They left the quiet of the parking garage and walked the half-block to the front entrance of the Batcave.
It was a lovely building. It had started out as a beautiful piece of neoclassical architecture, with thick columns and thin black windows spaced out beneath ornamental friezes. Mare Murphy, OACET’s Agent in charge of administerial tasks, had made sure the repairs had been performed by restoration experts, and the sandstone veneer of the old post office shone a light gray in the light of the Sunday afternoon. The front doors were huge metal monsters covered in a bas-relief mural of Roman gods, and wore their age well. Bronze rings the size of Rachel’s head served as knobs, with the metal of the right-hand ring polished to golden and rubbed thin beneath a million different hands.
She paused as she picked up the ring. Jason laid his hand over hers, and they steadied each other before they opened the door on its well-oiled hinges.
The Batcave was cold, the heat turned down to save on energy over the weekend. She sent her scans into the large central lobby to take stock of what the others had done with the place. Her own office was over at the MPD’s First District Station, and she only dropped by OACET’s headquarters when her physical presence was required. Normally, she’d delight in the small changes around her, signs that the other Agents were adapting their new headquarters to their needs. Today, she moved straight through the entrance hall, past the gymnastics spring floor that had been installed in the lobby (When did we get a spring floor? Why did we get a spring floor?), and up the stairs that led to Patrick Mulcahy’s office.
An FBI agent at the front reception desk checked their badges. Jason glanced around, his colors moving towards grays.
“Nobody’s here,” he said aloud.
His comment earned him a pointed glare from the man from the FBI, but Jason was right. The building seemed empty. Even on Sundays, there was always a skeleton crew of cyborgs roaming the halls, tugging on the digital aether of the collective’s link. Now, the alarm systems and WiFi signals of the building twitched and moved around them without guidance.
Rachel reached out through her implant to tweak a perimeter alert system and make sure it was active; it slapped her mind away, focused on its task.
Good, she thought. There was no better security system in the world than the one that OACET had designed for themselves. Even without supervision from the security teams, it was still humming along, still protecting itself from intrusion.
The Agents didn’t take chances.
No, that’s wrong, that’s so wrong, Avery’s gone, we didn’t do enough—
Jason placed a hand on her shoulder, and the two of them moved to where the minds in the building came together. A cluster of core colors had gathered in a conference room on the second floor, surrounded by electronic fields that burst into life as unfamiliar equipment came online. Rachel didn’t recognize many of those colors. She assumed they belonged to the FBI: kidnapping was a federal crime, and OACET wasn’t going to shoulder the responsibility of getting Hope and Avery back.
Shouldn’t, she corrected herself, as she finally spotted the cerulean blue that was Patrick Mulcahy. We shouldn’t be the ones who try to get Hope and Avery back.
She wasn’t sure how that was going to play out—the Cyborg King had taken control of the Batcave.
The head of OACET was a quiet flurry of commands. Under his direction, the FBI agents were setting up shop. They bustled about: here, they set up their own computers; there, they linked the FBI’s computers into OACET’s own systems. Rachel watched as Mulcahy reached over and yanked a power cord on an anonymous piece of machinery, handing it back to its owner with a strong warning about making sure the equipment stayed out of OACET’s private servers.
Over by the windows was a woman with a core of blue slate. She radiated deep red sorrow as she answered questions from a stranger in a suit. A gigantic man with a core of forest green stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, carrying his own share of misery.
A trace of wooly charcoal and Southwestern turquoise appeared in his conversational colors: Mako Hill had noticed their arrival. He gave his wife’s shoulders a gentle squeeze, and came over to meet them.
“Guys…” he began, his voice a heavy rumble, his fingers twisting aimlessly as he tried to find the words.
Rachel hugged him.
Mako was the largest man she had ever met; her head barely came up to his sternum. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as hard as she could, letting him go only when she felt the dampness against her forehead and realized he was crying.
She and Jason steered the grieving father out of the conference room. Mulcahy’s office was across the hall, and Rachel popped the digital lock so the two of them could move Mako to a nearby couch. He dropped, sobbing, onto the overstuffed leather, Rachel and Jason to either side of him. They covered his hands with their own. The force of his anguish was unreal: the two of them might love Avery as their niece, but their own concern was nothing in comparison to what a parent experienced when a child was missing.
Not missing, she reminded herself. Stolen.
There was no such thing as a happy ending in a kidnapping. Even if the victims were rescued or returned unharmed, there would always be the knowledge that it had happened, and the fear that it might happen again. Rachel and Jason could offer nothing except their presence, holding Mako with the shared knowledge that he was not alone in this. It was enough, and it wasn’t, and he was angry and grateful to them, all at once.
No, kidnappings didn’t have happy endings, but if you were lucky, you found peace.
When he had calmed down enough to pass through the worst of his sorrow, Rachel asked him: “What do we know?”
“Multiple men,” Mako said. His voice hitched, and he unconsciously fell back into the cyborgs’ version of telepathy as Jason passed him a box of tissues. “The security cameras in the garage were disabled. Carlota began recording once she realized what was going on, so we’ve got the leader’s face on file.”
