by Nels Wadycki
The teacher nodded, closed her eyes, and looked back at them, questions in her eyes, fear of further interrogation.
"We're going to need to speak with the kids, preferably all of them, but at least the ones who were nearest where the kidnapping occurred," Ana said. Her comm buzzed and she stepped away from the group, down the hallway.
"Aerin, any intel for us?"
His face already told her the answer was no. "I'm afraid not. Looks like some shortwave pulse weapon took out all of the security cams that would have caught anything during the time of the kidnapping."
"Seriously?" she replied, then muttered, "So fucking generic. Come on!" Then again to Aerin, "So we're definitely dealing with professionals."
"Oh yeah. Taking out the government-encrypted cams at the school and a few of the nearby operated by the police was not something an amateur would be capable of. At least, not as cleanly as it was done today. I mean, these guys went in like a surgeon who washed his hands with anti-bacterial soap, used vacuum-sealed rubber gloves and instruments sterilized with bleach and fire and stored frozen before excising any piece of video that might have been used to identify said surgeon, then washed his hands again and destroyed the gloves with sulfuric acid."
"Thank you for that. I got it. Professional surgeon."
Aerin looked down, bashful, self-conscious.
"Yeah, that's about it."
"Okay, thanks."
"Yeah. Um, good luck with the kids."
Ana went back to the group.
"This is it, guys. Aerin has nothing. They wiped all the security cameras. Hopefully they didn't wipe the kids’ minds."
A look of concern passed between the four of them.
--
Inside the classroom, the three Valkyries took a child each to a corner to interview them in semi-privacy. Ana had suggested it even though Marisol wanted to bring them out in the hall.
"It'll make them more comfortable," Ana had reasoned. "Those kids probably only get pulled out here when they're in trouble. They'll be intimidated. Inside they can see we are talking to all of them, and keep an eye on their peers around the classroom."
Marisol was not one to object to a good idea just because she didn't think of it. So they took the children aside three at a time, and talked to them, hoping the youngsters would be able to pony up some sort of clue.
The breakthrough came in the form of a cadre of precocious children who managed to piece together the ID number on the back of the vehicle from their collective memories.
Back out in the hall Ana said, "They have to have wiped it by now. I mean, you really think whoever did this wouldn't have thought of that?"
"Well, yeah," Marisol responded as she punched her comm. "But what else have we got?"
Justin shrugged. It was an accurate assessment.
Marisol contacted Aerin and gave him the vehicle ID they'd constructed from the fragments of the children's memories.
"So, now we just have to wait?" Ana couldn't hold back a sigh as she ended the question.
"Ana, you know the check on that ID is going to come back in less than five minutes."
Ana sighed again, a bit less melodramatically. It wasn't that she hated the waiting. It was the complete lack of control. Granted, she was never totally in control of anything—her own life included—but at least she had some influence over things that happened. There was always something to do, if she wanted. Something.
Right now, that something was waiting. So, as much as it made her blood jam up in her veins, she did.
It was approaching ten minutes when Aerin's face appeared on all three of their buzzing comms.
"Okay, guys. We got it."
Ana stifled a cheer and instead shared a look of relief with Justin while Marisol remained focused on her comm.
"Lucky break," Aerin continued. "Some cop remembered seeing the van just a little while before we put it out on the wire. Says he remembered it because they were driving pretty erratically, and did a quick nosedive off into the warehouse district on the West Side. The address is in your comms."
--
They flew a once-over in the hovercar, and saw nothing in the parking lot but a black van looking not at all discreet by itself in a lot designed for a hundred or more vehicles.
"No heat sig in the van. She's empty. Looks like three inside the warehouse."
"The kid?" Marisol asked.
"No, too big."
Only three. Ana wasn't holding out much hope. The van had probably been ditched there to throw them, or whoever the kidnappers thought would be chasing them, off the trail. Not as professional as the rest of the plan if they thought that leaving the van in plain sight would really fool anyone.
But might a professional leave the van there while hiding inside, knowing that agents would find it, search the building, find nothing, and cross it off a list of options? It certainly would put more time between them but required a lot of faith in their ability to remain undiscovered on the first pass. Ana knew it had been done before, not in a mission undertaken by the Valkyries, but it had been one of the cases they'd studied. All of the Valkyries had been, and still went through, rigorous mental as well as physical preparation. They weren't just hired muscle. Their brains collected, processed, and organized more information in case study sessions than the top minds in all the other Agency projects combined. That was why they were the Valkyries.
Ana's mind delved to a second level of problem-solving, but even if they were dealing with a double red herring, there was still only one way to find out.
They set down well clear of the discarded black van, but close to one of the warehouse entrances. They exited the vehicle and snapped to the outside wall of the warehouse. Marisol and Ana flanked the door while Justin checked the lock.
"Interesting." It sounded like it wasn't supposed to make it out of his head, but it still drew the attention of the other two. Their eyes were on him.
He was already in full-on inspection mode. Ana leaned in, searching for an answer to her unspoken question. Nothing immediately stood out, forcing her to ask, "What's up?"
