Toxic Influence

by Voss Foster

  Clark pointed back the direction she'd come from. "A cluster over there. Six."

  I gave her one last nod and headed that way, muttering to Gutt as I went. "This is bad, and this isn't like their other attacks. The others were targeted. They could have been marking out who would be there, going for specific people. The other attacks were in more private, observable locations. This is the most public things have gotten." This was a textbook, bog-standard terror attack, going for maximum fear and damage. But that just made it stick out all the more compared to what we'd run across so far.

  We came out of a small copse of poplar trees and saw the other six. They'd been in the poison long enough that it attacked their clothing. A stark reminder how lucky I got. Two larger corpses…and four smaller. Not child small, but smaller than the average adult. That coffee made another return trip and I just barely managed to get it to stay put as I approached the scene. It helped if I didn't look too closely at the bodies.

  Except I had to. Something stood out. Something demanded my attention. One of them wasn't so badly burned. One of them didn't have bone peeking through the crisp flesh. One of them had been buried a bit beneath the two larger bodies.

  One of them wasn't a corpse.

  His chest bobbed lightly up and down. I dropped straight to my knees and pulled my hand inside my sleeve, in case there was any residual poison on him, then pressed my fingers to his neck. I didn't know if I hoped he was alive and dealing with this pain, or dead and at least at peace.

  Something thrummed gently against my fingertips, even muffled by the fabric of my jacket. "Gutt! This one's alive!"

  In a split second, Gutt was next to me. "Can you carry him?"

  I slid off my coat to wrap him up, then lifted. He was so limp, and the blackened and reddened skin flaked off where I touched him. There came the coffee again. I was pretty sure vomit wasn't good for the open wounds all over his body, but I was also pretty sure he wasn't going to be protesting, either.

  Gutt waved his hand and the air shimmered. "Through here. Right into the Field Office. Just walk straight until you see something that looks normal. Don't turn."

  I nodded and stepped through. Again there were neons and pastels. I got a tiny flash of a building. Bricks of bright green with white mortar between them, a street lined with the brightest flowers I'd ever seen in all variety of colors.

  It could have been pretty or even potentially distracting if I didn't have a nearly dead teenage boy lying limp in my arms. So I walked straight ahead and into the cold and clinical room where I'm sure I was totally and completely welcome.

  The gray-haired dryad woman who jumped at the sight of me proved that. "What's…my god." After a second of shock, she shook herself and jumped into action. "Get him on the table. These are the poison attacks?"

  "Yeah." I laid him down as she extended the footrest with withered, knotted hands. "He's not doing too hot."

  "Well I did notice that." She pulled out a lot of strange instruments and implements I didn't recognize, along with all sorts of vials and powders. "Do we expect more survivors?"

  "I wouldn't hold your breath."

  She nodded, her mossy green lips set into a sudden grimace. "I can stabilize him, I think. But beyond that…"

  "I'll place a call in for our alchemist." Casey had done something for me, at least. Hopefully he could do something for this kid. "Umm…scrubbers. They gave me blood scrubbers when I came in."

  She glanced at me sideways as she continued to assemble things. "You're the agent who came in before. You look different conscious."

  I slid out my phone, but as I did, Casey materialized in the room and headed straight for the table. "Gutt called me. Another survivor." He nodded to me, then to the dryad woman. "Dr. Casey Daniels, OPA. Draw blood, then give him scrubbers and get to work on the lung damage." He snapped on gloves, then shoved a hand into the victim's now brittle, threadbare pocket. He came out with a wallet and flipped it open. "Dash. His name's Oscar Hernandez. Student at East Side High School."

  Oscar Hernandez. A fucking high school student. "I'll get on the horn. Fix him up."

  Casey shook his head. "Honestly? I'm good, but I don't know if I'm that good."

  Cool. Totally comforting. I stepped out, phone still in hand, and dialed up Swift, first. And of course he picked up after half a ring. "Agent Swift."

  "It's Dash."

  "What's going on?"

