Toxic Influence

by Voss Foster

  "He means to say it's slow-going and not exactly pretty work." Gutt also pulled away. Both of them bodily turned from the piles of papers and books on Bancroft's desk. "There are several angles to be taken, of course, which makes it even more difficult to know where to start, let alone where our final destination should be." He waved his hand to the side, toward the desk, without even looking at the work spread out there. "These are studies on historical Norse myth, as well as copies of records and research from the Hidden Kingdoms."

  He patted the top of one of the tomes and I nodded. "Wow…those are the copies?"

  Gutt nodded. "The archivists in Droshheim sent them through remote transport some time during the night, and they're putting out calls for any other information, speaking with scholars." He shook his head. "And the fact this was their solution means they don't have a very solid idea of what's going on from the information I sent them. And of course nothing on the request for information about mercenary organizations. It appears no sanctioned warriors for hire are working in the Mundane currently." Sighing resignedly, he turned himself back around to face the mass of papers and books gathered in the desk. "They're kicking things to archivists in a few other Kingdoms, including the Grand Archives in Nedelwald."

  "That's good news, right?" Grand Archives sounded pretty…grand.

  "Hardly." Bancroft turned around as well, sliding his glasses back on and slicking back a wild mas of flyaway white hair. "The Grand Archives of Nedelwald are a wonderful storehouse for research and learning, yes, but if anyone was going to have information relating to Norse runic magic, it would be Droshheim, not Nedelwald. The simplest answer is that this is what we're going to get without a new piece of information to put into play."

  "If this doesn't work out, I'll make a personal appearance next time." Gutt flipped one page of his book over, revealing a diagram of a tree with a lot of writing I certainly couldn’t make out. "I find it easier to intimidate people in person than with a letter."

  That I could definitely understand. I damn well sure found him intimidating the first time I looked him in the face. A name on a sheet of paper just wasn't going to live up to that, no matter what kind of history came with that name.

  "Dash." Swift poked his head out of his office. "I brought flashlights for nothing."

  "Well, I guess you were right this time. I needed the sleep to get back to my old self." I turned on my heel and headed for him. "I hope it didn't interrupt any plans you might have had for the morning."

  "I didn't plan on seeing you until nine or ten, so you're actually early." He stepped all the way out of his office, no longer looking tired at all. Just a weirdly ageless black guy exuding this laid-back energy that made you want to have a beer with him. I never wanted a beer with Carlson, that was for damn sure.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and sighed. "What's on the docket for today? Since it looks like Gutt is pretty well-occupied."

  "Kimmy actually wants you." He nodded. "She needs, and I quote, 'that pretentious pretty boy counterterrorism wonderhunk.' You're definitely the prettiest counterterrorism agent I could think of."

  "I'm flattered." And not particularly excited to be working with her, if I was honest. Who would be? "What is it she needs, so I'm prepared?"

  Swift shrugged and stepped back into his office. "Best bet would be to go ask her, don't you think?" He gestured to a doorless room across the space. "She's in the vault, as per usual."

  "Right." So I turned back around, past Gutt and Bancroft, and into…a computer geek's wet dream. Somehow, it felt a little bit incongruous with the OPA. This was a unit of magic and dragons and teleportation. But even though the space was small, Kimmy had made the best possible use of it.

  The left wall was just screens and a desk. Five screens across, and two rows, but only a few of them were currently on. There were also keyboards for each one on the desk, though just like the screens, most were pushed away, not in use. Beneath the desk were towers, blinking and whirring. The computer vault was immediately five degrees hotter than the rest of the OPA offices. In the far right corner was a set of rickety metal shelves stacked with all sorts of cables and disks, including a couple cases of actual floppy disks. There was also a really shitty, duct-taped office chair there tucked in against the shelves, and I had a feeling that one was for me.

  I cleared my throat and Kimmy whipped around, black ponytail flying behind her. "Wonderhunk's finally here."

  "Wonderhunk, pretty. Are you sure you don't have a little thing for me?"

