The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)
Page 18
Edith stayed inside that memory and happiness for a while, and then backed out of it and set the file back down in the lamp. When she looked around the room again, Roman and Adelaide were looking at her from across the room.
“What the hell was that?” asked Mars, who had stopped working on a device at her lab table.
“I knew it,” said Roman. “I knew you could use it!” Adelaide and Roman came over to Edith, who powered down the glove like Roman had shown her, then began loosening the straps. Roman held up a device the size of a stapler with thin tubes running from one side. “If you find the time, you can experiment with this. It plugs into the glove here and here, and runs on the glove's power supply. I'll probably need to fine tune it later, but this will make an artificial copy of a memory which can exist separate from the object or person you copied the memory from. I'm not sure of the quality of the copy yet, but when we have more time I should be able to get it perfected.”
“Sounds good,” said Edith, slipping the glove and the copier into a padded box and then into a shoulder bag Roman had given her.
“Shall we be on our way, Edith?” asked Adelaide.
Roman glanced over at Mars. “Are you almost done?”
“Nearly there,” said Mars, not looking up from the strange boxes she was working on.
“I'm going to show them out, and then start searching for strays from '34. I'll call you in half an hour.”
“Sounds like a plan, boss,” said Mars.
File 28 :: [Mars]
Mars hunched over the devices on the lab table, using something that wasn't quite a wrench and wasn't quite a screwdriver to tighten tiny clamps onto a few rubber tubes. “Got it!” she said finally, closing up the last of the boxes and pushing the conglomeration of lenses strapped to her head up onto her forehead. “At least I think I got it...” She twisted her mouth and nodded to herself. As long as Roman's instructions were spot on, these things were good to go. She probably had another fifteen minutes before he called, so no harm in testing them out. Well, theoretically there was no harm.
There were eight of the boxes in total, tuned to each other in pairs. All the chemical and mechanical components were housed inside the metal walls, with one fist-sized opening in the middle of one of the metal sides. She picked one of them up, whistled People Are Strange to herself as she walked over to one of the lab walls and pressed the box against the stone wall, roughly in the center of the large room. With a click the suctions on the bottom of the box latched themselves onto the wall. She flipped a small switch on the side and the thing hummed to life. Then she walked over and grabbed its pair and took it to the opposite wall. She lined it up as close as she could, and latched it onto the stone.
Mars licked her lips and said, “Cross your fingers!” to the empty room. She flipped the switch on and stepped back as the second one vibrated to life. The air between the boxes blurred and stretched like toffee in the window of a candy shop. “Ha!” she yelled, just before all the lab tables and devices that lay in the path between the boxes were thrown either one way or the other. “Whoa! Ha!” Mars walked into the middle of the room and slid the lenses back down over her eyes. She twisted her head and cracked her neck, then rubbed her hands together. The reason Roman was having her tweak the “ropes”, as he'd dubbed them, was that they were originally used to temporarily imprison violent people. He'd created them so that the nearly invisible “rope” running between the boxes would give a pressurized hit to a person's heart when someone came into contact with it, which would knock them down and render them unconscious or temporarily paralyzed. Obviously they didn't want a bunch of people from the '30s knocked out on the ground on one side of the ropes with people from this time all sprawled out on the other side – all in all, that just wouldn't be the best PR strategy.
Mars tapped her heart. “You Ok, girl?” she said. “Close your eyes, just in case!” She took off at a run towards the ropes, then leaped up into the air. The ropes caught her and slowed her down in the air, then flung her back the way she came. She crashed onto a lab table, sending all the tools on it onto the floor followed by her body. She pulled the lenses back up onto her forehead and felt her chest, which still housed a beating heart. Her shoulder hurt like hell but the adrenalin helped shoo away the pesky pain. Her arms shot up into the air. “Yeah!” She looked at the flower wrapped around her wrist, the one Tomas, the Caretaker of Jackson Square had given her. “Did you help me out just then?” Then she shrugged and kissed the flower.
The phone rang, and Mars got to her feet, ran over and turned off one of the boxes. The blurry rope vanished and she hurried over and picked up the phone. “Agents of Badass. How may we save your world today?”
“Mars,” said Roman, “I've run into a snag.”
“I got the ropes working! I tested them, and they're good to go.”
“You tested them? On yourself?”
Mars shrugged, as if he could see her do so. “It was either me or the time traveling people. Should I have waited to test it on them?”
“Yes, but I appreciate your initiative.”
“Um, thanks!” she said, glad he couldn't see her blushing. “What's the snag?”
“I'm unable to get the funding for the movie trucks and employees. Since the Agents have been out of commission for months, the entities of the city aren't going to see much advantage in funding us at the moment. And it turns out the movie trucks and employees are used to movie companies from California coming over here and paying them large amounts of money. It would take me days to get that much funding from different sources, and we just don't have the time. We'll have to go the construction route.”
Mars twisted her mouth. “I can call in some favors.”
“Some favors? Like what?”
“Do you think I just got into town? I know people. Just leave it to me, boss. I'll get us a movie crew.”
