Published at 29th of October 2022 3:06 pm

Book 2: Chapter 144: Third Party Contractor

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Dan said, “I’m gonna call you back,” and hung up without waiting for a response. He caught the beginning of an indignant bellow, before the call cut off and he pocketed his phone. Dan turned to face Rawls, who looked at him with something between caution and respect.

“That was Anastasia Summers,” Rawls observed, his voice carefully neutral.

Dan’s phone buzzed with the urgency of an incoming call. He pretended not to hear it.

“Yes, it was,” Dan agreed, bobbing his head. He glanced down at the Geist as he did, noting the vacant eyes and trail of drool running down his cheek. There wouldn’t be any more information coming from that end; not for a while, at least.

Dan turned, taking in the austere kitchen. Clean, simple, unadorned, much like the rest of the apartment. It was the apartment of someone who lived somewhere else. Work, in Rawls case, or such was Dan’s guess. The only visible appliances were a microwave, a toaster-oven, and a fridge. All were old, but obviously functional.

He glanced over the rest of the apartment, the little that he could see. The adjoining living room was similarly unremarkable, with a comfortable, but simple couch, a recliner, and a moderately sized television. There were few luxuries in sight. The walls were not left bare, but the sculptures and paintings hung every fifteen or so feet seemed like perfunctory things. Expected. No heart at all. They said nothing, expressed nothing, meant nothing. They existed to fill space.

A man’s home is a man’s mind, Cornelius had once told him. Dan couldn’t see the rest of the apartment, but he doubted it was any different than out here. It painted the picture of a serious, no-nonsense worker, dedicated and practical; a man whose life revolved around his work. Someone who took his job seriously. Someone who, judging by the complete lack of modern amenities, could not be easily bribed.

Finally, he turned to Rawls, looking over the man himself. His face was still flushed with exertion, and his once neat suit was rumpled and untucked. He wasn’t a big man, but he was blessed with the same mods that all feds were given. His body was sculpted to supernatural perfection, sporting the kind of muscles that looked jarring on someone who was essentially a desk jockey.

But not always, Dan thought, taking in the man’s stance. He didn’t move like Cornelius, or even Connor; the graceful gait of a predator this was not. Even still, there was something more to the man. He was clearly alarmed, flustered, angry and afraid, but none of it reached past the surface. None of it tainted the core of consciousness, where thought influenced action and fear became panic.

This isn’t his first rodeo, Dan realized, and even as that thought passed his mind, something similar passed across the fed’s. He watched Dan, as Dan watched him, and Dan’s carefully planted breadcrumbs led Rawls to exactly the wrong conclusion.

“You were very casual to Madam Summers,” Rawls noted.

Dan shrugged, and said, “Formality gets old after a while,” which had the pleasant effect of being both misleading and true.

“You work for Summerset, then?” Rawls asked, but immediately shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t speak to her like that if you were on her payroll. And you called yourself a freelancer.”

He descended into muttering, as he tried and failed to puzzle out Dan’s identity. Dan would’ve left him to it, but there was a loose end laying in the middle of the room.

Dan gestured to the Geist. “You got somewhere we can stash him, while we talk?”

Rawls ended up hastily emptying out his bedroom closet, and the two of them rolled the Geist inside. Dan added a few more zip-ties to the man, just in case. It drew a questioning glance from Rawls.

“The Truth-teller’s withdrawal effects should keep him down for at least an hour,” the fed pointed out.

Dan hadn’t known that, but he also didn’t care. “He was resistant to your upgrade,” he pointed out. “Seems reasonable to conclude that he’s resistant to the after effects as well.”

Rawls conceded the point with a worried glance at the Geist. “What’ll we do if he triggers his upgrade?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Dan assured him.

“Right.” Rawls nodded, as if he’d forgotten that Dan had already spotted this particular Geist, but Dan was pretty sure it was an act. He was being tested, probed about his capabilities. That was fine. He’d gotten pretty good at lying with the truth during his time in Dimension A.

The two men wandered into the kitchen. Dan spun his usual web of sensory threads, paying special attention to the motionless lump in the closet. The rest of the floor registered to his senses, but nothing stood out as alarming. Rawls went for the coffee machine, while Dan went for the door. He eased it open, confirming with his eyes what his veil was telling him. The Any-Key did good work. There was no damage to the mechanism that he could see or feel. He swung it close, and turned the latch.

“Coffee?” Rawls offered, from behind an open cupboard. Dan’s veil confirmed that the man was, indeed, reaching for a bag of coffee grounds.

Dan accepted the offer, more as a friendly gesture than out of any real desire, and they settled in as the machine did its work. The silence between them, broken up only by the pitter-patter of boiling water, was not an uncomfortable one. Rawls seemed to be processing the day’s events, and Dan was just happy to have a quiet moment for once.

