by Tyler Hanson
Daanis’s face-down body floated with the current, finding itself stuck sideways in the doorframe. Stacey turned to look at the three other people in the room while water rushed past his shins, pulling itself through the open door into the dry compound courtyard.
“Are you going to kill me, too?” he asked, his voice shaking.
The three ignored him, continuing their survey of the corpses surrounding them. He dropped his arms, watching them work. The phantom stepped into the light, revealing a small woman wrapped in black body armor and a thick cloak. Her face was stern and calculating, and she probably wasn’t someone he’d want to upset.
The man in white crouched over the dead woman with the swords—the one who had tried to speak with Stacey. He looked up at the electric woman, his face scrunched up in sorrow.
“Battery, they got Butterfly,” he said.
The woman in blue—Battery, Stacey supposed—turned to the man and sighed. She’d been checking on the small Inuit girl.
“Well, shit,” she said. “I liked her.”
The phantom held up a piece of the mosaic person’s body, but she did not speak.
There was a pause, and the room was completely silent. Battery placed a hand to her ear, as if she was listening to something. Stacey shifted against the wall, still ankle-high in water and feeling more than a little uncomfortable.
“Wait, really?” Battery exclaimed after about thirty seconds, her voice more urgent than before. Her head snapped in Stacey’s direction, her expression intense but unreadable. She gestured at the man in white. “Aquifer, make sure no one got missed on the second floor.”
He nodded and flung his arms downward. The water still in the house swirled around his feet, bubbling, before launching him through the hole in the ceiling the mosaic man had made. Stacey heard his metal boots stomp around the floor above.
Battery pointed at Stacey. “Fields, right? Tell me about your eyes.”
Stacey gulped. “What do you mean? I—“
She raised a hand to interrupt him. “I think we both know exactly what I’m referring to.”
Stacey exhaled through his nose, apprehensive, his thoughts racing. Should I comply? Should I fight? Either way might lead to my death.
He opted to squeeze his eyelids together, willing the orange starfield to reappear. The dots and strands were all around him, some new and different, like the water on the floor. He looked at Battery and the other woman. The protons he’d seen at the end of Ben’s cattle prod were everywhere around and inside Battery. He blinked, and his vision expanded. He realized the atoms pieced together to form proton-infused cells in her body. Her biology seemed almost symbiotic with electrical energy.
The other woman, however, was less interesting on an atomic level. She was just a normal human. Well, as normal as the others he had already seen through this new filter. There was plenty to look at on her, however. Stacey saw dozens of firearms, explosives, and bladed weapons. Not to mention the military-grade armor plating hefted along her slender stature. Stacey was impressed she could even stand in the gear, let alone engage in combat.
Who are these people?
Stacey blinked away the starfield. As his eyes readjusted, he saw his reflection in Battery’s goggles, and he realized why everyone seemed to know what he was doing. For a brief moment, the centers of his eyes glowed a bright, burning orange, like two cigarette embers in a dark room. The light faded away as his normal vision returned.
The black-clad woman raised her hand to her chin, her expression studious. Battery had a wry smile on her face, and she raised her goggles, letting them rest on her forehead. Her root-beer-brown irises glimmered in the floodlights.
Aquifer clumped down the stairs behind Stacey. “No one’s up there. Sorry, Battery.”
Battery shook her head and motioned for him to come join the other two, in front of Stacey. “Silver lining, Aquifer. I think we found a new Refined.”
“Oh, really?” He looked at Stacey. “What can you do?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Stacey stammered. “I didn’t know anything about this until right now.” He examined his hands, which were still smoking a little. “I can see what everything is made of. I can make things explode.” He looked up. “What is happening to me?”
In one deft motion, the cloaked woman reached behind her back and produced a black, sawed-off, pump-action shotgun.
“Whoa!” Stacey cried, holding his hands up in surrender.
“Cool it, Shadow,” Battery added.
