“When you came to us, we tested you extensively for supernatural abilities,” Warner reminded him. “We know about your potential, but we can only rely on the abilities you are in control of, and those are basically your prescience and your strength. You are an exceptional man but not necessarily in ways that lend themselves to ONSET’s mission. Everyone here is exceptional, David,” she reminded him as he started to object.
He was all too aware that he was hardly exceptional compared to anyone else on ONSET Nine. Even Bourque, the team’s other Empowered, was stronger and probably a more capable fighter than he was. Without his sparks of major power, he’d have nothing.
“You were a Class 4 supernatural,” she told him. “That meant you were borderline—an individual assessment case. You’re hardly the only Class 4 in ONSET—Nine’s Akono and Bourque are both Class 4s. You were judged sufficiently capable of combat that you were accepted.”
David nodded, wondering where this was going. He suspected by now that it wasn’t really Omicron’s policy in general to tell people where they rated on that scale. The only person, he realized, who’d mentioned it was Kate—in the context of her promotion.
Surely, regeneration wouldn’t raise him that high.
“After Montreal, we considered reassessing you, but Michael advised me you had no control over the ability,” Warner continued. “We left you at 4, with a note on the file that you were capable of Class 1–grade feats under sufficient duress. Then somebody emptied an Uzi into you, and you lived.”
David nodded silently. The thought still stung. It still brought back that memory of bullets tearing through his flesh, and the blackness after. The thought that he should have died without ever waking up was nerve-wracking.
“The analysts haven’t crunched it yet,” the Major told him, “but I’m reasonably confident you will have been upgraded to a Class 2 Supernatural. I’m sure by now you’ve realized most of our people really fall into the Class 3 and 4 categories.”
Class 2. David knew, from talking to Kate, that she’d been offered a Commander’s position just for reaching that Class in her training. But he wasn’t training—just waking abilities he wasn’t entirely sure he had control over.
“You also have police procedural experience most of our people lack,” Warner continued, apparently taking his silence as an invitation to continue. “You were trained as a tactical team leader, though I understand the team was only deployed once under your command. You are also older than over sixty percent of our people, with more experience in general.
“We are prepared to offer you a slot at the next Commander Training Session. We only run it when we have enough candidates,” she explained. “Marking you as a candidate does mean you are increased in seniority and effectively take on a second-in-command role.”
“Kate already holds that role in ONSET Nine,” David objected.
“Yes, she does,” Warner confirmed. “And with her and Ix, who, being a demon, obviously cannot command a team, ONSET Nine already has two Class Twos to support its Class One. We’re going to have to move you anyway, so we would like to move you to a team in need of a candidate for a second-in-command.”
Without moving from his chair, David reeled across the room. They were offering him more authority—more trust. More power—and the power he already wielded terrified him. His father’s old axiom of “power corrupts” rang through his head, and a part of him was convinced it would only put him on the slippery slope to what he feared.
Part of him knew he couldn’t be trusted with that much power. He feared he’d fail them, and he opened his mouth to refuse. Before he spoke, he met Major Warner’s eyes and Saw.
He’d looked at the Major before with his Sight, but not since he’d fully mastered the ability, and certainly not since the additional abilities woke up in Montreal and Montana.
He looked at her and saw her confidence. He saw the assured competence of the professional soldier and officer who served as the day-to-day Commander of ONSET. And woven through her competence he saw her day-to-day struggle against temptation. In her aura, he saw the same fear of corruption in her as he felt in himself. He knew she’d seen far more people abuse their powers than he had. She knew the consequences, and the temptation, intimately.
David White looked into his leader’s soul in that moment and saw a mirror of everything that drove him. The same oath drove Major Warner as drove him.
If she could use that oath to sustain her faith in herself in the face of temptation, how could he do less? For all his strengths, a high-Circle Mage’s temptations were far more immediate, more…insidious. Every day, Major Warner faced the temptation to make her life that little bit easier by abusing her power. Every day, she refused.
David’s refusal died unborn on his tongue as he blinked and the moment passed.
Warner looked at him strangely, as if questioning what he’d Seen, and he shook his head.
“I accept your offer,” he told her, as much an oath to himself as an acceptance to her. “I will serve and protect to the best of my ability. And I will trust you that this is the best use of my ability,” he finished.
“Thank you,” Warner said quietly.
The two stood in silence for a moment, and then Warner’s phone rang, interrupting the power of the scene. Gesturing for David to hold on a moment, she answered the phone.
“Major Warner.”
She waited a moment, and David watched the green eyes go completely flat and her lips press to a thin line.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I will inform the team.”
She turned to David. “I hate to make you the bearer of bad news, David,” Major Traci Warner said softly to her agent, “but that was the hospital in Montana. Alexandra Bourque just died.”
Chapter 35
The next day passed in near-silence in ONSET Nine’s apartment building. Michael flew off to Montana the very next morning, and the rest of the team gathered in the common room. No words passed between any of them, but they all took comfort in each other’s presence. David’s promotion attracted some gentle prodding early on, but even that faded into the general malaise of Bourque’s death.
