***
I like to be the first up in the morning. It makes me feel in control. Plus, by going to sleep early and waking up early, I get a few hours of blessed solitude.
Granted, waking up before my teammates isn’t hard. When we’re on an afternoon shift, Kaelich sleeps until lunchtime, and Sorivel is no morning person, either - he wakes up at ten and is cranky until twelve.
Once I’m done with Quicksilver’s survey, however, I find myself without a productive way to use those morning hours. That, in turn, makes me gloomy - in Intelligence School, I used to study in the early morning. But I’ve no classes and no exams, now. What else can I do? I could read or watch movies, of course, but even if I mostly read military memoirs, spending the whole morning that way would be frivolous.
What do people do in their free time? I haven’t had any since I was ten years old.
Before I get so desperate I learn to knit, I find out something useful: while in this base - like in most small provincial bases - investigations are mostly handled by Civilian Intelligence, they’re still required to share their data with us. In the base intranet, I can access reports, calls from the public, and a suspiciously empty “ongoing investigations” folder.
So, time to learn what is happening in this city. I sit in a warm corner of the empty, desolated mess hall, make myself a tea, and browse through CivInt reports on my tablet.
As everybody told me, there’s not much magical activity in Rakavdon. All the action reports in the last month are routine work - investigation of false alarms, escorting a cooperative young woman to the Council, providing security for the University when a potentially dangerous relic was handled. I have to go back three months to find an actual operation - a raid against a traveling rogue mage, seriously Else-Touched, who raved about monsters made of silence and was easily captured by the vac-train station.
Disappointed, I start reading through the citizens' reports. Most are obvious false alarms: this week, there were three separate, increasingly urgent emails from an elderly man who is absolutely sure an acquaintance is a mind-mage, because she keeps beating him at bridge, and ‘that can only be the result of unnatural powers’.
Well, I have nothing better to do, and at least they make for an entertaining read, so I go on reading this month’s summaries, skipping only the obviously unhinged ones.
REPORT - 2/9/2715: A concerned mother writes that her child, aged thirteen, recently changed behavior, becoming argumentative and rude, and started sneaking out of the house.
CivInt actually answered this one with ‘it’s called puberty, madam’.
REPORT - 4/9/2715: A blurry picture of a shadowy figure in a backyard, out in the countryside - I almost take it seriously untill I see CivInt’s answer: ‘our expert identified the presence, with high confidence, as a reindeer’.
REPORT - 11/9/2715: Anonymous report, from someone claiming to be an illicit drug dealer, and writing that they were approached by an unknown woman, offering to sell them high-quality psychedelics for a lower cut than usual. According to the source, they turned her down because they believed she was part of the Blue Rose Society - one of the Syndicates that recently joined a continent-spanning cartel.
This one is interesting. There’s no answer from CivInt, since it was anonymous, but I flag it as interesting. I should ask them if they investigated the claim.
REPORT - 12/9/2715: A foreign student had lunch with a friend, but afterwards, couldn’t remember who the friend was.
CivInt, helpful as ever: ‘we understand most Vorokans look similar to outsiders, but we suggest you keep better track of your social environment’.
REPORT - 16/9/2715: A worried fourteen year old writes that her skin tingles when she touches her best friend, and she keeps making ‘strange dreams’ - could it be a sign of developing magical powers?
CivInt answered with a link to a datasphere sex-ed website.
This is starting to feel as frivolous as watching a movie, but it is entertaining.
I make myself a cup of cocoa - it’s nine in the morning, and off-duty agents are starting to trickle into the mess hall. Waiting for my teammates to wake up, I skim other reports, even looking at those flagged as unreliable.
REPORT - 3/9/2715 - UNRELIABLE: A man believes his husband cheated on him under magical influence.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
REPORT - 7/9/2715 - UNRELIABLE: A University student swears xe saw the Chair of Precursor History vanish in a flash of light.
No answer from CivInt, source tagged as prone to fanciful stories.
REPORT - 18/9/2715 - UNRELIABLE: A fast food worker saw a colleague serving an annoying, chatty young client, who left without paying - but the waiter who served xem had no memory of encountering xem at all.
Wait, that one doesn’t sound so silly. Especially since it’s the second report about an easily-forgotten young person.
CivInt noted no theta peak was detected, and answered ‘we understand your job is very stressful, but it’s likely your colleague didn’t want to admit being fast-talked by a patron’. I don’t necessarily disagree with them, but…. I run a few keyword searches - forget, remember, unknown - and after discarding a few irrelevant ones, I find a third suspicious instance, from last month.