Shadow pumped the shotgun, and Stacey heard a bullet click into the chamber.
“Alright, easy,” Aquifer said. “We need all the help we can get.”
Shadow lowered her shotgun, making a series of hand gestures.
Stacey looked at Battery. “I’m sorry, I don’t know—“
“Hush,” Battery replied. “Don’t interrupt while Shadow’s talking.”
Aquifer waited for Shadow to stop signing before he spoke. “She’s right, Battery. We don’t know much about Fields. But he wasn’t at the hotel, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say we give him a chance.”
Shadow shook her head and holstered her shotgun.
Battery reached for Stacey’s arm, and he pulled away. Her eyebrows furrowed in impatience. “Let’s go, Fields. You aren’t safe here.”
“Go?” Stacey replied. “Go where? We’re in the damn desert.”
She sighed. “You don’t know us. You don’t trust us. You shouldn’t trust us. But you really want to stay here?”
She gestured at the bloody corpses scattered around them. The pile of DEVGRU operatives caught Stacey’s eye.
“What about them?” he asked.
Aquifer gestured to the man resembling Osama Bin Laden. “They got what they came for.”
Battery made an angry face. “Even if they have no idea who he really was. What a waste.”
Shadow made a quick, curt gesture toward Battery.
“Okay, okay, we’re going,” Battery said.
The three walked back into the hallway, toward what appeared to be a small bathroom, but Stacey didn’t move.
“You coming?” Aquifer asked, turning back toward him and offering a reassuring smile.
“I don’t even know where I’m going,” Stacey responded.
“Only one way to find out.” Battery’s voice was distant and nonchalant.
Stacey looked around him at the sea of violence and confusion and betrayal. There was nothing waiting for him here in this Pakistani house. There was, however, a path to understanding the things happening inside of him, if he were to go with these people. For now, it seemed to be the best path.
As long as his path ultimately led back to Sam.
Stacey walked toward them, his boots squishing against the wet floor, his eyes watching for the corpses on the ground. He reached the hallway. Battery, Aquifer, and Shadow peered at him from within the bathroom. They stood in a triangle, their demeanor relaxed.
He inhaled, filling his lungs, and slowly blew his breath through his lips. “Okay, time to do this.” He wasn’t sure if the words were for them, or for himself.
Stacey stepped into the bathroom. As soon as he crossed the barrier, Shadow slammed the door shut and turned the lock. Aquifer adjusted the sleeve of his hoodie and said, “Proxy, we’re all here. Bogeyman us.”
Stacey waited, listening to the ambient noises: The wind through the sand outside, the water dripping from the second floor, the soft buzz of the floodlights in the main room.
Then, everything stopped.
He heard nothing beyond the slight inhales and exhales of his present company. The light seeping through the crack at the bottom of the door extinguished, the space becoming an inky black. Stacey looked around the bathroom, but there were no other windows or light sources to investigate.
His jaw reflexively clenched when the entire room rattled, as if the faintest of earthquakes were imminent. He looked around and saw the shower curtain and visible toil
etries were reacting to what he was feeling, though no amount of vibration seemed to be moving the objects from their original placement. Stacey reached out and pushed his finger against a toothbrush that was lying on the sink; it moved forward a little before pulling into place, as if attached by a magnet.
Thin, straight cracks appeared along the floor, walls, and ceiling, forming perfect squares in the material. The gridlines rattled; to Stacey’s amazement and horror, a random square cut from the outer wall of the bathroom sucked away, leaving only black emptiness.
More squares pulled away in all six directions, sometimes taking with them parts of the bathroom furniture. As more and more vanished, Stacey squinted, attempting to find anything present in the surrounding darkness. He saw, heard, and felt absolutely nothing.
In a strange, intelligent way, the squares beneath his feet were last, the walls and the ceiling having disappeared entirely. Stacey wondered what would happen when the ground finally gave way to the strange forces pulling at it.
