With the emergency situation dying down, or at least not escalating any further, Dyna found herself able to sit still and relax for the first time in what felt like days, even though it had only been a few hours.
The alleged safe house was little more than an abandoned arcade building. Dyna wasn’t sure how safe the blue and yellow checkered building actually was, but wood covered all the windows and a storage garage around the back hid the station wagon from any passing eyes. With Emerald casually relaxing with a light cup of tea in front of a series of monitors displaying the feeds from cameras set up around the building, it certainly felt safer than being out in the open.
Despite it being nearly impossible for someone else to enter the building without either showing up on camera or making the doors chime, Dyna couldn’t quite let go of the mirror. She rubbed her thumb over the smooth cover, staring at her own reflection. Ever since Emerald got back to her, it hadn’t changed. If she didn’t know better, she would say that it was a perfectly normal cosmetic mirror.
“Drink your tea,” Emerald said. “You’ll feel better.”
Dyna took her eyes off the mirror long enough to see that Emerald wasn’t even looking at her. Seated behind what might have been a prize counter, Emerald kept her eyes on the array of monitors. Dyna watched over her shoulder, eyes flicking from screen to screen. All the images were black and white. Not because they were old, but because they were using some kind of night vision mode since the sun had gone down. Most were completely void of any activity. Only the main road had the occasional car driving by.
Satisfied that they weren’t in any immediate danger, Dyna looked down to the delicate porcelain teacup, white with green swirling paint, and its matching saucer. Much like coffee, she didn’t exactly enjoy most teas. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t drink it, but hot chocolate was by far her preferred heated beverage. This was a yellowish tea that smelled of flowers and had little… hairs floating in it. Not human hairs, but little thin wispy things probably similar to peach fuzz.
Dyna had to assume that the hairs were intentional given that she had seen them floating in Emerald’s cup, but they certainly gave it an unappealing look.
“White tea,” Emerald said, picking up her own cup. “Good for reducing stress.”
“I see…” Tentatively picking up the tea, Dyna gave it a careful sip, not wanting to burn her tongue and be unable to taste anything for the next week. “It’s good,” she lied. It wasn’t bad. Average. Adequate. A bit bitter. Not something she would choose to drink if given a variety of choices, but not something she would refuse to drink either.
Emerald gave her a smile.
Hopefully she wasn’t a mind reader. Dyna realized that she was very likely a psychic of some type given her apparent ability to disappear.
“How does your…” Dyna stopped herself, suddenly unsure. With Pyschodynamics hidden deep beneath the Carroll Institute and the subjects of artifacts and artificers conspicuously missing from any of the institute’s curriculum, she wasn’t sure if it was alright to ask about such things. Or share them.
Then again, she was one of these artificers and so was Emerald. They could talk, right?
The worst she could do would be to say no.
“Can I ask how your artifact works? Or is that not allowed?”
Emerald glanced over her shoulder, regarding Dyna with a small smile for a short moment before shrugging and looking back to the monitors. “I’m not sure what you’ve been cleared to know given your… irregular situation with Doctor Cross. But you’ve obviously observed that I can move about far faster than other people. I suppose that will have to suffice for now.”
“And your artifact is the pocket watch?” She shrugged again in a way that made Dyna think she was saying yes without actually saying so. “Do you have regular psychic abilities?”
“Barely. I’m technically classified as a Transmitter/Receptor hybrid - Clairvoyant.”
“I thought clairvoyants were always Receptors? Just plain Receptors.”
“The researchers were probably just trying to categorize the odd ability of supposedly sending myself visions of futures from alternate realities. Doctor Livermore calls it Psema Chronal Cognition. I call it pretty useless.”
“You see the future? Shouldn’t that be precognitive?”
“Doctor Livermore says that I send myself the visions. And it isn’t of our future. Nothing I see comes true. So it isn’t precognitive. And it isn’t ever useful either; these alternate realities are vastly different from our own so I can’t even use them to glean information. People don’t act the same or have the same jobs and personalities. And sometimes there are weird things like monsters or demons. Doctor Livermore is trying to decide if he can use me to prove the existence of alternate realities or if I’m just really good at daydreaming nonsense. I’ve learned to ignore it completely.”
Dyna couldn’t help but feel some minor kinship. While Emerald apparently had a measurable ability, it sounded like it would be about as useful on the psionic tests as Dyna herself was.
“Yourself?” Emerald said.
“Nothing unless you count the statistically improbable ability to get every question on psi-tests incorrect.”
Emerald looked back again, raising an eyebrow. “Every question wrong?”