  She snorted. "You're easy on the eyes, but you're much more Casey's type: tall, dumb, and completely unavailable."

  "I don't know if I'm more offended for me or Casey."

  "You should be more offended for you. Those are the criteria he gave me for the ideal man." She turned around and gestured flippantly to the chair in the corner. "Grab a seat so I can actually put you to use."

  "Well since you asked so nicely." I couldn't help myself poking the bear just a little. Maybe it was stupid…but like she said, I was kind of dumb. I grabbed the chair and swung it around next to her, then plopped down and looked up at the screens as though I could make heads or tails of anything. "What is it you need from me?"

  "I need some fresh eyes. I've been through this information backwards and forwards, and if there's something substantial here, I'm missing it."

  "It could just be there's nothing there. You work for the FBI. You've got to be pretty good at your job."

  "I'm more than pretty good at my job. I'm the best at my job. But my job is to manipulate computer systems. I let them parse out the information and I deliver it up. Since Swift puts his faith in you when it comes to cracking open counterterrorism bullshit, I'm turning to you to be a part of this." She offered something that maybe was supposed to be a smile, if it hadn't been so sharp and judgmental and slightly bitter. Or if it had lasted longer than half a second before her face reset to normal. "If I could do that by just plugging you into one of my CPUs, I would. But even with all the magic we have at our disposal nowadays, no one's quite cracked a human interface program like that, so we're stuck doing things the old-fashioned way."

  Well, at least she didn't like me being in her space any more than I liked being there. We had something in common. How touching. "All right, what have you gone through so far?"

  "Gutt's criminal listings, and the list of Kingdoms he gave me that would realistically use Norse runes in their magic. I didn't find anything, neither did Gutt when I sent it shipping his way." She shook her head. "I also didn't find anything related to poison magic, pestilence curses, anything like that. No major over-the-table military movements are going on, or if they are, they weren't reported to Al-Sekar or Nedelwald or any of the other central fucking Kingdoms that would want to keep tabs on that."

  "Would they really do this as a military exercise?"

  "Why wouldn't they? As long as you win the war, there are no consequences for any of that bad crap you did to get there. And the Kingdoms could ride rough shod over the Mundane if they put half a second of god damn effort into it." Again, that bitter smile. "Make you feel all warm and fuzzy?"

  "Yeah. Absolutely. Like a security blanket." Made of thorn bushes. "It's moving under the radar. It's only happening in the Mundane. I assume you scanned through social media on our end to see if there's anything weird?"

  "As much as I can. They amped up security hardcore after preets started moving into the Mundane. As if a stronger firewall would do anything to slow down an elf with a grudge." She rolled her eyes. "But it makes it harder to hack."

  "I don't know that you have to hack it." I finally felt like a had a little use in this room. I pulled just a little closer—not enough to push personal space—and stared up at the closest illuminated screen. "Head over there. Make a fake account if you have to."

  "You think I'm not fucking prepared?" She logged into an account that appeared to belong to a middle-aged balding white man with a beard.

  "Milo Maxw
ell?"

  "It gets the job done." She clicked the search bar. "What brilliance am I going to find on the front end of Facebook?"

  "That depends how much tech wizardry you can pull off. You want to look for anyone posting more than…three or four times about the poison gas attacks."

  "You mean the entire population of New York, plus several tens of thousands of others."

  "Humor me. If it's a waste of time, you can kick me in the balls."

  That got an actual smile out of her. "You're fucking on. But I'll have to get my pointy heels."

  Kimmy brought over another keyboard and started up another screen. She searched on the first computer, then did some weird string of code on the second computer's command prompt. In the background, behind the black box, rows of information began to pop up. They were too small and zipped by too fast for me to read.

  So I focused on the screen with the Facebook search results. The first few results were within a couple minutes, which was weird. Unless Swift was about to come barging through the door telling us there was another attack just now, there was no reason for that much activity. "Kimmy, scroll down the search results."