He didn’t have to wonder for long. Shadow, telegraphing her impatience, waved at the other three before allowing herself to fall backwards, away from her supernatural platform. She dropped beneath them and faded instantly out of sight. Within seconds, the squares flew away from Aquifer and Battery’s feet, and they held up their hands in free-fall.
Stacey felt the gridlines underfoot wobble. He held his breath, anticipating what was to come. His muscles gave a hypnic jerk as his support gave way, dropping him into the abyss. His body knew it was falling, and he could feel the building momentum, but strangely, there was no whistle in his ears or wind in his face. It was as if he were in the vacuum of space, hurtling toward some new, alien planet.
He couldn’t tell how long he fell, drifting with no sensation. The passage of time felt absent from this place, and the journey ended as suddenly as it had begun. Rather than an abrupt, violent landing or a forceful deceleration, Stacey was suddenly aware of pressure beneath his fingertips. The pressure spread to his toes, knees, legs and forearms; just like that, with the flick of a switch, he wasn’t falling at all. Instead, he was stationary on his hands and knees, the blackness parting between his fingertips like smoke, revealing cold, grey metal. Stacey’s brain couldn’t reconcile the shift in motion. It reminded him of waking up from dreams where he’d fallen off a cliff and hit the bottom, suddenly realizing he’d never been falling in the first place.
Looking around, he found the ankles of his three new companions. Battery and Aquifer helped him to his feet, his legs trembling. Swiveling his head, he could tell they were all standing in a silver metal column. Its featurelessness made it difficult to determine the size of the chamber, but he guessed it was big enough to fit at least three times as many people.
In front of them, a hyperbaric door slid to the side, revealing dim fluorescent lights and grey concrete. Shadow strode out of their tube, not even looking back at the rest of the group. Aquifer followed, turning only to give Stacey a grin and a quick wink.
Battery put her hand on Stacey’s shoulder. “You came this far. It’s time to see what you were dropped into.”
Stacey lifted his head and took a few steps, clearing the doorway. He found himself standing in the very center of a grey, concrete basement, though it was much larger than an average basement. It felt more like a small parking garage.
Around the outer walls were all types of stations: surgical tables surrounded by medical equipment; racks filled with rifles and pistols; workstations littered with electronic parts; and cartons of food and MREs.
Stacey took a moment to note a short, wooden staircase leading to a door in the far corner. Maybe it’s a way out, if it comes to that.
He turned around to observe a space filled end-to-end with homemade computer towers and monitors, communications arrays, and even older equipment like ham radios. This wall was definitely the most fascinating part of this place. The screens were wall-mounted, some on top of each other, while the heavier equipment was situated on the floor or on the surface of one of the many different types of computer workstations set along the wall. Though almost every visible computer had lights indicating they were running or on standby, most of the monitors were dark. The lone exception was a small cluster of maybe eight or nine screens near the bottom-center of the wall’s setup.
Sitting in a chair, facing these lit monitors, was a lean, goateed man in a purple-collared shirt. He turned to Stacey as he stepped from the chamber and stood from the chair, walking forward.
“Private Fields, oui?” The man addressed him in English, though his dialect was mildly French.
Stacey nodded.
The man moved closer to him, extending his hand. Stacey took it and pumped it up and down in a sturdy handshake. “For now, you may call me Proxy,” The man said, his tone amiable. “Welcome to the Faction, mon amie.”
Proxy’s Report
01.12: “Suspicion”
Paris, France
September 1, 1997-A
Quentin was inconsolable.
It wasn’t because the princess was dead; Quentin wasn’t one of those kinds of people.
It wasn’t even because of her influence, though he couldn’t deny its positive effects.
No, it was because of the way she’d died. Or, rather, that he was lied to about it.
He continued to mull on the exact nature and source of his distress in the darkness of his theatre room, the blue glow of the projector washing over him. It gave his face the palette of an ill man.