"Well, it's not biometric but it's pretty secure considering the number of broken windows I noticed when we dropped in."
"So, should we scale a wall and use those then?"
"It would probably be faster. But more conspicuous."
Marisol chimed in, "I'm thinking we stick with plan A for now. If we scale the building we will get a lot more exposure to the skylanes up there. Down here, I doubt anyone will even see us."
Justin attached a lock cracker and numbers began spinning rapidly across the digital display. Ana and Marisol waited and kept guard. There wasn't much else any of them could do while the hacker tried to guess the encryption method through reverse engineering, deduced maximum allowed entries, and whittled down the lock's security measures to something that a human could handle without years of specialized training. The three of them—and all the other Valkyries—were trained in many things, but when it came to tasks a machine could do just as well, their training time was much better spent learning to maximize skills that only humans could do. Humans were good at visualizing a desired outcome and improvising when said outcome stopped being plausible.
The cracker worked for what seemed like hours stretching into days, while the three Valkyries were left in a mutually understood radio silence. Alone with their thoughts. And just as Ana's started to drift off-mission, across the city to try to guess what Jrue might be doing at that moment, the lock flipped open.
Marisol made a few quick hand gestures and the team slid through the door as smooth as water down a drain. They all knew there were three larger heat signatures inside, so the odds were even should it come to a fight, but it also meant that rescuing the Senator's son was not part of their immediate plans. They could only hope to find a clue that would lead them to where the child was taken.
The warehouse teemed with crates, grouped together in stacks of six or seven. Ana felt no need t
o discern the organizing principle; it was probably just a random assortment of cover for the people who had kidnapped Senator Dilger's son.
The Valkyries took only a moment to locate two of the guards on the ground floor and fanned out to capture them. Marisol headed up an aisle through the middle with Justin out to her left and Ana on her right. They crept between the large wooden crates, using them for cover. Ana closed in on the guard on her side of the warehouse. They'd have to take at least one alive if they wanted to figure out where to go next. Ana had a gun on her hip, but if she could separate the guard from his, she'd have an easy time subduing him for further interrogation.
Background noise from the ventilation overhead provided more than enough cover for her light footsteps. In a moment she was behind the guard. Just as she reached out, a yell came from the other side of the warehouse. Nothing more than a startled utterance, but it was enough to make her guard turn.
She sprang for him, but he was able to fire a shot before she collided with him. Luckily it was a traditional slug round, and only impacted her shoulder, crushing into a tight weave of durosteel. The momentum behind her leap sent him sprawling, and in a single motion she knocked the gun from his hand and kicked it back across the concrete floor.
Ana was kneeling on his solar plexus while she deflected wild blows that came from her sides. Her forearms parried him over and over until she could grab one of his wrists, pin it to the ground, and use some torque on it to roll him to his stomach.
"I don't really care to hurt you," she said, very close to his ear. He jerked his head back trying to hit her, but she pulled back and drove her knee further into his lower back. "Easy there. I just want some information, buddy. You can do that, right?"
He probably would have given her a defiant prisoner spit-in-the-face if he could have. Instead, he just huffed and squirmed.
"I'll get right to the point. The black van outside, where did they go?"
"I don't know about any black van outside."
Ana pulled his arm tighter behind his back, the leather around his arm creaking like the door to a warehouse that had actually been abandoned. The guard winced and tried to buck her off. Ana laughed quietly at the effort. She'd been on top of broncos a lot stronger and rowdier than this one.
Ana heard a similar scuffle on the other side of the warehouse. Good. Both guards down.
She called out, "Ana, check."
The guard squirmed again, and Marisol was there before Ana could begin a real interrogation.
"Anything yet?"
"Come on, I just got him down. And I don't think he's going to be very cooperative. Are you, buddy?"
The guard gave his stand-in-for-spit-in-the-face huff again. Then he growled as he tried to wriggle away.
Marisol grabbed the hair on the back of his head and pulled back. Ana was sure it hurt, but she could also tell Marisol was being gentle.
"Who was in the black van outside, and where did they do?"
"I already told your bitch I don't know about any fucking black van."
"Whoa there. Let's watch our language around the ladies."
This time the guard did spit, but it landed short of where Marisol knelt in front of him.
"Look, we're not going to kill you or anything. But the people in the van kidnapped someone, and we need to know where that someone is."
Before he could spit or swear again, there was a whistling sound and the guard's head exploded, spraying Ana and Marisol with blood and brains. His body went limp as Ana sprang up, her gun searching for the source of the interruption.
Marisol called across the warehouse, "Justin, protect him!"
It was too late. Barely audible over the ringing of Marisol's voice, Ana heard the soft whine of another shot followed by Justin, much louder. "Dammit! What the—?"
The body of the insolent guard Ana had pinned was now gone from the shoulders up and rapidly disappearing. Green liquid bubbled, eating up armor, flesh, and bone. Gas hissed from the liquid, penetrating Ana's nostrils. She reeled back as more of the acrid vapor leapt from the liquid that consumed the guard's corpse.
