So Lochlan had thirty-one hours.
He checked his energy levels, seeing that he had another four hours before he’d be hurting for a meal. Lochlan reached into his pocket and retrieved one of the bars that Khard had given to him, rolling it into a ball before sticking the entire thing in his mouth. As he swallowed, he gained another three hours, and watched as the numbers adjusted themselves to his current energy output. Then, the young Agent picked up his pace on the side of the dirt road leading away from the Halley’s property. It had been nice to enjoy the walk for the time that he had, but even if the Capes were sleeping, Lochlan couldn’t waste any more time. With no guarantee that completing the mission with Khard was going to help him advance in any way, and with the threat of potentially failing to perform his primary function as an Agent of his status, Lochlan decided he’d need to throw his jacket back on and run to where he was going.
Lochlan reached the end of the dirt road, coming again to the bumpy asphalt and concrete that signaled the midpoint between Main Street in Choudrant and the Halley’s property. His eyes fixed on the ground to keep himself from being tripped by a raised piece of the road, sweat pouring from his forehead and the back of his neck. Lochlan wiped it away, and in doing so failed to notice that downtown Choudrant was not as sleepy as he had anticipated.
The Agent turned right away from the road and stepped onto the sidewalk, only a mile or so away from the GHS housing where he’d find Gil and Frikshen, and then was forced to stop when he came across a late-night market. There were numerous vendors set up to sell their wares in front of the closed shops along Main Street. Unable to run due to the density of the crowd in front of him, Lochlan slowed his pace and began weaving through weaved himself into the sea of bodies, taking steps to the right or left as he continued moving forward, only once having to step completely to one side as a pair of children refused to pay attention to where they were going.
Lochlan stole glances at the wares and food as he passed each stall, and as he neared the center of Main Street he caught a strong aroma of barbecued meats, the hot and humid air carrying the delicious scents directly into his sinuses. Lochlan’s mouth was wet with saliva, his body responding on its own, and the notebook in his pocket called up his current energy levels again. He could see that the run hadn’t shaved much time off, but if he were to grab some food, something more substantial than the nutrition bars Agents normally ate, his body would be able to begin recharging some of the systems he’d expended while fighting the robots. Lochlan was reluctant to trade off the precious minutes just to stop and buy food he didn’t need, but the unpredictable nature of the mission up to that point had him thinking it was better to be safe and recharge while he had the chance.
Lochlan flipped open his left pinkie, sliding a small black credit stick out in one swift motion, the light on the back glowing a bright blue to signal that he had plenty of money to spend. The Agent allowed his nose to guide him through the crowd, and his feet carried him swiftly as his body continued to weave towards the aromas that smelled the best to him. Finally, he arrived at a stall being operated by a woman and her daughter. The woman seemed somewhat sad before Lochlan caught her attention on his approach, but she began to perk up as she realized that Lochlan was coming directly to her. The woman’s daughter looked bored and had propped herself up against a stack of crates, her disposition unchanged with Lochlan in front of her stall.
“’Allo,” the woman said with a heavy French accent. “Tacos?”
“Please,” Lochlan replied. He looked over to the woman’s daughter, who was readying the meat and tortillas, grabbing them from the short fridge underneath the flattop cooking station in front of her. The tacos were small, but he could see that the meat was good quality beef, which made him wonder why more people weren’t ordering food from the women. “I’ll have twelve of them, s’il vous plait.”
The woman smiled. “Oui, monsieur! Twelve ‘et will be.”
Lochlan stepped to the side as the woman’s daughter worked quickly to begin cooking the food. Her practiced hands throwing down a large pile of meat which she sprinkled with garlic salt and onion powder before she flipped the beef and moved it around on the flattop. As the meat began to cook, the girl flopped twelve small tortillas onto the open spaces near the meat, grabbing a small disposable tray when the last had landed. As the food finished cooking, the girl flipped each tortilla in rapid-fire succession, then used her cooking spatula to move each of the tiny flour disks onto the tray, throwing equal portions of meat into each of them as they landed. She topped them all off with a small sprinkle of cheese and handed the tray over to Lochlan, her focused face going once again back to the boredom she’d exhibited when he had walked up. Lochlan handed the older woman his credit stick, which she ran happily, then took the disposable tray of food from the young girl, thanking the women as he walked off.
