The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  They went on like that for a long time, with him holding his own in actual skill and not letting her land anything on him, but nothing he did, even though he was really applying the moves, slowed her down at all, except throws, of course, which forced her to stand up first.

  It was a good practice for him, but did show he had some real limitations, basically just being a regular person physically. Some people were just too much for a guy like him to handle, weren't they? In the end she called it off so that they could get to the rest of the day, her face looking teasing suddenly as he grabbed a towel.

  "So, single again? Want to get together later and do it? Oh, wait... You already have a date tonight, don't you?"

  He nodded.

  "I do. After that though, if Mary rejects me, expect me to show up at your room crying." He didn't mean it, since nothing that minor would get him to cry anymore, but she sobered quickly enough.

  "Bit of a messed up situation, isn't it? It's hard for me too... I keep wanting to make fun of you for having Prime as a kid, but then I realize he actually is and that's just sad..."

  "You mean because I couldn't be there for him, like a real parent should? I know that must be what you mean, because if you were putting my boy down we'd have to have an argument over it and I doubt either of us wants that. You know, what with the screaming and crying. It would not end well." It was a warning to her, though it sounded decently playful anyway.

  She made a face.

  "You know, I actually did mean the part about you not having been able to be there for him. I'm not able to have children of my own, but... I'll be around later if you need to talk. Seriously."

  He nodded and then turned away a little, his face blank.

  "I don't know, but I might need it. Thanks. For not making fun of me in this. It's... so weird. I keep wondering if I'm going to find out that I'm actually Tobin's dad too, or yours. Freaking time travel..."

  "I hate it too, but we can only take what comes and plan for the future. The past has to take care of itself."

  It was wise sounding, but almost didn't make sense at the same time. Then a lot of wisdom was like that, wasn't it? It sounded good and probably was in certain conditions, but outside of a narrow framework it was kind of useless.

  As the day wore on he felt increasingly nervous, right until about six o'clock when, dressed in a nice black suit that Charlot had gotten for him a few months before, he tried to get a car from the motor pool. The agent in charge of that just looked at him as if he were insane or something.

  "I can't let you have a vehicle." He said it after looking at the sheet in front of him, tapping it with a pen. His voice sounded kind of cold about it too. Obnoxiously so.

  "OK... it would have been nice if I had known about that earlier. May I ask why? I have... Something to be at in an hour, so if I have to call a cab let me know that now." He didn't want to sound pissed, but it was an annoyance he could have done without, given how uncertain he already felt about the whole situation.

  "No. You don't have clearance to leave the base. It says so right here." He spun the paper and tapped it with his pen, showing that, of all the people on the page, he was indeed the only person not allowed off base privileges.

  He nearly killed the guy and took a car anyway, so that he could escape, suddenly feeling like he was trapped. It was probably a paperwork error, not someone purposefully trying to keep him from having a life at all. No one would do that, would they?

  Brian hated to do it in his nice clothes, but he jogged back to the base and went into the restaurant to see who was there. It was the closest point after all and if he had to run a search for someone to get the whole thing cleared up it would waste time if he had to come back. No one helpful was there, though he waved to Bridget and Jason, who were at a table with Doug and Janice. It was good to see they were getting along. Doug didn't look overly happy, picking at the salad in front of him, but he smiled when he saw him.

  "Brian." He didn't yell the word, but got up to talk to him. "Coming to dinner? You look ready for it. I can't believe I have to wear make-up all the time... I look funny don't I?"

  Brian shrugged, but took a few second to answer, even as he started to walk away.

  "No, you look good. I have to find Marcia or the Director, I think. Or Lancaster maybe." He mumbled it a little, walking away without saying more, worried about being late. If he sped he might just be able to make it on time. If he didn't have to run all over hell and back to get things cleared up.

  It was the tall Agent he found first, on the second floor, walking out of the Director's office. He didn't look happy at all already.

  "Brian. We have a bit of a situation here."

  It sounded dark, and like something important, but Brian didn't feel himself about to transfer out, so he just waited, trying to not be selfish and make it all about him or something.

  Except it already was.

  "The State Department has put you on lockdown. It's... You freed Ambassador Washington earlier, and while that wasn't a bad thing, politically speaking, some are questioning our right to do that so openly on foreign soil. Senator Hooper again. For the time being we... Actually that's the real problem. Medical is supposed to drug you into a coma, so your power won't work, but Burrows told them that won't be happening. The fact is, right now, you might just ignore that and go anyway, then be stuck, unable to protect yourself." He gestured towards the door to the office trying to get him to go in.

  Brian made a face that he knew couldn't look kind. It must have been harder than that even, because Lancaster held up his hands slowly and took several steps back.

  That got waved away though, a frustrated flapping movement.

  "I'm not a prisoner. More, I have a date tonight and I intend to go. If Hooper wants to ground me he can man up and send me to my room himself. Besides, I don't think the State Department can put me on lockdown. I'm a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and if they try to claim it's OK, because I'm a Federal agent, then I quit right now." He didn't even glare at anyone, wondering who was going to try and move on him first just for saying that.

