Morell Attison groaned as she opened her eyes, rolling to the side to face the room’s bedside table. Her phone buzzed, vibrating on the desk as the clock behind it displayed the time in dim, neon red. 3:34 AM was far too early in the morning. Still, the phone rang again, and Morell grabbed for the device before it could vibrate itself off the desk’s edge. She placed the call on speaker and fell back into the covers.
“Hello? Contractor Attison?” The phone clicked as it shifted lines, and a man’s voice spoke through the connection. “This is Anthony Cordellas, Assistant-Head of TALOS’s Internal Security Department. My apologies for the late-night call, but we need you to answer some questions for us. It’s urgent.”
Urgent. Morell frowned at the word, resisting the urge to end the call right then and there. People’s questions were always urgent. Had a hero been mind-controlled, or were they merely refusing to come in? Did Virginia’s second, state-wide blackout stem from man-made causes? Was yet another villain aiming to steal the Hollywood sign? Large matters, small ones – somehow, they all used that word. Urgent. It was why she’d left the Federal Heroes Organization, moving to private consultation.
Still, despite the man’s phrasing, Morell found herself coming into focus. The Assistant head? That was new. She’d worked with TALOS for a while now – six months, by next week – and they tended to respect her request for asynchronous contact. That they’d now chosen to call, and through someone in charge no less, spoke to the seriousness of their issue.
Morell thought about it a little more, weighing the burden of professional responsibility, before finally groaning and sitting up in the bed. “What’s the question?” She asked as she picked up the phone, moving into the kitchen and digging around in one of the cabinet drawers for a pen.
Cordellas sighed in audible relief. “Well, there are several, but I’ll start with the largest. One of our sponsored heroes, Flame-Warden? He had his contract released to social media. We’re working to keep things contained, but there're still documents floating around that include the man’s personal information. Real name, power-details, home address...”
“You want to know who did it,” Morell finished for him as she straightened, setting a pen and coffee bag onto the counter beside her. “Do you have a Claim already written for me, or is this going to be more off the cuff?”
“A claim? I’m not sure that I—” Cordellas paused as someone spoke in the background. There was a short shuffling of papers, followed by muffled conversation before he came back. “My apologies, I’m afraid I’m not following. Your power has been categorized as a form of query-based omniscience, correct?”
At that, Morell gave a slow blink. His was a clinical, high-level description— the kind that came from a summarization at the bottom of a worker’s file. And he was right, on a technical level at the very least; that was the category her power fell into. It was just a very, very poor description of what that power did.
“Not quite.” She sighed, resigning herself to giving the run-down as she plugged in her coffee maker. “I write Claims. True or False statements, preferably objective, but my power declares them either way. The more things I’m directly making the Claim about, the more it costs me to use. Conversely, though, a good set of details can decrease the cost of a single-target Claim to practically nothing. Larger is still better than many small ones, and I can do a few dozen moderately vague but well-written Claims in a day.” Morell paused, then nodded her head. Having filled the coffee maker as she spoke, she turned it on to brew.
“Alright. True or false questions,” Cordellas began, his words slow. “We don’t need to know the who of this, then; that sounds outside your scope. How about... whether this was a hack or an internal issue?”
“Doable, but a bit broad. Your company employs six— no. Seven thousand people?” Morel shook her head, not waiting for the man to answer. “Either way, that’s too large of a population. Can you tell me what departments have access to the hero contracts?”
“Legal, upper-level HR, and about half of the Internal Security team.” Cordellas spouted off the names as Morell scrambled to grab a pad of stickies from across the room.
“Alright. Got it.” She tore the top one off, sticking it to the limestone countertop. “And... what about what actually happened? The website used to upload all this? A time scale would be better, but—”
“The files were uploaded to DropChute at one thirty-eight this morning, and the posts to social media began ten minutes after that,” Cordellas interrupted. “If you think the account IDs will help, I can get you those too.”
Morell blinked. “No, that works.” Pulling a mug down from the cupboard, she scratched out a Claim on the pad. Individual(s) employed by TALOS’s Legal, HR, and/or Internal Security departments released contract information regarding Flame Warden to the public between one and two AM this morning.
As she finished writing, Morell directed her power out and onto the page. It emerged in the form of an ephemeral glow, flowing from the palm of her hand to cover the paper’s surface before being sucked into the ink. The flow continued for another second, then cut itself off, leaving the ink to shine white on the page.
Morell took a deep breath, then moved to sit down, feeling more than a little drained. The cost had remained quite hefty — a result of checking a Claim against some few thousand individuals — but she was gratified to have remained on her feet. She poured herself a cup of the still-brewing coffee before reading the Claim off to Cordellas.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The man’s frown was audible through the phone. “And? Was it correct?”
“Still waiting to see.” Morell eyed the sticky note, watching as the white light contained by the ink flickered within its lines. Edges crisped, then straightened out again, a cycle of power slowly diminishing as the Claim ran its course. The light took twenty-three seconds to die, leaving behind a paper whose ink had been scoured away and replaced with gold.
Not real gold, of course; the replacing substance was a power-created material, not truly useful. But it was what the material represented that was important. The Claim was true, according to Morell’s power. There existed at least one individual within any of the defined TALOS departments who had participated in the leak.
