Brute Force

by Spangler, K. B.

  “I’m not going to take over,” she said. “You’ve got my word. I can’t speak for my boss, but I know he doesn’t need any additional complications right now.”

  “But it’s already started.” Campbell began walking towards the cars again. “Mulcahy’s already begun locking us out.”

  “What?! What do you mean?”

  “At OACET headquarters—Mulcahy’s not allowing our tech team access to your database.”

  Rachel had thought her headache was gone, but it had just been napping. It woke up with a nervous shriek and started kicking the back of her eyeballs again. “Honest to Christ, Campbell, you guys are just dying to see monsters. If you had to solve the kidnapping of the head of the CIA, would you expect them to give you full access to their internal files? Same damned thing.”

  “We’d insist on it.” The gritty grays around Campbell deepened. “If we thought it was relevant to the case? Yeah, we’d go through every file we could.”

  “Do you think Mulcahy and Nicholson have planned this?” she asked. A hundred yards away, Santino had reached his car. “Does the FBI think we’re running some kind of scam on y’all?”

  “We don’t know what to think,” Campbell said. “We’ve suspected something big was going to happen with the sov-civ movement, eventually. Stack it with OACET, and you’ve got two big unknowns going up against each other.”

  “Right,” she said, as the headache kicked around her skull like a ninja. “Thanks for telling me this.”

  “You’re good people, Peng. You’ve always been honest.”

  Ouch.

  Some more small talk, mostly for closure’s sake. After that, she said goodbye to Campbell and escaped into the relative safety of Santino’s car.

  “When did he get you?” she asked, as Quantico fell behind them. “Cafeteria?”

  “Yup, cornered me while I was buying the drinks. He’s worried.”

  “No shit,” she said. Campbell was at the limit of comfort for her scans, his colors still warring between orange and blue. “He says the FBI thinks that OACET’s going to invoke our charter and take full control of the investigation.”

  “What?” Santino’s colors shifted towards white. “That’d be the stupidest thing you could do.”

  “I know,” she said, and yanked on the seat toggle. “Give me a minute. I want to rest before I call the office.”

  She turned off her implant, and felt the collective disappear from the periphery of her senses.

  Blessed silence.

  …that fucking charter…

  She supposed that, once upon a time, the charter for the Office of Adaptive and Complementary Enhancement Technologies would have made sense. In that fairytale time, a bamboozled Congress believed OACET would bridge the many different organizations within the federal government and was not, in fact, a mad Senator’s scheme to take control of modern civilization. If OACET was to provide a networked infrastructure of high-level leadership, a charter which allowed Agents to come in and take control of various committees, procedures, and actionable events was logical.

  There were limits to the charter, of course. Even the most cunning madman couldn’t convince Congress that the Agents should be able to seize control of the Supreme Court, or the office of the President. But if Rachel wanted a criminal investigation to call her very own, she could have taken over this one with a word and her signature on a document she kept folded into a tiny square in her wallet.

  Fuck the charter, she thought. It was good for nothing except causing friction between OACET and other agencies. She had never officially invoked it, and only once had dangled it as an implicit action against stonewalling. Better to pretend it didn’t exist than flaunt it.

  In her opinion, OACET should have gotten rid of the charter entirely, gone to Congress and begged them to take it away, or at least revise it so the level of power an Agent could wield on a whim was hamstrung to shreds. But no, Mulcahy had decided they needed every ounce of leverage they could hold, even as he advised them to avoid using it whenever possible. As a result, the charter—or at least the threat of the damned thing—remained intact.

  “Could I take over the FBI if I wanted to?” she asked Santino.

  “Thought you were resting.”

  “I am. Could I?”

  “Nope.” Santino had read paragraph and verse of the charter, and had an undergraduate’s degree in procedural law besides. “Best you could do would be to insert yourself in their organization in a supervisional position of authority.”

