Displayed on Wallace’s tablet was a live feed of a super-powered fight to the death, the men on screen both Chosen with incredible abilities. The feed jumped from one camera angle to the next to track the fight, showing close-ups of the two men as they tried desperately to kill one another. Khard suddenly found himself standing almost directly behind Wallace, just as engaged in the feed as the man in the overalls, not caring at all about Wallace’s unique stench. Lochlan positioned himself to see the screen as well, his eyes lighting up as one of the contestants fire a thick laser from the palm of his hand at his opponent, the other fighter somehow anticipating the move enough to cover himself in a layer of rock before being blasted open. The light fizzled against the stone fighter’s skin and the man made of rock slammed his arm down onto his knee, breaking his hand off at the wrist. The stone fighter threw his hand with incredible speed and accuracy at the man who could shoot lasers, the Lightslinger barely dodging the throw. Lochlan looked over to Khard and guessed that the older Agent likely would have been content to watch the rest of the fight, but it didn’t seem right to let the scenario continue as it was. Khard seemed to sense it too, and looked back at Lochlan, who made a face at the older Agent. Khard accepted, somewhat reluctantly, that they were there to work, and just as the man made of rock grabbed the Lightslinger on the screen, Khard grabbed Wallace by his shoulders and threw the hairy man into a nearby chair. Wallace released a high-pitched yelp as he was grabbed, the portly man clearly surprised. Wallace’s headphones had twisted themselves around his head so that one big earmuff was covering nearly his entire mouth, the plastic band cutting along the center of his face as it fell over the back of his head.
“Whaff happming!” Wallace tried to ask; his eyes wide with fear.
We think more people should have their mouths muffled.
That’s not a very nice thing to say.
Khard walked over and grabbed the headphones from Wallace’s face, prompting the man with a look to try again.
“What’s happ’n!” Wallace said again, somewhat pleadingly through his Creole accent. “Who’r y’all?” Wallace’s chest rose and fell rapidly, the hairy man appearing as if he may begin hyperventilating in the next few moments.
Seems just as hard to understand him that way, we think.
Oh shush.
“What is this place?” Khard asked him.
“It’s the station,” Wallace replied, his breathing still fast. “The Choudrant station.”
“What is that?” Khard pressed.
“It’s…What’chu mean? It’s the Choudrant Station.”
“What does the station do?” Lochlan piped up.
“Oh.” Wallace sat back in the chair, appearing much more relaxed. “Well, it does what any oth’a station does, I suppose. Keeps’n eye on things. Runs what needs runnin’ when the machines say somethin’ is actin’ up. Ain’t y’all ever been inside a station ‘afore? They don’t got none where you’re from?”
Lochlan turned to Khard, unsure whether Wallace could be believed or if Lochlan should be worried that the man spoke about such a place so casually. “Show us.” Lochlan said, pulling Wallace up from the chair by his overalls.
Lochlan walked Wallace over to the wall of monitors, and the hairy man sat down in front of them confidently. Wallace turned to Lochlan, “What you want me to show you?”
Lochlan pointed to the screen displaying Main Street. “What can you control over there from here?”
“On Main? Not much.” Wallace flipped a switch, turning a dial to his right, the Agents watched as the street lights in the picture on the screen dimmed and grew again in intensity. “That’s about all we can do there. So how did y’all wind up down here?”
Lochlan looked to Khard, and the older Agent shrugged.
“We were here.” Khard said, walking over to point at the screen where the warehouse full of robots was displayed.
“Oh. Oh! That was y’all?” Wallace looked surprised and ready to apologize. “The system said y’all was a couple of possums.”
“Can you see inside of that warehouse?” Khard asked.
“No more’n I can see inside of my own head.” Wallace replied, crossing his eyes as he finished his sentence.
“And so you thought we were vermin?”
“Possums, yup. System said critters was in the buildings. I pushed the critters button.” Wallace pointed to a grey button to his left. “It ain’t specifically for critters, o’course. It sent the power back to that block, was all. Them buildings ain’t turned on right now or nuthin, what with nobody rentin’em.”
“I see. Hold just one moment please.”
“Uh, sure. Hey, y’all is from the government, right?” Wallace called out to the Agents as Khard directed Lochlan to join him on the other side of the room.
When they were far enough away that they could whisper comfortably, Khard began to speak. “Do you believe what he is saying?” he asked.
“That he thought we were possums?” Lochlan replied.
“And that he can’t see inside that building.”
“None of my sensors are picking up any lies,” Lochlan said. “But it seems like there’s something much bigger going on. Have you ever been in a place like this before?”
Khard looked around. “Places like it, sure. But one for an entire city? Never.”
“You call it in yet?”
“Not yet. I’ve still got everything saved locally.”
“Maybe someone higher up can tell us whether or not this place is supposed to exist,” Lochlan suggested. “A control room like this wouldn’t come cheap.”
“Agreed. But then, if this place is on the record, that would beg the question…” Khard trailed off, looking at Wallace. The man had turned on an additional monitor that he’d raised up on his left at some point, the picture was back to the private television channel he had been watching on his tablet. The Agents could see the man made of stone still fighting, though his opponent was someone different.
