop? Trigger the thing we were trying to prevent?" Martinet asked, his face set in a scowl as he listened.
"Possibly, but it's hard to determine. Max seems at least partially immune to the laws of causality; it may be that the explosion was always going to happen, but Max preventing it, however she did it, created complications. We still can't isolate out the most likely scenario from all of the potentialities currently playing out in a roughly two minute loop. Some of them are clearly impossible. For instance, I distinctly remember one where Max was a humanoid spider, wrapping up and eating whomever this small child was..."
Martinet went pale at the notion.
"But now that more and more of the 'soup' is evaporating, we're starting to detect radio transmissions as part of the phenomenon, so it's likely she was in communication with someone at the time. Us, I would assume. Beyond that...well, I hate to say it, but I don't think we're going to effectively discern what's actually happened for...oh...given the rate of decay we're continuing to witness...I'd give it another twenty four hours?"
Martinet leaned back, steepling his fingers. He was clearly unhappy with what he was hearing.
"So let me get this straight: we have evidence of a nuclear explosion, one that we somehow managed to prevent, but that few people outside of our own organization will truly understand, let alone believe, Our most valuable asset is now completely unaccounted for, and apparently without any sort of tracker on her person. We're assuming Storyteller Protocol was invoked, yet a quick check of all the Edit Order tokens show them unused and accounted for."
Camilla blinked a few times, clearly not anticipating the turn that this conversation was saying.
"It's not outside the realm of possibility that Max was initially given one, traveled back, and then had to travel back again without it on her person. If she's not physically carrying it, its location would be reset, along with any other object in the timeline as it's being rewound..."
"This is an absolute mess, Camilla! A nightmare. We have an agent unaccounted for, possibly gone AWOL..."
Speaking out, her voice rising just slightly in pitch, she responded, "With all due respect, Director, we simply don't know that to be true! For all we know, Max laid down her life in order to save us all. We should have our answers soon enough, and by then, we can react accordingly." She paused, narrowing her eyes a touch. "In full possession of the facts."
A long, icy silence descended between the two of them. Martinet paused to remove his glasses, "I believe I'm within my rights to have an audit team called in. As part of a formal investigation as to whether some sort of negligence or incompetence was involved. As of now, the most powerful Special on this planet completely unaccounted for and out of our control."
So. It's come to this, has it? You've been looking for an opening to push me out for a long time now, Paul. And now you think you've finally found it.
Camilla took a few additional seconds to compose her thoughts, before responding, "I see. And as the head of Field Operations, I imagine you're of the opinion that I have more than a few things to answer for? Hmmm? Keep in mind that as Director, you may play a surprisingly large role in this situation as well. Whatever it is. Are you absolutely certainly don't want to wait until tomorrow?"
...before going off half-cocked, you great stupid git.
"Do you know something, Camilla?" he asked pointedly.
"No, sir. No more than I've already told you. Merely pointing out that given what we've seen today, anything is indeed possible."
The silent tension returned. It was a good five seconds before Martinet said, "I'll expect you back at Zion by Wednesday morning at the latest, and that you'll fully comply with the investigation."
The link was cut before Camilla could respond.
She sat there for a short while, as she assessed what just happened.
Been a good three weeks now since that vicious row we had. When I found out he was working behind my back to try and get the Wayden Amendment restored. Things have been strained - even for us - ever since. But this is desperate, even for him. On the other hand, he may finally see this as an opening, the likes of which he's not bound to get again anytime soon.
Of course, he might not like what he'd find, once the investigation began. Camilla knew, or at least strongly suspected more than she let on in the briefing. She'd managed to have the data stream fed over to her personal computer systems here in the apartment. Between some custom coded algorithms and her own mental aptitude, she eventually came to some rather intriguing - as well as disturbing - conclusions. The 'multiple-potentiality event' would resolve with enough clarity that by tomorrow, Jenkowitz and the rest of the science team would be able to piece together what she thought she'd already discovered.
Camilla still had no idea how Max made it to New York - other than she was sent with a team - or where she went afterwards.
