by P. S. Power
Burke didn’t miss a beat, just shifted gears without hesitation.
“Right, Mr. Peterson then, since he’s going to be a VIP. Should we include his detail as well?”
Marcia thought for a few seconds. It was a strange thing, since the ones most likely to catch flack were the Uglies, but they were also the most able to take care of themselves if it came to a fight. Warren was the most vulnerable that way out of everyone they had with them. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have the regular agents keeping tabs.
“Do it. Ink’s solid, but things are getting strange here. Speaking of which, any news on the missing people?”
Reyes pointed to the laptop in front of him and shrugged.
“So far Morris’s story checks out. We can’t find his daughter, Harpo, Weathers or Mic. They all have family members missing too. Weathers’ son’s family is off the grid, along with Harpo’s daughter, though Morris mentioned her being worried, so that might be a new thing. Mic doesn’t really have anyone that I can find, so that’s hard to tell. What that means I don’t really know yet. It seems like too many people for them to all be snatched from different locations without it being noticed. We’re planning to do some calling around to double check in about an hour, just to make certain we aren’t looking at a computer generated smoke screen. If it plays out, we’re planning a trip to the stores where the last credit and debit transactions took place.” He shrugged. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but so far looked like Cal hadn’t just lost it.
Not that Marcia was all that pleased with the man at the moment. He’d always been a bit of a pig, if in an affable enough way. Old age and stress had made him worse though, it looked like. At least if all the Infected crap and refusing to work with them wasn’t just a signal she was supposed to be reading somehow. More than anything she wished that she’d gotten Christian in on the matter the night before. It was a waste of resources not too and it would streamline things incredibly if she’d help out. That last part might be a problem, because Chris tried to avoid reading minds when possible and this still wasn’t work related, but if she would, it might just save a whole lot of time.
As things stood there was almost nothing for them to do for a while, except get to breakfast with everyone else. That meant getting people out of their rooms, which would probably take a while. Marcia started making the rounds, pounding on door after door, only to find a mixed reception waiting for her.
Denis was up when she knocked and looked tense when he let her in, even though the other two with him sounded happy enough as they puttered around, getting ready for the day. She remembered to talk to him about what was going on, but decided not to do it in front of Peggy and Lauren, since it might be about them in some way. Denis feeling trapped into a relationship or something or not wanting to hurt their feelings but not being interested in them as more than friends? That probably wouldn’t even be a real issue with Peggy, but Lauren had problems that way. Her first mode was loneliness. It couldn’t be helped. Except when Denis washed it all away at least. That would probably be enough to make the woman fall in love with him.
“Hey Marsh. What’s up? Do we need to…” He trailed off and looked at her meaningfully, asking if there was an emergency that he wasn’t supposed to mention out loud.
Good man. He was learning and everything.
“Breakfast. We’re all going together, so that we can get on the same page for the day. Ten minutes.” It would take longer, but telling people that would just get them to be even later.
“Oh? Um, sure, I guess.”
She moved to the next room, which took more pounding to get people up, since it was Tobin and Ink’s room. Apparently Ink was a sound sleeper. Tobin was ready in a few minutes though and moved out to follow her as they got the others in turn. The boys didn’t let her into their room though, which made her wonder if someone else was in there. It didn’t take her long to figure it out, since Kerry wasn’t in any of the other rooms.
She looked at the small black and green man next to her, but he just shrugged.
“It’s a convention. People do stuff. They’re old enough. Besides, if they share a bed I don’t have to share with anyone else.” He turned all green though, a dramatic thing she’d only seen a few times before. When he got scared he kind of changed color to match his surroundings. It wasn’t a very good camouflage but it was more entertaining than not. She kind of thought this one was just his version of blushing though.
Probably because the other two had been having sex. In front of him. Kind of mean of them, since dating wasn’t easy when you looked like a frog, most likely. Everyone that knew him loved Tobin, but that didn’t mean he was exactly hip deep in woman that wanted to sample his wares. Except for possibly Christian. She had Mark though. Marcia had never asked if it was an open relationship or not. Chris would probably be alright with that sort of thing, given her history, but Mark always seemed a bit quiet. Of course she hadn’t known him before he popped, so he might have a lot more held inside than she’d ever know. Well, if that worked for them, she wasn’t going to complain. Otherwise she was going to have to find someone to sleep with Tobin herself. That it wasn’t already a vast problem was probably because his life was looking up over all, what with the album and people actually liking his music. Even the bigots just claimed he had an unfair advantage singing, rather than trying to claim he wasn’t good at it.
A short half hour later everyone was traipsing down to the hotel’s restaurant, wondering if they’d be served at all. It was a hit or miss thing and Penny offered to sneak over and clean out the buffet if they tried to get rid of them.
Brian smiled, which actually looked genuine.
“Argh matey! Thar be Penny, scourge of the high buffet.” He was teasing, but Penny chuckled.