“If this place is official, why didn’t the chief of police mention it?” Lochlan finished for the older Agent, who had again become fixated with the television show. “Perhaps,” Lochlan started, trying to get Khard’s attention, “we should not show our hand just yet. Let’s ask Wallace to roll back the footage he has on the Halley property. I want to see who dug up their house and destroyed the evidence.”
“Good idea,” Khard replied, already walking back, still looking at the men on the screen fighting each other. “You know,” the older Agent said to Wallace as he got closer, “I almost did that.”
“No. You?” Wallace replied, a perplexed look on his face. “You gotta be crazy to want to do that. This sport ain’t for the livin’, it’s in the rules.”
“The money seemed good.” Khard replied to the hairy man. “Instead, I chose this. Traded one suit for another.”
Wallace eyes lit up at Khard’s mention of a suit. “I knew I knew who you was!” Wallace exclaimed. “You’re Khar-ad, ain’t you?”
“Yes, it’s pronounced K-hard, though,” he replied.
“Oh, my apologies, sir. It’s real great to meet you,” Wallace began, standing up with his hand out. “So what are y’all doin down here, anyway?”
“We need to know if you can roll back any of this footage.” Lochlan said.
Wallace turned to the younger Agent. “I sure can. Which one you want to see?” Lochlan pointed at the screen showing the Halley residence and took note as Wallace winced slightly. “Alright,” Wallace said, seeming uncomfortable. “How far back y’all want to go?”
“Just go back, I’ll tell you when to stop,” Lochlan said. Wallace began to roll back the feed quickly, a small digital display appearing in the bottom right corner of the screen showing the time and date. Lochlan easily kept up with how quickly the images went back in time, entire hours passing by in only a few seconds. Eventually, for just a few brief moments, Lochlan watched the hole on the side of the Halley’s property un-dig itself, th
e dirt falling back inside through the air, the footage quickly moving right through the event. Wherever the camera was set up to view the Halley’s property, Lochlan could only see the dirt as it was moved. He didn’t have as good of an angle on the hole as he thought. “Stop.” Lochlan said. “Go forward twenty minutes, and then play.”
“You find it?” Khard asked, having paid all of his attention over the last minute or so to the private channel.
“Yes, go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing,” Lochlan replied, aware of how futile it was going to be to get Khard to pay any attention to work in that moment. Lochlan waited to watch the dirt begin to fly outward, taking note that it occurred in the middle of the night, as Lucy Halley had informed them before. Lochlan’s enhanced eyes strained to try and make out a hand or a foot digging in the darkness, but he was unable to determine what was moving the dirt. All he could see were the clumps as they flew through the air. Lochlan waited until the hole had been dug, and for the last bit of dirt to land, hoping to see someone or something walk away. Whatever it was had gone back the way it had come, however, and Lochlan had no more information than when he had started. His mood module started to tingle, a light vibration resonating throughout his neck as he envisioned himself lifting his head up to place his hands over his eyes. Lochlan checked his internal clock, noting that he was already at thirty-six hours since he and Khard had left the office and gone to Choudrant. He looked over to the older Agent, who was still intently watching two strangers attempt to kill each other, and began to ask himself what he was doing. He thought for a moment that he’d like to somehow figure out how he’d gone from heading out onto a quick mission in the field—which should have been something that took a few hours and earned him much-needed points in The Game—to being deep enough underground that he could fit an antenna large enough to broadcast a clear radio signal over six miles away.
Lochlan retraced everything with the use of his electronic notebook, examining the twists and turns his time away from the office had taken him through. He’d spoken with Chief Rainch, with O-Rell’s team, and with Lucy Halley. He’d gone to corroborate Frikshen’s story, and wound up fighting robots. Following the lead, he’d ended up accidentally corroborating Lucy’s story as well, at least partially. But why had no one told Khard or him about this underground station? And what the hell was the point of all of those robots? They were made out of scraps—who would want that? The humanoid machines had all been brittle, in spite of being made of heated and repurposed metal, or perhaps because of it. And what happened to their car?
Ah, there was a question that made Lochlan think. His eyes found the screen that showed the warehouse the Agents had left not long before, and he could clearly see the driver’s-side front tire of their self-driving car off to the right. The younger Agent reached over to turn screen showing fights, Khard and Wallace both beginning to ask him why he did.
“Wallace,” Lochlan interrupted, “Show us what happened to our car.”
Wallace grimaced again—this time much more noticeably. Khard picked up on it immediately.
“What’s wrong, Wallace?” Khard asked. “Something you don’t want us to see?”