  "A lot of dead. Twenty-one so far." There were more. I knew they'd find more. "One survivor. Teenage boy. Oscar Hernandez. Student at East Side High School." I pushed all the thoughts of him aside so I could keep going and doing my job. "I'll touch base with local PD, find next of kin."

  "His parents?"

  "Don’t know for sure, but there were two bodies with him. Larger. Probably adults." His parents. I didn't want to say it out loud, but I'd have bet a week's salary those were his mom and dad.

  There was a long silence on Swift's end, followed by a crackly, staticky sigh. "Is the kid stable?"

  "Casey's here. They're doing what they can for him."

  Another sigh. "Well, damn. Anything anyone can do out there?"

  "Keep people away from the scene, do whatever it is you need to do to clean up a magical hazard like that. I've got samples being taken, but if this is like the other attacks, nothing's going to come from it. It was on my clothes and you couldn't find a trace of it. It's just procedural."

  "Yeah. All right. Any other bad news?"

  "Not yet, but if you give me enough time, I'm sure I can find something."

  He paused for a few seconds longer than was really normal—I thought it might have disconnected—but he did finally respond. In the end, it wasn't me delivering more bad news. "Well we just got one more thing to add to this fucking mess." His voice took on a hard edge. "Rise and Shine Motel again. Poison. Inside, this time."

  "Fuck." I shook my head. "Then this could have been nothing but a distraction."

  "Get over there now. NYC Field Office can set you up with remote transport. I'll get Gutt on his way."

  I hung up the phone and stuck my head back into the room. Casey and the old woman were moving their hands over Oscar, spraying him, working metal instruments back and forth and—most disgustingly—into his flesh. I focused on the old dryad. "I need someone who can get me to Manhattan immediately."

  "Make a right, past the elevators, signs will lead the way."

  I nodded and moved to leave, but not before Casey chimed in. Didn't look my way or break his concentration on the patient. But he did pipe in. "Another attack?"

  "New attack, old location. Hotel where I got hit with it."

  "Be careful."

  "Wouldn't want to ruin all the good work you did making me pretty." And I was off, scanning for signs to guide my way. As soon as I found Remote Transport, I barged in.

  An elf with short-shorn black hair stepped up to stop me. "Who the hell are you?"

  I pulled out my ID. "OPA, Special Agent Dashiel Rourke. There's been a poison attack at the Rise and Shine Motel in Manhattan."

  He glanced my ID over, then moved aside and opened a portal against the far wall. "DC's sending agents through a field office?"

  "I happened to be in the building when I got the call." With that, I stepped into the portal. Through the bright, pastel world again. Straight forward, no turning.

  I stepped out onto a too-familiar street with too-familiar barricades blocking off the area around a too-familiar motel. Except this time it wasn't dead quiet. Screams. Sirens. Crying. Shouting. People being forced back from doorways. Small children all around. I didn't bother trying to focus on any one thing, because there was no damn way.

  I walked straight to the door, being guarded off by one very large and muscular male agent. I flashed him my badge. "What's the situation?"

  "Poison's not clear. Nobody's going in, nobody's coming out until we get the all clear." Agent Large-and Muscular guarding the door shook his head. "I thought the spooks were on to
p of this case now."

  He came from outside the department, then. Guess they were stretched thin by two attacks. "OPA is on top of this case, now. You got an answer you're not sharing with us?"

  He snorted. "If I had magic on my side, I'd get it done."

  "Well good, we'll hire you right on." Maybe I was uninformed before, but I wasn't an asshole about the OPA. At least I was pretty sure I wasn't. "We'll hook you up with some magic and we won't have to deal with this bullshit anymore. Didn't know we had such a powerful deductive tool sitting unused. I'll tell Swift to put in a requisition, get you right on the team."

  "Not joining a bunch of spooks."

  "Then shut up." I turned and headed away. Maybe they weren't my department, but they damn sure didn't deserve to be bad-mouthed by…anyone.

  When I spun around, I ran right into Gutt, head to chest. His teeth were bared in a scowl. If him smiling was terrifying, that was way, way worse. "What is going on today?"

  "A lot of poison attacks. Thought you'd noticed."

