by P. S. Power
She rolled her eyes.
“Annnd done.” She clapped loudly and smiled. It was just to hide her panic and frustration, but she didn’t want any more of her people getting hurt. That meant grabbing this situation as quickly as possible. Somehow.
“Good job. Now, Brian, put that away. We have real work to do. The Director has a real warrant to be served. An old friend of yours? Shaw? Do you remember him? Beat you without cause, kidnapped you from your home and tried to kill you several times? The paperwork finally came through; the last signature is being put on it now. I’m not letting you kill these men though, warrant or not. If you keep trying I’m going to have to kick your ass and then you won’t be able to go after Shaw nearly as well.” It wouldn’t stop him, of course. She didn’t know if she could stop him like she said even.
Half the moves he’d used shouldn’t have worked. Oh, the physics were right, perfect in fact, but he was physically a normal man and yet without using any visible powers he’d just defeated a class six projective empath and gotten around a class four telekinetic without any trouble at all. She couldn’t have done that. Either of them would have probably taken her out without a lot of trouble. At least out of play. Kerry could levitate her after all, if she couldn’t touch the floor it was hard to move. Of course she could do that to Brian too…
“Kerry, pick up Brian please. Don’t let him touch anything.” She said it calmly, and the girl acted quickly, but Brian jumped as he felt himself lighten, hit the ceiling faster than the girl could correct, which was twenty feet up and spun in the air before she could understand what he was doing, then, while spinning like a top and flipping in the air, he fired at the Chief again. Hitting him twice in the chest.
Marcia wanted to shake her head. No one could make that shot once, much less twice.
The man went down hard, but there was no blood, thanks to his vest. Kerry dropped Proxy, who landed in a perfect roll and came up firing again. This time Prime stepped in the way, smiling a bit as he did, holding his large golden hands out in supplication.
“Why don’t we stop now? Like Marcia suggested? I know that you’re very angry and upset and you have every right to be, but I also have to agree that these men didn’t do anything to deserve death today. We shouldn’t judge them based on what they might have done. That’s the kind of thinking you hate.” He sounded… really reasonable. Then there was a camera on him, which always got Scott to bring his “A” game.
Denis was back on his feet.
“Fuck Yi… I agree with Scott. I mean I don’t love the cops, but seriously man, this is messed up and out of character for you. Or, well, not really, but hurting people that don’t need it is. You aren’t an unreasonable person. You didn’t let them kill me for instance, and I did a hell of a lot more to you than these guys did. I actually tried to kill you and you gave me a second chance. Then a third one. Shouldn’t you do the same for these guys?”
The breaths coming from Brian were steady, but deep. It was a frightening thing, since it signaled a person getting ready to fight, not someone starting to be reasonable. No one spoke for a long time, but no one got shot at either. Marcia worked her way toward Brian, hoping he could calm down. He had the legal right to serve the warrant and they’d all been breaking the law trying to stop him, but that didn’t make it moral. They had to keep things like that in mind, didn’t they?
After a time, which seemed like forever, but was probably closer to a couple of minutes, he holstered the weapon.
“I can’t count on you people for backup ever, can I?” He sounded sad, so much so it hurt to hear.
She didn’t argue the point though. Most of the time, when he’d needed them in a situation like this it had really ended up that way. What could she say? If it happened again, they’d fight against him. That wasn’t what anyone wanted, but there were larger issues involved. He knew that, on some level. He was smart. More so than he ever let on, according to the IPB testing. Off the charts brilliant in fact. His anger at the police bordered on the pathological though and as the psych people had pointed out, more than once, he couldn’t honestly be expected to help it. The guy just didn’t have time to learn to cope with his feelings on the matter and probably wouldn’t before he died. The best they could do was try to manage him.
Bridget shook her head, crossed her arms and moved in front of him, forcing him to look down a good bit to make eye contact.
“Bull pucky. We are backing you up. It’s just that this time you need us to keep you from making a mistake, and you can’t see it yet. Like when dad lost it and you had to drug him to protect people. You weren’t trying to hurt him, and what he was doing made perfect sense to him at the time, you just made sure he didn’t do anything he’d regret later. This is just like that… only I don’t have any drugs ready. Your first mode is getting out of control and that means you’re willing to do anything to stop what you see as a threat to regular people, even if it kills you. Only this time the threat to others probably isn’t real. Chris said so, and she wouldn’t lie about things like that. She’s a snitch and a pain in the ass, but not a liar. Ask anyone.” Then, without warning, she gave him a hug. “So, really, we are backing you up. We all are. Even the Chief here. Notice how he didn’t try to come in guns blazing or accuse you of being the one in the wrong? These men are scared and need you to protect them Brian. This time from yourself. Think about that for a while. You have to protect them. It’s your job. They aren’t wrong this time, it just seems like it.” She didn’t let him go, holding him around the middle.
Finally he patted her back.
“Sorry. I guess you’re right. I don’t see it still, but if everyone else is saying I’m wrong, I’ll have to try and take it on faith.” He looked at Chief Lincoln, who was still groaning a little, holding his chest.