“Darn straight. How else can I get by in the world? Still, it means we won’t starve, if they shun us like Amish ne’er do wells or something.”
They didn’t. In fact the waitress that served them smiled a lot and treated them all like they were famous or something. She didn’t even hesitate to put in a special order for Lauren, which had the chef out to ask for particulars, since she had to drink everything through a straw and needed a very high calorie diet. That ended with Mark running back to the kitchen with the man, but got a nice protein drink for their giant armored friend. Served in a large glass pitcher that had a soft fog of condensation already forming on the outside.
“Wow, this is good. What is it? Hazel nut and chocolate with bits of donut?” Lauren sounded pleased enough, though it seemed a bit overdone to Marcia. It was basically a milkshake after all. Even Marcia could make one of those.
Of course, she just got a normal plate of food and another bottle of oil. Olive this time, from the label. She downed it in a few minutes, treating it like water and made herself finish the food on her plate. It might not help much, drinking oil straight, but it was something worth trying. No one looked at her funny about it though. Not at their table. Next to them a man stared for a bit, but then just whispered to the woman next to him for a while. It was probably about her, but she didn’t really care. She’d been drinking oil straight. It might just be noteworthy to some people.
Unless they were planning an attack, noticing her breakfast seemed relatively harmless. Unless… it was a trick to distract her from paying attention somewhere else. She looked around, but didn’t see anything except people eating their own meals and a few people watching through the windows at the front of the place. Brian was sitting directly beside her and got more than his share of attention from the watchers, considering they had actually celebrities in the room with them, but Karen just smiled and put an arm over Marcia’s back, sitting on the other side of her as she was.
“It looks like the press is getting in. Would you trade seats with me? That or start feeling Brian up? Charlot wants us to point out that I’m not a lesbian again.” She leaned in closely, just being friendly by nature. It got confusing for the press at times though.
&n
bsp; “Sure, we can switch, but if you really want to sell the whole straight thing, you might not want to get that close to me or the other women on camera. Just saying.” She smiled though. It was darned hard not to like Karen. The woman was probably her best friend in the whole world most days. She pushed the plates around and changed places with her. Lady Glory was dating Proxy after all. They were sharing a room and everything.
That wouldn’t keep people from making false claims though. Reporters pretty much just made up half the news anyway now. They had for a long time, but it was starting to get really bad as the newspapers died out. The ones left were mainly tabloids and that meant the remaining few real ones had to step up and become competitive with those to even have a chance. In a few more years even the Times and the Herald would probably be filled with gossip and innuendo.
The day was pretty busy it turned out, for the people attending the conference specifically. For the others not so much. Unless they wanted to attend the various events, or help with them. Mark and Warren pointed out that they were supposed to come up with decorative cakes for a competition later in the day, even though they didn’t have anything planned. It was a last minute thing, since the guys from a cake decorating show the network had decided to come and challenged “Steinberg and Friends” to a contest. They’d cheated of course, coming with some advanced equipment and some cakes already made up.
“Good work too, I peeked. Still, we should try. Even if we lose badly. We don’t want to seem like poor sports or anything.” Mark spoke gently, which was something he almost always did, except on his show. It was part of how he coped with his first mode, an otherwise crippling fear of nearly everything. If he got too scared, he’d freeze time around him until he could calm down. That he wasn’t jumping in place, coming in and out of his powers field of effect over the contest showed he probably wasn’t that worked up over the idea. Even if the other guys were cheating.
Brian shrugged.
“I’d help, but unless you need something microwaved I’m kind of useless in the kitchen. Still, I’m here if anything that I can help with comes up. Floor scrubbing or whatever.” He sounded cold about the whole thing, probably wondering if this new contest was just being put together to make them all look bad. It clearly was. Marcia could see that, the question was only, why was it being set up like it was? There was a lack of information there. It could be the network, or the people from the other show. It could even just be general hazing, since “Steinberg and Friends” was the new show on the channel. Or it might have been people trying to get them, for being Infected, or the lesser version of that where they merely wanted to show they were better than the Infected.
She had things to do, and couldn’t help, but the others all agreed to do whatever was needed, so it would probably be enough. The hard part was that Mark and Warren had panels they had to be on as well, about different aspects of the show. The crew that normally filmed it was due in later that day too, she thought, the director and all that, but they wouldn’t help with cake decorating at all. It wasn’t in their contracts.
That meant that Kerry would have to be in charge of getting the basic work done, and Denis would be her main helper for the day, with Scott working back-up for them in the kitchen. It would keep people busy though, so she was all for it. That meant the picnic was set as a late dinner on the beach. Warren grabbed that one and ran with it, so all she had to do was sit while people finished eating and figure out what the heck she was going to be doing for the day. If the leads panned out she’d need to go and check on the places that the missing men had used their cards. That would take a car and some back-up. As well as a change of clothing. Strictly speaking it wasn’t legal for the IPB to be investigating anything that didn’t have an Infected person involved directly and by law that didn’t include her. That meant they couldn’t require anyone to hand over tapes or anything, if they even existed anymore.