“Liars, Maddie,” he spoke aloud in French. “All of them, liars. But never you, eh?”
Silence.
Quentin waited, his arms dangling from the sides of his chair, his faith in her response ironclad.
He received his reply in the form of a cold, wet sensation pressed against the back of his right hand. Peering down through the theatre’s gloom, Quentin came face-to-face with a beautiful, brindle-patterned Dutch Shepherd.
Her pointed radar ears twitched under his gaze, and she presented him with a loving smile that, in Quentin’s opinion, no other animal could replicate. The dog nuzzled his palm, asking for pets, and he was all too happy to oblige her.
While scratching beneath Maddie’s ear, Quentin looked at the images passing across the screen. He had amassed quite a few contacts and favors during his years as an analyst at the Direction de la Protection et de la Sécurité de la Défense, giving him front-row access to MI6’s records. Most of the images were from journalists, and they helped stitch together the last night of one of Europe’s, if not the entire world’s, most beloved political figures.
The night Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, passed away.
“Maddie, something isn’t right about this. Nothing here, nor anywhere in the driver’s personal history, dictate a propensity for reckless substance abuse.”
Quentin directed Maddie’s attention toward the screen ahead.
“The photos, they . . . they don’t show me a man prepared to die, by intent nor by irresponsibility. There’s something else here, something . . . nefarious. Something planned. Something that’s . . . hey, wait, where are you going?”
The dog had grown bored and wandered away from his monologue. She spun around, startled, as he hopped from his chair to catch up with her. When she realized the motion came from her human, her tongue flopped out of her grinning mouth while her tail, forever curled up into a question-mark, wagged back and forth. Maddie waited for him, and when he passed her, she followed him at his side. The pair left the theater room into the main hallway of his home.
Quentin sighed as he walked into the living room and plopped onto his couch, rubbing his temples. “Maddie, the DPSD is keeping us busy right now. I hear that other European agencies face similar, ‘sudden’ workloads. Even during this, some of the analysts are whispering of conspiracy, of intent. I’m hearing too many words like ‘Shadow People’ and whatever ‘Lomaria’ is supposed to be.”
He looked beside him, where Maddie dutiful
ly sat. Her right eye shone a bright brown in the sunlight, though her left iris displayed a sightless, milky-white cataract. It was a scar from her past, long before Quentin adopted her.
But we all have scars from our past, don’t we?
“These theories,” he said, “they don’t lend much credence to themselves. But foreign powers, covering up a scandal by keeping their analysts from piecing together the clues before they disappear? That, that I will believe.” Quentin stood up and wandered toward a glass door, sliding it open to step onto his patio. The cool, Parisian air filled his lungs as he took a deep breath. “Maddie . . . the Princess did not die for nothing. The truth will come out.”
Paris, France
September 4, 1997-A
“How is your coffee, Q?”
“It is just fine, Moha—“
“No. No names. I am just ‘M’ to you. And you are just ‘Q’ to me. Anonymity will save our lives.”
“Well, M,” Quentin replied, “the coffee is unremarkably fine.”
M, an older gentleman with wispy grey hairs and a furrowed expression, leaned forward, glancing around the small, outdoor café. “Your honesty is why I agreed to speak with you,” he said. “It’s clear you have some clout with MI6, but not the kind of relationship with them that makes you untrustworthy. Now . . .”
M retrieved a manila folder from within his green jacket. “You know where I work. You know the things I see, the things I hear. It’s a popular hotel, and a good one, at that. The clients that come through here are respectable people.”
Accepting the manila folder from M’s outstretched arm, Quentin flipped it open, maintaining eye contact with the old gentleman.
“Then tell me what you heard, M,” Quentin said.
M cleared his throat. “It’s not what I heard. It’s what I know. I know Paul, the driver. I know a great deal about the goings-on of royal families. Paul was not drunk that night. And Diana was not being honest with the public.”