“Sorry I shot you, even though it was completely legal at the time. Warrant for it and all, so you’re OK with that right? It’s just procedure. That makes it OK in your book… right?” He held up his right hand and took a deep shuddering breath.
“Argh. Sorry, I mean. Scratch that last bit. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m not a cop after all.” He winced. “Damn.”
The man on the ground chuckled weakly.
“I’ll take it in the spirit meant. Um, ow though. Good to know the vests really work. So, what do we do now?” The words were simple, slightly breathless and the movements slow, but no one seemed to know the answer.
Except Conroy. He’d stood back for the whole thing, behind the camera crew at a good remove, but he strode forward easily enough now.
“Get your men and leave. I’d suggest calling first, if anything else comes up for the week. Um… Agent Lancaster here would be a good person for that. Just to keep this from happening again. Let’s get the cuffs off of these men and send them on their way now.” He wasn’t ordering it, not precisely, but no one argued with him and it got done pretty quickly, Reyes moving without even checking with Marcia first. It was old habit after all. Not the best thing in a case like this, but at least Mike was getting the right thing done and she didn’t want to let anything else start again by trying to stop him.
She tried to keep breathing while they slowly ushered the men to their cars and watched them drive away. The amazing part of it all was that no one had taken it upon themselves to try and set up an armed perimeter. If they had she didn’t doubt that all the cops would have been dead already. So someone had gotten clever fast. Possibly the Chief himself. The man seemed to have his act together pretty well so far. If he sucked up being shot twice and didn’t whine about it she’d be floored, but the man was impressive for a normal. Maybe even someone capable of being one of their agents, if he ever wanted to change jobs. He’d seen what was needed and gotten his men out alive in a situation that probably shouldn’t have ended that way, by being smart and in control.
Conroy waited for everything to calm down, and then he pulled Marcia aside, his hand on her left arm, guiding her away from the res
t of the group urgently.
“So, what’s the situation? Did I miss anything? Any news about the men or their families?”
“Ah…” There was, of course. “Harpo and Morris are dead. They tried to kill a CIA agent that I was having Cellophane guard. She took them out before they could hurt the man. A fellow that goes by the name Wilson. I don’t know if you’ve met.” She filled him in on what bits and pieces she knew, summarizing quickly, but leaving in everything.
If there was one person on the planet she knew she could count on, it was Mike Conroy.
“So, that’s it. We’re reporting it all to the secret service and trying to find out what we can, but our only lead to this was Morris and he’s not available for questioning now. Unless we can grab someone else involved… I’ve got nothing. We also need to make sure everyone knows we aren’t involved in whatever happens, just in case it all goes sideways on us. Things around here seem to like doing that.” Marcia was about to look around for Brian and the others, but found them standing right behind her listening. Not everyone, but most of them.
Brian seemed to have calmed down a lot at least, which might have meant that Bridget had called it right. Screwed up first mode crap. It happened to all of them sometimes, no matter what they did to prevent it. Sooner or later everyone got triggered and with most people that could end badly. She’d done it a few times herself, going from being suspicious of others into full paranoia. Georgia from Team One had done it just the month before for instance. Since her first mode worked so well with her power, and both involved sex, she’d ended up screwing half of Team Two in their TV room and a good chunk of Team One, before Brian had stopped her. He was the only one that was able to walk through her ability and act in a way that didn’t involve sex.
It wasn’t that any of them meant to do bad things, like basically rape a bunch of people using psychic abilities, but it could happen. This was just Brian’s turn, it seemed. He seemed to be making himself recover though.
“Really? Wait… Um…” He pulled a cell phone, which wasn’t his, Marcia knew, and dialed a number from memory. That worried her for a minute, because she didn’t know what he was doing, but after a bit he spoke a long numerical code and then waited.
Then he repeated the whole story again, the thing about Marcia’s old crew and the threat to President Lawrence that the CIA told them about.
“It’s all unofficial and could be a set up, but the feeling here is that someone wants to kill you and then blame the IPB. We don’t really have proof and this could all just be hot air, but taking some extra precautions couldn’t hurt. Do you want us to send in some agents and operatives for it? The secret service is good, but they don’t have super powers. Well… most of them don’t.” He waited, looking at everyone in turn, scanning the crowd that was watching them.
Finally he started nodding.
“That… Yes, I think we can arrange that… OK. Yes sir. I’ll arrange that. He’d better. We can have people in place today, sir. In the mean time, if you could request an increase guard and maybe stay in a bunker or something? No? I didn’t think you’d go for that one… but it was worth a shot. On it.” His voice was cold as he spoke, but his eyes glinted and when he hung up he sighed at Marcia.
“OK, Lawrence is with us and will accept a guard for himself and his family. He requested Bridget specifically for his daughter. They’re about the same age and she can go anywhere with her. We should send Scott too and probably Rachel. By my preference we’d send you too Marsh, but I don’t think we can spare you from here. It feels important.” He shrugged.
