Echoes (Echoes Book 1)

by Therin Knite

  Gloria scrunches her nose and growls. “You looked at the case already?”

  “Of course I did. I saw it two days ago. I solved it two days ago.”

  Her cheeks puff out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask.” I wave her away. “Next!”

  She looks ready to deck me right here and now for all the hungry vultures to see. Instead, she storms out of my crummy little office in a huff, running face first into the bulky chest of Commander Briggs. Her lips let out a string of nasty swears and threats before she realizes; she goes rigid a moment later, back straightening, hand coming up to a shaky salute. “My apologies, sir.”

  Briggs stares down at her, mouth drawn into a thin line. “Accepted. Barely. Now get yourself back to Homicide, Shay. You’ve got work to do, if I’m not mistaken. Something about calling the Russian office to catch a killer?”

  Gloria runs off without another word. Literally. Runs. As fast as she can.

  The rest of the crowd has gone silent. They glance at Briggs and then at me, some of them wondering if I’m in trouble, some of them wondering if they’re in trouble, some of them praying that their cases will still get solved before lunch. Because, hey, it’s not like their cases are going to solve themselves! (And it’s not like they’re smart enough to solve them or anything.)

  Behind Briggs is the slim form of Ric Weiss. The Lieutenant Commander rarely emerges from the Main Deck, where all the most vital operations of the Washington IBI office are performed. He’s a second pair of hands for Briggs, who, despite his best efforts, can’t be in two places at once. For Weiss to be seen next to his Commander can only mean something is going down, as Jin would (and often does) put it.

  “Clear the doorway,” Briggs says.

  The crowd parts to let him pass. Silent. Fearing. Weiss follows him onward, stopping a few inches in front of the threshold. As soon as Briggs invites himself to sit down in the secondhand leather chair in front of my desk, Weiss hits the control pad on my door, and it noisily slides shut on its rusty track. Unlike the fancier offices that aren’t located at the edge of relevant operation space, my office door is not transparent. If it was, Briggs probably would’ve ordered Weiss to kick the other agents to the curb. After all, secrets are secrets only when kept secret. (Jin says that often, too.)

  “Busy day, Adamend.” The Commander laces his fingers together and leans back in the chair.

  “Every day is a busy day, sir, when you’re the only one that does any work.” I scoot back farther into my fancy desk chair, the one I purchased with my own money when the piece of crap I was graciously given by the office broke two days in.

  “Don’t be arrogant. I know it’s hard not to be, given how smart you are, but it doesn’t help your career to think yourself better than everyone else. Especially when no one’s willing to give you credit for all that work you do.”

  He’s right, of course. Of the four hundred thirty-nine cases I’ve solved in the eight months I’ve been officially employed at the IBI, only seventeen of them have my contributions listed. Agents aren’t required to list consultants. Crime Scene Investigators are consultants on everything except cases they are specifically assigned to.

  “There are also over five hundred agents employed here,” he adds. “And most were here long before you. They have invaluable experience, and they remain employed here because they have done invaluable work using invaluable skills.”

  “I know, sir.” Knowledge of the truth, however, does not stop me from feeling like the lonely island of intelligence in a sea full of idiots. Not with people like Gloria barking up my tree every other day.

  “I know you know. You know just about everything there is to know.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Arrogant and modest at the same time? Odd.”

  “Nope. Logical. I’m twenty-three years old. I can’t know everything there is to know. I don’t have nearly enough experience. Give me another fifty years. I might know everything then.”

  Briggs lets out a deep sigh. His eyes scan my office, affectionately dubbed the “closet office” by Jin on my first day of work. Junior agents get cubicles. Regular agents get offices. Regular agents who should be Junior agents but aren’t because of “special circumstances” get stuck here. Or so I presume, given my personal experience.

  “How many hours a day do you get hounded like that?” Briggs nods toward the door.

  “All eight hours, sir, including my lunch break.”

  “And they don’t give you a shred of respect, do they?”