“On it,” Jason said. He snapped his side of their three-way link and left the room.
“He’s got this,” Rachel assured Mako. “Nobody’s better with digital images than Jason. If Carlota got anything useful on tape, he’ll pry it out.”
“They had it all planned, Penguin,” Mako said. She tugged on his shirt until he allowed himself to lean against her. He was all heavy muscle, and it was somewhat similar to comforting a rockslide. “They wanted Hope, but they… They took my daughter! She’s nothing to them!”
She began rubbing her friend’s back as his fury rose, pushing calm, control across their link as hard as she dared. The last thing they needed was a three-hundred-pound, six-foot-eight-inch weightlifter on a rampage.
“Easy,” she told him. “Easy. They took Avery because they knew it was the only way to control Hope. Hope might have been the target, but Avery’s wellbeing is their priority. If anything happens to Avery, Hope will bring Hell itself down on them.”
Mako’s rage ebbed as she got through to him. Hope Blackwell was violence incarnate. The woman was a psychological hot mess, held together by decades of rigorous training in judo and a massive daily dose of Adderall. And, while not public knowledge, Hope was also one of the handful of normals able to perceive the Agents’ digital projections. Abducting Hope was stupid on so many levels that—
Well. If the kidnappers were willing to risk abducting Patrick Mulcahy’s wife and his oldest godchild, Rachel was sure they must have planned for the fallout.
The door opened, and the head of OACET walked into his office.
Mulcahy moved like a boxer before a match, tight with unspent energy and ready for the fight. Rachel had turned off the emotional spectrum so Mako’s heartbreak and fury didn’t overwhelm her senses. She flipped it on again to read Mulcahy, expecting to find the same mournful reds worn by Carlota and Mako. Instead, she saw his core of deep cerulean blue, and…nothing else.
Nothing. No emotions at all. No red-wh
ite blur of sadness and shock, none of the deep blue of professional suits to go along with his negotiations with the FBI. Not even the uncertain yellows of hidden fear.
Her confusion must have jumped across her link with Mako, as the big man sat up. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“Nothing new,” Mulcahy replied. “Could you step out of the room? I need to speak to Rachel.”
Shit, she thought to herself.
Mako caught it, a small smudge of curious yellow appearing in his conversational colors.
“It’s not about the kidnapping,” she assured him. “I’m just going to get my ass handed to me before he puts me to work finding your daughter.”
He nodded, not convinced but too preoccupied to care, and left without a word.
Mulcahy waited, the two of them watching through the wall as Mako walked down the long corridor to the nearest bathroom. Rachel counted her heartbeats—ten, eleven, twelve—before Mulcahy turned towards her.
His shields went up. Rachel blinked: Mulcahy had taught her the trick of twisting electromagnetic fields around them to block out all electronic surveillance, but she had never seen him use it in the Batcave. OACET’s new headquarters was, by design, a private sanctuary, and no Agent would dream of spying on Mulcahy while he was in his own office.
This was going to hurt.
She sighed and stood, falling into her reliable Army habit of standing at parade rest, and waited for him to burn her to ash.
“Have you called Santino?” he asked.
Rachel shook her head. “I didn’t know how far you wanted this to go, but he’s spending most of his time at Zia’s,” she replied. “If she knows—”
“She doesn’t,” he said. “We’re trying to keep this as quiet as possible. We’ve got maybe an hour left before the media realizes the abductions are connected to OACET.” He was silent for a long moment before adding, “Hope and Avery weren’t the only two who were kidnapped.”
Rachel fell out of parade rest at the news. “Who—”
“Nobody else associated with OACET,” he assured her. “It seems as though they grabbed another dozen people at gunpoint as they made their getaway.”
“Hostages?” she guessed, and when Mulcahy nodded, she nearly gasped in relief as she realized she had been stupidly selfish, that he still didn’t know about Wyatt, that he needed her to get his wife and godchild back… That she needed to pull her head out of her butt and concentrate on the bigger picture. She slumped down on the couch and raked her fingers through her short hair to hide her face. “That’s not good,” she said. “Hope and Avery might not be expendable, but random strangers? They could kill them, use them as armor or decoys, anything.”
“That’s what the FBI thinks,” he said.
“Do we have any suspects?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nobody,” he replied. “The only current threat on OACET radar is the China faction.”
The China faction… Possible. Slim, but possible. Last week’s security briefing had contained a credible rumor that a paramilitary organization in China had begun work on its own version of the cyborgs’ implants.
Which made nothing but sense. Rachel may have used her implant as a substitute for her eyesight, but it had been sold to Congress as a means of networking all branches of the U.S. government, with a wink and a nod to its use in espionage. By this stage of the geopolitical game, it was widely presumed that other intelligence agencies were playing catchup to OACET, with Israel and China leading the pack.
But the data that had led to the development of the implant was gone, in no small part due to Rachel’s own actions. She had already gotten a certain U.S. Senator removed from office because of what he had done to OACET, and she had no intention of stopping with him. Those who had been responsible for those five lost years needed to pay.
Is this a way for the Chinese to get their hands on— No, she decided. Just no. China might be trying to build their own version of OACET, but there were better ways to get information than by stealing Mulcahy’s wife.