Staying at the edge of the crowd as he continued walking to his destination, Lochlan realized as he ate his tacos that he was the only person on Main Street to have purchased anything from a vendor. It had been hard to see when he’d been moving through the crowd, but the residents of Choudrant were moving from stall to stall, many of them stopping for several minutes to talk with the vendors, and some of them going so far as to pick up the wares for inspection, but Lochlan had not identified a single person actually buying anything. Many of them looked as if they hadn’t eaten for a day or more, and their clothes seemed to be no better than rags as they inspected stall after stall of clean shirts free of holes or chatted with vendors selling pastries that smelled as if they had only recently been baked. Lochlan quickly found himself detouring, walking over to a pair of children who were chatting happily with a man who was selling juicy turkey legs cooked in foil. Lochlan could plainly see that the children were malnourished, their stomachs looking as if they’d both swallowed a balloon, their arms and legs no more than twigs.
Lochlan felt his mood module tingle, the small machine working rapidly and growing hot as he eyed the starving children and the man selling turkey legs who simply chatted with them as if they weren’t one step above walking corpses who he had the means to revive. The Agent was stopped in his tracks as three other children ran up to the two he had been approaching, quickly stealing them away. The man selling turkey legs caught Lochlan’s eye for just a moment, himself looking hungrily at the last two tacos on Lochlan’s disposable tray.
Lochlan placed both tacos in his mouth at once and chewed as he turned away, then tossed the tray into a nearby trashcan as he came to the end of Main Street. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck and directly over his mood module, the small bit of moisture sizzling as it crossed over the little machine buried in his skin.
Free from the bustle of the crowd, Lochlan again began to run, his pace slower as his body worked to recharge the modifications he’d used against the robots. He’d reach the GHS housing in a little over ten minutes.
But he couldn’t be gone from Choudrant soon enough.
Lochlan arrived at where Gil and Frikshen were stationed a little after one in the morning, as the heat was, thankfully, starting to dissipate. Lochlan’s body had stopped sweating, many of his systems back online or nearly ready to be utilized again since his stomach had turned the tacos into fuel that allowed his more prized modifications to function. Very few Agent upgrades required anything more than the nutrient paste or bars supplied by The Control, but the science behind the conversion eluded Lochlan and others like him, who built their own upgrades. Without the proprietary technology, there were many things he could only rely upon again after he’d eaten. As he felt his mood module continue to work. Lochlan felt a small area on his elbow depress and pop up. Hastily, he moved his finger over to the modification, his temperament evening out almost instantaneously as the alteration in his elbow finished flattening his mood in the ways his standard-issue mood module could not.
Lochlan didn’t bother to knock as he approached the door, which he thought looked different tha
n when he’d been there before. It seemed as though it might be a trick of the light, until he got close enough to see that it was covered in dust and dirt. The doorknob detected the wiring in Lochlan’s hand that identified him as an Agent and unlocked to allow him entry, a sheet of dirt falling away from the door not unlike heavy snow as he did. Lochlan stepped inside, doing his best not to shuffle his feet across the unpacked earth that caked the floor, and flipped on his dark-vision, the dirt in the air making it hard for him to see in the dark. His perked up before he continued, listening for the rustling or heavy breathing that would indicate someone was asleep nearby, with his attention pointed upstairs at the bedrooms. Unable to detect anyone in his immediate vicinity, Lochlan thought that both Capes might be heavy sleepers, or that their abilities somehow gave them different sleeping patterns. The Agent had known other Elementalists whose mastery of air was so complete that they hardly walked, and slept floating above the earth—perhaps it was the same for Gil. Lochlan was ready to begin making his way up the stairs, but halted when his attention was called to the kitchen—a small rock bounced lightly off of the glass door to the yard behind the house. The Agent made his way over to investigate, pulling the blinds to the side, and saw Gil and Frikshen in the yard, the both of them seated in lawn chairs around a fire that had been allowed to turn into nothing more than smoldering embers. Each Cape had a long stick in their hand, a marshmallow on the end that they turned in either direction to perhaps slow the cooking process even further. They both appeared to Lochlan to be perfectly relaxed, Frikshen slouched somewhat in her chair. The only indication that they may not be having a good time was the look on both of their faces, as Gil appeared to Lochlan to be deep in thought, with Frikshen appearing the same, though with the addition of furrowed brows, as if whatever was on her mind was making her angry.