  It took about ten seconds to work out the whole plan, taking a car from the motor pool, arming himself first... He'd have to run after that, but he could at least let Mary know he tried to make it. Just before he turned to actually start the whole thing, Lancaster shrugged.

  "No shit. But still, I don't think you can make it tonight. Call her up and let the lady know what's going on. It isn't secret or anything. If you don't get in touch it will be rude. As for the rest, being a prisoner... Maybe this is a situation that will be best worked out through diplomatic channels?" He gestured towards the door again and this time let his eyes go wide as if telling Brian to hurry the heck up and to stop being a baby about it all.

  Like this was normal?

  He went in anyway, figuring that calling might be the best short term option, even if he didn't have Mary's home phone number. She might not actually live in the shop now, right? He mentioned that out loud to the room, which held the assorted usual suspects. It was Charlot, the PR lady... and, he realized, his daughter in-law, who suggested just trying the coffee shop first, since it had long hours. That was the very first thing he did, even though it clearly made Moore clench his jaw in frustration. It was important though. After all, what if he had to run off after that? Or died taking out the despotic government forces that came to send him to some torture prison or whatever?

  No, he had to take care of that part first.

  It was remarkably easy though, since she answered the phone herself, sounding a little disappointed when he said he couldn't make it right then.

  "Oh? I... can we reschedule?"

  "Um... Well, I can't promise much right now, since it looks like they're going to lock me up illegally for a while. You know how creepy governments can get. Maybe you could come here for dinner? There's a really great restaurant here and I know the head chef. I'm sure we could get in." Technically it was the Team One dinin
g facility, but Marcia looked at Director Moore so hard he chuckled a little and nodded.

  "I'm certain that can be arranged."

  They had to do it the next day, according to Lancaster, since they needed to deal with the mess of the moment first, just to prevent it from getting worse. It was decently bad already. The government was actually serious about drugging him and had even tried to claim that if he didn't allow it, that meant he was a terrorist.

  When he heard that part he had to take several deep breaths before answering, knowing it was all on tape somewhere and would be reviewed. Probably by someone that really wanted him dead.

  "Hooper is the terrorist. Isn't using the full might of the U.S. government to illegally intimidate one person a crime? Besides, he knows that my power isn't consciously controlled, so this is set up as a trap... after Braid has clearly managed to force me to trade places with people at least twice in the last few days. Maybe this latest time too. I think that Hooper is, knowingly or not, working with her. The signs are there and it at least needs to be investigated." It sounded right to him, and was something he'd suspected for a while now, that the man was being controlled by the insane precog, but he couldn't prove it and his word, at the moment, didn't mean a whole lot, apparently.

  It meant that Moore was on the phone trying to stop this from going sideways, knowing the whole time that Brian was about to be forced to change places with someone, just to create an incident. It was far from a brilliant thing. Or rather, it was incredibly so, but it wasn't great for him to have to deal with. For his part he just sat, wondering what was going to happen. He was stuck and had no control over the situation, that was clear.

  Except that Braid had one weakness.

  Possibly at least. She couldn't tell what he was about to do. That was... Something he might be able to work with. Not directly, but... There had to be a way. First he needed to stop the Hooper stupidity. Somehow.

  "Phone please." He held out his hand, not explaining at all, and made a single call. Everyone stared at him when they realized who he was talking to. As if it was unexpected or something. Who else was he supposed to bug with things like this? He only knew about twenty people to talk to and most of them wouldn't have a clue about things of this nature. Well, other than the people in the room with him.

  "Mr. President?" He waited, figuring that the man would have already been briefed on the situation, if he cared to be, which was the case. Saving an Ambassador in a foreign country was apparently a fairly big deal.

  "Mr. Yi, so good to hear from you. I think I have an idea as to why you're calling, and I have it on good authority that this whole thing should be cleared up in a few days, a week, tops." He actually sounded pleasant about it and everything.

  "Heh, good one. You know that I just trade out randomly, don't you? Hooper knows that too, which means this is a set up to have me accused of being a traitor. So, I need for you to do me a favor. Please." It never hurt to be polite, when you wanted the most powerful politician in the country to pass threats along for you. Or help you set them up.

  "I need for you to get with the Department of Justice and suggest that they sign off on a Death Warrant for Senator Hooper, on the grounds that he's being controlled by a dangerous person with advanced mental control abilities that cannot be beaten by any other means. I can't actually prove that, but one way or the other he's certainly being used as a weapon, which is enough for the warrant."

  "We can't just kill him!" The man didn't sound angry, but rather scared. It didn't fit his normal personality at all.

  "Of course not. That's not my game here, as tempting as it would be. As soon as it's done, we need an announcement of the fact, one that doesn't come from you... If it's any comfort, I think that there honestly is a very good chance he honestly is being influenced in that sort of fashion. That or he's a traitor, trying to start a war that the U.S. military can't actually win, with their own people at that. Can you make the suggestion at the Department of Justice?"