If she could take Lancaster and Reyes though, it might still work. They could just announce themselves and pretend they had a right to the information. It wasn’t illegal for them to look at things like that, not specifically. They just couldn’t require anyone to hand things over. The police, and more likely the FBI, would freak if they found out that the IPB was looking into something like this though. Even if it wasn’t anything official. Those guys could be territorial. It was a real problem most of the time. Worse right now, because Marcia wasn’t even certain anything was happening at all. Just because the computer said so, that didn’t make it real.
It meant that after the others had started floating away for the day, led by Mark for the most part, all she had to do was wait for a while. Back in the agents’ room with Lancaster and Reyes, since they were the team making the calls to check out the information they’d received. It sounded straight forward on paper, but Marcia knew the score on that one, having been involved in similar things before. Data checking wasn’t just about confirming the facts alone. No, it was about doing it in a way that people trying to fake things might not have thought of. At least if they were going up against anyone good.
She listened as a friendly sounding Lancaster pretended to be Harpo’s brother, checking to make sure he was alright, calling a neighbor to go and check on him, since he couldn’t get in touch and was out of state. That ploy worked for the men, but when it came time to check on the women that might be missing they had to be more delicate.
So they lied and claimed to be from the IRS. It worked well, a lot better than just claiming to be a relative did. People protected women from strangers most of the time and got suspicious when personal questions were asked. The IRS was known for being nosy though, so as long as they didn’t go over the top about the whole thing, people didn’t really think anything particular of it. Especially once they put Marcia on the phone. People weren’t nearly as afraid of women after all.
“No sir, nothing like that. We just have some paperwork that needs to be completed before the end of the week. If Miss Morris can’t get it in on time it could end up being a rather sizable fine for her, but otherwise she should be alright. It really doesn’t look bad at all. We really just need her to mail in a signed document as soon as possible, but we haven’t been able to get in touch with her. It’s part of a new program, reaching out to make sure we don’t seem like the bad guys all the time. It’s a hard road, but we really are trying our best to work with people.” She held her breath, the man on the other end was a college student, and seemed a bit protective of his neighbor, one dorm room over. He probably had a crush on her.
He agreed to go and check, even though he hadn’t seen her in a few days. That wasn’t abnormal though, he assured her. Ten minutes later he told them that there was no answer at the door at all.
Normally that wouldn’t mean much, it being early in the day, since Beth had classes. She also had a roommate however, who he managed to find in the hallway. He put her on without waiting to ask if he should.
“Hello?” The young voice sounded timid, but then who wasn’t with the IRS?
“Hi, I’m looking for Beth Morris; do you know when she might be in later? This is pretty important.” She didn’t fill in the IRS thing and the voice didn’t ask about it.
“I haven’t seen her for days. Some guy came and she just left, packed her things and took off. She didn’t seem right, but no one is doing anything about it at all. The school won’t tell me what’s going on. I called the police, but they told me people leave school all the time, so they aren’t really interested in it. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
A few more minutes of question confirmed the basic idea to Marcia. Harpo from the old unit had come and gotten Beth Morris late at night a few days before. The roommate remembered that Beth had called him Uncle Rick. He’d been nice enough, friendly even, but had been firm on the idea that there was a family emergency and that she needed to leave with him right then. As far as the roomie knew no one else had been there at all.
The rest of the calls showed nea
rly the same thing. One of the guys from the old team would show up and collect the person or people, not using any force at all, or making threats, just stating it was a “family emergency” quite clearly and just drive them away. It was a bit odd, and could mean any of about a dozen things, but it did tell them that so far at least Cal’s story was playing out. That meant they needed to get back in touch with him too, as soon as they could, and see about getting everything he knew.
They had no clue where he was though.
Instead of fighting through that mess on the phone, she decided to see about getting a car to check on the physical locations they needed to. It took longer than she’d thought to arrange, and cost more which came out of her pocket since it wasn’t official, but by eleven they had one ready to go, complete with a GPS system programmed with the locations they needed. There were three sites and all of them in different directions on the outskirts of the city, meaning they probably weren’t close to where anyone was being kept. Lancaster drove, since her license had lapsed. It made her uneasy, letting someone else have control of a vehicle like that, but she tried not to let it show. The man was good and careful as he drove, following all the rules and signaling well. They still had two close calls getting to their first location, but they weren’t his fault. The other drivers acted like it was, but both times they’d been covertly chatting on a cell phone and not paying attention until Lancaster honked at them.
The place they needed turned out to be a small ceramics shop that sold cups, plates and vases. Nice ones, all handmade by the owner, according to a rather tasteful sign. The woman that ran the place smiled when they came in, checking out Reyes closely, as if he might be there for something other than a plate.
From the look on her face she didn’t fear robbery though. She looked at Marcia to speak though, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her fifty something nose.