  He pressed one knuckle into the center of his forehead and closed his eyes. "Did you get the boy situated?"

  "He's in the best position I could set up in the minute before I got called over here. Casey and the field office medic are doing what they can. He's in rough shape." I pushed that image aside again. If things kept up at this rate, I'd be way too used to seeing that black and red skin. And mostly on dead people.

  Gutt turned his gaze to the motel. "You were on scene for the first two attacks. What are the odds anyone—"

  "No one's alive in that building unless God loves them a hell of a lot." My jaw tightened. "I need to call NYPD, get them looking for anyone in Oscar's life who can take him."

  "Someone else can do that."

  "I know someone else can do that. I was someone else doing that not too long ago. But they're not letting us in, and I'm puking or punching someone if I don't occupy myself." I already had my phone out. "Tell me when they open up the building for us."

  I had NYPD up. I kept them from the first investigation with counterterrorism. One dial and I was on with the receptionist. "NYPD, if this is an emergency—"

  Slightly nasal voice with a bit of a lisp. "Stacy, it's Agent Rourke. Dash."

  "Oh no."

  Yeah. They'd gotten used to me calling with bad news recently. "Two more attacks today, you knew that when I called. This is a different sad phone call than all that. Need you to find family on a survivor if there's anyone."

  "If. I don't like if."

  "I don't like if either, but I like it more than a high school kid recovering from the poison gas attack that killed his family all alone. Name's Oscar Hernandez, student at East Side High School. He's at the New York Field Office right now."

  "Okay. We'll get on it."

  "Thanks, Stacy." I hung up the phone and turned to see Gutt right behind me. He wasn't scowling anymore. Just neutral, but looking right into my eyes. I looked back, and tried to pull a veneer of normalcy over myself for a second. "Don't tell me you think I'm pretty. I'm already committed to being Casey's eye candy. There's no room for you in our relationship."

  And he smiled, and I was happy to see it. Scary teeth and all. "Not my type. Too scrawny. You care about the kid?"

  "I'm not adopting him, if that's what you're asking. But I don't want to see kids die. Doesn't make me soft or cuddly or anything. Only whiskey does that. You shocked, or just need info to take back to Swift?"

  Gutt's smile just widened. A touch, but it definitely got bigger and…tuskier. "It's a sign in your favor you figured out he wanted me reporting in on you."

  "I'm a new agent, and an even newer OPA convert, and he sends me out in the field with a senior agent? What kind of idiot couldn't figure that out?"

  "You'd be surprised. You're not the first agent I've been sent out with like this."

  Boy, that gave me faith in the rest of the FBI. I jerked my head toward the Rise and Shine. "Building's open. Not that it matters. We're not going to find anything."

  "You sound sure."

  "Like you said: I've been here since the first attack. If there's significant evidence or a survivor in there, I'll eat my hat."

  "You're not wearing a hat."

  "You think I got to be an FBI agent by being stupid? I wouldn't risk actually having to eat my own hat on a bet." I strode over, steeling myself for the mausoleum I was walking into.

  Of course, steeling myself would do jack shit to lessen the blow of all the dead, but it was better than upchucking. That coffee in my belly still wasn't quite happy with the current situation.

  Chapter Five

  Back in the office, I'd forced myself to down a government quality peanut butter sandwich. Protein, carbs, and more importantly, something that would soak up the acid I still had churning in my gut. The Rise and Shine, thankfully, had lost business with the recent attack. It was only partially occupied, and the people staying there were on-edge enough that some of them managed to get out.

  But partially occupied was still occupied, and the same couldn't be said for Madison Square Park. Those two attacks sky rocketed our death count up to a total of sixty-one. sixty-fucking-one in just over a week, and every news channel was plastered with how much the FBI was screwing this up. What we'd cost them. The president was…not helpful. To anyone. Lots of platitudes and empty words designed to make people feel like we had a handle on this.

  There were no handles. There was nothing but sixty-one god damn corpses.

  At least the media, for all the fear that was being spread around by them, was doing its job. They told the story as it was. It just so happened that the story as it was made the OPA look less than stellar, and made preets seem less than one-hundred percent safe in the process.