  “Right.” That made sense: that madman had sold OACET to Congress as a form of government-wide Internal Affairs. “But OACET could take over the Nicholson case.”

  “No question,” Santino said. “Why?”

  “Why am I asking, or why would OACET do that?”

  “Why are you asking? There’s no logical reason on earth for OACET to take over this case.”

  “I know. Something’s clicking around in my head,” Rachel said. “It feels as though we’ve gone back to the bad old days when OACET first came out, and nobody trusted us because they didn’t know what we’d do.”

  “You’ve only been out a few years.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve established ourselves,” she said. She flipped her implant on again and felt the asphalt bleed and squeeze beneath them. Asphalt was so useless, plastic pretending to be stone. The car wobbled slightly. “Our media guys say the public trusts OACET more than they trust Congress.”

  True: they had built their walls piece by careful piece, shaping their image within the public as reliable. Credible. Trustworthy.

  Will they still think we’re trustworthy after this? she asked herself, as her mind wobbled down its own road.

  Probably? This wouldn’t be the first time their image had taken a hit. It had all but been shot and left to die in the street the previous spring, when the media had broken the story of what Senator Richard Hanlon had done to them. The public had already known that Hanlon had developed the program where five hundred young federal employees were turned into cyborgs, but the news that they had been slowly brainwashed into mindless machines? New information. They learned how Hanlon had introduced an intentionally buggy AI interface, and that this AI had been programmed to break down the Agents’ resistance. Triggered not just by action but by thought and emotion, the AI had slowly conditioned them to obey. Unconscious, immediate responses replaced critical thinking. Hobbies, personal relationships, all of the finer things? Also gone—the AI was always there, and there was no reason for it to recognize the boundary between work and home lives.

  Five years of this. Not living. Not death. A mechanical existence, office drudgery punctuated only by consuming enough food to survive, maintaining enough comfort to sleep, and the infrequent screaming fit during the morning shower when the bubbles of how wrong it all was made it to the surface of your dull routine and popped.

  When Mulcahy had broken them out of it, they didn’t even realize what had happened to them. Not at first. But the conditioning hadn’t been completed, and they slowly came back to themselves.

  (Most of them, anyhow. But those who hadn’t weren’t anybody’s business but their own, and OACET kept its secrets.)

  After the brainwashing story had broken, there had been some loud discussions over whether OACET should have disclosed this part of their history when they first went public—didn’t the public have the right to know the risks posed by these obviously unhinged, psychotic cyborgs?

  Mulcahy had responded by unleashing the psychiatrists. The psychiatrists had torn through the Congressional subcommittees, and had left no foe unassessed. When the Rorschach tests had settled, the Agents were found to have acted within the standards of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, and, more importantly, were judged to be clinically sane.

  (Rachel watched the road run beneath them and wondered about Shawn, and Adrian, and Sammy, and the others who had left but might come back, and what might happen if they did, or, worse, if they wanted to come back
but couldn’t—)

  “Your tires are low,” she said, as her scans finally placed the wobble.

  “Bad?”

  “Getting that way.”

  They pulled off the highway at a gas station. It was a newer place, built after the gas companies realized that travelers were more likely to stop at a building that didn’t look as if it were home to multiple homicides. Rachel sprinted inside for the bathroom and a sandwich or eight.

  When she came out, Santino was on the phone and staring at two flattish left tires.

  “What the hell?” she asked.

  He covered the mouthpiece and said, “Look.”

  Rachel ran a scan through the flats, and found small perforations along both inside tire walls. “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe when we pulled off the highway on the drive down. We’re lucky you noticed and got us to pull off before they went.” His attention snapped away from Southwestern turquoise to the nondescript beige of the service industry, and he stepped away to talk to his insurance company. “Yeah, two flats… I’ve got roadside assistance coverage…”

  “Of course you do,” she muttered. She went back inside the gas station and bought a fistful of candy bars as sandwich chasers.

  Santino joined her at the lone convenience table in the gas station. “They said they’ll be here in an hour.”