  “Of course not. That’s not what’s important though.” (But it is irritating.)

  A dark eyebrow arches. “What is important, if not the respect?”

  “The answer, sir. Always. Solving the case is what’s important. Catching the bad guy.”

  He pulls his Ocom from a vest pocket and gives me a knowing look. “I suppose that would be the most important thing to someone like you.” His gaze shifts to the screen mounted on the back wall of my office, and I swivel my chair around at the same time Briggs’ home block pops up on it. He’s got three hundred messages in his inbox. “Which is why I came to apologize, actually.”

  My hand slips and selects the music app on my desk screen by accident, my latest hard punk playlist laid out for my boss to see. I exit it. “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say apologize?” Briggs doesn't apologize to anyone. Ever. Unless…

  Sure enough, the man pulls up a three-dimensional rendering of the dragon that killed Victor Manson last night. Its head isn’t quite the right shape. Its tail spikes are a tad too short. And its wings look more like giant rubber triangles than anything else. But it’s unmistakably the monster I spent hours reconstructing at the crack of dawn this morning.

  Briggs stares at it wistfully. “My scenario runners spent five hours building this thing, using the best software available in the world. Most of their initial parameters failed to come up with anything at all. They sat in front of their screens all morning, shaking their heads, lost and confused. It wasn’t until someone mentioned the overheard conversation between you and Connors that they got a manageable model working. You solved this case in, what, five minutes?”

  “I didn’t solve it, sir.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I merely found the weapon that killed Manson. The responsible party, the responsible human party, is still at large.”

  He leans forward and taps a finger on my desktop. “You don’t think it was an accident? Some escaped experiment like you originally postulated?”

  “No. After additional consideration, I found a more likely scenario. The escaped lab project theory doesn’t account for the dragon’s disappearance. The only way a twenty-six-foot-long dragon could wreak havoc in a cul-de-sac and get away unseen is if someone deliberately set it loose and then recaptured it. Think about it. It only killed Manson. It only damaged the siding of his house. Only his lawn. Only his fence. And then it was gone. What are the odds of that occurring by coincidence?”

  Briggs hits play on his Ocom, and my wall screen runs through the modeled scenario of the dragon toasting Manson. “You think someone used a dragon to kill him?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  He exits the scenario and opens a file labeled Manson Clients. “Would you like to find out who?”

  * * *

  Lunch with Briggs is like sitting at the king’s table in a medieval fantasy novel: everybody hates you because the king likes you, and they all secretly plot the best way to bring about your painful demise. In the IBI lunchroom, this comes in the form of not-so-subtle whispering and intermittent glances from the various office cliques. They all have their own tables: Homicide in the far right corner, Cyber Security near the salad bar, Special Forces next to the finger food serving line. When we first sit down with our trays—me, Briggs, and Weiss—the entire room falls into a startled hush. Briggs sits alone (with Weiss). Always.

  Change is anathema to the IBI.

  Before I c
an even bite into my sub, I spot Jin mouthing words to me from his place at the end of the Cyber Sec table. On his first try, the message reads something like: Wart our yodeling? Realizing his exaggerated enunciation, complete with wide O’s and sluggish tongue movements, makes him look the part of a character in a slow-mo gag video, he tries again, lips moving at a normal pace this time around: What are you doing?

  I smile and take a large bite out of my lunch. Jin pouts and stuffs an entire handful of fries into his mouth. He’s well aware I’ll tell him all my dirty secrets later today, but the man is a gossip lover at heart, and it physically hurts him to be left out of the loop for even half a second. Unfortunately for Jin, this is neither the place nor the time to tell him I’m about to do something illegal.

  “Having a secret conversation with Connors, are you?” Briggs sits across from me (Weiss at his side) with a bowl full of extra-cheesy nachos in front of him. Weiss is apparently having nothing for lunch save for a bottle of mineral water; his eyes are closed, his face serene, and anyone foolish would think him attempting a midday nap to recover from overwork. But I spy his ears perking up at the smallest sound, catch him regulating his breathing on purpose. Even in a relatively danger-free zone, the former sniper is on guard.