  She didn't snark at me that time, just ran down the results. Apparently Milo Maxwell still had autoplay on his videos. And thank god he did, because it turned out all the recent posts were videos. Were one video. The same video. A live stream of a guy in a ski mask against a beige background, lit from above in really stark light.

  The statuses that went with them? Mostly variations of 'why aren't the FBI catching this guy' or 'is this a joke,' and even a couple people actually tagging the official FBI Facebook page, as though we didn't have half a dozen actual methods for getting a tip to the proper authorities.

  But all of those posts pointed to the poison gas attacks, vaguely or in very clear terms. Or if not all, enough of them. The page refreshed and there were more. A few news stations were picking up the feed, now.

  Kimmy shook her head. "Get Swift. Get everyone."

  I nodded and headed straight out the door to Agent Swift's office. It was still open and I stuck my head in. "There's a video going around. Looks about as stereotypically terrorist as you can get. And it's live."

  He jumped to his feet. "Get Gutt and Bancroft."

  Good. That meant he was asking Abigail to come down. I headed for Troll and Old Man and leaned over the wall of the cubicle. "Video feed. Might be from the terrorists."

  And then they were up and going too. Kimmy's computer vault was crowded and cramped when I got back in. Swift and Abigail came in last, and he squeezed his way up to the front, right next to where she sat. "Play it."

  She hit one key and the video popped out to full screen. The figure was male, judging by the voice.

  "We are responsible for the poison gas attacks, and they will not stop until the world corrects itself once more. Magic and the Mundane were never intended to mix. We will rectify this error. We will fix both worlds."

  Chapter Seven

  My head whirred through half a dozen different options, piecing together the sparse, repetitive information this masked man was handing out and trying to reconcile everything.

  Luckily, everyone in the room was an FBI employee, and they were all in the right headspace to deal with this. Kimmy clacked way frantically at the keys. "I'm tracing it back. Just hope he keeps flapping his fucking mouth long enough for me to get some info."

  Swift shook his head. "They're not going to make it that easy. They've eluded us this long, why would they—"

  "Got an IP. He's broadcasting from somewhere in Manhattan."

  Swift blinked a few times. "Okay then. It's still a broad net. Can you get it smaller?"

  "Gutt." Kimmy jerked her head to call him over. "I need your help to run that tracking protocol we've been working on."

  Gutt's eyebrows shot up. "Is it reliable enough?"

  Kimmy snorted. "Who knows? But I don't see another choice, so get your ass up here."

  He muscled his way to the front. I didn't know what was going on, now, but he stood right up next to Kimmy with his hands outstretched. "In tests it has a higher success rate with more data points."

  "Everything has a higher success rate with more fucking data points. That's how reality works. We have two." She typed some more, bringing up another command prompt window, then nodded. "Go."

  Gutt worked his massive fingers into knots and out again, slow and methodical while Kimmy typed away. The screen went all wavy. Like an old school tube monitor when you stuck a magnet on it. Rainbows and discoloration and generally just off, and getting worse the longer Gutt worked and Kimmy tapped at her keyboard.

  "What is this?" Swift tried to lean in closer, but there was no room for him with a giant twisty-fingered troll. "I'd like an answer."

  "And I'd like to find our creepy little fucking videographer, Swift, so I need to focus." Kimmy continued to type at an increasingly furious pace, leaning into the keyboard and craning her neck up to watch the weird shit on her screen. "We have magic at our disposal. I'm using it. Just keep your fingers crossed that it actually does what it's fucking supposed to."

  "It's a combination of Kimmy's software and various magic that bounty hunters and law enforcement would employ in Droshheim." Gutt's fingers stiffened, locking into a strange, jagged composition. "I'm closing in on something."

  I had to admit, if this worked, I'd be blown the hell away. This was some kind of experimental combination of magic and tech, unfolding right in front of me. That was the kind of shit on the cutting edge of computer research. Even after ten years, there was no release of Microsoft Sorcerous Edition or whatever. But if anyone was going to have a leg up in that department, I guess it made sense for it to be the OPA.