“I’ve gone fifty coin flips in a row without getting a single one correct,” Dyna said, trying to tone her voice such that it didn’t sound like she was boasting.
“Have you tried saying the opposite of what you think the answer is?”
“Yes. And randomly picking heads or tails. And simply alternating my answers or giving all the same answers. And a dozen other things.”
“That seems like it should be a measurable ability even if you give inverse answers.”
“I thought so too. A few researchers like to poke and prod at me every now and again, but they usually look over me in favor of others who can actually produce more obvious results. Sometimes it feels like only Walter believes I’m actually a psychic despite the statistical outliers in my responses.”
Emerald nodded slowly. “I understand that. Doctor Livermore is about the only doctor who actually tries to investigate my ability.” Her smile faltered for just a moment. “Which is half the reason Ruby and I were staying out here rather than at Carroll. It gets a bit annoying having to deal with him. And… speak of the agent…”
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Dyna blinked at the non sequitur until she noticed one of the cameras. The one posed over the rear entrance of the building.
A certain dark-haired man stood in frame, wearing those distinctive sunglasses despite the sun having set long ago. He depressed a button on an intercom device just next to the door, leaning in.
Walter’s deep tone came over the speakers set near the monitors. “White eight-eleven.”
Emerald leaned forward, pressing a button on the keyboard. “Green dash,” she started before consulting her pocket watch. “Six-eight-one-six.”
Dyna watched the brief exchange with idle curiosity, wondering just how they decided what their code should be. Every time she had heard Walter’s code, it included different numbers. And that included the version that Beatrice had given her, which could have been a deliberately false code for all Dyna knew. Emerald looking at her watch implied a time sensitive nature, but Walter hadn’t done the same.
Shaking her head, deciding that it really didn’t matter unless she got a code of her own, Dyna simply watched as Emerald hit another button on the keyboard. With a low, buzzing tone from the speakers, the door’s electronic latch released and Walter pushed into the garage.
At one point in time, there might have been a wall separating the storage area filled with discarded and broken arcade cabinets and the rest of the arcade floor, but it had since been torn down. Or it fell down. Either way, Dyna could simply turn her head and watch Walter walk past the station wagon, up a short step, and approach the prize counter.
Seeing his dark hair and mirrored glasses in person released a strange tension that Dyna hadn’t realized she had. The muscles in her neck, shoulders, and thighs all released at once, making her slump. Although, given their experiences, she trusted that Emerald didn’t want to cause her harm, there must have been some small niggling doubt in the back of her mind that Beatrice had steered her wrong and led her to the wrong people.
Walter, standing at the broken glass counter, vanquished any vestiges of such thoughts from Dyna’s mind.
“Status?” he asked, clearly addressing Emerald.
“Super green,” she said with a bright smile. “I received a text from Ruby stating that she has both of our spooks in hand.”
“Can Ruby handle that without your oversight?”
“Neither have put up a fight. Not that they should be able to after I disabled them. I doubt either will walk again,” Emerald said in a perfectly cheery tone, though her smile turned just a tad toward the vicious side of things.
“Do we know their origin?”
At that, Emerald shook her head. “After they demonstrated anomalous abilities, I prioritized the safety of the asset over interrogation.”
“Describe the abilities.”
Emerald stopped for a moment, apparently in thought. “I had them both down with hardly any harm to either. I was in the process of tying them up when the situation reversed. They were up on their feet and I was down on the ground, getting tied up. I cannot account for the how, only that they were a bit shocked at first as well. Not long enough, however, making me think that they had experienced something similar before.” Frowning, Emerald shook her head. “I escaped with a tactfully timed distraction courtesy of our asset and elected to escalate matters to ensure history didn’t repeat.”
Walter frowned, reaching up to run the nail of his thumb against the stubble on his chin. Eyes hidden behind the glasses, Dyna couldn’t tell if his eyes flicked over to her or not. “Possible artifact effect. What of the artifact you recovered?”
“Safe and sound,” Emerald said, holding up the steel box.
Dyna glanced at it, following its movements. So that was another artifact? Dyna didn’t feel anything from it. The case was probably shielded.
“Understood. Rendezvous with Ruby, deliver the detainees to Carroll, and personally ensure that the artifact finds its way to Doctor Cross’ hands. We will have a proper debriefing after.”
Emerald, pocket watch in hand, looked over her shoulder to flash a smile at Dyna. “I’m already there,” she said just before she vanished completely.
Only to reappear right next to the station wagon.