But I now know at least some of what happened during those two minutes. You poor girl. The state you must be in.
Rising up, and walking into the hidden operations chamber in her apartment, she pressed a hand against a wall panel, sensors reading her palm. Once the safe unlocked and opened, she retrieved a single item: a smartphone in a hard, black metal shell.
She pressed a button and waited. It was a good minute or three before someone finally answered.
"Mushi mushi?" a feminine voice on the other side answered.
"Shimiko, it's me." Camilla said, speaking expertly in Japanese
"Ah. Davies-san. You've called me on this line. You are speaking Japanese. Truly something drastic has happened. Anything to do with events in New York City, perhaps?"
Camilla sighed, "I'll get right to the point, because we have little time: the White Knight has fallen off the board."
"I see" Shimiko replied. "Is she dead, or...?"
Continuing, Camilla explained, "I honestly don't know. I suspect not, but she's actually managed to somehow slip out of her tracking band. And it would be difficult enough to locate her with the PAN-Opticon, but now we're effectively blind thanks to this new Incident. Look, I'm sending you a data packet, with a brief summary of the situation, my findings thus far, along with some additional raw data that I need for you to analyze. Outside of the normal channels; we're in a tenuous situation at present."
"Oh really? Do elaborate."
"The Black King is finally forcing my hand. He's trying to use the situation with the missing piece to remove me completely from the field of play. And if for some reason he doesn't succeed, it's just a matter of time before he tries again; he's clearly grown desperate." Camilla paused, before she finished, "It's time to play the Alexandria Gambit, I fear."
There was a short pause, before the other woman spoke. "Speaking of desperation moves. Cammie-chan...please don't do anything rash."
Camilla laughed lightly, and murmured, "The hour for caution is quickly passing. I'll try to contact you one more time before...well...before. In the meantime..."
"Yes...of course." Shimiko quickly answered. "I'll do what I can. If she's alive and out there somewhere, clearly this is the opportunity we've been waiting for. We'll need to work quickly; if any of the other factions get wind of this, things will becoming increasingly complicated."
Camilla winced at the thought. "Putting it mildly there, although there's only one or two worth worrying about at this point. I...need to go. I have to consider my options. Start lining my pieces up. Setting my affairs in order."
A few seconds of silence passed between them, prompting Camilla to ask, in English this time.
"Are you there?"
"Yes", Shimiko responded, in a much more faraway voice, also in English. "Good luck."
"Well, fortune favors the bold, I suppose." She took a deep breath, and then let out a sigh. "And to you, as well."
With that, she quickly hung up.
Making her way back into the living room, Camilla stared out through the window, admiring the New York skyline at night, sparkling like a necklace of diamonds.
She clasped her hands behind her back and mused to herself. "Would have liked to have made it to retirement the long way around. But...let's see what this week brings, shall we?"
A/N: Whew! Hey there Swanketteers...it's Black Swan Lyta and Corentin Saturday Variety Story Time! :-)
I have to say, this was, by far, the hardest chapter to write. I literally felt like I was dragging it out kicking and screaming from my brain. I had so much trouble doing this that I wrote 1500 words, then skipped to chapter 17, 18, 19, and half of 20. Then wrote a one shot, then wrote 8 chapters of Grande Dame, until I had no choice left but to get back to this. It probably has something to do with the fact that neither Max nor Chloe are present. Also? Cory really helped a lot with this chapter...when I first wrote it, I was absolutely convinced it was crap. On further readthroughs, it's not nearly so bad.
But no worries, we'll get a ton of Max next week, along with more answers as to what happened in New York City...the second, or is it third? time around ;-)
On a semi-related note, I'm afraid it's going to be time for another hiatus after next week; work has just started kicking my ass soooooo hard, and I need time to catch up. Not all the remaining chapters are fully finished. I suspect this is also going to be the way things go for the rest of the story. That is, we get through a "day" and then pause with a short break before the next day begins. Sorry about that. :-(
Anyhow, have a great rest of the weekend!