  "There." Gutt yanked his hands apart fast, like they'd been burned. "Assuming this worked out the way it's supposed to, he's there."

  The screen slowly cleared of its discoloration and there was a satellite map with a large blue circle around…it had to be a single block in the middle of Manhattan. I whistled low. "That's amazing."

  Swift looked between Gutt and Kimmy, his eyes hard and sharp. "What are the odds this is right?"

  "With two points of data…" Kimmy brought up more windows on a different screen. "Two points gives us around sixty-three percent accuracy, but that's not based on extensive testing. Just what we've been able to squeeze out here and there."

  Swift nodded, cracked his neck side to side, then turned around and headed for the door. "Gutt, Bancroft, Abigail, stick around here for now. Fend off the media, because their calls are getting redirected here when they finally come in. Kimmy, keep looking, update us if you find something useful." He pointed to me. "You and I are going to New York City."

  "Is that wise?" Gutt turned around to look at him straight on. "Neither of you have magic, and even with magic it took two of us to survive our last head on encounter."

  "We're stopping by R and D to prep for that eventuality. Want you here to work with Kimmy if she needs it, because I damn sure won't be any help in that department" He nodded and glanced to me. "Ready, Dash?"

  "Absolutely. Sounds like a great time." I followed him out through the throng. "I don't suppose we have any of those gas masks ready?"

  "Like I said: we're stopping by R and D to see what the gals have for us. And to pick up a little better firepower, since bullets apparently don't work on these sons of bitches."

  "What, we have magic bullets and you didn't tell me?"

  We zipped past Remote Transport and down an exceptionally narrow hallway…crawlspace…accidental gap between two walls. "We don't like to use enchanted munitions when we don't have to. They're volatile, and if one of those bullets goes astray, everyone's in trouble. They're nasty business when there's nothing magic in their way. Nasty and sometimes unpredictable."

  We finally got out of the tiny cramped hallway and into…it wasn't a lab or a production station, but it wasn't not one, either. The problem was that it just didn't look ste
rile enough to be a research and development room. Like everything else in the OPA, it was cramped, though still slightly bigger than Swift's office. The massive number of cabinets lining the walls took many square feet out of the space, and a large wooden table took up the rest. Crystals hung from silver and copper chains on the ceiling, all pointing straight down toward the table…and at the two middle-aged preet women sitting on the opposite side, currently ignoring the both of us.

  Swift walked up and rapped his knuckles on the table, shocking both women into looking up. "Gals, I need those gas masks, and some bullets that'll get us through magical shielding. And I need them yesterday."

  The left one was an elf, her hair cut into a mohawk and dyed—or magicked—bright green. She had tattoos all up and down her arms and creeping onto her breasts, and she wore a tank top that most definitely wasn't standard FBI garb. Neither were the silver caps on the tips of her ears.

  The one on the right was…basically the same, except she was, if I wasn't mistaken, a ghoul, and her mohawk was pink, standing out as a shock against her pallor.

  The ghoul spoke up first, sounding remarkably not dead in spite of her gray, withered skin and sunken eyes. "More poison?"

  "Not sure," said Swift. "Live video. We tracked them. Now we need to get in there fast."

  "Well let's stop dawdling." The elf got to her feet and went for a cabinet in the back. "This the new blood?"

  "Dashiel Rourke. We can introduce you later, Unna."

  She nodded. "Here's your masks."

  She handed over a pair of very cobbled together gas masks. The face plate from a standard issue FBI model, but with the respirator replaced with what looked suspiciously like baby food jars. Runes had been burned into the mask and etched into the plastic jars, but otherwise it looked wholly unremarkable.

  "And your guns. Loaded and ready." The ghoul slid over a pair of average looking Glocks. Well, average except for the strange markings carved into the grips. Not jagged like the Norse runes, but not anything I could immediately identify, either.