“Wh… what? Uh, naw, it’s… it’s all good.” Wallace began to play with the knobs and buttons in front of him, looking increasingly nervous. More than once, the fat, hairy man leaned forward and grunted, as if he were trying to clear his throat. “Just uh… Just give me a second here to roll the uh… I just got to roll the footage…” Wallace let his words trail off, slamming his hand down onto a large blue button at the top of the console. As he did, a loud pop resounded underneath the men, and a panel opened up in a perfect circle below Wallace, the chair and hairy man on top of it dropping into the earth. Wallace hooted and hollered as he was swallowed by the earth, and Khard managed to catch a glimpse of the smiling man’s toothy grin as his chair carried him around an immediate bend, presumably somewhere far away. Khard began to smash his foot against the panel, trying to slam it back open as Lochlan banged his own fist on the button Wallace had pushed. The Agents’ efforts were completely in vain, the panel unwilling to open no matter how hard either of them continued to strike their chosen targets.
“Can you track him?” Khard asked.
“Not any better than you could,” Lochlan replied. Lochlan bent down, moving Khard out of the way to try and pry his fingers into the spot he perceived the panel in the floor to be connected at. He shoved and wiggled his fingers every way he could, but was unable to grab anything he might be able to pull to the side. After a few moments, it became abundantly clear that Wallace had gotten away. Even if it took the hairy man an hour to finish riding through the tunnel, he was already far enough ahead of the Agents that if he had a car waiting for him, he was gone.
Lochlan got up, asking Khard if he wanted to look around the station at all, and the older Agent reluctantly agreed, still kicking at the panel on the floor, though not as hard as he had been.
Lochlan said he’d start with the left side.
It had taken a few days, but the heat that Khard and Lochlan had left behind at the field office had finally managed to catch up to them in Choudrant. The day’s sun had set long ago and the Agents were begrudgingly making their way back up the winding staircase and into the dilapidated shack after having searched Choudrant’s Station. The reprieve from the summer heat they had expected hadn’t come, Lochlan’s internal thermometer registering the overall temperature to have risen at least six degrees. As he exited the shack and looked to the skies, it seemed to him that it was only going to get hotter still before the next daybreak. He and Khard had gone over every inch of the station underground. There were two areas that branched off of the larger room, a bathroom and a storage space. The bathroom ha two stalls big and smelled terribly of sewage, as if the septic system were backed up and needing to be emptied. The storage area was dug out behind the wall of monitors, accessed through a door in the corner. It was thirty yards or so long with only about ten yards of accessible space. Most of the area was filled with stacked boxes of various food or sanitary items—almost all toilet paper and baked potato chips.
Khard took a moment to lean against nothing in particular as Lochlan walked out onto the dry grass, the both of them staring out at the lake. Lochlan took the opportunity to see how low on fuel he was, and determine whether he’d need to eat or rest soon. He saw that he was fine on both, and then walked over to Khard to ask him what their next move was.
“Well,” Khard said, “I did some thinking. I can tell you one thing: someone we talked to since we got here is lying to us, though I don’t know about what. Best choice we can make right now, far as I can tell, is to go have a look again at the property. If we knew how to operate the station we could go there, since Wallace didn’t want to roll that footage back so badly that he broke character and escaped through that hatch in the floor.”
“What do you mean he ‘broke character’?” Lochlan asked.
“If Chief Rainch is to be believed, Wallace is a pretty skilled cards player. He started bluffing the moment we surprised him. He must have known the camera angle on the Halley’s property was no good, but that we’d have had a clear shot at whoever sabotaged our car. He was playing it cool in character, trying to bluff his way out, but then he realized we were going to force him to show his hand. At that point, following the metaphor, he flipped the table over on us and ran.”
“Who do you think he’s working with?”
“Tough to say at this point,” Khard replied. “He smells weird enough that I might believe he’s got some kind of related power, maybe something to do with controlled pheromones. If that is his power, maybe Wallace is the mastermind behind the whole… whatever is going on here.”
“Didn’t really strike me as the masterminding type. All right,” Lochlan took a deep breath, touching the point on his elbow to calm his nerves so he could think, “let’s start walking. Should take about an hour to get to the Halleys’ from here.”<
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Lochlan took point as he led himself and the older Agent to the Halleys’ property. They walked in silence to start, both of them no doubt combing back over their internal recordings and notes as they tried to piece together anything they had missed. Lochlan ended up making a few additions to previous notes over the first few minutes of his walk, and attempted to save them via the mental link he had with his notebook. The small machine reminded him that he was going to be due soon for a memory upgrade. Lochlan’s mood module tingled as he was faced with a myriad of older memories and notes his notebook was asking him if he would like to delete. The machine was wired to target older notes for deletion as it became too full.
While he would still have the memories in his mind, he knew that the upgrade he would eventually be receiving might compromise his ability to retain them throughout the rest of his life. Many agents at levels above him forgot birthdays, anniversaries, or other special occasions once their memory was upgraded. Something about the way the hardware was installed made losing memories that were important to the younger Agent possible, so he had been making sure to actively spend time reminiscing in between tasks at his desk. Being out in the field again had taken him away from the activity, the reminiscing being a great way to break up his workday, and he realized somewhat angrily that he hadn’t taken time to think about any of the memories he didn’t want to lose, as he had been in the habit of doing before leaving to Choudrant.
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