  Going through the list of victims Kimmy had compiled, I wasn't stumbling across any brilliant connections between them. By sheer geography, a lot of them had similar schooling backgrounds, one or two intersecting work lives, but nothing stood out to me as particularly significant. I still shot an email off to Swift with what I'd found.

  "Dash. Gutt." Swift sauntered out of his office just as soon as I hit send. He looked tired, if you focused hard enough on his features. I did my best not to, just let him talk. He leaned against the little dividing wall of Gutt's cubicle. "First things first, either of you need counseling?"

  Gutt shook his head. So did I. "Not my first rodeo."

  "Figured, but better to check. That's not an easy thing to do." He nodded. "Okay, so that gas mask you nicked off the sorcerer before? It's definitely using Norse runes to channel the magic. Bancroft's looking into exactly what means what."

  Gutt got to his feet. "I'll be helping him, then?"

  "That was my plan. Does the whole thing being Norse actually help you out?"

  "It may. It certainly cuts down on the number of Kingdoms that could be involved in this. A Kingdom like Xianxi isn't likely to be dipping into Norse runes for their magic."

  "Well good. Find us something." He sighed. "Once Bancroft got through with the gas mask, the R and D gals pieced together how it works. They're getting everything set up so we can try to be safer when we have to go back out again."

  "How do they work?" Gutt had started to leave, but I guess his intellectual curiosity got the better of him and dragged him back into the conversation. "Anything we can use to track the poison back to a source?"

  Swift shrugged. "I am an FBI agent, and I'm good at that. Not a scholar, not from the Kingdoms, don't even ask." He waved a hand toward Bancroft. "I figure between you, Bancroft, and R and D, you can find anything there is to find."

  Gutt nodded and walked off, leaving me alone with Swift. I looked up at him. "You got the email I sent?"

  "Probably. Was it important?"

  "That's for you to decide. It's what connections I could find between the victims so far."

  "Well, I'll take a gander. Wanted to let you know they got the kid stabilized. Breathing on his own. Drugged to hell and back, but
currently alive. Got them some good info on how to handle the poison, if nothing else."

  Assuming we ever stumbled across another survivor, which just didn't seem all that likely. Oscar was a fluke. A damn lucky fluke. "Glad he's okay. Any word on his family?"

  "You saw the victims list."

  Yeah I did. His parents and his brother and sister all died in Madison Square Park. "I meant next of kin. Someone who can take him in."

  "Nothing that I've been made aware of. Things are a little busy. But they'll find someone if there's someone to find." Swift clenched and unclenched his hand on top of the cubicle wall, the only outward sign of any frustration. "I want you to go talk to him. Orders in place to turn everyone away until one of our agents can get in and have a word or two. We've taken a special interest, shall we say." He patted the top of the barricade like you do with a car hood as someone's pulling out. "He's at New York Presbyterian. You can find Remote Transport on your own, right?"

  "I should be able to. Not exactly a big office space to get lost in."

  "See? I knew that college education had to be good for something."

  "I'll head over now" I stood up and started toward the main doors, then stopped myself. "Listen, does all this portal, remote transport stuff do anything to you? Any health issues I need to know about?"

  "All it's done to me so far is make me more ruggedly handsome than ever. It's not radiation or anything scary like that."

  I sighed, honestly very relieved. "Too bad. I was hoping to mutate something cool like a rhino horn."

  "I'm sure you could find someone who'd do that for you if you really wanted. But then you'd really never be able to go back to counterterrorism. Once you have horns, they tend to stick you in OPA for life." He snapped. "Right. Speaking of horns: our Remote Transport tech is a demon. So you're not shocked."

  "Got it." I waved him off as I walked away. Remote Transport had to be somewhere close, given how small the OPA offices were.

  A sign sat on a door left ajar that marked a tiny broom closet of a room as Remote Transport. Barely enough room for me to step in, and nothing but blank walls and a chair holding a sleeping, heavy-lidded red demon. Classic devil looking fucker, but in a nice black suit tailored to their form. So I was in the right place.