The Agent stepped out of the kitchen into the backyard. Frikshen made a move as if she were going to stand, but quickly settled again as she saw that it was Lochlan. The lady Cape grabbed another lawn chair from behind her and swung it easily around, continuing to turn her marshmallow while she set the chair at a nearby spot around the glowing coals.
“Agent Lochlan, good to see you,” Frikshen said.
“Hello, Frikshen,” Lochlan replied. “Hello, Gil.”
Gil continued to sit and stare forward, undeterred as Lochlan issued his greeting. “Don’t mind him,” Frikshen said. “He’s still upset. Grieving, you know? It’s a process.”
“I understand,” Lochlan said flatly. “I came to speak with you about O-Rell, but first, why does the whole city seem to be awake?”
“You came through Main, huh? The Midnight Circus is in town. You’d have seen it if you’d gone two streets over—they set the tent up next to the courthouse. The circus is free, so people usually sleep all day before it shows up so they can go.”
“A circus at midnight is enough to change people’s sleeping habits in the middle of the week?” Lochlan asked flatly.
“Especially on days like today, with all the heat that rolled in. Marshmallows are an after-dinner activity, but we had to wait until it was cool enough out and sit by the fire.”
“Is there a reason you aren’t at the circus?”
“Not really our thing, I guess. You see one circus, you’ve seen all of them. You said you came to talk with us about O-Rell?” Gil’s ears perked up at the second mention of the briefly sighted Cape, the man’s attention finally coming to the present. Gil frowned somewhat as he realized he’d burnt his marshmallow, though he ate it anyway. His face was neutral as he looked over to Lochlan and gave the Agent a nod.
“I did. We thought it would be best to tell you that Khard and I ran into him earlier. Just a little while ago, actually.”
Frikshen stood up. “Where was he? Let’s go and get him!”
Lochlan, unmoved in spite of Frikshen’s urgency, calmly replied, “He’s gone now. He ran almost immediately, and was much too fast to be caught, at least by us.”
Frikshen sat back down and picked up the stick she had thrown to the side. Then, she dipped the marshmallow covered in dirt close to the embers as if she could cook away the nonedible portion. “How is it that you couldn’t catch him? I thought Agents were supposed to be able to handle stuff like that.”
“O-Rell ran much faster than we could follow.”
“What about your car?”
“The tires had been removed.”
“And what about the… uh… you know, robot stuff that you guys have?”
“The enhancements we could have used to catch him had already been expended. We were without the fuel at that time to use them again.”
“How did you manage to do that? I thought you guys drove around all day talking to people.”
“There were more robots. At the warehouse.”
“What? But Gil destroyed the machine.”
Lochlan’s electronic notebook sent a ping to him, a soft noise ringing just behind his left ear and signaling that he had been given a new detail that pertained to a set of notes he had written recently.
“Gil destroyed the machine?” Lochlan asked. “I don’t believe either of you mentioned that when we were here before.” Lochlan accessed the notes, then read over the recorded conversation. “You said earlier that after the fighting had stopped, you called in the situation.”
“Well, of course Gil destroyed the machine. It was printing robots.”
“I see. Gil, is that what happened?”