  “Not so secret when everyone within a mile radius can see Jin’s obvious gesturing. It’s a good thing he does most of his work on the computer.” I grab the free pickle next to my chips and break it in half with my front teeth—the crisp crunch interrupts Weiss’ silent survey, and one eye cracks open to locate the source of the offending noise.

  Briggs chooses to ignore my meddling. “Connors does good work though. He’s smarter than you give him credit for.”

  “On the contrary, I give Jin a lot of credit. I think he’s smarter than half the people in this room.” From the corner of my eye, I scrutinize the still-furious silhouette of Gloria. Black hair, black suit, and back to me, she’s a gray-scale cutout in a room full of color. And yet, the stiffness in her shoulders, the tilt of her head, and the wave of her hand radiate the same emotional vibrancy as all the faces in plain view. Most people are confused to see me sitting with the king. Gloria is dismissive. Her critical flaw. In every case she takes on, she trivializes the little details that would scream the answers from mountain tops if she would only pay attention to them—

  Movement. Weiss taps on Briggs’ shoulder, and a truly secret message passes between them. They have a system, Weiss and Briggs. One that I have yet to crack. It consists of a hundred nonverbal cues that transmit at least a hundred words a piece. Emotions, jokes, and obscene amounts of information jump from one man to the other on a daily basis, and neither of them ever has to say a word. It is the kind of system that emerges when two people work side by side for thirty-seven years. It’s one of the few abilities I envy.

  Briggs closes the top on his nacho bowl and motions for me to pack the rest of my lunch. “Seems we have a bit of a time crunch. You can finish in my office while we chat about your new assignment.”

  What event triggered this “time crunch” is not for me to know, judging by Briggs’ expression. I trail behind him and Weiss as we exit the cafeteria, and when I place my tray in the return slot, I dare to peek at the subdued lunch room. About seventy-five agents stare back at me. Their emotional range stretches from neutral to the Ninth Circle of Hell. With some extra spring in my gait, I catch up to the Commander duo in record time.

  From behind, Briggs and Weiss make a ludicrous pair. One well over six feet, the other barely half past five. One with the darkest natural skin tone possible, the other with the lightest. One ripped beyond comparison, the other skinny as a rail. One a weathered SWAT veteran, the other a sharpshooter who’s never gotten closer than a thousand feet to any fight. And yet, when you view them from the front, their faces read of the ultimate solidarity, understanding, and friendship. And the more you dig into their respective skillsets, personalities, and backgrounds, the more they make sense together—they are perfect counterweights.

  I spent the first six months of my employment wondering if they were (or are) a couple. But if they are (or were), they hide their feelings somewhere in their special code.

  Briggs’ office is positioned above the Main Deck. It’s framed with one large window-wall that gives anyone inside a panoramic view of all the most important happenings in the office. As we flank the three-tiered Deck, few agents below bother to acknowledge us. These are the real professionals of the IBI: former Special Forces leaders, retired from decades of dangerous field duty, hardened communications liaisons, worn rough by years of fending off the press, specialists in every field imaginable running every possible disaster scenario and updating IBI standard protocols to account for new discoveries. These are the people who keep the world running. These are the people I respect. One day I will be one of them.

  Weiss breaks away from our three-man group when we reach the door to Briggs’ office. With a quick nod, he descends into the Deck and takes a seat at the desk screen that links to the Deck’s massive wall-to-wall display. It usually features a real-time map of the United Republic of Earth, all the Districts labeled, all the Dead Zones labeled, all the time zones labeled, and the world population (two-point-three-one billion) listed in the corner. Weiss hits a command on his screen, however, and an active mission log replaces the map. The first entry reads—

  “Not for you, Adamend.” Briggs has seated himself in his expensive, custom-order chair, and he waves me a few feet forward so he can close his office door. Once I’m inside and sealed off from the rest of the world, he turns a digital dial on the edge of his desk screen, and the entire window-wall, door included, darkens to an impenetrable black. The wall is also soundproof. “Pick a chair,” Briggs says, pointing to the four identical options in front of his desk.