The moment ended when the coffee machine dinged. Brown liquid dribbled and sputtered into the waiting pot, clouding its glass surface with steam. Rawls opened up another cabinet and reached inside. Dan could see the man had all of three mugs to his name. He pulled two out, filled them up, and passed one to Dan.

They both sipped, and the silence lingered.

Rawls was the first to break it. His skin had regained its normal shade, his breathing had evened out. He’d gathered himself, as best as anyone could expect in such a situation, and faced Dan with clear eyes.

“So, you mentioned something about Austin.”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to talk about what just happened?”

“Better to get whatever you came here for out of the way, first,” Rawls said. “Not to be disrespectful—I realize you probably saved my life—but I’d like to get the less important things out of the way first, so that my focus does not waver. Someone just tried to have me killed, so you’ll have to forgive me if I truly do not care about whatever is happening in Austin.”

That seemed fair. In Rawls’ position, Dan probably would have felt the same. Fortunately, Dan was in a position to accommodate the beleaguered fed.

“The Austin PD have got one of your people in custody,” Dan said. Seeing Rawls uncomprehending expression, he added, “A fed. Name o’ Dunkirk.” He waited a moment for that to sink in, then added, “Someone tried to assassinate him, a few days back.”

That got a reaction.

“Local police are holding a fed?” he asked, puzzled. His brow furrowed. “Dunkirk. Dun-kirk. Why do I know that name…”

“He ran the Bureau’s field office in Austin,” Dan explained. “Right up until Coldeyes’ Crew flattened it. Lost some Genius-tech in the process.”

“Ah.” Rawls nodded, sipping his coffee. “That was a mess. Though it doesn’t quite explain how he ended up in police custody.”

He really doesn’t know, Dan thought. He has no idea at all.

It was what they’d assumed, but confirmation was always important. He wasn’t ambivalent to the situation, just uninformed. That was good. It was a problem Dan could fix. He rounded the kitchen counter and settled himself onto a bar stool. He drained his mug, let it fall to the counter with a soft clank. Dan leaned forward, steepling his fingers.

“Yeah, well,” Dan said, slowly, “it’s a long, strange story.”

It was also one he was intimately familiar with. Dan was able to summarize Dunkirk’s actions, and the events the fed had helped kick off, relatively quickly. It was, to Dan, an unbelievable story. If he hadn’t lived it, hadn’t met the man himself, he never would have thought someone so viciously short-sighted could have risen so high in the ranks of the FBI. That, Dan reflected, was the kind of naïveté he could no longer afford to have.

Rawls took the information in with grim stoicism. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Whatever faith he held for the institution where he worked, it must have at least been shaken by recent events. Even so, he kept calm and under control. He listened to Dan’s story, accepted it, and immediately moved forward.

“What demands did the APD have for me?” he asked, and Dan passed over the note Cornelius had prepared. The list wasn’t extensive, but it would go a long way towards rebuilding the APD’s SPEAR Teams. Specifically, Rawls’ Unit—The Villain Response Unit, which specialized in combat—used several highly restricted upgrade patterns and mods. These were jealously guarded tools, but they were not illegal to sell or distribute. It was rarely done, but made for a potent favor.

Rawls scanned the list of demands, and nodded. “I can agree to this, assuming Dunkirk makes it to me alive, and cognizant enough for interrogation.”

“That’s up to you,” Dan pointed out. “The APD can’t do transport. They’re having enough trouble just keeping the man alive.”

“My side is compromised,” Rawls pointed out. “I can’t order a pickup either, because I don’t know who I could trust to do so.”

Dan shrugged, straightening in his seat. “The APD can’t do it,” he repeated.

“There’s another option,” Rawls said, eyeing Dan. “How did you enter my apartment?”

Dan blinked at the non-sequitur, but realized almost immediately where the fed was going with it.

“I don’t like talking about specifics,” Dan equivocated.

“Could you have brought someone with you?” Rawls pressed. “Could it be somewhere else? Say, a secure location, without cameras? I could pick up the prisoner myself, and drive him to the RED Building. Once he’s secure and in my custody, nobody would dare to assassinate him. Too many eyes in that building, too many sensors.”

“They could send another Geist,” Dan pointed out. “Or not. You’re not bulletproof. If the other side gets desperate, a guy with a gun works just fine.”

Rawls scowled, but shook his head. “I can be careful, now that I know I have to be. My counter-intelligence skills are rusty, but not gone.”

Dan hummed, considering it. There were a number of risks, the most pressing of which was that his portals were supposed to be secret. On the other hand, he had a few options for obfuscation that he thought might work. It would be a challenge; he would have to be clever.

“The VRU has a budget for third-party contractors,” Rawls offered. “We pay very well.”

Dan leaned forward, putting both elbows and the counter and resting his chin on steepled fingers.

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

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