Morgen was missing for most of the first day but returned in the early afternoon and threw himself into a chair in front of the dead television. David was playing a very quiet hand of blackjack with Kate and Ix, the three feeling the emptiness of the room.
“What is it?” Kate asked, looking up from the game.
“I’m supposed to be doing analysis on the data I pulled from those bastards’ computers,” the techno-Mage said flatly, “except that someone at OSPI has pulled strings and yoinked the entire analysis operation over to New York. The damned disks were pulled right off of my chopper and couriered to OSPI before any of us even got a chance to look at them.”
“The last thing we need right now is an interoffice pissing match,” David said quietly. “They do have a larger analysis department than we do.”
“Normally, this would not be grounds for concern,” Ix growled. “However, given the seizure of a high court demon, it is likely a bad idea to have Ekhmez and those responsible for tracking down his cult in the same building.” The demon looked around at the other ONSET agents as he dealt out a new hand, including a set of cards for Morgen.
After a moment, the hacker joined them, accepting the cards.
“It’s a security risk,” he said bluntly. “We don’t know what the bastard is capable of.” He glanced at his hole card and tapped his king. “Hit me.”
“You think he might escape?” David asked, looking at his own hole card. He had an eight showing and a queen in the hole. “I’ll stay.”
“Possible,” Kate replied, checking the card next to her own queen. “I’ll stay,” she told Ix, then continued. “There are other powers Ekhmez might have that could be more dangerous.”
“It is notable that most of the high court demons can influence the minds of their inferiors,” Ix said flatly as he de
alt himself a three to go with his four showing. “Certainly, my encounter with Ekhmez was…uncomfortable. I had not yet encountered a higher court demon than myself on Earth, so the realization that I could not act against him is difficult to accept.”
“You’re saying he could take over OSPI?” David asked in horror, his fingers pressing hard against the card table.
“Unlikely,” Ix said calmly. “Even among demons, who have issues resisting the powers of higher courts, it is usually only an influence. He would find it difficult to force his enemies to become his allies. Card, Morgen?”
“No, I’ll stand,” the Mage replied. “Also,” he said, turning to David, “the OSPI pukes aren’t useless. They’ll know if he’s doing something like that and counteract it. They’ve got some good Mages over in New York.”
Ix dealt himself a five and then flipped over his nine to show he’d busted. “Show cards.”
Kate flipped over her ace first, revealing a perfect twenty-one none of the others matched.
“You’re all being paranoid,” she reminded them. “OSPI really does have a bigger analysis department than us. That’s why they grabbed the data. Let them do their job and give us a target. Then we can go kick the bastards’ asses to hell.”
A growl ran around the room. Alexandra’s death had not fully sunk home yet, but they intended to make someone pay for it. Dearly.
#
Michael made his way into Kalispell Regional Medical Center in a somber mood. The ONSET Commander had been out of the state for less than twenty-four hours before being called back.
The receptionist at the front desk had clearly been told to expect him.
“If you’ll wait here, please,” she asked, leading him to a plainly furnished side office. “Dr. Lincoln will be with you shortly.”
The girl vanished with surprising alacrity, and Michael smiled to himself. Even though he was dressed in a conservative black suit, most people were still uncomfortable around him.
The werewolf looked around the office and noted its bare surfaces. A pair of filing cabinets against one wall, in institutional green. A simple metal desk, the sole furnishings on it a silent computer and a picture he couldn’t see the front of. Not much to suggest that Dr. Lincoln spent much time here.
As if summoned by the thought, the doctor finally arrived. A surprisingly short man, Lincoln barely made it to Michael’s shoulder. Skinny and dark-skinned, he surprised Michael. The werewolf had hardly expected a doctor in Montana to be black.
“Have a seat, Mr. O’Brien,” Lincoln said softly, as Michael was still standing.
“Thank you,” Michael replied, doing so. “My name is Michael, please, Dr. Lincoln.”
The small man nodded nervously as he took his seat and faced the ONSET Commander across the desk.
“I don’t presume to ask what happened,” he said eventually. “Suffice to say we don’t see a lot of government agents or gunshot wounds.”
“You were the closest hospital,” Michael replied. “Some of our people wouldn’t have lived if we’d gone further.”
While Bourque had not lived, Michael had been given a quick rundown on the status of the AP men who’d come to this same hospital. While they had all been moved on as soon as they had been stabilized, several had lived who hadn’t been expected to make it that long. Captain Narita had specifically labeled Dr. Lincoln as the cause of that.
“Yes, that is true,” Lincoln replied quickly. “Still, we were not expecting so many, so quickly. Those sorts of wounds are not our specialty.”
“This is a quiet area,” Michael agreed. “You and your people performed wonders.”
The small man seemed to relax slightly. “But not miracles,” he answered, his speech somewhat slower. “I am sorry.”
“How bad was Alexandra?” Michael asked, after a moment of silence.