“You want me to get my team together and start doing what we can?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his face turned towards the conference room across the hall. “The FBI is excellent, but I’m not taking chances.”
“What are my limits?” she asked.
Usually he’d raise an eyebrow at that, an implied You should have learned this by now, Rachel, really, and follow it up with a martini-dry joke. Today, all he did was say, “When this hits the media, everything we do will be dissected. Play it like you already know you’ll be on the witness stand.”
“Better than at the defendant’s table,” she said, the slightest push.
Mulcahy ignored her; she shivered at that, glad they weren’t sharing a link tight enough for him to feel it.
“Call Phil, too,” he said. “I’m pulling him off the MPD’s Bomb Unit and assigning him to you. We’re going to need everyone you’ve trained on this.”
“The MPD’s not going to be happy,” she said. She had taught Phil all she could about deep scans and how to see through walls, and the MPD had snatched him up and assigned him to their bomb squad. With Phil on their team, injuries and other unsavory incidents had fallen to nearly zero. The MPD wouldn’t want to go back to their old methods, no matter how temporary. “Hell, I don’t know if I have the jurisdiction to pull my guys and have them run an OACET case.”
“You know you do,” he replied.
“No. No way,” Rachel said. “I’m not invoking the charter unless I absolutely have to.”
“Agreed. Ask first,” Mulcahy said, “but get it done.”
She nodded.
A blur of yellow-white energy came over his surface colors. Not an emotion, not exactly, but it showed Mulcahy’s attention had shifted from her to something unseen. It was gone as quickly as it had come—he had dealt with it and moved on—but was the only color she had observed in him, so she chased it down.
“What happened?”
“The FBI turned on another piece of equipment,” he said. “Every time they boot up something new, it tries to get onto our network. I’ve been running security all morning.”
And managing personnel, and setting up a response plan, and freaking out about your wife and godchild… She checked his colors again to be sure; there was still nothing resembling anger or concern. Or fear. Or any emotion at all.
Or not.
“You doing okay?” she asked him.
They weren’t close, her and her boss, but they were in each other’s minds often enough that she knew what his reaction should have been. There should have been a wave of red anger at the question, held in check by his professional blues; anger at those who had stolen his wife and godchild, anger at her for asking such a stupid question…
Nothing.
“As well as can be expected,” he replied, and turned to rifle through the stack of papers on his desk.
Dismissed.
“Do I salute you or smack you?” she asked.
“Good luck, Rachel,” he said as he flipped through a notepad. “Work fast.”
She paused. What would happen if she really did smack him, just haul off and crack him across that steel jaw—
Mulcahy looked up from the papers and stared at her.
“Right,” she snapped, and went to look for Josh.
He had to be nearby. OACET’s second-in-command handled their major media appearances. Something like this would require his full attention. But…
She couldn’t find him.
All Agents had their own GPS, and they kept these open and available unless they wanted privacy from the collective. When Josh wasn’t on duty, he tended to play games with his GPS, setting it to rotate through multiple locations. Finding him became a game of hide-and-seek, when you knew he was within spitting distance but spitting distance could be anywhere from the local coffee shop to OACET’s office supply closet.
You didn’t want to barge in on Josh when he was i
n the supply closet. Not unless you wanted to join in on whatever—or whoever—he was doing.
Rachel wasn’t in the mood for such shenanigans, and she was willing to bet that Josh wasn’t, either. She sat down at the top of the stairs and scanned the building from roof to foundation, looking for the person with a core color the blue of fresh tattoos.
She found him two floors down in the War Room, surrounded by the glowing green avatars of other Agents. Rachel had no trouble picking out the details of those avatars: she recognized Ami and the two other members of OACET’s internal team of wetworks and demolition specialists. Mulcahy didn’t allow his former assassins to practice their old trade, but the Cuddly Hippos were more than just mindless killers. If stealth and information gathering was required, the Hippos would fit the bill.
Rachel went downstairs, tossing polite words back and forth with the personnel from the FBI she met along the way. Not right, her subconscious nagged, not right at all, get them out of here, they don’t belong.
She told herself to shut up, that there was a huge difference between a crumbling mansion on the Potomac and a state-of-the-art government facility in downtown D.C., and that the FBI were only here to help.
Her subconscious rolled over and went back to sleep, muttering to itself.
When she reached the basement, she found the door to the War Room had been gaily painted in ponies.
Not horses. Ponies. Cartoon ponies with large eyes, and rendered in colors that spoke to the back of her brain. She took a moment to absorb this cartoonish mutiny against federal regulations before she knocked; the ponies weren’t photorealistic (thank goodness) but they had been painted by an expert hand, and appeared to be sliding down an iridescent rainbow into a sun-drenched pond.
On the other side of the ponies, Josh’s surface colors flickered. A strong thread of Southwestern turquoise appeared, and this chased away the core colors of the Hippos. As Rachel watched through the wall, Josh said something to the Hippos, and the three avatars winked out of the air.
“Come in.” Josh’s mental voice wasn’t exactly weary, but it did carry with it the sense of things getting much worse before they got better.
Brute Force Page 3
