Published at 12th of August 2022 9:14 pm

Book 2: Chapter 88: Breaching Sanctuary

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Dozens of thin blue lines spiderwebbed in every direction, all leading away from the swirling silver orb. They weren’t there, really. It was Dan’s power that brought them into being. His Navigator found the connections and his veil bridged the distance. He could feel the well of power within him draining, as the strings stretched farther and farther. He quickly put an end to it, and progress stopped.

Dan knew he could follow any string with nothing but a flex of his will, but he held steady. The worst possible outcome would be to travel to a cache still connected to Vault, and somehow alert the Natural to Dan’s meddling. The cache’s he’d meddled with had been thus far removed from Vault’s… influence? Deliberately so, if Dan was parsing the feeling correctly. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell which caches were connected and which were not until he used his veil to interface them, which again lead to the aforementioned issue.

Dan’s goal was two-fold: Discover where these caches came out in reality, and determine whether their contents contained a small army of terrorists. He needed to accomplish both of these goals subtly—not his strong point—and in a way that could be acted upon by Anastasia and whatever army goons she could rustle up. He was still uncertain exactly how Vault’s power worked, or if the man himself was even alive. Anastasia’s initial theory could be correct: Echo may very well be mimicking the man’s power. Dan might be chasing an entirely unrelated string, or Echo’s mimicry may be so accurate that it has effectively become a beacon for Dan’s Navigator.

Only time would tell.

Location was the first problem that needed to be solved. Dan was tracking caches through the Gap. He could find them there, or in the spot where they overlaid with reality. Either way, Dan had no real way to determine their location without physically appearing there. That was an issue, given the likelihood of danger. He was likely to be shot by a startled terrorist, or even a completely unaffiliated homeowner, given Dan’s own situation with his basement. Either way, it was a situation to be avoided.

There was another option, but it was one Dan feared to attempt. He had, multiple times now, used his veil to see into the Gap, while remaining firmly rooted in reality. It was a simple act for him, basically wearing his power like a contact lens. It worked perfectly, letting him spot the caches that were otherwise undetectable. He imagined that, should other powers hide things in t-space, it would remain just as useful. It was effective and easy to use.

He was utterly petrified of attempting the same action while in t-space.

Dan could not visualize a moment frozen in time. He knew the Gap operated on a completely separate time scale, but how did it work? It was all well and good to look into it from Dimension A; Dan didn’t care about the flow of time in the Gap while he wasn’t in it. Besides, the Gap changed for whomever perceived it. Time, or whatever proxy existed in this place, likely slowed itself to match reality whenever Dan looked in from there. Not that it mattered, regardless. Nothing ever happened in the Gap. What did it matter if time went a little odd if Dan wasn’t inside to experience it?

On the other hand, the time dilation was utterly crucial to maintain while inside the Gap. It was one of Dan’s greatest advantages, and he was terrified that gazing out into reality would forever alter the nature of t-space in his own perception. Because it would have to change, to match reality. Otherwise, Dan wouldn’t see a thing. Light had to be moving for his eyes to function. Right?

He was already overthinking it, and this was exactly his issue. Perhaps his subconscious would adjust the Gap’s speed to match reality, to square that circle in logic. Perhaps it wouldn’t need to, and the Gap would remain out of sync with reality, and his veil would pick up whatever slack was needed. Once he saw the world moving at the same pace as the Gap, would this dreamspace not alter itself to make that the truth? And could Dan ever un-alter it, after having that image seared into his mind? Controlling one’s own perceptions was not easy when presented concrete evidence to the contrary of what you were trying to achieve. It just wasn’t worth the risk, despite how insanely useful it would be. He refused to lose the advantage of time. Even just being able to calm down without a moment passing was invaluable to him.

He’d have to find another way.

It did put him in a bit of a pickle, though. He’d dismissed his easiest solution, and was now left with a whole host of lesser ones. Dan eyed the snarled webs, extending wildly through space. One by one, he withdrew his veil back into himself. He counted each thread as it faded from view, until none were left.

Twenty-seven.

Not as many as he’d feared, but many more than he’d hoped.

Dan drifted back towards his original cache, still merrily floating in space. Tentatively, he pushed more of his veil into the sphere, flooding it with his power well past what was first necessary. The more of his veil that resided within the sphere, the clearer his senses became. He was searching for… something. He wasn’t sure. He had a goal in mind, without a clear picture of how to accomplish it.