REPORT - 29/8/2715 - UNRELIABLE: from a comic book vendor: a young agender person approached them and asked if they could have the whole collection of the changing tide, in physical paper volumes, for a ninety-percent discount.
The vendor remembers thinking the kid made a good case for it, and agreed to the discount. The kid paid from a gray account. Afterward, however, the seller couldn’t remember a single word the kid had said.
My interest starts turning into unease. These could be rationalizations from overworked people who made mistakes. But it could also be the work of a Mind-mage - or maybe a Lie-mage?
“Watcha doing?” Kaelich asks in a sleepy voice, almost making me jump out of my skin. Xe sat at my table and I didn’t even notice. “Wow, you were really taken in,” xe adds. “Watching something fun? Porn? You must have some vice.”
Xe leans over the table to take a look at my tablet.
“I’m reading intelligence reports, ser,” I say. “And you should see this...”
Xe blinks. “You’re reading reports in your free time? In the morning? Abyss, don’t they have video games where you’re from?”
We do, but my family worked fourteen hours a day to survive in a collapsing country, so I never had much time to try them. But I bite back my retort - there’s no point starting an argument. And my tongue feels laden. Not even a week here, and we already got to the part where my teammates found out I’m strange and wrong. So, I say nothing, and turn my tablet so that Kaelich can’t see it. I’ll just ignore xem and look for more relevant reports on my own.
“Well?” Kaelich adds, xir tone casual, “didn’t you say there was something interesting?”
“I thought you preferred videogames,” I say, hating that the words sound whiny instead of angry.
Kaelich looks confused. “You know I was kidding, right? Like, I definitely wouldn’t read reports in the morning, but if that’s your kink, go for it. Abyss, Sorivel’s hobby is lecturing me about my sins, if you like reading boring reports, it’s a step up.”
I know I reacted too aggressively, and I know, from long experience, that this is the kind of situation that tangles into a snarl of social gaffes I can never get out from. But Kaelich doesn’t look angry, nor diffident - either xe thinks I’m behaving strangely because I’m foreign, or xe simply doesn’t care.
It’s a strange feeling, making a social misstep, like I did so many times, and finding it doesn’t matter.
“There are a few citizen reports that attracted my attention,” I say. “CivInt didn’t take them seriously. But there are three different instances, in the last month, of people meeting a young person and giving them something - food twice, comics once - in return for nothing, and then not remembering the encounter.”
Kaelich frowns. “Hm,” he says. “So you think… it could be magic? Does magic do that?”
Lord of Sands, explain in your wisdom - how can someone possibly go through basic training without learning what magic does? But I don’t want to be snappy with Kaelich when xe’s being nice to me, so I repress my annoyance and answer.
“It could be a Mind-mage - specifically a Memorialist, I’d guess,” I say. “They can read and alter memories. Except the mage - assuming there is one - also made xir targets do something they wouldn’t do willingly. That would be a Puppeteer. So… it could be a Mind-mage with several abilities. Or maybe a Lie-mage. Wait, on second thought, a Liar would make more sense. A Mentalist Liar would both influence its victims and affect their memories.”
To my surprise, Kaelich seems to be listening carefully.
“Wow, you know your shit,” xe says. “I could never remember all the zillion sub-paths. Anyway, we should probably talk to CivInt about this. But… just a question. If someone can make people give xem stuff, and forget about it too… why just ask for food and comics? Like, with that kind of power, couldn’t you get rich easily?”
I open my mouth to answer, except I realize...i don't have a good answer to that. Why would a mage powerful enough to affect people's minds limit themselves to junk food and comics?
"Maybe xe's...not very smart." I wince at my own justification. It's lazy, and silly, and Intelligence taught me better than this. If your theory rests on the mark not being very smart, it's probably a shitty theory. And I do have a tendency to see patterns when there's none, I know it's one of my faults, and should always keep that in mind.
"Sorry, Corporal. I...it's likely I got carried away a bit. Apologies for wasting your time," I say to Kaelich, and feel my cheeks heat up.
Kaelich laughs. “The real question is why anyone would want to eat fried grasshoppers, magic or not. And really, don’t worry. This was kind of fun! I love when I give stupid opinions and smart people listen to me.”
Xe smiles, and while I have to force myself to smile back - smiles never came easily to me - for the first time in this cold, foreign place, I feel a little at ease.