“Ok, but I need you up here soon. Load the rope boxes onto a cart and take it up here. When you leave the lab, if you turn left instead of right, two doors down is an elevator. You'll have to turn it on first, because we barely use it, but it lets you out in the bottom of the World Trade Center. Just open the garage door and you'll be in the Trade Center's parking lot. Then you don't have to deal with stairs.”
“Cool, give me thirty minutes.”
“I'll see you near the Piazza d'Italia in twenty.”
Mars hung up the bat-phone, took out her cell phone and put it on the table. “Ok,” she said to it. “I really need you to work for like thirty seconds. That's it. Think you can muster that up?” She walked over to her bag, grabbed a small notebook and a pen, went back to her phone and went into the phone's contacts. The colors were all rainbow and random numbers floated across the screen like they wore life jackets. She opened the folder entitled Noiseco[18] and went through the contacts inside, but the screen was getting more and more wobbly. She found Trevor's number just before her phone went completely haywire. Luckily he had a 504 number, so she only had seven numbers to scribble down from memory into her notebook. She picked up the cell phone, which was covered in layers of tiny stickers she'd gotten out of grocery store toy machines over the years – rainbows and unicorns and handcuffs and sunglasses. “Well, if you were gonna only give me one number, at least you gave me Trevor's. Thanks phone. I'll put you up on my wall or something... you know... after I help save the time-space continuum, or the time continuum... if that's a thing.”
She tossed the phone into her bag, went to the bat phone and called the number.
“Yeah?”
“Trevor! It's Mars!”
“Oh, hey. Is this your new number?”
“Um, it's my work number. My old number's been compromised, so this is the only one I have for the near future.”
“Where do you work?”
“You're gonna think I'm lying, but I'm not. I'm a fucking Agent.”
“You mean you're helping the Agents. There's a difference, remember? We talked about this.”
“The Agents Of Now?”
“No! Just the Agents Of.”
“That doesn't make sense.”
“Whatever. Neither does the word Noisician. But seriously, things are about to go batshit in the city and I need some help.”
“Ok, go.”
“There's a rip in time in The CBD, somewhere around Ernst Café. Me and Roman are gonna find out where exactly it is, and then I need some manpower to guard the area. We're hoping it's only about a block large. We want it to look like a movie shoot, but it doesn't have to be professional looking.”
“Holy shit, Mars! You are a fucking Agent, aren't you?”
“Trevor! Pull it together, man! Slap yourself for me, will you? Now, can you help us? We'll pay you in trade.”
“Trade, huh? Do you remember that thing you brought to parties years ago, that your weird friend F gave you? That little box that made stories you told project up onto the wall and ceiling so everyone could see them?”
“I don't have it anymore... why, you want one?”
“You mean you know where there are more of them?”
“No, but I can find out. Or I can build you something like that.”
Trevor laughed. “What do you mean, you can build one?”
“Trevor, does that mean you're in?”
“Of course, girl. I'm always in when it's you asking.”
“Great. It might take a few days before we can fix the skip, but people can rotate shifts. And I'll make you guys all kinds of cool shit afterwards, and feel free to make outlandish promises to people on my behalf.”
“Sounds good. When do you need us?”
“As soon as possible. This is a landline – I no longer have access to cell phones. Whoever's there first, just bring a metal trash can lid and bang on it a bunch of times around Ernst Café and I'll run over and find you.”
“Got it,” said Trevor. “I'll gather some troops right away and by tonight we'll have it looking like a genuine low-budget movie set.”
“Thanks Trevor!”
She hung up the bat phone, grabbed a rolling cart and started loading up the rope boxes.
File 29 :: [Julius Marcos]
Maneuvering through a wide sidewalk which was splashing over with tourists, service workers and locals, Julius made his way down the busy thoroughfare of Canal Street[19]. He used a black wooden cane with a silver plated lion's head handle, along with the false leg. Roman had wanted to take the leg and fix it so that it adjusted better to Julius' shifting body, but Julius didn't want to spend the time yet. Roman had jerry-rigged the straps so that they would hold as long as Julius didn't shift forms.
Walking lakeward down the sidewalk, Julius passed multiple hotels and tourist shops, restaurants and fast food places. On his left between the streams of rushing cars, the streetcars passed each other on their slow and squealing ways towards distant corners of the city. He stopped briefly and pretended to check to see if he was being followed or watched. But he was Julius, Bes, leader of The Agents Of – every entity in a block radius had their eyes trained on him at that moment. Really Julius was making sure that they were indeed paying attention.
He turned and walked into the alley known as Exchange Place. Running three blocks long only to vanish and then show up for half a block further into The Quarter where it runs smack into the Saint Louis Cathedral, the alley was a sliver between Royal and Chartres Streets. If Canal Street was indeed the spine of the city, Exchange Place was historically the knife pressed into the city's back. He walked down the broken street, past garbage cans and the back doors to hotels and businesses. Then Julius took out a bottle of golden Caribbean rum and unscrewed the cap. The sugary stench of the alcohol made him grimace – he absolutely hated rum. No matter his incarnation, the scent brought back ancient memories of pirates – of watching his own people being starved and beaten and shoved into the smallest of spaces.