Even though he had been paying attention, Gil made no movement to answer. Frikshen cut in once more, killing the silence. “Of course it is. I just told you.”
“Right. Forgive me, but standard practice is to obtain corroboration if possible. While we’re talking about the machine, I’m wondering… did either of you happen to try and track down who was controlling the robots? We were able to lock onto a radio signal once they powered on.”
Frikshen paused for the first time in the conversation, seeming stunned that Lochlan had asked her something so simple. The lady Cape looked over at Gil for a moment before she continued. “We didn’t, but how would we have done that? We’re a small team in a tiny town. We don’t have any of the fancy equipment teams in bigger cities have.”
“May I see your communicator?” Lochlan asked.
Frikshen pulled the device from one of her pockets and handed it to the Agent. Lochlan turned it over and pointed to a small switch on the back, little letters reading TRACK. “Are you familiar with this feature?” he asked. “It’s been a primary feature on Cape-issued communicators for some time.”
Frikshen paused again. “Well... Ah…” she stammered, looking back again at Gil who continued to do nothing more than stare ahead at Lochlan, which drew Lochlan’s gaze to the man as well. Lochlan’s mood module began to tingle, something about the scenario making him uncomfortable. Frikshen wasn’t behaving as if she were trying to think of a way to explain the lack of follow up when the fighting had ended; she was behaving as if she were trying to think of a way to lie about what actually happened. Lochlan sat still, waiting for his answer, easily keeping his composure as the woman fidgeted and Gil moved not at all.
Then Lochlan’s head was knocked forward, two large clumps of dirt flying up out of the ground behind him. The dirt hit him hard enough that it knocked him to the ground.
“What are you doing?” Frikshen screamed. “I could have thought of something, Gil!”
“Not fast enough,” Gil replied, and two more large clumps of dirt, both easily as heavy as two full-grown men, slammed down onto Lochlan’s back. Gil had pulled dirt from far enough into the ground that it was moist and clung to Lochlan’s clothes as it beat down on him.
The pace of the tingles Lochlan was feeling from his mood module quickened as he tried to understand why Gil was attacking him, the Agent stuck on the ground from the barrage of heavy dirt and soil. Frikshen yelled in anger as she grabbed a larger piece of hot wood with her callused hands and swung it into the side
of Lochlan’s face. Lochlan managed to close his eye just before impact, the mostly burnt wood shattering as the blow landed, doing little damage at all to him.
Another piece of dirt rose from right beside the prone Agent, knocking Lochlan to the side a little, and he used the momentum to roll a few feet away—the heavy earth landing in the space he had vacated not even a heartbeat before. Lochlan shot up onto his feet, his thoughts turning to some of his earliest training regarding confrontations with Capes. While they are separate agencies in form, function, and funding, The Control and the Global Heroes Society have numerous overlapping policies. Lochlan never thought he’d need to refer to the one that was relevant to his current situation, though he worked down the checklist in his mind to determine his proper course of action.
We think it’s admirable that Lochlan clung to his creed, even in a stressful situation. We can relate.
Oh? That’s neat, and I agree. It couldn’t have been easy even with the mood module. I’ve seen the checklist, too. Sort of crazy that he took the time to go over it mid-fight.
What is on it?
So, the first one is: Who started the fight?
The Capes.
Are any of them at a notable ranking?
Gil is very powerful.
Can you engage in the altercation without a lethal result on either end?
From what we know of Lochlan, he seems very resourceful. His solutions are certainly different from ours.
Is the attacking Cape or group of Capes absolutely beyond reasoning with?
They attacked mid conversation. Seems likely they would be deemed unreasonable.
That’s it. He must have reasoned through it about the same as you all did.
So he fought back.
Just listen.
Lochlan sidestepped another clump of wet dirt, then ducked under the water that was pulled from the earth by Gil as he forced the liquid to fly sideways at the Agent, the edges of the liquid hardening into sharp, pointed ice.
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