  “So, five hours. Maybe three, if we’re lucky.” Rachel shook her head. “No way I’m getting back to D.C. for that meeting.”

  “Honestly, Penguin,” Santino said as he took out his phone again.

  Ten minutes later, she was in a northbound Uber. The driver was a college kid and the car stank of dirty clothes, but they were making deadly time. The kid drove as if she were competing for post time at a rally, and when Rachel managed to gasp out that she was a cop and maybe obeying the speed limit was a good idea? Please? the girl gave an exaggerated sigh and put the car into the travel lane.

  City traffic was bad—it was always bad—but the driver darted through it like a water bug across the surface of a pond. By the time they had pulled up at OACET headquarters, Rachel’s fingernails had cut little half-moons in the dashboard. The limestone steps of the old post office were warm from the afternoon sun and welcoming, and Rachel collapsed on top of them to watch the girl in the Uber speed off, another passenger already waiting in her queue.

  Rachel wasn’t alone; the reporters were setting up camp in preparation for Nicholson’s arrival. Rachel fended off questions as she waited for her heart to decide it was safe enough to climb down from her throat.

  “Peng.”

  Sandalwood.

  “Wyatt.”

  The psychopath grinned down at her, then gently ushered the reporters back to the far side of the yellow sawhorses that OACET used as crowd control barriers.

  “Sweet Jesus, they’ve got him doing chores,” she muttered. She sent her scans up, to where they caught on Ami’s core of meadow green high above in her hidden sniper’s perch. She pressed on Ami’s mind until the assassin opened a link.

  “Has he been a good boy?”

  “He’s been really useful.” Ami was…chilly. Polite, but the emotion behind what she said was restrained. “He’s helped out around here all day. Pointed out a few flaws in our security, actually.”

  “Well, he is a trained killer, Ami.”

  “So was I,” Ami said, and snapped their link.

  A little too much wistfulness in Ami’s last words, and Rachel lied when she told herself she didn’t know why.

  Up the stairs and through those grand metal doors, leaving the reporters and the man with the sandalwood core behind…

  …strangers everywhere…

  …through the first checkpoint, the second, and the third, and then left waiting until someone from the FBI was available to escort her upstairs. Rachel allowed five minutes to pass, and then gave the FBI agent at the last security checkpoint a good hard staring until the woman agreed that, yes, this was OACET’s headquarters, and yes, since Rachel was undeniably a member of OACET, maybe they were being a little overcautious? Yes?

  Rachel agreed, and trudged her way upstairs.

  Mulcahy’s office was the only room on the entire floor that was empty of FBI agents. She opened the digital lock and let herself inside to wait for the other members of OACET’s administration.

  If Josh’s office was the center of a bureaucratic sex tornado, Mulcahy’s was the sound stage for a docudrama about contemporary politics. The office smelled of wood polish and leather. There were expensive Persian rugs and paintings by contemporary American artists, their straight lines and orderly patterns offset by the clutter of the awards and mementos that OACET had acquired along the way. Near the door was a TIME magazine cover with Josh and Mulcahy smiling at the camera, white and black typefaces chasing each other across the page in varying sizes of “men” and “year.”

  And the desk.

  That fucking desk.

  The mahogany executive’s desk in the center of the office was a relic from a Roosevelt administration; she didn’t know which one, and didn’t care enough to find out. It was a massive piece of furniture, with elephants, lions, giraffes, and the rare stork in flight carved across its front and sides. It was ugly as hell, reeked of ostentatious wealth, and everybody in OACET despised it—the desk had been a much-publicized gift from ex-Senator Hanlon. A peace offering, Hanlon had claimed, a little piece of history to show that he wanted to improve his relationship with Mulcahy.

  Peace offering, my skinny ass, Rachel thought. That desk was nothing but an insult. Every time an Agent entered Mulcahy’s office, that desk loomed before them, a memento from Hanlon to remind them that he was still around, that what he had done to them would always be around.