Dyna felt it would have been a far more impressive magic trick had she not stood about while waiting for the garage door to open before driving out of the arcade in full view.
Not that Walter paid her any attention. He immediately moved forward, taking her seat at the monitors. He pulled out a phone and small cable and connected them to the computer and monitors. The displays immediately started dividing up, showing feeds from more and more cameras. Some were cameras from other nearby buildings. Others were clearly traffic cameras. While the subdivision of cameras continued, Walter turned his back to the monitors.
Dyna couldn’t help but shrink in on herself at seeing her reflection in his glasses. “Am I… in trouble?”
“With me? No. The fault for this incident lies with Doctor Cross. Were he anyone else, I would see him thrown out on the streets, brainwashed to think he was a stray cat,” Walter said, offering a small smile at the… joke? “Unfortunately, the man is the premier scientist in the field of artifacts and their creation, containment, and other studies. A fact that makes him more or less indispensable. He is not, in any sense of the word, an expert in artificers, however.
“That said, you may be in trouble in other contexts of the word. Invariably, all artificers find themselves… hunted,” he said as if only deciding on the word at the last moment. “As you experienced today. The Carroll Institute maintains a monopoly on artificers and that makes them desirable to other, similar organizations. Artifacts tend to be valuable as well and are often sought after by both Carroll and others, making artificers even more appealing given that they always carry an artifact with them.”
“So these guys will be after me… forever?”
“For the foreseeable future, at least.”
Dyna shrank down even more. “Oh.” She wasn’t sure what else to say to that. “I can’t just give the artifact back, can I?”
“Now that people have already found you? I doubt it. I intended to bring you into this slowly, to ensure you had proper training and adequate knowledge of just what you were getting into. But after consulting with another associate of mine, I suspect that your psionic cascade during compatibility testing reached an intensity that others could detect and hone in on. It may have been too late at that point in time, which is a failure of my own.
“I’m still not sure how they singled you out specifically. Without a real artifact, they wouldn’t have been able to hone in on that source. Beatrice suggested that there was a… communication error, resulting in some information on your identity leaking outside the institute.”
“Oh, so there’s no chance,” Dyna said, only to tilt her head in confusion once his full statement registered with her. “What do you mean real artifact?”
Walter’s wan smile did not reassure Dyna. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that the item Doctor Cross gave you doesn’t actually do anything. It was an experiment he devised to test—”
“Yes it does.”
Although Walter’s eyes were hidden behind his pinch-nose reflective glasses, his face still twitched in obvious surprise. Dyna could easily imagine him blinking in shock to go along with the contemplative frown.
“I’m sorry?”
“The mirror,” Dyna said, holding it up. “I saw things in it. Those men who were following me, their perspectives showed up in the lenses when they were chasing me. And again when Emerald got into trouble. That’s how I knew they were chasing me and pointing a sniper rifle at our car.”
For a long, long minute, Walter didn’t speak. He opened his mouth, but didn’t quite manage to get to the point of actual words. He simply stared at Dyna for about half the minute before tilting his head downward to stare at the mirror. “That… shouldn’t be possible.”
“But it is. It did show me things, I’m—”
“I believe you,” Walter said, holding out a hand before Dyna could jump to her feet. “These things are poorly understood. It looks like that is another reason to keep Doctor Cross around,” he added in a tone more to himself than to Dyna. “We’ll need to speak with him after we return.”
Dyna looked down at the mirror in her lap, rubbing her finger over the rim. It wasn’t fake. That she was sure of. There must have been a mix-up somewhere because the mirror had definitely helped her out. Her and Emerald both.
“Are you ready to return? My car is just around the corner. Nothing will happen while you’re in my care.”
Nodding, she slowly got to her feet. The idea that she might still be in danger hadn’t even crossed her mind. Between the mirror looking normal and Walter’s presence, she definitely felt safer than she had even with Emerald around. His reassurance didn’t go unappreciated despite that.
“Thank you for coming for me.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier. Unfortunately, we had to ensure the security of the Carroll Institute as a whole before venturing out here. But Emerald and Ruby have my full trust. You are in good hands with them.”
“I barely even saw Ruby,” Dyna said with a small laugh as Walter collected his phone. “Not that I’m all that upset about not getting to know her. The few minutes she had a gun pointed at me was more than enough.”
“I’ll apologize on her behalf, but mostly because I imagine she was harsher than needed. An unknown showing up with someone else’s codes is beyond suspicious. One can’t be too careful.” With a quick glance to his smart watch, Walter motioned. “Come on. I imagine you’ll want a long rest after today.”
“That sounds lovely.”