  He doubted it would work, but if he could smear the man's name enough, he might be able to survive the fact that he couldn't stay locked down like they wanted. Really though there was only one person that could make this whole thing work. Him. At least the press portion of it. He had enough popularity to be listened to, a reason to be speaking at the moment, and was enough of a wild card that it wouldn't damage the IPB too much if he ran his mouth a little. The fact was that people thought of him as Proxy, not as an IPB operative. Brian could look like a jerk in public and it hardly affected the agency at all. That was his theory at least. It was kind of hard to tell so far, if he was going to tell the truth.

  After they got off the phone he put in the paperwork, through normal channels, wondering if the thing would even be looked at before it got rejected. It didn't have to go through at any rate, it just needed to be in the system when he talked about it later. That could be checked out by Hooper and his friends after all, which was the point of the paperwork in the first place. He wanted the man to realize he was in trouble in a way that being a Senator might not fix for him.

  "Charlot, we need a press conference. As soon as possible. Within the hour would be best." That might not be possible this late in the evening, but everyone looked at him anyway, making pained faces for a while, as if they thought he didn't have a plan that would work. They were probably right, but he felt like it would do something and maybe even help keep him alive, so he was going with it.

  Director Moore started to speak first.

  "Brian, you can't expect-" The man was cut off with a sharp movement, and a head shake.

  "No, I don't. Don't talk about it or ask questions right now. I need to throw off Braid and that means no one can give me away. Pretend that you're planning a press conference too... Um, introduce the new Team One members? This isn't what it looks like, it's an ambush, but I need everyone to pretend it isn't and to not ask why. Don't talk about it out loud at all. Especially you Kevin. She watches you all the time, I bet." Brian didn't know that, but the two had been married. For that matter they still were.

  It took a lot less time than he figured it would, the first shock being when the Death Warrant came back... approved. It was probably Braid getting Stillness to set it up of course. All of Brian's Death Warrants had probably been rushed through that way. It was meant to get him to look dangerous to the public no doubt. So far though, he'd managed not to step into that particular trap.

  Eventually he would, if enough of them came in. Not that they needed that to make him look bad. Braid could just set him up to kill someone that was relatively innocent of any crimes at the moment. Like the angry woman that had attacked him, the flying one. If he'd killed her it would have been considered murder. No doubt the whole thing was caught on video somewhere.

  For a second he really felt extremely overmatched. The woman was older than he was, and actually had some control over her power. Plus she'd had three decades to get ready for him, as compared to his three or four months dealing with her. The only way out for him now was to do something truly unexpected. A thing that couldn't normally work at all, that might make some waves, because there was no other choice. Or he had to at least make it look that way to the public long enough to control the situation.

  The real fact was that Brian had no legal grounds to put what he wanted to try into motion. What he had to try and do was to put Hooper, who was a master at political manipulation, so off his game that he had to back off almost instantly. It wasn't going to be easy, because he was powerful enough that he could beat just about anything Brian could do to him.

  Well, not if he just killed the man, but the President was right on that one. If they executed Hooper or even just helped him "accidentally" die, a lot of people would use it as a rallying cry for a hate war. What they didn't get, or at least didn't seem to, was the one fact that kept Proxy going personally on the issue. Starting a war with the Infected meant regular people, most of whom were pretty innocent, losing. Hard and fast. Brian d
idn't know if he could beat a company of soldiers on his own, but almost everyone else he knew could. Little Bridget was probably getting pretty close to being unstoppable now for instance.

  In a few more years no regular military force on the planet would be able to make that happen. Oh, they'd be able to drive her away, eventually, most probably at least. But only because she'd eventually get tired, or bored with killing them all and just wander off. That or hungry. The girl did like to eat, as tiny as she was.

  It was probably why Devorah Timberland was trying to have those strange creatures built, making things that could even the fight enough to really ramp up the crazy on her plan. It would increase the death toll by millions at least. What Brian didn't know, and had never understood, was who she thought would win the war she wanted. Did she have a plan to get rid of all the Infected? That might work, for a decade or two, but the problem wouldn't go away, just the bodies.

  If there were people, like Carla, spreading the thing...

  He really needed to deal with her then, didn't he? For all that he didn't want to be locked up forever or put in a concentration camp, the world couldn't survive a million more first mode crazy people running around with powers that no one but the IPB could stop. It was going to be hard handling that part of things. He'd never been wild about Carla and she'd kind of hated him, which made sense if that was related to a first mode, but he'd never hated her. Not really. There was a huge difference between not wanting her dating his best friend because she was mean, and wanting to see her be locked up forever. That would be the best case scenario too. Permanent quarantine.

  Brian really doubted she'd get that though. The government wouldn't allow it. Honestly, on a deep level, he understood that line of thinking, but she was someone he knew. Not a friend, but she'd practically lived with them for months, so he felt responsible for her. It wasn't sane, but it was just the way he felt.