  She planned to set fire to the desk around Christmastime. It was the best she could do for Mulcahy. Her boss was impossible to shop for.

  Rachel ran her scans across and through the desk, a familiar exercise as she searched for hidden bugs that she already knew weren’t there. Any surveillance equipment would be a valid reason to get rid of the desk, and Hanlon didn’t want that desk anywhere but in Mulcahy’s office. Four hundred pounds of dead tree, gleaming in knots of browns and reds, to show up on camera whenever Mulcahy hosted a small press conference or entertained a visiting dignitary.

  That fucking desk, indeed.

  As she picked out a spot on the leather couch to wait, she decided that since Mulcahy’s birthday was coming up in a couple of months, she’d just have to order the kerosene and find him an alternative Christmas gift instead.

  She let her scans wander away from the desk and across the room. Not much changed in Mulcahy’s office: it was a backdrop, with each piece on display carefully chosen to tell a story. But there, on a shelf that was in direct line-of-sight from the desk, a new photograph rested in an antique silver frame. A candid photograph from Mulcahy’s wedding, taken late in the day when everyone was feeling the hours press down on them: Hope Blackwell resting in her new husband’s arms, her dark hair swept back and tamed beneath her veil; Mulcahy in his tux, his jacket open and his boutonniere missing. The two of them were staring at each other as if they were the only two human beings alive, with enough love and lust crackling between them to survive the challenge of repopulating the entire planet.

  Rachel stood and moved to examine the photograph. The old frame was heavy; sterling, not plate, and freshly polished.

  Mulcahy was smiling down at his wife.

  She set the photo down, carefully, and returned to the couch.

  The factory in Maryland was more than thirty miles away, and her headache was still kicking the back of her brain’s chair. She resigned herself to another six hours of misery, and closed her eyes.

  Her avatar opened them, and the sight of the factory floor greeted her.

  Green was her first thought, as she spotted the digital avatars of other Agents keeping watch throughout the factory. Blue was her second: the afternoon
sunlight was pouring through the filmed windows, and the place glowed in false neons.

  The avatar of the nearest Agent nodded to her. He was standing over a small group of militia men as they played cards. Rachel pushed off of the floor and glided over to him, and the two of them watched as the dealer started a fresh hand.

  “…gin rummy?” she asked.

  The other Agent shrugged. “They’re pretty good, believe it or not.”

  She walked around the table. “Why are they wearing so many guns?”

  “They think they might be raided while Nicholson’s at the meeting.” He pointed towards the windows. Men were stationed along the catwalks, staring into the parking lot below, rifles bristling across their backs like porcupine quills.

  Rachel swore. “This isn’t dangerous in the slightest.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Not in the slightest.”

  “Avery?”

  He pointed towards the far end of the factory. She followed the line of his finger, but her avatar’s limited range of vision crashed into the wall before she could spot the little girl. “She’s fine. Mulcahy stationed a team around her, and Mako and Carlota check in with her every hour. Kid thinks it’s a game.”

  Rachel doubted that: Avery was one sharp cookie. She nodded goodbye and flew skyward, towards the second floor of the factory.

  The windowed front room where they had held Hope was empty. Rachel steeled herself to a sensation that she knew she wouldn’t feel, and walked through the door.

  Sounds of a television, somewhere down the hall. She followed the noise of the laugh track to another door. Someone had moved a refrigerator in front of it, and had braced a desk between the refrigerator and the hallway wall to hold the refrigerator in place.

  “Yup,” Rachel whispered to herself, and pushed her avatar through the second door.

  She found herself in a windowless office, large enough for a desk and a few filing cabinets. Faint blue specks of light chased themselves around until her avatar’s eyes made sense of a room lit by nothing but a sitcom. A man, different from the one with the core of fresh-made iron who had guarded Hope on Rachel’s last visit, sat with a shotgun aimed at Hope’s head.