The sphere’s color was slowly changing into the familiar sky blue of Dan’s veil. Dan frowned at the sight. He’d always been a visual person. He felt in his bones that what he wanted was possible, he simply needed to figure out a way to properly express it. With a flex of will his veil drew back from the sphere’s edges, condensing itself smaller and smaller. The cache was roughly the size of Dan’s torso, but his veil and drawn itself into a tight cylinder, scarcely wider than Dan’s fist.

He approached the orb, ignoring its swirling features, and focusing entirely on the makeshift hole his veil had created. He reached into his front pocket and grabbed hold of the first thing he found, a small pen. He held it loosely between his fingers and slowly, deliberately, pushed it into the spot where his veil met the cache. It wasn’t about the action; the action accomplished exactly nothing. It was about seeing it. It was about linking expectation with reality, and willing the result he desired—

The pen vanished from his hands, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that it had been deposited into the cache.

Better confirm it, though.

His veil snapped back into its previous shape, and he willed the orb back into reality. Dan stepped back into the world as if he’d never left it. He watched the room spread back over the wall and its features resolve. Anastasia’s spy watched him in bemusement.

“Was there a purpose to this?” he asked.

Dan ignored him. The man clearly hadn’t realized that Dan had come and gone already. Instead, Dan walked forward into the room that the cache had created. His veil spread out in anticipation of a search, but he needn’t have bothered. Sitting on the floor at the center of the room was Dan’s pen. He stopped beside it, carefully knelt down, and picked it up.

The portly spy stared at the object with a furrowed brow.

“I cleared the room,” he said, almost in protest.

“You did,” Dan agreed quietly. He closed his hand around the pen and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Let it be said that Anastasia employed no fools. The man widened his eyes, almost immediately picking up the implications.

“You can place things inside the caches?” He cocked his head. “But can you track them?”

“I can track the caches, and I can put things inside of them,” Dan confirmed. “I think you’d better call Anastasia.”

Calls were made and a plan was quickly assembled. Anastasia was positively bloodthirsty, immediately suggesting that Dan fill any cache he found with explosives of every variety. That plan was quickly nixed by the woman herself, as she quickly realized that even she would not be able to rustle up enough deadly ordnance to reliably kill the People’s Naturals twenty-seven times over. Dan had yet to work out how to look inside a cache, and he wasn’t sure if it would even be possible. So far, his attempts had just… not worked.

Both Anastasia and Dan were concerned that his meddling would be noticed the instant he attempted to invade an active cache, that being one that the Natural—Vault or otherwise—was consciously maintaining. Near as Dan could tell, the Natural could cut off parts of his power, likely as a safety measure, and to reduce whatever mental upkeep was required. Dan couldn’t tell the difference between an active and inactive cache until he shanked it with his veil, which was hardly subtle. The moment Dan began, the enemy would know that he is doing something.

Should his foes be outside the Gap, this alert would be completely useless. The time dilation would ensure that Dan could act however he pleased, and they would only notice after the fact. But if they were indeed using the caches as safehouses, floating safely inside t-space, then they would presumably experience the same benefits of the time dilation.

Or… the power maintained a constant link between the Gap and reality, meaning that time ran the same within the cache as in reality? Or not? Damn, this was too much to think about! It was impossible to know! All they could do was plan around Dan being discovered, and hope for the best. Thus, Anastasia supplied Dan with a big bag of tracking devices, which he would then slip inside each and every cache he could lay his hands on, before ordering them out of the Gap.

Dan was also given a bomb. He was reasonably confident that his veil could overwhelm the Naturals own power, and force it out of the Gap. Dan’s concept was almost anathema to what Vault’s seemed to be—a gateway into the villain’s sanctuary—and only if the Natural was physically present would he have a snowball’s chance in Hell of stopping Dan. If that turned out to be the case, and Dan was unable to control a single, specific cache, he was to assume that Vault was within, and stuff his bomb inside of it. That, Dan was certain he could accomplish.

Anastasia was standing by with several FATs and an active GPS, waiting for the signal from her trackers. They’d come down on the caches the moment they appeared in reality, assuming any were within the city. There just wasn’t enough manpower to cover the entire country, though the locations would be saved for future raids. All told, they’d done the best they could on short notice. Should this plan fail, they could try something else. The most important goal was to force the People out into the open.

Preparations were completed quickly beneath Anastasia’s anticipatory gaze.

All was ready; the rest was up to Dan.

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