“Lauren is a bit too high profile I think, though why anyone wouldn’t want her guarding them if they were in danger I don’t know. I’d want her on my side. Anyone have suggestions?” He sounded firm enough that no one spoke for a few seconds.
Bridget was the first to speak, fidgeting and not able to hold the words in.
“You know the President, and can just call him up on a whim? I mean and he takes your calls and listens to you? How cool is that!” She hugged him again and whispered something to him.
He answered out loud though.
“You’ll do fine. Just remember what Hobbs taught you. Anyway, suggestions?” That he’d gone from crazy cop killing spree mode to calmly chatting up the President wasn’t the amazing part. No, it was how many people wanted to actually avoid being on the duty at all.
Marcia would have thought they would have all been volunteering left and right, since a lot of them viewed Lawrence as one of the best things to happen to politics in the last sixty years or more. That didn’t mean they wanted the public scrutiny though, which being on a guard detail for the man would no doubt bring. Ideally whoever did the task could be hidden, but the IPB mainly had two types of people working for them. The first team members who were, in general, pretty famous in their own right, or had powers that really didn’t belong in a fight like Pixy or Whistler. A lot of the others had first modes that were really nice over all, but made them kind of hard to use in a real fight. Like Argos, who was probably the fastest person in the world in raw speed, but was so humble it constantly affected his ability to do anything involving other people.
Team Two was just as bad, if in a different way. They were all tough, and not that famous, but that was because they were largely hidden from public view. The uglies. People like Lauren, who anyone that wanted to live should love to have guarding them, or Tweek, who was darned near as fast as Argos and had a tractable first mode, which was just a sort of obsession with collecting tiny objects. She sat and stared at them for hours sometimes. The problem there was that she looked, and acted, like a crack whore. Not he selling herself cheaply part, just the face and how she moved in a spastic fashion all the time, but the look was all wrong for Presidential duty.
It didn’t leave a lot of people really and they needed about twelve of them. Three shifts of four people each. Who though? Finally she started listing people off, and waited for the reactions, expecting a mutiny. It probably wasn’t the best idea in the world to do it on camera, in a hotel lobby, but everyone would know who she wanted for it anyway. Of course what they really had to do was run a list by the Director first. Or at least as soon as possible. Dumping stuff on him was never good, but delaying it would probably be worse. The man wasn’t a tough boss most of the time, but he had feelings and was even a little bit of a sentimentalist. Marcia was almost certain that was part of his first mode. Nostalgia or something related to it.
She made the call, and got a gruff answer from the man, almost barking.
“Are they dead?” He sounded like he knew the answer, but he was wrong on that score, thankfully.
“All alive. Well, the ones that left here at least. I don’t know about the ones at the hospital, though they should live. That’s handled for now. Bridget seems to have worked Proxy out of a first mode loop. Brian got with the President, and set up a special protective detail. Oh… right, I guess I haven’t told you why yet. Um, oversight, not me trying to hide anything from you. Let’s see…” She spelled it all out quickly and got ready for the man to hammer her for keeping secrets and sneaking off on personal business. It would only be fair.
Instead the line went silent for a while.
“I see. Very good. Who’s going so far?” He sounded relieved when she explained that they hadn’t decided yet. The man had asked for Bridget, which kind of recommended the other Chambers except Charlot, who they couldn’t afford to let run off to the Whitehouse. She was just too important to them.
Oddly enough Scott nodded along with that when Marcia said it.
“That’s true. We’d all be lost without her. Maybe Christian could lend us her jet for commuting purposes? We’ll have to hide her from them though, or they’ll want to keep her full time.” His voice was a little playful when he said it, but it was a real enough point. The woman probably would have had a job there or someplace similar if it wasn’t for her being Infected. As it was she was so astute at her PR job tha
t they’d taken her off of Team One to do it full time before Bridget was born. When they’d almost left some months back the office was a lot more worried about losing her than Scott, though no one was ever supposed to say that out loud where the man might possibly hear.
Chris just nodded.
“Of course. We’ll schedule weekly trips to and from the area, so that personnel can travel in comfort. I take it Mark is going?” She didn’t say it as if it were a question.
The idea was good though, wasn’t it?
“Yes. We need Penny here, and Mark and his show crew are needed for the conference, but as soon as that’s done, we should send them in. That still leaves us a little light on the ground there, but I don’t know who else should go. I… We should get Tweek, if… can that be done?” She looked at Charlot, who tilted her head and blew out a huge, somewhat frustrated breath of air.
“With difficulty. She’s not an attractive woman, but a lot can be done with make-up and she’s easy enough to get along with. If we’re going to paint people like clowns we might send Ink too. He just needs a good cover of foundation and he’d be fine.” The words lacked tact, but no one mentioned it. Not even the man himself.
Mark shrugged and then looked at Denis who tilted his head and finally shook it.
“I can’t. Still on probation, remember? I don’t think anyone wants the President guarded by a would-be killer. I say though, if they want our help they can accept a few of our other people. Lauren and that guy with the white eyes from Team Two for instance. I don’t know his name, but he’s good and not a lot gets past him.” He looked around, which got Brian to nod.