Morell communicated as much as she sipped from her mug. “That’s as good as I can give you right now; it costs too much to keep doing broad strokes like this. If you get a narrower list together, though, I should be able to help you isolate the people.” She sat back in her seat as the man thanked her, then muffled his end of the mic, passing on what she’d said. “Was there anything else?”
He took a minute to answer. “Yes, actually. Two things. Much smaller in scope. We’ve been trying to reach some other contractors of ours — a female hero called Flashstep and one of our workers, Cole Barston – but they haven’t responded. It’s been nearly a week, and their lack of communication has people concerned.”
Morrel frowned, waggling her pen. “Are they related?”
“Not that we know of. No. The company hires Flashstep for the occasional courier run, and Barston is a technopath working with the IT department. Both are powered, though, and that they’ve both gone missing is... unusual. We’d prefer not to file a missing-persons report, but that’s the next step. More so given recent events.”
Morell winced, giving a slow nod. Power-related crimes were on the rise again, and though it was hardly as bad as in the decades prior, the whole of the city’s powered population was on edge. “Well, again, I don’t know about finding them, but I can certainly run a sweep and check that they’re okay.”
She pulled a new sticky note from the stack, scribbling a quick, basic Claim. Flashstep and Cole Barston, contractors of TALOS, are in Kelton City.
She leveraged her power against the ink on the page and watched as the words transitioned to gold, integrating themselves with the paper. “Alright, so they’re in the city,” Morell murmured, grabbing another sticky from the pad.
“Flashstep and Cole... are in fair health.” She leaned back as that one burned, flaring up in a harsh, white flame. It was bright but ultimately non-harmful, giving off no actual heat even as the sticky she’d written turned to ash. False, then. A non-true Claim.
Morell frowned, brushing off the countertop. “No, they’re not both healthy. As individuals, then?” Again, both papers burned, and Morell began to cycle through the possibilities.
“Sick.” No. “Injured?” Also no. “Physically unwell. Mentally unwell.” She pushed some additional juice into the last two sets of claims, adjusting for their technical broadness, only to watch them burn false. Baffled, she ran a check to see if the two were dead.
They were not.
“Well, hell,” Morell began. “None of that’s making sense. They can’t not be in fair health, but neither be in poor health. They’re inversions of each other. At least one should have...” She trailed off as Cordellas hummed worriedly from the phone.
“Power interference, Miss Attison? The circumstances are unfortunate, but I’ve heard that can be an issue regarding powers like yours.”
Morell wavered. Interference was a reasonable assumption; it just wasn’t... something was off. Her power was still working, but the results weren’t right. She tried a few more Claims before Cordellas waved her down, citing his earlier fallback of filing for missing-persons, even in light of the two’s remaining presence within the city.
He thanked her again, and at long last, Morell put down the phone.
Looking around, she let out a sigh, feeling disquieted. The time was too late – too early – to go back to bed. She’d already drained one coffee mug and was halfway through another. She was stuck, awake and with nothing to do.
Morell left the table and came back with a box of crackers, chewing through them as she rolled the phone call over in her mind. Anxious. Of all that they’d gone over, one line of thought continued to nag at her. A silly thought, it was the kind that told you to check the ceiling or behind the shower curtain when you used the bathroom. A small, uncomfortable niggling in the back of her head that said ‘what if.’
Two missing, and a leak regarding one of the company’s heroes. How many powered individuals did TALOS contract with? A dozen? A dozen and a half? There couldn’t be many.
The thought stuck with her, beginning to roll as Morell crunched down on another cracker. What were the chances that both Flashstep and Barston had dropped off the radar in just one week’s time? She’d only just checked for a security breach. That, mixed with all that was going on around Kelton, gave rise to a set of suspicions she just couldn’t shake.
Morell’s reluctance to continue draining her power warred with her suspicion, and after a few seconds eying it, she reached for her pen. My own contract with TALOS has leaked to one or more external parties.
The ink sputtered for a moment, and Morell leaned backward in her chair, already letting out an annoyed chuckle as she waited for the paper to burst into flames. She’d let the moment get away from her.
And yet, as the seconds dragged on and her chuckling died off, the paper continued to glow. She shifted, a little less comfortable, waiting for the light to end.
And end it did. In a rush, the glow sucked away, leaving the sticky unscathed— the ink, golden on the page.
Morell froze. There was a brief silence as the information registered, and then she jerked to her feet. The box of crackers fell to the side as her arm hit it and she flew into her bedroom. Pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a tread-worn pair of tennis shoes. Morell pulled open her bedroom’s closet door and shouldered a mid-sized gym bag that hung from the rack across from her. A few changes of clothes were already inside, as were copies of her IDs. All hopefully unnecessary but packed nonetheless.
She was moving quickly. Too quickly not to have missed something. And yet, after giving the room a quick look-over and stuffing away anything she felt she couldn’t live without, Morell dialed a number on her phone and headed for the door. Her voice was strained as the person on the other end picked up her call. “Sallas-- hi. I know it’s early. Listen, I was wondering if I could crash at your place for a bit. My contract got leaked; I'm leaving the apartment now.”