  I select the one farthest to the left. “Sir, you do realize you’re asking me to do something that could land me in prison, yes?”

  Briggs reopens the Manson Clients file on his desk screen alongside the incomplete case report last updated earlier today. “You do realize you want to do something that could land you in prison, yes?”

  “Wanting to do something and actually doing something generally have different consequences.”

  He snorts. “Why play the devil’s advocate for your own cause? What does it gain you? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have pursued the Manson case had I not intervened.”

  “I would’ve. Yes. In my own way. Blind research. Sneaking back to the crime scene. But using the internet and taking a leisurely stroll down Pennimore Street aren’t crimes. Actively spying on another federal agency is.” Find out what EDPA does, Briggs said, and find out who killed Victor Manson.

  “You won’t get sent to prison.” He hits compose in his message box and addresses it to me, attaching all the relevant files. “You’ll get a kick in the ass, maybe, from the Director Board. But Brennian won’t let any misfortune befall you. He holds a great deal of power over the other Directors. Plus, the man knows what EDPA’s up to, and he won’t let his little protégé get kicked out of the IBI for snooping around.”

  “Wait, Brennian knows what EDPA does?” The Director has never even mentioned the existence of such an agency to me before, despite spending almost all our time together explaining the intricacies of the federal bureaucracy.

  Briggs hits send, and my Ocom vibrates in response, the message counter increasing by one. (I’m up to seventy-nine now.) “Of course he knows,” the Commander says. “The Director Board has Level Six clearance. They all know. I’m unfortunately one step further down the ladder. Level Five doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t stop me from being irritated at EDPA’s actions though.” He selects one of the files he just sent me, revealing its contents: seventeen other incomplete cases. “They’ve taken all these cases from us in the last three years alone. There were more before this, but because I was a green Commander back in my first few years, I was too foolish to see the pattern until the official files had been
deleted. Someone with Level Six clearance has access to all our files, and they erase the EDPA-related ones less than a day after we lose jurisdiction. These are my unauthorized personal copies.”

  Every case listed is every bit as strange as the Manson debacle. A ten-foot-tall ghost dog. A phantom van that snatches people off the street and disappears. Violet fires starting in six different high-end penthouses, burning everything inside but never moving to different floors or even different apartments. And the strangest of all: a circus that appears at the stroke of midnight and vanishes at dawn. All seventeen involve varying degrees of death and destruction.

  “I’ve never heard of any of these events.”

  Briggs nods, solemn. “Media suppression. EDPA is a big fan.”

  “So Manson’s death is simply the latest in a long line of strange, unexplained occurrences?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Well, now I understand why you’re so willing to break protocol to figure this out. I thought you were testing me at first, sir, to be honest. Seeing how far out of line I am. You’re usually so by the book.” My palms are sweating, the sign of an infrequent burst of excitement and nervousness. The Manson case isn’t some one-off anomaly. There’s a grander picture here. A complex story I can read. An impossible puzzle I can solve.

  “I’m by the book because I like the rules. EDPA breaks the rules. Often. For once, I’d like to know what I’m up against, what insane criminals these people are facing, what horrible experiments gone awry they’ve been tasked to put an end to.” He rests his chin on his hands, staring at his desk screen without actually seeing it. “During three of these past cases, I lost agents. And I couldn’t tell their families what happened to them because I didn’t know. I sent them out to do their jobs, be the heroic first responders they trained their entire adult lives to be. And then they were gone. I didn’t even get their bodies back. Their families didn’t get their bodies back. That’s against federal rules. That’s against IBI rules. That’s against my rules. And that pisses me off.” His voice wavers. Ever so slightly. “Brennian won’t tell me what EDPA does. But Brennian sees you as the next generation of himself.”