“Honestly, I am amazed she made it here,” the doctor replied, his words very slow now. “She had a number of minor wounds, but the one that killed her was her stomach. She took a shotgun slug there, and it did not fully pass through. While it was present, she could not properly digest and would have starved,” he said in a voice now distant and clinical, as though describing an article he’d read.
“When we attempted to remove it, she began bleeding profusely and died before we could stop the bleeding. We were not prepared for blood loss that drastic.”
Lincoln fell silent; his gaze focused somewhere far away from Michael. The ONSET officer allowed the doctor his silence for a few long moments and then cleared his throat.
“Her body is ready for transport, as requested?” he asked.
“Yes,” the small man confirmed. “We were not given a next-of-kin listing,” he noted.
“They have been notified,” Michael replied, wincing internally. He’d left that duty to Major Warner while he came here to collect her body. Alexandra had an ex-husband and two daughters. While her husband had had custody of the children for the last ten years and one of the daughters was now adult and married, she’d still been on good terms with them. She had effectively sacrificed her marriage on the altar of service in ONSET.
“The US Government is handling all funeral arrangements,” he continued. “My understanding is that a significant disbursement is slated for Kalispell Regional in thanks for your assistance and discretion.”
He stressed the last word carefully. While no one would be so crude as to say so, the major boost to the hospital’s funding was nothing more or less than a giant bribe to keep their mouths shut about this whole mess.
Lincoln nodded without comment. “I’ll take you to speak with our morgue director,” he offered. “You can make the transportation arrangements directly with her.”
“Thank you, Dr. Lincoln,” Michael replied. “My colleagues made clear that you are the reason as many of our people survived as did. We cannot thank you enough.”
Maybe it was Michael’s imagination, but the little doctor seemed to stand a tiny bit taller and straighter as he led the way out of the office.
#
Curiosity always had to give way to paying the bills, and it had been days since Majestic had last had a chance to trawl through ONSET’s files and servers. Each time she went through, she found new layers of security she had to circumvent. The system was the most secure she had ever hacked her way into, and she made a habit of raiding the Pentagon yearly to make sure she was still up to the task of doing it without being found.
Searching by David White began to give context to large portions of the system. Over here was payroll and human resources, and the read/write protections on those files defeated even her. Not that she needed to change anything there; just looking at some of the salary figures made her blink. Salaries alone for the organization probably ran somewhere around a billion dollars.
Over here were equipment records, recording the issue of weapons, armor, rooms, ammunition, food, even furniture to David White. Skimming through the list of items issued to him and others was an experience in itself. What the hell was an “ONSET-Issue Combat Knife, comma, Aetherically Modified, comma, Mod Six?” What did the “Class Four Technological Aetheric Focus” note attached to the issue of a laptop to one of his teammates mean? Digging back through the library gave some of the answers, but the idea of a magical computer made Majestic laugh.
Until she remembered the choke point security. Yeah, it was technically possible to have a reactive firewall like that, but no program should have even detected her. A magical computer suddenly didn’t sound so unlikely anymore.
The jackpot of the night was personnel files. David White’s personnel file, to be specific. It gave his name, place of birth, parents, social security number—all things she already knew—and several ID numbers she hadn’t been aware of.
Then it listed details of his supernatural powers. “Supernatural Strength” was listed as confirmed, with specific ratings she didn’t understand. “Aura Perception” and “Precognition” were the same, numbers and descript
ions she’d have to reference. Then…Major Regeneration?! That seemed…somewhat self-explanatory.
The last entry was more complex. “Agent has demonstrated extreme levels of supernaturally enhanced speed under significant stress. This ability has not been confirmed under controlled conditions, but data suggests at least A-rated Empowered Speed, and possibly as high as AA or AAA.”
A summary line at the bottom of that list labeled David White as ‘class two supernatural, potential class one rating on achievement of potential abilities.’ Another line labeled him as a candidate for some ‘Commander Training Session,’ though no more details were given.
The document closed with an itemized list of what appeared to be reports. Not efficiency reports, Majestic presumed. After all, he’d only been with the organization a few months.
She clicked on one. It gave a date of a few weeks before and a location in Montreal. Further reading rang repeated bells in her head, until the hacker pulled up her list of red-flag new stories.
The “drug bust” in Montreal had been an ONSET raid on a vampire holding. David White had been there—in the middle of it, according to this report. Each of these reports gave the true details of an incident that had been buried and hidden.
Setting her computer to download all the incident reports linked to David White, she looked back up at the numbers at the top of the document. She stared at them blankly for a moment and then realized what one of them was.
It was an identifier code for a communication network. With that code, she could pick out his radio from ONSET’s network. Maybe talk to him.
Not, she realized, that he likely wanted to talk to her.
Chapter 36
David had almost forgotten about his transfer in the midst of ONSET Nine’s grief for their fallen member. On the second morning, however, he received an internal electronic memo requesting that he confirm with Campus Facilities when his belongings were packed and ready to move over to the dormitory for ONSET Team Thirteen.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 29