He took a couple of swigs, doing all he could not to wretch and really wishing he'd brought a bottle of whiskey to wash out the taste. A moment later a door appeared in the midst of the alley, large and red and metal[20]. There were gouges in it like someone had gone at it with a metal bat. Julius stretched his neck until it cracked, tossed the nearly full bottle into a trash can and then slammed his fist against the door three times.
Nothing happened, so he spoke loud and clear. “This is Julius, leader of The Agents Of. I am here to see Nimble.”
A moment later he heard the metallic sounds of locks churning, of bolts being pulled aside. The door opened a crack to show several heavy chains still connecting the door to the wall inside. And then half a face appeared in the crack – grizzled and scarred, the man was much larger than Julius.
“I am here to see Nimble,” said Julius.
“Mr. Nimble wasn't expecting you,” the man said.
“I know.”
“He is a very busy man.”
“So am I,” said Julius. “Tell him I'm here, or I'm going to go in there and tell him myself. Then you're going to owe Mr. Nimble a new door.”
The door closed and he heard all the locks sliding back closed. Less than a minute later the dance of metal against metal started all over again and the door was opened – this time wider and without the chains. In the doorway was the pale face of a young Asian woman. She stood confidently, yet her eyes were closed and her face was the epitome of serene. Her clothes were tight and black and padded, and on the one hip that Julius could see was a small array of sheathed blades.
“Hello Nemu,” said Julius.
“Mr. Nimble will see you now,” she said, her voice as calm and smooth as cream.
The door opened the rest of the way and Julius stepped inside. The entry room was small and adorned with little stone fountains in each corner as well as ornate mirrors and stone benches. The walls of the room and most of the other rooms were covered in dark red velvet.
Without opening her eyes – as far as Julius knew, she never opened them – Nemu, whose nickname was “The Sleeping Assassin,” led him through the entryway and into the next room, which was very large and had dozens of pool tables and poker and blackjack tables. A lone piano player pecked at the keys of a grand piano in one corner. The walls were adorned with enormous paintings of 19th century brothels and gambling halls. Several of the paintings were of that very room, or of other such establishments that used to exist in Exchange Place. There were about two dozen entities and humans and creatures and ghosts about the room, drinking and talking and gambling, nearly all of them watching Julius out of the corners of their eyes. Julius saw the abandoned pool games and card games. He had no doubt that once his name was mentioned many people left through other exits or went to hide in other parts of the building. He took note of those who had not run and stored the information in the back of his mind for future use.
Nearly everyone in this room, along with those who had left, wanted Julius dead. Early on in Bes' life as leader of the Agents, he had established a certain routine – a routine that had vastly increased his life spans. The routine was this: when somebody or a group of somebodies killed him, he would come back about sixteen years later (sixteen was about the age that his new incarnation would remember that he was Bes and also remember all of his past lives). He would reestablish the Agents if they were not around and then he would destroy everything the murderer or murderers had built – and then he'd destroy them. He'd done this so many times now that everyone was afraid of killing him. Setting up this routine was technically Bes breaking his own vows – to never to take anything personal and to put the people of the city above all else. But if every incarnation was killed only five years after remembering that he was Bes, he'd never be able to get anything done and the city would fall into the hands of those who care nothing for the people who reside in it.
As Julius crossed the room, he met the eyes of several of th
e gamblers – as if daring them to say something to him, or to fight – but they just kept to their games.
As it was, he hadn't told Roman that he was going to see Nimble. Roman would have fought him over it, calling it an idiotic suicide mission – Julius wouldn't have been surprised if Roman had tried to tranquilize him to keep him from going. But Julius knew more than Roman about how the underbelly of the city worked, and believed that the only shot the Agency had at being taken seriously so soon after having its ranks wiped out was for him to step into the spotlight, fearless and confident. He wanted the darker parts of the city to talk. He wanted them to peer over their shoulders, wondering if there were Agents hiding in the shadows.
Nemu had to stop at the doorway to the next room and wait for Julius to catch up. The next room was a long hallway and also adorned with paintings between its many doors, and had a thin spiraling staircase on one side that went down into the bowels of the building.
“I can call the service elevator,” said Nemu.
“No,” said Julius. He hadn't actually known that there was an elevator, having never needed it before. “The stairs are fine.”
He managed the stairs carefully but without much difficulty, and at the bottom he found himself in the large study. There were shelves of books along two walls, a large heavy wooden desk and several comfortable chairs. Nimble had told him once that he chose to make his place underground in case the city decided to spontaneously burn down again. “The city needs its gambling dens, so I have a stash of them down here,” Nimble had said. “The city needs it's black heart – something to pump tar through it's sick veins, to keep it sick. You see, that's what keeps the city alive – its unending struggle to fight against imminent death. Eventually maybe you'll understand that, my friend.” Julius still had no idea if Nimble actually believed what he'd said back then, or if it had been just an attempt at manipulation. It was one of the clearest things the man had ever said to him.