Ana struggled to look around for the assassin, but her eyes were welling up from the acid's byproduct.
"There!" she heard Marisol yell. Shots fired. At least one of them could see.
Then a male voice rang out. "Infinite Army!" It wasn't Justin.
Ana wiped the tears away just in time to see the man on the catwalk's head explode with the same green gel that had now more than half-consumed the guard on the floor. His hand held a gun, pointed at the place where his head had been a moment before. Then his shoulders were gone and his arms fell, still locked at the elbows from holding the gun to his head.
Ana moved away from the disintegrating guard on the floor, trying to get beyond the tear-producing range of whatever was now destroying two—probably all three—of the people they'd encountered in the warehouse.
"What the hell was that?" Ana’s question was basically rhetorical, but directed at Marisol. Then, "Justin! Status!"
The familiar voice called back, "Well, I've got a guard turning into a pool of green acid, and the shooter just blew himself away with the same gun!"
"Well," Ana said to Marisol, "no one to question, but at least we've got the place to ourselves."
Marisol raised a single eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm sure we'll find plenty of clues in here. Maybe we can start by searching the bodies of the guards. Oh, wait."
The guard's body was just a pair of quickly disappearing combat boots. From what Ana could see, the assassin above them would be gone soon as well.
Justin appeared from around the side of a crate. "What the fuck is the Infinite Army? If they're infinite, should we be expecting more guys to pop out and shoot each other with acid disintegration guns?"
"Well, unless one of them called the Infinite General of the Infinite Army before impersonating the Wicked Witch, then I think we're clear of said army for now."
"Would be one of our easier fights, though," Marisol said.
"So, what now? Just search the place?" Justin asked.
"I suppose so. Looks like just the one large room here and a control room upstairs."
Ana nodded in agreement.
"Justin, you want to check the control room? Ana and I should be able to case this place pretty fast."
And they did. Justin was still loading information onto his comm when they met him up in the control room.
"Nothing suspicious down there," Marisol said.
Ana didn't exactly agree with her, but she couldn't figure out why. It was just a small tangled thread with one end tethered somewhere in the back of her mind. Half of her was worried that if she pulled on it too hard, she'd just get a bucket of water from the bottom of a well. The other half was worried that if she didn't pull, the child trapped at the other end would be trapped in the well until he starved. Still, she said nothing. There were times when a gut feeling was enough for a Valkyrie to go on, but this one wasn't strong enough for Ana to act on. Yet.
--
Ana spotted him through the window, balanced on a half-sphere, throwing a full sphere against a wall. Bounce. Catch. Bounce. Catch. Swaying a bit, but staying balanced.
Sweat shone in the shards of sun that stepped through the window, over Ana's shoulder, onto the skin of the few people who occupied the gym. A bronze hue hung in the air like a filter on a camera lens.
She pushed through the door.
Bounce. Catch. Bounce. Catch.
Ana approached, wondering if she looked to outside observers as much like a cat stalking a mouse as she imagined she did. Of course, this mouse could probably have her for dinner instead of the other way around. And in a place not as sparkling clean as this gym, the thought might have turned into an innuendo in her mind. For now, though, it remained a decent hunter-prey metaphor.
Bounce. Catch. Bounce. Catch.
"Hey there, handsome."
Bounce. Smack.
The sphere appeared much he
avier when it struck Jrue's stomach than it had when he was tossing it against the wall. He caught the ball, held it against his stomach, then turned to look at her. He held the pain from the impact to a small squint in his right eye and a sharp intake of breath.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be such a distraction." It sounded a lot more like a pickup line than she'd intended.
"No problem. Just surprised to see you."
"Aren't doctors always supposed to check up on their patients?"
"I don't think that applies to field doctors."
"Nevertheless, here I am. So, how are you doing?"
"As well as can be expected, really. The docs said that I'll be able to fly again soon. I'd say they said it was thanks to you, but I'm pretty sure your job has already given you an inflated head."
"Speak for yourself. Your head isn't doing you any favors." Ana blurted the insult. Then after registering what he'd said, "Do people really think that? That Valkyries think their shit don't stink? I've been in the bathroom with those girls and I can provide positive proof to the contrary."
"Please, Ana dear. Are you really trying to play off that you didn't know the Valkyrie Project is the alpha dog pet project of this whole place?" He was still smiling a bit. She wasn't sure, though, if he was really amused or just trying to be nice.
"I"—her mind stumbled in searching for the right words—"I don't really talk to many people outside the Project."
"So, what, you guys just go around patting yourselves on your insular backs?"
The amusement was gone. That was a flat-out insult. Well, maybe not, but close enough that Ana felt her stomach coil like a snake, ready to strike. The anger reached from there almost far enough to stir her hand to slap him. The nerves tingled in her hand, but she held it in check.
"We're reviewed on a regular basis by the head of the Project and all of our reports are available to the Board. If we were a bunch of inbred suck-ups who weren't doing the right thing, someone would have called us out by now. The government stopped blindly throwing money at anything remotely off-book long before you and I were even born."
